Coca-cola sticks to its old-school guns with ‘the single largest marketing push the soft drink giant has ever run.’

CherryFlava gives us the rundown here: http://www.cherryflava.com/cherryflava/2010/04/coca-cola-quest-world-cup-2010-ad.html

I’ve got nothing against the effort put in and the 3d awesomeness that has been created, but I’m pretty bored by the idea that Coke just wants to interrupt arguably the most passion-driven event in the world show us some stranger getting thirsty from jumping on robots and reaching for a Coke.

All this opportunity to connect and interact with the beautiful game and its singing, screaming, crying and cheering fans (the actions that make us thirsty), and Coke wants to interrupt those actions to shut us up, bring us down from the high and remind us to pick up a case of Coke before the next game.

But, please – I don’t want to make this a monologue – what do you think?

PS – COME ON ENGLAND!

When you’re a movie maker, could there be a more positive inquiry from a potential viewer?

Isn’t that what trailers are designed to do? How many hours are spent creating trailers? How much money? How much time and effort is spent crafting the perfect show-a-little-leg-but-not-too-much tease to get people to sit forward in their seats and expand their pupils by the time the name of the movie and the opening date fades in?

And yet, thousands of people asking “What movie is this from” doesn’t seem to be influencing the poor decision made by the lawyers representing Constantin Film, who have decided to systematically destroy what is probably the most successful marketing campaign they’ve ever been a part of (Well, at least since the NeverEnding Story).

Constantin Film AG is the production and distribution company behind the movie “Downfall,” which is also the source from one of the Internet’s most hallowed memes.

Read the rest of this article on Threeminds

Tucked away near the end of one of the best Slideshare’s I’ve come across, is this lil’ gem of UGC brilliance. Musicians C-Mon & Kypski need a little help with their music video, and it’s crowdsourcing that makes this video memorable (and affordable, I imagine). They’ll show you a frame from their video, and all you have to do is mimic it via webcam.

But before I tell you why I love this so much, let me share the Slideshare presentation with you – In “Stop Saying Viral – A Case For Spreadable Media,” Eva Hasson of Trendspotting makes an argument against “The Viral” strategy on which so many agencies and brands are stuck. If you’re a marketer, the best thing you could do today is open your mind to Hasson’s Wisdom Bombs…

Read the rest of this post at Threeminds

There’s a lot of buzz about the Pepsi Refresh project and how they’re pulling their usual investment in Super Bowl Advertising and moving funds to a broader social strategy. It’s exciting news for people like me who work on big brands and are trying to bring perspective to the old-school Mad Men wanna-bes who still crowd this industry while the world moves away from traditional one-way advertising to deeper experiences. But, even as Pepsi tries to break new ground by cancelling their standard multi-million dollar 30-second football spot, their television ad agency proceeds to fumble the ball by blatantly ripping off a brilliant YouTube video to sell the new social initiative.

Here’s the Pepsi Refresh ad:

And the original music video that Pepsi “Refreshed”:

Much more magical, don’t you think?

Imagine if they contacted SOUR and worked with them to take SOUR’s concept to a whole new level, as opposed to just blatantly copying it. Wouldn’t that be more in line with the ideals of the new Pepsi Refresh Project? Imagine the positive wave of support from SOUR’s fans, and the 1 million+ other viewers of this video who surely would like the band to succeed. Please agencies — it’s not about you anymore. It’s not about your ads. It’s about the customer; the consumer; the user; the publich; the individual. It’s about The Human.

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.

When a new technology comes along, or in this case, a new video effect, the first use cases are rarely contextually appropriate.

It must have just got easier to build 3D composite videos, because they’re being churned out faster than auto-tuned hip-hop songs as many creative minds are overwhelmed by the razzle-dazzle of their spot actors invoking Hogwartsish incantations of product features out of thin air. Examples are piling up and running back-to-back in some instances.

Before we look at who’s getting it right, let’s look at a few examples that didn’t quite…

Finance Canada

The Canadian Government tries to metaphorically represent their new website experience with citizens plucking grant options from the clouds, but the message – the benefits – are lost among the gimmicky visuals.

Ford

Ford goes through a similar experience, as the car buyer is building her Escape in her mind’s eye by shoving animated features one-by-one in to the SUV.

SyFy

SyFy’s recent brand announcement is more of the classic high-budget blue-screen big-CG style, but the partygoers are tossing around magic items with abandon. Each one, more awkwardly than the last.

Blackberry

Blackberry attempts to demonstrate that you can control your whole world in your Curve. The representation of the mobile digital experience though is cringe-worthy though, as the actor, as with all of these examples, just isn’t quite sure where to focus her eyes.

So, who’s doing it right?

HP

HP’s “personal” celebrity stories commercials are instantly recognizable – yes, they have star power, but it’s the execution that works so well with this creative platform. Perhaps the best decision here was to cut off their heads. Not only does it invite the viewer to try to figure out who the celebrity is, but the celebrity doesn’t have to worry about looking silly and unfocused as they stare at their waving and empty hands. These ads have earned big viewcounts on YouTube, has boast lots of user-generated videos and parodies, further proving the success of the concept. These commercials could be about anyone, and HP has seized this opportunity, expanding the platform on YouTube with the “You On You” contest (which I wrote about it on Threeminds).

Apple

iPhone ads demonstrate the apps, sell the benefits and dazzle you with the product, not computer graphics of metaphors of potential behaviours that you could maybe have at some point.

You might think using the iPhone ads as a best practice example is a cop-out – the fingers are demonstrating the product itself, you say, not flicking around post-production 3D objects… and to this I say…

“Precisely.”

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.”

‘Trouble At The Henhouse’ dropped in 1996, just as marketers were starting to try to think about the Internet. In my opinion, this was and is the much-worshipped (by Canadians) band’s best album. But, until today, when ‘Let’s Stay Engaged’ shuffled through my iPod’s earbuds, I didn’t realize they wrote the anthem for today’s best practice marketing strategies ten years early.

Let’s Stay Engaged

It might be late but it won’t be early
you got me to the gate with time for a coffee
it’s getting late sounds like a departure
it’s getting close sounds to me like a departure
Until we meet again lets stay engaged
until then lets stay engaged
Lies over time float to the surface
lies over time they equal surface
lies over time though the reasons desert us
lies over time with no apparent purpose
Until we meet again lets stay engaged
until then lets stay engaged
See the dead art and you see your reflection
fear no art and you fear no reflection
but don’t look at me, I’m not the artist in question
sounds good to me, but I’m not the artist in question
Until we meet again lets stay engaged
until then lets stay engaged

Maybe ‘Henhouse’ was a full brand/marketing/social web/social commerce concept album…

Gift Shop – “After a glimpse over the top/The rest of the world/Becomes a Gift Shop”

Does this refer to Chris Anderson’s “Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business” concept?

They really were Ahead By A Century.

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.

Apparently, API stands for All Projects are Implemented, according to some agencies. Marketers are trying to find their way in the Times-Square madness of the Social Media space, but when someone is asking for directions, they don’t really want every street on the whole map.

With Twitter, for example, it’s still important for strategy to drive decisions on tactics. An open API seems to be a maddening siren’s call for agencies and developers, causing them to lose all sense and launch campaigns just for the sake of integrating Twitter.

Let’s learn from these campaigns and stop all the gimmickry.

Skittles

If you haven’t heard of the Skittles.com debacle (which they continue to host), welcome to the Internet. Kidding aside, this web site has thrown away caution and its brand, allowing Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to define its message and its value. Upon launch of this “strategy,” users gamed the sites, associating swear words, offensive posts and negative messaging. Now, weeks later, the aggregate social destination sits passive; the brand message confused and tarnished.

The glass-half-full viewpoint: I should, however, acknowledge the 1 million+ fans subscribed to the Skittles Facebook fan page. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, Skittles does with these subscribers.

FixOutlook.org

This recently launched grassroots site hopes to grab the attention of the Windows Beta evaluators, and send a powerful, organized message to Microsoft before they commit to the sin of continuing to use Word to render emails in the 2010 version of Outlook. I admit, it’s a noble cause. But the twitter implementation at the core site is reminiscent of 90s designers using animated gif backgrounds just because they could. It was a terrible idea, and the addition of a Twitter avatar feed doesn’t change this. This is/was a great opportunity to unite these users in a deeper way.

The glass-half-full viewpoint: The people behind this cause did keep it simple, and don’t necessarily have a need for a long-term view. The virulence of the tweets are visible, and I’ve yet (with 17,489 “tweetitioners”) to see any tweets against the campaign.

Terminator Salvation (Resistance 2018)

The film over-promised and under-delivered, so I suppose we could say the Twitter campaign stayed true to the brand. This Twitter game sent Jumbled words to decode and trivia questions to answer to followers who would earn points. It also incorporated some Terminator-world messages, such as, “You have been harvested by the machines, you lose 5 points.” Games on Twitter are starting to multiply, and this one seemed to have good promise, but the challenges became repetitive quickly, and the burning Terminator face rolling by among my smiling happy Twitter friends weakened the impact of the experience. If this is SkyNet, we have nothing to worry about.

The glass-half-full viewpoint: Games on Twitter are still a new concept, and this early attempt did earn some pretty good reach and buzz. It does foreshadow more robust and solid twitter contest and gaming to come.

Polar Ice

The ultimate in Twitter API gimmickry lives at PolarIce.ca. This flash site pulls in what appear to be completely random Tweets, with a muddled interface featuring confusing functionality creating the ultimate why-am-I-here experience for users. It seems Polar Ice just likes Twitter. But what does this have to do with Vodka, or partying?

The glass-half-full viewpoint: If you have a glass half full of Polar Ice, tip it back and Google your way off this site.

Nike’s The Hookup

Nike’s work-in-progress started with a whimper, but is now, it appears, starting to evolve into something a little more useful. The Hookup tweets local shoe drops to followers, and has other functionality pulling key terms for their fashion product/item/lines called “icons.” Fans are starting to use the tag #thehookup, which may connect to this strategy too, but it’s difficult to say.

The glass-half-full viewpoint: There is a lot of activity around these items on Twitter, and this team has a long-term view. A few changes will lead to success for this program.

(Full disclosure: I work for Organic, with Nike Canada as one of our clients. I haven’t, however, worked on The Hookup)

What’s the common thread here? These API implementations are all ideas conceived based on the brand’s needs, instead of the users’.

If instead, one considers the drivers behind users’ behaviours on Twitter and other Social Media, one realizes that these are surface ideas that don’t serve their preferences, desires and needs. Start with user-centric thinking, think long-term, and ease into Social Media with grace and success.

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.

Organic’s ThreeMinds blog has a couple of great posts that I think you’ll enjoy:

1. Social media micro case study: “X-Men” by Russ Hopkinson estimates the value of a brands’ friends on MySpace, and what they may have lost.
2. Turning Nothing Into Something by Michael Beavers examines a fantastic idea from ThisIsReality.org — Advertising in context on a 404 error page. And also;
3. A Look Back at Some Favorite iPhone Apps from 2008

Photo by Chinaguccio

I’m an Olympics junkie. But, until the olympiad when I can watch the event I want, when I want, wherever I want, my craving will remain unsated.

Athens 2004 gave a glimpse at the potential of the future of Olympics coverage, and as Beijing 2008 approached, it seemed that on-demand, super-immersive web strategy and mobile tactics would be ubiquitous and all-encompassing.

As it turns out, it’s not quite there yet. NBC’s has no regrets however, as their lock down of the coverage has grabbed a 17.6 Nielsen rating and $1 Billion in advertising revenue.

Nevertheless, social media and Web 2.0 has opened new doors for the dissemination and celebration of the games to spread higher, faster and stronger.

Here are some of the strategies and memes that are defining the Olympic Games online and on your mobile device:

Video

Wired’s “How to watch the olympics online”

If you’re hunting for the ultimate on-demand and live coverage online, this is a good place to start.

• howto.wired.com/wiki/Watch_the_Olympics_Online

CCTV Olympics Flash interface

Flash designers are boasting about the scope of the content being delivered on a Flash platform implementation. It’s “pretty,” I suppose, but severely limited as far as organization of the content and usability. It’s possible this answers the question whether Flash can support large projects, but that’s secondary to delivering a good user experience… and Flash just isn’t the right fit for this type of content.

• cctvolympics.com

NBC using Silverlight

… but at least the CCTV site is Flash and not Silverlight. Users, if they’re so fortunate to own a Windows PC, are forced to download the new Microsoft Silverlight plug-in to view NBC’s online video. After that hurdle is cleared, the experience is good for some, terrible for others.

• nbcolympics.com/video

Googolympics

StartupMeme lists the many Google initiatives for the games, including Gadgets, One-box search, Maps visualizations and the (arguably) revolutionary dedicated YouTube channel.

• startupmeme.com/google-geared-up-to-fix-beijing-olympics-2008-2

And here’s Google’s mobile access to stats and updates.

• google.com/m/messageboard?mb=08bj

Widgets

All the major content providers have built desktop widgets.

• www.google.ca/search?q=olympics+widget

Lenovo’s TVTonic Super-Widget

Lenovo’s has sponsored a skinned TVTonic app that allows you to subscribe to full-length events, viewable on- and off-line.

• www.tvtonic.com/olympics/install/

Interactive Strategies

CBC’s Sport Explainer

CBC explains events with simple animations. You can learn water polo by clicking on the link at the bottom right here>

• cbc.ca/olympics/water-polo/

BBC Interactive Olympic Map

The BBC leverages Microsoft Live Search Maps to surface blog and twitter coverage via a geographical visualization.

• news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympics/7493757.stm

NYT’s Medal Count Map Visualization

The New York Times shows us the historical (and current) medal counts for all of the modern games.

• nytimes.com/interactive/2008/08/04/sports/olympics/20080804_MEDALCOUNT_MAP.html

BBC’s Olympic Myth: “Monkey”

The Gorillaz’ Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett adapt and animate a classical Chinese novel to promote BBC coverage.

• news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympics/monkey/7521287.stm

Mobile

Blackberry Cool’s Olympic Roundup

Follow on your Blackberry with these apps.

• blackberrycool.com/2008/08/get-the-olympics-on-your-blackberry-round-up/

Softpedia’s Blackberry Beijing Travel App

Going to Beijing? Here’s an interesting targeted Travel App.

• handheld.softpedia.com/get/Travel/Travel-Beijing-China-2008-Summer-Olympics-BlackBerry-60532.shtml

Zumobi’s Olympic iPhone App

Zumobi has a simple app – no video, but general coverage, including photos and blogs. If you have an iPhone, let me know what you think of this…

• macworld.com/article/134963/2008/08/olympics_app.html

Social Media

Twitter Hashtags: BG08, Beijing, Olympics

The twitterati can’t make up their mind on a tag, so here’s all three as they are rolling out on Twemes.

• twemes.com/BG08,Beijing,Olympics

Flickr

Wow, Flickr had a great opportunity to capitalize on all the great photos from the event… but finding the good photos is tough. Most searches return almost an equal number of protest and political images as mediocre shots of the games.

• flickr.com/search/?q=beijing+2008+olympics&s=int

Facebook Apps

Pramati has built an interesting Guess-the-Podium app for Sun. It’s a good idea, but tough to guess many events – that is, I could have an educated guess on a World Cup or March Madness app, but I’m not sure who to pick for 60kg Men’s Freestyle Wrestling. Will it be He Qin, Yandro Quintana or Mavlet Batirov who take the gold?

• facereviews.com/2008/08/07/facebook-olympics-app-by-sun/

NBC’s and other also-ran apps are available too.

Wikipedia

• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Summer_Olympics

Blogs

Bloggers Blog Olympics Blogs and Twitterers

A great list of bloggers and twitterers is collected here.

• bloggersblog.com/cgi-bin/bloggersblog.pl?bblog=808081

Athlete Blogs

With so many to follow, I haven’t had a chance to sift through these massive lists. (If you have any highlights of great athlete bloggers or entries, let me know.)

• danwei.org/blogs/athletebloggers_at_beijing_oly.php
• hehe2.net/misc/60-beijing-olympic-athletes-blogs-opml-file-directly-to-your-reader/
• summergames.lenovo.com

Wordpress Tag: Olympics

Of course, there are lots of other bloggers talking about the olympics. Wordpress aggregates the tags from these posts.

• wordpress.com/tag/olympics/

Reuters Olympics Podcasts

• blogs.reuters.com/china/2008/08/08/olympics-podcast-day-one/

User-generated content and Memes

We can’t ignore the waves of UGC and the viral contributions of general public.

FriendFeed Spanish Faux-pas

This story exploded across the web, and gains strength still via social networks.

• friendfeed.com/search?q=spanish+team&public=1

Blue Screen of Death @ Opening Ceremonies

The meme says Windows projected its infamous artwork on during the opening ceremonies. Real or fake? Either way, geeks grabbed on to the story and added another chapter to the Windows Fail mythology.

• gizmodo.com/5035456/blue-screen-of-death-strikes-birds-nest-during-opening-ceremonies-torch-lighting

LOLBush @ Olympics

The Guardian wonders if Bush “can haz” anything else to do, besides watching Misty May dig sand.

• guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2008/aug/12/bushlol?picture=336501045

Sponsor Strategies

Most of the official international sponsors have weak (if any) strategies – Flash timelines and movies that unapologetically cram the brands down the users’ throats. If your computer doesn’t crash, check out Panasonic’s “World Wide Wave.” Yikes.

On the other side of things

McDonalds’ The Lost Ring Cross-channel Immersive Storyline

Wow. I stumbled on to this only recently, and it looks expansive, and impressive. It also looks like it’s nearly over. I’ll be looking deeper into this multilingual social media play.

• thelostring.com

Atos Origin’s On-site Infrastructure

Here’s an overview of Beijing 2008’s IT provider’s offerings, including the “Olympic Family Intranet”

• computing.co.uk/computing/news/2216061/beijing-olympics-primed-break-3988584

Kodak’s Blog?

Meh. Kodak’s final olympiad as an Olympic sponsor passes on a weak note online.

• 1000words.kodak.com

… one interesting post however, is the comprehensive gallery of Kodak’s Olympic Pins.

• tomhoehn.1000words.kodak.com/default.asp?item=2245002

Samsung’s Medal Mania

Medal Mania is a cross-Internet hunt for medals. The clues are kind of lame, but it’s a good attempt at engagement.

• medalmania.com

Official Web Strategy

Beijing 2008’s official site

One wonders at the missed (?) opportunities for the official sites to host and stream on-demand content. And for revenue streams? Sponsorships, subscriptions and fee-driven access. How about a deal with iTunes?

• en.beijing2008.cn

Vancouver 2010

Finally, a shameless proud plug for the home team currently building towards the next winter games. Go Canada Go! (See you there.)

• vancouver2010.com

This list is a work-in-progress. Send me your links and thoughts on the games…

Yes, this is another blog post about Twitter.

It looks like Twitter’s ready for your brand. Is your airline, coffee franchise, financial services organization, non-profit, car dealership, landscaping company, ad agency, funeral home or laundromat ready to Twitter?

From a social media marketing analysis standpoint, the conversation has changed from questioning Twitter’s viability as a channel to acceptance of the tool, its audience stability and growth. The question now is, how does a brand use it without (as the internet-savvy say) EPIC FAIL?

Here are some of the recent thoughts, proofs and discussions:

1. Dell expands Twitter strategy
2. Dell explains their strategy on YouTube
3. Zappos (@zappos) has 400+ employees on Twitter (and amazing online reputation/WOM momentum), and here are the employees: twitter.zappos.com/employees
4. Bryan Person (@BryanPerson) is collecting “BrandsOnTwitter” Delicious Links
5. Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang) analyzes at the Brands that have been unsuccessful on Twitter
6. Fortune Magazine highlights Twitter’s potential

Let me know if you find more analysis to help brand planners and marketers understand Twitter.

Follow me here: @craigritchie

Update: Jeremiah Owyang has posted his recommendations for Brands on Twitter.

Web conferences have become host to the new wave of viral tools and technologies that are enhancing community and business meetings. Carlson Marketing calls this next-gen conference style ‘Meetings 2.0.’ As a worldwide enabler of business meetings, Carlson has added mobile tools and social networking to their meetings and events offerings, which expands the experience from just ‘During’ to include ‘Before’ and ‘After.’

Twead carefully during your keynote

Recently, at the Toronto Mesh web conference, a lot was revealed about the future of conferences. Specifically, the massive impact of mobile devices and social media tools on these types of get-togethers. The communication vehicle of choice? Twitter, of course. During the two-day event, power-tweeters (frequent users of Twitter) introduced the power and benefits of micro-blogging to dozens of twuddites. (Twitter luddites)

What was the call to action for these new adopters? Easily a quarter of the audience members in any given session had laptops open, and half of them were twittering amongst themselves, expanding the presentations and panels to deep discussions in the seats.

Twemes, a Twitter API implemetation, further enabled the conversation between tweeters, as Mesh attendees or ‘Meshies’ tagged their 140-character-or-less comments with ‘#mesh08,’ allowing the community to follow the discussion in real time as the comments rolled by. You can see all of these comments aggregated here.

I recommend trying out Twemes.com: ideally, follow a “hot pick” in the top right corner (these are usually conferences) and click “start live update” to see the topic-tagged twitters roll by. You can imagine the additional engagement this provides for events and conferences.

The added value of the Twitter conversation backchannel was obvious. During the conference, Meshies were using Twitter to discuss the future of music as a business model, and taking the liberty of re-branding Saturn’s awkwardly named social network ImSaturn (the marketer from Saturn tried desperately to point us to the correct URL, but stumbled through the difficult address).

Do we even have to attend anymore?

ScribbleLive was unveiled at Mesh ‘08, a live blogging platform with real-time updates. In this forum, ScribbleLive users live-blogged forums and presentations, allowing multi-taskers and attendees in other sessions follow multiple discussions. For a great example of the group blogging output, check out the live blog of Steve Jobs’ Keynote at the WWDC, including his announcement of the new iPhone 3G.

My mobile meeting manager

Mesh ‘08 also boasted an impressive, although slightly off-the-mark blackberry app. The technically-oriented (crackberry-addicted) audience presented an optimal opportunity for Sweet Caesar to offer a free downloadable guide to the event. The features and user experience of the app were quite valuable, even though it just left me wanting more.

Among the features were a venue map, schedule and presenter bios. Unfortunately, this information didn’t update over the two days and was incorrect (as conference schedules go) as soon as the first keynote began. Overall however, the implementation demonstrated the potential for great value in the future. Now event planners must consider “What is my mobile strategy?” “What is my web strategy?” Maybe next time we’ll see the integration of Twitter, ScribbleLive and social networking tools to enhance our next Mesh (or your next conference’s) experience.

Look for Part 2 of my post on the evolution of Meetings and Conferences: Meeting virtually in real life (Part 2): Entertain us, we’re bored and twittering.

While Seth Godin is questioning the longevity of everyone’s patience for “Green” marketing, Dell has achieved great success in its current campaign, “What does ‘green’ mean to you?” In partnership with and in support of Regeneration.org, Facebookers can use the Graffiti tool to enter their artwork to be voted on by their fellow social networkers.

More than 7,000 entries have been submitted.

The top 150 (yes, One Hundred and Fifty, not top 10 or 20…) are now available for voting, and the quality of art is astonishing. Spend some time in the virtual art show here.

Also notable is the quality of the conversation and virulence of the campaign. The discussion board boasts more than 100 topics, with conversation ranging from Global Warming – Real, or Hoax?” to sub-campaigns started by the participants suggesting that competitors “Rate the Person Above You’s Grafitti!!”

The engagement reaches beyond the page as 1,471 Facebook fans are spreading word of the campaign.

Quite simply put, there is a monumental difference between social media strategies that sputter and die because of lack of knowledge and direction, and successful campaigns like this one that is lead by expertise and focus.

Hat tip to Jeremiah Owyang (twitter @jowyang) once again for the link.

Seth wrote a blog post about me. Well, kind of.

Add this post on the Canadian Marketing Blog to the list of articles I think everyone I know should read. In fact, if I work with you on any project, please print this article out and read it before we sit down at a meeting.

Let’s do some things that generate buzz; that catch some users’ and customers’ attention. I’m not talking about setting fire to the brand and chopping down the business, just grabbing some momentum and market share and allowing room for some failures. Let’s set some benchmarks.

Wow. My two favourite topics in a single post over at One Degree:

1. The mis- and overuse of flash for no real value; and,
2. A watered-down attempt at UGC (user-generated content) by a corporation

Update: A Sears marketer has posted that this was not an attempt at UGC… good positive follow up on the blog, but really, what was the point of this site anyway?

Update 2: Man, that security guard is creepy.