May 25, 2009
Posted by Mike in Advertising,Marketing,New Media
5 Comments

Coleman… The Origin of Social Networking?

Just caught a spot while watching The Deadliest Catch that caught my attention… which is saying something these days. The spot for The Coleman Company (THE camping equipment folks) makes the bold claim that Coleman is “The Original Social Networking Site”… well, actually, I’m not really sure if that claim is about the website or about any campsite using Coleman equipment, but that’s not the point of this.

It’s a bold statement indeed, enough to make me jump online and check out the Coleman website to see all of the cool things a venerable old company like Coleman was doing with social media… ummm, one word comes to mind: FAIL.

Here’s one of the TV spots:
(Oh, wait, they don’t give users the ability to share the videos through their social networks.

That’s OK, I’ll use their YouTube channel:
(I’ve been unable to find a Coleman channel on Youtube.)

How about Vimeo.com:
(Umm, this is starting to get embarrassing, nothing on Vimeo.)

Let’s try Dailymotion.com:
(Nada.)

OK, so maybe video sharing is a little too much to expect, I’ll just pop over to Twitter, and see what their Tweet Stream says about all of this, after all, they invented Social Media, surely they’ll have a presence on the fastest growing SM site… Don’t bother, they’re not there.

Facebook? Oh yeah!! We have Facebook… in fact, when you visit the Colman site, Facebook is the ONLY SM app they have a presence on, and the ONLY LINK under the “Start Networking” tab on the site. (And I’m sure they’re proud of their 850 or so fans… that’s right, 850 fans of a 109-year-old brand).

It’s such a shame when a possibly great campaign concept and beautifully executed “old” media pieces are overshadowed by the lack of follow through, or understanding. Coleman has a real chance to take a 100+ year old brand and bring it into the 21st century with this campaign, but unless they act fast, this campaign will end up being written off as an expensive mistake, and the only thing the company will “learn” from it is that “Social Media doesn’t work.”

According to joeytomatoes.com, the agency behind the campaign is Doner Advertising, a well respected group; so I’m not sure who will bear the brunt of the blame when this campaign fails or only succeeds mildly well.

To Coleman’s credit, they do have 2 free iPhone apps available… and desktop wallpaper, but since I’m a Blackberry user, I can’t tell you what the apps do, or if they are worth the download. (And they also provide an iTunes link to buy the music from the commercial.)

So let’s review, Coleman invented social networking, check. Coleman has a Facebook page, check. Coleman has iPhone apps, check. And that is the sum total of their Social Networking…

(Dear folks at Coleman and/or Doner Advertising: give me a call, drop me an email, find me on Twitter, or Facebook, or any of the other SM sites here. We’ll see what we can do to get the Coleman Social Networking program up and running. I would have left this all in a comment on your blog… but well, you know… YOU DON’T HAVE ONE.