As self-professed social media junkies, we have a pretty robust obsession with keeping tabs on what’s happening right now in all facets of the marketing world. We constantly have our eyes peeled for info about emerging technologies, new platforms, and most importantly, innovative campaigns that mix it up in new ways.

Take, for example, some of the inspiring (or at least creative) work we’ve been passing around the office this week:

• Omo detergent: This Brazil-based campaign is taking the marketing + GPS recipe to a whole new level. The company planted GPS tracking devices in 50 boxes of detergent, which activate when the consumer takes them off the shelf. A promotions agency will follow the lucky buyer home, surprising the family with a video camera and a day of “outdoor fun.” A bit on the stalker side, perhaps, but definitely a new way to reach the consumer.
• Levi’s Walk Across America: This two-minute stop motion commercial nixed the aggressive sales pitch and went viral. It’s a visually stunning piece, and we’re partial to the footage of good old Mt. Rushmore. YouTube views hit nearly 2 million in just two weeks.

  Click here to view the embedded video.

• Domino’s: The pizza chain’s rebranding strategy continues with the admission that food commercials may actually (gasp) doctor the product before filming it. The Show Us Your Pizza challenge encourages hungry people to upload their own pictures of Domino’s pizzas for a shot at cold hard cash. Simple concept, but we give it an A+ for engaging the audience.

These campaigns all incorporate a social element: from the Levi’s video that’s been shared and commented on thousands of times to a dedicated website that will feature footage of Omo’s winners and their stories, social media has become an integral part of the marketing mix for both big brands and small businesses alike. Traditional advertising continues to be a major player for most businesses, but combined with social, the results can be especially powerful.

Of course, social media is constantly changing, which is both exciting (for us) and intimidating (for some of our clients). We see a lot of small businesses that are interested in venturing into social, but they’re nervous about getting started. Should they be on Twitter? What about FourSquare, or LinkedIn, or Facebook? Should they start a blog? What crazy stunts do they have to come up with to be competitive? With new tools emerging as “the next big thing” all the time, businesses are overwhelmed and unsure how to spend their time and money.

Our advice? Don’t worry about tackling every social media platform or replicating million dollar detergent stalking campaigns. Start small – focus on your business goals and pick a tool that will best support your initial efforts.  It takes commitment to build a successful social media strategy, but it doesn’t have to be over the top. Provide helpful information, talk with (not at) your audience, and post often. It’s really that simple!

Still confused about the whether social is right for you? Take a look at the answers to some  social media FAQs Kyle posted awhile back.

Social Media Inspiration: Detergent Stalking and Other Stories is a post from: RSA Blog

In a brilliant and entertaining blend of traditional advertising and social media, Old Spice simply nails it here.  With a traditional TV spot posted on Youtube, they simply monitored comments on the video, as well as on Facebook and Twitter, and then shot and posted video responses to some of them.

Simply amazing. This has got to be the first time in a long time any advertising, by itself, has made me want to purchase a product!

And they’re still doing it. Prepare to waste your afternoon…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Old Spice Does Something New is a post from: RSA Blog

Last week, as Rapid City was pounded with rain, snow, and blistering winds (in early May, no less), our fearless leader ventured south to attend the Alliance of Marketing Communications Agencies conference in West Palm Beach.

Lady Gaga recycles...and uses genius product placement.

While Robert didn’t bring back sunshine or “I swam with dolphins” t-shirts for the worker bees, he did gift us with some conference nuggets that we’d love to share.

Takeaway #1: kids are smart.

Today’s tweens have grown up in the world of 24/7 advertising, where everything from their underpants to their morning cereal is a blatant advertisement for a movie superhero, cartoon character, or up-and-coming pop star. Tweens are exposed to so many messages in any given day that they’ve learned to tune out the noise, skipping commercials and ignoring movie previews altogether. So what’s a marketer to do?

Get smarter. Learn to craft messages that don’t look like the tried-and-true commercials everyone expects to see during the four-minute gaps in our favorite television programming. Creative product placement boosts credibility and top-of-mind awareness for your product, when mixed in a believable way.

Bank of America struck marketing gold when it announced a partnership to present History’s “America: The Story of Us” last month. The channel’s 12-hour miniseries is sprinkled with two-minute mini-documentaries detailing Bank of America’s role in American history. The mini-documentaries are shot and narrated in the same style as the series, blurring the line between programming and advertisement.

Other recently successful placements include the partnership between NBC’s “The Biggest Loser” and Subway; contestants visit a Subway restaurant in nearly every episode.  Lady Gaga made headlines for working in a bevy of products for her big-budget “Telephone” video, including Diet Coke cans (used as curlers) Virgin Mobile, Miracle Whip, and her own branded Heartbeats headphones, among others.

To make sponsorships and product placement work, especially for tweens, it’s important to make sure the product and the project fit together naturally. Find an angle that seems organic, not forced, and you just might get through to the smarty pants generation.

Stay tuned for more takeaways from Robert and the AMCA conference. And who knows, maybe he’s just waiting until later in the week to give us our t-shirts?

Palm Trees and Product Placement is a post from: RSA Blog

Video + Blog = Vlog, to test this theory we enlisted the help of Sean Coyne, our superstar videographer and office comedian.

Sit back….grab your lunch, a snack or maybe that fifth cup of coffee needed to get through your day and enjoy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sean says: “Visit our Youtube channel”

Video Confessions: Sean is a post from: RSA Blog

[In this guest post, Tracy Mailloux points out a trend in advertising he noticed while on his Great Education Adventure, and is kind enough to share some insight with us. Thanks, Tracy! ]

Interactive TV ad

Traditional TV isn’t dead… yet. It is, however, on a respirator, and the priest has been called in for last rites.

Digital TV, on the other hand, is very much alive. Although in it’s infancy, it is growing at a rapid pace–its steroid of choice: advertising.

Now I know what you are thinking, “there’s nothing new about advertising on TV.” True, advertising has been around ever since cavemen could sketch on rock walls. But with the digital revolution in TV, advertising is becoming more and more interactive and engaging, which is a new thing for ads.

Invention or Ad-vention?

“It’s about making the TV a more lean-forward medium than a strictly lean-back medium,” said Bob Ivins, vice president of research and data products with Comcast Corp.

Digital Cable and Satellite (DC&S) are employing advertising techniques conceived on the internet through your DVR. It first started about three or four years ago when DC&S started advertising on the menu screen or guide page on your digital service. For example, while searching for your favorite TV show, there is an advertising banner, usually at the bottom of the screen, prompting you to “click here,” for more information about a show, a product, a service, etc. DC&S collects a fee every time a viewer clicks on this feature.

When DC&S started this, many people were not happy with it at all. Many felt that it slowed down their DVR’s response time–just to linger an extra second so you might be captivated by the banner and decide to click on it. For me, that little banner isn’t a problem. I’ve never used it to request any information, but have used it to watch movie trailers. I actually think it’s a great advertising method that is capitalizing on a captive audience.

Ads within ads…

But I was taken back the other day when I noticed advertising within advertising. That’s right, advertising within advertising. Basically DC&S are now able to have “pop-up banners,” during commercial breaks. For example, let’s say you’re watching a commercial about Viagra. As the commercial plays, a pop-up (no pun intended) banner appears prompting you to “click here,” (using your remote) to receive a free trial pack. With that one click, your information–from DC&S–is transmitted instantaneously to a processing center that will fulfill your request.

“It allows us to combine the power of the Internet–with its engagement, targeting and accountability–with the power of the big screen,” said David Kline, Cablevision’s president of ad sales.

Being in the advertising business, all I can say is… wow, that is insane. On one hand, I think that it’s a great idea to be able to request information, coupons, free samples, enter sweepstakes, or have an agent contact me about a product that I am interested in as I sit in my pajamas while watching TV–very cool! This is the ultimate for advertisers: seeing exactly who their audience is, and build databases from that contact.

On the other hand, I do worry about what the next phase will be. Will advertising become too obtrusive while watching TV, as it can tend to be while surfing the internet? In addition, with my information being sent to companies and stored in their databases, who is to say that they won’t sell my information to third parties? Next thing you know, I am receiving more junk mail and spam calls.

So where’s it headed?

To be fair, the survival of DC&S depends on their ability to get creative with the way they execute ads for their advertisers. The reason and culprit for this is the fast-forward button. How many people skip commercials with their DVR’s fast-forward button? I know I do.  Because of this, DC&S must implement interactive advertising channels. Now you can go to this interactive channel, say you see an ad for Walt Disney World, with one click of your remote, you can request for a travel agent contact you. Next thing you know, your telephone is ringing–it can be that fast.

“Using interactive techniques, we can get a targeted consumer to engage with a brand on TV for a much longer period of time than just a 30-second commercial,” said Jacqueline Corbelli, chief executive of media agency BrightLine iTV.

Kevin George, an ad executive at Unilever who oversaw one such campaign, said “the response was great” because it reached its targeted audience “without interrupting them,” in part because Unilever reached the audience “in a place where they’re comfortable, giving them the option to participate without interrupting them.”

In addition, due to the fast-forwarding of TV commercials, there are talks about having TV shows being sponsored again–much like they were back in the 1950’s. Be on the look out for these and more changes in the years to come.

When Digital TV started, they promised better picture and sound. But with the great potential now for much more data to be sent through your television, TV will become more and more interactive. Pretty soon, TV and your computer will be one and the same.

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Digital TV Advertising: is it Invention or Advention? is a post from: RSA Blog

Whenever I sit down to go through ideas for blog posts, I inevitably think of a few that sound great, only to realize hey, we already wrote that one. A lot of the things we wrote about last year are still relevant even now – maybe more so.

Looking back through our logs, it’s no surprise to find some content was more popular than others. After all, we’re still experimenting to find the sort of thing you, our readers, find most useful.

To make sure you didn’t miss any of the good ones from last year, here’s a short list of our most viewed posts from 2009.

Why Good Customer Service Is So Important

5 Reasons Not to Cut Your Marketing Budget in a Recession

Elements of Internet Marketing

Going Nuts? Don’t Cut your Marketing

Should You Put Video On Your Website?

Understanding Web Design

14 Practical Uses For Social Media

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Photo courtesy of kevinzim

Stuff You Liked From 2009 is a post from: RSA Blog

Have you ever thought to yourself, ‘whoa, that has got to be one of the worst jobs’.  Maybe you were walking down the street and had a little pity on the poor ‘jo’ that had to spend his day analyzing smells emanating from the local locker room.  This summer (it’s over – boo, hiss) we started working on a series of commercials for Western Dakota Tech based on the creative notion – what kind of jobs would you just hate to be stuck in? Steve B. from WDT and the RSA team had a great time coming up with outlandish jobs. We landed on a few that really seemed desperate and began production. Our goal was to encourage anyone who might want to improve their life to consider taking online courses through WDT for business management and marketing. Ever had one of these jobs?

1)  Human Pinata – How fun is it to go to parties, hang from a tree, and meet the power of 5-year-olds with BATS?

2) Professional Kiss-up – Yes sir, you’re a genius! Ever notice someone following an executive around and wonder…’what do they do all day?’ Well, maybe they have to kiss-up all day long… oh joy!

3) The Shredder Guy – Initially inspired by “The Office” – we wanted to show an over-worked, under-paid person working in a small office doing his overwhelmingly mundane work. Naturally, an ‘office accident’ is likely to occur.

4) Assistant on a Leash – Don’t ya hate it when the boss never gets your name right but always expects you to know everything and be at their beckoning call?  Not the greatest gig, admit it.

Production went on and we had a blast yanking, smacking, shredding and blowing hot air all over the place.  Turns out that all of our fun paid off and the commercials received Platinum & Gold MarCom Awards.

• A Platinum Award for the television campaign promoting the online degree program. The ads tell stories about people in terrible jobs – just as a human piñata – who choose WDT to improve their lives.
• A Gold Award for the radio campaign promoting the online degree program. The radio ads tell stories similar to the TV ads.

The MarCom Awards competition received over 5,000 entries from all over the world. The winners ranged from Advertising agency to Fortune 500 companies.

WDT is showing a 20% improvement in their enrollment this year, and they’re bursting at the seams. We continued into the fall producing more emotional based commercials that show specific values WDT has to offer a range of students – hands-on training, affordability, and one-on-one attention from professors.

It’s been great working with WDT over that past several years and it gets better as we go.  Congratulations guys!

The Worst Job Gets National Awards is a post from: RSA Blog

As the competition for attracting viewers to your web site intensifies, the questions of where to go from here keep coming.  Today I am sharing my thoughts about the addition of web video to your web site.

In the audio below, I cover some basic questions that you need to consider before making a decision about web video, and talk about the age-old question of costs.  While the discussion will continue in-depth in the weeks to come, this first clip should help you begin the decision-making process with some easy-to-understand fundamentals and historical perspective.

Give it a listen:

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Should You Put Video On Your Website? is a post from: RSA Blog

It’s often said that if a picture is worth a thousand words, video is worth a million, as it has to power to  relate emotional value that is unprecedented.

Recently, our video team had the opportunity to work with the Volunteers of America-Dakota to create a video that tells the ‘day in the life’ story of staff from this non-profit organization.

Video has the ability to translate raw emotion, capture rare moments, tell a story, see into the private lives of everyday people, and make indelible impressions.  Today, video is in the hands of the public every day via cell phones, handy cams, and web cams…taking advantage of this powerful tool, anyone can use video to help those in need.

Online video networks like Youtube, Hulu, and Viddler create giant stages for the world to tell their stories and even 3rd world countries are starting their own ’slumdog millionaire’ type productions.

In South Dakota there are multiple locations where those in need can find support like housing, food, clothes, toys, and medical resources for their families.  This support system is quite impressive and the degree of encouragement, hope, and education had quite an effect on us.

Volunteers of America-Dakota used the footage we shot in a fundraiser video to create a tangible understanding of how their financial support really does make a difference.

We were proud to be a part of capturing these stories – how these volunteers work with troubled teens, meet family necessities, and help people get back on the right path.

Be Bold Minded.

Video Helps Volunteers of America is a post from: RSA Blog

Have you seen it?  Youtube has opened up a fun little feature to its members.  It’s called Annotations.

Remember watching VH1 back around 1996-2000 when they had ‘Pop-up’ video?  It was the biggest thing going for a little while.  Basically, VH1 would take music videos from all genres and play them with fun little pop-up cartoon bubbles that showed funny little comments like trivia, wardrobe style comments (or lack thereof), and mocking the plot of the video.  It was always very entertaining, sort of like a music video ‘roast’.

In June of 2008, Youtube started playing with the idea of Annotation, based on the same concept as pop-up bubbles except these are INTERACTIVE (if you want).  Users who uploaded videos have the ability add pop-up bubbles or invisible ‘hot spots’ to their youtube videos on their youtube channel. Why is this a big deal?  It’s INTERACTIVE!  Users can create hotlinks from their video to other videos in their archive or elsewhere on Youtube.This is awesome, especially for guys like Chad, Matt, and Rob who used the concept to make a ‘choose your own adventure’ movie.  At the end of every clip, you must choose the next destination for Chad, Matt, & Rob via clicking on a interactive bubble.  There’s lots of other ideas out there too.  Enjoy…  Annotations get even better NEXT…

NOW,

you can also invite the world to add annotations to your video or invite specific people too.  You have complete control. To learn how to use annotations… watch the video at the bottom of this blog.

The upside is that Google is doing a great job of pushing the envelope of idea’s and giving the creative control to the users, not limiting it.  The downside is that this little opportunity could possibly muck-up a lot of videos if they aren’t managed well.

As for me, I love it!  It’s a great new playground to enjoy and might even take me back to when I actually watched tv and VH1 pop-up videos (I can still here the jingle…Pop-up vid-eee-ohss…..lalalalla)

Be Bold Minded.

Youtube, Pop-up Video Annotations is a post from: RSA Blog