FM Gold

THIRD SCREEN: Mobile Voter Launches SFVote Campaign

2005-10-19T09:43:00.000-04:00

From PDF:

Mobile Voter, the newly formed non-profit dedicated to providing voter registration information via mobile technology, launched their first campaign SFvote yesterday. In collaboration with the Chinese American Voter Education Committee (CAVEC) SFvote hopes to register voters using a text-messaging service developed by Mobile Voter founders Ben Rigby and Bart Cheever.

This is good stuff. Nonprofits and advocacy groups are notoriously un-creative when it comes to creative content, so mobile information services may be the best entrée for groups to get members and advocates on the mobile bandwagon.

MICROSITE VIRAL: Crony Jobs

2005-10-12T13:54:00.000-04:00

Simple, clever and timely effort from the folks at Whitehouse.gov.

OPEN SOURCE MARKETING: AdAge Jumps On The Train

2005-10-12T12:43:00.000-04:00

Good open-source marketing article from AdAge.

I think the point missed so often in these discussions is that the open-source movement does not represent a fundamental shift in what people believe in or what they want or expect from a product or service. Experts talk about open-source as a societal sea change where every consumer now feels they own your brand and is compelled to have a hand in marketing it. That’s crap in my book. That would smack of effort and damn it if we Americans have the time or energy to give a hoot on that level. We want information delivered just like we want our products delivered: in a convenient and tasty package. The open-source movement is more about the arrival of new channels and representatives of influence that can serve to compliment or undermine the traditional institutions of influence, not supplant them. Marketing is still a game of matching products and services to consumers through hubs of information and influence, there are just new channels to consider in the mix.

As the article mentions, transparency and feedback are important with open-source, but they have always been an important component of brand success. The only thing new under the sun is that your success or failure at addressing and accounting for them is now measurable. This represents a huge opportunity, not a threat. Not only can you now measure your brand efficacy quickly across these new channels, you can measure it on the cheap. That’s the real revolution in my book.

VIRAL: Bush Sings!

2005-04-29T23:46:00.000-04:00

Via Boing Boing...
Amazing! Someone has mixed Bush audio clips so he's singing on a mash-up of “Imagine” and “Walk On the Wild Side.” Listen to the sweet, sweet stylings of 43. Also available, Bush sings "Sunday Bloody Sunday."

CAMPAIGNS: Taxation Without Representation Field

2005-04-06T11:12:00.000-04:00

The buzz czar, John Hlinko, is back with a new grassroots campaign that is getting some serious buzz around the basepaths and the beltway. Be sure to check out the site, give some cash to the cause, and as Mr. Hlinko would say, "tell 10,000 of your closest friends."

The Nationals are coming to town...
...but apparently, DC is having trouble finding a company to pay for the naming rights, and hadn't even received a single offer in writing – until now. We have officially submitted the first written offer for a new name:"Taxation Without Representation Field at RFK Stadium" Think of it. Every time we enjoy the national pastime here in DC, we'll remind America that we lack another national tradition – democracy.

MEMBERSHIP: The Perfect Cultivation Email?

2005-04-02T15:04:00.000-05:00

Mark Rovner got what he calls "the perfect cultivation email" from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Membership Department. Mark says it's "simple, clear, engaging, and involving":

Dear Mr. Rovner,
After careful consideration and planning, we removed the white shark from the Outer Bay exhibit early this morning and released her in the open waters just outside Monterey Bay at 5:45 a.m.

Two factors led to this decision. First, the shark was rapidly approaching a maximum size and weight at which she could be safely removed, transported and released with full confidence that she would thrive. Second, aquarists observed a marked change in her behavior over the past week of what they considered to be active hunting of other exhibit animals and they became substantially more concerned about the well-being of the other fishes.

She was not released because of any injury or health problem. At the time of her release, she was 6'-4" long and weighed 162 pounds. That means she grew more than a foot in length and gained 100 pounds in her six months on exhibit. She was healthy and strong when she swam away from the boat. We expect her to quickly adapt to hunting and feeding on natural prey. An electronic tag was attached to allow us to track her movements.

The decision to release her into the outer Monterey Bay is based on suitable water temperature and turbidity conditions. It is supported by research from tagging and tracking data about the movements of other young white sharks indicating that they inhabit our offshore waters.

We're proud of the fact we were able to keep this shark for more than six months and then release her safely back to the wild. You should be proud too as a member of the first aquarium ever to accomplish this. During the time she was here, we developed a better understanding of how best to collect, take care of and ultimately release a juvenile white shark.

Thank you for supporting our efforts to learn more about white sharks and to heighten public awareness about the threats facing shark populations worldwide.

For more information, please visit www.montereybayaquarium.org

Sincerely,
The Monterey Bay Aquarium Membership Department

Our mission is to inspire conservation of the oceans.

VIRAL: People Love To Send Holiday E-Greetings

2005-04-01T10:16:00.000-05:00

Media Post has a story by way of media head-counter, Nielsen, about the popularity of e-greetings cards this last St. Patricks Day.

Suprisingly, this year consumers were almost as likely to send an e-greeting on St. Patrick's Day as on Valentine's Day, Nielsen//NetRatings reported this week. Driven by St. Patrick's Day cheer and good spirits, e-greeting card sites jumped 63 percent week-over-week for the week ending March 20, Nielsen found. That week the e-greeting card category drew over 5.1 million unique visitors, reaching more than 4.6 percent of active Netizons--not bad, considering that this year's Valentine's Day holiday week drew 6.2 percent of all active home Web users to e-greetings sites.

E-postcards are a simple way to get fans of your site to invite lots of new people to your site and your issue. Viral! Why not ride the holiday e-greeting wave and offer and promote unique message-centric e-postcards for all the major and semi-major holidays? (Even daylight savings is becoming a minor holiday celebrity according to some marketers.) Just a minor creative investment could yield some solid returns.

PRIVACY: The Race To Replace The Cookie

2005-03-31T14:45:00.000-05:00

A JupiterResearch study recently found nearly 40 percent of web users clear cookies from their machines on a regular basis. The study sent shockwaves through online marketing, analytics and ad technology vendor communities and started the race to build a better cookie. An article today in Clickz introduces us to the the potential of the "Flash cookie."

This is entirely the wrong approach to the cookie problem. For the consumer the issue of cookies and tracking technology is not an inconvenience issue, it is part of a larger online privacy issue. They don't want a technology that embeds itself in their computer and records their behavior as they move about the web. For many consumers this type of "stalk-nology" is akin to rifling through their trash or eavesdropping on a private phone conversation, so they remove it.

Consumers are telling marketers that cookies are unwelcome and by refusing to listen to this loud and clear message the industry is inviting trouble. By trying to out-sneak the consumer with Flash cookies marketers run the risk of driving online customers offline or driving an expensive spy vs. spy subversion technology race. Or worse, they run the risk of inviting Congress to jump into the fray with a reactionary piece of privacy regulation that kills the online marketing industry.

The challenge is to find a solution that leaves marketers and privacy conscious consumers happy, but that isn't going to happen unless marketers invite consumers to the table to help figure it out. A recent DMNews commentary on marketing and privacy by Chet Meisner warns,

“every industry that uses consumer data needs to immediately treat this as a problem to solve, not just an annoyance to overcome. We should rally around the privacy advocates and offer to help them in any way we can.”

The online marketing industry would be wise to understand this and begin the privacy dialogue soon before the consumer backlash begins.

DONOR LISTS: Schiavo Donor List Allowed To Die?

2005-03-30T10:37:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we mentioned the NYT story about the Schiavo donor list being sold. It looks like the negative attention from the Times story may have caused Response Unlimited to look deep into their direct marketing soul and reevaluate their ghoulish behavior...or maybe they just decided to stop crowing about selling the list until after Terri has died.

Broker Removes Schiavo List From Catalog
A list of donors to a fund set up by the parents of Terri Schiavo apparently was no longer advertised in a catalog of lists from broker Response Unlimited as of yesterday after a report in The New York Times. Response Unlimited had advertised the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation Active Donors list as early as March 15. An ad on the broker's Web site had offered 6,198 2005 donor names and 4,439 opt-in e-mail addresses. As of yesterday, a link to the ad found through a Google search led to a page that stated, "This list is not a managed property of Response Unlimited, contact for details." A call to Response Unlimited president and founder Philip Zodhiates was not returned yesterday. [ DMNews ]

CAMPAIGNS: AFL-CIO Takin' It To 'The Street'

2005-03-29T22:23:00.000-05:00

March 31 the AFL-CIO is organizing marches and rallies in more than 70 cities at the offices of Charles Schwab, Wachovia, and other Wall Street firms to urge them to withdraw support for Bush's Social Security privatization plan. Go AFL-CIO!!

The secret to campaign success is all about gaining leverage over your foe. Too often activist organizations get stuck playing political pong with faxes and emails to Reps offices. These days it takes serious volume to get a member of Congress quaking at the site of emails or faxes from an issue group. And a campaign organized around emailing or faxing your Rep just doesn't have the viral/harvesting sex appeal it once did. Maybe it's time to take a new look at the breadth of your issue and take stock of all the players. If there is an opportunity to target a specific brand or business it could be an attractive proposition for your activists and it could generate a lot of buzz around your effort. For the business world negative attention can be like kryptonite and the leverage battle can be a much easier ride. NRDC's BioGems campaign has proven that once the fax machine starts humming at corporate headquarters businesses get more nervous than Keanu Reeves at a Shakespeare festival. Get ready for some seriously shaky blue suits when the activists and the cameras show up outside Schwab offices this Thursday.

DONOR LISTS: List of Schiavo Donors Will Be Sold

2005-03-29T14:49:00.000-05:00

The New York Times reports today the "parents of Terri Schiavo have authorized a conservative direct-mailing firm to sell a list of their financial supporters, making it likely that thousands of strangers moved by her plight will receive a steady stream of solicitations from anti-abortion and conservative groups."

The article paints an image of a bunch of sleazy direct-mail vultures circling the tragedy in Florida and pushing contracts in front of the grief-stricken family during their darkest moments. Definitely a low point for conservatives, Response Unlimited, RightMarch, and the direct mail industry in general. Even grave robbers have a code to wait until the body is in the ground before they start digging for treasure.

VIRAL: Do-It-Yourself Viral

2005-03-28T11:41:00.000-05:00

We have been pushing hard on the idea of integrating Do-It-Yourself Viral (DIVi) pieces into campaigns for a while. The basic principle behind DIVi is the same as most viral pieces -- create a branded entertainment experience that people want to pass on to friends. The difference with DIVi pieces is the entertainment is not passive. DIVi pieces are interactive experiences where the user creates or constructs a unique and personal final product with the sole intent of sharing it with others. Whether you call it DIVi, interactive postcards, or the Old Navy Flip Flop Mixer, entertaining user-constructed tell-a-friends can immerse the user in your brand and message for a fair amount of time and the result of their stay is always viral.

GOTV: Youthful Expression 2004

2005-03-27T11:30:00.000-05:00

Encouraging 2004 youth voting numbers from Dave Rosenfeld, Program Director for PIRG's New Voters Project:

The youth vote was up 10.8 points over all to 48%, with 10.5 million votes cast - the best turnout since 1992!

But our work is definitely not done. The New Voters Project is gearing up to work on races in 2005 and 2006 - we'll be sending out regular updates on our work, including actions you can take now to ensure that we continue to be a powerful force in future elections.

Now... for some cold, hard numbers! We promised to keep you posted as local numbers roll in - check below for the first county-by-county information, hot off the presses from Iowa.

Linn County
2000 Results for 18-24: Registered 14,633; voted 6,504
(44 percent turnout)
2004 Results for 18-25: Registered 22,075; 14,203 voted
(64 percent turnout)

Dubuque County
2000 Results for 18-24: Registered 6,458; voted 2,564
(39 percent turnout)
2004 Results for 18-24: Registered 8,335; voted 4,797
(57 percent turnout)

Polk County
2000 Results for 18-24: Registered 25,742; voted 12,440
(48 percent turnout)
2004 Results for 18-24: Registered 33,081; voted 20,957
(63 percent turnout)

Johnson County
2000 Results for 18-24: Registered 16,715; voted 10,344
(62 percent turnout)
2004 Results for 18-24: Registered 23,244; voted 16,239
(70 percent turnout)

(Sources: Cedar Rapids Gazette)

UPDATE: Michael Agosta points to some other numbers to keep in mind and adds some commentary.

Linn County, where 18-24 old registered voters turned out at 64%:
65+: Turned out at 89% of registered
50-64: Turned out at 91%
25-34: Turned out at 73%
County: Turned out 82% of all registered voters.

Dubuque County, where 18-24 turned out at 57% of registered voters:
65+ turnout: 86%
50-64 turnout: 88%
25-34: 61%
Countywide turned out 77%.

Lesson, for my 2 cents, is the usual lesson: youth voting can be a good thing, but it's not a big piece of the pie, and young turnout is relative vis a vis turnout overall...

The GOP gets that better than we do: they are better about focusing on the slices of the pie that are likely to cast a ballot. So, if they can even steal 1% of our senior vote, it has a huge impact.

MESSAGING: You Are Not Your Target Audience

2005-03-25T19:36:00.000-05:00

Interesting reminder by way of Politics and Technology. A small investment in understanding how your audience talks about your issue and the real words they use can pay off big. Everything from press releases to the navigational structure of your website should reflect the language and perceptions of your audience, not the knowledge level or organization structure of your group. Learning the language of your audience can involve setting up focus groups or be as simple as checking your site search logs to see the terms people are using to find your content. Remember, you are not your target audience.

Do you know what ‘reproductive’ means to regular people? Have you checked in with your target audience on that? We asked our target audience and we were told ‘reproductive’ meant having babies. They also told us that ‘clinic’ meant dirty and substandard. And they told us that nurse practitioners were nurses in training — not real nurses yet. Which was a real shame, since our print ads at the time basically said: ‘Come to our clinics for reproductive health care from caring nurse practitioners.’
This campaign was aimed at 18- to 24-year-old guys. I’m 50. If I had only consulted with my own instincts, I would have been wrong at every single stage of this campaign. [ Low Hanging Fruit ]

GUERRILLA MARKETING: Tagging Your Message

2005-03-25T14:27:00.000-05:00

Wired has a story on Grafedia which is similar to the Yellow Ribbon Project we mentioned a while back. The idea is to extend the reach of the internet by bringing hypertags into the real world. Grafedia or something similar to the Yellow Ribbon would be a great campaign tool for a youth focused organization (Rock The Vote!!). Imagine a well branded visual sticker project (think Obey) that allows folks to claim a public space, communicate with each other and your organization, and build a networked street-level buzz around your campaign. Good stuff.

UPDATE: To see it in action I uploaded an image to the Grafedia network. Let's pretend you were walking down 125th Street and saw a "Hello My Name Is" sticker with "privatize@grafedia.net" in the white space. You would enter that email address into your cellphone and immediately be sent a copy of my rich media content. You can get the same response by sending an email to the privatize@grafedia.net address with your computer. Try it!

Today, companies with big advertising budgets are the main players in interactive media, engaging in activities like online ad campaigns or billboards encouraging some sort of viewer involvement. Geraci would like to change that.

"Grafedia is the option for the little guy to get involved in that dialogue," he said.

The little guy is definitely catching on. Since the project launched in late December, instances of grafedia have popped up stateside in places like New York City and San Francisco. Outside the United States, the project has gained fans in Brazil, France and England, Geraci said. So far, several hundred images have been uploaded to the grafedia server.

Anyone with the right tools -- a phone that supports picture messages and is under a T-Mobile, Verizon Communications or Cingular Wireless contract -- can view grafedia. You can also view it on a computer through an e-mail program.

Anyone can make grafedia, too. To do so, a user selects a rich media file (image, video or sound) and then chooses a word (say, "wirednews") to go along with that file. The user then uploads the file from a computer or sends it from a cell phone to, using this example, wirednews@grafedia.net. The user can then paint, draw or tattoo "wirednews" in public spaces in blue with an underline to identify it as grafedia. Viewers can interact with the grafedia by sending a message via their computer or certain cell phones addressed to "wirednews@grafedia.net" to get the content behind the link.

Geraci wants grafedia to make people think about the idea that the boundaries of the web are totally arbitrary. If you can put links in different places, he said, you're essentially extending the internet.

In this vein, in addition to general grafedia proliferation, he'd like to see large-scale examples, like multiple, related instances over several blocks or on an entire side of a building. [ Wired ]

CREATIVE COMMONS: Yahoo Launches Creative Commons Search

2005-03-24T10:29:00.000-05:00

Yahoo continues to amaze. They just launched a beta Creative Commons search tool that allows you to find web content that has a Creative Commons license. Most stuff on the web has a full copyright, "this search helps you find content published by authors that want you to share or reuse it, under certain conditions." It's great to see a giant like Yahoo embracing Creative Commons.

I am always on the hunt for cheap or free photos of Dubya, Congress, or other symbols of questionable authority to use in design work for clients. It's hard to find photos and other media that don't come with expensive licensing agreements from Getty or AP. My advice, try searching on the Creative Commons website or Archive.org and if that doesn't work try searching on Federal agency sites. Most images on U.S. Federal Government web pages are in the "public domain" (which means they have no copyright restrictions). Here's a good resource for finding public domain photos on agency sites. (The thumbnail of Bush is from the Air Force website.)

PHISHING: The Nonprofit Bait And Hook

2005-03-23T18:01:00.000-05:00

NPAdivisors reports that those dastardly phisherpeople (no, not Trey and the boys , Marc) may have devolved to a new low by trying to sucker folks into donating to a phony United Way site. A closer read reveals this is not technically a phishing scam (no one was emailed and told to come to the site), but it is a scam nonetheless. Lessons learned: nonprofits should own all the popular extensions of their urls (.com, .org, .net) and keep tabs on any registered domains based on spelling variations (amesty.org or nacp.org). Read all about the United Way's brush with fraud at their website (the real one).

FYI...The tsunami tragedy brought a lot of phishing opportunists out from under the floorboards, so if you are looking for some good tips to avoid getting phished check out this release from Consumers Union.

If you are looking for a way out crazy jam to make you lose your stuff, man, go here.

ANWR: Leave It To The Onion To Hit The Nail On The Head

2005-03-22T20:54:00.000-05:00

"If I may be allowed to pursue the idea of 'addiction to oil,' I think the nation just reached the point where we sold our wedding ring for one night's fix." [ The Onion ]

DOMAIN NAMES: Hillary Wins Rights To Her Name

2005-03-22T19:24:00.000-05:00

Interesting... HillaryRodham.com is a site advertising stretch mark and wrinkle cream.

Senator Clinton Wins Rights to HillaryClinton.com
The National Arbitration Forum announced today that a ruling has been issued in favor of Hillary Rodham Clinton regarding rights to the Internet domain name hillaryclinton.com.

Senator Clinton, represented by James Lamb of Ryan, Phillips, Utrecht and MacKinnon, filed a complaint with the National Arbitration Forum on February 1, 2005 asserting legal rights to the Web address bearing her name.

Ruling in Senator Clinton's favor, National Arbitration Forum arbitrator Tyrus R. Atkinson, Jr. found that the other party, Michele Dinoia, registered the hillaryclinton.com domain name on October 22, 2001, and was using the disputed domain name to direct Internet users to a Web site that displays a generic search engine, links to commercial Web sites, and exposes users to pop-up ads and pay-per-click search results. In addition, the disputed domain name would bookmark itself as the visitor's homepage each time he or she opened his or her Internet browser.

The arbitrator found that Dinoia did not have legitimate rights to the Web address hillaryclinton.com and that the Web address was confusingly similar to Senator Clinton's trademark rights in her own name. The arbitrator also found that Dinoia was using hillaryclinton.com in bad faith by presumably profiting from the use of it.

Senator Clinton's Internet domain dispute was one of thousands heard each year by the National Arbitration Forum under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy ("UDRP") of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ("ICANN"). The domain name dispute process is a popular alternative to lengthy and expensive trademark lawsuits. [ GovTech ]

PODCASTING: Two Americas 'One With iPods, One Without'

2005-03-22T17:53:00.000-05:00

Got an email from John Edward's One America Committee hyping his big issue, poverty, and his big foray into podcasting that begins tomorrow.

On Wednesday, March 23, the One America Committee Web site will post John Edwards' first podcast. We hear that he will have a very special guest.

Given the recent Pew Internet study that revealed iPods and other MP3 players are primarily a toy of the affluent, podcasting might seem an ironic channel choice for Mr. Edwards to speak out on the injustices of poverty.

ADVERTISING: Gay Ad Spending Not Effected By Marriage Debate

2005-03-21T14:38:00.000-05:00

What is the state of gay ad spending? Super! Thanks for asking...

Same-sex marriage might have polarized lawmakers, but it has galvanized advertisers in the gay press. Overall, 2004 ad spending in gay and lesbian publications was up 28.4% versus the previous year, reaching $207 million.

The findings in this report represent the biggest increases in spending for the gay press since 2000. Conventional wisdom held that controversy around marriage would deter marketers. Instead, the debate had a powerful effect in the opposite direction.

Gay media also saw an astonishing surge in ads with “gay-specific” content. The number of gay specific ads, which feature messages directly aimed at gay and lesbian consumers through their copy or art direction, jumped 241.9% over the previous year.

Importantly, the 2004 Gay Press Report found that over 150 Fortune 500® brands were active in the gay consumer market in 2004, up from 72 in 2001 and only 19 in 1994. And for the first time, the majority (59%) of ads in national gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) publications were specifically created for gay consumers. Currently, the most popular product categories are automotive, travel, financial services and fashion.

Read the full report in PDF form by Prime Access and Rivendell Media.

ALTERNATIVE REALITY GAMING: It's Going To Be 'Gabby Hayes' Big!

2005-03-21T01:07:00.000-05:00

Just when you finally grasped the subtle differences between advergaming, viral marketing, word-of-mouth, and PR, comes a new niche of alternative advertising: alternate reality gaming. Near as I can tell this is basicially advergaming, but it processes the potential for players to get really immersed in the brand. At some point we should just lump viral, advergaming, and the rest of the lot in one big pile and call it what it really is, branded entertainment.

Alternate Reality Gaming and You
Alternate reality gaming is one of the most interesting new trends in online brand immersion. Pioneered commercially by online campaigns for properties such as the film "AI" and the game "Halo 2," these efforts blend "hoax"-like Web sites that don't announce their affiliation with online quests, unfolding mysteries, and even real-world activities such as messages received at phone booths or prerecorded calls to participants in the middle of the night.

Rather than 30 seconds of exposure to a brand, they generate stickiness that can last days, or even weeks, as they subtly (e.g., "I Love Bees") or not-so subtly (e.g., "Alias") draw in users and encourage them to bring other players into the "game." As branding experiences go, these things have the potential to be far more powerful than the short viral video clips that get passed around, or somewhat gimmicky one-trick ponies, such as the Subservient Chicken or the now-defunct Burger King Angus Intervention site. [ Clickz ]

CAUSE MARKETING: Nike's Stand Up/Speak Up Campaign

2005-03-18T18:59:00.000-05:00

Nike's campaign to Stand Up/Speak Out against racism in football (ummm, soccer) is being met with skepticism by European anti-racism activists who refuse to take Nike's money. As is usually the case these days there is a colored wristband for sale and while it may or may not have a swoosh on it, it most certainly will be perceived as a Nike product to anyone who sees someone wearing it.

EMAIL: Double Open, Click, And Conversion Rates?

2005-03-18T09:17:00.000-05:00

A very informative email case study from Marketing Sherpa. Would love to test this.

Want to double your email open, click, and conversion rates? It's not a dream, it's not hype ... this is a real story about a real marketer who used a simple tactic you can use too. Stan Ades at Pacific Shaving Company split his house list into two segments: at-home addresses and at-work addresses. Then he mailed at-works during business hours, and at-homes on the weekend. It really, really worked. [ Marketing Sherpa ]

BROADBAND: NYC Supports Broadband For Low Income Housing

2005-03-18T09:01:00.000-05:00

The New York City Council unanimously adopted a resolution to provide low- or no-cost high-speed Internet access to affordable housing residents.

Res. No. 669, introduced by Council Member Gale A. Brewer, the chairperson of the New York City Council's Committee on Technology in Government, calls upon city agencies to use their funding and regulatory power to support and encourage the provision of affordable high-speed Internet service and computer purchases for the benefit of residents of affordable housing. [ GovTech ]