Superhype

Amnesia Razorfish builds its brand by doing

In January, my Razorfish colleagues Garrick Schmitt and Malia Supe wrote an insightful blog post, “Brands Do.”  They asserted that in the era of consumer participation, brands must spend more time doing things than saying things.  Amnesia Razorfish (part of the Razorfish global network) just provided an example of the “Brands Do” ethos.

For three consecutive years, Amnesia Razorfish has won the Adnews interactive agency of the year award, and its embrace of Social Influence Marketing is one of the reasons.  Amnesia Razorfish doesn’t tell the world, “We understand social!”  The agency shows everyone through its actions.

For instance, on June 30, Iain McDonald, an Amnesia Razorfish founder, conducted an experiment to test the power of Twitter.  He publicly challenged Coke and Pepsi to say hello to each other on Twitter and then asked others to retweet his challenge — no small task given the rivalry between the two brands:

But within hours, Coke gave Pepsi a hello on Twitter and even started to follow Pepsi:

Not long thereafter, Pepsi responded in kind:

It’s not the first time rivals have said hello on Twitter.  Yahoo famously welcomed Google to Twitter.  What’s different about the Coke/Pepsi story is how Iain collaborated with the Twitter universe to inspire the two brands to play nice — a real application of one of today’s hottest buzzwords, crowd-sourcing.

The experiment worked because the idea was irresistible and because Iain leveraged the many influential followers he has built on Twitter.  Those followers, in turn, influenced their followers.  The story has generated attention in publications like Advertising Age and Brand Republic — a boon for the Amnesia Razorfish brand attributable to Iain’s actions as opposed to anything he overtly said about Amnesia Razorfish.  For those of us trying to live the social values, Amnesia Razorfish offers a lesson in building a brand through action.

Tags: Amnesia Razorfish, Coke, Pepsi, Razorfish, Social Influence Marketing, social media, Twitter

Posted in Agencies, Digital, Marketing | No Comments »

Mercedes-Benz USA creates luxury online

In earlier blog posts, I’ve discussed how Razorfish clients like Intel, Mattel, and MillerCoors are making bold product launches amid the recession.  All along, Mercedes-Benz USA has been doing just that.

Case in point: as announced recently, MBUSA has launched the 2010 E-Class automobile with the support of a major online/offline marketing effort managed by Merkley & Partners and my employer Razorfish.  In doing so, MBUSA has stayed true to its brand and avoided the temptation to compete on price during down times.

As Steve Cannon, vice president of marketing for MBUSA, told The New York Times, “I’d rather tell our brand story, our innovation story, our value story, than join the chorus of everyone else that’s screaming ’sale’ — that’s about the only message that’s out there right now.”

And the entire marketing campaign, “Everything We Know, Everything We Are: This Is Mercedes-Benz,” reflects the Mercedes-Benz reputation for innovation and a first-class automotive experience.

The digital experience shows you what MBUSA has in mind rather than hit you over the head with the message.  For instance, the online advertising uses cool CGI-enhanced videos including 3-D homepage takeovers of nytimes.com and wsj.com.  Normally we associate CGI with the innovative minds of Pixar.  By employing CGI in its advertising, MBUSA ups the ante for state-of-the-art digital advertising.  (Also demonstrating innovation, MBUSA and Razorfish employ the new Online Publishers Association standards for the ads).

As reported in ClickZ, the ads expand into super-sized web pages with an E-Class coupe bursting out of a 3-D version of The New York Times front page, backlit by a city under a night sky.  You can also rotate the car for a better look.

I like what Razorfish Client Partner Pat Frend told ClickZ “We used CGI to create those compelling environments to tell about those features in ways that are easy for users to understand, and in ways that are also beautiful.”

MBUSA understands that making luxury auto features easy to understand is not the same as dumbing down a product for consumers.  Rather, the technology actually increases the wow factor and draws the consumer into the world of MBUSA.

Razorfish also helped MBUSA create a special E-Class section of the MBUSA website, which also features CGI-enhanced videos.  And in another nod to innovation, MBUSA is using mobile web applications to target consumers using devices such as iPhones.  You can also view the E-Class autos on YouTube.

The online ads launched July 1.  Check them out and let me know what you think of them.

Tags: Mercedes-Benz, New York Times, OPA, Razorfish

Posted in Agencies, Design, Digital, Marketing | No Comments »

Post Cereals: a fresh approach to corporate giving

According to McKinsey Quarterly, corporations are responding to consumers’ growing expectations to make corporate philanthropy a higher priority.  Post Cereals recently demonstrated an innovative approach to giving.

On June 29, Pebbles, a Post Cereals brand, announced that my employer Razorfish has helped launch PebPals, a philanthropic campaign that supports Australia Zoo Wildlife Worldwide — USA.  Australia Zoo Wildlife is a charity founded by the late Steve Irwin and his wife, Terri.  As part of an integrated offline/online effort created with the assistance of Razorfish, four million packages of Post’s Pebbles carry promotional “PebPals” trading cards.  The cards challenge kids to “adopt” PebPals characters on a children’s game site that Razorfish designed awhile back, Postopia.  Kids can bring these characters to life, play games, and earn points.  They can use the points to vote for how Post should spend a large donation that Post has aside for a number of animal conservation projects.

I think the PebPals story is interesting because a major brand is empowering kids to play an active role in animal conservation, and it’s an example of a creative approach to philanthropy.  You can read the announcement here and coverage from Brandweek.

Tags: PebPals, Post Cereals, Razorfish

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Why we need Michael Jackson

If the elections in Iran have brought out the best in Twitter, Michael Jackson has brought out the worst.  His death June 25 unleashed a torrent of morbid celebrity gawking that brought Twitter to its knees.  (Ironically his death will also give him a bigger career boost than anything he had accomplished artistically in recent years.)  So what are we to make of his legacy?

Michael Jackson shaped the 1980s as we remember the decade, culturally speaking.  His landmark recording Thriller shattered the racial divide.  He and Madonna were to MTV what Michael Jordan was to ESPN: catalysts to an important phenomenon.  He was also a humanitarian who used his fame to raise awareness for HIV/AIDS research and charities.

But he was also a deeply troubled soul.  At first we tolerated his eccentricities, such as his fondness for plastic surgery and a chimpanzee named Bubbles.  But in 1993, after he was accused of child sexual abuse, his reputation was tarnished.  (It didn’t help that his sister La Toya accused him of being a pedophile.)  Although he was never criminally charged, in the court of public opinion, he was guilty.  Eventually he settled a civil complaint against the family that accused him.  Then in 2003, he expressed a fondness for having young boys share his bed, which led to more charges of child sexual abuse.  Again he was acquitted, but his reputation received another blow partly because of his own public statements.

Is it possible to divorce Michael Jackson the entertainer from the Michael Jackson the person?  Is it OK to accept the gifts of people we also ridicule, fear, and loathe?  Roman Polanski gave us Chinatown and The Pianist yet he remains a fugitive from the United States after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor in 1977.  O.J. Simpson and Phil Spector were brilliant artists in their chosen fields, and both men are in jail.

In fact, we need these tragic figures and villains to remind us that people who do great things are capable of doing very bad things, too.   We not only allow ourselves to accept the contradiction between Michael Jackson’s life and his art, we need to do so.  We need to be reminded that he was a flawed human being, like we are

Tags: Madonna, Michael Jackson, O.J. Simpson, Phil Spector, Roman Polanksi

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Redbox delivers a social experience

If you haven’t heard of Redbox, you will soon.

Redbox rents DVDs for $1 a day through more than 15,000 vending machines.  As reported by the Associated Press recently, Redbox is fast emerging as a rival to Netflix.  I’ve rented from Redbox several times and agree with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, who said that movie rental kiosks will likely be the Number 1 competitor to Netflix, according to the AP.  And why is that?

• Redbox is convenient.  The vending machines are often found near the entrances of supermarkets and drug stores.  It’s easy to combine a DVD rental with a quick trip to pick up some soda pop and chips.  But Redbox is also banking on the impulse renter. It’s just too darned easy to pick up a DVD on the way out of the store similar to scooping up a magazine or candy bar at the check-out lane.  The concept is brilliant.

• Redbox is simple.  The pricing terms are easy: you rent movies for $1 dollar a night.  There are no complicated, multi-tiered pricing systems to understand.  And the movie rental categories are simple. You don’t encounter the dizzying array of specialty categories found at movie rental stores, like Family Favorites, Hollywood Favorites, Movies about Psychotics, Just Fallen off the Top 10, Classics for Kids, Classics for Teens, Romances Pre-1950, and so on.  Redbox has to keep the choices simple.  You don’t have a lot of time to ponder your options on your way out to the car with a gallon of cold milk in your shopping cart.

• Redbox is social.  I don’t even think Redbox knows this yet.  But renting and returning DVDs is a social experience at Redbox vending machines.   I’m amazed at how many times strangers walk up to each other at a Redbox and seek out each other’s movie opinions or swap informal movie talk. (”You returning Revolutionary Road?  What did you think?”) Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised given that Redboxes are located in places where people congregate.

In the digital world, peer reviews of movies happen all the time.  Capturing that dynamic in the offline world is trickier.  Even still, I  would not be surprised if Redbox figures out how to capitalize on the surprisingly social aspect of renting movies from a vending machine.  It’s not difficult to imagine what would happen if you could find Redboxes near restaurants and bars, for example.

Redbox has its flaws.  The downside of a simple inventory is a limited inventory.  You still have to leave your house to return movies, and it’s possible for the vending machines to malfunction.  But until Netflix can figure out how to deliver movies on demand to your television set, Redbox is a fun, social alternative.

if you’ve tried Redbox, let me know what you think of it.

Tags: Netflix, Redbox

Posted in Marketing | 4 Comments »

Zappos, Shaq, Whole Foods, Twitter, and you

On June 15 I was privileged to be a speaker at the O’Reilly Twitter Boot Camp (#OTBC) along with luminaries such as Tony Hsieh, Steve Rubel, Tim O’Reilly and Eric T. Peterson.  The purpose of the event was to swap insights on employing Twitter for business use.  Topics ranged from measuring Twitter’s value to integrating Twitter into a marketing and PR program.  Here are some ideas that resonated for me:

• Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, described Zappos’s employee Twitter policy this way: “Just be real and use your best judgment.”  Incidentally, Tony also dangled the possibility that 20 years from now, Zappos could diversify into more businesses — even airlines — because Zappos is about obsessive customer service, not just shoes and other consumer goods.

• Eric T. Peterson and Mike Volpe covered Twitter measurement tools. Mike shared the HubSpot Twitter Grader, which you can use to measure your reach in the Twitter universe.  Eric shared the Twitalyzer for assessing your Twitter influence.  These tools are easy to use.  Check them out.  Eric T. Peterson: “Measure your return on influence, not your ROI.”

• Amy Martin gave a peek inside the world of Shaquille O’Neal’s justly famous the_real_shaq Twitter account, which has 1.3 million followers (Amy herself has nearly 500,000 followers).  If you enjoy following Shaq on Twitter, thank Amy — she got him to do it.  And how hard was it?  Getting started was not that difficult, as it turns out.  Amy just needed to get Shaq plugged into Twitter and set him loose.  He quickly gathered a following because of his authenticity. (Amy: “Shaq has zero ability to fake anything.  He’s transparent and genuine.”)  After a few months, Amy collaborated with Shaq on an idea: what if he used Twitter to give the world more than his ideas and random observations?  The result: “random acts of Shaqness,” in which Shaq uses Twitter to do good deeds for fans such as offering free tickets to basketball games.   At a time when celebrities are carefully protected from the public, the concept is quite stunning, actually. If you’re lucky enough to catch the right tweet from Shaq at the right time, you stand a good chance of meeting him at, say, a food court, where you can pick up a free ticket.  We can learn a lot from this example.  Per Amy: “Don’t ask what Twitter can do for you.  Ask what you can do for Twitter.”  Amen.

• Marla Erwin of Whole Foods discussed how Whole Foods uses Twitter to be responsive to customers and build the Whole Foods brand.  She also cleverly demonstrated her point by offering Whole Foods gift cards to boot camp attendees who could generate the most retweets about Whole Foods during the event — a nice way to generate consumer enthusiasm.  Marla also dispelled the notion that consumers just want to talk to each other about your brand on Twitter rather than talk with you.  She asked, “If people don’t want to interact with a brand, then why are 786,000 people following Whole Foods on Twitter?”

Marketers: even in an era of consumer-generated content, your message does matter and consumers do care about you. It’s just that marketers need to share their messages in a different way.  To cite a popular — but true — cliche, we must join the conversation that consumers are having about us. And we need to empower our brands to do things, not just say things.  Marla’s nifty contest during the O’Reilly Twitter Boot Camp was a case in point.

One of the benefits of appearing at the event was receiving the recently published The Twitter Book by Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein.  The book is like Strunk & White for Twitter: a summation of practical tips for communicating clearly and effectively in the Twitter universe.  I highly recommend it even if you consider yourself an experienced pro. Brushing up on your Twitter etiquette never hurts.

Incidentally, you can find my O’Reilly Boot Camp presentation, “Twitter: The Two-Edged Sword,” here.

Tags: analytics, HubSpot, O'Reilly, random acts of Shaqness, Shaquille O'Neal, Social Influence Marketing, social media, the_real_shaq, Twitalyzer, Twitter, Twitter Grader, Whole Foods, Zappos

Posted in Design, Marketing | 3 Comments »

Does winning matter in Major League Baseball?

Recently Forbes updated its ranking of the most valuable Major League Baseball teams from a financial standpoint.  The top 5 teams — the New York Yankees, New York Mets, Boston Red Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Chicago Cubs — had zero World Series appearances in 2008.  But we should not be surprised.  Relying on a successful product on the field to obtain financial success is a risky strategy.  Superstar players win batting championships by getting on base only a third of their at-bats.  The The New York Yankees, arguably the most successful team in baseball history, haven’t won a World Series since 2000.  The Atlanta Braves defined the standard for excellence in the National League in the 1990s yet struggled with fan indifference.

No, success in Major League Baseball is all about locking in lucrative media deals and providing an experience (not necessarily a great product) for fans and corporate sponsors at the stadium.  Going to a ball game really isn’t much different than going to a rock concert anymore with exploding scoreboards, slick merchandise, and an element of theater keeping fans entertained.

As we all know, the baseball world has been rocked by allegations of abuse of performance enhancing substances by its marquee players, which calls into question the validity of their successes and their teams’ successes.  In other words, fans are probably not getting an authentic product on the field, anyway.  But really, do the fans care?  Banning beer sales from Wrigley Field or removing the swimming pool from Chase Field would be far more damaging to the future of the Chicago Cubs and Arizona Diamondbacks than substance abuse scandals.

Baseball, as it turns out, is just one more option in a world awash with video games, personal devices, a proliferation of TV channels, and many other forms of consumer experience.  Competing to win is one thing; competing to survive financially is a different beast altogether.

Tags: Braves, Cubs, Forbes, Major League Baseball, steroids, Yankees

Posted in Marketing | 1 Comment »

Multitouch technologies taking Razorfish by storm

Multitouch technologies like Microsoft Surface are taking Razorfish by storm.  Encouraged by the popularity of Wii and the iPhone, Razorfish user experience designers are creating new ways for people to communicate with applications on devices through body gestures like a simple tap of a screen.  As my colleague Garrick Schmitt has cited in many blog posts, the esoteric sounding term “user gestural interface” has become part of our vocabulary.  The new Razorfish Emerging Experiences blog shows why.

The blog is the brainchild of the Razorfish Emerging Experiences team, which explores newer user experience metaphors, with a focus on multitouch.  The Emerging Experience blog gives you a glimpse at some of the ideas the team develops for commercial use.  For example, the blog showcases the Razorfashion retail application, which demonstrates how multitouch can enrich retail shopping.

Incidentally, Razorfashion was developed using the Razorfish Touch Framework.  Introduced at the 2009 Razorfish Client Summit, the Touch Framework enables the rapid development of multitouch technologies.

At Razorfish, multitouch is more than a blog.  Amnesia Razorfish just worked with Microsoft and Lonely Planet to introduce Surface commercially in Australia.  Earlier this year, Razorfish and OMD launched for Dockers the first known interactive “shakeable” ad for the iPhone.  The advertisement, which ran for about one month, featured a dancer wearing a pair of Docker khakis.  People who saw the ad between levels of game play on their iPhones were prompted to shake their devices and make the dancer perform various moves.

And as announced in 2008, Razorfish built the first known retail application of Surface for AT&T wireless stores.  Inside select stores, consumers sit down at Surface tables and play with the touch-and-recognition technology to learn about mobile devices. For instance, consumers can review features of a device by placing it on a table.  Surface recognizes the device and displays a graphics-rich overview of features.  Consumers may also use touch-and-hand movements to explore a map that reveals how much coverage AT&T provides in different areas of the United States.  (More about the design of the application here.)

We are grateful that we have clients who want to explore the commercial application of multitouch especially during recessionary times.  Meantime check out the Emerging Experiences blog for a glimpse at the future of user experience.

Tags: AT&T, Dockers, iPhone, Razorfish, Surface

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Jimmy Page, the Hardy Boys & Razorfish

In the Marketing Hitch Ad Industry Innovator series, David Wiggs was kind enough to profile Razorfish and my role as vice president of marketing.  David indicates that Razorfish has “helped reshape marketing conversations by leading public, transparent discussions on how digital touches all aspects of the marketing enterprise.”  In my conversation with David, I discuss a few examples of how Razorfish helps reshape marketing conversations through thought leadership like the social influence research that my colleague Andrea Harrison has been developing.  I also touch upon how Razorfish lives the social values through employee blogging, among other activities.  David’s profile also mentions aspects of my personal life, such as personal inspirations (Jimmy Page), and books I’m reading (Hardy Boys along with my daughter).  The personal touch is not only fun but relevant.  At the 2009 Razorfish Client Summit, Matthew Weiner, the genius behind Mad Men, provided several examples of how Mad Men episodes reflect his personal life and experiences.  You might say Jimmy Page is working hard at Razorfish.

Tags: Marketing, Razorfish, Social Influence Marketing, social media

Posted in Agencies, Marketing | 1 Comment »

Obama.com & You

At FIAP Buenos Aires, my Razorfish colleague Joe Crump discussed seven tactics that marketers can learn from Barack Obama, America’s first digital president.  I’ve reproduced his presentation here and highly recommend you take a moment to browse through it. The seven tactics are:

1. Got a vision for what you want to do?  Great.  Now go recruit a team of digital specialists to craft your strategy.

2. Make your message findable.  Make your content visible in the right place at the right time.

3. Be relevant to your audiences.

4. Create engagement.

5. Empower your fans.

6. Reward the faithful.  Give them inside information. Make them feel special.

7. Be transparent.  Use digital to report on what you’re doing throughout your campaign, whether you’re launching a new product or building a better brand.

I would add one more take-away:

8. You need a compelling message.  In this era of consumer-generated content and advertising as an experience, what you say about yourself still matters — a great deal.  Barack Obama delivered the right message at the right time.  As Joe mentions, his vision of change was short, simple, motivating, and viral.  Does messaging still matter to marketers? The answer is a resounding yes.  But, what’s changed is how you deliver that message — not by pushing it but by employing the kinds of tactics Joe discusses, such as empowering your fans and creating engagement.

What do you think?

Tags: Digital, Marketing, Obama, Razorfish

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