FLIRTing with the Crowds

Henri just wrote about the Garfield strip randomizer and its promise as a viral marketing tool for Garfield, should the company behind the brand be awake enough to utilize it. Just finishing up (yes, on xmas holiday, since it’s the only time available) my thesis on crowdsourcing, I felt compelled to comment on this one

Touched up a little, with enhanced sharing tools, this little app definitely would hold some promise as a viral marketing tool, since it’s incredibly easy to use and produces fun and readily shareable results that can be enjoyed in no time. This one would definitely fly on, say, facebook in a similar vein to visual bookshelf, which I wrote about here.

I’m not sure though that it provides enough creative freedom for ‘expressing personality’ to actually work as a fame generator (best cartoons would be rated, etc.), since there’s very little for the person to do except push the randomizer button, and the end result always reflects first and foremost the personality and creativity of Jim Davis himself (personally I think the cartoon nowadays clings to the irresistible character more than the quality of script writing; Garfield passed its heyday some twenty years ago…).

What it all comes down to anyway is the ‘Organization’ piece in the triple play of ‘Business Needs’, ‘Customer Environment’ and ‘Organizational Capabilities’: as the cease and desist letter shows, there’s no force in the marketing dept. of Garfield brand that would allow this, for it doesn’t fit with their existing mindset on how brands should be handled and guarded, which now seems to be ‘tampering with the product strictly prohibited’.

As said, I sure think Garfield could use some refreshing.