Category: Viral Marketing

Virtual ‘Radvertising’ – Heineken

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

This is ‘radvertising’ for many reasons.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M2mABv2RAI&feature=related]

  • It highlights a single minded product benefit – nothing artifical
  • It leverages historical brand postioning & authenticity – so it’s believable
  • Chooses a topical juxtapostion which is easily understood
  • Has broad appeal which can cross the chasm of age demographics
  • The creative idea is strongly linked to the consumption environment & category
  • It’s sneezeworthy (worth spreading / has viral potential)
  • It’s entertaining. Which by the way is never, ever an objective of ‘radvertising’. It’s a BONUS.

Old media / new media

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

We all agree that media is changing – “ing”, not “ed”.

So it still makes sense to consider both options for our limited marketing and startup budgets.

So here’s a simple summary of each:

Old media
Costs a lot, but is really quick. Reaches people who might not have been looking for you. Leverages solid infrastructure so demands less human capital. But has a high wastage rate. Suits mass markets

New media
Usually free, and reaches those who are seeking you. Can be quick, but only for the lucky few who nail ideas people want to spread. Uses fragmented infrastructure so requires more man hours. Leaves a digital footprint and so effort compounds. Suits niches.

Until old & new media fully merge, we need to allocate budgets. But it’s also important we remember we can replace money with time when we are financially constrained.

Innovation is quite forgiving

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

All twitter users know that it’s not the most reliable website out there. At the time of this post, it’s currently ‘down’ and gives you the message below:

 

 

2 things:

 

1.      They told us about it before hand.

2.      We forgive it, because we love it.

 

If you’re a ‘me too’, chances are your customers would be less forgiving. If you’re a new killer app, service or widget then the lesson is simple: Innovation is quite forgiving.

 

Launch now – improve later.

Barenaked Ladies embrace new world

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Here’s an example of an organization who’ve embraced the new world to absolute advantage.

 

Rock band the Barenaked Ladies, achieved a reasonable level of commercial success in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. A song of theirs you may know is ‘One week’ – you can click here to watch it and jig your memory.

 

Their success enabled them to do what most bands can’t – secure a record deal with the large record label Warner. But in 2003 they sacked them. They thought they could a better job – and they have. They just cut out the middle man and began to have a direct relationship with their passionate fans.

 

Here’s some of the cool stuff they’ve done:

They have a ‘dynamic’ websites & myspace– not static pages

They blog ‘daily’

They include fans in ‘every’ film clip

They built a permission database

They provide ‘free’ downloads of their music

Allow ‘free’ sharing of their music (Youtube / File sharing)

They sell their records direct and collect all revenue

They have ‘band days’ and ‘invite only concerts’

They provide photos of the days events

They run cruiseship holidays for fans

(Yep, 300 of their fans socializing, eating, relaxing with them for a week or so, where they provide the entertainment for them every night)

 

 

The net result is this. Their fans feel like they have a real connection, which they do. Their revenue per album sold is now approx $6.00 to the Barenaked Ladies, versus the previous $1.00 while with Warner. They have pure creative control of their work and don’t have to worry about being dropped by their record label.

 

Their site link is here: http://www.bnlmusic.com/default2.asp

 

Kudos BNL.

Mass customization

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Here’s a few categories or Industries which have been revolutionized by Mass Customization:

 

T-shirts (Threadless & Neighborhoodies)

TV (Youtube & Joost)

Handbags (Elemental Threads)

Journalism (Blogs & podcasting)

Newspapers (RSS)

Job Seeking (Aggregation & feeds)

Book publishing (Lulu)

Tourism (the web in general)

Luxury goods (fractional ownership)

Music (itunes)

Networking (facebook & social apps)

 

In fact there’s just too many to mention.

 

But the real question is this: If it hasn’t hit your industry yet, why not and what are you doing about it?

Ahead of their time

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Here’s a meme from the Cluetrain Manifesto guys.  It was written some 9 years ago and still rings true. The predictions herein are still evolving today, and yet some corporations still haven’t got it.

Start ups out there; invest 5 minutes with the ideas below, embrace them and you’ll be well ahead of the game.

[slideshare id=7027&doc=cluetrain-28722&w=425]

Rentoid on techcrunch

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

We finally got ‘crunched’ – with a little spiel for rentoid on Tech Crunch.

In the first instance it’s given us a large membership boost and a very positive response. But it’s also given us our share of negative armchair experts, naysayers in the comments.

We say:

“That’s Ok – revolutionaries like us don’t care what naysayers think.”

But it’s a few thousand more people that know about rentoid.com too.

Actually we do care about what they think as it pertains to ideas to improve the service. We turn their negatives into a positive. But we always ignore an attitude which says something won’t work. It won’t for them – their attitude has already predetermined that!

In fact, some context here: We had many more positive comments and only a few negative. Also, both our membership and listings have been boosted as has our unique visiters today. But I thought I’d make this ‘blatant piece of self promotion’ worthy of a startup blog story by providing some insight!

You can check out the story here.

And add some comments here on the Crunch Base or on the story. We want to hear negative and postive sentiments. We want to improve our offer.