Of course, things really get crazy when you convert these minutes to full days.  Or god forbid, actual years.  Do the math on YouTube video uploads: if there are over twenty-five hours of video added every minute, that means there are over 1,500 hours each hour and a whopping 36,000 hours every day, which equates to well over four years worth of video. Every day.  Good luck keeping up with that.

Thanks to the ease of content generation, the explosion of social sharing and the basic premise of Web 2.0, content isn’t just King, it’s exponentially ubiquitous.  Or some other expression that means really, really freaking massive.

Damn internet, you scary big!

By Dennis Ryan, CCO, Olson

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

These posters are part of a series called “Historically Hardcore” by Jenny Burrows (AD) and Matt Kappler (CW) who created it as a spec campaign when they were ad students at Creative Circus.

The fact that so many of us have enjoyedt Matt and Jenny’s old classwork these past two weeks speaks to one of the web’s peculiarities: the ability to confer a certain type of immortality on ideas.

Despite being well over a year old, these posters have captured public attention through the type of key blog and twitter mentions that drive an idea viral. If you go to Jenny’s Behance page, she writes about how the phenomenon caught her by surprise.

But there’s another side to all this attention. Despite creating the precise sort of message any museum should crave–that history is cool, relevant and real–the august group at the Smithsonian, under advice of counsel no doubt, sent Jenny a warning to remove their name from her work. They have a logomark to protect–if they don’t, what’s to stop some unscrupulous upstart from naming their paperclip collection “The Smithsonian”? And so Jenny changed the layouts.

But again, the web bestows a certain immortality. So despite the best efforts of the Smithsonian’s lawyers, I was able to find the original above. And if you Google “viral Smithsonian posters,” you’ll find a URL that reads: http://www.behance.net/gallery/Smithsonian/376305/. Of course, if you follow the link, you’ll find a blank page with this message: “Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.”

But even the attorney’s have to admit that’s not entirely right. It should read “Sorry, no posts match your criteria anymore.”

.OLSON, OLSON, OLSON, OLSON, OLSNO, OLSON, OLSON..

By Dennis Ryan, CCO, OLSON

.OLSON, OLSON, OLSON, OLSON, OLSNO, OLSON, OLSON..

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

First, my friend Paul Meyer sent me a clip from this New York Times article which outlines the impact Google marketer Wael Ghonim had in galvanizing the youth movement protesting Egyptian police brutality and eventually, all of Mubarak’s regime.  After police beat a young Egyptian to death, Wael created a very active Facebook group “We Are All Khalid Said” and filled it with pro-democracy, anti-government propaganda articles and editorials from around the world.  Ultimately, this culminated in the January 25th Police Day revolt, an event they hoped would gather 50,000 protesters that ultimately drew twice that.  Ghonim used modern media outlets to communicate that the regime in power neither understood nor respected, and ultimately unseated them.  Yeah peaceful mob action!

Then there was the viral clip featuring CBS LA TV reporter Serene Branson stumbling through a live post-Grammy piece.  For nearly ten long seconds, she says gibberish and looks panicked before the cameras cut away.  The garbled clip went viral for its ‘hey, laugh at the blonde bubblehead’ hilarity…until unsubstantiated reports arose that she had actually suffered a stroke on air.  Suddenly, it wasn’t so funny.  This morning, CBS doesn’t confirm the stroke rumor, but the uncertainty killed the joke.  Boo sickening mob action!

And then there’s the Daily Online Examiner’s story about the people trying to make a buck selling appliances online at Full House Appliances.  In a bit of understandable but ill-directed policy, they banned “negative feedback” while threatening “criminal libel” against anyone who posts bad reviews of their company.  In a long section of eight point type that follows up their ‘Click to Agree’ box which most of us check with knee-jerk disregard, they explain their motivation this way: “While there are ample consumer protections, the inconvenient truth is that seller (the good ones to be precise) protections are severely lacking.” Lawyers doubt those threats would hold up in court.

Today, everyone of us must learn to adapt to a world where people–even name-calling, libel-spewing trolls–have access to powerful media tools.  We have to deal with this new reality.  Whether the revolution breaks our way or not.

.

By Dennis Ryan, CCO, Element 79

.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

If you like bacon, the Bacon Explosion is magic. If you like pork, it’s super magic. And if you like them rolled together in an unholy protein mash up even Robert Atkins might consider excessive, this is your holy grail. Of course, if you’re vegetarian, some well-meaning fella did create one out of tempeh but that’s just kind of depressing…

The sheer surprise and audacity of this recipe idea made it a natural pass along on the forward-friendly web, quickly leading this monstrous concoction to widespread awareness and ultimately, my plate during last night’s game.  And I’m more than just okay with that…

A quick Google search turns up nearly 1.7 million results, including step-by-step how-to’s and video cooking demonstrations.  And one of those seemingly endless posts inspired my brother-in-law Chris to create one. Of course, now that the Pack proved triumphant, I can pretty much expect this for every Green Bay post-season game: Christopher has his superstitions.

Anyway, this is what glory looks like in photographs. Enjoy…

.

By Dennis Ryan, CCO, Element 79

.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

These findings feel a bit late since they seem so intuitive to anyone who thinks it through, but I’m still grateful that someone finally said it. With this type of promotion, the lead brand in consumers’ minds will always be Groupon while whatever brand that’s on-deal is transient, and thus secondary. Worse, a Rice University study conducted on 150 companies that ran Groupon deals between June 2009 and August 2010, found that only two thirds of them found the investment profitable.  Still worse, less than 60% of restaurants made money off Groupon promotions. Frustrated restaurateurs reported Groupon users only spent the face value, didn’t tip and didn’t return.  And worst of all, later users of Groupon were more likely to find it unprofitable than earlier ones. The truth behind all of this is that social deals may make a lot of sense for consumers, but they make increasingly less for brands.

The King of all packaged goods sellers has already walked away from promotional dependency. Last year, Walmart made a lot of news with their self-funded ‘rollbacks’ but when that didn’t jumpstart sales, they quickly returned to Sam Walton’s time-proven, everyday-low-pricing strategy.

So is Groupon still worth billions of dollars?  Probably.  To somebody.  And if you love a deal, it’s definitely worth signing up.  But given these research results, those young Turks might want to think twice before rejecting the next big dollar bid that comes their way.

Because they themselves might just be the next drastic markdown.

.

By Dennis Ryan, CCO, Element 79

.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

But today, Ad Age reports that this brand has chosen a shocking media vehicle to build awareness quickly–

Super Bowl TV ads.

Everyone realizes the marketing world has changed. The deep consumer engagement that digital channels make possible are definitely a powerful asset. But all of that engagement is meaningless when your brand’s growth challenge is awareness.

That is why Groupon’s media investment in high-profile TV advertising makes so much sense.  And yet this kind of wise, strategic thinking flies in the face of the prevailing conventional wisdom as spouted by the web’s loudest ad pundits, many of whom earn attention by loudly and repeatedly tap dancing on the grave of TV.

TV is far from dead; it remains the single most dependable medium for generating broad awareness.  Writing it off may be fashionable, but it’s also irresponsible. Because for every task, there is a right tool.

Despite what some other tools may claim.
.
By Dennis Ryan, CCO, Element 79
.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

However, as a number of news sources point out, in the movies ranking, “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” ranks as #3.  And yet, this Michael Cera film was far from a box office sensation, earning a total of $31.5 million despite a production budget of $60 million.  In other words, it  bombed.

Yet there it sits at #3.  Why?  Because “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World”, much like Twitter’s #4 ranking “Despicable Me” was a ‘promoted’ trend.  The studio invested in Twitter as a media partner, leveraging the microblogging sites word of mouth audience reach, much like the #1 top trending Television show, the MTV Video Music Awards.

Much like the competitor’s outcry this past weekend over Google’s purported favoritism in what is positioned as their organic search results, this kind of blatant advertiser influence further pushes any attempt at editorial neutrality further and further into irrelevancy.  In a world where we pick our news organizations based on their clearly expressed editorial viewpoints, this kind of incremental subjectivity doesn’t come as any scandalous surprise but still, it strips another veneer of at least attempted objectivity from our culture.

And slaps it on a Top Ten list.  Apparently in a culture war, shame dies first…

.

By Dennis Ryan, CCO, Element 79

.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Yet as we entered the weekend, the television and internet were rife with warnings.  In fact, on any given day, news outlets are thick with scary prognostication.  And we believe them.  Which is only natural.  After all, we’d hate to ignore them and be caught off guard.  During the slow news days before Thanksgiving, I breathlessly parroted the dire forecasts of huge delays caused by air-traveller revolts over invasive new bodyscanners.  But that didn’t happen either.

Living at the speed of Google is a blessing and a curse.  When information comes at you so fast, it’s very hard to discern fact from speculation.  Like the weather, situations can change quickly.  And like the weatherman, we don’t blame the reporters or news outlets that get it wrong.  We chalk it up to the shortcomings of the system and move on.

And waste a lot of time needlessly worrying.

.

By Dennis Ryan, CCO, Element 79

.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Judging from the volume of chatter on the internet, the TSA may have underestimated the public response.  As of yesterday, a Google search for “TSA Pat-down” returned 4,900,000 hits.  Everyone’s heard the shameful anecdote about the veteran flight attendant with the prosthetic breast.  And the chatter on talk radio only seems to be building.  Steadfast or not, this nascent agency doesn’t seem ready for the controversy, particularly in our Web 2.0 enabled world of today.

Today, everyone has a phone in their hand that records photos and videos.  So now we can all witness a TSA Agent strip-searching a young boy at Salt Lake City…

Today, everyone has a Twitter or Facebook account where they can post their personal experiences.  So now TV producers and magazine editors can quickly find human interest stories on the topic.

Today, anyone can start a free Tumblr blog, so now ordinary people can form national ad hoc repositories to express either their outrage or amusement over their TSA experiences.

The reality is that today, it’s no longer possible for any government agency to totally control any story, whether it’s a student uprising in Iran or Venezuela or a citizen protest here in America.  The tools of dissent are too widely available and wired into a viral, international network.

So will this rising hue and cry, magnified by the heavy Holiday air travel season, impact or even alter government policy?  From a specifics standpoint, it’s too early to tell.

But speaking generally, it already has.

.

By Dennis Ryan, CCO, Element 79

.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites