Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

Quite by accident ( a blog) I came across this 404 page from Jeep.com.

Absolutely brilliant!  The brand experience has been maintained and
extended all the way to a Page Not Found notice!

This is the kind of detail that takes a 9 and makes it a 10.

Kudos to the Organic team for this little nugget.

http://www.jeep.com/en/07wranglerunlimited/index.html

Michael Convery

One of the most interesting trends in social media is the emergence of vertical social networks. One of my greatest passions is sailing, but since I don’t get to do much of it for real these days, I started blogging about it a little over a year ago with the launch of Messing About in Sailboats.  Talking about sailing is not as fun as doing it but it gives me the opportunity to connect with other sailing nerds.
 
As a form of social media, blogging is very different experience to Facebook and myspace. In the latter case, it’s easy to join a social network, reconnect with old friends and make new friends. But it’s also a bit like the first few weeks of college where making friends is easy but frankly a little superficial.
 
Blogging is a different thing altogether. It takes time and a lot of commitment. The social networks are smaller but more intimate. It’s a bit like joining a slightly exclusive club. Personally I find it more rewarding than Facebook and myspace. The downside is that the community is small. The community of sailing bloggers I am connected with is less than 20. You have to post frequently and comment on each others blogs to stay active in the community. It takes work.
 
Like other niche interests, the social network is evolving. In the last few weeks, I have been invited to beta three new sailing-oriented sites. Each one seems to aspire to be “The Facebook for Sailors”.  The first was Boaters.tv, a video podcast on sailing that is beta’ing a social network; next was Sailtrac, a Google maps mash-up with a social network. The most recent is Tripsailor. This one is very Facebook-like in the way it lets you create a profile, connect with other sailors and share stuff.

Like everyone on Facebook I got this message today:

“Now people can search for this listing from Facebook's Welcome page. In a few weeks, it may also be found through search engines like Google.”
 
Our friend Nick Royle from Captains of industry poses this question:
 
“… My understanding is, that if you leave your privacy setting as currently configured, your picture and name will appear on the search engine rankings. Personally, I don't have a problem with this, however, it also appears (I think) that anyone will be able to view someone's friends, poke them, message them and request friendship - this I think has the potential for trouble (especially the ability to view friends and message). Any thoughts, and how do you all intend to adjust your privacy setting?”
 
What does everyone else think?

Adam Turinas 

During my couch potato hour (or two) this weekend...I stumbled across this commercial for All Bran. Its subtle, or not so subtle humor, is worth the time to take a peak. TV/commercial watching may become more entertaining if more companies took this approach :) Cinnamon Pritchard

I was reading my personal AIM email over the weekend to come across a link to the Songs of Summer on the AOL music site. I’ve been building my music library and wanted to check out the top songs from summer to ensure I added my family’s favorites (I also thought there might some links to free downloads such as on the Chrysler Music Legends Podcast Series).
 
The Songs of Summer site blends narrative video (host Egypt) and music videos, and syncs them together nicely for a rich media experience. Another cool feature of the site was a sort of take-over banner but without the banner. See, you can change the skin on the site yourself, but if you’re watching the videos you might just skip over that feature. So while the video is playing, Egypt appears in a smaller window to make a plug for a V Cast Mobile TV skin. Shortly after the plug the site changes to the Verizon skin with a link to the V Cast landing page, unique.
 
Anyway there are a few other features which make the site interesting (and a few more plugs/commercials) so check it out.

Rodney Cooper

Firefox and software developer Wladimir Palant are offering AdBlock Plus, a free add-on to the popular browser that blocks most display ads.  The technology uses a simple filtering system to block the IP addresses that host advertising content.  When I tested it out, the standard filter that came with the plug-in probably blocked 80% of the ads I would normally see.  In fact, AdBlock Plus was so effective that I had to rely on publisher's own demarcations of "advertising content" to differentiate white space on the page from missing ads.

This is a serious challenge to the online advertising industry of Tivo proportions.

As Noam Cohen of the New York Times writes: "the program is an unwelcome arrival after years of worry that there might never be an online advertising business model to support the expense of creating entertainment programming or journalism, or sophisticated search engines, for that matter".

While the project has so far been ignored by large publishers like Google and Yahoo, some smaller sites have responded by blocking the Firefox browser. But with 2.5 million users worldwide and 300-400,000 new users a month, this won't last long.

Unlike the early days of Napster (and you already hear the same accusations of users "stealing content" on the AdBlock blog), I think the initial response of publishers will be to counter with technology, not lawsuits.  In the short term, I see a technology arms race taking off, where publishers look to outwit the filters by, for example, hosting third-party ads on their own sites.  But the open source nature of AdBlock Plus means that users will counter with increasingly sophisticated workarounds to each new technological response. 

In the long term, I think ad-blocking technologies will make the value of high quality branded entertainment content more important than ever.  The challenge will be to bring visitors to interesting and immersive sites - the kinds we often feature on ThreeMinds - without an easy way to attract them there in the first place.

Read more from the New York Times here.  

Misha Cornes

Headlines heralding Apple’s announcement of a new Wi-Fi enabled iPod, ringtone creation service, and nano form factor are already proliferating across the web. These are relatively minor improvements to Apple’s greatest product ever. The ability to download music to an iPod was a long time coming and, while convenient, is really more of a boon to Apple than its users.
 
The real story here is a $200 price cut on the 8gb iPhone and the elimination of the 4gb model. The price cut is a slap in the face for early adopters, many of whom stood in line for hours, even days, eagerly awaiting the most hyped piece of tech ever. People who shelled out $599 and a portion of their soul to AT&T for the privilege of owning said tech have been left out in the cold.  No new features were introduced for the iPhone. The ability to access iTunes over Wi-Fi and ringtone conversion service do not add any real functionality and are really a way for Apple to make a lil’ more $$$.
 
Where’s the love for your core supporters, Steve? Where’s the flash support and wireless sync functionality we’ve been begging for? Personally, I would not forgive this transgression for anything less than a $50 iTunes gift certificate.

Daniel Neumann

In the current, welcome trend towards "conversational" marketing on the web, we often struggle to find the right amount of transparency. While many clients worry that embarrassing content will surface when they relinquish a bit of control, it's important to remind ourselves of the problems that can unearth themselves when we try to hide too much. 

In the post-Soviet world, few facades are more carefully constructed than those around "reality" television; and unplanned exposure of the men behind the curtain can seriously damage an otherwise successful franchise.  Such was the case earlier this summer with the exposure of planned, staged, and otherwise "faked" events on the BBC/Discovery series Man vs. Wild. 

Shortly after this controversy surfaced, I was watching an episode of the very similar (and, by all current accounts, more "real") Discovery series Survivorman.  Being a bit of a dog fanatic, I was slightly alarmed when the show’s star, Les Stroud, “released” a team of sled dogs to simulate an actual loss – only to be airlifted out of his location due to poor ice conditions with no further mention of the dogs’ fate.  A quick trip to the show’s message board showed me that I wasn’t alone in my concern.  In fact, the fate of the sled dogs was the most active topic on the board. 

Eventually, someone posted a response they had received from Discovery stating that the release was planned, and that the dogs were safe.  No one from the Discovery channel or the shows production company addressed the issue directly on the forums, or any of the shows various blogs and official sites.  While this might take away a bit of the shows aura of authenticity (though it was clear that the dogs’ release was done as a demonstration), it would have allayed some potentially negative feelings.  In both cases, a little more transparency would have gone a long way.

Christian Dodd 

Lately there has been a trend towards more hands-on musical devices that remove the barrier between musician and machine/computer. This has resulted in a number of (relatively expensive) devices coming to market that rethink the way musicians create and manipulate their music.

Two such devices are the Genoqs Octopus and the Sequentix P3.

While these devices are excellent takes on the traditional 70's step sequencer, another instrument really caught my eye recently because of it's innovative approach to making music by "drawing" on its surface.

Media artist Toshio Iwai and Yamaha have collaborated to design a new digital musical instrument for the 21st century, TENORI-ON (Japanese for "Sound On Your Palm"). Basically, TENORI-ON is a 16x16 tactile matrix of LED switches which allows musicians to draw music intuitively, creating a "visible music" interface. It can trigger external MIDI instruments, or it's own internal samples - but here's the neat thing - Yamaha designed it double-sided so that the visible changes can be viewed by the audience while it is being manipulated.

There's a great video on SonicState.com of the TENORI-ON in action.

Rod MacQuarrie

Time Inc didn't listen to us, or maybe they did ...

We've witnessed several trends over the past two or three years that show that digital has grown up and has gone mass.  Marketers have embraced the entire paradigm and digital is now increasingly at the center of marketing - just look at the way agencies are evolving, look at the way brands are evolving.  Customers led the way by embracing and integrating all things "interactive" into their daily lives.

Digital innovation is not dead - it just morphed into something new ...

What do you think?

David Feldt

I came across the company AMO which is a subsidiary of Office for Metropolitan Architecture.  They have created designs for specific Prada locations as well as the technology that you see throughout the store. 

I believe Prada stores are some of the most dynamic and interesting retail experiences I have ever had.  One of the most interesting projects on the site is a bar code (above) that they proposed for the E.U. It merges the flags of current EU member states into a new image which includes all the flags colors.  The shop has taken architectural creativeness and expanded it to other areas. 

Check out some of their other designs below.

http://www.oma.eu

St.John Oneil-Dunne 

The Washington Post has launched an interesting news filtering tool to help readers follow the 2008 Presidential race.  The Issue Coverage Tracker sorts both by candidate and by issue. So, for example, if you want to read about Immigration, you can see that it's a hot-button issue for Rudy Giuliani,with 83 press mentions in the last three months, vs. only 24 for Barack Obama.  Or you can hone in on a single candidate and see what he (or she) has been saying across a variety of issues.

The tool is powered by Daylife, a multi-feature news aggregator that uses multiple news articles to, for example, create wikipedia-like overviews of major topics like Iraq or to track the relationships between major news figures.  Daylife is funded by the New York Times company, among others.  Thanks Eric. 

Misha Cornes

…you can always get Short Boring Socks.
 
http://www.boden.co.uk

I just ordered a scarf, a bathing suit and “short boring socks” from Boden.com. What I particularly like about this online haberdasher is their small but appealing selection of wardrobe staples.
 
But that’s not what won me over. Throughout the site, they use adjectives like “boring” as a substitute for even duller adjectives like “grey.”
 
Who knew boring could be so exciting?
 
Tim Armitage

Today, we read an interesting piece in Mediaweek about the different ways TV networks are transforming their approach to delivering their shows over the web.

The article points our that ABC, which had hitherto tried to make ABC.com the single destination for watching re-runs of Lost, Desperate Housewives, and its other programs, is abandoning that strategy because they couldn’t raise sufficient revenue.  Instead, they will be doing something similar to what CBS announced recently, which is to distribute their programming over a network of partner sites.  This is in some ways a second cousin to what NBC and Fox are doing with their confusingly-named Hulu.com, which still aims to be a destination, but also will enable offsite viewing of programming.  Partners include big players like AOL and other large media portals.  

One major difference from the CBS strategy is to syndicate not just the content, but a proprietary viewing technology.  We’re not completely certain why they are doing this.  Could be a quality control effort, could be an effort to maintain itself as the primary seller of advertising against their shows.  Could be that they want to preserve the unobtrusive advertising experience they developed for ABC.com.  But a great user experience it ain’t if different content providers (as the networks now seem to be evolving toward) have different delivery technologies even when their programming exists on the same platforms.  

What’s that?  ABC and CBS content appearing on the same channel?  Wow, that seems somewhat game changing, doesn’t it.  In some ways, CBS’s or ABC’s moves in isolation seem like a modernizing of the old school affiliate model, where shows are delivered by channels not owned by the networks themselves (There are a hundred NBC stations, for example, but only about a dozen are owned and operated by them.  The others sign multi-year affiliate deals where they take the NBC programming for a fee and then sell advertising that appears on it, often jarringly local spots right next to the big national spots that the network sells.)   If you look at this like the affiliate relationship, then you might think that ABC and CBS are doing that thing where old media companies try to stick with outdated models.  But having their programming appear side by side turns that on its head.  It’s like running both Leno and Letterman.  It turns the networks into mere content sources, which is a little risky for them since in many cases they don’t own (or at least wholly own) the content.  At some point the distribution partners may find that they can make deals directly with content creators (writers/directors/actors) and the power may shift so that the tv networks are either irrelevant or, in the extreme case, bid to become the over-the-air distribution partner of the digital distributors.

I'm proud of the way Organic has taken the initiative to conduct our business in a more environmentally-friendly way, from reducing travel, encouraging recycling, doing away with harmful chemical cleaning solutions among other steps, and it appears that at least one of Madison Avenue's big agencies has "gone green" as well.

The WPP Group agency, Grey is setting the example by encouraging the entire ad industry to share energy-saving strategies with it's "Green It Forward" initiative.   They have launched a website where other New York agencies can share and blog about their own internal efforts to reduce, reuse and recycle as well as minimizing carbon emissions.

The site will officially launch during Advertising Week, held each year in New York later in September.

I like that they have taken a stance in challenging others to "walk the talk, and I will be watching with anticipation to see how many agencies join Grey in going Green.

http://www.green-it-forward.com/

Michael Convery

Move over, scent-based marketing.  Pennsylvania's First Flavor has combined the technology behind breath strips with a more sophisticated flavor palette and a twist of print media savvy to create a new kind of taste-based ad.

CBS has ordered up mojito-flavored taste strips to promote Cane, a new Jimmy Smits vehicle.  Smits's character runs a family rum business in the new show.  The strips will be inserted as samples inside Rolling Stone magazine.

This execution shows how the assocations of "taste" could stretch beyond simple food and beverage promotion. (In fact, I doubt most CPG brands would risk trying to replicate their carefully crafted flavors on a filmy-tasting breath strip.)  On the other hand, I don't think every experience has a de facto taste quality.  Even the relationship between Cane and a mojito seems a little forced.  Do you think edibie strips can overcome their heritage in "oral hygiene" to become a bona fide promo tool?  Thanks Marta for the tip.

Misha Cornes

A semi-faithful adaptation of the original 1971 Oregon Trail, Thule Trail has you heading west, not to conquer the wild frontier, but rather the road. The game swaps covered wagons for turbo wagons and lets you hunt fast food instead of wild game. Really takes you back! Via digg.

http://www.thuletrail.com/

Enjoy!

Lau Ardelean

Floor Planner is a free tool for building floorplans.  Not only is this a fantastic use of flash in an online app, but it will soon include 3d (above).

http://www.floorplanner.com/3ddemo

In addition, users can also share their ‘creations’ with others. And by including a user-supported forum, the developers have made it easy to share and contribute to the applications development.
 
http://www.floorplanner.com/weblog/
 
Jim Bachalo 

I just found this site for Hyundai which shows 7 short videos of their “Think About It” advertising campaign.  The videos are beautifully shot with images of cities, horses in a field, driving in the snow, etc. and zero footage of any of their cars.  While you are mesmerized by the video phrases float onto the screen such as, “the logo is to tell you what the car is, not who you are” followed by “Think about it”.  I think this is a really interesting idea considering typical car commercials you are shown every detail of the car.  Even more interesting will be to see if it works to change the consumers’ minds on Hyundai as a car company.  Either way I can’t seem to get enough of watching these videos and that is a pretty good start for me.
 
http://www.thinkaboutit.com/

St.John Oneil-Dunne

As vast as Amazon, eBay, Flickr, and YouTube have become, I welcome any tool that promises to make their warehouses of content more intimate, more navigable. oSkope — a "visual search assistant" — goes a long way toward doing just that. You can search any of these four sites (soon to be more, they promise) and results will appears as a set of thumbnails displayed in whatever format you prefer: grid, stack, pile, list or, my personal favorite, graph — a 4-square matrix that clusters results by timeliness and popularity. Each thumbnail carries along enough info to tell you if it's worth the click. (YouTube results will play right on the page.) Create a free account and you can drag and drop results into a folder for future reference. I could get used to this...

Sam Cannon

Now that the iPod/iPhone hubbub has settled a bit, and credits can be obtained by those early adopters burned by the recent price drop, we can obsess over other things.

For one, there's al the possibilities a robust OS like OS X offers, even on a “small” platform. Many of these we probably can’t even imagine, and others are simply “ports” of existing software projects to the iPhone. One that is sure to raise a few eyebrows is MAME (or Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator).

The project is over a decade old, dedicated to preserving the original playing experience of old video games (minus the cigarette smoke and people accidentally pressing your “hyperspace” button). It’s legal to own versions of MAME, but not necessarily the individual ROMs of the games (most are still covered by copyright).

If it takes hold on the iPhone, it will bring all these issues back into the spotlight. If nothing else, I hope it helps make the device more palatable as a gaming platform. Maybe then I’ll buy one.

Dan Sicko