Digital Stuffing

Via Order-Order, I get pointed towards a lovely post from Nicolas Kayser-Bril, a student in media economics, on the Economics of Comments

Economics of comments (used under licence CC-BY-NC, Nicolas Kayser-Bril)

This is something that any brand has to face, when trying to distribute content on the web, the value of the comments. I’ve worked on a campaign where a video was released onto YouTube as part of a campaign, with open comments. The subject matter (a young, bratty teenager) meant the comments quickly dropped to the basest YT commentry. A decision was made to leave them as is BUT when a further video went up, which included a ‘real’ contest winner, not just the actress, we closed them. The comment quality tended to be low and potential for defamation too high to be comfortable leaving them open.

For any brand, commentary moderation is a high cost if all you are going to do is ‘moderate’. either pre- or -post. If you’re going to be around for a while (ie it’s not just a short term campaign), I’d be focusing on supporting and empowering your readers and commenters, to set the tone and encourage self-policing. A community manager can go a long way to help reduce reactionary moderation costs. For short term campaigns, if you want your content out on sites that are not your own, your going to have to live with it if the commentary turns bad, it’s a consequence of the web.

There’s a whole bunch of lists been published by blogging friends, what you don’t want to hear in various situations. So here’s a round up of the ones you should be reading – and my favourites (it’s also a way to keep track of them all in one post). I was going to write one myself, but by the time the weekend came, they’d all been done!

First was Jeffrey Zeldman, with 20 signs that you don’t want that web design project. Things I’ve heard myself:

7. Client can’t articulate a single desired user goal. He also can’t articulate a business strategy, an online strategy, a reason for the site’s existence, or a goal or metric for improving the website. In spite of all that, client has designed his own heavily detailed wireframes.

13. The client wants web 2.0 features but cannot articulate a business strategy or user goal.

Then there’s Chris, with his 20 signs that you don’t want that Social Media Project

2. Client has a “hilarious” viral they want you to “seed”, which turns out to be their latest TV ad on YouTube.

9. Client insists that you anonymously post links to their site on a range of forums.

16. Every Tweet you post to client’s official Twitter stream has to be OK’ed by the brand manager first.

There’s 21 signs that you don’t want in your online marketing pitch from Tom

4. Pitch includes the phrases “the new Facebook” or “Facebook for X” (where X is some niche group that nobody cares about, not even the people in the group).

6. You refer to your video as “viral” when it hasn’t even been made publicly available yet.

15. Your website is a single Flash entity that takes an hour to load, contains no permalinks, and has content that isn’t embeddable or shareable in any way apart from a link pointing to the root URL.

And Suw has signs that you don’t want the internal social media project

1. Client wants to code their own blog/wiki software because “we want total control”.

6. When you ask how much experience staff have of social media, IT replies, “Oh, we block all those sites.”

And finally, 21 ways to tell if your social media expert is a carpetbagger from Beth and Geoff

1. When asked about listening, gives you a blank stare.

4. Doesn’t understand how social media integrates into larger corporate communications or business strategy

18. Defines social media as only tools (Facebook, blogs, Flickr <INSERT SHINY OBJECT HERE> ) as opposed to conversations with communities

They’re all great and the sad thing is they’re all true. Too many people jumping on the shiny bandwagon, because it has press, has buzz, because everyone is doing it without having a key understanding of what is needed. So try not to fall into any of these mistakes- and if you’re already there, how are you going to correct your course?

Last weeks top videos are dominated by the George Bush show throwing incident and multipel version of the X-Factor finalists. But there are a couple of product videos in there.

Santa’s gone Centro is still up there, getting loads of views. Still no idea why this is popular.

From Brazil comes this advert for VW SpaceFox, which seems to feature a weird genetically modified Fish Dog. The same brand made this gorgeous VW Golf ad (via Scamp) which came out this week. Which do you prefer?

I love this Christmas Card from AKQA. At the start, you have no idea where it is going, but it builds to a satisfying conclusion.

AKQA Christmas Card (screenshot from site)

Collins Language are doing some fun stuff with their Adopt a Word campaign. It’s all about supporting the I Can charity, which helps children with speech, language and communication difficulties. You can Adopt a Word, from £20, the money going to the charity. In return, they send you a ‘certificate of ownership, for that word. So whether you want to buy a ‘diamond’ or the definitive article ‘the’ you can get it all for yourself. They’ve got some great new words on offer as well, such as ‘disemvowel’, the art of removing vowels from web comments so they become far less intelligible.

They’ve also got this widget with a daily word test from Nicholas Parsons – do you know what he knows? Take it and have ago at improving your vocabulary.

This is a nice little social responsibility campaign for a dictionary company; the right charity connection, some celebrity endorsement and tools that all fit in with the core product, that of words.

Lego Miniman is 30 years old this year and they have a site and video celebrating the fact. As seems to be rage a tthe moment, you can paste your face into the video and them embed them into your site. Well, I’d embed it but the video has an annoying autoplay, so if you want to take a look at my personalised video, take a look here

The Go Mini Man Go site is at heart a blog and they’re regularly updating it with lots of Lego news. I quite like the timeline as well, where you can see 100′s of Mini Men

Lego MiniMan (Screenshot from site)

I’ve never really got into the UK version of these ads, much preferring the characters in the US campaign. Here’s the 2 latest from Apple, in a lovely animated way where the sheer awkwardness of PC still managed to come through.

I can’f find any UK Christmas versions, so not sure what they are doing. It doesn’t matter, I can still watch these.

Joe Jaffe writes about the Charmin bathroom that has popped up again in Times Square, New York for the Christmas season. Apparently P&G have added Duracell to their product mix this year, providing recharging stations for your phones and other batteries. I’ve loved the experience the last 2 years I visited and great to see them back again bringing one of the best holiday experiences a clean, warm, fun bathroom.

(my photo from last year)

There’s a lot of ‘load up you face’ apps out there, it’s always a favourite way to get interaction, engagement and personalisation. The logic behind the choice and the connection with the brand is not always clear, but this Mistletoe Makeover tool from Sephora is a great little app to play around with.

Load up your face, adjust the parameters and the make-up company adds the latest looks to your face, all made with their products. You can pick your favourite and send it along to your friends – which sends them a code to add a free lipstick or mascara to a purchase (WINKORKISS)

Sephora makeup (Screenshot from site)

They’ve got a busy Sephora Facebook page as well, which has over 48k members and seem to regularly put up offers and contests, as well as being active in the group there.

Breathing Places is a BBC programme ( I assume aimed at children) that focuses on wildlife and the environment and what you can do to understand them and help them. As part of the Christmas drive it’s produced this very surreal, creepy video. I say creepy, because that’s how i find it. I was spending too much time on the weird mouths than the actual message of the video. But I’m guessing not everyone thinks that as it’s doing a pretty good view rate on YouTube.