In a sudden wave of cultural awakening, media buyer Caren Coffin and writer Ana Yoerg have started to explore new social avenues.

Inspired by their older, late-twenty-something friends and mature superiors at their San Francisco-based interactive ad agency, the two girls have made conscious effort to "branch out" and really take advantage of everything their fair city has to offer.

Coffin expressed enthusiasm about her first foray into Bay Area day hikes. "I went hiking in Tennessee Valley on Saturday and was completely pleased with the result. Not only did I meet a cute new guy who is way athletic, I got a great tan! Try getting that in a bar." Author’s Note: Outdoor bars like Sam’s and Pier 23 are exceptions to this rule, though are indeed limited to daytime drinking. Nighttime tan-seekers can try self-tanner osmosis from the Marina crowd at the famous Bermuda Triangle.

Yoerg was also happy with her Saturday success: "I woke up super-late after a crazy Friday night in North Beach. I was like, I am such a waste of space. I need to deal with myself. So I totally bailed on my friends the next night and went to see Harold and Maude at the Red Vic, like by myself, and read a chapter of Eat Pray Love before I went to bed – soooo early!"

And they’ve already begun looking into other venues. Jazz at Pearl’s and museum nights at the deYoung have made the first cut.  Using company time to conduct further research on sites like Involver and the Only in San Francisco Calendar, they are meticulously compiling a comprehensive list of local activities that will produce the highest levels of social ROI.

Ms. Coffin is happy to employ her web analytics and Excel skills (learned on the job!) to measure Cultural Event ROI based on criteria such as Cute Guys, Free Booze, and Gossip Opportunities. Yoerg will take an advertorial approach to the final report, using her powers of persuasion to help San Francisco girls "take back the night from double vodka sodas" and "better themselves, without concealer" through exposure to high American culture.

The report will be released at the end of August, timed perfectly for the September and October social season, when warmer nights send twenty-somethings out in droves, seeking entertainment. See www.beyondbeerpong.com for the full report.

…there is a lot of good stuff out
there and, like everywhere else, there is a lot of junk. Now with the Internet,
90 percent is unwatchable and maybe a 10th of one percent is brilliant.  

Who said this?

a) Jeff Zucker

b) Bill Maher

c) Leslie Moonves

d) Charlie Whittingham

Guess again, it was Michael Eisner.
Remember him? Disney dude. So, he started The Tornante Company which then
launched Vuguru, the new media studio that brought out the mini-series Prom
Queen – aimed at the young, early adopters of new media technology. Episodes
are 90 seconds long, ads are 3-5. Now that
is a ratio people can deal with.

“In the past few years, the
development of exciting and innovative digital media platforms and technologies
has outpaced the creation of truly great content.” Mediapost
called him a content guy at heart; I
would go one step further and call him a capitalist – in the best sense of the
word. Capitalizing on the latest trends in online video advertising, which
according to eMarketer, will grow 89 percent this year
to $775 million.

The Pew
Internet study on the subject reveals that 19% of “gen pop” view or
download video every day, and that goes up to 31% when we’re talking about the
18-29 age group. Ads rank surprisingly high, at 13% – whether they be rich media
integrated into content, or specifically sought out. (This is in the same
ballpark as Sports and Politics, and far, far ahead of Adult. Whew.)

But for Eisner, who’s got anywhere from 3-6 interns trawling
the Internet for good videos to post on Vuguru’s The Cream, the challenge is
not in getting more people to jump on board on the online video train, but to narrow
their focus on what is the highest quality, where the talent is. “You need talent and personality and perseverance, and people
who usually have talent and the passion get to wherever they need to be seen. I
have always felt there is a dearth of talent, and spent most of my career
looking over and under any rock for that talent.”

Talent + professional production?
It’s what the people want, with 62% expressing a preference for video created
by professionals, but this does incur higher costs. It’s the trade-off, I
suppose, for the higher ad revenue that traditional media still brings. We’ll see how it creeps up, slowly but surely.

Wake up on the wrong side of the bed? “Crabby.”

Just found out you’re going to be an aunt? “Elated.”

And then there’s all those feelings in between – generated from factors like low barometric pressure, a particularly
delicious turkey avocado wrap, or an existential conversation in the spirit of Gus Van Sant’s
Gerry. Anything and everything can contribute to daily moods, and we don’t
have to be PMSing or riding on some sort of mood elevator – or be surrounded by
psychologists – to be aware of them.

Since most people don’t really want any response beyond,
“fine thanks and you” to the standard “How are you” greeting, we need other
outlets. Click on The Feel Wheel and
you’ll know exactly where you stand. It’s actually part of a larger plan to
conduct “pop research as entertainment” with the goal of aggregating
well-profiled, active, and responsive consumers which would lead to higher ad
dollar rates and conversion income.

Any bets that Laurel Toby clicked “Great – couldn’t be
better” when the wheel of fortune span her way when JupiterMedia
agreed to pay $23 million for MediaBistro? From zero to millions in only 14
years? Dunno, I think I’d probably consider that “an improvement” from
yesterday too.

From health care to global warming, social security to Iraq, the questions of CNN/YouTube Democratic debate really ran the entire spectrum. Normally, I can’t stay awake for debates – especially the last one I saw which was the Berlusconi-Prodi battle that took place in Italy last year. (I’ll put it this way: you can’t impose a 3-minute time limit on an Italian politician.)

But this one was no snoozer. In fact, I would go so far as to call it interesting. As observed on  Online Video Watch, "Ordinary Americans are far more interesting than politicians. And the
draw became not duels of words but the question of how to best improve
the United States."

True. There was little room for running off on tangents or candidate-bashing. Contenders Sens. Joseph Biden, Chris Dodd, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and  John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Rep. Dennis Kucinich and Bill Richardson were all lined up like sitting ducks on the stage at the Citadel and had to answer questions like, "Will you be different than do-nothing officials who can’t do their jobs?" (See here for a complete transcript.)

The questions were submitted on YouTube
- about 3,000 of them were received – and narrowed down to about 50
which were then presented on the big screen by moderator Anderson
Cooper of CNN. I was skeptical at first at the abiIity of CNN to do
this "filtering" but then I remembered – the content is still
user-generated and therefore a more real voice. There were, however, a few that didn’t make the cut.

A Not-So-Complete List of What You Didn’t See
Bjorn Svenson, who is dressed as a Viking and claims to be originally from Norway, wanted to know what the candidates plan to do about illegal immigration.
A San Rafael woman dressed like an outlaw and asked what will be done to stop predatory lending.
Groucho from Los Angeles inquiring into the problems of home ownership affordability.
And my favorite, a question about telephone outsourcing, sung by a woman in a pink bathrobe.

But even with these questions left unaired, the entire event was still rather lighthearted. CNN commentators noted that the format worked well. "I got a great kick out of it," one admitted. Really, it was the spirit of the Internet translated into politics: informal, to-the-point, forthright, and sometimes downright funny.

Maybe it was because they’re Democrats, but I was impressed by most of the candidates ability to adapt to the different types of questions. (I wonder how the Republicans will fare on September 17th.)

Speaking of gray-haired politicos, there were a choice few who got a little riled up over the war and tax questions but lost energy and started murmuring when it came to social issues. I thought that Barack and Hillary were by far the most consistent. The audience agreed: Obama was the winner of CNN’s focus group and Clinton won the SurveyUSA instapoll.

We’ve long been perplexed on the problem of online video
content – who will buy, and for how much. (Answer: no one, and nothing.) Coming
to terms with the fact that advertising is going to have to be the sugar daddy
for streaming video, and it now looks like audio is in the same boat. No one
will pay to receive podcasts. But marketers are thwarted from embracing
podcasts because they have no way of tracking how many times their messages are
being heard or changing outdated ads.

However, like a hungry herd of raptors from Jurassic Park, industry executives are reported
to “have closed in on a solution in recent months” and may soon be able to
provide consumers with “a much wider array of free audio (and video) content…if
they can stand a little advertising to go along with it.”

Sure, why not? But the question now is not what and when,
but where and how? iMediaConnection offered up some advice last year what
was the best way to do it, but Susan Bratton has her own ideas: the mid-roll.
“I have the ability to not just have a single ad in front and end, but a series
of them that’ll tell the story.” Ooh. Ahh.

With technology that keeps the podcasts connected to the
publishers’ site for better tracking, and the formation of a new industry
group, the Association for Downloadable Media – with about 15 companies
involved, from Apple to NPR – the future looks fairly good. Projected to grow
at a compound annual rate of 154.4 percent to $327 million in 2010 by PQ
Media’s Alternative Media Research, and to $400 million by 2011 by eMarketer,
we’ll certainly be seeing more on this.

With search, video, social networks, blogs and streaming TV
so prominent these days, though, we’re wondering along with RawVoice
if “podcast advertising [is] doomed to
play fifth fiddle online”.

In an attempt to crank up its popularity, we’ve done our own
podcast. Check out CEO Bruce Carlisle’s podcast with Lisa
Morgan on The Future of Advertising, in anticipation of his appearance at
Online Market World in October. No-Ad!

How do you create and implement a successful online branding
campaign? Then, how do you measure it? While we’re at it, how do you
solve a problem like Maria?

There’s an article in Ad Age
that pinpoints the commonalities among the eight best online branding campaigns
of 2006, as
determined by Dynamic Logic. They measured success by awareness, persuasiveness,
and positive brand impact. Let me ask one more time: How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? In other words, how do you measure these
things? With a click-through report? I
think not. Let’s table that issue for one moment and move onto the "things" themselves. (How very Imagist of me.)

They found that “the right ingredients for online ads” were:
Simple and visual. There’s too much else going on to try and
compete with crazy graphics and complicated text.
Front and center. No little tricks, we’re not clever enough
to figure these out. More likely, our ADD kicks into high gear when we’re
online and we just don’t have the time to mess around with gimmicks.
Align online and offline campaigns. Does this mean putting
your website on a billboard, or using a banner to direct consumers to an
offline promotion? Probably.
Incorporate video and rich media. Spinning McShakers,
dunking Oreos: put your message into motion.
Add interactivity. Duh.
But wait, how duh is that? We’re always talking about “interactivity
this” and “interactivity that” but will someone please tell me what that means?
Am I really going to be excited about being able to virtually add my Crystal Light On the Go
to a bottle of water? Well, yes. Herein may lie the secret to that little thing
that we don’t like to talk about: connecting the dots, Pee-wee Herman style, between user engagement, interactivity, emotion, and (drum roll please) Brand Experience. In holistic terms, “brand
energy.” Oh yes, a concept so new that Wikipedia
has yet to create a definition for it.

Here is their first draft:

The energy that flows throughout the system that links
businesses and all their stakeholders and which is manifested in the way these
stakeholders think, feel and behave towards the business and its products or
services.

Stakeholders? What about customers? The concept is that a
brand is experiential, and that businesses create value through all
transactions, i.e. “meaningful experiences.” But in order for the value to be
created, “people first have to have positive associations with the business
and/or its products and services and be energized to behave positively towards
them.”

This is getting way trippy.

What they are trying to say, in New Age terms, is that
online branding campaigns are about building an emotional connection, and you
can’t measure emotion. How do I love thee, asked Elizabeth Barrett
Browning. And even she couldn’t come up with a quantifiable metric. (Maybe she should have spent less time with Pope’s Homeric translations and more time with her web analytics textbook.)

As Jack Gordon explains in “Which
is Declining – Brands, or Branding?”

how consumers feel about your brand is more important than
what they think about your brand. It is precisely this emotional reaction to
the brand that leads to consumers spending more money for a particular product.
Understanding and reinforcing the brand’s emotional appeal is every bit as
important as understanding its functional benefits.

So, turn on the charm and get the consumer to love you. Then
“count the ways.” If you run out of fingers and toes, try Lovemarks.

We can’t ignore China forever, that’s for sure. Today’s SF Chronicle tells the continuation of the story of Xu Jinglei, the Chinese actress and director whose blog now has a readership of, well, millions. Since she started writing two years ago, more than 100 million viewers have caught a glimpse of her daily activities, moods, and thoughts. (No social or political commentary here, folks. China, remember?)

And these numbers are not even that accurate. (China, remember?) Sina, which hosts the site, notes that each entry regulary receives hundreds of comments. Last year, it topped the Technorati list, and some even argued that even then the numbers were still under-reported due to Sina’s selfish blog system that steals hits and other similar factors — you know, like the Great Firewall of China.

Nonetheless, as the Chronicle states:

Xu’s prominence also is a testament to China’s sheer force on the
Internet. Only a fraction of the country’s more than 1.3 billion people is
online, yet the number of Internet users in the country  –  about 137 million 
–  is closing in on the United States, which has between 165 million and 210
million, according to a Pew Internet & American Life Project report.

They’re mostly under 30, and they’re doing all the same things we’re doing, more or less. Chatting, social-networking, blogging, and buying Mao paraphenalia on eBay. Now the question is, where do they go from here? "When 1 billion people decide to do something, it has a ripple effect all
over the world," says Derek Gordon of Technorati. Sure it does, but are celebrities going to be the ones to "change the world"? My god, I hope not.

"Celebrities can obviously attract eyeballs, but celebrities can sometimes be a time bomb that will explode at some unknown moment in time," warns blogger Massage Milk. In a discussion on Xu Jinglei’s decision, or non-decision, to put advertisements on her site, he says that she should set an example for Chinese bloggers everywhere and build a foundation for the next steps towards profitability. "Anyway, if someone wants to advertise for a cure for mental retardation on my blog, I will fully support it."

Here’s even more of a laugh: check out News Groper, the fake celebrity blog site. Parodied Brad Pitt confesses, "I love popcorn. If babies were popcorn, my house would be a lot quieter. And more buttery." It’s almost as good as The Onion.

The New York Times covered the Sun Valley Summit this year, gathering of bigwig media types from all over, from Rupert to Larry, Jerry to Meg, Terry to…Tony Blair?  Hey, who invited that guy? (Party foul.)

The conference, once meant to be a haven for the Hollywood elite to discuss big ideas in a relaxed and remote atmosphere, is now known as a "birthing ground for mergers." Media mergers, that is. The kind we’re interested in, and the kind that have been making all the news this year and last. And in fact, there were high expectations coming into the weekend.

What deals would occur? 

Who has the prettiest private jet? 

And would Google and Viacom square off for a duel on the grassy knoll by the lodge’s romantic swan pond?

Who would you put your money on? Sure, Google’s got the technology, overqualified Ivy grads, and bouncy balls, but these old guys are tough. Viacom’s chairman, Sumner M. Redstone, has seen quite a few things in his 84 years, and according to the Times, seems like a man "who  believes he has a firm grip on the levers that run the world." Indeed, I would not underestimate their ties to business and political leaders and the clout they have, not just among each other. They got the goods: tremendous assets and the ‘tude to back it up.

But deep down, they must be just a little bit scared. They can’t play dumb anymore, and they must know that the days of controlling consumers will soon be over. Especially when companies like Sling Media introduce a box that allows consumers to watch their home television programming anywhere
there is broadband.

…the version of the future that Slingbox and its ilk
represents — a frictionless environment where consumers are surrounded
by media at a time and place of their choosing — is a threat on all
fronts to the people who own the pipes and what goes through them.

But for all the hype, and all the supposed confrontation, there wasn’t any fighting, and there wasn’t any dealmaking. Perhaps there were a few whispers or behind-the-back winks that we’ll hear about later, and until then, we’ll just have to hold our breath.

Launched more than a year ago, the satirous – yes, a made-up word – ad agency called Tribble Agency of Record came into existence. And I mean existence in the most loose form of the word, which is how the Internet has taught us to think of it. Part of their mission statement reads:

We are proud of our advertising agency legacy and we are proud to have
launched our site / blog to inform the tactics of how we intend to burn
our clients online marketing budget and inflate our billlable hours.

Designed to "point out the flaws and the crisis the current ad agency industry is in," Tribble is a blog that discusses some serious topics and some not-so-serious topics; they do a clever if splotchy job of spotting industry news that builds their thesis that the ad industry is suffering splendidly for their lack of SEO offerings, observing that said agencies have "yet to face the fact that they must change their business model and either buy or outsource these products to SEO firms."

For a quick laugh/shot of sarcasm, check it out. They might be worth keeping on intravenous drip too, for fairly interesting posts, like this one here about the clues from the trailer from the movie called…well, with no name. Neil Young’s horse, if you will.

Due out in January of 2008, this JJ Abrams film (Lost/Alias) is cloaked in mystery. There is lots of online discussion about it, but after watching the trailer, I’m unimpressed: didn’t we already see – and hate – Armageddon? I think I do wanna miss this thing. But what do you think about it as a marketing ploy? Smart & savvy, or over-the-top?

In any case, they don’t seem to be having any problems with SEO.

As I’ve stated before, I hate MySpace. Too junky. And as
I’ve not stated before – but am stating now – I have a strong dislike for
LinkedIn. Don’t get me wrong; it’s useful…but incredibly boring. Blah blah a
college friend’s resume blah blah introduce me to your boss.

But here is a mashup for you: Facebook. I know, it’s not like I just
discovered something new. It’s been around for a while, but all of a sudden, everbodys doin’ it.

But are they worth the $6 billion that Microsoft is offering
– 1/25^th of the Google valuation? John Battell of
SearchBlog says no. Robert Scoble agrees in
some respect, too, saying that Facebook’s advertising has little or no
connection to the user. “Facebook needs an advertising platform and it needs
one in the worst way. I’m not going to even look at the ads until the ads are
tied to the people on Facebook.”

But advertising is not what Facebook has posited itself to
be about. Rather, as summarized in the Fortune
tech blog, it is about being a “platform-provider, a giver of tools to the
creative masses, a massive enabler.” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg declares,
“Being a media company is about content. Being a technology company is about
being a layer in the stack. Facebook is a tech company.”

Okay, so you’re a tech company. What kind of “tech” are you
providing me?

They brag about their applications – now introduced by
third-party developers, which opens it up to monetization. And certainly the
ease and extent of connection between users creates a viral distribution
platform that is way better than any portal or search engine. But other than
that, I’m not being “wowed” by any fantastical, user-friendly tools. Maybe
after they IPO?

So, to sum up: MySpace & LinkedIn: bad. Facebook, good. Google sweating?
Not remotely. They’ve got their own
stuff goin’ on.