www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghSe23tc2ew

I’ve gathered some stats that were as accurate as I could get earlier today around 12:30 and probably don’t begin to measure the total impact of the campaign, as they don’t even begin to measure the blog posts and Facebook shares, etc. of the videos.

149 ‘response’ videos thus far and it’s probably more than that by the time I finish writing, for a combined 3,347,742 views. The average video has been viewed 22,468 times.

Tweets @oldspice in the past two days are at 12,066, and he’s getting responses on Facebook, YouTube, etc, also. (That number grew by 30 in less than one minute).

New videos are getting about 130 views within minutes. Within 20-30 minutes, they average around 300 views. Overnight, viewing numbers explode as blogs pick up their favorite videos and they are passed around virally.

So far, the campaign has: Endorsed libraries, facilitated a marriage proposal, responded to many articles from outlets like: Huffington Post, LA Times, Perez Hilton, 4Chan(!) and G4 TV, responded to celebrities and online personalities such as: Ellen Degeneres, Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Biz and Ev, Kevin Rose, Guy Kawasaki, Ryan Seacrest, and carried on an ‘online fliration’ with Alyssa Milano. Oh, and they responded to the official Starbucks twitter account, getting in on the action.

I went to my old university the yesterday to see a friend and when I arrived they had been watching these videos for awhile. This is a huge success story for Old Spice in updating their brand from the previous perception as an ‘old person’ brand. (College-aged friend’s words, not mine.)

Some film posters might soon have more to offer than graphics and titles.

Disney created the first augmented reality campaign for a major motion picture to promote the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. If users launch Layar, an augmented reality app available for iPhone and Android, near a specially-marked poster for the movie, they’ll be presented with a character from the film. The character prompts them to watch the trailer and offers the opportunity to play a short game.

If users answer three questions correctly, they are awarded points at Movie Minutes, a website that offers movie-related merchandise and DVDs. The campaign is taking place exclusively in the Netherlands right now, targeting users in close proximity to movie theaters.

Major brands are taking notice of the unique opportunities that augmented reality provides and finding creative ways to use the technology. Expect to see more of the same soon, in a theater near you.

Originally posted at Speaking of Social Media.

Seven hundred million questions, 12 million accounts, and the 61st most visited site in the US (according to Quantcast), one site that is growing in popularity has provided a new way to communicate directly online. A more stealth trend among younger ‘netizens’ is an anonymous questioning platform provided by a service called Formspring.me.

Formspring features a simple to set up to create an account and link it to social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Anonymous users can ask questions of whoever has set up a Formspring page, and the question-ee can choose to respond and make public any submitted questions. While teenagers are using it to ask risqué questions of their peers, some brands have been able to capture the direct-response appeal of the platform to answer their customers’ questions.

Far from a customer-complaint forum, Formspring’s user culture of anonymous Q&A provides an opportunity to answer questions in a casual way. The users are mostly unidentified, and the answers tend to reflect a sense of humor or personalization behind the brand face. Fiat in Brazil set up a page for the launch of the Uno, and Red Bull US is using the service to answer questions that range from the mundane, “What was the happiest moment in your life?” to the more combative “Why are you **** riding the Celtics so hard?” with a flair and personality of its own (“Have you heard of a Red Bull athlete named Rajon http://redbullusa.com/rondo? Our turn: Are you a Lakers fan, or something? =) See also http://j.mp/LooseBall — next Q!”)

Authenticity is a keystone for brands engaging in social media.It takes a strong stomach to solicit anonymous questions, but for the brand that’s willing to take the risk, the payoff is increased credibility.

Article originally posted at Speaking of Social Media.

The most followed accounts are generally those of media outlets and especially celebrities. In perhaps the most unsurprising study yet released, Sysomos has done a study of followers’ influence based on retweets and follower quality, and found that celebrities’ followers have the least influence.

Because celebrities’ followers are inherently listeners, rather than authorities or influencers, they do not have the same value as followers of the New York Times or other media outlets. Sysomos identified rankings of “follower authority,” defined as those who are more apt to comment or make their own judgments on current events and share those opinions, via retweet or reblogging.

The quest for followers does have some use in validating the newsworthiness of the information from a particular twitter account, but chasing follower numbers alone is a poor metric of performance when using social media. Pay attention to the quality of followers you attract as well as the number to spread your message online.

Find more information on this study at Mashable.

Originally posted at Speaking of Social Media.

A bowl ban of 2 years, and the loss of 20 scholarships. Sounds heavy, but take heart, Trojan fans – all is not lost. Here are a few reasons the Empire will not fall:
- Company Culture. People playing for us play so they can get to the NFL. Other schools are all about bowl wins, team history, prestige, winning championships, etc., but that’s not the program’s priority at USC. Although our fans are all about championships, the program’s ultimate goal is to prepare and send guys to the NFL.
So a guy that goes to SC isn’t thinking championship, he’s thinking NFL – and us not having bowl-eligibility doesn’t hurt that. That’s the culture that Pete instilled when he was here (he was an NFL coach beforehand, remember), and Kiffin (also an NFL coach and a PC disciple) is going to coninue it.

- Team talent. Even before the sanctions, our recruiting classes are smaller than other teams (even the best programs, like Texas and Ohio State), because we don’t have that many holes to fill on our roster. SC recruits for quality, not quantity. Besides, walk-ons at SC have a history of producing – e.g. last year’s NFL Rookie of the Year Clay Matthews, for one, and to a lesser extent, multipurpose QB-WR-FS-holder Garrett Green.

- Location. SC is still in the nation’s second-largest media market. While other, smaller and less prestigious schools need to go to a bowl because playing in a bowl against top-level competition will help scouts evaluate whether or not the guys are as good as advertised, SC doesn’t need that. Every SC game is on TV (many of them national TV), and for all the flak that the Pac-10 takes, it’s always going to be discussed in the major media outlets.

- Hegemony. There just aren’t any other big-time programs in our area that can steal recruits. There’s always UCLA, and Oregon is gonna be good for a while – but SC is the undisputed powerhouse on the west coast. Though the Ducks are good, and we’re coming off a “down year” (although i can think of a hundred teams that’d love to have a season like we did last year), we’re still the premier destination for players that want to make it to the NFL. Two bowl-less years aren’t gonna knock us off.

There’s still reason for optimism in Trojan-land. So let’s get out there and watch our boys win a Pac-10 championship.

FIGHT ON!

We’ve covered Stickybits before, a startup launched at SXSW earlier this year with the intent of creating a platform for discussion of physical objects. Today’s announcement of Pepsi as an official partner is a peek into the future of physical objects that mirror the digital world, and vice-versa. A cousin to augmented reality, Stickybits provides a way for customers and brands to discuss real-world objects, by scanning barcodes and sharing stories, comments, photos, and video that have to do with those brands.

Pepsi’s sponsorship means that they will have the first message to users, similar to a paid search result, on any of their products that a customer might scan. While it may be a while until mass adoption of scanning objects takes place, similar behavior such as checking into places via Foursquare and competitors has already begun to seep into the mainstream. Barcodes are available for anything via Stickybits – the picture at the beginning of this post is one we’ve created for GolinHarris.

The internet has long strived to become a place that interacts and provides useful information about the real world, from RFID technology to Google Maps’ Street View. The object-oriented internet has taken a huge leap forward today in a platform that provides information about brands and products via mobile phones.

As new platforms that merge the digital space with reality emerge, so do both opportunities and threats to brand discussion. Although Pepsi has taken a bold leap forward by proactively joining the conversation about real-world objects tied to the digital space, it is easy to see that this kind of digital and physical interactions has the potential to be both positive and explosively negative for all kinds of brands. How long until health organizations are attaching photo media of the morbidly obese to brands such as Pepsi that contribute greatly to the obesity epidemic taking place in America?

While Stickybits may only be an iteration in an object-oriented internet, the message is clear: discussion of brands can and will take place everywhere a product exists in the real world.

This article originally posted at Speaking of Social Media.

Yap stated that Asia’s virtual economy is five times the size of the United States’ – and it is growing quickly. This means faster evolution on the web of new business models due to fragmented and evolving consumption modes. Mr. Yap said that Singapore is focused on creating networks where they are needed, in areas such as health, transportation and employment. This will create simplicity for everyone from everywhere and digitize physical interactions. Yap described his concept of an “information shadow”, the idea that capturing physical interactions with the world could create corresponding data online, fueling the kind of information that can create new insights and industries.

Singapore is uniquely situated to capitalize on this digital revolution by orchestrating elements of social networks, design, businesses and creative works. Michael Yap says cross-discipline and cross-border collaboration is not just the future of Singapore, but also the outlook for the world.

Read more Notes from TEDxUSC.

The ruling of the U.S. court system is that fashion is too “utilitarian” to be protected by copyright. Imagine if only one designer was allowed to use buttons, or zippers? She was focused on finding a model of ownership that fosters innovation. Blakley also said that copyright is bad for some industries, and the sales or market share of those industries is far smaller than the share of industries with less copyright protection.

The way forward, in fashion, comedy, and perhaps other industries, is to create a ‘style’ or ‘quality’, a personality of the brand that cannot be ripped off. This is certainly food for thought, and mirrors an online culture that values ‘open source’. To learn more about the Norman Lear Center’s project on copyright, visit http://www.readytoshare.org/

Check out Johanna’s talk below:

Read more Notes from TEDxUSC.

Recently, I attended the second annual TEDxUSC event and participated in an exciting day of speakers, artists, and an interactive reception.

Maja Matarić introduced to the audience the concept of socially assistive robots. By creating non-contact assistive robots, Matarić hopes to solve part of the healthcare problem. Her robots have had success in being companions for people with special needs, such as the elderly, stroke patients, and children with autism spectrum disorders. She found that stroke patients who needed to complete a daily exercise regimen were far more likely to do so with one of her robot “coaches” than someone who was asked to do it on their own. She envisions her robots of the future as personalized one-on-one coaches, monitors, motivators, and companions. Her initial results sound like a positive direction for both health motivation and a practical application of robotic technology within the healthcare arena. Learn more about her work in this article from the New Yorker, or visit the USC Robotics Interaction Lab.

Read more Notes from TEDxUSC.

The increasing connectivity to the internet via smart phones has given rise to another always-on technology: location-based services. Juniper Research’s newest report on mobile services estimates that mobile location-based services may reach revenues of $12.7 billion by 2014.

The most popular location-based services of the future will be timely, rewarding and useful. In a study by eMarketer, 88% of female internet users would be interested in targeted offers from brands they trust. Discounts and coupons are already popular on smart phones, and Foursquare has made their business out of offering “Mayors” special deals. Cellfire also offers on-the-spot coupons to customers. Location-based services are an opportunity to match brands and customers based on their proximity to points of sale.

Location-based services also serve other, more utilitarian needs. Yelp offers restaurant and store information for nearby stores, while Sit or Squat offers restroom reviews. Happy Hours will find the closest happy hour for after-work revelry, and Rocket Taxi will find a nearby taxi to take you home after.

Other location-based services, such as Whrrl and Twitter‘s location feature, offer the opportunity to provide locational context to sharing information such as photos and status updates. These services might create digital communities of those who regularly visit the same real-world locations.

The ubiquity and utility of always-on devices ensure that location-based services continue to grow in adoption. Although privacy concerns will be prominent, the experience that providers will offer and augmented reality apps such as Layar will provide an even more seamless experience hard to resist.

Article originally posted at Speaking of Social Media.