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Sketch-a-Move from Superflux on Vimeo.

(via @karrio)

Merry Xmas everyone. Here’s some holiday magic.

The buzz words are changing. As the term “Web 2.0” becomes antiquated, and the masses embrace social media, brands, corporations and organizations are starting to understand the implications of the new paradigms of the web.

Transparency is what’s driving consumer decision now, and the trust that is formed through the authentic collective voice of a brand’s management team, employees and customers.

At this point, I’m starting to feel dirty just saying the words “messaging” and “tone” when discussing “campaigns.”

In Boy Scouts, young campers are taught to start a one-match fire – focusing one’s skill on building the framework of the fuel so that it catches with only one match. I’ll do better than that. I’ll give you six matches to start the transparency fire in your organization.

Here are six catalysts to spark your new focus on authenticity and transparency.

Authencity drives consumer choices…

1. Joseph Pine defines the new Experience economy in this TED talk from 2004, and how “Authenticity is becoming the new consumer sensibility.”

… and they trust only human voices…

2. The Cluetrain Manifesto celebrated its 10-year anniversary with a new edition published this year. It describes how consumers are finding trust and truth through human voices within your organization, or elsewhere – that is, however they wish. From the book: “The corporation pretends to speak, but its voice is that of a third-rate actor in a fourth-rate play, uttering lines no one believes in a manner no one respects.”

… and some of these voices are much “louder” than others…

3. Chris Brogan and Julien Smith’s Trust Agents just hit the New York Times Bestseller list. It’s a how-to guide, defining and training the individuals in your organization best practices to be honest as they build genuine relationships. From the cover flap: “Trust Agents wield enough online influence to build up and bring down a business’ reputation.”

… so organizations must find a new way to communicate…

4. Shel Holtz and John C. Havens’ Tactical Transparency presents a framework for dealing with all the scary situations that big brands fear as they dip their toes in to Social Media. From the book: “Tactical Transparency provides dozens of case studies and interviews that address the implementation of transparency tools at the highest levels of the organization and the lowest. Transparency succeeds when it is embedded into the culture of a company, not implemented as a program designed to be exercised by only a few.”

… and it must go all the way to the top…

5. Organic’s CFO and COO Marita Scarfi explains the opportunity CEOs are missing if they don’t participate in Social Media and open conversations, in this recent Threeminds blog post. “Being engaged with your customers allows you to produce better products/services which, in turn, leads to improved customer loyalty. Ultimately this helps increase sales and fosters stronger company financial performance (e.g. increased shareholder value).”

… just like these numerous examples of management-level-driven open conversations.

6. The NewPR Wiki lists dozens of blogs written by Management-level contributors, where issues are being discussed, and trust is growing in brands… and the people that are behind them.

One last tip, campers: Campfires start quicker when the team works together, and when the structure of the tinder allows in oxygen… Keep it open.

(Insert Seth Godin Quote here)

Here’s a quick link to the Google Search: ebay wicked sick bmx

Phil “PhotoPhilCro” Crozier’s Final Canvas

50 new Nissan Cubes are driving off Canadian cubes dealer lots this month. Each one’s being driven by a brand advocate you only wish you had hired to tout your brand.

The new cars are the reward for months of creation and promotion by these musicians, DJs, dancers, programmers, designers, bloggers, podcasters, poets, writers and artists, and all kinds of creative thinkers; the cream of the crop of 500 competing “auditions” broadcast online over the last three months via social channels. Nissan openly called The Hypercube a social media marketing experiment, choosing to invest only in this channel, and is now pleased to announce (or tweet, perhaps) the successful proof of their thesis.

Nissan Canada’s creative agency, Capital C, went beyond the boilerplate hey-make-us-a-video and please-retweet-our-propaganda “campaigns” that are all too common these days, by offering prizes on which creative minds could really envision spending time and effort.

The Contest

Of 7000 applicants, 500 elite were given Hypercube canvases to audition for the mass public, stumping for daily votes with photos and animation, video, poetry and song. Competitors even took their campaigning offline, including Telma “TSwizz” Costa, who created and distributed pins to drive traffic, and Sean “Cube Man” Williams who literally drove offline traffic in his homemade cardboard Cube costume.

The cream rose quickly, as canvasses brought out the best from these competitors. And believe me, if you followed or friended any of them, you were hearing about it.

Over the course of the contest, so much exceptional content was created, it’s difficult to “highlight” the best stuff. Here are pieces of just three of the intense and daily updated canvasses:

Tony “Tony Holiday” Elston’s final canvas

Brittany Jade “Gunandagirl” Hanson’s final canvas

Delphine “Delf Berg” Bergeron’s final canvas

You can view all of the winning canvasses at thehypercube.ca

The Platforms

The Hypercube site was just the town hall of this experience, though, as competitors created videos on YouTube…

Posted images to Flickr…

Tweeted (like crazy)…

built web pages and blogs, and invoked social graphs from their other communities. For example, contestant Andre Molnar looked to leverage the passionate Drupal community, by promising to create the “Drupliconcube,” a Nissan cube “decked out in Druplicons, spreading the Drupal love to the streets.

Deeper Interactions

More than just pleas for votes, these daily updates became meaningful interactions between the competitors. Williams sent out a YouTube dance-off challenge to his fellow participants, and created this mashup:

Some social media users voiced disapproval of the campaign, including Shawn Micallef, who questioned the quality of the engagement suggests a line had been crossed, from daily updates from friends and outright spam. I disagree, as social media users are constantly pushing out posts and tweets that may annoy some, but be useful to others. This is the very nature of Social Currency, and one can, in fact, “Unfollow.” Furthermore, this type of repetition occurs with non-marketing events even more than with campaigns. When Michael Jackson died, or during the Obama campaign, the tidal wave of repetitious posts seemed to drown most other conversation. The Hypercube campaign wasn’t perfect, but neither is Facebook, nor Twitter, themselves.

The Finale

Such a momentous story had to end with an explosive climax, and on June 24, it did just that. Contestants gathered with friends at events simulcast in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. (Small-town contestants got together on their own in other provinces, too.) Contestants performed live between DJ sets, mingled over drinks, and sat in the highly-coveted Cubes on display. Winners were announced across the country via big screen video and some tight computer graphics. The dance floor of CiRCA in Toronto was like a minefield as groups of friends exploded in cheers when the local winners were listed off. It seemed like an endless supply of car keys were handed out, and many of the winners were ironically rendered speechless.

One can’t argue the level of quality and vastly disparate creative skillsets with which the Cube brand has been aligned.

The Outcome

Now, Nissan Canada has tons of authentic content to work with, generated by skilled creatives at a low cost. The winners are required to update their canvasses twice a month for the next year, but the brand will get a lot more than that, I predict, as these content generators are eager to share their experiences on the road. And they’ve also got promises to keep with their fans. Singer/Cube-winner Curtis Santiago promised to drive to a voter’s house in his cube, anywhere in Canada, to play a house party. No doubt he’ll be blogging and vlogging the whole trip.

I’ll admit, at first glance, I assumed Nissan Canada and Capital C’s campaign was a huge gamble. All too often, big brands create deep connections with new communities, but then drop these connections as soon as their campaign is over. Nissan has demonstrated how to think and plan long term; find–no, create passionate advocates who themselves created a plethora of content and awareness; and build a brand in partnership with their customers.

The Community

Moreover, this campaign was just the spark, a great success already, but the story of the Nissan Cube and the CubeCommunity is just beginning. Cubecommunity.ca teases us with a “coming soon” page, but the long-term strategy is obvious, as the community has all of the core requirements, starting with deeply invested and passionate community leaders. I look forward to following this community, and, in many ways, the hard work for Nissan and Capital C has just begun.

I’m happy to admit, the bar’s just been raised for “social media marketing.”

I’ve never used Lolcats on my blog, so this is the first, and last time. Promisses.

Photo credits: Marc Shandro.

Back in May, I tweeted eight “Web Strategy Reminders” that got some great responses. Here they are altogether, with two bonus reminders to allow people to laugh like Count von Count when they’re done.

Web Strategy reminder No. 1: If you’re just adding a “Community” tab to your web site, You’re doing it wrong.

Web Strategy reminder No. 2: If you’re pushing Content out through banners, You’re doing it wrong.

Web Strategy reminder No. 3: If everything you build has a unique interface, You’re doing it wrong.

Web Strategy reminder No. 4: If you start with a tactical gimmick on a platform your market doesn’t use, You’re doing it wrong.

Web Strategy reminder No. 5: If your platform doesn’t separate form from function, You’re doing it wrong.

Web Strategy reminder No. 6: If you’re ignoring the fact that Search is the number one way that users find you, You’re doing it wrong.

Web Strategy reminder No. 7: If you’re not considering how your experience will change over time, You’re doing it wrong.

Web Strategy reminder No. 8: If you’re not implementing a holistic measurement strategy beyond clickstream analysis, You’re doing it wrong.

Web Strategy reminder No. 9: If you’re ignoring the fact that your employees are telling the story of your brand (good or bad) better than your corporate web site, You’re doing it wrong.

Web Strategy reminder No. 10: If you’re excited about your new banner ad pushing to your new television ad on your new Flash web site, You’re doing it wrong.

As the shimmering waters of Facebook, Twitter and other social spheres are opened, many marketers are diving in the shallow end head first and hoping that the API waterwings their social media guru has supplied will keep them afloat.

I blogged about a few of these examples here, listing some brands gasping for air as their Twitter API “strategy” gets pulled from their lungs, and others just treading water.

Enter Prototype-Experience.com, a console game site (the Mitch Buchanan of this metaphor), where users link the Prototype trailer with their social graph and assets via Facebook Connect.

This is an excerpt of a post… Read the rest of this post on Organic’s Threeminds Blog

Nike combines their world-class storytelling with modern in-the-moment citizen journalism with this new Nike 5 Tournament Ad. While filming the ad with Wayne Rooney and Rio Ferdinand in Manchester for the Nike Five 5-a-side Tournament, an onlooker catches the best footage on his mobile phone of a SOT (soccer-obsessed-teen) taking Rooney’s pants down. Nike drops it in the ad, with the original mobile phone footage for proof-of-realism on YouTube.

(This was also posted on the Organic Threeminds Blog.)

Coca-cola and Wieden & Kennedy are expanding their “happiness” branding with a new spot featuring a world filled with gamers and social networkers ignoring each other while they are jacked in to their virtual worlds.

One lone “reality-lover” wades through the avatars on the way to enjoy a soda pop. When he finally gets to enjoy his soft drink among the wifi-ers, he meets a fellow cola enthusiast who learns that maybe socializing is better face-to-face, over a Coke.

There’s another story here, however. Assuming the spot wants to sell to teens, it misses the mark. The world has changed but social networking and gaming is the norm to millenials. They don’t see faces buried in mobile devices as a societal failure. They would prefer to broadcast their thoughts entire lives to many others than to enjoy a double malt with a stranger at the drug store.

The target will be watching this spot and, yes, will be intrigued by the plethora of mingling avatars, but they’ll be wondering what game each player is enjoying, not what tonic can save them from their 24/7 wired addiction. Coke should be asking, ‘How can we make ourselves the drink of choice for social networking?’ And, ‘Does our agency really understand the new paradigms of the digital-driven world?’

(Perhaps appropriately, you can view the non-embeddable spot at Creativity.)

I can hear the client now: “We need to make our gift cards more engaging.”

I would have kept a straight face, while I laughed on the inside. I would have made a half-hearted attempt at a brainstorming session and then tried to gloss over the request among other goals and great ideas during the client presentation.

But, I now realize I should really push for the exceptional experience in every strategy and tactic. No matter how audacious, ridiculous or obnoxious, there’s always an opportunity to raise the bar on every product, channel, tactic and strategy, including even the now ubiquitous gift card.

I have the Home Depot to thank for this revelation. Seen above (in a photo at which my old photography professor would shudder), a gingerbread man gift card I received for the holidays. More than just a gift card, however, as it came with a set of static-cling plastic features with which to decorate my bare cookie. Check it out:

Bottom line, I’m engaged. I’m showing friends – before and after I decorate my drywalling yuletide biscuit friend. This brilliant idea works on many levels:

1. At the checkout, this has great potential as an impulse buy;
2. If the giftee unwraps or unstocks with friends and family, this is a conversation starter;
3. The giftee can play (!) with the normally 100% utilitarian gift before eventually cashing it in for cool lumber and copper tubing;
4. The design seamlessly meshes The Home Depot’s branding and holiday theming; and,
5. They got me blogging about it.

Cheers to the team that put this one together. And good, though belated, tidings to all.

Note: The client quote above is a completely fabricated Pilkingtonian situation that may not have occurred. It was created by me, only to serve my point in this post. If anyone knows of the actual people involved and process that occurred to invent and implement the gingerbread cookie gift card (I’m looking at you, @thehomedepot on Twitter), I’d be happy to update this entry.