Greg Verdino

What have you done for me lately?

I was tooling around YouTube and happened across this video of Digitas's chief creative officer Mark Beeching, shot at this summer's AAAA conference.  The clip is not much longer than a 30-second spot and the shooter must have been miles away from the stage (Beeching is the small white dot moving about beneath the massive projection screen) but the message is perfectly clear:

Marketers need to stop looking for new ways to "message at" consumers and, instead, figure out what they can "do for" consumers.  Good advice...

A new diversion for snowboarders

Tomorrow Diversion Media rolls out Snowvision, the second property in their network of niche market video portals.  Snowvision is built on the same platform as Diversion's first property, Travelistic.  Snowvision combines professional and user generated content, all geared toward the snowboarding enthusiast, along with personalized ski reports for up to four user-selected resorts.  Diversion is the brainchild of MTVi alum Nicholas Butterworth.

Take note: This is just one example of a former cable industry exec using broadband video to launch new media brands that super-serve underserved niche audiences.  As technology companies are just beginning to offer consumers new ways to bypass the set top and bring web content into their living rooms, this may turn out to be a very smart strategy.  Definitely worth watching this trend.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I've met with Nicholas about Diversion and the potential opportunities for brand integration.  I was given pre-launch access to the site, but Nicholas did not ask me to write about it.)

links for 2007-02-20

• The Revolution is Here! Digitas's Verdino Proselytizes  From the Digital Axle blog: "Someone has finally said it: "Be the Content." Hallelujah!" Check it out. (tags: advertising brands business change content creativity digitas entertainment ideas marketing media trends strategy)

• Publishing 2.0 | Digg Is The Apotheosis Of Niche Media  Scott Karp's interesting - and IMO accurate - take on Digg. (tags: media content emergingmedia digg scottkarp socialmedia web2.0)

Advertise here: punch your customer in the face

Today Pali Capital's Rich Greenfield issued his opinion on movie theater ad network National CineMedia and initiated coverage at a BUY rating.  His logic?  That video ads preceding a feature film reach a captive audience that can't easily avoid your message, as they wait for their movie to start.  He even supports his assessment with this simple formula:

Unique, Unavoidable and Minimal-to-No Distractions = Great Advertising

I generally like Rich's coverage of the media industry, but I'm beginning to think that everyone has gone crazy.  If traditional advertising is like punching your customer in the face, then "unavoidable" advertising is like punching your customer in the face while your friend pins him down.

Get Rich's report here. Download ncmi_initiation_22007_cc.pdf

Word of mouth: beyond bloggers

Last week, Karl Long wrote a blog post asking when, if and how it is appropriate for marketers to provide products to influential bloggers, and other citizen content creators, in the interest of soliciting feedback and sparking chatter.  He tagged a handful of marketing bloggers -- Armano, Coates, Collier, Holtz, Hobson, McConnell/Huba, Rubel and me -- and asked us to contribute our thoughts.

The gist of Karl's post lies in two sets of questions:

First, as bloggers, if we received product from a company "what would you do with it? How would you feel about it? Obligated? Bribed? Important? Valued?"

Second, "Beyond bloggers could you actually work with other kinds of communities, like Nikon did with Flickr? How about giving some devices to top contributors or the Elite on Yelp, helping them take pictures or do video reviews of restaurants? And what are you building here? Positive WOM? Finding some 'lead users'? Seeding the 1 percenters? "

David Armano did his usual bang-up job of tackling the first set of questions.  And since I mostly agree with his points, I'd like to devote my space here to the second set and look at the word of mouth marketing opportunity beyond bloggers.  So here you go:

Could you actually work with other kinds of communities, like Nikon did with Flickr?  This may actually represent a more significant marketing opportunity than blogosphere activation (which doesn't mean I wouldn't accept free products - bring 'em on) but the power of community sites is that they aggregate audiences of like mind and provide an easy forum through which word of mouth can spread with relative ease.  I believe that the best community-based marketing programs celebrate the members of that community and tap into their existing behaviors and passions -- presumably the 16 photographers that Nikon provided with digital cameras would have taken those photos anyway.  Nikon simply found a way to both highlight their work and meet brand objectives (show off the camera and the quality of images it takes), without compromising the community members (not directing them to shoot specific subjects, or asking them to review the camera or blatantly shill for the manufacturer.)

How about giving some devices to top contributors on Yelp?  Sure.  What's so great about this particular implementation is that the seeding program is more about putting useful technology (since Karl is writing about mobile devices in particular) into the hands of a community's influentials and giving them new ways to create the content that they would have created anyway.  Expand the view here, and this approach is really about providing key community members with value and enhancing their experience.  Value could take the form of product (as in Karl's Nokia example) or exposure (like this or this) or financial incentives (like this) or any number of other things that a deep-pocketed marketer could bring to the table.  And I think that any of these are fine, provided that the relationships between the marketer and the community members are clearly disclosed and don't compromise the integrity of the content creator.  (Ah, and in the interest of disclosure, some of the examples used in this post are Digitas programs.)

And what are you building here?  You're building any or all of the things that Karl suggests -- positive WOM, finding lead users and seeding the 1 percenters.  But most of all, I think community activations provide a perfect platform for "brand sampling," for showing the product in action and demonstrating its tangible benefits.  A relatively small subset of each community (the influentials or taste makers) gets to experience the benefits first hand.  But all community members get to experience those benefits vicariously, as they engage with the content created by their community's influentials.  Brand sampling can be an incredibly powerful marketing tool, but what makes it work so well within online communities is that, done right, the community members benefit as well.

As with blog outreach programs -- and as I've hinted in this post -- community outreach that is not authentic, transparent and consistent with WOMMA's various ethical codes is, simply put, "bad boogie."  We need to look no further than the recurring scuttlebutt over the "gaming" of digg's top users.  I wish this went without saying but as long as there's a system to game, some unscrupulous company will look for ways to game the system.   Don't do it.

Hope this helps, Karl.  And I am interested in hearing any additional thoughts you have.  Same goes for anyone else who reads this -- feel free to chime in.

Extreme blog makeover

OK, maybe not so extreme -- but regular readers have no doubt already noticed that my blog has "had some work done."  Most significantly, I've dropped the left sidebar and am now running all of my sidebar content down the righthand side of the page.  I haven't eliminated any of the content or functionality that formerly ran down the left -- it's all there, but in a different place.  So if you normally use the tag cloud, calendar, archive links or Technorati search to navigate this blog, you'll now find those over to the right.

Why?  Just trying some new things, and this should definitely improve the experience for anyone who accesses my blog from a mobile device.  Now, the most recent post will appear right at the top of the mobile web page, meaning less scrolling down to get to the content.

GV Sighting: Talking to the Telegraph (UK) about SL

In Friday's edition of UK newspaper The Telegraph, reporter Jo Moulds asks if Second Life might herald the coming of the next generation of the Internet -- the so-called 3D web.  Jo interviewed me for her piece and included this quote:

"...Real life companies have entered Second Life with varying degrees of success. Digitas marketing analyst Greg Verdino says many are making their presence in Second Life too much about the brand.

"Second Life is about person-to-person experiences," he says. "It's a graphical chat room. With the native in-world brands, more often than not you're going to see the guy who builds the stuff offering help. When you go to big brand experiences there is nobody in sight, no rep from the company, no way to communicate with the company."

It's a fun warts-and-all article that chronicles Jo's first foray into SL, while also addressing the key business issues and opportunities.  Read it here. 

(Thanks to PSFK for linking to the article, without which I might have missed it...)

Joost gets joostier

Today Joost pushed their 0.8.0 beta release, featuring a new video decoder for improved video quality, lots of new content and a Mac-compatible version of their software.

New content channels include National Geographic, indy car racing, Lime (health), classic cartoons including Rocky and Bullwinkle, video game tips and tricks from Gamestar, more reality programming including Bridezilla and a variety of clips from Endemol, some indie films and even Bollywood music videos.

The video looks great, performance is good with lightning fast menus and buffer-free streaming.  The content offering still feels like a bit of a grab bag with a taste of long tail content for just about any audience.  I'm waiting for the first "short head" video provider to hop on board.  And I'd love to see where they are going with their ad model.

While we're at it -- calling Paul McEnany... Have you blogged about your beta experience yet?  If you did, I missed it and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

links for 2007-02-16

• ChaosScenario | Google may not be able to 're-invent' traditional advertising
  (tags: advertising media google business)
• Survey: Blackberry owners chained to work
  But which is the cause and which is the effect?
  (tags: business technology mobile reference productivity blackberry)
• ExperienceCurve | Sending Smart Phones to Smart Bloggers
  Karl Long of ExperienceCurve has asked a handful of blogger, myself included, to weigh in on how marketers should work with bloggers.
  (tags: bloggers blogging blogs citizenmarketers marketing socialmedia viral)
• Logic+Emotion | Product Outreach Among "Influentials"
  Armano's response to the ExperienceCurve reach-out on seeding product to bloggers (linkrolled here as well.)
  (tags: bloggers blogging blogs socialmedia citizenmarketers viral marketing)
• Publishing 2.0 | Will Widgets Hit A Mainstream Wall Just Like RSS?Publishing 2.0
  Scott Karp questions whether widgets will be easy (and valuable) enough to get real traction among the mainstream consumer audience.
  (tags: widgets marketing rss change internet media emergingmedia technology content)

GV Sighting: Talking About Kaneva

Georgia-based legal publication Daily Report interviewed me for a profile of Atlanta-based virtual world upstart Kaneva.  Read the article here.