The decision to use Doritos CGM ads in the Super Bowl was something the brand orchestrated in order to engage the creativity of its consumers and to create something unique and interesting. Part of the reason they decided to use Yahoo! Videos as the medium to promote their videos -- instead of a microsite or a page within their own corporate site -- was because of Yahoo!'s superior audience size, thriving video community, and an easily-customized video hosting platform.

Frito-Lay was extremely focused on community engagement -- and made it a point to answer questions within the message boards where the viewers/submitters were asking them. All comments were moderated, approved, and heard.

According to Ryan, 72% of survey respondents couldn't remember a URL immediately after watching a TV spot, almost all of consumers are motivated to search after viewing offline media -- creating a solution where TV viewers were told what to search for ("Go to Yahoo! and search for 'Doritos.'") instead of the URL to remember was integral.

For Doritos, campaign's objectives were to engage the target (18-25- year-old men) with the Doritos brand, drive purchase frequency, build buzz around an innovative ad campaign, and create a kick-ass Super Bowl commercial. For Yahoo!, the objectives were to reinforce Yahoo! as a destination for video creators, generate unique, high quality videos, and establish Yahoo! as a leader in participatory marketing.

So, Ryan said, they launched and announced the campaign, opened it up for submissions, created and enforced a submission deadline, opened community voting, announced the top five finalists, opened voting for them, flew the five finalists to see who won LIVE, and announced the winner as it aired during the Super Bowl.

Having good content coming in was a key component of the success of this campaign, Ryan pointed out. Because of the, the initial outreach of the campaign was extremely important. The outreach strategy involved:

* Personalized communications -- Make one-on-one phone calls and emails
* Targeted communication -- Focus on the "right" people over "many," and knowing where to find them
* Arm the influencers and employees -- Let the influencers speak for you, people will listen, and share PDFs and text for localization and distribution
* Keep it real -- Use authentic language and avoid spin at all costs

Results:
* Winning Ad #4 USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter
* Highest rated ad on YouTube's Super Bowl Page

Some helpful hints:
* Keep it simple and original
* Ensure the reward is compelling to the target
* Don't get hung up on smaller advertising budgets
* Challenge yourself on "wordofmouthiness"
* Make the consumer the hero
* Don't underestimate the power of people's creations
* Ensure the campaign fits your brand
* Consistently engage and collaborate

Jory described what BlogHer is and how they have grown over the past year to over 10,000 members, almost purely WOM driven. They do not advertise. Jory views the site as the TVGuide to women bloggers.

Jory sees the marketing dollar moving, and more of this is moving online. While people spend 36.4% of their time online, advertising only spends around 5% online. Looking at BlogHer stats: 94% female, 64% between the ages of 28-40, 51% visit daily, 94% with high school education. The women are also not afraid to buy online.

In October of 2006, TheFind.com launched a new 'search by color' feature. The campaign objective was to drive women to the site to use the service and build buzz about the feature. But how do you market a service like this? TheFind knew they wanted to support a charitable cause as part of the program, TheFind.com looked to BlogHer and asked their members how they should proceed.

The BlogHer network wanted to support Doctors Without Borders. TheFind.com donated $1 for searches for anything red on its shopping search engine. BlogHer was given the exclusive run of the campaign so they could have a sense of ownership. The members appreciated that.

When users completed searches on TheFind.com that resulted in a donation they received immediate feedback and thanks.

The campaign resulted in an increase in 'red' searches from 1% to 12%. Over 10% of the searchers came back 5-6 times in order to search again and donate. The donation to Doctors Without Borders was $10,000.

What's better click-thrus or blog chatter? Jory and Larisa think that blog posts are better since it also helps boost your SEO.

What did they learn?
- Be creative, but keep it simple
- Identify a cause that your target is known to care about
- Give examples, help them out
- Interact with those bloggers who participating
- Always solicit and respond to feedback
- If you are choosing a philanthropic route, choose your charity carefully to make sure they spend their money wisely

Doing good = ink in the blogosphere. If your campaign can be a story in itself then it will be talked about.

For the Cold Stone case study, Jami explained a program around Valentine's Day in which Cold Stone decided to "Marry" two ice cream flavors -- tapping into people's emotional connections to the brand, as well as creating an experience.

Integrated Marketing Elements of the Mr. & Mrs. Cheesecake Wedding Experience:
* Website
* In-store POP
* FSI snipe
* Local PR
* Co-op satellite media tour; Countdown to romance
* Viral Video
* MySpace Page

Jami shared the viral video with the audience -- which included the requisite Barry Mannilow song.

Results:
* Generated buzz and awareness for strawberry cheesecake ice cream
* 24 million earned media impressions
* 350 local print and broadcast placements
* Increased ice cream sales
* 44,000+ users added to the Birthday Club
* 123,000 + total views on MySpace, YouTube, and IceCreamWedding.com

Jami also went on to explain Cold Stone's "Shake it Up" campaign, which was implemented to generate buzz and awareness around a new shake and smoothie line. For this campaign, customers were charged with creating dance videos to demonstrate their enthusiasm for Cold Stone.

Results:

* Exceeded shake sales goal by 51% and smoothie sales goal by 32%
* Secured celebrity judge Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas just as her solo career was taking off
* 45 million earned media impressions
* Coverage on Today Show, Fox & Friends and ESPN Cold Pizza
* Placement in USA Today, Star, InTouch Weekly and American Baby
* Granted a Wish for the Make-A-Wish Foundation
* Engaged 25,000+ crew members in new product campaign in a creative way

Christine serves as the product manager for TurboTax and makes sure the entire customer experience and product lives up to the expectations of customers. To get things started you need to listen to your customers. Customers are you best teachers.

Most importantly though, you need to act on what you hear from your customers. That's what separates listening from engagement.

So what does WOM have to do with taxes? Believe it or not there are passionate users of TurboTax. Intuit built the Inner Circle as a community for their passionate users. They wanted to solicit their input and then give something back. One of the difficult things it keeping the balance between what we give and what we get. The majority of the members are mostly looking for recognition.

In the product development cycle TurboTax has to be on time. Uncle Sam doesn't push back his tax deadline, so they can't push back the updates to TurboTax.

They currently have 10,000 members out of a customer base of 15 million. This small little sandbox gives Christine and Intuit a great place to test new things. One thing they have been doing are local events for their members. On the internal blog, users have begun to stick up for Intuit, they are becoming brand advocates.

A huge issue for Intuit is the listing of their software on sites like Amazon and the accompanying product reviews. This past year Christine invited their beta users to leave reviews on Amazon. Reviewers were required to disclose that they had received a preview edition of TurboTax.

Intuit works with Informative to collect data about their customers and Inner Circle members. Intuit uses this data to understand what's important to their customers. Content that is discussed is also ranked by the members. The goal is to have scalable conversations with customers.

Promoters want to have an ongoing dialogue with brands while detractors want action to be taken on their issues. This allows Intuit to provide different content to promoters and detractors.

One of the major benefits is that Intuit can allocate resources to fix the issues that matter most to their promoters/detractors.

Building great products builds great WOM. Their research shows that 46% of new customers arrive because of WOM. Rather than mining for customers they think of it as mining for gold. The Inner Circle was mostly a product development program. The decision was made to use the Inner Circle for more outreach programs.

While many organizations use the net-promoter score as an indicator, how many of them actually follow-up on this? What this means is if the person was likely recommend our product, did they actually do it? Intuit learned that 14% of their Inner Circle members were true advocates.

Since the O Magazine launched seven years ago, the soul of the magazine -- Oprah herself, who holds the title "The O of O" at the magazine -- has remained the same. Today, the Oprah show has 22 million viewers, and the magazine has more than 16 million viewers -- yet within those numbers there is only a 16% rate of duplication. What this means is that O Magazine is in itself a formidable.

According to Stefanie, Oprah has often been called the "Queen of Word of Mouth." Just as the show is able to create mountains of buzz around products and services, so does the magazine connect with and engage consumers in a way that prompts results.

O Magazine's commitment to guaranteeing their advertisers that their readers are engaged is based on the following factors:

* Reach women through a mission that is unique and organic
* Extend the O, The Oprah Magazine connection to marketers
* Connect with women -- emotionally and intellectually
* Deliver an affluent, influential, and diverse audience
* Leverage their passion and advocacy
* Year-over-year success and results for participating advertisers

The "O You" conference sessions were part of the magazine's solution to extending their footprint and creating an experience -- instead of simply creating and delivering a magazine. O You event attendees are given personalized treatment and are pampered, all the while engaging with brands and products around the events.

Results:
* 81% response rate on the survey
* 47% surveyed gave it a perfect 10; 87% rated it 8-10
* 69% responded with a 9-10 statement "I could clearly see Oprah's influence in shaping/creating the event
* 44% of attendees traveled over 100 miles
* 66% said they used/tried a product/brand they had never used before
* 69% bought or planned to buy a product/brand they used at the O You event
* 88% talked to friends/family/colleagues about things they learned at O You

Laura Schuler of Jack Morton spoke about the stats of word of mouth, which all point to the idea that hand-raisers are able to use their disproportionate power to move information through their networks, and that people will raise their hands to talk about things they are passionate about.

Laura outlined the steps that Jack Morton took to create the experiential brand program for O Magazine:

* Be crystal clear about your promise
* Translate your promise into behavior
* Cultivate your passionates
* Create experiences that ignite advocacy
* Watch & listen

Bill asked how marketers cut through the static. But let's define static as: fixed or stationary, showing little change, lacking movement, not really static in the broadcast sense. Now think about static marketing or conversation, it's not good. In product development, static is not good.

What they want to do is adapt, they want to learn from our customers and their conversations. They want to anticipate and exceed unexpressed needs.

LEGO is a 75 year-old company that is re-inventing themselves. They have an extraordinary community. LEGO fans make Star Trek fans look like lightweights.

Recently LEGO embarked on a program to update the Mindstorms product. They asked their fans what they wanted and listened.

The conversation loop is an ongoing process. They ask, listen, prioritize and respond, then start again. With tools like surveys, forums, blogs and profiling they learn about their customers.

With their platform (illustrated below) they can quickly gather feedback from customers on a variety of topics. Not only do the validate certain programs they also rate/rank them. Not only can they look at overall data, the can look across segments.

LEGO uses blogs within their member communities and allows readers to rate posts for the benefit of others in the community. The feedback can be sorted by profile, so users can see what other people like themselves are saying.

A blog allows LEGO fans to:

- Talk to cool LEGO employees, icons
- Rate, rank posts
- Collaborate with others
- Contribute, influence future direction
- Understand, innovate with precision

Customer can contribute and help direct the future of the company.

Part of working with a luxury brand like Jaguar, Ryan explained, was understanding the differences between automotive communications conventions and the conventions that are set for luxury brands. Where consumer communications strive to be all encompassing and inclusive, part of the cachet that accompanies the idea of luxury is the exclusivity associated with it. The same approaches that are applied to consumer communications, therefore, do not necessarily apply to these kinds of brands.

According to Ryan, Jaguar consumers are "connoisseurs of finer living." They have a high use of indulgences, enjoy fine service in their travel and leisure, and have extremely high standards of design. Luxury has become far more complex, Ryan explained, and keeping luxury brands luxurious takes a soft touch.

Luxury is driven by word of mouth ... and luxury conversations are driven by:

Access -- Luxury is what you can know, as opposed to what you can buy
Recognition -- Luxury is being recognized and rewarded
Rarity -- Luxury is exclusivity, limited edition, and scarcity
Experience -- Luxury fuels the senses

"Creating a gorgeous conversation" -- as opposed to a normal conversation -- is part of what brands can do to establish themselves as luxury, according to Ryan. It wasn't enough with a brand like Jaguar to simply create a conversation. It had to be a specific kind of conversation. Pretty wouldn't cut it -- which is where the idea of the "gorgeous conversation" comes in to play.

To do just that, Ryan explained, a variety of WOM-worthy events and experiences were staged. Everything from trips to the Hamptons and star-studded parties got Jaguar the association they wanted -- and also garnered some media hits.

Results:
* 83% of folks surveyed "strongly agree" that Jaguar is a luxury brand, and 95% "agree at all"
* 63% strongly agree that Jaguar makes beautiful fast cars, 85% agree at all

Tracy started things off by reviewing how WOM impacts JetBlue and marketing in general. JetBlue was a brand that was really built on WOM. Their research has shown that 81% of JetBlue fliers recommend us to a friend. Their focus was the bring humanity back to airline travel.

From JetBlue's perspective they want to help amplify the conversation that already existed among their customers. It's a fortunate situation to be in.

JetBlue's communications strategy has a number of components (shown below). One of their first initiatives was a series of commercials featuring letters read by actual customers. The commercials were genuine and honest. No shots of planes flying off into the sunset or airline pilot hugging a small child.

Another focus is their Blue Betty mobile marketing unit. This traveling JetBlue program allows people to experience the JetBlue way of travel.

Much of the content their receive from customers is shared via a microsite.

The next question is how do we introduce JetBlue to college students while maintaining the passion that many of their current customers feel.

Previous to 2005 JetBlue had never used an outsider represent them, previously it was always a JetBlue employee. The other issue is that JetBlue is part of the culture in New York, but it's not always so big in other markets.

Their goal was to become the air carrier of choice for college students. But, for the most part many students had never flown JetBlue.

The first step was to select the channels and markets. For JetBlue they were looking for the individuals that made campuses move. When it came to campus selection they targeted the following markets: New York, Boston, DC, Los Angeles and San Francisco. They wanted to indentify passionate JetBlue fans who are creative, responsible campus leaders.

A focus of the training was to make the ambassadors feel part of the team. They become part of your marketing team and really embrace your brand. They allowed their ambassadors some flexibility in customizing local programs. Sometimes a local event turns into a great idea for a national campaign.

According to Sam, customer ratings and reviews are an authentic way for consumers to influence one another by giving their genuine feedback about products and services. While Sam was quick to acknowledge that negative feedback is something that happens, the majority of the ratings and reviews -- I believe he quoted a Keller Fay study -- are positive, and that the same study has indicated that people have a much greater propensity to pass along their positive impressions than negative.

Sam discussed PETCO.com specifically, and PETCO.com is unique in that their customers, as pet owners, are extremely passionate.

Promotion, Sam explained, is essential to success. Burying ratings and reviews functions and results renders them useless, and in the online web 2.0 world we live in, customers want to be able to poll other users.

Some stats on customer ratings and reviews: Customer rating drives on-site search conversion, and, according to Sam, Searchers that sort by rating spend 41% more than searchers who do not. Visitors that browse the "Top Rated Products" navigation path convert at 49% higher and spend 63% more than non-browsers. PETCO.com saw 50% higher clickthrough rates on emails that feature customer review content.

Sam also noted that the ability to host customer photos within the ratings and reviews conveys passion -- such as the "pet using this product" pictures that feature heavily on the PETCO.com website.

According to Sam, ratings and reviews funtionality is rated higher than search functionality on websites -- which indicates that customers highly value the ability to easily peruse other peoples' opinions.

Key Takeaways:
* Customer reviews are a powerful Web 2.0 application and are measurable
* Use user-generated content as a powerful marketing data set
* Drive use through advanced analytics

First off we need to look at the market. The college market is usually defined as one market. but it's really hundreds of markets. If you look at a target, you have a college student, part of a larger group, money to spend, media editor, brand experimenter, strong friend-fluence.

College students are sometimes a good test market. They have grown up with technology and love to experiment. Also the college market is always growing. Today there are 17.4 million students.

They looked at how students spend their 'fun' money. Food is the number one, followed by entertainment, clothing, cell phone, personal care products, cosmetics. The average college student spends $32/month on cell phone service.

Their research showed that a large majority of students avoid ads on the internet, text messaging ads, direct mail and ads on social networking sites. College students are also prone to test new brands and often seek the advice of others when making purchases.

Helio recruited 21 on-campus ambassadors. These ambassadors received extensive training about the wireless market and the Helio brand. This included a visit to the Helio HQ.

Once on campus they began an incremental exposure plan. The reps used Facebook as a primary communication tool. They used the tools that the students use. The major goals included:

- Brand Impressions
- Product Engagements
- Event Attendance

Helio soon became a natural part of the Rep's daily lives. They integrated Helio into their social network profiles.

At the end of the day it's about having a great product. Helio was fortunate that they had a great product with a good feature-set.

The first step, David said, was defining which bloggers and which message boards would be targeted for outreach about the program

Target:
* Nonprofits
* Fundraising
* Community
* Library
* Sporting activities
* Mom/dad blogs

David went on to explain that Hass MS&L went on to use a version of the WOM 101's principals to define the parameters of how the program would be designed, implemented and executed. The steps were:

* Find the right people
* Give them something to talk about
* Engage and sustain relations
* Measure results
* Report back to clients

Doing the homework (i.e. reading the blogs that you plan to approach and knowing your client INTIMATELY) is an integral approach to doing word of mouth right, according to David.

Learning and having a firm understanding of the audience that you are hoping to reach down the chute is integral to success. According to David, the primary audience for the Hometown Helpers program included:

* Philanthropists
* Community activists
* Parents

Knowing the metrics, the things that you are going to use to track success, is extremely important before launching a word of mouth program. For GMs Hometown Helper program, the metrics were designed around blog chatter as well as around hits to the Hometown Helper.com website.

Metrics for the Blog Chatter:
* Comments
* Impressions
* Trackbacks

My Hometown Helper.com Metrics:
* Page views
* Unique visitors
* Grant submissions

Results:

According to David, the program enjoyed a 30% placement rate on the targeted blogs and message boards. The Hometown Helper program also generated between 300,000 and 750,000 media impressions. More submissions came in to the program in the first month than was anticipated for the entire length of the program.

Dave started off his keynote with a question, "Yes we know that markets are conversations, but is marketing a conversation?" Our first duty is to the conversation. But what happens to marketing with the top priority is conversation?

For many years we lived in the world of broadcast, i.e. a select few talking to everybody else. We get to listen, we receive the radio waves. We want to lean forward and not lean back. Things are changing.

There has been an evolution of the market. It started as a place to do business, the traditional market. Now the term is a verb, it means to sell to somebody. This was driven by the industrial revolution. Customers became consumers, things that can be replaced. Conversation became messages.

Dave quotes Doc Searls, "There's no market for messages." Marketing becomes a war.

Instead of relying upon corporations for information, people rely upon each other.

What are marketing conversations really like? Dave referenced the Juicy Fruit blog campaign. The blog was designed by people that probably had seen a blog, but never really interacted with blogs. The bloggers thought they were being passionate consumers, but they were just being lame.

Dave recently shopped for a washer and dryer. Rather than visiting the Kenmore site he searched blogs. He trusts the information he receives from other people. Often there is information about products/services that you can only get from other customers.

It's not the value of conversation, it's the value in conversation. People talk in real voices and have conversations that are opened ended. Conversation is about WE are interested in.

Control by the market is increasing. There is more person to person communication than broadcast communication. However it's not about the tools and the content of this new market. It's the connections.

For years there was a separation between content and meta-data in the analog world. Today, with everything digital, all content and meta-data are digital.

The owners of the information no longer own the organization of that content, the users do. You can no longer know what people are interested in. People will determine that on their own. The lesson, include everything.

Tagging and folksonomies have given users control over the organization of content.

The result is that content becomes more valuable when it's free. Think about the travel industry. For an airline their flight information is more valuable when they share it with other sites. Users don't want to search every airline site.

Things like playlists are bringing order to the chaos that is all the music in the world.

Hyperlinks are not neutral. A link is a little act of generosity. You're telling people to go somewhere else. Links are like conversation, you recognize that somebody else's view is important.

The majority of company web pages are not designed to be conversational since they own it. They think they know what we want and how we want it.

Dave turned the conversation to Edelman and their recent issues. Dave noted that he is a consultant to Edelman. While Edelman is genuinely trying to do things right they have screwed up. The truth though, is that this is hard to do. Companies are going to fail before they succeed.

Why is this new conversational market so hard to deal with? Clients want to sell, and customers are still sitting ducks. Advertising does work, we as humans respond to good advertising. The combination of self-interest and human meaning leads to self-delusion.

One of the major issues is that marketers get paid to talk. Does that corrode the conversation?

* Start a corporate social responsibility campaign -- something like Microsoft's IM conversation for a cause campaign, which meets the communication goals, doesn't cost anything, and generates WOM.

* Create a smaller, niche community within an online social community around a very specific idea.

* Set up educational seminars for clients where they can learn about word of mouth broadly -- instead of trying to sell to them.

* Identify your customer advocates and give them a voice in your company either by creating a community platform or by involving them in the process using a customer advisory council.

* Treat your customers as advisors ... not JUST as voters. Listen to their input instead of just polling them and not acting on what they say.

* Combine the online with the offline tactics to fully engage the customers. Don't just find your online enthusiasts ... tell them what they can do offline to further their advocacy.

* Don't just measure how active community members are, allow the influencers in communities to measure and rate themselves (comment value ratings, etc.) -- this gives you qualitative as well as quantitative data.

* Add a blog to your site.

* Know who your influencers are and engage them regularly in an interesting way, for instance: Bring your influencers together in person to talk about a specific issue or subject that's crucial to your industry.

* Be attentive to the consumer conversations that are going on -- not just the answers to the questions you want to have answered. Conversations started by community members are the places to find answers to the questions you haven't thought to ask.

* Use blog searches to find out what people are saying about your company and track to see who's linking to you. What are they saying? You should know.

* Prepare in advance for what you will do/say if someone says something negative about your company so that you can be as responsive as possible at the push of a button.

* What type of campaign is really going to catch on? Why not invite the people that are going to be involved in the campaign to help figure out what they're going to be most responsive to? Ask your influencers.

* Pick up the phone, call your clients, thank them for their business, and ask them for referrals -- and always provide a good product and good customer service.

* Solicit newsletter content from your customers/target audience. This gets them involved and allows them to be the "voice" of your company -- which is what you're trying to do.

* Think beyond the idea of a campaign and thing long term relationship capital.

* Think of BtoB audiences -- word of mouth is a major factor in BtoB because there is a major "systems overload" and these folks really lean on their peers to help sift through the clutter.

* Have a conversation -- not just when you're going out to the marketplace, but during the product design and while planning your marketing. Find out what consumers "hear" about your product before it's out the door.

* Come up with a very creative idea to get 2-3 different channels with viral capabilities that you can use to get the message out ... then put it in the hands of your biggest fans.

* Assess the relevance of the audience that you're talking to. If you're talking to the biggest spenders, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're talking to your most influential of customers.

* Use random connections between people (such as the "wheresgeorge.com" stamp on dollar bills) as a way to connect passionate people around your brand.

* Small business -- invite a handful of your customers out for a quarterly breakfast. Ask them what they think about what you're doing. Listen.

* Get involved in community development and social causes -- leave the messaging at the office and see what happens.

* Figure out how stories naturally spread through the networks you're targeting. Use that path to carry your message.

* Follow up with the customers that are reaching out to you. Show them that you appreciate the fact that they're paying attention to you -- this invites them back!

Quick stat from a recent study, 0% of youth surveyed said they would purchase something based upon seeing an billboard at a sporting event. For example, IZZE has no above the line marketing. They have never run a TV or Radio ad or a newspaper ad.

First off, determine the demographic target for your brand. Quantitative and Qualitative research will help. Build on the backs of others, read, read, read what's out there. Learn from others.

Aim for the aspirational person. They may not be a consumer of your product, but reflects the values, practices, attitudes and need-mindset that you want to become and that your target groups aspire to be like.

Be interesting or be gone!

In modern, mature advertising markets that average consumer receives 4000 advertising messages per day. If you're not interesting then you need to go back to the drawing board and make your product interesting.

Determine influencer hubs for your demographic. Key influencers are worth almost a million impressions for a brand. Constantly refine you approach as well. Look at where you are at and what you'll need to do a few quarters from now. Influencers are always looking for new things and new stories. By changing your approach you satisfy that need for change on the part of the influencer.

An influencer will not stay with you if you don't innovate.

Use the 'Treasure Hunt' to your advantage. Consumers in North America are always on a hunt for the next luxury good or the next bargain. What's the story behind that hunt? Make sure to give consumers an option to trade up and trade down. Don't get stuck in the middle.

Let's talk a bit about cultural creatives. The cultural creatives are doing now, what you need to be doing with your brand. They are 50 million individuals, they are book buyers, they desire authenticity, they aren't consumers, they're shoppers. They are technologically savvy, the love to experiment. They think they're unique, but they're not since there are 50 million of them.

People are buying things to silently or non-verbally communicate who they are. It's what they drink, what they drive. Whole Foods is there church.

Jumping the chasm is making the leap from the tastemakers to the progressive user to the mass market. The mass market plays follow the leader.

How to translate this offline? Great products sample, average products advertise. Lesson, sample, sample, sample. Invite people to sample, never interrupt or intercept.

Teach influencers your brand story and they will share. Influencers want to know the story behind the product/brand.

Giving away free stuff does not build a brand.

PR is critical because is validates WOM but remember that the story/editorial has to be earned.

According to Hanekamp, all of these departments have their hands in the corporate website ... and yet none of these people have a stake in marketing. The solution for not setting off alarms with these folks when creating an online destination is to create a microsite -- something separate from the corporate website -- which has its own needs -- which is a marketing tool that can get away with more.

Creating great content, according to Bill, is rule #2 in creating a successful website. The "Elf Yourself" microsite for OfficeMax generated 36 million visitors in five weeks -- which averages out to 10 "Elfings" per second. Not only that, the $0 ad proposition was posted all over YouTube. Similar sites that copied the same technology did not enjoy the same rates of success -- because the "rules" of the online viral venue don't allow copy cats.

According to Hanekamp, being original does not necessarily mean being funny. A good example of such a campaign is the Dove, Real Beauty campaign -- which had a $0 ad budget and received 1.7 million views in the first few months it was online and produced three times more traffic than a Super Bowl ad.

Rules of Great Content

* Entertaining -- Not necessarily funny, just "entertaining" in the broadest sense of the word. Don't "bore the crap" out of folks.
* Relevant -- You have to care about it.
* Timely -- You have to be current.
* Exclusive -- Something that you have exclusively and that people can share with each other.

Getting folks engaged is also extremely important, according to Hanekamp. Getting people to do something (anything) while touching your brand prompts them to follow this path to WOM:

Engagement --> Commitment --> Caring --> Sharing

Tools for Action

* Rank/Vote
* Download/Upload
* Schedule
* Use Widgets
* Buy
* Return (RSS)
* Share

Chad Stoller from Organic presented about a specific case study in which the company created a microsite for Organic's longest standing client, Daimler-Chrysler.

As Stoller put it, because the job of selling cars to savvy consumers is extremely difficult Organic has had their hands full. Consumers no longer go straight from an advertisement to the dealership; they see an ad on YouTube, follow it to a branded site, distrust the site, look at online reviews, chat with online community members, touch base with their social networks online, and the do price scouting online ... and then maybe go to the dealership.

According to Stoller, learning from a brand community is "cool." Jeep, specifically, has a cult following and the brand goes to great lengths to give their Jeep owners special attention. But they don't just market to the community, Chad explained, they listen to it.

Part of listening to the community involves understanding that car buying has become as socialized as teenagers shopping at the mall. People might want to own a Jeep -- but they might also lack the confidence needed to make that final purchase decision. That's where the community comes in.

Chad also showed a trailer for the Jeep Patriot and the Way Beyond the Trail microsite campaign -- which is an interactive film featuring Jeep and is designed to both demonstrate and communicate with consumers. The film follows the "Choose Your Own Adventure" format, and contains 44 different scenes that total over one hour of original branded content that can be linked to friends.