As part of its ongoing monitoring and reporting on FDA guidance, RTCRM has produced a two-page POV that  analyzes the issued guidance and provides condensed key information, top-level points, implications and actions item.

Download the entire POV: RTCRM POV FDA guidelines_mobile

Download the entire POV: ICANN TLD Options POV

Every marketer, it seems, wants to hit pay dirt with a viral campaign like Subservient Chicken or something as catchy as that. But as we’ve discovered these past few years, striking gold virally ain’t so easy. In fact, you could say it’s pretty hard.

Think of why. Viral is part PR. Part advertising. Part zeitgeist. And when they all miraculously come together as they did for the Alamo Drafthouse, then my friends, you’ve bottled lightning.

First, watch this. If you’ve seen it before, watch it again. (By the way, there’s a lot of profanity in this one. So wear headphones or keep the kiddies away.) As of mid-June, this has garnered over 1.5 million clicks.

This is so brilliant on so many levels.

• First off, it’s incredible positioning. The Alamo Drafthouse understands its audience – film geeks. These people know Strother Martin’s last movie. And they’re sick and tired of morons who don’t appreciate the art of cinema texting during movies.
• Second, this wasn’t made by a committee. It was probably made by a couple of folks in a room who decided that this was a pretty good idea. Boy, were they right.
• Third, they had fun with it. This isn’t a serious product you’re selling. It’s a movie theatre. The Alamo Drafthouse has a bit of an attitude. Check out the owner’s stance on texting. They’re independently owned. They sell beer. And they show whatever movies they want to.
• And finally, you don’t need a big budget. The key to a successful viral campaign is getting the clicks. Some people think you have to spend a lot of money to create something interesting. Oftentimes, that’s true, as with Smirnoff’s Tea Party. But it always goes that the best viral ads (as with any ad) all start with a good idea.

This little commercial didn’t need any icing or big production values. All they had to do was present the phone call from the irate customer in a clear and concise manner. It’s one instance when the ad literally wrote itself.

What’s your favorite viral campaign? I’d love to hear what’s impressed you. Send comments to jpolsinelli@rtcrm.com.

We all like to reminisce back to an era of Pan Am, Concorde and the “Golden-Era” of flight, but the hard reality is that today much of that no longer exists. While the increase in accessibility of air travel has been a blessing it has also had its drawbacks: between cursing the TSA, and fighting with our fellow travelers over overhead bin space, many people have started to compare flying to the experience of taking a bus. For airlines, this isn’t good.

In general the airline industry receives 43% of its revenue from a mere 9% of travelers (those seated in the premium cabin) (Handbook of Transportation Engineering; Kutz, 2004). Even with increasing ancillary revenue, for the bulk of legacy carriers these passengers are their “bread and butter”, and a few airlines have begun to listen to them and try and incorporate their wants and needs into their travel experience.

Elite frequent fliers who spend anywhere from 50 to 250 days on the road per year have two basic needs: To have a form of personal connection with others (community), and to have their time on the road validated by a certain measure of social status to counteract the stigma of being away from home and family.

Taking the primary audience into account, airlines have redesigned the whole trip experience to be more enjoyable for the premium and elite frequent flyer customers.

Lufthansa, for example has taken an extraordinary step. The airline has built a terminal exclusively for its highest tier fliers. Passengers are met at the terminal by a personal assistant, car valet parked, taken through a private security screening, and then wait in a lounge that features a spa and full service restaurant before being taken to the aircraft in a limousine. Upon landing they are met again by personal assistants who often accompany them through customs. There are several advantages to this all-encompassing approach, it puts the entire customer experience in the control of the airline, which means any issues or concerns can be immediately addressed. It also ensures that there is an uninterrupted dialogue between the airline and the customer. At every point of the experience the customer engages with the brand and is not distracted by any competing propositions. It also is makes possible for a hyper-individualized treatment that is made possible by physically separating the airlines ‘best’ customers at every step of the way, and that speaks to the need for frequent travelers’ to form some form of personal connection.

The all-encompassing approach is an example of how a brand can not only re-enchant a previously maligned experience, by selecting the right elements of conspicuous consumption and marrying them to products and services that have real value to the consumer. For those left outside the gates of the metaphorical “Emerald City”, brands can deploy it symbolically, as a unique selling proposition for potential customers.

The webcast, Di Presents, will bring you views of the latest emerging digital trends, what they might mean to marketers and their clients and promote discussion with live Q&A.

The first installment of DI Presents Carlen Lea Lesser will highlight the latest and greatest from SXSW 2011.

On Friday watch the live webcast here and join the conversation by registering with UStream and logging in.

RTCRM Perspectives January 2011

RTCRM Perspectives February 2011

RTCRM Perspectives March 2011

RTCRM Perspectives April 2011

RTCRM Perspectives May 2011

RTCRM Perspectives June 2011

RTCRM Perspectives July 2011

RTCRM Perspectives August 2011

RTCRM Perspectives September 2011

RTCRM Perspectives October2011

RTCRM Perspectives November 2011

RTCRM Perspectives December 2011

Enjoy!

RTCRM Perspectives November 2010

RTCRM Perspectives_FDA Warning on AMAG Web Pages 11 02 10

It’s Pottery Barn Kid’s Halloween costume application, an app designed to help you envision your child (or unsuspecting co-worker) in one of their many cute Halloween costumes. Simply snap a picture of your child using your phone, upload and bingo – you can scroll through each costume overlaid on your child’s photo and get a sense of how they will appear wearing it. You can e-mail it to a friend, share it to Facebook and then hit the shopping cart when you have made the decision.

What I love about this app…

I tested this out at first on very tolerant coworkers. I snapped a test picture of my boss, and found it so shockingly easy to use I continued to capture almost every person on my team. And then I finally got my two-year-old child. After two days of toying with this I ventured out to Pottery Barn kids nearby with my little one in tow to purchase my selected costume.

As I embarked on the customer journey, a few of the key consumer insights came to mind that made this app make strategic business sense:

1. Pottery Barn Kids (at least this location) does not have fitting rooms. Therefore, having your child “try-on” a costume really isn’t easy (unless you insist and put them in it in the middle of the store as I did)
2. Many people do not even bother to try costumes on small children. How many costumes can you get an infant or toddler to try on anyway? I was able to get by 2 year-old into one of the two finalists, and even that received protest
3. While shopping for a seasonal costume, my child of course found many a toy in the store he would like to have… great timing with the holidays around the corner

Area of improvement (Suggestions for next year):

• Make it possible to upload an existing photo (currently you have to take a new one) — this would help make this app useful for the shopper who doesn’t have their child with them or a friend or family member
• Some of the costumes were only available online – while the app may help to encourage the decision to purchase a $50 costume for a young child online, it backfires when those super cute costumes are not even available to see in-store for those of us who want immediate gratification (and I really wanted that sold-out dinosaur…)

These two suggestions are minor enhancements to an already great app — the online comments are also very positive). You can find it here:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pottery-barn-kids-costume/id387049651?mt=8

There are many apps that are entertaining. There are apps that are informative. There are apps that can help generate buzz. It’s exceptional to see an app that does all this as an effective marketing tool and that can affect sales. Now I bet there’s an ROI for that.

While I found the panel-focused conference interesting, I think the conference feel short of its mission for two reasons: 1) The panel subjects were too broad (Social Media, Cloud Computing, Web Analytics, Online Marketing, Ecommerce, Email, etc.) and this made it difficult for panelists to really delve into the weeds, and 2) the panels were too large (4 panelists and 1 moderator,) so panelists couldn’t explore/explain their experiences with emerging technology and provide attendees with insightful, implementable information.

These two factors kept the panel discussions at a very superficial, almost 101, level. While this may have been perfect for a fair portion of attendees, as someone looking for more than just a preview into the overarching digital trends, the conference fell short.

However, there were a few tidbits/facts to be mined from DigitalEast:

• 50% of all web content in 2011 will be consumed on mobile devices. Keep it mobile, keep it user friendly.
• Facebook says 30% of 2011 revenue will be from virtual sales in social games. So figure out if and how your targets use them.
• 50% of the online population is under 30 and 96% use social media. It’s time to really get to know your  Millennials.
• Analytics and Web Reporting is hot, hot, hot. It was SRO only for this session. Getting beyond the CTR and not getting too bogged down in the nitty gritty numbers were the key takeaways.
• Social Media is taking over. Companies need to have both the staffing and strategy necessary to engage.

During the conference, the #digitaleast TwitterFeed was fairly active. Given the amount of digital marketers present, the Twitter feed had a strong professional networking focus. Below is a word cloud of the #digitaleast Twitter stream.

As you can see specific attendee Twitter handles drove the conversation with their tweets, RTs and mentions. (Feed range is 10/19/2010 from 7:30am until 6pm, and excludes #digitaleast and #DigitalEast)

The bigger question is: what were the topics, aside from making professional and personal acquaintances, that attendees were actually tweetingabout? After filtering out RTs and Twitter handles, the top performing topics in the twitter stream were: social media, Facebook, mobile, Twitter, digital and online focused topics. “Content” placed strongly as well probably because many of the panels talked about types of content and how to use and manage them online.

All in all, DigitalEast was by no means a terrible conference. While the panels may have only scratched the surface of the digital trends currently speeding their way into the marketing world, the enthusiasm, camaraderie and intelligence of event attendees made the conference extremely enjoyable.