We Gorillas have never won a Loerie Award. In fact, we’ve never even been invited to South Africa’s most prestigious advertising awards ceremony… We’d like to think it’s because we’ve only just celebrated our third birthday, and let’s face it, who wants a toddler at an upmarket, black tie affair. But the truth is that it is more likely due to Barry Tuck’s Twitter timeline.

But going on the video the Loerie organisers have just released to promote the 33rd Annual Loerie Awards, we’re holding thumbs that Barry’s tweets will crack us an invite. Because let’s face it, if this is how Riaan Cruywagen rolls, our Guy Who Does Stuff looks like a saint!

Regular readers of our blog would have noticed we recently had a bit of downtime for maintenance and we’re very sorry. Did you miss us? We missed you … Whilst making our tweeks and adjustments we attracted some blog-munching Gremlins who stole a few posts from last month. We must have feed them Zoo Biscuits after midnight or something … Anyway, with some technical Tuck Technical wizardry we were able to retrieve the missing blogs and post them up again (excuse the inaccurate dates). So from now on it will be (monkey) business as useful, so stay tuned…

At Gorilla we’re all about fun, so we try pick our clients accordingly. We know what we as a company and a brand stand for, and actively seek out clients that share our passion and love. We want to engage and entertain, and most of all, have fun doing it. So when Lee Jeans approached us to work on their latest campaign, Own The Moment, we jumped at it, working closely with brand manager Clair Mead to conceptualise the campaign images which Barry Tuck then shot.
The campaign is focussed on encouraging people to make every moment in life worth living by doing things their own way with passion and dynamism. The ethos of the campaign embodies everything Gorilla stands for, and we’re stoked with the how the ads came out. Here’s a small sample of what’s been used so far…

This ad featuring Hairlip drummer Gareth Gale and keyboardist Candice Nel ran in Glamour Magazine.

This ad featuring Durban’s ultimate Man About Town, Keith Ncongo, truly captures the essence of Own The Moment.

This ad again featuring Hairlip drummer Gareth Gale was run in GQ magazine and gathered a lot of attention because of it’s striking colours and setting.

Check out Lee’s Facebook page by clicking here, and Own The Moment.

Google has become an integral part of everyday life for literally hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people across the globe… Need to know who led the British forces at the Battle Al Alamein? Google it. Looking for accommodation for a surf trip to Indonesia? You go to Google. Can’t find a style of sunglasses at your local stores? You connect to Google and find an online store that sells them. A standard Google search returns hundreds of thousands, sometimes even millions of hits, because of the nature of the search engine’s technology, and it has become a ubiquitous and essential tool in everyday life. But sometimes Google can steer us wrong, simply because of the nature of this technology.

Without getting too technical, Google makes use of a technology called Pagerank, that runs a link analysis alogrithm that assigns a numerical weighting to certain elements of a hyperlinked document. The more mentions of a particular website or term on the worldwide web, the higher it places in a relevant Google Search. And here in lies the rub…

The majority of people don’t have time to trawl through even the first few pages that Google return, let alone the millions of returns. We trust that the results appearing on the first page are the best, and the higher they place the more we trust them…

So here’s an interesting story we read in the New York Times. In late July 2010, a New York resident by the name of Clarabelle Rodriguez was searching for a specific style of sunglasses to purchase online, and top of the Google Search results was a site called DecorMyEyes.com. In good faith that the site at the top of Google’s search result would be a reputable business, she placed an order for the sunglasses she was after, as well as a pair of prescription contact lenses. And then her nightmare began…

The day after placing her order, Rodriguez was called by a man calling himself Tony Russo and informed that the brand of contact lenses she had ordered wasn’t available, and rather than refund her money he brusquely told her to pick another brand. Naturally Rodriguez was unhappy with this as she was only interested in that style and brand, and requested a refund. This was refused, and a few days later the sunglasses arrived, complete with a different brand of contact lenses. She then also discovered that she’d been charged an extra $125 more than her original quote.

Over the course of the next few weeks, Rodriguez became embroiled in a war of words with the owner of DecorMyEyes.com, in which he even threatened her with physical violence. She requested her bank dispute the credit card payment, and DecorMyEyes.com even went so far as to have a woman phone Rodriguez bank and impersonate her to cancel the dispute…

With the situation having collapsed into an utter nightmare for Rodriguez, she began researching the retail site online, and found literally hundreds, if not thousands, of similar complaints on consumer advocacy websites like Get Satisfaction, ComplaintsBoard.com, and ConsumerAffairs.com. People were complaining of poor service, receiving the wrong product, being over-billed, and being threatened with violent repercussions when the complained… In the middle of all the complaints, she found the following post from the owner of DecorMyEyes.com:

“Hello, My name is Stanley with DecorMyEyes.com. I just wanted to let you guys know that the more replies you people post, the more business and the more hits and sales I get. My goal is NEGATIVE advertisement.”

Essentially DecorMyEyes has established it’s entire business model around offering an awful customer experience to generate complaints on the net, elevating the site in the Google search results and thus generating more business. “I never had the amount of traffic I have now since my first complaint. I am in heaven,” Stanley said in signing off his post.

When contacted by the New York Times, DecorMyEyes owner Vitaly Borker unashamedly said: “I’ve exploited this opportunity because it works. No matter where they post their negative comments, it helps my return on investment. So I decided, why not use that negativity to my advantage?”

It’s an interesting concept – businesses purposefully ripping people off to generate online buzz and manipulate their Google ranking. Google searches don’t differentiate between negative and positive reviews or comments, they only look at terms and words,and thus deliver their results based on the most hits. It’s a loophole in their search criteria that unscrupulous marketers are exploiting, and innocent consumers are paying the price. This blog in itself will probably contribute to maintaining DecorMyEyes’ Google ranking…

Will Google be able to refine their search criteria to differentiate between negative and positive online chatter, thus ending this form of e-commerce thuggery? It’s a question we don’t know the answer to, but the lesson to be learned here is simple… Don’t simply trust the top returns on your Google searches, especially when you’re looking to make an online purchase. Stick to reputable and trusted online shops and retailers, and if you’re going to make a purchase from a smaller retailer, investigate them thoroughly first.

Being masters of the tactical, viral and sneaky marketing campaign, we Gorillas smell a rat here… Yes, global warming is real, and the ice-caps are gradually breaking apart, but an iceberg off Cape Town? Let’s see what comes of this, and if some brand suddenly takes ownership of this as a viral or campaign teaser. If not, start preparing for climate change, cos it’s real…