OMMA Magazine’s April issue delves into the growing trend of real companies establishing presence in the virtual world, including Pontiac’s Motorati island.

(more…)

Share This

USA Network’s The 4400 is a serial sci-fi drama that began its fourth season on June 21st, 2007. USA retained Campfire to excite the existing 4400 fanbase while also creating interest among non-fans and lapsed viewers. The challenge, of course, was finding a way to create a compelling marketing story that would engage an audience already schooled in The 4400 mythology without chasing away potential Season 4 fans who might see the first three seasons as an imposing barrier to Season 4 viewership.

USA Network had ambitious expectations for Season 4 of The 4400. They needed it to stand its ground against stiff Sunday night competition and maintain interest among men from 25-54. The network also wanted to engage women at a higher rate than they’d been able to previously since the show, though thoroughly a sci-fi genre program, had plot elements and characters that should appeal more highly to women.

The 4400 universe is a complex mythology. There are plotlines and characters woven into and out of episodes that require hours of viewing to fully understand. We needed a simple hook that would allow us to simplify the fundamental issues of the program and not have to rely on existing characters and plotlines to deliver us. Enter Promicin.

Promicin is a fictional pharmaceutical taken straight from The 4400. It’s a drug that either kills the user or gives him a superhuman ability. At the end of Season 3, Promicin was being distributed to the general public. In Season 4, we will find the characters dealing with the repercussions of a world overcome with Promicin use. So, we built a bridge in the story that would generate excitement for the season premiere without divulging too much of the new season’s plotline.

For the campaign, Campfire created an atmosphere that paralleled the most heated political debates, with an issue (Promicin distribution) with connotations toward the gun control battle, women’s reproductive rights, or drug legalization issues. We developed the debate from all sides, with a pro-promicin destination, an anti-promicin website, and a neutral watchdog site to monitor activity and host the debate. We invited our audience to pick a side on the Promicin issue and defend it. We also gave users the chance to create their own characters, take Promicin, and explore the imagined limits of their powers.

Share This

With the Virtual World Conference in New York coming up in two weeks, I asked my 8-year old daughter, Rose Wax, to fill you in on Club Penguin.

Club Penguin


By: Rose Wax.

Club Penguin is a virtual world (just like Second Life) where you waddle around villages and towns and meet new people. There are places where you and friends can meet and there is a map that can teleport you to different places in the Club Penguin world. You play a penguin that has a name and when you waddle they show your name below your penguin. There’s a chat bubble so you can talk and there are icons you can talk with. There are also keyboard shortcuts that can make your penguin do dance moves and different icons. You earn coins (money) by playing games like cart surfing, pizzatron 3000, ice fishing, sled racing, mancala and find four. You buy clothes for your penguin and furniture for your igloo you can also buy puffles (penguin pet) and stuff for them. There is a newspaper that you can read it has tips and riddles and jokes and poems. Club Penguin is really popular a lot of kids and sometimes adults have accounts the more penguins there are the merrier!

Technorati Tags: Campfire, puppy, Second Life, social media, Virtual Worlds

Share This

Mohammed Iqbal, a Creative Planner at Ogilvy & Mather Advertising, Bangalore (India), has just published a fantastic 22 page paper titled THE ELONGATING TAIL OF BRAND COMMUNICATION: An approach to brand-building incorporating long tail economics, and it is a must-read.

He neatly summarizes Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory and applies it to brand communications.

There’s nothing sacrosanct about the single-minded brand proposition. In fact, in markets of abundance it is the wrong strategy to follow. In these markets, it makes sense to make available in the market every single proposition your brand can and should stand for.

Download the PDF

Link to Mohammed Iqbal’s blog

Share This

With the growing popularity of Second Life marketers’ presence in this virutal universe has taken root. This barrage of marketers to the landscape of user created content in this virtual world has given root to another organization, the SLLA (Second Life Liberation Army). I first got wind of the latest headlines the SLLA have been making from the publication Contagious‘ most recent newsletter. The SLLA have even been making the local newscast. Who’s to know where users and even marketers may take Second Life but we can now watch as the story begins to unfold in our First Lives.

Share This

Nine Inch Nails have a nice arg style campaign going on currently to support the new album “Year Zero” that will be released on April 16th.

It’s well done by the folks over at 42 Entertainment and, more importantly, goes along with our entire motto of blurring the line between marketing and entertainment.

As Trent Reznor puts it, “What you are now starting to experience IS ‘year zero’. It’s not some kind of gimmick to get you to buy a record - it IS the art form…”

That’s the secret guys…eyeballs are no longer captive to forcefed taglines and images of shiny products in the noon day sun. If you wanna connect with your audience you have to approach them with something they want to see.

It’s working for Year Zero in a big way. And even more interesting is the fan made materials that are starting to appear. This homemade clip for one of the new songs off the album holds just as much power as the official video that was released a few days ago.

Share This

The Ad Generator remixes and randomizes real corporate slogans and pairs them with related images from Flickr. Alexis Lloyd, the creator of The Ad Generator, says:

By remixing corporate slogans, I intend to show how the language of advertising is both deeply meaningful, in that it represents real cultural values and desires, and yet utterly meaningless in that these ideas have no relationship to the products being sold.

Link to The Ad Generator.

Share This

How to kill a brand:

1. Treat your customers like criminals and install malicious software on their computers.

2. Create fake blogs that pretend to be consumer generated rather than honestly engaging people. (archive of Sony’s fake blog)

3. Attempt to bully new media outlets because they don’t blindly do your bidding rather than engaging in the conversation. (The comments are especially worth reading)

4. Spend a lot of time and money to stop your customers from using your products the way they want to use them.

5. Sit back and watch as consumers define your brand for you based on all of your actions:

This video alone has received over 450,000 views and over 2,500 comments. As Scaramouch, from YesButNoButYes says, “It’s about time that corporations realized that with the rise of citizen journalism and the communities ability to connect and share a POV, the tide has turned. Now, they need us so much more than we need them.”

Share This

Many more here.

Share This

From a presentation I recently made at the Consumer 2.0 conference in Toronto…

Technorati Tags: Advertising Agencies, Creative

Share This