Posts filed under ‘online advertising’
My talk at Pratt
Hi All,
I was asked to do a short talk at Pratt Institute, so I decided to share my slides. Basically I wanted to have a short visual aid to a myriad of mainstream, large and successful properties and brands that did/do well interacting and connecting with their audience through online community and fan engagement .
Let me know if you would like more info or examples or if you have any questions.
COMMUNITY 2.0: INTEGRATING SOCIAL DESIGN INTO THE PRODUCTION PIPELINE
SPEAKER/S: Nathan Fouts (Mommy’s Best Games), Brian Jarrard (Bungie Studios), Ryan Schneider (Insomniac Games, Inc.), Dan Hsu (Bitmob.com) and Christian Arca (Toy Studio)
Unfortunately walked into this one halfway thru. Interesting conversation, tho, about the value of adding community in the Gaming industry. So cool to see them have the same conversations as other media industries were having a couple years ago. But they deal with it on such a more empirical level than other entertainment marketing people. Their more tech/science/math backgrounds give them a solid basis for defending
“Community is all about #’s”
- registered, active, posts,
- make formulas that prove community
- clicking link, then following, then memebers of comm
Community day – bring them in your studio
Actually connected with one of the speakers, Christian Arca, on twitter and then offline (another Chicago community person!). He’s written some interesting stuff on trying to measure community engagement (including a formula!)
Marketing Impact
So I have been thinking alot lately on marketing impact and promotional goals, especially in online media buys. It’s the constant double edged sword:
- Do you spend your money on the high traffic site that cost more but you know you will get more click-thrus, and therefore, more traffic to your site?
- Or do you spend that money on a lower traffic site that will allow you to have a deeper engagement with the members of that community?
The ideal answer is YES or BOTH! If you have the money, you should totally go for it, as you will get the benefit of traffic AND engagement of your brand.
But the Iron Triangle of project management looms large:
You rarely are able to have all three points of the triangle in any project.
So what do you do? If you are lacking in resources (money, usually) make up for it in features. But before you get all tactical, make sure you are clear on your project objectives. Figure out what is your ultimate goal?
- Is it to get tons of traffic? If your goals are about building awareness and this is but one of your plans in a long term campaign, put an ad on one of the “big guns” for tween traffic – TV networks, gaming sites, etc. Traffic is great and the more people see your ad on other sites then the more people you can get to your destination, the more brand awareness you spread.
- Is it to get some great quotes for sales packages, etc? Then go to a smaller community that will be able to build a deeper, more immersive experience for the users. Many times you can organize a community or world event and get the players talking either directly to you or about your brand.
- Is it to maximize your spend? A targeted ad network might be a better idea for you. You might not get an ad on the heavy hitters and you won’t get the engagement you would from a smaller site, but you can spread your brand around to more sites. There are some great options out there to help you target collections of site within the demographic you are looking at.
- Have you thought about offline engagement? It’s funny, but ever since the web came around, it becomes the only thing people can think about. But TV still dominates most peoples lives. And don’t discount the level of engagement that a well planned event sponsorship/promotion can have.
Other factors to consider in your choice include whether this is a one time campaign or part of a larger strategy, what sorts of users you are looking for, whether you are looking for awareness, conversions or something else.
At the end of the day, it’s a question of priorities and choice. It’s best to weigh all of your options and objectives before jumping into implementing tactics.
Turns out, this is good advice for your non-work situations as well. 
2 golden nuggets from Liisa’s firm
Maine Kid’s Privacy Law Takes Effect September 12
As we have previously reported, the Maine governor signed a new law that: (1) puts an absolute prohibition on using personal information of a minor to market to the minor or to promote any course of action regarding a product to a minor – whether parental permission has been obtained or not and whether you know the person’s age or not; and (2) prohibits knowingly collecting personal information from children in Maine under 18 for “marketing purposes,” without first obtaining parental consent. The prohibited activity of using a minor’s personal information seems to be broadly drafted, and may include not just email and text messages sent to children in Maine – including those between 13 and 17, but also marketing messages sent directly to a child through social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter. It’s possible that it could also prohibit analyzing and internally using a minor’s personal information to determine how to market to individuals generally. The prohibition on collecting information for “marketing purpose” is similarly broad. Unfortunately, the exact meaning of the law is subject to multiple interpretations. The law allows not only for the Maine Attorney General to bring actions for violations, but also allows for a private right of action. Although many have objected to the law, an immediate delay or modification does not appear on the horizon. TIP: If you have an ongoing promotion, consider how you will address the eligibility requirements (for example, prohibiting all persons under 18, persons from the state of Maine who are under 18, voiding to Maine residents, or having a verifiable parental consent mechanism). If you do not currently collect date of birth for your marketing activities, consider doing so, or voiding Maine residents. For your existing database, consider separating out those who are under 18 and reside in Maine, and be sure not to send marketing materials to them.
For more tips, see our bulletin at: http://www.winston.com/siteFiles/Publications/4_ME_Tips.html.
Linking to a Non-Compliant Website Is a Violation of CARU Guidelines
The Children’s Advertising Review Unit (“CARU”) recently found that Kidz Bop LLC violated the CARU Guidelines when it contained a link on the Kidz Bop website to a website which allowed the collection of personally identifiable information from children without fully complying with CARU guidelines. The non-compliant website did not implement a neutral age-screening mechanism to filter children under 13, and various areas of the site collected personally identifiable information. CARU found that Kidz Bop could reasonably expect children under 13 to visit their website and CARU guidelines specifically provide that operators of websites which are for children or contain areas for children should not knowingly link to other websites that do not comply with CARU guidelines. In addition, the Kidz Bop website privacy policy did not include Kidz Bop’s contact information, as required by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
TIP: If you operate a website which is likely to appeal to children under the age of 13, ensure that your website is compliant with CARU Guidelines, including removing any links to websites which you know are not in compliance with the Guidelines.
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Weezer’s Pork and Beans Video
Gotta love this. An homage to viral video makers, by having them in the video (see if you can spot them all), and launching it virally before the album. Yay Weezer. Added 2 days ago and already at 1.6 million views. I heart the internet.
Marketing & Commercialism in Virtual Worlds « Izzy Neis
Or at least this is often the sentiment I find online from awesome people willing to speak their mind about things that bother them. I respect those peeps and I understand their mentality. I do. But I am not on that bandwagon of anti-brand-immersion. Forgive me, but I’m not. Knowing that these environments cost a LOT of money (not just at first, but continuously– they’re living/thriving environments that need constant attention, supervision, and care), I understand the need for ulterior methods that do NOT cast higher fees onto the user.
To me, it’s the responsibility of the individual in CHARGE of the youngling minor to teach them the difference between idolizing brands, and recognizing brands. And really– to me, the important things to look for in virtual worlds are safety & quality of content/environment– is it fun? Do they get to play and explore? Are they free to be themselves in whatever storyline/epic adventure the virtual world/MMO has to offer? Those are the important things.
Marketing & Commercialism in Virtual Worlds « Izzy Neis
Yeah, yeah, I a bit behind in my feeds. But I read them all, so it takes awhile.
GREAT post by Izzy with great dialog in the comments. This is such a big topic and I am on Izzy’s side here on pretty much every point, especially in that taking the extremist view on anything gives you a pretty good chance of losing the battle. Not always, but more often than not.
That is to say, “no ads – ever” is a bit of a pipe dream, especially in no subscription communities. These virtual worlds are expensive to produce and run, as Izzy said and as I have said about communities in general for years now. Maybe sponsored clothing/areas/games isn’t the answer. But rather than flipping out and lambasting the virtual worlds for being creative in how they keep their doors open, why don’t these groups help figure out a way for the world to pay their employees and stay on the ok side of marketing. There are solutions that will sit well with everyone that just haven’t been figured out yet. It’s great to point of problem areas, but let’s take the next step and help determine solution sets as well.
Tags: marketing, consumerism, kids, virtual worlds, utopia
Thinking Outside Virtual Worlds
The big category is Webkinz. The company is already launching different models, but it’s also selling figurines, lip gloss, and more to monetize the interest in the brand. Lots of companies are following suit. [ed: it seems like a new one at least every week]
Barbie Girls and Be-Bratz target an older market. Barbie Girls, though, offers some free content and as taken an early lead in users Collectible cards, like Bella Sara, Chaotic, Maple Story, World of Warcraft, have also spread across the environment. In the other direction, companies like Moo.com (with Habbo), Stardoll, Zazzle, and FigurePrints.com allow users to take elements from the virtual world to the real. Sometimes that’s as simple as printing your avatar on a tshirt, sometimes it’s designing clothes for your avatar that can then be fabricated for you, and sometimes it’s the creation of your avatar itself.
TestTubeAliens.com is an alien in a tube of water, when held up to the screen, it detects screen patterns and changes the mood of the physical alien. UbFunKeys comes from Mattel and operates in the similar fashion as Webkinz, but with plastic instead of plush. Tamagotchi recently updated its online world. Me2 from IrwinToy.com is a motion sensor that records your physical activity and then points to your virtual character at home, potentially promoting activity away from the sedentary lifestyle.
Other products like iBuddy or Ambient Devices’ gadgets interface with your computer or environment to provide you more information, creating more of an augmented reality than a straight up virtual world, but creating possibilities, said Smith, for giving feedback to users away from their avatars.
Other items, like Tshirts from Thinkgeek, Firebox, eLaundry.com, and Tqualizer imprint electronics that are tied to other tshirts or products, giving feedback through interwoven screens.
Interesting post on how to extend the virtual world brand to products.
Blogged with Flock
Tags: mindcandy, moshi monsters, figureprints, webkinz, barbie girls, be-bratz, Bella Sara, Chaotic, Maple Story, World of Warcraft, Moo.com, Habbo, Stardoll, Zazzle, TestTubeAliens, Me2, IrwinToy, UbFunKeys, Tamagotchi, iBuddy, toys
Psst…introducing Chuggington
Just wanted to let you all know about the project I have been working on. Not much news, other than we launched our production blog at http://chuggington.com.
It’s a cool project. I am getting to dive into areas of our industry I haven’t had a chance to before which is always exciting. Subscribe to the Production Blog to stay updated.
Blogged with Flock
Tags: Chuggington, Ludorum, kids, trains, preschool, animation, CGI, virtual world
The Community Spirit lives!
I operate most of my life acting as I would like other people to treat me. This rarely guarantees that people actually WILL treat me as I would like to be treated. But I carry on, not so much to be a martyr, but because I like being a nice person. So, for the most part, I try to feign ignorance to the inequity of nice to not nice actions I see around me on a day to day basis.
In my professional life, I pride myself in that same level of quality. My mom has been in customer service jobs for as long as I can remember and brought me up to value and respect the customer. For years I have been managing online communities and teaching my staff to respect the users above all else. A decade ago, when having a staff to listen to and interact with our users and really putting those users first, was seen primarily a loss center, albeit a nice thought, I fought the good fight for them (and usually in kid communities, no less!). When the dot-com bubble burst and there were just handfuls of us left crafting ROI defenses for adopting, or not trashing, online community strategies, I ate my ramen noodles to the glow of my computer and typed away, confident that my justifications would matter someday.
All that was not some sort of weird confession of my tenacity and awesomeness, but rather to setup the fact that, I have been pleasantly surprised lately with the online communities to which I belong. I have been so happy this year with the notoriety that social networking and online community has been getting. The mass market is finally adopting, in a real way, what myself and so many others have been trying to convince the world of for years.
But this week I received multiple personal examples that these new communities REALLY get it:
- I was introduced to ConceptShare at Mesh 2007 in March and loved the idea of it. I talked about it with many clients this summer and finally got a chance to actually use it myself on a project last week. I twittered about this and said how happy I was with the product. That’s it – one tweet. The next day I received an email from Will Pate, ConceptShare’s Community Evangelist (and many other web 2.0-y things), thanking me for the nice words and offering assistance, if I ever needed it, on the product. I was floored by the personal message and wrote back to say so, offering to search our staff for testimonials for him. They made an even bigger evangelist with just one email.
- I was procrastinating last week and reading some twitters and saw a request for a to-do manager, based on the GTD theory. I posted about the program I used in the past (iGTD), but was also able to learn that one of my FAVORITE software companies, OmniGroup, had recently put out a new to-do list manager based on GTD as well (OmniFocus). I was able to download it and start using it that day. I have bought many of OmniGroup’s products before, but I would not have been aware that they had released this new gem, unless my community of twitter-ers had informed me.
- I received an email from Dopplr today thanking me for being a beta tester. As an early adopter, I have helped beta test countless sites this year. But I think this is the first simple thank you I have gotten for doing so. I may have gotten others, but this one didn’t offer any cool incentives, didn’t feel like a request to virally market for them or anything like that. Just a “Hey, thanks for helping us out”. I liked the service before, but now I feel even more a part of it.
Maybe it’s not that the sea change of the net that I and many others have been patiently waiting for. Maybe it’s simply a coincidence that these great acts of customer service and community all happened in the past week. Maybe it’s just the holiday spirit making everyone giddy with niceness. But I am going to think that it’s a sign of a new age. Where community and good will isn’t something you just share with your family, your workplace or your neighborhood block. But that community can also be felt and spread in nebulous virtual places as well – be it an online community, between a company and a customer or as a respected consumer.
Let’s hope the good cheer continues on in 2008 and beyond. I’ll do my part, you should too.
Blogged with Flock
Tags: conceptshare, will pate, mesh 2007, GTD, iGTD, OmniGroup, OmniFocus, Dopplr, community evangelist, customer service, marketing, users first
Events this month
So I was out of the country on various business trips for the past 3 months. Fun, tiring, informative, and cool.
But now it’s time to get back into my Chicago networking circles again. I thought I would share some of the events I want to go to (or at least try to). Please let me know if you want to go with me to any of them. Always nice to not walk into a room of strangers alone.
11/29 – Mashable Meetup, Fulton Lounge
12/1 – StarShaped Press Open House
12/6 – MediaBistro Holiday Party
12/6 – KEXP’s Equalizer
12/6 – CIMA holiday Party
12/7 – our holiday party 
12/8-9 – Bucktown Holiday Arts Fest
12/11 – I-Go Holiday Party
12/18 – Type A Meetup
Wish me luck on getting to any/all of them, as there are also many friends and family holiday parties littered throughout this time as well.
Also, let me know about any other Chicago events. I am always up for meeting more Chicago peeps in or adjacent to my industry.
Blogged with Flock
Tags: chicago, networking, cima, kexp, mediabistro, starshaped press, letterpress, mashable, bucktown, type a, i-go, car sharing, holiday parties
