Start-Up Watch COD: Xtranormal and the text to vid phenomenon

If you are alive, I would imagine you have seen an Xtranormal flick over the past year -- the iPhone 4 one was quite popular, as is Digital Ninja. (Both appear below.) But there are thousands of others, and I am certain we will be seeing even more of them over the months ahead.

Xtranormal is a Montreal-based company that lets users makes 3-D animated movies just by typing a script. Whether what you want is 20 seconds long or an hour, it's all possible, and their technology makes it incredibly easy and monstrously addictive. Here are the iPhone 4 and Ninja movies, just to give you a sense of how entertaining DIY cartoons can be.

Warning, both are NSFW:

digital ninja from moon stuff on Vimeo.

Those two videos use the same characters and background, but there are actually dozens of other people and places to use for your mini Citizen Kane.

There are essentially two versions of their offering, one web-based and one you download to work on offline. The second version is faster and appears to have more flexibility, not surprisingly. In addition to movie making, Xtranormal also offers a web viewing community, and lets you export your creations in a variety of ways -- low res and higher res. You actually plan your movie through storyboarding, clicking on character icons and writing text as you go. Don't like the way a line sounded? You just change a couple words and re-render. You can also direct simple character movements, and switch camera angles to reflect what the characters are saying and doing.

But how is all this relevant to marketing? Well, I think in about a dozen ways. I'll stick to just a couple here:

First, technology has dramatically reduced the cost of producing commercials. We've moved from a world in which directors and production companies had a monopoly to an era where tens of thousands of pro and semi-pro video makers are scattered across the country, on a level playing field. In 1989, I worked on a TV commercial for laundry soap that cost $1.3 Million. How we spent that on something that did so little for the business -- well, I would say it was a challenge but really it was all rather easy. Of course, that was exceptionally expensive, but for most of my career, major brands paid in excess of $300K for :30s. These days, more and more brands are using crowd sourcing to develop their TV ads. Communities like Poptent and sites like XLNT Ads bring both great value and tremendous ideas to brand challenges every day.

Xtranormal has also been used for making TV ads. I was pleasantly surprised to see GEICO use the platform to make ads they broadcast on national media, using the premise that in the time it took to make the ad, the person could save hundreds. There are a number of these ads out there - I chose the one below to show you a different background and character set:



But as we all know, marketing-centric videos needn't all be broadcast-bound. So many companies would love to produce videos to replace rarely read content on websites. But it used to cost a lot of time and money. Tech companies used to spend a small fortune on making their front page "what we do" videos. Now they can do it for free in about -- two hours.

The final way that I think Xtranormal and its compeittiors are changing the game is that they are shifting the balance in online entertainment from the art direction to the copywriting. Hey, pictures will always be a critical currency online, but with Xtranormal, the emphasis is on writing and aural communication.I think that's great because ads online are, with some notable exceptions, utterly devoid of ideas. And in the ad biz, most of the ideas historically came from the writer. So by entering the environment with such a strong platform, they may shift the balance in online creative to a more idea-centric model. That'd be very good news for our industry.

Finally, this is all animation. But how long can it be before we can put words into the mouths of people? I don't know if that is in Xtranormal's plans, but it is or should be in SOMEONE'S PLANS. It'll probably look rough at first, but like everything else online, it'll get better and better. And THAT will make it possible for us to deliver highly tailored video messages that express brand benefits in the context of a user's personal needs. Pretty powerful stuff for what today looks like a couple of talking bears. Xtranormal was founded in 2006 and has 30 employees according to Crunch Base, so it is a bit bigger than many of the companies I write about. But I think this area is something brands should definitely take note of in a significant way.

Start-Up Watch COD: Tynt shines a light on invisible sharing

Thanks to the ad:tech blog for publishing this first.

If you visit a web page, there are any number of companies interested in using that information to predict your future behavior and map your interests. Sometimes the information they collect will be extremely revealing about what you like. Sometimes it won’t.

But content you share is far more likely to be the stuff you care about. According to a fascinating new start-up called Tynt, the most common way content is shared is actually cut and paste. Yes, really. People grab a paragraph and stick it on their blogs. Or post it for Facebook or Tumblr. All that sharing was largely under the radar until Tynt.

Another cut and paste use is for search. You are reading an article on something, and grab a phrase and paste it into the Google Toolbar. Off you go. Meanwhile the site you are on has lost you. Without knowing what you pasted, they have no visibility into what their readers care most about. Or, they might have missed out on telling you about their great content on the specific subject you Googled. Ergo, the site has lost potential revenue.

How many cut and pastes are we talking about? Consider SFGate, the online property of the SF Chronicle. Tynt reports that SFGate’s readership cuts and pastes approximately HALF A MILLION TIMES a month.

Tynt Publisher Tools enable websites to track what is being copied and pasted. The free-for-pubs service is easy to deploy – the site simply adds a small script to its pages. There are four components:

Tynt SEO: Whenever a user cuts text and pastes it, Tynt tracks the content and adds a link to the story to the paste. Here, I’ll simply show you. I am going to cut a sentence out of SFGate, and paste it here.

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Bay Area tech firms Google Inc. and Twitter Inc. have quickly joined forces to launch a "speak-to-tweet" service to give anti-government protesters inside Egypt a way to get around the worsening shutdown of Internet access in that country.


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/techchron/detail?entry_id=82144#ixzz1D7YoTNZx

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SFGate will benefit from your visits AND get an SEO boost by this link.

Tynt Keywords: Publishers get reports about what words are driving visits and searches/departures from their sites. The reports give a nice graphical view of the topics that people care about most.



Tynt Content: This portion of the service tells you which pages/articles/posts are driving the most cutting and pasting, and what topics were driving the activity.

Tynt Social: It reports on which social channels are driving the most virality for your content. Sites can use this to guide their social strategy.

Here’s their 1-2-3-4 video:


Tynt will obviously have oodles of information about audience interests as a result of all this. Their web site reports that already more than 600,000 sides have integrated Tynt. The monetization opps for all this info are potentially very yummy.

As advertisers and marketers search for better ways to target and tailor messages, Tynt is adding a bold new category to what is available. They have not yet announced how they will monetize the info, but I would be stunned if ad targeting didn’t end up being a part of this. It could also help in dynamic site optimization and audience analytics. To name just three examples.

As Tynt becomes clearer about how they will be merchandising this data, I expect that marketers and advertisers will be anxious to test and deploy efforts using it. It’s really an untapped well of potential value. And there aren’t a lot of those left anymore.

Start-Up Watch COD: Badgeville brings game dynamics and rewards to YOUR site

Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.

The whole Four Square badging thing sort of mystified me when it first launched -- why would people jump through hoops for little virtual icons? But I am certainly no stranger to addictive behavior, so the appeal of these little virtual awards sunk in fast.

But why should virtual awards exist only on FourSquare or select social environments like networks and games? According to Badgeville, they shouldn't, and their fascinating company offers a compelling white label badging solution for any web site.

Using Badgeville, which was the Tech Crunch Disrupt Audience Choice Winner in 2010, sites can encourage visitors to perform desirable behaviors in exchange for virtual awards and recognition. Webmasters can offer consumers points, badges, or trophies for specific web tasks.

Example: Want more reviews of products in your store? Give reviewers silver medals, and power reviewers golds.

A longish video of their LeWeb 2010 start up competition pitch appears below:


Site integration comes through nifty little turnkey widgets, or flexible APIs for deeper integration. You can also reward people for sharing your site content on FaceBook and Twitter, and enable users to encourage their friends to join the rewards/awards community in social media. Heck, you can even give them a badge for doing it. Using the built-in real time analytics, you can immediately answer questions like:

Who are your top 100 visitors?
How many of your users have left comments or shared a link to your site?
Where are your site's bottlenecks?
By combining loyalty rewards and game psychology, Badgeville offers an engaging new way to get people to do more on your site, more often. It's an engaging approach to loyalty without requiring lengthy sign up processes or major commitments. Badge lovers will participate while other can simply consume the results of the actions you have encouraged and rewarded on your site.

Definitely one of those ideas that makes me hit myself in the forehead and say, "Why didn't I think of that?" They're based in Palo Alto and Amsterdam. It integrates with your existing database so your current users/members don't need to "join again" to play. It's a SaaS model, with a monthly fees model based upon the level of usage in your community.

Any site
Any behavior
Any award

Flexible, hunh?

Start-Up Watch COD: Order up! Village Vines offers a different take on group couponing

Thanks to the ad:tech blog for publishing this first.

When I first read the concept for Village Vines, I was intrigued because they seem to have a distinctive spin on the mega hot group couponing trend. It's different in part because it's vertical -- delivering offers focused on fine dining restaurants. Foodies can join the site and get daily offers from some of the better restaurants in a city.

But there are a bunch of other unique characteristics as well.

The specifics of the promos are standardized, and it's a good deal but won't break the bank of the businesses. Essentially, you choose an offer, make a reservation from the available dates, and pay $10 now for a 30% discount when you visit the restaurant. Naturally, restaurants are going to use this to fill tables that would ordinarily sit empty. So it'll often (but not always) be on lower traffic days of the week, or at the beginning or end of the mealtimes. Additionally, new restaurants could sell discounts at all times to drive trial from a really food involved customer base.

There is a featured offer each day, but the offers aren't one day wonders. You'll want to book today to get the best times and dates is all. When you visit the site, you see the daily offer first, but recent offers lie below based upon the continued availability of tables within the promo period. What impresses me about this approach is that it offers a good value, but we aren't going to read about restaurants going under from the discount. Further, the reservation component ensures that the diner can actually have a decent dining experience -- the crowd is regulated and spread across the night. No lines of 300 people wanting that $2 chicken burrito supreme.

Oh, and cheap daters rejoice -- the discount is automatically applied to your bill -- you don't need to whip out that coupon and look the total schlub to your would be squeeze. Because no woman -- or man -- has ever said, "Coupons are sexy."

Focusing on foodies is also a strong idea -- there are lots of foodies that will well appreciate a discount, and be happy to go out on a Tuesday instead of a Saturday in order to get to that pricey eatery.The $10 fee also appears to be a good place to be -- a $10er is pretty easy to part with for the promise of a discount later in the week. Village Vines is a restaurant play only, but I have focused on them here as an illustration of how the group couponing space will likely evolve and niche out as more and more players enter the space. In the coming weeks I know we are going to be seeing more of these specialty sites emerging. The concept is too big to focus solely on 75% offers. Lots of small and large businesses won't wear that sort of discount. But as a tool to fill empty seats -- or aisles -- or beds, this kind of program and deal structure holds significant promise.

Start-Up Watch COD: Napkin Labs brings people together to help give you big ideas

Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this post first.

Over the last couple years, the idea of corporations using a larger community of thinkers to generate innovations has gotten plenty of ink. I think the tipping point was when Procter and Gamble unveiled its strategy of working with everyone from consumers to suppliers to generate better products. It's a brilliant notion -- it just plain stands to reason that more people can generate more and better ideas.

Napkin Labs is a Boulder, CO start-up that has created a web platform to help brands, companies, and organizations harness the brain power of engaged crowds in service of their challenges. Anything from new product ideas to market research to early trends identification to concept validation.

Using Napkin Labs, businesses describe what they are looking for and have teams of people come to them with ideas and insights.

The process begins when a brand posts a challenge and any relevant "constraints" or desired features. From there, the brand posts a prize for identifying the idea/solution. And then we're off to the races.

That's when the community kicks in. Napkin Labs members join the projects that deeply interest them -- those to which they believe they can make a contribution. From there, the project moves through a defined set of phases, with participants asking questions, posting answers, and submitting content of whatever form -- whatever helps get the group closer to the goal. That could be a mechanical drawing, a video, or even, like it says on the tin, a drawing on a cocktail napkin. Of course the team is not just working on one potential solution -- the process is designed to generate multiple POVs and options. Then, the larger community votes on these ideas. The voting chooses the winning idea, and the prize is awarded.

Nothing happens in a vacuum on Napkin Labs. There are no lone wolves here. Rather, the individuals that are attracted to this community are people who like to collaborate -- who are driven by possibilities and the enriching power of many perspectives. Oh, and as for the prizes, it's not an all-or-nothing competition. Rather, people are rewarded for the number and quality of their participations. Here's the "tour" vid (hit the expando icon when it starts...you'll want to see it full screen.)

Take a Tour from Napkin Labs on Vimeo.

Members must apply to be part of the community. It isn't automatic. That's valuable, if for no other reason than to protect the platform from becoming the "the Yahoo (Bad)Answers" of Innovation. The core value proposition of this is deeply connected to an enagegd community, a strong collaboration platform, and the wisdom of crowds. Time will tell, but I am betting that it is a winning combination. I am absolutely convinced that crowdsourced innovation is the future of every industry. When we unleash committed teams, there's nothing they cannot do.