A Wider Net

WillItBlend

For those who have ever had a bad day on the course – check out willitblend.com and see what happens when golf balls are put into a Blendtec blender.

I saw a link on youtube and clicked through to watch a pseudo-scientist show us how this consumer blender can mince up golf balls. Beyond the fact that the power of this blender is quite astonishing, I am blown away but the simplicity of this marketing effort. This video alone has been viewed 1,371,935 in the last 5 days. Now, I realize that a lot of that traffic is not ‘the right audience’ for the proto-typical blender buyer but, at the very worst; Blendtec has definitely used youtube as an engine for creating awareness. I picked up the video front the front page of youtube.

We discussed in our Ad 2.0 session at Innovation Day the concept of ROI in this case. Specifically we asked, does this type of media have a better ROI than a Superbowl ad? The answer of course is that it depends on the purpose of the campaign. Each medium connects to another (tv to internet to internet to commerce) but I would argue that the willitblend approach is interesting as it all ties into an end point to purchase the blenders within 2 clicks – pretty compelling. Of course, for mass awareness, 90M plus impressions during the Superbowl (400M pre and post) is going to be hard to beat but I am not sure that’s exactly what the blender folks had in mind. Plus, I am only guessing here, but the price tag of the Superbowl spots may be a little expensive for a division of this size company (82M gross revenues for KTEC, Blendtec’s parent company)

Regardless of the marketing goals and tactics chosen, pretty fun to watch someone throw things into a blender.

With plenty of arguments for asimov and other writers toiling away in the bars of Philadelphia in WWI, my vote is for Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.

The book birthed the concept of Avatars (virtual representation of someone in cyberspace) and a ‘metaverse/virtual’ world as well as an interesting examination of religion and politics and acceptance within the context of a changing social world. With a virus taking over computers and a chase through both the real and metaverse worlds, the book exposes concepts such as permanent connections to the internet, business and lives existing only in the meta-verse (second life anyone?) and the de-valuation of the IPO (the main character IPOs and then needs to deliver pizzas to make ends meet…ah the bubble predicted…)
The book may have not been the first with these concepts but it is an important piece of science fiction that was able to popularize them.

It is amazing how a good book change still change the way we think.

With all the buzz around the world of RSS, it seems like few have been able to actually monetize it. I ran into a company that is starting with a good idea. Offertrax is focused on enabling merchants and their products with RSS. The idea is that 97% of people leave without purchasing from e-commerce sites. RSS is a way to gain a level of commitment when the full sales conversion is not reached, continuing the conversation with the buyer – hoping to eventually bring them back to the site, or in-store, to buy.

From a consumer perspective RSS is a nice way to get information on our terms. Whether it is a feed from a news paper or blog (like this one) or from merchants as companies enable them, RSS puts the control back into the consumers’ hands.

What I keep waiting for is someone to arm the world of bloggers with a way to capitalize on their readers the way that affiliate programs did in the late 90s. Perhaps RSS’ role will be to leverage communities as buying groups or simple as an easier way to manage the flood of spam.

One thing is for sure; RSS is about to hit big. Whenever Microsoft agrees with anyone else, you know something’s brewing. Microsoft and Mozilla have agreed to use the same icon for RSS even loading it into MS Office 2007– a new standard….

the logo they agreed on….

http://blogs.msdn.com/rssteam/archive/2005/12/14/503778.aspx

You can check them Offertrax here:

www.offertrax.com

Google announced today that it is allowing anyone to build specialty search engines on Google’s huge online index – for free. All they want in return is the ability to place their text ads within your customized search engine.

The idea is pretty powerful for lots of sites. For instance, a site catering to small business may now implement a customized search engine that will prioritize ‘money’ or ‘cash’ within financial content instead of pages about the music industry. Google claims that the process of setting up one of these tailored engines is only a 10 minute adventure.

Other products exist but seem to offer less flexibility in terms of altering look-and-feel. It appears that Google’s product will allow sites to keep visitors and allow site owners to make money on the advertising.

http://www.google.com/coop/cse/

One of Cramer’s signature sites was featured as an example of atypical navigation on Design Melt Down.

From the article: Creative navigation techniques that don’t make the site more difficult to use can be a difficult challenge. The goal is to enable people to easily work their way through your content, but at the same time it is great to make it something more then that.

The site is for CTAM (Cable and Telecommunications Associations for Marketing).
Thanks to Colin Henson, an amazing Art Director in Interactive, for emailing this along.

Over the last decade, the digital channel has given marketers great reach and flexibility in delivering messages to targeted audiences. But that same ability has increased the complexity of synchronizing relevant and consistent data across the dimensions of brand, channel, campaign, and communication types.

Recent software advances have enabled new levels of cross channel integration that allow real-time targeted messaging via multiple offline channels (call centers, POS, etc) and online channels (banner ads, websites, email, kiosk, etc). Targeted messaging can now be based on multi-dimensional segmentation models that embed behavioral, demographic, geographic and psychographic attributes for micro-targeting messaging strategies. The richness of the data collected is constantly refined with the frequency of the audience’s interaction with the brand.

What does that mean to the brand company? The ability to reach “right place, right time, right people” with the “right message” across a broad spectrum of channels is now a reality.

The greatest value that digital marketing provides to national consumer companies is to help build customer ritual. In the case of most national brands, your goal is to bring customers in the stores for product. The best way to build ritual is to make a positive customer experience—and using digital media as a key component of your media mix is not only cost effective, but it is the best way to create a customer experience short of a visit to a store. Of course, digital marketing encompasses more than the website, including POS, digital signage, email, and more. And digital media is most effective when part of a complete media campaign. Nevertheless, there are specific benefits. While television, radio, and print advertising all have important roles, when a consumer visits a website, they have taken a small but proactive step toward the brand. That minor commitment says they are at least willing to consider being aligned with the brand.

Once at the site, they are not passive viewers, but can interact. They control the amount of time they stay on the site at no cost to themselves. If the experience is positive, entertaining, and has a strong mechanism to make an on-line purchase or visit a store, the return on investment is not only achieved for that visit—but fuels the ongoing ritual. Other specific benefits include:

• Digital media is a remarkably cost-effective way to reach a large, targeted audience.
• Digital media is persistent: It’s an “always on,” omnipresent element that enables secondary and tertiary marketing impressions that create lasting brand awareness.
• Metrics driven: You have the ability to quickly measure, adapt, and correct your path.
• Broadband is highly available. Today, more than 70- percent access exists in US homes—so the on-line experience is getting better.
• It’s a two-way channel. Your customers can reach you, and you can reach them.
• You are able to reach multiple audience and constituents beyond consumers, including franchisees and potential employees.
• Digital marketing allows the brand to speak multiple languages and assimilate to various cultures, cost effectively getting the message to the audiences at the right time and the right place
• Consumers associate themselves with like-minded consumers, and digital media is an easy and growing way for people to link themselves directly with the brand.

The bath tub is slowly filling in the other room. I am in the closet hanging up clothes that have been piled up for the week. My 2 year-old is ‘exercising’ or as I call it, literally running circles throughout the upstairs of our house. She had been previously playing with my cell phone; pretending to talk to her uncle. Then I hear ‘oh no’….I walk into the bathroom to find my wife pointing to my cell phone floating in the tub…with the flash light stuck on, I fish it out…this does not look good.

Long story short, I need a new cell phone and am wondering whether it is time to start thinking about a windows device. I know it will drive me crazy to see an hourglass and have to wait for my phone to start up but the value of using excel and word for reading docs on the road might just be too good to pass up. Am I ready to trust Microsoft with my cell phone?

More later…