Virginia Miracle

On July 2, I tweeted about a very cool real life application for Twittter during the Tour De France – Nike’s @chalkbot.  You could send a 40 character tweet to the @chalkbot handle and the message would actually be chalked onto the road during the race.

Given that the race is now over and our attentions focused on the upcoming LIVESTRONG Global Cancer Summit in Ireland, I had kind of forgotten about this.  Last night, however, I got a Direct Message from the Chalkbot with a link to this:

This is a photo of my tweet from 6 weeks ago in “real life” on the TdF raceway.  If you could read the fine print on the bottom, it actually gives the GPS coordinates of where it was chalked and the date and time it appeared.

This is a great example of creating another opportunity of Nike + LIVESTRONG providing additional conversational capital and opportunities for engagement.  The way that this principle sometimes plays into our lives at Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence is that we will create assets from events with influencers – interview videos, photos, etc.  They become an additional way to provide value and a great opportunity to keep the conversation going.

And on the LIVESTRONG front, the Tour is over, but the fight goes on.  Follow the road to the Global Cancer Summit in Dublin and beyond at livestrongblog.org.

(Disclosure: LIVESTRONG is a client, but the Chalkbot project is not in our purvue)

(Note: Cross posted on the Ogilvy Fresh Influence blog)

We are 10 days away from PR Blackout Week – a week for mom bloggers to get back to the basics of blogging and temporarily ignore PR folks and brands – being organized by mom blog aggregator MomDot.  Opinions have varied as to  whether or not this is necessary or is a PR tactic in its own right. Regardless of your position, it is a wonderful invitation to discuss the state of union and give current practices a good sniff test.We see PR Blackout Week is a timely call to refocus all of us who love blogs on the value exchange that must take place in order for them to maintain their magic.   This sounds soft, but it is very real – the whole notion of “Digital Influence” is the changing sources and forces of influence around us.  If blogs went the way of infomercials, we would start blocking them with our Personal Message Shield(TM) along with the rest of the noise that bombards us daily.  Absolutely everyone in that scenario loses.

I participate at all levels of this particular food chain – I’m a mom, a PR professional, a blogger,  and a blog reader.  When I think about this value exchange issue, I ask myself a few questions in front of the mirror in harsh flourescent light:

• Am I, as a PR professional, providing something of true value to the bloggers I would like to work with?
• Are bloggers, by working with me, in turn empowered to share something of value with their readers (insights, a new experience, media, meaningful pass alongs, etc)
• Am I acting in the best interests of the ultimate blog readers when I work to craft a blogger experience?
• Am I as a blogger delivering great content to my readership?
• Am I actively supporting the bloggers who provide me with great content, ideas, experiences, and laughter?

While PR Blackout week may not be for you, there’s no time like the present to look at your own RSS reader, your blog, or your blogger engagement programs to reassess whether or not you pass the test on adding value to every link in the chain.

It’s been 3 weeks since the best WOMMA conference in years.  As I’ve been reflecting, one of the big things I’ve been trying to nail down is exactly WHY I am so sure it is the best conference in years and what ideas I have taken with me.  Here’s what’s stuck:

Content Buoyancy - There were a lot of great takeaways from YouTube’s Jeben Berg’s talk (captured here on the All Things WOM blog), but this is the concept I am still pondering some weeks later.  Given that no piece of content will stay at the top of the YouTube pile forever, content buoyance describes your content’s ability to rise back to the top of the heap.  Will it find new relevance what conditions change in the future?  Does the content have the ability to be evergreen and find new audiences over time?  The example used here was Nike’s Ronaldinho Touch of Gold video from 2005 that has garnered 28million views over the years:

In this case, its about great content that doesn’t grow stale.

Blowing Chunks – Blowing Chunks with Ted & John is not just a compelling name for a breakout, but an invitation to great conversations.  Fizz Corp‘s Ted Wright & John Moore from Brand Autopsy not only brought beer, they brought a fun WOM construct – the “Nausea Avoidance Checklist”.  This invited participants to share their WOM mis-steps in a fun and safe environment.  It was like group therapy.

Pack Your Knives & Go

Location, Location, Location – This year’s WOMMA was just a few miles away from the previous one, but world’s away in terms of talkability.  The Ritz Carlton South Beach and its gorgeous beach setting was a breath of fresh air and WOMMA activities included lunch served by none other than Top Chef finalist Jeff McInnis.  Another divisive event element was the “naked” dessert spread on night 2.  Some people loved it, some hated it, but it gave everyone something to chew on which was, indeed, the point.

Positivity Reigns on Yelp - The conversational nugget that Goeff Donaker shared that Yelp reviews are 6:1 positive is something that I have already used in conversation multiple times.  People want to go out of the way to share POSITIVE experiences with others.  God bless altruism.

WOMMA not only knows how to throw a great conference, they also know how to host an online conversation.  If you have an opinion on where ethical boundaries should be drawn around “sponsored conversations”, please make your voice heard on the Living Ethics Blog.

I had never heard the phrase “pandemic flu” before my arrival at Ogilvy 18 months ago.  Having never worked in public health or (thankfully) lived through a scare, it wasn’t anything that crossed my consciousness.  Upon coming here, however, and learning about the great work this team did with the US Department of Health and Human Services Pandemic Flu Leadership blog, I started to learn about the role that personal preparedness will play in preventing a Pandemic and the power of social media in spreading that message.  It was also an example of the potent combination of a credible author (then Secretary of HHS Michael Leavitt) with a controversial topic and a social media platform for discussion.

In the last 48 hours, there have been some mainstream media articles pointing fingers at Twitter, where #swineflu has been the #1 or #1 trend for the last 3 days, as the culprit of spreading hysteria and bad information.  While I’m not particularly interested in long tail analysis on swine flu OR in taking medical advice from my Tweeps, social media can be a quick and powerful way to amplify some very credible sources of health information.  Looking at Twitter as a detriment is pointless when it can have power to spread correct information.  The CDC has embraced the tool and the 3 month old @cdcemergency handle is up to almost 40k followers who want to get their health information from the horse’s mouth, but on a platform that they already embrace.

Ogilvy in Asia has additionally put together a very helpful aggregation of up-to-the-minute credible sources of health information on the Swine Flu.  If you are wondering about something you have seen on facebook, the news, heard from a friend, etc, this is a great resource to check that information against the CDC and WHO.

Another source for interesting analysis from the science side can be found over at ScienceBlogs.com which has put together a great collection of perspectives on the issue from a peer-reviewed, science-based, hysteria-free perspective.  And with that, I’m off to wash my hands for the 5th time today.

I’m hesitant to admit that I have learned anything from Adam “the Aceman” Corolla of Man Show, Loveline, and radio infamy.  However, stats don’t lie.  2 weeks after kicking off his podcast, Corolla has broken the 1M download barrier, quickly smoking download rates of his peers – like my hero Bill “the Sports Guy” Simmons. (Click here for specific podcast lessons from Ryan Spoon).

How did he do it?  Awesome website?  Nope – looks like an intern programmed it in 1999.  Advertising and promotion?  None.  Here’s what he’s done:

1) Ask people to spread the word. At the beginning and end of every one of the free podcasts, Adam mentions that he is doing this “gratis” and all he asks is for you the fan to spread it around.  This may sound simple, but many people are afraid to ask for help and this is a compelling reason to get over it and just ask.

2) No sponsors = no censors. Adam was fired from CBS’s Free FM format in late January, but will be paid through the end of the year as long as he doesn’t accept other “jobs”.  Thus he has no sponsors, which means he answers to no one and he can use the language and cover topics that his fans want and expect from him.

3) Ridiculously awesome content.  In his first three weeks he’s had Aisha Tyler, Larry Miller, Bill Simmons, Jimmy Kimmel, David Alan Grier are the list goes on.  These are people willing to stop by Adam’s house to promote a project and be able to be themselves without the concerns I mentioned on #2.

So, can we learn something about WOMM from Adam Corolla?  Hey, if Dr. Drew could live with him for so many years, he must have some redeeming qualities.