Here is the complete list of top 10 socially buzzed ad campaigns. ~ p
Balls Were All the Buzz in 2010
In 2010, we were all socially buzzing about balls. More specifically, the balls shown in the Axe 'Clean Your Balls' commercial. According to Zeta Interactive, the ad beat out Nike's 'Lebron/Rise', Old Spice's 'Smells like a Man', and even Betty White's Snickers spot that topped the Super Bowl ad meter for the most-liked ad. To prove this out, Zeta claims to 'scour 200 million comments on social media, including blogs, tweets, message boards and other outlets, and then determines sentiment to arrive at its rankings'. Whatever, I'll buy it. That ad was hilarious. Even though Old Spice's 'Smells like a Man' crushed 'Clean Your Balls' on YouTube - 25 million views compared to 4.5 million. According to Zeta, it had better over all buzz. Check them out below.
Here is the complete list of top 10 socially buzzed ad campaigns. ~ p
Here is the complete list of top 10 socially buzzed ad campaigns. ~ p
Funny and Odd Google Search Results
So, remember, these Google search results are 'learned' from what the majority of other people look up. ~ p
Visa Gets into the App Game with New Trends Instead of New Technology
If you're a Visa Cardholder and download this App, you will receive customized offers that can be redeemed online or in brick-and-mortar stores. The App will also give you a map and directions for locating retail outlets where you can redeem their offers, and it will also help you find nearby ATMs (nice experiential play, but does leading customers to ATMs make business sense? Maybe there are more cash advances on Visa cards than I think).
Visa is currently working with around 50 hand-picked retailers, including 24 Hour Fitness, Meineke, New York & Company, Holiday Inn, Hard Rock Café and Zales.
As for the customization, you will be able to select from a handful of categories to personalize the offers you receive, such as clothing, jewelry, travel, dining, entertainment, and other retail goods. And account holders with Visa Signature cards will get extra special offers in addition to the offers available to all Visa account holders (nice loyalty play for their best customers).
Frankly, this is cool, but I think it falls flat. It's nice to see Visa get into the Apps game, but this really feels like a combination of a mini-Groupon and Google Maps, with an added customization touch. Unfortunately, it seems like the customization is self-reported and not served up from learned behaviors.
If Visa could sign on all of their partners, enable me to make my purchases through my iPhone (a technology will be the next big thing, my guess, in 2011 and 2012), and customize offers based on the tracking of those other purchases...then I would be impressed. That would be an App that everyone would want and eventually think they needed.
I won't be downloading this App, but I'm sure some people will. Are you one of those people? Would you use this App? ~ p
Top Google Searches and Twitter Trends for 2010
If you're interested in what the world was searching for and talking about in 2010, Google and Twitter recently published their year in reviews. Google Search, which I consider an information pull, and Twitter, which I usually call a push, have different top topics, but there are a few similarities between the two, including the one and only Justin Bieber.
In terms of other Google news searches, Haiti proved the most popular, followed by Turkish sports club Besiktas, Chile, “earthquake,” Lady Gaga and the iPhone 4. The Gulf of Mexico oil spill ranked 10th. Take a few minutes and click here to check out the Google site and the cool gadget they put together to track what was searched throughout the world in 2010.
The top 10 Twitter trends for 2010 round out with these:
1. Gulf Oil Spill
2. FIFA World Cup
3. Inception
4. Haiti Earthquake
5. Vuvuzela
6. Apple iPad
7. Google Android
8. Justin Bieber
9. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows
10. Pulpo Paul
For a complete list and a nicely designed chart, visit Twitter's report here. Now onto 2011. What can we expect over the next 12 months? ~ p
In terms of other Google news searches, Haiti proved the most popular, followed by Turkish sports club Besiktas, Chile, “earthquake,” Lady Gaga and the iPhone 4. The Gulf of Mexico oil spill ranked 10th. Take a few minutes and click here to check out the Google site and the cool gadget they put together to track what was searched throughout the world in 2010.
The top 10 Twitter trends for 2010 round out with these:
1. Gulf Oil Spill
2. FIFA World Cup
3. Inception
4. Haiti Earthquake
5. Vuvuzela
6. Apple iPad
7. Google Android
8. Justin Bieber
9. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows
10. Pulpo Paul
For a complete list and a nicely designed chart, visit Twitter's report here. Now onto 2011. What can we expect over the next 12 months? ~ p
To-Do List: 1) Get Whiteyboard, 2) Use it Everywhere, 3) Take Over the World
Somethings are so awesome it's tough to put them into words. Unless, of course, you have a Whiteyboard at your disposal, because anything you do write is just a wipe away from starting over.
So, yeah, this is a real company and they've made enough money to recently expand their product line to include WhiteyNotes, dry-erase sticky notes, and WhiteyPads, to-do list-type sheets.
As much as I like to affectionately poke fun at these products, I kind of want them all. I feel like I would be the most prepared man alive if I could take out one of these sheets or pads and congregate people around a to-do list whenever and wherever I was. I think it'd be like Survivor Man meets Robin Hood meets Martha Stewart. Speaking of which, Martha Stewart really would've benefited from a Whiteyboard or two in the clink. ~ p
So, yeah, this is a real company and they've made enough money to recently expand their product line to include WhiteyNotes, dry-erase sticky notes, and WhiteyPads, to-do list-type sheets.
As much as I like to affectionately poke fun at these products, I kind of want them all. I feel like I would be the most prepared man alive if I could take out one of these sheets or pads and congregate people around a to-do list whenever and wherever I was. I think it'd be like Survivor Man meets Robin Hood meets Martha Stewart. Speaking of which, Martha Stewart really would've benefited from a Whiteyboard or two in the clink. ~ p
Why Groupon Turned Down Google
If you didn’t hear, Google supposedly tried to buy Groupon for a reported $2.5 – 6+ billion. This story now sounds more and more real. When I heard it last week, my first reaction was, ‘Holy crap, that’s a lot of money! Is Google trying to buy their way into a hot trend again (see attempted Yelp acquisition last year) instead of building a true competitor? I mean, Groupon isn’t even making that much money, are they? Umm…are they?’ About 15-minutes of Google searching later, I answered my own question with a ‘Hell, yes, they’re making money!’ And it was a lot more than I thought.
This isn’t the next Twitter, this isn’t the next Foursquare, Groupon is a powerful business model with a two-way revenue stream from customers and businesses. They pull in about $20 million in revenues a month, and are projected to crush that in 2011 with $2 billion in revenues. With that in mind, my second reaction was, ‘Is Google getting cheap with their acquisitions? I mean, spending 10x to 20x or more on a proven Internet money-making machine wouldn’t have been given a second thought a few years ago.’ While multipliers aren’t what they use to be, I now think it’s more than that. Simply put, I think Groupon is choosing to not sell to Google because they see more potential and money in Facebook. As an example, their new service Deal Feed will be directly linked to Facebook. In their words, ‘We’ll be adding tons to the Deal Feed over time, beginning with making it more social: you will be able to connect your feed to Facebook and receive updates on what your friends are doing, such as when your friends buy deals, follow a new merchant or comment on an offer. This will be another fun way to find great offers – or just keep on top of what your friends are up to.’
Let’s take a quick step back. Two years ago, heck, one year ago, turning down this kind of money would have been crazy. A profitable Internet company choosing to not partner and align with Google, and instead strengthen services with Facebook, a social network that doesn’t really make much money, never would’ve happened. But this has been quite the year for Facebook, hasn’t it? They haven’t just changed the way we use the Internet, they’ve begun to truly redefine it from the World Wide Web to the Social Web. In doing so, they’ve also paved new Social Web highways for both Internet start-ups and big brands to make a lot more money than Google can offer.
Let me attempt to explain why this shift is happening. To start, the game has changed. We are no longer going to Google to search for everything from sports scores, movie reviews, weather, vacation spots, restaurants, keyboard cats, and so on. We are moving away from a search-based model and relying more on an influencer-based model. And the influencers that seem to have the most power are either real-life famous, or Facebook-friend famous, and to a lesser degree Twitter-follower famous. Basically, with so much crap on the Internet, and I say that affectionately, there is no way we can be served up relevant information and experiences without companies knowing a little bit about us. Facebook is that company. We have given them this information. This is why Facebook constantly fights to keep privacy laws less than private, and why Google wants to close the doors on personal data sharing, so they can even the playing field with Facebook and keep their stronghold on Internet advertising. And as much as Google and their lobbyists try to scare us into thinking the world will end if Facebook and their partner companies know that you have listed Justin Bieber as your fav singer…it won’t. If anything, your Internet experience will be more relevant and filled with less stuff you don’t care about by sharing that little piece of information. This realization is changing everything, and the people who are intimately involved with the construction of the Internet and all its utilities know that this is the future. Customers, however, are still a bit unsure. Luckily, Facebook’s model is working so well to constantly improve the customer experience, everyone will soon stop questioning the motives, and start connecting in more and more new ways.
Now don’t get me wrong. Google isn’t going away. They’ve been at the top of the Internet jungle for too long, and search still has its place. But when a company like Groupon turns down $6 billion because they truly think the Social Web has more money waiting…you gotta think that Google is increasingly becoming a fallback feature instead of the dominant Internet portal that it once was.
As Paul Smalera, Senior Editor of Fortune says, ‘Google is increasingly feeling like less of a value add. In its quest to be open, it's stopped feeling like a smart filter that brings the most relevant parts of the web to users of its search, and more like the actual wild, woolly, untameable raw web itself.’
Google once revolutionized the way companies connected to customers with their search-based advertising. But, when you think about it, were those companies ever profitable because of Google? Media organizations like the New York Times experienced huge search-based traffic but very little profitability. (Source: Fortune)
When you think about companies like Zynga and Groupon, however, that have leveraged Facebook’s social model, they are wickedly successful. Granted those companies are set up to monetize traffic in a way that most media companies are not, but they are still unarguably benefiting from a social, targeted, personalized data model that every company will need in order to get a piece of the potentially massive new wave of Internet money in the future. And, at the risk of sounding like a cliché…that future is now. ~ p
This isn’t the next Twitter, this isn’t the next Foursquare, Groupon is a powerful business model with a two-way revenue stream from customers and businesses. They pull in about $20 million in revenues a month, and are projected to crush that in 2011 with $2 billion in revenues. With that in mind, my second reaction was, ‘Is Google getting cheap with their acquisitions? I mean, spending 10x to 20x or more on a proven Internet money-making machine wouldn’t have been given a second thought a few years ago.’ While multipliers aren’t what they use to be, I now think it’s more than that. Simply put, I think Groupon is choosing to not sell to Google because they see more potential and money in Facebook. As an example, their new service Deal Feed will be directly linked to Facebook. In their words, ‘We’ll be adding tons to the Deal Feed over time, beginning with making it more social: you will be able to connect your feed to Facebook and receive updates on what your friends are doing, such as when your friends buy deals, follow a new merchant or comment on an offer. This will be another fun way to find great offers – or just keep on top of what your friends are up to.’
Let’s take a quick step back. Two years ago, heck, one year ago, turning down this kind of money would have been crazy. A profitable Internet company choosing to not partner and align with Google, and instead strengthen services with Facebook, a social network that doesn’t really make much money, never would’ve happened. But this has been quite the year for Facebook, hasn’t it? They haven’t just changed the way we use the Internet, they’ve begun to truly redefine it from the World Wide Web to the Social Web. In doing so, they’ve also paved new Social Web highways for both Internet start-ups and big brands to make a lot more money than Google can offer.
Let me attempt to explain why this shift is happening. To start, the game has changed. We are no longer going to Google to search for everything from sports scores, movie reviews, weather, vacation spots, restaurants, keyboard cats, and so on. We are moving away from a search-based model and relying more on an influencer-based model. And the influencers that seem to have the most power are either real-life famous, or Facebook-friend famous, and to a lesser degree Twitter-follower famous. Basically, with so much crap on the Internet, and I say that affectionately, there is no way we can be served up relevant information and experiences without companies knowing a little bit about us. Facebook is that company. We have given them this information. This is why Facebook constantly fights to keep privacy laws less than private, and why Google wants to close the doors on personal data sharing, so they can even the playing field with Facebook and keep their stronghold on Internet advertising. And as much as Google and their lobbyists try to scare us into thinking the world will end if Facebook and their partner companies know that you have listed Justin Bieber as your fav singer…it won’t. If anything, your Internet experience will be more relevant and filled with less stuff you don’t care about by sharing that little piece of information. This realization is changing everything, and the people who are intimately involved with the construction of the Internet and all its utilities know that this is the future. Customers, however, are still a bit unsure. Luckily, Facebook’s model is working so well to constantly improve the customer experience, everyone will soon stop questioning the motives, and start connecting in more and more new ways.
Now don’t get me wrong. Google isn’t going away. They’ve been at the top of the Internet jungle for too long, and search still has its place. But when a company like Groupon turns down $6 billion because they truly think the Social Web has more money waiting…you gotta think that Google is increasingly becoming a fallback feature instead of the dominant Internet portal that it once was.
As Paul Smalera, Senior Editor of Fortune says, ‘Google is increasingly feeling like less of a value add. In its quest to be open, it's stopped feeling like a smart filter that brings the most relevant parts of the web to users of its search, and more like the actual wild, woolly, untameable raw web itself.’
Google once revolutionized the way companies connected to customers with their search-based advertising. But, when you think about it, were those companies ever profitable because of Google? Media organizations like the New York Times experienced huge search-based traffic but very little profitability. (Source: Fortune)
When you think about companies like Zynga and Groupon, however, that have leveraged Facebook’s social model, they are wickedly successful. Granted those companies are set up to monetize traffic in a way that most media companies are not, but they are still unarguably benefiting from a social, targeted, personalized data model that every company will need in order to get a piece of the potentially massive new wave of Internet money in the future. And, at the risk of sounding like a cliché…that future is now. ~ p
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