An orbital 1,967,514 views,
and counting

Good. Clean. Fun.

For a good clean feeling, no matter what, we offer up this serial Wrigley’s Orbit® gum spot. Smacking wads of Orbit, this threesome pushes nearly every FCC boundary, yet never broaches one.

Add the signature Orbit brand sign-off: hand-held, frame-centered package; Vanessa, the onlooking, ever-white-bright and über-perky narrator with package-matching scarf; a tagline reinforcement finish; and this one’s a wrap.

Viral. Free. Fun.

At last count Orbit has enjoyed 1,967,514 brand impression-delivered views of this video on YouTube alone—part of what’s propelled Orbit to a top five chewing gum brand. Now that’s meteoric viral distribution. And for brand agents, that’s just good clean fun—key word, fun.

White Castle’s conversation-inspiring promotion.

Dining on Slyders®
by candlelight

What’s Wrong with this Picture?

This street sign isn’t advertising a 4-star restaurant, it’s a 24-hour White Castle that serves miniature hamburgers called Slyders®. A regional player, they consistently rank among the Top 100 U.S. foodservice companies, serving over 500 million burgers a year.

White Castle is running a serious business, but not too serious.

Love is in the Ambiance

A kitsch castle motif and hamburger joint ambiance doesn’t register as a romantic destination for most couples. Nor does dining on steamy Slyders® in a stainless-steel and plastic-laminate setting on candlelit, linen-draped tables. Which is exactly why White Castle’s charming Valentine’s Day promotion works.

Not your typical White Castle experience: waiters, flowers, candlelight and tablecloths.

Embrace Yourself

From a strategic marketing standpoint, White Castle understands and embraces their market space and brand persona—and are willing to leverage it by poking fun at themselves. This promotion transcends a one-way communication, inviting consumers to interact with the brand—sharing a little levity with others at White Castle’s expense.

Instigating Viral-ability

The promotion’s self-effacing humor became an opportunity for consumer-generated online viral buzz. The Brainstorm employee who took the picture emailed it to 3 people; two within Brainstorm and one in Oregon. Several weeks later she received the image back in an email from a former co-worker, unrelated in any tangible way to the original recipients with the subject ‘Valentine’s Day dinner plans?’ Who knows how far it traveled or how many people saw it?

Share the Love

Socially shared experiences both on and offline begin with transparency, relevance, and often wit. Inspiring people to talk positively about your brand requires involvement and reaching out to engage.

[Restaurant interior photo: Girlieleep]

30 Rock, The Simpsons, SNL, The Office,
The Big Lebowski and more—free. Pass it on at Hulu.com

Watch your favorite TV shows and movies.
Anytime. Anywhere. Free.

Save the TiVo

After five months of Beta testing, today NBC Universal and Fox launched Hulu.com, mainstream media’s online answer to socially networked video sites like YouTube. Unlike YouTube, Hulu offers viewers online-anytime premium, recognized content with full production values that can be viewed full screen.

Feature Rich; Feature Friendly

Amid an understated interface and tastefully-sized and unobtrusively placed ads, a simple slider bar allows you to select snippets of any Hulu streamed media and clip it—to the second. You can preview the video clip, email it to friends, copy its embed code for blog insertion, or share it on Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, Windows Live, or Google bookmarks.

It’s not exactly Consumer Generated Media (CGM), but it is a great first step toward engaging a post-conventional television audience anew.

Did We Mention Content?

The site offers free streaming video, ad-supported shows and feature films from NBC, Fox, E! Entertainment, the SciFi Network, USA Networks, Sony Pictures, MGM and others. Even the NBA, NHL and the NCAA are signing on. So far, CBS and Disney’s ABC are taking a wait and see approach before joining in.

A Step in the Right Conversation

Whether sites like Hulu can deliver mainstream media outlets from the bonds of one-way communication remains to be seen. But we Beta tested Hulu and think there’s a lot to like.

Snip a clip and send it to a friend on Hulu.

Joseph Jaffe’s Join the Conversation

If you’re a brand marketer
or have a brand, or a market to reach,
read this book.

A Marketing Dialog

The foundation of Join the Conversation, How to Engage Marketing-Weary Consumers with the Power of Community, Dialogue, and Partnership is author Joseph Jaffe’s distinction between communication and conversation. He describes communication as one-way and carefully controlled in its implementation, while conversation is organic, non-linear, unpredictable, and not initiated by any one person or organization.

Key Moments

As collective online conversations begin to spill into conversations offline, the book addresses the opportunities presented to brand marketers engaged in conversation with groups Jaffe identifies as producers, prosumers and consumers.

He presents many examples of what we here at Brainstorm refer to as key social media moments—moments when companies have either seized an opportunity or been seized by it.

If you’re not present at a key moment,
you can’t exploit that moment,
but it may exploit you.

Helpful Advice

The book provides a number of guidelines to consider when adopting conversational engagement over mere communication: The need to embrace consumer-generated content, the importance of honesty, an emphasis on product quality and service excellence—coupled with a balanced sense of transparency, as well as the benefits of partnering with today’s consumer, paired with cautionary advice.

About the Author

Joseph Jaffe, author of Join the Conversation and Life After the 30-Second Spot, is president and chief interrupter at new marketing company, Crayon. He’s a noted consultant and blogger and hosts Coffee with Crayon Thursdays at 9am EST on Crayonville Island in Second Life. This review is part of his UNM2PNM project.

Join In

Although it may take purists a while to get used to the conversational writing style, regardless of whether or not you’re already engaged in conversation, Join the Conversation is a read worth talking about.

A successful HTML-based email campaign
may mean tabling the whole idea.

Back to the Future

Many of today’s email clients function like mid-90s browsers. To consistently display HTML-based, asset-laden HTML email designs and layouts, we often turn to font tags and tables instead of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to finesse creative boundaries and ensure consistent browser display.

Web-based and desktop email clients interpret HTML-based email differently. Some even strip CSS styles altogether, necessitating extensive testing and modifications during the development process.

Cheaters Never Prosper?

Beyond the arcane cheats and excessive work arounds, there are other concerns that may dissuade the faint of heart or non-technical professional from embracing the medium: Email authentication, white-listing, audience acceptance, and—should it actually run the gauntlet unscathed—trust, proper brand messaging, and design.

For all its idiosyncrasies, delivery issues, and purists like Jeffrey Zeldman who deplore graphically enhanced email, ours is a visually responsive culture. And HTML email response rates bear that out.

To Table or not to Table

Like any marketing medium, proper strategy, integration, appropriateness and understanding of design limitations are key.

We sometimes advocate the use of text-based email to drive recipients to a landing site where graphically intensive design is more appropriate. And yet, we’re just as likely to use HTML email when the circumstances warrant it.

Whether HTML or text-based, never table the idea of integrating permission-based email into your brand marketing planning.