Continued socialisation of TV

NewTeeVee has reported that a new service called Tunerfish via Comcast is emerging and it's being billed as Foursquare for video.

While I'm a little ambivalent towards Foursquare (mostly because of its hijacking of Twitter feeds) I do really like that Foursquare is using gaming mechanisms to build community and this is what Tunerfish will supposedly do for TV.

To understand the potential for a service such as Tunersfish take the example of the Lost finale and its corresponding Twitter-stream (graphic on right from NewTeeVee). For Australia the TV show Q and A has ridden the Twitter-stream well incorporating the #qanda hash-tag into its show each week.

You can see that by combining Twitter and TV the once solitary act of watching TV by yourself is becoming a much more social affair. Tunerfish aims to tap this social wave and amplify its effect by game-ifying (I'm gonna TM that!) it.

Like browsing my Twitter feed to find out what people I follow are watching, Tunerfish will aim to be a social discovery mechanism where you find out what your social circle is watching. Now, for myself, I don't have Pay TV so I only have a limited number of channels to watch, but even still the idea of finding our what shows are popular and then watching them by totally legal and broadcaster friendly means is a good one.

Tunerfish is in private Alpha at the moment so I don't know how it really works but the idea of adding game functions to a solitary/social activity is a catchy one.

From a personal perspective the only question I would have is that will it be service agnostic? Because it is being developed by Comcast will someone need to watch TV via a Comcast service or will it be a generic web app for all to use?

There's only one must-have rule for being viral - be legit

Viral campaigns were born of necessity. Whether it was a small film production or cheap start-up business - both with no money - or a large brand that was getting no cut-through in other media. Both these examples had a necessity to go viral to get to their core market.

Some key components of viral campaigns are:

> Use non-traditional channels
> Be irreverent
> Be legit

The third one is the biggest one to get right, because if you're not legit you're going to get yourself into a whole lotta mess.

But what the hell is "being legit" when being viral? Isn't viral all about smoke and mirrors? planting the seed for discussion? Well, yes and no. Creating mystery is one thing, but trying to pull the wool over your customers eyes is another.

The best way to explain is to use examples.

BAD viral blogging - Walmartingacrossamerica - where a couple travel from Walmart to Walmart across America. It turned out this blog was funded by Walmart although no recognition was made. A description of the uproar can be found here.

And now we come to the next round of viral controversy - the viral video.

The past few weeks have been abuzz around a Guitar Hero video posted on You Tube that turned out to be created by the ad agency with the Guitar Hero account.

This is it:



The problem with it was that it never acknowledged that it was essentially made by Guitar Hero. Therefore you could assume that although it was 'virally' and amateurish there would have been a nice budget behind it. It's still a great video, but in the world of gaming, game makers are game makers and fans are fans - game makers cannot impersonate fans, the two worlds must not collide!

What happens when fans revolt? You get great parodies just like freddiw made (warning, this video seems to have been removed from You Tube).

So how do you get it right? Derek Powazek has suggested the EA video they created for Tiger Woods 09. EA did not start the joke, but thought it good enough to get in on. Essentially it started with a fan showing how in the new game Tiger Woods could walk on water. From there, EA had the last laugh!

Check it out:



There will be plenty more case studies on viral campaigns that get it right and those that get it wrong. They key is to be legit with your audience. You do not need to give away all the mystery, far from it, just make sure that if you have a vested interest, let the fans know. In the case of Guitar Hero it may have been as easy as posting the video on the Guitar Hero or ad agency's website with a caption - can you beat this?

GTbyCitroen - PS3 or Citroen who gets the most benefit?

Back in 2006, when I was working for an automotive accessories retailer, we were offered an advertising billboard within the upcoming edition of V8 supercars for the PS2. I thought that this was a pretty big step in the convergence of traditional advertising and promotion and new and alternative forms of media.

Well, even though that was only two-and-a-bit years ago, advertising on a billboard in a PS2 game is the equivalent of sending sputnik into orbit compared to today's international space station.

I make this analogy because I read in today's Australian that Citroen have made a full concept model of their GT car that they developed for the PS3 game, Gran Turismo 5.

This just goes to show that while a little old Australian retailer might consider billboards an extravagant additional advertising cost, a global car manufacturer sees it as an economical model to develop and market test a concept car for the public.

While in this case the concept car was made at the same time as the virtual car, I can just imagine in the future where cars are built for games first then rated, reviewed and judged prior to any consideration is given to outlaying the costs for physical production.

Again, this just goes to show that technology, given the right need, is a great tool for marketing. Sure, the GTbyCitroen might turn out to be a one-off thrill ride, but the mere fact that it made the journey from PS3 to the Paris Motor Show is a giant leap in the convergence of consumer and alternative media and shows one company's use of the connection.