Tag Archives: advertising

Buzzworthy Wednesday Video: Nike SB

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So this week was a little light in terms of newly released online marketing videos that I would consider buzzworthy. However my pick this week is for Nike SB to celebrate the release of professional skateboarder Paul Rodriguez’s (aka P Rod) third shoe (the skateboarding son of the famous comedian). Set to the grooving tempo of the Ice Cube song “Today Was a Good Day”, the Nike video kind of parallels the original Ice Cube music video storyline just through the eyes of a skateboarder with one slight humorous difference at the end. It’s had over 370,000 views since being uploaded about 3 weeks ago.

Nothing earth shattering here. No crazy production. No trick camera skills. No dancing babies or flash mobs. While there are some very cool skateboarding tricks, I’m not a particularly big fan of skateboarding. So why did this video appeal to me? I probably just like it because the skateboarding tricks ARE cool, the tempo of them follow the music well and it’s set to one of my all time favorite rap songs. There I said it. Sometimes it’s all about the music and how it moves you or grabs you.


5 Question Interview: Ken George of WBUR

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kengeorgeKen George, new media production manager for Boston-based public radio station WBUR, 90.9 F.M., (one of the largest NPR-affiliated stations in the country) was bitten by the social media bug early last year.

Prior to 90.9, Ken was production editor for Masslive.com, a regional web portal based in Western Massachusetts.

After reading Ken’s blog, a chronicle of 90.9’s “web 2.0” initiatives, and following his “Tweets,” I got a chance to finally meet him at the station’s first “Tweet-Up” held in July 2008. Since then Ken has taken to organizing and hosting these events on an almost monthly basis.

WBUR is embarking on some really cool experimentation in the social media space, demonstrating a level of engagement and transparency pretty unusual for a major market broadcaster. As Ken is the mover and shaker behind this, I asked him to share his perspectives on what he is trying to accomplish for the station.

Without further ado, here is our conversation:

Eric Guerin: What prompted WBUR to get involved with social media and what websites/applications are you active on?

Ken George: We had been marginally tooling around with various social media sites like Flickr, YouTube for a number of years now. While great channels to port our new media content into, we never used those spaces to “converse” with users or listeners.

My eureka moment is a direct result of my attending one of the social media breakfasts last May. What I heard blew my mind. I left with a steely resolve to engage far more transparently and consistently with listeners via social media tools.

Twitter proved instrumental to this end. Why? I think the way it enabled almost real-time conversations. The more I Tweeted, the more followers I accrued and the more I would Tweet. A real self-reinforcing positive feedback loop.

EG: According to the most recent statistics I heard for public radio, the average age of an NPR listener is 47 and continues to trend older year after year. How does this age demographic of WBUR listeners, affect your approach to social media engagement?

KG: You’ve identified a huge problem with that question. For the most part, the “traditional listeners” are not the ones responding to our social media outreach. And frankly, I am unconvinced there is much I can do to reach those listeners via social media.

I see my efforts as helping the station to reach new markets and position itself for the future characterized by a limitless supply of on-demand content. Community will be the one trump card we can play to distinguish us from all the other guys.

EG: What are the biggest challenges WBUR faces as the way people receive news is changing?

KG: The unparalleled access to information, content, news on demand presents a huge challenge. Public radio operates best in an environment of information scarcity. When locked in your car you choices are 90.9, some innovative college programming or boatloads of crap.

This completely breaks down on the Web, where you can get all kinds of radio programs and other compelling content ad infinitium.

And of course there is the issue of money, specifically the amount advertisers (underwriters in public broadcaster parlance) will fork over to get mentioned over the airwaves. That revenue helps cover the considerable costs associated with radio production. On the web, those analog advertising dollars become digital pennies.

EG: You’ve started a monthly “TweetUp” at your studios where anyone can show up, get a tour and engage in a round table discussion about many different topics. How did you come up with the idea for this and what was the driving force behind it?

KG: The “Tweet-Ups” where a natural outgrowth of our social media experimentation. NPR resident social media evangelist (oh that term again!) It was from Andy Carvin, who among other things is tasked with getting National Public Radio affiliated stations onto the social media bandwagon, that I learned about “Tweet-Ups.”

So I thought “What the hay, let’s give it a go and see what happens.” I was dubious folks would attend, and was very gratified to see my misgivings were unwarranted. And these events have been of tremendous value to the station. The core attendees (yourself included of course) serve as a brain trust of sorts that have in no small way helped guide 90.9’s digital media efforts.

I think my strong feelings about empowering the “public” in “public radio” is what has made me a fanatic about hosting these events monthly. You folks have supported us through thick and thin. It is only fair play that you be invited in to tell us what you think (even if at times it is not necessary something we want to hear). I think that is incredibly empowering for listeners.

Speaking of events, the next WBUR Social Media Meet-Up is February 5th at 7pm and at the end of February we are hosting an “Eat Up at WBUR” – making a concerted effort to reach out to local food bloggers as part of the station’s new community-based “Public Radio Kitchen.”

EG: Being public radio you need to do fund-raising to stay on the air, how have you used your social media connections to help promote and donate to your pledge drive?

KG: We are in the embryonic phrase of tying social media to pledging. The end of the year fund drive last December represented the first time we tried using social media to solicit pledges. I would remind folks (mostly via Twitter) that the fund drive was on and direct them to a specific landing page so we can quantify the results. Our overall take via social media was small, but then the initiative was rather last minute and haphazard.

The plan is that the next time we try this we are a little more organized and consistent. We may (“may” being the operative word) even deploy “micro-pledging” applications across the social media space.

EG: Thanks for taking the time Ken!

5 Questions Interview: Mike Langford of Tweetworks

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One of the greatest and worst things about Twitter is the constant stream of conversation. It’s constantly changing. Yeah you can search to find posts you are interested in but I always thought there should be an easier way to connect with people who have like-minded interests and to follow a conversation that was threaded rather than searching for hashtags to follow the conversation. Hashtags are so MS-DOS, they’re like the mullet haircut – completely out of style and outdated even while it was popular. Which is why I was SO happy to find Tweetworks. I think Tweetworks will bring Twitter to the mass audience of internet users in a way that they can understand.

This 5 Question Interview is with Mike Langford who is the CEO, Founder and Funder of Tweetworks LLC. Mike is a serial entrepreneur with passion for making a difference in peoples lives. Something many people don’t know about Mike is he LOVES to talk. He claims it’s genetic and that if you meet his Grandmother, parents or his young son you’ll be left with no doubt that he’s a born talker. One on one or in front of a crowd, he thrives on conversation. (Tweetworks seems a natural fit now doesn’t it?)

Eric Guerin: Because Tweetworks is a new user interface for Twitter which uses 140 characters or less per update…can you describe what Tweetworks is in 140 characters or less?

Mike Langford: Tweetworks helps you talk with people who like to talk about the things you like to talk about.

EG: Threaded conversations on Tweetworks really make following conversations much easier. On Twitter you used to have to use a hashtag and then search for the conversation on a separate site which seemed like such an archaic way of having a conversation in this day and age. Can you explain how threaded conversations work on Tweetworks and how you came up with the concept for it?

ML: We capture, store and associate all posts made on Tweetworks in a relational database prior to passing them on to Twitter. What makes Tweetworks different than Twitter is the way we approach conversations. The way posts are presented on Twitter is as if each tweet were an independent and unrelated thought. In reality, a great deal of what is posted on Twitter is a reply to a previous statement. And in many cases you’ll find several different people replying to a single post made by one person.

I noticed early on that people like to crowd source on Twitter. It seems logical, you’ve got hundreds or in some cases thousands of people as a resource pool why not ask them stuff? The problem, as I found out, is that a Twitter user needs to be a social media celebrity like Chris Brogan or Guy Kawasaki to have a reasonable expectation of receiving a significant number of responses. Why? Think of it for a minute, Twitter only displays 20 posts at a time. And while you can click older, or use a desktop app like Tweetdeck or Twhirl which allow for easier scrolling the challenge remains, your followers are only seeing 10 to 20 tweets at a time. What this means for the average Twitter user is that he needs to hope that his followers just happen to be looking at the screen when his tweet hits. And with many people following hundreds of people that list of 20 tweets is refreshing pretty quickly. In short, the odds aren’t in your favor for a robust and inclusive discussion with Twitter’s current format.

So I thought, what if we created a way for people to start a discussion or ask a question and have the stream stay together? Then I thought, what if anyone, not just followers, could participate in the discussion? I mean, the only reason I have this weird follower/following thing going on is so I can have a reasonable prospect of having a conversation when I’m on Twitter right? So, we decided to remove the follower contingency and open it up. On Tweetworks conversation is king.

EG: One of the coolest features you have on Tweetworks are public and private “Groups”. Can you explain what the groups are and how they work?

ML: The randomness of Twitter is fun and super cool but it has it’s limitations. As human beings we tend to group things. Believe it or not it is this tendency that leads most people to follow the people they follow. You go to a conference on a certain topic like say a Pod Camp and you meet a bunch of new friends who like to talk about social media. So, you follow them because you had fun talking about social media. But, now your timeline is filled with tweets from these people on a whole bunch of other crap you have no interest in. At Tweetworks we thought a better approach would be to allow people to talk about what they like to talk about when they want to talk about it with other people who like to talk about the same stuff. To accomplish this we allow users to form or join whatever public group they’d like.

The private groups are a little different in that we add the ability to control the “who” part of the conversations that take place inside the group. Private groups are very useful for businesses, clubs, fantasy sports leagues, and sensitive topics.

EG: Unlike many social media tools I was impressed that you already have a plan & outline for eventual monetization, can you briefly discuss this?

ML: The point of starting a business is to earn money isn’t it? I’m not a software engineer with crazy coding skills that sat down one day and thought Tweetworks would be a cool mashup project. I found myself seeing a real problem that if solved would create real value. If Tweetworks is successful in creating value then we should put in place mechanisms to be compensated so we can continue to provide value to our users. I think it is a shame that people create these amazing tools and they eventually have to shut down because they simply could not afford to support the large number of users that adopted their creation. Look no further that Quotably, it was very popular but it is no more. While Ben Tucker cites Twitter’s pipe access as a reason for the shut down, I assume he would have found a work around if the venture were profitable.

Okay, enough pontificating on the why we have a revenue model let’s get to it. Tweetworks has two revenue sources, Pro Accounts and Group Sponsorship.

Pro Account: We rolled out unlimited private group access as our first Pro Account offering. For $24.95/yr a user will be able to have as many private Tweetworks groups as he would like.
Group Sponsorship: Tweetworks groups are available for sponsorship by businesses or individuals. We use the term sponsor because it carries a different weight and expectation than advertiser. On Tweetworks a sponsor will have its profile, or custom copy, displayed prominently in the Group Information Bar and their tweets will be highlighted when displayed in the group. This allows the sponsor to stand out in the crowd of tweets that are relevant to its business. It is our expectation that sponsors will be active and responsible participants in the community (group) in which they sponsor. For the other participants in the community having an active sponsor should feel much less intrusive than straight advertising. To start Sponsorship packages will be priced at 3 days for $45, 7 days at $84, and $150 for 15 days. The flat package pricing will make it simple and easy for a sponsor to jump in and get started.

EG: I know Tweetworks is only in its initial launch phase, what cool new features can we expect next?

ML: One of our next steps is to create and open up our API so that desktop, mobile and other third party applications can port into Tweetworks. We are walking that weird line of needing to include the early adopters of Twitter and staying true to our value proposition. Some people REALLY want us to bring the all of their followers’ activity into Tweetworks and we aren’t planning to do that. But, if we either partnered with an existing desktop application such as Twhirl or Tweetdeck, or develop our own we could make these people happy and still provide the robust Tweetworks experience. It is important to remember that there are millions of registered user names on Twitter but the majority of the population has no idea what it is and why they should consider using it. In the end, it is these new users that will make up the bulk of our customers.

Some other cool things we are working on are RSS feeds for groups and activity notification. We’ve had several requests from people who would like to post their group’s activity on an external website and we think that is a great idea. We’ve also noticed that some users come to the site, participate in a group and then we don’t see them for a while. The challenge with a new community is that it takes some time for the party to heat up. We need to work hard to get people to come to Tweetworks and revisit frequently enough so we build up momentum. We are getting there, I am very pleased with the success we are having so far.

EG: Thanks Mike!

To those of you reading who have been hesitant to check out Twitter or been intimidated by it, go check out Tweetworks. I highly recommend it.


Darwin's Theory Applied to Marketing

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tech savvy dodo birdHow Marketing Firms, Designers and Business Owners Must Adapt or Risk Becoming Extinct

I was recently talking to a marketing firm that really doesn’t grasp the changing dynamic of the marketing environment online. They were still convinced that the best way was still the old way and they had little knowledge of email marketing, how to implement it and virtually no knowledge of how to utilize online social media. Which quickly made me realize that they must adapt and learn quickly or they may go the way of the dodo bird. Here’s why:

Think back to 1995…I know…I know it seems like a long time ago. I was just graduating from college with a degree in Visual Design. The college curriculum during the early nineties included very little computer design because…well…there weren’t many programs and most of the professors had no idea how to use the programs themselves.

  • Adobe software programs that are design standards today like Photoshop & Illustrator were in their relative infancy. The majority of our design work and training was still a lot of paste up, photocopying and layout done by hand, not COMPLETELY on the computer as almost all design work is done today.
  • The “home” computer was still relatively new as Windows 95 had not been released yet and most of our computer work was done in on-campus “computer labs” because few students could afford their own computer, much less the expensive software needed for design. The computers we did have in the computer labs were also notoriously slow. If you put a photo into the design you may as well ask the computer to slowly crash and die.
  • The internet was also in it’s infancy for the home user as most web browsers were released to the public in 1995. So there was NO training in web site design. Most web developers at this time coded HTML using text editors. Web site design was not done visually until 1997 with the release of Macromedia’s Dreamweaver program.

All right, enough waxing nostalgic. So what’s your point, is what you are probably saying now. Well I’m getting to that.

14 years ago it was a much different world

After college I learned much of what I know by taking classes, learning on the job and teaching myself in my spare time. So I was able to survive and thrive with my own business doing graphic and website design. That’s not to say I’m the cat’s meow of design. Eric Guerin isn’t walking around talking about himself in the third person. There are many, many designers that are far more talented than I am BUT I can say that a number of people I graduated with and who were in the design field in the mid-nineties are no longer. Why? Because they didn’t change with the times and adapt to the new tools emerging.

Which brings me to today

We are on the precipice of another landslide change in how people are marketed to and how they interact with brands. People want to interact with the companies and brands they are passionate about online. That’s why there are over 70 million blogs worldwide and counting. Email Marketing is one of the simplest and easiest ways to keep in contact with your customers and help promote repeat business. Over 390 million consumers are at least watching video clips and listening to podcasts on a weekly basis. Social Media websites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter offer the business the ability to have individuals in their company interact with consumers and their brand identity on a 1on1 basis.

So the what is the moral to this story?

These social media tools are developing and growing in popularity at an alarmingly fast rate. If marketing firms, designers and even the individual business owner doesn’t take the time to educate themselves they could find themselves within a relatively short period of time falling victim to advertising natural selection.