Jaffe Juice

Virtual Thirst is featured in this week's edition of Ad Age in an article which covers off pretty nicely on the learnings and insights to date, together with advice for the future.

This is definitely one of the more prominent pieces of press the effort has received and shows that even in the new P.R., the "short head" methodology equally applies.

I'm also encouraged by the coverage which hopefully begins a new wave of insight and perspective into how to approach - not just - Second Life, but virtual worlds in general.

As I explained to my wife yesterday...take the prediction that in 3-5 years time, the majority of all "browsing' will be done in virtual environments. Internet browsers like Internet Explorer or even Firefox will be passe. Site maps will quite literally be maps and each "page" will be an attraction. Think of a funfair or carnival, filled with rides, stalls and kiosks. Sites like Amazon.com will be 3-D representations of stores like Barnes & Nobles, teaming with activity, life and social interaction.

Now if only 1% of that prediction comes true...can you imagine the implications for marketing, branding, advertising, socializing, connecting etc. etc. etc.

Now if you are Coca-Cola or any other blue-chip company, how can you not be seriously thinking about these implications and making planning/provisions/"bets" on these possible scenarios/outcomes.

I think when you put it that way, the obvious validation/justification naturally rises to the top...arguably even more important than short-term sales/ROI (ala Michael Donnelly's point in this article

DON'T EXPECT A DIRECT LINK TO SALES IN THE REAL WORLD. "So much of our metrics aren't about sale, but they're about brand love. Brand value and brand love are our key metrics." -- Michael Donnelly, director-global interactive marketing, Coca-Cola Co.

Scott Donaton writes this post about the downward-spiralling Bud.TV. Whilst most have jumped on the bandwagon to lambaste the program kind of like the lynch mob in Young Frankenstein, both Scott and I agree that this was a sound concept/a great idea.

So where did this "fail" in the execution? Should A-B have stayed away because they're not in the audience-growing business? Who is these days? The networks seem to be in the audience-shrinking business...perhaps A-B should have visited the founders of YouTube or MySpace.

What about the content? At the end of the day, great content should always prevail. Perhaps A-B should have consulted the cavemen at GEICO! As if.

Or perhaps, it was the failing of marketing (positioning, promotion, outreach, optimization, maintenance). I wrote this post last month and offered 10 ideas to help give Bud.TV a shot in the arm.

With any experiment, the learnings are the most invaluable. I don't think you can put too much of a premium on the competitive differentiation and advantage that comes from this approach. All in all, I think the only failing will be pulling the plug prematurely and walking away. I always go back to the first days of TV or how about the first days of any new marketing approach.

Hopefully A-B will find a new home for Bud.TV, perhaps as a video podcast. Stay the course, be strong and don't give in to the naysayers.

Aaron loves nature, originally uploaded by josephjaffe.

I just wanted to thank Nikon for selecting me to participate in their blogger outreach program. With photographs like this (which I would never have had before), I now have loyalty to a brand which quite frankly I had never considered before.

This kind of influencer outreach represents a new path forward and certainly a viable and cost effective alternative to traditional advertising.

As a reminder to everyone, this camera was sent to me on loan. I am under no obligation whatsoever to say anything about the camera or the program, except - with full disclosure - the nature of how I received the camera. And when I do say something, I am free to say what I want.

Also, to the "Serial Naysayers" out there, take a look at this photo and then take a good look at yourselves. Smile, enjoy life and enjoy your family and friends. Perhaps you'll even want to purchase a Nikon D80 camera to capture moments like these :)

Happy Memorial Day to my US-readers. I will be taking lots of pictures this weekend.

Yesterday, I was asked to do a taping for CNBC (it will air today and as soon as I know the time, I'll update this post) The thing was that I was also coaching my daughter's softball side (sponsored by crayon)

So we had to schedule the taping around the softball practice. How's that for prioritization!

I just found it quite surreal that I was in a suit in a studio at 3.15pm and on the field in shorts and a T-shirt at 4pm.

The latest episode of Across the Sound is up. It's a pretty meaty episode focusing on a few key issues such as change management, "The Big Purge", responding to serial naysayers in the blogosphere (with specific reference to the Nikon D80 campaign) and also justifying/selling Second Life (or any other non-traditional/emerging approach for that matter)

Hope you like it.

PS If you're still dipping your toes in the podcasting waters, take the plunge and subscribe to ATS via iTunes - click this link to be taken to the subscribe page

PPS If you haven't voted for ATS as an MVP candidate, vote here

So I gave back 1.5 pounds this week which is fine considering the 4 pound loss from last week. I'm not sure why I tend to be fluctuating like I am...I'd much prefer to go back to the steady 1.5 pound loss week on week.

Irrespective, I'm still on course to break 190 and hopefully settle around 187 by the time the baby is born.

The one thought I'd like to share this week is how the spirit of Fatblogging has captured the hearts and minds of this community. I can't tell you how many people have e-mailed me personally or approached me at conferences with kind words about this effort.

Publisher of Ad Age and Creativity, Scott Donaton, is blogging! His blog is called "When Trains Fly", which refers to a well-known HBR essay on how the railroads could have maintained their dominance if they realized they were in the transportation business, not the train business.

When Trains Fly will focus on a subject close to my heart, business model transformation of agencies, marketers and media companies.

Welcome to the dark side Scott...I'm looking forward to reading you and you joining in the conversation.

We're all very familiar with the concept of lean-forward and lean-backward.

TV for example, is considered to be a lean-backward medium. Relaxing on the sofa, beer in one hand and chips 'n dip in the other as you slumber slowly into that wonderful passive state of couch potato coma.

The web on the other hand, is a lean-forward medium. Hunching neanderthal-like over the keyboard as you check how many stranger friends you've signed up over the past 24-hours due to your fake porn-star image (real or avatar) you've posted as your own.

Both have their advantages and disadvantages.

My point for this post however is this: when I give presentations, it's always interesting to me to see how my audience reacts to the various examples I show. Typically when it's a piece of video, they lean back and don't react much except for laughter when it's slapstick funny. On the other hand, when I show various new marketing efforts, they tend to lean forward, engage, smile, chatter and interact - with me and with one another.

I realized that this is a pretty simple litmus test for everything we do and it's completely media-agnostic. Do our efforts result in audience, viewers, visitors, humans etc leaning forward and engaging with our ideas, stories, messages or threads...or more importantly, engaging with one another?

Or is the result a lean-back deafening monosyllabic tone of the flatline.

Think about it the next time and the next "campaign"

• PSFK Conference in London. With names like Parker, Davies and Macleod, how can you go wrong?
• 2 Futurists for the price of 1. Watts Wacker and Ryan Mathews have a new book coming out called "What's Your Story?: Storytelling to Move Markets, Audiences, People, and Brands". It's got to be good. Where's my review copy?
• Via Chasnote, 3 new marketing case studies in the making: Ask.com and Ask-A-Ninja, Virgin Airlines and Boing Boing, and Intel + Digg

More links throughout the week

BBDO has just completed a 9 month, 5,000 person, 26 country study on "shared habits", designed to isolate daily routines and I guess provide marketers with insight on how best to join or disrupt them.

The study identifies 5 primary categories:

1. Preparing for battle AKA waking up and getting ready for work
2. Feasting AKA Eating
3. Sexing Up AKA Grooming
4. Returning to Camp AKA Going home
5. Protecting yourself for the future AKA Going to bed

I know. That's what I thought as well...

Via Ad Age

What an awesome feeling. It's my daughter's 6th birthday day, and I get to have a slice of birthday cake. I'm 29 pounds down now with another 11 to go.

My 4-month progress report (thanks to CC Chapman) tells the tale and hopefully by June 18th, I will be fully flat and transparent.

I get a lot of e-mails and a lot of pitches. Generally I ignore them (both categories) and so when I received this one from a Josh Warner, with the following text:

Never pretend.
Never be afraid.
Never give up.
Never Hide.
Now playing near you http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-prfAENSh2k
The first among many.

...I did click and saw this:

I thought it was a cool video. I even showed one of my fellow crayonistas and we both tried to guess how it was done.

That's about it. I forget about it until I hear about a Ray-Ban viral sensation. I read this write-up in Adweek and realize that it's the same video I saw earlier. I read about Josh Warner, President of Feed Company, who is the same person who sent me the mail on 5/7 (look for it on the chart below)

Posts that contain Ray-Ban Viral per day for the last 30 days.

Get your own chart!

Feed Company is the company that seeded the video, like crayon did with Sneaux Shoes' Human Skateboard. Congratulations to Feed Company btw....based on just under 1.9 million views, pretty damn impressive performance!

According to the Fabio Costa, Interactive Creative Director at Cutwater, the agency that created the video, "...we knew we had to make Ray-Ban part of the conversation again. We never hide the brand message from Ray-Ban"

I scratch my head. To my knowledge, there was absolutely no branding whatsoever. The subject of Josh's e-mail to me was in fact Ray-Ban, but I guess I never noticed or paid attention.

Which brings me to my point. Could it be that vomitous viral has peaked and/or entered the black hole of cluttered forgetfulness? I disagree with Fabio's contention - as evidenced by the Technorati chart - Ray-Ban did not become part of the conversation, but rather just a freaky viral video, remembered for the wrong reasons.

This is the reality of the two extremes of video today:

The 30-second TV spot sells too hard and the viral video doesn't sell hard enough.

I'm all ears btw if the folks over at Feed Company, Cutwater and/or Ray-Ban would like to chat about this. I'll even have you all on Across the Sound.

Very cool. Advertising is a loud-mouthed, arrogant, egotistical jerk.

Way to go Microsoft. Just don't go replicating all that TV, radio and print all over again, now.

Been pretty busy lately. Here are some links of things I probably should have written more about:

• Greg Verdino points to Jim Kukral's analysis of Viral Garden's Top 25 Marketing blogs. It's an invariable cacophony of incestuous navel gazing. Gotta love it.
• Bruce Willis Joins the Conversation
• Some audio and video from my keynote presentation at MIPTV, as well as some others like Phil Rosedale
• "What Twitter Means for Marketers" piece written by Real Branding's Mark Silva on imediaconnection.com
• Ad Age article on how the various holding companies are buying (literally) into digital. Very illuminating to see the lack of progress IMHO.
• English/French (nice) post listing Top 10 reasons why traditional agencies resist interactive.

Discuss at will.

Earlier this week, I challenged Delta to stop talking about change and change already! I criticized a bloated 30-second spot which essentially says, "we're changing", but offers no proof. In addition, it sets them up for failure with typical mismatched expecations between communication and ground-level activation (service, baggage handling, delays, comfort - I could go on)

My point was simple: instead of telling us you're changing, why not prove it to us? Why not update us regularly with - for example - a Twitter group.

On the same day of my post, a Delta Twitter account mysteriously appears. What makes this so surreal is that the "voice" is not brand-speak or corporatese. It's human.

• looking at Derek Jackson's photos from the week-long party: http://flickr.com/photos/de... 01:49 AM May 10, 2007 from web
• playing around with this twitter thing 12:43 AM May 10, 2007 from web

The voice is certainly informed:

• @Blephen - been trying to make the employees happier too. Gave out bonuses and part-ownership in the company: http://tinyurl.com/28ddae about 18 hours ago from web
• revamped the award ticket system for you SkyMiles members recently: http://www.delta.com/awardt... - you can shop around, calendar-style about 18 hours ago from web
• @gamerandy - oh no, I'm not a 747. Actually, mostly 757s and 767s and MD-88s. And 47,163 employees (last time I counted) and so on... about 22 hours ago from web in reply to GamerAndy

It actually responds to other people - even influential bloggers like Steve Rubel. Steve didn't even respond to my twitter, but Delta did. How about THAT!

• @steverubel - consider me "unofficial". Kinda like cnnbrk, except I'm not a robot. about 20 hours ago from web in reply to steverubel
• @stevegarfield - enjoy your flight! about 18 hours ago from web in reply to stevegarfield
• @arielwaldman - sorry about your troubles with United. The industry is broken. We're working hard to fix it - better employee training, etc. about 21 hours ago from web in reply to arielwaldman
• @arielwaldman - sorry about your troubles with United. The industry is broken. We're working hard to fix it - better employee training, etc. about 21 hours ago from web in reply to arielwaldman

It has charm:

• @bloggersblog - a busy airline never sleeps ;) about 22 hours ago from web in reply to bloggersblog
• @chrispirillo: what makes you so surprised? :) 01:55 AM May 10, 2007 from web in reply to chrispirillo
• watching the new tv spot on YouTube: http://tinyurl.com/2gog2w about 21 hours ago from web

NOTE: Like the appearance of the Twitter account, the YouTube video also mysteriously was uploaded directly after my post

I can't even refer you to the me-too of 30-second spot-land, YouTube as there's nothing there.

It cares:

So now the real questions:

1. Who does the voice belong to?
2. Is it a fake voice? There are many opaque twitter accounts such as this one "belonging" to Condi Rice (via shakewellbeforeuse)
3. Is it sanctioned by Delta? It could very well be a purposeful unofficial voice. After all, humans can say many things corporations (or brands for that matter) can't
4. Is this (or should this be considered as) the voice of "the brand"? Does it speak as an "official agent" of the company? And if not, does it matter?
5. What will happen to the voice?

I have some hunches as to answers 1), 2), 3) and 5), but I think the real conversation is in 4)

This is one of those very clear - even seminal - moments in marketing that reflect a clear departure from the norm and status quo. It's a BIG story and has even BIGGER implications for all of marketing and its future.

So I gave back 0.5 pound this week to the fatman. It's no biggie and probably attributable to the fact I haven't been swimming for 2-3 weeks given a nasty, lingering cold of some sorts.

Surreal moment of the week: I was told that I'm starting to look more and more like my avatar every day! (I have a looong way to go)

I was interviewed for a Forbes article on The Upfront and it reminded me of this little Vidlit I helped create 2 years ago to launch "Life after the 30-second spot"

Enjoy big dance madness of paying more for less!

I received this set of very intelligent comments and I wanted to respond (but not now). I think I'll devote some time to this on next week's Across the Sound podcast and possibly post the clip here afterwards, but in the interim here are the 2 comments:

From Kelly:

I'm sure you've read all the coverage recently about the Gartner research that states "80% of active internet users will have a 'second life' before 2011 but not necesarily in Second Life" so where you do see the virtual world market going if not towards a 3D imersive world like SL? I'm an experienced gamer and began my career in PR for PC game companies and I have a tough time in SL...the lag is crazy and the only acitivy I ever come across is swinger clubs or drug binges...I now work for a company that operates a virtual world as well, but we are 2D based and offer a lower barrier of entry but yet every day new companies like Coca Cola are launching initiatives inside SL worth millions of dollars...but where is the ROI? I've also read SL's acutal population of active players is lower than 200,000 so if that is the case how can you justify the millions of dollars spent on these initiatives to only reach such a small audience?

From Rob:

Kelly makes a good point. As enticing as Second Life seems, it's practically impossible to know the type of results in can produce. This lends even more credence to the original post. The fact that many advertisers are advocating SL without experiencing it themselves is a dangerous game. I'm not suggesting that every busy ad exec spend hours a day crafting their virtual avatars, but I wonder how much would it cost to hire some independent testers to explore the site on their behalf? The idea is sort of like beta testers for video games.

This doesn’t need to be a long post at all to make a very simple point and express it in contemporary marketing terms.

Advertising follows the long tail to a fault And that’s exactly the problem.

Advertising does not work against the long tail methodology. New Marketing might, but advertising does not i.e. big bang short-lived launch with limited follow-through.

So there you have it.

Forget the long tail of advertising and instead, explore and embrace the “short head.”

What do you think about that, Chris Anderson?

I am a Platinum Delta Skymiles member (I'm also an AAdvantage Executive Platinum member and American is a crayon client), so you can imagine my relief to find out that the airline has emerged from Chapter 11 and is ready to begin Chapter 12.

Last night, their 30-second spot caught my eye on television (some do). Actually I had no idea it was theirs until the payoff, but it did enough to get and keep my attention. Whilst it was no different to most airline creative (sidebar: I have no idea why airlines all do the exact same thing when it comes to advertising, electing to go with a sugar-coated baby, bunny, puppy, flower aspirtional combo), it still did manage to stand out from the rest of the crowd (erectile dysfunction, denture cream, punny automotive etc)

At the end of the spot, my reaction was not one of hope, joy and enthusiasim, but rather one of cynicism, skepticism and sober doubt. My feeling was not "awesome. can't wait to fly your friendly skies again", but instead "yeah right. seeing is believing"

Arguably this is exactly the time to advertise. The brand has something to say. We're out of financial quicksand...we can now concentrate on the important things: you. That's the spirit of the message, but I wonder how ready the airline is ON THE GROUND LEVEL to execute against the (empty) promises laid out in the advertising.

• Have you changed every single one of your fleet?
• Are there screens on every coach-class seatback?
• Is your staff firing on all cylinders, trained, motivated and ready to overdeliver?

On Delta's website, you can watch the commercial. I can't even send you a unique URL as its all flash-based (soooo 2005). I can't even refer you to the me-too of 30-second spot-land, YouTube as there's nothing there.

The website reads, "see our new 30-second TV spot featuring the rebranded, reinvigorated Delta." Do I even need to point out the obvious - why would you turn to a traditional symbol of a time that has passed in order to herald or usher in a new period of change and growth? And why use such Corporatese to do it?

Why not create a Twitter group or an R.S.S. feed that doesn't talk about change, it shows it...it reflects it...it delivers against it, offering permission-based, timely updates or progress reports?

The spot itself says the following: "Rethinking every moment of the travel experience". Well Delta, I'll be waiting, watching and taking photographs of my travel experience with my new Nikon D80 camera to judge for myself whether you have rethunk every moment of my travel experience.

Oh, and best of luck with the next chapter of your journey. I know that might sound flat, but I mean it. I have hundreds of thousands of miles riding on your success.

On the cover of Ad Age this week, is a giant headline from NBC Universal: :30 and beyond. It sounds a lot similar to a certain book I'm vaguely familiar with (note to NBCUni: If you really want to shock and impress your advertisers, give away a copy of my book to each upfront attendee or have me address the crowd instead of Hiro Nakamura)

They didn't stop there.

This week NBC Universal announced that they were shunning 30-second spots online. Drilling down a little deeper, this is limited to pre-roll situations focused on short-form content, but irrespective it's a giant step in the right direction.

Whilst struggling Yahoo! and the other networks (offline; online) will no doubt continue to pig out at the trough of greed that is 30-second spot heaven, a major network - that arguably has both more to lose and gain - has taken a stand.

This is an announcement that is most likely going to frustrate lazy marketers and agencies (which is the norm, not the exception), so besides the obvious P.R. value generated from the announcement, where else can this go?

Personally, I believe that the optimal length of a pre-roll commercial online is a big fat ZERO. NBC Universal should be exponentially innovating, not incrementalizing here. They should take the wind in their sales generated from this announcement and convert it into pure innovation energy in the form of using technology (hint: Google purchased DoubleClick - gee, I wonder what happens when third-party adservers begin to power television) to power a more efficient, effective, accountable, engaging, relevant, utilitarian and entertaining value proposition that becomes a win-win for all.

Life after the 30-second spot is much close to Buzz Lightyear's Infinity and beyond as opposed to a wolf in sheep's clothing.

I applaud NBC's bold moves (Ford could learn a lot from this) but I hope this is a first of many steps in the right direction as opposed to just another way to package an already staid and dieing product.

This terrific DIY assessment test of your social media addiction is eerily accurate. According to canuckflack blog, the exposure continuum is as follows:

Libby Copeland just published this article for the Washington Post. She quotes me and also cites Virtual Thirst.

Libby originally interviewed me for this piece a few days before Coca-Cola's Second Life initiative launched. I invited her to the press launch in Second Life and what impressed me so much about her was that she actually took the time to download and install the software, register, create an avatar and attend the launch - all within a couple of days.

Most journalists that have written about Second Life have never so much as been in Second Life. The same applies with many agency execs that advise their clients on investing in non-traditional or emerging media like Virtual Worlds.

Makes you think, doesn't it...

BTW...I'm going to be on All Things Considered on NPR tomorrow on a feature piece about BBDO and also the changing role of advertising and agencies.

wow - just got an e-mail from someone who attended one of my presentations in Sydney, Australia, who just informed me that they went out and purchased a new Nikon D80 camera.

With all the healthy chatter on my blog about this program, I trust that this will well and truly shut the naysayers up regarding ROI.

One point I want to touch on quickly is the debate about who should be eligible for "blogger outreach" with a program such as this one. What I've learned through the process is that influence is influence. As I've often said, demographics are dead...all that remains is passions and when it comes to passion, it is an invariable melting point when it comes to profiling or "targeting" prospects. If anything, focusing only on the photographic bloggers actually limits the potential of the program.

The other insight is that I have been allowed to join a different conversation that I was previously not a part of. I had not activated my Flickr page before this. Now I am a photographer (amateur and budding, but a photographer nonetheless) or at least able to participate in other conversations that involve photography, for example chatting with my buddy C.C. Chapman.

PS Nikon - if ever an influential blogger, podcaster and photographer earned the right to participate in this outreach program, it is C.C. I'm just sayin'.....You can thank me later.

My belief is that two simple words will play an integral role in shaping "Brands 2.0" i.e. the nature, health and relevancy of the next generation of brands. They are "response" and "responsiveness"

Responsiveness: The ability or propensity for brands to engage their consumers, measured in time i.e. the length of time that elapses between consumer comment and brand response.

NOT Autoresponse: Your comment is important to us. We will get back to you in the order your comment was received etc.

BUT Humanresponse:Thank you so much for taking the time to contribute. We heard you.

Response: The nature and quality of that response

We heard you and here's what we did about it...

Segue to Virtual Thirst - the initiative crayon worked with The Coca-Cola Company to help launch in Second Life.

To date, we've got plenty of feedback from the blogosphere and beyond. I'm proud to say that the vast majority of it has been consistently positive. I'm even prouder of the fact, both our clients and crayonistas have responded to almost every post personally.

That's almost unprecedented in today's times.

Now with that said, we've also received some criticism - most of it constructive, but criticism nonetheless. Some people believed that the prize was not substantial enough.

One eligible grand prize winner will win a trip for 2 to San Francisco, California USA, for a visit to the offices of Millions of Us to participate in the creation of a video documenting the creation of the winning design as a Second Life object.

Others had concerns with the rules/T's & C's which were visibly posted on the Virtual Thirst website.

And then Coca-Cola's Michael Donnelly responded, with this video on YouTube, directly (or as best as he could) addressing the concerns and in places, providing a solution e.g. upping the prize to L$500,000.

We've even received our first video response from Christopher Penn

I don't know about you, but where else have you ever seen this kind of response or responsiveness? I think it speaks volumes in terms of how things are changing and if this is any indication of the new direction, I'm certainly encouraged by it and humbled to play a small part in the process.

I wonder if anyone will pick up on this. The mainstream media certainly has been quiet so far.

Just got some video footage from my "Spread the Love" visit to Oz. More to come...

Just got back from Sydney (my breakfast session with my host, TCO's Big Kahuna, Clive Burcham is here and some video footage from my tour is here) and as you will see, I have broken the 200 barrier, tipping the scales at 198.5 pounds or 90.2 kg's.

Total weight loss = 25.5 pounds

Not that the food in Sydney wasn't spectacular, but I think the secret was missing entire day's meals because of the International Date Line. I think there's a new diet plan in there somewhere: the IDL Diet :)

One of the highlights of my trip (there were many) was taking a 1+ hour stroll with Clive along the Bondi Beach coast and then having a hearty breakfast at the famous Speedo's Cafe.

I also had dinner at Iceberg's with some South African mates of mine.