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I bet Dell’s not the first brand to use wiki software to create a living whitepaper, but they set a high bar with What It Means to Be a Digital Nomad. I can’t think of a good reason why anyone would create a static PDF whitepaper anymore.
(Disclosure: FM works with Dell on parts of the Digital Nomads campaign.)
“Dell may be on to something. In-page video advertising — industry slang for putting TV-style commercials on Web pages via display ad boxes — is quietly booming,” reports Forbes.
“The reason: While less than 1% of users click on banner ads, Jason Glickman, chief executive of video ad network Tremor Media, says fully 80% of the in-page video ads he serves play all the way through–the chief measure of their effectiveness.”
The discussion of in-page video advertising, though, misses the bigger opportunity. In-page video is about forcing a rich media brand message in front of a wider audience. Kind of blunt-instrument approach to advertising at a time when technologies like Tivo and built-in ad blockers are making it easy for consumers to dodge blunt instruments.
Dell goes a step further.
The Digital Nomads ads use video to catch your attention, but they are also an invitation to something bigger: A conversation around a tech-enabled mobile lifestyle, and a call for ideas (assembled as a crowdsourced whitepaper) on how Dell can build products that enhance that lifestyle.
Ad units attached to another Dell campaign, ReGeneration, feature a thorough, interactive content experience piped into a 300×250-pixel section of a website. This isn’t about tweaking the TV advertising model to websites; it’s about brands becoming publishers and broadcasters within boxes formerly used for banner ads.
From Ad Age:
“Dell has pulled out of its long-term contracts to run ads on the back covers of business magazines including Fortune and The Economist, a retreat that only underscores magazines’ vulnerability during this recession…. the broader recession is also combining with the challenges posed by digital media to put pressure on all media channels to prove their immediate worth.”
The Society for New Communications Research named Dell brand of the year:
“The Brand of the Year is awarded to the organization that made the most significant advances in utilizing new communications and social media tools, technologies and practices.
“‘New media tools are quickly transforming the nature of business-customer relationships,’ commented Paul Gillin, SNCR Senior Fellow and host of the 2008 Excellence in New Communications Awards program. ‘This year’s special award winners have the vision and success to provide a valuable example for others.’”
Congrats, Dell!
UPDATE 10/28: Jeremiah Owyang on some of the creative units Dell used.
Dell launches Digital Nomads, a social media site where experts, Dell employees and visitors discuss their hopes and dreams for a better, more mobile future. And they’re inviting visitors to collaborate on a whitepaper that will define “digital nomads.”
At least twice a week I hear some variation of this question: “Gee, that conversational-marketing stuff is cool, but how does it scale?”
HP’s computer-skin design contest offers one answer. Back in September HP put out a call to artists who’d be interested in designing a notebook “skin” for an HP Pavillion, and 8,500 creations were submitted. HP then featured the winning design (by Joao Oliverira) in print ads to take the “Computer Is Personal Again” message to a significantly larger audience. Here it is, ripped from July’s issue of Wired:
Other examples: BMW, Dell, Haagen-Dazs and Intel sponsored Graffiti contests in Facebook.
“Federated Media Packs Banner With Features And It Works” is the headline at AdRants. Thanks, AdRants!
Jeremiah Owyang says Dell has:
“taken the next step by assembling some of the winning drawings and created an emebeddable flash player that shows the art work being created in time-lapse style. Yes, you can see how the engaged community of artists hand drew each of these ads…. Now you should be sharing this with your creative team (see the initial case study) and start to think about how your brand can start listening to your customers –- and allowing them to tell your story, rather than you always having to use a megaphone.”
Congratulations, James Gross, Andrew Bowins and the rest of the crew at Dell and FM that put this together.
From James Gross’s site:
“It contains:
- a video player that redraws all six of the winning graffitis from the ReGeneration Contest. Currently runs on auto-play but could also be a click to play.
- At the top it pulls in the RSS feed from the latest post at ReGeneration.org
- an overlay that allow users to(more button):
- send to a friend
- subscribe to the RSS feed
- download the video
- embed the video on another site (like I’m doing)”
James asks his readers for feedback. Here’s the comment I posted:
“James–As you know, I’m a huge fan of this execution. Two things I especially like. One, while it’s sponsored by Dell, the content comes from its customers — Dell merely surfaces and promotes a real conversation (in this case, a visual conversation about the environment). Two, Dell encourages us to ’steal’ the content and share with other people we think might be interested. This strikes me as a new paradigm: Dell isn’t using ads as teasers to get us to its website, instead it’s giving us its brand assets to take with us.”
Dell’s ReGeneration Graffiti Contest here.
You careful ChasNote readers may have seen this coming when you read last month about Chevy’s sponsorship the Best of the Green Web project (or Dell’s sponsorship of a green drawing contest in Facebook’s Graffiti), but now it’s official. FM has launched its Green Federation, a collection of the best green-leaning sites online, including Inhabitat, GigaOM’s Earth2Tech and the ViroPOP video network.
Here’s the press release.
