Adcrowd Blog News by Andrew Jordan

PR2.0: Facebook Connects 500 Million People: Defines a New Era of Digital Society

2010-07-23T08:19:00.000-07:00

On July 22nd 2010, Facebook officially announced that it had surpassed 500 million users around the world. This significant achievement represents a significant milestone for Zuckerberg and Co. as well as for social networking and more importantly for global societies overall.

To celebrate this achievement, Facebook released Facebook Stories, a new service to spotlight user stories from around the world and the impact Facebook has had on their lives... please read full article @ PR2.0

Collective Conversation Feed: Social Media in the Past Five Years

2010-07-23T08:01:00.000-07:00

Facebook reached a milestone 500 million users this week. Both YouTube and Mashable turned 5 this year and FourSquare announced they’ve had 100 million checkins. It’s clear that social media is growing rapidly, and it is even more impressive how this new phenomenon has changed the way we communicate with our friends, family, and colleagues. To honor their five-year anniversary, Mashable posted a very interesting reflection on the past five years in social media. Check out “A Look Back at the Last 5 Years in Social Media” as well as my insights into social media trends below.

Facebook is still relatively young, and it’s hard to determine whether or not it will have this level of success and popularity years from now. I believe there are a variety of reasons why Facebook has a emerged as a leader in the social media world. Mashable attributes much of the success of Facebook with the introduction of the Newsfeed. While the introduction of the Newsfeed may have increased Facebook’s popularity, I think establishing themselves first with a college audience helped to start a word-of-mouth campaign about Facebook’s capabilities. It would not have been able to do this successfully without the exclusivity Facebook had in the beginning, as a network only college students could join. Another factor that helped was simply good timing. MySpace was the only similar forum at the time, which introduced the public to the idea of social media. Facebook was positioned as a different medium exposed to a controlled audience and had easier tools to navigate others’ pages. Additionally, the timing of the emergence of other social media outlets was perfect for establishing Facebook as a leader.

In July 2006, YouTube was at 100 million video views a day. Today, 100 million YouTube videos are viewed on smartphones. Mashable’s article notes the social media trend that YouTube really exemplifies, how anyone with an internet connection can claim their “15 minutes” of fame. With the growth of reality TV and the rise of the celebrity, this was just the next way to make sure everyone has an opportunity in the spotlight. Facebook and Twitter serve some of the same function, and it is undeniable that this is part of what makes social media work.

Who would have predicted that social media tools that were used for recreational use would now be key tools for business professionals? What do you think are the most likely next steps in the social media world? Why do you think Facebook, YouTube and the rest of the social media universe have become such a large part of our everyday lives?

By Sara Hiller (Tech Intern) - Collective Conversation Feed

Hard Knox Life: Never underestimate the power of design and brand for a start-up (Flipboard)

2010-07-23T07:20:00.000-07:00

“One of the easiest things to do to make yourself standout within the digital world is to hit a homerun with the design and experience. If you invest significantly in this area, then you are going to standout from all the rest.” – Darren Herman

Darren is the Chief Digital Media Office at Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners and one of those guys that just plain “gets it.” He wrote the above quote when talking about why Flipboard is suddenly the hot start-up of the week in the media world. Ironically it is a sentiment that I was just discussing yesterday with a VC in NYC as it relates to the power of branding in the digital media.

Not enough companies in the digital world invest behind design, branding and experience. In many ways, Google won the search war because its simplistic design made it stand out from crowded search portals. The same goes for Facebook, a company that spends a disproportionate focus on user experience.
Hard Knox Life by Dave Knox

Business Insider: 10 Things You Need To Know This Morning

2010-07-23T06:47:00.000-07:00

Good Morning! Here's the most important tech news of the day:

* Microsoft blew out earnings on the back of strong Windows sales.

* Amazon had a huge miss on earnings, sending the stock spiraling after hours.

* Disney is about to acquire social gaming company Playdom.

* The long awaited HP Slate will come in the fall as an enterprise focused tablet.

* Dell is paying $100 million to settle its case with the SEC. Michael Dell is paying $4 million personally.

* Is hot iPad reader startup Flipboard legal?, asks Gizmodo.

* None of the major handset makers or wireless carriers would fess up to Slate about calls dropped on each handset.

* Google TV isn't even on the market, and it's already making Hollywood a little bit nervous.

* Apple is starting to process bumper refunds for iPhone 4, and it should be starting its free bumper program today, so keep an eye out.

* Droid X users are eating up 5X the usual amount of data from Verizo

Read more: Business Insider

Six Pixels of Separation - By Mitch Joel at Twist Image: Thank Social Media For The Next Phase In Human Evolution

2010-07-22T07:34:00.000-07:00

What do you do with your down time?

The average Canadian watches more than 25 hours of television every week (depending on which survey or research report you believe). On top of that, the average Canadian is also watching close to 12 hours of online video every month. Comparatively, the average American is watching close to 40 hours of television every week and about four to 12 hours of online video (the difference is probably related to both connectivity and culture). As busy as your life may seem, imagine what you could do with all of that free time? Let's agree that no one is ever going to ditch television (or watching YouTube videos) completely. What would happen if you suddenly had half of that time - which would be close to 60 hours every month? Would you watch more episodes of America's Got Talent or The Bachelorette?

We have to be able to recognize that television culture has done a lot more to us - as a civilization - than simply to entertain and (sometimes) educate the mass populous.

Television has changed who we are. We sit in front of this box as a way to kill time and as a way to relax (although we should be hard pressed to see how anyone could relax watching the news on Fox or Lock-Up). In its primal form, TV is probably a lot closer to what Paleolithic man did after eating and in between hunts -which is waiting to die (sorry for being so morbid, but it's true).

The act of actually creating something vs. sitting around and consuming content is one of the pivotal components that make the Internet and Web culture such a huge shift in the media landscape and who we are as a people.

That is the crux and main thrust behind the newly published business book, Cognitive Surplus - Creativity and generosity in a connected age, by Clay Shirky (Penguin Press, June 2010). In Cognitive Surplus, Shirky argues that now, instead of just sitting idly by and watching TV, this (fairly) new technology mixed in with Social Media can put our "untapped resources of talent and goodwill to use at last." Basically, television was (and still is) the main driver that is sucking this cognitive surplus out of humanity. The book isn't about turning off the boob tube to become an activist, but it is about the potential for human beings to see, do and create a whole lot more. Much like Shirky's first book, Here Comes Everybody - The power of organizing without organizations (Penguin Press, 2008), Cognitive Surplus is not only a pleasure to read because of Shirky's writing style, but it is a much needed, deeper look into what is happening now online.

Social Media and the advancement of things like the iPad, smartphones and more places us - as a civilization - in the middle of a new renaissance period.

And, it's hard to know that we're in the middle of a new renaissance period until after it is over and we have had the time to sit back, review the results and reflect on these many changes. No one will argue that business, technology and media have changed dramatically in the past two decades because of the Internet, but the question now becomes: what are we going to do with our free time now that we don't have to simply be a passive audience (or as NYU professor and media pundit Jay Rosen defines us, "the people formerly known as the audience")?

A glaringly obvious example of how to harness this cognitive surplus is Wikipedia (love it or hate it).

Suddenly, it is not incumbent on a group of PhDs and peer review to decide what constitutes the collection of knowledge and information that human beings have discovered. And suddenly, we can all contribute, edit, add, revise and yes, debate not only the content, but its accuracy. Shirky explains that Wikipedia took about 100 million hours of cumulative thought to build when compared to the reality that on average Americans watch about 200 billion hours of television every year. "That represents about 2,000 Wikipedia projects worth of free time annually," the book argues. "Even tiny subsets of this time are enormous: we spend roughly 100 million hours every weekend just watching commercials."

It turns out that even a massive project like Wikipedia takes up only a small amount of our cognitive surplus when broken down.

Now, we can do even more amazing things, projects and initiatives because of our connectivity and the publishing platforms that the Internet affords us. The question becomes this: are human beings naturally lazy or are we naturally hungry to replace our primal hunting instincts with a new hunt for information, content curation, creativity and publishing? As Shirky points out so eloquently in Cognitive Surplus, "Access to cheap, flexible tools removes many of the barriers to trying new things. You don't need fancy computers to harness cognitive surplus; simple phones are enough. But one of the most important lessons is this: once you've figured out how to tap the surplus in a way that people care about, others can replicate your technique, over and over, around the world."

This could well be the next phase of human evolution...

How we use our time to connect, share and build things (ideas, movements, social change, businesses, political change, helping those in need, etc.) in an era where everyone is connected and we push toward the last mile of connecting even those who are not in the developed world.

What are you going to do with all of this free time? What do you make of Clay Shirky and his concept of Cognitive Surplus? Please view this article in full @ Six Pixels of Separation - Marketing and Communications Insights - By Mitch Joel at Twist Image

FreshNetworks Blog: Why is Facebook such a success?

2010-07-22T07:16:00.000-07:00

Our last post looked at Facebook’s announcement yesterday that it had reached 500 million users. A huge number but it should not be mistaken as proof that Facebook is now ubiquitous. However, Facebook’s growth is impressive both because of the size the social network and the way it has grown when alternative social networks have been less explosive.

Yesterday, I appeared on BBC News talking about exactly this issue. Amongst the many reasons why Facebook is a success (and I’m sure that an element of luck and good timing is, of course, in that mix), I explain why I think two things have made a real difference:

1. Having some really good products that have helped people and change the way they connect with people online. Most notably the photos product – by allowing an easy way for people to share photos and associate people with the photos they are in (through tags) they have created a powerful tool that many people use. In many ways Facebook is to photos what YouTube is to videos.
2. Making it really easy for people to set up their own groups. For individual users this means that their experience of Facebook is often made up of their connections and the groups of these that they are part of. It is a huge social network made up of lots of little groups. This second point is great for user created groups but adds to the reasons why Facebook is a difficult place to play for brands and is not always the answer to their social media strategy.

Below is the BBC News piece from yesterday that I am interviewed for, we’d love your thoughts on this and why you think that Facebook is such a success.
FreshNetworks Blog by Matt Rhodes

Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association: Golden Rules of Blogging: Part 1 of 239

2010-07-22T06:58:00.000-07:00

I challenge you to find me a less captive audience than the one you find on the Internet. Tell me where I can find people in a comparable state of temptation fueled by an endless sea of customized possibility. It's impossible - there's just too many options online. Too many cool sites. Too many Facebook photos to creep. Too much damn stuff to do. And herein lies the challenge of blogging, that is, creating content that pulls your reader in deeply enough that they wont jump ship in the middle of a post.

So, what are the keys to creating blog content that is sticky, interesting and, most importantly, looks tastier than any of the dangling carrots that the world wide web puts in front of your readers?

1. Save the keg for college Micro-sized content rules. If I'm interested in a lengthy thesis, I'll pick up a book. But here on the Internet - the land of free music, porn, and cute videos of seals holding hands - my attention span is firmly set to minimal. Think in terms of offering your readers a beer, instead of forcing them to do a 23 minute keg-stand. Give me quick points, intriguing information, and good links in case I'm so inclined as to go further down the rabbit hole.

2.Sequels are for movies Nothing makes me cringe like reading an introductory sentence that sounds something like this: "In this, the first post in my 9-part examination into report-appropriate sans serif fonts of the B2B sector......" Oh. My. God. Blogs are supposed to be efficient and intriguing. Being concise is in your best interest. If you can't explain it in one post, then it probably isn't worth listening to. The mere thought of having to look at several subsequent pieces in order to fully understand your idea turns me off of reading even the first one.

3. Personality rules It's been said a kajillion times, but it still holds true that the best bloggers write the way they talk. Blogging is built around personal commentary, and yet so many people are terrified to show their bias and state their own opinions. This is the biggest difference between traditional journalism and online thought-sharing. People can find raw, objective data in any number of places; they read your blog because they are looking for insight. You must strike a balance between the two. So go ahead - take a stand, make a point, pick a side! This ain't CNN, folks. Compelling information + an intriguing stance = a great blog.

4. Don't suck. Be something. Most important thing to remember is this: nobody HAS to read anyone's blog. Readers follow them as an extra curricular function, and only when they enjoy doing so. As the author, it is your obligation to provide content that entertains and enlightens. It goes without saying, but a polished product is always the first step to success. Be funny. Be smart. Be something. Have you been on Technorati lately? There's no shortage of competition in the blogosphere, so you better have something incredible to offer. Stand out and make sure you're not adding to the clutter. Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association by CMA on behalf of Brook Johnston

Edelman Digital: In Twitter Interview, Edelman CEO Says Agency Will Remain Independent ‘Now and Forever’

2010-07-22T06:32:00.000-07:00

Originally posted on PRNewser by Joe Ciarallo.

Edelman CEO Richard Edelman is a relatively new user of Twitter, so we reached out to him to conduct PRNewser’s first ever Twitter interview, which took place this morning.

When asked in the interview if there have been any serious offers to buy Edelman this year, the CEO responded, “The big holding companies know our story–the Pirate King–independent now and forever.”

Edelman also said that “social engagement” is a big factor for the agency when looking at potential new hires. “Beyond Facebook and Twitter too,” he said. “[We want them to have involvement in community by donating time and PR expertise.”...view full conversation @Edelman Digital

Business Insider: 10 Things You Need To Know This Morning

2010-07-22T06:01:00.000-07:00

Great morning! Here's the news:

* Walt Mossberg really liked the new Samsung Android-based phones, calling them "worthy competitors" to the iPhone.

* Nokia reported a 27% drop in earnings per share, which is in line with consensus.

* Microsoft reports earnings today after the close. Bloomberg speculates the company could raise its dividend since the stock has been flagging and the company has a lot of cash.

* Amazon is also reporting earnings today.

* Big time NYC VC Fred Wilson says Apple is Evil, Facebook is just a photo sharing site, and it's tough for Gowalla to be second-fiddle to Foursquare.

* We have less than one year until the internet runs out of addresses thanks to the smart grid, mobile expansion, RFID, and other Internet connected devices. We need a new Internet Protocol.

* Microsoft will give out Windows Phone 7 units to all employees.

* Twitter is opening its own data center to deal with its surging user base.

* Motorola is accusing Chinese mobile rival Huawei of stealing trade secrets.

* Google hired a superstar music deal lawyer to handle the opening of Google Music.

Read more: Business Insider

Partners and Edell Blog: Superior customer service? So what.

2010-07-21T08:13:00.000-07:00

In the differentiation game, customers need to see and believe that your organization is unique. And that your uniqueness is relevant to them.

This is an elementary marketing rule. Ironically, many financial services advertisers continue to play variations of the same “unique” tune about superior customer service. Admittedly, some ads are definitely more entertaining than others like this spot from ANZ in Australia.

But do customers actually believe service is a differentiator? Where’s the beef? The fact that Canada Trust was open 8 till 8 put a huge stake in the ground and became emblematic of how a small trust company tries harder.

Service differentiation in many industries can be hugely disruptive. Porter has become famous for the way they treat travelers. While kudos to Porter for delivering on service it was not difficult to improve on the competition. Porter has done a superb job of branding the experience from check-in to boarding.

A brand is a promise kept. So don’t just tell customers you’re different – show them how you’re different and then tell them how you’re different. Deliver on your promise over and over again. This translates into superior customer service and a brand that is both talked about and trusted.Please view here: Partners & Edell Blog by Dennis

scobleizer.com: First look at “revolutionary” social news iPad app: Flipboard

2010-07-21T07:54:00.000-07:00

You’ve seen Twitter clients like TweetDeck or Seesmic, but you’ve never seen one like this.
You’ve seen news readers like NewsGator, Google Reader, or, even, newer ones for iPad like Pulse, but you’ve never seen one like this.
You’ve seen news aggregators like Techmeme, Google News, Skygrid, Yahoo News, Hacker News, or Huffington Post, but you’ve never seen one like this.

What is “this?” It’s Flipboard.

It’s from a new company you’ve never heard from before. Embedded here is an exclusive interview with CEO Mike McCue. You might have heard of Mike before. He sold a company, TellMe, to Microsoft for about $800 million dollars. Flipboard, the company, has already had one round of funding from Kleiner Perkins and today is announcing a new round of funding along with an acquisition of the Ellerdale Project (http://www.ellerdale.com/).

What is Flipboard? It turns your Facebook and Twitter account into something that looks like a magazine. It also lets you build a custom magazine, either by choosing from Flipboard’s pre-built curated “boards” or by importing Twitter lists. This is a very powerful and engaging way to read Twitter. You can also turn a single person’s Twitter account, or a single brand’s Twitter account, into a Flipboard. For instance, you can follow Techcrunch on Twitter with it and it will turn Techcrunch into a beautiful magazine-like interface that’s easier to read than any other reader.

The differentiator for Flipboard is the design. Lots of touches that make it engaging:

1. Touch an article and it “zooms” to reveal more.
2. Touch a video and it plays inline.
3. Turn your iPad and everything reconfigures, even photos switch from vertical to horizontal formats.
4. Touch “read more on Web” on longer articles and instantly be transported to the original website that was the originator of the information discussed in the tweet.
5. When you bring in your Facebook friends your friends’ photos, status messages, will all be laid out in attractive pages.
6. You can touch to share, favorite, like, or retweet, depending on what you are reading.

To get a sense of how dramatically different Flipboard is from any other Facebook or Twitter client, you should watch the video we filmed with McCue where he demoed the app for our cameras. In the interview he covered the philosophy of this interesting new company, demoed the product for us, and talked about where the company is going.

So, why is this disruptive, or even, revolutionary? Revolutionary isn’t our word, either, but is what actor/entrepreneur Ashton Kutcher said when we showed him the app to get a feeling for how it would affect the content businesses he’s involved in. He’s not the only one, either. We showed it to Wolfram Alpha’s CEO, Barak Berkowitz and he said “it’s one of the most awesome iPad apps I’ve ever seen.”

Techcrunch has covered that in a second post about why Flipboard is a killer app that — on first look — appears very disruptive to Twitter client producers, news readers, and news aggregator/publishing companies. In that second article we’ve also laid out why Twitter and the iPad have set in place the ingredients for a real media revolution — one that goes way beyond other publishing systems and one that further moves our reading behavior away from RSS aggregators.

But here let’s discuss how it works.

You add in your Twitter and Facebook accounts. It builds tiles, or “sections” out of your accounts. If you are an advanced user you can add in other people’s Twitter accounts, Twitter lists, or choose from a pre-done set of custom boards to choose from. More on those in a minute.

You then click on the section it builds after you flip past a “cover” that is made from photos that it finds from your friends and people you’re following on Twitter. The cover itself is pretty interesting, but the meat is inside, so we’ll focus on that.

Click on “Facebook,” for instance, and you’ll see your friends’ photos, tweets, status messages, articles, and videos. Just drag your finger through page after page, er, board after board, of these things. This is your Facebook news feed, but in a way you’ve never seen it before — all laid out like a newspaper. Click on any item and you can see the originating status message and all comments. You can “like” the item, or comment on it too.

How did Flipboard find these things? After all, I have 1,800 friends on Facebook and am following 19,000 people on Twitter and it filters out most of the noise I see on other Twitter and Facebook readers. Well, it has a set of algorithms that are looking for highly engaged items. You know, items that have lots of comments, likes, or retweets. It also has an algorithm that senses photography that’s been linked to from Facebook status messages and it lays those photos out.

When you reopen Flipboard it re-paginates the whole set of boards (you can only display nine sections at a time, which is a major limitation of the first version, but more on limitations in a second.

Along the bottom is a timeline that you can run your finger across to see a menu of all items. If you get to the end of the timeline and want to see more, just flip the last board over and it will go and get more pages for you to view.

LIMITATIONS

This is quite remarkable, and addictive to play with, but there are lots of things we’d like to see Flipboard add. More section tiles, for instance, is desperately needed. I have 25 different Twitter lists of just my own, for instance, and if you go to Listorious you can find thousands of lists on all sorts of different topics, all of which make good Flipboard sections.

Some might wonder why RSS isn’t used. That will be a limitation for some people, especially if you are trying to follow a blogger who doesn’t yet put their stuff into Twitter (naughty!) In reality, though, there is so much that IS on Twitter or Facebook that this limitation isn’t that big a deal. If you find some cool blog you can Tweet it and then it’ll show up in Flipboard anyway.

After playing with this I wanted to have Flipboard on my Android and iPhones. Unfortunately the team has chosen to focus solely on iPads for right now but are considering other devices for the future.

There’s no advertising, which leaves us guessing as to what the business model will be in the future. Mike McCue told me they are looking at new, design-centric, advertising that could possibly fill a page or a portion of a page.

A major limitation is that this is a reading and commenting app, not one where you can build your own tweets or Facebook status messages. I found myself often wanting to tweet from inside the app as I was reading.

It also doesn’t use LinkedIn or Google Buzz, both social networks I’d like to turn into Flipboards.

WHAT IT GOT RIGHT

Flipboard got a LOT right. It shows how you can enter a crowded space of Twitter clients with something that’s beautiful. The interaction design is beyond anything I’ve seen from a startup since Siri came on the scene earlier this year (and was almost instantly purchased by Apple).

They are totally right to bet on Facebook and Twitter. These are the default information sharing systems for most people now and are both mature enough to serve as news sources. I have a Twitter list of world news brands, for instance, that is awesome in Twitter. http://twitter.com/scoblemedia/world-news-brands Lots of people haven’t seen the power of lists like these, but now they will, and they’ll also understand that Twitter isn’t just about telling people what you’re doing.

WHAT IT DID NOT GET RIGHT

There is a lot missing from Flipboard. First, the #1 thing we need is more tiles, or what they call “sections.” Nine is simply not enough.

Second, we need a far better “store” from which to find new sections, er, Twitter lists. Yes, you can eventually figure out that you can search for people, lists, etc, but we need a better way to do that. I wish there were a stronger tie between Listorious, which I find has a very nice way to find lists, and Flipboard, which makes it somewhat difficult to find new lists to make into Flipboard sections.

Third, as a content producer, I’m very worried that this takes too much of the brand and advertising dollars away from the content producers. If I share a Techcrunch article, for instance, I get more credit than Techcrunch does inside Flipboard. That’s not good. Also, they need a better way for content producers to tell Flipboard just how much of the text they are using. Right now Flipboard looks for an RSS feed from a content producer to see if they’ve set full text, or partial text, or headline only, to figure out the syndication rules but there needs to be a way inside Flipboard for publishers to communicate their wishes since I’m sure lots of publishers won’t like what they see inside Flipboard. From a user standpoint, though, I find this reading experience to be unparalleled, so media producers should work with Flipboard instead of flipping out, as I expect some of them like Rupert Murdoch to do.

There are still some bugs. I often see duplication of articles, especially in my lists that follow larger numbers of people (Flipboard’s own curated lists have small numbers of sources to keep them cleaner). I also occasionally see bad text or bad headlines that were pulled in. But those are minor problems for a 1.0 beta and will be fixed, the team says.

THE FUTURE OF FLIPBOARD

The acquisition of the Ellerdale Project, this morning, gives Flipboard lots of new “trending” features to build as well as some strong algorithms to further reduce the noise and pull out great items for us to read, no matter what the list is we’re aiming Flipboard at.

Overall this is an extraordinary iPad app and one that will shake the media world for quite some time.

ANALYSIS OF WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT:

Every once in a while I get an early look at a “killer app.” I still remember the day I first saw Pagemaker (back then from a company named Aldus, which later sold to Adobe). That app, along with a $5,000 laser printer from Apple, was a “killer app” for the Macintosh. Why? Because if you wanted to do a new form of publishing you needed to buy a Macintosh, a laser printer (back then $5,000) and Aldus’ Pagemaker.

I’ve been using my iPad since the very first day and have been looking for that “killer app” that would give me a reason to tell you why you must get an iPad. In other words, an app that would justify buying an iPad for a large number of people.

We’ve seen other companies get close. Last month Techcrunch wrote about Pulse, a news reader for the iPad. I downloaded it, but it wasn’t revolutionary, just a nicer done RSS news reader. Earlier this week another nice news app, Apollo, was announced in Techcrunch, but I quickly answered back on Twitter that I had already been beta testing something that went far beyond what they were offering.

“So, Scoble, spill the beans already!”

The app I’ve been using? Flipboard. See the news article elsewhere on Techcrunch for more details, since Flipboard also announced new funding and an acquisition too.

It does something very simple: it turns your Twitter and Facebook into something that looks like a magazine.

But, don’t miss what’s happening here, because there’s a news revolution that has been born due to Twitter. First, you must see that Twitter has moved from being just for a way to follow your friends to a way you can follow news brands. Techcrunch, for instance, has a Twitter feed that I follow in Flipboard and other Twitter readers like Seesmic, Tweetdeck, and Twitterrific. But go further, I have a list of 216 news brands like the BBC, CNN, New York Times, etc at http://twitter.com/scoblemedia/world-news-brands. You add that into Flipboard and you have the most complete newspaper-style media you’ve ever seen. You can follow just the BBC, or just the New York Times, or just your local newspaper on Twitter.

The problem is that when you see the New York Times on Twitter.com it looks boring. You don’t see the great photography that the New York Times provides. You don’t have an easy-to-read layout. And if you try to read the New York Times along with my list of news journalists or if you want to follow Techcrunch’s staff writers on Twitter you’ll see them all mixed together with all the noise that comes with that. If MG Siegler posts what he’s drinking on Friday night, as he did last week, it is weighted the same as a New York Times article of international importance.

This makes reading Twitter far less useful than it could be and it lays out why Flipboard is a publishing revolution. Oh, don’t take my word for it. I showed actor/entrepreneur Ashton Kutcher Flipboard and he turned to me and said “this is revolutionary.” Then he asked me for an introduction to Flipboard so he could invest in the company (which he did). Nearly every person I gave a sneak peak to Flipboard said the same thing after playing with it.

It’s disruptive to several groups: those who publish media, especially news organizations; those who produce Twitter clients; and those who produce news aggregators.

“One of the most awesome iPad apps I’ve ever seen,” is what Barak Berkowitz, CEO of Wolfram Alpha, told me after he saw it. “It brings to life the real capabilities of social media.”

“It takes a lot of the stuff from nerddom to mainstream,” Gary Lauder, VC at Lauder Partners, and TED speaker. “My mother is not going to read tweets, but she will read Flipboard.”

But it isn’t just the app that makes this a significant new company.

It also is backed by an interesting team, starting with co-founder Mike McCue who started TellMe, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2007 for $800 million. < << http://www.crunchbase.com/company/tellme >>>

It also has already made an interesting acquisition, of Ellerdale < << http://www.crunchbase.com/company/ellerdale >>> which has been building algorithms using semantic technology that filters the real-time stream by topics, instead of keyword strings. Basically, this means that Flipboard has some cool trending topics features and noise control that will come in future versions.

It also has a list of impressive venture capitalists, including Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, Google investor Ron Conway, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, The Chernin Group founded by Peter Chernin, Alfred Lin, Peter Currie, Quincy Smith, actor/entrepreneur Ashton Kutcher, and major investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Index Ventures.

But that’s not why I view this as disruptive. It just is plain fun to use. I’ve spent more than 50 hours on it so far and love that it removes most noise from my Twitter feed, makes me much more productive in finding interesting items, and is plain addictive to use. It also makes me feel like I’m reading an old-time newspaper with beautiful design that helps me find important items to my life. Not every Twitter item is interesting and Flipboard focuses on that.

What do you think? If you have an iPad already do you agree that this is a “killer app?” If you don’t have an iPad does this push you over the purchasing decision line?
scobleizer.com

Social Media Explorer: Forrester Report Offers Analyst Look at Social Media ROI

2010-07-21T07:46:00.000-07:00

Forrester Research has produced another interesting report, this one focusing on perhaps the hottest topic of the social media world over the past year: The ROI of Social Media Marketing. The piece, primarily authored by Forrester analyst and friend Augie Ray, offers what Forrester calls a balanced scorecard for measuring the ROI of social media, complete with expected Forrester graphics and interview-based insights.
Please continue reading here: Social Media Explorer by Jason Falls

PSFK: A Creative Brief To Guide Social Media Efforts

2010-07-21T07:34:00.000-07:00

We were inspired by Griffin Farley’s collaborative brief to help planners (and the brands they work with) arrive at strategic social media efforts. Some of the questions that Farley and his collaborators propose be asked prior to developing and activating their social media strategy include:

* What are the campaign goals and/or communication tasks? A very clear outline of communication tasks, and how they will be measured. This could include CRM, conversions, sales goals, awareness or good will for the brand/product.
* What is remarkable about the Brand, Product or Service?
* Who is the target audience? Which audience will actually deliver on the brand’s business objectives? What is the desired action? Think of this audience as your aspirational audience.
* Is there another group of people that has more persuasion over the target audience? This group of people might be more likely to engage with the creative assets or act on the creative to influence the real target audience. Think of this audience as your inspirational audience.
* How does the creative foster a social experience? Is the creative designed to entertain, or to act as a branded utility? To challenge participants to submit and share responses? To spawn user generated content, etc.
* Why would someone want to pass something like this to others? This is an area to reference social theories (i.e. custom or personalized, gift economy, peer production, random acts of kindness, pay it forward, etc.) to inform why this creative might be shared and passed along among friends.
* What are the existing creative assets (if any)? List the creative assets that already exist, and allow room for them to be used in new ways. Do new assets need to be created to help extend the narrative?
* How long do we have before the paid media begins? This is a timing question that references how to use Owned, Earned and Paid media appropriately.
* What are the benchmarks and metrics will we be following? Are there platforms the client feels are most important to measure success (acquisitions, Facebook or Twitter followers, video views, etc.)? If not, identify the metrics that you will follow including impressions, reach, interaction and most importantly sentiment.

Propagation Planning: “Revised Propagation Planning Brief”
PSFK

chrisbrogan.com: Go Map Yourself

2010-07-21T07:00:00.000-07:00

I’m not much of a user of the current location-based social applications, things like Foursquare or Gowalla. When I started thinking about why, the answers were mostly business-related. If I point out where I am, it might give something away (if I’m in Memphis, am I with FedEx? If I’m in St. Louis, am I visiting Build-A-Bear?). If I point out where I am, it means you might want to meet (which is sometimes great, and sometimes not entirely possible). I just haven’t found the business value of telling everyone where I am.

I don’t want to be the mayor of things in Foursquare. I want to be the mayor of things in real life. In my little town, when I walk into my restaurant of choice, they know me from my frequency. They give me excellent service. They let me order off the menu. That’s much more fun than being the “mayor.”

Now, the missing ingredient? If there were context. I’d gladly tell everyone in LinkedIn where I am. Why? Because there’s at least a glimmer of possibility that we’ll have a business reason to connect instead of a serendipitous social reason. (Don’t get me wrong: serendipity is awesome. I’m just not always keen on decloaking for social-only reasons.)

So for now, feel free to go map yourself. Me? I’ll just let people know when it seems appropriate.

What’s your take? chrisbrogan.com

iMedia Connection: The 10 commandments of content marketing

2010-07-21T06:43:00.000-07:00

Article Highlights:

* Content shall be collaborative -- let your consumers play
* Content shall invite comment -- tap into all available feedback
* Content shall be forever -- so create marketing that can endure

Defining a new era

It's only a matter of time before some marketing pundit boldly declares this to be the Era of the Boldly Declared Era. Our attempts to make sense of the rapid changes in consumer media consumption have spawned such era-defining labels as "Web 2.0," "Emerging Media," "Generation Facebook," "The Death of Print," and most recently, "The Splinternet."

Historically, a mania for naming has been a sure sign of cultural anxiety, and in our industry, it's a sure sign that marketers are still percolating over the big questions: Will social media take over the world? Will streaming content kill broadcast? Will someone eventually click on a banner ad? Will society finally grind to a halt when there's nothing left to tweet about besides Twitter?
As an industry, we're struggling with these questions because we're stuck in outdated categories. We still think advertising is advertising and social media is something else. In fact, advertising and social media are the same thing: They're content. We can find answers to the vexing questions of our time the moment we realize that all marketing is content. And at the risk of adding yet another era-defining label to the mix, I want to suggest that the new approach demanded by these rapid changes is something White Horse calls content marketing.

Content marketing is already occurring; it's all around us. Marketers that do it well might not even know that they're doing it because they weren't burdened by the old way of thinking in the first place. Fortunately, it's possible to bring a stone tablet down from that mountain and share what works about content marketing. Its 10 commandments are as follows. Please click here-iMedia Connection to continue reading

Business Insider: 10 Things You Need To Know This Morning

2010-07-21T05:59:00.000-07:00

Good morning, here's the big news:

* Apple delivered blowout earnings, with strong sales of Macs, iPads, and iPods. iPhones were good but lighter than expected.

* Yahoo's earnings were mediocre. It beat EPS by a penny, but missed on revenue because it couldn't monetize search.

* HP's Slate WILL run on Windows, according to specs leaked on HP's website.

* Some Droid X screens are flickering. If that happens to you, just return it.

* Verizon is rumored to have two e-readers/tablets available in the fall.

* Facebook's lawyer is "unsure" if Mark Zuckerberg signed an agreement with the man claiming to own 84% of Facebook.

* Message board 4Chan has been trying to attack Gawker the last few days.

* eBay reports earnings today after the close.

* Adobe is trying to create a peer to peer mobile video chat service called "FlashTime."

* Skype is trying out a new ad unit called pay per call. It will put a phone number on websites, and you can call the number using Skype.

Read more: Business Insider

TAXI - BLOG: How contagious is your Twitter network?

2010-07-20T08:09:00.000-07:00

It turns out having a large network may not be as good for you as you think. The quality of the network can greatly influence your happiness.

Recent research from the Proceedings of the Royal Society showed that happiness and sadness spread in patterns similar to disease. Contact with someone who is either happy or sad can mean you are more likely to exhibit the same emotion. The not-so-good news is that discontent is much more contagious. Misery loves company.
Please continue reading here: TAXI - BLOG

davefleet.com: The Challenge – And Risk – Of Ad Agencies’ Growing Interest In Social Media

2010-07-20T07:58:00.000-07:00

Too much has already been written about the recent Old Spice foray into social media. However, one aspect of the campaign has escaped most commentary – the firm – Wieden + Kennedy – is an ad agency. Not a PR agency, or a social media agency. An ad agency.

On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal ran an interesting story on the growing interest of ad agencies in the social media space. As they put it,

“As more and more advertising dollars flow into social media, some Madison Avenue firms are seeking to grab a piece of the action.”

The story cites several examples of ad agencies who are making a move to grow this side of their business. As they do so, they are moving into direct competition with the PR firms and social media agencies who, until recently, they have partnered with on client projects.

Many public relations folks have harped on the idea that PR agencies are best placed to serve clients’ social media needs because of their focus on relationships and conversations as part of their core business. If nothing else, Isaiah Mustafah’s wonderful social media tour de force last week proved that ad agencies can get it right online, with a combination of creativity, comedy and captivating two-way interaction. Meanwhile, however, the pragmatists among us have been observing the blurring of the lines for quite some time. I’ve argued, for example, that PR agencies can learn a lot from ad agencies including:

1. How to better scale programs;
2. How to plan and execute more creatively;
3. That measurement is critical;
4. How to effectively target their key audiences;
5. How to better target messages.

Four challenges to PR firms from ad agencies
Please continue reading here: davefleet.com

The BuzzBubble: E07 Pt 3 Andy Azula Talks Social Media, We Choose the Moon and more on the buzzbubble

2010-07-20T07:47:00.000-07:00

In part 4 Andy and Kevin get into digital executions and integration of teams, social media projects like The Kennedy Space Museum, and great viral social marketing campaign, “We Choose the Moon”. We talk about our next guest CEO – Mike Hughes and some fun facts about Mike. Some Fun facts about Andy and a rare bit of magic from “The Great Azula”. We get advice for young creatives and dealing with the rejection of getting creative killed, while remembering the feeling of that spark when a great idea gets through.
In closing, as Andy says, “Find the button, press repeatedly”. Thanks man! – KK
The BuzzBubble - Interviewing advertising icons

Business Insider: 10 Things You Need To Know This Morning

2010-07-20T06:43:00.000-07:00

Good Morning! News:

* Nokia is hunting for a new CEO.

* Asus is dumping Windows for Android on its EEE Pad EP101TC.

* A bunch of tech and media companies are inching closer to a big cloud based media operation called UltraViolet.

* Amazon says Kindle sales were up 3X in the first half of the year, and Amazon is dominating e-book sales.

* Steve Jobs wanted to ditch AT&T half a dozen times, according to a great feature in Wired.

* Yahoo is looking at buying url shortener bit.ly.

* Apple reports earnings today after the close. Tune in for coverage, in the meanwhile, here's 12 stocks that move based on Apple.

* Want another search engine? You got it. Here's Blekko.

* Sales of this year's Tiger Woods video game fell by 32%.

* The FCC seems to be approving a new Apple Magic track pad. It's like a laptop track pad, but designed for the desktop instead of a mouse.

Read more: Business Insider

McCann_NY: Amazon says ebooks outsell hardcover books. Classic tipping point in our cultural history.

2010-07-19T13:57:00.000-07:00

McCann NY - NY Times

Tribble Ad Agency : The Advertising Agency of Record: Advertising Recession – More Ad Agencies reporting slowdown

2010-07-19T11:52:00.000-07:00

IN the past 3 months some advertising agencies have been reporting a decrease in spends, and client wins are becoming smaller (on average).

It appears that based on these reports alone many are bracing for a double dip recession.

“Billables though the same client are down at least 25%” one agency executive stated.

Another agency in a differing part of the country stated “I don’t understand why many of our clients are opting for the smaller spends rather than the bigger campaigns, they all have a sense of fear that things are going to get worse, not better”

Generally speaking when business sediment is that things are going to get worse, the businesses spend less on advertising. It appears that the reports we are seeing, ad agencies are seeing smaller client spends in the first and second quarter of 2010.

This is going to get ugly people...Tribble Ad Agency : The Advertising Agency of Record

Alex Bogusky: Warren Berger is a mind reader. Or maybe a warlock. A marketing warlock! Burn him!

2010-07-19T11:47:00.000-07:00

Please read story here: adweek.com

PSFK: This Week In Brand Strategy & Advertising

2010-07-19T08:22:00.000-07:00

Here is a look at some standout brand-building and advertising communications stories that have been catching our attention p lease click here to read:PSFK

JWT AnxietyIndex: A surprising message from J.R. Ewing: ‘Shine, baby, shine’

2010-07-19T08:13:00.000-07:00

Larry Hagman, best known as oilman J.R. Ewing in the hit 1980s television show Dallas, is now the face of SolarWorld, a German solar energy company. Long a solar energy enthusiast, Hagman recently told The New York Times he was motivated by the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico to speak out. He added: “Since Sarah Palin is saying, ‘Drill, baby, drill,’ I’m saying, ‘Shine, baby, shine.’”

That’s just what the actor says, with his trademark cackle, in a spot for SolarWorld’s new advertising campaign. We see J.R. looking disapprovingly at a portrait of his younger self in an oil field while a background TV screen gurgles with oil-spill images. He walks out of his house and we see a roof lined with solar panels. SolarWorld does an interesting thing here: It’s not only tapping into anxieties around the Gulf spill and the target consumers’ likely aversion to the “Drill, baby, drill” mind-set but is also showing how perspectives can change, even if J.R. is fictional.
JWT AnxietyIndex: Brand Answers for an Anxious World by Christine Miranda - New York

COFFEE AND DONUTS WITH JWT PLANNING: Cannes 2010 - Winning Case Studies from JWT

2010-07-19T07:05:00.000-07:00

With more posts to come , here are two winning campaigns by JWT Italia and Capetown.

Heiniken - Auditorium by JWT Italia

Taking Consumer Engagement to the next level , the campaign idea by JWT Italia truly did made its Target Audience spend quality time with their favourite beer - Heiniken.

My First Book by JWT Capetown

The campaign not only instills the importance of ‘going green’ but it also contributed to the education of many underprivileged kids around the world.

COFFEE AND DONUTS WITH JWT PLANNING

brandflakesforbreakfast: Mad Men Style: You can read every outfit.

2010-07-19T06:59:00.000-07:00

Ever watch those responsible for clothes on a set fret about the wardrobe? Ever see a grown art director cry at the "wrong wallpaper" on a set? Details are important. The wrong item can cause havoc, like when Dunkin' Donuts were accused of supporting terrorists due to a scarf.

As we wait for the next season of Mad Men, lets relive the excellent choices of clothes for each character. When Joan wears purple, she is wearing her heart on her sleeve. Delve into the Mad Men Style pages by the fabulous and opinioated Tom and Lorenzo. Every scarf and brooch is dissected as a reflection of what the character is going through. It's fantastic...brandflakesforbreakfast

Business Insider: 10 Things You Need To Know This Morning

2010-07-19T06:00:00.000-07:00

Good morning! Here is your news:

* Microsoft shipped a few early previews of Windows Phone 7. Engadget says it's "a little scary" how many technical issues need to be ironed out before the phone hits the market.

* Google will stop selling the Nexus One after it clears out of its most recent shipment of Nexus One phones.

* Now that Facebook has 500 million users, it has to figure out what to do when one of them dies.

* A Chinese glass manufacturer is holding up the production of white iPhone 4s.

* Verizon is ceasing sales of the Kin and shipping its inventory back to Microsoft.

* Motorola is selling off its networking wireless business for $1.2 billion.

* HTC and Samsung are disputing Apple's antenna claims.

* Mark Cuban is wildly bullish on facial recognition as the next form of check-in apps.

* Quicken appears set to screw over its customers, as it transitions to Mint.com.

Read more: Business Insider

WPP Marketing Insights: Our Top Ten Thinkers For Researchers by Tom Ewing, Kantar

2010-07-09T08:46:00.000-07:00

Explaining people's behaviour is the basis of our industry. But that's not to say we don't appreciate a push in the right direction. Since the publication - and more importantly the runaway success - of Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, we've seen a boom in "idea books" looking to uncover organising principles behind behaviour and decision-making. We've also seen a revival of interest in the idea of the individual - a public intellectual - who can explain these things. Go to any research conference and half the speeches will cite at least one book or writer with the scoop on why people act how they do. Thinkers are in.

But which thinkers? Not only is there a glut of thought for researchers to choose from - drawing on disciplines from economics to physics to anthropology - there's also a huge role for fashion. Sometimes an idea is so successful that it enters general business vocabulary - the "long tail" and the "wisdom of crowds", for instance. Other times writers fall from grace: despite giving his new book the research-friendly title Outliers, Gladwell himself has hardly been mentioned at conferences this year.

This article is a - wholly unscientific - survey of who researchers' current top ten thinkers are, based on names dropped at the MRS, WARC and ARF conferences this past March. Anyone actually speaking at the conferences was disqualified - so the worthy likes of Mark Earls (Herd) and Charles Leadbeter (We-Think) miss out. We hope you find the list enlightening - whether as a pointer to summer reading, or a bluffer's guide for the next industry bunfight.

To continue reading, please visit Kantar.com, and navigate to What's New > Inspirations.
WPP Marketing Insights

Landor.com: Blog: Happy birthday, Walter (great 60's video)

2010-07-09T08:34:00.000-07:00

Those of us who work at Landor know that our founder and namesake, Walter Landor, loved a strong cocktail and a good party. So during the week of his birthday (July 9), we at Landor, in all our offices around the world, take a day to celebrate together.

Born on 9 July 1913, Walter would have been 97 years old today, and the firm that he founded in 1941 with his wife Josephine is now in its 69th year of existence. A pioneer in the field of branding and design, he is also famous for throwing celebrity-attended parties on one of the most unusual and memorable offices around: the Klamath ferryboat.

We recently unearthed and digitized a promotional film, The Decanter. Filmed in the late 1960s, it shows the start-to-finish process of several of Landor's designs for Old Fitzgerald whiskey. Narrated by Walter himself, the film depicts creative teams illustrating and critiquing designs, industrial designers fabricating models, and research teams conducting focus groups and testing in Landor's supermarket laboratory. And the whole thing takes place on the famed Klamath ferryboat, docked at San Francisco's Pier 5, which housed Landor's offices for some twenty years from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. It's a great snapshot of the origins of our firm and the elegance and stature of our founder...Landor.com

Design story: The Decanter from Landor Associates on Vimeo.

1000heads: The Word of Mouth People: 10 amazing WOM thought leaders

2010-07-09T08:17:00.000-07:00

This week, our 10th birthday celebrations focus on saying thank you to the industry: that eclectic global community of social innovators, word of mouth practitioners, consumer champions and just downright interesting human beings who push us all to think differently, and do better.

So we’ve decided to profile ten of the WOM thought leaders who have really inspired us as a company, and asked them:

How do you feel WOM has evolved in the past ten years?

These are a tiny selection from a vast number of people we love, but they’re a great start for anyone looking at WOM. So, in no particular order…

1. Emanuel Rosen
Emanuel wrote his bible of WOM, The Anatomy of Buzz, back in 2000 to international acclaim, and we love his down to earth, challenging style. His emphasis on offline as well as online triggers and the accessibility of his explanations and case studies make him a must-read. In fact, come listen; he’s speaking at WOM UK in a couple of weeks.

“As consumers, we not only have more opportunities to hear and read what our friends have to say, but also to observe what they do. This will become even more important in the future. Marketers can no longer ignore word of mouth because so much of it is visible online (although most of it still happens offline).”

2. John Bell
We first met John, Managing Director of Ogilvy’s 360° Digital Influence team, as President of WOMMA. We were quickly impressed with his ability to link WOM to the realities of business, talking about how companies can harness this brave new world in a way that practically works with their processes and capabilities.

“While any communications expert will quickly acknowledge that “word of mouth” – peer recommendations of one sort or another – has been around since the dawn of man & woman, the power of WOM to build or level brands has been amplified exponentially by digital communications over the past ten years. Ask any true social media expert with experience why marketers are so fascinated by the strength and potential to use social media and the answer is always “to activate word of mouth.” Simply put, word of mouth marketing is the answer why any brand would want to use social media at all.

Looking forward? Big brands will launch large, multi-million-dollar marketing programs this year with word of mouth marketing firmly at the center. Their purpose will be to authentically activate word of mouth towards the goal of selling product and sustaining the health of their brand.”

3. Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore
Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore made a huge splash in 1999 with their fantastically original book ‘The Experience Economy’ and now ‘Authenticity: What Consumers Want’ brings us fresh perspective yet again. Packed full of case studies and practical models, it gives a fresh perspective on thinking how to connect with consumers in broad and deep ways - by thinking about how they want to feel. A must-read.

“There are two huge changes in word-of-mouth over the past decade. One, the recognition that the best way to create WOM is not through advertising and traditional marketing. Instead, more and more companies recognize that the experience IS the marketing — the best way to generate demand is through engaging experiences that generate word-of-mouth (and spend-of-wallet). Two, with authenticity becoming the new consumer sensibility, consumers increasingly purchase based on conformance to self-image; they will not spread the word on offerings that do not match their own identity.”

4. Joanne Jacobs
Unforgettable to anyone who has seen her present, consultant and educator Jo has unerring ability to cut through the crap and challenge assumptions, always finding the human perspective in any discussion about technology and tools. She believes in people, and it shows.

“This was, and continues to be, the revolution in marketing. Ironically, it’s the embodiment of the original emergence of marketing as a discipline - effective communication of authentic information about products, be these goods or services.

WOM is a shift in the way marketers and business generally need to engage the socially connected citizen.

The past decade has seen the rise of opportunities for mass adoption of platforms for social communication, and WOM as a subset of those social connections. It has seen the emergence of rich media capture - images, sound and video - via mobile devices, and the opportunity to publish and share these media at the touch of a button. But most of all, it has seen a shift in power over the reputation of brands from the domain of marketers to the experience of user/consumers. WOM hasn’t just been the instrument of that change; it has been the weapon of user/consumers against marketing spin. For me, this is such an exciting development. The rise in the power of the user/consumer, not just as an informed citizen, but also as a producer of content and resources, is partly a realisation of a long-promised global village. And at the end the past decade of social media development, I see ahead an even richer landscape of user-led advocacy and filters for timely, geolocated and compelling information and experiences. But understanding WOM is going to be utterly crucial to competitive advantage in that environment. And firms that fail to engage in the age and stage of WOM will soon find themselves shunned.”

5. Barak Libai
Barak is Marketing Professor at Recanati Graduate School of Business, Tel Aviv University, and an award-winning researcher on the economics of WOM, and his multi-discipline approach looks at WOM from every angle possible. Using biological models to simulate social networks, and harnessing vast data pools, Barak is helming the development of WOM ROI and social CRM.

6. Chris Brogan
President and founder of New Marketing Labs, Chris Brogan’s work is a must read for anyone trying to find their way in WOM, Social and New Media. Author of two books, Trust Agents and Social Media 101, Chris is constantly looking for new ways to humanise business communications through improving what he calls ‘The Guest Experience‘. Add him to your RSS.

7. Scott Gould
We first heard about Scott through a chance meeting with his Like Minds co-founder Drew Ellis (at the Finnish Ambassadorial Residence no less!). Since then he (and his cohorts) have wowed us with their Like Minded thinking, their ambition and their vision; to educate, discover and ultimately give something back through social learning, media and charity. Like Minds is a great event. You should go.

“Word of Mouth, as every marketeer knows, is the holy grail. And despite Social Media (digital word of mouth) growing exponentially, Word of Mouth still stands as the strongest - by far - way that ideas are shared and brands are recommended.

You’d think that every brand and organisation out there would be doing their upmost to generate word of mouth, but the understanding and relational ability that is required to create this is rare - not to mention the risk that many are just unwilling to take in creating campaigns and engagement that are so innovative.

What impresses me about 1000heads and their approach is not only the creativity, the deep relational building that is carried out every day, and their well executed plans, but their measurement and reporting on their activities. It isn’t all just fun and play - 1000heads *really* know what is going on and put most agencies to shame when it comes to measurement and analysis.

They are celebrating their tenth birthday, so as we watched them innovate through Web 1, Web 2 and now through Social Media, I’m confidently watching what they do next to see how I can learn from them, and follow.”

8. Darryl Ohrt
Brandflakes for Breakfast is one of our favourite blogs. It’s the official blog presence of Humongo, a Connecticut-based agency who specialise in creating digital wonderness (and then making it huge).

As you can tell, there’s a fair amount of synergy. Darryl is the curator of said blog is at the centre of all the news, ideas, design, branding and gossip that comes their way. Sounds easy, right? Wrong. Every day, without fail, we find something inspiring in his Brandflakes. Be it awesome innovation, or just plain every day awesomes. If it’s a one-stop shop place for new thinking you’re after, Darryl is your man. He gives good quotes too.

9. Griffin Farley
We ask a lot of questions here at 1000heads; how do we do this offline? What’s the human story? How do we make it better, work harder? How do we create true opportunities to experience? It’s this last element that first got us thinking about Griffin Farley. Anjali Ramachandran from Made by Many wrote about Propagation Planning, one of Griffin’s ideals that really speaks to our hearts: “Plan not for the people that you reach, but the people that they reach”. Griffin is Strategy Director at BBH New York and we like his thinking. A lot.

“40 years ago account planning was developed to inspire consumer-centric creative. 10 years ago connection planning was developed to inspire better media engagement. Today propagation planning is being developed to think about a new target audience: those that hear or see your message through word of mouth. Word of Mouth builds credibility while Advertising builds mass awareness.” On Brands: “I’m excited for the day that brand managers are replaced by community managers. Brands that are not inherently social will not be trusted.” Griffin on innovation: “What I love about social media behavior is at some point people will complain about something. If you listen closely that complaint creates the most fertile ground for innovation when you fix the problem.”

10. Mark Earls
The Herdmeister, Mark Earls, is an anthropologist of the highest calibre. The power of herd thinking, the merit of social objects, the pointlessness of (marketing to) social networks and alike are all opinions that Mark willingly projects out into the industry and, in doing so, constantly un-picks and questions the traditional marketing and advertising practices that have kept the industry from moving forward for so long. For that, we salute you.

“From the moment we are born til the day we die, we are shaped by our interaction with others; for good or ill, we are made who we are by other people - happy or sad, intelligent or otherwise, rich or not. We seem designed specifically to interact with others - our bodies and our brains are those of the ultimate social primate, the Super Social Ape.

Social networks are not channels for advertisers or for the adverts/memes you, your clients or any of your so-called “influentials” create, social networks are for all of the people who participate in the network. “

That’s who we love, what about you? Who inspires you, and why? 1000heads: The Word of Mouth People

Ogilvy Public Relations: Asia Digital Map: Asia Social Media Stats: The Video!

2010-07-09T07:49:00.000-07:00

This video on Social Media in APAC created for a recent internal meeting of our regional Digital Influence team. Enjoy!
Please view here: Ogilvy Public Relations: Asia Digital Map

BrandDigital | BrandSimple: The Blog: TV advertising is still hot, if it follows the right recipe

2010-07-09T05:58:00.000-07:00

Come on, admit it. Every once in a while you see a television advertising spot that makes you chuckle. Maybe you even spend a few moments chatting about it with colleagues at the water cooler. Perhaps you’ve even been known to send an ad link to friends and family in order to share the laughs. The fact of the matter is that good television advertising still exists, and people still pay attention to it, despite the cluttered digital environment. Notice I said “good television advertising.” While lots of it deserves to be Tivo-ed out of the picture, the spots that succeed do so as a result of following an age-old advertising recipe: Great insight about the category, a simple and compelling idea, and brilliant storytelling. In my recent column in Forbes Online I write about the winners of the 57th International Advertising Festival in Cannes and, specifically, what made them winners – with the judges and consumers. While the digital age has certainly created challenges for television branding, those who follow the tried and always true recipe for success, still keep us tuned in.
BrandDigital | BrandSimple: The Blog

AllFacebook.com: Why Facebook Killed A $100 Million Baby

2010-07-09T05:47:00.000-07:00

This evening Facebook announced that they will officially kill the company’s gift shop on August 1st of this year. Currently generating tens of millions of dollars for the company a year, one has to wonder why the company would take such dramatic steps. Facebook regularly touts how few developers run each segment of their business, but even if the company was generating tens of millions on a couple of developers, apparently more can be generated with the small gifts team working on other projects. So what does this really mean?
A $100 Million Business, Gone

We are to assume that Facebook’s gift shop has been growing since they were projected to have a $35 million annual run rate back in 2008, there’s no doubt that the company could easily be selling tens of millions of dollars in gifts each year, at a minimum. However the rise of FarmVille and the social gaming ecosystem on Facebook has driven virtual goods transactions away from Facebook’s core gift shop. The result is that Facebook’s virtual goods business may have been somewhat damaged.

If you had been offered to purchase all the revenue of Facebook’s gift shop going forward in 2008, you may have been willing to pay a pretty penny, if the company was really generating $35 million a year from the shop. While $100 million may be pushing the limits on the value of future virtual goods cash flows, it’s not an unreasonable number. However now the gift shop has become filled with damaged goods that no longer stand out from the numerous other gifts.
A Virtual Goods Ecosystem Rises

As Facebook prepares to wind down the company’s virtual goods store front, the company is also pushing full-force into the Credits business. While the distribution of those goods are currently taking place within games, one has to wonder what future integration points Facebook has planned. The gift shop as it exists today is not a robust platform. While multiple developers had access to the gift shop as a distribution channel, it was still limited in scope.
A Bigger Marketplace

Regardless of the growth or decline of Facebook’s gift-shop, the marketplace for virtual goods is expanding. Projected to reach $10 billion globally, this year, Facebook is aiming to take a big chunk of the marketplace through their Credits service. Additionally, one has to wonder if Facebook is planning on opening up a broader virtual goods marketplace. Given that Facebook believes the future resides off-site, there’s no guarantee that there will be any new distribution points of virtual goods within Facebook aside from the stream and profile tabs.

While we believe Facebook could open up a massive marketplace, there is a greater opportunity in play and Facebook doesn’t want to miss the momentum they are building as the virtual goods market explodes.
HTML5 Presents New Opportunities

One of the largest competitors to Facebook in the Credits space is Apple. Apple is selling applications across their platforms and now offer in-app purchases as well. These in-app purchases account for the majority of virtual goods transactions and while Apple has a monopoly on apps distributed through iTunes, the web will once reign again as the leading Platform. With this in mind, Facebook is ramping up their efforts to provide integration with mobile applications.

We recently saw the beginning of these efforts with the MyTown app promotion, however we would only expect that to continue. Facebook’s acquisition today of nextstop highlights not only Facebook’s interest in location, but also an investment in the future of HTML 5 on mobile devices (as effectively articulated in this interview with Robert Scoble). If all goes well, the $10 billion global virtual goods market, could grow 1,000% and Facebook could be standing as the primary intermediary in the market.

If Facebook can capture only 10 percent of a $100 billion virtual goods market, with the current revenue share of 70/30 with developers (70 percent going to developers, 30 percent to Facebook), Facebook could end up with a cool $3 billion per year. Granted, these are optimistic projections, however Facebook is well positioned to capture a large portion of this marketplace and become the virtual currency standard. Looking at things from this perspective however illustrates why it may make sense to kill the gift shop, even if tens of millions of dollars a year was providing great margins...AllFacebook.com

Business Insider: 10 Things You Need To Know This Morning

2010-07-09T05:42:00.000-07:00

Good morning, here's the news. No LeBron mentions!

* Google says China has renewed Google's web page license.

* Google founder Sergey Brin still uses Friendster.

* Facebook is shuttering its virtual goods store, which generated tens of millions in sales.

* Facebook acquired travel startup Nextstop to gain access to two former Google engineers.

* Apple wants to be able to push $0.99 rentals through the next version of Apple TV.

* Gerson Lehrman Group says, "It is highly likely that after the KIN fiasco, Microsoft will exit the mobile OS space within the next year." We don't think that happens, but this is a pretty harsh assessment of Microsoft's mobile prospects.

* Social gaming company Playdom bought Metaplace, a smaller, different sort of social gaming company.

* Yahoo farmed out its real estate listings to Zillow.

* Apple is an underdog in China says the NYT.

* MobiTV has streamed 88 million minutes worth of World Cup footage on mobile phones
. That's impressive since most people haven't historically watched TV on their phones.

Read more: Business Insider

Media Decoder: MDC Again Combines Two Agencies

2010-07-08T14:04:00.000-07:00

MDC Partners, the Toronto-based agency holding company, has made a name for itself with several spates of acquisitions. Such buying sprees are often followed by phases of digestion, absorption and consolidation, and that is what is now taking place with MDC — and, as is typically the case, not without some bumpy patches.

MDC said on Thursday that it would combine Zig, an agency based in Toronto, with Crispin Porter & Bogusky, the MDC powerhouse that has offices in Miami and Boulder, Colo. Zig will become the Toronto office of Crispin Porter & Bogusky, which will be known as Crispin Porter & Bogusky Canada — perhaps in case the agency opens an office in Moose Jaw.

However, a second office of Zig, in Chicago, is not going to be absorbed by its larger sibling and will be closed in the coming months. The office has eight employees and, according to Katie Kempner, a spokeswoman for MDC, efforts are being made “to find places where we can for them at CPB or somewhere else within MDC.”

The Chicago office is being closed, because it is “geographically redundant” with the operations of Crispin Porter & Bogusky in the United States, MDC said in a statement. In addition to its dual headquarters in this country, Crispin Porter & Bogusky has an office in Los Angeles; overseas, it has offices in London and Gothenburg, Sweden.

Zig began operations in 1999 and MDC bought a stake in the agency in 2004. Zig and Crispin Porter & Bogusky share a client, Best Buy, and the consolidation adds to the client roster of Crispin Porter & Bogusky companies like Clorox, Molson Coors, Pfizer and Unilever.

Zig has also been the agency for the Canadian operations of Ikea, and Crispin Porter & Bogusky will take over that assignment, too, but there is a bit of back story there.

Crispin Porter & Bogusky had created campaigns for the Ikea operations in the United States from early 2002 until late 2004, when Ikea and the agency parted ways. Not long before that, Crispin Porter & Bogusky lost the assignment to create Ikea campaigns in Canada to — yes, Zig.

How Ikea will feel about having Crispin Porter & Bogusky back on its agency roster remains to be seen.

The combination of the agencies is the second made by MDC this year. In March, an agency in Atlanta, Fletcher Martin, became the Atlanta office of an MDC agency based in New York, Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal & Partners.

Some similar moves made by MDC in the past have not worked. In 2005, MDC merged a New York boutique agency named Powell with a larger New York agency, Margeotes Fertitta & Partners to create Margeotes Fertitta Powell.

But less than two years later, after the merged agency lost significant accounts, it was closed. Some remaining clients were transferred to Kirshenbaum Bond and others were moved to a new agency, called We Are Gigantic, which was subsequently shut.

Other clients of Crispin Porter & Bogusky include Burger King, the Coca-Cola Company, Domino’s Pizza and Kraft.

Crispin Porter & Bogusky Canada will be run by Shelley Brown, who had been president of Zig. Andy Macaulay, chairman of Zig, is becoming chairman for Crispin Porter & Bogusky Canada, where he will serve in what is being called an advisory capacity.

And Aaron Starkman, chief creative office at Zig, is becoming executive creative director of Crispin Porter & Bogusky Canada.

The news involving the expansion of Crispin Porter & Bogusky to Canada is coming a week after a former senior leader of the agency, Alex Bogusky, who joined MDC early this year, said he would leave MDC effective immediately.

The Canadian trade publication Marketing Magazine reported on Thursday that the merger of Zig into Crispin Porter & Bogusky had been “discussed seriously” a few months ago. There had been rumors for some time that the larger agency was interested in opening a Canadian office, according to Marketing Magazine...Media Decoder

Richard Edelman - 6 A.M: Media Strikes Back

2010-07-08T13:53:00.000-07:00

At Edelman’s fourth Annual New Media Academic Summit, we convened a superb group of senior media executives who offered insights into the future of the sector. They included Raju Narisetti, managing editor of the Washington Post; Greg Coleman, president of Huffington Post; Gerard Baker, deputy editor in chief of the Wall Street Journal; Jonah Bloom, CEO and editor in chief of Breaking Media; Mark Lukasiewicz, VP of NBC Digital Media; Mike Oreskes, senior managing editor of the Associated Press; David Carey who has just joined Hearst as President of the Magazine Unit; and Jon Miller, CEO of Digital Media at News Corp.

These media leaders are addressing challenges head-on, and are optimistic about their future. Here are a few of the most important insights:

1. New Readers & Channels—David Carey, Conde Nast group president cited the incremental revenue and readers for its relaunched Gourmet food magazine and Wired’s completely reimaged iPad app. (they sold 95,000 digital copies at $4.99 each in June)., as only the beginning as people are willing to pay for mobility and engagement. Baker described the iPad as a potential game changer, noting that the WSJ has sold many subscriptions at $208 per year for this platform, and the Washington Post charges $1.99 for iPhone application for a year.

# New Revenue Options—Bloom believes Media will integrate eCommerce directly into content so “media will sell stuff directly.” So, right beside a book review will be the option to buy the book. Access to the archives, conferences and direct access to journalists via email are also being considered viable premium paid options.

# The Pay Wall—Narisetti offered a strong defense of the Washington Post policy on free access to content. “Subscription revenue has always been a tiny part of the newspaper business model. We have 30 million unique visitors each month to our site.” Baker went the other direction describing the Wall Street Journal pay model, “In the beginning of the web, there was optimism that we could focus advertising so ad revenues would suffice. Now it is clear that we need other revenue streams.” News Corporation is bringing in paywalls for its British newspapers and Miller emphasized that will keep investing in quality content to get people to pay.

# Trust in Content—Baker noted that the decline in trust in establishment institutions (business, government) extends to mainstream media. “We often fail to properly represent the views of the majority of our readers.” He quoted Oscar Wilde, “The parts that were original were not true and that which was true was not original.” Jonah Bloom noted that “there is not enough originality in stories being tackled.” Lukasiewicz said that “transparency is the new objectivity. We will have a point of view in stories.” Oreskes took a strong position on “Journalism being distinguished by its higher standards for quality, not by ownership of the printing press.”

# Narrow-casting—Narisetti wants to get away from the single “front page approach” so that a reader can focus only on specific more narrow interest (politics or sports). “We need multiple front doors to the house, such as PostLocal.com, PostSports.com, PostPolitics.com.” He said that “we link to other sites on stories they break (Politico as example)—we need to offer everything that is relevant.”

# Value from Conversation—Coleman said that the Huffington Post gets three million comments from its users each month. “Our content model envisages 1/3 from each of bloggers, original reporting and aggregation.” Narisetti added, “Comments may reflect the market’s view but those who comment represent a narrow slice of readers—but we keep comments as open as possible because these are the most engaged readers.”

# New Measurement for Reporters—Narisetti said, “Newsrooms have never wanted to measure how they are performing—specifically how many readers look at each article. We now do a daily report to 120 editors, with page views, time spent, unique visitors, which photos are preferred—metrics that are key to the business.” He said that his reporters must use meta-data to be sure they use words that “help readers to find your story…people search for Republican Party, not GOP, so use that term in stories.” Bloom added that reporters must be able to market their stories via Twitter and Facebook.

# Power of Visuals—Oreskes noted that while the AP may have 50 reporters on the coverage of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the most powerful content has been visual. “People remember the pelican photo or the AP photographer donning scuba gear to get unique video.” He quoted Walter Lippmann, media pundit, “The world outside, the pictures in our head.” At our dinner, key note speaker, Tom Cibrowski, Good Morning America Executive Producer, ABC, also mentioned they are rapidly adopted new hi-def video cameras to reporters to report more quickly and cheaply with video.

# Importance of Local Market Dominance—The Washington Post reaches 45% of Washington area households. You need 30 ads on local TV or 60 ads on cable TV to achieve the same reach as one ad in the Washington Post. Of the 18-34 year olds in the area, 62% use the Washington Post on-line. This is group most easily monetized in advertising. Note that 86% of the Washington Post web traffic comes from outside of the DC area.

Those of us in PR would be wise to adapt our business model to reflect the new demands of immediacy, visualization, conversation and localization.

You can watch the discussion by going here.

Richard Edelman - 6 A.M.

OgilvyWW: With 80 million views Shakira video for World Cup created by O&M's Antonio Navas scores big

2010-07-08T12:57:00.000-07:00

Please view here: OgilvyWW

JWT AnxietyIndex: Colombia among least anxious countries

2010-07-08T07:29:00.000-07:00

The latest installment of AnxietyIndex found that Colombia registers among the least anxious nations JWT has surveyed, with only 58 percent of respondents reporting feelings of nervousness or anxiety.

Our January 2010 survey of 1,253 Colombians aged 25-plus revealed that the primary drivers of anxiety in Colombia are crime, corruption, the state of the economy and the impact of global warming. With high rates of urban violence and theft, it’s not surprising that two-thirds report concern about crime in their neighborhood. And nearly 80 percent feel Columbian politicians are out of touch with how the global economic downturn is affecting the average person; about three-quarters fear the downturn is widening the economic gap between the rich and the poor in Colombia.

Still, Columbians are slightly more optimistic than the global average about near-term prospects of positive change, and most think Colombia has fared about the same or better in the recession than other Latin American countries. Almost six in 10 say Colombia has been less affected than “wealthier” countries.

For more on the drivers and levels of anxiety in Colombia, click here to download the report from our Trends and Research page.

JWT AnxietyIndex: Brand Answers for an Anxious World

DDBCanada: Digital storescapes reveal what’s happening in Canada

2010-07-08T06:29:00.000-07:00

Interactive Twitter-Based Murals in the U.S. Promote Canada
Click here to view: DDBCanada

WPP Reading Room: Twitter Ads: An Opportunity for Brands?, Mindshare

2010-07-08T06:14:00.000-07:00

In a departure from its previous proclamations that it wished to avoid taking on a ‘traditional web advertising model’, Twitter has announced the launch of a new advertising product, Promoted Tweets. This will allow brands to place their tweets at the top of relevant results on Twitter’s search platform.

Mindshare predicted this move back in September of 2009 when we said:

If Twitter can learn to rank results based on relevance… it then creates a space where brands might be able to see real results (from advertising). So if Twitter wants to make serious money from advertising, it may need to learn from Google’s ability to rank content and its ability to monetize those results.

Since then, the algorithms of the major search engines have been radically updated with Bing & Google now pulling in content from Twitter (a move which raised significant revenue for the micro-blogging service): in contrast to this, Twitter’s search algorithm has failed to evolve, and the result of this can be seen in the growth of traffic to search.twitter.com in comparison to the Twitter.com: traffic to the search function is essentially flat.

Read Promoted Tweets: Mindshare POV in full (Slideshare)
WPP Reading Room

Business Insider: 10 Things You Need To Know This Morning

2010-07-08T05:52:00.000-07:00

Good morning! Here's some news:

* Microsoft was rumored to have sold just 503 KIN phones, but Pocket Now weighs in with a pretty definitive answer of 8,810 based on the Kin Facebook page.

* Forget the mobile woes, Microsoft's Xbox Live probably did over $1 billion in revenue.

* Microsoft cut hundreds of jobs yesterday around the world.

* Here's what the PC market would look like if iPads were included. And by the way, Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi says Apple
could sell 25 million iPads next year.

* Foursquare is absolutely pounding Gowalla.

* MySpace mulls a subscription service for its music offerings.

* YouTube revamped its mobile site, making the YouTube app on the iPhone obsolete.

* Facebook is partnering with Asian company MOL Global to sell Facebook credits. MOL has 500,000 outlets throughout Asia according to the release.

* A blogger wound up with a prototype of a Nokia phone and now it wants the police to help get it back. (Sounds like the Gizmodo/Apple story, except without any intrigue.)

* T-Mobile's roadmap for the rest of the year has leaked. Get ready for 5 more Android phones.

Read more: Business Insider

Mod TV: Making It: Louis Vuitton Fall 2010 Ad Campaign Video

2010-07-07T12:55:00.000-07:00

Go backstage with designer Marc Jacobs on set of the Louis Vuitton Fall 2010 advertising campaign for Fall 2010. Shot by Steven Meisel, the campaign features supermodels Christy Turlington, Karen Elson and Natalia Vodianova and like the designer’s fashion show, is “a celebration of women and the joy and art of living“.
Mod TV

Yahoo Advertising Blog: Creativity Is Magic, but Scale Gives It Impact: Video: Andrew Roberts, president and CEO of BBDO Worldwide

2010-07-07T12:35:00.000-07:00

Video: Andrew Roberts, president and CEO of BBDO Worldwide, talks Science + Art + Scale at Cannes Lions Advertising Festival with Yahoo’s Shane Steele.

Andrew Roberts, president and CEO of BBDO Worldwide, explains why it’s valuable for him to attend Cannes Lions every year. In addition to connecting and reconnecting with colleagues from all over the world, he appreciates the “constant surprise of where ideas come from” and that “there is a magic here that we call creativity,” but adds that scale is needed for even the best ads to have impact. (Apologies for the poor sound quality, but it does add to the beachside ambiance!)Yahoo! Advertising Blog

Andrew Roberts, president and CEO of BBDO Worldwide @ Yahoo! Video

Media Decoder: Banana Republic Goes 'Mad' Again

2010-07-07T12:30:00.000-07:00

The Banana Republic clothing chain owned by Gap Inc. is back for a second year of promoting a season premiere of “Mad Men,” the AMC series about advertising in the 1960s.

There are several elements of the “Mad About Style” campaign, to publicize the fourth-season premiere of the series on July 25, that were not included last summer in the joint promotion of the third-season premiere.

The new elements include video blogs by Janie Bryant, the costume designer for “Mad Men,” and Simon Kneen, the creative director for Banana Republic; television commercials branded with “Mad Men” and Banana Republic; and shopping events in markets like Detroit and San Francisco that will be co-sponsored by the Comcast cable company.

Other aspects of the campaign include a “Mad About Style” style guide, to be distributed in stores; store windows decorated with “Mad Men” imagery; and a “casting call” contest that offers prizes like a walk-on role in an episode of the series. There were more than two million votes in the casting call contest last summer, according to Banana Republic.

The promotion is scheduled to run from July 21 through Aug. 11 in all of the more than 400 Banana Republic stores in North America. There will also be a presence on the Banana Republic Facebook page and on the AMC Web site. AMC is part of a division of the Cablevision Systems Corporation.The style guide will feature women’s skirts as well as suits and shirts for men.

The last episode of the third season of “Mad Men,” set in December 1963, was about the main characters’ decision to leave the (make-believe) Madison Avenue agency for which they worked, Sterling Cooper, and open a breakaway shop of their own.

In keeping with the usual hush-hush policies about future plot lines at AMC — not to mention the sealed lips of the creator of “Mad Men,” Matthew Weiner — there has been scant reliable speculation about the year in which the first episode of Season 4 will be taking place, much less what may happen to Don Draper and the other characters.

All that seems to be known so far is the title of the episode, “Public Relations.”
View story here: Media Decoder

Six Pixels of Separation: It Is What It Is And It Does What It Does

2010-07-07T06:54:00.000-07:00

Social Media (or any other form of Marketing and Communications) won't save a bad product, brand or service.

This may seem like an obvious statement out of the gates, but it is something that many brand managers don't really wrap their heads around. If you love the TV show Mad Men (and who, in their right mind, doesn't?) the subtext of the early days of advertising (and something that kept happening until very recently) was the ability for a brand to engage with a Madison Avenue type of advertising agency to help them turn a coal into a diamond. The germ of mass media advertising was about creating an allure or desire for products and over-selling them. Making them seem and feel bigger than they really were.

Social Media changed all of that... and more.

While advertising still works on creating this perceived desire, things do change when all voices (the brand, the advertising agency and the consumer) have an equalized platform. Any one individual with a gripe or with something nice to say can get to the top of the search engines or have their online social network share their story (in places like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc...)so brands, products and services have to be able to deliver. In fact, with customer reviews (or peer reviews) individuals can affect a sales outcome right there where the "buy now" button lives.

Ultimately, your brands, products and services have to hold up to this very simple adage: "it is what it is and it does what it does."

It's great if it can do more (but if it could do more, you would probably say so in all of your marketing and communications), but it really doesn't have to. So, when you use words like, "better, brighter, faster, 20% more, 40% off, etc..." you can disguise the true realities of the marketing initiative in the small print. Social Media is forcing companies to do away with that fine print. Seth Godin wrote brilliantly about how brilliant brands are the only way to go in his seminal best-selling business book, Purple Cow. While being remarkable should be every brand's lighthouse, the conversation around what it takes and those who have actually done it eludes the majority of companies. Most companies still do make regular products for regular people (in fact, if everyone was able to create a Purple Cow, how would we know? We would probably need a phrase for something that is more remarkable than a Purple Cow - Purple Panda anyone?). Seth's right, we need to get there, but most brands are falling woefully short of those purple pastures.

The point is to ensure that your product is what it is and that it does what it's supposed to do.

That - in and of itself - is enough to begin some semblance of a conversation and the initial strikes at building a community. Sadly, most brands don't even do that. They'll make claims in their advertising and fight for people to understand "their side" on Twitter. It's sad, because it is only the brands that are the exceptions to this rule that we can point to... and we can't even do that one hundred percent of the time... and there aren't enough great examples (hint: we need more!).

Why? Why? Why?

Why don't brands live up to that one simple adage? Why can't we all (as Marketers) make a commitment that our initiatives, programs and campaigns will be based on creating an appetite for something that can do what it claims and that works? One hundred percent of the time. All of the time. Without any small print. We would have a very different world. One where consumers actually enjoyed (maybe even looked forward to) advertising and one where the notion of brand loyalty would go beyond sending out mass emails to individuals who relinquished some of their privacy to simply save a few bucks.

Wouldn't it be nice? Six Pixels of Separation - Marketing and Communications Insights - By Mitch Joel at Twist Image

MediaAsia - CampaignAsia: MasterCard Japan asks youths to create their own definition of 'priceless'...

2010-07-07T06:29:00.000-07:00

MasterCard Worldwide in Japan is banking on digital to launch an online and mobile campaign titled ‘PricelessMaker’ for young potential card holders in the country...please continue here:MediaAsia: Campaign Asia

WATBlog.com : 10 Essential Apps For iPad

2010-07-07T06:24:00.000-07:00

Now that you have bought your dream gadget, the iPad, you must be busy getting used to it. But have you found out the right apps that would make your iPad experience more fruitful?

If not, here is a compendium of ten of the popular iPad apps for your use:

• Early Edition: This app allows you to organize all your news/RSS feeds in a newspaper style, thereby giving you a wonderful news reading experience.

• Netflix: This is a boon for you if you do not have a Netflix account. It allows you to select and watch a movie (in HD quality) in a fraction of seconds. No doubt, it is assumed here that you have a 3G or Wi-fi connection already.

• Flickpad: This photo app allows you to stream the photos that your friends have uploaded on Facebook. Supposed to have gained Flickr’s support, it gives you the liberty to flick through your photos.

• Phototransfer: If you have your iPad and your computer hooked on a same Wi-Fi network, you can easily transfer your photos from the former to the latter, without having to use iTunes or iPhoto.

• Twitterlator: This Twitter app for your iPad gives you a smoother experience, like TweetDeck, while you tweet out to the world.

• Penultimate: This is the ultimate app to help you capture your hand written notes. You can now flaunt your handwriting on your iPad too.

• Things: This Mac only to-do- list creating app has now come for your iPad. You can plan your day judiciously.

• Instapaper: This bookmarking app helps you bookmark a webpage or an article on to the Instapaper’s database ,thereby allowing you to retrieve them as and when you want to read them.

• iBooks: This is Apple’s bookstore, as already seen on the release day, for buying and downloading ebooks of your choice.

• iWork: An office suit for your iPad that will include word processor, spreadsheets etc.

If you have more apps in your knowledge, you can add them up hereunder. Wish you have a wonderful time with your iPad, loaded with one or all of these apps.
WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India

Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim: More Than Just A Check In Play for foursquare

2010-07-07T06:08:00.000-07:00

While I am admittedly not too enamored with geo-location services personally there is little denying the rise in popularity. Foursquare, Gowalla and others are experiencing some of the ‘hockey stick’ growth that was once reserved for Twitter and Facebook.

The problem as of late has been the nagging question of “What else is there to do other than just ‘check in’? Make believe badges and ‘mayorships’ can only go so far with most people. Well, if foursquare can do what is being reported in ReadWriteWeb even I could find myself playing along. The site reports

Looking at life through rose-colored glasses? How about walking through your town and seeing it as the Huffington Post or the Independent Film Channel sees it? IFC announced a new campaign this morning with leading location-based social network Foursquare that will allow you to do just that. The Huffington Post launched a Foursquare layer today as well.

IFC polled its member base for short descriptions of their favorite places in the towns they lived in or visited, then picked the place-descriptions that best suited the IFC’s brand (“Always on, slightly off”) to upload into a Foursquare database. Foursquare users can now opt-into getting those tips pushed to them whenever they check in near one of the annotated locations. It’s a chance to effectively say, “I want to see this town as IFC fans see it.” For marketers, this has got to be incredibly appealing, and for urban explorers it could be one of the best examples yet of effective Augmented Reality.

Now we are getting somewhere. People generally read or watch things that are of interest to them and a similar group of people. That group may have very eclectic tastes which is one of the appeals of being associated with it. Now, you can walking through an area and get the point of view of those eclectic folks. Imagine walking down a street in Greenwich Village and you told that there is a great ‘hole in the wall’ bar or restaurant that you would have never known about but your IFC or whatever minded friends have let you in on it through foursquare. This could be interesting.

Of course, these services could only be opt-in because of the distinct nature of each brands eye view of an area. It’s likely that those tuning into a channel like IFC would have little interest in what the Home & garden crowd wants to ‘find’. That’s the beauty of this kind of service and that is not lost on marketers.

ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick says it very well

I’m ready to follow the local historical society, an environmental justice organization or two, perhaps an art-graffiti-watchers association – the possibilities are nearly endless. Imagine allowing background location tracking and notification for some layers. “To see the world through the lenses of my favorite organizations” would be a nice addition to the reasons why people say they use check-in apps.

Can Facebook implement this kind of feature once location is rolled into its service? It’s a little hard to imagine; this feels like a feature that would best come from a service with location at its core.

Ahh yes. The great potential Facebook differentiator for foursquare. With the looming threat of location based services coming from social media’s 900 pound gorilla, foursquare needs to be seen as something more than just a novelty game for people to get tired of.

Could this be the way of the future for the location-based services of the world? At least it looks like a good start and it could actually be something that brings more people like myself into the fold.

This trend may be worth keeping an eye on for sure...Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

brandflakesforbreakfast: the country is about to get bigger

2010-07-07T05:59:00.000-07:00

Humongo Nation pre-tour video 2010 from Humongo Nation on Vimeo.

We're about to embark on our fourth annual social media road show that we like to call Humongo Nation! We'll be taking a sweet, Humongo Ford Flex from Maine to Miami, and profiling some of the most interesting brands, people and creatives along the way.

Starting July 19, you'll be able to watch the entire tour live. Tweet by tweet, blog post by blog post, with live webcams and daily video wrapups. If you don't have a vacation planned, consider this a business trip that you take from the safety of your cubicle.

This year's Maine to Miami route includes stops in Portland, Boston, NYC, Washington DC, Raleigh, Asheville, Atlanta, Savannah, Daytona Beach and Miami. (Got an interesting place or brand worthy of a visit? Give RJ AT HumongoAgency DOT com a shout.)

We're stoked about our sponsors this year, which include Ford Motor Company, Wingate by Wyndham, Sprint and Green Mountain Coffee!

We're also excited about a couple of new features on this year's tour dashboard:
+ A food blog that will chronicle the deliciousness of life on the road
+ FourSquare integration that tracks our whereabouts on a live Google map
+ A mobile version of Humongo Nation, so that you can stay tuned non-stop, day and night

Become a part of the Humongo Nation!
+ Tweet about it, and include the hashtag #humongonation in your tweet, and it will publish to the tour dashboard
+ Blog about Humongo Nation, and we'll send you a free tour shirt!

Tune your internet devices to team Humongo, starting July 19th! We're going to be visiting some amazing people, sharing their stories, and spreading Humongo love. Keep the roads clear...brandflakesforbreakfast

Business Insider: 10 Things You Need To Know This Morning

2010-07-07T05:43:00.000-07:00

Good Morning. News time:

* Microsoft is planning on cutting a few people.

* Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg were seen driving off together at Sun Valley. Maybe they were going to talk about Google Me?

* On Monday, the NYT ran a very negative Microsoft story. Tim O'Reilly was featured prominently in that story. Now he says he was misquoted throughout.

* Mini-Microsoft, the popular unofficial blog for Microsoft employees has weighed in on the KIN disaster.

* Amazon now has a patent on e-readers with LCD and e-ink screens. This could screw Barnes & Noble's Nook.

* Eric Schmidt's partner at TomorrowVentures, which is his personal investment company, has been involved in numerous failed startups and involved in many lawsuits.

* Skyhook wireless gets a nice write up in the WSJ. It provides location services for many smartphones.

* Foursquare introduced a new feature called "layers." You can follow HuffPo or IFC, and as you walk through a town, their recommendations about what to do can be pushed to your phone.

* Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg wrote a post explaining advertising on Facebook. The best part? The comments.

* AppleCare reps are telling people that Apple's software
fix won't address the fundamental issue with the iPhone 4 antenna.

Read more: Business Insider

Yahoo Advertising Blog: Science in Advertising is Not Just for Quants Anymore-Video: Winston Binch of Porter + Bogusky on creative technology

2010-07-06T12:56:00.000-07:00

In this video, Winston Binch, Partner at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, talks with Yahoo’s Shane Steele at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival about the importance of Cannes and the science behind creativity. Cannes, says Binch, is “kind of like a digital Switzerland for our industry.” Competitors, he says, “can come here and just talk about what’s going on with our business… there’s some real, honest discussion…”

Some of his biggest challenges? “People tend to avoid advertising more than ever… Our work has to be smarter, it has to be bigger than a gimmick or a joke…” Embedding technology in everything his company does, notes Binch, is key not only to things like analytics and reaching audiences at scale, but also to helping develop creative that truly engages...Yahoo! Advertising Blog

Winston Binch, Partner at Crispin Porter + Bogusky @ Yahoo! Video

JWT AnxietyIndex: Dunkin’ Coffee shows it’s in touch with Spain’s consumers—unlike politicians

2010-07-06T08:20:00.000-07:00

The general sensation that politicians are disconnected from reality gets even more pronounced during a downturn, often contributing to anxiety. Several years ago an infamous incident showed Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s disconnect from everyday life: During a TV debate with citizens, a man asked him how much a coffee costs, and Zapatero answered “80 cents,” 40 cents under the actual price. “Zapateros’ coffee” became a classic media buzzword, indicating how out of touch politicians are with their countrymen.

Earlier this year, as Spain’s consumers continued to grapple with high unemployment and other effects of the downturn, JWT created an 80 cent “ZP’s coffee” promotion for Dunkin’ Coffee. Since this low price had existed only in the optimistic mind of the prime minister (nicknamed ZP), we made it real, demonstrating that a “better world” can exist! With only point-of-sale marketing—copy read “This month, have a coffee with a different frame of mind”—the “ZP coffee” got significant media coverage. This simple way of leveraging a catchphrase put a smile on people’s faces and transmitted the brand’s connection with its customers’ needs...JWT AnxietyIndex: Brand Answers for an Anxious World

DDB Creativity: Dream a little dream

2010-07-06T08:13:00.000-07:00

It’s time to start thinking beyond viral and even beyond mobile, at least as we think of them now. In this blog post, I’ll talk about how to enable new forms of creativity by harnesssing emerging technologies to elevate the OOH consumer brand experience. Experience Proximity Series The Experience Proximity series is an interactive 3-D media platform designed to redefine the out-of-home consumer experience. The Experience Proximity series presents first-of-its-kind mixed-reality digital signage that is capable of transforming both time and three-dimensional space. The only limitation to augmenting any physical location is the creative vision of the designers. The Experience Proximity consumer experience platform uses proprietary technology to spatially register and align a targeted physical area with one-to-one, millimeter-to-millimeter precision. By tracking the dynamic viewpoint of the observer, the Experience Proximity Lens allows 3-D virtual content to be spatially aligned with and immersed within the surrounding environment. As the observer moves, the content is dynamically repositioned, creating a window-like viewing experience. OOH Interactive Signage KABOOM! This larger-than-life superhero smashes into your theater lobby. As an observer enters the “proximity zone,” the experience proximity display transforms into its immersive mode, engaging the movie patron by using full body tracking and in-world registration. Advanced 3-D rendering capabilities and dynamic gesture recognition allow the observer to cross into this imaginative world by interacting with the characters and engaging in a full micro-gaming experience. Retail Consumer Experiences Merchandise comes to life as stunning lifelike visuals and audio transport your customer into a remote natural paradise. By engaging the natural senses, experience proximity can capture the customer’s attention and provide an emotional connection to the product. Allow this experience to become reality by enabling the customer to book a campsite for the weekend. DDB Creativity

One Degree: Increase Sales with Case Studies

2010-07-06T08:05:00.000-07:00

By Jesse Hopps

Case studies are an excellent way to profile your target customers while demonstrating how you solved their specific business challenge. They are often used by Sales to illustrate how an organization has helped clients in a similar industry, size, or other relevant demographic. Use our downloadable Case Study Template to save time & effort with building an effective case study that can help you win more new business.
What is a Case Study?

A case study is a communication tool that outlines how an organization solved a particular business challenge. Typically, case studies include: the problem, analysis of alternatives, recommended solution, implementation, and measurable results.
Case Study Best Practices:

* Always base your case study on an issue that has a significant impact on your target audience. What are the problems that your solution solves?
* Support your case study with hard numbers. Use charts, tables, figures or statistics where applicable to enhance your credibility, but don’t overload.
* Avoid using proprietary terms or technical jargon.
* Insert names, titles, and quotes from customers or partners involved.
* Communicate both the expected and achieved Return on Investment.

Action Plan:

1. Profile your Target Customer – every organization finds a sweet spot in the market that is particularly suited for their products/services. This demographic may be based on Annual Sales, or industry, or any other relevant characteristic. Identify a prototypical customer who had a very strong need for your solution.
2. Contact & Gain Permission – contact your target customer and ask them if they would be willing to work with you to complete a brief case study. They will need to provide you with a quote or testimonial and/or act as a reference.
3. Develop a Case Study Template - you may wish to build more than one case study, so keep them consistent. Use Demand Metric’s downloadable Case Study Template to quickly format your case study.
4. Complete & Sign Off – complete your case study and send a proof to the profiled customer for sign off. Never post or distribute a case study that has not been approved, as many companies restrict marketing collateral rights.
5. Launch your Case Study - ensure your case study is easily accessible to your Sales, Management, or Services staff. Consider sending your case study out in a company newsletter (internal or external) or to potential prospects. Be sure to post your case study on your corporate website under ‘Customers’.

Bottom-Line:

Case Studies can be a very effective method for strengthening your relationship with key accounts, and increase new sales. As these don’t need to take a long time to complete, consider developing a different Case Study for each business problem your solution can solve...One Degree

Partners and Edell Blog: Charm’s Cool

2010-07-06T07:06:00.000-07:00

So there’s this company that has an ad campaign.
And it’s the nastiest ad campaign ever aired. How nasty? It presents the competition as complete bumbling shovelheaded buffoons. Commercial after commercial, at great media weights, it humiliates the competition.
And it does so to unprecedented success. Sales are up 46% in the latest quarter. Their stock is up 100% since the same time last year.
It’s competition at this point doesn’t know whether to poop or go blind.
So who’s that psychotically competitive company?
Apple. That poor sad competitor—Microsoft.
And how did they manage to get away with such an aggressive (and I mean North Korean level aggressive) campaign.
Charm.
The campaign is simply charming. The music is charming. The characters as performed by actors John Hodgeman and Justin Long are charming. The writing is charming. The tone, the sensibility, all charming.
To me it’s an absolutely perfect campaign. It’s got incredible longevity. It breaks down product benefits one at a time. And are those benefits clear? Clear as an azure blue sky on a December morning.
And the greatest accolade—it’s become part of popular culture. Not in a Burger King is-the-King-cool-or-just-really-creepy kind of way. It’s just sweet.
And charming.

Nothing cuts a gigantic wildly innovative market dominant software juggernaut down to size quite like presenting them as a cuddly incompetent dork.
And Microsoft still doesn’t appear, after all these years, to know how to deal with it.
Frankly, if I was up against a campaign this good, I wouldn’t know how to deal with it either. Their response still seems to be to just hope it goes away. Which to me, just makes it funnier.
Microsoft’s hugely expensive let’s bring in Jerry Seinfeld and Crispin Porter to go medieval on their collective Apple asses flamed out almost before it began.
And their current “I’m a PC” and I’m human and I’m interesting and I’m…trying way too hard, just doesn’t seem to be cutting it.
That’s how effective charm is.
But the charm also masks how incredibly brave this campaign is.
I have sat in endless brainstorming sessions where companies have clear benefits over the competition. The question inevitably will come up “why don’t we just show people how we’re better—you know, a side by side comparison.”
The client says “No. Why spend money to advertise the competition.”
The lawyer says “No. We’re opening ourselves up to litigation.”
The creative team says “No. It’s just so, y’know, old school.”
And if there’s anything that creative teams dislike more that being seen as unhip it’s being cute. Charm sits precariously on the borderline of the creative purgatory of Cute. Charm is a slippery slope. And no self-respecting creative person ever wants their work to be called Cute. Cute is kittens in baskets with yarn. Cute is babies in plant costumes. Creative people like to be funny and Cute isn’t funny. People will laugh at your Cute commercial, but it’ll be behind your back. Cute is creative death.
But Charm, as with all weapons, is incredibly effective when aimed accurately.
For example, what happens when Charm gets mixed together with wildly eccentric?
You get The Most Interesting Campaign Of The Year for The Most Interesting Man In The World. How interesting is he?

“His blood smells like cologne.”

“He lives vicariously through himself.”
“He once had an awkward moment just to see how it feels.”
“His reputation is expanding faster than the universe.”
“His beard alone has experienced more than a lesser man.”
“The police often question him just because they find him interesting.”
That’s the campaign for Dos Equis. And that’s the legend of The Man. We’re captivated. We’re entranced. And when he finally speaks to us in this TV commercial, does he go for a call to action? Does he extol the virtues of the beer? Not for him to stoop to such corporate stoogery.
“I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, I drink Dos Equis.”
Don’t always drink beer? In a beer commercial?
Now that’s a charmer
In an ad category of manscaped smugsters and beer-swilling bubbahs, The Most Interesting Man In The World uses wit as a weapon. Rather than celebrating the stupid and puerile, the appeal to the 12-year-old mind in an adult body, this advertising recognizes the fact that your voice has changed, you’ve got body hair and your testicles have descended. It’s a campaign for grown up men.
And the charming man gets the girl. Not the pull my finger guy.
Apple and Dos Equis. Charm rules.
So why aren’t there more charming campaigns? The most obvious reason is that they’re really really hard to do. They rely heavily on tone of voice, wit, style, incredible casting and great restraint. All elements that are hard for a lot of marketers to get their heads around. It all feels kind of touchy-feely in the hard-charging, media-neutral, results-oriented, innovate-or-die world of marketing today. And charming campaigns don’t test particularly well. So much is reliant on nuance. Sitting down 15 guys at $100 bucks a crack at a shopping mall on a snowy night in Regina virtually guarantees focus group suicide. Go ahead, ask them if they find it charming.
But when it’s done right. When all the precarious elements work together, charming campaigns are the ones that stand out, that really differentiate and captivate.
And boy do they work.
Like a, you know, charm...Partners & Edell Blog by John Farquhar

Business Insider: 10 Things You Need To Know This Morning

2010-07-06T06:14:00.000-07:00

Good Morning! Welcome to the news:

* Twitter's next revenue plan is reportedly to use the account @earlybird to tweet daily deals.

* Netflix entered into an agreement with movie maker Relativity Media, giving it exclusive streaming rights to Relativity movies.

* Prince says the internet is toast. Prince says it's like MTV. It was once hip, but now its outdated.

* MySpace is looking to sign a new ad deal to replace the Google deal which is ending.

* News Corp is looking to sell the Fox Audience Network (FAN), which runs many of MySpace's ads. If News Corp. sells FAN, then expect it to sell MySpace, reports Michael Arrington.

* The Apple versus Google battle is expected to dominate conversation at the annual Sun Valley mogul-fest.

* Apple is reportedly planning for iPads to hit a run rate of 2 million per month now.

* The price of labor in China is about to rise, and along with it, the price of smartphones, netbooks, and digital cameras will also rise.

* Daily Deal site Woot! (recently acquired by Amazon) wants the AP to pay it $17.50, for using too much of a Woot blog post in a story.

* Watch out for earnings estimates to start getting cut by analysts.

Read more: Business Insider

Profectio: National Film Board of Canada Launches iPad App, Instant Access To Over 1,000 Documentaries

2010-07-05T13:28:00.000-07:00

The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) launched its own iPad app last week that gives Apple iPad owners access to over 1,000 NFB documentaries, animated shorts and trailers, streamed over Wi-Fi and 3G wireless networks. It includes a selection of films in 3-D and stunning high definition. Users will also be able to download and store a film for up to 48 hours, for off-line viewing.
The app has the same features as the NFB’s iPhone app but has been optimized to take advantage of the inherent qualities of the iPad.

Features:

* Watch over 1,000 free movies
* Access a kids’ channel with fun and educational content for children
* Store films for up to 48 hours for off-line viewing
* Browse films by channel/category
* Search for films by title
* Bookmark your favourite films
* Browse related content while viewing a film thanks to split-screen technology

Profectio

ro0: 100 Beautiful Slides from Cannes Lions 2010

2010-07-05T13:23:00.000-07:00

Please click here to view

welcome to optimism: (video) small world

2010-07-05T13:17:00.000-07:00

Tony D here. Not often i contribute to the blog, but when i do i like to think it's of a high calibre. You may already be aware that the current award winning Old Spice campaign was produced out of our Portland office. However what is not so well known is that Freddie Powell, who co wrote the Nike 'Write the Future' epic,is the son of the original 'Old Spice girl'. Check out this link and have some 'mum envy'...welcome to optimism

Lowe Roche - Digital: From the Intern Desk: Fast Weeks, Firsts, & Fun Nervousness

2010-07-05T12:01:00.000-07:00

With the G20 craziness (which was going on right outside our office, hence the picture) and then Canada Day, the past two weeks have been short, busy, and have flown by! There were a few firsts for me, including my first off-site client visit, first agency-wide brainstorm (where I actually had some input!), and my first earthquake experience (we’re always shaking things up here at Lowe Roche! …Sorry, bad pun).

My first off-site client meeting was honestly the coolest experience I’ve had in my career, albeit very short, up to this point. We are doing some work with Roots Canada, and I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to go on the leather factory tour with a few others from the agency. We spent a couple hours there, gaining product/factory/brand knowledge, and met with Michael Budman himself – an extremely passionate and impressive person. I gained a lot from meeting him and seeing the inner workings of his business – it was all very inspiring. (It was also pretty sweet how he hooked us up with some product too, I won’t lie!) I’m super excited to be on this account, and look forward to the work we will be doing with them. In fact, within 24 hours of getting the account, we were delivering creative to the client, which I feel says a lot about what kind of agency this is.

Last week, I was part of a full-agency meeting, where I actually had the chance to speak up and pitch a creative concept. It doesn’t sound like much, but it was a remarkable experience for me. Having just recently finished business school, I’m used to being the one leading the meetings, but now I’m at the bottom of the totem pole, so to speak. And honestly, I was a little nervous to voice my opinion in front of these creative minds that have been in the ad business for years. But I think I did an okay job, and am glad to have that practice under my belt. (It’s fun being a little nervous!) I believe this is another example of how this agency works – everyone, not just creatives, has the opportunity to be involved in the brainstorming process and everyone has a say. One major thing I’ve learned about this business so far is that a great idea can come from anywhere.

So thanks again for reading, and as always, please let me know if there is anything you want to hear from me in an upcoming blog post. Cheers!Lowe Roche - Digital

TechCrunch: FaceTime and Why Apple’s Massive Integration Advantage is Just Beginning

2010-07-05T11:51:00.000-07:00

The success of iPhone 4 has been astonishing to witness, despite the antenna issues, proving once again that Apple has a unparalleled ability to differentiate around design and integration, not simply “features.”

Perhaps the best example of this so far is FaceTime, Apple’s take on video-calling. FaceTime makes video-calling on the Android-based Sprint HTC EVO look silly, because the EVO awkwardly requires users to sign up and download a third-party app, then launch it every time they want to talk. Normal people simply won’t do this.

Apple eliminated this friction by innovating at the confluence of hardware and software—hit one button mid-call and the feature just works. It really is amazing (yes, I am channeling Steve Jobs).

But FaceTime is just a teaser of Apple’s deep integration capabilities. Below the surface of hardware / software, Apple is on the cusp of differentiating on a much deeper level, a result of its strategy to vertically integrate at the component level. The advantages of integrating so deeply are subtle but incredibly powerful.

Feature Bloat in Components Benefits Apple:

I recently discussed why innovation in mobile is happening at an unprecedented pace. One primary driver is incredible component innovation.

But this rapid innovation—which is good overall—causes a negative byproduct: “feature bloat.” The HTC EVO, which crams in 4G wireless, epitomizes this best (sorry, but mobile 4G is not ready for primetime, and I firmly believe Apple won’t even include it on next year’s iPhone 5).

The temptation for companies to differentiate via features is a virtuous cycle: component vendors (Broadcom, TI, Qualcomm) compete aggressively based on integration levels. Handset OEMs like HTC push vendors to release features prematurely, and they make component decisions based on availability of bleeding edge (but often buggy) technology.

This leads to a “kitchen sink” mentality, which conflicts with customer development frameworks, ironically driving a maximum feature set. Pressure from handset OEMs is a driver, but component vendors also tend to use competitive analysis to shape their marketing requirements. Steve Blank made some excellent insights into why this leads to feature bloat. The poor reviews of the HTC EVO are proof that—though alluring—additional features don’t always speak to consumers. Especially when they kill your battery overnight.

Apple thinks much differently about adding features. While the HTCs of the world “differentiate” blindly based on available technology, Apple innovates only when it can create a superior, well-integrated user experience.

Right now this virtuous cycle of feature bloat is accelerating in system-on-chip (SoC) development for the reasons I outlined above. And Apple is poised to sidestep it by vertically integrating and producing chips which mirror its minimalist product strategy.

Supply-Chain Transparency is an Enormous Unspoken Benefit for Apple:

Perhaps even more powerful is an unspoken advantage afforded to Apple’s SoC designers: vertical integration gives them explicit knowledge of what’s happening across the entire component ecosystem and value-chain.

How? Every component vendor in the world visits Cupertino to share its “secret” roadmap—despite the fact that Apple now competes in SoC development. The dangling carrot of an Apple design win simply outweighs any aversion to sharing. This transparency from other chip makers is extremely powerful, since handset OEMs plan several generations out (e.g. Apple is undoubtedly in concept stages with iPhone 6 and the A6).

Apple can learn Broadcom’s chip plans and mull over whether to bring portions of the digital logic related to GPS and WiFi on to the A6. New technologies like NFC for payments—bring in-house or purchase discrete? There are dozens of permutations, each with design challenges, benefits, and risks.

By extracting data from suppliers, Apple’s chip team has a feedback loop into product planning. All of this collective wisdom adds up, helping Apple decide what to roll-up, buy, license, or outsource. Imagine seeing your competition’s entire feature roadmap, and then planning your own SoC strategy. It’s like seeing your neighbor’s wife naked, and deciding afterward whether you’re interested, even though you’re already married.

Cisco has used a similar vertical integration strategy to its benefit in the enterprise for many years (Broadcom and Marvell pitch Ethernet fabrics despite the fact that Cisco builds its own switch chips). But in mobile, Apple is the only company who owns all three elements of the value-chain—hardware, software and chip components (outside of Samsung). Nokia divested its component division to STMicro, and Ericsson and Motorola spun off theirs as well.

As multicore ARM-based chips accelerate, and as software / hardware integration becomes more of a differentiator, Apple engineering teams will out-innovate competitors at the intersection of these three levels (again, antenna issues aside). It’s much more difficult for Google, Motorola, and others to cross-pollinate information from their own independent silos.

In tomorrow’s smartphone wars, this transparency into the entire mobile value-chain will give Apple an incredibly powerful advantage. This strategic implication wasn’t lost on Steve Jobs when he made the decision to vertically integrate and compete with the giants in the semiconductor world.

Fact is, Apple is a company run by brilliant strategists and user experience designers, not engineers. They know that deep component, hardware, and software integration gives Apple an enduring advantage as mobile platforms evolve. Which is why Apple will undoubtedly produce more devices and features that become huge hits like iPhone 4 and FaceTime...TechCrunch

Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim: Will Your Life Be Better in 10 Years Because of the Internet?

2010-07-05T06:58:00.000-07:00

Assuming we are granted seeing the next 10 years unfold, how will the Internet impact your life and in particular your social interactions?

According to ‘experts’ (overused and often undeserved title alert!) a study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, life is gonna be good because of the social web. Honestly, since most of these folks probably depend on the Internet to make a living are they going to say anything else?

The study revealed

The social benefits of internet use will far outweigh the negatives over the next decade, according to experts. They say this is because email, social networks, and other online tools offer “low friction” opportunities to create, enhance, and rediscover social ties that make a difference in people’s lives. The internet lowers traditional communications constraints of cost, geography, and time; and it supports the type of open information sharing that brings people together.

While they acknowledge that use of the internet as a tool for communications can yield both positive and negative effects, a significant majority of technology experts and stakeholders participating in the fourth Future of the Internet survey say it improves social relations and will continue to do so through 2020.
Please continue reading here: Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

Business Insider: The Shocking Media Habits Of 8-18 Year Olds

2010-07-03T09:28:00.000-07:00

Kids are leading the world's transition to digital media
.

This is in part because kids aren't afraid of technology, and in part because kids haven't spent years getting use to anything else.

So if you want to get a sense of where the world's media habits are headed, it makes sense to watch what kids are doing.

The Kaiser Family Foundation did just that in a comprehensive survey released early this year. Kaiser surveyed more than 2,000 families
, and turned up all sorts of interesting information about the media habits of 8-18 year olds.

Some key points:

* Kids consume a heck of a lot of media--and more all the time. Basically, if kids are awake, they're consuming media. And, increasingly, they're consuming multiple forms of media at the same time.

* Kids' print media consumption is tiny and falling.

* Kids' digital media consumption is going through the roof.

No big surprise there. What is a surprise is how little parents seem to care about this. (Or, alternatively, how much parents encourage this media consumption by consuming a huge amount of media themselves.)

* In 2/3 of households, TVs are on during meals

* In 75% of households, TVs are on when no one is watching them.

* More than 70% of kids have TVs in their bedrooms

* Only 1/3 of households have media-consumption rules

No surprise, more media is consumed in households in which TVs are always on, where there are no media consumption rules, and where kids have TVs in their bedrooms.

And, no surprise, kids who consume the most media get the worst grades (but is this cause or effect?)

It's a long presentation, but it's awesome.
Flip through the presentation here >

Read more: Business Insider

PR2.0: Engage is Now Available in the Apple iBookstore

2010-07-02T07:18:00.000-07:00

My friends over at Wiley Publishing alerted me to some good news today. If you own an iPad or iPhone, Engage! is now available in the Apple iBookstore.
About Engage

Now is the time for businesses to shift from experimenting with social media to strategically designing and measuring campaigns that contribute to brand resonance, positive sentiment, advocacy, and most importantly, the bottom line. While many books, talk about social media as something that businesses need to embrace, most leave marketers wondering what they need to do and how this information applies to them

Engage was written to not only learn how to apply social media strategies within your company, it also helps you rally support and implement programs to excel personally and professionally. With the foreword contributed by Mr. Ashton Kutcher, Engage is indeed the complete guide to help you effectively…engage.

This book promises to provide the answers and insights necessary to effectively build communities, activate the social web, end the battle of who owns social media, guide you through branding yourself and your company online, and also determine the ROI of everything you do.

This is your time… PR2.0

Report On Business - Marketing: What is Canada’s brand?

2010-07-02T06:59:00.000-07:00

The question of identity is worth considering, as countries with strong brands can capture a competitive edge.

When it comes to marketing, sometimes what you think you’re saying isn’t what your audience hears.

Last week, The New Yorker magazine trumpeted the fact that all of the ads purchased in its edition coinciding with the G8 and G20 summits were taken out by Canadian organizations. There were tourism promotions, invitations for foreign investment, and boasts of clean energy industries. But readers flipping through the issue also received another unmistakable message between the lines. Out of almost 21 pages of ads, 18 of them – or 82 per cent – were paid for by various federal, provincial, and local government departments, which declared in their totality: Welcome to Canada, a place where it’s impossible to get away from the government!

As Canada turns 143 years old today, it is grappling with one of the most modern questions: Namely, What is our brand?

This is not just an academic issue. Over the past few years, the practice of place branding has proven to be catnip to countries around the world seeking a competitive edge. Italian industry and its government heavily market the country’s high fashion and foods. Germany emphasizes its engineering prowess. The United States throws hundreds of millions of dollars and much political effort behind the export of its high-tech and entertainment industries. (Needless to say, the country no longer tries to export its financial sector with the muscle it once did.)

A few years ago, Agriculture Canada rolled out a program to brand domestically produced foodstuffs with maple leaf icons and the tagline, “Quality is in our nature.” Other government agencies are exploring programs that could brand Canada and its products and services.

That’s because brands enable entities – whether people, companies, or places – to create and then capture premiums. Brands allow the whole to be greater than the sum of the parts. Countries with strong brands capture political, cultural, and economic premiums. When observers talk about Canada punching above its weight on the world stage, they’re really talking about the country leveraging its political capital based on a brand.

One year ago today, Erin O’Keefe, Interbrand Canada's director of strategy and brand engagement, was working in the company’s New York office when she took a few moments to ponder the difference between the Canadian and U.S. national holidays unfolding this weekend.

“The Fourth of July is about a revolution, the triumph of the individual,” she noted earlier this week. July 1st, on the other hand, commemorates the decision to form a country out of four founding provinces. “Canadians celebrate a meeting. A union. It’s an agreement about mutual goals over the individual.”

And it’s awfully hard to escape your DNA. The motto of “Peace, order, and good government,” included in the Constitution Act of 1867, still retains a hold over every decision we make.

Until a couple of years ago, of course, Canada was widely ridiculed for the zealous regulation of its financial sector. But in a piquant illustration of how fashions can change overnight, our caution became our fame. Boring became sexy.

Outside the banking industry, there may be no better illustration of the success bred by solidity than in our food exports. Over the past decade, studies commissioned by Agriculture Canada demonstrate that foreigners believe Canadian food to be highly desirable because of its safety and dependability.

From Singapore to Germany and Mexico, consumers may not often think of Canada, but when they do, the association tends to be positive. Those in Hong Kong are both very aware of Canada and Canadian products – owing to the fact that as much as 3 per cent of its population may hold Canadian passports – and predisposed to liking them.

“South Koreans think more highly of Canada than the United States and Australia, in terms of good reputation as a country, clean environment, trustworthy and likeable people,” reads one Agriculture Canada summary that reflects a typical sentiment. In the United Kingdom, Canada scores second only to the host country on such measures as “trust in food system” and “ability to deliver on benefits.” That’s us: trustworthy and dependable.

Still, brands can be finicky things, especially in countries that flirt with chauvinism. “There are some markets, like in the U.S., where some companies don’t want to identify themselves as Canadian, and that’s fine, because it’s a bonus for them if they can fly under the radar,” notes Melissa Furkalo, a senior markets and trade officer who oversees the Ontario office of Agriculture Canada’s Brand Canada program.

“Americans tend to have that ‘Buy American’ view, so they’re more likely to buy something American. So if you’re advertising yourself as Canadian, it might not always work to your advantage. It’s better to be generic.”

Which is why it’s hard to find a Canadian flag on a BlackBerry package in any foreign territory.

But as Canada explores more branding programs, it needs to keep in mind that it isn’t always the best judge of what it says to the world. In the case of The New Yorker magazine, the medium – all those ads paid for by the government – may have overwhelmed the intended message that Canada is a place cutting-edge companies should consider investing in.

Sandy Shiffman of the brand consultancy Millward Brown suggests one solution. If Canada undertakes an external branding program, “We would be very wise to get a shop over the pond to study us and help us encapsulate what we stand for as a brand,” she says. “It is like writing your own résumé. It can be difficult for us to do the brand positioning work.” ...Report On Business - Marketing

Business Insider: 10 Things You Need To Know This Morning

2010-07-02T05:43:00.000-07:00

Good morning! Here's the news:

* Google is acquiring travel software company ITA for $700 million.

* Apple hasn't banned Google ads from the iPhone yet, say developers.

* comScore also made an acquisition picking up Nexius a mobile analytics company.

* IBM is going with Firefox as its default browser.

* Apple's iAds are popping up in apps now.

* The two execs at Microsoft and Yahoo responsible for making the search deal work are grilled by Kara Swisher.

* Asked if he wishes he bought Facebook, Viacom Boss Philip Dauman says, "It wasn’t for sale. I’d be interested in buying Buckingham Palace, but that’s not for sale either."

* Disney acquired top iPhone game company Tapulous.

* Remember Diaspora, the open-source Facebook competitor? They're celebrating a one month anniversary.

* Google CEO Eric Schmidt basically admits Google's trying to make another social network.

* (Enjoy the fourth of July weekend everybody in the USA!)

Read more: Business Insider

adweek: Alex Bogusky Resigns From MDC

2010-07-01T09:14:00.000-07:00

In recent years, the legendary creative exec had less input at holding company's flagship agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky

Alex Bogusky's resignation from MDC Partners and its flagship agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky underscores one of the biggest challenges the Toronto-based holding company faces moving forward.

MDC's business model of acquiring entrepreneurial companies is being tested as the founders of its early acquisitions now cash out. At the beginning of this year, MDC was due to pay the remaining earn-outs of $47 million in cash and stock to principals at its two largest agencies, Crispin and Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners. KBS+P and Crispin together contribute about 35 percent of MDC's revenue.

Bogusky's exit from MDC, where he had become a creative figurehead at the holding company in January, follows the departure of Jon Bond in February, who left KBS+P after 23 years. Bond has since reemerged to bankroll new digital competitors to MDC companies.

The delicate art of institutionalizing agency culture at MDC agencies was made all too clear after the collapse of the holding company's first U.S. acquisition, Margeotes Fertitta Powell, which was folded into Kirshenbaum in 2007 after the departure of its founder, George Fertitta.

But Bogusky is MDC's biggest star, earning him praise as Adweek's Creative Director of the Decade last December. While he stepped back from a day-to-day creative role at his agency two years ago, his departure, from an image perspective, is a huge blow. At present, visitors to MDC's new home page are greeted with the 47-year-old hosting a video showing a new digital feature that allows "high-tech stalking" of MDC's execs. (Bogusky kicks off the exercise by pointing to Boulder, Colo., on a map where he reports he is "rockin' my new Birkenstocks at Sherpa's.")

MDC has been preparing for Bogusky's possible departure from an agency he joined in 1989. In early 2008, he was named co-chair at Crispin, with agency execs Andrew Keller and Rob Reilly assuming top creative responsibility as co-ecds and becoming partners. After Bogusky assumed the top MDC creative role, he is said to have spent half his time on his outside projects, which have included writing books like 9-Inch Diet and Baked In.

In a statement, MDC Partners said: "Alex Bogusky has resigned from MDC Partners in order to focus his time and energy on pursuing a number of initiatives and issues apart from advertising and marketing that he feels strongly about. We have enjoyed a long and tremendously productive partnership over the past 10 years and have the utmost respect and admiration for Alex. We're confident that many important causes will benefit from his passion and brilliance, and wish him the very best in all of his future endeavors."...adweek.com

simonmainwaring: The new Old Spice spot from Wieden & Kennedy. Just as much fun.

2010-07-01T07:05:00.000-07:00

Pro PR: A Birthday Buss for Canada

2010-07-01T06:44:00.000-07:00

Today is Canada’s 143rd birthday. Happy birthday Canada!

I’m a proud Canadian. I love this country.

Canada is a place of small cities and large towns. Even today as a country of 34 million people. We look one another in the eye when we walk down the street, and we’re not afraid to smile in recognition.

It’s a place that allows me, my family, my friends, my neighbors to live the life that we want. It’s a country of peace and tolerance.

I don’t know anyone who owns a gun.

Canada is a country that celebrates diversity. I grew up assuming that people would come to Canada from around the world and they would continue to live and celebrate their unique heritage and culture.

Our Charter of Rights has embedded our freedoms in our Constitution. Thank you Pierre Trudeau.

Thanks to our British heritage, we have a Parliamentary system of government. Not perfect, but perhaps the best system of government. And in Canada we’ve turned minority parliaments into working governments.

We live next door to the United States. I grew up with a front row seat on the great American adventure. Thanks to our access to U.S. media, I shared my American friends’ experiences, their fears, their successes. Like many Canadians, I feel very close to America and Americans. But I’m also conscious of the differences. I like and respect everything that’s great about the U.S. And I always hope that Americans like us. Because, when the elephant rolls over, the mouse…

Here’s to the CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. You give us a window on our own experience.

In Canada we have the metric system. And car speedometers that display both miles and kilometres. Because we do love to take vacations in the United States.

Hockey! Our national sport (Well, not quite. It’s officially lacrosse, but who wants to quibble.) And don’t forget the Canadian Football League (they never will in Saskatchewan)

Canadian spelling. Let’s always remember that neighbour has that “U” in it.

Here’s to our weather. Only in Ottawa, Canada’s capital, can I awaken to a sunny July 1 Canada Day morning and discover that the temperature is 12°C. You’ve got to love living in a country where you can get any or all of the four seasons on any day of the year.

Most of all, I love the people of Canada.

I’ve been fortunate that my work has required me to travel extensively. And wherever I go in this great country, I feel welcomed by other Canadians. Friendly, peaceful, happy people.

July 1. Canada Day. A day to count our blessings. A day to celebrate all the things, large and small, that make our country great.

Happy birthday Canada!Pro PR

brandflakesforbreakfast: storytelling reinvented

2010-07-01T06:36:00.000-07:00

Touching Stories is a film that was produced entirely for the iPad. They've built user interaction into the production, so that the viewer can actually impact scenes in the film by touching, shaking and using the iPad for everything it was meant to do.

Welcome to the first wave of genius productions that will change the way we consume media. Expect even more brilliance over the next months, as developers really get a handle and fully realize what's possible with this magical device. Thanks, Pete! brandflakesforbreakfast

Business Insider: 10 Things You Need To Know This Morning

2010-07-01T05:36:00.000-07:00

Welcome to July! Here's the news:

* Microsoft killed its failed Kin phone. Engadget's report on what killed the Kin is pretty troubling for Microsoft's mobile future.

* Amazon cut the price on the Kindle DX to $379 and it says it improved the screen's contrast.

* Amazon acquired daily deals site Woot for $110 million in cash.

* Yahoo announced authorization for a $3 billion stock buyback.

* IPO filings are the highest they've been since 2007, with 89 companies filing last quarter.

* Details are leaking on the next version of Android software. There's hints of tablet love in the new version.

* USV backed startup Wesabe is shutting down. It was a Mint.com competitor.

* Finland made access to broadband a "legal right."

* Mozilla submitted a cool app to the App Store called Firefox Home. It connects your desktop browsing to the app. Let's see if Apple approves it.

* Google is tacking on extra pay for its gay employees who have domestic partners. The extra pay is to cover the tax on health benefits that straight employees don't have.
Read more: Business Insider

DRAFTFCBlog: Draftfcb’s Institute of Decision Making: Tapping into what really MATTERS to Consumers

2010-06-30T12:08:00.000-07:00

Posted by Soraya Eltomey, Corporate Communications Associate, Draftfcb

Draftfcb today announced the launch of its Institute of Decision Making. What’s this all about exactly? Well it has to do with understanding the instinctual triggers that influence consumer decisions and applying that expertise to attract new business and build better brand value for clients.

To find out more about what’s to come from this global group and its academic partners at Stanford and Berkeley, check out the video below from the Institute’s director, Draftfcb San Francisco Director of Strategic Planning Matthew Willcox.

Please click here to continue reading and view video: DRAFTFCBlog

Six Pixels of Separation: First Things First

2010-06-30T11:47:00.001-07:00

Strategy before tactics.

"What are we doing on Blogs, Facebook and YouTube?" is the wrong question to ask (so don't let those boardroom discussions get too heated). The better question is: "why?" "Why should we be on Blogs, Facebook and YouTube?" As I've said before, asking "why?" forces a brand to look at the business objectives and strategy first. "What?" is simply a tactic (which should always follow from the strategy). It's the same as when initial brand planning sessions immediately diverge into conversations about the color of the logo or what the business cards should look like. We will (hopefully) all agree that the strategy needs to drive the tactics.

But before you get to the strategy, ask yourself this...

What are we really great at creating? Social Media isn't one kind of media channel. It's many different type of media that can be interacted with, created and collaborated on in many different ways. If you have a solid strategy that aligns everything to being on Twitter (let's just say), you then have to find someone within the organization that will not only understand Twitter (what it is, how it works, etc...) but they will have to be good (err... great!) at publishing small bursts of content, frequently and engaging with others within the Twitter community. As obvious as that may sound, I've seen many strategies relegated to the bottom drawer of the Chief Marketing Officer's filing cabinet because there was nobody within the organization who had the passion and skills to be the content creator and see the initiative through.

Remember: being great at Marketing means being great at Publishing.

Yes, you can still use broadcast media to drive a message through, but when you start to connect with Social Media and the many new communications and marketing platforms, you are a publisher, and the best publishers live and breathe the content they are sharing. So, if it turns out that the strategy deck calls for YouTube but there is nobody with a passion for online video, you're going to struggle (unless you can bring in the right resources). To make Social Media work - in a very authentic way - you need to sit down, review your team and figure out what you're good at creating, publishing and talking about.

There's some good news.

Again, Social Media isn't just one media. It's many media channels. You can create content in text, audio, video and images. You can create short pieces of content (think Twitter or posting pictures to Flickr) or you can create an ongoing Podcast series (in audio or video). Spend those initial first moments before diving into the strategy to really figure out what type of content you would be best at producing. That line of thought might help move the strategy along, and it will also ensure that there is someone (or many people) within the organization that not only see this as part of their day-to-day job, but enjoy the process of creating it and engaging within it.

Take the time to really figure out what you're good at before chasing after the latest shiny social media object.

Six Pixels of Separation - Marketing and Communications Insights - By Mitch Joel at Twist Image

360 Digital Influence Blog: Its all about location. But will there be a winner?

2010-06-30T11:41:00.000-07:00

Since everyone is talking about location let’s extend the conversation Sophia started in her post “Geo-Location Is Truly Everywhere“.

It seems we at interesting point in time in location based content. One one hand you have the early pioneers of this new land Foursquare and Gowalla (I will leave Mytown on its own because of the amazing gaming experience) who are consistently gaining new users. But what happens to Foursquare and the likes when people start tapping into the API for Twitters geo location data and when Facebook checkin gains critical mass ?

On one hand the openness of API’s means all platforms can technically benefit because there is more geo tagged content. For example if Foursquare pulled in places data which was actually tagged via a tweet it would only enhance the experience consumers have while trying to oust their others as the “Mayor”.

The flip side is that the critical mass of Twitter and Facebook could mean doom for the little guys.Kind of like when the big box retailer moves into to small town America.

The advantage I see Facebook having in this space is the amount of behavioral data it collects both implicit and explicitly. This could translate into highly targeted content and very relevant offers. If there was a way to opt in for specials or useful content delivered to my mobile device from my favorite brands I would do it. The challenge with the current models is that they are only location based and not preference. This may feel like spam to some.

Assuming the start ups can extend their platforms and keep a fun gaming experience with a proper balance of rewards extending beyond a badge there is plenty of shelf space available.

Only time will tell how this will shake out but either way location based content and marketing has made great progress. It is proving to be a unique way for brands to engage and reward their most loyal customers with special offers based on frequency or prospective customers who happen to be “nearby”.

How do you think this will play out? Will there be a “winner” or Will everyone win because of broader adoption? 360 Digital Influence Blog

Conversation Agent: Social Media Metrics (book review)

2010-06-30T07:21:00.000-07:00

In thinking about metrics, it seems to me that the difficulty is not so much in measuring -- there's plenty you can measure online. So much, in fact, that the conversation needs to be about what to measure, and why. Why is especially important.

Measurement has become more important for marketers in recent years, especially with the increased fragmentation of media.

With digital media, once you know your objective and goals, your strategy can have measurement built right into it -- from the get go.

How do you optimize the myriad ways you could execute a program?

In his book about Social Media Metrics: How to Measure and Optimize Your Marketing Investment (Amazon affiliate link), Jim Sterne talks about:

* identifying goals -- what do you want to accomplish?
* reaching your audience -- how do you get attention?
* identifying influence -- is it just about follower count?
* recognizing sentiment -- can this be automated?
* triggering action -- are you noteworthy?
* hearing the conversation -- are you on top of searches, reviews, likes?
* driving business outcomes -- are you getting results?
* convincing your colleagues -- do you need help with buy-in?
* seeing the future -- will customers truly run the show?

Listen

The biggest opportunity for companies still resides with listening. The best place to start with that is by determining what your goal is: do you intend to track brand mentions, are you looking to identify market risks and opportunities, how about improving your campaign while in market.

Other ideas are measuring customer satisfaction beyond the net promoter score, responding to customer inquiries and gain a better understanding of customers so you can anticipate their wants and needs.

Learn

Listen, if you were just able to aggregate all of the combined information from what all your employees hear in their separate functions, you'd be able to make true headway in insight to action.

However, listening online is a bit more complicated -- you need to filter out the information that is not important to your business rules. To get to insights you also need fact-based analysis.

The biggest contribution you can have from listening is gaining an understanding of the impact of your participation on business results.
Leverage

Measuring the effects of what you're doing in social media marketing is the only way to know what you're going to do next. Just like in all other kinds of marketing. Things like purchase intent and actual purchase need to be part of the conversation.

To leverage the integration of social with other channels and off line experiences and get results, you need to figure out a way to attribute the contribution of each tactic in social (and that of the other media, BTW).

***

This book gives you a comprehensive look at measurement in social media and the issues/considerations associated with it. Who should read it? If you're an individual or an agency still grappling with how to create a baseline, figure out what needs measuring, and want examples of how other organizations have done it, pick up a copy.

***

What would you like to see next in the field of measurement and metrics? Conversation Agent

brand dna: 30 years of Apple

2010-06-30T07:10:00.000-07:00

brand dna

Simon Mainwaring: Top ten reasons social media should not (and will not) kill traditional advertising.

2010-06-30T06:52:00.000-07:00

I spent the week at the Cannes International Advertising Festival and came away greatly encouraged. Not only did the Festival team (led by Terry Savage and Philip Thomas) do an amazing job but I was impressed by how well the event captured the latest expression of the marketing world. With all the excitement (and, yes, hype) around social media, one might expect this bastion of traditional advertising to take a defensive posture and shun social media, or at least to be a little out of touch. The opposite was true. Not only did the work and seminars fully embrace the potential of social media, but agencies and clients demonstrated real engagement with the marriage of the two. So I thought I’d use my experience of this year’s Festival as a way to explain why traditional advertising is more relevant than ever.

1. IT’S ABOUT THE IDEA: Whether it’s an uber traditional ad spot like Nike’s World Cup spot, ‘Write the Future’, or the Cyber Grand Prix-winning Nike Chalkbot, the fact remains that it’s the idea that determines success with consumers and at the show. Social media expands the reach of great content, but ideas determine reach into hearts and minds. As such, veteran idea generators like ad agencies are very important.

2. FIRST PRINCIPLES, NEW MEDIA: Irrespective of your marketing speciality – whether it be traditional, digital, or social media – the timeless fundamentals of effective advertising apply. Work needs to be simple, emotional and consistent. As such the hard won lessons of traditional advertising agencies are more relevant than ever. They just need to be applied to all media including social media.

3. SOCIAL MEDIA IS IS NOT AN END IN ITSELF: I did not see a single piece of work celebrated at Cannes simply because it was social media. The power of social media is only unleashed when an emotional connection is made that motivates someone to share something using social tools. Brands at the Festival demonstrated a clear understanding of this and a due respect for agencies as architects of community.

4. BRAND CUSTOMERS: Clients made up almost 15% of the 8000 attendees this year according to Ad Age, and this demonstrates a recognition of two facts. One is that consumers are now reaching out directly to brands through social media, and, secondly, that brands are looking to ad agencies for guidance in how to respond. As such the client/agency dynamic is as critical as ever. In fact Terry Savage, Festival Chairman, also said he is 90% sure there will be a prize for effectiveness next year in which clients will play some role.

5. ‘GOOD’ BUSINESS: So much work demonstrated that brands and agencies realize that consumers want a better world, not just better widgets. This a new thing. Campaigns like the Millions, UNICEF Tapwater and Earth hour receiving titanium awards in recent years. What’s more this year the Festival introduced the first Grand Prix for Good indicating a further appreciation of the positive role that advertising can and must play.

6. SILO BLURRING: This year clearly demonstrated the ability of traditional ad agencies to fill new roles. For instance, Interactive Agency of the Year was Crispin, Porter & Bogusky, and Direct Agency of the Year was Abbott Mead Vickers in London. As traditional ad agencies migrate their focus and talent into emerging areas, their creative prowess will come to bear on the marketing.

7. PURPOSE AS PROFIT: One of the things I stressed in my seminar was that the future of profit is purpose. This is based on the recognition that the universal values that inform purposeful work make brands innately sharable and therefore potentially profitable. Across the board work demonstrated a recognition that consumers want to see their brands changing the world for the better. A great demonstration of this was done by the Festival itself when Jeff Goodby, Ben Stiller and Yahoo, enlisted the entire audience to raise money for Stillerstong that is building schools in Haiti.

8. TECH = SAVVY: As someone who attended last year, I was struck by how tech savvy everyone suddenly became. Eyes were permanently glued to iPhones and Blackberries, laptops served as sun reflectors and there was amble wi-fi and power throughout the Palais (which is not always the case even at tech conferences). As such the Festival did a great job of reflecting the impact of technology discussed in so many of the seminars.

9. TRIUMPH OF YOUTH: Each year the Festival does an amazing job of filling its hall with the future of the industry. It would be easy for an expensive Festival such as this to become stocked with veteran ad types (like me!) but this year I felt more old and out numbersed than ever. This is partly due to the Young Lions Zone and new efforts this year through Cannes Connect to put attendees in touch with each other and their communities.

10. THE FUTURE IS HERE: Each year the Festival does a great job of securing the thought leaders from areas that are re-shaping the industry. This year it was Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook. The Debussy Room was packed to the rafters with two others rooms outside full of people as well. Beyond the understandable fascination around such successful entrepreneurs, the industry is clearly listening to those shaping their future on a daily basis.

With that said, there is still ground to be gained. I was surprised how few people were tweeting out from laptops during the seminars (if that’s any indication of the audience’s personal engagement with their own social communities). Plus I believe the private sector (represented by brands and ad agencies at forums like Cannes) can play an even more powerful role in shaping the future of marketing and society at large. No doubt next year will demonstrate an even fuller embrace of this potential in which brands, ad agencies and consumers co-create the stories that move people, sell products and change our world for the better.

How do you think traditional advertising agencies are doing? Are they sufficiently embracing social media?
If you liked the post, please tweet, Digg or Stumble it. Thanks! Simon Mainwaring

Business Insider: 10 Things You Need To Know This Morning Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/10-things-you-need-to-know-this-morning

2010-06-30T06:08:00.000-07:00

Good morning! Here's the news you need to end June:

* iPhone is said to be coming to Verizon in January. If true, one analyst thinks it equals 12 million new iPhone sales, or $7 billion in revenue next year, as well as an additional $3.00 EPS.

* Sony is recalling 500,000 Vaio laptops
because they run too hot and melt the laptop.

* YouTube is going to offer skippable ads to users. If an ad is skipped, then advertisers don't get charged.

* MapQuest got a make-over. New logo, new look.

* Foursquare raised $20 million at a $95 million valuation.

* Hulu made its subscription service available to a select audience. $10 per month for more shows and access on the iPad/iPhone and other gadgets.

* Yahoo promoted Erin McPherson from biz dev at Yahoo Media to "original programming chief." She'll be in charge of ramping Yahoo's content strategy.

* Remember Chatroulette? Well, Salon is saying it's dead, which probably means its going to flourish once again.

* Twitpic is threatening legal action against Posterous, because Posterous is offering to put all your TwitPics on Posterous.

* Amazon.com was down for hours yesterday. It's back now, but so far it gave no details on what went wrong.

Read more: Business Insider

Business Insider: Check Out The 27 Brands That Will Dominate The Future

2010-06-29T11:49:00.000-07:00

A good brand is a tremendous advantage for a company, but its potential is difficult to forecast.

According to a new study done by Credit Suisse, efficient branding
is a vital indicator for investors. They came up with 27 brands that will be big in the next years. Among them are well-known brands like Apple or Facebook, but the study shows that many of these brands are from Asia or the Middle-East.

Pay attention.

Read more: Business Insider

Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association: Another Reason for Business to Embrace Social Media

2010-06-29T08:17:00.000-07:00

Breaking down organizational silos in favour of organization-wide collaboration was a predominant theme at CMA’s Social Media Conference last week. Presenters emphasized the significant value proposition of this more holistic approach to management – with the caveat that a full implementation of such a dramatic new policy will prove difficult.

“I think they’ll always be silos,” said David Armano, Senior Vice-President Digital at Edelman, in his keynote address. But you have to make the silos more permeable, he said. Several speakers provided useful examples of how to break down the barriers created by fragmentation. Jeff Gluck, Senior Manager, Marketing Communication and Web with MTS
Allstream, discussed the company’s Idea Factory initiative. The project saw the development of an intranet-based social media tool where employees in all departments could submit ideas to better the company. The response to the project, Gluck said, was very positive. Similar initiatives have been undertaken by myriad organizations – even the United States government operates a similar program though the Department of Homeland Security.

Another illustration of breaking down silos was provided by presenters from Research In Motion. Becky Young and Michelle Kostya are RIM’s Social Media Marketing Manager and Community Manager respectively. While they both leverage social media for the benefit of the organization, they are responsible for separate departments, which have unique areas of focus.

However, they make considerable effort to foster collaboration between their individual segments, particularly with respect to social media. Kostya says within RIM there are councils that have weekly calls to discuss social media policy, ensuring coordination across departments. This helps ensure customers get a consistent approach from Blackberry support teams providing user assistance through social media channels. “When consumers are online (using social media) they don’t expect to hear from one department or the other,” said Kostya. “They just want to hear from the company.”

Additionally, Kostya works out of a Young’s office once a week. This would be a frightening proposition for many - but it surely helps RIM’s Community Manager gain valuable insight into the operations of her colleague’s department.

A full transition of an organization’s structure from one of isolation to complete collaboration will face considerable challenges moving forward. But the introduction of social media tools into the marketing mix has helped to clearly demonstrate the benefits of a more holistic approach to company operations. If marketers continue to discuss and promote these benefits as they relate to profitability, senior managers will undoubtedly be galvanized in support of the destruction of organizational silos. Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association by Jordan Sandler at CMA

OgilvyWW: (video)Well deserved Gold in Cannes for Ogilvy Johannesburg for a new way of looking at AIDS

2010-06-29T07:53:00.000-07:00

Collective Conversation Feed: How do you measure PR?

2010-06-29T07:28:00.000-07:00

While most of the worlds attention has been turned toward Cannes and the festival of advertising there♣, the faceless men and women of the PR industry have been busy trying to work out standard measurements to track and value what it is we do.

5 measurement companies, two hundred delegates from PR and the aforementioned measurement companies flew into Barcelona to nut out the specifics. It was the second time the global group had come together and while i’m not aware of what they came up with last time, the outcome of this meeting wasn’t a standardised measure. They did however come up with seven nifty principles that they could all agree with.

1. Measurement and goal setting are fundamental for any PR programmes
2. Media measurement requires quantity and quality – clip cuts are generally meaningless
3. AVEs do not measure the value of PR and do not inform future activity; they measure the cost of media space
4. Social media can and should be measured
5. Measuring outcomes is preferred to measuring media results
6. Business results can and should be measured where possible
7. Transparency and replicability are paramount to sound measurement

The over all shift that these principles describe are an increasing desire to dissociate the world of PR from the world of advertising. The value of media has fallen sharply this year, right around the world, so I’d agree that AVE’s (Advertising Value Equivalents) doesn’t make much sense. Also, allowing for some measure of quality of coverage, and quality of effect seems like a great direction to be headed in.

I’m a little disappointed that the group felt that social media was unique enough to single out for a principle. Any interaction online has almost infinite measurability when compared to some of the traditional media platforms. The continuing exclusion of digital at the highest levels of the industry seems unbelievably out of place to me. We could learn a lot from the media planners and their language of channel neutrality. There is a tendency to chuckle it up at ad agencies who leap into the production process of a 30 second spot, while we think nothing at all of reusing the coverage target slide from the latest presentation on the server. All agencies need to play a part of moving PR thinking towards true online/offline integration. Its worth it for our clients and the job enjoyment of our staff.

Digital rant over, measurement means being able to crow our success and learn from our failures. It’s about delivering a considered and comprehensive ROI to the client, one that hopefully starts by communicating effort, perhaps through quality and reach. Quality and reach probably don’t represent return in many business, and when we make the jump from Comms Manager to CEO, that bottom line looms large. Demonstrating effect on sales, and the development of an engaged and re-contactable audience are key.

Interestingly, the winners at Cannes in the PR Lions section exhibited this type of breadth. Many of them fell back on AVE’s to communicate quality and reach, but since most were ad agencies that is hardly surprising. Secondly, they subscribed a group of advocates who drove their campaigns transmedia. Finally, they all could document (or at least suppose) a significant change in consumer behaviour, the most successful in increases of sales.

Media buyers have been weighting channels on their influence and value for years. By developing a channel neutral weighting system we could potentailly have one system across both new and old forms. It might be as simple as reach (potential reach/actual reach) x quality (the value of the channel itself) x influence (the likelihood of a channel generating news, content or action). Then again, it might not.

This wasn’t meant to be an attempt to define the measures for the industry. I believe that the PR industry has a tremendous advantage in our existing skill sets in building campaigns that earn media. We have, for some time now, told stories that capture the minds of influencer’s and get retold in their voices. I believe that the changes in terms of social media have massively increased the number of people who can act as an influencer, and I’ll accept that just because everyone can, doesn’t mean everyone does.

In developing a system of measurement for the industry, let’s not lose sight of the things we do extremely well, and try to find a way to measure those.

♣ Well, ok. It was probably only me watching Cannes...Collective Conversation Feed by Ben Shipley

brandflakesforbreakfast: the creative brief: necessary, or waste of paper?

2010-06-29T07:14:00.000-07:00

So much has changed in the industry of creative agencies that it might lead you to wonder if the creative brief, an age-old document invented by someone older than Moses still has a place in the creative business.

Do we need such a document? Are they helpful, or do they get in the way?

This is the question that Jasmin Cheng of Twist Image seeks to answer. She's put together an absolutely brilliant presentation that examines this challenge.

Disclosure: I might have been swayed to say this is absolutely brilliant because I'm quoted throughout the presentation, and generally the things that I say are perceived as brilliance when I hear them.

After you read my quote on slide 6, I am convinced that you too will see the glorious shiny light...brandflakesforbreakfast

WPP Reading Room: Top 20 Most Valuable Global Retail Brands

2010-06-29T06:10:00.000-07:00

Welcome to this Kantar Retail analysis of the Top 20 Most Valuable Global Retail Brands

This report helps illuminate the radical changes reshaping retail as shoppers, chastened by the recession and empowered with technology, think differently about what and how they purchase. Here are just three of many critical considerations:

First, brand is a prerequisite of retail success. How retailers build their brands impacts all aspects of their business. Brand is key to effective merchandising. It converts private label from a margin-building tactic to a strategic symbol of brand equity. Brand alone secures an enduring place in the mind of the consumer. It is fundamental to the supplier-retailer relationship.

Second, retailers own the conversation with shoppers. Through their loyalty programs and daily interactions with shoppers, retailers have the most authentic and perpetually updated understanding of the shopper. This knowledge is critical to suppliers who need to engage with their retailer customers to actively participate in the conversation.

Third, retail is becoming even more competitive. In developing markets, retailers face tough competition both from traditional outlets and the modern trade. In saturated "post-modern" markets, hyper competition for share of wallet has replaced expanding square footage as the engine of growth. Suppliers play a critical role in helping retailers succeed amid the local competitive forces.

This report elaborates on these considerations and many others. It provides the ingredients needed in order to thrive in this new retail environment: the best data, original insights and compelling ideas that will drive our businesses forward.

Kantar Retail is pleased to provide this report. We believe that it will help you think differently about your business, its challenges and opportunities.

Sincerely,

Wayne Levings
CEO Kantar Retail

Download the full report (pdf, 4MB)
WPP Reading Room

Business Insider: 10 Things You Need To Know This Morning (GOOG, DELL, MSFT, VZ, EBAY, AMZN)

2010-06-29T05:58:00.000-07:00

Good morning, here's the news:

* Google is in more trouble with the Chinese government. China doesn't want Google automatically redirecting Chinese users to the unfiltered results served up from China in Hong Kong.

* Google is hard at work on a Facebook killer called "Google Me" according to Facebook's ex-CTO.

* Tesla priced its IPO shares at $17, raising around $226 million.

* Dell is being sued for faulty computers
, and the NYT uses it to "explain the decline of one of America’s most celebrated and admired companies."

* Microsoft's Windows 8 plans were leaked to the web. Microsoft plans an app store, tablet computers, facial recognition technology, faster computers and much more.

* Verizon cuts the price of the Microsoft Kin after one month.

* Insiders on why PayPal produced so many entrepreneurs.

* Foursquare has another big business deal, getting window sticks at Whole Foods that tell customers to "check-in."

* AT&T says it has improved service in New York.

* Jeff Bezos tries to downplay the iPad, saying it is totally different from the Kindle.

Read more: Business Insider

ESCAPOLOGY (the escape pod's blog): The New World Champions of Advertising

2010-06-28T12:09:00.000-07:00

“Why do so many TV ads suck? Seriously!” – Norm Bilow, Managing Director, The Escape Pod. Just minutes ago.

Norm said that as he watched the new Cannes Grand Prix winning Old Spice ad from Wieden and Kennedy. This is that ad. It’s sheer perfection. Watch it and see. There isn’t a wasted millisecond. It’s pure old school hard sell wrapped up in genius execution. Solid gold.

If I wore a hat, i would be doffing it in appreciation. Not every Cannes Grand Prix winning ad is a great ad. This one is. Bravo!

Go on, watch it again. You know you want to...ESCAPOLOGY (the escape pod's blog)

Media Decoder: Interpublic Acquires Agency to Strengthen London Operations of Lowe

2010-06-28T12:01:00.000-07:00

The Interpublic Group of Companies is again taking steps to bolster the operations of a major office of its Lowe & Partners Worldwide agency.

Interpublic said on Monday that it had reached an agreement to acquire Delaney Lund Knox Warren from the Creston Group for about $40 million (27 million pounds) in cash. Delaney Lund Knox Warren, which was founded in 2000 and is based in London, is to be merged with the London office of Lowe to form DLKW Lowe.

The deal is subject to approval of Creston shareholders, who are to vote on the agreement on July 13.

The merged office will be led by the senior managers of Delaney Lund Knox Warren, who will have a minority ownership stake in DLKW Lowe.

Lowe, which has its headquarters in London, is the smallest of the three major agency networks owned by Interpublic, trailing McCann Erickson and DraftFCB. Interpublic has recently been seeking ways to strengthen what it calls the “hub market” offices of Lowe.

In October, Interpublic merged the United States operations of Lowe into the New York office of Deutsch in a realignment that placed Deutsch under the Lowe umbrella and erased the Lowe name per se from the American market. Deutsch, which Interpublic bought in 2000, also assumed responsibility for the Canadian operations of Lowe.

Interpublic has also made deals to improve Lowe’s status and standing in Brazil and India.

The top managers of Delaney Lund Knox Warren who will lead DLKW Lowe are Greg Delaney, Tom Knox and Richard Warren. They will report to the leaders of Lowe & Partners Worldwide: Tony Wright, chairman, and Michael Wall, chief executive.

The two executives who had been leading the Lowe London office — Robert Marsh, who oversees the office’s important Unilever account, and Rebecca Morgan, chief strategic officer — will stay on, reporting to Messrs. Delaney, Knox and Warren.

DLKW Lowe will have 253 employees, 167 from Delaney Lund Knox Warren and 86 from the Lowe London office. The merged office is to retain all the clients from both sides, which in addition to Unilever include General Motors.

In 2006, the Lowe London office suffered a blow when it lost a major client, Tesco, along with senior managers who included the Lowe & Partners founder, Frank Lowe. They left to form a rival agency in London, called Red Brick Road.

Last year, trade publications reported, the Lowe London office lost two large clients, the Peperami food brand sold by Unilever and a department store, John Lewis.

A cautionary note to the deal is that in the last 15 years, Interpublic tried many times to beef up Lowe in the United States through mergers.

In some instances, Interpublic acquired smaller agencies and merged them into the Lowe American operations; they included Scali, McCabe, Sloves and Goldsmith/Jeffrey.

In other instances, Interpublic merged agencies it already owned with Lowe, among them Ammirati & Puris Lintas and Bozell.

In all cases, the combinations really never gelled, leading to the decision by Interpublic in October to throw in the towel on the Lowe name in the United States and to go forward with the Deutsch name as the North American hub office of Lowe...Media Decoder

DDB Creativity (video): The Meek Have Inherited The Earth: The power and future of social media in the new decade

2010-06-28T11:46:00.000-07:00

Social connectivity is the driver behind the greatest leap in human and brand evolution so far this century. Social media is the single greatest agent of change in both the wider world today and specific commercial channels. From the news being reported real-time through Twitter, to brands developing and altering their products based upon social feedback and democratically enabled creativity and utility - the meek have truly begun to inherit the earth.

Bernbach said: “Word of mouth is the most powerful medium of all.”

Trusted conversation, referrals and advocacy are the most powerful purchasing factors in the marketplace, making social media the most important but least defined of the digital channel tiers. Those that get the fundamentals right will be the most powerful brands of the new century.

In this Cannes seminar, delegates learned how to best leverage social media. In addition to drawing on examples from across the industry, TribalDDB highlighted client Hasbro, and delegates heard a leading brand’s beliefs on this new age of social media as well as how those are informing future business and marketing decisions. They also heard about the latest social media practicalities: the way that brands can harness the social power of Joe Public, create marketing mechanics and experiences wherein public opinion is facilitated and incentivized in order to reach a specific campaign goal, and how to best facilitate this social creativity.

Matt Ross, Head of CreativeTribal DDB, London

Brian Solis: The Last Mile: The Socialization of Business

2010-06-28T06:38:00.000-07:00

I’m working on developing new ideas and wanted to share them here with you for your review and also to seek your feedback…

Everything begins with a shift in perspective from viewing stakeholders as a separate entity, “us vs. them,” to a singular view of “us ” as this enlivens a new era of community-focused marketing and engagement.

Social media introduces a new problem of sorts, one where the answer is lost in the politics and corresponding burrows of debate as to who owns social media within the organization. As brands venture into social networks, many are unwittingly contributing to the dilution of their brand image, value proposition, and mission amongst a new genre of social customers and influencers. The mission and vision statements of old no longer convey authority or inspire conviction in an era where the audiences to which we are trying to connect now possess audiences of their very own. The ability to connect with someone and inspire them to take meaningful action is in direct competition with the actions of social customers who are intentionally or indirectly building communities around their views and interests.

In my work, I’ve uncovered what I call the Last Mile or Last Kilometer of Social Media, a challenge that will face every business in the attempts to engage with consumers and influencers and impede the cultivation of dedicated and flourishing online communities.

The last mile is a term associated with the cable and internet provider industries, representing the final leg of delivering connectivity from a provider to a customer. It is symbolic of the human connection required to take a service from the connection hub in any given neighborhood to the home of the new customer...please continue reading in full here Brian Solis

CrapHammer: A response to Ara Tremblay - "Social Media: Are We Talking About it Because There’s Nothing Else to Talk About?"

2010-06-28T06:19:00.000-07:00

Ara Tremblay asks "Social Media: Are We Talking About it Because There’s Nothing Else to Talk About?"

A friend in the insurance space sent this to me and asked for my opinion. I share my response here.

...

I hear the argument a lot. And I can relate. I cringe every time the topic of defining social media comes up, for example.

And this is the crux of it. We are not talking about a programming language. Or a change in infrastructure.

We are speaking of a significant societal shift - from organizations leveraging technology to accomplish their goals TO individuals leveraging technology to accomplish THEIR goals.

And their goals are MUNDANE. They are ABSURD. And they are anything BUT rational.

And nothing matters more than what consumers say about us as a brand. Nothing.

The outcome of this shift will require significant investments in technologies, infrastructure and new ways to operate for businesses. Those that see it coming will be the most successful because they will be positioning their firm to take advantage vs. those that question whether anything is changing out there.

Look at companies that are embracing this and driving unheard of profits and growth? Zappos offers its successful minimum wage trainees $2,000 to NOT take the job. Dell empowers its employees to fix problems and does not care where they sit - call center or escalation path.

...

I can certainly relate to Ara's line of questioning.

There is no end to people just filling time with the latest buzz words.

And my company, like any other agency, has to own up to our role in fueling this type of behavior and conversation.

But this is not a new technology.

This is a shift in who is using technology.

Technology has been democratized.

Just as businesses that fell asleep at the wheel were disintermediated by technology in the 1990's, now businesses face being left behind by the very consumers they "serve."...CrapHammer

Business Insider: 10 Things You Need To Know This Morning

2010-06-28T05:59:00.000-07:00

Good Morning! Here's the news:

Foursquare is about to close a round of funding at an $80 million valuation, after coming thisclose to selling itself to Facebook.

Kevin Rose of Digg started a big rumor this weekend saying that Google will take another stab at social networking with something called "Google Me".

Elevation Partners has purchased $120 million worth of Facebook shares on the secondary market.

Amazon has updated the Kindle iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch apps to allow more embedded video and audio.

Palm has lost another exec. Lynn Fox, an ex-Apple employee and Palm's VP of Public Relations, decided to leave.

The giant, expensive Plastic Logic Que e-reader, which was supposed to be a Kindle for the business folk is pretty much dead.

After Apple conceded there was an issue with iPhone 4's antenna, Steve Jobs contradicted himself saying there "is no reception issue. Stay tuned." So keep an eye out for what happens next.

Doodle Jump has had over 5 million downloads, which probably makes it the most popular paid iPhone app of all time.

Gadget factory Foxconn has handed over control of its dorms to another company.

Google's Android app market, for all its freedom, is a bit of a mess.

Read more: Business Insider

Part 1 Andy Azula Creative Director at The Martin Agency on The BuzzBubble

2010-06-25T07:27:00.000-07:00

As we head into the close of Season #1 we wrap with a trip to The Martin Agency in Richmond Virginia. This trip we got into TWO heads at the Martin Agency. CEO Mike Hughes, and Creative Director Andy Azula.

We got the royal treatment and a personal Tour of the expansive Martin Agency compound from Dean Jarret and Michele Barker.

Voted 2009’s agency of the year by adweek, and once mainly famous for its powerful print advertising, The Martin Agency is now a force in all media… traditional and new, with a particular strength in bringing “not-so-everyday thinking” to the brands they work with.

You’ve seen their work with huge brands like Walmart, NASCAR, and the insanely brilliant Geico Gecko and Caveman Campaigns, not to mention the idea of putting the creative director on screen for their intelligent and engaging UPS spots.

We are fortunate enough to really get to know the agency from two minds: Foundationaly from Mike the patriarch who grew up at the agency, and Andy the Young Gun who landed here after stopping in at a few other top agencies.

It was truly an enjoyable informative journey with them both.

Join me as we climb into the buzzbubble and examine the brains of Mike Hughes and Andy Azula…. Right now.

This week – Part 1 of our Interview with Andy Azula we start with the buzz round and get to know Andy’s brain from the personal side...The BuzzBubble

MDCPartners: NY Times 6/25/10 - MDC Partners' ‘Million-Dollar Challenge’ to Foster Start-Up Agencies.

2010-06-25T06:26:00.001-07:00

Please read full story here: NY Times 6/25/10

Business Insider: 10 Things You Need To Know This Morning (AAPL, RIMM, YHOO, GOOG, NWS, DIS)

2010-06-25T06:15:00.000-07:00

Good morning, enjoy this hot news:

iPhone 4 is out, but there's a weird glitch with the metal band surrounding the phone. If you hold it just so in your left hand, covering certain parts of the antenna, the signal strength drops. Apple is telling people to not hold it like that that, or buy a rubber casing.

Research In Motion reported earnings last night, missing on sales and subscriptions last quarter.

In a demo at Cannes a Microsoft VP says Windows Phone 7 is coming in October.

Hulu's subscription service could be coming next week for a 10,000 early testers. It will cost $9.95 per month for access to more shows on more devices.

Facebook is including its open graph web pages in its search results, opening its most direct assault against Google. The amount of "likes" a page gets determine its search ranking.

Yahoo's VP of search consumer products, Larry Cornett, is leaving.
Playdom has acquired Hive7, a little gaming studio.

USA v. Algeria attracted the largest ever online audience for a game with 1.1 million unique visitors tuning in for 43 minutes on average.

Texas Instruments is releasing the "Blaze" tablet this fall.

Google remotely killed two apps from the Android store that were put in there by a researcher.

Read more: Business Insider

alexbogusky's posterous: The first Cannes Lion for not advertising at all

2010-06-24T16:15:00.000-07:00

We love awards in advertising and awards motivate agency behavior and recommendations. Perhaps it is time for Cannes to have a new award. An award for the most accurate, careful and ethical use of advertising. Not PSA's, but an award for consumer brands that have decided to take into consideration all the potential effects of their marketing and have built a plan that carefully avoids abusing the power of advertising. This would need to be the pinnacle of achievement. So what is nicer than titanium? Unobtainium? Kryptonite? Crystal? I sort of like that. Crystal clear. No blemishes. And here is what I’d like to see entered next year.

Advertising to adults is not without controversy. And although I’m concerned about consuming for consumption’s sake, I am able to see the role advertising plays in moving our economy forward and the benefit to society that can be created. However, when it comes to advertising to children, it’s much more difficult to find any redeeming value created by the activity. In fact, to the contrary, it is easy to see how destructive the process is to most of us.

First, let’s take a few words to get into the brain of a child. As we all know from experience, children are not small grownups. Their brains are fundamentally different, the big difference being that right hemisphere brain development doesn’t really kick in until the age of twelve. This is important because without the right hemisphere involved, all decisions and concepts are very black and white. If you have kids, you’ve experienced this: The child that learns at school that drinking can be dangerous and suddenly thinks that glass of wine is going to kill dad. All things go into a category of good or bad; there are no grey areas for children. And this leaves them fundamentally and developmentally unequipped to deal with advertising in the way an adult can. If you sit with a child and watch TV commercials, you will notice how vigorously effective the messages are. “I want that.” “Can I have that?" “I need that.” These words come out of their mouths with seemingly every message, and they mean it and they believe it and they are defenseless against it. And that is the issue.

So what if we stopped it? What if we decided that advertising to children was something none of would engage in anymore? Perhaps because we legislate it, or perhaps because we just decide to police ourselves. We can get into the how a bit later. But what if we stopped? What would happen? A lot of things would happen and almost all seem to be for the good of society.

Let’s start with mom and dad and the relationship with their kids. Without the messages suggesting to kids that they eat differently than how mom and dad would like them to eat, trips to the grocery store and meals at home would almost certainly contain dramatically less complete and total meltdowns. Imagine a relationship with kids where moms and dads aren’t caving in to the constant pressure their kids apply to get what they want. Helping to create this pressure is why companies advertise to a group of people who have neither jobs nor income. And it is working. More than 10 percent of 12 to 13-year-olds admitted to asking their parents more than 50 times for products they have seen advertised. That fact alone should get every parent to sign a petition. For the potential to have a little quiet time, if nothing else. But the statistics go beyond bugging mom and dad and into a much sadder place. More than half of children surveyed (53%) said that buying certain products makes them feel better about themselves. This is a pattern we all need less of, not more. So a ban on advertising to kids would improve the child-parent dynamic, as well as improve our kids' self-esteem. So far, so good.

But without all this ad-supported revenue there would be much less programming developed and broadcast for children. Whole networks like Nick might cease to exist. Horror of horrors! Children would be forced off the couch and made to think of new ways to entertain themselves. Some of those games might include moving the body. These days they would probably just go online or play video games but at least that takes a bit of interaction. Kids would mourn the demise of the Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon, but they’d get over it. So I guess I can live with that, too.

But a ban would mean less dollars for the advertising industry. Oh, lord we can’t have that! Well, in my experience this isn’t really what happens. The dollars get moved; they don’t go away. Now, if you specialize in advertising to kids then, yes, your business would be a casualty. My bet is, those people would find their talents put to use in ways they would actually prefer in the end. The advertising industry as a whole doesn’t all agree and in fact, get quite excited, about doing even more adverting to children. Chinese children.

In his book, Kids as Customers, James McNeal estimates that there are about three quarters of a billion children in other industrialized countries: "Letting one's marketing imagination run wild for a moment, if these children spend only half of what U.S. children spend, their market potential would be equal to around $86.5 billion." When this kind of money is involved ethics and morality often become more difficult to measure.

Sweden, Ireland, Greece, Italy, Denmark and Belgium all have bans on advertising to children under 12. It is interesting to note that in Sweden, the reason given is the way a child’s brain works, it is “not fair play.” I agree. But even in Europe where bans do exist, the amount of money involved has made progress slow and sometimes nonexistent. A proposed ban in the UK was blocked as recently as ‘08. The actual dollars spent advertising to children is difficult to come by and the figures I’ve been able to find vary, but a little over $15 billion annually is a moderate estimate. It is shocking to realize that is about 250% more than it was as recently as 1992. To me these numbers seem scary.

So, what about the companies that rely on advertising to kids as a way to drive sales? What happens to them? My sense is that they will be fine, too. They’ll probably sell a little less and they’ll probably have to make the products a bit healthier since it will be mom and dad that they’re trying to convince. But they will be fine. In fact, I think they’ll feel better. My old client at Burger King used to talk about pulling all the kids' advertising as a way to garner some positive press and put pressure on McDonald’s to do the same, knowing that it was a much, much bigger part of McDonald’s business. My guess would be they debate this at McDonald’s, too, but I have no way of knowing that. The trouble that arises when ethics and money place pressure in opposite directions is that no company feels it can afford to go first. The loss of competitive advantage would be too much.

Then the question is one of adding a bit more pressure to the ethical side of the scale. I’ve been scratching my head for some potential solutions and it’s a sticky problem, but I’m not completely convinced it is hopeless just because market forces have proven that there is big money to be made by spending billions to influence our innocent and defenseless offspring. The first and most obvious solution is a ban not unlike other developed European nations. Our heavily lobbied politics makes this seem an unlikely scenario, at first glance. Unless the lobbyists were for some reason asked to do the opposite of what we might expect. It is actually beginning to make more sense for fast food lobbyists to actually ask for the ban. They need the publicity that puts them on the right side of these issues and, if legislation is created, it makes a new and even playing field where there is no disadvantage created.

Perhaps our own industry could lobby to stop the behavior. God knows advertising people need the good press.

Another potential bit of leverage might be for ethical and fair use of advertising to become a common way companies are rated. Today we see more and more data made available in the areas of a company's impact on health, sustainability and the ethical treatment of workers and even animals. How about ethical treatment of our most precious resource? Our children. What is your score on fair and ethical use of advertising? This can be measured and quantified and it can become part of the buying decision. Not just for people with children, but for all consumers. Advertisers would reconsider quickly if they noticed that people we’re buying their product as adults because they advertised to kids.

So my hope for the 2011 Cannes Crystal award is some brilliant agency works with their client to pull all the advertising to children and takes home the Cannes Crystal Grand Prix Lion in the inaugural year. And that would be the end of that. Because as soon as you can win an award for it, we ad folk are all over that shit.

Most people in advertising have a list of categories they will and will not work on, and it evolves. My list has evolved and probably will continue to. At the beginning of my career, I wouldn’t work on any pharma. I probably would have worked on tobacco given the opportunity but luckily for me I got the opportunity to work against tobacco and I got one hell of an education in the process. My time working on TRUTH, the youth anti-tobacco campaign, taught me a lot about early brain development and soon I added to my personal list that I wouldn’t do any advertising that targeted kids (defined by most brain scientists as under 12). As we took on the BK account, we politely offered that we could not work on that part of their marketing. And in subsequent years declined multiple invitations to work on the kids business. Once one of our adult spots for Sponge Bob Squarepants (hard to believe, but young adults love Sponge Bob) was repurposed and re-edited by another agency to add toy footage and aired on Nick. I was livid and we got it pulled. The client owns the work, but pulled it out of respect for the relationship. We all work to bring our personal values in line with our professional life and there are shades of grey to these decisions. But shades of grey don’t exist in our society’s decision to allow millions to be spent targeting an audience that is literally and physiologically incapable of protecting and defending themselves from a message probably doesn’t have their very best interest at heart. It’s not a matter of the rightness or wrongness of the products being advertised. That is a grey area. But there are children and there are adults. And the duty of adults in society is to protect it’s children. And that is black and white...alexbogusky's posterous

TAXI - BLOG: Microsoft launch Hotmail.ca with TAXI

2010-06-24T16:07:00.000-07:00

TAXI is behind new online campaigns for Microsoft for the launch of Hotmail.ca.

Hotmail.ca is a new separate Hotmail domain for Canada. The creative exploits the notion that now you can get the email address you really want – like your real name.

TAXI’s insight is based on a simple fact: most people got their first Hotmail.com addresses when they were a lot younger, and have evolved since. The banner campaign theme – You’ve changed. So should your email. – encourages users to Update themselves to Hotmail.ca. Banners drive traffic to the microsite, where three characters play out this evolution in video.

The campaign launched June 10 and runs till early July.
ENGLISH VERSION
FRENCH VERSION

Or see those videos on Youtube

TAXI - BLOG

Collective Conversation Feed: Cannes Eye TV interviews P&G's Marc Pritchard

2010-06-24T13:49:00.000-07:00

As one of the largest marketers in the world, we were delighted to be able to catch up with Procter & Gamble global marketing and brand building officer Marc Pritchard during his hectic Cannes Lions schedule to find out why he thinks the festival is the place for his marketers to be.

Improv Everywhere's Charlie Todd also tells us why the kind of improvisation missions that took place at Cannes are relevant to brand owners..please view video here: Collective Conversation Feed

DRAFTFCBlog: (video): Consumers Accessing Video Content Anytime, Anywhere: The Power of “The Three Screens”

2010-06-24T13:37:00.000-07:00

There is no denying it. The video content available via television, the web and mobile devices engages, informs and entertains consumers alike. But what does this all mean for advertisers?

To best answer this question, I sat down with Draftfcb New York VP, Group Media Director Bhavana Smith...To view video please click here: DRAFTFCBlog

New blog on Adcrowd: The Bees Awards

2010-06-24T07:22:00.000-07:00

Welcome

The Bees Awards was created to grant recognition to the best Social Media communications and marketing practices. You are welcome to submit your work and help your industry share its excellence within the international marketing community.

Bees developed a well coded communication system to make their collective intelligence greater than each individual’s intelligence. Like bees, Social Media is all about collective communication. It takes place everywhere there is user-generated content. Websites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and any other community-based content are Social Media. This new kind of content and media usage calls for a new communications and marketing expertise. The Bees Awards reward this new expertise.

Our notable jury is composed of some of the most renowned Social Media professionals who will evaluate, with the highest regard, the work that comes in from around the globe. The Awards presentation will take place in San Francisco on November 9, 2010 at 7pm and will be transmitted for free throughout the Web...The Bees Awards