Open The Dialogue

Mobio, a company that delivers movie times to mobile users, has announced it has joined the Mobile Marketing Association.

That might not sound like big news, but I do think it's important that content providers and companies like this are joining groups for a number of reasons. First, trade groups are a great way to amass knowledge and share what's worked and what hasn't with others. Second, organizations like this are out there trying to create standards in new fields that too often have none. That's important, especially for something like mobile marketing, because standards can help increase user adoption rates.

Let's look for good things from both Mobio and the MMA out of this.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This eMarketer story is focused around how 30 percent of American homes now have DVR functionality but it contains a quote that is applicable to any media, not just TV.

By letting go of how, when and where content is accessed, content providers can reach a greater audience that is able to consume more of its content.

It doesn't matter whether you're a TV network, movie studio, newspaper publisher or anything else. People - at least the young, tech-savvy crowd that marketers are going after - are becoming used to reading, watching or listening to media at a time that's convenient to them. It's going to be important for everyone to adjust to this model sooner rather than later to avoid being left in the dust.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 04:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Earlier in the week, Mashable's Pete Cashmore pointed out that Break.com is going to be dropping some coin for good video content that it publishes to the homepage. [via]
• For those of you who thought Vault was a potential issue for your business, you ain't seen nothing yet. Check out jobberwiki. [via eHub]
• Research that eMarketer is talking about today is saying that the DVR will be in about 30% of American homes by 2009. Statistically that might look like the trend from right now, but I think that the cable and satellite co's will make this statistic way off by that point.
• YouTube vids will now be seen on the phones of V Cast subscribers on Verizon's network

Posted by Tom Biro at 01:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• I think it's important that we all remember that while we might know what Web 2.0 means, not everyone does, even just in the marketing profession. Those who do, though, are seeing their knowledge and practices pay off.
• As proof that sometimes we're likely to out-clever ourselves, all those URLs with "your" and "my" in the title that are used for specific campaigns might not be as easy to remember as we think they are.
• The practice of recruiting college students to spread the word about social networks on campus is one that not everyone is thrilled about, with some feeling that students, because they're so sought after, actually need to be protected from the practice.
• Video sharing site Break.com has upped the price it pays to people who upload videos to $500 for live-action and $2,000 for animated shorts.
• Ben McConnell nicely analyzes a recent New York Times story on word-of-mouth and engagement and reminds us all that it's not necessarily enough just to be talked about. It's better when people feel an emotional connection to a brand or company that spurs them to action on behalf of that brand or company.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have to agree with Lost Remote regarding posting video online. If you have video on your site, it should be embeddable. LR brings this up because of Comedy Central now allowing people to embed video from "The Colbert Report" and more from their site. Whenever I want to pass along a video now I always not only link to the source (likely Apple's Quicktime or some other such site) but will also make an effort to search it out on YouTube. If it's there I'll grab the code and put it up as well, giving people the option to either view it directly on my site or go to the high-quality version.

But so many video producers don't get that allowing people to easily pass on the video is a good thing. There might be a "tell a friend" link to email the video to someone but as more and more people are creating content themselves, allowing for embeddable video lets them add some spice to their site. It's an easy way to let people spread the word in a way that builds brand loyalty for both the publisher as well as the video creator. I'm actively disappointed when I see someone has lots of video on their site and none of it is embeddable, even if I don't plan on using it. Someone might be and that's one less tool they have to talk about the product or brand in a compelling manner.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

If you're a new media fanatic (and who here isn't) then the page Target has setup for its upcoming 2-day sale will probably be of interest to you. The page is setup to promote not only the store's sale but also the latest stunt from magician/performance artist David Blaine. Blaine appears in an ad for the store that Tom seems to love but which I'm lukewarm toward. That may be because I'm lukewarm on Blaine in general but we'll leave that issue for another day.

The site features RSS, a downloadable widget for you to track Blaine's stunt and code for you to put the promotion on your own website. Those are really nice tools to give people that let them spread the word organically, a favorite topic of mine. And it's all wrapped up in a pretty nifty mobile-device looking format that makes the page a lot of fun to play around with.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 04:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Finally.

[via MWWer Clayton]

Posted by Chris Thilk at 04:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Goodness, what fun it is to get out from in front of the computer screen occasionally and remind yourself that it's real people writing some of your favorite blogs. Clay Parker Jones, David Armano, and Gabby, a colleague of David's at Digitas and I got together at a downtown Chicago Intelligensia to talk blog and such. It would have been an enjoyable morning as it was but it turned out to be even more so with the arrival of Kelly Komp.

Kelly, you see, works for a small design firm named Tandemodus here in Chicago and has not yet begun a blog of his own. He had heard about the meetup via what he described as a series of clicked links it would impossible to recreate or describe. His presence was more than welcome because, as I'm sure all of you know, the thing bloggers love to talk about the most is how they started blogging and what kind of experiences they've had. So we all shared with each other and Kelly how we all came to dive into the online world, what worked for us, what didn't and other such war stories. We probably overloaded him with information and suggestions but also hopefully gave him some things to think about. I'd look for a blog from tandemodus soon and sure it will make my daily reading list.

We all decided this should be a regular thing and hopefully will get more and more people to turn out as the word spreads. Clay has setup a page dedicated to the Chicago Coffee Meetup that he'll be posting updated dates and times to as well as a Flickr Group where we can be embarrassed by how we look in the morning.

In the meantime you can check out the write-ups of this morning's get together complete with pictures from both Clay and David.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 03:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Hot on the heels of Jon Miller was out at AOL and had been replaced by Randy Falco comes this report from TechCrunch that Jason Calacanis has resigned from AOL.

I'm not going to speculate on this since Tom and I both work(ed) for Jason at Weblogs, Inc, but if this is true, then wow. Just wow. You can read Jason's thoughts on Miller's leaving the company here.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 04:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Everyone just sit back and think of the turkey you'll be eating next week while you enjoy these tasty links.

• TechCrunch has been YouSued, with lawyers claiming that a program they made to download YouTube vids to your iPod violates the TOS. I initially didn't why they would do this but now I've figured it out: YouTube loses online ad revenue if people can download a hard copy of the videos.
• Brian Oberkirch calls making corporate announcements in Second Life "the new webcasting."
• Ann Handley has some good advice on how to treat everyone in the blog world as an equal.
• Blogs are now more trusted than TV ads. Maybe that's because they're not overt attempts at selling stuff.
• Not that I claim to be an expert in the matter, but saying only one percent of the internet is devoted to porn seems like saying only five percent of the world's oceans is devoted to water.
• Mark Cuban says he'd get into the newspaper business since they really do make money, just not in a way that makes shareholders happy. Someone go check to see if Jeff Jarvis just had a stroke.
• The Weinstein Co. seems to be solving cash-on-hand problems by signing a deal making Blockbuster the exclusive rental outlet for its movies on home video. That means you're out of luck if you're a Netflix user. Does no one else get that exclusivity agreements are what's killing the theatrical movie industry? And now we're replicating that for home video? This makes my head hurt.
• I'm not sure exactly what "hockey" is but the league has signed an online video deal with YouTube.
• I can't believe that anyone is seriously considering embargo windows as a way to shore up the financial futures of newspapers.
• Over at my personal blog I try and show that marketing hyperbole can't fool Technorati.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 04:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This morning, I'd posted an update to this post about how the Vimeo version of the Bank of America / MBNA "One" video had been taken down, and that I'd reached out to Vimeo to find out what happened.

When asked if the company had asked Vimeo to remove the video from its site, Zach Klein, GM at Vimeo, responded affirmatively, saying that "they asked us to take it down citing copyright protection since they produced the clip internally for company-use only." Additionally, he mentioned that Vimeo allows its users to download the original version of the file that was uploaded [ahem, YouTube (thanks, Chris!)], so that's most likely how the high res version has made its way around, including to E!'s The Soup.

Posted by Tom Biro at 01:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While taking a survey just now I came across this question and honestly didn't know how to answer it.

I don't use the internet any amount of times per day. I'm always on the internet. Always. I guess if I were to count the number of times each day I opened a new internet connection I would answer "2" but that's a bit misleading. The first time is at roughly 7:30 in the morning, a "usage instant" that lasts just about non-stop until 4:30 in the afternoon. Then in the evening I log on for an hour or so. So that's technically twice, with one of those sessions lasting about nine hours.

So do I choose "Daily," which seems like a more all-encompassing answer, or "Several times daily" because that's more technically accurate?

Posted by Chris Thilk at 09:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While it's not really my thing to criticize former clients of my employer, I've got to say that this video of an employee at Bank of America / MBNA singing a re-done version of U2's "One" featuring lyrics about the merger of those two banks is not something I'd ever want to see on the Internet were I working for that company. There are a lot of times where "any buzz is good buzz" when it comes to people talking about your company, its products, or its executives on the 'net is a good thing, but I'm not sure this is one of them. It's obviously unclear at this point whether this was put out on purpose by someone who was in attendance at the event featured, or if someone "leaked" it to be mean. What is important is that it's out there, and in a big way. In fact, it was the closing item on the episode of E!'s The Soup that I watched on Sunday afternoon.

Whether you like or dislike the song and this rendition, what's important to note here is that this is the sort of stuff that companies are up against in today's new media revolution. Hell, on the E! show, it looked like they had a high res version of the video, not something they pulled off YouTube or Vimeo. Where'd they get that one?

There are plenty of consumer generated things out there that draw attention to brands and should be left alone because they work, for the most part. In this case, if you follow any of the comment threads which you can find starting here at Jaffe Juice or over at Technorati [here is the Technorati search for "Jim Dubois," the singer involved], the general consensus is not so good. Additionally, keep in mind that just because something seems like a good idea, doesn't mean it is. It might be relevant and special and important to those of you in a particular space, but it might not be, let's just say in a base sort of way, "YouTube-ready." Put it this way - there are a lot of things said at company events that you wouldn't want to be posted on the Internet - keep your eye on the fact that what you say, do, and show on film (or audio) can (and may) show up on the Internet.

[update: 11/15/06 11:51am] A co-worker just let me know that the Vimeo link above - the one that was the original, as far as I can tell, place where the Bank of America spot was located - is now dead, and there are no video copies on that service of the version of "One." I've contacted Vimeo for comment and will post if I hear anything back about this.

Posted by Tom Biro at 10:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Attention fellow Chicago bloggers! A couple of guys are putting together a Chicago version of the Coffee Mornings meet-ups popularized by Russell Davies. Here's the details, via Exit Creative:

Where: Intelligentsia Millennium Park, 53 East Randolph Street, Chicago
When: 8:00 AM, Friday, November 17
Who: Anyone. Ad/blog folk will attend for sure, but others are more than welcome!

Posted by Chris Thilk at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

While all of us in this new/social media world talk a lot about how companies are no longer fully in control of their brand messaging, I wonder sometimes just how many actual people get that. Take these two examples:

Chicago Tribune columnist/blogger Eric Zorn recently converted his family's home computing from Windows machines to Macs. This past Halloween, his son Ben expressed his approval of that decision in a seasonally appropriate way.

Josh Hallett points out that there's a sudden spike in Flickr pictures tagged "shuffle" as Apple's new iPod Shuffle starts arriving on doorsteps. As Josh says, expect more once they're available in stores.

So ask yourself this afternoon: What have you done that's going to generate this sort of spontaneous celebration of your brand? Is the product worth talking about even absent any advertising? Have you made it easy for people to express their fondness for the product?

Some food for thought.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 04:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• A big one for me here, as Google Talk is turning on offline messages, so no more lost messages!
• Over on the (PRODUCT) RED blog, you can find some initial results on how things are going with that launch
• Did you notice iTunes Latino, the new store within the iTunes Music Store?
• We all know that potential employers are Googling their prospects when reviewing candidacy, but what happens if someone with the same - or similar - name as yours is (gulp!) doing things a little on the racy side online?
• BusinessWeek Online's Reena Jana and Alli McConnon have put together one of the most solid roundups I've seen in awhile regarding the overall situation with businesses inside Second Life. Of course, you'll notice that people are taking a lot of old-world, real-world ideas, and simply porting them into the game. While that might work for certain things, it's not necessarily the best thing to do, as you might have read here. While I'm by no means a Second Life long-timer at all, I am not surprised to hear about things like this. Bringing Real Life to Second Life is something that is going to happen, and has already been happening. The thing we should be taking to heart, from the first link here, is that SL isn't simply about bringing stuff straight in that we happen to know and love in the Real Life world - unless people ask for it. Not trying to work with either SLers themselves or the Linden folks is a mistake that companies are going to learn about in unfortunate ways. You might be able to call the cops for egging your RL home office, but you might not be so lucky in SL, should you come up with some idea that isn't exactly moving the needle.

Posted by Tom Biro at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)