“This Ain’t Flint”: Ain’t a campaign, but it ain’t social media at work, either.

(Warning: This is a long post, but it goes by quickly.)

In Michael Moore’s 1995 fictitious movie Canadian Bacon, the U.S. economy was in a rut and the president, whose low approval rating is not unlike that of our former president, decided that what was needed to boost both his popularity and the country’s morale was a good war.  Naturally, war was declared on a country that didn’t do anything to us — Canada. (This scenario sounds eerily familiar, doesn’t it?)

Well, imagine my surprise when it was brought to my attention last week that the exact opposite situation was actually happening — our economy is in the dumps, but our president has a high approval rating and somebody in Ottawa, Ontario, decided to (inadvertently?) pick on us. No, not “us” as in the United States of America, but “us” as in the running backdrop to many of Michael Moore’s films — Flint, Michigan.

(Disclaimer: This is a tad awkward for me to write, as Flint is where I was born and grew up. However, I’m taking as objective as an approach to this as I can, analyzing from a campaign standpoint, not as a Flintstone but as a professional.)

Here’s the deal:

For about a week, citizens all over Ottawa were seeing outdoor advertising of a fuchsia square with a creepy doll  in the foreground, with the words simply “THIS AIN’T FLINT .CA” displayed prominently in white. However, people were being directed to a website that wasn’t even ready to be launched.

Finally, when it was launched on April 5th, people whose curiosity from the outdoor campaign turned into conversion went to thisaintflint.ca, where they were greeted with a gaudy site with a video in the middle. Said video is a 3 minute, 19 second poor attempt at  . . . well, that’s just it. You as a viewer aren’t really sure what the video is trying to accomplish, other than to compare footage of Michael Moore’s first film, Roger & Me (1989), to modern-day stock footage of Ottawa, while telling you that Ottawa “ain’t Flint,” it’s immune to the recession, it’s the best on earth to live, and blah blah blah you get the picture.

Here’s the video if you don’t really want to go to the site:

There are so many things wrong with this campaign that I don’t even know where to begin. First, let’s clear this up right now:

Said campaign was NOT issued by the Canadian government. Under the “Who” section on the site, it says:

The “THIS AINT FLINT” campaign has been executed exclusively by Newcap Radio – using the creative inspiration of the team at Alphabet Creative.

This same combination of resources is largely responsible for the dramatic, yet consistent growth of LiVE 88.5 and HOT 89.9 in the very competitive Ottawa-Gatineau radio marketplace (see chart – up to 400%* increase in market share over the past six years!)

Needless to say, word has spread around, from the Flint Expats to MLive.com (home of The Flint Journal), which has 46 comments on the article as I type this (unfortunately, most commenters there are trolls).

In an article from the Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa Tourism has come to Flint’s defense, as well as issuing a joint statement with the Flint Area Convention and Visitors Bureau (said joint statement is not on FACVB’s site at the time I write this, however).

Ottawa blogger Audra Williams did a pretty good job of dissecting this horrible campaign on her blog, pointing out the bad copy, typos, and (my favorite) misuse of the word “obtuse” (they meant obscure), but I’d like to emphasize a few things she beat me to but should be worth reiterating nonetheless.

I am not going to incorporate the actual politics of Flint involved in my analysis. Most of those who are jumping to Flint’s defense on this are talking about how wrong the “This Ain’t Flint” campaign has it, how great Flint actually is, how far we’ve come, “why does everybody pick on us?”, “stop kicking our dead horse,” and I’m not going to go there. I will, however, say this:

No matter what, before you decide to launch a campaign, ask yourself this one simple question: “Is the potential for backlash greater than the potential benefit?” If the answer is yes, start over.

Or, more bluntly, “Am I taking a crap on somebody else in order to make myself look good?” If the answer is yes, start over.

What’s this aboot, eh?

As I touched upon earlier, a big issue with this campaign is the fact that it’s unclear who exactly they’re targeting and what exactly they want them to do. Is to brag about how Ottawa is the best place on earth to live? Is it to pick on Flint even more than they have been the past 20 years? Is it supposed to evoke community pride?

The ThisAin’tFlint site says under the “Who” page:

This same combination of resources is largely responsible for the dramatic, yet consistent growth of LiVE 88.5 and HOT 89.9 in the very competitive Ottawa-Gatineau radio marketplace (see chart – up to 400%* increase in market share over the past six years!)

(ugly bar graph)

Our Clients Are The Real Winners

Our increased influence has paid off for a number of Ottawa businesses. These winning business owners include…(blah blah blah)

Um . . . so . . . wait . . . there’s a “If You Own a Business” page . . . let’s see what that says:

If You Own A Business

If you own a business and would like to grow your market share by putting our ideas and proven strategies to work for you, please email us here thisaintflint@magma.ca

We got you this far, let’s see how far we can take you.

What ideas? What proven strategies? So far all this is proving is that these guys are jerks. Ian Capstick, Ottawa-based PR/Communications firm owner, decided to send the creator of the campaign, Tony Lyons of Alphabet Creative, a few questions.

Question: What are the overall objectives of the “This Ain’t Flint” campaign for Alphabet Creative?

Answer: The impetus of the campaign comes from a basic frustration that we feel exists amongst a lot of local businesses – that – although we are clearly in a recession, there’s no denying it – the level of doom portrayed by the media is not commensurate with the actual level of contraction – locally.

“Locally” is the key word here. We are incredibly fortunate to live in a community that is somewhat insulated from all this, not entirely, but somewhat. Our objective, as a communications firm, is to show that we can move a message using a proven media formula – outdoor and radio advertising – delivered in a unique way.
That’s it – pretty straightforward really.

Really.

Obviously they need to work on their social media and overall online strategies, because it’s backfiring big time.

On This Ain’t Flint’s “Spread The Word” page, they really want to know what you think:

If you have your own success story to share, or even if you think we’re completely out of our minds! Let us know – and we’ll post your story on the site.

Click here to tell us what you think >

Click here to forward this >

How bad do you want to know?

One of the first rules of spreading the word online, as I’m sure David Meerman Scott will agree, is make it easy for people to spread your message. What they have here are two “click here” links (bad enough) that are both “href=”mailto:?subject”, meaning that if you use gmail or yahoo (a.k.a. “cloud emailing”) like most of us, that ain’t gonna work. Given what I’ve seen so far, they’d have to be out of their minds to publish the reactions to this campaign on their site.

Next, we have:

You can also join the conversation on our Facebook Group

Follow us on Twitter and we’ll keep you updated

This is why Facebook should have “Not a Fan” pages

The majority of the people who are “fans” of “This Ain’t Flint” (which is a fan page, not a group, there’s a difference), are Flint natives and Canadians in the right mind who are NOT cool with the entire concept. (Personally I am not a fan, because I’m not going to BECOME a “fan” of something I’m not a fan of just to tell them how much I’m not a fan, because even writing that makes my head hurt, but you get the idea.) Take a look at the fan site, the comments, the pictures submitted, and you’ll see that most people are NOT fans that are “fans”.

The Twitter profile is a joke in itself. As I type this, there are 26 followers and the last update was April 9th.

They forgot a couple things

Also, it’s worth noting that if they want people to spread their “message” (which is still unclear even after Ian Capstick’s interview), then there should be an “Add To Any” or “Share/Save” button on every page (like at the bottom of each post here), and fer crissakes, THE VIDEO SHOULD BE EASILY EMBEDDABLE. Not everybody knows how to rip it from source code and tweak it like I did above to get it here.

You really want to spread your story? MAKE IT EASY TO SHARE. And why not just have a form to email you, if you REALLY want to know what we think? I’ve got one, and if I can do it, so can this professional

“. . . advertising, design, and new media creative consultancy. [Whose] focus is communication. Clear, concise messages delivered from a unique angle. [Whose] commitment is to help clients succeed by creating the right message targeted to the right person, at the right time.”

I just had to retype that from their website because it was all in flash. I’m sure they’re SEO experts, too.

Proven media formula indeed.

Proven to backfire.

Which it has.

Matt Bach, PR guy for the Flint Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, mentioned on his Facebook profile earlier that the station manager of the Ottawa radio station behind the “This Ain’t Flint” campaign said he’s going to issue an apology to the Flint Mayor. According to Matt,

“The manager said he’s been bombarded by e-mails from Flint and Ottawa people who are upset over the ad campaign. He said he didn’t realize there was so many Flint people so passionate about our community.”

But that ain’t social media

Matt said he thinks this is the work of social media, because he made pleas on his Facebook and his Twitter profiles to basically spam the email addresses provided.

I have to disagree.

Being bombarded with emails isn’t social media working — email existed long before social media. While a few consider email “social media,” I do not, and while it is a type of correspondence, it is largely regarded as separate from the tools that comprise social media. In fact, social networks have recently been proven more popular than email as a whole by Nielson, thus differentiating the two.

Some of his friends claimed that it was “good PR” and “definitely social media,” because they “would not have known about it otherwise.” But the truth is that it’s the work of an email spam campaign, in which social media was a conduit, but not a necessary factor.

Think about this:

If this campaign were to still have launched in a Web 1.0 world, where Facebook and Twitter did not exist, how would others have probably found out about it? Email.

How did they bombard the station manager? Email.

How did I find out about it? Email.

The only case here where “social media was at work” was the existence of a Facebook fan page (mislabeled as a “group”) on the site and a lame Twitter account which may as well have not existed in the first place. However, those who were “fans” (but not really fans) of the campaign were complaining about it on the fan page, and posting pictures of that Calvin kid peeing on the logo of the campaign, which is all fine and dandy except . . . there has been no response from the creator of the page, the campaign, nothing whatsoever.

Therein lies the rub

That does not make it social media at work — it makes it a sounding board for complaints of like-minded people, which might as well be a guest book a la Web 1.0. Yes, they object to the campaign, but unless whoever behind it actually interacts with them, says “I hear you, I am here, and I acknowledge your complaints online and I’m making myself visible and accessible” . . . it’s basically a BBS. Actually, a BBS has more capabilities than a Facebook fan page. Nevermind.

You could say blogs were a factor, however as I type this Google indexes four unique blogs talking about “This Ain’t Flint”. Most of which have a lot of comments, whose commenters had never been there before, except when they either a) Googled “This Ain’t Flint” or b) were sent links to them via . . . email, like I was.

Overall, it was a poorly planned, poorly executed “campaign” in every aspect, online and off.

What could’ve been better?

The role of social media could have been greater given a few factors:

• the Twitter account could have been more aggressive with its message, conversational (if not defensive), and A REAL PERSON, therefore having more followers, regardless of the content of the message of itself
• the Facebook page needed a) more content, and b) actual interaction between the “brand” and the “fans”, therefore allowing the fans to have the piece of mind that their concerns were acknowledged
• there should have been “Add To Any” or “Share/Save” buttons on every page of the site
• the video on the site needed to have an embed option and a URL option
• the email links needed to be either popups (like CNN has) or forms
• better copy, a shorter video, and should have been much clearer about the message and the target audience

I know I could add to the list “just don’t be an asshole,” but it’s hard to get through to someone like the creator of the campaign who, when asked if he thought it would offend, said

“We don’t intend to offend anyone, and I don’t think the campaign could be seen to be in any way offensive, except maybe to doll enthusiasts.”

Um . . . what?

So now I ask (and apologize for the length of this post) — what do you think? Am I wrong? Was social media at work here any more than as a conduit? What would you add? How would you have handled it, either as the pitcher or the catcher? What would you change?

Possibly Related posts:

1. The difference between print & web, + how NOT to launch a student campaign.