Jaffe Juice

Stop Killing Trees

This is the scene at Grand Central during the morning commute/rush. It's one of a plethora of similar-looking trash bins.

I don't know about you, but it's just such a waste to see piles and piles of newspaper discarded every day.

Such an inefficient and old fashioned way of getting information and updates which are out of date.

What is marketers' speed to market? Oh, about 11 months

And that's a best case scenario.

Such is the case where EA took about 11 months to respond to Levinator25, who introduced the "Jesus shot" in EA's Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08.

In the official response, EA directly addresses Levinator25 in promoting Tiger Woods 09. Here's the video

All in all, it's awesome. My first reaction was to check if Levinator25 was real. He appears to be 100% gamer.

Bravo! I love it.

I only have one question for EA and/or Levinator25: did EA in any way, shape or form compensate, recognize (other than in the video) and/or reward him for his nugget of content?

And if the answer is no, is EA in essence, taking advantage of one of their most passionate customers?

I'm absolutely giving EA the benefit of the doubt on this one, until proven otherwise.

This whole episode raises really interesting questions about a phenomenon which will only be on the rise:

• Should EA have taken less time to respond and capitalize? It's highly probably that the timing really just coincided with the release of the new TW.
• Did they lose any momentum in doing so?
• Who discovered the video?
• Could EA have done more...other than just create a promotional video (ok...AD)? Could they have put Levinator25's video into the actual game? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this one...
• Why do brands take so long in general...if at all...do respond?

Oh and one more thing, this does remind me of my little Tiger Woods "viral" video and Nike's lack of response.

I wonder if they'd have done differently if this had happened today...

Big hat tip to Sebastian

Linkety-Link: you know you want it

Embrace it. Swim in it. Be it.

• jetBlue attempts to give Delta Skelter a run for its money. This is an interesting one with consumer generated content implications. Hat tip to Sean Cheney.
• Press release which announces ExactTarget keynote speaker line-up, which includes Tony Dungy, Chris Gardner (Pursuit of Happyness), Nigel Travis (Papa Johns) and me. Wonder if Dungy told Peyton he was going to meet me and if Peyton asked for a signed book?
• Adweek article on Denuo and how its constant changing (which ordinarily would be viewed negatively) is in fact part of its DNA and a positive. Instead of Built to Last, this is all about Built to Change. Reminds me of a company I know...
• OK, here's a test. Watch this video. Is it real? Is it fake? If it's fake, who is it for? And if you know, were you aware of this before?

• Does DVR stand for Devil's Video Recorder? A recent court ruling paves the way to potentially push DVR penetration amongst US digital cable homes to 60% or more. Hint: Critical Mass. Hint: Bye-bye 30-second spot
• Virtual analyst love-hate: Owyang (Forrester) on Gartner's Generation V. Not to be confused with Generation C. One of the intelligent points of difference here are whether demographics matter as a segmentation variable (when it comes to defining Gen V). Owyang's thinks they do matter. I'm siding with Gartner on this one. In fact, I think all segmentation classification that deals in "absolutes" (avoider versus connector) misses the point. How about you?
• "Are social media jobs here to stay?" asks Mashable. Yup, that's the right question. The wrong question would be asking if broadcast television or print media buyers' jobs are here to stay. Now, THAT would be the right question (any hint of sarcasm is purely intentional)
• Lost in translation? Not sure if this translation of an upcoming conference: Revenge of the i (which I keynoted at last year...or was it the year before?) which talks about "consumer terrorism" was intentional. Sounds a bit harsh, especially when juxtaposed against marketing dumbassiness.

Jaffe. Sydney. Brace yourself Sheila.

Tuesday, August 19th at 9.30pm/10pm at Blue Hotel Bar in Woolloomoolloo. Be there.

Oh and if anyone is in Tokyo next weekend and wants to hang out, eat sushi and shop for Space Invaders merchandise, give me a holler.

Bloggers gone Wild

My new BFF, Julian Cole, down under in Australia got my attention twice recently with his 12 Historical Social Media (Marketing) Moments and also his personalized response to the NAB kerfuffle.

In his top 12, you'll notice that another Kerfuffle (the Curry one) is recognized, thereby propelling me into eternal social media infamy.

1. Amazon Review Section May 15th 1997*
2. Friendster March 22 2002
3. Technorati 20th November 2002
4. Mysace Fox Interactive Media pays $580 million for Myspace July 16th 2005
5. The first viral Youtube clip - Evolution of Dance April 06 2006
6. Jaffe Juice holds Curry to ransom September 7th 2006
7. Transmedia Planning: Idea Propagation October 3rd 2006
8. Dove Evolution Viral wins Cannes Ocotber 7th 2006
9. The first flog:Fake McDonalds Monopoly winners blog October 31st 2006
10. Dell Ideastorm launches February 16th 2007
11. The Age of Conversation March 22nd 2007
12. Power 150 ranking moves to Ad Age August 7th 2007

What would you add/subtract from your top 12 historical moments?

In the other example, Julian impresses me by walking his talk (kinda like I did with Delta Skelter) and gives Aussie bank, NAB, a taste of their own medicine, following the bank's futile and systematic commercial comment spamming exercise. Read more here and watch the video here:

Pluck off!

Couldn't resist this (sorry guys, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do):

Avenue A | Razorfish and Pluck announced that the two companies have signed an agreement to develop and market the industry's first offering to inject social media features like customer comments and user-generated content into mainstream digital advertisements.

So now consumers can tell us to get plucked to our faces.

The power of consumer generated reporting (CGR)

A deserved winner of the week, CNN recently announces that they've hit a record with 2.5 million unique users in June. If you want to know more as to why I think iReport is great, listen to the podcast.

Jaffe Juice #112 - Brand marketers join (or don't join) the conversation

Audio comments to +1 206 203-3255. Join the Jaffe Juice Facebook group. In this episode I talk about conversational marketing's silver bullet, indifference versus ignorance and apathy, Apple's most recent failure, Greyhound's crisis, CNN's iReport and much, much more. It's an interesting juxtoposition of brand marketers as individuals joining the conversation, but as corporations not.

Direct download here

iTunes subscription here

Some links:

• Greyhound's crisis
• FailMe - MobileMe's failure
• CNN's iReport success
• My LoveDigital interview
• My Marketing Magazine interview

Proof positive that even Apple needs to join the conversation

I've written about Apple fairly often (both on the blog and in my book, Join the Conversation). For the most part, I'm more often critical than complimentary, based on what I think is a very one-sided and in these times, archaic approach to customer service, community and openness.

Before the Mac Zealots unleash hell on me, I'd like to believe I give credit when credit is due. The iPhone is a masterpiece; a game changer; I <3 the iPhone (I can't believe I just did that)

Perhaps part of the reason why I've taken this tough love position is the need to counter balance all the goo-goo eyed marketers that slobber over the Apple brand ever day and seem to benchmark everything they aspire to do around a usual suspect list of Apple, Nike, BMW and, oh yes, that's it.

Time to burst the bubble. In recent times we've seen even the mighty Apple come down to earth, for example: the price drop and Steve Jobs' (to his credit - pun not intended) apology.

And now, we have an internal memo ('er doesn't that normally happen to other companies?) being leaked from Jobs to the company admitting that MobileMe was released too early and was "not up to Apple's standards." Here's the full text:

Team,

The launch of MobileMe was not our finest hour.  There are several things we could have done better:

– MobileMe was simply not up to Apple's standards – it clearly needed more time and testing.

– Rather than launch MobileMe as a monolithic service, we could have launched over-the-air syncing with iPhone to begin with, followed by the web applications one by one – Mail first, followed 30 days later (if things went well with Mail) by Calendar, then 30 days later by Contacts.

– It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store.  We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence.

We are taking many steps to learn from this experience so that we can grow MobileMe into a service that our customers will love.  One step that I can share with you today is that the MobileMe team will now report to Eddy Cue, who will lead all of our internet services – iTunes, the App Store and, starting today, MobileMe.  Eddy's new title will be Vice President, Internet Services and he will now report directly to me.

The MobileMe launch clearly demonstrates that we have more to learn about Internet services.  And learn we will.  The vision of MobileMe is both exciting and ambitious, and we will press on to make it a service we are all proud of by the end of this year.

Steve

Like Sony that once could do nothing wrong (Minidisk vs PS3), even Apple is human and cannot hide behind the blended mystique and aura of innovation and aspiration. Jobs' apology is a step in the right direction, but (unless he intended this to leak out) clearly he should be extending this apology beyond Infinite Loop.

Furthermore, could this have been avoided? This prime example of detached and aloof thinking, without a contingency plan or customer service backup (pun kind of intended) arguably hurts the brand and may very well leave an incurable dent on the hat of MobileMe's future sales.

Now can I have the 60-hours of my life back, please.

Hot Dog (Greyhound to be specific)

Tim Nudd over at Adweek blogs about a PR nightmare for Greyhound, following (hard to believe this is true) the gruesome murder of a passenger onboard a long haul trip in Canada (I told you Canada was dangerous):

A traveler aboard a Greyhound bus repeatedly stabbed and then decapitated his seat mate, pausing during the savage attack in central Canada to display the head to passengers who had fled in horror

Tim's not wrong. Greyhound certainly has seen a spike in activity as shown in this Technorati chart.

English posts that contain Greyhound per day for the last 30 days.

Tim's post title is "Worst Nightmare for Greyhound" and I guess I agree with him, but for very different reasons. Whilst there's no question this is a prime "crisis communication" candidate (and it's one of the steps we - at crayon - include in our "committment to conversation" methodology), the real problem here is not what was being said in the blogosphere (more on that later), but what was NOT being said i.e. Greyhound joining the conversation.

Truth be told, Greyhound probably followed the crisis communication handbook to the letter. They "cooperated" with the investigation (d'uh), provided counseling to the passengers and released the typical statement:

The incident near Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, was tragic. Our condolences go out to the victim's family, and Greyhound Canada will continue to cooperate fully with the RCMP on their investigation to determine why exactly this horrible event occurred. Intercity bus has been and remains the safest mode of transportation in the country.

What they didn't do was figure out a way to respond to each and every blogger who commented on the story. Yes of course, there was going to be a pretty solid theme about safety and security, from "how did this happen?" to "how do we prevent this from happening again?" Yes of course, there were going to be comparisons with 9/11. Yes of course, there were going to be widespread fears expressed about traveling by bus again...and specifically Greyhound.

The comments weren't exactly 100% focused on Greyhound, however when it comes to fear and future lost business, Greyhound had no choice but to come along for the ride. You'll also see that the Bus Driver was a hero in terms of containing the tragedy.

Bottom line: This is a classic case where the brand simply had no choice but to represent itself and its position in a very volatile, but manageable scenario. Without the brand's involvement and participation, the conversation (think of it as a spark or even a fire) had no framework or frame of reference (the ability to contain it), and therefore had every chance of becoming a raging forest fire.

PS It's not too late...