Jaffe Juice

JJTV #18 - Sprint finally gets it right

After the Dan Hesse bluff, Sprint leaves the wireless revolution and focuses on the NOW. Even thought they kind of cheated, kudos to them on a great effort.

Spread the word:

• Tell Dan Hesse (dan@sprint.com), your friends, co-workers, clients and colleagues
• Tweet or RT: JJTV #18 - Sprint finally gets it right, even if they did cheat a little - http://bit.ly/s7ka3
• Subscribe to the show via iTunes or YouTube 
• Post a video response - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maxw1jf6SHE

Links:

• Now network spot
• Dan Hesse / Wireless revolution spot
• Did you know video

Kudo's to Boone Oakley

Finally, an agency gets it right.

Now whilst I'm still not a fan of any company (Skittles, Modernista) completely ceding their digital presence to a surrogate/substitute e.g. YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia or Twitter, I think Boone Oakley did a terrific job with this expression of their passion for producing 30-second spots :)

I say that tongue-in-cheek of course, because they've chosen video (much like I've done with JJTV) to demonstrate that they understand how to best use new media to tell an old story so to speak.

Specifically, they're showing their understanding of non-linear storytelling brought to life through YouTube annotations and hyperlinks. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, give Boone Oakley a call...they deserve the shot to teach an old dog (you), new tricks.

It remains to be seen whether this agency actually is a cut above its competitors, BUT they've certainly been able to get their proverbial feet in the door, make their pitch (independence over conglomerendence) and I'll bet that you spent more than 30-seconds being entertained by (gasp) a sales pitch.

Quite lovely. Well done, lads and ladesses.

JJTV #14 - The King acts like a Clown

I'm no prude, but I don't like it when the dude is rude.

Link to the commercial is here

Spread the word:

• Tell Oprah, Alex, Russ, your friends, co-workers, clients and colleagues
• Tweet or RT: I'm no prude, but I don't like it when the dude is rude - JJTV #14 - Squarebutts & Burger King http://bit.ly/g0lPT
• Subscribe to the show via iTunes or YouTube
• Post a video response

JJTV #13 - The TwitteRFP and how Current fixed the RFP process

The RFP process is broken. Jordan Kretchmer and Current_ fixed it. Hooray!

Spread the word:

• Tell your friends, co-workers, clients and colleagues
• Tweet or RT: JaffeJuiceTV on how Current_ and @jkretch fixed the RFP process with their TwitteRFP - http://bit.ly/UGOH5 #twitteRFP #crayon #JJTV
• Subscribe to the show via iTunes or YouTube
• Post a video response

The Launch of the Living in High Definition Podcast

This is a little backwards, because I still want to spend some time over the next couple of weeks outlining the single most signficant project we've worked on at crayon, namely Panasonic's "Living in High Definition" community and commitment.

We've had the pleasure and privilege to work with Panasonic North America on a truly landmark effort - actively demonstrating that Living in High Definition changes everything.

And what better way to bring this to life than through a High Definition video show, presented by one of the real stars of the program, Laura Pollack, a mom and a community member.

The LiHD Podcast is a bi-monthly snapshot of the best of what the community has to offer. It's a showcase which operates on three levels:

• Internal i.e. within the community - motivation for members; a showcase of recognition
• External i.e. outside the community - a portal or window into the community; a source of promotion and membership acqusition
• Both - a source or resource filled with tips, tools, tricks, how-to's and inspiration

Making this podcast happen are the fine folks over at For Your Imagination (FYI)

So take a look, subscribe to the show and while you're at it, join the LiHD Community.

Living in HD Podcast, Episode 1 from Living In HD on Vimeo.

JJTV #3 - Augmented Reality, Creativity & Ecomagination G.E. Style

New episode of JaffeJuiceTV focusing on a ridiculously cool demonstration from G.E. which puts Second Life to shame.

Links:

• Subscribe to the show on iTunes
• G.E. Augmented Reality/Smart Grid demonstration
• Karen Nadalin

Digging the HD Scene

SXSW came and went. I wasn't there, but crayonistas Jane Quigley and Greg Verdino represented us in full force.

They also represented two of our clients: ooVoo and Panasonic - with the latter being involved in a unique live taping of cultishly popular Diggnation, led by their two hosts Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht.

The partnership in question (episode #194) was to highlight Panasonic's Living in High Definition initiative in a promotion called, "Diggnation lives in HD"

From Greg:

If you like taking pictures or shooting video -- or just want to take a look at our latest social marketing tactic to promote the Living in HD community site -- visit the promo page to find out how you can qualify for the competition.  Don't forget to join LiHD, friend the Diggnation crew.You might win a sweet Panasonic digital still camera or HD camcorder.

Greg's photos from the event are here.

Crack in the Box

Jack in the Box (which I'm told is best described as a perfect cross between White Castle on Crack mixed with Stephen King's IT Character) recently dipped its cone into the social media snark-infested (oh I am trademarking that - full attribution required from hereon end) waters with it's "conversation starter" Super Bowl commercial commercial.

Bringing back shades of Frontier Airline's Flip the Dolphin, JITB created a website - Hang in there Jack - which included 81,000 get well messages from "concerned" patrons, including videos and songs. There was also (of course) a blog, which included comments like these:

• You all are morons. I like checking out most dot com websites .but yours is the epitomy of the worst. Your humanity is absurd
  
• Makes no difference to me, because Jack never came up here to feed us New Yorkers. We should grill Jack like a Pig and eat him.
• Your food makes me poop

That's where it gets interesting and where JITB might (I stress might) have succeeded where Skittles failed. With the exception of vulgarity and profanity, of which poop is apparently neither, the company let the conversation extend and evolve (or devolve) as it might...

No question that irreverence is a major part of this brand's make-up and personality. Couple that with a more open-minded, pragmatic and honest approach to dealing with consumer generated content and the "conversation", and you have a pretty authentic mixture of good and bad...peacefully co-exiting side by side.

According to the LA Times, the six-week "Hang in There Jack" campaign (Secret Weapon Marketing, Santa Monica) was a remarkable document: a 360-degree social media event that mocked even as it exploited the power of YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. Along the way it leveraged irony to the breaking point with "viral" cellphone and faux-paparazzi videos, ring tones and texting. Among the crowd-sourced content were 27 get-well videos from fans, some quite brilliant. A man in Hawaii bought Jack's size-14 Bruno Magli shoe on EBay for $910. Now that's buy-in.

Clearly there was leadership, pre-sell and management of expectations by and from both client and agency in this case. JITB execs contended that the social media component of this program generated impressions (4.8 million video impressions for example) which would have cost "three times as much" using traditional media.

The other obvious ingredient in this taco was strategy (repositioning; relaunching) as hard as it may seem when you read a blog post written by a fictional demented clown titled "My post coma plans"

Jack's back, baby. Jack's back.

Why charging a digital or PR agency with social media is a flawed strategy

My latest Adweek column is up and it's already getting its fair share of comments - with some particularly negative ones leveled at me.

The piece is about where I think "social" media really fits and why - based on this assessment - I think it's a flawed strategy to charge a digital or PR agency with the AOR responsibilities associated with this imperative.

PS If you're going to be a hater, please indicate if you work for a digital or PR agency :)

Full text here:

Who Owns Social Media?

A clue: don't look to digital agencies or PR shops

March 15, 2009

-By Joseph Jaffe

There are three worlds. Or perhaps I should say three environments. And whether you know it or not, you're living in all three right now.

Let's start off with the physical world, also known as the real world (and I'm not talking about an MTV program). The physical world, from a media standpoint, is the one governed by television, radio and print. It's also the world in which most word-of-mouth conversations happen. Face to face.

Then there's the digital world. Web 1.0. The world of Web sites. Of big, Flash-based, SEO-unfriendly "skip intro" edifices built to glorify brands. This is the world of e-mails, banners and buttons. It's a world of advergames and gargantuan portals. And it's become synonymous with "traditional interactive" -- a sterile wasteland devoid of life, creativity and innovation.

Finally, there's the virtual world. Yes, it includes the obvious virtual reality, the maligned Second Life, MMORPG experiences like World of Warcraft and more kid-friendly environments like Club Penguin or Webkinz. But, I would argue, it also includes blogs, podcasts, presence applications like Twitter and social networks. My definition of a virtual world is any environment that utilizes avatar and/or profile-based participation, with the option of anonymity. In short, it's a place or space where people can interact with other people in ways they could never do in the "real" or digital worlds.

So where does social media fall? The obvious answer is right in the middle of these three worlds, which is exactly why neither a digital agency nor the PR industry is equipped to deliver against the three-pronged imperative of community, dialogue and partnership.

Digital agencies today are stuck somewhere between scalability hell (tasked with automating and compartmentalizing the lowly impression) and storytelling schlock (replicating obtuse and detached hyperbole in an advertising-unfriendly environment). It's a world governed by performance-based pricing and ad networks on the one side and pre-roll advertising and clunky Web builds on the other.

Exactly where and when did the digital space earn the stripes and credentials to tackle the high roads of authenticity, transparency or peer-to-peer collaboration (just to name a few of conversational marketing's core tenets)?

The PR business is really no better and no worse than the digital one when it comes to social credentials. With its claim of being champions of "earned media," it tacked the word "relations" onto blogger, lumped it together with "media relations" and "journalist relations," and somehow went unchallenged.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying PR shouldn't be at the table. I'm just questioning how "relations" between corporations and journalists equate with real people hanging out with other real people.

Whereas the digital space has very little claim to the "physical" world and hasn't proven itself in the virtual space, the PR industry resides more comfortably in the physical world, with a superficial grasp of the digital space and an anemic understanding of the virtual one.

In both cases, the ability to connect the dots among the three environments, find the commonalities and establish obvious synergies is barely practiced.

I've seen client after client duped into charging a digital or PR agency with-arguably-the most transformational opportunity we've been given in our professional lifetimes and the result is almost always a shambolic disappointment. From Sony or Wal-Mart's fake blogs to the recent Skittles.com mess, the culprits are almost always digital or PR agencies.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying every digital and/or every PR agency is ill-equipped to deliver against "social." What I am suggesting, however, is there's an acute and fundamental flaw in equating "social" with "digital" or "social" with "earned media."

So what's the solution?

Perhaps the solution is to return to the clichéd "integration" drawing board and figure out how to ensure that all three sides of the equation are equally represented around the table. In this scenario, there's a definite and defined role for an "integrator" -- an independent third party (internal or external) that is the generalist to the physical, digital and virtual specialist verticals, with less interest in ensuring success in any one world than in simply ensuring your success, period.

Having said this, it may also turn out that there is no such thing as a social AOR.

But don't take my word for it. Continue to vest your future in companies that build elaborate destination Web sites, construct parties that nobody shows up to and deliver ostensibly social solutions that reek of control, manipulation and fakery.

Hey, at least people will talk about you, right?

Ski-doodle

A lot of "buzz" has been going on about Skittles "homepage redesign"

For those of you who've been spared from the tempest in a teapot, essentially Skittles decided to go all Modernista! (an agency that made Wikipedia their homepage; irked Wikipedia purists and as you can see, became a little too transparent) on us and cede their entire web presence to "the people" by presenting the amorphous "conversation" as their true digital presence.

You'd think I'd be elated with this authentic demonstration of cession of control to the masses. You'd be 100% wrong.

For starters, I don't believe that we had control to start with and even if we did, the worst thing we could do is to give it 100% to consumers...who quite frankly, don't necessarily even want it.

Let's begin with Skittle's first bowl (a bold attempt at getting a strike, but sadly nothing more than a gutterball) which was to overlay their site against Twitter. Exhbit 1 shows that when left to their own devices, the "conversationalists" (as defined as social media insiders, fishbowl dwellers and navel-gazers) are mishevious little imps who are also a little sado-masochistic.

Translation - Skittle's entire web-presence AKA Twitter is skittled with gems like: @qwghlm More like: ARE SKITTLES MAKING PAEDOPHILES OBESE? or Skittles Skittles Skittles Skittles Capitalist Whore Skittles Skittles Skittles Capitalist Whore.

Like the Octo-Mom, very soon the media coverage turned on their once darling and Skittles swapped out Twitter for Facebook before settling it would appear on banal Wikipedia as their final resting place.

Rumor has it that this was always a short-term "campaign" and Skittles always intended to go back to a more traditional destination website presence i.e. revert back to the way things used to be. I find this suspect at best and loathsome at worst: suspect given Agency.com's (the same agency behind Subway's When we Roll...We Roll Big) involvement in this and their subsequent backpeddling from the Subway kerfuffle and loathsome if this entire move was nothing more than a short term attempt (campaign) at seeking "buzz" or "viral" response.

So why am I so irritated about all of this? Honestly, I'm not entirely myself. I think it's because of the ridiculous lack of strategy behind this program. It epitomizes 90% of all the work out there right now, which continuously demonstrates "tactics in search of strategy" and an acute lack of understanding of the real power of conversational marketing.

I could go on for hours about the myriad of holes in this program. Here are a few examples:

• Exactly how many of Skittle's core target audience are actively on Twitter? Even if the attempt is just to reflect the buzz, it's a classic example of the Revenge of Second Life (there I said it)
• A company's digital presence or storefront is arguably more important and inarguably as important as their physical presence. Why on Earth would a brand cede this equity or asset to an emerging, unproven and unstable platform like Twitter or a more stable, yet decentralized environment like Facebook or Wikipedia? This is 100% cart before the horse
• What exactly is the message or idea behind this entire effort? It's not remotely clear what the intent or goal is? From a functional standpoint, the Wikipedia page is your boring "about us" tab, which is one of many tabs on a traditional website. From a form perspective, I still can't possible think of what the takeaway is....do you?

I do want to add that a lot of people have said, "why chastise them for being bold and innovative; taking a risk; experimenting" - indeed, a big part of my and crayon's message is about experimentation. That may be so, but there is a huge difference between experimenting with versus without any structure, cause, process or methodology. Case in point, would you casually experiment by playing with matches, gunpowder and a gas cylinder...I think not.

And so, although most mainstream media outlets have praised these efforts, I am not jumping up and down with the same excitement (an understatement) Perhaps they're all right and I am wrong. All I know is that brands need to be adopting new approaches, technologies, platforms and experimenting accordingly....but NOT at the expense of a smart, integrated and solid strategic foundation.

It's really that simple.

Just to be clear, I'll gladly share sales data and mea culpa if I'm wrong about this and there is success at the cash register. However, I think the end result is another demonstration that short term buzz or viral success is relative when a) it is fleeting and b) it is predominantly negative.

So final result? At best, a "split" in keeping with the Skittles analogy.