Here's another fun sixthman mission we shot last winter: The Cayamo singer/songwriters cruise brings top performers Lyle Lovett, Emmylou Harris, John Hiatt, Shawn Colvin, Patty Griffin, Buddy Miller, and others together with their fans on a six day Caribbean cruise. Visit cayamo.com for more details.
Jesse and I will be live vlogging portions of WOMMA's WOMM-U down in Miami May 7-9. For the next few days you can check out the action on our front page and here at a more permanent site. I'll do a more detailed post on what tools we're using soon. Hint: Mogulus, Qik, Nokia N95's and Flip Video Ultras.
We are taking the opportunity to make a PR announcement: coBRANDiT is teaming up with guerrilla marketing agency Street Attack to offer a full suite of alternative marketing services. We've built out the widget below to help spread the word. Check it out and let me know what you think! (That goes for the live vlogging too...)
Elliot Yamin of American Idol fame sits down in NYC with top bloggers to discuss his role as a global ambassador for Inspired by Diabetes and other topics related to living the dream. Here's the YouTube channel. Video by coBRANDiT, 'natch.
Inspired by Diabetes is a global campaign asking people with diabetes, as well as their family, friends and health care professionals, to express how diabetes has impacted their lives — and share those stories with others around the world.
To share your story, and enter the Creative Expression competition, visit www.inspiredbydiabetes.com. You could win a trip to Italy and backstage passes to an Elliott Yamin show. Lilly will also donate money to the IDF Life for a Child Program, which provides insulin and diabetes supplies to children in developing nations.
This story in the NY Times provides the best breakdown I've seen on how Facebook's Beacon implementation (and communication about it) went down. The comments are good too--including tips and links to help disable Beacon.
I'm all for brand content moving through social networks...but people have to do the work themselves, because they want to. Not 'cuz it's forced upon them. Duh!
Jeff Bell of Microsoft was in charge of the Halo 3 launch and in his WOMMA Summit 3 keynote provided a detailed overview of the program--very impressive. In this interview he touches on the elements of the launch, the relationship between online and offline activities, and taking risks in marketing.
Richard Tait of Cranium was a very inspiring keynote speaker at WOMMA's Summit 3. Here he talks about what it takes to breakthrough in an industry and develop new distribution channels.
Dave Balter of BzzAgent on PQ Media's forecast for WOM marketing, what it means for the industry, and how his business is developing international contacts in the advertising and media space. Taped at WOMMA's Summit 3, Las Vegas, NV.
Jamie Tedford of Brand Networks on the size (and measurement) of the WOM industry--does Facebbook count?--and Brand Network's move into application development (for Facebook and OpenSocial). Taped at WOMMA's Summit 3 in Las Vegas, NV. Background: PQ media's projection for the WOM industry. We're at 1.35B now, going to 3.7B by 2011.
Communispace launched their new site today, and we're proud to play a part: we're providing the video. For the moment it's a single intro piece (as seen above), but over the next few months we'll be adding to the collection. Stay tuned.
Charlene Li discusses the concepts from her forthcoming book Groundswell (co-authored with fellow Forrester researcher Josh Bernoff). Groundswell refers to the "spontaneous movement of people connecting, using online tools, taking charge of their own experience, and getting what they need – information, support, ideas, products, and bargaining power – from each other"...as opposed to marketers and other traditional sources of authority. The book revolves around the POST framework: People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology. Where do companies go wrong? Who is using social technology wisely? And how will she and Josh put the groundswell to work in the marketing of the new book? Find out more at forrester.com/groundswell.
More in-depth on the forthcoming book Groundswell. Forrester researcher Josh Bernoff (co-author with Charlene Li) talks about who should own social media in an organization, describes the five key strategy objectives of the groundswell: listening, talking, energizing, supporting and embracing, and talks about a couple of Groundswell Award winners.
"Reach consumers where they are." That's the promise of syndicated video from Brightcove. Problem is, syndicated video requires advertisers to give up control over the context in which their ads are shown. Jeremy thinks third party measurement services need to step up and start gathering more data about where syndicated content plays...but in this vid he discusses ad formats, ad content, and how online networks are way ahead of advertisers when it comes to innovation.
Ze discusses media as social capital, and why it's not important that everyone who connects with your video actually watch it fully. Ze lists all the ways he's monetized his content...he's also a social media consultant, and sits on the Advisory Board of Bazaarvoice, a company that provides consumer rating & review technology to retail websites. In this capacity he focuses on getting consumers "from 0 to 1", pushing them to take simple, minimal participatory actions. Ze thinks the old media/new media formulation is not super important, and seems to be pretty excited about some projects he has in development...and the possibility of a springtime writers/actors guild strike out in Hollywood.
"Be it. Don't Buy it." That's Richard Edelman's current mantra, and it refers to the idea that companies need to BE a good reality, rather than PURCHASING the appearance of a good reality. In his keynote session he spoke of the need to continuously learn, to push staff to "ski the hill hard", and acknowledged failures in the past (ahem Wal-Mart)...
Forrester's video specialist gets into what's wrong with online video measurement, what ad models are the most successful today, what's coming in the next 6-9 months, and what kind of interactive content might work best in online video ad slots. This guy is such a good talker (and I'm such a video geek) that we had to do this in two parts.
Forrester's James McQuivey on the state of online video, part 2.
Communispace and client Charles Schwab won of Forrester's Groundswell Awards in the category of Listening. Schwab community manager Mike Dumbroski talks about what makes a private managed community work, and the kind of marketable insights Schwab gets out of theirs. Disclosure: Communispace is a coBRANDiT client.
Known to many as the Web Strategist, Jeremiah is in week #2 as a Forrester Senior Analyst. He talks about what he brings to the job from his past positions at Hitachi and PodTech, corporate reaction to social media, and building brands online--personally and professionally.
David writes the well-known marketing blog Logic + Emotion and is VP, Experience Design at Critical Mass. He was on the "Always in Beta" panel at the Consumer Forum and we spoke with him about Permanent Beta at the Critical Mass booth...and checked out his cool mash-up.
How do you measure engagement? This was one of the big themes at the Consumer Forum. Analyst Brian Haven has broken it down into four elements to measure: Involvement (visits to a site or store), Interaction (click-thrus, transactions, reviews, uploads), Intimacy (sentiment, affection, touchy-feely stuff), and Influence (likelihood to encourage consideration). Ethnography can help figure out what to ask and how to measure (especially intimacy and influence), then you have to add up the numbers and put on your thinking cap. Brian's bottom line when it comes to marketing? Experiment...and measure.
Misha Cornes, editor of the excellent threeminds blog and lead strategist at Organic talks about three ways brands can connect with people: as badges (like Harley-Davidson), in brand-related communities (like fiskateers.com), or as providers of special experiences (like this from Wilkinson Sword, France). And with client Chrysler, his agency is going beyond advertising by using social media strategies to provide insights for product planning and design.
Playboy's Director of Operations on the interplay between professional and amateur content, new platforms, and the line between flattery and thievery when it comes to watermarked Playboy photos.
Marc emphasizes that marketing and advertising need to be driven by an understanding of human truths, not tools and technology. Brands will mesh authentically with these needs when they know who they are, and they know their audience. In other words, context is key. In his presentation, Marc also proclaimed positioning dead--the landscape is too fragmented, the world to large to present a brand in the same way in all places. The niche markets found through social media technologies demand individual approaches and nuanced methods.
We hear from ex-Arnold SVP Jamie Tedford about his new start-up, Brand Networks. Brand Networks has developed a two-part marketing solution to "help marketers cultivate, manage and motivate networks of brand evangelists."
Part one is BrandNets--a "customizable software platform that connects consumers with the brands they love. Through viral tools, widgets, games and other applications, a brand can build a vibrant community which promotes brand engagement, inspires two-way dialogue, and fuels evangelism and positive word-of-mouth. The platform can also be used to deploy on-demand research and focus groups."
Part two is Tokns--a cross-platform video player that is powered by "tokns", meaning that in order to play the content a viewer has to cash in tokns which are earned by engaging with the sponsoring brand in a social media network or community. Send the player to a friend is worth X tokns, embed the player in your myspace page is worth 2X tokns, etc. The widget-like player is loaded (and regularly refreshed) with exclusive insider content from the sponsoring brand, and functions as a launching pad for word-of-mouth campaigns and interactive online experiences. The idea is to take video advertising (or branded content) out of the interruptive model and instead make compelling content a reward for loyal "brand lovers" who spread the word through social media. From the press release: "Tokns is the first universal, reward-based, social media currency. Tokns powers, tracks and rewards engagement with brands across all social networking environments. Deeper engagement with brands unlocks exclusive access to digital content, unique experiences, and brand sponsored rewards."
Brand Networks is launching specialized "BrandNets" for national clients and is conducting a private Beta of its tokns platform. They also provide "strategy, creative and implementation services designed to improve the effectiveness of viral marketing, social media, promotions and word of mouth among a company's existing brand advocates."
(All quotes pulled from the Brand Networks press release)
A PodTech.net Marketing Voices interview with David Meerman Scott, author of "The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly". I recommend this book because it's at the top of Amazon's marketing books list, and I'm in it...David interviewed me last winter. Here's some of what he has to say about me and coBRANDiT:
"Owen Mack, cofounder and head of strategy and development for coBRANDiT, a company that does social media video production, is a pioneer in using video for marketing and PR purposes. From the early days of online video Mack has helped companies like PUMA and Pabst Brewing create video strategies."Video is an extension of the blogging ethos," Mack says. "Do you have an interesting story to tell? If you don't, can you develop something? You need to see what people are saying about you already and know how you can mesh with that. Transparency and openness is required. Done properly, video is very compelling."
Mike's pitch to the attendees at OMMA Video in NYC last Thursday. After presentations from Blip.tv, Brightcove, Revver, ManiaTV and Soma Management there was an informal vote for crowd favorite...guess who won? Blip.tv. Now this is an audience of ad people, and they voted for the company with the least amount of ad revenue, a company that claims it will never force pre, post, or any other form of in-video advertising on it's producers; a company formed as a service to videobloggers. So did the ad people vote Blip.tv #1 because of it's support for independents, because of it's lack of advertising, or because they think it really has the best model? And if they like the model, then why is Brightcove the one with 100 big name advertisers on board?