What’s Fresh?

Here at Geary, we like to cap off each week with an Innovation Session – an informal meeting with food, drinks and a presentation from the front lines of interactive marketing.

Last Friday, we chose to explore the various ways that Barack Obama and John McCain are marketing themselves online — with a particular focus on Web 2.0 strategies.

We tried to keep the presentation non-partisan, but it was difficult because Obama has made aggressive social media efforts his trademark. He has an active presence on MySpace, Facebook, and niche social networks such as Faithbase and BlackPlanet; active accounts on Twitter and YouTube; text message updates; an active social network at my.barackobama.com; and much more. McCain also has a social network on his main domain and presences on the big social networking sites, but his presence on Twitter and niche social networks is bare-bones compared to Obama’s, and he does not have a text messaging program.

We hypothesized that Obama’s aggressive efforts are primarily a function of the citizens he’s trying to reach — young people and first-time voters, as well as independent voters who spend time on niche online communities. We’re guessing that Obama has found that online efforts are a cost-effective way to reach new, disaffected and undecided voters — and he has the deep pockets to back up these efforts.

Here are some fun facts about each candidates’ online efforts:

• My.barackobama.com, Obama’s in-house social networking platform, is run by Chris Hughes, one of the co-founders of Facebook.
• Obama’s various websites get about 20 million visitors a month, compared to 4 million a month for McCain-affiliated sites.McCain is much more active in paid search advertising than Obama. At one point, McCain was bidding on 226 keywords, compared to only 174 by Obama.
• Obama ran 17 negative paid search ads, while McCain ran only three – the opposite of their general strategies, where McCain’s advertising ran much more negative than Obama’s.
• At present, Obama’s infomercial has 1.6 million views on YouTube. This is significant reach, but it’s dwarfed by the 33.55 million people who watched the infomercial on TV.

To learn more about this topic, you can view the full PowerPoint presentation.

I also recommend “Obama’s Wide Web” from the Washington Post and this article from MediaPost, which gives details about the candidates’ paid search strategies.

Veoh is known for breaking new ground in the online space, but their new advertising program could revolutionize the way advertisers purchase advertisements online and how consumers are exposed to them.  The program (being release out of beta today) will group viewers into buckets based upon their past searching, tagging, commenting, and viewing activities.

One could ask if a user watches videos online that fit into their true interests or if they primarily watch pieces that are considered viral (have you seen the water skiing chipmunk?!)?  For YouTube this may be true, but Veoh offers the largest library of online TV resulting in more interest based viewership.  Veoh is even claiming that during beta the program’s ads preformed twice as well as the non-targeted versions.

It will be very interesting to see how this technology develops and what it does to Veoh’s position in the industry.

Do you have a Facebook profile? A MySpace page? A Twitter Account? A blog? A YouTube Channel? A personal Wiki?  Chances are that almost every person can answer yes to at least one of, if not all, of the previous questions.

The internet has become a haven for personal publishing and information sharing.  People freely offer opinions, ideas, photos, videos, likes, dislikes, and everything in-between.  However, how cautious are people about the lasting effect their information may have on the company they work for?

This question is something I ponder and am reminded of daily with the things I find online.  Using Twitter as an example, I follow roughly 125 people that are affiliated with SEO or Social Media Marketing.  Numerous people use this site to push out content they have written or are reading that help to show them as industry thought leaders.  When these type of people are free with their company affiliation this can positively effect how the industry views the person and their company.  Yet, some people are not as strategic with the information they share.  When people that associate themselves with their company tweet information about “giving the finger to a client” or “our blog is run by suits” or “my boss doesn’t know bleep” I have to question if these people really care about the work they are doing, who they are doing it for, or what external people think of them?  My opinion has been changed about numerous companies this way, be it fair or not.

To some extent, freedom of speech has to be protected and people should be able to post whatever type of content they please.  Yet, at some point common sense should kick in and say maybe I shouldn’t tell the world that “i hate ABC co-worker” in an open forum setting.

Does it seem fair to judge a company based upon the actions of the people who work there?  Can this really be patrolled?  Should it be?  What are your thoughts?

Andreas Roell was interviewed on FOX 6 News regarding the impact of viral marketing in this year’s presidential race.  Two videos produced by the Black Eye Peas about John McCain and Barack Obama are discussed.  Click here to watch the video.

This week, it was reported that MySpace and Facebook, the Internet’s two largest social networking hubs, are stepping up their efforts to turn their popularity into profit.

Facebook announced that it will start letting advertisers interact with its users, even when they aren’t on the Facebook site. The goal is to help advertisers sell services and target their advertising.

Meanwhile, MySpace’s plans center on democratizing advertising, and making ad space available to more people. Their plan is to lower the bar for buying ads and rolling out a self-serve model that allows everyone from bands to politicians to buy advertising on MySpace.

Will this commercialization of social networks spell the end of the social networking craze?

MySpace’s motto, after all, is “a place for friends” — not “a place to buy stuff.”

However, we can’t deny that social networks are the ideal place for advertisers to play. With important consumer data right at their fingertips, advertisers can precisely target their messages on social networks. In addition, consumers have already shown a remarkable affinity for sharing opinions on their social networking pages, including favorite products, movies, and more. Advertisers are merely seeking to capitalize on this trend.

And in an era where consumers look to other consumers – and, ideally, their friends — for reviews and recommendations, social networks are a goldmine.

Of course, it’s also possible that this commercialization could backfire and drive users away from social networks. However, the most lucrative demographic for advertisers — young people - grew up with advertising, and may be able to accept or even embrace it as part and parcel of their social networking experience.

Wendy’s new website, Hot Juicy Burger, is catching the attention of anyone who has ever dreamed of winning a contest that enables the winner to never pay for their fast food addiction again. The goal of the website is to build a social network of Wendy’s target audience, engage their audience on a daily basis, create marketing buzz for their current advertising campaign and ultimately awarding the winner a lifetime supply of burgers.

Once joining the contest, you can earn points by having people vote for your personal reason that you deserve a “Hot Juicy Burger,” referring a friend to join, posting your Wendy’s character to a social networking site, and continuously logging onto the site.

To me, this seems like an online version of the famous pyramid scam that got people to sell a water filters to all their friends and relatives but just image how well that worked for the one at the top of the pyramid? Wendy’s has built a great social network of all who dream of having a steady diet Wendy’s burgers for the rest of their life. I am getting ready to color my hair red and e-mail all my friends, what about you?

Cereal boxes over time provide a nice graphic design barometer to the designer world. The cleaver folks at Kreepsville Industries have killed the design barometer and taken cereal boxes to the grave and beyond. Some of the finest illustrators and designers have come together to incarnate a collection of “Cereal Killers” scary halloween cereal boxes for an upcoming coffin table book. The images produced in this collection are beyond words, so enjoy!

Radiohead, one of the largest alternative bands in the world, released their new studio album “In Rainbows” via their website. The entire album can be downloaded for as little as $.90 or as much as you decide to pay for it. Although we all know that the majority of people are going to download the album for the minimum price, Radiohead is turning their album into a promotional tool to gain visibility, build fan loyalty, increase merchandise sales, and increase concert ticket sales.

For example, Google searches for “Radiohead” increased ten fold since the announcement of their downloadable album, website traffic increase 11 fold according to HitWise and news coverage of the band has increased dramatically in recent days. Although the knife is being turned that was stabled into hearts of major labels years ago by Napster, Radiohead is gracefully leading the progression of the music industry into the digital era. In the last few days, bands like Oasis and Jamiroquai have expressed interest in following suite with Radiohead.

In this day and age of Internet-savvy searchers, online shoppers, and technology enthusiasts, it is no wonder that people are going online more and more frequently to express their thoughts and opinions. Forums, chatrooms and polls are just a few of the ways users known as “passionistas,” or consumers passionate about certain issues, can express their opinions.

Blogs, such as the one you are visiting right now, are a great way to market, promote, or connect with certain brands, issues or products, so why not spread the word on the resource with the widest reach? I think everyone is a ”passionista” about something, so it is easy to use the Internet as a channel to create an open discussion and spread knowledge on an issue.

Here at Geary, we have people who are passionate about everything from mobile technology to tropical fish, so it’s no wonder this blog (and our office) is inundated with information on all things creative. What are you passionate about and how do you get the word out?

The rapid growth of online video has created a lot of interest with marketing professionals on how to best utilize video content websites as a marketing platform. While many video websites are looking for an effective means to index and tag videos, You Tube has also been busy revolutionizing the method of distributing advertisements to online video viewers.

Recently, You Tube introduced a new “semi-transparent” advertising overlay that covers the bottom 20 percent of the screen for up to the first 10 seconds of the video being played. According to You Tube, these advertisements are less annoying than the “pre-roll” video ads that are currently being used on other video sites.

The distribution method is based on the same principles of targeting traditional broadcast TV, (age, sex, geography and genre) combined with the measurability of online marketing mediums such as banner ads. Currently, there are about 20 advertisers using the “semi-transparent” advertising including New Line Cinema and BMW.