Greg Verdino

links for 2007-06-30

• reBang | Coca-Cola 2.0
  Blog post about crayon client Coca-Cola releasing its trademark in SL, permitting residents to use the Coke logo in any way they wish. VERY forward-thinking.
  (tags: branding brands marketing future innovation socialmedia secondlife strategy metaverse creativity)
• Fallon Planning | Postcards from Second Life
  Fallon perspectives on crayon's in-world Virtual Branding panel discussion.
  (tags: secondlife socialmedia marketing advertising event ideas emergingmedia crayon metaverse technology)
• Marketing in a Web 2.0 World | My First Second Life Event
  LaSandra Brill of Cisco offers her perspectives on crayon Virtual Branding SL event.
  (tags: technology socialmedia secondlife metaverse event marketing emergingmedia ideas crayon advertising)

Jewel in the rough

A bit over a year ago, Phillips Norelco launched an unconventional campaign for their new male shaver Bodygroom, centered around a piece of short-form web video that was too edgy for TV.  According to reports from the time, the campaign delivered more sales in six weeks than Phillips Norelco expected in its entire first year.  Now, Bodygroom is back in this well-done mockumentary, Jewel in the Rough: How Sack Saved the Beach (aka The Story of Sack), that chronicles the early days of manscaping.

Good creative work from TribalDDB, but this video falls prey to "viral video disease."  It simply doesn't work hard enough.  You got me to sit through five minutes of content and, in the end, didn't even tell me where to find more information.  Seriously, flashing a URL at the end of the clip or even including it in the description that accompanies the clip on YouTube can go a long way toward making viral videos accountable.  And where is the conversational marketing groundcover that can stimulate interest and viewership.  Other than a few marketing blogs, I don't find much mention of the new video on Technorati and YouTube views are, so far, anemic (a couple hundred as I write this.)  Where's the outreach?  How is TribalDDB seeding conversation?  Norelco stuck gold last time around but will the new video sell shavers? 

I believe that good content will naturally go viral -- and that sure as hell beats ad industry attempts to make "viral videos" -- but without a bit of support, videos like this one are likely to get lost in the "dark, tangly sea of hairy" videos.

Love your haters

If some people love your brand, I'll guarantee that some other people hate it.  I don't care how good you think you are, or even how good you really are.  Some people hate you. Some people may even love to hate you.

This is actually a good thing, especially in an age during which most consumers probably don't devote much brainpower to your brand at all.  In fact, your harshest critics are probably one of your best sources for honest feedback and suggestions for positive change.

So what are you doing to get closer to your haters?  To listen to them, involve them in your business, to show them that you really do care what they think and that you're always looking to improve your offering. 

Many businesses have gotten reasonably good at loving the people who already love them back -- with loyalty programs, exclusive access, insider deals and all sorts of customer relationship management programs.  But the smartest marketers will dedicate just as much (if not more) effort and budget to building programs that make the people that hate them "part of the brand family."

At a minimum, you'll gather some insights that can directly impact the future of your business.  Do it right, and you stand to gain a whole lot more.  You may find that your fiercest haters can turn -- over time and with the right nurturing -- into some of your most loyal, most vocal supporters. 

Your presence is virtually requested

Today on crayonville Island in Second Life, crayon kicked off our thought leadership speaking series with a panel discussion about marketing and branding in virtual worlds.  As C.C. Chapman reports at our 93 Colors blog, the event was a success.  You can see my photos here and C.C.'s here, and within the next day or so you can listen to the whole thing when we push it down the crayonCast feed (we streamed audio live on the sim rather than hold the panel via SL text chat.)

So rather than blog on the topic of virtual branding, I thought I would share some thoughts about my first experience presenting in a virtual world. 

I've done plenty of real world speaking and a few webinars.  For me, the in-world event struck a good middle ground between the real world and the web.  Being able to look out and see the audience, not to mention my co-panelists, made this event feel more "real" than a traditional web event or teleconference. 

When I present in webinars, I can't help but feel like I am talking to an empty room.  Sure I can generally see a list of attendee names (and sometimes even see comments and questions as they were submitted in real time during my presentation) but a list of names isn't the same as a crowd of faces, even when those faces are more or less expressionless avatar faces.  To me, this virtual forum felt more natural and seemed to have better flow.

Today's seminar also had more of an event "feel."  I could watch the avatars enter the amphitheatre and take their seats.  When the program ended, I was able to mingle with the attendees and make small talk.  These things may sound relatively minor (or even obvious) but you lose these pieces of the event experience when you do a more traditional phone or web conference. 

What's more, I could see that at least some of the attendees got added value from being "in the room" with other people.  Sidebar conversations, spin-off discussions and (yeah, I'll say it) some goofing-off among audience members made the event feel like a bona fide social gathering -- which, after all, is what a social media channel like Second Life is really about.  In fact, during the presentation one of the attendees questioned why we chose to hold this event in SL rather than on the web.  Another audience member immediately responded, "presence."  Right on.

Of course, it wasn't all upside.  Our moderator, Mark Wallace, joined us by audio but not on the sim itself due to a glitch on his end, we did have one avatar attend in the nude, and it was clear that the whole experience was a bit awkward for attendees who aren't as experienced in SL. 

The lesson?  If you're considering an in-world event, be prepared for the unexpected.  But all-in-all, the positives outweighed the negatives for me.

If you were at today's event, I'd love to hear your thoughts.  Or if you've held or attended other in-world events, I'd love to hear about your experiences. 

links for 2007-06-26

• Virtual Worlds Platform Matrix
  Comnprehensive table listing the current competitors in the virtual world space.
  (tags: secondlife metaverse socialmedia media reference technology emergingmedia)
• Webware 100 Best Web Applications
  The winners of the Webware top 100 for 2007.
  (tags: web2.0 webware innovation startups reference internet socialmedia)

links for 2007-06-25

• Stock Exchange of Visions
  Forum for collecting opinions about the future across a wide range of topical areas, including media, culture and economics.
  (tags: culture future ideas innovation research technology trends)
• Advertising Age | Just 12% of Senior Marketers See Value in CGM
  (tags: advertising marketing socialmedia adage change citizenmarketers media statistics internet)
• WSJ | Marketers Seek a Banner-Blindness Cure
  I'm quoted in this article about how advertisers are responding to consumer tendency to ignore onoine display ads.
  (tags: advertising mediabuying media creativity marketing internet innovation branding digital)
• iMedia Connection | Signs It's Time to Fire Your CMO
  Written by deposed Walmart CMO Julie Roehm, interestingly enough.
  (tags: marketing change business brands)
• Micro Persuasion | The Future of PR is Participation, Not Pitching
  Steve Rubel lays out some imperatives for change in the PR industry.
  (tags: publicrelations socialnetworking socialmedia media marketing future community blogs blogging change socialnetworks wordofmouth web2.0)

Nuts about authenticity

If consumers are demanding more authenticity and transparency from marketers, is it still OK for brands to be anything but authentic?  Before you respond with a resounding, "of course not," let's consider the possibility that not all of us are equally serious about being authentic in all we say and do.

Over the weekend, my wife purchased a small container of trail mix -- specifically a blend called Psychedelic Sunday Mix from a company called Elizabeth's Natural.

Despite the use of the word "natural" on the product label and in the company's name itself, one peek into the container is enough to disprove the claim.  Among other things, the mix contains M&M's which, in turn, contain a number of artificial ingredients including artificial coloring.

I'm not singling out Elizabeth's per se.  This is just one example of the kind of brand inauthenticity that is still all too common among companies small and large.

Does your fast food burger look as good on the table as it does in your ads?  Does your body spray really make your customers irresistable to members of the opposite sex?  Will your new automobile perform as well for the average suburban carpooler as it seems to for the "professional driver on a closed course?"

Odds are the answer will be, "no," so what do we really have to gain from advertising our products in this way?  Consumers have never been less willing to buy into the charade.  Why continue to play the game?  Is it because we've always done it this way?  Or because, as often as not, we realize that presenting things as they are might actually hurt our bottom lines?

I'd argue that creating total alignment between what we say we are and what we actually are would force a commitment to making our brands, products, customer relationships and our companies themselves better than they are today.

But maybe I'm nuts.  What do you think?

GV sighting: making virtual news

Cybergrrl Oh at Second Life News Network delivers some good coverage of my move to crayon, spun for the in-world crowd -- read it here. 

[Jiggy Stardust at Sunset.  Photo by C.C. Chapman.]

Friction is stranger than the truth

If you're feeling fed-up from a rough week at work and are looking to let off some steam, you might want to visit Friction.tv, a new video sharing site out of the UK that is positioned as a forum for topical debates.  Ostensibly "an online platform for user generated news and opinion," it actually amounts to a platform for people with extreme points of view on a given topic can egg each other on.  Opinionated citizens spark a new debate by posting a video op-ed piece and site visitors join in the debate by posting video responses or text comments.

Check out this gem in which a British radio personality argues in favor of global warming (possibly/probably with tongue-in-cheek, but still) -- this video has prompted 70+ responses (mostly anonymous, interestingly enough, and some quite serious.)

[Feed and email readers click through to watch - all others, if you don't see the video controls, click on the still to activate them.]

I'm all for conversation and love the idea of a platform that spurs genuine consumer-to-consumer debate, but I wonder if a site that seemingly caters to the crazies (or nutters, as they say in the UK) does more to hurt the mainstream perception of consumer generated media than to help it.

What do you think?  I'd especially love to hear from my British readers.  Or if you're feeling particularly ornery, feel free to start a debate at Friction.tv and post the link in the comments here. :-)

[via PSFK and Urban Junkies]

New media film festival

Shout out to Matt Dickman, who blogs at Techno//Marketer. Since late last month, he has been creating great, no nonsense video segments that provide layman's tours of much-talked-about-but-often-not-understood new media platforms that lots of marketers are asking their agencies about. 

He kicked off his series with a general overview of Web 2.0, continued with a look at Twitter and even toured Google Street View, but I personally like his latest best -- a marketer's tour of Second Life (vaguely reminiscent of my own SL tour late last year, but his is captured for posterity on video.)  In the interest of disclosure, he spends a good four-plus minutes touring crayon's virtual headquarters and highlighting our work for Coca-Cola Virtual Thirst, but that's not why I'm calling attention to this vid.  In fact, it's worth watching for the last 30 seconds alone - trust me. :-)

[Feed and email readers click through to the post to watch the video.]

If you're a new media maven, these video tours may seem pretty rudimentary to you.  But I'd guess that you're not Matt's primary audience (you are, however, his blog's primary audience so if you don't read him already you may want to check him out.)  I'd guess that he's aiming these vids square at the people who need them the most -- marketers and agency folk who may be talking about the latest "next big thing" but don't really understand what they mean as communications and marketing channels.

Check out Matt's entire Brightcove channel, subscribe to his updates and share these videos with all of your co-workers and clients who need a boost to their new media know-how.