Ignore the number of fans, says Facebook

From SimplyZesty:

A refreshing approach from Facebook today, when they said exactly what frustrated marketers have been waiting to hear. At a conference in London, David Parfect, the group head of agency sales at Facebook urged brands to look beyond the number of fans they have on their Facebook page. This, he said, only goes some way to communicating the value of your community, suggesting instead that you look at how engaged your fans are. While this type of thinking may not be new to many marketers and brands who have avoided the Like race, it’s still nice to hear it straight from the horses mouth.

It’s also particularly welcome given that this is coming from someone responsible for growing revenue at Facebook. Not just encouraging people to buy, buy and buy fans again but to think about what you’re actually going to do with them when they get to your page. It shows an element of responsibility from Facebook when a lot of their recent decisions have been geraed towards heavy investment in order to get any significant return from the platform (think iframe applications). Parfect also hinted at the wider potential of social media, where he discussed that ‘marketers need to change the way they think, and social media should not be siloed’. This kind of thinking is needed, particularly among larger brands who have yet to integrate social media fully into their marketing plans, instead seeing it as an easy add-on.

Facebook focusing on quality

This move away from thinking in numbers, which the Like button has been so tailored towards, seems to be in line with recent thinking from the site. They have just announced their creative hub for advertisers : Facebook Studio. This is an interesting move from the site, as it shows a desire to be considered differently by brands, less as a place for simply growing numbers as quickly as a possible, and more as a place to be innovative and creative. Their advertising targeting options are certainly sophisticated, but up until now the ad format hasn’t really leant itself to creativity. That could change though, if their Facebook studio takes off, at it’s expected launch next month. A project like this is certainly welcome and needed, as Facebook have a somewhat difficult job to to do now. They’ve convinced brands and users that it’s the place to be, but now they need to stay ahead of the curve and remain relevant.

It’s possibly an inevitable outcome for Facebook, that the more their numbers grow, the more this affects the quality of service that people enjoy. Parfect’s advice is spot on and brands should listen to this, if you want your consumers’ experience of you to continue to be a good one. If people are simply being ‘farmed’, they’ll catch on pretty quickly. The new Facebook Studio fits in here, as Facebook claim it’s about encouraging engagement, away from the traditional click through conversion rates. If advertising can move away from this model, then there’s exciting times ahead.

Valpak Rolls Out Augmented Reality Coupons

From Mashable:

Valpak, known for its coupon-stuffed blue envelopes, has updated itself for the mobile age with an augmented reality app.

The new feature, available from junaio [iTunes link], identifies local deals when a consumer points his or her camera phone in the direction of nearby businesses. Coupons offered by merchants as far as 5 feet to 20 miles away pop up on the app. When clicked, the offers lead to a mobile website where consumers can sign up for the deals. There’s no need to print the coupons. (See video below for a full description on how the app works.)

Valpak, a unit of Cox Target Media that sends mailers to some 40 million U.S. households, is jumping into a fairly crowded market at the moment. LivingSocial began offering mobile-based local deals this month, and Facebook also introduced a service called Deals in November that targets local users for offers. AT&T also entered the market recently with ShopAlert, which texts offers to consumers when they’re near a participating store or product.

The move comes after Valpak introduced Valpak Deals, a Groupon-like daily deals site, in September.

Free Coffee, Hot News: LinkedIn Truck Hits City Streets

From Mashable:

Extra. Extra. Read all about it: LinkedIn is offering free coffee and hot news. That’s the promise of the LinkedIn Today coffee truck, a trendy food truck-inspired, mobile coffee-dispensing vehicle riding around the streets of New York and San Francisco.

The bicoastal trucks hit the pavement Monday morning as part of LinkedIn’s social-media-meets-the-street marketing campaign to promote LinkedIn Today, the 100 million member site’s personalized social news product.

The trucks will be dolling out free, locally-brewed coffee — the hot news you have to grab via LinkedIn Today, though brand ambassadors and employee volunteers will deliver street demos to consumers — between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m local time in San Francisco and New York for the remainder of the week.

Should you wish to track down the truck, you could stay on the lookout for the blue and white print-themed trucks. You can also follow the LinkedIn Today Twitter account or #LinkedInTruck_SF and #LinkedInTruck_NY hashtags.

The trucks’ schedules are fairly flexible, LinkedIn’s Mario Sundar tells us, so a tweet or two could cajole the powers that be into changing course to your neck of the woods. On Wednesday, however, Mashable has learned that the truck will be affixed outside LinkedIn’s offices in both Mountain View and New York (outside the Empire State building) following the company’s all-hands meeting.

The week-long promotion is a bid to drum up enthusiasm around its new aggregated content vertical. At the very least, the free coffee will be a welcome pick-me-up for the New York and San Francisco denizens who stop by the trucks.

Google’s Answer to the Facebook “Like” Button: The “+1”

From Mashable:

Google is making a big new push into social with a feature called “+1” that is similar in purpose to the Facebook “Like” button, but integrated directly into the world’s biggest search engine.

Starting Wednesday, users who opt into the +1 button experiment (and soon everyone else) in Google Labs will start seeing a +1 icon next to each link in Google search results.

Google defines this action as a “public stamp of approval,” and it is exactly that. When you +1 something, your name becomes associated with that link “in search, on ads, and across the web,” according to the company. It also shows up in a feed on your Google Profile, which is required to use the product.

The move builds on a number of social features that Google introduced in search earlier this year, such as the ability to see which friends have tweeted a given link in search results. Today’s move, however, is clearly something much bigger.

Beyond showing up in search results, Google plans to offer to publishers a +1 button that lets readers +1 something without leaving the publisher’s site. Facebook has a big head start here with its Like button — some 2 million sites and counting have it installed — but Google’s button will instantly have a lot of appeal, given the company says +1 data will directly influence its market share dominating search rankings. Similarly, we have to imagine that +1 is more bad news for content farms, whose content is less likely to be shared.

In another twist, users will also be able to +1 ad, which essentially adds a “recommended by friends” component to AdWords and AdSense. as the company explains on the AdWords blog.

The video below explains +1 in more detail; we’ll have further analysis on Mashable later today.

Top 5 Innovative Digital Marketing Agencies

From Mashable:

Behind every great digital campaign is a great agency. Thanks to the Internet and its growing role in our lives, agencies have come a long way in the past decade, and they’ve begun to hone in on and innovate in the realm of digital marketing.

Whether the agency is a dozen people or 500, or was founded as a traditional agency or a digital agency, every creative group brings its own flair and aesthetic to its work. Here’s a look at five interactive agencies behind some of 2010′s best digital marketing campaigns, which promoted a new TV show, a community giving project, gum innovation and more.

1. Breakfast

Conan O’Brien’s team came to Breakfast on September 14, 2010, with a blimp that was to be in the air by October 1 to promote Conan’s debut on TBS. Breakfast concepted for 24 hours and decided to turn the orange blimp into Foursquare’s first constantly-moving target. (The team hacked some hardware so that the blimp would automatically update its location periodically.) The blimp was supposed to fly for just one month on the East Coast, but it ended up flying cross-country, and people drove across state lines to check in and earn the Conan Blimpspotter badge on Foursquare.

More than 18,000 people followed the blimp on Foursquare, and the blimp garnered more checkins in that 60-day span than the Empire State Building and Statue of Liberty combined.

Breakfast was also the brains behind Precious the Tweeting Bike and the recent Instaprint device, which was developed to make use of Instagram’s API and take advantage of the photo sharing that was bound to happen at SXSW.

Andrew Zolty, the shop’s creative director, says Breakfast is “not quite an ad agency, not quite an interactive agency, not quite a product company.” What they are is a trio of innovators that creates and develops new digital products and custom technology for each project and brand they service. “We’re kind of all over the place,” Zolty says. “But we try to connect the online world to the physical world.”

2. Razorfish

The 2011 Super Bowl was more than a Packers-Steelers showdown — it was also the centerpiece of an innovative auto campaign. After competitors deemed Mercedes-Benz to be old and dodgy, the German car company enlisted Razorfish to liven its image. The Razorfish team, led by Frederic Bonn, launched the first-ever Tweet Race. It was like any other race, except that the amount of gas each team could use was directly proportional to the volume of tweets it was generating. Four teams (pairs who had extant Twitter followings) competed, each with a Twitter-savvy “celebrity coach” — Serena Williams, Pete Wentz, Nick Swisher or Rev Run – who leveraged their own Twitter followings for the race. The race and the #MBTweetRace hashtag were also marketed via promoted tweets and promoted trends on Twitter.

The campaign generated more than 150,000 tweets from 21,000 users. It’s too early to say whether Mercedes sold more cars because of the campaign, but the goal was more about brand perception, and Mercedes embodied a cool, sleek and cutting-edge vibe in the eyes of consumers. “The cost we would have had for paid media to get those impressions would be very big, but we got that through earned media instead,” says Holly Mason, a program director at Razorfish.

Other prominent Razorfish campaigns include the Axe One Night Only campaign in August — which garnered 44,000 contest entries and saw more than 105 million impressions on Facebook — and the redesign of The Hollywood Reporter‘s website.

Razorfish was founded in 1995 and rapidly embraced digital media. One of its founders, Jeff Sachis, once prophesied that in the future, “Everything that can be digital, will be.” The company now has 21 patents to its name in digital marketing technology.

3. Huge

When Pepsi forwent a multi-million dollar Super Bowl buy in 2010 to host a community improvement initiative, the marketing and ad worlds were stunned. After all, “can a soda really change the world?” The Pepsi Refresh Project (PRP), designed and executed by Huge in Brooklyn, was one of the most-watched digital campaigns of 2010. The keys to its success were a “brand-agnostic platform for doing good and cause marketing” and making the project immensely “shareable,” says Kate Watts, the PRP account lead at Huge.

“I don’t think any of us really expected how powerful it would be,” says Watts. The project garnered 3.3 million “likes” on Facebook and 75 million votes, more than 60% of which were generated through referral traffic. Pepsi granted more than $20 million to 400 ideas, and the success of the campaign led PepsiCo to launch PRP once again. It was also a huge success for Huge, which earned a Social Media Agency of the Year award.

“PRP is a great example of what Huge is at its best — it’s a combo of creating a best-in-class user experience and marrying that with effective marketing to create utility for our users and drive business goals for our client,” Watts says.

She adds that the differentiator between Huge and other agencies is its eye toward simplicity and a “user-friendly approach.” Its clean aesthetic in web design is what has drawn big brands like JetBlue, Ikea and iVillage to the agency, which was founded in 1999.

4. Firstborn

Firstborn gave Twi-hards something to tweet about when it branded Eclipse gum with the stars of Twilight: Eclipse. The agency created a microsite that — when you flash the specially-branded Eclipse gum package in front of a webcam — unlocks exclusive video content. And when Wrigley was launching its 5 gum brand, Firstborn created 5react.com as an online destination for an augmented reality experience and got the product in front of consumers before it even hit the shelves. 5React started the promotion with 890,000 Facebook fans, but Firstborn’s campaigns have helped to grow the fanbase to 4.3 million fans in less than a year. The promotion was effective in part because of its utilization of Facebook Connect — 5react.com pulled in people’s Facebook photos and contacts, which created a highly personalized user experience.

Personalization guides the entire ideation process at Firstborn, which has a 65-person roster. “Our strength is being involved with the client as early as possible in the strategy and creative development phase,” says Dan LaCivita, Firstborn’s senior vice president and executive director. “We talk about business objectives, and we’re able to understand what our clients’ problems are. Then we come up with ideas and execute them.”

To improve efficiency and overall quality of work, Firstborn has grown and built out departments in-house to streamline a multi-platform production process under one roof. The next department to be built out is mobile tech and dev, showing Firstborn’s commitment to digital marketing.

Its marketing expands beyond the gum industry, too. Firstborn’s initiative for Sobe — including Skinsuit 2.0 videos and an iPad app with Jessica Szohr — was also a marquee campaign that created a lot of buzz in 2010.

5. Victors & Spoils

Perhaps the most important part of a digital agency is its creative brain trust. After all, great campaigns are born from great ideas. Victors and Spoils has that in spades — it was founded in 2010 on the premise of crowdsourcing, and it enlists a database of 5,200 freelancers around the globe, with varying degrees of experience in advertising. Each project is spearheaded by one of its 14-person staff so that there is a layer of consistency and creative direction for each project. Though V&S isn’t explicitly a digital agency –- it’s an ad agency that works in all media platforms -– it has achieved success with its digital efforts, and its innovative methods are worth noting.

When Virgin America was launching its first international route to Toronto, its Creative Director Jesse McMillin contacted Evan Fry, V&S’s Chief Creative Officer to brainstorm ways to build buzz and find a local brand ambassador in Toronto. They came up with the Virgin America Toronto Provocateur. The website V&S created — with a video of Sir Richard Branson himself — received 1,500 contest entries, which were narrowed down to 20 candidates (this seems like a small number, but candidates needed to live in Toronto, be able to do the job and submit a video, which limited the applicant pool). The site received 46,000 unique visitors and V&S helped Virgin find its cheeky new ambassador, Casie Stewart, who still functions as the provocateur.

Fry maintains that V&S is not a digital agency, but “an ad agency that does any media,” and no matter how media evolves, V&S will stay true to its crowdsourcing roots. “Technology is allowing this abundance of interested and creative people, whether they’re amateurs or professionals, to actually contribute,” Fry says. “The reason we exist is that we creatively direct and curate all the work.” This model allows V&S to let its database of freelancers to work on accounts when they’re right for the job or are interested — they can enlist people in Steamboat Springs and Jackson Hole for an outdoorsy brand, for example — and that passion creates admirable work.

Kraft To Turn Mac & Cheese Tweets Into TV Ads Within 24 Hours

From Mashable:

Your tweet about Kraft’s Macaroni & Cheese could be on TV tonight if the brand picks it up for a new initiative converting tweets into TV ads.

The marketing minds behind the brand, along with agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, are trolling Twitter right now looking for just the right tweet. The only qualification is that the message mentions Kraft Mac & Cheese. Kraft and the agency will then pick five tweets, and write and shoot ads based on them this afternoon. All the filming is taking place in a studio with multiple sets in Los Angeles. One of the five will run during Conan and Lopez Tonight this evening on TBS. The other four will run on Kraft Mac & Cheese’s Facebook Page.

Noelle O’Mara, brand manager at Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, says she’s not sure if this will be a one-off. “We’re focused on today,” she says. “We’ll see how it goes.”

Kraft’s last Twitter-related marketing push, which ran earlier this month, was a big success, O’Mara says. In that campaign, called “Mac & Jinx,” Kraft identified pairs of people who tweeted about the brand at the same time and then contacted them. The first of the pair to respond got prizes, including a t-shirt and five boxes of Mac & Cheese. The effort propelled Mac & Cheese into a trending topic for a day and garnered more than 1.5 million tweets, according to the company.

O’Mara adds that consumers’ expectations and their ability to comment immediately has forced marketers like herself to step up their game. Says O’Mara: “I think social media has given us the opportunity to engage in real time.” Indeed, several marketers of late, including Toyota’s Prius, Coca-Cola and various Academy Awards advertisers, have created outreach efforts with real-time communication in mind.

Kraft has taken more risks with marketing Mac & Cheese after hiring Crispin last March. Meanwhile, Crispin is coming off a rough start to the year after losing its Groupon account due to an ill-received Super Bowl ad, as well as losing the Burger King account it held for several years.

7 Little Known Tricks That Will Get You More YouTube Views

From Social Times:

So you want to get more YouTube views, but you don’t know where to start? You’ve got the perfect title, tags and description, your video is hilarious and you’ve been promoting like crazy on your Facebook and Twitter page, but your video is still not getting the recognition you think it deserves? We’ve got you covered with a few little known tips that could help skyrocket your YouTube video views.

Before we get started, it’s important to note that Rome wasn’t built in a day and there is no foolproof method for turning your video into an overnight viral success. It may take time for your videos to start taking off, but these seven tips will definitely get you headed in the right direction and get you more views that you’re getting today.

Annotations across videos

You know those little text bubbles that you see popping up on people’s videos with text that says things like “Thumbs Up!” or “Subscribe!”? Those are called YouTube annotations and they are a fantastic way to increase your video views. Through annotations you can link from one video to another, as well as to playlists of your videos, your channel and more, compelling your viewers to watch more of your videos.

Annotations are a great way to point your viewers in the direction of watching your other videos, in order to drive up your view count across your entire channel. Find out more in our post, How To Use YouTube Annotations To Maximize Your Subscribers, Views & Overall YouTube Success and check out annotations in action in the video below. We created a collection of viral video compilations and used annotations to link every single video together, to entice viewers to watch not just one video, but all of the videos in the collection.

Playlists

A lot of YouTube users don’t realize that playlists are a great way to increase your video views. A playlist is a list, or group, of videos that will play in order, one video after another after another. The good thing about playlists is that they come up separately in search results. That means, if you’ve got a video about frogs or a playlist about animals that includes the frog video, viewers will have more opportunities when searching to find your video. They may choose to watch your playlist, or they may choose to watch your frog video.

Additionally, because playlists play your videos automatically one after the other, when viewers watch playlists they typically watch more of your videos, which is great for increasing the views across your channel. Playlists can also be embedded, so viewers can watch all your videos together on your blog or website. Find out more in our post, The Complete Guide To YouTube Playlists, and check out an example of an embedded playlist below.

Subscribers

Subscribers are, hands down, the best way to get more views on your videos. After all, the people that subscribe to you are your fan base and they are ready and waiting for you to upload new videos so that they can check them out. The more subscribers that you’ve got, the more views you will get within the first few days, or even hours, of uploading your video. When someone subscribes to you, all of your new videos will show up on their home page and they may even subscribe to be notified by email when you upload something new to the video site.

How do you get new subscribers? Aside form uploading great content on a regular basis, ask! A lot of viewers aren’t thinking about subscribing to anyone at all, but if an annotation pops up on the screen reminding them to subscribe or, better yet, if you ask them yourself in your video, they will be more likely to click through to subscribe to your future videos.

Bulletins

As you build up your subscriber base it’s important to communicate with your fans. One of the best ways is through bulletins. Just about a year ago, YouTube introduced bulletins. Bulletins let you easily send out text and videos to all of your subscribers and the bulletins appear on the homepage of your subscribers. Don’t be shy—send out bulletins to let your subscribers know when you upload new videos.

Video Responses

Another way in get more views on your YouTube videos is by posting them as video responses on more popular related videos. It’s easy to do and can get you a substantial number of clicks, if you’re lucky and post to the right video.

So how is it done? Head over to the video you’d like to post your video response to. You’ll notice that next to the comment box you can click on “Create a video response”. Click and you’ll be directed to a page that lists all of your videos. Click on the one you’d like to use as your video response. It takes two seconds and can be a great way to get some extra video views.

Community

If you aren’t taking advantage of the YouTube community yet then you’re only hurting yourself. By commenting on videos that you like, subscribing to and following other cool video makers and reaching out to your YouTube “idols” you can do a world of good. Not only does joining the community spread your name around and encourage the people who’s videos you comment on (and others who see your comments) to head over to your channel and check out your videos, but it also helps to broaden your network and open doors for future collaborations.

Collaborating with other YouTubers is great (especially when they have a following of their own) because when you collaborate you introduce one another to your follows, hopefully leading to more subscribers and fans.

Topical Content

Finally, if you want to get a lot of views in a short time then one of your best bets is to create some topic content about something that is big right now. It could be a remix of an already popular video, a cover of a popular song, a review or parody of a movie that just came out, or something related to a big news story. Title your video similarly to that of the original clips, songs, movie trailers, or news stories and not only will your video come up in the same results, but you also might wind up on the sidebar of the popular clips as a recommended video.

Why Xbox Kinect Technology Will Be the Next Frontier for Marketers

From Mashable:

Tomer Tishgarten is vice president of technology at Engauge, one of the nation’s largest independent advertising agencies. Follow him @tomerific.

If you’re among the many marketers trying to grasp the game-changing impact of Xbox’s motion-controlled add-on Kinect, you’re not alone. Even Microsoft didn’t realize what it had on its hands. When launching in November, Microsoft predicted sales of 3 million units by the end of 2010. Instead, the company sold 8 million in two months and recently entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the fastest-selling consumer electronics product in history. For brands, the excitement is just beginning — and so are the challenges.

In addition to sensing motion, Microsoft’s newest periphery for the Xbox 360 recognizes voices, captures facial expressions in real time, and can even tell players apart. It’s arguably the biggest advance in mainstream digital interface design since the widespread adoption of the computer mouse in the ’80s.

Kinect and its underlying PrimeSense technology promise to open new doors and could explode our conceptions of what’s possible online. Today’s online world remains governed by the conventions of preset hyperlinks and point-and-click devices, but over time, those constraints will be shattered. The popularity of touchscreens on smartphones and tablets suggest we were already headed in this direction. Marketers may play an important role in determining how quickly Kinect technology crosses the chasm from hardcore gamers to mainstream adoption.

The Engagement Potential for Brands

Big brands, including Burger King and Samsung, jumped in first with Kinect gaming promotions. But the marketing potential of Kinect extends far beyond video games. In the near term, marketers could leverage Kinect technology to create eye-opening trade show displays and in-store promotions. Freed from the gaming console, the technology can draw people into an immersive, interactive experience.

Innovative web-based applications will also be worth considering as the technology reaches a critical mass of 15% of households or users, a point at which adoption rates tend to accelerate.

With Avatar Kinect, Microsoft will soon move into augmented social media. Microsoft’s plans for the new technology clearly go beyond gaming. And Kinect’s controller-free environment should appeal to casual gamers, not just the hardcore console jocks, which will heighten appeal for mass marketers. Indeed, the pitch to advertisers from Microsoft is that women, younger children and tweens are “joining in the fun” with Kinect. Most importantly, perhaps, the price is relatively inexpensive; approximately $150.

In the future, it’s conceivable that consumers scanned into the system could theoretically interact with three-dimensional models of products. Why couldn’t Ford, which recently launched an exclusive Xbox campaign for its C-MAX, put consumers behind the wheel and let them take the newest model for a spin?

For catalog clothing brands, the ecommerce implications are immense. Why couldn’t Eddie Bauer let consumers try on clothes virtually? In the travel industry, the applications are even more numerous — a walking tour of the cabanas at Club Med, anyone? And with the capacity to scan an entire room, why couldn’t The Home Depot let customers design the layout of new kitchen cabinets or Ikea showcase sofas within digital models of consumers’ living rooms?

Peak Expectations Meet Practical Challenges

Marketers have tremendous opportunities to differentiate themselves from their competitors in this new environment. Yet they also face the challenge of developing those experiences without instructions or precedents.

Before agencies and developers can create the architecture of this new world — and customized applications for brands — they must first study what makes the new technology tick, which is why developers have been so busy “hacking” Kinect.

The development tools for Kinect are still fairly immature at this stage, but they do provide enough capabilities to build some interesting applications. As more work is done to support these tools by Microsoft and the larger development community, the possibilities for Kinect will grow exponentially.

Rayovac using social media to recharge an established brand

From ragan:

Best known for batteries, the company has seen huge responses to a virtual snowball fight on Twitter and an ‘indestructible’ flashlight challenge using Tumblr.

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For those people whose power went off during the huge snowstorm that hit virtually the entire country last month, batteries were a big priority. For some of the people who were lucky enough to have electricity through the storm, the name Rayovac took on a whole new meaning.

The brand encouraged thousands of Twitter users to participate in a virtual snowball fight, a move so popular that #rayovac became a trending topic.

“The snowball fight was really kind of, ‘Everybody’s going to be stuck in their house today. Let’s do something with this,’” says David Carlson, Rayovac’s creative director.

Now, Rayovac is expanding beyond Twitter with a new social media initiative. The company set up a Tumblr to show off its new “indestructible” flashlight and document a cross-country tour to meet up with people who might use it on the job. YouTube videos document those meetings, as well as tests of the flashlight’s durability.

As a result of the company’s efforts over the past few months, customer response on Twitter and YouTube has grown rapidly. Carlson hopes that trend continues.

“We, as an organization, are taking this all very seriously,” he says. “It simply makes sense for a value brand.”

Snowball effect

Starting the night of Monday, Feb. 1, Rayovac started hurling digital snowballs at its Twitter followers. By the time it was all over Wednesday, the company had more than 500 new followers, traffic on its website increased by 400 to 500 percent and the event generated more than 1,100 click-throughs to a widget that changed user profile pictures to include the Rayovac logo.

Within that 48-plus hours, a two-hour Twitter “event” encouraged users to ask questions about Rayovac, answer trivia questions and talk about their local weather. Those who participated had the chance to win prizes, including an iPod Touch and battery chargers.

The idea for the snowball fight was a spur-of-the-moment thought that two internal employees and two workers at a PR agency ran with, Carlson says. “We’re an organization that, we don’t have too many layers, so it moves pretty quick,” he says.

To spur interest, Rayovac reached out to its 10 “power bloggers,” all of whom are under contract with the company, Carlson says. Plus, Rayovac contacted about 300 other mommy bloggers and asked them to mention the snowball fight.

Shining a light

Rayovac was working on its indestructible flashlight project before the snowball fight came about, but even that idea moved pretty quickly, Carlson says. The flashlight itself was developed “purely within Rayovac,” a rarity for the company. It’s the result of surveys that found customers mainly wanted durability, brightness and value from a flashlight.

The YouTube videos featuring the flashlight haven’t quite hit viral status yet, but the main video featuring the light got more views in a few hours than most Rayovac videos have in two years, Carlson says.

“Fan growth and participation on Facebook has been astounding, and we have gained over 1,200 followers in the first few days,” he says.

The Tumblr about the Indestructible Tour includes Facebook comments, embedded YouTube videos and Flickr photos. The company Twitter account links regularly to the Tumblr, and the company has again pulled in its power bloggers to talk about the tour, though Carlson acknowledges mommy bloggers’ audiences may not be the target here. “We are looking to round ourselves out a little bit,” he says.

So far, the tour has visited three cities—Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Charlotte, N.C. There’s one more scheduled stop in Memphis, Tenn. How’d Rayovac pick the cities? Carlson says his team picked places where “we knew we could connect with somebody in that area” who would use the flashlight. The team has spoken to firefighters, a company that removes mold from homes, a sculptor, mechanics, and workers at a steel mill.

“We went through the rolodex trying to find people at fire departments we knew,” Carlson says.

He says he hopes to add more cities to the tour soon. “We’ve had people tell us, ‘Hey I’m in Pittsburgh!’” he says. “We’ve even encouraged people to come meet us at the restaurant we’re at.”

Viewers are getting a kick out of seeing the flashlight tests, too, Carlson says, and suggesting new ways to test its indestructibility. “People say, ‘Indestructible? Right,’” he says. “We’re doing those things as they ask for them.”

Contests, coupons and expansion

Along with these big pushes, Rayovac is keeping online fans interested with regular offerings of contests and coupons. Every Friday, the company runs a “fan Friday” promotion on its Facebook page, in which entrants can win gift cards, tickets to Six Flags theme parks or Rayovac products. Right now, Facebook fans have an opportunity to win an indestructible flashlight months before it’s available on store shelves.

Fans can also download coupons from Facebook, Carlson says. And most use them.

Eventually, Carlson says he’d like to see social media efforts such as Rayovac’s expand to the battery maker’s parent company, Spectrum Brands. Spectrum’s umbrella includes George Foreman grills, Remington razors, Cutter bug repellent and about a dozen other brands.

The Simple 5-Step Formula for Effective Online Content

From Copyblogger:

When I was preparing for my panel earlier this month at South by Southwest, I thought a lot about what I wanted the audience to take away.

Of course, there’s always the First Rule of Copyblogger, which I preach to anyone who will listen. But telling people “don’t publish content that sucks” tends to need a little more explanation if it’s going to be helpful.

So what could I give content marketing newbies that would give them the right foundation? And how could I help content marketing veterans who weren’t finding the success they wanted? Was there a “formula” they could use that would start them on the right foot?

What makes some content marketing succeed, while other writers work and work and never seem to get anywhere?

Like any formula, this one can be stated simply. Actually executing it is going to be more complicated. But if you use this framework, you’ll avoid the pitfalls that bring down most content marketing.

The formula: Effective Content = Education + Personality



1. Effective content educates

We have a mantra at Copyblogger Media: Don’t sell, teach.

Content that sells (whether you’re in the premium content business or you’re using content to sell another product or service) is content that makes itself useful.

Effective content teaches your audience something they want to know more about.

It might be fitness tips, parenting skills, or career advice. But it answers pressing questions and makes your readers’ lives better in some key way.



2. Effective content has personality

I was talking with tablet computing blogger Shane Ketterman about this the other day.

What made his blog climb to more than 10,000 unique viewers a day, faced with a sea of hundreds of jump-on-the-trend competing blogs?

We came up with a number of answers (I’ll have an MP3 of that conversation for you soon, as a matter of fact), but one of the most important is that Shane doesn’t just report iPad and tablet news — he creates a site that has personality, that’s reader-friendly, and that’s written to both educate and entertain.

There are plenty of junk blogs out there that scrape and remix real content to earn a couple of Adsense pennies. Bringing a consistent voice and personality to your content is a lot more work — but it’s also a lot more rewarding, both personally and professionally.


3. Effective content has a great headline

We’ve said it before, and we’ll keep saying it until we turn the lights off for good.

If you’re going to put the work in to create strong content that educates in a reader-friendly way, please don’t bury it with a lousy headline.

Great headlines make it easy for readers to share your content. They attract more links, more social media sharing, more readers, and more customers.

Put the time in to learn to write better headlines. It really does pay off.


4. Effective content keeps SEO in mind

One great benefit to creating content that’s both educational and reader-friendly is you get a big jump on SEO (search engine optimization). The content you’re creating is exactly the content that Google wants to serve.

Just remember, effective content works for human readers first and search engines second. If balancing those two still seems mysterious to you, take a look at our special report on SEO Copywriting.


5. Effective content puts the reader first

All of the “rules” of great content marketing come from one rule: put your audience first.

It’s not about how much money you need to make with this launch, where you want to rank on Google, or what your cat had for breakfast this morning.

It’s about them — the readers, prospects, and customers — not you.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t have goals for your business and your content. But when you create content that both benefits your readers and makes them feel good, you’ll find that your marketing goals become a lot more achievable.

Toyota Hops on Real-Time Marketing Trend With Prius Records Event

From Mashable:

Toyota will tap into the real-time marketing trend later this month with a live streamed event in which the company’s Prius will try to break as many world records as possible.

The hybrid brand will launch two 10-hour Prius Records webcasts on March 30 and March 31 on ToyotaPriusProjects.com. The stated goal is to set 200 records in that time.

Unlike Mitsubishi’s recent event in which it broke five driving-related Guinness World Records in 24 hours, however, the effort for the Prius is a lot more whimsical. Rather than Guinness, the record-keeper in this case is the Universal Record Database. Records include “The Largest Mural Created During a 3-hour Prius Plug-in Hybrid Vehicle Charge” and “Most Shadow Animals Made with Prius LED Headlights in Two Minutes.”

As evinced by such categories, the tone of the effort is in line with Prius’s last major social media effort, its “What is the Plural of Prius?” campaign that attempted to get people on Facebook and Twitter to debate that topic.

Real-time marketing is a growing trend. Campaigns and brands attempt to prompt such social media chatter by injecting themselves into talk around an event (like the Academy Awards) or creating events designed to take place in real time (like Coca-Cola’s program with Maroon 5 Tuesday in London to compose a song in 24 hours).

To make people aware of the latest event, Prius and ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi, Los Angeles, released the teaser video below.

5 Social Media Lessons for Company Legal Departments

From Social Times:


When you’re trying to get your corporate blog or social media marketing initiative off the ground, you can expect the lawyers involved. This is especially true if you work for a highly regulated company (such as telecom, financial services or life sciences/health care). In any company, risk is always a serious concern, and the threat of litigation can overshadow even concerns about competitive intelligence. And, let’s be realistic: the legal team is likely to be a skittish bunch.

This can be frustrating for marketing professionals. For us, it isn’t just natural to take risks – it’s a job requirement. If we aren’t pushing out new ideas to generate interest and revenue, then we aren’t doing much of anything. It’s unsurprising, therefore, that the marketing team can wind up head to head with the legal folks over social media marketing initiatives.

I have to be honest: when I got my last big social media marketing program off the ground, I had the sort of legal department that marketers dream about. It was filled with smart people who understand that a business needs to move forward. They saw it as a professional responsibility for them to find ways to help the marketing department deliver the company’s message effectively while not introducing unnecessary risk. Of course, it helped that I brought the legal department a plan that had already accounted for their concerns.

So, how can you help your legal team get past the risks and biases against social media? Introduce them to the five lessons below, from Corporate Secretary, a magazine that speaks their language:

1. Realize that the world runs without your involvement: Corporate Secretary interviewed one source who had been monitoring social media sites until he noticed that news about poor company leadership and CEO departures was taking off. He then decided that he had to take a more active role in communicating via these platforms.

Lesson: watch first, but understand that, at some point, you’ll have to become an active social media user.

2. Understand the up-side: your company may have an opportunity to distinguish itself as a thought leader and gain tighter control over its message in the public. There are more forms of risk than litigation, and using social media can help you protect your company in other ways, from the risk of being misunderstood to competitive threats and brand erosion.

Lesson: think about your company as a whole. If your marketing team wants to get moving on social media, there may be a good reason for it. Find out. Don’t let a knee-jerk reaction about risk prevent progress.

3. And, note the down-side (to not being involved): as we’ve seen over the past few weeks, social media can be used to (help) topple governments. So, do you think your company is immune? Not becoming part of the broader social media dialogue could cause issues to gain momentum before you’ve had a chance to get involved.

Lesson: learn from the world around you. Consumers can resemble angry citizens, and if they feel they’ve been wronged, they’ll make their voices heard. Smart social media engagement can actually mitigate many forms of risk.

4. Even industries resistant to change are getting involved: sometimes, it’s easy to cite your peers as a reason not to try something new. If nobody else is doing it, maybe you can get away with skipping it too … right? Well, not so fast. Even “slow” industries are testing the waters, notes Corporate Secretary. Once the social media ball is rolling, you’ll have trouble stopping it.

Lesson: do you want to be first or last in the space? It’s that simple. Join at the tail of adoption, and your competitors will be comfortable while you’re still trepidatious.

5. Fear is failure: Corporate Secretary put it elegantly: “You fear, you fail”. It really is that simple. If you don’t engage in the social media space – or allow your marketing department to so – fear of the environments and attendant risks will become tantamount to a marketing failure, which will lead to substantial missed opportunities for your company.

Lesson: proceed intelligently. Don’t avoid social media, but do make sure your company has a plan for dealing with the risks associated with it. Planning is never a bad idea.

CTIA: PayPal Talks Future of Mobile Commerce

From ReadWriteWeb:

Fabio Sisinni of PayPal's Mobile team was at this week's CTIA Wireless 2011 conference in Orlando, Florida to talk about the company's vision for mobile commerce. Paypal's usage on mobile phones has soared over the past few years, and the company is now processing around $6 million in mobile transactions per day. It's on track to produce a total payment volume of $2 billion in 2011 on mobile, Sisinni says, a figure that's up from just $24 million in 2008.

Along the way, PayPal has been experimenting with different types of technology, including everything from barcode scanning to NFC (near field communication).

PayPal Wants to be Your "Wallet in the Cloud"

In short, PayPal's vision for mobile is a "wallet in the cloud." Within this wallet, a customer could select any one of their payment instruments to make a purchase - a credit card, a debit card, a particular bank account, etc. But this vision isn't just for smartphones - PayPal wants to expand to every other Internet-connected device, too, including set-top boxes, TVs and even billboards. For example, PayPal would like to be a payment option embedded in the signage advertising a particular movie - just tap the sign and purchase tickets right there on its digital screen. It could also show up in signage related to local transit systems, too, so you could use PayPal to buy your train ticket or subway pass.

But PayPal knows that mobile payments aren't just a necessity for modern societies with smartphones and Web-connected TVs, it also has a place in the developing world. On this front, there have been recent initiatives to address this market, like Paypal's agreement with VIVO, the largest mobile phone service provider in Brazil and the southern hemisphere. Under the new agreement, subscribers can send in payments for airtime, goods and services using their mobile phones. The technology doesn't require an "app" to work, but instead uses USSD technology, which provides a menu directly on the phone where different payment choices can be made. (USSD is a protocol used by GSM devices for basic data communication.)

Technology Experimentation

When asked about NFC (near field communication), a short-range wireless technology for data exchanges between devices, and most often associated with digital wallet initiatives, Sisinni stressed that PayPal is not betting on just this one new technology. The company's goal is to be a "technology agnostic wallet in the cloud," he said. The service has to be ubiquitous. It has to work on any device, running any operating system.

That said, PayPal has been experimenting with NFC though its partnership with Bling Nation, an NFC-based startup where consumers stick "BlingTags" (NFC-enabled stickers) on their phones to pay for goods and services in the real world. When used at participating merchants, the money is deducted from the user's PayPal account just by tapping or waving their phone at checkout.

PayPal also acquired the popular barcode-scanning application RedLaser from Occipital last summer, and now provides that same technology to other mobile developers through a software development kit. This kit lets third-party developers build apps that use RedLaser's scanning technology in apps of their own creation.

Another experimentation was the integration of Bump into PayPal's mobile applications. With Bump's technology, users can tap their phones together to send money.

This sort of experimentation with new technology will continue over the next few years, Sisinni says. But at the end of the day, PayPal just wants to make sure it's a discoverable choice when there's an option to pay - whether with your computer, your phone, your tablet or whatever device comes next.

Starbucks Card Mobile Is a Hit: 3 Million People Pay Via Phone App

From Mashable:

Grabbing a cup of joe got a whole lot easier this year. In January, Starbucks began accepting mobile payments via the Starbucks Card Mobile iPhone and BlackBerry applications at 6,800 company-operated stores. Today, the company revealed that more than 3 million people have paid using Starbucks Card Mobile.

The mobile payments milestone was presented by chairman and CEO Howard Schultz to shareholders during the Starbucks Annual Meeting of Shareholders at Marion Oliver McCaw Hall in Seattle.

“Starbucks now offers the nation’s largest mobile payment network,” vice president of Starbucks Brady Brewer added later in the meeting.

The Starbucks mobile payments offering is a “touch to pay” system. It allows the customer to hold up the app’s barcode to the in-store scanner at the register to pay using the electronic tender. The program was piloted at select stores in September 2009. After extensive testing, it was found to be the fastest way for customers to pay.

The past financial quarter was the best performing in the 40-year history of the company, according to Schultz. Starbucks cards now account for 22% of all transactions, he says.

Mobile payments is just one element of a much larger social and digital media strategy that Schultz refers to as a “blueprint for growth.” This involves the brand crossing over into the consumer packaged goods (CPG) category by leveraging its digital and social properties. Schultz was eager to inform shareholders that the Starbucks brand is number one on Facebook with 29 million fans, and is also a top brand on Twitter and Foursquare.

Schultz used Starbucks’ new instant coffee brand VIA as proof of the crossover strategy. VIA generated $194 million in sales in its first year, and is now in 40 points of distribution.

Ultimately, Schultz believes the company’s CPG business will rival its retail business — and that the Starbucks Card Mobile application will connect both sides of the brand’s identity through loyalty programs.