Are we aware of the psychological tricks and traps some marketers use to lure us into purchasing specific brands? Just because most of us at the Daily Fix are involved in marketing doesn’t mean that we can’t be affected by our colleagues’ ruses.

No matter how smart we think we are, I guarantee we’ve all fallen prey to a marketing enticement trick or two. I know I have.

While working out recently, I watched an interesting segment on the Today Show about a branding experiment conducted by author and branding/consumer behavior expert, Martin Lindstrom. In it, a California couple agreed to promote specific brands to their friends and social circle in everyday conversations and at parties that they hosted. At the end of the three-month period, the results were staggering:

• 9 out of 10 brands were bought.
• One brand had a 1,000% sales increase.
• An estimated 13,000 people were affected by the couple.

Now, maybe our pal, Daily Fix blogger, author, and word-of-mouth marketing guru, Andy Sernovitz wouldn’t be surprised by this, but others may.

Admittedly, I haven’t yet read Lindstrom’s book, Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy, but based on the experiment and book reviews, I am certainly intrigued.

I could never have imagined that some companies begin marketing to babies in the womb. Or that shoppers in U.S. department stores who are exposed to Muzak with a slow tempo shop 18% longer and purchase 17% more than do those who shop in silence. Or that peddling panic and paranoia was so ubiquitous.

What’s even more interesting is Lindstrom’s take on it all.

“Whenever I meet up with executives around the world, I remind them that today the most powerful force in marketing is not a corporation. It’s not a CEO. It’s not a big-budget marketing department. Today and in the future, the people who hold the real power are hyperconnected, mouse-clicking consumers and their wide circles of virtual and real-life friends and acquaintances. In other words, the people who hold the real power are us.

“As a result, brands of the future simply must be transparent and live up to their promises. Trust me (and you marketers out there take note), any brand that doesn’t will be instantly and painfully exposed and reviled.”

Your turn: Were you aware of these types of brandwashing  tricks and tools? Have you ever been duped by them? Do you think marketers should continue to employ these tactics, or do you think they are unethical? WEIGH IN!

Think of the PR for Muse and for Branson’s vaunted Virgin brand if Sir Richard buys into the idea. Won’t the whole world be glued to this event if it happens? Won’t we all be following this as it unfolds on our iPads, iPhones, TV screens, and computers? How huge would the publicity be for both parties if Muse can pull this off? Just the possibility this might happen is grist for the PR mill—whether it materializes or not.

And if anybody thinks Branson doesn’t care about publicity as one of the richest men in Britain, think again. He’s often taken shots at breaking records and even tried to circumnavigate the globe in a balloon with Steve Fossett once.

From press reports, it seems this is no off-the-top-of-the-head whim. Bellamy has been interested in astronomy for a long time. Fans of the group know it, too. After a recent gig in Moscow, Bellamy was presented with a powerful telescope. When he set it up, he was reportedly awed by the views of the moon.

Bellamy’s comments about the possibility of recording in space: “Would I be scared? I think I’ll be all right.”

• Is this extreme PR or what? Would you be glued to this if it happens?
• What’s your favorite PR move by entertainers been?
• Do you think there ought to be limits to sensationalism or is our culture hungry for edgier “reality TV” kinds of fare now?

You’ll see what I mean when you check out the YouTube pizza box concept that delivers, serves, and stores the leftovers in the same package. How about one million hits and counting! Obviously, this ingenious package structure has people buzzing … Isn’t that what great marketing does? It creates buzz. I’ve always felt that packaging is one of the most important marketing initiatives of all. Remember: It makes product and brand tangible to the consumer.

Not long ago, the same idea from Orville Redenbacher lit up the Internet. The concept is a simple one: The bag that pops the corn also turns into a serving bowl. A host of videos popped up on this unique structural packaging, no pun intended: with much the same result. Check this out.

There have been other ground-breaking package design ideas. Remember how Birds Eye started a revolution in the frozen vegetable aisle when the company developed steam-in-the-bag technology?

What this reaffirms: Packaging adds value to consumer products. But in some cases, it adds more overt value, thanks to its structure. This ought to serve as a challenge to the package design community. How can we rethink category packaging to add more value for the brand and for consumers?

Questions:

• Which structural packaging examples add more value to the consumer products they contain? Name names.
• Which consumer product categories might benefit from changes to their packaging structure, adding more perceived value among customers?
• Are there specific brands you purchase because the packaging rather than the product are the key differentiators? Which ones and why?

All points of view are welcome. Please chime in with your thoughts.

That said, I do remember trips to Denny’s many moons ago that included a cranky waitress or waiter who hated us being there (okay, so we were a bit wound up) and food that was, well, not a grand-slam by any stretch. Sound familiar?
My, how times have changed!
Who knew that Denny’s has been serving up food to bands and music fans since the 1950s?! Well, that heritage lives on with Denny’s Allnighter, which is sponsored by Dr. Pepper.
Today’s Denny’s is all about enticing night owls with alternative music and affordable food from 10pm-5am (that’s the ‘allnighter’ part). And not just any music, but music from bands they adopt as well as more well-known bands such as Good Charlotte, Sum 41, and Rascal Flatts. And not just menu food, but food created by the bands that drop by Denny’s while on tour. The staff also dons relaxed uniforms and serves up food to the sounds of Envy on the Coast (that’s the creature comfort part). Hmmm, doesn’t sound much like the cranky wait staff or Denny’s that I remember.
So aside from inviting bands to cook and eat and their fans to join in, what makes this campaign cool? Denny’s has, of course, totally embraced social media to reach out to the 20-something crowd with their campaign including the usual suspects: Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Lala, YouTube, and an iPhone app.
It’s not enough to just use the tools…it’s about the buzz.
And they are definitely creating a buzz. With Denny’s sponsoring after-parties and special giveaways for this summer’s Warped Tour, they buzz will most likely continue to grow.
Denny’s isn’t using social media just to blast out messages–they are actually talking to people on Twitter, every month people have a say on the bands that Denny’s adopts and, ironically, if you plan on dropping by Denny’s after the Warped Tour, you’ll need to RSVP to hang out with the band.
An RSVP to eat at Denny’s?! Yep, you read that correctly and that’s where the buzz comes in to play.
I don’t know about you, but I think this is a grand-slam. Why? Aside from some PR and some late night advertising, the campaign is not mainstream and that’s what’ll keep it a success–for now.

As it turns out when it comes to buzz, A-List bloggers (and even top Twitterers with gobs of followers) aren’t as influential as some might think. So if you are a marketer targeting A-List bloggers and Twitterers to create buzz for your strong brand, you may want to reconsider.
How so?
Recently, Communication World (a publication of the International Association of Business Communicators) had an interesting article called “Human Transponders in a Digital Age” by Angelo Fernando that talks about buzz. What caught my attention most in this article was the subhead “Respect for the weakest link.” In this section Angelo talks with Emanuel Rosen, author of “The Anatomy of Buzz Revisted” about influencers versus the weak links within social networks.
According to Emanuel, the weak links offer the most potential. Why? Because they aren’t hearing the same buzz that all the influencers are. In essence, the influencers tend to be exposed to the same similar sources of information. What does that mean for you? Your buzz really isn’t that buzzworthy once it hits an influencer because they most likely already know about it. The weak links, on the other hand, tend to generate new information because they belong to other social sub-networks and are exposed to different sources of information.
Don’t believe it? Tara Hunt, the author of The Whuffie Factor, has a great example on her blog, in a post called Whuffie Math. Tara’s question is “which is greater, 0 or 500?” (Give her post a quick read and then come back. If you don’t have time, below is a brief synopsis to make a point.)
Tara goes on to explain:
“The other day, my publisher asked me to send them a list of bloggers/twitterers to send an advanced copy of my book to. Great, I thought. Let’s see who wants one! So, I proceeded to tweet out a message that said I’d send a book to 20 bloggers who want a copy. Instantly, I received a slough of excited messages with addresses…”
Well, apparently her publisher thought the list needed to be made up of influential bloggers who had more readers and Twitter followers than the list Tara submitted because their response was:
“Don’t you have a list of bigger bloggers – you know, influencers – that you want me to send these to?”
Tara goes on to say “I want to send the book to people who WANT to receive it. People who are excited and are more likely to write about it, tweet about it, tell their friends, their bosses and everyone who will listen. I want to send my book to people who give a damn.”
So what’s greater 0 or 500? Well, if you are a marketer going after busy influencers, who most likely don’t have a lot of time on their hands, and get a 0 response versus being a marketer that nurtures and respects the weakest links, you can easily see that 500 is the greater number. [Note: 500 is from Tara's post and is an example of the potential number in the weakest link's network and who they'd share the buzz with.]
I’d like to position the question this way too…what’s greater 1 or 500? If you get one influential blogger to write about you is that as powerful as 500 non-influential people sharing your story?
When it comes to creating buzz on a social network–your weakest links might just become your strongest chain.

There are some great examples of how ideas spread in his ebook on the Top 10 unsigned bands from MySpace who just give away their music as a means of promoting themselves. Artists like Bec Hollcraft who know full well the goal is attracting enough attention and leveraging buzz marketing to get a record deal.
It reminds me of the Grateful Dead who were hip to this idea long before Bec was even born. They had special taper sections where deadheads could tape FOR FREE the bands show and reproduce it for anyone who asked (so long as there was no exchange of money, which was one thing the band was against).
Its brings into view the theory that the best way to spread ideas is to give them away for free …. then why do B2B marketers have whitepapers hidden behind signup form?
While I believe in the theory …. I am also a prime offender of the theory …. so I went back over our data to test this theory and here is what I found:

A third of the papers downloaded on our corporate site are protected

That means free whitepapers were downloaded 67% more than, what we like to call, protected whitepapers.
If you think about the last few products you purchased. Did you see an ad on TV? Did you answer a direct mail piece? Go to a tradeshow to learn more about it? If you’re like most people, you didn’t do any of those things …. you just went online.
82% of C level execs said they use search engines to get business information Source: B2B Magazine
So it begs the question – why are we marketing in the same old ways?

I first met Doug on a panel speaking about Web Video and he invited me to do a vlog with him. Candidly I have wanted to use more video for my own blog so I jumped at the chance.
As my team knows I have been looking for ways to incorporate video in the marketing mix at BearingPoint not just as a nice to have but as a staple of our interactive go-to-market. And with the proliferation of tools out there to allow you to capture video that should be easy right? After visiting Doug’s facility I can safely say it’s still hard to do if you want to do it well.
Doug has an award winning Communication Company and he started a Vlog to document the change he see going on in his industry. Check out his mission captured on his Vlog and some of the impressive names he has been able to interview from companies like: CNN, New York Times, Southwest Airlines, Burson-Marsteller and Fleishman-Hillard.
Here is our talk about how BearingPoint is using Social Media to help define the brand!

And here is a link to his original post – http://www.dssimonvlogviews.com/paul-dunay-bearingpoint/

In a recent Razorfish survey it was ranked second to mobile as the most important emerging media channel in the coming year. Roughly 51 percent of respondents ranked mobile as the most important, followed by Digital Signage with nearly 32 percent. Other channels trailed by a wide margin.
Interestingly enough in a recent article in Wired Magazine they featured a company called MegaPhone that combined both of these emerging areas.
MegaPhone is a mobile gaming company whose latest project is to connect cell phones with games embedded in big-screen billboards in places like you guessed it – Times Square!
People can interact with these billboards via a special phone number which will show them as special avatars identified by the last four digits of the caller’s phone number.
When I first read the article I thought it was just another super geek application but the more I thought about it …. the more you can think up new applications for this.
For example, Jumbotrons at sporting events where they can pick attendees to play an engaging mini game of basketball, baseball, football, hockey, or whatever sport you are watching. Rock Concert goers could dial into the Jumbotron to participate in a live chat with the band backstage. Tradeshow events could use this to allow real time Twittering and live Q&A via mobile. Anywhere you are waiting in line …. airports, hotels, on airplanes, amusement parks (read Disney) could not only pre-engage their audience with the ride …. perhaps they could let us sign up for tickets once we enter the park and call us when we are due to blast off!
This one article opens up the wide world of mobile marketing, digital signage and more importantly a glimpse at the future of social media marketing (SMM).

Ascentium …. A model for the agency of the future
I spoke to the CMO, Romi Mahajan who explained Ascentium’s go-to-market strategy to me. They are the nexus of a digital marketing company mixed with a technology firm that does Microsoft CRM, Business Intelligence and Analytics to provide creative solutions for brand perception and instantiation.
No doubt very useful and very powerful when they come together (I read this as an agency mixed with a lead nurturing platform that can track ROI!). Not only do they build cool marketing campaigns but they can connect to your sales process. They in effect unify sales and marketing so that clients see that their campaign pay off …. thereby eliminating the normal tension between sales and marketing.
Romi was also a speaker on Agency 2.0 on how should agencies of the future be organized. Clearly I would think Ascentium is a model for agencies of the future.
Brickfish – Measuring Social Engagement
Brickfish offers an innovative way for brands to connect with their target audience online. They offer a launching pad for highly viral marketing campaigns that allow you to reach consumers where they live on the social web. They get them to listen to your message and interact with your brand, and more than that, they produce the results.
What does this mean …. as I understood it …. they make various viral marketing campaigns or social applications that can then be shared with friends who can customize them to post it to their blog or website via an iFrame. The iFrame technology allows Brickfish to measure where, when, who and how many times your messages were viewed.
Some examples are Coach engaged consumers to design a new tote. Nike asked consumers to share their inspirational athletic achievements. Kodak got consumers to share their Kodak moments to celebrate their new low-ink printer. All of these examples needed consumers to make customize the message and make it their own then spread it virally. Best off Brickfish is an all in one platform to do this.
HiveLive …. Platform for building unique communities
I spoke to the CEO John Kimbel and visited with HiveLive crew on the Expo floor and was very impressed. HiveLive has a very different take on Enterprise Communities. In short, what they do is act as a platform that aggregates all your types of media (both new media and social media) to create a very different type of experience than say a standard community. So that means they integrate things like blogs, podcasts, wikis, forums into a “Hive” (one could say mashup here). That can be customized to the experience you want to create for your users.
One of their customers is Serena Software. Their CMO, Rene Bonvanie is a forward-thinking marketer who’s been leading the community charge for quite some time now at places like SalesForce, SAP, BusinessObjects, and Oracle. Below is a video where he does a great job explaining Serena’s vision of a new model of community-powered marketing and how they’re using tools/technologies (like Facebook, HiveLive, and YouTube) to reinvent their business: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDsJE98NPbM
InsideView …. Smart marketing and sales tool
I was lucky enough to have breakfast with the CEO Umberto Milletti. Who started InsideView in 2005 because he saw that “business information was becoming more distributed over the web” though articles, interviews, various databases and then eventually social networks.
He viewed this as an opportunity to aggregate these sources of information to provide a composite view of a person or a company through the use of some proprietary Natural Language Processing.
All comes together in a mashup within your own CRM …. InsideView integrates with all of today’s most popular CRM systems namely Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, and recently announced Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, and Landslide.
InsideView also tells you who you are connected to in Facebook or LinkedIn. It’s a form of “Smarketing” as Umberto called it.
Over 200 companies use their application with hundreds of sales reps using the application. They sell per seat licenses but they also have a free version in the spirit of Web 2.0 with a limited version of the functionality. No doubt this is a company to watch in the coming years!
Wi5Connect …. Welcome to Social Learning 2.0
I spoke to Matthew Bowman, VP of Sales and Marketing, for Wi5Connect who explained what they did as a “different approach to learning that marries two technologies …. Social Networking and eLearning” into an easy to deliver SaaS solution.
Their new product LearnSocial is a revolutionary new way for businesses to train employees. Different than online learning, user manuals, or instructor lead training, LearnSocial is an online community that captures the power of social networks and fortifies with a state-of-the-art Learning Management System (LMS) platform. Finally, an effective learning tool that allows you to better engage, track the engagement, correlate progress to training, and measure ROI.
Matt called it “a way to combine the brain trust hidden in all levels of your own organization with the magic of your own corporate social network!”

Social Networks are clearly here to stay with almost 50% of the population is using these sites (70% of teens).
Social Network have all opened up their platforms which means that brands have cost effective access to more than 500M engaged users (250M of them on just Facebook and MySpace alone!)
This is a massive distribution channel for any brand but still <1% of digital ad budgets are going toward Social Networks …. why?
Because Social Network ad impressions are worthless …. the old model of buying impressions is like shouting at consumers …. you buy ads to “get in front of them” and “give them a message” …. but that’s not going to work in a “social ” world by definition!
The new ad model will be about creating social brand loyalty by creating Social Branded Applications that allow users to interact with your brand attributes. That’s when we make the pivot from finding a target audience and moving messages to them …. to creating Social Branded Applications that give away the message and letting the audience tailor it to the social graph.
Here are some examples of brands benefiting from Social Branded Applications –
FedEx
Created a Social Branded Application called – “Launch the Package” which is very in line with the FedEx brand. It is simple, fast, easy to use etc.
Has had the most activity of any application on Facebook with 72,000 packages delivered per day, 100,000 installs in 72 hours more than 300,000 active users in 6 days with less than 10% uninstall rate.
New Balance
Created a Social Branded Application to get in front of key customer and influencers. It’s a game called the New Balance Run-devouz where you earn points and redeem for shoes, kinda like a Chuckie Cheese but for Facebook.
So far they have 250,000 active users, with 86% returning at least once, 57% of which came back 9 times or more! And so far $1,000,000 in virtual dollars have been earned by customers which can be redeemed for actual shoes.
BudLight
Created a Social Branded Application that utilizes Facebook’s “age gating” so only certain age groups can use this application. So they created the Dude Campaign which connects to the BudLight ad Dude ad campaign but allows the user to determine through a series of questions what kind of dude they really are: Examples Game On dude, Red Neck dude, Gangsta dude etc.
So far they have 200,000 installs in 5 weeks, 14% average daily growth, 6000+ daily users, 19% of users visited every day during the campaign.
InStyle
Created a Social Branded Application for hair makeovers where you can grab celebrity hair and add it to your Facebook picture once you find the new hair style you like you can then save it and add the InStyle banner and upload it back to your Facebook profile for your friends to vote on.
So far they have 185,000 installs in 6 weeks, 78% of the user base is InStyle’s target demographic, average time spent is 7 min, with over 50% of total users returning to the application more than 25 times and an average user did 3 hair styles.

Who can make something popular on the web?
Duncan Watts said there are not some special people who do all the viral work …. it’s the network that makes it popular.
Take for example in real life: a forest fire …. once a spark hits a dry forest and the forest starts burning the whole forest will burn down …. no one would say there was a “special spark” that burned the whole forest down.
If you remember The Tipping Point …. East village hipsters wore lots of ridiculous clothes besides Hush Puppies. But the problem is after the fact: influential people seem like the key factor.
The problem is hindsight bias is not a repeatable event in the future.
Here are 6 strategies and solutions for predicting success with the Bored at Work Network:
Solution 1 …. Contagious media …. Include some sort of social imperative like “how to make your husband behave” – there is a social reason to share this on the Bored at Work network and it will catch fire. Other examples include: Nike Sweatshop, The Rejection Line. Limits of contagious media: it is usually silly or free, shocking, simple of fun. But businesses create drag on the message because they aren’t simple or free shocking etc.
Solution 2 …. Big Seed Marketing …. Small seeds lead to failure: 10 people recruit 5 people etc. But sub viral growth is still growth. Big seeds lead to success: 1 million people recruit 500K people etc …. examples: Tide Cold Water by P&G can seed a campaign with 4 million people and got 40,000 extra. Oxygen media seeded with 7,000 people and got 30,000 more.
Solution 3 …. Multi Seed Marketing …. Try lots of creative ideas …. nobody can predict what will be popular …. test to see what is working using real data. Then Big Seed the stuff that is working best. More data enables more creativity. Example: BuzzFeed …. Sarah Palin vs Tina Fey …. most of the traffic was from the bored at work network. Unlike the Carl Sagan blog-a-thon which didn’t catch fire with the bored at work network, surprisingly. Got to try lots of ideas and remove what isn’t working.
Solution 4 …. Mullet Strategy …. Best for businesses …. all business up front but party in the back. Example is the Huffington Post …. all business upfront with huge comment section in the back. The nerve center of the Huffington Post is like Home Shopping Network for blogging. YouTube and Digg manage seeds in the same way the most popular stuff sits on the front page …. as it starts to decrease they pull it and replace with a hotter story.

Solution 5 …. Personality Disorders …. Examples include Perez Hilton, Ron Paul, Apple lovers. Help your audience engage with others passion. Especially appetizing are personality disorders like: paranoid behavior, schizoid behavior, antisocial behaviors etc–
Solution 6 …. Learn from the Mormons …. Mormons want you to be Mornom: Make evangelism core to your strategy. Focus on the mechanics of how an idea spreads not just the idea itself.

Enter Jesse Stay …. Facebook developer and guru, a recent author of FBML essentials, blogger of Stay-n-Alive and social media junkie like myself.
I sought Jesse’s help in further understanding how he was using FriendFeed for tracking and commenting on all the conversations that were happening at the recent F8, Facebook developer conference.
Here his thoughts and excuse my ignorance on any of these topics for those of you more social advanced.

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About Jesse
Jesse is a Social Media technologies expert. He specializes in Facebook and other technologies that enable you as a business to better reach your customers in a viral manner, leading to more targeted ad and marketing positions, leading to faster adaptation of your brand through the social networks.
Through his company, Stay N’ Alive Productions, he has firm experience developing and providing quality applications that have already had strong successes. He has both developed and consulted for successful social networking applications, some of those which currently have over a million users (the top 90 on Facebook!).

In reality if you look at the Latin origins of the word social it would most likely have a definition akin to the free give and take of conversation and collaboration amongst multiple parties. Slap on the word media and that ensures it is some form of digital media these days.
So with this as a backdrop the answer would logically be …. NO!
A podcast is a new media. A podcast is a new channel. But it is still at the end of the day a one way dialog …. you listen to one or two people having a conversation. If you were listening to two people having a conversation at a party are you being social? I think not …. its only when you get involved in the conversation does it become social.
So just how social are podcasts?
Take it from me, I have personally recorded and handed edited over 100 podcasts for this blog and other purposes and I can safely say they don’t get the level of interactivity (read comments) like my regular old blog posts do. Yes there is that element of “portability” meaning you can take a podcast anywhere and listen to it any time …. but do people really do that?? The answer there is also NO. I find my listeners tend to consume the media right when they find it. Which is why I go through the trouble of tagging my podcasts with Veotag so folks can listen to only the relevant question or 2, get in …. get out and on to the next thing. People are busy and you can read faster than you can listen!
So does that spell the end of podcasts?
No way, I got a little nervous when I saw PodTech get sold for $500,000 but think podcasts can be very useful in delivering messages …. just realize going in you aren’t really doing social media by doing a bunch of podcasts. Does this mean I will stop my podcast series? …. no, I enjoy it too much to stop!
So what’s your view …. is podcasting social media to you?

But these days you hear a lot of discussions about the explosion of new media types and formats like RSS feeds, blogs, podcasts, video, communities, micro-blogging and other emerging forms of social media. And it is causing plenty of concern that this disruption of media is eroding the traditional command and control branding that has become such common place for marketers.
Well, I say hallelujah and good riddance!
I believe that there is a very compelling argument that media doesn’t have to be fragmented while at the same time the message need not be command and control anymore. It is only a matter of knowing how to orchestrate it.
This is why a recent BusinessWeek article on Ford surprised me so much. Ford hired a very talented marketer away from Toyota named James Farley (FYI – cousin of the late Chris Farley). Farley has been doing a masterful job on several levels: he has built/is building a dream team of marketers, making product managers be wholly accountable for individual product launches (like the new Flex) and then building the kind of consensus around a new brand message that some of us can only dream of, bringing in key dealership owners to help with the final message selection. But in the end he came away with a new brand message of — Ford: Drive One.
Nice but – It’s a one way message, like Nike: Just do it. There is no conversation in there. How can I have a conversation with a brand that is ordering me to drive one of their vehicles?
In agonizing about our new brand message …. New Thinking for a Changing World. I knew I could build content and harness the power of the organization around it. I never would have felt comfortable going to the market with a message like BearingPoint: Just do it!
So here is the secret.
First, the brand manager needs to architect a single theme that can be used across all media traditional or otherwise. Notice here I didn’t say command and control at all …. just to create a theme that is broad enough to use across every aspect of your media plan and “invite” customers and prospects to “engage” with it.
Next, you need to give your customers and prospects the digital tools to comment, to interact, and to add to the conversation. Then you add in more traditional elements of a media plan that all point to the online conversation and you will end up supercharging your media plan!
The bottom line is your customers and prospects are perhaps the most savvy engaged technology users of any buyer in any industry. You can’t expect to reach them with just traditional media only anymore, you need to deliver your message in a way that is targeted to their exact interests. So why not get out there where they talking about your product or service, and give them a conversation starter along with the permission to start a dialog with your brand!

These questions and more are why I interviewed Jim Calhoun the CEO of Popular Media for his advice on how to really make your Buzz Marketing programs engaging.
So what’s Jim’s advice on how to make good decisions when it comes to Viral or Buzz Marketing?
Two tenets – Make it fun to share and Make it fun to get …. this is a base minimum for any Buzz program. To hear more of his advice on how to make your campaigns go viral check out our podcast.

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About Jim
Jim co-founded PopularMedia and has served as chief executive officer since its inception in 2003. He is responsible for guiding the company’s strategy, growth, operations and customer satisfaction. A true Silicon Valley veteran, Jim has helped a broad range of businesses grow through technology and marketing — from startups such as Glam Media, Inc. to global leaders such as HP and IBM. Prior to founding PopularMedia, Jim founded CustomerClick LLC, a privately held direct marketing services firm based in San Francisco. Previously, Jim served as Vice President of Products at NetObjects, Inc. Jim is a former reviews editor at CNET and holds a degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri.

While blogs and social media have become increasingly common – discussions occurring on message boards and within forums aren’t usually surfaced by traditional search engines. This kind of web content is multiplying rapidly and you are going to need something dedicated to getting to the content underneath.
So I interviewed Scott Germaise the director of product management for Twing to find out how we should be using this great new tool for your reputation monitoring efforts.

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About Scott
Scott is currently the Director of Product Management at Twing.com, a vertical search engine for searching and discovering communities. I’ve been in the online biz since the early days at Prodigy, was a co-founder and VP, Information Architecture at About.com, worked for or on other community sites such as ClubMom.com.

Create content that doesn’t interrupt users as they explore what they’re interested in. Instead, create the very content that is what they’re interested in so, by definition, they are interacting with your brand.
You will see this more and more as marketers create better and better content rivaling that of traditional media houses. A great example of this is Greg the Architect, which is both a blog series and a video series. It is so in tune with TIBCO’s SOA product that it has become a rallying cry within the organization. It also has the side benefit of positioning the company’s brand perfectly against the competition.
This is a great example of pull content rather than push content, let’s say. And that’s really the goal of new media …. create the nexus for your brand and the media it takes to make that brand experiential.

Within his quote is the idea that we as marketers need to focus on driving fundamental shifts in customer behavior. Using tactics like pay per click advertising, you can effectively do just that. One well-placed Google AdWords can get prospects to engage in the exact behavior you want them to! It’s short. It works. And John would be pleased!
Other forms of media, however, can no longer deliver a captive audience. Customers and prospects have plenty of reasons to dislike media these days: irrelevance, interruption and just plain clutter.
But now factor in social media. The media balance is shifting from push to pull. Content creators represent 13% of all U.S. adults online. That means command and control of exact behaviors just gets harder every day.
So to think marketers can really affect customer behavior with social media is a dangerous idea to hang your hat on these days. Sure, marketers can perhaps influence behaviors with forms of social media like communities. But to me, it seems like we are getting further and further away from where Professor Quelch was directing us.
What’s your view?