Before there was the Internet... There was ME.
The (sometimes) random musings of a man who has a (sometimes) faulty filter between his Ferrari brain and (sometimes) Trabant mouth.
A number of months ago, I met with fellow Newhouse / Syracuse alumnus Howard Polskin of the Magazine Publishers Association.We had gotten hooked up with each other via another fellow Newhouse alum Howard Sholkin a few weeks earlier, to talk shop and do a little bit of networking.We had a great conversation, talking about the media business in general, and the direction it’s going in.
During our chat, Howard mentioned that the MPA was in the process of planning for their third annual Digital Awards luncheon at the fifth “Magazines 24/7 Digital Conference” in March, and asked me if I’d be interested as acting as a judge for the competition.The MPA Digital Awards honor excellence and innovation of magazine brands on all digital platforms in 12 categories.
I told him that I’d be honored to be part of the distinguished group.
WEBSITES OF THE YEAR The “Website of the Year” category recognizes excellence and innovation in content, design, functionality and usability in four subcategories.
Website of the Year: News, Business & Finance:Wired.com Website of the Year: Entertainment & Sports: SI.com Website of the Year: Enthusiast: Architectural Record Website of the Year: Service & Lifestyle: Epicurious.com
Found this yesterday... I have a feeling it'll go viral, unintentionally(?).
What is it? It's a church-produced (allegedly? seems legit...) ad featuring a tech-jargon-dropping grandma. Strangely enough, a lot of what she's talking about makes no technical sense. However, it's a great concept for how-to videos, since, if 'grandma' can understand it, so could 'anyone'.
BTW, "l33t" is hacker-speak for "leet" or "elite", which is a status term that us old-skool geeks used to use when we were working BBS and rockin' 14.4K baud modems.
(ED. NOTE: Updated and tweaked 10 Nov. 08) Pepsi-Cola has decided to shake up their branding (as opposed to a can of Pepsi, which is not advised) to see what happens.
FULL DISCLOSURE:I don’t like Pepsi. The brand itself is fine, but any carbonated beverage, aside from Champagne or beer, is anathema to my palate.Blech.Anyway…
You may have already seen some posts from several “social media influencers” (Shankman, PSFK, Rohit Bargava, among others) in the marketing and advertising field about Pepsi's innovative new campaign, being dubbed by many the "Pepsi 25" for their choice of 25 bloggers to single out and send three packages to over the course of an hour (gotta suck to be an Account Assistant at Pepsi’s agency, huh?). Since I wasn’t one of them, I've grabbed the image posted on AdRants(thanks, AdRants! :) ) .
I’ve been a bit busy lately, but being late to the party gives me the benefit of some “widescreen views” about the campaign, and seeing what many of my fellow bloggers had to say the new initiative. Here’s the topline thus far:
The new logo looks a lot like Barack Obama's campaign logo.Really.I assume Pepsi's was being mocked up before Barack started his campaign (not sure when he debuted his, but let’s assume over a year ago), but it’s really, really close.
Who are these “Pepsi 25” influencers that Pepsi chose (though you can find them by checking out the Pepsi Cooler and other blogs—see below)?
How did they choose them (friends in the blogosphere?)?
Blogs/observations/rants that this campaign won't necessarily get any of the bloggers to like or drink Pepsi any more than they do now.I think they’re more the Mountain Dew, hyper-caffeinated types, probably, but I don't think that's the point of the effort. More on that below.
Pepsi’s making moves, no doubt about it.They’ve always been eager to make connections with youth and pop culture.It started in the ‘80s as the “Voice of the New Generation/Pepsi Generation”.According to AdAge , this effort will cost them hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide as part of a multi-year transformation.But the Social Media part is probably of minimal cost. You know something?I think it’ll work.
Why?
Research shows that 1 in 2 online Americans access social networks.I’ll write more about that in another post, but as you can imagine, the young (under 30 – grr..) people of today make up the bulk of the users, and that number will grow as that demographic matures.But also...
Social Media is the most efficient, cost-effective way in which to:
Grow a publisher's audience, increase engagement, and generate new revenue streams
Enable Brands to engage their customers more effectively in an increasingly fragmented world
Enable Marketers to evolve from delivering messages, to engaging in a conversation with customers
And get this:
"93 percent of Americans believe a company should have a presence in social media, while an overwhelming 85 percent believe a company should not only be present, but also interact with its consumers via social media."
- 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study, September, 11-12, 2008
It could be argued that this is a very well-executed campaign, if only for the reason that these influencers have large followings (especially from marketing geeks like myself), and therefore will just get a lot of buzz.From what I can see, it’s succeeded. Going by the compiled list of "Pepsi 25" targets on ParkerWeb, the campaign's hit rate as of this writing is 16 for 25, which is pretty decent (for a small scope), actually.
Granted, some on the list don’t add to coverage in the “Positive Team”, but as some of my previous employers have noted/built their empires on, any coverage is coverage.Not my style, but then, I don’t work for them anymore. Pepsi's choice to make it an exclusive marketing story to online journos (in the Stuart Elliott/NYTimes vein of MSM pitching), and a revamp of a 100+ year-old brand logo and its evolution in the physical form of cans (would’ve LOVED to have that collection in my office!), probably means that Pepsi is pretty happy with what they got:a bunch of marketing geeks who reach a larger group of marketing geeks (as I said before, myself included) to talk about it.Word of Mouth, baby!
So what does this mean?
More importantly, many folks who really have no interest in writing about Pepsi now have a reason to, and Pepsi's (attempting) to keep the buzz going using the tools that Social Media people use, likeFriendFeed.They’ve created an online community called the Pepsi Cooler (hehe, ‘cooler’, get it?For soda pop, and ‘causeit’s cool!).
The Interwebs are a superlative communication stage, but you already knew that.It's efficient (fast, cheap-ish), effective (you’re reading this, right?) and scalable (start with 25 influencers, and let them grow the buzz for you). However, now that Social Media is here, it's become even more so. The ‘Net is now a launch pad for global relationships between brands and their consumers, as well as their stakeholders/critics.
NYTimes.com said Friday it has launched a new platform that will bring more video to more sections of the site.Videos will be presented in hi-def and made available to the home page, articles, blogs, and the site's video library in an effort to make video a central part of The New York Times' (overall) strategy of moving more digital.
The Grey Lady’s site’s new vid platform will display videos in 16x9 widescreen (woot for letterbox!) format, and more robust search so users can more easily find the videos they’re looking for. More importantly (for survival, and social media geeks like myself), each video will now feature share tools (!), which will allow viewers to share the videos on sites like Digg, Facebook,Twitter, etc. This is another extension of the Times’ digital social media strategy like TimesPeople, which rolled out recently.
NYTimes.com already produces about a good deal of videos from journalists like David Pogue (Personal Tech) and Mark Bittman (Dining), which happen to be my favorite sections. With the announcement of the enhancement of its video offerings, it appears that video will become an integral part of its new strategy to keep current.I'm sure additional mainstream media outlets will be following suit.
Interestingly enough, the topic of online video has been popping up (not pop-ups – I hate those) all over the place lately.Ipsos Media released a study on Monday that found that the popularity of online video is moving beyond the early adopters/geeks and growing significantly among women and older consumers.As Anchorman Ron Burgundy once said, that’s kind of a big deal.The study found that about 54% of female Internet users ages 12+ have viewed streaming video online in the past 30 days, up from 45% a year ago -- nearly equal to the 58% of men who have streamed online video in the same time period.In the grown-up category, Ipsos reports that 60% of adults 35-54 have recently streamed online video, up from 49% in 2007.
In addition, I had lunch last week with Eric Wright (SVP, Marketing & Business Development) from DS Simon Productions, whose firm conducted a survey of some 200 “web influencers” about this very subject just recently. They're poised to make aggressive moves in this area, and I can see why.
According to the survey, a full 65% of online media sites now use video, and 77% of online media sites project the use of video to increase over the next year. I believe that this will be an ongoing trend, as broadband use becomes more prevalent, both nation- and worldwide.
About 45% of TV stations use outside video for their Web sites, while two-thirds of radio stations, newspapers, magazines and bloggers use outside video on their Web sites.Of course, the strongest interest in sourced video content comes from ‘web media’, which I imagine like a ‘hyper-local’ television affiliate, with limited resources to create their own video content.However, they all have broadband access, and can download from an FTP site (or otherwise).The advancing usage of digital editing works for both parties:online outlets can produce professional-quality video packages at their desktops, and traditional media has regular access to the technology to download video directly to edit bays -- this was a problem back when I was in the TV biz, actually.
I have a colleague (actually a few) who is obsessed with Rickrolling.
Never heard of it? Guess you're not as geeky as you thought. :)
To Rickroll is to intentionally misdirect someone to a video of Never Gonna Give You Up from 80s pop icon Rick Astley.
Tease them with a link to a supercool video or site, perhaps disguising a YouTube link with TinyURL. Your victim is served with Rick Astley doin' his blue-eyed soul thing in your face. Ha.
Anyway, the Rickster heard about it, and shared his thoughts...
Yeah, I know I'm late to the game on this, but some of the late night talkers (Dave, Conan, Jay) went back on the air last week... Colbert and Stewart back tonight.
Didn't catch Jay sans WGA, but saw Dave (not bad, good Top 10 List), and Conan was excellent. Haven't watched him in awhile, but he was in TOP form on his return night. People seem to forget that he wrote for the Simpsons for years, and was an SNL writer too. This video clip was pretty outstanding... Dig Big Red singing the Beastie's Sabotage as Edith Bunker from All In the Family. Awesome.
(if I had some time on my hands, I'd PhotoShop something cool like Edith as Conan or a Beastie, but I don't have any time on my hands)
Saw this on boingboing... Some are very fitting, and some are just disturbing in a Wes Craveny sorta way... Photos of celebrities and celebutantes who've had their eyes replaced with smaller versions of their mouths. Photoshop Fun.
You know how you always hear -- a number of times-- during a sports event on TV, "This broadcast is the sole copyright of Fox (or ABC/CBS/NBC/etc.), the NFL (or MLB/NBA/etc.), and any rebroadcast..." blah blah blah... Well, there's an interesting twist to that tonight. A blogger and her husband were surprised to see a (slightly modified) photo of their dog appear in the FOX network's "Happy Holiday" ticker during a football game. She says that someone from Fox nicked the pic from either her blog or her Flikr photostream.
And let's not forget that this is the corporation who SUED YouTube over streaming FOX content (full disclosure: I was in the employ of the House of Murdoch on the broadcast side for about 8 or so years).
Now, you and I all repurpose images that we find via Google each and every day-- and that's what these guys did. But it wasn't theirs, so they should be remunerating someone, at least according to their own rules for not allowing others to utilize their content.
Another thought: ever think of where your photos might be ending up?
Well, it's Christmas Eve (I think -- I always get confused with Christmas Day and Eve and crap-- I know, ridiculous...), so here's one for the Jews... Perhaps some inspiration for this evening's activities... To quote Adam Sandler:
"There's a lot of Christmas songs out there, but not too many about Hanukkah, so I wrote a song for all those nice little Jewish kids who don't get to hear any Hanukkah songs-- here we go..."
To quote my colleague Dave, "The future of CGM and TV are here in full effect."
This is really really cool -- not just 'cause I'm a geek for this stuff (yes, including the Star Trek angle), but because it was done COMPLETELY with consumer-grade hardware and software. I estimate it was done for about $3K for all the equipment involved. In addition, it was worked on by remote teams, who communicated via Skype and email (free).
From a public relations / media relations standpoint, it's a great example of consumers taking a piece of pop culture into their hands and creating something for mass consumption... Much like we're about to do with Swiffer/You Tube in January.
I realize that this was produced by an IT guy and a printing shop guy, but this is an extreme example. But think about it: media editing technology is getting simpler everyday, and the digital cameras we all have are getting better video quality by leaps and bounds (aka, 'you don't need a special camera'). Engaging consumers like this will explode soon. Have you seen the material out there that's been done by WGA Letterman strikers?
The moms we're targeting for Swiffer/YT are just the tip of where this can go... Just think of all the new tech-savvy moms we have around here, who have the technology and the skill to do it....
ird annual Digital Awards luncheon at the fifth “Magazines 24/7 Digital Conference” in March, and asked me if I’d be interested as acting as a judge for the competition. The MPA Digital Awards honor excellence and innovation of magazine brands on all digital platforms in 12 categories.
Conference was a big success, and the awards were announced a little over a week ago (yeah, I’m a bit behind – been busy), so I thought I’d share the news with you as well, if you hadn’t heard. Kate Maxwell, Senior Editor at Condé Nast Traveler, presented the awards to the winners at the Marriott Marquis New York on March 3rd. 
The Daily Beast: Jessi Klein