The Future of Ad Agencies and Social Media

To keep up with ever-changing advertising and marketing options, ad agencies are rapidly adopting new strategies and outlooks on how consumers interact with brands. While many ad agencies have been slow to adopt social media, others have been keeping up with the trends quite well.

But keeping up with change is never good enough in this industry; the most successful, game-changing campaigns are generally a bit ahead of the curve. It’s not enough to hitch your star to an existing facet of viral content; you have to create the content yourself. And you can’t wait for mass markets to catch up to new technologies before you begin thinking about how to incorporate new tech into campaigns and creative; you need to test how that tech will work now. Mobile and social ads are no longer new; what’s more interesting now is figuring out how brands can integrate creatively and effectively with location apps and casual games.

We talked with five people who are familiar with the connected worlds of digital media and ad agencies, and here’s what they had to say about the future of social media and advertising.
Software Is the New Medium

Tom Bedecarré is CEO of AKQA, an agency well-regarded for its digital and interactive work, a field in which AKQA specializes; you can see some recent examples of that work on the agency’s Facebook page.

He told us in an e-mail recently, “One of the newest forms of media is not media at all, but software and platforms. Increasingly, AKQA is developing applications and marketing platforms that provide greater utility, entertainment and information to our clients’ customers without relying on traditional media channels. One example of this is the Fiat eco:Drive application we created that allows Fiat drivers to monitor their driving skills and fuel efficiency and helps drivers to lower CO² emissions.”

More and more, agencies will be called on to be (or at least have the capacity to behave as) short-order web and mobile dev shops. You’ll need to make sure your creatives have access to skilled hackers and experienced web designers; you might even consider including a few highly technical, very creative engineers in your creative team, not just as part-time or freelance collaborators.
Groups and Friends: The Power of the Hive Mind

If you want to get inside your clients’ customers’ heads, just take a look at what their friends and peers are doing, saying and buying.

We asked David Armano, Senior Vice President at Edelman Digital, if he thought group or friend buying behavior could be used as a recommendation system for goods and services. His answer was resoundingly affirmative.

“If the numbers behind Groupon’s recent success with The Gap is any indicator, the answer is yes.” For reference, the partnership between the group-buying site and the national retailer completely smashed sales records for both entities with a simple digital coupon.

But group buying is most powerful when combined with sharing across social networks.

“The key,” continued Armano, “is that the group buying activity needs to be be present in your friends’ streams. Combine ‘likes’ with mass purchase behavior, and you’ve got the perfect storm of a signal that says, ‘Your friend got in on the deal, maybe you should too.’”
Transparency Is Still a Long Way Off

Part of the art of selling is the illusion that the company is doing what’s best for the consumer and not for their own bottom line.

We asked Jeremy Toeman, founding partner of San Francisco-based agency Stage Two if he thought online marketing has (or should have) more or less transparency in this regard than traditional marketing.

“This might sound odd,” he began, “but I actually think online marketing has less transparency than traditional does.

“In traditional marketing, your advertising was effectively blatant, from TV/radio/newspaper ad buys to junk mail to billboards on the side of the road. Online companies use tactics like SEO, spam/spam-blogs, pop-ups, text-link-ads, fake viral videos, etc.”

Steve Hall, creator and editor of industry blog Adrants, wrote in 2008 that most of the “viral” videos then (particularly the “guys backflip into jeans” clip that ended up being part of a Levi’s campaign) were, in fact, advertisements. And earlier this year, another tattoo-related fake viral video was discovered to be a marketing gimmick from Ray Ban. Fake virility isn’t limited to YouTube (YouTube); often, we find commercial entities trying to “push” supposedly non-commercial content on platforms such as Digg (Digg), Facebook (Facebook) and Twitter (Twitter).

Of course, consumers don’t figure it out… until they do. And they’re getting more savvy about fake transparency all the time.

Toeman believes brands and agencies should strive for more genuine methods of bringing an advertising message to consumers. “Personally,” he said, “I’d nix all the ‘hide the fact that this is an ad’ tactics completely and eliminate the methods of gaming systems.”

If you need more convincing that labeling ads as ads might be a good thing, consider Old Spice’s recent campaign. Pure creativity and Internet (Internet)-culture awareness drove a YouTube campaign that was very clearly advertising; still, the company’s sales doubled as a result of the YouTube clips.
Location Campaigns Are the New Targeting Mechanism

In the past couple weeks, Foursquare took over Times Square and Facebook launched Places. Clearly, location-based services and related ad campaigns are going to become huge very shortly.

“We’re right at the beginning of an exciting time for the development of location-based services and marketing that integrates geo-location into advertising and applications,” said Bedecarré. “Recent announcements by Facebook and Google (Google) reflect the importance of location services.”

Hall says location-based marketing “will change everything.” He explained:

“With the ability to target people only when they are within purchasing distance, brands will be able to come that much closer to targeting nirvana. Offers can be made only to those meeting certain location (and even demographic) requirements, reducing waste and actually saving a brand a lot of money by minimizing its old school spray-and-pray mass marketing techniques. In a nutshell, mobile will, once and for all, make it possible for a marketer to target without waste.”

Getting your clients thinking now about how to integrate location and checkins into a campaign is key. While we can’t yet construct fully formed campaigns around Facebook Places, there are a slew of other services you can use as case studies for an at-scale campaign.

Starbucks, which does an excellent job in the social media advertising and marketing category, has seen good results from a recent Foursquare (foursquare) campaign, as have many other brands. And they were right to jump on the bandwagon early. Between the intelligence you can gather about your clients’ customers and your ability to find more highly qualified targets than ever before, location is indeed the holy grail for advertisers.
Display Ads Are Evolving

Jesse Thomas runs one of the most forward-thinking creative agencies around, but he’s not ready to pick out a headstone for display ads just yet. However, he did tell us that “the usual suspects” of banner ads and skyscrapers are definitely undergoing a change.

“Facebook’s ads have singlehandedly made ads social,” he wrote to us in an e-mail. “The idea of ‘liking’ an ad is genius… The idea of advertising a Page in Facebook via the Facebook ad engine and being able to access special advertising powers is nothing short of revolutionary. In a world of [expletive] Google text ads, Facebook’s social ads are a breath of fresh air. But we have a long way to go!”

And not all of Google’s ad-buy offerings are as excremental as Thomas thinks the text ads can be. “Google offered the ability to integrate the Facebook checkout (one-click purchase) option to their ads, and that was awesome at the time. You will see more of this in the future: Making ads better by integrating features from other parts of the platform that are no longer cool anymore.”

In other words, display can still be part of your ad buys and collateral, but you have to think creatively, target carefully, measure thoroughly and react accordingly. Use all the tools at your disposal to do so.

Jolie O'Dell for Mashable.

Meet YouTube's Most In-Demand Brand Stars

Great summary from AdAge about the future face of 'talent'


For Marketers, Web-Video Celebrities Offer Trusted Voices and an Engaged Viewership

by Irina Slutsky
Published: September 13, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) -- Once upon a time, YouTube was considered the Wild West -- its so-called "stars" more likely to produce cringe-worthy performances than to displace the pitch-men and -women of traditional media. But now big-time brands like Lancome, McDonald's, Ford and Kellogg's are trusting YouTube celebs with their money and reputations. "The reason we turned to them is because they have a valid voice in their community, and people trust what they say and what they think," said Scott Monty, head of social media for Ford Motors.

They've got trust and, it turns out, engagement.

"What these YouTubers have proven is that they have engaged viewers -- they comment, they talk on the YouTuber's Facebook page, on Twitter. The brands want millions of views, but they also want engaged viewers," said Caroline Giegerich, director of innovation at Initiative, which was one of the first agencies to run a successful YouTube stars campaign with Carl Jr's. "If they're engaged with the stars, clearly they are engaged with the brand ... it means someone is not just seeing an ad and forgetting about it."

In the beginning, neither the brands nor the YouTubers themselves had much of an idea how much they were worth. But the price of hiring a YouTube celebrity to pitch a product is now comparable to hiring a B- or C-level Hollywood celeb.

Ryan Higa publicly lists his starting rate as $75,000 per appearance, a fraction of what someone like Paris Hilton charged for her Carl's Jr. commercial. Some, like Joe Penna, a.k.a. MysteryGuitarMan, feel as comfortable pitching themselves to brands as they do their audiences. "I get millions of hits, and I know my demographic -- I know what kind of video will be in line with my channel," Mr. Penna, a 23-year-old former pre-med student, said. "The best thing the brands can do is come to me with a blank slate and ask me, 'What can you do with this product for us?'"

Ad Age teamed up with TubeMogul to find the stars racking up the views.

CHARLES TRIPPY

Charles Trippy

WHO IS HE? Mr. Trippy, 26, and Alli Speed, 21, vlog a "home-made reality show" called "Internet Killed Television" that is widely known as CTFxC. Mr. Trippy has been on YouTube since 2006 and continues to vlog almost daily -- he hasn't lost interest or enthusiasm for the venue.

CONTENT: Daily life vlogs with his fiance.

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 159,489,749

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 2,122,380

BRANDS: Gillette, Google, Xacti Passion

DUDEPERFECT

dudeperfect

WHO ARE THEY? Garrett Hilbert, Cory Cotton, Cody Jones, Sean Townsend, Panda, Coby Cotton, and Tyler Toney -- a team of trick-shot basketball entertainers from Texas

CONTENT: Impossible basketball shots

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 27,712,318

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 3,241,856 (top campaign for GMC snagged 1,917,028 views)

BRANDS:GMC, NBA (Sacramento Kings)

FRED

Fred

WHO IS HE? Lucas Cruikshank

WHAT HE MAKES: Videos in which he pretends to be a child in a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic mother

CONTENT: Screechy voice, occasional meltdowns

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 585,136,315

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 101,698,863 (includes promos for films and his own merchandise)

BRANDS:20th-Century Fox, Hot Topic, Nickelodeon, Taptivate

IJUSTINE

iJustine

WHO IS SHE? Justine Ezarick, 23, LA-based freelance graphic designer. Ms. Ezarick's almost unbelievable ability to create videos several times a day, her deft editing skills, her Apple obsession and her long, blond hair and good looks snagged her a young, male techie fan base.

CONTENT: Techie girl vlog

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 171,403,990

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 7,408,587 (top campaign was GE, with 1,913,481 views)

BRANDS:AT&T, Fox, GE, Intel, Mattel, Nikon, Mozy, MTV, Carl's Jr. and Dick Clark Productions

MICHAELBUCKLEY

Michael Buckley

WHO IS HE? Michael Buckley, 35, is a comedian who started with a public-access chat show called "Table for Two." He's benignly malicious -- the opposite kind of meany to Perez Hilton.

CONTENT: Celebrity memes/gossip

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 261,715,708

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 4,370,345 (top campaign was for Fox's Teen Choice, with 865,885 views)

BRANDS:ABC Family, BabelGum, 20th Century Fox, Discovery Networks, Fox television, Nickelodeon, OpenFilms, PriceDoc, Pepsi

MICHELLE PHAN

Michelle Phan

WHO IS SHE? A Vietnamese-American who gained popularity afterher Lady Gaga "Poker Face" make-up instructional got 20 million views. Before YouTube stardom, Ms. Phan worked as a waitress in a sushi restaurant and studied illustration.

CONTENT: Cosmetics tutorials

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 221,989,434

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 22,095,935 (of which Lancome Paris represents 12,234,338)

BRANDS:Colgate, Lancome Paris, PriceDoc, Sandisk, Verizon

MYSTERYGUITARMAN

Mysteryguitarman

WHO IS HE? Brazilian-born Joe Penna, 23, is an L.A.-based filmmaker, guitarist and animator who graduated from UMass with a pre-med degree.

CONTENT: Music videos and clever mash-ups of himself in his apartment in front of the camera

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 138,614,194

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 5,125,862 (top campaign is for Microsoft, with 8 million-plus views)

BRANDS:Garnier, Pop Tarts, Microsoft, McDonald's, Coca-Cola

NIGAHIGA

Nigahiga

WHO IS HE? One of the highest paid YouTube stars, Ryan Higa is a Japanese-American comedian from Hawaii who started making lipsyncing videos with his friends during college breaks. YouTube stardom followed, and his content is now varied and wide.

CONTENT: Comedy, short films, parody videos, "rants," how-to comedy videos ("How to Be a Gangster"), advertising spoofs

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 546,333,874

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 13,405,781

BRANDS:Google, Carl's Jr.

RHETT & LINK

Rhett & Link

WHO ARE THEY? Comedy duo Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal

CONTENT: Humor that's actually funny; not as viral but high-quality videos like "Facebook Song," and "T-Shirt War"; actual commercials

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 66,294,209

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 25,093,462 (top brand campaign was Microbilt, with 9,986,225 views)

BRANDS: Alka-Selzer, AJJCornhole (not a joke), Baby Ruth, Coca-Cola, Dentyne, GM, McDonald's, Spy Associates, Taco Bell, Microbilt

SHAYCARL

Shaycarl

WHO IS HE? Shay Butler, 30, lives in Idaho with his wife and kids and produces family vlogs with a funny, edgy "cool dad" twist. His user name is ShayTards, his baby is BabyTard, and his other children are PrincessTard and SonTard. You get the idea. His most recent Footlocker campaign takes place in a school cafeteria and involves a giant food fight.

CONTENT: Family vlogs

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 250,954,220

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 5,725,254

BRANDS: AT&T, A1, Google, Kia, Kodak, Sanyo, Footlocker

SMOSH

Smosh

WHO ARE THEY? Comedy duo Anthony Padilla and Ian Andrew Hecox, both 22, gained initial fame with the "Pokemon Theme Music Video," and this led them to be featured in Time Magazine's 2006 Person of the Year issue.

CONTENT: Sophomoric teen humor; video games

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 465,534,527

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 12,310,844 (top brand campaign was GE, with 4,717,047 views)

BRANDS: Carl's Jr., GE, Google (Nexus One), Kia, Nintendo, Puma

VENETIAN PRINCESS

Venetian Princess

WHO IS SHE? Jodie Rivera, 26, studied opera at the New England Conservatory of Music before becoming one of YouTube's first partners. Ms. Rivera has said, "I can make anywhere from the mid-five to six figures per one- to two-minute video with product placement."

CONTENT: Parodies of popular music videos

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 258,098,945

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 1,697,996 (top campaign, for Pop Tarts, notched 1,562,269 views)

BRANDS: Pop Tarts, Samsung

WHEEZYWAITER

Wheezywaiter

WHO IS HE? Craig Benzine, went to school for TV, radio and film, worked as a waiter at Big Bowl before YouTube success. He's a hungry up-and-comer with a promising start.

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 13,350,225

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 290,145

BRANDS: Ford

DHL Creative

OK it's not digi-wow, but i just love the simple smartness in this work. Thanks Fred via CrookedBrains:

Creative and clever DHL's advertising campaigns from all over the world.

DHL - Turning Page: Clever and innovative use of magazine; a transparent plastic sheet was placed into the magazine with DHL worker printed on both sides. And when you turn the paper the worker delivers the express mail to the customer.

DHL Online Tracking: To create awareness for DHL online tracking among the business community, a group of couriers with a white silhouette of a computer cursor on their backs were posted around the central business district. As they walked around, it literally demonstrated the possibility of constant tracking of DHL parcels. 'Courier 24 Hours Online Tracking.'

DHL Express - Pit lane: The back of a DHL cargo center in Amsterdam was converted into the biggest billboard in Europe. This huge poster measures 196 meters long and almost 4 meters high. As DHL is the official logistic partner of F1, they made a detailed replica of F1 pit lane. DHL vehicles would drive by day in day out to reach the main entrance of the building. And this would be seen by train travelers from Amsterdam to Zaandam.

DHL Installations: 'If it is where it belongs it was probably delivered by DHL.'

DHL: 'For all your heavyweight shipments'.

DHL Van: To create awareness for DHL online tracking among the business community, a large white silhouette of a computer cursor was installed on the fleet of DHL's runner vans which shuttles around the central business district. As a result there was an apparent drop in parcel enquiry recorded by the DHL phone tracking system while it effectively increased the usage of online tracking among the customers.

DHL - Tunnel box: To draw attention for the superfast DHL Express service from Asia, DHL provided boxes with a special inlay. The inlay, at the bottom of the box, shows another open box and together they make a long 'tunnel'. In one version the person hands over a toy box, in other version its laptop and shoe.

DHL - Maze: A huge three-dimensional billboard measuring 7 x 5 meters was installed directly in front of Schiphol Airport's main entrance, a small ball rolls from point A to B via the shortest route. At the end of its journey, the ball is transported by an invisible conveyor belt within the billboard back to the top to repeat the process, along the same route, again and again. This was done to get the attention of business travelers at Schiphol Airport, where 11 million people pass through each year.

DHL - Ups:

DHL - Fortune vase: 'Next time you will use DHL'.

DHL - Horse:

DHL- Small World: 'It's a small world'.

DHL - Determined: 'DHL express. Nothing stops us'.

(Image credit: adsoftheworld).
(Image credit: adsoftheworld).
DHL: Always first.

DHL Express: 'A direct line between you and more than 210 countries worldwide.'

Awesome - advertising banners carried by flies

Flyvertising? Wonder what the average CTR is?

How Ad Position Affects Conversion Rates

Thanks Online Media Daily for this post on banner location.

For marketers wondering how conversion rates change depending on where ads appear on Web pages, Google Chief Economist Hal Varian appears to have an answer.

Varian calls the problem "tricky," because Google ranks ads by bid times and ad quality, so ads in higher positions tend to have higher quality. These higher-quality ads tend to have higher conversion rates. He writes in a post on the AdWords blog that this means marketers may see a correlation between auction position and conversion rates.

Another fact that influences conversions: marketers increasing bids might see their average position move lower on the page. That's because when bids increase, ads appear in new auctions, and tend to work their way up from the bottom. This can push down the campaign's overall position, he writes.

"We have used a statistical model to account for these effects and found that -- on average, there is very little variation in conversion rates by position for the same ad," Varian writes. "For example, for pages where 11 ads are shown the conversion rate varies by less than 5% across positions."

An ad that had a 1.0% conversion rate in the best position would have about a 0.95% conversion rate in the worst position, on average, Varian writes. He explains that ads above search results convert within ±2% of right-hand side positions.

Didit VP Mark Simon says the New York company sees similar conversion rates occurring with its clients. "Not all traffic is converting traffic," he says. "The trick is to offer the creative and post-click experience that draws in the right searchers and drives them to convert, while also targeting the right market segment to convert on a given term."

Great use of Facebook Connect

Facebook connect as the means to automate personalisation and context of a digital experience: http://www.prototype-experience.com/

Found via this post from Jeremiah Owyang. Thanks

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Remember early Jib Jab cartoons where you’d manually upload your own photo and that of your friends? Now, it’s much easier with just a few clicks to Facebook Connect.

Last week, I had dinner with Chris Pan (linkedin, twitter), Head of Brand Solutions at Facebook, who pointed me to a new social interactive marketing advertisement for a video game called “Prototype”. Upon accessing the site, Prototype Experience, (try it for yourself) you’ll be prompted to login with your Facebook account. After a rather lengthy loading period (it’s worth it, hang tight) you’ll watch a short teaser trailer.

This isn’t a normal trailer, as it uses your own social information in Facebook from your profile picture, your profile information, and photos from your friends. Here’s what I saw, see screenshots below.

What’s going on here? This is an example of more contextual ads based off social profiles, which is a trend as you can see my coverage of VW’s Twitter and Facebook campaign). These are early examples of the era of Social Context, where content, media, and ads will be personalized in the future based off your social information, learn more about this in the future of the social web.

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User Experience: Screenshot Storyline
Here’s the blow by blow, with my thoughts.
Above Image: First, users are encouraged to login with Facebook Connect –a few clicks. If you’re already logged into Facebook, it’s just a few clicks –all without entering a password. Expect more people to interact as there’s less commitment and up front investment than finding photos and uploading them –Facebook already has the inventory you need.

Above Image: Promo video includes my profile pictures –making things a bit more interesting and personalized. As this evolves, imagine how your face and profile info will populate other experiences and content –we’re instinctively drawn to look at ourselves.

Above Image: “Is that me?” Yes it is, this promo video includes information from my profile –I’m right in the game. In consideration of my friends, I didn’t include their photos –which you’ll see in your own trailer video. Expect future ads where friends ‘promote’ or even sponsor content –some opt-in, some not.

Above Image: Participants are ‘hooked’ into the registration form in order to win in the sweetstakes, a good example of gathering leads from an engaged audience. Facebook isn’t a great way to generate leads, while you can get users to be ‘fans’ of your Facebook page, getting their true identity and email is often limited –as dictated by their Terms of Service.

Above Image: The participants are encouraged to share the campaign with their Facebook or Twitter friends, thus staring a “Viral Loop”. It spreads.

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Key Takeaways

• This is clearly a trend, expect many interactive and digital agencies to offer this social campaign to their clients.
• Consumers will initially ‘freak out’ and be concerned that big brother is watching them –then will accept this as mainstream media over the next few years.
• At some point, nearly every campaign will have social content influencing the content –hitting a saturation point that disinterests users
• Expect site wide Facebook Connect initiatives to happen, allowing all of the media, content, and ads to be socially contextual. Expect media sites and eCommerce sites to launch this first.
• Expect recommended products and ads to appear from your friends and those connected to you in your social network.

Cars, twitter and a new adserving model

Thansk Contagious and Adage for these posts on who some auto manufactueres are tapping into microblogging

First this overview from Contagious

Volvo's Multi-Purpose Banner Ad

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21/04/2009

Swedish Automaker Volvo, has taught the old banner ad a few new tricks thanks to a campaign masterminded by Euro RSCG Worldwide. The new multi-purpose ad not only measures a whopping 950 x 250 pixels but also contains photos, videos, an advergame and regular Twitter

www.thevolvotwitterad.com

The initiative is in promotion of the new automatic braking or 'city safety' feature on Volvo's latest XC60 sports utility vehicle - a system which is being debuted at the New York Auto Show, from which the brand is providing constant Twitter updates that get displayed in the banner.This Twitter feed has been enabled thanks to Google's DoubleClick technology, which relays the 'Tweets' via an RSS feed. The most recent update is displayed, although users can scroll down to catch up on previous news. The brand launched its Twitter profile 3 months ago and currently has over 1200 followers.

www.thecarthatstopsitself.com

As the very best 'must-see' viral adverts have shown (think Cadbury's Gorilla) when content is engaging enough, its consumption can become something of an event. By squeezing its campaign into one banner ad, Volvo has streamlined this process for the user. Furthermore, the inclusion of a Twitter feed not only keeps it up to date, but also gives the initiative a human voice that should set it apart from the more standard intrusive banner ad.

In other automotive Twitter news this week, Tata-owned brand Land Rover has also been documenting its presence at the New York Auto Show using a Twitter hashtag, #LRNY, which filters conversations, aggregating chat and information about the brand.

updates.

During the lead up to the auto show, these tags were seeded in trade press publications, through online media channels and outdoors on billboards, taxis etc. Also, the brand enlisted (via direct-marketing firm Wunderman) the help of Twittad - a US-based Twitter advertising specialist which payed a selection of 15 popular users (typically with an excess of 3000 followers each) to feature extensive branding on their profile pages. James Eliason, CEO of Twittad reported that in total the effort was Twittered to more than 300,000 followers.

www.twittad.com

Then, this more in-depth piece of the LandRover work from AdAge

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Land Rover Taps Twitter as Campaign Cornerstone

'Hashtags,' Fledgling Ad Network Help Get the Word out Across Microblogging Site

by Jeremy Mullman

Published: April 20, 2009

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) -- Land Rover last week became the first national brand to execute a national Twitter campaign in a bid to promote its newest models' debuts at the New York Auto Show.

While brands as diverse as Southwest Airlines and Smirnoff vodka have been tweeting and accumulating followers for months, Land Rover attempted to use the burgeoning social-media platform in a more ambitious way, seeding so-called hashtags (words used in tweets that make it easier to follow an ongoing conversation via online searches) on billboards, taxi TVs and other out-of-home venues; spreading word of the Twitter effort through auto-obsessed blogs and online publications eager for a peek at its latest bells and whistles; and paying a fledgling Twitter ad network to spread the word among its army of compensated, heavily followed Twitter users, all of whom wallpapered their Twitter profiles with Land Rover branding.

While it's too early to know what sort of return Land Rover will receive for its efforts, "it cost us virtually nothing," said Keith Rhodes, VP and account director at WPP-owned direct-marketing firm Wunderman, which orchestrated the effort.

Mr. Rhodes said he was particularly encouraged by the Twitter-fueled traffic to a blog post he wrote about Land Rover's initiative. Posts on his site typically draw about 30 views; this one grabbed more than 200,000 views.

Land Rover is not likely to remain the only national marketer doing this for long, said James Eliason, CEO of Twittad, the Des Moines-based "social-media affinity network" Wunderman tapped to boost Land Rover's launch.

Mr. Eliason said the next national effort using Twittad's roster of 4,500 Tweeters, whom it pays to post on topics and brand their profile pages, with nearly 5 million followers, will be for Elations, a glucosamine-enhanced beverage from the makers of Sunny Delight targeted at women over 40.

Twitter machine
All told, the Land Rover effort was Twittered to more than 300,000 followers, Mr. Eliason said. Twittad used 15 different Tweeters with at least 5,000 followers, although the majority had between 2,000 and 4,000 followers.

Most won't get rich doing this anytime soon. One paid Tweeter, willconley777, wrote on his blog that he was paid $2.50 for letting Land Rover sponsor his profile page for seven days. Mr. Conley has 1,160 followers. Still, for those few Twitter users with huge reach, real money might one day be possible. The most-followed Land Rover campaign participant, queenoftheclick, boasts nearly 25,000 followers and was paid an amount "in the hundreds" for her participation, Mr. Eliason said.

Other larger-scale marketers are also eyeing Twittad, which is in talks with Sears.

The appeal to marketers is obvious: It's a cheap way to reach people through their trusted contacts. And Twittad's technology is able to sort its users by geography, demographics and interests, which can both lead to more targeted appeals and, perhaps, prevent Twitter users from feeling under siege by advertisers, a major concern.

"We were worried it would be considered spam, but we didn't get a single complaint [about Land Rover]," Mr. Eliason said. "What that tells me is that our connectors have influence."

Less clear is whether the model is sustainable. Mr. Eliason, who launched Twittad eight months ago, said he expects it to break even by the end of its first year. He said he has contacted Twitter about a revenue-sharing agreement but has yet to hear back.

Axe does a Skittles

http://www.theaxeeffect.com/

Interesting to see companies creating their own 'webs on the web', rather than a a series of more or less independant sites and microsites. Having a series of branded and unbranded social media presences, linked to from a central hub and ideally plugged into freiend freed, tumblr and a load of other streaming platforms really does seem like a smarter way to get your brand online. I have to say i prefer Axe's approach to that of Skittles (http://www.skittles.com) as it gives that brand and how it like to portray content much more of a role (and a much more of a bill i imagine), rather than just tapping into content and keywords on existing sites.

Thoughts?

In the words of Simon - Genius

This is probably the best application I've seen yet - aiding justification for deleting those people that you just don't care about. What's more is that its practical for the brand also.
Thanks to Adweek and Simon Mc for this post.

BK Offers Facebook 'Sacrifice'
Cut 10 friends, earn a free Whopper

Jan 8, 2009
-By Brian Morrissey

NEW YORK It's a common problem for anyone who joined Facebook some time ago. You look at your friend list and wonder who these people are. Burger King wants to help consumers do something about it.

The fast-food chain has released the Whopper Sacrifice application on Facebook. The app rewards people with a coupon for BK's signature burger when they cull 10 friends. Each time a friend is excommunicated, the application sends a notification to the banished party via Facebook's news feed explaining that the user's love for the unlucky soul is less than his or her zeal for the Whopper.

The effort crafted by Crispin Porter + Bogusky came about after agency creative staffers confronted the too-many-friends scenario themselves on Facebook.

"We thought there could be some fun there, removing some of these people who are friends [but] not necessarily] best friends," said Jeff Benjamin, executive interactive creative director at Crispin, and friend to 736 on Facebook. "It's asking the question of which love is bigger, your love for your friends or your love for the Whopper," he said.

The app also adds a box to user profile pages charting their progress toward the free burger with the line, "Who will be the next to go?"

The application is available on Facebook and at WhopperSacrifice.com.

Whopper Sacrifice is the second application Crispin has built for BK. During the election, it released the BK Polarizer, a quiz widget that gauged where users stood on a political matrix compared to their friends.

Brand applications have a spotty record on Facebook, with few enjoying more than a temporary jolt in popularity before quickly fizzling. Some brands have begun rewarding consumers for installing their apps. One example is Kraft's current campaign that includes donations of meals to needy families when users get their friends to add the Kraft Facebook app.

"We always look at these social networks and think of what tool or thing we wish was here," Benjamin said. "A lot of times, brands force a feature or an application that I don't think people ever want. That's when you can waste some money."

The notion of dumping friends in exchange for a burger could offend some, though Crispin has not shied from controversy with BK. Its recent "Whopper Virgins" campaign, showing people in remote areas of the world introduced to fast food, came under fire from many critics. Benjamin said the agency and client were careful to make the application lighthearted rather than "vindictive."

"The [friend] removal is another kind of socializing," he said. "At first you think it's antisocial, but it's a social device. Now we finally have something to talk about."

SnapAds: Survival Of The Fittest Meets Madison Avenue

Thanks TechCrunch for this outline of SnapAds, a new offering in the automated, multivairant ad delivery market. Looks useful, but not sure how they compare to something like memetircs

It’s rare to hear about genetics and advertising platforms in the same sentence, but new startup SnapAds has put together an ad service that effectively combines the theory of natural selection with banner ads - with very impressive results. The startup, which shares a number of founders with Weebly (though the two companies are unrelated), has created a system that dynamically adjusts the appearance of banner ads over time to maximize engagement. And it seems to work - a three day trial campaign for a recent film saw an increased clickthrough rate of 1922% over three days (not a typo).

To create a campaign, advertisers provide SnapAds with a special Photoshop file containing a number of specially-tagged layers with all of the art and text assets they’d like to potentially display in their banner. Advertisers can create rule sets specifying which layers are allowed to appear together, allowing them to ensure that SnapAds never generates an ad that is nonsensical or potentially offensive. Once all of the rules and assets are in place, the platform can get to work.

SnapAds - Display Ad Optimization from SnapAds on Vimeo.

The process initially begins by displaying ads with a smattering of random combinations of the assets. As time goes by, the system identifies the most successful ads and allows these to “live on”, further modifying them towards perfection as the failures die off. Co-Founder David Rusenko says that a fully refined ad takes around one million impressions, but that the system never stops optimizing. Because user interest in an ad will typically wane after it’s been seen multiple times, SnapAds will continue to modify the ad indefinitely. The platform can also recognize when certain ads are more successful at different times, and will keep multiple branches of an ad “alive”, showing each at the appropriate time.

Rusenko says that to use the service advertisers will need campaigns consisting of at least 1 million impressions (SnapAds is not currently self-service), and that each ad is recommended to have 3-6 variables with 2-8 possible values each. Today’s announcement coincides with the launch of a SnapAds-powered campaign on Reddit and Wired for the AXE Detailer (man loofah).

While the initial results are promising, it’s too early to tell just how successful SnapAds will be. The system isn’t magic - it can’t automatically generate a new, especially appealing button or image. These assets will all need to be provided by the advertiser, and if there is nothing innovative to work with, SnapAds will only be able to offer slightly different permutations of the same generic ad. That said, provided the ad agencies can come up with a little creativity, the SnapAds service could prove to be very successful.

The Power of ‘Our’ Machinima

Thanks Gary Hayes @ Personalise Media

Sep 1st, 2008 | By Gary Hayes | Category: Last Post, Media Personalizing, Participatory Media, Virtual Worlds

Social Media and Web 2.0 is a lot about providing the tools and therefore the means for everyone to create content, that they believe others may want to see. I have personally created a lot of corporate, professional entertainment and music films over the years using high end equipment but now, like many millions around the world, find it a fun and satisfying process to be able to create films and stories in virtual worlds, aka machinima. (Quite a few are over on my personal virtual blog justvirtual)

There are literally millions of machinimas emanating from the likes of World of Warcraft, Sims, Movies, Halo, Second Life, Half Life and many more. Most are done for the love vs the money and some make it onto the big screen. For the creators it is about expressing ‘their’ world and experiences to each other but of course there is something else as important here.

Laurel (heart) talked recently on a machinima I did in Twinity and about the ‘free advertising’ it offers for the brand or platform. For me it is also about creating an environment where simple tools encourage large numbers of people to come together remotely and do real-time, collaborative content creation for extended periods. It makes the world very, very sticky when they have shared creative goals and purpose - not just pre-constructed game play. Some may say game quests are social too and I believe when the players get ‘creative’ with the mechanic and ‘bend the rule’ together it certainly is.

Comfortably Fun

Using game or social virtual worlds to entertain each other in this deeply immersive way, leads us to imagine what the potential will be when bandwidth and graphic realism are no longer limitations. Perhaps a portent of the future here is a machinima I did of a forty three minute performance of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, in a social world, Second Life. It was captured last week and it is useful to remind us all what is going on here. There are around 70 people logged in together in real time from around the world, most audience a few performers. About 8 are ‘animating’ on stage or controlling lights, effects or triggering scripted animations and I am recording the whole thing at the same time. This is digital puppeteering. I captured elements of the performance three times and put together this compilation edit. More after the embed…

So this all started with an invite from a self motivated group, led by Debbie Trilling, who for the love of what they do, created an inworld, cross-reality, musical tribute. CARPs (Cybernetic Art Research Project) inventive and emotionally driven version of Pink Floyd’s 1980’s album was a truly international affair and many hours were spent developing and performing a Virtual Show to this music that reaches a new audience every few years.The reason the music reaches new audiences is because of its use in ‘community created content’ just like this, a far more poignent way to share digital content. More than 2000 avatars have experienced this particular concert inworld generating 10 000s of impressions across blogs and media sites. That is the key point - don’t dismiss game or virtual worlds as being irrelevant because of perceived low numbers - these are active and proficient online users who see the 2D web as a ’simple’ publishing tool and become prolific creators of content and by implication major influencers.

Professional marketeers need to be aware of the power of machinima (consumer films in worlds they are very loyal too) and how by allowing the use of often locked down content is probably the best way to introduce ‘old’ content to new audiences. As an example, while I was putting together this ‘mash-up’ compilation I tried a recording of the reunion performance of the Comfortably Numb at Live 8 a few years ago and was entranced by the synergy of visual and song. Hope you do too. BTW a medium quality (90MB MP4) download of the YouTube above is available here. Worth playing full screen with the volume up and the lights down

To further consider how effective game world movies are. I created again out of a moment of relaxation a ‘flycam’ film around some of my ‘builds’ in Second Life. I like others were entranced by the new feature in the engine, Windlight. This rendered more naturalistic reflections and skyscapes for example. The machinima was a self expressive piece, some improvised guitar and piano and flowing movement, not really an typical ‘traffic’ generating video.

Ticking along at a few hundred views over a month on YouTube then Linden Lab decided to feature it on their machinima page. For a week or so it was getting between two to four thousands views per day. Over the past four months or so it has been viewed over 30 000 times, not bad for an ‘art’ video? But outside the numbers what is the dynamic at play here? Well it is really simple. If you own any space where people frequent, make it really, really easy for them to share their experiences. You scratch their back and they will yours. Give them the tools to make it easy to create professional looking content. Let them do the viral marketing for you. Even though the community realise they are doing you a ‘big’ favour, the joy they get from sharing is part of their own virtuous circle.

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Tags: Advertising, animations, ARG, brand, Comfortably, community, compilation, EXPERIENCES, Floyd, free advertising, game, Halo, Laurel, Linden, Linden Lab, machinima, metaverse, Movies, pink floyd, professional entertainment, Second Life, Sims, Social, twinity, Virtual, Virtual Worlds, Warcraft, Web 2.0, world of warcraft, youtube

Unilever - mobile case study

Thanks MMA for this case study:

Unilever Increases Teen Awareness with Multi-Faceted Mobile Campaign (Nokia)

Client: Unilever – Seda Shampoo, Brazil

Sector: Consumer goods, Beauty & personal care

Challenge: Raise awareness of Seda Shampoo among teens in Brazil

Solution: Mobile campaign and customized Nokia 5200 Pink handset

Results: 5% CTR, more than 360,000 visits to mobile site

The client – Unilever, Seda Shampoo

Unilever is the multi-national parent company of many of the world’s leading consumer brands in foods, beverages, cleaning agents and personal care products. Unilever employs nearly 180,000 people globally.

The challenge – Raise awareness of Seda Shampoo among teens in Brazil The Seda brand is part of the Beauty and Hygiene Division of Unilever Brazil. Seda is the leader in the Brazilian shampoo market, with 25% market share. Sold in 80 countries, it even holds the Guinness World Record for the most heads of hair washed and styled in one day. When Seda prepared to release a teen-friendly version of its shampoo, executives discovered that most teens preferred to be communicated with via their mobile handsets. Nokia and interactive agency F.biz created a mobile advertising campaign along with customized handsets for the brand.

The solution – Mobile campaign and customized Nokia 5200 Pink handset As part of the Seda Teens product launch, Nokia and F.biz developed a mobile campaign featuring banner advertising on the Nokia Media Network, and wallpaper and game downloads on a customized Nokia 5200 Pink handset. Banner ads led customers to the download page of the Seda Teens Java game and a Seda Teens branded social networking site. The site allowed users to browse beauty and health tips, horoscopes and an “Experts” area where they could submit questions.

The 5200 Pink came preloaded with Seda Teens advertisements in the opening and closing screens, four Seda Teens campaign themes and MP3s from a popular Brazilian band. The 5200 Pink was shipped with its bookmarks pointing to the Seda mobile community and a mobile game, Dancing Star, was placed as a free download.

The results – 5% CTR, more than 360,000 visits to mobile site

• 5% average click-through rate
• More than 360,000 visits to the mobile Internet site in two months, twice the number of visits to the Seda Teens website
• More than 11,000 game downloads

Paula Lopes, Marketing Manager, Unilever

“We are excited to be taking part in this new marketing initiative, allowing us to reach the consumers we want on the device they want. This campaign shows how innovative both Nokia and Unilever are when it comes to reaching consumers.”

About Nokia Interactive Advertising

Nokia Interactive Advertising provides brands with all that they need to connect with and engage the mobile consumer. It includes:

• The Nokia Media Network, which gives reach to millions of mobile consumers through advertising on more than 100 blue-chip mobile publishers, operator partners and Nokia services.
• Nokia Interactive Solutions that create end-to-end, high performance mobile campaigns for brands using banner ads, mobile Internet sites and location finders, mobile coupons, click-to-call and other advanced mobile mechanics.

To see mobile advertising in action, please visit nokia.mobi/advertising on any mobile device.