Frontiering Talk

In the UK, P&G has created an interesting site for their Tampax brand which allows consumers to create their own ringtones. Anyone can create a ringtone, but you need to enter a Unique Packaging Code found on Tampax packs to send the ringtone to your phone.

Embracing the Consumer Generated Content trend, Tampax is showcasing the best entries as voted by other consumers. Winners receive a Motorola phone.

I think’s it’s a clever site which will certainly appeal to the younger demographic. It’s another example of creating a destination site that ties in nicely with the product, creates an ongoing value for the consumer, and creates a foundation for word of mouth marketing.

Tags: WOM

Embracing the growth of Consumer Generated Content, the N-show has created a Video Mixing tool that allows consumers to create Mashups of the N’s shows, by combining graphics, video and music.

Once you’ve created your mashup, you can send it to your friends, who after watching a Skittles ad, get to see your mashup. Shows include The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Moesha, Degrassi: The Next Generation, and O’Grady. Typing in a Unique Packaging Code from any Skittles Pack unlocks additional effects.

Chevy recently created a site which allowed consumers to mix pictures, add text and music. Not quite as much fun as mixing videos, but it is evidence that some brands are at least attempting to give their consumers opportunities to get involved and share ownership of brand marketing.

Keep an eye on Cuts.com, which is a soon to be released video mash-up website.

Consumers are getting smarter, and media companies must continue to provide tools like this if they are to attract attention.

via B2Day

Listening to Across the Sound this week, Jo Jaffe spoke about this great initiative from JaK Attack called the 1PPP. Note: 1PPP = the 1 Penny Podcast Project.

I have been following the way Advertising is emerging within Podcasts for a while and haven’t really seen anything very “Frontiering”, but the 1PPP is certainly worthy of something different. Most Podcast advertising are essentially top and tale spots, with perhaps an additional spot in the middle of the podcast.

I think Jon describes the initiative well

How’s it work? Simple - you send us $5 and three lines of text. We’ll speak those three lines during the show somewhere and you’re guaranteed that show will be downloaded at least 500 times in the first 30 days.

The three lines of text are preferably:
1. Business/Blog/Site/Whatever name
2. Your all important one sentence!
3. Your URL

Have you ever seen the improv comedy routines where the audience makes up sentences and puts them in a hat? The comedians then have to pull a sentence out of the hat now and again and work it into their routine. Same deal here. You have no control over where or when we’ll speak your three lines, but rest assured we will speak them. Oh yes, we will speak them.

It sounds entertaining, a bit of fun, and will no doubt push the boundaries of Pod-ver-tising. I wish Jon well with the initiative and have enrolled Frontiering in the program. So keep a listen out on JaK Attack, and see if you can hear any Frontiering ads!

Just to update you on my previous post about the first Rocketboom paid advertising that was auctioned on Ebay for $40,000 by TRM an ATM vendor.

Here are the links to the ads which I think are very innovative!

Having played in a band many years ago, one of the hardest parts was getting everyone together for practise, either finding a place to practise, and then setting up all the equipment. Even then you had to finish at 10pm due to noise curfews.

Well, thanks to the Internet, and a new piece of software called eJamming, Muscians can talk (using VOIP), and play in real time and hear each other right from their homes even if they are on the other side of the world.

If you are interested, watch the demo here to see how it works.

Cleverly, eJamming is planning new features to help the site become a meeting place for musicians with tools to schedule practise times.

This is just another example of how the internet is becoming a conversation!

via Techcrunch

Wouldn’t it be great to have a butler who knew your tastes in television, movies, music and organised the downloading of content for you while you were working. But, most of us can’t afford a real butler. So, how about a simple tool where you could articulate keywords like CSI, Playschool, and also broader categories with a simple check box to mark an interest in “all things Sci-Fi”, as well as “Content from my high school buddies”. Finally, like a real butler, the tool would allow you to review shows that you watched, so it could learn what you like and start to recommend other videos based on similar interests.

Most of this can all be done today, although it suffers from what I call “Video Recorder Syndrome”. i.e. Even though most of us could if we had to, program the video recorder, the hassle of setting it up, making sure it has the right date/time is perceived by most of us to be more trouble than it’s worth. Similarly, to preset your computer to pre-download your favourite tv shows and movies, you still require a fair degree of passion and technical savy.

So, what is going to change to bring the Video Butler concept to life?

1. Fast Broadband
Broadband is being rolled out across the world, and the “always on” nature of broadband has changed the way people use the internet. No longer is it something you schedule for a certain time, the computer is always on, and you can use it several times / day. Faster speed broadbands are helping to drive more video content to the web and will ensure that background downloading of large files do become a viable alternative to taping, hiring or purchasing physical DVD media content. In the US, Broadband penetration grew 13% last year to 95.5 million homes, which means 68% of active home-Internet users now use a broadband connection, according to a study released this week by Nielsen/NetRatings.

2. Discovery and Subscription services.
More and more people are starting to discover the benefits of RSS (define) feeders by subscribing to blogs and podcasts. This service provides something of a “subscription butler” and when combined with services like “other people who subscribe to this also enjoy this” as per Del.icio.us does for favourite websites, and Amazon does for books, RSS will only continue to grow and evolve. This is exemplified by Addidas who has recently launched it’s own RSS widget to help people receive content from the world cup soccer. Video viewing on the internet is gathering momentum, YouTube attracted 9 million unique viewers last month; whilst Google Video brought in 6.2 million.
Whilst the major search engines such as Google and Yahoo both include video search, it will be Video versions of Music discovery services like Pandora and Last.fm that really drive the ease of use for the Video Butler idea. An emerging example is CosmoTv which lets you Tag television shows.

3. Video Content Availability & licensing
Perhaps the hardest piece to enable the Video Butler concept is the ability for Video Producers to make deals with Online websites to market and sell their content. The challenge for many is to do this in such a way that doesn’t harm their existing contracts with large television networks. Video music clips can be purchased on Itunes, as can some short movies from Pixar (also owned by Apple) and between mid-October 2005 and mid-January 2006, iTunes sold 8 million video downloads. However, even though you can download mainstream tv and movies illegally, the major online portals don’t offer them. But this will change. AOL and Warner Brothers, both divisions of Time Warner, have announced “In2TV,” and will offer free “vintage” TV service online and will include four 15-second advertising spots. According to the NY Times, Amazon is rumoured to making a deal with 3 of Hollywood’s biggest production houses.

4. Advertising
Today’s Advertising can best be described as Interruption Advertising and it’s relevance is based on the likely demographic who happens to be watching a certain program. With Video Butler things will change. For a start, if you can download in the background tv shows or movies, if they contain ads, they can be easily skipped over. A pay per download model or a “all you can eat” package like Yahoo Music, which is $5/month may prevail, and if it does where does Advertising fit? The fact is, in it’s current form it doesn’t! I think brands need to adapt to this new model sooner rather than later. Many brands actually have terrific content about a specific area. For example, Petfood companies know more about Pet selection, Training, Grooming etc and could easily partner with production houses to create relevant content that not only entertains consumers, but educates them in their products. Secondly, consumers are more than happy to have relevant information served up to them when they are in the market for a particular product or service. This will ensure that interruption advertising changes to a kind of “just before you need it” model, and the Video Butler will manage the preferences between Brand and Consumer. Just imagine you are in the market for a new car? You don’t just want a 30 second commercial of a car performing unreal moves on a dance floor, what you want is a short list of 2 or 3 brands that suit a criteria, and then you want each one to give you a 2 to 3 hour pitch on why you should buy them! Currently most advertising agencies aren’t very equipped in developing the long format and customised pitch, but this will start to change as the Video Butler idea takes hold.

5. Technology
Technology is the last piece of the puzzle and is mostly there today. Besides fast broadband, you need a suitable downloading client such as Bittorrent which splits large files into tiny bits and shares them across many peers resulting in very fast download speeds. IPTV is a new term that perhaps describes the idea of serving tv via your internet connection. Then there’s the front end interface. Windows XP Media Center is helping to drive the computer to central stage in the household television viewing area, and can today record, store and retrieve music, images, tv, video or play dvds. What’s missing is the front end that has access to a complete library of downloadable content, complete with consumer reviews, and the ability to create a selection criteria as I described in Video Butler. But rest assured this is an easy piece of the puzzle, once the content is available.

And I can’t wait

Advertising in Gaming is one of the growing trends in marketing. One of the challenges is that games, like movies can take 12 to 18 months to produce and can be difficult for brands to think that far ahead.

Visa is moving the bar by integrating their new fraud monitoring service into the latest CSI game.
In addition to in game billboard advertising, Visa alerts users to suspicious activity on a victum’s account, leading the ‘CSI’ detectives to investigate.

“It’s not just an ad in a game,” said Jon Raj, Visa’s vice president of advertising and emerging media. “It allows the consumer to understand our product.”

As television advertising continues to decline in it’s effectiveness, gaming is one way to engage consumers and educate them while they play!

The market for in-game ads is expected to grow to $560 million in 2009 from about $60 million to $70 million today, according to the Yankee Group.

via NY Post

Honda has created some interest with a new campaign that links up Outdoor with Radio.

162 billboards in 15 US cities as questions such as “What would an Element and a crab talk about?” and consumers can get the answer by tuning into a specific short range (2 miles) radio frequency.

I this is a good initiative and I think consumers will respond favourably. And we continue to see “talking billboards” using Bluetooth, short range radio and the like to enhance the consumer engagement.

via Mediapost

Clever art now hanging in the JWT Shanghai which looks great, and includes the Nike swish and the words ‘Run Free’

via Advertising for Peanuts

Now that email is so mainstream, a hand written note can have a kind of extra special feel to it. Part of the reason hand written notes can be special, is that it takes so much more time to write them (if you can touch type), and then you have to address them, and post them.

Well .. thanks to Staedtler, you can type in a note, address it to a friend, stranger or even yourself, and they will post the handwritten note to you, complete with a free pencil. The promtional site is called Take Note, and is good for sending a hand written note to any address in Australia.

It’s a great way to sample their pencils because receiving a pencil with a short note creates a very positive experience.

Like so many great websites, some of the key non technical aspects of the campaign have been overlooked. As the sender, I wasn’t asked for my details (email or physical address), which I think is a missed opportunity for building a consumer database. As they are giving away a free service, they should have used the opportunity to include 1 or 2 consumer insight questions. The gallery of existing notes are difficult to navigate - I would have got someone to write some clever notes and sorted them into categories such as humour, friendship, love etc.
Checking the Staedtler website, I noticed that they do sell promotion products.

Get inspired by our tailor-made solutions with room for getting across intelligent advertising slogans - long-term!

So I think the promotion could have been adapted to market customised pencils that contain a special message .. perhaps with a min order qty of 100.

Nevertheless, the site is worth a visit!

via Adverblog

I love Del.icio.us and am using it more and more as a search engine rather than just a place to store my favourite sites online.

Now you can find similar sites with a great mashup of del.icio.us and easyutil.com called Similicio.us

Simplify key in your favourites sites, and Similicio.us will find similar tagged sites.
A great way to discover new blogs!

Having read many of Seth Godin’s books, including Unleashing the Idea virus, and Purple Cow, I was excited to watch Seth’s presentation to Google online.

Seth’s presentation talks about making products remarkable (purple cow), giving consumers a reason to talk about your products with niche markets, and just to show how viral works, Seth’s video has already had over 1 million downloads.

If you like Seth, then download his free ebook called Flipping the Funnel here, which is a great read about giving your fans the power to speak up.

From Etech, Jeff Han demos this amazing touchscreen, which explores new frontiers in interfacing with technology.

It’s probably easier to see the technology in motion, so watch the video at Youtube.

via O’reilly