Grown Up Thinking

The award-winning vamp series “True Blood” has been one of my favorite guilty pleasures from HBO in recent years. It’s funny, sexy, artfully done (Shout out to Digital Kitchen for their amazing opening title work, btw) and yet it’s deliciously trashy all at the same time. I was really impressed with the last two seasons’ marketing campaigns which included fun tie-ins with Mini Cooper and Harley-Davidson. The series managed to generate significant buzz while maintaining an artsy niche appeal. Season 3 (coming in June) has just kicked off its 12-week poster campaign and it does not disappoint. The Alan Ball-helmed series has carved a significant presence for itself in the social media realm with over a million fans on Facebook while actively engaging with their 60,000 (and growing) followers on Twitter. Kudos, for sure, but there is something beautifully “old school” in their newest teaser campaign: smart and eye-catchingly awesome posters that simply demand your attention. It’s both simple yet disruptively brilliant. Stay tuned as they roll out a new poster each week–all unrelated aside from trying to “glamour” you into tuning in on June 13th. I’m definitely thirsty for more.

I just got back from a trip to Miami, having spent five days at Winter Music Conference 2010, one of the largest and most publicized annual music gatherings in the world. This year, I was there simply as an observer and mole for all who are looking to connect with consumers to make their presence known. I certainly had some fun, but after five days of over-stimulation with 70,000 other event attendees (including the cast of Jersey Shore), I felt it worthwhile to share some of my recommendations:

Hey DJ! Use your microphone!
With such a captive audience, brands can leverage the opportunity and really connect with consumers- think mobile and social interactive calls-to-action, engaging consumers and creating content. Vendors should be asking consumers to interact and experience products while they’ve got their attention. Oh, wait- there was no product (that’s my next observation).

Where was the ‘product’?
The only WMC-friendly promotions I witnessed on Collins Ave (main drag for parties and prime people-watching zone) were beverage providers handing out cans. But when it came to larger ‘official’ venue events and activities presented by major brands, there was nothing to experience.

Foursquare was the rage!
If you didn’t know what Foursquare was upon arrival, you certainly were game by the time you left Miami. The service continues to grow in popularity for multi-venue, multi-day experiences like WMC. Attendees were constantly whipping out their phones to check-in, connect and find others on the ground.

With mobile, less is more money
There are huge opportunities for events, venues and other vendors to integrate mobile payment solutions, ticketing services or other transaction-based or promotional solutions into the event.  By the way, 8 out of 10 mobile users at WMC own a smartphone.

From a marketing perspective, WMC 2010 was a fun experience with many continued lessons learned and unique opportunities available to brands.  As a sidebar to future attendees –please remember your sunscreen, drink lots of fluids (note: beer does not count) and enjoy the music safely with your earplugs.

QR codes have been all the buzz these past few weeks and many companies are taking advantage of this new trend. QR stands for Quick Response- because they can be scanned quickly by a mobile phone via its camera. QR codes can be used to pull information from one location and stored directly into your mobile phone- anything from links, videos, photos and more.

One company that sticks out (literally and figuratively) is Stickybits. Stickybits produces two-dimensional barcodes users can attach to any real world object. For example, take a sticker and put it on your business card, scan it with either the iPhone or Android app and upload a full PDF version of your resume to the sticker. When others scan the barcode on your business card, your resume will be at their fingertips.

This is just one example of how QR codes are changing the way we think about barcodes. Facebook is also jumping on the QR bandwagon and will be used with an upcoming version of the Facebook mobile app. Facebook is still keeping the details under wraps until April, but some predict that QR codes will be most useful for Facebook’s integration of location-based social networking. In addition, QR codes will be useful for businesses who want to engage with consumers on a deeper level.

Stayed tuned, and don’t be surprised if you start seeing QR codes everywhere. Happy scanning!

H&M Kids Fashion Flash Mob

This weekend, Mr Youth had the pleasure of helping create a truly unforgettable flash mob for H&M Kids. 55 talented (and tireless!) hip hop dancing kids took over Union Square in San Francisco to show their moves and flash their fashion. Read a bit more about it here (and thanks for the love, AgencySpy).

We hope you love watching this as much as we loved making it! Watch it here.

We all know that product placement is nothing new. It’s a multi-billion dollar market that spans across television, movies, music, sports and more. Whether it’s the Coca Cola cups on the American Idol judging table or the food on top of Joey and Chandler’s fridge in Friends, product placement is everywhere all the time. Sometimes it’s subtle and plays in to the storyline of a movie or TV show; other times it’s more obvious. In Lady Gaga’s case, it’s on the screen and in your face, and she doesn’t care if you like it or not.

She’s known for her eccentric outfits and imaginative performances. In fact, being over-the-top is what made Lady Gaga so famous. Now the artist is starting to be noticed for the blatant product placement in her music videos. And with over 50% of brands using branded content for awareness-based marketing, she is a marketer’s dream come true. In fact, Lady Gaga is the only recording artist to reach 1 billion video views across all online video platforms – perhaps making her blatant product placements the most valuable in entertainment history! According to Neilsen AIG, product integration is more likely to drive brand recall than other forms of advertising, so if all goes according to plan, I’ll never make a sandwich without thinking of Lady Gaga, and I’ll never see Lady Gaga without wanting a sandwich.

Maybe when I finish eating I’ll take a picture with my Poloroid camera, upload it on to my Beats laptop, listen to some tunes on my Hearbeats headphones and call my friend on my Virgin Mobile phone. Why? Because Lady Gaga made me do it.

If I were in the sports marketing department at Northern Iowa, I’d be working overtime (no pun intended) to get my basketball coach on Facebook and Twitter by, like, yesterday. Your school just knocked off a giant in the NCAA Tourney and now you’re the trending topic of the week. Embrace it.

How many opportunities does a small school such as Northern Iowa get to have millions of people reading, watching and talking about them? Schools are businesses, and businesses need to build their brand in order to attract new customers (or in this case, students).

A school and coach that’s doing it right? Check out Kentucky’s Coach Cal. He has over 138k fans on Facebook and over 1.1 million Twitter followers…WOW. I imagine there are a couple brands that would pay good money for that type of online community.

How many of those Facebook fans are high school students still deciding on which school they will attend? How about potential basketball recruits looking to get to know the coach? He even goes on to promote a Nike contest that the University of Kentucky is participating in to help rally votes and get the University more exposure.

So, Ben, even though your Panthers crushed my dreams of bracket supremacy by defeating Kansas, I forgive you and would like to offer you a bit of advice if I may:

Please, speak to your marketing department and ask that they set you up with some social media networks pronto. The world is listening and you’ve just signed a big ol’ 10-year contract extension to stay at Northern Iowa (congrats BTW) – better start building that brand while you have our attention.

In the fuzzy afterglow of the Chat Roulette frenzy of the past few weeks, I find myself thinking “what’s next”? Lucky for me, I don’t have to spin my wheels on that brain buster quite yet as two similar sites have already distracted me with their unique interpretations of the random chat craze:

RandomDorm connects college students on the prowl for some dorm-to-dorm interaction (only those with a .edu address need apply).
MyChanceRomance Billed as the “fun way to find love”, MyChanceRomance is a dating site with a Hot-Or-Not mentality that’s bound to give you an inferiority complex.

Not ready to move on from the original just yet? Don’t fret. It’s  still alive and well, even spawning it’s own Chat Roulette Missed Connections site (which I can assure you is comic genius in its own right).

The BEST bait and switch ever. Thank you, Heineken…

And the second best bait and switch. Thank you, Hot Chip.

Kickball, the alternative first Foursquare client for iPhone. (Our prediction= bigger than Tweetdeck).

My Famebook: another example of bringing the online world off. Personalize your own journal with 320 of your Facebook statuses (far cooler than that “Year in Status” update hogwash, we think).

On stealing and borrowing: two sides of the homage coin, from Creative Review and Ad Age respectively.

Unhappy Hipsters: a fun time waster (even for those of us *ahem* who live in Brooklyn).

CMYK Cocktail Contest: Droog & Tasteologie team up to celebrate design and mixology to raise funds for Food Bank of NYC. Tasting color for a great cause? Yum.

Happy Birthday, Twitter! As we reflect on four years of compacting our thoughts into 140 characters, social media pulse point Mashable.com is asking readers how Twitter has changed their lives, by using the hashtag #thankstwitter4. Sifting through the 140 #thankstwitter4 tweets that Mashable chose to highlight got us well-connected folks at Mr Youth thinking about what we’d like to thank Twitter for. Here’s just a smattering of our grateful gospel:

@courtneyc: #thankstwitter4 helping our generation fuel the biggest text-based fundraiser in history via the @RedCross

@laural:  For the information I learn from everyday #thankstwitter4

@kennyh:  #thankstwitter4 forcing me off my butt on #lazysunday by showing me what all my friends are doing

@jennaa:  #thankstwitter4 the most hilarious trending topics – i.e. #myfuturehusband & #dearfuturewife

@ericab:  For celebrating pithier wordsmithery #thankstwitter4

@ericab: (and for @ShitMyDadSays) #thankstwitter4

@alexisd: #thankstwitter4 giving me a place to voice all of those random thoughts that come to me on my commute to and from work

@manisham:  #thankstwitter4 helping me get hundreds of clicks a day on manishainmanhattan.com!

@laural:  For all the new friends and business contacts I have made #thankstwitter4

@giancarlop: #thankstwitter4 making human interactions, thoughts, and feelings searchable. (sorry to get all heavy on you)

“Help me fight this gang in Mafia Wars!”, “Join my wagon in Oregon Trail!”, “I’ve just found a golden egg in my FarmVille!”.

Most people have likely seen one of these updates in their Facebook news feed before, and many of them have participated in one of these popular social games. They’re fun and addicting, and millions of people all over the world just can’t get enough of them. In fact, FarmVille has over 80 million users monthly, and nearly 75% of Facebook’s 400 million users participate in online social gaming.

My question is, why hasn’t Madison Avenue capitalized on this yet? Bing recently made a push into marketing via FarmVille, but we have yet to see a real attempt at infusing marketing into online social gaming.  This raises an important question: How much marketing are you willing to put up with to play these addicting games? Will you spend money for special features, or give up screen space for ads? Will you be open to branded content, or even entirely branded games? If you got an email saying you couldn’t play FarmVille anymore unless you paid for it, what would you do?