The Refine+Focus Blog

• Social Graph: Concepts and Issues - ReadWriteWeb
  Brad Fitzpatrick recently wrote an elegant and important post about the Social Graph, a term used by Facebook to describe their social network. In his post, Fitzpatrick …
  (tags: “social facebook graph graph” media” network” privacy social socialmedia)

If you’re looking for an example of how to use social media to enhance your brand’s presence online, look no further than J & D’s Bacon Salt. The makers of this incredibly popular product have been able to successfully use social media in a way that fits in with their brand message, their company’s personality and their audience’s behavior.

Let’s start with their great website. The “Our Story” page introduces you to the company’s creators, Justin and Dave, and how Bacon Salt came about. The story is told in a friendly, off-the-cuff tone, and it is taken to an even more personal level with a YouTube video of one of the creator’s toddler, which that won them $5,000 on America’s Funniest Home Videos, an amount they refer to as their “first round of funding”.

Since their product is in the spice/condiment family, J & D’s Bacon Salt website smartly offers a recipes page, which are perfect for sharing but would be even better if each recipe had its own “share” button (although you can share the website with the bookmarking links at the bottom). The reviews page has another a YouTube video that shows a bunch of people, women and men, young and old  (and really young), professing their love of Bacon Salt. Plus, the merchandise page makes use of an e-commerce widget from Zazzle.

But although it does contain social media elements, the website is reserved for communicating their brand message and their company’s personality. So Justin and Dave created a blog to help document their quest to make “everything taste like bacon” and created a MySpace page and a Facebook group so they can interact with their customers more directly. Both are very active, with customers proclaiming their love for bacon and Bacon Salt, sharing ideas, videos, asking for recipes and more.

So follow Justin and Dave’s lead and find out how social media can work best to enhance your brand and messaging.

Yet another YouTube video has made its way into a television commercial, and quite effectively I might add. BMW popularized the trend with its use of a home video depicting two ecstatic children who just received what is apparently the greatest gift ever. The commercial got its point across, equating the pure joy of the children with the joy of BMW ownership. Now AIG, a financial services company, has released a new commercial of a  cute and very amusing laughing baby that was a hit on YouTube. “Laughter can add eight years to your life. So live longer, retire stronger. Never outlive your money,” the commercial proclaims. The commercial flows nicely and it’s hard to argue with a laughing baby, just ask anyone who has visited YouTube recently. Laughing babies have seemingly turned into a phenomenon. Simply enter “laughing baby” and an endless array of giggling infants appears. Or look at the numbers: as of this entry’s writing, 35,839,310 people have watched the most popular laughing baby clip entitled “Hahaha”. AIG certainly took notice of these numbers and capitalized on this popularity.

• Study: There’s Never Been So Much Media-Multitasking - Marketing Charts
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Everyone knows that finding good parking is a huge pain. You’re not paying attention to the road, you reduce your speed and increase traffic, you throw away  gas and increase pollution by circling the block 80 times, and, of course, its a gigantic waste of time.

Enter SpotScout, a web-based parking spot market place; an eBay for parking, if you will. Except it’s first come, first served and there’s no bidding involved. Basically, anyone who owns a spot or garage or is leaving a public spot can be a SpotCaster, selling a reservation for their owned spot or information of where they are parked and when they are leaving for a public spot. SpotScouts (people looking to park) can then buy this information online from their computers or mobile phones. The benefit to individuals and to parking garages is clear, but businesses can also gain by signing up as a searchable destination so visitors can have a better chance of finding parking nearby!

Armed with great features like user ratings, advanced search options, walking distance from spot to destination and PayPal payments, SpotScout is quickly gathering steam and is being talked about at The New York Times, the Boston Globe, NPR, the Today Show and many more. Head on over to SpotScout.com and let us know what you think.

We recently say the CEO of SpotScout speak at a Web Innovators meeting in Boston. He responded to a question from the audience that highlights one of the most talked about aspect of the new service: “How do you manage this in New York, a state whose laws strickly regulate the buying and selling of parking spaces.” He responded, “In the case of individuals selling street parking, we manage this because they actually aren’t selling parking—they are selling information.” It’s a clever concept. Let’s see if the cities and users will go for it!

It used to be that the journalism industry had relative monopoly on providing information. But now-a-days, millions of blogs and even sites like Wikipedia are taking over this service. When there are millions of sources available for getting your information, whether or not they are considered “accurate” and “reliable”, how can the journalism industry compete? This, of course, is a trend that can be observed in a number of other industries/institutions (TV, schools and universities), and it shows no signs of slowing down. BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow writes that “in a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007” blogs are ranking higher than the New York Times website, and Wikipedia beats both. Perhaps the answer can be found in Hugh McGuire’s article for the Huffigton post, where he suggests that these industries are having trouble in the digital age because they confuse what they do with what they are for. What do you think?

Hyplet.com
A very cool, simple app that lets you create embedable flyers and business cards to put on blogs, social networks, websites and emails. Via: TechCrunch

Best Internet Marketing Blog Posts of 2007 - Techipedia
A VERY extensive list of the best and timeless articles of 2007 about internet marketing, broken up into categories like specific social networks, blogging, content generation, etc.  Via: Greg Verdino

Using Social Media to Create Social Media Training
A wiki for social media training. Via: Social Media Marketing

This post is part 2 of The Interactive Media Mix Series. In the series we plan to go over the basics on each of the tools that marketers can use in interactive campaigns, such as microsites, banner ads, streaming audio, online video, mobile marketing, podcasts, email marketing, search engine marketing and social media.

Dear Interactive Marketers,

When banner ads (AKA display ads) were first introduced, they were hailed as one of the greatest advances in advertising, because unlike billboards or TV ads, they could interact with the audience AND their effectiveness could be measured by way of click-throughs with a great degree of accuracy. But then, the advent of flash animation created an unfortunate side effect: “hit the monkey”, “shoot the spaceship”, “trap the mouse”, and “the dancing baby” banners became too annoying and ubiquitous to be effective at all. And so, the banner ad fell from grace.

It finally appears that the age of the dancing baby is over. Today, studies are showing that various campaigns become more effective when display ads are added to the mix and new design technologies like rich media and video are allowing banner ads to become increasingly more interesting and useful

Lets hear from the experts:

• Tessa Wegert, from ClickZ says that banner ads allow marketers to visually imprint their image on the minds of consumers in a way other forms of online media don’t.
• Jason Fittipaldi, from iMedia thinks that expandable banners—which use a new technology that allows the banner to expand when the user rolls over them—are fresh, exciting, compelling, highly interactive and rewarding to the viewer, and they provide an effective foundation for viral marketing and brand extension.
• Lydia Estrada, also from iMedia, claims that the interactive space provides the capability to reach consumers on multiple levels (rational, emotional) and it is important to take advantage of that as often as possible.
• And finally, examples cited in both Media Post Publications, by David L. Smith, and in BusinessWeek, by David C. Churbuck, show that banner ads used in conjunction with other channels increase the overall effectiveness of the campaign.

So What?
Banner ads have made a comeback and have become the centerpiece of the interactive media mix. Used wisely, they can be helpful and entertaining for your customers and an entryway into your company or brand’s web presence.

Interested?

Internet Advertising Bureau UK - Display Ads

DoubleClick - Best Practices for Optimizing Web Advertising Effectiveness, May 2006 (Available for download)

BizReport - Europeans Click with Video Ads, Kristina Knight, May 2007

BizReport - Large Ad Formats Popular with European Marketers, Helen Leggat, May 2007

Media Post Publications - TV and Web, Working Together, David L. Smith, Aug. 2007

BusinessWeek - Google and the Rebirth of Banner Ads, David C. Churbuck, April 2007

ClickZ - Do you buy Banners? Tessa Wegert, Nov. 2006

ClickZ - Interactivity with a Mission, Tessa Wegert, July 2006

iMedia - The Seven Principles of Effective Online Ads, Lydia Estrada, Sept. 2005

iMedia - Three Ways to Improve Banner Ads, Jamie Roche, Nov. 2006

iMedia - 5 Targeting Success Stories, Robert Moskowitz, Oct. 2006

ClickZ - Making Video Advertising Accountable to Consumers, Jeremy Lockhorn, Sept. 2006

iMedia - Extreme Makeover: Banner ads Redux, Jayson Fittipaldi, April 2007

BusinessWeek - Levi’s Fits its Ads to the Web, Steve Rosenbush Oct. 2006

iMedia - How better display ad targeting is changing internet advertising, Tim Brown, Aug. 2007

Marketwire - Marketers can Buy Blog “Buzz”, Nielsen Reports, July 2007

Yukonbiz (blog), Do banner ads still work? Geoff Harries, Oct. 2006

GigaOM (blog), Why Google bought DoubleClick, Om Malik, April 2007

ClickZ - Mobile advertising goes graphic, Rebecca Lieb, Jan. 2007

WJS.com - Brand Marketers Return to the Web, David Kesmodel, May 2006

And here are a couple of examples of great video banners

The Google/Saturn banner video

A “Get a Mac” campaign banner

(knife image: ©iStockphoto.com/s_white, Levi’s banner ad courtesy of Avenue A | Razorfish. See all of them here.)

This post is part 1 of The Interactive Media Mix Series. In the series we plan to go over the basics on each of the tools that marketers can use in interactive campaigns, such as microsites, banner ads, streaming audio, online video, mobile marketing, podcasts, email marketing, search engine marketing and social media.

Dear Marketers,

If you want to launch a specialized campaign for a company or brand or a new product, centered on an idea that is set apart from the overall brand, a microsite is one of the most interesting and compelling ways to do so.

One way to use microsites is to do what Coke has done. In addition to its regular site, Coca-Cola also has specialized microsites for specific products, such as the new Coke Zero. Since Coke Zero has its own concept and campaign that is separate from the broader Coca-Cola brand concept, its microsite allows audiences to further connect with the campaign by maintaining the same look and feel, and featuring games and activities related to the campaign.

But microsites are also often used to support a new campaign for a brand. Burger King found a fresh way to communicate its traditional slogan, “Have it your way”, by creating a microsite called “Subservient Chicken”, (credited with launching the microsite concept), where visitors could type in commands for the person in the chicken outfit to perform on the screen.

Well-executed microsites such as the BK’s “Subservient Chicken”, OfficeMax’s “Elf Yourself” (only available during the holidays) or Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” (with online videos such as Evolution) often also serve a double function, since they are excellent viral marketing assets. Entertaining, innovative or exciting microsites will be shared and forwarded millions of times.

So what?
Microsites are an excellent way to engage your audience with a new product or campaign online and does double duty with potential viral success.

Interested?

Microsite.com – The history of microsites

iMedia Connection - Go Micro for Macro Results

ClickZ - Microsites and SEM: A Proof of Concept

iMedia connection - Offline-Online Unity

Marketing Sherpa case study - How Microsite & Video Lift Consumer Leads 13.54% for Home Builder

And for more examples of microsites check out:

The Weather Channel - article and review
Land Rover - review
Toyota (autoshow) - article
Audi A3 - review
National Geographic – Inside the Mafia - review
Reebok – RBK Pump - review
Verizon Broadband - review
Cartoon Network - review
Warner Home Video – “Kiss Kiss, Bang Band” DVD release – review
Lexus 2007 ES – review
MINI Canada – review
Twentieth Century Fox Corp. “24” – review
Mountain Dew – review
Reebok - G xt II – review
Sony Electronics - Mobile DVD Dream System – article

Integrated Interactive Campaigns with Microsites:

Arctic Cat - Mediums: TV spot, microsite
KFC - Mediums: TV spot, microsite
Old Spice - Mediums: TV spot, microsite
Range Rover - Mediums: TV spot, microsite
Fox Atomic – “Turistas” - Mediums: MySpace, YouTube, blogs and microsite - Review
The Simpsons Movie - Mediums: MySpace, Flickr, Xbox contest, JetBlue Contest, merchandise, be in an animated episode promotion, 7-11 to Kwik-E-Mart makeovers, Vans custom shoes - Review (blog post)

UPDATE: Check out this presentation for an overview on microsites and some great case studies!

(knife image: ©iStockphoto.com/s_white)