Do you know what Twitter is yet?

It's the reason more and more of the blogs you read have been referring to people as @innonate and @robmay. 

Twitter is a social network based on one simple concept:  What are you doing?  It takes the concept of a Facebook or AIM status message and yanks it from those closed networks and applies it as an open platform.  You can send Twitter messages from GTalk, the web, various clients built on an API, or, most importantly, by SMS on your phone. 

While not a mainstream tool yet, it's become a very popular service among key blogging influencers.

One interesting feature is Tracking.  Tracking allows you to get any mention of a term sent straight to your phone.  So, if you are a Twitter user and you send "track snot" to 40404, every time the word "snot" appears in a Twitter message, it will get sent to you.

Being an avid fan of Jamba Juice, I track "jamba".

I figured I'd get a sporadic mention here and there, but, as it turns out, Twitterers are avid Jamba Juicers and I regularly get posts.

Here are the last few:

(MONEKE):           Jamba juice here i come

(lunaraine): i've introduced 2 new fruits into my life. lemon, meet blueberry and banana. we'll all get along just fine. i could go for Jamba Juice now.

(surfingfarmboy): Currently drinking a "Lime Sublime" smoothie at Mix Juice on Hollywood Rd. in Central Kong Kong. Mix Juice is a precise copy of Jamba.

(michryan):           flag football is next, after Peet's and Jamba Juice.  it's a branded family day.

(spookygirl): Hmm....9:33pm. Jamba Juice it or not? My tastebuds are saying yes...but my laziness because they have no drive-thru say noooo.

When people talk about buzz marketing, tracking conversations, as you can see, Twitter is where it's at. 

People ask about the business model...   I have no doubt there's a serious business model in here providing tools and services to brands to enable them to help track these conversations, over and above the "track" feature.  Who's talking about your brand?  What other things do they talk about?  Who are they? But before that happens, brands need to get serious about Twitter. 

I'm quite sure Jamba Juice has no idea what's going on here, or if they have, they certainly missed this exchange:

(emilychang):           jamba juicing

(emilychang): 6 days ago i twittered i was jamba juicing.

today i got a $20 gift card in the mail from jamba juice to emily "twittered about jamba" chang!

(emilychang):           turns out the jamba juice gifter wasn't a twitter-savvy company, but a nice gift from @ceonyc. haha Yeah... so I was the gifter. 

You have to know the backstory.  Quite a while ago, Emily and I got in a little blogger tiff, due to my slightly overaggressive poking of the bear.  It totally blew up in my face.  So, when I saw Emily's first Twitter message, I immediately thought this might be a good opportunity to bury the hatchet.  I went to the site and got her a gift card.  When I saw she thought it was from someone at Jamba Juice, I thought it was absolutely hilarious.  Clearly, she gave the company too much credit for being Web 2.0 savvy. I mean, they don't even have a blog.

So what should they do?  How can other brands and marketers use Twitter?  Here are some suggestions, brought to you with the help of I Can Has Cheezburger.

1. Listen first. "Track" your brand, if nothing else.  It's really great information.  Unfortunately, you can only send tracks to your phone at the moment, but I'm sure that will change.
2. Listen more.  "Follow" the key influencers and the people that are talking about your brand to here their stories, what other brands they use, what their lives are like, etc.
3. Create a Twitter account for your brand.   It's easier than a blog.  Can't find a person who can write two paragraphs a week that legal and PR approve of?  How about just 140 characters or less at a time?  You could get that approved daily without a lot of fuss, I'm sure.  You can even send links through it...  tips, news stories, links to a corporate blog if you have one. 
4. Free stuff.  A bunch of people sent around that "Buy one, get one free" coupon from Jamba that went around a month or two ago.  That's how I found out about it...via Twitter tracking.  Send links to coupons via Twitter... especially ones that can be redeemed with just a phone.
5. Point of advertising follow up.  You put your website on all your outdoor and transit ads, but how many times are people actually in front of a computer when they see it.  Yet, they probably have their phone on them.  Just tell them "Send 'follow jamba' to 40404" to get updates about Jamba Juice via Twitter.   40404 is an easy short code to remember, and instead of just being a one way communication tool, you're signing them up for a platform that enables them to be a connector and word of mouth marketer as well.
6. Twit of the day.  Encourage people to talk more about your product by holding "Twit of the day" contests that mention your brand.
7. Executive twittering.  Twitter makes your staff seem more connected and real, and provides transparency.  When they Twitter about their day, it gives outsiders insight into how decisions at the company are made.  Its all the benefits of blogging, only with a much lower overhead.  Doesn't even require a computer!
8. Mobile information.  Use the Twitter API to build in an information tool via Twitter.  Tell me where all the nearest Jamba Juices are when I send @jamba location 10010.  Flavor of the week?  @jamba weekly?
9. Sponsor a Twitter display.  Conferences are great places to allow people to interact live with a big TV display.  Twitter allows people to send messages that can be displayed in prominent locations... like a conference backchannel.  Connect a few big TVs up to a box, give people instructions, and slap your logo next to it, and you're now the sponsor of the communication hub, and again, enabling all your audience to go forth and spread the word.
10. Track the competition. What are people saying about the other guy?  Here's an opportunity to make the Folger's switch.  "Bob normally drinks Folgers, but today, we've switched his regular coffee with Bright-eyed and blueberry.  Let's follow his twits and see what happens.

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Tags: jambajuice, twitter

Back in April, Zay Monday posted this "Chocolate Rain" video:

Over 11 million views and a summer of virality later, he's put out another take--this time, a "Cherry Chocolate Rain" video sponsored by Dr. Pepper, who just released a flavor of that name:

So... wait a sec...  how did this happen??  Am I to believe that Dr. Pepper had this product in the works, and just by sheer dumb luck, found this guy writing about chocolate that happened to go viral and then convinced him to add "cherry" to the beginning and make a video?

What would their ad campaign be if this guy never existed?

How long was this product in the works?  Any chance it was actually inspired by the video itself?

Or... any chance that the original video was a plant, six months in advance, making this the greatest viral advertising campaign stunt ever?

Imagine 6 flavors are being considered... they plant 6 ridiculous videos from 6 different people...  and decide that whoever, if anyone" takes off, that's the flavor they're going to put into production, and use the popularity of the first video to push the second.

It's possible, no?

I'd love to see the inside scoop here.

It's hard for me to bet that the Dr. Pepper folks would have been so clever to plant the original so far in advance, but if I don't believe that, then the existence of Zay Monday is the greatest luck a brand ever had.

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Thanks, Nataliya.

I just saw a great ad on Shockwave.com with a limp joystick asking "Is spyware affecting your performance?"   Hilarious.  Nice job whoever did it for McAfee.

And I'd love to have reposted that ad on this blog... and I suppose get paid for it.. but regardless, why should video be the only form of viral advertising.  Every single ad element out there should be sharable.  Where's the embed code for this ad?  Even if you don't build in a way to pay me, people don't get paid to pass YouTube videos around (for the most part) yet either...  so why shouldn't you be making banner ads that are just as entertaining and just as worth playing?

With Microsoft now rumored to be buying 24/7 Real Media, the arms race is at full throttle.  For nextNYer's, the question of "Where will I be working in five years if I want to work in online advertising?" becomes more interesting everyday. 

I'm sure these topics will be covered at the Future of Online Advertising conference, but if you don't have a $995 to drop and you're looking for something a little more conversational, check out nextMadisonAve, next Wednesday, May 9th, at 6:30PM (22 West 27th Street Bet. Broadway/6th - 6th Floor).

nextNY's "Community Conversations" are done in the round (or rectangle, if we're in a conference room) and are an open forum for discussion for the up and coming members of NYC's digital media and technology market.  We invite prominent thought leaders to help lead the conversation, but they're very participatory.

So, if you want to meet with other digital media entreprenuers and professionals to talk about where the advertising and technology market is converging (other than in investment banker wallets) please join us! RSVP Required on our wiki (just click edit and add your name).

Also, if you know of anyone you think would make a great conversation leader for this event, we have some outstanding invites, but I think we'll have an additional slot or two open.  Please let me know at charlie.odonnell@gmail.com.

This new Fight for the Flavor Campaign from Doritos has a fantastic two-player boxing game with bags of Doritos. 

Check it out and feel free to challenge me...   I'm ceonyc.

Does anyone know who built this?  What agency?

Listening to Carla Hendra of Ogilvy, Ed Keller of Keller Fay, Jim Nail of Cymfony, and Jerry Needel of Nielsen Buzzmetrics...

Hey folks, check out this post I wrote over on the Oddcast blog about what we might see in 2007.

Here's something I don't quite understand the economics and protocol of...

MLB pays to advertise, right?  Whether it's the league or teams or whoever, I see baseball ads in the subway.

Yet, if you want to use MLB stuff in a video game, you have to pay them for the license.

But, when MLB wants to be in Second Life, that's free, except for the product costs of hiring someone to contruct the virtual ballpark.

So let me get this straight.... MLB pays to advertise in old media channels that people are paying less and less attention to, only pays minimal production costs to play in what a lot of people believe is the future of online, and then gets paid to be in a growing market where attention is full and engagement is off the charts?

Am I missing something?

Was having a conversation with a friend today who feels a lot of pressure from her PR firm to learn about all of these new social media tools so that her clients can take advantage of them.

She's also given 10-20% of her emerging media time for education, and her emerging media time is only 50% of what she's supposed to be working on for her clients...the rest is on traditional media.

Meanwhile, the folks that make social media attractive... the movers and shakers of MySpace and the blogosphere... they're doing it fulltime.  They're tagging and reblogging and connecting and pasting cool widgets into their pages everyday.

Anyone who doesn't live in that world everyday, not as work research but recreationally, because they love connecting and discovering new things online, is simply going to fall behind. 

It's actually pretty funny, that a lot of these young people who are social network junkies don't realize that the skills they possess are highly sought after by marketing and PR firms.  They have an innate understanding of what flies in this world.

Whether you work for a VC firm, PR firm, in marketing, for a brand, a media company, etc. you need to find a way to integrate these tools into your real life, otherwise it's always going to be something "extra" that you never get to or don't fully understand because you're just a casual user.  There's no blog you can read to get all the answers.  No conference that will help you get it.  What also won't work is hiring a bunch of interns that you think are "cool", because no single intern is going to be representative of anyone else.  Unless you live in this social media world, be prepared to watch it pass you by like an outsider.

 Scott Karp writes a great blog called Publishing 2.0 and he's talked several times about paying for advertising in a world where lots of content can be created and published for free.  What's the point?  Why bother?  Why not just throw some free ads up and let virality take its course?
It's a great point, but I have a few counters.

In the instance of Wendy's creating a MySpace profile, which anyone can do for free:

"What if Wendy’s won’t pay? Will MySpace have to tear down the page? That would be a great advertiser relations program — policing for unpaid commercial pages and tearing them down."

Actually, that's entirely fair and should be expected.  There are lots of instances of software and APIs that are free for non-commercial usage but paid for a commercial license.  If you are using MySpace to make a buck, doesn't MySpace have a right to take a reasonable piece of that buck?  There would have to be tiers, of course...     My local pool hall shouldn't have to pay much more than the price of a Yellow Pages ad for their profile.

Plus, going paid for commercial, just like Craigslist is doing for NYC commercial real estate, gets rid of a lot of spam. 
What's the value of paying?  Think of MySpace like the RedHat of the ad world.  RedHat packages free Linux with a service guarantee and support.  That's what I think of when I think of Advertising 2.0...  sure, viral videos are free to post, but you want more than just a single number--hits.  You want demographics.  You want to see what other types of videos people are watching.  You need data and there's where the MySpaces and YouTubes should really be ramping up.  Give me a whole reporting package that I can show my boss when I create a commercial MySpace profile that tells me a lot about the users.  What's the #1 band of the people who friend me?  Age?  Race?  You can't do that with a free profile but that's very valuable data.

That's one of the things we're focusing on with our upcoming consumer product.  Anyone can sell a virtual t-shirt direct to consumers or as a sponsored ad buy, but I think the difference is in the data and ongoing relationship you build with the users.  Businesses thrive on consumer data and I think that's going to be a major asset of Advertising 2.0.  If you can put a viral video in front of someone, cool... but what you really need if you are a business is a call to action to convert those folks into customers or at least some useable data.  The platforms have, need, or are definitely working on building out those tools.

I'm really getting into these "avatar notes".

 As if you couldn't have predicted this when I joined...   Oddcast is now blogging!  Check out CEO Adi Sideman's first post.  I'll be adding posts from time to time as well.

If you are doing anything in interactive marketing, you should be reading Rohit's blog. His position at Ogilvy gives him a lot of insight into how the role of PR and marketing is changing as digital media changes.

The other day, the terms he used for the role of brands in social media really struck me.

Participate

Commericalize

At the end of the day, brands all want the same thing...   influence, attention, sales... whatever.   This is capitalism and we are all aware that all the free stuff on the web comes at some kind of price. 

But how we encounter those brands can vary dramatically.

"Participating in a conversation" is a very human thing... and for a brand to do it, they need to act more human.  This includes sharing, mutual respect, openness... all sorts of things we come to expect by the actual people around us.  If brands can't do this, it is unlikely we are going to sacrifice any attention that we normally give to our friends in social media.

Every brand manager out there should take out a piece of paper and write down three ways that their brand "participates in a conversation".  If they can't think of any, they should talk to people like Rohit, because they're probably commercializing.

And you thought I was kidding.

I think we should have a contest... what is the most bizzare *legal* service you could sell with a Sitepal avatar.

I have to admit, this site is slightly compelling if for nothing else than the fact that Russian accents are sexy.  I think it's a James Bond thing...    

"She loves me... she stabs me in the leg with a poison tipped shoe-knife... she loves me... she stabs me in the leg with a poison tipped shoe-knife."

We've got a money back guarantee on these characters, so I'd like to issue a challenge for someone to come up with a product a Sitepal can't help sell...

AdSense is easy.  It takes minutes to create a text link and then you can blow out as much advertising as your bank account can take.  That's scaleable.

Banners are a little harder.  Someone has to draw it.  It might take an hour or two, but once its done, you can repurpose.

When you do something a little more creative, it's harder.  Things you can only use once don't scale as well, but they can be a lot more entertaining.  Plus, its much more appealing to the consumer.

Rich media is a great example.  When TV commercials get reporposed for internet video, its mindlessly easy to setup.  However, the level of ease is only matched by the level of hatred people have for TV commercials following them onto the web.  Easy to setup, easy to fail, to alienate... easy to never click a video again.   When I hear the talk about YouTube monetization, I'm hoping we'll see some really creative advertising appear within this unique community, but I also recognize that it might be difficult to make happen.

Or, on the other hand, aren't brands looking for unique?  Don't they want different?  Certainly the agencies should be pushing this, no?  For them to come up with unique applications for all of these web communities, it would be more revenue and more work... but hopefully better results as well.

So how do you create a tradeoff?  Are creative campaigns destined to become more niche and more specialized, making them more appealing, but also less profitable and more people-heavy.  Are there even enough talented creative types around to think of these creative brand interactions?  How does creative and unique scale? 

Totally agree with Fred here...    Postrolls are are really an untapped opportunity.  After you watch a funny baseball clip, a link to buy tickets or sports jerseys makes total sense.  Even better would be if you let users pick the link.

Feedburner lets me approve or bag the ads that appear in my feed and on my site, and I've turned down a few penny stock links here and there... and I think that improves the overall quality of the experience and content on the site.  YouTube should work the same way, letting me turn down advertisers I don't believe in.   

From Searchviews...

"Marketers have been getting excited about the recent distribution deals cut between search engines and social networks....Now consider social networking sites. Users visit pages in those networks not because of the concepts being discussed, but because of the people they know. You may like the same bands, movies, books or sports teams as your friends, but that’s not why you’re ending up at their pages. You’re there to catch up on what’s new with your crew. This is going to completely change the way marketers need to message to these groups."

Can I repeat that?

"This is going to completely change the way marketers need to message to these groups."

Unless you get you users intimately involving themselves in your brand, like this young woman who has a Coach wallpaper as her background in MySpace, its all just going to sound like push advertising for products we don't want, like or care about...   non-user selected or MeVertised advertising is going to be the pop-ups of Web 2.0...  people will do everything to block, get rid of, and avoid this kind of messaging.

What kind of CPMs do you think she's getting on her page for that?  How badly do you think Coach wants to be able to push that kind of thing out?

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I disagree with Fred's assertion that YouTube could be making a ton of money on pre-rolls.

Pre-rolls, in their current form, suck.

No, really suck.

The other day I was watching some great wiffleball footage.  Anyone who ever grew up playing would be really jealous of these guys who seemed to record every single pitch on video over eight seasons.  Man, I pitched this one game where I gave up one hit and whiffed 25...  of course I walked 11, but still...   Anyway, repurposed TV car commercials and mortgage ads would have completely ruined the experience for me.... and that's all YouTube really is... its an entertainment experience.

We put up with TV commercials because, they're more than just entertainment.  There's social capital being built.  We're watching the same shows as our friends...   the price for knowing what happens on Nip Tuck is that you have to watch some commercials... but socially, being in the Nip Tuck "know" is very valuable.  Plus, we're planted in front of the TV... not much on...   the value of switching is pretty low.

But when I watch these wiffleball clips, I may send them to a couple of friends, but its mostly a solitary experience... just pure entertainment value.  I don't need to watch them, and there are a million other distracting entertaining things on the web to choose from.  If I had to watch a 10 second preroll in front of each one, I'd quickly lose interest, because the entertainment value would suffer. 

So how else can YouTube monetize these videos?   Rather than a full pre-roll... how about just a "Sponsored by, around the player.... re-skin the player."  Maybe not the same CPM, but that wouldn't really ruin my viewing experience.

More interesting would be the idea of a user selected theme of some sort...  How about breaking down the elements of a brand and allowing the user to mix them in.  So, with the wiffleball videos, the user could be given a little editor that allows him to stick a logo and some text right on the corner of the screen...  they select from a menu of choices... they might pick Nike or Adidas or Gatorade or something.   Or, let ESPN sponsor the sports videos, pull them onto their site, throw in the SportsCenter theme song, etc.  In that scenario, the owner of the video knows something about the content and the audience that allows them to select an ad that fits, in a way that's not obtrusive.  Plus, knowing that the owner selected it also makes it part of the content, versus something YouTube tacked on at the beginning. 

Plus, the breadth and quality of video advertising has to get a lot better...   maybe companies should be putting live offers out on YouTube for people to create advertising for them and make the videos themselves the advertising.   

Pre-rolls are non-contextual.  They degrade the user experience.  They degrade the quality of the content.   They are not expressive the way the content itself is. 

I know its hard to be creative with your advertising and scale at the same time, but I don't think you'll ever see anyone put up with 10 second prerolls on half the videos they see on YouTube.

I dated a brand once.

We had a great time... lots of fun...  got really close right away, but then, suddenly, I got this note:

"Dear Charlie,

     You've been great to me and I really enjoyed the time we spent together... the money you spent on me... all the friends you've introduced me to, but now this marketing campaign is over and I feel like I need a change.  I'm afraid of just being the same brand all my life.  I'm not ready for this kind of commitment...  I hope you understand.

Love,

Brand-y"


I should have realized it would happen.  Marketing slogans change.  Products get redesigned, usually, for the worse--alienating loyal users.  Its so hard to maintain a consistent relationship with a brand, because they're always changing... looking upstream, downstream, diversifying, etc. 

Its even worse in a world of sell side advertising where you pick the ads you want to run, because they're brands you like.  Then, they just get yanked from you when a campaign runs out.  That's because marketing is campaign driven.  It has an end.  It is seasonal... driven by television lineups, upfronts, etc.  Brands aren't consistent, and so users have little loyalty to the message.  Its only a matter of time before I stop obeying my thirst to drink Sprite or quenching my thirst to drink Gatorade (Is Gatorade even the "thirst quencher" anymore?  I don't remember.) and I'm doing some other action besides just drinking it.

So at some point, Careerbuilder is going to stop paying us to maintain Careerbuilder Monk-e-mails, even though consumers still want to send them.  I mean, are they supposed to run this forever?  Well, maybe...   Its an interesting problem...  certainly it will be a messy breakup...  just one day the "send to a friend" button disappears and your consumer says, "You won't make monkey for me anymore...   we haven't monkeyed around in weeks...  are you seeing another consumer??" 

Persistence in branding is going to be an issue in a sell-side MeVertised world where the consumers think they own the brand and they have to be told they were just "borrowing" it.... unless we see longer term commitments on the parts of brands.  Like, what happens if American Apparel loses interest in Second Life?  Will they close the store?