Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

Last night I got a firsthand glimpse of a very cool video streaming app from startup Qik.
 
Qik is a mobile streaming video service with a social angle that is currently available for Nokia and windows mobile phones (see their site FAQ). However, they are developing the service for use with iPhones and what I saw last night was that alpha in development.
 
On the iPhone, the app is activated from an icon link and from there you hold your phone like a camera while recording video that is stored on the qik.com site for you or other users to view.  When we tested it last night, our stream happened to load up on their front page as a currently running stream - so we were watching our stream in real time (about a 3 second delay) - very cool!
 
Using the iPhone 1.0's lens optics and processor, the video quality was good but not great (about 5-7 fps, quality dependent on ambient lighting); however the audio was surprisingly good (kudos to the iPhone mic?).  Besides seeing ourselves on the qik.com homepage, we were also immediately able to access the file created from a directory of videos just created.  Making and viewing a video was a seamless, instant user experience.
 
From a content distribution POV, this service is even easier to use than YouTube and like the site says, will have a million uses.  Like YouTube, there is already a global user base (check out the integrated geotagging for videos).  Already on the site are quite a few known 'lifecasters' and podcasters, ranging from pro to (extremely) amateur.  Another great feature is live chat. It's the most elegant implementation of "video+phone" I've seen yet. I'm not sure if their iPhone app will be as robust for viewing as for video creation (e.g., the YouTube app on the iPhone) but we will see.
 
Color me very, very impressed with this service, its implementation so far and its potential impact on our media culture that is rapidly changing to bottom-up and many-to-many.  This is going to be big!

http://www.qik.com
 
Jay Bain

Student James Houston of Glasgow School of Art's visual communication department used his final project to answer the band Radiohead's challenge to remix their new single "Nude." Though the project did not make the deadline, the end product was well outside the box and a great example of true creativity being fully executed in craft and concept.

http://www.vimeo.com/1109226

Mike Glowacki

Animoto is in beta but it's very very cool..  Essentially you upload a bunch of static images, choose a song of your choice (or upload your own) and Animoto produces a video based on what you've uploaded..  The images have some very nice motion effects and is all synced very nicely with the soundtrack you selected or uploaded...

I read about this site from one of my newsletter subscriptions and so I took 5 minutes and played with it.  Very easy to use. My only negative is the wait time while it puts your video together for you - but i'ts hardly a valid complaint as it's worth the wait.  The site allows you to watch videos/movie trailers while your waiting for your final result..    With that said - I'll definitely be back.

I only created a small (< 30 secs) version but you have the option to create full length video's as well.

My first animoto can be found here. 

Enjoy!

Patrick Dunphy

p.s.  Pardon the cheesiness..  Yours truly is getting married this summer.  ;)

I was chatting this weekend with an Organic alum about the value of entertainment content online. One of the cardinal rules I learned in working with clients like 20th Century Fox is that movie promos have permission to be much much more intrusive into the digital experience than any other form of advertising. In 2004 or so, Organic developed a lot of really aggressive takeovers for the Yahoo homepage, for example, and people tolerated and even embraced this content. Picture Wolverine slashing out from behind the homepage for XMen, and you'll get the idea.

A couple of years later, you started to see media platforms leverage movie content as a kind of reverse product placement tool. Google, for example, has partnered with blockbuster titles in Summer 2006 (The DaVinci Code) and 2007 (The Bourne Ultimatum) to promote the launch of Google Maps, Google Earth, etc.  In each case, the film content drove interest in trying out new online tools.  I'm surprised not to see a major studio-web portal partnership (yet?) this summer.

Now Papa John's pizza is using movie previews to drive traffic to its site, in this case partnering with The Mummy franchise to offer an exclusive trailer. It's a smart relationship given the overlap in their audiences - I guess Adam Sandler wasn't available. Even though the basic value proposition of the web is ubiquity, it shows that exclusivity can still mean something online, particularly for premium content like movies. This campaign would have been even more powerful if the only place you could see a Mummy trailer was on Papa Johns.com

Misha Cornes

Since its entrance into popular culture, the internet has always worked to empower consumers, just by the innate nature of the medium. The wealth of data and improved tools to access that data gave consumers access to information more efficiently than they ever had before. Web 2.0 introduced a new culture of passionate empowered consumers. Their desire was to not only extract value from the internet, but to contribute to an ongoing dialogue with other like-minded consumers. More recently, those conversations have extended beyond user to user, and consumers are able to collaborate directly with the brands they are passionate about.

Consumer collaboration is one of the booming social sectors of the year with numerous branded collaboration tools launching daily. Dell's IdeaStorm and My Starbucks Idea are commonly used examples of how consumers can help influence product or service improvements. But, the more comprehensive list of brands involved in crowdsourcing and "white label" social networks is immense. In fact, the list is probably far shorter for brands not currently involved or planning to become involved in some form of consumer collaboration.

Brands are not just collaborating with consumers to gain insights for product improvements. Forrester has broken common objectives into 5 specific categories. Brands are using online communities to listen, to talk, to energize advocates, to support customers, and to embrace consumer ideas. Recent brands to "energize advocates" include SeaWorld and Nike. SeaWorld nurtured rollercoaster enthusiasts with rich video content and Nike featured a top community member in a commercial.

With such a huge growth in consumer collaboration tools, it was just a matter of time before the free, "create your own My Starbucks Idea" tool came forward. Enter UserVoice:

"UserVoice is a way to harness the innovation and ideas of customers and potential customers. It's a way to improve the signal-to-noise of user opinion, and to moderate the ideas of one against the opinions of the many. It's Satisfaction meets Digg. It's focus groups for companies that can't afford focus groups."

Although UserVoice hasn't been put to the enterprise level traffic challenge, it does offer much in the way of simplicity and integration into other useful tools, such as Google Analytics. The clean design is reminiscent of a 37Signals product, which makes the learning curve pretty manageable. This makes it an attractive solution for many companies with or without a product, who might not have otherwise got into consumer collaboration. One example is Jeremiah Owyang, who is using UserVoice to take suggestions on how to improve his blog.

This is just further proof that it is a great time to be a consumer. Whether it is big brands using robust collaboration tools with large communities or micro-niche brands engaging smaller groups in a more intimate conversation, there seems to be a movement on all fronts to truly give every consumer a voice.

Marta Strickland

Burma has been on everyone's mind in the last few days as a result of the catastrophic cyclone that struck on Friday, killing as many as 10,000 people.  It's a tragic way to bring the appalling human rights situation in Burma back to the forefront of the collective consciousness after the monk-led anti-government protests of September 2007 failed to bring about any changes.

My mother is Burmese and I have plenty of family living in Rangoon/Yangon.  One of my cousins was arrested and beaten by the Burmese government for his association with opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.  For me and for anyone concerned about the Burmese political situation, it's hard not to feel powerless in the face of an immovable military regime.

The U.S. Campaign for Burma is taking an interesting and provocative approach to making Burma relevant, refusing apathy and sending the message that collectively, we can do something about the situation.  In conjunction with the Human Rights Action Center and social shopping site Fanista, they have created a 30-day campaign that uses short celebrity videos to raise awareness of the plight of the worlds only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize recipient and the atrocities occurring in Burma.  Some of the spots are serious (Julie Benz), many are humorous or irreverent (Will Ferrell, Jennifer Aniston).  Each is unique and worthy of pass-along.

The goal is gather a million signatures of support for Burma in 30 days.  Welcome to social action, new media style!  As Human Rights Action Center founder Jack Healey writes:

"I've thought long and hard about how to create a new paradigm, a new thrust, a new energy, a new force. I am bored by public service announcements and feel that they have lost their effectiveness. I set out to create a new genre...A big or small non-profit can now define themselves without raising tons of cash through direct mail, cutting down trees for the paper, and can go up online and get the world to respond in a new way."

Sign up, add your voice, make a donation, and spread the word!

http://www.burmaitcantwait.org

Misha Cornes

Proctor & Gamble Productions, the entertainment arm of P&G that sponsors and produces the two longest-running soaps on TV (each on the air for more than 50 years!), has come under fire for a same-sex storyline on As The World Turns.  Specifically, for a kiss that occurred between two gay teens on the show.

It's hard for me to believe that the same week The New York Times Magazine ran a cover story on young gay rites (describing them as a natural outcome of the mainstreaming of homosexuality), groups like the American Family Association can still plumb outrage over "open mouth kissing" and try to organize a boycott.  Talk about your two Americas.

What does a mainstream marketer like P&G do?  In the days before social media, they could  provide a fragmented response that would (appear to) cater to the needs of each constituency.  This time, they decided to listen.  P&G has set up an automated hotline to tally the national pulse on the issue.  (1-800-331-3774)

We appreciate you taking the time out of your day to share your thoughts with us.

If you are in support of the Luke and Noah storyline, press 1
If you have concerns about the storyline, press 2

Callers can also voice their opinion on another proposed boycott of MTV and BET's profanity-laced hip-hop programming.  It's not a full conversation about the direction of the brand (and honestly, post-Ellen, where is the controversy about depictions of gays on TV?), but it's a start.  Even Perez Hilton was shocked.

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.

- Mashups where (registered) users can write the third panel and get their wittiness ranked.
- Save favorite strips in your own profile.
- Daily animated shorts.
- Easily share site content on a variety of social networking and news aggregators.
- A lite, non-flash, version of the strip at http://dilbert.com/fast
- Strip archive back to 2001.
- Now in color.

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

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

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.