Message For Future Generations

Mark Earls and Domenico Vitale have created Message For Future Generations a depository of planners' wisdom about Account Planning.

Fallon Brainfood: The Social 10 Redux

10 Things Marketers Should Know About Social Networking.

On March 26th, 2008, Aki Spicer, strategic planner at Fallon Worldwide, conducted a presentation about social media, using social media, live, across a mashup of social web touchpoints including Fallon Planning Blog on Blogger, Yahoo! Live, NetVibes, Plannersphere on Ning, and Facebook. View the accompanying slides at Slideshare or download the pdf directly to your desktop at Dropio.

Below is the recorded videos (1,2,and 3) and slideshow links of the presentation in case you missed it live on the web:

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What is Brainfood?
Brainfood is a monthly all-agency lunch conducted by Fallon Planners. Wide-ranging topics explore trends, business issues, and actionable opportunities for our brands. Moreover, Brainfood offers us a chance to come together, share a beer and some pizza, and engage in a stimulating discussion on a variety of interesting topics that affect our business. Previous topics have included Virtuality, China Rising, Design For All with more stimulating editions still to come.

Fallon Brainfood: The Social 10

10 Things Marketers Should Know About Social Networking.

This will be a live event/webcast presentation about social media, using social media!

You're invited to a one hour presentation that will explore ten trends affecting marketers who are considering entering the burgeoning social networking space - what's now, what's next, and what other brands like yours are already doing.

Join Fallon strategic planner Aki Spicer on Wednesday March 26, 12pm CST/1pm EST/10am PST, in person (for Fallon employees) or on the social web (for everyone else) for this worldwide first, and the latest in an ongoing series of monthly Brainfood presentations to the agency.




How do you attend this social?
For Fallon employees, come on down to 27Rotunda and you can see the presentation live (lunch provided).

For everyone else, it's an open social on the web (lunch not provided)! Attend Aki's presentation (slideshow, live sound and video) on your choice of a range of social web touchpoints including Fallon Planning Blog on Blogger, Yahoo! Live (sound and video only), NetVibes, Plannersphere on Ning, Slideshare (slides only), and Facebook.


*Don't worry, specific links will be forthcoming on day of the event, you will not have to download or learn any new or complicated technology to participate, I promise.

**Social web attendees will be able to talk/text questions via Yahoo! Live and AIM.


What is Brainfood?
Brainfood is a monthly all-agency lunch conducted by Fallon Planners. Wide-ranging topics explore trends, business issues, and actionable opportunities for our brands. Moreover, Brainfood offers us a chance to come together, share a beer and some pizza, and engage in a stimulating discussion on a variety of interesting topics that affect our business. Previous topics have included Virtuality, China Rising, Design For All with more stimulating editions still to come.

Brave New Media: How Facebook Users Spend Their Time

Compete.com blog discusses "how Facebook users spend their time".

Not unsurprisingly, people spend most of their time browsing profiles, but using applications is getting up there in terms of number of users, and the time spent is almost as long.

And speaking of Facebook Apps...Compete data show that Facebook activity grew 32% from May to August, 2007, with more than a third of the growth coming from the new applications.


And furthermore...O'Reilly released a report The Facebook Application Platform and it has good and bad news. Good: there are nearly 5000 Facebook applications, and the top applications have tens of millions of installs and millions of active users. Bad news: 87% of the usage goes to only 84 applications! Only 45 applications have more than 100,000 active users. "This is a long tail marketplace with a vengeance -- but unfortunately, the economic models (for developers at least, though not for Facebook itself) all rely on getting into the very short head."

Here's the distribution of active users among the top 200 developers. (Some developers have multiple popular applications.) As you can see, the drop-off is extremely steep:


Doh! Tim O'Reilly says: "This doesn't mean that Facebook won't become an important platform for developers, just that a throwaway Facebook app is not the ticket to quick riches. Embracing the Facebook opportunity requires more than just optimism."

via O'Reilly Radar and Compete.com Blog

Live Web in Plain English (as Advertisement)

Common Craft strikes again, this time for the new Google Docs app - yet another smart play at making Google your dashboard for digital living (Facebook is aiming at becoming your dashboard for social life).



*Google Docs don't work for Safari...so, ya'll lemme know how it's workin'.

Brave New Media: The Machine is Us/ing Us

Mass Interactive: Justin.tv Redux

Justin.tv launched 14 days and 10 odd hours ago. That’s when Justin strapped a camera to his head and started live feeding his life—24/7. And, according to the site, he has no intention of taking the camera off.

The curious voyeur who watches Real World can get the same kick out of Justin.tv, that’s nothing new. But the fascinating part is how Justin interacts with his viewers. He answers emails, text messages, IMs. He used to take phone calls until he got too overwhelmed—people want to interact with Justin.

He is giving up a lot of control over his life to his viewers; basically, people can change Justin’s world as he’s living in it. A prankster called in an order for $63 in pizza to be delivered to Justin. And when he got kicked out of the Gap for refusing to take his camera off, people watching Justin.tv called the store to tell the employees to tell them how lame that was. And when Justin’s trying to sleep, fans on the site try to convince his roommates to wake him up—earlier this week, they poured water on him to satisfy the live chat peer pressure.

It's like Sims meets Truman Show, which is a cool novelty, but these guys are trying to make money. They are loading up with product placements and eventually want to get enough demand to get their own network. I’d say the intrigue will wear off, and that Justin.tv will be a flash in the pan. But spend some time watching him yourself and tell me if you disagree.

via SF Chronicle

User-Created: What's with all the tiny pictures?

Madeofjapan.com (Onitsuka Tiger by Asics)
Eye.kddi.com
Drawball.com

These sites have passed under my nose over the past week. While each is slightly different— the Asics site is a collection of photos, while eye.kddi encourages video upload and drawball is a user-created graffiti site—they collectively invite users to submit an image (a representation of themselves in some way, I’d argue) to become a tiny part of something massive. While I think these sites are cool, visually and conceptually, I’m left wondering, “what’s the point? Is this cool for cool’s sake?” I posed the question to our esteemed Interactives.

Basically, the group agreed. Right now, it’s answering the innate human desire to engage, be a part and leave your mark.

But more interestingly, there are lots of ways to evolve the concept into something more purposeful (dare I say) that could either bring people together in support of a product or idea (a nod here to Onitsuka) or to help people better understand the components that make up a big, maybe faceless brand. What would a thousand picture collage of SXSW look like? Or Tumi?

ROI of Blogging: Part One-Buzz Metrics

I've been thinking on the sidelines about the ROI OF BLOGGING (nobody asked, but I recall one of our declared missions is to be more accountable about RESULTS), so here goes.

Part 1: I took a 5 minute BlogPulse review (short attention spanners can skip to conclusions at bottom):

Fallon Planning Blog vs Fallon.com
Our Planner blog is getting buzz volume on par with the main website (we work largely outside the margins with no PR flack "promoting", just planners talking and people talking about what we talk about). We take the hit in being cited among traditional (ie mass audience) press sites (though we have scored a mass media mention or two throughout last year).


Fallon Planning Blog vs Fallon Worldwide
What's more interesting to people: Fallon Thinking or Fallon Accomplishments (new spots, new book)? Kinda neck and neck (I remind you, planners have no PR team flacking daily). Interestingly, most of the Agency buzz is fueled by Pat+Fred's "Juicing the Orange" book promotions.


Fallon Planning Blog vs Juicing the Orange - 6 months
"Juicing the Orange" takes it! But planners ain't no slouches in this race...do note, that Agency Buzz verbatims reveal a tendency to be mostly Book buzz with the agency buzz basking in that association, so those could be considered duplication of the same buzz. And that note only shows that Agency Thinking is the bigger draw, add JuiceBook buzz and PlannerBlog buzz and we easily trump Agency Accomplishments buzz.


Fallon Planning Blog vs Juicing the Orange - 2 months
The Book is the gift that keeps on giving - buzz that is.


Fallon Planning Blog vs Fallon.com vs Juicingtheorange.com - 2months
Eh, the JuiceBook Dotcom ain't really pulling them in to the extents that the AgencyBrochure Dotcom or even PlannerBlog Dotcom is...interestingly, the JuiceBook Dotcom was intended (I think) to be an ongoing conversation continued beyond the book...a blog format could have been a better reworking of that thesis (compared to a promo microsite that may not work as effectively at fueling revisitation). Note too, I don't have the JuiceBook Dotcom metrics since day one, so there was likely a big flurry of buzz back in the day that trumped all of us (I would have to check Alexa for that measure). Needless to say, today, the JuiceBook Dotcom is not quite up there.

- but JuiceBook ain't doing so horribly when you take the 6 month view.


CONCLUSION: The F* I knows.

OK, so I'll try a few:

1) Metrics are fun!
2) Planners rule. Fallon Planners rule the mostest.
3) Blogs can definitely reinforce (even take the lead) building the overall experience of the brand...note that Agency and Book Buzz is propaganda. Hey, I got nothing against corporate propaganda at all, but it is a different POV than our blog which (allegedly) is our thinking (on a good day). And technically, GOOD THINKING IS THE FALLON PRODUCT IN TRADE (NOT JUST ADS)...but that is a different debate for a different day.
4) I could also conclude that the blog reaches pretty damn far (comparatively) with half the resources (did I mention we got no PR team flackin' us daily?). PlannerBlog buzz is produced from simply harnessing the thinking we do everyday - recorded in posts in real time and opening our thinking process up for people to see. For us, thinking is easy, it is the merchandising of our thinking that is the hard part (the important part?).
5) Fallon Planning Blog is "Juicing the Orange" in action...mmm, tasty. We're putting in action, daily, the corporate ideal of being outsmart in lieu of outspending.
6) Buzz about the book and buzz about the work (ie New Ads and Clients) is prob getting the bigger mass audiences, though. Do we like that? To be honest, Planner thinking ain't landing in Fast Company and BusinessWeek everyday...but that is a matter of time, and prolific content, and striking the timing on a hot topic and the responsive discussion and insight from us.
7) Blogpulse metrics depict a snapshot of levels of buzz, but admittedly it lacks a bit in defining the audience whose buzzing. Planner Blog was always intended to speak primarily to Planners (we told you that at the title)...and secondarily to internal Fallon teammates, then tertiarily (that a word?) to whoever cares to peek inside our heads and contribute or gawk (whatever's your pleasure). Number 1 and 3 are our biggest viewers. We should boost internal Hive Mind around our blog (get your AEs and Creatives on the same page with you - this webpage - and stop complaining that they never "get it"). So much of our chatter may be amongst other elite thinkers (discounting the occasional blog cite in CNN.com and CBS News et al). Is high buzz amongst elite thinkers good or bad (I pretend to speak rhetorically, but I certainly have a POV)? We can change any and all of these, blogs are flexible like that. JuiceBook buzz is targeted squarely to prospective clientele. Technically, PlannerBlog can just as effectively (perhaps more effectively) target prospective clientele, too. That is up to us to get it in the clientele channels (perhaps starting with our own clientele). **We may have an offline conversation about who actually reads Planner blog, but you'd be surprised what domain names I see checking us out, consistently - and it ain't just planner geeks at other agencies I'll have you know.
8) Time matters. Blog buzz and readership (currently at almost 300 readers a day) didn't just blast off at day one, so don't expect to light fireworks with your blog - it's a Long Nose strategy that builds up. The traditional buzz tactics (press release about new work debuts, a new book debut) spikes and drops, spikes and drops, spikes and drops - like a crackhead scrambling for the next hit. Buzz tactics such as the book provides a long tail that at least keeps it going a bit longer - like a slow baked weedhead coming down from a good high (Like these colorful metaphors? "This is your blog on drugs"). But without doubt, the Plannerblog keeps our brand buzz steady, steady, ongoing, like a heartbeat - as long as we commit and continue to contribute and stimulate and surprise. Blog demands that we deliver the goods (good thinking) with each and every post.

So while I hardly want to make a better than/worse than inference, the money shot could be that BOTH BLOG AND TRADITIONAL APPROACHES ARE VALID, BOTH MAY INTEGRATE NICELY, BOTH MAY COMMUNICATE THE BRAND VISION IN BROAD(ER) DIMENSIONS TO COMMUNICATE WHAT AND WHO WE ARE. WE ARE FALLON.

Open to discussion. Oddly enough, I don't hear too much talking about ROI of blogging...some good ones I have found are here and here.

I will soon post further thoughts and analysis on ROI OF BLOGGING throughout coming weeks and conclude a magic formula for easy success.

Mass Interactive: Wanted Poster on MySpace UPDATE

UPDATE: Homie is NOW APPREHENDED! Thank you MySpace for keeping the streets safe!
*Note the subtle change in music tracks since he's been caught (b4 it was "Bad Boys, Whatcha Gonna Do?"). Oh, Ponch and John, you clever-clever cops...Cue the freeze frame, theme music and roll titles.

Previous episode: Police created a MySpace account for a serial bank robber hoping to enlist the millions who use the popular social networking site as a cyber posse to help track down the fugitive.

The account has already collected over 1800 "friends", other MySpace users who have joined the unnamed robber's social network.

via MIT AdLabs and Smart Mobs

Mass Interactive: Wanted Poster on MySpace

Police have created a MySpace account for a serial bank robber hoping to enlist the millions who use the popular social networking site as a cyber posse to help track down the fugitive.

The account has already collected over 1785 "friends", other MySpace users who have joined the unnamed robber's social network.

via MIT AdLabs and Smart Mobs

Mass Interactive: YouGaveMeAnSTD.com

Doh!

Great communications shifts hold the power to empower and enable...and then there's the others. Consider this the Maury Povich show of social networking.

Not much to really explain here. Similar model as Don't Date Him Girl and Manhaters (now RENAMED to Woman Savers) - the dater haters tattle (minus any real evidence, accountability or even opportunity for rebuttal) and the rest of us gawk (and gasp). Convenient search functions allows you to look up any suspects by name, city and state. Even oogle at the "Infector of the Month". Fun times.

As their tagline says "log on before you lay down."



Don't just leave it to Match and eHarmony, check these other date prospecting references, too, to get the full lowdown X's Revenge, Dating Psychos, True Dater, Cheater Database

Mass Interactive: Open Houses

Truth awareness and transparency is opening the doors of our homes.

Some examples:
HGTV, the home and garden cable channel owned by Scripps Networks, launched a social network this week called Rate My Room.

The idea is self-explanatory: it’s a Flickr or YouTube for rooms, allowing users to upload photos of their rooms, tag them, and have them rated and commented on. You can then find the top rated, most viewed and most recent rooms. There are profile pages, too, but these simply aggregate all the rooms you’ve submitted.

The site is a bit plonky now, but interesting thinking with loads of potential presuming improvements are ongoing. The brand connection to HGTV is intuitive and smart, too.


*One slight confusion I have is the relation to Ratemyroom.net, which seems to be the same idea, and name, created by an interior designer from Atlanta. I can only assume HGTV has covered this potential conflict?

Anyways, another interesting (and similar) house share community is Curbly, "a community of people who love their neighborhoods."


And finally there is Zillow which is about a year-old and headed by the founders of Expedia. Consider it the E*Trade/Expedia/Craigslist/MLS of Real Estate. House values are valued for all to see (harvested from local municipality data), with useful trending data to aid users' search and decisionmaking. Though there are some early-stage flaws with coverage and up-to-date accuracy Fortune magazine reports that 4 million visitors a month are checking out Zillow's 52 million house valuations, making it one the internet's biggest real estate destinations.


And, not surprisingly, it is the real estate agents (protecting a $27 trillion industry) who are the loudest critics of Zillow, perhaps fearful of suffering the same disintermediation that travel agents endured when sites like Expedia came on strong.



Zillowblog here



via Mashable, Marketing Vox and CNN Money

Bankrupt!: CyberBegging

ABC News 20/20 showcases a burgeoning trend of "CyberBegging", wherein broke scrubs appeal to the masses online for some dough to pay off shopping debts, mortgages, even new boobs. One lady claims to have clocked as much as $13K with the strategy. Dustin "Screech" Diamond is profiled, too.

Critics find the idea to be shameful, yet it would seem that increasing numbers of youth and desperate debtors are rather shameless about it and find CyberBegging to be a "creative" and viable option for debt management.

File your own e-beg here and here and here.

Politics 2.0: ABC News "Your State of the Union"

More Web 2.0 State of the Union, this time from ABC News' "Be Seen, Be Heard" initiative.

Your chance to address the nation-- send ABC News a video of what you'd say if you were giving the State of the Union-- including what you think is the top challenge facing the country today.

Comments should be no longer than 45 seconds total. You may get a chance to be a part of network coverage the night of the President's speech, Tuesday January 23rd.

You can upload your video below or send your cell phone video to seenandheard@abcnews.go.com or go here.

Politics 2.0: First Congressional Appearance in Second Life

No, Katie Couric didn't report this one. [Eh - a pity that a multi-million dollar paycheck can't net us anything more interesting from Couric beyond retreading that dead 1950's formula. But I digress.]

Rocketboom's Joanne Colan conducted the first congressional appearance in Second Life last week with her interview of California Congressman George Miller.


(Note to SL makeup and wardrobe stylist: homie's highwater pants is a bit too tight in the rear! Nice hair, though. Believe me, girl, I know how much time it must have taken you to get that hairdo done right in 2L. Mmn, hmn. Ahem, but again, I digress.)

The event was fairly well attended (only one guy sleeping).

The congressman considers himself the proverbial "canary in the coalmine" with regard to future congressional involvement in 2L. Though he encourages increased collaboration and participation with 2L and other such media from his fellow congress members.

Hive Mind: Peugeot Concept Vote

I don't read french too well, but Peugeot invites you to place your votes on which of their concept cars of the future you'd actually buy.

Now obviously you haven't test driven these babies, so noone is actually holding you to your vote. But this is a clever approach to fast prototyping innovation and getting the customer a virtual seat at the boardroom table.


Rock the vote here

*I'm partial to this "N Joy" model myself.


via Church of the Customer

How To...Make The Digg Top 10

How to...Make The Digg Top 10

Marketallica gives 10 Actionable Tips (Rules) to rocket your blog posts to the Digg Top 10 here.

I reprint the highlights below:

1. Recognize Big Stories: This rule seems to be obvious, but there is (usually) a recipe for big stories. For example, a story that contains, How-to, Tutorial, Reference or Top10 tag have more chance to get front page story. Also, a story about Digg itself, Google or Apple is always popularized by users

Tip: Prefer to submit, how-to, reference, DIY, Top10 style stories

2. Track Pulse of Internet: To submit more and more big stories, you should have known “What’s popular right now”. My major resources for finding big stories are Delicious Popular, and Reddit. I track popular stories constantly at these sites. The popular stories which already bookmarked by dozens of people have big chance to get frontpage story on Digg, too.

Tip: Track pulse of internet on delicious and reddit. And your own resources of course (techmeme, netscape, micropersuasion, techcrunch)

3. Interesting Headlines: Some words like Awesome, Great, The only, Finally and Free are usually attracting more diggs than unexciting headlines. Create excitement with your headlines.

Tip: For writing great headlines you should read this and this

4. Humanized Story Description: Diggers usually prefer to quote from the original story. If quotation is exciting there is no problem, but usually there are better options. My advise is some add some human touch to your stories.

Tip: Look up Delicious URL on how people bookmarked your story. You’ll find some inspirational quotes to write exciting description for your stories.

5. Trackback Your Submission: This is not applied by most of digg users. But it can be so powerful. If your story is taken from a blog, i recommend you to add a comment to the story. In comment you can say “I like the story and i submit it to the digg. You and readers please add your diggs to get it frontpage the story…”

Tip: Add comment to the original story to inform readers digg submission.

6. Comment First: Comments added your story are important as the number of diggs your story have. Because diggspy get the latest dugg stories and the latest comment. If your stories have more comment, your stories take more impression and the possibility to get front page increases.

Tip: Try to be the first commenter for your stories. Write comments that spark debates and further conversations. Or ask a question about the story.

7. Timing: Timing is so important. Diggtrends have a great research about timing. They conclude that the best time submiting story is 9:00 EST because many office goers start digging as soon as they step in office.

Tip: Prefer after 09:00 EST for summiting stories

8. Make Friends: Digg is not %100 rational of course. People are more likely to dugg stories submited by their friends.

Tip: Make friends. Make generous friends. If you look at Top user screen and sort them by dugg stories you see that some of diggers dugg more than 10000 story. Add them as a friend. They are more likely to add their diggs to your stories

9. Digg Your Friends News: Rules of reciprocation is true for digg community, too. If you dugg your friends’ stories they respond positively and they start to dugg your stories, too.

Tip: Trust your friends and dugg their news.

10. Finally, Enjoy: Enjoy being part of world’s best community.

Of course, his final recommend is to rate his post on Digg if you like his post.

Nice.


via Marketallica

How To...Make a Video Viral

How to...Make a Video Viral

Two "Entertainment Weekly" writers consulted experts at CollegeHumor, YouTube, Google Video, AOL Video and MySpace this summer to find out what makes a viral video sensation. The keys to viral success, according to the amateur filmmakers, include:

* Comedy: The most successful consumer-created videos are funny and spontaneous.

* Hooks: Viewers must be drawn in within the first 10 to 15 seconds of video.

* Music: Sound adds to a video's entertainment value.

* Length: Short is always better.

* Relevance: Most viral sensations target a niche audience and include nostalgic or pop culture references.

Then when you make it, chart it globally here


via womma.org