Social Media Goes Viral

Just seconds before the self-satirizing Old Spice "Man on a Horse" character wore out his welcome, the hyper-manly bastard crushed it this week with a brilliant combination of social media and video. Scores of videos of actor Isaiah Mustafa responding in near-real-time to questions posed on Twitter, Facebook and Reddit were produced. The actor and crew invited high profile members of various social nets to pose questions to the Old Spice persona. Holed up in a studio for a couple of days, they then made short clips in response to queries coming apparently from everyone from Christina Applegate to Alyssa Milano, Demi Moore to the crowds at Reddit.

The Old Spice Guy Has Some Advice For Obama According to ReadWriteWeb a team of videographers and creatives are working in concert with technical staff to determine which Tweets have the combination of social influence and content potential to merit a filmed response. The report quotes Iain Tait, Global Interactive Creative Director: "We're looking at who's written those comments, what their influence is and what comments have the most potential for helping us create new content. The social media guys and script writers are collaborating to make that call in real time. We have people shooting and we're editing it as it happens. Then the social media guys are looking at how to get that back out around the web...in real time." As the commercials so clearly portray, the Old Spice Guy is more than perfect, he is an angel sent from heaven to rescue us from the average smelling men in our lives. Recently, the man in the towel, Isaiah Mustafa, took his magical power to another level. Johannes S. Beals, now known to the world as "Jsbeals," dropped to his virtual knees via Twitter and asked the deodorant guru to propose to his girlfriend on his behalf. Mustafa agreed, and to no surprise, the two mere mortals were engaged shortly after the video was aired. Because the truth is, neither male nor female could resist a line like, “your love has blossomed from a seed into a fully grown love plant and now it's time to fertilize that plant.” The effect is simply brilliant. They have succeeded in blending social media, video and sheer creative inspiration into a campaign that looks like nothing that came before. This has become an ongoing social media/video event that just expands its reach every second. The videos are hit or miss, but the project was so addictive you just kept coming back to see if the next one was a hit. The Demi Moore clip, in which our hero trashes a pirate piñata is noteworthy. Alyssa Milano herself grabbed a towel and took her vidcam into the bathroom to vid-banter with him. This is media you can't buy.

Converging Advertising and Public Relations: LeBron James’ “Decision”

LeBron James’ decision to sign with the Miami Heat made NBA commissioner David Stern say “I wasn’t like, ‘Whoa.’ You know, it was more like, ‘Hmm, that’s pretty good.’ ” Stern said he does wish James had chosen a better platform to announce his decision, particularly because he didn’t give the Cavaliers more notice he was leaving. “I think that the advice that he received on this was poor. His performance was fine. His honesty and his integrity shine through. But this decision was ill conceived, badly produced and poorly executed. Those who were interested in it were given our opinion prior to its airing. I would have advised him not to embark on what has become known as ‘The Decision.’” James made the right move; he just handled the PR horribly. He knowingly, or unknowingly, slapped Cleveland in the face by announcing his "decision" on national TV. A 10-story billboard of James on one of Cleveland's skyscrapers was immediately taken down. James' replica jerseys were burned and across the city James' Cleveland jerseys were being sold for under $20. Before the defection those same jerseys were being sold for over $100. By now you've heard the offense against the basketball star’s one-hour TV special to announce his team choice -- that it was narcissistic, sullied his brand and blurred the journalistic line for ESPN. But what you haven't heard is the defense of the man who helped put the show together: Ari Emanuel, co-CEO of the William Morris Endeavor agency, who says "The Decision" forwarded the paradigm for advertiser-funded programming. "Everybody can say what they want -- it was the wrong decision, there was too much hoopla, whatever -- but for me it was about doing the event, getting the advertisers to participate and doing it for charity," Mr. Emanuel said. "This was a major success for advertisers, and we're getting closer to pushing the needle on advertiser-content programming." But it's perhaps more surprising that James decided to go so big, almost ostentatious, with the revelation of his decision. He's spent years developing a spotless and humble reputation, so the show smacked of showboating overkill to many fans, even in Cleveland, which desperately hoped he stays put as a Cavalier. Jame’s “Decision” show snared an audience of around 12.5 million people, according to calculations from Brad Adgate, senior VP-research, Horizon Media, using preliminary Nielsen figures. That's a big audience for a quiet cable interview at a Boys & Girls Club. At those levels, however, the ESPN broadcast fell far short of prior "newsmaker" moments on TV. The verdict at the now-infamous O.J. Simpson trial captured the attention of 53.9 million people across 10 different networks, according to Nielsen. And Game 7 of the 2010 NBA Finals snared 28.2 million when it was broadcast on ABC. "The Decision" was no Super Bowl or series finale of "M*A*S*H," the two most-watched TV broadcasts in history. For that matter, the show wasn't even an "American Idol."

Enjoy $9.99 Electronic Books While They Last

News Corp Chief Rupert Murdoch, who oversees a media empire than includes HarperCollins books, home to authors like Michael Crichton and Janet Evanovich, made clear his displeasure with the low price Amazon.com Inc has set for electronic books, Reuter reports. In order to raise prices, Murdoch wants to renegotiate the current deal with Amazon, and said the world's largest retailer appears "ready to sit down with us again" to talk about new terms. If Murdoch's HarperCollins manages to work out a new deal, it would deal a major, and perhaps final, blow to Amazon's current pricing. Just days ago, the world's largest online retailer bowed to pressure from another major publisher, Macmillan, which insisted on charging $12.99 to $14.99 for its books. Book pricing has been key to pushing growth of Kindle e-reader since its launch in 2007, since cheap e-books help consumers justify the cost of purchasing the device. It has also put Amazon at odds with publishers, however, who say that the low prices will cannibalize sales of higher-priced hardback copies. Fresh competition from Apple Inc -- which rolled out the iPad -- has only cast more attention on pricing. Publishers are more anxious than ever to protect their profit margins, and now have some leverage in negotiating against Amazon. Murdoch, while keeping mum on the exact deal with Apple, suggested the terms of are more favorable to HarperCollins than Amazon's. "Apple, in its agreement with us, which is not been disclosed in detail, does allow for a variety of slightly higher prices," he said. Amazon.com surrendered to a publisher and agreed to raise prices on some electronic books.

The Emergence of Mobi

Gary Klingsheim of Site Reference says it’s a small world, after all; but with the emergence of Mobi -- a Top-Level Domain (TLD) in the domain -- it's even smaller. In fact, the whole world, at least the World Wide Web, will now fit on a cell phone screen. Approved by ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, in July 2005, the Mobi domain is managed by a group of technology firms known as the mTLD global registry. Executives from Google, Nokia, Samsung, Ericsson, Microsoft, Visa and other tech and communications firms serve on mTLD's board of directors. There are many competing interests, as well as convergent ones, and time will tell if the consortium can hammer out realistic standards and steer the development of this new "mobile space." From "who" to "what" Those are the firms behind the Mobi domain name, but besides being an obvious abbreviation of "mobile," what else makes it special? The first Mobi domains were granted in September 2006, as mTLD worked with the W3C Mobile Web Initiative (MWI) to develop standards for mobile content and delivery. Mobi domains do not require the use of any particular technology, but there are general standards for creating user experiences "consistent with the guidelines" and specially optimized for cell phones and other mobile Web devices. The mTLD group distributes a free tool, named "Ready.mobi," for determining a Web site's mobile readiness. A quick page analysis will result in a Ready score between 1 and 5, depending on how well Mobi's best practices were implemented. Tailoring sites to particular domains, however, is considered by many to be a breach of the "principles of device independence." There are other ways to tailor content to mobile devices without establishing and enforcing a new TLD -- hostnames within an existing domain, subdomains, "negotiated content," CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) -- but sometimes the top-down method does work best. Similar services There are other tech solutions that can provide very Mobi-like features, such as the Opera Mobile "microbrowser" which uses its Small Screen Rendering Technique to convert Web sites on the fly. However, because the browser still has to download the whole Web page, images and all, displaying a converted page may not get you "flying" very fast. You will also be paying for the connection, meaning the process is expensive in money as well as time. The W3C is working on new authoring languages, one of which is DIAL (Device Independent Authoring Language), to help create Web sites usable across the huge range of mobile devices available now, as well as even more powerful new ones coming soon. There are already some "adaptation solutions" in use that leverage DIAL and similar tools to build sites that can be used with the Mobi domain names. Other open source initiatives are approaching the problem from another direction, amassing a huge database of browser ID strings. The wrap-up Although the control is still loose, Mobi sites are required to be optimized for viewing (and actual use) on mobile phones. All users want is the same good content they get online in any other fashion. Sites have to be optimized for the particular, and ever-changing, abilities and drawbacks of these mobile units, which means contending with small screens, limited or awkward input/output methods, the presence of embedded sensors (accelerometers, GPS, touchscreens, etc.) and the often unpredictable "human factors." People want immediacy in their Web experience, and want it in the context of the mobile environment -- meaning they want to get what they need without thinking too hard, since they're not at a desk with time to spare. They are more likely walking into a restaurant and want to check the reviews of the blue plate special. Right now, Web site owners are hard at work retrofitting content, making changes and even creating separate sites for mobile as opposed to desktop-based use. From the perspective of content providers, maintaining separate sites represents more work, twice the trouble and a lot of unnecessary spending. Watch for the Mobi domain to be assimilated, like a new Borg, into the Web 3.0 universe as faster, better "re-purposing algorithms" tailor single Web pages for viewing on multiple devices. There is too much waste involved in keeping things separate. Convergence doesn't just refer to TVs turning into PCs. It means media will be adapted to whatever device you are using to read, play or watch it. Exciting times are ahead!