Jaffe Juice

Been a little busy (understatement of the year) lately, but didn't want the following gems to slip through the cracks:

• Logic + Emotion's Levels of Influence post
  • Follow up post from "Shake well before use" (love it)
• Militants ambushing brands in Second Life from IF!
• 7 Deadly Sins of Advertising via Viral Video post (via Fresh Glue) from "will video for food.com" (lol)

Eat up!

Warning: Watch out for loose puns ahead. Proceed at own risk.

After much venom in the social media land, soap opened to what is considered to be a rather toothless performance.

Will Waugh from the ANA Marketing Maestros Blog reminds me that I was rather bullish (snakish?) on the anticipated outcome of this movie:

- Tagworld post

- Across the Sound episode with Jackie Huba and Pete Blackshaw

I'm not sure I as much predicted it would be a smash as I hoped it would be, based on the exponential validation it would have lended to the still-young and oft misunderstood social media and new marketing worlds. THAT SAID...

1) The snakes not quite out the bag...it is early days and after a weekend of great weather and a long tail (with a rattle at the end of it) that has yet to wave, I'm reserving judgement on the binary "success"/"failure" of the movie and its marketing. Despite preliminery (or is it premature) judgement - even from the studio - it did come in number 1 (or very close to it) based on early box office estimates...

2) Ultimately this movie is highly specialized in terms of its genre and expected audience. That's not a cop-out, but it remains to be seen whether love = $$$. Did Jackie Huba sleep outside for 3 days to be at the first screening? Probably not

3) Ultimately we should be looking at very simple metrics.

• How much did it cost to make?
• How much did it cost to market?
• How much did it earn?

4) What did the studio learn in the process that they can use for future marketing of movies with much more risk at stake?

5) Arguably most importantly, was the movie so great that Sam Jackson already signed up for soap II or so bad that it will be destined for cult status immortality? If this movie was truly embraced by the people, then it will ultimately live and die by the hands, mice and wallets of those same people.

Early days my fellow reptilians, early days...

Long Tail's Chris Anderson gives this report card on media, affectionately titled "Media Meltdown"

Here are the lowlights for you:

• TV: network TV had its lowest ratings week ever in July.
• Music: weekly album sales set a 10-year low in July. For the year, CD album sales are down 4.2%; although digital single downloads (still less than 10% of the business) are up 77% and are nearly making up the difference in revenue terms. 
• Radio: the music radio listening audience is down 8.5% this year alone, continuing a multi-decade decline.
• DVDs: shipments are down 4% so far this year, more than 30 million units behind the same period last year.
• Newspapers: circulation, which peaked in 1987, is declining faster than ever and is down another 2.6% so far this year.

Eric Kintz, via DailyFix, originally reported on Anderson's post He adds a great social media flavor to it, including some of these highlights:

• YouTube announced in July that viewers are now watching more than 100 million videos per day on its site.
• The blogosphere is 100 times bigger than it was just 3 years ago
• MySpace has 75 million users, 15 million daily unique logins, is growing by a massive 240,000 new users per day, and is now a solid second to Yahoo in terms of pageviews!

Bryan Person suggested I give a little more information on tomorrow's SkypeCast. Good suggestion...and the only reason I didn't sooner is because I'm rather clueless myself :) He points me and so I'm pointing you to the following link from FIR's SkypeCast for more details.

Here's how I see it playing out:

1. At 12noon EST on Sunday (tomorrow), August 20th, you'll either click on THIS LINK which will take you to the ATS Skypecast page directly, or alternatively go to www.skypecast.com and just type "Across the Sound" in the search bar.

2. After 12noon EST, you should see a link which says "Sign in to join" under the Across the Sound banner. After clicking on this, you'll need to use your Skype ID and password (obviously if you don't have a Skype ID, now would be a good time to do this)

3. You'll then click on a "Join this Skypecast" link and once you do, you're connected.

4. The only other nuance is that your microphone might be muted and you'll have to request the mike if you want to contribute. It really depends on how many people are participating in terms of whether it makes sense to periodically mute/unmute people.

5. Other than that, come armed with ideas, themes, memes, rants, winners, losers etc. and have fun!

Check it out...it's a slice of Grand Theft Auto life, or is it?

General blogo feeling right now is that this is great (4 out 5 stars on YouTube from 30 ratings...although this could be from the agency - good message everything u give come backts to u :))

Low views, but this could be the very beginning of the viral spiral...

I don't think you need to be a pimp-bashing, rampage-loving, pig-whacking GTA fan to enjoy this and quite frankly, I'm impressed with the nerve and resolve to have produced this (clearly some of the approvals came from those who have never played the game)

Good snuff all round (he-he)

Here's a threat worth following and continuing. It deals with things every company should be monitoring (and resulting implications) I have contributed items 18-23

Started by Cameron Olthuis on his blog, Pronet advertising:

1. Company name
2. Company URL
3. Public facing figures
4. Product names
5. Product URLs
6. The industry “hang outs”
7. Employee activity/blogs
8. Conversations
9. Brand image
10. Competitors

Amplified by Steve Rubel on his blog, MicroPersuasion

Extended by Jeremiah Owyang on his blog, Web Strategy by Jeremiah:   

11. Images/video like YouTube and Flickr

12.  tags and Social search tools like Del.icio.us

13. Social Voting tools like Digg.com and Techmeme.com

14: "Advanced Listening"

15: Feedback URL and link threads

16: “Voice of the Customer” log to track sentiment, instance, and/or voice.

17: Develop new roles to such “Brand Monitor” or “Blogosphere Watcher”

...and enhanced by me on Jaffe Juice:

18. Self-clipping services like Google or Yahoo alerts for keyword mentions, but also audio and video hits as well...services like PodZinger for example to ascertain conversational audio levels

19. Utilize RSS and aggregators like Bloglines in order to aggregate, integrate and assimilate all relevant incoming and outgoing moments of truth (perceived truth perhaps, or even truthiness according to Rob Stevens)

20. Use wikis like PmWiki to discuss and debate pretty much everything from 1-19 and most importantly attempt to turn all the talk/conversation into walk/action.

21. (ending on 20 would have been so contrived) Repeat steps 1-20 to look outside of your own circle. Evolve the perspective from yourself, through your direct competitive set to your indirect competitive set and ultimately to your aspirational/non-endemic/non-competitive set. This is where you want to follow the leaders so to speak - Apples, Nikes, Googles or whichever company you admire.

22. Create a PROACTIVE capability/budget in order to QUICKLY execute against everything you're monitoring - specifically opportunities like Fedex Furniture, Tiger Chipping in on the 16th.

23. Conversely, have a REACTIVE process in place to comprehensively and compellingly respond, especially when you're on the bumpy receiving end of the stick.

It must be US Open time again if Andy Roddick is taking on the Mighty Pong. I saw a link to the game via "paid media", but what really caught my eye was the embedded HTML code which allowed me to do this:

It's an interesting move, namely allowing bloggers and the like the opportunity to help spread the....'er.....advertising.....hmmmm, but neverthless I just did it and there's something there, no doubt.

I just made the top 100, but I fear I was only the 100th player :)

PS Wonder what would happen if I took out the "bl" (as in blogger landing) from referring URL: http://www.stoppong.com/bl - come on Amex, share some results with us!

Part 1 of a 2 part interview with PodShow's Adam Curry and Ron Bloom is up.

Episode and shownotes link here

iTunes subscription link here

Via Silva, this is a long-form content piece for Smirnoff Raw Tea. What impresses me is the extent of product mentions (which I feel many advertisers seem to either forget...or play down due to some kind of apologetic subservience) and more importantly, 525,000 views and counting.

Over half a million views is not a viral O' the day blip...this is serious viewage my friends. It certainly rivals many cable networks AND if you chose to weight this based on a) permission based, b) credibility from friend recommendations and c) it's length (2m15), we're talking that voodoo cliche, "engagement"

The only nagging question is the ROI one. Now I'm not talking about a stupid binary "99 bottles of raw tea on the wall" sales metric...and certainly not one that would ever be bound to one particular component of an assumed larger integrated plan, but I do feel that we need to start challenging ourselves to demonstrate and validate the business impact of "viral"/communal/CGC et al.

Now if we did that, well then that would change everything, wouldn't it?

Via GapingVoid and Karl Long, a thread with potential on rules for social media and viral.

Karl comes up with 3 ideas under the banners of experiment, monitor and respond: (expanded explanations via the link)

• Success bares no relation to investment
• Viral Marketing does not have a timeline
• Number of views bare little relation to reach or impact of Viral Marketing

Karls adds 5 implications for social media (inspired by the Agency.com kerfluffle) - expanded version here

1. Interactive Agency business models are subverted by social media.
2. Failure is not just acceptable, it should be encouraged.
3. In Social Media Everyone is a Critic.
4. Experimenting Meaningless Without Measurement.
5. Viral Stewardship - Virals Are Unpredictable So Pay Attention.

Episode 50 is just around the corner. It's a milestone I want to share and celebrate with you...so I'm going to be doing my first live SkypeCast which should be a blast.

It's (re)scheduled for Sunday, August 20th at 12 noon EST and you can log in (at the time) here

If you're planning on attending, drop me a note at acrossthesound@gmail.com and also let me know if you have suggested topics/themes/memes for discussion, plus of course winners & losers.

If not, you can always send in message, comment or question to +1 206 203 3255

I’m a big sports nut and a big Yankees (baseball) fan. On the radio, the best (and I think the ONLY) sports talk-station is ESPN (in the Tri-state area of New York-New Jersey-Connecticut, it’s 1050 AM) In the morning, the program of choice is Mike (Goldberg Greenberg) & Mike (Golick) During the day, there’s plenty of great shows from the likes of Steven A. Smith, Dan Patrick and Michael Kay.

So what’s the problem?

When I travel into the city on my every-other-day commute on the train, I typically leave around 7 or 7.05am in order to make a 7.20am train.

So what’s the problem?

When I arrive at the station and park, my car tells me I’ve been traveling for about 7 minutes.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is that in these 7 minutes, I don’t hear a damn word from Mike & Mike. All I hear are damn ads, promos (Summer Hummer crap) and more damn ads. Actually that’s not true, I change the channel and typically continue to change it as I encounter more ad breaks.

I’m not going to stick around and wait for ESPN to figure out how to better reach – and connect – with me.

I also don’t want to hear about the NFL or NBA or NHL. I want to hear about Baseball, Football (your soccer), Cricket, Rugby and headline making stories in general.

ESPN doesn’t care what I want. They just care what their advertisers want.

I’m out of here.

Radio is doomed.

Here are a few ways of helping to kill off this terminally ill patient.

1)    Radio’s only remaining competitive advantage is the live or near live experience i.e. currency (as in current) and listener call-ins. So to make the East Coast commute, beginning around 6 or 6.30am, I would record a podcast every morning at 5am and upload it at 6am. 30 minutes; 1 sponsor maximum.

2)    The third Mike. Are Mike & Mike truly (one of) the best in the game? Perhaps and perhaps note. Against ESPN’s arbitrary standards, absolutely. Against the wisdom of crowds, lifetime Yankees loyalists and sports nuts…not so much. It's time for the listeners to become the broadcasters...

3)    Tailored Content. The podcast created in 1) would be a Yankees podcast (25 mins) with 5 mins of general content to balance out the sporting news of the day/night before

4)    Satellite Radio. Need I say more?

5)    The rise of iPod (or similar MP3 player) installed handsets in cars. Yes, the lighter thingy is nifty, but it’s a little cumbersome and the quality isn’t so great and besides, if they can put in GPS, Satellite Radio etc in a car, they can make sure MP3 players are standard

6)    The obvious next step…who needs an MP3 player anyway? Ala Tivo and Rocketboom, how far away are we to being able to download podcasts directly to our “audio console” (or whatever we end up calling it) in our cars.

7) The obvious next step…the mash-up of SkypeCast meets Wi-Fi meets Podcasting. The inevitable and inexorable march towards LiveCasting (there’s a term worth coining), which should be able to comprehensively be the final straw or final nail for radio

8)    5 steps backwards…there are already plenty of Yankees Podcasts, right? WRONG. Can anyone spell out O P P O R T U N I T Y (see step 1)

The Agency.com kerfluffle (can't believe I just used an FIR word) has certainly got many people talking about one very isolated incident viz-a-viz (ditto with using that phrase) the way agencies pitch...

...but what I'm thinking about is something else and larger. What exactly are agencies doing right...and what are they doing wrong with respect to leading their clients into the future, embracing change, experimentation and risk-taking, and fostering a culture of constant innovation and R&D.

I'd be curious as to whether there are acute differences between so-called traditional agencies, full-service versus media only agencies and of course interactive (specialist agencies.

I'd like get your take and begin and nurture a meme on Jaffe Juice and Across the Sound.

Send in your thoughts via comments on this blog and audio comments to the podcast on +1 206 203-3255

Cover story of Ad Age: McKinsey Study Predicts Continuing Decline in TV Selling Power

Read it and weep (with tears of joy or sorrow)

• by 2010, traditional TV advertising will be one-third as effective as it was in 1990
• real ad spending on prime-time broadcast TV has increased over last decade by about 40% even as viewers have dropped almost 50%
• (Teens) spend less than half as much time watching TV as typical adults do. Teens also spend 600% more time online, surfing the web.

...but really this is what is comes down to: the so-called Catch-22 of so-called limited online inventory and so-called fragmented audiences which "will keep TV in booming business for the next several years."

In other words, if I'm reading this right...we're saying keep your money in TV because we don't know where else to put it and/or there's no better alternative. This is just plain bullshit. According to a specialist at McKinsey, the reason not to shift up to 30% of TV dollars to the Web would be because there's no room.

Look. It's late at night and I'm feeling crabby, so to do all of us a favor, I'm just going to politely disagree with all the respect in the world based on the grounds that the online opportunity does not equal buying out ESPN Motion's 30-second slots or Yahoo's homepages.

There is a world of untapped opportunity right now - prime for big thinkers, risk takers, creative visionaries and budgets in search of a new home. It's time to open your eyes, open your ears, open your minds and open your purse-strings.

...but then again, if you're reading Jaffe Juice you already know this and I'm just venting to the choir, aren't I?

Check out I humped your hummer ...and in case you don't know what its about, here's a blurb from one of the video submissions:

I am in this video humping a hummer. I did this because I believe that hummers and their owners/driers should be discraced for their actions, especially those who use their vehicles in an urban context. The pollution generated by hummers is as outrageous as the unnecessary noise they create and the unnecessary space they take up. They are wasteful monsters hulking over pedestrians, cyclists and even people driving reasonable useful cars. As I see it hummers are constantly violating the city and environment whenever they are used for non-vital non-offroad reasons, as such I have chosen to violate this H2 sexually, raping the car as it rapes the social and ecological environment around it.

Also I think it’s funny. We should work towards mass hummer-humpings where packs of people gang-bang hummers that are in use. Stalling the owners and ridiculing them at the same time.

I'll be on CBS Evening News tonight at 6.30pm EST in a piece about viral videos. If its any good, it will be on YouTube soon enough ;)

Update: Here's the link to the article and the video is on YouTube :)

Whenever you or I come up with "keepers" i.e. sound bytes or ideas which are quotables and/or catalysts for conversation, inspiration or thought leadership directional signposts, I'm going to publish them here.

If you hear a great quote or an idea whose time is coming or has come, send it in and I'll use Jaffe Juice and Across the Sound as fertile proving grounds for discussion, debate and development.

All submissions will have the proper corresponding attribution...and certainly if any idea has been expressed before, I'll make sure that is reflected in the credits :)

Here are some previous ones and a few new ideas:

• You are the community you keep (JAFFE)
• The opportunity cost of an opportunity lost (JAFFE)
• Just-in-place marketing (JAFFE but pretty sure someone else must have come up with this before...)
• Sometimes the best way to stand out from the crowd is not to be in the crowd at all (JAFFE)
• The Funnel of Trust (TROJA from Pyjamas Media)

Discuss.

Starwood is in the process of launching a new brand: Aloft, which will be a more accessible version of the W (trendy, sociable, wired, affordable)

There's a blog to wet your appetites, but what really caught my eye is the fact they've essentially leaked the experience to prospects in Second Life...in other words, a virtual preview of the RL experience in a SL environment.

Just to be clear...the virtual hotel is not open for business yet (the blog is doing a pretty good job documenting the "making of..." and getting people excited), but as soon as I hear otherwise...I'll let you know and we can plan a gettogether!

Very Very Cool.

Via MicroPersuasion

Celebrity SethMatch is up and ready for your listening pleasure. Ala carte here and iTunes subscription here.

Fosters announced today that they're cutting ALL US TV spending and shifting ALL of this to the Web.

Furthermore, Gary Cattell, Foster's brand director has indicated that EVEN IF their initial efforts aren't successful, they will NOT change direction/course.

The ship has sailed Ladies and Gentleman. Gary Cattell - contact me for a signed copy of Life after the 30-second spot...you've earned it.

The only troubling part of the announcement is the deployment of "viral videos" disguised to look homemade in order to mask the fact they're ads. Beware.

(Via WSJ)

I can't even put into words how bad this campaign is. I previously blogged about the man with the world's largest moustache and the fatal tie-in to the employee pricing downward spiral.

No offense Dr. Z, but I'd sooner put you in a circus freak show than a commercial. For now, why don't you stay in the board room.

Worse still is that the trades got it all wrong. Ad Age leads with "Chrysler's Dr. Z campaign fails to halt July sales slump" (gee, do you think perhaps other facts played a role in this...like perhaps the cars themselves?), whereas Adweek contends that "Dr Z gets vote of confidence" based on the fact both the employee-pricing program and Dr Z ads are being extended (gee, do you think perhaps the Upfront has anything to do with this?)

The move comes as the automaker disclosed that U.S. sales slid 34 percent in July from the same period a year ago.

PS A year ago would be the first time they introduced employee-pricing. 'Tis truly uggles when a deep discount's performance benchmark is the previous deep discount AND it does worse...OOGGLY OOGGLY OOGGLY to quote Jeriba "Jerry" Shigan

Like pets.com, business.com, computers.com or let's say agency.com.

That's why differentiation is so important...

By now (as in the past 18 hours or so), you must have been living underneath a rock (as I almost way) if you haven't heard about Agency.com's self-proclaimed risky and differentiated stunt of uploading their Subway pitch video (per brief) to YouTube (not per brief) in order to demonstrate their proficiency with respect to viral. As of this morning, the video has been viewed 19,000 times...

The question is whether this will be looked at as an act of genius or complete stupidity and either way, whether it's fair to judge this solely on whether ADC gets the business or not.

• As of this morning, the AdRants post had generated 67 comments (mostly negative I might ad, including the original post).
• It's already generated a spoof from Coudal Partners (who are currently pitching Arby's...you'll see why when you watch their video.)
• I've already spoken to a trade reporter about the incident.
• Seth and I will discuss this on the next episode of ATS

Karl Long supports the effort; what about you?

Via ClickZ, the music single produced by Bolt Media and sponsored by Wendy's. The song is titled "Gunshy" and the catch here is that it was produced entirely via Web collaboration.

In fact the entire affair was facilitated remotely so to speak, with audience participating and voting on every aspect - from the band's name to auditioning its members.

Even more special is the fact the song will be distributed via Web social networking metropolis' MySpace and FaceBook AND will also make its way to the radio in the hope of some mainstream play and perhaps even a chart attack.

"Not only has anything of this scale not been done at Bolt before, but as far as we know, no band has ever come together without meeting each other or talking together and produced a song," said Bolt CEO Aaron Cohen.

Aaron's not quite right and perhaps he should take a stroll over to Podsafe for Peace with "If every day were Christmas". I put it down to his excitement, which is quite justified...this is quite unique and I for one, will be eager to see if the transition from 2.0 to 0.2 (get it?) is a success.

Here's the track (can't find the standalone MP3 though....hmmmm):

Upload music at Bolt.

The latest episode of Across the Sound is up and ready to arouse your earbuds. Subjects covered include mass marketing (alive and kicking or died a long time ago), The revolution will not be televised, my first video comment, standing on the shloulders of Giants, variable speech and a healthy chunk on Connecting with Buyers (Agencies; marketers)

Give it a listen here