Ray-Ban's Never Hide campaign is an ongoing global marketing effort to target young, brave and nonconformist individuals. As part of this effort Ray-Ban sponsored Irish indie rockers Two Door Cinema Club as they performed at major American music festivals: SXSW, Coachella, and Lollapalooza.
Working with partner agency NMS, coBRANDiT covered the shows, conducted interviews, and shot behind-the-scenes content with the band. Finished pieces highlighted interview segments, top hits, and acoustic performances while also integrating fan content shot on consumer devices from the crowd and side stage. The results can be seen at Ray-Ban Films or at these locations: SXSW 1, SXSW 2, SXSW 3, Coachella 1, Coachella 2, Coachella 3, Lollapalooza 1, Lollapalooza 2.

The Brief:
In early 2009 PUMA began moving heavily into social media. Most PUMA brand pages were turned into blogs (PUMA Running, PUMA Ocean Racing, etc) and PUMA began developing presences in Facebook, Twitter and others while utilizing a range of social tools and platforms. How to make sense of this new space, properly manage communities and technologies, vet research and new partners, calculate ROI, and use the knowledge to improve programs, create value, measure performance and make sales?

coBRANDiT's Role:
Since February 2009 we have partnered with PUMA on a retainer basis to assist with program and platform development, research initiatives, and other projects related to the socialization of their business. Working out of their international office in Boston, we are continuing in this capacity through 2011. Specific projects to date include:

PUMA Football: Develop iPhone and BlackBerry mobile apps, technology and feeds. Assist with football content strategy, mobile and otherwise, surrounding African Cup of Nations and the 2010 World Cup. Get the iPhone app here.

PUMA Ocean Racing: Video distribution research & recommendations. Extensive platform set up and maintenance, including facebook, twitter, blog functions.

PUMA Running: Set up facebook page, manage Street Meet PR and limited advertising through facebook. Video production & distribution surrounding Street Meet. Develop and execute award winning Usain Bolt video distribution program (see case study here).

Ongoing research: The social media/WOM ROI question: Assigning value to fans/friends, figuring out market mix/word-of-mouth valuation methodologies, making research recommendations. Assist in vetting monitoring solutions, develop questions/analysis surrounding research results.

Monthly pull of comparative statistics for facebook, twitter, and youtube channels, competitive research. Ongoing research into ramifications of facebook platform updates and the effect on fan growth. Ongoing research and recommendations re: facebook app developers and use of dashboard management systems. Assist in vetting platform development proposals and composing strategy & budgeting docs.

PUMA Golf: Video production, tee-off party. PUMA City: Develop and populate elements of facebook page. Tretorn: Video distribution, optimization, & reporting. Sergio Rossi: Video distribution & optimization. Alexander McQueen RAW POWER: Analysis and recommendations related to video editing contest.

Research/expose "black hat" video distribution techniques (Findings were presented in our WOMMA Webinar, click here for deck).

Research/recommendations: 1) Brand presence/best practices in Orkut for S. American audience. 2) Marketing uses of mobile "Check-In" sites: Foursquare, Gowalla, etc. 3) Analysis and recommendations related to brand uses of photo sharing and archiving sites such as Flickr, Photobucket, etc.

Create blogger outreach master list by brand: Research existing resources/contacts and recommend new ones when appropriate.

We will continue to post examples of our PUMA work here in the months to come. Thank you PUMA for the opportunity to be a part of your team!

A little action we shot last month. For more see PUMArunning.com or PUMA Running on facebook. coBRANDiT is assisting PUMA Running with social media content development and outreach.

Jesse and I will be shooting video at PUMA Running's Street Meet Boston this weekend. Street Meet is what you get if you drop a come-one-come-all track meet into a Jamaican street carnival, and add in international stars like Usain Bolt. Street Meet Boston is stop one on a 6 city international tour.

coBRANDiT is working closely with PUMA Running on video production, social media optimization, and community outreach surrounding Street Meet and other running initiatives.

PUMA CITY comes to Boston for three weeks or so later this month. It's a retail store, event space, and bar rolled into one. Constructed of shipping containers, it's currently traveling around the world with PUMA Ocean Racing as the team competes in the Volvo Ocean Race. It's also going to be the backdrop for STREET MEET, PUMA Running's Jamaican street party/track meet on April 26.

coBRANDiT is assisting PUMA with content production, distribution, optimization, and general social media strategy. Work in progress, details TK, but here's the short list of projects we're involved with as of now:
PUMA Ocean Racing, PUMA Running, PUMA Golf, PUMA City, PUMA.
Most of these sites are blogs. Also active on facebook, twitter, flickr, and youtube.

"Whether they admit it or not every team has a guy who loves to take his clothes off. PUMA's guy just happens to be bowman Casey Smith. When rounding Cape Horn, Casey promised to round in the nude. As you will see, he kept his word..."

coBRANDiT is working with PUMA Ocean Racing for the next 7 months, helping to engage audiences through social media.

coBRANDiT’s Role:
We shot and delivered finished, edited videos (6-8 per roundtable) within days of the event, and in the case of cancersandcareers.org we developed a cross-platfrom widget containing videos, info pages, and links to relevant urls. Distribution was handled by MS&L.

As part of PUMA's chasingBOLT video distribution program we have developed the above video widget and a related Facebook app. on Involver's platform. (Click on the Join on Fb logo in the lower right corner of the widget.) Thanks to Rahim and the Involver team for busting ass and getting it out in short order! Involver is an interesting platform for two reasons: 1) They have a number of plug-ins that allow easy function withing the widget: email capture, quizzes, outbound links can all be set up to run within the player, and 2) this player integrates with Facebook like no other i've come across. Involver creates a custom app. with many community sharing and outreach functions that I'm hoping we'll be able to utilize...planning time is tight (we just got the whole assignment 10 days ago) but we do have a few things in store...Watch for special Usain Bolt Olympic gear and info coming through this thing!

PUMA Running has hired coBRANDiT to help distribute video and publicize content from chasingBOLT.com. chasingBOLT is a "blogumentary series" which follows PUMA sponsored 100m world record holder Usain Bolt as he travels to Beijing to compete in the 2008 Olympics. Working with our distribution partners Pandemic Labs and Involver we'll be updating various social media video channels, widgets and apps. with new content regularly for the next month, so stay tuned!

We're learning to build widgets on sprout's platform, here's an example we mocked up for a theoretical PUMA motorsport campaign. (Note: Widget no longer supported as of 7/2010) Widgets to me represent the ultimate viral thing for a marketer...a perfect little tranferable package...as long as you recognize that they're worthless as a stand-alone gadget. They should be treated as the interface for a much deeper experience, and an interface that provides some usefulness & utility. Pretend you're an F1 race fan, then play around with the widget above and you'll see some of what I'm talking about. Note: PUMA produces Ferrari's team gear.

More detail from Desperate Housewives stylist Cate Adair...a project we shot for MS&L in NY. We've got it here on Viddler because we can drop url's for the sites Cate mentions right in the vid...nice! From the description:

Cate Adair, stylist for Desperate Housewives, partnered with Febreze for a roundtable discussion on spring style with top fashion and style bloggers. In this video, Cate reveals style tips for new moms, must have brands for spring, and using Febreze to care for your vintage items. This is the second in the series from the Febreze "Breath of Fresh Style" blogger roundtable discussion.

We shot this piece for MS&L in NYC last week: A Febreze sponsored blogger roundtable with Cate Adair, stylist for Desperate Housewives. From MS&L's description: "Cate demonstrates two looks you might see on the Red Carpet: A beautiful butter yellow Kevan Hall goddess dress and a stunning navy blue satin dress from Rare Vintage - with amazing John Hardy and Platinum Guild jewels."

Cate also reveals behind-the-scenes red carpet secrets and tips for using Febreze to care for your vintage items...we'll release more content from the Febreze "Breath of Fresh Style" blogger roundtable discussion soon.

So I was reading this post by Spike at Brains On Fire (thanks for the shout-out Spike) about Nokia's self-described "viral video" and cutting-edge interactive thing and it led me down a path and I ended up watching the video below and freaking out. Damn. I need more style, more rare Russian style in my life.

Fashion.psfk asked us to suss out the question of sweatshops...does the issue have any resonance with consumers today? and do people have any awareness of which brands/companies are producing stuff in equitable conditions (or otherwise)? We got some reactions from the street as well as input from various marketing and PR execs.

Jesse runs the nice camera, camera 2 is the cheapo Canon zx60 we carry around for backup and when we're goofing off and want something that fits in a pocket. This piece is a collection of clips from two missions we went on in 2003: exploring an abandoned factory in Somerville MA and checking out the environs in Eastham MA near Jesse's dad's house.

We did not produce this movie. We don't know who did. But we like it, and submit it here for your approval.
(Full disclosure: PUMA is our client.)

We recently produced this video for PUMA's internal sales team. PUMA specified the gear, music and titles, we rounded up locations and models.

Fashion.psfk tasked us with this investigation: Is Converse an iconic brand? Here are the results.

Future Marketing Summit, NYC Feb 2006: Piers Fawkes of psfk.com talks about web publishing and plans for his new fashion site.

Here's some more detailed discussion of the shoes. But what's the DJ got on his feet?

"Do not release them."

PUMA Californias explore an abandoned house.

We conducted market research in London, sussing out a new line of PUMAs. Not everybody liked them.