Linktip: the worst social media campaigns of 2007

Over at the One Degree blog, there is a coverage of a panel from the SXSW interactive festival, during which the panelists were asked to vote on the worst social media campaigns in 2007. Amongst the panelists were bloggers like Jeff Jarvis and Steve Hall. I have to admit, I didn’t hear about all of these campaigns, but some of the bigger blunders (Walmart, Coke/Mentos and Sony) I did hear about, of course. I wonder what will be next for this year? You would assume, that (we) marketers learn…

Coke „bubbles“ widget for joost

Sofar, advertising on joost has only been in the form of short ads at the beginning or end of clips. Sort of like the traditional ad model.

Now we have the first attempt at actually providing added value through a marketing tactic. In this case, a widet:

On Thursday, Joost announced that Coca-Cola’s European division has created the first „commercial widget“ for the software. Called „Coke Bubbles,“ the downloadable advertising widget lets you choose a clip on Joost and then send it to fellow Joost users, appended with a note in the form of a „bubble.“

You can download it at „Coke Bubbles„. While I am unsure about whether this is a really clever idea, I do support the fact that Coke does not just run ads in the clips, but does try to provide added value. It’s a first step in the right direction.

A lot of marketing efforts will have to provide a clear added value in the future. Either through real product information at the points where consumers are seeking information. Or, alternatively, if consumers are not seeking product information, brands can help to provide plattforms, contents or tools for entertainment or networking – two of the other main things people seek out in digital media these days.

Machinima clips of brands in computer games

Just finished the blogpost about Toyota and Burger King, when I found a post at the „off the record“ blog listing video clips of brands filmed in World of Warcraft, Second Life and GTA (so called machinima):

Toyota in World of Warcraft

Coke in World of Warcraft

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOSrapbPrzU

Coke in Secondlife

Coke in GTA:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfhZfSVuup4

Thanks for the tip!

Links & News, 29.04.07

I guess April was one of the most unproductive months in the history of this blog, with the holidays and the nice weather outside…

Here is a quick catch up on a few headlines that I found after looking into my feedreader for the first time in weeks:

Being a blog addict is not what I have been the last couple of weeks. Here is a list of symptons that you should watch out for.

I got an invitation for joost some time ago and have been checking that out. I was fascinated by the quality of the „free“ IP TV but now I read at Startup Meme that they will indeed integrate ads – even the classical 30″ spot. In addition, they track my viewing behaviour:

Joost will also be creating behavioral profiles of the users based on the viewing habits, likes and dislikes, to serve hyper targeted ads.

Adverblog pointed me to this nice idea for an „interactive“ outdoor ad by Grolsch beer.

eMarketer refers to a study be marketing sherpa about effectiveness of viral marketing tools. Apparently „experienced“ marketers think highly of these things.

At the same time, YouTube is experimenting with pre- and post roll spots in order to find out how and where to best place ads amongst the clips.

Coke has started a virtual promotion with the guys at Crayon, as you can read at Experience Curve. It’s called virtual thirst – since you don’t really drink anything in Second Life, the idea of being „thirsty“ got extended to thirst for fun, experiences, knowledge, etc. They now call for people to enter their virtual Coke machine that delivers against whichever of these „thirsts“.

Anyway, so much for now, I will continue later, once I am through the rest of the feeds.