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/

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.

Spike Jones of Brains on Fire receives the first official WOMMA tattoo during Summit 2008...though he passed on the WOMMA logo and got a pirate ship instead. Introduced by John Bell, WOMMA President.

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 (archived videos require 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 build cross-platform widgets (white label video players with WOMMA links and other information) to help spread the word.

Results:
Our WOMMA videos have accumulated over 50,000 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 one of my favorite WOMMA videos, featuring a massive game of Rocks/Paper/Scissors:

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.

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...)

WOMMA's next conference is WOMM-U, May 8 and 9 in Miami. Here's a video and widget 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...

Ted Wright, founder and president of word-of-mouth marketing organization Fizz Corp. moderates a panel with Andy Levine of Sixthman, Ken Block of the band Sister Hazel, and band fan Marc Pruitt--a "hazelnut". Taped at WOMMA's Summit 3 in Las Vegas, NV by coBRANDiT. Disclosure: Fizz and Sixthman are coBRANDiT clients.

It's not our usual MO to tape whole panels, but there was a lot of interest in this one. Presented here on viddler, with chapter markers so you can scroll through. Feel free to add your own markers and comments.

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

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.

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.

More of our interview with Gary Stein of Ammo Marketing. Here Gary discusses Google's Video ASdSense program and web video in general, plus a new term? Flash production crew...

I started off interviewing Gary (AMMO's Director of Strategy) about web video, he had just returned from a ClickZ video symposium in NYC. The conversation morphed into a discussion of SecondLife. Here's Gary's take. (And here's his blog. Good stuff.)

Geno sat down with us for a few minutes to describe the brand ambassador and community program Brains on Fire just launched for Fiskars (the orange handled scissors people.) He provides a very nice overview of a WOM program done right, from research to launch, with transparency and ethics. Check out Fiskateers.com to see the project.

Jackie is a WOMMA boardmember and WOMBAT2 keynote speaker, her blog (written with partner Ben McConnell) is the well-known Church of the Customer. We caught up with her and discussed one of the threads she's currently following: Snakes on a Plane.

Julian was on a panel at WOMBAT2 and used a term I had not heard before: "Pilferables." Here he describes some of AMMO Marketing's tactics for spreading buzz and talk within a community.

We continue following the career arc of the Scobleizer and get some background on his recent job change announcement. What are the factors that caused him to jump? In brief: his career follows the development of the PC and web communications, that leads him to web video (PodTech.net.) Where does it go next? SecondLife...

We filmed while WOMBAT2 keynote speaker Robert Scoble (scobleizer.com) was interviewed for an audio podcast by Judd Bagley of PRweb. Judd traces Scoble's career starting with his move to Silicon Valley at age 5, and in the process we find out why you shouldn't have skipped your typing classes.

Ryan discusses Buzz Marketing at Euro RSCG, his family roots in advertising, and the importance of trendspotting and analysis (his team linked Polaroid and Outkast in popular culture.) What is the tie between ads, events and WOM? What does it take to generate talk value? What are the Three C's?

The Well Advertising in Chicago specializes in producing microsites, which CEO Bill Hanekamp describes as 24/7 sales reps. Here Bill talks about how The Well came to focus on this niche, and why new compensation models make sense.

How has the role for PR agencies evolved in this new media world? John talks about Ogilvy PR and WOM, and the job of turning clients (Snap-On tools for example) into media producers. John maintains a good blog about these topics here.

Expo TV is a website and VOD channel with it's roots in infomercials. President Bill Hildebolt (WOMBAT2 attendee) talks about Expo's move into soliciting consumer generated product reviews (videopinions) and the differences between the web and VOD.

Rob Key, CEO of Converseon, talks about how affiliate marketing is morphing into a WOM practice. Where is the line between the two? And what about disclosure?

Trip is in charge of guerrilla marketing at Renegade in NYC. We discussed their recently launched Panasonic/Oxyride "Neuter Your Bunny" campaign, and asked him how Renegade works when going into a new business pitch.

Bill Mosher, Founder of Echopinion! is the first paying member of WOMMA, the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association. Here he talks about WOM, his career and the descision to join.

Selections from Andy Sernovitz's opening address at the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association's WOMBAT2 conference held June 20-21 in SF. Stay tuned for interviews with attendees, panelists, and keynote speaker Robert Scoble coming in the next few days.

THIS VIDEO HAS BEEN DELETED.
While we were interviewing Bob Garfield at WOMMA's WOMBAT conference in Orlando last January he went on an extended and unsolicited riff about the purported origins of WOMMA. He claimed WOMMA was founded by members of various 1970's era leftist guerrilla organizations. He did this in jest, while we filmed him. We recently rediscovered the tape and edited it together with images of the IRA, SLA, other organizations, and WOMMA board members.

We apologize for the offensiveness of the material, and for our unthinking actions. We sincerly hope that any discredit falls on us. We would like to reiterate that WOMMA had no knowledge of or say in the creation and production of this video. Thanks for your understanding. - Owen

We asked a few people about WOMMA and WOMMA events. Here's what they said. (Including quotes from Laurent Flores and Nigel Roth, event sponsors from CRM Metrix. (Taped at WOMMA's WOMBAT conference, January 2006. coBRANDiT attended as official videobloggers.)

A testimonial, call to action, and CGM all in one.

Paul Rand of Ketchum has recently launched a new practice called Ketchum Personalized Media which focuses on blogging, podcasting, rss, mobile, etc. Here Paul talks about the new practice, and the changing role of the PR industry.

Mark Kingdon of Organic talks about what makes for "exceptional experience" with brands, and also about the power of video to connect with audiences. (Organic maintains a very interesting blog called three minds which they use as a platform to experiment with new technologies and methods. Any Organic employee can post.)

Steve Friedman of Weblogs Inc. on the business of blogging and integrating marketing with blogs. Volvo is about to start videoblogging with them...

Bob Garfield, noted ad critic and author, talks about WOMMA as an organization and WOMM as an industry.

Jamie Tedford of Arnold Worldwide speaks about the challenges of creating content in a new media world, and of the interplay between advertising and WOM.

Laurie Weisberg describes Informative's work building customer communities for brands such as LEGO, and how co-creation can result in fabulous products. (Did you see the cover of the Feb. '06 WIRED? All about LEGO...)

Ted Wright of Liquid Intelligence on how his company uses the power of WOM storytelling in the beverage industry, and how WOM synchs up with advertising.

WOMMA co-founder Pete Blackshaw of Neilsen Buzzmetrics coined the term consumer-generated media, or CGM. Here he describes CGM2 (multi-media) and the impact it is having on advertising and marketing.

Douglas Atkin of merkley + partners describes some of the research in his book The Culting of Brands, and how his client BMW Motorcycles is heading in a new direction.

David Fletcher of MediaLab UK talks about WOM as a media vehicle and the psychology of online behavior and empowered consumers.

John Moore of Brand Autopsy discusses WOMBAT keynote speaker Don Pepper's book Return on Customer and how how his own experience behind the counter as a barista at Starbucks influences his thinking about new marketing programs.

Steve Rubel of Micropersuasion discusses Cooper Katz's blogging efforts, notably Vespaway.com

An introduction to Womma, the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association.

Josh Hallett of Hyku is a social media consultant whose clients include old media (The Florida Sentinel) and new (Micropersuasion.com). Here he discusses online engagement and the role blogs play. (taped at WOMMA's wombat conference)