Finally, A Branded Facebook App That Does Not Make Me Hate Facebook

Okay, so the title of this post is a little bit harsh but let's face it, brands have been doing a terrible job of leveraging Facebook (one might say this is true of the social media space at large, but that is a story for another day).

My good buddy C.C Chapman sent over a social media press release about the new CokeTags initiative and my first reaction was, "just what we need, another branded app that will interrupt and annoy, and claim to be joining the conversation".

I was quite wrong (had I been right, I probably would not have taken the time the write this post. Who wants to read another whiny blogger talk about how everyone is getting everything wrong).

Adam Broitman's CokeTag ExperienceI am not going to go into all of the ins and out about how the CokeTags program works (you can do that yourself). I would rather point out some of the reasons why this new program is really on the right track:

  • CokeTags is taking advantage of the notion of the World Wide Social Web. Here is a quote from Michael Donnelly, Director, Worldwide Interactive Marketing, The Coca-Cola Company;

    • "While Facebook may be the starting point for CokeTag, it is only the beginning. We are excited to be working towards the potential of expanding the use of the CokeTag application throughout the web and we are now working on the best way to leverage the OpenSocial platform. We are looking forward to the day when anyone could potentially create a CokeTag and have it on all of their social network profiles and their blog and only have to worry about updating it in one place. That excites me."

    • This excited me too! What especially excites me is a forward thinking marketer talking about social media in a way that makes sense



  • CokeTag Adds Value

    • The application does not merely offer some goofy novelty (i.e. throwing a sheep). The applications accentuates the social nature of the web and potentially provides for deeper connections between friends

      • The application takes an existing technology (tagging) and aims to streamline it in a way that is useful and accessible to the masses





  • Coke Does Not Insist On Inserting Itself In Every Aspect Of The Application

    • Sure, Coke has a presence within the application and they even have a branded widget skin, but this is not the default.



    • Coke is there if you want them to be part of the conversation. It is also apparent that coke respects the fact that you may not want them around all the time



  • Coke Has Created A Platform That Will Help Them (and other marketers) Better Understand The Community

    • This point may not be a benefit to the consumer, but from a marketing perspective I think Coke has laid the groundwork to garner some decent user data in a non-obtrusive manner. The employees of Coke will certainly have their work cut out for them when it comes to making this data actionable, but this is a good start.




I am very excited to see whether or not the CokeTags program is something that is adopted by consumers, and does not turn into something that only marketers point to as a good idea. For the sake of advancement in social marketing, I am really rooting for Coke on this one!

Brand Indentity Syndication

I have to admit, it is alarming how many brand marketers still feel that they can support a successful campaign with a single presence online. I am not suggesting that the microsite is useless, but I do believe that the microsite is merely one weapon in the arsenal.

The web is a series interlinked hypertext. The modern web user is less discriminant as to how they reach their information, as long as they get what they want. It is this fact that makes it a necessity for a brand to have a ubiquitous presence as opposed to a singular, centralized presence. This is the basis for my latest article in iMedia. Head over there and take a look. I would love to hear your thoughts on this subject.

Mobile Marketing Forum Day Two- Buying and Selling Mobile Ads

Buying and Selling Mobile Ads
Buyers and sellers will learn the differences between using a mobile ad network versus transacting directly with one another. We'll showcase how advertisers today are working with mobile ad networks including AdSense for mobile content. We'll also take a look at how premium publishers sell and manage mobile display ad campaigns.
Rob Victor, Product Manager, Emerging Media, Google/DoubleClick

  • There is a lot of friction in this marketplace

  • 2001 Doubleclick first started building a mobile platform

  • Mobile display advertising has been one of the fastest growing channels

    • (hmmmm. I need data on this one)



  • many advertisers still don't have mobile web presence

  • advertising need a single dashboard where they can control their own media

  • there is still no advertiser third party in mobile (single centralized server)

    • creating the same type of dashboard for the mobile as what we have for the web



  • Mobile is still a premium type of ad unit

  • Targeting as differentiation and value add

  • counting standards still need to be established

  • Content management and ad serving should be interoperable

  • Multiple sales channels should be available with a centralized place for reporting etc.

  • transparency is best for the industry

Mobile Marketing Forum Day Two- Location Based Mobile Advertising

Location Based Mobile Advertising
Opportunities to be discussed include proximity marketing and location based services - and the options available for mobile advertising.

Moderator: Jim Manis, CEO, 1024 Wireless Services & CEO, Mobile Giving Foundation
Brian Levin, CEO, Useful Networks
David Klein, Vice President, Advertising Sales, Navteq

Lisa Uhrmacher General Manager, Mobile Advertising Sprint

  • What type of threat does Google pose to carriers with their location based services?

  • "the road to hell is littered with location based services" Levin

    • privacy stigma

    • carriers go overboard with privacy measures

    • google has brought these services to the forefront by making them free



  • It was either to make text interoperable than it is location/mapping

  • Navigation Media

    • relevant location based advertising

    • scale will be key



Mobile Marketing Forum Day Two- Case Study: Perspectives from Brazil

Case Study: Perspectives from Brazil
LATAM (Latin America) is one of the hottest growing markets for mobile marketsng. Join this engaging session to learn about the state of mobile marketing in Brazil. Two of Brazil's leading providers will share some recent successes and case studies.
Daniel Costa, Co-founder, MobX - Mobile Marketing
Federico Pisani Massamormile, CEO, HANZO

  • Population of Brazil 189 MM

  • Stocks are booming, economy is strong

  • GDP growth 1,551 USD trillion

  • Consumer spending boom 6.5% over 2006

  • 127MM phones

  • mobile penetration 67%

  • 4 major carriers

    • Vivo largest mobile carrier



Mobile Marketing Forum Day Two-Case Study: SuperBowl Mobile Campaign

Case Study: SuperBowl Mobile Campaign
In 2007 Anheuser-Busch introduced an innovative way to bring the success of our SuperBowl commercials to the mobile platform via text voting. The program also launched a highly successful IVR campaign that lasted well into the third quarter of 2007 We have experienced continued success in 2008 with the program and our enhanced WAP site and look to continue to grow the mobile program for SuperBowl in 2009.
Tim Murphy, Senior Manager, Digital Marketing, Anheuser-Busch

  • We really need to start with the idea

    • everything else is an outcome





      • (agreed)





  • Budweiser text campaign extended TV initiative into other spaces

    • added coolness factor to creative



  • Budbowl 2007


Mobile Marketing Forum Day One- AKQA/Mobile Case Studies

AKQA/Mobile Case Studies


Dan Rosen, Founder, AKQA Mobile




  • There will be no eureka moment, but the industry is growing and there are new trends

  • Utilitainment

    • (love that :) )



  • Case Studies

    • Smirnoff

      • mobile great way to engage consumers on the move

      • an example of a brand investing in the media, not just a tactical campaign

      • local and globals modules

      • wearable bluetooth to beam video to people in bars

      • Pocket Bartender

        • the worlds smallest bartender

        • based on a customer insight

        • integration not replication

        • optimizing your media for users on the go



      • Vodkapedia



    • Coke

      • brand led personalization

        • "the greatest gift is giving"

          • M Cards

            • sell for about 5 dollars (hmmm, never heard that before)









    • Nike

      • "Run London"

        • RFID placed on the shoe



      • "SuperSonic"



    • McDonalds

      • "the lost ring"

        • ARG (alternate reality game)

          • global mobile internet presence

          • engaged with bluetooth

          • there were very few logos on the site, they were benefiting from the association











  • The mobile phone- "The Remote Control For Your Life

    • Social Networking a big part of mobile

    • Mobile banking

    • maps

    • tickets



Mobile Marketing Forum Day One- Metrics!

Was is worth it? Why accurate measurement is the key to helping marketers move to mobile


Anil Malhotra, Senior Vice President Marketing & Alliances, Bango


George Ivie, Executive Director & CEO, Media Rating Council (MRC)





  • What people are looking for in metrics these days?

    • reliable data

    • mobile marketing touches audience in a way other media cannot



  • Media Rating Council not for profit association- Audience Measurement

    • working to develop standards for mobile metrics



  • Mobile Campaign KPI's

    • We have gotten use to granular metrics on the PC. Mobile is a bit more difficult, but there is a lot of data we can garner





      • Uniques, Visits, Repeat Visitors

      • Referrals

      • Location

      • Carrier

      • Handset type

      • M commerce transactions

        • revenue



      • Traffic by carrier

        • down to MVNO level





    • Don't assume that PC analytics will work on mobile



Mobile Marketing Forum Day One- Pitch Panel

How does a brand ensure success in achieving their strategic objectives when there are so many vendors in the mobile space? Learn first hand how a pitch is orchestrated to achieve brand goals and objectives.


Moderator: Gene Keenan, VP Mobile Strategies, Isobar


Chris Murphy, Director, Digital Marketing, adidas US


David Rippetoe, Senior Director of Business Development, Neighborhood America


Fidel Parente, VP Account Director, Global, Basketball, CARAT


Matt Shaw, Director, Advertising Sales, AdMob


Paul Salumbides, Senior Account Executive, Carat



Further conversation about the adidas campaign




  • Emphasis on integration on agencies

    • traditional agencies not used to giving up power to digital agencies



    • very important to add extensions of traditional campaigns, especially for certain demographics that are used to searching and not just going to a URL



  • Will tagging commercials with short codes become ubiquitous?

  • Personalization very important when dealing with something like a mobile experience

  • adidas used athletes to gain trust for the brand to help them join the conversation

    • the brand was kept out of the phone calls



  • User experience was central to the campaign

  • How do you measure ROI on a campaign like this?

    • Murphy "I am on the brand side, I don't have to track ROI" :)

    • I can't







Mobile Marketing Forum Day One Keynote

Keynote


Chris Murphy, Director, Digital Marketing, adidas US




  • Adidas very active in the mobile space

  • Why Mobile?

    • The third screen is first in users

    • youth spend 8x more on mobile than music

    • mobile is an addiction

    • brand favoribility goes up considerably due to mobile campaigns

    • there still is a lack of reach

    • there is still a lack of measurement relative to the rest of the digital space, but there is still a decent amount of metrics

      • knows enough that it is still attractive



    • mobile has to be integrated as part of a larger campaign

    • Participation is the new engagement





      • think qualitative, not quantitative audience





    • mobile is easy to integrate

      • one click, on the go access



    • Relatively inexpensive compared to traditional media

    • mCRM

      • Mobile CRM- How do you have an extended conversation via mobile?

        • mobile campaigns, much like social campaigns are conversations







Mobile Marketing Forum NYC 2008

It is a very exciting time to be working in the mobile space. While I am not personally doing a whole lot of paid mobile marketing, many of the brands that I work with are beginning to take a much closer look at this channel and I will continue to stay on top of all of the progressions taking place in this space.




  • 1 billions pc’s/3.3 billion mobile subscribers (half the global population)

  • a lot of new marketing choices in the mobile space

  • MMA from 40 at start to 630 members

  • 8 mobile marketing forums around the world

  • 2012 $4.5MM in messaging revenue

The Future Of Content

The exponential growth of content online is often times overwhelming for both users and marketers. It does not help that there is a new tool for content creation released daily (it may help certain content creators, but it does not help control the clutter). At a certain point it will become very difficult to navigate through this expansive sea of content and data created by our social graphs’.


How will you get to the content that you really want?


How will you ensure that you are getting the most important news from the friends and family that are most important to you?


A recent post over at TechCrunch touches on similar questions, and I agree with much of what Arrington has to say. As always, I agree with his strong belief in mobile as the center of our social network.


One point that Arrington does not touch on is the importance that search will play in sifting through the heaps of content to get to what we are looking for. This is of course something that Read/Write Web is always good at. A recent post of at RWW talks about the myths and reality of Semantic Search. While I remain skeptical about the concept that there is a semantic search solution just waiting to overrun Google, I do feel that the future of how we find things online is rooted in structured, meaningful data, as well as the connections between data.


I would love to hear some thoughts on what you feel the future of content will look like!



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Marketing To The Person Behind The Persona


There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.



From The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). Prufrock and Other Observations. 1917.



The above is an excerpt that I used in my latest article for iMediaconnection. The article was written with my good friend Jack Tatar. He and I spent a lot of time talking about the gap between how we portray ourselves online, and who we really are (and how this effects marketers of course). It was a pleasure working with Jack on this, I definitely recommend taking a look at his work.



In writing this article we explored the differences between 2 dimensional, non persist online communities and 3D virtual worlds. We were in agreeance that at the end of the day, they are pretty much the same thing; online communities.



We explored the notion of Generation V and how younger generations are becoming increasingly comfortable with 3D persistent virtual environments.



Head over the iMedia and have a look. I would love some feedback!



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See The Whole Web From Your Mobile Phone

Sure, we have heard claims that you would be able to experience the web on your mobile phone, just as you experience it on your desktop, but it has never been entirely true. Skyfire is making some lofty claims that they prove in the video below. I am very excited to test the browser, and am excited about the possibility of a mobile browser that supports flash video as well as Javascript.






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Diane Von Furstenberg Says Yes To "Really Real Beauty" and Conversation

Disclaimer:  Diane Von Furstenberg is a client of my employer, Morpheus Media and helped put this event together. The following post is my (Adam Broitman) take on the event and is in no way representative of DVF, or Morpheus Media at large

Despite the recent controversy surrounding Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty, some people in the fashion world still believe in the power of real people and real beauty.

These days everyone in the media/marketing world is paying lip service to the notions of conversation and collaboration, but how many are actually taking part in the seismic shift that has been thrust upon us? Furthermore, how many brands are actually bridging digital social media with real life environments?

The bad news is that the answer to these questions is, not too many. Well, I am here to bring you some good news!

Always on the bleeding edge of culture, fashion Icon Diane Von Furstenberg has proven yet again, that her finger remains on the pulse of society and culture. DVF continues to prove that you can remain at the highest heights of fashion, and at the same time possess the ability to listen to your consumer. As a man who will never wear DVF (or at least probably won't J), I have become increasingly intrigued by this symbol of self empowerment, beauty and forward-thinking.

With the help of the brilliant women over at the Coutorture network, DVF invited a number of bloggers into her studio for an evening of wine and fashion.  I had the pleasure of meeting Couturture editor,  Julie Fredrickson. She is nothing short of brilliant.

Julie had this to say about the event:

The streetwear symbol for collaboration involves combining two names with an "x" as a signifier that two brands joined forces for a creative project. Often it is the collaborations that bring out the best from each side, highlighting the strengths of the players while creating something that is greater than the sum of its parts. It is the "x" factor of unique teams coming together to do something great. It is this spirit of collaboration that inspired us to host a photo shoot with iconic women's wear line Diane Von Furstenberg and the Coutorture community.

The collaboration was a mashup between bloggers and fashion industry professionals. The bloggers had access to professional photographers and models (as well as DVF attire), and were able to create their own ideal fashion shoot. While I was not able to be at the event, I heard that by the end the bloggers became the models (and who knows, maybe some of the models started blogging).

All in All DVF and her brand team were able to create the type of new marketing event that most only speak about.

Blogs to Check Out:

Whose Space Is It Anyway?

Do you love throwing sheep? Is poking your friends the best part of your day? Tom Anderson, president of MySpace would answer these questions with a categorical no! In a rare act of public communication, the president of the 600 pound gorilla of social networking laid out some rules for MySpace application developers. The rules includes governance over how people are invited to adopt applications and rules around incentivizing apps.

Tom states the following,

"Balancing the needs of a community is never an easy job. There are many constituents, all with their own needs and desires. The needs of the few cannot outweigh the needs of the many."

My Proposition

Why not put some of the governing power in the hands of the community?

One only needs to look at the success of Wikipedia to know that the wisdom of crowds is a very powerful thing. If MySpace is in fact a "community" why not set up a trusted board of members and developers (perhaps let the community vote on them). Let them be part of the approval process for applications and other pieces of the platform. I am not advocating MySpace let users entirely run the show, but why does MySpace not take on a more transparent, collaborative stance on the community.

I have to be honest, I see MySpace as a sinking ship. I do however think that if MySpace were to make some radical moves they could turn things around.

I am not holding my breathe.

I have become increasingly disillusioned with both Facebook and MySpace, as they do not embody the true essence of community. Sure, I understand they have revenue goals and they are not charities, but I think it is time to stop referring to these networks as communities and start calling them what they really are, services (and businesses).

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Now That You Are The Media, Who Owns You?

I am really getting to like expressing my feelings over Seesmic. If you are not a member, I strongly recommend going over to www.seesmic.com and signing up (if you still need invites, let me know).

Below the video are some links and notes on what I was speaking about.





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