The Best Marketing Campaign Ever

Cisco has launched a new marketing/advertising campaign called “The Human Network”. I first saw it as an ad on tv and I actually went back (thanks Tivo) and watched it a second time. When is the last time you did that? What a fantastic tv ad. Then I saw it on-line and today I have found the main site. They are also now getting Internet industry luminaries to help define what is the human network. In fact, anyone can submit a story about what the human network means to them. The main site has lots of inspiring and interesting content on it. Nowhere do I see an ad or data sheet for a Cisco router. This is about branding and it works.

In-Game Advertising

Ozgur Alaz has a nice post on in-game advertising.

YouTube Video Advertising

It’s finally here. YouTube has started video advertising, allowing ads on the site that include video. It’s only natural, no big surprise here. They have, however, created something kind of cool in Brand Channels, wherein advertisers can have their own channel to push all their stuff down. The first such channel is…….The Paris Hilton Channel. Of course. Paris, remember, was also one of the first commercial podcasters when she was promoting her House of Wax movie. Let’s hope marketers don’t just shove the same old crap they serve us on tv and radio down this hot new medium.

Snakes On A Plane – Time For The Payoff

After untold Internet hype, this Friday Snakes on a plane with Samuel L. Jackson will open nationwide. This film has had an amazing run of user generated Internet marketing, more than any other film in history. Now we will see if that pays off at the box office or not. At the end of the day, this is a commercial product and it needs to sell. If it does, it could be a huge boon to this kind of new media marketing. Certainly, there is a core of Internet faithful, but can it reach a mass audience? Should be a interesting weekend; I’ll be there.

ABC – One Step Forward, One Step Back

And here I thought ABC was getting it with regard to the new media revolution. Well, not everyone at ABC. President of advertising sales, Mike Shaw has some amazingly stupid things to say about our new digital world.

“I would love it if the MSOs, during the deployment of the new DVRs they’re putting out there, would disable the fast-forward [button],” Shaw said.

I bet you would, effectively crippling the device. Brilliant idea. He doesn’t stop there.

Shaw also threw cold water on the idea that neutering the fast-forward option would result in a consumer backlash. He suggested that consumers prefer DVRs for their ability to facilitate on-demand viewing and not ad-zapping–and consumers might warm to the idea that anytime viewing brings with it a tradeoff in the form of unavoidable commercial viewing.

You know, people have two livers, so they won’t care if we take out one. WTF! I have bad news for you Mr. Shaw. By skipping commercials, I cut down my tv viewing hours by 15-20%. That’s time back for me to spend on other things. I am not going to just give that up quietly.

Crippling DVR’s is not the answer to the problem of ad skipping. Creating better ads and using technology to better target ads is. The tighter your grip is on your old business model, the more it slips through your fingers. I think that was in the first Star Wars movie.

Advertising Supported Video Heats Up

ABC has had great success lately streaming tv shows with advertising support. Now Google is getting into the game. A few prominant advertisers like Pepsi and Hewlet-Packard are already on board. Google, like iTunes still offeres pay-per download as well at $1.99, but having a choice of watching ads or not is great for consumers. We shall see which format wins out in end.

Internet Television – Disney/ABC Totally Gets It!

Already a leader in the IPTV arena, there is much exciting news from ABC about their on-line TV experiments. ABC is having even greater success with it's free, ad supported effort than it's $2.99 per download shows via iTunes. Since last October ABC has sold more than 6 million downloads via iTunes. In the first month of the free ad supported service, more than 11 million shows were watched.

Two amazing bits of information from the tests:

The test also showed that making the episodes available on online platforms is not decreasing the amount of traditional television viewing of those shows.

Disney Channel premiered episodes of "The Suite Life of Zack & Cody" online several hours before the program appeared on television, yet saw TV viewership for those episodes soar to number one in its time period for viewers ages 2 and older.

 This kind of data is hopefully going to make the other networks go ape shit and start putting as much content on the Net as possible. Props to ABC and Disney for being bold and proving that IPTV is for real. 

New Apple Ads Reviewed

Cry me a river; Seth Stevenson at Slate reviews the latest Apple TV ad campaign and complains they are mean spirited and insult the intelligence of PC users. Boo Hoo. I think they are funny. Self indulgent, absolutely. That's Apple for you.

AIM Bots – I don’t get it

AOL has introduced AIM Bots. As far as I can tell, these are instant message buddies that are more like robots and will respond when you chat to them. There are bots for all kinds of things including a Tyson PowerPlates bot that you can use to search for Tyson power-packed recipes. Oh boy, just what I always wanted. Who the hell is going to use that? There are more useful things like Moviephone for looking up movies and some sort of dating bot. Isn't this all much easier to do on a website. Do people really live in IM enough to make this useful? I don't use IM at all so maybe I am out of the loop on this one. Sorry, I just don't get it.

Seth Rocks!

Whenever someone asks me about search engine marketing or search engine optimization, I always tell them its great but there is so much more to on-line marketing than that. Seth Godin nails it.