Viral - Can it be measured –

A short film by Public Mojo that was created more than a year ago for Schweppes has raced into the world’s viral video top 20 after online users belatedly fell in love with it.

“Signs” was originally created to promote an online Schweppes short film festival.



In the last month, the 12 minute movie, which does not feature the brand and has only one subtle reference to a character putting her finger to her lips, has surged in popularity.

On YouTube it has picked up over half a million views, 1200 text comments and a Facebook Group has acquired the film nearly 2,000 fans. According to the website Viral Video Chart, it is currently the world’s 17th most viral video. Globally, more than 300 blog posts have been written about it in the last 28 days. It has become particularly popular with Portugese and Spanish audiences.

The movie provides a great case study on Viral using social media tools... as of today, Youtube, facebook, blogs and twitter have all been used to create more reach for the brand and the short film.

Viral marketing works because people trust the opinions of their peers. Author and industry expert George Silverman says, "Word of mouth is the most honest advertising medium there is. People don't want to hurt their friends and family and colleagues with bad information."

Comments and recommendations coming from peers will be perceived as reliable even if the information slyly originates from a marketer.

A successful viral marketing campaign also helps consumers cut through the online clutter. With so many advertisers vying for the same customers, a personal recommendation from a friend or colleague will help direct your online audience to your site without much additional effort like a banner or paid search advertisement.

While creating conversation and buzz is fantastic, all the publicity will not do advertisers any good if it doesn't relate back to their brands. For example, I was forwarded an interactive widget that I spent the better part of an hour using, but by the end of the day, I could not tell you what brand was behind it. This is ultimately a failure because, while the campaign got my attention and my time, there was no subsequent call-to-action or brand attached to benefit from the interaction.

So how do we feel about the Schweppe’s short film?



We will let the users decide

Credit Crisis Broken Down

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Financial doom made simple

Plain English - if econimics is like Greek to you then this video provides and insightful way of explaining to even the most math retarded of you/us.

Lost Generations

We float through the connectivity and isolation of our social lives, we have facebook, myspace and friendster account, we connect via twitter and instant messages, sending an mms, sms is as second nature as calling. However fast we move and however ingrained things become we need not lose sight of who we are...

We live with the pending environmental, economic and social disasters that we have created for our generation and the ones to come, will our passage in life create what the next generation see as the norm….

This video was submitted by a 20 year old in a contest titled "u @ 50" - and she came second???

Did You Know? 08/09

The last 10 years the world has changed, The internet has become our saving grace to those who need friends and a little social contact, The world has changed and will forever be changing based on how the inteweb of technologies evloves.



This is the latest 'state of the world' video created by Karl Fisch - a US teacher and technology commentator - http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/.





It's an entertaining and informative account of the speed of global economic and social change but with a glaring lack of sources and references...

Innovation in the interactive

Innovation in the interactive space isn't just about having ideas -- it's about timing their execution just right. There's no sense in launching a campaign on a digital platform that has yet to achieve acceptance among the target audience. And yet, when campaigns are timed correctly, brands can position themselves as cutting-edge competitors by tapping into an emerging technology at the precise moment it hits the mainstream.

BMW Films; Brahma "Drumprovise"By John McGarry, Continuity

The BMW Films series, launched in early 2001, is representative of a campaign that was forward-looking, in terms of both the technology and creative methods the campaign employed as it unfolded. A series of eight short films, BMW Films featured the work of popular Hollywood filmmakers and highlighted the performance aspects of various BMW cars. The videos featured actors crashing and blowing up these much-sought-after cars in high-speed chases and explosions. Using branded entertainment in an entertaining and engaging format, this campaign shied away from typical luxury brand advertising and was designed to attract consumers of a particular mindset.

Executions included broadcast, print, and outdoor elements, with a primary focus on promoting the actual films and not the cars. For its time, the campaign achieved stellar results, with millions of views on the BMW website. Yet there's little doubt that, with today's advances in online video technology, audiences would have had much greater access to this campaign, which would have dramatically increased traffic and viewership. Thanks to the rising popularity of sites like Hulu.com, Joost.com, and some of the network sites, consumers today are more comfortable watching longer format programming online. In fact, people are still downloading and watching the BMW Films today, so they continue to be relevant as our media habits evolve.

This is not how traditional campaigns usually unfold or how brands typically represent themselves. By creating these online videos, BMW realized this work would live on the web and would continue to be viewed by BMW fans. It's also worth noting that these films were best viewed by downloading a proprietary video player that (at the time) worked better and looked cooler than most video players. By using proprietary, high-end technology, the company helped position the brand itself as high-end, technologically advanced, and entertaining.

A less obvious example of a campaign that was ahead of its time technically is a campaign called Brahma "Drumprovise," which launched in late 2006. Brahma is a Brazilian beer whose brand is built around bringing a Brazilian flair, known as "Ginga," to a person's daily activities. The target audience for this campaign had an interest in all things Brazilian -- street art, music, creativity, and dance. A key manifestation of this strategy was an online digital music mixer that enabled visitors to create Brazilian themed music, and to place themselves in the middle of the Brahma's Brazil webcam, all via their desktops.

Drumprovise is a Flash-based application that pushed the envelope in the online space. It represents a solid example of a campaign that used fresh technology to bring a strategy to life. However, its reach was limited based on the low penetration (at the time) of desktop cameras and high bandwidth. In addition, compared with today's social media environment, fewer opportunities were available to further support the effort through social networking tools and contests on sites like YouTube.

In addition, some of the regional marketing support shifted before the campaign launched to locations that had lower penetration of webcams and high-speed access. If these regions had more advanced internet access and more frequent use of webcams, it would have stimulated the viral nature of the campaign.

Both of the above campaigns were ahead of their time based on their use of technology to bring each brand's core strategies to fruition. The incorporation of the medium into the message continues to power innovation in advertising and, as always, it brings new, exciting content, entertainment, and tools to consumers.

Social media and PR

The Internet has prompted titanic shifts in the way PR and media relations are going to be done now and in the future. Technology, economics and changing public sensibilities have changed the PR game forever…

Basic PR assumptions:

1. PR influences mass media to put ideas, products and brands into the public consciousness and conversation
2. PR works through editorial decision-makers who set the national or global news agenda
3. PR targets large audiences to accelerate and optimize brand impact and buzz
4. The value of the implied third-party endorsement combined with the speed and reach of influence-able media makes PR worth the effort

Now consider the current media and editorial landscape:

• Mass media audiences have significantly declined and fragmented. Niche media rules.
• Famous vehicles like daily newspapers, radio and the TV news have much smaller audiences and cannot keep up with the news cycle.
• Almost anyone with a blog, a camera phone or a video recorder can gather, edit and transmit news, potentially influencing public debate or potentially initiating a viral sensation. John Q. Public can still claim his 15 minutes in the spotlight.
• Reaction to and analysis of events takes place in real time and is influenced by a growing number of voices and sectors empowered by widely and cheaply accessible technology

“The basics of news gathering are changing, Online PR tactics are becoming more important to access to and attention from the media. It also requires you to think of PR much more like advertising where the message can be directly transmitted to customers and prospects without an editorial filter. Here’s how and why.”

Everyone Searches. Google is the universal go-to-resource. Those same reporters who won’t take your call, use Google and other search engines for ideas, sources, data and colour commentary.
If your press materials aren’t online and aren’t searchable you have no chance of either influencing the media or of going direct with your message to people interested in your brand, your category or your subject matter.

This mandates understanding and using different tools. You have to consider the means of distribution; e-mail directly to press lists and online distribution to insure searchability and to capitalize on those sites that import PR feeds as content. You also must build SEO tactics into the language and construction of press releases.

Video is Vital.
YouTube is the second most searched site on the web.
Video is expected.
Video gives you the option to more carefully control the explicit and the implied message and has the potential for significant consumer or media pass-along.

Everything is a Conversation. One-way media is dead. Everyone talks back to, edits, reviews, and comments, adds to, shapes and criticizes everything.

In a world where everybody finds out what is happening at lightening speed on a growing range of devices, the game is about interpreting and analyzing the experience rather than presenting new information.

“So PR pros need to monitor mentions and reputations, transmit and receive RSS feeds and keep track of advocates, enemies and the forums they participate in. They also need to understand how to use
Twitter,
Facebook
Delicious / dig
and other social media to follow and to influence the on-going conversation, which is often monitored, catalyzed and promoted by leading websites and TV or cable networks. Social Media Drive Online PR Tactics”