Urban Spam – The Movie

PSFK has put together a cool movie on Urban Spam , aka Guerrilla Marketing. Quite a lot of stuff I have seen aroung the blog(s) in the last year or so, but also a lot of stuff was new and fascinating. (And of course, some stuff was just too obvious or boring…)

YouTube – Serving 100 Million Videos a Day

… or more than 2.5 billion in just one month, writes ExperienceCurve. That is 60% of all videos watched online – and that’s a pretty large figure, considering most people don’t even know YouTube yet or watch online videos at all, for that matter.
At the same time, Nielsen states that TV Networks count 20 million viewers at any one time, which are their lowest ratings in recorded history.

Two large numbers, that deserve to be mentioned in one post as if to draw comparative conclusions. Yet, they shouldn’t be directly compared. Online Video still only consists of short clips, mostly user generated, the networks (at least in Germany) show professional content, movies, sports, etc. The interest of users is different for each medium and even though growth rates online soar, there is a limit to how much user generated content I can stand per day/hour/minute. And I doubt that’s much different for most people.

Strategy as the new commodity

Umair hast an interesting Post about how strategy is in danger of becoming the new commodity (in his opinion), and the fact that creativity will be the next thing to add true value:

In a world where strategy is a commodity, creativity becomes the vital factor from which value flows. When everyone can think strategically about everything, the locus of value creation shifts from out-thinking everyone to out-creating them.

I don’t full agree. True, strategy is a lot about analysis and in that respect it is a commodity, in the same sense that information itself is becoming a commodity. But strategy is also about what you do with that information and analysis. And when you think about it: that is, in effect, creativity. Shaping the future, going new ways.

Everything else is just management, as one of the commentators wrote:

strategy is a subset of creativity – it is management that is the commodity and it is management that is no longer adding value.

Mobile Marketing in Print Magazines

Lucky Magazine Introduces Mobile Marketing Program.

Readers just have to text a message to the magazine to purchase goods advertised within this magazine. The whole system uses PayPal’s Mobile Text2Buy technology.

Nice idea, since the mobile phone is something you always carry with you. As opposed to the internet, a mobile connection is really always present.
The market is apparently not very big yet (and won’t be for quite some time in Germany, I am sure), but is expected to grow quickly in the next ouple of years.

Sofar, however:

most marketers will remain on the sidelines until there is substantial positive buzz and some sort of tipping point in the mobile marketing arena is reached

(via)

Interactive Baseball Reality Show

Apparently, MSN is launching an Interactive Baseball Reality Show as clickz writes.

The team for this „Fan Club“ will be the Schaumberg Flyers:

„Fan Club“ content will consist largely of short-form video. Background information on the team, the Illinois-based Schaumberg Flyers, will populate the site upon its launch. Along the way, users will be able to select the team roster, determine batting order and choose pitchers. They’ll also be able to make decisions on roommate assignments and player trades. Whatever they collectively decide will be implemented, and they’ll then be able to watch the results via short-form video and text narrative.

Apart from the new kind of customer engagement and storytelling, this will be a particularly interesting experiment with the Wisdom of the crowds. If the majority of the fans can vote on player trades, batting order, etc. they should (according to that theory) perform better than the average coach, possibly even better than the best coach.