Tuesday, July 08, 2008

New WOM Concept: Shhh!

I don't know if it's a trend or if it's a clever way of handling a word-of-mouth (WOM) campaign, but I thought it deserved at least a passing mention.

There have been a couple of outreach efforts lately that have encouraged the comments of online influencers, but have requested the influencers to avoid mentioning the product being promoted.

When I was at crayon, this is the approach that we used when we encouraged 25 influential bloggers, podcasters and authors to use ooVoo. We wanted the technology to simply enable their conversations, rather than to be the focus of it, so we told them there was no requirement to talk about ooVoo, but instead, they should avoid it. The hero was conversation, not the client or the product.

I recently learned of Lenovo's sponsorship of the Summer Olympics that incorporates 100 athletes blogging about their experiences under the title "Voices of the Olympic Games." Ogilvy's Digital Influence group recruited 100 athletes from more than 30 sports and 25 countries, gave them all a Lenovo laptop and Flip camera and helped them to all start a blog or continue their existing blog, chronicling their experience at the Beijing Olympic Games.

Ogilvy/Lenovo let the athletes know that there is no requirement to post positive opinions about Lenovo. The aim of this outreach, according to Rohit Bhargava, SVP of Digital Strategy at Ogily, is "to offer our technology to help them share their voices just as Lenovo is providing the technology to power the Athlete's Village at the actual games in Beijing."

As long as the influencers disclose any relationship with sponsors, I think this is a solid and unobtrusive way to execute some WOM campaigns.

Photo credit: caitlinburke

Labels: ooVoo, outreach, Rohit Bhargava, social media, WOM

Posted by Scott Monty at 9:50 PM

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Friday, April 11, 2008

Doing Good with Influencer Outreach

Last week on Media Bullseye, Connie Reece wrote about the overnight success of the Frozen Pea Fund, a charity that sprang to life in response to the cancer diagnosis of fellow blogger and Twitter community member Susan Reynolds. If you haven't done so, please take a look at Connie's article, to get the full story - I couldn't possibly do it justice here.

She concluded her post by alluding to ooVoo (a client of my employer, crayon) and the promotion that we called My ooVoo Day With... In short, we asked two dozen bloggers, podcasters and authors to use ooVoo to connect with their respective communities to talk about anything they wanted to. And as a way to thank them for their valuable time, ooVoo generously agreed to give $1,500 in their names primarily to the Frozen Pea Fund (or to any charity they felt passionate about).

The event was a major success, with over 450 seats filled over the course of 10 days, resulting in some 187 blog posts about the program in the month of February, as well as 1,600 mentions of ooVoo on Twitter. Many of the posts and mentions were from participants on the chats, so our idea of using the technology to influence other influencers was borne out.

More importantly, we helped out some other great charities in the process, thanks to these hosts: Scott Sigler -$1,500 to the Disabled American Veterans; Irina Slutsky - $1,500 to Pie Ranch; C.C. Chapman - $750 to Whitney Hoffman's Ma Chen Autism School fund; David Meerman Scott - $1,500 to the Massachusetts Air & Space Museum; Karen Putz - $750 to Hands & Voices.

But the biggest news is for the Frozen Pea Fund. On Saturday night in New York City, at the famed Blogger Social, I had the honor of presenting a check from ooVoo to the Fund in the amount of $30,000 in honor of: Mitch Joel, Steve Hall, Bob Garfield, Joseph Jaffe, John Wall, iJustine, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Connie Reece, Chris Thilk, Erin Kotecki Vest, Dave Delaney, Geoff Livingston, Allan Cox, George Parker, Chris Brogan, Susan Reynolds, Laura "Pistachio" Fitton , Drew McLellan & Gavin Heaton, Robin Good, C.C. Chapman, and Karen Putz.

Photo courtesy of ck_epiphany

Susan Reynolds' husband Bill and daughter Kate were on hand to accept the check, as well as Connie Reece and Cathleen Rittereiser, two of the board members of the Fund, which now officially a 501(c)3 corporation. To say that this money has made a difference in the future of the Frozen Pea Fund is an understatement. I join ooVoo and crayon in taking great pride knowing that this gift will make a difference in the lives of many people suffering from cancer.

One final note. In his absence from the dinner (he was under the weather), Joseph Jaffe had been lampooned all night on Twitter by the attendees. I decided that, rather than be taken in vain, Joe's name should be used for good, so directly after the check presentation, I held an impromptu auction of his name badge. After some pretty aggressive bidding, Geoff Livingston went home as Joseph Jaffe for the sum of $500, payable to the Frozen Pea Fund.

Labels: client, crayon, Frozen Pea Fund, news, ooVoo

Posted by Scott Monty at 11:05 PM

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Monday, March 17, 2008

Thank You and Welcome

I'm going to get personal on you for a bit - but with good reason, so I hope you'll bear with me. Today was a big day for me, as I was mentioned in the Wall Street Journal for the first time (that's right, I said "first time." I'll be back.)

I was interviewed about the "My ooVoo Day With" program that we at crayon developed and executed on behalf of our client, ooVoo. The resultant article, Attention, Bloggers by Shelly Banjo describes how small businesses can use nontraditional marketing methods, such as blogger outreach, to build awareness. We were very pleased that ooVoo got a nice mention.

But at the same time, I got some surprising press as well - Ms. Banjo asked me for a list of recommended reading material to complement the article that was part of the Small Business edition of today's Journal Report. I ended up with my photo included in Marketing with Social Media, along with books, podcasts and blogs that I consider to be top-notch. Click the link to see the full list and a line about why I think each is worthy of your time.

(Full disclosure: I had also included Join the Conversation, JaffeJuice and Media Bullseye in my list, but the editors removed it.)

The "thank you" I referred to in the title of the post goes to all of the friends, colleagues and connections who were kind enough to congratulate me on this bit of good fortune. I appreciate your thoughtfulness and support and I hope I'll continue to earn it.

And the "welcome" is for anyone who is happening by this blog as a result of the article. I do hope you'll consider subscribing - it's completely free. I hope you'll take the time to look around, comment, provide me feedback, join me on Twitter, and let me know what's on your mind.

While the editors only had space for 8 -10 recommendations, there are many more than could have been on there. While I feel like I follow many (too many!) such blogs out there, I'm sure there are some that I'm missing - and my blogroll needs some updating. So here's your chance to help me out: what are your favorite blogs? Leave a comment below and I'll take a look at them. Who knows? They might even end up on my blogroll or feedreader.

Labels: crayon, Marketing, ooVoo, social media, WSJ

Posted by Scott Monty at 11:50 PM

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Sunday, February 10, 2008

My ooVoo Day With Kicks Off

Well, it's here! We "ooficially" kicked off My ooVoo Day With... today at noon with the first chat session with George Parker. There are a few additional slots available and I'm working on adding a couple of last-minute hosts that you might want to check out.

Some folks you might want to check out include:

Allan Cox, author of Your Inner CEO
Steve Hall, editor at AdRants
Geoff Livingston, author of Now Is Gone
C.C. Chapman, podcasting at Managing the Gray and Accident Hash (and my former crayon colleague who's now at The Advance Guard)
Erin Vest, political & parent blogger from The Huffington Post and a BlogHer member writing at Queen of Spain Blog
Dave Delaney, who just finished organizing PodCamp Nashville; you can see his stuff at Dave Made That and Two Boobs and a Baby +
Karen Putz, of A Deaf Mom Shares Her World - she just had a major run-in with Steak & Shake that led to a media firestorm

And thanks to a suggestion from Bryan Person, who noted that it was difficult to see who was available on a particular date without checking out each host, I've created this Google Calendar as an easy reference. Please be sure to share it:

If you haven't done so yet, please take a moment to download ooVoo over at the My ooVoo Day With site and sign up for some sessions. I hope you'll be as pleased with your experience as I've been hearing from others.

Reminder: ooVoo is a client of my employer, crayon

Labels: crayon, Google, ooVoo

Posted by Scott Monty at 2:02 PM

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Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Can I Share Something with You?

I've been a little distracted lately. Not because of Twitter, not because of my other interests, but because of a very complex and detailed project I've been working on at crayon. I'm very excited about it and happy to tell you about it now that it has launched.

To say that this project has been my life lately is an understatement. My colleagues know it. My friends sense it. And my family feels it - and I thank them for their amazing patience and support. But in the end, I think we've got the makings of a fairly unique project that's bringing together bloggers/podcasters/authors and their respective communities like never before - all in the name of Conversation .

Let me explain.

The project I've been working on is for ooVoo , a crayon client that

does video chat - but more than just any video chat. As you can see, it allows up to 6 people to talk at once. Plus with the latest version, you can actually record video conversations. I won't get into all of the details here. If you want to know more, just check out some tutorials & stuff on ooVoo's site.

Our goal with ooVoo is to help build awareness - they're a fairly young startup - and introduce people to what they can do. So we came up with a pretty interesting way for bloggers & podcasters to connect with their communities, face to face. We're calling it "My ooVoo Day With..." and we've got 23 bloggers participating - the list includes:

Mitch Joel/Six Pixels of Separation
Steve Hall/AdRants
Bob Garfield/AdAge & On the Media
Joseph Jaffe/JaffeJuice
John Wall & Christopher Penn/Marketing Over Coffee
iJustine
Marshall Kirkpatrick/ReadWriteWeb
Irina Slutsky/GeekEntertainment.tv
Connie Reece & Susan Reynolds Every Dot Connects / Boobs on Ice
Chris Thilk/Movie Marketing Madness
Erin Kotecki Vest/Queen of Spain
Dave Delaney/Two Boobs and a Baby +
Jack Myers & Friends/Media Village
David Meerman Scott/The New Rules of Marketing & PR
Geoff Livingston/Now Is Gone
Allan Cox/Your Inner CEO
George Parker/Madscam
Scott Sigler
Chris Brogan
C.C. Chapman
Susan Reynolds/Boobs on Ice
Laura "Pistachio" Fitton

As you can imagine, these are busy people who have little time in general. Well, ooVoo is thanking them by primarily sponsoring the the Frozen Pea Fund, a fund established to support the American Cancer Society’s Making Strides Against Breast Cancer campaign, in honor of blogger, Twitterer and cancer patient Susan Reynolds. A handful of the hosts have selected their own charities for ooVoo to support as well.

But in the end, this is all about conversation - not about ooVoo, mind you, but about whatever these bloggers and their communities want to discuss. ooVoo is just the enabler. In fact, we're determined to see ooVoo become the "unooficial" sponsor of conversation.

So, how does this work? Check it out:

So, all you have to do is go over to My ooVoo Day With..., download the software (for Mac or PC - both are still in beta), and pick the blogger of your choice. You can sign up for a single session with any of them and chat with them about whatever they've got scheduled.

If you'd like to tell anyone else about it, you can grab some multimedia elements from the social media news release that our partners over at Abraham & Harrison created.

What are you waiting for? ooVoo someone today?

(That was a mouthful just to explain - can you imagine trying to coordinate all of it?)

Labels: crayon, ooVoo, Video

Posted by Scott Monty at 6:16 PM

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Monday, December 24, 2007

Going Truly Digital This Holiday Season

I don't know if you've heard, but Queen Elizabeth II is going digital, as she releases her annual Christmas message on YouTube. What's more, the Royal Family has even established its own channel on YouTube. Not bad for an institution that 10 years ago was being thought of as potentially irrelevant and extinct.

I addressed my share of holiday cards this year (well, truthfully, I used mail merge and address labels, but there was manual labor involved), but I thought what a great time to start integrating some digital messaging as well. Here's one for you:

While I recognize that not everyone on my list is able to send/receive electronic messages, odds are the percentage will grow higher each year. Which is why it's cool that I can record a message like this with ooVoo, Seesmic, or any number of applications. If I really get my act together, I can do the ultimate cool thing: connect with up to 5 people at a time on a video chat via ooVoo, which could make for some fun holiday interaction.

Whatever you're doing for the holidays, be safe and enjoy. And I look forward to hearing from you in whatever manner you choose to communicate.

Disclosure: ooVoo is a client of my company, crayon, LLC.

Labels: crayon, fun, ooVoo, social media, Video

Posted by Scott Monty at 10:56 AM

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