Let’s [>>]]]> In the early days of the Internet, businesses with a physical location were referred to as “brick-and-mortar,” while those on the Internet had a “Web presence.” Obviously, that distinction doesn’t hold up anymore, but a recent Google campaign and a new iPhone app got me thinking about the convergence of the online and offline worlds.

Let’s start with Google. The company took its online world offline this summer with its “Favorite Places” marketing campaign. Think Yelp meets Google Maps meets celebrity endorsements for the mobile age. For the campaign, Google asked local experts/celebrities in more than a dozen cities (in the Bay Area, folks like Gavin Newsom and Alice Waters are featured) for their favorite hotspots.

Go online and you can search by personality—what cultural events do Yo-Yo Ma and Maya Lin like?—or by city to find out the celebrity dish on shops, restaurants, culture, and nightlife. And in San Francisco, Google took the campaign a step further with a physical presence: Celebrity-endorsed businesses got a life-size version of the signature teardrop-shaped marker from Google, complete with a plaque telling you who had endorsed the business.

In the spirit of “there’s an app for that,” the offline world jumps back online with a new iPhone app from Acrossair, which has developed an augmented reality browser with 3D navigation. With this app, your iPhone becomes a portal to an “augmented” reality; now you can view the names of businesses, events, and so on that are near your physical location; hold the phone flat and it turns into a Google map view that also moves with you so you know exactly where things are in relation to you. Check out the video—it’s pretty cool.

Convergence and convenience
What’s old is new, what’s online is offline, and what’s stuck in a silo isn’t going to fly. It’s really about convergence and convenience—about making things as easy and “full-service” as possible for your customers, your audience, or whoever you’re talking to. Of course, none of this should be a revelation, as companies like Microsoft realized this a decade ago.

In the late ‘90s I worked for Microsoft’s Sidewalk.com, online city guides that provided editorial-based information on restaurants and arts and entertainment. The sites were great, but they were doomed almost from the start because of Ticketmaster. Microsoft wanted to make a deal with them to sell tickets through Sidewalk—users would read an editorial review of “Wicked,” for example, and the page would include a link to purchase tickets—but negotiations broke down and Ticketmaster made a deal with rival Citysearch instead. Sidewalk trudged along for a while, but Microsoft knew it had lost its best opportunity to monetize the websites (perhaps a fee from each ticket sale made via Sidewalk), and also to provide a one-stop shop for users who could read about an event and then buy tickets, all in the same place. They knew early on that convergence was key, but they couldn’t convert the idea to reality.

Now it’s a new reality, and companies need to promise an even bigger and better bang, not only for your buck, but also for your time and your convenience. Is there an app for that?

When used effectively, virals can and do perform in ways that traditional PR and advertising simply can’t. But how do [>>]]]> A bit like the Supreme Court’s definition of pornography, viral marketing is something you know when you see it, although it’s hard to define outright. All viral marketing campaigns share one element in common–an unstated agenda.

When used effectively, virals can and do perform in ways that traditional PR and advertising simply can’t. But how do you separate an excellent viral campaign from a dud?  With five key criteria in mind, let’s rate one of the more recent viral splashes: Jared Holstein’s “fake Shooting Brake” Porsche promotion for TopGear.com America:

Eyeballs

The more people see and share a viral, the higher the mission-critical eyeball count. After a false start or three, The Shooting Brake viral sputtered to life and managed to pick up enough of an audience to achieve liftoff. We’ll give it a C+ for taking the time to analyze initial seeding attempts and be willing to try again in less-than-obvious places.

Engagement

If YouTube videos “A” and “B” each have 100,000 views, but “A” has 1,000 comments whereas “B” has 10, viral “A” will have proven to carry a higher level of engagement. Here, ‘brake did really well. The ratio of user involvement in the dialog was extraordinary as viewers of both the video and still images felt compelled to toss their $0.02 in on the debate and repost for others to weigh in. A+

Longevity

Short lived but highly engaging virals that capture a lot of attention often have superior recall rates to those that stay at a slow simmer and net a greater number of views over time. The chatter surrounding the Shooting Brake viral began to diminish around the one-month mark, around the time the instigators revealed all. We’ll give this a B for performing above what one might have expected through the clever use of three separate permutations of the ‘brake.

Brand Relevance

Every viral walks the line between being so tenuously connected to its parent brand as to have no meaningful impact and being so closely connected as to not have any hopes of ever succeeding as a viral. Mr. Holstein and crew get a solid A here. TopGear is, and always has been, cheeky, irreverent, subversive, and often sarcastic. In this case, TopGear wanted web traffic to support TopGear.com and new awareness of its original content. Job done.

Reach

A viral that transcends and rises above topical environments, and is just as big of a hit among Scrabble enthusiasts as it is among Labrador aficionados, is more relevant than one that fails to break out of its defined silo. The ‘brake transitioned from automotive to gamers, back to automotive, into mainstream press, and now, by virtue of this write-up, into the industry press for marketers. That’s another A+ for bridging the gap and capturing our collective imaginations.

The sixth, unspoken variable is one that will warm every marketer’s heart–-solid ROI. Here, Holstein leveraged the sizable coffers of Microsoft Game Studios in its promotion of Forza 3 to achieve great effect with his own viral promotion. There is nothing like riding the slipstream of someone else’s online spending spree to capture value far beyond one’s own investment in a project. A+ to team TopGear on this note as well.

Leading Hotels of the World launched [>>]]]> If you were smart, you were still in bed at 5 a.m. this morning. That’s where I wish I’d been. Instead I was click, click, clicking away at my laptop in hopes of scoring two nights at a luxury hotel somewhere across the globe for a mere $19.28 per night.

Leading Hotels of the World launched a worldwide promotion to celebrate its 80th anniversary. “At 12 noon GMT (8 a.m. EDT) on October 1, 2008, we will release a limited number of the world’s most-coveted hotel rooms at the unprecedented rate of USD 19.28 per night. For 80 minutes only, registered consumers will be able to secure the celebratory USD 19.28 rate and experience a multitude of our iconic members.”

From 5 a.m. until 6 a.m. PDT (when I surrendered and went back to bed), the only thing I saw on their website was, “Sorry! Due to the overwhelming number of consumers currently trying to access this promotion, your request is being delayed momentarily. Please be patient, don’t get discouraged, and retry in a few seconds by clicking here, or by going back to http://www.lhw.com/1928.”

LHW may understand the finer points of hospitality and luxury, but they do not understand the importance of building server infrastucture to support a worldwide viral promotion. During the next few days, we shall find out if they understand how to control the damage their failed promotion has created.

This is the current message on their site.

How would you handle this failure? Is an apology and promise of a do-over enough? —Anna Marie F. Panlilio, marketing specialist