Digital Marketeer

A few months ago I founded this amazing presentation /video that tells incredible facts about how our world and media is shifting, the research and concept is amazing all this was develop by Scott McLeod, Jeff Brenman, and Karl Fisch who made this presentation.

Then the story tells that someone from Sony BMG Music Entertainment ask them if they could remix it for an upcoming meeting, they gave them the OK and the rest is history.

This is what Sony BMG remixed based on the original presentation; hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

There are some amazing facts that now more than ever are more and more relevant our lives:

• The top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010…did not exist in 2004; Let´s think just about the social media jobs, the community managers, guys like Sctott Monty or Chris Hughes who are being needed by brands and corporations, so they can enter the game of all this new media.

• We are currently preparing students for jobs that don´t yet exist…Using technologies that haven’t been invented… in order to solve problems, we don’t even know are problems yet; YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter this are the new media channels created by the people and for the people, brands are willing to pay good amounts of money to be part of this and join the conversation.

• There are 31 Billion searches on Google every month, in 2006, this number was 2.7 Billion. To whom were these questions addressed B.G.? (Before Google) Nothing to say… I’m working on get 2009 number from a reliable source.

• Facebook reach a 50 million market audience in just 2 years; TV took 13 years, I wonder who will be the next to reach 50 million in just one year…

So this is the world we are living in, in case you still haven´t see the dramatic shifting in every aspect of our lives personal and professional it’s time to take a break and think about it. All this is happening so fast and we adopt new technologies so quickly that we even seem to remember how we used to search for information, watch videos, reed news, talk to friends: now all this is just a click away…

We´ve seen the guys from Improve Everywhere froze grand central in the Frozen Grand Central Mission and go viral with more than 17 million views since January 08 they also ride the subway with 2,500 people in 22 cities around the world without pants in the No Pants Subway Ride 2009 Mission and again go wide viral with almost 8 million views since January 09. Amazing actions that represents the shift of how people participate interact and most important: how they organize via social networks sites.

My favorite campaign so far for 09 without a question is T-mobiles “life´s for Sharing” developed by Saatchi & Saatchi London, the strategy and channel integration is perfect.

The T-Mobile Dance at Liverpool Street Station

T-Mobile Sing-along Trafalgar Square

Did you liked it… Let’s give it a quick review:

The concept:

• “life is for sharing” with your friends and family by calling them and sharing anything you want.

The Channels:

• BTL: An amazing public event where everybody is invited to share by dancing and singing
• ATL: I didn´t find any TV Spots or print ads but I´m sure there´s got to be something there
• PR: I´m sure that this actions where cover by a lot of news programs, newspapers and magazines and when you have celebrities invited the reaction increases, Pink share and sing with all people in Trafalgar Square.
• Viral: The sing a long video has almost 600,000 views since May 02,2009 and T-mobile Dance 12 million views since Jan 16,2009
• Social Media: Facebook, twitter, Blogs, YouTube people creating content around this events, just make a quick search and you will see what I´m talking about.

T-mobile has built an audience through different places, e-mails, mobiles, fans in facebook, followers in twitter, but what happened when you have thousands or millions of people following your brand? The answer is simple: You need to start creating “Social Actions” or anything you want to activate them by giving them something interesting to do; otherwise they will left or forget you.

The first viral branded video I remember is Ronaldinho: Touch of Gold that was uploaded on October 20, 2005 just 5 months after the first video was uploaded to the site on April 23, 2005, and shows founder Jawed Karim at San Diego Zoo.

All this seems like a lifetime but was only 5 years ago and since then YouTube has reinvented the way people watch and share videos online and how brands communicate with their audiences.

In this five years we´ve seen a lot of viral branded videos, really good examples of how companies are using video sharing sites to post virals and let users to distribute their content with friends exploiting all the channels and principles of social media.

Going back to Samsungs viral this is one of my favorites the concept and the strategy couldn´t be better. The video shows a “magic trick” recorded with the new Samsung i8910 Omnia HD and then challenge the viewers to guess how they did it? They assure us that the video was recorded in one shot and no post production or special effects were used. As hint to catch more details they strongly suggest watch the video in HD, this is the perfect pretext to appreciate how the phone record in high definition.

What´s the best of this video?

1. Simple: Not an extremely expensive production just a great idea.
2. Surprise: When you see that the phone is gone, you can´t believe there is no post production edition, what makes you see it over and over again and turn the HD mode on.
3. Activate: They invite all the viewers to try to discover the trick creating a social object that let users be part of the conversation.
4. Shareable: What better pretext to send it to a friend and see if maybe he can find out how they did it, then make some buzz and post your answer in the YouTube video page as a text comment or video response.

The video has more than one million views and two thousand text comments in just a month a half that has been online.

Samsung is going full speed with viral strategies this is just one of the recent videos that has been released by the company, With this success I´m sure we will be seeing more and better viral videos from them.

In case you haven’t figured it out, here is the trick reveled by Samsung giving the strategy a second boost.

…Or should I say “The Favorite Viewers Awards”

The fwa (the favorite website awards) hits the 50,000,000 visitors a pretty good number thinking that the site has been online for 9 years and having such a reduced niche like web designers, brand managers and online marketing people.

The site is incredible I mean where else in the web you can find daily an amazing site, just here and without a question all the brands and agencies clients wants to be here it´s like the first step for knowing that your site has been recognized.

Just a few weeks back one prospect send me a brief and one of the lines was “Our sites should be worthy to be in The FWA”. That only means that our friends of FWA are making a great job and they are point of reference to a lot of people in this business.

Going back to the 50 million celebration in case you haven’t seen it, you MUST go now and do it, don’t keep reading my post because it will spoil the surprise.  In case you already have seen please keep reading.

I was checking the site as I usually do to see who has won lately, when out of nowhere the “host of a Show” comes out and starts celebrating, singing and cheering me up for being part of the party, I think this has been the biggest surprise a website has given to me, it complete caught me of guarded.

I think these  are the key points of the takeover action:

• Video interaction: The video of the host plays extremely smoothly I mean not even a YouTube video plays as well as this one.
• Surprise factor: If you didn’t know about the action I’m sure  you were surprised, and this is what I think made you recommend it to your friends.
• Wall of comments: via facebook connect users were able to be part of the celebration by posting comments, links and pictures of their facebook profile.
• Copywriting: “the script” of the host was extremely original and creative, this is my favorite part of the whole action.

The FWA team has a great challenge I mean they only publish the best animated and designed sites of the web, so their takeover had to excel among the entire published cases. The design and strategy was developed by Domani Studios.

So in case you haven’t seen it I think you need to go now….

The viral actions that let users upload self images or friends edit or customize them are always a good way to viralize an action an making users to send the brands message, we´ve seen some successful cases like “Elf Yourself” by OfficeMax, one of the first big branded actions of this kind, according to adage the site received 36 million hits and increased OfficeMax traffic by 20%. Those are pretty good numbers for a “not expensive” online action.

Since Elf Yourself we´ve seen a lot of similar actions and besides simpsonizeme I can´t remember one as successful as this two cases.

So what was the key of the success?

1. Relevancy – The site is only online during holyday season, it’s the perfect timing.
2. Customizability– You can personalize the hole postcard with friends or family.
3. Jokeable – You can tease your friends by uploading their photos and send it to them, I think this is the main “viral factor”.
4. Unique – back in 06 there was no other place where you can turn your friends in to elfs.

A case online right now is the new site launched by the WB for the upcoming movie “Terminator Salvation” by the concept “terminate yourself” here you can convert you into a futuristic robot with the face all smash up. I just try it and honestly I was hoping to see something really amazing but the action is really basic, upload a photo edit it and you are done. One good thing about it is the integration with social networks but these days have this sharing option it’s a commodity.

One great site and maybe one of the most interactive I’ve seen is the “brainfreeze laboratory” by Slurpee. It has a solid concept relevant to the brand, 100% customizable, jokeable and unique because you mainly get brain freezes with a good cold Slurpee.

How does it works?  After you upload your photo you can give yourself or a friend a good brain freeze that plays a different and funny animation for each flavor available.