360DigitalInfluence

WPP (parent company of Ogilvy PR and our 360° Digital Influence Team) has been sponsoring a series of technology partnership meetings called “Co-Labs” which are aimed at connecting digital teams to discuss the latest advances in web technologies. I made the trip up to NYC last Thursday to hear from Justin Osofsky, head of the Facebook Developer Network. On a side-note at the Starbucks across the street I ran into the T-1000. I love this town.

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Over the last year, location-based social networks such as Foursquare, Gowalla and Brightkite have exploded among early adopters. It’s no question—with increasing adoption of smart phone usage, location-based social networks are rising in popularity every day.

Recently covered in GigaOM, CNN, Ad Age and The New York Times, Foursquare is currently one of the most buzzed about location-based mobile social networks. Intel and Ogilvy recently used Foursquare to drive traffic to and create buzz around Intel’s offline events and activities at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month.

For CES, Intel created a branded Foursquare page, featuring locations where Intel had activity and tips for Las Vegas visitors. Intel also rewarded check-in’s to key events with branded badges, paired with the chance to win an Intel-powered netbook for all badge recipients.

This exclusive collaboration allowed Intel to track and build relationships with online influencers active on Foursquare at CES. With more than 400 cumulative check-in’s to Intel-affiliated locations and events, the collaboration was a breakout success and proved to be an interesting event-based model for brands looking to work with Foursquare.

We interviewed Tristan Walker, head of business development at Foursquare, to learn more about their vision for what’s to come for brands, businesses and Foursquare.

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Window shopping isn’t easy on video sharing sites like Youtube.   If you’ve ever attempted to browse around without a specific keyword then you know what I mean.   The search and sort features generally aren’t that great, and what boils to the surface tends to be irrelevant no matter how you structure the search terms.   It’s easy to be discouraged, especially if you’re looking for examples of a video content strategy for a client.

I’ve waded through the cesspools of the online video underbelly to bring you fantastic examples of how organizations are using episodic video in compelling and interesting ways.   These examples range from channels on Youtube to full fledged video libraries like Fora.TV and SnagFilms.   Some are of these examples are oriented around a specific organization, some are purely educational, perhaps a few will even make you wonder why you still own a TV.

FORA.tv

This is an incredible collection of some of the world’s top thinkers and scientists.   Similar to the uber-popular TED Talks, Fora.TV brings together brilliant minds for discussions on current events, science, business and culture.   With a wealth a content, visitors could spend all day combing through the different categories.   The My Fora.TV section is an excellent example of how organizations can use co-creation to engage with users.   This section allows users to upload their own content, splice it together with Fora’s footage, and produce a brand new program.   Genius.

@GoogleTalks

Google has a reputation for snagging incredible speakers to come talk to their employees and now you have a front row seat for every presenter that’s ever graced the halls of the Googleplex.   There’s over 400 episodes in all.   Some notable guests include Noam Chomsky, Richard Florida, Salmon Rushdie, Condoleezza Rice and Bob Woodward.

Worldbank Channel

The official Youtube channel for the Worldbank.   With nearly 20,000 views and 100 videos, this NGO is doing it right with online video.   It’s not all boilerplate and CEO interviews.   There’s video aggregated from all over world.   The most recent video is from Here Comes Everybody author Clay Shirky.   Very interesting stuff and proof that large organizations can overcome the common barriers to producing compelling video.

MoMA

Youtube channel for the Museum of Modern Art.   A video content strategy probably wasn’t part of the plan during the founding of the museum in 1929, but like many organizations, they’ve evolved.   Each video generally represents a new exhibit or project.
Hulu

In the “why do I own a TV” category, Hulu aggregates free episodes available from the major network and cable stations into one, organized home.   While one no organization is likely to have a treasure chest of video content like Hulu, brands looking for a video content strategy would be well advised to emulate the layout, categories, and search that make using Hulu a breeze.

Citizen Tube

A meeting ground for interviews and discussions focused on politics and the general election.   With over 1.8 million views, this represents a legitimate forum of discussion and one of Youtube’s most subscribed channels.   With a steady flow of fresh content, Citizen Tube is also proof that post frequency is a contributing factor to building and maintaining a large number of subscribers.

SnagFilms

This is the brand new home for more than 250 full length documentaries from all over the world.   Top documentaries like Super Size Me live alongside obscure independent gems, making this site an instant favorite among film and documentary buffs.

The real beauty in SnagFilms lies not in the free content but in the way users are encouraged to share the films.   Each movie comes with an individual widget that allows users to post the full length movie in their entirety. on their own site.     “When you embed a widget on your web site,” Snagg Films explains,   “you open a virtual movie theater and become a ‘Filmanthropist’”

I’m going to stop here rather attempting to boil the ocean by providing every example of great video content online.   Instead, I’m going to turn it over to you.   What’s your favorite place for video content?   Post a link in the comments section and if enough readers submit we’ll expand the list for a round two edition…

As I sit here watching the University of Georgia struggle in the last inning of the last game Men’s College World’s Series, I can’t help but think how much they need the “ball girl” right now.

A colleague of mine sent me a clip of the “ball girl” at the Fresno vs Tacoma minor league game, catching a foul ball. He asked if we could recruit her for our PR league softball team. Why not? Even though we’ve got a great record going this season (2-2, fyi), who wouldn’t want a player like that (ahem, on stunt wires) in your outfield??

That’s right, I hate to burst anyone’s bubble about “ball girl” but she is not real — in fact, according to Shoot Online, she’s a result of Element 79 Partner’s new viral video for Gatorade.

The video has been making the rounds on the Internet and likely fooling a lot of people, but what we are seeing is, in fact, staged. It is actually a viral video for Gatorade titled “Ball Girl” that was created by Chicago’s Element 79 Partners and directed by Baker Smith of harvest, Santa Monica.

The video has received over 165,000 views in the past 5 days on YouTube. Definitely a strong viral video.

The thing that gets me is the effectiveness of the branding. Sure, many people have seen the video and they are certainly passing it around. But how many viewers recognize the Gatorade branding? How many people saw the Gatorade bottle sitting next to the ball girl’s chair?

So my question to you is how subliminal can branding be within viral videos and still be effective? Does the video have to focus on the brand like the Mentos and Diet Coke phenomenon? Or can the video have no obvious brand recognition at all? If so, how does the brand build awareness? Through press releases and additional WOM tactics?

As I think about it, I do think that a viral video doesn’t necessarily need to include branding to be effective. As long as the viral video is part of a larger WOM campaign, the conversation around the video and who’s behind it (aka the brand) can build visibility and brand recognition.

AdAge calls the Gatorade video “pure gold”. So what do you think about the “ball girl”? Could it have been done differently? Do you think it was as effective as it could be? What would you do differently? The same?

12 years ago I had my first job in PR and vowed it would be my last. It was a summer internship at the Cartoon Network down in Atlanta and was a role I was thrilled to get. Even today, there is something nice about being able to say I spent a summer working on planning and promoting the Bugs Bunny Marathon. We can all use more Bugs Bunny. The only problem was, it was my first role in PR and the majority of my role consisted of writing press releases. It was my first taste of ghost writing - where I would spend hours crafting the perfect sentence to describe Cow and Chicken and send it out on a release, only to see that phrase quoted in the TV Guide with no credit or attribution.

Ghost writing is tough - and it is something that many PR pros know too well. From writing releases, to helping author books, to crafting speeches, much of the communications industry is writing things that you cannot take credit for. To some degree, a communications pro must make his or her peace with that. The only problem that remains is, when you are not able to share what you are writing, how can you get feedback to improve it?

Last week I spent Thursday at the Social Networking Conference in Miami doing a presentation titled “The Secrets of Creating Talkability.” After my session, I met Lindsay Preston - founder of a new community called Writing Room. Inspired by her experience of being a ghost writer, the newly launched site is meant to be a resource for writers to help them get feedback privately on things they are working on. For many of my colleagues, it is probably a site we have wished for many times in the past.

Though it is a very new site, the idea behind it is one that many writers will be able to relate to - getting help from a community of folks in a similar situation to yourself. If I had to pick one core lesson to come out of this event, it was summed up in the idea behind WritingRoom.com … that the real power behind any social network is to connect people so they can help one another. The more effectively you can do this, the better your social network will be.

It’s been awhile since a Web banner made this kind of an impression.

If you visited either NYTimes.com or WSJ.com on Thursday, you probably saw Apple’s ad promoting the Mac OS X Leopard.  

The Apple “banner” is actually a combination of two synched ad units that combine to tell a clever, funny story about Apple’s Leopard operating system.  

In the ad, “PC man” John Hodgman from Apple’s “Get a Mac” spots climbs a ladder into the second ad unit to staple a “NOT” sign to the end of a Wall Street Journal quote claiming that “Leopard is better and faster than Vista.”

What makes the ad stand out?

1.     Humor. The ad shows that YouTube does not have exclusive rights to “funny” and “clever”. The “man they do NOT proofread these things” and “we’ve got the whole Internet to correct” comments are particularly cute. And when’s the last time we’ve seen a WSJ quote in 40-point type font on the homepage of NYTimes?

2.   Context. The ad was created to fit perfectly within WSJ and NYTimes environments. The top leaderboard banner features a WSJ quote in large, headline-like font, making it appear to be part of the page’s editorial content.

3.   Execution. Apple’s ad is more than just two streaming ad units linked together. They work together, playing off each other in a way we’re truly not used to seeing. And they’re timed and executed perfectly.

Yesterday The Library of Congress announced that it is partnering with the popular photosharing site, Flickr, in a crowdsourcing effort to improve the bibliographic information pertaining to more than 3,000 of its copyright-free photos. The Library is posting the photos in hopes that the Flickr community will comment on and tag the images with the names of people and places depicted, ensuring “the best possible information about those collections for the benefit of researchers and posterity.”

The Library of Congress’ effort is part of a pilot program with Flickr called The Commons, which both hope will serve as a “publication model” for other publically held photography collections. The two Library of Congress collections currently hosted on The Commons are “News in 1910″, which features photos taken in that decade by the Bain News Service, and “1930s-40s in Color”, with pictures of World War II mobilization efforts taken by the government’s Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information.

I think this really epitomizes the best of what Web 2.0 has to offer, and it’s fantastic that the Library of Congress - who likely has many patrons that are not as familiar with our geeked out terminology and trends - recognizes its importance.   As the Library points out, “Even if you don’t know the term [Web 2.0] itself, you’re one of millions worldwide who are actively creating, sharing or benefiting from user-generated content that characterizes Web 2.0 phenomena.”   For someone like me that spends more time than I should reading feeds from “the Valley”, it’s nice to see be reminded that millions of brains are almost always better than one - whether you’re developing software, a browser, or trying to improve a photography collection from 100 years ago.

If you had your ear to the “ground” this summer, you may have picked up on something bubbling among bloggers, especially mom bloggers. In short, they’re pissed.

Blogger outreach has proliferated in the last year as firms and clients of all shapes and sizes see the value of exposing bloggers and their audiences to new campaigns and products. However, there are a finite number of influential bloggers out there — so as you might have guessed, the big dogs in the “momosphere” and beyond are getting solicited by agencies again and again and again and again and again and again… (I think you get my point).

At the BlogHer Conference in July this topic came up for discussion during the “State of the Momosphere” panel. One of the big take aways was that mom bloggers did not feel that agencies reaching out to them were respecting, or in some cases even acknowledging, their influence, audience and powerful voice. Upon returning from BlogHer, many participants used their own blogs to sound off and share their opinions on the practice of blogger outreach — from (truly horrible) pitch letters to the lack of outreach to bloggers of color.

As we regularly read many of these blogs, and several of us in the 360 Digital Influence group are bloggers ourselves, we quickly a) became (yes) embarrassed and b) agreed that something needed to change. Alison had an insightful interview with Chris Jordan of Notes from the Trenches last week, and hearing Chris’ experiences first hand convinced us that the solution to this growing problem was not something we could create on our own. Navigating through this issue is something that will benefit agency-blogger relationships externally, and also help us at Ogilvy codify an internal procedure for conducting blogger outreach.

Below we’ve identified some basic tenets of blogger outreach that we at 360 Digital Influence abide by when contacting bloggers on behalf of our clients. We want you (bloggers, friends at other agencies, colleagues at OgilvyPR) to share your experiences. Within the comments of this post, tell us about being reached out to as a blogger, conducting blogger outreach for your clients, add to our Code of Ethics, take away from the Code, tell us if you think the Code is nonsense — this is a chance for us to get it all out on the table. In two weeks we’ll take everyone’s feedback, refine it, and repost popular topics of debate and an evolved Code of Ethics for further discussion. Let’s have an ongoing conversation about what does and doesn’t work when it comes to blogger outreach and try to arrive at a better place.

Ogilvy PR’s Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics

• We reach out to bloggers because we respect your influence and feel that we might have something that is “remarkable” which could be of interest to you and/or your audience.

• We will only propose blogger outreach as a tactic if it complements our overall strategy. We will not recommend it as a panacea for every social media campaign.

• We will always be transparent and clearly disclose who we are and who we work for in our outreach email.

• Before we email you, we will check out your blog’s About, Contact and Advertising page in an effort to see if you have blatantly said you would not like to be contacted by PR/Marketing companies. If so, we’ll leave you alone.

• If you tell us there is a specific way you want to be reached, we’ll adhere to those guidelines.

• We won’t pretend to have read your blog if we haven’t.

• In our email we will convey why we think you, in particular, might be interested in our client’s product, issue, event or message.

• We won’t leave you hanging. If your contact at Ogilvy PR is going out of town or will be unreachable, we will provide you with an alternate point of contact.

• We encourage you to disclose our relationship with you to your readers, and will never ask you to do otherwise.

• You are entitled to blog on information or products we give you in any way you see fit. (Yes, you can even say you hate it.)

• If you don’t want to hear from us again, we will place you on our Do Not Contact list — which we will share with the rest of the Ogilvy PR agency.

• If you are initially interested in the campaign, but don’t respond to one of our emails, we will follow up with you no more than once. If you don’t respond to us at all, we’ll leave you alone.

• Our initial outreach email will always include a link to Ogilvy PR’s Blog Outreach Code of Ethics.

While you don’t need to use your name in commenting, please identify yourself as a blogger and/or as an agency representative. Also, feel free to repost the current draft of the Code of Ethics on your own blog and solicit feedback from your readers (just give us a link back so we can follow the conversation too!). If you have any questions, or want to share an opinion privately, please feel free to contact me at kaitlyn.wilkins@ogilvypr.com and Alison Byrne Fields at alison.byrnefields@ogilvypr.com

Recently Susan Mernit wrote a post about user-generated conferences coinciding with my past weekend’s experience at Washington DC Barcamp. Just as there has been a shift from main stream media to user-generated media conference go-ers have turned to a practice where the attendees provide the programming. The idea behind this genuinely interests me, a trend of open-sourcing and sharing ideas on the world wide web is translating to community based gatherings that attract people looking to connect and learn in a casual atmosphere with their industry peers.

Being that Barcamp DC was my first “unconference” I wasn’t sure what to expect. The organizers facilitated pre-conference planning via PB Wiki and Twitter. This planning included getting an idea of interest, recruiting sponsorship, finding a venue and loosely facilitating session ideas. Based on the pre-Barcamp hype online I presumed there would be a decent turnout with a mild structure and perhaps a little chaos. Upon arriving I was pleasantly presented with a very organized, well sponsored event that had an overwhelmingly passionate turnout.

Over 110 web professionals gathered on a Saturday morning to decide for themselves what they wanted to get out of Barcamp DC. With Twitter alerts letting participants know what was going on when, sessions ran throughout the day on topics ranging from the Mobile web to Typography. With such enthusiastic participation there was never a shortage of interesting discussion.

Assuring that the collaboration continues far beyond the local community participants are encouraged to document their experience on the web and tag it. Having said that I am not going to attempt to recap the details of the entire event, rather point you in the direction of other blogs who already have on technorati, exposing you to a much wider range of vantage points than I could in just this one blog post.

The concept of the “unconference” successfully illustrated at Barcamp DC makes me think differently about the future of user generated content and the platforms where it can be utilized. Hopefully we can see this format translate to other scenarios such as the Un-University or Un-Workplace; collaborative meetings that take place in real life but utilize the internet to spread the ideas that are hatched from them.

Today I had the opportunity to expand my knowledge on the mobile marketing industry with Katrin Verclas. Katrin is the Executive Director of the Non Profit Technology Network and also heads up Mobile Active in her spare time.

A global network, Mobile Active focuses on the use of global technology for advocacy and civil engagements. Providing tools, data and resources, Mobile Active works to develop mobile marketing strategies to improve marketing campaigns.

Sounds great but still a little vague, right? If you are like me and considered mobile marketing to just be those cheesy ‘Text 1234 for your daily joke’ commercials, then you are wondering how these tactics can fit into your campaigns.

First off, let’s start with some stats to back up these marketing strategies:

• There are over 3 billion cell phone users in the world.
• Over 250 million of those users are in the U.S.
• 35% of adult surveyors were willing to accept incentive-based ads.
• 56% were willing to accept these ads as text messages.
• 40% were willing to accept ads via picture mesage.
• 70% of surveyors were willing to provide information to their cell phone service provider.
• 30% were willing to receive incentive based ads from this information.
• 20% were willing to receive incentive based ads if they could opt-out.

So what does this mean?

While the population of cell-phone users is growing, so is the opportunity to engage open-minded audiences with your message.

Mobile marketing engagements can range from breaking news alerts to polls and quizzes, contests and ringtones. The objective is to build a relationship with the audience while growing your market list.

Let me re-iterate: building a relationship.

This means that a single attempt at outreach isn’t going to strengthen your campaign and can definitely hurt its reputation. Mobile marketing is just like any other social media marketing tactics - the only way to be successful is to build a relationship with the audience and allow them to engage (on their own terms) in the campaign.

For more details and tips, the Mobile Marketing Association has created a Code of Conduct to follow when developing a mobile marketing campaign.

Although there is much more to discuss on this topic, I want to leave you with a few examples of successful mobile marketing campaigns (courtesy of Katrin Verclas). Then, I’ll let Mike Mangi take it from here on more of the technical aspects of mobile marketing…

LiveEarth
Audience members were encouraged to text in to sign the pledge, which then streamed only along the bottom of the screen during the LiveEarth concerts. Each participant received energy saving tips via text message after signing the pledge.

Center for Biological Diversity
The Center offered free ringtones of the sounds of endangered species. Users submitted email and cell phone information and were provided free ringtones and wallpaper. Over 60,000 ringtones were dowloaded within three months, equally over 60,000 emails accumated. The Center then used this information to send out frequent calls to action to support the campaign.

The key to both of these campaigns is the repeated interaction thus building a relationship between the organization and its audience.