The Ocean Agency

Sometimes, you just can’t plan the best exposure.

So by now, you’ve probably seen this video, which recently exploded across the internet. Maybe it’s the catchy Chris Brown song, or the joyful wedding party, or just the general gutsiness it would take to do this that makes the video so addictive– whatever it is, it’s already gotten almost 2 million views on YouTube. Here at Ocean, our office has been bumping to “Forever” all day.

The “JK Wedding Entrance Dance” is the first and only video posted by Jill and Kevin, a couple from Minnesota. And that may just be the reason behind it becoming such a viral hit. It feels real, genuine and legitimate, and not like content created by a marketing company and planted on YouTube to drive traffic to a website or spread brand awareness. People love to share it, the defining characteristic of a viral success, because it comes from other people just like them, who were looking to share a moment of their life. If you are trying to create a viral smash hit, remembering the importance of the urge to share and emulating Jill and Kevin in their genuiness would probably take you a long way toward success.

Who benefits from this kind of viral video, though? Clearly, Jill and Kevin weren’t pushing any agenda with their wedding day stunt, but just expressing their personality and sharing it with friends. This time, Chris Brown may actually be the winner. According to The Idolater, his song “Forever,” is “currently No. 45 on the iTunes Store’s singles chart, and No. 41 on the corresponding chart at Amazon MP3.” Around a year after this song made it’s original pop chart splash, that’s a big deal. It also makes us agree with The Idolator writers–  maybe Chris Brown should send Jill and Kevin a wedding present for the free press. You know, something nicer than a breadmaker.

According to TechCrunch, Amazon has purchased well known online shoe retailer Zappos. Very rarely do you read about a business partnership, merger, or acquisition that makes this much sense for both brands.

In a letter  by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh published on their website, Hsieh explains that Zappos will remain an “independent entity and a ‘wholly-owned subsidiary’ of Amazon.”

Both Amazon and Zappos have won with this deal. Amazon’s greatest strength is the size and infrastructure of its operation– from exclusive deals with retailers to its legendary affiliate program. The sheer size of the Amazon webstore is astounding, and they have leveraged long tail and niche marketing to rise to the top of the online retail business. While Amazon’s size is its greatest asset, it is also its greatest weakness. People worry about customer service and personal interaction from a store the size of Amazon.

Zappos is legendary for its customer service, transparency, and social media presence. People shop at Amazon because they have just about every product imaginable and an extremely clean and intuitive shopping experience. People shop with Zappos partly because of their selection, but also because they are a company where customer service is at the forefront of their whole operation.

Now, with the merger, Zappos gets Amazon’s infrastructure and Amazon gets Zappos’ beloved personality. This is great news for both brands, and could forecast a larger trend of big business partnering with smaller businesses who excel in areas such as customer service or social media outreach.

But the best news of the entire deal: Soon you will be able to buy a pair of Minolo heels and a copy of Groundswell using the same ecommerce interface. Marketers everywhere are salivating.

Check out Jeff Bezos’ comments on the merger:

Everyday, something is written about sports and social media. The sports blogging community is quickly becoming monetized, and the line between the mainstream sports media and the sports blogosphere is quickly blurring. On ESPN’s SportsCenter broadcast, there is a new segment entitled the “Blog Buzz” where a sports marketing company uses it’s “Buzz-Manager” software to provide the top 5 most blogged about stories of the day.

Beyond blogging, thousands of athletes and teams are constantly on twitter and other social media portals. There is even a service that aggregates athletes’ twitter updates. Partly because of social media, the sports world is more transparent than ever, where athletes have the ability to control their own public image and interact directly with their fans. Chad “Ocho-Cinco” Johnson has even threatened to tweet during NFL games.

Now all of this is impressive, and has been examined thoroughly by just about every sports blog and PR company. What few have talked about however, is what major market teams can learn from smaller sports teams in niche markets.

Today, I became a fan of the Chicago Red Stars on facebook and started following them on twitter. For those who aren’t familiar, the Red Stars a professional women’s soccer team from Chicago. After checking them out, I am very impressed by their social media campaign and fan community. There is much that major market sports teams can learn from these Red Stars:

1) Build an officially licensed and branded fan community:

The Red Stars have an amazing fan community. The key to the community is integration. All of the Red Stars’ social media presence is accessible from the fan community– links to their twitter, facebook, myspace, and youtube profiles.

Beyond links to other social profiles, they have lots of internal blogs and media on the page.

The fan community reflects  that the organization seriously cares about their fans. Moreover, by putting up interesting and fresh content, they will convert many new fans (like me), who just happen to browse through their community.

Imagine if every NFL team had a branded fan community with great interactive content  such as forums, pictures, video, and blogs like the Red Stars. Give fans the tools to express their loyalty online,and your brand or fandom will grow exponentially.

2) Leverage contest marketing with Twitter and Facebook

Both twitter and facebook are great tools for contest marketing. Many large market sports teams are using both twitter and facebook, but few are tapping into their full potential.

The Red Stars are running a campaign right now where if you suggest friends join the facebook group you receive a $10 ticket to the game. Moreover, if they hit their goal, 5 fans will win free parking.

This is a perfect example of the power of contest marketing with twitter and facebook. I guarantee you if a major market team ran a contest similar to this they would be on Twitter’s trending topics within hours. Imagine if an NFL team randomly gave away 5 pairs of tickets a day to those who mentioned the team on twitter using hashtags. People would go nuts.

3) Transparency and Fan Appreciation (Reaching out to content creators)

One of my favorite things about the Red Stars fan community site is that they list all the people who work within the organization with links to their personal profiles and blogs. In this day and age, transparency in your organization is key. We live in a world where the open brand is king, and privacy has been redefined.

Acting as a closed brand, you appear untrustworthy. In today’s world, if everything isn’t placed out in the open, it is assumed you are hiding something. Fans want to be part of their organization, they want to know who is running their team, and feel like they reflect their own values.

Show your fans that you reflect their desires by expressing your own ideas  in an authentic way. By showing the human side of your franchise you will create a fan base and community who not only believes in the athletic prowess of your team but in the underlying message of your whole organization.

In the sports world in particular, many sports bloggers and other content creators have huge followings. Bring those content creators into your own fan community. Offer them guest posts. Involve them in press release creation. While you can never fully control the message in the online world, you can develop relationships and communication avenues where you appear likeable and human– even in the eyes of those pesky bloggers.

The Red Stars are building up a passionate fan base one social profile at a time– your major market teams could learn a thing or two from them.

Interactive marketing and fashion are a natural combination. People who are into fashion love to talk about it and share their opinions with others, after all, and there are hundreds of social networks and thousands of blogs devoted to fashion, trends, and personal style. 

Read more…

Beer is inherently social, and people love to talk, drink,  and share their beer. It is most definitely a powerful conversation starter. Essentially, beer is the perfect object for social media

.

Case in point: Facebook has a gift program, that allows you to place a gift on other people’s profiles. They charge a nominal fee for the gift, and brands can also pay for gift placement.  When they were trying to get their gift program off the ground, one of the free gifts they offered was a beer mug filled with delicious brew. It was a huge hit. Facebook leveraged free effectively, and today Facebook gifts are everywhere, partly thanks to that little beer stein.

Beyond the obvious qualities that allow beer to connect people, companies that make beer, especially those who make hard to find micro and specialty brews, portray themselves as especially social — just regular folks who enjoy drinking with friends and savoring the flavor of life. Even larger brands, such as Sam Adams, have adopted this approach, featuring “brew-masters” in commercials who describe their passion for beer.

These tactics allow beer companies to appear open, likeable, and as beverage experts. At face value, many of these micro-breweries market themselves so effectively that you would swear that they would give their beer away for free if they could.

So the goal of most breweries is to appear open, social, and friendly. Social media allows brands to connect with their fans, appear transparent, and increase their likeability. So, I’ll come right out and say it. Beer companies, especially small micro-breweries with a following of passionate fans, need to use social media.

By using social media specialty and micro breweries can further their already effective branding, and be as social as possible. Beyond branding, Social media also gives you amazing niche marketing. Micro and specialty breweries definitely cater to a growing niche market, that probably is engrossed in social media already.

So, to all you micro and specialty breweries out there, leverage this passion and further your branding by using social media. Whether it is creating a facebook fanpage where you advertise events and talk about new brews, or using twitter to interact with your fans, or a great company blog that illusrates your personality, social media is key for growing your business. So get started today.

For some great examples of micro and specialty breweries that effectively use social media, check these out:

Dogfish Head Brewery. Not only do they have great beer, but they have an impressive Twitter presence as well, check it out.

New Holland Brewery. They have great blogs that really illustrate their personality. Makes me want to go hang out in Michigan, which says something about the power of their social media presence.

New Belgium Brewery. They have a great site, a facebook fan page, and a strong Twitter following. Also, their Skinny Dip is one of my favorite summer beers. Yum.

We at The Ocean Agency were very excited to hear about Chrome OS yesterday. Now that I’ve had a chance to read quite a few articles about Chrome OS, I’m ready to offer some insight:

1) Chrome OS is a direct attack on Microsoft for releasing Bing.

Google is definitely getting a little revenge. Chrome OS screams: “You step on our search turf, we’ll step on your operating system turf”. Not to liken the Google and Microsoft feud to gang violence, but it seems pretty clear that these two camps don’t get along. While this is fun to write about, it is also a little worrisome. I can’t think of too many business innovations that stem from hatred or revenge. Hopefully Chrome OS will be legitimate innovation, not just a cheap plot to take some of Microsofts’ OS market share.

2) Is a Web Based OS the Future of Computing?

While this is an extremely enticing idea, I’m not sold on it just yet. While Google applications have come a long way since they were first introduced, it seems a little premature to deem desktop applications irrelevant. Do you think Google OS will be able to run Photoshop or Final Cut Pro?

While desktop applications are slowly becoming overshadowed as web applications become more powerful (think about services like mint.com to replace Quicken or  playlist services like Blip.fm, Last.fm, or Pandora to replace Itunes), desktop applications are by no means irrelevant.

While web applications offer certain advantages, such as infinite backup and cloud computing, the sheer power of desktop applications has not been matched. In other words, Chrome OS cannot succeed unless it is powerful enough to run the most powerful of desktop applications.

3) What does Chrome OS mean for the future of online interactive marketing?

The development of Chrome OS reflects that people will want their desktop applications integrated with web services and applications. As people begin to store more and more data online, online and interactive marketing will become even more important. As marketers, we will have more data than ever before, and ads will become even more well targeted.

The fact that the Google OS is even a possibility reflects just how far the internet has come and that it will be even further integrated in to the fabric of our daily lives. This is great news for online marketers, and bad news for techno-fobes. At Ocean, we’re excited. Are you?

Some great further reading:

Mashable

Buzz Machine

Here in Chicago, everyone loves to eat. The restaurant and bar scene in Chicago is both vibrant and cutthroat. While there are plenty of diners and drinkers, there are also plenty of restaurants.

As a restaurant in a saturated market, how do you stand out?

Restaurant that needs some online marketing

Online marketing, especially a strong social media presence, can build a brand awareness for your restaurant and bring in waves of new customers with a small investment. Here are some tips on how local restaurants can leverage the power of social media and online marketing to shine in a cluttered market.

1) Use Twitter and Facebook:

While this seems obvious, there is more to these outlets than simply advertising your weekly specials. Facebook is ideal for creating a community around your restaurant or bar, with testimonials and pictures to prove that your place truly is the most fun. Moreover, a facebook fan page that is updated regularly implies that you both have outstanding customer service and a customer base that values your product. Facebook fan pages are a great way to sell an experience, to illustrate the ambiance and clientele of your bar or restaurant in a powerful way.

Twitter is a great way to advertise specials and hold interactive contests. For example, let’s say your trying to start up a happy hour business at your mostly nighttime bar.

What if you design a contest through twitter where anyone who includes a hashtag with your restaurant in it gets a free pitcher of beer from 3-6 PM? This a simple way to get your potential customers both curious and involved.

2) Food and Drink Bloggers are Powerful

Reaching out to food and drink bloggers (maybe even offering a free dinner in exchange for a review), is a great way to promote your restaurant online. Identify bloggers who have lots of online clout, meaning those who receive generous amounts of traffic, and those who are active across all social media platforms.

There is nothing better than having a potential new customer hear that your bar or restaurant is great from someone that they trust.

3) More People than ever are finding restaurants and bars online, As a restaurant or bar owner you need to manage your web presence.

As sites like Yelp, Citysearch and Metromix become more and more popular, as a restaurant or bar owner, you need to pay attention to what is being said about you.

While you cannot control what is being said on the hundreds of sites where customers can express their love or hatred of your establishment, you can interact with them, and respond to them in a manner that shows you care about your customers.

If there are customers that are especially angry, maybe you can offer them a free drink or appetizer next time they come in. Now instead of talking about a bad meal or terrible service, they’ll talk about your wonderful social media presence and generosity. Constant monitoring and interacting on social media channels is the only way to keep manage your bar or restaurants image online.

4) Search Engine Optimization is increasingly important.

Imagine this. After work a group of co-workers want to meet up at a bar. Because they live 20 minutes from where they work, they aren’t especially familiar with the bars or restaurants in the area. So, one of them types “Chicago Loop Happy Hour Bar” into google, then looks at the Googled sponsored results, looks at the Yelp, Citysearch, Metromix, and Chicago Tribune reviews, and then decides on a place based on a combination of user reviews, posted daily specials, and placement within the google search universe.

In that scenario, how would a customer find your bar or restaurant? Think about the previous scenario whenever you are managing your online presence. How are the title tags for your website? What about your html code, is it search engine friendly? Do you have a blog and strong backlinks?

While online marketing and social media expertise are important for all bars and restaurants, it is especially important for small and local restaurants, as they do not have the brand recognition that larger chain restaurants and bars do.

The good news is that small local restaurants can build effective brand recognition and find customers harnessing the power of online marketing. Build an interactive community around your restaurants, monitor your online presence, and make sure you rank well on major search engines. Then watch the customers stream into your doors.

Happy Friday!

To get your weekend started here are some links that have our office buzzing this week.

1) Mashable highlights the importance of appearing generous in one’s online strategy. This does not necessarily mean giving things away, but rather having an open brand that rewards interaction. This generosity needs to be expressed by celebrating your customers and sharing more about yourself. 

This goes for web design as well, having a clean and user friendly interface definitely makes brands appear more generous and inviting. Rounded logos and bright color schemes definitely portray generosity as well. A great example designed by Ocean: Earth Mate Lighting. 

2) Another from Mashable, CrowdEye is looking to challenge Twitter in real time search. For us SEO geeks, this means paying more attention to real time information as more web traffic finds websites from real time conversation, rather than more traditional web channels. 

3) From the Econsultancy blog, Bing’s traffic has been rising steadily since its inception two weeks ago. Microsoft has placed a lot of capital into a television marketing campaign that definitely seems to be generating buzz. With the rise of both real time search and Bing, Google’s exclusive hold on the search market may be eroding slowly. Knowing Google however, innovation to squash its competitors should be on the way. 

4) Another post from the Econsultancy blog, looks at the redesign of a furniture website and how it has translated in to an extreme bump in sales. Great example of how good web design can improve your business exponentially. 

Alright enjoy your weekend, and feel free to share your thoughts on the linked articles!

Mousavi supporters (via the big picture @ boston.com)

The uproar in Iran is big news. At the Ocean Agency, we are inspired by Iranians’ fighting for their freedom.  We would like to think that we would do the same if we were placed in a similar situation. News outlets across the globe have been following the story, and social media has emerged as an impressive  conduit for unrestricted first hand information from the ground. Currently, with few foreign journalists in Iran groups from the US State Department to CNN are relying on social media to cover the story.

The centrality and necessity of social media in the coverage of this event reflects more than a changing journalistic landscape however. The Iranian election illuminates the ability of social media agents  to organize effectively and provide real time information quickly, fueling a world-wide conversation that has the potential to reach everyone with internet access.

Taken as a social media marketing case study, the Iranian election and its corresponding  coverage can teach online marketers how to better harness the power of social media:

1) Start an interesting conversation:

Any online marketer can target bloggers and social networks, and just simply drop in a link or push a product. The goal of social media is to create conversations and connections. People will talk about your product only if it is worth talking about, or at the very least packaged in an interesting way.

The Iranian election story took off because it appeals to a variety of our human instincts, touching on themes of religious freedom, persecution, violence, and revolution. Chances are your product won’t be this interesting, but as a marketer, you can package a product in a way that taps into what people already talk and care about. This should be a cornerstone of your social media strategy.

2) Harness the power of “real-time”

Some of the power of social media lies in its revolutionary ability to spread ideas in real time to a myriad of people. It can reach into niches and crowds and connect with individuals who belong to a variety of different marketing profiles. Moreover, it can do this in real time, providing a constant flow of information that cannot be found anywhere else.

Don’t think of social media as just another platform for spreading information. To garner the most success, you need to tailor content for social media, content that cannot be found or interacted with on any other media platform.
Would you buy a color printer if you only needed to print in black and white? Why use social media tools if you are not tapping into all of their capabilities?

3) Don’t forget about traditional media coverage:

While many people do live their lives online and on their smart phones constantly connected to the web, many do not. Traditional media plays a large role in driving casual web users to internet “events”. The Iranian elections  became a social media phenomenon only after traditional media coverage. A lofty goal for a great online marketing campaign should be to create such intense, engaging, and interesting conversation that traditional media deems it newsworthy.

Create an engaging conversation, create content that is designed specifically for social media platforms, and don’t forget the power of traditional media coverage. In the world of online marketing there is much to learn from the constantly evolving world around us, the Iranian election and subsequent uproar is no exception.

Happy Friday all!

It has been a busy week here at the Ocean Agency. Here are some interesting creative web design links that our web design firm will be thinking about this (hopefully) sunny weekend.

It was widely speculated that Microsoft would unveil their new search engine, Bing today. Alas, they have been completely overshadowed by Google who unveiled the first looks at their “Wave” platform today.

Wave will combine email, instant messaging, live editing of documents and online photo and video sharing all on one platform. This has the potential to really shake up the internet world. This is a developing story that is definitely worth following. TechCrunch has a full analysis and interviews from the Google developer conference. A preview of wave can be viewed here.

Beyond this huge news in the internet world, here are some interesting links that deal with creative web design:

1) Darren Rowse, who runs problogger.com, writes on SitePoint about sneeze pages for you blogs. Most blog posts go unnoticed once they leave the front page or recent stories tab. A sneeze page is a great way to show off your archives.

2) From PSD/Tuts (Photoshop tutorials),  has 45 step by step photoshop tutorials to create interesting websites. While you should always leave web design to the expert design firms, these tutorials are great for creating simple individual web pages, or to give you or your business ideas of how you want you web page to look.

3) For those developers out there, here is a great article on SixRevisions.com about how to speed up web page response times. Really helpful tips.

4) From Designer-Daily, 11 ways to increase your RSS feed subscribers. Great suggestions to increase your visibility as a blogger, writer or designer.

5) Lastly, for those who enjoy Hulu, but want a more television like experience, TechCrunch reports that Hulu is launching a desktop application. This means that you can now browse hulu with you computer remote. I recommend hooking up your laptop to your TV with an HDMI cable and enjoying hulu on the big screen. A new labs section also launched on Hulu today, so be sure to check out the new features as they go live.

Enjoy your weekend!