DOUG SCHUMACHER

experience designer + writer

ugc

Creativing :: Where good ideas come from, YouTube’s new mobile site, and WiFi on ‘roids

By

What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

Where Good Ideas Come From [VIDEO]

Excellent animated video on where good ideas come from. A lot of this will ring true to the importance of conversation monitoring, which is really just a way of plugging yourself into the community, or conversation, that the author talks about in this video.

Digital Marketing: Security Tech CAPTCHAs as Advertising – Advertising Age

Most of the time it’s annoying when advertising creeps into every nook and cranny of daily life, but this idea comes off as clever, and really making a pretty drab event — entering CAPTCHA info — a bit more interesting. And for brands, getting viewers to actually type out their tagline or product features based on a paid impression is pretty remarkable. One of the more clever new ad units I’ve seen in a while. The only limit will be that there really aren’t that many times a user has to see CAPTCHA’s, assuming they have cookies turned on.

The State of YouTube Mobile: Viewing up 160%, Operator Partnerships Sought

A couple of interesting things in this piece. For one, Google’s not happy with the way Apple’s YouTube app works, and are promoting the WAP version of YouTube mobile, instead. It offers a considerably better user experience, which shows that WAP has a lot to offer versus native app development. Secondly, Apple controls the YouTube app on iPhone, and if they can’t keep a major brand like Google up with the latest and greatest mobile experience, then it really underscores how much this brand really needs the larger development community on it’s side, and developing apps like mad for their platform.

SCVNGR provides deeper integration with Facebook Places

I’m following SCVNGR closely, as they seem to be the most aggressive of the location-based apps at trying to figure out survival in a post-Facebook Places world. It’s also interesting, because they’re backed by $4m from Google Ventures. And Google would love to kill both the social and mobile birds with one stone. But I still feel like SCVNGR lacks the simplicity to really go mainstream. For one, it requires an app download, a big barrier, whereas Facebook’s mobile app already has 100m users. And then there’s that problem of less than 1% of all mobile phone users use a location-based app more than 1x per week. So driving consistent use is going to be a real challenge. But the logic behind SCVNGR’s actions are on target, as they get that it’s ultimately about making brands more dynamic on their Facebook properties.

Digital Marketing: The Top 10 Viral Ads of All Time – Advertising Age

Just ran across this list. What I find interesting is that most of them are from the past two years. I’d think having more time on to accrue views would help. My guess is that two factors contribute to the recency of the leaders. One is that companies are getting better at promoting their videos, versus just tossing them on YouTube and telling a couple of forums about it. And secondly, the metrics tracking these views are improving, as they’re extending the analysis beyond YouTube views alone.

“WiFi on steroids” gets final rules, drops spectrum sensing

Any involved in online marketing should be a fan of anything that dials up our broadband speeds here in the US. They’ve been rated as low as 25th in the world, or something abysmal like that. But this is great. Take some unused TV spectrum and allocate it to wireless broadband. And I like that they’re focusing on wireless. It may not have the topend speeds of cable now, but ultimately it will be the most cost effective solution to scale, and seems like the most probably path to blanket coverage.

Phones Begin to Replace Hotel Keycards – Popwuping

Simply a smart way to differentiate yourself amid a battered travel industry. While it might not be enough to attract new customers, this will certainly make a strong impression on anyone who uses it (assuming no bugs, of course!). It also shows how companies need to focus on consumer touchpoints, and not media inventory, when looking at ways to make a real impression.

Hand Craft Your Way to Great Prizes in Etsy API Contest

Etsy is an interesting company to watch, as they’re developing a reputation for interesting, community-centered marketing campaigns. Earlier, they had a UGC video contest (http://www.youtube.com/user/etsy), and now an open API contest, with cash prizes. A couple things are truly helping them in these efforts. One is having a product that naturally attracts a lot of creative, artistic people. The other is having VC Fred Wilson (www.avc.com) as one of your backers.

5 Important New Trends in Location

An overview of the post-Facebook Places location-based services landscape. As expected, this is quickly moving from fun and games to real functionality. And that’s the big opportunity for brands. Because you may need several million people to make a game fun, but good functionality can be delivered on a 1-1 basis.

Creativing :: What Steve Jobs should say, kings of YouTube, and dissecting the Old Spice campaign

By

What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

Tweet of the Week

If Jobs doesn’t start this press conference with “Look at your CEO now back to me now back at your CEO now BACK TO ME” he’s missed a trick.

How the Old Spice Videos Are Being Made

A good overview on how the campaign was created. It’s interesting to see user generated components kicking in, which is mentioned towards the end of the article.

Skin Lightening Facebook App Sparks Controversy

Have to say I think this issue is blown out of proportion. Maybe it’s because in Venice Beach all I see are people trying to darken their skin.

Seth’s Blog: A hierarchy of failure worth following

An excellent distillation of where to take risks, and where not to.

Chatroulette Rolls Out Local And Custom Channels. Top Channel: “Sex”

Shocking!

5 Non-Profit iPhone Apps You Should Know About

A few mobile apps from the non-profit sector. My pref on these is the simplest one, the Salvation Army “Bellringer”. A nice way to reenforce a strong brand icon.

Queen Rania of Jordan takes to TwitVid to Promote Her Country [VIDEO]

While the contest info delivery vehicle, the video, might be what you expect from a Royal, the underlying promotion has a nice feel of global inclusiveness. Swap two people from your country with two people from somewhere else in the world.

YouTube – Most viewed videos

With the recent Justin Bieber / Lady Gaga ‘most viewed’ showdown, I was curious to see the 100 most viewed vids on YouTube. Perhaps not surprisingly, the majority seem to be music videos, interspersed with baby’s laughing, people dancing, and allusions to sex. The view counts are also interesting to note. The top vid has 245m views. The 100th: 40m views. That’s a pretty precipitous drop, and if you consider that 2 billion videos are viewed every day on YouTube, it’s really a long tail play with a huge majority at very low view counts.

Is Social Media Failing to Produce Business Leads?

This pulled select from the article says it all in regards to shifting marketing forces: Former President of CBS News Andrew Heyward wrote in the Harvard Business Review last year that “every company is a media company,” summarizing the idea that marketing is shifting to an environment where advertisers need to produce compelling content in order to succeed.

Creativing :: Social Media’s World Cup, Ridley Scott directs YouTube, and social media meets the offline world.

By

What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

Tweet of the Week

Come on, city of Cleveland, you’ve been on top for years. Give another city a chance.

The World Cup of Social Media – Advertising Age

While there’s been a lot of talk the last couple of years about the need for global marketing, perhaps nothing drilled that message home like the World Cup. A good read as much for the prose as the content.

Ridley Scott and YouTube Want You To Film One Day in Your Life

I’m quite curious about this because it seems to intersect a lot of different things that already exist. I mean, isn’t YouTube really an ongoing day in the life? So then this is just an edited version of that, with even less contest to what each of the video clips is about? I’ll be very curious to see how they bring a bigger POV to this and make it more than just a mashup of video clips. Perhaps this is the Internet version of Powaqqatsi.

What Is The Value Of A Facebook Fan? Zero! | Forrester Blogs

This line pretty much sums it up: It is what companies do with fans that creates value, not merely that a brand has fans.

Seth’s Blog: Payola

A lot of SEO people spend their lives trying to outsmart a campus of Google geniuses with PhDs. Kinda like going 1-on-1 with LeBron James. You might get a lucky basket now and then, but he’s just going to come back even stronger. If you want good SEO, don’t think like a Google engineer, think like a consumer. Bottom line is there are always games going on to goose online performance. But long-term value tends to align with consumer interests.

NYTimes Shows How Civic APIs Should Be Built

I like how often we see data going from rote facts to entertainment value. The idea of taking voting district information and attaching that to landmarks in NYC is exactly the type of way brands can take data and create interesting stories about what they or their customers are doing.

Google’s Display Advertising Plans Include Gmail, YouTube – Advertising Age

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard someone suggest the online display game is on. And if Google’s piling money into it, that’s a pretty strong indicator.

The Real Life Social Network: How Facebook Affects Offline Relationships | MobileBehavior

This highlights a major challenge of social media at the moment. Sharing the same posts with vastly different networks of people in our lives. This includes a nugget of insight about where Google’s going to be aiming to penetrate Facebook’s armor.

Why Google’s Launching ‘Me’ and Facebook’s Real Future – Advertising Age

If you’re not familiar with Facebook’s Open Graph or why Google is gunning for Facebook, this is a good quick read.

Creativing :: Conan O’Brien’s tweet, Social media pushes the ‘cuddle’ button, and Web 3.0?

By

What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

Tweet of the Week – Conan O’Brien

11 years between “Toy Story’s” and 7 months between “Twilight’s.” By that measure, the “Jonah Hex” sequel should be out in 3 days.

Virgin Gives Free Tickets to ‘Influencial’ Tweeters – MarketingVOX

If you’re into the numbers side of campaigns, this is a good read. Also a good back and forth on the value of social media as a demand creation tool. Nothing overly conclusive, but the varying points are worth reading. The end line really summarizes it well. No single tactic can do everything. It has to be a group effort.

Kynetx Introduces the Programmable Internet – the Language of the Building Block Web | Stay N’ Alive

Those wondering when “Web 2.0” would run it’s course, this could be the next direction. The trajectory of tech developments continues to be sharable, with rapid development times enabling products to get to market fast. There are several good examples of how this tech can play out.

Social Media Increases “Cuddle” Chemical Production in the Brain [STUDY]

So social media pushes the ‘cuddle’ button. That means it’s either jumped the shark or is so irreversibly embedded in our psyche’s that we’re never going back. Despite all the hype and it’s growth curve, I’d have to vote it’s the latter.

While at first glance this sounds a bit cooky, the three bullet points at the bottom reiterate things we’ve known about communication and writing for a long time. Write with verbs and not adjectives, sex sells, and use simple language for broader appeal. Signs that social media is a not-so-distant relative to traditional media.

Who Will Fall to Facebook Questions? – MarketingVOX

I recently covered Formspring as an example of answer sites that are producing remarkable traffic numbers. Granted, Formspring has a big sensationalistic slant to it. But the underlying growth is real, as this investment by Facebook clearly demonstrates. So bottom line is, despite all the content and site experiences already out there, people still have a lot of questions. Seems like an opportunity for a lot of brands.

Twitter Annotations Are Coming — What Do They Mean For Twitter and the Web?

A discussion on Twitter’s forthcoming Annotations, which get’s pretty technical fast. However, the first couple of paragraphs delve into what the real potential, and potential problems, of annotations is all about. And you can watch the video at the end of the article, if you don’t get shaky camera sickness.

Augmented Reality: Thinking Beyond Branded Hype | MobileBehavior

While this is probably one of the most robust AR mobile apps yet developed, the best part of this article is the expanded thinking on what really makes a great mobile app or AR experience, and what direction that technology is going.

9 Universal Principles of Viral Media Sites

If you’re in the content development space, you’re likely in the meme development space to some degree. This article lists points that, while obvious, are also good reminders. Bottom line is, memes are a fickle business, and need as much surrounding support as possible.

Secrets to Revenue and Innovation in New Product Development | Nielsen Wire

A summary of some remarkable findings relative to product development. Keep upper management out of the early ideation stages. And off-site teams tend to produce better ideas than those on site. Bottom line is, companies need a fresh perspective, and driving innovation from within the status quo is apparently not getting the job done as effectively.

Social Media as Digital Plastic Surgery – Eric Wegerbauer

With social media continuing it’s surge to overtake seemingly every other site category out there, a lot of contrarians are beginning to predict it’s pending doom. Many take the boredom approach, but I don’t buy that. It will reinvent itself, much like gaming. Others speak to the loss of privacy. Like that’s stopped anyone or anything on the Net so far. But Eric’s point is interesting to me. That the use of social media monitoring of customers by brands like healthcare providers and insurance companies will force many people to craft their online persona’s, killing off a lot of the authenticity. A good point, and something that hits directly on social media’s strongest appeal.

Creativing :: Tweet of the Week, Craigslist TV?, and Foursquare links to print ads

By

What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

Tweet of the Week

RT @hodgman “Just out here retweeting.”

Craigslist TV: Just as Awkwardly Entertaining as You Would Imagine [VIDEO]

Craigslist never ceases to amaze me. For one, it’s ongoing popularity, despite a horrible user interface. But even moreso, the way it frequently extends directly into popular culture. The personals are read for entertainment, artists do visualizations of the “Missed Connections” sections, and now this. There’s a fairly personal nature to much of Craigslist content, from personal ads to what people are selling out of their garages, that helps people identify with the content.

Facebook to Simplify Privacy Controls – NYTimes.com

Facebook responds to the privacy blowup. Given the speed of change Facebook’s been going through, and the Apple-esque disregard for outside opinion (some that’s both asset and liability for both), this whole scenario isn’t surprising.

More than anything, this really points to the role user experience plays in app and site development. Ignore it at your own risk.

Earthjustice Uses Foursquare to Make Print Ads Actionable | MobileBehavior

With Foursquare all over the news, the big question is, What are the different ways brands will be using technologies like this in their campaigns? This example links print work to mobile, with mass transit posters prompting riders to ‘checkin’ on a give subject to support an environmental cause. One great feature is that they’ve taken a print piece and given it a highly-trackable action.

Mobile creation – the Japanese way – Popwuping

The Japanese have long been ahead of us in mobile usage, and this is a good topline of their user behavior and why it’s different from the computer-based Internet.

YouTube Launches Platform for Crowdsourcing Suggestions

I’m seeing a lot of activity around the crowdsourcing/answers site format lately. Here, YouTube demonstrates again their value to Google in the way that Google can so quickly integrate many of their broad span of features into the largest video site in the world. In this case, I’m not sure video adds that much to answers, although given the power of video, it’s certainly worth Google trying. Bottom line is, there’s a lot of potential in answer sites, and that’s what Google’s trying to tap.

5 Ways To Turn Your Traffic Into Valuable User Data

Clearly your site visitors are a valuable source of insights and information about what interests them and others like them. The question is, How do you gather that information? This is a list of 5 tools that can help you ask them questions, process the information, and even compare it to competitor sites for relative value.

Google Rolls Out More Tweet-Based Ads

Using a Twitter feed to create the content for a Google AdSense ad is a great idea not only because it’s new and innovative, which generally tends to do well for online marketing, but because it does two things at once. It provides the advertiser with an extremely simple content management system for piping fresh messaging into their ad, and it also prominently promotes their Twitter account, which is a strong conversion action for many marketers.

Flash Enthusiast Sends a Hidden Message To Steve Jobs

This is quite clever. A creative at McCann built his website in Flash, and for the image that loads incase you don’t have the Flash plugin, he’s inserted a photo of Steve Jobs giving you the finger. He’s offering the image to anyone who will install it, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find this image popping up across the Web.

Yahoo Announces Deep Integration Partnership With Social Gaming Start-Up Zynga | AllThingsD

Social gaming is red hot. And it seems such a natural for brands to get involved. An existing, highly-active audience. Relatively low production costs. And of course, it all ties in to their social media networks for sharing.

Here’s What Google TV Looks Like (PHOTOS)

I’ve posted several things recently on Google TV, which is probably the most interesting happening around TV technology. Here are some early screen snaps from the experience. This is classic Google. Throw something out there early, it looks kind of ugly, but the upside potential is clear and massive.

Creativing :: Facebook plugins overview, Personalization gone extreme, and crowdsourcing crime fighting

By

Tweet of the Week

Just geeked out about iPads with some SF policemen. Man I love this city.

McDonald’s to Use Facebook’s Upcoming Location Feature – Advertising Age

Facebook offering location based technology was inevitable, and it will be interesting to see how this further shapes the war between Facebook and Twitter. The bomb drop stat in here is Facebook has over 100 million users on it’s mobile app alone, which is what Twitter has in it’s entirety.

Participatory Sensing: SnapScouts App Crowdsources Crime Prevention | MobileBehavior

The idea of crowdsourcing crime fighting might seem a bit nutty, but then again, that’s not far from America’s Most Wanted TV show. I can only imagine the abuse this could generate in the form of practical jokes. At any rate, the app is enough to pull comments from Bruce Sterling, who sees it as a key link to the future.

Apple Worship: Creating a Brand – Design and Architecture on KCRW

There’s a good interview at the front of the podcast with brand marketer Sasha Strauss on how brands extend beyond feature sets and price points.

Advertising Lab: Private Customized Adventures

A company that will privately engineer someone’s day, for better or worse? A bit creepy, but could definitely see this used positively for a buzz-worthy human interest story.

5 Ways Facebook Will Impact E-commerce

What most brand’s want to know about Facebook’s Open Graph is “How will this help me sell more product?”. Here are some good examples of that.

Facebook’s Social Plugins

Facebook’s Open Graph was just announced, and it’s the pervasiveness of the “Like” button that seems to be the topic of most conversation. However, there are a number of plugins that marketers can use on their sites to make a visitor feel more at home. They’re explained, with visuals, on this page.

Confessions of an Executive Producer: i have seen the future

I’m not familiar with the Canon D5, but certainly appreciate how technologies — even the non-Net variety — impact the marketing and advertising business. Jerry Solomon, Managing Partner of Epoch Media, outlined some interesting thoughts on how this, camera and others like it to come, will further shape the production process.

8 Lessons for Creating Social Impact | Fast Company

While focused on physical product design, I was struck by how similar these principle’s are to product/app design on the Web.

Tim Hanlon Reviews New Role at Catalyst S+F, And Agency As Venture Fund

A lot of advertising people are reevaluating their careers, and the industry at large. Tim Hanlon just joined CatalystSF as a partner responsible for venture investments, and shares his thoughts on the changing role of agencies. It’s a particularly interesting POV given his venture capital background, and I think this is a space a lot of agencies would love to be operating in, assuming they can make the numbers work.

Creativing :: Remarkable iPhone story from Haiti, Put yourself in a music video, and the future of mobile and social networks

By

What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

Man Buried in Haiti Rubble Uses iPhone to Treat Wounds, Survive | Wired.com

Remarkable story about a documentary filmmaker caught in the Haiti earthquake and survived, in part due to a first aid app on his iPhone. Of course, this is as much about being prepared (he had previously downloaded the iPhone app, after all) and being resourceful (using your SLR camera as a flashlight), but it does show how technology makes it easier to have the right information and tools when you need them.

New NBC Logo Combines Fail Whale and Peacock [PIC]

Funny (unless you’re Conan) mashup of the Twitter fail whale and the NBC logo. Certainly fits based on what I’ve been reading about NBC lately

oneframeoffame

An interesting idea that reminds me of the $1,000,000 home page idea, in which they broke down a home page screen into something like 10000 small squares, and charged $100 to advertise in each square. This is a sort of user generated version of that, but instead of getting your logo on the page, you get your image, and maybe 1 second of fame, in the video. It looks like a Dutch group is behind this, and they have some other interesting projects on their site.

Create Your Own iPhone or Android App in Minutes With iSites

Count on me to be trying this out asap. Create your own iPhone app, for as little as $25. With nothing more than an RSS feed required. Sure, this will invite a wave of drivel, but in that pile will also be a couple of apps that might really stick. And that’s the multiple that emerging tech lives on.

Five Mobile Trends for 2010 – Advertising Age

Mobile’s making more sense by the day. iPhone apps keep getting cheaper, i.e., more abundant. Android takes off. Talk of a Facebook mobile phone. So prepare for change in this space. This is a good projection of what to expect from the mobile industry in 2010. If not the peak trends, these will all be areas to watch.

Bing to Become the iPhone’s Default Search Engine?

While this news doesn’t really shake any iPhone user’s tree very hard, it does underscore a new stage in the tech world battle of the super brands. The battle raging between Apple and Google. Two of my favorite companies. And in many ways, two of the most divergent businesses out there, philosophically. The end of the article speculates on Apple developing their own search engine … something I’ve not heard of before. The last line of the article is the best, though: “Apple and Google know the other is their primary enemy . . . Microsoft is now a pawn in that battle.”

CONFIRMED: New York Times to Start Charging for Website in 2011

Mashable has some good extended thinking on the issue. I generally agree that the value of gained subs will likely not outweigh the loss in readership. At least not for the long term. And while their announcement doesn’t seem like much, that’s clearly their strategy. Give their user base plenty of time to adjust — they can always retract — while they work out the details of something they feel is pretty inevitable.

With the NY Times subscription story hot, their announcement to drop the subscriber model in 2007 is a particularly relevant read. They state $10m in revenues from about 227k subs. I don’t know their revenues, but the NY Times company and it’s 24 papers made $2.9b in 2008. Whatever the NY Times portion was, it would seem to make $10 look pretty thin.

Opticana – the 500$ Campaign

This is a fun video on a campaign tactic from Israel that’s been employed here in the states for a while. I’m sure almost all alternate spellings of our top 10 web sites have been purchased years ago (many of them by the brands themselves). Still, this is a great reminder that the ever changing digital marketing landscape always contains unique surprises and workarounds for those coming at the problem from a slightly different direction.

The Future Of Social Networks

This is a nice read, partly because it’s very graphically easy to absorb. My favorite part is at the very end, where the writer reminds us that social media is an ongoing process, and that even large brands like Wal-Mart can fail numerous times before succeeding. Another interesting note on that is that Wal-Mart isn’t exactly a beloved American brand, but that didn’t stop them from using social media.

The Pros and Cons of Hiring Contract Workers

An article on outsourcing that I was interviewed for, with some good reference sites if you’re interested in outsourcing. I think this is unquestionably going to be a growing trend for agencies, both large and small. Every day, new developments in communications, from file sharing to video communications, are minimizing the border between remote and in-person.