Coors Perfect Pour Vid - Cool or Crass?
Viral video success “The Perfect Pour” looks at first glance like so many other amateurish YouTube videos. The shaky camerawork and bad lighting all spell “cameraphone,” as does the setting–a house party that a guy shows up to and starts doing wild and crazy tricks with cans of Coors Light, such as pouring two of them into glasses while hanging upside-down from a rooftop. But a closer look reveals that this is a clever marketing stunt, bought and paid for by Coors itself.
The folks at Gawker sniffed it out immediately, because of the video’s striking similarity to similar stealth videos by RayBan and Levis. Sure enough, the New York Times eventually discovered that the Coors “perfect pour” video is the work of ad agency Avenue A/Razorfish (owned by Microsoft). Silicon Alley Insider then revealed that the ad agency also paid several others to post “response” videos illustrating various beer pouring tricks of their own. Hot on the trail of the story, SAI later reported that one of these videos–featuring a sexy woman opening a can of Coors Light– was deemed too risque and pulled from YouTube. (It’s posted on the blog, as well as on Blip.tv.)
All of this raises the question–is it okay to use YouTube in this way, or this kind of thing overly sneaky and just a little bit sleazy? My first thought is: what exactly will happen to the “real” amateur videos on YouTube? Already, signs indicate that for the most part, what people watch online isn’t all that different than what they watch on TV. Perhaps professionalization is inevitable. But it makes me just a little bit sad, especially when the occasional true UGC “gem” comes out on YouTube, such as the laughing baby. (Oh no, wait, that became an AIG commercial. Oh well, at least it started out amateur.)
My second thought is, what’s all the fuss about? This is just like product placement was in the 70s. People didn’t always notice it, and if they did, they weren’t necessarily aware that they were being targeted with advertising. Eventually they figured it out, at which point product placement hardly went away–it got bigger than ever! Which indicates that viewers not only tolerated it, but they kind of liked it. I know that for me, watching ET on the big screen and seeing real brands at the breakfast tables struck me immediately as far more realistic than other movies I’d seen.
However, this isn’t the 70s, and audiences have gotten savvier. In this way, such stunts represent a step backwards. Nowadays, with product placement, audiences are quite often let in on the joke. Marketers treat them as equals and rather than sneaking the ads by them, they make sure they’re noticed. MTV does this with its overtly advertorial Dove tie-in, as do edgy online-only video producers like Revision3, where the guys on Diggnation crack jokes about their sponsors while nodding and winking to audiences about it. And to my mind, this is the way it should be. In the long run, this approach will make audiences into partners rather than unwitting victims. Still, I have to admit I’m impressed–I never would have thought to suggest that even the response videos should be part of the marketing push.
Update June 6: NewTeeVee has sniffed out a great example of a viral video that works without resorting to sneakiness of any kind:
Running 2.0
While running Bay to Breakers last weekend as part of the Asics Aggies Centipede, (If you don’t know what a centipede is in this context, click here) I came to the realization that there is truly no better time to be a runner than the present. Discounting scientific advances that have bettered our understanding of human physiology and training techniques, the fact that my best time for the mile would have had me ranked number 1 in the world as recently as the 1910’s and that (some) modern professional runners can make millions of dollars doing it, Web 2.0 has had a profound, positive impact on the running community.
I use a Web site called running2win to keep track of my training. My college teammates are on the same site and it allows us to follow each other’s progress, offer comments and encouragement and plan group runs and other activities. Our coach was able to log-in and view graphs and charts that tracked total distance run, the average pace of runs and overall improvement.
Even a mere decade ago, track fans were forced to wait days or even weeks for race results to be published and distributed. This was true even of the most prestigious events - let alone your local 5k or half-marathon. Now, it’s nearly unheard of for race results not to be immediately available online. But it gets better. A friend of mine ran this year’s Boston Marathon and plugged my email address into the marathon’s site so that I would receive automatic updates with his times at the 10 kilometer, half-marathon and 30 kilometer points.
RSS-style updates don’t satisfy you? Companies like MediaZone allow you to watch the race in live, streaming video while companies like Flotrack have taken advantage of the ease with which it is possible to upload and share videos and travel around the country and world filming races and interviewing athletes. Whereas previously it was impossible to watch anything longer than a sprint on television without being interrupted for commercial breaks (if the track meet was even televised to begin with), enthusiasts can watch even the longest distance events wholly uninterrupted.
After the race you can go to the message boards on a site like LetsRun.com - that boasts over 200,000 monthly visits - to discuss the latest results, our predictions for races, training techniques, how to prevent/heal injuries and all forms of running-related gossip.
These topics are boring to most people. They don’t care that shoe X weighs 1.3 ounces less than shoe Y, whether you should warm-up on a track running clockwise or counterclockwise or how an obscure Kenyan name is truly supposed to be pronounced. But we do.
We runners are clearly a weird bunch when compared to the general population. When I said at the top of my post that Web 2.0 has had a profound positive impact on the running community, it would actually be more truthful to say that Web 2.0 enabled there to BE a running community. The interactive Web has provided a forum for uniting the global diaspora of runners where previous communities were limited to small and scattered groups of fanatics.
Not only have these developments allowed runners to dive into all aspects of the sport in unprecedented depth, but they’ve made the sport more accessible to the general population as well. It has never been easier for a wannabe-marathoner to find a community of like-minded (and like-bodied) people to train with. As it does with many things, Web 2.0 has expanded the depth and breadth of participation.
Ultimately, it’s pretty amazing to see how the world’s latest technological advances are applied to to its oldest and most basic form of competition.
So next time you see someone running and feel the urge to yell, “Run, Forrest, run!” or harass him/her in any other way, remember: there are a lot of us out there. Now we know it, and we mean business.
SF MusicTech Conference Showcases What’s Coming
I recently attended the SF MusicTech conference, a really inspiring event that featured a number of interesting music technology companies. Some of the panel topics included social networking platforms and music, mobile strategies, and record labels and new technologies. The conference provided the opportunity to hear about a lot of cool upcoming companies and to see first-hand how the music industry is evolving and what the future will look like — it was a day well spent.
One of the panels that was particularly interesting was the mobile strategies discussion, which featured panelists from Kadoink, Mozes, Thumbplay, Mplay, Tonethis, and XLR8 Mobile add links to these companies. As with all forms of media, music features for mobile devices are expanding in an amazing range of directions and this panel made it clear that as these devices are becoming increasingly sophisticated and better handling bandwidth, the possibilities for streaming, sharing and discovering music on your phone are exploding. Goodbye iPods?
Another panel that we enjoyed, though it had very little to do with music, was an interview with Tim Ferris, author of “The 4-Hour Workweek.” CD Baby founder Derek Sivers interviewed Tim about his incredibly successful book, thoughts on productivity in the Web 2.0 age, and how he became an Argentinian national dance champion for the Tango. Tim’s thoughts on “experiments in lifestyle design,” which pretty much translates to “just getting things done better, faster,” were often enlightening — for example, he recommended not reading your email first thing in the morning, as it will only put you in “reactive” mode for the rest of the day. You can get a feel for his style on this video interview of Tim conducted at the conference by Mashable CEO and LaunchSquad friend Pete Cashmore.
The MusicTech conference included way too many ideas and companies to sum up in a single blog post, but clearly it got me very excited about where the music industry is headed. From Pandora to Songza to the next awesome music application being created in someone’s apartment somewhere, music and technology are developing a fascinating relationship and we’re happy to indulge.
SonicLiving Sounds Good to Me
I’ve oft complained about the excessive steps involved in being a loyal music fan. After discovering a band, one must find a tour schedule, gather friends to see the show, and then log on to purchase tickets. Too many steps for lazy ol’ me.
For years I’ve talked about how brilliant it would be if one website could somehow absorb all of my music preferences, then feed me a list of upcoming shows that I want to see and invite my friends to join.
Well, brilliance has come in the form of SonicLiving, a relatively new company based in the Bay Area. Since I just discovered the site today, I can’t attest to functionality, but I am keen on the concept.
Here’s how it works: SonicLiving scans your iTunes library, Pandora and Last.fm favorites to create a list of your favorite bands, then instantly tells you when your favorite bands are coming to town, and automatically uploads the information into a personal music calendar where artists can be easily added or removed.
Since this is 2008, there is a social network involved. So, if you choose to go to a show on your calendar, friends will automatically be alerted - and you can sneak a peak at what shows your friends are attending.
Seems like SonicLiving is the one-stop music shop I’ve been hoping to find. It will be interesting to see how it helps me wrangle up friends to see the Flight of the Conchords show next week.
MySpace Spam Money: What About the Users?
Ever seen the face of a spammer?
Exactly what you expected, right? This guy and his spam-buddy were busted by MySpace a few years ago for stealing users’ passwords, then posting spam messages on other profiles from the hijacked user account — more than 700,000 to be exact. This same guy is responsible for running a company that was sending 30 million spam messages PER DAY back in the 1990s. Classy. If this were medieval times, this man would definitely be getting the ax.
But instead, while many blog commenters have been asking for the death penalty, he and his buddy have to pay MySpace a whopping $230 million. Most bloggers and reporters on this topic seem to think there’s no way for MySpace to collect any money, but let’s say for a minute they receive every penny of what the federal judge awarded them… Where does that money go?
From what it sounds like, MySpace collects that money and can do whatever they want with it. But, aren’t MySpace users affected the most here? Shouldn’t they be assured a cut of the award?
In fact, it could be argued that MySpace built a platform that enabled the spamming and didn’t have the proper safeguards to prevent it. If these settlements become more common and are actually paid, what’s to stop companies from relaxing their spam prevention efforts and making a little side cash at the expense of their users?
Ok, that might be a little overblown, but if MySpace sees even a fraction of the settlement, I seriously hope the affected users who make MySpace the success that it is see a good chunk of that money.
One Stop Shop for Docs
There is a new start-up in Southern California that I have been excited about for almost a year now. Docstoc is the latest brainchild of one of my former business school classmates, Jason Nazar and his partner, Alon Schwartz. It’s a user generated community where you can find and share professional documents, ranging from legal to technology to business and beyond. Docstoc announced this week that it has raised $3.25M in its series B round of funding from Rustic Canyon Partners.
Docstoc is a great example of the increasingly transparent world that we live in, a vast database of useful information that is part blog, part social community and part encyclopedia of free information. An interesting attribute and arguably the most compelling reason that this start-up attracted the attention (read: money) of such an esteemed, media-savvy venture firm is that it has popularized the ability to embed documents into any blog or website, a feature that we know very well in the PR world is popular in the blogoshpere and on news sites.
I like Docstoc for many reasons; the site has become my go-to resource for information that I might have had trouble tracking down previously, but I also think that it is leading the charge in changing the way that people use, store and share information. The site is still in beta, the company is brand new, so for me, I will be watching to see what it does with its $3.25M and whether Jason can get another winner off the ground…
Facebook Opens Up Chat For All. No Converts Here (Yet)
Approximately one year ago I thought I was done with Web chat.
I’d moved on to social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, and had begun to associate instant messaging more with my social-drama-filled adolescence than new and (hopefully) professional adulthood. But then it slowly began to creep back in…
First I graduated from university and started using Google’s Gmail chat to keep up with the international adventures and job hunting travails of my classmates. I was then converted to iChat as another means of communication by my co-workers, and finally caved to Windows Live Messenger– the chat vehicle of choice for my PC-loyalist parents and siblings.
And now Facebook presents another option. Early this month, it was announced on the Facebook blog that an instant-messaging application would slowly be rolling out across networks. A couple of weeks later, the small and supposedly inconspicuous widget appeared at the bottom of the screen– although I have yet to activate it.
Sure, it’s simple, collapsible, unobtrusive and arguably valuable– serving to make communication even easier among Facebook addicts, but do I really have any need for it? Yes, I use Twitter, and one could argue I don’t have much use for that either, but Facebook chat seems at this point entirely superfluous.
As yet another distraction, I’m sure it will slowly gain in popularity over time much like other recent (and initially criticized) Facebook updates like the mini-feed and news-feed.
For now, however, I am content to stay away — we’ll see how long I hold out.
Resumes Are Sooooo Six Months Ago
A friend of mine recently became a “fan” of Union Square Ventures on Facebook, a New York based tech venture capital firm that has funded the likes of Twitter, Wesabe and Etsy, and home of venture capitalist and blogger, Fred Wilson. I followed the link to their Facebook fan page which then led me to the Union Square Ventures home site.
Much like the lovely redesigned LaunchSquad site, Union Square Ventures puts their blog content front and center — in fact, their blog is the homepage of the site. Something caught my eye: a “We’re Hiring” blog post that asked for potential candidates to put their name, email and link to their web presence, in a blog comment. That’s how you apply.
I found it interesting, and probably increasingly required for tech related jobs, that a web-presence is requested and is basically the only significant and descriptive information in the initial application. Basically, your blog, Facebook page or other online presence IS your resume. Don’t have one? Well you’re probably not right for the job. And if you do have one, it might be time to take those beer-pong-night pictures off the old Facebook photo album.
The more I thought about it, it started to make a lot of sense as a way to whittle down the applicant field. On a blog or social network page a potential employer can easily find some basic pertinent information about someone: Do they write well? Are they analytical? Do they think about things in an interesting way? Are they good networkers? Who have they worked for? I wouldn’t recommend this strategy for, say, a corporate law firm, but for a company that invests in social media and other web-based technologies, it makes perfect sense.
My only criticism of this method, which I think is a big one, is the fact that all applicants are essentially making a public statement, via blog comment, that they are applying for a job. What this means, is that the applicant pool will not include people currently at a job that need to be discreet about their job search — a common occurrence and probably where the best candidates would come from. Who does that leave? People who either don’t care if their job knows (probably not a ton of people and says something about the applicant) and people without jobs. Not sure if that’s necessarily the most fruitful crowd to pull from, but, it seems to have worked for the guys at Union Square Ventures before.
FOHBOH: Chowhound and Yelp Meet The Kitchen’s Back Door
I’ve definitely seen my share of niche social networks. Every time I flip through the NY Times Sunday business section, it seems there’s a new article about social network for some group - Irish Firefighters have a little section of Firefighter Nation and Baby Boomers have probably a dozen choices (although I don’t know a single one that uses anything outside of Facebook or LinkedIn). So, when I learned about FOHBOH (”Front of house, back of house”), a social network for restauranteurs, last week, I was pretty impressed, because the network was behavior-driven, like LinkedIn or Facebook, rather than demographic-driven, like some of the new boomer social networks or social networks for children.
This past Saturday night, an old friend asked me, “There are so many new social networks out there; how do you gauge which ones are going to survive?” I think that the ones that are purpose-driven are the ones that are going to make it, long-term. For example, when I want to learn more about a prospective client, I usually turn to LinkedIn. When I want to figure out which PR or social media industry events I should attend, I check out Facebook or Upcoming. Those are purpose-driven visits. (So, advertisers trying to reach me in that way should rely on behavioral targeting.)
I’ve worked in restaurants through much of high school and college; when you’re 18 or 20 years old, making $15 an hour, in cash, is a pretty appetizing proposition. Through working at the Peninsula Creamery Fountain and Grill (still totally awesome) in Palo Alto and the now-defunct Ovens of Brittany in Madison, Wisconsin, I learned how to wait tables, bartend and do some food preparation. And I definitely met some really interesting characters. That’s a little bit of what I see on FOHBOH; it’s a place for restaurant owners, servers, sommeliers, vendors and wine reps to come together, and have really frank conversations. And the place is just vibrant; although it only has a little over 2000 members right now, typically 15 to 50 people are logged in at any one time, and the conversational level is pretty high - when one member solicits feedback on their blog, people respond.
Besides the obvious purpose-driven social networking and business-networking opportunities, FOHBOH reminds me of a very insider version of Zagat’s or Yelp. When you go into a MySpace Group and “eavesdrop” on the conversation, you frequently feel like you’re sitting in the quad of a high school or college campus; when you “eavesdrop” on FOHBOH, you feel you’re sitting at the bar in a restaurant that closed an hour ago, having a beer with the manager. And that’s the kind of totally candid feedback that I want, as a consumer, when I’m trying to get the lead on whether a restaurant is the real deal, or when I have a serious food question.
Jeremy at LaunchSquad turned me on to Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential; that was the book for the kitchen’s back door. Now, I feel like I’ve discovered where those conversations happen in real time.