In collaboration with Amazon, Godin is trying to change the way books (the content not the medium) are published, distributed and read.
Seth Godin’s latest book, Poke the Box is the first title in the Domino Project. Released just this past Tuesday, Poke the Box is all about encouraging people to just get started on something, to have initiative and “go for it”.
Today’s event is all about poking the box. Using a new platform to encourage his readers and fans to quite talking and start doing.
We’ve embedded the Twitter feed below and we hope that you’ll join us between 1 and 2 pm this afternoon. The conversation will be fast past and informative time that we’ll all learn something from. Hopefully then we’ll all start Poking the Box
Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend the second annual eMarketing Conference at Fanshawe College. I’d like to first acknowledge the hard work of the organizing team in pulling together a conference and group of speakers that we would normally have to travel to Toronto or further to attend.
The keynote for the day was Avinash Kaushik. He is currently one of the greatest minds working around web site analytics, site measurement and optimizing online presence for maximum impact. He delivered an amazing lecture full of practical knowledge, tangible advice and actionable items. One of the greatest things about his presentation was that it was customized for London, Ontario. It’s very easy for a big name speaker like himself to use a prepared slidedeck. However, Avinash did his research and brought up examples of local business’ websites and highlighted issues and successes with their online strategy which made his whole lecture extremely relevant.
The remainder of the day extended from this perfect start. The breakout sessions I attended were incredibly informative and contained pieces of content that I’m looking forward to implementing with our clients. There was much more of a focus on mobile development; both native apps and mobile friendly websites as well as overall analytics and measurement techniques.
While I loved the conference itself, I have started to notice a disappointing trend with online marketers. For decades we have been trying to find a way to measure our tactics and determine the returns. Trying to determine whether the audience watching TV saw your ad, or if the full page spread in Wednesday’s Globe and Mail had any impact. When Social Media emerged with all its reporting tools and dashboards, everyone thought the Holy Grail of measurement had been discovered. Unfortunately, in thinking this many people have lost sight of the original intent of social media; building relationships through telling stories. This isn’t something that you can measure, and you can’t put a dollar figure on the connections you make with potential customers. In our rush to measure everything we’ve dumbed down relationships and made them another line on the budget sheet.
In closing, though; I’m very glad and encouraged to see how active the online marketing space in London and area is. If we can continue to bring in high profile speakers and put on conferences like eMarketing, I’m confident that we’ll continue to expand as a digital media centre that meaningfully contributes to Canada and the World.
In yesterday’s post about my recent trip to Vancouver I mentioned that I was able to sit down with David Eaves. Unfortunately our schedules only permitted us to have a short lunch; nevertheless, we were able to chat about a number of projects, the philosophy of Open Data, and the future direction in Government 2.0.
David Eaves is a leader in the Open Data initiative. He is an advocate of openness and transparency and spends a lot of time looking at how technology impacts government operations and their interactions with their constituents.
At rtraction we are big advocates of Open Data and have been pushing our local municipality, (London, Ontario), to adopt this philosophy. We’ve launched a number of products built using open data sets. We’ve had success with EatSure and played a role in helping LondonTrash become a reality. A number of our staff are also involved with OpenDataLondon; a citizen led Open Data advocacy group.
I met Dave at Canada 3.0 in Stratford, May of 2010. At the time we spent time chatting about that event; its strengths and weaknesses, as well as the future of digital media in Canada. We also shared emails back and forth about various initiatives including the http://www.opendataday.org/. Therefore, when Dave and I were able to get our schedules lined up, I was very excited to pick his brain and discuss how London could play a role in shaping Canada’s digital future through Open Data and Government 2.0
Vancouver is viewed as a leader in Open Data. They were one of the first cities in Canada with an active community that pushed the city to release data sets and had some of the first apps built with this information. Through discovering VanTrash we realized the potential for such a website in London, Ontario, and so in collaboration with Open Data London, UnLondon and many individuals we built LondonTrash.
During lunch Dave filled me in on the group in Vancouver that was getting ready to launch their own version of EatSure. In fact, just a couple days later the Vancouver site went live. We’re very pleased that a simple project we launched here in London has been successfully replicated in other cities. Hopefully this is just the first of many other regions who want to make restaurant inspection data available to the public in an intuitive manner. Feel free to drop us a line if you are interested.
There are a number of avenues that we are looking to explore with EatSure in the coming months. Dave suggested that we look at how we can integrate concepts of openness back into the project itself. For example, when looking to expand into other areas that may not have restaurant inspection data opened up, how can we provide a platform to those groups so they can make that information accessible? Following up with that; what is the most open way to share that newly rescued data? These are questions and projects we hope to explore in more detail in future releases.
Dave and I wrapped up our conversation chatting about how to encourage new governments (especially relevant with the recent municipal elections in Ontario) to get on board with Open Data and other open platforms. One of the points we established was the need to keep moving forward despite setbacks or lack of immediate adoption.
It’s an exciting time to be interested in politics and technology. Innovations are happening daily and it’s easy to become involved. If you’re interested in participating in this important dialogue I encourage you to reach out to one of the organizations linked above.
I’ve just returned from a trip to Vancouver and was really happy to be able to meet some of the people working in the social media / startup space in that city.
I started the week on Monday with a great lunch with David Eaves. We brainstormed a few further ideas around EatSure and some other projects with great potential for London so stay tuned on that front.
On Tuesday I stopped by BootUp Labs and chatted with Maura Rodgers, their Executive Director. I learned about the startup culture that’s very active in the city and what BootUp is doing to foster that. I was also very pleased to hear about the level of collaboration that exists in Vancouver. There are a number of cool companies coming out of BootUp that I’m sure we’ll hear more about soon!
In the evening, I stopped by the Vancouver Hack Space (VHS) and watched as they rolled out some really interesting projects, including seeing their MakerBot in action!
Finally on Wednesday morning I was able to have a long chat with David Olson from HootSuite. It was very encouraging to hear about the successes they’ve had with their products and some of the plans for the future. One of their biggest challenges is that many people aren’t aware that they’re a Canadian company!
The team at HootSuite is one that truly “understands” the storytelling aspect of Social Media and are providing a tool that
makes that easier for businesses and organizations of all sizes to interact with their communities.
I left their office with a bag full of stickers and pins, so they next time you see me be sure to grab some for yourself!
Over the next week I’m going to talk more about these companies and individuals and what lessons I’m excited to bring home and implement here. There are many opportunities here in London and lots of potential to add a bit of West Coast flavour to the Forest City.
When a company is seeing a major decline in their market share, they have a couple of options. Their advertisements could play it safe and focus on the traditional approach. Or, they could be like Proctor and Gamble and trust the direction of their creative agency to turn the Old Spice brand around and throw all assumptions out the window.
By now I’m sure you’ve seen the widely successful Super Bowl Ad for Old Spice body wash. Old Spice recently followed this up with a second advertisement using the same unique and unusual creative stylings. However if you thought that a couple of funny and unique videos was all the company had up their sleeve, then what took place on the @OldSpice Twitter stream (combined with other social media activity) during the last few days must have you reconsidering that position.
A relative new-comer to the microblogging site, Isaiah Mustafa and the Old Spice team turned the Internet on its head when the started personally interacting with their fans online. It all started out with the relatively innocuous tweet:
“Today could be just like the other 364 days you log into twitter, or maybe the Old Spice man shows up.”
What we saw was one of the most original and innovate uses of the Internet and social media since Zuckerberg stole a series of yearbook pictures from the Harvard student body. (or a couple of rainbows appeared in the sky)
As fans interacted with Mustafa, he would respond to their messages via short YouTube clips. The responses were done in the same random, post-modern, uber-meta style as the rest of the Old Spice advertisements, which made them entertaining and addictive; it was impossible to just watch one clip.
And oh yeah… It was in real time, as in you could make a comment or ask a question and within minutes hopefully watch a response from Old Spice.
Target the Audience
The brand capitalized on influencers, like Kevin Rose and Alyssa Milano, and used them to spread the campaign beyond Twitter. Sending personalized videos to both “web” celebrities and media outlets promotes the brand and this advertising campaign to even broader communities.
You could easily write this off as a really cool idea, wish that you had thought of it or think that it’s only possible because of the enormous budgets multinational brands like Old Spice have available…
Or you could think about what the lessons are for your brand.
What Are You Doing?
Old Spice has effectively shown the internet what social media promoters have been telling brands for years: successful usage of social media requires you to honestly listen to and interact with your users and then provide them with relevant information and content to consume.
Should you run out and start recording a bunch of personalized video responses to questions and comments posed by your audience? Are you’re willing to take the risk needed for fast turn around times? Do you have chutzpah to create entertaining videos that capture users attention? Video responses work for Old Spice because it’s the format viewers expected from the brand. What medium and what type of conversation will your users expect from you?
Run with It
Even if you don’t think the format will work for you, there are tonnes of lessons your marketing department can learn from Old Spice:
Its not enough to just respond when you feel like it – if you’re really listening, you need to respond when your audience is ready and with the information they’re expecting.
You already have interesting and relevant information or marketing to share; if you can share it in an engaging manner then people are going to spread it for you.
Old Spice broke down our silo assumptions; that Twitter is for Twitter responses, blogs for blog responses and YouTube for inane comment responses. Instead, they connected various platforms together in an incredibly effective way.
We’re not done innovating yet, and it’s always possible to take simple ideas and combine them into a new and interesting way of presenting information.
