I’ve tried them all: Netvibes, Pageflakes, MyYahoo, Yourminis, and iGoogle, to name a few start page providers. Despite my love of new interface interactions, I keep coming back to iGoogle as my customized home page location. And I’ve tried to leave it; believe me, the slick interfaces of Netvibes and Pageflakes have called me many times over. So why do I keep coming back to iGoogle (despite the fact that I can’t stand the name)?

- Fast load times. I’m as impatient as anyone else. I love the fact that iGoogle is lightweight and loads quickly. Many of the slick, Web 2.0-looking apps seem to take forever to load.

- I love GMail, therefore I love iGoogle. My GMail integrates seamlessly with iGoogle. With other providers, the GMail integration was clunky at best.

- A nice, clean interface. Less clutter pleases the eyes. Although I am occasionally bored by the lack of customization and the bland white background, I’ve come to appreciate Google’s clean lines after toying around with several other providers. With that said, I do wish that Google would implement a few additional tools for customizing the interface. For example, I’d love to be able to color-code my RSS feeds by topic.

- The Web feels as though it is a click away. I use Google Maps as well as the integrated Picasa albums frequently, so the other tools I use to manage my daily experiences are close by.

- RSS additions are seamless. Unlike some RSS readers I’ve used, the RSS integration for iGoogle is a no-brainer.

Does iGoogle have its limitations for customization? Absolutely. Are its pre-packaged themes for the AOL crowd hideous and campy? I believe so. Have I sipped too much of the Google Kool-Aid? I hope not. I don’t mean to purport that Google is sole provider of great start pages. If I find something that works better in the future, I will use it. However, Google continues to remain relatively true their mantra: “Focus on the user, and all else will follow.” In this case, they’ve provided a great user experience by keeping my interactions seamless and my interface simple.

Peyton Lindley, Interaction Design

User-Generated Content (UGC) is definitely the latest trend in website content. Production costs and barriers to entry have dropped significantly so that anyone with a $500 camera and a video editing program can be the newest Quentin Tarantino. Combine that with programs like YouTube, Ziddio and other video publishing sites and getting your 15-minutes of fame is easy, .e.g., Diet Coke + Mentos.

In fact, some of the most popular commercials during the Super Bowl last year were UGC. Chevrolet, Doritos, Yahoo and more have turned to consumers to provide the commercials for the over $2 million time slot¹². This new trend is obviously much less expensive than the Ad-agency created alternative, but will that continue to be the case? Will these novice video makers begin to charge big bucks for these monoliths to deliver a seemingly more authentic message?

While there’s a lot of millennials creating bizarre, interesting, beautiful, silly videos, does this mean the content is “good” or “relevant”? No. UGC-bearing sites are being called a virtual flea market where there is some interesting content but it often takes a lot of sifting and searching to find it. Is there an emerging business model around UGC? Absolutely. Will it commoditize this content and therefore make it inherently commercialized and therefore not authentic? Unknown.

Perhaps this newest trend will bring us back to our roots and democratize advertising. Or perhaps, it’s just a trend, like Napster that started out grassroots and became a multi-million dollar commodity.

Libby Niemi, Client Services

Where does viral come from?

Inspirado.

To paraphrase Jack Black’s Tenacious D, “It arises from a stillness, a quietude. When your heart mingles with your soul and they do the dance…”

“Now, I could 23 skidoo you a video. I could zippety-do-dah you a game. But that would be false.”

You can’t manufacture Inspirado

Inspirado is where viral marketing campaigns are born.

By definition, you can’t manufacture a viral campaign. You can’t force a video to be popular, much less force viewers to tell their friends about it.

Viral just happens. The Star Wars kid never wanted to be famous. But somehow the video got out. Ultimately, viral campaigns are a gamble.

But human nature craves that the success story. As marketers we want to push the limits (or jump on the bandwagon). We WANT the next great viral campaign. We WANT to make it happen.

Sometimes You Have to Manufacture Inspirado

The Mentos guys did it. They made a video and hoped it would catch on. It hit big time. But they weren’t selling anything. We know people resist being marketed to.

So you hire a hip, creative agency. You have brainstorming sessions and creative workshops, and you come up with a great idea for THE NEXT BIG YOU TUBE HIT.

You release it to an unsuspecting public and wait… Maybe it needs a jumpstart, so you seed a few influential blogs. If it still doesn’t hit, you blast it out to your email database and hope that they will be so enamored that they will forward it to their friends. What’s left? Banner ads?

Now we’re squarely back in the world of mainstream online marketing. Hardly a runaway viral hit.

The cover story of the December BtoB magazine asserts that “playful platforms reach audience subsets and spark viral campaigns”. The article touts how “a simple online viral game created as a promotion for Microsoft Corp.’s “Flight Simulator” game for Xbox 360… has attracted 159.3 million players [since December]” as an example of how “such campaigns can propel brand awareness and take on a life of their own”.

Touché.

Microsoft, the world’s largest software company, managed to create a video game that people enjoyed. And just in time, their brand awareness was really slipping…

Does your company have Microsoft’s resources?

Office Depot used “an e-mail promotion that can be forwarded to friends” to promote their “Gift of the Day Giveaway”. “Once on the microsite, customers can enter the contest as well as play another game called ‘Snowball Standoff’ wherein players throw snowballs at a cartoon reindeer”.

Anyone remember “Elf Bowling“, circa 1999? It seems not much has changed.
Finally, UPS has bought a ride on the bandwagon with a game of their own. “We wanted to [promote the new services] in a fun way, because shipping in general is not exactly sexy”. In the space of two lines the BtoB article again quotes UPS’s Donna Barrett, “It was designed to have a viral component so they could send it to a friend,” followed by “Banner ads promoting the game ran on the UPS site.”

What is the common theme among these “viral” campaigns? Promoting them with mainstream online tactics. Banner ads, email, forward to a friend.

Orbitz Got it Right… in 2005

Surly you’ve seen them. Probably even played them. Those Orbitz pop-up banners with fun little games. People love them. They’re so popular that there is even a site where you can play all of Orbitz Games, past and present.

Why do they work? They engage the viewer in a fun and creative manner. They are a soft-sell, with little relevance to travel other than the Orbitz brand. They are a quick and entertaining diversion. Importantly, Orbitz knows that the value of repetition and reinforcement. Every few months they launch a new game. This re-engages the viewer and even builds anticipation. Imagine, your customers anticipating your new banner ad.

Viral is the latest and greatest, right?

Orbitz did it in 2005, and we can still learn from their example.

Is this really “viral”?

Is “viral” really the NEXT BIG THING? Or is this just another tool for the marketer’s toolbox? If you need to advertise it, how is it different from ads and email and the rest? Orbitz Games may be a success story, but they are banner ads. Expensive banner ads. Where is the big win when you have to advertise your advertisements?

When we add up the numbers at the end of the day we may find that these campaigns successfully “grew the brand” with a positive ROI. As such, they may earn a place in my tool box. And sure, some of them are pretty neat.

Please, just stop calling them viral. That’s for the people to decide!

Jason Rogers, eMarketing

I’m insatiable and I know it.

Here I am holding my iPhone - by far the best consumer electronic device
I’ve ever owned - and I want more. After spending every spare moment
together over the last several months, my iPhone and I are past the
honeymoon phase. From time to time I find myself looking at its smooth shiny
surface and asking, “iPhone, what have you done for me lately?”

Since the iPhone is a closed operating system, no one but Apple can
distribute new features on it. Apple strategies have rarely centered on the
openness of their solutions. Instead they have focused more on high end
design and user experience to win market share. For example, Apple could
have chosen to make iTunes more easily available to a broad variety of
devices in order to support increased sales of online music and video.
Instead they have chosen to tightly couple iTunes with the iPod. By closely
controlling the end to end experience, they have been able to create a set
of simple yet intuitive interfaces that have driven both iPod sales and
iTunes transactions.

They are obviously extending this strategy to the iPhone. If the iPhone was
a more open environment, you could easily imagine developers creating a
feature which enables people to download new content from Amazon.com.
Instead, the one new feature created by Apple since the iPhone was released
this summer is a feature which enables people to download songs from iTunes.

The user experience of the iPhone is unquestionably delightful. But from a
new feature perspective, we are stuck with what Apple gives us. It’s not
enough for me. I’m not the only one who feels this way.

There’s a community of developers and iPhone users out there hungry for new
features. They’ve gone so far as to create programs that enable you to
“unlock” your iPhone so that you can install third party software
applications on your phone. I haven’t gone down this path yet because I’m
concerned what these hacks will do to the stability of the operating system
and I know I can’t expect much support from Apple if I get in trouble
through hacking their software. Also updates to the latest iPhone software,
will relock the phone and delete third party applications.

So what’s a bored power user to do?

Google has an answer to this question. It’s called the Google Android
project.

Let’s discuss it in the next blog entry.

Dan Fox, Technology

Maurice Lévy Chairman and CEO, Publicis Groupe:

“Five years is an eternity in technology, but from our vantage point a few things are clear about what the internet and internet advertising will look like in 2012. One, virtually all media will be digital, and digital will enable almost all kinds of advertising. Two, online advertising will depend more than ever on the one element which has always been at the heart of impactful advertising, both analogue and digital: creativity. The explosion of media channels means this is a glorious time to think and act creatively. In art history terms, we are at the dawn of the Renaissance after the Dark Ages.

Just as the Renaissance broke down the distinctions between sacred and profane art forms and between individual and community, so we are seeing a similar exciting blurring today - and this will only intensify. Linear media is fast giving way to liquid media, where you can move seamlessly in and out of different settings. Prescribed time - the 7 o’clock news, the Friday night out at the cinema, etc - is now becoming multitasking time. People are no longer willing to put up with interruptions for a commercial break during their entertainment experience, and so we have to find incredibly creative solutions to interact with them and engage them in genuine and honest ways. This implies a brave new world of engagement and involvement between marketers and consumers and will also mean co-production between marketers and media owners. Scale will be critical: in five years’ time, around 2 billion people will be constant internet users and mobile internet computing will be ubiquitous. What a great time to be in the business!“

Premium is an organic term, literally. Many brands are seeking to define Premium, own it, redefine it, sell it, push it, and share it. For example, the makers of Bud, Anheuser-Busch, are now selling Organic, Ultra-Premium Vodka. Not just premium, but Ultra-Premium. There are many examples. Odwalla Juices are super-Premium juices. Premium is everywhere. There are Premium chocolates, condoms, water, DVDs, and cats. We are surrounded by Premium.

This leads me to think, if the term continues to be used for everything from Vodka to Christmas Trees (I purchased a Premium Noble Fir this weekend), will the term lose meaning? If Premium were enough of a description, why is Ultra-Premium or Super-Premium needed to describe a superior product or service? Or, is Premium simply the new luxury? According to this article there is no such thing as a luxury product, just a product that has a good luxury story attached. Does the same rule apply to Premium?

Fortunately, at texturemedia, we have more than just a Premium story. We have Premium-Proof.

Premium-Proof: (adj.) has stood the test of time, contains hard facts and data, collective belief, great taste, and talent.

Allison Kent, New Business