What’s new with Facebook? As the company continues to improve, new technology is introduced. Facebook has announced chatbot and Live Chat. This has the potential to replace 1-800 numbers and other “Help” related outlets. Facebook is working with Live Chat developers who can potentially build contact buttons that directly message people for help on websites. Instead of having to email or call help stations, customers can interact with someone on Live Chat, which optimizes efficiency, timeliness, and customer satisfaction. Happy customers = Happy business.

Sick of cluttered news feeds and not knowing whether your posts are being seen? Facebook is developing a new way for businesses to reach their ideal customers. Recently, It was leaked that sometime in Q2 2016 the social media giant will allow business Pages to send advertisements via Messenger to customers who have previously contacted them.

Last Thursday, Ubisoft, a French video game developer, sent a safe containing the new Watch Dogs game. Ninemsn, a digital media company in Sydney, Australia, received the mysterious package without the voicemail message that was intended to be sent with it by Ubisoft. The package began to beep and with much concern, Ninemsn evacuated its office and brought in a bomb-squad.

While marketing techniques created by Ubisoft have been innovative in the past, this PR went too far in its promotional effort to hype the video game.

“The PR company no doubt got carried away with their creativity and ended up sending us something the bomb squad had to open up,” said Hal Crawfor, Ninemsn’s editor.

In response, Upisoft issued a statement apologizing for the delivery that did not go as they had planned.

“We will take additional precautions in the future to ensure this kind of situation doesn’t happen again,” Ubisoft said.

Does this stunt negatively affect their business? While a mishap like this circulates in the media, negative publicity scares can also give a bad reputation to a brand. But Watch Dogs is still the fastest selling game released from Ubisoft, and their current selling goal remains at over 6 million.

PR stunt or nah?

Sometimes, the PR is just laughable. Or is it meant to be PR at all?

Last week, 50 Cent gave the internet a good laugh after videos of his bad pitch at the Mets game circulated. Was it a publicity stunt? With a new album and TV show set to release soon, it seems probable. But 50 Cent denied this claim on Good Morning America as he claims that the ball just slipped.

Got some extra cash? And by extra, I mean $1-2 million dollars? Well you are probably eligible for Pinterest ads with CPMs priced between $30 and $40 (AdAge).

Pinterest hasn’t fully brought its advertising service to the market yet, but these are the numbers that AdAge has reported came from “three executives who were briefed on Pinterest’s ad pitch”
(AdAge).

This premiere advertising service that Pinterest is aiming to launch will bring actual revenue to the social media service. Currently, the company has only raised money from investors. How much you ask? Oh just a mere $564 million dollars.

Pinterest tested promoted pins with different advertisers, but those promoted pinners were not being charged since Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann wanted to first test this feature to see how users felt about this type of content on their feeds.

Although Pinterest advertising is in the works, they have not announced a set date as to when this service is officially rolling out.

Check back here for more updates!

Dove - the skin care brand - has the most viewed viral advertising campaign ever. It got there because of three key features: honest, simple, and patient.

HONEST
The campaign relies on testimonials, but unlike most commercials who do the same, the people on screen clearly want to testify. They aren’t actors selling something. They’re regular, seemingly middle class people talking, and they just happen to be on screen.

SIMPLE
There are no exotic locations, no sweeping vistas, or elaborate sets. The setting is a typical workplace without ideal lighting, however the set shown here looks much closer than, say one from Victoria’s Secret.

PATIENT
Since Dove did not constrain themselves to 30 or 60 second ad, they had time to tell a story. Over the course of the 3:01, we start to see what the artist Gil Zamora is doing right along with the women. They build a relationship with both sides and as a result, are both surprised and pleased when the reveal finally comes. There was no need to fit everything into very little time. If you have an honest story to tell, it will spread.

Check out the advertising campaign below and tell us what you think!

British mobile provider Three (UK) seems to have struck a bit of viral marketing gold in the recent #danceponydance campaign that hit Youtube this month. The premise of the advert? Silly stuff matters.  How do they convey this slogan? With a dancing Shetland Pony of course.

In the age of Tivo and DVR, advertisements have gotten creative, and I can’t say that I mind too much.  That being said, companies face a need to reach audiences at a startling speed that will rise above the many Youtube videos of cute sloths in slow motion, adorable children saying the darndest things and, ahem, other companies trying to rise above viral happy accidents. And let me just say, they are doing a terrific job doing so. 

Exhibit A: Shetland Ponies.

A HUGE congratulations is in order for our video production partner, Cool Hand Look for winning two Central Coast Bronze ADDY Awards! We are so proud of Luke Archer of Cool Hand Look for receiving this great honor.

The ADDY Award Gala took place yesterday, March 13 and recognizes award winning marketing and advertising techniques, strategies, and presentations. Cool Hand Look received these two bronze awards for two awesome projects he produced for our clients Ron Whiteand Rolling Pet Vet. The two awards were for “creative excellence in the art of advertising, including a Bronze ADDY Award for the web series ‘Rontourage: On Tour with Ron White’ and a Bronze ADDY Award for an Integrated Campaign for the launch of local mobile veterinary hospital, Rolling Pet Vet.”

In april 2010, Google released an online advertising service to support small businesses in their online advertising, DFP Small Business. DFP stands for DoubleClick for Publishers, and DoubleClick is of course the company made rich and famous by annoying you on just about every other webpage before the advent of pop-up blockers. However, we can also thank DoubleClick for monetizing the internet and creating a new form of Advertising. DoubleClick was acquired by Google in 2007 and has since been augmenting and integrating with Google’s services creating an unprecedented network of advertisers.

DFP Small Business is a free hosted ad serving solution that helps online publishers manage their growing online advertising business. As opposed to AdWords, which allows you to advertise across Google?s ad networks on a Cost Per Click (CPC) pricing model, DFP actually has ad workflow and inventory features built in. DFP Small Business allows it’s users to upload an inventory of advertisements and prioritize them according to their value. DFP intelligently distributes Ads to target audiences by demographic, geography, and time. Google promises proper and effective ad delivery, utilizing not only their own AdSense features, but also third party services that offer similar management solutions.

If you are a publisher interested in these services, you can check out DFP Small Business here. If your business serves more than 90 Million impressions per month, you can contact Google about a DFP premium solution.

The following post was written by reknown producer and industry thinker Sjoerd (Sjoko) Koppert.  Besides working with bands such as The Who, Pink Floyd, ABBA, Janis Joplin, Frank Zappa, Beach Boys, Yes, and Lynyrd Skynrd, he also orchestrated the launch of FedEx in Europe and the Middle East in 1986 while on a personal break from the music industry.  He is well-known for being an insightful and forward thinker for the music industry, as he has constantly adapted his strategies to maintain success in an ever-changing business.

Oniracom is currently working with Sjoko on two original music series, produced in high quality to be premiered on the web before moving to television and film.  (More on that soon!)  Here’s a snippet on some of Sjoko’s thoughts for YouTube future in their fast maturing market. Enjoy:

Points for thought

After launching FedEx in Europe in ‘86 I attended my first “official” FedEx board meeting in Memphis and caused a lot of consternation. When asked my opinion about the state of the corporation my response was: “Dangerous. You are a single product company in a fast maturing market.” To say this remark caused consternation would be a severe understatement. After all, I was addressing a board that had only ever experienced and accommodated growth. But my statement was truth based on fact and before long they recognized that they had to take serious action in order to preserve their market position.

Today I see a very similar situation with YouTube. They are a single product (delivery platform) company, a market leader in a maturing market. Alternative delivery platforms are developing and growing. Just in recent weeks we have seen developments. Hulu is moving from being just another delivery platform to content development (Article). AOL is moving from content provider to include delivery platform (Article). Shifts have also been spotted from companies such as Yahoo (Article) and MSN/Bing (Article). History has shown that this market movement is to accelerate. As such, a company like YouTube will have to make strategic moves in order to preserve and built its market position.

Currently, we are awaiting YouTube’s response to a request for a more “fixed rate” schedule of advertisements for two original series. This is a move away from their Google based advertising platform. Our request to YouTube is based on our concept research, our proven capability to deliver and the interest in the shows from corporate sponsors. 

Our contact with sponsors is due to my history with marketing / advertising / sponsorships, but our core activity is content development. I am a producer first and foremost and a marketing / development person as a necessity. No question YouTube can handle sponsorship / product placement and have the people in place to do so. The latter is one of the reasons I requested for a YouTube person to be part of our “closing team” when finalizing major sponsorship deals. It helps us and comforts our corporate sponsors.

And here comes today’s key question:

YouTube is considering a strategic decision in changing their manner of advertising. Should they perhaps consider a different strategy and partner in the production of shows?

Personally I think of YouTube as a partner anyway, be it an “initial delivery partner” only. I would not have any objections to them becoming involved financially. Yes we would forego a percentage of our long-term revenue, but I do think they have much to offer to counterbalance that. I would value your opinions. 

In evaluating the above, please consider that currently our production entity owns both shows and YouTube is the initial delivery platform. After YouTube the shows will go to television and after that other alternative platforms (DVD etc.). In other words, there will be a large ongoing residual value. Naturally we would have to share the revenue with YouTube should they partner us in producing the content.

Do you think this would benefit both parties? Or do you think YouTube should stay away from production and revenue share? I welcome your opinions!

Sjoerd Koppert