The Viral Garden's Top 25 Marketing Blogs - Week 16

Here's the standings for Week 16, and these will be updated again next Monday.

1 - Seth's Blog - 5,459 (LW - 1)(+39)
2 - Gaping Void - 17,115 (LW - 2)(-21)
3 - Creating Passionate Users - 17,781 (LW - 3)(+262)
4 - Duct Tape Marketing - 18,195 (LW - 4)(+3)
5 - Marketing Shift - 46,115 (LW - 5)(+221)
6 - HorsePigCow - 51,651 (LW - 6)(+148)
7 - Coolzor - 52,669 (LW - 7)(+531)
8 - The Viral Garden - 65,296 (LW - 8)(+1,197)
9 - Church of the Customer - 75,421 (LW - 9)(+2,467)
10 - What's Next - 78,482 (LW - 10)(+107)
11 - Emergence Marketing - 84,339 (LW - 11)(+295)
12 - Brand Autopsy - 88,530 (LW - 12)(+1,478)
13 - Diva Marketing - 107,232 (LW - 13)(+1,203)
14 - Jaffe Juice - 107,929 (LW - 14)(-374)
15 - Beyond Madison Avenue - 130,205 (LW - 15)(-4,321)
16 - New School of Network Marketing - 140,804 (LW - 16)(+4,427)
17 - Logic + Emotion - 162,230 (LW - 17)(+1,310)
18 - Pro Hip-Hip - Hip-Hop Marketing - 203,351 (LW- 18)(-2,126)
19 - Marketallica - 206,239 (LW - 19)(+5,995)
20 - What's Your Brand Mantra? - 213,083 (LW - 20)(-3,032)
21 - Marketing Headhunter - 233,304 (LW - 21)(-9,359)
22 - Daily Fix - 237,028 (LW - 22)
23 - Movie Marketing Madness - 241,737 (LW - 23)(+8,454)
24 - Experience Curve - 257,402 (LW - 24)(+11,529)
25 - WonderBranding - 262,884 (LW - 25)(-2,021)


Unfortunately, these rankings are the same as last week, since Alexa has now gone 11 days without updating their 3-month averages. Yeah I don't like it much either. One thing I did want to mention is that Daily Fix continues to set a torrid pace. If Alexa had updated, DF would have probably jumped to the Top 15. So don't be shocked if Daily Fix cracks the Top 10 for the next list, assuming Alexa wakes up between now and then.

As a result of this being a Top 25 re-run, I wanted to focus on some of the blogs that have been surging lately. These are the guys that may make a run at the Top 25 in the coming weeks.

Marketing Nirvana - 295,782
Brains on Fire - 324,574
Decker Marketing - 335,511
Studio UES - 370,767
Ageless Marketing - 404,570
The Brand Builder Blog - 415,599
Spare Change - 454,092


As always, next update is next Monday. Hopefully we'll actually have something to update then.

The Viral Garden is one of the Top 11 Word of Mouth blogs

Well as I told Sean, this just made my day! Sean runs an excellent word-of-mouth blog called Buzz Canuck, and he's come out with his list of The Top 11 Word of Mouth Blogs, and was gracious enough to include The Viral Garden in the mix! Thanks a ton Sean! And the list has plenty of familiar faces from The Viral Garden's Top 25, with seven current members making Sean's list.

A great honor, and the best part of the deal for me? I just discovered another great marketing blog! Check out Buzz Canuck, another great Canadian marketing blog. You Canadians sure know your marketing, I can think of a couple of others that are pretty good too!

Thanks again Sean, a great honor!

Mentos unveils geyser contest on YouTube

Mentos continues to prove how clued-in they are to their community, and how internet users are interacting with social media.

I've already blogged about how Coke tried to control the community-based buzz they received over the geyser videos, while Mentos embraced it. When Coke finally woke up and decided that all these people enjoying their product was a GOOD thing, they then created 'The Coke Show' and wanted people to start playing with their product on THEIR site.

Sorry guys, that's not the way it works. When your customers are enjoying your product, you do NOT try to stop that or control HOW they are enjoying your product. You embrace them, and if they are building positive buzz for your product, you do WHATEVER you can to make it as easy as possible for them to pass that buzz onto other other community members.

So while Coke tried to tell their community that it was ok to play with their product, as long as they did it on their new site so they could 'oversee' them, Mentos announced that they would create a contest to award prizes to the best geyser video. Genius. Whereas Coke tried to alter/control the behavior of their community, Mentos embraced their's and announced that they would award them for doing what they were already doing for free.

Then Mentos made yet ANOTHER smart move, and announced they will be hosting the contest on YouTube. Excellent. While Coke wants you to come to THEIR site so THEY can control what you are doing, Mentos has gone to their community and told them that they will reward them with prizes for doing what they are already doing anyway, and using the space that they are already the most familiar with.

Make it as easy as possible for your community to spread their positive buzz. Mentos still gets it, and Coke is still scratching their heads.

Thanks to Jackie for the tip about this.

BTW, on a completely unrelated note, thanks to everyone that has added me to their Technorati Favorites! I've added everyone that added me, to my favorites as well. I think I need about 30 more bloggers to favorite me to crack the Top 100. So if you'd like to help out, just click on the logo below!

Well it ain't '100 CDs For 100 Bloggers'...

....but it's pretty close. Jason at Music Business Blog has told me how On Target Media Group is targetting bloggers to promote Les Claypool's new CD, Of Whales and Woe. According to Jason:

I'd say we approached 50 or so blogs about Les' CD. We only contacted the ones we really thought would be interested. As we move forward and find more and more relevant blogs, that number will certainly go up for future campaigns. The key in success here is relevance - we want to create goodwill and a sense of community, not be seen as merciless promoters that are aiming wide versus a targeted approach.

Jason told me that the bloggers were offered CDs, exclusive content, even interviews! Notice he spoke of the importance of relevance and a sense of community. Again, that's what makes targetting bloggers to promote music as such a complete no-brainer. These guys are ALREADY doing your job for you, all you are doing is making it as easy as possible for them to do so from here forward. Good to see Jason and On Target Media Group being WAY ahead of the curve here, but again, this is the future of music and all marketing, empowering your community to market for you.

As for '100 CDs for 100 Bloggers', thanks to Letters from the idiot for picking up on my idea. The amazing thing? I'm starting to get referrals from visitors who found The Viral Garden by doing a Google search for '100 CDs For 100 Bloggers'.

Viral Community News

First of all, if you are coming here for the first time, let me quickly explain what this post is. Viral Community News is my way of highlighting interesting and relevant posts I see at other blogs that I read. It gives you a way to (hopefully) find some interesting reading, and maybe be introduced to some new blogs to add to your feeds.

Also, I have added an 'About Me/FAQ' spot to the sidebar, as well as a 'The Best of The Viral Garden'. Both should be pretty self-explanatory.


Seth, THIS is the best-case example I have ever seen for why bloggers should allow comments. After I left my 'Does the Best Marketing Go Unnoticed?' post on Daily Fix, which highlighted the 'marketing' efforts of The Favorites on MySpace and the work Brains on Fire and Fiskars did to create The Fiskateers, Spike from BoF, Jeremy from The Favorites, and 2 of the Fiskateers, Stephenie and May, ALL commented to give further background information on their efforts. Absolute gold. If you are in marketing in any shape, form, or fashion, then you MUST read the comments to this post, because these people are foretelling the future of marketing. A future where companies find their passionate community members, and empower them to market for them.


Anyone else notice that Miami Vice opened #1 in the box-office wars ahead of Pirates of the Carribbean? Can we blame it on 'The Miami Vice Story'? ;)


Great story from Mike Wagner, how as a kid he didn't go the 'lemonade-stand' route to earn money. Marketers can learn from his example.


Laura chimes in on how Mel Gibson can save his brand after the fallout from his remarks during his DUI arrest last weekend. Also, Jennifer Rice disagrees with an earlier post that Laura made about Weber grills and their branding. I agree with the points that Jennifer make, but don't think they are applicable in the Weber case. And Jennifer then has a follow-up post. Another great example of comments making the post, as Laura and Jennifer give a sort of Branding 101 primer. Pure gold.


Paul from Hee-Haw Marketing has started posting 'It's the Links I love, My Friend', where he posts his own list of posts that have caught his eye lately. Here's his first two.



Tricia at Studio UES gives her 5 Reasons Every Artist Should Have a Blog. A great list, and also Tricia you might want to check out Jason's Music Business Blog, which is another great read.


Mario's blog interview with Jeremiah Owyang is up. As I said earlier, I'm not a big fan of blogger interviews, but this one is different because Mario let his readers pick most of the questions for Jeremiah. Great way to include your community in the process. Here's Part 1, and Part 2.


Teresa comments on having bloggers 'embedding' with artists as they tour. She thinks it's a good idea, and so do I, but I think it works so much better if the artists themselves will at least occasionally post. Or do like Rob Thomas did, create a vlog showing sound-checks, portions of the concerts, and backstage interviews with Rob and the band. As with most efforts to integrate social media, it's a good start, but still has endless possibilities.


CK has a great post explaining exactly why the current Mac vs. PC ads work so well. I won't give away the ending, but I think she's exactly right!


Bob has a great review of the book “A Whole New Mind – Why Right-Brainers Will Rule The Future” by Daniel Pink. Again, this is why blogs are such effective communication tools. Before this post I had never heard of the book or the author, now I am looking forward to reading the book.

Note to companies: We aren't the bad guys

Recently, David at Logic + Emotion got a personalized email from PR firm Edelman, letting him know about one of their clients, Getty Images and some new photographers they have brought on board. As David says, this is a smart move for Edelman, because it shows that they took the time to read L+E, and decided that David might be interested in this.

Almost daily, I got 'blind' emails from companies and agencies wanting me to check out (ie...blog about), their latest spot/flash game/whatever. Normally these consist of little more than 'Hey man, we just started this, thought you might think it's cool, thanks!', with no contact information, or any reason why I should care. To be fair, some people are very helpful, they carefully explain what the deal is, why I should care, and are happy to provide more information.

But another thing that happens almost daily, is that companies will visit The Viral Garden, usually after doing a Google or Technorati search for their company. Case in point, yesterday someone from T-Mobile in the UK came by to look at the post I wrote about their 'subtle' concert promotion they are running. They came and left.

Why do companies do this?

They send mass emails out to every ad/marketing blog they can find, yet ignore the ones that are ACTUALLY TALKING ABOUT THEM. Very short-sighted. Yesterday when the T-Mobile rep visited here, either they read my post and agreed with what I said, or they didn't. If they did, all they had to do was spend literally 60 seconds sending me a quick email saying thanks for helping to promote our concert campaign. Or if they disagreed, all they had to do was send an email quickly explaining their reasoning behind the campaign.

To any companies reading this, trust me, taking a minute to give some feedback to a blogger that writes about you is NEVER a bad thing. Even if you think we are idiots that have no idea what you are trying to accomplish, just send us an email telling us where you think we got it wrong, and 99% of us will blog 'your side' of the story, and thank you for coming. If you want to REALLY be smart, invite us to email you from now on if we want to discuss any marketing initiatives your company has in the future.

And for any of you thinking 'Oh c'mon, you're just one blogger, how can talking to one blogger make a difference?', read this.

More on using bloggers to promote music artists

Teresa at BlogBusinessSummit recently blogged about a new Christina Aguilera online promotion.

Teresa explains:

Today, an e-mail went out to all fan club members offering us a 5% discount to pre-order Christina’s forthcoming double album, Back to Basics. They also announced a contest in which each fan club member received her own personalized 5% discount code to share with “friends and family.” The Christina fan who pre-sells the most CD’s before Friday, August 11 at 3 PM ED wins an autographed iPod nano.

Teresa admitted in her post that this promotion could have been a bit better, and I commented that a better way to engage bloggers may be my '100 CDs for 100 Bloggers' idea.

Teresa agreed, and she was kind enough to post about the promotion, adding this:

Then Mack Collier came along, commented on my post and smacked me over the head with what I think should become the immediate best practice for engaging bloggers when promoting a CD.

Thanks Teresa! The good news is, a few labels have contacted me about this idea, and even some MSM sources, so we may see it yet.

The concept of empowering your community is at the heart of this promotion, and I think the future of marketing lies with this idea. Find community members that are already passionate about your product, that are well-connected and have the ability to communicate to many other community members quickly and effectively, and empower them to market for you. Bloggers are a natural fit for such a promotion, given that they already have established communities of readers, and that ideas spread so quickly and easily among bloggers.

They already have the infrastructure in place to communicate to others, they just need the message, and the incentive to spread that message. This promotion supplies both.

And as I tell everyone that contacts me about this idea, the FIRST label to execute this promotion is going to make serious waves. That's what frustrates me, because I obviously have a short list of certain labels and artists that I want to see be the ones that reap the benefits from this idea, but I can only lead them to the water ;)

Hells bells The Viral Community proved that this concept works, with the attention that 'The Miami Vice Story' garnered. And that started from ONE blogger. Add 99 more and see what you get.

Thanks again Teresa, and everyone make sure to check out her blog at BlogBusinessSummitt!





Pic via The Donnas MySpace page.

Social Media: Who's Hot, Who's Not

As a change of pace from using Alexa to rank the Top 25 Marketing Blogs, I thought I'd look at how all the social media/networking sites are doing, and see if any of them are starting to cool off, or are growing quicker than we might have guessed. However, since this entire area is scorching hot, I'm not sure we'll find too many 'not hot' sites, but you never know.

First I'll rank the sites according to overall Alexa score. This will be the 3-month average, the same as we use in the Top 25 Marketing Blogs list, and yes, I may very well have missed a site that you think should have been included, this will just give you an idea. The number in paranthesis shows how many spots up or down the site has moved in the last 3 months:

1 - MySpace(6)(+1)
2 - YouTube(16)(+18)
3 - Wikipedia(17)(No Change)
4 - Blogger(19)(-1)
5 - Flickr(40)(+38)
6 - Friendster (45)(+28)
7 - Facebook(66)(-13)
8 - Digg(100)(+160)
9 - TypePad(131)(+5)
10 - del.icio.us(147)(+239)
11 - Technorati(247)(+272)
12 - Bloglines(320)(+242)
13 - Bebo(340)(+154)
14 - WordPress(402)(+691)
15 - Second Life (3,788)(+608)
16 - Revver(5,191)(+3,908)


You have to be careful when looking at these numbers, because the higher your traffic rank, the more difficult it is to move up. For example, a traffic move from #8 to #5 could be far more significant than moving from #150 to #100. Given this, I think you have to say that YouTube has surpassed MySpace as THE hot Social Media/Web 2.0 whatever you want to call it site of the moment. These numbers seem to also back up the media's shift from MySpace more to YouTube being their media darling. MySpace is relatively flat, and could be very close to peaking, if it hasn't already. But YouTube is white-hot right now.

Flickr is also surging, and I think as the media's attention shifts more toward YouTube, you will see Flickr get some ancillary attention. Also, notice that while MySpace and Facebook are flat or down, that Friendster is up 28 spots. I think that's something that gets lost in the shuffle, usually when the media talks about 'social networking' sites, they mention MySpace, and maybe Facebook. Friendster is usually the odd-man out, but as these social-networking sites seem to be cooling, this lack of attention could actually be helping Friendster, especially if MySpace and Facebook lose their 'cool' factor.

While Typepad is relatively flat, Technorati, Bloglines, and Wordpress are all up solidly. Technorati's performance has always been a sort of barometer for the overall health of the blogosphere, and T-Rati is showing no signs of slowly down.

Digg and Del.icio.us are both up solidly. Also notice that YouTube is getting all the press, but Revver had a huge move. Granted, YouTube's traffic is much higher than Revver's, but the video-monetization site still had a nice jump.

I think the key info to take from these numbers are that the social networking sites are showing signs of slowly down, while the social-media and bookmarking sites are gaining momentum.


Now we'll look at just traffic. This will show how many people are actually visiting each site. The number next to each site is how many people out of every million visited this site, and then what percentage that number as changed over the last 3 months:

1 - Wikipedia - 39,790 (+17%)
2 - Blogger - 34,785 (+3%)
3 - MySpace - 33,530 (+8%)
4 - YouTube - 31,370 (+152%)
5 - Flickr - 9,650 (+79%)
6 - Digg - 7,420 (+132%)
7 - Friendster - 7,295 (+46%)
8 - Typepad - 6,500 (-8%)
9 - Del.icio.us - 4,925 (+123%)
10 - Facebook - 4,310 (-14%)
11 - Bloglines - 3,745 (+79%)
12 - Technorati - 3,465 (+85%)
13 - Wordpress - 3,070 (+172%)
14 - Bebo - 1,135 (+21%)
15 - Revver - 236 (+100%)
16 - Second Life - 213.5 (+24%)


Notice that just based on traffic, everyone is up except for Facebook and Typepad. But again, YouTube has a huge move. If their traffic continues to grow at anywhere close to present rates, they will sail past Wikipedia for the top Social-Media site in a matter of weeks. But again, you see that the guard may be changing.....the top 3 spots all are up only slightly, but starting with YouTube at #4, most of the rest of the list has big moves. The wildcard in this mix could be Revver, as it will be interesting to see if YouTube can pull up the site with it. I think you're going to really see the media start to wake up about YouTube in the next few weeks, which will boost traffic, and probably push the site ahead of MySpace, possibly as soon as the end of the month.

Types of bloggers

How many can you spot? (inspired by the always funny, always smart and always cute Leigh)


1 - The Godfather. He invented blogging, and then wrote the first book on the subject. One link from him will give your blog as much traffic as it gets in a month. Likewise, if you piss him off, he will flame you, which is the same as credibility-suicide. As a result, no one has the stones to tell him that he hasn't made a lick of sense since at least 2003.

2 - The Conference Groupie. Attends each and every blogging conference, clapping furiously at every A-Lister's speech and giving meticulous accounts of how he met every A-Lister that attended, although none of them will admit to meeting this blogging everyman on their own blogs.

3 - I call bullshit. The blogger that loves to hit every A-Listers' blog, trying to knock them out of their ivory towers, and back down to earth. Calls them all windbag assholes, but secretly envies their superior links and traffic.

4 - Diamond in the rough. The blogger that no one has heard of, that makes more sense than all the other A-Listers combined. Since she has authored no books, and doesn't work for a major company, she isn't taken seriously. Of course, when she finally reaches a few hundred links (or starts doing the blogging conference circuit), other A-Listers can then acknowledge her existance, and she becomes an A-Lister overnight.

5 - The namer. This blogger knows that no true A-Lister has ever achieved this elite status without publishing a book. Since he realizes that he has nothing book-worthy to say, he re-names existing concepts thinking that a new name to an old idea, will equal a new idea.

6 - The pseudo-sage. States the incredibly obvious, while other bloggers act like he just invented String Theory. Such as:'We overlook the simple things. The key to selling more soap is marketing to people that take baths'.

7 - The Tipping Point - Blogger who suddenly realizes that he's now getting love from A-Listers and his every post, no matter how banal or meaningless, is getting link-love. TP is perplexed by this sudden rush of blog-love, until he realizes that he just got his 500th link.

8 - The hack. Has built her empire by posting 20 times a day, not by saying anything memorable. She's an A-Lister, but wants to be taken seriously for her knowledge, not traffic and links. As a result, she is constantly trying to get meaningless memes started, with the disclaimer that 'I think we need to start a conversation about this'. No one ever takes the bait.

9 - The would-be consultant. Constantly blogs about how every major company is 'getting it wrong'. No matter what they say or do, this blogger is convinced that they could do it better. Scratch that....they could do it better IF THEY HIRED HIM.

10 - The lister. Constantly makes lists in a cheap attempt to start a meme. Hates it when others call him 'MaRk'.

The Viral Garden's Top 25 Marketing Blogs - Week 15

Here's the standings for Week 15, and these will be updated again next Monday.

1 - Seth's Blog - 5,459 (LW - 1)(+39)
2 - Gaping Void - 17,115 (LW - 2)(-21)
3 - Creating Passionate Users - 17,781 (LW - 3)(+262)
4 - Duct Tape Marketing - 18,195 (LW - 4)(+3)
5 - Marketing Shift - 46,115 (LW - 5)(+221)
6 - HorsePigCow - 51,651 (LW - 6)(+148)
7 - Coolzor - 52,669 (LW - 7)(+531)
8 - The Viral Garden - 65,296 (LW - 8)(+1,197)
9 - Church of the Customer - 75,421 (LW - 9)(+2,467)
10 - What's Next - 78,482 (LW - 10)(+107)
11 - Emergence Marketing - 84,339 (LW - 11)(+295)
12 - Brand Autopsy - 88,530 (LW - 12)(+1,478)
13 - Diva Marketing - 107,232 (LW - 14)(+1,203)
14 - Jaffe Juice - 107,929 (LW - 13)(-374)
15 - Beyond Madison Avenue - 130,205 (LW - 15)(-4,321)
16 - New School of Network Marketing - 140,804 (LW - 16)(+4,427)
17 - Logic + Emotion - 162,230 (LW - 17)(+1,310)
18 - Pro Hip-Hip - Hip-Hop Marketing - 203,351 (LW- 18)(-2,126)
19 - Marketallica - 206,239 (LW - 20)(+5,995)
20 - What's Your Brand Mantra? - 213,083 (LW - 19)(-3,032)
21 - Marketing Headhunter - 233,304 (LW - 21)(-9,359)
22 - Daily Fix - 237,028 (LW - UR)
23 - Movie Marketing Madness - 241,737 (LW - 22)(+8,454)
24 - Experience Curve - 257,402 (LW - 25)(+11,529)
25 - WonderBranding - 262,884 (LW - 23)(-2,021)


Fairly quiet week, as 18 of the Top 25 were up. Coolz0r continues to inch closer to HorsePigCow and MarketingShift. Church of the Customer has had a nice run these past few weeks. For the longest time CoC, What's Next and Brand Autopsy were all 3 running as a pack. First What's Next made a move ahead, now CoC has taken the lead. And to be fair, Brand Autopsy is still doing well itself. Experience Curve and Movie Marketing Madness both had big weeks.

The week's sole debut was Daily Fix. DF has made huge leaps after moving to its own domain name a few weeks ago. Eventually DF should make a run at the Top 5.

Outside the Top 25, Studio UES and Marketing Nirvana again had nice moves.

As always, next update is next Monday.

Social Media Mavens Series

This series looks at what some of the top companies and organizations in the world are doing with social media. Every two weeks, I'll post an interview with a corporate leader in the social media space. These interviews will let you see how the top companies in the world are using social media, and hopefully give you some instruction on how you can craft your own social media efforts.

The entries in the series are:

Lindsay Lebresco - Social Media Manager, Graco:

"I work with these people to create quality content that we hopes connects with our readers and helps underscore the fact that the people behind the products at Graco are on the same journey our consumers are on or are headed on."


Bonin Bough - Director of Global Social Media, PepsiCo:

"Overall I think we need to stop focusing on the “either/or” approach to traditional versus online social media marketing. At Tropicana and PepsiCo we have an integrated marketing mix strategy. The Juice is a specific tactic that brings a different and deeper level of engagement and provides a platform for an open conversation, so we can actually engage directly with our consumers."


Tom Hoehn - Director of Interactive Marketing and Convergence Media, Kodak:

"It isn’t about the tools it is about connecting with our customers. This helps people within Kodak understand the opportunity at hand without getting caught up in jargon."


Kristie Rogers - Marketing Manager, and Cathy Mortensen, Blogger for HomeGoods:

"It was a conscious plan to keep the blog as organic as possible. We wanted to make it inviting just as if you were having guests over to your home. We give a lot of autonomy to the bloggers. There are very little restrictions. Referring to “commenters” by their first name makes it more of a dialog. We like to think of HG Openhouse as a sisterhood - girlfriends having a conversation with one another."


Gary Koelling - Director of Emerging Media Technology, Best Buy:

"When we first build BlueShirt Nation (BSN) it was an attempt to solve a specific problem. We wanted to get employee and customer insight that could lead to better, more relevant advertising. We never got a direct answer to that although you could argue it led to us to better advertising eventually. Any way, the users made it into a social network. Steve Bendt (the other founder of BSN) and I just happened to have the good sense to stick with it - whatever it became."


Terry O'Neil - Executive Vice President, Citi:

"Social media requires a long-term approach and cohesive strategy. It’s about establishing and encouraging conversations with customers in order to strengthen and improve products and services. In doing so, companies need to embrace unfiltered dialog from customers, recognize they’re not going to be able to control the conversations and use this real time feedback to improve the overall customer experience."



New entries in this series will be posted every other week. If you have a corporation that's successfully using social media and would like to be interviewed for this series, please email me.

New post up at Daily Fix, and other cyber goodness

My latest post at Daily Fix is headlining, entitled 'Does the Best Marketing Go Unnoticed?'. The post talks about the excellent jobs Fiskars and Brains on Fire did in creating The Fiskateers, and how The Favorites created their online community of fans on MySpace. IMO, these are textbook examples of how to empower, and join your communities, respectively. Give it a read if you get a chance.

The Top 25 Marketing Blogs list for this week will be up sometime between now and this afternoon.

Also I'm going to call on The Viral Community today, if you have a minute, please use this link and add The Viral Garden to your Technorati Favorites. As you know, I'm not big on self-promotion, but if you make the Top 100, it does add some traffic to your blog, so if you haven't already, please add me to your favorites, and I'll happily do the same for your blog. In fact if you want, you can leave a comment saying you have added me to your list, and then I'll add you to mine. Thanks to Ann Ray, Chris, Bob, Rob and Ed for adding me to your lists, and I've already added each of you to mine. You need to have a free Technorati account to play (which you should have already anyway). With any luck we can lift The Viral Community up to take over the Top 100. Wouldn't THAT be something? ;)

T-Mobile hosting free concerts to sell phones

From Church of the Customer comes an interesting promotion by T-Mobile. T-Mobile has started hosting free concerts in the UK for their customers. The concerts are by major brit acts, and in very small venues that will only hold a few hundred fans at most. There is little to no signage or promotion for T-Mobile at the concerts, and the idea is to give their customers a free concert, show them a great time, and hopefully by creating a great experience for them, they'll remember that and not only stick with T-Mobile, but encourage their friends to make the switch to the provider.

I'm not sure how I feel about this promotion, but I wanted to first highlight some quotes from Karen Harrison, a brand manager for T-Mobile in the UK:

"We're trying to put bands you wouldn't expect in really surprising venues"

"Music has become a little bit too corporate"

"It's not about us ramming T-Mobile down people's throats because there's no need.

"People know who we are."

"People are looking for spontaneity"

"Intimate events work, as long as you are credible and serious about it. There has got to be a reason for you being there.

"You go to a gig and what strikes you is the number of people with a phone in the air taking a picture or ringing a friend or leaving them a voicemail of the show.

"You have to give it context, otherwise it comes across as cynical. We have a role it terms of the network helping people to enjoy music."

Ok, first of all, the above quotes tell me that T-Mobile is realizing that traditional marketing doesn't really reach their target market, and that they need to try some new tactics. As Jackie says on CoC:

It's anti-marketing designed to spur word of mouth. Customers become VIPs at an exclusive event. That should be plenty to get people talking.

It should, but there's one area where I really think T-Mobile missed a golden opportunity here. You give your customers a free concert, you try to create a great time for them so they will tell others about it, so why not make it as easy as possible for them to spread the word? Why not also give these customers that were given the passes to the concert, a free month of text messages and unlimited minutes? That would encourage them to text and talk as much as possible, and I'm sure the fact that they were getting a free concert AND free text/calls would definitely be something they would want to tell their friends about.

The main problem I see with this promotion is that the main focus of the excitement and talk will likely be the band at the concert, and not T-Mobile. And it's a fine-line for T-Mobile to walk, because from the quotes above, you can tell that their thinking was that they wanted the promotion to be very subtle, almost sublime. They realize that pushing T-Mobile in the concert-goers faces smacks of traditional marketing, and would turn their customers off.

But the trade-off is, you risk the band getting the majority of attention and buzz, and not T-Mobile. Let's be honest, if you get a free concert with your favorite artist where you are only 3 feet away from them for 2 hours, that experience will likely impress you more than T-Mobile sponsoring this event.

Having said that, I do think this is a step in the right direction. I think the key is to create a promotion where the customers have a high incentive to spread positive WOM about the product, and are also empowered to communicate that positive WOM to as many people as possible. As I said earlier, I think adding free text messages and calls for at least a month around the time the concert is held, would be a big plus.

Of course, I can think of another promotion that creates a high incentive to spread positive WOM about the product, AND also reaches the community members that are the most empowered to spread that positive WOM to as many other community members as possible.

Awesome! We F*ckin' Shot That!

I've said this before, but moving forward, I believe the marketing landscape belongs to the companies and people that are willing to join and empower their communities. This is a big reason why music marketing has always intrigued me, because artists are extremely close to their communities of fans. By default, a music artist is also a member of his or her community, since they are also fans of their own music. The greater the level of interaction with their fans, the greater the level of devotion to the artist.

Take The Beastie Boys. They've been around for literally decades, but haven't been in the mainstream music consciousness in years. To many in the industry, being out of sight, out of mind would represent a career in decline. But the Beasties are smart enough to know that appealing to their core fans is the key to sustaining a career (Paying attention, Jewel?). A classic example of the Beasties embracing their community came in 2004 when the Beasties decided that they wanted to shoot a concert documentary.

The Beasties ended their 2004 World Tour in their hometown at Madison Square Garden. Seemed like the perfect place to film the group's concert documentary, but the Boys didn't. Their fans did. Prior to the concert, the Beasties walked out into the crowd and handed out 50 camcorders, with the simple instructions for their fans to film anything they wanted as long as they filmed it with passion.

The result is the current DVD 'Awesome; I F*ckin' Shot That'. The title came from producer Joe Doran, who explained that in 20 years when fans that were at this show see this DVD, they'll be able to say "Awesome! I F*ckin' Shot That!".

So is this a documentary about the Beasties, or their community of fans? Or is it all of the above?

Yes.

This is again, the new marketing reality. You don't have total control of your marketing message, you share control with your community. You can fight this reality, or you can embrace it as the Beasties did here, and create something magical. I'm not a big Beastie Boys fan, but I don't have to be to know that this DVD is going to be a hit. Why? Because it is aimed at the people that made it.

Want to create some marketing magic of your own? Then you'll have to do what the Beasties did, you'll have to leave the stage and get out in the crowd.

Theory is good. Theory being put into action and proven is even better.

Add Cinematical to the list of blogs that have picked up 'The Miami Vice Story' as I've started calling it when I talk to other bloggers. And the amazing thing is, I spent most of yesterday doing just that, talking to other bloggers about this story. Between contacting bloggers to get them up to speed on what was happening, and fielding comments from bloggers that read my post on Daily Fix, everyone was excited about one rep at one company reaching out to one blogger.

Am I getting a little geeked out by all of this? Yeah....I guess I am.

This excites the hell out of me for 3 reasons:

1 - It brings more exposure to Chris, and Movie Marketing Madness. Nuff said.
2 - It brings more exposure to Universal, who was smart enough to contact Chris to begin with to help promote Miami Vice. Nuff said.
3 - It proves that this 'empowering your community' marketing theory that we like to talk about, actually works.

And yes, the bigger this story gets, the more exciting #3 gets for me.

A couple of months ago after I posted my '100 CDs for 100 Bloggers' idea on Daily Fix, I started hearing from labels that wanted me to explain to them exactly how the promotion would work. It was terribly exciting and frustrating at the same time. Exciting, because the labels I talked realized that there was something to this idea of empowering bloggers to promote their music for them, but frustrating because I got the sense that they didn't want to commit to this promotion because 'no one has done it before'. I remember one guy in particular, he started out with a list of reasons why this couldn't work, but as I explained my idea to him, he realized it would work, and by the end of the conversation he had almost adopted a 'defeated' stance. He knew the idea was great, he knew it would work, but he also knew he could never sell it to his label because, 'no one's ever done anything like this before'.

Now they have. And again, all this hype has originated from ONE post on ONE blog by ONE blogger.

That's it. Multiply that buzz by 100, and what do you get? In the case of '100 CDs for 100 Bloggers', one very happy record label selling a great deal of music for very little cost. Sounds like a win-win to me.

And it works for other products just as well. All you have to do, as Chris said, is 'talk to your advocates'. Find the people in your community that WANT to tell your story, and give them a megaphone. That's it.

The future belongs to the companies that are smart enough to empower their communities to market for them.


PS: Chris now has his Movie Marketing Madness column up for Miami Vice, and he goes into even more detail on the 'word of mouth/mouse' campaign for the movie. All of Chris' MMM columns are must-read, and this is one of his best.

Pic via Flickr user DannyG

The birth of the Spontanous Marketing Campaign

Add Daily Fix and Church of the Customer to the list of blogs chiming in on Universal's contacting Chris. As Ben says:

Pick up the phone and CALL A BLOGGER today. It's so simple but yet so novel that the phone call alone can generate some word of mouth.

My latest post on Daily Fix also goes into how one company contacting one blogger has evolved into a 'Spontaneous Marketing Campaign' for Miami Vice. Adding Daily Fix and Church of the Customer likely gets the combined daily reach for all the blogs that so far linked to this story to well over 10,000 readers A DAY. As I told Ben, what would happen if Universal had decided to contact as many bloggers as possible today? Just spend one day talking to bloggers.

If talking to one blogger is netting over 10,000 daily exposures for Miami Vice, wouldn't talking to 10 bloggers get you up to 100,000 daily exposures? Actually, it would likely be much more than that, since the more bloggers linking to a story, the more quickly it spreads.

So if Universal were to spend today talking to 10 bloggers, and those 10 bloggers and all the other blogs picking up on this story led to total daily exposures of over 100,000, it's not impossible to envision today's efforts netting them a half a MILLION total positive exposures for Miami Vice by the time it's released this weekend. How many companies would be willing to spend a day executing an online promotion that would get them 500,000 positive exposures in 5 days? FOR FREE.

And that's from just 10 bloggers. Imagine what would happen if you included 100 bloggers in such a promotion? No wait....someone's already thought of that.

The Viral Garden's Top 25 Marketing Blogs - Week 14

Here's the standings for Week 14, and these will be updated again next Monday.

1 - Seth's Blog - 5,498 (LW - 1)(+181)
2 - Gaping Void - 17,094 (LW - 2)(-97)
3 - Creating Passionate Users - 18,133 (LW - 4)(+148)
4 - Duct Tape Marketing - 18,198 (LW - 3)(-116)
5 - Marketing Shift - 46,336 (LW - 5)(-1,250)
6 - HorsePigCow - 51,799 (LW - 6)(-1,784)
7 - Coolzor - 53,200 (LW - 7)(+2,753)
8 - The Viral Garden - 66,493 (LW - 8)(+2,183)
9 - Church of the Customer - 77,888 (LW - 10)(+3,626)
10 - What's Next - 78,589 (LW - 9)(+1,980)
11 - Emergence Marketing - 84,634 (LW - 11)(+6,488)
12 - Brand Autopsy - 90,008 (LW - 12)(+3,500)
13 - Jaffe Juice - 107,555 (LW - 13)(-2,905)
14 - Diva Marketing - 108,435 (LW - 14)(-876)
15 - Beyond Madison Avenue - 125,884 (LW - 15)(-10,539)
16 - New School of Network Marketing - 145,231 (LW - 16)(+6,653)
17 - Logic + Emotion - 163,540 (LW - 17)(+12,681)
18 - Pro Hip-Hip - Hip-Hop Marketing - 201,225 (LW- 20)(+845)
19 - What's Your Brand Mantra? - 210,051 (LW - 19)(-12,549)
20 - Marketallica - 212,234 (LW - 21)(+14,578)
21 - Marketing Headhunter - 223,945 (LW - 18)(-28,388)
22 - Movie Marketing Madness - 250,191 (LW - 24)(+10,541)
23 - WonderBranding - 260,863 (LW - 22)(-11,685)
24 - Marketing Roadmaps - 263,149 (LW - 23)(-3,330)
25 - Experience Curve - 268,931 (LW - UR)


Normally the bottom half of the Top 25 seems to surge the most, but this week the Top 12 blogs had a nice push. Marketing Shift and HorsePigCow again slipped a bit, but 7-12 all had nice jumps, and CoolZ0r inches ever so closer to the 2 blogs in front of him. The Top 4 continue to enjoy a large gap over the rest of the countdown, but that may be about to change in the coming weeks.

Outside the Top 12, Logic+Emotion and MMM again had nice weeks, and Pro Hip-Hop jumped 2 spots to #18, I think that's the highest that Clyde's blog has gotten so far.

Karl Long's Experience Curve does a cannonball to land in the Top 25 at the last spot. Huge move for EC this week. Studio UES, Marketing Nirvana, and DailyFix(with its own domain name now), all narrowly missed the Top 25, and any or all of them could be in the mix next week.

As always, next update is next Monday.

Comment Policy

First, let me state upfront that I definitely do want you to comment here. Please. But I also reserve the right to remove any comment for any reason. Some of the reasons that will almost positively get your comment removed include:

1 - Harrassing other commenters or myself. You can disagree but don't be disagreeable.

2 - Profanity, almost zero tolerance here.

3 - Anonymous comments. I don't allow them, and if you try to post as a moniker, that will probably be removed, even if your comment itself wasn't out of line.

4 - Comments left to posts older than 14 day are moderated and will have to be manually approved. I have this set up because these are the ones that are more likely to get spam comments.

5 - If your comment is clearly an attempt to simply promote your own site, it will probably get deleted. If you leave 'Great post, thanks for sharing!', then five links to your site, it's gone.


The bottom line is if you are respectful of others and leave comments that are valuable to the rest of us, you will be fine. And 99.9% of the comments left here fall into this category. But if you are attempting to attack/flame others, or promote your site, there's almost a 100% chance your comment will be gone immediately. If you have any questions about these guidelines, feel free to email me.

What's your answer?

Add The Media Drop, Converstations, One Reader at a Time, and Burbanked to the increasingly long list of blogs that are chiming in their support of Universal's move to approach MMM. I did a Technorati search for 'Universal and Miami Vice' and quickly found that it is The Viral Community that's driving the buzz for both terms.

I also noted that NONE of the A-List bloggers that were so upset over Dell's first blog last week, have chimed in on Universal's move to CONTACT Chris.

The question I have is: Why not?


UPDATE: Add Musical Ramblings to the list.

Nother UPDATE: Add Marketing Nirvana to the list.

Your 24-hour guide to creating buzz with blogs

Let's revisit what has happened in the last 24 hours concerning Chris' post on MMM about Universal contacting him about the marketing efforts for the movie Miami Vice.

Since this time yesterday, the following blogs and websites have linked to Chris' post:

The Viral Garden
Studio UES
CK's Blog
Tell Ten Friends
exitcreative
Flixer
Beyond Madison Avenue

And then Clay even went so far as to comment on David's blog linking back HERE.

This is why we call it 'social' media. We talk. We spread ideas. Quickly. One guy at Universal taking 30 minutes to talk to a blogger has so far netted Universal and Miami Vice exposure on (currently) 8 blogs and websites within the first 24 hours, including 3 of the Top 25 Marketing Blogs.

Not a bad tradeoff. How many people were exposed to Universal and Miami Vice in the last 24 hours as a result of these sites? Well I can say that over 2,000 people visited BMA and here in the last day, so right now Universal is batting a thousand people a blog. Again, a 30-minute chat with one blogger has now blossomed into an online marketing campaign for Universal and Miami Vice. Which didn't cost Universal a penny.

Like I said, we talk, we spread ideas, and enjoy doing so. We especially love to talk about companies that are smart enough to talk to us.

The question your company needs to ask itself is: Why didn't you give us a reason to talk about you?

UPDATE: Karl Long just emailed me to let me know he's joined in praising Universal's reaching out to MMM.