Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield and his company Tiny Speck have come out today with a game they boldly assert could be "the greatest game there ever was". The massively-multiplayer, Web-based Flash game was unveiled this morning and will be opening for private alpha testing soon. While the game will not be fully open to the public until late in 2010, the current site not only gives us a preview of what Tiny Speck has been working on, but offers a way for you to keep track of what's new and sign up to be one of the game's testers. Sponsor What's Your Glitch First, let's get the name out…
Selected by soda
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ReadWriteWeb
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Flickr Co-Founder Unveils Glitch: "The Greatest Game There Ever Was?"
9 Feb 2010 | 10:45 am -
Live Blogging from Google: Launch of Google Buzz
9 Feb 2010 | 9:44 amThis morning, Google is announcing some exciting new features for two of its most popular applications. Team Red, as we affectionately call ourselves, is present at the Googleplex in Mountain View, and we'll be live blogging the event, giving you, dear reader, a fascinating play-by-play. Stay tuned for updates! The event will begin at 10 a.m. Pacific time. Just refresh this post to see new content as events unfold. Additional on-the-fly research and images from RWW journalist Frederic Lardinois. Sponsor 10:45: Mobile Buzz will have a "nearby" setting to see posts/pics from folks around you. -
After Success in Boulder, Open Angel Forum Marches Onward to San Francisco and New York
9 Feb 2010 | 9:10 amThe talk of the venture capital and entrepreneurial towns these days is the Open Angel Forum which after its second event in Boulder, Colorado is now announcing two more events in New York and San Francisco. Brainchild of Jason Calacanis, the Open Angel Forum (OAF) is an opportunity for startups to get face-time with active big-time venture capitalists and angel investors - all for the low, low price of free. Sponsor As we mentioned back in January following the debut event in Los Angeles, the OAF was formed out of frustration over events and investors which charge startups to present their… -
Amazon Simple Storage Service - Not So Simple Anymore
9 Feb 2010 | 9:02 amToday Amazon Web Services announced the availability of a new feature of their Simple Storage Service (S3). Object Versioning now joins the ever growing list of features supported by S3. This proves once again that Amazon Web Services are listening to their customers and putting plenty of distance between them and their competition. Sponsor They Grow Up So Fast In March 2006 Amazon publicly launched S3, the first of their web services. In doing so, they also unveiled their new Web Services division of their business. The service will soon celebrate its 4th birthday; at its 3rd birthday over… -
Google Wave Coming to Google Apps this Year
9 Feb 2010 | 9:00 amGoogle Wave, the maddeningly confusing yet highly innovative real-time collaboration tool, will become a member of Google's online office suite Google Apps later this year. The service, still in closed beta, is meant to be a modern-day revamp of email - what email would be if it was invented in 2009 instead of the 1960's. Yet the interface, a mashup of email, chat, and collaborative document editing, left many early adopters with mixed feelings about the product...at least in its current form. Called "unproductive," "complex," and "overwhelming" by the same people who usually embrace new…
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PR 2.0
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The State of Social Media Around the World 2010
8 Feb 2010 | 3:09 amIf you were to look at Social Media the United States and many other parts of the world, you would believe that the world of Social Media was flat, dominated by social continents including Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, and Flickr. As we zoom in, we visualize other established and emerging social services that depict provinces and outlying settlements of our social atlas.Upon publishing the original Conversation Prism, which was the culmination of a year’s work documenting and organizing the social web by usage and conversational patterns, the world responded by creating… -
The Roles of Facebook and Twitter in Social Media Marketing
5 Feb 2010 | 4:14 amSocial Media marketing is rapidly earning a role in the integrated marketing mix of small and enterprise businesses and as such, it’s transforming every division from the inside out. What starts with one champion in any given division, be it customer service, marketing, public relations, advertising, interactive, et al, eventually inspires an entire organization to socialize. What starts with one, a domino effect usually ensues toppling each department, gaining momentum, and triggering a sense of urgency through its path. And, it also marks the beginning of our journey through the ten… -
Mobile Internet Market to Eclipse Desktop Internet
3 Feb 2010 | 4:42 amSounds like a sensationalistic headline, but if you read Morgan Stanley’s latest series of reports on the Mobile Internet, you’ll walk away with the same impression.Morgan Stanley’s global technology and telecom analysts documented the rapidly changing mobile Internet market to provide a framework for emerging trends and direction.To set the stage, Morgan Stanley forecasts that the mobile Internet market will be at least 2x the size of desktop Internet when comparing Internet users to mobile subscribers.According to the report, Apple’s iTunes + iPhone/Touch ecosystem… -
The Human Algorithm: How Google Ranks Tweets in Real-Time Search
1 Feb 2010 | 4:57 amIn 2009, Google struck a deal with Twitter, rumored at $15 million, to integrate tweets into keyword related Google searches. And last month, Google also integrated real-time search technology to surface blog posts and news content as they hit the Web – dramatically improving the previous five to 15 minutes its spiders would take to crawl the Web. I should also note that Collecta also offers the ability to search the real-time Web, but its results also include popular networks within the social Web. Between Google and Collecta, Twitter Search is starting to show its age.The opportunities… -
Who is the ME in Social Media?
29 Jan 2010 | 4:11 amGood friend Stowe Boyd recently shared a quote by Gabriel García Márquez, “Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life.”Indeed, quite simply many of us live life allowing specific, trusted individuals to know us in one or more of our personae. Our moral compass as well as outside influences affect how we balance our three lives. The size and permeability of our personal dividers vary in the separation of each life and resemble doors that open and close based on our desires. We nurture each individually with slight coalescence, but concentrate on…
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Brand Autopsy
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Fit to Flexible (the skinny edition)
8 Feb 2010 | 4:41 pmTodd Sattersten has written a smart ebook, FIT TO FLEXIBLE, about pricing strategy. He blends together research from economists, theories from businesses strategists, and writings from journalists to concisely share four lessons on how businesses have more flexibility in pricing than ever before. FIXED TO FLEXIBLE is good lunchtime read. (Gotta love it when you can digest thought-provoking business knowledge in the time it takes to eat a turkey sandwich.) Not sure its possible to condense Todd’s message further. I like a challenge... so here’s my attempt to share the gist of FIXED TO… -
Tough Love For Starbucks
26 Jan 2010 | 2:16 pmIt’s been almost two years since Starbucks jumped into the deep waters of social media with their MyStarbucksIdea.com program. This is a website where customers submit and discuss ideas on ways Starbucks can improve its business. Over 80,000 ideas have been submitted and late last year, Starbucks informed us over 50 ideas from customers have been implemented. Cool. Sounds great. Sounds impactful. But wait, let’s take a closer look at these customer-driven ideas Starbucks has "implemented." Of the 53 ideas Starbucks has "implemented," my closer look reveals only a handful of ideas, SIX to… -
LINCHPIN | a dramatic reading
26 Jan 2010 | 3:16 amExperience Seth Godin’s newest book, LINCHPIN: Are You Indispensable, like you never thought possible ... thanks to this dramatic reading by the sultry “Miss Betty.” [NOTE: The Video Blog Association of America has given this video a rating of PG-13, some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.] >> DIRECT LINK to VIDEO [NOTE: I received a free, uncorrected proof copy of LINCHPIN. However, I will spend my money to buy the hardback version.] -
PRICELESS | in less than 300 words
11 Jan 2010 | 11:40 amNext up on the “Less Than 300” project is William Poundstone’s PRICELESS. (Truth be told, ain’t no way PRICELESS can be fully summarized in less than 300 words. No way. But, I’m giving it a shot.) PRICELESS | summarized in less than 300 words PRICELESS is an advanced studies book on pricing practices, perfect for MBA students, product marketers, and entrepreneurs. The author, William Poundstone, draws from studies by renowned economists to dive deep into the psychophysics of money to explain how the “mundane act of naming a price ... turns out to be a surprisingly tricky… -
Less Than 300 Project | TRADE-OFF
8 Jan 2010 | 2:21 pmBusiness books have been a mainstay topic on the Brand Autopsy blog. We’ve done straight-up reviews, shared summaries, and done inane dramatic readings. This year, I plan to share concise summaries of most every business book I read. Concise as in... less than 300 words. We kick off the Less Than 300 Project with Kevin Maney’s worthwhile book, TRADE-OFF: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don’t. TRADE-OFF | summarized in less than 300 words It’s common knowledge consumers make conscious decisions to trade up with some purchases and trade down with other purchases. Kevin Maney…
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Conversation Agent
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How I Participate in Social Networks
9 Feb 2010 | 4:00 amI'm borrowing a page off the Communicatrix blog to lay out how I participate in social networks. Why? Because we all have a different strategy to how we spend our time and energy to be social and to achieve our goals and since we have a strategy, in the spirit of social, we should make it transparent. [hat tip to Skip Shuda for suggesting it]I've been getting more than many requests from several people in many networks lately. Requests to friend, requests to tweet, to forward, to bookmark, to stumble, the list goes on. Being online for the best part of my day makes me very accessible. That I… -
Are You Customer-Averse?
8 Feb 2010 | 4:00 amWe all know the story of how Comcast went from customer-averse to customer-friendly. It started online with a person, and it's making its way to the rest of the organization. You will agree with me that Comcast went from this episode, to this action, to this thinking. They went from customer-averse, to customer-friendly. It didn't happen overnight, still it did. Competition helps, too, so we keep our fingers crossed on any one company getting too big to care.Businesses continue to look for more ways to get new business either from new or current customers -- usually both, in this order. Shiny… -
Trust in Media Down, Good News for Experts
7 Feb 2010 | 4:00 amTrust in business and Government has gone up in the last year, while trust in media seems to be declining across the board -- this is the latest finding of the latest annual Edelman Trust Barometer survey. Take a look at the executive report and see that:Trust in traditional media is trending downward: TV news dropped by 20 points radio news dropped by 17 points print news dropped by 12 points Trust in digital media is still pretty low, and although corporate communications are trending higher than social networks, they're still not that high.We've all witnessed the decline of stretched news… -
The Future Online is Subscription-Based: Why I Joined Third Tribe
5 Feb 2010 | 4:00 amClearly, the title left out a few pieces of information. I believe there is still a future online for free, but increasingly, the way to get things done, to go from conversation to agent, is subscription-based. Why? Accountability, resources, self-selected network, and opportunity to syndicate service, for a fee.The service for a fee model interests me most. That's why I joined Third Tribe as a member this week. The whole velvet rope community concept should make brands pay attention. This is not just a build a community to push your products, or just engage customers in your stuff kind of… -
We Still Get Things Done Through Search
4 Feb 2010 | 4:00 amWith all the talk about social networks and engagement, when it comes to getting things done, we rely on search. The image above was part of the set I used last Fall at the Inbound Marketing Summit when we talked about the importance of creating content for sharing.There was another interesting study I did not mention at the time that confirms a few of the following statements on social media as content delivery mechanism to: help conversions connect to value build relationships extend to influentials engage via education They are all outcomes I've had the opportunity to experience and…
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Church of the Customer Blog
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A tale of 2 birthday cards
4 Feb 2010 | 1:48 pmIt was my birthday this week, so that usually means birthday-related direct mail from women's retail stores. I have two examples that showcase distinct differences between doing the minimum amount and doing something worth buzz. Ann Taylor delivered a typical postcard: 15% off a one-time purchase in February. "On your special day, treat yourself with your Birthday Bonus," says. "It's your birthday. May all of your wishes come true." Anthropologie sent a card in a odd-sized bubble pouch featuring a perforated cupcake with a candle on it. The candle is part of a necklace. It, too, offers 15%… -
Simplify your objectives
27 Jan 2010 | 4:50 amStrategic objectives are the Holy Grail of a company's being. They typically involve big plans, so the natural inclination is to compose a lengthy description of each objective. That means strategies and tactics are often piled into the wording of the objective. That unnecessarily complicates the objective, making it less likely to be understood quickly and efficiently. Anything not understood easily is unlikely to spread. Here's a fictitious, slightly over-the-top example of what a top-heavy objective might look like: Understand how to create better innovation opportunities for our products… -
Why it's important to be a linchpin and an artist
25 Jan 2010 | 9:00 pmIf you want to succeed in today's world of work, author Seth Godin says you should focus on being a "linchpin." That's the title of his new book, so we asked him a few questions about it. Q: What is a linchpin, and why is it important to become one? A linchpin is the part you can't live without, the thing that makes a difference. In every organization there are one (or several) people like this. It might be the brilliant inventor who creates the impossible, but it's far more likely to be the great sales rep or customer service person who makes a connection, or the marketer who knows how to… -
5 new ways to compete for book PR
18 Jan 2010 | 4:15 am(Editor's note: This is a guest post from Barbara Henricks of CaveHenricks, a public relations firm for business books and authors. She's considered by many to be one of the best book publicists in the publishing industry. She can be reached at barbara@cavehenricks.com.) I’ve been in the PR business nearly 20 years, and there’s been more change the past two years than in the first 18. That’s created much fear and confusion. Readers are consuming content from more outlets and with a staggering number of devices-- via iPhones, computers, Blackberries, Kindles, Nooks and Sony Readers, to… -
Please donate to Haiti earthquake relief
15 Jan 2010 | 10:49 amIf you are able, please consider giving to the Haiti relief efforts. We have given to Yele Haiti, a grassroots movement that builds global awareness for Haiti while helping to transform the country through programs in education, sports, the arts and environment. Yéle Haiti was founded in 2005 by Wyclef Jean, Grammy-award winning musician, humanitarian and Goodwill Ambassador to Haiti.
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Micro Persuasion
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Facebook Pulls Lexicon Analytics Tool
9 Feb 2010 | 2:04 amFacebook has taken its promising Lexicon tool down from the site. Perhaps this happened when they pushed their new redesign. Lexicon, like Google Trends, provided limited yet interesting data on site-wide trends. You can read more about it here. From the Lexicon site.... "Thank you for your interest in Lexicon. We are removing the Lexicon product from Facebook for the time being. We may bring components of Lexicon back in the future, but we are focusing development on our analytics tools for Page owners, advertisers and Platform developers." Analytics remains a major focus… -
Trust in Friends Declines, Trust in Experts Rises - Social Media and PR Still Win
8 Feb 2010 | 10:52 amLast week Edelman, my employer, published our tenth annual Trust Barometer study. You can read the full report here. One of the more juicy statistics that Advertising Age and others noted is that trust in peers surprisingly dropped dramatically from 47% to 27%. Tom Foremski says this is bad for PR: "This is bad news for PR agencies because social media has been the ‘point of the spear’ for so many firms. This is what brings in new business." While he's right that social media has been a big business driver, I respectfully disagree with Tom that this is bad news for the PR… -
Facebook Will Centralize the Social Web
8 Feb 2010 | 7:31 amMichael Arrington laments about about the decentralized nature of social content on TechCrunch today... "The online social landscape today sort of feels to me like search did in 1999. It’s a mess, but we don’t complain much about it because we don’t know there’s a better way. You might be sick of hearing this from me, but strongly believe that Facebook is the next Google. It took me a while to "get religion," but now I have it. Just as Google brought a simple way to search the web, my observation is that Facebook is poised to do the same for organizing and -… -
Facebook Could Eat the Web
4 Feb 2010 | 11:54 amPhoto credit: mastermaq Like almost everyone else on the planet, it seems, I am spending more time on Facebook than any other site. The lone exception is Google. The reason I know this is that Safari, my browser, lists Facebook as my most visited site when I access its top sites feature. In addition to using Facebook to check in on what my family, friends and colleagues are up to, I have been using it as a newsreader for months. The screenshot below is my reader. This is something that the company suggested everyone do here. Although I suspect that most users haven't taken the steps… -
Go Big, Get Your Employees on the Bus or Go Home
3 Feb 2010 | 9:10 amThe following is also my column in next week's issue of Advertising Age. Go Big, Get Your Employees on the Bus or Go Home Photo credit: Traffic by scottpowerz The single biggest challenge that marketers face over the next ten years is attention scarcity. Bank on it. According to Andreas Weigland, Amazon.com's former chief scientist, more data was generated by individuals in 2009 than in the entire history of mankind. Human attention, however, is finite - and arguably, it shrinks as we age. The end result is downright ugly. It's like 25 lanes of traffic trying to squeeze through two…
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PR-Squared
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Social Media Abhors A Vacuum
9 Feb 2010 | 8:07 amOne of the issues that large brands must worry about — especially franchise brands — is IF and HOW local affiliates and employees decide to participate online. For example, take a look at a well-known brand like real estate giant Century 21. In addition to the official @C21realestate handle managed by Corp Comms in Parsippany, there are over 350 Century21 employees and/or franchisees on Twitter. Their Twitter handles range from @C21_SUNBELT to @Cntury21, from @Century21Seller to @RealtorToCall (and any number of @firstnamelastname combinations, i.e., no C21 affiliation). Some of these… -
Guess Who’s Talking: Social Media Ethical Dilemmas
8 Feb 2010 | 6:00 amContinuing our series on Social Media Ethical Dilemmas, this post is about the guidelines related to agencies who help client contacts to identify and engage, via commenting, on industry/influencer blogs. The goal is to insert our clients’ executives and perspectives into industry conversations; to help them build up their credibility, and ultimately to create valuable relationships with influencers. How do you do this? How can you effectively inform and educate busy clients while also cultivating the bloggers’ goodwill in an authentic way? Here’s the general process… The Agency… -
Will RSS Fall to Apps?
5 Feb 2010 | 9:15 amSeveral of my friends have launched iPhone apps recently. (I am lookin’ at you, Brian Solis, Chris Brogan, Tamar Weinberg and C.C. Chapman.) This is getting easier and easier to do, thanks to emergent services like Mobile Roadie and Motherapp. On the one hand, yea, I admit it, I smirked at each new announcement. Felt a little too self-reverential. Even Mitch Joel — no shrinking violet — called them “Golden Calf” apps. But I parleyed with C.C. about it, and read his post carefully. His point is not lost on me: RSS is a tool of the elite; most folks surf their Bookmarks… -
SHIFT’s NYC PR Agency Debuts!
3 Feb 2010 | 2:12 pmLast Thursday was a banner day for SHIFT, as we cut the ribbon at the opening of our NYC office. We celebrated in style, ‘natch, with a party that included everyone from SavvyAuntie Melanie Notkin, to reporters from the Wall Street Journal, PRWeek, MediaBistro and RealSimple, to venture capitalists, and many more friends and colleagues. Full-house. Raucous and fun. David Parmet of Marketing Begins at Home probably did the best job of capturing the “real me” — an unmatched combination of goofiness and ego. I half-drunkenly stumbled out onto our NYC… -
Trail of Breadcrumbs
1 Feb 2010 | 4:20 amA new survey conducted by Cision and Don Bates of The George Washington University’s Master’s Degree Program in Strategic Public Relations found that “an overwhelming majority of reporters and editors now depend on social media sources when researching their stories.” Specifically, “89% said they turn to blogs for story research, 65% to social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and 52% to microblogging services such as Twitter.” Per the news release: While the results demonstrate the fast growth of social media as a well-used source of information for mainstream…
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Seth Godin
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TEDthink
9 Feb 2010 | 3:00 amCan you factor this? If you're like most people, you get a little queasy at the thought. And when you were in tenth grade, you surely wondered why they were bothering you.(the answer is (x-2) times (x-2), in case you were curious.)It turns out that the real reason you needed to do this work was to be able to play with numbers in your head. Abstract numerical thought is an important skill among educated people.Which brings us to TED, a conference held every year in Long Beach. It's going on right now. Watch a few TED videos and try to get ahead of the speaker. They have an idea...it's probably… -
Frightened, clueless or uninformed?
8 Feb 2010 | 2:57 amIn the face of significant change and opportunity, people are often one of the three. If you're going to be of assistance, it helps to know which one.Uninformed people need information and insight in order to figure out what to do next. They are approaching the problem with optimism and calm, but they need to be taught. Uninformed is not a pejorative term, it's a temporary state.Clueless people don't know what to do and they don't know that they don't know what to do. They don't know the right questions to ask. Giving them instructions is insufficient. First, they need to be sold on what the… -
The least I could do
7 Feb 2010 | 3:35 amOne way to think about running a successful business is to figure out what the least you can do is, and do that. That's actually what they spent most of my time at business school teaching me.No sense putting more on that pizza, sending more staff to that event, answering the phone in fewer rings... what's the point? No sense being kind, looking people in the eye, being open or welcoming or grateful. Doing the least acceptable amount is the way to maximize short term profit.Of course, there's a different strategy, a crazy alternative that seems to work: do the most you can do instead of the… -
iPad app of my dreams: the digital talking pad
6 Feb 2010 | 8:10 amHere's the spec. If you build it and it's great, I'll use it and I'll blog it.A while ago, I posted about the talking pad and a modern version of it.I think there's a killer app version of this for the iPad, and I hope someone will build it. The talking pad is an interactive presentation tool for smart people.OverviewIt's a very simple concept: a collection of pages (slides, images, type, let's call them pages) that are easy to navigate in a non-linear way. Along with the standard zoom features, I'd like to be able to write on any of them in real time using my finger. I can also call up, on… -
The relentless search for "tell me what to do"
6 Feb 2010 | 2:26 amIf you've ever hired or managed or taught, you know the feeling.People are just begging to be told what to do. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the biggest one is: "If you tell me what to do, the responsibility for the outcome is yours, not mine. I'm safe."When asked, resist.
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Tom Peters
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Link Roundup #12
9 Feb 2010 | 8:20 amKeller Graduate School of Management has an online roundtable discussion series on how "businesses of any size can encourage an environment of corporate entrepreneurship." The Job Search Difficulty Index "measures the difficulty of finding a job" either by state or major U.S. city. For January, as I'm sure you can guess, Michigan was the the most difficult state in which to find a job. With the current state of the job market, many people are turning to self-employment. Reader Stephen Garner pointed us to How to Succeed in the Age of Going Solo from the Wall Street Journal. If you're as… -
Leadership: The Problem Isn't the Problem
3 Feb 2010 | 2:16 pmTom argues that the reaction to the problem often becomes more of a problem than the original misstep would have been if dealt with honestly. As he's been known to say: "Foul up. Fess up. Fast. Fastidiously." You can watch the 2:10 minute video on YouTube and, if you like, download a PDF of its transcript. -
Scary!
1 Feb 2010 | 4:59 amScariest start of an article award 2010, from yesterday's New York Times: "China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world's largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year. China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world's largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants. These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may… -
The Fortune Guy Is the One With the Problem
28 Jan 2010 | 12:22 pmThere's a Fortune article on a Goldman guy who quit. ("The Man Who Walked Away from Goldman Sachs," William Cohan, 0208.10.) The Goldman guy was worried about Goldman doing a header like Lehman. The Fortune guy wrote: ""If Goldman's stock went to zero as Lehman Brothers' had ... then Winkelried's decades of hard work would be vaporized in the blip of a Bloomberg screen." What a horror. Namely, the fact that the Fortune guy could produce that sentence, presumably with no sense of irony. Suppose my net worth was 100.000% wiped out this morning. I would be unhappy. Very unhappy. But ... But… -
What is Excellence?
26 Jan 2010 | 3:59 am[Our guest blogger is Seth Godin, who needs no further introduction here. We'd like to thank him very much for this, his first post at tompeters.com.] Twenty-five years ago, my life (and yours, too, probably) was changed by Tom and Bob's book, In Search of Excellence. After that, on a regular basis, Tom has provided us with shots of brilliance and unsettling reminders that we've got a long way to go to reach our potential as organizations and individuals. Along the way, there's a question that's been nibbled at but never really answered. I mean, I already know many of the 687 ways to create…
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Adrants
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Hello Ladies. I'm on A Horse. And I Smell Like Old Spice
9 Feb 2010 | 9:25 amIn a witty jab at "smell like a lady" mens' fragrances, Old Spice whips out a full on man's man to tell us what real men are all about. -
In Ad Spoof, Google Kidnaps Steve Ballmer's Wife
9 Feb 2010 | 8:38 amIt's not like a spoof of the Google's Parisian ad which ran during the Super Bowl is any surprise. It's how funny it is that surprises. -
Chevrolet Makes Social Media-Style Road Trip to SXSW
9 Feb 2010 | 5:45 amIn a different kind of Movement, Chevrolet will send eight people on a road trip to Austin for SXSW. -
Adrants Makes Up Awards for Super Bowl Commercials
9 Feb 2010 | 4:26 amEvery year we talk about the Super Bowl. And not becasue it's a sport. -
Hot Ass Still A Workable Creative Solution
8 Feb 2010 | 2:03 pmHey, didn't some other brand just do the "your ass will look better if you wear our shoes" thing?
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John Battelle
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The Tuesday Signal
9 Feb 2010 | 7:20 amTuesday, we hope, things will get back to normal after Super Bowl fever had subsided. Google is set to turn Gmail into a status updatin' machine, which positions it to compete directly with Twitter. I'll be posting this Signal an hour or so before the details emerge. I have an FM Board meeting this morning, (don't fear, it's all good...). So click this link for news of Google's Gmail moves. Meanwhile, the past 24 hours has brought, as usual, all manner of linkworthy schtuff: Loopt and Mobile Spinach Team Up for Location-Based Deals (Mashable) I'm watching this space. Hence the… -
A Google Twitter Killer? Not Till Google Mutates
8 Feb 2010 | 11:53 amThat's the rumor (BI via WSJ). The idea is to let Gmail become your portal into status update. It won't work, period, unless it connects to Facebook and Twitter. And so far, as I've pointed out before, Google won't do that, at least, not yet, and and certainly not in the way it should be done. Google is simply not understood by consumers to be a place where they can connect with friends and colleagues. If it intends to become that, it has some DNA mutation in its future. This one should be interesting. -
The Monday Signal: Monday Morn. Advertising Quarterback
8 Feb 2010 | 7:51 amWas it really as simple as that? Google CEO Eric Schmidt took to the blogwaves after the Super Bowl yesterday to explain Google's surprising decision to purchase an ad thusly: We didn't set out to do a Super Bowl ad, or even a TV ad for search. Our goal was simply to create a series of short online videos about our products and our users, and how they interact. But we liked this video so much, and it's had such a positive reaction on YouTube, that we decided to share it with a wider audience. If there's one thing Google's consistent about, it's the company's approach to PR: it always sounds… -
Updated: Google to Air "Search Stories" Ad During Super Bowl...
6 Feb 2010 | 3:11 pmRemember when I wrote about the new "Search Stories" ads for Google's core search offerings?In that post, I noted "It's truly a brand campaign: Google is not selling anything here other than its own brand - that ephemeral sensibility that resides between its customers' ears." Well I've got a pretty reliable source who is telling me Google plans to hit the branded advertising big leagues this Sunday - the source says Google's "Parisian Love" ad (below) will air during the third quarter of the Super Bowl. Now that would be a true turning point for the brand - a brand that, for nearly ten years,… -
The Friday Signal: It's The Platform, Not the Bowl
5 Feb 2010 | 8:35 amFriday is all about the biggest event in television marketing - the Super Bowl. This year (as I've noted here before) I'm struck by how many campaigns are integrated with longer term social marketing platforms. That's putting the investment to good use - promoting what I call a media annuity that will pay back all year long. However, much of the press and some of the marketing still gets it backwards - they see the Super Bowl as something that social media "builds buzz for." Nope. It's the other way round, folks. Your brand, which after all is what you're buying the ad for, right? - your…
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Make the Logo Bigger
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You’re a quart low.
9 Feb 2010 | 10:05 amArla ecological cottage cheese has virtual cow udders. I guess it beats going door to door squirting people with a real cow. Now, go have fun.(By Perfect Fools.) -
The flyover country edition
9 Feb 2010 | 7:54 amThe pre-Super Bowl hype edition was recorded before the game, which means we didn’t say much about it, much. The flyover reference comes from the thought that more creatives should spend time with their audience viewing the final product while it runs, instead of listening to focus groups and planners before the concept stage. Keeps you grounded; least it does me. Toyota gets an ass kicking for its PR moves, while Second Life gets a second chance along with Foursquare (the latter two being two max-hype trends I just can’t get behind.) Jim Mitchem of Smash Communications, Dirk Singer of… -
Super Bowl scraps.
8 Feb 2010 | 11:32 pmNot every part of the country saw the same ads, which is normal. Regional ad buys happen all the time, and Sunday’s game was no different. This series of :15 second CarMax.com spots from BooneOakley ran everywhere but the Northeast or Pacific NW. They feature the infamous prairie dog shock gag as part of their animal kingdom series. (2010 model also includes the optional Capuchin monkey, boxer or cockatoo sport packages.) Props to carmax for not releasing ahead of time. I would’ve rather seen these than a few of the ones I can no longer unsee now (*cough, cough* Skechers). -
I’ll get back to ya.
8 Feb 2010 | 10:17 pmAs real ya think it is. According to one blogger, this Wyoming, MN outdoor really is, even though nobody has claimed ownership. No Photoshop here under penalty of swear to God on a stack of bibles. But, since we’re asking a past POTUS hypothetical, screw Bush, I’d vote to bring Teddy Roosevelt back. See what he could do with Mr. VW Punch The West. Harness nuclear energy? HA! We’ve harnessed Jurassic Park™ technology and are currently homegrowing old school Real Man™ leadership somewhere in a secret lab.*(Via.)*Just need to hurry up and invent the super speedy DNA > grows to adult in… -
I’ll have what she’s having.
8 Feb 2010 | 10:06 pmI already do. Eggs. Six of them in an omelette every day, and I still can’t do what she does. (Yes, eggs have their own Egg Board as well as a commercial.) I watched this thing over and over at first trying to spot the cgi, but then after someone claiming to be Lucy Romberg commented there that it was all real and no cgi, I watched in awe. Eggs—it’s what’s for breakfast.
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Conversation Agent
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How I Participate in Social Networks
9 Feb 2010 | 4:00 amI'm borrowing a page off the Communicatrix blog to lay out how I participate in social networks. Why? Because we all have a different strategy to how we spend our time and energy to be social and to achieve our goals and since we have a strategy, in the spirit of social, we should make it transparent. [hat tip to Skip Shuda for suggesting it]I've been getting more than many requests from several people in many networks lately. Requests to friend, requests to tweet, to forward, to bookmark, to stumble, the list goes on. Being online for the best part of my day makes me very accessible. That I… -
Are You Customer-Averse?
8 Feb 2010 | 4:00 amWe all know the story of how Comcast went from customer-averse to customer-friendly. It started online with a person, and it's making its way to the rest of the organization. You will agree with me that Comcast went from this episode, to this action, to this thinking. They went from customer-averse, to customer-friendly. It didn't happen overnight, still it did. Competition helps, too, so we keep our fingers crossed on any one company getting too big to care.Businesses continue to look for more ways to get new business either from new or current customers -- usually both, in this order. Shiny… -
Trust in Media Down, Good News for Experts
7 Feb 2010 | 4:00 amTrust in business and Government has gone up in the last year, while trust in media seems to be declining across the board -- this is the latest finding of the latest annual Edelman Trust Barometer survey. Take a look at the executive report and see that:Trust in traditional media is trending downward: TV news dropped by 20 points radio news dropped by 17 points print news dropped by 12 points Trust in digital media is still pretty low, and although corporate communications are trending higher than social networks, they're still not that high.We've all witnessed the decline of stretched news… -
The Future Online is Subscription-Based: Why I Joined Third Tribe
5 Feb 2010 | 4:00 amClearly, the title left out a few pieces of information. I believe there is still a future online for free, but increasingly, the way to get things done, to go from conversation to agent, is subscription-based. Why? Accountability, resources, self-selected network, and opportunity to syndicate service, for a fee.The service for a fee model interests me most. That's why I joined Third Tribe as a member this week. The whole velvet rope community concept should make brands pay attention. This is not just a build a community to push your products, or just engage customers in your stuff kind of… -
We Still Get Things Done Through Search
4 Feb 2010 | 4:00 amWith all the talk about social networks and engagement, when it comes to getting things done, we rely on search. The image above was part of the set I used last Fall at the Inbound Marketing Summit when we talked about the importance of creating content for sharing.There was another interesting study I did not mention at the time that confirms a few of the following statements on social media as content delivery mechanism to: help conversions connect to value build relationships extend to influentials engage via education They are all outcomes I've had the opportunity to experience and…
