Red Bricks Media’s News Blog

by Peter Vaughan, Copywriter

Both Yahoo Buzz and Digg allow users to submit news and vote on articles, with the most popular rising to the top. But according to a recent study by comScore, Yahoo’s user-generated news site, Yahoo Buzz, is vastly outperforming the incumbent, Digg. Is this for real?

Well, the data doesn’t lie. During the month of April, Yahoo Buzz outperformed Digg with 7 Million unique visitors who spent an average of about 14 minutes on site. More importantly, 51% of Yahoo Buzz users are women, compared to Digg’s 39%.

While I’m a loyal Digg fan, I’ll be the first to admit that this is a long time coming. Digg’s site has long been criticized for being overly male, childish and, for lack of a better word, geeky. If you’re into video games, politics (if you count Ron Paul), gadget news and the occasional LOLcat image, Digg is the place for you. If you like sports, music, movies, celebrities and “reliable” news from “trusted” media, Yahoo Buzz might be your new home.

However, I wouldn’t raise the victory flag just yet. Digg’s fans are a special breed – they spend hours upon hours on the web, are very tech savvy, and obviously as the aforementioned criticisms state, stick to cult subject matters. To them, Yahoo represents an evil corporate machine (you need to register a yahoo email address to participate on Yahoo Buzz) – what Digg has going for it is anti-culture and mob rule, even in major site development decisions.

In recent town hall meetings conducted via web cam, Digg founder Kevin Rose listened quietly to hundreds of complaints about “super-user” scandals, poor commenting features and gaming (making an article popular via artificial, black hat means). However, the monthly public ranting sessions seem to work – Digg made its algorithm smarter by rewarding “experts,” blocking the ISPs of Public Relations companies, and updating its comment system two weeks ago.

More importantly, the statistics presented by comScore are a little misleading given the fact that the most popular Yahoo Buzz stories are featured on the search engine’s homepage. Each click on Yahoo is a click for Yahoo Buzz, greatly increasing the stats – this is a very intelligent business move, but doesn’t necessarily mean anyone is actually using and interacting with Yahoo Buzz.

Oh, and did I mention that right now Yahoo Buzz only allows people to post stories from partner and affiliate sites? This drastically reduces content options from bloggers and third-party sites. Once this ban is lifted, I imagine Yahoo Buzz will find itself with the same problem as Digg – dominant techies, or in the case of Yahoo, payola reps, gaining a monopoly on popular content.

In the end, there is no doubt a buzz blood bath will occur. Perhaps, Yahoo will ultimately gain the upper hand due to its mainstream dominance and a little bit of a budget increase from our friends at Microsoft. As a marketer, I recommend common sense – if your content is more techy go with Digg. If you’re more mainstream go with Yahoo Buzz. Or if you’re a real rebel, use both – it’ll take you all of fifteen minutes.

We’re thrilled to announce that our CEO, Ed Kim, will be a speaker at the upcoming Building Blocks/Digital Hollywood 2008 conference in San Jose. In his panel, entitled Social Networks & User Generated Media as a Technology Challenge: The Platform, the Content & the Network, Ed will share industry insights and advise best practices around one of 2008’s hottest buzzwords: social media.

“I’m honored to be selected to speak at Building Blocks 2008,” Ed commented. Elaborating on his panel topic, he explained, “social media and user-generated content offer new ways for marketers to connect with their audiences. The challenge that marketers face is how to understand and use it. Many want to get into the game but don’t know where to start. I hope that after attending this panel, audience members will come away with actionable items they can implement on their own campaigns.”

The Building Blocks 2008 conference brings together the top minds in consumer electronics, entertainment, and media, for a two-day extravaganza featuring a host of informative sessions, hundreds of speakers, and a convergence of industry luminaries. It is the “premier event for transforming the consumer electronics, entertainment, social media & web application technologies & the global communications network.” The conference focuses on seven key strategic tracks, including Television 2.0, The Advertising and Commerce Platform, Technology Innovation Redefining the Future, and the Broadband and Social Media platform.

This year, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) joined Digital Hollywood in the sponsorship and production of the conference. Digital Hollywood’s other conferences include Advertising 2.0 and the multiple Digital Hollywood conferences. Speakers from past events include representatives from Microsoft, Comcast, Fox Interactive Media and CNN. For more information about Building Blocks 2008, visit http://www.digitalhollywood.com/BuildingBlocks.html.

We may never be in the rock and roll hall of fame, but we’ll settle for the next best thing – the viral marketing hall of fame. Each year Marketing Sherpa honors the year’s top ten viral marketing campaigns, and Red Bricks Media’s campaign for client THQ joined the ranks of the top ten for 2008. Other winners this year include General Mills and Columbia Sportswear.

According to Marketing Sherpa’s article on the competition, “these top 10 campaigns leveraged peer-to-peer pass-along to achieve amazing results in a range of demographics and audiences – hip-hop music fans, hardcore gamers, breast cancer survivors and activists, philanthropists, Portuguese soccer fans and more. Some campaigns mixed big budgets, great strategy and wide exposure. Others created entertaining content and watched it sail.”

This competition, which is free to enter, awards winners with a write-up in Marketing Sherpa and the eyes of thousands of marketing professionals who read this publication on a weekly basis.

“The rise of social networking and user-generated content is feeding and enhancing viral marketing. Many marketers want to take advantage of these new trends but aren’t sure how,” said our CEO Ed Kim. “At Red Bricks Media, our approach is to have a solid strategy in place and really understand your target audience before you try to launch a viral campaign.”

by Jacob Morgan, Search Strategist

First off, let me give credit where credit is due. I came across this information from reading one of Brian Solis’s post about “Discovering and Listening to Conversations on Twitter.” In the post, Brian refers to Jeff Nolan, who discusses Twitter analytics. Thanks to both of you!

First I’m going to briefly touch on the tools that Jeff addresses, and then show you how they work.

TweetVolume: Type in a few keywords or phrases and you will be shown a graph that compares their volume. As Jeff Nolan pointed out, this is great for monitoring a particular brand, trend, buzzword, etc.

TweetStats: This tool lets you analyze your own twitter traffic. Also great if you work for a known brand and are twittering for your company.

TweetScan: This is really an interesting tool that lets you see real time twitter search information. Think of it as a search engine. You type in your query and then are presented with all the Tweets that include your search.

Now let’s pick an industry and see how we can use these tools. I chose the automotive industry.

Let’s look at the twitter volume for Ford, Honda, GM, Nissan, and Toyota (note: you get slightly different results based on capitalization, but not much)

Start off with TweetVolume. Below we can see that Ford is clearly dominating the Twitter space, Nissan has virtually no Twitter presence. We have to be careful here because terms can have multiple meanings. For example, Ford can refer to the car or to Gerald Ford. (This is where hashtags can come in; see Brian’s post for info on this).

Now let’s take a look at the actual conversations that are taking place using TweetScan. I typed in Honda as a search query and these were a few of the results that I saw. You can also get a bit more specific with your searches and type in Honda Civic, etc.

Finally, we can take a look our Twitter usage using TweetStats. Jeff Nolan was kind enough to post his stats so that is what I am including here.

Finally, you can begin to draw correlations. For example, if I am Honda and I just announced that I am giving away 100 free Hondas (via twitter, etc.) I would expect more people to talk about “Honda” (if I’m doing a good job marketing the promotion on Twitter).

Do not get too caught up with analytics and statistics. Social media marketing is not as cut and dry as web analytics is. It is not that easy to attribute revenue or traffic to a particular tweet, etc. The quality of the conversations is more important than the quantity. However, this is a topic for another post.

Thanks again to Brian Solis and Jeff Nolan.

This article is cross-posted from Jacob’s blog.

Come visit us at Search Engine Strategies, New York!

Ed Kim, our CEO, and Craig Hordlow, our Chief Search Strategist, were recently invited to speak at the Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo in New York City March 17-20, 2008.

Ed will present in a panel titled “Igniting Viral Campaigns,” a session focused on helping marketers understand the newest buzz channels and how to apply these learnings towards their own marketing campaigns. In this session, Ed and other notable marketing experts will “unveil the secrets of Web 2.0 techniques and technologies that enable companies to stand out and be talked about.” Ed has presented on similar topics for Search Engine Strategies Chicago, MarketingSherpa, the Baptie Conference, and the Vodafone Summit.

“With the emergence of social media, brands can leverage viral marketing now more than ever as an extremely effective way to reach its audience with measurable results,” comments Ed.

Craig Hordlow will present in a panel discussion on “Search Engine Friendly Design.” This session will educate its audience on best practices for search engine friendly design. Craig will present a practical approach to the oft-encountered challenge of integrating flash design with SEO-friendly techniques.

“Marketers have pressured their developers to minimize flash content, but flash is a perfectly acceptable development application for both humans and search engines if the proper precautions are taken,” he says.

Search Engine Strategies and Expo is the leading conference and expo series for the latest news and developments in optimization, search engine advertising, and search marketing issues. The New York City conference is a four-day series of workshops featuring presentations from industry leaders, as well as major search engines. The conference runs from March 17-20, with Ed and Craig’s panels occurring on March 17th and March 18th, respectively.

by Ben Kou, Account Manager

Whether you’re an Armageddon scholar or not, you can’t help but notice that the price of gas keeps climbing, Vladimir Putin is sending submarines to claim the North Pole, and China is slowly kicking America’s butt economically. Throw in some radical Middle Eastern terrorist groups and it’s not completely absurd to imagine all these elements fomenting another world war over the most precious resource on the planet – oil.

In fact, such a scenario is so easy to imagine that THQ built their latest first-person shooter, Frontlines: Fuel of War, on this exact premise. It’s the Red Star Alliance (China, Russia and a handful of former Soviet States) against the Western Alliance (read – US, England, and Europe) in another war to end all wars.

What does Red Bricks Media have to do with all this? In order to build interest in advance of the official release of Frontlines: Fuel of War, THQ contracted Red Bricks Media to concept, design and manage an alternate reality game allowing players to experience the frontlines of tomorrow, today.

After signing up to play at http://www.exeoinc.com, players become involved in an online search to uncover just how another world war could come to fruition. After reading blogs, discovering secret YouTube channels, befriending characters on Facebook and phoning in covert rescue missions, players discover the who, what, where and when in the world of Frontlines: Fuel of War.

“We wanted people to interact with real online channels like Facebook, Flickr and Google search in order to feel like all this is really happening, that there is a real Exeo Incorporated out there developing futuristic weapons and peak oil research and selling it to the highest bidder,” related Red Bricks Media CEO, Ed Kim.

Red Bricks Media upped the reality factor by using paid search as the backbone of the campaign. “You might be searching for real world news, say things like ‘North Pole oil reserve’ and you would come across one of Exeo Incorporated’s ads and click on it thinking it was real. Almost immediately, you become aware that something’s not right,” noted Media Director Andrew Leinicke. “It’s all just part of the game.”

Even fictitious characters in the Frontlines: Fuel of War game get in on the action. War journalist Wayne Andrews has his own blog on Wordpress (www.wayneandrews.wordpress.com) which describes his mysterious disappearance after discovering a secret Exeo Incorporated facility in the deserts of Iraq.

“I kind of feel like Orson Welles reading War of the Worlds over the radio,” said copywriter Peter Vaughan. “I hope people don’t get too freaked out by all this, but at the same time I think we all wanted to create a concept that would raise some eyebrows.”

To get in on the Countdown to War action, visit http://www.exeoinc.com – but remember, it’s only a game.

Red Bricks Media’s most recent Buzz marketing campaign with The CW and Academy of Art University is live and running successfully. Aspiring actors were invited to download a script from a popular CW show and video tape their delivery of it for upload to the website. The entire program is hosted at www.FreeToBeFamous.com. The program is now in a heated voting phase, where visitors can vote for the most successfully delivered script. The winner will get a walk-on acting role on a CW primetime show and the stakes are high, so join the action and vote now!

by Peter Vaughan, Associate Copywriter

Depending on who you talk to, the “Boston Bomb Scare” was either one of the biggest debacles in marketing history or an act of unpredictable genius.

How did a guerilla marketing effort escalate into a full-on bomb scare?

It all started with a campaign idea meant to promote the Cartoon Network’s show called Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens were paid by a guerilla marketing agency to place models of an Aqua Teen Hunger Force character around the city of Boston as a promotion for the show’s upcoming movie. The problem? The characters’ blinking lights and suspicious appearance caused authorities to mistake them for bombs. Soon, panicked news reports began to filter across the nation.

Major media outlets such as CNN and Fox News leaped all over the story using words like “hoax” and “devices” to insinuate that Berdovsky and Stevens planted the character in a premeditated effort to make him look like a bomb. Locally, the city of Boston cited a cost of $500,000 in false-alarm fees.

Turner Broadcasting, the company that helped create the campaign, focused on damage control. They issued a public apology and volunteered to pay one million dollars to the Boston Police Department and the Department of Homeland Security respectively. In the end, Turner Broadcasting paid an estimated two million dollars on top of whatever they originally paid for the campaign, not to mention reputation damage that could affect consumer trust.

Despite the aforementioned consequences, an argument in favor of the outcome of the “Boston Bomb Scare” can easily be supported by the reaction of the target audience; the Aqua Teen Hunger Force cult is already a group of counter-cultural, anti-authority individuals. In other words, the incident could be called one of the most impressive buzz events in history of web 2.0.

Almost immediately after the scare, bloggers began incessant rants and raves, sparking endless commentary threads, mostly poking fun at the stupidity and over-reaction of the Boston Police Department, exclaiming “1/31/07 – Never Forget!” Bloggers also used the popular Digg website to “digg” (or promote) numerous articles, propelling Aqua Teen Hunger Force into the coveted Top 10, with one article getting over 5,000 “support” diggs.

On YouTube, videos showcasing live news footage of the police blowing up one of the “devices,” the night-time video of Berdovsky and Stevens planting the models, and the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie trailer racked up over 100,000 views each. A “24” spin-off, complete with Bauer battling the character, also scored over 100,000 views. An extensive Wikipedia article entitled “2007 Boston Mooninite Scare” appeared almost overnight, and five pages of group listings on Facebook that specifically mention “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” and “Bomb” in the group title were formed.

Those who preach against the unruly nature of guerilla marketing campaigns certainly have their reasons; the outcome of the “Mooninite Bomb Scare,” whether positive or negative, was completely unpredictable. Most corporations are not keen on continuing a relationship with any agency that has no control over consumer reaction. At the same time, it’s just as hard to condemn an agency for this tactic as it is to praise them for it – how can you control human nature? In several other cities the campaign went completely unnoticed, generating little or no reaction.

Furthermore, there is the tendency to equate buzz and guerilla campaigns with the idea of a low-cost marketing solution. In this instance, Turner Broadcasting certainly shelled out the type of money that one would place towards more traditional, safer forms of marketing.

Aside from sparking dialogue around “any press is good press”, the Aqua Teen Hunger Force incident revealed a lot of information about the current direction of online marketing. Social networks, blogs and user-generated media provide effective means to measure the success of buzz campaigns in a way that was never before possible. Direct consumer reaction is available in hard numbers if you know where to find it (e.g. views, searches, postings, diggs, traffic, groups, etc.). By allowing anyone and everyone to directly express their opinions, web 2.0 the equivalent of allowing marketers to see and measure water cooler conversation.

That being said, corporations must realize that consumers are ready for more interaction with their favorite brands – they want to actively participate, they want to be social, they want to be famous. This most definitely makes any attempt to influence the masses very tricky, if not dangerous. However, this does not mean that corporations should stay away from buzz, but rather, approach it with intelligence, creativity and a thicker skin. Providing a place for your “fans” to engage with your product and participate at a level that goes beyond, ahem, simply paying for a service, builds greater awareness, loyalty and excitement.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on buzz marketing, the “Boston Bomb Scare” and, well, anything that interests you. Feel free to email me at pvaughan [at] redbricksmedia.com.

We’re excited to announce that Edward Kim accepted the responsibility to assume the helm of Red Bricks Media. Ed had previously served as Vice President of Client Services and will be Red Bricks Media’s first CEO. As our co-founder and vice president of Sales and Marketing, Elliott Easterling, put it, “Ed has shown leadership in all aspects of the business, from client service to sales to human resources to operations. There is no aspect of the business that Ed has not touched.”

Ed has been a driving force in defining our vision for the future, and has served as a great motivator for our team. Ed’s long-term goal for Red Bricks Media is to become the industry leader in delivering creativity, performance, and client satisfaction. His short-term goals include expanding our work in emerging forms of media, applying our patented creativity and performance-driven analytics to channels like video, social networking, and mobile search.

Before joining Red Bricks Media in 2004, Ed served five years as Director of Sales and Services at the digital marketing agency Digital Impact (now Acxiom Digital), where he developed award-winning programs for Fortune 500 clients such as Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Wal-Mart, and Target. He also spent five years as a consultant and manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Feel free to contact Ed and congratulate him on his promotion! He can be reached at ekim [at] redbricksmedia.com.