The Wilderness Downtown

Warning: extremely long post below. Read (and be fascinated) at your own discretion.

So I was scrolling through my Twitterfeed, and procrastinating from school work when I stumbled across a post which led me to The Wilderness Downtown--a Chrome experiment (and an experimental music video) directed by Chris Milk. After I read about it, I couldn't resist but try it for myself. (Ironically enough, I saw the whole thing on Firefox since it crashed the three times that I tried to run it on Chrome.)

Here's a lowdown of what it is. You go to their site (here) and type in your childhood address. If Google maps has that place on streetview, then be prepared to watch a custom multi-window video featuring your childhood home with Arcade Fire's "We Used to Wait" playing in the background. It's hard to describe, it's one of those "you've got to try it out yourself" kind of things, and I don't want to go into any further details for fear of ruining it for you, or over-hyping it up. Ultimately, in my opinion, it's an experimental music video for Arcade Fire.

Now, I wouldn't say that I'm a big Arcade Fire fan (simply because I haven't heard nearly enough songs to form any opinion), but I am extremely impressed with how the band has embraced different web mediums and social media streams to market themselves and their latest album (The Suburbs, released August 3rd 2010). The Canadian band teamed up with Youtube, Vevo, and American Express to live stream one of their shows in NYC. Online audiences were given the choice of 2 camera angles to view the show. Amazon teamed up with their record label and offered the label at a discount price ($3.99!!) during the week of their release--which consequently led to their climb to the #1 spot on Billboard's album chart. Twitter came into play and also offered a CD discounts tweeted the day the band made their appearance on The Daily Show. Now THAT is what I call making use of relevant social media streams to reach out to all their fans. And I LOVE how smoothly and cleverly the music and the video are intertwined together.

Also, it's great to see just how far Google has gone in terms of marketing their products while promoting and encouraging web experimentation. We all know of the Google Demo Slam videos, their "Search" videos, as well as their methods of research for their Chrome extensions/changes (they release their experimental extensions to Chrome Beta users and note the general feedback). When I found out about The Wilderness Downtown, I was truly impressed by the ingenuity of the execution. It was such a clever way to showcase some of their best creations (i.e. Google map and their streetview) while revealing the potential in latest open sourced technologies and the creativity amongst users in the web community.

Of course, this may be a bit of a biased post since I am a HUGE Google fan, and I always love to talk about Canadian music. But I thought this was also an appropriate topic in lieu of our upcoming conference theme, which looks at "The New Era of Marketing" (tickets are still on sale! Check our home page for more information!). I feel like this is just a sneak peek at the potential of future social media marketing, and how companies and bands, such as Google and Arcade Fire, are testing their bounds, and setting the bar for viral campaigns and even marketing in general.

Anyway, I've rambled enough for this week, I won't delay you any further in checking out just what The Wilderness Downtown is about! Word of advice: unless you want your whole browser to crash, close all your other browser tabs and programs.

PS. Congratulations on muddling through the long post! Here, have a cookie. *cookie*

Tweet if you want a job!

Ever wondered what your job application would be like in 140 characters? Campbell Mithun, an advertising and marketing firm situated in Minneapolis, announced today that it will hire 13 summer interns this year based on their application of 13 tweets sent during a set period of time next month.

For six summers, the agency has given 10-week paid internships to 13 interns (called Lucky 13) who are in their 3^rd or 4^th year of university. Up until now, the application has been your generic resume, and other materials following their online guide, all to be submitted through the mail.

Campbell Mithun decided to go the Twitter route to show that it’s thinking about the marketing world through a digital and social media focused perspective.

So what exactly are the requirements for interested applicants? Students are asked to include #L13 in their 13 application tweets, as well as a second hashtag that lists the track they choose. There are 4 departments to choose from: media, creative, copywriter, or technology.

The agency has declined to specify what types of tweets they’re looking for from candidates other than the hashtag rule.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’ll be checking out some of the applications when the time comes just to see how they’re selling themselves. The great thing about these internships is that every year at least one from the Lucky 13 has accepted full-time offers from the agency. This just makes it even more intriguing to see what tweets students will make to get one of the coveted 13 positions.

What do you think about this application process? Do you think more companies will start going down this route during the hiring process in the future?

Golden Year for the Golden Voice?

Happy New Year everyone! (I realize that I'm 6 days behind but hey, better late than never, right?) First update of the year--how exciting is that?

Anyway, here is a story that I stumbled across earlier today that shows you just how far a viral video can get you. A 53 year old man by the name of Ted Williams has recently been offered a job by the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers as an announcer at the team's downtown arena, the Quicken Loans Arena.

The homeless Ted Williams, who was only recently inhabiting a tent, has been soliciting money along a street in Columbus, Ohio since his life and career (as a radio announcer) were ruined by arrests, drugs, alcohol, and jail for theft and forgery. Holding an old piece of cardboard telling of his "God given gift", his slogan caught the eye of a reporter for the city's local news, who posted online a quick video of Ted demonstrating his voice over skills. The video soon became viral and shortly after, Ted was contacted this past Wednesday and was offered the job by the Cavaliers. He has also been asked the "official voice" of Kraft's Macaroni and Cheese.

The father of nine has been hoping that a job offer would come his way, and looks like his hope has come true!

For those curious about the video that set it all in motion:

Promo Gone Wrong!

So I'm sure you've all been exposed to some brilliant, unique, and creative marketing campaigns sometime in your lives (if not then I hope this blog has introduced y'all to some cool ones!). But what about those that didn't get quite the results that the companies were looking for? What about those that BACKFIRE?

Well...

This past week Brazil experienced a bomb scare in the public square of the well known and upscale Ipanema beach area of the city. Police were called last Wednesday to report that there were two wooden crates abandoned in the aforementioned location. I don't know if you guys know this, but the city was just recovering after days of fighting between violent drug gangs and the heavily armed police with military vehicles that killed at least 23 people. So imagine their reaction to find these crates in the middle of such a public place. After the Rio's bomb squad closed off the area and surrounding streets, they opened the crates only to report that it was completely empty, and no explosives were found.

So what in the world were those two crates for??

LONG STORY SHORT, the crates were actually part of P&G's teaser promotion for its biggest sweepstakes in Brazil, called "P&G Faustão's Airplane" with multiple drawings held every Sunday by Brazil's most popular TV host, Fausto Silva. The website for the promotion shows a plane on a run way with cars, motorcycles, and home electronics and appliances--as well as a wooden crate with stickers of P&G products and labels on it (see above). And thus, the crate kind of became the mascot of the campaign/promotion, and so the idea behind putting said crate(s) in such a public place was to show that Faustão's Airplane was so filled to the brim with prizes that they were even falling from the sky. This..brilliant idea was created by two partnering local promotions companies called NewStyle situated in Sao Paulo with Moda Promoções e Eventos in Rio. There were also plans to put these crates in the parking lots of huge retailers that sold P&G products...but I guess that kind of backfired, eh? Neither promotions company would comment but P&G quickly cancelled their plans on installing other wooden crates in public.

Well I would assume so, after such an event!

T-Mobile Sings Its Way to Second

Remember that awesome T-Mobile advert a while back where they did a dance flash mob at the Liverpool Street Station in London? And then they also did that cool sing-along in Trafalgar Square?

Well, this time they're back with another creative venture--also created by Saatchi & Saatchi, as with all their previous stunts. This version, "Welcome Back" was filmed at Heathrow Airport (Terminal 5, to be exact!), and released just before Hallowe'en. Already, it's garnered over 3.7 million views, last I checked, which is pretty awesome, in my opinion. According to Adage.com, the video has climbed its way to second place on the Viral Video Chart, bested only by Nike's "Lebron Rise" video, which has over 3.9 million views. Oooo it's going to be a close race! (Note: the numbers were taken from their official YouTube channels.)

Welcome Back:

LeBron Rise:

What do y'all think? Does T-Mobile's "Welcome Back" have what it takes to usurp Nike? Or will "LeBron Rise" reign supreme? Have a look-see, and comment accordingly!!

Her Royal Majesty...on Facebook?

Now this is what I call keeping up with the times. So apparently, Queen Elizabeth II and her whole royal household have created a Facebook page that was launched just last week. Social media fans will now be caught up in all the latest news, photos, speeches (etc etc) of the monarchy, and there is even an app for which users can search up Royal events happening near them (sadly, for us North Americans the closest would still be an ocean away). The page has been created as a 3 way collaboration between Buckingham Palace, Clarence House (official home of the Prince of Wales, Duchess of Cornwall and Princes William and Harry), and the Royal Collection.

But this isn’t the only social media site where the royal family is active on. Though the Facebook page is the latest in the series of social media launches by the Household, the British Monarchy also has a Flickr account (launched earlier this year), a Twitter account (joined 2009), and a channel on Youtube (2007). For all you social media fans, feel free to follow, like, subscribe and basically find out what’s happening in the family’s lives.

In my opinion, joining a social network (or in their case, many networks) this is a great way for the family to be more integrated in our society in this day and age. Celebrities do it, politicians do it, even your Average-Joe does it. So why not the British Monarchy? The Queen is also said to frequently email her grandkids! So kudos to the Queen for staying in tune with her inner techie!

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the Facebook page is a corporate page. So no, you cannot poke her.

How to Go Viral With Your Videos

So I came across this really great article on Mashable the other day (via Twitter…it’s an addiction, I swear!) that discussed the 3 things a video needs in order for it to go viral. Off the top of my head, a perfect example of it a video gone viral would have to be the Old Spice ones that’s been circulating just recently. Or the HALO video that I put up in one of my earlier blog posts.

But what is it about videos like these that make it so epically…viral? Well, according to the article, the 3 main things you need for video success are:

1) Psychological share motivation, which was further broken down into three subcategories: emotions (tug the heartstrings), identity and self expression (clear message), and information (self explanatory).

2) Easy shareability (also self explanatory. I always look for “share” buttons when I see a particularly cool video online, Youtube, in my opinion, is fantastic for its easy shareability).

3) Data-driven strategy (obviously, you should know which sites generates the most traffic, at which time, and for which target audience etc etc before you launch your video.

Though these traits may be obvious to y'all, you may be surprised to see how effective these small reminders can be for people who are looking to launch a successful video.

And obviously, one can’t make a blog post about great viral videos without actually posting one. So…here’s one that I particularly liked from the article:

For further information (or just access to the article), click here.