#MakeItCount – Nike Film Director Scraps Project, Travels World, and Creates Viral Hit

Kaitlyn Dennihy sent me a link rogue video that said almost nothing at all about Nike, lasted four minutes, and made me want to go out and purchase the product more than any commercial I can think of recently. The story behind it’s creation is even more fascinating than the ad itself. But first, watch the movie:

Casey Neistat, film director, was hired to create his third commercial for Nike. Tired of the same routine, they took a chance that could have caused them to be sued for breach of contract. From the movie:

Nike asked me to make a movie about what it meant to ‘Make It Count.’ Instead of making their movie, I spent the entire budget travelling around the world with my friend Max. We’d keep going until the money ran out. It lasted 10 days.

And this story is true.

Video Consumption in Social Channels

For Valentine’s Day, My Coke Rewards created a series of three posts that had pass along value that fans wanted to share with their own networks. The results were phenomenal, and insights on the post series showcased opportunities for leveraging multimedia (video and photo) posts in social media.

App #Geekout Trend: Real-time People Discovery Using Facebook Interests

I love following the startup scene in technology (specifically in social [especially using Facebook's Open Graph API], mobile and healthcare in particular). Drew Hawkins and I geeked out with a presentation on some of our favorite startups to emerge from TechCrunch Disrupt last fall internally at Engauge. My all-time, hands down favorite to emerge from the bunch was Wondershake, a location-based mobile app that connects individuals with like-minded people using their Facebook interests. This startup was included in all of the “remarkable” categories; however, it didn’t place because it was not available in the U.S.

Since then, I’ve seen no comparable players that align an app user’s interests to allow for real-time discovery of individuals around them. Until now.

Marketer-Speak in 2012 for Facebook Changes in 2011

2012 kicks off the year of the verb. Hot debates stemmed following the change in Edgerank, as part of comprehensive changes from F8, Facebook’s annual developer conference, in September of last year. Since then, subsequent changes affected Facebook applications, third party publishers, and Facebook analytics, to name a few. For those not as interested in keeping up with the day-to-day changes, below are three key summary strategies for adapting a Facebook page to optimize engagement with the changes and two key takeaways from the changes in 2011 moving forward.

Three key summary strategies for adapting a Facebook page to optimize engagement with 2011 Facebook changes:

1. Facebook decreases the value of a Page Like and of a Post Like.
2. For the social marketer: Comments four times more valuable in driving click-throughs than Likes.
3. Graphrank, a News Feed prioritization for Open Graph apps, comes to Facebook. 

Two key takeaways from 2011:

1. Facebook’s Champion in 2011? The developer,  the Hacker, and the Open Graph-speaking marketer.
2. Facebook applications will become the most valuable opportunity for brands to engage Facebook users.

Top Five: Lessons Learned in First Year of Blogging

I never dreamed I’d learn so much from blogging in one year, and the investment is well worth it. (More stunning to me than anyone is that my blog received more than 4,000 non-spam views over the course of a year, which is approximately 3,999 more than I expected.) Here is a top five countdown of lessons learned in my “freshman year” in a new terrain:

Insight #5: Search Is a Key Referral

My most organically-searched post consisted of less than one hundred words. The driver was search, in which users were looking for a data type that is no longer easily accessible in Facebook. Keeping text succinct and creating a how-to post allowed for the post to show above other more highly trafficked websites, like eHow, and was only outranked by pages from Facebook itself.

The post itself received more than 2,000 impressions in search. Using straight forward wording is critical in driving referrals. After all, the homepage only drew 30% of traffic (reiterating the need for good keywords for search within individual blog posts).

Insight #4: Content First

Recently, I’ve loved seeing how brands take excellent blog content and juxtapose it onto other platforms (such as Modcloth’s Pinterest page). But the fundamentals are that they started with good content on a blog.

Insight #3: Unexpected Successes

People love Top 10 Lists. And Geeks. A Top 10 List of Geeky Wedding Cakes post (of 40) drove more than 25% of the blog’s total traffic and had twice as many views as any other post. Really, geeks? Here’s one of the places we geeked out recently.

Report: Importance of Mobile in Consumer Shopping Intentions

Think Insights with Google is one of my favorite new free reports on consumer behavior. I receive their newsletter every quarter, and the latest featured a report on gauge of consumer interest measured at the beginning of Q4 last year to predict shopping behavior this past holiday season. The overall takeaway is that it’s critical to be available to shoppers (on both smartphones and tablets) as they are making decisions. Below are four highlights:

Lazy Man’s Four-Minute 2011 Viral Video Recap

My boyfriend and I had a bit too much fun this morning watching way too many viral videos from 2011, including “Motivational Bike Kid” and “Dancing With Swords” (really?).

Too lazy to watch the best viral videos from 2011 one at a time? Watch a 4-minute recap of the year’s best videos, which captures (an incredible) 79 videos: The Best Viral Videos of 2011.

The Creativity of Playing, Learning, and Innovating Technology

Weiden+Kennedy, one of Fast Company’s 50 Most Innovative Companies, recently wrote an interesting piece on the role of technology in the changing definition of what it means to be creative. They profile how traditional marketing agencies have transitioned into the digital landscape, and how the dynamic between planning and strategy has affected developers. In sum, the greatest creativity we see in the digital landscape is in the creative deployment of technology.

In the Atlanta office of Engauge, there is excellent collaboration between groups, especially from my perspective on the Digital Innovation Group (DIG) and how we interact with other teams. Social does not work in silos, and we are cross-functionally figuring out how to collaborate.

Within this, there exists a great opportunity to apply how we’ve incorporated social into other disciplines to do the same with technology, further incorporating it as a leading creative differentiator across disciplines. The solution may not exist solely with the technology leaders themselves. As we give the mission to other disciplines to adopt social (and, for example, that all members of the company need to be participating in social, not just the social team), it is as critical for other teams to adopt, engage with and experiment in leading technology.

Technology is the “language” that links creativity and implementation. Everyone, not just developers, needs to be well-versed in the language of technology to be able to converse and be relevant.

Digital Atlanta: Nonprofit Digital Strategy Forum

I’m excited to present tomorrow at the Nonprofit Digital Strategy Forum as part of Digital Atlanta. Thank you to Jessica Kirkwood for organizing. I’m looking forward to joining Cristin Jordan and Chad Elkins of Engauge and Shannon Primm and Sarah Cronin of Alzheimer’s Association, Georgia Chapter. Linked below is my presentation.

Social Currency for Brands: Where to Start

Social currency is how we enable consumers to interact with a brand in ways that are most natural and everyday for them. It means that we’re meeting consumers in their day-to-day life and providing utility from the brand without interrupting their flow. For example, we’re not asking them to visit a brand page to (go out of their way to) seek out our material. Instead, we’d identify their natural social behavior and give them an enhanced, more streamlined way to execute that action.