Being Peter Kim

An automated social network of feelings and emotions

For the past nine months, We Feel Fine has been collecting data on human feelings and emotions on the internet.  There are some great metrics on the site, both static and dynamic (click on "metrics" or "mounds" from the site's nav).

From the past few hours, the greatest incidence of posts appear to be from people feeling hungry, low and off, mostly women ages 50 - 59, in snowy Victoria, Australia.  Hmm...

From the site:  "There is no human involvement in We Feel Fine. The system runs autonomously, collecting and presenting data about human feelings."

How long before someone creates an app that dreams of electric sheep, too?

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Gun buyback gets you more Target time

Today's Boston Globe reports on the launch of a program to get guns off of Boston city streets.  Each gun turned in gets a $200 Target gift card.  Officials cited the use of gift cards rather than cash given that funds are often used to buy newer guns.  Good thing it's not a Wal-Mart gift card.  WBUR reported this morning that part of the $200 card's value was being contributed by Target.  Somewhat ironic that a brand whose logo is a big BULLSEYE is sponsoring the program - subversive marketing?

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Will you know it when you see it?

Interesting conflict between posts today from Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki.

Godin:  "Lots of marketers (and most of their bosses) like to say, 'I'll know it when I see it'...Actually, you won't."

Kawasaki quoting "best definition of design that I’ve ever seen":  "Design consists of creating things for clients who may not know what they want, until they see what you've done, then they know exactly what they want, but it's not what you did."

Just semantics?  Or is the difference here being discussed called serendipity?  (great discussion from earlier this month on Steven Berlin Johnson's blog).

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Corporate media takeovers

Advertisers are starting to see value, or at least experiment, with how they utilize media.  Rather than trying to excel with the best creative in a standard slot, the idea of the short-term media takeover is starting to pop up more frequently.  Some examples:

• Snapple is sponsoring 40 days on Boston rock station FNX for $2 million
• Target single sponsors an issue of the New Yorker for $1.1 million
• Evian offers a detox version of Gawker for 2 weeks
• Ford sponsors a commercial-free season opener of Fox's 24

Any other examples?  Seems like this works better for niche brands targeting niche audiences.

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VW Ego Emissions Index

Nicely done minisite as a spinoff from CP+B's current VW Passat ad campaign.  Contributions are moderated, so unlikely we'll see anything too controversial up for discussion, like politicians, brands, etc.  I'd like to see more grup-related items added, which would undoubtedly rate high on EE's.

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Inflation-adjusted game console prices

Great information from Curmudgeon Gamer.  The pic at left shows inflation-adjusted game console prices from the past thirty years.  Thinking about dropping around $600 an xbox hd dvd 360 or ps3?  Just think about that Atari 2600 you used to play pitfall and yar's revenge on - $659.41 - and rationalize away.

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corporate kids on myspace

I was just thinking about the growing number of corporate characters on MySpace and then a post from Organic popped up in my RSS feeds.  Marketers are finding new ways to tap into MySpace every day and this tactic is increasing in popularity.  Are they finding success?  Here's one way to tell.

Organic commented on number of friends as a measure of campaign resonance - I'd like to take their analysis one step further.  Although the pages were supported by different levels of support, there are some clear differences involving orders of magnitude.  Starting with the number of friends in a network, divided by the number of days from the first posted comment to today (to get a sense for tenure), some differences emerge.

Let's call this a MySpace POPULARITY AND POWER RANKING just for fun.  [the number represents friends pro-rated based on number of days online]

• fox family guy:  3,708
• vw fast:  1,045
• dodge pig & bear:  698
• wendy's square:  503
• honda element:  216
• vw helga:  171
• dell dj ditty:  59
• ge elli:  14

Makes sense when you think about a "typical" myspace user, doesn't it?  Steve Rubel posted on The Magic "T" of Marketing yesterday - thinking about the PPR above, it should be noted that creating a myspace place for every campaign isn't right for everyone.  Then again, the cost of social computing technologies are so low - why not?

Speaking of which - the cost of securing rights and talent releases sometimes isn't cheap - be sure you get broad inclusion of internet/web rights before shooting your next campaign - and before agents start splitting out domain names in contracts!

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Forbes+LinkedIn: Social Network Is Seeing the $$$

With all the chatter about monetizing social network users, I found this partnership timely.  After logging in to LinkedIn last night, the screen at right popped up, announcing a partnership between the networking site and Forbes.com.

Although I'd guess the AdSense and Adbrite ads they're running are bringing in some revenue, in addition to premium memberships, securing deals like this are a way to increase the revenue flow pretty quickly.  Moreover, it's a great way for a traditional media company to get involved with social computing and learn how to extend their business model into the CGM space.

Wonder when we'll see something similar with Spin or Fader on MySpace.  Or more corporate groups fight for "linkedin juice"  (see "google juice").

BTW this is my page on LinkedIn; if you want to see how the groups are presented on a profile, click the "view full profile" button:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/peterkim

 

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A guide to gaming for marketers

Josh Larson, director of industry products at CNET's Games & Entertainment group, has a great article in the spotlight over at iMedia Connection.  He uses examples to illustrate different types of marketing opportunities in games:

• Product placement
• Game content websites
• Gaming tournament sponsorships
• Dynamic in-game ads
• Advergaming

Looking forward to the followup article later this summer, which will outline how to select the right opportunity for your brand.  Josh is a sharp guy and we went to school together at Darden.  Great insights on how to think about incorporating gaming into your marketing mix.

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Testing, testing...$50 MM TV ad auction proposed

Posted today over on the Forrester Marketing Team blog about the proposal to create a $50 million test market for TV ad auctions.  Interesting concept, but as the saying goes, people are going to have to step up and put their money where their mouth is.  Click to read more.

Database marketing gone wrong

My four-year old niece is moving up in the world.  She got this in the mail today as a result of being a valued member of the United Mileage Plus program.  No flights on UA this year, but she did about 6,000 miles last year and 3,000 the year before.  Now she's hooked up as a Gold Starwood Preferred Guest, which usually takes 10 stays or 25 nights in a year [or a special offer] to earn.

I'm not a database marketer by training, but something seems wrong here.

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Mosquito Magnet - WOM

You might not be able to relate to this post if you spend most of your time in a fairly urban area.  But if you don't, or even enjoy visiting a park now and then, you know that summer's just around the corner which means...mosquitoes.  [btw don't click on the picture until you finish reading this post - it will make more sense.]

Look, I hate mosquitoes.  I can't find any redeeming answers for why they should remain in anyone's circle of life.  Skimmed Wikipedia; looks to me like all they're good for is transmitting malaria and west nile.

So...what's going on with the picture?  That, my friend, is the net from the inside of my Mosquito Magnet.  I read about this device years ago in a newspaper article or maybe an in-flight magazine and how they were being used by the government.  They're not cheap, starting at $200; the best models run around $1,300.  This article from 2003 discusses how the company had grown 25,615%.  That's a lot.

I'm guessing I don't have to elaborate on what the brown stuff is inside the net.  That picture is worth not one thousand, but only one word - "YES."  Which is the answer to the question, "do those things work?"

To this day, I've never seen an ad for a mosquito magnet and purchased mine on word-of-mouth, similarly influencing the sale of a few others.  Not sure what American Biophysics has for creative, but I'd say they are in prime position to launch a killer CGM campaign.

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Minority Report at O'Hare

So there's print and online - now there's outdoor and online.  Mediapost reports that Accenture is sponsoring an interactive touchscreen up at Chicago's O'Hare Airport.  It's being developed by Schematic, who participated in the conceptual design of the crazy computer in the film Minority Report.

Schematic's executive creative director, Dale Herigstad, outlines a model of media distances/personal space:

• 20 feet or more:  "public" or "outdoor" media (e.g. things like billboards)
• 10 - 20 feet:  friends and family (e.g. TV)
• About 2 feet:  personal (e.g. computers)
• Less than 1 foot:  private (e.g. personal devices like iPods)

Assuming these distances are for people in the U.S., no word on how these distances would be shortened for Europeans or extended for Asians.

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Cuba in Wikipedia - Miami Herald

I had the opportunity to discuss the Cuba entry on Wikipedia with Pablo Bachelet from the Miami Herald the other day. It's interesting to see that the most controversial topics on Wikipedia (and CGM in general) often touch on politics.  Not a lot of controversy on the sneaker stub that I've contributed to a few times.

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BzzAgent.org?

OK I'm still processing this one because I have a lot of things going right now.  Apparently BzzAgent is the target of some backlash from their successful PR and marketing efforts.  Which is interesting, because they only have one PR guy (Joe Chernov) and no one officially in charge of marketing (I think).

A few different ways to look at this.  It's a credit to the power of their business model.  They espouse leading-edge WOM ethics yet operate in a gray area.  WOM marketing is more than agent networks but because of the first two points, BzzAgent gets a great deal of press.

Last time I checked, BzzAgent was operating a .com site.  (Balter owns the .org as well).  So what incentive does the firm have to throttle their success in order for good of the industry?  They're certainly not dominant in WOM of Microsoft-like stature...yet.

It's strange yet entirely appropriate that this dirty laundry about WOM would be aired by WOM in a WOM channel.  My guess is that it'll just die on the grapevine and people will buzz about it in the industry, but there will be very little impact otherwise.  I'm sure most people have already deleted this post and moved on already.

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NYT and MSFT planning to help luddites bridge the gap

Microsoft and the New York Times have announced plans for a new technology that makes reading a newspaper online more like reading a newspaper offline.  Using features in Vista, The Times Reader will offer emulation such as "turning" pages and offline reading capability.

No more newsprint fingers - but at least the paper doesn't have a battery that will die on you.  And laptops make for expensive flyswatters or impromptu rain shields.  But maybe die hards who refuse to read news online will finally convert, while the rest of us move beyond RSS.  Personally, I'd like to see some sort of superaggregation go mainstream.

Subscriptions are currently anticipated to run more expensive than a regular print subscription.  It will be interesting to see how this changes access to nyt.com - which you can cache already.  The Times Reader will have to go beyond TimesSelect and offer more value.  This is a great opportunity for advertisers though and can spark a revival in print ads, especially if the offline/online buys can be integrated.

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Beer Ads Getting...Boring

I hope this isn't a harbinger for advertising creative.  The New York Times reports today that Miller's launching a new campaign called "Man Laws" that revolves around a bunch of macho guys sitting around...talking.

I wanted to check out the site, but got a strange "GSI_SHARED_HOSTING" error message.  Maybe someone in Missouri hated the new direction enough that they hacked in and crashed the site.  GSI's tagline?  An ironic "let's get it done right."  Perhaps this is a mission statement ala "we try harder."

If beer ads can't be funny and full of slapstick humor, then what can be?  As someone who watched a lot of television in the 70's and 80's, my head is full of old ad slogans and jingles.  I know Intel's four tones pitch perfect.  Same with the guy yelling "SEGA!"  The recent Pew report on life's major moments reminded me of the old General Foods International Coffee, "celebrate the moments of your life."

The last soundbite from a commercial that I remember catching the nation's attention was Bud's "Whassup."  I bet it's the same for you.  And these new commercials of a bunch of dudes sitting around a table, talking about things that you discussed with your friends years ago (like the  Coors "wingman" commercials) aren't going to leave a lasting impression when you're standing in the beverage aisle at the supermarket about to make a choice on which beer to grab.

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