Viral Anyone?

The store owner created this ad for his for business for about a buck and pocket change to air on local cable. Now he’s the newest internet meme being seen by millions and flown out to LA to appear on a national network.

The local paper was smart enough to capitalize on this and has a remix contest going that’s starting to spawn consumer interaction.

Heads up, this is how it’s done.

Wax Nostalgic: A conversation with Miss Overachiever and the Medicine Man

Although he’s not a doctor he plays one on t.v. Listen to a conversation with Steve Wax on Reel Spit where he talks about integrated media and “this kind of stuff”.

You can listen to the full conversation here: Reel Spit #14

Just in from Sundance: “I’m already part of a big campfire…”

David Carr has a fascinating article in today’s NY Times titled “M dot Strange Finds a Way at Sundance” in which a young filmmaker from San Jose, California, M dot Strange, talks about how he built an audience in the hundreds of thousands via YouTube and his own site, leading up to his film’s premiere at this year’s Sundance festival — much like Haxan Films did via The Blair Witch Project.

Carr writes:

“During the last two years, he (M dot Strange) has been posting a video blog on YouTube letting people know how the movie was coming along. And then two months ago, he finally posted a trailer, and almost immediately it was downloaded hundreds of thousands of times.

While we were talking at the Kimball Art Center in Park City, he checked the site and showed me that over 648,000 people had already viewed the trailer for a film where he served as writer, director, animator and effects coordinator.

Kevin Donahue, vice president of content at YouTube, said M dot Strange has created an audience in part by talking to it. ‘The originality of the work is quite high, but he has also built a real rapport with his audience,’ said Mr. Donahue. ‘He has an online film school and a very active community.’

…Wearing a black stocking cap and sporting a wisp of hair under his lip, M dot Strange, whose actual name is Michael Belmont, looks more like a snowboarder who wandered over from the nearby chairlift than a big deal filmmaker… but he represents a new paradigm of filmmaking that could have a profound effect on the traditional models of film production, distribution and animation.

‘I’m already part of a big campfire,’ he said. ‘We talk to each other all the time about what we are seeing and thinking. It’s a personal experience without anybody in between.’”

See the entire piece in today’s NY Times Business Section.

Technorati Tags: Sundance

Dolby turns down the volume on obnoxious spots and people speak up

Found a story on digg.com tonight about Dolby’s new system for regulating sound on TV sets to stop the stupidly loud volume on today’s commercials. What’s really interesting however, are the user comments to the story:

The solution is to BitTorrent your shows. That way you can watch them [brain damaging] commercial free and when you want.

All I can say is YES YES YES, why the hell has it taken so long for this simple feature?

Well…if you’re not TIVOing or torrenting or dailymotioning at this point, you’re just subjecting yourself to needless hassle and torment. the only commercials you should be watching are the ones that make it to youtube

Awesome. Now if we can get them to black the screen during commercials, we’d be set.

Personally, the only spots I see are the ones people email to me, (and which happens less and less often these days). The key, of course, is to stop allowing TV to lead the direction of your campaigns and instead make it a part of an overall strategy. On both our Sharp More to See and Audi Art of the H3ist campaigns, the TV spots were a part of larger stories that played out in a wide mix of media — outdoor, online, live event, web video, and more. People engaged in those campaigns actually sought out the spot, posting which shows and networks they ran on so others could see them, even uploading them to the net.

Marketers can no longer make commercials without asking themselves “Why would anyone want to watch this spot?”

iPhone: So What?

1. No 3G?
2. What the hell is the processor going to be?
3. Why did Jobs need to be hardwired?
4. Data entry looks crap.
5. When can I order mine?

Technorati Tags: hardware, Michael Graves

Participatory Culture and Democracy

Chris Dahlen just posted an interesting essay on Pitchforkmedia about participatory culture and transmedia stories, and wonders whether these new tools could revitalize democracy, pushing us to become more active citizens. It’s an interesting read, check it out.

Zeroing In on Authenticity via the Michael Graves Tea Kettle…

The Brand Experience Lab recently cited a terrific piece by Paul Barsch on the marketing value of Authenticity. Paul points out that we eagerly seek out, and are willing to pay a premium for, “Authentic” experiences, whether delivered via product, service or engagement. He cites the Michael Graves tea kettle, sold by Alessi for $145 as a prime example.

While Campfire labors in an industry that could easily be characterized as inauthentic, we nonetheless endeavor to create authentic entertainment experiences. This work began with my partners’ participation in The Blair Witch Project — an authentic horror experience.

We don’t believe that we’re engaged in a noble mission built around Authenticity, it’s just that giving consumers an entertainment experience that emphasizes having a genuine and genuinely good time is highly effective.

Paul put it this way:

An authentic “…product, service or experience is:

• Special: unique and differentiated, you can’t find it anywhere else
• Valuable: as Warren Buffet would say, valuable not because of the dollars you pay, but for the value you get
• Real: the product, service or experience “speaks” to the core of who you are, your mission, your purpose”

He goes on: ““The Authentic” is why people are willing to pay a premium for a unique teakettle, a scarce work of art, a great bowl of soup, or a spiced latte they can only get at their local coffee shop. Authenticity breeds passion and the examples of the authentic are endless.”

“The pursuit of the authentic then, for a marketer means:

• Incrementalism, or simply adding a few new features to an existing product or service, is the path to mediocrity
• Imitation, while “the highest form of flattery”, will always be challenged to measure up to the original
• Boldness, is taking a new direction, even when your customers of today are telling you they want more of the same”

Technorati Tags: authenticity, design, Michael Graves, net marketing, social media

Good vs Evil

I caught up on some personal reading over the holidays and came upon a NY Times Magazine cover story by Clive Thompson called “Rewiring The Spy ($)”” (Dec 3). It’s about the precarious information situation facing American intelligence professionals.

The article focuses on how US intelligence agencies are being forced to adapt from the threats of the Cold War (big plodding Soviet Union, professional spies, Mutually Assured Destruction, etc.) to the post-9/11 world filled with non-state actors who are irrational, unprofessional, and multilateral threats. Sure, this is well-trodden territory but Thompson covers new ground when discussing the imminent and dangerous implications of social media in the pursuit of terrorists.

While most of us run roughshod over the web, absorbing the benefits of the new collaborative environments we’ve created, professional spies are caught keeping the necessary secrets of their trade and fighting an enemy that no longer resembles the Soviet Bloc. It’s quite challenging, as Thompson points out, to encourage open collaboration among professionals whose lives and livelihoods rely on “need-to-know” bases.
CIA, FBI, and NSC officials are cautiously encouraging their analysts and agents to collaborate online, to use the ‘hive mind’ to piece together complex puzzles that no individual analyst could. What’s wild, though, is that they’re essentially trying to emulate the communication tactics that seem so well-suited to America’s enemies.

Consider how terrorist networks operate: independent mission-oriented cells, non-national IDs, non-hierarchical structures. Terrorist cells are ideal micro communities to use our new social media tools exactly because they’re disparate, discrete and always on the lookout to recruit new participants. That’s exactly how we use social media ourselves, whether it’s by blogging, tagging, or digging information we find useful and we want to have absorbed (or vetted) by the electronic universe.

You can see why the intel community is at such a disadvantage, though there’s a palpable opportunity that Thompson does well describing. The article subtitle says it all: “Could wikis and blogs prevent the next terrorist attack?”

Technorati Tags: NY Times, social media, spy