Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

It feels like only yesterday when there was frenzy of blogging over Second Life. It seemed like an unstoppable hype machine. Bloggers, journalists, and marketers were painting a future with Second Life concerts, classrooms, and real-life brands selling virtual wares. Every adventurous brand willing to take a chance, from Coke to IBM to Toyota, hopped on the bandwagon. And then it all went silent.

Second Life today, post-hype-apocalypse, contains scattered groupings of people in a whole sea of empty space, containing a number of eerily abandoned brand islands. When recently digging through every press release I could find about a brand launching a new Facebook App, I started to wonder if this was the new brand wasteland. At the front of the Facebook list are a myriad of highly social applications with hundreds of thousands, even millions of active users. But to the back are all of the big names (Coke, Honda, Adidas, Verizon) with applications drawing in... 12 active users?

Are branded apps a lost cause or an untapped goldmine? And if not applications, how exactly are brands succeeding on Facebook?

Legend has it that Hemingway was challenged to write a story in only six words.

His response? "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

In 2006 SMITH magazine teamed with Twitter for a six-word memoir contest. The response was huge, and led to a book that was released in February 2008.

Here are a few examples of the amazingly vivid and insightful stories that can be told with six words:

"Nobody cared, then they did. Why?"
"Fifteen years since last professional haircut."
"I still make coffee for two."
"I'm ten, and have an attitude."

See more here.

Heather Dunphy

A fake rocker who prefers milk to drugs! Hilarious.

There are a bunch of White Gold videos which have been posted on YouTube too.

http://whitegoldiswhitegold.com/

Euphenia Cheng

Ever since human interaction migrated to the world wide web, people have been trying to describe the effect the technology has had on social behavior. New phrases have become part of the strategist vocabulary: social media, social messaging, social currency, social gestures, social markers, social objects. In order to simplify the discussion, there are really only three words marketers should be concerned with...

1. Nouns / Social Objects
Lorcan Dempsey summarizes the evolving discussion of object-centric sociality better than I can in this post, but the basic idea is this:

The Social Object, in a nutshell, is the reason two people are talking to each other, as opposed to talking to somebody else. Human beings are social animals. We like to socialize. But if think about it, there needs to be a reason for it to happen in the first place. That reason, that "node" in the social network, is what we call the Social Object. - Hugh MacLeod, gapingvoid.com

Social networks cannot exist solely on the idea of being social alone, there needs to be something to be social about. Traditionally, people don't have conversations about having a conversation. And while the nature and tone might be influenced by the type of relationship, the subject of the conversation is not limited to being someone's friend, boss, mother, classmate, etc. Which is a long way of saying that people talk about things, and thus people are connected by things.

Flickr has been a godsend for a designer putting together comps for clients.  Fast, no watermarks and a HUGE variety of images for inspiration.

Comp Fight builds on all those good things by tapping into the Flickr API and giving the intrepid visual designer the ability to search tags or text, sort by CC or commercially available assets, quickly gives you image scale, etc.

Basically everything you love about Flickr for making comps only faster, easier and an even more stripped down interface and no-nonsense functionality.

http://www.compfight.com/

Sean M Rhodes

Hypemachine takes some of the things we love best about social networking and combines it with two things almost everyone loves, finding new and cool music and not having to pay for it.

There are millions of MP3 blogs out there but who has the time to go through all of them and keep up to date with what's out there? Hypemachine is an enormous MP3 blog aggregator that's the love child of a social networking and music centric Web 2.0 properties Muxtape and last.fm.

You can sign up and <3 music you like and make your own internet playlist. Sounds familiar right? Muxtape allows you to do the same thing but does muxtape link you back to the orginal MP3 blog and allow you to download the MP3? Nope, but Hypemachine does.

Want to find out what music is hot in say Chicago? How about Tokyo or Berlin? Go into the SPY area and it allows you to see whats how in different geographic locations. There is also search by (artist, genre, track) capability and of course you can find all your friends and make new ones to see what they are listening to.

http://hypem.com/


Sean M Rhodes

I've been a little jaded by the Facebook phenomenon lately and I needed a different fix... Enter Ego (still in beta) by Punch Entertainment, a little startup in Mountain View. These guys used to port console games to mobile phones for carriers like Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile etc.

After playing it online for a day, I find that Ego is like a cross between a Tamagotchi, a Mii, Facebook and IM. Your avatar starts off with very basic attributes and levels up by developing a stronger persona or archetype through in-game interactions called Socializing. Going from high school to college to adulthood, you can be buddies with not only your friends, but with the whole American Idol crew, the folks from Lost (all AI driven) or random avatars with AI kicking in when they're not online - based on those users' past actions. As you progress in the game, you unlock rewards that help refine your personality instead of buying features.

Ego is built as a social networking game for mobile phones with online components through their site, a Facebook app and beyond. It was awarded "Most Innovative Game" at Game Developers Conference 2008. The target demographic is teens and up.

http://www.ego-city.com/

Nic Tan

This past weekend several Organics attended the NYC iPhone Dev Camp at Brooklyn Polytechnic University to share their views, questions, and experiences with development on this exciting new platform.

I was able to attend two sessions, one on user experience/interaction design and the other on business models. Most agree that the UI conventions employed on the device are well thought out and user-friendly, but there's a lot to consider when designing an iPhone app and there are still some areas where there is room for improvement. UX designers will want to think carefully about balancing the intuitive standards they need with some unique elements that differentiate and improve on the core app set.

The interface builder emerged as a hot topic for its promise of WYSIWYG development for the non-coder. Unfortunately, it's nowhere near ready.  

There are still a lot of unanswered questions about Apple's app store. There is also a great deal of enthusiasm about its potential to improve the mobile app economy. Most developers seemed to like the idea of iTunes for apps. In particular, developers seem to like the idea of setting their own prices. If the opinions of the Dev Camp discussion's participants prove an accurate gauge, we can expect to see most apps released at somewhere between free and $15 dollars.

Dan Neumann

  We work on two major automotive accounts, and occasionally we get an audience with their automotive design teams, which is always fascinating.  These are product designers who are thinking 5-10 years out, an eternity in the world of shifting consumer tastes.  I hadn't thought much about the role design plays in motorcycles.  As a former rider, I can tell you that no vehicle category is designed with as little regard for the passenger!  No gas gauge, no reverse gear, tiny rear view mirrors, no storage space - all standard on most bikes.  It's forever the pre-cupholder era, and I guess most bikers like it that way.

So I was fascinated to read about Harley-Davidson's new line of Dark Custom bikes.  Willie G. Davidson, Harley's chief styling officer, has developed a clear design point-of-view expressed through six new motorcycles.  Compared to the current Harley line, they're throwbacks to The Wild One (1953), less chrome, more black matte finishes, and designed (in theory) to get dirty.  From a marketing perspective, they're about making the brand younger.  Average age of the Harley rider? 46. 

The Dark Custom promos shows guys riding with Vans on, shredding in skateparks, and even on the slopes with snowboards strapped behind them like guitars.  It would seem over-the-top until you remind yourself that motorcycling was the original extreme sport.

Harley-Davidson: Dark Custom

Misha Cornes

Go to CNN and check out the "Latest News" headlines.  As usual, there are a few small icons next to some headlines. The usual video camera icon is there.  And next to it... a t-shirt.  CNN is selling on-demand t-shirts from selected headlines. The sorta odd thing is it seems they are available only from the headline itself (click the icon) and not from the story.
 
So for example in today's "Latest News", from the icon next to the headline "Synchronized swimmers faint in unison"  you can get to the t-shirt page.  From the story itself, they don't plug the t-shirt. 

So is there a new editorial direction in the newsroom - "Is it t-shirt worthy?'  Are the writers getting a kick back for each of their headline t-shirts sold? Will there be a strike for t-shirt rights?  Sorry, got carried away.
 
Anyway, this one seems to follow into the "amazing nobody thought of it" category. For that matter, you'd think maybe The New York Post or a similar rag would have beat CNN to this one.
 
David Lewis

Spike Lee is teaming up with Nokia to direct a movie pieced together from user-generated cell phone video footage.

"You are seeing first hand the democratization of film," Lee said in a statement on Thursday. "Aspiring filmmakers no longer have to go to film school to make great work. With a simple mobile phone, almost anyone can now become a filmmaker."

It's an ambitious idea that ties together the classic elements of social media, (particularly public voting), with the stamp of celebrity.

Organic explored a Spike Lee mobile film festival several years ago, with Sprint as the sponsor. The idea was ahead of its time - pre-YouTube - and didn't include the element of shared media. We were going to call it "Fifteen Seconds of Fame"!  I think the social component is a big improvement and shows how fast we are moving in terms of the adoption of user-generated content.

http://www.nokiaproductions.com

Misha Cornes

Perhaps Dilbert is a little passé, but they recently released an updated version of Dilbert.com that has some new and improved features.  Here are some highlights of the new features that make it exceptional.

What would make it more exceptional?  Searching the comic archive by keyword.  The current search is by date range only.
 
What's not exceptional?  Dilbert's incessant use of pop-under ads.

http://www.dilbert.com

Richard Liechty