This one has been roaming the net in the last few days:

It has more than 2 Million views already. Who would have thought that this is actually a viral clip for Levi’s? Amazingly well done - both in terms of content as well as spreading it on the net. Who was the agency - does anyone know?

I will be at the blogger gathering in Hamburg today, which is organised by Klaus Eck and Cellity. Let me know via Twitter if you’re there (@webjungle). It’s my first blogger gathering, so I am already looking forward to it!

Volkswagen Germany just launched a rather unique employee contest: the scirocco song contest. Out of the ca. 100.000 Volkswagen employees, more than 100 opted in take part in the contest and sent in their version of the scirocco song. A Jury put up the best 25 songs for a vote by all web users on a voting microsite.

A pre-produced clip of what these versions could sound like:

So, click here and vote! (There even is a sweepstake!) Sorry my readers from abroad, but the site is in German…

The scirocco song was written by Leslie Mandoki - one of the most successful german producers, in Germany well known through songs like Dschinghis Khan,. But he also worked with internationally known artists like Phil Collins, denNo Angels, Jennifer Rush, Lionel Richie and German rapper Sido.

The Jury consists of Leslie Mandoki, as well as Volkswagen head of PR Stephan Grühsem, head of marketing Jochen Sengpiehl, Felix Magath and starlett Mina.

disclaimer: this is a project of my agency, in which I also take part. So far, I have not blogged about work related projects, because this blog is a hobby of mine. But I wanted this blog to support this particular project and the Volkswagen employees taking part in it…

(PS: yes, I do have a favourit, but I don’t want to influence the vote )

An update on latest usage numbers, especially about social applications dominating web usage:

| View | Upload your own

Have Fun!

I should have known. The chances of having an idea first are really slim. So someone, Alister, to be precise, came up with the idea to block the URL for Marketing Meme first. A URL that could be the meme-tracker of the marketing world, just as techmeme is the meme-tracker of the technology world.

Not sure when he came up with this, of course, it doesn’t say on the site. All it says is: your vote and support is needed here. And the post behind that link was written in December of last year (so I am probably only 5 months too late - which is a decade in internet terms). Now he is asking us from the marketing community to help him to get the guys from techmeme to setup a special service for the marketing industry:

I’d be happy to see some nice ongoing volume of inbound links from SEM Search, but honestly, I’d really like to see Gabe Rivera over at techmeme.com create a “marketingmeme.com“, that removes SEM/SEO/SMO/PR/etc stuff out of techmeme and puts it under its own “engine”, building off, say, Lee Odden’s list, with some fuzzy logic around that, finding other on-topic blogs as well.

So if you’re interested in having such a service (I am, for sure!), go over to this site and put your vote in the comments!

Nevermind the fact that there are sooo many marketing buzzwords out there already, enough for a prolonged bullshit olympics, behind this link are 10 more you most likely haven’t heard yet - but might well hear often in the future

Here are some examples:

2. Viruseful.
Viral marketing initiatives that are actually useful.
“Not only did Shave Everywhere make me laugh—I was able to configure and purchase my new electric razor online”

4. Emotrics
The analytical measurement of emotions.
“Yes—we’ve seen the metrics. But what about the Emotrics? We need to measure emotional engagement!”

6. Intercommunes
When people meet on the internet, form communities and eventually move into a commune together. For real.
“When I first started participating in social media, I didn’t leave the house. Now, I never have to leave the Intercommune.”

Seth Godin, godfather of good quotes, recently wrote this:

The best time to look for a job next year is right now. The best time to plan for a sale in three years is right now. The mistake so many marketers make is that they conjoin the urgency of making another sale with the timing to earn the right to make that sale. In other words, you must build trust before you need it. Building trust right when you want to make a sale is just too late.

Publishing your ideas… in books, or on a blog, or in little twits on Twitter… and doing it with patience, over time, is the best way I can think of to lay a foundation for whatever it is you hope to do next.

This is why, in my opinion, Social Media Marketing cannot simply be viewed as another tactical discipline within marketing - or even advertising, as many companies might currently think about it. You shouldn’t just do Social Media Marketing as a one-off, as part of a campaign (”we’ll have som TV commercials, some online banners, and, let’s see, some social media activities”).

It needs to be a strategic, long term goal to engage in Social Media activities, to build relations with the target audience, and to build trust for those moments, when you (urgently) need to activate your greatest brand/product fans…

… is a really nice TV commercial by Nordpol:

Courtesy of one of my colleagues who sent this around today: Social Media always existed in one or the other form. Sometimes the means of communication were a little complicated or indirect, but there was no excuse for not having been able to communicate the way you can today.

Well, I am still happy to have the tools of today, even though I sometimes feel like they can turn me into an adult ADD…

Over at the Online Spin blog, there is an interesting article about “peers vs influencers“. The question is, of course: who is your ideal target group. It’s the debate of Gladwells Tipping Point theory vs Duncan Watts argument, that there aren’t any network nodes more influential than others.

Joe Marchese says, there are indeed people who are more influential than others. But only in three dimensions - and they can vary according to topic, point in time and other variables for the same person:

–People have a quantity of influence: the maximum number of other people they can reach with a message.

–People have a quality of influence: the amount of influence they exert over those that they reach.

–People have types of influence: categories of “expertise” that other people assign to an individual.

If this is the case (if it is that easy), you can quickly deduct your target audience according to the marketing objective. Is it widespread awareness? Is it consideration? Is it increased sales?

Not sure if it is that easy. But it does sound nice to put these target groups against the typical marketing funnel. Only question remaining: can you always clearly distinguish one from the other these days? (I doubt that.)

Over at the One Degree blog, there is a coverage of a panel from the SXSW interactive festival, during which the panelists were asked to vote on the worst social media campaigns in 2007. Amongst the panelists were bloggers like Jeff Jarvis and Steve Hall. I have to admit, I didn’t hear about all of these campaigns, but some of the bigger blunders (Walmart, Coke/Mentos and Sony) I did hear about, of course. I wonder what will be next for this year? You would assume, that (we) marketers learn…

Just a quick one: Joost shuts down its global operations and focuses on the US only. Shame, I liked the idea of Joost. But in the end, it was brought down by two main factors that even a technologically smart way of streaming videos can’t solve: first: trying to buy global rights for content that studios could probably sell much more profitable on a country-by-country basis. second: having exclusive, compelling content that users won’t find anywhere else (nevermind that they’re overloaded with too much online video anyway.

And for me: I always felt like the joost interface just wasn’t right somehow. I don’t watch fullscreen video on my PC. Still, I was always hoping for it to evolve (globally), so that one day I could enjoy watching videos via joost. But not any more, I guess.

There is a standard joke around online advertising managers about the fear of those “chinese villages” taking over one of your ad campaigns so that you receive the clicks you paid for, only all of them come from one and the same family (in China or India, or Eastern Europe or Antigua, etc. it doesn’t really matter).

But you don’t need to go very far away. Your next door neighbor might be part of a “click farm”. Even though he most likely never realised what he got himself into.

Just the other day I took a look at a site called OnlineTVRecorder.com (don’t want to give them any link credit). On that site you can record TV programms of any German TV Channel - most of which I wouldn’t even be able to access in this area of the country. You first record them, and then download and decode them. But you can only decode those that you “recorded” in advance. This makes it similar to any VCR/DVD recorder and hence (I guess) a legal way of recording shows via the web.

So far so good. However, the system only works for you, when you pay per download with so called “good will points”. If you haven’t got enough points, you can’t download or decode any files.

And how do you get these points? There are two ways. Either you donate money, or you click on some of their ads. Yes, that’s right: you can click on the ads to receive good will points! You get points for clicks that advertisers pay a lot of money for (on aggregate).

I guess most users on this site aren’t fully aware of the fact that each of their clicks contributes to ripping of advertisers. Note: I am not saying “poor advertisers” here! I am just saying that advertisers don’t get what they pay for when they signed the contract with these mediasites: intentional attention.

Clickworking is an interesting and positive trend, since it uses the minimal individual productivity of large crowds to achieve a large complex goal.

Clickfarming seems to be a dark side equivalent. Utilize the small contributions of a large crowd’s individuals who might not even (want to) realize that their few clicks are contributing to a large system of fraud.

I wonder how many other sites of this kind are out there? How much dubious content is paid for in this way? How many advertising campaigns bought on a pay-per-click basis have been corrupted by clickfarms like these?

If I was an advertiser and I saw one of my banners on one of those sites, I would ask my media agency or the publisher for my money back. And may be sue them.

This is a strange but rather interesting idea: Modernista, an ad agency, doesn’t actually have a real website. Instead, the just provide a navigation layer that sits on top of various websites that have the relevant content, i.e. a flickr gallery of their work, a google news page with news of the agency, a wikipedia page (or facebook profile) with the descriptive info of what the agency did in the past and offers for their clients.

(via online spin.)

There seems to be a concurrent trend. Two companies just announced new projects / plattforms on which they want to listen to consumers, engage them, discuss product development with them.

Starbucks launched the website “My Starbucks Idea” on which they aks users to provide Starbucks with their ideas:

You know better than anyone else what you want from Starbucks. So tell us. What’s your Starbucks Idea? Revolutionary or simple—we want to hear it. Share your ideas, tell us what you think of other people’s ideas and join the discussion. We’re here, and we’re ready to make ideas happen. Let’s get started.

As you would expect, you can post ideas, vote on other’s ideas, discuss ideas, etc. In addition, there is a blog called “ideas in action” that covers the project. At the moment, some sources are rather cynical about the project, because people mostly just ask about free drinks, fre Wi-Fi, etc. I am curious to see if there will be some really good ideas with added value resulting from this approach.

Chrysler, on the other hand, will launch a “customer advisory board” of up to 5.000 consumers chosen of those who will apply through the website to take part. Once they can access the forum, they can submit ideas, get a sneak peak at videos, etc. It will be interesting to see if they can capture the right target audience, to quote autoblog:

However, we’re a little unsure if the tactic will provide Chrysler with what it needs to shape the future of its products and services, considering that the only people likely to sign up are partisan pistonheads who are already married to the Mopar camp or slighted customers looking for a place to vent.

For some companies, this change in dealing with the (online) target group has resulted in successes, as Ad Age writes about the Dell case study:

This sort of online listening post worked for Dell, whose IdeaStorm website resulted in a few concrete product developments and, in turn, helped to turn some of the computer-maker’s fiercest critics. One of them, Jeff Jarvis, went from a state of high dudgeon on his blog to praise the company in BusinessWeek.

In my opinion these approaches should probably work fine, as long as there is added value for both sides. If the consumer ideas and suggestions are crap, useless, unreal or simply silly, the companies might soon stop asking consumers in this fashion. It would then be much easier to go back to the old fashioned model of focus group research, where the noise to signal ratio is much better.

On the other hand, there should be some real improvements/products/ideas coming out of these approaches, making the whole outcome visible to the participating audience, showing them that their little contribution did infact change the way these companies go to market (even if the resulting outcomes were not your own idea, you would appreciate the effort made by the company).

Otherwise we’ll start having similar symptons as you have in German elections nowadays. You feel like your vote is too small to make a difference - and heck, no matter what people vote for, it doesn’t feel like things change much anyway. So why bother.