The formula is simple: Mix one part love of contests with one part love of ‘reality’ entertainment, add a heaping spoonful of social media and you’ll end up with what I’m calling the ‘Experience Prize’.

Ford was one of the first brands to experiment with adding the social media spotlight to their prize with the Fiesta Movement. In the Fiesta Movement, 100 winners (they called them ‘agents’) were selected from more than 4,000 applicants, and each was given a brand new Fiesta to drive for six months. Then, each month Ford would send the agents on themed missions, and the agents would complete, and then lifestream those missions with blog posts, photos, videos and status updates. Thus, the agents didn’t just win a car for six months; they won an experience prize that included ongoing interaction with the brand, and a series of unique trips and adventures in exchange for their willingness to share the experience with the world.

Queensland, Australia was the next to integrate social media into their prize, with one lucky winner spending six months as the caretaker of an island in what they called The Best Job In The World. During those six months, the winner explored the islands of the Great Barrier Reef, and the world followed along through a regularly updated blog, YouTube videos and Twitter posts. Instead of just a trip, this experience prize included a job title, roles and responsibilities, and the jealousy of thousands of people around the world.

Groupon took the concept of the experience prize and evolved it into something else entirely, as their experience prize is more like an experience challenge. The contest, called “Live Off Groupon”, challenges one person to attempt to survive for one year with nothing but a laptop, a cellphone and an unlimited supply of Groupons. If he can last for twelve months, he wins $100,000, and if he can’t, he still gets to take home a pretty good chunk of Internet fame as a consolation prize.

Lastly, Old Spice added sex appeal and competition to the formula for their experience prize, with Gretchen Bleiler and Anastasia Ashley hosting an Internship Challenge. While the two women act as ‘internship mentors’, the two winners get to go to Switzerland or Fiji, where they will compete with one another in various challenges spread out over five days. Each challenge gets documented with photo and/or video evidence that is then uploaded to the Old Spice blog and Facebook Page, where a winner will be selected by those following along to receive an extra $1000 per challenge.

The key benefit of the experience prize is that it finds people who are likely to be loud, far reaching and influential voices online, and then gives them the tools and the exposure they need to amplify their voice even further. This turns the winners into mini cewebrities, or enhances their current cewebrity status, and lets them use that status to promote the brand (and themselves) for an extended period of time.

In addition, another benefit of the experience prize is that the world can follow along as the winner essentially test-drives the sponsor for an extended period of time. Whether it’s an actual test drive, as in the case of the Fiesta Movement, or a test drive of the benefits of a service, like the Groupon challenge, it’s a chance for the rest of the world to watch as the winner uses the service in excruciating detail, and then shares that experience in the most entertaining way possible.

So what are the challenges that a brand faces when putting on a contest with an experience prize?

For one, the prize needs to be worth the effort required to enter, win and then use it. If the goal is to find an online personality that will engage others and be worth watching for an extended period of time, then you need to fish with the right bait. If the prize is too small, you either won’t receive many entries, or the entries that you do receive won’t be from the right type of people. Large prizes also tend to spread via word of mouth, as one person tells the next about the great prize that they can win by just entering a contest, and the result is that you can keep your promotion costs relatively low while still reaching a large audience.

The second challenge is that it can be difficult to transition the success of an experience prize campaign into the success of other social efforts. Unlike an online ad buy, which can drive traffic to a social channel that can then be used for a number of promotions, an Experience Prize often lives on its own microsite, and is not integrated into a larger social effort. While this can be mitigated by hosting part of the contest on a channel like Facebook, it’s important to remember that a few extra YouTube videos and tweets from the entrants aren’t suddenly going to turn your brand into an ongoing social media success story.

Lastly, there needs to be a concentrated effort to build buzz and excitement around the contest before the entries are due, because the quality of the entries will determine the quality of the content that the campaign creates. Whether it’s with voting, targeted ad buys, YouTube videos entries or a full blown social media bombardment, word of mouth is key, and the campaign must be easy enough to share that entrants will willingly help to promote it to their friends.

Despite the challenges, a well-run contest with a unique and interesting experience prize can generate a ton of buzz for a brand, and can keep the excitement alive for months after the announcement of the winner.

When the team behind the Dante’s Inferno video game hid ASCII art in the source code of many popular websites and then waited for that art to get discovered, they were taking a huge risk, but sometimes big rewards can only come to those that are willing to take equally big risks. The risk was mitigated by the fact that their campaign was innovative and well targeted, but there was still the chance that their idea was going to fall flat, or that consumers were not going to be receptive to the idea of hunting for what essentially boils down to fancy looking banner ads.

Before we dive into the campaign however, let’s do a quick history lesson: ASCII art, or art made with text, has been around since the early days of the computer. Back when printers weren’t able to make graphics, someone figured out that various characters could be combined to simulate them instead, and ASCII art was born. Because of its lengthy history and quirky nature, ASCII art has remained popular in the geek crowd for many years, and coders are even known to hide ASCII art in the source code of their websites so that other geeks will stumble across it and discover the hidden art while looking under the hood of another coder’s site. This type of ‘hidden reward’ is also found in video games, where coders will hide objects or inside jokes in hard to reach places or behind lengthy button combinations in what’s affectionately referred to as an Easter Egg. The goal for both is to reward users that dig into a website or explore in a video game beyond what the typical user would do, so that whether it’s hidden code in a website or a hidden Easter Egg in a video game, those that discover it feel like they have earned access to some sort of exclusive content or reward.

With that history lesson out of the way, lets look at how Dante’s Inferno combined the geek’s love of ASCII art with the gamer’s love of Easter Eggs into a unique and innovative ad campaign that generated a ton of buzz for their upcoming release.

The campaign featured six pieces of ASCII art that were hidden in the source code of various video game and technology websites. One of the first of these sites to get discovered was Digg (by Brent Csutoras) with the initial discovery leading to a large scale search that uncovered a number of other pieces of art scattered across the Internet in places like IGN, GameSpot, Daily Motion, Games Radar, and WWE. One site, Kotaku, even discovered art hidden in their own source code after a reader tipped them off to the campaign, which the editors claimed to have no knowledge of. In addition to the art itself, each hidden ‘ad’ also contained a URL and a password to a secret site, and by collecting all six of these passwords, users could visit that website and unlock a special bundle of content that included music, wallpapers, posters, concept art and more from the upcoming game.

What’s interesting about this campaign is that it was very risky, since the ads could have sat unnoticed for a lengthy period of time before being discovered, and even then, they would have to be almost exclusively passed around by word of mouth, since there is no way to view them except by manually selecting to view the source code of a website. Thus, the campaign would have been dead in the water if it had not generated the buzz that its creators were hoping for. In addition, there is no way to track who views the source code of a website or the traffic generated from those views, except through a very rudimentary URL tracking system that uses custom URLs to track the source of visits. Thus, the only way to judge the results of this campaign is to track how many users download the special bundle, and what kind of buzz the campaign generates. (It’s interesting to note that Dante’s Inferno decided not to track what sites users were grabbing their codes from, since the same URL was used across all sites, and secret codes were shared among sites as well.) Another challenge is that while bundle downloads do indicate the total number of people exposed to the campaign, they can’t differentiate between a user that actually viewed the ASCII art in the source code of a website, and a user that simply found or was given the six passwords on a gaming forum or other less involved medium and then used them to unlock the bundle.

The result of these challenges is that for a campaign like this to work well, it has to be used for the right product at the right time and with just enough luck thrown in to capture the interest of the right audience long enough to make an impression. Judging by the blog reactions and user comments about the campaign however, this seems to have struck just that balance, with comments ranging from “I am pretty impressed by this campaign” and “it is an advertising campaign and quite a clever one if I must say so myself” to “The latest stunt is eerie, and gets bonus points for both creativity and giving the fans some fun bonuses.” Even Digg’s Chas Edwards, Digg Publisher and Chief Revenue Officer was quoted as saying, “Since Digg’s early days, ASCII art has been ingrained in our site’s culture. We’re thrilled with the opportunity presented by our partnership with Electronic Arts and the Dante’s Inferno team — incorporating ASCII art into advertising on Digg, while providing the 40 million users in the Digg Community first access to the promotion code.”

Hiding an ad in the source code of a website is a great example of a company that’s willing to think outside the banner, but does the success of the Dante’s Inferno campaign mean that hidden ASCII art is a viable option for other ad campaigns as well? In this case, I don’t think that you could duplicate the results of this campaign in the near term, as the success was due in such large part to the combination of right place, right time to the right audience for the right product. However, if enough time goes by and users once again forget about a company’s ability to hide ads in places as remote as the source code of a website, I think we could see another campaign or two reach a similar level of success by using a similar idea.

So why can’t companies just start hiding ads in the source code of all of their favorite websites and then wait for people to find them?

1. There is a very small percentage of people that even know how to view the source code of a website, and even then, it’s not a guarantee that they will like ASCII art.
2. Much of the buzz around the Dante’s Inferno campaign was driven by the novelty of the idea, so each subsequent implementation will have substantially less buzz as people get accustomed to seeing ads hidden in source code.
3. If people don’t care enough about a product to go searching for hidden art with secret codes and mystery websites in exchange for exclusive content, then the campaign will never get seen by more than a handful of consumers who accidentally stumble across it.

The take away from this campaign is that it’s important to always keep your eyes open for new and innovative ideas, and to be willing to take a risk on a new format that might drive a lot of interest in a product, even if that format can’t be directly tied to traffic or sales. In addition, because the lack of direct tracking means you will never know the exact impact of a risky or non-conventional campaign, you must find a new way of defining your reward (besides just traffic and clicks) so that you will know if the risks were worth it, and if the campaign was a success.

The Good:

• Unique and innovative campaign generated a massive amount of buzz.
• Exclusive content motivated users to seek out additional pieces of hidden art and pass along the campaign to others.

The Bad:

• Results would be difficult to duplicate, as much of the buzz was driven by how innovative the idea was.
• Limited tracking means the success of the campaign is based on a single number (in this case, bundle downloads) and that the awareness generated by the ads themselves, separate from clicks, was all but impossible to track.

The Future:

• Unique ad formats that reward the viewer are sought out by consumers, rather than needing to be forced upon them.

Hell Is Nigh

Gowalla, a location-based social network, and Incase, an Apple accessory manufacturer, have teamed up to create one of the first ad campaigns to live exclusively on a location-based social network. (They’re calling it a ‘collaboration’, but it’s still a proof of concept even if Gowalla isn’t getting paid for it.) The campaign features six Incase-branded virtual items which are modeled after actual Incase gear. When Gowalla users check in at any Apple Store around the world during the promotional period, they receive one of those six virtual items, and a few lucky users will even receive an actual Incase Slider case in addition to their virtual item.

This ‘real prize’ functionality debuted during Gowalla’s 10 and a Half Days of Christmas promotion, but this is the first time it’s been sponsored by another company.

Lastly, if a user collects all six virtual items, they receive a special ‘Incase Pin of Glory’ to mark their accomplishment. (Pins are one feature of Gowalla’s system.)

Since Gowalla, Foursquare, Loopt, Whrrl, Brightkite and the rest of the location-based social networks are all relatively new, they’re all still trying to figure out how to monetize their service, which should make this an interesting space to keep an eye on in 2010. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that location-based social networks will be the space to watch in the coming year, as they have the potential to revolutionize how companies advertise to consumers on a highly targeted and hyper-local level.

Currently the two leaders in the space (at least in terms of buzz) are Foursquare and Gowalla, and each service is trying slightly different methods of advertising to their users, with each method having unique advantages and disadvantages. Gowalla gives users items related to the locations that they check in at, such as Incase items at Apple Stores, and a digital icon of Gary Vaynerchuk’s Crush It book at all stops on his book tour. Foursquare on the other hand shows users sponsored locations that are near their check in location, offers users coupons and specials based on check ins, and also counts the number of times that a user checks in at a location, turning Foursquare into a hosted loyalty rewards program. Regardless of which advertising method comes out on top though, expect to see each service adopt parts of what works well with the other services as each continue to refine their offering.

To test drive this campaign, I visited the Apple Flagship Store in San Francisco and checked in on Gowalla. The first time I checked in however, nothing out of the ordinary happened, so I returned later that day and checked in again, and received an Incase Slider Case item in return. There wasn’t much more to it though, which left me feeling like they could have done so much more with the idea. (Note: I did receive a tweet the next day, shown above, which said that I was the winner of an actual Incase Slider case. While I’m excited to have won, I think the points below are still valid.) A few potential ideas/changes that crossed my mind:

1. Explain the campaign in the item messaging. Had I not been actively reading the Gowalla blog, I would not have known that the Incase item was any different from a normal item that you receive when checking in on Gowalla. At the very least, Gowalla should have included some information about the campaign and the fact that you can receive a special pin for collecting all six limited edition items, as this would go a long way towards increasing the repeat engagement of each user, and highlights the specialness of the item. Taking the sponsor integration a step further, if Gowalla included a web browser in their app, they could include a link to the Incase product page in the message, and if a user wanted to find out more about the featured product, they would be just a click away from detailed information and potentially even an online storefront.
2. Turn each item into a coupon. If Incase wants to convert Apple Store shoppers into Incase customers, they should use the message attached to each item as an opportunity for them to give Gowalla users a special deal on Incase products. The timing is perfect, since they’re reaching a very targeted audience at or near the point of purchase, and they’re also able to specifically target early adopters and heavy social network users who are the most likely to be using Gowalla at this point, and are also the most likely to help spread the message to others. Even better (for Incase at least, though maybe not for users) would be to turn each item into a small coupon, and allow users to combine the six items together to create a larger coupon, creating an incentive to collect all six items that has more real-world value than a virtual Gowalla pin.
3. Get users to share. Encouraging users to collect all six items is a great way to motivate repeat visits, but if Incase wants to spread the word from the initial group of influencers to a larger audience, they need to incentivize the sharing of items with others. Perhaps it’s a coupon that is only activated when one user gives an item to another user, or a contest where the person whose item is subsequently picked-up and dropped-off by the most users wins a prize from Incase, but a little motivation can go a long way toward the spread of information from user to user.

As the Gowalla/Incase campaign shows, advertising on location-based social networks can be integrated into the experience in a fun way that adds to a user’s enjoyment of the service, rather than detracting from it. And while Twitter continues to struggle to find the best way of monetizing their service without angering their users, Gowalla and Foursquare have both introduced advertising very early in their growth, which should help users accept ads and other promotions as a part of the user experience. As they continue to grow however, the key will be for location-based social networks to work closely with sponsors to help create campaigns like the Incase sponsorship that integrate ads in a non-invasive and additive way, so that users welcome and respond well to these ads, since they will ultimately provide value to both the sponsor and the user.

Samsung’s NOTCOT sponsorship is a great example of how a company can go beyond the banner to integrate itself into the uniqueness of a blog and speak directly to that blog’s audience through custom content. It also shows how the continued transition of ad dollars from traditional media into online media will fund new opportunities for advertisers to reach their online audience in new ways as blogs capitalize on the customizability of their medium.

The Samsung Go sponsorship includes a special section in NOTCOT called the Netbook Resource Center, which covers netbook news and accessories (they call it ‘fresh mobile lifestyle content’) and lives inside of a branded wrapper featuring images of the Samsung netbook done in the traditional NOTCOT style. There’s also a traditional banner that leads each post, and a rich media banner at the end of each post that’s co-sponsored by CNET, and lets readers see reviews, change color options, view the netbook from different angles, and compare prices.

(Tip for Samsung: If you’re going to feature the CNET Editor Rating in your banner, make sure you actually give CNET a netbook to rate.) Lastly, posts written ‘out in the wild’ on the Samsung netbook receive a special banner style tag that’s appended to the lead image.

The result is an integration that lets the blogger keep control over the content, allowing her to continue to make the content that created her audience in the first place, while Samsung can wrap it in advertising that goes well beyond the traditional banner and works to become a part of the overall experience.

While the POPURLS sponsorship allowed UPS to brand business news without paying any writers for the privilege, the NOTCOT sponsorship is on the opposite end of the spectrum, and allows Samsung to speak directly to their target audience by paying a writer to create an entire section of specialized content dedicated to related news. The end result is that Samsung has more control over the message, though that control must be balanced with the idea that blog writers know what will resonate with their readers, and should usually just be left alone with a minimal amount of guidance.

In addition to NOTCOT, Samsung also sponsored Uncrate and TrendHunter, which highlights another interesting aspect of this campaign: The difference in integration between the three. While NOTCOT created an entire section dedicated to netbook posts, and redesigned the blog’s theme to includes the Samsung Go, Uncrate and TrendHunter have just appended the leading and trailing banners to their netbook posts and placed the content aggregating banner into the sidebar, giving their sponsorships a much more traditional feel. As blogs continue to evolve and take over the role that traditional media used to serve in the consumer’s consumption of media however, I expect more sites to go the route that NOTCOT has pioneered, offering advertisers a much more customizable and comprehensive option for integrating a brand and its products into the overall experience.

While this was obviously a one-off campaign that required a lot of planning and integration, it’s not hard to imagine how blogs and advertisers can use this as an example of how to think outside the banner and reach their intended audience without feeling like the brand is being forced upon them. However, the key will be to avoid sponsorships that feel like the blogger was bought and paid for, and work to create sponsorships that feel like a natural extension of the content that the sponsored blog would cover anyways.

The Good:

• Sponsorship highlights the brand in a natural, non-intrusive way that’s specific to the blog being sponsored.
• Innovative placements cut through a viewer’s ad blindness.
• Content doesn’t feel forced, and integration is a natural extension of the blog’s typical subject matter.

The Bad:

• Expensive one-off requires a lot of planning and setup, and would be difficult to roll out on a large scale.
• Consumers are wary of sponsored content, which can affect their opinion of any review.

The Future:

• Brands work closely with blogs to integrate themselves into the experience, going beyond just a banner ad or sponsored post, and becoming a much larger part of the new digital media.

NOTCOT Netbook Resource Center

Most companies would love to have people spend a few minutes of each day thinking about their brand, and many pay a lot of money for the privilege. However, paying to put your brand in front of people’s eyes and having people want to look at your brand on a daily basis are two very different things, with the former often leading to brand fatigue while the later leads to a case study and high fives around the office. Making people want to look at your brand isn’t what I’d call easy, but if you can find a service that people want to use anyways and then cover it in your branding, there’s a good chance you can get them to look at your logo on a daily basis and actually get some value out of it along the way. For UPS, that’s exactly what they’ve done with the POPURLS Brown Edition, a sponsored dashboard for business news.

POPURLS is a “dashboard for the latest web-buzz, a single page that encapsulates up-to-the-minute headlines from the most popular sites on the internet”. POPURLS Brown Edition takes that formula and delivers only business related news, including the U.S. Economy, Small Business news, the Global Economy, Capital Lending and more. UPS then pays POPURLS to make the page UPS brown, slap the UPS logo in a few different places, and slide video thumbnails of the UPS whiteboard ads in between content, with the end result being a branded space that automatically updates with all of the latest business news on a frequent basis. Think of it as UPS associating their name with some of the best business content online without having to pay a single dollar to any writers to do so.

One addition to the already proven POPURLS formula is that UPS has permanently added specific UPS links to the bottom of each section when appropriate, so for instance, the Technology section links to the UPS Mobile iPhone App and the Small Business section links to UPS Paperless Invoice service. These links are tagged with a small UPS logo, and work well because they’re categorized along with the regular news, so that someone who is interested in technology and browsing the technology news section can also see what UPS is doing on the technology front.

Another advantage of the POPULRS sponsorship is that UPS can use the POPURLS system to create dynamic banner ads that are constantly updated with the latest business news. This allows them to automatically inject hot keywords and relevant headlines into their banners that will grab people’s attention, and the rotating creative helps fight banner fatigue for viewers that see the same banner over and over. These banners rely heavily on the POPURLS branding, which works well in the social space where many viewers will have had previous experience with the POPURLS service, but may not work as well in other areas where the POPURLS name is not as recognizable.

Partnerships and sponsorships are a tricky thing to master, as each brand must benefit from the union, the two must be related but non-competitive, and the value needs to be high enough to deliver results, but not so high that the cost becomes prohibitive. However, when done right, a good partnership/sponsorship can be an easy way to create a service that people actually want to use, and that each side can be happy to be a part of.

The Good:

• Existing POPURLS formula is proven, making it easy to create a new product with just a few small changes.
• Users get value out of the dashboard in exchange for their time spent in front of the UPS brand.
• Constant updates keep the content fresh and allow UPS to leverage the latest in business news.

The Bad:

• UPS is not a vital part of the equation, and a business news edition of POPURLS could easily survive without the UPS sponsorship.
• Lack of control over the content means there are potential risks for stories that don’t favor UPS.

The Future:

• Partnerships and sponsorships allow brands to piggyback on successful web properties while delivering value to the user in exchange for brand exposure.

POPURLS Brown Edition

Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of music on Pandora, and while their Music Genome Project is great, it’s their advertising that has kept me coming back for more. By working with companies to integrate their ads into the overall experience, Pandora is able to use their advertising format to create value for both the advertisers and the users. One example that really stood out recently was the integration of Columbia, which brings together a banner, backgrounds and playlists to create an entire branded experience.

Experience marketing is a growing trend in recent years, as companies think outside the banner and look beyond traditional media for their next customer, but it’s often costly, time and labor intensive, and usually relies on social media to spread the experience of a select few out to the larger population. What Pandora has managed to do with their advertising is to create an experience that, while not at the scale of a traditional experience marketing campaign, does manage to spread a sponsor’s message to a much larger audience.

The ‘Pandora Experience’ goes like this: When listening to the free version of Pandora on Pandora.com, any user action (such as changing the volume, skipping or rating a track, or changing a station) changes the banner(s). This allows Pandora to ensure that their ‘views’ are actually being viewed, and probably helps boost the numbers when it comes time to negotiate costs. Sponsored banners (vs. remnant ads served through ad networks) usually include a site takeover that changes the background as well, though not all advertisers are using that feature to its full advantage.

When Columbia makes it to the front of the sponsored banner rotation, listeners are presented with a banner that looks like a dashboard interface that has been customized to include their local weather forecast. While banner customization based on IP address has been available for a while now, it’s often inaccurate at best, and usually results in a very rough and forced feeling of customization. On Pandora however, account holders provide a zip code when they register, so the Pandora system can accurately match each user to a location they’ll recognize, even if they happen to be traveling or at work and away from their home base.

With this single piece of user data in hand, Columbia matches the user’s current weather to a piece of clothing in their current collection. Users can then scroll over the rest of the five-day forecast to see what Columbia would recommend for the upcoming weather, or arrow through a larger catalog if they see something they like and want to investigate further. Each type of weather also includes a customized playlist that a user can add to their collection of Stations, and when listening to that custom playlist, the user exclusively sees the Columbia banner and the Columbia-sponsored background that matches the weather. (Or maybe the weather that the user wishes they had, as Columbia also allows users to select a variety of alternative weather options in case they want to brighten up a stormy day with the Sunshine Playlist.)

What’s so great about this medium is that Columbia can use it to transport your mind away from your desk and into a winter wonderland, where you can see the snow and hear the winter music, and then think to yourself, ‘You know, I probably will need a winter jacket for that ski trip I’ve got planned.’ They grab your attention with personal details that you wouldn’t expect an advertiser to present you with, and then use that attention to draw you into an experience that promotes the brand to more than one of your senses.

Columbia’s attention to the detail can also be seen in the way they have designed the banner, with plenty of arrows to direct an interested viewer’s attention to the important areas of information. For starters, every arrow but the ‘Buy Now’ button points away from the product, giving your eye a point to focus on that centers on the product they want to sell you. Then, if your eye works its way down from the forecast through the trail of orange, there are arrows along the way to guide you from the product to the weather to the custom playlist to the ‘Add Playlist’ button. It’s subtle, but there’s some good UI going on in this banner that works well for the intended purpose. If I were to find fault, I’d say that the alternative playlist selection is a little funky, but that’s nitpicking at best, since most users will just want to select the playlist they’re given that matches the weather they’re currently experiencing.

By presenting each user with a single banner at a time, and not overwhelming them with a barrage of advertising, Pandora has created a valuable placement that advertisers should be willing and happy to pay a premium for. At the same time, companies who are going to pay that premium need to be smart about it and think like Columbia to create an experience that adds to the medium and gives users a reason to engage with the advertising.

The Good:

• Integration creates a full experience that can be shared by a large number of consumers.
• A small amount of user data goes a long way towards creating a look and feel that is customized without being intrusive.
• Repeat engagement is dynamic, and the experience changes with the weather.

The Bad:

• Alternative playlist selection is a rough edge on an otherwise smooth experience.
• The available backgrounds are a bit… ugly.

The Future:

• Custom integration within specific channels allows advertisers to cater their message to each user and create a small-scale experience that packs plenty of impact.

Size often dictates what a company can and can’t do with their advertising: Larger companies can use their larger budgets to make a big splash if needed, and smaller companies can get away with scrappier methods that larger companies can’t even consider. One example of the small and scrappy side of advertising is the recent trend among iPhone game developers of collaboration, in which they will swap character cameos as a way of cross-promoting each game to the other game’s audience.

Examples include:

• Minigore’s John Gore swings through the worlds of Sway.
  
• Enviro-Bear 2010’s Enviro-Bear and Lizzy from Sway will make cameos in the upcoming release of Minigore.
  
• Harbor Master features a special episode called Pocket God Attacks! which features the characters from Pocket God.
  
• Pocket God added a new episode to their game called Bait Master, which pays homage to Harbor Master.
  
• The Creeps features characters from both Doodle Jump and Pocket God.
  
• Doodle Jump features a secret easter egg character from Pocket God.
  
• And the list goes on…

In addition to iPhone developers, indie PC developers are also getting in on the action, as demonstrated by Cliff Harris from Gratuitous Space Battles featuring rabbit shaped spaceships that take their design cues from Jeff Rosen’s game Overgrowth.

What makes this trend so interesting is that with traditional advertising, companies avoid promoting their competitors at all costs. In the indie space however, developers see other developers as more friend than foe, and are willing to help each other do what it takes to get their name out there. Perhaps it’s the fact that iPhone game pricing means consumers don’t need to pick one game or another, as they can just buy both, or perhaps it’s the fact that indie shops are often just one or two man armies, and so they see each other as a support system, but either way, there’s a different type of relationship between indie developers that you don’t see in most spaces.

When talking about his collaboration with Jeff Rosen, Cliff Harris said:

The thing I find really interesting though, is the way in which our companies can do stuff like this, where we promote each others games, even stick content from one game in another, with the minimum of fuss. When I suggested we stick a rabbit ship in GSB to see how it could work, I didn’t need to get my lawyer to talk to Wolfire’s lawyer. I didn’t need a strategic planning meeting with the head of corporate strategy, or have to justify to shareholders why we should help out what they would see as our competitors…

This is what I like about the Indie attitude. Indie devs often share tips on game coding, getting decent contract work done, promoting websites and running forums, even the financial side of the best payment providers and who knows a decent accountant etc.

Can you imagine the head of EA giving the head of Activision tips on how to save on their bandwidth bill?

This is the indie attitude, and the indie advantage. We tend to take it for granted, because at the end of the day, me and Jeff are two guys who love games and love making games. Somewhere along the line, the mainstream industry forgot that.

Since the Minigore/Enviro-Bear collaboration was what sparked the idea for this post in the first place, I decided to reach out to the developers with a few questions and see if they’d respond. Not one to disappoint, Kimmo from Mountain Sheep replied to my questions with some great insight into the world of the indie developer:

• As an indie developer, what challenges do you face with advertising your game?
  The biggest challenge is to stand out among all the noise. You need to come up with something clever and eye-catching every time since you don’t have the budget to just push it through. It makes you pick your shots. Which is great, because it forces you to be creative.
• How did you come up with the idea of adding characters from other games into your own?
  Timo (the artist behind Minigore) took a bunch of different characters and gave them the Minigore-treatment – just for fun. It turned out the style worked really well and we asked ourselves: what would be the wackiest thing you could do with the upcoming co-op update… we had just recently played Enviro-Bear and it was almost immediately obvious we just wanted to get the darn bear into the game. Timo got a hold of Justin Smith and he loved the idea. We felt so good about the whole thing that we wanted others in, too, and got some great names. Lizzy from Sway is going to make an appearance and we also have others we haven’t even revealed yet.
• Do you think it’s easier as an indie developer to do collaborations like this?
  The great thing about being an indie is you get to do whatever you personally think is right. It’s definitely a lot easier for indies to collaborate like this. It takes a lot of negotiation and paperwork to get two large companies to collaborate, but with smaller teams you can get the ok even on the same day!
• Are collaborations just a fun way to work with other developers, or do you think they help cross-promote both games?
  They are both. It makes the whole process of developing so much more fun by offering a deviation from the daily routine. In the App Store the visibility on the device itself is crucial and that’s where cross-promotion and collaborations can really help. On-device cross-promotion is in fact how some of the larger companies with lots of games in the store are able to get their games to climb the charts. Indies on the other hand usually don’t have that many games, so collaborations like this can be huge for them.
• What game would you love to see John Gore play a role in?
  Now that Disney has bought Marvel, John Gore absolutely needs to get involved in the mash-up and get his ass handed to him by the Iron Duck or Gooferine.

Unfortunately, I don’t think collaboration is a technique that will work for many industries, as the willingness to enter into a reciprocal relationship is a lot easier for indie shops that don’t have a team of lawyers scrutinizing each and every word in a contract. For those that can make it work though, it’s a great way to not only get the word out about your product, but to build a support system of peers for yourself along the way.

The Good:

• Collaboration benefits both parties.
• Advertising without ads avoids banner blindness.
• Helps smaller companies build a support system.

The Bad:

• Difficult for larger companies to manage.
• Runs the risk of lopsided agreements that benefit one company more than the other.

The Future:

• Small companies help themselves by helping one another, benefiting the industry as a whole and giving extra value to consumers along the way.

Sharpie’s new Uncapped Gallery is a great example of how a company can embrace the social web, encourage word of mouth and show off what its products can do in the hands of actual customers.

The gallery is set up like a Sharpie lifestream, and pulls in content from the Sharpie Showcase, the Sharpie Blog, Flickr, YouTube and the web. Each item is color coded to indicate where it came from, and clicks out to the original version so that users can interact and explore. Once a user clicks on an item and leaves the Uncapped Gallery to view the original, a navigation bar pops up so that they can return with a single click, or continue on if they find something interesting. Lastly, a share button attached to each item allows users to easily share the item with others in their own networks across a number of different channels.

What the Uncapped Gallery does is allow Sharpie to go out and find cool things that people are doing with their products and highlight them in a very public way. This serves to both thank the people that are showing off what they can do with Sharpie products, and to encourage others to create things with Sharpie products so that they too might be highlighted on the site. The effect is similar to what you’d see with a contest or giveaway, where word of mouth is exponentially increased, but there is no need to incentivize the conversation monetarily, and the word of mouth is much easier to sustain over a long period of time vs. a quick-hit contest or giveaway. In essence, Sharpie is able to take what users are doing naturally, namely, share the work they create with Sharpie markers, and increase the frequency by showing users that they are paying attention to, and appreciate the work that is being shared.

Turing the site into a user generated content portal has also allowed Sharpie to transform their brand from a product brand into a lifestyle brand. Rather than focus on the features of the pens or the differences between each pen type, Sharpie can instead embrace the culture that their brand has created, and use that culture to advertise their products by inspiring people to make creative things and to be a part of the larger Sharpie community. As a user, you can look at the Uncapped Gallery and see all the things that people are able to do with Sharpie products and know that there are an endless number of possibilities that Sharpie markers will allow you to explore. You can also reach out to users that are doing things that you think are interesting and communicate directly with them, turning the site into a source of fantastic user reviews. The result is that Sharpie isn’t selling pens, but rather, what those pens will allow you to do.

The Good:

• Leverages the social web to increase word of mouth and highlight product uses.
• Creates a community around the brand.
• High return for a low investment.

The Bad:

• Needs constant maintenance to stay fresh.

The Future:

• Companies use the social web to highlight what actual customers are doing with their products, allowing them to turn reviews, demos and a large part of the advertising over to the community.

Sharpie Uncapped

Q: What do Google Apps and Virgin America have in common?

A: Clouds.

Usually, bringing together two major companies for a single campaign is at best a challenge, and at worst impossible, because the companies are either too closely related to one another and so they compete, or they’re not related enough, and so they don’t add anything to the overall value of a larger campaign. For The Day In The Cloud Challenge however, Google and Virgin found a commonality in the ‘clouds’ (you can use Google Apps and their cloud services while flying through the clouds on a Virgin America flight) and they used that commonality to create a rather compelling campaign.

Before we dive into the game though, let’s look at the players:

Cloud Computing is a hot topic lately, and though most of us probably use cloud based services on a daily basis without giving it a second thought, cloud computing is still not something that many people understand or pay attention to. According to Wikipedia, cloud computing is “a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet”. Hmm… Since that description does little to actually explain the concept, let’s just stick with Google’s description: “Cloud computing is a new way of using your computer that lets you store, access and share your information through the web, instead of on your hard drive.” Much better.

Google is a company that makes most of its revenue by serving ads to consumers. Since Google’s revenues are directly related to the number of ads it can serve, it’s constantly looking for more places to put more ads so that it can make more revenue. As a result, Google has become a major proponent of ‘cloud’ services, and has developed an entire suite of applications that all live in the cloud. By creating these cloud services, Google is moving people into an environment where they are viewing tens, hundreds, or even thousands of Google’s pages each day to do common tasks like emailing and blog reading, and as a result, Google can guarantee that they’ll have access to tons of eyeballs, and more importantly, more places to put more ads in front of those eyeballs.

Virgin America is an airline that prides itself on service, style, entertainment, relaxation and astonishingly reasonable fares. One of the main features of their ‘living room in the sky’ is the fact that they have WiFi across their entire fleet, free in-flight entertainment, and many of the amenities that their competitors have chosen to forgo in search of lost revenue.

Now that we understand the players, let’s look at the game:

Since cloud computing is still a relatively new idea, and many people are still unaware of the fact that they are already using cloud computing for things like Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Reader and Picasa, Google teamed up with Virgin American for an event called ‘A Day In The Clouds’. The goal of that event was to get people to experience some of Google’s most popular services while taking part in a massive online scavenger hunt/trivia game by using Google applications either on the ground or ideally, in the ‘clouds’ aboard one of Virgin’s WiFi equipped planes. The contest consisted of nine rounds of trivia and games, followed by a ‘creative round’ that would be used in case of a tie. Each round featured questions that could be answered using one or more of Google’s apps, and winners received an HP netbook, 1 terabyte of Google Account storage, and a year of free flying through Virgin America complete with complimentary WiFi.

The campaign itself was a textbook example of a well-executed contest, but there are a few things that stood out and made The Day In The Cloud Challenge especially interesting:

1. Twitter – On every page of the DITC microsite, there was a box that displayed the latest tweet from @DayInTheCloud, an account that was set up specifically for the campaign. From that box, users were able to follow the account, message the account directly, or see the history of DITC tweets. Each tweet that @DayInTheCloud sent out included the #DayInTheCloud tag, and users were encouraged to use that tag as well so that everyone could easily follow along with the conversations that were occurring about the campaign. Users were also able to tweet out their score after finishing the challenge, and each one of those tweets was tagged with #DayInTheCloud to help increase social sharing of the campaign. Lastly, the Twitter account was used both for conversation and for broadcasting, as they answered questions, provided updates, gave hints and linked out to other blogs that were covering the event. This allowed the Twitter account to be interactive, which makes users much more likely to follow the account in exchange for the interesting information and conversation.
2. Social Media – Every DITC page included a ‘Spread the word’ box that allowed users to share the campaign with friends through various social media channels with just the click of a button. These buttons were formatted so that they would automatically populate the message field with a pre-designed message, and this allowed users to help spread the campaign through channels like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious and MySpace; greatly increasing the pre-event buzz without a lot of extra effort.
3. Micro-Community – Using Google’s Friend Connect feature, DITC formed its own community where players could exchange ‘spirited pre-game banter’ with other players and meet everyone else that was participating. Engagement with the community wasn’t outstanding, but for those that used the feature, I’m guessing that it greatly added to their overall experience.
4. Video – Using a combination of YouTube and Blogger Video, DITC was able to promote the competition beforehand and show participants both during and after the competition on the DITC blog. Since video (and especially HD video) is a highly effective but under-utilized way of getting a message across, it was nice to see it play such a prominent role in this campaign.

It’s tough to bring two messages from two very different companies together for a single campaign, but when it works well, the combined efforts can produce something that’s greater than the sum of the parts. Getting people to try out an entire suite of apps is a also tough proposition, and especially when those apps are built on a platform that few understand, but if you can manage to do what Google and Virgin have done and find a way to incentivize that trial and make it fun and interesting as well, you’ll have a successful campaign on your hand in no time.

The Good:

• Brought together two major companies for a single campaign in a relevant way.
• Made the competition fun and accessible for all skill levels.
• Used available tools to help promote the campaign and get users involved.

The Bad:

• Could have used additional paid promotion.
• Some questions required a high level of technical expertise.

The Future:

• Major brands work together to push a single message, leveraging their awareness through social media to engage consumers in fun and interesting ways.

Day In The Cloud

One of my advertising rules of thumb is this: Content that works well online is not the same as content that works well on television.

To see why, let’s look at Carl’s Jr.’s latest ad campaign for their Portobello Mushroom Six Dollar Burger.

First, their television commercial:

Next, one of the videos created for their online campaign:

See the difference?

While their heavily produced, perfectly scripted, hero-shot filled 30-second commercial managed to acquire more than a quarter million views in under a week, less than 200 people rated the video during that time, and less than 500 commented on it, indicating that a very low percentage of those quarter million viewers were actually engaged by the video. (Plus, their previous videos have around a thousand views or less, so I’m guessing most of the Portobello Mushroom Six Dollar Burger’s quarter million views were bought and paid for though an ad buy.) By contrast, the second video, created by one of YouTube’s top users named NigaHiga, acquired more than a million views in under a week, nearly 20,000 ratings, and more than 16,000 commentst, indicating a HUGE amount of engagement.

So what did Carl’s Jr. do right?

1. Create original content – Instead of trying to push existing assets online with banner ads and video buys, a smart company will reach out to prominent users and elicit their help with creating original content that will appeal to that user’s existing fanbase. The resulting videos might not have the highest production quality, or may stray from the strict brand guidelines from time to time, but they will be done in a style that the online community has come to expect, and will be an open and honest interpretation of the product by the creator, rather than the company speaking through a hired personality.
2. Involve the viewer – If online content is good, viewers will often want to emulate the campaign with creative of their own, so smart companies will encourage that response and find ways of compensating users that go above and beyond to engage with the brand by creating videos of their own. In this case, each sponsored video ended with a call out by the star to the viewers to encourage them to make their own ‘How do you eat yours?’ video. As a result, while most pure UGC campaigns require a huge prize or some other promise of fame and fortune to get a response, this campaign is fueled by viewers’ desire to relate to the personality behind the video, and the compensation is the fact that the star might actually see the video response. A UGC video response campaign also doesn’t have to cost a lot when using YouTube, since the site’s built-in video response feature and viral sharing tools mean the backend is already in place for a campaign with little to no effort required from the sponsor company.
3. Use the tools – YouTube provides built-in tools for creating and spreading a message, and smart companies will make sure any online video campaign uses them to the fullest. For one, each video should be embeddable. It sounds obvious, but there is still the occasional video that gets put online by a company that can’t be embedded into other sites, and it’s just a waste of potential free media. Second, smart companies will establish a way for viewers to integrate their own content quickly and easily into the overall campaign. Whether it’s posting video responses to campaign videos or tagging their own videos with a specific keyword, giving users the ability to contribute will do a lot to increase the viral spread of a campaign idea. Lastly, tools like the ‘Favorites’ area of a brand’s channel and Flash video viewers allow a company to separate videos into unique campaigns and make it easy to do a lot with a little.
4. Start from the top – If the budget is big enough, there’s a lot of value in going after the biggest online stars you can find and afford. In this case, Carl’s Jr. got a few of the top 10 most subscribed to YouTube stars to create a video, and the results speak for themselves: After less than a week, each video had an average of 250,000 views, with some receiving more than a million. It might be tempting to save a few bucks by going after the up and coming stars, but there’s a reason certain content producers have so many subscribers, and that’s usually because they consistently make quality videos that others want to watch.
5. Give creative freedom – Too often, companies get online stars involved in their campaigns and then limit what they can say and do, or try too hard to keep them on brand. The main problem with this is that viewers can usually tell when a message is heavily controlled, and views, pass-along and overall engagement will decrease dramatically as a result. Second, the popular YouTube users are popular for a reason, and they will know what their fans want and what works best, so why try to reinvent the wheel? By giving the content creators more creative control, the videos will be more original and more unique, the views will be higher, and the costs associated with trying to control the message will be much, much lower.

As far as online video campaigns go, the Carl’s Jr. Portobello Mushroom Six Dollar Burger campaign was a complete success. They got a number of top users to create content, that content has generated a high amount of engagement, and viewer response has been very positive overall. Sure, it’s not the flashiest campaign, and it’s definitely not the most expensive, but when the results can speak for themselves, who can doubt the power of a well-run online video campaign?

The Good:

• Uses existing cewebrities to tap into existing communities and create content that is specifically targeted to the online audience.
• Engages the viewer and encourages participation.
• Uses existing YouTube tools to their fullest, which extends the campaign while keeping costs down.
• Offers an online only coupon to try out the product, giving viewers an exclusive offer and connecting the campaign to actual sales.

The Bad:

• Some of the videos are a bit on the quirky side, and may catch unaware viewers and those that aren’t used to web content by surprise.

The Future:

• Brands use existing online personalities to give their campaigns life and guarantee initial success.

YouTube – Carl’s Jr.