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Category: Sonia Carreno

BuyYourFriendaDrink & The Local Watering Holes

Published October 16, 2008

BuyYourFriendaDrink.com
By Sonia Carreno

One of the popular early Facebook mini applications is BoozeMail. The application allows users to send friends virtual drinks (or even a round of drinks) on Facebook.

Currently the application has 213,215 monthly active users sending each other mojitos, sangrias or any other drink from the menu. If only they were real…

Boozemail on Facebook

The idea of sending people drinks online is one that has been fantasized about since the early days of online media. While we were busy toting around closed circuit Palm Pilots, we often daydreamed about the doors wireless mobility would unlock for PDAs “If only there was a way to send people stuff (like drinks) while they were on the go…sigh."

One dream scenario was to be able to send a friend a drink at a location they are either at or close to. Through GPS technology, the dream has become more realistic than ever. The only missing link is the network of bars that would participate in delivering on the goods. Today, I thought it would be fun to dig a bit into what has been done in this area.

I talked to Barbara Liss, the VP of Marketing for BuyYourFriendaDrink.com. The company launched out of New Jersey and Texas but has virtual offices in Chicago, San Francisco and New York.

BuyYourFriendaDrink lets consumers send drinks to each other online and is starting to pull together a decent sized network of bars that can fulfill sent drinks from across the country.

The company has a couple of business models. Among them are:

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Internal Hobnobbing…Enterprise 2.0 Style

Published October 10, 2008

Enterprise 2.0
By Sonia Carreno

This week at Third Tuesday, Niall Cook, Worldwide Director of Marketing Technology at Hill & Knowlton Inc. and author of the recently released Enterprise 2.0, shared his thoughts on social software and how companies are adopting it around the globe.

The discussion started with an interesting exploration of the “why now” factor for conducting this type of research and the obvious demand for it worldwide. He gave some theoretical background about how technologies required appropriate business climates in order to become fully adopted.

Alluding to the Gartner Hype Cycle that describes the time it takes for technologies to be integrated and adopted, Niall talked about the tools that have been available for some time and the global business environment that has only recently become an ideal climate for convergence and adoption.

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Technology

Today’s most successful companies have been developed as pure platforms completely content-free for others to fill. Some obvious examples include eBay, Google and Amazon. All of these companies have based their success on providing channels for others to communicate, share, sell or review content.

Business Environment

There has been a fundamental shift in power from:

  • Producers of goods to the consumers
  • West to East
  • Employer to Employee

Niall made a specific point about the employer-employee shift in power that I think resonated with the audience. He said that where it used to be that CEOs could refer to teams as “my people”, today employees have full control over their “ownership” and feel that they are renting out their skills (on their terms) to the employers for a time that they feel is appropriate. In this shift, the CEO becomes a Chief Engagement Officer whose responsibilities are more focused on relationships and collaboration vs. hands-off leadership and control.

Here are some other interesting points discussed at the presentation:

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Immersive Marketing… Alternative Realities or Plain Old Delusions?

Published October 8, 2008

By Sonia Carreno

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I was in Montreal yesterday watching the presentations at the IAB MIXX Conference. There were some interesting speakers and I had an opportunity to catch up with some of them at the show.

One of the presentations peaking my interest today was the one delivered by Pierre Côté of GRAMSCLO. GRAMSCLO is an agency that produces alternative reality content that can be branded and executed across multiple platforms. Most of the audience would agree that the presentation was somewhat confusing as Pierre attempted to convey the value of the concept it got buried somewhat in translation. So, I caught up with him afterward to talk about alternative reality games and why they are starting to make some noise.

Remember the Blair Witch Project? You might recall the media hype surrounding the film before it launched, while it was playing and shortly after. The movie was positioned as a true story but soon after audiences streamed into theatres it was revealed (in rumors at first) that the film had been a hoax developed by a clever New York based team that went on to form the marketing company called Campfire.

Pierre shared a Campfire case study in his talk for Audi A3. A news story appeared last year complete with footage from the surveillance cameras, of a car robbery at a dealership. The piece included the actual robbery, the police arrival, the wanted ads and the whole shebang that took place after the alleged heist. Consumers, ever fascinated by who dunnits and criminal acts, spent a lot of time internationally viewing and sharing the news footage and the articles that had been generated as a result of the headlines.

There were even banners created and served across the web urging people to report any facts about the missing car. When the auto show came to town later that year, Audi had cordoned off an entire area on the show floor to feature a placard with a picture of the stolen vehicle showcasing what would have been there had the robbers not taken the car.

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Results of the Audi A3 Campaign:

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