Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

Bob Lefsetz is an incredibly prolific music business expert who writes a free e-mail blast called The Lefsetz Letter (www.lefsetz.com). Many in the music business read it, even though he is often very critical (and, more often than not, right) about its ills -- artistic and financial, which he ascribes to its general incompetence, greed, arrogance and short-sightedness. Technology has progressed, and consumers have followed suit, but the music industry continually lags behind in spite of itself. He does not shirk from naming names, big names!, and numerous important executives and musicians have been skewered in his virtual column. What's more, he occasionally compiles his more well-known readers' responses and sends them out as updates, even if they are critical of him. Kid Rock and he had a great, pointed exchange regarding Kid's refusal to put his latest album on iTunes, which ended up being a hit anyway.

A recent Letter, published on November 26th, concerns a same-day article in the New York Times regarding Atlantic Records' claim to be the first label to earn more from digital than from physical sales. Lefsetz argues that it is a red herring that still fails to address the fact that people are not buying music via digital channels to make up for lost revenue from declining CD sales. The "digital" revenue referred to in the Times article includes not only digital sales of songs and albums, but also other revenue sources: subscription services, ring tones, ring backs, videogames and satellite radio. Thus, it's not an apples-to-apples comparison. Maybe, apples-to-apples+pears+bananas+kiwis.

As always, Lefsetz argues that the record business needs to develop a model that is customer-centric: music conveniently available in various forms and formats via various devices at reasonable prices. My interpretation of his thinking: Because the industry has been slow to address consumers' wants in the digital music space, many consumers, particularly Gen X and Gen Y, have ventured into "file sharing", which has resulted in 5 inter-related consequences:

1. Many consumers aren't paying for these shared/stolen files, which
    means lost revenue for labels and publishers.
2. Many consumers think music should be free, even if they recognize
    that file sharing is illegal, and can't imagine purchasing a CD or
    album via a legal and licensed like iTunes Store, which they still
    deem too expensive and restrictive.
3. Music has become less significant in mindshare and culture,
    particularly in light of increased competition from the internet (UGC,
    blogs, social networking, YouTube, etc.), videogames, etc.
4. People consequently purchase even less music, because it's not
    as compelling or interesting as other things they enjoy doing.
5. Music continues to stultify, as labels become more risk averse and
    try to copy past forms that have been proven successful (though
    this issue has existed for at least 70+ years)

I might be alone, but I believe that the record business is on the cusp of a turnaround, particularly if it can offer subscription services via 3G mobile phones at a reasonable price (a big "if", no doubt). I know Rhapsody has a version of this mobile offering, but I sense it will require Apple to bring it to a wider audience. Here's hoping!

Jonathan Cohen

AdAge this week ran an interesting article on the rise of the widget. Ryan Stewart over on ZDNet and many other have commented as well. So I won't repeat what others have been saying. I think the closing quote sums up the most important point in the article:

In the past three months, according to Alexa, Apple.com's page views per user are down 9%; Comcast.net is down 1%; Dell.com, down 22%; AT&T.com, down 18%; Xbox.com, down 9% and so on as corporate e-bastions begin to experience the same audience fragmentation that is killing old media. "As popular as your site may be," says Kennedy, the reality is that people are actually visiting Yahoo, MySpace, Google and Facebook thousands of times more than they're visiting you."

I think that the days of the destination site are numbered. With more channels and touch points like mobile, social, and widgets the problem now is about making sure your brand is represented with the same brand attributes across many touch points you don't control.

One remaining big question about the current widget focus is when will the user backlash begin to appear? How long until users become tired of installing little plug-ins and platforms?

image credit: toothpaste for dinner

The online world is saturated with content. There are more expert opinions, user-generated content, and brand messages than one could ever consume in a lifetime of internet surfing. Why then, in an overloaded world, should brands still consider blogging (or micro-blogging) a worthy investment?

Three simple reasons...
1. It Humanizes
2. It's Fast
3. It's Two-Way

Humanizing Your Brand
Good corporate blogs can be seen as the face of the brand without makeup. In a time where consumers trust each other far more than they trust brand communication, blogs offer the opportunity to make brand communication more personal. Some brands will elect an internal evangelist with a passion for the brand to become an author for the blog. Others will make sure that all posts are written in a conversational tone. Blogs are a place where brands can talk without much filtering, and help regain consumer trust through transparency.

Getting Your Message Out FAST
Not bogged down with the time intensive needs of media buys, production schedules, creative concepting, etc, blogs offer one of the quickest ways to get a message out to consumers. This increases the relevance of messaging, which hits subscribers RSS readers and Google Blog Search in a time where consumers are actively searching for information. Because of this, blogs are often used as one of the first tools during a brand crisis to get the corporate side of the story out to the masses and clear up any misinformation.

Joining The Conversation
Finally, blogs are a place for brands to have two-way conversations with their enthusiasts, skeptics, and consumers looking to actively reach out. Many poorly executed corporate blogs are used merely as another PR platform, a one-way channel to push messaging. Consumers flock to corporate blogs in the hopes of a humanized, relevant message, and are open to engaging in conversation if given the opportunity. Great corporate blogs use this channel as a way to gather influencers and help change consumer opinion by making it not just a place to talk, but a place to listen.

Marta Strickland (editor at ThreeMinds)
Mike Hudson (editor at AllHands)

Editor's Note: This is a piece on Camp Organic from a recent counselor. In fairness to future teams, we try to avoid specific references the exercises at Camp. But the post below attempts to convey the experience of one Organic nonetheless.

As I've heard the story, picture Tommy Lasorda, pacing the room. A legend of the American Pasttime, suited up in Dodger Blue. The script team name on his nylon windbreaker. The baseball pants. The stirrups. And the legendary "LA" on the cap.

All eyes from the team are on his ruddy, bulbous and weather-worn mug, a stadium of Angelinos waiting. It's a simple room of cinderblocks and a dusty chalkboard. Batting practice is over. The game is just ahead. And the skipper prepares the team with a simple question, "What's that say on your jersey?"

For a Dodger, it was Dodgertown for Spring Training that helped bring a young player from amateur to teammate. And for Organic, it's Camp Organic as the rite of passage. It's weird and somewhat flaky and generally hard to pin down. But it is fundamental to us as a company and the way we think. I've now gone twice, once as a Camper and once as a counselor, and I'd like to share a bit of my experience here. I mean...what is the point of this thing?

For many, the act of archival is about remaining true to the original source, maintain authenticity and fidelity. Maybe at most, we remaster in attempt to boost the sounds or images that were already there. But with the incredible tools of modern video and web, there is the opportunity to allow us to do something more... to reimagine, to dream, and to build upon the original in a way that extends the experience to more senses and more audiences.

"In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon's every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon's boundless wit, and timeless message."

Nick Sternberg

It seems that all the news this week as swirled around fighting. Technology such as Twitter was used to report actual terrorism. There was also a great deal of turf warfare as the cell phones duke it out to be the next big thing and the big web giants fight for control of the open social graph.

What's Been Happening This Week?

Cell Phone Wars
The iPhone is feeling some heat from all sides of the board. The Nokia N97 has been described as the "perfect Facebook phone", with it's beautiful 16:9 wide screen, full keypad, and impressive battery life. Also this week, the second Google Android phone launched. And while the iPhone is just starting to offer shopping tools like Amazon for the iPhone, it still pales in comparison to Shop Savvy and barcode reading technology.

The Social Web Cracks Open
Facebook Connect arrives and many rejoice at what it promises to do, which is to bring the power of the Facebook social graph to the rest of the online world. While some promising announcements came during their launch, like an alliance with Digg and Hulu, there were other disappointing marketing efforts that didn't seem to make use of the data in a beneficial way.

This Facebook Connect business brings up two valid questions:

1. Will Facebook data ever be useful enough to become a relavant tool for social browsing on properties like Amazon on iTunes? It relies on there being a more useful information tied to our interests and our relationships with people. I want to get wine recommendations from my wine friends when I visit Wine.com. I want music recommendations from my music geeks on Amazon. The web needs to be a great big party host.

2. Is Facebook ready to be the center for our social data? While many are arguing whether it's going to be OpenID or Facebook Connect that emerges victorious, I am wondering if either one of them are ready. With the great deal of vulnerability that has been show in recent Facebook hacks, are they ready become that important... to house our single online identity.

One thing is for sure, the decentralized, distributed social web is coming. Are you ready?

Marta Strickland

When I crossed over from the print world to interactive, there were a few things that I had to give up. One was working in Photoshop with a file that was 400mb -- but I didn't really miss that. What I did miss was the nuances of type. It was something that I just couldn't control. I forgot kerning. I forgot leading. I focused on the template and the transitions.

But I'm starting to love type again. Here's a simple site that delivers some long copy in an interesting way. Screw the template.

http://www.corporateriskwatch.com/

Christopher Page

All Dan Kaminsky wanted was to get free wifi at Starbucks. Instead, he discovered the ultimate hack - a security flaw coded into the very DNA of DNS, and with it:

"... a moment hackers around the world dream of ... a tool that could give them unimaginable power."

It's now known as the Kaminsky attack - an elegant, simple, virtually undetectable maneuver that had been overlooked by the godfathers of DNS for 25 years. By exposing it, Kaminsky may - MAY - have short circuited the mother of all hacks.

Read Joshua Davis' entertaining, dramatic and frightening account of the discovery, response and unveiling of the Kaminsky attack on Wired.

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-12/ff_kaminsky?currentPage=a

And the next time someone asks you to keep an eye on their laptop as they go to the washroom at Starbucks, remember, they might just be taking a break from saving the world.

Alexander Churchill

From Mono, comes Monoface: the brief writes itself....

This is a holiday card that is certainly a bit different, a highly interactive real people Mr. Potato Head. Using the faces of the agency's fifteen employees, the user can exchange their facial features to create some interesting new faces. 759,375 faces to be exact, the site is currently being used as a teaching tool in a high school math class.

The photography and blending of the images is amazing. The only thing I miss is the ability to build and save a face to the gallery, rather than have the gallery prepopulated with all 759,375 options. The gallery is also a little too small to actually be useful.

But still and impressive and fun effort, and the coolest Christmas card I've ever seen.

Christopher Page

There is this fascinating book called The Big Sort by Bill Bishop, who takes a look at how the clustering together of like-minded individuals is homogenizing America. Sandy Marsh wrote an excellent post on ThreeMinds about the dangers of homogenization in our culture, where in her frustration she cried out:

"It makes me want to sew my own clothes and burn the patterns. Create my own desserts and wash them down with a glass of milk and the recipes. Develop my own language and only share the decoder ring with my closest friends and family. Start traditions and keep secrets."

So here is my question of the day... Is the same destined to be true for social media as it has been for the real-world? Are we destined for a big online sort?

I don't have an answer. On one hand I want to embrace the niche as a way to find relevance in the noise. On the other hand, I don't want to isolate myself in a homogenized world of wine snobs and social media junkies, never to discover that my true passion might be for football (yikes!).

I don't have an answer, but here is some food for thought. It seems in fashion these days to be divisive. As one person writes a blog post exclaiming Twitter is going to save the world, another declares Twitter is dead.

We work in black and whites, pulling towards biased news outlets and online groups that support our opinions. At any given moment, you can find your PRO this and ANTI this groups on Facebook waging war. But where is the Facebook group for "I can see both sides of the story" or "Let's find common ground"?

And what will this homogenization mean for marketers, who are just starting to hop onto the social media train? With their enthusiasts in one corner and their haters in another, they are bound to get a very biased viewpoint depending on which conversation they join. Which is a shame, because the real magic happens when those conversations come together.

Marta Strickland

Radiohead continues to push the digital envelop with 12 Cams, Create Your Rainbow. They have allowed their fans to remix their songs, and now they bring you behind the video booth for one of their shows. For those of you who missed their "In Rainbows" concert, you can toggle between different camera feeds and play with the lighting show here:

http://wowow.co.jp/music/radiohead/special/

There are some nifty data visualizations of users' favorite camera views. But it's a shame there is no way to share your creation with others. There is also no drag n' drop/stacking feature to mimic the live video feeds they had at the venue.

Angela Di Pietro

I recently downloaded the GoodRec application for my iPhone (thanks Angela!). The concept isn't new: find your favorite things and rate them/read other reviews. Categories include: restaurants, bars & nightlife, wine, movies and books.

What makes GoodRec notable is that the experience is inherently intuitive. From your mobile, you can search/sort per location of interest within GoogleMaps. And for restaurants, the integration of OpenTable is a smart touch.

GoodRec takes Yelp and Citysearch a step further with the straightforward integration of social networking features. Each search result places your friend's recommendation on top. In my opinion, this adds a level of credibility not found on Yelp. I also find the "badges" for increasing levels of participation especially addictive - but that could be just me :)

Try it for yourself, and "out-rec" me:
http://www.goodrec.com/

Rachel Nathan

As someone in the creative profession, I often wonder where exactly the bad stock photography of the world comes from. What inspired the commission of that shoot, of that subject matter? Now I know, we only have ourselves to blame...

According to The Inspiration Room blog, Getty Images records all their users searches, which isn't terribly uncommon. What is strange is that, if they don't have what people are searching for, they commission a shoot.

To test this theory, Think Meets Do, a design team in London, decided to create a Facebook group called 'Search for a Rollerblading Dwarf on Getty Images'. An entourage of creative industry folk began using terms such as 'Rollerblading Dwarf' or similar terms like "Miami Midget" or "Little Person on Tiny Wheels" on Getty to see what happened.

Low and behold, Getty noticed the influx of terms and Patrick Ryan was commissioned to shoot a dwarf on roller skates, now available for sale online.

Christopher Page

During my eight years as a professional derivatives trader I quickly learned that one of the most important predictors of success was being able to tap into the deal flow and information flow in order to make successful, rapid trading decisions.  There were so many sources of information and my trading success relied on finding the right information, talking to the right people and being able to synthesize the information rapidly.  This is the adrenal rush of trading where your success is tied to how quickly you can filter signal from the noise.

More than a decade later the Internet has democratized information sources and trading platforms. The average investor / day trader / speculator can now trade successfully without the need to access an expensive Bloomberg or Reuters terminal.

One of the most innovative Web 2.0 tools that has emerged in the past month is StockTwits. It's a powerful mashup that uses Twitter's global conversation as a very powerful source of information flow.  It elegantly filters the conversation and allows you to track your favorite stocks, listen in to the conversation that is happening around those stocks and add your own point of view.   It was developed by Soren Macbeth and Howard Lindzon.  Find them on Twitter here and here.

To contribute to the conversation one simply needs a Twitter account and add a "$" symbol in front of the ticker symbol you're talking about in your tweets.  Stocktwits automatically tracks your tweets and categorizes them into the correct ticker stream.  For example, here's a comment I made on $GM.

StockTwits also shows the most active contributors, the most active stock comments and provides external links to Google Finance, Yahoo Finance, WhaleWisdom and WikiInvest.

Bottom line:  This is a must-use tool if you're interested in trading stocks profitably.

We'll see more and more vertical business applications as Twitter continues to expand as a truly global conversation platform.

David Feldt

Since everyone's eyes and ears have been stuck to the auto industry bill in Congress, you might think that not much else has been happening. But as I scroll through my delicious links on the newly launched mobile site, even I was surprised at the amount of interesting news that came out in the last seven days. Unfortunately, the interactive news this week has been equally depressing, at least to me. Even though social media is apparently making us happier, it's also a big mess that is tearing us apart (okay I wrote that one).

What's Been Happening This Week

Corporate Blogs Aren't Trusted
Some "shocking" (or maybe not so shocking) Forrester research came out this week, which lead to dozens of sensational headlines proclaiming "Corporate Blogs Are Not Trusted". It's disappointing to many of us in the industry who believe that blogging is still valuable, especially the type that promotes corporate transparency. After the drama died down, many realized that perhaps the question wasn't phrased properly in the research. Others used the concern to create useful health checks to measure the trustworthiness of your blog.

Social Doesn't Play Nice With Advertisers
If the blogging news wasn't frustrating enough to social media evangelists, how about these following bites of news... Social network firms are scaling back in a sinking economy. The once high ad revenue estimates on eMarketer for social media have recently taken a dive. Facebook viruses are becoming a growing concern. And despite the warnings earlier this year, Facebook Apps have continued to be a huge disappointment... a graveyard for brands.

A Sign Of Things To Come
In fact, things have gotten so bad this week, that one very famous blog (the irony) declared the entire Web 2.0 movement DEAD. But all this drama, this talk about blogs being dead, or Facebook being dead, or being over Twitter, I think it is a sign of better things to come. All this buzz doesn't mean we need to throw out what Web 2.0 brought us, only that we need something smarter. We need a more organized, but still social web. We need a more relevant web.

We don't need it just for all of us kool-aid drinking social media fans, we need it for everybody. Take for instance how the newly launched Change.gov "Open For Questions", a digg-style ideasourcing tool, has become subject to the bury brigade. It's a strong idea for social change that has become to victim to growing problems with Web 2.0. How would you make this tool more relevant? How would you balance social interaction with smart analysis that pulls out the wisdom of the crowds and not the mob mentality?

Marta Strickland

Riddle: A man gets on an elevator. He presses the button next to the letter "P". When the door opens, he steps out and walks through the front door of the hotel. What country is he in? Answer: Finland

A recent All Hands discussion posed the question, "How many times are you on an elevator trying to figure out which button represents the lobby, ground floor or the way out?" Is it the "L", the "G", the "P", the one with the star next to it... and why do we need a star anyway? Can the IESC (Intergalactic Elevator Standards Committee) not come to agreement on this?

Or, perhaps we are just asking the wrong question or considering the wrong need. Las Vegas Casinos - modern day masters of usability and manipulation of human behavior - solve this dilemma by simply writing "Casino Floor" on a large, elongated, backlit bar. Problem solved. They want you to go to the casino floor. Often. The goal and the need -- theirs, not yours -- are clear. The solution is then obvious.

Lip Dub Lyric Send Card - watch more funny videos

How do you bring back a fan base you maybe didn't have before it was Business Time on the YouTube? How 'bout a lip-sync video contest and a web premier of season 2 a month before the broadcast premier?

Flight of the Conchords, the two-man New Zealand folk novelty group and the HBO series about them, owe much of their success to Youtube. The video-sharing site is littered with clips from their HBO special, music videos from the TV show, and fan versions of songs. Giving the love back to that fanbase, FOTC has launched "Lip Dub Fansterpiece", a video lip-syncing contest, which already features entries from some famous comedians. And to top it off the Season 2 Premier will be released on FunnyOrDie a month before it broadcasts on HBO.

Richard Liechty

image credit: factoryjoe [Flickr]

For digital marketers, it pays to be opportunistic. Wherever there is a jarring or unsatisfactory experience, just as in the real world, there is often a chance to build in a message that suits a brand mission. Take 404 errors for example. Sooner or later someone is going to either click on a broken link from an email, mistype a URL, or a developer will write bad code that somehow makes it through QA. The user experience sucks, but sometimes a bit of good clean fun can come from a common moment of frustration.

We have to give a nod to whoever came up with this display advertising campaign for The Alliance for Climate Protection and their purchase of the Washington Post's 404 error pages. Here, an environmental lobbying group seeking to call out opposing the energy sector's efforts to promote "clean coal" as just so much hot air.

It redirected an otherwise bad experience into a memorable point.

More fun 404 pages here. (Organic did the Geek Squad one, BTW).

Michael Beavers

After watching this attempt at edgy viral marketing, I felt like I needed a shower. I can't imagine what Pizza Hut was thinking when they approved this campaign.

Step 1: Produce a low budget "edgy" video that disrespects small business owners during a recession.
Step 2: Tarnish the family-friendly brand image we've worked years to create
Step 3: Profit!

(Well, since the video player serves up competitors' advertisements during playback, at least someone will profit.)

One of our roles as good marketers is to make sure we ask all of the appropriate questions up front. The question we must ask ourselves is not "How can we make this viral?" The question is "how can we make something exceptional go viral?"

Stephen Murray

Culture jamming: transforming mass media to produce ironic or satirical commentary about itself, using the original medium's communication method.

We recently posted about the "rollerskating dwarf" experiment on Getty Images. But that isn't the only instance of culture jamming that has happened recently.

A group of people living on Sampsonia Way, located in the North of Pittsburgh, decided to bring to the street to life when the Google Street View cameras came by. Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley, the people behind the project, gathered neighbors and other participants to create staged scenes including a sword fight, parade, marathon, band practice, and more. The Street View cameras captured the activity via 360-degree photographs, as the snapshots became forever preserved in Google Maps.

These instances of culture jamming got Organic thinking... Is this a downside of pure information-driven systems like "search?" If I know when the Google camera van is coming, then I can dress the environment to be anything I want. Perhaps even raise property values...

"In this particular case, it took the group quite a bit of effort, and the coordination of artists, actual people living in the neighborhood, etc to set it up. It isn't likely that this would start happening everywhere. And while artists, local tricksters or a Flash Mob taking over a street is personally entertaining and interesting, who's to say that that street view wouldn't also tell something meaningful about the neighborhood and its people? What if cities really started beautification projects because they knew the Google camera van was coming, then Google Street View would have some remarkable power." Karri Ojanen

Christopher Page

Real proof that traditional paper billboards are not as immortal as the vampires promoted in this Brazilian subway ad campaign. The following video shows great examples of how a movie release campaign came to life. You can see it in action in the link below:
http://www.vimeo.com/2508720

For the movie release of Twilight in Brazil, Ginga Interactive created a series of marketing stunts both on and offline. Apart from creating and uniting various fan communities of the books and film, interactivity was brought to the underground metro system in São Paulo. Interactive Posters were installed in various terminals of the metro system, with animated videos and even extra content sent via bluetooth to cell phones.

Randi Barshack

image credit: jdcow [Flickr]

It's been about eight months since I wrote the piece, Are Facebook Apps The New Brand Wasteland?, detailing the disappointingly large amount of failed brand applications on Facebook. Flash forward to last week and I find this article on AdWeek, Apps: The Newest Brand Graveyard. What this tells me, besides the fact that Brian Morrissey and I share a similar fascination with advertiser's mass exodus from Second Life... is that we STILL haven't got this figured out yet.

But unlike what Proctor & Gamble and Peter Schwartz from the Huffington Post would like you to believe, the fault does not lie in the medium. The fault lies in us... in all of us, consumers and advertisers alike. We've grown up, things have changed, and what might have worked in 2006 will surely not work in 2009.

So, What Really Is Dead?

#1. Building an app to "experiment" in the space. Social media is a grown up game now. Marketers can no longer get away with finding extra room in the budget to play in adventurous spaces. Brands are expecting a lot out of every dollar they spend. And consumers suffering from fatigue are not interested in something that won't better their experience.

"A social medium cannot be co-opted for branding purposes unless the attributes of the brand/product are congruent to the properties of the medium, common interests of the targeted social group, and the intents of the group members' interactions. Too often marketers are drawn by social media's potential and neglect to devise sensible usage that can benefit both the consumers and themselves. No wonder the results are often disappointing and unsustainable." Fang Yu Lin

#2. Launching an app with no engagement strategy. The social space is a crowded space, and it will take effort not only to navigate the right people to the right places, but to convince them there is a reason to stay there.

"I agree that Apps have become a brand graveyard because of the ham handed approach most advertisers take to developing them. Spend a little money on media to get it off the ground. Especially with an app with such a focused purpose, a small amount of highly targeted media would go a long way." Russ Hopkinson

What Isn't Dead

Social networking isn't dead. Web 2.0 isn't dead. Blogging isn't dead.

The inconvenient truth is... this social media stuff is HARD WORK. Or as David Armano put it in a recent post, comparing social media to a Ferarri with flat tires:

"I guess we could walk away from a Ferarri with flat tires, because there's not much you can do with it. Or you can roll up your sleeves and do what it takes to get it fixed. It'll probably be messy -- you might even get a little grease on your shirt. But think about the places you could go."

Marta Strickland

For the launch of the third of the X-Men franchise movies, "Last Stand" Organic worked with Myspace to allow users exclusive functionality if they added the X-Men profile (www.myspace.com/xmenthelaststand) as a friend. The media plan included promotion to this page and skinning myspace.com home page for the first time ever.

The results?

More than 3 million members of the myspace.com community added X-Men as friends in 1 month leading up to the movie's release on 5/1/06. This help drive a massive $107 million three-day opening, the largest ever for Memorial Day weekend and the fourth-biggest in box office history.

Campaign done, lets go home.

Post launch the profile was turned into a one stop shop for digital swag and DVD sales. Which would not be a bad exit strategy... if you were not planning additional movies in the X-Men franchise (at least 3 upcoming movies are on the books from what I can tell). It appears that there was little to no dialogue with the community by 20th Century Fox since "Last Stand" and consequently the friend base dropped to 1.7MM users.

I have never lost 1.3 MM friends, but I am sure it hurts. How much does it hurt? This is just a guesstimate but let's assume a conservative 30% conversion rate of friends to ticket holder and that Fox gets 50% of each ticket sold at an average price of $7.08 per ticket.

$1.38MM worth of friends. Ouch.

Could they have kept all of those friends in the interim? Probably not, but they definitely could have kept a lot of them by engaging this community in between launches. A few suggestions:
-For hardcore fans get stan lee on myspace to answer questions
-For Hugh Jackman fans (preparing for "Wolverine" remember?) create a profile for him and tie this into the page
-How about plot teasers for upcoming movies, sending press releases through this community, or asking the community what X-Men they would like to see the origin of*?

20th Century Fox is now preparing for the next launch in the series X-Men Origins "Wolverine" and they are starting off on the right foot. They are leveraging their existing audience to spread the word and have just posted the trailer on the new Wolverine page over 5 months in advance of the movie release. Hopefully between "Wolverine" and "Magneto" (guessing a 2012 release date) they will engage and maintain their community better.

-Russ Hopkinson

*20th Century Fox if you are listening - Colossus Origins has all the makings of a great movie - new cold war overtones, risqué relationship with Kitty Pride and just an awesome character

It's a good time of year to remember Sears, Roebuck, and Co., once mail order megalith from which exciting and mysterious packages would arrive to the wonder and expectation of kiddies everywhere. As a kid I used to spend hours poring over the toy section of the Sears catalog and dreaming around this time of year.

Well, good ol' Sears has made a dream come true again this year. This has turned out to be one of the most practically useful web sites of the year for me:

www.searspartsdirect.com

My 1995 Craftsman garage door opener stopped working a few days ago, leaving the door stuck open, and when I hit that web site, within minutes I had pinpointed the exact part (drive gear & sprocket assembly) that I needed to fix the problem. Another five minutes saw an order submitted for about 40 bucks.

Last night I was bumming about the garage door being open before the big Detroit snowstorm of '08. Lo and behold, like the star-struck kiddies of yore, how my eyes lit up when my wife presented me with that mysterious package from Sears.

Fast-forward through four hours and a couple of customary expletives, and my wife and I were gleefully cycling the automatic 1/2-hp-motor-driven garage door up and down, up and down. The precise directions included with the specific part needed for our 13-year-old opener made the replacement straightforward (though never expletive-free for one with thick thumbs). Needless to say, dry garage this morning.

One may say that the above site is not a marketing site. But that site and the accompanying attention to detail in the parts process did more for my Sears brand opinion than any Sears marketing to which I've ever been exposed.

Even their acquisition of Kmart didn't go as far (close second, though - OK, not really).

Matthew Williams

Just in time to be this year's hot stocking stuffer, Burger King released a limted edition body spray that supposedly smells like "the scent of seduction with the hint of flame-broiled meat".

http://www.firemeetsdesire.com/

As the site says, "The Whopper sandwich is America's Favorite burger. FLAME by BK captures the essence of that love and gives it to you in the form of a body spray."

On the site, I especially like the full screen option and the different video clips are really funny - plus the buy now link to close the deal. It's also cool to see the King character continue to evolve as a representative of the brand...

Now if only this smells as good as/better than the AXE spray in the Organic San Francisco mens room, the world will be a better place ;)

Jay Bain

I didn't even realize that awesome could be this awesome. And I weep for our collective lameness. Christopher Dane Owens is the creator of this impossibly awesome confluence of multi-dimensional cheesiness. It's like he got a 20 every time he rolled the big Dungeons and Dragons dice of life. And then rolled all that good luck up into four minutes and seventeen seconds of YouTube greatness. Sure, it took a huge, largely self-funded budget (he's a well-paid TV producer by day). And sure, it's a bit confusing, but when you're trying to pack this much awesome into 4:17, sacrifices must be made. But don't listen to me, here's Calabassas-based Christopher in his own words, courtesy of the LA Times.

My character is part of the witches kingdom, which is the second kingdom. I'm actually part of their army and an enforcer, a general, if you will. I meet that young lady Arra who is secretly being trained by the angels and they hand her a book. That book is the book of golden symbols which can only be understood by the spirit, by the living soul. She's being trained secretly to be the queen of this realm, to overthrow the forces of darkness. My character actually meets her and falls in love with her and decides to leave the dark side, so he has an epiphany.

Dude, wait. What? That's totally some Narnia meets Final Fantasy and has a three-headed baby type ish. In other words: awesomeness redefined by spectacular geek-out overload. 

The rub? This can be perceived as disingenuous at worst when brought across the fence to the advertising community. Or just not all that awesome. So, how do we get this dude a Super Bowl ad without stealing his mojo. Somebody get Tay Zonday on the line for his thoughts. The White Gold guys over at Goodby? Barring that, this deserves some commentary from all of us. Fire when ready.

Turman

PS. Read the whole LA Times piece here.

As you all know, the global economy is on its way to being one of the worst economic recessions in 25 years. Layoffs are happening all around us and consumer spending is extremely tight. Getting share of wallet will be more difficult than ever before. So, what should marketers focus on during these challenging times?

1. Measure Return of Investment Holistically.
2. Develop Integrated Campaigns.
3. Optimize Your Marketing Campaigns.
4. Balance Creative and Measurement Goals.
5. Don't Shy Away From Social Media Platforms.
6. Develop Disciplined Innovation.

Full descriptions of each after the break...

I received a Snowflake message this morning from a family member that certainly brightened my day. I found the delivery of the message fun and it inspired me to create my own to send...

http://www.popularfront.com/snowdays/

The process of creating the snowflake was intuitive - very much like the paper version we all created as kids and then finally, sending my own message that I knew would brighten someone else's day was a nice ending to a morning diversion.

Nicole Craine

It's almost 2009. And as everyone's predictions for next year and best/worst lists for this year come out, there has been a lot of caution and skepticism. But in the spirit of the holidays, I am going to keep this digest short and sweet... sweet meaning let's focus on the positive news this week.

What's positive? Well, Facebook is still growing. Mobile social networking is up. And, the iPhone isn't the only phone getting cool new apps, although they are probably the only phone where people can make $10K with a farting app.

As we look back over the year, from the Superbowl to the election, it's amazing to see how Twitter has been there to add real time commentary and communications. Just in time for Christmas, they gave us a better and faster people search to help tweeters find each other more easily.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Marta Strickland

I received an e-mail last week from JetBlue announcing their JetPaws program, an exclusive program tailored to pets and pet owners to ensure a smooth trip.

While I don't have a pet, I'm really impressed by this idea. Great combo of useful information, subtle push to sign up for their loyalty program, fun stuff with the photo contest and product cross sells. While they're asking you to take action, they're also providing a payoff.

I had a pet in the past and needed to move her from San Diego to NYC. It was more frustrating than my own cross country move in that there was little useful information on the site and I spent at least 2 hours on the phone/on hold with American Airlines.

Pets are like family members, and it's great that Jet Blue recognizes this and is treating them as important parts of our lives.

Tracy Richards

During the Web 2.0 Summit earlier this year, Paul Otellini, the CEO of Intel Corporation, brought up an interesting paradox about Moore's Law, the theory that computer hardware will drive ever smaller and more complex at an exponential rate. Rather than embrace my inner-geek and describe what that means when we get down into computers the size of atoms and the impending singularity, I'll try and put it as simply as Paul did at the conference...

Moore's law is not a law of nature, it's a law of human innovation. And thus, the limits are ours.

From what I'm sensing, 2009 will be a year of less new things. It will be a year to aggregate your social presence and sanitize your friends list. We could consider this a side effect of the economic downturn. Perhaps "tightening the belt" is not just limited to our finances, but also to our valuable time. However, there are others that say we are reaching our human limits...

As limits of quantum mechanics will forever taunt Intel as they drive technology smaller and smaller, we are limited by the evolution of our brain and our learned culture. There are only so many things we can remember, only so much we can multitask, and only so many "friends" we can really follow on Twitter!!

But I have faith. Every time Intel hits a wall, they break it down, they innovate, and they find a new way to move technology along. And we will too.

2009 will bring us aggregation tools that will help us sort through the noise, while our brains and learned social behavior has a chance to catch up to the brave new always-on world. Someday, we will be born with the natural skills to handle such dense information. Although, one look at the digital natives, who happily browse with 20 windows open, music blasting, videos playing, makes you wonder if that evolution hasn't already happened.

Marta Strickland