Month: March 2012

Last night I attended the SPARK Alumni Branch event, UBC Hot Companies which featured five teams of student companies pitching to a panel of industry professionals Dragon’s Den style. Aside from the delicious food (pulled pork sandwiches, savory bites, spring rolls, cookies, cheesecake, and brownies) and a delightful session of mingling,  what I was also pleasantly surprised to find was the extent to which Facebook was integrated in the business models of the presenters.

Three out of the five presentations mentioned how they would utilize Facebook to compliment their idea. The three products were:

1) A task management app – Share your tasks with your Facebook friends.

2) A mobile event ticketing platform – Immediately connect via Facebook to buy and sell tickets and to share it on your wall.

3) An online dating site – Integrated into Facebook so that once you complete the online quiz it posts to your wall.

No longer can we live in the granny days of Facebook denial. Social media is pervasive in almost all aspects of business. I can’t even imagine what life was like prior to Facebook now.

The real question now is, what does Facebook have in store next? How can Facebook change our lives even more so than it already has?

A couple weeks ago, my friend and I attended the grand opening of a frozen yogurt franchise by Cambie and Broadway called Menchies. Not going to lie, we were persuaded by the promise for free delicious froyo–and indeed it was delicious! Now before I get too sidetracked and start talking about the yummy green tea and cinnamon apple combination, let first get into why my day at Menchies was so awesome.

1) They offered free froyo. Anytime something is free there is value being given on a silver plate to the customer.

2) They handed out goodies: stickers, tattoos, balloons!

3) They had a cute mascot on site! This guy is irresistable!

Mash all of these elements together with a quality product, delivery, and store…you get customer engagement!

Menchies did their job that day and got me excited and curious about the brand. I was so enthused that I sought out their website, Facebook page and Twitter handle. They didn’t have to promote these pages in any way but somehow they got me from point A (the store) to point B (online).

This only happens once in a while when a brand is able to kick the living awesome out of me. The message for marketers? Embody AWESOMENESS and your customers will reward you. They will want to interact with you online without you forcing them to through special twitter contests and chanting out random quotes on Facebook.

Of course I’m not saying everybody should go out and give out free products. (That would be nice, but of course it makes no business sense to hand out iPads like cups of frozen yogurt. Find the awesome from within your brand and express it. Do so with conviction and make your customers believe. Once we believe, we will talk–not just to the brand but to our entire network about your awesomeness.

Since when did things of a viral nature become positive? Welcome to the 21st century where “going viral” has become the goal of many marketers. According to CEO of TrendHunter, Jeremy Gutsche, there are three ways to cultivate infection:

1) Viral Creation – “When you create something that connects, your story will travel faster than before.”

2) Viral Medium – “Portray your event as average and that is the best that it will be.”

3) Well-Packaged Stories – “Simple, Direct, Supercharged.”

Gutsche suggests that the key question to be asked should always be, “specifically what are you trying to do?”

Personally, for me to want to spread something, it has to fall under at least some of the following criteria.

1) Easy to share

2) Interesting, relevant

3) Unique, breath-taking, surprising

4) Emotionally charging

5) Visually pleasing

The content you decide to share speaks to who you are as a person. No one wants to share boring content, otherwise you are known as the person that shares boring content. It’s simple. People want to be the most interesting, the most unique, and the most captivating; so they seek content that is going to reflect those attributes.

Picture this: You slip on your Nike+ shoes and plug in to your iPod to go for a run in the morning. As you’re running your route is getting posted in real-time so that your friends can see. Suddenly you hear a cheering sound through your headphones and you are notified that your best friend is cheering for you from miles away.

Sounds implausible? No, just a creative fusion between startup Path and Nike.

Just when you thought you had Nike all figured out, they go and do this–innovate. As Nike moves away from traditional advertising and gains ground in unconventional media vehicles, we will see more innovations to come that integrate social media, emphasize immediacy, and that promote connectivity.

Marketing has reached higher grounds ever since web 2.0 and if you don’t keep up you might just end up getting left in the dust.

Recently my friend shared a video with me via Facebook called KONY 2012. I merely glanced at the title, felt no direct relevance from reading the heading and decided to defer watching it until I had time. Then I began noticing several people posting and reposting the video. My spidey senses were tingling–well actually my curiosity was itching to see why everybody was talking about this Kony thing. So I watched it.

First impression: Beautifully packaged piece of communication. Touching, inspiring, motivating. (At the same time, almost too perfect and propaganda-like…)

Reaction: I joined the Facebook event page. I talked about it with friends.

Analysis: This is viral content at its best. By the end of the day everybody was talking about KONY. Why? Because the content was able to speak to us as emotional creatures. It did its job to engage the audience to the extent that we couldn’t just let it slip through us without sharing it.

What I find even more interesting is how when viral content first breaks loose it is spread with optimism and positivity. Past the 24 hours, people are ready to bash the content and question its motives. This is exactly what happened with KONY.

My view: I can’t speak about the intentions of the campaign or of the leaders of Invisible Children, but at the heart of it I believe awareness for the situation is extremely important. My human rights radar tells me that something unjustified is going on and I’m glad that someone is at least taking action in some way.

On a vastly contrasted note, the leader of the Kony campaign shown in the video, Jason Russell, was recently detained by police for masturbating in public. Say what?