What Are You Saying?

What's more effective?

2006-10-10T19:31:00.000+05:30

I've been watching both the Pepsi and Coca Cola damage control ads that have appeared on TV and it's certainly worth a discussion. On the one hand you have the CEO of the company making a passionate plea about the safety of the brand he represents. On the other hand, we have the celebrity brand ambassador backing the brand and IMHO, he does a great job.

Still, I'd like to open this discussion up. Do you think the CEO is better at representing the brand in such a crisis or the celebrity brand ambassador? Who's doing the better PR?

Here's a link that talks about this, but would love to hear different views.

Around the world in...50 blogs

2006-09-29T16:13:00.000+05:30

A phenomenon that started in October 2003, Metroblogging (Metblogs) was intended as a group blog where a number of bloggers from Los Angeles could talk about the city as they saw it. Three years later, the project includes more than 50 city-specific blogs around the world with close to 700 contributors.

Metroblogging recently found place in Forbes Magazine's Best of the Web. Forbes described it as:

An idiosyncratic hodgepodge of posts--some regional, some cultural, some just random thoughts. In Bangkok, posts ranged from information about a two-day rock-and-roll festival to the opening of a new bakery that sells fresh "roti" buns.

and called it

The only site that connects bloggers worldwide.

Metroblogging is interesting as a peer-to-peer media phenomenon because it's a global movement with local flavour. Whether irreverent like New York or environmentally conscious like Bangalore, a Metblog typically reflects the tone and mood of the city. However, the place and the personal often overlap. This is sometimes interesting, but often not. A little more structure might actually help distill the experience.

One area where Metroblogging really scores is crisis reportage. During Hurricane Katrina, Metroblogging New Orleans provided first hand accounts of the destruction and were even able to provide coverage that mainstream media could not. During the July 2005 London bombings, writers for Metroblogging London shared news and first-person stories of what actually happened during and in the aftermath of the bombings.

An interesting point that the Forbes article makes is that there is very little reader feedback or message board traffic on Metblogs. In an interactive medium, how does one interpret the lack of interaction? All logic points to the fact that the more responses you get, the more successful you are but it may not be as simplistic as that. Metroblogging is an example of how something can be considered an Internet success without inciting as much comment and message board traffic as other popular blogs.

At first, it is puzzling that a community blog initiative on this scale would fail to generate message board enthusiasm. Some possible reasons come to mind. Blogs that excite comment and discussion are invariably those that strike the right balance between substance and crispness. People don't want to spend an hour reading your post but they do want something to chew on to be able to comment.

Metblog posts are reportage or reflection and typically not very long. This may have something to do with the fact that each contributor has to post a minimum of 3 posts a week. Assuming that people have day jobs, this may be a tough ask. As a result, a lot of the entries seem hasty - more like post-its than blog posts!

The other aspect is that the comments link after each post is inconspicuous so there is little motivation to read or write comments. In any case, getting feedback or comments is not easy. Even loyal readers sometimes shy away from leaving comments (and everyone knows you have achieved blogger nirvana when a post incites flame wars). A little tweaking of the UI (user interface) may help the comments cause for Metblogs.

I'll leave you here with links to two interesting points of view on Metroblogging that enlighten far more than I could: Jace Seacrow and Bode Media.

References:

Jace Seacrow
Wikipedia
Metroblogging

The World is not Enough...

2006-09-21T17:30:00.000+05:30

The title, in a sense describes what an increasing number of people across the real world are feeling today. And before you think I'm going to wax eloquent on philosophy or worse, the 007 flick by the same name, let me allay your fears - this 'first' post is about virtual worlds - digitally simulated 2D or 3D environments that allow millions of people to interact real-time, and commune in an online space.

Wikipedia and Virtual Worlds Review do a fairly good job of defining virtual a.k.a digital worlds that the geekier junta refer to as Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games and categorise as MMO-Role Playing Games or MMO-Real Life Games. I will outline the difference between these two, again quoting Wikipedia... "the distinction being that in RPGs, the fact of the user playing a specific character is a main feature of the game, whereas in RLGs, the user can edit and alter their avatar at will, allowing them to play a more dynamic role, or multiple roles."

With Google being such a good resource, it is pointless to take you through the what, why, who, how, where and when of MMOs. Instead, I'll try and explore the buzz around opportunities for marketers in these worlds.

Tristan Louis, author, entrepreneur and blogger, lists the top ten opportunities in virtual worlds . A preview for those less inclined to click on links - For users or denizens of these worlds - "Most of those opportunities seem to center around the fact that there are places for people to meet and interact in an environment that is much richer than other electronic collaboration platforms."

Pretty much anything that is done in the real world can be simulated online. So it's not surprising that advergaming, or using online games to promote brands, is poised to grow. A year ago Rathe Underthorn launched MetaAdverse, a virtual advertising market within Second Life. (ClickZ has more on that, also highlighting why marketing services firms prefer Second Life over other MMORPGs.)

Text 100, the public relations consultancy where I work, recently opened its 31st office (first virtual office) inside Second Life , becoming the first public relations agency to do so. We hope to facilitate virtual training, press conferences and product demos for our clients. Sounds insane? Not the case for the 747,263 residents of Second Life. Or for millions of other online gamers logging on to other virtual worlds.

Consumer trends firm Trendwatching.com has this to say - "Synthetic worlds are popular: currently, these new worlds have around 10 to 20 million inhabitants (source: Edward Catronova) and the total number of players is expected to reach 40 million by 2020 (source: Swansey University)." There's more where this came from.

Yankee Group expects the in-game advertising market to reach USD 732 million by 2010. Impressive? Always the case when numbers do the talking... that aside, virtual worlds are changing the way people collaborate using new generation media. A virtual world journalist notes - "People's activities in virtual worlds increasingly have real-life impact on people's economic and social situations in the real world, coverage of virtual events will become more important." It is no wonder then that several magazines, newsletters and newspapers have mushroomed in the recent past, Metaverse Messenger, being one among them. So what are the chances that a Textie (employee of Text 100) might end up pitching an interview to The Second Life Herald!

I won't ramble on...I'm sure you've got a fair idea. I'll leave you this interesting transcript from a recent panel on marketing to virtual worlds. Enjoy!