Author Archives: Paul

Daily reading 02/07/2008

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Marriott – Marriott in the Kitchen – Brad Nelson’s Blog

tags: corporate_blog_examples, social_media_useful

  • Building on the apparent success of the blog by Bill Marriott, Chairman & CEO of the big hotel chain, Marriott has launched a culinary blog written by its corporate chef. This is a low-impact, non-controversial way to extend the blogging metaphor to an area in which Marriott evidently wants to highlight its capabilities. The company has not historically been known for its food, and this is an effort to build awareness around that competency. It’s nicely done.
     – post by pgillin

The TSA's bold move

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I sometimes tell people, “If your products suck and your customers hate you, don’t start a blog.”

Well, the Transportation Security Administration has gone against that advice. More power to them.

The TSA blog mostly does it right. The branding is subtle; the TSA logo appears only at the bottom of the page. The slogan – “Terrorists Evolve. Threats Evolve. Security Must Stay Ahead. You Play A Part” – is meant to invite the public into a discussion about security. I think that’s a great marketing statement. The traveling public feels that security has been shoved down their throats, which is one of the reasons they hate TSA.

And they took the opportunity to express their emotions; more than 700 comments on the welcome post, according to the blog. There’s lots of anger, negativity and obscenity, but also a lot of good ideas and observations from people who clearly know something about security. Give TSA credit. They knew there’d be a firestorm of negativity, they were prepared for it and they responded calmly and constructively.

The blog is written by five people: four mid-level employees and a PR guy. Strangely, there are no photos of the bloggers, but maybe that’s a security measure. 🙂

As a government agency, TSA could afford to ignore the opinions of travelers if it wanted. Launching the blog is a gutsy move my hat’s off to them for it.

And can you believe it? They’re hosting the whole thing on Blogger!

Thanks to Daily Dish for the tip via Alex Howard.

The blog that refreshes: Coke joins the conversation

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I noted last November that Coke was planning to launch a corporate blog. Well, here it is!

Looks like they’ve done a nice job, too. Clean layout, lots of graphics, design is well-integrated with the Coke brand. The content is mainly historical. A few facts from the press release:

  • Phil Mooney, Coca-Cola archivist and resident historian, will serve as the blog’s primary author and will solicit questions and respond to reader comments;
  • Content will include: New products and other marketing announcements, as well as a look at how this news fits into the context of Coca-Cola heritage and lore; future content will also include features on newly uncovered artifacts and the global phenomenon of Coke collecting;
  • Readers will have many opportunities to engage in conversation: Open Q&As, submitting stories for publication, posting comments, guest blog opportunities and more “Coca-Cola Conversations” will feature photography and video of rare artifacts from the Coke archives, as well as content provided by readers.

Daily reading 01/27/2008

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Conversation Agent: Forget Influentials: in Viral Marketing, Context Matters – Conversation Agent, Jan. 18, 2008

Valeria Maltoni analyzes recent work by Edelman to understand the dynamics of viral marketing. Conclusions: It’s the Network, Stupid. In other words, influence has less to do with individuals than with the patterns by which information is spread. Figuring that out will get you farther than understanding who are the top bloggers. Interesting stuff.

Web Ink Now: The New Rules of Viral Marketing – free ebook!

David Meerman Scott has another winner with this short e-book about viral marketing. It’s already been downloaded 20,000 times and once you read it, you’ll know why. No obligation, no registration, just get it.

Secret Websites, Coded Messages: The New World of Immersive Games – Wired, Dec. 20, 2007

This Wired story details Nine Inch Nails’ elaborate viral marketing campaign and a new kind of role-playing-based market. What’s interesting about the approaches outlined here is that they assume that the community will work together to solve the puzzle. Clues may be placed anywhere, and a person who finds a clue may not be the person who figures out how to decipher it. Rather than a player vs. player contest, it’s a group project.

Daily reading 01/25/2008

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Scrabulous and the New Social Operating System: How Facebook Gave Birth to an Industry – Knowledge@Wharton

Excepts: As of late January 2008, more than half-a-million Facebook users play Scrabulous daily, with four times that number having added the application to their Facebook profiles. Because third-party developers can keep all the revenue they generate, the Agarwallas are currently pulling in about $25,000 a month from advertising, according to Jayant, resulting in a “decent profit” after expenses like hosting, labor and server costs.
    “I know so many venture capitalists and CEOs who play Scrabulous. It’s a new form of golf. Maybe you don’t have time to play nine holes, but you can socially interact and challenge one another via Scrabulous,” says Rumford, CEO of the Solana Beach, Calif.-based Gravitational Media and publisher of Facereviews.com, a review site for Facebook applications.
      “The main selling feature of Scrabulous for me is the fact I can play it within Facebook. If it was on an external site, I would have to search for my friends all over again, and I don’t think that would work, and I don’t think people would sign up for it.”
        A few major brands have made it big on Facebook, like Red Bull, the energy drink produced by Austria-based Red Bull GmbH, whose Facebook application “Roshambull” offers an online version of the classic children’s game “Rock-Scissors-Paper.”
          Online dating is another area where big players are lagging. Like the Agarwalla brothers before the f8 launch, Cliff Lerner ran a website, in his case called Iamfreetonight.com, an online dating site owned by the Manhattan-based eTwine Holdings. After the Zuckerberg announcement in May, Lerner recalls, “We decided to stop working on Iamfreetonight.com for a couple of weeks in order to write a dating application for Facebook.” The result was an application called “Meet New People.” “In no time we had more users on the app than we had on the website. And we didn’t spend a dime on advertising the app — it was all viral.”

            Why you should never give an unrehearsed demo to a journalist with a video

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            Scott Kirsner blogs about a disastrous live demo by an executive at Nuance Communications, one of the biggest players in speech recognition. The demo went so badly that the exec posted a follow-up on YouTube explaining what went wrong. A lot of reporters carry video cameras these days, so know what you’re doing before you agree to let them switch those devices on!

            The press release evolves again

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            Maggie Fox’s Social Media Group, which is one of the most innovative boutique agencies specializing in new media marketing, has developed a new version of the Social Media Press Release (SMPR), which was pioneered by Shift Communications in 2006.

            The SMPR differs substantially from the traditional press release, which is often long, detailed and inflexible. The new format emphasizes many points of entry, so that journalists and bloggers can pick and choose the information – and the media – that they wish to use. The latter point is important. With so many media outlets today using images, audio and video to tell a story, the traditional press release doesn’t meet their needs very well. The SMPR makes room for story-telling through whatever media the publisher wishes to use. It requires more work on the client end, but should result in much better results.

            Another innovation in this new version is its use of popular back-end services like YouTube and Flickr to host content. This means that people can find the information through search engines as well as via the press release.

            Maggie has made the template available for anyone to use under a Creative Commons license. She has a more detailed explanation here. Or you can just download the template in PDF format.