This one is worth it: “What is the value of your brand?” by Uwe Hook, co-founder and CEO of BatesHook. He makes so much sense so often, I just kept nodding my head. The essence for me is this: A company’s values motivate, energize, engage, and reward the people that work there. A mismatch of an employee’s and the company’s values make work “work.” People who do something they love every day are not working; they are living. I particularly like these thoughts from Uwe:

“After the multitude of bubbles have burst, shareholder value and making money for the sake of money doesn’t feel that good anymore. And consumers are craving institutions that care and give back. This and the age of product parity lead to an avalanche of brands that suddenly care, that support businesses in making positive change, try to rebrand themselves as green or just transform communities around the world (right after they almost destroyed the whole financial system).

“Most of this comes across as advertising, not as a commitment. Because it’s not rooted in real values, we are starting to deal with caring parity: Suddenly everybody cares for the wrong reason. (emphasis mine) Consumers want us to care, let’s care. Brands purely jumping on the caring bandwagon are missing out on a huge opportunity: Stand for something. Have values. And express yourself as an organization based on these values.”

I can’t help but think of the swarming now to social media by companies not really committed to the value of the relationship with the customer. I read an interesting interview with Magic Johnson, head of Magic Johnson Enterprises, in Knowledge @ Emory. This quote from Johnson stuck with me: “You have to know your customer and you have to speak to that customer every day.” Social media are an excellent way to accomplish this, but, when customers get the sense they are being used or sold to more than listened to, social media are also an excellent way to turn conversations into sales pitches and turn customers and prospects into former customers and disinterested prospects. Johnson’s Magic Johnson Enterprises web site repeats a mantra for the company on the home page: “We Are The Communities We Serve.” The first part of the message is clear; the last word is the message. If social media serve the customer, the company wins.

The first clue that something is off comes from the chart they provided. True, when asked whom do you trust as a credible source of information about a company, friends / peers dropped from 45% to 25% (from 2008 to 2010). However, trust in other sources – TV news, radio news, and newspapers – dropped by almost the exact same proportion, from almost the exact same base (i.e. newspapers appear to have dropped from 46% to 26%, for example). The article gets around to mentioning this, but not until the main message they are trying to send has been established.

This indicates two things to me. One, the article deliberately chose to focus on the one part of the story that seemed most provocative – always suspicious. Two, that the question being used does not appear particularly good at distinguishing trust levels between different channels, in terms of marketing. Setting the 2010 data to the side, there is a lot of data out there indicating that tells a very different story than the 2008 baseline (and interpretation) presented. Commenter Kevin pointed towards one such study, from Nielsen, that showed 90% of online customers either completely or somewhat trusted recommendations from people they know. The importance of “recommend to a friend” has been well established, and validated, for many years. But I’ll come back to that in a minute.

A second clue was the interpretation of the quote provided by Richard Edelman himself – that “the lesson for marketers is consumers have to see and hear things in five different places before they believe it.” That type of message could be viewed as great news for people in the advertising business, who can tell clients they need to spend money everywhere to get a message through (cha-ching!). I don’t buy it. My main interpretation of the chart is that it’s very, very likely that many, many customers indicated they didn’t trust any source, in relation to the given question. Hitting these people with messages from many sources they deem uncredible, and expecting that to turn into a message that they trust, is a bit of a stretch.

A third clue is that the chart provided is primarily focused on news sources (i.e. it’s “radio news”, not “radio”), while the discussion is primarily marketing focused. I think there’s a major disconnect there, which ties into some of the discussion above.

I then thought a bit about how I would respond to the given question – and I realized I’d probably fall in the “not trusting any source” camp. But it’s not because I don’t trust opinions and recommendations from friends and peers – it’s because the question is too generic, and notably I don’t really associate it with marketing and purchasing decisions. The reason is simple – while I may know a fair number of people, most of them are fairly busy. If I want “information on a company”  – a very generic request – that I pick out of thin air, I can’t exactly expect them to have it. It’s also likely that what they know, or could find, would come from the company itself (directly or indirectly). In my opinion, the link between this question, and what marketers should be thinking about, is relatively weak.

This led me to a couple more thoughts that I think need to be taken into account here – from a marketing perspective.

First, let’s start from a different question – Who knows you the best? - and provide the same list of options. I would bet my retirement fund on friends / peers winning this contest, and that if someone chose “radio” it’s unlikely you’d let them in your house. I’d also be willing to assert, with a high degree of confidence, that there are many situations where people trust messages, and recommendations, from this group of people over ads on TV, radio, and newspapers – even though this article would have you think differently. I know that seems like a very simple and obvious point, but it seems like it needs to be made here.

Second, take a context specific approach – and think about a question that more closely ties to influence in relation to marketing, or a specific purchasing decision. For example, “who do you trust to help pick a movie?”, or “who do you trust to help you find new fashions?”. It’s very likely that for any question that ties to personal taste, style, etc., the influence of peer recommendations is important. In other words, I many not trust them as a source of information “on a company” , but I will trust them as a source of information for a specific product or service, in a specific context, in relation to me.

Third, such questions need to account for different platforms that are emerging to influence purchasing decisions – particularly the ones that consolidate numerous different opinions (think Flikster, Yelp, etc.). I might not trust any single individual on there (and thus claim not to trust them in response to a generic question), but I may trust their collective opinion if the sample size is large enough, or even a specific individual’s opinion if (say) their reputation score is high enough. Very hard to tease out of a survey – but very important.

I could go on, but I’ll stop there. Overall, I think there are quite a few issues with what this article presents, and how it is interpreted. Did I miss any big ones – or do you think I’m wrong?

Some time ago internet memes were confined mostly to the periphery of the Internet, but some made it into the mainstream–think LOLCats and RickRolling. These two and their fore-bearers originally spread on message boards, forums, and irc channels; parts of the internet that weren’t especially welcoming to casual users. But the face of the internet has changed: it’s now easier to use and more people are on it. And it’s more social. Lots has been written about how it’s easier for messages to go viral on social networking sites like facebook because people have a built-in friends list, and their peers are likely to be more receptive to a message that comes from a friend.

Lately on facebook these mainstream internet memes really seem to be taking off. A few weeks ago women everywhere were posting status updates that were only one word long: a color that corresponded to that of their bra. This was allegedly to raise awareness about breast cancer, though it’s equally plausible that the idea was simply to “confuse boys.” Shortly thereafter, “doppelganger week” began, and people started changing their facebook pictures to photos of celebrities that they vaguely (or wishfully) resembled. Next was the “post the urbandictionary definition of your name. Finally, and most recently, has been a political meme going around seeing if an onion ring can amass more facebook fans than Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper (and boy can it ever).

These four memes have taken over my facebook newsfeed, and likely those of just about everyone else who shares more than a few friends with me. Viral marketers would love to get this kind of reach, but doing so largely remains a dream. So why not change the rules of the game a bit?

Urbandictionary is clearly benefiting a great deal from being the center of attention in this way, but what’s to stop other companies from joining-in on the trend and showing that they “get it”? Various breast cancer societies could have easily hopped on the bra-color bandwagon. New York Fries or Pizza Pizza (the only places I can think of off the top of my head that serve onion rings) could roll out a “Prime Minister Onion Meal,” and any number of celebrity gossip magazines could use the doppelganger meme to great effect.

After all, if these trends simply “happen,” then there’s no intellectual property concerns to worry about, the message already exists and is popular (making it a proven commodity), and it shows people who already feel like they’re a part of something that the marketer/company is also in the know. Macy’s tried this by hiring Rick Astley to sing “Never gonna give you up” in 2008′s Macy’s day parade, but I think the best has yet to come in terms of marketers latching on to, and reflecting back, the spontaneous culture of the internet.

Unlike information taxonomies that catalogue data or data security protocols that either allow access or deny it, context is dynamic; it changes. Advertisers have been thinking about this for many years. An ad for Bud Light Lime might not be all that relevant in the commuter newspaper, but it makes perfect sense behind a urinal in the men’s room of the pub, or on a billboard in cottage country. But that’s still a very 1.0 view of context. What’s missing is the granularity that takes this type of generic contextualizing (e.g. if you’re at the bathroom in a pub, you’ve probably been drinking beer; maybe you’ll like our beer) to a personalized one (e.g. we know you only drink at the pub after work, not during lunch, so at lunch we’ll offer an ad for coffee; after work, we know you’re favourite drink is gin and tonic, not beer, so we’ll suggest a new premium brand of gin).

While advertisers are leading the way, for most enterprises, this type of granular ‘what you need, when you need it’ approach to information is still far from reality. The good news is that the tools to sense and record context—rich user profiles, presence awareness, geolocation data, status updates, and lifestreaming information—are exploding all around us. You might think of much of this as information exhaust—the incidental, or ambient data that is created as a by-product of simply carrying on with our daily lives.

The anthropological view (circa 2007) of ‘exhaust data’ is that it has little information content, but lots of emotional and social content that contributes to identity, intimacy between individuals, and a deeper cultural understanding. However, as tireless machines work 24/7/365 to mine this exhaust data, the information content becomes apparent as well. The data will reveal important trends about individuals and their preferences, thus enabling context-aware machines to sense our needs and respond. What this means for enterprises is greater employee productivity as users spend less time looking for and filtering information, and better customer experiences as contextual information leads to greater customer intimacy and personalization. As Edo Segal notes on TechCrunch:

“These are streams of information bubbling up in realtime, which seek us out, surround us, and inform us. They are like a fireplace bathing us in ambient infoheat. I believe that users will not go to a page and type in a search in a search box. Rather the information will appear to them in an ambient way on a range of devices and through different experiences. [...] Humanity is constructing its own synthetic sixth sense. An ambient sense that perceives the context of your activity and augments your reality with related information and experiences. Increasingly, we will be sensing the world with this sixth sense and that will change the way we collectively experience the world.”

Indeed, Gartner believes context-aware computing will provide significant competitive advantage. I agree. The firm predicts that “By 2012, the typical Global 2000 company will be managing between two and 10 business relationships with context providers.” Technologists, enterprises, and academics are beginning to understand the importance of context and we’re starting to see products and services that reflect this. Consider the following examples:

• MIThril at MIT Media Lab is working on wearable computers that gather contextual information and provide feedback; projects include the Real-Time Context Engine and the Context Aware Cell Phone Project.
• Also from MIT, SixthSense by Pranav Mistry provides the “synthetic sixth sense” alluded to by Segal. This is some of the coolest technology I’ve seen in a while. For a demo, check out the TED Talk video below:

• Cisco Context-Aware Software is a mobile solution that integrates contextual information (including location, temperature, and availability of an asset) with business process applications.
  
• Marcopolo for MAC OS is an open-source, early example of context aware computing that triggers actions based on changes in location or activity.
• Research In Motion (RIM) appears to be pursuing context-aware security for the Blackberry. The company was granted a patent in August of 2009 for a mobile device that can change security settings based on its environment.
• Earthmine uses 3-D mapping to tag the physical world. Imagine having Terminator vision, but displayed on your iPhone. Tags, such as the ones shown in the picture below, could be customized to reflect any context.

 Feel free to share any other context-aware examples you know of.

But there is a bright spot on the horizon for online marketers. Apart from the point that online advertising seems to have reached its bottom and will now rise up (according to Yahoo), there is a great push to make online ads more relevant and user specific. And now a new service has stepped up to achieve that. Bedrock.com – a start-up by the same people behind gumgum.com – makes use of the prosumer movement in an effort to make online ads more profitable. Their tagline is:

“Don’t spend time tweaking your creatives.
Allow incentivized publishers to work for you instead.”

Acting as an intermediary between the advertiser and the person or organization publishing the blog or magazine, Bedrock works with the publisher to create an ad that is not only relevant to the content and overall theme of the site, they also allow publishers to design and place the ads to ensure that the overall feel of the blog or magazine is not negatively impacted.

Then using a real-time auction platform for online advertising, Bedrock simply sells the key word to the highest bidder for a fixed period of time. After the period is over, the word is auctioned again and in this manner, a single ad can lead to different products.

The challenge for Bedrock is two fold:

1. Will brand managers actually use their service if they have no control over the visual aspect of the brand? Firms work hard to breed familiarity amongst users and often the image of a product is what draws the user to click on the ad.
2. Will enough publishers actually take the time to personalize the ads? The large publishing houses and companies already see such a small margin on their online offerings, that it is unlikely they would spend time on working to create page specific ads. They may prefer the regular advertising simply for the convenience of it all.

The reality, I think, is pretty far from the mark: people don’t want high quality, (and in the case of media, accurate) content; they just want to be entertained. What’s more, the threshold for entertainment is frighteningly low. Even before the YouTube revolution, “Reality TV” was gaining ground and prime-time space with each new season, and Fox News/CNN were reporting on trivialities (on good days) — exactly the problem that crowdsourced media was supposed to remedy.

Unfortunately, look at the content that does really well online: stoned children, rude celebrities, general failure, and of course, cats — none of which requires any editorial effort, and generally reflects poorly on our collective taste. If we have network neutrality, and this is the content that really thrives, where then is the drive for media companies (or individuals) to make high-quality content when they can just as easily monetize the equivalent of the Springfield film festival winner? Instead, media becomes a race to the bottom with media companies competing with Joe-Sixpack to see who can first discover the one true lowest common denominator.

This mirrors the old saying about democracy: “it’s the form of government where the people get what they deserve” — we’ve now got democratic media, and people are going to get what they deserve there too. It seems to me that if we’re going to collectively demand network neutrality, and the power and responsibility that comes with it, we’re going to have to raise the bar in terms of what we expect and demand in terms of quality content — and “Twitter journalism” (and the like) shouldn’t make the cut.

Even if there isn’t a collective intellectual awakening, there will always be people online who want premium, high quality content. However, under this new model, in order to make the delivery of that content sustainable (let alone profitable), we’re going to have to pay for it, and it certainly won’t be cheap.

If you look at the last few years, one of the most important developments is that various social media tools are allowing brands to connect with customers directly, for free – and that many customers want them to do just that. Unlike traditional mediums, brands can know exactly who they are connecting with, and as pervasive personal identity continues to evolve this will only become more true. It’s ever easier to measure impact directly. Toss in the benefits of location-based information, the evolution of the intention economy (where customers directly express what they want, allowing brands – and others – to respond), pay-for-performance campaigns, the ease at which messages go viral, the proliferation of ways to make customer connections, and the benefits of having “prosumers” do everything from provide information to each other make commercials on the cheap – to me, it all looks like it’s pointing to a structural decline in ad spend.

But that doesn’t necessarily meaning that the impact of advertising will diminish anytime soon. If anything, I expect that it will probably increase - but companies, on aggregate, won’t have to pay as much for it. That’s a winning combination. But there is a counteracting trend as well – tied to the end of the Pepsi statement of “doesn’t get caught up in trying to make everyone like it.” As all these tools evolve, transparency increases – and the truth matters ever more. If a company is not good at what they do, they will likely be in more trouble than ever – but if they are good at what they do, they’ll be better off then ever before. Because in most cases, you can’t make people say they like it – they either like it or they don’t.

One particularly interesting area to watch on this will be in relation to private label goods in retail stores. As the recession took hold, there was the predictable increase in demand for cheaper, private label goods – and in fairness many of them have been rapidly increasing in quality as well. While I can’t find the link, it was this challenge that was featured in an Economist article about P&G about a month ago, as they sought to counteract the private label trend.

One part of this was revisiting selling directly over the Internet – a now “old” strategy that I also think will become “new” again for many manufacturers that have avoided it up until now. But if you look at their use of Innocentive (improved efficiency AND innovation for their R&D), and perhaps a structural decline in advertising spend, there’s a reasonable case to be made that much of the price advantage that private label goods have can be eroded. And from my experience, and I think this isn’t just an advertising-brainwashed brain speaking, most branded products remain superior to their private label counterparts. So long as that is true, social media (et all) should help that message get out – much cheaper than before. And for a company that spends over $3.5 billion a year on advertising while banking about $11 billion in profit annually, that (again) could be a great thing…

Tohato, a Japanese snack manufacturer, launched the “World’s Worst War,” a massively multiplayer online game created to promote the launch of two new spicy snack flavours: “Tyrant Habenero Burning Hot Hell” and “Satan Jorquia Bazooka Deadly Hot”. The flavours were positioned as rivals with each snack claiming to be the spiciest, and the matter was settled on the battlefield. To join the battle, a consumer would purchase one flavour of the snack and with their cell phone, scan the 2D barcode (called a QR code). The consumer would then become a part of either Tyrant Habenero’s or Satan Jorquia’s army, depending on the flavour they had bought. Every 24 hours, there would be a battle at one of the 31 online battlefields and players would receive updates from “War Reporters” on recent battle developments, including who had been captured by the opposing army and who of their comrades had been promoted to a higher ranking officer.

By awarding special mobile standby screens to battle winners and offering an increase in rank as well as improved fighting power to players that recruited friends to their army, Tohato was able to promote the viral nature of the game. The “World’s Worst War” became very popular, with over 10,000 participants in total. Players even created communities online to discuss strategy for upcoming battles. Tohato reported that as a result of the campaign, sales increased significantly and page views on their website increased to 100,000 per day.

The success of this campaign is evidence of the shift in power that has occurred in the marketing world. With TiVo, time-shifting and media available online, consumers have become empowered to decide which advertising they view, and to get their attention, marketers must create value for them. The “World’s Worst War” was able to do just that. It introduced new consumers to Tohato products while providing an entertaining experience that consumers appreciated.

So, if even a CPG like Tohato can integrate their product into an exciting online game of war, marketing through games should be applicable to almost any industry.

I’m no fan, but the mainstream appeal is clear: the video has almost 13,000,000 views. I’ll allow Wired.com to explain what happened next:

On YouTube’s business blog, technical account manager Chris LaRosa and music partner manager Ali Sandler describe how Chris Brown and Sony Music managed to capitalize on the 12 million-plus times people have watched the “JK Wedding Entrance Dance” video, which shows Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz’s wedding party boogieing down to the Chris Brown song “Forever.”

“The rights holders for ‘Forever’ used [YouTube's content management tools] to claim and monetize the song, as well as to start running Click-to-Buy links over the video, giving viewers the opportunity to purchase the music track on Amazon and iTunes,” they wrote. Not only did the song rise to No. 4 in the iTunes music store and No. 3 on Amazon, partly as a result of YouTube’s links, but Sony and Chris Brown also collect a share of revenue from Google’s text ads on the page itself.

The wedding video is inspiring people to click through from YouTube to Amazon and iTunes at twice the normal rate, according to LaRosa and Sandler. And the effect appears to be spreading to YouTube’s official music video page for the song, where they say the click-thru rate has increased 250 percent over the past week.

And the kicker:

Unfortunately the newlyweds depicted in the video aren’t making any money from the video’s millions of views, which would have surely helped defray their wedding and honeymoon costs. YouTube spokeswoman Jennifer Neilsen confirmed that Sony is the one monetizing the video, and that the people depicted in the video are not part of the revenue equation.

This is very frustrating. Worse still is YouTube’s prideful gloating about finally monetizing a video.

Sony’s implicit logic is that because that they own the rights to the music they could have the video removed. Since it remains online by their good graces alone, they are entitled to all click-through revenue that the video generates.

This makes sense legally (it shouldn’t) and is exactly the kind of arrogance I expect from Sony. It’s also a terrible way to engender consumer loyalty. The increased Chris Brown sales would not exist were it not for the video. Taking advantage of content creators and then leaving them out in the cold is not a viable long-term strategy. If users feel that their work is going to be leveraged by others to great effect, they’ll stop sharing it.

An even more egregious example of the one-way flow of content control was South Park’s Internet Meme episode. Viacom felt entirely within its rights to take the likeness of iconic Internet/YouTube celebrities and use them in the episode to generate ad revenue. If those same Internet celebrities uploaded clips of the episodes that featured their claims to fame to their own YouTube channels they would receive takedown notices. This is completely unfair.

Both of these are examples of a larger issue at play which is tightly knit with copyright law. The use and compensation surrounding content between individuals and media companies is not bidirectional. YouTube is not only complacent, but jubilant at the prospect of allowing its users to be exploited. And worst of all, I had to listen to a Chris Brown song to write this post.

Something has to change.

The idea that a company would use costly TV ad spend to promote an iPhone app seems pretty novel to me, and yet at the same time completely natural. The bigger idea of an insurance company offering a mobile application is pretty cool as well. Nationwide’s app will:

• Call emergency services
• Help you collect and exchange accident info
• Store your insurance and vehicle info for easy lookup
• Locate Nationwide agents near you
• Take and store accident photos
• Convert your iPhone into a handy flashlight

If you happen to be a Nationwide customer, the app will also:

• Help connect you with towing services
• Help you start the Nationwide claims process
• Find Nationwide Blue Ribbon Repair Facilities

Depending on how viral this goes, my only question for Nationwide would be, ‘Do you have the back-end processes in place to fulfill the promises made by this new level of customer service?’ Meaning, if I am connected to a claims agent or repair facility on the spot, will I be able to seamlessly send my accident photos and vehicle/insurance information via my iPhone? Will the response rate be equally as ‘real-time’ as entering the information into the phone, or am I going to be standing on the side of the road, on hold, wishing I had waited to get home to file the claim? Will the towing services be vetted for the same friendly and easy service I am receiving via my mobile device? Hopefully Nationwide has thought about these questions when designing the end-to-end customer experience.

My advice for all companies: New Web 2.0 channels are cool, but if you open a new channel, there had better be someone on the other end (and the processes in place) to engage the individuals coming through that new channel.

Widely recognized for creating some of the most brand loyal customers around, Apple has designed an overwhelmingly popular in-store summer camp targeted at 8 – 12 year old children.  The camp features a series of four different workshops: Movies, Music, Photos, and Presentations.  Each is designed to give children exposure to Apple’s hardware and software suite.

While certainly not as exciting as the dinosaur camp that I attended in my childhood, I think that Apple is really onto something here, and all kidding aside, I know many adults  who could benefit from similar workshops.  Here is the ad for the Presentation Workshop: 

Replace kids with employees or executives and school with work and think about how many people you know who should probably be first in line for this workshop.

These sessions are being offered at all U.S. Apple retail locations free of charge and all technology required is to be supplied by Apple (unless you’d like to bring your own gear).  Of note is that if you’re looking to sign your litte one up, you’d better hurry as many sessions are already filling waiting lists and some have been closed for registration due to oversubscription.

I think this is an interesting example of industry creatively stepping in (albeit for self-motivated purposes and on a tiny scale) to help provide training in skill sets that our school systems may not be able to immediately address – advancing the technological skills and comfort level of some of our youngest scholars.

What’s your take on Apple’s attempt to create a little army of I’m a Mac evangelists?  Creative marketing combined with valuable skills training or targeting a market too young for comfort?

Although this innovative campaign has been very successful, I question Tourism Queensland’s choice to retain almost entire control over the candidate selection. A key strategy in the campaign was to engage the public through their interest in the candidates, and there may have been more engagement if they had allowed the public to choose the 10 finalists, instead of a single wild card, from the 50 shortlisted candidates. By shortlisting candidates and by choosing the final winner of the competition from the ten publicly chosen candidates, Tourism Queensland would still be able to ensure that an appropriate candidate was chosen. In addition, allowing the public to be more involved would result in a winner that has great charisma and would be able to create a large following for his/her blog. Would the campaign have been even more successful if the public had been more involved? The question of how much control should be retained by a company and how much should be left to consumers is becoming increasingly important as more companies begin to include consumers in the development of their products and services.

Another interesting example of an organization incorporating public opinion is NASA’s contest to name the new module for the international space station. The name that received the most votes was Colbert, after the popular comedian, Stephen Colbert. Although NASA did ask for public opinion, they reserved the right to name the module themselves and decided on Tranquility, one of the top ten suggestions from the public. In recognition of the winning name, NASA did name the new space station treadmill the “Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill”, or COLBERT for short. I think that in this case, NASA made the right decision in not allowing a module of the international space station to be named as a result of a joke, but to incorporate the winning name in NASA’a own joke. In other cases, however, it is not as clear, and it will remain a difficult judgment call to decide how much control should be retained by a company working in collaboration with the public or its consumers.

Personally I think that Facebook and Twitter have a lot of potential as fee-based services for online entertainment, enterprise productivity, intelligence mining, information distribution, and others applications that would be build upon and expand from the free service offering, while leveraging an incredibly large audience. But for now, ads are the most direct route to a source of revenue…if people pay attention to them. A big IF. One company that is serving ads on these platforms, albeit in a different way, is Magpie, shown below. This pay-per-tweet service utilitizes a Twitter users’ account to broadcast a message to the users’ followers through tweets, and although the same click-through issues still apply, its interesting that this company is using a different approach to generate attention. And yet some questions remain…let’s dive in.

Magpie: Pay-Per-Tweet Advertising

Last summer I introduced Social Spark and its pay-per-blogging platform that matched bloggers with advertisement suppliers. Magpie is similar in that it allows advertisers to leverage someone’s social media audience (Twitter followers) and distribute ‘contextually appropriate’ ads through tweets, in exchange for compensation to the Twitter account holder of the pay-per-sale, pay-per-lead, pay-per-click or pay-per-view variety. The way it works is, a Twitter user signs up to Magpie and provides them with posting privileges to your personal account, specifying the type of compensation, as well as the volume of tweets the company can use for advertising in relation to normal tweets (e.g. 1/20). Advertisers use these accounts to distribute targeted messages based on the content of the twitter user and its respective audience, as if they come from the Twitterer. The amount of money that you make as a user depends on the type of plan you’re on, detailed below, which is taken directly from Magpie’s FAQ.

• Pay-per-Sale: Here you get a cut of the sale price when one of your followers buys something on one of our customer’s sites through one of your tweets. This is perhaps the most lucrative of the compensation models.
• Pay-per-Lead: Every time one of your followers enquires about a service or joins up for a subscription or the like, you get compensated (compensation rates tend to be 15% greater than Pay-per-View, depending on the campaign)
• Pay-per-Click: You get paid every time one of your followers clicks on a link. Currently Magpie’s click rate is double that of any other online advertising.
• Pay-per-View: You get paid a base amount for allowing a tweet to be placed in your stream – this amount depends on the number of your followers and the hotness of your tweets.

While there are upsides and downsides to this model, what’s interesting is that the ads are likely to get more exposure because they’re sandwiched right between authentic tweets, and it’s less easy to actively tune them.  Advertisers are able to reach a large volume of people through this tool, and insert a (theoretically) relevant message into a discussion that people are personally involved in. These are definite pluses for the tool. My breakdown of this platform becomes: a lot of people will see the ads but its success will depend almost entirely on its ability to convert views to click-throughs.

What about Magpie’s disadvantages? As with SocialSpark, there are ethical considerations at play here. Although Magpie allows and encourages people to create a disclaimer to affix to the end of the their Magpie tweets, for transparency, the whole pay-per-tweet activity is in that gray area where people may debate whether it is appropriate to lend your personal voice and relationships to companies for money in this way. Although one might argue that this is nothing other than brand sponsorship at a micro level and online, the flip side of the argument is that the diffusion of a branded message across trusted, personal relationships crosses a boundary. Regardless of one’s philisophical perspective on this debate, I see one possible consequence to a Twitterer who follows this path – where they lead, others may no longer follow – right or wrong, people may not appreciate having a ‘bot’ advertise to them, diluting their feed of real tweets, and may protest by no longer following that Twitter user.

The key factor in this then, becomes whether those tweeted ads have any value. Even though the ads are supposed to be targeted, I remain skeptical that any keyword based tool can understand a conversation to the degree that it’s able to insert textual advertisements that match the context. Twitter seems to be used as a tool to specifically reference events or activities, so a textual ad that has no direct relationship to that tweet is likely to stand out like a sore thumb. Text that is not targetted becomes spam, and the last thing you want to do is annoy your reader base, especially when there are so many other people competing for your attention.

Personally, if I were Magpie I would be interested in exploring how Twitter users could work together with Magpie in self-selecting advertisements from a range of possible topics, which could still be inserted on behalf of Magpie advertisers, yet would benefit from the Twitter account holder’s human touch and knowledge of its readership. I suspect that restructuring the ad placement mechanism in this way, to present you with a list of relevant ads that you can insert into your respective content, would increase relevance and click-through rates, while also decreasing resistance as a result of the bot-generated ad delivery system. Thoughts?

Lots of interesting elements on the table. Would you be bothered by ads like these showing up in your tweet feed? Why?

“Twig. Alwaaaays there when you need it” chants the catchy song in the promo video below. They’re not too far wrong and although I wouldn’t go so far as to say I NEED Ads, Twig IS always there, a floating frame at the top or bottom of your page. Contained in the thin frame is an interactive advertisement or video that becomes activated several seconds after you mouse over it. What I think is so interesting about this ad delivery mechanism is that it combines a number of simple elements, which when taken together, provide an advertisement that I believe will be more effective at getting “eye time” from website consumers, as well as produce better click through rates than ads embedded into specific locations on a page. Often advertisers try to achieve these results through using advertisements that are so big that you can’t help but see, be annoyed by, and raise mental walls to block out. There’s nothing that causes me to shut down and ignore an advertisement faster than when they get blown up and dominate my view of the content I actually went to the website to the consume. I think Twig is more subtle than that and as a result, will be more effective. Below is the promo video, and after the jump, a few reasons why I like Twig as both an advertiser and a media consumer.

1. Plenty of Face Time

Although you have the option of closing the frame, you have no major reason to, and I suspect that a lot of people will find the ads unobtrusive enough that they leave them up. This means that they are likely to get more eye time than traditional Ads that you ignore and scroll past on a page (or close outright). Having the advertisement on your screen does not obscure your vision of a page’s content or create clutter between text and images, but if viewers choose not to close the advertisement, then their subconscious will subtly absorb its presence throughout the entirety of the time someone is viewing the website.

I feel like having the ad always present will also provide viewers with both a constant stimulus AND the constant opportunity to click on the Ad. Further, when you mouse over the Ad, even if you don’t wait to see the larger version, it does create some visual movement on the ad, meaning that even if you’re ignoring it, you’re bound to look directly at the advertisement at least a few times. Here’s why: in order to click on any of the Internet browser controls (back, forward, URL etc.), you need to pass the Ad’s threshold, triggering motion and awareness. Although this Ad shows the motion on the right side of the page, a good redesign of the Ad would put it on the left side, to better expose the motion to the peripheral of a viewer’s vision when they interact with the browser.

2. Simplicity and User Friendly Design

Twig has a simple but elegant solution to online advertising. Rather than push Ads at you that you’ll likely close or ignore, they are attempting to attract your attention and pique your interest so that you’ll get involved with the Ad yourself. The Ad is slim and does not clutter up the website, meaning that there’s more screen real estate to devote to valued content, as well as a more friendly website viewing experience. This Ad format may be particularly well suited to long pages of viewing content, like blogs., and I imagine that it will do well as a launch pad for interactive games and videos. However, Twig also has the capability of providing a full-screen experience IF you’re interested in participating, meaning it is unobtrusive, while also carrying the capabilities of large Ads too. Ads that ‘blow-up’ to be larger when you mouse-over them are typically annoying because they try and get your attention by being unavoidable, a “boulder in the road”which may or may not also create noise. Although Twig blows up in size and has sound, it has one simple difference, a countdown on it to show that the “Ad will expand in…” three seconds. Providing this forewarning positions the ad as ‘opt-in’ rather than ‘opt-out’in my mind, and beyond that, when you do choose to view the Ad, it’s easy to see due to the grayed out background, and is easy to close if you’d like to return to where you were on the website.

So What?

So it’s safe to say that I like the demonstration of Twig. But as with anything, “it all depends” on the application of this tool. When it comes down to it, you’re still going to be stuck with an Ad that ‘follows’ you around the page you’re viewing and when confronted with a choice of ‘unobtrusive advertisement’ or ‘no advertisement,’ i’m sure most people would still rather go with the latter. Consider also that the slim width of the Ad limits what media you can put on it, forcing you to get creative. But personally I think that these types of advertisements will only become more pervasive. When you’re watching TV you don’t mind being interrupted, and broadcast to, because that’s the model that we have become accustomed to. However, with the Internet, people like to be in control, driving their media consumption, and they resist activities that do not add to that consumption in a relevant and valued way. Managing the conflict between broadcast (TV) and engagement (Internet) is a tricky task, but I think that Twig is a good attempt at a system that provides a necessary revenue stream for providing content, but does it in such a way that the viewer’s experience is not greatly sacrified in the process. Win-Win? What do you think?

“Twig is always there when you need it…” Now to get the song out of my head.

The Institute is dedicated to keeping the profession abreast of new techniques, new media and new practices. Promoting best practice, the Institute works to increase marketing’s contribution to business, while reducing its cost, through:

* Assisting the lifetime professional development of those engaged in direct, data and digital marketing
* Providing thought-leadership and disseminating best practice
* Setting and promoting global standards of professionalism

Of course no one really knows how much accumulated wealth there is in the GI and Boomer generations, or how longer life expectancies and inheritance taxes will affect the transfer of wealth, or if the current downturn will eventually empty the Boomers coffers, leaving nothing at all. Still, there seems to be an untapped opportunity in there somewhere.

For companies with Boomer marketing strategies, it could mean it’s time to start thinking about what strategies are needed to ensure that Boomer assets and business stay with the enterprise. At the very least it’s a whole new angle on retention and relationship marketing – call it “inheritance marketing” if you will. I recently came across the term gerentocracy to describe the imbalance of political power between the young and the old. How about geriadvertising for Boomer-inspired advertising?

An interesting article in USA Today talks about how, while Boomers have enjoyed unprecedented levels of wealth; “Households headed by people in their 20s, 30s and 40s have barely kept up with inflation or have fallen behind since 1989. People 35 to 50 actually have lost wealth since 1989 after adjusting for inflation.” This would seem to suggest that targeting Boomers is the way to go.

In the book Workforce Crisis, by Ken Dychtwald, Tammy Erickson, and Robert Morison, the authors discuss the implications of the imbalance of wealth distribution (written in 2006 before the market crash):

“How should companies and governments plan for the shrinking number of young workers, young taxpayers, and young consumers? Most marketing is still youth-oriented (or “youth obsessed”) even though today’s mature adults (those over fifty) control two-thirds of the accumulated wealth in the United States. Boomers will be the most financially powerful generation of mature consumers ever. What happens to marketing and product development when 80 percent of the consumer growth comes from the fifty-plus age group? How will businesses maintain brand loyalty when customers reinvent themselves at forty, sixty, and eighty years old? Will boomers, who have been active spenders in their middle years become more frugal as they mature?”

But, Boomers are moving / have moved out of their key spending years. Tammy Erickson wrote a recent post in Harvard Business, “What Demographics Tell Us About the Economy,” where she talks about how tracking the number of people age 46 to 50 in a given economy can be used as proxy for growth in consumer spending, and how this “big spender” demographic is declining around the world. She says, “This narrower age range, 46-50 year olds, will decline in number in the United States for the next twenty five years, until about 2035, when members of Generation Y will begin to enter this age category.” Looking at this data, targeting Boomer inheritors and Gen X makes sense, but inheritance marketers may have to wait for a while to see the returns.

Regardless of how well- or poorly-informed an inheritance marketing strategy might be, there are definitely Boomer brands out there that are trying to reinvent themselves. Here’s an example from this past year that sparked my thinking on this and made me smile a bit as well. I don’t know if Canadian Club has been thinking about Boomer wealth redistribution, but I have to say the tag line for ad campaign certainly helps make my point. “Damn right your father drank it!” says CC was a cool brand for Boomers, but can still be cool for their Net Gen children. Certainly invokes images of my own dad living out his college years in California in the 60’s.

People like to have fun on the Internet, and there’s no reason why companies can’t share in, and benefit, from acting a little less serious every once and a while – it makes them personable and less robot-like in the eyes of the public. They key factor may be that on April Fools, people in general expect others to joke around, and so are primed towards a positive response when encountering a prank, rather than criticism. In the same way it’s accepted that you can dress up in a silly costume on Halloween and not be ostricized for it, April Fools is a stamp of endorsement for companies to have some fun…and benefit from it. Netizens enjoy a website that has personality, because they often identify to a certain extent with their favourite websites – and when a website has personality, then the internalization is that YOU have personality. Marketing impressions goes up, and I suspect loyalty goes up too because the “entertainment” at your hangout was pretty good – they came through.

So without further adieu, my top 3 favourite April Fools 2009 “Jokevertisements.”

3. Reddigg Redesign – Best Strategic Jokevertisement

This was clever. Popular social aggregator, Reddit.com, redesigned its interface to be a copy of competitor, Digg.com. What’s important to understand here is that the Internet abounds with fanboyism – people like to associate with the websites they frequent and will often disassociate with other sites for the same reason. Ingroup vs Outgroup. Given that Reddit and Digg are competitors it’s pretty funny that they would be willing to cast themselves in the shadow of Digg. However there’s also another effect in my mind, which is that of reinforcing Reddit’s ingroup loyalty among its readers – its funny but it also elicits a “yeah right” response from people.  The Reddit staff also left this note: “Note: If for some reason, you think that this new interface is lame — a result of your poor taste and lack of foresight, you can (for now) head over to http://classic.reddit.com and get the legacy Reddit interface. We cannot make you be less ignorant, philistine.”

2. YouTube Flip – Best Interactive Jokevertisement

Go to any YouTube video and in the URL append the text “&flip=1″ and hit enter. Flip-o-matic. What I really like about this is that it’s both very interesting, and interactive – the combination that you want to generate word of mouth and activity. People will tell or even show their friends this because it’s original, unexpected, entertaining and anyone can do it. “YouTube is cool!”

1. Expedia Flights to Mars – Best Business Related Jokevertisement

This was very well done, with a slick website showcasing flights to Mars for $99, including a Mars themed graphical interface, video and media, as well as a page of fun tourist activities to partake in once you make it over. The fact that Expedia put so much effort into making the site look real and fun, gives the impression that they care about you having fun – an impression that I suspect customers or potential customers might maintain when considering Expedia for their real travel activities. The other aspect of this prank that I like is that it relates to Expedia’s core business activities so it is more memorable, and once you’re viewing the Mars travel page, you can still access the rest of the Expedia website, meaning all that buzz and linking going on around the webosphere is likely to convert to real website clicks and travel bookings – win win.

Honourable mention goes to Flickr’s smellr (above) for making me laugh with the name of Facebook founder’s ‘cologne.’ Those are my favourites – share your own!

No matter what you were looking for, at least one would have left a lasting impression.

Recently, world-class French pole vaulter Romain Mesnil bared all in a YouTube video aimed at bringing attention to his quest for sponsorship.  The video featured Mesnil running through the streets of Paris, pole in hand (for jumping, come on!), with his unmentionables covered by a digitally-imposed black box as onlookers tried to figure out what was going on.  The video concludes with a message imploring viewers to return to Mesnil’s site on March 31st, stating “You haven’t seen anything yet.”  Click here for video (watch at work at your discretion). Mesnil’s former sponsor, Nike, did not renew their support in October and ever since, Mesnil has been very creatively searching for a replacement.

One of Mesnil’s earlier efforts had him wearing a jersey with a large question mark during competition and he has also posted other great YouTube videos (even before this round of looking for sponsorship) that have helped bring a more playful side to the sport of pole vaulting. 

So now that the 31st is here, what was Mesnil’s (other) big reveal?  He has posted two auctions on eBay targeted at prospective sponsors 1, 2.  The first auction is for a sponsorship for his 2009 season and the second is to have your photo/logo/message posted on Romain’s jersey, with proceeds benefiting the ARTC (brain tumour research).  At the time of publication, bids totalled >19,000 Euros, with just under 10 days remaining in the auctions.

As far as new media strategies for the branding of an individual (athlete) go, I’d say that Mesnil has started down a very intriguing path and he has managed to reach a widespread online audience, as well as gaining traditional media coverage, with prime time exposure on French television networks and news broadcasts worldwide.  I can only imagine where he’ll go next…

Just the other day, Skittles made a bold experiment:  they moved their Skittles.com homepage to a Twitter search page (see it here).  The new homepage is the same Twitter page you would view if your were to search for “Skittles” under Twitter search.  The only added features from the company are two pop ups – one that asks for your birthdate before you can see the site, and one on the top left that redirects you to Skittles information (as would be available on a typical company website).

The outcome?  It’s 10 a.m. right now, and on average, 10 people per minute are including “Skittles” in their Twitter feed, many of them just writing in in gratuitously to get their name at the top of the page.  Tweets like this one are common:  DaveMcCue: look Ma, I’m on the Skittles homepage! 

There’s also some like this:  spedteacher: Please RT: @andrewwarner wants to take over Skittles page. He’s lending $1 on Kiva for each retweet of this message–till midnight.

This is a great experiment, and there’s obviously lots of marketing benefits (even if it is just a one-time novelty), as well as potential downfalls.

Pros:  – Lots of people on Twitter now talking about Skittles, and all of their followers now see the word “Skittles” popping up.  The novelty factor encourages conversation as well (notice that I’m blogging about it).  Great way to get people talking about your brand, at no financial cost.  This morning, the Wall Street Journal posted their own blog on the subject. 

Cons:  – No company control over the dialogue could be a problem.  For instance, someone could tweet a derogatory comment next to the word “Skittles”, which would then show up at the top of skittles.com.  Atleast one website has already been launched to encourage this (I’m not going to link it myself, but if you’re really interested you can find it through the WSJ blog).  I should note that they do have one safeguard; you have to type in your birthdate before you can visit the site (must be over 18).

Overall, I don’t think this particular experiment represents a future trend for marketing, atleast not in its current form.  Skittles, in the long term, shouldn’t look to restrict their site to adults-only.   Still, it’s a great novelty, and it likely points towards a future where savvy brands will find innovative ways to use Twitter as a customer engagement tool.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.  Is this a smart campaign?  Or, will it blow up in their face?  Should other companies take on similar endeavours?

(2:00 pm update:  Instead of Twitter, Skittles has changed this so that they now redirect to a Skittles facebook page.  I assume this was pre-planned.  I wonder what they have in store for us next?  What are your thoughts on this?)

SOBCon stands for Successful and Outstanding Bloggers, so it seems fitting that any promotions for the event take advantage of Web 2.0 opportunities. By targetting the core audience of this event, bloggers, and providing a tangible reward for their participation, I am confident that this type of promotion will be a highly cost effective way of advertising for their event. This is especially true when you consider that the prize is a discounted ticket rather than a monetary reward, and therefore the actual cost of the promotion is likely to be negligible in the face of some good publicity. You might also consider what type of blogger might be interested in this reward and my thought is that respondents who self-select are more likely to be well-connected virtually, and hence the audience for their ‘discount-per-blog’ promotion will likely also be larger and = bigger impact.

Here’s the description provided by the founder of SOBCon:

“Blog your thoughts, share it, link it back to this post, and broadcast it on Twitter (hash #blogitearnit).  We’ll also link to you on the SOBCon blog for others to see and learn. And as a thank you for sharing your story, we’ll send you a special code to take $200 off the $795 FULL conference rate - that’s over a 25% savings!

…

We also know that getting to conferences isn’t always easy, especially this year.

So we are announcing today the opportunity for you to significantly reduce your registration cost for the event.

It’s called the “Blog It, Earn It” discount. We’d like to hear from you about what “The ROI of Relationships” means to you. Tell us why relationships matter. How they affect what you do every day and how you do it. Maybe how you see them changing the face of tomorrow’s businesses. We want to know how relationships and personal connections shape your world.

Blog your thoughts, share it, link it back to this post, and broadcast it on Twitter (hash #blogitearnit).  We’ll also link to you on the SOBCon blog for others to see and learn. And as a thank you for sharing your story, we’ll send you a special code to take $200 off the $795 FULL conference rate - that’s over a 25% savings!

Please act quickly because there are only a limited number of these discounted registrations available. All blog entries must be posted no later than March 7, and the discounts must be redeemed by March 14.”

–

What I like about this promotion, beyond it’s impact, is that it’s transparent in the exchange taking place – in fact it’s almost hard to ignore the quid-pro-quo nature of the activity given its name. I suspect that to many people, this information might make the difference between an unethical viral marketing campaign, and one with the public on its side. Thoughts?

My question for you: if you could have an alternate prize that’s more meaningful to you than the one offered, and which is within the range of reason, what would it be? Money? Items? Reputational rewards?

Through this arrangement, Blyk users receive as many as 6 ads per day on their cell phone.  In many previous cases, this type of push-advertising mobile marketing has been a major failure in Europe.  But somehow, Blyk seems to have figured it out.  As of late 2008 in the UK, it was reported that Blyk ads were achieving a 30% response rate. 

Their marketing strategy has several factors that have lead to its success.  For one, Blyk is only available to 15-24 year olds.  They use MMS to send their ads, which ensures much better content than other, similar MVNOs.  Moreover, several elements of the ads, like music, are selected by user preference, thus improving consumers’ receptability. 

Blyk initially set a goal of reaching 100 000 subscribers in the UK by the end of 2008, but were able to hit that number by April of last year.  By September, they had over 200 000 - more than doubling their initial projections for the year.

Does this business model represent a coming trend for mobile marketing?  Would you be willing to receive 6 targeted MMS ads per day on your phone, in exchange for free texting and minutes?

The Telegraph is reporting that Facebook has announced a strategy to monetize the site that has thus far defied monetizing. Generally the standard web start-up business model is, build something unique that people like, and then once it’s got a large enough fan base and web traffic, sell advertisements or subscriptions. After all, somebody’s got to pay for it. The problem Facebook encountered is… it turns out people don’t really like to click on tacky ads when they can rather use the site for its intended purpose and talk to their friends.

There was Facebook’s Beacon of course. But that didn’t last long, with everyone from Facebook users to privacy groups crying foul. This made Facebook rethink it’s ad strategy and the new kid on the block is called Engagements Ads, and is a Facebook initiative to bring targeted polling to Facebooks’ 150 million members. Marketing companies the world over have been salivating and thinking about all that personal, relevant, and valuable information about you that can be used to learn about how best to connect with you and your dollars. Well, rather than just give it to them, which would probably face Beacon-like ethics issues, Facebook has come up with a clever strategy that will allow companies to ask you questions through the use of polls for market research purposes. Should you be within the specific demographic that concerns the poll, as indicated by the information you enter into the system (otherwise known as your profile) … say, male, 25, and you just happen to like movies and electronics … then maybe you’ll be of interest in a Best Buy poll. The poll will automatically show up in your feed and you can choose to engage it or ignore it, your call. It’s a smart move, given how much intimate information exists on Facebook, and which can accurately serve as a screening process to serve polls to more willing candidates. If Facebook is successful in leveraging their members as a mass focus group, then marketers will be eager to exchange that information for dollars.

Where Beacon largely failed by forcing members to be part of an activity they didn’t want to be, and which invaded their privacy, Engagement Ads will be opt-in, presumably with some kind of incentive to participate.  And it’s the incentives themselves that will make or break this new Facebook initiative. There’s several conceivable scenarios. Enough bored Facebook addicts may be interested enough in a certain brand, that should it come knocking, them would be interested enough to spend a few minutes filling out a form. But then, what if (enough) people aren’t that bored. Those polls better be fun, really fun. Maybe even disguised as a game, or a fan club, through smart integration of Facebook applications and tapping into expressed brand-fan goodwill. And last but not least, is the incentive of micropayments in exchange for a few minutes of your time.

Perhaps a combination of the above would work, but one thing is for sure, members will need something in exchange for giving up their time, the question is what. Not just that, but Facebook has clearly found that it is a real challenge to get its members to care about the artificial interruptions in their friend-scape (e.g. advertisements). I think the marketing application is smart but ’m not entirely sure that forcing annoying polls to show up on your screen, in addition to annoying ads, will work. Time will tell.

What are your thoughts? Have you ever clicked a Facebook ad? Here’s a poll. Would you answer a poll?

HNIC used to be North America’s sole source for televised hockey games. For Canadians in particular, Saturday was synonomous with one thing: HNIC on CBC. But for years, fans have been asking, “What’s so special about Saturday night?” After all, basic cable broadcasts 2-3 games a week, and if you’re still looking for more, you can purchase the NHL Network (or a team-specific channel like LeafsTV), and watch hockey 7 nights a week. CBC clearly faces a challenge in maintaining the popularity of HNIC. So how exactly are they promoting their product?

As Andrea Bettello wrote here, many fans were outraged when the CBC sold the rights to the HNIC theme song in 2008 (for anyone outside of Canada, the HNIC theme song probably rivals ‘O Canada’ and ‘Happy Birthday’ as the tune most widely recognized by Canadians). But maybe CBC was on to something. After selling the theme song, they held a contest asking Canadians to write the new HNIC theme song, actively engaging thousands of fans in the process. But surely there are further steps CBC could take to engage and retain viewers. (Obviously they have taken such steps or this post would never have been written).

When I sat down to watch the Toronto Maple Leafs get beat by the Philadelphia Flyers on HNIC last Saturday night I wasn’t expecting any Wikinomics-related content from the CBC. But then I was struck by a commercial for ‘Hockey Night MashUp‘. On the Hockey Night MashUp site (which has been in operation since the start of the season), fans can create a mashup highlight reel using a selection of clips from HNIC broadcasts. With the application, fans can choose clips specific to their favourite team. Clips are even categorized (e.g. ‘Goals’ or ‘Celebrations’). Now, this may not seem all that cutting-edge. But, believe me, for HNIC, whose main draw for the past 20 years has been 74 year-old former NHL coach Don Cherry, this is innovative.

I’ve been watching HNIC since I was 3. There were no other games televised, at least in my cable-free home, at that time. Needless to say, HNIC is close to my heart and has special meaning. But in order to resonate with anyone who doesn’t have a deep-seated connection to their broadcasts, HNIC must engage viewers in innovative ways. They indeed seem to be doing so, and not without the help of Wikinomics principles.

(Also note that HNIC has paired with Tim Hortons [sic] on their ‘Every Cup Tells a Story’ campaign [as written about by Jude Fiorillo here], to introduce ‘Stories From the Rink‘).

As I was scanning the web today I came across this interesting Guest post on Social Times, which was written by Michael Mossoba of Genius Rocket, that builds on some similar findings. Of particular note, the lessons from examining the top-50 viral videos of the year include the following as #1: the most viral content is usually corporate content. It’s also interesting to note that the most viral content is usually OVER a minute in length, and “Ads” more often succeed as viral content than “Politics”, “Comedy”, and even “Sexy” (which when combined with #1, challenges the conventional wisdom of 30 second advertising slots). Michael goes on to add:

These results undermine some of the conventional wisdom about viral videos. First, it contradicts the stereotype that viral hits are the mysterious province of webcam diarists. Indeed, the most viral videos are dominated by the film and music industries, and a few savvy companies like Dove, Sony, Honda, and Cadbury.

I couldn’t agree more – and it’s something people (and marketers in particular) should really think about. Too often we all get wrapped up in all the things that are changing, and don’t pay enough attention to what is staying somewhat the same. I encourage you to check out the rest of his article, as it really is an interesting read.

This week, we’re renting out our upstairs apartment. So we placed a 1-week classified ad, as well as posting it in the for-rent section on craigslist. 

First some background – In the past, we’ve always had the best success with local newspaper ads. A few hundred dollars on an ad is a good deal when it means you don’t leave a suite empty for a month - classifieds were a great source of leads for the money. In contrast, we hadn’t had much luck with craigslist in the past, too few responses and no real qualified renters.

My, how times have changed. Our local newspaper advertising cost us $325 for a week of ads. Cost of our craigslist posting: zero, zip nada. Here’s how they compared:

Classifieds:
- Cost: $325
- Time before listing went live: 1.5 days
- Results (viewings): 2 viewings one late this week, one scheduled for next monday
- Results (completed applications): zero

Craigslist:
- Cost: free
- Time before listing went live: 5 minutes
- Results (viewings): 6 viewings scheduled within 24 hours (and one more later in the week)
- Results (applications): Three sets of completed applications

All I can say is: Craigslist, you are amazing, wow!