I’m not sure I know anyone who works in advertising who doesn’t love the show Mad Men. Their season 3 promotion allows you to create your Mad Men avatar! I had to jump right on this. That’s me in the bright blue in the middle.

I noticed that the cartoon versions of Don Draper and Roger Sterling (left) are looking a lot like RTC’s Matt Connor and Jeff Ross. Does that make Barry Kessel the Bertram Cooper of RTC?

Needless to say, I think this promotion is a brilliant use of social media and viral marketing. Check the Twitter avatar of half the people who work in advertising and they have changed over to Mad Men avatars in the past few days. But the question always becomes, how do you prove success on promotions like this. RTC wasn’t involved in this promotion, but here’s what I’d do. Until the show airs, you can’t determine real ROI of increased viewers. So, right now we’d be watching the leading indicators. But what are those leading indicators? Here are a few of the stats we’d be watching:

Stats as of 07/29/2009 for past 7 days:

• URL posted to Twitter 685 times
• URL posted to 112 blogs
• “Mad Men Yourself” mentioned on 84 blogs
• “Mad Men Avatar” mentioned on 65 blogs
• 315 results on Flickr for “mad men yourself”
• Posted to Delicious 224 times

One thing we learn right away is that Twitter fans are Mad Men fans. It’s an interesting piece of data for future promotions. A quick check on my Facebook friends showed more than a few have also utilized and shared their avatars! Names are obscured to protect their privacy.

Lots to learn from this promotion, and lots of fun to be had!

[tags]mad men, mad men yourself, marketing, advertising, social, viral, word of mouth[/tags]

I have nothing I can possibly add to this.

Last week I had the privelege of speaking at a 4As (American Association of Advertising Agencies) meeting of Kansas City advertising agencies executives. They were in NYC for a day of marketing & advertising fun for the Kansas City Council Board of Governors meeting at AAAA headquarters. It was quite a full bill of speakers with topics ranging from trends in media planning to consumer insights, and of course social media.

I decided to take advantage of SlideShare.net to socialize my social media presentation to the folks at AAAA, and anyone else who might be interested.

This is the second or third time I’ve done this presentation, and I’m now inspired to do a part two. So look out for the 5 Myths of Social Media & Marketing (Part II) in the near future. Here are the Ten Myths of Social Media & Marketing, the first five are covered in this presentation:

1. Social computing is a niche activity
2. Only a few people are involved in social computing/media
3. Only millenials are into social media
4. It doesn’t matter if your audience are "inactives"
5. Social computing has hit its peak
6. If you build it they will come
7. Social media is free
8. I should build a community for my brand
9. Social media has no trackable ROI
10. Blogging is done

[tags]social media, presentation, myths, marketing, 4as, aaaa[/tags]

I love when a company actually takes the time to know its customers well enough that they would think of a promotion like this. Jones Soda is a quirky micro-brew soft drink company that makes bizarre soda flavors like Turkey & Gravy for Thanksgiving and Jelly Doughnut for Hannukah. To be fair, they also make more mainstream flavors like Rootbeer and Cola, but I think their limited editions are far more interesting.

But…I digress.

Recently Jones Soda launched a promotion with ICanHasCheezburger to create a new label for their sodas. Beyond this they’ve created the ultimate in Web mashup experience. You can order a 12-pack of Jones Soda with your own customized “LOLcat” label for your soda. Now if you’ve never heard of ICanHasCheezburber or LOL cats, you’ve missed out on one the Web latest and greatest time wasters. Heck, there’s even an LOL Cat translation of the bible now. By the way, LOL cat is a generic term. You can really use any animal for this, hence the Hippo shot above.

Jones Soda cements their “hipster” status by joining forces with the ican crew and clearly knows that this site and the LOLcat experience appeals to their customers. I’ll be really curious to see how they don on sales. Even I’m considering it buying my own custom 12-pack.

[tags]jones soda, lolcat, i can has cheezburger, internet, promotions, marketing[/tags]

Twitter in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

[tags]twitter, video, what is twitter, twitter in plain english, twitter explanation[/tags]

Photo Credit: Andy Piper Used via Creative Commons Attribution Copyright

Depending on your point of view blogging is either the greatest thing to happen to marketing in the history of modern marketing, or the most over-hyped channel in history. Like most everything, it’s really somewhere in between. Blogging is honestly a great tool, if you use it well. Fame and fortune are hard to come by via blogging, but building a reputation — that’s a bit easier.

There are two main avenues to go about building your reputation via blogging:

1. Writing a blog
2. Commenting on other blogs

Since most people are familiar with the power of writing a blog — let’s talk about option number two. When I’m working with clients, they are often surprised that I don’t start out recommending that they write a blog. To me this is like trying to run a marathon when you’ve never even laced up your running shoes. It doesn’t matter if you are trying to build up your individual professional reputation or build awareness of your company in B2B or B2C markets. This works for all of them, but there are slightly different approaches. It often doesn’t occur to someone that leaving a comment on a blog can work not only at an individual level, but also have positive (or negative) effects at a B2B and B2C level.

Best Practices for Blog Commenting

Regardless of the reason you are commenting on a blog, if you are doing it for professional reasons there are a few best practices to keep in mind.

[tags]blogs, blogging, comments, commenting, wom[/tags]

1. Add value to the conversation. Forget about marketing and be a human being and respond to what you just read. If you are in a regulated industry like Pharma, you need to use some common sense here. Be aware and be very clear if you are speaking for yourself or your company.
2. Utilize the URL or “Website” field. This is where you mention your website. Almost all blogs have a place for commenters to leave their website. If you say something interesting, people will click to learn more about you. If you don’t have your own blog then link to your LinkedIn.com profile, or other appropriate location
3. Use a consistent and appropriate name. Blog comments can appear in search results. Make sure you use your full professional name.

It’s really that simple. Picking the right blogs to comment on to achieve business and marketing goals is a bit more challenging. There’s more science to that to ensure that the blogs have the right type of content, reach and engagement levels, and will allow you to truly build relationships over time. But, a little common sense can also go a long way.

Measuring Success

The last element of this technique I want to quickly cover in this post is measurement. The basics are really quite simple.

1. Website Analytics: If you are linking to your website or blog from your comments, simply check your analytics program to see if people are clicking through.
2. Responses: Are people responding to your comments and continuing the conversation based on what you said? That’s a great outcome.
3. References: Are the bloggers you are engaging with seeking you out in different arenas or referencing things you’ve said in comments in later blog posts? It’s a softer outcome than click-through rates, but it’s a highly desirable outcome.

Here’s one final tip. If you want an easy way to keep track of all those comments you’ve been leaving, you can use a service like coComment. It will track all the conversations you participate in and aggregate them for you.

So get out there and join in the conversation!

Since my whirlwind business trip to Cabo San Lucas a few months back, I’ve developed a taste for high-end tequila. So when the campaign for Hornitos opened up, I definitely was interested. I just received my “buzz kit” so I haven’t had a chance to pick up a bottle and try it out for myself, just yet. I’ll report back on that once I’ve sampled. What was funny, though, was one of the items in the kit: a tequila bottle shaped USB drive. Great — just what my computer needs — a shot of tequila!

I also just received my kit for Aura Paint, and I’m really looking forward to testing it out. The big selling point seems to be that it’s low odor and quick drying, but what I’m excited about is the low VOC (volatile organic compounds). That means it’s better for the environment. It’s funny that they are leading with “low-odor” and not eco-friendly — but maybe they think it will appeal to a wider audience that way. It’s more of a “why is it good for me” than “how does it help me save the world.” Either way — it seems like a good thing. I also dig the colors — now I just have to choose one!

[tags]buzz agent, buzz, wom, aura paint, hornitos tequila[/tags]