What are you looking forward to most about Super Bowl XLVI? The game? The parties? The halftime show? As the most watched TV broadcast of the year, the Super Bowl brings much hype. Although the football game is the most obvious reason why people tune into the broadcast, many people tune in for other reasons, specifically the commercials.

Companies spend months strategizing, preparing, creating, and producing innovative and engaging commercials that will grab the viewer’s attention in hopes of promoting their product. In years past, the commercials were kept secret up until the moment they aired and were shown once during the live taping of the game, but last year some marketing officers went against the traditional approach and implemented a new plan of attack. As our society has become more and more engrossed into the world of social media, companies have discovered that combining their commercials with a social media overlay increases not only the awareness of their product, but also “gets the ball rolling” before the commercial airs live on TV.

Perhaps “innovator” is most appropriate to summarize Steve Jobs.  But for proper homage, a new word should be added to our vernacular, highlighting Steve Jobs’ genius of communicating his innovations—he leveraged rich understanding of marketing, type and typefaces, images and movies, letters and words: the 1984 Ad, Apple II, NeXT, iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad, Think Different (sans ‘ly’) to name a few. 

How about “Jobsian Marketing”?

After all, his legacy is the very act of creation paired with exceptional marketing build up, excitement of rumors and secretive roll-outs which turned millions into disciples.  We, the ambassadors, spread the gospel, hoping to convert the meek, evangelizing the culture of Steve Job’s innovations and in turn become the strongest marketing arm any corporation could hope for.

Perhaps the pinnacle accomplishment for an inventor is to revolutionize the industry of their invention.  Steve Jobs revolutionized several industries, enabling and accelerating the analogue > digital shifts of the early 21st century.  His love of both process and product turned us on, tuned us in and made us believe.

Steve Job created a true new world order, where a single person can successfully manage their global business from the palm of their hand; created a film studio that disseminates genuine storytelling in an industry easily labeled as tired and uninspired; created a brand new market to support a once unknown product now casually known as the Tablet; created convenient media consumption, changing our expectations for how, when and where we are able to enjoy our books, music, films and video games.

Embedded in his great creations, Steve Jobs delivered great simplicity.  His genius can be further seen by pushing Apple to be the first to remove the floppy disc drive from home PCs in the 1990s, or shipping units that had no dial-up modems when high speed internet was not yet available everywhere, or most recently shipping a line of laptops without a CD/DVD-ROM drive, coaxing people to depend on USB and WIFI.

Above all, Steve Job’s passion for his family, work and play immortalizes him as one of the world’s modern great thinkers, doers and innovators.  He brought us the future before it was due.

Where do we go from here?  Mimicry may be a form of flattery, but Steve Jobs would be disappointed with a legion of copy-cats.  It is all of our time to continue pushing the boundaries of innovation, creation and marketing. 

Thank you for setting the bar Steve Jobs.

This Summer has been jammed packed with fun and exciting new projects. One of our favorites has been getting to work with Doheny Days Music Festival 2011, which is finally happening THIS weekend in Dana Point, CA.

Earlier this year, Omega Events, the group behind Doheny Days, came to us to create a web presence for the revival of this festival that has a long standing history in the Southern California music scene after a 7 year hiatus. We enjoyed working closely with the team at Omega Events to define their overall branding including logo, colors, aesthetic and general vibe as illustrated on DohenyDays.com.

In addition to creating their website, Omega Events hired us to implement a strategic Marketing and Advertising Campaign during the summer, including online advertising, give-away contests and other creative marketing initiatives. We’re stoked on the success of this campaign and are loving the public’s response and excitement for Doheny Days. This first year back paves the road for a successful festival for years to come.

Want to know what to expect during Doheny Days? Here’s a little insight into the amazing two-day festival, which is sure to end the summer on the right note!

Marketing over social networks used to be easy. You would create a MySpace page, upload a few songs and a picture or two and let millions of users do the rest by virtually spreading the word. Fast forward to now – boy, has that changed. With a seemingly ever-expanding plethora of social networking sites all trying to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, marketing yourself over these platforms has moved from hobby to chore to nearly a full time job. The typical artist must manage and keep up-to-date their Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, website, and any other social media platforms they’ve chosen to market themselves over. Most artists will confess that constantly updating each and every one of their online marketing platforms takes much longer than they’d prefer. The process is arduous at best, and any artist will acknowledge their true desire to use that time creating music. Yet, in the modern age it’s an integral portion of anyone’s marketing strategy.

Enter Musedash, a new online application that lets musicians manage all their social network profiles from one main dashboard. From this dashboard, you can post content (be it status updates, links, news, or photos and videos) and choose to which networks you’d like the content to appear on. So you could simultaneously post a news article on your Facebook profile, your Facebook page, your Twitter, your MySpace, and any other applicable network – all with just one click. Musedash sets itself apart from competing services like Hootsuite and Ping.fm by catering specifically to musicians. And, recognizing that most musicians are not computer geeks in their spare time, creator Hilke Ros and the rest of the Musedash team have made user-friendliness a top priority. The result is a clean, simple and straightforward application designed to make social networking easier, not more complicated. Potentially, using Musedash to manage multiple social networks simultaneously could save valuable time and frustration, and would eliminate the possibility of mistakes or inconsistent information on different networks.

Late last month, the unveiling of Google+ prompted the world over reconsider the future of social media and online networking, and many began to wonder if The Goog’s latest product would boast enough innovative features to dethrone Facebook, king of the social networking realm. Speculation has run rampant as the search giant’s latest foray into new media gains momentum, much of which attempts to size up Google+ against Facebook. Many in the tech world are projecting whether or not + will be successful both in stealing existing social network users and attracting new ones. But here at Oniracom, my compadres and I have been interested in how Google+ will integrate into the larger scheme of social media marketing and brand growth strategies. While wishful thinking would allow Google+, Facebook and others to harmoniously coincide with each other in the virtual world, it is becoming ever-more clear (as is obvious with Facebook’s Skype contract retaliation) that there really may only be room for one. It’s impossible to know which network, if any, will prevail, but Google+ is making a strong attempt by promising features and upgrades not available on Facebook or other social networking sites.

Likester is “the global popularity engine,” here to help you understand what people like on Facebook. This includes anyone from your best friends to people you have never met that live across the world. The site is broken up into five major sections: My Likes, Friends, Everyone, Trending and Like List. With these tabs, you are able to sort through popular likes on Facebook in comparison to your own personal likes. Likester is potentially a great tool for social marketing; it can help any Facebook page increase their fan base!

“My Likes” provides an interface to easily view the items you personally like. Here you can sort you likes as entertainment, people, places and things. Likester displays how many of your friends like the same things as you, and how many total Facebook users like the same pages. When comparing your likes to others, you have the option of browsing according to the location of users. Additionally, you can manage your likes through Likester.

We are proud to present our updated Solutions Page on the Oniracom website.  We like using the filter by Solutions on the upper left.  Click on any Solution in the grid or alphabetical listing along the left column to launch a litebox overlay with details about our offerings.

Groupon,a deal-of-the-day website that is localized to major geographic markets worldwide, is very much in the hot seat when it comes to quick and easy deals. Recently, “Google Offers” a service provided by Google wants to take part in this new craze. The company has now gone live with a signup for beta programs in Portland, Oregon, several cities in California, including Oakland/East Bay and San Francisco, as well as areas around New York City.

Groupon has been notorious for its awesome deals. However, I am definitely curious to see what Google has in store. Especially, since they promise “50% off or more at places you’ll love.”

Oniracom is proud to announce the new website for Ron “Tater Salad” White, the popular stand up comedian who is a charter member of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour.  Ron has been nominated twice for the Grammy Awards and is RIAA certified 10x Platinum for CD/DVD sales of over 10 million.

Don’t forget his famous slogan…. “You can’t fix stupid.”

Oniracom is gearing up to work on more projects with Ron’s management who has been an incredibly savvy and wonderful team.

Oniracom has teamed up with our good friends at SoundCloud to bring you the first listen of
G. Loves latest release from Brushfire Records, Fixin’ To Die, exclusively on Conan O’Brien’s website Team Coco.  Head over to TeamCoco.com to hear the full album a week before it hits stores and you can download an exclusive track right on G. Love’s website.

The switch from the old profile to the new profile that Facebook pulled on its users in late December/early January anticipated some other alterations to occur. Alas, the new Pages on Facebook is here! The new Pages redesign resembles and operates like a user’s regular profile. However, there are multiple differences in regards to the Page’s and their admins.

The new Pages consists of all the features of the new profile more or less. For example, the menu bar is on the left-hand column with links to the wall, photo albums, videos, tour dates, etc., which also eliminates the information box that was a component of the old profile and old pages of Facebook. The edit tab option has therefore also switched to the very top of the page. Admins can now click up top to edit their pages, which directs them to editing the info, apps, profile picture, marketing, etc.

Now here’s a brilliant album release campaign. UK songstress Adele, grammy winning “Chasing Pavements” singer, is releasing 21 (XL, Columbia) the much anticipated follow up to her debut album, 19. To generate buzz and increase fan engagement with the record in the weeks leading up the it’s US release, team Adele has set up quite a creative splash page:

Facebook introduced the new profile to its users this past December, and hoped to upgrade all users from the old profile to the new profile early during the new year. Gradually reeling its users towards the new profile allowed users to sample the new profile before it officially became mandatory, which stirred up different types of discussions between almost all Facebook users. Not only did the new layout get users talking, but the new features such as exposing all users to individual friendships and connecting interests between them, caused much debate between whether the old profile or the new profile was viewed as “better.”

By : Erik Koral - FanManager Founder/CEO - 1.10.11
http://www.fanmanager.net

Hey everyone,

One of my new years resolutions was to do a bit more personal blogging and provide the music and marketing communities with some cool tips in navigating the web and managing your street campaigns.  I have been in the marketing field for over 10 years now and running FanManager for 6 years, so I wanted to post some of my observations and let you know what has worked and what hasn’t.

The entry below will cover everything you need to know about online street teaming in this new digital era.  Although physical street teams are still important and relevant for many hard touring bands, online street teaming is becoming much more prevalent.  Here is why…

1) It has never become so easy to reach tens of thousands of people in just a few minutes. In today’s ADD culture, people want instant bite sized bits of information. People are tuning out billboards and traditional advertising and are much more willing to listen to a recommendation of a new track, video, or concert from a friend.  This is why platforms like Twitter and Facebook are so important today

Peter Tanham of Amp Music Marketing writes, “When we start working with any musician, two of the most important goals we start with are:

1.) Build a strong mailing list

2.) Build a popular Facebook page

Fans are going to be more comfortable interacting with the artist through these mediums, and they are also the ones that drive the most sales.”

Highlights from this article include:

The importance of Facebook Ads

Implementing effective Facebook Ads

1.) If You Like Those Guys…  it’s called a “power play,” pick musicians that are similar to your style and pay to be played to their fans.

2.) Building A Good Landing Page: make sure your Facebook ad redirects them to a customized landing page which will encourage them to click the “like” button with some incentive to hear or get your music. Make sure it is the most similar sounding music to the artist you referred to in the “power play.”

3.) Target Your Ads… and run multiple campaigns!

4.) Ask Questions. Encourage Clicks and Likes - (reference pseudo ad image on the left).

Flowtown.com just posted this great infographic on the Millennial Generation. (Also frequently referred to as Generation Y, the Echo Boomers, the Net Generation, etc.)

If you are doing any sort of marketing or posting on the internet, you need to know this group of people.  These are the innovators, the sharers, the first people that are going to interact with your brand. Especially for younger bands, this is the group that is going to be passing your music around and building your buzz.  Make sure you know where to hit them.

If this graph sparks your interest at all, there are a ton of resources on understanding this Net generation, including the shift that is happening right now as they are entering the workforce and looking for creative, collaborative positions.  I highly recommended checking out Don Tapscott’s Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World for further reading.

“At the MobileBeat 2010 conference in San Francisco, Eric Tseng said that Facebook “really sees mobile as the future,” and that we can expect to see Facebook’s “Like” buttons in mobile applications soon.

Tseng used geolocation as an example to illustrate the power of the mobile Open Graph. If you were to walk near a coffee shop and get a location-aware notification that there’s a happy hour going on there, you’ll probably be even more inclined to visit it if the notification comes bundled with recommendations from your Facebook friends.”

We have compiled a list of what we find to be the most interesting and informative music blogs on the web. The list amounts to 21 music blogs, but is divided into four categories; Music Blogs (general reviews of up-and-coming music), International Blogs (reviews up-and-coming music from specific countries and around the world), Entertainment Blogs (covers news and reviews of a variety of art forms), and Music Industry Blogs (covers the latest happenings of what is moving and shaking in the music industry).

Direct-to-Fan (D2F) marketing is essentially creating a relationship with your fans through a marketing outlet, fans help you and in return you help them. D2F marketing is a creative business model that allows artists to eliminate the need for a middle man by delivering music directly to fans.  Which means, artists keep a higher percentage of their own sales, compared to the current business model where major labels, distributors or even iTunes take 30% or more away from the artist! D2F is most easily identified by free content give-aways in exchange for a tweet, Facebook shout-out, or e-mail sign up, reference MattCosta.com.

However, D2F marketing is evolving to include custom storefronts and marketing analytics that enable you to better grasp your audience and sell directly from your website and various social profiles. After researching the following sites; Bandbox, Nimbit and Topspin, I have outlined a detailed explanation of the costs, benefits, similarities, and differences between each platform. 

Read More…

I’ll be honest. When I see the ubiquitous PowerPoint title page start off a presentation, I groan inwardly. And I’m guessing you do too.
Despite becoming a staple of the business and scholastic world, Microsoft’s presentation application hasn’t evolved beyond its linear bulleted slide formating since its release over twenty years ago.

Enter Prezi.

Prezi is an online presentation tool that does away with the slide-by-slide approach of Powerpoint entirely. Instead, it utilizes a visual map with embedded words, links, images and videos. Users can navigate this visual map by zooming in and out, resulting in an interactive and visually stimulating product.
Perhaps Prezi is best explained by watching a sample project. I wasn’t completely sold on the idea until I saw a demonstration on their site. Check out the video below:

The pliable interface of Prezi means that every presentation is unique to its creator. And it’s FREE. Best of all, it’s web-based, which means that Prezi presentations can be created and shown on any computer with internet access. No more emailing presentations to yourself, hoping desperately that the computer you’re presenting on will have the necessary OS and software. Users are also provided with an offline player in case you’re presenting somewhere without access to the internet.

Prezi offers three different levels of pricing: Free, Enjoy & Pro. Every version grants users access to the editing software and an offline player and the ability to download & embed presentations into websites and blogs, as well as the abiliy to import images, videos, PDFs, & Flash files. The free version allots you 100MB worth of file storage but ensures that all your presentations will be public. For $59 a year, users can quadruple their file storage and are given the option of making their presentations private. Pro, at $159 a year, lets premium users download a desktop application of the editing software so they may work offline.
Prezi.com also has a forum component, in which you can view the works of others, comment and perhaps choose to “pat them on the back” for a job well done.

One of my favorites is the Prezi that accompanied the lecture “Mixing Mind & Metaphor,” at TED Global 2009 given by James Geary. Check it out here.

I’ll admit at first it takes a little while to get used to the interface, especially if you’ve been brought up on Powerpoint. But Prezi is relatively intuitive and the site contains many helpful tutorial videos to assist with the basics and offer tips and tricks. Once you get the hang of it, the entire process is strangely liberating.

What do you think? Will you be using Prezi for your next presentation?

Last Friday I had a great opportunity to listen to Jay Matheson from Apple Computer speak at our local City College about personal branding.  As a small business owner, I never turn down these special moments to learn, no matter how versed I believe I may be in a particular field.  We can always learn more information, or see familiar information from new perspectives.  Please Read More…

Traditional 80’s fast food Marketing is back!  For better or worse…

A Business market segment is a group of people or organizations sharing one or more characteristics that cause them to have similar product and/or service needs.

In this case, Burger King and Microsoft have teamed up pushing the “Windows 7 Whopper” to their market segment (very very hungry and/or large people in Japan).  For 7 days only, you can shell out Â¥777 (or $8.55) for 7 beef patties on a sesame seed bun, in support of Windows 7.  BK’s in Japan are limiting this price to the first 30 customers each day, upping the price to Â¥1,450 ($17.10), officially breaking the “7” theme.

But this campaign has pushed beyond the limits of traditional marketing into the digital realm.  Yes, blogs all over the web have picked up on this story (including our own SFDBlog.com).

For blog publishers to resist re-posting this image is nearly impossible.  It has all the necessary elements: two American company logos, Japanese characters and 7 mouthwatering beef patties.

But I would like to give a huge thank you to Gizmodo’s Mark Wilson & co. who attempt to down this burger for Generation YouTube to “enjoy.”

Rumors are starting to fly about Googles new music service.

It seems as if the service will be going after Bing who is trying to offers users a better search engine.  Google’s music service would simply be an upgrade to their search results for music.  If you search for an artist like Jack Johnson it would now give you a small list of some of his most popular songs and videos pulling data from music services such as LaLa, MySpace, and iLike.  You can stream the music right there on the same search results page, watch the video and even click a link to download and buy it.  While nothing is official yet we have been working on updating some of our clients on those music services just in time for press release.

Check out the sneak peak at what the service might look at over at TechCrunch.

New Noise Santa Barbara was a great success.  Being their first year, nobody was certain how heavily attended the concert component or conference component would be.  Both turned out to be a success!  People raved about Michael Franti’s Arlington Theatre performance, Jack Johnson’s film screening with last minute acoustic performance as well as many of the sold out club shows. 

The New Noise Panels were also well attended and talked and tweeted about all weekend.  I was asked to speak on two panels, “The Future Is Unwritten” and “The Green Musician.”  Below I’ve written a list of 5 items from each panel that I learned from other panelists.

What I learned from other panelists on “The Future is Unwritten:”

(click “Read More…” below)

What I learned from other panelists on “The Green Musician:”

(click “Read More…” below)