Mr.
Matt
Spangler

Tracy on Twitter

Twitter is made for comedians…This is gonna be good.  I predict fastest million followers ever.

via fimoculous (and pretty much everyone else on my Tumblr feed)

BREAKING: Tracy Morgan joined Twitter. Mission Accomplished.

Crowdsourcing Product Design

Crowdsourcing continues to be used more often by major brands and social media is more often then not the conduit to attract participants. Recent examples of product development have become more prevalent as the “crowd” works their way farther up the decision tree.

Through Facebook, Vitaminwater has been engaging consumers on their next flavor and on October 5, 2009 they launch a “label design” contest with the top prize being $5000.

This is a good idea, nothing new, but executed well if it reaches the people who love the brand and gets them more involved in the products future. Vitaminwater has built in controls to force the audience down certain paths, which is often important to get successful outputs. One area where I think they missed their mark considerably (and one that brands rarely get right) is the under-valuation of the cash prize for the designer. A $5000 prize for someone to design my new bottle, label and copy for a product that will surely deliver millions in revenue seems laughable.

A innovative approach might look to give the designer a miniscule stake in its success (like they offered 50 Cent), or a much bigger cash prize. This would drive considerable word of mouth in the professional creative community and no doubt deliver a higher quality product package for Vitaminwater to chose from. There are not too many great designers I know who would waste their time for the very slim possibility of winning $5000.

Regardless, well executed contests have shown to be a good way to populate brand Facebook pages. Vitaminwater has grown 11% since the launch of this contest and the “Woody” Facebook promotion for TGI Fridays delivered over 900,000 new fans to their page in the month since it launched.

The ability to leverage this program over time will be the testament to its true success. With the latest wall posts on Woody’s page being “Seriously, has anyone got their coupons for free burgers yet”, it becomes clear that the follow through on the promotion will be just as critical as the promotion itself.

Will Ashton Unlock Additional Foursquare Funding?

As was reported by Caroline McCarthy reported on CNET There goes the neighborhood? Ashton Kutcher’s on Foursquare, Ashton Kutcher seems to have created a Foursquare account along with some of his other close contacts (his wife etc) using the same user handles they use on Twitter.  While there is not definite confirmation it is very likely they have joined the service.

Caroline brings up a couple of interesting points about the usability of the platform for celebrities who already guard their whearabouts closely, but regardless of that what this will clearly do is bring a thunderbolt of attention to Foursquare.

This is coming at a very advantageous time for Dennis and Naveen as they have (hopefully) not locked up their initial funding round yet because it is super users like this that provide the necessary media attention and pop culture cache to catapult a product into stratospheric growth.  Ashton’s attention to Twitter has unarguably brought them millions in national media exposure with no effort, but more importantly for Foursquare, with “Captain Social Media” jumping on board they have effectively captured the white whale that will drive investment speculation on their growth and likely drive real user growth, all of which will drive up the valuation of their company prior to their initial round of investment.  This may seem inconsequential, but from an investment perspective it can equal millions.

Back at the beginnings of Dodgeball, Dennis had been growing the product and user base and was looking for either funding or purchase from another entity to take him to the next level.  We helped him clean up his brand, redesign the website UI and implement an advertising program with ABSOLUT that allowed users to “friend” the brand after which they would receive useful local based information from the brand.

There is often a little push that investors need to get them convinced to sign that big check.  In the case of Dodgeball, you could argue that the ground-breaking deal done with ABSOLUT, which then helped land Dodgeball on the front page of the Wall Street Journal as an innovator in the mobile advertising space, was the push it needed.

Even Dennis will tell you that while there were many factors, this certainly helped provide a necessary validity to the revenue model and gave them the little push they needed to become a more desirable asset for purchase (in this case by Google).

Years later not that much has changed in the mobile marketing game, but a LOT has changed in the device and application market.  Foursquare has pushed a similar model while leveraging the use of this new technology to build a company on the verge of funding.  If he sticks around and uses the service and promotes its usage, Ashton’s efforts could be the hit they need that unlocks a whole new level of funding.

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UPDATE It appears already after Caroline’s article that Ashton has pulled down his account on Foursquare.  Wow. That was fast.  This opens up an entirely different thread then relating to the usability of this platform from a national audience.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE Scratch that - my bad - the link on the CNET article is incorrect.  He’s still there.

Our Andy Kaufman

My friend Dianne, an agent for CAA, has been a long time supporter and friend of Zach Galifianakis and has always encouraged me to check out his shows.  I’ve seen him test out his new material at Seth Herzog’s downtown comedy show, SWEET, a few times.  His one liners are usually hilarious and his act is always challenging, borderline uncomfortable and memorable.

There is a great article about him in the New York Times from last weekend.  His new film The Hangover comes out this weekend and from the looks of the trailer and the early word of mouth, it should be an enormous hit.   Its the kind of profile the Times writes as a real “coming out” piece.  The one where many, many people who have never heard of him will now check out his work. From the brief times I’ve met Zach it couldn’t be happening to a nicer guy.

I was impressed with ABSOLUT when they gave him the artistic control to create the ads with Tim and Eric that he did.   He made the most of the opportunity, creating something that is quintessentially his while (whether by design or not) featuring the brand in a way that most spirits ads would never dare.

It describes the ups and downs of his career and the time it took for him to finally discover his own brand of comedy. Following the Malcolm Gladwell Outliers theory, he is probably getting near his 10,000 hours of comedic work and if you seen him live recently it shows.

What I find appealing about Zach’s act is that everytime I’ve seen him, I have had a moment of uncomfortabilty and tension during the show and without fail, I have thought about the performance for days afterwards. I will literally find myself walking by myself on the street days later and laugh out loud thinking of a bit from the show that drew complete uncomfortable silence from the crowd. Its all so considered and uniquely his and at the end of the day, most ground-breaking stuff is.

In the article he mentions that one of the funniest standup acts was Slovin and Allen’s “Time Machine” routine from the Luna Lounge shows from the mid 90s when were performing standup together.  I remember seeing Eric and Leo perform there, but never saw their time machine bit.  After watching it, you can tell why it was influential to him as its hilarious, smart, ridiculous, campy and kinda sweet all at the same time.

Slovin & Allen - Time Machine

Manufacturing Participation Pressure

Was looking at the reblog discussion related to dpstyles thoughts on the Feltronification of Tumblr. Zach offered his perspective as well…

zachklein:

“It’s not the infographics on the page that interest me, rather it’s the trend of emphasizing a user’s popularity on the network. Lamentably, I think this metric will come to define the experience for the next generation of social networks. I fear that the internet’s utility for many people will equate to constant awareness of one’s value, and the play of meaningless games to increase the sum. This in turn will render many networks impersonal and irrelevant. Like a candidate’s bid speech for high school class presidency, I fear my Tumblr dashboard will become padded with ‘popular stuff’ sure to garner votes rather than the intimate, vulnerable and quirky bits that I’ve enjoyed, and define Tumblr’s personality.

I’m disappointed by Tumblarity, and Ashton’s follower count for the same reasons. I liked the Internet better when it was nebulous, and now I’m depressed that it shaping up to be a social pyramid.”

I fall more on the side of Zach on this debate.  While I see the appeal of ranking, rating and competing (and there is certainly a lust for it in our culutre)…I can’t help but get the sinking feeling when I see these rolled out that they are just another tool for the platform to drive usage through through what I refer to as “manufactured participation pressure”.   Who has the most posts, followers, likes, loves, reblogs etc etc etc.

Personal branding will only continue to be more powerful, but wasn’t the true beauty of these online communities that it facilitated easier connecting to loved ones and more meaningful connections with interesting new people?  This new “social pyramid” that Zach refers to screams of high school cliques and prom queen voting and I don’t have a secret desire to head back to that time in my life.

Now, let me be clear, I’m a fan of come good ole friendly competition.  Through LVHRD we utilized it to amplify the experience of physical interactions.  It was a way to increase the options for conversations with someone next to you and facilitate the rush of natural endorphins among the competitors. But once the competition ended and people hugged and congratulated each other, they made plans to meet up later or collaborate on a new project.  They didn’t linger in the darkness ranking and comparing themselves to everyone else at the event.

This kind of online, personal brand engineering seems a bit trite.  Its just another form of peer pressure, a phenomenon our culture has railed against for years, to manufacture product engagement.   Are we heading to place where this will actually become a form of personality filtering?  Where people who agree with Zach’s opinion will gravitate away from the over competitive connectivity and spend more time searching for and investing in moments that are private, vulnerable and intimate.

This doesn’t mean I won’t look at the figure occasionally and continue to play with these tools on a daily basis, but at the end of the day if my Tumblarity is off the charts, has it given me anything besides a feeling of guilt*?

*Looking at the others who share my current Tumblarity score…thats what I’m currently feeling.