marketing

POW-POW! “Adding comments has been disabled for this video.” Guess Trigger The Vote forgot about the right to free speech? Ennywaaay... CHUCK NORRIS FTW, as embodied by the bandana-sportin’ Second Amendment likes of Randy, who will pry any semblance of fashion taste from Tim Gunn’s cold, dead, fingers. Also providing a little extra NRA subtext win, Ted Nugent with Wang Dang Sweet Poontang in the background, (albeit about a different type of weapon.)

(Via.)

I just watched a new Vern Fonk Insurance commercial on TV, and it led me to search for the spot online. Alas, the new spot (where customers seeking auto insurance get slapped upside the head by non-Fonk agents) is nowhere to be found. But fret not, I found these gems, and they are really something.

Join another conversation? I want to listen to music, not talk.

So as I sit here blogging angry while streaming Blip, I’m wondering how a brand like Apple, one that wrote the new rules on how people access and buy music, one with a leader like iGod who goes to great lengths to *get it right* before releasing music devices that wrote the new rules, could put out Ping.

I try a lot of things out before deciding if it works for what I need or not, and immediately I knew this was a fail, for no other reason than its interface feels corporate and lacks the features the majority of music sites offer. Others who have issues with it too, and hopefully Apple pulls the plug faster than Google did with Wave.

With this and Genius, they seem to just not get it when it comes to the development of a music community. Much as they might think it is, iTunes is *not* a music community, rather a way into one that they never came up with. And I don’t need Genius algorithms telling what I like. If Jobs was responding in his classic terseness, he might just say “We like it.” Good for you guys, really.

Me, not so much.

Maybe they think existing Mac fans at large will give them a built-in community to make this work. Maybe one of the main problems I have with it—the heavy emphasis on paying for downloads—is actually the medicine Jobs knows consumers will all have to start taking, so why not start implementing it now? I can *sorta* see that logic if that were the case. (Hey, I’m trying to understand the motives here people.)

Except, there are too many case studies of other sites who have gotten it right. Blip, Last.fm, or Pandora are about the latest song you heard. They allow me to see something, immediately sample it, then add it if I want and add the person who found it. These sites have figured out how to add commerce into the equation by providing links on where to buy things. They haven’t sacrificed the overall music experience to do it either.

Ironically, listener supported Radio Paradise, a streaming radio station in iTunes, is an example of what Pandora figured out some time ago—aggregate what’s out there. RP is an active community that not only shares new music but also makes it easy to buy and allows comments on each song. All Apple had to do was work out a deal with them and other streaming radio stations to build one large community.

Launching Ping doesn’t take me right to the act of sharing/discovering music the way current music sites do. Like those above and the newer ones such as Said the Gramophone, The Hood Internet or Mad Descent, they put an emphasis on remixes and original works by emerging artists. (As for a selection test, searching for artists on the sites I mentioned has already yielded zero results in Ping.)

I know licensing is a big part of this too; you only have to look at the recent Gama Bomb vs. U2 fight over streaming to see where the industry is still at on the issue. Yes, people will have to pay for stuff at some point. But a bigger part of the equation is how much exposure listeners get to new music.

Barring that, what’s the point of community if you make access difficult to the very thing people came for in the first place?

Crowdsourcing agency Victor & Spoils is busy doing spec work for Harley-Davidson on the heels of the company's split with Carmichael Lynch, their agency for 31 years.

According to V&S's John Winsor:

We love the Harley-Davidson brand (just like most everyone). And we've talked to a bunch of our creatives and strategists (I dare say some of the best in the world) in our 1,800-strong creative department, and H-D was also at the top of the list of the brands they most loved. So, instead of going through the typical steps of credential decks and pitches, we thought we'd try something different.

We're getting to work.

Just yesterday, the Victors & Spoils team did some quick strategic research pulled from public sources and went ahead and wrote a very open brief. Today, we launched it on our simple work-creation platform called The Squirrel Fight. And right now, creatives and strategists from all over the world are working against your brief.

I bet you didn't know that V&S had "a creative department" with 1800 people in it. I know I didn't. Of course, it's not a traditional creative department. It's a community of creatives willing to pitch their ideas for free to agency types and their clients in hopes that they might get paid, someday.

But let's not get lost in that. Let's think bigger thoughts. Here's one...is Harley's marketing organization--used to working with one of the best ad agencies in the world--ready for something new and different? Here's another thought...is pitching from one's blog or Twitter stream the new three-martini lunch? In my experience, landing new business takes great ideas, but it also takes connections, phone calls, lunches, dinners and lots of cocktails.

An Ozark, MO billboard purchased by a local businessman says so. It’s more of the same great writing found in signs calling out for Bush’s return. Funny, and here I thought who you voted for was still something you could call your own. Reveal it if you want, but for the most part, it’s one of those things like salary discussions that you keep to yourself. So what’s embarrassing isn’t that we live in a country where we are *supposed* to defend to the death the right for someone to say whatever they wish, but the way in which people choose to express that right. Cue Jack in A Few Good Men: I would just rather people who hate the guy give him the finger and be on their way, rather than ridicule someone’s else right to vote the way they wanted.

Red Energy, the #1 energy beverage in Russia, is engaging otherwise-unoccupied citizens of Moscow in a digital scavenger hunt involving QR codes.
The game kicks off at métro stop Paveletskaya, where a user must scan a QR code on the ground with their phones, then answer a riddle, which inevitably leads to a QR code elsewhere in the city. The object is to be the first to crack seven codes; the first to do this for any given game wins a prize. (We really, really hope the prize isn't a can of Red Energy. Because that would be uncool. Even if we were thirsty by then.) Games and prizes change weekly, and the fun continues until September. If you want to know more, and if you happen to read Russian, take a looky-loo at the Red Code website. See? QR codes might seem a little low-fi, and in years to come they may indeed be. But take advantage of the opportunity they provide to play with mobile users out in the real world. Your target's got phones with them all the time. Maybe they're looking for stuff to do. Dig into their natural habitat and give ‘em a little something to play with, some brain exercise mixed with legwork, and a nice little prize for their efforts. They'll reward you - first by participating, second by retelling your story to others. (So make it compelling.) Maybe one day they'll even buy something from you.
Source: Every-ware.fr

Here's another chance to tell the choir that collaboration in the malleable media age is important - nay, crucial. They broaden creative horizons, change the shape of traditional boxes, betray glimpses into the future, and open doors you didn't know you could walk through. (Et cetera, et cetera.) Ponder that while tapping the address of your childhood home into TheWildernessDowntown.com. Use the Chrome browser, because it's Google-powered and will otherwise give you heartache. Close other applications if you can. And whatever you do - DON'T. CHANGE. TABS. Just enjoy it. Directed by Chris Milk for Arcade Fire track "We Used to Wait," the video (does that describe it?) incorporates footage of your childhood home and the surrounding street from an impressive series of angles. The gimmick doesn't feel at all shoehorned in; it melts into the melancholy of the music, unexpectedly reviving your own sense of childhood isolation. Those used to be my train tracks! And that was... Meanwhile, birds fly and this kid runs, runs, runs ... like you used to do back during Wonder Years time. What was that place where we grew up? Why does it seem like an island in a fable? Maybe it's all that sepia. Being a collabo, this isn't just a promo for Arcade Fire's latest, The Suburbs. It's also a "Chrome experiment" - it works best on the GOOGstah's browser, if not exclusively. (Crashed on Safari when I tried, and I'm not even bothering with Firefox.) Finally, maybe most importantly, it's a love letter to HTML5. We hear a lot about how HTML5 is going to eat Flash's face off, but we don't get many examples of what it can do. All we seem to know is, it's indexable for search engines and readable on Apple mobile products. And then there's Steve Jobs' word that it can do everything Flash can, but unless you're a dev/designer who's played with both, you don't actually know that. I'd say this is the most visible and interesting demonstration yet. Thoughts on this approach and/or HTML5 in general?
Sources: Where's My Jetpack?

Once a little investors cash rolls in, even the most innovative startup seems to give in to the siren's call of billboard ads. That said, we give you Foursquare's crowning glory, perched triumphant at the corner of Fashion Ave. and Broadway, NYC. What is this, apart from a sizeable wizz on Flashy Ad Man's favourite fire hydrant? ...nothing else, which is disappointing. At best, it's an F-You at steadfast competitor GoWalla, which scored a mural in New York last month alongside Jay-Z, Mikhail Prokhorov and the New Jersey Nets. But that was cooler. It overlooked Madison Square Garden, home of the New York Knicks. Users were invited to check in and receive something special from GoWalla. It was well thought-out work for a company that, like Nets vs Knicks, is eclipsed by a bigger player (Foursquare) in the big city. When you consider that Foursquare went and bought three tiers of two-sided ad space, you just gotta ask 'em: how could you have used this opportunity? You could've invited people to check in at "The Heart of New York," then broadcast their New York go-to tips in a marquee. You could have made this stop the starting point for a scavenger hunt for cool city-specific badges. You could have, you could have... ...you could have done so much more besides backhand our eyeballs with a giant checkbook.
Sources: Olivier Mermet

Here's packaging that makes you think, even if just to wonder "Why...?" French perfumier Honoré des Prés is punting a line of organic perfumes dubbed We Love New York*, packaged in American-style takeaway cups. The fragrances come in three off-beat varieties: carrot, coconut and, uh, vamp (the Matters blog says this is actually vanilla). Each is made with high-quality biological materials, no synthetic chemical riff-raff. Try to keep the packaging from psyching you into drinking the stuff. (Though if you did, it's unlikely anything terrible would happen. Who knows? It might even be tasty, like Nads)! Jests aside, perfume's definitely a market that suffers from lack of imagination in terms of both advertising and packaging. Not sure the disposable cup idea (or even the name "We Love New York") makes complete sense, but if we walked by an installation we'd still think it was cute and give Carrot a good long inhale. Seems like novelty fare, though; you don't want to spend years of your life known as that quirky girl whose aroma is packaged to-go, like ... well, hamburgers. — - *Milton Glaser must be proud to see his most viral idea finally penetrate another market besides unimaginative sister cities.

In my presentations I oftentimes reference a quote from Gartner which says the following:
“By 2010 more than half of companies that have established an online community will fail to manage it as an agent of change, ultimately eroding customer value.  Rushing into social computing initiatives without clearly defined benefits for both the company and the customer will be the biggest cause of failure.”
Notice that value must be defined for BOTH the customer AND the COMPANY, something I feel that many organizations miss when developing their social web strategy.  Social media isn’t going to go away and while I’m all for testing and playing around with social channels such as twitter, I think the real benefit comes from being able to solve business challenges while making customers happy.  I thought it would make sense to look at a few simple examples of what defining customer and company value can look like.  We don’t need to get too crazy with defining “value” here because quite honestly most companies are still in the early stages so let’s keep things simple.
Company

Looking to speed up or improve the innovation process, soliciting and encouraging customer participation
Improve or augment customer support issues through social channels
Identify product or service problems via customer feedback
Connect with and build relationships with analysts or companies that can result in partnerships or business opportunities
Empower customers to become advocates, the advocates act as Jeremiah Owyang calls them, “unpaid armies”
Improving the end user experience to keep customers coming back to purchase from you

Customer

Timely and quality customer service support resulting in less frustration
The feeling that the organization values the customer
An improved experience when interacting with the company
The ability to affect how a product or service is marketed or created which provides a feeling of importance and contribution
Offers and promotions available exclusively through relevant channels
Peer recognition

You can of course use monitoring tools such as Attensity and Radian 6 to get a better understanding of what your customers are saying about you online and what they expect from you.  This can dramatically help in the customer value creation statement.
Again, these may or may not be specific to your customers or your organization but the key here is actually setting up these key value statements so that you have an idea of what you and your customers are working towards.

Speaking at Apple's annual press conference in California yesterday, chief executive Steve Jobs announced the launch of Ping, a music-orientated social network that lets users to create a profile to share information on music and gigs, as well as allowing them to see what friends and artists are listening to and downloading.

Ping is built into the latest version of iTunes, which has160 million users worldwide, and can be accessed from Macs, iPhones and iPod Touches.

Why is it that I don't care? Maybe it's because I already share my musical interests on Facebook, MySpace and my blog dedicated to the topic. No, that's not it. Maybe it's because I have an external hard drive full of hundreds of albums I BOUGHT from the iTunes store that are unplayable on our new Apple machines, courtesy of Apple's use of DRM and the fact that I changed my identity in the iTunes store. Yep, that's it. Now, I only purchase from iTunes if the song or TV show is not available elsewhere, and Amazon is working hard to make sure it IS available elsewhere. Ergo, my entertainment money goes to Seattle, not Cupertino.

Speaking of things that don't work, I've been using Tweetie (a service Twitter purchased some months ago) on my iPhone for a year or more, but no longer. The app won't authorize my ID and password. This pain isn't mine alone, it's being felt around the Twittersphere. Henry Blodget of Business Insider, for one, is pissed.

Well, it happened.

A few months ago, when Twitter announced that it was going to kill a boatload of startups that had sprung up around its ecosystem, I wondered whether that meant I would eventually be forced to abandon the app I spend about 18 hours a day using (on desktop, mobile, and laptop) -- TweetDeck.

And based on what happened yesterday, it seems the answer to that question is "yes."

Blodget updated his post, saying readers lambasted him for being dumb as a rock because he didn't know that some OAUTH thing was the problem. He admits he doesn't care about OAUTH, he just wants his TweetDeck to work.

This morning, Twitter sent an email to users that tried to explain.

Starting August 31, all applications will be required to use "OAuth" to access your Twitter account.

What's OAuth? OAuth is a technology that enables applications to access Twitter on your behalf with your approval without asking you directly for your password.

Desktop and mobile applications may still ask for your password once, but after that request, they are required to use OAuth in order to access your timeline or allow you to tweet.

Uh huh. WTF does this mean? How do I get Tweetie to work again? There are one million assumptions in Twitter's email and zero steps to take.

Oh, and Twitter dropped 99.9% of my @replies from my @bonehok account. They've been missing for a week now, and the company's response to my support ticket said nothing other than they're aware of the problem. Is Twitter understaffed? Underfunded? Or simply lacking what's truly needed--a clue?

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