the merger of integrated strategy and innovative development.
Our partnership with CIF (The Canadian Institute for the Future) is leading us down a swift path towards a new dynamic publishing platform, designed to build infrastructure in local communities by way of transmedia development and a robust microfinancing engine. Basically, we’re hoping to re-engineer the storytelling process and make it profitable (and equitable) for entire groups of people. In our humble belief, participatory culture is something that must be empowered if we want to affect real change in the near and long term. Look out for more details coming soon…
A bunch of us digital monkeys will be presenting awards to the “unsung heroes of the Internet” – programmers, designers and respective ilk – tonight in good ole’ Austin, Texas (yee-haw!). You can check out the LiveStream here via BitGravity. Special thanks to Executive Director, Alan Wolk, who has worked tirelessly to pull this thing together. It should be one hell of an event… that is if the judging panel doesn’t get too sauced before the curtains open (did I just incriminate myself?).
I’ve been invited to speak at Gulltaggen, the Nordic Premiere Digital Media Conference, April 27th – 29th in Oslo, Norway. I will be presenting material based on Transmedia Development and The New World Model, as well as showcasing new work I’ve been doing with Canada’s IFTF (Institute for the Future). I am honored, humbled and thrilled to join such renowned company as Sir Richard Branson, Guy Kawasaki, Mitch Joel and Chris Andersen… and of course, it’s always great to visit Norway!
My colleague and agency vet, Alan Wolk, started a really cool awards platform to acknowledge the “unsung heroes of the Internet” called the Hive Awards. It’s a robust and well-designed site with an all-star cast of industry advisors, and even has some interesting blog content from an array of digital monkeys, including yours truly. So check out the site, damnit, and join the Hive.
In a partnership with search consultancy GOplatforms our collaborative Twitter donation app for brands is primed and ready. For more information on the offering, feel free to check out our SlideShare preso… We welcome any and all feedback you might have. You can also follow us on Twitter.
Well, technically the site is still in private BETA, but we’re finally live. It’s been a great journey thus far, and we look forward to your feedback on how we can improve the platform, which is meant to give you the ultimate purview of a brand’s online visibility. Join our special invite list and experience this for yourself at heardable.com
Gunther Sonnenfeld will be teaching a communications planning and advertising technology course on November 13th, 14th and 15th at the prestigious Miami Ad School, a partnership with CP+B. The invitation is truly an honor, and special thanks to Frank Striefler (Media Arts Lab) for making the recommendation. The three day course will cover the subjects of media socialization, transmedia development and technology implementation, as well as how these disciplines apply to a thesis project the students are creating to rebrand the city of Miami. If nothing else, 4 nights at The Clinton and 80 degree November weather should be enough to stimulate the senses.
Transmedia storytelling is an emerging discipline that has only just begun to reveal itself in recent years, and has only enjoyed success with a limited number of brands such as Coke, Audi and Dove – brands that have had the courage and foresight to empower their consumer relationships. With valuable input from the leaders of this groundbreaking movement, the folks at iMedia gave us the opportunity to discuss the possibilities of what we can do as brands, agencies and publishers of dynamic content.
It’s tough being in Alpha (or Beta). With interactive development, you’re always feeling that the product is unfinished or could be better. Thankfully, you can lean on some trusted colleagues to push you into launch mode, whether you like it or not. Well, sort of.
Heardable is a real-time, social search listening platform that examines over 20 unique on-site and off-site variables, including a website’s code, creative design parameters, connectivity, search engine best practices, social brand presence, and other unique characteristics that determine one’s ‘heardability’.
We’re proud of where it’s going, and we hope the platform helps all of you in your quests to get your brands heard…
We were recently invited to a symposium hosted by the LA Times Media Group; in attendance were senior representatives from the likes of Ning, Facebook and Passenger. In a nutshell, the panel reinforced some very critical points about the digital publishing world, namely that the transition from paid print content to shared digital currency is a very promising and very scalable model. In giving us an exclusive sneak peek of the LA Times site redesign, it was also apparent that new feature sets would facilitate this growth; among them, ‘unstandardized’ ad spaces as well as ‘content adjacencies’, in which the establishment of strategic content partners provide real value with things like popular cross-posts, all of which bolster engagement and awareness around select categories. While the verdict is still out on newspaper print operations (and respective ad sales which still haven’t bottomed out), when you consider utilities like Kindle and a whole new suite of mobile apps (including one coming soon from Ning), the ‘Times’ should prove to be quite profitable in the not so distant future. Oh, and where does social media play a role? Right in the middle.
Read all about our successful trip to the Bay Area, from our discussions with technology partners eCairn and Sharethrough, to chats and learnings from brands such as General Mills, Wells Fargo, Kaiser Permanente and Intuit, and thought leaders like host Andy Sernovitz. The grand takeaways were that social media is the ultimate complement to integrated marketing methods, and that trust means everything when it comes to internal communications and outreach.
We tried the “group thing”, but that didn’t work so well. So after putting up a fan page and redirecting some of our content, it’s going pretty well. Facebook has done a nice job of offering functionality and application sets that really enhance the user experience, as well as making it possible to port your content as real currency. Come by and say hi, we’d love to hear from you.
A new article in iMedia Connection about bloggers and the brands they sometimes represent who have been caught in the FTC’s crosshairs. There are some specific examples that highlight just how convoluted this battle might become. Enjoy!
It’s been interesting to see how big agencies are adapting to the ever-changing media landscape and economic times – in many ways, they’re embracing niche opportunities and partnering up with little people like us to get the job done right. So, after talking to friends at sister WPP agencies Burson-Marsteller and Penn, Schoen & Burland, we started exploring the development of some new research and analytics platforms, as well as creating some forward-thinking strategies for their clients. Personally, I just like the steady stream of bagels and coffee. As for the work, well, I suppose size does matter, especially when it comes to brand relationships.
We’re teaming up with our friend Juan De Lascurain on an exciting new project that will (hopefully) leverage a suite of product offerings that span programming, apparel, literature and high-end art. Juan is a maverick creative personality, and created the VidaYouth brand as an umbrella for these offerings and others to come. His inspirational show “Dream Big” (based on the book) has aired in 24 countries around the world and has attracted celebrity co-hosts and interviewees such as Shane Moseley, Pau Gasol, Dustin Hoffman, Debra Messing and a whole crew of international sports stars. We plan to repurpose a lot of this content and develop cross-network distribution deals for IPTV and mobile. Most importantly, Juan is an enlightened individual who believes in contributing to the greater good, which is why we’re so happy to be a part of these efforts.
ThinkState has signed on to co-develop a new utility called “Heardable”. Basically, the platform will allow companies to optimize their digital offerings in an easy-to-use format, for things like local search and a slew of other related functions. The idea was hatched by a well-respected online marketing exec who had come across these functional challenges in his own work, and decided to do something about it. We’re honored to be a part of it, and like all the other projects we’re developing, can’t wait to get into the BETA phase!
Ahh, yet another teaser. While we want to share all of our development with the world, we still have to abide by the rules of good business. However, we can tell you that we’re building a suite of customizable ad units that combine dynamic search, behavioral targeting, brand & social media monitoring, advanced real-time analytics & enterprise data-sourcing as well as reputation management all in one, turnkey solution. We’re partnering up with some heavy-hitters in these respective areas, and expect to engage in more serious discussions with some name brands in the next few weeks. Once again, stay tuned!
ThinkState and a collective of agency and technology partners are developing what is described as a “social utility for business conversation” called UBIQUID.US. Under the premise of “you tell me, I tell you”, the concept was hatched as a means for aggregating and optimizing myriad social media conversations, allowing individuals to develop and share their voice without having to find those conversations across a dizzying array of blogs and forums, which most often are duplicitous with their content. Further, the utility will act as the ultimate social experiment – building off of a foundation of 10 advertising and media topics, people will then create their own categories and sub-categories; our hope is that the content tree grows to include everything from art to science to law and politics. The utility will function as part wiki, part (micro)blog, part bookmark, part portal and will offer things like micro-tagging and presentation export features, and most importantly…it will be free! Look out for a release in the coming few weeks…
In the quest to give microblogging tools true utility, the two companies are creating a joint-venture to develop an innovative overlay technology that will allow Twitter users to make donations to their favorite charities. We can’t elaborate much more than that, but we can assure you that this will be one of the first steps in developing monetization for microblogs with a higher purpose. Stay tuned for the Beta release!
For more information on GO Platforms, click here.
In other development news, we’re teaming up with our friends at TRÜF and Founding Minds on a new open source ad platform (application based) called “AdStiki”. We’ve actually been developing the concept for over a year now and are finally getting into the front-end logistics. In a nutshell, the platform will match national brands with local businesses to provide highly targeted advertising (micro media). The catch here is that we plan to capitalize on off- and online remnant inventory as well as “unrealized” inventory (use your imagination…). That’s about all we can tell you right now (annoying, right?), but we do hope to get a Beta release out within the next 3-4 months, so stay tuned!
Marshall McLuhan’s famous declaration that “The medium is the message” has evangelized one of our industry’s greatest and most progressive challenges. For the most part, media and creative camps have been able to co-exist almost independently (or mutually exclusive) of one another. The work has commonly suffered because the system is not only self-preserving, but also runs on conflicting business models and ideologies. As medium and message become more and more aligned, and as the evolution of Web 2.0 spawns a new movement in which web applications are rapidly replacing web destinations, media and creative camps need to work together more. In other words, media should win out as an equal partner in creative and product development. All we need to do is look at the work of some of the world’s biggest brands and their respective agencies for inspiration.
Read the full iMedia Connection article here
By Gunther Sonnenfeld
