As every social marketer knows Facebook apps are a big deal. Facebook terms dictate that all contest activity on a brand's page must be managed though a 3rd party app; as a result apps have become the way brands promote events, contests, and giveaways. And any good app includes video!

Recently coBRANDiT has worked on a number of app projects. Our fave example is the app. built by Ignite Social Media for Ram Truck. The app was in support of Ram's Sponsorship of the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo and included giveaways of Ram schwag and a sweepstakes. How did it work?

Ram set up a mechanical bull at a bar in Detroit and 19 contestants mounted up and rode...coBRANDiT was there to shoot the action. We cut all the contestant videos up into a series of 30 second pieces, complete with a timer and slo-mo instant replay...Facebook users were invited to guess the length of time each rider stayed on. Winners received Ram gear!

Check out these screen shots below of the app in action...and a sample of the video! You may actually LOL.

coBRANDiT produces great social media video for brands, agencies, and organizations of all sizes. Check out our new reel and learn a bit about our history and our capabilites...want to learn more? Get in touch here.

Over the past 9 months we have produced close to 100 videos for brands, agencies, and organizations large and small. Here are our faves...

Ray-Ban brought us in to shoot Two Door Cinema Club at SXSW, Coachella, and Lollapalooza. Below are the tops vids from each location.

About 40 of the vids we've done are for Chrysler Brands including work for Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram Truck, and Fiat. Below is a nifty timelapse we shot for Fiat in Miami, a blogger roundtable for Dodge, and a set of images from the livestreaming mission we ran for Dodge in Detroit...click here for more deets on that!

We also produce regular content for Microsoft's Cambridge HQ known as the NERD center...below is a piece we shot at a party they hosted for regional video game developers.

Here's something we put together for Boston's Safar Salon during National Fashion Week (ok...it was late 2010...but we still love the piece!)

We also produced many corporate videos for companies and organizations ranging from Ocean Spray to Genzyme to Disney. Below are examples of work for Sylvania and business organization MITX.

That's it for now! We gotta get back to work...there's still 3 months left to 2011. We'd love to add your videos to our faves list so get in touch if you'd like to discuss a project.

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.

Held every year in Detroit on the 3rd weekend of August, the Woodward Dreamcruise is an unofficial celebration of the American auto industry. Dodge reserved a key location at Woodward and 13 Mile featuring vintage cars, custom hot rods, new Mopar technology and various entertainments. coBRANDiT was retained to provide live coverage of the event for 6 hours on Saturday afternoon.

How we did it: Camera 1 continually swept Woodward Ave, zooming in on burnouts, crazy rides, and Dodge vehicles. Camera 2 roved in the Dodge display, shooting details of the vintage cars and picking up interviews conducted by staffers of official Dodge blog Red Line Dodge. We cut between cameras and managed titles and the text crawl from a laptop nearby running Livestream's pro studio.

Each camera utilized a Live pack which wirelessly fed the signal to livestream's servers. We accessed the feeds through the studio interface (pictured above) which allowed us to switch between cameras, lay in titles, and pop in logos and text crawls. We also archived both feeds and had the ability to re-broadcast previous clips and pre-produced pieces. The entire production process was managed via a wireless 4G card...not really recommended (hardwired ethernet is more secure) but it works in a pinch. Dodge embedded the live broadcast in facebook.com/dodge and at the top of Red Line Dodge (see picture below).

coBRANDiT has managed numerous live broadcasts on both the livestream and ustream platforms. Get in touch if you'd like to discuss a live video project!

coBRANDiT produces video for some of the biggest names in the corporate world: Genzyme, Sylvania, Partners Health Care, Disney, Ford, Verizon, Forrester Research, Microsoft, Eli Lilly, Ocean Spray. Our work provides snappy, compelling video content for press releases, media sites, social sites, HR, intranets, investor meetings and sales pitches. Check out these samples below:

Above: OSRAM Sylvania's Dr. Chips discusses LED lighting technology.

Above: Chef Ming Tsai cooks up a cranberry recipe for Mickey Mouse and the Epcot Center (Client: Ocean Spray; edit by Disney).

Above: Ford's Scott Monty introduces the casting call for Ford Focus Rally America. This piece was shot, edited, and delivered in 10 hours on location at BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas.

Above: Coverage of Microsoft Cambridge's Day of Caring employee volunteer event.

Above: A qualitative research project demonstrating proof-of-concept for a global PR agency's pitch to a leading provider of wireless, cable, and broadband services.

Get in touch if you would like to discuss how coBRANDiT can help tell your stories!

coBRANDiT is helping get the word out on two open positions at PUMA's International marketing HQ located in Boston MA. The positions are perfect for those with solid community management experience...both operationally and strategically. PUMA is looking for a Global Social Media Manager and a Junior Digital Social Media Manager.

The positions are not yet live on PUMA HR's page...for the moment qualified candidates may submit resumes to pumaresume@gmail.com.

JOB NUMBER 1:
JOB TITLE: Global Social Media Manager
LOCATION: Puma North America, Inc., Boston, MA
JOB SUPERVISOR: Senior Global Digital Marketing Manager

Become a member of our Global Digital Marketing team within the International Marketing Department at PUMA North America, Inc. This position will have the strategic responsibility to create awareness of and engagement with our brand through a combination of blogger relations, social network management, community engagement, and viral marketing. Successful candidates will possess an awareness of social media tactics and strategies, an enthusiasm for maximizing PUMA’s global social media presence as well as impeccable communication and presentation skills.

Job Description:
• Develops and manages global community and content strategies for facebook.com/puma, other brand category Facebook pages, and strategies for other strategic public social networks.
• Coordinates and coaches global category managers, regional territory managers, and national market managers to program, develop and deploy relevant local social media content in 25+ global markets.
• Designs and develops marketing and communications campaigns within the social media and community space that align with global and digital campaigns, but that leverage the unique properties of the social marketing channel.
• Collaborates with internal and external creative resources to define a unique and distinct brand voice that reflects the joyful and fun attitude of PUMA.
• Seeds seasonal products for review and coverage within on line communities in alignment with our product and ecommerce marketing teams.
• Develops and manages relationships with global online bloggers, content providers, and other digital influencers in the Sports, Lifestyle and Fashion categories.
• Generates conversations and coverage in the digital channels that connect PUMA to its online consumer targets and drive brand awareness in our business categories.
• Packages and places original and syndicated content (video, etc.) tied to PR and marketing communications campaigns on relevant content platforms.
• Monitors online conversations to determine reach and impact of PUMA with online consumers
• Applies analytics to quantify and qualify effectiveness of interactive campaigns and reports findings to senior management
• Identifies trends taking place in mobile, viral marketing, blog and social networking spheres to help PUMA stay ahead of the curve
• Works with global Brand Management as well as PR, Interactive, and Creative teams to ensure alignment of all initiatives across all channels

We Expect:
• Bachelor’s of Arts in Marketing, or other related field
• 4-5 years post-college experience in social media or community management, or digital Public Relations
• Some experience in managing junior members of staff
• Excellent communications and presentation skills, as well as an awareness of and facility with communicating with team members in 5 regions and tens of markets around the world
• Strong research and analytical skills, including familiarity with Facebook insights, Google analytics and other industry standard analytics packages
• An ability to generate and drive breakthrough creative ideas for interactive and social media campaigns
• Knowledge of the social media environment and trends in the business
• Awareness of competitors’ social media marketing activities
• General awareness and knowledge of the sportswear and lifestyle product category
• High initiative, high energy, confidence, passion for the job, decisive eye for detail
• Willingness to learn and take creative and art direction
• Ability to excel in a fast paced environment without compromising quality

Do you think you could be a perfect match for this role? Submit your resume to PUMA at pumaresume@gmail.com

JOB NUMBER 2:
JOB TITLE: Junior Social Media Manager
LOCATION: Puma North America, Inc., Boston, MA
JOB SUPERVISOR: Global Social Media Manager

Become a member of our Interactive Marketing team within the International Marketing Department at PUMA North America, Inc. This position will take ownership of our social media communications process – developing plans and implementing against those plans. A strong copywriting background is a requirement, as successful candidates will be responsible for working with our global creative team to define the “voice” of the brand in the social media sphere, as well as providing support and sharing best practices with our regional and national teams around the world.

Job Description:
• Support the global Social Media Manager in the development of our social content plans – including wall posts, app development and releases, video posts, microblog posts, and blogger outreach.
• Develop content guidelines, copy guidelines, branding guidelines, and other tools for use by regional and national social media counterparts.
• Work with our regional and national social media contacts to share best practices, provide feedback and comments, and offer suggestions and guidance for their day-to-day social media efforts.
• Coordinate and implement all global-focused social media activities, including regular weekly global posts, and weekly updates to our community web pages.
• Compose copy and content for use within our global regional and national communities.
• Work with the regional e-commerce managers to maintain correct key items, product catalogs, or promotional, traffic driving product content within the context of our social communities.
• Work with the global PR team to ensure alignment with the brand press communications plans and calendars.
• Use analytics tools to review and optimize performance of content, and develop regular reports on social media KPIs
• Work with the rest of the marketing team to ensure that all communication campaigns drive traffic and conversions within the regional on-line stores via creative production, e-mail, and social media networks.

We Expect:
• Bachelor’s of Arts in marketing or any other related or adjacent field.
• 3-4 years post-college experience in social media, PR, or other relevant position.
• Knowledge of the social media environment and trends in the business.
• Awareness of competitor’s on-line social media activities.
• Ability to present information and communicate effectively with a variety of teams and individuals around the world.
• Experience in running or managing an community of some scale is a plus.
• General awareness and knowledge of the sportswear and lifestyle product category.
• High initiative, high energy, confidence, passion for the job, decisive eye for detail.
• Creative thinker and innovator with exceptional design/typography/layout skills.
• Willingness to learn and take creative and process direction.
• Ability to excel in a fast paced environment without compromising quality.

Do you think you could be a perfect match for this role? Submit your resume to PUMA at pumaresume@gmail.com

Good luck!

Yes you're looking at another infrequently updated company blog…but we have a good excuse! coBRANDiT has been very busy. Since the first of this year we have produced over 60 videos for 12+ clients, some directly and some with partner agencies. We have shot at SXSW and Coachella, been strapped into the back of speeding trucks, smuggled cameras through security, interviewed numerous global CEO's, and turned videos around in the same day. Eventually we'll get around to posting some of them…in the meantime please see samples on our facebook page or YouTube channel.

The client list YTD includes:
Ray-Ban, Chrysler Brands (including Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge RAM Truck, Fiat), Microsoft, Iron Mountain, Genzyme, Partners Healthcare, Sylvania, Covidien, Bentley University.

As of May 1 we've also deepened our consulting engagement with PUMA to include operational assistance surrounding the roll-out of a global facebook management platform. PUMA is our first (paying) client, our relationship dates to 2004. Thanks guys!

Yes it's true! Italian automaker Fiat is returning to the US market with it's iconographic car, the 500. A series of events were held during Art Basel Miami 2010 to publicize the introduction and a mural was hand painted at a local street corner. coBRANDiT was engaged to create a snappy timelapse video showing the process of it's creation; check out the results above!

During the week of October 4-8, 2010 internet business & marketing association MITX organized a multi-location event series known as FutureM. Hill Holliday agreed to underwrite a multi-faceted video series , but who to call? The production schedule would be crazy...12 formal interviews and 18 plus events to cover, all with a 24 hour delivery schedule.

The answer: coBRANDiT. We produced nearly 30 short format videos over the course of 5 days, garnering thousands of views for Boston's most dynamic series of marketing conferences as well as live streaming FutureM opening night. At the end of it all we put together a snappy 2 minute piece for use in promoting FutureM 2011.

The Brief:
Ford is teaming up with the creators of The Amazing Race to create a new web series -- Focus Rally: America. It's the ultimate interactive cross-country road rally. They're looking for an elite group to take the wheel of the all-new 2012 Focus for five weeks, beginning in February -- digitally savvy people with a hunger for adventure. The first casting call was to take place on Friday October 15th at BlogWorld Expo 2010 in Las Vegas, NV...and Ford wanted a video of the process for display at BlogWorld (and on the web) by 9:30am Saturday the 16th. The video had to be fun, fast-paced, and informative; it had to work on a big screen in front of a live audience and it had to have legs for the web: all web traffic would be driven to focusrally.com and a related facebook page. Who could deliver a sharp piece on such a crazy deadline?

coBRANDiT's Role:
We put a two man team on the scene, carefully mapping out the shoot in advance. We started shooting video at 10:30 and wrapped the shoot by 2:30...then we whisked into post-production. Edits, titles, transitions and beats were pulled together in a whirlwind of caffeine fueled activity. The video was uploaded for client review late that night, changes were made at 7:00am, and the piece delivered on time and to spec.

Results:
"The video is fantastic and was very well received...it was so nice to know that you had everything under control and I love the result." -- Karen U., Ogilvy PR Worldwide / Ford Motor Company

Xenith required a video demonstrating proper emergency removal of it's X-1 football helmet. coBRANDiT made it happen with integrated sound and title design.

Geo-locational services tie the link between digital and offline: Unlike a Facebook fan or Twitter follower, you actually know when a geo-location user has entered your store or other target location. All geo services rely on users "checking in" to physical locations where (depending on service) they can find other users, append data (tips, posts, pictures, etc.), find out about local happenings, and earn points. The top geo-location services include elements of game play into their offerings; savvy marketers are creating new experiences for these environments and driving foot traffic, earned media, and word-of-mouth. The top two geo-location services for marketers seem to be Gowalla and Foursquare, but others have more users and Facebook is poised to enter the fray.

How does it work? Gowalla (250k users, Austin TX based) and Foursquare (1.1mm users, NYC based) have reward systems in place whereby users earn "badges" or "pins" or titles (such as "mayor"). Badges, pins, and titles are so far not officially redeemable for anything, but business are beginning to create incentives and rewards for users to check in and earn these honors.

Current mktg. uses in Foursquare include:
--Branded badges: Earned (or “unlocked”) with a certain number of check-ins at given locations, showing a badge may result in a special gift, experience, or bragging rights.
--Rewards for Mayors: Mayors are top location visitors, and may be comped meals or allowed past the velvet rope, etc. Bragging rights are also hotly contested!
--Check-ins often prompt a special offer (discount, glass of champagne) that may be broadcast to friends (either through Foursquare or twitter/facebook/etc.)
--Somewhat random give-aways to users who check-in: gear, special invite, etc. (choose a well-known blogger for greater spread, this takes coordination).
--Foursquare allows “tips” to be included in location info, retail stores seed their locations with tips, facts, stories. They also use the “to-do” function to drive traffic to other venues or provide fashion pointers.
--The “Swarm” badge is tough to unlock...50 people need to check in simultaneously. Create an opportunity for people to earn the badge, PLUS get some sweet special.
--Lucky magazine has gone heavy into Foursquare. Are they your demo? Partner with them or a similar tuned-in property to offer promotions or sneak peaks at new gear/demos/behind-the-scenes.
--Leaderboard sponsorships: Leaderboards show top activity in a given market. In November ‘09 Pepsi sponsored the NYC leaderboard to raise $$ for a non-profit. At the time Foursquare users in NYC generated some 150k points on the leaderboard, Pepsi donated 4 cents per point to charity.
--Jimmy Choo ran a treasure hunt in London. Shoes were left at specific locations and users were sent out to find them. Finders keepers! Great press and WOM virality.
--Diesel ran a more sophisticated campaign in NYC to promote a sale at it’s flagship store: Users who checked in within a 3 block radius of the store were notified of the sale. Users who checked in at the store received a free t-shirt and were invited to participate in the Be Stupid campaign.
--Coach Men’s Store Cologne Giveaway: For opening weekend of their Men’s Store in NYC, Coach gave away free cologne ($85 value) to the first 200 customers who checked into the store. 10% of the traffic to the store that weekend came with Foursquare check-ins.
--MTV has set up “celebrity mode” Foursquare accounts that let fans know where reality stars are temporarily located. Great word-of-mouth, great turnouts.

Articles on specific campaigns run on Foursquare:
mashable.com/fashion-foursquare-diesel
mashable.com/2010/04/foursquare-jimmy-choo
mashable.com/fashion-location-based
mashable.com/foursquare-brands
http://ht.ly/1SHnH (21 case studies, Foursquare, Gowalla, Whrrl, and MyTown)
blog.foursquare.com/as-you-may-know-every-checkin-on-foursquare

Possible issue: Foursquare relies on user input for physical address locations. People game the system by entering addresses they're not actually at, thereby claiming false points/mayorships and creating user outrage. In comparison, Gowalla locations are gps based, this makes it easier to check-in, and you can't cheat on your location.

Gowalla allows virtual goods to be left or "dropped" at locations, and then picked up by others, kind of akin to virtual geocaching. Histories attach to these items (user X dropped item Z here yesterday). Branded virtual goods can be redeemed for real goods.

Possible business uses include scenarios such as: Retailer creates a virtual item and seeds it in various physical locations. It can be redeemed only on a given day. Gowalla sends out an announcement to its’ users, and then everyone goes to retailer on that day and gets the item or experience.

Like Foursquare, Gowalla offers custom event and place stamps (instead of badges) which show up in “passports”. Holders of these custom pins and stamps may show them for special treatment of some kind. Gowalla also allows brands and users to set up “trips” that guide others from one place to another. Pub crawl? City hot spots? Completing a curated trip and gathering all the stamps could earn the user gear or some other reward.
techcrunch.com/gowalla-business-models

FWIW, Foursquare seems to have more WOM virality, more discussion and updates (via twitter, Facebook) and is the darling of the SXSW crowd, but many think the Gowalla user interface is better. Both services are used almost exclusively on iphones, though android apps exist with others in the pipeline, notably for BB. If one of these services was used for a temporary event/location it would be smart to move users/the experience to a local, more permanent spot when the temporary event closes. Foursquare and the others are beginning to mine user data on behalf of brand marketers, creating a new, physical graph of customers and their movements.

Other Geo services include:

Brightkite, 2mm users:
Brightkite is less reward focused, and seems primarily geared to pure social networking, with location based photo and text posting and none of the game play of Gowalla and Foursquare. However Brightkite does offer “local promotions” and has signed up 100 plus brands to drive traffic and offer rewards in local stores: They just inked a deal for all 11,000 Starbucks locations, and have begun offering Starbuck’s badges like Foursquare. They also recently launched the nation's first augmented reality ad campaign with Best Buy: point your phone at a participating store, and receive special location-based offers. Brightkite is working with Layar, a technology which lets users see posts and comments thru their phone cameras overlaid on real world landmarks.

marketingvox.com/twitter-brightkite-push-ar-closer-to-mainstream
techcrunch.com/brightkite-2-million-users
thenextweb.com/fly-a-brightkite-into-a-starbucks-near-you

Loopt, 3mm users:
“Before there was Foursquare or Gowalla, Loopt was the original smart phone service for sharing your whereabouts with friends. The point is to let buddies know where you are so that they can join you, and to find hour-by-hour listings of all the cool stuff going on in your neck of the woods. However, while you can check in to locations, rewards are limited to coupons from nearby retailers.” Not user-editable, no game mechanics. laptopmag.com/loopt.aspx

Whrrl, ?? users:
“Whrrl is all about communities of people inspiring each other to take real-world action, and we’ve thought deeply about how to channel that for causes...At the core of Whrrl are Societies, groups of people who check in to the same kinds of places, who care about the same kinds of things. The whole experience is wrapped in an “influence” game, in which you gain points based on how successful you are at inspiring others to do your real-world recommendations. As you gain points, you level up in your Societies, and that unlocks higher-level “Social Offers” from merchants as well as special privileges in Whrrl.” Yet Whrrl lacks compelling case studies, and has changed it's business model and communications a few times in the last couple of years.
techcrunch.com/whrrl-3
blog.networksolutions.com/whrrl-increases-the-gamesmanship-of-location-based-services-by-inspiring-your-real-life-friends

MyTown, 2mm users:
Real estate based, MyTown is “like monopoly in the real world”. Check-ins at physical locations earn points which can be used to buy or improve properties (and ultimately towns). A MyTown user could “own” a given retail store, or stores. The more improvements to a piece of property you “own” the more rent (points) you make when a user checks in. While there are virtual goods exchanged by users, MyTown is more purely game based, there’s less of a social aspect: people play for the points, not for the community or for real-world rewards. It’s been called “the Farmville of location-based gaming.” See techcrunch.com/mytown-3

Facebook Geo: Massive potential, currently not available. Could launch any day or not for awhile. Much speculation as to whether Facebook Geo would play nice with other platforms or destroy them. See this AdAge article.

FYI Foursquare is hosting global MeetUps on June 16th...check it out and get involved here. Cheers!

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!

All three services rely on users "checking in" to physical locations where (depending on service) they can find other users, append data (tips, posts, pictures, etc.) and earn points. Gowalla and Foursquare have reward systems in place whereby users earn "badges" or "pins" or titles (such as "mayor"). Badges, pins, titles and points are so far not officially redeemable for anything, but business are beginning to create incentives/rewards for top users to check in. Brightkite is less reward focused, but recently launched the nation's first augmented reality ad campaign.

Current marketing uses in Foursquare include branded badges (earned with a certain # of checkins at given locations, showing badge may result in a special gift or experience) or rewards for mayors (mayors are top location visitors). In November 09 Pepsi sponsored the NYC leaderboard to raise $$ for a non-profit. Leaderboards show top activity in a given market. At the time foursquare users in NYC generated some 150,000 points on the leaderboard. Foursquare also allows TIPS to be included in location info, these tips could be sale items or other current specials. Gowalla has no such feature, though it does feature a type of virtual gifting that could be useful.

Possible issue: Foursquare relies on user input for physical address location. People game the system by entering addresses they're not actually at, thereby claiming false points/mayorships and creating user outrage. Gowalla locations are GPS based, this makes it easier to check-in, and you can't cheat on your location. It also allows virtual goods to be left or "dropped" at locations, and then picked up by others. Histories attach to these items (user x dropped item z here yesterday). Possible business uses include scenarios such as: Starbucks pays Gowalla X dollars to create a (R)ed item you can only pick up at a Starbucks on Y day. Gowalla sends out an announcement to its’ users, and then everyone goes to Starbucks.

Gowalla offers "pins" instead of Foursquare's "badges"...presumably branded pins could be produced...how would this differ from a virtual good? Pins would live with a user as long as they had their account and wouldn't be spent or dropped. Foursquare has more WOM virality, more discussion/updates via twitter for ex. and is the darling of the SXSW crowd (FWIW), but many seem to think the Gowalla user interface is better (both services are used almost exclusively on iphones, though android apps exist with others in the pipeline, notably for BB) If one of these services was used for a temporary event/location it would be smart to move users/the experience to a local, more permanent spot when the temporary event closes.

Then there's Brightkite...who recently launched the US's first AR (augmented reality) ad campaign with Best Buy. Unclear how this works within Brightkite's interface...Brightkite is working with Layar, which lets users see posts and comments thru their phone cameras overlaid on real world landmarks. Brightkite seems primarily geared to social networking, with location based photo and text posting, and none of the game play or potential marketing elements of Gowalla and Foursquare (with the exception of that AR ad play of course...)

These services tie the link between digital and offline: Unlike a Facebook fan, you actually know when a Gowalla or Foursquare user has entered your store or other target location (unless they're cheating of course...) Foursquare (and presumably Gowalla) are beginning to mine user data on behalf of brand marketers. Interesting articles on the space include:

Techcrunch: Gowalla business models
Pete Cashmore on Foursquare
Brightkite's AR solution
MarketingVOX on Brightkite and AR

Last Friday the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) awarded coBRANDiT client Daily Grommet with a 2009 Commendation of Excellence in the Corporate Media Creation category. This award recognizes our innovative use of video in Daily Grommet's social media powered e-commerce site, and is a reflection of the Grommet team's willingness to experiment with new forms of video production. From their award application:

"Video production is handled by coBRANDiT, they've proven to be wonderful partners able to adjust to our changing needs. They built us a basic in-office studio, provide professional 1 and 2 camera HD shoots on a weekly basis, got us started with Flip video cameras (plus assistance, training, and a tip sheet for new users), manage regular ooVoo video chats, and generally counsel us on content development and continuous improvement, all while handling daily editing of the content that floods in. Our videos now consist of a mix of studio content as well as material shot by our office staff, Grommet creators, and assorted family and friends. coBRANDiT sends us finished, compressed videos in the 2 formats we require and provides ongoing strategic assistance related to video distribution."

Congratulations to the Daily Grommet team, and thank you for bringing us along on the ride! Read more about our work with Daily Grommet here, or click on over and see it live at DailyGrommet.com. Watch the vid above for Daily Grommet's take on "citizen commerce".

A 2 part interview we shot at WOMMA's WOMM-U last spring: Above, Chris Pan discusses: Achieving goals via WOM | Facebook page as a voice | The engagement factor | Walls, tabs, microsites | Lenny Kravitz on Facebook | Tags | Brands with low follow rate | Quantifying business results. Part 2 is below.

In part 2 Chris talks about: Fan pages as an authentic voice | Brand fan pages by fans | Content is king | What people want to hear vs. what you want to tell them | Facebook marketing solutions | WOM is long term | WOM works best when integrated with social media.

Orkut 101: Orkut is a community platform owned by Google. They just launched a redesign today (10/29) that makes it much more Facebook-like, though currently limited to invite only so it's unclear how functions work. Every profile has the ability to promote text, photos, video. Options are pretty basic. Orkut is best known for Brazilian penetration but India is also big. Both countries are battling fb which just surpassed Orkut in India, Orkut just disabled friend exporting in an attempt to stop fb migration.

Brand mktg. in Orkut emphasizes targeted ad promotions underpinned by adsense (and brand widgets/experiences built on Google's opensocial platform, there are currently approx. 6k apps. in the directory). In Aug. 09 Orkut launched a StumbleUpon type ad promotions service whereby users vote an ad/video etc. up or down and spread it that way or not...it's called Orkut Promote (see this press release) Brands have to pay...it's not free. Best description of the system can be found here.

Other viral elements include embedded html in scrapbooks, or "scraps" which can be shared across networks (kind of like a widget). Functionality/presentation is limited. Branded communities do exist, but they pale in comparison to fb pages, for ex. see this MTV experience. If you're a big brand there are a number of rogue brand pages ("communities") you could engage, but the level of traffic/activity is often somewhat low. Beyond communities Orkut doesn't seem to offer varied advertising options similar to Facebook’s sponsored groups, social ads, pages etc.

Best practices at this point seem limited to:
1) Monitoring & engaging users on brand community pages (SOP for social media), though this will be complicated by any existing rogue pages. Can or should this be addressed? How to establish an authoritative brand voice if rogue pages exist?

2) Launching adsense programs, targeted ads, scraps widgets, custom apps. and/or Orkut Promote programs. This is simply going down the advertising road...really a similar strategy in many ways to Facebook, but with more limited options and in Portuguese. What are the ramifications of trying to poach Orkut community members and move them into Facebook?

Heidi Browning of MySpace talks about: Harness your advocates | Finding brand friends on MySpace | Hyper-targeted advertising | Advertising engagement | What is the impact of advertising in a social networking environment | Cultivation of creativity, that's what MySpace is all about | Creators and social activities | Cherry Coke example | Creating closed/private communities | Apply social learning to future campaigns | Video shot by coBRANDiT at WOMMA's WOMM-U conference, May 2009, Miami Beach, FL

What constitutes success in the world of B2B video? Is it view count? Comments? Embeds? SEO results? How do we measure engagement? This deck examines successful examples of video usage in the B2B environment, and compares B2B video with B2C. This deck was originally presented at The Conference Board, NYC, October 16, 2009. For more detail please contact Owen Mack, coBRANDiT.

We turned this vid around in 24 hours last week, with a b-roll package delivered same-day to local news outlets. From the press release:

Celebrating 80 years, Ocean Spray transformed Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots, into a sea of glimmering red cranberries for the cooperatives Patriot Place Bog. The 1,500 square foot, free-standing cranberry bog contains more than 2,000 pounds of Ocean Spray cranberries designed to recreate the beauty of a cranberry harvest.

The Patriot Place Bog kicked-off a weekend of activities with Ocean Spray's first ever Tailgating Recipe Contest judged by Ming Tsai. Three finalists were selected to compete in a head-to-head cook-off for the title of Unofficial Official Tailgate Recipe of the New England Patriots on October 15.

Find the winning recipe Grilled Bacon Apple Bites with Chunky Cranberry Spread and other game day favorites at OceanSpray.com.

Facts on FiOS: Blogger demo at Gillette Stadium, Foxborough MA. We put this piece together in 24 hours as part of Verizon's effort at FactsOnFiOS.com. Verizon invited local bloggers to Gillette Stadium to check out FiOS's advanced features, we captured the session and blogger feedback for online distribution (part of a national series of blogger demos).

Here's a compilation of the Q&A from the video distribution webinar we recently ran on behalf of WOMMA. Thanks again to all who participated, and if you have further questions don't hesitate to get in touch.

Q: Basic question: What is the optimal place for your video to reside (generally)? On your site, on YouTube, both, etc.

A: There really is no one "best place", though there may be places that drive more traffic than others based on your use of the social web. In practice, many of my clients place their vids on youtube (and perhaps a few other video sharing sites) and then embed the vid in facebook, their site/blog, etc. and then tweet about it or otherwise publicize it. Kinda depends on what you're trying to achieve with the video, and where your audience resides.

Q: Do you convert all video for IPOD downloads?

A: We do not convert video for iPods unless we believe there is a good reason to. The fact of the matter is that getting your vids set up to run in iTunes is kind of a PIA, and unless you're producing a stream of content it really makes no sense. Discovery is tougher in iTunes, so you really have to market your channel aggressively. Furthermore, iPhone users can watch on YouTube already, so they're covered. I think iPod conversion makes sense if you're making vids that really are about portability, like a city travel guide or something that people would need to have with them.

Q: Do you know of any media companies effectively using video to retain/gain audience?

A: Of the big media co's i think NBC is the leader. The example I used in the webinar is the site/content they've built around Heroes: Check it out. You've got to dig around a bit but they've got different levels of content for different levels of interest. I think this is a strategy that could work for any brand/company using video. Here's an interview on the subject we did w/ Matt Allen, the guy behind NBC's digital strategy.

Q: Is there any way to get Street Team Flip video content to download to an office a few hundred miles away?

A: There are license-able platforms available for sharing internal video on a large scale (see VidiTalk for ex.), or you could set up an FTP hub for street teams/editors to use. In practice we use yousendit.com which can be a hassle content management-wise but is fast and cheap.

Q: I'd like to some tips for shooting good video...it appeared on one of the slides.

A: If you're doing Flip vid/street team work you might be interested in our shooting tip sheet:
Check it out here, there's a download-able .pdf at the bottom of the post.

Q: If you have a video posted on YouTube, which is off your site or on a blog, how do you generate a click through to your site? (Since you can't post an actual clickable link on a youtube video). Is it simply them reading the web address on the title of the video and typing it to their browser manually?

A: Yes, if the vid is embedded in some site/location where you have no control over the related text or metadata that's about it. YouTube viewers have to see the title and then manually enter it. But if you're open to using another video sharing platform you can embed a clickable link. See Viddler for ex. Viddler allows you to insert clickable links and messages in the time line. Pretty cool feature, and returns great SEO results.

Q: Is it a good idea for businesses to accept friend requests from individuals on Youtube?

The answer depends upon whether you want to actively engage YouTube viewers in that way or not, and i would advise you to treat YouTube community members the same as any other community platform you may be engaged in (twitter, facebook, etc.) Friending people in any of these environments can help you get your message out, but it does potentially open you to spammers or worse. It's really a community management function, many companies create basic guidlines and have their PR/mktg department monitor comments and friend requests uniformly across a variety of channels.

Q: I'm looking to create a video contest, how do you suggest getting consumers to submit video, social, TV, or radio or all of the above?

A: This is a biggie for which i have no short answer besides: Make the reward good, focus your message, and be prepared to actively market the contest thru paid placements and vigorous community management/outreach. It helps if your contest/promotion is about something that has an enthusiastic, technically savvy fan base. Contests are notoriously tough to get traction with. It's usually music acts that are successful, or mass culture efforts around movies or something.

Q: My blip.tv account was deleted for "advertising." I know that this is one of the sites supported by tubemogul. Should I go back into all of my videos and remove any traces of my company's name, contact number, email, etc?

A: Different sites have different policies concerning the types of content they will support. Blip.tv is particularly focused on episodic, storytelling content and "shows", their business model depends in part upon selling video ads within a popular series. While Tubemogul supports numerous sites, not all of them are appropriate for all types of content. (Tubemogul is a service for batch uploading video to numerous sites simultaneously). I wouldn't worry about cleaning titles, etc. from your videos on other sites. There are plenty of options for free video hosting out there, if one site has a problem and you can't use it, no big deal.

Q: Are any of these "Video Widgets" open source or are they all custom/paid?

A: One good widget building solution I have used is SproutBuilder. Not really open source (or free) but it is inexpensive and very flexible. It's basically a WYSIWYG editor that allows you to build multi-functional widgets, with or without a video component. Sharing features are handled by Gigya/Wildfire, so you can buy paid placement for your widget through their network if desired.

Q: Demographic stats on YouTube (as shown in your example)...do they cost anything?

A: No, they're free. Check "Insights" related to your channel (also available from your "my videos" page), see also the "Statistics & Data" drop down under your individual videos.

Q: How do you get a video featured on YouTube or another video sharing website?

A: Each site has their own methodology for picking featured videos. Some of them are paid, some of them adhere to an algorithm (typically a mix of views/velocity/engagement), some rely on human editors. Such is the case with YouTube. YouTube has 10 people sitting in a secret bunker in an undisclosed location making decisions on what to feature. There is no way to game YouTube's featured front page vids.

That's it. More questions? Get in touch with coBRANDiT!

Related Links: Webinar Q&A Re: Video Distribution, Jeben Berg of YouTube on How to Make Your Videos Successful, Flip Video Shooting Tips for Distributed Production Teams and Novices, Matt Allen of NBC on their innovative online video approach: They give their stars Flip-type cameras for use back stage. coBRANDiT's Capabilities and Case Studies, Get In Touch With coBRANDiT.

Here's a great interview we shot at the last WOMMA event. Jeben is Google/YouTube's lead creative for cross platform solutions (he actually has a two-sided business card!) and in this vid covers partnering w/ top producers, buying search, linked multiple vids, and other tactics to get your videos out there.

We're presenting a webinar this Wednesday as part of WOMMA's ongoing series. For more deets and to register check http://tinyurl.com/wommavideo.

Video Distribution: 5 Key Elements
This webinar will be a discussion of video strategy and distribution techniques, from the basics of uploading & optimizing to outreach, promotion, measurement, and content development. Learn some tips, bring your questions, and be prepared to re-think your assumptions as we break down the components of a successful video program.

An interview we shot for WOMMA last spring: Geoff Donaker, COO of Yelp, talks about WOM and social media, the importance of joining the conversation, and why it's probably not a good idea to pay your mother-in-law for dinner. Make sure to attend WOMMA Summit '09 this November...
co-sponsored by yours truly, coBRANDiT.

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 James fakes his death for Spike TV?

Over the past seven years we've produced hundreds of videos for brands, agencies, and organizations of all sizes. Interviews, behind-the-scenes, research, event coverage, PR and sales: check. Live streams, mobile, HD, all sorts of distribution deals, channel optimizations & uploads...yup. Using video in Facebook, on YouTube, behind a firewall, or in some weird specialized forum known only to you and your customers? No problem. Did your street team shoot a bunch of flip video? Need help cleaning it up? Need help improving? Call us. We design and manage programs leveraging events and distributed video teams too. Our work is about real people and real products in real places: context and authentic voice are key in social media.
Check out our case studies here.

MENU OF SERVICES

1) Video Production. Professional one and two camera HD shoots with clean sound, lighting. Shooting, editing, packaging. Music direction & rights (if req’d). Event coverage, interview series, behind the scenes, how-to’s, product demos, qualitative research, pitch videos with the emphasis on voice and story.

2) Distributed Video Production Teams. Working with Flip-type video content shot by amateurs, street teams. Development, set up, and management of program, "cleaning up" amateur content with edits, titles, transitions, packaging elements. Providing guidance/shooting tips to teams to maximize quality of content.

3) Live Video, Video Chat. Live event streaming, interviews, multi-person video chat with viewer text chat alongside, moderation. Streams can be archived and edited for later use.

4) Distribution.
a) Multi-channel profile creation and uploads with optimization for discovery and SEO. If authorized we can upload to designated brand channels (Facebook, etc.)
b) High visibility placement on targeted video sharing sites and blogs. Guaranteed user-initiated views.
c) Client/staff training on social media channel management skills, tools, and ethics.
d) Social media ad networks. Drive traffic to your video or fan pages.
e) Full reporting/documentation on all of the above.

5) Street Teams, Alternative Media. Need something to happen in a number of markets simultaneously? Parties, events, product intros, street teams, flyers, wild postings, etc. with a video component.

6) Custom Applications and Code.
a) Facebook fan page modifications and apps. that enhance visibility, pass-along, and growth. Ask for details.
b) Mobile video and video sharing applications/integration.
c) Cross platform video tools and white label players. Highly customizable with your branding and links. Guaranteed installs available.

7) Consulting. Take advantage of our experience working on high profile projects for PUMA, GM, Proctor & Gamble, ADA Midwest, Boston Coach, Flying Dog Brewery, Pabst Brewing, Gyro Worldwide, Cutwater, Ogilvy PR, Weber Shandwick, WOMMA and others. Utilize our contacts and our wide network of production partners with deep experience in social media, word-of-mouth, and event marketing.

Monthly retainer for long term project management and consulting. Day rate and hourly fees for short term projects. Final prices depend on length and complexity of project, activation components, number of markets covered, and deliverables.

For more information please contact:

Owen Mack, Strategy & Development
617.823.9286 direct
owen@cobrandit.com

Download our Capabilities .pdf

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.

coBRANDiT | 119 Braintree Street #516 | Boston, MA 02134 USA (map)
Prefer Facebook? Twitter? Others? Google us, we're everywhere!

Wanna discuss a project (or just say hello)? Contact:
Owen Mack, Managing Director View Owen's profile
617-823-9286 direct | owen@cobrandit.com | facebook | twitter: @cobrandit

"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.

Facebook has just re-designed the functionality of branded fan pages. Here's what you need to know, courtesy of Jamie Tedford's Brand Networks, Inc.

Jesse and I launched a new Twitter channel yesterday: http://twitter.com/FlipHowTo. We'll share tips, tricks, and our experiences using these cameras personally and professionally. While they have their faults, these little cameras have revolutionized video production...and make the kind of marketing Jesse and I have always dreamed of possible. If you have questions get in touch, or drop #fliphowto into a tweet and add your 2 cents! For more Flip info and a downloadable tip sheet, see this post.

The Brief:
With the return of legalized absinthe to the US market Austrian distiller Fischer Schnaps began importing Absinthe Mata Hari in late 2008. Partnering up with marketing agency the Brand Action Team, Fischer Schnaps launched a campaign to introduce this "mixable absinthe" to communities of cocktail enthusiasts in key markets. Reaching out to noted cocktail bloggers, the Brand Action Team began sponsoring drink nights at local wi-fi enabled bars: mixologists meet to develop original recipes based on Absinthe Mata Hari, and share the results via live chat. But how to publicize this activity, put faces to names, and get out the word on absinthe's return to the US? And how to give the bloggers valuable content that would highlight their original creations?

coBRANDiT's Role:
Armed with a single Flip Mino HD camera, coBRANDiT documented the January 22 drink night session at Washington DC's Tabard Inn. The resulting video introduced chat room participants, provided links to their blogs, and contextualized Absinthe Mata Hari in the cocktail scene...as well as showcasing the top drink creations. Within a few days of the event we distributed the video on a variety of platforms and sites, with the Brand Action Team handling outreach and commentary. A "basic training" component was built into the project, with the goal of seeing what could be done with simple tools...the ultimate intention is to have reps. in local markets documenting events with Flip cameras and sending raw content to coBRANDiT for editing, distribution, and optimization.

Results: As of this writing the highly targeted video has been viewed in drink blogs and forums over 2000 times.

I've recently been crawling around PermissionTV's site, trying to get a handle on what all their "SmartPlayer" is capable of...and how to make use of it. I gotta talk to these guys (and this is a good opportunity for those of us in Boston). Here's the player capabilities list from their site:

* Smart Playlists: video content presented based on targeting rules that combine viewer information (e.g., demographics, geographic location) and business objectives.
* Video Overlay: additional information may be presented during video playback such as commentary, links to additional content, options to purchase products, etc.
* Integrated Viewer Feedback: viewers may provide feedback during video playback through voting, polls, clickable graphics, etc.
* Branching: facilitates a real-time change in the content path based on previous activity or viewer action to optimize relevancy
* Hotspotting: areas within the video are highlighted for selection to trigger activities such as learning more detail or purchasing a product
* Contextual Viewer Notes: viewers may add notes directly on the video experience, creating personalized messages to share with friends
* Tag-based Viewing: videos may be tagged and re-organized to create new viewing experiences
* Ad Serving: multiple ad servers and formats may be combined within one video experience to give viewers the best - and most content relevant - advertising and presentation
* Syndication: all capabilities travel with the video on distribution to other sites, blogs and social networks including MySpace and Facebook

Thing is when I tried to embed it here the code screwed up my blog formatting...

For use by distributed production teams and novice camera operators.
Seems like these days it's all about novice teams shooting Flip videos and sending us their content for editing. Here's something Jesse and I have been working on:

Recommendations for Shooting Video With Flip-type Cameras:

Avoid backlit interviews. Try to have subjects lit from the front or side. Do not have their backs to the sun, windows, or bright lights. Natural light is preferable to other light sources.

Hold camera 30” to 48” from subject so their head and shoulders fill the viewfinder. This will also improve audio quality. Shoot with the camera close to your eye level and face.

Avoid using zoom. Instead move the camera closer or further away. Need a close-up? The Kodak Z16 has a macro-lens that will do the trick.

Be aware of how much ambient noise there is. Sudden loud noises are worse than a steady hum of activity.

Shooting where there is action behind the subject increases the interest of the composition & can enhance the story. Find a spot out of the way but in the subject’s typical environment.

Get details of the subject’s routine, things they do every day that will illustrate their character, their core values, or both. When shooting this type of content, treat the video camera like you’re taking a photograph. Hold the camera motionless on a scene for 10 seconds and let people/cars/objects move through it. If you want to follow or track motion, try to start or stop your movement with a still shot.

Shoot B-roll to illustrate detail and provide an overview of the scene. Get subjects to say/spell their names and titles so we can positively ID them later.

When interviewing someone, ask some softball questions first to get your subject comfortable. Look for an entry to a deeper discussion. Try to get them to summarize their thoughts in a sentence or two.

Have fun with the process and don't worry too much about getting it "right." Good content will compensate for technical difficulties (within reason).

Workflow and Media Management
Flip video cameras require 2 hours to charge on your computer’s USB. Each charge will last for approx. 1.5 hours of video. Plan ahead. If you have a Flip Ultra, they take 2 AA’s. Swap in some new ones and you’re good to go!

Flip video cameras hold 1 hour of video content before they need to be “emptied”. If shooting for more than an hour either have your second camera ready to go or have your laptop booted up and ready to receive video. Have a Kodak Z16 or Z18? Swap out the memory card!

The cameras are similar to accessory hard drives. When you mount the camera to your laptop’s USB the camera will appear as a hard drive. Find the video files (located in DCIM/100Video if you have a Flip) and copy them off to a designated folder and label the files with where they were shot. If using a Flip Mino HD make sure you have LOTS of storage space available. You may want to purchase an accessory hard drive for this purpose.

After transferring video files to your drive, spot check them and make sure the transfer was successful. If so, remove videos from the Flip camera by dragging the contents of “100Video” (or other) to the trash and deleting them. Now you’re ready to shoot more video.

If you wish to send video files via the web, zip the files into a folder and send via http://yousendit.com. Video files are too big to email as an attachment. HD files will take a LONG time to send via web. Cameras may also be sent in for editing via FedEx.

Files can be most readily edited in iMovie or Final Cut Pro. Buy a Mac.

Want a .pdf of this to distribute to your teams? Download here.

Prepared by Jesse Buckley and Owen Mack, coBRANDiT
Video Questions? Call 617.823.9286 or visit www.cobrandit.com. We've also launched a Flip How-To twitter channel that we'll keep updated with new insights. Join in and tell us your tips! NOTE: This page and related .pdf updated 9/19/09

New video released by coBRANDiT today: WOMM-U is a 2-day comprehensive and interactive educational experience from WOMMA. It's built around giving you the real-world knowledge you need to execute exceptional word of mouth marketing programs that are most effective in today's recession economy.

When and where?
May 13-14, 2009 at the Ritz Carlton South Beach Miami.

For more info please visit http://womma.org/wommu/

The Brief:
Narragansett Brewing Company runs an annual Father's Day tie contest wherein consumers are asked to submit tie designs to the Brewery. 15,000 examples of the winning design are given away with the purchase of a case of beer. The contest has been traditionally limited to residents of Providence, RI, but in 2009 Narragansett wished to spread word of the contest to creative communities in Boston as well.

coBRANDiT's Role:
Utilizing existing creative (a poster), coBRANDiT created a cross-platform widget that could be shared (via email or social nets) and embedded in blogs and profiles. The widget contained contest details, links to brand websites, an invitation to the contest wrap party, and a video call-to-action. (As of 7/2010 the widget is no longer supported. The video component can be seen here.)

coBRANDiT distributed both the widget and the related video, posting to 12+ social media sites and managing blogger outreach and commentary across all channels. All content was optimized for SEO with the secondary goal of improving search results for Narragansett Beer.

Results: Word got around between Boston and Providence, and 'Gansett got many entries. The winning tie was released and spawned at least one fan video...see below.

Text of a recent twitter writing binge I went on, triggered by a Jeremiah tweet and all those recent posts about the sudden glut of "social media experts":

Jeremiah's tweet: reviewing data from a recent Forester survey regarding if brands will increase or decrease social media spend during a recession. stay tuned.

I reply: @jowyang will be interesting to see your report. seems to me like mktg budgets are getting cut overall but SM budgets are going up.

all this talk http://tinyurl.com/458jm5 about the economy creating bogus SM "experts"...but there is a lot of opportunity.

let me riff on this more...economic downturn means people are losing their jobs...some of them are now social media "experts"

i've red a bunch of posts on this...checklists to make sure your social media expert isn't full-o-BS...anyway

with all these "experts" looking for work in social meda...and all the growing budgets for social media...don't you think there's a fit?

let's talk about my sense of social media budgets growing. my partner and i operate a 2 man video production house and SM consultancy.

we work for start-ups, small agencies, very big agencies, beer breweries and international brands. the last few months have been very busy.

2009 is going to be busier. we have more new business now than we ever have...and more existing clients growing programs.

how are social media programs growing? what are the driving factors that we're seeing this new year? video, of course...but also community.

community is one of those tossed around words with lots of different meanings. SEO guys often think community is a numbers game.

for a brand looking to hire someone to manage their youtube and blog comments these out of work "experts" could be perfectly competent.

and that's what needs to happen in 2009: businesses/brands "participating" in social media need to follow thru on the comments, etc.

that, plus shoot a bunch of video. ;-)

THERE! all global economic and social media problems solved.
@cobrandit http://twitter.com/cobrandit

The Brief:
Viximo is a leader in the growing market for virtual gifts, creating platforms for developing and monetizing digital goods worldwide. On January 5th 2009 Viximo released a landmark new development platform called VixML that allows talented designers to create basic iPhone applications with a minimal amount of programming knowledge. With a month to go before launch date Viximo contracted with coBRANDiT to produce an HD video that would explain the basics...and show off some of the cool things developed with VixML.

coBRANDiT's Role:
Viximo had an outline of the information that needed to be delivered...verbal and visual. We worked to streamline the content and develop a script that was then sent out to VO talent. We then shot supporting HD footage at the Viximo offices and in our studio which was edited together to create a 2 minute piece that demonstrates VixML's capabilities...and how the results look on an iPhone. The finished video is posted to YouTube HD.

Results:
Techcrunch wrote up the January 5th launch, giving VixML a great review and embedding the video. As of this writing (January 7th) the video has over 6000 views and is growing daily. The post has been linked to by numerous tech sites (many of whom have embedded the video) and has generated 36+ comments...a strong launch in a targeted community.

"coBRANDiT did an awesome job of understanding what we were trying to accomplish in the video & applying their creative energy to bring cool, innovative ideas to the table. Video they produced was very high quality & they were super responsive to all the feedback & edits that I had."
--Ted Achtem, Product Manager at Viximo, Inc.

There seems to be real push to get branded content out there via social media. But are companies following through on maintaining the community (or even just managing the comments) that then spring up? Are they developing content specifically for these communities? Seems to me that getting companies into social media is a series of incremental steps...and we should be happy with every little step taken. In this video David Armano of Critical Mass and Christine Morrison of Intuit discuss the issue. Presented in a fun little widget (aka white label video player) I put together...also pimping the next womma conference this May...Ritz Carlton South Beach, Miami. Be there.

I spent New Year's Day cruising around town documenting some of the sweet rides found on the streets here...typified by the kind of shabby chic I love. Happy New Year from coBRANDiT!

That's right: Free beer for a year if you win the 2009 Narragansett Beer tie design contest. Send a lo-res image of your design to Intern@NarragansettBeer.com by January 23, 2009 and keep your fingers crossed. Check the widget above for further deets. Click "share" and pass it on. Good luck! (Widget no longer supported as of 7/2010)

Courtesy Robert Scoble and FastCompany.tv:

"Chris Putnam, software engineer at Facebook who runs the video team, talks about its new HD video feature. He also tells me about how he got his job at Facebook, which is quite interesting because it wasn't with a traditional interview."

We are live streaming sessions from WOMMA's word-of-mouth marketing summit today and tomorrow. You can check out the stream here.
UPDATE: Archived Summit 08 content can be seen here. An example can be seen above.

The Brief:
The Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) was founded in 2004, coBRANDiT has attended every conference they have put on. In fall 2005 we approached WOMMA and offered to provide video coverage of their events with the goal of providing short, insightful interviews with key participants that could be viewed and shared by ad and marketing industry professionals. We have been working on WOMMA's behalf ever since.

coBRANDiT's role:
We have covered WOMMA events in a variety of ways including:
1) Shooting interviews with keynote speakers and panelists and rapidly preparing edited pieces for web delivery. Examples can be seen here.
2) Live streaming keynote addresses and general sessions via WOMMA's Ustream channel (access requires WOMMA membership, though an example can be seen here).
3) Mobile live streaming and party coverage using a combination of qik-enabled N95's and Flip Video cameras. For a detailed post on this type of coverage, read this.
4) We also produce and distribute overview videos used to pitch specific upcoming WOMMA events, and have built cross-platform widgets (white label video players with WOMMA links and other information, not currently live) to help spread the word.

Results:
Our WOMMA videos have accumulated over 110,000 views and have helped to demonstrate, establish and solidify WOMMA's leadership in a new industry. WOMMA video content has been featured on top marketing blogs and has led to increased online chatter, increased search visibility and improved traffic to womma.org. Here's something we pulled together after one of their events in 2008:

I will be broadcasting live from Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba's SWOMfest '08 in Austin, October 30. Using my N95, run thru Qik.com over AT&T's 3G network into Mogulus, as seen here in player above.

Follow-Up: I turned off the live player and have instead embedded the opening minutes of SWOMfest: A Zombie Dance to MJ's Thriller, and Ben McConnell's opening remarks. Be patient...it takes 50 seconds till the zombies come out... More of our SWOMfest video content can be seen here on our qik channel and a revolving selection here on the SWOMfest mogulus channel we built.

The Brief:
In early 2008 PUMA Running began sponsoring up and coming Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt. On May 31 Bolt surprised the running world by setting a new world record in the 100m, and it was decided to create a video “blogumentary” following Bolt as he prepared for and competed in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. A flash based site and game was built to contain the program, but how to attract online running communities and the wider world of Olympic enthusiasts? What word-of-mouth and social media strategies could be used to involve viewers, improve SEO, and drive traffic to chasingbolt.com?

coBRANDiT’s Role:
In the space of 4 weeks we developed a multi-faceted social media outreach strategy that consisted of distribution to 15+ video sharing and social networking sites, as well as a branded Facebook application (no longer supported as of 7/2010) with a related cross-platform video widget. We optimized the videos within networks, responded to commentary, reached out to top running and olympic bloggers to gain choice placement, managed ad buys supporting the program, and ran a user-generated photo contest through the Chasing Bolt Facebook app. During the month of August, 12 videos were sent from Beijing to us for distribution and optimization, resulting in over 2 million views, a 64% increase in PUMA-related online chatter, and on August 20th the greatest number of daily uniques for any PUMA web property ever.

UPDATE: On November 14th 2008 this program received an Award of Excellence from the Society for New Communications Research.

“coBRANDiT put together a great social media campaign, the results of which exceeded our expectations. They know the space very well and are very easy to work with. I highly recommend coBRANDiT.”
-–Matt Taylor, Global Manager, PUMA Running

“coBRANDiT has been an incredible help to PUMA in areas from consumer research to digital campaign launches, always bringing fresh ideas and seeing them through to execution. Their passion and energy lifts up our entire team.”
--Ryan Eckel, Group Head, Marketing Strategy and Operations, PUMA AG

**Note: coBRANDiT has also conducted man-on-the street video research for PUMA in top markets such as Paris, London and NY; produced internal sales vids for PUMA Running; and consulted on social media and word-of-mouth programs off and on since 2004.

coBRANDiT is working with Fizz and the ADA Midwest documenting the ADA Midwest's Refuel with Chocolate Milk program. The program aims to spread awareness of chocolate milk's benefits as a recovery beverage at high school football games, track meets, and at health and fitness events throughout Ohio. The video series will be distributed in a custom player late in 2009.

"The coBRANDiT team really knows what they're doing. With work from Sixthman to Chocolate Milk they bring some great creative ideas to the table. They always deliver results and they do it within your time frame and do it with class. I highly recommend their work."
--Tyson Yirak, Director of Operations, Fizz

The Brief:
Athlete’s Performance provides training staff, facilities, and equipment to top athletes in the NFL, NBA, MLB, and many other sports. For the launch of their new consumer focused website coreperformance.com Athlete’s Performance required interview and demonstration videos shot on location with their coaching staff, as well as long-term social media video capabilities and strategic assistance.

coBRANDiT’s Role:
Working with Core Performance’s site editors, coBRANDiT shot interviews in Boston and Phoenix, creating over 40 2-3 minute HD videos in the space of about four weeks. We developed custom compression specs and delivered finished flash video ready to be uploaded to coreperformance.com’s servers ahead of schedule. As an ongoing partner to Athlete’s Performance, coBRANDiT continues to provide regular video content for coreperformance.com, and assists with strategic facilitation of social media video strategy.

“We needed storytellers experienced with video production and coBRANDiT did an excellent job. By helping us translate our needs into video presentations they really helped me sell-in to our organization just how we can use video to help out users out.”
--Sean Bohan, VP Strategy & Production at Athletes' Performance (Read more details here)

The Brief:
DailyGrommet.com is a web retailer hooked in to social media. Daily Grommet is “a place to learn about, and buy, one great product a day. Our promise to you is to offer fresh finds, and true stories, every day.” Launched in mid-October 2008, Daily Grommet emphasizes community, and stays connected to it’s audience with widgets, blog posts, twitter, and numerous social networking sites. Founders Jules Pieri and Joanne Domeniconi knew daily video would be a key storytelling component, but had no video production or distribution experience.

coBRANDiT’s Role:
Every weekday we produce a 2 minute video which features Jules and Joanne (and others) talking about their product offerings; the vids are distributed on 9+ social media video sites as well as on Grommet's homepage. We built a simple studio in the Daily Grommet offices for regular shoots, and work with Jules and Joanne to integrate manufacturer videos and their own Flip Video content. We also produced introductory and “about” videos for the site launch, and continue to offer strategic counsel relating to social media video. Watch Daily Grommet here.

“I hired coBRANDiT to produce our daily videos for www.dailygrommet.com. This was a big decision because our team had no expertise in this area and we really needed pros… coBRANDiT is delivering on all counts. They are highly dedicated, make us sound way better than we should, and really add valuable experience, creativity, and perspective to the whole project. Our video shoot day is becoming a highlight of the week… Great work!” --Jules Pieri, Founder, Daily Grommet

The Brief:
Craft brewer Flying Dog has an ambitious social media program; they aim to be the most web 2.0 savvy brewer online. The goal is to communicate with home brewers, beer drinkers, and aficionados in the environments where they live, and to create and place content in easily sharable formats. Video is a clear part of the mix.

coBRANDiT’s Role:
coBRANDiT traveled to Flying Dog HQ in Denver, CO for 2 week long taping sessions; one in the winter and one in the summer. While in Colorado we documented the brewhouse, interviewing brewery founders, the head brew master, bottlers, and other staff; the brewery Superbowl retreat in Steamboat, a road trip to Flying Dog’s original location in Aspen, and various staff interactions and brewery events. The results were edited into a year’s worth of bi-weekly video which was distributed on various sharing sites, and on a vlog we built and continue to manage. We also developed and distributed a video widget that brought the entire series to embedded locations. In addition we worked with FD marketing on how best to integrate our activities with event, advertising and packaging initiatives, tying it all together with an outreach strategy that incorporated all elements of the program.

SNCR recognized our work with the 2007 Award of Excellence in the Corporate Video category, a full case study can be seen here.

“The guys at coBRANDiT are forward thinkers. They’re constantly analyzing new and current social media technologies to present to clients and integrate into their marketing efforts. They love this stuff.” –Neal Stewart, Prime Minister of Marketing

**Note: Neal was formerly the Brand Manager for Pabst Blue Ribbon, and in that role became coBRANDiT’s first client. We produced a series of PBR neighborhood interviews for him in exchange for beer. The story was written up by Rob Walker in Inc. magazine, August 2004. That’s what put us on the map.

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.

coBRANDiT’s Role:
We sent a two-man video crew to cover the event, attending blogger dinners, press events, the show floor, and interviewing GM managers and auto industry bloggers about their take on the state of the industry and show announcements. Within two days we released 14 detailed videos on various social media sites, and built a cross-platorm video widget to allow easy sharing and embedding on relevant blogs and social networks. These videos were viewed thousands of times and resulted in increased traffic to Gmnext.

Set up a clipmarks account and easily clip web items (video, pics and text) and post them to your blog. It is so frickin' cool, I love it. It's like the "share on facebook" bookmarklet thingy for firefox. So easy. Clipmarks also provides widgets and cross-platform sharing tools galore. OK, enough.

Here's the video we just put together promoting WOMMA's Summit 2008 in November at the Rio in 'Vegas. Shot the whole thing with Flip Video cameras and my N95.

Jesse and I recently produced a set of 20+ videos for CorePerformance's site launch. We spoke with CorePerformance's professional trainers on location in Boston and Phoenix on topics such as Mindset, Nutrition, and How to do the World's Greatest Stretch. The above vid is about Snacks for the Golf Course.

Watch how the titles and logos work in these videos. I'm pretty proud of the titles and logos.

Yeah yeah, I know every video site has it's version of this...but I just came across DailyMotion's version so I thought I'd embed it. Another tool you can use to show off your social media participation...

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!

Dipity provides a nice tool for pulling together all your RSS-enabled web activities, above is one we built for ourselves. This could be a useful thing for pulling together all the content produced around an event or theme, there's lots of sharing and embed functions and different nifty ways to view the info: as a text list, a thumbnail flipper, as timeline, or as map (if you've got that kind of data).

OK, I don't quite understand this vidyup thing yet but it seems to allow site owners/managers the ability to allow their viewers/readers/users the ability to upload video to the site via YouTube. How site owners manage incoming video is not clear to me...so I've embedded it and now I'm gonna play with it. Results forthcoming.

**UPDATE 6/25/08** So here's how it works: You embed the widget above on your site and include a call to action separately: "Hey!! Upload your crazy dog videos here!!" When your readers upload a vid to their own personal YouTube channel you receive an email from VidyUp that includes the embed code. From there you just grab the code (if you like the vid) and drop it into your site (as seen below). Pretty basic...but exactly what I could have used 3 years ago when we launched the original coBRANDiT site.

I was interviewed a couple days ago by Adam Zand of Topaz Partners on his call in show Really Big Shoe. We talked a bit about how coBRANDiT got started, the importance of video quality (or lack thereof), and using video to create a feedback loop in a community. Talk Shoe is a pretty cool technology that allows people to conference live by phone, online, and/or via chat. An archive of the conversation is created and dropped into a widget like the one above (which contains my interview). I met Adam at Bryan Person's Social Media Breakfast a few weeks back; we did an impromptu utterz post on the feedback loop topic where I talked about my experience producing video on the Lynyrd Skynyrd Simpleman Cruise. Here's the utter:

Ok folks...a breakdown of the technologies we used to vlog from WOMM-U last week in Miami. We used two cameras: a Nokia N95 8gb and a Flip Video Ultra. The N95 is a multi-functional phone/computer often billed as competition for the iPhone. It's user interface blows by comparison but it shoots very nice video and has a few video apps. available that make it a great vlogging tool. You can shoot video to memory and then send the video (we use Shozu) to many social media video sites at once with one touch of a button. I typically send videos to a couple of youtube channels, a couple of blip.tv channels, and utterz.com though there are 20+ others i could set up. Shozu uploads are limited to a 10mb file size (though direct uploads to individual sites are not). That's why we didn't use Shozu in Miami. Instead, we live streamed via Qik.

We loaded Qik onto the N95 and set up our account online. When you open up Qik on the N95 it takes about 2 seconds to load, then you hit the button labeled "stream" and there you are, live streaming to the web with a few seconds of delay. Viewers can type in chat comments and they appear on the screen of the N95 in real time. This means if I'm talking to Joeseph Jaffe (as I did at the womma party in Miami, see photo above) viewers can ask questions which appear on my screen and I can ask Joe to respond. Joe sent out a tweet to alert his audience and we were off and running. As a side note: Qik videos can be viewed or embedded in two ways: you can embed a player which shows live video whenever you go live, or you can embed and view archived streams as individual clips (like you do on youtube). Here's the archived stream created while Joe was running my N95. I had gone to get beer...



Ok, understand so far? Good. Now it's gonna get more complex...we were also using Mogulus. Mogulus allows you to produce a 24/7 video channel that's always playing a rotation of selected video. Whenever you go live (which you can do via an N95 and qik, or via a web cam like the one built into you laptop) the live stream automatically bumps the rotation and there you are. Live. Mogulus lets you overlay branding and tickers and titles and crawls, so you can apply text and images to your live feeds (and the vids in rotation for that matter). We set up a Mogulus channel for WOMM-U at mogulus.com/womma. Mogulus is set up so that multiple producers can login from remote locations. You could run a live or near live channel from different places around the world. This just in from our team in Dakar! Pretty cool. Mogulus allows chat in the same way Qik does, and offers customized embeddable players. I'm not embedding one here because they're a pain in a blog post. They're always on! They need to be on a standalone page like this one: the coB homepage.

So far so good. But it turns out that live video is hard to produce (surprise!). Easy technically, but in terms of compelling content you've got to have your interviews and situations lined up pretty well. And to get the chat going you've got to do a little pre-publicity and then run the camera for awhile to give people a chance to respond. People aren't used to live web video. The first comments we get are usually something like "Are you really live? Say hello to me if you are." To make live video work well you've got to have pre-determined go live times and you've got to stream for 15-20 minutes minimum. AND you've got to have some good content lined up. A hot interview, a sweet scenario, a crazy event, a compelling demo. Want the easy mobility of an N95 but don't need or want to go live? Want to produce video you can actually edit? Ahhhh....Flip Video Ultra.

These $140 cameras hold an hour of flash video content and produce amazingly crisp 600x480 video with good sound. The file formats can be a little wonky (.avi) but there are easy workarounds available. The converter I use is streamclip, available from apple. Here's the Flip workflow: Put it in your pocket. When you want to shoot, pull it out, turn it on and in 3 seconds you're ready to shoot. Hit the red button and you're recording, hit it again and you stop. There's a basic digital zoom that helps in some situations, but it degrades the video quality. When you've got an hour of content, flip out the built in USB and load it on to your computer. You can load on files directly (the camera functions just like an accessory hard drive) or you can edit and compress videos right on the Flip--all the software is on the camera's drive in a nifty little program that opens up on your computer screen. The way we work is to bring the files into iMovie or Final Cut Pro and edit them down a bit and add titles and music. Then we do our own compression and throw it up on YouTube or Viddler or load it into our Mogulus stream or whatever. Here's a mix we produced this way at WOMM-U. It's not live, but pretty close if you work fast and the content can better because it's edited...but you lose the live chat functionality. Though you can chat about non-live video through Mogulus if you want to.

Part of the question here is quality vs. quantity, and is live really valuable? Depends on the situation. I can certainly think of a lot of applications for live video, but you really need to do the advanced set-up, PR, and pre-production to get it to engage people and work properly. Near live like we did with the Flip worked pretty darn well, though at an event you need to set aside time for editing or be prepared to stay up late. Need more quality? That's why we aren't throwing out our nice Sony HD camera and our wireless mics...yet.

Jesse and I will be live vlogging portions of WOMMA's WOMM-U down in Miami May 7-9. For the next few days you can check out the action on our front page and here at a more permanent site. I'll do a more detailed post on what tools we're using soon. Hint: Mogulus, Qik, Nokia N95's and Flip Video Ultras.

We are taking the opportunity to make a PR announcement: coBRANDiT is teaming up with guerrilla marketing agency Street Attack to offer a full suite of alternative marketing services. We've built out the widget below to help spread the word. Check it out and let me know what you think! (That goes for the live vlogging too...)

From a Scott Monty Facebook post publicizing ooVoo, a video conferencing platform that looks pretty cool:

In February 2008, a group of 20 bloggers and podcasters hosted "My ooVoo Day". The participating bloggers chatted with fans via ooVoo. To thank all the bloggers hosting the chats, ooVoo donated $30,000 to the Frozen Pea Fund, a fund established to support the American Cancer Society's Making Strides Against Breast Cancer campaign, in honor of blogger and cancer patient Susan Reynolds. Go to http://www.oovoo.com/ to download ooVoo...

Jesse and I attended Bryan Person's Social Media Breakfast in Cambridge MA this morning...fun event. I shot some N95 qik video of the 4 presenters and did a little video show and tell. Topic: getting hired via social media. Guess what? If you want to get hired in the social media jobspace, the paper resume is dead. You can see all the video posts here.

I bought a Flip Video Ultra last week and I just got it. It's pretty cool, very nice build quality, video quality, the software is all included in the camera so when you plug the thing into your usb it's all there. Sweet! Except that if you're running a 2 year old mac with 10.4, you get no audio when you try to view in quicktime. This means you can't view outside of Flip's program...no editing in iMovie or FCP. Flip includes a 3ivx codec to plug into quicktime but it doesn't solve the prob. I tried some third party plug-ins I found online (Perian.org and others) to no avail, then called Flip's help line. They told me to try Perian. I said that no good. They said there was an issue with 10.4 and they were working on a patch. I said when patch ready? They said dunno. I said so....my new toy is trash until then? They said yes, sorry. Hang up. LAME!

I've since found squared5's mpeg streamclip, which is a converter that solved all the probs, 'cept the audio is still really soft. Shame on Flip for not being up front about the problem on their site.

BLF Manifesto

Plan-B

WOM vs. Ads

CGM

Freevlog.org
And Beer.

BLF Manifesto

Plan-B

WOM vs. Ads

CGM

Freevlog.org
And Beer.

WOMMA's next conference is WOMM-U, May 8 and 9 in Miami. Here's a video we put together to help publicize the event. Pass it on! and see you there. It's also here on blip.tv and here on YouTube and a bunch of other places...

Sarah Meyers [of] daily show Pop17, a joint production with Rocketboom...
Like superstar blogger Robert Scoble who has both an edited and a live show at fastcompany.tv, Sarah two as well.

Robert uses QIK. Sarah uses Flixwagon. Both use the Nokia N95.

Beyond the live audience for these video casts, the clips are saved and archived by both services. Earlier this month, YouTube announced an API to allow streams from QIK and Flixwagon to upload directly to YouTube. Robert reported this first on QIK earlier this month. Flixwagon announced the news on it's blog a few days later.

It is the archival use of these video that is the promise of this new technology.

In addition to live uploading, Sarah explains later in this interview how the 3GP files on the Nokia can be downloaded into a editing system.

I finally got around to checking out Kyte. Impressive. I'll be playing with this once i get my N95 back. The above video is too long but sure tells a good story: Video, live video, live text and audio chat, full embedability, app. development tools for facebook etc. This is advanced stuff.

Well, I really do love ShoZu, which allows you to easily upload video from your phone to any number of different locations quick and easy....as long as your file size is less than 10mb. That is a tiny limit! It means that people running decent camera phones can only upload 20-30 seconds of material. Bummer! There's a petition on the ShoZu forums to raise the upload limit, or make it a pay service, but no answer from Shozu yet. ShoZu! Help! I can't use your service enough!

Some years ago we started a site called OBTTV dedicated to cheap uploads. We've resurrected it as a mobile platform, for the moment running on blip.tv. Upload your own mobile vids to obttv.smile@mobile.blip.tv and it'll appear. Fun eh? Here's an official announcement we ran on Qik earlier today.

Who Needs A Movie? is the most recent viral to enter my inbox. A wonderful argument for the power of web video...500k plus people have watched this thing in the last month. I wonder how many have clicked through to their site and PayPalled them a $1 CDN? (For access to more videos...even though they're all up on YouTube) These guys are probably rich now. I could learn a thing or 2 from Fred and Sharon up in Canada.

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.

This is cool...all sorts of widgets available from freewebs, built on all sorts of platforms (Gigya, YourMinis, etc.) from the functional send to friend button (try it below) to Space Invaders (above). Yeah, they've got various pre-programmed video widgets too...

Now that I'm finally getting into mobile video I've discovered Veeker.com (though I haven't played with it yet). Veeker's front page lists these capabilities:
* Send videos and pictures from your phone to any phone
* Send videos and webcam messages from your PC to phones
* Store every video and picture you ever send or receive
* Embed a Message Widget that lets others send webcam messages to your phone
That last one's pretty nifty...see an example above. It's monetized with ads, of course. Their blog has some other examples and a video interview with some Veeker poo-bahs.

Vlogger Sarah Meyers of Pop17 on live video apps, including word from YouTube's Steve Chen that 2008 is the year for live vids on YT. Via Mashable.

Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net put together the above vid with a few of his tips for marketing in social media. Guess what? Spreading your message with social media is a full-time job. Gotta maintain all those sites and profiles...be active and insightful...and have something relevant to say. And note the AdSense ads playing out on revver...when is AdSense gonna run video ads? Anybody know?

VideoEgg continues it's leadership role when it comes to serving video advertising. Their new AdFrames offer is sweet...sweet technology and a sweet new way of charging around engagement rather than CPM. Mashable breaks it down here, here's VideoEgg's page on the offering. And watch the video above, click through to the demos. Cool cool cool!

"...Dailymotion [made an] announcement that all HD content uploaded to the video-sharing site will be automatically re-encoded for 720p HD playback."

I can't emphasize enough what a game changer this is. Introducing our Mogulus channel. Right now it's running youtube vids, better quality vids to follow...See Jeremiah's post on how to run live video through mogulus using a ustream account.

WOW. Check this live video widget broadcasting from CES. (Disabled 'cuz it's now out of date. For an example of the technology, click here.) Courtesy mashable.com and podtech.net.

Then go to this page and watch the great opening video intro'ing mogulus.com. (Too bad I can't embed it here...where are the embed tools??) Sign me up anyway...holy sh*t this site changes the game.

A pretty cool example of widget technology...looks like the video component is built on a brightcove platfrom. Plus I like Daft Punk.

coBRANDiT | 119 Braintree Street #516 | Boston, MA 02134 USA (map)
Prefer Facebook? Twitter? Others? Google us, we're everywhere!

Owen Mack, Chief of Strategy & Development | View Owen's profile
617-823-9286 direct | owen@cobrandit.com | facebook | twitter: @cobrandit

Jesse Buckley, Director of Production | View Jesse's profile
617-388-8165 direct | jesse@cobrandit.com | facebook | twitter: @jessebuckley

Want to know more about our capabilities? Click here.

Ahh, New Year's. Better quality trash appears in the snow the next day.

First Christmas Eve flight of S. Claus detected by NORAD satellite. For more info visit NORADSanta.org.

Yeah boooy! In case you were wondering what happened to Flava Flav...he's alive and well and living in China, where he voices animatronic toys like this one found at my local grocery store.

Gonzo Imperial Porter comes off the bottling line from Josh Mishell on Vimeo. Looks pretty good don't it? But it looks better on the Vimeo site... especially if you toggle fullscreen. Hey Vimeo! Why don't your embeds look as good as the video on your site?

Elliot Yamin of American Idol fame sat down in NYC with top bloggers to discuss his role as a global ambassador for Eli Lilly's Inspired by Diabetes and other topics related to living the dream. Video by coBRANDiT, 'natch. (Note: Videos are NLA as of 7/2010)

Inspired by Diabetes is a global campaign asking people with diabetes, as well as their family, friends and health care professionals, to express how diabetes has impacted their lives — and share those stories with others around the world.

To share your story, and enter the Creative Expression competition, visit www.inspiredbydiabetes.com. You could win a trip to Italy and backstage passes to an Elliott Yamin show. Eli Lilly will also donate money to the IDF Life for a Child Program, which provides insulin and diabetes supplies to children in developing nations.

Courtesy of I Hate Young People (which I definitely recommend watching).

In this blog entry Josh Bernoff describes the POST framework he has helped develop at Forrester: People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology. This was the big idea at last October's Consumer Forum, it describes a methodology for business to approach consumers through social media. Check it out.

We're pleased to announce that our work on behalf of Flying Dog Brewery has been honored with a Society for New Communications Research Award of Excellence in the Corporate Video category. Here's a link to the case study. You might not think lo-grade video from my cell phone counts as excellence in new communication, but here it is:

Yes, the award is a huge cut glass paperweight.

I've been playing around with PageFlakes, another site generally known for startpages but with the side benefit of a pretty cool widget engine. See below and click on a vid to check out the player. Neat huh? And you can click on the little envelope logo in the upper right corner to email it or get embed codes. (OOps, this only seems to work from the pageflakes page itself...doesn't transport. Bummer.) Here's the coBRANDiT page I'm working on.

I'm playing around with utterz.com, which is a mobile blogging platform. It takes audio, pics and video from your phone and drops it into a web widget like the one above. Seems like I need a new phone though...the video above is all out of synch! I've got a not so fancy one year old LG. Hmmm. Here's Mashable's review of Utterz.

Great post from Forrester web strategist Jeremiah on Google's new OpenSocial API standard, and what it means for widgets, apps, and the continuing "death of the pageview" (Steve Rubel's term).

"Using mini-applications, companies can now efficiently extend their website experience to existing communities on popular social networks."

Read Jerimiah's post here. Read TechCrunch's breakdown here.

MEDIAPOST | Owen Mack

TWO MAJOR THEMES IN ANY discussion of online video are advertising and CGM (consumer-generated content, or whatever you want to call it). Some of the questions we're asking: What kind of ads will work best in short-form content? What should these ads look like? And, how are we as marketers going to produce the many different executions necessary for all the geographic, demographic, and use-based targeting that's just around the corner? CGM campaigns run through managed brand communities provide one coming answer.

Well-known examples of CGM ads are big splashy contests like the Superbowl Doritos spot, or failures like the Chevy Tahoe mix-your-own ad ploy. But many smart marketers today are managing (or having managed for them) communities of citizen marketers and brand loyalists, people who are interested in helping out the brands they love -- and these communities are slowly being empowered with video sharing tools. Some of this activity is behind firewalls, some is in the open, and whether you want to call it "advertising" or not, it's often enthusiastic brand content that communicates well to others.

On platforms like Ning and Kickapps, marketers are building spaces where niche audiences of brand lovers share video content about their lives, their creative endeavors, and their brands. And marketers are sharing back, releasing professionally produced insider video, setting up private events, joining the conversation and creating excitement as well as excuses for community members to post more CGM video. And unlike YouTube, marketers have control over what gets posted; though as with blogging, marketers have to have the right voice and tread lightly when it comes to censorship.

But, wait! you say. Who wants to watch a bunch of crappy home videos? Here's where mixing CGM and pro ad content and packaging comes in. Many managed communities give marketers access to the source CGM material. Are you an auto marketer with a new model on tour? Show it off first to community members in your major markets. Encourage them to shoot video and upload it to your site. Pull out the good stuff and edit it together with a clip from the lead engineer or head designer. Do this in each market, and voila! A number of different, low-budget executions you can place wherever video advertising lives. Play the San Francisco clip in San Francisco. Play the design clip for design audiences, the engineer clip for gear-heads. Maybe you luck out and something funny happened during the tour: there's your YouTube viral. This is do-able now.

I don't own a TV. I couldn't care less about the demise of high-dollar :30 spots. If I'm watching short vids on a site like BeBo or Blip.tv, I want to see relevant ads (brand content) that have a similar look and feel to what I'm watching. I want them to be made by people like me, in my city. I want those ads to be user-activated ("bugs" or "tickers") because I want an experience that I can either skip entirely or that draws me in, shows me something I didn't know about a brand. I want an invitation to go deeper, to hear from my peers, and to join the community myself. And I don't think I'm alone.

Article link (Requires free subscription) or see the Video Insider blog.

That's where the action is for the next couple of days. Stay tuned for a new batch of marketing pro interviews coming out of Chicago courtesy of Forrester and your social media video source: coBRANDiT! We'll put the stuff out on blip.tv, youtube and facebook, which will in turn distribute to all sorts of places via rss, springwidgets, etc. etc. From Chicago we're flying to Buffalo NY to work on a project related to fantasy football...ever heard of My Football Tracker?

coBRANDiT’s Role:
Working with Communispace’s marketing department we developed a series of interview questions focusing on various team member’s role within the company, and how their work positively impacted client business. Our low-impact shooting methodology took the stress out of the interviews, and allowed thoughtful, insightful, and passionate responses to come from staffers not used to being on-camera. The results were carefully edited into a series of pieces for use on Communispace’s website and in sales presentations.

Here's AdBrite's pitch for how to do ads in video...but where are the demo ads? Still don't see how the ads are meant to display. Maybe they've got no inventory...I'm hoping to speak with Philip Kaplan of AdBrite at next week's Forrester Consumer Insights Forum; he'll have the answers. Oh wait! I think it's that little piece of text in the top left corner of the player. Yeah, that IS unobtrusive.

We've launched a new coBRANDiT homepage on Netvibes.com. If you haven't checked out Netvibes, do. It's a desktop web app designed to aggregate RSS feeds, video players, all manner of social media goodies and it does it by giving you customizable widgets (little windows) you can drag and drop around a page. You can nest them all in tabs to create another level of organization as well. It's just what I've been waiting for...why didn't I discover it sooner? (I found it via a Steve Rubel Facebook post. Steve is a big advocate of making content portable...see his post titled "death of the page view") For a while now I've found our blog to be a less than satisfactory solution to the problem of how to show all the social media things coBRANDiT has gotten into. For those of you subscribed through RSS or direct linked to our blog, go see our new homepage and you'll understand. Feel free to lift a widget!

PS: Here's the readwriteweb.com post Steve linked to in Facebook.

Read a story in the newspaper last weekend (yes! a real paper newspaper!) about Commercial Creator. This company has designed a system for building TV commercials out of stock imagery and stock video--though you can upload your own logos and images too. They provide voice overs, cleared music, the works for packages in the $400-$700 range. You build the ad you want online, then they produce it. Hmm. TV ads? Here's their demo video (quicktime, no social media features at all)...You'd think they'd go after the web market.

Brightcove's new pitch video is strangely un-embeddable...they only provide a link. Weird.

Like the title says...as viewed in the new player. Yes, AdAge did a story on Facebook and I joined. See ya in the womma group! I put this vid together in about 45 seconds so I could grab a screen shot of my face in a quicktime player.

I'm contantly re-tooling descriptions of what we do and how we do it. I banged this out in an email yesterday and liked the way it sounded:

To re-cap coBRANDiT's areas of expertise:
1) Video Production. Market research, man-on-the-street, behind the scenes, interviews, branded content for sites, blogs, presentations, pitches.

2) Video Distribution. Now you've got the video, what do you do with it? We build and maintain video blogs and social media tools on various platforms including MT, wordpress, blip.tv, youtube, brightcove, springwidgets, feedburner, ning, etc.

3) Consulting on wom/community/mktg integration. With a particular focus on video CGM and the way offline brand activities migrate online and into adspace.

We are actively seeking projects in the community arena and to that end are working with/speaking to Communispace, Flying Dog Brewery, PUMA, GM, Weber-Shandwick, BzzAgent, Street Attack and others.

From today's MediaPost:

DISCOVERY COMMUNICATIONS HAS ADDED THE environmental news and blogs of TreeHugger.com to its multi-platform Planet Green initiative, which will include a new eco-focused TV cable channel in 2008 and a branded Web site later this year. Terms of the acquisition were not announced but Discovery said it "will not have a material impact on earnings in year one." TreeHugger, founded in 2004, said it now has 1.4 million unique monthly visitors.

We suspected that at a certain point in TreeHugger's life that we would need to
attract significant investment or partner up with a large media organization if we
were to really take our message to the masses and fulfill our mission. Over the last year, we were approached by over 15 large companies interested in playing this role. We had many conversations and concluded that we needed a partner with a sizeable, international audience, a kindred brand and a high level commitment philosophically and financially to green.

Discovery fits these criteria to a T.

Click To Play

From mashable.com comes this pretty damn complete list of online video tools. As they say:

"Online video is a huge trend - so huge that’s it’s proving hard to keep track. From video sharing sites to video mixers, mashups and converters, we’ve brought together more than 150 of our favorite sites in this category. Enjoy."

BzzAgent has launched video reporting tools within it's community of agents. Jono gives some detail in this post on the BzzAgent blog, and describes some do's and don'ts of video reporting in the vid above.

This is going to be huge. BzzAgent has over 300,000 people signed up as agents, people who are excited about marketing on behalf of BzzAgent clients. Besides generating WOM, agents submit reports on their activities, attitudes, and findings to BzzAgent. These reports are full of great research insights and testimonials--clients often ask BzzAgent for quotes they can use in their ad campaigns. Now drop video into the mix, and you can see it's not too far a leap for agent-produced video to appear in ad campaigns. Indeed, BzzAgent has positioned itself perfectly for this. As BzzAgent has morphed into a media channel it has begun working closely with ad agencies to produce integrated campaigns...and BzzAgent owns all the content agents generate. They are going to be the gatekeepers for a wealth of video CGM brand messages, the better of which will be appropriate for pre/post-roll or ticker placement on Revver and VideoEgg etc., as well as TV, brand websites, reccomendation sites, anywhere video lives. As always, transparency will be key; but handled properly we could see BzzAgent truly fuse WOM and CGM advertising in a way never before seen.

And it will be so much better than all those "Make your own adz!!!" websites and contests--contests which only attract ad students and wannabes who reinforce the status quo. It will be the realization of the vision Jesse and I had when we started coBRANDiT: to make advertising about real people in real places using real product. On the ground brand reality, by and about people like you and me. All tied in to some of the smartest marketing (and greatest brand experiences) on the planet.

Jono, call me!

A PodTech.net Marketing Voices interview with David Meerman Scott, author of "The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly". I recommend this book because it's at the top of Amazon's marketing books list, and I'm in it...David interviewed me last winter. Here's some of what he has to say about me and coBRANDiT:

"Owen Mack, cofounder and head of strategy and development for coBRANDiT, a company that does social media video production, is a pioneer in using video for marketing and PR purposes. From the early days of online video Mack has helped companies like PUMA and Pabst Brewing create video strategies.

"Video is an extension of the blogging ethos," Mack says. "Do you have an interesting story to tell? If you don't, can you develop something? You need to see what people are saying about you already and know how you can mesh with that. Transparency and openness is required. Done properly, video is very compelling."

In case you haven't heard...a new milestone in CGM:

AT&T Inc. [has] launched what it said is the first service letting callers share live video between cell phones. Video Share was introduced in three markets -- Atlanta, Dallas and San Antonio -- to start with and will be available elsewhere in late July. New AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson told a telecommunications industry trade show in Chicago that the new service has the potential to expand rapidly beyond wireless-to-wireless.

"You should expect this to quickly reach the other two screens, and that's the PC and the television," he said at NXTcomm.

"Imagine watching television when a notice pops on the screen that a daughter or granddaughter would like to initiate a Video Share call, then immediately switching the television screen to accept the video and audio," Stephenson said. "With our powerful IP-based network and flexible IMS platform, these scenarios will eventually be reality."

From Will Video For Food:

A new startup is paying college kids to simply mention product names to strangers. It’s part of a new viral-marketing wave that capitalizes on the trust of peer-to-peer “buzz marketing. Here’s a video that explains how the system works, and be sure to visit www.CashtoBuzz.com to see some top-notch clients.

Here's what they're up to. Watch how the "ticker" plays out, and be sure to click on "menu" to see how they're functionality plays out.

Update: Lame. For advertisers anyway. The embed code they gave me for this video doesn't serve ads. (It does on the site demo). Is that true of all their embeds?

From the "Old media is where you learn about new media" category comes this: Truveo.com, which I learned about from a radio ad on my drive to work this morning. Funny huh? Truveo is a video search portal owned by AOL, who (I guess) wanted to re-brand itself a bit. Might work, considering that if I'd heard an ad for AOL video search I probably wouldn't have checked it out...

Truveo seems to work OK, it found about half the coBRANDiT vids that are out there, and about half the Flying Dog vids which is strange 'cuz they're only served from two locations. Why wouldn't they all be found? It also lists posting dates incorrectly in a few cases. The order the vids come up in is a bit strange too. I wonder how it works?

There are various ways to search, rankings, etc...also you can set up a Truveo account (thru AOL) and get some extra customizable functions. When you click on a vid to watch, you get bumped out to YouTube, or Blip, or where ever. So what's the big deal? Beats me. I'm sticking with my re-branding guess.

The ads embedded in the Alan Schulman piece stood out. They're banners and embedded boxes that expand and play video, also offering links and deeper experiences (they behave kinda like the "tickers" VideoEgg uses). Served by EyeWonder, the way they work is pretty sweet...but a bit too invasive. The video plays (without volume) automatically. Kinda distracting if you're reading a story. Worse, they expand to twice their size when you roll over them. You end up having to play "dodge the ad" with your cursor. I wish the functionality came with a mouseclick instead. Still, a new way to serve video ads...

Another great piece by Alan Schulman in Video Insider, this one titled "As Web Video Becomes More Lo-Fi, Maybe Your Pre-Rolls Should To." Basically he makes the arguement that placing cut down high-dollar TV spots or other too-slick creative in front of your typical lo-fi web video makes no sense. As usual I'm in full agreement with him! The videoblogging world has a lot to teach marketers. The gritty and immediate style of many lo-fi productions is much more in keeping with the video I watch online, that's for sure, and most especially when it includes real people. I can't stand watching perfect shots of cars on the beach, etc. anymore. I want to feel connected.

One thing I've noticed about myself since starting work on the Flying Dog series is that now, every time I open a bottle of Flying Dog beer, I think "Hey, I know the guys who made this. They literally had their hands on this bottle." And that's cool. I wish I knew more about the people who made my car. My shoes. All kinds of stuff.

Interesting NYT Business story titled "The High Price of Creating Free Ads" about the Doritos Superbowl thing, an ongoing Heinz contest, and such. Check it out here.

At last! Easy embed tools (click on "share"). Custom controls and colors. Nice. Congrats to Blip.tv, still my favorite video service provider. This little widget (notice a theme here?) holds all our channel vids (click on "guide"). Here's their post on the updates.

I just came accross KickApps, a pretty slick set of tools that allow site managers to easily integrate CGM content and social networking into their offerings. There's a free ad supported model, or you can brand it yourself and pay on a CPM basis. Similar to Brightcove, though the video quality is not as good and i'll bet Brightcove has more player customization options. However KickApps seems to push the social factor farther, and gives you widgets (like the one above) to spread around. I wish you could play videos right in the widget (like Springwidgets) but KickApps is designed to bring traffic from the widget to a site. Still, a really nice way to integrate CGM and brand content into a single platform. From KickApp's front page:

A KickApps-enabled website provides your visitors with a complete rich media community experience. Users are invited to upload media and create their very own “personal space” directly at your site. Site visitors are provided with easy to use media management tools to manage their personal space. Similarly, your site administrator is provided an array of easy-to-use media management and administrative tools to ensure that only appropriate content makes it on to your website.

Here's the execution that caught my eye: http://www.lemonyourwidmer.com/

Naughty naughty! Server configuration does not allow access to that page.

Amazing BP viral campaign by Oddcast featuring it's talking avatars (or ava-tards as Rob Walker calls them.) This one features a customized talking baby with a variety of BP (British Petroleum) logos and renewable-energy green motifs in the background and BP-logo'd clothes they can wear. (I guarantee there are going to be cool kids wearing BP logo shirts around soon.) Totally viral, 'cuz I gaurantee you'll send your own to somebody. "After all," the text says, "no one can resist a message from a baby."

This thing was sent to my 7 year old daughter by her 7 year old friend. I hope it doesn't include any spyware or other bogus code.

UPDATE: Yikes! I didn't know the half of it. See alittlebettergasstation.com for the whole (cute) ugly story.

Flying Dog President Eric Warner appeared on Denver's CBS4 news program to discuss beer alcohol by volume. Is Guinness stronger than Bud Light? Nope.

"The strength in beer comes from how much grain you put in, not the color of the grain," Warner said. "Alcohol actually has, contributes a flavor and a lot of times what you're doing in the brewing process to create more alcohol, you're going to get more flavor out of it as well."

Warner said there seems to be demand for higher alcohol beers right now and his company is responding with some heavyweights.

This video is pure experiment. How many hits will it get on YouTube (and how quickly) by having a picture of a woman as the thumbnail image and the word "ass" in the title? So far in one day it's surpassed the video I put up 2 weeks ago...

Description: Flashback to 2/07. Flying Dog Brewery winnebago ride down the mountain into Steamboat Springs, CO. Danada gets out at the top of the pass in a blizzard to take a leak. Rippe gets us lost, walks into the wrong house. Impromptu party in the driveway, beer and cigarettes. But wait! Whose naked ass is that hanging out of the hot tub?

Will Video For Food's Kevin Nalts posts his commentary on product placement in videos, and links to this story (oops, subscription only) on the subject in Sunday's LA times. Nalts recently produced the above video for GPS maniac. From the story:

GPS Maniac, a consumer information website (www.gpsmaniac.com), paid YouTube funnyman Kevin Nalts to produce and star in a video called “What GPS Thinks.” In it, the viewer gets to eavesdrop on the female GPS unit’s inner monologue as she bemoans her bad luck with drivers. “I get this clown who never even leaves New Jersey,” she mocks. “Who needs to navigate New Jersey, for God’s sake?”

In the credits, there is an explicit thank you to GPS Maniac for its sponsorship. According to Dana Fisher of GPS Maniac, the attention Nalts’ video received — 26,000 views to date — has been a major traffic driver to the site. GPS Maniac has been so pleased that it has hired Nalts to produce future projects.

Social media activity from Chevy--the Aveo Livin' Large Roadtrip. Chevy has sponsored two recent grads from the University of Florida on a cross-country road trip to Hollywood, where they'll (hopefully) meet up with Jay Leno and make their fortunes. Along the way they're blogging (and video taping) their adventures. Complete with google maps! Check it out here.

Just wait and see.

Here are the interviews we shot at WOMMA's Word-of-Mouth Basic Training 3.

"10 Steps to Finding a YouTube "Weblebrity" to Pimp Your Product." Very good on brand/corporate/vlogger relations. That is, if you want a YouTube "Weblebrity" to Pimp Your Product.

From Will Video For Food.

In a post tilted "Steve Garfield continues to make Internet Video History" Jeff Pulver provides links to a how-to for live streaming video over the net from a Nokia N95 camera phone hooked up to a wireless ComVu set-up. (I'd show you the video, but as with so many cutting edge things, it won't play w/o updates and plug-ins I don't have on my 6 month old MacBook...) Do go look at Steve's Nokia testblog. It's good.

BLF Manifesto

Plan-B

WOM vs. Ads

CGM

Freevlog.org
And Beer.

Via Pulverblog:
How to get RSS feeds to your new Apple TV device, courtesy twenty08. Strangely, video feeds are not (yet) available...

Also from OMMA Hollywood: Alan Schulman of Brand New World on the types of creative agencies that are going to bridge old and new video media. Brand New World is Brightcove's agency...

Two vids from MediaPost's 2007 Hollywood OMMA event:
Jason McDonell of Doritos talks about the program (warning: heavy marketing speak) and then a few words form the winning consumer ad team.

Amanda Congdon's newest gig is pitching for DuPont.

It incited some controversy:

"Poor Amanda Congdon. The bodacious videoblogger and ABC News contributor just can't seem to understand why she should be embarrassed about playing journalist while taking money from companies like DuPont to shill for their products." (from RadarOnline)

The videos were made for online audiences looking for different and interesting stories told through video," said DuPont in a release. "Each video showcases how DuPont science helps to protect people and how innovations developed by DuPont enhance people’s lives."

"We're going to be measuring the impact," said Spangler. "Does this deliver of DuPont science resonate with the audience? Is this the way they would like to receive information? Did we pick the right blogs? Is it the right channel strategy? Should we broaden it to other channels with video?"

"This wasn't supposed to be a viral marketing program like one of those `look how cute this is' type of thing. We really are just telling the story behind DuPont science in an interesting way... They were made around the story, the delivery, presentation and, to some degree, Amanda."

This is the problem all conventional vloggers looking for corporate dollars will run into: "Selling out" and "ethical lapses". Interesting to note, though, that most critiques of Amanda's DuPont deal are about Amanda as journalist vs. corporate shill, rather than the question of whether DuPont itself is ethical. DuPont has not been faulted...Oops wait! How about this, (also from RadarOnline)?

Consulting/Project Management:
What stories to tell, and who should tell them. How to reach out to consumers and involve them in the process of brand marketing and development, and how to get brands to “open up” to this process. How to leverage this process for maximum value using both social media technologies and traditional methods, and why video is a key component. Design and management of vlogs, feeds, social media channels, etc.
Monthly retainer or short-term day rate depending on length and scope of project.

Video Production & Distribution:
We shoot, edit, package, and distribute videos designed to authentically and credibly display brands and the place they occupy in the real world.
On location day rate depending on complexity, hourly fees for editing, etc.

For questions or sales please contact Owen Mack, Chief of Strategy & Development

Download PDF of this page plus coBRANDiT background

So if you read the fine print on the block of text to the left above, you'll see blip is now allowing it's content producers the ability to drop in post-roll stills that link to a specified site. If blip really wants to do this stuff right they ought to look at Brightcove's customization and controls...and their easy embed tools. too bad Brightcove's uploader results in sub-par video, and they don't support itunes like blip does...

Hey Brightcove! Build in some podcasting tools and make it easier to get good video out of your uploader, and we'll do more business...

Steve Rubel brings a MarketingVov report on prime online video viewing hours;

MarketingVOX reports that comScore Media Metrix found that 5-8 pm is the primary viewing time for online video. Some 123 million people in the U.S. viewed 7.2 billion videos online in January. Naturally given its two huge properties, Google was the top streaming video site for the month. For more, including charts and graphs, hit the MarketingVOX site.

Need I say more? Another attempt to be a destination site for CGM video ads.

Or maybe they've just ramped up the marketing. Anyway, I just got an email from Apple TV and it sure is cool to see that the first thing they give you to link to is video podcasts...and they're not all from the networks either.

Related note: The Flying Dog podcast is now live...

Jesse found this the other day: Newly launched zooppa.com has been getting some press in the ad world, and no wonder. Here's their tagline: "Join the revolution-- advertising goes social." This site is the best iteration yet of the idea Jesse and I tried (unsuccessfully) in 2005, and is similar to adcandy (currently "on hiatus" or defunct..) as well. Apparently headed by an Italian/American fellow who goes by "big zooppa" the site offers to connect citizen advertisers with video advertising opportunities and $$. He's got the $$ too... offering up to $1500 for a winning ad (users vote for the winner) and in one intro video (for the current "contest" for a flip-flop manufacturer) he seems to have lots of props including vintage cars (ok, just a 70's era mustang II) and a helicoptor. That wasn't cheap. Anyway, research indicates that the site is registered and maintained by an Italian marketing firm (I think, I can't read the site!) so who knows what the truth is, and how long they'll plow $$ into this. We'll see, maybe the time is right for this to work.

And as for the ads going social? The video ads seem to be hosted by zooppa themselves, and there are no sharing/distribution tools made available. Do the ads live only on the zooppa site? And if they move off the site, is there disclosure? Hmm...

From NewTeeVee:

Don’t let the cheesy synth soundtrack fool you in the video above — you’re going to be interacting with concert footage, tour photos and liner notes from your favorite band with technology like this multi-touch display from Perceptive Pixel.

Came accross VodPod today...allows you to pull vids you find online (from any number of sources) into your own video "pod", example above. Not quite an aggregator, more a collector it seems. With lots of features packed in.

Just like the title sez. By Jake McKee, Community Guy.

This ain't real fresh, but I hadn't seen it...

Found on Scott Karp's Web 2.0, wherin he notes that Comedy Central has built in bunch of slick embedding tools. Neat huh? Now I gotta figure out who provides their player...

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.

Caddy's new campaign "My Cadillac Story" is a good example of the sort of integrated thing we at coBRANDiT have been pushing for awhile. It's a web video series on (what else) Cadillac stories as told by the famous (Joan Jett, Fat Joe) and the not so famous (Matt & Michaeline Larson, Jerry Franchi) as well as guys working on the assembly line. The site shows hi quality flash vids, but also plays out on YouTube...the whole thing supported by print ads in magazines and newspapers. Now, will they intro any new products through the site??

New blog on marketing and communities. Very good. Conference to match.

"The four principles of community management...are: Purpose, Participants, Platforms and Policing."

Also includes a decription (and flickrset) of Otter Networks new community management platform, which includes Brightcove video services. (Hey Kathleen, give me a call when you want help with video...we're local.)

Thanks to Jake.

Via Jeff Pulver: A video acceletator for people running PC's who watch a bunch of YouTube vids and are sick of them freezing up with streaming issues, etc. Smooth fast playback all the time. (I didn't think this was a problem...but then I have a Mac.)

Owen's marketing interest began with his adolescent involvement in the family retail business, a 70 year old venture he now owns that generates extensive WOM. Studies at Washington University in St. Louis fused his interest in vernacular design, art events, and math. His annoyance with conventional ads led to an epiphany: advertising ought to be about real people in real places discussing real product.

Jesse’s relationship with visual documentation began with photography and evolved into documentary video; his award winning anthropology thesis film "Shiva" led him from UC Berkeley into editing, broadcast engineering, and the production of two other films. Jesse has worked for WGBH, Frontline, Errol Morris, Harvard University, Cambridge Television Productions, and others producing a variety web, broadcast, and digital content. He is coBRANDiT’s primary videographer and editor.

Our work is predicated on the belief that 1) Consumers are interested in seeing their peers interact with brands and products in real life environments and situations, 2) Consumers are interested in behind-the-scenes information relating to brands and activities they care about, and 3) Consumers want to participate in the creation and marketing of great products and brands.

coBRANDiT has been featured in various publications including Inc. magazine and Dentsu-ho (the Japanese AdAge), and is a frequent presenter at conferences including WOMMA’s Summit 2 and WOMBAT 3, the New Communications Forum and PodCamp Boston, and at BlogOn 2005 was recognized as a Social Media Innovator. In 2007 we received an Excellence in New Communications Award: Corporate Video Category from the Society for New Communications Research recognizing our work for Flying Dog Ales.

Recent coBRANDiT projects include video production, platform development, and consulting work for Communispace, General Motors, Weber Shandwick, MS&L, Fizz, Flying Dog Brewery, WOMMA, Treehugger, fashion.psfk, ihaveanidea, and PUMA Running.

Jewelry site Ice.com's marketing director Pinny G. stars as "Mr. Cupid" in a multi-part valentine's day YouTube campaign. The piece above struck close to home...

OK, so it IS really cool. I wish they demo'd video playback...

The just-announced iPhone is getting all the press, I'm more interested in Apple TV. It's a $299 box that allows you to synch your iTunes library into your TV with a wireless network, available next month. No more lean forward/lean back dichotomy... That's right! Now you can watch video podcasts on that big 'ole flat screen you got for xmas. One more step towards platform integration.

From YouTube's best of 2006 list.

Dove continues their social media vibe with a contest that's been promoted on YouTube a bunch lately...though the contest is hosted on AOL. Talk about co-branding! Anyway, it's a "make your own TV commercial" thing and it's a good example of the high-end way to run a video contest. Cream Oil Body Wash? I guess I'm hopelessly male...sounds way too confusing to me.

From Brightcove's blog via Beet TV (or vice versa):

"Brightcove's Consumer Media services enables any website, media owners or marketer to launch their own user-generated video services. We believe that the deep passion of consumers to create and share their own media can gain even greater mainstream adoption but enabling consumers to participate in brands, programming and communities of interest that relate to topics and content of interest."

See the post for a video demo of how it works. And here's an example of Brightcove's new CGM tool put to use by Haagen-Daz.

Nalts at WillVideoForFood has his list of 2007 video predictions out. #8 sounds particularly good to me:

"Marketers will get smarter about how they gain consumer mindshare through online video. The self-created viral videos will give way to more creative partnerships between brands and top video creators. These deals will be efficient for marketers, and highly profitable for video creators with low budgets. We’ll see increasingly fewer $250K viral video series created by agencies, and more low-budget, fun videos that were inspired by amateurs but get the media support of advertising budgets."

Timberland (known in the US for it's boots ("tims") and CityYear sponsorship) has entered the UK, and they've done it as a fashion brand. Slick website, with slick use of documentary-style video shot in the urban environment Tmberland Boot Company UK aspires to (Click on "Collections"). They could certainly go further with this approach, though. Plot the locations. Link to the model's MySpace pages. Open it up!

Great use of video on the Discovery Channel's Sherpa Cam page. They mounted cameras to the helmets of sherpas (and others) climbing Mt. Everest and have put hours of the footage online. A timeline and other tools are available so you can scroll through by hours over 2 days and see the climb as it unfolds. Wow.

Chevy is sponsoring a YouTube New Year's thing featuring original content from various rock stars, sports stars, YouTube celebs, "and maybe you!" Upload your own New Year's resolutions, wishes, and shout-outs for a chance at the front page...22 uploads so far. It's going to run all day December 31 and January 1. What form will it take? Can we time shift it? Or do we have to stay glued to YouTube (and the Chevy ads) all day?

A hot episode no less! Thanks Blip.

Another version of a video map mash-up, put togther by a Brightcove partner. The video plays next to a map window that marks locations. Via Brightcove's blog. I gotta show them my Narragansett video map...

We recently produced Communispace's 2006 holiday "card." Documentary style set to a soundtrack... See it here.

Here's my presentation from WOMMA's Summit 2, December 11-13 2006. Most video examples mentioned can be seen on my YouTube page (or via the links below), you may also download the presentation in pdf and ppt formats.

Viral Video and Messages: Content That Gets Forwarded

How are brands and companies using web video to reach an opt-in audience?
What are the most innovative strategic uses of social media web video?
Is viral video the best video strategy, and does video need to be viral to be effective?
How does viral video tie into CGM and WOM?
What's new in video sharing technology?

You can't make a video viral; viewers can. Viral video attempts often have a TV approach: the most number of eyeballs possible, brand attributes secondary. Marketers look at CGM viral hits and want some of that. Too often this means Paris Hilton (or similar).

>Paris Hilton Carl’s Jr.

More recent successes have gotten smarter, more aligned with brand:

>Shaveeverywhere.com
>Dove Evolution
>Tea-Partay (maybe not smarter, but a lot more fun)
>Ecko/StillFree
>Blendtec

Why do these videos work? Outrageous/Amusing/Character driven. The product isn’t the star...a person is. There's an increasing emphesis on personal stories, storytellers. This is seen more clearly in brand vlog efforts.

>Amanda Across America
>Ford Bold Moves
>Chasing Kimbia
>DiddyTV

This type of content is potentially viral, and designed to engage a specialized audience with backstories and insider information. To generate WOM and inexpensively release info/messaging that might not otherwise get out there.

>BMW Vodcast
>Weber Nation
>Narragansett Beer Story
>Video enabled Beer Map

And then there’s CGM brand efforts, often contests. These take the form of brand asset remixes (remember Tahoe?) and original content around a theme.

>iamnotafraidofyouandiwillbeatyourass
>Follow the Finger
>Dabble
>Tokion/Dewar's

Of particular note is Current TV's V-CAM (Viewer Created Ad Message) program. Citizen producers earn $1000 or more from sponsors such as Toyota, T-Mobile, and Sony.

There are video sharing providers out there building tools to manage these contests, and in the process are creating platforms for video-enabled brand communities.

>Jumpcut
>Vitrue
>Vive Network
>Brightcove

And there are others building more general community management platforms that integrate video:

>Street Attack/Yfon's SwitchBoard
>Crowd Factory

Companies that manage brand communities have been gathering important market insights as well as generating substantial WOM messaging. As these companies move to provide their communities with video sharing tools a lot of CGM brand videos will appear.

>Expo TV
>Biore the Blackhead Slayer

Different services, different approaches: Revver, Videoegg, Brightcove allow you to attach your ad to opt-in video content. How well the ads are matched to the video? Check out Google's video AdSense program...

If you are distributing your own vid, you’ll want to look for channels that you can control:
WebVideoZone, Blip TV.

Video Search: What do you want people to find when they type the name of your brand/product/company into a video search engine? My argument: something about how your company is supporting brand enthusiasts, listening to them, and giving them voice.

Conclusion: There's more to it than viral video. Viral video is a mass market ploy that often leads to least-common-denominator tactics. Instead, do something relevant for insiders & enthusiasts. Figure out what resonates, and what your story is. Deliver that story authentically, with real voice.

That voice may be your customer's.

We are at the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association's Summit 2 in Washington DC for the next two days. I'll be presenting on the topic of viral video (and marketing uses of social media video generally), and we'll be interviewing other speakers and interesting people for the WOMMA vlog. If you're attending and want to have your say, find us! We're the guys with the video camera.

That's the title of this article in Sunday's NYT. It's about marketers hosting events in Times Square specifically to provide material for consumers (people) to post to their blogs, flickr accounts, and youtube.

Jeremy Allaire's Keynote from the Fall 2006 Video on the Net Conference

Straight off the Brightcove blog...

Steve Rubel at Micropersuasion comments today on the evolution of TV into the "ultimate open content platform." It's a good read. From the article:

"The open TV platform will comprise of four key sources of content: network programming via your cable/satellite provider, a-la-carte shows sold directly to you by networks/studios, branded entertainment developed by major marketers and consumer generated content piped in via RSS."

Bring it on!

Check out this mapping tool (fmatlas) just launched by Fanueil Media. Built on the Google maps API, fmatlas lets you create a map, set up the points and info windows, then easily embed it in your site or blog. I just threw together the above map of Fall River, Mass (scene of Narragansett Beer consumption) to test it out. Fmatlas is in alpha and is not fully developed (I can't embed video directly in the info window yet) but looks to be pretty slick. I can think of a bunch of uses...

Note: I heard about fmatlas at the Boston Media Makers' monthly get together (thank you Steve Garfield), Rick Burnes of Fanueil Media was there.

UPDATE: Rick and I had a back and forth and got the video working. Check this map out. Very cool.

Ran across this post dated 11/27 on techno.blog today:
"I vaguely remember hearing that AdSense was going to be shelling out video ads, but forgot about this until I saw my first in the wild today:

I wonder how long the compunction to hit "play" will last...

Diddy on YouTube? Well Gwen Stefani is on Brightcove. Real nice player, features, video quality.

Brightcove has re-launched it's site since I last looked, it's more consumer facing now. Check it out. Now you've got to dig around for the corporate stuff. Which I did. Here's their current ad format offerings. Player Takeover? Video Overlay? These guys and VideoEgg are duke-ing it out for slickness! And while you're at it, go read this page too: Video Marketing Solutions. Yeah, they're moving into community work and CGM. Check out this early experiment...

I mentioned Tubesock in a post awhile back, but never got around to trying it out. Until today. TUBE SOCK IS SO COOL. Allows you to rip a flash movie (off, say...YouTube?) and convert it to quicktime for your desktop or iPod. Or just keep it in flash. Very slick interface, easy to set up, $15. (Watch the movie). It even integrates with firefox so you have a built-in converter/ripper in your toolbar. Nice. Now I can do a viral video mash-up of ripped flash vids for my presentation...

So is this a music video? An ad? Inside scoop? All of the above.

Another example of how to use social media video...back story. There's a bunch of celebs on YouTube, but I think Diddy's got the cleanest approach I've seen: DiddyTV. It's all mixed in there, highly produced PR to lo-fi behind-the-scenes.

WOMMA (the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association) is in the process of redesigning and upgrading their website with a new look and a bunch of new features...including video! There is now a link right to our WOMMA interviews on the front page, as well as on the Summit2 pages, check it out. Thanks to Andy and Peter and Jennifer and all the WOMMA staff for helping to put this together. Jesse and I have been proud to be WOMMA's official vloggers at the last few events, and we're excited to continue the tradition next month in DC. We hope to see you there--and get you on camera. Seriously, if you're going to attend and have a bit of WOM knowledge you'd like to spread find us there or get in touch now and schedule your 15 minutes of fame. Just about to register? Type the phrase "guestofcobrandit" into the promo code box and you'll get a discount off your registration.

A Coke viral, Grand Theft Auto style. 12,000 views, 3 months.

Came across this post about viral video, etc. on Publishing 2.0 titled "The Deep Structural Problem of Advertising 2.0" Well, turns out it's not a problem...it's problems. Check it out. I left a comment.

Sorry. This is old news too. See, I'm getting together examples of branded viral video for my WOMMA presentation and I just haven't posted some of this stuff...

Tea-Partay is currently at 1.75 million views.

This is old news but I really ought to post it: The most recent iteration of Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty features a video that has been watched millions of times (thru the site, not YouTube, though it's there) and generated a ton of blog chatter among the moms and daughters it aims to communicate with. A story in AdAge a few weeks ago (subscription) lays out the facts: much greater ROI than a superbowl spot.

The video above (golf balls in a Blendtec blender) has been watched nearly 1.6 million times in the last week. I found it via this great viral video story and podcast from PodTech.net:

"George Wright, marketing director at Blendtec, invited us back stage for the filming of Blendtec's next Will it Blend? video. Currently YouTube's #3 most watched video producer, Blendtec has found an amazing ROI for their $50 marketing spend. With over 6 million visitors to their WillitBlend.com web site in just five short days, it's been like hitting the mother-lode for the typically under-the-radar commercial small appliance manufacturer. More interesting than the awareness is Blendtec's use of blogs, RSS, and comments from watchers/readers to feed future creative. And with over 10,000 comments from prospects in 10 days since their campaign launch, there's certainly no shortage of ideas.

Tom Dickson, the chief actor and executive office at Blendtec, establishes trust through his "extreme blending" product demos and down-home personality. As Wright says, "what you see is what you get." Destined to be an MBA business case classic, Blendtec spins up a brand-building showcase through its use of social media technology that even the hippest Madison Avenue firms are struggling to figure out."

Pull quotes from the NYT story "Brands Produce Their Own Shows:"

1) "Before a Unilever-produced show called “The Gamekillers” was shown on MTV last spring, the network promoted it as a TV show and Unilever held off running ads related to the show. Only after the show ran were characters from it included in ads for Unilever’s Axe deodorant, said John Shea, executive vice president for integrated marketing and brand partnerships at MTV. “The last thing anyone of us wanted was for the show to feel that it was, in fact, an ad,” Mr. Shea said."

2) “We are living in a world now where it’s harder and harder to capture somebody’s undivided attention,” said Linda Kaplan Thaler, chief executive for Kaplan Thaler Group. Ms. Kaplan Thaler recently created a campaign for Dawn that included online shows, traditional commercials, a contest, and Ellen DeGeneres as a celebrity spokeswoman. She said advertisers had to do it all these days. “Ubiquity is the new exclusivity,” she said.

This is why I hate advertising.

Courtesy AdHack comes this link to a vid of Flickr co-founder Stuart Butterfield. Stuart talks about the genesis of Flickr, and why the community works.

Check out AdHack, a "A Do-It-Yourself Advertising Community." Nice. Then check out the original coBRANDiT page, circa July 2005. I have to say his site's prettier...but the message sure is the same. This guy and I gotta talk.

Five years ago we got our start as consumers, two guys making movies about brands and products that we loved. It was our belief and vision that companies and brands should drop their conventional marketing efforts and put their cash into consumer and community based initiatives, initiatives that highlight and enable consumer creativity and enthusiasm. We wanted to do this with video.

Why video? On the web, video is the glue that ties it all together. “It” is lifestyle. Activities. Events, scenes, scenarios. People and their environments, context. Video shows these worlds with unrivaled veracity. We wanted to find a place, create a place where consumers who were into brands could get compensated in some way for their loyalty.

Today we’ve found the sweet spot: helping manage and document communities of brand evangelists. The documentation comes in the form of CGM and video we shoot. The results are shared among community members, the brand, and the public: market insight, qualitative research, passionate testimonials and expressions of character. We are making marketing communications about brand experience, direct and lived by real people in real places. We show it on the web and in traditional ad space. Community interaction, documented, as the center of the marketing effort.

We’re not into “viral video.” We don’t want to amuse our audiences, exactly. We want to be smart, subtle, reflective. We want to show people something they didn’t know about themselves and others. We want the insiders, the geeks and wonks and critics who are crazy enough to care about brands and their impact on society. We want to get brand communications off the high horse, and down to our level...the level where “it” all really happens. And we want it to be a good deal for everyone.

While we're talking about Scoble... PodTech sponsored the Vloggies (a videoblogger get together and awards ceremony) over the past couple of days in SF. Here's the official list of winners, overall and in various categories. No...coBRANDiT didn't win! But Treehugger TV did (in the green category, of course). Look for a coBRANDiT produced episode on alternative fuel vehicles playing there soon.

Courtesy Beet.tv comes this interview with Scoble on the business of vlogging, discussing metrics and engagement (do you think he knows how to fiddle with his numbers too??) Listen especially for the part where he talks about ZeFrank and his use of the "org" button. The org button is a clickable button that appear's in Ze's Revver player. He uses it to offer treats to his viewers, the "org."

This YouTube vid by littleloca (who was featured in last week's New Yorker for those of you who read periodicals of that sort) explains how to game YouTube. Boils down to subscibing to yourself with fake accounts and setting up 'bots that hit your vid all the time. Thanks to EndlessEurope for the tip.

UPDATE: EndlessEurope has set out to game YouTube. Here's the announcement. Track results here.

That's the title of this piece in Inc. Magazine on Viral Video. Good read. I recommend it. Quotes:

"Videos seem to have replaced the jokes in my in box,"says Stefan Tornquist, research director at MarketingSherpa, a research firm in Warren, Rhode Island.... Sixty-six percent of the people who watch videos online have seen an ad clip. About one-third of those viewers visited the marketer's website, and 8 percent made a purchase."

Amid such clutter, it's easy to get lost... "You can't be a classic brand manager, worried about having the right words," Tornquist says. "The companies that are going to benefit will be the ones willing to stick their neck out."

The story also includes an extended session on Heeling Sports' social media practices...including video. (Heeling Sports does those sneakers with roller wheels in the back. Sales doubled to $40mm last year).

Videoegg keeps upping the ante with new ways to drop ads into video. Viewer Initiated Brand Engagement as they call it. VIBE, man.
Check out this Snoop Dogg demo "ticker."

Saw this story in the NYT today about United Talent Agency's launch of an online unit dedicated to scouting out web video producers. Sounds like they're in the hunt for the next LonelyGirl15 (or someone else with huge numbers) rather than niche content. They're specifically looking for talent that will align well with brands. Key bits:

" The goal this time around, executives say, is not only to recruit the next generation of television and film writers and directors from the relative obscurity of sites like YouTube and Revver. It is also to help the major Web portals that are hungry for original content to find the creative people they need — just as movie studios have long turned to talent agencies when looking for new directors, screenwriters and actors.

“It starts with just helping identify people on both sides of the aisle,” said Brent Weinstein, head of the new division, UTA Online. “The barrier to entry is so low, everybody is now a potential artist. So there’s this great unwashed of talent out there, 99.999 percent of which is probably not good enough to have a traditional film and television career. But on the Internet, a lot of different types of things go. And yet for buyers, this is a wall of people, so how does a brand know which one of them can help it execute?”

Hello!

Found an "after the hype, what does it mean?" story on the YouTube/Google deal from MediaPost this morn. Full story here, key clips here:

"The quick win for online video advertising is the generous boost it receives as a category--from the large dollar amount paid to the Google brand. As the largest acquisition ever made by Google, it brings the significance of online video front and center and gives the industry a lot of good buzz. This is a classic case of a rising tide lifting all boats....whatever else you may hear about the Google/YouTube deal, it's a big win for the online video advertising industry. It brings credibility, searchability and access...the deal will start to clean up the perception of the online video space, which will go a long way toward raising advertisers' comfort levels."

In case you haven't been paying attention, there are currently 60+ video sharing sites out there. Some are YouTube clones, some were concieved specifically to enable IPTV plays (and create a market for producers, affiliates/syndicators, and advertisers), some started out as video editing web apps. Recently I've been watching for players that have tools in place for managing video in brand communities, and while I've mentioned them before, in just the last week or so Vitrue and Jumpcut have really ramped it up with new sites and product offerings.

Vitrue has launched two seperate things: Branded Video Communities (BVC) and AdMixer. BVC is a customizeable video page that allows users to upload, share, etc. and (as an option) allows rating and comment features, among others. It's geared to running contests. AdMixer lets brands provide video assets to users for remixing (remember Chevy Tahoe?? Yeah, like that). For some reason it looks like the two offerings can't be used together--they're certainly not presented that way. From a user perspective, the offerings come off a bit heavy handed. Sample text from the homepage:

"ViTrue is a safe place for Brands... At ViTrue, we give consumers the tools to create authentic, engaging advertising experiences that never compromise the integrity of your brand."

Hmm. Sounds a bit controlling, no? Two way conversation? or "unprecedented results at a fraction of the usual cost of production." (Also from homepage).

More interesting to me is Jumpcut's B2B page. They're going after the video contest crowd too, but also offer BrandSpace and InLine. The two are similar, but BrandSpace is a Jumpcut interface and Inline is an API built into the client website. Both allow all the social media video tools we've come to expect, plus a video editing web app. The unknown here is what kind of sorting/management tools they offer.

CGM video ad contests and other outward facing programs get all the attention, but there are many brand communities operating behind firewalls. Video in these communities will be about market research as much as (or more than ) group communication, and community managers will need tools to both pull video into presentations (to clients/boardmembers) and to create external (outward facing) marketing campaigns. They'll need good search/sorting functions too, beyong tags and keywords. How will these video tools integrate with existing community management systems?

It's hard to say at this point which these two providers has the better toolset, and how they'd work patched into an existing platform...but if you're starting from scratch I've also found a couple of platforms in the works for broader (video/blog/photo/voip/IM/etc) off-the-shelf community management tools: see CrowdFactory and this announcement from StreetAttack/YFon Global.

Long story short: This stuff changes every week. Yikes! How exciting.

Just wrote meself a new bio. Here it is:

Owen Mack is co-founder/strategic chief of coBRANDiT, a social media and marketing consultancy specializing in web video for online communities and opt-in environments. The coBRANDiT story includes brand hi-jacking, market research, viral video, and the launching of the world's first open-source ad agency. Recent projects include video production for Treehugger, fashion.psfk, ihaveanidea, and WOMMA, as well as production and consulting work for PUMA Running.

Owen's marketing interest originated with his involvement (starting at age 11) in the family retail business. This formative experience taught him early on the value of customer-centric thinking and the importance of presenting information honestly and authentically. Studies at Washington University in St. Louis fused his interest in vernacular design and marketing. His annoyance with conventional advertising led in 2002 to an epiphany: advertising ought to be about real people in real places discussing real product. He teamed up with partner Jesse Buckley and got to work producing unauthorized documentary "ads" for Schlitz beer and PUMA which received national attention.

Most recently Owen has been applying his knowledge of the web video space to new delivery systems including YouTube brand channels, Google video AdSense programs, post-roll content, videoblogs and other opt-in formats as well as consulting on video sharing tools in brand communities. He has been featured in various publications including Inc. magazine and Dentsu-ho (the Japanese AdAge), spoken at the New Communications Forum and PodCamp Boston, and been recognized as a Social Media Innovator at the BlogOn 2005 conference.

Owen lives in Boston, Mass. with his wife and two daughters. In his free time (ha!) he can be found riding bicycles made of spare parts and building plywood sculptures painted aqua blue.

Just read the new Ad Age (in good 'ole newspaper form) on the Google/YouTube deal. In a sidebar subtitled "The challenges Google is likely to face in the world of video, and what GooTube means for the world of marketing" I found this key quote from Alan Schulman, CCO of Brand New World:

"With video you can really take the richness of a brand's creative and bring it to life. If I sell shampoo [and] that's a word tagged accross video, now I've got an opportunity to link to video that's a little more contextual. It's not justa a random pre-roll.... Some advertisers--Pop Tart's webisodes, the "Dear Jet Blue" ads--are doing things that look and feel user-generated but they're brand-centric. The challemge is: How do you get inside the vernacular of that user-generated video? How do you create something fun and a little lo-fi, with less production cost? It's more about short, sweet, crisp and cracks a smile. And if you can do that accross ontent categories at a lower price, that's smarter than...TV spots."

Well said Alan. Can we set up a meeting? Also: Brand New World is Brightcove's agency...

Where will the Google/YouTube partnership lead? Check out this version of the future.
(Once again I get my news from Will Video For Food)

I've been asked to speak at the WOMMA Summit coming up in December, the session title is "Viral Video and Messages: Content That Gets Forwarded."

While I'm super excited about presenting at a WOMMA Summit, I'm hoping to expand the session a bit. Thing is, if you want to talk about marketer uses for online video, viral is just a small part of the story. The best known (and flashiest) part of the story perhaps, but I don't think the most interesting. The problem with viral video is that it almost always relies on outrageous humor or situations for it's virality. Viral video seeks to be seen by the largest number of people possible, like TV. Viral doesn't care if the brand message is relevant or interesting to the viewer, it's just hoping you'll notice the brand, somewhere in there with all the farts and breasts and rapping WASPs. Most viral vids associated with brands are CGM, and negative. So while viral is a workable strategy for some brands, it's tough to pull off in the right way.

Similar to viral is stuff like YouTube's "brand channels" and Video Egg's opt-in post-roll ads and Google's Video AdSense program--these are brand messages that rely on viewer interest in the product or service offered. While the content is displayed in the same format as a viral video, you know it's an ad (of sorts) and you know what it's about (more or less). If you click on it, it's because you want to see a message from brand X. What can you do as a marketer to make that message compelling? Hint: don't make it look like a TV ad. No bogus sets. No bogus actors.

The next level out is video blogging, or creating a series of ongoing pieces that tell a brand story. Again, you can put this story out through viral channels, but what you're really trying to do is get interested viewers to follow the story on your site, where you can create better context for your message, and provide better tools for your customers and viewers. Current examples of this include Ford (both Bold Moves, and Amanda Congdon's Road Trip, also with the NRDC) and Samuel Adams Brewery. All of these approaches are documentary is style, which means real people, real voices.

The core expression of real people real voices is of course CGM. And there are some fun marketer executions using CGM video, my current fave being iamnotafraidofyouandiwillbeatyourass.com (look for the gnome...that's me). Still though, when it comes to CGM video and marketing activity it seems like the real action is in qualitative research. Trend sites (noteably trendwatching.com) and brand researchers of all sorts watch video sharing sites for a peek into consumer's lives, and companies that employ and/or recruit trendspotters and brand loyalists and bzzagents etc. are getting into providing video tools to their communities. The results of these more focussed assignments are rarely public, but I think we'll increasingly see content come out of these groups that plays as advertising.

For me, that's where the real interest lies: in the crossover between research and brand messaging. I want to see content about brands that shows context, connection to poeple's lives. I want to see work that reads as research to brand managers, documentary advertising to consumers, and provides insight to both.

PS One sort of brand that would thrive by giving users video tools would be sites like PlanetFeedback.com and TripAdvisor.com. (I'd love to put up my video of the shitty buffet, unstaffed bars, and blowing trash at Beaches, Turks & Caicos, $6000/wk).

Speaking of VideoEgg, they just launched the Eggnetwork, which allows advertisers to purchase time in a variety of formats accross VideoEgg's large user base (20 million vids per day). From the site:

"The Eggnetwork was created to connect advertisers with the top social networks and vertical communities and delivers on four critical promises. Users first: give viewers a choice about which ads they want to watch. Reach: advertisers should reach the largest social networks with a single call. Targeting & accountability: leverage profile data to target video ads in powerful new ways. Safety: make user content safe for advertisers. Have real people review each video."

The interesting thing here is the formats: Ticker, End-Cap, and Post-Roll. The ticker seems particularly nice...check it out and see a unique approach.
They call it "permission video advertising."

Jumpcut.com, 6 month old provider of web apps. for video editing, just sold to Yahoo. (Reuters story here) Video editing web apps. are the next big thing in social media video (see also VideoEgg, and rumor has it that Brightcove isn't far behind...) and it's going to be wild to see what comes out of it. Here's a hint from Jumpcut's announcement:

"We’ll be working with Yahoo!’s media and advertising partners to bring everyone high quality content for remixing into movies."

Remixed advertising, eh? I'm still waiting to see what comes out of the ViTrue/Sharkle/Denuo pairing...ViTrue has had the same enigmatic placeholder page up for months. Sharkle is a video sharing site owned by ViTrue, which has partnered with Denuo (Starcom) to provide a platform for CGM brand content. Kinda takes me back to the original launch of coBRANDiT as an open-source ad agency.

UPDATE: The placeholder is gone, now there is a bit of info...on remixed advertising tools, and private label video sharing sites, Moe's Burritos being the example.

Matt Taylor of chasing tradition is helping out with a new project: chasing KIMbia. It's a really good example of corporate blogging. The project follows the training of a group of elite kenyan runners prepping for the fall marathon season and includes blog posts, pics, audio and video posts, and lots of Q&A with readers. Pretty cool, and sponsored by KIMbia athletics (managers) and New Balance.

Prompted in part by the Lonelygirl15 thing, WOMMA is starting up a new task force on the issue of disclosure in viral video and social media. The goal is to work out industry standards for marketer activity in this space, and they've issued a call for comments; you can find it here. Here's the issue, as outlined by WOMMA:

"Video sharing platforms, social networking sites and blogging tools are increasingly enabling real and trusted conversations between consumers -- and marketers are moving aggressively to become part of that conversation.

By its nature, "social media” is assumed to emanate from consumers who are unaffiliated with marketers. These communication channels also rely on deeply trusted relationships among consumers. Therefore, marketers must exert special care and attention when using this media to prevent any possibility of confusion or deception. Consumers must get enough information to understand what they are seeing and where it came from."

Continuing on, here's the key item, as it refers to lonelygirl type campaigns:
"Creative Expression Protection: How do we protect creativity and maximize entertainment? Mystery, building anticipation and teasing outcomes are positive forms of communication arts. What forms of disclosure protect the creative process and the entertainment outcome?"

Hmm. That is a tough one. I guess it depends on when and how you reveal... something lonelygirl seems to have botched. Or is that all part of the plan, 'cuz she's actually a clue in an Alternate Reality Game? See wikipedia on that...

Brands joining the conversation successfully have learned their cluetrain lessons: transparency, authenticity, and a conversational (human) voice are critical. These core values apply to video as much as they apply to text. The companies that get it right often hire videobloggers as spokespersons, or they go a step further: they hire their customers.

At some companies, customers form a core of evangelists with whom they market. These brand communities suggest new products, test prototypes, and spread the word about new releases. As brand stewards move to provide video sharing tools to these communities, they are finding a wealth of research material, as well as authentic brand content. As an online communication tool, video has arrived.
We're here to help.

SERVICES WE OFFER
Video Production including social media/blog content, field ethnography/market research, event coverage, and internal communications. (Click links for video samples)

Consulting on social media/CGM/ad/event/word-of-mouth integration, brainstorming/ideation for new business pitches, RFPs, and marketing programs; video sharing technology for brand communities.
Project Management for the above.

Our work is predicated on the belief that 1) Consumers are interested in seeing their peers interact with brands and products in real life environments and situations, 2) Consumers are interested in behind-the-scenes information relating to brands and activities they care about, and 3) Consumers want to participate in the creation and marketing of great products and brands.

Brands, agencies, and organizations we have assisted: Flying Dog Ales, Communispace, PUMA, Pabst Brewing, Arnold Worldwide, Liquid Intelligence, Converseon, WOMMA, PSFK, Future Marketing Summit, I Have An Idea.

>Contact coBRANDiT for pricing
>Download a PDF version of this page
>View interactive quicktime presentation (35MB, QT 7 req'd)

Yo L a Tengo's new album is being promoted in part by their fans (and matador records) with a really pretty nifty YouTube video wall. The album is titled "I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass" and so the video wall features uploads of people repeating this fantastic phrase. It's almost as catchy as "snakes on a plane!" Check it out here.

From AdAge Digital: Pete Blackshaw (the original CGM guru) on what's at stake as marketers enter the CGM space (video and otherwise). He also uses a new term he's developed: chatterbacking. Key quotes:

"Marketers are aggressively exploring every possible technique to piggyback on CGM and conversation. I refer to this as 'chatterbacking.'

CGM is a gift to advertisers because we've been struggling to find -- and in some cases develop -- compelling content that both captivates attention and harmonizes with ad messaging. Consumers are literally creating it themselves.

CGM also brings to the table several coveted building blocks that advertisers let slip a long time ago: trust, credibility, authenticity and, often, restraint. CGM thrives because consumers trust other consumers more than advertisers, period."

Full story here.

Web Video Zone is a new entry into the video serving scene. Designed especially for businesses (and others) that want a customizable flash player, Web Video Zone also offers various clickable in-video functions and post-roll links that allow more promotional/cross referencing opportunities than other players I've seen. Doesn't look like they've got some of the social media functions the competition has, tho... no community/tagging/comment features, etc. It's really just about embedding video with links, and player customization. I'd say put this technology together with some social media features (besides simply send-to-friend...)

Thank you: Will Video For Food

From Jake's post:
"Mark William Hansen [has] been a powerhouse behind pushing co-creation concepts within [Lego] for years. He does a great job in this presentation of summarizing the concepts of working together with your community/fans/consumers. His input can be put to work, as he says, at all companies."

Rocketboom interviewed Steve Rubel of Edelman (and Micropersuasion) yesterday, good chat about the future of media, marketing, etc. Check it out here. They also shot some extra content titled "Selling yourself without selling out" about bloggers turning themselves into ad-friendly brands. Who has done it succesfully? Watch that one here.

(ps Mike Wiley of GM's fastlane and fyi blogs just joined Edelman. Mike also sits on the board of WOMMA. Nice power team going on over at Edelman, eh? Looks like PR will own this space before advertising!)

Just found this round-up of current social media video sites here on fabricoffolly.blogspot.com. Good resource for at least the next few months...


Tip: Will Video For Food

Not too complex. Still, you've gotta really want that video. Methodshop.com lays out the details on ripping and converting flash files for desktop or iPod use.

But TubeSock makes it even easier.

From a link on mefeedia's front page comes this:

"Calling the beautiful, amazing, brilliant things people create online 'user-generated content' is like sliding up to your lady, putting your arm around her and whispering, 'Hey baby, let's have intercourse.'"

"Lately the notion that the web is about 'user-generated content' has been getting more traction. With the success of MySpace and Flickr, pundits are looking for a trend. And they've found one in this hateful phrase. But 'user-generated content' is nothing new online. In fact, it's what the network was designed for."

Written April 2006 by Derek Powazek in this post. Well said. He posits the term "Authentic Media" in place of UGM, but that doesn't quite work for me either. I know this is all shades of nuance, but I like the word "people". People Media, People's Media. As opposed to corporations. The outsiders. Is it us against them? Pete Blackshaw, your opinion please??

When I first discovered videoblogging, it was like the blinders fell from my eyes. Wow. A friend (Peter Durand of alphachimp.com) sent me a link to www.videoblogging.info. Jesse and I had already been putting video online for over a year (see our first site here, watch for pop-ups, and be sure to look for easter eggs!) and we were looking for a community of web video people. Partly because we had this grand scheme of building a worldwide network of vloggers for hire (see the original coBRANDiT site), and partly because we wanted to find people with the same problems we did: how to display and share video online. And how to fund it.
Any way, we quickly found the yahoo videoblogging group, and freevlog, and the original video sharing tools (before google video, before you tube) that got us hooked: ant, and mefeedia.
The people behind these groups and this software are the people who launched vlogging, and video file sharing, and the whole video aspect of social media. I think it's super cool, and I'm very excited to say hello to some of them at the upcoming PodCamp event here in Boston. There are a bunch of them in attendance but what got me writing this post was seeing Peter Van Dijck's registration on the PodCamp wiki. Peter is the founder of mefeedia. Very cool.

Short bit in AdAge featuring/written by Organic's Chad Stoller and Chris Portella on Marketing to the "YouTube Generation." Or rather, how to make marketing use of YouTube's new ad channel offerings without looking like a corporate dope. (Thanks to Mark Kingdon's 3minds post.)

We've just signed up to attend (and sponsor) PodCamp Boston, Sept. 9-10 2006. (We may be speaking, too. More on that later.) It's an unconference-type thing devoted to grassroots media, podcasting etc. and looks like it's attracting all sorts of interesting people. Some PR firms and bigger businesses, but mostly individuals trying to launch their own projects or get their organizations on board with new media. It's going to be fun to hang out with a group of people who can actually DO things...as opposed to the many big business (marketers) who just talk talk talk. Funny how sometimes it's easier to do things when you don't have any money.

UPDATE: Here's our speaking session description: The Advertising/Marketing World and Video Social Media - Owen Mack & Jesse Buckley, coBRANDiT - How we've used our videoblog to open doors and establish credibility in the world of new marketing, and why marketing agencies and new media content providers are interested. The coBRANDiT story includes brand hi-jacking, market research, viral video, word-of-mouth marketing, and other topics sure to get us flamed.

From MediaWeek comes this story on recent YouTube ad integrations. Whatever you do, YouTube, don't start with the preroll ads...and did it have to be Paris Hilton??

Here are some nice videos from Beet.tv: Seems like AOL has announced that it will offer web-wide video search, which sounds too good to be true. To get to the bottom of it Beet.tv interviewed Forrester's video analyst Brian Haven (above) and got the low-down on video search techniques and AOL's offer (yeah, it's still about the meta-data, at least for now).

Read an article in last week's AdAge about Communispace, a company founded in 1999 that builds and maintains private brand communities on behalf of 250 big name businesses. Sounds like mostly it's about market research and rapid prototyping (both products and marketing campaigns), and it sounds pretty secretive in that the communities are behind firewalls. The article does mention creating word-of-mouth as a community benefit, but mostly it all sounds pretty inward facing. Perhaps that explains why I haven't heard of them in the WOM marketing world, even though their HQ is about 1/4 mile from my house? I must learn more...

I was browsing YouTube today and at the bottom of the front page was a video with well over a million views (above). It was the first million view video I'd come accross (though this clip for Smirnoff Tea will be there soon) and I was kinda surprised to find that it consisted of an apparently 70-80 year old guy talking about posting his first video, and maybe people would watch it and respond? As of this writing it's been viewed 1,697,231 times, had 9,367 comments, and 209 video responses. Posted August 5th, 2006. Wow. Not only are the stats wild, but I was charmed by his interest in watching YouTube, and wanting to be a part.

Fast forward to this eve, and catching up on Church of the Customer. They point to this article from emarketer with stats for web video viewership. Guess what? 59% of YouTube viewers are 35 and up (4.31% over 65). Hmm. Not as much a youth thing as you thought, huh?

Just discovered (thanks to Theresa Iezzi at Ad Age) this videoblog effort by Ford: Bold Moves. This is a really great example of the kind of work we've been pushing companies to produce. An open investigation into business processes and challenges, a behind the scenes look at how things get done, and a call for discussion and criticism. This series (a new vid every week for 50 weeks) provides Ford all kinds of opportunity to display it's competence, highlight the individuals who make the company, and reach out to the press, customers, and the world at large. It will be interesting to see how open the series really is, how responsive it will be, and what steps will be taken to really involve consumers in the story. Show test drives? Interview Ford club members? Find evangelists and give them some treats? What kind of word-of-mouth will be generated? Wait and see...

We got written up in the Japanese Ad Age, fall 2005. I wonder what it says?

We put this together just before the Oct. 2005 BlogOn Social Media Summit. Burned DVD's and handed them out.

This is the piece we used to introduce the concept of Documentary Ads to the world back in the summer of 2005.

Welcome to the new and improved coBRANDiT, now on a new server and with Moveable Type. Due to the nature of hacking video into MT, I've got to manually migrate our archives over here from OBTTV.com. Stay Tuned.