Wednesday, January 14, 2009

A Charlie Brown Ad Agency

Red versus Blue Episode 39

Digital Marketing Factoid of the Day: Top Political Sites

Arianna’s got the clout!



Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to write.

Bad Defensive CSR: Yum (Brands)

I love it when companies make defensive CSR efforts that fall flat. The people that bring us KFC, Pizza Hut, Long John Silvers, and Taco Bell have created one in Keep It Balanced, a new website dedicated to making people think they want us to make healthier food choices.

The same company that gave us:

Stuffed crust pizza, because there wasn't enough cheese on the pizza by itself. We needed more cheese and fat.Oh, and the stuffed crust meatlover's pizza, which serves up 480 calories, and 27 grams of fat per slice with its pepperoni goodness.

Several KFC ad campaigns designed to make us think that batter dipped and deep friend chicken was health or diet food.

Long John Silvers 2 pieces of fish and fries meal, with a medium Pepsi, logging in a whopping 1050 calories and 76% of your fat allowance.

Taco Bell, which has a surprising number of not horrifying options, but which, seemingly in compensation for this, is encouraging us to add FourthMeal eating occasions to our daily lives, at Midnight or so. I think the Surgeon General has been saying the same, right? "End your day with a Chalupa to avoid heart disease."

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Hey, I know from experience that they offer tasty feeds, but the idea that they care about nutrition?

Here BTW, is one of their tips:

KFC Original Recipe is fine, as long as you skip the original recipe bit:

Consumers can create a variety of meals with lower fat content from KFC's U.S. menu by removing the skin and breading on KFC's Original Recipe® chicken breast (2g fat) and choosing two home-style sides, such as the 5.5 inch corn on the cob (1g fat), mashed potatoes and gravy (4.5g fat), green beans (0g fat) or BBQ Baked Beans (1.5g fat). Consumers can also select the Honey BBQ KFC® Snacker (3g fat) or the Honey BBQ Sandwich (4g fat), where available, with a side of long-grain rice (1g fat) and a side of green beans (0g fat).

Look, you sell fried chicken and pizzas. Embrace it. Stop trying to pretend that you are Pritikin approved!

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Old News Now, But Egad

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- No one expected real growth in the e-commerce sector this holiday season, but few expected it to actually drop as it did.

ComScore's end-of-season online sales figures put the tally at $25.5 billion, down 3% from $26.3 billion a year ago. To come up with those figures, ComScore measured the same number of days, this year looking at sales between November 1 and December 26.

The total falls short of ComScore's original forecast of flat e-commerce sales. Fourth quarter e-commerce sales to date are down 4%, a reversal of the period from January to October, when e-commerce sales grew 9% over the year-ago period.

Retail has battled a number of negative forces this year: a poor economy, shortened holiday season (five fewer days between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year vs. last year) and a wet, snowy weekend before Christmas.

White Paper Wednesdays: Social Media Marketing

Well, it's Mark Silva Wednesday, apparently. Here's another of Mark's decks, this one a comprehensive intro and "skate key" to the world of social media.



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White Paper Wednesdays: Social Media And Word of Mouth

A great deck from Mark Silva of Real Branding on the dynamics of social media nad how to use them. As a bonus, Mark offers a couple of case studies to bring the concepts he describes to life.



Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

White Paper Wednesdays: What Ails The Economy

A great deck from Morgan Stanley about the state of the economy and the factors underlying that condition.



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White Paper Wednesdays: Celebs in 2008/09

An interesting Summary of Forbes's assessment of the world of celebs in 2008/9. Not what you'd call terribly useful, but rather intriguing anywayz.



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White Paper Wednesdays: Facebook Marketing 101

Vidar Brekke, formerly of Linkstorm and now CEO of Social Intent, put together a short 'n sweet preso on Facebook Marketing 101 that is definitely worth a read.



Their company is interesting in that it is focused on integrating brands into the social media environment organically.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

White Paper Wednesdays: Consumer Half Truths

A lickety split deck that exposes some rash over simplifications about who and what consumers are and think. Read on, McDuff! From Sarvajeet Chandra.



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White Paper Wednesdays: Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is one of the megatrends in our digial industry today. Don't know much about it? Well. I am here to help. Or rather, I am here to embed help -- in this case, a presentation from King Chung Huang, Technical SOlutions Analyst from the University of Calgary. It always impresses me loads when people who know technology can explain it to people who know considerably less about tech. Without further ado:



Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Bristol Palin's Baby! OMG What A Name!

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

Digital Marketing Factoid of the Day: Top Blogging Sites

According to Hitwise and Marketing Charts, MySpace is king in blogging sites.



Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to write.

Pleo: Dinosaurs Walk The Earth Again!

Robots -- by which I mean cool robots -- have long been more the province of movies and TV than the real world. There have been robotic toys, but most have been of fairly limited fuinctionality -- or too expensive for regular people to have in their lives.

Enter Pleo, a week old "camerasaurus" that moves, "sees", reacts to sounds, and generally appears to be of flesh and blood.

He's pretty darn cyute too:





The product of a company called Ugobe Life Forms, the realism is pretty remarkable.

Check it out:



So, if you are asking...why...then you don't get it.

Ugobe describes itself thus:

UGOBE™'s multidisciplinary team has blended engineering, life sciences, philosophy, and artistic design and developed a unique set of core technologies. The company's unique products, known as Life Forms, intend to blur the line between technology and life. By integrating three disciplines-organic articulation with sensory response and autonomous behaviors-UGOBE aims to revolutionize robotics and transform inanimate objects into lifelike creatures. Inspired by its dream, the group coined the word 'UGOBE', which translates to: "You! Go and be!" a creative reworking of Descarte's "Cogito ergo sum"-"I think, therefore I am."

The price is still a little steep as far as toys go, though the sheer quantity of technology in this little dude explains that pretty easily. At this point, Ugobe is available online only on their website.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Amazon's Bill Me Later: No Longer Works On Amazon?(!)

Looks like the economy has another casualty: Amazon no longer accepts Bill Me Later, the company that offers instant credit to online consumers. The BML model does an instant credit check before offering consumers the option to get a service or product now, and pay later. The service makes money on fees and on interest charges for consumers who choose to pay on time, as with a credit card.

Problem is, in the current credit crunch, far fewer people are actualy eligible for credit, meaning that the profitability of this business has dropped. So much so that Amazon, its owner, no longer offers Bill Me Later as a payment option. Huh?

Ah, the joy of the "free market," brought to us in large part by Saint Phil Gramm.


Photo Credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Bull Me Later weren't cheap, neither. As I recall, Amazon dropped $800 Mil on this acquisition -- yep, a service they no longer have the confidence to accept.

The times they are a strangin'.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

The New Bebo: AOL's Integrated Social Powerplay?

Last month Bebo delivered a major redesign that integrates a lot of AOL's enduring popular features and begins to offer the short of multiplatform ecosystem that may alter the social realm in AOL's direction.

As Mashable reported about a month ago, Bebo's new features include:

IM/AIM integration: Log in or keep track of your friends right from BEBO
Social: Integration of AOL's recently required SocialThing, a service similar to FriendFeed. This enables you to feature content from other social presences on your pages, even track nonBebo friends.
Email: Get notifications of new messages in AOL mail, Yahoo Mail, GMail, and (soon) Outlook.
Access to TW Audio/Video: Bebo now has Time Warner multimedia built right in, to significantly enhance the entertainment value of the experience.


This screenshot I took off Mashable gives you a sense of all of this integration, as well as the enduring attractiveness of Bebo.



I like Bebo as a service, though more Americans will need to be in its clutches before it could replace FaceBook for me. In addition to offering a beautiful and highly functional and entertaining environment, the service also has some amazing and pleasantly intrusive ways for marketers to reach this audience. Perhaps all this great integration will mean a boost to Bebo traffic.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Minixr: Incredibly Easy Lifecasting Tool



I'm trying to cover more startups from countries other than the US and Israel, because great ideas are coming for every corner of the earth.

One of those great ideas is Minixr, a microblogging and lifecasting platform where the emphasis is on EASY! Some lifecasting platforms can be a bit clunky -- but not Minixr. The simplest of interfaces lets you quickly provide text updates as well as audio files, video files, photos, and other multimedia content.

Additionally, if directed, the service will also grab and publish content from your various presences online, like YouTube, Digg, and the like.

The service now offers mobile posting tools as well. Pownce users can also move their life cast to Minixr quite easily.

According to StartupArabia, the service will be entirely ad supported.

Minixr isn't from Silicon Valley or Tel Aviv, rather it is based in Algeria, which puts an interesting spin on their business. How? Because Minixr is said to being focusing particularly on Arabic and French speakers around the Earth.

I am impressed by that idea because the number of English dominant environments is exploding, and I would imagine that great money can be made on serving other populations. No one is going broke offering services in Mandarin these days -- similarly Arabic and French speakers are in numbers so high that it is only natural that serving them can be lucrative.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Monday, January 12, 2009

My Ten Year Love Affair With Yahoo!

Exactly ten years ago, Yahoo and I began an exclusive relationship. In my younger days I was searchually promiscuous – I played the field, getting Excite-d for a while, whoring all around the Netscape. Just Ask-ing for trouble.

And, of course, there was that other girl, the one who always appeared whenever I went online. Truth be told, I found her a little too available for my taste, ya know? Anyway, I never knew her name, but she always wears a monogram, MSN. Don’t get me wrong. She has a lot going for her, and I’m sure she’s lots of people’s idea of ideal. Just not mine.

I kept coming back to Y!, drawn like a moth to a purple flame. And over time she taught me life’s most important lesson: playing the field can be titillating for a time, but the search really is better with someone you know.

I am very proud to say that my girl Y! is the BBW I adore having in my life – the Big Beautiful Website that is with me through thick and thin, day in and day out. Yeah, she’s gotten bigger over the years, but it just means there’s more to love.
I’ve never gotten into the whole My Y! thing – trying to change her into what I wanted instead of just letting her be. I’ve always accepted Y! as she is. I still greet her sunny homepage every day.

Y! and I have been through a whole lot. She’s changed her style a few times, and went out and splurged on a couple of facelifts, even though I’ve always loved her looks. But I’ll say this for her, she’s always working hard to keep our relationship fresh.

Y! has expanded my horizons in so many ways. She introduced me to online romance. Though that ended when she started charging for love connections – she learned fast that I won’t pay for dates.

But in other areas she’s been all I could hope for and more. For instance, she always seems to be able to uncover a bargain on whatever I need to buy. Plus, she keeps track of money better than anyone. And helps me make sense of my mobile phone –she’s always there to answer my questions. Heck, she’s even taken my dog places – she has such a caring heart.

Hey, Y! isn’t perfect. Sometimes that jealous obsession with her younger, richer sister Google can get tiresome. I wish she’d just recognize that Miss G isn’t more attractive than she is – she’s just beautiful in a different way. Sort of a rhinestoned Angelina Jolie to Y!’s t-shirt and jeans Jen Aniston.

Y!, just relax. You don’t need your li’l sis’s multibillion dollar bustier to catch my eye.

Y! can hold her own in any conversation. Some days she’s bursting to tell you about some important political issue in the minutest detail. At other times, OMG, she’s just bubbling over with celebrity trash.

Everybody always says, if you want the Buzz, turn to Y!

Y!’s no doormat, that’s for sure. Sometimes she really enforces her honey do list. Like transforming her appearance without warning. Or trying to force me to send mail in some new way when I am more than satisfied with the Classic. But when I go with the flow and am content to just let her be her, things usually turn out better.

I don’t know what I’d do without her. Like any aging husband, there are many times when I can’t find things on my own. But all I have to do is ask and she has the answer right away. And she never rolls her eyes about even the dumbest questions.

A couple years ago, I was disappointed for a time. See, she went on a Panama retreat, promised she’d be back fast, but then took forever to return. But since she did, it’s like she’s clairvoyant – she knows me so well that she can finish my sentences and give me answers that much faster.

She’s gotten more animated in the past couple of years, and definitely more motional. It’s nice that she open to trying new things. And it’s interesting…she was always a private person, didn’t want to “let others in.” But lately she’s become a wonderfully open book – she calls it her Y!OS and everybody seems to like her more for it.

My girl Y! is full of secrets and surprises -- like how you click her homepage logo in just the r!ght place and she lets out that happy yell! She can also be a delightful tease – showing a little leg of her news stories, and making you click for more. She knows how to draw you in, that’s for sure.

There are so many other things I love about her. There isn’t enough time to list ‘em all. So let me just close by saying,

Honey, Jerry Yang may THINK he’s Chief Yahoo, but no one loves you more than me!

Happy Anniversary, Y!

Tetris Is For Chicks The Musical

Warning: Explicit

Digital Marketing Factoid of the Day: Video Sell through

No surprise that premium content creators do better than others. But this shows they are doing a heck of a lot better.



Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to write.

Personal Informatics Post Seven: Facebook Feeds

I'm probably putting this in a bit out of order, but your feed and your friendfeed on Facebook are close kin to the specialty informatics offerings, albeit an extremely public one. But being public is not counter to this phenomenon -- almost the opposite.

While most people don't populate their feeds with EVERY ASPECT of their lives, like they would with a service like Daytum (see post six), the principle of placing such a high level of personal information out there for large number of people to see is, through Facebook, an extremely popular activity.

Again, the feed feature is a rather polarizing offering. I admit that I am in the camp of having total indifference to what you ate today ("Paul is EATING BACON...), but others tell me that this is their favorite part of using the site. It enables those of us who have difficulty keeping up with people a way to have a sense of what they are doing on a daily or even hourly basis.

Was this tendency in all of us before Facebook? Did they really launch the concept? The ability to add updates through mobile, particularly through iPhone apps, is only going to expand the audience of fact exhibitionists.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Personal Informatics Post Six: Daytum And Our Lives of Factoids



OK, this is simultaneously an odd and thought providing site in the personal informatics category. Daytum allows you to track pretty much anything you wish to in your life, from how you discover music to movies you've seen to weight fluctuations, to the type of beverages you drink each day. Here's an example of a profile of the site:



Here's how they describe their raison d'etre:

Daytum is a home for collecting and communicating your daily data. Begin tracking anything you can count and display the results immediately... or just look around and see what other members are recording.

So, at this very instant, I am guessing that half the readers are logging on immediately, intrigued. And the other half are wondering...why?

Whatever you think about the idea, it's plain that this site is beautiful, with a host of approaches to visualization that really hit the mark.In fact, founders Ryan Case and nicholas Felton have the most impressive backgrounds in information display I have ever seen.

In fact, the service offers a variety of ways to visualize data. Here's a mini screen of the array:



You can also add text fields to enhance your content when pictures alone won't cut it.

No word on how they will monetize, but one can see a variety of marketers that might love to have this information about users if those same people were willing to share it.

If you want to read more about them, check out this WSJ article that features founder Felton and his profile.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Personal Informatics Post Five: Bedpost



The tagline of this site says it all:

Ever wonder how often you get busy?

Bedpost helps you keep track of your sex life by counting your acts, time spent, partners, time started, and other measures. It is not a social site -- the idea is to keep this information private, between you and your partner(s) if you wish. I am assuming that's for married folks -- I dunno a lot of people that want to know that they are one of a list, whatever the type of relationship hey have with you. Would you really want to look at the partners tab of your partner's report???

Anyway.

The site is in private beta and I am waiting for an evaluation invitation -- but from what I can see in this screen shot it seems very easy to understand and populate with data. Though the mind reels at what sorts of "charts and reports" are available in tab two.

Now, don't ask me how I know, but this service was predated by several years by free online services that helped highly promiscuous people track the whos and whats and wherefores of their sex lives. The site iTrick is an example of a gay service that that's been around for some time. Note: The site is rather explicit.

Though I don't know anyone straight or gay that used(es) one.

But let's be clear, the intent of this service is different. However much the idea of this site makes me wanna giggle, helping people better understand their sex lives can be quite valuable. It can help track the health of the physical side of a marriage or relationship, and can help single people make the choices about their lives that are right for them. Both are important -- and our tendency in this society is to simply ignore or consciously avoid examining such issues.

So there you go. And I will admit it. I am dying to know what the color coding means on the calendar charts -- expect a full report when (if) they let me in.

;-)

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Personal Informatics Post Four: Mon.thly



Mon.thly.info is a service that helps women track and anticipate their menstrual cycles. The service is simple -- you input the sates of your cycle and the service sends you an email two days before your period begins.

The service is easy to use, and based upon the fictional dates I put into my profile, I found that I begin my period today!





Anyway, this sort of service -- and the sheer simplicity of it -- is bound to appeal to a large number of busy women who might lose track of time owing to their busy lives. Here's what the Jezebel website says about Mon.thly:

So, for those of us not really organized enough to keep track of our periods, resulting in monthly surprise periods, pregnancy scares or embarrassment when the gyno asks you to list the date of your last period and it takes a really long time to work it out… Comes this nifty site, mon.thly. You give them the date of the first day of your last cycle (I know, but you're at home so you can take your time), and they then calculate the date of your next period and e-mail you a reminder. Oh, and it's free. This is why the internet was invented.

And now, if you will excuse me, I need to call Maury Povitch and secure my slot on "Ovulating Men! Talk About Mr. Mom!"

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Personal Informatics Post Three: Personal Media



The mission of Personal Media is to improve the health of customers by offering tools to continuously track, monitor, and analyze bodily functions through wearable devices. Currently they offer two such devices:

1. MWS: A weight management system that monitors calories burned, dietary intake, duration of physical activity and sleep

2. BMS: A body monitoring system that tracks energy expenditure, activity and sleep.

Naturally, just collecting such data isn't a 360 offering, so the monitoring devices are supplemented with a comprehensive data platform. Here's how their web site describes that:

Solution Platform
The SenseWear® platform is a marriage of three basic components – a wearable monitor, a personal feedback device and software. Working in concert, these three components deliver the data and insight that enables healthcare professionals to provide true behavior modification guidance and patient adherence.

SenseWear® Armband
The armband collects real-world metabolic data

SenseWear® Display
Shows up-to-the-minute patient feedback

SenseWear® Professional Software and SenseWear® Website
Allows for armband data uploads and (website only) manual input of nutrition intake and health indicators such as weight and blood pressure

Detailed Reports
Detailed reports are generated providing easy-to-read activity profiles and trends

Physician Insight
Physicians and patients can review the data and progress to gain insight into sleep, nutrition and activity patterns to evaluate adherence to doctor-prescribed behavior therapy programs


The target here can be consumers, but doctors and corporate wellness programs are also sales foci for the company.

I would imagine that the model here is direct payment -- that advertising is not part of their revenue program. But as a tool to offer more accurate and comprehensive assessment of patient health, lifestyle, and well being, this is clearly a serious component of the personal informatics landscape. shaving even a fraction off the costs of diabetes treatment would make this company very rich, indeed.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Personal Informatics Post Two: Dopplr





Designed to help frequent business travelers keep track of the whereabouts of their friends, families, and colleagues, Dopplr offers an entirely private way to stay in touch geographically. You log in, identify or invite your friends, input business trips (or migrate them from an online scheduler) and you are set. Here's an excerpt from a highly favorite Time magazine feature of the outfit:

Passing through Manhattan a few years ago on my way to Miami, I left a voicemail for friends whom I'd hoped to see while I was in New York City. Two days later they left a return message saying: "Sorry we missed you. We're in Miami. Here's our hotel number." They were in the same hotel as me, one floor up. "Wow," said my friend, "that's karma."

For those who don't believe that some spiritual force throws people together, however, there's Dopplr, a website for frequent flyers that takes the luck out of meeting up. Dopplr — which launched its free public service in December — allows you to plug in all your travel plans for months ahead, and see at the click of a button which friends' and colleagues' journeys will overlap with yours. "We're against lonely travel," says Lisa Sounio, one of Dopplr's co-founders. While working as a business consultant in Helsinki, Sounio grew tired of trying to arrange meetings with peripatetic colleagues. "We found we were traveling from conference to conference, spending weeks trying to get together," she says. "Only later would we find out we'd been in the same city."

So Sounio and four other founders built the Dopplr site early last year, and invited about 500 heavy travelers from technology and media companies to road test the software. Since the Dopplr users were logging thousands of air miles a month, the site quickly became an élite spot for hyper-wired globe-trotters, many of whom are now hooked on checking each others' movements.

Although these days anyone can join that high-flying club by plugging in their travel itineraries on Dopplr, the site remains exclusive — permission to view another member's itinerary is by invitation only. "This is a high-value market, with a particular kind of lifestyle," says chief technology officer Matt Biddulph of Dopplr's membership. "This is for people who travel a lot."


Naturally, Dopplr offers both social, networking, and business benefits. By knowing people's whereabouts, you can enrich your relationships of whatever type.

I think we've all had those moments of opportunities lost -- when paths almost crossed and whatnot, and having a business solution geared toward selectively disclosing information serves to eliminate these missed opps.

No word on how they will make money, but I see a couple of logical streams, including a monthly fee for membership, potential intros a la Linked In, or highly targeted behavioral ads geared to what people are doing when. Whatever they select, Dopplr clearly offers the business traveler a way to mitigate one of the biggest challenges of her lifestyle -- getting and staying connected.

Dopplr is Helsinki based. Here's an interview with Lisa Sounion, CEO, from CMA:



She's right: the site is Nordic gorgeous.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Personal Informatics Post One: Introduction

There has been an explosion of new websites of late focused on helping people track and monitor personal information through digital media. A recent WSJ article, entitled The New Examined Life, alerted me to the scope of the phenomenon, so I thought I would spend some time this week examining a cross section of such offerings and attempt to understand their significance.

Which is, of course, enormous from a marketing standpoint. Since personal informatics services are by their very essence opt in, the range and quantity of such data, and its marketing implications, are enormous.

It would be very useful for a packaged goods company to understand the exact menstrual cycles of prospects.

It would be of tremendous value for hospitality companies to understand where, when, and why an individual travels.

Similarly, understanding the most mundane patterns of our lives, like the places we walk when headed to work, for example, has solid implications for a variety of commercial concerns.

Of course there are massive potential privacy issues in this space. Personal informatics companies will need to be at the forefront of user disclosure in order to be viable for the long haul. But if consumers are indeed interested in sharing these sorts of personal life details with the world, its easy to see why we marketers can be excited about the development.

Through some rapidfire posts I want to introduce you to 7 or so of these companies over the next two days.

So let's get my fingers typing, and your eyeballs reading, shall we?

Wait, one more piece of business. I want to make the following PowerPoint available here to you as well. It is entitled Polite, Pertinent, and Pretty, and is a discussion of personal informatics. From Matt Jones (of Dopplr) and Tom Coates of Yahoo! Brickhouse. It offers a range of really powerful insights to shed even mroe light on the topic.



So on with the show!

World's Smallest Mac!