Red Bricks Media’s News Blog

By Lauren Quan, Associate Marketing Manager

Facebook reached me via word-of-mouth, far before I had even heard of word-of-mouth and buzz marketing. I was a college sophomore, perusing my friend’s AIM profile, which included a link to the site.

Back in that day there were no applications, games, or even photos to overwhelm me. The sleek blue and white interface was a welcome change from the brief fling I had with Friendster. It was clean, uncluttered, and blissfully ad-free.

When I started working in the digital space, I was surprised by marketers’ growing obsession with Facebook and inability to understand it. What was there to understand? Growing up in an atmosphere where everyone was always online and everyone constantly updated their AIM away messages to show their whereabouts when not online, Facebook made sense as a way to keep track of friends while multi-tasking, AIMing, doing homework, and so on. Because the sign-up process required a valid college/.edu email address, people tended to use their real first and last names. There was a level of transparency and honesty lacking from the dead Friendster and perv-producing MySpace.

At its heart, Facebook was pretty much a virtual, interactive yearbook that helped people stay in touch with college friends. I still check it once a day and prefer it to the vastly overcluttered MySpace or the glorified address book Linked In.

I’m not the only one who checks these social networks daily. According to a recent Forrester report, 80% of young adults and 30% of adults are using social networking sites. These numbers keep growing, as the site averages more than 20 million unique viewers per month.

These large figures have not gone unknown to advertisers. Facebook’s high volume of targeted, engaged web users is a marketer’s dream, and it’s no longer an ad-free zone. Advertisers have enjoyed success with Facebook advertising by creating branded groups and allowing users to become fans. Maybelline, for example, has created a group to promote its cosmetics. BMW is also in the Facebook loop.

Is all hope lost if brands are not entertainment or retail-focused? Not at all. Companies like Ernst and Young have created recruiting Facebook groups, with people assigned to actively respond to questions and give feedback to potential job-seekers. Obviously, such a page would draw fresh college grads in search of a first job. This network has more than 20,000 users.

Overall, companies just need to be aware of the target audience and dream up campaigns that really add value for the users and allow them to engage with the brand. For example, in a recent campaign we ran for THQ, our buzz team crafted an alternate reality game to promote the company’s new first-person shooter, Frontlines: Fuel of War. After signing up at an interactive microsite, users were plunged into a scavenger hunt that had them reading blogs, discovering secret YouTube channels, befriending characters on Facebook, and more, in their quest to uncover the secrets of the world of Frontlines: Fuel of War.

Another way to engage the audience is with widgets. Good widgets should be fun, interactive and useful to the audience. For samples of successful widgets, one need look no further than this online dating widget or the popular Scrabulous widget. People who may not have ever touched the vintage board game edition of Scrabble are flocking in droves to play it online against complete strangers.

Regardless of whether marketers choose to go the widget/application route, the group route, or take a different route altogether, they need to follow the rules of good social media advertising. They need to understand the audience, engage with the community, be completely open and transparent, and above all, remain active and constantly engaged. It’s important to encourage open conversation and feedback, both positive and negative. One need look no further than the failure of flogs to see that trying to trick your audience just won’t work.

Facebook will never again be the ad-free, adult-free, and exclusive social networking platform it was when I first joined. However, I still want to use it to keep in touch with my friends and engage in lighthearted virtual interactions with them. With constant new innovations, (such as the news feed and open application platform, to name a few), Facebook keeps me engaged as other social networks scramble to keep up. If Facebook and advertisers continue to innovate and evolve while not bombarding users with ad spam (a la MySpace) then even legacy users such as myself will continue to visit for years to come.

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.

by Jacob Morgan, Search Strategist

Recently, the folks at Pandemic Labs asked me to write a guest article on social media. The article (with minor changes) can be found below.

On a call with Seth Godin, I asked him where he sees the future of social media growth and how we can stop spammers. He responded that social media will continue to segment, and that there is no way to stop the spammers.

As marketers and spammers (although they are not the same, their objectives are similar, and sometimes marketers inadvertently become spammers) continue to penetrate the social media marketing platforms, we are going to notice that social media platforms will begin to segment. In fact, the trend is already quite apparent.

Consider the following segmented platforms:

• Flickr allows people to share pictures
• Craigslist allows people to buy/sell apartments
• LinkedIn allows business professionals to connect
• MySpace allows friends to connect
• Guru Del Vino allows people to share their wine preferences
• ignighter helps people interested in group dating

The reality is that eventually there will be a platform to cater to virtually every marketing niche. Another example is the recent launch of Google Health, a platform that allows users to create online health profiles, find doctors, and even download medical records.

With the “verticalization” of social media platforms (and eventually search), how is a marketer or spammer going to survive? Well, there are two sides of the coin.

1) With the sheer number of vertical platforms and their continued growth, there is just NO WAY that marketers and spammers are going to be able to keep up. There are tens of thousands of platforms, with many more appearing each day, and for every 100 platforms that are created, only 1 will survive. Sure, a marketer or a spammer can focus all of their efforts on the large sites such as Facebook or Myspace, but eventually when the “verticalization” kicks in, the amount of targeted advertising and marketing will be reduced drastically. So a marketer or a spammer is left with little choice but to target as many social platforms as they can, and they are becoming increasing efficient at doing so.

2) With the sheer number of platforms and their continued growth, it is becoming increasingly EASY for spammers and marketers to reach their desired audience. If I am a marketer or spammer, I can focus on specific social media platforms that are catered to my exact target market, piece of cake.

Essentially a marketer or a spammer has 2 choices: go after as many verticals as they can and hope that some of those verticals yield results, OR, focus on the target verticals and ignore the rest. The problem is that marketers and spammers pursue both avenues. There are those that try to target all the platforms, and there are those who try to target specific platforms. The point is that there is no way to prevent marketers or spammers from penetrating social media platforms. It doesn’t matter what side the coin lands on - it’s a trick coin and the marketers always win.

The coin was flipped and is in the air, call it…

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

By Bain Smith, Lead Copywriter

I’ve sequestered myself in the deepest recesses of the Red Bricks Media web laboratory this week, poring over mountains of data, reading exhaustive summaries of research from all over the world, and mixing beakers full of consumer behavior patterns, all in hopes of achieving that perfect alchemy known as Predictions for online marketing in 2008.

So without further ado, let’s get down to brass tacks.

1)    Social networking will continue its meteoric rise and touch more people in more places in 2008.

While “socialnetworkitis”—the fatigue from keeping up with all the social websites we belong to—is a real concern, any rumors of social networking’s demise are greatly exaggerated, and I’ll tell you why.

There are approximately two things that make the web interesting: content and people, especially people you know. So it stands to reason that social networks, whether Myspace, Facebook, Bebo, LinkedIn, or another as yet undiscovered network, will continue to attract zillions of eyeballs and provide unparalleled levels of “stickiness” to their users.

The difference in 2008? You create the content these social networks profit from, so expect to see new websites that pay users for their participation. I’m not saying it’s going to work, but if Web 1.0 meant paying to use something, and Web 2.0 meant you were free to use something, Web 3.0 may just mean you get paid to use something.

2)    StumbleUpon will become a household name in 2008, as more people will stop googlin’ and start stumblin’.

StumbleUpon uses collaborative filtering, an automated process combining human opinions and machine learning of personal preference, to help you explore a rich, vast variety of content you would never see otherwise, and rate it with a simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down via an easily downloadable toolbar.

It leads to unexpected discoveries, and dare I say it: Fun. There are myriad features that make it even stickier, but StumbleUpon has single-handedly rekindled my love of the web.

3)    Twitter, while not for everyone, will continue to influence the influencers and make waves in 2008.

I mean it: Twitter is not for everyone. But for those who crave direct, brain-to-keypad-to-audience interaction with people they like, respect, look up to, or are just plain curious about, Twitter can be an experiential revelation, unearthing information, news and opinions literally as they are happening. Companies and others are catching on to this new info-delivery platform, and people are making a living from it.

4)    Advertising on video sharing sites and mobile devices will increase, but consumer noses will turn toward the sky in response. If you’re still in doubt, read this prescient manifesto for more on why.

Today’s consumers are not a TV generation. Video advertising is interruption marketing, and consumers don’t play that game anymore (TiVo anyone?). The same goes for mobile ads, except it’s an even more personal invasion of privacy and space.

Smart marketers, responding to the challenge, will come up with new, innovative ways to engage and “go steady” with the audience beyond sticking ads in their face. It’s already happening. While motion picture product placement has been going on forever, video and video game product placement is increasing, and mobile apps (widgets) that engage and help the audience will become more of the norm on mobile phones.

5)    A backlash occurs against obsessive, exhaustive communication, connectedness, and the glut of “gadgetry.”

It’s only a matter of time before people stop IM’ing the person two feet to their left, rest those stiff, fatigued Blackberry thumbs, remove the Bluetooths and iPod earbuds, and engage in old-fashioned, face-to-face discourse with other human beings.

Don’t forget that ultimately there is a reason they call it word of mouth marketing, because the real marketing gets going when face-to-face conversation is flowing.

These are my modest marketing-related predictions for 2008. Now back to the lab.

by Jacob Morgan, Search Strategist

The Commander-in-Chief we elect in November 2008 has some giant shoes to fill. We demand someone with vision, values, ideas, charisma and drive. We need someone who is part economist, part diplomat, part statesperson and part CEO…and a little SEM expertise won’t hurt either.

We analyzed several of the Democratic and Republican candidate sites, and determined that the front-runners (based on SEM and conversion practices) were Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Ron Paul.

Ron Paul’s site is aesthetically pleasing in its choice of colors and use of new media. The call-to-action, “Donate!” is highly visible and recent donors’ names are listed beneath the donation total. Contributors are not only rewarded by having their name displayed but the donation total changes once the donation has been made. This sort of interactivity connects the donor to the campaign.

Other pluses include easy-to-use navigation, access to Ron Paul’s YouTube video assets and a block of CTAs (calls to action) that are easy to understand: “Sign up for emails,” “Get involved,” “Spread the word,” “Register to vote.” The only problem is they, and other key messages are buried below the fold.

Hillary Clinton’s site is well-executed, as nearly all the important copy can be read without scrolling. Key content appears above the fold, easy-to-read CTAs like “Make Calls,” “Build Our Base,” and “Join Team Hillary” have little icons that just beg to be clicked. Video and Blog links are prominent and the main navigation is clean and easy to use. Overall, her site is optimized to increase conversion (obtain contributions). On the home page alone, there are three “Contribute” CTAs.

On the semantic front, consider the difference between the words “Donate” and “Contribute.” The latter requires a greater commitment and involvement than the former. We’re pretty sure that a team of staffers sat in a room for at least an hour debating this very topic.

The Clinton site also takes advantage of online user communities (MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc.) by providing links on the main site, and listings on the community sites. In the last election, many candidates were ill-equipped to answer to the blogs and forums that shaped the perceptions of younger voters. However, this crop of candidates has been savvy enough to add that type of expertise to their ranks.

We have to say that when we were deciding which Democratic candidate to select, we assumed that we would prefer Obama’s site. After all, he is the “voice of the American youth.” However, his landing page asks for an email address and zip code right off the bat. Depending on how sensitive the audience is, this can be perceived as “rude.” You do have the option of skipping the sign-in in order to go directly to the site. But once there, we only found one CTA to “donate.” Where the Obama site really excels is in its connection to new media: Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, BlackPlanet, Flickr, LinkedIn, and Obama Mobile, but even so these links were well below the fold.

As we move on to the John McCain website, you’ll note that there’s an uncanny resemblance to Hillary Clinton’s site. The home page is “short and sweet” with much of the content above-the-fold—strong CTAs, rich media and a high degree of interactivity make this a successful conversion site.

All of the candidates would benefit from some heuristics testing. On the McCain home page, CHARLIE CRIST jumps out at you, when the candidate would be better served by having one or more CTAs take the spotlight.

Extra points go to Team McCain for creating a blog and McCainspace, where you can create your own website dedicated to John McCain. However, his web team has not leveraged web 2.0 assets—there are no links to all of his online communities.

We’re glad to see that the presidential candidates are starting to make good use of the participation architecture of web 2.0 and interactive media to help market themselves. Now, we’ll see whose internet strategy bears fruit come November 2008!

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 has appointed Dan Weiner the new Managing Director of the company’s New York office.Prior to Red Bricks Media, Weiner held product and marketing roles at Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Idealab, and Priceline.com. In his most recent role, Weiner was Vice President of Sony BMG’s Online Media Network and was responsible for deploying new ad networks across the company’s hundreds of artist and label sites and developing compelling marketing offerings around its content and artists. He also launched a range of new content delivery and community tools, including the industry-leading Musicbox video network.

CEO Ed Kim is enthusiastic about Weiner’s leadership. “Dan is the perfect person to lead our New York office. He’s a creative and experienced professional who has pioneered online tools and properties for some of the world’s top media and web companies. I am confident that Dan will lead Red Bricks Media East to provide the same innovative marketing solutions and outstanding client services that characterize our other offices.”

Weiner is equally enthusiastic about his new role at Red Bricks Media. “I’m very excited to be joining the incredible Red Bricks team and building on their success in New York and the East,” he comments. “With the rapid emergence of nontraditional digital tools and channels, Red Bricks’ unique mix of rigorous performance marketing, great design, and technical depth offers a chance to develop ground-breaking new ways for marketers to reach and engage with consumers.”

Contact Dan at dweiner [ar] redbricksmedia.com.

by Bain Smith, Lead Copywriter

There was a discussion at Red Bricks Media recently between our chief search strategist, Craig Hordlow, and the Red Bricks Media creative services team, regarding the pros and cons of employing Flash as a primary web design component. In particular, the discussion revolved around the following question: how does Flash design fit within the larger framework of a search engine optimization strategy? The conversation went something like this:

Craig: “Flash is to SEO what fire is to your home: a total disaster.”
Creative: “But what about interactivity? What about the cool factor?”
Craig: “People want info quickly. They don’t want to figure out which floating monkey to click on to get back to the home page.”
Creative team: “We love monkeys, especially floating monkeys.”

This heavily paraphrased conversation highlights an ongoing conundrum for many in the marketing community: build more interactivity and cutting-edge design into the web experience via Flash, or build easily indexable and discoverable websites for search using more traditional web language?

As we discovered in redesigning the new Red Bricks Media website, there is no simple answer. There are valid reasons to build a website, using different information architecture strategies, in order to satisfy different goals and end uses, for the benefit of many different target audiences.

Knowing this, opportunities abound to employ both Flash and/or more traditional web language in the fulfillment of a successful marketing strategy. I suppose it really depends on the objectives of your marketing strategy. The desire to entertain, wow and impress your customers with cutting-edge Flash design shouldn’t interrupt or trump the need to be discoverable, indexable and searchable via Google and Yahoo, and vice versa.

Scouring the internet, as well as some useful in-office brains, has yielded helpful tips in approaching the deployment of Flash and how it may fit into your SEO strategy:

1. Don’t place Flash content where advertising normally lives on a web page. Why? It will likely be ignored or mistaken for…you guessed it…advertising.
2. If Flash content will live within a page keep it to half the screen or less and preferably on the left side of the page, per widely read eye behavior studies.
3. Make Flash complementary to the message on the page, not the message itself.
   a. We all know how effective a half-heard, half-understood message can be!
4. Speaking of half: half the country still dials up to the internet, meaning you can lose precious customers in the extra seconds it takes your Flash content to load.
5. Don’t use Flash to tell a story about a product/service, use it to enhance the story.
   a. Use HTML to express important purchase/learn more text info on the page
   b. Use Flash to emphasize product details (360 view, colors, sizes, etc.)
6. Create keyword-rich, SEO-informed title tag and meta descriptions on every page where Flash content is featured.
7. Provide a “text equivalent” for every non-text element on a Flash page.
   a. This goes for Flash as well as images, maps, applets, audio, video, etc.
   b. Providing equivalent information for inaccessible content is also the primary way to make your website accessible to people with disabilities.

Hopefully, your marketing strategy won’t call for a comprehensive, highly integrated SEO strategy using a 100% Flash website. If so, you may want to have a conversation with Craig and our SEO team, who may in turn recommend that you develop a new SEO strategy and a new website, or at the very least, a website without the floating monkeys.

By Craig Hordlow, Chief Search Strategist

This is the time of the year when people reflect on the past and make predictions for the future.

Those in the Internet world are aware that we are in “Web 2.0”. I’m going to quickly discuss the characteristics of Web 2.0 and then make predictions about Web 3.0.

From a business point of view, Web 2.0 is characterized by an economic resurgence fueled by long-tail principles. Web 2.0 services include wiki, social networking, communication tools, folksonomies (online collaboration), and tagging, whereas the Web 1.0 generation is generally perceived as being more static HTML.

But what might Web 3.0 look like, and what does it mean for search engine marketers?

I believe that Web 3.0 will start when bandwidth and wifi are so abundant and plentiful that we see the convergence of television, cell phones, and computers. A whole new world of applications that bridge these devices will be readily adopted, and it’s the adoption that will characterize Web 3.0.

Google’s brokering of print, radio, television and cell phone ads will be mature. Google will only have about 15% of its products in Beta. The boundaries between traditional and non-traditional media will be blurred. Marketers will not necessarily differentiate between their Internet and offline marketing budgets.

Here is the list:

• More bandwidth: Netflix and cable companies will stream movies into living rooms
• Free wireless: cities will provide free wireless
• Convergence of devices: with the bandwidth and wifi infrastructure, cell phones and televisions will be a more seamless extension of the Web
• Emergence of devices: wifi phones, portable Internet music & video players will become prevalent
• Convergence of industries: with the convergence of devices, we will see television, cable, and Internet companies in a market grab
• Online storage and subscription services will quickly replace client side storage and download-only business models. iTunes users will feel silly paying $1/song (that’s $10,000 for 10,000 songs) to download music when streaming services, enabled by omnipresent wifi and robust bandwidth, offer a far better deal. Streaming services like Rhapsody and Yahoo Music which currently make millions of songs available for about $8 / month, will kill the download model.
• Vertical evolution. Search phrases such as “I need a rental car next weekend in downtown Chicago, and a hotel for less than $200 per day, and I am traveling with a dog and my blind aunt” will return results that will have users about 1 click away from booking this package. On their cell phones.
• Google will be at last monetizing video and traditional media, including YouTube, cell phones, print ads, and free wireless in cities.
• Google will integrate their current link-based algorithm with click behavior. They will be able to do this after years of Windows computers shipping with the Google Toolbar pre-installed. Regarding the Google Toolbar, imagine a biologist tagging migrating whales with listening devices. That is what Google is doing NOW to most Windows computers that ship.
• F1000 companies will, for the most part, have evolved their internal change processes so that they can adopt sophisticated SEM techniques with less internal bureaucratic resistance
• A full length movie will be made about Craigslist. Jason Alexandar will play Craig Newmark.
• Encouraged by their success invading privacy with their toolbar, Google will begin buying satellites and giving away free hearing aids to an older generation that has embraced technology.

What do you think? Well, for those in search engine marketing, you can do more than just think about…

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it”, Alan Kay, computer scientist, 1971.