Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

Nintendo launched their Wii News Channel this past weekend and now lucky happy Will owners can spin their globe for world news as supplied by the Associated Press.

What makes it more appealing to view syndicated news on your television as opposed to broadcast news or online destinations? The interface, features and control of course...afterall, this is the Wii.

With the remote in hand, users utilize the globe to navigate world news and can view local news volume based on paper stack height. In addition, viewing modes include a slide show feature which automates news presentation by filling your screen with headlines and a tour around the world.

Chad Stoller

Market research firm Compete, recently released a list of the top December 2006 online destinations in regards to "time spent online."

While social sites dominate the list, the online destinations of Bank of America and WalMart are also in the top 20.

Derek Chew

I often spend time looking for music videos on YouTube, however finding them takes time.  I came across this site the other day - it provides links to almost every music video on YouTube.

The experience is simple and functional - a list of links.

Baron Conway

Aqua Teen Hunger Force fans are keeping the Boston Bomb Scare buzz alive with some just-in-time entrepreneurship.

Get your mooninite t-shirts here or, step up to the plate and place a bid for an actual weapon of mass deception.

The current bid is $242.50 with just over 23 hours to go.

David Freedman, Trevor Jones and Michael Miller

I’ve been in love with Swiss Chalet for….well, an awfully long time.  And over the last few months, I fell in love with their online ordering system.  But it looks like just my love wasn’t enough, because now they’ve upped the ante with their new  Group ordering system.

You start off with a "master orderer".  He puts in everyone’s e-mail address who are going to participate in the order (it saves this list so you don’t have to re-enter the e-mails every time you order), and the site sends e-mails to each of them, with a link they can click on to put in their order.  Very cool, but that’s not the best part.  The BEST part is that the master orderer sits back and watches, in real time, as the status of the order changes.  The page refreshes every 30 seconds or so, and it lets the master orderer know which members are online and doing their orders, and once their order is submitted, it lets them know that they’re done, and the total of their order.  The master orderer can even set a submission deadline, and send a reminder e-mail in case somebody hasn’t yet ordered! 

Once everybody has ordered, the master orderer sends off the entire order off to Swiss Chalet with a couple of quick clicks. 

Brilliant!

And here’s the icing on the cake: We did an order with 7 of us today, and it arrived in less than 30 minutes. 

To quote Adam Kahn: “From www.swisschalet.ca to the lemony wetnap in 30min – every one of them EXCEPTIONAL!"

Check out the demo and if you live in Canada, share the experience with your co-workers in the office.

Daryl Brewer

Fresh off their USA Today Super Bowl advertising poll victory, Budweiser has flipped the switch on Bud.tv

This could turn out to be one of the biggest stories in advertising this year. Anheuser-Busch will spend over $30 million this year on this online video network. The site is as easy to use as Youtube (well kinda) and features short films like “Finish Our Film”. This mash-up of reality show and making-of-a-film documentary produced by LivePlanet, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s production company.  Not surprisingly most of the videos lean towards 25-year guy humor with high art concepts like “Replaced by a Chimp” in which a chimp tries to do a real job.

This is a new play on one of the oldest tactics in marketing known as branded entertainment. P&G started it in the age of radio with the soap opera (little know fact: until recently most soap opera actors were employees of P&G as P&G owned the soaps!). There have been many attempts by marketers to create content online that provides a contextual envelope to advertise their brands. This is far and away the most ambitious venture of its kind.

A-B intends to tread carefully in how they promote their brands. They are acutely aware of how easy it would be turn off their audience with excessively blatant promotion. You’ll know it’s for Bud brands but it will be subtle s, so they say.  For me the most interesting thing is the ROI model. $30 million is about 5% of AB’s ad budget and their goal is to reach 2-3 million 21-34 year-old guys per month (lets say 24-36 million exposures per year).  That works out an average of $1 to get each customer to spend time with them. Even compared to a 30 sec spot on the Superbowl that’s expensive. Hopefully each prospect will spend lots of time on Bud.tv, giving A-B the opportunity to put lots of ad exposures in front their customers.  I hope it works.

What do you think?

Adam Turinas

Budweiser took the Super Bowl advertising crown in the USA Today consumer poll with its "Crabs" spot, however, it was Bud Light that won the Tivo Championship with the top two spots.

Taking home the crown were "Language Courses" and "Rock, Paper, Scissors."

Tivo used a base group of 10,000 of its 4.4  million subscribers as the basis of their study.

This is the fifth year that Tivo has measured Super Bowl activity. Reebok's Terry Tate: Office Linebacker was the first winner.

Chad Stoller

I recently saw this great post on one of my favorite blogs, Proper Course. This blog on sailing is run by a veteran blogger, Tillerman, one of the leading (if not the leading) bloggers on this sport/activity/hobby/lifestyle. Tillerman recently was asked to participate in a discussion on how to increase the popularity and traffic to a blog. He posted snippets from over 20+ active bloggers on what works.

In short, it’s about “the community stupid!” It’s about commenting on other people’s blogs, putting up stuff that fosters discussion, posting frequently, extending out to other communities where there are other people that share the same interests. Above all – It’s about sharing.

In the words of zen, another sailing blogger:

“Bloggers write to share, not reward. Most times they do not even get comments.”

Adam Turinas

Image: courtesy of surfstyle.

Social networking sites like MySpace are really starting to get used and abused by us marketing shlubs. To wit, the newly unveiled (I am not making this up) campaign from the embattled folks over at General Motors' Pontiac division: Friends with Benefits. Yes, blink a couple of times and then read it again: Friends with Benefits. The basic premise is that you buy a Pontiac G5 and then register your new whip on the General's shiny new MySpace page. Then you start pestering your friends to buy the same car and register it on the site. As this social networking ponzi scheme expands, GM starts handing out the gifts. Once membership of the (blink again) Friends with Benefits community reaches 100 people, they all get $100 VISA gift cards. A thousand members? Then GM breaks everyone off the $1,000 maximum prize. Not the worst idea, but OMG. The name makes me, like, totally ROTFLOL.

But questionable marketing taste might be what they're angling for up in the Ren Cen these days. One of the more talked about commercials of the Super Bowl was the Lonely Robot spot. Though well executed, the spot (about a suicidal robot) was perceived as being more than a little crass for a company that is laying off factory workers by the thousands. Maybe next year they can have an ad where the robot gets an early retirement bonus and loses his house. That would be sweet.

Daniel Turman

Update: General Motors is deleting the images of the robot jumping in the river. It appears that they are bowing to the unanticipated backlash from the tens of thousands of suicidal ex-employees living in the Detroit Metro area.

Xnet, a small European VOIP software company just released a (Mac-only) iPhone-inspired desktop client called iSoftPhone (turns out it's basically just a reskinned version of its MegaFon app, the existence of which I was previously unaware).

What makes it worth downloading is its easy interoperability with multiple SIPphone providers. The benefit to the end-user is that one can make calls on multiple networks to take advantage of the cheapest provider for each type of call, i.e., local vs. international.

I already had a Gizmo Project account, so I was able to configure iSoftPhone to use my existing SIP address and make calls. It immediately recognized the microphone in my iSight camera and the call went through perfectly on the first try.

According to the web site, iSoftPhone will begin offering an SMS feature soon.

It also just looks nice on my desktop, though it makes me wish iPhone's June release could come sooner.

Daniel Modell

Design Within Reach is again soliciting votes for their annual champagne chair design contest. The artful competition inspires modern design aficionados to create gorgeous and inventive chairs using their festive New Year's party castoffs. You can vote for your favorite before this Friday (02.09.07) when the contest ends.

Cast your vote here.

Angela Di Pietro

Here's a wonderfully elegant story told by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University.  Its the story of our online lives and how it has evolved to embrace community and collaboration.



Thanks to Patrick Dunphy for sharing with us.

“The job of media — and, for that matter, government, business, and technology — is to bring people together to find distributed and elegant solutions to their problems. That is not web 3.0. That’s society 2.1. And we’ve only just begun.”

This is not a quote from Clinton, Gates, or Branson.  Rather, it was said by Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg to Arthur Sulzberger the NY Times.  Here are some other interesting articles that capture the scene from the leading world economic forum and show how interactive media was a major topic of discussion.

http://davosconversation.org/

http://www.buzzmachine.com/

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2007/01/from_experience.html

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/alan_rusbridger/2007/01/davos.html

-Paul McConnell

I recently came upon this touching article about the the coming of age during the golden age of video gaming in the 80s, written by Wil Wheaton (anyone remember Wesley from Star Trek: TNG?).

"Come with me, for a moment, back to the days when a quarter really meant something, and take a look at some of those games and places . . ."

(Note: Some content on the linked site is NSFW)

Paul Seid

What is Pipes?

“Pipes is a hosted service that lets you remix feeds and create new data mashups in a visual programming environment. The name of the service pays tribute to Unix pipes, which let programmers do astonishingly clever things by making it easy to chain simple utilities together on the command line.”

Either way, Yahoo! is blowing up the interweb today with the launch of this new web service. Check it out and share your mashups.

Jason Law

AdAge reports on a TNS study today that "GM slashed ad spending by more than $600 million last year, a drop so stunning it should convince even the staunchest doubters that the age of mass-media marketing is going the way of the horse and buggy."

Betsy Lazar, executive director-advertising and media operations, said through a spokeswoman that "the automaker is continuing to shift more dollars online and that she believes TNS underreports digital spending."

Peter Kim from Forrester asked me if I believe this statement is a vote for digital. He felt that decline has more to do with GM's overall financial difficulties.

I think its a combination of several things:

1. GM's financial difficulties
2. Major shifts in the industry away from mass and TV to more targeted and measurable channels
3. The huge importance of digital / interactive in the automotive space (80+% of people use the web to research their purchases before walking into a dealership)
   

Read the entire report here.

David Feldt

E-walkers will need to pay better attention in New York State or they may walk away with a $100 in addition to a new meeting notice in their inbox.

A New York State senator is proposing legislation that will fine pedestrians $100 if they cross the street while using their BlackBerry, iPod or other electronic device that may distract them from a safe street crossing. Senator Carl Kruger (Brooklyn district) is reacting to three Brooklyn area street crossing accidents which have resulted in death, since last September

According to Senator Kruger:

"This electronic gadgetry is reaching the point where it's becoming not only endemic but it's creating an atmosphere where we have a major public safety crisis at hand."

(image is property of ABC)

Chad Stoller

On his personal blog, Mark Cuban recently discussed brand "fanboy culture."

Mark waxes on comment bombs and the positives and negatives of these obsessive communities. He adds that it is a marketer's responsibility to manage their own fanatics, especially when these communities are threatened by a rival product/brand, under attack by a rival community or when their own brand (and ultimately mission) fails to meet their own hyped expectations.

Chad Stoller

I came across this wonderful video by HappySlip. It highlights how, today, a passionate consumer  has the tools / the ability to reach out with a personal message that is more sincere and believable than a piece of corporate generated advertising.

Steve Jobs was asked to describe Apple in an interview a year ago.  His response was:

1. Apple is a company that takes complex technology and makes it easier and simpler to use
2. Our goal is to stand at the intersection of technology and the humanities

It’s about empathy and understanding consumers, not about selling to them.  In a post-modern world, companies no longer really own their brands; it’s consumers who mold them; shape them to their needs.

Watch this video and see this all come to life.

David Feldt

In case you missed it, Ryan Block of Engadget posted a "hands-on review" of what passengers may expect if Virgin America gets a chance to run routes in the United States.

In addition to getting a tour of a vessel, there is an extensive review of the in-flight entertainment and communication experience which includes passenger to passenger messaging and persistent play lists that will be restored every time you fly VA. If Virgin gets a chance to get off the ground, we are looking at a 30,000 foot exceptional experience.

If you've had it with the current state of air travel, sign the petition to help Virgin America get off the ground.

Chad Stoller

On February 14th, Google's homepage displayed a Valentine's Day themed logo that drew a surprising amount of attention.

The blogosphere was abuzz with posts about the mystery of the "missing" L. Internet marketing guru Seth Godin even noticed something awry and wrote on his blog, "Oops." (Tip o' the hat to Virginia in the SF office.)

After posting the above image on Flickr, it received over 1000 views in under 12 hours.

I'm usually a fan of the holiday logos, but at at first glance, I also read it as "Googe". (Interestingly, Google does not own googe.com, though they do own other typo-domains such as gooogle.com and gogle.com.) It soon became apparent to me and many others that the L was, however subtle, simply the stem of the chocolate-covered strawberry.

One of my favorite comments was from a blogger who thought that the G and L getting together on Valentine's Day was romantic.

Google finally posted on its own blog, "those with true romance and poetry in their soul will see the subtlety immediately."

Of course, they've got the monopoly on all things beginning with G, so they could just put up a blue G and a picure of wind-up chattering teeth and everyone would still know it's Google.

To me, all this chatter just serves as proof of how much Google is loved.

Here's a fun link to Google's past theme logos.

Daniel Modell

One of our sister Omnicom agencies, Design Forum is a leading innovator in retail design.

Their chairman, Lee Carpenter, wrote a great article in a recent newsletter about what he learned in 2006. There was one piece that I thought was very relevant to the w