QViews

How to Handle the Obligations of Brand Community

Once you've committed to a brand community, you accept some leadership from them. You DO get to set boundaries, but within those boundaries, you have to let the brand change. Not just evolve into something more successful, but to follow where its market wants to take it. That's very, very hard to do.

Adweek: These Brands Build Community. 2008-May-12, by Brian Morrissey

"The community changes the brand to suit them," said Jeffrey Kalmikoff, CCO at Threadless parent Skinnycorp. "We don't have expectations of what Threadless will be. We just manage the parameters." That includes trying to manage the perception that the brand is getting too big. It turned down offers to sell its shirts in department stores, for example, and chose to open retail stores in markets like Chicago and Boulder, Colo., rather than New York and Los Angeles.

How to Commit to your Audience

As marketers struggle to take advantage of the hot new trend of social networking sites, they are stumbling on their own short-term thinking. They can't just run an advertisement or even a campaign. They have to make a commitment to participate in the community, for better or for worse.

Adweek: Social Ad Lessons, 2008-May-19, by Brian Morrissey

RockYou has seen success matching movies with its applications; Vampire flick 30 Days of Night made a good fit with its Vampire app, resulting in 60,000 registrations for the movie. "The biggest misconception is people assume the performance of these campaigns is the same as the performance of general social networks," said Ro Choy, vp of business development at RockYou. While progress is being made and lessons learned, Schafer believes advertisers need to deal with a more fundamental problem of campaigns in social media: They're not well-suited as short-term endeavors. His agency helped develop an Entourage community on MySpace that has run for four years, requiring continued tending and activation. Yet for most clients, social media campaigns tend to mean running ads for a set period of time. "What social networks are more fertile for are initiatives about CRM and changing attitudes, rather than awareness, frequency and reach," he said.

Marketing with Social Objects Vs. Social Media

"Social media marketing" is justifiably hot. If your brand can participate, you have an opening to find more evangelists, build awareness, obtain cachet, and maybe even ride a trend to higher revenues, all at lower cost than traditional advertising. However, the unpredictability of social media marketing is daunting to many marketers.

Fortunately, the architects of social media are beginning to find a path. Jyri Engestrom, the founder of Jaiku, recommends five principles for building a social service. First you must define a "social object" that participants can share. That item may be a video clip, a new communication method, a hot deal, or a new job lead. Whatever it is, it must be presentable as a gift. View the whole 50-minute presentation to get tremendous insights into the dynamics of social media. (Site is Dutch, but video is English.)

Gapingvoid: Looks like i'm back drinking the stormhoek kool-aid again, 2008-Apr-11, by Hugh MacLeod

Between 2005-2007, Jason Korman and I tried out a lot of different experiments with social media. Some worked better than others. Some of the stuff we had high hopes for, utterly failed. Some of the stuff we had very small expectations for, caused major earthquakes in the wine marketing world, and sold many tens of thousands of wine cases. Like they say in the movie business, nobody knows anything. That being said, we did learn the hard way that there's a lot to be said for keeping things simple.

Gapingvoid: More thoughts on social objects, 2007-Oct-24, by Hugh MacLeod

The most important word on the internet is not "Search". The most important word on the internet is "Share". Sharing is the driver. Sharing is the DNA. We use Social Objects to share ourselves with other people. We're primates. we like to groom each other. It's in our nature.

How to Serve the Tribe

One way to avoid depersonalizing the people who use your product or service is to consider them as members of your tribe, instead of as a target market. You have to live close with members of your tribe, and you can't afford to disappoint them.

Seth's Blog: Tribe Management. 2008-Jan-30, by Seth Godin

Tribe management is a whole different way of looking at the world. It starts with permission, the understanding that the real asset most organizations can build isn't an amorphous brand but is in fact the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them. It adds to that the fact that what people really want is the ability to connect to each other, not to companies. So the permission is used to build a tribe, to build people who want to hear from the company because it helps them connect, it helps them find each other, it gives them a story to tell and something to talk about.

How Brands Make Friends

Collecting all the data in the world will not make the target your friend. Facebook, ePinions, and StyleHive make it possible for people who have nothing else in common to band together and compare data about their suppliers. Have you been treating your targets like human beings? Do they have warm, fuzzy stories to share about you?

HubMagazine.com: Is Friending ending CRM'ing?, Nov-Dec 2007, by Charlie Tarzian

We have built these monoliths of web and email infrastructures. We have names in our databases. Certainly, some of us even have sales histories to go along with those names and that help us tee-up that never-ending, all-you-can-eat email machine with a constant flow of relevant and timely offers. But that doesn’t mean you have “friends.”

We have email and e-CRM summits, e-sales planners and sales enablement tools. We have call centers that interact on the web with a caller. We sometimes even have face-to-face meetings.Yet, if 92 percent of Americans surveyed by Roper Reports (2004) rate word-of-mouth of friends and family as being among best source of ideas and information, then decisions about brands in people’s lives are conversations we are generally not a part of.

How to Establish Good Networking Habits

Unless you recruited avid networkers, getting employees to socialize in the business community can be a daunting challenge. Making them do it one particular way, such as joining professional associations, or entertaining clients, or using Facebook (see below), will probably lead to gaming and faking. Every business is part of a larger social system that employees should understand, so people should be informed when recruited that you expect them to make and sustain connections. Then you should give them the opportunity to do it their own way, but you should also make them accountable for sharing their knowledge about the community with the rest of the company. Finally, you have to be the role model.

Marketing Profs Daily Fix: Frivolous Facebook Fridays?. 2007-Nov-9, by Paul Barsch

Recently, Business Week had a brief article titled, “Now Social Networking Fridays” that described one company’s attempt at using social networking tools to improve recruiting, networking and even employee morale. The company in question, Serena Software, has launched “Facebook Fridays” where employees are asked to spend one hour each Friday to “update their profiles, collaborate with colleagues and clients, and recruit for Serena.” The goal of Facebook Fridays, according to SVP Rene Bonvanie, is to “get people to communicate and collaborate more.” On the whole, this doesn’t seem like a bad idea, especially if your community and customers are mostly online.

If you need some help in getting "shy" employees to join the community, I highly recommend Susan RoAne.

How to Socialize

Now that marketing is a conversation, many companies are surprised to realize they don't know how to hold up their end. Over at ChasNote, Chas Edwards describes a program where WebEx offered free services and effectively "sponsored conversations" among their target audience. (Talk among yourselves...)

In an August 2007 article in BusinessWeek about fashion marketers participating in a new community on MySpace, Reena Jana notes that most of them want to post runway video or buy ads, but somebody there knows how to socialize...

Designers such as Isaac Mizrahi ... regularly update their personal MySpace pages with details about their own creative processes and tastes. Mizrahi includes unknown MySpace designers alongside his celebrity "friends" to nurture a creative community around his brand. "When a designer offers access and intimacy, he allows a sense of belonging with his audience," says Shawn Gold, MySpace's senior vice-president of marketing. "They can create a network of mutual appreciation."

Kellogg Shares its Graphic Heritage

Now Kellogg's cereal fans can get toys, clothes and collectibles decorated with their favorite characters, like Tony the Tiger, below. Buy it retail at the Kellogg's store, but they are hoping to see them on eBay soon.

Chicago Sun-Times: Kellogg artwork a grrrreat novelty, 2006-Nov-10, by Denise O'Neal

...said Kathleen Pavlack-Glassman, senior manager worldwide of consumer products for the Kellogg Company. "We at Kellogg are very thankful that we can share the company's visual history with our loyal consumers, giving them back a bit of their childhood to enjoy all over again."...

Let 'em do it themselves

Fresh Express is running a promotional contest, but what is amazing is that they are inviting teenagers to submit their own salad recipe. To help activate the audience, they are teaming up with an established community called Do Something.

Progressive Grocer: Fresh Express Spearheads 'Go Green' Tween Challenge 2006-Nov-1, no byline

"I was in the kitchen putting a salad together when my two young daughters said they wanted to make one, too," said Fresh Express president Tanios Viviani. "It dawned on me then that we need to involve our young kids in the process of making healthy eating a part of their lives rather than just talking at them."...

Going Where Your Audience Is

People judge you by your associates, and the new social media are making that a very big marketing issue. Marketers now have to figure out where their customers are congregating, go there, and act like they belong.

ChiefMarketer.com: No Escaping Online PR. By Sherry Chiger 2006-Oct-31

... The tools of Web 2.0 can [give] companies more control in their ability to talk directly to consumers. For instance, (Product) Red, a not-for-profit brand founded by Bono to raise funds to fight AIDS in Africa, has a Website (JoinRed.com) and has been promoted heavily in ads from commercial partners such as the Gap. But within a week of adding a MySpace page, visits to JoinRed.com rose nearly 80%.

Bring a Stake to the Game

Desire to create a "cool" product leads many marketers to "urban youth," where they hope to capture the loyalty of this trend-setting audience. Looking over recent successes and failures in marketing to urban youth in the U.K., James Curtis of BrandRepublic notes that marketers need to accept the diversity and frequent poverty of this market's members and meet them on their own terms. You can't join a poker game without a stake, and you can't play in this sophisticated market unless you contribute.

Sprite U.K. has experienced some success in this market by sponsoring Urban Games and inviting grafitti artists to contribute artwork for cans, which are then sold at the regular price, but as limited editions.

...According to Glen O'Connell, sports and lifestyle marketing manager for video-game company Electronic Arts (EA), this kind of two-way interaction is essential. 'We very much see this audience as one that wishes to interact with the product and brand, and experience it the way they see fit,' he says. 'But they will only do this if the mindset is right. The approach should not be "I know what you like best", but rather "Tell me what you like and I'll tell you how my product can excite you".'...

from BrandRepublic: Youth marketing: What's under the hood? 2006-Oct-18 by James Curtis

Crown Royal Brands Barbershops

What a phenomenal way to "brand space" and build community at the same time. To strengthen ties with the black community, Crown Royal targets the owners of barber shops and offers to update their shop--in Crown Royal style, of course. They get new barber chairs, fresh paint, lighting, and flat screen TVs. Then Crown Royal throws a big party for the barber shop regulars. Don't you know that every time someone walks into the barber shop, they think about that party again!

Yahoo Finance: Crown Royal 'Makes The Cut' In Neighborhood Barbershops Across the Country, 2006-Oct-9, press release

Since early 2005, the Crown Royal Barbershop has traveled across the U.S. and to date has refurbished 11 barbershops in several major cities, including Chicago, Houston, New York, St. Louis, and Philadelphia. Late last year, Crown Royal deployed a special mobile version of its Barbershop program to the Gulf Coast region to benefit evacuees displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Pontiac Wins the Gen Y Garage with Music

Pontiac has been doing an amazing job of appealing to younger car buyers, mostly by being humble and lovable. They have a music sponsorship for emerging artists called Pontiac Garage concert series (because cars and emerging musicians compete for the garage, get it?) They attracted 55,000 to the concert in Times Square, and Harris Interactive says they've reduced the median age of their shopper by 13 years and become the highest rated car brand among Generation Y.

MediaPost: Pontiac's Music Tie-Ins Pull In Younger Drivers, 2006-Sep-28, by Karl Greenberg

"I love music, but as a marketer with a big budget, I realize I'm perceived as 'the man,' the person who many musicians see as the evil person who can ruin them" by luring them to sell out, said [GM Director of Marketing Mark-Hans] Richer....The key to avoiding that kind of invidious association is not to ask the question, "Can music make the brand better?" but rather: "Can the brand make the music better?"

New Participatory Marketing Model

Researching their market, pre-launch, the new CW Network found that everyone expected them to push the envelope. And so they decided to become the most participatory network, encouraging involvement of both viewers and advertisers. Advertisers like P&G's Herbal Essence can submit 2-minute content wraps. Herbal Essence is talking about Fashion Week and hot hairstyles. Viewers can go online to the web site or the MySpace page and compete in contests to make TV spots, appear in TV spots and appear in the TV shows.

Washington Post: New Marketing Model for New CW Network, 2006-Sep-18, by Lynn Elber (Associated Press)

While established broadcasters maneuver to exploit the Internet, iPod and other technology, CW is building them into its carefully designed model, its executives said. "The words we use to describe CW, besides the young demographic, are innovation, participation, connection and community," said [CW Entertainment President Denise] Ostroff, ... She cited market research that showed its target audience, found at the 60-million-strong intersection of Generations X and Y, "is a 'we' generation, not a 'me' generation."

Sustaining Fan Communities

Although it's amusing, I've been uncertain about how important the Snakes on a Plane phenomenon would be. Now Jake McKee has an excellent analysis. When the company takes the ball and builds on what the fans have done, then we can have something better than ever before, but it's a delicate balancing act, as Jake explains.

Community Guy: Snakes on a Plane: The Community Ecosystem, 2006-Aug-20, by Jake McKee

When in balance, ecosystems are surprisingly robust, growth happens, species flourish, everyone grows. ... But when an ecosystem is thrown off balance, it can easily and quickly fall apart. This is what happens when marketers think of the fan community as nothing more than “free marketing”. This is what happens when fans forget that businesses need to make money in order to stay in business.

In an “Community Ecosystem”, much of the burden for maintaining that balance falls to the marketer, whether they like it or not. Marketers have the budgets, they have the time, and they have the vested interest in ensuring that the ecosystem stays viable....

Gaming Community Encouraged to Design by Microsoft

Microsoft is expected to announce XNA Game Studio Express, a low-cost version of its expensive XNA game development tools. As the gaming audience becomes more sophisticated, its tools like these that may make a big difference in market share.

NY Times: Microsoft Has a Starter Kit for Aspiring Game Designers, 2006-Aug-14, by Robert Levine

For Microsoft, the goal is to inspire amateurs to share or sell relatively simple games on the company’s Xbox Live network. (Microsoft will not own any rights to products created with these tools.) Programs created with XNA Game Studio Express will not look as good as most packaged titles. But at a time when gamers seem tired of sequels and genre standards, the company says it believes that some kind of independent games business could provide a breath of fresh air. “We thought a lot about ‘The Blair Witch Project,’ ” said Scott Henson, a director for Microsoft’s game developer group, referring to the low-budget horror film that became a surprise hit in 1999.

Film Community Built by AOL

To promote a documentary of the lives of soldiers who've served in Iraq called The Ground Truth, AOL has created a special section in AIM pages. The site is exceptionally vibrant and I hope it continues the story for a long time. It's not clear whether the producer had to pay AOL, but probably not. It's an excellent demonstration of the AIM Pages capabilities.

Adotas: AOL Lends Social Networking Touch to Focus Features War Doc, 2006-Aug-8

Along with the training and the actual harrowing footage of the war itself, the film takes a look at the soldiers as they return home, facing their own personal demons in the process. But rather than just leave the film be, AOL is giving these troops a new voice through its AIM Pages, the company’s social networking-based entity. ... The Ground Truth AIM Page will expand the voices of these veterans through user-generated video, photos, blogs and comments, providing a forum for debate and self-expression. Information about veterans services organizations and support groups will also be available on the film’s AIM Page.

Gated Brand Communities

In contrast to the open branded communities visible at Amazon, Netflix and CNet, closed communities of 400 to 1,000 highly involved customers and influencers are being created by many companies. Communispace currently manages about 225 for companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Hallmark, Reebok, State Farm and Starwood.

Advertising Age: Welcome to the Anti-Social Club, 2006-Aug-7, by Matthew Creamer

Community members assured Unilever's Axe that its Tsunami body spray wasn't an insensitive name following the 2004 disaster and they helped Kraft decide which Asian foods it should include in a line of diet products. Charles Schwab himself dipped into the community to sample investment strategies and market viewpoints prior to going on a press tour.

Unlike, say, a corporate-sponsored page on MySpace, you can't just visit those communities. In fact, you won't see them at all, unless you cough up the $200,000 a year it costs to build one of your own. They're accessible only to consumers that have been invited into them.

Key Chains and Candy for the Community, too

After years of licensing whatever cartoon characters are popular for key chains sold in gift shops, Monogram International has begun to think about the community it serves and items they might like to see. One of the results: gummy candy shaped like pink ribbons, with some profit donated to the American Breast Cancer Association.

St. Petersburg Times: Welcome to the fun factory, 2006-Jul-31, by Paul Swider (via Extra Texture)

Monogram International is broadening its product line and opening its doors to a younger demographic. "It's important to meet the audience," said Vesiah Lee, the new Monogram president, who is introducing students and other groups of children to the company that makes licensed products for Disney, Marvel comics, Nickelodeon, Warner Bros. and more.... from Hong Kong, Lee is making use of her experience with Chinese industry to broaden the company's offerings, but she also wants to expand its community appeal.

Mini Flaunts Customer Privileges

The new ad agency for the BMW Mini has surveyed the trends in customer-oriented marketing and produced a very interesting mash-up that seems to combine the grassroots feel of a Harley-Davidson rally with the exclusivity of Lexus' owner privileges. A magazine print campaign is running in conjunction with a direct mailing to Mini owners that allows them to decode secret messages in the ads and win prizes. At least some of the prizes help customers participate in a two-week road rally for Mini owners.

BuseinssWeek: For Your Eyes Only, 2006-Jul-31, by Burt Helm

"It's a covert and an overt campaign almost simultaneously," says John Butler, a creative director at Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners, Mini's new ad agency. "If you get the kit, you're rewarded. If not, you get the gist that owning a Mini is like being in a club." The prizes perpetuate that clubbiness. The first will be an invitation to join Mini's upcoming "Mini Takes the States" event, a cross-country rally where hundreds of Mini Coopers will drive from Monterey, Calif., to Lakeville, Conn.

Romance Authors Offer Connections

Using a new web site, www.AvonFanLit.com, HarperCollins will stage a writing contest for their audience, with competition to write chapters and possible email contact from the authors in the Avon romance line. The authors will judge the competition and contact fans individually where they feel they have something to share. Trachtenberg and Steinberg note that similar contests have not always fared well. The publishers hope to defray the costs by selling advertising space on the web site and in the email announcements, but they have to find third-party marketers who can benefit from that environment.

WSJ.com: HarperCollins Turns to Web, In a Search for More Romance, 2006-Jul-26, by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg and Brian Steinberg

"We're creating an online community that will bring the fans closer to the authors we publish," said Jane Friedman, CEO of HarperCollins. "If you are a fan and you get a communication from Julia Quinn, somebody you've been reading for years, then you'll be a fan of hers for life. And I think you'll become a fan of Avon's for life."

To Each Brand its Own Community

Building and running online communities for marketers is becoming big business. The Wall St. Journal has an interview with Peter Friedman, who has watched this business grow up. In 1996 he left Apple, where he'd been in charge of the customer support and started LiveWorld which manages communities for companies like Campbell's Soups, HBO, and TVGuide. LiveWorld recently partnered up with ad agency Ogilvy & Mather. Friedman believes that the community activities need to be an integrated part of a company's overall marketing strategy.

WSJ.com: Questions for … Peter Friedman, 2006-Jul-26, by Emily Steel

WSJ: Your service creates loyalty marketing communities, promising to integrate brands into customers' daily lives. How does this work generate a viral marketing buzz?

Mr. Friedman: We did a study with McKinsey that showed that people who participate in an online community, if it is done well, return to a site nine times as often and five times as long...that is a 45 times increase in loyalty.... So right there is a hard metric that shows if you do this community there is more happening. The second thing is that as you empower people within these communities ...they are talking. If they are talking about you online, then they are talking about you offline, so you create all of this word-of-mouth buzz. It is a word-of-mouth engine.

Janet Jackson Relinquishes Control to Fans

Impressed by artwork posted by her fans, Janet Jackson has announced a contest for designing the cover of her upcoming album. Four winners will be chosen and their designs printed for the first million copies (250,000 each?). Once their proposal has been submitted, fans are encouraged to invite their friends to come and see the contest. Sounds like fun to me.

News on Yahoo! Music: Janet Jackson Wants Fans to Design New Album Cover, 20006-Jul-18, by Billy Johnson Jr

Janet does not give participants any parameters for their designs. She wants them to be uninhibited and to "go for it." "That's what it's really about," Janet says, "for them to manipulate it and get creative, and go wherever their images takes them." To enter the contest, contestants should visit: http://designme.janetjackson.com.

Leveraging Communities to Reduce Risk

What fascinates me about the new movie studio Fox Atomic (a venture of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which also bought MySpace) is the way they are trying to connect with their audience in a broad variety of ways, reducing the risk and opening up for many inexpensive experiments. They are targeting 17- to 24-year-olds. They have transferred over Peter Rice (Napoleon Dynamite) to run the division. They are buidling a web site with a broad variety of content. They are publishing graphic novels. And you can expect them to use their web audience to find and test ideas for movies.

WSJ.com: Fox Atomic Aims to Be Web Crash Pad, 2006-Jul-19, by Kate Kelly

"The more someone feels that a film is for them, the more likely they are to go," says Jim Gianopulos, co-chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment. "So Fox Atomic is designed, in a manner parallel to Searchlight, to find a different kind of specialized film, and market it in a specialized manner."

Kiss Extends Brand to Coffee House

What a commitment to staying close to their fans(?!) Rockers Kiss are branching out with a coffee house in Myrtle Beach, SC.

Chron.com: Fans can rock and roll all night at Kiss Coffeehouse, 2006-Jun-29, Associated Press

"You can live to rock, but you have to eat to live," Stanley told the crowd. Some fans drove from as far away as Colorado and Oregon. One came from Poland. "I can't believe I just met them," said Adrian Czarnbey, who introduced the band at a news conference. "It's just like seeing Jesus for me."

United Way Twin Cities Segments Donors but Doesn't Pigeon-hole Them

The Greater Twin Cities United Way (Minneapolis/St. Paul) has some of the best marketing practices I've seen. Realizing that people wanted to be more involved they studied and segmented their donors based on behavior, but they didn't then limit the donors' options. They set up programs that would appeal to the existing segments, then marketed all the programs to all donors. Everyone can select their favorite way to participate.

Inside1to1: United Way Creates Donor Communities, 2006-Jun-26, by Alissa Pepe

For example, a 35-year-old-donor has an opportunity to join an Emerging Leaders program, even though she might be [demographically] part of the Young Achievers group. ...

"Participation usually leads to a stronger interest and relationship," [Sandy] Clifford [director of marketing technology and IT] says. For instance, the Emerging Leaders group recently held a wine tasting event. Four-hundred people attended, allowing those in the group to network and build the community.

HP Shows New Way to Socialize using your PC

Hewlett-Packard is trying to put the "personal" back into computers. They have come up with a pretty interesting activity for college students. I think this will either take off or drop dead, and I admire them for trying it. To hedge their bets they have lots of other diversions on the web site.

iMedia Connection: HP Goes Wide to Get Personal, 2006-Jun-20, by Neal Leavitt

"We want to reinforce the personal relationship to the PC and show consumers all the different tasks they can accomplish with an HP personal computer," Reyas says. "It's based on the notion that the PC is autobiographical...

One innovative aspect of the campaign involves MTV's college network, mtvU. A series of short, four-minute episodes on the "Meet or Delete" series follows college students as they determine if they want to meet-- based solely on the contents of their hard drives.

To complement the programming, MTV, mtvU and HP have launched 14 regionalized "Meet or Delete" online hubs with episodes worldwide, unseen footage, interactive games, free music downloads, updates on previous cast members, casting calls and more at www.meetordelete.com.

Many Ways to Interact with Customers

Many companies are learning how to profit from customer involvement, including Fluevog Shoes, Jones Soda, and Threadless.com. The current craze for customer-generated advertising is just the tip of the iceburg. I recommend reading the entire article to see all the ways businesses are sharing with their customers and improving their business processes. For every business, co-creation can be a different experience from product design to packaging to advertising.

New York Times: To Charge Up Customers, Put Customers in Charge, 2006-Jun-18, by William C. Taylor

"Some of the ideas from customers are striking, but impossible to make," Mr. Fluevog said. What tends to work best, he explained, are intriguing twists on design themes that he and his colleagues are already exploring. "But even submissions we can't make add to the stimulation," he added. "Our customers get more involved, and we get insights into who they are and what they're doing. It's better for both of us." ...

Eric von Hippel, head of the innovation and entrepreneurship group at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, calls this bottom-up phenomenon "lead-user innovation," ... "This is not traditional market research — asking customers what they want. This is identifying what your most advanced users are already doing and understanding what their innovations mean for the future of your business."

Entourage 2.0: That Chicken's Got Nothing on Ari Gold

Of course popular TV shows now have vibrant web sites, but Entourage (HB0) demonstrates a fine grasp of Web 2.0 principles with their new web-based promotions. Fans get to play the roles, win prizes and share the fun with their friends.

The antithesis of the Subservient Chicken is Entourage agent Ari Gold and you can be grilled by him just like the one of the show's stars at http://interviewwithari.com. If you play long enough, he'll say something that will cause you to burst out laughing.

Over at MySpace, Entourage is sponsoring a competition for fans to build their own entourage using the MySpace tools. Two winners will be selected, one by a panel of judges and one by the fans. Prizes, of course, include going to Hollywood and acting like a big shot. Here's a sample entry that was G-rated last time I looked.

New York Times: Using the Internet, HBO's 'Entourage' Finds New Ways to Hook Its Fans, 2006-June-5, by Lisa Miller (purchase required)

Deep Focus, the Brooklyn-based online marketing agency that works frequently with HBO, geared the campaign to the show's core fan base of young, Internet-aware viewers....

For Profitable Attention, Start a Conversation

Why:  To get people's attention, it used to be enough to entertain or inform them. Competition among the messages has destroyed the return on that investment. Now you have to generate a conversation.

Context:  Direct response marketing has always judged its success by the amoung of response, preferably in the form of purchases, it generates. Advertising for awareness was much more common, but now it's dying. Consumers can't afford to be aware of things they don't need, and advertisers can't afford to waste time speaking to them.

The Diving Board:  Two valuable articles have recently been published.

On mobile marketing: For Tiny Screens, Some Big Dreams in New York Times, May-21-06, by Lorne Manly

[Trip Hawkins, early Apple employee, founder of leading game maker Electronic Arts, is now running a startup for mobile games called Digital Chocolate, which promises conversations.]

"Content is just a means to an end, so there's something to talk about," he said. In other words, social connection trumps all.

On research and development: How and Where to Listen to Customers in iMedia Connection, May-23-06, by Laurent Flores of Brand Delphi.

...although questions are a great way to learn from consumers, the real insights are those that come from day-to-day observations and conversations that occur naturally...

Do you let your contacts know how to reply? How have you enabled your listening post?

Assembling a Customer Advisory Board

Customer/consumer advisory boards aren't anything new, but what a fun one to be on: updating the image of Tweety Bird. I like the way they used PDAs to collect information instead of written forms.

ChiefMarketer.com: Ambassadors Transform Tweety From Classic to Contemporary by Matthew Glass, April 2006

The objective was simple: to reposition Tweety as more of a contemporary fashion/lifestyle icon for teens and women and less of a classic licensed character. Influencing this trendy demographic would not be as easy. Our first step was to assemble the “Tweety Squad”—a group of trendsetting teenage girls aged 13-17—who could provide Warner Bros. with fashion feedback and new product ideas while generating excitement for the re-branded Tweety among their peers.

GCM deployed promotional teams to seek out and recruit Tweety Squad members at beaches, parks and malls across the country. Our teams used handheld PDA’s to gather information, and by the end of the four-month search process, we had enlisted 2,400 hand-picked teens. Once the squad was assembled, the next step was to engage them in an open dialogue about what was hot and what was not among them and their friends.

Verizon Innovates in Music Distribution to Attract Fans

As wireless carriers like Verizon and Cingular enter the media business, we're starting to see some very appealing new combinations of content and service. Possibilities for joint promotions seem very nice if you can keep the risk under control. Some of these new services will catch on and some won't. What could you share to your audience via cell phone?

ClickZ: Verizon Wireless Provides SXSW Concert Footage, Enhances Music Offerings by Kate Kaye, March 17, 2006

Aiming to target the indie music community and bolster its V CAST music content selection, Verizon Wireless is providing concert footage from ...South by Southwest (SXSW) event in Austin, and expanding relationships with independent music distributors....

the company wants to build its song library to one million tunes, and needs to ensure critical mass in adoption of its V CAST handsets before it puts a full-fledged campaign behind its music product....

In another appeal to the underground sounds set, the firm has paired up with MySpace, offering contenders in the site's "Calling All Bands" contest the chance to have their song, video, ring tone and ring back tone released on Verizon Wireless.

4300 musicians participated in the MySpace contest. I wonder if any effort was made to spread the word to all their fans, or just the winner's fans.

Run London Keeps Building Community

I've mentioned before how much I admire the Run London web site from Nike. Now they've added a Google Maps feature that gives users another reason to come back and share. Although I've categorized this story as "community building," Nike is making itself useful to the runners of London as well.

Run London with Nike (via ClickZ story by Zachary Rodgers)

You can become part of the Run London community any time throughout the year just by signing up when it's time for the next 5K run. ...Just leave your email address below and we'll be in touch.

Plot your route to measure the distance, then save it to share with the rest of the red shirts. Search by postcode, route-length or type of run for routes tried and tested by your fellow London runners.

Finding Fans, er, Friends

Since its parent company purchased social networking site MySpace.com, Fox is now using MySpace to promote its TV shows. On MySpace.com, attaching your name to a profile as a "friend" doesn't mean you know someone but rather that you approve of something in their profile. So MySpace has been a great place for rock bands to establish fan connections, and I would expect most TV programs would eventually want a site. It's a good way for the program to demonstrate its support and the fans can connect with each other.

Fake profiles are so common on social networking sites that hardly anyone objects, but the creativity and satisfaction of solving the mystery better be a fun pay-off, or fans may feel ripped off.

MediaPost: Fox Gets 'Free Ride' On MySpace, Social Net To Promote TV Net

News Corp.'s Fox is using heavily trafficked MySpace.com to promote new comedy "Free Ride"--a possible preview of how it will use the online force to plug new venture My Network TV. Over a month ago, Fox seeded MySpace, a social networking site, with "profile" pages for "Free Ride" characters "Nate" and "Dove." At first, stealth marketing was used. The profiles bore no mention of the show.... viral marketers then worked to get people to visit them, interact, and hopefully return. 

Now...Fox has created a special MySpace page devoted to "Free Ride" accessible through a link on the MySpace home page. That site includes a video trailer, MySpace pages for all nine show characters, and the opportunity for MySpace users to link their profiles to the site, becoming "friends" of the show.

Energizer Institutionalizes the Brand Image

Having a brand image built around a character strength is a natural advantage. Realizing that nobody doesn't admire persistance, Energizer has established the "Keep Going Hall of Fame." The annual solicitation and induction of new members is a long-lasting campaign platform.

Energizer Keep Going Hall of Fame (via Extra Texture)

We all know people who continually go above and beyond. People who have shown uparalleled determination and tireless spirit - ordinary people with extraordinary attitude and energy. The Energizer "Keep Going" Hall of Fame was designed as a way to celebrate these stories and to meet the people who inspire us all to keep going. Who Belongs In The Hall Of Fame? Ordinary people with extraordinary spirit, determination, and courage. They never give up. They keep going, just like the Energizer Bunny. It could be your child or parent, a student or a teacher, the mailman, a co-worker or a dear friend - anyone you feel deserves recognition for their shining example of endurance, determination and perseverance.

Don't overlook the opportunity to build community around the universal vales associated with your brand.

Espresso Dating

On finding out that the most popular place for a first date is a coffee shop, Strarbucks reaches out to the dating community. Starbucks does a good job of staying in dance step with its customers.

Espresso Dating (sighted by Page Rockwell at Salon, subscription required)

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