Friday 12 November 2010

Project Titan and Facebook Webmail

With more than 500 million users, Facebook today is already the world’s most popular search, social, photo, and event product - and soon will be the most popular local deals product as well.  (Sorry FourSquare).

And just when you thought it was safe (Google), Facebook are launching Project Titan on Monday— a robust, integrated web-based email client with personal @facebook.com email addresses for users. Facebook’s webmail client will naturally integrate content from each offering (i.e. Places, Search, Photos, Events, et al) in a seamless fashion. Logic would suggest that, as Facebook knows who your friends are already (interaction activity levels) and how closely you’re connected to them - prioritizing email based on social relevance should be a natural transition and more fluid user experience.

Next for Facebook?   More social commerce and extending a group-purchasing model. (Sorry Groupon).  We ultimately believe Facebook has been championed because users simply do not want to visit multiple websites to engage multiple disparate communities, content and/or log-in’s.  It's inconvenient and inefficient.  Users want one place where all other content is intelligently served to them as they determine.  We believe Facebook is that place today.  Maybe we've had too much of the Kool-Aid? 

What do you think?

Wednesday 10 November 2010

SOCIAL MEDIA CASE STUDIES [NOV-10-GB_V15.0]

Lavazza Coffee’s campaign called The Italian Experience that lets anyone from around the world talk directly with locals about food, shopping, love, lifestyle and just about anything else you could think of – More     

Wonderful Pistachios is relying on "twitter-centric" talent to generate buzz around their new campaign that features blogging by celebrity blogger Perez Hilton and user-generated videos.  - Business Wire 

Cheerios Facebook campaign donated a free book to children in need for every new Facebook page fan. The results? More than 124,000 books. - Read Case Study

eBay is using a Facebook application that lets friends and family contribute separately to one account to buy a gift for someone they care about.  - Parcel2Go 

Victory Motorcycles “test ride” campaign on Facebook ended up being the highest conversions all year. Read Case Study  

M&M’s (Canada) latest campaign "Find Red" is based inside Google's Street View. It’s an online treasure hunt where people find clues on the M&M’s YouTube, Twitter, Foursquare and Facebook page. www.findred.ca 

Clorox announced via Twitter that their "Power a Bright Future" grants for school program received an astounding 1.6 million votes on participant submissions.  - Power a Bright Future   

Orange launched it’s second “Balloonacy” campaign (where contestants jump from site to site finding balloons that unlock mini games that help you race balloons across the globe) employs new and innovative features (like iPhone apps, progression badges and race widgets) for the contest - More   

Check out the winners of the 2010 Forrester Groundswell awards include Telligent for their US Department of Defense's APAN Community, Intuit for their "Brainstorm" platform, and CEMEX for their "Shift" platform.  - Empowered Blog  

NIKE’s emerging technology installation (BBDO Argentina) brings to life Nike's “Air” with a levitating shoe platform that suspends the new range of Nike Air shoes in-store. 


The newest version of YAHOO's Mail Service features Twitter integration and allows users to view videos on YouTube and photos on Flickr and Picasa.  - FFOG 

The GAP took advantage of Facebook's new ‘Deals’ feature with a promotion that promised a free pair of jeans to the first 10,000 people checking in at Gap stores with Facebook Places.  Read the Case Study 

Industry Analyst Altimeter on the "Rise of Social Commerce." - Web-Strategist 

Golf 2.0. - Rickie Fowler - Brand Identity and Social StrategyCase Study 

Sears is connecting with customers in new ways by hosting in-store product testing events. For the first event in Chicago, Sears invited the city's leading bloggers to try their newly released camera and posted a video of the experience on YouTube for all to see.  - MySears Blog 

New Balance's Projection Mapping Innovation 


Dell is keeping track of all of their social media content on their new Buzz Room Facebook application.  - Dell Buzz Room 

PUMA's "King Diego" Facebook Campaign Celebrates Maradona's 50th Birthday - Goodbuzz 

Coca-Cola used a street team to get consumers to interact with mobile bar code-enabled out-of-home posters and signage to drive engagement and trial of Coke Zero.  The results?  140,000-plus mobile bar code scans - More 

Ralph Lauren to Stage 4-D Spectacular on New York’s Madison Avenue - More 


Tuesday 9 November 2010

PUMA's "King Diego" Facebook Campaign Celebrates Maradona's 50th Birthday


Advertising today is about creating something participatory that reinforces your brand attributes.   It’s about creating something fun, engaging, viral and personalized.  Better still is creating something users would engage irrelevant of the brand facilitating the experience.   It can definitely be a challenge, however, to ensure you’re positioning optimizing activities, try using our Campaign Scorecard

A great example of this new model is Droga5’s latest “King Diego” effort for Puma.  To celebrate soccer legend Maradona's 50th birthday, Droga5 and Puma have launched this online Kick-Ups competition

Players log onto the game on Facebook and have 30 minutes to pass a video of Maradona juggling a soccer ball to a buddy. The goal is to continue passing and keep him from dropping it. The longer you do, the more footage you'll see of the soccer star juggling over the years, including newly shot film of the icon keeping it up at the age of 50.
The player who keeps the ball up the longest will earn the Grand Prize, viewing a soccer match with King Diego himself—at a venue of his choosing—whether it's on his living room couch, in a pub or at the stadium.   Prizes will also go to Kick-Ups with most countries passed to, most players passed to and most passes completed.  Check out the PUMA Football Facebook Page.





Monday 8 November 2010

RICKIE FOWLER (PGA) - BRAND STRATEGY


RICKIE YUTAKA FOWLER is an extremely likeable, handsome young guy who’s also laid-back, genuinely approachable, and largely unknown except in NCAA circles. This despite becoming the only golfer in history to be the NCAA's 'Player of the Year' as a freshman (at Oklahoma State) while also notably breaking all of Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh’s and Phil Michelson’s NCAA records after only a few years of taking up the sport.  He’s also one of the fastest in the sport to have earned a PGA Tour card so if you haven’t heard of him yet, you certainly will.



As of this post, Rickie is currently sponsored by Puma Golf, Rolex, and Titleist (ProV/Scotty Cameron,) followed on social media channels by more than 90,000 (at the time of this post,) has represented the United States at the Walker Cup and the 2010 U.S. Ryder Cup Team - and all before even turning twenty-two. Goodbuzz Inc. was extremely proud to be selected by Rickie's management team SFX Golf to develop a brand, social media, and activation strategy that would position him for success and reach out to a new generation of 'wired' golfers.



THE CHALLENGE

Professional Golf has changed a great deal over the years and never more so than with the advent of social media and a new 'wired' generation. As Andrew Giles, Senior Brand Strategist at Goodbuzz, explains, “Golf as a brand today feels antiquated, inaccessible, and corporate.  It’s a game that may be better accessorized by a defibrillator than Puma Gear – and that’s the primary problem.” Testing only confirmed this notion.



SFX Golf established an overarching goal to create a bulletproof brand that was bigger than the score Rickie posted at the end of a round.  Goodbuzz thereby determined that the brand needed to feel authentic, connected, accessible, and genuinely represent who he is and what he liked.   


STRATEGY
Our Golf 2.0 strategy ultimately requires a new 'connected' way of thinking: an always-on, real-time brand strategy.  Good marketing is good storytelling, and for a brand to be successful in this competitive era, it must have an engaging story. Fortunately, Rickie’s back-story was uniquely interesting, inspiring and entertaining.



As Andrew Giles explained, “Rickie Fowler is a true challenger brand.  If you are cheering for Rickie, you’re cheering for the underdog - the little guy fighting against the establishment. Twitter and social media give these followers a window seat. We ultimately needed to ensure that the Rickie Fowler brand shared little in common with the current PGA positioning.  It had to feel like a fresh, understated upstart challenging the status quo. This naturally led to our Golf 2.0 positioning and strategy.”



To the casual consumer, the power that some brands hold seems like a mystery or stroke of luck. But there's nothing unintentional about it.  To this end, Goodbuzz architected the brand strategy to be equal parts ‘hero’ and ‘rebel’ - a reluctant anti-establishment hero, who’s courageous, overcomes tremendous obstacles and persists in difficult times.  Add a dash of moxie and an extremely competitive position could be established in short order.



Rickie’s primarily “Millennial” constituents access the Internet continuously first and foremost for information and for entertainment and secondarily for connection. Our strategy needed to make Rickie Fowler both relevant and accessible to use social media to let fans come along for the ride.





ECOSYSTEM
The resulting digital infrastructure positioned Rickie Fowler as the next generation of Golf (or what we coined “Golf 2.0.”)  Therefore, whether tweeting, uploading pictures, videos or commentary, Rickie would be extremely approachable and accessible.  A website was developed and integrated with social media feeds and real-time PGA updates.



Rickie's promise to his constituents is nothing short of full transparency and unfettered access to his life (and we’re not talking about ghost-posting either.)  From the beginning, Rickie enthusiastically adopted social media (Facebook and Twitter specifically.)  For example, Rickie tweeted his frustration at hitting an errant fairway shot immediately after hitting a ball. This level of access was unprecedented in professional sports.  Ultimately, Rickie’s exemplary play on the course ensured he was always in the spotlight and driving the discussion. 

Our strategy was to make his followers active participants and stakeholders in Rickie’s success or failure and ensure an authentic emotional connection is made with his brand.  This unique and distinct positioning helps followers separate and isolate his brand from his seemingly antiquated competitors, as they are with him every step of the way.   


Managing and operating a successful sports brand is about winning, yes. But you can’t bet all your chips on doing well all the time, so you need to build a customer base that’s not reliant on winning. If that sounds like a contradiction, it’s not. You need to dig deeper into the relationships you have with fans, so that the satisfaction they get is not just from the score, but from their entire relationship with your brand. Goodbuzz has a passion for the business of sports, and a close connection to golf.

We look forward to walking this path with Rickie and watching him change the world of Golf as we know it. It’s a tall order certainly but he is definitely positioned to disrupt the establishment as we know it. Hold on for the ride.  Note: Rickie Fowler's Brand, Social and Activation Strategies were proudly developed and launched by Goodbuzz for SFX Golf.  What can we do for you?