Web Strategy Blog

The Amazing GE Ecomagination Digital Hologram

 

Today I took a look at the GE Ecomagination site that allows you to see a digital hologram of Smart Grid technology come to life in your hands. You start by printing a solar panel marker and then launching the application in conjunction with a web cam. You then hold the paper up to the webpage and watch the hologram unfold before your eyes.... you can also blow on the wind mills and they will speed up - its truly amazing!

It got me thinking about all of the potential uses for technology like this - imagine being able to visualize in 3D form images like homes, cars - pretty much any consumer product. It would be especially useful for anything that needed customization or configuration. The concept of using augmented reality in advertising has been used previously in this ad for the Cabrio Mini.

Microsoft Windows new IT Pro Campaign "Talking About Windows"

Microsoft just launched a new campaign called Talking About Windows focused on IT Pro's where they are opening up the conversation about Windows 7. It includes interviews with Microsoft's top Windows 7 Engineers including Jon DeVaan, Mark Russinovich, Gabe Aul and others as well as some great Windows 7 early adoption companies.

 

TalkingaboutWindows.com offers IT professionals genuine insight on Windows 7 from the Microsoft engineers who helped build the product. Featured are video's and discussions about why product decisions and feature trade-offs were made. Also, IT Pro's can get real-world commentary from IT professionals as they share their Windows deployment and adoption experiences. If you are an IT Pro, check out this forum to express your opinions, discuss Windows and share adoption stories.

As a marketer, I am very interested to see the conversation around Windows 7 and the IT Pro customer is a great place to start.

Blurring the lines between marketing and learning – New Game for Sun and Java Developers

What happens when you combine technology, online story telling, mystery, clues and collaborative missions? You’ve got a fun way to engage developers around solving a mystery while learning how to use JavaFX. Crimson recently launched an ARG with Sun Microsystemsfor the launch of JavaFX.

Baron Rude and Hector Macchiato are Paranormal Investigation Experts or the “PIE guys” and they have a theory they call “the JUMP”. According to Baron and Hector’s research, strange events have preceded some of the most significant leaps in science, technology, and agriculture.  They track and record these strange phenomenon through their website www.pietheory.com Recent sightings suggest that another advancement is about to occur and the PIE guys need your help in following the jump and ensuring its arrival. When you registeryou get a recruitment kit that includes free downloads of Netbeans 6.5 and the JavaFX Production Suite 1.1. Through following the story you are given clues and challenges to solve that involves using JavaFX and learning to create your own assets – such as screensavers, text decoders, audio and video.

How do ARG’s help to promote products? Rather than getting people to talk about a product directly, it engages players in the creation of something fun, allows them to share it and then take credit for it. In this case we are betting that Java developers will take the story clues, work with them in JavaFX and create their own assets as a result of what they learn through game play.
Shortly after launch there are already fan sites being established and a group of players in Brazil have created their own Orkut PIE network group in Portuguese. The site was reviewed by ARGNet and is being promoted through social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Myspace.

Stay tuned – the story is starting to unfold and Baron and Hector are up to some crazy stuff!

Get your own slice of the Pie: www.pietheory.com

Crimson Social Media Marketing Approach

In the spirit of "if you get it, share it" we’ve decided to start publishing some of the approaches, methodologies and marketing strategies that we are doing in the Crimson Consulting Interactive Services group, for which I am the lead Partner. We’ve worked hard over the past few years at creating and refining some approaches we have used across both F500 clients and some startups - particularly around Social Media Marketing.

In many ways this goes against the traditional management consulting and agency practice of treating everything as proprietary, but if there is one thing I have learned in the new modern marketing environment, its that sharing your approaches has a lot of advantages. The feedback, recognition and collaboration we have received when we have done this is invaluable and I am hoping that as I publish some of our approaches that other people will share theirs also. As a result we can all learn from each other, what is working, what isn’t and what is still experimental.

 

Here is the first framework - its the basic approach that we use for planning Social Media Marketing initiatives:

Crimson Consulting Social Media Marketing Framework: A repeatable approach for planning social media marketing initiatives

View more presentations from Karen Obrien.

Social Media Analytics: Radian6

We've been using Radian6 as a Social Media Analytics tool for some time and I wanted to share the differentiators in their tool vs others that our clients seem to like so much.

1. Time to discovery - results are FAST! Usually real-time or max 30 min for a really broad query.

2. Ability to drill down in queries - in other words you can do a search within a search. This is really valuable in being able to drill down into very specific things you want to know.

3. Ability to pull top results in different ways - those of you who have pulled down a mass of comments in an analytics tool can appreciate how valuable it is to be able to bubble to the top and prioritize results... by Top 10 or by Twitter users, etc.

Radian6 put out this video to announce that they have some new product features coming out - you gotta love a company where the VP of Marketing does a decent Johnny Cash imitation! Looking forward to seeing the new features guys!

First Round Capital - any problem can be solved by DANCING!

I heart this holiday video card from First Round Capital and their Startup companies  where the say in these trying times its more important than ever to remember that we have much to be thankful for...and to recall the immortal words of James Brown ..."Any problem in the world can be solved by...Dancing!" I didn't realize that First Round had such a fantastic portfolio of startups - I saw several of my favorite San Francisco startups and learned about a few I wasn't aware of. Congrats to First Round for putting out such a positive inspirational message - unlike other VCs doomsday messages that invoke fear and panic. I would definitely send a startup seeking funding to them!

What Do Obama and David Hasselhoff have in Common?

In the theme of "do we really need another social network?" comes a bold move by celebrity David Hasselhoff who has started his own social network called Hoffspace in late August. Since then I've been watching it to see the reaction and have been surprised by both the response and the amount of activity its getting. I won't get into the multitude of social tools, UGC and activity in his social network - because we all know its not about the technology - bottom line is his fans have enthusiastically responded. The user experience is train wreck - but that doesn't seem to matter, from my experience when you have an enthusiastic following people will tolerate a lot of UX issues. Its been publicly reported that over 13,000 users signed up on the first day.

Whats so new about a celebrity doing social networking? Many celebrities are prominent on large social networks and many leverage social tools/ social marketing in their promotions. The difference is that I haven't seen celebrities building a dedicated social network around THEMSELVES as a brand! I suppose you could argue that the current politicians running for election are doing just that EG: Obama. It begs the question - is the Hoff just another self-obsessed celebrity or a social networking pioneer?

   

On the business side - will we start to see social networks created around CEO's or tech celebrities? Or are the Robert Scobles of the world already social networks unto themselves? Who would you like to see create their own social network? Is this the end or the explosion of social networks as we know it?

CEO's Who Twitter

Interesting story today in BusinessWeek on heads of companies and their take on Twitter. Given the amount of information overload and the pressure on CEO's to be efficient with time, use of Twitter makes a lot of sense given its 140 character limit and ability to give/ get instant feedback.

My favorite CEO to follow onTwitter is hands-down Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com if you haven't seen his Beginners Quick Start Guide and Tutorial to Using Twitter its worth a read. I also love the Tweets of Tara Hunt of Citizen Agency and Jeremiah Owyang, senior analyst at Forrester Research.

Benefits to CEO's to use Twitter:

- Feed reader: I monitor Twitter several times/ day to see whats happening. I know many people who no longer read news sites and gain most of their daily information from Twitter alone!

- Brand Building: abilty to communicate your company culture, brand and personality. Ability to raise visibility of the CEO and your brand.

- Focus Group: quickly reach people with news or questions - get instant feedback - 24 hrs/ day open feedback without filters. I frequently put questions out to my Twitter network and am always amazed at the generous response I get on everything from requests for stats to opinions on issues.

- Networking Tool: connect directly with others in a effective way. I have personally connected with journalists and executives on Twitter that way that would have been difficult to do otherwise. I frequently see CEO's Twittering about where they are and inviting people to join them for coffee or discussion.

- Monitoring: spot trending or buzz around a topic or technology - FAST! If I want to know where the buzz is on a specific topic, I usually turn to Twitter first. Many social analytics tools now include Twitter in their monitoring of conversations.

- Drive traffic: to your website - Twitter community is ACTIVE! Post a popular post on Twitter with a link to your website and you will see a huge spike in traffic and usually an increase in your network of followers.

- Humanizing your communications: there are some who don't like mixing the personal chatter with business on Twitter - while others believe that some element of this contributes to us seeing the human side of a business or CEO.

Over the past year I have been following the number of large enterprises and media companies that are using Twitter in their communications as well as advising several of Crimson's clients in their use of Twitter as an effective social media marketing tool.  I hope to see more CEO's embracing Twitter and I personally welcome more of the human element as I find the most compelling posts from CEO's to be those that expose their everyday activities as people. 

You can find me on Twitter: bondjanebond

Starbucks - MyStarbucks Idea

So many companies are now using social media to communicate more effectively with their customers - and Starbucks is no exception. I spent some time today on the MyStarbucks Ideas site - which to me looks suspiciously like Dell's Ideastorm concept...but I give Starbucks credit for creating a forum for consumers to share ideas and vote /comment. 

In summary the site features allow you to:

- Post an idea (in areas like products, experience and involvement)

- Vote for idea's that you like

- Comment on ideas

Not surprisingly there are a lot if ideas along the lines of "become a coffee house" or "offer free wifi" - but there are also a multitude of interesting ideas for new products, process and customer experiences. Interestingly the top rated idea is to foster conversation at Starbucks and to use new media to drive it...

"Great conversation at Starbucks?(Top rated idea from the MyStarbucks idea site)

My idea is simple - Starbucks does a lot of things well - good coffee, interesting locations. One of its challenges though I believe is to create a sense of conversation and community within its locations.

One way of doing this would be to use the power of media and wireless new media in particular to foster a sense of conversation about the arts, current events, etc. In other words to stimulate Starbucks patrons that wish to interact as part of a 21st century "cafe society" such as they have in Europe traditionally - people gathering together to discuss the arts, world events and culture.

I've seen some interesting programs in new media that to me would be a great step forward in terms of promoting this kind of engaging conversation. For instance one of the ones that springs to mind is a new online program called "The Alcove with Mark Molaro" which is based in New York. They have wonderful conversations with fascinating world-class guests and it seems to me that this sort of program is the kind of thing that would foster subsequent conversation and community within Starbucks locations.

The key is to provide cultural leadership through media to promote conversation and community within Starbucks locations. That would be a quantum leap in terms of engagement and experience at Starbucks. Thank you. "

 

If more companies opened up the conversation directly to customers to allow them to share ideas the insights would be phenomenal. What will be most interesting to see is what Starbucks does with these ideas - how will they review and implement?

 

Live Blog: Session on Twitter from Community Unconference

I have been Tweeting on Twitter for awhile and I really enjoyed this session on Microblogging and Twitter: who's using Twitter and for what? Use cases, whats the business value?

Some current uses of Twitter from the group:

• Drive Traffic to other web content - such as blogs, announcements, articles, etc.
• Promotion - PR - push out/ broadcast announcements, events, etc.
• News, breaking news, awareness
• Social Filtering - getting your news via Twitter now - some rely on Twitter now to get general news.
• Communication efficiency - the nature of the brief and frequent posts, its efficient and effective
• Brand Cachet - for those who are currently on Twitter
• Work streaming - updates, status,
• Reports from the field, live messaging
• Member support
• Conversation monitoring/ brand tracking

Twitter etiquette - "Twitiquette"

Things to think about...

• Tweet Formats: A lot of discussion about "is it acceptable to have multiple persona's on Twitter?" General consensus was yes, similar to having multiple emails.
• Do you Twitter professionally vs. personally? Public persona's - some people are experimenting with multiple identities in Twitter (personal vs. private). There are examples at companies like Zappos where there are many employees with "Zappos" in the Twitter name alias.
• What happens when a "fan" takes over your brand name on Twitter?
• When do you use Twitter to broadcast only vs. get into dialog?
• Signal to Noise: What makes a good tweet? Consensus: Succinct, pithy, poetic posts
  •  If your reply isn't pithy - then maybe it should be a direct message instead
    • If your reply is relevant to others (not just the receiver) its ok to broadcast it to everyone
  • Frequency of Tweets - what is too much? 7x/ hr
• Does anything go on your personal account? general consensus is yes.
• How do you decide who to follow? General consensus is that you can easily reach overload so you need to be selective about who you follow. Jeremiah Owyang uses Friend Feed.
  •  Is it fair expectation that if someone follows me when I am following them? Consensus was yes. Some people are weirded out with "branded persona's" who follow them out of nowhere.
  • Some people are experimenting with Twitter around events. Experimenting with importing participant lists and doing follow up on Twitter post event.

Where is this going? When Twitter grows up...

• Support needed for different persona's/ roles in your life (personal, private, hobbies). Its possibly a matter of both privacy and managing the data.
• Up time more? Badly needed reliability
• Monetization? What about advertising within Twitter clients? Would people pay for premium services? -> general consensus was yes, especially if it included improved uptime.