Axe has officially stepped up their marketing efforts…it’s a whole new ball-game! (…Ignore the pun) Their new slogan: “There’s no nook or cranny that the Axe Detailer can’t reach”.
The best part of this video, a truly touching moment (get your mind out of the gutter)…where they help shine up Mr. Hackerman’s dirty old balls.
Posted under Online Video, Social Networks, Viral Marketing
This post was written by Joshua Russak on February 22, 2010
I find it amazing that drinking games can be applied to pretty much anything. Buttttt…for all of you binge-drinking enthusiasts out there, here’s a game that can only be played once a year: The State of the Union Address Drinking Game!
The general rules of this game are no different from any other drinking game. Every time President Obama says a certain word (ie: “change”) or phrase (ie: “make no mistake”), you take a drink/shot. A drink is either a shot or a good gulp from a beer (or cider). All you do is watch the speech and play along. If all goes well, you’ll be unconscious by the time they show the other party’s response. For an extended list of keywords, phrases and rulesa, check out their website or their Facebook Group. This year, President Obama’s State of the Union address is scheduled for Wednesday, January 27, 2010 at 9pm (Eastern). It should be broadcast on all major networks and cable news/political netorks. For online coverage, go to http://www.c-span.org/executive/stateoftheunion.asp.
This drinking game dates back to when George Washington gave the first State of the Union address on January 8, 1790. I’m pretty confident there’s no evidence of that fact, but I’m pretty sure it happened. On the other hand, I do know that is when the State of The Union Address began. As for the drinking game, the website (DrinkingGame.US) says nothing about it’s history. “I’m sure there are other people who have made similar games, but I think most people play by our rules,” Marc Melzer, one of the creators of the State of the Union Drinking Game and now a lawyer, told AFP. (Yes, they were interviewed by the AFP as well as The JDF.)
I decided to do a little research of my own. WhoIs information for the site says the domain was registered in 2004. I decided to contact the owner, Marc Melzer and a few questions myself. “We did it our senior year of college in January 2002, mostly for fun. We were on the campus and thought this was a great idea to distract us from work. We hosted it on a college site and people responded with over 50,000 hits…in 3 days. In 2003, we saw more like 500,000 hits in a matter of a week. We ran into trouble with bandwidth issues. In 2004, it found it’s final home on DrinkingGame.US (how appropriate!). ” (Marc Melzer, Co-Founder of DrinkingGame.US). When I asked him about the other sites that promoted their own versions of this game, he said that there was nothing they could do. It was a matter of an impossible Copyright.
It looks like this game has gained a lot of popularity since 2002. Major web publishers have put out their own articles about this game, and GAVE NO CREDIT TO DRINKINGGAME.US!
And what kind of game would this be if there were warning labels attached to it? After researching the sites that promoted this game, I decided, that instead of posting my own disclaimer, I’d simply post theirs. Enjoy:
Please note that we do not now, nor have we ever, encouraged irresponsible use of alcohol. It is important to know your own limits and to act accordingly. We discourage improper use of alcohol.
Disclaimer: This overview of the State of the Union Address Drinking Game, is, given the problem of Binge Drinking on college campuses, a controversial subject. Note that these sites contain adult-oriented content and should all be considered potentially unsafe.
NOTE: The Huffington Post in no way encourages binge drinking. This is the comedy section. If you actually drank as much as we suggested you would die, so do not do that.
Posted under Blogs, Events, Jewish Marketing, Online Marketing, Viral Marketing
This post was written by Joshua Russak on January 26, 2010
This is, hands down, the most cracked version of Jingle Bells ever produced. Quoting Huffington Post, “It’s like they took the classic song, soaked it in a tub of LSD, then took a match to it.” Who could come up with such a thing? Well, at the end of the clip, it has the “NICK” (as in Nickelodeon) logo…though as of now, it could have been thrown in there. First Slumdog Millionaire dominates Hollywood, and now XMas! Go India!! What will they think of next?
Posted under Online Marketing, Online Video, Viral Marketing
This post was written by Joshua Russak on December 21, 2009
For five minutes last Monday, the bread aisle at Gourmet Glatt became an avant-garde musical theatre.
Customers were surprised, to say the least, when 7 students broke into a song and dance routine to the tune of “Be Our Guest,” from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. They did it to help drum up online publicity for NCSY’s 18th annual auction. The six dancers are all NCSY alumni.
They seem to have met their goal: the recording was the most-viewed video last week in YouTube’s non-profit category, according to NCSY’s marketing and PR director, Duvi Stahler, who came up with the idea. As of press time Tuesday evening it had been viewed over 9,000 times.
Stahler hit upon the idea of a musical interlude from this year’s top prize: a year’s worth of free groceries from Kosher.com, the online supermarket that operates out of Gourmet Glatt’s Cedarhurst facility.
“The idea was to do something as a grand prize that [people] need, not luxuries, something people have to spend money on,” he explained.
While the number was heavily rehearsed, the recording bears a touch of improv nevertheless. The video shows an elderly woman who insisted on disrupting the performance, pushing through the dancers to get a loaf of bread.
[*Original Article Above Found On The Jewish Star.]
What did you expect? Of course this idea worked! According to Duvi Stahler, the concept for this video was inspired by ImprovEverywhere’s “I LOVE LUNCH” prank. Every one of their videos is an immediate success, so by following their guidelines, Duvi was confident this video would work as well.
I have a feeling the inspiration for this video also came from ImprovEverywhere’s “GROCERY STORE MUSICAL” (1 Million+ YouTube views) prank, Published 3 weeks before “Supermarket Takover”. Though Duvi claims originality, it’s not an issue. The point I’m trying to make is that Viral Videos like these work!
I guess if you’re a small business or niche organization, and you want to go Viral, just copy ImprovEverywhere. No, seriously…just copy them…Until you can come up with something original, do them a favor and give them credit at the end of the video.
Posted under Online Marketing, Online Video, Viral Marketing
This post was written by Joshua Russak on November 19, 2009
The game is called World of Goo, and it’s really an awesome game. Normally it costs $20 to buy the game but right now they are having a promotion that allows you to pay anything you want for the game. Let me repeat that…PAY WHATEVER YOU THINK IT’S WORTH!
It’s not free…but they’ve found a new use for all those pennies hiding around the house. You have to donate at least 1 penny but otherwise its up to you. And this isn’t some low-level, under the radar, game. “Brilliant, stunning, and ridiculously fun … World of Goo is so good that it oftentimes feels like a title developed internally at Nintendo” (IGN). The game itself is fairly simple. World of Goo is a physics based puzzle / construction game. The millions of Goo Balls who live in the beautiful World of Goo don’t know that they are in a game, or that they are extremely delicious.
All versions of World of Goo – Windows, Mac and Linux – are on sale until October 19 for “whatever you think it’s worth.” Just go to 2dboy.com, click the “GET IT” link. That’s it!
This is simply marketing genius. They’ve allowed the consumer to decide on a price and once this campaign is said and done, they’ll have a better idea of their average buyer. Oh…that’s besides the fact that their sales will probably have gone through the roof and once the users get hooked, imagine when the next release comes along. Want to start a revolution? MAKE IT FREE!
Still not convinced, then watch the promo:
Posted under Blogs, Viral Marketing
This post was written by Joshua Russak on October 14, 2009
Kevin Rose – The name should be familiar to you, considering he’s the founder of Digg.com. The domain “digg.com” attracted at least 236 million visitors annually by 2008 and has continuously been growing for the past year (Compete.com). The best part is….THEY NEVER EVEN PAID FOR MARKETING! Every technique they used was free and available on the internet.
Kevin Rose decided to bear all at the Future of Web Apps conference. Digg’s success is not due to expensive marketing techniques…everything was FREE. They used word-of-mouth and social methods to spread the word. If you want some of these methods, watch the video or simply read the summary below it:
Taking your Site from One to One Million Users by Kevin Rose from Carsonified on Vimeo.
As summarized by HighScalability.com, below you will find some of the secrets behind digg.com and wefollow.com explosive user growth. He covers ten unique strategies that turn passive users into passionate advocates.
1. Ego. Ask does this feature increase the users self-worth or stroke the ego? What emotional and visible awards will a user receive for contributing to your site? Are they gaining reputation, badges, show case what they’ve done in the community? Sites that have done it well:
Twitter.com followers. Followers turns every single celebrity as spokesperson for your service. Celebrities continually pimp your service in the hopes of getting more followers. It’s an amazing self-reinforcing traffic generator. Why do followers work? Twitter communication is one way. It’s simple. Followers don’t have to be approved and there aren’t complicated permission schemes about who can see what. It means something for people to increase their follower account. It becomes a contest to see who can have more. So even spam followers are valuable to users as it helps them win the game.
Digg.com leader boards. Leader Boards show the score for a user activity. In digg it was based on the number of articles submitted. Encourage people to have a competition and do work inside the digg ecosystem. Everyone wants to see their name in lights.
Digg.com highlight users. Users who submitted stories where rewarded by having their name in a larger font and a friending icon put beside their story submission. Users liked this.
2. Simplicity. Simplicity is the key. A lot of people overbuild features. Don’t over build features. Release something and see what users are going to do. Pick 2-3 on your site and do them extremely well. Focus on those 2-3 things. Always ask if there’s anything you take out from a feature. Make it lighter and cleaner and easy to understand and use.
3. Build and Release. Stop thinking you understand your users. You think users will love this or that and you’ll probably be wrong. So don’t spend 6 months building features users may not love or will only use 20% of. Learn from what users actually do on your site. Avoid analysis paralysis, especially as you get larger. Decide, build, release, get feedback, iterate.
4. Hack the Press. There are techniques you can use that will get you more publicity.
Invite only system. Get press by creating an invite only system. Have a limited number of invites and seed them with bloggers. Get the buzz going. Give each user a limited number of invites (4 or 5). It gets bloggers talking about your service. The main stream press calls and you say you are not ready. This amps the hype cycle. Make new features login-only, accessible only if you log in but make them visible and marked beta on the site. This increases the number of registered users.
Talk to junior bloggers. On Tech Crunch, for example, find the most junior blogger and pitch them. It’s more likely you’ll get covered.
Attend parties for events you can’t afford. You can go to the after parties for events you can’t afford. Figure out who you want to talk to. Follow their twitter accounts and see where they are going.
Have a demo in-hand. People won’t understand your great vision without a demo. Bring an iPhone or laptop to show case the demo. Keep the demo short, 30-60 seconds. Say: Hey, I just need 30 seconds of your time, it’s really cool, and here’s why I think you’ll like it. Slant it towards what they do or why they cover.
5. Connect with your community.
Start a podcast. A big driver in the early days of Digg. Influencers will listen and they are the heart of your ecosystem.
Throw a launch party and yearly and quarterly events. Personally invite influencers and their friends. Just have a party at a bar. Throw them around conferences as people are already there.
Engage and interact with your community.
Don’t visually punish users. Often users don’t understand bad behaviour yet as they think they are just playing they game your system sets up. Walk through the positive behaviours you want to reinforce on the site.
6. Advisors. Have a strong group of advisors. Think about which technical, marketing and other problems you’ll have and seek out people to help you. Give them stock compensation. A strong advisory team helps with VCs.
7. Leverage your user base to spread the world.
FarmVille. tells users when other players have helped them and asks the player to repay the favor. This gets players back into the system by using a social obligation hack. They also require having a certain number of friends before you expand your farm. They give away rare prizes.
Wefollow. Tweets hashtags when people follow someone else. This further publicizes the system. They also ask when a new user hits the system if they wanted to be added to the directory, telling the user that X hundred thousand of your closest friends have already added themselves. This is the number one way they get new users.
8. Provide value for third party sites. Wallstreet Journal, for example, puts FriendFeed, Twitter, etc links on every page because they think it adds value to their site. Is there some way you can provide value like that?
9. Analyze your traffic. Install Google analytics, See where people are entering form. Where they are going. Where they are exiting from and how you can improve those pages.
10. The entire picture. Step back and look at the entire picture. Look at users who are creating quality content. Quality content drives more traffic to your site. Traffic going out of your site encourages other sites to add buttons to your site which encourages more users and more traffic into your site. It’s a circle of life. Look at how your whole eco system is doing.
Posted under Blogs, Events, Online Marketing, Online Video, SEO/SEM, Social Networks, Tech2.0, Viral Marketing
This post was written by Joshua Russak on October 8, 2009
…ok, well maybe not “sexy” in the traditional sense, but in terms of social media marketing, this company is getting it right. I’ve invited Moishe’s Moving to explain their sexy *new* strategy and why it’s working!
By Itamar Kestenbaum, Marketing & PR Manager at Moishe’s Moving Systems
There are many reasons why Moishe’s Moving Systems is not only a household name in the Northeast, but is synonymous with moving in New York City. However, in entering a new era of social media, Moishe’s has encountered new and interesting challenges.
Social media advertising has proved to work well for retail giants such as Starbucks, JetBlue and the infamous #moonfruit Twitter extravaganza.
The reasons for their successes are as follows:
However, the moving industry is a different marketing animal with the average customer life-span being approximately two weeks. And, the moving industry does not or will ever possess a sleek or sexy image.
Moishe’s predicament was, “Can social media work for a moving company?”
The answer: Yes!
In an effort to create a fully integrated and effective social media campaign, Moishe’s has launched a contest that will increase interaction with their customers. “M4: Moishe’s Moving Movie Madness,” is a month-long contest in which Moishe’s customers can film their move in progress and submit a video to Moishe’s Facebook page (facebook.com/moishesmoving). The winner of the competition will get a full refund of his/her move. Moishe’s has integrated the contest into its marketing platform by publicizing it on Twitter (twitter.com/moishesmoving), mentioning it in our blogs and with an extensive PR campaign.
Moishe’s believes this competition will not only bring out our client base’s creativity, but will also create a “buzz.” “This is a fun project, and we truly hope that our customers will jump on this great opportunity to win a free move,” said Eugene Lemay, CEO of Moishe’s Moving Systems. “Our goal with this competition is to further expose our brand to a younger demographic and to enjoy a viral effect by urging our participants to ask their friends and family to vote for their videos, thus introducing our brand to a slew of potential new customers.”
Already, as a result of the contest Moishe’s sales figures have gone up. Indeed, many of Moishe’s customers have already expressed interest in participating when the time comes for their moves. Moishe’s has also observed that just under 50% of visitors to Moishes.com having clicked onto the contest page.
M4 is not Moishe’s first foray into social marketing. In fact, in the past 2 years, Moishe’s has been dabbling in various social marketing platforms. Recently, Moishe’s enjoyed success with a YouTube campaign that creatively showed the lighter side of the brand. Moishe’s also has plans for further experimentation on Twitter and Facebook in the coming months.
Posted under Jewish Marketing, Online Marketing, Social Networks, Viral Marketing
This post was written by Joshua Russak on August 5, 2009
On July 20, 1969, at 10:56 p.m. ET, Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped off the “Eagle” onto the surface of the moon and said, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” The United States’s Apollo 11 mission was the first manned spacecraft to land on the Moon. An estimated 500 million people worldwide watched this event, “the landing drew the largest television audience for any live event up until that time”. (National Geographic)
40 years later we find ourselves honoring that day in one of the only ways we know how…via the internet.
As a tribute to this momentus occasion 40 years ago…and as expected…the internet has paid its respects to the moon.
1. Google changes their logo: It looks as though Google waited until we actually landed on the Moon to update their logo, as they’ve updated their homepage with the following logo.
2. YouTube changed their logo: YouTube has changed their logo, which now includes “The Eagle” and a piece of the Moon.
3. Bing changed their background: Bing has changed their daily background image to feature a shot of the Moon.
4. Google Earth Adds Moon To Celebrate Apollo 11 Landing: Google on Monday released Moon in Google Earth, which allows users to explore lunar images and related lunar content.
5. Video of First Moon Landing 1969: Located on YouTube and originally posted on February 2006, this classic only recently jumped to the top of the charts, gathering in over 2,585,748 views:
I’d say it’s pretty sad that Michael Jackson’s death was able to shut down the internet, yet one of the most notable events in US history has merely caused a blip in cyberspace. I guess it really isn’t fair to judge…but I’d like to see what happens June 25th a year from now. Also, I’d like to note that Moon Landing Hoax videos are also getting a boost on YouTube. Equatable to staring at a blank wall for 6 minutes…you choose how to spend your day.
Thanks again for reading and HAPPY MOON LANDING DAY! Now to celebrate in the only way I know how – by mooning oncoming traffic from my window…
Posted under Online Marketing, Online Video, Viral Marketing
This post was written by Joshua Russak on July 20, 2009
RSS
E-Mail Subscription!