While I was busy attending too many Social Media conferences, 30 or more people here at Campfire were busy doing real work for real clients.

So, as you may notice, it’s been weeks since the last post to this site (to lessen the demand for frequent posts, we’re developing a new blog-lite site; it’s just that we’ve been too busy to finish the new site. Sigh.)

Meanwhile, here’s a bit of what’s going on at Campfire over the past month or so:

• Our True Blood campaign for HBO: working with Gawker as a partner we created a campaign that sparked a lot of controversy and a whole lot of attention to the show. In fact the launch of the second season was the highest scoring HBO show (second only to the final Sopranos’ episode). If you want to know a bit about what we did, check out this excellent article in the Financial Times.

• Verizon’s FiOS: We’re currently shooting two new episodes of this tech makeover show for the East Coast regions of Verizon; it’s now called My FiOS Home: Ultimate Upgrade and focuses on a competition to win a high tech makeover. Overall we’ve created 12 episodes, 10 huge live events, a rich web experience. And the infamous Twittering Teddy DIY. Watch for the new shows in the Fall.

• Terminator Salvation: We successfully completed our campaign for Warner Brothers and the McG-directed fourth Terminator movie, involving a complex backstory which used, among many other tactics, comic book stores across the US, and leading up to the release of the film. Check out this piece on summer movies in iMedia’s publication highlighting our campaign.

• The Dr Pepper/Snapple group: We’ve been developing a whole series of marketing efforts for a variety of Dr Pepper/Snapple group brands, including Snapple, Canada Dry, Venom, and Mixers.

• Shark Week. We are about to launch a new campaign for Discovery Channel’s much beloved Shark Week. Can’t really say anything about it, except it’s really, really amazing.

• We are also working on early stage plans for ten other clients, none of who can be named, as our competitors watch our site.

• Meanwhile we’ve made some new hires, including Benita Conde as Director of Project Management, Jackie Guerra as a writer, and Lauren Bozarth as an account executive.

• And our Executive Creative Director, Mike Monello, was just picked as one of the iMedia 25, Internet Marketing Leaders and Innovators.

Stay tuned!

Technorati Tags: Advertising Agencies, Campfire, Discovery, Dr Pepper, Financial Times, FiOS, FT, HBO, McG, Monello, Shark Week, Snapple, Social Media, Terminator, Terminator Salvation, True Blood, Verizon

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A team from Campfire, including Gregg Hale, Brian Cain, Ryan McGrath, James Young and Jenn Mann, have been running a campaign for Terminator Salvation, due out this week from director McG. and Warner Brothers. iMedia featured our contribution to the film’s marketing in a recent piece on summer movies and their digital and interactive advertising.

Technorati Tags: Campfire, Mediapost, McG, Terminator, Warner Brothers

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Hey everyone. We’re proud to announce that our HBO True Blood campaign has just won Best Integrated Campaign at the 2009 ad:tech Awards!

ad:tech has been showcasing the best of the best when it comes to digital marketing for over a decade now, and we’re definitely honored that they’ve decided to show us some love.

If you guys want to learn more about our “award-winning” campaign (kind of rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?), feel free to click here.

Technorati Tags: ad:tech, Adtech, Awards, Campfire, New York Times, True Blood

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Over the past couple months I’ve been attending conferences: The IAB Annual Meeting, PMA Annual Integrated Marketing Conference, DIGIDAY: SOCIAL, and iMedia’s Breakthrough Summit. I’ve been a listener, presenter, and occasional inquisitor.

My goal is to get the word of Campfire’s methodology out there, but also to assess industry practice during a period of major flux. So this week I’m going to ad:tech in San Francisco, followed by a 4A’s event, and a brief stop at iMedia’s Driving Interactive.

Already I‘ve seen one question raised repeatedly: the proper use of media in “new” marketing campaigns. In a way this is the old issue of separation of media planning and buying from creative, but now with a different spin.

Get this: I’m at the famous one-minute dating event at the iMedia Breakthrough in Fort Meyers. We, client and agency participants, are sitting at a long, long U-shaped table, and for one minute, “providers” pitch us on their services and then move down the line. Most of these providers are ad networks.

I don’t know what to say to them. Although Campfire works with some networks (Federated for instance), we largely rely on “Earned Media”. We tell people stories, they adopt and adapt them, and tell new versions to their friends. (Hence the name Campfire.)

At another session I sat through a couple of presentations about video distribution from two companies: BBE and DBG. These presentations, involving the syndication of branded video to millions of on-line viewers, are as impressive as hell — but don’t include any “social media”, i.e., the structure in not about retelling; it’s “Bought Media”.

Finally at the IAB, portals like MSN and Yahoo showed off marketing programs relying on their own platforms and a captive, or captivated, audience. “Owned Media.”

Where do these channel tactics intersect? Who’s exploiting a balance of Bought, Owned and Earned? See “Why your marketing program will never really be integrated” By Lori Luechtefeld and Earned Media May Be Efficient, but It’s Far From Free by Pete Blackshaw.

Randall Rothenberg, CEO and chief agitator at the IAB, and I have proposed that we focus on this issue via the IAB’s Agency Advisory Committee, which includes Campfire, Crispin, Droga5, AKQA, Ogilvy, Barbarian, and a group of media agencies. This should lead to a fascinating session, as each of us approaches media based on agency’s origins and staffing.

Meanwhile, think about this: does your company rely on just one leg of the Bought, Owned and Earned stool? And wouldn’t it be great if we found the right magic combination of these different approaches? And by what standard would we judge the best combo? ROI? The silver bullet of an engagement metric? Sales?

I’ll be at ad:tech and the 4A’s through Monday, April 27, drop me a line at swax@campfirenyc.com or @campfiresteve if you want to talk.

Technorati Tags: Campfire, Earned Media, Media, Owned Media

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David Brooks, writing in the New York Times about the financial meltdown yesterday, put forth two possible theories as to how bankers got it so wrong: “either Greed or Stupidity.” And, after weighing both sides, came down on the side of Stupidity.

He asked how so many smart people could miss that so many financial instruments — Warren Buffett’s “Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction” also known as like CDO’s and Credit Swaps — were worthless, particularly when all the bankers were in constant communication with each other?

“To me, the most interesting factor is the way instant communications lead to unconscious conformity. You’d think that with thousands of ideas flowing at light speed around the world, you’d get a diversity of viewpoints and expectations that would balance one another out. Instead, global communications seem to have led people in the financial subculture to adopt homogenous viewpoints. They made the same one-way bets at the same time.”

This raises a lot of interesting issues about our use of tools like Twitter, Facebook status updates, instant messaging, mobile Skype, etc. — and how they may distort our cultural perspective. While we are not trading trillions of dollars in world markets, we are feeding into mass culture, and then measuring it.

Are we participating in a digital/marketing echo chamber? Did the potent combination of SxSW and Twitter create a false sense of our own importance?

Technorati Tags: David Brooks, Finance, New York Times, Twitter

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About a year ago we posted a short piece about the origins of Twitter. Since then not only has Twitter become more popular (and, boy, is that an understatement!) but people have continued to post comments to our site and the original site about the first sketches of Twitter design by Jack Dorsey. Here’s our original post:

Among the recent comments, here’s something from just a couple weeks ago:

lassi.kurkijarvi says:

“This is makes an excellent case for preserving the stuff you do: document the ideas, moments of inspiration and when one day you notice that you’ve made another Twitter, you’ll have historic items such as this to show for it as well. ”

And here’s an interview with Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, by Dan Skeen.

Technorati Tags: Biz Stone, Jack Dorsey, social media, Twitter

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Last Monday, March 15th, Campfire’s Brian Cain birthed his SXSW panel to the world and named it “You’re Living in Your Own Private Branded Experience.” Brian and the other panelists, Brian Clark, Dee Cook, Steve Peters and Lance Weiler, did more than explain and discuss a topic with their audience. They made them a part of it through an elaborate “hoax” campaign for TARP that included multiple websites, twitter accounts, protesters, SXSW security and even a little fake blood. It all came together and not so much proved a point as presented one to the crowd and allowed for an incredibly insightful and newly educated discussion during the panel’s second half.

I got into Austin a couple days later than the rest of the Campfire crew. As I wasn’t available to take part in rehearsals, I was deemed cameraman. This allowed for me to be free of the stress or performing and instead sit back and watch everything unfold. Even though it’s what we were aiming for, I was a bit shocked by how quickly and readily the audience unknowingly played along. From annoyance at Brian’s no-show, to outrage at the planted protesters who heckled and cursed at the panelists to a flood of Tweets wondering what the hell was going on. Luckily, everything eventually came to light, people settled down and dialogue ensued. All while Brian sat atop the panel stage caked in dried blood and glitter.

For a great thorough write-up of the entire panel, read this piece by another atendee at Bring Back Gimmy.

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I’m heading to Austin, TX this week for SXSW and this time I’m speaking on a panel. Come check out Suxorz ‘09: The Ten Worst Social Media Campaigns on Saturday, March 14th at 5:00 PM. Last year, this panel was one of the most lively and interactive of the whole festival and I’m honored to be sitting on the panel with Zadi Diaz from Epic Fu, Jeff Jarvis from Buzz Machine, and Sarah Smith from Wonkette. Moderator Henry Copeland of BlogAds promises to throw firecrackers into the social media bonfire and keep things lively.

And don’t forget about Campfire Creative Director Brian Cain’s panel,You’re Living in Your Own Private Branded Entertainment Experience, which I promise will be the most unusual panel you’ll see at SXSW.

I’m looking forward to meeting people and eating BBQ so if you are going and want to connect, drop me a note mmonello (at) campfirenyc (dot) com or contact me through my Twitter account. Hope to see you there.

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I’ve been to several PSFK events and I always get a great deal of inspiration and information out of them, so I want to point you towards the PSFK New York conference, taking place on April 2. This year has a great lineup of speakers already booked, including the fantastic Wooster Collective, a representative from Boxee, and Danielle Sacks, our favorite Fast Company writer. Unfortunately, I’m out of town and won’t be able to attend so how about you go and tell me what I missed?

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