Frontiering Talk

Here are some stats which show just how much reach some of the new media video sites have.

ClipShack: 2.200 daily users (source: AdBright)
Google Video: 12,5 million monthly users (source: Washington Post)
Grouper: 3-8 million monthly users (source: PR News and Alexa) and 500.000 registered users (source: Alexa)
Ourmedia: 28.000 daily users (source: AdBright).
Vidiac: 2 million streaming videos daily and 3 million monthly usres (source: Silicon Beat)
Vimeo: 20.000 daily users (source: USA Today) and 50.000 registered users (source: Vimeo)
YouTube: 50.000 uploads daily and 6 million daily users requesting 50 million streaming videos per day (source: YouTube).

via Marketing Facts

Perspective: Do you regularly check these sites for videos relating to your category?

Here’s a great video, which was originally aired on the BBC, which demonstrates a Hydrogen concept car.

Perspective: As well as demonstrating a vision for future cars, it exemplifies how Youtube is starting to be used as a distribution tool for mainstream media.

If you haven’t got a spare $40 million to become the official Beer sponsor of the World Cup like Budweiser, what do you do?
Bavaria Brewing produced uniforms for 1000 or so fans with their logo and sent them to the game.

But FIFA officials wouldn’t let the fans wear their Lederhosen into the game, so Dutch supporters watched the game in their underwear. They of course had to look after their sponsors.

Read the full story at the Guardian here, and from ESPN here.

Perspective: The irony of this ambush marketing is that the stories that flowed from the fans watching the game in their underwear has probably provided more publicity for Bavaria than they would have received from the mass of orange uniforms. The lesson is that just because you are the official sponsor, doesn’t mean you have the rights to every consumer conversation.

Many of you would be familiar with Wikipedia, which is a reference based online encyclopedia. It is maintained through a principle that anyone can update any page. Wikipedia is “opinion neutral” which means it is focused on providing facts about topics.

Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales also helped create a sister site to Wikipedia, called Wikia. Whilst the wiki software technology is the same, Wikia concerns itself with consumer collaborative communities that share opinions and views on almost anything.

There is a Wikia for Diabetes in Pets, Spiderman. TV hit shows such as 24 and Lost have their own Wikias as do topics like Psychology.

Since Wikia’s launch in November 2004, over 1,200 Wikia have been created and edited by over 30,000 registered users and are available in over 40 languages. Here’s the current list of Wikia.

The content can even be freely distributed as long as Wikia is referenced as the source. You could even produce a book and sell it commercially for your own profit, providing the book cover contains reference to Wikia.

Perspective: We were surprised how many communities are talking in Wikia. Companies should definately review this list and potentially join in the conversation on any wikia’s relating to your product or service offerings.

More and more consumer sites have emerged where real consumers are writing about real experiences with real products.

Take this example Heat Eat Review, which specialises in the growing category of Heat and Eat food.

Perspective: Consumers have always been talking about products, but now there are many places where they are openly discussing their experiences. We wonder if the brand managers are tuned in?

Ever felt like you would like a “virtual dog” that you can throw a search term to, and it would return results from several major sources on a single page.

Well, Tagfetch does just that

Perspective: Try searching for your company or brand and you might be amazed at the conversations taking place!

eBay has launched a wiki (define) to allow any of it’s members to share and edit information about doing business on the site with each other.

The most famous wiki is Wikipedia which maintains incredible consumer generated information about almost anything. Ebay has partnered with Jotspot to produce it’s wiki.

Perspective: eBay has always let it’s members provide support and advice to other members, that’s part of it’s business model. The strong community and it’s rating system work together to ensure content is self moderated. Unlike carefully crafted marketing material, the information is trusted because it’s provided by real people voluntarily.

World Cup fever is well and truely here, and there is some excellent creativity being displayed.

I love this tribute to soccer using the sixteenth chapel for inspiration.
It’s a ceiling painting in the railway station in Cologne. 10 points if you can spot the brand, which is very subtly displayed in the image.

via Advertising for Peanuts

So often companies neglect one of the most important parts of a sales cycle, and that is the moment after purchase when the consumer actually opens the box !

Excitement or Disappointment ?

Who can forget the electronic Christmas presents that are unboxed without batteries included.

Now there is a blog dedicated to capturing and sharing “unboxing” moments. Unboxing.com is full of positive and negative examples which manufacturers would do well to consume.

Perspective: Unboxing represents a great opportunity for launching word of mouth .. or detraction. Do you measure this?

Tags: WOM

Using data from the World Bank and the United Nations, Google Labs have launched a pretty cool visual display tool called Gapminder that shows information like population, number of phones per 1000 people by country, by year.

I like the visual presentation of the tool which is an excellent example of presenting information in a meaningful way.

Here’s some possible gadgets that may be available soon. I particularly like the transparent toaster which ensures you can see your toast cooking!