Wow!  For over 23 years and $140MM Pepsi has been investing in high profile Super Bowl ads.  Not this year.  Pepsi is moving it’s spend to Online Social Media buys.  Is this a good move?  I don’t know — but definitely will keep an eye on this to see how it pans out.  For those that read my posts you know that I favor interactive media that creates a dialog with your audience over mass communication.   I’d rather pay for a consumer relationship than an impression.  It looks like someone at Pepsi may share in that view.

Is this another nail in mass media’s coffin?  No,  there will always be a need for making the first impression and TV is still the best option to make that first impression.  However,  expect TV to radically change over the next 5 years.  Necessity drives innovation and with more dollars moving away from TV expect TV to quickly innovate.  TV will become more socially enables.  Allowing for brands to create relationships with the consumer over the TV.

With FourSquare everyday tasks are Social

FourSquare is getting a lot of press lately.  The service is a cross between location tracking, reviews, social network, and game play.  As you travel around your city you enter tips and reviews of the places you frequent.  Leaving virtual notes for others to find.  The more notes you leave the more points you earn.  Points turn into badges that add the element of game play.  It’s a compelling concept that may have some legs, but most likely this is an early example of things to come.  The big picture is that Social Game Play will be applied to everything.  Some ideas:

• Community TV Watching.  We all know it is coming – but how cool would it be if there was a social game element to LOST.  The first person in your social group to find the hidden item in the scene wins!
• News / Local News:  When will the major news outlets start to reward the amateur news gatherers?  CNN already provides them fame as part of the iReport.  Next step it Fox giving “badges” for the first person to submit that cop beating video.
• Shopping:  This is obvious and is already happening.  But soon it will happen in a big way via your mobile phone.
• Work:  Non-competitive companies could create “work-groups” that allow sharing of best practices.   Imagine if you were connected to 10 other internet marketers across the country that work in different companies but work together on campaigns.  Then have those work-groups compete against other similar work groups for fame and fortune.  (this sounds a bit out there — but there might be something here)
• School:  Let’s think about bringing social game elements to education

Expect a lot of Social Game Play to seep into all facets of our life.   From major things like retirement investing to simple entertainment like BeJeweled.

I like companies with “Play” in the name.  I also like companies that have started to crack the micro-payment model in the US.  Playdom just announced a funding round that raised $43M while Playfish made off with $275M from EA.  This amounts to some interesting validation of the Social-Causal Game / Micro-Payment Space.  Details are sketchy but it looks like these guys are pulling in $40M to $60M a year in micro-payments fueled by their Facebook and MySpace games such as Mob Wars and Social Life.

We’ve seen excitement with this kind of thing before — remember the Beenz and Flooz craze?  But this is different.  This is a new low risk / high engagement way for consumers to pay for casual games — and soon other things too.  Why ask the consumer to pay $20 once up front for a game or service while you could ask them for $1.00 at a time 5 times a day for everyday they use the game/service.  Expect this new payment method to be proven and profected in the game space then move into consul and handheld games, online video, social networking, news, and maybe to TV.

There are a couple factors at play that make the micro-payment model compelling to producers and consumers.  But two overlooked factors are environmental trends and the decline in consumerism.  The next generation may feel completely comfortable with sending a $1 virtual rose bouquet on V-day rather than spending $40 of on handful of flowers that were cut from the ground to whither and die just for that special someone.

1,000,000 Fans and Counting

A corny gimmick and some free publicity can get you a million or so Facebook Fans fast.  For proof check out the “If 1M people join, girlfriend will let me turn house into pirate ship” group to see how it is done.  This appears to be just grass roots craziness that caught on like virtual wild fire over the last couple days.  It’s hard to tell how the sparks were started but the content is pure geekdom gold (for those non-geeks, Pirates is a geek meme that is only rivaled by Ninjas).  They are trying to capitalize on the success of the site through a CafePress store where they might make a couple bucks.  But the effort doesn’t appear to be motivated by commercial gains.

Which is unlike the effort we saw a couple months ago from TGI Fridays.  Their Woody Fan Page promised a free hamburger for all if the fan page topped over 500,000 fans.  This promotion was also heavily featured on TV.  It’s a great idea that has to be executed very very carefully.  For a primer on what can go wrong just read through Woody’s Fan Page discussion board (link).  Here’s an example of damage control:

Woody Damage Control

Thoughts:

• I’m a huge fan of leveraging communications to build an audience that you can communicate to directly.  What was once your Email capture strategy is now your Social Network Fan base creation strategy.  The bigger your base the more effective the communication.  So look to include links to your Social Networking site in your mass communications.
• Using a gimmick to quickly build your base is a good idea if executed correctly.  But gathering the fans is just the first step.  You need a solid communication plan that nurtures that fan base.  And expect to dedicate resources to it.  But what better way to send a direct personal communication to million consumers!
• WARNING:  Think twice before setting up a persona as the face of your brand.  TGIF’s use of Woody is extremely dangerous.  As you can see for his post he is speaking “to the people at TGIF” — he is not speaking on behave of the company.  What happens when he gets arrested for indecent exposure?  And how does TGIF use this base three years from now when they want to do an entirely different campaign.

Wendy's Real Time Site

There are some interesting campaigns based around the voice of the consumer.  We first saw this with Skittles and now with Wendy’s.

The idea is to pull together user generated content that is popping up on Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, etc. onto the Wendy’s web site.  The display is a random cascade of user generated posts, pictures, and videos.  It seems to me that there is a potentially engaging concept here but I haven’t seen an execution that lives up to the concept.

It’s interesting to see how we could have gotten here by looking at the history of interactive marketing.  We first mimicked traditional mediums by broadcasting a unidirectional message.  Then over the last 3 years or so we all started to delve into multidirectional conversations with the consumer.  Now it appears the pendulum has swung all the way to unidirectional but the message is coming from the consumer.    I’m not sure that this is anything more than a gimmick but like I said, maybe there is something worth looking into.

Thoughts:

• The Wendy’s and Skittles execution lack a purpose.  I get it but why would I get engaged.  And what is the connection to the product?
• There is potential here.  Especially around the idea that you can reward your brand’s fan base by showcasing their posts.  Hence enticing them to post more.  But this can also quickly backfire as mischief makers start learn how to game the system.
• An execution of this nature needs a purpose.  It may work better if linked to a cause or movement.  Combining your brand with a cause ,such as Breast Cancer Awareness, than wrapping that into a platform for consumers to share with each other will build engagement much better than these stand alone concepts.

How do you think this concept can be executed in a meaningful integrated campaign?