Grown Up Thinking

From outlandish one-on-one encounters to themed bar nights, ChatRoulette has swept the nation with its unapologetically uncensored take on the classic internet chat. Marketing types around the world held their breath wondering who would be the first brand to tap in to the 500,000+ unique users per day.

And the winner is…. French Connection. The international clothing brand has launched a ChatRoulette competition challenging participants to use the service to seduce a woman in exchange for a $250 voucher. Risky move for an international brand, considering the proliferation of shady stuff going down on the site. But foolish or not, they’ve been getting a lot of coverage for being the first.

Only time will tell if ChatRoulette can become a useful tool in the marketer’s arsenal. Thoughts?

The arrival of March means many things. Winter coats are being tucked away into the backs of closets, flip flops are making their premature debut and the buzz of March Madness starts in offices, apartments and dorm rooms across the nation. This year, Hulu (the commercial-supported website that streams video of TV shows and movies) is partnering with Entertainment Weekly to put its own spin on the traditional basketball tournament by sponsoring a voting-based Best In Show Tournament.

Voting opened on March 1st and the ultimate champion will be crowned on April 5th with the prestigious title, Best in Show. While it’s still too early to predict the mass popularity of the competition, I think Hulu is doing a great job of providing unique interactive ways for its users to stay connected with the site beyond streaming video. One drawback: I do not see a sharing feature anywhere on the site to share the competition and my votes within my social networks.

And for now my predictions: I think Glee and Family Guy will showdown in the semi finals against Lost and 24. Ultimately, I think Lost will take it, appealing to a wider fan base than my beloved Glee.

Anyone care to make a wager?

You thought that your car could keep you safe from advertising as long as you ignored the billboards, but it’s 2010 now and it’s time for change! As we move into the next decade of technology, consumers can expect to see more integration between marketing, social media, and their daily commute.

Companies like Ford are coming out with new cars that will deliver popular mobile features to their navigation systems like turn-by-turn directions, streaming music, and Twitter. Google Maps will even start featuring paid advertising layered over existing billboards. This is big news for businesses like gas stations, restaurants, fast-food chains and hotels which will now have the opportunity to offer special discounts and promotions to drivers.

I don’t mind this new presence so long as there’s an added benefit for the consumer. Maybe while on vacation my navigation system could show me a promotion for a hotel discount, or let me know where to get cheap gas. Perhaps when I pull in to fill up the tank, a virtual billboard could remind me how much I’d love some McDonalds for the road (just so long as my Twitter doesn’t automatically post that I’m breaking my new year’s resolution.)

In a time where brands A, B and C are dipping their pen in the social media ink well, innovation is quickly becoming the key to online success for those who are willing to pave the way. Case-in-point: a new in-stream sales channel for Facebook that allows consumers to purchase their favorite products directly from their main feed. Dubbed “Off The Wall“, this new service brings products out of the catalog and lands them directly on Facebook- for all to see, share, comment, “Like”, and hopefully purchase. This also presents a new opportunity for companies to drive more traffic to their Facebook Fan Page by offering special promotions and discounts through Facebook as well as custom content for consumers.

This new service comes as no surprise, however, as Facebook continues its efforts to expand e-commerce on the site. “Off The Wall” satisfies consumers who are looking to brands and social networking sites to integrate their overall shopping experience. In addition to the existing ability to purchase Facebook Gifts, consumers will soon be able to use an online currency to buy and share music and other virtual products through Facebook.

One big step for social media, one giant plus for all of us.

Perhaps Twitter may become the next frontier in method acting? Actress Barret Swatek is certainly ready to find out as the star of the new online comedy series “My Two Fans.” More and more entertainment choices are beginning to spring up exclusively on the web. (Arguably an early indication of things to come for the future of television? Discuss.) “My Two Fans” follows Swatek’s quirky character, Kate Maxwell, as she rebounds from a nasty breakup with the help of her two biggest fans. An inverted “Three’s Company” of sorts, the show can be consumed in a variety of ways including YouTube, Funny Or Die, or Facebook.

While the series has decent production values, a large marketing budget was decidedly out of the question. Enter Swatek’s personal Twitter page in which she began “tweeting” as her character and following businesses and people that could relate to the show. A large portion of the series is improvisation which allows a fascinating twist on life imitating art imitating life. In a relatively short period of time, the character Kate has amassed an 1,000+ following on Twitter, including key industry players at Sony, Lionsgate, and NBC. Even more interesting is how speaking in the character’s own voice has really fueled the actress’ own comedic writing with a huge dose of creative inspiration. Stanislavski would be like SO proud.

Few things in the 2.0 era have received so much buzz so quickly as Skittle’s recent social media effort. I logged on to Twitter yesterday to a literal hashstorm of all things Skittles. I realize people get excited about candy, but this was ridiculous. What was going on? Obviously I did what any responsible digital marketing  professional would do–I went to Skittles.com.

Something wasn’t right–why did Skittles.com take me to Twitter’s search page with a little branded overlay on the top left?  Where’s the flashed out, high res animated page loader? Where’s the ambiguously organized homepage with different content engagement opportunities?  All I could see were different users’ tweets about Skittles. I clicked around the overlay, and was taken to….Facebook? This was something entirely new.

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Social networking site, Twitter, seemed to steal the show during this year’s Super Bowl Sunday. The two major Twitter Super Bowl chat groups received hundreds of Tweets every minute throughout the night. While last year’s Super Bowl ads were blogged about shortly after they aired, this year’s had millions of people instantly display their feedback in 140 characters or less (as is Twitter’s maximum character count) thus providing an accurate and live pulse of the nation (check out this very cool interactive map that displays the most popular words Tweeted during the evening and from where they were sent).

And what better way for a brand to capitalize on this massive audience than having its Super Bowl ad stars Tweet to the masses. Pepsi’s PepSuber, E-Trade’s babies, and H&R Block’s Murray were among the characters who were Tweeting on game day. This type of social networking is proving invaluable for brands because of its impact and because it’s FREE! Because Twitter is an open dialogue it has the ability to connect with consumers more personally than TV spots and having grown over 600% in the last year, it can no longer be ignored by marketers.

A great site for Sprint that beautifully illustrates the Consumer 2.0 insight that bite-sized communications dominate.

Plug Into Now compiles small fragments of information onto one easily manageable page that changes dynamically and can be downloaded for use on Facebook, Myspace, and iGoogle. It’s admittedly quite mesmerizing (and the soothing voice doesn’t hurt either).

Visit Plug In Now.

So, much has been said about Joe Six-Pack and the newly famous Joe the Plumber but convenient store chain 7-11 actually conceived of an ingenious promotion to use Joe to predict the election. In this case, a cup of joe. The idea is quite simple, 7-11 created red coffee cups with McCain’s name on them and blue cups with Obama’s. They then track the cups that their customers are selecting on a nationwide map on their 7-Election.com web site, which even allows consumers to view results by state. Even more remarkable, the results of this poll were within 1% of actual results in 2000 and identical to final results of the 2004 election. Guess Joe really does play a big role in this year’s election.

Hotel 626 is a spectacular site for Doritos made by Goodby & B-Reel. Certainly not for the faint of heart. Terrifying and extremely well-made. Yet another example of how great brands can create a fully personalized, rich, interactive experience for Consumer 2.0 to make things memorable.

Note: best experienced with a web cam & microphone enabled. The site is only accessible from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., but you can override by changing the time on your computer.

Thanks to the guys at The Digital Stew for pointing me in the right direction. Yummy.