So I have traveled a little recently and I always wonder what goes on at the office when I’m out. Well, let’s just say that I’m not sure how much traveling I’ll be doing in the near future based on what our Creative Director and Director of User Experience were up to while I was gone. Luckily someone at Spun caught it on video and slapped it up on Youtube for the world to enjoy.

Two things are currently fascinating me this media summer: Rupert’s single handed attempt to dismantle the US economy and business reporting universe buy purchasing WSJ, and the run to the White House.

On the first front, does anyone really think that even if our most highly respected paper (sorry, NYTs) does take a drastically Murdochian editorial tone and demeanor - and save for probable under reporting on China’s political enterprises (since he wants to expand his empire there), there’s no telling it will – are we really going to lose the only responsible organ for transparent reporting on capital markets? Well, the capital markets tell us…

No.

Someone enterprising and resourceful is going to fill the gaps that Murdoch will supposedly create, and if no one does, something will. A digital community, an artful blogger, an amalgam of the two. Ten years ago yes, there would be have been real concern about a reportage vacuum in the financial verts. Today? Whatever. The WSJ is in this mess because of strong competitive pressure , not a market still reliant on a single source for its financial coverage.

It’s likely Michael Bloomberg, even if he doesn’t run for the presidency, will save the day none the less.

Which brings me to my second curiosity and question: who do the presidential candidates turn to for their advertising, and how are they selected?

Is it a comment on the state of the ad community or the acumen of the office seekers that the biggest brand builders in the world - BBDO, DDB, Satchi, W+K (you know, for Nader), et al. – aren’t selected or even pitching the business for the highest office, i.e. the biggest brand, in the world.

I can’t imagine that telling a voting public how you’re decision making, baby kissing, pork loading, veto drafting, estate dinner attending skills differ from your opponents is much different from explaining how your paper towel’s spill picker-uppering is better than someone else’s. We put as much emotion and energy into selecting both.

These tiny Washington consultant groups (headed by ex-politocos like Bob Schrum, not ex-admen) are winning business that should be going to the masters of marginal narratives and integrated thinkocracy. Hillary is buds with GSD&Ms chief, but are they actually running her ad campaign?

Who’s doing the media placements, and what’s the gross up? This stuff fascinates me. Maybe the big agency holding cos don’t want the business, with all of the baggage it comes with (let alone the red face test you’d have to pass as a self respecting Creative Director building ads for a conservative).
If you know anything about this strange world I’d love to hear from you.

I’m sorry, I can’t help it. I try to give new technology a chance, I really do. And I usually credit companies for trying things, for sticking their necks out there, for attempting to innovate. But when I saw that Playboy was launching their own social networking site…well lets just say I can’t hold my tongue on this one.

On the Playboy U website, they describe the site as “an exclusive college-only non-nude social network. Here is where you can show your school pride, connect with other students and celebrate the social side of college.”

Finally, its here! A website where college kids can network with each other. It’s going to be a Golden Age! Why didn’t I think of that? Oh wait, I did think of that, a few minutes ago when I updated my Facebook status. You know Facebook, one of the most visited sites on the web. The one that was started in early 2004, and according to Wikipedia, has “the largest number of registered users among college-focused sites with over 34 million active members worldwide”.

And I’ve been thinking about all the reasons this won’t work but the biggest reason is very simple: females largely detest Playboy. At least the females I know. Heck, most females can’t stand Hooters, let alone Playboy. So getting females to sign up for this will probably be impossible. So then there are just the guys. Why do guys use social networks? Especially college guys? It’s not to chit-chat with their buddies. It’s to meet girls. College guys pretty much have three things on their minds, and they’re all called, “meet girls”.

What’s funny is, when I read this I assumed the the Playboy headquarters must be in some place like Big Piney, Wyoming (no offense to all of our Big Pineyian readership - we’re huge there). But no, Playboy HQ is in Chicago. So they should know better.

Yeah, this is going to be a big winner.

Jeff Hilimire recently blogged about how great our company and our office space is. Well, frequent commenter (and goddess of all things social) Sherry Heyl suggested a site called OfficeSnapshots.com. Apparently this got their attention, because Stephen from Officesnapshots.com was kind enough to comment that we should send some pictures over.

So, we did just that. Amy Griswold and I (mostly Amy) took pictures of the Spunlogic office and I sent them on over to Stephen. (Check it out.)

Now our office rocks, and if you read OfficeSnapshots.com, then you’ll know our office rocks.

We all know MySpace and Facebook … LinkedIn. We’re now learning about sites like Twitter, Dandelife and many more.

Well, I was reading the Adfreak blog and it seems the folks from Adweek, Brandweek, Mediaweek, and Marketing y Medios recently launched a social networking site of their own, At The Roundtable. And, it’s pretty good. It’ll be interesting to watch this grow - and I’ll definitely be signing up. (ok, I already did.)

Certainly this was going to happen - social sites geared toward a specific industry. We already knew sites like Facebook that catered to the school set (even though the site is now for everyone), so industry social sites were only a matter of time.

So, I did a little “googling” and discovered there’s actually quite a few community-specific sites brewing right now:

• Shelfari - an online community for book lovers.
• Sermo - for physicians.
• Travbuddy - to find people traveling where you are, see reviews of places you want to go, and read experiences of users.
• MyChurch - a site for, well, Christian church-goers.
• Respectance - a social site for mourning the loss of loved ones.
• Flirtomatic - A dating site. Ok, I’ll be honest … the name just tickled me, so I had to include it.

Does anyone else know of social networking sites that are specific to an industry?

Much has been written in the last four months about the economic impact of Second Life  in publications like the New York Times and CNN. To some degree, the initial shock of hearing people pay $200 in real U.S. dollars for a virtual home (albeit one that doesn’t really exist) has worn off. However, the real world impact of Second Life so far has been limited to advertising and economics. Socially and culturally, though, Second Life has not had as much of an effect. No real-world friendships have been lost because of a heated dispute between avatars.

As The Wall Street Journal revealed in its August 10 issue, this is all about to change.

 
(Source: The Wall Street Journal Online)

The Journal article “Is This Man Cheating on His Wife” focuses on a 53 year-old man, Ric Hoogestraat, who created his own male avatar named Dutch Hoorenbeek. He soon meets another female avatar and established a close Second Life friendship … then relationship, and subsequently a marriage with avatar Tenaj Jackalope, who is controlled in real life by Janet Spielman. As Hoogestraat spent more and more time in Second Life and his avatar spent more and more time with Jackalope, he spent less time with his real life wife, Sue Hoogestraat.

As one might imagine, the real life wife became jealous, and Sue Hoogestraat’s children are quoted as saying that the real life marriage is “beyond repair.” According to family law experts and marital counselors, though, the Hoogestraats’ deteriorating marriage is not an isolated case. The article cites that an increasing number of marriages are crumbling because of “virtual infidelity.” This begs the question, if virtual marriages are causing real life marriage trouble, are the virtual marriages all that virtual?

So far, many of the reports about Second Life and other worlds have focused on the economic, marketing, and social opportunities of these worlds. Not much has been written about the potentially negative consequences of these worlds. The possibility of a world that doesn’t even exist to cause a marriage rift seems incredible. Then again, many other fast growing forms of technology have come with their own set of undesirable side effects. As great a tool as the internet is, a slew of problems have come with it as a result of the enormous inappropriate and sometimes dangerous content that is available to anyone. However, the obvious benefits far outweigh any possible negatives.

It will be interesting to see how much the culture of virtual worlds affect the real world. It presents amazing possibilities for social interaction; never has it been easier to interact side by side with someone who is on the other side of the country, much less the other side of the world. Companies can now hold real business meetings in virtual conference rooms.

Given that some analysts say that this current growth is only the beginning of the boom, we can expect even greater potential for more virtual world, and in turn real world, opportunities. However, one question that may be asked down the road is “Do virtual world opportunities enhance or take away from the real world?”

If you ask Sue Hoogerstraat, the answer is probably the latter. If the marriage does end up in divorce, her husband may have effectively traded his real world wife for a virtual one. “The other life is so wonderful; it’s better than real life. Nobody gets fat, nobody gets gray. The other person that’s left can’t compete with that,” said Sue Hoogerstraat.

Sue brings up an interesting point. Many analysts have said that the main reason people choose to get into virtual worlds is because it is an escape. As a result, more and more people are spending 12 to 14 hours in virtual worlds. When people spend the majority of their day in these worlds, it can be easily argued that they are investing more time and energy in their virtual life than they are in the real life. Whether it’s because people are dissatisfied with their real lives or because worlds like Second Life provide a new alternative to reality.

I think that as the popularity of virtual worlds increase, so will the side effects; with virtual marriages and friendships coming at the expense of real world ones. It is likely that in the present and future that for most users, these worlds will become a powerful medium of social interaction that opens up all kinds of doors and opportunities. As the Hoogestraats remind us, for more than a few, virtual worlds have the potential to present a variety of real life problems. Even so, it’s hard to argue that the positives don’t outweigh the negatives. 

Three months ago, I had no idea what a virtual world was, much less what Second Life was. Now after logging in and creating an avatar for now too many worlds than it seems I can even count, I am convinced that I have learned more about business and virtual worlds in this internship than I learned in an entire semester of high school biology. It’s been quite a change.

On the one hand, the concept still seems strange. Why spend real dollars on items inside a world that doesn’t even exist? It seems very backward. One other surprising aspect is how fact these worlds have grown. Two years ago, many of these worlds hardly even existed. Now, many worlds have more than a million users.

Second Life, arguably the biggest out of all the worlds, has a population of over 8 million. While many of Second Life’s users have more than one avatar - the number of unique users in Second Life is closer to 2 to 3 million, rather than 8 - anyway you cut it Second Life’s user base growth is incredible. Perhaps even more incredible is the fact that more than 50 companies have launched projects in-world as advertising ventures, even though there is still relatively little research that has been done on the advertising potential of these worlds.

This in itself is interesting to me. Why would companies like Coca-Cola and Nike, which can (and does) advertise in any medium that it so chooses, decide to invest in a world that’s still a relatively unknown entity? It at first seems like a gamble. I think one reason is because five to ten years from now companies don’t want to look back and realize they missed the boat on something big. As a result, lots of companies have gambled and established presences in-world. This has in turn helped these worlds grow, which may very well make it a worthwhile investment for the dozens of companies that have gotten in.

I’ll be very interested to see how virtual worlds progress in the coming years. Some still predict that worlds like Second Life are simply a passing fad and that soon the supply of these numerous worlds will outweigh the demand. Others say these virtual worlds will become what the Internet was in the 1990’s, and we may see people worried more about their virtual worlds than their real ones. (Who needs expensive beach front property when the market in Second Life is far cheaper?)

Realistically, I think the future lies somewhere in the middle. I don’t think we’re going to see virtual worlds become as big as the internet, but neither will they simply fade away and be forgotten in the next six months. Virtual worlds will play a significant role in social culture, but not as extreme a role as some analysts have predicted. It may be that a few of these smaller worlds fold or merge with larger worlds, but I think overall we will see different worlds that target different types of audiences.

In the more near future, I think these worlds will only continue to grow, and more businesses will look to launch projects in-world. Virtually any analyst will tell you that these worlds are far from peaking. It makes sense for media companies to continue to research these worlds, because the demand for advertising will continue to grow, just as the number of users in these worlds. Perhaps the only question is just how much these worlds will grow. 

So I was in the middle of finishing this post when I got an email on the same topic from my good friend and childhood idol, Joe Koufman. So now I have to give him credit for the idea - great. Oh, and if you don’t know Joe, he works at a great Atlanta technology company, KnowledgeStorm, and is apparently a huge hippie based on this photo I found of him and his lovely wife. Peace, man.

Back to the point…according to a study by Rainmaker Consulting there is a pretty big gap between what agencies think a client wants (when choosing which agency they want to work with), and what clients actually want. The biggest differences? Size and location. Apparently clients don’t care too much about those two things, and I’m betting in the interactive world they care about them even less.

The ranking of things that are important to clients when selecting an agency came out looking like this:

1. Quality customer insights
2. Chemistry
3. Creative work
4. Service level / response to needs ongoing
5. Cost control
6. Innovative / strategic thinking
7. Case for ROI
8. Client list
9. Strict adherence to brief
10. Seniority of account team
11. Location
12. Size

We shouldn’t be surprised, but all those agencies that lead with their clients, size and experience better rethink their pitches. Wait, what am I saying? You guys should keep pitching that way and maybe just flip this list upside down and start from there. What do clients know anyway about what they want, right?

In all seriousness, do you really want a client that is focused on the size of your firm and impressiveness of your client roster? Surely the client that is focused on things like your ideas and the chemistry they have with you are going to be better long-term partners for the agency.

So my question is, does this list surprise any of you?

Big oops! Melissa Read, Ph.D. and I talked today about the 300-page iPhone bill a blogger received and then shared with the world to encourage e-billing. As a former Cingular employee, I cringed to hear this story–and not just for environmental reasons. Receiving a 300-page bill not only kills a lot of trees, it kills the customer experience.

I hope this publicity doesn’t overshadow Cingular/AT&Ts other industry-leading efforts to provide outstanding customer care. When I worked for Cingular, I led a revamp of the online and in-store welcome experience, especially the Cingular Service Summary and welcome collateral for all customers. Changes to the bill itself may be in order, too.

Even without a major redesign of the bill itself, AT&T could address this issue a few ways. Most people are interested in bill details only when there is a problem–not all the time. Some thoughts…

• Clarify messaging to new customers about their bill format.
• Make the default billing setting for customers online, with the option to change to print.
• For print bill recipients
• Make the default setting a summary, with the option for detailed billing or an occasional request for a detailed hard copy.
• Communicate to customers that bill details are always available online, and make details easy to find.
• If a detailed billing customer’s bill is going to exceed a certain page number, then notify the customer with an option to receive it by e-mail or online instead.
• Consider providing print details only for charges that exceed the customer’s normal amount. For instance, detail only the text messages exceeding the plan’s included number.

Nalini sent me this email the other day and rather than encouraging her to create a blog post about it (which is probably my first response to just about anything people at Spun tell me these days…Hey Jeff, check out this new Facebook app…Great, blog about it!…Hey Jeff, where are you going for lunch today?…Great, blog about it!), I figured I’d just throw up a quick post so people could hear about this pretty unique campaign and if you have any thoughts about it…Great, blog about it!

Enjoy:
I saw Katie checking out the site: http://www.1-18-08.com/ and thought it was really cool so I asked her to send me the link.

She also sent me the blog that had the article related to the site, which I think is even more interesting: “How do you advertise a movie with no name” because it talks about how you can generate user interest by leaving clues on websites; using emails; even phone calls.