Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

In case you’ve been living under a rock, Facebook rolled out some changes to user’s profiles earlier this month, including a snazzy new band of photos across the top of most people’s profile pages.

This naturally inspired some people to find novel ways to express themselves using the ‘canvas’ at the top of their newsfeed, including (famously) Alexandre Oudin. After a few more days, there were sites popping up everywhere to do this to your profile in a few easy steps (Photo Magic, Oudinizer, Profile Maker, etc.).

Impressively, Schweppes acted quickly to get a developer to create a Schweppes Profile App on Facebook, as explained with the following video:

I like that they managed to turn around the app so fast, and keep the entire experience relatively simple.  My questions are:

1. This seems to be an activity that most people might enjoy, and I wonder if Facebook considered making the functionality native.  To be honest, the process is still a little complicated, due to the tagging requirements, and Facebook could get around these elegantly.

2. I think the resulting photo could have carried at least a nominal amount of branding - maybe even flirt with a facet of the product?  What about making you in your photo engage with the product in some way?

Although here’s a good example of what you should probably not do:

3. When these mercurial changes occur on Facebook, I wonder if there is really any benefit to the ‘first out’ application.  The app seemed to have some loading troubles a few times when I was using it.  Stability should be pretty high on the list of requirements, one would think.

This week, Jumo launched their beta social network for causes, issues and organizations.  The press was a little hotter when the project first was announced, and there have been 60,000 members in the closed beta.  Factoid for the day: Jumo is Yoruban for “together in concert”.

The site is designed to make it easy to follow (think ‘like’) updates from a variety of causes and even join in the conversation. The interface is familiar and integration with Facebook is, to use one of their favorite words, frictionless (no surprise there, given he was a co-founder).  The causes (they use the word “issues that you care about”) fall into 7 groups - Arts/Culture, Education, Environment/Animals, Health, Human Rights, Peace/Governance and Poverty - and there are 9 or so orgs in each group already, with surely more to come.

Previous comments from the company clarified that the site is not about donations (although you can click through to the organization’s homepage to give if you’re so inclined), but rather getting people connected who care about specific issues.

But I have to ask: Why would I use this service when I can already get these updates on Facebook itself?  Is there another audience out there that is not on Facebook, but would want to use the service for charities and causes?  My hunch is that this platform is designed to allow for smaller charities that don’t advertise widely to get eyeballs on their cause without having to pay for Facebook ads.  Jumo makes it easy to explore a variety of charities that would probably never get my attention, since this type of exploration is such a basic part of the site (One complaint: hovering over a charity it would be nice to get some overlay information about it - I should be able to know a bit more about it before committing to follow it) The integration with Facebook certainly could help in terms of spreading activity on that site without paying for the traffic upfront.

When Facebook re-launched Groups, I was wondering if they were considering just rebranding part of their platform as a news service, which is kind of the main functionality here.  It pulls the latest and greatest to your Home page, and allows you to read summaries, or delve into the original articles at will, with the ever present opportunity to join the conversation and comment.  Sharing without commenting doesn’t seem to be present, but this is beta, so things could change rapidly.

If you’ve got an organization that needs to connect with people, this could be another platform for you, but the question remains: What’s the value?

You can follow Jumo on Facebook and Twitter.

Ok, I understand if one company patents the whole name but what about when it is only a part of it and even when this word is of such common usage as “Face”.

That’s right, according to a Techcrunch article Facebook is just about to get the official trademark for the word “Face”, all it has to do is pay the issue fee within the next three months. The article quotes the usage of the word “Face” in: Telecommunication services, namely, providing online chat rooms and electronic bulletin boards for transmission of messages among computer users in the field of general interest and concerning social and entertainment subject matter, none primarily featuring or relating to motoring or to cars.

Of course this act has already created a lot of controversy because of the trade marking of such a common word, even it has already spawned a new troll in which you write the word face … sorry Face™, as many times as possible in coherent and ordinary sentences.

It is clear that this measure will help to eliminate the piggybacking from other sites and that it applies for online telecommunications, but what happens with other no copying sites/apps/brands that already have that word in its name? I just think right now of iPhone’s FaceTime but I’m pretty sure there may be others out there.

Let face it, it may sound ridiculous but what’s next? YouTube patenting “You” or Microsoft doing it for “Hot” and “Mail”?

Fun video showing a life lived - but solely from Facebook’s perspective:

Via AllFacebook.com Via Mashtart

Interesting execution bringing awareness to the pollution in our oceans - specifically the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  This work includes a website, Facebook page and TED video asking you to pledge to join the nation, and then vow to destroy it.

http://www.thecrapolaislands.com/

Can you imagine that title to be true for your business?  Well, get ready.

With the launch of Places Deals today at their mobile summit, Facebook is jumping into the waters of ecommerce deeper than ever - and it’s fresh on the heels of Facebook Vendor and many other examples (check out here an excellent post from TheNextWeb for several more) of smart marketers leveraging Facebook as the place to be for shopper marketing.

Deals is not the most original - having basically the same functionality as Foursquare already offered - but the scale of opportunity is immense.

Facebook has been said to be becoming “the Internet” for many people - where they meet, where they share, where they get their news, where they email, and where they play.  Why wouldn’t we offer a marketplace on this digital version of the old town square?  Why wouldn’t you want to sell there?

Via: Facebook Blog and Mobile Announcement Gathering

Addendum - their announcement of the availability of the Facebook Write API may not get as much news as Deals, but it may have even more importance for marketers in the long term.  More on that later.

There’s a good article over at Adweek about Walmart testing the ‘Groupon’ model.  Crowdsaver puts “you in charge of lower prices. If the deal gets enough likes, the price drops for everyone.”

The Groupon model itself is powerful - where signing up for the service gets you alerts as to the daily deal.  And the daily deal is a group-buying endeavor, where you buy the offer beforehand, and then go to the retailer to collect the deal - usually 50% off or more.

Earlier this year we saw Uniqlo run a campaign on their ‘under construction’ page as they were relaunching their UK site - which also allowed the users to participate in building tension for the new launch - with every tweet bringing down the launch sale price for their favorite items.

These various models make a lot of sense - finding new ways for the customer to participate in the process beyond just getting whatever offer the marketer or retailer fee like giving them.  With more power and control being taken over by the consumer at every step in the value chain, why should they not be involved in pricing?

Via AdWeek

From our friends in Leo Burnett Iberia comes the Guinness-record-setting world’s largest beach towel.

But what’s really interesting to me is the integration between social media and the event. Facebook is used to ‘take your reservation’ for a space on the towel, and spread the word about the event.  The event itself is a great celebration of beach culture and extends and expands the emotional content.  Well done!

Via: Ads of the World

Yesterday McDonald’s debuted in FarmVille, the popular Facebook social game with its own farm - giving  players the chance to play with the Brand and win prizes.

The program was created by appssavvy and OMD, and includes a McDonald’s Farm where players grow tomato and mustard seed crops and can earn prizes.

I’m surprised that more brands haven’t worked with Zynga.

via: Brandweek

As with all articles containing the words “x success criteria…” use this with caution. However, the report, while not earth shattering should help you with your next argumentation.

Via DavaiDavai