Digital Hive

UPDATE: Cocaine (the drink)

{November 2, 2006 - One final Cocaine (the drink) update} Chairman & CEO George Nadaff did come through with a gift card and a note that confirms he actually read my email. I'm talking a walk downtown for the chipotle chicken, but I give props to you Mr. Nadaff.  Thanks for listening.

------------------  from October 31, 2006

I had some email correspondence with the George Nadaff, Chairman & CEO of Knowfat Lifestyle Grille regarding my Cocaine (the drink) encounter at the downtown Boston Knowfat location. Before I posted last week, I sent a note to a number of principals at Knowfat expressing my confusion at the attempted brand affinity between Knowfat and Cocaine (the drink).

Mr. Nadaff replied (1 point for guts) and gave me permission to reprint anything I chose from his email (2 points) and offered me a $20 gift card just for complaining providing my feedback (20 points!)  Knowfat has their demographics down and was willing to share this information:

"Our customer base average age is between 18 and 35. We get high praise for providing this group with energy drinks with every product name you can imagine…from Pimp Juice to Pit Bull to Crunk!  The names are edgy across the board.  While, on the other hand, I can appreciate that some people are not fans of the energy drink category in general for a variety of reasons."

Dove campaign keeps on giving

According to an AdAge article (reg. req'd) the Dove campaign has chalked up another noteworthy achievement.

"With not a penny of paid media and in less than a month, "Dove Evolution," a 75-second viral film created by Ogilvy & Mather, Toronto, for the Unilever brand has reaped more than 1.7 million views on YouTube and has gotten significant play on TV talk shows "Ellen" and "The View" as well as on "Entertainment Tonight." It's also brought the biggest-ever traffic spike to CampaignForRealBeauty.com, three times more than Dove's Super Bowl ad and resulting publicity last year, according to Alexa.com."

Todd Tillemans, VP-North American skin care: "This is a great example of where we're not using the old playbook where we do a lot of TV advertising," he said. He believes the strong consumer insight behind "Campaign for Real Beauty" gave the effort "viral legs" and that the particular message was "more powerful because it came from an objective source" in the form of the TV news and entertainment programs."

Great stuff. We continue to "heart" this campaign and its extraordinary results.

Department of Demographics Worst Nightmares

Department of Demographics Worst Nightmares

“No one's really afraid of Frankenstein”.

Here is a fun Halloween example of how research and customer insight turned into a great creative idea. Theater director, Timothy Haskell, polled New Yorkers to find out their 13 biggest fears and, based on their responses, designed an adult haunted house for Halloween, one in each of the five boroughs: Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island.

The houses have different themes and it originated from one big insight that New Yorkers fear different things in different boroughs: (…) "People from the Bronx and Queens, they said, tend to fear things that might actually happen, like being mugged (harpaxophobia), while Manhattanites are frightened of fantastical and unlikely occurrences (flying sharks, riding in an elevator that rockets through the roof of a building). “In Manhattan and Brooklyn, we heard ‘fear of the homeless,’ ” Smithyman said. “Then, in the Bronx, we heard ‘fear of becoming homeless.’ ” "Staten Island residents apparently dread chemical spills and gas leaks."
(…) In every borough, it seems, both fear of insects and fear for rodents trump thanatophobia, the fear of death.

To learn more check out this article in the last issue of The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/061030ta_talk_schulman

Cocaine (the drink)

At lunch today I walked past the Knowfat Lifestyle Grille and encountered a product demo for the controversial "energy drink" called Cocaine. 

I recently re-read David Armano's piece from July called Brand Affinity Through Stories + Experience because I have been pondering how companies and marketers make decisions on affinity products and associations (see Audi piece) and how they could make better connections - when the Cocaine controversy walked right up to me. 

On any day in downtown Boston you could partake in any number of product demos, so I wasn't certain that the Cocaine demo was associated with Knowfat.  It seemed like a strange attempt at affinity given Knowfat's mission statement (from their website):

"KnowFat! Lifestyle Grille promises to provide great tasting, nutritionally packed food and products to help you look good, feel good, and achieve optimal physical and mental performance."

TV watching online-- promising?

New numbers are out from TNS and the Conference Board regarding the number of consumers who watch TV content online.  This article couches the numbers as "only 1 in 10" web users are watching shows online.  I actually would argue that it hasn't been that long that a plethoria of programs have been available online.  Given the newness of the trend, 1 in 10 ain't that bad...

In another year, the numbers could be significantly higher. That's why these outlets are called "emerging" media.

http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=50166&Nid=24558&p=375266

Audi Presents: The Head of the Charles Regatta

Audi North America gently branded this weekend's Head of the Charles Regatta held on Boston's Charles River in glorious fall weather. By virtue of being a (practically) lifetime Audi owner, my husband and I received an invitation to the Audi Hospitality Tent with prime (heated) viewing space, virtually unheard of race-day parking, a lovely catered meal (including fine German wines & beers) and Audi swag.

The hospitality tent also featured a number of affinity partners which made for an interesting afternoon in between heats. Audi chose to display two vehicles at the entrance to the VIP tent, the 2007 Audi S8 (starting at $92,000 MSRP) and the Audi Q7 (starting at $49,900 MSRP). The S8 absolutely sizzles and was great at showing off its Bang & Olufsen sound system. The Q7 is Audi's entry into the SUV market - they cracked me up showed great event affinity by putting a crew shell on top of the display vehicle.

The hospitality suite featured a set-up by Bang & Olufsen playing a lovely rotation of dinner jazz.  B&O is providing the audio system for the high-end Audi vehicles.  Check out the sound concept tab on the B&O page - nice web work.  The president of the New England region manned the station and was engaging and provided amusing commentary, helpful information and  gentle invite to visit the Newbury Street store to try out any of the amazing equipment.  I really liked the sound of these $20,000 speakers.  My husband pointed me to the $3,000 speakers.  They all sounded amazing.  The sound system in the S8 was amazing - and if they can make a car sound that good, I feel certain they can make my house sound good.  The B&O catalog is so stunningly produced you would pay for a copy - gorgeous stock, beautifully designed, a fantastic "history of" spread in glorious photos and in the last few pages, what they can do for your home.  Nice.

Why are people watching this stuff?

Check out this interesting New York Times blog article which offers compelling rationale for the apparent "success" of certain types of user generated content (to wit, "The Evolution of Dance" - with more than 34 million views to date). It's successful - "nearly double the number of the runner-up, because it’s not in English. That’s all. No talking. No dialogue, no voice-over, no monologue. No language but lyrics.....That’s it’s secret: it’s a silent movie. With a soundtrack."

The posting continues with an interesting cultural insight (that's either cultural or just about language, I can't decide which) : "In English, people love to opine and blather, which is well-suited to blogging. By contrast, Asian blogs — the ones I’ve seen them translated from Mixi — are not polemical, and not even very wordy. They’re links and images."

Well I love to opine and blather and my first language is English so there you have it, focus group of one, validating this assertion.

The posting has an interesting conclusion: "What will make the web universal, what will turn us into one magical networked planet, what will blow our minds with how much can be said in icons and images and film — and, above all, why Google didn’t overpay for YouTube — is video."

Kind of makes sense - and what I most respond to in video (specifically the example cited above) is the easy entertainment aspect of it - you don't have to think too much, you can just let it wash over you.

If I want a lean forward experience I'll go shop for a vehicle, man.

Thoughts from the Peanut Gallery?

Sign up, win free stuff

The internet really is too much work, we simply must make it easier. So, we're bringing Digital Hive directly to you.

Just sign up to get your daily dose of Digital Hive delivered via email. It's easy, just look to the right at the top under the header that says Subscriptions and RSS. Type your email address into the box, then click where it says "subscribe." See I told you it's easy.

You'll get a single daily email with all the new posts from that day.

But wait there's more - here's the Ginsu knives offer. The first 100 people who sign up for a daily dose of Digital Hive will be entered into a drawing for a special item selected by Lori Magno from her Digitas Gift Closet. While I have never seen the closet myself (this particular closet, that is), popular lore tells us this space is stocked with riches and finery from around the world.

AKA, high value offer, respond now.

Meet Adam, Reuters' Second Life correspondent.

Adam Reuters (left) is Reuters' bureau chief in Second Life. In real life, he is Adam Pasick, a veteran tech and media journalist. He's already conducted interviews with Second Life movers and shakers like Ginko CEO Nicholas Portocarrero and Philip Rosedale, Linden Lab's CEO.

According to Wikipedia, "as of early October 2006, Second Life has approximately 850,000 total user accounts and 358,000 users active over the previous 60 days, relatively few compared to other virtual worlds, such as World of Warcraft's 7 million subscribers".

However, if Reuters is covering it, that tells me this Second Life thingy is catching on.

Snaps to Organic's Three Minds for the tip.

Empathy. Experience. Curiosity.

The David Armano Experience rolled into Digitas Boston this morning bringing the good word about blogging. David brought his road show complete with PowerPoint and very cool (and copyrighted) charts and walked the room through blogging from concept to creation to overanalyzed potential for client marketing.

It was a treat to hear David illustrate his fantastic diagrams. Having the author “air quote” his Round World vs. Flat World chart was awesomely good. His thoughtful comments on 'Influence Ripples' resonated with a lot people and started a debate about blogs and comments that recently prompted clients to get in on the action. The room got a great chuckle out of David's description of a discussion that many marketers have had with their clients about "wanting a viral something" or "going viral".

We had company in the form of visitors Peter Kim from Forrester Research, the Boston Globe’s Maura Welch and Marketing Profs' Ann Handley. I'll be interested to check out their take on the session.

David moderated a spirited Q&A/comment session where everything from the value of corporate blogs and social networking to the current Technorati rank of Dooce and angry commenters. David made the time (an hour+) well spent. When the world tour comes to your town – get a seat early.

The full dog and pony show can be found HERE.

Me and David Armano in our Digitas-issued eyewear. A shame the cameraphone pic is awful as my hair looked totally cute this morning.