V/Speak

Today a trusted media partner sent me a note about a Google search he had done on Starbucks during his business trip to Seattle.  The subject line of the email: “Starbucks” search results & you!  wow… Curious, I opened the email to find a screen shot of what his search result delivered.  Interestingly enough – there is a new feature in Google’s search results that I had not seen before.  That feature (in Beta, of course) delivers results for your search from people in your social circle.  I know for a fact that this partner reads my blog from time to time and has it delivered as an RSS Feed to his iGoogle account.  Google recognizes that, and delivers a search result based on that connection.  Nice job Google – closing the loop on keyword search and your personal social graph.  I’m impressed.

David Veneski Google Google, Search, Social Circle

I am a big fan of media partners that go the extra mile to make an experience good for the client.  We recently did a pretty cool execution with Digg around our new product announcement at CES.  We worked with Chas Edwards and the Digg team to create ‘content’ ads and ‘digg’ ads that offered up a great value to the customer – aggregation of the best stories coming out of CES, in multiple places our target audience consumes content.  Yep – that’s right – we aren’t forcing them to come to Intel.com, rather, we’ll bring that content directly to them…wherever they are by offering a teaser link that drives them to a content hub on Digg (see below, credit ChasNote).  As I’ve stated before, driving people to Intel.com is not my first priority.  Bringing them great content (from Intel) in their natural browsing path, is.  We’ve done that in our program with Digg.

David Veneski Advertising, Intel 2010 Core Family, CES, Digg

My top 10 reads for the week.   This is a SMALL sampling of what I come across in my weekly media consumption addiction.  If you’d like to be on my email list, please email me and I will add you.

5 Lessons Learned From The Front Line – MediaPost article

Don’t let Twitter, Facebook, Google be the only game in town – CNN article

29 Million Searches Per Minute: WW SEM Grew 46% in 2009 – ReadWriteWeb article

5 Ways Foursquare is Changing the World - Mashable article

Engagement on Social Networks Top Priority for Marketers – eMarketer article

Learning from Steve Jobs’s Success - Internet.com article

Get Ready for the Post-PC Era – ITBusinessEdge article

Is The IPad Publishing’s Savior? Pro And Con – AdAge article

How Facebook Can Become a Money Making Machine – Mashable article

Twitter Brings Its Trends Right to Your Neighborhood – FastCompany article

David Veneski Marketing, Social Media Weekly News

Simply…wow.  From Silicon Alley Insider:

“According to revenue generated per employee, around $336,000 per quarter, or about $1.34 million per year on an annualized basis.”

David Veneski Google Google, Revenue

Social Networking is, as Charlene Li says ‘Like Air‘ – ubiquitous and everywhere.  We are in a culture where every demographic on the planet is involved in some capacity or another.  Some of the most visible?  Athletes – especially professional athletes.  Social Media is a way for the athlete to share a little bit of their ‘off court’ or ‘off field’ persona with those that support them most – their fans.  From a fan’s perspective, this is an amazing peek into the everyday lives of their sports heroes.  Is it always good for the athlete? No.

In many case – Lance Armstrong, Shaquille O’Neal, and Tony Hawk – their use of social media is positive and often used to make the world a little bit better (Lance promoting Cancer awareness and Shaq using his influence/large following to secure financial relief for disaster victims.  I have a lot of respect for these guys as athletes, and even more as humans… they use their widespread influence for good – how can you not be impressed?

Then, comes the flip side.  Using social media to make a complete mockery of themselves. Case in point… this week, Portland’s own Greg Oden.  There are multiple incidents that are embarrassing for athletes that have a very public persona – and some of the ramifications are career threatening, in the case of Gilbert Arenas.  In many cases, it is simply kids making a mistake that is extraordinarily public (Brandon Jennings on Twitter and Video). Remember, these athletes are often times not even of drinking age but making millions of dollars…with plenty of free time on their hands. You know what they say about idle hands…

From my perspective, the moral here for professional athletes to take care with their use of Social Media. You have an incredible opportunity to extend your influence for good and to give the people that ultimately pay your salary (the fans) the ability to take a peek into your ‘off field’ persona.  Be careful of what you ‘Tweet’ – it could come back to bite you…

David Veneski Social Media, Sports Athlete, Social Media, Sport

At long last, Intel made the list again for Fortune’s Top 100 companies to work for.  For 2010, we come in at #98.  It’s been quite some time since Intel has made this list (we were on it from 1998 through 2004 with positions ranging from 65-28), although last year we were recognized as the #23 company to work at in terms of developing strong leaders.  A great quote from that recognition was spot on, in my assessment:

“The companies that made the cut have one thing in common: They know that investing in their employees isn’t a luxury — it’s a necessity.“

David Veneski Intel Fortune Top 100, Intel

Recently Pepsi, a long time Superbowl advertiser (Cyndi Crawford anyone?) announced a switch in their advertising strategy. Rather than spend an estimated $20M in ads for America’s largest sporting event, they would be driving a social media campaign called the Pepsi Refresh Project.  AdAge sums up the core tenant of the project:

“Consumers, businesses and nonprofits could then submit their ideas for how to have a positive effect on their community. Pepsi has said it plans to pledge at least $20 million in grants to the effort.”

In short, this campaign is a crowdsourcing effort – not unlike Dell’s IdeaStorm, Best Buy’s IdeaX, and My Starbucks Idea – that channels funds that would have been applied to SuperBowl advertising, into a user identified community giving program.

The difference?  Execution.  Pepsi’s effort was fraught with privacy and security issues that tarnished the first step of what could be a very good campaign.  There is upside however.  I think that many people will respect what Pepsi is attempting to do.  Rather than spending millions of dollars on less than a minute’s worth of shameless self promotion during the world’s largest sporting event – they are putting those powerful dollars towards programs that will have a positive impact within the community – a generous foray into Cause Marketing.  Kudos to them for that.

David Veneski Cause Marketing, Community Crowdsource, Pepsi

According to HubSpot’s recent report ‘State of the Twittersphere‘ Twitter growth has slowed from a high of 13% in March of 2009, to a low of 3.5% in October of 2009. 

The upside…the Twitter population is more engaged – with the average user following more people, being followed by more people, and posting more updates than ever before.  In addition – those same users are providing more information about themselves consistently – such as location and web address links in their Twitter profile.  Here are some additonal key characteristics of the Twittersphere, pulled directly from the report:

• 82% of Twitter users have less than 100 followers
• 81% of Twitter users are following less than 100 people
• Thursday and Friday are the most active days on Twitter, each accounting for 16% of
total tweets in our study.
• 10-11 pm is the most active hour on Twitter, accounting for 4.8% of the tweets in an
average day.

David Veneski Twitter Twitter

A study recently released by UCSD describes in detail the amount of data Americans consume on a yearly basis.  A snippet below gives a quick glance at the staggering numbers…

“In 2008, Americans consumed information for about 1.3 trillion hours, an average of almost 12 hours per day. Consumption totaled 3.6 zettabytes and 10,845 trillion words, corresponding to 100,500 words and 34 gigabytes for an average person on an average day. A zettabyte is 10 to the 21st power bytes, a million million gigabytes.“

David Veneski Marketing, Traditional Media Americans, Data Consumption

Every week, I send a growing list of internal and external customers a list of 10 compelling reads for the week.  This is a SMALL sampling of what I come across in my media consumption addiction, but that would be an overwhelming amount of content to share through this means.  Each Friday, I’ll post my summary out to a larger audience than my mailing list through this blog.  If you’d like to be on my mailing list, please email me and I will add you.  Here’s the list for this week:

Tech Boom: Intel’s Earnings Up an Astounding 875% – Mashable article

10 Tips for Becoming a Smarter, Social Business Person – GigaOm article

Facebook’s Zuckerberg Says The Age of Privacy is Over – ReadWriteWeb article

The 10 Stages of Social Media Business Integration – Mashable article

The Starbucks Formula for Social Media Success – The Next Web article

In-store facial recognition ads from Intel and Microsoft – Econsultancy article

The Children of Cyberspace: Old Fogies by Their 20s – NYTimes article

Is 2010 Your Year for a Mobile App? – ClickZ article

Nexus One and Android 2.1: Apple Better Watch Out – ReadWriteWeb article

Why Apple Bought Quattro Wireless And Is Getting Into Advertising – Silicon Alley Insider article

David Veneski Marketing, Social Media Weekly News