Facilitating Real World Interaction Through a Digital Medium

Timberland has a new campaign with startup social network called Changents. The site allows you to throw your support behind small environmental campaigns and join up with others to promote them.  Timberland has teamed up with the site for a Facebook application that allows you to share seeds for a virtual tree. The more seeds you share the the larger your tree grows, and for every tree that reaches full size Timberland will plant a real tree in a deforested area. This is a great example of using interactive marketing not just to entertain on the web but to actually get people to interact with your brand in real life.

If you ask me where the future of the web is it is here, when digital agencies can inspire people to think about their clients’ brands in an offline setting they become worth their weight in gold. Elf Yourself is a great example of a campaign achieving all of the commonly accepted hallmarks of digital media success but achieving absolutely nothing. How many people had memorable offline experiences from being able to paste their faces on a dancing elf.

SEO Marketing….. Worthless.

SEO Marketing is for all intents worthless…. I can’t help but notice the vast majority of full service agencies who have no interactive marketing skill whatsoever profess to be experts at SEO marketing.

Where Crowdsourcing Goes Wrong…

Digg has a community culture where the users not only provide the content, they tend to dictate company policy. Recently with acquisition rumors floating around (Digg executives hired Allen & Co. to help pitch the company for a sale) the Digg community went into an uproar threatening to leave the site if Rose accepts Microsoft’s bid. That said, I think the manner in which Rose has chosen to deal with user revolts (capitulate) is dead wrong. Most hardcore Digg users think of the site as their own, and fashion themselves as co-owners rather than simply users. Rose is playing right into this thinking by backing down when faced with a revolt.

If the acquisition rumors do have any real footing, I’d be surprised if Rose and the rest of the Digg executives don’t accept one of the bids. Consider that Rose has to deal with a rabid user base, aggressive internet giants banging on the door, and VCs looking for major returns on their investments. All together that’s enough to drive anyone mad.

Jason Calacanis to Silicon Valley: Fire Employees Who Don’t Share Passion For Bad Ideas

Something really bothers me about Jason Calacanis. Maybe it’s the fact that I completely hate the idea of Mahalo (really? Human-Powered search? Really?) but I have a general bias against the man that I think is secretly shared by most of the blogosphere. With that in mind, I took a look at his post, “How to Save Money Running a Startup (17 Really Good Tips),” expecting to come away unimpressed and slightly aggravated. While I wasn’t blown away, I was pleasantly surprised with his advice on how to build a cost effective yet comfortable work environment. While most of his office purchases aren’t entirely altruistic, how many can we say are? Even Google’s supposedly utopian work environment strikes me as some scheme cooked up by power-suited, human resources types. What I’d really be interested in, is how he deals with people abusing the perks he’s afforded them, in the same way they’ve abused the ones they were meant to replace.

Missed Longtail, Love Free!!!

What I love about Chris Anderson is that he is always precisely on point with his predictions and observations. In his recent interview with Charlie Rose, he talks about the difference between the Wall Street Journal’s and NYTimes’ internet strategies. This is a point I’ve wanted to make for quite awhile but just couldn’t phrase quite as effectively. He makes two directly opposing viewpoints when considering the closed nature of Wsj.com’s web offering.

On the one hand he notes that infomation wants to be free saying, “Some wants to be free and some wants to be really expensive… Commodity information [the type Wsj.com offers] needs to be free, or they’re not in the conversation.” On the other, he notes that the WSJ’s culture may not be ready for a free web offering. Both points are valid, but to what extent? Is it more important to adhere to the rules of the web and offer a useful product (he goes on to say that, “The job of every print publication is to add value to the web”), or do you stick to your brand?

Wall Street Journal is for all intents and purposes a luxury brand. With that realization, the question that must then be posed is: how do you port your customer’s/subscriber’s real-life experience to the internet? It seems that Wsj.com has decided to attempt to retain some of their core sensibilities by keeping their content subscription based, and thus out of reach of most heavy internet users who are by nature averse to paying for content. The NYTimes on the other hand has taken a much more populist approach and kept the bulk of their website free, thus dominating Wsj.com in most site statistics including: Google Page Rank, Traffic Rank, Blog Rank, Inbound Links, Google Indexed Pages, and del.icio.us Bookmarks (via Website Grader).

Side Note: At the very end of the interview, Anderson mentioned the future of America’s economy/competitive edge. In the most concise way I’ve heard yet, he summed it up saying, “Everything I believe is written on the back of the iPhone, ‘Designed in California, made in China.”

Air Korea: Now With Less Koreans???

2007_Global_Print_Advertising_Bird, originally uploaded by IT Blog.

Among the very first lessons my mother tried to teach me: first impressions matter (see snappy title gone wrong). That must be why I was so taken aback when I started browsing a recent issue of Forbes and saw the above ad for Korean Air. The distinct lack of Asian representation in most of their advertising leads to an absurdly simple question. Does Korean Air want to be a multi-local? I understand that stretches the definition a bit, and takes a few things for granted, but bear in mind: currently Korean Air operates in more countries than McDonald’s did in the mid-nineties [37 vs. 25 via brandchannel]. A mildly useless fact except when taken in context with the growing trend of airline misnomers (If my recent Northwest airlines flight from Detroit to D.C. is any indication). Indeed, a well developed marketing strategy could lead some of us to accept Korean Air as our own, taking into account our misguided concept of airlines as regional.

“Google docs is chock full of FAIL.”

If we’re making admissions, I must say I’ve become enamored with Internet Productivity Suites. I love my basic Writer from Zoho and my Excel sheets from eXpresso. I find every other product (except the aforementioned Expresso) pales in comparison to most of Zoho’s offerings. That said I find it hard to use anything other than Google Docs for my online Office needs. What Google’s products lack in sophistication, usability, and looks they make up for in reach. No longer is it necessary for Google to enter new markets with a dominant offering, with their core products (Internet Search, Advertising, and the ever popular Gmail), the Mountain View giant can quickly capture a significant market share simply by entering a new sector.

What worries me about this is that I’m beginning to think that Google has come to think of themselves mainly as a Microsoft Competitor, rather than an innovator and market disruptor. That’s mildly unfortunate as Microsoft is not known for their innovation either, making the fact that Google is pacing themselves against the other internet (PC/Gaming/Electronics) Titan preposterous. Take for instance Google’s ridiculous reaction to Microsoft’s proposed hostile bid of Yahoo. While it’d be unwise to let Tech Bloggers run your company, why not listen to the cascade of opinions telling you to “Simmer down”. You still have emails’ best product with Gmail, as well as footholds in almost every internet sector, subsector and burgeoning market. Why not just sit back, see what happens and if they do merge, watch the inevitable clash of cultures.

Brand Management

In an attempt to avoid the blogger half-life, I’m adding another substantial section to the blog more in line with my training and skills. Now as well as Brand Marketing, I will begin to cover Internet Products and Services, as well as Internet Marketing. That should add to the material which I have to draw from when writing, as well as increase the number of posts I’m able to do to about three per week (down from my original loftier goals). Also the site will be restructured to the extent that the posts will be longer, and there will be far fewer pictures involved (to further differentiate between the two sections Tech Focused Posts will be demarcated with their own insignia and page). To those of us who are vertical readers, I apologize.

Jesus James Superstar!!!

Lebron James, originally uploaded by Renowned Artwork.

There is an interesting article on Moderately Cerebral Bias discussing Nike’s godlike marketing of Lebron James. Avoiding any of the moral grandstanding MCB indulges in, I have to say I love these advertisements. His performance on court and the likewise depiction of him would give any hoops obsessed suburban kid the idea that James’ Nike gear endows you with god like powers on the court. What better way (even if mildly morally bankrupt) to sell your wares than to imply that they imbue the buyer with powers otherwise unattainable. Below are some of my favorite/most controversial excerpts from the post:

As adapted from Acts 3, which refers to the disciples being witnesses of the resurrection of Jesus Christ:

You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this.

As adapted from Matthew Matthew 7:7-8, in which Jesus encourages his followers that he is a generous God who will provide for them:

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

Link to more information

Big Business: Minority Marketing!!!

901a9cb3, originally uploaded by The Fly Girl.
Shawn Carter has built a name for himself by staying on the pulse of movements within the urban demographic. Frequently he’s lent his cache to major companies in the hopes of taking a slice of the returns. Now, with the launch of Translation Advertising, Shawn Carter hopes to build his own empire from the ground up. Obviously, I’ve been reading a bit too much of the NYTimes but this is something you can’t ignore. A frequent focus of my education thus far has been the influence of minority culture on the mainstream, and with the recent influx of minority driven advertising, the continued dominance of Hip Hop and an estimated $2 trillion in minority buying power I firmly believe it is time not only for minorities to be taken seriously but to control their own destinies (shiver). And who better than to start the trend than the man popularly known as Jay-Z? He has such a cache in the urban markets that his word is taken as the will of God (not much of an overstatement). Translation Advertising will be successful if only for the fact that major companies will sign on just to have a piece of Jay-Z’s magic.