Propagation Planning

Word of Mouth Marketing in a Recession

This deck covers a lot about the 'R' word, but I liked how they talked about Word of Mouth marketing in a downturn economy.

Marketing and the R Word

View more Microsoft Word documents from Citrus .

Email Reinvented: Google Wave

Here is a link to a list of apps that will work with Google Wave. How can your Brand play a role in this space?

Two W+K Planners in a Room - Live

Advertising towards a fake audience for real results

Part of this ad makes me very mad because I had this same idea but didn't have a good opportunity to act on it. After the MIT Futures of Entertainment 3 conference last year I knew that we would start seeing ads created for fake audiences to inspire real audience results.

Mini created an ad that targets Vampires. However, in reality it targets fans of True Blood who will give it major respect because it has crossed the line into an alternative universe where Vampires are consumers.

This is a perfect example of Propagation Planning. They identified a large community and created a contextual ad that aligns with the values and social norms of that community. Very good job!

Facebook page is found here.

Design Strategy

I try to keep this Blog very focused on planning not for the people you reach, but the people they reach. The video I'm posting today is 'not on strategy' as we say in agency land but what is interesting is the multidisciplinary approach they take to Design Strategy. The same is needed for Propagation Planning when working with social media strategists, producers, creatives, business affairs, storytellers, etc.

Anyway it's a great video:

Resonance from Continuum on Vimeo.

Role of various platforms in a Social Media Strategy

A Blog called Hit Singularity has been working on this framework that describes the role and purpose of using a community platform in your social media strategy. I thought it was interesting because it might also point towards metrics that one might follow to ensure effectiveness (Click on it to view a larger format):

Digital Natives Presentation

CSN Conference 2009 - Urs Gasser

View more OpenOffice presentations from KREMCSN.

What can Zombies teach us about Propagation Planning?

According to CNN, an independent film has been receiving huge acclaim over at the Cannes Film Festival. The movie, Colin, is a zombie thriller that twists the genre by taking the point of view of the zombies. It’s been well-received at Cannes - in fact, so much that Japanese and American movie distributors are trying to secure the rights to the film.

Ben Parr over at Mashable writes a great post on this:

The amazing thing about the film isn’t the storyline and acting, though. It’s the fact that director Marc Price produced the film with just $70. To accomplish this, he used Facebook () and MySpace () to find volunteer zombies and social media tools like YouTube () to build up the buzz. Make-up was taken from past movies, actors were volunteers, and about the only thing they paid for was coffee and a crowbar.

This is a great story about how social media can help bring people together to accomplish great things. We look forward to hearing more about Colin. In the meantime, we’ve embedded the trailer for the short film below:

What can all this teach us about Propagation Planning? It seems that great ideas and perspective are more important that production dollars. The community recognizes greatness and they volunteer to be a part of it. Leveraging this fan labor can be very powerful and cost effective for the clients that we represent.

Very Cool Way to Use Flickr

What happens when all the options suck?

I love the idea of crowd sourcing and inviting the consumers or citizens to participate in decisions that will affect everyone. The Nebraska DMV posted an online survey for citizens to vote on the next license plate. As described on this website, the situation started off bad and got worse:

• Two choices were losers from the last vote six years ago (top left and bottom right)
• One choice was "professionally designed" by the state’s license plate material vendor (probably over a lunch break) (top right)
• The other was done by Motor Vehicles Department staff members with input from the governor. (bottom left)

People HATED the designs. Comments flowed into the Journal and the Omaha World Herald. In response, a spokeswoman for Gov. Dave Heineman said he stood by his praise for the "attractive designs" and had received just one critical comment.

The key to this story, if you are going to use crowd sourcing be willing to act on the response that you get.