I am thrilled to announce that I am joining the incredibly talented team at Engage. Over the past year, I have had the pleasure of leading the online communications efforts for some amazing clients under the banner of my own consulting firm, Direct Media Strategies. Those clients include Nathan Deal for Governor, BlueAnt Wireless, HCA and University of South Florida Athletics just to name a few. As of today, Direct Media Strategies is now a part of Engage and we could not be more excited.
In 2010, we had the privilege of partnering with Engage on The Voting Information Project and foursquare’s I Voted project, successfully bringing to life the foursquare I Voted badge on Election Day 2010. There is not a more talented, more forward-thinking team at the intersection of politics, media and technology than Engage and we are honored to join them.
Prior to launching my own firm, I had the incredible experience of managing SayfieReview.com – an online news aggregation service that has become a staple in Florida politics thanks to the site’s founder, Justin Sayfie. My time at Sayfie Media gave me invaluable insight into how news is consumed and shared in the new information economy – experience that has served me well in working with political campaigns, advocacy groups and corporate communication teams.
Many communication shops today get hung up on tools and technology, which are changing every day. The firms that are the most successful are the ones that work hand-in-hand with their clients to clearly define communication objectives on the front end, and then find the right mix of tools and technology to achieve those objectives and win. Engage is that firm. If your corporation, campaign or cause is looking for a team of professional, forward-thinking communication strategists who place objectives and strategy before ever-changing tools, look no further than Engage.
Joining me at Engage is Jonathan Morgan, who served a number of non-profit and small business accounts with excellence at Direct Media Strategies. On behalf of Jon and myself, we would like to thank Patrick Ruffini and Mindy Finn for the opportunity to join them and their rock-star team at Engage. We look forward to joining the Engage family and serving Engage’s current and future clients with excellence.
If you are ever in the Sunshine State, be sure to give us a shout. We would love to meet you. You can find my contact information by here.
Over the past few weeks, I have become obsessed with Instagram - the "fast, beautiful and fun way to share your life with friends through a series of pictures." Part of my fascination with Instagram stems from how quickly the niche social network has grown. After launching in early October of 2010, Instagram quickly reached 1 million users before the end of the year.
But what makes Instagram so great? After all, we are already able to share photos through Facebook, Twitter and a whole host of other niche photo apps. So why Instagram? Aside from the obvious technology features that make the app a social success (Facebook, Twitter and foursquare integration, photo tagging by hashtag and location, photo news stream, ability to like and comment on photos, etc.), I am convinced that the success behind Instagram is much deeper and lies in the app's ability to make anyone feel like a professional photographer, telling the story of their life through really cool looking photos. There's only so much you can do artistically with a Facebook photo uploaded from your mobile phone, but Instagram gives you the ability to really tell a story through images alone. Another component of the app's success (IMHO) lies in the app's simplicity and limited functionality. Instagram is solely about photos. No video, no links, no games. Just photos. This simplicity is a breath of fresh air from Facebook and other services.
For me, part of the fun of Instagram has also been following news organizations and brands and watching how they tell their stories through pictures alone. Brands on Instagram include The GRAMMYs, NPR, NBC News, Pepsi, CNN, Starbucks, and SnoopDog. I was particularly fascinated by a giveaway campaign that The GRAMMYs ran yesterday in which they gave away a free GRAMMY poster to one randomly selected person who liked or commented on any of The GRAMMYs Instagram photos throughout the day. I didn't care about winning the poster, but I was intrigued about how this brand was using this new platform to drive brand engagement and of course participated. After doing some research, I am fairly confident that The GRAMMYs are the first brand to run a giveaway through the Instagram platform - a sure sign of things to come. And yes, as you can see from the photo above, The GRAMMYs notified their followers this morning (via an Instagram photo of course) that yours truly was the winner of the giveaway!
If you haven't downloaded Instagram yet, click here from your iPhone to do so. Unfortunately, Instagram has yet to come to Android or Blackberry, but I am sure we can expect an Instagram app for those platforms soon.
In June 2009, I published a piece on SayfieReview.com which garnered much buzz here in Florida, especially as it related to Marco Rubio's insurgent fight against Charlie Crist for the United States Senate. In the piece, I argued that with the right candidate and the right message, the internet could level the playing field and help reverse the conventional wisdom that you must run a "Traditional 3M" campaign to get elected to office. I argued that the Traditional 3M model was based on big money to launch a campaign, followed by momentum, with the candidate's message being a distant third priority. This model can be diagrammed like this:
MONEY → MOMENTUM → MESSAGE
Using the internet to drive message directly to voters, victory is now possible for candidates who don’t have big money to kick-start their campaigns, by following a “New 3M” model that looks like this:
MESSAGE → MOMENTUM → MONEY
We saw Marco Rubio articulate the New 3M Model time and time again in 2010, and now, it seems Texas Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams is articulating the exact same message in his battle for the United States Senate in 2012. Hear what Williams had to say in an interview with the Texas Tribune yesterday:
Aside from screaming children, what’s the worst part of any theme park? Waiting in line.
That’s why I was greatly disappointed to find that after all of the hoopla surrounding Disney’s new partnership with Gowalla, the “game” ended as soon as I entered the hour-and-a-half line for Toy Story Mania with my wife over the holiday weekend. Check-in. Get a badge. Game over. Nothing else to keep me entertained or, more importantly for Disney, experience their brand with my friends online. Before I dive into exactly what Disney could be doing to obtain a much better ROI while simultaneously enhancing the consumer experience, let’s first take a look at the state of location-based social networking.
Mashable stole the words right out of my mouth a few weeks ago when they said, “It’s painfully obvious that location is one of the fastest-growing segments of the tech industry.” At Direct Media Strategies, we are always looking to implement tomorrow’s technology today for our clients. We believe location based social networking (LBS) is a huge part of the future of online brand communication and we are doing a lot of work in this space (see our recent case study on our involvement in foursquare's Election Day "I Voted" badge).
Because it is still early in the location game, no one service has emerged as the undisputed winner. Foursquare, Gowalla and SCVNGR are certainly leading the pack by gaining the most users, high-profile partnerships and attention; and Facebook’s recent rollout of Places certainly has added a significant wrinkle to this whole game. And while foursquare is the front-runner in the race for users (excluding Facebook Places), the user gap between foursquare and it’s closest competitors is relatively small. The latest publicly reported numbers show foursquare at 4.5 million users, while SCVNGR is expected to reach 1 million next month and Gowalla is right at 600,000. At this point, it’s anyone’s game.
A recent report by Pew showing that only 7% of mobile-online adults in the U.S. are using these services has raised some legitimate questions regarding usership of these networks. However, I would argue that the reason why more people aren’t using these services is not because they are fundamentally opposed to sharing their location with their friends, they just haven’t found a game compelling enough to keep their attention and make sharing their location worth their while. After all, the reason these networks popped up in the first place was because millions of people were sharing where they were in their Facebook status updates. Services like Facebook Places, Foursquare, Gowalla, and SCVNGR simply geo-coded it and put those shared locations on a map.
If these networks are simply going to be about the check-in, they won’t survive. Facebook Places has filled that void. So what unique value proposition do these networks bring to users? Gowalla is frequently referred to as the “pretty” network for its commitment to beautifully designed badges. But are pretty badges enough to keep people playing? I don’t think so. Foursquare has had the right idea from day one in making their network competitive. Users go places, earn points, unlock rewards and compete for mayorships of locations. Foursquare is on the right track and that’s undoubtedly a big part of why they have been successful thus far. They understand that people love to compete and win. But the thing you hear time and time again from users and opinion leaders is that foursquare is passive. We have noticed with our clients that people check-in on foursquare as they are physically leaving the location. By nature, the foursquare check-in is not engaging, it is passive, making foursquare something you do not something you play.
That leaves us with Google-funded SCVNGR. At its core, SCVNGR is a game. Throughout everything they produce, SCVNGR is very careful in their choice of words, making it clear that their key differentiator in this market is true game-play. SCVNGR goes beyond the check-in, by allowing brands to create custom challenges that users can complete at locations to earn points and unlock real-world rewards. With SCVNGR, users experience brands, not just simply tell their friends where they are. In addition to these custom challenges and rewards, SCVNGR also has many of the same features as foursquare and Gowalla – badges, points, full Facebook and Twitter integration, etc. SCVNGR has got it all.
Going back to the Disney example above, allow me to show you how SCVNGR is different rather than simply tell you. When I checked-in to the Toy Story Mania ride on Gowalla this past weekend, I unlocked a custom Toy Story badge on Gowalla:
After taking that one simple action though, my experience was finished. The only action my Gowalla friends, Facebook friends or Twitter followers could have seen was my passive check-in letting them know I was at the ride. With SCVNGR, the next hour-and-a-half I spent waiting in line could have been filled with opportunities for me to have fun by playing a game, earn real-world rewards, and show all of my online friends all of the fun I was having at Disney.
On SCVNGR, you are greeted with a series of custom challenges at each location:
SCVNGR offers 4 different kinds of challenges: Photo Challenge, Specific Text Response, QR Code and Open Response. Here's an example of each:
Photo Challenge:
Specific Text Response:
The video integration is one of my favorite things about SCVNGR. By pressing play in the clue above, the following video would pop up in the user's phone allowing them to answer the question correctly and complete the challenge.
QR Code:
Open Response:
The one component not shown above is the Rewards component of SCVNGR, very similar to foursquare's Specials and Facebook's Deals. With SCVNGR, users unlock Rewards by accumulating points at a specific location. In the above example, once a user earns a certain number of points, they could be notified that they have unlocked $5 off their meal at Pizza Planet right next to the Toy Story Mania ride.
As you can see by the examples above, SCVNGR goes far beyond the check-in. SCVNGR is about experiencing brands and having users promote those brands in a fun way to their social-graphs. It's not just about telling your friends where you are or earning a virtual badge, it's about a fully customized experience with your favorite brand - something much more valuable to the user and the brand.
Disney, like other big brands, is making a gamble in the location-based space. Big brands like Coca-Cola, Conan O'Brien and the New England Patriots are making similar gambles. While custom foursquare and Gowalla badges are cool and pretty, they don't go nearly as far as SCVNGR can go for these big brands. With SCVNGR, Disney could take the most dreaded theme park experience (waiting in line) and transform it into an interactive experience for the user, earning them rewards, causing them to spend more money in the park and spreading more content to their social-graphs. As I stood in line for Toy Story Mania this weekend, I noticed countless adults and teens playing on their smart phones while in line. They were bored and they were looking for something - anything - to keep them entertained while they stared at the backs of people's heads. SCVNGR could have filled that void.
Don't hear me wrong - I am not saying that brands should choose not to play on other location-based platforms. Every brand should be doing the basics on each network (secure ownership of venues, setting up foursquare specials, creating tips, etc.) but as more and more brands look to invest money in this space, I am confident that SCVNGR will give brands both the greatest ROI and the greatest experience for users.
On June 17, 2010, I started a petition on Twitter calling for foursquare to create an "I Voted" badge for voters who check-in to their polling place locations on Election Day. On November 2, 2010, that dream will become a reality. Today, The I Voted Project is thrilled to announce that foursquare will be awarding an official "I Voted" badge to voters who check-in to their polling place location and "shout" #ivoted on November 2.
This project was designed with three purposes in mind:
Encourage civic participation through the distribution of the “I Voted” foursquare badge;
Increase transparency by visualizing how many voters are checking-in, and at which polling locations; and
Develop a replicable and scalable system to use for the 2012 Presidential Elections and beyond.
The official I Voted Project site, located at elections.foursquare.com, will go live on November 2nd and display “I Voted” check-ins throughout the country as they are happening. The site will allow users to explore check-ins by city and state, while also providing data about the volume, time of day and gender that each polling location is experiencing. The interactive map of check-ins will also be available for embed on any website. Here's a taste of what you will see on Election Day:
So how did this whole project come about? Shortly after our petition caught fire, Leslie Bradshaw of JESS3 (the brilliant design and data-visualization team behind this project) reached out to me and a handful of others about creating a coalition of passionate and experienced political digital strategists to make this idea a reality. We knew right off the bat that the biggest challenge to making this project happen would be uploading more than 108,000 accurate polling place locations across the country for a one-day affair. Fortunately, Direct Media Strategies had been working on producing that list since June when we joined the Voting Information Project with our good friends Patrick Ruffini and Mindy Finn at Engage. The data we were able to share with foursquare via the Voting Information Project proved to be a critical cornerstone to this project's launch.
When I first started the Twitter petition in June, I blogged that, "Someday soon, you will show up to your office with an “I Voted” sticker and your friends and colleagues will have already seen your “I Voted” foursquare badge on Facebook or Twitter." I am excited to say that that day will be November 2, 2010. To all of you who signed the petition that helped fuel this project, THANK YOU! I am honored to have been a part of this I Voted Project with the rest of this talented team:
Eric Friedman Director of Client Services at foursquare
Leslie Bradshaw Former Community Manager for C-SPAN's 2008 Convention and Debate Hubs (Webby Nominated) and current President & Chief Operating Officer at JESS3
Jesse Thomas Chief Executive Officer of JESS3 and Creative Mastermind
Patrick Ruffini Partner, Engage & former eCampaign Director, Republican National Committee
Mindy Finn Partner, Engage & former Internet Director for Romney for President 2008
Jordan Raynor President, Direct Media Strategies & Founder of the "I Voted" Act.ly Petition
Patrick Ottenhoff
Founder of The Electoral Map & Correspondent at the Atlantic
Tracy Viselli Member of the Twitter Vote Report team & Community Manager at ACTion Alexandria
David Almacy Former Internet & E_Communications for the White House & current SVP at Edelman Digital.
Since June, me and my team at Direct Media Strategies have been working with the very talented teams at Engage, NOI, Pew and Google on The Voting Information Project - an effort to, for the first time in history, make every single polling place location in America publicly accessible in one single location online. I am thrilled to share that with one week to go before Election Day, you and your campaigns can directly benefit from the fruits of our labor by embedding your own customizable polling place locator tool on the website of your choice. With the VIP Google Gadget (example below), you have the ability to provide your website visitors with official polling place location data from Secretary of State and local election offices across the country. So go ahead - embed it on your own site now and help get out the vote!
Last week, I had the honor of addressing the Florida Association of Counties' Annual Convention in Tampa, FL. I was asked to give a "Social Media 101" presentation, but took my speaker's prerogative to deliver a message I felt was much more critical for my audience of County Commissioners to hear. I charged the room to think less about the question "How can I use the internet to get myself elected?" and ask the more important question of "How can we use technology to make government more accessible, efficient and transparent?"
Here is my full presentation, broken into three parts:
