3 Days and counting until Justin Timberlake brings his FUTURESEX/LOVESHOW to HBO. eROI teamed up with HBO and integrated a solid design into our favorite social media video platform, KickApps, to produce the site – www.futuresexlove.com. Take particular notice of the uploaded videos of JT’s biggest fans or the cool widget that I also show below – put the widget on your own blog when you get a chance.
If you check out the site, you’ll notice that the most viewed video is my friend Anna. She is Polish and she is Freaky as you can see below.
A dude on the internet referred to Navy Fire Controlman 2nd Class Petty Officer Russell Tavares as “a nerd” in an online trollfight. In one of the more dramatic tales of internet rage we’ve seen lately, the 27-year-old Tavares, who believed himself to not be a nerd, hopped in his car and sped off 1,300 miles from Virginia to Texas, where the name-caller lived.
Tavares photographed road snapshots along his route, and posted the images online, as if to prove to his internet peers that he was not a luzer. When he got to there, he burned the dude’s trailer down. Tavares has been sentenced to 7 years in prison for arson. Snip:
The feud started when Anderson, who runs a haunted house near Waco, joined a picture-sharing Web site and posted his artwork and political views. After he blocked some people from his page because of insults and foul language, they retaliated by making obscene digitally altered pictures of him, he said.
Anderson, who went by the screen name “Johnny Darkness,” traded barbs with Tavares, aka “PyroDice.” Investigators say Tavares boiled over when Anderson called him a nerd and posted a digitally altered photo making Tavares look like a skinny boy in high-water pants, holding a gun and a laptop under a “Revenge of the Nerds” sign.
In my previous blog post, I reflected on my talk in New Orleans at the annual conference for the IABC on the importance of blogging and social networking. The following day after the speaking engagement, I flew back to spend a couple days with my parents and extended family on a quick vacation. I was telling my Dad about how well the whole event went and some of the key points I made in my speech.
One main point is the notion that: Customers Own Your Brand, NOT YOU (the marketer). The case study I showed was Kettle Foods People’s Choice Awards where the company allowed its customers to name the next flavor of potato chips (Doritos is now copying this campaign 2.5 years later). My Dad understood my point that customers have a huge influence on your brand, but vehemently denied that customers truly owned any consumer brands that were near and dear to their hearts. Those brands controlled their own strategic decisions and at the end of the day, legally and financially owned their own organizations.
Of all the people in the world that I hate to admit he may be right, it’s my Dad (I respect him so much that I’d rather the roles were reversed with me giving the counter-point to his argument). But, the truth is – I need to choose more specific words that don’t exagerate the concept that Customers Must Co-Create Your Brand with You (instead of being talked at).
If you’re trying to get your head around terms like search engine marketing, blogosphere, podcasting, RSS and social media, this is the session for you. This presentation will provide an overview of effective e-marketing strategies and tactics as well as case studies and helpful resources you can use to develop and implement your own e-marketing program.
In this session, you will learn:
The definition and proper applications of e-marketing
Effective e-marketing strategies and tactics
How do develop your own e-marketing program
There were roughly 1,100 people at the overall event and 250-ish at our session. There was a lot of great dialogue between us (the speakers) and the audience on the importance of the blogosphere and social networking. Search marketing and email marketing were known entities as must-haves in any marketing mix.
The debate around whether or not a blog is worth the effort reminded me of a worldwide Intel conference for employees 10 years ago when then Intel CEO Andy Grove said that every company would be a “web company” (meaning every company would have a website) within 5 years. Guess what – he was right. I think the same thing will happen with corporate blogs in the next 5 years. It is not a question of “if” – it’s a question of when your company will support the 1 hour per week required for maintaining a good blog.
Here is our presentation if you didn’t get a chance to see it at the event: (the file is a bit big, so I need to upload it to the server when I talk to my tech guys at the office – sorry about that).
I admit it… I’m what they call a lurker. I spend countless hours reading industry blogs and articles. I have more rss feeds than I could read in a lifetime and as the Creative Director of eROI, I build websites on a daily basis that rely on user-generated content. So the question is: Why is this my first blog entry?
Apparently I’m not alone. A recent study published by Forrester Research showed that many people my age (I just turned 30) fall into the lurker category. For those that don’t know the term, a lurker is someone who reads content on the web without participating or adding content themselves. Based on this study, the majority of the creators and participants online fall within the 15-20 year old range. This isn’t a huge surprise based on the success of sites like youtube and myspace, but what does this mean for the future of the web? With this level of adoption and acceptance of social media will virtual environments like Second Life really become a part of our culture? Will adults really interact within one another as if they are in a video game. I don’t think it’s so far fetched to think so.
I recently got an offer from an advertiser to pay for blog ads on this Blog. Here is the email I received:
“Hi,
I’m interested in buying an ad on (http://www.emaildays.com/ ) for a company who offers business email hosting. My budget is about $35. I know you probably don’t do this a lot but I’d love to discuss it further if you’re interested. Let me know what you think. Thanks so much.”
OK – I know it is only $35, but it really got me asking a whole lot of questions:
1) What is the purpose of EmailDays.com?
2) Since the interactive world is in the advertising community in a larger sense, shouldn’t I engage this prospective advertiser to learn more about how blog ads work from a practical standpoint?
3) Since I’m in the advertising community and see so much advertising, isn’t it refreshing to have a blog (and read other blogs) that do NOT have advertising on them?
4) What would be my price that I’d start to entertain the blog ad discussion a lot quicker – $350, $3500?
What would your price be? What are your thoughts on blog ads? Please comment and continue the dialog!
Well this site moved in at the speed of light and brought us into a new tech platform from KickApps in NYC. These guys let us use the back end of their system to build out a custom User Generated Content/Social Video site for Widmer Brewing. The video and design from Sasquatch Advertising who is their agency of record. (We just got to chop it up, style the design elements and mess with endless code that we had never seen) It was a fun project to work on and a good learning curve for a new project which rolled in last Thursday from HBO/Cinemax for a new series show that starts June 1st. (Yeah that gives about 3 weeks to knock it out of the park) Can’t tell you much more than that now, but it is going to be saucy and use social video and user generated content. (And has to do with Las Vegas, beautiful people and steamy plotlines.)
I would love for you to take a look at the LemonYourWidmer site as the videos we loaded it with to start it off sure are a lot of fun. AND believe it or not 100% legitimate. After you see the golf chip shot (which took only 10 takes) you will know what I am talking about. If you have an idea of how to Lemon your Widmer, shoot it and load it up.
And of course it uses emailROI to power the front page Send to a Friend functions with a custom HMTL email template.
If you think of eROI as just an email ESP, you are missing the other 40% of our business: campaign sites, blogs, DM PIN campaigns, corporate sites, Web 2.0 application builds and advergames.
The theme of this year’s Innotech eMarketing Summit really hammered on Social Networking and Web 2.0 sites. While this seems to be over-played in the media, the content and speakers in this 2-day event of back-to-back seminars was truly AWESOME.
From brand new upstart Citizen Agency, I learned a dozen new social networking sites that I’d never heard of before that were incredibly niche, but fascinating. They drove home key points about building community online throughout their presentation such as: “these are my peops,” “they talk my language,” “they get me,” and build off of one another’s conversations. Sites I hadn’t heard about:
Dogster.com
Catster.com
Intuit JackRabbit community site
VIRB.com
Last.fm
BarCamp.org
Ma.gnolia
BareNakedApp
Also, you should know about some amazing Web 2.0 companies in our backyard in Portland:
Jive Software
Platial
Values of N
JanRain
MatchPoint
Part of me is distressed by this news and part of me is happy. Why? Because I’m eROI’s Emerging Technologies Manager; guess what I do! According to this survey, 90% of 4000 people state their leading activity on the internet is sending and receiving email. Booooooooring (shhh don’t tell my boss I said that)!!
While eROI is firmly embedded as a leader in the email marketing industry, I’m on the lookout for next thing, and enjoying every minute of it. And in the spirit of being completely honest, everything I am loving right now will probably never be as useful as email -or- maybe it’s just too similar to notice.
Our lead programmer, Tore Gustafson, is going to talk about the challenges of building this site from scratch from a programming (not design) perspective:
Social networking sites at their core are really a collection of a lot of common and architecturally simple applications. What is a blog from a development standpoint? Really it’s just a few database columns including things like a date, an article and a title. Then all you need is the application framework to edit and display that information. A social networking site takes applications like a blog, like email, like adding a person to your personal network and builds a cohesive framework for all the pieces to play together.
Building matchpointcorp.com from scratch, however, is by no means a small task. Mapping the database architecture for a site that offers so many different capabilities was probably the most time-consuming task, not to mention building interfaces for both delivering content to the end user as well as an administration portal for Matchpoint managers to administer their users, companies and service provider and ultimately connect them.
Probably the most enjoyable aspect of developing sites like this is getting cool flash-like (and much more) effects working with plain old javascript. Javascript frameworks like prototype and the ensuing add-ons like mootools have made javascript not only more consistent across browsers, but actually fun to code in. If your a developer and still ignoring javascript, grab a copy of prototype and dig in!
The only strand of relevance of the movie “300″ and online marketing is the advanced motion Graphics applied in the movie are finding their way quickly into the videogame, advergame, and web worlds. Also, I saw it with a co-worker in Hollywood, CA at the Online Marketing Media and Advertising 2007 event. And, I couldn’t stop thinking about it the whole show. I am in awe of my Spartan ancestors (my family traces its roots to Scotland, but I’ve got to believe that a noble Spartan entered the family tree somewhere).
But, the real reason why I’m blogging about the movie “300″ is the sheer primal force that seared into my soul after watching it. I’m sharpening my wood spear in my office right now so that I can go into the wild and kill the evil, dark wolf that lies within. Sparta!
Web 2.0 companies are springing up all over the place. I know most of you are thinking that this is just like the Dot Com rush of 1999, but it’s different because many of these business models are sound and social networking / user-generated content works (given the right implementation of it).
One company (Matchpoint) in our backyard came to us 6 months ago with an amazing concept – connect professional parents, highly-skilled and intelligent parents who are getting back into the workforce, with each other and ultimately to flexible, contract jobs. It has some elements to LinkedIn, but it is far more visually appealing, niche, and a hybrid full-service revenue model of having real regional managers place professionals in these jobs. Create your own profile on Matchpointcorp.com!
In Seattle, venture capital reporter John Cook, documents the top 100 Web 2.0 companies in the city alone. Here are the top 5:
Atomic Moguls: Next generation fantasy games. (New entry)
Former Crispin Porter + Bogusky execs just wrote a book called “Punk Marketing.” To be honest, I’m intrigued enough to buy it on Amazon and learn something from them, but it’s a tall order to out-punk an industry full of us punks in the marketing and advertising industry.
Here’s the article that got me interested:
“Rebels with a Marketing Cause”
The authors of the new book Punk Marketing talk about the emergence of advertising that rejects tradition and embraces edgy attitude
by Reena Jana
Punk-rock impresario and Sex Pistols producer Malcolm McLaren once said, “Punk was just a way to sell trousers.” The quote appears, appropriately, in a new book, Punk Marketing, by Richard Laermer, chief executive of public-relations firm RLM PR, and Mark Simmons, a marketing consultant and former executive at hot ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky.
The duo defines punk as “an attitude of rebellion against tradition” and the genre of punk marketing as “a new form of marketing that rejects the status quo and recognizes the shift in power from corporations to consumers.” They apply the term to any type of ad or marketing campaign that defies traditional tactics–think consumer-generated ads that spread via YouTube or guerrilla-marketing stunts such as the Cartoon Network’s controversial electronic displays that were mistaken for bombs by Boston residents last month (See BusinessWeek.com, 02/09/2007, “Guerrilla Marketing Gone Wild”). The book, which is perhaps not as rebellious as the snappy title suggests, is best seen as a neatly organized time capsule of late-2000s marketing and ad strategies.”
When I see a good viral marketing campaign, especially from a major brand like P&G, I have a hard time NOT telling people about it. It’s only good etiquette in the online world to at least tell your closest friends and family (if it’s clean enough). The crazy thing about this viral campaign is that it got 13 million visitors and I wasn’t one of them until I was recently asked by iMediaConnection to write a Creative Review. So here it is:
I’m shocked. Procter & Gamble actually takes a risk with their “Men with Cramps” online viral campaign site. And, it’s really engaging and funny on top of it all. Another shocker– there have been 13 million visitors to this site since it launched in September, but a P&G emarketing exec and I didn’t know about it when asked about viral campaigns at a panel event at the Email Insiders Summit in Utah two weeks ago. At that event, I asked him “a lot of the campaigns you showed are good but safe, what is P&G doing to compete with the caliber of viral sites like favorite Philips’ ShaveEverywhere site?” His response was that P&G has taken risks before with viral sites targeted in Europe, but plays it safe in the U.S.
Normally, I don’t mention anything in one of our press releases, but this was a recap to 2006 and I’m feeling a bit philosophical from a business perspective. If things go well for us this year (’07), we will grow smart and build employee evangelists and customer evangelists. Halleluiah! (I’m not religious, but I couldn’t avoid it with all the evangelist talk). There’s a lot more to it then that, but let’s start the discussion there. I hope to gain a lot of insight from other creative agency owners in an Agency Owner Roundtable (among Portland agency owners) discussion that begins tonight and hopefully will continue to happen every couple months.
Our Press Release: eROI Delivers Strong Finish to 2006 with 61% Revenue Growth; Adds Over 150 New Clients and Expands Management Team
PORTLAND, Ore. (January 22, 2007) eROI, Inc., a full-service e-marketing company, today announced that the company continued its pattern of profitability, recording its fourth consecutive profitable year as a 4-year old company. In 2006, the company grew their revenue 61%, making 2006 their strongest year. Last year, the company brought on over 150 new clients, including The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business, Montinore Vineyards, Annie’s Natural Foods and Digimarc Corporation. Furthermore, eROI grew to 32 team members and expanded its management team through well-deserved promotions.
eROI’s positive growth continues partly because of its consistent high quality of service and distinctive creative approach to online marketing. Additionally, the strong momentum is fueled by an increase in the demand for email marketing, e-commerce functionality, and social media tools and platforms. New and current clients such as retailer Dunderdon, gamer Konami and foodie Kettle Foods are realizing the value of direct consumer feedback that social media tools provide. “We’ve helped implement some very successful online viral marketing campaigns for clients by using customized versions of available social media tools. Social media allows organizations to build online communities of loyal brand evangelists,” said Maureen Pimley, recently promoted Vice President of Client Services. “These tools are key to tapping into a much larger audience of interested prospective customers.”
VIV Blows It Out With Animated Gifs - We have all been jawing about the use of animated gifs in emails over the past 8 months and I love that we are starting to see them being used more and more when they make sense. Now not only to they really make an email work well, drive deeper engagement, and even make us [...]
I am excited to join a great panel for an upcoming Software Association of Oregon event called 
