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The Quest Begins:  My First Video Game

Yesterday, I continued my quest to get a handle on interactive gaming.  A combination of art and technology, gaming and the principles of gaming are playing a critical role in the future of marketing and my understanding of social media.  They help build brand and community.  They are highly interactive, immediate and lend themselves to hours of engagement.(Check out a previous posting on gaming that I did.)

Earlier in the day, I sat down with Hector Pages, COO of Brandmovers.com (blog), an online games, contests, sweepstakes and loyalty promotions firm here in Atlanta.  He showed me an interactive game for a wireless communications provider.  This “advergame” asks users to look at two very similar pictures and pick out the differences,  The goal is to build customer engagement.  These games yield a great deal of customer data, email lists from users who opt in, and a small cadre of very loyal brand ambassadors.

While it goes without saying that the game needs to be fun, it also must be consistent with the brand and part of a wider marketing strategy to be successful.  As Pages said, “Games don’t live in isolation.”

In the afternoon I met up with Lukas Bradley in the refurbished garage behind his house, which also serves as the home for Thrust Interactive, a gaming studio.  As his team of developers looked on amusement, Lukas gave me my first gaming tutorial.  A bit disoriented at first, I burned through a an hour of Portal, a single-player first person action/puzzle video game.  It was immersive and yes addictive.  It makes me wonder how I will find the time to do everything else I want to do in life.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Brandmovers; Thrust Interactive; Advergame; Portal; Lukas Bradley;

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Reading Chris Anderson’s recent Wired Magazine cover story about the End of Theory prompted me to do something I had been meaning to do for sometime: buy Michael Lewis’s Moneyball.

Chris’s piece examines how computers, the Internet and the era of massive data are changing our assumptions about science and scientific method. Moneyball looks at how the use of data enabled the Oakland Athletics to amass one of the best overall records in baseball with one of the lowest team payrolls.

And it is the power of data that is transforming the way we in marketing and PR do business. Through data, we can identify trends that we never knew existed, find previously ignored market segments and gain an advantage in a very competitive marketplace.

So beginning at the All Star break, I started reading and finished the book at 2:30 one recent morning. Now I am no baseball expert and can’t prove or disprove Lewis’s theory, but I was struck by one thing in particular: The story of how Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane used Ivy League number crunchers parallels the work we are doing with social media.

It is a story about questioning assumptions, challenging orthodoxy, tapping new ways to engage fans and measuring performance. It’s about a new kind of expertise that is creating a whole new approach to doing business.

For the longest time, stats like batting averages, stolen bases, and RBIs have governed baseball. Leading the majors in any one of these categories is worth millions of dollars. What Beane did was unconventional. He looked at the statistics that others overlooked, ignored, or rejected to sign ballplayers that other scouts had overlooked, ignored, or rejected.

His conclusion: on base percentages and slugging percentages are a far more accurate way to assess talent and predict success. They were the best indicators of which players would produce the most runs for the team as a whole. More runs, more wins. And today, while these stats are more widely used, that has not always been the case.

The story really begins in the late 1970s with an eccentric visionary, Bill James. Back then, there was no such thing as a blog, so he self-published a book that challenged the orthodoxy governing the measure of baseball success. Without search engines, he placed a single ad in the Sporting News. He grew a small but loyal following and responded individually to reader mail.

At the time, management and traditional sports journalists were very skeptical. In much the same way bloggers were initially dismissed, sportswriter Thomas Boswell wrote, “What we really need is for the amateurs to clear the floor.”

There was also no place for companies to share information with their customers. Data was not transparent; stats were held by major league teams and only one company – the Elias Sports Bureau – was authorized to sell that data. Major League Baseball wasn’t interested in new metrics and wasn’t interested in giving fans the data they asked for.

Quoting James, Michael Lewis writes: “The entire basis of professional sports is the public’s interest in what is going on. To deny the public access to information that it cares about is the logical equivalent of locking the stadiums and playing the games in private so that no one will find out what is happening.”

James advocated that the accumulation of baseball statistics should be taken out of the hands of baseball insiders and put instead in the hands of volunteer scorekeepers. The huge success of Rotisserie Baseball in the mid 1980s demonstrated that fans were hungry to engage with each other.

These developments along with the growing power of computers and the drive for new kinds of expertise (like the use of derivatives in financial markets) all contributed to a new way to think about stats, baseball and managing teams.

Does the story of self-publishers, companies unwilling to engage their customers, skeptical journalists, empowered fans and the lack of transparency sound familiar? These are the elements that social media advocates experienced in the beginning and, to a lesser extent, experience today.

While most of us are not involved in managing sports teams and picking players, the lessons learned from Moneyball are transferable. Most importantly, data is king.

Moneyball Marketing

In making their selections, the A’s crunched millions of bits of data, analyzing the outcomes of thousands of plays in a given game and in a given season. It’s the same approach we should be taking: looking at the connections among and interactions between individuals to understand innovation, collective decision making, and problem solving, and how the structure of organizations and social networks impacts these processes.

Blogger Steve Rubel refers to it as Moneyball marketing.

We need ask ourselves: Are we looking at the data that social networks yield? How and where does data factor into PR decisions? Can we use data to target the right audience - especially in the age of the long tail where we can go after niche markets?

Identify the right data and you can help improve products, increase sales, engage customers and build brand.

Once more, as the Oakland A’s demonstrated, data collection can save dollars. The challenge of course is to identify the right data. And that data must directly relate to your company’s business objectives. In the case of the A’s, the goal was to maximize limited dollars.

Number crunching and computers may seem incongruous with the traditions that govern our nation’s past time. And after all baseball is just a game. But Moneyball demonstrates once again that how you play the game often dictates whether you win or lose.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Moneyball; Michael Lewis; Oakland As; Baseball; Billy Beane; Social Media;

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The second reminder was the new Pixar film Wall-E, which I also saw this weekend. It’s about a trash compacting robot set in Earth’s future. Wall-E lives in an urban environment overrun by trash and devoid of people. Wall-E is addicted to a dance number from the movie “Hello Dolly” that he (assuming he is a he) finds on a discarded videocassette. Through repeated viewings, he begins to transcend his physical limitations and connects with another being. Oddly, Wall-E seems more human than the humans he later encounters. Disconnected from the physical world, these humans of the future eat fast food and communicate with each other via video screens. (Hmmm — not sure we need to look that far into the future for that reality.)

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Matt Harding; Wall-E; Pixar; Stride Gum;

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Thanks C.B. Whittemore for tagging me for the 8 Things Random Things About Me meme.   The game is to come up with 8 things people probably don’t already know about you and then tag eight more people to play. 

In the spirit of community fun here is my list:

1. When I was 6, I wanted a Johnny Cash album.  Concerned about his lyrics, the salesperson convinced my parents to buy me a record by John Davidson, who later hosted the Hollywood Squares.
2. When I was 12, I wanted to be Jimmy Connors, the tennis star.
3. My favorite television show is the Andy Griffith’s Show, 1960-1965. The chemistry between Andy and Don Knotts was special.  After Don left, it went downhill.
4. I am more likely to buy a book or see a movie if it has been favorably reviewed by the New York Times. 
5. I hate missing the very beginning of a movie and, once started, I will more than likely read a book to the end even if I hate it.
6. I would rather photograph with black and white film than digital.
7. Neither my VCR nor my DVD player has been hooked up to my 1997 television set.
8. I started using the Internet in 1993, but didn’t begin blogging until 2006.

Mike Manual 
Kevin Dugan
Sherry Heyl
Brad Berens
Mike Prosceno
Giovanni Rodriguez
John Bell
Brian Solis 

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: 8 Things; Meme;

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Ahh, what confusing times we work in.  The Daily Show makes fake news more popular than real news, and marketers pass off professionally produced advertising as amateur content.  Where visibility was once the name of the game, companies are choosing to obscure, not highlight, their involvement.  At the same time, we celebrate candor, openness and authenticity.

Consider the following: 

• We accept television ads for pain relievers knowing full well the testimonials made by actors are fake because we know the ground rules; we’re used to the form.

• We tune in the Daily Show and while the subjects are real, the treatment is not.  They know it; we know it.  We laugh; it’s funny; it’s entertainment.

• Or the other hand, it’s decidedly unfunny when Wal-Mart Stores set up a pro Wal-Mart blog and didn’t fully reveal that the bloggers were tied to Wal-Mart.

• Or possibly it’s illegal as in the case of John Mackey, chairman and chief executive of Whole Foods who used a fake name to post pro Whole Food comments on an Internet message board.
   

So when is “fake” acceptable?  Talking to marketers and social media experts, I believe it comes down to intent and context.  Make believe is appropriate when it’s intended to entertain; it is completely inappropriate when it’s deception designed to mislead or advance an unstated agenda.

A wink and a nod to the audience may be the difference between a wildly successful viral campaign and outright hostility.  It’s the difference between the saga of lonelygirl15 who was in fact just an actress and the fake blog of a cosmetically-challenged woman Claire who was just a creation of Vichy, a division of French cosmetics giant L’Oreal.  The former was entertainment; the latter was an attempt at a fast one.

Consumers need to be in on the joke, not made to feel that the joke is on them.  At some point, there must be a sign or signal that what they are seeing, reading or listening to is entertainment or make believe.

And that’s exactly what The Lenovo Group did. Most people don’t they are the world’s third-largest personal computer maker.  What did they do?  They went viral with a spoof Web site.  As Steve Hamm reported in BusinessWeek that the site attracted 3 million visitors in first few weeks.  The campaign pretended to let viewers in on some super advanced technologies being tested by the company. The site’s anonymous producer had supposedly received some videotapes revealing the secret research. The joke is apparent once viewers click through to the tapes.

So how did the YouTube founders answer Steven Levy’s question?  Chen responded that it came down to a question of trust and individual decision.  He felt that it was up to informed users to decide. 

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Daily Show; Jon Stewart; Steve Levy; Lenovo; Robert Love; Chad Hurley; Steve Chen; D Conference; Marketing; PR; Fake News;

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Happy July 4th. Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Michael Bay; Transformers; Summer Bockbuster; Branded Entertainment;

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I’m not sure I agree with the staff writers of Brand Week.  In their May 28^th issue, they question the “viability” of branded entertainment in the light of challenges Anheuser-Busch is facing with its Bud.tv.

Or as BusinessWeek’s Helen Walters wrote generally about brand entertainment in her piece, “A New Breed of Branded Entertainment:”

“The biggest conundrum, of course, is whether consumers really do love brands as much as those working for brands and their agencies do. And even though transparency has been a buzzword in marketing for a while, will viewers really choose to navigate to a site with such blatant consumerism at its core?”

A few have offered ways to save Bud.tv including Kevin Dugan in his excellent piece.

One of Bud.tv’s major challenges was its restrictive registration process to weed out consumers under 21 – the very consumers they try to reach with their Super Bowl advertising.  Another problem, the content could not be found on other sites.  

Ultimately, as a user, I have to already know about and seek out Bud.tv, I can’t just stumble upon, which is one the best parts of the web. The content may be funny, but it is difficult to share.  Take the recent Ray Ban video.   Like the sunglasses in the clip, the video is getting tossed around virally on the Net. 

Whether Bud.tv survives is less important than the ground it is trying to break.  As Andrew Wallenstein wrote back in March in Adweek, “Bud.tv has attracted attention for portending a paradigm shift for online media, allowing advertisers to pitch directly to consumers with their own programming.”

And so, I get back to the point of branded content on the web. Companies like A-B are going to have to rethink their appoach if they want to be successful.  Using the Internet for entertainment is still in its infancy.  Brand marketers who are willing to take chances will be the first to reap the benefits.  It is no longer enough to just get product placements. The ads themselves must be the entertainment.

Web 2.0 is wide open.  There are no restrictions on content.  Short form, long form, mobile devices or desk tops — they all apply.  Even users themselves can create content.  The only limits will be the marketer’s creativity. 

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Bud.tv; Blip.tv; YouTube; Anheuser-Busch; Branded Entertainment; Branded Content;

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I mark my one year anniversary as a blogger with a movie review. 

Enough said.  Here is my review:

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Movie Reviews; In Great Silence; Carthusian Monks; Twitter;

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Call it the JibJab effect or the Daily Show phenomenon.  Whether it is news or politics, humor is in.  And I don’t mean the political ditties of the Capitol Steps in
Washington or the monologues of Jay Leno.  I am talking humor of the “edgy” variety (not the entertainment publication), as in the blurring of the boundaries between news and entertainment.

And so I come to today’s topic, should news be entertaining or entertainment newsworthy?  Should politics be played for some laughs?  And more specifically, should PR follow suit and get into the funny business – especially in the age of new media?

For starters, I looked no further than funny man Jim Meskimen.  I worked with Jim on a video to launch HELIO, the wireless joint venture between EarthLink and SK-Telecom.  Among his many credits, Jim did the voice-overs in the now famous JibJab videos from the 2004 elections featuring President Bush and Senator Kerry.

Dan Greenfield: I hear you are a funny guy.  How funny are you?

Jim Meskimen: I’m so funny that my own crow’s feet beg me to stop.

Greenfield: You were the voices behind the JibJab videos in the 2004 election mocking both President Bush and Senator Kerry.  Have you no respect?

Meskimen:  Not really.  I can’t afford to.  I’m the Marni Nixon of the political world.  I also voiced Cheney, Edwards, Michael Moore, Al Gore, Rush Limbaugh, McGreevy, John McCain, Clinton, Schwarzenegger and Dan Rather.  And I can only assume that they make fun of me, too.

Greenfield: Do you think humor was a bigger factor in the 2006 elections because of videos like the one you did in 2004?  Did you see more instances of humor?

Meskimen: I saw a lot of JibJab wannabes.  The thing is that nobody can match Evan and Gregg’s (the Spiridellis brothers) dedication to making superb animations.  They make it look easy, then you see some of the copycats and go, “Oh, I understand.  This stuff ain’t easy.  In the words of our Commander in Chief, “It’s hard work!”  Now, the Daily Show, that’s something else.  Man, that stuff is funny.  And they get to use the actual footage, so they don’t need to make brilliant animations.  But is it art?

Greenfield: The Daily Show, Bill Mahrer…how is humor changing the tenor of political discourse?

Mark Twain was a brilliant political humorist, too.  I think humor gives us a socially acceptable way to discuss a very volatile subject, and anything that facilitates that is okay by my book. 

I actually don’t discuss politics much.  Any of the big social problems I am very confident will NEVER be solved by the political arena, but by caring and informed individuals.  If politicians can stay out of the way of these more noble sorts, then they will have done a great service.

Greenfield: Is the public expecting more humor in their news and from their candidates?

Meskimen: I have no idea.  For me, the humor is already there in many cases, if you can listen or watch with a discerning eye.  Unfortunately, the things that would be most hilarious and ironical in the world of politics do ACTUALLY have a negative impact on the lives of real people like you and me.  Then it’s not so funny.

Greenfield: How much do you love YouTube?  How is the Internet changing what you do and how you do it?

 

Meskimen:  I like it, but I don’t think it is organized very well.  I am a bit wary of it, because it is so uncontrolled; for instance, anything I do as an actor can wind up there to a massive audience.  That’s fine, if I’m proud of it and if anyone can actually find it.  I’m not getting paid, but it is free promotion… but what if my car gets hit by a train and anyone can watch me get splattered over and over again?  It’s kind of creepy to think that with all the cameras around, pretty much anything is available, even the things that human dignity would suggest be best treated with privacy.  Hey, what a funny interview, huh?  Man, cheerful stuff!

Greenfield: If the Internet were a joke, what would be its punch line?

Meskimen:  I don’t know.  But if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has an email address, is it mailto:Netanyahu@yahu.net? 

Greenfield:  Thanks Jim.

——-

To me, the likes of the Daily Show, E! News and YouTube are raising (or lowering) the stakes – turning news into “newsotainment.”  What does this mean for PR folks when an interview with Jon Stewart may be more impactful that one with Katie Couric?  And in a nod to ABC News, what does it mean that many Americans get more of their news from the Daily Show than from any other source?

Now I make a distinction between celebrity news (E! News) and parody (the Daily Show) whose “news” formats serve to blur the distinction between news and entertainment and YouTube where featured video clips make their way to mainstream news.  These clips are often entertaining even if the subjects of the videos were not intending to be (e.g.  the Comcast rep caught on video falling asleep on a service call).  YouTube’s popularity only guarantees that more embarrassingly funny true moments of real people (and possibly our clients) will find their way into the news cycle.  We now are all actors in our own lives.  Is news the new Hollywood?

We, the keepers of the PR tradition, have decisions to make.  Do we continue playing it straight or do we start infusing some humor into our press releases and pitches?  Do we start producing podcasts and YouTube videos with entertainment in mind?  My advice: tread carefully.  As Jim pointed out, humor is “hard work.”  Being unfunny, when trying to be funny, may be funny but not the way you intended.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Jim Meskimen; JibJab; The Daily Show; YouTube; Bill Mahrer; Katie Couric; E; Jon Stewart;

I read John Miller’s AP story with relish and fries.  Apparently two Boise, Idaho city employees recently made a midnight run to a Burger King drive-through atop two Zambonis.  According to the story, the two big ice-resurfacing machines were not damaged in the mile and half round trip trek.  The two employees were fired after their actions were reported by an anonymous tipster. 

Now if you are the keepers of the Burger King PR flame, how would you respond?  Is it a Whopper of an opportunity or a King-sized headache?.  Ahh the joys of having it your way.

In the PR 1.0 era, you may have avoided the controversy.  These days where two guys with some Mentos and Diet Coke can become overnight celebrities, where people get their news from Comedy Central and amateur videos are the rage on YouTube, companies need to be nimble and embrace user-generated content and oddball opportunities — even if doing so incurs risk.  And in the case of Burger King, a little risk seems consistent with their ad campaigns. 

So if you were the King for the day, would you reach out to those city employees or hope the whole incident blows over?  Post your thoughts.  Maybe the good folks at Crispin Porter, Burger King’s ad agency, will feature your ideas in an ad campaign.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Burger King; Zamboni; Crispin Porter; Mentos; Diet Coke;