Avenue A | Razorfish, Pluck to develop social media offering

At AD:TECH Chicago August 5, Wendy Aldrich of Disney Parks and Resorts mentioned how Disney uses digital media to engage consumers wherever they they are. Her comments provide a fitting pretext for an August 6 announcement from my employer, Avenue A | Razorfish, and Pluck Corp., to develop a new hybrid digital marketing and social media offering that will help marketers better engage with consumers across the digital world.

The offering, code-named AdLife, will inject social media features like customer comments and user-generated content into digital advertisements such as banner ads or microsites – in effect, turning mainstream ads into social media opportunities distributed across the digital world.

For instance, let’s say you’re Disney Parks & Resorts, and you want to promote a new attraction at a theme park. With AdLife, Disney could launch a banner advertisement that enables consumers to review the new attraction itself by clicking on the ad, as well as read feedback from other vacationers, without ever leaving the point of display for the advertisement. Disney then might use AdLife to link that ad (plus user-generated content) to its own branded microsite, the Disney YouTube channel, or other properties where Disney consumers play.

AdLife is not a substitute for the cool experiences that Wendy shared, like the contest on YouTube where you can upload your favorite Disney park memories. What AdLife does is give Disney a way to combine mainstream and social media properties to engage consumers — and help them engage with each other — across the digital landscape.

The next step is for Avenue A | Razorfish and Pluck to work with marketers to do beta testing before making AdLife available. Meantime today’s news is a sign of how social media and advertising are converging. The enterprise has a rightful claim to employing social media and influencers to achieve its marketing and business objectives (what Avenue A | Razorfish calls Social Influence Marketing™). AdLife will help them do that.

For more information, feel free to contact me or my colleague Shiv Singh.

Avenue A | Razorfish, Pluck to develop social media offering

At AD:TECH Chicago August 5, Wendy Aldrich of Disney Parks and Resorts mentioned how Disney uses digital media to engage consumers wherever they they are. Her comments provide a fitting pretext for an August 6 announcement from my employer, Avenue A | Razorfish, and Pluck Corp., to develop a new hybrid digital marketing and social media offering that will help marketers better engage with consumers across the digital world.

The offering, code-named AdLife, will inject social media features like customer comments and user-generated content into digital advertisements such as banner ads or microsites – in effect, turning mainstream ads into social media opportunities distributed across the digital world.

For instance, let’s say you’re Disney Parks & Resorts, and you want to promote a new attraction at a theme park. With AdLife, Disney could launch a banner advertisement that enables consumers to review the new attraction itself by clicking on the ad, as well as read feedback from other vacationers, without ever leaving the point of display for the advertisement. Disney then might use AdLife to link that ad (plus user-generated content) to its own branded microsite, the Disney YouTube channel, or other properties where Disney consumers play.

AdLife is not a substitute for the cool experiences that Wendy shared, like the contest on YouTube where you can upload your favorite Disney park memories. What AdLife does is give Disney a way to combine mainstream and social media properties to engage consumers — and help them engage with each other — across the digital landscape.

The next step is for Avenue A | Razorfish and Pluck to work with marketers to do beta testing before making AdLife available. Meantime today’s news is a sign of how social media and advertising are converging. The enterprise has a rightful claim to employing social media and influencers to achieve its marketing and business objectives (what Avenue A | Razorfish calls Social Influence Marketing™). AdLife will help them do that.

For more information, feel free to contact me or my colleague Shiv Singh.

So you want to work for Avenue A | Razorfish?

Check out “Confessions of a Summer Intern” a blog by Maddie Graunke, which gives you an inside look at the experiences of an intern for my employer, Avenue A | Razorfish. Based in the Chicago office, Maddie has been interning on my team for several weeks. She has captured some interesting insights about life here and the kind of work she’s been assigned. All I care about is that Maddie be honest and open in the true spirit of blogging. I learn more about my own employer that way. If you are wondering what it’s like to work here, visit her blog and ask her whatever you want to ask.

So you want to work for Avenue A | Razorfish?

Check out “Confessions of a Summer Intern” a blog by Maddie Graunke, which gives you an inside look at the experiences of an intern for my employer, Avenue A | Razorfish. Based in the Chicago office, Maddie has been interning on my team for several weeks. She has captured some interesting insights about life here and the kind of work she’s been assigned. All I care about is that Maddie be honest and open in the true spirit of blogging. I learn more about my own employer that way. If you are wondering what it’s like to work here, visit her blog and ask her whatever you want to ask.

Are you experienced?

Engagement-based marketing is all the rage. Forrester Research, Gartner, and JupiteResearch have all published major commentary on engagement in the past 12 months. Agencies like my employer Avenue A | Razorfish are talking about the importance of building brands through experiences that engage consumers, online and offline. David Polinchock of the Brand Experience Lab publishes a popular blog, The Experience Economist. In reality, marketers have been pursuing the holy grail of engagement since Starbucks proved that you could charge a premium rate for a cup of coffee if you provided a memorable experience (probably even before that). So why all the talk now – and why will agencies like mine continue to talk about engaging experiences? I can think of three reasons:

Continue reading

Are you experienced?

Engagement-based marketing is all the rage. Forrester Research, Gartner, and JupiteResearch have all published major commentary on engagement in the past 12 months. Agencies like my employer Avenue A | Razorfish are talking about the importance of building brands through experiences that engage consumers, online and offline. David Polinchock of the Brand Experience Lab publishes a popular blog, The Experience Economist. In reality, marketers have been pursuing the holy grail of engagement since Starbucks proved that you could charge a premium rate for a cup of coffee if you provided a memorable experience (probably even before that). So why all the talk now – and why will agencies like mine continue to talk about engaging experiences? I can think of three reasons:

Continue reading

Avenue A | Razorfish Unveils Top 10 Digital Brands

In a previous blog post, I mentioned that my Avenue A | Razorfish colleague Joe Crump was going to discuss “Digital Darwinism” at the Cannes International Advertising Festival on June 21. Today I’m making available to you his final presentation courtesy of SlideShare. Make sure you check out the top 10 digital brands, which Joe unveiled at Cannes using the Avenue A | Razorfish proprietary Brand Genes Scoreboard:

1. Google

2. Apple

3. YouTube

4. Flickr

5. Netflix

6. Nike

6. eBay

8. IKEA

9. Coca-Cola

10. Mercedes

These brands scored the highest when we measured them against atributes like immersion (how easy it is for a consumer to become engaged with your digital home), social (whether a consumer finds your brand worth sharing), and adaptive (how well a brand responds to a consumer’s digital environment), among other qualities. By contrast, the Interbrand top brands are as follows:

1. Coca-Cola

2. Mercedes

3. General Electric

4. Nokia

5. Microsoft

6. IBM

7. Disney

8. McDonald’s

9. Toyota

10. Intel

Coca-Cola and Mercedes are the only two Interbrand top brands that make the Avenue A | Razorfish top 10 list. So . . . do you agree or disagree with Avenue A | Razorfish? For more reading on Digital Darwinism, go here.

Avenue A | Razorfish Unveils Top 10 Digital Brands

In a previous blog post, I mentioned that my Avenue A | Razorfish colleague Joe Crump was going to discuss “Digital Darwinism” at the Cannes International Advertising Festival on June 21. Today I’m making available to you his final presentation courtesy of SlideShare. Make sure you check out the top 10 digital brands, which Joe unveiled at Cannes using the Avenue A | Razorfish proprietary Brand Genes Scoreboard:

1. Google

2. Apple

3. YouTube

4. Flickr

5. Netflix

6. Nike

6. eBay

8. IKEA

9. Coca-Cola

10. Mercedes

These brands scored the highest when we measured them against atributes like immersion (how easy it is for a consumer to become engaged with your digital home), social (whether a consumer finds your brand worth sharing), and adaptive (how well a brand responds to a consumer’s digital environment), among other qualities. By contrast, the Interbrand top brands are as follows:

1. Coca-Cola

2. Mercedes

3. General Electric

4. Nokia

5. Microsoft

6. IBM

7. Disney

8. McDonald’s

9. Toyota

10. Intel

Coca-Cola and Mercedes are the only two Interbrand top brands that make the Avenue A | Razorfish top 10 list. So . . . do you agree or disagree with Avenue A | Razorfish? For more reading on Digital Darwinism, go here.

Best Buy launches Summer Hub

How does a retailer like Best Buy build build awareness in the digital world for consumer products like cameras and GPS devices? It’s not like you can test a camera on a website.

Enter the Best Buy Summer Hub.

Built with my employer, Avenue A | Razorfish, the Best Buy Summer Hub employs rich media, snappy graphics, and a Facebook application to help consumers learn how consumer electronics devices can make summer more fun. The hub provide vacation tips relevant to six primary categories that people enjoy during summer: the beach, hiking and camping, the backyard, travel, sports and activities, and the road trip.

For example, in the “backyard” section, a brief video clip explains how you can create an outdoor theater in your backyard by using a bedsheet for a screen and a video projector with a built-in DVD player. I like how the tip is shared, too. A member of the iconic Best Buy “blue shirt nation” team quickly shares the tip accompanied by an image of the type of projector that would work best. She doesn’t perform a hard sell, either — she suggests you can borrow this equipment from your office, not just buy it.

(One suggestion: I realize it’s probably too expensive to do, but I’d love to hear some authentic songs of summer playing in the background as I visit the site, like “Soak up the Sun” by Sheryl Crow or the classic “Summer” by War.)

I think the digital trip journal is pretty cool, too:

Just click on the icon running at the top of the Summer Hub screen, and you are taken to Facebook, where you can load this application on your profile. From there, you can create a customized journal of a vacation and invite your fellow Facebook friends to keep track of your experience.

Of course, you can upload digital photos, too, which sounds like standard operating procedure at first blush. But think about it for a moment: instead of trying to sell you a digital camera, Best Buy creates a fun reason for you to want to own one and use it.

I actually just started a digital journal. Trust me: if I can do it, anyone can.

So why should you care about the Summer Hub? Because it’s one example of where marketing is headed: not pushing a message or a product at consumers but providing a captivating experience, usually one with emotional appeal.

We live in a world where consumers suffer from a massive case of ADD. We skim content briefly all over the digital world, snacking on small morsels of information and entertainment from digital video, blogs, websites, and portals. And we multi-task, too. (In fact, I’m toggling between email and a video while I write this bog.) How can even the most smartly crafted 30-second message reach us anymore? So ironically marketers are going in the opposite direction by creating entertaining and fun destinations where we won’t mind spending time with their brands.

That’s where experiences like the Summer Hub come into play: they’re not about overt messaging. The company branding is more subtle. Best Buy is banking on the chance that we’ll be engaged enough to spend some serious dwell time with the Best Buy brand and eventually buy a product online or in-store. Sure beats getting beat over the head with a loud banner ad.

Best Buy launches Summer Hub

How does a retailer like Best Buy build build awareness in the digital world for consumer products like cameras and GPS devices? It’s not like you can test a camera on a website.

Enter the Best Buy Summer Hub.

Built with my employer, Avenue A | Razorfish, the Best Buy Summer Hub employs rich media, snappy graphics, and a Facebook application to help consumers learn how consumer electronics devices can make summer more fun. The hub provide vacation tips relevant to six primary categories that people enjoy during summer: the beach, hiking and camping, the backyard, travel, sports and activities, and the road trip.

For example, in the “backyard” section, a brief video clip explains how you can create an outdoor theater in your backyard by using a bedsheet for a screen and a video projector with a built-in DVD player. I like how the tip is shared, too. A member of the iconic Best Buy “blue shirt nation” team quickly shares the tip accompanied by an image of the type of projector that would work best. She doesn’t perform a hard sell, either — she suggests you can borrow this equipment from your office, not just buy it.

(One suggestion: I realize it’s probably too expensive to do, but I’d love to hear some authentic songs of summer playing in the background as I visit the site, like “Soak up the Sun” by Sheryl Crow or the classic “Summer” by War.)

I think the digital trip journal is pretty cool, too:

Just click on the icon running at the top of the Summer Hub screen, and you are taken to Facebook, where you can load this application on your profile. From there, you can create a customized journal of a vacation and invite your fellow Facebook friends to keep track of your experience.

Of course, you can upload digital photos, too, which sounds like standard operating procedure at first blush. But think about it for a moment: instead of trying to sell you a digital camera, Best Buy creates a fun reason for you to want to own one and use it.

I actually just started a digital journal. Trust me: if I can do it, anyone can.

So why should you care about the Summer Hub? Because it’s one example of where marketing is headed: not pushing a message or a product at consumers but providing a captivating experience, usually one with emotional appeal.

We live in a world where consumers suffer from a massive case of ADD. We skim content briefly all over the digital world, snacking on small morsels of information and entertainment from digital video, blogs, websites, and portals. And we multi-task, too. (In fact, I’m toggling between email and a video while I write this bog.) How can even the most smartly crafted 30-second message reach us anymore? So ironically marketers are going in the opposite direction by creating entertaining and fun destinations where we won’t mind spending time with their brands.

That’s where experiences like the Summer Hub come into play: they’re not about overt messaging. The company branding is more subtle. Best Buy is banking on the chance that we’ll be engaged enough to spend some serious dwell time with the Best Buy brand and eventually buy a product online or in-store. Sure beats getting beat over the head with a loud banner ad.