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July 1, 2008

AOL, Microsoft, WPP: Top Wheeler Dealers

Marketing executives working with digital media vendors might need a scorecard handy to track who owns who these days.

AOL, Microsoft, and WPP each acquired five marketing, advertising, or digital media companies during the first six months of 2008, according to a report on mergers and acquisitions released today by investment bankers Petsky Prunier.

According to Petsky Prunier's research, the companies making the most acquisitions -- and some of their purchases -- include:

AOL: Bebo, a social networking site; Goowy Media, a widget development platform, and Perfiliate Technologies, an affiliate network.

Microsoft: Farecast.com, an online travel search engine, and Rapt, advertisement management software.

WPP Group: Integrated Media Measurement, which has a media measurement system that links media exposure to consumer action, and Yankelovich, a consumer research company.

Aegis Group: AdWatch, a Russian Internet advertising agency, and Globlet, a Thailand search marketing agency.

Havas Advertising: Kadium, a San Francisco digital ad agency, and Shake, a promotion marketing agency based in Chatham, NJ.

A look at the marketing, advertising, and digital media sectors shows the most money was exchanged for digital media companies. There were 78 transactions involving digital media companies totaling $6.3 billion, the firm reported.

Of those deals involving digital media companies, more than one-half involved user-generated or social media businesses. Those deals included AOL's acquisition of Bebo and Goowy Media, and Buzznet's purchase of Idolator.

In all, the Wall Street firm identified 398 deals valued at $19.7 billion involved marketing, advertising, and digital media companies for the first half of this year. Compared to the same period in 2007, the number of deals was up this year by 21 percent but the total transaction dollar volume was down by 26 percent. It said the drop in the value of transactions was due to two factors: this year's soft economy and two large deals last year with Microsoft's acquisition of aQuantive and Google's purchase of DoubleClick for $3.1 billion. (The Google-DoubleClick deal closed earlier this year, but was included by Petsky Prunier in the 2007 tally.)

As expected, no mention of the deal that didn't happen: Microsoft-Yahoo.

Or who's next.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 4:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 5, 2008

No ROI in Listening?

As a marketer, you know you're supposed to track user feedback, comments, consumer reviews, and other types of online chatter about your brand or product.

Do you? And when you hear something -- positive or negative -- how do you react?

Do you even react?

Nope, agreed a panel of marketers at Advertising 2.0. On the client side, everyone's too busy.

Well, what about your agency?

"Agencies aren't paid to move on a dime like that," affirmed Liz Ross, president of Tribal DDB West.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 1:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 1, 2008

Would Anyone Pay to Network on Facebook?

Media executives at "The New Kings of Media" breakfast in NYC debated the future of user-generated content, including who will pay for the stuff.

John Rose, managing director of the Boston Consulting Group, had an interesting theory. He sees UCG heading into two directions: public and private content.

In most cases, content developed and viewed by the public will have to be ad supported, he said, doubting there are enough folks willing to dish out money to support the vast amount of content.

Having said that, he anticipates some business users will pay for access to UGC. Those customers would get "proprietary first rights, first look access to content," he said. (Sounds an awful lot like what Barrons.com is doing with its weekly mag.)

"There will probably be company-paid models for things like LinkedIn and Facebook," he continued. "There are elements of Facebook morphing to provide interesting networks...It's not consumer pay, but it's direct pay."

If LinkedIn's already doing it (account holders can pay between $20 to $200 a month for more features), why won't Facebook users? Maybe a few more have to graduate from high school and college first.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 5:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 14, 2008

Best Buy Targeted by Lawsuit, Blog Wrath

Hell hath no fury like a blog launched against your brand -- particularly when it merits major media coverage.

That's what big box electronics retailer Best Buy is learning. Raelyn Campbell is enraged the store lost her laptop after she'd brought it in for repairs. She's suing Best Buy for $54 million for exposing her to identity theft after months of getting the runaround regarding her computer's whereabouts.

Campbell is venting her rage -- and detailing her version of the story -- in her Best Buy vs. Consumer Protection Blog.

Hello, long tail. No matter which way the lawsuit goes, it's going to live on in search results for a long, long, long time.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 7, 2008

American Airlines' CGM Journey

AAdvantage, American Airlines' frequent flyer program, has enrolled consumer-generated media (CGM) in its marketing efforts.

"See other AAdvantage members' travel photos," reads the subject line of an e-mail message sent yesterday from American Airlines' frequent flyer program.

At "Milestones," AAdvantage's frequent flyer members are invited to upload travel photos and contribute travel advice on a message board. Paris is the most recent site to be featured.

Since July, AAdvantage has featured three other destinations: Rome, London, and Hawaii.

In the consumer generated media world of travel, TripAdvisor has long been a prominent site for online hotel reviews. That site, owned by Expedia, boasts it has more than 10 million traveler reviews and opinions of hotels, vacations, and more.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 8, 2008

T-Mobile Back on Current TV for VCAMs

Current TV and T-Mobile are teaming up again to challenge the cable channel's viewers to send in video ads online, promoting the wireless company's products. The two companies previously ran a contest for viewers to send in potential ads promoting T-Mobile's "Fav 5" campaign where winning submissions were voted for online and eventually broadcast on-air. The latest contest centers on T-Mobile's Sidekick LX device, and closes on February 25, 2008. Current has run several Viewer-Created Ad Messages (VCAM) Assignments since it was launched in 2005.

Posted by MatthewNelson at 3:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 20, 2007

Dove's Going for an Oscar

Unilever's Dove has gotten traction from YouTube with its Evolution and Onslaught. It also aired a consumer-generated ad during last year's Oscars. Dove plans to repeat last year's success with another consumer-generated commercial contest being hyped on the YouTube homepage, which then directs Internet users to dovecreamoil.com (hosted by MSN) where the contest objective: to create and ad that captures the feeling of everyday luxury when you shower with the rich cream and lush softening oil in Dove's supreme Cream Oil Body Wash.

Viewers of the Oscars can text to vote on their picks during the Oscar broadcast. Dove plans to air the winning commercial later that evening. No word on whether the orchestra will start to play if the commercial exceeds its :30 runtime.

The campaign is well optimized. In addition to running a spot on YouTube, Unilever bought the search term "dove cream oil" on Google. Organically, however, the site was way down the list. It came up after YouTube video spoofs and the Australian site for Dove Cream Oil Body Wash.

Posted by Enid Burns at 3:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 14, 2007

Can Millions of Online Fans Write One Def Jam Song?

In what has to be a branding collaboration first, Yahoo is teaming up with McDonalds and record label Def Jam to encourage music fans to contribute lyrics for a future song by recording artist Ne-Yo.

Yahoo Music is hosting an eight week contest on a co-branded site with McDonald's at music.yahoo.com/lyricmakers, where fans can vote on one of four song themes: love, peace, dreams and party. After that, they'll be able to submit lines of lyrics to be voted on, with the winning lyrics to be incorporated in a song produced later this year. Yahoo Music will release the song and proceeds will go to Ronald McDonald House Charities, while McDonald's will promote the contest with french fry boxes featuring the contest logo and a message reading, “Go to Yahoo! and search for LyricMakers.� The promotion was developed by media communications agency OMD.

Posted by MatthewNelson at 9:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 25, 2007

Heavy.com's CGM Promo (Somebody's Going to Get Hurt)

Laddie site Heavy.com has just put out a call for users to submit videos of pranks pulled on friends.

It's all part on an ongoing promotion for Sum 41. The band is shooting Webisodes exclusive to Heavy.com in a series called "Road to Ruin." The winning submission will earn its creator a role in one of the Webisodes as the band's roadie for a day in Las Vegas.

“We think this a perfect opportunity to get fans involved in Heavy’s unique brand of engagement, and really spotlights the advantage for Sum 41 of partnering with Heavy, a site with original programming and a strong editorial voice—as opposed to just throwing their videos into a vast pool of undifferentiated content,� said Heavy's VP Programming Jason Marks in a statement.

Not a bad promo, but when America's Funniest Home Videos collides with the Jackass demo, you've got to wince. No doubt Heavy has the liability issue sorted out.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 28, 2007

Mysterious and Compelling Eye-Project Site

KDDI Corporation is some sort of a Japanese communications company doing some sort of viral, CGM-fueled project that assembles photos, Web images and movies into a constantly morphing display of digital imagery.

Can't tell you much else about it, other than the Eye-Project site is hypnotically cool:

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 12, 2007

CGM TKO

Ian's right: Nintendo's Shortcuts CGM contest was long overdue, and this video is awesome. Anyone who ever lost a summer on Mike Tyson's Punch-Out! will relate to this.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 5, 2007

1040EZ-E: YouTube Contests Getting All Up in Your Tax Forms

Hey look, it's an advertising battle for the YouTube age.

Two online tax services, TurboTax and TaxCut Online, have launched dueling video contests on YouTube. TurboTax's is a rap video competition hosted by Vanilla Ice. Entries range from merely bad to the utterly ridiculous, from traditional hip-hop to so-whacked-it's-almost-good. What do you call that last one: TaxCore? (Oh, and here's Vanilla's contribution.)

TaxCut Online meanwhile is asking YouTubers to submit videos on the theme "Me and My Super Sweet Refund." Nearly 150 contributions so far. The dumber the better seems to be the rule here.

Both contests offer cash prizes to contributors. Is this a good way to get more people to file their taxes online? I don't know, but I'm feeling taxed.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 22, 2007

How'd You Two Meet? NYT Invites Video CGM

How did you meet your intended? Was the tape rolling when it happened?

None other than the venerable Gray Lady just announced couples who submit wedding announcements to the Weddings/Celebrations section are also invited to submit a "How We Met" homemade video. Never before has the Times asked its users for video (heck, a lot of folks out there are still reeling over the fact the Times now runs same sex partner pairings in the section).

NYT.com is asking for videos under three minutes, and they'll only select yours if they run your announcement -- a notoriously stringent process Gawker.com recently attempted to codify.

The Times unsurprisingly specified that video should be appropriate for a general audience. Considering the both subject matter and the selection process, this has to be a pretty safe way to dip a toe into CGM waters.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 7:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 16, 2007

The Runaway Engine That Couldn't

An interesting, if not surprising, report from U.K.-based Screen Digest has predicted that the careening choo-choo train of user-generated content will not produce much ad revenue for the foreseeable future.

By 2010, Screen Digest projects, 55 percent of all video content consumed online will be generated by end users, representing about 44 billion streams. Despite that, amateur content will account for only about 15 percent of revenues derived from online video. Whether that's a little or a lot can be debated, given that close to zero percent of amateur video content is monetized in any meaningful way today; it's almost all run of network banners at this point.

At any rate, the report's authors note the usual problems of hyper-targeting ads against video content, the difficulty of assigning quality and appropriateness quotients to individual clips, and the conundrum that experimenting with ad models is somewhat at odds with the non-commercial caché sites like YouTube built up in their early days. (link to report)

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 4:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 15, 2007

News Wire Services Pushing Web 2.0, SEO

Last time I was in a marketing gig, I recall screaming at our rep from one of the major wire services when they started charging us a per-item clipping fee (I think it was $0.50) for snail-mailing us hard copies of our own press releases -- verbatim -- which had been "picked up" on Yahoo News, Google News, and all the other usual suspects.

Now, the news wires have stopped charging and are working hard to sell these and other Web effects to companies as unique advantages. Today, PR Newswire, on of the two leaders in the space, announced FreePRWeb, "Everyone from business owners to consumers and even the local church may submit news and press releases via a global online news and press release distribution service with powerful distribution points such as NBCi News, AskJeeves News, Lycos News, Excite News, Topix News, MSN News and Google News...They are also syndicated through more than 20,000 RSS feeds that get re-published on thousands of Web sites that collectively reach millions of consumers and journalists daily."

Well, yeah, that's exactly what happens when you distribute news via a wire service. What interesting here is the free level of tiered service, as well as the fact Google Checkout will be accepted for payment. That's a real change in how these services do business.

And, all you publishers and Webmasters out there -- it's a great link-building strategy, at least short term. The engines may well have to adjust their algorithms soon against a wave of SEO-optimized press release spam. It'd be nice if they didn't have to -- but I fear this could generate an awful lot of very lightweight "news."

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

November 7, 2006

Control? What Control?

Deciding how much control of your brand to give up to consumers is like "deciding how much money to give up when you have a gun to your head," Ted McConnell, interactive innovation director at Procter & Gamble, said today during a panel at Ad:tech New York.

Fortunately, your consumers are usually not so threatening as a mugger. "It's so much easier to give up control if you are in touch, if you understand them. They're going to do the right thing," he said.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 23, 2006

Social Sites Better for Dems?

Are social networking sites more effective for the left than the right? There's a lot of chatter about politicians using sites like MySpace and Facebook as part of their online campaign efforts. After a morning event on political advertising held by the Ad Club last week, I spoke with Mike Turk, former e-campaign director for the Bush/Cheney '04 presidential campaign about this (he's now with the National Cable and Telecommunications Association).

The way he sees it: if you're a Republican, don't bother with the MySpace profile. Social networking sites, he said, "have a limited amount of effect because of who's there." According to site demographic info he's seen, Turk thinks sites with more social features attract democrats, while sites like Amazon, Ebay and financial sites such as ETrade draw a more right-leaning crowd.

I asked Michael Bassik of D.C. political consulting outfit MSHC Partners what he thought. He responded via e-mail:

In reality, there are not many differences between what Republicans and Democrats are doing online.... Many campaigns now recognize the importance of social networking and user-generated content sites like MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube, and have begun to include them in their online communication strategies. It's difficult to measure the impact these sites will have on Election Day, but they're a great way to stay in touch with one's natural base -- especially among younger demographics. An average supporter might feel compelled to visit their favorite candidate's website once in a while, but you can bet that they're checking their MySpace and Facebook pages every single day. By bringing the content to supporters on the sites they use most instead of requiring supporters to come to them, it just means that more voters will interact with more political content. It's a win-win for democracy."

I wrote a piece on political candidates managing the effects of CGM back in June that touches on similar issues.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 3:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 14, 2006

Revver Compensates Video Creators and 'Sharers'

Video hosting and sharing service Revver is now out of beta with new features, and I've been looking at and playing around with it some, trying to gauge its significance.

Revver is going hard after power video bloggers, and counts celebrities like Ask a Ninja and the Mentos/Diet Coke guys among its uploaders. Its greatest creative assets are these dedicated creators who have committed to the service for reasons of quality and monetization. Whereas YouTube offers no recompense to video uploaders, Revver attaches a still end-frame ad and splits revenues 50/50 with the video creator. Another way people can make money with Revver is by becoming "sharers" and promoting videos already living on Revver's servers. These affiliates get 20 percent off the top of any ad revenue earned through their site. Revver and the creator split the remaining.

One of the top video creators using Revver right now for hosting is Ze Frank, whose The Show with Ze Frank and other online community efforts have built a large following. (One show from July has been watch 41,000 times; another about 36,000.) I tried to reach out to Frank to gauge his satisfaction with the service, but nothing back yet. Since I imagine most of the views are coming through his own Web site and not through Revver's, I'm curious to learn whether he's satisfied with the 55 to 60 percent share of ad revenue he's likely pulling.

Advertisers so far on Revver have included American Apparel, MSN, Warner Bros. and Universal Studios, a spokesperson told me. Ads are sold in-house.

A big part of the new release is about making Revver more of a destaination in its own right. New features allow Revver users to create Web pages, complete with individual URL, and populate that space with theirs and others' videos. I'm not sure I think video hosting services should be content destinations. These days, the trend is in syndication and enabling the sharing of video in nooks and crannies all over the Web. Of course, you can't blame them for trying to have more of a brand and pick up extra ad revenue from that.

The nice thing about Revver 1.0 is the embrace of both approaches, with a financial nod toward the video creators who make the whole thing possible.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 12, 2006

Vodka Maker Bottles Top 100 Absolutes

Absolut Vodka's irreverent advertising is using CGM to potentially run a few future campaigns. It's microsite calls for site visitors to submit their "absolutes" in five categories: culture, fashion, food and drink, science and tech, people and places and miscellaneous. Among the 100 topics within these categories, your absolute kiss, Web browser, city, typeface, cocktail occasion, sneaker, sitcom, gay icon, electric bill, novel, etc. I'm not making these up.

On the site it says "We need your voice to determine the 100 Absolutes." The visuals are somewhat Web 2.0 with colored blocks that work like a tag cloud, each box represents one of the absolutes. Users not only submit their answers, but can offer an explanation why they absolutely must keep Explorer as their browser (because that requires some explanation). After a nomination phase where users proclaim their absolutes, there will be a voting phase. Winners will presumably become part of Absolut's next ad campaign. Hey, the culture category asks for your absolute haircut, can everyone go nominate the mullet?

Posted by Enid Burns at 3:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

September 5, 2006

Building the Perfect Beast

Sick of hearing about the "long tail"? Now you can expect to start hearing about the "Fat Belly." Writing on GigaOm, serial entrepreneur Robert Young expounds on the large section of the distribution curve between the "Fat Head" and Long Tail.

Most ClickZ readers have likely heard of Chris Anderson's Long Tail framework, which he first described in Wired Magazine in 2004. His thesis points to the power the Internet brings to allow small, niche topics to prosper online, instead of succumbing to the will of the masses.

Young expands the Long Tail idea to include a middle section, the Fat Belly, where most of the action is taking place. That's the place where social networks like Digg need to focus, he says:

"Now, why is this relevant/important? The answer is simple… in my view, the potential success of any Internet venture, particularly for those heavily reliant on the development of an online community of active participants, is directly correlated with the concept’s ability to create a large and dominant Fat Belly... much like a successful democracy will result in a large and dominant middle class."

For Young, the value of a site like Digg is not the elite few Diggers in the head that submit the most stories, or even the masses in the tail, but in the "middle class" of individuals that consistently submit some stories and Digg some stories.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 3:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 31, 2006

Hoops & Yoyo

Ever heard of Hoops & Yoyo? We hadn't, until ClickZ's crack Associate Editor Erin Brenner called them to our attention.

Apparently, Hallmark has a mini-franchise going with these cute and droll characters (Erin says her kids are nuts about them). From the Hoops & Yoyo homepage there are links to a blog, CGM in the form of user-submitted photos, wallpaper, a store, a newsletter, advice columns, the whole nine yards. E-cards are available in no less than seven languages and there's even a MySpace page a few YouTube videos (one seems to have been posted by Hallmark).

This is a site that's doing everything right -- even if none of the rest of us were aware of the duo. But hey -- that only means they have a viral component, too.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 3:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 23, 2006

All Your Snakes Really Do Belong To Us

Like Gary, I have no intention of seeing "Snakes on a Plane," either (it was bad enough getting in and out of London last week -- serpents couldn't have made the aviation experience any worse).

But I know Gary's biking all over the Bay Area in his Snakes t-shirt.

Seth makes a valid point, saying of the box office debacle, "just because people know who you are doesn't mean they're going to buy what you sell...the best way to succeed is to have a really great product."

But there's another dimension to this, too, one that's very 1999: traffic does not equal conversions. Conversions are what you're after. Ditto viral marketing. Nice to have all that chatter. But as someone who once marketed New Line films, I know that's not what the company was after. At this point, they'd likely be happy for a slice of the Cafe Press t-shirt sales (though they'd never admit it).

Know anyone who's seen it? I don't. At the office, meanwhile, we're still passing around stuff like All Your Snakes Are Belong To Us on YouTube.

All these snakes really do belong to us. Why? Because the CGM is better than the original could possibly hope to be. That wouldn't have held true 10 years ago, but it's true today.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 4:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 17, 2006

Let the Del.icio.us Monetization Begin

When Yahoo acquired bookmarking and tagging site del.icio.us in December, Yahoo's Tim Mayer told ClickZ that the company would tread lightly when it came to making changes at del.icio.us, especially in regard to ads.

A Yahoo spokesperson reiterated that ideal this week, saying, "We have evaluated the del.icio.us experience since the acquisition and felt it was the right time to execute sponsored results to enhance the user experience. The ads are non-intrusive and relevant. Our number one goal is to create the best user experience and preserve the community. Eight months after the acquisition, del.icio.us remains true to its roots, both in look and feel and in what the brand stands for."

The company made the move to add ads to Flickr soon after its acquisition last year, and caused a mild uproar from users. Flickr now has text ads on the search results pages and tag pages, with occasional ads as part of front-page sponsorships. In early August, Yahoo began adding text ads to search results pages on del.icio.us.

Steve Rubel, on his Micro Persuasion blog, said this could be a "dicey" move, but lauds Yahoo for taking it slowly.

I don't think it's that much of a risk for Yahoo. I think del.icio.us users, being Web-savvy, understand the trade-off inherent in getting something in exchange for putting up with ads. That being said, if they decide to move past the ads on search pages, and start showing ads targeted to users' personal tags, I'd expect a few complaints. In the end, people will realize that nothing worth using is free, and the cost in this case is a minor annoyance, at worst.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 5:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 8, 2006

Notes on the ClickZ Track at SES

It was a long, crowded, fruitful day at ClickZ's track on broader advertising and marketing issues on this, the first day of Search Engine Strategies in San Jose. Herewith, a few notable quotes and impressions.

At the session on video advertising, AKQA President Tom Bedecarré showed what amounted to his shop's interactive video reel. Waitamminit. Interactive shops now have reels?

IPG's emerging media labs' Brian Monahan shared recent research conducted on who creates video CGM and posts it on the Web. 86 percent are young men; 72 percent are under 25; most spend less than an hour creating the submission and a third post more than a few times per month.

Hans Peter Brøndmo discussed open source marketing and exhorted the audience to "learn how to hate Google."

Gary Stein on the "clique": "Don't think of MySpace as a group of 300 million users. Think of it as 75 million groups of four people."

Ian Schafer showed a video created by a band for their song "Die Hard." The song plays over -- you guessed it -- scenes from 20th Century Fox's feature film, "Die Hard." Unlicensed, of course. And here's the punchline: one of his account executives plays in the band. Oh, and Fox is a client. They don't know about the video, but betcha they will soon.

Later, in discussion about all the copyright fallout surrounding YouTube, someone accused marketing executives at TV networks and film studios surreptitiously posting videos, then praying legal would stumble over them. PR is born.

TerraPass' Adam Stein wowed the audience by explain how his $0 marketing budget, together with some judicious blogging and e-mailing, led to coverage in both "The New York Times" and "The Los Angeles Times," resulting in a deal with Ford.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 26, 2006

Orbitz' CGM Honeymoon

Yes, that's my face you see on the groovy dancing bride image there. I created this image while checking out Orbitz' new honeymoon-oriented effort. It lets users customize everything about the freaky dancing bride message, including adding a face from a static .jpg image, choosing a song, and choreographing dance moves from a set of options. Once you've customized to your heart's content, you can send to a friend.

It's kind of cool but hard to imagine exactly how this plays out in reality. Do brides-to-be hang in packs so they can e-mail one another and make honeymoon plans simultaneously? Or is this meant for the bride-to-be to send to her husband-to-be? If so, that seems like an awfully small audience for something that appears designed to "go viral".

Posted by Pamela Parker at 8:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 19, 2006

Wal-Mart Emulates the Social Networking Scene

Nothing says mid-summer like the appearance of back-to-school campaigns. Last week JCPenney began its campaign, and this week Wal-Mart's The Hub appeared on the scene.

It's yet to be seen whether the target audience will embrace the site, but it was heavily criticized in an AdAge article and subsequent reporting on other media and blog sites.

The criticism is in response to the antiseptic nature of The Hub. Any content posted to a page must be approved from both Wal-Mart and the poster's parents. There's also no contact between kids with profiles posted on the site. Yes, the site leaches out the general nature of what makes MySpace and other social networking sites so popular, but do remember that it's a campaign and serves its purpose in that way. And are kids really going to embrace this and post their own profiles? Probably not. It really has a similar feeling to the JCPenney campaign that shied away from CGM but populated its site with bubbly teens talking about themselves with an emphasis on personal style and fashion.

When I spoke to Bolt CEO Aaron Cohen yesterday, he said "All brands are looking to be cooler in some way, and yet cooler is so illusive." Clearly Wal-Mart missed the mark of "cool" among the blogging and media community, but what about with the target audience? The question is whether we applaud Wal-Mart for giving some freedom with its brand, though with parameters; or if it should have avoided the perceived social media elements in its campaign?

Posted by Enid Burns at 5:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 7, 2006

WOM Heats Up for Global Warming Flick

I just received an e-mail from a friend urging me in the strongest terms to see the new Al Gore movie "An Inconvenient Truth." To wit: "This movie really does a great job at explaining how and why global warming is happening. I believe that every single person on this planet should see this movie. If we don't start making changes now, we are in for a climate catastrophe - in our lifetime. Seriously. This is not an exaggeration - it is reality. It's almost too big to fully understand. It's terrifying. But we can do something about it."

After reading a recent Berkeley Daily Planet story, which described how high school kids were creating posters promoting the movie and putting them up in vacant store windows, I thought... "Wow... serious word of mouth!"

It's like the liberal version of the grassroots groundswell that propelled "The Passion of the Christ" to become such a hit.

Judging from my exchange with my e-mailing friend, these expressions of support aren't orchestrated, but the film's Web site, climatecrisis.net, definitely provides plenty of material for those of a mind to spread the word.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 5:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Halliburton Site: CGM, Spoof or Real Deal?

If ever there was a company ripe for a CGM spoof, it's gotta be Halliburton.

This site looks legit, until you look more closely. It contains gems like The Halliburton SurvivaBall™ "a one-size-fits-all solution to global warming," also advertised as "a gated community for one."

Other links appear to actually be legit. Yet none of this is part of the official corporate site, haliburton.com. A whois lookup seems to confirm there's really no association with Dick Cheney's former corporation.

It sure would be interesting to know how -- and if -- the real Halliburton responds. And if they're even listening.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 5:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Another CGM Contest Spews Forth

This one I actually like. In fact, it's the first CGM contest I've seen in a long while that seems to have a halfway decent reason for existing.

If you spend any time slumming around YouTube, then you know about the Mentos/Diet Coke mini-craze. Two guys put together a video of themselves creating complicated geysers and mist clouds of vapourized corn syrup using only Mentos and a two-liter bottle of Coke. Many amateur chemist-videographers followed suit, and now scattered across the video aggregation sites are hundreds of short movies showing the curious results of dropping Mentos into sugared soda water.

With its new contest, Mentos will now do what Cingular, Intel and others have done before: invite video creators to make movies featuring its brand, in exchange for a shot at winning something or other. What's different here is that the Freshmaker is working with a CGM concept that already has a some momentum behind it, rather than trying to invent one out of thin air.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 3:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 30, 2006

Sheraton Make Room for CGM

Sheraton Hotels & Resorts is adding CGM to their Web site. The chain is patting themselves on the back for being "the first hotel industry website as to embrace social media and feature user generated content."

Not unlike sites like TripAdvisor, user posts will contain travel tips and user recommendations for local sightseeing, attractions, eateries, and the like. Stories and photos are accessible through an interface that's more than a little reminiscent of Google Maps.

Sheraton has launched a sweepstakes to encourage posting to the site.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 23, 2006

Product Recommendations: Free Beats Fee

David's right. This whole recomendation-engine thing is mind-boggling.

Amazon's telling me to buy Pink Floyd because I told them I own a lot of VU. Huh? They're convinced my predilection for Patti Smith makes "The Concert for Bangladesh" a must-own (the mind reels). Given the vintage of my tunes, I obviously didn't buy a lot of them on Amazon. But I have been putting their engine to the test by spending way too much time telling Amazon what I already have -- to little avail.

Over at GreenCine, it's much clearer why I get the recomendations I do. But they're still wrong, wrong, wrong.

Why? In a word, segmentation. On-the-fly tagging is much nimbler than baked-in metadata.

I overwhelmingly rent Asian films, primarily Japanse and Korean (OK, I have obscure tastes -- that's why I bailed from Netflix). GreenCine obviously takes this preference for "asian" into consideration as Asian films account for a preponderance of my personal recomendations. But (and this is a very big but), nearly all the recommendations are anime. This completely disregards the fact my rental history consists of zero anime.

I can click "not interested" on anime suggestions until I get calluses, but there's always more where that came from. The engine just doesn't get it. GreenCine segments their anime into no less than 11 subcategories (who knew?), all distinct from a completely separate Animation category. This means one broad and 11 subcategories I've never rented DVDs from constitute about 90 percent of my recommendations -- presumably because of metadata I'm not seeing; "japanese" and "asian" are likely guesses.

It's so much cheaper and so much easier for these e-commerce players to go the CGM route. I love Amazon's customer reviews, lists, and "people who looked at this product actually bought..." links. I've rented a ton of movies off Greencine's excellent, eccentric and often, arcane, user recommendation lists (like Roger Ebert is a Big, Fat, Idiot or Movies that make you want to take a shower).

Building an e-commerce site? Considering a recommendation engine? Save your money. Let your customers do that work for you.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 22, 2006

Review This Shoe

Who's not getting into CGM?

Shoes.com is encouraging customers to review shoes with a weekly $250 gift certificate offer. Get ready for shopping sites in all sorts of categories to follow suit. Comparison engines, local search plays and, of course, Amazon, are all solidly on the bandwagon.

In the future, everyone will write at least 15MB of user reviews.

Right?

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 1:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 19, 2006

I Could See a Payday for Craigslist Users

This Saturday's Wall Street Journal featured an intriguing piece about Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster as told from the first person perspective of WSJ editorial board member Brian Carney (Zen and the Art of Classified Advertising, June 17). In it, Buckmaster comes off as a bit of an anomaly: a CEO who's not all that interested in turning a profit. The main objective of the company, says Buckmaster, is to serve its users.

The thing is, according to the article, "One industry analyst has estimated that Craigslist could generate 20 times [its 2005 revenue of $25 million] just by posting a couple of ads on each of its pages. If the estimate is to be believed, that's half a billion dollars a year being left on the table."

As folks who follow the online classifieds space are probably aware, and as Carney notes, "The money that does come in comes from businesses posting in just two categories of classifieds in three cities -- job listings in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles and, this week for the first time, brokered apartment rentals in New York."

Craigslist just added 100 new cities to its roster, too.

The article touches on the effect that free listings sites like Craigslist have had on newspaper publishers' bottom lines, but doesn't get in too deep.

Though facetious, Carney's conclusion is an interesting one:
"If Craigslist does what its users ask of it, and Craigslist doesn't need or seem to want all the ad revenue it declines to collect, maybe we, as end-users, should ask them to post some banner ads and give us the money instead. There's something wrong, I suppose, in that reasoning. But I like the idea."

Gather.com, another site with an altruistic bent, already gives its users a cut of its ad revenue. To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if Craigslist were, in the future, to offer up a share of revenue to the very users who enable its existence.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 9, 2006

CGM: Where's the Money?

Still at the Innovative Marketing Conference, three leaders in the space were asked where the money is in consumer-generated media.

Here's how they responded:

Chris Tolles, Topix.net: "In the past year, all the new sites that have broken the top 20 site list have been user generated content. I think it costs a million dollars now to be on the home page of MySpace, which nobody looks at."

Craig Newmark, Craigslist: "There's spinvertising and the occasional scam. In New York we're going to charge the apartment brokers because they asked us to. The more ethical ones think it will discourage the less ethical ones. You give people who are advertising the chance to be more right and more ethical, the chance is they're going to take it. In the future, marketing might be more branding, then participating in public discussions to get the message to the consumer. And countering disinformation on discussion boards. Just make it discrete, please, otherwise I'll have to go ahead and delete all your comments."

John Hiler, Xanga: "We're managing communities of people who live on our sites. It's a lot easier to be a CEO than to be mayor. You have to manage your approval ratings or you're not going to be reelected. How can I make my site, my brand a better community? How can I build trust and all those things? I think less about the corporate things than about serving my community. And the money will take care of itself."

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 18, 2006

Google Breaks Out the Movie Promos

The Jennifer Aniston, Vince Vaughn vehicle "The Break-Up" is catching a break on Google. Columbia Pictures brokered a deal with the search engine to feature its film on Google Video. In addition to being able to view the trailer, visitors are encouraged to upload video about their own break-ups. That will run through June 2.

This is the second movie to have a sizable promotion hosted by Google. Last month it ran a 24-day contest for Columbia Picture's "Da Vinci Code.

With the announcement of "The Break-Up" promotion, Google co-opted the opportunity to introduce its more user-friendly video-upload system. The procedure now lets users upload video through a Web-based tool in multiple formats, and video will be available faster than before.

Posted by Enid Burns at 3:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 5, 2006

Namco Rolls Up a Costume Contest for Fans

I'm not exactly about to craft a costume, but I've been playing Namco's "Me and My Katamari" on the Sony PSP for the past week. The third title in the Katamari Damancy property has a little prince rolling up objects onto a Katamari ball to gain mass and create islands for a few lost animals. It's definitely quirky, the objects that get rolled into the ball include everything from candy and pencils; to people and trees; and skyscrapers and entire cities. The property created an instant following for Namco Bandai games, and the fans are being rewarded with a costume contest run on the game's Web site. There's a bunch of fan art submitted on the site right now, and entries for the "cosplay" costume contest will be posted soon. This is a great example of how a company can leverage a heavily-involved audience to further promote a property.

Posted by Enid Burns at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 1, 2006

Oodle Goes Danny Terrio on Us

I've been spending a little time on Washington Post's new hyper-local classifieds-centric Express site (see recent ClickZ story), and noticed a link to an Oodle-sponsored dance video contest. (Oodle is powering Express's free and paid listings.) The Shake Your Oodle online contest is an extension of a series of charity college dance-off sponsorships Oodle has done recently. Starting March 29th and lasting 10-12 weeks, the broader contest allows people to upload homemade dance videos for a chance to win a year's subscription to Netflix's unlimited monthly service. Contest voters can search by city for related dance videos.

Tying in these charity event sponsorships with the YouTube-style CGM thing is an interesting move, perhaps more integrated than other CGM efforts that don't seem especially connected to anything else. I think the notion of engaging college communities through the local events and contest seems like a smart way to familiarize a tech-savvy, very neighborhood-centric bunch (they're stuck in or around campus, after all) with Oodle.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 5:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 21, 2006

Tapping the Travel Community

Internet Brands, home to Cars Direct, Autos.com and other sites in the real estate and travel space, is bringing aboard Wikitravel and World66, two collaborative Wiki sites that seek to be comprehensive global travel guides. Terms of the acquisition deals weren't disclosed.

Going forward, Internet Brands plans to introduce (and improve) contextually-targeted text ads, which currently appear on World66.com. It also plans to distinguish the properties from one another by having Wikitravel focus exclusively on encyclopedia-like objective info, and having World66 encompass people's subjective opinions and personal experiences. (Here's the Wiki page dedicated to the acquisition.)

It's interesting to see how user-generated content and collaboration are making an impact on the travel vertical. Kayak.com recently launched a social-networking aspect to its site, Kayak Buzz, and Yahoo! has tried to tap the community with Yahoo! Trip Planner (will it mix this with the new Farechase?).

Posted by Pamela Parker at 7:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 12, 2006

Power to the Peeps!

A few years ago, a friend of mine designed a necklace that featured a Marshmallow Peeps snugly nestled in a small coffin. The cease-and-desist letter from the Peeps attorneys arrived just as soon as the necklace appeared in a David LaChappelle fashion shoot.

What prompted this remembrance? Well, first it's Easter. And because of that, the Web's again rapidly filling up with all kinds of peeps-mods. BoingBoing has long lead the charge. Just two examples are here and here.

Citizen Web sites devote considerable online real estate to peep shows, and a Milwaukee gallery has been running a peep art exhibition for three years now.

Of course, "peeps" is a Flickr tag, too.

I don't have any figures, but I'll bet all this peepsing piques plenty of interest in the sticky little fowl, not to mention sparks plenty of sales well beyond the company's target demos.

I'm also willing to bet the company has ceased and desisted with the cease-and-desists. CGM can indeed hatch new markets -- if you can just allow yourself to relax.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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