Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

Earlier this month I spoke at the Forrester Consumer Forum 2007 in Chicago.  In a sign of the times, this was a two-day conference devoted entirely to social media.  Given the topic, it was inevitable that almost every aspect of the conference was fully blogged, tagged, and uploaded even before the last session concluded.

Just when I thought I couldn't consume any more virtual content, I got a special treat this week in the form of this video widget from coBrandit, a video podcasting team that covered the event.  It really got my attention.  Here in one neat package are interviews with key speakers including Ze Frank, Charlene Li, Richard Edelman, David Armano, even yours truly.  (Thanks David for the heads-up.)

Widgets are going to be the story for the rest of this year, particularly following the announcement of OpenSocial, Google's challenge to Facebook's closed API.  We tend to think of widgets as toys that live inside a particular social network (throwing a sheep at someone on Facebook), but the advent of open standards will mean an opportunity to applify all kinds of content.  It's game-changing.

Misha Cornes

Who wouldn’t want to lay their head to rest on what’s on everyone else’s mind?

It’s the Google News Cushion, featuring the top 10 Google searches of the year stuffed with feather down. It’s bizarre; it’s brilliant, and its $120.

Buy it here.

Mitch Mitchell

There has been a huge amount of buzz regarding Google OpenSocial, the new social application platform for developing common APIs using relatively open standards that launched yesterday. With huge names in the social world jumping on the bandwagon (MySpace, Friendster, Bebo, etc) with an overall network of users that greatly outnumbers Facebook, it is understandable why everyone is so excited. This news promises decreased development costs, richer applications, wider marketing reach, social networks coming together, peace love and happiness in the cyberworld...

But pushing the hype aside, let’s take a closer look at who is OpenSocial good for?
(Answer after the fold...)

Whoa. I don't know what to think about this site from Agion, an ingredient-brand supplier of anti-microbial technology to products like GUM toothbrushes and Timberland shoes, as well as hospital equipment and industrial building supplies.  They hired Florence Henderson to do a series of humorous webisodes on the original Brady Bunch set.  You watch her new, multi-ethnic family spreading germs via sneezes, bloody meat, and animal droppings.  If you don't "catch all the germs", prepare yourself for the gross-out results outside the door of the family's shared bathroom.  I can almost guarantee this is your one chance to hear Mrs. Brady talk about "Montezuma's Revenge", "Praying to the Porcelain God," and "Odors that make grown men weep".

I can't help but compare this site to the wildly successful Shave Everywhere, which took another very personal topic and treated it in a much more conservative way.  Is That's Revolting breakout, in-your-face marketing, bold enough to propel an obscure brand into the mainstream?  Or is the kind of dumb frat-boy humor that is bound to turn off a core market of female heads of household who are used to gentler fare?

http://www.thatsrevolting.com

Misha Cornes

Wow, this is beautiful in delivery (interaction) and message (what it says without saying it). I love the fact that it is not sneaky in trying to get you to click so you get taken to a sales pitch. So go ahead and slide the button and mouse away. There are great little sounds and visuals that happen. http://layertennis.com/071102/index.php

Casey Riggleman

Ok this is just plain fun.  For anyone who has secretly longed to hurl a fistful of food at someone or has seen Animal House a dozen times can appreciate the fun to be had at thegoodfoodfight.com.

The site manages to capture the spontaneity, splatters and projectiles of a real food fight, and you even can "ambush" a friend.

This a playful and fresh way to introduce users to benefits of eating healthy. The best part is once you've hurled that plate of spaghetti at someone, you can get the recipe at www.eatbetteramerica.com and try it for real at home.

Angela Di Pietro

the site was created by General Mills, in partnership with Rodale, the health magazine publisher - Ed.

http://www.datenform.de/are-you-social-eng.html

How marked up would your shirt be? (bonus points for being early enough of an adopter to get your preferred username)

After toying around with the few OpenSocial APIs that are out already, I ran across this piece which really underscored how much we need a way to slide horizontally across net properties. Even spookier is how many additional sites of the same ilk I routinely use that didn't many the artist's cut. Our current approach of forcing users to freshly join each new community that pops up is not going to work for much longer.

OpenID has been a great start, but Google's recent moves look even more promising in terms of forming that common framework that web apps as a whole desperately need. I for one can't wait until more of the big networks, that have signed onto the program, start to show their hands a little, and this shirt can be culled down to a single checkbox.

James Vreeland

I love this whimsical site from Orange, one of Britain's largest mobile carriers. The new campaign for their unlimited texting option is "Good Things Should Never End".  This has been interpreted online in a clever way, with a website that (seems to?) scroll forever.  The illustrations are by Rex Crowle.  Beautiful work from our friend Asi Sharabi of No Man's Blog and Poke London.

http://unlimited.orange.co.uk

Misha Cornes

ING takes a step forward in creative advertising.

Checking is a low-interest category. It’s an intangible product. Fees are a nuisance. Balancing a checkbook is pretty mundane.  

Quite frankly, checking is as boring as going to the bathroom.

That got the folks at ING thinking. What if we took another everyday moment? What if we reminded people of its importance? What if we used that moment to say something about our new checking product?

The result: a great piece of creative advertising.
 
I found my (bathroom) visit surprising, entertaining, even engaging.

Even better, it sells a checking account. This is a great step forward.

http://i-needtogo.com/

Bryan Fuhr 

Hulu’s recent decision to reject 30-second pre-roll ads falls in line with the stance taken by YouTube back in August.  Both video platforms have opted for overlays, initiated by Videoegg and ScanScout, which they deem more conducive to satisfying user experiences.  However, for its long-form content (half and full hour programs), Hulu offers sponsor introductions starting at two minutes of pre-show ads for half hour programs.  

While Hulu and YouTube have chosen not to run pre-roll ads, a study released by the Online Publishing Association (OPA) in June  calls into questions whether pre-rolls should be rejected outright.  The study claims that consumers 30-second ads are more effective at driving brand awareness, likeability, and consideration than shorter ads.  

While it may not come as a shock that longer ads promote these brand attributes, the study does not measure the impact that these ads have on the user experience.  Google/YouTube fought back two months later, citing their research that suggested that abandonment rates were nearly 75% with 15-second ads while only 10% with the overlays.  They continued to note that click rates on the overlay ads were around 1-2% and that 75% of those watched the entire ad.   

So everyone was talking about the Google Phone.  Now everyone is talking about Android.  It’s not iPhone-level buzz.  Not yet anyway.  If you don’t know the details, well, Google “Open Handset Alliance”.  The short answer is it’s a bunch of wireless players (T-Mobile, Sprint, HTC, Samsung, Motorola and the like) getting together with Google around a new, open platform for wireless devices.

So what do the participants get out of it?

Google gets an opportunity to become a major part of the wireless landscape and to significantly extend its ad network.

The lagging carriers like Sprint and T-Mobile get a platform that, in theory, enables them to develop richer data applications more quickly and easily. It’s also probably the closest that they’ll get to countering the iPhone in the mid-term.  The brand association with Google probably doesn’t hurt either.

For manufacturers, Android will simply be added to the stable of platforms they use in developing new devices.  HTC, for example, is currently developing a new device using Android, but isn’t planning to abandon Windows Mobile 6 used in most of its current smart phones.  

So what about consumers?  I’ve seen very little talk about what the user gets out of this.  Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO said "The fundamental problem that most phones people have today is that they don't have fully powered Web browsers."  It is? I’d say one of the more fundamental problems they typical user would note is that the phones don’t perform as they expect them to.

I’m not going to elaborate on this site too much on this site. You’ve all heard the song! (if you haven’t you can listen to it here) Now you can buy the amazing cream that makes logos bigger! Not only that but you can get starburst dust, emotiontionator and many other gifts.. FREE!!

http://www.makemylogobiggercream.com/

Lau Ardelean

I just got an invitation to my first FATHOM event, a same-day nationwide theatrical screening of the first two Star Trek episodes ever aired (including the pilot in which Leonard Nimoy is the only original cast member).

Granted, I’m no Trekkie, but I do love American kitsch…and I love the FATHOM concept. It taps into the viral potential of the web by galvanizing temporary communities who meet in the physical world for a one-time “movie performance” in select theaters around the country. So not only do you come together to share your passion, you are doing it with thousands of other people on the same day around the country. Instant, fleeting Zeitgeist.

If only I had known about FATHOM last week when they down-linked my all-time favorite horror flick: Halloween (famous because its implied violence scared the bjeezuz out of audiences, yet nary a not a drop of blood is seen onscreen. And of course it starred Jamie Leigh Curtis whose mom, Janet Leigh, met her maker 18 years earlier in the unforgettable shower scene from the original Psycho. They are the queen and heir apparent of American horror flicks.). But I digress.

http://www.fathomevents.com/

Tim Armitage

I was reading the Best Week Ever blog which had a link to a video of Jon Stewart explaining the writers’ strike.  Not only did he explain why the writers were upset, he used his own show’s new website as an example -  basically, the networks claim that new media is still too new to structure a model for compensation.  As more money is being poured into internet advertising, the writers are still being compensated like it’s 1991.  

Being a huge fan of The Daily Show, this BWE spot sent me to www.thedailyshow.com – and I must say, it’s amazing!  You can search all episodes by keyword or by date and timeframe.  Want to re-live Indecision 2004?  See Jon tear Bill O’Reilly a new one?  Watch a marathon of Produce Pete or This Week in God?  It’s REALLY easy to find what you’re looking for.  And it also lets you rate/comment, embed, bookmark, and post to profiles like Facebook.  Very useful tools for Jon’s cult-like following.

Oh, and the advertising isn’t intrusive at all.  It comes after the clip.

Stacey Levine

The IT Room is launching November 11th…What’s that you ask? An Office knockoff? The American version of the British sitcom The IT Crowd? 

No, The IT Room is a slightly subversive attempt by Dell (and possibly other tech companies) to create their own commercials in the form of online TV mini-episodes that push their brand and show their products in action while conveying a story.

Though the site and episode are not quite ready for prime time, the concept has promise depending on the quality of the content and the heavy-handedness of the messaging. Except for a little Dell logo at the bottom of the screen when you watch the promo video there is nothing to give away that it is advertising.

A few in the blogosphere are arguing that the web show is independent and the episodes are merely sponsored by Dell. But watching it, my finely tuned ear for Dell marketing speak--I used to write Dell case studies--gives them away. Characters chanting “blades, blades, blades” and the narrator sermonizing on the constant battle between “IT complexity and simplicity” scream Dell messaging. So, while they might just be “sponsoring” the show as some contend, it seems they have at least some influence on the content.

Either way, while not entirely novel, anyone who has fond memories of their days at Initrode is sure to have a chuckle, and the messaging seems just subtle enough, at least in the promo.

Benjamin Vigil

Here's an elegant and fun application from SimpleBits that lets you manage who you owe a beer to and vice versa. It uses Twitter as its delivery / distribution mechanism. 

I was debating sharing this as Rube Goldberg machines are not even close to original anymore.  This one however, is fantastical in a different sort of way.
 
The same director of the Sony Bravia “balls” commercial, Nicolai Fuglsig, now brings you the latest Guinness ad.
 
It’s amazing that with the completion of such a simple idea he can bring out that much joyous emotion at the end of it all.  With everyone cheering, people following and strange gawking looks, every piece of this is well done.
 
Philip Garwood

You may have heard there's a writers strike.  That's why The Daily Show, Colbert Report, SNL, and a host of others are now or are soon to be in reruns indefinitely.  It is an article of faith on both sides of the strike that digital distribution of content is going to one day replace television as the way you consume your entertainment. 

The biggest issue of the confrontation is how to split the money pie when that happens.  If the strike goes on for even a few months, that day may come quicker than anyone thought.  Remember how hard it was for baseball to get its audience back after their last strike?  Well, there was no new sport to replace baseball in fan's lives.  There is already such a vibrant digital content universe that TV has been steadily losing audience.  Now it may fall off a cliff, but the soft landing for viewers is everything they can be entertained by online. 

Is the strike bad for the companies?  The guild?  The viewers?  Maybe for all of them in the short term.  But while the future, as The Clash said, is unwritten, good entertainment is not.  In the long term an economic model will develop that allows the creators, the stars, and the producers of the programming you will watch through infrastructure that used to be called "cable television" to get back to business.

Matthew Rosenberg

An interesting way to showcase a range of products and break through the usual pablum of a straight up ecommerce catalogue.

http://producten.hema.nl/

Shane Ginsberg

http://www.hobbycity.com

Try adding a lightweight item to your cart (under 100g). You get the message:
 
‘Hey, don't waste money on postage!
Your total postage weight is 45grams see below to find out how much you have left in that weight category!

International Air Mail ($65 Limit) 0 - 100gr $3.09 55g left.’

A new list of items comes up that are light enough to add to your order without bumping up the shipping rate. The first thing you think is ‘I could buy more now and save on shipping!’. It puts the catalog in front of the user again, and goes for the impulse buy reflex. Deadly.
 
I planned on buying one motor. Now I’m thinking of grabbing a battery and some wire connectors too. ARRGGH. 
 
Adam Sullovey

AT&T has had a few commercials running that highlight individuals who work, live and play in multiple cities. They now allow consumers to play along, create their made up location and purchase items (T-shirts, mugs, bags and stickers) with their unique slogans.  It’s an interesting way to allow consumers to be unique and promote AT&T at the same time.

http://www.attwheredoyoulive.com/

Bonnie Hoag