So you monitor Twitter feeds, Google feeds, what’s going on Digg and in the blogoshere - all to stay current on what people are saying about your brand and to make sure you kill any fire drills before they become bigger in scope. But how do you turn something that could be really bad into something that could be really good?
Or as Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins says “Live the Chinese cliche of turning danger into opportunity.” Well you have to be creative, and apparently those folks over at EA have their creative juices flowing.
Last August a YouTube user named Levinator25 posted a video online of a glitch in Tiger Woods 2008. The apparent glitch allowed the virtual Tiger to take a shot in the middle of a water hazard as effortlessly as he would on land.
Well those creative folks over at EA monitor YouTube. They apparently heard the chatter around the glitch with serious gamers and it wasn’t lost on them. So nearly a year later as EA made Tiger Woods 2009 demos available online in advance of the game hitting the shelves, they cleverly tied the glitch into their marketing campaign.
In the YouTube video posted on Tuesday and specifically addressed to Levinator25, EA notes:
“Levinator25, you seem to think your Jesus Shot Video was a glitch in the Game. It’s not a Glitch. He’s just that good.”
If social media is on your radar, you’re obviously familiar with Mashable and its founder Pete Cashmore. The blogging network, designed to cover Web 2.0 and launched by Cashmore in 2005, brings in an estimated $166,000 in monthly revenue through sponsorships and advertising. Racepoint Group was in attendance (with more then 400 others) at Mashable’s SummerMash Boston tour stop on Tuesday at the Roxy and had the chance to sit down with Cashmore.
Here is a piece of the interview that my colleague and RaceTalk correspondent Erik Milster had with him:
Although Cashmore wasn’t willing to fully disclose what’s in the pipeline for the rest of this year and moving into next year, it’s clear that the site will continue to be a must read for those involved in Web 2.0 and social media. According to Compete.com, in July the site nearly hit 1 million unique visitors - falling just short - with 977,328.
I took in the “How Net Content will be Monetized Round Table (Wedding Table) at Fortune Brainstorm: TECH this morning. Hosted by Fortune’sAdam Lashinsky the round table included Greg Waldorf, CEO of eHarmony; Neil Ashe, President of CBS Interactive; Robert Glaser, CEO of RealNetworks and Mike Volpi, CEO of Joost.
Here are some of the excerpts from the round table:
Adam Lashinsky: Good morning, we are going to be talking about “Net Monetization.” This is not the format that we planned on doing for a breakfast round table (straight table facing the audience). We had so many people sign-up we decided we’d do something like a head table at a wedding with you being the guests. However, we’re not going to talk to you we are going to talk with you.
Robert Glaser, President & CEO of RealNetworks:
600 million in revue last year. 2/3 of monetization comes through consumer purchases. 1/3 is from net carriers.
Our goal is to create a balance in revenue streams.
You look at what Google does with only one revenue stream and may think we are taking the wrong route, but you have to diversify.
Behavioral targeting is an major opportunity, but there doesn’t appear to be an Overture type idea out there that goes beyond search.
Greg Waldorf, CEO of eHarmony:
eHarmony was founded 8 years ago to be a series match making site. It was a crazy idea at the time because the industry was dominated by the photo-clicking approach.
We recently released Harris Interactive numbers, which found that 236 people marry each day (on average) through eHarmony.
This has allowed the business to become very successful and over 200 million in revenues last year.
Lashinsky - ”My best friend met his wife through eHarmony. He’s a serious guy, so I guess he needed a serious relationship site.”
96 - 97 percent of our revenue comes from subscriptions.
Match.com and ourselves are really the biggest players in the space.
We want to keep a “happy” churn rate - given our goal to match couples in serious long-term relationships (which leads to them leaving site). Usually takes a couple of months for that to happen.
You can’t just create great content first and then say we’ll figure out how to monetize it later. I think people have this belief that good content will easily translate into ad revenue and that is just not the case when you are looking at scale.
Mike Volpi, CEO of Joost:
Joost was created in October of last year and has slightly under 1 million unique visitors.
We have a revenue share model that goes back to content owners.
We’ve really been the first online video destination to use the 30-second in-spot ad that is seen on TV.
Music has been really hard to monetize on our site because its hard to understand interests in music to target relevant ads at users.
President of CBS Interactive:
Earlier this year I was the CEO of CNET Networks and now I am the President of CBS Interactive after the close of our sale to the CBS Corporation.
We reach the 8th largest Internet network in the world.
80 percent of business is ad supported through sponsorships or advertisements.
About 20 percent of our business is in major countries in Europe.
We’ve found that you can’t out grow your category. The growth of advertising revenue has grown across the Internet but there is a cap in how it can grow within certain markets on the Internet.
We’ve made mistakes along the way. We never could monetize Webshots. We could sell certain sponsorships but not for each individual page view.
Disclosure: eHarmony is a client of the Racepoint Group
My favorite show on TV right now is “Mad Men” on AMC, which returns with Season Two on Sunday, July 27th. There I got my shameless plug out of the way. The Golden Globe winning show (It should garner several Emmy nods on July 17th) that still plays host to a relatively small audience because of its home on AMC, chronicles the “Golden Age” of 1960’s advertising.
The show’s star Donald Draper (played by Jon Hamm) is the Creative Director and Partner at the fictional 1960’s Madison Avenue shop “Sterling Cooper.” Throughout the first season Draper illustrates an aptitude for pulling ideas out of thin air to win over his prospective clients during presentations. However, the Season 1 finale really provided us with Draper’s “Kodak Moment.”
In the clip embedded above, Draper is asked to fit Kodak’s new “Wheel” slide projector into its product marketing and a potential advertising campaign. I’ll let you judge for yourself; but let’s just say it leads to one of his colleagues leaving the room in tears and the Kodak executives left to pick their jaws off the floor.
That’s followed by the classic line from the Head of Accounts Duck Phillips (played by Mark Moses):
“Good luck at your next meeting.”
Yes, it’s a little over-the-top Hollywood dramatization, but tell me it isn’t the pitch we all dream of? If only Madison Avenue was this relevant today…..
As I log into Facebook each day and quickly read through my “news feed” to see what my friends are doing (much like how “normal” people read the daily paper), I’m noticing a trend. These days news feeds are also populated by advertisers and products that want to update me on free ice cream at Ben & Jerry’sor new candy from Mike & Ike’s (Facebook’s targeted ad system must have me mixed up with a sugar-comatosed eight-year old boy).
However, I’m also noticing that a leading Web company is advertising on Facebook. You may have heard of them before, they’re called Facebook. Yes, as confusing as I made it sound, Facebook is advertising their own ad network in most user’s news feeds. My 17 year-old sister, for one, also has the image I posted above popping up in her news feeds with supporting text that says, “80 million users strong. With Facebook’s highly targeted ad system, how will you connect them? Learn here now.”
That my friends, does not equal the likelihood of a high Click-Through-Rate (CTR). I love my sister to death, but her current understanding of advertising -and interest in it- solely revolves around the latest Prada bag she bought thanks to what she saw in Cosmo.
Why to begin with is Facebook advertising its Ad Network to everyday consumers? Wouldn’t they be better suited to target the advertisements to users in the industry that actually have control over advertising budgets (or even work for a company in my sister’s case).
It really points to the bigger problem that Facebook has. Its targeted ad systems just isn’t that targeted. The company is on the right track in creating social advertising but the holy grail of the next generation ad network will be intelligently engaging in brand discussion with the right group of segmented users. Facebook needs to find a way to better target their advertisements so advertisers (including themselves apparently) will know that their product/advertisement will be recommended to a certain % of consumers that have a high likelihood of buying the product or service.
It’s all about CTR’S, which are created by getting relevant ads in front of interested users. Until they can figure this out, they might want to stop advertising their ad network all together.
Wedding budget a little tight? Get corporate sponsorship on eBay!
Kelly Gray and her fiancé Karl Gau were set to be married in April of 2009, but the budget was tight and the couple hoped to have a bit more money to put toward the wedding. The solution to their money woes: creating the “Be My Bridesmaid” eBay auction.
The highest bidder wins a spot in the wedding party, a dress/tuxedo, shoes, and a “plus one” invitation to the reception. The auction created instant buzz, gaining the attention of media people waiting to see how far bidding would go.
When bidding closed on June 25, a member called “drpeppersnapple” had bid $5,700. To Kelly and Karl’s amazement, they had caught the attention of the people at The Dr. Pepper Snapple Group – who later raised their offer to $10,000. (Note: They will also be providing drinks for the wedding… Snapple iced teas all around! Wooo!)
The Dr. Pepper Snapple Group put out a press release yesterday saying “Weddings are about families, and we have a large one … more than 50 different brands from Dr. Pepper to Rose’s Mojitos,” said Greg Artkop, spokesperson for Dr. Pepper Snapple Group. “In fact, you can find us behind the bar at most weddings, so we’re looking forward to being up at the altar for once.”
Snapple has had super-creative advertising campaigns in the past… but this one takes the [wedding] cake. Cheap publicity or not, Snapple sure knows how to leverage online buzz to its advantage.
I had the opportunity to attend PRSA’s Digital Impact Conference the past few days in New York City, and discovered quite a few new resources that I wanted to pass along, as we all try to identify the best ways to make our digital and social media marks online. Check them out when you get a chance!
SEO / Linking and Ranking Tools
Seodigger.com - Shows how a company ranks for organic search
Market Leap - Add in a URL and see how many links your site has versus competitors, and what their ranks are
Search Rascal - Shows the sites that are ranked for use of one certain word, and how it changes over time
“Link:” on www.Google.com – If you type “link:” immediately followed by a domain name (ex: link:racepointgroup.com) into Google search, the results will show you which and how many sites are linking to that domain name
Twitter
TweetScan - A real-time search engine for Twitter that lets you find the conversations on the topics you want.
Who Should i Follow - Enter in your Twitter username, and this tool will give you suggestions of people you might want to follow.
TweetWheel - A tool that shows you which of your Twitter friends know one another
TwitDer – A Twitter directory that shows you the most popularly followed people on Twitter, and the people that send the most updates
Video
Icyou.com - Healthcare video community that brings you everything from late-breaking medical research videos to exercise tips
Tubemogul - Video analytic tool that shows you when, where and how often videos are being watched, letting you measure how powerful your video marketing campaign is against competitors
RedLasso – Search national and local TV and radio broadcasts and make clips to post to your site
Podcasts
Podscope - Search engine that lets you search podcasts by typing in a phrase of spoken words
Podcast Alley - One of the biggest collections of podcasts on the Internet – features the top 10 podcasts as rated by listeners
Can you imagine living under a government that cares so little for your wellbeing that it deliberately fails to notify you of an impending natural disaster?
More than 100,000 people have died or gone missing at the hands of the cyclone that tore through Burma on May 2 – regulations and censorship boards created under the military dictatorship of Than Shwe ban free press, providing the Burmese people with no warning, and no forum to speak to the atrocities they have been facing.
The 30 Days for a Million Voices campaign has enlisted the help of celebrities to create poignant and thought-provoking video messages each day of the initiative, with the ultimate goal of raising money and awareness, bringing the truth about Burma to light.
A few of the startling facts I’ve learned from this campaign:
Political activist Aung San Suu Kyi – the world’s only imprisoned recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize -has been on house arrest for 12 years for fighting for human rights and democracy in Burma
3,200 villages in Burma have been destroyed under the illegal military regime
For public healthcare, Burma ranks 190th out of 191
For freedom of expression, Burma ranks 164th out of 168
W2 Group is working with Fanista to raise awareness and activism, through Racepoint Group’s media outreach and Digital Influence Group’s viral marketing campaign, which includes developing a Facebook application and social networking badges promoting burmaitcantwait.org. DIG will also be contributing $10 to the U.S. Campaign for Burma for every non-spam comment or trackback made to this post.
Make your voice heard in support of a country of people that have no voices. Find out how you can take action today.
