Digital Influence Mapping Project

Idea Bar 10: Travelers' Smoking "Clubs"

Overheard in a meeting: "Cigarette smokers are the last great counter culture." I am not so sure about "last." Still, the world has changed. Harley Owners are now a customer retention program versus a badge of outlaw honor. Rock and roll has long since been main-streamed by the Live Nations of the world.

Cigarette smoking is counter culture, no doubt. And that's what makes the business ripe for programs that reward the fan (existing adult smoker). There are so many marketing restrictions in the business, it makes the pharmaceutical industry look like just another consumer packaged good. They need new ways to stay true to those restrictions (don't market to new smokers - especially youth).

I don't smoke. I did once. I do not want my children to smoke. And I am not advocating smoking. But, ever since the industry put those intense warning messages on the packs, it seems more like matter of personal responsibility.  So what's the Idea?   

The Haze Club
You know the glassed-in room with little more than hard plastic, bus station seating and a haze of cigarette smoke that are the "designated smoking room" in airport terminals? They remind me of the smoking room at highschool which was a dark room with hard wooden benches and a perpetual stench. They wanted us to hate it. We didn't.

Why aren't there Admiral Club-like smoking lounges sponsored by a tobacco company eager to win wallet-share from the already smoking-committed?

Members-only, the Haze Club (no need to pretend it's anything but proud of the smoke) would exist behind mysterious, wood-paneled doors. Inside, leather arm chairs and Vitamin Water for everyone. It would feel like a club - a little exclusive, a little plush. Only 18-and-over existing smokers could join.

Online a members-only web site would let you find the unlabled locations of the Haze Club in airports and select southern cities across the country. You could even connect it with your Dopplr application to let them know when you would be passing through and if you had any special brand needs.

If smoking is counter-culture, it's time they started celebrating that and overhauled their own image. 

Idea Bar #9: Health Fashion & Lifestyle Store

So many pharmaceutical companies want to build better relationships with patients and physicians yet get caught in the ruthless cycle of pressure for short-term product sales and safely navigating regulation or worse, the threat of more regulation. Launching a new drug is complicated. And it's a game with a lot riding on it. A game that can squash creativity in certain organizations.

Regulation like "fair practice," DTC rules and "adverse event reporting"  are hard enough. The effectiveness of the push and pull of TV adverstising for drugs is really not all that clear. 

So, how can pharma build that better relationship? Can they really balance product brand-building, corporate brand-building and sales?

The Well, Well, Well Marketplace

Someone needs to create the Well, Well, Well Market (WWWM). We're talking -  "well, well, well, don't you look good" or "well, well, well I thought you were sick but you seem to be doing okay..."

This is a market that sells products that help us all live well with our various diseases and conditions without sacrificing our taste. If we test ourselves because we are diabetic, we use cool kits like Stickme Designs. If we have to take food through a tube even after you are back at work (happened to a friend of mine), you have a cool shoulder bag with the tubing built into your shirt (remember the cool "stillsuits" from Dune? ). If your hair is out due to chemo, not only do you get much cooler scarves but head-care supplies like sunscreen and even some hat suggestions.

The bottom line - every condition that allows us to remain engaged in life we ought to enhance by putting our best fashion and design talent against it.

It's Alessi for devices. Donna Karan for chemo scarves. Dean Kamen for wheelchairs.

Marketplace of Ideas
And it's also a marketplace of new fashion and design innovations from the crowd. Look at today's NY Times magazine article on the 'craft-centric' cottage industries sprung up throughout the Web . This marketplace could become not just a breath of fresh and cool air for people challenged by conditions, it could also become a boost for those creative minds that would dream up super cool solutions.

One of the biggest hurdles for big business to develop lifestyle solutions for people without legs or with special medical needs is the small size of the marketplace. Yet their are many entrepeneurs who are motivated by the challenges they face or their loved ones face. They are more than willing to dream up fashion and design products without a million-dollar payday expectation.

Pharma builds the store 
What if a pharma built the store? One of the challenges here is that no one pharma has drugs for devices across a wide collection of conditions. While this one has deep expertise in diabetes, another will have deep expertise in cancer treatments. Maybe an independent needs to build the mall, but the individual pharmas need the opportunity to create a cool store for their patients (and physicians) that help them live well with their condition. 

Being 'of-use' to patients is a great way to demonstrate they really do care. And helping people with diseases or conditions lead a high-quality of life via the best style and usability in design is one way to do it. Even if a pharma just built a promotional 'window' for these great products and, in the process, motivated others to design even better looking chemo chapeaus. 

Idea Bar #8: Nonprofit Widgets in the age of OpenSocial

With this week's announcement from Google of OpenSocial - essentially creating a uber-platform to eclipse all platforms (i.e. Facebook) - and the news that MySpace has joined, widgets suddenly became a lot more relevant. The promise behind the Open Social move, whose API became available late last week, is that advertisers can now create widgets that hold some, hopefully, useful or delightful code, that can be embedded in user profiles across a range of social networks including MySpace, Bebo, Linkedin and more. More than that, we may achieve that wonderful goal of a single social network profile, "one ring to bind them."

Non-profits must jump on the widget wagon now!

If you go to widgetbox, one of the clearinghouse directories of widgets for different social networks, you will find approximately 29 nonprofit widgets available for your download and installation pleasure. They are a pretty varied and obscure bunch from the Dancing Dolphin to the Wild Apricot. Where is the Peace Corps? Amnesty International? Oxfam? Oceana?

So far, folks are using the widget to pull RSS headlines into a special box. (You can check out my Auctions for Change widget on my MySpace page)

I want to feature the 1-2 organizations that I support on my blog(s) and social netwrk profiles. I want to promote their mission and solicit other supporters ($$$). I need a widget that offers something more than headlines. It should offer something engaging like a dynamic statistic of the number of people going without meals in different parts of the world right now. Here's my RockYou countdown widget reminding me that I am off to Taos in t-minus "x" days and counting. How hard would it be to make that a "stat-widget" driven by real research numbers that tell me how many folks are starving, how much of the ocean is polluted, or the average human carbon footprint?

Then I need a micropayment button that allows visitors to give $1 to $1000 (or whatever) right there in the widget. How many people will click and give based upon widget exposure alone? No idea. But chances are, if it's on my blog, it's a cause I support and I will blog about it. Let me be your champion.

Non-profits need to engage their brand ambassadors now. We need nonprofitwidget.org to emerge not as just another clearinghouse (like widgetbox) but as a toolbox for promotion and measurement for nonprofits who would use this type of resource.

Here's how nonprofitwidget.org can work:

• All nonprofits can publish their widgets in this directory which features all of the requisite download and embed protocols to relieve the necessity of too much technical knowledge.
• A directory of developers with rating systems would help nonprofits connect with folks to build the widgets.
• A promotion toolbox will give the nonprofit staff a set of procedures and tools to help promote their widgets
• A voluntary "membership" link will allow all of the folks who are using the widget to remain connected.
• Each widget "page" would feature and aggregate set of links to the blogs who feature that widget thus sending some link love back to those who publish the widget. 

Unlike advertisers who will wrestle with how to measure the use of widgets in terms they are used to (online advertising - see this WaPo article from Saturday), nonprofits have everything to gain by activating their greatest asset - their supporters and fans. 

As reported in the NTEN, Network for Good has released a new whitepaper on technology and fundraising. In general, the report includes their experience with widgets and here are some key points:

"When Wired Fundraisers Talk, People Listen: The messenger matters even more than the message.

Not Every Wired Fundraiser Is a Champion: The successful Wired Fundraiser has a relatively rare combination of true passion and a means to lend a sense of urgency to their cause.

Technology Makes a Difference: Widgets and social networks make existing personal fundraisers more effective.

Smart Charities Embrace the Wired Fundraiser: And they find their own, “inner” Wired Fundraiser. "

 

Idea Bar #7: Geek Paradise

Geek is cool. It always has been, it has just taken different forms. Today, it's all about video games, D&D, comic books, science fiction and a splintered universe of offbeat music including Nerdcore (geek hip hop). (You can check out a documentary of the Nerdcore "movement" here) The geek eco-system is actually made up of sub-communities defined by subject matter interests from experience format (comic book vs. computer game) to story types (Battlestar Gallactica to Dr. Who) to other affinities, I'm sure.

The common element is a slight-to-greater sense of being an outsider or at least on the fringes of the head-of-the-tail pop culture. An there is a type of tribal kinship. Can this kinship transcend the subcommunities' differences? Can a comic book geek identify with a Halo 3 enthusiast? I think the tribal sense is powerful and may transcend the experience and even the story formats. I had that sense when I attended VideoGames Live! at the Kennedy Center.

The Idea already
What if we could create the ultimate Geek destination that combined the best of geek retail with community? What if we created the Geek Superstore?

Retail
xtremegeek and ThinkGeek are well-established in this category. We need to rethink the category. The current xtremegeek store has some great stuff (where else can you find geek staples like trebuchets and barcode t-shirts) but looks and feels too much like that bastion of malls from the eighties. We need more cross-over merchandise:

• button-down white shirts with white-thread (subtle) emblems of Battlestar Gallactica and the scientists from Andromeda Strain. You know, things a guy can wear to work and "blend" while still having that subtle, tribal symbol.
• A selection of geek music from electronica to hiphop
• Advance editions of big name comic books like DMZ
• Special edition Moleskine notebooks with simple text messages on the outside (e.g. "And they have a plan", "I'm a doctor not a brickmason.")
• Gadgets: the latest 4Gb SD Cards (I wish), micro-GPS's, special-use MP3 players.

We have to be careful here as many of the most desireable gadgets - iPhones, Blackkberry 8830's - would require complex service and sales support. Still there's a fleet of  gadgets on another level. Or we could create the "ultimate collection" which is really only one produce per category but it's the best in it's class. 

Community
It must be more than standard retail. Geeks are a tribe(s). They are social amongst themselves and are enthusiasts for authentic, if not a bit fanciful, experiences. Apple has done a good job of creating a sense of community in their flagship stores. Between the genius bar, product demos, auditorium and occaisional events, they become a destination. Discovery had that in their awesome DC flagship store when I worked there. We actually broadcast a live weekly Webcast from the store in front of an audience. Thinkgeek is already doing some fun things to build community. The good news is that the community(s) already exist. That is the best way to "build" community - start with an authentic, organic core. We have to understand the community and then offer it ways that make it easier to interact.

• Free broadest-band wireless. Keep it simple. That's the bright light. We (geeks) are the moths. You get it.
• Organize products around customer picks. This is like the independent bookstore that features a display of staff picks with handwritten reviews. These would be collected and displayed online. But customer lists would also be featured in-store to give them a spotlight.
• Create a creators circuit where the writer of Y: The Last Man and the effects guy from Serenity can talk and meet with fans. We already see this happening at Comiccon and other big events. Let's bring in more people to talk with fans. It's no longer about the head-of-the-tail stars, it's the creatives that contribute that are interesting. And geek fans are loyal fans.
• Product co-creation. Let's take a page from the book of Threadless. They produce customer-created t-shirts that are voted up by the community. Let's invite customers in to vote up merchandise for our shelves. They choose.

The name
Teh PownTown. Teh-ville. I know it sucks. I need some help here. I have become a big fan of Namewire, the name blog. They are the best naming and branding blog out there and I follow them regularly. I am hoping they can help name this IdeaBar idea.

"Teh" is the classic typo for "the" and before you dismiss it completely think of the SEO benefits. "Pown" is current geek speak. "Town" is stupid but like I said, I need some help.

Whatever the name, it must appeal to the fringe sensibility of the geeks even at the expense of becoming a bit of a head-scratcher for the mass market.

Idea Bar #7: Walk-a-thon "Flash"

How many walk-a-thons are there out there? Is it a tried-and-true model for community participation in a good cause or tired-and-tame based upon over-use and lack of imagination? Does it pull in the same walkers or draw new crowds.

Our good friend, Wikipedia defines walkathons(walk-a-thons) as:

"A walkathon (walk-a-thon), or walking marathon is a type of community or school fundraiser where participants raise money by collecting donations or pledges for walking a predetermined distance or course."

And the most notable examples include:

AIDS Walk

Breast Cancer 3Day

MS Challenge Walk

WalkAmerica

Relay for Life

There are, of course, all sorts of other marathons, bike-a-thons, etc.. Walk-a-thons are great because they are accessible to most people. If I can walk, I can make a difference. Even if I cannot walk, I can sponsor someone who can. But there are too many of them.

Bring on the Flash

But it is tired. If I do not have a personal connection to the issue, I overlook the same-same posters promoting something-a-thon on Saturday morning somewhere in America.

What if the next walk-a-thon took a page from Converse.com (their ConverseOne design-your-shoe app) and Poject Runway (their make fashion fun and shareable)? What if participants were invited to customize their sneakers with the grandest of "flash" - you know, homemade sparkly, colorful, wild stuff? Not only would participants do the walk-a-thon thing but they could also participate in a wild and weird fashion show of homemade good and bad taste combined.

Local merchants could sponsor a Friday night event leading up to the Saturday event. Kids could create clubs at school to compete. Those who shun exercise but love showing off would get motivated. We would create Flickr galleries of shoe entries and extend the voting online creating a whole dimansion of engagement that doesn't exist right now. And fresh, new life would breathe nto a tired-yet-true model. (And new money would come in)

Walk-a-thon-a-lulu - that's what I would call it. And I promise not to copyright it or buy the url. Another IdeaBar there for the taking.

(get some ideas here at the Solepedia: encyclopedia of sneakers)

(And check out Rohit's latest IdeaBar on Magazie Subscription Coupons)

Megatrends and the Glory of the Road

Will the shrinking credit market affect the VC market and exhuberance around Web 2.0? Never!

Anyhow, David Beisel at Venrock had an interesting post outlining Seven Ubertrends ripe for VC capital. Here are the first three and I encourage you to click through to see the rest:

"1. The digitalization of transportation experience. Our cars are transforming from motorized transportation into digital immersion experiences. With in-dash devices ranging from GPS, to satellite radio, to integrated telephone controllers, the place where many Americans spend much of their day is going digital. Also, other transportation experiences, namely public transportation, is being affected by a digitalization trend – everything from digital signage in subways to infomation touchscreens in taxis is modifying what we do when going from here to there.

2. Internet’s facilitation of green lifestyle. With concern over the environment becoming a progressively more relevant issue, the web provides a natural vehicle for connecting people to resources and services which lessen impact of individuals on environment. We are at the beginning of “The Green Web” which will provide individuals within our society a leveraged way to positively affect the planet.

3. Influence and word-of-mouth marketing facilitated by online social software. Marketers are increasingly concerned about truly engaging with consumers as the effectiveness of traditional advertising erodes. Social software (in its broadest sense) coupled with the principles of word-of-mouth marketing will provide for successfully reaching potential customers via the most trusted source – people they already know."

Idea Mini-Bar

The first point I find interesting as we have been poking around Sync - the voice activated mobile and MP3 control that is a joint venture between Microsoft and Ford - for a client. It's only natural that we would spend energy figuring out how to make use of our time traveling and especially commuting. I hope some equal energy is spent on making the road experience more glorious and fun via digital.

• What about a digital version of "I Spy" that would let cars traveling the same road participate as a community? "I spy something red near Exit 12...."

• Or a voice activated Yahoo Answers for a local community. Driving through, I could call a 1.800 humber and pose a question about the best diner in town with fresh pie. It gets converted to text, someone answers and it appears on my Google map mashup that is custom published for my trip.

• Or a traffic alert collective where everyone traveling on I95 through Maryland subscribes to a live channel that broadcasts traffic reports called in from the crowd.

I am all for seeing where travel innovations go to make us more productive during those lull moments we cannot control. But I don't want to lose the sense of adventure I get on road trips to the distractions of headphones and DVD consoles.

(image Heart Like a Wheel (2006)  from http://www.takehitoetani.com/hbbb.html)

Idea Bar #6: Brand Jingle Mashups

How do you take a classic brand who made their mark back before Johnny Quest and whose enduring brand "footprint" is a music jingle and make it relevant to a new, younger audience?

Think of "Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Mayer weiner...." or my personal favorite, the Good and Plenty song (actually qualifies as a "song" as it tells a complete story just the way Johnny Cash would).

I know - boomer crap. Still, these musical phantoms linger in the ether around us just waiting to be resurrected. Most ad agencies would re-introduce them through new television advertising.

What if you orchestrated them a dozen different ways and then unleashed them on the growing music mash-up universe. Users could layer them into new creations, trade the music elements, create their own and get some instant recognition for their work. Dozens of different genres of  "Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Meyer weiner...." would pop up with hip hop back beats, electronica wavers, rock and roll drum solos.

Promote the activity within existing social networks (e.g. My Space, Facebook, Bebo), influential bloggers, and even via partnerships with relevant sites (e.g. www.splicemusic.com ). And construct gallery pages to return well in major search engines along with the third party content. 

To drive uptake and mashup creation, we can hold a contest that allows for both judged winners and people’s choice winners. Much like users voted during the recent Slideshare competition, particpants can vote their favorites up and down. That leads to the people’s choice. Meanwhile, we can enlist judges from the mashup community (and who have credibility) such as Thaumata from splicemusic or DJ ZTrip or DJ Spooky.

These judges are celebrities in the world of mashup music and would add a draw to the competition.

Let’s give our users the jingle outright. Let’s allow them to make it their own. Just as teens and young adults rediscover their parents’ music and mash it up or otherwise make it their own, they can do the same with jingles. This is about co-creation NOT about adopting the vernacular of social media to “market.”

Will they butcher the brand? You betcha. That's a good thing because they will make it their own.

Idea Mini Bar #3: Band Tour RSS

This easily falls into the "this must have been done everywhere but I can't find it" category. There are about 6-8 bands that I am sufficiently in love with that I want to see them when they come within 60 miles of DC. I won't tell you them all but just to give you some idea:

• Grinderman (or the Bad Seeds whichever tours US first)
• Social Distortion (yes, they are back on the road and already have some East Coast dates)
• Drive-by Truckers (never seen them but they are supposed to be a great show)
• Thirsty Merc (touring their Australian homeland at the moment)

There are at least four more.

Why can't I just subscribe to their tour RSS feed? Why do I have to check their Web sites every so often to try and catch when new dates appear? I am a fan. Make it easy for me to show up and spread the word.

Anyhow, it's hard to believe that My Space doesn't have the RSS tour feed thing built in. Aren't I on fan email alerts you ask? Yes and no. The "yes" - I am on some band's email lists but it clutters up my Inbox. My feed reader is the place to be. The "no" - I have been dropped by the Social Distortion email list. I know because my wife still gets email but I do not. If it were a RSS feed, I would have known immediately if there was some technical problem.

Could this be done by Tickets.com or Ticketmaster? No. Unfortunately with their ticket pricing practices, these guys are one level below the cable company in terms of credibility, trust and so forth. More and more bands are ticketing outside these 600-lb gorillas, that I would prefer to hear from the band, itself.

Some labels are doing it. Here is the RSS Feed for Sonic Youth. But you don't need Geffen Records to provide an RSS feed.

Hook me up, baby.

Idea Mini Bar #2: Flickr Fashion Slideshows

It's always great to see how different people use the tools in really useful ways. Mai has just started a blog that captures and comments on street fashion in SF (thanks to Awesome which is...awesome). But it is Mai's Flickr account where the magic happens. If you worked for a fashion company, retailer, or maybe an ad agency, why not set up Flickr slideshows to play on your hallway computer displays (if you have them - we do). And as you might guess, Mia has some company out there with many people posting snaps they take on the street of fashion - mostly youth.

Do you need an expensive trendwatcher to offer reports of what folks are wearing out there? Only if they offer insight along with it.

Set up your in-office flatscreens that usually cycle the work created by the agency/company for outside visitors to display slideshows from these Flickr feeds. These internal screens will spark conversation inside the company and demonstrate something more to visitors - that you look outward, not inward.

Idea Mini Bar #1: ColbertNation Flag

This is a mini-bar idea. Seemed so obvious at the time so I didn't mention it but then I Googled a bit and found no one taking up the flag, so-to-speak.

Stephen Colbert challenged his Antarctic viewer, Michael Rehm, to design and plant a flag in Antarctica on his behalf. This coming from the guy who produced great green screen clips of himself weilding a light saber so that his fans could do a mash-up.

We should all be challenged to create the ColbertNation flag, post our designs on Flickr, allow Digg-style voting, even encourage different designers to do a mash-up of sorts. Clearly Colbert has developed a community of fans. They get some of their sustenance at CobertNation.com. There is plenty of 'social" activity there which is great. But here is a perfect group activity to get viewers/community members engaged, generate some sustained word of mouth over time and create a cool flag. 

Sometimes small opportunities arise to get social. While I am huge proponent of creating a thoughtful strategy, sometime you just have to go with it.

maybe if we all just started uploading our flags and tags to a Flickr page....