Micro Marketing

I'm looking forward to Miller High Life's 1 Second spots tomorrow during the Super Bowl. The media buy is a great idea and fits perfectly with the brand. 

I was hoping they'd push the idea a little further and produce a few spots spots with real-time media placement that paralleled the story line of the game. For instance, after an end zone celebration "Tasty Celebration".  Or after a fumble, "Two hands on that High Life." 

It's also an idea that would work great with social media by sending friends a one second message or leveraging one second script lines through crowdsourcing. 

To view the High Life 1 Second Ad site go to www.1secondad.com

Flame-Broiled Engineering

The insight into social networking that Burger King uncovered is so simple I can't believe it was overlooked for so long. The Whopper Sacrifice asks "what are your Facebook friends really worth?" Pure genius. BK completely flipped the Facebook value proposition on it's head by rewarding users that sacrificed 10 of their "Facebook friends" for a free Whopper through a viral application. More than 230,000 friends were removed by 82,000 users during the very short promotion. 

Due to a few technical issues around privacy the promotion was pulled but I give BK (and CP+B) a lot of credit for producing an idea like this.  

Objectified

Gary Hustwit will be releasing a documentary film on industrial design in spring of 2009. If it's anything like Helvetica it will be worth watching.

Opening Day

Several brands and products are attaching their wares to the Obama bandwagon during the run up to the Inaugural Address. Many fall flat simply because they're inauthentic.

The Chicago White Sox have have struck the right tone at the right time with their bringchangehome.com microsite. With spot on messaging and design it's part celebration, part social media promotion and all for the greater good.

Any guesses where the President will be throwing out the first pitch for the 2009 baseball season? 

Nadav Kander Photographs Obama Administration

A very impressive collection of Nadav Kander portraits documenting the incoming Obama staff. For a peak into the process make sure to view the back story as well. Published by the New York Times at http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/magazine/2009-inauguration-gallery/index.html

Streaming Success

Twitter is such a unique medium that people may not completely understand what's going on the first few times they check in. In my opinion it's all about building a quality "stream" to tap into and collaborate with. Building a quality stream that meets your needs can take time and and some discipline. Before logging in you should be aware of the user types you'll come across. Ryan Deal, author of http://mashable.com breaks down the 10 users you'll meet on Twitter.

10. Memes, games, and activities

9. A company, product, or brand

8. Suspended accounts

7. Guy in a suit, corporate background, with more following that followers

6. The default avatar

5. Schoblizer... and others like him

4. Entertainers, athletes, and otherwise famous people

3. News sources

2. Characters, personalities, and unusual entities

1. The rest of us

The rest of us is the key to developing a quality Twitter stream. Any medium that offers a low threshold for entry generates a lot of noise that becomes distracting and possibly a turn off all together. My objective is to build a stream of new media, branding, trend spotters and technology thought leaders. There are several contributors offering up quality information. The key is to keep up.

There are several people already dissecting the art of twitter better than I could but I hope to pull together a cross section of insights on best practices in the near future.

For Ryan's full entry (with some more details about the types) follow:

http://mashable.com/2009/01/01/twitter-user-types

Twitter Poll

Within my Twitter stream there are several individuals contributing ideas and information about their audiences. Mike Johnson, aka TheBusyBrain was able to capture some basic information about his 13,500+ followers with a simple web survey. The graphic above shows an age breakdown to his Twitter stream. There's nothing earth shattering about this data, but I think it's interesting that Twitter can provide a platform for real time quantitative market research.

To view the original posting click here:

http://blog.thebusybrain.com/poll-age-demographics-of-twitter-users/564

The Lake Effect

Lake effect snow has always been an interesting phenomenon to me because it's a lot like creative ideation. With the right conditions you can accumulate a lot of material. In average conditions you net average results.

9 Premonitions For '09

Now that I have a blog it will be much easier to see if any of these come through. Happy New Year everyone. 

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9) Barack Obama will continue to innovate government communications with integrated branding and new media ideas, but will fail to appoint me to his cabinet as Secretary of Branding after several of my repeated requests.

8) Sometime after Spring Break '09, the brand managers at Pepsi will stop mixing whiskey in their drinks and realize what they've done to their identity. It's going to be a hell of a hangover.  

7) wii and twitter form a partnership titled twiittiiwt.

6) Blagojevich will declare Illinois' independence from the union. 

5) Brand managers will finally recognize the print campaign they developed in '08 didn't shift their customers beliefs. 

4) The Blackhawks event at Wrigley will be the largest single sporting event uploaded to flickr in '09. 

3) Ideas will become bigger as teams get smaller. 

2) I will tweet early and often.

1) Google will evolve their brand identity. 

Keeping It Simple

This is a great piece of motion graphics work + music that I came through my twitter stream. If you have a minute or two to load go to:

http://motionographer.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/tad_fin_sd_tiltshift_sh264.mov

Credits:

Audio/The American Dollar

Director/Kasper Verweij

Design & Animation/Menno Fokma, Harm van Zon, Reinier Fleas, Heerko Groefsema, Kasper Verweij, Rogier Hendriks

Post/Rogier Hendriks

Production/Onesize

Social Distortion

After browsing through a handful of agency blogs and reading the year end reviews it's pretty clear that almost every shop is trying to figure out how to leverage social media for their clients. I was more heavily involved with social media a couple of years ago and there was an underlying tension between agencies and clients because nobody couldn't really agree on how to use it. Not only was it literally changing by the day, most agencies were still figuring out how to integrate online and offline initiatives. But as I sit here with my iPhone downloading apps to make my mobile life more fluid you can feel the shift that social media is making into everyday communication and (brand) relationships. 

These three trends from the OgilvyPR blog (http://blog.ogilvypr.com) connect the social media engagement into tangible results.

- In crowdsourcing, My Starbucks Idea reported receiving over 75,000 suggestions since its inception in early 2008; the company has implemented several of those including complimentary wi-fi at stores

- In microblogging, Dell Outlet reported selling over $500,000 in refurbished items through Twitter promotions

- In applications, Acuvue reported greater brand awareness and an 18% sales lift in the quarter following the introduction of a creative corporate Facebook application: Acuvue Wink

Even the local deli is getting into the social media game and I particularly enjoyed Dan Shust's blog entry about Twittering Pastrami. http://blog.resource.com/2008/12/twittering-pastrami/

A spin on the 4P's that I thought was relevant for social media I came across on Mark Stinson's blog (http://brandinnovator.blogspot.com/2008/12/6-fundamentals-of-branding-in-digital.html). Mark suggests extending the "4P's" idea into Personal support. This is one area I think social media can play a huge role in connecting with customers beyond the typical (and reactive) customer service call center. 

If everything in social media is happening too fast for you Big Spaceship does a great job of taking a step back and looking at the big picture: "Way back when, email was scary too. Maybe in the near future, social media will be thought of as just another office tool." Read the full entry at: http://think.bigspaceship.com/2008/12/16/think-before-you-twitter/

Until then you can follow me at http://twitter.com/smithdidit

The Whopper Virgins Mirror

It's a taste test but who cares about the winner in this contest. The Whopper Virgins idea is the most authentic piece of advertising I've seen in awhile and by far the most interesting idea ever to come out of burger culture.  

There's been a lot of negative comments about this campaign ranging from "Those poor people. I bet their stomachs exploded soon after eating those things and woke up the next day craving hamburgers. Thumbs down for CP+B."  to "Why don’t they bring along a little smallpox while they’re at it…"

This campaign isn't about taking advantage of third world cultures or some bizarre global expansion strategy. It's not even about taste! It's about 1 thing: Making Burger King relevant again by getting people talking about it. In this they have succeeded based on all of the noise in the media about it. 

But for me, the real genius of this is how it introduces the idea of discovery and understanding through authentic cultural exchange. Not only did BK take our culture to other parts of the world, they are allowing us peek into cultures many of us aren't familiar with even though it's just a commercial. American society is so preoccupied with itself that we're oblivious to just about every other culture on the planet. We often believe that everyone is just like us. And why not? We're the greatest aren't we?

For better or worse this piece forces us to look at ourselves and take stock in what kind of culture we've created and/or forced onto other parts of the world. It forces us to think about how other people may view our culture and just how foreign we can appear in a different context. It forced me to think where the hell is that guy going to put that wrapper we just gave him? Will it end up in the ocean? Where have I been putting wrappers all of these years? 

These individuals should look curious and confused just like we would be if we were eating seal meat for the first time. I don't think it's designed to exploit them, rather to hold up a different mirror to our own culture. But the underlying point is we need to be aware and open others so that we can have a better understanding of our neighbors whether they live next door or live on another continent. It's everything Obama's been saying! 

Part of this "exchange idea" comes through during the Thailand scene when they show the Americans dining on the other cultures food. They even give you a nice close up of the dish that would typically be reserved for the burger "product as hero" sequence of a typical commercial. Everybody is sharing and it's a two way street. I especially like the last interview and the gentleman revealing he "likes seal meat better." It's a great ending and more importantly it's real. 

So thumbs up to Crispin Porter + Bogusky for letting us have it our way and bringing some other ways to us.