Product Placement 2.0

Before you read on ... hop over to Facebook ... find a picture you've posted or perhaps one that a friend has posted, which has some kind of product placement in it. One of Facebook's latest features will allow you to now tag this photo with the corresponding brand page! 

This raises 3 questions in my mind: 

1. Why did Facebook choose to launch a feature like this? - Is this Facebook's attempt to grow it's marketing tools offering? One of the things this features allows for is the auto-population of a brand's photo gallery. Brands that are more likely to appear in photos have a higher chance of being tagged and as such have a higher chance of gathering free marketing materials (customers using products)! That leads me to question number two... 

2. Should customers in some way be rewarded for tagging a brand in a photo? After all if companies pay TV shows to have their products placed ... why should they not reward Facebook fans in the same way? It doesn't necessarily have to be a direct monetary reward (in the form of a Facebook credit), it can be something like a discount code perhaps or even a coupon. However ... this idea certainly begs the question... 

3. If customers don't tag brands in their own photos, is it ethical for brands to go out and tag themselves in fan photos? This was the premise of a great article by Todd Wasserman on Mashable. Since brands can now act as people on Facebook (another recent feature), a brand could technically go out there and look through some pictures of all the people who have liked them and potentially start tagging their photos. This seems a little beyond the line because it completely violates the underlying principle of permission marketing that Facebook is built upon. 

Final thoughts: It will be interesting to see how brands use this feature to enhance the permission model and potentially leverage it, rather than abuse it. What are your thoughts? 

p.s. Later this week I hope to record a special episode of The Digital Marketing Lounge with my friend Ben Wise. We will be discussing all things Facebook! If there is something in particular you would like us to talk about, drop it in the comments below! Thanks in advance :)

One Trait Every Entrepreneur Must Have

If you're looking for some inspiration ... watch this video. 

If you're into tech in any way shape or form ... watch this video. 

If you like the Matrix and want to see what it would be like if Neo and Morpheus met in real life ... watch this video. 

If you're older than 20 ... watch this video. 

I think you get the idea by now. Watch this video. 

There are a couple of things that amazed me about Brian: 

1. Desire - Many times Brian keeps referring to his intrinsic need to understand why San Francisco and New York were the places to be. What he did when he got to those places was truly nothing short of amazing, I am not going to spoil the story here because I really want you to hear it from him... so watch the video. In summary though, it is truly amazing what you can accomplish (even Kevin Rose was amazed) by simply having the desire to do so. You should always be thirsty for knowledge. 

2. Creating luck - Brian's story is a great example of what happens if you work hard enough to create your own luck. At one point, he describes his entire whirlwind of a journey in the past year or so as, "serendipity." You may consider it oxymoronic, but I believe someone can create serendipitous events. Brian understood the power of networking very early on and that played out much later in his life. His story tells me that if you work hard enough and get to know enough of the right people ... you can create your own luck. 

The main message that I took out of this interview though, was a trait that both Brian and Kevin exhibited. Brian did so by admitting that despite his overwhelming intelligence (skipped 4 grades in grade school and started University at 14) ... there will always be someone in a room smarter than him ... always. Kevin, despite all his success, exhibited this trait by commending Brian on the brilliance of some of his ideas. 

This one trait ... is humility. When you are as successful as either of these two guys, it's so easy to be proud/arrogant/boastful ... but what makes them heroes in my mind, is how humble they are. 

Instant Gratification

Has social media (more specifically Twitter) conditioned us to the notion of instant gratification? Let's see ... when was the last time you found yourself using Twitter, simply because the 'regular news sources' were too slow? I'll admit, I found myself doing that just two nights ago when President Obama was about to address the nation. My question is this ... does it really matter whether you hear the news right now? It's not like the facts are going to change a couple of hours from now ... what happened, happened and eventually everyone will hear it. 

A Professor of mine once said that the most important lesson any University/College student can learn, is how to embrace delayed gratification. The process of acquiring a degree takes an average of 4 years ... yet when you are in the trenches, writing exams, putting together presentations and submitting reports ... the light at the end of the tunnel seems to be a lifetime away. Eventually though, it will come. 

To what extent has social media influenced your need for instant gratification? Perhaps even the proliferation of mobile devices and the ubiquity of information has added to this need? When was the last time you waited patiently for something and tried to soak in as much of the waiting experience as possible? 

Wile E. Coyote (pictured on the left) certainly is persistent ... but would things have been different for him, had he been patient? 

The Clock is Ticking

"The principle of scarcity is based on the future unavailability of something, even if we don't need it: Opportunities seem more valuable to us when their availability is limited."

- A quote from Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Caldini. 

If you have been following Seth Godin's new publishing platform called The Domino Project, then you may have been just as excited as I was to hear an 'exciting' announcement this morning. The announcement ended up being pushed until later in the day but Seth wrote a wonderful note explaining why and even giving hints as to what the announcement would be. All anyone knew was that it was going to be a deal, but a very limited-time deal.

Seth even went so far as to say that part of the success for the Groupons of the world, is the fact that their business model has scarcity built in. How many times have we been influenced by the scarcity principle? Discounts, deals, limited-time offers... any of these ring a bell? 

When the Domino Project finally revealed the limited-time deal, it lead me to discover this wonderful offering by Amazon called lightning deals. According to Amazon.com, "A Lightning Deal is a promotion in which a limited number of discounts are offered on a single item for a short period of time." Lightning deals really are an amazing value for money, but what makes them even more amazing is how they truly epitomize the principle of scarcity. I encourage you after reading this post to just visit the lightning deals area of Amazon's site and take a look at the principle in action. You may find yourself automagically moving the mouse closer and closer to the buy now button, simply because the deal is too good to be true. 

So what can a marketer learn from this? (this being the underlying principle of any daily deal business model)... Think rare. Think hard to find. Think the situation with iPad 2's right now. This principle can most easily be applied to an event. Create an event, invite only 50 of the most influential people in your tribe and wow them. This is the idea of a private beta. Think about how much the other x amount of people in your tribe will be hanging on each influencer's every word.

In the past week alone, how much have you been influenced by the scarcity principle? Can we as a society start using this principle as a means of doing good? The clock is ticking. 

Marketing? There's an app for that.

Today, Apple launched an iPhone app called iAd Gallery. It lets you browse through a gallery of ads. Take a second and read this again from the beginning. 

This is either a gigantic waste of time and money ... or ... it is pure genius. I like to consider myself an optimist so for the rest of this short post I will explain why I think it's the latter. Here are my reasons: 

1. Permission - This is an app... meaning... you have to choose to download it. Unless you are the type of person to go on a downloading spree and click anything in the store, you will be fully aware that all this app contains... is marketing! Downloading this means you are specifically choosing to devote your time to engage with marketing! To marketers, this is what dreams are made of.

2. Lovemarks - A term coined by Saatchi & Saatchi CEO, Kevin Roberts. Why is it relevant here? Although they are not lovemarks in the traditional sense, if you take a look at the app itself (for all non-iPhone users, the Business Insider had a nice walk-through gallery), you will notice there are literally 'lovemarks' at the top right-hand corner of each ad. If you click this lovemark, the ad gets stored in an area called 'loved.' I know you're probably thinking this is some kind of late April Fool's joke but it's really not. What if marketers could get stats on how many people "loved" their ad in relation to how many people downloaded the app? 

3. Future - An ad search engine? This point may seem a little flighty but I guess one can always dream. What if, this app became a sort of search engine for ads. Basically, what would happen is you would type in some of your interests and then the iAd Gallery would serve up some ads that are relevant to you. Based on your interests and your 'loved' ads, the iAd Gallery would be able to provide you with some seriously targeted ads. For marketers - the iAd Gallery would be able to provide specific information about the consumers who are choosing certain ads, giving marketers deeper insight into the psyche of their tribe. 

I really cannot wait to see what the future holds for this app. I'm hoping that it will transform the way companies think about mobile marketing on the iOS platform and perhaps give rise to a new model of marketing. 

Sheep Marketing

Is the new guerrilla marketing. 

In order to promote this, Zynga did this. What a truly brilliant way to cause a bit of a commotion, disrupt the pattern of everyday life and ultimately garner some serious attention for the brand. This is marketing at its very best. 

If you're thinking about running some kind of sheep marketing campaign for your brand, here is what Zynga's demonstration can teach you:

1. Go for the eyeballs - Zynga picked New York and London for a reason. What is the nearest big city to your brand? If you are in a smaller city then where can you go to garner the most attention? Find that place and be there. More eyeballs allow for more puzzled looks, which allows for more questions, which allows for a chance to win a new customer. 

2. Direct traffic - Regardless of where people see your campaign (whether they are witnesses on the street, or viewers online) any traffic you get should be directed to a specific place. In this case, FarmVille's Facebook page. This means, having one location where everyone can go and enjoy the experience. One unique call to action. This will help track the success of your campaign too. 

3. Hire some sheep - Translation... be outrageous. In the words of Seth Godin, be that Purple Cow. You have to be remarkable or else people are not going to take notice and your campaign would be for nothing. How can you disrupt the flow of everyday life? What can you do to make people start asking questions? Try hiring some sheep. 

Not only does Zynga's campaign contain some valuable lessons for marketers but it is also a sign that the digital world is beginning to permeate the physical. FarmVille can only be played online, yet Zynga chose a very (probably one of the most) traditional mediums of advertising to promote its new extension. Just another sign that traditional marketing will not die, it will just become further rooted in digital. 

The F Word

Free. 

Earlier today, Seth Godin wrote a post on the Domino Project's blog about some news surrounding the project's next release. For a limited time (due to sponsorship by GE) the book is going to be available for free. I hope that the Domino Project team releases some numbers about how many people rushed to order the free version of the book... but it will be equally interesting to see how many people order the paid version as well. 

If you find something you genuinely love doing, why not turn it into an art and give it away for free? This is what Seth Godin does everyday with his blog. If someone spent some time assembling all Seth's blog posts over just the past year into a single book (categorized by topic)... I would imagine that book would sell for a lot of money; however, if you were already subscribed to his blog... you would have got all of that goodness for free. 

If you're a brand manager... think of something that your consumers would be more than willing to pay for... and instead offer it for free. I know it seems to defy probably every sound business principle, especially within a public company but if you can take the risk then why not try it. If you're an entrepreneur trying to make a name of yourself, why not start by offering something of value... for free. I'll leave you with two examples of folks who are heroes of mine and who have built their respective empires by offering value for free: Gary Vaynerchuk and Leo Laporte.