Someone recently tipped me off to a great banner execution for Burger King courtesy of Crispin Porter. I really respect great banner executions as you have so many more restrictions. It truly proves how far you can take the medium when you want to.

My gut tells me they were not able to run it like this on many sites, but I thought you’d enjoy it anyway. As always BannerBlog had it first…

http://www.bannerblog.com.au/2008/07/bk_banner_of_doom.php

Social media has played a massive role in recent US politics and its influence will continue to increase over time. Although this trend permeates social networking, blogger outreach programs, and even more traditional banner ads across both of these mediums, the use of Twitter is particularly fascinating. For example, the number one position on Twitterholic.com, which tracks the most popular Twitter profiles, has belonged to Barack Obama for the past month and half.

In terms of demographic, social media is no longer something that is skewed towards the younger demographic who have traditionally had lower voter turn-outs. It now extends to the many layers of the voting demographic and even has an influence on mainstream media, which proves that it is targeting people outside of social media’s traditional reach. Indeed, social media has the capability of seeding public sentiment in real time into web properties that people visit on a daily basis, and these are typically sites that people visit more often than news sites. Personally, I believe there will be a growing and consistent trend between successful politicians and those that focus on strong internet and social media strategies.

The UK’s use of social media sites runs in parallel to the US so unique cultural differences will rarely make a difference. Indeed, it would be foolish of UK politicians not to adopt similar strategies or what’s more, create ambitious strategies that could set the trend for future US campaigns.

While most social networks struggle to sell advertising due to lack of proper segmentation and totally irrelevant content for advertisers, LinkedIn has so much demand that they decided to launch their own ad network. LinkedIn claims 27 million registered users, according to comScore, 5.2 million from the U.S. visited the site in July (8.7 million worldwide).

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When I look at some of the most successful marketing campaigns I have been fortunate enough to be involved with I have started to realize that, in most cases, they fit into two categories. One category is projects that have a very high pass-along factor and the second is projects that have a very high pass-along factor and are very press friendly. These press friendly ideas, like Trevor The Mentos Intern or Guinness Hands for example, received exponentially more traffic because of their original content that truly was unlike almost anything on the web at the time of their release. When bloggers received links from us or tips from friends it was easy for them to find a reason to write about it in the hopes that they’d publish before anyone else or felt a sincere need to tell their friends.

These ideas aren’t always the most sane (yet again, reference Trevor The Mentos Intern) and in some cases they’re not particularly politically correct. The fashion company Diesel seems to have a really good grasp of how to make these press friendly viral campaigns. They did it very successfully last year when they had two models “kidnap” a sales person and the company’s primary website while interacting with visitors via a live web cam.

VIDEO AFTER THE JUMP.

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PART V OF THE “TREND WATCHING TO GAIN A COMPETITIVE EDGE IN MARKETING” SERIES:

Let's Hug!

A survey was done at the end of last year that asked people  What their most important source of information was. 80% responded the Internet followed by TV, Radio, and Newspaper at 68%, 63%, and 63% respectively. Simultaneously 73% of people responded personal source as their most important method. When the two highest categories Internet and Personal Source can be so close coordinated in a social network it paves the way for potentially the most important way to communicate with consumers. - USC Annenberg School: Digital Future Report 2007

We can target Age, Connection Type, Day Part, Education Level, Ethnicity, Gender, Geographical, Interest Groups, Marital Status, Parents, Religion, Sexual Orientation, Smoker/Drinker, Enthusiast Targeting.  Unfortunately we’re still just pushing more target ads, when we should be targeting communities and using this knowledge to engage them in a longer conversation.

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Ah, a fresh new Candystand.com smell...

It was announced yesterday that CandyStand.com, Wrigley’s premier gaming site, would be sold to a new third party. Candystand.com has long been hailed as a trend setter in branded entertainment sites boasting well over 5M unique visitors per month with hundred of high quality Flash games.

The new entity, Funktank, is a sister company to famed boutique digital shop WDDG who has been producing great award winning work in the digital space longer then most of us have been thinking about it.  Although the purchase of Candystand is interesting and apparently a sensible business move it raises a bigger question for boutique digital shops that hang in that gray area that is appealing to companies looking to buy them. They’re not big enough to get the multiples they want and so the deals just don’t make sense, but if you’re producing high quality work, and have been giving away your great ideas for years, why not just focus your talent inward and take over a successful web property?

I think this was a bold and brave move for James Baker (CEO of both companies) and the success of this project might very well change the “exit plan” of many small digital shops around the world.

Great YouTube Ad

I’ve seen two really first class uses of YouTube as a marketing tool recently and I thought you might enjoy seeing them as well. The first ad is for the new “Wario Land: Shake It” title on the Wii. The video which shows game play and the associated Wii hand motions also slowly starts to shake the entire YouTube page to pieces sending text and content flying. I’ve seen concepts like this before, but by being the first on YouTube it came on as totally unexpected which made it memorable and interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/experiencewii

The second ad for Samsung Instinct telephone. It uses some of the new functionality in YouTube to link between multiple videos. The series of videos are presented in a “Choose Your Own Adventure” style with amusing and racy content that is not only entertaining but demonstrates functionality on the phone successfully. Make sure you watch the video to the end to view the additional functionality.

http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=HoOCiaxIZF4

My congrats to the agencies behind both ads. In fact if you see this blog post and you worked on one of these send me an email. I’d love to take you out for a drink in recognition of your original thinking.

A friend tipped me off to this great post on Josh Spear’s blog on “Cat Cafes” in Tokyo, Japan. Essentially you can go to to a cafe and rent a cat to play with for an hour. As Josh points out - this is really indicative of how unique their fast paced culture is. Althought I don’t see this as outside the realm of possability in a major cities like New York or London.

Check it out:
http://www.joshspear.com/item/japanese-cat-cafes/

Technorati Profile

PART IV OF THE “TREND WATCHING TO GAIN A COMPETITIVE EDGE IN MARKETING” SERIES:

Use with skill and caution....

In my previous post I talked about the concept of micro-celebrities. Where are some of these micro-celebrities and how do we use them help us launch products.

Look to Personal Blogging, Fanfiction Writing, Podcasting, Video Blogging, and even the profile pages of your friends on social networking sites. (The other option is to create your own micro-celebrities like Trevor the Mentos Intern, but we’ll get to that in a second.)

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Microsoft’s new ads begin with company employee Sean Siller — who looks a whole lot like John Hodgman, the actor who plays the PC in Apple’s ads — saying “I’m a PC and I’ve been made into a stereotype”,  directly targeting Apple. It’s an interesting strategy attacking directly Apple’s implication that Mac is cool and PC’s are boring…

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