Frontiering Talk

Now that Youtube has gained acceptance across the world as video sharing site, it’s no surprise that companies are creating tools to assist content producers in establishing their own video collections.

Magnify is one such tool. You can browse the existing channels by category, or create your own in a few simple steps. The resulting site contains all the social sharing features that you need to allow your audience to comment and rate your videos as well as placing a widget of your collection on their own blogs, such as I have done above with the Creative Robot collection.What surprises me is the lack of brands in the collection of Video Categories. The notable exception seems to be Absolut with over 1400 videos in their channel. So what are you waiting for, starting a video channel for your brand / category has never been easier. In fact to show you how easy, i have just created a Gourmet Food channel.

Tags: Frontiering Products, Frontiering Websites

Cleanscores is a new site which links Google maps with the cleanliness of a restaurant rating.

It’s currently reviewing restaurants in LA and San Francisco and is indicative of a trend towards empowering consumers to rate products and services. I expect to see more and more consumable items being both reviewed and commented online, providing assistance to would-be purchasers.

Tags: Frontiering Products, Word of Mouth

This is quite an interesting video on what features pre-schoolers would incorporate into a “Magic Phone”.

Perspective: Ok, much of the suggestions are silly, perhaps even impossible, but that’s the whole idea. Kids don’t have the normal reality boundaries that we have as adults, and make a great source for creative thinking. Have you asked your kids what features they would build into your next product?

Tags: Frontiering Products

SpinVox which offers technology to convert audio to text, will soon be offering users of facebook the option to dial a number and then dictate updates which are then converted to text and posted to your profile.

Perspective: I first trialled text to voice technology in the mid 90’s as a potential solution for busy on the road sales reps to connect with email conversations. The technology has improved since then, and Spinvox seems to have found several applications for it’s tool. For instance, Lawyers use the tool to enable them to “read” their audio to text converted voice mails in court. Transcribing of podcasts might be another application. It will be interesting to see the take up of SpinVox facebook service.

via CNET

Tags: Frontiering Products, Social Network, Social Networks

Magazine publisher CondéNet, who purchased the application “What are you wearing?” earlier this year, has found success linking the application to Facebook reports Media Week.

The application allows you to tell your network of friends what brands of clothes you are wearing. Already, 90,000 users have added it to their facebook accounts and it is growing at 1,000 per day. Today’s most popular brand is Zara, which the following people are wearing.

Within the application there is a banner advertisement which is currently advertises the Guess brand’s Club G via the CondéNet owned Flip social network.

CondéNet has also released a spin-off application known as What are you wearing for Halloween.

Perspective: Currently Facebook are allowing applications to run their own ads, and this creates enormous opportunity for brands to leverage the social network to reach consumers. This could be by creating an application related to the brand essence, or by sponsoring an application. People are using their facebook accounts to express things about who they are and what they like, so it makes sense to provide tools that aid this expression. If you are looking for ideas for your brand, start by checking out some of the best Facebook Applications.

Tags: Frontiering Products, Frontiering Websites, Social Network

Stacy’s chips .. (part of Frito lay), couldn’t afford to provide a sample of their chips to everyone in the US .. that would be 300 million chip packets. So instead, they sent a sample pack to everyone called Stacy .. which was 133,000 people.

As well as receiving the Brand story, the Stacy recipients were invited to share their sample with their friends with the following message.

“We hope you enjoyed getting your free box of Stacy’s Pita Chips as much as we enjoyed sending them to you. If you did, why not share the joy by sending a FREE gift box to a friend? Since we’ve already sent them to every Stacy, you’re free to send them to Bill or Mary or Cheryl or John—or whoever you think would enjoy Stacy’s chips the most.”

The Stacy Consumers were impressed, and many of them not only shared the sample, but also shared their story online. Like Josh, and Ryan (husband of a Stacy), and this Stacy, and no doubt many others.

Perspective: This is a great example of a brand creating an unexpected positive experience for consumers, that not only rewards, but provides the tools to share that experience when the samples are spread. Positive experiences do make things taste better, and when something tastes better, we tend to repurchase!

Tags: Frontiering Campaigns, Frontiering Products

Gossip Girl, a new tv show that premiered this week on CW, has taken brand integration to the next level by allowing people to purchase the clothes featured on each episode.

“With our audience, we know fashion is very much at the top of their minds,” says Rick Haskins, executive vice president of marketing and brand strategy for the CW.

Consumers can browse by character, brand, product or episode. Here’s a couple of items you can purchase.

Perspective: I have always been surprised that more fashion brands haven’t used the integration of TV shows or movies to market their “look” to viewers.

via NYDailyNews

Tags: Frontiering Campaigns, Frontiering Products, Frontiering Websites

How about this for the ultimate addition to your book shelf. It’s the Live Book !

The book has a simple drainage system and actually opens up into a real book !

Perspective: Products like this easily become talking points .. and create opportunities for brands to engage in the conversations

Tags: Frontiering Products

I can’t claim to be a Baseball fan, but I love to talk about campaigns that let consumers have a real say in determining an outcome.
And that’s exactly what Marc Ecko is doing with the Barry Bond’s baseball that broke the number of home run records .. 756 to be precise.

You can even join the conversation on Youtube and Myspace

Perspective: The competition is pretty simple, but given the 10,010,552 votes so far, it’s sure to generate over 756 thousand conversations! Are your giving your consumers a reason to experience and talk about your brand?

via Jaffejuice

Tags: Frontiering Products, Frontiering Websites, Word of Mouth

XTD3D allows you to control standard windows functions using body movements instead of using keyboard / mouse.

You can watch a presentation on XTD3D from the recent Techcrunch40 here, which shows the founder of XTD3D advancing powerpoint slides and also navigating Google earth by clicking his fingers. Here’s another demonstration of the interface.

Perspective: The application can be programmed to use custom movements, and therefore it is not hard to see Gaming manufacturers integrating the technology with their games. Perhaps there is also a market for this in the growing space of virtual worlds such as Second Life.

Tags: Frontiering Products, Gaming

Here’s a clever web initiative, called Flameonwebcam, designed to help market the Fantastic Four movie.

The site provides the ability to record a brief message using your webcam, but the recording adds a flame effect to any movement which creatively links the viral to the movie.

Here’s a samplethat I created. You can send the link to your friends, or embed the video in your own site or social network.

Perspective: The site is clean and easy to use, and the use of the flame effect is a good connection to the movie. I couldn’t see any links to the actual movie website and it would have been nice to add a feature to show showing times of the movie in my city, or perhaps options to buy the DVD.

Tags: Frontiering Products, Frontiering Websites, Social Network

Adotube is a new video advertising network, that allows publishers to monetise their content showing roll-over ads that display inside video content. The main use for these ads are “opt-in” or lead generation initiatives. Another example is LiveRail which places ads below video content.

Perspective: It’s no surprise that innovative new techniques are emerging to help publishers make money from video content through different advertising methods. Content will remain important, and as it moves into narrower niche categories, increasing opportunities for linking relevant ads will emerge. At the other end of the scale premium subscription models for ad-free content will become more prominent.

Tags: Frontiering Products, Frontiering Websites

Music fans now have a chance to invest in musicians and even take a share of the profits, should the band become successful.
Slicethepie is a new startup that is hoping to provide the tool to connect Musicians with fans.

From the site ..

* Artists can raise money directly from their fans to professionally record albums
* Fans can become emotionally and financially involved at all levels of the music industry - scouting, breaking, investing in and influencing real artists
* Investors can gamble on, trade in and profit from the success of these artists
* Artists who secure finance pay Slicethepie a small royalty on album sales but keep all their copyright and publishing rights.

No doubt .. slicethepie will have plans to integrate into the major social networks, in particular Myspace, so as to build a critical mass of both musicians and fans.

Perspective: I can see this kind of trading place being applied to not just music, but to movies, books, product innovations, cars, banking products, even consumer packaged goods. The actual trading rules may be different, but the principles are to give your brands passionate lead consumers some control in return for their help / buy in to share in the brand’s future success.

Tags: Frontiering Products, Social Network