We’ve been on a rant the last few years pressing clients and prospects on producing long form video. Call Of Duty has produced a really nice new 2 1/2 minute piece with actor Peter Stormare (Fargo and Seinfeld) as The Replacer.

In a nice shift in tone Call Of Duty goes with funny as opposed to hyper-violent.

Again, we just don’t know why more aren’t building long-form when they seem to work so well.

Interesting how we can know more about something like Barbering or the history of Johnnie Walker than how our 20-40k cars are made when we buy them.

Shame on any auto-marketer who isn’t crafting long-form to explain how they’re doing it differently.

Anyone looking to build a spike in their marketing plan would do well to follow Psy and the K-pop studios cranking out these new stars.

The brilliant use of social and a manic, but methodical, amplification of the initial social success should be inspiring.  The K-pop have done persistent well with their Korean Stars but really did it right when they hit big with Psy.  A hit followed by a military style expansion, all in a matter of weeks.

Difficult to repeat as evidenced by the fact that Psy is the first K-pop artist to break through in the states but really solid.

Most haven’t heard that name but many have used the services of her companies:  Buzzcar, Zipcar and GoLoco.  Three successful companies all in the transportation reinvention game.

You could do far worse than to follow her counsel on start-ups.

Microsoft never got it right with Internet

Google never got it right with Social Networks  (setting aside of course the strength of YouTube)

From here on out it’s mobile or bust.

Will they get there through acquisition? If history is any indication the answer is no.  The public pressure to deliver will force the company to pay too much attention to the existing business and not develop aggressively enough against mobile.

On the other hand, they did say no to GM and all the other marketers who’ve asked them to expand what’s possible on the platform so perhaps they have a shot.  A long shot for sure but a shot nonetheless.

The Internet Underground Music Archive was launched in 1993.  It was created to democratize the music distribution business and give thousands of unknown bands a direct path to fans.  The concepts of: social or peer to peer influence, long-tail marketing and direct to consumer distribution were all a part of the original model.

The site was salvaged by Jason Scott (textfiles.com) and he has a nice write-up about the project.
Glad to see IUMA alive and hopefully kicking.

e.d.

I loved the recent Sandwich Billboard with the Meatball Sandwich review but damn this Boxing Coach at a gym in NYC ought to win some kind of award for this performance.

He’s brilliantly cutting of the chumps in the gym that he very publicly derides for their weakness. It’s painfully awkward to watch, having gone through a boxing phase myself, but you’ve got to watch every second of his dissection of their manhood. In a sense though you get why they come in spite of the cruelty. If they can convince him to stop insulting him then they’ve made it.

This makes it a great piece of advertising. Like with the meatball billboard, the brutal honesty is a crisp (and refreshing) position for the gym and gives it great separation from the fakey, “go-go”, Jake Lalanne spirit of all the other trainers out there.

It’s difficult to describe all the ways in which this sandwich board is brilliant.  Let’s try three:

1) It’s brutally honest.  We expect marketers to mostly hide from the truth but here’s someone being quite frank.

2) It’s funny.  We like things and people that are funny.  Putting this message on the sandwich board makes us want to hang around with the people who run this shop.  Regardless of the quality of the food.

3) The guy who wrote the review must be a bit of a douche and it probably wasn’t the sandwich that drove the review.  Somehow their willingness to put this message on the board makes us think that they must actually think their food is pretty good and that actually the jag-off who wrote it just had another issue that ticked him off.  

Since these people are so funny and we’re all so clever and appreciative of their humor we’re sure we wouldn’t be like the jerk and would actually have a great time here.  Can’t imagine there are any brands out there that wouldn’t learn a lesson in customer communication from these guys.  

Great post from Dan Lyons on The Daily Beast / Newsweek about the Facebook Instagram purchase.

In the piece Lyons makes the rather obvious point that these mobile devices are turning out to be pretty popular.  So much so that Zuckerberg realized his Desktop Internet system will die if it doesn’t get mobile tout de suite.

We may not like Facebook as a company as much anymore but  this was a smart acquisition in the Andy Grove, “Only The Paranoid Survive” kind of way.  He may turn out to be more Jobs-like than the rest of the desktop-CEOs.

In the first phase of social it was ok to treat all your communication with that same community-manager “up with people” voice.  Asking people their opinions on every single thing you post because you believe it will jack up the engagement numbers, or talking to communities in overly personal language and tone.  Why not.  Heck, people were downright thrilled to hear from a company so you could get away with just about anything.  But come on enough, please.

Let’s get those social voices aligned a bit more with the brand.  That community manager voice is as grating as the Obama “Hey” subject line or our personal favorite (or least favorite):  ”Let’s have dinner”