Influential Marketing Blog

Trendspot: Peripheral Marketing

Marketers love big events. Whether it's a big game like the Super Bowl, or a holiday specifically fabricated for marketing reasons, like Valentine's Day, these themes offer a marketing opportunity hard to resist.  Usually, this means that most events are very crowded when it comes to marketing messages.  As a result, it's tough to stand out.  When you are having a sale on the same day as everyone else, you are forced to compete on the same terms as them.  There is a technique that I have seen being used a few times over the past few weeks that offers an interesting alternative by focusing on being "peripheral" to the big event that every other marketer is focused on.

My colleagues at Ogilvy just launched a campaign that fits this category for a new Honey Bunches of Oats cereal with chocolate pieces.  It features a fake band called "Dawn's Early Knights" singing a boy-band pop song called "I Made You Breakfast In Bed."  Here's the video:

Instead of focusing on Valentine's Day itself, the campaign is all about the morning after Valentines, on February 15th.  It is extended online by a Facebook group, a Flickr gallery and a campaign website.  This is also a technique that got several brands significant buzz around the Super Bowl without forcing them to pay the hefty price tag to run a spot during the game.  My favourite example is the "Miller High Life Delivery Guy Rant" which already has more than 50,000 views and has been getting great buzz for how the beer brand positioned itself outside the game and yet still made an impact:

Reebok's effort with it's "Perfectville" spot, filmed with two potential endings, has also generated great buzz outside of the Superbowl:

So, in 2008 with the arrival of social media and lots of other ways to reach consumers, is peripheral marketing going to be here to stay?  From what we've seen so far, it will be a technique to watch and one that smarter marketers continue to use to stand out.   

PS - In case you were wondering, here's the alternate ending for the Reebok spot that would have run if the Patriots had won the Super Bowl.

A Recap of Ideas from Nielsen's CGM Summit 2007

I spent the day today at the Nielsen CGM Summit in NY listening to some panels and presentations from Nielsen and many of their clients about the future of measuring CGM.  One thing I was looking forward to about this event in particular is that the percentage of brands vs. agencies in attendance would be much more favored toward brands.  It is sadly ironic when you think about all the events that agency folks attend to basically talk to themselves, while their clients are all interested in (and spending time attending) events on measurement (which few creative folks from agencies would be able to stay awake through).  I must admit, I had a bit of a hard time staying awake myself today ... but to be fair, that was probably due to my redeye from the west coast to NY last night. 

In any case, I managed to stay awake throughout the day long enough to take some notes on some key takeaways from the summit which you will find below.  I also had the chance to meet several folks in person that I have been reading or known from afar, including Peter Kim, Henry Copeland, and Emanuel Rosen (author of The Anatomy of Buzz).  Though some of the "wonder of Nielsen" presentations that I expected throughout the day ran a bit long (not yours, Pete!) - overall the day was a great deep dive into all the ways we can and should be measuring.  As one speaker shared earlier in the day, "media is not an island" and is interconnected as consumers watch and interact with messages across mediums. Marketers may be specialists in one particular channel (TV, Online, Mobile, WOM, etc.) ... but consumers are most definitely becoming experts in all of them and use them concurrently. 

Anyway, here are some key notes and insights I took away from the event:

1. Influencers are emailers.  There was an interesting data point in one of the presentations that said that 55% of people who were considered "speakers" (those who share opinions vocally) have emailed directly to a company about a product that they liked.  This was a big insight throughout the day, as it indicated that brands seeking their influencers may simply need to listen more closely to the feedback they are already getting.
2. CGM generates powerful insights, not just influential voices to "target" - In response to a question from Max, I shared this point of view during the recap of the day and it was something that came up repeatedly throughout the morning.  Listening to CGM can drive strategy if you find the gaps which you can use CGM and social media to solve.  One example I shared was using CGM to find the conversation about Julian Beever (a sidewalk chalk artist) before we started our Fountain of Youth program for Aveeno.  We learned that there was lots of discussion online where people wanted to see more of his images and know how he does it.  So we created a Flickr gallery of all his images and a video of him drawing to rave reviews online.
3. Buzzphrase #1: Consumer Fortified Media - This was a new concept that Pete introduced in his presentation about how brands are putting their commercial messages online (like Dove Evolution), and consumers are talking about them and adding credibility to these messages, thus making them fortified.  Of course, there is a handy acronym for this as well: CFM.  (I suppose it could be CFM2 when those commercial messages are for products already "fortified" ... um, like Fruit Loops).
4. A new reason 2008 Superbowl ads will be better than the game - The guy from Fox Interactive shared that next year Fox has a deal with the NFL to create an official site where the 30 second spots will be accompanied by "long form video."  The smart marketers will take the chance to create "making of" secondary ads around their $3 million Superbowl spots.  Not sure how CGM plays a part here (unless lots of brands do the "you can create our Superbowl ad" thing again), but I still thought this idea of extending the most watching ads in the world with long form content behind them is a great concept.  Maybe worth an idea bar post at some point ...
5. "Getting out of the way" is a strategy - During the panel where media brands shared what they believe will happen in 2010, the guy from CBS talked about the things that they are doing and noted a significant moment where a random user placed a clip from Letterman where he interviewed Paris Hilton on YouTube and the clip got millions of views.  His point ... we didn't go after him, which signifies a great case study.  I loved the irony that getting out of the way is now considered a strategy.  Actually, sometimes it's the best one. 
6. Buzzphrase #2: Consumer Emulation - In this second concept from Pete's presentation early in the day, he talked about how we are in the midst of a wave of "consumer emulation."  Citing examples like the JetBlue and Mattel CEOs addressing the public as if they were doing consumer produced Youtube videos, or politicians and celebs who have Facebook or MySpace pages  - the point he made is that the pros are sometimes emulating the amateurs.  And of course, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't ...
7. It's not about volume anymore - The great conflict with how brands used to purchase media to buy influence online versus how they do now is that tricky measure of CPMs.  When you are buying in blocks of thousands of impressions, it is impossible to say you are not buying volume.  Yet as many marketers noted today, less is really becoming more.  One thought I shared is that sponsorships of blogs and social media sites that are persistent can offer a much higher value, but not measured in terms of page views, but rather in terms of brand perception.
8. The silo-fication of marketing remains a barrier - Many of the brands that participated in the day were large ones, and all seemed to struggle with similar issues when it comes to ownership.  This was not about the typical debate on whether blogs belong in corporate comm, or product development, or marketing, etc.  The silos on a macro level are those between marketing/communications, customer service, product testing, and other large divisions.  In many large organizations, these groups are in geographically disparate locations.  CGM may be a brilliant place to gather insight, but if the marketing team who gets the blog monitoring reports isn't sharing them with product development, or the customer service team who is speaking with a blogger doesn't share that information with marketing ... the power of CGM is never realized.

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Influential Marketing Blog Featured in Wall Street Journal

Many of you may have already caught this yesterday, but this blog was cited in the Recommended Reading  section of the Wall Street Journal yesterday in an article by Keith Huang.  As Jay Berkowitz from Ten Golden Rules shares on his team blog, my blog was one of 60 resources that they recommended to the journalist as part of their reading list and was selected from that list as a recommended resource for companies looking to "optimize their online presence."  Here's the writeup:

Influential Marketing Blog, rohitbhargava.typepad.com
Rohit Bhargava's blog is intellectual and educational. In a recent post, he discusses the art of stamp collection and how, even today, many smaller countries use stamps as a key marketing tool. He writes, 'Next time you pass a post office in any country, pay attention to how they are using their philately to promote the country, cater to tourists, or commemorate moments of significance.'

It is a great media hit and to be selected from a list of what I am guessing were 60 stellar resources is flattering.  I'm in awe at being included among the other bloggers and authors mentioned in the article - including Seth Godin, Steve Rubel, Matt Cutts, John Battelle, Chris Anderson, Joseph Jaffe, and Danny Sullivan. Thanks to Jay for including me in this great list, and to Keith for selecting to include my blog!

Rohit Bhargava: Social Media Today Podcast Just Launched!

Last week I was invited to do a podcast interview as part of the Social Media Today Weekly Podcast series being put together by Maggie Fox.  I am part of a group called the Social Media Collective which is a group of bloggers that write often about social media and it's impact on business and marketing.  Our content is republished on the Social Media Today site and it is a wonderful collection of writers and thinkers in the social media space.  During my brief conversation with Maggie, we had a good dialogue about the future of blogging, social media marketing, effective techniques and a few thoughts about social media optimization.  You can check out the podcast on the original site or on Maggie's Blog, or you can download it direcly from here. 

Trendspot: Using Social Media to Tell the Inside Story of a Book

Getting the "inside story" is an appealing thing.  Whether you are talking about business, or entertainment, or even gossip about people's daily lives, knowing the inside story means you are part of an elite club.  Inside stories are engaging, and they pass quickly from person to person (often, regardless of whether they are meant to be secrets or not).  In the publishing and entertainment world, giving people the inside story has become a big marketing trend.  "Making of" documentaries are produced for films and events.  DVD releases of films include "behind the scenes footage.  Some films (eg - King Kong) or books (eg - The Long Tail) even publish ongoing blogs throughout the creative development process.  Simon and Schuster is taking another step towards helping authors connect with readers with the recent announcement last week that they will be partnering with Turn Here to create a series of author videos to help promote books.  As Sue Fleming from Simon & Schuster explains in a ClickZ article:

"Publishing in particular has been thought of as a very old media industry, and we have a tendency to only think one-dimensionally. I think all of us who are working in [online media] have a challenge to think multi-dimensionally," said Fleming. "Books have always been promoted on television, and through a visual experience. You see an ad, or hear an ad, or you see an interview on the news... Video for us seems a logical extension."

Meeting the challenge of standing out in a sea of content competition, this type of new thinking about marketing is more and more likely to become a core part of publisher's efforts to sell books.  I wrote some time ago about 5 case studies for what I felt were very smart examples of book marketing with new thinking.  Blogs from book authors around their books are increasingly common.  Authors can "claim" their book on Amazon and respond directly to feedback in the world's largest book marketplace.  Podcasts, video interviews posted online, and even commenting on blogs are all viable ways of connecting directly with readers.  The future of book marketing is not solely about more book tours, speaking engagements and signing sessions in book stores.  It is marketing the inside stories that can make a book more than it's pages, and now more than ever authors are in a position to share them.  Social media may be changing the media landscape by giving everyone a platform to be a content creator, but it's also shifting the way that publishers market the oldest form of published content they have ... printed books.

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Are You Marketing Your Product Backstory?

Several weeks ago, I noted an interesting story about how Dole is offering "farm codes" printed onto stickers that are placed on organic bananas offering consumers the chance to get to know more about the farm that grew the banana by visiting www.doleorganic.com.  On Dole Organic, you can see such information as a description of the banana plantation, photos of workers, and Google Earth images.  Despite the site's average design and limited functionality (no ability for users to interact with the content or add their voice) - the effort represents a great example of new thinking that product marketers are using to capitalize on the global trend towards ethical consumerism.  As more and more attention is being paid to the manufacturing or acquisition process for products, as well as the carbon footprint behind these processes, offering insight into the backstory for how your product is made is becoming more and more necessary.  Certification programs like Dole's Farm Code effort, or the international movement to create a certification for conflict-free diamonds are just two examples.  Soon, the "Made in Tiawan" stickers so often seen and ridiculed through the 80s and 90s may be replaced by reports on the factory, images from the floors, and interviews with the workers.  Social responsibility and ethical consumerism is not just about buying green products, but also understanding the process that they are created with and choosing based on this information.

Yet product backstories have more potential than just offering environmental or societal impact assessments for products.  Backstories are a cultural trend.  More and more films are taking a different approach to the traditional beginning to end timetable for telling a story.  Lost is perhaps the best example of the rise of the backstory, as the hit television show has used the engaging format of weaving a backstory of one of the show's characters into each episode to allow viewers to learn more about each character.  The backstories fill in the details and deepen the emotional connection of a viewer, or a consumer.  You might say it's a stretch to say we will care more about our bananas after having seen images from the farm ... but on some level, it has an impact.  Having worked with BuzzAgent (a word of mouth marketing company) on a number of campaigns, I know that when it comes to WOM, the backstory is particularly important.  Knowing more about a product or company's origins make you more likely to tell others about it.  In many cases, the backstory becomes the marketing story.  Most marketing today focuses on product attributes and uses or creating a need for consumers to purchase.  What if more of our efforts focused on a product's backstory?  At least one marketer is betting that's the way to sell a whole lot more bananas.

Update (06/06/07): Dole also has a blog about this effort at http://doleorganic.blogspot.com/

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A Recap of the PSFK Conference

Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend the first conference event put together by Piers and the team at PSFK focused on trends and ideas.  The agenda was very compelling going into it, and I did leave with many interesting insights and new ideas about marketing and communications.  Though I unfortunately had to duck out early due to client commitments, here are a few key observations I made in my notes:

1. Getting the "doers" to come and speak. At many industry events, there are lots of great (or average) speakers that are trained to position companies.  The tone at the PSFK was definitely more real, with Piers choosing to feature many "doers" rather than speakers.  The result at times was the necessity to really focus on the essence of what someone was saying rather than being caught up in the speaking, because the presentations could be halting or awkward.  In the end, I think that added to the appeal of the event.
2. Blogs fill a void in vertical media. This is something I had experienced, but not thought about ... how blogs are augmenting vertical trade publications in just about every industry to offer another channel for learning and information.  Elizabeth Spiers started the day with a somewhat sales-pitchey presentation about her collection of sites for Dead Horse Media, but did share the interesting observation that the secret of success behind Dealbreaker.com was that it allowed lots of 29 year old financial services workers to read something entertaining while "allaying their guilt because it is peripherally related to their jobs."  Seems like a lesson lots of other blogs have learned as well.
3. Most toaster designs suck. This is something I would never have thought of before Allan Chochinov's presentation from Core77.  He shared lots of imagery, talked about the design asthetic and illustrated how his sites was truly focused on design ideas.  Bucking the trend for many popular blogs, Core 77 does not necessarily post what they like, but rather what sparks the most ideas.  His tour of Flickr, Worth1000 and other sites were worth checking out - as is Core77 and coroflot.  If you have anything to do with design in your job, or are passionate about it, this collection of sites are must-reads.
4. Gaming was the first social revolution (maybe even leading to UGC?). This sentiment was echoed both through the presentation from David Rosenburg from JWT and Kevin Slavin from area/code.  Until about 2004, video games were played alone against the computer.  Slavin pointed to this as what people 20 years from now might call the dark ages of gaming.  Now it's social, huge and for everyone (especially people in categories you might not expect, like women and boomers).  Rosenberg's survey of the many different types of gaming, evolution of gaming and built in videos was a great 20 minute survey of a very ambitious topic. 
5. TrendSpotting is not as important at TrendUnderstanding. Simon Sinek  had many great moments as part of this panel, and one of them was pointing out that much of the crappy marketing work published recently comes from brands blindly following trends without understanding the underlying reasons and motivations for them.  Positioning the difference between the academic world and the business one, Grant McCraken from MIT shared the perspective that the academic world is very good and understanding the underlying reasons, but not quickly spotting the trend.  As Simon noted, the marketing world is just the opposite.  I'll be subscribing to his Re:focus blog in my rss reader ...
6. Using continuity instead of consistency to create a great brand experience. Going against the trend of sameness in retail locations, George Murphy (the former VP of Brand at Starbucks) shared the example of how Starbucks creates an experience of continuity without resorting to consistency.  With so many brand marketers focused on making every aspect of an experience fit together and giving consistency an undue reverance, Murphy's observation offered an insightful caution about avoiding your brand becoming stagnant because of sameness. Planned inconsistency can make a big difference in fostering your brand experience and offering some personality without losing your consistency.
7. Good guerilla marketing is not deceptive and sometimes even useful.  In a strong panel about guerilla marketing, folks from several agencies shared some core principles of doing guerilla marketing right.  The first idea that stuck out was that you cannot be deceptive otherwise you risk pissing off consumers.  The other interesting concept was that now messages could become inherently useful by offering messages or guides to locations that people need.  Floyd Hayes of Cunning also shared an interesting observation about how we use so many militaristic terms in marketing (guerilla, campaign, targeting, etc.) and perhaps we need to stop treating customers as "targets" and more as people.  Amen.
8. How to invent assvertising without becoming the "assvertising agency."  This is a topic of particular relevance for me as I focused late last year on participating in dialogue about Social Media Optimization without wanting to become the "SMO guy."  Darren Paul of Night Agency shared the story behind coming up with "assvertising" and how it helped to put his agency on the map to do much more.  It's a great lesson in not being afraid to introduce a big idea even if you are afraid of getting "type-cast" with it.  There's always a way to move on.
9. Big games and building a "public secret" really work.  Kevin Slavin's presentation about the Brand as activity was one of my favorites of the day, as he shared lots of examples of great games and real life contests that used brands as the focal point for interactive experiences.  This is the concept at the heart of the "creationstorming" idea I posted about earlier this week.  The Tucson Conqwest is a great early example of a mobile "big game" and how effective it can be.  Kevin shared lots of other examples I will be checking out, including several I am linking to in my resource link list below.
10. Art as advertising is not anonymous.  Most attendees of the event would be familiar with the intense frustration creative professionals feel after spending long hours to produce artistic work as part of a marketing effort, only to have their involvement be anonymous and hidden to everyone but the advertising community through awards shows and trade pubs.  The panel on using art for advertising was illuminating because it represents a different kind of advertising where the art is identified with the artist and the brand is simply a participant.  This was the concept we explored through our popular effort with Julian Beever for Aveeno - and seemed to represent a different type of respect for advertising that most aspired to.

As with most of these kinds of events, I also noted many sites for a follow up visit (or revisit) because of mentions in presentations and tagged them in del.icio.us.  You can check out my list of sites at http://del.icio.us/rbhargava/psfkconference.

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Trendspot: Simplicity Marketing from Apple, Nintendo, and UPS

Like anyone else, I find Steve Job's product launch presentations to be mesmerizing.  Apple is certainly getting their mileage out of his typically irresistable keynote performance from Macworld, where Jobs announced the iPhone - marketing the download from the homepage of the iTunes store and probably getting millions of downloads already.  Yesterday evening, I also saw another TV spot for the new UPS Whiteboard campaign - dedicated to simplifying the process of international shipping and how UPS can help your business.  Nintendo has also gotten into the simplicity game with their new Wii - using a combination of their website and branded consumer experiences in retail locations to help spread the word about the game console.  Philips has received a lot of credit for restructuring their entire product development teams around the core tenets of simplicity and making this a core part of their corporate culture.  There is a trend in all this, but it's not about the necessity of making products simpler. 

There are plenty of products that we use on a daily basis that are not simple. The QWERTY keyboard is the classic example, having been laid out to actually slow down fast typing by separating the most commonly used letters - but since then we have learned to use it and adapted to it.  Many top selling consumer electronics gadgets further prove this rule.  The point is, people adapt to non-intuitive interfaces, especially when they have no other options.  The real lesson is about simplicity in marketing.  Using simplicity to sell is now an imperative, and one that can actually cut through the clutter.  No one adapts to marketing that isn't simple ... it just gets ignored.  Simple stories, on the other hand, are easy to understand and pass along.  They are the essence of a message without the ego of the creative.  They are concepts that respect their audience by not wasting their time.  As an example, just compare the UPS effort to an ad that aired right after it during the NFL playoffs last night, the Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robot ad for Dodge Ram - where two robots are boxing and then the winner goes on to attack a Dodge Ram and loses.  What's the simple message there - that if my car is ever attacked by boxing robots, I should buy a Dodge Ram?  Aside for standing out for it's lack of relevance, that ad doesn't make the simplicity connection.  It has no insight. 

When Steve Jobs tells the story of an interface, it makes sense.  When he goes "boom" - it's the most natural thing in the world to hear.  UPS simplifies what many business owners believe is an extremely complex task - international shipping.  Nintendo is the anti-game console for an audience that won't go out and buy the latest Alienware desktop system with supercomputer processing power just for gaming.  Sure, product simplicity and innovation is part of the message.  But more and more, the most successful marketing campaigns are those that focus on telling a story  simply and clearly.  Now there's an idea: cutting through the clutter without needing to raise your voice or blindly throw more dollars at advertising creative.  Sounds too simple.

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A Recap of 2006 on Influential Interactive Marketing

Let's start with a warning ... this is the "clip show" post where I recycle a lot of old material so if that causes you extreme pain, please close this window now and come back tomorrow.  For all the rest of you, it's the holidays and a quick glance around the marketing blogosphere will show that these clip show posts are in right now.  With nearly 400 post on this blog already, there is lots of content to choose from ... allowing me the luxury to conveniently ignore those posts from the past year that are outdated or that I just don't like anymore.  Here is a sampling of the rest:

Concepts & Ideas:
This is a collection of concepts and ideas that were introduced or discussed on this blog and then travelled virally to other blogs and were discussed elsewhere in media.  A good collection of ideas, many of which I still hope to implement on a client campaign (but haven't yet).

• Soundbombs
• Virtual Hugs
• Placecasting
• Widget Marketing
• Text Messaging Customer Service
• Tagging with Domain Names
• Social Media Optimization
• Automated Blog Translation
• Photopedia
• Human Search Filters

Rules & Guides:
These are a group of "Guy Kawasaki style" posts written in list format as guides to various topics from SMO to viral marketing.  It's a format I have always liked and you will probably see many more posts in this format going into 2007.

• Avoiding the Dark Side of Social Media
• 5 Rules of Social Media Optimization
• Signs Your Viral Marketing May Flop
• 7 Tips on Pitching Bloggers
• Golden Rules of Blog Etiquette

Presentations & Published Work:
Links to presentations given at industry events as well as guest contributions to other blogs.  There is some good powerpoint link bait in here, useful for those who are interested in any of these topics but couldn't make it to the events referenced.

• 7 Rules for Getting into Search (Search Engine Strategies Conference)
• 7 Tips on Pitching Bloggers (White Paper)
• The Human Side of Search (Search Insider Summit)
• Guide to Blog Marketing (SixApart Seminar) 
• Finding your Personality in Personal Media (Guest Column on Strumpette)

That's it.  Look out tomorrow for an all new post about what I think the top ten marketing ideas to watch will be in 2007.

Trendspot: Autotagging Images to Help Organize the Web

I am a big fan of tagging as a way to organize content, save my bookmarks on del.icio.us, and optimize content for consumption on social media sites.  Yet I have also written before about the inherent difficulties of tagging (suggesting that a TagWiki might be the solution).  The biggest issue is that multiple people can use many tags to indicate the same thing.  This creates a difficulty in aggregating similar content, because you cannot rely on a single tag or keyword to show all relevant content.  Other problems stem from differences in syntax.  For example, right now, "publicrelations" is a different tag to "public_relations" or "public+relations."  Chances are, most people would mean the same thing by using any one of these tags, but there is currently no way to aggregate them.  Spelling and plurals also cause issues, as someone might use the tag "socialmediaoptimization" or "socialmediaoptimisation" depending on where they are from.  When it comes to images, the issue is more basic ... most images online are lacking any tagging or semantic data to describe them.  They are therefore effectively invisible to search.

With all of these minor issues with tagging, I came across Michael Arrington's post yesterday on TechCrunch about Ookles, a soon to be launched online photo site.  One of the intriguing features of this site is the ability to set up autotagging with facial recognition.  Taking the work of Riya in visual search one step further, Ookles is extending this idea into autotagging.  After beta testing the site, Arringon describes a three step process to train Ookles to recognize a particular face - and then every photo uploaded from then onwards will recognize the same face.  Today on Techcrunch, Arrington posts about Polar Rose, another such offering taking the different tact of creating a plugin to let users generate semantic data around images.  Looking at both of these services, it is clear that the uses go far beyond simply organizing your holiday photos.

In this age of consumer co-creation, brand logos are being photoshopped left and right.  The problem is, it's not easy to know when and where this is happening.  Training a technology like Ookles to recognize versions of a brand's logo and autotag real uses, as well as derivative uses with specific tags could help brands to monitor logo usage and spot potential brand issues.  In my view, the ideal use of autotagging for images would be similar to how the DDB music database is integrated into music sharing sites such as iTunes.  Currently, when you import music, you can automatically get a list of song tracks, album data and even cover artwork downloaded automatically.  These new technologies being introduced by both Polar Rose and Ookles offer the same potential - to allow people to upload images of people, places or things, and get automatic suggestions for tags that describe those images.  Aside from being a great time saver, its one of the more powerful ideas I have seen to help organize the growing billions of photos that are being posted online every year.

Ideas for Marketing with Fantasy Games Online

On Friday last week, there was a great piece by Julia Beizer in the Washington Post Express about a different category of fantasy games that offer an alternative to Fantasy Football.  Now officially giving up on my Fantasy Football team after losing my two star players in back to back weeks to season ending injuries, I may just be seeking an alternative fantasy league myself.  For those readers of my blog unfamiliar with the American phenomenon of Fantasy Football - the premise is very simple: choose a player at each position from any team, and each week your "fantasy team" gains points based on how each of these individual players performs.  In this way, you can combine the best players from multiple teams and have a stake in multiple NFL games as you watch how each of your players perform.  As I have commented before on this blog, it's a brilliant brand extension strategy for the NFL that keeps it's brand front and center during the football season, and leverages the statistical element of the game to deepen it's relationship with NFL fans.

Now, however, the idea of fantasy gaming is starting to travel beyond football ... and even beyond sports.  The Tabloid Fantasy League is a great example, allowing people to choose their roster of stars and win points each time a star appears on the cover of a tabloid or gossip mag.  Of course, you lose points if your stars are busted by the cops ... or the fashion police.  The rise of concepts like this raises an interesting truth about the power that fantasy games can have to raise an individual's personal stake in just about anything.  In each case, the core benefit is engagement at a deeper and more personal level.  In a way, this is the reason why online stock trading has become so successful.  By removing the barrier to trading and watching investments, you can come up with your own "fantasy portfolio" with real money, and track your investments real time.  Here are a few other ideas for how fantasy games could be used by real world marketers to extend their brands and engage customers:

1. AMC Opening Weekend Fantasy - Each weekend, you can bet on the movies that will have the largest opening weekends.  Tie this into movie marketing and viral campaigns already being launched for many movie openings, and this could be a big idea in Hollywood.
2. Technorati Blog Fantasy - Despite the often discussed inconsistencies in how Technorati reports inbound links to blogs, tying a fantasy game into the currently existing Blog Favourites list could offer a great hook for users to continually check back into Technorati.  Readers could get points based on how many inbound links posts from their favourite blogs get over the course of a week.
3. AllRecipes/Whole Foods Food Fantasy - One of the best recipe sites out there, AllRecipes, could launch a fantasy game that lets site visitors select products to add to their fantasy lineup and win points based on how many views of recipes that use those ingredients get, or even tie it into sales data from a large grocery chain such as Whole Foods to win points based on bestselling items. 
4. PRWeek Fantasy Placements - This one is likely to get us in trouble, but what if the entire PR industry could select fantasy teams based on clients, stories, and PR agencies?  All readers of PRWeek could choose which clients, stories or PR agencies are likely to get prominent news placements on online and offline media and win points based on the favorability and prominence of the placement.

I am sure there are lots more ideas for how fantasy games could be used for marketing, though my favourite so far comes from the civic sector.  The Fantasy Congress (mentioned in Beizer's original piece), is a site where you can "draft" senators and representatives and earn points as they introduce legislation and make law.  As one of the founders of the site says, "if people cared about government as much as they cared about sports, we'd have a much better government."  I'm heading to the site right now to choose my fantasy congress.  Unfortunately, the way my luck has gone for Fantasy Football, I wouldn't be surprised if I lost my chosen Senator to a season ending sex scandal before too long ...

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Idea Bar: Marketing with Soundbombs

In this month's issued of Wired Magazine, there was a profile of Soundbombs, an innovative new concept designed to merge audio with physical experiences to bring a new dimension to just about anything from billboards to art.  As unique as the concept is, the distribution strategy is even more so ... with Felix Beck, creator of Soundbombs, noting that "one can apply for the purchase of a Soundbomb – only those who deserve a Soundbomb, get a Soundbomb!"  This has created significant viral buzz about Soundbombs and generated more than 2,500 requests according to the Wired article.  I love this concept not only for the idea behind it, but also for the distribution strategy that is keeping some amount of control and prestige behind the use of Soundbombs and keeping the artistic integrity of the concept intact. 

Contrary to what some might think, I don't believe this means that there cannot be any marketing implications or uses for Soundbombs that fit into the philosophy behind the invention.  Rather, this purity of the idea - when associated with the right brands - could create an immensely powerful marketing tool that adds to a customer experience, connects with potential customers, and shows an added dimension to a product, service or experience that could otherwise have been lost.  Here are just a few marketing situations I think could be ideal uses for a Soundbomb:

1. Street Donations for Charities - Imagine if you could amplify the message of volunteers soliciting money for charities by adding a Soundbomb close by offering more information about the cause before passersby are solicited.  It would certainly be an interesting social experiment to see if someone on the street is more likely to support Saving Tibet after hearing an emotive plea from the Dalai Lama ... 
2. Auditory Tourism - As tourists are walking by historical points of interest, adding Soundbombs could enhance the experience by allowing them to listen to sounds from the past that could be associated with a place.  Consider it a vastly more mobile version of the audio phone tour so popular in today's museums.
3. Virtual Instructions - For interactive kiosks, display stands, and coin-operated machines - sometimes the method of use is not immediately apparent.  In these situations, have a voice to proactively answer a common question or simply provide a welcome and offer guidance on the first step could be a welcome addition.  At the very least, you could use a Soundbomb to answer the common question of how to make an ATM (which already has braille instructions) easier to find for the visually impaired ... 

Have any other great marketing applications for Soundbombs that fit with the philosophy of the project?  Add a comment to this post and send an email to Felix to see if he agrees.

To learn more about Soundbombs, visit the website or watch a video of how soundbombs work.

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The Human Side of Search: Taggregation

As more and more content gets posted online by organizations and individuals, the barriers to finding the content that truly matters are getting higher.  Search algorithms are valuable for helping to sort through this information, but unfortunately the automated approach can only go so far and falls short when it comes to less well recognized niche content (part of the long tail) or newer content that has not had time to be indexed.  Augmenting search algorithms is the human side of search - where individuals are manually grouping content, creating new ways to find or browse, and generally becoming the gatekeepers of information.  Across the Internet, there are multiple examples of this, from the rise of social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us to people sharing their "searchrolls" on sites like Rollyo.com.  An example of the rise of the human side of search is the phenomenon of Taggregation ...

The Trend: Taggregation
Taggregation, as it sounds, is a term used to describe the phenomenon of aggregating content online based on using a common keyword tagging structure.  Sites that use this structure include del.icio.us, digg.com, and Technorati.  What is interesting about taggregation is that it offers an alternate way of browsing content on sites that often also offer search capabilities.  There are challenges with taggregation, namely the requirement that users choose the exact same tags for content (plurals and spacing or underscores can create problems), but even with these hurdles the tag view offers a useful method for aggregating content and is growing in popularity as a resource to filter content for users to digest without the necessity for using search tools.  This is a concept that is already being used by several smart folks for PR.  One example is how BuzzAgent (through their agency) has created an archive of articles and blog posts discussing Word of Mouth marketing.  This archive, hosted on del.icio.us, offers a central resource for anyone looking for a list of resources on the topic, and is even indexed by tonality.  Another example is Technorati's highly useful index of blogs by topic through their "Blog Finder" feature.  Bloggers who have claimed their blogs in Technorati self select the keywords that apply to their blog and blogs are then taggregated by topic.  Over time, it is likely many more examples of taggregation will appear. 

Note: This post is the first in a series of explorations of the human side of search that relate to my upcoming presentation at the Search Insider Summit this week in Keystone, Colorado.

UPDATE: Listen to an MP3 of the presentation or download it.

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The Carnival of Marketing - Call for Submissions

One of the more popular blogs on marketing and PR today is Media Orchard.  Scott's "Pick of the Orchard" are very useful daily posts on the top five or so marketing and PR related links worth reading online.  Piers does the same thing on marketing news and trends on both PSFK and Marktd.  Every once in a while, a post of mine makes it on one or both of these sites - and generates some great traffic.  This week is my turn to host the Carnival of Marketing, a related effort to highlight the best of the marketing blogosphere launched by Noah Kagan.  The Carnival has a different host blog each week and each week up to 7 posts are chosen by the host of the week to be highlighted throughout the week.  My picks will be posted on July 2nd, and I will probably do an update in the middle of the week to follow up.  Anyone who has posted on a marketing-related topic in the past week is welcome to submit their ideas, and  I have already started receiving some good submissions.  If you have a great post you'd like to try and get included, email me the link at rohitaustralia[at]gmail.com anytime this week - or the email address Noah lists on the Carnival of Marketing description page linked above. 

What will I be looking for?  Smart marketing ideas that go beyond simple reports of what's out there.  Ideally, I would love to use my week of hosting the Carnival to also locate and help publicize a few new blogs that I hadn't heard of or visited before.  I consider reading marketing blogs my best source of new information, ideas and strategies.  As this global conversation about marketing continues to grow on blogs, more sources for aggregating information will emerge.  Hopefully the Carnival of Marketing will be only one of many ways that marketers can add their voices to the discussion, make new connections with one another, and share some of the best ideas.  I invite you to join the Carnival of Marketing this week on Influential Interactive Marketing.

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Inside The Da Vinci Code Marketing Strategy

After much fanfare over the last few weeks, The Da Vinci Code opens in theaters across the US today.  Though some early reviews from the Cannes Film Festival premier have been less than perfect, there is no denying that the marketing machine behind the film has generated buzzworthy firsts, from partnering with Google to open up it's tightly guarded homepage to a marketing promotion - to successfully repositioning a controversial film about religion to something much broader.  In looking at the marketing of the film over the past few months, there are several key lessons that emerge which make this a marketing campaign to remember:

1. Build on top of current social trends - Some of the smartest marketing builds on trends already happening in society.  For Da Vinci Code, this trend was around curiosity marketing and the natural human inclination towards solving a mystery.  Creating a first ever movie marketing campaign with Google was the perfect opportunity to launch the geeky Da Vinci Code Quest.  After all, who's better at connecting with code cracking geeks than Google?  In the process, Sony successfully repositioned the movie as one about religion and history to one about mystery and code cracking.   It's even fun to read about how the quest ended.
2. Simultaneously fan the controversy AND the debate - For controversial films that deal with religion, it is relatively simple to use the controversy to build buzz.  The harder thing is to step back and actually promote the dialogue as a way of creating even more buzz.  When Sony launched The Da Vinci Challenge website, they did exactly this by inviting prominent authors to debate the merits of the book.  Christian bloggers have also called on one another to become knowledgeable about the book - and this debate fans even more publicity.
3. Market the core values that work - At it's heart, the story is a historical mystery - and the characters in the book and film are trying to solve the puzzle.  Relgion is the theme, but code breaking is the heart.  The movie's website starts with a loading script the slowly transforms "The Divine Code Dealt Chaos" into "The Da Vinci Code Has Loaded."  Clearly the positioning is all about "cracking the code" even though the URL is www.sodarktheconofman.com.  Do they ever market the URL?  If they do, I haven't seen it.
4. Don't discourage the copycats - Gizmodo points to a promotion from Motorola around a similar theme of unlocking a mystery and "finding the Q."  Sony could have stepped in here and tried to claim ownership of the "since the beginning of time mystery" theme ... but letting promotions like this happen on their own is the best thing they can do.  In the end, it will build even more buzz about mystery and code solving, and entice more people to see the movie.

It will be interesting to watch how the movie does at the box office this weekend (my friend Gitesh, the Box Office Guru, should have updated figures on his site through the weekend), but by many marketing metrics that have appeared in press recently (such as 30% of Sony's overall site traffic arriving due to the Google promo) - I'd say the campaign has already been a huge success.  Not that the movie needed any more buzz marketing - but as an example of how movie marketing is reinventing itself, and the direction Google seems to be moving towards ... this will be a marketing campaign that people in the industry will be talking about for a long time.

technorati tags: The Da Vinci Code da vinci code davinci code davinci sony sony pictures tom hanks audrey tautou ian mckellen alfred molina movie marketing hollywood marketing google google quest sodarktheconofman dan brown marketing rohit bhargava
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