Digital Influence Mapping Project

The Best Kind of Viral Video: Passion, Strength and Jessica

I wanted to share a personal story about my niece, Jessica Jensen. She is all of 24 years old and a dancer from Pensacola. You can see the story that was published yesterday and the video below. While she was eliminated ultimately from So You Think You Can Dance, I know she can dance. The judge said it best - she reflects "passion, strength and accepatnce

Truth be told, she and her story touch me deeply. I realize that this may be off-topic or my blog but I hope others will appreciate it. It may be that this video and those who would think to share it or otherwise connect with her demonstrate another case of digital influence - exposing the world to a woman who lives in a smaller city in America yet demonstrating more grace than many of us could hope for in a lifetime.

Here is the story and by all means, watch the video:

Jessica Jensen dreams of dancing on Broadway

Special Event: WOMMA SUMMIT 2009 - Wall-to-Wall Brand Cases

The best, most practical social media summit for brands will happen on November 16-18 in Las Vegas at the Paris Hotel. It's the Word of Mouth Marketing Association's Annual SUMMIT 2009. This year, we have packed the agenda with real world case studies from brands applying social media and word of mouth marketing to their marcom and business needs. Join Ford, Pepsi, CDW, General Mills, Weight Watchers,iTunes, SAP and more.

• Ford's Ray Day and Scott Monty pair up to talk about driving social media transformation through the enterprise
• FTC Chief of Staff Chuck Harwood will talk about the FTC's role in social media marketing and the imminent FTC Guidelines
• Comcastcares, Twelpforce and others convene for a customer service smackdown on the mainstage

If you are creating and executing social media and word of mouth marketing programs for your brand or organization (or client), come to the WOMMA Summit to share best practices and the latest innovations in the use of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogging and offline word of mouth.

• The new WOMMY Awards will highlight the best of the best including best measurement models in social media and WOM.
• The Brands Council will offer special brands-only meetings
• And networking events will give you intimate conversations with your peers and colleagues from other companies to share experience

Join us now. While space is limited and no special price offers will be introduced, if you register and reference the code "fanofogilvy" you will recieve $100 off your fee.

Ogilvy will see you there.

An OfficeMax Social Media Lesson

I am not a big fan of quirky game or activity microsites that brands put together as an alternative to advertising. Too many advertising-driven marketers turn to this form of 'branded entertainment' first as it seems like a natural extension of the stroy-telling capacity fo their ad agencies of advertising leadership. Traffic to microsites feels as good as ad impressions, etc.. But they can play an important role and be hugely popular which can be helpful to the brand.

OfficeMax's Elf Yourself is hugely popular. They have done it for three years running. I laughed my you-know-what off when I saw Christine Cea and her band of marcom execs from Unilever "Elf" themselves at our WOMM workshop in December. (This past year's effort was powered by JibJab - check out Random Culture's coverage) By December 13th 2008, AdRants reported these figures:

• ElfYourself.com has served over 65 million visitors thus far
• Over 41 million elves have been made since mid-November*
• 35 new elves are created per second
• The average time people spend on Elf Yourself is equivalent to 800 years (based on total site visits times average time per visit)

In this past week's Business Week, Bob Thacker, SVP of marcom at OfficeMax, talked about competing with Staples and teh like when their ad budgets outweigh his measly $15m (that's just their newspaper spend). And while the holiday time is a high revenue time for them, the ad clutter out there is dense and immovable. So, did he charge his agency with creating the cut and paste cut-up, Elf Yourself? No. 

Experiment Broadly and Concurrently

He asked his team to create 20 different, holiday-themed microsites. many fell by the way-side. Elf Yourself took-off. that experimental approach is key to suceeding today. The days of researching adn "cathedral-building" a campaign must die. No one, no expert of any kind, knows exactly what will work especially when it comes to this narrow world of "viral campaigns.' The best professional advice is to poise yourself for experiments and be ready to dial up the effective ones. And time, 'she's-a-wastin.' Do a few things at once or in a short period of time. No one has the stamina for 6 months of testing what might work.

This is a big shift. Many ad agencies have either a creative or planner-dominated culture. Both can be 'cathedral-builders.' And the best of them are great salespeople on the brand value of cathedral building. They can really suck you in.  

Stay nimble. Try things. Be willing to be imperfect. Measure everyday. Make a change up when something doesn't work (and know when you need to commit more energy and effort to prove out the model, too). That's what I have learned form this example and many others.

The Next Experiment

Now that Officemax has a perennial winner with Elf Yourself, will they continue to apply the experimental approach to find the next marcom approach that works? Will they dive into utility in addition to entertainment?

(thanks to xcaballe on FlickR for the EflYourself CC image)

Non-invasive Social Media Strategies

Also known as superficial strategies, "toe-in-the-water", strategies-that-remind-me-of-advertising, not-rooted-in-organizational-behavior strategies, and a-less-risky-strategy. It is kind of like non-invasive surgery - no big impact on the patient, easier decision to make, less change. I am talking about the two fundamental ways that businesses and brands can plan and execute word of mouth programs online that leverage aspects of social media.

One way is to embrace the changes that go along with a culture of conversation with your customers and stakeholders.

The other way is to look at digital word of mouth (WOM) as just another channel and try to figure out how to weave it into your media or communications plan.

A lot has been written about the first way. Many social media evangelists including ourselves have waxed poetic about the business and karmic benefits of authentic conversation and an earnest interest in customers/stakeholders/employees as people. (Far fewer of these evangelists offer any credible measurement model. They often just speak about "getting it" and criticize those who don't. It is critical that we all get very disciplined about measurement and reporting impact to have our arguments hit home in favor of the "one way")

Brands who embrace their fans fall into this category. While part of me wishes this path was for everyone, it's really not. Microsoft, Harley Davidson, Nintendo, LEGO, Intel, Dell and others have all done this, no matter how imperfectly.

The other way
Many brands and businesses want to take advantage of social media - influencer outreach, activation of networks or communities and radical visibility - to fill out their marcom plan. They are not ready, or maybe even suitable for organizational change. They need to launch a product, boost sales this quarter, or demonstrate that they are innovative. We see this with many consumer package goods companies (CPGs). They are sales machines. Often their brand leadership is transitory at best. The brand managers move from brand to brand within the organization as they conquer challenges. Short term gains - those that get measured in no more than a season or a year - are the key driver.

Examples of the "other way:"

• contests that solicit user generated content for some marketing purpose -i.e. submit your photo to win, submit your video to be part of a commercial, submit an essay to win.
• Brand Facebook pages without an outreach or community strategy - basically just a beachhead with no plans to go further inland.
• Viral video attempts
• Many ideas that leverage social media channels but without the conversation or intent to do much more with the consumer generated ideas/content.

Experiementation with the other way, which treats digital WOM as a "channel" breeds an interesting pressure. One that I actually believe is good for Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) as an emerging fresh discipline. One that could help the "one way" (I mean the fisrt example I gavce above, not that there is only one way to do it

Unintended Trojan Horse(s)
The "other way", the way of the experimenter who may not be committed or even fully aware of the potential benefits of WOMM, does three important things:

1. It let's brand marketers try some of the techniques of social media and activating WOM before going any deeper - a move that might require business or organizational change that just won't happen at the brand marketing level.

2. "Light experimentation" is shared across the organization, across brands in a typical multi-brand universe. The stories of social media success spread through the halls pretty quick. This pushes the learning across more brand teams.

3. It forces a measurement discipline on WOMM. These marketers live and die by KPIs (key performance indicators). If the WOMM effort doesn't compare well to their advertising or PR metrics, it's going to be hard to repeat 3 times (sometimes institutional memory is short in a multi-brand marketer just due to the churn of brand leadership and teams)

What's the downside?

Simple. This less-committed approach, can lead to trying shortcuts around best practices in WOM. Many best practices require a different way of thinking of marketing and the benefit of building relationships with customers. Shortcuts can lead to program "underperformance" and a perceived sense of failure. E.g. "social media didn't move the needle as much as my online advertising"

Both ways exist. Both ways are valid. Both ways are here regardless of what WOM purists would prefer. (they would prefer the "one way").

Can we inject enough best practices into these less intrusive experiments to make more CMO's and more brand managers believers in the bigger potantial of WOM to transform their business?

 

Will Samsung's Video Promotion Recipe Make a Tasty Treat?

Samsung Mobile is running a promotion via YouTube that is a crazy collection of some of the right ideas that just don't go together in a recognizable and tasty dish. (Thanks to Orli whose Go2Web2.0 blog is terrific)It's as if they looked at the recipe list for video-based engagement but forgot the idea or concept to hold it all together.

Essentially, they are soliciting users to create videos - against 4 categories - plant their video "pin" on a Google Maps mash-up alongside videos from "select" Warner Brothers music artists while colecting customer ideas on product innovations and, oh, by the way, your video may be featured on the Times Square Samsung Billboard. Whew, that's a mouthful.

Here's the recipe where each ingredient is finger-lickin' good:

1. Ask users to create short videos: take advantage of the mass of video creators out there and populate YouTube with related videos
2. Offer them a "soapbox" for personal expression that goes beyond them talking about your product. Two of the 4 "scenarios" that users can depict include - tell them your watch word for 2008 or act out the best or worst thing that happened to you in 2007.
3. Create a "meme" that may travel and be shared (see #2)
4. Ask them to create videos about how they use your product (not reviews of the product)
5. Ask them for ideas on product innovations
6. Add a Google maps interface to incite users to compete regionally
7. Offer 15 minutes of fame via the YouTube channel & homepage and the Times Square billboard
8. Offer glimpses and shoulder-rubbing with "celebrities" via the Warner's talent tie-in

What aren't they doing?
Just about the only thing they left off the list of potential incentives is a "social good" element where they make a donation triggered by site activity. There's no reason why they should do this other than that they seem to have thrown in everything but the kitchen sink so far.

They do not have a real contest strategy either. There is no clear "winner" nor prizes beyond the vague suggestion that your video may end up on the Jumbotron. Usually incentives break down as follows:
a. the activity is organically relevant
b. there is a chance to win something of value
c. you get a spotlight and/or credit
d. there is a social good outcome

They have played a little loose with a and c.

I do not know what their outreach strategy is. There is no way to know. Whenever we run a program along these lines we have a whole outreach and activation plan to help the experience grow and be discovered.

There is no binding idea here. The headline is: Ringing in 2008 with Samsung Mobile. Not a lot of definition to the idea there. 

It is a collection of some of the right things but not all of them should be thrown together like this. For instance, the 4th video submission category is "Tell us what type of mobile phone Samsung should develop for you." If they are really interested in soliciting customer ideas and driving innovation from the outside in, they would make this the cornerstone of their activity. (Lest they get the videos of the telepathic man who needs a phone to go with his special "abilities")

The Warner tie-in is a bit of a head-scratcher, too. Usually you do this to really leverage the fan base of the talent. The talent is all but invisible here.

We shall see how it goes.

There may be enough engagement that enough users will find something they want to do here. So far the promo video has been viewed 215K times since Dec 5th (I played it 6 times during the writing of this post to get the facts of the promotion correct). They have 75 subscribers and 9,269 channel views. They accept video until January 14. A stronger idea with half the recipe items might have served them (and their customers) better.

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. "

 

6 Steps to Sparking the Conversation for a Brand

Beyond our digital strategy programs where WOM is the cornerstone communications goal, we are often asked to "add in" some viral sharing and "talk" to a program. You know, get the bloggers chatting up the product. Get those folks sharing the video we made. That sort of thing.

Essentially we are asked to make a program viral often after a program is defined. That's tough. Most viral programs never get there. And the most reliable recipe for making something so share-worthy that you have big video views or game plays under your belt, will take your brand places you may not want to go (think outrageous, outlandish and often, plain stupid).

Our approach to designing a program that does get talked about and shared follows the following 6 principles. It often defines the program from the start. What else should go on this list?

1. The content is outrageous, laugh-out-loud funny or highly provocative: we have all seen videos that you just had to share. The challenge is that to be appealing to a broad group, these have to be over-the-top to cut through the YouTube clutter. Often this pushes them beyond relevance to a brand.

2. The content or experience facilitates something I care about: Too many brands want to "own" the experience online - as if they could - by creating a unique, brand-centric experience. It is often better to understand people, what they want to spend time doing and then help them accomplish that in some way.

3. It’s participatory and engaging: A clever game or activity allows the user to get involved on some level. If there is more that I can do besides ‘watch’ then I am more likely to advocate for it.

4. It’s personalized: This is about relevance and ego. If the video says my name or includes some personal element that I have selected, suddenly I am more involved with the content or experience.

5. There’s an incentive for sharing: Will it benefit me or something I care about? This can be self-centered such as contests to win prizes or less directly so, as with a philanthropic tie-in. Often, adding a ‘social good’ element will help motivate share-ers. (e.g. for every ‘view’ up to 50K, we will donate $1 to charity….). Often the incentive needs to be tested in a live program just like a direct marketing offer to understand what becomes motivational for most people.

6. It is “talk-worthy” amongst influencers: the traditional definition of “influencer” has been re-written in our world of social media. Once we understand who may be influential in a particular group, we need to understand what may cause them to talk about a campaign. Often it is not the same thing that may drive participants to get involved.

The debate continues. What do you think?

• What else can spark buzz online?
• How do you do things differently for buzz vs. sustained WOM?
• Can low engagment products like CPG generate conversation as easily as fan brands?

We will have a session at November's WOMMA Summit on "Stunts vs. Science: What does it take to spark the conversation?"

Join us at WOMMA’s 2007 Summit, November 13-15 in Las Vegas. Get the agenda now>

And jump into the conversation now. You can see what the WOMMA conversation is by using the del.icio.us tag - wommeme.

The 4 Myths of Viral Video

"Get me a viral video that's as popular as Dove Evolution (7+m views) or Free Hugs (17m views)." Which is kind of up there with the start-up that intends to launch a new social network and uses MySpace as their competitive barometer. It's not simply that it's hard to reach these goals. We do "hard" every day. It's that the goals and tactics demand re-examination.

Myth 1

The fist myth of commercial use of viral video, is that video online is the natural replacement for television. While runaway hits like Dove Evolution can rack up millions of views and lots of related word of mouth (WOM), these are the exception, not the rule. Television remains the great 'reach' medium. The Internet is the great 'engagement' medium. Trying to use the internet simply to raise awareness via a reach strategy ignores it's basic value. Online video offers a gateway to enagement one-click away. The statistics on video usage and sharing online do make clear it's potential. Ben McDonnell has a great post that sums up the stats from Pew (e.g. 57 million Americans watch online video content every day - 19% of American adult Internet users). Which brings us to the second myth.

Myth 2
A viral video is a digital strategy. That's the myth. A viral video is a video that you hope will grab people's attention to the point that they will tell their friends about it. It is something that must be remarkeable (literally), surprising, insightful or otherwise engaging. It may last as much as a few minutes. And then it is done. Where do our users, customers, people go? Out to buy the product? Ready to fill out a survey with all sorts of warm and fuzzies about the brand?

We have an opportunity to really get involved with customers online. We can get their input, their ideas. We can demonstrate that we really care about them and their business. Providing them with a LOL video (we could only hope for laughter) is certainly one way to provide value - entertainment value. But it is a shallow short-lived way. What can we drive them to do? Create their own video(s)? Appear on our "show"? Write the script or create story ideas? Email or hold a blog conversation with someone featured in our show? All of these convert the video idea into so much more than an awareness blip in a equally cluttered horizen.

Myth Part 3
Plopping a video on YouTube is a digital strategy. That's the third part of the myth. It says that something that is worth talking about will find its own audience organically (i.e. with no marketing effort) and will gain viral velocity until it reaches millions. Duncan Watts would point out that most 'viral' things die off before reaching what anyone would claim is a tipping point of volume. If part of a digital strategy includes video(s) that will grab people's attention then we need to support them with smart, authentic promotion. Viral videos go better with outreach and advertising. This seems couterintuitive if you as a marketer are using video to raise awareness of some engagement opportunity with your brand online. Now we want you to promote the promotion? If you are designing a truly engaging experience for your users than this will make sense. If you want to use video as your entire strategy, then it may not make sense.

How can you tell if something will go viral? Do you try different things and see what works (This is a basic tenant of Popular Media's approach - one that I admire)? Or do you find discrete ways to test? Nigel Hollis at Millward Brown (another WPP company) had a great post about this. here is an excerpt:

"To close, there is one point made in the Ad Age article with which I cannot agree. It states,

“In Mr. Watts’ chaotic conception of the world, you might as well try to plan for a terrorist attack or some other random event….’We cannot predict what is going to happen,’ [Duncan] said. ‘Things happen randomly. You want strategies that don’t depend on being right, but do depend on being able to measure things very well. You throw things out there, with as low cost as you can manage and with as great a diversity as you can stand and then you see what gets taken up.’”

Things happen randomly if you do not plan and test, and throwing things out there risks a potential backfire. The one factor that is not considered by Duncan’s analysis is the “stickiness” of the idea behind a viral campaign, and that is certainly not immune to testing. There is no reason why you cannot pre-test a viral campaign. The objective would be to ascertain the likelihood that people would share the ad with others and it would reduce the chances of failure by ensuring people did find the content relevant, compelling and worth sharing."

Myth  4
Bloggers and message board posters are just waiting to talk about marketers mediocre videos. That's is the myth about outreach. "Can't you just tell bloggers about the video and they will chatter about it on their blog?" Even if a traditional mareketer doesn't utter these exact words, it is often in their head. Paid media is one thing. But to engage people in word of mouth the "it" must pass the "who cares" test. If so, then you have earned their coverage. Yes, this is the fundamentals of 'earned media.'  Can we get people to talk enthusiastically about something that doesn't measure up? Sadly, no. What we are good at is creating compelling experiences that engage people genuinely. Videos can be a part of that but are rarely the centerpiece.

Here's another good summary of some of the stumbling blocks for successful use of viral videos in marketing strategy from Kevin Nalts, Will Video for Food.

Using Video Well #1

We are always concerned when a client begins a conversation about digital influence with viral video. It's just that we want to create a strategy first. There are plenty of good uses of remarkable video. They can serve reach goals and they can sometimes serve engagement goals.

I wanted to take a look at individual videos that are being shared out there. Some I have discovered through my seemingly endless reading (ok, scanning), some came from my very smart students at Johns Hopkins, some from colleagues. This is a simple round up of what works (beyond the obvious grand slam of our Toronto group's success with Dove Evolution).

Entertainment
Getting a talent like Christopher Guest to direct a 2:33 music video - or a couple of them - is a great move. He obviously has a draw amongst a smart, well-educated audience and he embraces the geek in all of us through every movie he has done. This particular video for Intel (a client but we had nothing to do with this) is great - it's funny, dense-enough that you may watch it a few times, lives up to what I expect from Christopher Guest, and it associates Intel with someone/something that is uncharateristically cool. It's at almost 25K views over 3-4 weeks which is not huge. But it is very B2B and huge numbers aren't necessarily the endgame. There are lots of B2B videos out there with tech companies, specifically trying to have fun. Branded entertainment isn't as it easy as it looks. And Christopher Guest is 'A' - level talent.

Good for: Reach & Awareness (not much about it leads to engagement - there is no click-through call-to-action)

How-it-works
I am a big fan of white board How-to's and How-it-works and this one about social networks is particularly good. This format is deceptively simple-looking yet it relies heavily on the "presenter" - either by being compelling or being a great counterpart to the visual story. The visual story is tightly choreographed. I would be surpised to discover that this was not painstakingly rehearsed. This is part of the "in Plain English" series that also includes "Wikis in Plain English."

Here's one from another source that has been around about a year (610K views) and outlines the marketing potential of SecondLife
Good for: Engagement, Thought Leadership

Futurecasting
There have been a lot of compelling videos that portray a vision of the future. This one was shared by Steven Feld, one of my graduate students (and smart guy). Called Prometeus - The Media Revolution (Prometheus?) it paints a picture of the future with enough sprinklings of present fact to be super compelling. And the Italian accent doesn't hurt either. Intel has one called the Intel UMPC Vision Video (again client but not involved in this one)

I am a sucker for future visions. We used to do these regularly at ATT&Viacom back in the early nineties to vision out what ITV might become.   
Good for: Engagement, Thought Leadership

Interviews & Notable Presentations

Hearing from someone you admire or who interests you is "of-use." This goes beyond entertainment by offering access to a thoughtleader's POV that you might not normally have access to. Google has an internal series, Authors@Google, which is pretty much what it sounds like. this one features David Weinberger, author of Everything is Miscellaneous and the Cluetrain Manifesto (co-author). So, Google has these on-campus events for the sake of employees and then posts the videos for the sake of everyone. Great move. I have seen David speak and know he is insightful and inspirational. This is a series which features many authors including Christopher Hitchens  and Floyd Landis.

Good for: Awareness, Engagement, Thought Leadership ( I have added 'awareness' here as the authors or notables will draw their own viewers thus introducing fans of the author to the sponsoring company.)

Co-creation: Four-eyed Monsters and Crowdfunding

Engagement can be basic - how much time and how many interactions will a user have with an experience. This simple baseline allows advertisers to try and gauge (can't say measure) how "engaging" an ad is.

That doesn't begin to describe the real promsie of engagement. In the online video world, there have been some terrific engaging experiences. From ZeFrank's The Show, now archived on Blip.tv to havemoneywillvlog, creators are trying new ways to make involving experiences.

Now, the filmmakers behind a 71 minute film, Four-eyed Monsters, are trying to get known, get reimbursed, and prove out a new sponsorship/promotion idea. The film which is available on YouTube and Spout.com begins with the filmmakers displaying the fan of credit cards that funded their film. They tell the viewer that for every sign-up at Spout.com (if you want to sign up, use the link below so the filmmakers get their dough), they will recieve a dollar (up to $100K) to offset their movie debt. I am pre-loading the movie as we speak and only know that it begins on an unassuming suburban ranch house. I can say it looks nicely shot and made. We will know more later, perhaps much later.

I cannot help but want to know the fine print. Are the filmmakers who they say they are? Are they truly at risk financially? How did they hook up with Spout.com?

Arin Crumley and Susan Buice seem to be as real as you and me. (Susan has 3600 "firends" or so at MySpace; Arin, well, his MySpace page won't load so I don't know how many he's got).

So far they have about 5100 Spout.com members to their credit, so $5100. If they go all the way, that would be huge for Spout - 100K new registrants. Of course that is step one in a review service. You also need to promote activity or there isn't any "there" there.

What is Spout.com? Essentially a social network for movie reviews. They have been plugging away since January 2005. And they are pretty well known judging from their Techcrunch and news stories. Rick DeVos is the CEO. Here's how they describe themselves:

"In a nutshell, we were four guys wanting to make movies. We got tired of seeing great films die on the vine at film festivals because the Hollywood model for Marketing and Distribution is broken. Some of the best stories are lost beneath popcorn-seller flicks, but they're out there and people--somewhere, someplace--know about them. So, we thought:

If we can make it easy for people to share movies they love with others, the big movie/little movie playing field will be level and really meaningful stories will find their audience."

There is a lot of user-inclusion in their service. I can become a Spout tester (get paid!) and they actively solicit feedback on new features. They also offer small rewards like digital swag where I can download widget-like apps and tag cloud screensavers.

There are a lot of opinion sites out there. Movies is a solid genre to pull enthusiasts together in this social network-like model. The great thing is that Spout is very open. They facilitate pulling Spout into MySpace and other SNSs and are not trying to build a walled garden.

If you join, go to www.spout.com/foureyedmonsters so the filmmakers get the bucks. Could a bigger brand ever do this? A Netflix? A studio? A consumer product like Coke that tries periodically to endear itself to the creative intelligentsia? Part of the reason this seems to work so well is that Spout is a genuine start-up like the filmmakers, themselves. I wonder if big brands might spoil the experience....