I met the Chk Chk Boom girl, Claire Werbeldoff at the Adknowledge Social Media Conference. She’s a nice person but an accidentally superstar. Said some crazy things and gained international fame via youtube and viral. The question is whether she can maintain the momentum.

I’m out like chk chk boom,

Matt

]]> http://inspiredworlds.com/2009/09/29/chk-chk-boom/feed/ 0 http://inspiredworlds.com/2009/07/02/eventbrite-test-2/ http://inspiredworlds.com/2009/07/02/eventbrite-test-2/#comments Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:12:15 +0000 Matthew Ho http://inspiredworlds.com/?p=690 Next Digital and Jennifer Frahm Collaborations are hosting an event called Social Media and Online Marketing Masterclass. It features an international best selling author, David Meerman Scott who will be coming from the US to lead the sessions.

If you are interested check out the widget below or hit me up for more info =)

Cheers,

Matt

A few weeks ago I went to TEDxSydney. One of the videos we watched was the one above from Seth Godin. It’s quite good. Its about how change no longer comes from mass marketing, cheaper labour & faster machines, but rather tribes. Tribes can be used to start movement and connect people.

Very inspiring video. There’s more here. I’ve been watching them all night. There’s lot of really cool videos on music, design, technology. Other diverse topics include health, education, etc.. It’s more about innovative ideas. 

I’m out like tribes,

Matt

After telling the door staff we registered via the web, we pointed to our names. Much darker than upstairs, we wandered in as the sounds of old school 90′s rnb tunes wafted through the doors. To my surprise, the place was 3/4 full. I wandered around looking for my friends and found them in the “pit”, this dancefloor area sunken into the ground, with raised bar around it. There was still nothing on stage, so we went to get some food on Pitt St.

On our eventual return to the Civic, the place was packed. Couldn’t even move around. As I brushed past the bodies, I made by way back to the pit. There definently was some buzz in the evening. Most people had RSVP’d via the facebook group or on Charmaine’s website. I suspect the majority of the crowd were friends or friends of friends. I came because my friend Neha (@twittledeeps) was a backup singer.

Charmaine Bingwa rocking the Civic Underground

Charmaine came out the blocks with a Beyonce cover. Full of energy, she had that vibe goin’ on! She did a couple more tracks  including her own stuff and pulled out her red guitar. Sang and strummed the guitar at the same time. I always like it when a singer plays an instrument – she’s legit.

Oh yeah, and did I mention she had some crazy sneakers on – blingin sparkling aqua sneakers from General Pants.

It was a pretty good night. She definently has some potential, though not sure about the strength of her voice. I don’t think her tracks show off her range. It’s mostly “funk,rock, snap, crackle and pop” as she describes on her website. She’s been gigging for a year now and has an EP out. Something about her – she’s got the buzz. 

After she did her final song and walked out. I told G that she’d be back, he looked at me and said “nah, she’s done”. To which I responded, “if she’s worth her salt, she’ll come back out”. After a few minutes, some chanting, particularly from the groupie girls next to me, and a sneak peek through the curtain, they came back out. Charmaine did two more songs and called it a night. I’ll let her have the final word on the night:

Charmaine Bingwa on twitter

She then came out and hugged some of the people, and I think some of the guys I was with were disappointed they didn’t get a hug too =p

I heard on the grapevine that she’s actually Zimbawean (G did a google search before he came).

$64 million dollar question – who does Charmaine Bingwa look like? 

She’s a dead ringer for Brandy – in fact some other people told me independently. Its the dreads and the chocolate coloured skin. In case your wondering – she is hot.

You can check her out on Myspace, twitter and her official website. 

I’m out like the Civic underground,

Inspiredworlds aka Matt.

I had originally planned to talk about all 3 and how they work together. Given the time restriction, Peter (@HubertusB) suggested that it would be best to focus on one topic. So I decided to focus on Yammer, the concept of microblogging and presented a short case study on how Next Digital was piloting its use. 

Check out my presentation below:

I enjoyed all the presentations and I particulary liked the interactive exercise we did for “sharepoint v wiki”, and the insights we gained from that. I had fun presenting and I hope it was of interest to everyone on the night. The presentation has been uploaded onto slideshare for others to view it. As I actually have to do another training presentation on Friday to show everyone how to use Yammer, it was killing two birds with one stone =)

I also got to check out Google HQ, and it looks like a pretty cool place. Also, thanks to Jamie, Vincent, Walter and Aaron for coming as well and providing some moral support!

Here are some various twitter feedback and comments on the night.

I’m out like Wiki Wednesday,

Matt Ho.

At 6.30pm when I arrived, the place was pumping. They had two levels booked out, and the bottom level where the main arena was, was absolutely packed. Standing room only! (Well bars are made for standing room).

Man with the $349 jacket

Adam Ferrier went first and spoke about their infamous “girl in the jacket campaign”. This campaign was created for Witchery to launch their mens range and they had a budget of zero (emphasis) and wanted to generate a lot of buzz. So they created a fictious story where girl sees boy in cafe she fancies, boy leaves jacket, girl wants to find boy. Girl then goes to the enormous length of posting a video on youtube. The story then got amplified as the main stream press picked it up and they showed that Sunrise breakfast program, newspapers, etc… Their intention was to get the brand noticed and get people talking about Witchery Man. Check it:

As of now, 212,100 views in youtube. Pretty impressive for a budget of zero. I’ve watched the video for the first time, and although I have the benefit of hindsight, I would have been highly skeptical of it at the time. The way that she goes to great lengths to describe the jacket and how the “perfect guy” would be wearing it. In fact its not a bad jacket. Subliminal advertising must work on the weak.

Then the press started asking who is this girl, is this a marketing campaign, who is behind this? They eventually got outed. Naked & Witchery came clean and posted a video response saying yes it was us. I’ve only seen the videos now (after the talk) so here it in all its glory:

Man, I cringed when I saw this. It could have been executed a lot better and definently with more class – the way that Heidi turns it into a ad for the jacket. In fact, the only time I cringed even more in the last 24 hrs was when I heard Adam Ferrier’s response as to whether Naked was arrogant.

Its all about generating conversations

It seemed that for most of the night Adam was defending Naked’s actions. He even had stats to back himself up. But at the end of the day, I think he was convincing and I agree with Tim Burrowes comments on Mumbrella that he did help to sway the crowd onto his side.

Honestly, I don’t have a problem with this tactic of creating a false story or building a mysterious story to get customers engaged and talking about a brand. Brands do it all the time. It’s what we do as marketers. Can Jordan really fly? (Wait, there is doubt?), are pure blondes really made from pristine rivers? Brands make up stories and fantasies all the time to get customers talking and excited. All they want to do is generate buzz. If that’s the objective, then Naked slam dunked it.

Was the public misled about Girl in the Jacket. I have no doubt they were. Was their a line that was crossed? Yes – only when they made that cringeworthy followup video. If Naked did not do the followup video like that, I think it would have been a great campaign. Consumers are smarter than what we give them credit for.

Was it groundbreaking? Of course not. In fact some guy in the audience asked “Did the Witchery Man campaign helped increase the popularty of social media?” – dude are you kidding me? They posted a youtube video about a fake story and it got picked up by the press. It’s not as if they created Twitter. When the story was being told, I immediately thought of the real life campaign of NY girl of my dreams, the cybersearch by one NYC man for an aussie girl he met on the subway. I came across this when I was travelling in the States, and I had actually thought about it when I started reading about this campaign and the connection became even more clearer last night. 

I agree with Adam’s insight that social media is a communication channel. It could be more than that, but at the end of the day that’s primarily what it is. Yes it is democratizing media (see Ashton Kutcher). However, it does make it a lot harder for brands and marketers to do something similar now because people think they got screwed over.

It nots really Stephen Conroy?

I love Leslie’s work as the fake stephen conroy. Dude is funny but a walking PR disaster. He didn’t have a lot to say on the night and Tim was trying to involve him as much as possible by asking him questions as well. But he definently had a couple of good insights – that not everything created by companies on social media is great. Everyone does go nuts when they see a brand do something on social media. 

If you want to see more of the Witchery Man campaign check the video from the night.

I’m out like the man in the jacket, 

Matt

I’ve made a slidedeck of how to post an event on Linkedin. It’s actually quite easy, though a lot of people are unsure how to do it. There’s a Q&A on the Linkedin website, but not a step by step guide with pictures. So I did one =)

Check it!

[slideshare id=1053453&doc=linkedinevents-090220221605-phpapp01] 

I also included some slides at the end for eventbrite. Eventbrite is being used a lot more now to manage registrations for events. The way it works is that they take a slice of the ticketing fees. If your event is free, then using it is free too. So they work on a commission basis. It’s really cool and simple to do up as well. 

Some great features of eventbrite:

- Print out a list of the attendees

- accepts payment via paypal (no need for you to create anythign in the backend)

- ability for attendee to print out tickets

- there’s a barcode on the event ticket, and if you use a web cam, it acts as a scanner!

- listing of all events for cities, upcoming. You can also tell it to publish in search engines

- listing of all attendees on the registration website

Overrall, Eventbrite is great especially for small time promoters, non profit organisations as it gives them the infrastructure to manage ticketing and its looks very pro. Plus its very simple to use. In my slides, I’ve done a demo to show you how easy it is to do.

The best thing is that these tools are free. 

I’m out like ticketmaster!

Matthew Ho

Yuri Narciss, Head of Technology Industry Sales talks Innovation.

The event was held on Thursday 12 March 2008.

This is Part 1 of 4.

Slides will be coming soon.

[viddler id=f22f29b&w=437&h=392]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIRbQB4O45M]

Another good video from SXSW is about designing community pages for the wisdom of crowds (yes, its that book!). It’s not the actual author but someone who is applying those ideas to online.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX-7xwPPY8I]

I’m out like everything you knew about web design,

Matthew Ho

I was there to help out with the exhibit. I was at the Next Digital stand from 2.30 – 4.30pm. I also took a bunch of pics and posted them on Flickr and below as well.

It’s interesting being an exhibitor as opposed to a visitor walking around on Day 1. Some people walk up to you just to chat and find out what it is about, others have an interest or something they want to pitch at us. I think the most important thing is to be nice and have a casual chat. Not everyone is interested in hearing the marketing spiel and you have to be ready for all types of questions.

There’s a lot of people at ad:tech that are very tech savvy, and you have others there for the 1st time who looked like they just walked off the street. Overall though, it seemed pretty quite and there was not a lot of people walking around. It look like ad:tech was winding down on Wednesday afternoon.

Next year, I’d like to go to some more of the seminars, possibly even the paid ones. I hear the chatter on twitter from following the hashtags (#atsyd, #atsyd1, etc…) and there seems to be a lot going on.

When I look back, I realise that I have progressed in this industry and it is a humbling experience that a year ago, I wasn’t even working in digital. Now, I had the priviliege and the opportunity to talk to people at ad:tech as an exhibitor about online marketing regarding email marketing, analytics, etc… They say that 1 year in online is equivalent to 7 dog years. I believe that’s so true. Online just moves so fast, new things are emerging all the time. As I’ve heard people say, it may be changing but the fundamentals haven’t changed.

Overall, ad:tech was very good for checking out some new things. One of the most important things I was exposed to was affiliate marketing and traffic marketing, and different companies in this area. These aspects about online marketing I would never had learnt about sitting at my desk at work.

I’m out like ad:tech,

Matthew Ho.