CEO Dianne Wilkins Speaks at Forrester

CEOs Dianne Wilkins, Critical Mass and Billy Vassiliadis, R&R Partners, will be speaking at the Forrester Consumer Forum in Chicago on October 27, 2009. Their presentation, entitled “Viva Las Vegas!” will discuss Las Vegas’ resiliency through these turbulent economic times:

When the stakes are high, it pays to listen. The current economic trials have caused unprecedented adversity for the tourism industry: high gas prices, low consumer confidence, and the economy in decline have created a perfect storm of reasons not to travel. Yet, through it all, Las Vegas has persevered. Learn how the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, Critical Mass, and R&R Partners have kept Las Vegas on the map as the No. 1 tourist destination by bringing Vegas to life — through the eyes of real people who experienced it.

• See how an integrated 360-degree marketing strategy kept Las Vegas rolling despite the odds.
• Discover how social channels, from word of mouth to viral campaigns, can create a groundswell of passionate advocates for your brand.
• Understand how to listen, learn, and continually adapt your strategy to stay on top.

Scott Shamberg & Luxury Institute Present "Redefining Luxury Online"

On October 7, Critical Mass in partnership with the Luxury Institute recently hosted an invitation-only gathering for senior luxury executives at New York City’s exclusive CORE Club. Executives from Mandarin Oriental, Forbes, Intermix and illy caffe among others came to hear Milton Pedraza, CEO of the Luxury Institute, deliver a sneak preview of his new Luxury Institute WealthSurvey “Social Networking Habits and Practices of the Wealthy.”

Critical Mass Senior Vice President Scott Shamberg also presented on the topic: “Blending High-Touch and High-Tech: Redefining Luxury Online.” The presentation discussed how consumers, empowered with more access, tools and information than ever, have changed, while the fundamentals of luxury have remained the same. Quality. Exclusivity. Impeccable service. To thrive, Shamberg advised, luxury brands must learn how to translate their high-touch approach to the online world. Executives in attendance learned how to build meaningful relationships with valued, time challenged clientele by:

• Ensuring the online experience is worthy of their brand
• Designing an experience with customers in mind
• Managing the interactions across various channels

Recent Launches

Critical Mass Launches Multi-Channel Measurement Group Called Marketing Science

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – CALGARY, AB and CHICAGO, IL – Critical Mass (www.criticalmass.com), a digital marketing agency and unit of Omnicom’s Star Marketing Group (www.starmsgroup.com), today announced the launch of a new multi-channel measurement group aimed at driving accountability for marketing initiatives.

As more dollars shift to digital, with options for spend across all consumer touch points, a key area of focus for brands and agencies alike is proving their marketing efforts actually work. Critical Mass’ new Marketing Science group focuses on gathering insights to improve marketing and experience effectiveness through development of measurement strategy, KPI frameworks, and multi-channel data aggregation and analysis.

According to Shaina Boone, Group Marketing Science Director, Critical Mass, the team’s primary focus is to understand “the why” behind the data—across the breadth of marketing channels—in order to optimize and achieve long-term business goals. “We believe in analysis, not reporting,” said Boone. “Rather than simply focusing on objectives and results over a finite period of time, we ask questions that get to the root of causality: Why did an initiative do better than expected? What did the consumer do differently and why? This information helps with planning and optimization as we continue to improve the success of our clients’ marketing initiatives,” Boone added.

“In this business climate, clients are being held accountable for their marketing spend, and they are looking to us for proof that their marketing investments are working,” said Dianne Wilkins, Chief Executive Officer, Critical Mass. “Marketing Science is about providing them with the expertise and tools to deliver the right message at the right time to the right consumer—and ultimately, to measure effectiveness across the entire marketing mix,” Wilkins added.

Critical Mass’ Marketing Science Group is focused on developing customized solutions based on client needs. Services include Web Analytics, Customer Behavior Modeling, Marketing Mix Model design support, Brand Affinity, Neuromarketing, and Social Sentiment & Influencer Monitoring and Measurement.

According to Colleen DeCourcy, Chief Digital Officer, TBWA Worldwide, who collaborated with Critical Mass to form Omnicom digital agency, RIOT, “Critical Mass’ Marketing Science experts played a pivotal role in the development of Riot because they were able to participate in developing the overarching strategy for our client, and devise a methodology to prove that the strategy worked simultaneously.”

Contact:
Celia Jones
Critical Mass
312.705.4169
celiaj@criticalmass.com

Critical Mass Hosts AIGA SMALL TALK in Chicago

On September 15, Critical Mass opened its doors to the Chicago creative community for the AIGA “Small Talk V.” Group Creative Director JT Andexler opened the evening with a short history of Critical Mass, chronicling our humble beginnings as an interactive CD-Rom company and ultimate evolution into a world-class digital marketing agency with a client list that includes Rolex, adidas and Budweiser. Following JT’s introduction, three CM creative teams each presented a case study on some of our work:

Vegas Bound: The first case study, called “Vegas Bound,” took half the population of a small town in Texas and sent them to Las Vegas as part of a promotion encouraging America to “take a break.” The project took 13 weeks from initial sketches to the final production. Art Directors Jeremy Hlinak and Duane Wheatcroft humorously shared their experiences staying up late in Cranfills Gap, where there are no traffic lights, only two gas pumps, and just one bar in three counties.

Brandon and the Frog: The second case study, “Brandon and the Frog,” was a promotion directed to young DIYers for Valvoline. Greg Arvanitakis and Jamie Toal, creative leads on the project, presented a series of instructional videos starring gearheads Brandon and his best friend the Frog, who like to change their own oil. The project’s timeline was only 10 weeks and the budget was less than 200K — both very tight for such a production. “We had to beg, borrow and steal,” said Jamie who in addition to helping direct the project also wrote the scripts and the soundtrack. To stay in budget, and to keep up the DIY spirit, the team at CM hacked into Blogger to create the initiative’s web site. They also made use of popular social media sites to generate interest.

Gillette Stylers: After a short break, Tim Schavitz and Scott Serilla showed their online promotion for Gillette Stylers. Taking a choose-your-own-adventure approach, the project was called, “Take charge of your hair.” It showed men about to style their hair at crucial moments (like before an important meeting) with an angel and a devil character on either shoulder. The voice of reason, Mr. Gillette, would encourage good style. On the other shoulder, a coach, a mother or an unfashionable friend would suggest outlandish hair styles that only resulted in the main character's fall from grace. Again, the project had a small budget. “We do billion dollar web sites and incredible Flash work,” said Scott Serilla, “but tonight, we’re showing you labors of love.” An “all hands on deck,” approach was taken to this project as well, with art directors holding lights and acting as extras. A notable take-away from this case study is that Critical Mass had to convince the client that they could engage their audience with branded communications that didn't heavily push the product.

The evening concluded with a Q&A session. One member of the audience asked, “How does a print designer get online experience in order to stay marketable?” To this, several CM staff members suggested that traditional designers should begin by taking the time to understand new media by first getting involved— by signing up for Facebook or visiting YouTube. JT Andexler also asserted that “a good idea is a good idea,” and ultimately designers who produce good ideas, regardless of technological savviness, are the kind of people that Critical Mass seeks to work with and employ.

Alberta Venture – Steal Market Share in a Recession

It seems like everyone is doing it. Every time you turn on the TV more companies are sympathizing with your smaller budget. But when Quaker Oats suggests the high protein value of oatmeal makes it a viable alternative to costly meat – as if anyone is going to serve porridge at their next barbecue – you have to wonder if recession advertising has gone too far. So should you introduce a recession message into your marketing? Three experts weigh in.

“I think it shows a sensitivity to the current economy. However, businesses have to be careful not to send a message that price is the only reason to buy a product, because it may cheapen the image. If Sleep Country started pushing all low-end mattress, it might give the impression that they blow out bad quality. If a business is constantly having sales, it looks like they are in economic trouble, or they’re conditioning people to think of them as the discount solution.”

Jacqueline Drew, president, Start Marketing, Calgary

Some companies are probably using that message because it’s in line with their strategy, so if you’re the budget brand you’re reinforcing your strengths. But if your key position in marketing is a luxury brand, it would do you a lot of damage to position your product as budget conscious. Do you want to jump on the recession bandwagon, or move past it? If every product is using that message, more consumers will think “Oh, it’s worse than I thought.” Advertising can affect public perception and consumer confidence.

Geoff Grimble, Account Director, Toybox Media Inc., Edmonton

There is nothing inherently wrong with tweaking your brand to reflect the recession. But like most things, it’s the execution that matters. McDonald’s “Appetite Stimulus Package” is the same old value meal, wrapped up in slump slang. It’s lazy to slap a recession veneer on your brand; instead, strive for a deeper connection with your customer. Target’s “Brand New Day” ad series, for instance, is pitch-perfect. Recession-era products (i.e. hair clippers, self-tanner) are introduced as means to interact with the family. Thrift has never been this fun. “Dirt cheap” isn’t a long-term strategy; aspirational partner is. Ensure that brand tweaks make consumers feel like savvy shoppers, not scroungy skinflints.

DJ Francis, Author, OnlineMarketerBlog.com and senior content analyst, Critical Mass, Chicago

Critical Mass Announces Experience Distribution Practice

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - CALGARY, AB and CHICAGO, IL – Critical Mass (www.criticalmass.com), a digital marketing agency and unit of Omnicom’s Star Marketing Group (www.starmsgroup.com), today announced the creation of its Experience Distribution practice. Focused on driving consumer engagement at the point of need, the group’s proprietary methodology aligns business objectives and consumer insights to relevant marketing channels, and evaluates success across the breadth of digital initiatives—ultimately connecting brands with customers on their terms.

“Online behavior has fragmented into nearly infinite touch points—yet each one can be incredibly important in the total customer experience,” said Scott Shamberg, Senior Vice President, Marketing & Distribution, Critical Mass. “We believe marketing today is about conversation, dissemination and brand relevance. Our focus is building distributed experiences with purpose, not to interrupt, so they serve the customer and their needs uncovered in the planning process,” Shamberg added. Beyond the site, the group’s aim is to deliver portable content wherever the consumer is—from banners, email and widgets to mobile, social and video experiences—and to install the most effective method of measurement.

Critical Mass’ Distribution Methodology is based on a rigorous analysis of consumer behavior in order to identify clients’ Consumer Engagement Opportunity. Once business objectives and consumer insights are determined, the group implements a proprietary scoring methodology—based on Searchable, Syndicated, Situational and Social content—to prioritize and recommend the best avenues to influence desired consumer behavior. Measurement is the final step to evaluate effectiveness and evolve recommendations based on key learnings.

“Experience Distribution is about listening, learning, and capitalizing on relevance to drive conversion,” said Dianne Wilkins, Chief Executive Officer, Critical Mass. “Portable brand engagement and social media are tightly tied in our future view of the digital landscape and our business has evolved to meet that need,” Wilkins added.

According to Wilkins, breaking down traditional silos between disciplines such as strategy, media planning and search is a key point of differentiation. “Our Experience Distribution Methodology is integrated across all delivery teams. We believe this holistic approach leads to extraordinary brand experiences—ones that deliver relevance and customer value,” Wilkins said.

Contact:
Celia Jones
Critical Mass
312.705.4169
celiaj@criticalmass.com

WEBINAR: Distributing Brand Experiences

Scott Shamberg, SVP Marketing & Media, presented a webinar on the topic of distributed experiences. During the session, he answered the question: with consumers in control of their digital experiences and a multitude of channels to choose from, how do brands determine where they need to be? Shamberg discussed how the opportunity is ripe for brands to reach consumers by being everywhere—that’s relevant—and explained how to create extraordinary experiences for customers on their own terms.

Critical Mass Announces Launch Of Global Brand Website For Infiniti

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – CALGARY, AB and CHICAGO, IL – Critical Mass (www.criticalmass.com), an Omnicom digital marketing agency, and Infiniti, leading manufacturer of performance luxury vehicles, jointly announced the launch of a global brand website for Infiniti. The new site (www.infiniti.com) enhances the luxury automotive brand’s global presence while driving traffic to Infiniti’s extensive network of regional dealers.

Embodying the Infiniti brand promise of “inspired performance,” the site (www.infiniti.com) delivers an immersive online experience that draws the consumer into stories around each of Infiniti’s brand pillars and showcases the product through a brand lens. Papervision was utilized as a key technology to bring the experience to life through a tactile navigation. Beyond ensuring the brand’s visibility within existing, new and seed markets, the new site also serves the essential function of delivering users to the right regional site at the right time.

“When you are building a luxury brand on a global scale, the challenge is creating a seamless experience that resonates across different regions and divergent consumer needs and preferences,” said Shannon Deye, Senior Manager of Global Interactive Marketing, Infiniti. “We are continually expanding our geographic reach and this site will ensure that we are projecting a consistent brand image globally while at the same time driving visitors to our regional sites,” Deye added.

As Infiniti’s global Digital Agency of Record, Critical Mass also redesigned Infiniti’s Middle East site (www.infiniti-me.com) to bolster Infiniti brand's presence in the region. Launched on a global CMS platform, the site features a vibrant new design, 360 vehicle views, configuration tools to personalize your automobile before purchase, and the ability to request a test drive from Infiniti dealers across the region. The Infiniti Middle Eastern site is the first regional site to have language selection on the site itself (rather than on the redirect prior to the site) and was built with the flexibility to accommodate the nuances of both English and Arabic languages.

“Our experience has taught us that activating a luxury brand globally is all about effectively balancing global and local priorities, while always providing a relevant experience to the user,” said Chris Gokiert, President, Critical Mass. “We are looking forward to helping Infiniti define their long-term digital strategy and strengthen their global presence through the online channel,” Gokiert added.

Contact:
Celia Jones
Critical Mass
312.705.4169
celiaj@criticalmass.com

JT Andexler Participates in NY Festivals Panel

This panel will explore the role that craft still plays in the industry and how agencies can take advantage of their core competencies in the digital realm.

Speakers:
JT Andexler, Group CD Critical Mass
David Hernandez, Managing Director/ECD Tribal DDB
Steffan Postaer, Chairman and CCO - Euro RSCG
Diane Ruggie, Senior VP, Group CD, DDB
Dennis Ryan, CCO - Element 79
Moderator: Alan Wolk, Executive Director, Hive Awards

Critical Mass Launches Curious

CALGARY, AB and CHICAGO, IL – Critical Mass (www.criticalmass.com), a digital marketing agency and unit of Omnicom's Star Marketing Group (www.starmsgroup.com), has just announced the launch of Curious, a research division focused on helping companies use online communities to uncover consumer insights. A quick, cost-effective alternative to some traditional research methods, Curious builds and manages market research online communities to generate rapid qualitative insights from consumers.

According to Forrester Research's Brad Bortner, "Market research online communities (MROC)…provide cheaper, faster, and newer types of insights that today's traditional qualitative research modes, such as focus groups, don't currently provide" ("Will Web 2.0 Transform Market Research?," April 24, 2008).

The new Curious offering will enable Critical Mass to provide clients with an affordable vehicle to gather valuable insights from their customers. "The reality is that customers don't wait for a formal study or survey to have an opinion," said Arif Hirani, Consumer Research Director, Curious. "They are already talking about brands online—their likes and dislikes, needs and preferences. Our goal with Curious is to enable companies to join in on the conversation in a more controlled environment. By tapping into the power of a private online community, a company can actively listen to its customers and engage in an ongoing dialog, ultimately leading to a better experience with their brand," Hirani said.

In contrast to costly, time-consuming research methods such as focus groups, Curious is focused on generating insights quickly and efficiently, from custom communities comprised of a company's target consumer audience. Once assembled, the community can be asked virtually anything at any time—from opinions on brands to how they make purchasing decisions to desired product features—offering unmatched convenience and instantaneous customer feedback.

"Besides being nimble and cost-effective, the biggest benefit that Curious provides is time-to-value," said Dianne Wilkins, Chief Executive Officer, Critical Mass. "As a company, we are focused on creating extraordinary experiences. We believe the best way to do that is to dig deep and really understand the consumer. Curious plays a pivotal role by arming us with key insights that lead to meaningful experiences, ones that deepen the relationship between our clients and their customers," said Wilkins.

In addition to creating custom communities for clients, Curious also maintains its own private online community called ShopTalk, aimed at generating "quick hit" insights and answers to specific business questions, from topics ranging from retail to travel to banking. They also use it as a proving ground for clients that want to experiment on a smaller scale first.

About Critical Mass

Critical Mass (www.criticalmass.com), an Omnicom digital marketing agency, helps the world's leading companies use digital media to create extraordinary experiences—experiences that bring together creative thinking, smart ideas and emerging technologies to drive our clients' business. Consistently recognized by Forrester Research as a leading interactive agency, Critical Mass operates globally from offices in Calgary, Toronto, Chicago, New York, London, Costa Rica, and Amsterdam. For additional information, visit www.criticalmass.com.

About STAR Marketing

STAR Marketing (www.starmsgroup.com), a division of Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE: OMC) (www.omnicomgroup.com), is a network of Customer Relationship Management agencies and specialist services. STAR works with its clients on all aspects of CRM from strategic planning to program development and execution to campaign measurement. STAR companies have leading expertise in offline and online media, interactive, direct, digital, analytics, teleservices, e-mail, strategic consulting, and process improvement. Clients may access some or all of our capabilities directly or through a single point of contact to maximize campaign performance and ROI.

Contact:
Celia Jones
Critical Mass
celiaj@criticalmass.com

Research Magazine - Critical Mass gets Curious about online communities

Omnicom-owned digital marketing agency Critical Mass has set up a research division that will build and manage online market research communities for brand owners.

The division, called Curious, is headed by consumer research director Arif Hirani. “Customers don’t wait for a formal study or survey to have an opinion,” he said. “They are already talking about brands online — their likes and dislikes, needs and preferences.

“Our goal with Curious is to enable companies to join in on the conversation in a more controlled environment. By tapping into the power of a private online community, a company can actively listen to its customers and engage in an ongoing dialog, ultimately leading to a better experience with their brand.”

The agency maintains its own private community it calls ShopTalk, to deliver “quick hit” insights and answers to specific business questions, from topics ranging from retail to travel to banking.

Critical Mass works for clients including Gillette, car maker Infiniti Global, Budweiser and Rolex.

Heidi Skinner Speaks at OMMA Social

The good news: as social media has grown, so have the options in terms of social monitoring tools which can help companies figure out what their market is talking about. The bad news: they are all expensive, and it's hard to find the right fit. In this panel, those who have had to choose a social monitoring tool explain how they came to their decisions, and whether or not their evaluation of which social monitoring tool to use was on target.

Moderator
Catharine P. Taylor, Columnist, MediaPost

Panelists
Anna Banks, Group Director, Strategy, Organic, Inc
John Bell, Managing Director, 360° Digital Influence - Ogilvy
Pepper Evans Roukas, Director, Content and Community development, American Express
Heidi Skinner, Director of Emerging Media, Critical Mass

Mediaweek - MySpace Mojo, or No-Go? Buyers Suggest Revamps

For one of the Web's biggest sites, there's a lot that needs fixing over at MySpace.

Buyers and analysts have varying ideas on just what News Corp. should do with its ailing social net, ranging from the philosophical (decide who you are) to the logistical (cut down the clutter). But no one doubts that change is needed, and is coming soon.

It's been a rough few weeks for MySpace. A new CEO replaced the site's founder. Analysts downgraded their ad revenue forecasts. Then last week, the company laid off 452 people, with maybe more to come.

So just what should be done with MySpace? First, the good news. Though the site's audience slid from 73.7 million uniques in May 2008 to 70.2 million this May, per comScore (while Facebook's audience doubled), it's "still an eyeball fire hose," said Dave Martin, vp, digital media at Ignited.

That said, the site has seen its white-hot buzz dissipate. "Are they still an effective marketing vehicle? Yes," said Craig Woerz, managing partner, Media Storm. "But they're not the bright shiny new ring anymore."

Beyond buzz, MySpace, which declined to comment for this story, has seen a sharp drop in engagement. Per Nielsen Online, its average monthly time spent per person is now one hour 20 minutes from two hours last year. Facebook exceeds three hours.

To wit, many contend that MySpace needs to better define itself—either by getting more social, or less. eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson recalled that just a few years ago, MySpace came out with its Never Ending Friending study touting the power of social ads. "Then they stepped back and started calling themselves a social portal," she said.

In another switch of sorts, last year the site launched its Hypertargeting product, which promised to let advertisers target MySpace users based on their stated profile preferences. "That has nothing to do with social advertising," said Aho Williamson.

Given the recent innovation in the social media segment from Facebook and Twitter, many contend MySpace shouldn't try to catch up, but instead maintain its focus on being a high-reach content portal. However, that's not easy to pull off. "They are trying to be all things to all people," said Scott Shamberg, senior vp, marketing and media for the digital marketing agency Critical Mass. "They should really dig into their highest frequency users and carve out a niche."

Such as music, a longtime strength. Even so, despite MySpace Music's popularity, interest among advertisers is mild given its reputation as a background medium.

What about video? Long a strong No. 2 behind YouTube, in April Fox Interactive Media saw video traffic plummet. Plus, given that most of its content is user-generated, "MySpace Video has never been a consideration for our advertisers," said Chris Allen, vp, director of video innovation at Starcom. "You skip right over MySpace on those rankings."

MySpace also ought to deal with its design and overabundance of junky ads, agreed buyers. "The site got so bastardized so fast," said Shamberg. "As advertisers you're trying to break through the clutter—with MySpace you feel like you're adding to it."

Of course, it might be tough for MySpace to pull back on ads when monetization is one of its problems. That's where a strong sales organization would help, something else that's been lacking, said buyers.

Still, the agency community is rooting for MySpace, particularly given its potency as a reach vehicle. "I still believe in MySpace," said Ignited's Martin. "But they need to plug the leaky ship. If the numbers come down, we are less likely to work with them."

iMedia Connection – Is Your Brand Ready for On Demand?

Learn how careful planning of the right marketing experiences can help your brand support your customers' need for content where, when, and how they want it.

It's becoming de rigueur in the marketing world for people to play a number of different roles when engaging with brand messages -- participant, customer, community member, content producer, just to name a few. With the expansion of consumer activity with and surrounding brands, it is no longer enough to just push messages out to them; marketers now need to invite consumers into the brand's world, and connect with them in ways that are more meaningful and valuable to the consumers' lives and daily activities.

So how can marketers plan to provide on-demand value for consumers? The best way to start, said Allyson Hohman, experience distribution director at Critical Mass, is to analyze what channels will work for your brand, and to make sure you are engaging in the right conversations -- not just engaging in any conversation for the sake of having a presence there.

In a presentation at iMedia's Brand Summit in Colorado Springs, Hohman outlined seven characteristics of the on-demand brand, as well as her company's recommendations for becoming more aligned with these emerging marketing requirements:

1. On-demand brands are insightful. Hohman looked to the Webster's dictionary to define insightful: "The act or result of apprehending the inner nature of things or of seeing intuitively." In this context, marketers need to bring in qualitative data, demonstrating not only how well they can initiate consumer communication, but how well they can listen to consumers in the process.
   
   For example, Critical Mass put together a private community of 150 people in the U.S. and asked them to give details on their own personal shopping processes. Armed with this insight, they were able to apply social monitoring tools to get a rounded picture of consumption patterns that they can share with clients.


2. On-demand brands are remarkable. Hohman asserted that brands need to resonate with the specific people they want to engage with, rather than sending out communications designed to fit anyone and everyone.


3. On-demand brands are valuable. Brands need to focus on outreach that makes an impact on consumers above and beyond their purchase of a particular product or service. Did your campaign effort make your consumers laugh? Were they entertained by it? Did it make their lives easier in some way? Was it tailored to a particular consumer need? "Customization is extremely valuable," Hohman said.


4. On-demand brands are dynamic. With analysts reporting that nearly 3 million pieces of content are posted online every day, brands need to be flexible and fluid. They can't send something out into the ether and expect that it will be the end-all/be-all forever. "Be prepared to present value that will keep audiences coming back," Hohman said.


5. On-demand brands are portable. Hohman explained that no matter how well planned out your campaigns are, if they aren't able to deliver the right information when and where a consumer needs it, they are worthless. Hohman gave an example of walking around in Chicago when she decided, at the last minute, that she wanted to see a live show. Despite being in-market and aware of a brand that could help her -- eTickets -- she was unable to access the eTicket site from her particular mobile device, and therefore, eTickets and its partners lost a potential sale.


6. On-demand brands are conversational. If consumers are using social media tools to talk about your brand, you need to be using those same tools to talk back. For example, on Twitter, a consumer named Roger tweeted about a horrible experience he had with American Airlines that had escalated his frustration to the point where he decided he would avoid flying American at all costs. Luckily, a Twitter user affiliated with the airline stepped into the conversation. Though "Dennis" couldn't provide the assistance that Roger needed, just acknowledging the problem provided some necessary goodwill that held him over until "Marty" tweeted that he could help Roger solve the problem.


7. On-demand brands are everywhere they need to be. Hohman recommended that when analyzing platforms to deliver messages on -- particularly in social media -- brands need to think strategically about each channel. Just because a medium is available, doesn't mean you have to be there. But you should know enough about that medium to know if it's a worthy place for you to be, as well as if it's the wrong place for you. Quoting an eMarketer study, Hohman remarked that consumers don't see the difference between marketing channels -- they just see the brand and then use the channel that's most useful to them.

Critical Mass and Infiniti Co-Present at Luxury Interactive

A multitude of channels. A myriad of opportunities in expanding markets. An unprecedented opportunity to reach wealthy consumers no matter where they are in the world. As luxury brands increasingly consider where to spend scarce marketing funds, the Internet wins every time as the fastest, cheapest, and most effective way to reach consumers in today's global marketplace. With more than 1.2 billion Internet users around the world, companies across all industries are rapidly expanding their geographic reach on the Web. Yet with opportunity comes peril.

• How do you activate your luxury brand globally while still providing a relevant experience to the individual?
• How do you craft a seamless brand experience that resonates across different regions and divergent consumer tastes, habits and preferences?
• What strategies and technologies are available to ensure both brand consistency and regional flexibility?

iMedia Brand Summit - Allyson Hohman Presents "Is Your Brand On Demand?"

Is Your Brand On-Demand?

The behavior of today's consumer isn't changing. It has changed. If you don't recognize this and evolve your marketing plans accordingly, you risk getting left out and left behind.

Listen to what it means to be an on-demand brand in a real-time, Twitter-driven culture. Our discussion will start with a review of just how consumers use online channels and how that translates offline. We will look at key consumer insights -- generated by the consumer, for the consumer -- and what that says about their interaction expectations with your brand.

With these insights as a foundation, we will talk about how channels like display media and behavioral targeting are now tactical support for your on-demand strategy, not the strategy itself. A framework for how this on-demand mindset is enabled will also be shared and discussed.

Below the Line – Agency/Client Relationships

Lisa Cooper is the next interviewee for the Friday series on agency/client relationships. She thinks agencies and clients are still looking for an integrated marketing model which works. Have you found one?

Q1 Name

Lisa Cooper

Q2 Location

New York

Q3 Website

LinkedIn

Q4 Bio

Lisa has spent the last 20 years growing, evolving and innovating in the areas of online, direct and integrated marketing for some of the world's leading consumer brands, including Mercedes-Benz, IBM, JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, MCI and Rite Aid.

In her management roles, Lisa has leveraged all communications and media channels, from PR to Relationship Marketing to interactive and new media, to create innovative and award-winning campaigns that have generated greater awareness, interest and sales.

Q5 Do you work on the agency side or client side?

I have worked on both the Agency and Client side.

Q6 What makes a good agency/client relationship?

Understanding each other's needs and bringing forth the best, most creative, strategically sound ideas to meet those needs. As a Client, you want to make sure the Agency makes you look good with great creative and strategic ideas. And especially, in today's world, you want to make sure that you're able to be accountable and see tangible results for the work.

I also believe a great Agency relationship gives the Client ideas beyond just what they asked for. I think it's also important for an agency to take a client beyond the "comfort" zone - creatively and strategically.

Q7 What's your best tip for building a good agency/client relationship?

Like any relationship, listening, responding and slowly step by step, building trust. There must be mutual trust and respect to make the relationship work at its highest level.

Q8 How can agencies add value for clients?

By continuing to stay attuned to new trends, insights and technologies and ensuring that these are brought forth on an ongoing basis to the Client. I think it's critical for the Agency to keep educating the Client.

Q9 How can clients get the best out of their agencies?

- By making sure they have strong, well-thought out input briefs at the beginning of any project.

- By listening to creative ideas and concepts that push the envelope.

- By thanking and acknowledging the Agency team for a project well-done.

Q10 Have you noticed any recent trends in agency/client relationships?

I believe both sides are still looking for an integrated marketing model which works. I think it is still challenging for traditional advertising (TV) to let digital or direct agencies take the creative lead. The bottom line is often impacted so it's challenging when multiple agencies are asked to work together in an integrated fashion.

Q11 Which past agency or client was the best to work with? (Past relationships only, please.)

I've experienced great Agency relationships with both Critical Mass (interactive) and Rapp Collins Worldwide (direct).

Marketing Daily - Valvoline Offers Engine Guarantees

Critical Mass Redesigns Valvoline.com

CALGARY, AB and CHICAGO, IL - Critical Mass (www.criticalmass.com), an Omnicom digital marketing agency, announces the launch of the redesigned web site for Valvoline, a worldwide leader in automotive care products and services. The web site, www.valvoline.com, delivers an enhanced brand experience, offers users a streamlined path to the company's range of products and services, and celebrates the Valvoline brand and its deep heritage of automotive care innovations. The launch is timed to coincide with the first-ever Valvoline Engine Guarantee loyalty program (www.engineguarantee.com), which encourages consumers to change their oil every 3,000 miles using Valvoline in exchange for an engine guarantee for up to 300,000 miles (see full details at www.engineguarantee.com).

[insert quote from Michelle Bronson, Marketing Services Director, Valvoline]

The key objective for the Valvololine.com redesign was to deliver a brand message that resonated with existing and potential customers. To deepen user engagement with the brand, Critical Mass rebuilt the site on a robust new platform and developed a flash-based heritage module entitled "The Valvoline Experience," (http://www.valvoline.com/heritage/) that explores the past, present and future of the automotive icon. In addition, new content was added, including a racing section with inside-scoop interviews about racers' personal lives and what Valvoline means to them, and a Car Care section that would speak directly to the "Do It Yourself-er" while providing intuitive navigation. By leveraging the company's 140-year history, the site provides messaging for a key segment of its audience—the true automotive enthusiast.

Beyond creating a richer brand experience, Critical Mass helped to organize Valvoline products (and product partners) into a way that made better sense to the user. Organized by category, brand, consumer and commercial, the new product organization allows users to find the right products quickly while providing details that are important to them. Further, Critical Mass created cross-promotional buckets per product to educate users on special offers and other products that Valvoline would recommend for their vehicle.

"Valvoline is one of the world's most recognized automotive brands," said John McLaughlin, Senior Vice President, General Manager, Critical Mass. "We saw a real opportunity to bring their unique heritage to the forefront and connect the user to the brand—both practically, by making it easier to find products, and emotionally, by serving up content to keep them engaged and excited about all that Valvoline has to offer," said McLaughlin.

About Valvoline

Valvoline, a division of Ashland Inc. (NYSE: ASH), has been serving American motorists longer than any other motor oil marketer and is a leading innovator and supplier of quality, high-performing automotive and industrial products in more than 100 countries. Best known for its lubricants, Valvoline also markets Eagle One® appearance products, Zerex® antifreeze, SynPower® performance products, Pyroil® automotive chemicals and MaxLife® products created for higher-mileage engines. Valvoline also has a stake in the growing quick-lube market with its Valvoline Instant Oil Change unit. Find more information at www.valvoline.com.

About Critical Mass

Critical Mass (www.criticalmass.com), an Omnicom digital marketing agency, helps the world's leading companies use digital media to create extraordinary experiences. Consistently recognized by Forrester as a leading interactive agency, Critical Mass operates globally from offices in Calgary, Toronto, Chicago, New York, London, Costa Rica, and Amsterdam. For additional information, visit www.criticalmass.com.

About Omnicom

Critical Mass is a part of Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE: OMC) (www.omnicomgroup.com). Omnicom is a leading global advertising, marketing, and corporate communications company. Omnicom's branded networks and numerous specialty firms provide advertising, strategic media planning and buying, interactive, direct and promotional marketing, public relations, and other specialty communications services to over 5,000 clients in more than 100 countries.

Contact:
Celia Jones
Critical Mass
celiaj@criticalmass.com or 312.705.4169

Hyatt Winter Resorts Media Wins Horizon Interactive Award

Critical Mass' work with Global Hyatt wins a Bronze award at the 8th Annual Horizon Interactive Awards. The Hyatt Winter Resorts Ice Banner won in the category of Advertising Online. Judging is completed by a panel of interactive media industry experts and based upon a review of Creative, Technical and Messaging components, also considering Originality and Effectiveness.

DM News - 2009 Agency Business Report: The New Age of Direct Marketing Agencies

They are leaders in sectors ranging from traditional DM and digital to emerging channels. They remain steeped in the science of data while offering greater contributions to a company's overall brand strategy. They struggle both to reorganize their own internal organizations to reflect the number and complexity of emerging channels as well as to educate their clients about today's turbo-charged marketing space. They enjoy newfound respect and access to the C-suite.

This is the world of today's direct agencies, as we proudly introduce DMNews' first Agency Business Report. In a series?of online-exclusive profiles, you'll read about 70 of the top direct and digital agencies, including their capabilities, service standards and corporate identities. Click here toaccess all of these profiles.

It has been nearly a half-century since Lester Wunderman famously coined the term "direct marketing" in 1961 — which Wunderman CEO Daniel Morel points out was later said by Lester to be better put as "personal advertising." But today's DM agency leadership acknowledges that the past 10 years have truly brought a vast shift to the industry, due to the rise of digital; changes in consumer behavior; the emergence of many more marketing channels; and the need for agencies to reorganize the traditional way they do business.

"A lot of things have changed," observes Epsilon CEO Bryan Kennedy, who started at the agency 13 years ago. "There's no question that the complexity of the solutions and the amount of coordination for well-executed integrated channels has just become more complex as channels have really proliferated."

Direct agencies used to have a much more straightforward role, as direct mail served as the primary one-to-one channel for most marketers. Just a decade ago, Kennedy points out, Epsilon managed databases for clients that focused on driving direct mail and only centered on names and addresses. Now, however, data have become more abundant and more detailed, and tools to analyze it have become far more complex.

"To take advantage of the rich data available and to truly understand customer behavior and segmentation, agencies really have to be more nimble and have a much different toolset than existed 10 years ago," he says.

For agency Draftfcb, that data complexity, as well as increased efforts to integrate campaigns across channels, means the company has had to break down walls of separatism between various disciplines, says CEO Laurence Boschetto. But, he also admits that hasn't been easy.

"Anytime you have anyone going into uncharted waters, it's very challenging because there are different audiences you have to impact," he explains. "So, there are a number of different areas that need to be developed internally within our own organization, in terms of psychology and training as to why we're doing what we're doing to benefit our client's business."

He adds that educating clients about these new efforts is also challenging. "Taking large organizations and helping them see a new solution requires pretty considerable heavy lifting, [which means shifting] how they think, work and budget," he says.

At the same time, today's clients expect their agencies to wring more out of less - they want increased accountability and measurement to get the most from shrinking company advertising budgets."[Clients are] not satisfied with click-through rates," says Bob Lord, who was named CEO of Razorfish last month. "They want to know if the product sold, and whether it helped their brand impression. The line is blurring between direct marketing and brand. Companies see both as synonymous."

But this tight-fisted client attitude actually bodes well for the direct and digital world these days, he adds, because DM can boast measurability that traditional advertising cannot — so more marketers are turning towards DM agencies and cutting back on traditional spend."While marketing budgets are contracting, I suggest we're staying flat," Lord explains. "With our targeting abilities we can be more effective in getting the consumer at the right time."

"It's pretty amazing that it was not that long ago where everyone involved in an Internet company thought they had created and invented DM," says Kennedy. "In fact, [direct marketing] is a discipline that's rooted in data and collecting and analyzing and processing that data over a period of time. That has not changed."Wunderman CEO Morel notes that it's obvious that direct agencies are not looked at as the "old envelope stuffers of yore." Instead, DM is "becoming sexy, man," he laughs. "Even my daughter thinks her dad is cool." Direct marketers, he says, spent a long time feeling rather invisible in the ad world. "We were very much under the radar screen, we weren't the visible part," he says. "We were the guys working the data and the numbers, the stuff being done at retail and with production." But now, Morel says, mail production accounts for less than 10% of what Wunderman produces.

"[Our] business is in an exciting time," he explains. "It is 60% digital when, in fact, two years ago it was less than 20% digital. For Microsoft, for example, [our work is] all digital — we don't produce a single piece of paper for them. With Ford it's [becoming] exactly the same."

In addition, DM agencies are becoming more "front row" for the client, he continues. "We've escalated the discussion we have from the guy in charge of buying of print production to the guys talking strategy," Morel says. "[We're discussing] 'What should I do with my brand on the new medium called the Web,' because the business is immediately transactional. We are the ones doing all of this stuff - but now it's on steroids."Lord agrees that DM agencies are now able to connect with the C-suite in ways they never had before. "We're having conversations not just with the brand manager, but also with the CMO and potentially the CIO," he says. "And [the conversations are] about how to fundamentally change how we get to the consumer in a different way than ever before. For example, we just recently did a brand product launch exclusively online and had phenomenal success. Two or three years ago, the brand manager wouldn't ever have considered it. But now, the budget must be put into a place where they knew it will be effective and drive results."

But while agency CEOs are pleased at the relatively newfound focus on accountability, there are still concerns about the DM agency industry that keep them up at night.

"I think on a macro level, our industry has been very reticent to change and needs to change at a more accelerated rate," says Boschetto. "The industry is still compartmentalized, he insists, and those barriers need to break down further."

The larger question for agencies is, he says, "How do you let the accountability and all the scientific and direct side coexist with the branding and advertising side and have the best impact?"

Another concern, he adds, is that clients may say they want new thinking, but it remains to be seen whether they are really ready to respond to it. "Are they really prepared to respond to those kinds of new solutions?" he wonders. "Because they [categorize and compartmentalize] as well."

For Lord, it is the confounding issue of measurement that still hangs over the digital industry that concerns him. "It's somewhat frustrating to me that I sit on a lot of individual boards and we still rabble around the concept of measurement — what's the measurement of engagement," he says. "The world is changing so quickly that the issue is evolving. It's not about messaging anymore — it's about whether someone really engages with your brand. It's very powerful vs. a TV spot, but the industry hasn't figured that out in terms of measurement."

He also adds that traditional research is "not up to snuff now." It's too slow, he explains, at a time that consumer buying behavior has drastically changed. "Consumer buying behavior is now so influenced by their social graph and influence sphere, that research is too slow to react," he says.As for new online measurement tools, he points out that the industry has not accepted them as valid. "The research industry has to say these tools are valid and effective put into context," he says. "I'm not saying traditional tools will go away, but when is it appropriate to use these new tools? Our measurement systems have to include this influence sphere."

But for these same CEOs, the excitement about being part of DM has not dimmed. "I believe this is the best place to be in the entire value chain of marketing spend," Kennedy insists. "At the same time as you're seeing shrinkage [of budgets], we're also seeing budgets concentrate on the kinds of marketing programs and strategies we support - whether those be pure multichannel direct marketing strategies or loyalty programs, which are a big part of our business."

Draftfcb's Boschetto says that while he came from the above-the-line advertising space, he has learned about good business from direct.

"I've learned about cause and effect relationships, about databases and insights into consumer behavior, about developing marketing programs built on that premise and seeing what the results are and fine-tuning the program in real time," he explains. "So, when I look at both, I imagine a world where the best of marketing and the best of business coexist in an open space. That's the excitement for me - venturing into new technologies, asking, 'What learnings do we take from yesterday to reinvent our tomorrow?'"

As for the future of the DM and digital agency, Razorfish's Lord believes those specific attributions will soon break down."You're going to call [them] agencies in general," he says. "I do believe there is this space between the traditional agencies and traditional consultancies. Where you're bringing business context and great ideas together - that's the new agency of the future, where you are a trusted adviser helping them to transform their business through innovative direct marketing. And it's a pretty cool space."

Boschetto agrees, pointing out that agencies need to deal with their disciplines as people deal with their lives — in totality.

"It's not about direct, brand-building, promotions, retail or digital, it's about all of it," he says. "So, as we reinvent ourselves with a whole new thinking about the engagement process, we have to understand that totality of the industry and how to optimize results using every channel and touchpoint."

CADMEF - The Impact of a Web 3.0 World on Accountability

CADMEF features Heidi Skinner, Experience Distribution Director, Critical Mass during their Academic Roundtable May 8th in Chicago.

The Impact of a Web 3.0 World on Accountability (Panel)

Moderator: Heidi Skinner, Critical Mass




Courtney Price, Chicago Sun-Times




Chris Miller, Draftfcb




Tyler Williamson, Kraft




Jennifer Bradburn, Google

Forrester - Where to Find Help for Web Design Projects, 2009

Executive Summary

Web site owners know that selecting the right Web design vendor can be a stressful and complicated endeavor. Budgets for design services are tight, but interactive design agencies are still selective about the projects they take on. To help kick-start the vendor selection process, Forrester gathered key data from 41 firms that have significant experience designing and developing Web sites — especially in the consumer packaged goods (CPG), financial services, and retail industries. Site owners beginning the process of hiring a new interactive design agency can get critical information on these 41 agencies, which range in size from less than 20 employees to more than 750.

Critical Mass Takes Top Honors at 13th Annual Webby Awards

Critical Mass' NASA.gov site was named the official People's Voice Winner in the Government category of the 13th Annual Webby Awards. As an official nominee, the NASA site was pitted against other contenders in the category and after the global Web community placed their votes, the NASA site came out on top. Also honored was Critical Mass' work on the Mercedes-Benz AMG 360 Video Experience, which received an Official Honoree designation in the Automotive category. Out of the nearly 10,000 entries submitted, less than 15% are awarded the status of Official Honorees.

The Webby Awards is presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a 650-person judging academy whose members include Internet co-inventor Vinton Cerf, "Simpson's" creator Matt Groening, Arianna Huffington and Harvey Weinstein. The 13th Annual Webby Awards received over 10,000 entries from all 50 states and over 60 countries worldwide.

Calgary Herald - Calgary Embracing the Rise of the Creative Class

It's late Sunday afternoon at the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo. The BMO Centre is teeming with thousands of comic-book collectors, more than a few dressed as Star Wars storm troopers, any number of Batmen, and even a tiny, perfect R2-D2, beeping as he poses for pictures with adoring fans.

At the Red 5 Comics booth, Calgary comic publisher Paul Ens hustles up potential customers, working the crowd and building his brand by extolling the virtues of titles like Atomic Robo, Midknight and Afterburn.

"Saturday we made money," he says, when asked how business is. "Sundays are what is known in the comic business as 'normal-people day.' Normal people don't buy as many comics as Saturday people."

Don't weep for Ens, however. After nearly a decade spent running the online content for George Lucas down on the Skywalker Ranch near San Francisco, in late 2006 the Saskatoon native decided he had spent enough time playing in George Lucas's sandbox and wanted to play in his own. He and his wife both wanted to move back to Western Canada, so their three young children could be closer to their grandparents. Because of the nature of his work, Ens could choose to move anywhere.

He chose Calgary.

He's one of the growing number in Calgary of the so-called creative class, a term coined by University of Toronto professor Richard Florida to describe the people he says are the key to cities being major players in the 21st century.

Strong cities, Florida writes in The Rise of the Creative Class and most recently in Who's Your City?, are built by retaining and attracting members of the creative class. The recipe? Be economically dynamic, diverse, gay-friendly, urban --and friendly to the arts. (And it doesn't hurt to have a bunch of old buildings either. Old buildings spark new ideas).

Happily for our city, thanks to a decade of attracting young, creative and artistic immigrants, Calgary has grown into a creative-class magnet. We now rank among the top three Canadian cities for being youth-friendly, family-friendly, educated and gay-friendly.

And last year, a Maclean's magazine survey ranked Calgary the most cultured city in the country, further cementing a somewhat incongruous image of a city that was far more used to being ridiculed for an inaccurate and stereotypically feeble embrace of its arts.

Now, in the throngs of its third major recession of the past three decades, something has changed. Rather than being the first to hit the chopping block when growth stalls, Calgary's corporate and governmental leaders appear to have embraced the idea that the arts --through economic, social and demographic strengths --can be a catalyst that leads this city through the recession of 2009.

While arts groups across North America are retrenching, and in some cases shutting their doors, Calgary's arts groups seem to be attacking the recession with an optimism and aggressiveness that reflects a new-found confidence.

There are currently 62 non-profit arts organizations in Calgary, which draw more than 1.1 million people to nearly 4,000 arts events throughout the year, according to an analysis by Calgary Arts Development.

Alberta Ballet is performing at the 2010 Cultural Olympiad and creating an entire new work with Elton John. Theatre Calgary is co-producing Beyond Eden, an expensive new Canadian musical that will also be produced at the Cultural Olympiad.

At Alberta Theatre Projects, corporate sponsorship is at an all-time high, a state of affairs that fills managing director Greg Epton with optimism that the company can emerge from the recession in good fiscal and artistic health.

"What we hear a lot from corporate Calgary right now is that their desire, first and foremost, is to hang on to their talent," Epton says. "And, as an extension of that, their engagement with community through community investment is forming a key part of corporate Calgary's strategy of weathering this difficult time."

One member of corporate Calgary that is awash in members of the creative class is Critical Mass, the digital advertising agency founded in 1995 by Calgary Stampeders owner Ted Hellard and Alberta College of Arts and Design professor Michael Clairo.

The firm is a star of digital advertising, with a global roster of clients that has included Mercedes-Benz, Adidas, Rolex, and Infiniti, to name a few, all of which shrugged off advances from big-time ad agencies in cities like New York and London to hire a Calgary firm.

Critical Mass's 250 Calgary employees (they also have offices in Chicago, Toronto, New York, Amsterdam, Austin, Costa Rica, London and elsewhere) are a combination of recent grads from local post-secondary schools and recruits from all over the planet, including Poland, Ireland, Pakistan, Peru, the U. S. and Toronto.

"The toughest challenge we sometimes have is we're in an industry, the advertising industry, that's usually in clusters," Critical Mass president Chris Gokiert says. "To get individuals to come and move to Calgary, you're taking them a little bit off the beaten path."

While the economy, family-friendliness and nature are usually Calgary's top draws, Gokiert thinks the arts provide a crucial value-added aspect to any city trying to sell its civic brand.

"If (the arts) are given a voice, if they're able to get the influence, absolutely I would agree," he says, citing arts scenes in cities such as Seattle, Austin, Nashville and Minneapolis that have helped positively shape those cities' images.

For Ens of Red 5 Comics, the strength of Calgary's creative class surprised him and gave him an economic boost. Before moving to the city, he worked virtually with artists and writers in Australia, Florida, Toronto and Brazil, and he wasn't aware there even was a comic community in Calgary.

"Once we picked which city we were going to move to, I started investigating," he says. "(Calgary) had quite a little local scene developing unbeknownst to me when we picked Calgary.

"One of our initial titles was called Afterburn," he adds. "We . . . threw that script out to the local scene and several local folks immediately gave me some great feedback on that project. It has since gone on to be published and has been purchased by Tobey Maguire (and Fast and Furious producer Neil Moritz) to make a major motion picture.

"So I immediately owed a bit of a debt to the local scene."

That sort of creative synergy is exactly what Florida writes about in his books as the kind of scene that lures talented people from other places, as well as being the catalyst for keeping them around once they finish their education.

According to Gokiert, who recruits anywhere from 30 to 50 new employees a year depending on how business is (it's actually up a little in 2009), Calgary is doing OK, but could also do a whole lot better.

"We have a lot of our grads come from University of Calgary," he says. "Mount Royal and SAIT are also trying to get in the game and bring out good talent, so it's not like there's not good talent out there, it's just that there might not be enough of the jobs to keep them here, unless they want to go into oil and gas, or a little more heady tech instead of more creative, which is where we are."

Where Gokiert becomes frustrated is how a place like Calgary, despite so much cultural evidence to the contrary, continues to brand itself by relying upon cliches.

"I know that the Calgary Economic Development are trying to do some really cool stuff," he says. "But even as you come into the airport, they're relying on the old assets: 'Hey, you're close to the mountains.'We always show the scenic shot of downtown and the tower --you're not showing the Calgary Folk Festival. You're not showing the kind of industry-leading events like ACAD puts on.

"When they show the Stampede, they show the rodeo--and yeah, that's a great part of it--but (what about) the nightlife? If you took a shot of Stephen Avenue during a hot summer day with everyone milling around, they'll be like, 'Wow, what a fantastic, vibrant downtown core that I never even realized was there.' "

Meanwhile, evidence of Calgary's growing vibrancy was on display Friday as the Epcor Centre downtown was filled with high school kids attending the second annual LiveStyle Urban Arts Festival, a free event featuring concerts and a daylong free workshop to teach interested youth everything they could possibly hope to learn about hip-hop music and dance.

Tara Blue, the artistic director of the Blue Collar Dance Company, regards events like this as being part of her dance company's mandate: cheap, creative, fun that helps foster a sense of community that turns this city into a place young people look to grow old in.

"Especially in this economy, you sort of want to close off and shut yourself off in your house," she says, "But this is one of those things where you can really be a part of the community.

"(Hard) times have hit the world," Blue adds. "It's not just us, it's everyone in the world, but this is still a beautiful city with a lot of talent and good people and a community--and it's worthwhile."

Canada's Top Cities To Live In

Richard Florida's Rankings Of The Best Places In Canada To Live:

Singles:

1. Calgary

2. Iqaluit

3. Ottawa-gatineau

Mid-career

1. Ottawa-gatineau

2. Calgary

3. Whitehorse

Families

1. Ottawa-gatineau

2. Toronto

3. Calgary

Florida's Rankings Of The Best Canadian Cities For Gays And Lesbians

Singles

1. Ottawa-gatineau

2. Calgary

3. Victoria

Mid-career

1. Ottawa-gatineau

2. Calgary

3. Yellowknife

BlogTO - FITC 2009: Creativity in a Can

In its 8th year in Toronto, FITC ("Flash In The Can") wrapped up eariler this week and it proved to offer even more insight than I was expecting. Aside from all the amazing art and hip nerd parties, FITC is a highly technical developer and graphic design forum; however, FITC also brings in experts in the 'creative process' to the table.

While creativity is essentially everywhere at this conference - even the exhibitor booths were doodled on and decorated - the creative process itself can sometimes get lost amidst technical discussions on software and design integration. But this year FITC felt different to me - as though there was a deeper appreciation for the creative philosophy behind the project's execution. In particular, I was fascinated by Jason Theodor and Mikey Richardson's discussions of how to avoid falling in to stagnant thinking patterns, and how to tap into the true power of brainstorming and the creative process.

I don't think it was just me. FITC shifted focused this year and looked to take a VERY liberal creative approach with even the most technical topics. One of the feature sponsors, Chuck Freedman of Ribbit, seemed to agree. "My talk this time around was an effort to be a bit more 'inspiring thought leadership' and less 'technology salesman'. I think the audience was very receptive! This was my 3rd Toronto FITC and my 4th overall; it really keeps getting better."

Personally, I was eager to hear from one of the creative minds at Critical Mass, Jason Theodor, who was already on my radar (he's created branding for companies like Yahoo! and Dove). His presentation There is no Box - How to Think Beyond the Edge took a frank look at how the creative process can break down, especially when confined to binary lines of thinking. People often think they are being creative, or 'outside the box', when really they are just presenting a polarized view of the issue. I had a chance to speak with Jason about some of his forays into corporate creativity, and how binary thinking can kill creativity.

"Often the brain is convinced that there are only two options for an idea: accept or reject. How often have you heard, 'Think outside the box' ? That is a perfect example of Binary Thinking. It presupposes that an idea is either inside the box (stale) or outside the box (fresh). What about checking that idea out from the side, from the top, from the bottom, from the edges, from that low, aggressive three-quarter angle? What about taking it all apart and putting it back together again - inside-out? Without exploration there is no innovation. Just telling someone to think outside of the box isn't enough. They need new tools. And I hate to be the one to break it to you, but there is no box."

Jason's approach is so direct that it is easy to forget how complex the 'creative process' can be, especially when dealing with large brands. "Pepsi spent thirty-five million dollars redesigning their Tropicana packaging only to revert back to the original look in two months. What happened? A loud group of consumers said they didn't like it.

It's shocking to think that such a strong brand could be so wildly insecure and react in such a knee-jerk fashion. If a musician only listened to her fans, she would play the same damn three songs for the rest of her life, never finding the time to experiment and grow as an artist. Brands are no different. By judging their packaging to be good (launch) and then bad (recall) they left out any chance for discovery."

Though I only stole a moment of his time at FITC, I'm looking forward to sitting down picking Jason's brain over his upcoming workshop at the Rich Media Institute, The Creative Method: How to Generate Great Ideas on May 9th.

In the meantime, I was also interested to hear Mikey Richardson talk about The Things (he) Learned About Being Creative. Though his presentation was basically an expose of the creative philosophy used at his design firm amoebacorp, I gotta say... HIS COMPANY IS SO AWESOME. They have a very broad approach that is narrowed down through a lot of research, time, trial and error - without fear of being reprimanded for taking the time to explore a new idea or wild concept.

I also like how Mikey underscored the value of 'Peers and Beers' & 'Long Walks and Bathroom Breaks' as vital components in the creative process. However, the real message here was simply how a semi-streamlined process can actually yield some fantastically creative results, as long as the goals are kept front of mind: generate a multitude of ideas, narrow down the good ones using project criteria, deliver on-message creative concepts. Some of the outcomes at amoebacorp were really very impressive; they seem to generate a ridiculous wealth of creative output.

Most of those in attendance at FITC are, of course, on the technical side of things. Speaking with some of the savvy developers and designers in attendance, it's clear that people were happy with this year's offerings. "This isn't like most web conferences, where a lot of business CEOs come to shake hands," explained Derek, a young design student at Seneca. This was his first year at FITC but he'd been to several other 'tech' conferences that failed to impress.

Another designer, Michelle was impressed with the accessibility of the more 'hardcore' workshops."I ended everything off with the most technical session I could find... the dude that's behind NoteFlight. And surprisingly I could follow it and understand!" Judging by those in attendance, FITC is striking just the right chord with this stylish artsy tech crowd - an impressive feat.

The biggest take-away from FITC for me (being relatively non-technical) was that old ideas are not bad ideas, and should be re-explored and re-cycled when possible; that new ideas can come from strange places and you have to let your mind explore those places to find them. Amazing how a tech conference can deliver such a sappy sense of inspiration!

FITC Toronto - There is no Box: How to Think Beyond the Edge

Jason Theodor, Creative Director, Critical Mass, wowed the design crowd at the FITC Toronto event, April 25-28

There is no Box: How to Think Beyond the Edge

You've heard of leading edge thinking, cutting edge ideas, and bleeding edge creative - now take that notion one step further. What happens when you eliminate the edge altogether? You've been told to think outside the box, but where can you go to find the most interesting and focused ideas? When you challenge your preconceived notions, when you dismiss binary thinking, when you poke at the fringe of thought and memory, much more interesting things start to happen. Go beyond the edges and learn how to be a better creative where there is no box.

CBC Eye Opener - Play-off Rivalry Heats Up in Calgary and Chicago offices

It's a good thing hockey sticks aren't allowed in the office.

A Calgary-based firm is waging a hockey battle with its Chicago branch. Jim speaks with the two employees leading the inter-office trash talk.

Radio Interview with Jim Brown on the Number One Calgary morning show, the Eyeopener.

Critical Mass Launches AutotraderClassics.com Interactive Campaign

CALGARY, AB and CHICAGO, IL - Critical Mass (www.criticalmass.com), an Omnicom digital marketing agency, announced the launch of an interactive campaign to promote AutoTraderClassics.com. The campaign, which includes an AutoTrader Classics YouTube Channel (http://www.youtube.com/AutoTraderClassics) and supporting media buy, aims to drive engagement with Classic Car Enthusiasts and ultimately position AutoTrader Classics as the brand that truly understands and can fuel enthusiasts' love affair with classic cars.

Armed with the insight that classic car enthusiasts form a tight-knit community and seek out others who share their passions, the AutoTraderClassics.com site is more than a place to buy and sell vintage vehicles. The site features a host of online tools to foster and support the enthusiast community including forums and favorites.

In creating the solution, our team went straight to the source and tapped the classic car community for help. The team interviewed real classic car enthusiasts about their hobby (some might say obsession). These stories focused on the cars and the people who sparked their grease-fueled passion. In turn, these videos became the main content for banners and an AutoTraderClassics.com YouTube Channel.

Featured on targeted sites such as hotrod.com, the banners allow users to meet just a few of the founding members of the AutoTraderClassics.com community—people just like them.

About AutoTrader.com

AutoTrader.com, created in 1997 and headquartered in Atlanta, Ga., is the Internet's leading auto classifieds marketplace and consumer information website. AutoTrader.com aggregates in a single location more than 3 million vehicle listings from 40,000 dealers and 250,000 private owners, which provide the largest selection of vehicles attracting more than 13 million qualified buyers each month. Through innovative merchandising products such as multiple photos and comprehensive search functionality, AutoTrader.com unites buyer and seller online - dramatically improving the way people research, locate and advertise vehicles. AutoTrader.com is a majority-owned subsidiary of Cox Enterprises. The venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is also an investor. For more information, please visit www.autotrader.com.

About Critical Mass

Critical Mass (www.criticalmass.com), an Omnicom digital marketing agency, helps the world's leading companies use digital media to create extraordinary experiences. Consistently recognized by Forrester as a leading interactive agency, Critical Mass operates globally from offices in Calgary, Toronto, Chicago, New York, London, Costa Rica, and Amsterdam. For additional information, visit www.criticalmass.com.

About Omnicom

Critical Mass is a part of Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE: OMC) (www.omnicomgroup.com). Omnicom is a leading global advertising, marketing, and corporate communications company. Omnicom's branded networks and numerous specialty firms provide advertising, strategic media planning and buying, interactive, direct and promotional marketing, public relations, and other specialty communications services to over 5,000 clients in more than 100 countries.

Contact:
Celia Jones
Critical Mass
celiaj@criticalmass.com or 312.705.4169

Marketing Profs - What Companies Can Learn from the President

Depending on how you look at it, the U.S. Government is one of the largest companies in the world. On March 24th, the "CEO" of this "company" utilized a Digg-Like voting system to address the most common questions that American's had on their minds.

More than 13,000 different questions were submitted and 400,000 votes were cast to help filter the most pressing to the top. Clearly, there was no shortage of opportunity. By implementing this system, Obama used the will of the crowd to:

1) Shape the topics of discussion when addressing the nation

2) Show the crowd that the oval office is acknowledging their importance in driving the country's success.

3) Illustrate transparency and democratization of modern government

Should brands replicate this effort?

The importance of the issues discussed in the President's forum obviously shouldn't be bestowed upon brands, but replicating that system could certainly prove beneficial. It's no secret that consumers are talking about the brands they use, but if further proof is needed simply run a search on Google for "Brand X + Review." There's a lot of negative unhelpful chatter but if even 10% of millions of pieces of feedback are useful, then perhaps it does make sense to facilitate a conversation around improving a brand and its marketing efforts.

Legal issues aside (which do affect certain categories more significantly such as insurance) there are multiple benefits of hosting a feedback forum, to name a few:

Market Research: Focus Groups, Test Markets, and R&D Departments are very expensive. While hosting a "town hall" for your brand isn't going to replace these entities, it's a very realistic way of reducing the size of them. Additionally it can act as low cost experiment before launching any real products in test markets.

Reciprocation: It's much easier to respond to consumers in one central location vs. scouring the web for brand mentions in various locations. The latter is certainly a good practice too, but when budgets and manpower make that prohibitive, a brand hosted forum is a great place to start. A side benefit is that for the consumers who are looking to engage with you, by focusing response efforts on your platform will condition the community to talk in your environment vs. their own (IF they want to hear back from you).

Personalization: Imagine you're a person who submitted a question to President Obama and he actually read it. How would you feel? The President is obviously a person but also a symbol. If that symbol talks to you, then it turns it into a person. A person is much harder to dislike than an object. Similarly, brands are objects. But they aren't blocked off from having a face. More and more "faces" are emerging to represent brands. Even if it's in short semi annual sessions, a brand that gives (and publicizes) its open forum with customers humanizes that brand. The ideal situation is that people will like you for it, and when they don't, they'll be more likely to empathize.

On Your Playground or Ours?

There are three main paths here. Brand-driven forums like Dell Idea Storm and American Express Open Forum or conversely, user driven feedback channels such as GetSatisfaction and niche forums like "Please Fix the iPhone."

Brand-Driven: A portal built by, moderated, and used as a spotlight for a brand. Although the volume may be smaller, the engagement is much higher and centralized.

Consumer Driven: No avenue exists for customers to voice their feedback so either they create one or join one of many broad forums that give them a voice. Unlike the above, feedback is scattered and often less constructive as there are no ears to hear legitimate complains.

Hybrid: Previously mentioned Get Satisfaction provides brands with an opportunity to participate in the discussion the feedback aggregator hosts. (Including feedback widgets and owning a profile). This is a combination of the previous two however the consumer's voice most likely will still be stronger in this setting.

Could this practice tie into marketing programs?

What's the biggest obstacle for hosting and moderating a town hall for your company? Cost of technology and cost of labor to manage/grow it. Because of that reality, every possible resource needs to be squeezed out of this entity to justify its existence. Besides the payoffs mentioned earlier, this forum can also be leverage for future marketing efforts.

Search: Think you're buying all the right keywords on Google to drive efficient traffic to your site? Think again. There are topics/keywords that a company will simply not think to include in their search efforts. If you're using a voting system to show trending topics of discussion on your own forum, you'll know what respective keywords to buy for your search efforts. Although difficult to quantify in terms of payoff, the opportunity costs could be astronomical if you are able to sneak past your competitors in search results.

Insights and Planning: One of the most common complaints from agencies is that their client briefs don't include enough information to build insights unique to the brand or consumers of that brand. Again, while it would be difficult to assign a specific economic value to providing more relevant insights, there are obvious benefits to having more poignant creative and better placed media as a result of more accurate insights. By watching an internal forum for top trending topics around a brand, clients would be able to feed their agency partners with more data and thus receive more effective planning.

Word-of-Mouth: Regardless if the forum is composed of your best or worst customers, more likely than not, they are the most vocal. For the purposes of making an announcement in a subtle, yet effective way, news can be built into a response within your answers. As an example, a question makes it to the top regarding your companies return policies. While answering it, the brand mentions "as of next week, return shipping is free." This tid-bit (if genuinely a top concern of your customers) will spread across the web faster than any press release ever would. It doesn't feel like advertising and it's directed at the exact people who need to know about it.

People Will Still Talk Amongst Themselves

President Obama got a lot of people talking about political issues during the user forum, but this doesn't mean that conversations won't continue outside those walls. They will, and so will conversations around brands. The web makes it incredibly easy to discuss the brands that intersect with our lives so trying to contain that force is futile. But to pass up giving consumers a chance to also have those conversations with you is a huge missed opportunity. Let people talk to you. Let them know you care about what they have to say. Then prove it.

* * * * *

Len Kendall is a digital media manager at Critical Mass Chicago where he manages strategy and activation for fortune 500 companies.

In Len's downtime he can be found blogging at www.constructivegrumpiness.com where he tries to lend his innovative thinking to help improve brands, products, and experiences. You can also Follow Len on Twitter.

Budweiser American Ale Site Wins Regional ADDY Award

Critical Mass took home a Silver Regional ADDY Award for its work on the Budweiser American Ale microsite. The ADDY Awards, the advertising industry's largest and most representative competition for creative excellence, is a three-tiered national competition conducted annually by the American Advertising Federation (AAF). The District 6 ADDY judging took place on March 27th and 28th and with this win, the Budweiser American Ale work will compete for national honors, to be presented at the AAF National Conference in Virginia.

AdWeek - Digital Shops Embrace Cheap Chic

Marketing Profs - How I Got the Job

Guest Post: How I Got the Job (Or, Optimizing Opportunities in a Stale Economy)

In the midst of a recession, most marketers are preoccupied with keeping their current job. Unemployment continues to rise and job opportunities are scarce.

That's why you must take full advantage of any opportunities to improve your job prospects. The tips below illustrate ways for you to easily optimize job opportunities during a recession.

I know these suggestions work. Within the last month, I secured a new job at Critical Mass, an award-winning digital marketing agency. By following these simple suggestions, you can optimize your own chances of snagging that great new job opportunity.

• Become a Google detective. My first step was to update my online profile. I revised my resume and LinkedIn profile, and made my other social networking profiles more professional by touting recent experience without seeming haughty. I Googled myself and edited any results I could in order to look exemplary to a prospective employer. In short, I viewed the summation of my online profile from my audience's perspective.


• Reach out online. I ensured that communication avenues were open and primed. I reciprocated follows from local marketing professionals on Twitter and communicated my professional interests to friends on several social networking sites. I solicited advice from anyone I respected, both in my field and outside of it – I had the mindset that virtually everyone had something to teach me in this new pursuit.


• Make meaningful personal contact. Online marketing professionals can sometimes be too reliant on the online channel (myself included). However, don't forget the benefits of in-person interaction as well. I got one interview as a result of going to The Chicago Tribune's first Tweet-Up. Another time, I met with prominent blogger David Armano during IDEA 2008 to get career advice and ask his opinion about where online marketing and experience design was headed. (Coincidentally, David is VP of Experience Design at Critical Mass, and, while not directly involved in my hiring, was kind enough to give great advice and act as a resource to me and many other bloggers.) It wasn't easy to promote myself face-to-face, but I knew that personal contact would make a difference.


• Strategically align your efforts: By the time I interviewed with Critical Mass, I had been writing a blog for over a year. And I knew that potential employers would be most likely to visit my blog directly before or after a meeting, so I thought carefully about the type of post I wanted to coincide with interviews. In the early morning hours before my first in-person interview, I released an e-book I'd been writing for several weeks in hopes of reiterating my expertise and ambition. Similarly, before my second interview, I delayed publishing one of my more inflammatory posts. In both cases, I aligned my blog content with the way I was marketing myself in person.

These tips - an updated online presence, online and in-person connection, and alignment of your assets - will all contribute to your landing that dream job. But there is one more piece of advice that is often overlooked, especially in marketing circles.

That piece of advice is to forget networking. Networking is the act of pressing yourself onto others in your field, often against their will. Networking as we know it is part of the old model.

Instead, eschew networking for providing value. I made the most valuable connections after I had answered questions on LinkedIn or re-tweeted a great article or connected two fellow bloggers who might not have known each other yet. Networking is about meeting people, but talking only about yourself; providing value is about fixing other people's problems.

And by creating solutions for others, you might just create one for yourself too. It worked for me and it can work for you too.

* * * * *

DJ Francis is a Senior Content Analyst with Critical Mass and blogs at OnlineMarketerBlog.. Follow DJ on Twitter.

Advertising Age - Six Ways Ad Agencies Are Reeling in New Business Now

By Rupal Parekh

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Client cutbacks amid the recession have placed intense pressure on agencies, who are clamoring to hold on to the clients they have and starved to add new business where they can. "When times are tight, even the huge agencies go after the tiniest of accounts," said Ann Billock, a principal at consultancy Ark Advisors in New York. Below, Ad Age shares some of the ways agencies are managing to still snag business.

NETWORK INNOVATIVELY

Having an ample Rolodex is essential to growing your agency, but networking doesn't have to be about three-martini lunches. Via Group, Portland, Maine, has developed a clever way of drumming up new business. Once a month, founder-CEO John Coleman organizes a get-together of eight to 10 marketing executives to discuss topics such as "technology's role on the evolution of society and culture." The strategy is getting Via on the radar of key industry players: Attendees have included former Dodge and Walmart executive Julie Roehm and top marketers from Welch's, HBO, Playboy and HSBC.

SHOW YOUR SOCIAL-MEDIA SAVVY

Having an influencer on your team is a huge asset. Take Dave Armano, VP-experience design at digital agency Critical Mass, or Steve Rubel, senior VP-director of insights for Edelman Digital (and an Ad Age columnist). These are new-business people on social-networking steroids. Mr. Rubel's blog has been cited as a must-read by the likes of The Wall Street Journal and Forbes, and he is followed by more than 17,000 people on Twitter. Sure, the thoughts they share are their own and not their employers.' But in the end, the agency wins with talent that is active in consumer conversations.

ADOPT A RECOGNIZABLE PLATFORM

Agency-positioning efforts such as Kevin Roberts' "Lovemarks" platform at Saatchi may not be new, but they really can work. One of the more recent platforms to emerge is Publicis Groupe's "Contagious Ideas," which rolled out across the globe a year ago and quickly gained momentum. Existing clients have embraced it and entrusted the company with additional business, and it has attracted new clients across the network. "It's not just some abstract theory," said Mark Hider, exec VP-director of engagement strategy for Publicis USA. "There is a conversation going on about brands whether we like it or not," and the key is to "monetize brand conversations, and then alter them in your favor."

BE WILLING TO CONTORT

Every client seeks flexibility in a partner, but increasingly that requires taking it one step further to build custom-made solutions. There's WPP's Enfatico, the agency it built from the ground up for Dell, and more recently DDB Entertainment, a dedicated agency unit at Omnicom for Blockbuster. Another Omnicom offering dubbed Riot came together from agencies TBWA, 180 and Critical Mass. Its willingness to try a new agency model is what helped it beat out a host of contenders to win the Adidas assignment.

WRITE A BOOK

Mitchell Levy, CEO and author at Happy About, says books are the new calling card. According to Mr. Levy, the author is the one asked to speak at conferences and events, and books are a great networking tool when sent to both existing customers and new prospects. To boot, major retailers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble advertise your services, thereby offering third-party credibility.

OFFER A DIRECT LINE TO THE CEO

Personal attention goes a long way. Anyone who knows Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based agency honcho Jordan Zimmerman knows he is not only accessible to clients 24 hours a day, he's checking in with them on a daily basis. It's no coincidence that the shop in the past two years has grown its operation by leaps and bounds, winning an astounding 85% of pitches.

Web Marketing Association - 2009 IAC Winners Announced

We are pleased to announce the winners of the annual Internet Advertising Competition (IAC) Awards, an effort to honor excellence in online advertising and to recognize individuals and organizations responsible for the best in Internet marketing. The Web Marketing Association is proud to present this 2009 IAC Award for Outstanding Achievement to Critical Mass for Budweiser American Ale in the category of Outstanding Website. A complete list of winners can be found at www.iacaward.org.

iMedia Connection - It's Fivebux, But Do We Care?

By Scott Shamberg

At the annual investors meeting yesterday, coffee brat Howard Schultz, Starbucks CEO, went on the offensive regarding the perception that his coffee is expensive.

Howie (I feel like I can call him that since Howard is my middle name) made two key points. First, that Starbucks has "…become the poster child for excess…" Man, Ozzy Osbourne might have an argument with that if he could still form a sentence.

The second point he made was that because of the extraordinary taste of his coffee, it is a great value. "Don't let anyone tell you their coffee is the same as Starbucks because it is not." Oh, and by the way, they have plenty of coffee under $4.

Finally, Howie announced a forthcoming ad campaign that will convince people Starbucks is not as expensive as they are perceived. He said that recent campaigns have generated strong response. So here is my question – what exactly is a "strong response"?

I'm a believer that all campaigns should be driven by an insight, a consumer truth as one of my colleagues here likes to say (thanks for the line, Roger). So, yes, the fact that we are in a recession/depression/AIG induced spiral and people want to save money is an insight. But is it the right insight for Starbucks to act on?

My argument is that Starbucks and the whatever $ cup of coffee isn't about the cost. It's about the brand. People who drink it -- drink it religiously and I don't think it's about the taste. Its about walking around with that logo on the cup. Maybe it says, "Hey, I can afford Starbucks." Maybe it says, "I'm cool." Maybe it says, "The coffee my office gives me tastes like mud water, the kind that Bear Grylls drinks."

Look up Starbucks on Facebook. There are over 125,000 addicts (more than the amount of people Oprah launched with). You can send authentic Starbucks coffee to your friends. You can do the same with Dunkin Donuts, but the amount of people signed up is significantly less.

The point is that if you are going to launch a new campaign, especially in this environment, you better have the insight right. You better be sure that price IS the main driver to influence consumer behavior because if you are wrong, and you are Howie, you risk withdrawing from your brand bank in a way that you may not ever be able to deposit again.

Luxury Interactive UK - Online Reputation Management

Brand Impression Management: The importance of effective online reputation management for luxury brands

Promiscuous customers. Visible brands. The truth will out – especially online. In the US, 65 million consumers have shared product opinions online (eMarketer). It's not just a brand owner's site that makes an impression – it's the wealth of review sites, product blogs & consumer ratings that influence purchasing decisions. Online reputation management means listening, engaging and opening a dialogue with your customers so as to make them ‘fans'. Luxury brands need to strike a balance between embracing this new reality whilst remaining ‘exclusive'. This session will explore real-world examples of tactics that worked and didn't in the changing landscape of online luxury.

Chicago Convergence – Experience Distribution and How to Jumpstart Influential Marketing

Everyone creates content. It's a challenge to compete with 1million new pieces of content posted online every day. Consumers want to see your content, but how do you reach them? CM's Emerging Media Director, Heidi Skinner, talks about creating content that is ready for distribution.

Advertising Age – P&G Gives Its Marketers a Crash Course in Social Media

By Jack Neff

BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) --Procter & Gamble Co. paired 40 digital media and agency executives with 100 of its North American marketing directors in a contest to sell Tide T-shirts for charity last night as its much-awaited "Digital Hack Night" became a four-hour reality show aired largely in social media.

Among the lessons learned: Fewer than 150 media and marketing people leaning heavily on their social-media friends and followers, resorting to big-name incentives and spending a total of about $4,000 on digital media can sell more than 2,000 T-shirts at $20 a pop for charity and hit the top 10 trending topics on Twitter in the process.

Tide's Twitter honor

Tide attained that Twitter honor, if ever so briefly, in the last half hour of the contest before being elbowed out by four entries related to reports that Bristol Palin, daughter of former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, has broken up with her fiance.

In all, the four-team effort, which included executives from Google, Facebook, MySpace, Intuit and a host of other digital players, raised about $50,000 directly for the charity Feeding America and another $50,000 in a match from the Tide brand.

But charity wasn't the night's only objective. "We really wanted to come up with a learning experience for our marketing directors that would inspire them and expose them [to digital media] in a way they hadn't learned before," Lucas Watson, team leader for P&G's digital business strategy team and organizer of the event, said. The event also aimed to build stronger ties with digital media and agencies, and help recruit marketers to work at P&G, he said.

Twitter, though it served as a digital backbone for hawking Tide T-shirts, didn't send an executive, despite the invite, because it doesn't yet have anyone on the business side to handle such an appearance, Mr. Watson said.

Fierce competition

As might be expected with a group from P&G, competition got fierce. One group got Global Marketing Officer Marc Pritchard, in a short-lived YouTube video, to offer an hour of his services advising a nonprofit on cause-related marketing in return for a 100-shirt purchase. Greg Ross, director of media for North America, and Ted McConnell, general manager-interactive marketing and innovation, also offered to barter consulting services for similar purchases.

David Armano, VP-experience design at P&G digital shop Critical Mass, webcast the event through the agency website, alwaysinbeta.criticalmass.com. Numerous participants -- including Kelly Mooney, president of Resource Interactive, Columbus, Ohio, at mooneythinks.com, and Dave Knox, P&G digital brand strategist, at HardKnoxLife.com (he also passed along via Twitter an offer of two tickets to Google's Zeitgeist event in October) -- blogged the proceedings to promote T-shirt orders.

Others resorted to more conventional promotion. David Dintenfass, a marketing director for Vicks, got an offer posted on slickdeals.net, prompting a P&G colleague to note a recent lecture she had gotten against using digital coupons.

TotalBeauty.com CEO Emrah Kovacoglu blasted an e-mail appeal for T-shirt orders to his site's registered users -- albeit a few minutes after the contest deadline. Media participants weren't allowed to provide free media that would put their teams above the $1,000 spending limit.

"This wasn't meant to be a media-buying exercise," Mr. Watson said, but it did give P&Gers a real-time demonstration of the power of social media even without a big outlay. Screens throughout the expansive training center adjacent to P&G's 11th-floor executive suites tracked team efforts by web hits, closure rates and final sales.

Who else but P&G?

Probably no other company could get so many digital players in Cincinnati on a Wednesday night for an event whose purpose was almost entirely undisclosed in advance, said John Burbank, CEO of Nielsen Online.

"P&G has the obvious clout," he said. "But clout without imagination is nothing."

Eight years ago, Mr. Burbank was himself a brand manager for Pampers' online program.

"There was a group of us who were pioneers and had the arrows in our back to show it," he said. "The organization now is so much more embracing this kind of work now."

"It's for a great cause, which was the motivator for me, other than the fact that I'm competitive," said Andrea Theodore, marketing director for Olay, and co-leader of one team. "Experiencing the impact of digital in a way you can immediately see the impact is what it's all about."

Chicago Sun Times – How Tweet It Is: More Chicagoans on Twitter than almost anywhere

By Kara Spak

Tweet this: Chicago is No. 3 among cities worldwide in the number of people who use Twitter, according to twitter.grader.com, a Web site that analyzes the use of social-networking tools.

t says more people here use the popular social-networking site than New Yorkers or even those living in tech-savvy San Francisco and Seattle.

Only London and Los Angeles have more Twitterers than Chicago, according to twittergrader.com.

Twitterers post real-time updates of no more than 140 characters from their cell phones or home page on Twitter.com. It's free to join, and you pick who gets your posts -- called tweets -- and whose tweets you get.

"There's a concentration of people here that have decided to leverage the tool and use it," says David Armano, rated by Twittergrader.com as one of Chicago's top Twitterers, based on the size of his network and the frequency of his updates, among other factors. "There are people that are just really interested and see the potential behind it, see the potential for commercial use."

Armano -- who can be followed at twitter.com/armano -- has a network of 12,000 people who get updates on everything from the smell of the cab he rides in to the selection of beer available when he stops at an airport bar to the best practices in "cause marketing." As a vice president of a digital marketing agency called Critical Mass, he helps clients use tools like Twitter to get their message out.

But he says he saw the real power of Twitter when he posted updates on a victim of domestic violence his wife knew through their church -- a mother of three who found herself without a home. He decided to send a post out to see if anyone would be willing to help her. He also asked those in his network to re-tweet, sending the message to their networks.

"I've never seen anything like it," Armano says. "Within the first four hours, we raised almost $4,000." He had hoped for $5,000 in contributions. But he says that, within a month, he'd raised $16,800.

"It's pretty unheard of to raise that amount of money that quickly," says Armano. "And Twitter definitely played a huge part in distributing that message."

Business Week, Nussbaum on Design – The Dogs of Dogma Are Barking

By Bruce Nussbaum

I had a great Design At The Edge class at Parsons School of Design on innovation with David Armano, VP of Experience Design at Critical Mass, this week and learned two major things. First, the use of social media and digital platforms is determined by micro-cultures defined mostly by age. Second, orthodoxy appears very early in innovation.

David talked a lot about twitter in his presentation and then opened it up for discussion. Turned out that none of the 80 or so students were on twitter. They were all on Facebook. Most of the students were sophomores and juniors and used Facebook as a private network among friends. The seniors, however, were beginning to use Facebook as a network to get jobs. There was a sharp Age Break or Life Cycle Break within the Gen Y class. Younger students faced inward in their use of Facebook, toward their friends. Seniors faced outward, networking with people outside their circle of friends. Facebook has both a social and professional function, and at least two micro-cultures.

Three micro-cultures really. Aging boomers are using Facebook socially to contact old friends, including old boyfriends and old girlfriends. Back to social micro-culture.

This insight led David and me to discuss, over dinner, how companies should fragment their brands according to micro-cultures. Those brands that sell across demographics, such as razors or cleaning materials, need to target their messages differently to different micro-cultures.

David started tweeting about it—and received a wall of orthodoxy back in reply. No, people argued, brands have to be consistent and uniform in their message.

Well, no. Companies don't sell their brands consistently across global cultures, such as China or India. So why sell them the same way across internal micro-cultures inside the US or Europe—or China and India for that matter? Even in the new arena of social media, the dogs of dogma started barking.

Which leads me to think more broadly about the dogs of dogma. We're hearing and seeing them bark away all over the blogosphere and mainstream media about Washington policy. Old categories of liberal vs. conservative, big vs small government, etc. are framing conversations when we should be looking to new paradigms of innovation and design for solving our problems. If there is one thing lacking in the Obama Administration—and in the media—it is the voice of innovative thinking. Instead, we hear the dogs of dogma, barking away.

Global Calgary – Twitter Explained

Tony Tighe unravels this latest Internet phenomenon. Jared Folkmann, Critical Mass Planning Director lends his views.

Medill Reports – Online Advertising's Appeal Grows During Recession, But Will Dollars Follow?

By Jason Hahn

As the economy contracts, the cost and efficiency advantages of online advertising make it increasingly appealing to marketers. But there are conflicting outlooks for the online business in 2009.

The two main "buckets" of online advertising are display and search, according to Larry Witt, an analyst with Morningstar Inc. who covers Google Inc. and Yahoo! Inc., two major online advertising publishers.

Online display ads typically refer to banners that include logos, images and text, and are placed on Web pages. Some are interactive and include moving images and sound. Search ads, or paid search ads, appear next to search engine results for relevant queries that trigger keywords.

The major points of appeal for online advertising in rough economic times are higher accountability and flexibility, according to Jason Pope, vice president of shared services at Chicago-based online marketing firm Performics, which is owned by Publicis Groupe SA.

He noted that online advertising, which allows advertisers to track how many views or clicks their ads attract, enables clients to aim for the best return on investment for their campaigns. Pope added that since turnaround times are short, "marketers are using their leftover dollars" from their total marketing budgets at the middle or end of the month for online initiatives.

Mirek Boruta, owner of Princess Port Bed and Breakfast, in Half Moon Bay, Calif., ran his own online video ads through San Mateo, Calif.-based Jivox Corp. last summer, after advertising through local newspapers and radio stations.

An online ad that cost $500 drew 40,000 views, the restaurant's Web site traffic tripled and its rooms were booked during its busy summer season. A coupon was appended to the video ad, which saw "quite a nice redemption rate," Boruta said.

"The biggest advantage for online advertising was the fact that I was able to start for zero cost," he said. Boruta added that creating and running ads in newspapers and magazines was "a lot more tedious," and that responses were "harder to tell."

Boruta said 25 percent of his marketing budget is now dedicated to online video campaigns, up from 0 percent during his previous five years in business.

While he is not cutting back on his marketing budget, Boruta is reusing old print ads this year and will stop running radio spots. Online advertising "suits my needs better than the traditional media that I've been using in the past," he said.

Online advertisers like the fact that engagement with their ads can be quantified, even though the measured clicks may be small.

A report released earlier this month by comScore Inc. on behalf of Starcom MediaVest Group, a subsidiary of Publicis Groupe, and Tacoda, a unit of AOL LLC, stated that click rates on display ads were less than 0.1 percent. By contrast, comScore noted, Google search ads are clicked on 4 percent of the time.

Jean-Pierre Dube, a marketing professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, is surprised that the Internet is still not the main advertising channel, and that television is still more of a focus for advertisers.

"People spend so much money on TV ads, but what do we know about the effect of that exposure on purchase behavior?" he asked. "On the Internet, you can measure that."

Scott Testa, a marketing professor at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, said, "If you can run ads and really measure ROI like you can on the Internet, that's valuable, especially during this time."

He also said that online ad rates "by nature, are much cheaper" compared to traditional advertising outlets. The ability to run online efforts inexpensively, in addition to the ability to test and run campaigns quickly, are main reasons for advertisers' shifting more of their spending from conventional media to the Internet, according to Testa.

New York-based market research firm eMarketer Inc. estimated that online advertising spending in the U.S. was $25.9 billion in 2008, or 8.8 percent of the $293.3 billion spent on total media advertising. This proportion was up from 7.4 percent in 2007, and 6.0 percent in 2006. eMarketer expects this figure to continue rising to 10.0 percent in 2009, and 11.4 percent in 2010.

Walgreen Co., based in Deerfield, has begun shifting advertising from television, radio and print campaigns towards online efforts, according to Robert Elfinger, a company spokesman.

He said that while the company has cut its advertising budget slightly, Walgreen wants to "get more bang for the buck," and sees the Internet as an "affordable alternative."

Elfinger noted that Walgreen's shift towards online advertising had already been in place, but was helped a bit by the economic downturn.

Testa expects the trend of dollars migrating from traditional advertising outlets to the Internet will continue in 2009, and thus online advertising spending will continue to rise.

However, not everyone agrees.

Despite the clear appeal that online advertising holds for companies during the recession, it will not be immune from the general ailments plaguing the economy, according to market research firm IDC, a subsidiary of IDG Inc.

Last week, IDC backtracked on its original forecast for 10 percent growth for online advertising revenues this year and now expects they'll actually fall 5 percent in the first quarter of 2009.

Clickable Inc., a New York-based online advertiser, forecast an even gloomier first quarter. In late January the company stated in a report, "2009 Q1 spending is declining versus 2008 Q4; early signs indicate up to a 20% decrease."

Display ads are the most vulnerable to declines in 2009, according to Witt, who said the medium "very well could decline this year."

He attributed this to two main reasons: the general economic slowdown and the downward pressure on display ad prices, due partly to the growing number of online ad networks, which have increased display ad inventory.

Witt expects the search ad business to continue to grow, "but it won't be near the levels of last year or the years before that."

While Pope said some of Performics' customers have shifted their spending from traditional outlets to online campaigns, "most shifting is from other online budgets," he explained.

He said some clients have begun shifting spending from online display advertising and offline campaigns to search advertising initiatives. "Largely, display budgets are getting smaller."

Neil Clemmons, president of strategy for Critical Mass Inc., an online marketing agency based in Calgary, Alberta with U.S. headquarters in Chicago, agreed, saying that while "every expense is under review and scrutiny," search will still hold up, while display ads will experience downward pressure.

He explained this expectation by describing display advertising as more expensive and reflecting more of a brand-impression mindset as opposed to a transaction mindset. Clients are presently more interested in short-term return on investment, Clemmons said.

"You'll see better efficiency from a search campaign," he added, saying that click rates for display ads will remain low.

Another negative sign for online advertising is the slowdown in spending by clients, according to both Clemmons and Pope.

In the IDC report, Karsten Weide, an analyst, said the outlook darkened after a worse-than-expected fourth quarter, which saw online advertising grow just 0.4 percent to $7.1 billion.

According to eMarketer, spending increases on search advertising slowed from $2 million in growth in 2007 to $1.9 million in 2008. Spending on search advertising, the firm went on, is expected to increase by an even slower $1.6 million in 2009.

Total online advertising in the U.S. fell far short of expectations in 2008, according to eMarketer. In a report released this month, the company stated that online ad spending was $25.9 billion in 2008, short of the $27.5 billion projected in a 2007 report.

However, cutting back on spending at a time like this is a "really bad idea," according to Dube.

With so many firms suddenly withdrawing money from their marketing budgets, advertising rates will become cheaper. "If you have money on hand in this environment," marketers can advertise without having their message diluted by competitors, Dube said.

He also said that as people become more price-conscious and look for deals online, advertising on the Internet is a way to meet consumers while they are in bargain-shopping mode.

Like the Princess Port Bed and Breakfast, other Jivox clients have obtained gratifying response from their online video ads. As a result Jivox's customer base and revenue have doubled in each of its four quarters since the firm's launch, according to Jim Gustke, vice president of marketing.

The company, which has 3,000 clients across the U.S. and has raised $11 million in funding, is seeing "big demand from small businesses who want to get online and want to start marketing online in an easy and affordable way," Gustke said.

Another form of online marketing appears to be garnering more attention from companies during this time of economic weakness.

Chicago-based GasPedal LLC, a word-of-mouth consulting firm, has seen "no downturn," according to Andy Sernovitz, the company's CEO and an adjunct lecturer at Northwestern University.

He said GasPedal, which aims to help companies utilize blogs, social media, communities and viral marketing to spark word-of-mouth campaigns, has experienced steady growth independent of the economy, and has doubled its list of long-term clients to 50 in the past six months.

"In this kind of market, you want to build an army of fans," Sernovitz said. "When you get good at word-of-mouth, the cost of acquisition is cheaper."

This gives advertisers the ability to save money, which gives them a strong position and more available money when the economy is no longer a concern, he said.

"Now is the time to have a positive attitude, to give great value and to make customers happy," Sernovitz added. "There's always demand for that."

MediaBistro PRNewser – Skittles Re-Skins Website With Twitter Search Page, World Still Revolves Around Sun

We're hoping you caught the sarcasm in the title of this post. In all seriousness, however, news moves so fast these days that posting about Skittles today feels in a way like posting a story on Obama's campaign victory a week later.

We digress. Certainly, you have heard of Skittles PR stunt that began yesterday. The candy maker re-skinned Skittles.com to display only the Twitter search result page for the keyword Skittles. So, you go to Skittles.com to see what people are saying about Skittles on Twitter, when what they are talking about on Twitter is that Skittles re-skinned it's homepage to display only the search result page for the keyword Skittles. And so the cycle continues.

Confused yet? It's ok, so is everyone else, it seems. Some are calling it "the worst thing to ever happen to social media branding," while others say the re-skin is the "ultimate Twitter viral campaign."

Regardless, many are saying the idea was stolen from Modernista, which did the same thing a year ago.

As David Aramano, VP of Experience Design for Critical Mass writes, "...the story is bigger than what Skittles or Modernista! have done and the punditry that will inevitably swirl around it. The big takeaway is that the traditional (yes, this includes digital) model is being disrupted before our eyes. Business as usual used to mean a Flash and promo heavy website for a brand like skittles, and now it looks entirely different. And it doesn't mean it will work either. Do people really want to engage with a brand like this on Facebook, a ecosystem built primarily for managing your social and professional life?"

We agree with Armano, namely with the point that there are bigger issues at play here than this specific effort from Skittles. Also, it bears asking, what were/are the goals of the campaign? Generate a ton of link love, SEO and online conversation for the brand while experimenting in social media? Ok. It seems that Agency.com, the agency responsible for the campaign wouldn't go on the record with Advertising Age. Digital Editor Abbey Klaassen cited an "Agency.com spokeswoman" with the following statement: "Skittles as a brand is all about embracing and empowering the conversation online -- just look at the YouTube entries and their Facebook page. Its kind of a natural evolution for them moving in to something like this."

Forrester – Low-Cost User Research and Usability Testing Techniques

By Vidya L. Drego

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

While customer experience efforts held up fairly well in 2008's slumping economy, many customer experience professionals can expect tighter budgets during the coming year. Luckily, user research and testing don't need to end up on the cutting room floor. From surrogate user interviews to paper prototyping, several low-cost research and usability testing methods can help companies get the insight and feedback they need during the economic downturn. However, firms shouldn't adopt these bargainbasement tactics as replacements for more robust methods like ethnographic research and persona creation. Instead, customer experience professionals should consider using low-cost techniques to supplement larger efforts during lean times and focus future spending.

User Research and testing Don't need to break the Bank

Although customer experience efforts appear to be faring surprisingly well even in the slumpingeconomy, firms can expect shrinking budgets for a variety of these initiatives in 2009. Fortunately, userresearch and testing don't have to become cost-cutting casualties. Forrester has identified several lowercostuser research and usability testing methods that companies can employ to gain insight into theirusers.

Low-Cost Methods For Getting To Know Users

Firms must understand user goals that relate to the business purposes of their various channels todesign those channels effectively. But the fear of high price tags for ethnographic research and personacreation can deter many firms from beginning a research effort. While low-cost research methods can'treplace more rigorous studies, they can give firms valuable insights during lean economic times and helpprovide focus when budgets increase in the future. To begin, firms can:

Mine existing research to develop project hypotheses.

Before conducting new research, firmsshould take inventory of customer information that's already available to them. Syndicatedresearch from firms like Forrester, Nielsen, and others provides a wealth of consumer data thatcan help identify market trends, developments, and opportunities. If subscriptions aren't availableor affordable, sources like the US Census Bureau and the Pew Research Center give data away forfree. Many firms can also leverage internal knowledge. For example, product design and researchfirm Artefact brings stakeholders together in interactive workshops to extract the most insightpossible from their clients' minds and file cabinets. With existing research in hand, firms can begindeveloping project hypotheses and identify research gaps to be filled using other methods.

Connect with users online to nurture empathy.

Empathy-based research helps site owners step into users' shoes. But real-world immersive experiences like those employed by interactiveagency Organic can be expensive. To conserve cash, firms can connect with users remotelyvia phone, email, text, or social network. For example, interactive agency Critical Mass reachesout to target customers in existing online social networks and maintains a custom onlinecommunity that it periodically queries about online goals, attitudes, and behaviors. Researcherscan also comb the Web to gain some understanding of users' favorite brands and read userratings and comments and popular blogs to gauge customer attitudes. Personal pages on siteslike MySpace and Flickr can offer an even more intimate view of users' lives. However, brandsshould also beware that violating users' trust with Big Brother-type monitoring or phony socialconnections could turn them off.

Talk to surrogate users when real ones aren't accessible.

If recruiting real users isn't an optiondue to budget or logistics, firms should try leveraging user surrogates — people who work withor speak directly to target users. For example, an agency working on a site for deployed militarypersonnel was unable to access its subjects directly. Instead, it reached out to recently returnedveterans and the families of those still deployed to gain insights. Firms can also look to theirfrontline employees, like sales reps or call center staff who interact with customers every day.While researchers need to look out for potential differences between surrogates and real targetusers, surrogate interviews can help establish project hypotheses, reinforce data from othersources, and generally prevent the missteps that occur when products are designed for theircreators.

Bargain Techniques For Testing Your Designs

Firms need a portfolio of tools to evaluate their customer experiences. But not all testing techniquesare created equal, especially in terms of cost. If expensive efforts like formal usability lab tests aren'tin the budget, firms can try these cheaper strategies to get some of the feedback they need:

Conduct expert reviews to tackle problems with known solutions.

Expert reviews, alsoknown as "heuristic evaluations" or "scenario reviews," are quick and inexpensive ways toidentify known usability problems. To conduct one, first find potential reviewers who canempathize with your users' needs. Then have them try to accomplish user goals that arespecific to the business purposes of the channel you're reviewing. Throughout the process,identify specific problems that would slow users down or keep them from accomplishing theirgoals. For this, you'll need a set of evaluation criteria, like those in Forrester's expert reviewmethodologies. While firms should remember that expert reviews are only one weapon in theusability arsenal, our research shows that fixing known usability flaws can significantly improvesuccess metrics.

Use online card sorting to validate categorization schemes.

Card sorting helps researchersunderstand how users organize concepts and information. They generally start by askingparticipants to sort an actual deck of cards marked with information or functionality related to aWeb site or product, though there are several variations on this theme. Researchers then analyzethe results to identify menu schemes that make sense to their users. Online tools can help firmsavoid the costs of recruiting, incentives, and office space associated with in-person exercises.For example, pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts taps customers to participate in onlinecard sorts when they visit the company's Web site. Even better, some electronic card sortingtools are free. Whenever possible, researchers should supplement card sorting results by askingparticipants why they categorized information as they did.

Create paper prototypes to vet and refine early designs.

Paper prototyping is a fast andinexpensive way to validate product concepts, iterate on designs, and find usability problems.If you can print legibly and draw a relatively straight line, you have the required skills for paperprototyping. And if you have access to an office supply closet, you have the necessary materials.Once you've created a prototype, you can quickly get feedback from users and internalstakeholders without waiting for a usable product to be developed. Testing simple electronicprototypes can also offer insights into users' interactions, and tests can be conducted remotely.Still, prototypes aren't appropriate for every occasion. For example, think twice about usingthem to demonstrate concepts to top-level management, who might view prototypes as finishedproducts.

Review Web analytics data to spot problems and measure solutions.

Web analytics softwareis the best tool for understanding what users do on a site. It can showcase data like number ofsite visitors, click-through rates for specific links, and conversion rates. And since many firmshave Web analytics packages in place already, putting this data to work adds almost no burdento an already tight budget. Site owners can use Web analytics data to improve site usabilityby finding and removing barriers in key customer pathways and measuring the effectivenessof design changes. This data can also identify where customers are arriving to a site from,whether they're finding the content and functionality designed for them, and where they'regoing when they leave a site. Savvy marketers can draw on analytics data to deepen theirunderstanding of customer interests and activities on a site.

Recruit test subjects remotely or from within to get quick feedback.

Recruiting target usersto participate in usability studies can be logistically difficult and expensive. But that doesn'tmean firms should abandon testing efforts altogether. Researchers can save time and money byrecruiting usability test subjects — and conducting tests — electronically. TechSmith's UserVueservice lets companies recruit users, observe their desktops, and listen to their comments asthey interact with a site or application. According to one firm we talked to, this cuts the costof testing from a few hundred dollars per participant to less than $50. As another alternative, designers can look to the people available to them, like friends, relatives, and colleagues. Toavoid potential pitfalls, usability staff should be careful when broadly applying findings fromsubjects who might not be their target users. Whenever possible, researchers should also recruittest subjects who correspond to their key user profiles or personas.

RECOMMENDATIONS

use Low-Cost Methods to survive the Downturn and focus Futurespending

Low-cost user research and usability testing methods can help customer experience professionalsget the insights they need when budgets or timelines get tight. However, companies shouldbe wary of relying solely on bargain-basement techniques. Instead, they should draw onthese techniques to gain initial insights into users and identify points where further researchis necessary. This approach can help customer experience professionals avoid prematurelyembarking on large, unfocused research efforts that waste time and money in up or downeconomies.

AdWeek – ‘Influencer Programs' Likely to Spread

By Brian Morrissey

NEW YORK Despite concerns that paid "influencer programs" blur the lines between editorial and advertising, the payoff for brands in starting conversations makes them likely to spread, according to Forrester Research.

Per a new report by the research firm, such "sponsored conversations" are a cost-effective way for brands to ignite word of mouth online. It advises marketers to be scrupulous in the bloggers they work with and insist on disclosure that they are compensating the bloggers.

The rise of social media has made online word of mouth a top goal for marketers. It's led some marketers to embark on programs that give products, services or travel to bloggers in exchange for posts about their experiences. Kmart, for instance, gave five top bloggers a shopping spree in exchange for posts about their experiences. Panasonic flew several top social media bloggers to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where they posted about the show and Panasonic products unveiled there. Mercedes recently gave a top mommy blogger use of an SUV for a week in exchange for posts about it.

The programs are particularly attractive to marketers because they are comparably low cost to expensive media buys while the bloggers bring with them their own loyal and often passionate networks.

Some have criticized the programs as payola that would be forbidden under the typical rules at editorial publications, but others defended it as an innovative way to bring marketing off the sidelines in ad units and into the meat of the conversation on blogs that are not news organizations. Forrester rates paid conversations as falling somewhere between public relations outreach and advertising.

They are most useful for brands that have little innate buzz about them. Not every company is Apple or Nike. For others, paying for conversations is a helpful way to ignite chatter about their products, Forrester concludes. Kmart, for instance, generated more than 2,000 comments on the six blogs in its program, goosed by the enticement of a sweepstakes entry in return for a comment or post on Twitter.

"Consider a brand that sells products like batteries or mufflers -- products that may not get a lot of discussion on blogs but may be quality products," writes Forrester analyst Sean Corcoran. "For these low-buzz brands sponsored conversation is another way to increase discussion about your products."

The research acknowledges potential pitfalls. While marketers get the authenticity of their brand being reviewed in the blogger's own voice, it also risks a backlash from compromising the author's objectivity, according to Forrester.

For that reason, Forrester believes it is important that the bloggers reveal they were compensated and marketers give them freedom to write what they want. The question remains, however, whether positive feedback is expected since a blogger would not be invited to participate in future programs if he wrote negatively. Standards will inevitably arise, Forrester writes.

"Bloggers gotta eat, and marketers gotta market," Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff writes. "The forces leading to this spot were inevitable."

Advertising Age – For Online Brand Reps, Getting Personal Can Be a Tricky Situation

By Abbey Klaassen

You've got a highly visible Web 2.0 persona. You're tapped to run social media for a brand. How much of your personal social-media equity do you lend the brand—and how much does it lend you?

That's been a hot topic in the social mediasphere in the past couple of weeks, since Ray Wert, a blogger for Gawker Media-owned auto blog Jalopnik, suggested that Scott Monty, who works in social media for Ford, was doing more for himself with all his twittering and social networking than he was for the company's own brands. One specific criticism: Mr. Monty's Twitter account is in his name, not Ford's.

While that might seem trivial, it sparked a larger discussion about whether people should put themselves or their corporations first when it comes to Web 2.0. What is the right balance of personal and business? David Armano, VP Experience Design at Critical Mass and a Web 2.0 personal brand, explained his views in an Ad Age DigitalNext blog post—and launched pages of discussion in the comments.

Sure, some argue that personal and corporate brands should be separate, like church and state, but "I'm not sure it's that simple," Mr. Armano wrote. "Take a look at Frank Eliason's (@comcastcares) personal blog. Frank talks about life, his family and, yes, his work. While @comcastcares on Twitter leads with the service that Frank and his team provide, Frank has swapped the company logo for a picture of himself. It's not always business on the social web; oftentimes it's personal, and this is what makes it work."

Risk for personal brand

We'll definitely see more "brandividuals" as a younger generation moves into marketing, said Paula Drum, director of marketing for H&R Block, in the posts's comments. But associating themselves with a brand can be risky: "The risk was far greater for Scott to associate his personal brand with Ford that Ford to be associated with Scott," she wrote. "Ford has benefited from the audience/reach/credibility/human voice that Scott brought with him."

Maybe the idea of the brandividual isn't so new, commented Lara Kretler, associate VP at Fahlgren Mortine Public Relations, but rather to a mom-and-pop era. "Back then, we didn't do business with a business; we did business with a person," she said. "I think we're coming full circle back to that point."

Mr. Monty commented as well, explaining that Ford's Twitter strategy is expanding all the time and the company has many corporate Twitter accounts.

Yet there are difficulties. One example: What happens when a "brandividual," in an attempt to defend the brand from an online critic, seems to be telling the customer he's wrong?

And perhaps a bigger issue: What happens when the personal brand associated with a company's social-media efforts wants to leave? Whoever replaces Scott Monty will have to build a new Twitter presence—a problem brands such as JetBlue and Zappos don't have.

But Christopher Bacchus, author of the Auto Marketing Blog said even a new person taking over a corporate Twitter account will have to build a reputation. People "can ‘vote' by un-following the new person if they don't like the new personality."

And the opportunity to talk to a person at Ford—not a faceless entity—is why Scott Monty has so many followers, said marketing consultant Bob Knorpp. "I think that in itself justifies his strategy of not hiding behind the brand. There was an obvious hunger among Ford fans for a person who would give them access. Scott is that guy for now. But his personal fame in the role does not mean that someone else can't fill that role in the future," said Mr. Knorpp.

Chicago Convergence – Thinking Visually

Effective communication is everyone job—whether you are trying to sell in a concept or convince a client. Visual Thinking can help us take in complex information and synthesize it into something meaningful. In an increasingly fragmented and cluttered world, simple imagery, metaphors and mindmaps can get people to understand the abstract and make your idea tangible. Find out why thinking visually may be one of the most sought after abilities of the 21st century.

AdWeek – Facebook Grapples With Revenue and Data

By Mike Shields

A few weeks ago, the social application developer Slide announced that movie and TV star Ashton Kutcher would headline an original Web series on Facebook.

Around the same time RockYou, another major apps provider, made some noise about a new product that it claims offers advertisers access to more robust behavioral targeting data than Facebook itself can offer. Meanwhile, Facebook -- which spent last week dealing with a highly publicized revolt by its users over proposed changes to its terms of use -- doesn't see a dime from Slide and RockYou.

But as the company continues to struggle to find a sustainable revenue model while catering to an increasingly vocal user base, many believe that Facebook will soon impose some sort of tax or revenue sharing requirement on apps companies. "A deal of that sort is probably in the works," observed Anton Denissov, digital media analyst, Parks Associates.

Adam Shlachter, digital practice lead for MEC Interaction, agreed that such a scenario is possible, since apps companies like Slide offer an increasingly viable alternative for advertisers to reach users on social networking sites, while also driving up the number of page views these sites generate and need to sell. "I wonder if it becomes a problem eventually," he said. "I do imagine it has to be something they are thinking about."

Max Levchin, CEO of Slide, has spent a lot of time thinking about this issue, and perhaps surprisingly, he's in favor of some sort of apps tax. He even proposed the idea to Facebook executives about six months ago -- his contention being that if Facebook were incented to promote Slide's apps: "That's better for all individuals," he said.

Chris Cunningham, founder and CEO of the apps rep firm appssavvy, says that though he's heard "rumors and murmurs," he doubts that Facebook will start charging companies apps fees. "I'm not worried," he said. He estimates that the apps business will generate $125 million to $150 million in 2009. Solid, but perhaps not enough to get Facebook -- which has been valued at $15 billion -- overly excited.

Plenty of Facebook users were overly excited last week, when several changes to its terms of usage agreement came to light. Many panicked that Facebook was staking claim to permanent ownership of any and all personal information users post on the site-leading the company to negate the terms changes.

However, most buyers weren't terribly concerned, pointing to Facebook's enduring popularity. "It was a blip," said Scott Shamberg, svp, marketing and media at Critical Mass, who doubts that the average user was even fazed by last week's storm. "People just love the experience." Lots of people in fact. The site now claims 175 million registered users, and in January Facebook cracked comScore's top 10 audience ranking for the first time with 57.2 million uniques, up 69 percent versus last year.

Jordan Bitterman, svp, media, Digitas, said that Facebook might have suffered user and advertiser defections if they hadn't changed course quickly. "To marketers it would matter in a big way [if they didn't back off]," he said. "You never want to be associated with anything that threatens privacy. But this had just a short-term toll."

In the future, Facebook, which declined comment for this story, may need to actively engage its audience prior to making any sort of change to its site or policies. Reuben Steiger, CEO of Millions of Us, suggested that the company explore installing an executive as a permanent community liaison, or perhaps a council of community leaders so that future moves don't catch the user base by surprise. "No one likes those 'ta da!' moments," he said.

It may be that Facebook, by its very nature, faces issues that the average Web publisher doesn't. Said Shlachter: "There's really nothing else like this audience."

Advertising Age – When Personal and Corporate Web 2.0 Brands Collide

By David Armano

Earlier this year I gave a talk on something I believe is an emerging trend whether we like it or not: the idea of everyday people spending countless hours building and managing their reputations online. I made the comparison of this equity-generating behavior to that of brand building. Ordinary people having micro influence in this macro medium we call the internet.

Since I only had 20 minutes for the talk, I missed out on very important part of this phenomenon: the potential risks and downside of this activity as it can relate to your full time profession -- especially if you are not self-employed. Take Scott Monty, who currently heads up social-media initiatives at Ford. If you go to Scott's Twitter page, you'll immediately notice a dichotomy between Scott Monty, the individual, and Ford, the company he works for. Ford's logo is evident all over the page and even hovers over Scott's "avatar," which shows up in thousands of Twitter streams globally. Scott has more than 12,000 followers on that social network alone.

Scott was well known in the social-media space prior to his employment at Ford (which probably helped him get the job) and uses his network to talk about work- and personal-related issues. The lines that separate the two are blurry. Recently, Scott's been receiving some criticism over how he handles this delicate balance between his brand and the brand he works for. To pull a recent quote from one of the blogs:

"... if Scott Monty wanted to show that he was really doing this for Ford, he'd open up a Ford Twitter account -- an idea seconded by another social media site -- to use daily for his work rather than his current ScottMonty twitter account. Because right now it seems like he's set up more for ScottMoCo promotion than for FoMoCo promotion."

This post is not meant to defend Scott, though I do know him and we have spoken on several occasions, but I think there is something much bigger worth thinking about which goes well beyond the surface accusation that Scott is promoting himself at Ford's expense. And for the record, based what I've seen, I think Scott is being rather generous leveraging his personal network to help jump start Ford's initiatives (which includes several Ford Twitter accounts and outreach programs).

Powered By People

Here's the simple truth. If you are going to have your company play on the social web, then you have to be ready to play a full contact sport which includes unpredictable scenarios. The latest evolution of the web and the ways business tap into this are enabled by technology, but fueled by real live people. This means that hiring people like Scott means bringing his existing network into your organization and your organization into his network. On the flip side, individuals like Frank from Comcast, Lionel or Richard from Dell or Tony from Zappos have put their company first in their profiles, thereby building equity through their jobs.

In either scenario there is still common ground. The social web is personal and dependent on people, and when a person leaves your company, at the end of the day no matter if their persona had JohnatBrandX attached to them, the people they interacted with in all that time will remember the person behind the brand. That person takes their equity with them while leaving the infrastructure they have put in place at the company they worked for. If it sounds messy it's because it is and will be. It's powered by people and people are messy. People also tend to be more loyal to other people than they are to faceless organizations.

If your company, or you as in individual doesn't like this, don't even bother investing seriously in social initiatives, because they aren't automated, easy or quick solutions.

Blurring Lines

Some will say that separation of church and state is the way to go. Always lead with the brand. I'm not sure it's that simple. Take a look at Frank Eliason's (@comcastcares) personal blog. Frank talks about life, his family and, yes, his work. While @comcastcares on Twitter leads with the service that Frank and his team provides, Frank has swapped the company logo for a picture of himself. It's not always business on the social Web, often times it's personal, and this is what makes it work. In my humble opinion, while we can try to compartmentalize our "personal brands" with the brands we work for, the more we try to separate them, the less human it becomes. The social web thrives on personality, mixing a "personal touch" with a professional service. When Frank talks about life and business on his blog, it makes him not only a person, but an employee like many of us. And vice-versa on Twitter, which is why I assume he ditched the Comcast logo for a photo of himself instead.

At the end of the day, the social Web blurs the line between individuals and brands. It's not exactly clear what the rules of engagement are in these scenarios. But they will undoubtedly emerge as more companies put their people on the front lines of communication & interaction.

More Human Than Human

I've had some interesting conversations about this topic with people who have invested time developing and nurturing their own networks. Though they may not have the notoriety of a Monty, an Eliason, a Menchaca or a Hsieh, they may be unaware that they represent the organizations they work far more than they know. Using social networks on company time can help you do your job better or can be viewed as unproductive time. Either way, it brings up questions about how clear the line is between our work, our social networking and where they overlap.

And what about when social networking is your job? That's when we need to remember that at this point, it becomes about human contact regardless of who you work for.

The Road To Co-branding

Recently I talked about the idea of "brandividuals" (my hobby is making up words). For some, the idea is scary -- the melding of our personalities with the companies and brands we work for. Call it whatever you want, I believe we'll see more of it, not less, which means we'll need to figure out how the balance works. In it's simplest form, the phenomenon will look like "co-branding," two brands coming together toward a common goal. As someone who spends intimate time in this space (I am an full time employee for Critical Mass) the dance is delicate. It requires an understanding that the arrangement can be mutually beneficial along with a comfort level of the space. If your company is dipping it's toes in the the social Web, then you're going to attract employees who are active participants across multiple networks. Some, like Scott, may bring that network to your job.

There will be risks for both sides. But in the end, the switch from automated to manual means being powered by people. People with real faces, lives, families and potentially fans (not to mention critics).

Lastly, let's not forget to keep our eye on the prize. As Scott says himself in his video interview:

"We're not interested in advertising on social networks—we're interested in getting in there and interacting with people."

MediaWeek – Facebook Growing Pains

By Mike Shields

A few weeks ago, the social application developer Slide announced that movie and TV star Ashton Kutcher would headline an original Web series on Facebook.

Around the same time RockYou, another major apps provider, made some noise about a new product that it claims offers advertisers access to more robust behavioral targeting data than Facebook itself can offer. Meanwhile, Facebook -- which spent last week dealing with a highly publicized revolt by its users over proposed changes to its terms of use -- doesn't see a dime from Slide and RockYou.

But as the company continues to struggle to find a sustainable revenue model while catering to an increasingly vocal user base, many believe that Facebook will soon impose some sort of tax or revenue sharing requirement on apps companies. "A deal of that sort is probably in the works," observed Anton Denissov, digital media analyst, Parks Associates.

Adam Shlachter, digital practice lead for MEC Interaction, agreed that such a scenario is possible, since apps companies like Slide offer an increasingly viable alternative for advertisers to reach users on social networking sites, while also driving up the number of page views these sites generate and need to sell. "I wonder if it becomes a problem eventually," he said. "I do imagine it has to be something they are thinking about."

Max Levchin, CEO of Slide, has spent a lot of time thinking about this issue, and perhaps surprisingly, he's in favor of some sort of apps tax. He even proposed the idea to Facebook executives about six months ago -- his contention being that if Facebook were incented to promote Slide's apps: "That's better for all individuals," he said.

Chris Cunningham, founder and CEO of the apps rep firm appssavvy, says that though he's heard "rumors and murmurs," he doubts that Facebook will start charging companies apps fees. "I'm not worried," he said. He estimates that the apps business will generate $125 million to $150 million in 2009. Solid, but perhaps not enough to get Facebook -- which has been valued at $15 billion -- overly excited.

Plenty of Facebook users were overly excited last week, when several changes to its terms of usage agreement came to light. Many panicked that Facebook was staking claim to permanent ownership of any and all personal information users post on the site-leading the company to negate the terms changes.

However, most buyers weren't terribly concerned, pointing to Facebook's enduring popularity. "It was a blip," said Scott Shamberg, svp, marketing and media at Critical Mass, who doubts that the average user was even fazed by last week's storm. "People just love the experience." Lots of people in fact. The site now claims 175 million registered users, and in January Facebook cracked comScore's top 10 audience ranking for the first time with 57.2 million uniques, up 69 percent versus last year.

Jordan Bitterman, svp, media, Digitas, said that Facebook might have suffered user and advertiser defections if they hadn't changed course quickly. "To marketers it would matter in a big way [if they didn't back off]," he said. "You never want to be associated with anything that threatens privacy. But this had just a short-term toll."

In the future, Facebook may need to actively engage its audience prior to making any sort of change to its site or policies. Reuben Steiger, CEO of Millions of Us, suggested that the company explore installing an executive as a permanent community liaison, or perhaps a council of community leaders so that future moves don't catch the user base by surprise. "No one likes those 'ta da!' moments," he said.

It may be that Facebook, by its very nature, faces issues that the average Web publisher doesn't. Said Shlachter: "There's really nothing else like this audience."

AdWeek – Adidas.TV Goes Hulu Route

By Brian Morrissey

NEW YORKDespite the similarities in its name, the soon-to-launch Adidas.TV hopes to be vastly different from the ill-fated Bud.TV.

The Adidas-branded video service, slated to roll out starting this week, lives at its own Internet hub. But in a nod to the vogue for sharing online content, it is designed to spread Adidas video across the Web.

The service soft-launched Tuesday as part of the Adidas basketball site. There, it houses content from the brand's NBA endorsers like Dwight Howard, Chauncy Billups and Gilbert Arenas.

Adidas.TV is designed as a global hub for video content produced by the athletic footwear giant and its partners, and the broadband site boasts channels devoted to specific sports. It also has an "Originals" channel of shorts created by Adidas. The venue aims to begin with a library of 75 videos and quickly ramp up to hundreds.

"It is based around the idea that lunchtime is the new prime-time," said Daniel Stein, CEO of EVB, the San Francisco digital shop that conceived and built the service for Adidas.

Adidas' strategy is to use the lure of its star endorsers like Howard to counter the marketing might of rival Nike to reach young audiences. In a promotional site for the NBA All-Star Game this weekend, Adidas scrapped the regular microsite for a destination centered on showcasing the experience of the event through Howard's eyes. Content was gathered on the Adidas site but originated elsewhere. It accumulated feeds from videos Howard uploaded to YouTube, photos on Flickr and short blog updates via Twitter.

Similarly, Adidas.TV content will be available for syndication. What's more, visitors can transport video in an Adidas-branded player -- whether to a blog or 25 social networking sites the unit integrates with. The player includes a logo at the bottom and links back to Adidas.TV. Users can also create their own Adidas.TV widget that receives frequent content updates

"The point is less about getting people to the site," said Stein. "It's more about getting the content to the people."

The approach is similar to that taken by Hulu, the NBC Universal-News Corp. joint venture that's become a popular service for high-quality video programming online. One secret of Hulu's success: letting users take the content with them. Such lack of portability was a huge knock against Bud.TV, the infrequently visited Anheuser-Busch-branded entertainment site that suffered from having its content locked down behind a cumbersome age-verification system.

Adidas.TV is intended for use by the footwear company's shops, including 180, Riot and Carat. The centralized system is designed to cut down on the inefficiencies of having video managed separately across dozens of Adidas sites worldwide.

Creativity – Adidas Pushes Dwight Howard as Social Networking Spokejock

By Nick Parish

There were fabulous dunks, but Adidas was pushing 180 for the big 360 during the NBA's All Star weekend.

The agency attempted to blanket the web with bits of celebrity-insider content from young Orlando Magic center Dwight Howard.

Anchored by a TV spot directed by PrettyBird's Paul Hunter called "ManChild of the East" the push branched out into Twitter, Flickr and YouTube, pushing content from Howard out to fans on the net as quickly as possible for the duration of the event last weekend. Along with content on the Adidas Basketball site aiming for a channel model, the brand is working up a lather of content.

"[The biggest challenge was] getting the site, technology and media ready to deliver a constant steam of communication, that alone was a huge task and all credit goes to the folks who worked day and night to pull it off," says 180/LA ECD William Gelner. 180/Los Angeles worked in concert with Amsterdam-based Riot, an agency created by 180 and TBWA to service the adidas account on the effort. "Add the logistics involved in legally capturing all the content at the event and then posting it in almost real time and making sure it's all cool, that's a whole other level of impossible."

The campaign aligns itself with the notion of constant communication 180 partner agency TBWA/Worldwide's chief digital officer Colleen DeCourcy has mentioned in connection with the brand before.

While this is certainly one of the larger concerted efforts to get an athlete involved in these networks, it's unclear how thorough the immersion is.

Howard's Twitter account, while followed by 664 others, doesn't follow anyone, and hasn't managed to graduate from Twitter 101 and attempt @replies or ReTweets. Compare Howard with Shaquille O'Neal, who has been vocal about claiming his online identity and boasts over 111,000 followers and a more advanced familiarity with the service. O'Neal and Howard have jousted over who gets to be called Superman on the court, but it's clear Shaq is the social networking man of steel.

Additionally, there's a clear imbalance between the size of audience for reality-type programming, like Howard's web films and Flickr photos, and the crisper content like the TV spot. While the latter (which has so far only aired in China) has over 2 million views online, some of Howard's Flickr photos have barely broken 100 views and the YouTube efforts are struggling to break five figures.

"We see the value of both [types of content]," Gelner says. "TV gives you the reach and emotional benefit of placing a message in the context of programming. A great basketball message during a great basketball game. With the webfilms, you're getting a different slice of the audience. Probably younger, more digitally savvy. People who are actively seeking out that content, with greater willingness to engage with it. Then there's the ability for direct action like seeking more messaging, more content, passing it along or perhaps even a sale. All of which we can more accurately measure and give a value to."

Forbes.com - The Creativity of Crowds

By Christopher Steiner

In 1922 publishing baron colonel Robert McCormick promised $50,000 to the architect who produced the best design for a tower to house the Chicago Tribune. The competition attracted 263 entries (and the winner's neo-Gothic 36-story building still stands). Now Chicagoans Ross Kimbarovsky, 38, and Michael Samson, 49, want to bring that same competition model to the graphic design business--and help thousands of struggling entrepreneurs in the process.

Their company, CrowdSpring.com, allows buyers to run competitions for company logos, Web sites, T-shirts and the like. For buyers of designs, that means more choice at a fraction of the cost; for aspiring designers, it means a shot at stealing work from entrenched design firms.

"The beauty of our site is that it doesn't matter if you have a degree from the Rhode Island School of Design or if you're a grandma in Tennessee with a bunch of free time and Adobe (nasdaq: ADBE - news - people ) Illustrator," says Samson. "If the client likes the grandma's work better, then she's going to get the job."

The twosome didn't make a beeline to Web land. Kimbarovsky, an intellectual property lawyer, met Samson, a film producer, 20 years ago, when Kimbarovsky started dating Samson's cousin (now his wife). In 2006 Samson was struggling to outsource postproduction work to India, while Kimbarovsky was running into trouble with a design shop that kept bungling a face-lift of his law firm's Web site. Initially, the two imagined a matchmaking service for buyers and sellers of everything from wedding planning to landscaping. They settled on graphic design because the product could be rendered and exchanged digitally with minimal overhead. In six months they rustled up $3 million from 16 business associates around Chicago.

The concept is compelling. An established interactive-design firm like Razorfish or Critical Mass might demand a $5,000 retainer to take on a project; CrowdSpring lets customers load rough specs into the site and pledge as little as $200 to the winner (higher purses, however, lure more artists). Designers compete by posting their work, gratis, for all to see, and buyers can offer instant feedback. CrowdSpring's cut: 15% of the pledged amount, meaning that on a $500 project, $500 goes to the winning designer and $75 to CrowdSpring. If at least 25 designs come in, you're obliged to buy one, even if you don't like any of them; if fewer than 25 come in, you can get your money back.

Venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki, who recently put up $500 for a T-shirt design to sell on his Web site, received 230 entrants and garnered a lot of traffic for CrowdSpring from Kawasaki's huge global reader base. Last August Kimberlee Dushinski, a self-employed mobile-marketing consultant, offered $250 for a new company logo; five days later she had 112 to choose from. "This gave me the opportunity to work with several great designers, something that wouldn't have been possible otherwise," she says.

CrowdSpring eats its own cooking. It offered $5,000 for its Web site design, done by a college student in the Netherlands. CrowdSpring's logo, a clever silhouette of a man's torso leaping with the force of a spring below, came from a janitor in Toronto with no formal design training. Cost: $200.

On the supply side, freelance designers--some 80,000 in the U.S.--need lots of help. Sarah Urbanek couldn't find a drop of work until she went on CrowdSpring, where the 28-year-old Titusville, Fla. designer has since snared 37 projects. "It's been a total savior to me," she says.

While scores of so-called business-to-business Web startups have flamed out groping for immature or insignificant markets, CrowdSpring, now with nine employees, is showing some legs. Some 5 million new companies come online every year and most need design work. Since its launch last May CrowdSpring has registered nearly 2,400 buyers from 35 countries--and 12,200 designers from more than 130. "We have clients chasing good designers rather than desperate designers chasing work," says Kimbarovsky. About 1,900 projects, worth an average of $400, have closed so far, yielding a little over $100,000 in revenues. Assuming the founders can manage their cash (they won't share their monthly burn rate), they expect to turn a profit in mid-2010.

How to land higher-dollar gigs? The site's premium Pro option (minimum pledge: $1,000) appeals to larger buyers--such as packaged-food-giant ConAgra Foods (nyse: CAG - news - people )--by allowing them to veil the submissions, so as not to tip off the competition. (ConAgra confirms it has tapped CrowdSpring to spruce up some of its brands but won't provide details.)

Competition lurks. Sites like Elance.com and Guru.com offer a big pool of freelancers for everything from legal to design work. But those sites don't do much to help untested freelancers. After a buyer posts a project, vendors advertise existing portfolios, but they don't take a preliminary stab at the work. Seasoned players usually win out.

Yet another challenge: dealing with pushback from the established design community, which has started a campaign called NoSpec, urging designers not to work in advance of getting paid. "You can't go to the new restaurant at the top of Trump Tower, ask for a taste and then decide if you're going to pay," says Catherine Brownlee, director of the Association of Professional Design Firms.

Not that Kimbarovsky feels the need to justify CrowdSpring's competitive approach. "In the design world, the gatekeepers are fighting hard to keep the status quo," he says. "Now if you live in India or Peoria you can buy a computer and sophisticated software for a little bit of money and compete with big agencies--and they don't like that."

Wall Street Journal – Las Vegas Touts Its Affordability

By Tamara Audi

Desperate for visitors and fighting the perception that now isn't the time to splurge on roulette or glitzy stage shows, Las Vegas has a new marketing message, and some unusual messengers: 100 or so Texans from a tiny town outside of Waco.

In recent years, the gambling mecca attracted tourists with a campaign that portrayed it as the ideal place to indulge in extreme behavior, like conspicuous consumption. But its assurance that "What Happens Here Stays Here" lost its resonance as the recession sobered the nation's mood and brought thrift back into fashion.

By contrast, its new campaign, with the slogan "Vegas Bound," urges hard-working Americans to take a well-deserved break in Las Vegas, so they can return re-energized for the task of making sure their homes and businesses survive the tough economy.

"We had to think how we should address our customers during this financial crisis when they're reluctant to make big financial commitments," says Rossi Ralenkotter, chief executive of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. "We're appealing to Americans saying, 'You're working hard. It's OK to take a break.'"

The campaign, which includes TV commercials, as well as minidocumentaries on online-video site YouTube, was created by Las Vegas-based R&R Partners. It features real people from Cranfills Gap, Texas, whose 358 residents refer to it simply as "The Gap."

More than 100 people from the town were taken on an all-expense-paid trip to Las Vegas for the filming of the ads. They show Cranfills Gap residents in high-end nightclubs, spas and restaurants. A grinning 81-year-old woman gives a thumbs-up after an indoor sky-diving session.

To emphasize that a Vegas vacation isn't just for the self-indulgent, many of the people featured in the campaign say they've been working too hard to have ever taken a vacation.

Las Vegas marketers say they researched more than 100 small towns, but settled on Cranfills Gap as the embodiment of working-class America -- their target audience. They hope to show that Las Vegas, while glamorous and luxurious, can be affordable.

For more than a year, the city has struggled with declines in visitors and revenues, prompting thousands of layoffs at casinos and hotels and the cancellation of major development projects. Room rates have plummeted.

Tuesday, casino mogul Steve Wynn said his Wynn Resorts will cut employee pay, hours and bonuses at the company's two Las Vegas properties as part of a plan to save $75 to $100 million.

Las Vegas has tweaked its marketing pitch several times in the past few months to try to quickly respond to changing economic conditions. But as the recession took hold and consumer confidence remained low, its marketers decided to try a completely new approach to redefining the city's image.

But supplanting Las Vegas's reputation as a posh resort destination frequented by the likes of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears will be a tricky job, marketing experts say. And getting people to spend money will be a challenge as consumers keep a tight rein on discretionary spending.

After years of marketing Vegas as a guilt-free adult playground, "it's hard to suddenly shift and see Vegas as prudent," says Jonah Berger, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. He says the new campaign tries to clear that hurdle by continuing to market the city as a glamorous place, but offering a new justification for visiting. "They're not suggesting Vegas isn't glitzy, but that given the current economy, consumers deserve a break," he says.

Producing the campaign, which started Jan. 12, cost about $2.5 million, says R&R Partners. The LVCVA is expected to use about 70% of its $12.6 million first-quarter ad-buying budget to purchase space and airtime for the ads.

The marketing push is having a big impact -- at least on Cranfills Gap. Owen Carlson, whose family owns the Horny Toad bar, says both his bar and the town have had more business since the ads came out. The family appeared on the Jan. 29 episode of "Jimmy Kimmel Live" to talk bout their Vegas trip.

"People are coming from all over just to see our little bar,'' Mr. Carlson says. "It's been a big help for Cranfills Gap."

ADWEEK – Reviews Fly at Twitter Ad Parties

By Tim Nudd

NEW YORK Consumers, creatives and even advertising characters gathered Sunday night at virtual Super Bowl chat parties set up specifically to discuss the commercials in real time. And while the sheer volume of reactions made it difficult to gauge a consensus opinion, there were some clear winners and losers among the ads -- and a general feeling that the spots, by and large, underwhelmed.

At least three separate large discussions sprang up concurrently on Twitter, grouped under different hashtags. The major ones, #superads09 and #sb43ads, were swamped with messages all night, each receiving several hundred posts per minute.

Instead of live-blogging the spots, which has been customary in recent years, several big advertising blogs chose to stream the Twitter chats -- a step forward in creating a convivial, communal forum for live, on-the-fly Super Bowl reviews.

Adweek organized its own Twitter chat at #superadfreak09, featuring seven creative directors and two Adweek writers, and simulcast that discussion on Adweek.com and AdFreak.com.

In terms of the work, Pepsi's "Refresh Anthem" spot got an enthusiastic reaction early in the game from consumers and creatives alike. Among the other ads that seemed to do well: Doritos' snow-globe spot, Pedigree's "Crazy Pets," Monster.com's moose ad, Hulu's "Alec in Huluwood," E*Trade's two talking-baby spots, Denny's "Serious" and CareerBuilder's "Tips."

The latter particularly impressed Adweek's group. Todd Grant of Cole & Weber United, Peter Nicholson of Deutsch, Patrick O'Neill of TBWA\Chiat\Day, Erich Pfeifer of Venables Bell & Partners and Eleftheria Parpis of Adweek all picked CareerBuilder as the best ad of the night.

Anheuser-Busch's Bud Light offerings largely fell flat among the Twitterati, and reactions were mixed on the Budweiser Clydesdale series. The GoDaddy commercials with Danica Patrick drew some particularly vocal animosity, with a number of people referring to the company as "Go Away Daddy."

Coke Zero's remake of "Mean Joe Greene" generally failed to impress. And the 3-D efforts of Dreamworks and SoBe mostly prompted a flurry of grousing from people who hadn't picked up the glasses.

David Armano of digital agency Critical Mass, author of the Logic + Emotion blog and a top Twitter user, was a fixture on the #superads09 chat throughout the evening. He chose Pepsi's Bob Dylan spot as the most memorable. Asked by AdFreak at the end of the night to sum up the commercials in a single Tweet, he replied: "import cars, talking flowers, punched koalas, generations, bad remixes, moose asses, boobs, + babies."

Several brands that advertised on the game joined the Twitter chats to stoke the fires before and after their commercials aired -- and to get feedback from viewers. Pepsi's PepSuber, the SoBe lizard and the E*Trade baby were among the ad characters who joined the party, posting with their own Twitter accounts. (After his second ad aired, the E*Trade baby wrote: "Best ads are behind us, headed to the bathroom. Ahhhh.. That's better.")

As the game drew to a close, viewers generally seemed to agree that the ads could have been better. As guiltyofcraving wrote: "not as good as last year, lots of hype, not a lot of follow through. A few surprises, but generally uninspired." Also, of course, the ads may have suffered in comparison to the game itself -- the second straight Super Bowl with a classic finish.

When the Cardinals took the lead late in the fourth quarter, the general good humor at all of the Twitter parties suddenly turned to palpable excitement -- something that was missing for big stretches of the evening. As LizardSoul wrote: "Yay!!! At least this makes up for the ads!"

OMMA – Sticky Situation

By Christine Champagne

After tons of buzz and a lengthy beta run, honeyshed.com officially opened for business last November. An independent venture backed by Publicis Groupe, Droga5 and production company Smuggler, the site employs hundreds of videos ranging in tone from silly to sexy to very sexy to sell cool products ranging from Shu Uemura false eyelashes to Puma sneakers designed by Alexander McQueen to a Volvo c30. (Wait, since when are Volvos cool?)

Aimed at 17- to 27-year-olds and widely touted as "MTC meets QVC" when it was announced, HoneyShed, which makes shopping an actively social experience, has gone through a lot of changes from beta to launch: It now has a slicker look, simplified navigation, a search function, reviews capability and more product channels, including one hawking the wares of up-and-coming designers and artists. This section is important in that it gives HoneyShed street cred, says the company's CEO Steve Greifer, noting, "It can't be just all major, brand-name products. One of the promises of HoneyShed is that we are tastemakers and curators. We find cool stuff."

Additionally, HoneyShed, initially envisioned as a site-centric enterprise, now distributes its videos across the Glam Media and Heavy networks, among other sites. "I think maybe we were being ignorant to think it could all be self-contained," concedes Droga5 founder-creative chairman David Droga.

Self-contained or not, are folks going to spend money on HoneyShed right now? Yes, according to Droga, who contends that while luxury purchases might suffer, young people will spend their disposable income on extras like new shoes. "Fortunately, they don't have mortgages yet," he notes.

And now on to the big question: Will the mortgage-free members of the Net Generation make HoneyShed the next big thing - or the next big flop? omma invited David Title, director of new media at Crossroads Films, and Heidi Skinner, director of emerging media at Critical Mass, which happens to count qvc, the granddaddy of home shopping, as a client, to enter the hive and share their thoughts. We also sought the opinions of perhaps the ultimate authority - a 19-year-old college student and avid online shopper named Amanda, who hails from New York and attends school in Boston.

OMMA: Does HoneyShed succeed in - as it says on the site - "reinventing shopping for the digital generation"?

Title: I guess we'll see. It certainly looks really pretty and seems to function, which is nice because with a lot of launches things don't work.... but it is so light on content right now that it still feels like a beta site.

Skinner: I appreciate a lot of the improvements made since it was in beta, and how can you not love some of the best practices they employed around social media and sharing? But really those types of pieces of content are so niche, and shoppers are ultimately still looking for that Amazon-like experience - some additional content that speaks to you and how you want to use specific products. That's something that could be layered on.

OMMA: Amanda, would you shop at HoneyShed?

Amanda: Honestly, not me particularly. It's kind of like a giant Web site of infomercials mixed with MTV. But they don't really list anything about all the products. They just kind of tell it to you. I'd rather just go to Amazon and read the description for myself. I hate to say it, but no one, especially college students, is going to sit there watching videos trying to figure out if they are going to buy a product or not.

OMMA: What did you think of the videos? Do they do a good job of selling the products?

Title: Everyone who is appearing in the videos has some personality and I think they're all appealing in their own way. I think they are cast well, but why would I sit through a two-minute ad? I Tivo through them on television.

OMMA: The site has been criticized for the way women are portrayed. Did you find anything offensive?

Amanda: Yeah, there was an advertisement on there for a woman's T-shirt. The video for it was these three girls wearing the T-shirt and licking ice cream cones, and at the end they were like, "Ice cream is just so innocent, but not to guys," and they're sitting there licking the cones, and they're like, "Guys' minds wander everywhere!" And I was just like, Oh my God. It was cheesy and a little bit trashy at the same time. I thought, Are you really trying to sell this to girls? because it isn't going to work.

Skinner: When I looked at the makeup, there were two girls on a couch, and the way that one girl was positioning herself to help the other girl apply makeup to her eye was very uncomfortable to me. I have nothing against being a lesbian, but that isn't speaking to me. I feel like the women who are selling the products have been trained to act this way. It's not coming naturally to them. It feels calculated, and it doesn't resonate with me as a woman shopper.

OMMA: There are social components to the site. For instance, you can post your shopping cart, called a Stash on HoneyShed, on sites like Facebook and MySpace so everyone can see what you covet.

Amanda: That's kind of cool that you can post it on Facebook because everyone has a Facebook page, and if friends don't know what to get you, then it's right there.

Skinner: Portability in this context is key, and that's one thing that they've done well.

OMMA: So what do you make of HoneyShed overall?

Skinner: I really wanted it to work. I love it when things shake up current models, but I just don't feel like this hit the mark. They're positioning themselves as, "This is the newest, most cutting-edge way to shop!" But they really didn't employ things for video shopping that could have been a differentiator like hot spotting in the videos.

Title: I wish them luck. If they can figure it out, that's great. But I just don't know who shops this way.

Amanda: When I'm going to buy something, it's not about the look of the Web site or anything like that. It's about what I'm buying. Anything straightforward and easy to follow is better than something that's trying to be hip and cool.

Ad Age - Vegas Turns to Reality Show Amid Recession

By Natalie Zmuda

New York - "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" certainly seemed ready-made for reality TV. But it's a new campaign, "Take a break USA," that is getting star treatment.

The popular branding campaign that promoted Sin City as a high-rolling destination where anything can happen has been shelved in favor of a more recession-proof strategy. The "Take a break USA" campaign was quickly developed last fall when it became clear the recession would take a dire toll on the travel industry.

"It is a direct response to how the economy is affecting people's use of discretionary dollars and the impact on travel budgets," said Terry Jicinsky, senior VP-marketing at the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. "We're very focused on helping people eliminate the hesitation they have. ... Many of the messages received through the campaign are about impromptu travel."

Dwindling revenue

Mr. Jicinsky said he hopes the campaign, which is rolling out now and will run through at least March, will lead to short-term visits and stem fast-dwindling revenue in the city. It replaces R&R Partners' first effort to address the economic uncertainty, a short-lived campaign called "Crazy times call for crazy fun," which launched in June. Preliminary figures for 2008 show a 4% decline in visitors and a 4.5% decline in hotel occupancy in the city. Both figures had been relatively flat before taking a nosedive in the fall, Mr. Jicinsky said.

With research showing that consumers believed Las Vegas was grinding to a halt -- media reports have highlighted the slowdown in new construction, and travel agents are offering steep discounts -- R&R Partners, the visitors authority's creative agency, set out to show consumers that simply isn't the case.

"Consumers wanted to know that Vegas was alive and vibrant and that they'd have the same experience as the last time they were there," said Rob Dondero, exec VP at R&R Partners.

To that end, the organization wanted a campaign that would be more retail-oriented, promoting local attractions and accommodations without focusing on discounted prices. "If you use price to market a destination and prices go up, the campaign you used previously works against you," Mr. Jicinsky said. "It's one of the things that people who market destinations are very conscious of."

Appealing to cash-strapped consumers

The concept of documenting a citywide vacation for one small, quintessential American town of hardworking, deserving individuals was settled on as a way to appeal to cash-strapped, stressed-out consumers. Some 125 towns were considered, as the agency looked for a cross section of residents that would match the diverse array of visitors Las Vegas attracts. After narrowing down their choices, agency execs visited several towns and began identifying potential storylines.

Cranfills Gap, a rural outpost some 100 miles southwest of Dallas, was eventually chosen. Roughly one-third of the city's 350 residents took a five-day trip to Las Vegas in December, agreeing to let the agency chronicle their adventures reality-TV-style.

The residents were organized into groups such as the "Vegas Vixens" and "The Wild Bunch," and itineraries were created accordingly. But there were still some surprises along the way, Mr. Dondero said. One couple got engaged during dinner early on in the week, and an 81-year-old woman decided she simply had to go skydiving.

Online component

An online component of the campaign features those itineraries so other visitors can recreate the experiences. Through a partnership with YouTube, about a dozen webisodes are being broadcast at visitlasvegas.com and youtube.com/lasvegas.

The partnership with YouTube is a first for the visitors authority, Mr. Jicinsky said. He said he believes that social media and viral marketing are little-utilized channels that destination marketers should be looking at more closely. "Rather than just relying on 30-second television spots or print ads, [we all] really need to ramp up this social-media and viral-marketing aspect," he said.

Traditional media, including five 30-second spots, as well as newspaper and magazine ads, is still a part of the campaign, however. The campaign cost about $2.5 million to produce and has nearly $13 million in media buys behind it in the first quarter. Executives say that is on par with previous campaigns.

Creativity - LVCVA: Vegas Bound

Las Vegas-based agency R&R Partners is promoting its hometown tourism trade with a new web-based campaign that documents a few hard-working small-town Americans enjoying some overdue vacation time in the casino-filled desert mecca.

The agency picked a few lucky folks from the small town of Cranfills Gap, Texas to go on a Vegas vacation and captured their various experiences in web videos. The site for the campaign follows each group through webisodes that feature footage from their trip. Additionally, visitors to the site can learn more about "The Gap" and its 358 residents through videos and also plan their own trip to Vegas.

The campaign also includes a TV spot and this week, the various characters from Cranfills Gap will be appearing on late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Ad Age - TBWA Worldwide: How To Behave As A Network

By Laurel Wentz

Months before Visa even called the $600 million global pitch that would become a battle of four strong regional incumbents, TBWA, which had the business in the U.S., pulled together a financial-services fast-track study looking at the role of money in 52 markets. The agency hustled to show it to Visa's newly arrived global chief marketing officer, Antonio Lucio.

It was a bit of the "strategic rigor" for which Mr. Lucio praised TBWA after the pitch, the kind of sharp thinking that translated into memorable work that resonated with decision makers at Visa. By the end of the pitch, Mr. Lucio's eight-person group of regional managers voted unanimously for the agency.

"For the entire team to decide on one agency, without arguments, was a monumental achievement for TBWA," said Mr. Lucio, who took some convincing that a company that "grew up as a confederation of independent states" could really "behave as a network."

Judging by the Visa win; its success in assembling a new agency to win Adidas' digital business; its respectable revenue growth (5%) in a tough climate; and its continued creative excellence in a number of international markets, TBWA has done just that. That's why it's Advertising Age's Global Agency of the Year for 2008.

First, there's the work. Take one of Adidas' innovative "outdoor spectaculars" last summer, when TBWA erected "The Impossible Huddle" using 17-meter-tall replicas of 11 of Europe's best soccer players. The gigantic huddle dominated Zurich's train station as fans arrived for European championship soccer matches (jersey sales rose 50% during the championship for the five players from the huddle whose jerseys Adidas sells).

Ideas without borders

Or consider the way TBWA's "In an Absolut World" concept is spreading across borders, with local executions such as a German airport taxi fleet in which all the cabs are Porsches and the rides are free, because that's how life would be "In an Absolut World." Absolut's German sales went up 18%.

Less visible to outsiders is the network's strong leadership, which has been taking the network beyond that "confederation of independent states" Mr. Lucio was worried about. It begins with President-CEO Tom Carroll, who by the time the Visa pitch had come around had already fixed one of the agency's black holes. For more than a decade TBWA had flopped in Brazil, buying a succession of local agencies that floundered. So Mr. Carroll, who was named president in 2006 and CEO in December 2007, tried something new. He flew to São Paulo and spent time with the younger creatives at the outstanding local shop he wanted to buy. After he won them over, Lew Lara agreed to sell to TBWA at the end of 2007, just in time to play a key role in the Visa pitch. Brazil was one of the five "demonstration markets" Visa focused on in the pitch, along with the U.S., Canada, Russia and South Korea. What's now known as TBWA Lew Lara is handling Visa's global efforts for the 2010 World Cup.

Mr. Lucio said he was impressed by TBWA's consistent track record with brand stars Apple, Adidas and Nissan, and likes being able to draw on seasoned brand builders such as creative icon Lee Clow and Chairman Jean-Marie Dru, while also working with a younger generation that includes Rob Schwartz, executive creative director of TBWA/Chiat/Day, Los Angeles, and brings "new technology and new approaches."

As part of the management team's dedication to bringing TBWA together as a network, Mr. Carroll does about three live webcasts a year, showing recent work and taking questions from staffers in different countries. To span the world's time zones in a single day, Mr. Carroll starts at 3 a.m. and does the live webcast three times throughout the day.

This approach resonates with outsiders as well as employees. "They have a good sense of how the world fits together; that's their greatest strength," said Christophe Bezu, Hong Kong-based senior VP and head of Asia/Pacific for Adidas.

Thanks to TBWA's comprehensive Olympics-related effort for Adidas -- ranging from grass-roots events to an ad campaign that won China's first Gold Lion at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival for stunning depictions of individual athletes lifted up by huge Chinese crowds -- Mr. Bezu said Adidas is closing in on the No. 1 spot in China. It narrowed the gap with Nike in 2008, boosting sales more than 30% and growing China from Adidas' fourth-largest market to No. 2 after the U.S.

Disruptions

Even so, there are sometimes glitches in the network. First off, its New York office last year was forced to go through another in a series of reinventions after the departure of creative whiz Gerry Graf to Saatchi & Saatchi. That sparked a further exodus of creative talent, leaving the office to Mark Figliulo, Mr. Graf's replacement, to fix.

Another black mark came when TBWA, basking in the glow of winning China's first Gold Lion, was caught up in an international scandal. The Chinese were outraged by another Cannes Lion, awarded to TBWA's Paris office for print ads for Amnesty International that criticized China's human-rights record. A boycott of TBWA and its clients in China was briefly threatened.

It was an embarrassing lapse caused by creatives' lust to win awards. The ads in question had run once, in a free magazine in the south of France, fulfilling the requirements for eligibility. From now on, Mr. Carroll said, he will vet all TBWA's entries for the Cannes festival.

"Had we known about that ad, it would never have been produced," he said. "I want to see everything that goes to Cannes, and if it's not legitimate, it's not going. I'd rather come in 12th."

Even harder than winning new business is knowing when to kill a legendary campaign -- and figuring out what comes next. That was TBWA's dilemma with Absolut vodka and the 27-year-old iconic bottle campaign that was largely limited to print and reflected an era before Absolut had premium-vodka competitors.

Coming to terms

"There was no surprise left in the brand," said Jamie Gallo, global group account director on Absolut and managing director of the New York office.

"It was the most difficult thing I've ever been through in my career, when we finally admitted to ourselves the bottle campaign wasn't working anymore," Mr. Carroll said. "We had about 20 ideas that weren't good enough. Some we came close to producing."

What finally emerged was "In an Absolut World." Ideas for the campaign have been as big as short films in the U.S. by rapper Kanye West and as tiny as adding a billboard extension to a tree in Mexico City, an almost-treeless city that could use more greenery. Sales of Absolut are up about 10%.

"You know you have a great, iconic campaign when the rest of the world can not only stay true to it but can execute it in a way that's [locally] relevant," Mr. Carroll said.

TBWA decided to make a client the theme of the agency's annual Very Short Very Cheap Film Festival for the first time in 2008, and 315 entries about Absolut poured in from almost 50 countries. TBWA and Absolut did a mini film festival in Stockholm and New York with the 20 best entries, and the U.S. client created a YouTube channel for some of the favorite films. In one film from the Philippines, money is replaced by affection, and hugs are the currency for every transaction. "Hugs" is being professionally reshot and will break in February 2009 as a global commercial, Mr. Gallo said.

Sticking around

"'In an Absolut World' has worked incredibly well for us, and still TBWA is always pushing it to the next level," said Anna Malmhake, Absolut's global brand director. "When I started 18 months ago, I thought about looking at other agencies, but in a very short time I came to realize that we are in the best hands."

Even long-standing clients looked at TBWA in new ways last year. When sibling agency 180, Amsterdam, muscled into Adidas' global effort to trim down to one digital agency but didn't have the digital capability, Colleen DeCourcy, TBWA's chief digital officer, spent a month building an agency in Amsterdam that could compete against the other contenders, including Isobar and Razorfish. She pulled in people from 180, TBWA, Critical Mass and interactive agency EVB and developed a clear vision of what Adidas needed.

"You may have good digital creative, but who's digitally helping you run your business?" she said. "The mistake all traditional agencies make is to fight for who gets to build the website that goes with the ad. The client needs his business managed, not who does the website."

She won the account, and the 50-person Amsterdam-based unit called Riot that grew out of the pitch is running the business.

"We'll see more of this," she said. "We'll do a lot of formations around clients we value."

AdWeek - Social Networkers Show Their Heart

By Brian Morrissey

NEW YORK Last Wednesday night, David Armano asked a favor of his Twitter network: he wanted to help out a family friend fallen on hard times. Armano, vp of interaction design at digital shop Critical Mass, is not just any random Twitter user. He boasts over 8,000 followers, and writes a well-read blog, Logic + Emotion.

What unfolded is destined to be a case study in the power of micro-networks and influencers. Within 24 hours Armano raised nearly $15,000 for Daniela and her needy family, cobbling together donations from 472 people.

Some lessons from the experience:

Big Influence Comes From Small Things: Debates over what it means to be an "influencer" can miss the point. Armano has influence with thousands, built short update by short update. He attracted all those donations not simply because of a heartbreaking story of a woman in need but thanks to thousands of small interactions over many months. Social media influence is trust earned, not given, over the long term.

Secondary Distribution Is Critical: Armano tapped not just the reach of his followers, but encouraged them to "retweet" his request by sending it on to their networks. This exponentially grew the reach of his message, reaching thousands more people. The velocity is apparent in how quickly donations came in-by the next morning, over $11,000 was raised.

Authenticity Scales: To date, Twitter has mostly been used for personal promotion. Twitter celebrities with tens of thousands of followers like Jason Calacanis, Robert Scoble and Guy Kawasaki have used their networks, effectively, to promote their products or personal brands. Armano took his influence and flipped it, using it to direct attention on a deeply personal cause. (Daniela is living with his family.) "I'm hopeful we can move the discussion from who has influence to what we do with what influence we have," he wrote.

Critical Mass Appoints Cameron Bedford SVP, General Manager

TORONTO, ON and CHICAGO, IL – Critical Mass (www.criticalmass.com), an Omnicom digital marketing agency, has named veteran e-business and digital communication strategist Cameron Bedford to the role of Senior Vice President, General Manager. In his new position, he will oversee the daily management of the Toronto office and its contribution to the company's global operations.

Bedford brings more than 20 years of experience in marketing, communications, and e-business consulting to the position. He has led the implementation of online marketing programs, built informational and transactional Web sites, and integrated a wide range of interactive tools and technologies.

Prior to joining Critical Mass, Bedford was Vice President, General Manager at Fjord Interactive Marketing + Technology, a division of Cossette Communications. He was responsible for the delivery of digital marketing and advertising services to such clients as Bell, BMO, General Mills, General Motors, GlaxoSmithKline, McDonald's and Samsung.

Previously, Bedford co-founded the Canadian division of Organic Inc. and opened the Toronto office. He led the financial services and telecommunications consulting practices and worked with a variety of clients, including Bank of Montreal, Great-West Life, Bell, Manitoba Telecom, Aliant, the Ontario Lottery Corporation, Honda, Sprint and President's Choice.

"Cameron brings a wealth of experience to the position," said Dianne Wilkins, Chief Executive Officer of Critical Mass. "His strategic vision, coupled with the expertise he gained from working with Fortune 500 clients, will serve him well as he leads the growth of our Toronto office."

Business Week - The Collective Power of Individuals

By Helen Walters

Last night, two things happened on Twitter that seem to me to point to the reality of our present day connected world, with trends that are budding now that will revolutionize many an industry and many a life.

Happening # 1

David Armano (@armano), VP of Experience Design at the Chicago marketing consultancy Critical Mass, posted an enigmatic tweet on his Twitter feed. "Hey everyone. I am going to need a very BIG favor from you. It's going to be asking a lot. I'll let you know more very soon." A few minutes later he posted a request for help for Daniela, an acquaintance in a bad situation.

Sadly, we've all heard similar stories before. But what happened next was nothing short of phenomenal. Armano's network of 8,150 followers swung into action, spreading the word about Daniela. Within a few hours, donations had reached $5,000. Tweets of support poured in. By this morning, donations had topped $11,700, and there's probably more to come.

Happening # 2

Tireless tech world figure, blogger, Tweeter (etc), Robert Scoble (@scobleizer) found himself in a jam.

The bus transporting him and eight blogger cronies to the CES show broke down about 100 miles outside of Las Vegas. "Getting taxis to come pick us up this time of night is proving troubling," Scoble tweeted. "Any ideas?" Apparently so. Scoble's network (of nearly 48,000) swung into action and a few hours later the day was saved. "Tons of people have been helping us get unstranded – all via Twitter," Scoble noted.

There are a few forces at play here. First and most important, the importance and value of a true network. Both Armano and Scoble diligently respond to their network, engaging and discussing, merrily debating and disagreeing. No one would have given a dime to Armano, no one would have lifted a finger to help Scoble, if they hadn't felt a genuine connection. That's why businesses that are successful on Twitter have a human face. Where once a brand could tell consumers what to think (even if it was that their product was good for you), top down, authoritarian monologues don't cut it in this world.

Secondly, this isn't the future. It's just another step on the way there. Armano can't repeat this trick. Scoble shouldn't bank on his bus breaking down every week. People were galvanized because this is new as much as anything else. The surge of the crowd inspired others, and the good will was palpable and moving, but it strikes me that if another person in Daniela's unfortunate situation tried to emulate the success of this experiment, they wouldn't do so well.

Again, it comes down to individuals. Both the networks in play here have been built up over years. As Armano wrote, this is the first time he's tried anything like this. Indeed, the experiment wasn't really planned; more an idea he put into action on a whim. But I bet it's the last time he tries this in a while, too.

Nonetheless, I think both stories provide a great, salutary reminder that nothing less than humanity lurks among the bits and bytes. Don't you agree?

Business Week - The New Focus Group: The Collective

By David Armano

There's probably no better time for an organization to ask the question, "What's the return on investment?" Given the economic uncertainty, it's an understandable instinct.

The problem is, traditional ROI, with its focus groups and lab-type settings, is less relevant in a fast-paced digital world. Hyperfocusing on ROI as a key indicator of future success limits the quality of insights that can be obtained when an initiative is launched in a real environment. In the real world, a "mass audience" doesn't really exist (this is especially true on the Web) and brands that deal in niches are rewarded. In the real world, the collective is the focus group.

It's time to focus on another type of ROI, one we like to call Return on Insight. Here are some tips on how brands should think about this new form of ROI.

Listen

There are many ways to listen to what's being said about your company, product, brand, service and most importantly, related universe. Services from vendors such as Radian 6, Collective Intellect, Networked Insights, or Nielsen BuzzMetrics uncover and analyze what people are saying both inside communities and on the open Web. For our recently launched Pampers Village community, P&G (PG) partnered with a company called Liveworld (LVWD), which offers such services as building and managing the community. Liveworld helps us listen to and moderate user interactions in the community, which not only helps filter out inappropriate comments so the quality of the community experience is maintained, but also allows the brand to listen to what consumers want to discuss—from parental topics to features they would like to see in the community. Another great technique for listening is using the social network Twitter. Brands can use search.twitter.com to monitor what people are saying about them—in the context of actual conversations.

Crucially, brands need to listen at all times, not just at the beginning of a project. Listening through the life of a campaign or initiative yields insights into attitudes and identifies which consumers have influence, as well as the most fertile ground for digital engagement.

Learn

If you don't launch, you don't learn. Pilot initiatives can be quickly launched using prototype methodologies. We typically perform "rapid design labs," engaging multiple stakeholders across multidisciplinary teams to flesh out objectives and get into some rough design activity. By the end of a typical rapid design lab, we have the beginnings of something that can be built. Part of the goal is to see what happens so we can analyze findings along the way. When we worked on the NASA.gov redesign, we got the idea of "social bookmarking" content and organizing topics in "tags" from these sessions.

With the site launched and evolving, metrics are analyzed to help determine what's working. With most initiatives on this scale, the design is ongoing and never really ends. As with "Listen," "Learn" is NOT a phase; it must be continual. Learning helps reduce risk and helps executives make better decisions on an ongoing basis. Both are critical in a down economy.

Adapt

If estimating traditional ROI is a predictive exercise, then gauging the Return on Insight is an adaptive one. In order to glean both strategic and tactical insights, organizations have to be nimble enough to measure what is or isn't working and make adjustments. Think about navigating a small fleet of speedboats vs. a large cruise liner. Analytics again play a big role. From helping to identify consumer sentiment to measuring the effectiveness of a campaign or initiative, the science behind marketing provides insights into how to move forward. But it's not just about data points. Digital media may be easily measurable, but a combination of analysts, planners and other team members is needed to make sense of the data. That team should think like "digital anthropologists," sifting through the quantitative data that analytics can provide and pulling insights from the qualitative inputs.

Stage a Revolution Within Your Own Organization

The advent of Web 2.0 and social media has been nothing short of revolutionary. Today, consumers can most likely move faster than your organization or brand could ever dream. To keep up with the changing behavior of customers, your organization may need to undergo its own revolution. As you prepare for this, you might want to ask yourself the following questions:

1. Are you actively listening to your customers in the places they frequent online?

2. Are you launching initiatives that can be easily updated? Are you enabling a "culture of rapid response?"

3. Are you evaluating current processes and updating them as needed?

4. Are you building a culture in which "failure" is acceptable?

5. Are you allowing your teams to create "pilots" prior to scrutinizing them through traditional ROI exercises?

6. Are you planning initiatives that will help your organization learn prior to backing major marketing campaigns?

7. Are you synthesizing qualitative insights in addition to analyzing hard data points?

8. Are you tweaking your strategy along the way—and adapting where change may be needed?

9. Are you empowering all members of your teams to think and act like "digital anthropologists?"

10. Are you evolving the tools and methods to measure success (i.e. going beyond clicks and impressions)?

The Internet has evolved into a highly fragmented and niche medium where the formulae of mass communications and even traditional interactive tactics may not apply. Every day, average users are putting out both content and applications that sometimes compete directly with your own. Now more than ever, executives need to have a solid grasp of the nuances that exist online in order to get—and sustain—the attention of digital consumers. And, critically, insights into digital behavior can help us design the kinds of solutions people want as part of this lifestyle. By listening and engaging the "collective" through all phases of our initiatives, we now have opportunities not only to be more in tune with customer needs, but also to adapt as quickly as they do. In our digital world, that could be the most important ROI possible.

Adweek - Global AOY: TBWA

By Andrew McMains

Adweek - Not-So-Banner Year For Digital

By Brian Morrissey

The Globe & Mail - What Women Want

By Jennifer Wells

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that in the face of the global economic slump/crash/catastrophe, I have adopted a statistically predictable financial strategy.

Behaviour 1: I have turned into a coupon clipper and now manage a running mental tally of expiry dates (three weeks left to claim that free cup of java at Second Cup).

Behaviour 2: I've reduced my acceptable price point for wine purchases. Farewell, 20-bucks-a-bottle. Do you have something peppery for $11?

Strangely, I recently purchased a golden shimmering lip gloss—"sparkles with mother-of-pearl"—from Yves Saint Laurent, paying roughly twice as much as I normally would for a lipstick from a cosmetics manufacturer whose counter I have never before darkened, plus an under-eye highlighter that I never had the nerve to treat myself to in the so-called good times.

Oh, and I'm interested in a high-quality flat-screen television, if you've got one on offer.

From everything Janet Riccio has to say about me and all you women readers out there, this is standard operational behaviour in times of economic crisis. And—guess what?—most companies don't get it. And—here's a surprise—most companies fail dismally when it comes to capitalizing on the economic power of women consumers.

They so don't get it that Riccio, an executive vice-president at Omnicom Group Inc. in New York, has launched a consultancy stacked with women from within the Omnicom empire.

The name Omnicom may not register, but it's one of the world's largest advertising, marketing and communications companies, with $12.7 billion in revenue in 2007 and such big-name firms as the public relations agency Fleishman-Hillard and the advertising agency BBDO Worldwide in its embrace.

Collapsing onto a hotel couch during a brief jaunt through Toronto, Riccio hands over her business card, which features a below-the-knee photo of Riccio and her women partners in chic footwear.

Women. Shoes. A natural fit.

Riccio's consultancy is called G23. G for global. And 23 for the pair of chromosomes that determines gender differences. G23's mission is to sell insights to marketers as to what women buy, when they buy, and how they exert their influence over buying decisions. I will admit here to a slight aversion to any business group that is women-specific. A little '70s, no?

"The power of the female economy is underestimated around the world by marketers," counters Riccio. "There are marketers in Fortune 100 companies that still relegate women to diversity status."

Riccio knows this territory. In a matter of days, she will be pitching G23 to a Fortune 100 company. Two weeks prior to our meeting, G23 was retained by Chrysler as that company was suffering the worst crisis in its history. Why would they bother with market research in the middle of a meltdown?

"We're sitting on the largest database of the consuming female economy in the world," says Riccio of proprietary research that spans 8,000 women in 16 countries, and includes 80 in-depth studies in 11 of those countries. (The data was mined for G23 by Harris Interactive and Ethnography Pacific.) "We have come to a collective understanding that there is a power in that specific female-driven economy that is completely untouched."

There's the database, and then there's the executive brainpower. The members of G23 include Emma Gilding, president of in:site, a cultural anthropology think-tank, and Dianne Wilkins, CEO of the interactive agency Critical Mass.

Any company that retains G23 is seeking to understand markets better. The scope of the research at hand allows G23 to present data in a fresh global context. Example: Attitudes among 30-something women in China are consistent with those of 50-something women in the United States. "They share the same attitudes about how they shop," says Riccio. "They're conservative shoppers. They're thoroughly technologically savvy. They research everything that they shop for. When you think about it, if I'm marketing a product to a 50-something woman in the U.S., would I naturally think of a 30-something woman in China?"

For decades, marketers have been yakking about the force of women in purchasing decisions. And for just as long, marketers have failed to capitalize on that reality.

Here's an interesting G23 statistic: In purchasing a computer for the household, 89% of women have equal or more say in the decision; 39% have primary or sole control over the purchase. Here's another: Women spend more time using the Internet than watching television, listening to the radio, or reading books, newspapers and magazines.

And then there's this: The economic world order has come undone, and women now make roughly 80% of the spending decisions.

"It's going to be really fascinating in this economic crisis," says Riccio. Surveys show that under the rubric "happily ever after," women rank family/children as their top priority. Contentment is a close No. 2. Financial security places third. "Think about the impact of women in this economic downturn, the importance of financial security. Everybody's losing: homes, savings, college funds, all of that....Women are making the dough. They're retrenching, seeking security, rebuilding their savings."

The cool factor of not spending is only going to build, predicts Riccio. She recounts tales of a recent New York gala in which the cocktail talk was about how long the women had owned their shoes, how old their dress was. Not spending has emerged as the season's fashionable badge of honour.

Some categories are relatively immune to the not-spending trend, and even the trading-down trend. Chocolate is one. Cosmetics is another.

"And," adds Riccio, "they will not trade down on their televisions."

Televisions?

"Correct."

Why?

"Because they're not going on vacation, they're not going out as much, they're not going to movies as much, and they're in charge of family entertainment."

My point precisely.

If I were in the home electronics business, I'd be fashioning the ends of aisles with me in mind. A sleek television. An array of family-cozy DVDs. (Why does one never tire of The Princess Bride?) A set of those TV tables with the metal tops that collapse when they're stacked in a group. And that comfort food classic: the TV dinner.

Marketers have had eons to figure this out. Maybe the economic meltdown will prove to be the final push they need.

Advertising Age - What Brands Can Learn From A Weiner

By David Armano

I know what you're thinking. "Not another recession article -- ugh." Well it's not, really.

Several weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go for a ride in the world-famous Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. Actually, I went on several rides -- and it started with getting picked up at the Las Vegas airport, no less. Right off the bat, there were several things I noticed as I approached the giant wiener on wheels. It was surrounded by a crowd. Everyone was taking pictures, talking to each other about it and, of course, smiling. Just take a look at my own behavior as I sat inside of it. I was instantly transformed into a child. Which isn't really hard for me because I'm a kid at heart, but as we drove around I noticed that the Wienermobile had this effect on virtually everyone.

We rode on the Strip, where cops on bicycles stopped us to ask for "wiener whistles," and made a stop at Zappos, where we witnessed full-grown adults literally skipping around the Wienermobile as they sang, "How I wish I were an Oscar Mayer wiener." On the Las Vegas Strip itself, where there is no shortage of photo opportunities, people stopped in their tracks, fumbling to get out their cameras before we passed them by. Toward the end of my trip spent in the Wienermobile, several things became clear to me. For starters, the Wienermobile teaches us about what it means to produce a "social object," as prominent blogger Hugh McLeod puts it. It's an object that connects people, gets them talking and, more important, gets them sharing stories as I am doing here. Think about this lesson as it came before "social media" was ever invented.

Secondly, it is an experience. From the crafting of the vehicle to the whistles to the "Hotdoggers" who drive them (and undergo some serious training), everything about the Wienermobile is designed to be memorable.

Lastly, the model has become somewhat scalable. What started out as one Wienermobile has now grown to seven, which cover geographical regions of North America. And the Wienermobile has survived tougher times than our current recession. For example, during World War II it had to be taken off the road due to gasoline rationing. Today it's alive and well, and the latest addition is a more fuel-friendly version built off the chassis of a Mini Cooper.

But my greatest epiphany was this: Had Carl G. Mayer, nephew of Oscar Mayer and creator of the Wienermobile, put his concept in front of a bunch of marketing executives, I'm not certain it would have ever gotten the green light to move forward. Think about it -- if you never saw the Wienermobile in action, how would you estimate return on investment? I mean it's not actually selling hot dogs and it is dependent on fuel and maintenance. Aside from giving out coupons in front of grocery chains, how do you measure the ROI of something like the Wienermobile? How do you measure smiles? What do those get you?

Well, I think they get you a lot. And I think Carl realized something that maybe today's cash-strapped CMOs might not. A brand like Oscar Mayer isn't just selling hot dogs -- it is actually selling smiles. Like the ones at a baseball game or family grill out or a party. Wieners are a commodity. A winning brand is not. And the Wienermobile helps take Oscar Meyer out of the commodity game and into a game where brand affinity matters and leads to sales.

At Critical Mass, we think about experiences like this as extraordinary. And extraordinary experiences are practically recession-proof. The Wienermobile has gone "2.0" with an account on Twitter and even a blog. Let's see if those smiles can translate online, since affinity has a way of translating to sales offline.

NussbaumOnDesign - How to Blog Best From an Expert

By Bruce Nussbaum

Check out this new book on blogging. David Armano of Critical Mass is one of 40 top bloggers interviewed.

Armano’s views on how to blog are insightful and frank. What’s the best measure of success? Influence, he says, not simply traffic. Traffic is the means to an end—remember that.

And check out what he believes to be his own most important post—on creativity.

Advertising Age - The Four C's of Community

By David Armano

Have you ever given serious thought as to why marketers are so infatuated with the idea of "viral"? Think about it. Viral is actually pretty easy to wrap your head around. For starters, it's not difficult to measure. Views in YouTube, the number of times a video was embedded, the number of comments, the number of times a Facebook application has been downloaded or shared and the last time it was used. They are all measurable. And like traditional marketing, they're pretty easy to walk away from.

If you are fortunate enough to hit the "viral video" jackpot, for example, you can sit back and watch as the infectious behavior kicks in. No wonder marketers can't get away from the idea of viral. The problem with it, however, is that the odds are not in your favor. My writing may be influenced by the fact that I'm doing it on a plane on my way to Las Vegas for the WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) summit. But, I'm also pretty sure that the stats back up my claim, as there are relatively few of the "Subservient Chicken" and Dove "Real Beauty" examples compared to the thousands of initiatives launched that hope to be the next one.

So let's forget the "V" word for a moment and talk about the "C" word: community. Chances are that this is a word that's come up nearly as often as "viral." But unlike viral, community requires a different set of objectives, strategy and tactics around measurement. Yet, intuitively, brands realize there is value to them. That's because if we take our bright and shiny marketing hats off for a moment, we realize that it's likely we are part of them. From Apple to Mini Cooper, many brands already have millions of fans participating in some form of community around the brand, official or unofficial. People who use social networks also feel like they're part of a larger community of people they relate to. Twitter, for example, has this effect, especially when many of us actually make efforts to meet each other in real life or just connect digitally. Just ask the "Motrin Moms."

But brands need to know a few things before they head down the community path. The web is saturated with communities. Some, like WebMD, are thriving, while others have come and gone. The starting point to any community is finding a niche that is currently underserved and serving that community better than anyone else. For example, I'm a member of the IXDA (Interaction Design Association), a community that sprung up because there was a void between information architects and designers. Brands do potentially have opportunities to act as what I'll call "facilitators," but they have to be willing to start with a bit if research and then ask themselves if they are really willing to do what it takes to start and maintain a community.

The tools aren't the issue -- by using services such as Ning, any brand can build a community without investing in heavy infrastructure. Or they can add community functions through solutions offered by companies such as Pluck. Communities can be used for consumer research, too. Leverage Software creates internal communities around products, brands and organizations which can be positioned to test ideas. Critical Mass, the company I work for, even has an internal group called "Curious" dedicated to polling communities that we help pull together for the purpose of gleaning insights.

And of course there's always the option to customize and build as we recently did on our Pampers Village. For P&G we teamed up with both technical partners as well as global agencies such as Saatchi. Together we built the beginnings of a branded community that blends content, tools and social functionality, all based on the insight that parents want to connect and naturally form communities both online and off. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Before even thinking of a community initiative, consider the following "Four C's" as a high-level framework:

Content
Quality content is a great way to attract the people who are needed to form the elusive community that your brand is hoping to help build. When considering community initiatives, there are three questions to ask: Where will the content come from? Does it provide indisputable value? Can a regular flow of quality content be maintained? Even pre-Web 2.0 initiatives such as beinggirl.com, another P&G-powered community for female teens grappling with relevant topics, have to focus on keeping the content itself fresh and relevant.

Context
Context means understanding how to meet people where they are and serving them the right experience at the right time. Well-designed applications and functionality have great opportunities to deliver on context. For example, Facebook's recently updated iPhone app is perfectly designed for contextual usage on the go. It's my favorite way to stay in touch with my Facebook community, which I prefer to do while away from the PC. Context means investing time in knowing how your users will want to engage with their community -- then enabling them to do so.

Connectivity
Communities thrive on squishy, hard-to-measure activities that are relationship-based at the root. It's not about mass communications but more about the micro-interactions which I've talked about at great length. Designing experiences that support thousands of micro-interactions means you are making a commitment vs. trying to produce a one-hit wonder. Communities can in theory be the new CRM (Customer Relationship Management), but require people to mind them. Community software platforms such as Liveworld offer moderation services. If you've invested in building a community framework, you need to play host if you're lucky enough for guests to arrive.

Continuity
Communities that thrive often evolve to meet the needs of users. As mentioned earlier, we launched our Pampers Village which includes a baby name finder, parent blogs, forums and a non-traditional navigation design that tags topics and references relevant products. Communities such as this and others need to be flexible to evolve while still providing a valuable and consistent user experience which can be sustained.

The bottom line is that building a community looks less like marketing and more like customer relationship management, and it takes the combined effort of different disciplines to even get one off the ground. It's not a campaign you can launch and walk away from. If you are fortunate enough to champion a brand that has the potential to draw people who want to connect, or are associated with an underserved niche -- then it's worth investigating. But know that you are in for the long haul and it won't be easy.

Advertising Age - Twittering Critics Bring Down Motrin Mom

By Michael Learmonth and Rupal Parekh

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Johnson & Johnson did manage to offend some mothers with an online and print campaign for Motrin that implied moms carry their babies as fashion accessories. But was it a genuine groundswell that felled the effort -- or an alliance of the few, empowered by microblogging service Twitter?

Two days after a new ad push for Motrin triggered an online backlash, J&J's McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit is pulling the campaign, from the New York office of independent shop Taxi, and begging a vocal mommy-blogging nation for forgiveness.

The campaign, which was featured on Motrin's website, as well as in several magazines, was an attempt to connect with moms through the common experience (and pain) of carrying a child. But the implication felt by some of the campaign's more vocal critics was that moms wear their babies as fashion accessories, or because it "totally makes me look like an official mom."

"Supposedly it's a real bonding experience," the online ad said, "but what about me?"

Cause celebre

The campaign has been online since Sept. 30 and has been circulating in several magazines for weeks, but it finally caught the attention -- and ire -- of some influential bloggers Friday night before blowing up into a full-fledged cause celebre on Twitter over the weekend.

The ultimate demise of the campaign demonstrates either how quickly social media can galvanize a groundswell of opinion or how much power over online discourse they can give a few vocal tastemakers with outsize weight.

The beginning of the end for the Motrin push probably came Friday night, when Los Angeles blogger Jessica Gottlieb said she was tipped off to the ads and started expressing her outrage over the campaign on Twitter, where she has 1,018 followers.

"I am a satirist, I get humor, I talk about my vagina," said Ms. Gottlieb, who works as a freelance writer for National Lampoon and writes for Silicon Valley Moms Blog and Celsias. "I'm just insulted. I'm not an activist. I don't have an agenda, but I do have children."

On Saturday, Katja Presnal (4,221 Twitter followers), a New York blogger and proprietor of online children's clothing store Skimbaco, collected tweets from offended moms and edited them into a nine-minute video on YouTube titled "Motrin Ad Makes Moms Mad," which had been viewed 21,000 times as of today.

The spread of 'Motrin moms'

The campaign caught the attention of David Armano, VP at marketing firm Critical Mass (5,582 Twitter followers), last night. He said the "Motrin moms" phenomenon wasn't just the work of Twitter celebrities and marketing gurus such as Seth Godin, who also weighed in on the kerfuffle.

"You don't have to have thousands of followers to start something like this," said Mr. Armano, who also blogs for AdAge.com. "Many people with small networks have just as much influence as a few people with large networks."

Whoever it was, their impact was felt by J&J last night. McNeil Consumer Healthcare took down Motrin.com, and VP Marketing Kathy Widmer started apologizing to bloggers via e-mail.

Amy Gates, who runs the blog Crunchy Domestic Goddess, posted a personal note from Ms. Widmer on her site yesterday. "We certainly did not mean to offend moms through our advertising. Instead, we had intended to demonstrate genuine sympathy and appreciation for all that parents do for their babies," Ms. Widmer wrote in the note.

When the Motrin site was restored today, the ad was replaced by a message from Ms. Widmer: "We have heard you."

"On behalf of McNeil Consumer Healthcare and all of us who work on the Motrin brand, please accept our sincere apology," the message said. "We are in the process of removing this ad from all media. It will, unfortunately, take a bit of time to remove it from our magazine advertising, as it is on newsstands and in distribution."

Ms. Widmer did not immediately return an e-mail or phone call from Ad Age seeking comment. J&J spokesman Mark Boston said the campaign comprised the web video as well as print ads in Cookie, Nylon, Parents, Wondertime and Lucky magazines currently on newsstands.

Taxi, which created the campaign, declined to comment. Mr. Boston wouldn't say if the incident would change the marketer's relationship with the agency.

Little ad spending against brand

The pharma marketer devotes little in the way of marketing dollars to its Motrin brands, according to TNS Media Intelligence. Last year, it spent a total of about $15 million in domestic measured media on Motrin and Children's Motrin, and in the first six months of 2008, that figure dropped to about $2 million.

Elisa Camahort Page, co-founder and chief operating officer of BlogHer, a blogging community for women with an ad-sales partnership with NBC Universal's iVillage, called the incident an "incredibly impressive display of the power of social media."

"[It was] amazing to have that happen over 48 hours, on a weekend in the blogosphere," she said. "People are now spreading around the apology; it's such an immediate time frame."

Indeed, seven of the top 10 search returns today for "Motrin" and "headache" on Google referred to the marketing debacle.

"We now have indisputable proof that online marketing, YouTube and Twitter and all that it encompasses is meaningful and has arrived," said Gene Grabowski, chair of the crisis and litigation practice at Levick Strategic Communications. "We are seeing real consequences to a mistake. If [social networks] didn't matter, you wouldn't see this type of reaction from J&J or consumers."

Contributing: Michael Bush, Marissa Miley and Jack Neff

Read the PDF

Pampers Launches New "Pampers Village"

CINCINNATI, Nov. 13, 2008 /PRNewswire/ -- According to an ancient proverb, "It takes a village to raise a child." This holds true today, though instead of an extended family of relatives all living under one roof, today's moms are creating their own "village" networks with friends and family through blogs and online communities that make it easier than ever to connect, share happy moments and stay in touch.

In a digital age where busy moms connect by poking, tweeting and friending one another on sites like Facebook and Twitter, Pampers -- a leader in baby care for more than 40 years -- has created the Pampers Village, an online village where moms can bond and chat with other moms about the topics that affect them and their families most. The virtual Pampers Village can be found at www.Pampers.com, which has been completely redesigned with a brand new look and tons of new features to delight moms and moms-to-be where they live, work and play. For example, expecting moms can download a pregnancy widget to their desktops to engage in their baby's progress while multi-tasking on the computer, check out the baby name finder for the coolest baby name, or access the site's "Out & About Guide" to find that perfect destination for an upcoming Babymoon.

"All moms share a common goal -- to raise a healthy, happy child. And the great thing about Pampers.com is that moms can connect, bond and chat with other moms all over the globe in real time and share in each other's experiences," said Jodi Allen, North American vice president and general manager for Pampers. "With the new Pampers Village, we hope to more easily foster these connections and experiences, and also provide the great developmental resources and information that parents have to come to rely on from Pampers."

A majority of the content on Pampers.com is provided by the Pampers Parenting Network (PPN). Formerly known as the Pampers Parenting Institute, PPN is a group of leading parenting experts and medical professionals hand-picked to provide moms with the best information, support and resources for the health and well-being of their babies and families -- everything from advice on potty training and flu season, to exercise tips for mom that she can do with her baby from Stroller Strides' founder Lisa Druxman. PPN members participate in Q&As, blogs, articles and videos/demonstrations that will be unveiled throughout the year. New lifestyle experts to the PPN board include: Laura Jana, M.D., a widely recognized parenting expert; Lisa Druxman, founder and chief executive officer of Stroller Strides; and Julian Claus-Ehlers, executive chef and expert in healthy eating habits for the family.

"As a mom myself, I am always looking for new information about the health and well-being of my children, or connecting with other moms that may be going through the same things as I am," said Druxman. "As part of PPN, I'll contribute exclusive articles and content to the new Pampers Village and respond and provide advice in 'real-time' to moms who are seeking on-the-spot information. I'm so excited to be a part of Pampers' new online community."

Pampers Village will be organized into three categories, each focusing on a different aspect of a mom's life:

-- "Me" - is similar to "spa time" for mom. It provides an extensive selection of articles and content specifically designed for moms' personal well-being, and information on fitness, nutrition, beauty, body and soul, and much more.

-- "My Baby" - highlights the wonderful world of baby. It showcases information that affects the important developmental stages that each baby will experience, and features an ample selection of articles for moms on topics such as feeding, safety, skin care, sleep and health, among others.

-- "My Family & World" - celebrates mom's world and the village that supports her. Moms will find information about family dynamics, such as sibling relationships and rivalry, as well as recipe ideas and vacation planning for the whole family. Parents can also find information about Pampers' support of charities around the world and how Pampers is contributing to the well-being of the environment.

As part of the new Pampers Village, Pampers products will be featured with enhanced information including a product selector to help parents find the best Pampers products for their babies at each stage of development, new product tours, the ability for members to comment on various products and a store locator, making it easier for moms to find their favorite Pampers' products in their own neighborhoods.

Pampers Village launched in select European countries earlier this year and ultimately will be available in 44 regions around the globe by the end of 2009. The new Pampers Village was made possible by creative agencies Critical Mass (Chicago) and Saatchi and Saatchi Interactive (Europe).

About Pampers(R)

Pampers is a trademark of Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG) and the company's largest global brand and is the world's top-selling diaper brand. Our business is inspired by babies and toddlers, created by Pampers. For more information on Pampers and the Pampers Parenting Network, visit www.Pampers.com.

About Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG)

Three billion times a day, P&G brands touch the lives of people around the world. The company has one of the strongest portfolios of trusted, quality, leadership brands, including Pampers(R), Tide(R), Ariel(R), Always(R), Whisper(R), Pantene(R), Mach3(R), Bounty(R), Dawn(R), Pringles(R), Folgers(R), Charmin(R), Downy(R), Lenor(R), Iams(R), Crest(R), Oral-B(R), Actonel(R), Duracell(R), Olay(R), Head & Shoulders(R), Wella, Gillette(R), and Braun. The P&G community consists of over 135,000 employees working in more than 80 countries worldwide. Please visit www.pg.com for the latest news and in-depth information about P&G and its brands.

iMedia Connection - The Message or the Medium?

By Scott Shamberg

Here at our agency, we have a program called Beer Camp. Contrary to how it sounds, this is not some type of half-assed training program for the exceedingly popular sport of Beer Pong.

Beer Camp is a once a month opportunity for anyone in the company to lead a discussion about any topic they are passionate about. This can range from obviously relevant topics, like web development or social media, to the not-so-obvious, like American Idol and self-defense.

Inspired by a scene from the last episode of Mad Men, I partnered with Heidi Skinner, our Director of Emerging Media, to lead a debate about what is more important, the message or the medium. We had a room full of people from multiple disciplines - media, technology, creative, content, project and account management.

"It will take two seconds to find some kid that can write a prose poem to a potato chip."
"Wow, Duck, you really value creative, huh?"

So here are the points and counterpoints for each side that we started with:

The Message:

1. Emotion: More than ever before, consumers need to feel connected to brands. Emotional messaging achieves that.

2. Influence: A channel cannot influence a buying decision.

3. Authentic: The message is how brands communicate authenticity because that message is based on an insight into the consumer's preference.

4. Relevance: If done right, content can be created to take advantage of the environment a channel provides.

The Medium:

1.  Acceptability:  Youth marketing is always redefining the parameters of what is acceptable.  It's less about articulation; it's about making it easy.

2.  Fragmentation:  Increase in clutter requires shorter messages.

3.  Credibility:  The brand creative is not as credible as it used to be.  People trust lackluster messaging, as long as it comes from trusted and relevant environments.

4.  Social shopping:  Ratings and reviews are driven not by the message but by the environment and experience of the channel.

5.  Influencers:  Do people listen to influencers based on what they say or because they work hard to build up their own channel?

6.  Time:  We have to be conscious of the time a consumer has to spend, and the channels in which they choose to spend that time.


Let the debate begin...

Advertising Age - Play-by-Playing Well With Others

Media Morph: Conference Coverage Via Twitter

By Abbey Klaassen

Whether you're attending an event or want to follow one from afar, one of the most useful tools is Twitter, the 140-characters-or-fewer messaging service. Here's some advice from the pros on how to participate -- or simply tag along. (First step: Get a Twitter account.)

CREATE OR FIND THE HASHTAG: A hashtag is the little code preceded by a "#" that people use to indicate the topic about which they're Twittering. The idea is to ensure that tweets on the same topic can be found and aggregated more easily. Simply search for a particular hashtag on search.twitter.com or TweetDeck and you'll unearth the Twitter conversation related to it, making it easy to follow along if you're not at the show. If you are at the show and creating a hashtag, keep it simple.

DISCOVER FELLOW TWITTERERS: If you're at an event, you can search on the hashtag to figure out who else is Twittering. A good way to connect with them is to respond to something they said or to add comments referencing their tweets, said Alisa Hansen, an iCrossing social-media strategist (@alisamleo on Twitter).

COLOR YOUR COMMENTARY: This one comes from David Armano, a power Twitterer himself (@armano on Twitter), who has written a stellar post on tips for twittering conferences. "Throw out your POV for what it's worth," he wrote. "Spice up things by adding additional thoughts to what you just heard. For lessons ... think of the great sportscasters."

HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH? Some of your followers might not want an update every five minutes of a daylong conference. Ms. Hansen said she typically tweets a message ahead of time, warning followers that she'll be tweeting a show. "I say, 'I'm going to start Twittering, and I apologize because there's going to be lots of volume. So if you want to un-follow me for the day, I will be done on the 6th.'"

Market Sentinel – Measuring Social Media

David Armano of Critical Mass, author of an excellent blog on social media - what he calls micro interactions - gives us his perspective in a podcast interview (10 mins) on ways to measure in social media, and how to judge ROI.

(P.S. Because I couldn’t figure out how to work the CallBurner software the conversation ends with a namecheck for French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard - coiner of the term “grand narratives” - whose idea of “petits recits” has some resonances with David’s micro interaction idea)

BryanPerson.com – Experimenting with Social Media

I’ve just return from two-plus action-packed days in Dallas, Texas, where I attended Forrester’s Consumer Forum 2008. (LiveWorld, my employer, is a Forrester client).

I may have more to say on the conference in a future post, but for now, I want to share three brief interviews I conducted this afternoon. In each, I asked this question: “Given the current economic climate, can brands still afford to experiment with social media?”

All of the interviewees comes from the vendor/agency side, so their answers might not surprise you. However, several of the attendees I met at the Forrester event work for the brand/buying side, too, and many aren’t shy about their plans to launch new social media projects in the coming year.

Here are the conversations:

Marty Wetherall

Marty is a social media producer at Fallon and the co-founder of FanChatter. He is based in Minneapolis.

Deb Schultz and David Armano

Deb is Bay Area consultant who is currently working with Proctor and Gamble to develop a Social Media Innovation Lab. She blogs at DeborahSchultz.com.

David is the VP of experience design at Critical Mass in Chicago. He blogs at Logic + Emotion.

Deb and David led a session at the 2008 Forrester Consumer Forum called “Viva La Evolution! Revolutionizing ROI Through ‘Return on Insight.’”

Adam Cohen

Adam is an interactive marketing consultant and partner at Rosetta. He blogs at a thousand cuts.

What’s your take?

I’d like to keep this important discussion going. Leave a comment below, or create your own video answer to my question above and then point me to it. I’ll embed your video within this post.

iMedia Connection - Display Is Dead! There, I Said It

By Scott Shamberg

Forgive me if this post tapers off somewhere in the middle.  I will most likely be fielding calls from my friends on the publisher side as well as the ad networks.

Remember when people started saying the :30 spot was dead?  That the microsite was dead?  That newspapers were dead?  Actually, newspapers are dead.  I read the Chicago Tribune this morning.  Ouch.  But the :30 spot is still alive and kicking and microsites are plentiful.  So why, do you ask, would I declare the death of digital display ads?  Oh, where to begin...

Reponse rates aren't going to go back up.  Sure, you can work with some of the better BT networks like Yahoo! (through Blue Lithium) and broad reach networks like Valueclick, but how much of a lift will that really give you?  One percent?  Two percent?  Is that enough to make an impact?  Storing data allows for better targeting and the POSSIBILITY, based on a better profile of the user, of an action.  Nothing more.  Maybe you are just looking for eyeballs and argue that this type of buy provides them.  Hold that thought.

Search wins.  So after reading the above paragraph, many people probably cried BS.  That's "bullshit," by the way, not to be confused with some fancy abbreviation for behavioral targeting.  They probably said that BT works wonders for their clients' business.  That might be true - if the clients' business is direct response.  If it is, then search is certainly a growing part of the business.  The biggest differentiator?  User initiation.  People are actively looking for something, not actively closing a pop-up or homepage takeover and cursing while they do it.  If anyone uses the MLB Gamecast on ESPN, you know what I mean.

Old school CMOs.  See, the majority of CMOs out there have limited to zero digital experience.  So when their VP of Marketing, who probably has some experience, walks in and says "we need to go digital," the CMO looks for a bridge to walk across rather than a cliff to jump off.  How does he do that?  He looks for ways to repurpose the stuff he is comfortable with - television spots and integrated partnerships.  So he calls his buddy at NBC who says "Hulu" and off we go.  It's an easier sell because a site like Hulu or even Veoh talks the right language.  Hell, they could probably sell them TRPs if they had to.

If content is king, original content is Napoleon.  If the digital agency is good, they are telling him that pre-rolls are pointless and that viral content is the way to go.  You want eyeballs?  How many pairs are there on YouTube every day?  Not sure?  Ask Burger King. Burger King invested in a known commodity, Seth MacFarlane, to drive awareness rather than in a massive display campaign.

And this, to me, is the final nail in the proverbial coffin.  We all know media channels are blurring.  There is a point of convergence coming, and coming soon.  Until current CMOs are replaced with people who grew up in digital, old school language is what will make them comfortable.  Try talking about BT, view-throughs and cookies to someone who still wants to go to the commercial shoot, lunches with their ABC rep and has the checkbook for the marketing budget.  So how does this CMO handle convergence?  They move offline strategies online, they measure in impressions and they show their kids the "cool stuff" they did at work that is on YouTube.  Sad, but realistic.

The web is officially a massive publishing and syndication tool.  By the time this digital infusion happens at the CMO level, original content, digital product placement and interactive syndication will have taken over.  Display advertising, as we know it, will be a thing of the past like three martini lunches, third-party e-mail and independently run banks in the U.S.

Get ready to attend the funeral.

Boxes and Arrows - Micro-Interactions In A 2.0 World

By David Armano

We live in a world where the little things really do matter. Each encounter no matter how brief is a micro-interaction that makes a deposit or withdrawal from our rational and emotional subconscious. The sum of these interactions and encounters adds up to how we feel about a particular product, brand, or service. Little things. Feelings. They influence our everyday behaviors more than we realize.

Vice-President of Interaction Design at Critical Mass, David Armano shares what organizations are doing this and how we'll all need to re-think how brands are built and sustained in an ever-changing 2.0 world.

Advertising Age - Innovation vs. Litigation

By David Armano

Take a good look at the "curve" visual that goes along with this post. Look familiar? It should.

Increasingly, as I talk to folks from a variety of large brands and companies, I'm seeing an interesting shift. Not only is there a desire from individuals within large corporations, brands and businesses to leverage social media in some capacity, but increasingly there's an interest in going beyond "viral." After my talk at the the Web 2.0 Conference in New York, an individual who worked in the health-care sector approached me. He said something along these lines: "I believe in everything you just said and I think there is tremendous opportunity for my company to participate in social networks, but each time we try to initiate something, our legal department shoots it down."

Though sectors like health care are especially sensitive, I've heard similar tales from others. And yet there seem to be some examples of big brands that get out there and participate in social networks despite the risks. Dell, one of the more well-known case studies, has been doing it for years, through blogs, communities it's created and by jumping into a number of networks. Zappos has taken to extending its customer experience across social channels such as Twitter. Whole Foods has a useful presence on Facebook, where one of its representatives is active in the discussion boards, not only alerting members to promotions but also encouraging them to share recipes. Is legal asleep at the wheel of these companies?

There's a growing number of case studies of brands that go beyond putting their ads on social networks, and it's becoming increasingly clear that brands that figure out how to engage customers meaningfully through the use of social media can reap rewards, but there is some risk. To help understand that risk you need to truly understand how different social media is compared to something like, say, interactive marketing.

For starters, it's social, which means it's people-to-people, not technology-to-people. Secondly, you can't walk away that easily from social initiatives the way you can walk away from that microsite and banner campaign you just launched. (Well, you could -- but I wouldn't recommend it.) And lastly -- and most important -- you have to understand that social media as the killer app of our time has one killer feature that is designed to make your legal department cringe. It's called feedback. Even putting a simple video on YouTube means that you are opening yourself up to the opinions of anyone and everyone who has something to say. So what's a business, brand or large organization to do? I have a few suggestions.

Start Small
As marketers, we're trained to make a big splash. Participation in social networks often requires the opposite. Start small and test things out. Take calculated risks and plan for multiple scenarios. If your ultimate desire is to be active across multiple networks, start with one and figure out the nuances there. In other words, do what you can to manage the risk.

Find A Corporate Sponsor
Whether you've coordinated with legal or plan to after the fact, it's important to find someone high up in the organization that's willing to support and go to bat for your initiative. Try not to do something in a total vacuum if you can avoid it. When we launched our "always in beta" mash-up, which included live streaming video and a live chat, it was important to get the buy-in from someone high in our organization who understood the risks of opening ourselves up to feedback and would be co-accountable on whatever transpires after the fact.

Develop Participation Guidelines
The first question any organization has to ask itself is whether it's going to participate in the conversations. If you answer no, then you are most likely interested in simply getting your content out there. If it's yes, then hold on to your hats because you'll get positive, negative and neutral feedback on anything you put out there. Prior to launching your initiative, have these guidelines in place and be ready to change them on a dime because that's how quickly a plan can turn into an act of improvisation.

Don't Give Up
The explosion of participation in all forms of social media is actually not a trend or a fad -- it's a significant shift in how we human beings interact with the web, not unlike the shift in behavior as more people began buying merchandise, bartering or getting information online. If legal seems like a brick wall, don't give up since it's worth finding out if it even makes sense for your organization to participate in the first place. The only way you'll know for sure is if you try.

I could go on, but hopefully these offer food for thought. It's important to remember that the successful case studies that are slowly emerging often look less like advertising and more like a mash-up of customer service, communications, content delivery, etc. The legal department in your organization is there to help protect it from liability, while you may be there to serve your customers. While there's no silver bullet to this topic, it's important to remember that you're both in the service industry. And if meaningful participation in social networks provides a way to better serve customers, it's worth trying to balance innovation with litigation. Oh, and if you're interested in hearing about some social-media case studies from biggie companies such as Home Depot, Wells Fargo, Intel and UPS, you can check out the BlogWell conference at the end of the month.

Advertising Age - Times Call for Unconventional Marketing

By David Armano

As an individual, my blog is one of the most effective manifestations of "marketing" I could have produced for myself. I have a respectable audience that comes back as opposed to visiting it once, never to return again. People participate through comments and the content is distributable. But imagine if I started it the same way many large organizations launch conventional marketing initiatives. What would that have looked like?

If I were a corporate campaign
First I would have had to do several hundred pages of strategy documentation, including target audiences, marketing segments, competitive analysis -- you name it. Then I would put some concepts together and test them in focus groups to see if representatives in a lab like A, B or C better. Next, I would take that feedback, make a few adjustments and plan a multichannel campaign, launching the blog with all sorts of advertising pointing to it. And since I painstakingly outlined the ROI in the in-depth strategy, I'd go about measuring the effectiveness against the ROI that was outlined prior to launch.

Of course, my blog, like millions of other forms of "social media," followed a path that looked nothing like that. In fact, it looked less linear and more cyclical. Sure, I put some initial thought into it before ever touching a pixel, but once I launched the blog it became a never-ending cycle of content development, template design tweaks and learning curves based off of what was going on each time I did something.

A learn-as-you-go process
For example, when I started posting visuals, I would check my stats and could see that people from all sorts of other sites and blogs began referencing them and linking back -- so I realized the visuals were providing something people wanted and that if I wanted to continue to build an audience, this was a good way to do it. Secondly, I thought that my primary audience would be designers, when in fact the blog started attracting an eclectic audience of planners, marketers, librarians -- even evangelists. After each cycle of launching content or functionality in the sidebars, I was learning about my audience and why they were coming. This required me to periodically have more frequent checkpoints of "little strategy" where I would plan the direction of where I wanted to go and make the appropriate adjustments to get there. And it felt less like a straight path and more like a meandering one, because the "focus group" was happening in real time after the initial launch.

I've been thinking about this for a while because after having some exposure to large organizations, it occurred to me that there is a desire to do more "unconventional marketing" but the machine that's in place is actually "conventional" -- all the things that have been done in the past. For example, it's common and understandable for the "What's the ROI?" question to be raised during an unconventional marketing initiative, but that question could derail the entire effort before it has a chance to ever get off the ground. Sometimes the ROI is simply insights and lessons that are gleaned from actually doing the initiative. Other times, the direction of the initiative changes midway through in unexpected ways that could not have been predicted. Many times for the better -- let's not forget that Twitter was never meant to be what it ended up being today.

Unconventional times call for unconventional paths
Speaking from personal experience, I could not have predicted many of the outcomes I have had since launching a blog, but I believe following a much more "unconventional" path is a core reason behind everything that I've learned from it. For a couple of hundred dollars a year and a whole lot of dedication and effort it's priceless to me. So as I think about how times are becoming more unconventional -- with unpredictable financial markets and political change in the air -- I can't help but think that it's more important than ever to get serious about what it takes to do these types of initiatives right. It just doesn't look like conventional marketing -- it's different. And unconventional times call for unconventional tactics.

Canada.com - Website Showcases Calgary

By Gwendolyn Richards, Calgary Herald

Promoting the city and recruiting workers is the aim of a new website written about Calgary by Calgarians.

Calgarypedia, which is already up and running, is based on the popular online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. The site will be driven by those who live and work in Calgary.

Calgary Economic Development president and CEO Bruce Graham said research has shown people who want to relocate, particularly from out of province, are looking to a variety of sources for information. Calgarypedia -- found at www.calgarypedia.com -- is designed to be a one-stop site full of information and opinions.

"It's like talking to friends about a community who already live there," he said.

Calgarypedia is the first community wiki -- a site that allows anyone to contribute or change content.

The project began about a year ago with Calgary Economic Development collaborating with marketing agency Critical Mass as part of a broader project to bring more workers to the city.

Critical Mass strategic adviser Dan Evans said the company was motivated by its own difficulties in finding employees.

"We thought we could leave it to Calgary Economic Development to solve the problem or we could jump in to help," Evans said.

Still in its infancy, the hope is Calgarians will adopt the site, expanding the resource by adding information.

"We'd ultimately like to inspire a younger generation of Calgarians to take on the role of promoting what they think is great about the city," Evans said.

Having the community take ownership of the site will be key to its growth, said Bart Beaty, a University of Calgary associate professor of media studies.

Wikipedia has grown because contributors are passionate about certain entries or subject areas, said Beaty, adding he isn't sure people are going to have the same attachment to Calgary's version.

"If they are unable to attract that kind of attention, it will sit here and languish," he said.

But he believes if it does become a genuine commons that includes the "unvarnished truth" about Calgary, it will be a strong site.

"If they're willing to take the risk of allowing people to say what they want, there is potential it could grow into a worthwhile site," he said.

Graham said organizers anticipate the site will be self-policed through community oversight, but the "odd wart or wrinkle" is all part of being in a community.

"The idea is to allow Calgarians to express themselves," Graham said.

Introducing Calgarypedia

Calgary Economic Development

(CALGARY) – Today, Calgary Economic Development (CED), in partnership with Critical Mass, a world-class interactive marketing agency, have launched Calgarypedia; the first known community based wiki site aimed at connecting Calgarians with each other and the world. Not only will Calgarypedia be a central, collaborative online location where members of the community can share what's great about their city, the project is a new web-based resource to attract and retain talent to Calgary.

Content on the site will be contributed by users and monitored by CED, Critical Mass and the community at large. In the same way Wikipedia has become the authoritative online reference site with content created, monitored and verified by a strong collaborative community of contributors, we are confident Calgarypedia will become a relevant resource about Calgary, created and maintained by Calgarians.

According to Mayor Dave Bronconnier, Calgarypedia will support the city's economic development goals by helping to create an attractive and desirable environment for people to work and live.

"In this time of global competition for talent, Calgary strives to become a destination of choice for people from different parts of the world, many of whom are exploring their options online. Calgarypedia will be a great source of information about our prosperous and welcoming city; a place to choose for career and lifestyle," said Mayor Dave Bronconnier.

People are Calgary's most important asset and the long-term economic growth of Calgary demands that quality of life be a priority. As identified in the recently released Economic Development Strategy, quality of life for Calgarians and supports for the settlement and integration of newcomers who relocate to Calgary to join our workforce, will be foundational to our sustainability.

"Calgarypedia is a CED led initiative that will assist us in fulfilling our ongoing mandate to position Calgary as the destination of choice for people and business," said Bruce Graham, president and CEO, Calgary Economic Development. "Calgarypedia demonstrates a new and different approach to economic development and talent attraction."

To fulfill this mandate, CED has a number of initiatives planned to increase Calgary's presence online through traditional websites as well as the new world of social media. The first of these programs is Calgarypedia.

As part of today's launch of Calgarypedia, CED will be challenging Calgarians to submit their best Calgary photo and best Calgary video for a chance to win an exclusive ‘Experience Calgary' prize package complete with dinner at a high-end Calgary restaurant, participation in unique-to-Calgary activities, and a one night's stay at a high-end Calgary hotel. Contest details are available on the ‘Best of' page of Calgarypedia. www.calgarypedia.com.

"It's really exciting to see an opportunity where a younger generation of Calgarians can get engaged in promoting what they love about the city," said Dan Evans, strategic advisor, Critical Mass.

"CED is very forward thinking in focusing on how to empower the digital generation to direct all of that energy to talking about what makes Calgary such a great place to live. For a long time, we've seen an older generation of Calgarians, the ‘White Hatters', greet visitors to the city at the airport or in public places. Think of social media as an opportunity for a generation of new Calgarians to share what's great about our city and greet people online, the ‘Digital White Hatters'," added Evans.

For the Calgarypedia project Critical Mass and CED recruited a group of interns and set them loose on the city to write, photograph, video, and converse about the parts of Calgary that inspire them. It is the hope that this prompts a larger group of volunteers who are interested in doing what they do everyday; blog, upload photos, upload videos, text, twitter, post, and ultimately create a significant dialog and ongoing record of everything happening in Calgary.

ABOUT CALGARY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Calgary Economic Development (CED) is working to make Calgary the undisputed choice for people and business. As Calgary's lead economic development agency, we work with businesses to facilitate growth, expedite local, national and international business investment and trade development opportunities and promote sustainable economic growth in the Calgary region. For more information on Calgary Economic Development, please visit our website at www.calgaryeconomicdevelopment.com.

iMedia Connection – Group Therapy Marketing

By Scott Shamberg

As many of you know, last week saw perhaps the third largest bursting of a bubble ever (behind the .com bubble of ‘99 and the recent real estate market crash). This bubble, upon implosion, secreted a substance referred to by many as "Cubbie Blue," a euphemism for the overwhelming enthusiasm displayed by North Side Chicago fans for their favorite baseball team which means they "bleed Cubbie Blue." Ironically the team they lost to, the L.A. Dodgers, also bleeds blue. So apparently what you had was a NLDS made up of Martians.

The passion that this fan base has for its team is on par with all the great team/fan relationships in history. I have friends who, over the course of the last four days, have refused to talk about baseball, who have spewed venom, the likes of which you don't hear in the most heated political or religious debates. I even had one friend who picked up the phone, called the Chicago Cubs and demanded an apology.

It is a fan base that relies on each other for a sense of calm to help with the relationship that has been established. In 1908, when the Cubs won the second of their back-to-back championships, fans read about it in the newspaper and talked about the team at the local tavern. It has been 100 years since that title and there have obviously been some advances in communication, although many people still spill into one of the many taverns that line the perimeter of Wrigley Field.

Here are some posts on Facebook over the last week in reference to the Cubs:

Steve is looking for answers.

Stacey is tired of what this team is doing to my husband.

Scott thinks it is going to get better from here.

Peter is off to L.A., although I have a new found hatred for the city after what they did to my Cubs.

Jamie offers a plot spoiler for Cubs fans. We never get off the island.

If you Google "Chicago Cubs Blogs" you get a very long list of results, the first and second results being very popular blogs.

The long tail (yeah, I'm sick of it too but bear with me) has clearly allowed for a much wider range and selection of communication channels. It means that no matter what you are interested in, you can find other people who share your interests and want to talk about it. Blogs like Bleed Cubbie Blue are very popular. They provide a point of view from the blogger and, more importantly, allow Cubdom to vent their frustration to thousands of other fans in real time. Go to this blog and just look through the comments. It reads like a group therapy session.

"And so when Soriano struck out for the third time, how did that make you feel?"

"I felt frustrated, disappointed and alone. Mostly alone."

And oh by the way, this and other blogs have a nice big list of advertisers. It isn't just fans who flock to blogs like this. Many marketers see the upside for having their messages heard in an extremely high frequency destination.

Maybe instead of betting on technology by dumping millions of dollars into behavioral networks, the portals should recognize the unmitigated passion that consumers have for these topics and these blogs and add social communities to their stables instead. MSN did invest in Facebook, but that is the head, not the tail. These are niche environments where users are truly engaged.

In fact, I smell a new marketing approach: Group Therapy Marketing – reach passionate consumers on the edge of sanity. There is more than a statistically relevant sample size on the north side of Chicago.

Advertising Age - Marketers, Interested in Some Karma?

By David Armano

Here's a recent illustration of how the web works. Chris Anderson, author of "The Long Tail," is working on his new book in which he explores the notion of "free." Rather than hole himself up in a cabin somewhere while writing, he uses his blog to test out content, source external perspectives and even ask for a little help.

Several weeks ago Chris put together a couple of rough visuals of his "free models" in the hopes that someone could improve upon them. A Critical Mass co-worker passed the blog post on to me, knowing that I might take Chris up on the challenge as I love solving problems visually.

Within minutes of my post being launched, Chris provided feedback on my visual, I re-posted and he linked back to us.

The irony is that this little exchange is not only becoming more commonplace, but it's also reflective of the fourth model Anderson outlines as the "gift economy." People will provide things of value at no cost, and it's likely that something good can happen in return -- call it karma. Now that's something to think about as marketers. When was the last time you asked your customers for help? When was the last time you listened? And when was the last time you produced something of value only to freely "give it away"?

Critical Mass Expands Chicago Creative Team

CALGARY, AB & CHICAGO, IL – Critical Mass (www.criticalmass.com), an Omnicom digital marketing agency, has named Jon Andexler Creative Director, Vanessa Donley Art Director, and Rina Mallick Associate Creative Director. Andexler, Donley, and Mallick are all based in the company's Chicago office.

With over 11 years of interactive media experience, Andexler previously held posts at Avenue A/Razorfish, Digitas, and EURO RSCG Life. While a Creative Director at Avenue A/Razorfish, he led the development of www.upumpitup.com, a social networking initiative for Crystal Light. In addition, he also directed the Oreo Double Stuff Virtual League for Kraft Foods - www.dsrl.com - which built a fan base around the product by inspiring consumers to compete against each other.

Over the course of his career, Andexler has handled a variety of accounts, including Allstate, Best Buy, Chicago Tribune, and Miami Visitors Bureau. His work has received such industry recognition as the RX Club Award, the RAC Gold Award, and the Miami ADDY Award.

Specializing in interactive executions, video production, layout and creative concepts, Donley has more than 12 years experience in the design and advertising industry. She was previously Senior Interactive Art Director at Abelson Taylor in Chicago, where she developed projects ranging from consumer web sites and broadcast commercial storyboards, to 3D and Flash-enabled animation, viral marketing, and game development for pharmaceutical brands.

For over three years there, Donley was lead designer for pharmaceutical brand Rozerem's interactive Web site, www.rozerem.com. She also served as a Senior Designer at Proxicom, working on web initiatives for such clients as Nike, Toyota, and Procter & Gamble.

Prior to joining Critical Mass, Mallick was Associate Creative Director at Young & Rubicam's Wunderman. Serving as the creative lead for all Lincoln brand digital efforts, her extensive CGI work there included the Lincoln Reach Higher Web site that launched four new vehicles and the new Reach Higher brand campaign as a broadband experience.

Mallick also worked as a Designer at Organic, responsible for a broad range of Web initiatives for Jeep and Chrysler. Her projects included the 2002 award-winning J.D. Power Manufacturer Web site for Jeep.com and the 2002 Jeep 4x4Evo2 Game. Fourteen percent of Wrangler Rubicon sales resulted from game registrants within the first month of its release.

In 2008, Mallick co-organized the inaugural CGAM Conference, a global conference for marketing and advertising professionals focused on technology and the value of CGI in Hollywood, California.

"Jon, Vanessa, and Rina bring a wealth of creative experience to our growing Chicago team," said Dianne Wilkins, CEO, Critical Mass. "We strive to deliver, not only creative, but strategic, guidance to our clients. We believe that all of these individuals will bring the expertise and exceptional level of service that our clients have come to expect."

About Critical Mass
Critical Mass (www.criticalmass.com), an Omnicom digital marketing agency, helps the world's leading companies use digital media to increase revenue, reduce costs, and deepen customer relationships. Founded in 1995, Critical Mass has offices in Calgary, Toronto, Chicago, New York, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Austin, Geneva, and London. For additional information, visit www.criticalmass.com.

Life In Perpetual Beta - David Armano Improvised this Interview

By Melissa Pierce

Up until this interview, I had never seen David Armano in person, in fact, all I knew about the internet celebrity I learned on twitter. I had no plan to interview him, I'm not even sure that I know how I came to decide to interview him, somewhere buried deep in my brain lies the answer, but it doesn't matter. I'm glad I did.

The above paragraph is a brilliant micro-illustration of the point of my lil' film project here.

I do minimal planning, and I follow my instinct as I find new information, and I add that to my cache of knowledge, which leads me to ask more questions, and be passionate about new things and people. And this whole instinct and improvise thing I've got going seems to be serving me pretty well. I'm just rolling with it, I'm planning just enough in advance that I can take the next step. I can't get it wrong, because I'll never get it done.

An even more brilliant illustration of the point is a ven diagram from Mr. Armano himself.

And while I'll admit that the little speck in the middle of planning and improvising that says "we are here." has my mind referencing a piece of dust in Horton Hears a Who, I can just focus enough on the gist of the simple diagram to recognize that it is profound enough to be part of a much larger conversation. So the question is, where are you?

AdWeek - How's Life for Dell's Former Agencies?

By Andrew McMains

NEW YORK Many column inches have been devoted to the topic of WPP Group building an agency to service Dell's global marketing needs. After WPP beat Interpublic Group in December to claim the estimated $100 million in revenue on the business, the story shifted to how WPP would staff the agency, what it would be called (Synarchy? Enfatico!) and when it would launch its first big campaign.

Well, what about the "losers" in the Dell saga -- the hundreds of agencies around the world that vanished from the client's roster in the WPP consolidation? How big an impact did the shift have on them, and how have they rebounded since? In short, how is life after Dell?

In the U.S., the revenue hit was particularly significant for relatively small shops such as T3 in Austin, Texas, for example, which handled small-business-oriented interactive and direct marketing duties for the Round Rock, Texas-based computer giant. Dell represented about 25 percent of the three-office shop's revenue. In light of such losses, layoffs were common at ex-Dell agencies, though most had ample time to prepare, given that the global review lasted about six months.

T3 found out definitively in February, two months after the review concluded, that Dell would be gone by June, said Gay Gaddis, the agency's president and CEO. As a result, the shop redoubled its efforts in new-business development, adding clients such as ConocoPhillips and Robbins Brothers before the handoff and Intel and Taco Bell after. That said, T3 still hasn't completely filled the revenue hole created by the loss of Dell. It has come close, however, in part due to a reference from their former client.

"We worked hard. We worked hard to make it up, because it was a significant account for years," Gaddis said of Dell.

Dell had been a T3 client since 1992, and revenue from the business helped the agency expand, opening a New York office in 2002 to handle some media buying tasks for the company. In addition, Dell's needs prompted T3 to develop its data and analytics capabilities, as well as its ability to produce catalogs.

Dell also helped digital shop Critical Mass expand its footprint and capabilities. The Omnicom Group agency's tenure on Dell dated back to 2002, with the business expanding over time into international markets such as Europe, said worldwide COO Chris Gokiert. The shop handled global digital duties for the company in both the consumer and medium-to large-business sectors.

Like T3, Critical Mass was able to plan for Dell's exit, knowing that the writing was on the wall last fall when an Omnicom team was cut from Dell's review. The last of the agency's Dell business left in May. Since then, Dell has served as a reference and calling card for Critical Mass, which has added clients in consumer electronics, retail and e-commerce, Gokiert said. Reflecting on the loss, Gokiert said: "We weren't happy with it, [but] it was a holding company [consolidation]. ... Business is business, right?"

Although Dell represented about 10 percent of worldwide revenue at Critical Mass, which employs about 550 staffers in nearly a dozen offices, the agency was able to avoid layoffs by shifting Dell-dedicated employees to other accounts, Gokiert said. Three staffers also left for Enfatico. T3 saw about 20 staffers migrate to the new WPP shop but wasn't able to avoid layoffs. The shop let about a dozen people go, according to Gaddis.

The impact on bigger shops, such as Omnicom's DDB in Chicago, which handled business-to-business ads, was relatively slight, given the size of their networks. Dell supplied about only $2-3 million in revenue at an agency with estimated U.S. revenue of $660 million last year, said sources.

DDB is now actively marketing its Dell experience as it seeks to fill its computer category opening. But as at the smaller shops, the experience can be applied much more broadly in the pursuit of new business. That said, for DDB, the Dell calling card helped open the door to at least one meeting with another computer company this year.

Case histories, coupled with talent that worked on the business, are equally important when marketing to other prospects. But Brandon Snow, DDB's U.S. director of business development, knows the shelf life on experience in a fast-moving category like technology is short. Thus, the shop regularly attends industry trade shows in an effort to stay current and connected.

Because the computer industry "moves so quickly, it's not always relevant what you did years ago," said Snow, whose agency handled Dell from 2001 until late last year. "You need to show up and have insight into what's happening in the category."

Not every U.S. agency was eliminated in Dell's consolidation. Mother, an independent shop in New York, continues to produce consumer-orientated ads for the company. WPP's three-year contract with Dell permits the use of outside agencies; Mother joined the roster in early 2007, before the global review, and remains on the roster nearly a year after the process ended.

Some sources interpreted Mother's presence to the failure of Enfatico to completely transition onto the business. Indeed, the shop still hasn't met its goal of hiring 1,000 staffers, six months after WPP CEO Martin Sorrell had predicted it would. Also, a Dell representative acknowledged that Enfatico doesn't handle all of Dell's marketing; rather, about 90 percent of it. It's unclear, however, how long the Mother relationship will last. The rep acknowledged Mother's work on the brand but declined to say if the shop's tenure would continue or wind down.

AdWeek - That's How the Cookie Crumbles

By Brian Morrissey

As with the recently updated version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, changes in the browser affect the thorny issue of privacy.

NEW YORK Like much that Google does, the release last week of its new Internet browser, called Chrome, elicited rave reviews and predictable excitement among tech bloggers. Just as predictable was the wariness expressed by some on Madison Avenue.

As with the recently updated version of Microsoft's dominant Internet Explorer, changes in the browser affect the thorny issue of privacy. The reams of data produced by Web users present a dilemma: consumers worry they will be misused while advertisers need them to fulfill the Web's key promise of more targeted and measurable ads. Advertisers are now concerned that Google and Microsoft can use the privacy protection built into their new browsers to control access to this valuable data.

"This is a data-ownership play," said Dave Morgan, a former AOL executive, founder of ad network Tacoda and now chairman of The Tennis Company. "Privacy intermediation for consumers is something that's been talked about for a dozen years."

The immediate concern is that both browsers include a private browsing option, quickly dubbed "porn mode," which blocks cookies. Much of the targeting information used by advertisers and networks remains dependent on the Internet cookie stored on users browsers. Consumers have long been able to block cookies, but the process is less than obvious. Both Microsoft's and Google's browsers will give users much more control over data collection.

Omar Tawakol, CEO of BlueKai, an Internet data exchange, was initially concerned that these options could upend the economics of online advertising. Now, he believes they could be a net benefit for advertising, which has come under fire by privacy groups and faced skeptical questioning by congressional committees about its consumer tracking. Placing control more squarely in users hands will blunt some of the calls for more stringent regulation, he believes. BlueKai plans to compensate users for use of their data and give them access to it.

"I think they're doing it for the right reasons," he said. "Someone has to establish a middle ground [in privacy] and the browser is a fairly smart place to do it."

The sensitivities around privacy and targeting were on display elsewhere last week. Controversial ad targeting firm NebuAd lost its CEO Bob Dykes, and said it would put on hold its plans to deploy "deep-packet inspection" technology that monitors Web behavior through Internet service providers. While browsers would be ideal for collecting many forms of Internet data, Google will need to be careful not to step over an uncertain line, said Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus, an independent digital shop.

"The question is how much goodwill does Google have?" he said. "Google's line is they're providing free utilities to people. But how much privacy or targeting are people willing to accept to have access to free utility?"

The doomsday scenario plays out something like this. Google and Microsoft will use their relationship with customers to ostensibly give them more control over what company is following them on the Web. Consumers that opt out of tracking will become invisible to advertisers and third-party ad networks, making critical decisions like frequency capping and behavioral targeting impossible. At the same time, Microsoft and Google, through the browser, will have access to plenty of user data and a relationship with consumers through the products it provides them free of charge. Others wishing to reach them would have to pay. Google could also end up using the browser to display ads rather than cut deals with Web sites to show them.

"I really think there's a point at which consumers don't tolerate that but it becomes invasive to the point of counter productive," said Shar Von Boskirk, an analyst with Forrester Research.

Advertisers are sufficiently concerned with the implications that Microsoft presented its plans for Internet Explorer 8 to the members of the Interactive Advertising Bureau board late last week. The key concerns, according to board member Matt Wise, CEO of ad network Q Interactive, are how consumer options are implemented.

"In the past there's been an enormous amount of collateral damage," he said. "Q Interactive is predicated on predicting behavior. We're fine making sure consumer has some awareness of what's occurring. But if the consumer constantly gets challenged [with warnings of data passed to third parties], they might start turning stuff off as a default. They might hurt a lot of companies that are providing good services."

Some agency executives are much more sanguine about the new browser war. Like much that happens between Google and Microsoft, this camp sees it as more their battles than advertisers'. For Google, Chrome is a way to blunt Microsoft's stranglehold on the desktop by introducing a way for consumers to interact with the Web applications many believe will dominate the computing experience of the future. The notion of giving consumers more control over their data will only appeal to a hard-core few, said Scott Shamberg, svp of marketing and media at Omnicom Group-backed Critical Mass.

"I still don't think the average user does any of that stuff," he said. "I'm comfortable I'm going to be getting sufficient data on people."

Critical Mass Appoints Erik Thrane Group Account Director

CALGARY, AB & CHICAGO, IL – Critical Mass (www.criticalmass.com), an Omnicom digital marketing agency, has named Erik Thrane Group Account Director. An industry veteran with over eleven years experience in the digital space, he will work out of the company's Toronto office.

In 2007, Thrane was Senior Vice President, Interactive Business Director at Publicis, where he restructured the Interactive Services Group to accommodate the response-driven nature of clients T-Mobile and Hewlett Packard. During his year as Group Director, Engagement Management at Organic, he led the development of the Online Advertising Practice for DaimlerChrysler, one of Organic's largest clients. In 1997, he co-founded the Interactive division at Young & Rubicam Canada, where he worked for eight years, and served as the division's Director.

Thrane has extensive experience leading client engagements for Fortune 500 companies. He has developed and executed corporate branding and retail marketing campaigns, targeting both business-to-consumer and business-to-business audiences, for clients such as T-Mobile, Ford, Daimler-Chrysler, Colgate-Palmolive, and Citibank Canada.

"Erik's strategic account leadership and ability to build world-class teams are the primary reasons we brought him on board," said Dianne Wilkins, CEO, Critical Mass. "We expect that he'll focus his teams on delivering exceptional results for our clients."

About Critical Mass
Critical Mass (www.criticalmass.com), an Omnicom digital marketing agency, helps the world's leading companies use digital media to increase revenue, reduce costs and deepen customer relationships. Founded in 1995, Critical Mass has offices in Calgary, Toronto, Chicago, New York, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Austin, Geneva, and London. For additional information, visit www.criticalmass.com.

PC Magazine - The Top 100 Classic Web Sites

By Kyle Monson

All Web sites, whether classic or not, tend to follow the same evolutionary path: A site is conceived in the mind of an unusually intelligent person; starts off as a buggy alpha project; evolves into a less-buggy beta project; develops into a full-blown meme usually sometime around launch (Google betas excepted); and swirls around the Internet for a while. That's where the path diverges: the site can fade away into uncoolness and disuse, cater to a niche of hard-core users, or mature into a classic Web site that is used and loved by millions.

This list of 100 Classic Web Sites is for the last group, the sites that have transcended "going viral"; the sites that you, your parents, and your kids are familiar with, and that their kids may someday be familiar with. These 100 sites change the way we use the Web, pioneer new technologies and ideas, and inspire tons and tons of mimicry.

Unlike our list of Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites, you've probably heard of most of these sites, but we hope there are some new finds and old friends here for you to enjoy.

How We Selected the Top 100 Classic Web Sites

The sites on this list were selected from a list of hundreds of nominees by a committee of PC Magazine editors and analysts. When building this list, we looked for sites that are leaders in their field both in innovation and in the numbers of their readers and/or users. We also looked for sites that are either regularly adding cool features, or started out so unimprovably perfect that they shouldn't ever change.

Advertising Age - The Un-Dying of the Microsite

By David Armano

If there's one type of headline that gets attention, it's about claiming the death of something. Well, I'd like to proclaim the "un-dead" nature of a format that I think has the potential to become something more powerful than we are currently seeing.

The microsite was adopted by the marketing community as a tool of convenience. Continuing to add sections to our large company/product websites every time we wanted to promote a new product, feature or service simply became too unwieldy. And specifically for advertisers, well, they needed an online extension for their campaigns to live in the digital space.

And so the formula had begun. Launch a campaign, build a microsite, buy online media to drive traffic to it. Everything was in its place -- advertisers now had a presence on the web, clients were happy about it, and the big money was still being pumped into the traditional channels because that's how it's always been done. In the past year lots of us have had a grand ol' time proclaiming the death of the microsite, and with some validity. Fact is, the internet is littered with thousands of them and the majority are either promotional in nature, designed to win awards vs. serving up value, or simply provide no incentive to ever return to them. On top of that, most of the microsites I come across are difficult to use, take way too much time to load, crash my browser or use contrived marketing language written by professionals who have spent years perfecting their craft.

The reason microsites have come under fire is because amateurs have provided more compelling experiences in many ways. Sorry, it's true. If you Google a product name, it's not uncommon to come across a blog which has reviewed that product and is ranked higher than the professionally produced microsite. How do you think Engadget became so wildly popular? Still, I think the microsite format has legs. Here's why, and here's what we can do differently.

Analyze Digital Behavior
Where I see the opportunity for microsites lies behind simple human behavior in the digital space. Think about how the typical person interacts with digital media. My friends and family outside of the industry still send me links via e-mail. Simple copy and paste -- the lowest barrier there is. Most "regular" people I know still bookmark WEB PAGES. They aren't managing multiple feeds, readers and social bookmarks like I do. I am not a representative of mainstream digital behavior. I don't have numbers to back this up, but going on intuition and personal experience, I'm fairly confident that this is the case. Think about how you use the web. For all the talk about mobility, widgets and portability, my guess is that you still spend a lot of time on simple, good oldfashioned hypertext WEB PAGES. Microsites have lost some luster not because of the format, but because marketers and everyday people don't often think alike. We the people are looking for something we can use, and instead get a lot of bells and whistles that don't reward us for our time.

Offer Content, Context, Connections
Next we have to ask ourselves why formats like blogs, social networks and other manifestations of emerging digital media have become so popular. Blogs look nothing like microsites. But what they have in common is the delivery. Web pages -- pages that can be bookmarked and e-mailed, among other things. And they offer niche content, lots of links and, of course, the ability for people to talk back. Long-form content is the new design language -- I have become a convert. Debating the above-the-fold argument is a moot point -- we should start channeling our energy into debating how we can provide VALUE to users who are clearly getting it elsewhere. I propose that we breathe new life into the microsite format by fundamentally rethinking it. Look at the visual above this post. What if microsites evolved into content-heavy, long-form web pages that aggregated not only your own content, but content from any place you could think of? Instead of being concerned about linking away from the "site," that would be one of the primary objectives. I've found through my own experience in social networks that if you link to others and do the legwork of curating relevant content, people remember this. And guess what? They actually come back for more! Microsites can deliver this, simply because the format consists of web pages and links. We've just over-engineered the whole enchilada.

Develop a Content Strategy of Distribution Plus Aggregation
Take a look at Lenovo's Voices of the Olympic Games. The content actually lives across multiple platforms -- and it is all about content. Producing it quickly, updating it, uploading it via the popular networks that fuel the long tail. It looks nothing like a microsite but if you break down the components, it's still a web page, or at least that's one of the main components. The core difference is content and distribution. Traditional microsite thinking has marketers writing the copy, designers and developers building the site and a launch date followed by a maintenance plan. But if microsites begin to evolve into more "blog-like" experiences, they can quickly be launched, edited and refreshed, and have all the flexibility in the world to pull in the opensource third-party applications that are pervasive on the Web. Events can be streamed live, photo galleries can live on Flickr, and video galleries can live on You Tube. And there's a tremendous opportunity to actually embrace users who are generating their own content about your products. You can make them the star -- and they'll probably link back to you in return. The difference isn't in the technology as much as it is in the mind-set. In order to pull this off, we'll need to think more like bloggers, uploaders, journalists and mash-up artists than marketers, copywriters and designers. Take a look at what 37 Signals does when they live stream video -- it takes very little production value to achieve this, and the result is the sort of direct engagement that web users are craving.

Ask 'What's Next?'
Like anything else, what I'm proposing isn't a silver bullet. And it would take big mind-set shift for many organizations to pull this off. But it's worth looking into. I recently came across a microsite for HP featuring Shaun White, and, not being part of the apparent target demographic, I really can't judge if the site experience makes sense, but I did notice one thing. The site had clearly embraced a more "2.0" approach by offering multiple social bookmarks. But if you actually bookmarked a video, then returned to your link, it took you to the first page of the microsite where you are greeted by Shaun's talking/dancing avatar. You have to dig up the video all over again. I'm not a 20-something, but I have a hunch this would piss them off. But I don't blame the format -- if that video was worth sharing, a simple URL could have sufficed. Better yet, getting involved in the comments about it would take things a step further. It's probably a good time to rethink what the experience of a web page can be. I think the simple format has a lot of potential, if we just look at things with fresh, new eyes.

Advertising Age - Why Digital Marketing Needs a Reboot

By David Armano

Once upon a time, newspapers, TV and radio entered our lives. These wonderful inventions spawned yet another one -- multichannel advertising. Then along came things like DVRs and everything digital, which spawned yet another invention, the backlash of traditional advertising. For the record, traditional advertising isn't going away anytime soon, and despite the pronouncement of its death, it will live on -- albeit in an evolved format. And it actually still works. I look at billboards on highways. How can you not?

But "tradigital" could be another story. Tradigital, in my opinion, means using traditional marketing methods in the digital space. For example, creating an advertising campaign and "extending it digitally" usually ends up as a checklist. Micro-site? Check. Online banners? Check. Social media? Check. Mobile? Check. But these days, I'm thinking digital people have even tougher challenges than our traditional cousins. And "tradigitalists" may have it toughest of all. Why? Because some of us on the digital side have become just as set in our ways as our traditional counterparts.

Old habits die hard. While consumers are out there spending countless hours on social networks, file-sharing applications, chat, community sites, buying stuff, selling stuff and using multiple devices, some of us tradigital old fogies are still reaching for our beloved toolbox of the past in the hopes of getting their attention. While online user behavior tells us that people respond well to simplicity, we labor to create complexity in the form of experimental navigation and sites that take forever to load. When YouTube arrived on the scene, we responded by putting our TV spots on it or -- better yet -- creating spots that looked like they were made by amateurs. Little did we know that the real action happens in the comments. Have we thought about talking back to people, or are we really just interested in telling our stories?

And what about online gaming? It's a fixture for tradigitalists. Yet, many popular online games weren't created by agencies and don't have brands associated with them. Scrabulous, anyone? I don't follow Cannes closely, but with a few exceptions it seems to reward "tradigital" creativity. How clever was the idea? How good was the storytelling? These are all hallmarks of creativity, but I also see creativity as solving business problems. I really like My Starbucks Idea, because I think Starbucks will gain insights from the feedback they get there -- these insights may eventually contribute to Starbucks re-capturing some of the loyalty they once enjoyed, and that could reflect well upon their stock price. Would My Starbucks Idea win a Cyber Lion? I really don't know. It's not flashy, it's not terribly original (Dell did it already) and hey, where's the sound effects? But if Starbucks plays its cards right, it could become a powerful tool for turning their ship around.

It's time to come to terms with how people really use the web (hint -- it might not be to figure out your experimental navigation) and how we can harness the true power of digital. Digital marketing doesn't need more tradigital creativity -- it needs more creative problem solving. It just might be time for the industry to reboot.

Advertising Age - When Marketing Feels Shallow, Go Deep

By David Armano

These days, I find myself in a unique position. I talk and people listen. Don't get me wrong, I get challenged fairly regularly (thankfully), but for whatever reason, people are willing to hear me out. Sometimes I wonder why. But then I think about one of the stories I once told during a few of my earlier speaking engagements. In the movie "The Doctor," William Hurt plays a smart and capable hospital physician with terrible bedside manners. Then his world gets turned upside down when he gets terribly sick. His story unfolds as he undertakes a journey as a patient, seeing and experiencing things from the other side of the bed. His whole perspective changes once he knows what it feels like to be sick; as his body heals, he contemplates his past actions. Needless to say, when Hurt's character returns to full health and begins practicing again, he comes at it with the empathy that one can only have when you've experienced something for yourself.

The problem with marketing is that it often doesn't allow marketers to go deep, to gain an intimate understanding of human behavior. We're strapped for time, spread thin and torn between making our clients or bosses happy while trying to do what we think is right. We've got access to the latest trend reports, market segments, personas and metrics. We're surrounded by smart, capable people who, like William Hurt's character, know what they are doing. But there's a question we need to ask ourselves. Are we making the time to walk in the shoes of the people we market to? Are we willing to swim in the deep end?

In February of 1996 I "launched" Logic & Emotion, my personal blog. I did it mostly as an experiment, because I wanted to better understand the blogging phenomenon. Like many things in a digitally fueled world, the results of your actions can often be unpredictable -- you can plan for multiple scenarios but you have to be flexible enough to improvise along the way. I had no idea how much traction would be gained in a relatively short time and I learned as I went.

But more important, blogging and participation in multiple networks has given me a near endless supply of insights that could have only been gotten through firsthand experience. I would spend hours studying the linking patterns between myself and others, I understood what it felt like to become a "content" creator, an "uploader." I began to understand the concept of community and bonds that happen through connecting with like-minded people. I wouldn't have understood any of these things beyond a superficial level had I not done some of them for myself.

To be clear, this isn't about blogging, or even social networks for that matter. It does, however, relate to the shift in media consumption and participation, where and how people spend their time and the differences between them. If your target consumer is 18 to 22, it wouldn't hurt to do some of the things an 18- to 22-year-old does. If your target is baby boomers, and you're spending most of your time switching from iPhone to text to chat, you'll need to understand first hand that not everyone lives like this, even though you might be. Maybe increasing your face to face interactions is needed; you might need to step outside of your own behavioral patterns.

I've never considered myself a marketing expert or really even a marketer for that matter, but there's one thing I do know -- a healthy sense of empathy is essential in a topsy-turvy world designed to reward short-term spikes in sales and banner clickthroughs. When the majority of a user's time spent online is moving in the direction of video platforms we didn't build, photosharing networks we didn't dream up and classified services we can't charge for, it's time to admit that our world's been turned upside down. We've become the patients. It's time to leave the shallow end and and swim toward the deep. In the end, we'll likely be better marketers for it. And what the heck, maybe even better people.

Critical Mass Wins Silver ADDY® For...

CALGARY, AB and CHICAGO, IL – The American Advertising Federation (AAF), a not-for-profit industry association, has named Critical Mass (www.criticalmass.com), an Omnicom digital marketing agency, a Silver ADDY winner for its Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) "Free Will Campaign."

Critical Mass worked with R&R Partners, which produced the "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" television and print advertisements, to develop an interactive microsite, Las Vegas Free Will (www.visitlasvegas.com/vegas/features/free-will/index.jsp). Launched in late September 2007, Las Vegas Free Will is a location-specific social-networking Web site with practical features for first-time visitors to Las Vegas within VisitLasVegas.com.

"Our primary goal was to bridge that gap from the emotional message R&R was putting out there to the more tangible, informational experience, and backing up the promise of that message," says John McLaughlin, Vice President, Critical Mass. "The microsite's messaging capability also added a viral component to the campaign which appeals to the younger people the city is trying to attract as tourists."

With over 60,000 entries annually, the ADDY Awards are the world's largest advertising competition. The ADDY Awards recognize any advertising from all types of media from anywhere in the world. The AAF conducts the ADDY Awards annually through its 200 member advertising clubs and 15 districts. It is the only creative awards program administered by the advertising industry for the industry.

The local ADDY Awards are the first of a three-tier, national competition. All across the country, local entrants vie concurrently for recognition as the very best in their markets. At the second tier, local winners compete against other winners in one of 14 District competitions. District winners are then forwarded to the third tier - the national ADDY Awards competition.

A panel of judges evaluates all creative dimensions of every entry, affecting selection of the most creative entry in each category. Entries that are also considered outstanding and worthy of recognition receive Silver ADDYs.

About Critical Mass
Critical Mass (www.criticalmass.com), an Omnicom digital marketing agency, helps the world's leading companies use digital media to increase revenue, reduce costs, and deepen customer relationships. Founded in 1995, Critical Mass has offices in Calgary, Toronto, Chicago, New York, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Austin, Geneva, and London. For additional information, visit www.criticalmass.com.

About the American Advertising Federation (AAF)
The American Advertising Federation (AAF), headquartered in Washington, D.C., acts as the "Unifying Voice for Advertising." The AAF is the oldest national advertising trade association, representing 50,000 professionals in the advertising industry. The AAF has a national network of 200 ad clubs located in communities across the country. Through its 215 college chapters, the AAF provides 6,500 advertising students with real-world case studies and recruitment connections to corporate America. The AAF also has 130 blue-chip corporate members that are advertisers, agencies and media companies, comprising the nation's leading brands and corporations. For more information, visit the AAF's Web site at www.aaf.org.

Back Into the Fray Comes Joseph!

Proving that Serendipity is doing it's job, I've had in my mind that it's time to return to these thoughts and several people contacted me to find out if I was going to return to this blog.

Okay. Into the deep end first.

My time away has been due to busyness. Perhaps some readers have heard, NextStage Received its first patent on its Evolution Technology. For years we've been intentionally below the radar, now we seem to be becoming a recognizable object rapidly approaching from the far horizon. Now that we've left nap-of-the-earth flying I'm able to discuss things more openly, me thinks, hence some of my responses now and in the future.

Are the visitors happy?

One of the things I did while I was away was talk with a few people (about 100 so far) about what I'll call The Purpose of Web Analytics. I did this research because of something I wrote in this thread above, "…all these analytics are worthless unless they create happy, satisfied visitors, yes?"

I've talked with upper management in education, politics, at national telecoms, financial institutions, transportation, recreation, … a pretty diverse group. Most of them were involved in marketing products or services or some other form of gaining marketshare. None of them were web analysts or involved in web analytics except that they received reports and were expected to act upon them. None of them were particularly happy about being made accountable to a system that (they believed) wasn't measuring … and here's where the challenges really made themselves known.

What was being measured? Lots of money was being spent and lots of people were being told that the measurements mattered and as one fellow explained, for the amount of money they were spending they expected some consistency.

"What do you mean by consistency?" I asked.

He pretty much didn't know. He and those with him said lots of things and it could be distilled to a general dissatisfaction that there wasn't a single model that they could consistently use and derive actionable meaning from. The dissatisfaction grew geometrically when the discussion got into executives making decisions based on sales presentations rather than a given product's specific informational abilities.

At one point I leaned towards a speaker and quietly said, "Remember, Joseph friend," and everybody laughed because the tension in the room was broken.

I reference these anecdotes because one of my original hopes for this platform was an increase in understanding and acceptance of some mutual goals regardless of discipline or tool platform.

In the end, doesn't it all come down to "…all these analytics are worthless unless they create happy, satisfied visitors…?"

If I can't act on it, it doesn't exist

The next item I wish to thread into this discussion comes from an online conversation I had with Critical Mass's Christopher Berry about why web analytics seems to be a harder sell in Canada than in the US. You can follow my side of the conversation in Canadian Based Business Differences — Responding to June Li, Christopher Berry and Jacques Warren, Responding to Christopher Berry's Vexing Problem, Part 3 post, The Language of Web Analytics - The Hard(er) Sell in Canada, Responding to Christopher Berry's "A Vexing Problem, Part 4² Post, Part 1, Responding to Christopher Berry's "A Vexing Problem, Part 4² Post, Part 2 and Communicating Science to Business and Vice Versa and links are provided to Christopher Berry's side on the conversation in those posts. I'll invite people to pay particular attention to Communicating Science to Business and Vice Versa because (and as Mr. Berry noted) the summation is what counts, "Business is different. Business (me thinks) tends to be more ‘Tell me how to use this' hence most business proposals and reports start with Christopher Berry's nuggets then go into explanations."

My research is convincing me that (what I recognize as traditional) web analytics is going to be losing its authoritative power in the coming years. I think web analytics (and yes, this does go back to my original hopes for this blog) will evolve (just as anything will if it is going to survive in a given changing environment). What will it do and look like? I have some ideas, of course. Just ideas at present, though. More things to research before putting down on paper (or in a blog) at present.

This does tie into my comment re Avinash Kaushik's "…we shouldn't use ill defined engagement metrics as a proxy for something solid like a sale." I've been an oft-times unwilling father-confessor to businesses frustrated by ill-defined metrics of any kind and wanting something that is justifiable a) financially, b) scientifically, c) arithmetically (forget mathematically) and d) produces some kind of "do A, get B", "this-equals-that" link between action and outcome.

The comment I love about this is "If I can't act on it then it doesn't exist", ie, it's noise, a distraction at best and something best ignored. This was a wonderful statement used in a business practices discussion.

I'd really enjoy being involved in a web understandability/measurement/future usability discussion that has as its theme "If I can't act on it then it doesn't exist."

"To measure and analyze on and offline behavior and then try to predict who to market to by figuring out what they think is not doable with one tool or one metric."

I responded earlier to this comment. People who attended either the Toronto ‘08 or SF ‘08 eMetrics conferences are probably well aware by now that NextStage has patented a technology that can determine how someone is thinking through any programmable device. I won't go deeper into the topic here except to offer a comment I posted on Jim Novo's blog about the {C,B/e,M} matrix and its use in marketing and analytics.

Picking up where I left off with Jim Novo's comments in this thread…

I finally had an opportunity to read Jim Novo's Measuring Engagement and its related Framework for Engagement posts. I truly enjoy Jim's writing style and the points he makes.

I especially enjoy and appreciate his referencing Relationship Marketing because it places people center stage. Understand people and you can both understand and predict what they'll do. Watch only what people have done and you can only understand their actions in a specific historical context, you can only predict what they'll do when the confluence of events that led to their original actions repeats itself. Exactly (and don't hold your breath). Relationship marketing works at the question "…all these analytics are worthless unless they create happy, satisfied visitors, yes?"

Jim writes "The challenge with this model - and probably why it isn't more widely known - has been the data, it's a very analysis-intensive model…". Yes. Agreed. If Jim (or others familiar with these concepts) is reading (or perhaps at the next conference we meet at), I think this is where being able to substitute cognitive heuristic models makes sense (see Liberation and Heuristics or Responding to Christopher Berry's "A Vexing Problem, Part 4² Post, Part 1. I've also written elsewhere that I often wonder why more businesses don't make use of cognitive heuristic models).

For example, I've recently been applying heuristic models to helping adult second language learners increase their language acquisition abilities. That's a traditionally very tough nut to crack and (so far, anyway) I've been able to isolate neural activity that tends to make adult language acquisition challenging. Example 2, using heuristic models in the above grew out of learning which heuristic models are used (non-consciously, of course) by which personality types in their decision making processes. This non-conscious heuristic model selection process is being integrated into NextStage's Rich Personae. These and some other areas of my studies are intensely data-rich models that can be reasonably simplified via cognitive heuristics.

I also strongly like your concept of disengagement, although I tend to use a methodology that incorporates "satisfaction" into the scaling system (see Meet Online Engagement's Little Friend, Satisfaction). I shared the complete form of this during a discussion at the SF ‘08 eMetrics. It looks something like the figure on the right.

Some definitions to help in understanding; the x-axis is Engagement and is a measure of the amount of pleasure or pain an activity is giving you. If something is giving you either pleasure or pain to any degree your attention is focused on it, hence you are engaged by it according to the definitions documented in Attention, Engagement and Trust: The Internet Trinity and Websites. The y-axis is Satisfaction and is a measure of acceptance and rejection of some internal state and/or external event.

I believe what you are referencing as "dis-engagement" is what we recognize as the slide from high acceptance to "0² acceptance. Note that this is not rejection (as rejection is an active negation of acceptance) it is a lack of acceptance. I appreciate that the difference might be subtle and I believe that difference is significant. Rejection — the active negation of acceptance — can be thought of as someone pushing something away. Zero-acceptance is the point where one can "take it or leave it" and the internal state and/or external event does not have any value assigned to it, hence doesn't register strongly in the mind/brain.

Mapping this figure to real world experience, you always want visitors/consumer/etc to be in the first quadrant (where the green curve is). People are both positively engaged (they like what's going on) and positively satisfied (they accept it gladly). Depending on what you're selling you may or may not want people in those other quadrants. The second quadrant (bottom yellow curve) indicates someone focusing on painful experiences or information, the fourth quadrant (top yellow curve) indicates someone who finds pleasure in painful experiences or information. The third quadrant (red curve) is where visitors/consumers/etc often end up and marketers/businesses don't want them to be — the former are actively psychologically and physically moving themselves away from a business/product/service.

I'll offer that the above is also a reasonable representation of your:
1. Define / Measure Engagement – any way you want to, as appropriate for your business; whatever activity or combinations of activity you feel appropriate
2. Measure dis-Engagement – the absence of Engagement, as in the visitor / customer stopped doing whatever it is you define as Engagement for your business model

I think where the image above (and the math behind it) adds real value is with your "3. Take some kind of Marketing or Service action to slow or reverse the dis-Engagement with dis-Engaging folks" because it provides enough information to know how, exactly, visitors/etc are "right now" interacting with your marketing information.

I also agree whole-heartedly with your statements about predicting "dis-engagement", etc. I would love to see the data you used in your example and apply it to the above. I'm willing to bet that satisfaction/acceptance was the real driver (and I won't get into the depths of group satisfaction/acceptance states here (really, Joseph? You're going to leave something out? Whatever for?)). I did get a kick out of your graph of email response rates falling over time. It was very similar to the results we found in our research on how to design an effective email newsletter. Bravo! I always love it when our findings match others'. Gives me hope we're doing something right.

<ASIDE>
For what it's worth, much of the rest of what you've written in your post is so close to what we learned in our email newsletter research that the overlap is astounding. Not surprising, I guess, as you're listing an email-based experiment. It would be interesting to learn what else the rules we discovered pertain to. Let me know if would like to explore this.
</ASIDE>

You also list an implication about sending different messages to different segments. Yes, agreed. I believe the above allows for much more targeted and action-driven messaging (based on much of what I've shared above).

Perhaps, in the end, we've derived nothing more than a simplified mathematical model (complete with suggestions for better outcomes) of Relationship Marketing?

Whoosh!

Took me two days to put the above together folks. Sorry for the delay. More to follow. Soon.

Promise.

Critical Mass Wins Autotrader.com Digital Account

CALGARY, AB & CHICAGO, IL - Critical Mass (www.criticalmass.com), an Omnicom digital marketing agency, has been named the interactive agency of record for AutoTrader.com, the ultimate automotive marketplace.

Critical Mass' team will develop and execute digital marketing strategies for the AutoTrader.com brand, helping to deliver results for its business-to-consumer and business-to-business efforts, including online media, rich media, house ads, microsites, e-mail, mobile and search.

Critical Mass will also craft the interactive component of AutoTrader.com's recently announced national advertising campaign to highlight AutoTrader.com's new vehicle inventory. Long known as the No. 1 site for buying and selling used vehicles, AutoTrader.com has built up its inventory of new vehicles, with over 1.5 million new vehicles now posted for sale on the site.

"We selected Critical Mass because of its proven track record of innovative thinking and strategic insight," said John Kovac, Senior Director of Consumer Advertising, AutoTrader.com. "This partnership will enable us to take our digital initiatives to the next level, both from a creative and business standpoint."

"We are looking forward to working with AutoTrader.com," said Scott Shamberg, Senior Vice President, Marketing & Media, Critical Mass. "They are considered a pioneer in the automotive space and we are eager to support their expansion into the new car category through a comprehensive media strategy that will keep them ahead of the pack."

About AutoTrader.com
AutoTrader.com, created in 1997 and headquartered in Atlanta, Ga., is the Internet's leading auto classifieds marketplace and consumer information website. AutoTrader.com aggregates in a single location more than 3 million vehicle listings from 40,000 dealers and 250,000 private owners, which provide the largest selection of vehicles attracting more than 13 million qualified buyers each month. Through innovative merchandising products such as multiple photos and comprehensive search functionality, AutoTrader.com unites buyer and seller online - dramatically improving the way people research, locate and advertise vehicles. AutoTrader.com is a majority-owned subsidiary of Cox Enterprises. The venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is also an investor. For more information, please visit www.autotrader.com.

About Critical Mass
Critical Mass (www.criticalmass.com), an Omnicom digital marketing agency, helps the world's leading companies use digital media to increase revenue, reduce costs and deepen customer relationships. Founded in 1995, Critical Mass has offices in Calgary, Toronto, Chicago, New York, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Austin, Geneva, and London. For additional information, visit www.criticalmass.com.

Critical Mass Appoints Jason Theodor Creative Director

CALGARY, AB & CHICAGO, IL – Critical Mass (www.criticalmass.com), an Omnicom digital marketing agency, has named branding expert Jason Theodor Creative Director. An avid blogger, lecturer, and industry veteran with eleven years experience, he will be based in Toronto.

Theodor served as Interactive Creative Director at Ogilvy and MacLaren McCann prior to joining Critical Mass. He played an integral role in both Yahoo!'s global re-branding and Dove Evolution's viral campaign. He also started his own online consultancy specializing in idea generation for marketing, branding, and creativity, working with such agencies as Saatchi and Saatchi, JWP, Ogilvy and Mather, and Idea Couture.

Previously, Theodor led online branding initiatives for Yahoo!, Dove, General Motors, Rogers, Cisco, American Express, IBM, Mattel, Microsoft, Nestle, Sony, and other Fortune 500 companies.

The Canadian Marketing Association (CMA) has repeatedly recognized Theodor's work. He received the 2007 CMA Award for Yahoo! Canada's "Dance Dance Monkey" and the 2005 CMA Award for New Media: E-Mail for General Motors of Canada Limited's "Interchange."

Jason also authors the blogs, 1% (http://1over100.com/) and ThereIsNoBox.ca (http://thereisnobox.wordpress.com), in addition to consulting, lecturing, and driving workshops on brainstorming techniques and creativity.

"Jason brings a wealth of experience in the converging worlds of advertising, marketing, and Web 2.0," said Dianne Wilkins, Chief Executive Officer of Critical Mass. "We expect that our clients' campaigns will benefit from his creativity, forward thinking and passion for the online channel."

About Critical Mass
Critical Mass (www.criticalmass.com), an Omnicom digital marketing agency, helps the world's leading companies use digital media to increase revenue, reduce costs and deepen customer relationships. Founded in 1995, Critical Mass has offices in Calgary, Toronto, Chicago, New York, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Austin, Geneva, and London. For additional information, visit www.criticalmass.com.

Advertising Age - What's Your Brand U.0?

By David Armano

Pop Quiz: What's the first thing you do after reviewing the resume of a serious candidate? You Google them, of course. Brands and businesses of all kinds have been waking up to the reality that the way their companies show up on internet search results can define them more than any PR campaign.

Actually, the good PR campaigns factor in search results as a core strategy. But increasingly, the same goes for individuals. When we present ourselves to prospective employers or even enter new relationships, you can be sure the odds of getting "Googled" are pretty good. Throw in social networks and what you've got is an entirely new kind of profile -- and it matters just as much as the polished version of yourself that you carefully craft on your CV.

While "gaming" search engines or representing yourself inaccurately in a social network is inadvisable, there are certain things you can do to help you custom-design your personal brand online in a way that is unique, memorable and positive. Here are a few things you should think about when building "Brand U.0."

Establish at Least One Digital Profile
If you aren't participating in at least one personal or professional network, such as LinkedIn, then I suggest you stop reading this article and do so right away. Even the "walled garden" social networks will often display limited profiles that show up on search engines. Not only that, but they offer opportunities for your "personal brand" to demonstrate effectiveness across "multiple channels," so to speak. Checking out someone's profile on Facebook or LinkedIn and perusing photos on Flickr gives you a comprehensive view of an individual's personality, interests and professional qualifications. Sound like stalking? Guess what -- we're all stalkers now. If you don't want someone checking out your stuff online, don't put it there. And, more important, if you do, think about yourself as "brand you." It's all you have, really.

Engage in Personal Publishing
It's widely accepted that brands are in the business of producing content now. Guess what -- we are too. Blogging platforms such as Blogger, TypePad and WordPress offer opportunities to publish our thoughts, ideas and other details of our everyday lives if we choose. Services such as Tumblr let us tell the world what we like and why. FriendFeed lets us put it all in once place, and Google picks up all of it. If you are going to choose to "publish" anything online, it automatically becomes an extension of Brand You. It says something about who you are and what you care about. Personal publishing is a great way to build your brand online, but take a page from classic brand building and have some type of strategy. Think about how you want to come across to the world before you push that button.

Become Your Own Agent
That's right. Think about yourself as a celebrity or talent who just hired the most qualified agent you'll ever meet: yourself. You are now responsible for every photo or video of yourself that ends up in the archives of Flickr, Google or YouTube. As your own agent, you'll be able to edit the media you upload online and use discretion when participating in media that others upload. Choose wisely: The long tail of the internet is indeed lengthy and influential. By becoming your own agent, you'll have multiple opportunities to project yourself in ways you'd like, but it takes some discretion and experience to get it right.

Be Authentic
The hallmark of any great brand is authenticity -- just ask Harley-Davidson, Coke or Apple, especially when all of these brands lost their way and learned from it. Same thing applies to Brand You. In every tweak or a template, upload and keystroke, you have an opportunity to be authentic or disingenuous. Know what makes you special and unique, and tap into those qualities as you build your personal brand online. Most people can spot a fake when they see one, so remember that being genuine is more important that presenting yourself in an artificially glossy manner. It used to be important for bloggers to "find their voice" -- now it's relevant to all of us.

These are a few things to consider, and you don't have to be Robert Scoble or Seth Godin to benefit from them. Owning your personal brand online isn't just for "Weblebrities"; it's for all of us. I'd also be careful about using props. I once put on a cowboy hat at the request of my friend Richard Binhammer of Dell, and now it's become an expectation from the people I meet that I wear it. Sometimes, successful brands are created accidentally; if that happens to you, my advice is this: First roll with it, then own it.

Media In Canada - Critical Mass Wins AutoTrader.com

By Jesse Kohl

Calgary-HQ'd agency Critical Mass has won AutoTrader.com's digital account. As the newlypicked interactive AOR for Atlanta, Georgia-HQ'd AutoTrader.com, the Omnicom-owned digital agency will help promote new cars and trucks in addition to pre-owned vehicles, including the interactive component of the site's latest national campaign.

(The Canadian version of the site launched its campaign along with New Car Magazine in April, with John St. handling creative, Cossette Media the broadcast buys, and OMD the online buying. AutoTrader.ca is not affiliated with AutoTrader.com in the U.S.)

The Critical Mass team will develop and execute digital strategies for the brand, including B2C and B2B efforts using email, house ads, microsites, mobile, online media, rich media, and search. AutoTrader.com aggregates more than three million vehicle listings and attracts over 13 million qualified buyers each month.

Critical Mass also has offices in Toronto, Chicago, New York, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Austin, Geneva, and London.

Adweek- Shops Strive for a New Formula

By Brian Morrissey

Collaboration can be the key to creating great brand experiences. But sometimes, it's hard to get the chemistry right.

Last July, when Toy New York and EVB geared up for a second time to create "Elf Yourself," the OfficeMax holiday viral sensation of 2006, there was an understanding: wherever the Elf was mentioned, the two shops would share all creative credit.

For EVB CEO Daniel Stein, this "Lennon and McCartney" approach was a requirement to undertake the project. His digital agency still bore scars from earlier joint efforts that had seen the traditional agency partner get all the glory. Stein remembers walking down the Croisette in Cannes in 2006, getting awkward half congratulations, half apologies after the EVB-built "Whopperettes" took a gold Lion because main agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky got all the credit.

"We're creating something that is completely new," says Stein. "To try to control it is antiquated. There are still more agencies taking credit for someone else's work this year than there were last year or the year before."

The issue, long a point of contention among the digital shops that bring traditional agencies' concepts to life, blew into the open in Cannes when BBDO took top honors in several categories, including a gold Lion in Cyber, for HBO "Voyeur." The crux of the issue: The HBO "Voyeur" site was created by Big Spaceship, a small Brooklyn digital shop. The lack of credit given to Big Spaceship caused jury chair Colleen DeCourcy, chief digital officer at TBWA, to mention the forgotten partner when giving the award to BBDO. Still, the snub riled Big Spaceship CEO Michael Lebowitz, who served on the Cannes Cyber jury. He maintains that BBDO did not deserve all the credit for something it didn't create.

"The era of everything being based on the great idea is over," he says. "Other things have risen to a common level of importance." Without interactive experts to bring ideas to life, he adds, the big ideas are like "a fart in the wind."

It would be easy to dismiss the complaints of Stein and Lebowitz: Agencies abuse production shops and take undeserved credit, highlights at 11. Yet the incidents point to something more; the shifting definition of creativity brought about by digital technologies. The complexity of digital media often blurs the lines between "ideas" and "production," particularly as brand building moves from messages to experiences. If the experience is the fulcrum of the effort, it is hard to discount the work that goes into creating that experience as simple production. The best work often erases the distinction.

"Collaboration is becoming much more important to create great brand experiences," says Simon Jefferson, client services director at AKQA, which was also snubbed at Cannes for its work on the "Believe" campaign for Halo 3, winner of the Integrated Titanium award.

As an example, he points to AKQA's work on the "Run London" campaign for Nike. Nike's main agency, Wieden + Kennedy, came up with the line, "I'll do it if you do it." AKQA, though, created the MySpace hub that gathered runners ahead of the 1,000-meter race.

"That's a massive component of the overall experience," Jefferson says. "That's nothing to do with two guys that came up with the line."

Nike+, which was the talk of Cannes again this year, sums up the new creative order. Although Nike digital shop R/GA won a Cyber Grand Prix and Titanium Lion there in 2007 for its work on Nike+, could it really be pegged as R/GA's idea? Nike had been hard at work on the idea for years, and its collaboration with Apple happened outside of R/GA. Yet the shop played a critical role in the success of Nike+ by creating technology that linked uploaded runs to a social networking application, says Nike global director of digital media Stefan Olander. The service's success hinges on many elements: design, technology and interface.

"You need an army," says Michael Ferdman, managing director of Firstborn, a New York digital agency. "The idea is going to be spurred by two people, but they need to embrace all kinds of tentacles. It's like a starfish."

Increasingly, Jefferson argues, brands are likely to create services, often of a digital nature. That makes the technology and design elements equal to -- if not paramount to -- the concept. In effect, the creative process begins to resemble software development more than the typical agency process. This is simply necessary as advertising moves from mainly messages to building utility, he says.

To think of the copywriter and art director as the source for all creativity isn't right. "It's unfeasible to think two people can manage the experience over all the channels," Jefferson says.

This is more true when it comes to exploring new areas. David Armano, vp of creative at Omnicom Group digital shop Critical Mass, sees the embryo of the new creative professional in the world of Web 2.0 development. There the norm is for small teams to use the agile-development method to build rapid prototypes. This stands in stark contrast to the drawn-out creative process that silos functions. Instead, Armano believes the new creative mind will have a main function (say, a functional designer) while also being able to contribute in other disciplines, such as branding and storytelling. Rather than the creative process leading to a series of final products that together make up a campaign, the new process means quickly developing applications or utilities that can be scrapped or improved upon. Like Google's many products, everything is in beta.

"The shift from storytelling to user experience is huge," Armano says. "The advertising agencies that want to move beyond microsites are just figuring that out. It takes a different way of looking at things and expertise."

Some agencies have figured this out. Just two years ago, Crispin needed EVB to build its "Whopperettes" site. Today, the shop could probably do the work itself. It has spent the last two years building out its interactive capabilities, including its recent purchase of Texturemedia, a 50-person interactive development shop. A sign of how expansive its view of creative is nowadays was its sponsorship of the IxDA interaction design conference this February as a way to reach experience designers.

This is a major challenge to the sensibilities of traditional creatives, says Mike Parker, digital strategist for Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. The problem is the industry is used to creativity producing specific products that can be easily shown in portfolios and entered into awards shows. Yet now, Goodby finds itself doing creative work that defies easy categorization. For instance, to promote HP's reentry into the smart phone market last fall, it created a voice application that bloggers used to post voice messages on their sites.

"It really supports the brand idea and makes a lot of sense, but is that creativity?" he asks. "When you do that kind of stuff, it's not the traditional creative output for an agency. That's forcing the agency to think of what it is we make."

BBDO itself recognizes this. It has moved its interactive shop, Atmosphere BBDO, into the agency's offices, and is beginning to integrate its talent with BBDO teams. Yet despite owning Atmosphere, BBDO chose to lean on Big Spaceship for the expertise needed for "Voyeur," a site that combined video with an innovative design. David Lubars, chairman and CCO at BBDO, says ideally, if BBDO were to create "Voyeur" again two years from now, Atmosphere would do the work, rather than outsource it to a specialist shop.

Still, Barbarian Group CEO Benjamin Palmer, who had a high-profile tiff with Crispin over sharing the credit for "Subservient Chicken," has doubts that any agency will be able to offer expertise in such areas. He says it doesn't make economic sense to have high-end developers on staff all year long when only one or two projects might call for them.

In more cases, agencies understand what firms like Barbarian bring to the table, Palmer says. Rather than bringing a fully baked concept to Barbarian, agencies will involve them early on to flesh out the concept. "Most times, when an agency has an idea, they have no idea how to do it," he says. "More often than not, the idea morphs a bunch."

This was the case when BBDO contacted Barbarian last year for a ho-hum Web site. After examining the concept, Barbarian suggested the agency scrap it in favor of a much bigger idea: Create a site that lets people construct their own digital likeness on an M&M. The site, becomeanmm.com, ended up as the centerpiece of the campaign.

"It was meant to be a tiny project," Palmer says. "It turned into a massive endeavor because we brought a lot of massive ideas."

As for the debate over creative credit, Palmer is philosophical. It's simply an unfortunate part of the business that will probably recede as the industry changes and new players become less threatening to established ones, he predicts.

"We were upset a few times early on," Palmer admits. "We learned our lesson and figured out how to do good PR on our own. Now, we just try to do awesome stuff."

Advertising Age - Social Networking Will Go Mainstream

By David Armano

To the Millennials reading this, here's something you might want to save as a time capsule or something. I entered the workforce in January of 1995. My first job was as a graphic designer for Columbia House -- the 10-CDs-for-99-cents people (that's right, before CDs became drink coasters, you could order them through snail mail).

More important, I was the "tech savvy" one because I had a personal e-mail account via AOL and a dialup modem before my new employer had even adopted e-mail at all. Can you believe that? I would leave the office after a full day only to come home and have no work e-mail to contend with. I only had personal e-mail and the occasional chat-room exchange. Personal e-mail and chat rooms were fun for me back then. Kind of like social networking now.

Obviously a lot has changed. But some things haven't. E-mail has of course gone mainstream. Many of us have become dependent upon it to do business. Spam has become an annoyance that most of us fight against, but ultimately deal with because the e-mail platform is such a staple to our professional -- and personal -- lives. We get spammed by brands, by friends and, of course, by business scams. And as I think back to my early experiences with e-mail, prior to my first employer adopting it, I actually see a few similarities in my experience using multiple social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

I like to think of my multiple networks as my "social system" (see diagram). The ones that add long-term value are the ones I maintain. LinkedIn has become my Rolodex; Twitter has nearly replaced instant messenger. But, increasingly, each of my social applications is beginning to show signs of "spamming" behavior -- not unlike what most of us have been dealing with for years via e-mail. On Facebook my friends spam me. I get messages promoting their recent accomplishments. Brands spam me, too. I get invited to all sorts of events that I never asked to be invited to. Non-friends spam me with all sorts of propositions or requests to be friends. On Twitter, similar things happen. I log on, check out my "direct messages," and while most of them are friends or contacts who want to communicate, many of them are pitches. Same goes for conversation on Twitter, where individuals, businesses or even politicians are clamoring to get your attention. Same goes for LinkedIn, where I regularly get updates from people as they change careers.

None of this is inherently bad -- this isn't a gripe or a cry for help. It's simply an observation that not unlike e-mail, many of the social applications we use are becoming so convenient, so utilitarian that they begin to attract activity that we need to learn to filter out. Just ask any metrics analyst, they'll show you the stats of how effective well-designed e-mail initiatives can be. But there's a catch. Most effective e-mails are opted into by users who have decided to hear more from brands (or individuals) they trust. Violate that trust, and you are in the spam business.

As social networks become mainstream, it will be business as usual. We'll log onto our network of choice, just as we log onto email and sift through the spam. And we'll be making up our minds about brands and people along the way. Those who spam us will become a nuisance, something to tolerate. And those who make it worth our time will be rewarded with our trust and maybe even loyalty. As marketers and individuals, the choice to add value or generate more noise is ours to make.

BusinessWeek - Web Design Case Study: Brand Building

By Matt Vella

To further promote "what happens" in Vegas, R&R Partners teamed with design firm Critical Mass to create an interactive trip-planning site

When the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority launched its cheeky "What Happens Here, Stays Here" campaign in January, 2003, it hoped the sassy slogan would help boost sagging post-September 11 tourism and recast Sin City as an adult playground where vacationers could throw off their taboos and inhibitions without consequence. Little did the group entrusted with managing the Vegas brand imagine the phrase would spread like a Western wildfire, ultimately taking a place in the popular lexicon alongside marketing taglines like "Just Do It" and "Got Milk?"

But the group's research showed that while consumers were intrigued, they were also turned off by the practicalities of planning a trip to experience the city's temptations (roughly 20% of Vegas visitors are firsttimers). "We had the push effect of television, the ads creating the desire in people to come," says Sean Corbett, director of digital marketing at R&R Partners, the Las Vegas firm that created the campaign. "We turned to the Web to help people plan, pull them in, and, essentially, rationalize potential visitors' urge to come."

Working with the design firm Critical Mass, R&R set about devising a set of Web-based tools to act as a digital enabler—and an extended brand-building tool for Las Vegas. The result, My Vegas, was launched earlier this year. It's a location-specific social networking Web site that lives within the broader VisitLasVegas.com. "Our key insight in designing the site," says David Armano, Critical Mass vice-president for experience design, "is that people come to Vegas from all over and that most people are coordinating their trips with friends over e-mail."

Tweak the Look and Feel

Such organizing can quickly become unwieldy and is frankly too Web 1.0 for words. So Critical Mass set out to design a site that would streamline would-be visitors' planning process but maintain the frisky tone of the original campaign. Like other social sites such as Facebook or MySpace (NWS), MyVegas features profiles that users can customize by tweaking the look and feel of pages, adding and sharing picture albums of trips, and, of course, accessing the pervasive comment that makes up the chatter on most social networks. "But," says Armano, "this is not just social advertising." He points to a long list of practical features geared toward helping potential visitors.

For instance, My Vegas contains an arcade of Web applications that are also designed to reinforce the tongue-in-cheek brand work of the original advertising. The most robust of these, dubbed RSVP for "Really Simple Vegas Planner," allows groups of friends to co-create a detailed itinerary of their trips, hour by hour, adding details of hotel stays, special events, and restaurant and club outings, for example. Users in a group can even vote for or veto proposed events, times, or locations. Brightly colored motion graphics replete with miniature fireworks animations give the site's user interface a sense of dynamism and fun.

Other applications are more frivolous, including Be Anyone, which allows users to create detailed fake personas for use on an uninhibited night out. Another, dubbed Free Will, lets members create customized video messages hosted by angels or devils to encourage friends to join the site by extolling the potential virtues or vices of a given plan. And the Vegas Name Generator creates gag names for visitors to hide behind.

To date, the site has attracted some 8,500 members. About 60% have clicked through to hotel sites from the RSVP application, according to Corbett, though it's impossible to tell, of course, how many actually booked a room. To help the site grow, more features are planned. In the coming year, functionality will be broadened to integrate with desktop calendars such as Microsoft (MSFT) Outlook as well as modules for Facebook and Google (GOOG) Gadgets. That could help create lucrative repeat visitors out of members. "Ultimately," says Corbett, "the site isn't in the business of selling anything. We're just trying to further engage consumers with the Vegas brand."

Vella is a writer for BusinessWeek.com in New York.

How Twitter, FriendFeed Can Goose Online Shelf Space

By Abbey Klaassen, Posted in Advertising Age

Widgets are nifty. But do they really need a two-day conference? That's what I was thinking Monday as I checked out the agenda on WidgetWebExpo, held in Brooklyn earlier this week. But two DigitalNext bloggers, David Armano and Ian Schafer, and Digital columnist Steve Rubel were participating on the same panel and since I was working from home (also in Brooklyn) I meandered on down.

The title was "Micro Interactions: Can portable experiences go mainstream?" It's certainly a timely topic, tying in to the idea that the web is increasingly becoming a series of small services and experiences that consumers stitch together at their own will. Given the personalities on the panel, it should have been no surprise the discussion soon turned to web services like Twitter, Plurk and FriendFeed.

But these services don't exist in a vacuum. Rather, they have the potential to seriously influence what is arguably the web's biggest navigational tool: Google.

Armano, donning the role of moderator, pointed out that FriendFeed wasn't simply an "aggregation tool but a distribution one as well," with its content potentially showing up on search engines and on blogs for perpetuity. "That's another reason brands have to take these seriously," he said.

Rubel picked up on that theme, noting that while "companies fight for shelf space at Wal-Mart, brands are fighting for shelf space at Google." It's a reputation-management engine, and social media dictates what shows up on that shelf.

Marketers have handled the tasks of Twittering and feeding friends in various ways. Rubel pointed out that Dell has 20 people dedicated to engaging social media, but suggested an alternative would be to tell a wider swath of a company's employees to devote 10% to 20% of their time to it.

Zappos is another brand that has taken to it in a big way, with its CEO an avid Twitterer and the rest of the company encouraged to participate. Zappos has "imitated what individuals have done," Armano said.

Matt Dickman, VP-digital marketing at Fleishman & Hillard, pointed to Harley-Davidson, which has created a video-rich widget to broadcast content from its annual gathering in Sturgis, S.D. (Armano, an avid rider, had the widget on his iGoogle page.)

But for all the pontificating, there's a cold, hard reality, said Schafer, who played the voice of economics up on the panel. Very few of the tools, he said, have revenue models. And while consumers may believe these tools will simply continue to exist, the reason they're all being funded is because they're expected to make venture capitalists money someday -- either on their own or through a flip.

"Yes, it's about conversation, collaboration, but it has to be about compensation sometime. In order for these to exist, they have to make money," said Schafer. "I think there needs to be a conversation about the compensation, and hopefully collaboration will net a result to make sure [the services] keep happening."

DMNews - AutoTrader.com Lifted By Big Guy

By Ellen Keohane

To drive more new car searchers to its site, AutoTrader.com launched a new car center microsite and multichannel "Big guy" campaign last month.

Doner Advertising worked on the television spot for the campaign, which featured a giant man (the "Big guy") who approached several car dealerships, picked up a few different cars and compared them side-by-side. The spot drew attention to new search functionality on the AutoTrader site allowing users to compare new cars from local dealers.

The company's recently appointed interactive agency of record Critical Mass replicated that execution, in a homepage takeover on AutoTrader.com, which ran for three weeks, according to Brett McCarey, manager of consumer online advertising for the site.

"AutoTrader has been known mostly for being a used car site, although it's always had a good amount of information on new cars," said Scott Shamberg, SVP of marketing and media at Critical Mass.

The campaign launched on May 5 and will run through August. In addition to the television spot and homepage takeover, AutoTrader also sent out an e-mail blast to its internal database of approximately 133,000 users, McCarey said.

Display advertising was placed on about 12 properties including Askmen.com, iVillage.com and Disney.com, and the company partnered with the NBA for pre-game text alerts.

Strategy Magazine - Hockeyville Gets More Social

By Annette Bourdeau

Kraft Hockeyville upped its participation rates by 265% this year (its third), thanks to new content-sharing tools, the ability to create online communities, an easier entry process (submitting an essay with photos instead of a video) and increased prizing.

The promotion, a partnership between Toronto-based Kraft Canada and the CBC, invites communities across Canada to compete for the Kraft Hockeyville title throughout the NHL season, meaning they're the most spirited hockey-loving folks in the country (no easy feat in hockey country). This year, 1,138 communities competed, and over seven million Canadians voted. The winner? Village sur Glace de Roberval, Quebec, which received $100,000 to upgrade its home arena, a pre-season NHL game and a CBC Hockey Night in Canada special filmed there.

"We wanted to make it easy for consumers to rally their communities," says Jim Kozak, senior manager, consumer promotions at Kraft, adding that they were happy about the online buzz the promo generated this year, including 60 unsolicited Facebook groups. "It was a grassroots initiative."

Content-sharing tools include customizable newspaper, banner and email ads, which community "recruiters" can use to beef up their teams.

Newfoundland premier Danny Williams even held a press conference to motivate his citizens to participate, and many NHLers tried to rev up their hometowns.

We asked Jen Evans, president of Toronto-based Sequentia Communications, and Matthew Milan, director of insight and planning at Critical Mass's Toronto office, to weigh in on whether or not Hockeyville scored.

Concept

Milan: I love the Hockeyville concept. It's a good fit for the brands, which have a lot of Canadian content in them already. Kraft may be an American company, but Kraft Dinner is the quintessential Canadian food after poutine and beaver tails. If anything, the Canadian angle is underplayed.

Evans: Tying hockey together with anything is great for generating interest from Canadians, and the overall concept of having communities compete for the hockey capital of Canada is highly engaging and a premise for great interaction.

SITE EXECUTION

Milan: The site has great content, but finding it isn't easy. The navigation works against the visitor in some cases, and most links don't give a clear indication about what could be found by following them. The links in the map are hidden and make it harder to find the best content, the "stories." A real missed opportunity to use web and spatial navigation together to frame narrative content in a compelling manner.

Evans: It's good, but could have been more interactive. There are great social components and a strong sense of the size of the community, but untapped potential to engage around the brand.

CONTENT-SHARING TOOLS

Milan: The tools are comprehensive but somewhat hidden. The community content tool deserves more prominence. I like the fact that the social tools are real world-ready. It would have been nice to see more experimentation with helping people tap into their digital social graphs in addition to their real-world connections.

Evans: The opportunity to extend the campaign to include something related to food has been missed. How is Kraft reaping the rewards of all that traffic? It would have been interesting to have brand-complementary sections such as game night menus, and I'm surprised that there weren't more Kraft components in the prizing (e.g., a game night dinner). The tools look good but a stronger social element (widgets vs. templates, for example) could have increased the viral effect.

RESULTS

Milan: The results are interesting, but more so around the "emergent indicators" than the hard results. If you look at a campaign like this as an exercise in building influencer networks around existing communities, it's the edge case behaviours that bear further investigation. The incidental results [NHL player participation, Danny Williams' press conference] frame out the human behaviours that the real optimization insights should come from. Since we're all still figuring out social media, insights from these campaigns are valuable both for campaign optimization and for identifying future brand opportunities.

Evans: The level of engagement is strong and the participation results are excellent, but the opportunity to build some brand relevance on the success of the original premise hasn't been capitalized on. More attention to how the community can continue to be engaged and brand/product tie-ins would strengthen the program.

The creds

Kraft Canada

Jim Kozak, senior manager, consumer promotions

CBC SPORTS

Melina Corvaglia, senior manger, brand activation

Interactive Agency - Indusblue

Dayton Pereira , CD/AD; Mike Yukota, producer; Brook Smith, developer; Amy Lee, graphic design; Sean Morgan, graphic design

Servant of Chaos - Seeing the Wonder in Technology

By Gavin Heaton

Every day I work with people all over the world. There are conference calls, instant message discussions, blog posts to read and write, emails and even video meetups ... all enabled or mediated by technology. So, for me, this is everyday. I am sure this is the case for many people ...

YET, I still get a small thrill when I consider this in action. I am still amazed that it is possible to reach across the globe and see, hear and engage with others. As a case in point, first thing this morning, I power up my PC, check mail and Twitter. I notice that David Armano is streaming a talk with Gary Vaynerchuck through the CriticalMass always in beta site. And as I sip coffee and begin to wake up, I pause for a moment and look at the faces of people on the other side of the planet. I listen in to both the live audience and the back-channel chat that accompanies the ustream pictures. Someone calls for questions -- here's one -- "where is his wristband".

The question is asked and the camera pans away from the audience and over to Gary. In seconds, someone offstage throws a wristband to the table. Without blinking, Gary launches into his reasoning behind using wristbands or super-low-cost promotional items over t-shirts. He explains that the promotional item is, in his context, a social object ... providing his community with an emblem that reinforces a sense of belonging while also signalling to others your allegiance (ok that was my interpretation).

And as I watched and listened, I was amazed. One person watching asked a question ... and on the other side of the world, an impact was made. It was small, but it was real. Think about it, this is anything BUT mundane. This is the everyday world that our kids will inherit. It is a world that today's school students will build their careers in. I just hope they see the wonder in all this.

BusinessWeek - Talking Cool Stuff With Critical Mass in Chicago

By Bruce Nussbaum

I visited the great digs of digital experience design house Critical Mass today and was wowed with the terrific work they are doing. Critical Mass has design thinking and methodology down cold, with great insights into consumer culture, the customer journey, and the use of social media to generate a memorable experience.

David Armano and I did a video that covered design democracy, the olpc debate, the meaning of social media, and more. Oh, yeah, and Google Health and the issue of privacy. We called it Brunch with Bruce. I loved the technology that enabled us to just sit in front of a laptop and stream it live.

The firm has Hyatt, NASA, Rolex, Mercedes Benz and the city of Las Vegas as clients. The work it is doing for Vegas is wonderful. It's creating an experience for people who want to head for Vegas that allows you to connect with your "posse" or entourage and plan the trip before you go (make up your own persona for Vegas), put up photos, videos, words and connect while you're in Vegas (even with those who can't make the trip with you) and manage all the memories after you get home. I can imagine this working for any big event—like a wedding in Cabo.

Anyone who has doubts about the efficacy of design methodology in today's business culture has got to check out Critical Mass.

I'm here for the Institute of Design's Strategy Conference and it's no coincidence that one of the guys who showed me terrific customer-centric research at Critical Mass is a grad of ID—David Stallsmith. His work on organic food and the "green continuum" was right on.

Advertising Age - Web 2.0 Is Velcro

By David Armano

As a veteran of the 1.0 Web movement, I still suffer from flashbacks when hearing the word "sticky." The notion of creating a "sticky website" was the holy grail of digital marketing back when the web was still in its infancy. The new holy grail, as we all know, is "viral." But now Silicon Valley has its own version of contagious marketing, which as far as I can tell was first documented by an individual named Andrew Chen. Andrew's reference of "viral loops" was penned in July 2007 and was recently quoted in a Fast Company article:

"Chen calls a viral loop the 'most advanced direct-marketing strategy being developed in the world right now.' And make no mistake: Viral expansion loops are about marketing, just not in the traditional sense. 'Nothing can be truly viral unless it is good,' [Union Square Ventures' Fred] Wilson allows. 'You can create a crappy application, build viral hooks in it, but if it's bad, then nobody will follow the viral channel, and the company will go out of business.' But if you create something people really want, need, or merely enjoy, then your customers will grow your business for you."

In Andrew's original blog post, he then asks, "what's the viral hook in your product?" And this is what brought it all home for me. Velcro, as we all know, is a simple and effective invention that has permeated millions of products and replaced more antiquated ways of making things stick. The science of Velcro is simple. One side of the material is composed of thousands of tiny "hooks," while the other side is made of just as many "loops." When the hooks engage with the loops, they stick. When pulled apart, they un-stick. There's a reason why millions of children's footwear has been replaced with this material -- it's effective, easy to use and it works.

And that's why Web 2.0 is Velcro. Marketers, designers and developers alike are scrambling to figure out two things:

1. What are the viral "hooks" that capture people's attention?
2. What are the viral "loops," which create infinite engagement that spreads like wildfire?

The Web 2.0 landscape is full of examples that try to deliver on these principles. You Tube would of course be one of the granddaddies of them all. We provide the hooks in the form of user-generated content and the loops are formed through a combination of sustained engagements with the web application plus all of it's portable and distributed manifestations. Ning, the web service that allows its users to create their own custom social networks, is counting on the concept of viral hooks and loops to take their company to the next level.

In the same Fast Company article, Ning's founders talk about the company benefiting from a "double viral loop": "Only Ning, [co-founder Marc] Andreessen declares, benefits from a 'double viral loop,' which spreads two ways, because every network creator is a user and any user can become a network creator."

But back to the idea of Velcro, marketers need to keep in mind that the best viral loop may actually be the good old-fashioned concept of continuous engagement. Each time I go to the Apple store, there's a pretty good chance that I'll talk about my experience there based on how Apple's employees engage me. From the genius bar to checking out without standing in line to my paperless receipts delivered via e-mail, the Apple retail experience has become like Velcro to me. When I'm engaged, I'm "stuck" to the brand. The minute I disengage, it's back to going about my business -- but I usually tell some people about it and of course the brand becomes part of my lifestyle.

But Apple is only one example, each time I watch "The Office" on Hulu, or choose Netflix over Blockbuster, I engage with brands in ways that stick with me. I'll come back, do it again and spread the word. And others will do the same.

Digital marketing's current state of affairs is a bit heavy on the "hook" side. When Dove's Real Beauty video went viral it was a huge success, but where was the sustained engagement -- the other half of the Velcro equation? Where were the viral loops? Web 2.0 is Velcro. It's all about engaging on our terms -- where and when we want, and the new "sticky" can be simply defined as engagement over the long term. In other words, is it a reoccurring part of your life -- or isn't it?

iMedia Connection - How Widgets Can Dismantle Your Silos

By Mark Szabo

Trouble keeping everyone up to speed? See how this easy-to-use tool can organize your team.

Picture this. You have a senior executive who is responsible for your digital initiatives. She is extremely bright, knowledgeable and savvy. She even spent hard-earned political capital to secure your budget. But she is extremely busy. She is not trained in analytics or user experience metrics. She does not place priority on the minutiae of your many worthy projects. Neither does she have time to keep up on digital-related reading.

Now multiply her by 10.

How do you keep all of these execs informed in a timely, relevant basis?

A widget can successfully provide this information in an efficient little package. At Critical Mass, I've had great success utilizing widgets to share knowledge with clients and I'm willing to bet you can too.

You can create a widget that will display key performance indicators (KPI) from various initiatives, current status on projects and updated industry news. The widget can be attractive, easy to use, and have a bit of cool factor. I promise, pitch this simple idea to your senior client contacts and they'll love it. Here's how:

Step one: Decide what information goes in, and what stays out

This is the hardest part, because everybody wants everything and soon you end up with something completely overwhelming and useless.

HINT: Treat each page of the widget as an advertisement of your value. The analytics page should advertise how much value you are adding to the company. The project update page should advertise how organized you are. The updates page should advertise how smart and plugged-in your team members are. Keep it simple, graphic and relevant. And simple. Did I say simple? I want to hear you say this to yourself repeatedly until you mean it: "My widget will be simple, simple, simple." I won't let you read any further until you say it a few more times. Now SAY IT LIKE YOU MEAN IT.

Step two: Decide who is responsible for the raw data

Your analytics should come from the analytics team. It may even be easier to get the relevant information and directly feed it in by hand as opposed to using your analytics tools. Or you may find differently -- the more robust the KPI, the better. Senior executives love to watch visits, but you'll want to include conversions, engagement measures and other indicators of your true value. You could point them to your analytics tool directly, but they're too important to mess with that, and you want to keep them in the lovely environment you've created for them. They have people to look at the analytics program for them. That's you.

Your account service team should prepare the project status. Project managers and tech-focused people are a good resource, but they're not usually responsible for communicating to the client. The same rules apply as above -- simple, graphic and relevant. You can use little icons to denote Ahead of Schedule, On Track and Needs Attention, and it makes the page easy to scan.

Your entire team can be useful for coming up with relevant industry reading. If you're digital you're plugged in anyway. Set a rule that nobody on the team is allowed to forward an article without doing a summary, including a relevant quote and adding a "so what" to why the person thinks it's relevant. Not only does that cut down on the forwards, but it provides regular fodder for the widget.

Step three: Appoint a keeper of the widget

The trick is to make sure just one person is responsible for widget content.

Step four: Build it

Obviously there are plenty of options here. I've experienced building widgets in Action Script 3 and packaging in Adobe Air -- this way it is compatible with PCs and Macs and you can add lots of shiny things to it down the road. You can then set it up so it will be fed by an XML file that the keeper of the widget can easily update. The widget pings the XML file at regular intervals and updates automatically. That's as geeky as I get.

Step five: Brand it

Getting a widget on the desktops of senior executives requires some selling, so make it compelling, useful and fun. Create a fun name for the widget and get it to stick. It's gratifying to hear senior executives refer to your pet name in a very serious tone. Knowledge is power, and senior executives know power.

Step six: Work it, baby

Once people are paying attention, keep it fresh. Change it often to keep their attention. Update content regularly. Force them to look at it -- instead of sending out emails with articles, for example, just tell everybody to look at the widget for the new content. Hide Easter Eggs in the widget for people to find and see who finds them. Have fun with it.

Above all, be proud of the work you're showcasing. I recently had one of our very senior executives ask me why we moved a hash-mark in the analytics section -- now that's user engagement! You will make a big difference and you'll prove your ROI in ways never imagined.

Good luck!

Mark Szabo is VP, managing director, Critical Mass.

DM News - Marketing Luxury Despite Tough Times

By Kevin McKeefery

While many sectors have seen sales drop due to the recent economic downturn, luxury brands, from watches and cars to clothing and jewelry, have the benefit of a clientele that, for the most part, remains unaffected by the financial strains that restrict mainstream consumers' spending.

Appealing to a demographic that can brace itself against economic hardship does not, however, give luxury brands a reprieve from having to continually attract customers; it simply means they have to adapt their marketing tactics.

"Luxury brands are somewhat immune [to recession], but you have to be smarter in how you approach luxury buyers," said Adam Paul, director of business development at interactive marketing agency ID Society.

Whereas non-luxury brands can employ more of a mass-marketing strategy that includes promotions and sales, "the most important thing with luxury brand is the experience ? delivering a customized, personalized experience for the customer," he explains.

But as the market starts to slow down, the best solution for a true luxury brand is to not try to become more accessible. "Instead, make [the product] more special, more tailored, more of an experience, more unique," he continues.

Critical Mass VP and managing director Mark Szabo agrees, citing a rich interactive experience as the best way to market a luxury product.

"You have to understand why people want to use the site and then give a remarkable experience," he says.

Critical Mass' clients include watchmaker Rolex and auto manufacturer Mercedes-Benz, which both employ flash and audio-laden sites that heighten brand awareness as much as they market specific products.

Despite the Web becoming a more viable channel for purchasing luxury goods, the category has been surprisingly slow to adapt to a Web presence. Szabo believes this to be a function of luxury often being steeped in tradition, and "tradition takes time to adjust itself," he says. "That's why tradition gets to be tradition in the first place, and there is an inherent lag in reacting."

There is ample opportunity, however, to extend even the most traditional and artisanal brands to an online presence ? success depends more on the experience provided than the inherent interactive properties of the product itself.

Rich branding, such as that featured on the Mercedes Benz site, built by Critical Mass, can place products in a context that provides an experience that may transcend even in-person product usage, Szabo believes.

Greg Furman, founder and chairman of the Luxury Marketing Council, also acknowledges the lag luxury brands have shown in harnessing the power of interactive channels, but points out that they are coming to realize the channel's potential.

"Luxury marketers are awakening to the power of e-marketing. The conventional wisdom is you couldn't sell expensive goods over the Web ? it was a mass vehicle and not a class vehicle. That's not the case anymore," Furman says.

He cites Neiman Marcus as an example of a luxury retailer that grew online sales without cannibalizing its store or catalog business, by understanding its online customer and cross- and up-selling purchasers with suggestions of relevant products.

"The fact that the economy is softening is heightening [luxury] marketers' sense of urgency about using marketing techniques that have traditionally been on the back burner," Furman says.

DM News - Profile: Dianne Wilkins, CEO, Critical Mass

Three key clients: Mercedes-Benz USA, Rolex, Global Hyatt
Joined Critical Mass: 1998

What do you think when you hear the term "direct marketing" and how has it changed?

Honestly, the first thing that pops into my mind is junk mail and bad fonts?but that's an old stereotype. Technology has clearly changed the nature of direct marketing ? conversations between customer and brand are rapidly becoming the norm. It's a powerful conversation and it's taking place all over our neck of the woods ? online. Direct marketing just isn't about the mail anymore.

What makes a true agency visionary?

Focus. There are lots of opportunities to try to be too many things at once. I don't mean you can't add service offerings or launch new offices, but plotting a course and sticking to it rather than keeping all of your options open is actually a tough decision.

What drives change in your agency?

Determination and vision. There are times when we ponder change, and times when we drive change. My experience is that it's worth the time to debate and get comfortable with change before getting started, but once the process starts it's critical to drive it relentlessly. Any time we've rushed the initial decision or eased up during implementation we've made it harder for ourselves.

What is the biggest challenge your company faces today?

Finding and keeping the best talent and the right people. We're not located in the most obvious agency area geographically, but we've got a strong culture, which has made us special but demands real perseverance to grow and maintain the quality of staff we've been able to develop.

What does the agency of the future look like?

The agency of the future is focused on marketing and embraces technology as part of the way they live and work. Ours is an increasingly digital world, which doesn't mean marketing principles should be thrown out, it means they should be embraced and enabled by technology. Whether it's a widget that serves up relevant content or an application that helps people connect with friends or plan a trip, technology has the power to drive meaningful connections. Agencies who understand that will thrive.

AdWeek - Application Economics:

-By David Armano

It was the year 2000. I had been with digital shop Agency.com for less than six months when I got the call. It was Jon, one of our business development people. "We got it," he said. "We won the Grainger.com business!" Huh? I was less than enthusiastic. WW Grainger is a large b-to-b supplies distribution company. They sell everything from duct tape to flashlights that can open up a beer bottle. Seemed like unglamorous work for someone lured to a digital agency that boasted clients such as Coke. But what I failed to see back then has been what has best served me in my career in the digital agency space thus far. Grainger.com presented a unique opportunity to solve complex problems using user-centered design techniques.

For more than four years, my teams designed in iterations, prototyped, tested with users and even tweaked designs as we were building them. The work we did had nothing to do with "branding," at least in the traditional sense. Rather, it had everything to do with providing the right kind of "brand utility" -- features, functions and an overall experience that delighted customers by what it helped them accomplish, not how it communicated things or "sold" them. Grainger customers wanted time-saving tools that made their jobs easier. This made life better for them. And that's one way you can measure delight.

So what does this have to do with the ad business? Well, for starters, unlike my experience on Grainger, many advertisers aren't focused on building the digital applications that people want to use; they're focused on somehow cramming marketing into them. Some kid comes up with the next YouTube, Facebook or mobile platform, and most advertisers want to figure out how to market on it. Instead of designing and developing useful applications that could give brands the opportunity to insert themselves meaningfully into our lives, we get cutesy but useless "Sprite Sips" on Facebook, ubiquitous banners in all shapes and sizes and microsites that you won't likely return to. And I'm talking about digital advertising -- never mind traditional.

As agencies and our clients strive to add value to the lives of the average consumer, user and active participant, it's helpful to think about how we can do this in a framework I like to call the "Three U's of Advertising in the Application Economy." They are:

1) Usefulness. Any experience is useful when it's meaningful and serves a purpose. Currently, much of marketing still breaks down into self-serving gimmicks and interruptions that offer little value. Much of what's offered in digital is no exception. While the majority of criticism is of traditional advertising, the fact of the matter is that interruptive traditional digital advertising is not much better. These are the digital gimmicks that work to get your attention but are usually done so poorly that they offer no value whatsoever. Usefulness is the exact opposite.

2) Utility. Utility is interaction that delights us in some way. But hold the iPhone. The industry has hijacked the word delight and brainwashed us to think that only companies like Apple and Disney are capable of serving it up. Let me tell you a recent story about the "no-frills" Craigslist. My wife took pictures of a large play set we wanted to sell. She uploaded them at 10 a.m., by noon she had several people interested, and she sold the set in time for a late lunch. We had the set dismantled, picked up and were $100 richer that evening. That's delight in the application economy.

3) Ubiquity. We are living in a fragmented world with what seems like infinite touch points available to us. Brands and businesses that can distribute value across these endless touch points in effective ways will tap into new markets and solidify existing ones. Because some of us are interacting through multiple social channels, we can now find people just like ourselves who we trust and see what they like and dislike. This influences our decisions, from the stuff we buy to the things we recommend to each other. The best marketing in the world tries to simulate this, but usually ends up coming off as contrived. Meaningful interactions through multiple networks and channels lead to authentic word-of-mouth references and, ultimately, affinity.

One of the reasons I took my role with digital shop Critical Mass was its strong foundation in transactional digital design. When you think about the application economy, I have a hunch it will be fueled by organizations and individuals who have figured out how to retool Web design into something more engaging, rewarding, useful and valuable. Call it "brand utility" or call it a good experience. Whatever you want to call it, it's not a one-trick dog and pony show.

David Armano is vp, creative at Crtitcal Mass.

Critical Mass Takes Home 9 Horizon Interactive Awards

Horizon Interactive Announces 2008 Winners:

Ad Age - Does Your Company Need a Chief Blogger?

Corporate Blogging Is Hot, but Experts Say Place to Start Is Far From Online

By Beth Snyder Bulik

Published: April 14, 2008
YORK, Pa. (AdAge.com) -- To blog or not to blog?

It's a question marketers are still grappling with years after the first waves of corporate blogging flooded the web. But for better or worse, it seems corporate blogging -- and the title of chief blogger -- is beginning to hit its stride. Companies such as Coca-Cola, Marriott and Kodak all have recently recruited chief bloggers, with or without the actual title, to tell their stories and engage consumers.

"It's a good idea to have a chief blogger," said Mack Collier, a social-media consultant and blogger at the Viral Garden, citing Dell's Lionel Menchaca and LinkedIn's Mario Sundar as examples of a single personality positively affecting a brand.

"At SXSW, [Messrs. Menchaca and Sundar] were getting hugged in the hallway. They were as popular as Robert Scoble! And that popularity is bleeding over into Dell and LinkedIn," he said.

Numbers going up
Today, just more than 11% of Fortune 500 companies have corporate blogs, according to SocialText, and only a handful have a designated chief blogger. The number of corporate blogs has risen slowly and steadily since the end of 2005, when 4% had any kind of blog.

"The period of 'we've got to do this too' has passed, and now people are evaluating blogs as tools. ... It's going mainstream because companies are realizing this is a tool that has utility," said Paul Gillin, media consultant and author of "The New Influencers." He counts about 60 corporate blogs among the Fortune 500.

While the title of chief blogger is seductive, analysts and industry insiders said the title shouldn't be the focus. What's essential is the brand voice, whether it comes from one chief blogger (such as Vice Chairman Bob Lutz on General Motors Corp.'s Fastlane Blog or CEO-President Jonathan Schwartz on Sun Microsystems' Jonathan's Blog) or a group working together, such as those on Southwest and Wal-Mart's blogs.

The reason matters
No one is saying that a chief blogger or blog voice is right for all brands. Bloggers and analysts agreed that brands that want to blog should identify a specific reason to do so, such as to humanize the company (like Microsoft), make the company more open (like Dell) or advance the fun-and-happy company image (like Southwest.)

"Everybody right now wants to or is contemplating starting a blog, but it's the wrong place to start," said Sean Howard, director-strategy and innovation at Lift Communications and blogger at CrapHammer.com. "They really need to start with reading, following their customers, commenting on communities. Then think about creating something."

And, in fact, there can be a downside to corporate blogging with a single chief blogger who can quickly become a lightning rod for online communities' disdain. "The whole idea of having a chief blogger when social media is so grass roots still smacks of companies trying to control this," said Jim Nail, CMO of Cymfony. "There are certainly tensions between social media as a groundswell vs. corporations trying to use it as a tactic."

Dave Armano, VP-experience design at Critical Mass and blogger at Logic & Emotion, in fact, touched off a minor tweetstorm when he posed a simple question to his Twitter crowd for this article: "Any thoughts about the whole 'chief blogger' thing?"

Most of the responses fell into one of two camps: "No way; it's too formalized and a bad idea" or "Yes, it's a dream job I'd love to have."

Intrigued skeptics.
However, Mr. Armano -- and many others interviewed for this article -- are in a third camp. This skeptical but intrigued crowd thinks the focus should be less on the ctitle and more on figuring out how social media touch points can be used to benefit the brand in general.

"I'm all for the effect that the chief-blogger title creates in saying these are full-time jobs, because they are -- it's hard work. I just think it's the marketing on it that's off," he said. "It's should be a director of community engagement. That takes the focus off the medium and puts it on the interactions."

Geoff Livingston, CEO of Livingston Communications and blogger at the Buzz Bin agreed. "The problem is that too many people focus on the actual tool: the blog," he said. "What they need to focus on is the principles behind social media that make it work, like participating in a larger community works, and not controlling the conversation works."

Rolex Website Receives Official Honoree Distinction

Digital Marketing Agency Critical Mass Recognized by "Oscars of the Internet"

CALGARY, AB and CHICAGO, IL - The Webby Awards, the leading international honor for the Web, has recognized the Official Rolex Web site as an "Official Honoree" - a distinction reserved for online work exhibiting remarkable achievement. The site was honored in the categories of Best Use of Video or Moving Image, Best Use of Photography, Fashion, and Best Visual Design - Aesthetic. The Web site is produced by Critical Mass, an Omnicom digital marketing agency.

Hailed as the "Oscars of the Internet" by the New York Times, The Webby Awards are the leading international awards honoring excellence on the Internet, including Websites, Interactive Advertising, Online Film & Video, and Mobile Websites.

The awards are judged by the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences, a global organization that includes such luminaries as David Bowie, Harvey Weinstein, Arianna Huffington, AKQA Global Creative Director Rei Inamoto, Matt Groening, Jamie Oliver, Internet inventor Vinton Cerf, and RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser. "The Webby Awards honor the outstanding work that is setting the standards for the Internet," said David-Michel Davies, executive director of The Webby Awards. The Official Rolex Web Site Honoree selection is a testament to the skill, ingenuity, and vision of its creators."

"Our objective for the Official Rolex Web Site was to make it visually striking while ensuring that it worked flawlessly," said Dianne Wilkins, CEO, Critical Mass. "From the home page where a watch displays the user's local time, to the video clips that showcase the watches' histories and functions, our team has digitally captured the brand's essence."

The 12th Annual Webby Awards received nearly 10,000 entries from over 60 countries and all 50 US states. Fewer than 15% of those submitted were deemed Official Honorees.

About Critical Mass

Critical Mass (www.criticalmass.com), an Omnicom digital marketing agency, helps the world's leading companies use digital media to increase revenue, reduce costs and deepen customer relationships. Founded in 1995, Critical Mass has offices in Calgary, Toronto, Chicago, New York, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Austin, Geneva, and London. For additional information, visit www.criticalmass.com.

About Omnicom

Critical Mass is a part of Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE: OMC) (www.omnicomgroup.com). Omnicom is a leading global advertising, marketing, and corporate communications company. Omnicom's branded networks and numerous specialty firms provide advertising, strategic media planning and buying, interactive, direct and promotional marketing, public relations, and other specialty communications services to over 5,000 clients in more than 100 countries.

About The Webby Awards:

Hailed as the "Oscars of the Internet" by the New York Times, The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet, including Websites, Interactive Advertising, Online Film & Video, and Mobile Websites. First established in 1996, this year's Webby Awards received nearly 10,000 entries from all 50 states and over 60 countries worldwide. The Webby Awards is presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Sponsors and Partners of The Webby Awards include: Adobe; The Creative Group; Verizon; AOL Video; dotMobi; Level3; Adweek; Fortune; Reuters; Variety; Wired; IDG: Brightcove; PricewaterhouseCoopers; 2advanced.Net; KobeMail; and the Museum of the Moving Image.

About the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS):

The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences is dedicated to the creative, technical, and professional progress of the internet and interactive media. The Academy is an intellectually diverse organization that includes over 550 members consisting of leading experts in a range of fields, such as musician David Bowie, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, AKQA Global Creative Director Rei Inamoto, "Simpsons" creator Matt Groening, Real Networks CEO Rob Glaser, The Huffington Post's Arianna Huffington, and The Weinstein Company's Harvey Weinstein. The Webby Awards and The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences are registered trademarks of International Data Group. For more information, visit www.iadas.net.

Contact:
Matthew Caldecutt / Tiffany Guarnaccia
Trylon SMR
212-725-2295
matthew@trylonsmr.com / tiffany@trylonsmr.com

DM News - Mercedes Benz Fashions a Unique Partnership

Situation:
Mercedes-Benz wanted to increase awareness of and engagement with its brand. The challenge was finding the right way to communicate the brand's commitment to style, high design and luxury while still engaging a Web 2.0 user that expects innova¬tive and exclusive content. The car company was also looking to target female car buyers, who typically respond best to compelling visuals.

Approach:
Mercedes-Benz became a global sponsor of FashionWeek in the spring of 2007. The luxury car com¬pany launched a microsite at MBUSA.com/lifestyle in partnership with Omnicom-owned digital mar¬keting agency Critical Mass. The site showcases runway shows and leading designers in concert with its own glamour shots of the luxury car and exclusive content.

Driving show attendees to the site's behind-the-scenes videos and photo galleries through print collateral and signage at the event, Mercedes-Benzkept the microsite up for a year after the show. It then refreshed the content for the 2008 spring Fashion Week events.

"The real tough challenge was to marry the style and design of a fashion site to portray a car site," explains Taro Ramberg, VP at Critical Mass. "These fashions are on the leading edge, andwe wanted to highlight the same qualities in the vehicles themselves."

The site features interactive Flash functionality and content about Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week venues in New York, Miami and Los Angeles.

Results:
The microsite received 200,000 unique visits, resulted in 13,000 qualified leads and influenced at least 650 sales. Its visual motif was extended to Fashion Week on-site decor and fixtures, as well as in print ads, show literature and direct response efforts. Critical Mass expects a similar amount of sales leads and visits this year.

Business Wire - Critical Mass Wins Pearle Vision's Digital Account

CALGARY , Alberta & CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Critical Mass (www.criticalmass.com), an Omnicom digital marketing agency, has been named the interactive agency of record for Pearle Vision, one of the Luxottica Group's retail brands.

Critical Mass will provide strategic, creative, and development services to develop an online experience that will align with Pearle Vision's long-term business objectives. The new design and functionality for Pearle Vision's Web site will serve both the US and Canadian markets.

"Pearle Vision's redesigned Web presence will place the Company at the forefront of the eye care industry," said Jennifer Robinson, Vice President, Managing Director, Critical Mass. "The revisions will enhance customer interaction with the brand and help grow the business in their target markets."

About Critical Mass

Critical Mass (www.criticalmass.com), an Omnicom digital marketing agency, helps the world's leading companies use digital media to increase revenue, reduce costs and deepen customer relationships. Founded in 1995, Critical Mass has offices in Calgary, Toronto, Chicago, New York, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Austin, Geneva, and London. For additional information, visit www.criticalmass.com.

About Omnicom

Critical Mass is a part of Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE: OMC - News) (www.omnicomgroup.com). Omnicom is a leading global advertising, marketing, and corporate communications company. Omnicom's branded networks and numerous specialty firms provide advertising, strategic media planning and buying, interactive, direct and promotional marketing, public relations, and other specialty communications services to over 5,000 clients in more than 100 countries.

Critical Mass Expands Leadership Team

CALGARY, Alberta & CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Critical Mass (www.criticalmass.com), an Omnicom digital marketing agency, has appointed Mark Szabo, Taro Ramberg, Karolina Vieser, Kamal Syan, and Carolyn Robertson to their leadership team.

In their new roles as Vice President, Managing Directors, the five executives will provide leadership to their respective business units, facilitating communication between clients and teams. Senior level strategists, Managing Directors manage and grow client relationships and Critical Mass visibility. These individuals must also build and foster high-energy, multidisciplinary teams working across many geographic locations. The five new vice presidents have been promoted and/or hired after demonstrating outstanding strategic and leadership abilities.

Mark Szabo, a 12-year marketing veteran, who holds both MBA and law degrees, has worked on premier luxury brands at Critical Mass, including Mercedes-Benz and Rolex. Previously, he held the position of Planning Director, focusing on customer insight and implementing new technology. Szabo will now lead a 40 person team on Rolex's extensive web initiatives.

Taro Ramberg has played a central role in Critical Mass' long-standing partnership with Mercedes-Benz USA (MB-USA). He has a strong background in account management, working with clients such as Volvo, Lexus, Harley Davidson, United Airlines and Pfizer, and also ran the Critical Mass New York office for four years. Ramberg will now oversee the development of all MB-USA's interactive strategies and programs for both corporate and the distributed dealer network.

Karolina Vieser has been account director in Critical Mass' offices in Austin, Texas and Stockholm, Sweden during her seven years with the agency. In Austin, she helped grow Critical Mass' Dell account. In Stockholm, she led both Web site and global online marketing for Saab in 20 languages. Vieser will now lead the Moen, QVC and Hyatt relationships out of the Critical Mass Chicago office.

Kamal Syan, a proven entrepreneur and former business owner, has extensive experience in customer service and delivery. During his two years at Critical Mass, he has helped foster strong client relationships on numerous accounts, most recently as a program director on the MB-USA account. He will now be leading the breadth of digital initiatives for CitiCards, the Citi Thank You Network, and Citibank online, with a team in Toronto and New York.

Carolyn Robertson's client services and strategic cross-channel marketing experience spans a wide range of industries, including grocery, gas & financial services. She joined the Critical Mass team with eleven years of customer-relationship management experience, most recently with the AIR MILES Reward Program, Canada's premier coalition loyalty program. Robertson will be responsible for the USAA and Kaiser Permanente teams from the Critical Mass headquarters in Calgary.

?Our five new leaders each have a tremendous track record as senior-level strategists,? said Dianne Wilkins, Chief Executive Officer of Critical Mass. ?They have demonstrated a remarkable ability to grow client relationships, build great teams, and bring a structured approach to Critical Mass' business and client services. We are confident that these top professionals will provide the superior insights that clients have come to expect from us.?

About Critical Mass

Critical Mass (www.criticalmass.com), an Omnicom digital marketing agency, helps the world's leading companies use digital media to increase revenue, reduce costs and deepen customer relationships. Founded in 1995, Critical Mass has offices in Calgary, Toronto, Chicago, New York, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Austin, Geneva, and London. For additional information, visit www.criticalmass.com.

About Omnicom

Critical Mass is a part of Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE: OMC - News) (www.omnicomgroup.com). Omnicom is a leading global advertising, marketing, and corporate communications company. Omnicom's branded networks and numerous specialty firms provide advertising, strategic media planning and buying, interactive, direct and promotional marketing, public relations, and other specialty communications services to over 5,000 clients in more than 100 countries.

Co-host Brad Forsythe Interviews Dianne Wilkins, CEO at CM

The Advertising Show interview was an excellent opportunity for Di to gain visibility for CM and position herself as an industry expert, speaking live with the show's hosts for approximately 120,000 listeners. Conversation turned to trends in the digital industry, the CM point of difference, as well as some specific examples of our work, including the recent QVC.com redesign.

MP3 Version of the Interview

Windows Media Player Version of the Interview

Mercedes-Benz Redefines Fashion Week with Microsite

WHEN MERCEDES-BENZ USA (MBUSA) SIGNED on as the title sponsor of IMG's New York, Los Angeles and Miami fashion weeks, it was the first time the three properties had been united under one brand. And Omnicom's Critical Mass set out to create a microsite that reflected the luxury automaker's commitment to design and style, not just vehicle performance.

"Mercedes-Benz isn't just the world's top automotive brand, but one of the world's great fashion brands as well," said Steve Susi, creative director at Critical Mass. Susi said that the firm had been focused on creating a Web experience that helped redefine the notion of what the Mercedes-Benz brand stood for.

The redesigned, Flash-based MBUSA.com/lifestyle got its first run in March, during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week 2008 in Los Angeles. Critical Mass aimed to deliver an "insider" feel, complete with photo galleries, interviews with designers and behind-the-scenes videos. In addition to spotlighting breakout Ukrainian designer Veronika Jeanvie's first U.S. runway show, the site also paid tribute to Mercedes-Benz' new 2009 SL-Class Roadster.

Critical Mass partnered with Davis Factor, fashion photographer and chief creative officer of Smashbox Cosmetics, to develop the microsite's theme, dubbed "Reflections"--which combined light and reflective surfaces with static photos of Mercedes-Benz vehicles and models on the runway to create "seductive shapes" and "glamour."

"Mercedes and I have had a strong relationship for years, and when I started working with Critical Mass on the visual motif for Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week last year, a lot of things just clicked," Factor said. "It's some of the best work I've ever done, and Critical Mass and MBUSA gave me the latitude to explore and take the imagery to new heights."

In fact, MBUSA was so impressed by the "Reflections" motif that the automaker integrated it into related direct-response campaign materials, print ads and even the Mercedes-Benz Star Lounge area at the show. "The Critical Mass team has helped articulate our objectives and reinforce our branding efforts for Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week across every medium, not just the Web," said MBUSA spokesperson Lisa Holliday.

Internet Advertising Competition Announces 2008 Winners

AdWeek - Form + Function:

Advertisers want to build brand loyalty by providing utilities that both improve people's lives in some small way and directly pad corporate bottom lines.

NEW YORK It isn't a viral hit like Subservient Chicken, but Domino's pizza builder might be equally important. The application, built by Crispin Porter + Bogusky, lets users craft their own pizza online, name it, then have it delivered to their door.

For Jeff Benjamin, interactive cd at Crispin, the Web application that debuted early this year is a sign of where digital design is headed. Rather than craft a one-off Web site, he said, advertisers want to build brand loyalty by providing utilities that both improve people's lives in some small way -- even if it's simply a tool for customizing pizza -- and directly pad corporate bottom lines.

"The new 'viral' is going to be a business solution for clients," Benjamin said.

Funny microsites are giving way to useful, sometimes entertaining applications; the showing off of flashy technology is yielding to design geared towards generating sales; and crafting for social interaction is replacing one-way experiences. Now that digital points exist far outside the browser, designing for the Web is passe, with digital design chasing the elusive goal of designing experiences that wrap all of the above together.

"When you create a utility, you're creating something that gives people time back," said Nick Law, CCO for North America at R/GA. "It becomes less about information as pollution and more about information to help people get through life."

Interactive design used to be synonymous with Web site design. The objective was crafting a Web experience that reflected the overall brand message. Although brand consistency is a laudable goal, many interactive designers chafed at the role of "matching luggage" to offline campaigns, often resulting in shallow microsites that mimicked TV campaigns.

Even experts in those sites are rethinking their approach. Barbarian Group, which worked with Crispin to develop Subservient Chicken, is now concentrating more on useful, content-rich sites. That means starting the design practice with the customer in mind, helping them navigate quickly through an experience or to worthwhile content, said Benjamin Palmer, CEO of Barbarian.

"Five years ago, people would muck through a site with non-standard navigation that was confusing because the whole Internet was confusing," he said. "Now the Internet is so big you can't do anything that's annoying anymore."

Often that means scaling back the special effects, like Flash sites, which take a long time to load. For Kashi, Barbarian Group built a product site last summer that centered around community and included tools for visitors to improve their lives and encourage others. For instance, tools that let users participate in daily health challenges, such as taking 30-minute walks or skipping coffee, while interacting with each other. Product information is secondary to content about a healthy lifestyle and community interaction, a leap, Palmer said, from earlier Internet design.

"The thing that's more in the forefront is designing the experience of how people are going to interact with your content," he said.

Advertisers also see the opportunity to build brand applications that allow people to do everything from customizing pizza and matching their personality with products to the planning of trips.

"The days of making funny things that may or may not have an effect on the client's business are ending," Crispin's Benjamin said.

Epson took a new design approach with "Epsonality" last fall. In the past, the Web portion of the Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners campaign would have been a microsite with a few pages of content. Instead, Butler, Shine's experiential design team melded broadband video with a personality quiz to match users with the right Epson printer for their needs.

The creative approach is admittedly tongue-in-cheek, said David Blum, executive director of interactive services at Butler, Shine. But underneath the surface is a sales generator, built by interaction designers, information architects and decision trees. A lot of thinking went into getting people "through this experience [to purchase] without just being entertained by a bunch of videos," he explained.

Application design is also driving efforts to tap into the social Web, with utilities holding the promise of being able to build communities around brands. Take "My Vegas" from Critical Mass, part of the "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" campaign. On the surface, the social networking tool seems like another attempt by a brand to draw people away from more natural social environments into artificial ones created by advertisers. But "My Vegas" actually provides a useful tool for visitors who want to get the most out of their trips, thanks to Critical Mass bringing the "stays in Vegas" promise to life with social functionality. Users can build profiles, upload photos, manage trip details, compare attractions and schedule events with friends (their "entourage," in "My Vegas" lingo). It's geared to typical Vegas vacationers, such as college buddies scattered in different cities who converge in Sin City for a weekend during March Madness.

"There's a big possibility to deliver on your brand through the tools or functionality you can give people that are positive," said David Armano, vp of creative at Critical Mass.

The next step: free the application from the confines of the site. The old build-it-and-make-them-come design strategy is being replaced by a fish-where-the-fish-are mind-set that's leading advertisers to not view their brand sites as the be-all and end-all. Garrick Schmidt, vp of user experience at Avenue A/Razorfish, part of Microsoft, said in building RedBull.com, the shop made sure to make site features like videos, games and social-networking skins work elsewhere.

"No digital property is an island anymore," said Schmidt. "Everything can be connected to everyone. You have to design for that. We think about how we can chunk up content, and make it viral and distributable."

It's not just sexy brands that need to design for distribution. Bank of America launched a site for its "No Fee Mortgage Plus" product in the fall that included useful applications like a mortgage calculator and a mortgage comparison tool. From the beginning, Bank of America agency Organic considered how the applications can be not just on the bank's microsite, but detach to live where consumers want. "We're trying to think from the beginning of how to syndicate them out to other platforms," said Conor Brady, ecd at Organic. "That's been a mind shift for us because a year and a half ago there wasn't that expectation."

The next stop for digital design is not just out of the site, but onto other screens and into real life. Firstborn Interactive, a shop that in the past has concentrated mostly on Web projects and is moving into out-of-home design, worked with Digital Kitchen last November to build a platform to promote Windows Live where visitors to a Microsoft event in New York City could upload photos that were then beamed onto a gigantic sphere in South Street Seaport. It's now looking to use information like body heat and speed to create real-life interactive installations.

"If you think we're just going to be making Web sites in the next five years, anyone with that business model isn't going to be a business," said Dan LaCivita, executive director at Firstborn.

Digital shops like R/GA are busy honing their skills in out-of-home venues. Last year, R/GA started a retail practice for its work in designing in-store experiences for Verizon and other clients. Law sees interactive design moving front-and-center in new areas because a brand like Apple has shown the power of the interface in influencing consumer perceptions. His guidepost to good design: the Apple operating system.

"The functionality is apparent immediately," Law said. "It's a different way of approaching marketing. The creative has always been about telling stories. It's obscuring a truth until a punch line. It's linear. Designers want to make the message or functionality apparent immediately. It's fundamental to what we're doing in marketing."

Business Week - CEO Guide to Widgets:

For every marketing widget that takes off on the social network, dozens bomb. A look at why

Little wonder why big brands want their messages on Facebook. What smart marketer wouldn't want to reach the more than 60 million people who spend part of their Web surfing time on the social network? But conventional ads that show up as a banner alongside a person's profile have little effect, research shows. So advertisers are turning to so-called widgets, clusters of software in the form of games, quizzes, videos, or other tools that users can download, customize, and forward.

A widget success story is Parking Wars, a game created by the A&E Television Network to promote a new reality show about parking-meter readers in Philadelphia. Within eight weeks of its introduction, Parking Wars was installed by 151,294 Facebook users and by Feb. 11 had a daily active user rate of 51,440, or almost 34%.

For every marketing widget that takes off on Facebook, dozens bomb. "With nearly 17,000 Facebook apps available, having your own app stand out is challenging," says Eric Weaver, president of marketing consultancy Brand Dialogue. Data from Adonomics, a company that tracks Facebook user patterns, shows many brand-driven widgets had daily active user rates of as little as 1% to 2% on Feb. 11, 2008.

To find out why some campaigns fail, BusinessWeek.com consulted Weaver, as well as Sarah Hofstetter, vice-president of emerging media and client strategy at digital marketing agency 360i, and David Armano, vice-president of creative at Critical Mass, an interactive services company. The slides below highlight barely used applications, when they began generating enough traffic to be measured by Adonomics, and why experts say they failed.

1. Bad Chemistry

AMC Entertainment
Breaking Bad: Chemical Codebreaker
Peak installs: 7,700
Began generating traffic: Dec. 28, 2007

AMC's new acclaimed drama Breaking Bad is about a chemistry teacher played by actor Bryan Cranston (shown here) who breaks into the crystal meth business. The Facebook ad, a game that tests knowledge of chemistry elements, flopped. At its peak, in January, 2008, the ad garnered only 586 daily active users. That dropped to 65 by Feb. 11.

Weaver: "I really love this show. But let's say I'm a high school student who's hopped onto Facebook after getting home from school. What's the last thing I want to think about? A chem quiz! Beautifully executed Flash piece that requires too much thinking, provides too little reward."

2. Rough Cut

Blockbuster (BBI)
Movie Clique
Peak installs: 68,900
Began generating traffic: Nov. 7, 2007

Blockbuster faces some stiff competition with its Movie Clique widget, which lets Facebook film buffs rate and suggest movies to friends. Its peak of 2,516 daily active users is miniscule compared to Flixster Movie's peak of 2.3 million daily active users. By Feb. 11, Movie Clique daily active users dropped to 453.

Hofstetter: "When a branded version goes up against an identical nonbranded app without an extra value or nuance attached to it, nonbranded will win every time. An alternate option would be to partner with and tap into (Flixster's) already large user base."

3. No Need for Speed

Electronic Arts (ERTS)
My Need for Speed
Peak installs: 54,200
Began generating traffic: Nov. 20, 2007

The Need for Speed ProStreet widget lets players of the popular racing game post in-game screen shots and stats to their Facebook profile. The number of daily active users surged to 2,976 about a week after the game's official release but had plummeted to 512 by Feb. 11.

Weaver: "This is a great example of those Facebook apps that require you to sign up friends before you can even start using them. Note to developers: huge turnoff. Forced 'virality' didn't work with Amway, either."

4. No Go

eBay (EBAY)
To Go
Peak installs: 1,600
Began generating traffic: Aug. 29, 2007

With eBay's To Go widget, the auction site's bargain hunters can highlight their favorite eBay discoveries on their Facebook profiles. Even at its peak, on Aug. 30, 2007, the widget had a meager 30 daily active users. By Feb. 11 the number had dwindled to 10.

Armano: "EBay To Go seems like a good idea. The question is, do people want to interact with eBay through Facebook? Maybe making something portable because you can isn't always the best strategy."

5. Brandless Is Better

Hallmark Cards
Hallmark eCards
Peak installs: 38,900
Began generating traffic: Nov. 5, 2007

On Christmas Day, the number of people sending Hallmark eCards to their Facebook friends spiked to 961. Still, by Feb. 11, that number had dropped to 233.

Armano: "Hallmark eCards is very easy to install and use and seems like a great idea. Problem is that there is a lot of competition in this space. Consider Cool Greetings eCards, which claim to be the second most popular eCard application on Facebook (70,000 users). In any social network, brands are competing with the 'nonprofessionals.'"

6. Widget Blues

Sony BMG
Bob Dylan
Peak installs: 24,900
Began generating traffic: Nov. 27, 2007

Sony BMG released a Bob Dylan Facebook video widget days before his new album was due in stores on Oct. 1, 2007. It featured a young Dylan singing the first verse of "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and holding up pieces of paper that Dylan fans can personalize with their own messages. Interest peaked on Sept. 27 with 1,671 daily active users but was down to 171 by Feb. 11.

Hofstetter: "There's limited long-term value in an app around a single album, though it can certainly do a lot to raise awareness during a very critical time, which is evidenced by the larger number of installs during a short period."

7. Faux Hip

Verizon Wireless
Verizon Tones
Peak installs: 4,800
Began generating traffic: Nov. 10, 2007

With the Verizon Tones widget, Facebook users can find a ringtone and suggest it to a friend. Of course, anyone who downloads the ringtone will have to pay for it. The application had 218 daily active users at its peak in January. The number dropped to 35 by Feb. 11.

Weaver: "Sending ring tones to friends is