The MoPR Blog

When viral goes…viral. We’re always fascinated by a great marketing campaign – and here’s a good one. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently launched a viral campaign to help defeat a viral disease, the flu.

The CDC has launched a multifaceted public awareness campaign to encourage flu vaccination. A sampling of the agency’s methods include a YouTube film, web ads, eCards and “older” media such as posters, print ads and PSAs. The CDC also recently held a webinar with popular “mommy bloggers” (or as we like to call them, the mamarazzi) to enlist them to help spread the word on the importance of vaccinations. It’s working. We’ve definitely seen an uptick in flu shot messaging.

Metrics killed the video star. Imagine if you could gauge the exact moment viewers of your YouTube video lost interest and clicked away. Now you can. YouTube has unveiled YouTube Insight that lets marketers, filmmakers, and amateurs alike analyze viewer habits. The free tool lets anyone with a YouTube account view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site. According to YouTube, uploaders can see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time. Users can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of their videos, like how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks.

YouTube says using these metrics can help people posting videos to increase a video’s view counts and improve popularity on the site by finding their audience then concentrating on creating compelling new content that appeals to their target audiences, and finally posting these videos to YouTube on days they know these viewers are on the site.

Does this mean Obama is a Mac? Remember when the Obama campaign turned to text messaging to announce the vice president? Now they’re delving deeper into tech waters by unveiling an iPhone application. Developed by a team in Portland, Ore. (gotta have some hometown pride!) the official application from the campaign will give users the following:

• Call Friends: A great volunteering tool that lets users talk to people they already know – with contacts prioritized by key battleground states. Users can make calls and organize results all in one place.
• Call Stats: Users can see nationwide Obama ‘08 Call Friends totals and find out how their call totals compare to leading callers.
• Receive Updates: Receive the latest news and announcements via text messages or email.
• Local Events: Find local events, share by email and get maps and directions.

If you’re in the Portland area, be sure to stop by the Mission Theater and Pub next Tuesday to celebrate the launch of the official Obama ‘08 iPhone application. Drink some beer, watch the debate and download the app.

And speaking of presidential campaigns and uncharted use of technology…mobile will play a key part. As both presidential campaigns aim to get out the vote using multi-channel marketing like never before, Nielsen Mobile has unveiled some context on how mobile phones may play a role in this election season.

In addition to the text message campaign and iPhone apps, the Obama campaign has a full mobile website containing news, videos and ringtone and wallpaper downloads. Meanwhile, says Nielsen, the McCain campaign “has not been as active in mobile media, but that may make sense.”
Perhaps the McCain campaign “knows that, in 2008, mobile is a more effective channel for reaching Democrats than Republicans.”

Nielsen Mobile reports that, as of Q2 2008, mobile media was slightly more popular with Democrats than Republicans. Here are the stats:

• Overall, 62% of Democrats are mobile data users who use one or more data service on their mobile phone (compared to 55% of Republicans)
• Democrats are more likely than Republicans to use text messaging (53 percent compared to 46 percent)
• Democrats are more likely to use picture messaging and MMS (27 percent compared to 21 percent)
• Democrats are more likely to use mobile Internet, as well (17 percent compared to 13 percent)

These variations, however small, indicate that advertising across mobile channels tends to be more efficient at reaching Democrats than Republicans.

That’s not to say that conservative voters are without a place in mobile media. According to Nielsen, The Drudge Report, a “news site many consider to be conservative-leaning, attracted a mobile Internet audience of 567,000 unique users per month, as of July 2008.”

How important is social media to businesses? Very, say customers. If you thought that social media was some trendy, hip teen trend, you’re wrong. New research from Cone claims that an overwhelming majority (93%) of online Americans say companies should have a social-media presence, and 85% believe these companies also should be interacting with consumers through social media.

Asked about specific types of interactions, respondents said:

• Companies should use social networks to solve their problems (43%).
• Companies should solicit feedback on their products and services (41%) via social media.
• Companies should develop new ways for consumers to interact with their brand (37%) through social media.
• Companies should market to consumers (25%) using social media.
• One-third of younger, hard-to-reach consumers (age 18-34) believe that companies should actively market to them via social networks.

Interesting to us is that the wealthiest households (household income of $75K+) believe that companies should seek to reach them via social media.

We have [yet another] winner! Remember that scene in It’s a Wonderful Life when it’s explained that every time a bell rings an angel earns their wings? Well, at MoPR, every time one of our clients wins an award, we update our email signatures. And lately, we’ve been doing a lot of updating!

Congratulations are in order for Mobility PR client Hovr, the first place winner for “Mobile Infotainment & Community” at the Mobile Content 2008 awards. And three of our Canadian clients, Cascada Mobile, Talkster and Viigo all won Red Herring’s Top 50 award that celebrates the most innovative and promising private technology companies in Canada. Congratulations to our wonderful clients.

E-liar: Emails don’t always tell the truthTwo new studies claim that email in the workplace is more deceptive than writing – and people feel justified about it when they do lie online. According to a piece on LiveScience.com, two different studies came to the same conclusion that email makes it easier to lie, mostly by hiding behind email and disguising verbal clues that might give them away. One study had students email information about a money amount to other students and “those students using email lied about the amount of money to be divided more than 92 percent of the time, while less then 64 percent lied when writing by hand,” according to LiveScience.com

Most employed Americans employ email or the Internet at work [that’s actually not a lie]. A new survey by Pew Research Center shows that 62 percent of adults who are currently employed use the Internet or email at work with mixed views about the impact of technology on their work lives. The good news is that those surveyed say they enjoy the benefits of “increased connectivity and flexibility that the Internet and all of their various gadgets afford them at work.” On the other hand, many workers say these tools have added stress and new demands to their lives.

One of the major impacts of the Internet and cell phones is that they have enabled more people to work occasionally from home. Some 45 percent of employed Americans report doing at least some work from home and 18 percent of working Americans say they do job-related tasks at home almost daily. The downside is that 50 percent of employed email users say they check their work-related email on the weekends.

A Twitter for the enterprise? Where Twitter asks “What are you doing?,” Yammer, a new tool for “making companies and organizations more productive through the exchange of short frequent answers,” asks: “What are you working on?”  How does this make employees more productive? Yammer works like this: As employees answer that question, a feed is created in one central location enabling co-workers to discuss ideas, post news, ask questions, and share links and other information. Yammer also serves as a company directory in which every employee has a profile and provides a knowledge base where past conversations can be easily accessed and referenced. The basic Yammer service is free, though companies can pay to claim and administer their networks. Our only question is how secure are these sensitive conversations?

Texting more popular than calling? According to Nielsen Mobile it is. New research released shows that the typical U.S. mobile subscriber now sends and receives more SMS text messages than they do mobile telephone calls. As of Q2 2008, a typical U.S. mobile subscriber sends or receives 357 text messages per month, compared to placing or receiving 204 phone calls.  Though the number of calls has remained relatively steady, the number of text messages is up 450 percent from the previous two years. The research also found that the typical U.S. teen mobile subscriber (ages 13–17) now sends or receives 1,742 text messages per month (compared to making or receiving 231 mobile phone calls).

Me! My favorite subject! New research from the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin claims that users of social network sites [and in the study, specifically Facebook] may hint at a rabid case of narcissism. As reported on Scientificblogging.com the research says that the “tremendous growth of social networking sites has led psychologists to explore how personality traits are expressed online.”

The results indicate that not everyone on Facebook is narcissistic, just the ones with lots of Facebook friends and wallposts. Narcissists are also more likely to choose glamorous, self-promoting pictures for their main profile photos, while others are more likely to use snapshots.

Best quote from the article:

It just turns out that narcissists are using Facebook the same way they use their other relationships – for self promotion with an emphasis on quantity over quality.

Isn’t that pretty much everyone on Facebook?

Dell releases low-cost laptops for “emerging economies.” Dell has unveiled a new line of computers designed to meet the needs of small businesses, governments and educational institutions operating on limited budgets in the world’s emerging economies. The new Vostro products include two pre-configured laptops and two desktops. Additional Vostro products designed for emerging economies will be introduced in coming months.

According to IDC, there are more than 72 million small businesses worldwide, with 23.4 million – nearly one-third of the global total – located in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan). Latin America and EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) follow with 12.5 million and 11.9 million.

The new Vostro products were designed to address affordability, reliability and easy maintenance, says Dell.

Photoshop goes online, finally! Adobe Systems Incorporated last week announced the availability of an online version of Adobe Photoshop Express. The public beta will let users store, sort and show off digital photos with eye-catching effects. According to Adobe, Photoshop Express allows users to store up to 2 gigabytes of images online for free, make edits to their photos, and share them online in creative ways, including downloading and uploading photos from popular social networking sites like Facebook. Photoshop Express offers a variety of creative sharing options, including uploading and showing off photos and slideshows in your own online “Gallery” hosted by Adobe, or conveniently embedding or linking photos to social networking sites and personal blogs without having to leave the application.

Did you get Obama’s veep text? So did 2.9 million. Nielsen Mobile, a service of The Nielsen Company, estimates that 2.9 million US mobile subscribers received a text message from the Obama campaign over the course of Friday, Saturday and Sunday last week. How does Nielsen know this? Nielsen Mobile monitors shortcode marketing (the use of text-message shortcodes such as the 62262 “O-B-A-M-A”) through the world’s largest telecommunications bill-panel, an opt-in panel that reports on the billing activity for more than 40,000 subscriber lines in the US.

The VP message was sent in the late hours of Friday night and is, by many accounts, the single largest mobile marketing event in the US., to date. From a mobile perspective, it makes sense that the campaign chose to use text-messages. Today, 116 million US mobile subscribers (52 percent of subscribers) actively use text messaging, making it a new mass medium for marketing efforts.

Nic Covey, director of insights at Nielsen Mobile also believes that “the success of this text-campaign has Madison Avenue thinking even more about how they too can interact with a universe of 116 million text-message users in the US.”

We agree. From a marketing standpoint, good move. It got people talking throughout the week, not only about his announcement, but also his commitment to technology throughout the week – hitting a fever pitch Friday night.

On the other hand…

We knew who the veep was before we went to bed. We got the text message the next morning – because it was sent during the night. And where did we get the information? The old guard: TV news. Not the web, not Twitter, not a text message.

Information Week’s Mitch Wagner has a fantastic analysis on the old guard scooping the new media.

Was the announcement itself a success? Wagner doesn’t think so. It was successful though in getting people to opt-in [cough cough] with their email addresses. So far, we’ve received emails from Michelle Omaba, Barack’s campaign manager, and Joe Biden.

Then again, text messaging may be obsolete by 2017. In his thought-provoking post, Ed Hardy, editor at Brighthand.com says:

Five years from now, I predict that anyone in the U.S. getting a text will be surprised. U.S. carriers will turn the service off in less than 10 years.

The technology for full email access is available now, so SMS has really outlived its usefulness.

At least injuries from walking into light poles while texting will go down, right?