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You Want Viral? You Can’t Handle Viral! (Mediapost 11.30.11) 0

Virality. This is the single most important, most over-utilized, and meaningless term in digital marketing today. Virality applies to the concept of sharing content that happens spontaneously, through great planning or dumb luck. Virality is what you all want, and its something that many of you will never get.

There are elements that you can manipulate to try and increase the opportunity for something viral to take place, but you can’t control it. In the immortal words of Dan Patrick from his days at ESPN, “you can’t stop it, you can only hope to contain it”.

For virality to happen to need to have a couple key ingredients:

1. Strong, engaging, funny or immensely relevant content

Without truly engaging and relevant content, your message will go nowhere. You need the kind of exclusive, first-mover advantage content that people will see, will immediately apply to themselves and their situations, and will share.

2. Share functionality, built in and noticeable

Think through the user interface and make sure your share buttons are prominent, easy to use, and tap into Facebook, Twitter and email. Many people forget about email, but the majority of sharing still happens through email, so don’t overlook it.

3. A launching pad that stokes the fire for a large initial blast

You need a launching pad, and that can be an online campaign using Facebook, banners or in-game text ads. It can also be a TV campaign, or even a print campaign. You need something that can reach a large audience in an uncluttered environment, and all at the same time.

4. The launch needs to be a big, fast blitz, not a tempered, gradual release

As they say… go big or go home. You need to make a quick splash and you need to do it now. That is the only way to spark the attention of the fans, and get them to share your content.

Funny Or Die is among the best at this, having figured out all of the above and making viral efforts almost better than anyone. Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake should be ushered into the Viral Hall of Fame for their recent efforts with the History of Rap. These are the kinds of efforts that gain notoriety immediately, and then just keep on going. They have taken viral to an art form, and one that we all desire to emulate. Of course, relevant to one of my last articles, virality is impossible without great content. To be blunt, crappy content will not be viral. If you are a brand looking to create some viral buzz, or if you are an agency looking to pitch a “viral” campaign (if you are, you should rethink your strategy), then you need to be hyper critical of yourself. You cannot drive viral without the content being high quality. You better focus test that creative, you better have something really special. If not, then you are not setting yourself up for success.

And one last bit of advice; don’t be afraid to spend money in lieu of virality. You can drive reach in any number of ways, and viral is the most ideal, but reach is reach. Sometimes the tipping point requires more mass reach than you thought.

Don’t you agree?

Posted on: 12-4-2011
Posted in: treffiletti.com

An Ode To The Thrill Of Victory & The Agony Of Defeat (Mediapost 5.11.11) 0

I was reading an article in Sports Illustrated and it reminded me that ABC’s Wide World of Sports recently celebrated its 50-year anniversary, debuting in 1961 and leading the charge with beautiful sight, sound and motion tied to the emotion in sports. Wide World of Sports was revolutionary, and it became the template for how sports are covered on TV, and eventually the web. I remember watching it every week as a kid – and being completely engaged in whatever sport they were featuring that day.

Today there are many, many websites and cable networks who owe a debt of gratitude to the Wide World of Sports series, from ESPN’s “Outside The Lines” to sites like The High School Rudy Awards. WWOS created emotion around targeted sports where most people weren’t paying attention, and now that the web has matured we’re seeing lots of great sites take that style and run with it, further highlighting smaller, niche sports.

If you visit YouTube there are 4,420 videos for the Metal Mulisha, who lead the world of freestyle motocross. There are 34,600 lacrosse videos, many of which feature my beloved Syracuse Orange, all of which cater to a very targeted group of individuals. There are 24,100 videos for kite surfing – and if I had to hazard a guess I would say that outnumbers the number of total kite surfers there are in the US. There are even videos for “underwater basket weaving” and “hang gliding dogs”, though admittedly many of these are not very useful.

Wide World of Sports laid the groundwork for the increased price and value associated with sponsoring sports by making it about more than who won and who lost, and more about the human nature of sports. Sports has always been a valuable tool for a marketer, but that innovation in format created a more highly engaged audience in a wider-reaching array of sports, outside the standards of baseball, football, baseball and basketball. These days the UFC has eclipsed professional boxing and motocross is catching up to NASCAR, maybe not in terms of total dollars but definitely in terms of value for reaching a targeted audience. Sports Marketing is a huge business, and the web is creating even more opportunities for marketers to reach a highly engaged, emotionally attached audience. I would hazard a guess that if Tony Hawk were 21 years old today, he would quickly become one of the most recognizable faces in the world (far more than he is today) as skateboarding has substantially benefitted from ESPN’s X-Games and the myriad of clips the web offers (type in skateboarding on YouTube and prepare to be overwhelmed by more than 585,000 videos).

What’s interesting is that the aggregate of these sports has not been as effective as one would expect. There have been attempts at aggregating these assets together in ad networks and publishing companies, but rarely have they set the world on fire. You would think the advent of video online would have created a vacuum that sucked in all of these videos, and created the chance for insightful, emotional, journalistic overlays with highly engaged, highly monetizable audiences! ESPN is certainly the lead player in the category of online sports, but there’s definitely room for a secondary tier of sports enthusiast sites and content around their audience, isn’t there?

Regardless of the why or why not of the category, the fact is all niche sports owe a solid fist-bump to the Wide World Of Sports for blazing the trail that allows them to reach an audience, foster an audience and monetize an audience in some way. The fact that some skateboarders, motocross riders and kite-surfers can earn six figures every year in endorsements confirms that the legacy of WWOS will live on for many years to come.

Thanks for the memories Wide World Of Sports!

Posted on: 05-13-2011
Posted in: treffiletti.com

COD: Yinzcam delivers sports, squared 0

Thanks to for publishing this first.

Sports is an entertainment category that we as marketers need to pay a lot of attention to,because it is really the only thing left in our culture that consistently draws large audiences. Certainly there is a great deal of innovation in the sector, like ESPN narrowcasting virtually any sport performance out there. And fantasy sports have become such a large business that they are impossible to ignore. Plus video games. Plus plus plus.

One of the most interesting innovations that I’ve seen in the sector is , a project of two Carnegie Mellon Profs and ten of their students. All of whom are Penguins fans, and that bit becomes important in a moment.

See, they had nosebleed seats, and were frustrated when legendarily full figured Pittsburghers blocked their view, or when they wanted to see things up close and personal. In hockey, being in the top deck really is a disadvantage by dint of both the smallness of a puck and the incredible speed by which it moves.

In fact, the NHL has always been challenged by how to make hockey viewing more popular because the speed of the puck means you have to keep the cameras pulled way back, Which means you can’t see what’s going on as well as you can with say, football or even basketball. As a result, hockey isn’t as popular as it might be if TV viewing were more engaging.

The Yinzcam team saw an opportunity to enhance the sports viewing experience by making available vastly more content in real time. So they partnered with the Penguins (hiss!) to create Yinzcam service. Yinzcam content combines additional camera angles, replays and other real time content with evergreen items like schedules and rosters, and makes it available to stadium goers via a special wifi connection. Using it, you can change the viewing feed and explore other content as it is happening on the ice.Want to see that goal at close range? Simply choose that camera angle. Want to watch the penalty box? Click that one. Want to know who player number 81 was in ‘08? Click the roster (it was Miroslav Satan, who clearly has one of the best hockey player names ever, and now plays for the Bruins.)

Check out the screens and how to .

The platform can also incorporate sponsorship and ecommerce, which are added bonuses. And if you are in a skybox, the stadium provides touchscreen PCs with the same real-time content. It’s a tremendous enrichment to the in-stadium experience. Great for hockey. Great for the Penguins. Great for the sponsors.

I don’t know all of what Yinzcam is planning for the future. But I for one would love to be able to buy this kind of experience at home as well. The company is now expanding to support other teams. Which is great because they can wire the Flyers and be supporting the REAL hockey team in the Keystone State. Let’s go Flyers…da…da…da da da.

In short, I expect you’ll be seeing A LOT more from Yinzcam. Don’t hold being Penguin fans against them. What they lack in taste they clearly make up for in tech.

Posted on: 02-1-2011
Posted in: Oldest Living Digital Marketer

An Acceptable Margin Of Error Can Be A Good Thing (Mediapost 12.22.10) 0

Our business is VERY detailed. There are more data sets than there are pixels on my MacBook, and these data sets are part of what complicates the business so much. We try to make every decision down to a single degree of absolute perfectionism, but conversely some of the best campaigns and efforts I’ve seen in the digital space are those that accept a basic margin of error. The best campaigns are the ones embrace the absence of a perfect science!

There’s a margin of error that exists in the traditional media business which to date has not been accepted in the digital business. In traditional media, research and analysis are based on sample sizes of 2,000 here and 10,000 there. Decisions for millions are based on the behavior of a few thousand and that is an acceptable margin of error for those businesses. Why can’t that be the case in digital media?

The fact is it can’t because we have so much more data, people hold us responsible to make up the difference. The lack of data and proof in traditional media translates to a desire for over-reporting and over-analysis in digital, but that level of perfectionism can burn out the digital business and the people that drive the bus, so to speak.

Perfectionism breeds a lack of confidence because it requires constant attention, a higher level of proof and his held to a different standard than what the world truly requires. What it does is create doubt, because nothing can be done perfectly. In our business it drives the balance towards the science and away from the art, but our business is based on that balance.

The margin of error in advertising and marketing favors creativity, while the perfectionism favors science. The days of Mad Men were heavily weighted towards the art and they had a lot of margin for error (hence the three-martini lunches). In a business with an acceptable margin of error, you can afford to make a mistake and that mistake will be evaluated, and you move on. In a world dominated by data and perfectionism you have to rationalize every decision in advance in order to avoid any mistakes. It’s a risk-averse environment, but one that doesn’t lend itself to much creative thought.

I’m not trying to resurrect the debate between art and science; I’m simply using that argument to make a point. The point is that a margin of error in this business should be accepted, it should be embraced and your team or agency partner should be empowered to make a mistake here and there. It’s that kind of thinking and empowerment that brings us creative ideas like what Apple recently ran with ESPN. It’s that kind of thinking that creates the Old Spice social media campaign. Back when I worked at IUMA (the Internet Underground Music Archive) that enabled us to run the “Name Your Baby IUMA” sweepstakes in which 11 lucky people named their newborn child after our website in exchange for $5,000 each. Not the kind of campaign that a highly data-driven business in today’s marketplace would allow, but one that doubled our traffic for a period of time.

I like an acceptable margin of error. It guides my personal life as I’ve shed my perfectionist cloak. It allows for a little more balance, a little less stress and a little more freedom to try and test some new ideas. As you enter into 2011, think about what a little less perfectionism and a little more margin of error will do for your employees and your business. You might come up with something unique and great!

Happy holidays everyone – see you next year!!

Posted on: 12-30-2010
Posted in: treffiletti.com

Looking Forward to 2011… (Mediapost 12.8.10) 0

It’s that time of year once again! The time of year when pundits such as myself get up on their soapbox and make pointless predictions for the coming year that are little more than rehashed and half-baked versions of the same predictions their peers are making right now.

Nobody wants to read those.

I like my predictions to be a bit more provocative, so with that I give you my thoughts (some rational, some requiring a bit more explanation) for the next 12 months as we drive into 2011…

First off, following a post I made two weeks ago, I predict that some major Fortune 500 brand will drop its agency in favor of a DSP solution combined with dynamic ad generation for a 100% automated online presence. They will fully remove customized, integrated placements and rely solely on targeting and machine-based learning and analytics. This will signal a wake-up call for the agency business that they need to start training their staff and using technology the right way or they will be battling their own extinction for years to come.

I also predict that a major magazine (i.e. ESPN the Magazine, Cosmopolitan or Details) will go 100% online and tablet (iPad, Galaxy, etc.) due to decreased ad page revenue and the costs to maintain a printed version. Their subscribers will be given total access as a shifted subscriber and the quality of the content will remain very high as they also move to integrate more with technology like that of FlipBoard.

Speaking of FlipBoard, I have to assume that their business model is more than just technology so I predict that sometime in 2011 we’ll see them begin to make publisher acquisitions and start to amass a collection of owned and operated assets beyond just their technology platform. This move will begin to position Flipboard as the precedent for a 21^st century content network. Flipboard could become the model for companies like Conde Nast; at the core technology driven with a content-centric revenue model.

Speaking of the app space, I predict that Nielsen and Comscore will start counting apps as a media vehicle and applying these to the overall numbers for publishers. Apps are overlooked in many cases, but if these syndicated tools can begin to track them as a stand-alone medium, I think most brands would be surprised at the volume of activity they represent.

Outside of the media and advertising space, I foresee some of the following:

iTunes will release a cloud-based storage mechanism allowing us to share our music library anywhere at any time rather than having to copy files from one computer to the next and authorize those computers.
The iPad2 will release as a thinner version of itself, with a camera.
The Amazon Kindle will come out with a color version (for the pictures).

And while standing on a very thin sheet of ice, I predict the following will happen in 2011:

Google will buy Yahoo.
Microsoft will buy AOL, but no-one will really care.

As tends to happen in the space, Google’s moves will outshine that of everyone else. Google will buy Yahoo just to stop Microsoft from doing so, and to stop AOL and Yahoo from merging. Google will mine the various pieces of technology that Yahoo owns, and integrate Google search back into Yahoo.

Microsoft will acquire AOL, but Microsoft won’t really know what to do with AOL and will pretty much leave them alone until someone comes looking to buy up some of the pieces later in 2013.

By then we’ll all be surfing the web on the iPhone6 and iPad3, both of which will fully integrate Flash and HTML5 easily and integrate with the dashboard of your car allowing you to dictate all of your email while commuting to work.

Some of these services are already available, which makes it even more interesting since these predictions don’t really feel too far off! Until then, please have a wonderful holiday season and enjoy the final weeks of 2010!