Posts filed under 'Interactive Marketing'
Posted February 12th, 2008 by admin
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General Motors first delved into social media with the GM Fast Lanes Blog, a success by most standards of corporate blogging. GM is posting, podcasting and even Twittering regularly, and people are commenting. But apparently all this is just a warm up. Recently they’ve decided to build upon the open dialogue principles of their first blog by creating GMnext, a new online community focused around technology, innovation and collaboration.
Adding Your Story
Once you register you can participate in the GMnext community in many ways. GM invites people to help them tell a story by contributing content through guest posts on the blog, videos, photos and even the GMnext Wiki. Frank Oresnik, a Chevy truck owner, reached the million mile mark on his 1991 Chevy Silverado and posted his compelling stories on the GMnext blog. The story was recently covered in CNet, NPR, AP and several other news sources.
The community is divided by Stories, Thoughts, Videos, Photos, Events, Chat, Podcasts and Feeds. Content within these sections is labeled by categories aimed at communicating automotive innovation: Design, Technology, Green, Ideas and Reach.
Bob Lutz, Chairman, GM North America recently introduced a rather unique community feature called Our Thoughts/Your Thoughts in which a GM executive offers his thoughts along side a post by a third party source. Larry Burns VP, GM R&D and writer/director Chris Paine went face to face about GM’s approach on global energy issues in the first dual post. There are 120 comments so far.
The video section is designed similar to YouTube with a way of sorting through clips by Most Viewed, Highest Ranked and Newest. You can rate and comment on videos, bookmark them and explore links and other multimedia related to the video. You can tune in for a live talk through the Chat section with Carl Zipfel HUMMER Director of Exterior Design on February 14th at 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. EST.
GMnext shows a true commitment for taking the corporation-to-consumer conversation to the next level. After seeing success with Fast Lanes, they identified an opportunity to further leverage social media to involve the masses in the creation of the GM story. I learned tons about GM and their proactive position in innovative technologies while writing this post – more than I have from the years of commercials and Transformers product placements. Hopefully their commitment to innovation and their ability to communicate it will turn around this classic American company from its 2007 losses.
Posted June 13th, 2007 by Scott
I’ve been to quite a few Second Life (SL) events in the past, but haven’t been as impressed as I was with the launch of the Offical Playboy Island last night. I think this event was a great representation of Playboy as a brand rather than the stereotypical affirmations people usually make. What really caught my attention were the greeters who made it a point to greet almost every person that teleported to the event. Xena and Zoey, members of the Playboy team, were dressed as bunnies and welcomed everyone to the event throughout the night, even ushering tours around the facility.
The first level was a mix of mingling and casual shop browsing with the opportunity to buy Playboy branded clothing for both yourself (male & female) as well as your avatar. Surrounding the island, were several tiki bars and even a replica of the infamous “Grotto” (which I didn’t have a chance to go into but heard some stories haha). I did venture to the second level for a while which was definitely where the party was. I was told that the Sim was maxed out at 85 avatars throughout the night. Now you may be saying “85? That’s nothing!” However, when you look at it over the course of several hours, that’s a high number of people continuously engaging with your brand. Not to mention all the people (like myself) who told friends and family about the event.
I want to give props to MSGiro, the developer and manager of Playboy in SL, along with his team at Sentient Services for putting on such a successful event and representing the Playboy brand so well. It’s amazing how far SL has come since my first encounter with it and I feel other large enterprises will soon begin to realize its value. To those of you who still aren’t sure or have tried it and say it doesn’t work, all I have to say is “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” Just give SL time and patience and Linden Labs will do the rest.
Posted May 3rd, 2007 by Scott
Since I spend ample time scurrying around in Second Life (SL), when I came across Unisfair Inc. I was a little eager to see what they offer that SL doesn’t. To my surprise, I found this to be an amazing tool that eases businesses into virtual worlds without the need of feeling overwhelmed by a program as intuitive as SL.
IBM held the first ever Virtual Virtualization Tech Fair using the Unisfair environment. I’ve only seen the screenshots from IBM’s website, but the overall idea behind a virtual tech fair is ingenious. It gives businesses the opportunity to congregate at an event and showcase their products and services without the need to staff tables at convention centers. Bringing the people to the event can be done with online outreach eliminating the significant costs of attending an event in real life.
I feel this virtual event is only the beginning. I certainly won’t be surprised when we see virtual job fairs, home shows, auto shows, etc. Especially as we make the push into Web 3.0. Will you be?
Posted March 23rd, 2007 by Scott
Does anyone remember the movie Edtv? Well here is a real life Edtv sort of show covering the life of one man and his friends 24/7. I came across Justin.tv and figured I would throw my two cents in. Being in the social media industry, I think this is a perfect example of how companies need to utilize online audiences to promote their products. Justin.tv has only been live for a little over four days now, but the number of sites linking in and the countries they are located in shown by Technorati, depicts how far this campaign has reached so far. I think this is an ingenious way to draw in a crowd, keep their attention and have some fun while doing it.
Check out this Wired News article if you want to see what life on Justin.tv has been like so far.
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