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!

Viral Marketing Genius’s

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

“If you haven’t heard of Susan Boyle, it’s YOUR FAULT!”

Superior Viral Marketing

After a shocking performance on Britain’s Got Talent, Susan Boyle, a 47-year-old Scottish woman, broke all kinds of YouTube and online video records. According to ViralVideoChart, her video has over 143,389,133 views across all video networks. That’s a goal to be sought after. But how did they do it?

For one, they had the viral ‘emotional factor’ with her emotionally affecting TV performance of I Dreamed A Dream from Les Miserables. (<- For those of you haven’t seen it!) Dubbed the “Singing Virgin” (Crikey.com), the mix of her outdated fashion sense and a self-declared un-kissed church singer, you can only wonder about her YouTube life that is now heading toward 100 million views (the record is 120 million), including 20 million within the first 24 hours of its posting. That’s a record right there!

Susan Boyle has her own Wikipedia Page: Susan Boyle, and a Susan Boyle Fan-Site. Oh, did I mention she was on Twitter as well? Win or lose, it doesn’t matter because she is set.

In The Press

Many British newspapers carried articles on Boyle’s performance and subsequent Internet coverage. US & International news outlets also carried stories on her, including among others, The Times of India, Germany’s Der Spiegel, China’s Xinhua News Agency, Brazil’s Zero Hora, Israel’s Ynet, and the Arabic-language Al Arabiya.

On TV

Within the week following her performance on Britain’s Got Talent, Boyle was a guest on STV’s The Five Thirty Show. She was interviewed via satellite on CBS’s Early Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, NBC’s Today, and The Oprah Winfrey Show, and via a telephone interview on FOX’s America’s Newsroom. Boyle also appeared via satellite on CNN’s Larry King Live.

Still Going Strong…

Just to gain a sense of  how current all of this is, if you check out YouTube’s most popular videos of the week and the month, you’ll notice that most of the videos are from Britains Got Talent,  (including one of my favorites,  Mr. Methane).

Conclusion

Britain’s Got Talent left BIG SHOES TO FILL for America’s Got Talent (the US version). Either they’ll ride the wave of press, or fail horribly. In a sense, the real Talent show is “Which Talent show will prevail as #1 Marketing?” Ultimately you, the reader, will be the one to decide.

Posted under Online Marketing, Online Video, SEO/SEM, Social Networks, Viral Marketing

Wikipedia defines outsourcing as “subcontracting a process, such as product design or manufacturing, to a third-party company.” A practice that is common in many industries and is a growing trend in todays boot-strapping economy. But today I discovered a whole new low for outsourcing: Mom Sourcing – “Want to wish your mom a happy Mother’s Day this Sunday, but can’t be bothered to fit the task in to your, uhh, four hour work week?”

My room mate, e-mail marketing expert at Acxiom Digital, sent this to me. I thought it was a joke, but boinboing.com aparently has a friend of a friend who’s running the site and claims “They swear they won’t keep the data or use it for any other purpose, they just think this is a funny thing to do.” I decided to fill it out for myself. After a few hours I got a call from my mom…she was laughing histarically and told me “this is a mother’s day I’ll never forget” – SCORE! I guess outsourcing really does pay off.

All humor aside, this is a notably successful viral marketing compaign done by marketing agency MotherNewYork. They are a creative agency that uses traditional, non-traditional, and invented media to do inspiring things for great brands all over the world. Congratulations on a succesfull campaign and hopefully this will inspire them to improve their website

Posted under Online Marketing, Viral Marketing

This is one of the most heartwarming Viral Marketing campaigns I have seen. Global document management company, Xerox, is among a group of companies (GalleryCollection.com, Hallmark Cards, Pitney Bowes, and more…)  supporting American troops overseas by mailing them greeting cards. Xerox runs a year-round program which hosts a Web site, LetsSayThanks.com, to provide a way for individuals across the country to recognize U.S. troops stationed overseas.

By submitting a message through this site you have the opportunity to send a free personalized postcard greeting to deployed servicemen and women. According Carl Langsenkamp, director of public relations at Xerox, about 10 million cards have been sent overseas since the website went up about a year and a half ago. “All the companies are donating time, money and/or services directly or in partnership with nonprofit organizations to spread Christmas cheer to soldiers far away from their loved ones at Christmas time.” (BtoBOnline.com)

With LetsSayThanks.com, you don’t have the ability to pick who receives the card, but it will go to a member of the armed services. I originally found out about this opportunity in an e-mail from my girlfriend’s father Leo Catallo. “Regardless of how one personally views this war, rather amazing it would be if more of the population spoke in this manner. It has to pretty much suck big to be over there right now. Sometimes I believe we tend to forget that.”

Featured on local and national TV outlets, newspapers and other blogs, this has gained a lot of attention. MSNBC’s Consumer Man, Herb Weisbaum,  outlines the entire process in his article, “Want to send a card to a soldier? Here’s how“:

There are 53 postcards to choose from, all drawn by kids from across the country. They’re bright and colorful — lots of bald eagles, American flags, hearts and the Statue of Liberty.

Click on a card and you will see the first name and age of the child who drew it, plus the city where they live.

Once you find your favorite design, you can write a message or choose one of 10 pre-written greetings, such as: “Sending you big hugs and cheer from home. Thank you so much for your service and bravery. Come home soon!”

Xerox prints the cards. A non-profit group, Give2TheTroops, puts them in care packages and ships them overseas.

Now it’s your turn to go ahead, click on the link LetsSayThanks.com, and donate 1 minute of your time to make a big difference!

Posted under Online Marketing, Viral Marketing

YouTube is launching its first ever live streaming event that will celebrate it’s endless list of user communities. Part concert, part variety show and part party, YouTube Live will bring together some of the amazing videos and unforgettable individuals that have contributed towards making the site what it is today. Expect to see Internet-born stars like Soulja Boy Tell’em, Esmee Denters, and “Canon Rock” virtuoso Funtwo, a global b-boy showcase featuring dancers from the movie Planet B-boy, Discovery Channel’s MythBusters and lots more.

But one thing is still unclear. Why did they call it a “Live Streaming Event“? Isn’t this more than event? Isn’t this the luanch of Google Live!? That’s the thing…nobody knows for sure. Here’s my time line covering YouTube Live from the first time it was mentioned until now:

• January 2008: First rumored on the popular blog Scobleizer.com,  when Robert Scoble asked the Chad Hurley (co-founder of Youtube), “Is YouTube working on streaming video?”. Chad responded, “We’re working on a lot of interesting things…” (watch the video here).

• February 2008:  NewTeeVee published a video taken by video-blogger Sarah Meyers asking Steve Chen (CTO & co-founder of youtube) “When are you guys gonna do live video on YouTube?” in which Chen responded:
  • “2008. We’ll do it this year. Live video is just something that we’ve always wanted to do, we’ve never had the resources to do it correctly, but now with Google, we hope to actually do it this year.” (watch the video)
    

• August 2008: according to an anonymous source cited by Silicon Alley Insider’s Michael Learmonth, they state that YouTube is not getting into live streaming. Well, that didn’t last long!

• October 3rd 2008: Wired.com’s Blog anounced that “YouTube will be hosting an event called YouTube Live in San Francisco on November 22 which (as the name implies) will be streamed live on its site”. (Blog.Wired.com) That same day, Gawker Media blog Valleywag also anounced YouTube is going live after all. But they also supported Michael Learmonth’s position saying “Google and YouTube won’t necessarily be offering live streaming video to users of the site any time soon.”

• October 22nd, 2008: AlleyInsider goes ahead and publishes a followup to their August article with a new one titled YouTube Launching Live Streaming Service — Or Something.  They claimed a source was telling them that “someone personally involved in the YouTube Live! event on November 22 [...] specifically described it as Youtube’s Live launch.”

• November 19th, 2008: Well here we are! In 3 days the Youtube Live! event is taking place. Will this be the “official launch” or just a one-time-thing?

Posted under Online Video, Social Networks, Viral Marketing

Want to see Viral Marketing Perfection in action? Here’s a perfect example: Ben Folds is making an album of a cappella versions of their music to be performed by the best university groups they could find! The CD will consist of 12-15 songs chosen from the submissions made. I am currently a member of Queens College acapella group, Tizmoret, so I found myself very intrigued.

Their master-plan was actually motivated by a number of amazing university a cappella versions of their songs published on YouTube. All you have to do is post your video to YouTube and submit the link to the BenFolds.com/Acapella website. Then they’ll go ahead and provide links to the Youtube clips on Benfolds.com, MySpace and Facebook so everyone can see what they’re choosing from. It’s viral marketing to the max…encouraging the public to post their video on the top video publishing site and then linking it with the top 2 social networks in our space…and then linking all of that, back to BenFolds.com!

Oh…and to to top if off, proceeds from sales of the CD will go to a music education charity to be decided. Now that’s what I call good marketing and great PR!

…so if you’re looking into setting up a Viral Marketing campaign, use this as a guideline:

• Provide an incentive
• Make use of “Video”
• Spread your campaign across the 3 largest social networks and then link everything together.

At this point, my fingers are crossed and I hope we win! Check out Tizmoret’s Acapella version of Annie Waits:

Posted under Online Video, Viral Marketing

Remember the viral video 5 Friends Uncensored? The YouTube video is a PSA (public service announcement) with Leonardo diCaprio, Ellen DeGeneres, Forrest Whittaker, Courtney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, Dustin Hoffman, and others. It took the web by storm!

Well, now there’s another one….5 More Friends “Uncensored”…already, with almost 800,000+ views and 190+ blog posts (make that 191). Again, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Snoop Dogg, and more featured in a second of a series of public service announcements to encourage American youth to vote in partnership with Google, YouTube, Declare Yourself, and MySpace. The non-partisan PSAs, produced by DiCaprios Appian Way, were created to engage and inspire young people to vote and participate in the upcoming election.

According to my friends at ViralVideoChart’s Top 20 Viral Videos in the past 24 hours, this is #2 (the #1 spot was too boring to blog about…sorry). Check it out, enjoy and have a great weekend…oh, and DON’T FORGET TO VOTE!!!!!!!!!

Posted under Online Video, Viral Marketing

Google's 10x100 (Source: GoogleBlogoscoped)

As previously written about in my article Google’s 10th Birthday, it’s hard to really know the day b/c it changes year to year. The only way to really know is by finding some piece of evidence on Google itself, whether it be a Google logo decorated with cake and candles…or as Google finally acknowledges turning 10 this month with a special Google 10th Birthday page with many new features as explained on Google Blogoscoped article Google’s Project 10 to the 100:

“As part of their 10 year anniversary – in 1998, Andy Bechtolsheim made out a $100,000 check to Google Inc. – Google released an interactive time line of the company history. Danny Sullivan’s 1998 look at Google, linked from the time line, is worth a read.*

Google also starts off something called Project 10¹⁰⁰, a contest in which you should submit your idea of how to help the most people in the world. You need to assign a category to your idea, like community, energy, health and education. Later on, 100 selected ideas will be voted on publicly to find 20 semi-finalists, of which 5 will then be selected as finalists, and Google promises to commit “$10 million to implement these projects” (what you win is not a prize for yourself but, as Google puts it, “the satisfaction of knowing that your idea might truly help a lot of people”). The deadline for submitting an idea is October 20th, and you may use a video to supplement your proposal, Google says.

“Why the name 10 to the power of 100? One reason is that this number is a googol, a 1 followed by 100 zeroes, that number which Google says gave the company its name.”

But, again, the day is yet to be determined. I keep my eyes peeled daily for any changes in the Google logo. SearchEngineLand predicts it to land on September 27th in their article Google Is 10 Years Old? Finding The Real Google Birthday. “Google’s been putting them up [the logos] consistently since 2002. The first year, it happened on September 27, then shifted to September 7, then back to September 27 from 2005 onward. I’d expect to see a special ninth birthday logo showing up on the 27th of this month.”

Here’s an attached video about Google 10×100 as published by Google on Youtube:

Posted under SEO/SEM, Viral Marketing