On top of now being able to comment on almost everything*, you can now discuss with your friends about… ads! Like this example for Tropic Thunder, on the side of my NewsFeed yesterday, that convinced Camille ditch The Mummy in favor of this movie. You can watch the trailer directly from the sidebar and leave notes for your friends. Probably one of the best, simplest, most efficient marketing engagement tool released in a while. Of course, this opens the door to negative comments about your product, but, as InsideFacebook says, “When is the last time you heard 9 friends talk about an online ad in the same day?”.
*Sidenote to my friends and everyone else: if you want to open a discussion about a status for example, you can by clicking on Comment beside the timestamp, instead of writing on the Wall. It will start a thread, connected to the commented status in lieu of hanging out sans context among your friends’ sweet birthday wishes.
15 years ago (on 3 December 1992) the first text message was sent from a computer to an handset in Vodafone labs.
Since then, text messages have changed our lifes.
All around the world new words and expressions appeared. Early Internet users knew how to save key strokes with shortcuts like “brb” ; text messages gave it a name : SMS language. New language introduced new habits, and text messaging became in a few years a very important part of seduction. In 1997, french rapper Mc Solaar sung: “Times are changing // Pick up! With a cellphone”.
SMS allowed new type of business services to emerge. Alerting gives customer information they need, wherever they are. It has been applied to many contexts: stocks alerts, delivery notification, breaking news, etc. More services are coming: Texting money is now possible in the US, northern europe and quickly spreading in the rest of the world.
And of course, text messaging is a very successful advertising channel: the only marketing channel that allows a brand to talk with a customer at a precise time with a very personal message that has an opening rate over 90%.
What next?
SMS is also a huge source of revenue for carriers all around the world, and they have been fighting very hard to protect it.
Experiences in Africa have shown that instant messaging can replace text messaging, it is probably just a matter of time. Now you have figured out why there is no instant messaging in iphone …
We mentioned the 2 first Sony Bravia campaigns in the previous Trendwatch keynotes, mainly to talk about the buzz that they managed to create before even airing the commercials. There was the balls one, and then the paint one, both gorgeous and moving. Well, it seems that they’re doing it again right here, in NY, spreading bright rabbits made out of Play-Doh in the streets. They’re already using a wide array of web 2.0 tools to document the making-of the ad and have the blogosphere spread the word, just like i’m doing right now. There is obviously a website with RSS feed, someone from Sony UK is twitting live on-set about the whole preparation and shooting, and you can follow their flickr photostream. Anyone knows where the set location is?
By
olivier PEYRE,
1 Comment
Forget about annoying pre-rolls and post-rolls, the new format looks a bit like the transparent banners that TV channels use during a program to promote the next show.
The user can minimize the banner if not interested, or click on it which will pause the original content and the ad will start playing within the same video window. Once the commercial is finished, the original video resumes playback where it had been left off. Unobtrusive and pretty sleek. I like.
Check it out in Mark William Wielgus’ video.
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