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October 16, 2009

FTC Responds to IAB Letter on Blogger Guidelines

Yesterday the Interactive Advertising Bureau took a jab at the Federal Trade Commission's revised guidelines on online endorsements. Put simply, the guidelines call for online reviewers to disclose payment or affiliation with marketing campaigns or advertisers.

The way the IAB sees it, the FTC is unfairly favoring traditional media over digital media. In a letter sent to the FTC chairman, IAB prez Randy Rothenberg contended the FTC's call for disclosure of "material connections" between advertisers and endorsers in social media platforms will "shackle online media while exempting our offline cousins and competitors from equivalent constraint."

"I don't think that there is any favoritism based on the type of media," Rich Cleland, assistant director of the FTC's division of advertising practices told ClickZ News this morning. "The core here is do consumers understand the relationship that exists between the speaker and the seller." "Offline, if those lines are blurred, then there's a problem," he continued. "These are not new issues."

As iterated throughout his lengthy letter, Rothenberg and others fear that the FTC will now be on the hunt for bloggers reviewing and endorsing products, which he argues will squelch social media.

"In terms of bloggers and other endorsers...I don't think that there is any reason for concern," said Cleland, stressing, "We have explained on a number of occasions that we do not have civil penalty authority." In other words, he told me, the FTC is not planning an enforcement sweep against bloggers. Also, he confirmed, the FTC has no authority to fine anybody (despite countless erroneous reports to the contrary).

The IAB also suggested that the FTC guidelines are "perverse" and "constitutionally dubious," stating they imply "individuals writing in social media bear greater liability than do those writing for offline, one-way media."

"It's not clear what exactly the IAB thinks the constitutional issue is here," Cleland said. "The guidelines are in fact just guidelines and to the extent that they focus on [misleading] commercial activity and practices that are essentially promoting products in exchange for payments or free merchandise...we don't think that there's a constitutional issue."

As for the public hearing the IAB wants the FTC to hold to hash out the concerns, Cleland said, "We haven't made any determination on that.... We've already taken comments on this issue." Still, he added, "We don't want to preclude that we might do something in addition to [the comment period]."

Posted by Kate Kaye at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

October 5, 2009

British Band Finds Viral Success with "Greatest Hits of YouTube" Video

This YouTube video was doing the rounds last week, and was initially brought to my attention via Twitter. Essentially it's just a montage of "the funniest" videos from around YouTube, but it has attracted almost 2.2 million views since it was posted on September 13th -- 700,000 more than when I first viewed it on Thursday.

What interested me, however, is the fact the video was created to promote material by British band Hadouken. The video is sound tracked by their new single, M.A.D., and features links to buy it online from download stores such as iTunes. It may not be the most original from of promotion, but millions of people have now been exposed to the band's music, the majority of which had likely never heard of them before watching. By comparison, the official video for the track has received under 200,000 YouTube views.

Speaking with me last week, the band's guitarist and creator of the video, Dan Rice, described how the band was looking for interesting (and cheap) ways to get their music heard. "Our music doesn't really have much of a chance of getting on mainstream radio, so we have to think of other ways to reach out to new fans," he said. "This seemed like a fairly fun and creative way of doing it rather than going down boring traditional advertising routes, which we can't really afford and no longer really engage the young people that are into our music anyway."

Rice said the inspiration for the video came while the band was recording its new album, during which he spent a great deal of time online. "I saw the video of [trials cyclist] Danny MacAskill which was getting lots of views at the time and featured a Band of Horses track. It had 10 million views and I just started thinking about how, even though they were already an established band with a large fan base, loads of people must have been hearing them for the first time whilst watching that video," he said.

The movie was edited and posted in two days using a MacBook laptop and iMovie -- video editing software that comes bundled with the majority of Apple machines -- essentially costing the band nothing. In terms of sales uplift, Rice says it's too early to tell what effect the video has had. In terms of awareness, however, he's already noticing results.

"Views on all our normal music videos and [streams] on sites like MySpace have gone up, so it has definitely raised the profile of the band," he said. "Our music isn't to everyone's taste and I'm sure there are lots of people watching it who love the video but hate the track...but if we can pick up a few new fans, then that's great."

What's more, it appears the viral effect of the video is only just getting started. On Thursday, when I first viewed the video, it had just shy of 1.5 million views. At the time of writing this morning, it has attracted a total of 2.2 million. It was picked up by the Guardian's viral video chart on Friday, and has been featured on the Time magazine site as well as Huffington Post in the U.S.

Posted by Jack Marshall at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 21, 2009

Mad Avenue Blues

If you didn't catch "Mad Avenue Blues" on YouTube when it first appeared a few months ago, it's still worth checking out.

The slideshow, set to the tune of the 1971 song, "American Pie," won over the crowd at the OMMA conference today. It's the work of Terence Kawaja, managing director at GCA Savvian.

So bye, bye those big upfront buys...

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 8:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 10, 2009

Shop 'Til You Tweet and Drop

Can merchants, designers - and even a publisher -- get penny-pinching consumers to change their ways despite the economic downturn?

An initiative, Fashion's Night Out 2009, aims to do that and help revive NYC's fashion industry. Taking place in at least 13 cities tonight, including NYC, the campaign taps Twitter and Facebook to develop buzz.

Many of the city's retailers and designers are sponsoring special events. For instance, Gwen Stefani will appear at Bloomingdale's and Third Eye Blind will perform at Nine West Shoes at 53rd and Fifth Avenue, New York. Both appearances were announced on Twitter.

Fashionistas were giddy. Wrote @symonedollface on Twitter: "ughh #FashionNightOut Zac Posen, Patricia Fields, Ms. J, and Pharrell in one night... I MAY LOSE MY MIND"

Vogue magazine's publisher, Condé Nast, is behind the effort in a big way. It registered the URL, www.fashionnightout.com. The site includes a directory of 700 participating merchants and a tool that lets a shopper check off her itinerary.

On vogue.com, the mag publisher is offering a sweepstakes, including eight $5,000 shopping sprees. One hitch: participants must answer 16 questions on whether they'd like to opt in or out of getting special offers and other information from retailers and other event's sponsors. Let's make a deal!

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 31, 2009

Oreo Takes Big Budget Baby Step in Social Media

Oreo has tapped star power to promote its new Golden Double Stuf cookie.

In a homepage video ad that appears today on YouTube, Donald Trump challenges Eli and Peyton Manning to participate in a "lick race" competition to buy the so-called DSRL or the Double Stuf Racing League.

The YouTube video includes a promotion pointing Oreo fans to follow the brand on Facebook and Twitter and visit a YouTube channel or microsite for the Double Stuf Racing League. The campaign also includes a sweepstakes to meet the Mannings in Florida.

Will using celebrities like Trump and the Manning brothers help a social media campaign? Perhaps. To me, though, it feels like Oreo -- which has a huge following on Facebook -- is trying a little too hard to stuff its brand into social media channels.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

August 12, 2009

Zappos, Cisco to Chat Up Social Media at SES San Jose

Cisco Systems sells network equipment (e.g., routers and switches) and Zappos sells shoes. Each will be telling its social media story during panels hosted by ClickZ and Online Marketing Summit at Search Engine Strategies San Jose today.

We're also expecting a lively session about white hat/black hat in social media.

Not able to attend? Follow the conversation on Twitter by tracking #sessj.

Here's the complete lineup of the ClickZ/OMS panels:

Igniting viral campaigns: Brian Ellefritz, senior manger, social media marketing at Cisco Systems; Matthew Liu, product manager at YouTube sponsored videos; 10e20's Greg Finn; WebMama's Barbara Coll; and Apogee Search's Bill Leake. That panel will be moderated by Aaron Kahlow, chairman of the Online Marketing Summit.

Managing conversations and reputations: Brian Kalma, head of user experience and Web strategy, Zappos; Digital Voodoo's Dave Evans; Serengeti Communications' Liana Evans; and HubSpot's Mike Volpe. It will be moderated by yours truly.

White hat vs. black hat in social media: Harte Communications' Beth Harte; TopRank Online Marketing's Lee Odden; Search & Social's Dave Synder; and 97th Floor's Chris Bennett. Dave Evans will moderate.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 2:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 11, 2009

In Social Media, Motives Are Not Always the Same

People who write comments, share photos, upload videos, and contribute to blogs have different motives for participating online, sometimes surprising their audiences.

And don't assume those motives are all the same, warned Clay Shirky, author of "Here Comes Everybody" and keynote speaker at Search Engine Strategies San Jose, on Tuesday. He analyzed the technology and behavioral trends that are changing the way that people connect with each other -- and attempted to dispel assumptions about what motivates people to participate.

Take, for instance, the blogger who posted exclusive reports and photos about a coup in Thailand. "She's not a journalist, but she commits an act of journalism," Shirky said, adding that those reports earned her a following.

But when the same blogger wrote about her wish for a pink Hello Kitty mobile phone, some followers complained that she was going off topic.

How did the blogger respond to her critics? "She did something that most traditional journalists would not do. "She told those readers to buzz off," Shirky said, making the case that people who participate in social channels are not always motivated by the same reasons. "She's doing this because she's operating from intrinsic motivations."

Bottom line: "Amateurs are not sloppy professionals. They do things in different ways," he said.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 6:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 5, 2009

The JK Wedding Dance: A Manufactured Success?

Did a video of the Jill Peterson-Kevin Heinz wedding party's dance down the aisle get an assist from outside forces and help to make it a viral YouTube hit?

Digital marketer Augustine Fou does not question the authenticity of the "JK Wedding Entrance Dance" video, which scored 16.8 million page views on YouTube since July 19, 2009, and gave the wedding party its 15 minutes of fame including an apparence on the "Today" show.

Fou, however, questions whether a third-party, such as Sony or one of its PR agencies, helped to give the video an extra digital push. What would be the motive? The dance is performed to the song, "Forever," by Chris Brown, who is on Sony's Zomba Label Group.

YouTube, in a blog post, points out the rights holders for "Forever," used the video site's content management tools to "claim and monetize" the song. In addition, the rights holders -- not mentioned by name -- ran Click-to-Buy links over the video so viewers could buy the music track on Amazon and iTunes.

On his blog, Fou presents digital forensic evidence such as the "social intensity" of the video on sites such as Technorati, Delicious, Reddit, and Digg. "There was not enough organic sharing to support a view count of 13 million in 11 days," he wrote, while laying out other reasons behind his theory.

"This is one of the rare, if not the only, examples of a viral video that actually drove a measurable increase in sales. Unless someone from Sony or one of their PR agencies steps up to 'claim credit' for doing such an awesome job of not only driving sales but also polishing Chris Brown's image at the same time, we may never truly know if they did this. But if they did, this would go down as a text-book case of viral video marketing done right," Fou wrote in an e-mail to me.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 4:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

July 21, 2009

'Goode Job' Goes To...

The Murphy-Goode Winery social media manager's job -- officially known as a wine country lifestyle correspondent -- goes to Hardy Wallace of Atlanta, GA.

So what does a Southern guy know about wine? He's a Sommelier Guild level I and II and founder of the Dirty South Wine blog, according to the winery. And, more than 2,000 people applied for the six-month position that pays $10,000 a month and is based in Sonoma County, CA.

But a real wine snob wouldn't settle for less than a gig in Rutherford or Oakville. And that's not sour grapes.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 5:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 29, 2009

Twitter, YouTube Tributes Commemorate TV Pitchman Billy Mays

Fans of Billy Mays are rallying on Twitter and YouTube to pay tribute to the TV pitchman for OxiClean, Kaboom, and OrangeGlo.

Mays, 50, died unexpectedly this weekend.

Some are wearing blue and encouraging others to do. (#wearblue4billy)

Other tributes are popping up on YouTube, including this rap song and video and photo montage.

The pitchman's son, Billy Mays III, a.k.a., @YoungBillyMays, also reached out to supporters on Twitter, asking people to send in photos for a collage and thanking well wishers for their tweets. "Just want you all to know that I've read EVERY single reply and they've greatly helped me get through this day. Thank you," he wrote.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

May 19, 2009

Facebook Fans Addicted to Oreo Cookies

What happens if you scrape the white cream filling from 36 Double Stuf Oreo cookies and stack the sugary goo in between two chocolate wafers?

Just ask Web designer and developer Jason E. Beaird, who initially posted the photo on his blog, Jasongraphix.

You've got a savory photo for Oreo junkies to ogle on Facebook. In fact, 246 Oreo fans on Facebook commented on the photo when it was published on the social networking site. Some people posted sexually suggestive remarks, others marveled over the mini-engineering feat, and others proclaimed their love for the snack.

Oreo fans first came to my attention during the Interactive Advertising Bureau's social media conference this week. The cookie brand, part of Kraft Foods' Nabisco World snacks, has more than 1.3 million fans on one unofficial fan page alone. What's more, there are at least three other Oreo fan pages with several hundred thousand fans each.

While Andrew Markowitz, director, digital marketing, at Kraft Foods, acknowledged the brand's popularity during a panel discussion at the IAB conference, he didn't specify how the company interacts with its Facebook fans.

So I followed up with him and his team. Here are replies, via e-mail, courtesy of Stephen Chriss, director of consumer and customer engagement, U.S. snacks business, at Kraft Foods.

ClickZ: How is Kraft or the Oreo brand team interacting with fans on Facebook?
Stephen Chriss: We're thrilled with the number of fans and followers of Oreo on Facebook. We currently don't formally interact with fans on the site. However, we do keep an eye on the content, conversation and number of fans. Right now, we're reviewing the brand's digital strategies, including our approach to interacting with Facebook fans.

ClickZ: Do they participate in conversations in non-branded pages?
SC: Not currently. However, as I mentioned, we're reviewing plans to possibly do so.

ClickZ: And, is there an official Oreo fan page?
SC: No.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 6:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

December 8, 2008

Adidas Adicolor Campaign

The friend who forwarded this final entry into Adidas' Adicolor viral campaign on YouTube wrote, "viral advertising that I can relate to in a way that doesn't make me want to buy "product" at all."

Yep. That about sums it up. Even if it is compelling enough to make you spend tons of time with the brand, you don't feel as if you're really spending any time at all with the brand. That doesn't mean the films aren't terribly compelling. But are they terribly compelling advertising, or is viral getting too soft?

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 30, 2008

Starbucks: Cause Marketing and a 5 Cent Debate

During the holiday season, Starbucks Coffee will donate five cents from the purchase of select beverages to help finance AIDS programs in Africa.

A debate about the campaign is playing out on YouTube, proof that promoting a philanthropic endeavor can spur as much discord as selecting a coffee blend.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 8:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 17, 2008

Babycarrying and Online Marketing

I suspect more than a few folks are scratching their heads about the whole #motrinmoms scandal du weekend. As my friend @fuzheado said, the divergence in reaction might make a good Mars/Venus case study. He didn't get what all the fuss was about, but his wife honed right in on the problem.

Not surprisingly, I'm with the wife. Like the super-vocal moms who took such offense, I immediately "got" the problem with the ad -- its tone. As a mom with a 5-month-old, I "wear" my baby all the time. But it's not because it's "in fashion," because it's "supposedly" is a good bonding experience or because I want to look like "an official mom", as the Motrin ad implies. It's because it works. The kid doesn't cry and I can do whatever needs doing. And of course it's a bonding experience, because any time you meet your child's needs that's the case.

And, yes, sometimes my back hurts. Others out there are admitting this, too, even though the conventional wisdom is that babywearing doesn't hurt if you're doing it right. So, I don't think J&J is far off in targeting moms who wear their babies. They're just going about it wrong. (And let's not dismiss this as a Twitter crisis. For everyone that's tweeting about this, there are many others that are hearing about it, or just seeing the ads themselves and having the same reaction. Twitter is just surfacing the word-of-mouth that would have been happening anyway. )

But all is not lost for the brand. Right now, everyone's saying they will boycott Motrin. This bodes ill for their product for adults and may also impact their product for kids, given they've now offended the target that controls the purse-strings.

The silver lining is that Motrin has gotten everyone's attention. They need to grab this opportunity, while they're in the online spotlight, to connect in a positive way. They need to apologize and retool their condescending message about babywearing. To make sure it gets seen, an ad spend on mommy blogs is in order. Motrin have shown that they're not the experts on babywearing, but they can certainly get involved with and sponsor conversations on the topic -- a topic that inspires an amazing amount of passion. Whaddaya say, J&J?

---

Cross-posted from The River. Pamela Parker is author services manager at Federated Media Publishing.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sam's Club Circular Takedown and Embargo Politics

As someone who can’t stand shopping, I had no idea the kind of politics that are involved with store circulars, particularly when it comes to that obnoxious post-Thanksgiving consumer blowout they call Black Friday.

(Now I can’t get that Steely Dan song out of my head.)

Apparently SearchAllDeals.com posted a Sam’s Club Black Friday circular, prompting Wal-Mart (Sam’s Club owner) to send a take-down notice to the site. The letter, by way of TechDirt, calls the publication of the sales circulars “a violation of Wal-Mart’s rights and is also unfair to other sites that properly comply with the schedule for the official release dates.”

Wal-Mart also asked the deals site for a retraction. Oh, and they want to know exactly how the site got its grubby little hands on the circulars.

This part of the take-down notice had me a bit confused. The lawyers asked for a “statement of inaccuracy to be posted as follows: ‘The Sam’s Club advertisement included unauthorized changes that reflected inaccurate pricing information.’ " I’m guessing that’s just a way for Wal-Mart to ensure there aren’t disputes if they do end up altering prices - ? Or, perhaps, SearchAllDeals altered it?

It sure isn’t the first time Wal-Mart has shown a misunderstanding of the Web and the concept of building online buzz. When the firm launched its teen community site, The Hub, pundits panned the overly-policed site as out-of-touch and missing the point of social networking's free-spiritedness. And who could forget the "Wal-Marting Across America" travel blog? The company’s PR firm Edelman actually hired a couple to run the site, but it was passed off as a blog created by real brand advocates out of the goodness of their hearts.

And then there was that time they paid bloggers to write pro-Wal-Mart posts.

Anyway, this circular leaking thing is nothing new, at least as far as ZDNet is concerned. A post on their "Home Theater" blog about leaks of Best Buy’s and Circuit City Black Friday leaks is titled, “Circuit City Black Friday ad finally leaks. More yawns.”

I wonder how long it will take corporations to realize the immediacy and publishing ease enabled by the Internet has almost completely destroyed the embargo system. Yes, publications still honor embargoes requiring them to keep quiet on certain information until an agreed-upon date, but it’s gotten so they often end up shooting themselves in the foot doing it.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 17, 2008

M&M Goes Viral, Online and Off

by Douglas Quenqua

In its seemingly never-ending quest to make sentient beings out of snack foods, Mars has unveiled a new viral effort that allows people to upload photos of themselves on M&Ms, both real and digital.

Visitors to TheCandyLab.com can upload photos of themselves or friends onto a singing M&M and share their creation by e-mail. The anthropomorphic candy can sing one of two songs, I Want Candy (for obvious reasons) or You Blinded Me With Science (a reference to the site's mad scientist theme).

But the effort extends offline as well. Users can order the candies with their faces on it for real, just in time for Halloween. Executives who worked on the effort claim it's the first time the product of a viral media effort can be purchased and shared offline. Maybe true, and thankfully so when you consider the real-life implications of Monk-e Mail or (shudder) The Subservient Chicken.

The avatar technology was created by Oddcast, and the site itself was built by digital agency IMC2.

A word of warning: I visited the site several times over the past couple days, and every time it slowed my computer's performance down to a crawl. Granted my desktop is older than most of The Jonas Brothers, but this is M&Ms were talking about, your grandma's favorite non-butterscotch candy. One assumes early adopters are not the target demographic. A word of advice: Tone down the graphics.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 5:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 26, 2008

Most Highly-Targeted Message of the Entire Presidential Campaign?

The Great Schlep has launched with this genuinely funny -- and impactful -- video featuring Sarah Silverman exhorting her viewers to get their butts down to Florida to convince their Jewish grandparents to vote for Obama.

Sponsored by JewsVote.org, the microsite offers all the ammunition anyone would ever need to convince Zadie and Nana to vote Obama, down to a talking points PDF download addressing topics such as "He’s Black! Let’s talk about it!"

The viral traction seems to have already kicked in - the video's featured on Time magazine's Web site and is making the forward-to-a-friend rounds.

Sarah Silverman, meanwhile, has got my vote as the next Obama Girl.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 3:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

September 11, 2008

Mashup: 200 PR Execs, One Blender

How do you engage a group of more than 200 public relations professionals?

Bring in George Wright, marketing manager of Blendtec, a company known for viral videos on its site, WillItBlend.com.

Wright did not disappoint. With a garden rake and Blendtec blender as his props, Wright spoke at the Public Relations Society of America's T3 PR in NYC, a conference for PR professionals representing tech companies.

Wright has been on the speaking circuit, promoting the story of how he got Blendtec CEO Tom Dickson, pictured above, to don a white lab coat and agree to have his testing work be featured in a video shown online. A $50 investment resulted in a 700 percent increase in blender sales, according to Wright. (He didn't disclose the actual dollar change.)

And, the blender chewed up the wooden handle of the yard rake, no problem.

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 8:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 25, 2008

Absolut Behind Miracle Anti-Michael Jackson Drug Viral

Ever seen a spoof ad on the NYC subway?

No? That's what I thought.

Which is why my mind got bent six ways when I noticed BeKANYE yesterday on the downtown R train. Value proposition: two fizzy tablets dropped in water transform you from a white guy with receding chin and hairline into...well, Kanye West.

I couldn't find it online, but a friend did this morning. Funny thing is this afternoon, at the offices of a major publication, someone had tacked a digital printout of the subway print camapign to their monitor. This at least confirmed I had not been hallucinating of the subway (always a possiblity in +90 degree heat).

Absolut's the culprit, mocking direct and infomercials.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 3:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 1, 2008

'Sex and the City' and Facebook

It was the girls' night out at the movies and Facebook this weekend with the release of "Sex and the City."

Offline, women organized cosmo parties before heading out to see the movie.

Online, more 80,000 people signed up as a "Sex and the City" fan on Facebook as of early Sunday, many writing enthusiastic reviews. "OMG-This is the Girls at their absolute best!," wrote one fan.

(Who's counting, but fans of "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," released more than a week ago, totaled 72,000 as of today.)

And, Pogostick.com developed a Facebook quiz, "Which Sex and the City Character Are You?" that has nearly 4,000 fans. Complete it to learn whether you're sexy like Samantha or correct like Charlotte.

How about you?

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 9:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 22, 2008

Countrywide CEO's E-mail Faux Pas

Disgusting.

That one single word made Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo Mozilo look like an ogre this week.

It all started when Daniel Bailey Jr. used language from a form letter to ask the lender to revise the terms of his adjustable-rate mortgage so he wouldn't lose his home. Bailey's note went out to about 20 Countrywide addresses, including Mozilo's, according to the latimes.com.

Mozilo took to the keyboard:

"This is unbelievable…Most of these letters now have the same wording. Obviously they are being counseled by some other person or by the Internet. Disgusting," wrote Mozilo, who apparently hit the "reply" button instead of "forward."

Bailey posted Mozilo's note on Loan Safe, bringing widespread attention to the "disgusting" reply.

Countrywide issued a statement to the latimes.com saying the company and Mozilo "regret any misunderstanding caused by his inadvertent response to an e-mail by Mr. Bailey. Countrywide is actively working to help borrowers like Mr. Bailey keep their homes."

Posted by Anna Maria Virzi at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

April 29, 2008

STD's: No Laughing Matter

Except when they are. Planned Parenthood nails the sex ed instructor shtick with a new video site at TakeCareDownThere.org. It's funny and filthy stuff, just the way teenagers like it. Bonus points for use of "blow-jays."

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 5:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 23, 2008

New U.K. Advertising Regulations Have Online Implications

Online word of mouth and buzz marketing techniques are to be governed by new U.K. legislation, which comes into effect on May 26, subject to parliamentary approval.

Under the new Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading regulations, it will be illegal to "Falsely claim or create the impression that the trader is not acting for purposes relating to his/her trade, business, craft or profession," or to "falsely represent oneself as a consumer."

In layman's terms, it will be a criminal offense to plant positive messages about a brand in blogs or forums, use brand ambassadors or buzz marketing specialists, and to seed viral ads, without clearly stating that these actions are being carried out by, or on behalf of a brand.

In addition, there are new implications for ads including an "invitation to purchase." These will now be required to include a full description of the advertised product, which could prove difficult given the limited space available in many interactive ad formats such as banners, buttons and text messages.

In practice, it seems highly unlikely that these laws can, or will be enforced, given the sheer scale of the Internet and its global nature. That said, it will undoubtedly be in the interests of major advertisers to keep firmly within the confines of the law.

As Marina Palomba, IPA Legal Director noted, "While many advertisers will continue with such campaigns and get away with them, this is in my view a risky and undesirable way forward. If advertisers and their agencies ignore the ethics of responsible advertising, the damage to the advertising and marketing industry generally will be considerable, undermining all commercial messages, their effectiveness and the self regulatory systems."

The new regulations will implement the European Union's Unfair Practices Directive (UCPD) in the U.K., which should have already been introduced by the end of 2007.

U.S. regulators have also looked into the WOM marketing industry.

Posted by Jack Marshall at 1:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

April 14, 2008

Sony U.K. Froths Up Another Viral

The ad team for the Sony Bravia team in the U.K. has released a series of viral videos on the Web: First there was "Balls," then "Paint," and Bunnies followed. A new series of videos, Sony Foam City, made its way on YouTube, and a supporting microsite for Sony's new line of digital cameras an camcorders.

The video is a similar piece where a neighborhood of an urban area is taken over by, in this case foam, and it's affect on the area residents. Many are armed with Sony cameras to capture the event.

Posted by Enid Burns at 5:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 17, 2008

DoubleClick Acknowledges Widget Ads, Will Support Them

There used to be a running joke at DoubleClick that the company should hire a VP of widget technology. "It'd be a short-lived career," VP of Advertiser Products Ari Paparo told me in an interview last August. He uttered the somewhat mocking remark by way of acknowledging that ever more advertisers were asking for widget capabilities.

Six months later DoubleClick is giving them what they want. The Google-owned firm today announced support for widget (i.e. "embeddable") ads. The function will reside within DART for Advertisers, where agencies will be able to easily add "virality" to their rich media campaigns.

Gigya is supporting the ad sharing component through its Wildfire technology, which can process widget installs on 50 social media platforms, including social networks, blogs and bookmarking services.

The main value DoubleClick can bring to the widget advertising phenomenon is standardized reporting. DFA customers will be able to obtain metrics on the number of impressions, interactions, viral “grabs” for each of the social networks. That may eventually help marketers gauge the conversion impact of all that viral sharing.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 2:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 10, 2008

Live By the Crowd, Die By the Crowd

The SXSW conference has been all about bottom-up media; individuals and crowds creating, selecting and elevating content above and beyond whats doled out to them by traditional media outlets and corporations.

Sure, Business Week journalist Sarah Lacy's keynote interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg yesterday was a trainwreck, an abortion, went down in flames and every other metaphor for disaster. Why? Because Sarah was all about Sarah, all the time (except when she was dissing her audience). The media took her to task for it. So did the blogosphere and the Twittersphere (to which her "screw all you guys" response bears special mention).

In real time.

Her self-justification in this YouTube interview only makes something bad something much worse indeed.

Ironically, Sarah has, in unifying thousands of conference attendees against her (and providing the burning topic for conversation at last night's parties) become the most valuable object lesson in what's so endlessly discussed here in Austin. The word made flesh.

If you doubt the pundits, experts, panelists and pontificators, the Story of Sarah proves them right. In a highly weird way, it's almost the best thing that could have happened here. Except, of course, for Sarah herself.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 7, 2008

The Worst Viral Marketing Campaign - Ever

Just picked up the conference bag and badge. It's exciting to be at South By Southwest, and in Austin, for the first time.

If you're here, try to catch the panel I'm participating in, which promises to be a ton of fun. Henry Copeland, Jeff Jarvis, Steve Hall, Charlotte Selles and yours truly are going to nominated the 10 worst viral marketing campaigns of all time, then award The Suxorz Trophy to the all-time worst.

A snarky good time is all but guaranteed!

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 26, 2008

Puff Daddy Tries Widgets to Promote his Vodka

The alcohol industry is regulated heavily by the Federal Government as to exactly how and where it can advertise, and that includes online. As such, I was particularly interested to see Ciroq Vodka, the brand produced by Sean "Puff Daddy" Comb's Bad Boy Entertainment and Diageo, expand its online advertising efforts to include the use of shareable widgets.

Interpolls created the widgets which are similar to those developed for its other clients including Scion and Ford, but the Ciroq widgets have an extra feature -- an age verification requirement. To see the widget's content, which includes a video featuring Combs and recipes for drinks made with the vodka, viewers much enter their birth year. As widgets are intended to be "grab-able" and placed on a users Web site or social network site, it occurs to me that it's only a matter of time until a minor somewhere is extolling Comb's vodka to friends via his Facebook page, but the widget will require age verification before each viewing, according to Kwasi Asare, new media marketing manager for Bad Boy Entertainment.

"It's the same as any other age verification online," he told me. "The tough part of working through these new technologies is how does this fit into existing legal framework? There's not a lot of precedent for these kinds of things."

Bad Boy Entertainment is placing the widget initially on sites that require age verification to help weed out minors, he said, and it also distributed it last Sunday on AOL for a one day run. Based on what kind of response it sees the company may or may not continue to use the widget, but the unusual nature of the technology appeals to the company, Asare said.

"Puff has established his career to doing new things that have never been done before," he said. "It's important for us to be cutting edge not just from a product standpoint but from a technology standpoint as well."

Posted by MatthewNelson at 9:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 7, 2008

WPP's GroupM Acquires Majority Stake in Social Media Agency

WPP's GroupM announced today that it has acquired 75 percent of the share capital of LaCommunidad, the Dutch interactive agency behind imaginatively named viral tracking technology, ViralTracker.

LaCommunidad specializes in viral and social media campaigns, and has worked with big name European brands including ebay, Ford, and Dutch Airline KLM. According to a release today, the investment "continues WPP's strategy of strengthening its capabilities in digital media."

WPP recently acquired a minority stake in U.S.-based Integrated Media Measurement Inc., the developer of an end-to-end media measurement system that links media exposure to consumer action.

However, rumors of a more significant ad-related investment have been circulating since last September. One possible target is rumored to be SpotRunner, an Internet agency offering localized Web and TV ads for small businesses, in which WPP already owns a small stake.

Posted by Jack Marshall at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 7, 2008

Al-Qaeda Spread Viral Videos Through Mobile Phones

Terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda are distributing viral video clips through mobile phones, according to reports from the Associated Press.

An announcement was apparently posted late Friday by Al-Qaeda's media wing, Al-Sahab, on websites commonly used by Islamic militants. The statement read, "The elite jihadi media group presents the first batch of al-Sahab videos to be downloaded to cell phones."

Eight previously unavailable videos are believed to have been specially encoded for mobile, making them ideal for viral distribution through Bluetooth, infra-red and wireless file transfer – technologies which have become increasingly popular in a region with limited broadband penetration.

A message from al-Qaida's No. 2 figure, bal-Zawahri, introducing the videos read, "I asked God for the men of jihadi media to spread the message of Islam and monotheism to the world and spread real awareness to the people of the nations."

According to Associated Press, Ben Venzke, head of IntelCenter, a U.S. group that monitors militant messages, said that this was not the first time that the organisation had released videos designed for cell phones.

Posted by Jack Marshall at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 3, 2008

Late Night Talk, and JibJab Stabs at '07

Late night talk shows came back from hiatus despite the writers' strike, and while I don't often watch, I caught the intros for "The Tonight Show" and "Late Night." Jay Leno's monologue was punchy; David Letterman's was not so much. Letterman's writers may have negotiated special terms in order to come back to work, but their hearts are still on strike, trust me. The other thing going for the Tonight Show, it debuted JibJab's roast "In 2007."

Posted by Enid Burns at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Viral: ID Computer Geeks and Serial Killers

Before he was on the news as a serial killer, would you have thought Jeffrey Dahmer was a computer programmer if you had seen him on the street? Malevolent Design Weblog Malevole created a viral that makes site visitors identify a mix of 10 programming language inventors and serial killers. It turns out I "know my java beans from my fava beans."

Posted by Enid Burns at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 4, 2007

Paying For Play at SayHeyHey

Online dating sites are nothing new, but the latest site to go live has me amused not just because of its wacky kids looking for love, but for its adoption of some interactive advertising tricks, namely pay-for-placement and ad supported video.

SayHeyHey officially launched this week as the brainchild of Alex Gurevich and Soudy Khan. The site lets singles record and share videos of themselves for free, including Penny from Berkeley who's apparently into guys with glasses and Nick in San Francisco who's looking for a girl who likes girls. Silliness aside, a quick check of the site didn't show any advertising running with the videos as of yet, but approximately 500 videos are running so far.

The company did me that they're planning to add pay-for-placement early next year, so lonely hearts with some extra cash will be able to purchase more prominent placement of their videos. After all, who needs personality in their singles profiles anymore if they can just buy their way into the dating clutches of other lonely singles?

Posted by MatthewNelson at 8:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 5, 2007

The Color of Bunny

The best film series franchises may actually be advertisements. The Sony Bravia team in Europe continues to create incredibly sequenced commercials, which get picked up virally on the Web. "Play-Doh" follows "Paint" and "Balls" in the series where the creative really shows the color HDTV is capable of displaying.

A Sony Bravia Europe site has additional interactive elements including a "Colourwall" that shows the 16.7 million colors available on the Bravia HD sets. If you upload a picture, you can claim a pixel of color as your own hue.

Posted by Enid Burns at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 3, 2007

Sony Widgets its HDNA Campaign

This week Sony added a widget component to the HDNA campaign it launched in August. The widget, created by Freewebs.com, and gives users the ability to post the creative on Freewebs sites, social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook, or the ClickZ blog.

Posted by Enid Burns at 4:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 26, 2007

Next Dove Viral to Bow Oct. 1

Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty has met with blockbuster success. By now, it seems, everyone on the Web has seen (and re-seen) the spot that surely qualifies as the campaign of the year, Evolution.

Next Monday, the latest video in the series bows -- we just got a sneak peek. Unilever's longtime agency Ogilvy created the spot in which a sweet 7 year-old girl in bombarded, in about :60, with all the body image related advertising she'll see in a year. Tagline: Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does."

The spot is engaging, highly impactful, and will doubtless spawn even more consumer dialogue about women and girls' self esteem images. This is great advertising and great irony. What's in the crosshairs of the campaign after all is nothing less than....advertising.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Deer and Tails and Trees and Propagation

What's the perfect metaphor for combining word-of-mouth with major ad campaigns?

Yesterday, Carat's Sarah Fay told advertisers they should be "planting a tree" rather than painting a house. At a Yahoo event this morning, the similes and metaphors continued.

Mediavest's Jim Kite, president, connections research and analytics, told advertisers they're no longer in the "message delivery business," but rather the "message propagation business." He was followed by Ogilvy Vice Chairman Steve Hayden, who popped a drawing of a "big-eyed deer" onto the screen (presumaby, it was staring into an advertisers headlights). The deer was joined in short order by what looked like a goggly-eyed snake, but Hayden called the creature the "big-eyed tail."

Clearly, consensus is needed on the right industry term for the phenomenon of consumers passing along brand messages. Word-of-mouth? Viral? They just don't seem to be cutting it anymore.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 13, 2007

Borrowers Bare Fangs with Facebook Group, and a Bank Relents

HSBC felt the wrath of online WOM recently. The firm said late last month that it was scrapping plans to charge interest on its U.K. graduate accounts in response to pressure from an online Facebook campaign.

That pressure came in the form of a Facebook group launched by the National Union of Students (NUS) and titled "Stop the Great HSBC Graduate Rip-off!!!" The group has amassed almost 7,000 members since its creation in mid-July, and its founder, NUS Vice President for Education Wes Streeting, credited the collective online protest with forcing HSBC to back down.

“There can be no doubt that using Facebook made the world of difference to our campaign,” he said in a statement.

Back story: Previously, as with many U.K. banks, opening a student account with HSBC would entitle the holder to an interest-free overdraft not only throughout their years of study, but also for three years following their graduation. When the bank moved to renege on the promise, the collective outrage of Britain's post-grad population spurred the Facebook group, and the mea culpa. “Like any service orientated business we are not too big to listen to the needs of our customers," HSBC’s head of product development Andy Ripley said in a statement.

Posted by Jack Marshall at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 10, 2007

Book Promos Get Wikis and Video

Well, if anything, the fact that book marketing is getting hot online indicates one thing: some people still read things other than tabloids and free dailies. Video production outfit TurnHere today said it's expanding distribution for its BookVideos.tv video site, which features clips of authors discussing their latest titles. Videos on the Simon and Schuster-sponsored site will now be seen on new partner sites like blip.tv, LibraryThing, GoodReads, WhatsOnMyBookshelf, Book Divas and Veoh. TurnHere has been pushing its author and earlier local/travel video clips onto Google, MSN, Yahoo, YouTube and other sites for awhile now.

The firm has also introduced a widget to add it to other sites. Since the site launched in June, TurnHere enabled users to send e-mails with the videos or embed them on other sites, add comments, or click to buy the books.

On the more collaborative tip, Near-Time and The History Press have started up an online book community to promote True Richmond Stories, by Harry Kollatz Jr, due out next month. There's some free content available, including what look to be downloadable print quality images, but the site offers the entire book to paying members. It's a wiki-style site that will allow the author to make updates and engage in the reader community.

As the press release puts it, "Near-Time Premium extends the life cycle of a book and helps make each project more profitable. During pre-press, content gets to market faster and enables a community of interest around a topic, giving technology and STM publishers a distinct first-to-market advantage. When a title reaches backlist, online distribution allows publishers to capitalize on the long tail of the topic."

Posted by Kate Kaye at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 6, 2007

iPhone Price Drops, Does Jobs Rise to the Occasion?

The fallout over yesterday's announced iPhone price drop was immediate -- and angry. Apple's stock tanked as blogs filled to the brim with step-by-stop instructions on how to return your old iPhone and buy a new one -- at $200 off.

Steve Jobs to the rescue? In an open letter to iPhone customers in which he (improbably) claims to have read each and every angry e-mail sent to Apple over this issue, he's making an offer to every iPhone owner who doesn't return their unit, then exchange it for a new model at $200 off what they paid for it in the first place.

The offer? $100 credit towards their next Apple purchase.

Now, math isn't my forte, but I do know the difference between $200 in my pocket and $100 with Apple's name on it.

Still, Jobs gets credit for reacting swiftly, decisively and publicly. The question is, will iPhone owners swallow it? Time -- and the blogosphere -- will soon tell.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 4:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

August 13, 2007

The Humdrum Habits of Digital 'Influencers'

A new report from JupiterResearch upends some conventional wisdom about reaching "influencers" online with the finding that these individuals don't necessarily dig on social media -- at least for research.

As Jupiter analyst Emily Riley put it in a statement: "Although a high level of online activity may suggest the influential brand advocates would respond to social marketing tactics, they are actually more traditional in their manner of research." The report finds influencers are more likely to read a blog than write one, and more likely to seek value and reliability than whatever's hot this season.

In other words, the much-hyped influencer persona is above all things practical, skeptical and unmoved by social marketing. (release)

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 1:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 10, 2007

The Science Behind Travelzoo

Ever wonder what's behind Travelzoo's Top 20 newsletter with the best deals in travel? A team of scouts cull through travel sites, and get offers from sources, then get together for a pitch meeting. Each deal is then confirmed to be sure it's attainable. The site documented its efforts in a news-style clip it posted on YouTube (link).

Posted by Enid Burns at 2:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 30, 2007

Nancy Drew Sleuths Marketing Opportunities

With just over two weeks away from the movie release of "Nancy Drew," a modern telling of the classic teen mystery series, yet another marketing campaign surfaces at the mall. Earlier this month two separate campaigns deployed the Web and mobile phones to peak viewers' interests. Now there's "Nancy Drew and the Cotton Caper" making its appearance in malls in 15 markets around the country.

The Cotton Caper draws from a partnership between Warner Bros. Pictures, Cotton Incorporated, General Growth Management (the owner of malls across the country), and Her Interactive (the publisher of the Nancy Drew video game series). Activities originate in a "cotton-themed interactive mall experience" where consumers receive an activity book of clues and instructions to find answers hidden in a mall display. Looking for more sleuthing after a trip to the mall? Consumers can go to Cotton Incorporated's thefabricofourlives.com and subsequently the microsite for Nancy Drew and the Cotton Caper where consumers can find more clues, locate a participating mall, learn about the title character's cotton-laden wardrobe. There's also a link to longtime "Nancy Drew" video game publisher Her Interactive and a snowball fight mini-game made for the upcoming title "Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek," which retails on June 12.

Posted by Enid Burns at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 17, 2007

Aspiring Action Heroes Wanted

Every so often Verizon creates a campaign to push its broadband initiative. The latest is Verizon's Action Hero site created by R/GA. The site allows visitors to create and even star in their own techno thriller.

Site visitors choose a villain, cast a hero from a catalog of digital faces or upload a personal photo to get dual directing and staring credits. Users then choose the intro sequence, chase scene, and blow-up ending to the film. Verizon says it will send the edited video within 24 hours, but I got a link to my feature film within the hour. Users can share the video with friends, or post it to the Verizon Action Hero site for all to see and appreciate what broadband can do.

Posted by Enid Burns at 4:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Microsoft's Second Second Life Presence

Millions of Us, a virtual worlds/social media agency, recently launched Microsoft Virtual Studio in Second Life. They're also touting the success of the adjacent Microsoft property Coders' Cove island.

The community-building effort challenged coders to find hidden "eggs" and solve puzzles in order to win access to a mysterious blimp hovering above the area. Winners were accorded 900 square meters of virtual land (their lease is up in November, though).

Which reminds me -- this coming Monday, May 21, ClickZ is sponsoring the first-ever conference wholly devoted to Advertising in Social Media. We're going to be discussing projects in Second Life, social networks, syndication, and much, much more.

Check out the agenda, and if you're in New York, please make every effort to join us. We have an amazing line-up of speakers and one very cool, topical topic.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 3:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 30, 2007

Mobile Pass-along Rate

It’s understood that magazines have a pass-along rate, growing circulation beyond subscriptions and newsstand. Does mobile have a counterpart? On a panel at the Mobile Entertainment and Advertising Summit, Jeremy Wright, worldwide head of marketing services at Enpocket, referred to the behavior as “show-to-others.” He said it’s important to show to advertisers “the impact is much broader than a simple click through.” Of course this phenomenon will be difficult to measure.

Posted by Enid Burns at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 1, 2007

What Color is Your Microsoft Office?

You may have heard about a new bit of Microsoft Software: Vista. It's actually a whole line including several versions of the operating system and Office 2007. To add a little fun to what some see as potentially boring productivity software like PowerPoint 2007, Microsoft has created a short personality quiz to match users up to the appropriate software. Here's a fun, quick diversion. Though it's a bit pale in comparison to the multi-million dollar "Wow Factor" campaign to promote Vista.

Posted by Enid Burns at 4:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 31, 2007

City-Wide Bomb Scare Spurred by Outdoor Placements

CNN is reporting the city of Boston reacted to outdoor installments placed by Cartoon Network to promote its Adult Swim series "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" by calling a bomb-threat. The ads consisted of an electronic circuit board with LED lights in the shape of one of the show's characters. In DIY fashion, the units had a home assembly appearance with exposed wires making them appear of questionable origin. The devices were placed in several locations in several cities: Boston; New York; Los Angeles; Chicago; Atlanta; Seattle; Portland, Oregon; Austin, Texas; San Francisco; and Philadelphia. The light-up characters only raised a scare in and around Boston.

Posted by Enid Burns at 7:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 28, 2006

John Edwards Embraces YouTube, Viral, SMS,

Presidential hopeful John Edwards jumped his own announcement of his plans to campaign in 2008, scheduled for today, by posting a video on YouTube yesterday in which he pre-empts the news.

Edwards' appeal is for Americans to join his OneCorps campaign, and his call-to-action is to do so either on his Web site or via SMS (text 'hope' to 30644). He makes sure to ask viewers to forward his message to friends.

And it seems to be working.The enthusiastic feedback on his YouTube page runs very much toward "you've got my vote."

Where the effort falls short, however, is the campaign's stubborn insistence to capture e-mail addresses, no matter what. Want more info via SMS? Want to learn more about OneCorps? You're not going to get it..unless you fork over your deets and get on yet another e-mail list. Even the reply to sending an SMS message is, "Please txt us your email."

It almost feels like you have to pay.

C'mon, Senator Edwards. You've gone this far in embracing new media. Take the final step and don't throw up barriers to your message, or to your supporters. Embrace other communications channels (To be fair, the OneCorps.com URL redirects to blog.johnedwards.com, but it's not loading today, so no word about RSS feed availability).

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 13, 2006

FTC Response to WOM Issue Won't Change Much

With the Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing industry already policing itself when it comes to disclosure, a recent FTC statement sent in response to a call to investigate the industry probably won't change a whole lot.

OK, that's my assessment. Gary Ruskin, the man behind Commercial Alert, the marketing watchdog group that sent the petition over a year ago, managed to eek out a positive comment while speaking for a Washington Post story. “It will change practices in the word-of-mouth marketing industry.”

Ruskin says that because in the letter sent to Commercial Alert, dated 12/7, the FTC writes, "it would appear that consumers may reasonably give more weight to statements that sponsored consumers make about their opinions or experiences with a product based on their assumed independence from the marketer." In other words, the failure to disclose the consumer/marketer relationship would be deceptive, similar to previous false testimonial related cases cited in the letter.

"In conclusion," states the missive, "the FTC staff will determine on a case-by-cased basis whether to recommend law enforcement actions to the Commission." It goes on to suggest Commercial Alert "bring to our attention instances in which word of mouth marketing practices may cause consumer injury."

Commercial Alert isn't exactly pleased with what seems to be the FTC's request for more hard examples of deception. The org put out a press release recently regarding the letter suggesting, "the Commission gave the word of mouth marketing industry a giant Christmas present by refusing to launch a wholesale investigation of the industry for deceptive marketing.”

Evidently, Commercial Alert figured demonizing Procter and Gamble’s Tremor in its original petition was enough to get the FTC started. (Tremor is P&G's WOM agency that has thousands of kids signed on to help pitch products but doesn't required disclosure.)

To me, this looks like the FTC saying, yes, disclosure is important, but we're not about to put the time and energy into a full blown investigation of an industry in which the majority of its campaigns take place offline in actual in-person conversation. A very small percentage of WOM actually occurs online where the FTC might be able to track it.

Also, and perhaps more important, what Commercial Alert requested is a disclosure requirement. The fact is the Word of Mouth Marketing Association has spent the past year developing a set of guidelines for disclosure of the relationship between its member companies (from agencies to big brand marketers) and the people they enlist to spread WOM. Oh, and let's not forget it'd be pretty tough for the FTC to police what people say to one another, especially offline.

An interesting thing to note are some findings from a study by Professor Walter Carl that practically dismiss the notion that disclosure will somehow erode the supposed power of WOM:

For about 5% of the conversational partners who were not aware of the agent’s affiliation with the marketing organization there was a negative “backlash” effect when they found out. These negative feelings could be directed toward the agent, the interaction with that agent, the brand being discussed, and/or the company who made the brand, product, or service. There were virtually no negative feelings, however, when the conversational partner was aware of the agent’s affiliation.

It'll be interesting to see if Commercial Alert attempts to provide solid examples of deception via WOM marketing. To be honest, I think the disclosure issue is a red herring.

Posted by Kate Kaye at 5:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

WOMMA, Watch Your Buzz!

So I'm scanning one of the very few non-work related blogs in my feed list when I come across this item about the recent FTC ruling on word-of-mouth marketing regulation.

The stunning exerpt: "yesterday's decision was a victory for the extremely creepy "Word of Mouth Marketing Association," who want their street teamers to be able to shill without any type of disclosure requirements."

Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. WOMMA's all about disclosure, disclosure, and still another helping of disclosure. In fact, I sat in on WOMMA board member Jim Nail harping on that very fact at a Yahoo event just yesterday.

But that's not the point, is it? It would appear the Word of Mouth Marketing Association has its own issues to contend with, both insofar as "association" and "word-of-mouth" are concerned.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 4:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 12, 2006

WOMMA is Growing Up

Andy Sernovitz, the first CEO of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), is moving on. He informed members Monday that he will give up his role at the organization at the end of March to pursue consulting, writing, speaking, and teaching opportunities, as well as spend some time with his growing family.

"Seems like ages ago, I fielded the first call from Andy re: a plan to put structure on what back then was an idea on a piece of paper," Pete Blackshaw, CMO of Nielsen BuzzMetrics and WOMMA co-founder, told ClickZ. "We've built a great organization, and Andy deserves a world of credit for getting WOMMA where it is today. He's a real fighter, and that's what we needed in the first phase of building a great association."

WOMMA will continue to be led by Susan Tibbitts, executive director, who joined the WOMMA staff more than a year ago, as well as a recently expanded staff of eight. The group elected a board of directors in May.

Those two factors make Sernovitz comfortable in his decision, he wrote in his farewell letter. "Experience confirms a lesson that my dad taught me about starting a business: The most important service a true entrepreneur can provide to his company is to get the hell out of the way when the startup days are over."

Sernovitz said will remain an active member of the organization.

Sernovitz led the organization in several efforts to set ethical guidelines for word of mouth marketing, which some family groups felt did not go far enough; and to defend WOM from overzealous legislators.

"I didn't always agree with Andy on all issues, but he got the job done. We've built a great organization, and Andy deserves a world of credit for getting WOMMA where it is today. He's a real fighter, and that's what we needed in the first phase of building a great association," Blackshaw said. "Importantly, he hasn't been afraid to address the difficult, sometimes acrimonious and always thankless issues like word-of-mouth ethics. Marketing needs more leaders who are willing to swim upstream on the issues that truly put consumers in the center of the equation."

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 4:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 5, 2006

If Viral & Buzz Education Were a Vocational College

"I had to do some nasty stuff before I finally got a successful internet video. The viral learning center helped me stay focused." Worth a watch.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 9:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

November 1, 2006

Word-of-Mouth in New Hampshire

The New Hampshire Travel Council asked me up to beautiful Meredith, NH to keynote their Fall conference on marketing. My online marketing talk centered on the importance of user-generated content and participating in the conversations consumers are having about your business.

But the best lesson came from a member of the audience following a brief talk by the owner of the Inns at Mills Falls, Rusty McLear, and Alex Ray who runs the Common Man restaurants operated on the hotel properties.

Rusty and Alex alluded to contributing to the community and doing well by being good business citizens, but they didn't refer to specific initiatives. Then, a member of the audience raised his hand and told the audience that when his August wedding had to be canceled due to unforeseen circumstances, the hotel and restaurants forgave all his contracts for the event.

The two entrepreneurs shrugged off their good deed, but they did note that the gentleman had just told a couple hundred people about his good experience, and likely had related the story several times before. "We're in business to make money," noted Rusty, "but not to take the last dollar."

Strong brands tell stories. Really strong brands know when to sit back and let others tell the stories for them.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 17, 2006

Can a Good Viral Have a Good Sequel?

Sony enjoyed a viral lift from a TV spot it did called "Balls" where colored balls were filmed flowing down the hilly streets of San Francisco. Now it hopes to achieve similar attention with its "Paint" spot. This time the commercial was filmed in Glasgow by director Jonathan Glazer and features a fireworks-like display of exploding paint in a building complex.

The Bravia folks created bravia-advert.com just to show off the ad and making-of content. While there's the ability to download the ad and various behind-the-scenes video and images, there is little ability for a viral to happen from the site itself. On YouTube there's several version of "Balls" and making-of video for the "Paint" spot, but the creative itself isn't there just yet. One interesting note is that while there was extensive cleanup after each shoot as detailed on the site, it clearly took multiple takes, and a short video of one such disaster is posted on YouTube.

Posted by Enid Burns at 1:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 5, 2006

Consumer Control & Marketing - In A Nutshell

At the CMO Council Summit, Dean Harris of Kayak, Josh Brooks of MySpace, and Page Murray from Palm are talking brand building.

The panel is just discussing the trend of consumers' increasign control over marketing efforts, and what marketers should do about it. A nugget of wisdom just dropped from Page's lips that sums it all up better than anything I've yet heard or read on the topic.

Page said: "Go with god."

Amen.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 20, 2006

CGM's Milky Way

Web 2.0 on steroids? Maybe. Hopefully, without the added hormones.

Watching the Tuscan Whole Milk user reviews pile up has been something of a spectator sport here at ClickZ HQ all week.

Current total: 765.

Many of the submissions are funny enough to...well, to make milk shoot out of your nose.

Impact on sales? No idea.

Brand buzz? No question about it.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 4:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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)

August 30, 2006

Stolen cell phone, or viral campaign?

I came across a post on Digg this morning by a person claiming their cell phone was stolen, but thanks to the subscription to photo-upload service ShoZu, they're now seeing photos of the alleged thief's family.

Considering the implausibility of the scenario, the fact that ShoZu's founder has commented on the thread, and that the photos are not quite consistent with the story, my money's on this being a viral campaign seeded by ShoZu or its agency. It's a pretty good effort, with enough interesting plot twists and cool-factor to get people talking about it, and digging the story. It's also flawed enough that people will investigate it and keep talking about it to expose it as a charade.

UPDATE: I got in touch with Ben Clemens, the former owner of the cell phone, who swears the stolen cell phone story is true. Clemens, who tells the story on his blog The Practicalist, also happens to be a Yahoo employee, so we at least know that he's not under the direct employ of ShoZu or its agency. ShoZu's PR person contacted me as well to deny any involvement.

I guess this is an example of real word-of-mouth marketing for ShoZu, one that was unplanned and organic. Still, it works as a model for how manufactured WOM can be put together to work.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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)

August 17, 2006

Social Networks: Music to Brit Marketers' Ears

This whole social networking thing isn't going away anytime soon, is it? My breakfast copy of the FT is brimming with British social network news.

With A-level results set to be announced today, Univillage.com hopes to go head-to-head with MySpace, Facebook, and the leading British site, Bebo. It's following a Facebook model: only UK students with a university address can register. Their marketing program's sucess remains to be seen, but it's laser-targeted. They're mailing all the students who took the A-levels, using the university admission body's e-mail list. Red Bull is the first advertiser on the network which has signed deals with major labels to add music and "secret gigs" to the mix.

The adjacent FT column reports the U.K.'s recording industry trade organization, the BPI, is haiing social networks for the resurgance in British music. British debut albums have captured their biggest share of the charts for over 10 years, thanks to MySpace, Bebo, Faceparty and digital downloads. Seems like just yesterday downloading was going to obliterate the music industry. Remember?

What's the headline here, anyway? "Youth Likes Pop Music" just doesn't seem to cut it. "Recording Industry Embraces Web" is catchier, no?

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 9, 2006

"Snakes On A Plane" Re-Memes

Those flying snakes sure are viral.

A Web meme before it even went into production, the Samuel Jackson starrer has now got what has to be one of the best viral campaigns going. Within minutes, the first person I sent it to turned it around and sent it back to me.

But don't take my word for it. Give it a go yourself and send a friend a personalized message from Mr. Jackson himself.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 8:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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)

August 1, 2006

Agency.com Pitches Subway -- On YouTube

Is this as bad an idea as Steve thinks it is?

Wouldn't go that far, but it's a big, big risk.

Agency.com created a 9:00 video of the agency creating a pitch for the Subway account -- and uploaded it to YouTube.

We'll know if it worked when they either win or lose the business. Meantime, don't hold your breath waiting for a rash of social/viral pitches. It's been done.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 3:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 26, 2006

Comcast's CGM Nightmare

The newly-empowered consumer is, of course, taking every opportunity to cheer, and boo, the companies they deal with every day. The latest example: A Comcast Technician Sleeping on my Couch. The video posted on YouTube of, you guessed it -- a Comcast technician who fell asleep on a customer's couch during a service call -- has gotten 320,967 views as of this posting. Between footage of the sleeping technician, the customer interspersed text commentary complaining about Comcast's customer service. Reuters reports the technician has been fired.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 9:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 20, 2006

Go Forward - and Do A Good Deed!

The Superman Tag Web site finally launched!

Its purpose is to raise awareness -- and money -- for a great cause: the Christopher Reeve Foundation, which is dedicated to curing spinal cord injuries.

The story behind the Web site is here. I was honored to be a part of the interactive marketing committee group that helped pull this effort together -- although the lion's share of kudos are due to Euro RSCG, which generously did the heavy lifting, i.e. site building, on a pro bono basis.

Could you please help us leverage the buzz around this summer's biggest movie blockbuster opening? (Superman Returns is dedicated to Reeve's memory.)

Please visit the Superman Tag Web site. Buy tags. And if you're at all able, please download one of the banners and post it on your own Web site.

It's for a very good cause.

Thanks.

And thanks to my fellow committee members, which includes such illustrious names as Dave Weinberger, Euro RSCG's Jane Barratt and Ryan Berger, Mark Hughes, Steve Rubel, scenarioDNA and a host of others.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 15, 2006

WPP's GroupM Buys WOM Firm

Word of mouth firm M80, based in L.A., has been snatched up by WPP's GroupM. The eight-year-old agency "activates word-of-mouth among online influencers and opinion leaders." Clients have included Microsoft, SegaAmerica, Universal Music Group, Twentieth Century Fox and the NBA.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 26, 2006

WOMMA Names First Elected Board

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) has named its first elected board of directors.

WOMMA's new directors are:
* Idil Cakim, director, Burson-Marsteller
* Laurent Flores, CEO, crmmetrix
* Jackie Huba, author, Church of the Customer
* Ed Keller, CEO, The Keller Fay Group
* Virginia Miracle, director of word of mouth marketing, Brains on Fire
* Ann Moravick, president & CEO, Rowland Communications Worldwide
* Rick Murray, president, me2revolution, Edelman
* Paul Rand, partner, global chief development and innovation officer, Ketchum
* Jim Nail, CMO, Cymfony
* Gary Spangler, e-business leader, electronics and communications platform, DuPont
* Jamie Tedford, SVP, media and marketing innovation, Arnold Worldwide
* Scott K. Wilder, group manager, Intuit
* Michael Wiley, director, new media, GM
* Dave Balter, CEO, BzzAgent
* Pete Blackshaw, CMO, Nielsen BuzzMetrics

WOMMA's original board, which has been in place for the past two years, was made up of founders Balter, Blackshaw, Jonathan Carson, and WOMMA CEO Andy Sernovitz. Carson had been CEO of Buzzmetrics, which was acquired by Nielsen parent VNU in January at the same time as Blackshaw's Intelliseek. Since both now work for the same combined company, Nielsen BuzzMetrics, it became necessary for either Carson or Blackshaw to leave the board.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 10, 2006

Viewpoint Creates Toolbar for ONE Activists

Can a Web browser fight poverty and AIDS?

Viewpoint has created a custom toolbar for ONE.org's activist user base. It will become broadly available to ONE's 2 million active users on May 18.

The toolbar notifies users of ONE's action alerts; has a viral "spread the word" function; solicits feedback; comes pre-populated with photos and images from ONE camapigns and has a search feature using Viewpoint technology.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 27, 2006

FireFox Flicks Winners Announced

It killed us that we're so busy at Ad:Tech, we couldn't get over to the announcements of the Firefox Flicks
video contest winners at the San Francisco International Film Festival this afternoon.

The grand prize winner, Pete Macomber's "Daredevil," will be short-listed for the NY Festival of Advertising's 2006 International Advertising Awards in May. Finalist and runner-up videos will be incorporated into Mozilla's 2006 marketing activities.

The Firefox Flicks campaign continues throughout 2006.

More user-generated submissions can be viewed here.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 6:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 25, 2006

User Reviews Platform Gets Metrics

Word of mouth enabler Bazaarvoice has partnered with Coremetrics, Omniture, WebSideStory and WebTrends to offer its merchants deeper measurement of its user reviews product. From the release:

The partnerships allow clients to quickly and easily incorporate word of mouth metrics into overall measurements of online performance, as well as quantify and compare the strategic impact of customer ratings and reviews versus other online initiatives.

“My heritage is in Web analytics, and I founded Bazaarvoice with the goal of associating the ambiguity of word of mouth with tangible marketing ROI,” said Brett Hurt, founder and CEO of Bazaarvoice. “By establishing relationships with the major Web analytics vendors, Bazaarvoice has made it much faster and easier for our clients to bridge the strategic gap between the customer voice and solid business metrics and performance.”

Bazaarvoice’s partnership with each of the top four Web analytics solutions means mutual clients can track and assess authentic customer conversations through familiar tools and reporting structures without additional training or effort.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 5:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 6, 2006

Rupert. Homer. Rupert. Homer.

Looks like Mr. Murdoch is getting the advertising and marketing implications of his burgeoning MySpace property.

Mr. M's MySpace page may be phony, but there's no mistaking the presence of one of Fox's most valuable properties (and soon to be summer blockbuster) served up onto his page.

Click to view full size graphic

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 30, 2006

Citizen-Generated Cinema

Tomorrow is the opening day of the new Beastie Boys concert feature, Awesome: I Fuckin' Shot That.

The BBs seem to know nothing about SEM (I could only find the film's Flash site via beastieboys.com), but they're apparently up on CGM. Director Adam Yauch handed 50 Hi8 camcorders to fans in the audience of a Madison Square Garden concert and voila -- feature film. Never mind that some critics are calling the pic "unwatchable."

This is about control. Not as much control as citizens have on the Web with Google Video and YouTube, to be sure.

But the Beastie Boys are a brand, and in making this film (good or bad), they're allowing fans to participate in the brand, directly (the videographers) or vicariously (the film's audience).

Forget about the execution. Hold on to that idea.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 3:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Social Voicemail: Latest Marketing Tool?

With Social Voicemail, you call one toll-free number to leave one message for all your friends. Your friends receive a text message alerting them to check for the voice message.

The soon-to-launch service is offering early registrants free service for life -- and seems to be aiming at the MySpace/Facebook/Friendster set. They're encouraging early registrants to spread the word virally on those sites.

I can see plenty of marketing opps here. Stay tuned.

via Warren Ellis

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 28, 2006

The Problem with Earth Day: No Meal

Last year I covered an interesting effort by Organic Valley Farms to align itself with Earth Day (and give the holiday a plug as well) by offering free, downloadable "Earth Dinner" playing cards. Here's a detail from my deck:

Very well designed, fun to look at and hold.

I'm glad to see the company (actually a non-profit cooperative) is reprising the effort this spring. You can download the cards at EarthDinner.org

"What's wrong with Earth Day is it doesn't have a meal attached to it," director of marketing Carrie Branovan told me. "Every holiday has to have a meal."

Can't argue with that.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 23, 2006

Melody and her Webcam

Paging all online word-of-mouth fetishists: YouTube user bowiechick (actual name: Melody) has been videoblogging about David Bowie and her Logitech webcam on YouTube. Seventeen videos, all recorded with the device, have been viewed tens of thousands of times. Not often do you stumble across a case study showing CGM product buzz on such a large scale. Must be a great camera.

Nod to ZDNet, which also spotted this one today.

Update: Melody's now aware of the buzz she hath wrought. From her blog:

I called Nancy Morrison from Logitech today. She said they really love my videos. They aren’t going to pay me (which I don’t care about) but it’s cool because she said that if I ever see something I really want from Logitech, I can just contact her. Isn’t that nice? I would feel greedy asking for something, but then again I guess I helped them make a bunch of money and that is something most people are payed for. And hey, I should take advantage of this. I will find something I REALLY want first... Then later I called some guy from a San Fransisco news thing. This whole thing is so weird.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 5:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 22, 2006

Pepsi: Combine Media and Brand Relevance

Pepsi gets that they're not in control.

Anotonio Lucio, SVP insights and innovation, is talking CGM right now at the Conference on Marketing. He showed a consumer-generated karaoke video which he claims is the "most ownloaded commercial video ever." (Hear that, Carl Jr.'s?).

Lucio's exhorting marketers to, "Create a bond by combining professional and amateur work in your message. Understand the contact will be interactive. The content will be used and be recreated. There will be an element of losing control. Create an environment in which you set some limits. You need tools on the media side that focus on interoperability. Get the nuggets of [consumer] brilliance and push it out as part of your brand message."

Takeaway: Combine brand relevance with media relevance.

He just showed a commercial Pepsi will release next year that is made to be mashed-up, complete with a suite of interactive online tools.

Lucio: "Those are the choices that you make as a leader -- as a challenger."

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 16, 2006

'Crash the Trailer' on Road to Canonization

Last year didn't have a breakaway viral in the way 2004 did with Subservient Chicken, but New Line's "Crash the Trailer" edit yourself into the movie application for "Wedding Crashers" may be on a similar path to sainthood. Yahoo! has recognized the viral with its first "Big Idea Chair" award for excellence in studio interactive marketing. Yahoo!'s Vince Messina called the campaign "a perfect example of a cohesive effort that went beyond conventional methods to achieve exceptional results," in a statement. The award was given out last night at motion picture convention ShoWest.

Watch for more "Crashers" accolades during awards season.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 10, 2006

WOM Wednesdays

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) plans to hold a weekly teleconference series to educate marketers on topics like blogs, ethics and viral marketing.

Speakers include Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell, authors of "Creating Customer Evangelists" and execs from GM, Edelman, Cymfony, Dell and WOMMA. ClickZ columnists Pete Blackshaw from Nielsen BuzzMetrics and Mark Kingdon from Organic are also signed on for panels.

Posted by Enid Burns at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Natalie Portman Raps Again

NBC has evidently not lost all reason. After taking its 40 lashes for sending take-down letters to YouTube over two SNL rap sketches that went supernova on that site, the network has moderated its protectionist instincts by putting the videos up on NBC.com. Here they are: Natalie Portman Rapping and The Chronic(what?)les of Narnia.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 9, 2006

BSkyB Behind Viral Simpsons Video

UK satellite broadcaster BSkyB is behind a fantastic viral video that recreates, with real live actors, the Simpsons introductory montage, according to a
Reuters report. The video, aimed at promoting the company's broadcasts of the Simpsons, is one that hadn't crossed my desk until today. It's a delight.

UPDATE: Ed Martin at Jack Myers Media Village is reporting that the live action Simpsons intro will replace the animated version on this week's TV broadcast of the show (which was, incidentally, written by Ricky Gervais, perhaps the most popular non-tech podcaster).

Posted by Pamela Parker at 1:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mary Woodbridge and Her Dog Climb Mount Everest

Sex is not a necessary ingredient for a winning viral. You can substitute quality or relevance any day.

Take mountaineering gear maker Mammut, which has drawn some nice attention through the personage of an 85-year-old British lady, Mary Woodbridge. In a series of videos on her site, Mary details her plans to climb Mount Everest along with her Dachsund Daisy. Mammut also placed help wanted ads with copy like "85 year old British Lady plans ascent to Mount Everest. Need advice and sponsoring," and even infiltrated mountain climbing discussion boards -- a decidedly risky move that appears to have paid off in this case. Now, Mammut agency Spillmann/Felser/Leo Burnett in Zurich Switzerland has put Mary in some print executions.

See Adland's coverage for further details.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 6, 2006

CitiBank Gets Blogswarmed

AdFreak, Boing Boing, Consumerist and the rest of the blogosphere is abuzz about the fallout from CitiBank's apparant fraud issues that have caused untold numbers of customers to be locked out of their accounts.

The CGM and mashups are underway. AdFreak's posting a spoof of the bank's ubiquiqitous "Live Richly" campaign. Consumerist has posted the office and cell phone numbers of the public affairs officer.

This story's been snowballing since yesterday. Where's the mainstream media coverage?

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 23, 2006

Forced Buzz

Tranparency in viral campaigns is necessary, but posting step-by-step instructions on your Web site might turn transparent into bold print. KFC said there's a hidden code in its commercial airing during the Olympics, NASCAR and select shows. Discovery of the code redeems a $1.00 KFC gift check to try a Snacker sandwich. Viewers will have to play the commercial frame-by-frame to break the code.

The Easter egg plant in its commercial gains KFC Kudos. However the company sketched out its plans a little too much. People are directed to KFC's Web site to view the commercial and for directions on how to reveal the secret code. Is this trying a little too hard to capture a viral buzz? It's also just a matter of time before the code is posted throughout the Web for easy redemption.

Posted by Enid Burns at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 15, 2006

Kid-Generated Advertising

The campaign for the upcoming animated flick Doogal takes user-generated marketing to new heights (or lows). A print effort links people to doogalmovie.com/coloring. Under the premise that "Dogs are colorblind," the site asks for help -- presumably from the target audience of children -- coloring a black and white ad they can download as a PDF. Once the coloring-book-style ad is colored, folks are asked to mail it to the Weinstein company in New York. The winning version will be used as the opening day newspaper ad for Doogal.

Now I've heard of getting fans to create our advertising for you, but using child labor? On the other hand, it's awfully interactive... (And perhaps the only practical approach when your target audience can't yet use a keyboard and mouse.)

UPDATE: Oh, and there's an online matching game just announced, too.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 6:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 14, 2006

Valentine's Viral

Still stumped for an appropriate Valentine's day gesture? This viral magnetic poetry game from TribeAgency might help you keep out of hot water with your Valentine. It's not flowers or candy, but it affords a certain level of personalization and creativity.

Not a bad idea for the agency, either, given folks are innundated with e-cards like this around the holiday season. Holding off until V-day helps one stand out a little.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 1:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 2, 2006

Miller's Animal Auditions

Not sure if it's the lingering effects of lunch or the lazy ramblings of these CGI-cloaked working actors, but watching Miller's animal audition videos has driven my mind into a lull. (via screenhead and ad-rag)

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 3:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 31, 2006

Burger Queen

CP+B continues its Burger King/Brooke Burke paparazzi parody, begun here and furthered here.

The two are now engaged, so the next logical step in the viral ploy is either baby or break-up. And since you know a baby would be nixed by both client and supermodel, my money's on skidsville next month for the King and Queen.

You're welcome Burger King. This blog's new motto: putty in CP+B's hairless, tanning oil-greased hands.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 30, 2006

Microsoft Sees the Future in IM

Microsoft enlisted Fallon to create a microsite to promote MSN Messenger 7.5. Dubbed ESPBilly, the site is billed as "An MSN Messenger Films Production. The episodic series features actor Ricky Jay (Deadwood) as a cynical but dead-on fortune teller who advises a college student on his life's questions via MSN Messenger.

The pilot plays out on its own, but the three episodes play like a "choose-your-own webisode" video. I watched the first one. But when I clicked to see the alternate outcome, my newly updated MSN Messenger crashed.

It's a well put-together site, but possibly missing a few key elements. Visitors can sign up for MSN Alerts, e-mail updates and even RSS, but there's no way to send an e-mail -- or given the platform, an IM -- to a friend.

Posted by Enid Burns at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 27, 2006

Where Athletic Footwear Meets J-Pop Kitsch

Lovely Football's already going down as one of the best new instances of that rare breed of interactive deployment whose form suits the best functions of the Internet.

The site's highlight is a video performance of the song "Lovely Football," by the fabulously enthusiastic Onitsuka Tiger National Choir. An online karaoke competition ("the world's first!") awards Injector DX shoes to the top five renditions of its tune.

Onitsuka Tiger takes steps to ensure the recording and sing-along go smoothly, so important when you're enabling multimedia CGM. There's a sound check to get participants to sing loud enough and difficulty settings called "Junior Tiger Sing Along" and "Onitsuka Karaoke World Cup." Despite a couple moments when the Japanese pop kitsch aesthetic teeters on the brink of self-consciousness, it's pretty near perfect.

Created by StrawberryFrog for a European audience.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 18, 2006

Pherotones - The Killer Marketing App?

If only I believed they really existed!

Someone's put up a site called Pherotones.com which purports to sell (only it doesn't sell, really) "the ringtone secret that can make you irresistible to the opposite sex." One tone is coyly dubbed, "Veni. Veni. Veni."

Imagine the marketing potential! Is this a viral site? It certain appears to be -- e-mail-friend is highly encouraged, right on the homepage. There's also a registration page. If it is viral, who's behind it (a whois lookup wasn't much help)? Whatever it's for, it appears to be working. It got BoingBoinged, after all.

Update: Tip o' the hat to Steve Hall, who got to the bottom of this (where agency McKinney Silver lay lurking, no client outing yet).

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 8:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 17, 2006

Friday the 13th, via Greenpeace

I was on vacation when we had Friday the 13th last week, but wanted to share this viral nightmare scenario film, courtesy of Greenpeace.

Non-profits are getting really, really good at online viral marketing.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 1:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 13, 2006

Another Indicator of a Hot Sector

I wrote today about execs jumping to the word of mouth marketing space, saying it was an indicator of something exciting going on. Another indicator? Funding. Today BzzAgent announced (PDF) receiving $13.75 million in VC funding, co-led by General Catalyst Partners and IDG Ventures Boston. The company says it will use the dough to "expand its market position and organizational infrastructure."

Understandable why a company like BzzAgent would be attractive to investors. It's got well-known clients (Anheuser-Busch, Lee Jeans, Levi's, Sun Microsystems) and it's run in such a way -- with a passel of volunteers -- to keep operating costs low.

Of all the WOM companies, BzzAgent in particular has caught a lot of criticism over its methods. The firm recently changed its disclosure standards for "agents" to try to address one issue.

UPDATE: Ok, I should amend to say that Procter & Gamble's Tremor has also caught a lot of criticism, especially for its work with children.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 5, 2006

Video Ads for the iPod

PodGuide.TV points to a couple advertisers who are pushing content for download to iTunes and iPods.

Sprite's sponsoring a video short called "Marcus Hates His Job," which tries hard to project creative integrity and mostly succeeds, despite one moment of glaring product placement. Tagline: "An independent production brought to you by Sprite."

Meanwhile, Bud Light's created a character-driven mockumentary called "Ted Ferguson: Bud Light Daredevil" that more closely resemble advertising. (via Steve Rubel)

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 3, 2006

Lenovo: Which Side Are You On?

"Black or Titanium?" is the question posed to ThinkPad fans. My question to Lenovo: Do you really expect a favorite-color poll to catalyze a viral effect?

Ah well, the microsite gets points for an interactive "persuadatron" with avatars courtesy of Oddcast.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

December 31, 2005

Meet Mr. KentuckyFriedCruelty.com

A PETA staffer has legally changed his name to KentuckyFriedCruelty.com (yes, of course there's a corresponding Web site).

The former Chris Garnett decided to "make a statement" against KFC every time he meets someone new or signs his name. Not to mention garner international media attention for his cause, and direct consumers to an online resource, too.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 19, 2005

Firefox Brands RSS - It's Official

The next version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer will adopt Firefox's little orange RSS feed icon. That, effectively, is what will visually brand RSS feeds in consumers' minds.

Chalk one up to the power of consumer and word-of-mouth marketing. Firefox afficionados have beaten the Redmond marketing machine!

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 9:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 14, 2005

BBC Offers Video CGM Tools

Too cool!

Under the motto, "Don't just consume, create!" the BBC has opened its news archives to consumers and invited them to create their own video mash-ups of historic news footage of the past 50 years.

(more...)

"You are welcome to download the clips, watch them, and use them to create something unique. This is a pilot and we want to understand your creative needs. We'd like to see your productions and showcase some of the most interesting ones we receive."

Along with how-to guides, there's a feedback form inviting fledgling video editors to "tell us what your doing."

OK, the Beeb is a public, taxpayer and government-supported institution. Which brand will be the first one brave enough to proffer itself to the masher-uppers?

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 5:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 28, 2005

Word-of-iPod

iPods owners are significantly more likely to create and spread online consumer-generated media (CGM), and that will likely increase with the incorporation of video content into their iPods, says Intelliseek.

From the study:

"iPod users are twice as likely to have authored a blog than consumers who do not own MP3 players, and they outpace other MP3 owners on creating and posting content online. iPod users are also 2.5 times as likely to exchange text messages on cellular phones (59% vs. 24% of non-owners), three times as likely to take photos with a camera phone (45% vs. 15%), and three times as likely to download video clips and movies to a personal computer (47% versus 16%)."

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

October 26, 2005

Cheerioke

A new sub-chapter in the marriage of phone to Web. General Mills' Cheerioke lets you call in a song and then watch an avatar of your own design sing the recording back.

It's a viral play most cute and disturbing. And like many virals, the brand connetion is thin. "Start your morning on a high note." Yikes.

I sang a very bad rendition of "I Think We're Alone Now." I was afraid my cubicle neighbors would hear. I'm thinking office paranoia may deter widespread participation here.

Avatars are courtesy of Oddcast. Points go to those folks for upgrading the look of their virtual characters.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 12, 2005

Apple's Message Stays Polished

What promised to be a speed-typing contest has fizzled into wait-and-see. Apple picked a WiFi black hole in which to announce its highly-anticipated "One more thing..." (it's pretty much a given that 'thing' is a video iPod).

Apple's certainly has its issues with bloggers. Still, deliberately putting the kibbosh on live-blogging (or reporting, for that matter) is a very interesting choice, control-the-buzz wise. It'll be interesting to see who takes the hit from this move -- Apple, or the media.

Update: It's a video iPod, all right. Advertisers, bring on the branded entertainment! Trade show exhibitors, here's the latest in lead-gen bait for your booth.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 27, 2005

Down the Rabbit Hole with Microsoft

Bloggers (and presumably gamers) are abuzz over a European-targeted Web site to promote Microsoft's Xbox 360. Site visitors follow a pair of white rabbits through a series of surreal Flash adventures. One lets users take a quiz to win a trip to "Origen," described as "a wonderful magical place where all of your gaming fantasies come true."

[via Threadwatch]

Posted by Pamela Parker at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 1, 2005

Egg & Muffin Toaster Combo Flouts Blog Buzz

This may be a first. A release hit the wires this morning screaming,"'Where Do I Get One?' Dominating Blogs, Back to Basics' Egg & Muffin Toaster Makes Mouthwatering Debut." It goes on:

"The new Egg & Muffin Toaster from Back to Basics has created lots of online chatter and interest a few weeks before the inventive appliance hits store shelves throughout the United States. Comments such as "I want one ... it is so cool," "Makes me hungry just looking at it," and "It's a pretty machine that's well thought out," continue to cross blogs and Internet chat sessions."

First time I've seen a press release touting blog buzz preceding a new product's release.

Still, doesn't this thing make you feels as if you're reading an in-flight gizmo catalogue with feet firmly on the ground?

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 9:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 30, 2005

Take that, Firefox

Firefox isn't the only browser brand that knows how to harness a viral community. In honor of its tenth birthday, Opera hosted an online party on its Web site where attendees could chat with Opera bigwigs, play games, learn about the browser's history and download music made by employees. The Norwegian company is also giving away free registration codes for 24 hours (as of this posting there's still time!). Opera is also asking supporters to submit creative (poem, drawing, etc.) birthday greetings. It'll share the ten best with the community and the winner will get a t-shirt.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 6:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 29, 2005

The Week in Viral: Marg(ar)inal

A viral try from I Can’t Believe It's Not Butter got some love (registration) from Stuart Elliott of The Times this week, and for dubious reasons. Sure, the Unilever brand is a longtime broadcast marketer, but well, that’s sort of the problem isn't it? The serialized Flash cartoons, which play on familiar soap opera tropes, offer the safe, watered-down comedy you expect from a mass-market TV spot. Note to marketers: successful online viral is about more than making a longer television ad. All due respect to Seinfeld and Superman.

Old and new: Whirlpool tries to tap into American family archetypes with a new podcast series.

Lynx deodorant: You punch keys on your keyboard, and a disembodied pair of lips moans in various expressions of ecstasy. Sex sells, in case you hadn't heard. Except when visitors can't click through and leave after 10 seconds because they're bored. Hey, at least it's interactive.

Virgin Mobile continues the diabolical combination of religious themes and no-commitment phone plans that worked so well for it during the holiday season. The Fallon-created Paygoism Saves site uses an Oddcast-created preacher avatar named Reggie to delineate the precepts of pay-as-you-go. Southern Baptist all the way.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 8:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 19, 2005

Is This Considered Interactive Advertising?

Calvin Klein unveils a bottle full of models in the middle of Times Square today.

With both the temperature and the humidity index spiking into the 90s, isn't it nice to know those of us within walking distance of the spectacle who feel the need to see it can do so online, just as cooly and conveniently as anyone else?

UPDATE: OK, so the event is live and photos are up. Who's not livecasting the bottle? That would be the CK One Billboard site, folks. Nothing comes between me and my Calvins -- except consumer-generated media.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 9:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 13, 2005

Born Again Stealth Marketing

So I'm on my way into Black Rock yesterday for the CBS confab when a young woman presses a Quaker Oats granola bar attached to a card into my hand.

No biggie. Sixth Ave. can be rife with rush hour product samples, and few would decline the quasi-healthy treat at 8:30 a.m. So later at the office, the thing's sitting on my desk. An URL catches my eye, along with plugs for the hot summer movies: Fantastic Four, Willy Wonka, War of the Worlds. Idly wondering if we need to cover some sort of Quaker Oats/major studio coop advertising something, I hit the granola card URL and land on The Journey, a site geared to young, evangelical Christians. Their "God On Film" series promises to reveal the spiritual lessons in the summer's blockbusters (Tim Burton?); offers gifts with site registration; a mass baptism at Jones Beach...there are even apartment listings.

Pamela's written about Christian buzz networks, but this site floored me along with the rest of the ClickZ ed team. Jaded NY'ers that we are, we'd mentally filed that category in the flyover zone file. Who's jaded now? It's happening here - studio tie-ins, granola bars, guerilla marketing, and a deep, sophisticated site. Wow.

(No online coversions on this end yet.)

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 3:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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