In his presentation about growing an audience for your business at today’s BDI conference, Matt Gentile, Century 21’s Director of PR and Communications, provided several key takeaways for the audience:
Define targets
Establish objectives
Select appropriate platforms
Measure for success
Adjust for optimization
Gentile mentioned this post from Brian Solis on Mashable, and walked the audience through Solis’ 10 Stages of Social Media Integration and what the brand is doing on platforms like Facebook and YouTube.
You know how after going on a shopping spree, you take the items out of the bag at home to show your roommate (or friend or mom) all your great finds? Well, teens these days do the same thing, but for thousands of people on YouTube. As Andrew posted about back in March, “haul” videos are one of the hottest current trends for mallrats with webcams.
Some smart fashion brands targeting teens, like M Booth client J.C. Penney, are now engaging top “haulers” by providing them with gift cards and free transportation and lodging to shop near JCP HQ in Texas. Leveraging a viral trend that already exists is a great way for brands to show they have their fingers on the pulse of their target consumers. Oh, and I’m totally making a haul video of my own after our next office sample sale.
Getting Personal: In the recent weeks, we saw some pretty cool Old Spice commercials. We turned to one another and said, “This can’t get any better.” So, just to prove us wrong, Old Spice and Isaiah Mustafa hit the internet yesterday with personalized YouTube responsesto those who have commented about the campaign at some point – people he sent messages to include: @kevinrose, @alyssa_milano, and YouTube user bballgirlsl981.
First of Its Kind: Filmed and edited entirely on the iPhone 4 is the most recent commercial for custom-mixed cereal brand, mymuesli. Over the weekend the spot aired on TV in Germany and Austria – take a look here.
Horn Exchange: The World Cup is over and with some still celebrating, and some still wallowing, most are extremely relieved they don’t have to hear the background noise of the vuvuzela. But, what to do with your vuvuzela? You can save it for the next World Cup, but it will most likely get stored and “lost” in a closet along with your brother’s roller skates and your father’s “vintage” bell bottoms. So, KFC (looking to comfort downtrodden fans with comfort food) is kicking off a “Vuvuzela Exchange Program” where a retired hornblower can send in his or her vuvuzela and get a gift certificate for a Doublicious sandwich.
Oil Paintings: Photographer Jane Fulton lives on Lake Michigan and has no idea what those living on the Gulf Coast are going though in regards to the oil spill – but she manages to capture the catastrophe through her series of photos, Crude Awakening.
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Starting on June 29, YouTube and music licensing store RumbleFish will partner to allow YouTube users to purchase “copy-protected music tracks for use in YouTube videos for $1.99 each” via an online music store called Friendly Music.
According to an article by Laurie Sullivan in MediaPost’s Online Media Daily, YouTube and RumbleFish created the site to “support music artists and assist people uploading videos to YouTube to replace blocked songs” with the goal of “serving the average YouTube video maker.”
This idea of Friendly Music is extremely smart, as it provides musicians and amateur producers a way to collaborate to create spreadable content in an extremely accessible way and at an affordable price, while also giving musicians an outlet to make money on their music in the digital age.
Vuvuzela It: Since the start of the games there has been a lot of buzz around the vuvuzela – it seems that almost everybody in the United States hates it. But (BUT!) everybody seems obsessed with talking about it. Sensing that, YouTube has added a vuvuzela button that will play the horn noise over the video you’re watching.
Smile Machine: Unilever (an M Booth client) premiered its smile-activated ice cream vending machine at this week’s Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. The high-tech machine uses facial recognition technology to identify a smile and when it does it rewards you with free ice cream. The machines are going to be introduced around the globe over the next year and a half.
Reverse Geocache Puzzle: We’re obsessed with the idea of the reverse geocache puzzle – essentially, it is a GPS-enabled box that can only be opened in one very specific location in the world. We’ve seen them before, but Make Magazine brings us the most compact iteration that we’ve seen yet.
Google Places: Remember when Google Street View was impressive? “Oh my gosh, you can see the outside of my apartment building!” you might say. That will seem like nothing with the launch of Google Places – the initiative sends a photographer around to snap pics of the inside of businesses with the hope that consumers will use the data to inform their purchasing decisions.
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Pencil You In: If you think a wall calendar with pictures of babies in flower pots is the bees knees, you ain’t seen nothing yet. From designer Oscar Diaz’s archives, we bring you the “ink calendar.” Diaz uses a slow absorbing ink to indicate time; a new calendar number is “printed” daily.
NYC’s Building Blocks: At the beginning of the month, German artist Jan Vormann of Jarmuschek+Partner gallery, along with a motley crew of volunteers, took to the streets and began filling in building cracks with Legos. Is this part of a larger Lego trend? Perhaps. Check out this Lego conference room table and this Lego kitchen.
Haul Video Blogs: What’s the newest trend among the tween girls? Well, its something called “haul videos” where they show off their most recent purchases via YouTube. That’s actually a pretty simple explanation, as you’ll see from the video linked above, these ladies wear a lot of hats (or toboggans, as SoCalAshleyDanielle might say), including:
Economist “I have been trying to save a lot of money, not just because I need to, but because I feel like I spend way too much money on makeup and I need to spend more money on clothes.”
Dentist “The original Crest Whitestrips sucked, saliva would start accumulating and the strips would start foaming.”
Personal Trainer “…If you want to look skinny, wear dark wash skinny jeans.”
Computer Whiz Kid “Just type in ‘fashion’ and ‘Marilyn Monroe’ or whatever you want to find and you can find it on Photobucket.”
Philosopher “Is it ‘Nordstrom’ or ‘Nordstrom’s’?”
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You may know Matt from the videos of his ridiculously embarrassing dance moves that got him tons of sponsored trips around the world to dance in high-profile places and post his dancing videos online. South Africa Tourism signed him on board to encourage online users to submit videos of themselves dancing the Diski - a silly dance inspired by the slick moves of South Africa’s soccer team. The best Diskier diskies his or her way to a World Cup Soccer match in Cape Town, sponsored by South African Airways.
Matt’s video - already taped - airs on YouTube this coming Friday (March 5) and instructs viewers on how to dance the Diski as he travels through portions of the surrounding Capetown area.
Just another example of a high-profile destination understanding how to have a little fun and put its best foot forward…while diski-ing.
Earlier this month, the airline KLM gave online personality “Mr. Safety” quite a wedding gift, with two business class tickets to anywhere the carrier flies. The catch was that online viewers got to pick the destination, after visiting KLM’s destinations page to peruse where the carrier flies.
According to KLM, 14,000 people connected to the site in just one week and 4,000 registered their e-mails for KLM updates, which is a pretty good ROI in terms of getting in front of potential new fliers.
So will KLM give the FWD Thinking blog some free business-class tickets if we let our readers choose the location of the M Booth holiday party? I’m pulling for Rio de Janeiro…
“ I want everybody here to be careful about what you post on Facebook because in the YouTube age, whatever you do will be pulled up again later somewhere in your life.
President Barack Obama
Amidst a tumultuous political atmosphere, where authorities have blocked text-messaging on cell phones and journalistic websites, Twitter has emerged as an invaluable way for Iranian citizens to swap information about protests and demonstrations. In a remarkable move, recognizing Twitter’s invaluable role, the US State Department asked the site to postpone its scheduled maitenance in order to maintain this conduit of information for those in Iran.
This entire chain of events is fascinating to me, from the politics itself to the foregrounding of social media, and is a powerful example of how the Internet frontier—with the democritization of information and access that many seem to decry—can be an incredibly powerful venue, one that may even enable social and political movements.
In addition, Twitter has become a funnel for videos of protests and information about the elections, information otherwise banned from leaving the country. At a time when many feel the decline of print newspapers will degrade the quality of journalism, the internet—Twitter and YouTube, specifically—have filled the gaps in news-gathering that bans on traditional journalism have created. Revolutions every which way.
The video above features the President of Domino’s USA responding to a PR crisis that erupted this week after two Domino’s employees posted an online video of them tampering with food in, um…pretty gross ways.
While the original video is fodder enough for controversy, what’s really fascinating (and frightening) is how social media sites like YouTube can quite literally deface a company as large as Domino’s in a matter of hours. That localized stunts can be broadcast internationally with the quick click of a button means that crisis communications is a whole new beast in the digital age—the Domino’s video has been viewed over one million times, and discussions have been very lively on forums like Twitter.
Domino’s is getting high praise, however, for its response to crisis: a YouTube response and the formation of a twitter handle, @dpzinfo, to address customer concerns. By communicating with customers through the very same medium that so easily soiled its reputation, Domino’s has proven its moxy and social media dexterity. Unfortunately, this incident will forever be a cautionary tale for other companies.
I’ll admit, I’m partially writing on this topic because I’ve been DYING to post this video. I mean, come on, it was on last week’s The Soup!
But, I digress.
The Foush: Adventures of a New Media Maverick took this incredibly hilarious video as an opportunity to discuss ways that we interact with video. Rahaf breaks it down into the 5 R’s, which include Reposting, Remixing, Re-Enacting, Reacting and Reinventing. Definitely an interesting concept (not to mention she posts “David After Dentist” examples…I really can’t get enough of this stuff). I think that her categorization is pretty perceptive and that these concepts may be important to consider when incorporating viral video elements into campaigns.
On a side note: I bet that poor David will be asking, “Why is this happening to me?” for a long time to come, now that his awkward dentist drug-induced haze lives permanently on the Internet for the world to see. Thanks a lot, Dad!
According to TechCrunch, Twitter was abuzz this morning with people who thought the sound on their computers was broken. The problem was not individuals’ computers; it was that YouTube squashed the music. To indemnify themselves against copyright infringement woes, the videosharing giant muted all videos with copyrighted soundtracks. The hilariously depressing music video embedded here is courtesy of the nice folks at TechCrunch.
On a less serious note, what is the deal with John Boehner? The Republican from Ohio looks a lot more like a beach bum from Miami. I think his tan is evidence enough to investigate him for using tax dollars to finance swanky weekend getaways to the Caribbean.
Everyone’s favorite marketing guru, Seth Godin, recently blogged about the idea of viral marketing and how the term is often misused.
“Something being viral is not, in an of itself, viral marketing” writes Godin. “Who cares that 32,000,000 people saw your stupid video? It didn’t market you or your business in a tangible, useful way.”
Many companies launch viral marketing campaigns behind the idea of creating a picture, video or website that will spread around the Web like wildfire. But many of them fail to capitalize on the Internet lovefest. Or they will focus too much on trying to monetize an idea, and end up with a Web dud.
The correct answer might lie in looking at examples such as YouTube, where the viral element isn’t an ad but the product itself.
“The more people use them, the more people see them. The more people see them, the more people use them. The product or service must be something that improves once more people use it.” In other words, viral marketing is a perpetual cycle because the product or service is inherently valuable. No one will share your product with anyone unless they feel it has value. And the inherent value of your product is the foundation of brand loyalty.”
However, Seth does point out a particular marketing campaign that spread that wasn’t the product itself.
“Shepard Fairey’s poster of Barack Obama was everywhere, because people chose to spread it. It was viral (it spread) and it was marketing (because it made an argument—a visual one—for a candidate.)”
