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.

It’s just this easy.

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

Participants of Camp Organic 14. More on Camp Organic on the AllHands blog. Also, view the documentary
Photo by Dave Sylvestre.

After a few weeks in my new role as a Strategist for Organic, I’m compelled to add a quick post to “reset” my blog and get back to the task of blogging on an ongoing basis.

As the Digital Native demographic ages and press their elders to move beyond their fear of technology; as the heralded “web” comes to be with the explosion of new open platforms and tools; as new world leaders emerge and embrace technology for it’s community-building benefits, many organizations struggle to avoid falling irreconsilably behind the thought leaders and visionaries.

Organic is not one of these organizations. It is a true “digital shop,” at the point of the spear of modern marketing. Managing the evolution of one’s brand and product offering online has become increasingly complex, and it requires a deep understanding and acceptance of the new paradigm to succeed. Clinging to past strategies and processes will lead only to failure.

Organic is “platform agnostic,” which means the teams put strategy and goals first, and doesn’t waste time and energy on hiding ideas from the public, firewalling staff from Facebook and Twitter or lighting candles for push marketing and Microsoft products.

Organic attracts leaders in the industry and promotes idea generation and experimentation.

Organic boasts a proven process, where great minds converge and diverge to generate world-class work for its clients.

And finally (not really, but for the purpose of this post, it’s enough), the ThreeMinds culture permeates the day-to-day work and drives forward the long-term vision, creating a unified passion for quality and creating “Exceptional Experiences.”

It’s been years since I read Good To Great, and I’ve waited a long time to find an organization with such a drive… let’s just say if you see “Organic” on your RFP list, it’s okay to tell the other agencies to turn around and go home.

“The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incomptence and lack of discipline–a problem that largely goes away if you have the right people in the first place.” — Jim Collins, Good To Great

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.

Oh YEAH! The community of programmers at the recent Drupalcon in Boston was a passionate mob of some of the best minds in web creation. They’ve built a great product, and it’s about to hit the mainstream — in a torrential flood of mass adoption.

What sites should run Drupal?

Yours.

What is Drupal? A content and community management system. In a nutshell, everything your CMS does, Drupal does it better.

The key point for the hundreds of Drupal developers in Boston? From the creator of Drupal himself, Dries Buytaert, “Release the Killer App.”

Buytaert outlined a few key improvements to meet this ambitious goal that are in the works for Drupal version 7, due in a few months. Future killer app release aside, the features and benefits of Drupal are already very apparent in the latest implementations.

Drupal shops demonstrated several impressive case studies in Boston, with a wide range of product goals and technological implementations. The key point? It’s not just “Freaks and geeks” that are using Drupal for their World of Warcraft blogs.*

* Note: This is no insult, the Drupal community was empowered by the labels “Freaks and geeks” when applied by keynote speaker Chris DiBona, Google’s Open Source champion. Also, World of Warcraft is a powerful online community any corporation should only be jealous of.

So what can one create with Drupal?

Drupal boasts over 3,400 “modules.” These code sets bolt on to one’s Core Drupal site in minutes — or as fast as your server can accept file transfers… With these modules, some Drupal rockstar developers and themers and some great team leaders, these are six examples of the amazing creations that are possible.

Popular Science (www.popsci.com)

“We wanted to practice what we preach.” – The PopSci Team.

Pingvision, one of the newish self-described ‘Drupal shops’ worked with the PopSci Interactive team to produce the online presence of the famous print magazine devoted to innovation. You can read the full case study here.

Pingvision developed a blog-style interface with publishing and workflow managment for the content creators. To meet some of the specifications, Pingvision’s developers created new modules, and is currently making them available for all Drupal users.

Zuda Comics (www.zudacomics.com)

“IBM endorses and implements Drupal.” — Oliver Siodmak, Associate Partner, IBM Global Business Services

Zuda is DC Comics’ foray into online community for comic readers — a market that is nowhere near the size of the 90s equivalent, but one that is even more passionate than ever. Zuda attempts to find the next Superman, 300 or 30 days of night, comic books-turned movies that have built cash-raking brands for DC.

Comic creators can submit their work to the community for rating. Popular work can earn these artists and writers huge opportunity in the form of a contract with DC.

IBM produced the site, executing a brilliant theme and interface for reading and rating comics on screen. The full case study is here.

Fast Company (www.fastcompany.com)

“We spent a lot of money on that, and now it’s yours.” — Ed Sussman, Fast Company Team Lead on sharing a customized module with the Drupal community.

At the Boston Drupalcon, the hybrid team of multiple companies presenting new Fast Company online community seemed to be breathing a sigh of relief. The 120-pages of information architecture proved to be a challenge to Drupalize; the 500K strong existing community from Fast Company’s legacy site was obviously a task to integrate; and the hard launch date required to unveil at the Inc500 conference was unforgiving, but the outcome is impressive.

See the case study here.

Fast Company 2.0-ifyed it’s community with new tools, a new interface and a new spike in engagement. The team reports acceleration in traffic and time-on-site. If you join one site on this list, make it this one.

Warner Bros. Records Artists’ Communities

“The web site is the centre of the company.” — Ethan Kaplan, Warner Bros. Head of Technology

Warner Bros. has fully embraced Drupal as their solution-of-choice for all of their artists’ web sites. Fans of Britney (whoops, Britney.com’s been Drupalized, but she ain’t on Warner Bros., she’s on Sony BMG, so I dunno, let’s go with) Ashley Tisdale, Josh Groban, Avenged Sevenfold, Michael Buble and My Chemical Romance are enjoying new communities built around their respective and unique needs and wants.

The Warner Bros. web team boasted speed to market as one Drupal’s main benefits — they have launched more than 50 web communities in the past year, with unique databases, modules and themes (wild and crazy pink for Britney’s young fans; sparkling head shots and big type for Josh Groban’s more mature audience). The sites’ retention, according to the technical lead, easily quadruples when they switch from the one-way flash sites to Drupal’s user-empowering engine.

Amnesty International (www.amnesty.org)

Developer and business teams around the world worked together to produce the new Amnesty International web site. This implementation features Drupal’s highly-scalable localization (translation) module, including RTL (right-to-left for Arabic). CivicActions developed the site to add future languages with ease. Read the full case study here.

Rockband (www.rockband.com)

… And Drupal’s okay with Flash too. Check out Rockband’s appropriately loud and abrasive experience for a great example.

You can download Drupal at www.Drupal.org and start building your community.

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.