The Year's Best Marketing

This is not a list of successful marketing campaigns from 2009. It is however a summary of the underlying traits and consistencies found in home run marketing programs. As the article reveals, all campaigns worthy of recognition exhibit the six C’s of success. Thinking about your work over the last year, are you proud of your efforts? What did you learn this year that you will apply in the near future? We’d love to hear your feedback. Hit us up on Twitter at @_Fire_Starter_ or email us.

Great branding and marketing happened all the time in 2009, only it often occurred in some less noticed and most unlikely places.

In fact, I'm not sure we possess the right criteria or language to agree on what "great" even means. So many things have changed − from our channels to our expectations − that much of what was celebrated in the media (and promptly resold to other clients) just left me flat. I had this sneaking suspicion that we were missing something all year long.

A shared idea of purpose. Criteria for success.

A program.

I wrote a number of Dim Bulb essays during the year on what I thought were home runs that you'd otherwise miss; when I reviewed them for my new book, I discovered an underlying consistency across all of them. A pattern of design and execution that I believe drove all of the successes, whether large or small. The best campaigns all exhibited novel thinking in one or more of what I've concluded are the six categories, or Six C's of Success, which are:

1. Channel. "New" shouldn't be a synonym for "digital" when it comes to media for reaching consumers. The truly inventive campaigns used new ways to communicate, like incorporating heaters in bus stops with ads, or newspapers that were written differently, not just reformatted to look like web pages. Every communications channel is "new" unless you choose to use it in old ways.
2. Creativity. I'm a sucker for a good fart joke just like the next guy, but the really creative content in 2009 wasn't focused on making people laugh as much as inventing new ways to talk about products and services. Who would have ever thought of giving life insurance as a gift, for instance? Successful campaigns redefined the mandate for creativity and put it against finding ways to engage with consumers thatwere relevant, meaningful, and had some utility beyond eliciting a chuckle.
3. Competitiveness. Some marketers rejected the babble of talking about "enhancements" or selling imaginary benefits, and got back to talking about real differences with competing offers, sometimes going so far as to invent their own competition to crowd a market. "Why we're different/better" proved to be a far better basis for social conversations than whether folks thought an ad was good or not.
4. Content. Home run messages had meaning and relevance, not just entertainment value. One of the key winning ideas was to pull campaigns back to the old-fashioned idea of sampling, which helped make a beer message very compelling.
5. Clarity. The best ideas weren't focused exclusively on marketing communications, but the business behind it. 2009 gave us examples of clients linking marketing efforts to results (holding agencies accountable for results...gasp!), which the media interpreted as punitive. It wasn't. Could selling be emerging as the new marketing idea? It would be laughable if it weren't possible.
6. Call to Action. This was perhaps the most important quality of all. Home runs have objectively real actions attached to them, so they're memorable for what happened (and not for what people thought about them). So, for instance, an emotional attachment was less important than the offer to "try our toilet paper." Beyond all the babble about conversation for the sake of conversation, the most successful campaigns provided something after the talk.

The Six C's cut across the more common criteria by which brand and marketing strategies are discussed; I think that one of the biggest risks we run is when we try to do "a digital campaign," or look at a business challenge in terms of the marketing tools available to us. Home runs go above and beyond those common vendor definitions, and are assembled by sometimes unlikely (or unexpected) elements.

They can also be nothing more than scrappy singles, to push the baseball analogy perhaps too far. I'm convinced that some of the best strategies in 2009 were mistaken for tactics; doing "little" things really well was perhaps one of the year's "big" ideas.

So you've got my recipe for success. Want to know which campaigns I thought were the home runs of 2009?

Source - Baskin Dim Bulb

Location Location Location

Social media has drastically changed how we interact and communicate online but its impact on the offline world has been comparatively small. As social media continues to evolve, you should anticipate greater correlation between online and offline communication. As the following article explains, location is the missing link between the two worlds. Although location based services are far from gaining widespread acceptance, they will surely be prevalent in the coming years.

Imagine a world where you sit at your computer and you never go outside. Where you never see another human being. This is the world that sites like Google and Facebook want you to live in.

Though they’d never admit to such a thing, the reasoning should be obvious: The longer you’re at your computer, the more time you’re spending on their sites. The more time your spending on their sites, the more ads you’re being served. The more ads being served, the more money they are earning. No matter why these sites originally started, or what features they add, that is, quite literally, the bottom line. They’d have us strapped to a chair with our eyes taped open like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, if they could. The only difference is that we’d have a contraption on our arms to allow us to click on the ads being shown every so often.

Thankfully, we don’t quite live in that world yet. And there are a couple factors pushing us the opposite way from that. Mobile devices are the biggest one. But even that is still just a screen. You may not be chained to a desk using it, but as plenty of people with an iPhone will tell you, you may end staring at this screen even more than you do a desktop or laptop monitor throughout a day. But there’s another up and coming factor working against our screen slavery: Location.

Social networking has been perhaps the most popular trend on the Internet over the past several years. At first the term was ironic. “Social networking” was anything but social in the traditional sense. But over time, we’ve grown accustomed to the idea that you can do social activities such as play games, collaborate on work, and talk, online. And in fact, many times it’s even more convenient than doing it in person. It’s social, but it’s a different kind of social.

Ever since the term was born, countless people have debated the implications of taking social interactions virtual. At one point or another I’m sure that it has been said that it would be both the downfall of mankind, and the thing that would bring the planet together. The truth is that social networking, while great in many respects, does not fulfill a fundamental human desire: To be in the actual presence of other people.

If you’ll allow me to be embarrassingly obvious for a second: Sitting in a chat room all day, even if all of your friends are in it as well, is not the same as being in the same physical room with them. Even if you all are having great discussions in the chat room, and not saying a word when you’re hanging out with one another, there is just something that’s different. Something that social networking will never be able to replace.

That’s where location comes in. It has the power to be the bridge between social networking and actual social interaction. We’re already seeing the very early signs of this with services like Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Brightkite, and Google Latitude, to varying degrees.

To the masses, most of these services still either don’t make sense, or are way too creepy. Social networks used to be thought of in the same way. This will change.

The people who do use these services likely have at least one story about a situation where a friend saw where they were, or where they planned to be, and showed up to meet up. Some have many of these stories. And for some of us in cities where these services are popular, this happens just about everyday. And it’s really quite amazing.

Is it annoying if a friend shows up if you want to be alone or don’t want to see them? Of course. But that’s why it’s important that you’re in control of what location information you are sending out. Is it creepy if a stranger shows up to meet you somewhere? Of course, but that’s why privacy settings are so important.

Make no mistake, there are hurdles to location-based services gaining widespread acceptance. But the upside of it far outweighs the downside. And with that the case, these types of services are ripe to take off.

At the core level, using a social network to facilitate actual social interaction just seems to make sense. Though I poked fun at them in the intro of this post, don’t think that Facebook doesn’t recognize this. In some ways they already do this through their popular events offering. But anything they do with location — which it should be no surprise, they are working on — will go far beyond this. When you have a social graph with over 300 million users and you add a realtime location component into the mix, it’s going to change things.

I remember the first time I used sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Friendster (back in the day) to find people that I went to high school with who I hadn’t talked to in years. It was a little weird, but also in some ways exciting. Imagine that transfered into the real world. Maybe you’re in a city with a person you went to high school with, but hadn’t talked to in years. It’s unlikely that the two of you were ever run into each other randomly, but maybe you can get pinged by Facebook location when they’re nearby. Maybe neither of you want to meet, and that’s fine. But maybe you do.

The word we keep hearing over and over again for such situations is “serendipity,” but really it’s not. None of this needs to be left up to chance. It’s simply an extension of social networking into the real world.

Another social network, Twitter, is already in hot pursuit of such functionality. Any day now, the service will turn on its geolocation service which will both allow you to send tweets with your location tacked on, and allow you to pass in location information from other services, like Foursquare. As a service with tens of millions of users, Twitter will be the first massive test of location as an extension of social networking.

It may be a while before users start truly taking advantage of it since it is an opt-in feature. But eventually, I believe we’ll see more and more users opt-in to be able to use third-party clients like Birdfeed which let them choose which tweets to attach their location to and let people know where they are.

And beyond individual user data, this location data will be very interesting as an aggregate. Undoubtedly people will use things like Twitter’s geolocation APIs to make services that can show where people are flocking to in realtime. This is the next step for what services like SocialGreat are doing with location data, showing hot spots in towns. And we already know that Twitter is planning to use the data to tailor its trending topics to show the hot things being tweeted about in specific places.

Social networking up until this point has been great. But it’s also really a bit odd. The core concept is still to gather your friends in a virtual construct, while the companies behind these constructs convince you to hang out in them as much as possible. Instead, they should be using the interesting social data they have to help you connect in other places as well. That’s what makes Facebook Connect is so powerful. But that doesn’t extend to the real world yet. But with location, it could. And that’s exciting.

Source - Tech Crunch

The "Twitter" Of Twenty Ten?

You like “earned media”. You look for ways to leverage new media opportunities. If that’s the case, you also should be keeping an eye out on Foursquare, the latest rage on the scene. Foursquare is like a location based social game that asks people to “check in” their whereabouts. Discover how six ways business are integrating their brand into this rapidly growing platform.

After a spectacular debut at South by Southwest last March, Foursquare is taking over the world city by city, gobbling up users like Facebook in 2006.

Such viral growth, combined with the GPS app’s focus on brick and mortar shops and venues, has made Foursquare a fertile advertising medium for many businesses.

Here are a few ways businesses are already making use of Foursquare. (It must be noted however that other competitors like Gowalla can and do provide similar potential and functionality, but none have experienced quite as sharp a growth spurt as Foursquare.)

1. Digital Punch Cards
Foursquare tracks your GPS location and allows you to “check in” to nearby venues in order to leave tips for friends, rack up points or win badges, or become the “mayor” or king of the coffee shop (library, nightclub, whatever). Some businesses are giving incentives for people to keep coming back by offering deals like “Check in 10 times and get a free sandwich.”

2. First Check-in Specials

If it’s your first time visiting a certain venue, there may be a treat in store. Some businesses are running specials in order to get Foursquarers to stop by, and they’ll give you anything from a free coffee to 25% off a purchase if you show them your phone. “We offer $2 off any well drink upon your very first check in,” says Elise Oras, social media manager of Del Rey, a tequila bar in Seattle that’s been bent on utilizing the app to its fullest.

3. Secret Coupons

Some businesses are luring Foursquare users to their venues by offering secret coupons that show up when you’re in the area. Foursquare team member Tristan Walker explains, “We’re running a promo now with Fatburger venues in LA. When I’m about to check into a place near one of those venues, I’ll see a drop down that says ‘Special Nearby’ that’ll tell me to head to that Fatburger, check-in and unlock a secret code. When you do check-in, you’ll unlock the code ‘make sure to say burger enlargement please when ordering’ and then you’ll get a free upgrade!” He adds, “It’s stuff like this that gets us excited. The kind of thing that allows brands to engage with customers in interesting ways. It’s been really successful.”

4. To Do Lists

One of the features of the app is that you can write your own list of recommendations for your friends to do around your city.

Some businesses are creating their own to do lists for people that come by their venue. It’s a great way to get people engaged and create a favorable impression on clients.

5. Raffles
A hotel in Amsterdam recently announced a raffle for its smartphone-touting clientele, explains Dennis Crowley, one of Foursquare’s co-founders.

Each user who checked into Foursquare was entered into a raffle for a free dinner and a free night’s stay. This creative promotion came as a surprise to Foursquare itself, says Crowley. “We never imagined some of the things people are doing with Foursquare, but it’s pretty cool.”

6. Mayor Specials

The most infamous example of Foursquare marketing involves the competition embodied by the mayor status. Many venues are offering perks to the user with the mayor’s title, which has sparked further frenzy among users keen on claiming their territory.

“We offer our Mayor a free medium coffee based drink or a Texas beer when they check in,” says J.R. Cohen, general manager of The Coffee Groundz in Houston, Texas. “So far it has caused such a stir between many friends of ours that they are fighting over checkins.”

“We offer an all day happy hour for the Mayor & 1 guest,” Oras adds. “We have had a few mayor battles where literally someone came in for a drink just to steal back the title of Mayor.”

There are certainly more than just six ways a small business can leverage Foursquare and its community of hungry socialites to build a business, brand, or clientele. “Any type of in-store promotion you can conceive we want to make it so Foursquare can run it,” Walker says.

Source - The Next Web

Taking A Page Out Of Design

Expect “design thinking” to be on marketers’ radar in 2010. In the never-ending quest for consumer insights, marketers are leveraging methodologies used by designers to unlock truths. One of the golden rules of design is a human centered focus. We hope you find a number of learnings in the following article “four things I learned from designers”.

For the last two years, I’ve been doing to designers what they usually do unto others. Which is to say, I’ve been observing and studying them, asking a lot of questions and trying to discern patterns. Here are a few things I’ve learned along the way.

1. Designers question

To be more specific, they ask what Bruce Mau calls “the stupid questions”—the kind that are actually profound, but can make you look stupid because they address fundamental issues. When designers ask the powers that be, “Why are you doing things this way?” or “What are we really trying to accomplish here?” or “Does it have to have four wheels?” it can seem as if they’re bogging down the business meeting. But they are actually cracking open the door to real innovation and progress.

It’s a gift designers have that I’m not sure they fully appreciate: the ability to recognize that the present reality is a temporary and changeable condition. (To the rest of us, reality looks like reality, something to be accepted with a shrug.) I think all of this is captured nicely in the joke some designers tell about themselves. How many designers does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: Does it have to be a light bulb?

In these times, with so much in need of reinvention, we need people who know how to ask stupid questions. And who are actually willing to ask them—because it does take a certain amount of courage to question the fundamentals. Or, to put it in the pithy words of George Lois, “You gotta have guts to be the person in the room who’s asking ‘why’ while everybody else is nodding their heads.”

2. Designers connect

When I first began visiting designers’ studios and workshops, I noticed a lot of hoarding going on: five-year-old magazines, sketches on the wall from long-ago projects, lateral drawers filled with hunks of plastic and scraps of leftover cloth. I have relatives who engage in this kind of behavior for no good reason, but designers actually have a reason: They are master “recombinators.” They can take a bit of this and a piece of that to form something completely new.

Designers can do this because—as you probably know, and as RISD professor Charlie Cannon informed me—they are born and trained to synthesize, to take existing elements or ideas and bring them together in creative and coherent ways. The beauty of this, from the standpoint of anyone who happens to be involved in creative endeavors of any kind, is that it shows you don’t always have to invent entirely from scratch. To quote the designer John Thackara (who coined the wonderful term “smart recombinations”), most of us who are out there trying to create or innovate “are needlessly constrained by the myth that everything [we] do has to be a unique and creative act.” But the good news is, somebody already invented the wheel—all the rest of us need do is design new ways to combine it with other stuff that already exists. (Example: Put wheels on an alarm clock, as designer Gauri Nanda did, and you’ve created the Clocky—guaranteed to rouse you in the morning because you must chase after it to turn off the alarm.)

3. Designers commit

When it comes to ideas, most of us humans are all talk. But something I learned about designers is that they very quickly give form to their ideas. Ask a designer about a notion he/she has and immediately that designer starts sketching it out for you on any scrap of paper that’s handy. At that point the idea exists, even if only on a napkin. Whatever form a rough prototype may take—a carved piece of foam rubber, a cut-and-paste collage or a digital mock-up—it represents a level of commitment that most people aren’t willing or able to make when it comes to bringing a young idea into the world. Here again, the designer is showing guts—because when you commit to an idea early, sharing it while it’s still tender and imperfect, you open yourself up to criticism. You hand people something that is tangible enough to be torn apart.

But you also give them something to pass around, and to build upon, and rally around. The designer Brian Collins has a wonderful phrase he uses: “Design is hope made visible.” Designers can show us a better future, can present us with all kinds of new possibilities so that we can decide: Is this what we want? Before any of that can happen, though, the designer must first commit—by taking what is just a faint glimmer in the mind’s eye and giving it shape and life.

4. Designers care

This is not always a good thing, and can, in fact, be annoying. Designers obsess so much about their work that it’s a wonder they ever let any finished project out the door. And they’re just as tough on everyone else’s work. As I discovered, if you let designers read what you’ve written about them in advance, they will try to finesse every word. They can’t help but notice all the imperfections in the world around them, even when they ought to have other things on their minds. (Once, when Michael Graves was in the midst of a medical crisis, he reportedly said from his hospital gurney, “I don’t want to die here—it’s too ugly!”)

But if it’s true that designers sometimes care about things that don’t matter, it’s also true they care about things that do: sustainability, homeless shelters, better hospital rooms, better voting ballots, mortgages that can be understood, prisons that actually might be livable, social services that actually might work. Designers are tackling all of these challenges and more, and they’re not doing it for the money—because the money is in making the next iPhone. They’re doing it, I think, because they can’t help noticing that things around them are more imperfect than ever these days. And because they can’t stop themselves from stupidly asking, “Why?” and “What if?”

Source - AIGA

More For 2010

Urbany, Embedded Generosity and Maturalism are three of ten macro consumer trends predicted by Trendwatching to affect our world in 2010. Our friends at Trendwatching do a great job of giving us a look at what’s to come because they support their predictions with numerous examples. What are you going to do differently this year to capitalize on these observations?

BUSINESS AS UNUSUAL
Forget the recession: the societal changes that will dominate 2010 were set in motion way before we temporarily stared into the abyss.

URBANY
Urban culture is the culture. Extreme urbanization, in 2010, 2011, 2012 and far beyond will lead to more sophisticated and demanding consumers around the world.

REAL-TIME REVIEWS
Whatever it is you're selling or launching in 2010, it will be reviewed 'en masse', live, 24/7.

(F)LUXURY
Closely tied to what constitutes status, which itself is becoming more fragmented, luxury will be whatever consumers want it to be over the next 12 months.

MASS MINGLING
Online lifestyles are fueling 'real world' meet-ups like there's no tomorrow, shattering all predictions about a desk-bound, virtual, isolated future.

ECO-EASY
To really reach some meaningful sustainability goals in 2010, corporates and governments will have to forcefully make it 'easy' for consumers to be more green, by restricting the alternatives.

TRACKING & ALERTING
Tracking and alerting are the new search, and 2010 will see countless new INFOLUST services that will help consumers expand their web of control.

EMBEDDED GENEROSITY
Next year, generosity as a trend will adapt to the zeitgeist, leading to more pragmatic and collaborative donation services for consumers.

PROFILE MYNING
With hundreds of millions of consumers now nurturing some sort of online profile, 2010 will be a good year to help them make the most of it (financially), from intention-based models to digital afterlife services.

MATURIALISM
2010 will be even more opinionated, risque, outspoken, if not 'raw' than 2009; you can thank the anything-goes online world for that. Will your brand be as daring?

More on each rend available @ Trendwatching

Source - Ibid

One great thing about new media is discovering all the creative ways marketers are integrating brands into these new environments. Sure it’s easy to jump onto Facebook with a Fan Page but there’s so much more that can be done. One great example is the recent campaign by Ikea. In an effort to drive awareness and brand engagement, Ikea asked consumers to “tag” (behaviour intrinsic to Facebook) their showrooms for the chance to win products. The outcome for Ikea? Thousands of consumers engaging with the brand and organically spreading news about their product.



Source via YouTube

How Online Communities Are Changing The Way We Watch Television

This is another example of the blurring borders between the offline and online world. It’s also great platform for a brand sponsorship. TV shows in the UK are engaging their audience directly into television programming by inviting them into the conversation. By way of Twitter, the audience now has the option to become a part of a richer TV experience. The conversation is out there, it’s up to your to herd it.

Earlier this year we posted a series of examples of online communities in the TV industry. We looked at the way ‘old’ and ‘new’ media combine, how television broadcasters and production companies are working with online media. The examples we chose were all of ways in which online communities can be used to provide an additional set of experiences for a viewer, often after a programme has aired. From Channel Four’s Sexperience online community which supported the Sex Education Show to HGTV’s Rate My Space online community for people to share home improvement photos and tips.

These communities all have one thing in common – they provided an additional set of experiences for a viewer that enhance or extend their experience with the programme. They are for people who enjoy the programme and who want to engage more or find out more.

Things have changed in just a few months – the latest use of online communities for TV programmes is very different. They are now being used to add a social dimension to the actual viewing experience. Using online community tools to enhance a viewer’s experience while they are watching the actual show. We’ve written before about how two live shows in the UK have been experimenting with this use of social media tools: Live TV and real-time chat: X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing. But a new example from the UK shows how this use of online communities to enhance TV programmes is not restricted to live programmes.

Come Dine with Me is a popular cooking competition show on Channel Four in the UK. The concept is simple but addictive: four contestants host a dinner party for the other contestants on four subsequent evenings. Each host is rated by the other contestants and the person with the highest score wins. It’s a show that has always attracted a lot of discussions online as a quick Twitter search shows. Channel Four has now capitalised on this by hosting its own discussions on its site whilst the show is on air.

The Come Dine With Me ‘Play Along’ community shows how you can harness the conversations that are going on already and also enhance the viewer experience. The discussions in Twitter had always been of three kinds:

1. People giving their own ratings of what is happening on the show – saying the score they would have given for a particular dinner party
2. People commenting on the food or the ambiance at the parties
3. People talking about the contestants – who they like and why, and who they are less keen on

The Channel Four online community now allows people to do this in real time and on their site whilst the show is on air. They allow you to score each contestant against a set of criteria (and see the average score given by your fellow community members). They allow you to chat about what’s happening on screen and the host of the chat prompts you to discuss what is happening right now.

This is a great example of online communities really adding value to a viewers experiences in three ways:

1. They allow you to interact with other viewers who are sharing the same experience and who are interested in the same things
2. They are add a new dimension to the programme – letting you take part in the contest to
3. They have the benefit of being hosted by the same people who are broadcasting (or producing) the programme – you feel like you have inside access to information

The way we watch television is changing. Online communities are changing it. They add a new, social dimension to actual viewing experience. In time more and more programmes will be accompanied by online discussions and debates in this way. It will become the norm for many people to sit in front of two screens rather than just one.

Source - Fresh Networks

Ten For Ten

It’s that time of year when we look into our crystal ball of consumer insights and environmental observations to generate a handful of predictions for the fast approaching year. There’s no doubt that the recession has had a profound effect on consumer behaviour and attitudes but it’s looking like we’ve learned a few lessons after a tough year. The question is, will we remember what we’ve learned?

BBDO/Proximity Canada's forecasters have peered into the crystal ball and predict a heightened desire for affordable self-improvement that will impact brands and the products they buy. After a year of feeling somewhat powerless, Canadians are desperate to enhance their personal situation and will look for ways to be smarter, make money with the things they have, buy better quality products and build their digital brand.

According to Lynn Fletcher, Chief Strategy Officer, BBDO/Proximity Canada, "We've seen a lot of evidence over the past few years that consumers were feeling enlightened, empowered and energized to make change for the better." She says that Boomers (aged 45-65) joined Millennials (aged 18-29) in demanding that corporations act with a higher purpose and make a difference for the better of the planet. That was until the economy collapsed and there was an immediate transition into survival mode. "Even with recent announcements that the recession is over, we are now a little weary, a little less gregarious and a little more sober and reflective and this is evident in our findings," adds Fletcher.

BBDO/Proximity Canada forecasts the following Top 10 Trends for 2010:

1. Smart is Cool: From managing money to the explosion of brain-challenging online games, being smart is cool. The number one most admired trait by high school seniors, is not popularity, attractiveness or being a jock, but intelligence.

2. Frugalista Power: Comparison shopping and hunting for deals have become new sports. It's a real source of pride and it's cool to be cheap. It's now possible to be fashionable and frugal.

3. Less is More: Consumers will seek out products with longevity. The recession highlighted the old-fashioned truism that money needs to be respected.

4. IMBY (In My Backyard): There will be a movement toward local products. Some of this comes from the newfound awareness of the carbon cost of imports, some from a desire to keep jobs local and a general mistrust of the global economy. Look to the increased popularity of farmer's markets and staycations.

5. Consumerpreneurs: Consumers no longer just consume, but actually participate in the economy by making money from what they currently possess or create. The economic downturn encouraged people to find innovative ways to make money from what they already have - from renting their downtown parking space, to selling power generated on their solar panels back to the grid.

6. The New Eco-no-me: Many people say that the environment is important to them, but the recession has highlighted the fact that when it comes to action, suddenly the green that matters most is the green in the wallet: Me first, others second. Now consumers are looking for products with immediate personal benefit that just happen to do good.

7. My Digital Brand: The digital revolution has spawned a new bragging right - digital fame. Personal videos, pictures, gaming scores, opinions and outbursts are all for the world to see and status goes to those most viewed, followed or talked about.

8. Hyper On: Despite the fact that many people yearn for a slower and simpler pace, things are moving faster than ever with no signs of slowing down. A near-instant answer is expected. Products are hitting the market that feed off this need including desktop monitors with a second screen for instant messaging and laptops with 24-hour battery power.

9. A Pro-Am World: People are monitoring their purchases and choosing quality over quantity, which has in turn led to a growth in professional-grade products. Consumers with a do-it-yourself spirit have access to the goods that take matters into their own hands, such as professional-grade power tools, home laser removal kits that have replaced expensive spa treatments and online brokerage sites that offer enhanced tools.

10. Word of Mouse: During these economic times, more and more consumers are spending time researching a purchase or seeking an opinion before parting with their cash. Positions in companies that would have been unheard of a few years ago, such as Chief Blogger or Director of Digital Care are now the norm.

Source - via MarketWire

Media Convergence. Media Fragmentation.

We do a lot of talking at Firestarter about the massive change currently taking place in today’s media environment. On one hand, there is this huge fragmentation resulting from an explosion of different media channels and applications. On the other hand, new technology is trending towards convergence of behaviour and information. The following is a look at some staggering numbers that speak to both the fragmentation and convergence of media.



Source - The Economist via Youtube

Strategy For A Conversation Economy

We’re all on the same page: marketing has shifted from a push strategy to a pull strategy. The proliferation of new media has offered consumers the opportunity to choose which marketing communication they engage with and which they ignore. Marketers have to work hard to “attract” consumers to the brand. If the consumer were Winnie The Pooh, you want to be the honey. The following examines how brands can leverage conversation as a means of building an effective pull strategy.

What does the worldwide, technologically enabled drive for conversations mean for marketers? It means you're no longer marketing products or services -- you're marketing conversations. It means marketing-communication planning should be driven by a conversation strategy.

The right conversation strategy answers two big questions: What meaningful content will attract sufficient conversations with the right people? And, how will you jump-start conversations and keep them alive?

When people are starved for time and already engaged in many conversations, jump-starting new and meaningful conversations is the big challenge of marketing today. Just building a website, writing a blog or posting videos on YouTube doesn't mean sufficient numbers to impact ROI will find them organically, much less take the time and energy to converse with you. By definition a conversation requires others to be present and participate -- otherwise you're talking to yourself. Perhaps therapeutic, but no way to make a living.

Even if people know there's an opportunity to have a conversation with you -- on Twitter or your blog, for instance -- you can't expect them to engage given all the other demands on their time. You'll need a strategy that both gets them to know you exist and care so much that you exist, they'll become intrigued about conversing with you. This requires a strategy that integrates search optimization, media, message and contributions of content from consumers.

The right strategy begins with the end in mind: What message can work across multiple platforms and be scaled so quickly and broadly it can drive sufficient revenues to support a business model?

Very few companies have the luxury to let conversations build slowly over time. And no business can afford to risk a high-waste and low-impact effort. More often than not, high-impact campaigns with reasonable returns don't materialize solely from online ads and social media. Traditional media must be a major component of the mix.

Stefan Olander, Nike's global director of brand connections, noted at Lindsay, Stone & Briggs' Brandworks University 2009 that many of Nike's online campaigns received overwhelming response at launch. Colleagues at Nike were excited about the prospect of dropping expensive traditional media campaigns in favor of these successful digital campaigns. Olander reminded them that, despite how well-known the Nike brand is, to optimize online conversations they still must jump-start initiatives with traditional media.

That's because traditional media can do what social media cannot: aggressively interject messages into people's lives in a socially acceptable way. Research conducted by the Advertising Research Foundation indicates that messages delivered by TV may, in fact, be the fastest and most cost-efficient means to jump-start productive conversations in the digital and real worlds.

Experts at the World Advertising Research Center have also studied what it takes to optimize engagement in a conversation economy. They recommend this media priority:

1. Mainstream media.
2. Open networks such as blogs and websites.
3. Closed networks such as Facebook and MySpace.

A multimedia mix framed to spark conversations requires a compelling message concept that can work across a multimedia platform. Its foundation has to be far more than a one-time promotion or product attribute; it must be a message strategy that connects brand meaning with search habits and accommodates ongoing contributions that can range from casual conversations to consumer-generated content.

This is a tall order, but not impossible. That's because the solution can be found in the motivations of the conversationalists themselves. Some psychologists say that people subconsciously come to a conversation with a desire to be changed by them. This makes sense. Conversation is mankind's natural search engine.

What are we searching for? Swiss psychologist Carl Jung identified 12 universal human motivations, called archetypes. Messages that speak to one of these discrete motivations naturally engage consumers and fuel conversations for many reasons:

1. Associating with any one of these motivations gives a brand relevance and innate appeal.
2. These motivations are behind our search for change and meaning, and words related to them will find their way into consumers' natural online search habits.
3. They are timeless and universal. Messages based on them will be relevant across cultures and age groups.

So how do you keep the conversation going? You'll constantly be competing with other conversations for your target's time and attention. So, spark and fuel conversations with surveys, forums, contests and invitations for contributions that pertain to the change your brand's products and services can help people achieve. Keeping ongoing conversations fresh is where contextual ads, blogs, websites, videos and social media shine.

Content themed to your target's daily passions, routines or rituals are great for habituating conversations. And, habituated conversations have the greatest opportunity to generate ongoing revenue and almost unbreakable customer loyalty.

For marketers who get their brand's meaning and conversation strategy right, consumers will take over the conversation for you, making your marketing more proficient, and making you a genius in your new role of chief conversation officer.

Source - AdAge

R.I.P. Email

There’s been a lot of chatter over the last few years about the death of email and Google is likely to be the final nail in the coffin. In the coming months, Google will be releasing their evolution of email communication with The Google Wave - a platform that combines the usability of email, social media, wikis and a whole lot more into one hub. The following links require a time commitment but it’s critical that you understand the evolution of online communication.

What Is Google Wave?

Today has been dominated by news and excitement surrounding Google Wave, Google’s, new real-time communication platform that will launch to the public on September 30th. In fact, there’s been so much buzz that you might just not have enough time to read the thousands of articles being released on Google’s biggest product launch in recent memory. To make sense of it all, we have compiled key information, definitions, and links related to the launch of Google Wave. This in-depth guide provides an overview of Google Wave, discusses the terminology associated with it, details information on Google Wave applications, (i.e. the Twitter Wave app Twave), and goes over ways to keep yourself informed. We know you’re excited about Google Wave, so here’s what we think you should know:

While we suggest reading our article on the launch of Google Wave for more detailed information, here’s the sum of it: Google Wave is a real-time communication platform. It combines aspects of email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management to build one elegant, in-browser communication client. You can bring a group of friends or business partners together to discuss how your day has been or share files.

Google Wave has a lot of innovative features, but here are just a few:

- Real-time: In most instances, you can see what someone else is typing, character-by-character.

- Embeddability: Waves can be embedded on any blog or website.

- Applications and Extensions: Just like a Facebook application or an iGoogle gadget, developers can build their own apps within waves. They can be anything from bots to complex real-time games.

- Wiki functionality: Anything written within a Google Wave can be edited by anyone else, because all conversations within the platform are shared. Thus, you can correct information, append information, or add your own commentary within a developing conversation.

- Open source: The Google Wave code will be open source, to foster innovation and adoption amongst developers.

- Playback: You can playback any part of the wave to see what was said.

- Natural language: Google Wave can autocorrect your spelling, even going as far as knowing the difference between similar words, like “been” and “bean.” It can also auto-translate on-the-fly.

- Drag-and-drop file sharing: No attachments; just drag your file and drop it inside Google Wave and everyone will have access.

While these are only a few of the many features of Google Wave, it’s easy to see why people are extremely excited.

Google Wave was the brainchild of a team based out of Sydney, Australia. The core team members are two brothers, Jens and Lars Rasmussen, and lead project manager Stephanie Hannon, all of whom were involved in Google Maps previously. Google Wave was announced today at Google’s I/O Developer conference, although the product will not be available to the public for several months.

We detail even more of these features in our article The Top 6 Game-Changing Features of Google Wave.

Terminology

Google Wave actually has its own lingo – yes, you have to learn a few definitions if you’re going to really understand this new communication platform. Having knowledge of these terms will help you understand more about Google’s newest project.

- Wave: A wave, specifically, refers to a specific threaded conversation. It can include just one person, or it can include a group of users or even robots (explained below). The best comparison I can make is that it’s like your entire instant messaging (IM) history with someone. Anything you’ve ever discussed in a single chat or conversation is a wave.

- Wavelet: A wavelet is also a threaded conversation, but only a subset of a larger conversation (or a wave). It’s like a single IM conversation – a small part of a larger conversation and a larger history. Wavelets, though, can be created and managed separately from a wave.

- Blip: Even smaller than a Wavelet, a Blip is a single, individual message. It’s like a single line of an IM conversation. Blips can have other blips attached to them, called children. In addition, blips can either be published or unpublished (once again, it’s sort of like typing out an IM message but not yet sending it).

- Document: A document actually refers to the content within a blip. This seems to refer to the actual characters, words, and files associated with a blip.

- Extension: An extension is a mini-application that works within a wave. So these are the apps you can play with while using Wave. There are two main types of extenisons: Gadgets and Robots

- Gadgets: A gadget is an application users can participate with, many of which are built on Google’s OpenSocial platform. A good comparison would be iGoogle gadgets or Facebook applications.

- Robots: Robots are an automated participant within a wave. They can talk with users and interact with waves. They can provide information from outside sources (i.e. Twitter) or they can check content within a wave and perform actions based on them (i.e. provide you a stock quote if a stock name is mentioned).

- Embeded Wave: An embeded wave is a way to take a Google Wave and the conversation within it and place it on your website. Users could use this as a chatroom, as a way to contact you, or for something more.

Google Gadgets

A Wave Gadget is one of two types of Google Wave extensions. Gadgets are fully-functional applications. According to Google, gadgets are primarily for changing the look and feel of waves, although this seems to only scratch the surface of the potential of a wave gadget.

First: almost any iGoogle or OpenSocial gadget can run within Google Wave. That means thousands of applications that have been already created will work in Google Wave. Second: a gadget built within Google Wave can take advantage of live interaction with multiple users. This means something like a live online game with active participation from all users. In that way, it has similarities to Facebook or MySpace applications, which take advantage of your friend network to make games, quizzes, and applications more meaningufl and useful.

Gadgets are specific to individual waves, rather than to specific users. Thus, it’s not like having a Facebook app on your profile – the gadget belongs to everyone within the wave. They also do not have titles, to better integrate with the actual conversation. Some of the gadgets already built include a Sudoku gadget, Bidder (which turns your wave into an auction), and Maps (which allows for collaboration on a Google Map).

For a more technical explanation, be sure to check out Google’s Wave Gadgets Tutorial.

Wave Robots

Robots are the other type of Google Wave extension. Robots are like having another person within a Google Wave conversation, except that they’re automated. They’re a lot like the old IM bots of the past, although far more robust. Robots can modify information in waves, interact with users, communicate with others waves, and pull information from outside sources.

Because it acts like a user, you can define its behavior based on what happens in the chat. You could build one as simple as “change the word dog to the word cat” or one as complex as a fully-functional debugger. We’ll probably start seeming some very advanced robots in the near future.

Some of the robots already in service include Debuggy (an in-wave debugger), Stocky (which pulls stock prices based on stock quote mentions), and Tweety (the Twave robot, which displays tweets inside of a wave).

A more advanced explanation is available at Google’s Wave Robots Overview. We also have an inside look at Google Wave extensions and robots.

Wave Embed

Wave embeds are a little more complex than embedding a YouTube video onto your blog, yet in the end, that’s really what Google Wave Embeds are: a way to take Google Waves onto a third party website. Embedded Waves support many of the functions of the actual Google Wave client, including dragging-and-dropping files.

While the Wave Embeds is still very early stage, Google has already built two: YouTube Playlist Discuss and Multiple Extensions Embed. The former allows you to discuss a YouTube video via a wave and the latter allows for interaction with multiple waves on the same page.

One possibility: Google Wave Embeds may be a real-time replacement to static comments. If Google perfects wave embeds, you could even see YouTube.com comments replaced with waves, although it is way too early to make any calls on the potential of this.

Google’s Wave Embed Developer’s Guide has more advanced information embedding waves.

Further Wave Reading

Still can’t get enough of Google Wave? This collection of links and articles will help you understand this new product even better:

- Mashable’s Google Wave Coverage: We highly suggest bookmarking our Google Wave coverage and checking Mashable consistently for the latest information on Google Wave.

- Google Wave Federation Protocol: Google has provided some community principles, architecture information, and more detailed definitions on their Wave protocol webpage.

- Google Wave API: For developers interested in building applications for Google Wave, be sure to check out the Wave API website.

- Google Wave Updates: Haven’t signed up for Google Wave yet? Here’s the

More Wave Resources

- Testing Google Wave: This Thing is Tidal

- The Top 6 Game-Changing Features of Google Wave

- Google Wave: 5 Ways It Could Change the Web

- Google Wave Extensions: An Inside Look

- Could Google Wave Redefine Email and Web Communication?

- Twave: Google Wave + Twitter

Summary Video (long but worth it) - http://bit.ly/1dq9uE
A short example (not for virgin ears) - http://bit.ly/4EwYMi

Source - Mashable

Social Media Trends 2010

Social media trending is fascinating because there are such drastic changes that occur year over year. At this time last year, most of us were talking about Facebook, few of us had tried Twitter and nobody was thinking about Foursquare. As the following six trends reveal, the pace at which social media has been growing over the last two years isn’t likely to slowdown.

In 2009 we saw exponential growth of social media. According to Nielsen Online, Twitter alone grew 1,382% year-over-year in February, registering a total of just more than 7 million unique visitors in the US for the month. Meanwhile, Facebook continued to outpace MySpace. So what could social media look like in 2010? In 2010, social media will get even more popular, more mobile, and more exclusive — at least, that's my guess. What are the near-term trends we could see as soon as next year? In no particular order:

1. Social media begins to look less social
With groups, lists and niche networks becoming more popular, networks could begin to feel more "exclusive." Not everyone can fit on someone's newly created Twitter list and as networks begin to fill with noise, it's likely that user behavior such as "hiding" the hyperactive updaters that appear in your Facebook news feed may become more common. Perhaps it's not actually less social, but it might seem that way as we all come to terms with getting value out of our networks — while filtering out the clutter.

2. Corporations look to scale
There are relatively few big companies that have scaled social initiatives beyond one-off marketing or communications initiatives. Best Buy's Twelpforce leverages hundreds of employees who provide customer support on Twitter. The employees are managed through a custom built system that keeps track of who participates. This is a sign of things to come over the next year as more companies look to uncover cost savings or serve customers more effectively through leveraging social technology.

3. Social business becomes serious play
Relatively new networks such as Foursquare are touted for the focus on making networked activity local and mobile. However, it also has a game-like quality to it which brings out the competitor in the user. Participants are incentivized and rewarded through higher participation levels. And push technology is there to remind you that your friends are one step away from stealing your coveted "mayorship." As businesses look to incentivize activity within their internal or external networks, they may include carrots that encourage a bit of friendly competition.

4. Your company will have a social media policy (and it might actually be enforced)
If the company you work for doesn't already have a social media policy in place with specific rules of engagement across multiple networks, it just might in the next year. From how to conduct yourself as an employee to what's considered competition, it's likely that you'll see something formalized about how the company views social media and your participation in it.

5. Mobile becomes a social media lifeline
With approximately 70 percent of organizations banning social networks and, simultaneously, sales of smartphones on the rise, it's likely that employees will seek to feed their social media addictions on their mobile devices. What used to be cigarette breaks could turn into "social media breaks" as long as there is a clear signal and IT isn't looking. As a result, we may see more and/or better mobile versions of our favorite social drug of choice.

6. Sharing no longer means e-mail
The New York Times iPhone application recently added sharing functionality which allows a user to easily broadcast an article across networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Many websites already support this functionality, but it's likely that we will see an increase in user behavior as it becomes more mainstream for people to share with networks what they used to do with e-mail lists. And content providers will be all too happy to help them distribute any way they choose.

These are a few emerging trends that come to my mind — I'm interested to hear what you think as well, so please weigh in with your own thoughts. Where do you see social media going next?

Source - Harvard Business Publishing

Four Ways To Bolster Advocacy

Marketers always praise the influencer, the advocate, the ambassador. Why? Because it’s always better to have somebody else talk about how great you are as opposed to trying to convince them yourself. Smart brands are realizing it’s a good policy to have more than just your consumer rep your brand. The following explores four tactics for getting partners, consumers, employees and others to speak highly of all your hard work.

So what is customer advocacy anyway? Well for starters, they don't have to be your customers—they can be any part of your entire constituency. Employees, business partners, friends—you name it. But here's the point. You need them more than ever. Right now, if you are planning social initiatives, your biggest challenge is going to be manpower. Someone has to do the listening, the outreach, the customer service, the participation, the engagement with others in the ecosystem. Some parts can be automated (such as an algorithm in a listening tool technology), but many other parts require actual people. So at some point you'll have to scale, and you're going to need a passionate, engaged group of people to advocate on your behalf. So how do you do it? Here are a few high level pointers.

1. Improve your product, service or offering
Start there. You have to have something of value to offer. If your product, service or offering needs improvement, actively get out into your ecosystem and engage them in the process. Part of this is crowdsourcing, part of it is co-creation but the end result is that your constituents will become active participants in the process. You don't have to do everything they say, but you might be surprised at the insights and data you'll get in return.

2. Serve
Acts of service are a great way to create advocates. It takes time, but over time the people you are serving will talk about your acts to others, get their attention and they will benefit from this. Over more time loyalty will develop and over more time they will eventually become your advocate acting as your eyes and ears and providing value back. Think of ways your organization can provide a service.

3. Make it about the catagory
One of the biggest mistakes that companies make when trying to convert consumers to advocates is to make it about their products or marketing to them in some way. Advocacy often times happens around a topic that people care about. Aligning yourself with the appropriate topic is a great way to tap into that momentum. But it has to be relevant and real—so be picky about what catagory you choose to align with and participate around.

4. Make it really easy
Your employees will dread using a collaboration system that's unusable, and out of frustration they will not become advocates of that system (and less likely to advocate for your company). Likewise a customer is less likely to advocate on your behalf if you make customer support, registration, or interacting with your organization difficult. Make all your touchpoints as simple as possible. And this is probably one of the most difficult things you'll ever have to do.

I'm doing a good deal of thinking about what it takes to make a customer, an employee, or anyone within a relevant ecosystem an advocate. And we are incorporating these principles into our client deliverables. I'm convinced this will be a necessary step in scaling and taking advantage of the foundation social technologies is laying out for us. Having advocates which help us listen, aid in customer support and make our products and services better can have huge benefits in business, because the simple fact is you're just not going to be able to do it alone.

Source - Logic + Emotion

Where The Tweet Are You Going?

You tried Twitter and you didn’t see any reason to go back. On the other hand, you’ve got people out there who swear by the communication platform. There’s no question that Twitter isn’t perfect and even the hardcore Tweeters will admit there’s room for improvement. The following might change your perception about the future value of this communication platform. The article reveals five evolutionary trends taking place within the Twittersphere and explores how the platform will provide users with greater value.

We’ve been taking an active analytical look at emerging Twitter related trends on a monthly basis. This month instead of analyzing the state of the Twittersphere on our own, we thought we’d give some of the web’s most experimental, influential, and knowledgeable thought leaders an opportunity to share their perspectives on Twitter trends.

Given that BlogWorld Expo is currently underway in Las Vegas, with the best of the best wandering the halls, we decided to stop a few of the greats — Steve Rubel, Chris Pirillo, Leo Laporte, Brian Solis, and Guy Kawasaki — to get their candid take on the what’s trending in the Twittersphere.

1. Pirillo: Big Bloggers Tweeting More, Blogging Less

Lifecaster, blogger, and über web geek, Chris Pirillo [@chrispirillo] says that more and more bloggers are tweeting instead of blogging. Pirillo believes that Twitter offers pithy bloggers the opportunity to save the “time and energy poured into long-from blog posts, and instead find a way to say the same thing in 140 characters.”

One of his favorite lines to repeat is, “Twitter is a great place to tell the world what you’re thinking before you’ve had a chance to think about it.”

While this certainly isn’t a new idea, Pirillo has a legitimate point about it being a growing trend. In our chat, Pirillo used BlogWorld Expo as a prime example of his point. He spoke to the fact that the most prolific bloggers are in attendance and yet we’re seeing media, news, and updates about the show trickle out via Twitter instead of longer form blogs.

Unlike some bloggers opposed to the notion that Twitter may be usurping the blogosphere, Pirillo believes the trend to be what it is, and that Twitter actually “augments blogging. It’s a different medium, so while blog posts index well on Google, tweets may not…Twitter is for flash in the pan information.”

Looking at the bigger picture, the trend is an important one to watch now that prolific bloggers with large audiences have been able to port those same audiences, attract new followers, and expand their reach on Twitter. Given the financial opportunities made available through Twitter ad platforms like IZEA’s Sponsored Tweets, bloggers, like Pirillo, can still profit in shorter form. This means we could see a shift in preferred mediums, with brevity potentially being more rewarding.

2. Kawasaki: The Evolution of Twitter as a Platform

Though you may not agree with his hyper-tweeting ways or multi-managed account methodology, one thing is certain: Guy Kawasaki [@guykawasaki] is hard to miss on Twitter.

The Alltop co-founder and original Apple evangelist has been known to push a few buttons using the micro medium, but he continues to be one of the most retweeted users on Twitter, and has been vocal about using tweets to drive traffic. Which is why it comes as no surprise that he tells us that Twitter is moving away from just the personal, “we chatter,” and becoming heavily used by brands.

Kawasaki says, “When the internet was young it was primarily personal websites, but it since became commercial, but not in a bad way. It became a platform. Twitter is emulating the internet, and isn’t just turning into a marketing platform, but simply becoming a platform used for multiple things.”

What was once just a place for conversation amongst friends has evolved into a vehicle where brands can set up shop and drive real business. He even believes Twitter has matured beyond the original expectations and use cases that its founders envisioned. Kawasaki cites the Kogi Korean BBQ truck as an example of a business using Twitter as a platform in a way that Twitter most certainly didn’t plan for.

3. Solis: Semantic Intelligence

Brian Solis [@briansolis], PR 2.0 guru and consummate networker, has been focused of late on analyzing tweets and Twitter-specific behaviors, he even recently led a study on Twitter airline analysis. Given that his eye is so predominantly focused on Twitter data, we tend to agree with his analysis that Twitter is heading in the direction of more filtered and intelligent conversations.

Solis notes that as users follow more and more Twitterers, their ability to stay connected to individual users and their respective tweets diminishes greatly. Though the noise is commonly accepted by many a Twitterer as normal, Solis believes that the next big Twitter trend will be a more intelligent Twitter experience. He says, “the future of Twitter is semantic intelligence, where what you click, what you read, and what you do, act to determine what you like, with applications serving you the tweets you really want.”

Solis points to the iPhone app, my6sense, as a perfect example of semantic intelligence applied to social media streams. The app functions as an RSS reader, but you can share stories with Twitter, FriendFeed, and Facebook. The stories you read and share are then used to recommend articles, and the more you use it the better it works.

Solis believes that soon we will see more specialized services developed to work in a similar fashion in relation to tweets and Twitter updates, and he’s hoping that Twitter will build it into the API.

4. Rubel: Twitter Curation

Edelman Digital’s Senior Vice President, Steve Rubel [@steverubel] is on the same wavelength as Solis, and also believes that “Twitter is too linear, so separating the junk from the art” is a challenge that is only getting tougher. His perspective, however, is that we’re going to start to see more Twitter curators work to package tweets in more digestible streams.

The notion of organizing collections of tweets and Twitterers isn’t new, but Rubel speaks of curation as if there’s a human touch finding the works of art from within the rubbish so that you don’t have to. As an example, Rubel offers up Muck Rack, from Sawhorse Media, which actively organizes and collects tweets from journalists.

Rubel believes that this is just the beginning as demand for finding tweets of interest will continue grow, which means “we’re likely to see media companies built on top of twitter, curating tweets… so while the job market for journalists is bleak, the career opportunities for editors and curators is evergreen.”

5. Laporte: User Generated Twitter Lists

Leo Laporte [@leolaporte] is the founder of the TWiT Netcast Network, as well as the host and producer of the Tech Guy radio show. As a renowned voice in the technology space, Laporte’s excitement, shared by the likes of other influential techies like Robert Scoble, around the newly released Twitter Lists is palpable.

Laporte believes Twitter Lists to be “huge” and important for vastly improving the overall Twitter experience for new and seasoned users alike. Laporte states, “One of the issues with Twitter is that it’s been so simple, so Twitter Lists is a big breakthrough. They finally realized that they have been leaving all of this extra stuff on the table.”

When it comes to the new Twitter Lists, Laporte emphatically rejoices, “user-generated lists, long live the king.”

And we tend to agree. We’ve covered the new Twitter Lists prior to and post launch, and find there to be immense potential and power for all Twitterers. The easily-accessed follower lists highlight how many lists each Twitterer is on in a very a public way, which ultimately provides a new metric for measuring Twitter influence and relevance. We also think that Twitter Lists will help the company tackle their ongoing user retention problem.

Source - Mashable

Brand Advocacy 2.0

In last month’s bulletin we learned how the internet has revolutionized the purchase cycle. One step in the purchase cycle that has become increasingly crucial for marketers to understand actually comes after consumers have purchased your product/service. The internet is a loudspeaker that consumers are willing to use to voice their opinion on anything and everything, including your brand. This can be scary you but if you learn to monitor online conversations you can mitigate potential PR problems and ensure consumers are walking away from your brand experience on a positive note.



Source - via Youtube

A Roadmap For Collective Storytelling

Storytelling has always been a powerful tool for marketers. We leverage storytelling to create engaging dialogue and fuel tension in an attempt to keep consumers coming back for more. In today’s media environment, storytelling has reached a new level because consumers are now able to engage (two way dialogue) in ways that were never possible only a few years ago. Learn the recipe to collective story telling in today’s media landscape.

The ability to tell stories has always been one of the most powerful ways to connect with other people.

Social media has given us a unique way to to tell stories as a collective. Here's a road map for collective storytelling.

Stop #1 - Define Your Story

The process of discovering what you want to tell a story about is always different, but the most important step in storytelling. You need to be an expert on what your story is about.

Starting a story without knowing what it's about will likely cause confusion. If the collective is confused by a story, it's unlikely that they'll participate in telling it.

The collective will look to that person who started the story for reinforcement and reassurance that the story is still on track. Ensure you monitor your story and continue to participate in telling it, or risk the story ending.

Stop #2 - Spark a Conversation

In collective storytelling, stories are made up of wide-reaching conversations. Those conversations begin with a 'conversation spark'.

A conversation spark shouldn't be the entire story. It should provide enough information to be provocative, but leave the next chapter of the story open to be told by the collective.

Consider the Burger King "Subservient Chicken" campaign. The story begins: A human-sized chicken has decided to set-up a webcam. It's asking that you come to it's website and give it orders.

That's an example of a conversation spark.

Stop #3 - Participate in the Conversation

Conversations spread through social media like ripples across a pond. Consider the conversation spark as the pebble dropping into the water. The ripples dissipate as they move farther away from the center, just as the conversations have less impact the longer they continue without a new conversation spark.

Ok, consider this model:

The conversation spark could be the site created for the Burger King "Subservient Chicken". The longer the campaign runs, the greater the reach will be; however, the longer the campaign runs without a new conversation spark, the less impact the conversation will have. Eventually, the conversation will end.

Note: You can't control when the conversation ends. You can only control when, and how much you participate. Here's a great set of guidelines (PDF download) for responses to changes in your story.

This model shows the first two ripples as a conversation spark begins to propagate through a network:

Notice that each connection doesn't emanate directly from the conversation spark. Ideally, the originator of a conversation will encourage other storytellers to interact with each other. If you look at the "Subservient Chicken" example; Burger King actually provides customers with some tools to continue the conversation: a downloadable chicken mask, and a way to share the site with friends.

Of course they could have provided more tools. They could have allowed users to save a video of the chickens responses to a certain set of orders, and provide a link to send to friends. They could have created a gallery of user-generated video's of people responding to orders while wearing the downloadable chicken mask. These types of tools could help to extend the story.

Stop #4 - Extend the Story

A story could end after one conversation spark; but the best stories continue. As new conversation sparks are created and added to the story; the story grows, and reaches more people.

Innovative and provocative stories are often enough to inspire other storytellers to create their own conversation spark. Take the "Subservient Chicken" example again. It inspired this YouTube video, which reached over 2,000 people and got 7 comments. Not a huge conversation, but extending the story often includes conversations of many sizes.

Collective storytelling isn't necessarily about branding, or making money; it's about spreading a message and allowing that message to be malleable enough to be changed by its audience while maintaining its integrity.

Source - The Jordan Rules

Still Think Social Media Is A Fad?

You are entering dangerous territory if you’ve yet to consider how your brand is going to integrate into the Web 2.0 world. We’re not saying you have to drop everything and set up a Facebook presence or a Twitter account but it is crucial that you understand the implications of social media on culture. This video makes you consider if the advent of social media is going to have a bigger impact on mankind than the Industrial Revolution.



Source - The Economist via Youtube

Emotion > Rational

Irrespective of your gender, you are more likely to be swayed by advertising that is loaded with emotional cues over rational arguments. This isn’t news to most marketers however recent research has quantitatively revealed just how persuasive emotions can be when compared to rational thinking. Although the numbers favour emotional messaging, you have to be cognizant whether your brand is developed enough to take on a campaign that pulls at heartstrings.

The idea that ads that engage us emotionally work better than those that don’t might provoke a, “Well, duhhh!” reaction from Neuromarketing readers. Surprisingly, though, I still encounter business executives who don’t believe they are swayed by emotional factors when buying things, and often doubt that others are either. So, for those uber-rational decision-makers, here’s the hard data…

Earlier this month, I based a few discussions on the book Brand Immortality by Pringle and Field. The last finding from that book that I’ll share with you is an analysis of data from the IPA (the UK-based Institute of Practitioners in Advertising). The IPA dataBANK contains 1400 case studies of successful advertising campaigns submitted for the IPA Effectiveness Award competition over the last three decades. This particular analysis of the IPA data compared the profitability boost of campaigns which relied primarity on emotional appeal vs. those which used rational persuasion and information. The chart above shows the results. Campaigns with purely emotional content performed about twice as well (31% vs. 16%) with only rational content, and those that were purely emotional did a little better (31% vs 26%) those that mixed emotional and rational content.

Pringle and Field attribute this split to our brain’s ability to process emotional input without cognitive processing (or even awareness – see Low Attention Branding), as well as our brain’s more powerful recording of emotional stimuli.

The authors note that while an emotional marketing campaign may be more effective, creating ads that engage consumer emotions isn’t easy. By comparision, basing a campaign on a “killer fact” (if a brand has such an advantage) is comparatively simple. Indeed, brands have damaged themselves when an emotional campaign failed to align with reality. Pringle and Field suggest that committing to an emotional branding approach be “hard-wired into the fabric of the brand,” which requires a major commitment as well as good understanding of consumer motivation. They cite Nike’s pervasive theme of “success in sport” as an example of a brand that focuses on a key emotional driver and builds advertising, sponsorships, etc. around it.

Smaller brands may not be able to follow the same emotional branding approach as the market leaders, Pringle and Field note, but may be able to segment the market to find a group of consumers that will respond to a different appeal. Ben & Jerry’s and Jones Soda, for example, aren’t the biggest players in their markets but have achieved success by appealing to smaller segments of consumers.

Smaller entities face several addtional challenges. Their name recognition is likely much lower, and an emotion-based campaign may befuddle consumers who don’t even associate the brand and product category. Budweiser can run amusing and engaging commercials about Clydesdales and Dalmations because 100% of the audience knows their products. A small business might well have to take the “combined” rational and emotional approach even if it is slightly less effective, or at least ensure that their emotion-based ads clearly identify the product.

Emotion-based ads may be more difficult to create, but the stats say it’s worth the effort.

Source - Neuromarketing

Digitalinguistics

Please translate the following sentence: ROFL! #fail! Dewd got pOwned...thx for sending that vid thru. If you ever get confused with the endless amount of acronyms and other expressions commonly used online then the following is for you. The article is positioned as a “Gen-Y Translator” but we would argue that the highlighted linguistics are becoming the common language of the internet, irrespective of your age.

Everyone knows the number one rule of social media engagement is to be honest, and everyone knows the number two rule is don't start something you can't finish (as in, don't start a celebrity Twitter account and write in it for two days and then not write anything in it again, because you end up looking like a dick).

In fact, the rules of social media engagement are so well-known these days that pretty much everyone can recite them by heart, even rule number 14a which is:

"Don't try and talk like you're Gen Y because you're not, unless you are, and even then you shouldn't be twittering on behalf of the company yet because you're not responsible enough and if you get access to Twitter you'll want access to Facebook as well and you'll claim it's for work but we know, and you know, and we know you know we know that you'll end up spending most of your day updating your status, playing Mob Wars and LOL'ing with your BFFs".

Well to hell with that rule.

For the first time, ever*, thanks to the vivacious, spacious and audacious wit of LOL-linguist-intern-strategists, @anna_goddard and @AnnabelBrusasco, myself, a list of words Dialogix couldn't define and a little too much time, Marketingmag.com.au is able to bring you the official GenY LOLspeak A-Z Dictionary of the 65 Most Popular Young Person's Colloquialisms. Or, The Gen Y Translator for short. Rule 14a be damned.

Thanks to The LOLspeak Dictionary even the most moronic of marketing managers can now converse with the kewlest of lolcats. Fire up that Facebook chat window, update your MySpace pic and energise your emoticons, let's start totes talkin!

Oh, and if I've left off any LOLisms you feel should be included in the next edition, feel free to add them in the comments below...

*As long as you don't count the Urban Dictionary as ever

The Gen Y Translator

Word	Definition	Example Usage
!!!!!	Words cannot express how much I think this is totally amazing	OMG!!!!!
@	At
*action*	Right now I am doing whatever is between the asterisks	This LOLspeak dictionary is going to be out of date before it's published but that's kewl. *shrugs*
#fail	That didn't go very well at all	Did you hear she was trying to get around the world, only made it as far as North Straddie and got hit by a tanker! #sailingfail
aiight	Alright	A: "Sorry I ran over your cat with my car." B: "That's aiight, it was my sister's cat."
b4	Before
BF, B/F	Boyfriend
BFF	Best Friend(s) Forever
biatch	My dear friend	Sup biatch!
boi	Boy
brb	Be Right Back
BTW	By The Way
burn	To denigrate	At least I wasn't vomiting in the garden! Burn!
CBA	Stands for 'Can't Be Arsed', meaning 'I could not be bothered	CBA going out tonight. Stayin' at home watchin' Idol.
C-Bomb	The worst swear word you can possibly use	I accidentally dropped the c-bomb in front of my Mum last night and got grounded for a week.
dats	That's
defs/defso	Definitely	Defs wanna hit the clubs tonight.
DM	Direct Message/Direct Mail	OMG the boss is coming, have to get off the phone, DM me!
DW	Don't worry
everybunny	Everybody
FML	F--- My Life	Today, my first girlfriend of over 3 years left me for another guy. She said she's looking for someone who can financially provide for her in the future. The dude owns a mobile phone kiosk. I'm going to medical school. FML
fo shiz	For certain	A: "Wanna smoke some weed and listen to Snoop Dogg?" B: "Fo shiz."
FPP	Facebook Profile Picture	You look hot! You should defs make that your FPP!
G2G	Got To Go
GF, G/F	Girlfriend
Ghost Tweeter	Someone who writes or fine-tunes someone else's Twitter updates because the person in question is too busy, dumb or unfunny to do it themselves	That's not really Kyle Sandilands on Twitter. It's a ghost tweeter.
Hellz Yeah	Yes, yes indeed	And so the cop told me that my party was the most epic party they'd ever been called to... Hellz Yeah!
HTFU	Harden the F--- Up!	A: "Really tired hey, don't know if I'm coming out tonight." B: "HTFU!"
ish	Sort of	She was good-looking...ish.
kewl	Cool
KK	OK, OK	A: "Can I borrow your jeans tonight?" B:"kk"
L8	Late
Laterz	Later	"Bye", "Yeah, no worries, laterz"
LMAO	Laughing My Arse Off
LOL	Laugh Out Loud
LOLZ	That's so funny
LOLGASM	The climax of a particularly effervescent LOL incident
LOLWAT	Disbelief to the point of absurdity
Maggot	Exceptionally drunk	Going to Jake's house tonight. Going to get MAGGOT!
Mofo	A term of endearment between mates. Short for motherf---er
n00b	Someone who is new to something, usually in an internet forum
OMFG!	Oh My F---ing God!	A: "She let me sleep with her!" B: "OMFG!"
OMG	Oh My God!
Owned	Defeated
Peeps	People
PPL	People
QFT	Quoted For Truth	You said that and we all heard it. QFT
Redic	Ridiculous
Redonkulous	That is seriously ridiculous
ROFL	Rolling On the Floor Laughing
ROFLCOPTER	Rolling On the Floor Laughing, spinning around like helicopter blades	A: "So I was just driving high and I stopped to let a pinecone cross the road because I thought it was a hedgehog." B: "ROFLCOPTER"
Sick	Really, really good
Siff	As if, that couldn't possibly be true
STFU	Shut The F--- Up!
Sup	Hello, how are you? Or, What's wrong?
Tomoz	Tomorrow	A: "So I think I'm going to break up with her tomoz." B: "No way!"
Totes	Short for totally, as in, most definitely	That comment was totes inapprop.
TTYL	Talk To You Later
U	You
V	Very	V.Good
Woot	Gamer-talk for woo-hoo	I got to the last level on Final Fantasy VII, Woot!
WTF	What The F---?	The doctor took one look and he was, like, WTF?
XXL	Someone with a rotund figure
Yeeeewww/ Yeow/ Yiew	An expression of great joy
ZOMG	A more sarcastic expression than OMG Source - Marketing Mag