December 7th, 2009
It’s been a while since Foursquare had new proprietary event badges. In fact, the last time I remember a special badge was for NY Internet Week.
Foursquare took a break to focus on expanding to tons of global cities to strengthen their worldwide userbase. Now that that’s out of the way they can continue to hone their
business model by making
brand integration once again essential. This brings back the element of surprise that users love and turns users into fans and fans into evangelists.
Today has also been a marquee day for Foursquare with a return to focus on brands by partnering with Pepsi. For about a week Pepsi will donate $.04 to Camp Interactive for every point scored on the NYC leader board.
With event badges, leaderboard sponsorships and nearby checkin deals in place brands are starting to take their rightful place on Foursquare. While they may be privately funded thus far there is definitely a clear path to profitability by integrating brands in a timely and relevant manner.
Posted via email from db’s digital branding database
Tags: badge, badges, board, Boxee, brand, break, business, business model, Camp Interactive, checkin, clear path, database, day, download, element, element of surprise, email, evangelists, event, fact, Foursquare, gallery, global cities, integration, Internet, internet week, last time, leader, leader board, leaderboard, love, manner, marquee, model, NY, NYC, path, pepsi, place, point, posterousWith, profitability, relevant manner, return, surprise, time, today, userbase, way, week, while, worldwide
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November 10th, 2009
A strong brand pays attention to details. A smart brand connects with the connectors in memorable ways that may not be readily quantifiable. A savvy brand knows that there are many factors involved in making something a hit or miss. Motorola is all of these and more when it comes to Droid.
On Android day, Cake Group put together an amazing event for Motorola’s Droid release. Their efforts went beyond the day of with connecting with various influencers beforehand to seed articles after the fact.
The branding brilliance comes into play with the attention to details. Customized shortened urls were created just for the event:
Press Release for Droid: http://bit.ly/MotoDroid
Link to Droid specs/product info: http://bit.ly/MotorolaDroid
Pictures from last night: http://bit.ly/MotoLaunchParty
The invitation was elegant, simple and overall top-notch:
What really set them apart was Motorola’s use of Foursquare in a relevant and timely way:
If that wasn’t enough, the piece that pulled it all together was the fact that the launch party took place in Morimoto, the famous Japanese restaurant. MoriMOTO, MOTOrola - very slight but very intentional and very effective.
With Motorola the attention is in the details. At every turn there was a robot, or droid, to reinforce that we were there in fact for the DROID launch. By the end of the party none of the robot droids were left, as they were almost as coveted as the DROID itself. Another small detail was the DROID branded photo-booth downstairs, which came with props like a giant inflatable 90’s-era cellphone and a raygun, as well as an alien backdrop.
Attention to details doesn’t stop after the party: I have it on good authority that Cake Group also added tips to every Verizon store on DROID day (11-6-9) to clue people in to the new Motorola DROID. While Foursquare may not be completely mainstream yet one thing is for sure – the people that ARE using advanced social networking services are the ones who are buying these new mobiile computing “phones”. With the proliferation of these advanced communication devices it’s only a matter of time before everyone is using one. Until then we have companies like Motorola and Cake Group who are using branding purposefully to guide us along the way.
Tags: android, attention, authority, backdrop, brand, brilliance, Cake, cellphone, clue, computing, day, detail, downstairs, droid, droids, end, event, fact, Foursquare, giant, giant inflatable, Group, influencers, info, invitation, japanese restaurant, launch, launch party, link, mainstream, mobiile, Morimoto, motorola, networking, networking services, new motorola, night, none, party, photo booth, Pictures, piece, place, play, Press, product, props, raygun, release, restaurant, robot, seed, social networking, something, store, thing, top notch, turn, Use, verizon, way
Posted in branding, life, social media | 1 Comment »
June 18th, 2009
On June 8th 2009 Microsoft took an unprecedented move in advertising their new search engine Bing. They subsidized all commercials on Hulu for a limited time period. In exchange for that they produced something akin to a telethon meets an infomercial- the Bing-a-thon. The Bing-a-thon is something that has never been done before online.
Microsoft is getting it right with the marketing of Bing. They understand that search should be easy. They understand that in order to learn about something it should be fun. People don’t want to be lectured. We want to be entertained. Disguise learning in entertainment and you have just created an educated consumer. Here’s what some of you took away from the Hulu Microsoft Bing-a-thon:
Some of you were:
Compelled
destroytoday The Bing a-thon is like a gruesome car accident. I keep wanting to look away, but can’t seem to close the window: http://bit.ly/zHpPT
RobLaughton is bing-a-thon really made by the one of the most powerful company in the world? It’s sooooo bad, yet strangely compelling……
latitude46 Bing-a-thon is simply terrible, but I just can’t look away. God help us all.
JaysonElliot Watching the live “bing-a-thon” on Hulu right now. I can’t tell if they’re attempting irony or not. It’s all too self-referential.
Informed
mariogvasquez watched the bing-a-thon on hulu.com. Sudeikis is funny Olivia was hot. Fred Wilard was awkward. Did learn some cool stuff about bing.com
aznsclboi Bing-a-thon over… I’m not sure I’m smarter for watching this… but eh, at least I know how to Bing now.
Repelled
johnyjuice OMG….wth #bing-a-thon that is time spent I WILL NEVER get back! Thank you #Google for not EVER doing that!
jbruin @AlexBurdz I’m really hoping that MS spent most of that 80/100 mil on ads cause bing-a-thon was an epic disaster
Interested
arturot the Bing-a-thon is awesome, haha so cheesy but actually very fun. I hope they make the entire event available later on.
bajanx What an idea by Microsoft having a Bing a Thon on such a recognized website like HULU. How much will this help popularize “THE BING”?
{The interesting thing to note here is that Microsoft made it easy to share the telecast in Facebook and Twitter AND the message that was shared was updated according to what was happening on the Bing-a-thon. Notice the same bit.ly link.}
Promoters
Radums I just made some dude eat like 40 cupcakes. Go to hulu and check out the Bing-a-thon. http://bit.ly/avTj0
yotobari288 I just finished watching the Bing-a-thon with Olivia Munn, Jason Sudeikis, and Fred Willard. It’s running again on hulu http://bit.ly/avTj0
lakkineni Olivia Munn is live on hulu’s Bing-a-thon right now. Come watch it. You’re welcome. http://bit.ly/avTj0
{Of note here is that some found such value in the automated shared message that they reshared it. Some (myself) changed the message & left the automated link only to have others share that message as well.}
Sharers
SanjayJain369 RT @astanton: Fred Willard from Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman is on hulu’s Bing-a-thon right now. Come watch. http://bit.ly/avTj0
katriord RT @db It may not be ‘cool’ to like Microsoft but they get relevant marketing = Live Bing-a-thon http://bit.ly/avTj0
My conclusion? Microsoft made the right decision to market Bing the way they did. People were clearly informed. These are the people that are likely to use Bing over and over again. The people who were compelled (as well as the promoters/sharers) are likely to tell their friends of the funny cool thing they saw and interacted with. Bing has a funny name. It can make you think of Friends‘ Chandler Bing or evoke a sound. The bottom line is this: Microsoft wanted to educate its consumers and brand Bing’s personality at the same time. Mission completed.
Only time will tell if people adopt Bing as their default search engine. Right now people have turned the proper noun ‘Google‘ into a verb by saying ‘google it’. I can definitely see people adopting Bing in the verb sense. They may say ‘bing it’ if someone wants to know specific information about something or ‘bing’ as a verb may just eclipse ‘google‘. Google may provide tons of search results but that’s also its downfall. Microsoft may not say Google in their ad but they might as well, as I’m sure many of you have felt the same frustration:
Microsoft’s differentiator? Their tagline: “It’s not just a search engine. It’s the first ever decision engine, from Microsoft.”
While Google is focusing on Wave, Microsoft is taking this chance to make search more relevant. Yes, many of us are excited for real-time email etc etc BUT frankly I’m more excited with relevant search. The internet has become our default for information. I’m hard-pressed to find anyone who actually uses encyclopedias and dictionaries in dead-tree format. I already have Twitter for real-time info as well as instant messages. E-mail and document editing are fast enough for me now.
Make your customer’s life easier in a timely and relevant way and you’ve won their hearts. I’m sure Google has something up their sleeve for semantic web but until that day you can just Bing me.
Tags: attempts, automation, Bing, brand, branding, car accident, commercials, consumer, consumers, cool stuff, differential, disaster, disguise, email, event, excitement, Facebook, friends, frustration, fun people, god, Google, heart, hearts, Hulu, infomercial, interaction, interactions, irony, life, limited, limited time, marketing, Microsoft, noun, personalities, personality, powerful company, promotions, referential, relevance, tagline, technology, telethon, time period, twitter, unprecedented move, update, Value, video, wilard
Posted in branding, business, featured, technology | No Comments »
January 16th, 2009
http://www.will-lion.com/digitalbites
“I don’t think brand as “broadcaster” is going away anytime soon, but I do think the exciting challenge which lies ahead of us is to figure out what tactics actually work in the “brand as facilitator” category” -David Armano. WHAT IS A BRAND WORTH? This was a question that was inevitably sparked by my one-on-one chat with my infinitely wise friend Carl Gucciardi about Freemium Marketing. Upon moving the conversation to Twitter this back and forth arose between myself and @AdInfinitum:
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: benefit, brand, branding, broadcaster, business, chat, communicating, communication, communications, competitor, concerts, consciousness, conversation, corporate practices, david armano, decentralized conversastions, es, evangelists, event, freemium, friends, gay, goals, good stuff, hero, homonyms, lesbian, life, marketing, mentions, models, multitude, new media, niche, noun, Paris, perception, plans, platforms, present, product customers, productivity, reality, relevant questions, reply, responsibility, signs, social experiment, social media, social network, social networking, strategy, tagline, Television, The L-Word, twitter, video, Web 2.0, Whatever X.0, wise friend
Posted in featured, social media | 20 Comments »
January 14th, 2009
The following is a candid conversation I had with a good friend of mine, Carl Gucciardi. The topics range from pornography to music/media downloading and piracy to companies purchase of your mindspace to freemium models of business. If you can not handle an open honest and frank discussion about these topics I suggest you stop reading and stop interacting in the world today. But I’m sure since you’re here you have an open-mind and are intrigued to learn what we have touched upon and how it will spur your own growth to rise to new heights. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: about, brand, branding, business, buying in, candid conversation, carl gucciardi, cd, chat, collectibles, consciousness, consumer, consumers, conversation, Counting Crows, creators, discussion, downloading, dvd, eve lawrence, event, experiment, Facebook, freemium, friends, gay, Ghosts, good friend, growth, guilt, half.com, i have dreams, In Rainbows, interaction, interactions, iPod, katie morgan, knowledge, life, limewire, marketing, media, mentions, mindspace, mp3, music, music media, musical, network, networking, networking applications, NIN, pearl jam, piracy, porn, porn video, pornography, present, productivity, Radiohead, reading, record companies, selling, social, social networking, subscribers, The Blood Brothers, Value, video, viewpoint, vivid video, wallet, world today, youporn
Posted in featured | 5 Comments »
November 21st, 2008
Whenever a group of people get together they are bound to find their roles and settle into them quite nicely with barely a mention.? Out of all of these situations the one I have seen that is the most relevant to social media is a Hardcore show. People who go to Hardcore shows exhibit all of the passion and ferocity of belief it takes to sustain a viable social community.
In order to even have a Hardcore show there must be Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: classification, event, group dynamics, social media
Posted in featured, social media | 2 Comments »
