Marketing Roadmaps

Susan Getgood

Twitter?

by

At New Comm Forum, about half the folks I know were already Twitter addicts, and the other half could be summed up as "yeah, we’ve heard of it but WHY?"

Well, peer pressure still works, so most of us that were not using it already have been messing around with it today, myself included.

Here are my thoughts so far:  Yes, this could be a gigantic time sink, but I can already see one application — if you are trying to find a bit of information or perhaps a reference to someone who can help you out with a specific issue, Twitter lets you put the question immediately to a large group of people.

Tags:

New Comm Forum: the 5 Cs of Viral Marketing

by

The 5Cs of Viral Marketing

  1. Community
  2. Compelling
  3. Comedy
  4. Charity
  5. Contest

 I moderated a panel on viral marketing at New Comm Forum: called Viral Marketing: It’s the Message Not the Media. We started with a basic definition of viral marketing, and then used case studies to illustrate what works and what doesn’t.  A big thank you to Andy Abramson, Gary Goldhammer and Chris Heuer for joining me on the panel.

I’ve uploaded a PDF of the presentation but here’s the Reader’s Digest Condensed Version:

  • In order for an endeavor to be viral marketing, it has to be both viral (spread exponentially and usually with some urgency) and marketing (have a clear and understood business objective).
  • You don’t have to use video, provided you’ve got a good story and you are reaching out to the right people, but video certainly magnifies the effects of a message.
  • The key is to tell a compelling story to the right community.
  • The best campaigns include one or more of the following Cs: comedy, charity, contest.
  • Examples and case studies included Weird Al, Will it Blend, Google, Campbell’s Chunky Click for Cans, Xbox Colony and AXE.

BONUS LINKS:  Not in the presentation, because I got the email minutes before the panel started, SciFi Channel just launched a viral campaign for Battlestar Galactica. Fans can use a whole library of sound and video clips to create their own short Battlestar videos and exec producer David Eick will showcase one during an upcoming episode.

In the Q&A at NewComm, we discussed how this campaign will probably do quite well while similar efforts from car manufacturers have backfired, with folks creating highly negative videos. The difference: SciFi is tapping into a tremendously loyal fan base that is already making their own video mashups. This contest just gives them another outlet for their creativity. Plus easier access to the materials they need to make the videos.  And yes, my son Douglas and I have already started scripting our offering!

By popular demand, Will It Blend?

**************

More New Comm Forum Reports: Chip Griffin, Gary Goldhammer, Joe Thornley

Tags: , , ,

New Comm Forum: Hummers, High Rollers and Second Life

by

Just back from a great three days at New Comm Forum in Las Vegas. I’ll leave it to my high-rolling PR and communications colleagues to give you the recaps of the conference:  Josh Hallet, Shel Israel, Katie Paine, John Cass, Shel Holtz, Shel Israel, Todd Defren,  David Parmet and pictures on Flickr.  A special shout out to Kami Watson Huyse, who did a nice write-up of the Viral Marketing session I moderated.

Instead, I am going to focus on a couple of topics, starting with virtual worlds like Second Life. I do have an avatar, and have wandered around a bit, but Second Life didn’t personally grab me the way it has so many of my colleagues. My 6-1/2 year old son was more enthralled than I was.

So when it came to discussions about the viability of virtual worlds as an environment for marketing, as  you can imagine, I was a bit of a skeptic. While I’m not crazy about the versioning terms Web 1.0 and Web 2.0,  the best way to explain it is that virtual worlds are Web 5.0. We just aren’t there yet.

However, I now believe, more than I did before New Comm Forum, that we will get there. Two things combined to get me there: my son and the New Comm Forum session on Second Life presented by Kami and Linda Zimmer.

First, last weekend, my son discovered Nicktropolis, a virtual world hosted on the Nickleodeon Web site. In Nicktropolis, he can engage with other children and the Nick characters like SpongeBob, Patrick and the Avatar, play games and earn currency which he can then use in various shops throughout the world to furnish his own room. He played on this for hours, and it made up for his previous disappointment that he was too young for Second Life.

More importantly though: he is actively engaging with the Nickleodeon brands in the course of the play. These familiar characters are a large part of the attraction of the world. For him, and this new generation of "digital natives," engaging with brands will be an accepted part of his virtual experience. Now, I certainly hope commercial engagement won’t be all there is, but it will be an integrated and integral part of the experience, not the "sore thumb" that it often appears right now. Because the people playing will expect and understand it, and the companies marketing in the virtual worlds will do a better, more organic job.

Companies will do a better job in large part due to the effort of pioneers like Linda and Kami, who will help us understand how to fit in and "play by the rules" in this new community, this new culture. In their session, they did a great job presenting both the current realities of Second Life as well as the longer term potential  for marketers.

One of the things they covered was how useful Second Life is proving to be for education,and particularly distance learning, allowing students to experience the personal interaction with the professor and fellow students that they otherwise miss. And then someone asked about porn. Because porn is pretty rampant in Second Life. You can certainly avoid it, but it is there. That’s one of the reasons Second Life is an adult world.

And I had an AHA moment.

The porn industry is an early adopter of new technologies. First to video, first to the Web. And now among the first to virtual worlds. In part of course, because it keeps getting kicked out. Pushed out of movie theaters onto video. Filtered out on the Web by products like Cyber Patrol.. But also because it is pretty good at following the money. If the commercial pornographers are there — if they think the audience will turn up —  virtual worlds absolutely have the potential to deliver  returns for more conventional marketers.  In fact, I’d bet on it.

AHA:

  • We’ve got a "leading indicator"  in the porn industry.
  • Virtual worlds like Second Life will be second nature to the new digital natives like my son, at home and at school.
  • Engaging with companies and their brands in these worlds will be no big deal. Provided of course that the engagement is actually engaging, ie entertaining.

It won’t happen tomorrow. Or even next year. But someday, and probably sooner than we think.

Finally, a real highlight of Thursday night’s New Comm Forum dinner at Roy’s, along with the excellent company and wonderful food, was our transportation — the longest, most tricked out Hummer limo I have ever seen. Damn thing was so big, it fit pretty much our entire group of 20 or so people. Hopefully someone will post some pix.

Next post: more thoughts on 21st century press releases.

Tags: , , , ,

More JetBlue Blues and some good advice from Strive

by

The past few days I’ve been thinking about the mini-blogstorm that erupted toward the end of last week about some comments made by JetBlue’s Director of Communications Jenny Dervin. Interviewed in PR Week, she seemed to imply that advice and comments on how to handle the PR around the Valentine’s Day disaster were not at all welcome by JetBlue CorpComm. In later comments, she clarified that it was "ambulance chasers" looking for the JetBlue business that were not welcome. Sincere comments and advice were valuable; she just didn’t appreciate people pitching the business while she was in the midst of a crisis.

Putting myself in her shoes, I definitely understand the reaction. Trying to do the best one can in the midst of a serious crisis, you don’t want to hear — even remotely — from people implying that they could do it better. Or looking for your job. That doesn’t mean you don’t want advice, or that you ignore well meaning advice because it’s NIH. And the advice I read in many blogs, from many folks that I greatly respect, was in no way "ambulance chasing." Which I am sure Ms. Dervin realizes.

But she didn’t say it very well. And that’s what I’ve been thinking about. As communicators, we have to guard against becoming the story. It is our clients, our companies that should be the story, not us. In this age of constant and relatively shameless, and necessary, self promotion, this is hard. But imperative.

When how we do our jobs, or who we are,  becomes more important than the result we achieve for a client or our company, we’ve failed the client, the company.

Now, I certainly don’t think that Ms. Dervin has failed her company. She and her team have done a good job dealing with a real mess. However, I do know that personally, should something similar ever happen to me in future, I’ll be very careful to not become the story myself.

Shifting gears, Sherrilynne Starkie has some great advice about writing leads. Check it out.

And of course, don’t miss Battlestar Galactica, SciFi Channel, Sunday 10pm EST.

Tags: , ,

Filed Under: PR

Blog recommendation: Jane in Progress

by

As regular readers of this blog know, in addition to marketing, PR, my family and my dogs, I am absolutely passionate about the science fiction/fantasy genre.

My latest obsession is the SciFi series Battlestar Galactica. I’m also a spoiler-whore of the worst kind 🙂 You know, the kind of person who sometimes reads the end of a book to make sure she’ll like the ending before getting too invested. Anyway, as I was surfing around looking for material to feed my addiction, I discovered an interesting blog written by screenwriter Jane Espenson.

Espenson was a writer on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly (other series previously on my must watch list.). She has written a couple of Battlestar eps this season, including last week’s super Dirty Hands.

To the point. Jane in Progess  is written for aspiring screenwriters and is chock full of writing tips. Now I am not an aspiring screenwriter, but I find that many of her tips are equally applicable to my work as a marketing and communications professional.

She’s also a great writer, which makes her blog a real pleasure to read. Be sure to check out this post  There’s No Such Thing as Tylium

Tags: ,