March 19, 2010 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

You may have heard, Iain Tait is leaving Poke/London for Wieden+Kennedy/Portland. In his new position Tait will be top digital dog at an agency reared on TV, and one that's been slow to pick up the digital ball.

If this article by Tait in New Media Age is any indication, he wants to bring new ways of working on ideas to the global super shop.

If we want to create provocative, challenging and culturally relevant digital work, we need to smash the hen-house and go free-range. We need to embrace the un-team and the un-process. We need to borrow from the places where real innovation is occurring: the world of hack-days, collaboration, open-sourcing, ring-fenced R&D time and incubators. Clinging to outdated idea-farming methods just because they're reliable and predictable is a surefire route to extinction.

The "hen house" is Tait's metaphor for the place where copywriters and art directors lay their golden eggs. His argument is that you can't just bring technologists into this sacrosanct area without a dust up. Instead, you need to draw the hens out from the comforts of their coop and show them the expansiveness of the entire farm.

It'll be interesting to see how far Tait gets with some of the most entrenched "hens" in the business.

In addition to this Top 20 countdown video, Trend Hunter is offering a massive 300+ page report containing information on more than 2,000 Micro-Trends that all marketers need to know.

The 2010 Trend Report, plus 12 months of access to Trend Hunter Pro is going for $1499, and when you click this very special hyperlink, AdPulp will receive 20% of that amount via our affiliate relationship with Trend Hunter. So, please do not hesitate to educate.

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March 18, 2010 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 1 Comments

I'll readily admit I'd never heard of Brian Solis when I received a copy of his new book, Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web. But I suppose when Ashton Kutcher writes the foreword to your book, like he did here, you can do what Solis does and describe yourself as "one of the most prominent thought leaders in social media" as well as a "digital analyst and visionary."

I've read enough marketing and new media books to know that when something is considered a "complete guide," it won't be considered complete in, say, a year or two from now. But Engage is an impressive book; it's a deep dive into all the ways that social media is being used by brands, companies and organizations right now. There's an extensive "toolbox" of categories, instruments, and sites that serve the major components of social media. There are discussions of how to find influencers, the "rules of engagement," ways to measure effectiveness, and the promises and perils of the whole thing. Quite a number of topics are addressed in the book and that's no easy feat.

Be warned: if you're looking for how social media integrates into a more traditional marketing plan, this isn't your best bet. And Solis is a passionate advocate of social media, so you're also not going to get a pros-and-cons debate about to what degree brands should use social media (which is still something many clients are still wondering). But if you have a client who's very left-brained and analytical, or if you're looking for a very methodical trip through the world of social media as it stands in 2010, Engage is a great place to start.

Special thanks to John Wiley & Sons who provided me a copy for review.

March 18, 2010 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

South By Southwest Interactive wrapped up on Tuesday, and there's mixed opinion on the conference's enduring value.

Jolie O'Dell, who just announced she is leaving her job at Read Write Web, says SXSW sucks and she won't be going back for more.

This year, I spent most of my time trying to avoid being harassed, maligned, groped, ogled and threatened by the masses of people - I'm hearing 40% more than last year - who are holding badges. This show isn't fun, and I won't be coming back.

My greatest concern at the outset was the relative lack of truly technical content. I haven't even seen that many startups here this year, and even fewer developers. And non-technical people aren't here to learn; they're here for self-congratulation and mutual masturbation. People I've never heard of are referring to themselves as Twitter celebrities and generally making me ill.

I love it when people speak their minds and say the things that need to be said. SouthBy is a cluster fuck. And when there are too many people in one space, human nature is such that a "rats in a cage" mentality takes hold. Obviously, we're not at our best in these instances.

Steve Hall of Adrants has an entirely different take on the subject.

But where else can you physically hang with so many people in the marketing/interactive/advertising/social/geek space all at once? Evan Williams. Kevin Rose. Bob Garfield (yes, I include him), Justine Ezarik, David Armano, Brian Solis, Henry Copeland, Gary Vaynerchuk, Chris Brogan, Violet Blue, Rick Webb, Ze Frank, Jason Fried, Guy Kawasaki, Pete Cashmore, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Jeremiah Owyang, Benjamin Palmer, Adam Pash, Jeff Pulver, Ian Schafer, Ariel Waldman, Adam Wallace. And, yea, Ashton Kutcher.

In other words, there's no need to sweat a five day party with A-listers. It's all good, and Hall's got photographic evidence of this fact. Lots of it.

But clearly, thousands of people spend thousands of dollars to be in Austin so they can learn to do their jobs better. That is the nature of a conference. The socializing is icing, not the cake.

Jay Baer says "SXSW needs a much better vetting process if it's going to retain even a modicum of educational value." And O'Dell mentioned in her post that she was upset she that she couldn't find any bloggable content. When there's no there there, SXSW becomes an adult version of Spring Break, and that's kind of hard to justify to one's bosses and/or accountant.

For yet another take, here's what two students from Wharton think:

March 18, 2010 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Google makes running your company's ads, or your clients' ads, on national TV look easy. So easy, in fact, that it raised the suspicions of Slate's ad critic, Seth Stevenson.

Stevenson wanted to take Google TV ads for a spin. So, Slate created a bizarre TV ad that advertises nothing in particular, and directs viewers to Vcantellyouwhy.com (in order to track visitors and get a sense for ROI).

Stevenson set a budget of $1,300 total, selected four target networks and time slots, and then sat back to see what would occur. What happened is the spot ran a total of 54 times on national television, including seven times during Glenn Beck episodes on Fox. The ad reached 1.3 million people and, of those, over 1,000 actually visited Slate's landing page. All for the cost of drinks, or a ball game, with the client.

March 18, 2010 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

I keep finding articles on how big Google is, and what a threat Google presents to competition. By competition, the complainers often mean Microsoft, an odd thing considering Microsoft's monopoly on the desktop and the legal troubles the company has faced as a consequence.

Microsoft got Google's attention in Ohio recently, when a routine collections battle with a small Internet company resulted in a counter-suit citing monopolistic abuses. But what really caught Google's attention was the Internet site's legal counsel: It was Charles "Rick" Rule, long the chief outside counsel on competition issues for Google archrival Microsoft Corp.

"It's become clear that our competitors are scouring court dockets around the world looking for complaints against Google into which they can inject themselves, learn more about our business practices, and use that information to develop a broader antitrust complaint against us," said Google spokesman, Adam Kovacevich.

In other tech titan versus tech titan news, Brian Morrissey of Adweek reports that Microsoft used a speaking slot provided by the Association of National Advertisers to open a broad assault on Google, accusing the Web giant of using its market clout to the detriment of advertisers. One of Mirosoft's main complaints--that advertisers can't export their Google Adwords data--interestingly enough, has no merit.

"As we have repeatedly made clear, advertisers can easily export their ad campaign data out of AdWords into competing ad platforms like Microsoft and Yahoo, both through CSV export and the AdWords API," Kovacevich said. "In fact, both Microsoft and Yahoo offer their advertisers explicit tips and tools for exporting Google campaign data into their platforms."

Providing a little perspective, Tom Foremski, writing for ZDNet says Google owns 50 data centers around the world; it builds its own servers; it operates its own backbones that shuttle huge amounts of data across the world; it develops its own software for managing all of its data; and it keeps banks of servers in the data centers of ISPs so that it can cache data closer to delivery.

"The competition between Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and other large content players has long since moved beyond just who has the better videos or search. The competition for Internet dominance is now as much about infrastructure -- raw data center computing power and about how efficiently (i.e. quickly and cheaply) you can deliver content to the consumer," writes Craig Labovitz, one of the experts Foremski references.

If you step out of the specifics of this story and think for a moment about the two brands, Google and Microsoft, they evoke such different thoughts and feelings. They mean totally different things. Google is a company we find endlessly fascinating for what they've already accomplished and for what they're working on next. Microsoft, on the other hand, is what? A behemoth has been desperate to hold on, by any means possible?

March 17, 2010 by david burn | Permalink | 4 Comments

Gary Vaynerchuk was prank called at 5:00 am while in Austin for SXSW. Listen to how he handles it. The dude is quick.

Vaynerchuk says, "What I think is interesting here is we now live in a very transparent world and every interaction maybe recorded. The question is, if I handled this differently would it have impacted how some may look at me?"

The video was posted to YouTube by lalawag, a Los Angeles-based tech site. When I watched the video for the first time, I thought Vaynerchuk was in on it, but from his commentary above, it sounds like he wasn't.

BTW, Crush It is Vaynerchuk's new book.

March 17, 2010 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

Red Bull's new $220 million Major League Soccer arena in Harrison, N.J., opens this weekend when the New York Red Bulls line up in an exhibition match with Santos FC.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the arena, paid for without a loan, represents the biggest and most visible foreign investment ever made in professional soccer in the U.S. Red Bull is a privately held company based in Austria.

"As soon as we decide to take part in a sport, we either do it properly or we don't do it at all," says Red Bull founder and Chief Executive Dietrich Mateschitz, who also owns soccer teams in Austria and Germany.

Within the stadium, the company's logo--two bulls butting horns in front of a yellow sun--is emblazoned on the lower-deck seats. Where some companies might have plastered billboards throughout the building, Mr. Mateschitz says the idea is to build his brand through the quality of the experience the arena offers.

Red Bull also rocked the Winter Olympics this year with the creation of Shaun White's private half pipe, deep in the San Juan Mountains of SW Colorado.

When you go to RedBull.com and try to ascertain just how far the brand's commitment to sports marketing goes, it's overwhelming. The brand sponsors Street Style, Air Races, Cliff Diving, Skiing, Skateboarding and much more.

What the brand doesn't concern itself with is traditional advertising. When you can successfully create experiences for people that they like, want to repeat and share with friends, the need for traditional advertising kind of flies out the window.

PREVIOUSLY ON ADPULP: First It Was Stadiums, Now It's The Actual Team

March 17, 2010 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

SocialBuy is a new "social buying" site offering vouchers for discounts on luxury products and services often from retailers that have never before discounted -- but now must in order to stay afloat in this economy.

Naturally, the company wants to use social media to spread its social buying message.

That was interesting...

This is how it all works. SocialBuy negotiates "unbelievable local deals," (currently only in San Francisco and Los Angeles, but more cities will be coming online soon). But the deals are only good if a pre-determined number of people opt in. Here, take a look at today's deal in Los Angeles...

The retailer's interests are protected through volume, which SocialBuy brings to the table via the social nature of the Web.

March 17, 2010 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

According to The New York Times, the new Kotex campaign from the New York office of JWT is ruffling some network feathers. Apparently, three different networks informed JWT it could not use the word "vagina" in the ads, which led the agency back to the editing booth.

"It's very funny because the whole spot is about censorship," Merrie Harris, global business director at JWT said. "The whole category has been very euphemistic, or paternalistic even, and we're saying, enough with the euphemisms, and get over it. Tampon is not a dirty word, and neither is vagina."

Organic launched the digital portion of the campaign at U by Kotex.

March 17, 2010 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Ed Hamilton, a copywriter in London, put his CV on Google Maps, an act which led to 15,000 views in two days.

Here's another one from Carren O'Keefe.

[via Michael Lebowitz]

March 17, 2010 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Regarding the spot above, Greg Ketchum, Executive Creative Director, Ogilvy New York said, "We wanted to educate business leaders on the importance of data, provide some context for its proliferation, and suggest the enormous opportunities that lie within it."

Learn more at IBM's Smarter Planet microsite.

March 17, 2010 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Ad Age is reporting on the vanishing line between content and advertising, and using Dr. Pepper's spot last week on NBC's "30 Rock," as an example.

Yes, it's true, in the early days of TV, networks were happy to mix commerce and content, with talk-show hosts also serving as pitchmen. Many of them do that now. But Dr Pepper's spot offered a slight twist on the format by saying nothing explicit about "30 Rock" or about NBC. It just used a character from NBC's "30 Rock" for Dr Pepper's gain.

When you consider not just DVR penetration and the shaky revenue streams but a viewer diaspora spreading out to watch video in any number of formats, you wonder how much longer TV networks will be able to resist the old line of thinking that programs and promotions are supposed to be distinct and separate.

March 16, 2010 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Gen Y marketing expert and radio personality, Bret Bernhoft, asked me to appear on his new radio program, The Face of Media. Naturally, I agreed. What self-respecting ad blogger wouldn't want to quaff an IPA while dishing on the future of media?

The show is also available on Archive.org and iTunes.

The recording took place at The Green Dragon (now owned by Rogue) in SE Portland, a favorite spot for the technorati and beer lovers alike.

March 16, 2010 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Agency holding company MDC Partners is moving into TV production, and its new company, Shout Media, is already developing a show for Bravo called "Pregnant In Heels."

Miles Nadal, MDC's CEO, says marketers are "consistently seeking new and inventive platforms to deliver immersive brand engagement, entertainment and ongoing interaction with consumers." (Actually, I don't think he speaks like that, but his press release writer must.)

Along with producing traditional TV series, Shout will develop branded entertainment content for clients represented by MDC shops. Media Post notes that branded-entertainment arms at holding companies have produced network content before, "but investing in traditional production -- with its many risks -- is unusual."