Influential Marketing Blog

6 Ways Ford Is Finding Its Own Voice

Yesterday evening I co-hosted a tweetup in New York City where Ford was unveiling the new Ford Fiesta and a brilliantly conceived social media program to get 100 influencers to take the car on an extended test drive for 6 months as part of the Ford Fiesta Movement. The event was a gathering designed to help put a more human face on Ford and talk about a new Ford car that many of the 20 and 30 somethings who showed up (and are the target market for the Fiesta) may not have known about.

The effort is just one example of a greater shift that has been taking place at Ford over the past year as the company has worked to not only reshape its image in the eyes of the American public, but also to change the way that they tell the story of Ford. It is a rich story to tell, one that is linked to the history of America in a way that few companies can authentically claim. And despite being in the maligned automotive industry that seems a permanent fixture in the negative news cycle, things are changing at Ford. How are they managing to do it? Here are six elements to consider:

1. Having a strong story to tell. In the midst of all the scrutiny, Ford is (and has been) shifting their image from stodgy truck maker to a more forward thinking company making cars that the American public actually want to drive. The relaunched Taurus was a hit, winning top safety ratings - the Flex has had rave reviews, and other cars like the Fusion and Focus are winning many fans.
2. Tapping the passion of employees. Ford has always described itself as a family, and employees often demonstrate a stunning loyalty to the company ... even describing themselves in terms of the cars they have always driven. The old mode of communications would be to keep all these voices silent, and instead only authorize a small group of people to speak on behalf of Ford. Today many of these voices are being encouraged to speak and share their thoughts and experiences online.
3. Making a commitment to social media. Social media has played a big part in this evolution to using the voices of "accidental spokespeople." Scott Monty was hired nearly a year ago as the Head of Social Media for Ford and has actively been offering a voice to the brand and adding social media as a core element of all their communications.
4. Getting out of Detroit. One of the most powerful effects of this shift has been a willingness for even the most senior members of the management team at Ford to get out of Detroit and meet customers. Ford's President of the Americas, Mark Fields and Ray Day (the VP of Communications) even came to the Tweetup last night. Alan Mullaly, CEO of Ford showed up to a blogger event during the Consumer Electronics Show (in a sweatshirt instead of a suit and tie!) and stayed graciously for nearly an hour answering questions and doing podcast interviews.
5. Capitalizing on being Ford. There are not many companies that are as visibly at the epicenter of the American economy as Ford is. Like it or not, the success or failure of Ford is seen by many as a symbol of the success or failure of America. From a communications point of view, this is a major positive ... for the simple reason that the fate of Ford matters to people in a way that AIG or Enron just don't (unless you're a shareholder, of course)
6. Overcoming the American ego. One of the most interesting things for me has been Ford's recent willingness to take cars that have been huge commercial successes overseas and introduce them to the United States market (like the Fiesta and the Transit Connect). For many years, most of Detroit would never have considered taking these foreign cars and allowing them to be revised and sold in America. Finally ego and turf wars are taking a back seat to solid business decisions and introducing cars best suited to succeed.

Any other lessons you think Ford has learned which are contributing to their growing reputation?  Or if you think one (or all) of my points are completely off base, leave a comment and share that point of view too.

Disclaimer: I currently work for Ogilvy and Ford is a client of our team. The Ford Fiesta Tweetup was an official party organized as part of our efforts with Ford and I was on the team that helped organize these events. I have NOT been paid or compensated by Ford to write this blog post, though - and the opinions I share in this post are my personal views only and don't represent what Ogilvy, WPP or Team Detroit thinks about Ford.

Got Controversy? Why Your Brand Needs One Today

A recently released book that I contributed to asked the question with it's subtitle, "why don't they get it?" It's a fitting question today, as brands are often divided into those that understand the power of conversation and those that don't. Slowly, however, brands are adding their names to the ranks of those that get it. Dell and Comcast are often being praised as two shining examples due to their willingness to have a conversation with customers and actively use of social media tools.

There is one fact, however, that is often forgot. Both of those brands first entered into using social media out of necessity. More importantly, they started after major brand controversies. Dell had to reinvent their reputation after Dell Hell, and Comcast had to combat the incredibly damaging Technician Sleeping On The Couch video. Similar to the natural phenomenon of some forests needing fire so they can properly burn and new seeds can be released, evolving brand communications seems sometimes to adhere to a similar pattern.

Here are a few reasons why having a brand controversy may be your company's best hope to reinvent itself and start to embrace social media tools that initially seem new and scary:

1. Forces you to listen fast. Relying on daily or weekly media clips is no longer fast enough in a crisis. This means your team will need to start adopting social media tools to listen faster out of necessity. This skill will remain in the team, causing them to more actively monitor social media in the future.
2. Understand the real power of individual voices. Before seeing a crisis start from a single blogger or an errant tweet, it is difficult to describe the real power that a seemingly small time content creator can have. After a crisis breaks, it becomes easy to explain this point.
3. Demonstrate to managers why social media matters. This may be one of the biggest struggles marketers face, namely convincing their bosses that social media matters enough to dedicate time and budget to it. Having a crisis and using as well as showing the power of the tools offers a tangible example of why it is worth resourcing and budgeting.
4. Identify key influencers. Often in a crisis, the key influencers in a particular category that have the power to influence thousands if not hundreds of thousands will emerge. If marketers are paying attention, they can start to understand where the pockets of influence really are, and how to influence them.

As I write this post, there is another brand that is rapidly confronting its own brand crisis. Motrin released an ad that was immediately denounced by mom bloggers and social media types as offensive. The controversy really started through public reaction on social media and is now growing beyond those confines. I believe that this may well be the greatest opportunity ever to face the marketing team for Motrin. They now have the ear of everyone in their organization and the chance to do what few Over-the-Counter medications would ever have dared to do otherwise ... embrace using social media. The #motrinmoms controversy is a huge chance for the brand to reinvent its communications. The only question is whether they will take advantage of it or not.

Buy My Second Book Today (And Save The World)

Ok, before I get into too much trouble - let me explain. Today is the release of a project that I am honored to be involved in, and you could arguably call my second book, though I am sharing author credit with 236 other authors I highly respect. The book is called Age of Conversation 2, and is an exploration of social media and its impact on business. Engagingly subtitled "Why don't they get it?" the book is broken down into 8 key topics:

    * Manifestos
    * Keeping Secrets in the Age of Conversation
    * Moving from Conversation to Action?
    * The Accidental Marketer
    * A New Brand of Creative
    * My Marketing Tragedy
    * Business Model Evolution
    * Life in the Conversation Lane

I chose the "Manifestos" topic for my contribution, because it seemed like a big idea, and also because I knew it would come first in the book so my contribution would be earlier in the mix of over 200 others. That plan clearly worked, because my article titled "The Control Myth: An Inside Look At The Worst Advice In Marketing Today" is on page 5 (I can't help it, I'm a marketer even in a room full of marketers!).

Though I was not part of the first edition of Age of Conversation, that was also a great compilation, and this time around the project is twice the size and has contributions from many authors, bloggers and others that you will definitely recognize. No matter if you are a pro and already understand much of this world, or someone trying to figure it out, I guarantee you will find lots to learn from in this book. And you'll also help a worthy cause as all the proceeds from the book go to benefit Variety, the Children's Charity.

So what are you waiting for? Visit http://stores.lulu.com/ageofconversation and get your copy of Age of Conversation 2 in digital or print format. And flip to page 5 to see my counterintuitive contribution about control and branding. I'll give you a hint ... the future is NOT about giving up control. That's the control myth and in my piece I share the perception shift required to get past it.

Full Author List For Age of Conversation 2:

Adrian Ho, Aki Spicer, Alex Henault, Amy Jussel, Andrew Odom, Andy Nulman, Andy Sernovitz, Andy Whitlock, Angela Maiers, Ann Handley, Anna Farmery, Armando Alves, Arun Rajagopal, Asi Sharabi, Becky Carroll, Becky McCray, Bernie Scheffler, Bill Gammell, Bob LeDrew, Brad Shorr, Brandon Murphy, Branislav Peric, Brent Dixon, Brett Macfarlane, Brian Reich, C.C. Chapman, Cam Beck, Casper Willer, Cathleen Rittereiser, Cathryn Hrudicka, Cedric Giorgi, Charles Sipe, Chris Kieff, Chris Cree, Chris Wilson, Christina Kerley (CK), C.B. Whittemore, Chris Brown, Connie Bensen, Connie Reece, Corentin Monot, Craig Wilson, Daniel Honigman, Dan Schawbel, Dan Sitter, Daria Radota Rasmussen, Darren Herman, Dave Davison, David Armano, David Berkowitz, David Koopmans, David Meerman Scott, David Petherick, David Reich, David Weinfeld, David Zinger, Deanna Gernert, Deborah Brown, Dennis Price, Derrick Kwa, Dino Demopoulos, Doug Haslam, Doug Meacham, Doug Mitchell, Douglas Hanna, Douglas Karr, Drew McLellan, Duane Brown, Dustin Jacobsen, Dylan Viner, Ed Brenegar, Ed Cotton, Efrain Mendicuti, Ellen Weber, Eric Peterson, Eric Nehrlich, Ernie Mosteller, Faris Yakob, Fernanda Romano, Francis Anderson, Gareth Kay, Gary Cohen, Gaurav Mishra, Gavin Heaton, Geert Desager, George Jenkins, G.L. Hoffman, Gianandrea Facchini, Gordon Whitehead, Greg Verdino, Gretel Going & Kathryn Fleming, Hillel Cooperman, Hugh Weber, J. Erik Potter, James Gordon-Macintosh, Jamey Shiels, Jasmin Tragas, Jason Oke, Jay Ehret, Jeanne Dininni, Jeff De Cagna, Jeff Gwynne & Todd Cabral, Jeff Noble, Jeff Wallace, Jennifer Warwick, Jenny Meade, Jeremy Fuksa, Jeremy Heilpern, Jeroen Verkroost, Jessica Hagy, Joanna Young, Joe Pulizzi, John Herrington, John Moore, John Rosen, John Todor, Jon Burg, Jon Swanson, Jonathan Trenn, Jordan Behan, Julie Fleischer, Justin Foster, Karl Turley, Kate Trgovac, Katie Chatfield, Katie Konrath, Kenny Lauer, Keri Willenborg, Kevin Jessop, Kristin Gorski, Lewis Green, Lois Kelly, Lori Magno, Louise Manning, Luc Debaisieux, Mario Vellandi, Mark Blair, Mark Earls, Mark Goren, Mark Hancock, Mark Lewis, Mark McGuinness, Matt Dickman, Matt J. McDonald, Matt Moore, Michael Karnjanaprakorn, Michelle Lamar, Mike Arauz, Mike McAllen, Mike Sansone, Mitch Joel, Neil Perkin, Nettie Hartsock, Nick Rice, Oleksandr Skorokhod, Ozgur Alaz, Paul Chaney, Paul Hebert, Paul Isakson, Paul McEnany, Paul Tedesco, Paul Williams, Pet Campbell, Pete Deutschman, Peter Corbett, Phil Gerbyshak, Phil Lewis, Phil Soden, Piet Wulleman, Rachel Steiner, Sreeraj Menon, Reginald Adkins, Richard Huntington, Rishi Desai, Robert Hruzek, Roberta Rosenberg, Robyn McMaster, Roger von Oech, Rohit Bhargava, Ron Shevlin, Ryan Barrett, Ryan Karpeles, Ryan Rasmussen, Sam Huleatt, Sandy Renshaw, Scott Goodson, Scott Monty, Scott Townsend, Scott White, Sean Howard, Sean Scott, Seni Thomas, Seth Gaffney, Shama Hyder, Sheila Scarborough, Sheryl Steadman, Simon Payn, Sonia Simone, Spike Jones, Stanley Johnson, Stephen Collins, Stephen Landau, Stephen Smith, Steve Bannister, Steve Hardy, Steve Portigal, Steve Roesler, Steven Verbruggen, Steve Woodruff, Sue Edworthy, Susan Bird, Susan Gunelius, Susan Heywood, Tammy Lenski, Terrell Meek, Thomas Clifford, Thomas Knoll, Tim Brunelle, Tim Connor, Tim Jackson, Tim Mannveille, Tim Tyler, Timothy Johnson, Tinu Abayomi-Paul, Toby Bloomberg, Todd Andrlik, Troy Rutter, Troy Worman, Uwe Hook, Valeria Maltoni, Vandana Ahuja, Vanessa DiMauro, Veronique Rabuteau, Wayne Buckhanan, William Azaroff, Yves Van Landeghem

 

The Great #080808 Beijing Olympic Twitter Campaign Catches Fire

Anyone who has been to enough events with social media creators knows that it is inevitable that people will find a way to connect and find one another. To a degree, Twitter first caught on from this need a year and a half ago at SXSW in 2007. I have witnessed it over and over, through examples like attendees of four conferences finding one another to share an evening of Korean BBQ in NYC a few months ago, or finding someone to hang out with as you are travelling to a foreign city for business. Social media creators are not just creating content, they are becoming experts at connecting with one another.

So I wasn't surprised to see that the tag 080808 is catching on as a way for all of us in Beijing at the Olympics to find and connect with one another. Started by three Chinese bloggers (Flypig, Webleon and Babechloe) and described on http://tag080808.com/, this campaign is already bringing together not just everyone here in Beijing who is creating social media content, but is also becoming a brilliant way to follow all these live voices of the Games in a real time stream. As the Olympics kicks off tonight, this tag and the resulting conversations on Twitter will accelerate dramatically. For my part, I have already started tagging my content with this and will soon revise my Twitter icon to use the 080808 template created for the campaign (the image below is a compilation of current icons from a post about the campaign on Read Write Web).

In addition, I just sent out a Tweet about a blogger meetup that will be sponsored by Ogilvy and Lenovo where we can try to get some of the many diverse bloggers here in Beijing together for a drink and chat. If you happen to be here, send me a message at @rohitbhargava and let me know if you can make it to The Bookworm in downtown Beijing on Sunday, August 10th at 7pm. And even if you're not in Beijing, you'll want to start using this tag to find the best content and impressions from social media creators here at the Games. This is a case study in the making ...

Official Image from the Tag080808 Site:

The Rise of "Egommunication"

There is a magic power that a growing number of people are starting to have. It's happening all around us with social media and yet most of the time it is going without notice. I can now communicate with someone without communicating with them. I can tell them something without talking to them. And I can virtually guarantee that my message gets through to them no matter how flooded their inbox. Welcome to the world of something I would call egommunication.

Egommunication is a form of communication where you can share a message or piece of content with someone based on their own consistent habit of checking mentions of themselves and their content online ... in other words, relying on their ego as a channel for your message to get through. It is a tacit form of communication. In effect, you take advantage of the fact that just about everyone in social media is self-googling on a frequent basis.

Here are a few examples of what I would call egommunication:

1. Tagging someone in a photo, note or other content on Facebook so they will go and check out that content
2. Writing a blog post mentioning someone's blog post and counting on the fact that they will check their Google alerts to see that mention
3. Writing a tweet on twitter mentioning someone or something so that you can reach the audience of people that are doing searches for those terms

The nicest thing about egommunication is that the more popular the person you are trying to reach, the more likely it is that this form of communication will work because they often have the biggest egos (and I don't mean that in a negative way). It's the only communication form I can think of where ease of connection is inversely proportional to the internet fame of the person you are trying to connect with. Think Guy Kawasaki is unreachable? Send a tweet mentioning his name and see what happens. Dream of capturing the attention of Robert Scoble? Write a blog post mentioning him and link to his blog. Of course, it's not a substitute for direct communication and any of the examples above are people you could also email. 

Yet as volume of email goes up for us all, sometimes egommunication becomes a much more efficient way to communicate. Instead of emailing Guy and Robert about this post, I'm linking to both of their blogs - as well as Jeremiah Owyang, John Bell, Ann Handley, David Vinjamuri, Andy Sernovitz, Virginia Miracle and Doc Searls (all people I respect that I want to read this post and possibly comment on the idea).  I suspect it won't take any of them long to see this post and read it. They may or may not comment, but I'm just about 100% sure that the idea of egommunication won't be lost in their inbox ... and at the end of the day, that's a really interesting phenomenon to watch.

4 Unexpected Observations From BlogHer

I spent all last week attending events from two Mashable parties to the PSFK conference. Along the way I had the chance last thursday evening to attend the opening parties for Blogher - the conference dedicated to women bloggers. The first party was co-sponsored by Alltop and Kirtsy and held in Guy Kawasaki's house in the backyard (see all my photos on Flickr). It was a great relatively exclusive affair with just about every top female blogger you can imagine and just a few guys thrown in. I managed to score an invite thanks to the super nice Kirtsy gals (Laura, Gabrielle and Laurie) and the fact that I was giving away some copies of PNI and all the attendees were wearing their own Nametag 2.0s, which technically made me a sponsor. As I spent the evening being vastly outnumbered by women and getting just a taste of the excitement of the Blogher Conference (which I unfortunately missed the rest of due to the fact I had to be in LA the day after).

As I spoke to more and more people at the party, I learned a few things about the blogosphere, blogging and women bloggers that struck me as worth sharing:

1. Woman blogger does NOT equal "mommy blogger." There were quite a few women bloggers who were writing professional content, or hobby related content that clearly wasn't in the category of mommy blogging. Sometimes the easy assumption the many marketers make about Blogher is that it's a network of mom blogs. Actually, there's a lot more to the group than that one category of blogger.
2. The first question at Blogher isn't about what you do. Most of the time, there is a temptation at many social media networking events to focus on what your job is and what you do as a first way to get to know people. At the Blogher parties, people were not introducing themselves in this way. As a result, I got to know much more of the personal stories of people as I met them, like where they live or whether they have kids or what they were excited about from the rest of the weekend. The networking was much deeper as a result.
3. Rockstars were distributed and size didn't matter. At many other social media events, some bloggers are treated like complete rockstars. I have written before about how this feeds a delusion LINK TO OTHER POST that we all need to fight. At Blogher, whether you had a huge blog or a small blog, people were not basing their interactions on your percieved importance. As a result, bloggers of all levels of fame could feel comfortable at the event.
4. There was very little conference fatigue among attendees. Many of the women at Blogher were not on the conference "circuit." They hadn't been to twelve other social media events and were not as cynical as some people who attend too many events and have seen just about everything. The level of excitement was therefore much higher about this conference because for many of the attendees, this may be one of only events of this type and scale that they attend all year.

I've been reading many more real time observations from others who had the chance to attend the entire event, and it has made me completely jealous that I was not able to be there for more of it. I am definitely going to do my best to be part of their next event and if you happen to be a female blogger, I highly recommend that you consider it too. Along with SXSW, Blogher may very well become one of the best events of the year for social media types.

Introducing the Nametag 2.0 ...

Earlier today I wrote about standing out at an event and creating smart event marketing strategy. Tonight I'll be at the Mashmeet San Francisco event as a sponsor for my book and trying to create some buzz at the event. As I saw it, here were my key challenges:

1. How do I get people to walk up to a table selling books at a cocktail party?
2. What can I give to people as a free incentive to get them interested in the book (without spending a lot of money)?
3. How do I get across the premise of the book very quickly and get people interested?
4. And finally, how can I make the sponsorship that I paid for work harder and do more with it?

My solution was to try and offer something that would be both useful and relate to the premise of the book ... a "Nametag 2.0."  A Nametag 2.0 offers more than just your name - it also gives a snapshot of who you are and why people would want to interact with you, as well as giving them the vital "2.0-style" information of what keyword you would like to have used as a tag online for content about you. If you've been to many of these events, you know that often they don't have nametags and if they do, they are usually useless white stickers where you write your name and little else.  A Nametag 2.0 is a lower tech version of what pioneering nametag companies like nTAG offer (Full disclaimer - my brother works with nTAG).

Here's what the Nametag 2.0 I'll be giving out looks like:

Hopefully party goers will find the nametags useful and choose to fill them out and use them.  Also, as people take lots of photos of one another, hopefully the nametags are big enough to be seen and I'll get some extra exposure on Flickr.  What do you think about this idea?  I'll be sure to post an update on the event tomorrow for those won't be there and let you know how it goes.

The 4 Big Problems With Blog Metrics And How To Solve Them

Like most bloggers, I struggle with true metrics for my blog. The problem isn't so much about technology as it is about understanding what is useful to know about my blog to make it better and attract more of an audience. I've got lots of metrics that I can look at today, from my Technorati ranking to where my blog is on the Power150 list. I can check the number of comments I get, or look at the number of daily or monthly impressions. There are several big problems with any of these approaches, though:

1. RSS skews most metrics - When readers are consuming your posts through RSS, most of the time they don't need to visit your site. While this may reduce your page views and monthly visitors, it can often lead to a greater engagement and wider distribution. 
2. Inbound links aren't all equal - Perhaps the greatest injustice of many metrics systems today is that they reward "linkbait listing" (the activity of listing a large number of blogs and links in the hopes those sites will also link back to you). As a result being part of some of these lists, some blogs can be propelled to higher numbers of links and authority without producing any quality content to earn it.
3. Content expires though it may still be relevant - One of the most frustrating things about Technorati as a tool is that it expires older content. There is lots of good content that is getting ignored simply because it was written over six months ago.
4. There are multiple ways to measure engagement - Looking only at links to a post or comments are incomplete measures. People use different sites and different ways to engage with content, from commenting to saving it.

In a sentence, the real challenge for blog metrics is to find a more comprehensive way to see if people are really connecting to the content on your blog. Melanie Baker, the community manager at yet another smart Canadian startup called AideRSS emailed me last week with a very interesting solution to this challenge of measuring "social engagement." They have created a system using what they call "PostRank" to measure the engagement of any individual blog post. Posts are ranked from 1.0 to 10.0 with the top score going to those posts that generate the most activity. Instead of just focusing on inbound links, their ranking system looks measures such as comments, number of saves on del.icio.us, number of Tweets mentioning the URL, and how many Diggs a particular post gets. Then an aggregated score for your blog is calculated based on the individual performance of your blog posts. This is brilliant for a number of reasons:

1. It separates metrics into blog posts instead of one big number. This means that you can get a better sense for which blog posts are really working and driving engagement and which aren't.
2. By allowing you to view your entire blog in terms of your top, best, great and good posts, you can start to spot trends in what content is the most viral.
3. As the name suggests, the site can be used to make your RSS subscriptions more useful by helping you to filter all the posts you get into just the top posts which are the most discussed.

There are only two slight limitations in their model that I can see. The first is that it only looks at a small subset of sites where engagement can happen so some large sites (such as a social network on Ning, or a Facebook group) where there may be lots of discussion can get ignored. The sites AideRSS uses are also very US-centric, which means that significant international discussions could often get ignored. The second limitation is that some of the blog-wide metrics that could complete the picture of blog influence, such as number of RSS subscribers or affiliations of a blogger are missing - so it's not a complete picture of blog influence.

Still, the idea of using PostRank to filter posts and judge the quality of a blog overall is one worth taking a look at. Particularly if it could be easily combined with a tool like Alltop which pulls in RSS feeds by category to make reading blogs and finding the highest quality blogs in a particular category easier.  Any service that can give bloggers a better idea of how to produce higher quality content AND help readers to more effectively decide what content in their flood of RSS subscriptions is most worth reading http://gr.aiderss.com/ should be a big hit.

If you haven't visited this site yet, you need to check it out. A great place to start is with Melanie's blog post where she remixes Viral Garden's list of Top 25 marketing bloggers in order of "social engagement."  Also, in case you're curious, here's what AideRSS came up with as a list of my top ten posts from the last year:

My Top Ten Blog Posts:

Lenovo Extends The Olympic Experience With 100 Athlete Blogs

For any die-hard Olympic enthusiasts like me, you already know that today is a special day. It's exactly one month from the beginning of the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing (on 08/08/08) and media attention is already starting to turn towards these Games in a more frenzied way. For several months now, I have been part of the team here in Ogilvy's 360 Digital Influence group working on what I believe will be one of the most unique Olympic sponsorships of the coming games. Of course, I'm biased since I work on the campaign, but yesterday we started to spread the word about a new campaign that I have mentioned already once before on this blog.

The campaign is called The Voices of the Olympic Games and over the past several months we have recruited 100 athletes from more than 25 countries and more than 30 sports to all blog about their experiences leading up to the games. Our campaign strategy, in a sentence is:

Use Lenovo products to power athletes sharing their real experiences leading up to and during the Olympic Games directly with fans around the world.

There are several reasons why I'm really excited about this campaign. The most obvious is that as part of it, I will be heading to Beijing to offer a live voice - something I can't wait to do. More than that, however, the scale of this project and bringing this many real voices together from so many different cultures and sports is a much needed view of the Games that will be unique in its lack of melodrama.  None of our blog posts will be set to sappy overture-style music, and the stories we have are all an unfiltered view directly from the athletes that are competing. 

Along with our site aggregating all these voices at http://summergames.lenovo.com, we are also going to be using a live Twitter feed (@lenovo2008), Flickr, del.ici.ous, and there is a Facebook application created in partnership with Citizen Sports that has already topped 60,000 downloads. I'll be blogging lots more about the Olympics, but for now please check out our site and let me know what you think. We've got another month to put the finishing touches on it before Opening Ceremonies!

Campaign Mentions & Buzz (leave a comment if you'd like to be added to this list):

• Kevin Dugan: http://prblog.typepad.com/strategic_public_relation/2008/07/social-media-br.html
• Adrants: http://www.adrants.com/2008/07/ogilvy-er-lenovo-blogs-and-tweets.php
• MarketingVox: http://www.marketingvox.com/39699-039699/
• Kyle Flaherty: http://www.engageinpr.com/2008/07/08/olympics-and-social-media/

Brazlian Author Paulo Coelho Takes Marketers To School

This post is a guest contribution from my good friend and fellow author, David Vinjamuri - founder of the ThirdWay Brand Trainers and author of the new book Accidental Branding. I don't often run guest posts on my blog, but I'm on vacation through Wednesday and asked David if I could repost the following post from his blog for two reasons - firstly because I think the example is brilliant and I have been a big fan of Coelho's work since I read The Alchemist more than ten years ago, and secondly because I love the format of David's posts and think it's something many other marketing bloggers and others should consider as a way of presenting case studies in an engaging, clear and actionable way.  Without further ado, here's David's post (with my thanks for his permission to repost from the original).

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Think of consumer generated advertising and you might think Doritos,  the NFL or Heinz. But Brazilian author Paulo Coelho has jumped headfirst into this space with a MySpace competition to make a collaborative movie of the book [The Witch of Portobello] for film festival submission.  The rules are straightforward: pick a character and film the segment of the book in which that character is the narrator (there are fifteen).  The best segments get stiched together with a movie that, like the book, is told from multiple perspectives.  The entire movie will be submitted to film festivals.

What Works:
Paulo Coelho has involved his most passionate fans with his brand in a way that few professional marketers manage.  While the standard user-generated advertising campaign is well understood - shoot a commercial for my brand and I’ll stick it on network television - Coelho has reimagined the boundaries of this very limited medium.

The framework for this project is what makes it so effective. Rather than an open assignment, Paulo Coelho gives his readers a specific challenge: film a portion of the book from the point of view of one of the narrators.  Narrowing the scope of creativity can significantly enhance both the results and the creative quality - if it’s narrowed intelligently.  And this is brilliant narrowing.

The second success factor for the Witch of Portobello contest is the attraction of the final project.  Instead of having one winner, Coelho will recognize fifteen, and their work will be stiched together in a way that will add unexpected elements to the final product.  This creates a good platform for extending the life of the contest and of the book.

Finally, Coelho hosts this contest through a social network (albeit MySpace) and will naturally attract the kind of talent he is looking for.  In fact, the contest has been so successful that he has shut down submissions for all but a handful of the narrative chapters.

What Doesn’t:
There actually is some corporate involvement here - from Hewlett Packard. It’s not clear how broad their role is (or if they had any part in creating this competition), but the merest whiff of corporate marketing in this competition could hurt the authenticity of the final product. This competition will pay back in user interest and loyalty - corporate money might do more damage than it is worth.

Branding Bottom Line:
A novelist takes the serious marketers to school.  (David's conclusion, which I wholeheartedly agree with - althought I think Coelho could have generated even more buzz by having a corresponding strategy for Facebook instead of just focusing on MySpace).