Genuine Juice

Genuine's Justin on the MTV VMA Tour

name.nospam@nospam.example.com (Chris Pape) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:38:00 -1000

Congratulations to Genuine rockstar, Justin, whose band, The Hollow Sound, just won a spot on the MTV Video Music Awards Tour. We hope Justin gets famous enough to have a E! True Hollywood Story made about him while still having time to produce stellar video edits with the Motion team here @ Genuine. And when he does go "Axl Rose crazy" on us all - we at least would like to partake in destroying a hotel room or two with him.

An Open Letter to XBOX

name.nospam@nospam.example.com (Chris Pape) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 03:07:00 -1000

Dear XBOX,

I'm getting tired of holding my Wii controller.

I'd definitely rather hold nothing than hold my Wii controller. That would free up my hands for more important things - like a Toasted Almond bar or a ChocoTaco. Also, I’m tired of leaving my living room to shop, meet with friends and exercise. Is there anything you can do that would help me stay homebound and still free up my hands for snacking?

Also, all this typing all day is getting old. (OMG...so true) My 5 year goal is to be able to work here at Genuine and conduct meetings without putting down a snack over an 8 hour period.

Lastly, in certain public bathrooms that DON’T have auto water sensors I am confused as to what I need to do. I wave my hands under the faucet yet water STILL won’t come out. And don’t get me started about towel dispensers without sensors.

If you guys can think of anything that would help me out I might be willing to pay $199 for it.

Regards,

Chris Pape

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Bill [mailto:bill@xbox.com]

Sent: Monday, June 22, 2009 8:05 AM

To: Chris Pape

Subject: RE: Dear XBOX

Dear Chris,

We hear ya. See below.

Bill

Augmented Reality: Integrating Your Consumer with Your Brand.

name.nospam@nospam.example.com (Michael Svetchnikov) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:22:00 -1000

Augmented reality is a technology that blurs the lines between virtual reality (computer generated) and the real-world (you, not the show). It has been around for a few years now, but only recently made a push into digital marketing. Car manufacturers such as Nissan, MINI and Toyota, were quick to use augmented reality capabilities to show off their new models. We’ve also seen baseball cards, t-shirts mashed up with Twitter, drum kits, movie trailers, music videos, and of course more advertising care of GE Smart Grid.

Augmented reality is still in its infancy and there hasn’t been too much actual and practical commercial use for this technology. That is, until the USPS: Priority Mail Virtual Box Simulator. This augmented reality simulation allows a user to see the different flat-rate shipping boxes in 3D. So there are practical uses for augmented reality – and for brands looking to let the consumer connect with their brands in a different way this technology has great potential.

The creative applications are limitless. In fact, you can even make an augmented reality 3D version of your logo as a shameless self promotion. We did.

Try it out. Here’s how it works:

Print this Genuine Interactive augmented reality marker (I promise it won’t bleed all your black ink).
Turn on your webcam and then click here to launch the flash player.
Finally, hold the marker in front of the webcam to see the Genuine Interactive cube live in your desk. All the kids want the cube!

Bing is here, but are people really going to stop using Google?

name.nospam@nospam.example.com (Kyle Sinclair) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:50:00 -1000

Earlier this week Bing, Microsoft’s self-proclaimed “decision engine”, was released. Bing is Microsoft’s latest (and may be last) attempt at becoming a viable player in the search engine market. At press time, Coremetrics reports that Google has 63% of the search marketing while Yahoo! (20%) and the old MSN Live (8%) are getting further and further behind.

Bing is a bit different for a search engine. For starters, Bing attempts to make sense of a mish-mash of random content for users by grouping like content into categories and presents the data for the user to navigate. A search for “baseball” will result in your expected standard search rankings with mlb.com on the top of the list. The categorization is on the left as Bing presents categories as it relates to baseball – baseball equipment, baseball teams, baseball tickets, etc. It’s not a perfect system, but interesting nonetheless, and for some users this guided search navigation is a new thing.

Where Bing really excels is with shopping searches. Search for “cell phone” and the user can navigate further to search phones by brand or by price levels. Sure navigated grouping features have been done before, (Home Depot does it great) but Bing is the new kid on the search block - not to be confused with the five now fully-grown men - and there’s an audience of users that’ll be seeing navigated search for the first time and I’m thinking they’ll like it.

On contrary, if I have to pick one of the more frustrating components with Bing it’s the annoying flyout that appears when you hover your mouse over the right-side of an ‘ organic ‘ ranking in Internet Explorer, which ironically happens to also be owned by Microsoft. For starters, there really isn’t that much valuable information presented in these annoying flyouts, although one guy thinks its Freakin Amazing, and if I’m a user and I’m moving my mouse over to the right side of the page, something has caught my eye and I’m probably not interested in the content presented in the organic rankings. I don’t know… maybe I’m interested in reading and/or clicking on one of the PAID SPONSORED ADS in the right column. Are you reading this Microsoft???

Bing used in IE makes it extremely frustrating for users to click on a paid ad if it’s not ranked within the top two positions. So I predict this flyout feature will not only annoy users, but online marketers will notice considerably fewer clicks and decreased click-through rates as they’re normally accustomed to in Google and Yahoo!… and not to mention potential lost revenue to Microsoft. Again, are you reading this Microsoft???

In summary, Bing is new, Bing is a bit different, and Bing is at least worth trying out. But Bing has a lofty hill to climb if it plans to try and wrestle away even some of Google’s stranglehold on the juicy search engine market share.

Should I Twitter? Yes, You Probably Should.

name.nospam@nospam.example.com (Kyle Sinclair) — Fri, 08 May 2009 11:30:00 -1000

Unless you've been stranded on a deserted island with a volleyball named Wilson for the past year, you're probably familiar with Twitter. I don’t think I need to detail what Twitter is and does, but in order to fill up this blog post with SEO rich content, I’m going to anyways. If you are indeed familiar with what Twitter is and does, please skip the next paragraph.

Twitter started as an online dialog and communication application where users connect and repeatedly share short answers, known as tweets, to the question "What Are You Doing?" in an informal and instant manner. The Twitter community has since opened the line of interpretation to the "What Are You Doing?" question. Today, the Twitter community regularly shares information about just about anything - “What’s cool?”, “What’s not cool?”, “What number am I thinking of now?” – it’s all on Twitter. Basically, if people have something on their mind, they’ll share it on Twitter.

Now back to the original reason why you are reading this: Should I Twitter? Yes, you probably should. And you have think beyond using Twitter just to tell your buddies you're hungry and what you’re going to eat for dinner. There are real business opportunities using Twitter.

For one, Twitter is absolutely exploding with new members. Let me repeat that – Twitter is ABSOLUTELY EXPLODING WITH NEW MEMBERS! In March 2009, Twitter had a growth of 1382% according to a Nielsen.com blog ranking the fastest-growing sites in the Member Communities category for February 2009. There’s an audience for just about everything on Twitter.

And if sheer volume of members isn’t enough, it was announced this week that Twitter Search is not only going to index and rank tweets in their search ranking results, but Twitter will also index and rank the links to the content within the tweets in their search results. Twitters’ search results will be one step closer to a search engine serving real-time information. If something’s being tweet-ed, especially something very 'now' and very topical, you will not only be able to search for but also find plenty of open dialog about that topic on Twitter - and in real time. Take that Google!

If you have brief newsworthy information to share and want to share it right now, Twitter allows you to both collect a captive audience and also provide an outlet to get your message out to the masses, fast.

If you've hung out with this guy, you may not know about Twitter.

50 Years of Branding Ruined in Less Than 3 Minutes?

name.nospam@nospam.example.com (Michael Svetchnikov) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 04:18:00 -1000

By now, most should have heard of the still developing story about two sophomoric – to say the least – Domino’s Pizza employees.

In summary, two employees posted a video to YouTube of themselves “improperly handling” food at a North Carolina Domino’s Pizza. The video titled “Disgusting Dominos People” was viewed more than a million times before being removed by the author as suggested by the notice, “due to a copyright claim by Kristy Hammonds” which appears above the video.

Unfortunately for Domino’s, and as many other will attest, when something gets released to the web, it’s nearly impossible to remove all traces if it has grown in popularity. Much of the media and user comments have sided with Domino’s in their handling of the situation due to a fairly quick yet cautious response as well as a formal Domino's apology video on YouTube by president, Patrick Doyle.

The interesting thing to note here is that world of social media is quite finicky in what makes the front page… As can be seen with this case, only one video of unsanitary food preparation really made the headlines, but there are actually four other videos of the same gross and immature behavior that have since surfaced.

Some may say Digg played a role – as the story appears 3rd and 11th for most popular in the last 7 and 30 days respectively – even though the video was first released elsewhere. Others may point to the Consumerist Sleuths who tracked down and identified the individuals and notified Domino’s corporate. All we know is this will have a negative effect in the short term but will fade in the long run just like this guy.

The Creat Wall of Awesome: Most Awesomest Wall Ever

name.nospam@nospam.example.com (Lindsey Wagner) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:14:00 -1000

Creat Studios is an industry-leading game development company based in Canton, MA. At Creat, each employee, from developer to CEO, is a game enthusiast, devoted to future of the console. Creat publishes cutting-edge games for the Sony Playstation Network; in fact, they just announced that their PS2 hit -- Smash Cars -- will be available for download on the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system. Creat is an official developer for Sony PSP, Nintendo DS, Wii and Microsoft XBOX 360.

For nearly two decades, Creat Studios has been delivering high quality games, so Genuine was pleased to bring their expertise to the forefront in developing their new website. Using Flash and Adobe Aftereffects in combination, Genuine showcased Creat's interactive portfolio in a slick 3D wall, highlighting new releases, game trailers, and developer diaries. To further spread the word of Creat's superb work, Genuine developed a robust games section full of rich media, all the while maintaining SEM best practices and utilizing social networking tools.

We also wanted to ensure that Creat's fans were exposed to the people behind the games. The developer diaries and candid photography included in the careers and company sections demonstrate the passion and dedication behind the team's work.

Yoga and Online Audience Segmentation

name.nospam@nospam.example.com (Chris Pape) — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 16:06:00 -1000

Today, I walked up Boylston Street where a yoga instructor was giving out yellow pamphlets good for one free yoga lesson. I watched as pamphlets were eagerly handed to every single person ahead of me. Then when I got within pamphlet handing distance – no pamphlet for me. The instructor was doing what marketers have been since the beginning of time - audience segmentation. Online, we use cookies as one tool that can help us deliver the right content to the right people based on their behavior. On Boylston Street, real cookies took part in visually sending a message that I’m too fat for yoga. Chips Ahoy, beotches.

We’re all familiar with Amazon’s pioneering ways of delivering a custom experience based on user behavior. But we're used to seeing custom content, products etc. Now, many of our clients outside of the ecommerce world are trying to create customized visual experiences for their online audience segments. In simple terms – they want to site to change look and feel according to who’s surfing it. In a scenario where a brand has a bizarro-audience of teens and baby boomers – image set A is of Abercrombian shirtless teens and B) is of steel-haired, perfect-toothed boomers walking on the beach in white cotton pants rolled up as the waves gently touch their aging feet. (As a side note, if you have imagery like that on your site, smash your monitor. Do it.)

The visual story you weave for the potential customer is a large factor in their decision of whether or not they engage with your brand. So, why shouldn’t we try to tailor the visual experience on sites in a fashion similar to Amazon’s content delivery strategy? We should within reason – its easy to overanalyze the different colors or types of imagery that will appeal to an engineer vs. a lawyer. A mom vs. a dad. A CEO vs. a CFO. A good audience segmentation strategy should consider all the potential differences between customer types but take into account that too much segmentation can seem contrived and gimmicky. Audience segmentation is critical and effective when used in moderation. Just like cookies and yoga.

I like to do this while eating Upper Crust BBQ pizza. I call it the husky

locust.

Woolite and Stacy London help Genuine become a fashion diva

name.nospam@nospam.example.com (Chris Pape) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 01:59:00 -1000

Genuine has a fierce fashion face. (Growwlllll.) We know a lot more about fashion thanks to our recent "Find the Look, Keep the Look" project which features "What Not to Wear" star and fashion expert Stacy London. Everyone from Genuine who worked on the project wore strappy-strappy sandals and cute n’ sporty tops with when working on the project. (OMG we are sooooo cute!) On Friday’s we wore simple black dresses which should be the staple of ever digital person’s wardrobe. (Obviously, people. PAlease.) And we take great care of our fiercest looks thanks to Woolite. You see?

Check out the campaign featured in today’s Wall Street Journal thanks to Schneider Associates.

A 1981 newscast >> The First Internet Newspaper

name.nospam@nospam.example.com (Chris Pape) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 12:26:00 -1000

This is a hilarious news report from 1981 about a "TelePaper" that can be uploaded to a rare machine known as a "home computer." I was actually in this newscast as a 4 year old but didn't make it past the editing room floor. In it, I predicted that in 10 years I would have the U.S. high score in Jungle Hunt, have a pet lion and a Knight Rider car bed. I have failed 4 year old Chris on all counts. Self, you need to reevaluate your life.