Under the Radar Social Media & Entertainment
May 24, 2008
Our good friend Debbie Landa from Dealmaker Media is offering Social Media Club members $100 off their upcoming Social Media and Entertainment event in Moutain View, CA on June 3 at the Microsoft Campus. I am hoping to be there myself as this looks like a great event. You can read more about it on their blog or simply go register following this link for the $100 discount.
The Fireside Chat… Breaking Down the Door to Madison Avenue - Hear from R/GA, JWT, AKQA and GLAM MEDIA
PRESENTING COMPANIES:
33Across - Identifies influential online users
Animoto - Create personalized, professional-quality videos from images and music, offering a new alternative to traditional online photo slideshows
AudioMicro - Stock music and sound effects licensing platform
Aviary -Suite of web-based applications for people who create and a marketplace to sell that content
BigStage - Animate yourself with cutting-edge virtualization technology
Comedy.com - aggregated comedy entertainment site
CrowdSPRING - crowdsourcing of creative talent.
Curse - MMO gamer community.
Dizzywood - A virtual world that allows kids to dress up 3D avatars, play games, explore worlds and meet new friends in a safe environment
ffwd - Organized, multi-platform, video content delivered via a browser, with social network awareness, and predictive recommendations.
GumGum - A licensing and distribution platform for online content
Hollywood Interactive Group - A mass casual mmo based on reality TV concepts and Hollywood stardom.
Jacked - Browser-based “second screen” for TV viewers, which provides synchronized content and a real-time interactive experience that complements what they’re watching on TV
Jygy - Mobile social networking with SMS
Keibi - Moderation and classification of user generated content (UGC)
Kontagent - Next gen social analytics
Kosmix - Categorization engine that crawls billions of Web pages in a unique manner to create algo-generated home pages
Lil’Grams - Tracking your babies memories in real time.
Loomia - Social recommendations bridging established social networking sites with media websites
Loud3r - Aggregating and publishing semantically searched content
MediaForge - We’ve got widgets comin’ out our ads
Mochi Media - Provides independent game developers with analytics, distribution, tools and monetization while providing advertisers with turnkey opportunities to reach the one in three Internet users who play online games.
MovieSet - Platform that brings behind-the-scenes filmmaking online, giving fans authentic access through its proprietary toolkit for Producers.
Mytopia -Social gaming community for Web, Mobile, Smartphone and TV
Nesting - Organizing family activities; scheduling, networking and more
Overlay.tv - video commerce platform that overlays contextual information directly onto online video content
Pikum - A new kind of betting game
PluggedIn - Enjoy stunning, broadcast-quality music videos from your browser
PutPlace - Media storage all the way from Ireland
SocialMedia Networks - enables developers of social media applications to monetize their traffic
Sometrics - Social Analytics and Social Ad Platform
Verismo Networks – High quality video over broadband without a pc.
Vivaty - Brings together your friends, photos and videos into a personal virtual scene, in your browser
Vusion - HD Quality Video over the internet
Wetpaint - Wiki powered websites
Xumii - Take all your contacts from your social networks with you — on your phone!
JUDGES:
Jack Kennedy, EVP Strategy & Corporate Development, Fox Interactive
Bradley Horowitz, VP Product Management, Google
Dan Schiappa, GM - Strategy & Business Development - Entertainment & Devices, Microsoft Marty O’Keefe, Director - Business Strategy & Development - Entertainment & Devices, Microsoft Joshua Newman, Director - Digital Media, Twentieth Century Fox
Kara Swisher, Co-Executive Editor, Wall Street Journal/All things D
Charlene Li, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research
Dave McClure, Startup Advisor & Angel Investor, 500 Hats
Lewis Henderson, SVP, William Morris Agency
Peter Chane, Group Business Product Manager - Open Social, Google
Scott Sangster, Director of Strategic Planning and Development, Walt Disney Internet Group
Jason Oberfest, VP of Business Development, MySpace
Rob Hayes, Partner, First Round Capital
Robert Scoble, Editor, Scobleizer
Chad Kinzelberg, Partner, Scale Venture Partners
Rick Bolander, Partner, Gabriel Venture Partners
Vineet Buch, Partner, BlueRun Venures
Storytelling and the Blogospehere -Third Thursday April 2007
April 30, 2007
This is the recording from Third Thursday’s monthly meetup in Silicon Valley on April 19, 2007. This month’s discussion featured a great presentation from Elisa Camahort and Kathy Klotz-Guest called “How Storytelling is (Still) Critical to Communications in the Blogosphere”. There are really some wonderful insights here that get at the heart of branding, engagement and blogging’s role facilitating both. From the event’s description:
As companies try to figure out how to use blogs and other social media tools to engage with customers, successfully participating in the blogosphere remains a bit of mystery to many marketing and PR professionals. Social media initiatives can’t be spin, but companies must have a compelling story to tell about their brand, culture, products, and customers in their online activities. At the heart of every communications effort must be a story. Storytelling can be an organic process that comes from open dialog with customers.
More feedback on the Meetup from attendees and a full description of the event is available on the group’s Meetup page.
Many thanks to Jen McClure and the Society of New Communications Research for sponsoring this month’s Meetup.
Download MP3 File
We’re all hardwired for Music
March 14, 2007
Tomorrow at the London Club, Michael Spencer and I will show you that we are all hardwired for music. It’s in our very heartbeat. Naturally, we want to walk the talk and include appropriate sound effects in the accompanying podcast.
There are several ways to include message-appropriate, cost-effective, and life-giving music and sound in social media. YouTubers record it themselves. The exact mood or effect that you are looking for may be freely available and one link away, if you can find it! SOUNDDOGS.COM would have sold me 63 seconds of ‘pristing feature film quality’ heartbeat for $6.75 from its awsome collection. Turbo Squid made no such claims, but would still have charged a round $5.
In the end, I followed a recommendation from Lars Ploughmann, whom I met last week while we learned how to podcast from the London Club’s usual master of ceremonies, Lloyd Davis. Lars’ friend, Martin Christensen, provided me with several sound effects in easy-to-use MP3 format free gratis - for which I give my thanks.
So where are the results? You’ll have to listen to tomorrow’s podcast to hear them. There’s still time to input your thoughts and questions to make it a truly interactive evening.
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Discounted Registration: Future of Online Advertising
February 13, 2007
The Future of Online Advertising is a two day conference where the biggest names in online advertising show you how to increase ad revenue from your site, how to use your ad budget effectively and where the online advertising industry is headed.
The conference is coming to New York City on June 7-8, 2007 and Social Media Club members are eligible to receive a 10% discount by using the code ‘SMC-DEAL’.
You may register online and note there is an additional Early Bird discount if tickets are bought by March 5th.
The World is Grey and Mushy - Part 1 of a gazillion
February 13, 2007
I was chatting with Brian Solis just now about his post called, Are You Talking to Me? Taking the BS out of Business Blogging, when I noticed Strumpette’s comment bagging on conversational marketing and some of the broader Cluetrain principles. Its a funny thing that everyone is always trying to be absolute and literal instead of allowing for smart people like Brian and others like Dave Weinberger who understand both the ideal and practical implications of “markets as conversations”. Regardless of your perspective, I hope that more people do understand that all of these emerging practices, however you want to classify them (conversational, social, participatory etc…), are based on COMMUNICATIONS, one way, multiway and bi-directional. To that extent, there are times you want to talk to people and times you want to listen.
The thing is, Strumpette gets caught up in the social and conversational side, or rather the word ‘conversational’, neglecting that all media is a form of communications, and could be easily described as conversational in most of its forms, eventhough the purpose is occasionally out of self interest than group interest. The media created between a performer and their audience, between a blogger and the people who are interested in what they have to say and even David Letterman is largely conversational.
Is conversational marketing or business blogging always good? - of course not, but it often is, and could be better if we work together to explore how and understand why.
Much of the same criticism leveled at Social Media champions like Brian is very similar to that slung at brand marketing before it became widely understood and refined. Same for banner advertising. Same for ecommerce. More case studies with ROI will appear in time. Indeed it already has helped many, they just have not shared their stories yet with many trying to maintain a competitive advantage.
No the world is not always flat, nor is transparency always ok, nor is a consensus driven model always best - we need to use the right thinking in each unique situation. The world is grey and mushy, not black and white. However, when a stragegy is more often broadly appropriate for organizations than less, why not talk about a practice area affirmatively and discover the edges of what works and what doesn’t and where it can go. As I was reminded recently, ‘don’t make yourself the Chief Electricity Officer‘.
When a company has established its trustworthiness in the market, when it is focused on creating value over greedily chumming up sales, when it listens as much as it talks, good things generally do happen - the organization is, in a sense, in harmony with the market it serves. If the organization is having conversations with customers, potential customers, former customers and influential people in their market segment, and the right people are leading the organization’s team, conversation can be the difference between delivering an ok experience and one that becomes a Lovemark - which would you rather have?
Sphere: Related ContentVote for Best Use of Social Media In Super Bowl 2007
February 5, 2007
Great first half, boring second half, but fun time over at Brian Solis’ tonight for the game. The ads were ok, nothing really outstanding, though there were a few gems that got everyone laughing (and a few people cried for the robot who lost his job - or was that a shebot?). Regardless, we are here to determine who had the best use of Social Media in their Super Bowl Advertising. Some tech companies did not throw down the big bucks, but did put up ads on YouTube that were less than funny or entertaining - good thing they did not blow that $2.6MM
I will collect votes through WED morning, Feb 7 @ 9am PST, so cast your vote right now…
[poll=2]
Sphere: Related ContentBest Use of Social Media in the Super Bowl Award - 2007
February 4, 2007
While it may be a long name for an award, this intersection of advertising and Social Media is short on competitors for top honors. As the premiere venue for traditional advertising, it should seem obvious that Super Bowl ads are ripe with opportunities for leveraging Social Media. In that Super Bowl advertising usually includes the best and brightest creative talents and the biggest budgets, I was hoping to see more of a brilliant flash of innovative Social Media strategy. Unfortunately, it seems that the level of risk and potential for backlash from a mishandled effort on the world’s stage was just too much for these advertisers to bear. With $2.6 Million on the line for 30 seconds of airtime, it is somewhat understandable, but it is also a real shame when I think about how much great Social Media could have been produced with all that money!
While I still believe 2007 is the year that Social Media will cross the chasm into the mainstream, it is obviously not happening in February. The earliest of the adventurous travelers are perhaps just now preparing for their journey ahead. Oddly enough, we may not see the massive surge of insightful Social Media usage by large companies come until after the elections, in the time leading into the 2007 holidays. It is strange to think that marketers are going to be learning from politicians in this instance rather than the other way around, but it is a distinct possibility as they are some of the first organizations that are truly being forced to engage through Social Media - participatory democracy here we come…
I hope I am wrong, but my experience as Conference Chair for Content Week over the past few days demonstrates how difficult it will be for many corporate cultures to change from a risk adverse attitude to one that fully embraces authentic engagement built on a model of trust instead of fear. Indeed, the “Attack of the Bloggers” piece from Forbes had a chilling effect on decision makers across the Fortune 2000 and beyond. Thanks Steve.
Then again, this further supports the need for the sort of dialogue that we are hosting with Social Media Club. More specifically, this clearly points to the need for two of our primary missions, training the champions within these organizations and their communications agencies, and more broadly promoting a new level of media literacy across society. As early adopters though, I fear we may all still be focusing our energies on who has the loudest voice, rather than understanding that the ability to hear what people need and respond is more important [thanks to Ryan Troy for pointing this out at our Social Media Cafe]. In sales training they say that you should listen at least 2x as much as you speak. More interestingly, I believe that Superman’s real power came from his super ears - being able to identify people in trouble from far away and swoop in to save the day.
Until this point in time, most corporate Social Media efforts have emanated from digital communications and public relations departments. However, there is more to Social Media than is apparent from the most obvious aspects of user generated content and citizen journalism. While the communications industry is being massively disrupted as individuals wrestle away control of the messaging juggernaut, it is only natural for those entrenched in their gatekeeper roles to resist and defend the status quo. As the Borg says, resistance is futile. Perhaps more poignantly, as my manager Michele Bartram at the US Mint used to say, “the camel’s nose is already in the tent.”
The good news is that the stage for the revolution is clearly being set, and some big brands are getting ready to play. So today, while watching the Super Bowl ads, I ask you to think about the role that Social Media plays and more importantly, think about the role it could have played. As the brightest minds in Social Media, you can help shape the future of advertising and help to make it more than just user generated ad contests and companion blogs. We should all be innovating towards more of a holistic strategy, being made visible through advertising, rather than stopping with the ads and remixes that will be distributed online.
So on to the awards…
Unfortunately, some advertisers keep their ads a secret until they air, so I will be coming back here after the game to post a complete list and open the voting. So far this year, we found three contestants to consider who took the user generated advertising route.
Best Use of Social Media in the Super Bowl Award - 2007
The Entries Thu Far
- Doritos: ‘Crash the Super Bowl contest’ was opened to the public to submit ads with the best one featured on air and the five finalists awarded $10,000 and a trip to the Super Bowl in Miami. This is the closest to pure user generated content of the three pre-announced, with the web site for voting open to comments via JumpCut and promoted through Yahoo!.
- The NFL: They ran a “Pitch us your idea for the best Super Bowl Ad ever. Seriously” campaign, with the winner, advertising agency employee Gino Bona from Portsmouth, NH having his commercial shot by award winning director Joe Pytka. The commercial sounds like a good one, with just the right balance between humor and sentiment, but the approach was influenced by the desire to control the positioning via the production value. Then again, I would love the opportunity to work with Joe one day myself, so that is pretty cool.
- Chevy: They held a similar “pitch us” contest that was only open to college students. More importantly, they actually tracked the progress of the contest and engaged with people through their Chevy College Ad Blog in addition to a broadcast tie in with CBS’ Early Show leading up to the announcement of the winner.
Interesting Possibilities
- A man who goes by the alias JP has been seeking sponsorship of his marriage proposal to air during the big game. He originally sought out funding through the Web but in only raising $75,000 online, is turning to traditional big corporate sponsors for help. For some reason, I think this guy will get lucky in more than one way today…
- Both HP and Snickers are running ads that use the ‘go to the Web site to see more’ angle. To say that the Snickers ad I just saw online is less than compelling is more than an understatement. HP at least takes the celebrity tie-in angle with the boys from American Chopper as the featured stars.
I am sure there will be more, so come back on Monday morning to see the whole list and cast your vote!
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