links for 2009-11-11

• Schering-Plough's Experiment With Digital Out-of-Home Ads
  When Schering-Plough, the pharmaceutical/package-goods giant behind brands like Claritin, Dr. Scholl's and Coppertone, sought to move $8 million to $10 million of its $372 million TV ad budget into digital out of home earlier this year, vendors were eager to accommodate them. In what is believed to be the fledgling medium's biggest dedicated ad buy, Schering-Plough and its media agency, Havas' MPG, and its out-of-home division, Chrysalis, met with more than 30 member companies of the Out of Home Video Advertising Bureau in the spring to discuss which networks would be the best demographic and creative fit for seven of its portfolio brands. Participating brands in the digital out-of-home buy were Claritin Liqui-Gels, Claritin For Kids, Dr. Scholl's for Her, Dr. Scholl's Massaging Gels, Tinactin Chill, Lotrimin Ultra and Dr. Scholl's Pain Relief.
  (tags: advertising digital marketing ooh)
• American Airlines Meets Mr X
  A blogger apparently trying to help American Airlines inadvertantly gets an AA UX employee fired.
  (tags: americanairlines socialmedia)

Media Owner Ads: MTV vs Dunkin, ESPN vs Toshiba

Michael & Michael Have Issues Live Ads

Seemingly, Comedy Central has recognized that their demo is not too likely to stick around through a commercial break, opting to fast forward through the ads or take a Twitter break instead. In fact, many young viewers only watch television commercials when someone sends them a YouTube link to one. Turning the traditional 30-second spot on its head, the titular Michaels (comedians Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter) of Michael & Michael Have Issues perform sketch ads for brands such as Palm, Dunkin Donuts, and Klondike during what would normally be commercial breaks.

ESPN Develops Toshiba’s New Campaign

To help sell Toshiba TV sets and laptops, ESPN worked with the Japanese company to create advertising that illustrates specifically how ESPN fans could use those products. The ESPN-centric campaign represents “one of our efforts to reach sports fans while they are watching their favorite team in the living room or if they are on a laptop trying to check fantasy scores,” said Eddie Temistokle, manager-corporate communications, Toshiba America. “We really want to engage the whole fan base.”

Metaverse: Second Life Corporate, Twinity’s Berlin Wall

Second Life Takes Virtual Goods Corporate

Virtual world Second Life has just introduced a beta designed specifically for businesses that will open up new opportunities for companies to hold virtual meetings and trade virtual goods – especially products based on business collaboration needs. The new corporate option, “Second Life Enterprise,” will enable companies to run the site on their own network behind their own firewall, adding an extra layer of security to encourage such trading and more use in general.

Twinity – The Berlin Wall
To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Twinity has reconstructed a true-to-scale section of the wall in virtual Berlin.

 

Linden Lab unveils Sadville: Enterprise Edition (theregister.co.uk)

Second Life Virtual Meetings (ecombizcenter.blogspot.com)

Second Life Goes Behind The Firewall (readwriteweb.com)

Fall of the Berlin Wall: 20th anniversary celebrations (guardian.co.uk)

2010: Trends, Ideas

Top Digital Marketing Trends for 2010: Flash, Crowdsourcing, Info-Art
As 2010 fast approaches, digital marketers are gearing up for yet another year of changes that will incorporate both the transformational and the incremental. From the economy’s influence on the burgeoning “do-it-yourself” culture to an increasing reliance on collective wisdom, information-based art, and remote computing, digital experts at Last Exit (via MarketingCharts) have put together the following list of top digital marketing trends they believe will play out in the year ahead.

2010: The Year of the Good Idea

Judy Franks believes that if the industry can begin to look at the media landscape as a whole and less at its parts, and understand the ways in which it is changing, 2010 can still be the “year of the good idea.”

Nerds: Star Wars Fans, Star Trek Hands

The crowd strikes back: fans remake Star Wars

A new crowdsourced initiative invites fans to remake Star Wars. People can sign up on Star Wars: Uncut to recreate up to three of the 1,313 fifteen-second clips that make up the epic space film. They then have 30 days to film and upload their segment before the slot is offered to someone else. The 337 contributions submitted so far range from live action and animation to stop motion and cardboard shadow-puppetry. Submissions can be viewed on Star Wars: Uncut, side-by-side with the original. Eventually, the site’s administrator—Casey Pugh, a Vimeo staff member—will stitch all of the pieces together, letting the project reach its ultimate goal of recreating the the entire movie.

Live Long & Prosper Foam Hand

Now you can share in the genius of extra terrestrial logic for yourself with this fine Live Long & Prosper Foam Hand. Simply insert hand and start waving.

Agencies: Traditional agencies too resistant to digital … Digital agencies not ready to lead …

Agency bosses too old and change resistant, claims Sorrell
WPP chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell (aged 64) claims that brands are not spending enough online because the people who run their agencies are too old and resistant to change. Delivering the opening keynote session at ad:tech New York, Sorrell criticised brands for investing an average of just 13 per cent of their marketing budget online despite the rapid increase in digital media consumption.

Why Digital Agencies Aren’t Ready to Lead
Ana Andjelic opines: “Any conversation about digital marketing these days includes at least one mention that traditional agencies just “don’t get it.” While this may be correct, it’s equally true that digital agencies are not ready to take the lead. Look at the typical digital agency. It excels in exploring new horizons. It supports a flat and loose organizational structure in which a developer has access to the CEO. And it makes sure everyone’s opinion is heard. It’s one big crazy family. Digital agencies are having fun experimenting with ideas, technologies and strategies to find new alternatives superior to obsolete ways of doing marketing. That’s what they do best. The problem is, this is the only thing they are doing. When they are asked to actually follow through on their ideas, they often come up short. It is because they don’t know the business of marketing (or want to know it, for that matter), and they rarely have the organizational structure or past practices to guide them.”

Possibly related

“Sir Martin Sorrell: Rupert Murdoch’s pay wall plan is right (telegraph.co.uk)

Profits halved at advertising firm WPP (guardian.co.uk)

Does Sir Martin have another motive for peddling his alphabet soup? (telegraph.co.uk)

WPP profits down by nearly 50% (guardian.co.uk)

WPP sees little evidence of ’stouter hearts’ needed to spend during downturn (telegraph.co.uk)

Mobile: Touchscreen, TwitterPeek, eReaders

Top 10 Touchscreen Devices: iPhone Drives 159% Growth

The number of touchscreen mobile-phone users in the US has grown 159% during the past year – to 23.8 million in August 2009 – and has substantially outpaced the already-strong 63% growth of smartphone use, according to a study of touchscreen mobile phone adoption in the US by comScore, Inc.

Dedicated tweeting gadget TwitterPeek launches

A new gadget designed specifically for people who want to tweet on the go was launched Tuesday by gadget maker Peek. The device, dubbed TwitterPeek, does one thing and one thing only: it lets people tweet. It doesn’t access e-mail. It doesn’t make phone calls. It tweets. That’s it. TwitterPeek, which looks like a smartphone, features a QWERTY keyboard and comes in black or aqua blue. The idea behind TwitterPeek is simple. After buying the device, users need only to input their Twitter credentials to get going. The gadget lets them tweet, reply, retweet, send direct messages, and download followers. It supports one account at a time. Users can also view TwitPics by clicking the “view content” option from the TwitterPeek menu. The company claims its battery lasts three to four days with average usage.

Will TwitterPeek be Darling or Dud?

In what appears to be indicative of Twitter’s success and growing popularity, a new gadget has hit the market that has been developed specifically – and solely – for users to send and receive tweets. TwitterPeek, a $99.95 device with a QWERTY keyboard, color screen and click-scroll wheel offered through Amazon.com, could prove to be the hot selling item for the holiday season. On one hand, it’s less expensive than a smartphone upgrade. On the other, it could also prove dud-worthy if demand never materializes.

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iPhone Beating E-Readers at Their Own Game?

With the iPhone still the hottest smartphone, there’s much speculation about how its future will pan out. For some the money’s on gaming, but new research from Flurry is surprisingly different: eBook apps are overtaking games in the App Store.

Bogusky: Baked In v Half Baked

“Baked In” Theory

Joe Ciarallo recently interviewed David Steel, SVP of marketing at Samsung, about merging communications and product development. This practice (or theory) is also the subject of Alex Bogusky and John Winsor’s “Baked In: Creating Products and Businesses That Market Themselves”.

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The LA Times missed the point a bit … asserting that the  “Ad guys’ new book is self-glorifying and half-baked”. AdFreak weren’t keen either.

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For my money, it gets to the heart of one of the simple things many agencies ignore.  The worlds of product development and marketing should not be artificially separated.  You can create a much more powerful business and brand when you bake marketing directly in to the product. This has created things like Nike+ and Help Remedies and has revitalized brands like Domino’s to name but a few.

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You can buy the book here and read the mandatory Twitter feed here.

Social Media: Crowdsourcing, Social Business, Tweeters, CIA

Ex-Crispin Porter duo launch crowdsourcing agency

Two former Crispin Porter + Bogusky executives have set up an ad agency based in Colorado that will produce work by crowdsourcing instead of having any in-house creatives. John Winsor and Evan Fry have joined up with Claudia Batten, a founder of in-game advertising network Massive, to launch Victors & Spoils. Winsor is the chief executive, Fry the chief creative officer and Batten the chief operating officer.

Social Business By Design

Nice presentation by David Armano about the benefits of social business, the power of collaboration and the importance of social media to brands to start making moves in a social direction. Filled with some great slides and even better visuals, it’s well worth flicking through the D’Armanograms.

One in Five Americans Now a Tweeter

Nearly one in five (19%) online Americans now uses Twitter or a similar service to post and share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others, according to the latest survey data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. This figure represents a significant increase over previous surveys that reported on Twitter use. Research in in December 2008 and April 2009 from Pew found that only 11% of internet users preported using a status-update service, while a similar study by Harris Interactive in March/April of 2009 found that number to be even lower, at 5%.

CIA invests in social media monitoring company

US intelligence agency, the CIA, has formed a “strategic partnership and technology development agreement” with Visible Technologies, a company specialising in data-mining social-networking sites such as Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA, has invested in Visible Technologies, “a leading provider of social media analysis and engagement solutions”. The move is believed to be part of the CIA’s aim to utilise the “open source” information available on social networking sites.

Stunts: Colonel Sanders Goes To The UN, Fake Meteorite Goes Down In Flames

KFC’s Colonel Sanders and the UN
Apparently, if you dress like Kentucky Fried Chicken’s Col. Sanders, you can get in anywhere. An actor wearing “the fast food icon’s familiar white suit and black bow tie” was able to “gain access to the restricted areas” of the U.N. headquarters in New York and even meet Ali Treki, president of the U.N. General Assembly. KFC is “lobbying” the U.N. for “the fictional Grilled Nation to be accepted as a member state” as part of its campaign promoting its new menu. Officials attributed the fake Sanders gaining so much access to a “lapse in security.”

Meteorite stunt goes down in flames
A publicity campaign involving a hoax meteorite in Latvia has backfired spectacularly with the Swedish telecoms company behind the stunt losing a government contract. Tele2 has admitted that it staged a meteorite crash in the Latvian countryside, resulting in a 10-metre wide crater. Emergency services attended the scene followed by scientists, who quickly identified that the meteorite was a hoax.