Frontiering Talk

Virgin mobile have released a Parential Enlightenment kit, aimed at providing tools that kids need to convince their parents that they need a mobile phone! It contains powerpoints, email suggestions, wallpapers to place on the home pc, and other techniques kids can use which makes for an amusing read.

Marketing, selling and particularly “Word of mouth” can definately be helped by ensuring the right tools are available for consumers, but many of us are focused only only providing these tools to our paid salesforce.

Make sure you don’t forget your unpaid consumer sales teams!

Tags: WOM

When was the last time you experienced something so positively outrageous that you just had to tell someone. And the associated story would not be told just once, it would be told to lots of people at lots of occasions.

Some examples?
Nordstrom the US department store once gave an elderly lady a refund for a tire … which is incredible because Nordstrom don’t carry car tyres !
This story was made famous by Tom Peters.
A FedEx employee after discovering that a package was left on the airport tarmac rented a helicopter and delivered the package personally. $2000 well spent considering the associated publicity.

What can you do this week that is so outrageous, that it will generate positive consumer generated media?

Here’s an example of a move towards “open source marketing”. Geico’s Golden Gecko are running a contest which people are asked to submit a 15 second trailer featuring the Golden Gecko. First prize is a $5,000 holiday to Hawaii. The conditions state that all submissions become the property of Geico, so it would be able to broadcast any entries via mass media.

I think this trend will continue, and one day we may even see companies providing creative briefs to their own customers, including making available any creatives or copies that should be included. The community would then work on delivering concepts which would be put back to the community for ratings.

Lulu.com is changing the playing field for writers providing a complete publishing, printing and selling tool for writers ! It even manages the selling of your material in digital format!

This should help reduce the life cycle of many books and also provide a clever promotional outlet for many writers!

Sites specifically built around a local community are gathering popularity as the tools that allow self publishing of articles, photos are the like become mainstream.

2 examples are Backfence, and ibrattleboro

As broadband penetration reaches critical mass, it is not surprising that people are turning to the web as a place of community news. Most importantly, both of the examples above include a ratings process which rates articles, and local businesses.

What amazes me, is why more non-profit organisations such as local councils, hospitals churches and sporting clubs aren’t tapping into this medium to involve their respective community memberships to collaborate, discuss and share ideas?

Many bands are changing the way their albums are named and which songs are selected by involving online music consumers. In Canada, musicians are hiring professionals to create “word of mouth” on the street about their music. People perceived to be “tastemakers” are recruited and then given advance copies of unreleased records. This article from the Ottowa Times says ..

Seeding is about putting the right product into the right hands at the right time. The idea is that tastemakers will create a buzz on a given album or musical act by talking it up with their peers and creating street-level excitement.

In Emanuel Rosen’s book The Anatomy of Buzz, the whole idea of Buzz marketing is explored in greater depth. Using paid Buzz professionals is ok, but I believe the “tastemakers” must be allowed to exercise free will.

This recognition of involving consumers early in the product life cycle is destined to spread beyond just music. Finding new things and helping to diffuse their adoption to the rest of the population is what some of us enjoy doing, so when are you going to start tapping to this group to help identify the right next product and then to spread the buzz?

Tags: WOM

If you don’t have one, maybe you could win one …

Sony Ericsoon in association with Mobloguk are hosting a memorable movie moments competition where you re-enact your favourite or most memorable movie moment and capture it with a photo.

The winner gets a free trip to the UK, and 2 runner ups get a free Camera phone.

However, I think the ease of entry and the creativity of the competition are sufficient to encourage entries from people just wanting to show others what they can do !

In keeping with a growing trend to allow consumers to take more control in entertainment / advertising, KFC has launched CHOSEYOURSAUCE.
The website lets people chose the way the story unfolds by selecting on their favourite sauce.
Now .. that’s what I call Open Sauce Advertising !

In a similar style, SAAB has built a clever online game into it’s communication model.

The press release is out, that EBAY has just purchased Skype for about US$2.6 billion in cash and stock.

What could EBAY want with a Voice over IP (VOIP) company?
Simple, EBAY is very much in the Consumer to Consumer space, and anything they can do to help consumers communicate with each other in a faster, cheaper and more organised way is right in their core business.

The world of consumers talking, trading, sharing ideas is really accelerating !

Are you stuck for ideas for your next campaign?

How about a website that accepts a few parameters, then automatically creates the concept for you? It’s sure to make you smile at least!

Agencies can relax, as this Ad concept generator isn’t going to make them redundant. However, automated wizards do have their place and I can see a place for a creative decision matrix.

Ever wanted to know what you Cyborg name? I typed in “Ian” and found that it spells Intelligent Artificial Neohuman

And you can buy the t-shirt … Quirky .. but clever !

Try your own name here

Here’s an interesting spin on Video rentals with a business called Bag, Borrow or Steal. For a small monthly fee, you get to have a constant supply of different handbags to suit every occasion!

I think it’s a clever business idea as it attempts to bring the extreme luxury category within reach of middle America.

It seems more and more companies are passing the source or design of their products to their consumers. Here are some more examples

Open Source Software. Where the term Open Source first originated .. in the software industry. .. where software is collaboratively developed, and given away!
Open Source Shoes Shoe designer John Fluevog invites people to submit shoe designs.
Lonely Planet’s, The Thorn Tree hosts 1000’s of travel tips, discussion notes.
Boeing’s world design team is involving consumers to help with the design of the 787.
Korea even has it’s own Open Source Newspaper where 80% of all the articles are written by about 26,000 community reporters. For most of them the incentive is just to be published, although they are paid about US$20 per article.

So what can you do to Pass the Sauce for your brand?