Beach balls, LEDs, live music, creators projects

Can't believe it's taken me this long to discover the Vice/Intel Creators Project.

Creative and inventive minds together, a great combination. Looking forward to watching more videos like this one:

Chinese youth culture today

One area of marketing that I would love to study further is youth culture throughout Asia. Below is a great presentation on Chinese youth culture. It shows the evolution of Chinese youth to an individual yet inclusive culture, where millions of youth are facing similar societal pressures. It shows that when the youth do not find the cultural values they seek within China they will turn to international cultural consumption from Taiwan to Thailand and Japan. This is in-turn feeding new cultural industries within China melding external influences with local Chinese culture.

There are too many insights to summarise here so I suggest you view the presentation to get all the great information!

Ypulse Mashup presentation: Building deeper connectin with China youth

View more presentations from Lisa Li.

Social media from outside the marketing department

It's been a little over 12 months since I left the marketing department at work. I'm now sitting in a small team that is curiously called Knowledge Exchange and essentially our role is to "help members connect with each other online and share experiences" (that's how I put it).

I've had a fantastic time in the role because it has given me the freedom to voraciously learn about everything that online collaboration/networking/sharing can offer. I've got my million-and-one accounts on every service possible; I'm talking to people I would never have met were it not for the Interwebz and all up I think I've had a bloody educational year.

But one of the biggest things that it has taught me is that doing this stuff just ain't natural to everyone. For the past four or five months I've been having regular catch-ups with my old marketing team to get them on-board as advocates for online collaboration.

While it is true a person's need is the first step in deciding what and indeed if collaboration should be online, in these meetings we've decided to have a bit of a taste-test to learn about the fun things that live online. The team has tasted forums, blogs, micro-blogs, wikis, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube... the works. And in the end I think that the biggest learning I've had is that for most of these tools and platforms you simply can't explain the benefit - you have to experience the benefit.

And that's a bloody hard sell. The whole "trust me" line just doesn't cut the mustard when a member receives their 4th email for the month.

Deborah Schultz, partner at the emerging tech strategy consultancy Altimeter, also shows in her P&G digital hack night, the 'jump-in' mind-set of a digital native/convert is different from the 'planned' marketing mind-set. Marketing, as creative as it might sound to the outsider, is actually about tangible benefits and direct outputs - $1,000 input gives me 6% return gives me $20,000 sales. It's logical, it's tested, it works. Marketing reads the instructions, figures out how it works and then applies the correct procedures.

Sitting outside the marketing department has given me a new appreciation for the act of marketing, especially in this new world of 'experiences'. The digital native/convert has accepted that the world simply has too many experiences and opportunities to sit down and read the instructions. You simply gotta jump in and go for a ride. If you don't like it get out, get in the next one, try something else. You'll find the one that you get a benefit from soon enough. Try marketing that! And everybody's 'it' is different to the next.

The best I could say is get your story right and tell your story through the experiences that you market. And it doesn't all have to be digital. Red Bull is a great example of a company/brand that has a story to tell through the experiences it markets and I bet their marketing spend is 90% off-line.

So in a little over twelve months a curious thing has happened to me, my walls of data and measures that direct-marketing taught me have started to crumble. Instead I'm now talking about stories and experiences, about failing, collaborating, talking with people not at them.

... I think I have a long way to go to win over the marketing department but I'll keep working at it. Good luck to all you other digitals out there converting the analogue marketing departments of yesterday.

Imagine a subversive world delivered via augmented reality

This just blew my mind with the possibilities.

From the Digital Urban blog...

A new application from Metaio is taking the concept a step forward allowing users to leave tweets, messages, web pages and 3D models in a real space for other users to view or pick up when there are in the vicinity.

An example Digital Urban gives is the opportunity for augmented reality graffiti. Wow, the possibilities for a really subversive world hidden from reality, open only to those with the right key... wow.

Changing of the guard for online content recognition

YouTube and Read Write Web have both commented this past day on Jill and Kevin's wedding dance and the subsequent news that Sony has actively profited from the 'improper use' of the Chris Brown song that Jill and Kevin danced to.

The YouTube post discusses how rights holders of content such as music can actively manage their content through YouTube's click-to-buy which has been live for a year or so. YouTube highlight's the direct correlation between the appearance of J&K's wedding dance and the Chris Brown's year-old song rocketing back up the iTunes and Amazon charts.

Read Write Web then goes on to highlight the change in tactic Sony has employed going from restricting use of their content in these User Generated (UGC) videos to identifying themselves as the content owner of the music and adding in a click-to-buy advertisement pointing people to either iTunes or Amazon to purchase the song.

I think it's a great move on Sony's behalf and the proof can be seen in the dollars rolling in. YouTube's ClaimID system that can automatically identify a song and notify a rights holder would really be an ace up their sleeve if all major and independent labels encouraged the method Sony has taken.

Imagine all the machinima creators, vloggers and other creative types out there being encouraged to take their pick of any song they wish instead of a limited amount of home-study productions. I think we'd see a whole new wave of UGC being unleashed onto our screens.

This is a real win for fair-use and share-alike on the web and I only hope it can extend further. If logos such as Facebook and YouTube could have a ClaimID type system attached you would no longer have to fret about whether some big-bad lawyer is going to serve a take-down notice on your site because of the improper use of a logo or content.

I can also see Internet radio having a great time with this. One click to purchase any song playing live online right now.

Maybe for artwork and design too? One click on an image to go to an online shop to purchase the original creator's work.

Text? Could it go too far? Should we all just freely use each other's work and share-alike?

Maybe this new tack from Sony poses more questions than it answers, but the fact that everybody seems to win from the deal makes it such an appealing option.

Livestrong and the STAGES exhibition

STAGES09

I am a big fan of Lance Armstrong. I am a big fan of the Lance Armstrong Foundation, Livestrong. If every charitable foundation could have a Lance Armstrong in it we'd all be in a better place.

Here's what's great about the man and the foundation - their both driven; relentless; passionate; positive; creative; loved and loving. Basically they know what they want and they're going to get it.

Forget about the fact Lance is back in the Tour, That's just the dressing on top - the real reason Lance is in Europe is to promote Livestrong. In Paris during and after the race the STAGES art exhibition is on show (the video above describes Shepard Fairey's entry in the exhibition) and in August Lance and Livestrong will be in Dublin for a summit to further promote the foundations good work.

Lance's involvement in sport and in art shows everyone that can get involved in an honest and positive way. Nike's continued involvement with Livestrong and support of STAGES should be seen as a model for corporate partnerships and giving back to the community. The artists eagerness to be involved in this campaign also shows the amount of respect Lance has across industries, interests and cultures. Uniting sport and art has been one of the hallmarks of the Lance Armstrong Foundation. It's an odd marriage but through the single focus of fighting cancer Lance has drawn the best out of everyone involved and we're all the better for it.

The growing world of Augmented Reality

Disclaimer: I'm writing this blog post with no, repeat NO, technical understanding about how AR works, so keep that in mind.

Augmented Reality (or just AR) is picking up steam, largely i think off the back of new powerful mobile devices a la iPhone and the likes.

New AR applications are being released almost every week. They seem to be falling into two camps at the moment: Practical tools or gimiky advertising.

The gimiky advertising use of AR has built up steam and while some in advertising might lament the over-use of AR and the questionable tangible benefits, it is had to go past the "we're doing it because it's cool" arguement, because frankly, it is cool.

Here's a few examples of advertising uses of AR:



On the practical side of things, there are plenty more tangible benefits. By watching the clips below you'll see that assisting technical operations and overlaying information on points of interest are just some of the great ways AR can help bring real-time information to real world situations.

Here's a few examples of practical uses of AR:



The rumor mill has it that Apple will bring out AR support for the iPhone later this year - it'd be a hard one for Apple to pass by with the amount of applications possible.

You may be in the 'why isn't one reality enough?' camp or you might be in the 'bring it on' camp but the short of it is that mobile devices and demand for real-time information mean that reality and virtual reality are on a collision course and AR is how it is playing out.

Oh, and i'll leave the last word to a comment posted by mihaiviteazu5 on YouTube,":D idiot proof , the way of the future".

The set-up of a mixed-reality event

So, I've been a bad blogger an not posted in a month. Tut tut. It's not to say I haven't been doing anything interesting!

Check out the photo above. This is the set-up of a live stream that I conducted in Second Life. Well, as this picture is taken at home, it not a live 'live stream' but a 'repeat' live stream. Let me explain...

On May 12 I was at the CPA Week conference in Perth where I had a similar set-up at the back of a hall where a keynote presentation was taking place. Two Macs; one video camera, audio hook-up to sound desk; internet connection. Away we went!

Computer one. Audio link from presenter's lapel mic into DV camera. DV camera on tripod hooked up to computer with firewire cable. Live video feed into Quicktime Broadcaster. Feed sent to Quicktime streaming host, Netromedia.

Computer two. Second Life running with live feed into media texture on stage screen. Mac linked to plasma screen on stage.

The result?

A keynote presentation, once only available to those in the room, was now beamed into a theatre Second Life where CPA Australia members from all across the globe could log in and view the live presentation. The outcome of having the stream beamed back into the real life theatre was that those in the real life could see how other members were engaging in the presentation AND the members in SL, wherever they were, could pose questions to the presenter during question time in real-time.

It kinda does the head in trying to comprehend the whole mixed-reality phenomena, as trying to explain even after I have done it hard enough.

Now back to the 'not-quite-live' aspect of the photo above. As well as stream the event live I recorded the video feed to mini-DV tape and the set-up above was me re-playing the video for members that could not attend the live event. By playing the tape through the DV camera I could utilise the live-stream functionality of Broadcaster and Netromedia to replicate the live-feed at a more convenient time for other members.

The only question I have remaining is, is it possible to to the video feed 'out' and the Second Life stream 'in' on the one computer? I guess it's a question of grunt.

Seeing it live is perhaps the only way to truly grasp the potential for events in the future. The blending of realities is a fascinating future and one that has many possibilities.

The big balloon, you can't avoid it

Spotted over Caulfield race course this morning, the Carlton Draught big balloon is out and about again.

Conveniently, there is two weeks left to register for the latest Carlton Draught competition, Drop the Bomb.

Maybe it has been in town for the Grand Prix/AFL launch, maybe it is in the air to promote the latest competition. Either way, the hot air balloon is a great way to get attention.

I remember in 2006, the Australian F1 GP launched a hot air balloon in the shape of an F1 car to gain attention during the Commonwealth Games. The hot air balloon is possibly one of the best tools in the ambush marketing tool-box.

What-ever the balloon is doing in the sky, it's always a fun sight (well, the world's largest beer at 8am in the morning may not be the *greatest* sight).

As an events promotional tool for sheer attention grabbing, it beats dancing girls, celebrity autograph signing, stunt cars, and all other manner of events promotions. It's big and it's there and you cannot avoid it!

Cascade gives a billboard back to nature

For the first time ever, a cross promotion with AlexofMelbourne, my poor second blog-child. I have been very tardy in updating my adventures in Melbourne, so in sorry attempt to give it some love I am giving it air-time in Love Number Two.

Here is a great billboard at St.Kilda Junction. Strangely, it was being erected on Friday evening.

This Cascade Green billboard had been erected a number of times in 2008 but this one in St.Kilda Junction is the biggest I have seen yet. Billboards, ever such a restrictive medium, rarely get loving such as this, so when they do it is refreshing to see and certainly catches the eye.

Let's just hope Melbourne gets some more rain over the coming weeks as I guess water restrictions will prevent Cascade from watering the plants!

Taking window dressing to the next level

Big ups to Olivia Solon from Right Brain, Left Brain and her post on the above Coraline ambient media.

It's this kind of imagination that keeps on inspiring me. While the video touts the five technologies it uses, that's just the sales pitch, it is really the execution of them all that makes it an amazing campaign.

Plus it puts Augmented Reality to use in a fun and engaging way!

Why not?

We're living in an age where we don't need to be limited by boundaries, we have the ability to define how we act, what we do and how we do it. It's not about having the biggest, the best, the most expensive. We are now happy to play with the vintage edition, we want to see how far we can push to previous model. The standard edition is good enough, it mightn't flash and spin, but it looks great because it's how you like it. Fun is about how you use it and who you use it with, it's not how shiny it is or who says it's cool.

Have fun with with your friends, and take life as it comes. Find your spice of life.

And most importantly, don't ask why, ask why not!

Who say's so? Lance says so!

How I tried to appeal to the left brain in a marketing blog

I have recently changed my blog template. It's part template and part me playing around with HTML/CSS or whatever the code is. Granted it's not pretty and I won't be getting a web design job anytime soon, but quite a bit of thought has gone into the layout.

The thinking has mostly been about, 'what is the most effective layout for a blog?' A quick perusal of a blog template page like btemplates will show you there is no set pattern for templates, but you can have a rough estimate that there are twice as may right-hand side bars as left-hand side bars and also three column (left- and right-hand sidebars) are becoming more fashionable.

But from a usability perspective what is the best? Are there rules for blogs? If there are, I haven't been able to find them.

The general wisdom of print publishers, has traditionally been that the left side of the page is more inspirational/pictorial and the right hand side is more informational/factual and the most 'viewed' part of a publication is the right-hand side. An example of this is a QMedia rate card (PDF) for the Qantas inflight magazine where a right-hand side placement commands a 10% loading.

While some might say that more purchase decisions are made by the left side of the brain and that's why there's a load, it also stems from the traditional way (most) people read magazines, the right-hand side is the first thing you see when turning a page. So does this translate to the web?

Like their printed siblings, online newspapers do reserve the right-hand column for advertising. Have a look at these examples taken from today's editions:

Sydney Morning Herald

news.com.au

Wall Street Journal

Guardian

It would seem that the right-hand side is the preferred place for advertising in online newspapers.

But if an online advertiser were to take a look at the F-Shaped pattern for reading online content, they might be a bit miffed to see the right-hand side of a web page is almost vacant of any eyeball viewing.

One more theory to throw into the mix is the left/right brain preference. One such test for this is the HBDI brain quadrant preference test. As seen in the above image, the left brain (therefore right side of the screen) is more anyltical, technical and organised while the right brain (therefore left side of the screen) is more imaginative, emotional and conceptual.

It would seem that the F-shaped viewing pattern and left-brain preference would be contradictory, but this might also provide a possible opportunity. Imagine a news web page that had the travel and lifestyle section on the left side of a page and the business and world news on the right side of the page. In this scenario you would read the section you want to and it would be placed on the most preferable side of the screen to elicit the best response.

In the end with my new blog layout I went middle of the road. I have centralised the main content but by placing my side-bar on the left I have skewed the text to the right so the informational/factual aspects of the content are brought to the fore.

Yes my blog is about marketing and advertising and more right-brain ideas, but I want to explore the technical aspects behind the execution, and that is why I prefer to have my text slightly to the right!

Cheers to a new look

To celebrate the launch of my new look I present the only thing cooler than my new blog...

here's to beer.

Reb Bull gets it

Advertising nowadays is all about content - not the space in-between. We all know this. Red Bull has known this for years. From their paper aeroplane contests to their forumla one team and of course, their annual NYE Las Vegas crazy stunts.

2008/09 is looking absolutely crazy!

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?

Wordle - fun with words

Above is a word cloud based on my Delicious links. So there is probably some scientific study to show that words displayed as above provide quicker snapshots of information than any other method - then again maybe there isn't.

Anyhoo, me being equally left and right brained I like pictures as much as facts and figures. A word cloud such as this is a great way for people like me to get across a topic in a short amount of time.

The one I created above used Wordle.net, which I was directed to when I saw this blog post by Deepak Singh, that used the word cloud as a speak-bio outlining the Deepak's interests via his delicious links.

Fail ad #003 - email marketing at its worst

Thanks to CEO of Socialtext, Eugene Lee, and his Twitter post for pointing out this Fail Ad that Zoli Edros has blogged about on Cloud Ave.

People received the above email ad in the USA which, when reading just looks like a badly worded spammy email, but when you find out the actual email subject line was ...

"If you want to keep your job, use Spoke"

... it is just plain bad.

This arrived via Twitter - the public soap box that kills brand reputation quicker than you can say "This subject line cost me my job". Here's how it goes: bad ad goes out to the public > Someone points it out on Twitter for being crap > their followers (we're talking in the hundreds) tell their followers (hundreds multiplied by hundreds) and step three > your brand reputation tanks.

I agree, you need a killer subject line to entice people to waste two minutes reading ANOTHER email, but the subject line needs to also inspire confidence. There's a reason all your viagra/debt/gambling spam starts with "big", "win", "huge", "now", "rich" - it's a simple formula that even the worst spammers know about.

So, Spoke, I would strongly suggest that you call up one of your customers that do email marketing for a living and get few pointers on how to actually write a proper subject line.

UPDATE: 14/11/2008

OK, So after sleeping on this post I think it may be a little harsh. Email marketing is a tough gig, so while I still think it's a very bad subject line, maybe the best criticism is some constructive feedback. Here's a few alternative subject lines that would also have worked:

"Be accurate in uncertain times - use Spoke"
"Uncertainty brings change - keep up with Spoke"
"Improve your targeting even in a changing market"

Selling social media internally

This great diagram comes from David Armano via Beeline labs. I've been following Beeline for a little while since their tribalization of business study came out, and now thanks to Beeline I'm going to be enjoying David's great visualisations of social media.

I like this diagram because I can relate. It's nothing spectacular, not new, and is not unique to social media. Anybody trying to run a traditional, easy-as-you-like competition is likely to have experienced this curve as well. This is the traditional effort vs status quo fight anybody in marketing will have faced.

The opportunity that social media has in this space is that it is relatively new. While there are plenty of precedents in like cases and like scenarios, social media is redefining what the legal precedents mean.

In the post-copyright era where you're more likely to get thanks for spreading the word rather than scorn for 'ripping off' others' work, the creative commons movement is an example of how social media and the socialisation of the Internet is changing the legal game altogether. A maxim that I like to work by in this era is to have the benefit to the customer/consumer in mind at all times.

Working from this angle, it is possible to work with legal (also branding and many other internal departments) to ensure that if it is a viral campaign that you want to do, then it is done for the right reasons and with the maximum benefit for the customer.

I think that it comes down to the old effort versus status quo scenario and if you have the right effort behind your project, and the right argument for customer benefit, then it is possible to keep that viral campaign flying.

And in the spirit of the post-copyright era I would like to assert David Armano's ownership of the original design of the following diagram (as also seen above), but with my own personal touch. In this remix of the diagram I've added a little Chuck Norris. The trajectory of your viral campaign is proportionate to the amount of effort behind your thinking and the customer benefit. If Chuck Norris were to launch a viral campaign he'd make sure that it'd fly fast and far and get to where he wanted it!

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.