Grown Up Thinking

Finally! Ever since the emergence of Chatroulette I’ve been eagerly anticipating a viral marketing campaign that takes it to the next level.

For me it has arrived in the form of “The Last Exorcism” where some genius marketer has combined the two best things about Chatroulette: sex appeal and shock value. This viral move comes as a follow-up to the newly created Church of St. Marks website that provides tips and tricks to avoid being possessed by a demon, and in the event that this is unavoidable, also provides guidance to care for the possessed.

An important point to note with this is that the actual promotion on Chatroulette isn’t what will bring the movie in to the spotlight, but rather the virility of the reaction videos. Considering the largest demographic on the site is 18-24 year olds, Chatroulette seems like a perfect fit for this type of promotion.

All-in-all, I’m glad to see that someone is keeping Chatroulette in the headlines and giving us even more entertaining reactions to enjoy.

Check them out here.

Twitter can be a valuable tool for businesses, but it’s important to know how you can get the most out of it. Whether it’s learning about what tweets are most popular or who is actually retweeting your tweets, allowing businesses to track and aggregate data pertaining to their specific hashtag or username can help them better understand ROI and help make improvements as needed.

Posting tweets with a hashtag or asking users to use a hashtag can be difficult to track, which is why we have compiled the following list of Twitter tools used to track hashtags. Enjoy!:

TwapperKeeper.com: Are you interested in archiving tweets as they are posted? What about saving your own personal tweets? Twapper Keeper is a wonderful service that allows you to search and save data by date.

Monitter.com: Monitter tracks keywords and hashtags in real-time. Type in the words you want pulled and it will automatically update the graph with the most recent tweets.

Hashtags.org: This website tracks specific hashtags and also includes a graph to outline how often the hashtag is used.

Plodt.com: This website is a user-generated trend tracker based on tagging and ranking your tweets. It requires you to follow the Plodt Twitter account to participate, but even without participating, its timelines, tags, and statistics are still useful and interesting.

RowFeeder.com: RowFeeder tracks and aggregates data on Facebook and Twitter. You can track any word, hashtag or even a username. A number of different report types are available and can be downloaded via Excel.

This week, the Twitterverse has been buzzing about a new Foursquare visualization tool, Weeplaces. And with 100 million check-ins under their belt, it’s about time Foursquare found a way to visualize them.

How does it work? Blue circles represent places you have visited and even bigger circles with numbers represent places you visit frequently.  A time series chart below the map shows how long you have been a Foursquare user.  Once the animation begins to play, a yellow line connects all your check-ins and the timeline at the bottom follows along.

One of the best features of the visualization is the shaded regions, as places in the areas that you often frequent show up lighter than places you haven’t been.  This way you can see which neighborhoods you’ve been neglecting. @VishalSapra (shown above), for example, seems to have something against the Upper East Side.

All in all, I’m always looking for a new way to impress my friends with my check-in prowess. Thank you Movity for thinking of a way to reinvigorate my Foursquare addiction.

Well, well, well.  NYC is finally moving forward with a $200 million project to bring Wi-Fi to the underworld in the next 2-6 years.  This project has been approved since 2007, but (as with other NYC undertakings) did not have funding until recently.  Transit Wireless and Broadcast Australia get credit for fronting the cash; the question is do we thank them or not?

There are many reasons I am glad I do not have service in the Subway:

1.    Convenient excuse to end a phone conversation
2.    I read more books that way
3.    Time spent disconnected from the world – which they say is good for you
4.    People are irritating when they don’t pay attention to where they are going, and this would expose them to the dangers of texting while walking

There are also times I wish I had service on the Subway:

1.    When I forget which stop I want
2.    When I am late(r than usual) and need to call my blind internet date… er… friends
3.    When someone asks me a question and I don’t know the answer
4.    When I think of something brilliant to Google
5.    when I open Facebook on my phone just to be reminded that I cannot

On the whole, it is an attractive and practical idea that will result in more meaningful, engaging advertising content.  It’s surprising it took this long to come to fruition, really.

Can you imagine being able to meet friends on a specific train car or play live online trivia with the plasma TVs that will definitely be installed by then? Cross your fingers the world doesn’t end in 2012 because I definitely want to be here for this.

What does the future of marketing on subway cars look like to you?

I remember when watching TV used to be a sociable experience.  My friends and I would base our Friday night plans around ABC’s TGIF line-up, a bowl of popcorn and our parent’s carpool schedule.  These days watching TV is my “me” time, curling up in my bed with my laptop and catching up on a week’s worth of TV via Hulu.

I’m happy to report your TV viewing experience is about to, once again, revolutionize with a so-called “second screen” experience.  The concept is being fueled predominately by the growth of mobile and sites like Foursquare and GoWalla, and will take your on-screen viewing experience to your social networks where you can connect with friends (and strangers) who share similar viewing interests.

Two start-ups forecasted by Mashable caught my eye:

Miso, the self-described “Foursquare for TV”, allows users to check into the show they are watching and push notifications live to both Facebook and Twitter.  Badges and check-ins work very similarly to Foursquare which in turn, socialize your TV viewing experience.  A simple concept, but does it have the ability to take-off like Foursquare?

i.tv takes socializing television to a whole new level.  The app aggregates conversations happening around shows and can provide the user with these conversations no matter what time they are watching.  This is particularly helpful for people like me who watch TV shows several days after they air, and then wants to see what everyone has to say about the latest episode.  The app allows for additional functionality such as remotely scheduling your TiVo, using your iPhone as your remote control, manage your Netflix and more.

No matter which startup wins this war, I think it’s safe to say things are about to change.  As social media evolves and more and more people jump on the bandwagon things we’ve become accustomed to, like watching TV or a movie, are going to change.  Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing?  Well, that’s up for you to decide.

So, after having highly anticipated the iPad and getting one on the day it came out, I found myself disappointed without a ton of use for it. Like all Apple products, the device was beautiful, had a great user experience and performed above expectations. It was just that nothing was new. The iPod changed how music was listened to, the iPhone brought about the mobile app ecosystem and both devices notably changed the way I did things from Day 1.

I kept saying the same would happen with the iPad, the applications just hadn’t caught up. Finally this week, I came across Flipboard and things started to change. Flipboard is a personalized social magazine, pulling content and shared links from your own Facebook or Twitter feeds and displaying them in magazine format, allowing you to flip through content that your social graph has created and shared specifically with you. You can even view curated lists by topics like sports, music, tech and fashion that pull stories from leading influencers in those areas based on what they are sharing in real time on their social networks.

Magazines and newspapers had already created some slick interfaces that turn pages in a similar way by swiping a finger but the content and even experience was largely the same. Similar to how these same publishers faltered and lost ground to blogs and content aggregators on the web because they tried to largely repurpose their content in a digital medium, publishers face the same challenges with new mobile and tablet platforms.

It is never about displaying the same content in a new fresh way. The true success stories of media when faced with disruptive technology are always those that fully embrace the new medium and develop a product that does things that completely alter how people consume content. Flipboard understands the immense amount of content that we now have to sort through from our social networks, the ability to leverage the personalized nature of this content and the emergence of a new device that now seems perfect for enabling us to consume this content en mass without being tied to a desk chair and computer screen. As a result, I’ve used my iPad more in the last two days than in the previous two weeks and my media consumption has once again been flipped on its head.

If you’re anything like me, you spend 72-85% of your “going out to dinner in NYC” time looking for a location that’s equal parts NOM-licious and affordable. Those of you familiar with the New York gastronomic scene know that “affordable” is the more fleeting variable in this scenario.

That’s why Scoutmob, the newest platform to jump on the Groupon/Woot bandwagon seems pretty spot-on to me. Bridging the gap between two of the hottest trends right now, geo-location enabled mobile apps and daily e-coupons, Scoutmob serves up hand-picked deals in NYC and Atlanta (usually 50% off) and delivers them right to your iPhone. The clincher? Unlike its web-based predecessors, there’s no purchase required for the adorably quirky Scoutmob. Simply present the app at your restaurant or bar of choice, and you have instant access to the 50% discount.

Did I mention the deal is valid on ANY combination of items on the menu? Guess I know where I’m eating tonight…

I came across a box of Barnum’s Animal Crackers the other week at a train station in Delaware and immediately noticed the packaging overhaul. To celebrate the Year of the Tiger, Lilly Pulitzer has teamed up with Nabisco Barnum’s Animal Crackers, to create special packaging to support the WWF with a goal to raise $100K to save the Sumatra Tigers.

Why is this interesting? For one, its an older brand that is getting a fashionable face lift. Through partnering with a modern, nationally known fashion brand they are definitely appealing to moms, but also making a cause connection between their animal crackers and real world animals, which can be a great education element for young kids. In short, the product has a real educational effect on young children and can teach them about endangered species causes. Furthermore, they are issuing one million of these limited edition boxes, so the campaign has some decent scale to it.

On top of all that, it’s an unexpected collaboration, which is what makes it great. I love seeing brands like this partner up for the purpose of a common cause. Overall it feels genuine. Lilly Pulitzer is issuing animal prints as part of their line this season to support Wildlife, so the elements all tie in well without feeling forced or like a sell out.

We need to encourage more mass-brands to step out of their comfort zones and predictable patterns. They should be entering new spaces, initiating unlikely collaborations and using their reach for the greater good. I’d love to see these boxes make their way down the runway of Fashion Week. Who knows? They may even make good upcylced purses for cell phones and essentials.

So what unexpected brand collaborations have caught your eye these days? Leave a comment and let us know.

This article appeared as part of MediaPost’s Engage:Teens Publications. To read the original post, click here.

So here is my report not from the sidelines, but from the mud pits of Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, Tenn. I was only there for 36 hours of it, but had enough time to party with festival children, see some killer bands perform, participate in the festival revelry and witness some brands in action.

In my eyes, event sponsorship is all about heightening the consumer’s experience. I hope for the sake of our industry, that corporate culture has graduated from thinking signage and logo placement equates to consumer retention and interest.

The true play for a brand in the event activation space is to elevate the event goers’ experience by ultimately conveying that the brand understands what the consumer is going through. Once a brand understands and connections to the consumer’s emotional event experience, they can effectively add real value as a sponsor.

Additionally, event producers don’t have the time to offer every amenity, every perk, every nice-to-have since they are focused on the entertainment and general production needs. I’m sure every festival producer says, “That’s a great idea; maybe we’ll get to it next year.” Four years later, it’s still a great idea but hasn’t been executed. This leaves a huge opportunity for brands to elevate their activations.

A quick snapshot of Bonnaroo to properly set the stage: four days of music and mayhem on a 700-acre farm in the middle of nowhere. There is no escaping the festival grounds. The average teen I spoke with drove 8+ hours and stayed in a basic camp tent with minimal amenities. Most didn’t have a basic fan in their tent and it was insanely hot. Bonnaroo isn’t an event; it’s a cultural movement comprised of loyal adventure seekers, with approximately half of 100,000 attendees being teens and college-aged.

Click here to read more of Doug’s experience at Bonnaroo 2010, and how some brands got it right.

I am so excited about the potential of Facebook’s open graph that I want to look further into its driving force: the “Like” button. The popularity and recognition of this little button is what propels the web’s social function, and the reason brands will see the results.

Many moons ago, when Facebook first created the “Like” button, there were skeptics. But, as with all good social media developments, users began to accept the “Like” button and it has since started a new trend in communication.

The phenomenon of the Facebook “Like” button is that it has become part of our daily expression. Online (and offline) it reigns.

It started when I received a letter in the mail (you know, with a stamp and everything) with a drawing of a Facebook “Like” button on the envelope. Then, I stumbled across this gem by Nation, which we’ve already started using in the Mr Youth office. You can also wear, send, or peel and stick a tangible button.

What other words could Facebook have chosen for this task? You “love” this. You “approve” this. You “concur”. You “agree”.  You “think this is the shiznit”.

Definitely not. Nothing else works! “Like” is the word. (I suppose Eisenhower had it right.)

Though this isn’t the first instance of web speak going face-to-face (OMG!), it is funny and realistic (more so than this). Facebook has turned a single word into everything we need to say; created such a strong need for this simple piece of feedback that we’ve asked for it to exist everywhere.

Now we need buttons for the rest of our emotional range.

I guess to sum it up, I “Like” this. Do you?