why internet marketing

Matthew Latkiewicz works at Zendesk.com, customer support software. He writes for and edits Zengage, Zendesk’s blog about customer engagement. He also writes about wine for McSweeney’s and imagines stuff at his own website, youwillnotbelieve.us.

Just as early television shows were essentially radio plays shot on film, the earliest attempts by online marketers mimicked the worlds of television and print. While banner ads and pre-roll commercials are still with us, of course, a new generation of marketing professionals and companies are exploring techniques more native to the web: multi-platform marketing campaigns that encourage interactivity.

Marketers who take advantage of the class='blippr-nobr'>Internetclass="blippr-nobr">Internet’s unique capabilities have the potential to build increasingly engaged customer communities. Here’s a look at three major trends.

1. User-Generated Content Contests

Doritos hosted its first Crash the Superbowl campaign in 2007. Like a lot of big companies, Doritos bought a commercial slot for the Superbowl, but instead of hiring a production company to make a 30-second spot, Doritos turned to its consumers. “Grab your camera and create your Doritos commercial,” the company advertised. Anyone could create and submit a spot. These spots were put to a vote online, and the finalists received $10,000 and the winning spot ran in the very expensive Superbowl slot.

More than 1,000 people submitted videos, and Doritos generated a lot of attention for the campaign, ranking high in a number of surveys that tracked buzz and impact of the Super Bowl commercials.

These kinds of campaigns are very popular on the Internet at the moment and they range in scale. SolidWorks, makers of computer-aided design (CAD) software, worked with the design firm Small Army to build a campaign that involved its very active community. Christine Washburn, VP of marketing at SolidWorks, says, “We wanted to do something that would involve them and be very visible for new potential members of the community.”

Small Army came up with Let’s Go Design, an interactive web series. Users submit design ideas in response to challenges proposed by the show. Ideas are voted on and ultimately incorporated.

What works: Activity and participation around the brand.

If users get involved, they can win. And the voting structure generates even more activity. Washburn reports that SolidWorks’ “web traffic is up by a factor of four in comparison to previous campaigns.”

When this doesn’t work: Your brand doesn’t carry either the same kind of mass appeal as Doritos or the committed fandom of SolidWorks.

Branding consultant Lisa Merriam wrote a case study of a failed contest campaign by a company called Levia. It tried a campaign similar to Doritos, asking consumers to submit a video about the healing power of light.

Doritos is a mega-brand millions and millions of passionate consumers. And Levia®? You probably never heard of it. Levia® is a device that uses light to treat psoriasis. The set of people who suffer from psoriasis and who have heard of Levia® and who have the technical know-how to produce video and who care enough to come up with winning concepts about light’s power to heal is an infinitesimally small set of people — certainly not a crowd./>

2. Making a Consumer Community

Marketers have jumped on the relatively recent explosion of online communities. If customers have the ability to talk to one another, why not create an incentive and a space for them to talk about your brand?

One way to accomplish this is to offer customers something they might actually do in real life. Marketing agency Movement Strategy, for instance, recently created an online forum for two of its NBA clients, the Denver Nuggets and the New York Knicks. The site — NuggetsVsKnicks.com — operated during an actual game between the Nuggets and the Knicks, giving the fans a place to cheer on their team (and trash talk the other). By integrating with Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook — users cheered by “Liking” their team — Movement Strategy was able to give a real-world analog to the digital interaction.

What works: Campaigns that encourage community among their customer base can really help to build loyalty.

When this doesn’t work: When the campaigns are lazy.

It’s not fair to say that most company Facebook Pages don’t work, but often the conversations there offer a relatively low level of engagement. Contests, questions and announcements all encourage participation from the customer, but not necessarily participation with each other.

A lot of brands use Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter contests in a similar way. A few years ago Squarespaceclass="blippr-nobr">SquareSpace, for instance, gave away an iPhoneclass="blippr-nobr">iPhone a day to anyone who mentioned Squarespace in a tweet. While this kind of activity can generate a lot of buzz, the actual customer engagement in the brand is low — the equivalent of dropping your business card in a fishbowl.

Even worse is when Facebook and other social network integration is used as a gimmick. Last March, Absolut sponsored a short film by Spike Jonze, the director of Being John Malkovich. The film, titled I’m Here, was designed to be shown on the web. Before watching, the viewer is first walked through an invitation process using Facebook Connect. The friends you invite are cleverly integrated into an introductory cut scene, during which, you “enter” the theater to watch the film. Their photos appear on the VIP passes of other people in the theater. The whole thing works to give you a sense that you are watching this film with people who you know.

Except in this case, the experience stops there. As soon as the film starts, the connection to your community ends. The introduction has nothing to do with the film itself and instead feels tacked on and gimmicky. Absolut hinted at what could be done but didn’t actually do it.

3. Choose Your Own Adventure

Perhaps the most exciting development in multi-platform interactive campaigns is the ability of the customer base to participate in and affect the outcome of a story.

At Blogworld 2010, Ford announced an online marketing campaign to promote its new Focus. The campaign, called Focus Rally, pits six teams against each other in a reality-style adventure game where the viewers make the important calls for the participants.

“It’s a little bit like a choose your own adventure here, but the people at home were choosing the adventure for these players. It’s kind of cool how interactive the show is going to be,” says Focus Rally producer Neal Konstantini.

Specifically, the Focus Rally competitors must rely on the network capabilities of the car and their social networks to solve challenges. “f you’re in Albuquerque and you’re stuck and you run out of gas,” Konstantini explains, “you’re going to have to get on Facebook and tell your network, ‘I’m stuck. I need gas. Help me.’”

What works: When the web is integrated into both a compelling storyline and effective brand messaging.

When this doesn’t work: When you expect interaction to be what solely carries the campaign.

“It’s not enough to be interactive,” says Michal Ann Strahilevitz, associate professor of marketing at Golden Gate University. “It has to be truly compelling, engaging and persuasive to the target market. If you build it, they may or may not come.”

Choose your own adventure campaigns build off the Internet’s potential as a story-telling device. These kinds of campaigns “require the audience’s presence and participation in order to be complete,” says Mike Monello, co-founder and executive director of Campfire, an advertising agency in New York. Monello was one of the creators of The Blair Witch Project and used viral Internet distribution before there was a name for such a thing.

In a recent campaign that Campfire created for the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week programming, the team produced a series of videos about famous shark attacks throughout history. Like Absolut’s promotion of I’m Here, Campfire used Facebook Connect to personalize users’ experience of the site and videos. But whereas Absolut’s choice felt tacked on at the end, Campfire accessed users’ Facebook information to build a personalized shark attack for the visitor. It integrated personalization into the branding and the storytelling.

“Telling stories is one of mankind’s most enduring traditions,” Campfire explains on its website. “Our increased connectedness has only made spreading them faster, more pervasive, and more effective.”

More Business Resources from Mashable:

- 5 Ways to Sell Your Expertise Online/> - 4 Misconceptions About Marketing in Social Games/> - Small Biz Checklist: 5 Important Tasks for the End of the Year/> - HOW TO: Boost Holiday Sales With Commonly Overlooked Marketing Strategies/> - Why SMS Marketing Still Makes Sense for Small Business

Image courtesy of iStockphotoclass="blippr-nobr">iStockphoto, IvanWuPI

For more Business coverage:

class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Businessclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Business channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for Android, iPhone and iPad

Were you one of the many swooning over Frank’s iPhone app-assisted, Central Park proposal to girlfriend Kasey the other month? Well, sorry to tell you, folks, Frank’s undying love was a lie! That is to say, it was a hoax.

Frank’s Marriage Proposal in Central Park hit class='blippr-nobr'>YouTubeclass="blippr-nobr">YouTube at the end of October to the delight of many an class='blippr-nobr'>Internetclass="blippr-nobr">Internet denizen and news outlet — so popular that we’re still receiving tips about it over here at class='blippr-nobr'>Mashableclass="blippr-nobr">Mashable.

According to the YouTube description, the elaborate proposal was orchestrated by a team enlisted by Frank (whose real name is Doug Darwin — Kasey’s real name is, in fact, Kasey). The whole thing — which included a live band and a row boat — was said to be filmed using a bunch of hidden cameras, which were “streamed live into the team’s iPhones so they could watch the whole thing from a safe distance. A behind-the-scenes camera guy videotaped the team in action,” according to the YouTube description.

Whatever app the description is referring to, it doesn’t exist, but it did prompt some commenters to speculate that the whole thing was an elaborate Apple commercial.

It turns out the commenters were wrong — the video was not a shill for Apple. It was made to promote Michael Krivicka’s and business partner, former Saturday Night Live producer James Percelay’s, newest venture, Thinkmodo. Thinkmodo, which will launch on January 3, 2011, focuses on mining the marketing potential of viral videos.

If Krivicka’s name sounds familiar, you may be familiar with his other moniker, The Bald Guy, under which he has come out with such stunts as parody AR iPhone app NUDE IT, as well as a campaign to get Jimmy Fallon to follow him on Twitter.

“Since viral videos are both art and science, we wanted to merge both elements to introduce predictability to the videos’ success,” Krivicka tells us. “As part of our ’study’ we staged an elaborate marriage proposal in Central Park and fused tech and romance to see how well each would be received if merged.”

“Would men be drawn by the awesome iPhone app (which unfortunately doesn’t exist) or would women cry and wonder why Frank threw the ring (which was never in the box)? Since our video was covered by outlets like Glamour as well as CNET, we learned that, contrary to conventional wisdom, content can be made to appeal to both sexes without lessening the appeal to each.” (Note: It seems CNET was suspicious from the start.)

As for what Krivicka plans to do with these findings: “The field of viral videos is constantly changing and new trends are born every day,” he says. “With these particular findings we want to show advertisers that one video can target men and women. Separate campaigns are not needed.”

Krivicka certainly picked an effective theme for his video; tech-related wedding proposals are always a crowd-pleaser — see The Old Spice Guy delivering a proposal during his viral campaign, a proposal packed with Twitter, Foursquare and Qik, and even an Apple Store wedding.

What do you think of Krivicka’s highly effective, yet false, viral video? What function do you think videos like this could serve in a marketing arena? Have you lost your faith in true love? Let us know in the comments.

For more Web Video coverage:

class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Web Videoclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Web Video channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for Android, iPhone and iPad

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Source: Nationals to offer Lee seven-year deal - NY Daily <b>News</b>

The Washington Nationals are prepared to make Cliff Lee a seven-year offer, one that could drastically alter the Yankees' offseason plans. According to a major-league source, the Nationals - who already blew the market open with their ...

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

AMERICAblog <b>News</b>: Krugman thinks tax deal is bad for Obama&#39;s <b>...</b>

News and opinion about US politics from a liberal perspective.

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Source: Nationals to offer Lee seven-year deal - NY Daily <b>News</b>

The Washington Nationals are prepared to make Cliff Lee a seven-year offer, one that could drastically alter the Yankees' offseason plans. According to a major-league source, the Nationals - who already blew the market open with their ...

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

AMERICAblog <b>News</b>: Krugman thinks tax deal is bad for Obama&#39;s <b>...</b>

News and opinion about US politics from a liberal perspective.

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Source: Nationals to offer Lee seven-year deal - NY Daily <b>News</b>

The Washington Nationals are prepared to make Cliff Lee a seven-year offer, one that could drastically alter the Yankees' offseason plans. According to a major-league source, the Nationals - who already blew the market open with their ...

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

AMERICAblog <b>News</b>: Krugman thinks tax deal is bad for Obama&#39;s <b>...</b>

News and opinion about US politics from a liberal perspective.

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Source: Nationals to offer Lee seven-year deal - NY Daily <b>News</b>

The Washington Nationals are prepared to make Cliff Lee a seven-year offer, one that could drastically alter the Yankees' offseason plans. According to a major-league source, the Nationals - who already blew the market open with their ...

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

AMERICAblog <b>News</b>: Krugman thinks tax deal is bad for Obama&#39;s <b>...</b>

News and opinion about US politics from a liberal perspective.

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Source: Nationals to offer Lee seven-year deal - NY Daily <b>News</b>

The Washington Nationals are prepared to make Cliff Lee a seven-year offer, one that could drastically alter the Yankees' offseason plans. According to a major-league source, the Nationals - who already blew the market open with their ...

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

AMERICAblog <b>News</b>: Krugman thinks tax deal is bad for Obama&#39;s <b>...</b>

News and opinion about US politics from a liberal perspective.

bench craft company rip off exersizes

Matthew Latkiewicz works at Zendesk.com, customer support software. He writes for and edits Zengage, Zendesk’s blog about customer engagement. He also writes about wine for McSweeney’s and imagines stuff at his own website, youwillnotbelieve.us.

Just as early television shows were essentially radio plays shot on film, the earliest attempts by online marketers mimicked the worlds of television and print. While banner ads and pre-roll commercials are still with us, of course, a new generation of marketing professionals and companies are exploring techniques more native to the web: multi-platform marketing campaigns that encourage interactivity.

Marketers who take advantage of the class='blippr-nobr'>Internetclass="blippr-nobr">Internet’s unique capabilities have the potential to build increasingly engaged customer communities. Here’s a look at three major trends.

1. User-Generated Content Contests

Doritos hosted its first Crash the Superbowl campaign in 2007. Like a lot of big companies, Doritos bought a commercial slot for the Superbowl, but instead of hiring a production company to make a 30-second spot, Doritos turned to its consumers. “Grab your camera and create your Doritos commercial,” the company advertised. Anyone could create and submit a spot. These spots were put to a vote online, and the finalists received $10,000 and the winning spot ran in the very expensive Superbowl slot.

More than 1,000 people submitted videos, and Doritos generated a lot of attention for the campaign, ranking high in a number of surveys that tracked buzz and impact of the Super Bowl commercials.

These kinds of campaigns are very popular on the Internet at the moment and they range in scale. SolidWorks, makers of computer-aided design (CAD) software, worked with the design firm Small Army to build a campaign that involved its very active community. Christine Washburn, VP of marketing at SolidWorks, says, “We wanted to do something that would involve them and be very visible for new potential members of the community.”

Small Army came up with Let’s Go Design, an interactive web series. Users submit design ideas in response to challenges proposed by the show. Ideas are voted on and ultimately incorporated.

What works: Activity and participation around the brand.

If users get involved, they can win. And the voting structure generates even more activity. Washburn reports that SolidWorks’ “web traffic is up by a factor of four in comparison to previous campaigns.”

When this doesn’t work: Your brand doesn’t carry either the same kind of mass appeal as Doritos or the committed fandom of SolidWorks.

Branding consultant Lisa Merriam wrote a case study of a failed contest campaign by a company called Levia. It tried a campaign similar to Doritos, asking consumers to submit a video about the healing power of light.

Doritos is a mega-brand millions and millions of passionate consumers. And Levia®? You probably never heard of it. Levia® is a device that uses light to treat psoriasis. The set of people who suffer from psoriasis and who have heard of Levia® and who have the technical know-how to produce video and who care enough to come up with winning concepts about light’s power to heal is an infinitesimally small set of people — certainly not a crowd./>

2. Making a Consumer Community

Marketers have jumped on the relatively recent explosion of online communities. If customers have the ability to talk to one another, why not create an incentive and a space for them to talk about your brand?

One way to accomplish this is to offer customers something they might actually do in real life. Marketing agency Movement Strategy, for instance, recently created an online forum for two of its NBA clients, the Denver Nuggets and the New York Knicks. The site — NuggetsVsKnicks.com — operated during an actual game between the Nuggets and the Knicks, giving the fans a place to cheer on their team (and trash talk the other). By integrating with Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook — users cheered by “Liking” their team — Movement Strategy was able to give a real-world analog to the digital interaction.

What works: Campaigns that encourage community among their customer base can really help to build loyalty.

When this doesn’t work: When the campaigns are lazy.

It’s not fair to say that most company Facebook Pages don’t work, but often the conversations there offer a relatively low level of engagement. Contests, questions and announcements all encourage participation from the customer, but not necessarily participation with each other.

A lot of brands use Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter contests in a similar way. A few years ago Squarespaceclass="blippr-nobr">SquareSpace, for instance, gave away an iPhoneclass="blippr-nobr">iPhone a day to anyone who mentioned Squarespace in a tweet. While this kind of activity can generate a lot of buzz, the actual customer engagement in the brand is low — the equivalent of dropping your business card in a fishbowl.

Even worse is when Facebook and other social network integration is used as a gimmick. Last March, Absolut sponsored a short film by Spike Jonze, the director of Being John Malkovich. The film, titled I’m Here, was designed to be shown on the web. Before watching, the viewer is first walked through an invitation process using Facebook Connect. The friends you invite are cleverly integrated into an introductory cut scene, during which, you “enter” the theater to watch the film. Their photos appear on the VIP passes of other people in the theater. The whole thing works to give you a sense that you are watching this film with people who you know.

Except in this case, the experience stops there. As soon as the film starts, the connection to your community ends. The introduction has nothing to do with the film itself and instead feels tacked on and gimmicky. Absolut hinted at what could be done but didn’t actually do it.

3. Choose Your Own Adventure

Perhaps the most exciting development in multi-platform interactive campaigns is the ability of the customer base to participate in and affect the outcome of a story.

At Blogworld 2010, Ford announced an online marketing campaign to promote its new Focus. The campaign, called Focus Rally, pits six teams against each other in a reality-style adventure game where the viewers make the important calls for the participants.

“It’s a little bit like a choose your own adventure here, but the people at home were choosing the adventure for these players. It’s kind of cool how interactive the show is going to be,” says Focus Rally producer Neal Konstantini.

Specifically, the Focus Rally competitors must rely on the network capabilities of the car and their social networks to solve challenges. “f you’re in Albuquerque and you’re stuck and you run out of gas,” Konstantini explains, “you’re going to have to get on Facebook and tell your network, ‘I’m stuck. I need gas. Help me.’”

What works: When the web is integrated into both a compelling storyline and effective brand messaging.

When this doesn’t work: When you expect interaction to be what solely carries the campaign.

“It’s not enough to be interactive,” says Michal Ann Strahilevitz, associate professor of marketing at Golden Gate University. “It has to be truly compelling, engaging and persuasive to the target market. If you build it, they may or may not come.”

Choose your own adventure campaigns build off the Internet’s potential as a story-telling device. These kinds of campaigns “require the audience’s presence and participation in order to be complete,” says Mike Monello, co-founder and executive director of Campfire, an advertising agency in New York. Monello was one of the creators of The Blair Witch Project and used viral Internet distribution before there was a name for such a thing.

In a recent campaign that Campfire created for the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week programming, the team produced a series of videos about famous shark attacks throughout history. Like Absolut’s promotion of I’m Here, Campfire used Facebook Connect to personalize users’ experience of the site and videos. But whereas Absolut’s choice felt tacked on at the end, Campfire accessed users’ Facebook information to build a personalized shark attack for the visitor. It integrated personalization into the branding and the storytelling.

“Telling stories is one of mankind’s most enduring traditions,” Campfire explains on its website. “Our increased connectedness has only made spreading them faster, more pervasive, and more effective.”

More Business Resources from Mashable:

- 5 Ways to Sell Your Expertise Online/> - 4 Misconceptions About Marketing in Social Games/> - Small Biz Checklist: 5 Important Tasks for the End of the Year/> - HOW TO: Boost Holiday Sales With Commonly Overlooked Marketing Strategies/> - Why SMS Marketing Still Makes Sense for Small Business

Image courtesy of iStockphotoclass="blippr-nobr">iStockphoto, IvanWuPI

For more Business coverage:

class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Businessclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Business channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for Android, iPhone and iPad

Were you one of the many swooning over Frank’s iPhone app-assisted, Central Park proposal to girlfriend Kasey the other month? Well, sorry to tell you, folks, Frank’s undying love was a lie! That is to say, it was a hoax.

Frank’s Marriage Proposal in Central Park hit class='blippr-nobr'>YouTubeclass="blippr-nobr">YouTube at the end of October to the delight of many an class='blippr-nobr'>Internetclass="blippr-nobr">Internet denizen and news outlet — so popular that we’re still receiving tips about it over here at class='blippr-nobr'>Mashableclass="blippr-nobr">Mashable.

According to the YouTube description, the elaborate proposal was orchestrated by a team enlisted by Frank (whose real name is Doug Darwin — Kasey’s real name is, in fact, Kasey). The whole thing — which included a live band and a row boat — was said to be filmed using a bunch of hidden cameras, which were “streamed live into the team’s iPhones so they could watch the whole thing from a safe distance. A behind-the-scenes camera guy videotaped the team in action,” according to the YouTube description.

Whatever app the description is referring to, it doesn’t exist, but it did prompt some commenters to speculate that the whole thing was an elaborate Apple commercial.

It turns out the commenters were wrong — the video was not a shill for Apple. It was made to promote Michael Krivicka’s and business partner, former Saturday Night Live producer James Percelay’s, newest venture, Thinkmodo. Thinkmodo, which will launch on January 3, 2011, focuses on mining the marketing potential of viral videos.

If Krivicka’s name sounds familiar, you may be familiar with his other moniker, The Bald Guy, under which he has come out with such stunts as parody AR iPhone app NUDE IT, as well as a campaign to get Jimmy Fallon to follow him on Twitter.

“Since viral videos are both art and science, we wanted to merge both elements to introduce predictability to the videos’ success,” Krivicka tells us. “As part of our ’study’ we staged an elaborate marriage proposal in Central Park and fused tech and romance to see how well each would be received if merged.”

“Would men be drawn by the awesome iPhone app (which unfortunately doesn’t exist) or would women cry and wonder why Frank threw the ring (which was never in the box)? Since our video was covered by outlets like Glamour as well as CNET, we learned that, contrary to conventional wisdom, content can be made to appeal to both sexes without lessening the appeal to each.” (Note: It seems CNET was suspicious from the start.)

As for what Krivicka plans to do with these findings: “The field of viral videos is constantly changing and new trends are born every day,” he says. “With these particular findings we want to show advertisers that one video can target men and women. Separate campaigns are not needed.”

Krivicka certainly picked an effective theme for his video; tech-related wedding proposals are always a crowd-pleaser — see The Old Spice Guy delivering a proposal during his viral campaign, a proposal packed with Twitter, Foursquare and Qik, and even an Apple Store wedding.

What do you think of Krivicka’s highly effective, yet false, viral video? What function do you think videos like this could serve in a marketing arena? Have you lost your faith in true love? Let us know in the comments.

For more Web Video coverage:

class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Web Videoclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Web Video channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for Android, iPhone and iPad

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Source: Nationals to offer Lee seven-year deal - NY Daily <b>News</b>

The Washington Nationals are prepared to make Cliff Lee a seven-year offer, one that could drastically alter the Yankees' offseason plans. According to a major-league source, the Nationals - who already blew the market open with their ...

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

AMERICAblog <b>News</b>: Krugman thinks tax deal is bad for Obama&#39;s <b>...</b>

News and opinion about US politics from a liberal perspective.

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Source: Nationals to offer Lee seven-year deal - NY Daily <b>News</b>

The Washington Nationals are prepared to make Cliff Lee a seven-year offer, one that could drastically alter the Yankees' offseason plans. According to a major-league source, the Nationals - who already blew the market open with their ...

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

AMERICAblog <b>News</b>: Krugman thinks tax deal is bad for Obama&#39;s <b>...</b>

News and opinion about US politics from a liberal perspective.

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Source: Nationals to offer Lee seven-year deal - NY Daily <b>News</b>

The Washington Nationals are prepared to make Cliff Lee a seven-year offer, one that could drastically alter the Yankees' offseason plans. According to a major-league source, the Nationals - who already blew the market open with their ...

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

AMERICAblog <b>News</b>: Krugman thinks tax deal is bad for Obama&#39;s <b>...</b>

News and opinion about US politics from a liberal perspective.

homebench craft company rip off

Source: Nationals to offer Lee seven-year deal - NY Daily <b>News</b>

The Washington Nationals are prepared to make Cliff Lee a seven-year offer, one that could drastically alter the Yankees' offseason plans. According to a major-league source, the Nationals - who already blew the market open with their ...

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

AMERICAblog <b>News</b>: Krugman thinks tax deal is bad for Obama&#39;s <b>...</b>

News and opinion about US politics from a liberal perspective.

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Source: Nationals to offer Lee seven-year deal - NY Daily <b>News</b>

The Washington Nationals are prepared to make Cliff Lee a seven-year offer, one that could drastically alter the Yankees' offseason plans. According to a major-league source, the Nationals - who already blew the market open with their ...

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

AMERICAblog <b>News</b>: Krugman thinks tax deal is bad for Obama&#39;s <b>...</b>

News and opinion about US politics from a liberal perspective.

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Source: Nationals to offer Lee seven-year deal - NY Daily <b>News</b>

The Washington Nationals are prepared to make Cliff Lee a seven-year offer, one that could drastically alter the Yankees' offseason plans. According to a major-league source, the Nationals - who already blew the market open with their ...

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

AMERICAblog <b>News</b>: Krugman thinks tax deal is bad for Obama&#39;s <b>...</b>

News and opinion about US politics from a liberal perspective.

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Matthew Latkiewicz works at Zendesk.com, customer support software. He writes for and edits Zengage, Zendesk’s blog about customer engagement. He also writes about wine for McSweeney’s and imagines stuff at his own website, youwillnotbelieve.us.

Just as early television shows were essentially radio plays shot on film, the earliest attempts by online marketers mimicked the worlds of television and print. While banner ads and pre-roll commercials are still with us, of course, a new generation of marketing professionals and companies are exploring techniques more native to the web: multi-platform marketing campaigns that encourage interactivity.

Marketers who take advantage of the class='blippr-nobr'>Internetclass="blippr-nobr">Internet’s unique capabilities have the potential to build increasingly engaged customer communities. Here’s a look at three major trends.

1. User-Generated Content Contests

Doritos hosted its first Crash the Superbowl campaign in 2007. Like a lot of big companies, Doritos bought a commercial slot for the Superbowl, but instead of hiring a production company to make a 30-second spot, Doritos turned to its consumers. “Grab your camera and create your Doritos commercial,” the company advertised. Anyone could create and submit a spot. These spots were put to a vote online, and the finalists received $10,000 and the winning spot ran in the very expensive Superbowl slot.

More than 1,000 people submitted videos, and Doritos generated a lot of attention for the campaign, ranking high in a number of surveys that tracked buzz and impact of the Super Bowl commercials.

These kinds of campaigns are very popular on the Internet at the moment and they range in scale. SolidWorks, makers of computer-aided design (CAD) software, worked with the design firm Small Army to build a campaign that involved its very active community. Christine Washburn, VP of marketing at SolidWorks, says, “We wanted to do something that would involve them and be very visible for new potential members of the community.”

Small Army came up with Let’s Go Design, an interactive web series. Users submit design ideas in response to challenges proposed by the show. Ideas are voted on and ultimately incorporated.

What works: Activity and participation around the brand.

If users get involved, they can win. And the voting structure generates even more activity. Washburn reports that SolidWorks’ “web traffic is up by a factor of four in comparison to previous campaigns.”

When this doesn’t work: Your brand doesn’t carry either the same kind of mass appeal as Doritos or the committed fandom of SolidWorks.

Branding consultant Lisa Merriam wrote a case study of a failed contest campaign by a company called Levia. It tried a campaign similar to Doritos, asking consumers to submit a video about the healing power of light.

Doritos is a mega-brand millions and millions of passionate consumers. And Levia®? You probably never heard of it. Levia® is a device that uses light to treat psoriasis. The set of people who suffer from psoriasis and who have heard of Levia® and who have the technical know-how to produce video and who care enough to come up with winning concepts about light’s power to heal is an infinitesimally small set of people — certainly not a crowd./>

2. Making a Consumer Community

Marketers have jumped on the relatively recent explosion of online communities. If customers have the ability to talk to one another, why not create an incentive and a space for them to talk about your brand?

One way to accomplish this is to offer customers something they might actually do in real life. Marketing agency Movement Strategy, for instance, recently created an online forum for two of its NBA clients, the Denver Nuggets and the New York Knicks. The site — NuggetsVsKnicks.com — operated during an actual game between the Nuggets and the Knicks, giving the fans a place to cheer on their team (and trash talk the other). By integrating with Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook — users cheered by “Liking” their team — Movement Strategy was able to give a real-world analog to the digital interaction.

What works: Campaigns that encourage community among their customer base can really help to build loyalty.

When this doesn’t work: When the campaigns are lazy.

It’s not fair to say that most company Facebook Pages don’t work, but often the conversations there offer a relatively low level of engagement. Contests, questions and announcements all encourage participation from the customer, but not necessarily participation with each other.

A lot of brands use Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter contests in a similar way. A few years ago Squarespaceclass="blippr-nobr">SquareSpace, for instance, gave away an iPhoneclass="blippr-nobr">iPhone a day to anyone who mentioned Squarespace in a tweet. While this kind of activity can generate a lot of buzz, the actual customer engagement in the brand is low — the equivalent of dropping your business card in a fishbowl.

Even worse is when Facebook and other social network integration is used as a gimmick. Last March, Absolut sponsored a short film by Spike Jonze, the director of Being John Malkovich. The film, titled I’m Here, was designed to be shown on the web. Before watching, the viewer is first walked through an invitation process using Facebook Connect. The friends you invite are cleverly integrated into an introductory cut scene, during which, you “enter” the theater to watch the film. Their photos appear on the VIP passes of other people in the theater. The whole thing works to give you a sense that you are watching this film with people who you know.

Except in this case, the experience stops there. As soon as the film starts, the connection to your community ends. The introduction has nothing to do with the film itself and instead feels tacked on and gimmicky. Absolut hinted at what could be done but didn’t actually do it.

3. Choose Your Own Adventure

Perhaps the most exciting development in multi-platform interactive campaigns is the ability of the customer base to participate in and affect the outcome of a story.

At Blogworld 2010, Ford announced an online marketing campaign to promote its new Focus. The campaign, called Focus Rally, pits six teams against each other in a reality-style adventure game where the viewers make the important calls for the participants.

“It’s a little bit like a choose your own adventure here, but the people at home were choosing the adventure for these players. It’s kind of cool how interactive the show is going to be,” says Focus Rally producer Neal Konstantini.

Specifically, the Focus Rally competitors must rely on the network capabilities of the car and their social networks to solve challenges. “f you’re in Albuquerque and you’re stuck and you run out of gas,” Konstantini explains, “you’re going to have to get on Facebook and tell your network, ‘I’m stuck. I need gas. Help me.’”

What works: When the web is integrated into both a compelling storyline and effective brand messaging.

When this doesn’t work: When you expect interaction to be what solely carries the campaign.

“It’s not enough to be interactive,” says Michal Ann Strahilevitz, associate professor of marketing at Golden Gate University. “It has to be truly compelling, engaging and persuasive to the target market. If you build it, they may or may not come.”

Choose your own adventure campaigns build off the Internet’s potential as a story-telling device. These kinds of campaigns “require the audience’s presence and participation in order to be complete,” says Mike Monello, co-founder and executive director of Campfire, an advertising agency in New York. Monello was one of the creators of The Blair Witch Project and used viral Internet distribution before there was a name for such a thing.

In a recent campaign that Campfire created for the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week programming, the team produced a series of videos about famous shark attacks throughout history. Like Absolut’s promotion of I’m Here, Campfire used Facebook Connect to personalize users’ experience of the site and videos. But whereas Absolut’s choice felt tacked on at the end, Campfire accessed users’ Facebook information to build a personalized shark attack for the visitor. It integrated personalization into the branding and the storytelling.

“Telling stories is one of mankind’s most enduring traditions,” Campfire explains on its website. “Our increased connectedness has only made spreading them faster, more pervasive, and more effective.”

More Business Resources from Mashable:

- 5 Ways to Sell Your Expertise Online/> - 4 Misconceptions About Marketing in Social Games/> - Small Biz Checklist: 5 Important Tasks for the End of the Year/> - HOW TO: Boost Holiday Sales With Commonly Overlooked Marketing Strategies/> - Why SMS Marketing Still Makes Sense for Small Business

Image courtesy of iStockphotoclass="blippr-nobr">iStockphoto, IvanWuPI

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Were you one of the many swooning over Frank’s iPhone app-assisted, Central Park proposal to girlfriend Kasey the other month? Well, sorry to tell you, folks, Frank’s undying love was a lie! That is to say, it was a hoax.

Frank’s Marriage Proposal in Central Park hit class='blippr-nobr'>YouTubeclass="blippr-nobr">YouTube at the end of October to the delight of many an class='blippr-nobr'>Internetclass="blippr-nobr">Internet denizen and news outlet — so popular that we’re still receiving tips about it over here at class='blippr-nobr'>Mashableclass="blippr-nobr">Mashable.

According to the YouTube description, the elaborate proposal was orchestrated by a team enlisted by Frank (whose real name is Doug Darwin — Kasey’s real name is, in fact, Kasey). The whole thing — which included a live band and a row boat — was said to be filmed using a bunch of hidden cameras, which were “streamed live into the team’s iPhones so they could watch the whole thing from a safe distance. A behind-the-scenes camera guy videotaped the team in action,” according to the YouTube description.

Whatever app the description is referring to, it doesn’t exist, but it did prompt some commenters to speculate that the whole thing was an elaborate Apple commercial.

It turns out the commenters were wrong — the video was not a shill for Apple. It was made to promote Michael Krivicka’s and business partner, former Saturday Night Live producer James Percelay’s, newest venture, Thinkmodo. Thinkmodo, which will launch on January 3, 2011, focuses on mining the marketing potential of viral videos.

If Krivicka’s name sounds familiar, you may be familiar with his other moniker, The Bald Guy, under which he has come out with such stunts as parody AR iPhone app NUDE IT, as well as a campaign to get Jimmy Fallon to follow him on Twitter.

“Since viral videos are both art and science, we wanted to merge both elements to introduce predictability to the videos’ success,” Krivicka tells us. “As part of our ’study’ we staged an elaborate marriage proposal in Central Park and fused tech and romance to see how well each would be received if merged.”

“Would men be drawn by the awesome iPhone app (which unfortunately doesn’t exist) or would women cry and wonder why Frank threw the ring (which was never in the box)? Since our video was covered by outlets like Glamour as well as CNET, we learned that, contrary to conventional wisdom, content can be made to appeal to both sexes without lessening the appeal to each.” (Note: It seems CNET was suspicious from the start.)

As for what Krivicka plans to do with these findings: “The field of viral videos is constantly changing and new trends are born every day,” he says. “With these particular findings we want to show advertisers that one video can target men and women. Separate campaigns are not needed.”

Krivicka certainly picked an effective theme for his video; tech-related wedding proposals are always a crowd-pleaser — see The Old Spice Guy delivering a proposal during his viral campaign, a proposal packed with Twitter, Foursquare and Qik, and even an Apple Store wedding.

What do you think of Krivicka’s highly effective, yet false, viral video? What function do you think videos like this could serve in a marketing arena? Have you lost your faith in true love? Let us know in the comments.

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