ChasNote

To accompany the launch of a new suite of inkjet printers aimed at SMBs, HP launched a content site to help those business owners expand their firms through more efficient marketing efforts. The Small Business Marketing Guide

Rocky IV divx

includes tips and other marketing-related editorial posts from the authors at TREND HUNTER

, Springwise, Life Clever The Sandlot movies Proof of Life dvd and others from the FM family. Coverage at eWeek:

“HP also unveiled special offers and free resources for SMBs in an effort to aid growth and technology management, including rebate programs and expanding Web-based resources to include the Small Business Marketing Guide, an online community focused on small business marketing. “

Care Bears: Journey to Joke-a-Lot

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.

These are some stylish laptops. I love that HP created them (with help from designers Paul Frank and Shepard Fairey) for charity; why not make them available for wider distribution too?

The printing and imaging group at HP has launched a new section of its wiki, Branding Bootcamp.

We — HP and this Community — will work to provide the answers, guidance, resources and camaraderie to help you develop the marketing materials you and your business need to succeed – without breaking the bank?

My first thought, What self-respecting control-freak business owner or brand manager would let an anonymous community crowd-source his or her brand materials? And then, I thought, genius. Intuit founder Scott Cook once said a brand is what a friend tells a friend about it, so why not let them — friends, partners and random people who care enough to provide input — build your brand materials from the get-go?

From Business Week:

“Social networks have some of the lowest response rates on the Web, advertisers and ad placement firms say. Marketers say as few as 4 in 10,000 people who see their ads on social networking sites click on them, compared with 20 in 10,000 across the Web. Mark Seremet, president of video game publisher Green Screen, stopped advertising on MySpace last spring because of a 13-in-10,000 response rate. ‘It’s really hard to make money on that anemic click-through rate,’ says Seremet.”

Google admits they’re struggling with the same issue, and their stock got hammered on the news.

Meanwhile, advertisers who recognize that building awareness, preference and affinity with customers involves activities other than clicks alone are finding more success in social networks. Examples include Intel, Dell, Wacom and HP, to name a few.

As part of HP’s continued efforts to make websites and blogs more printable, and to get customers more comfortable with printing projects in general, they’ve sponsored the photo sections of parenting sites such as Dooce and Confessions of a Pioneer Woman. Here’s the masthead at Dooce, where HP invites readers to share their own pet photos.

The Pioneer Woman hosts frequent “Give That Photo A Name” contests. Today’s installment solicited nearly 3000 comments in around six hours. (Yes, 3000 reader comments attached to a single post.) The lead-in to today’s contest, the Pioneer Woman alerts her readers to the new functionality added to her site as part of HP’s sponsorship: “Before I show you the prize, have you noticed the little ‘Print Pioneer Woman Photos’ blurb in my nav bar above? Here. Let me show you.” Followed by these screenshots:

Conversational marketing can be this simple. Simple yet well situated — right in the thick of an engaged conversation among 3000 web-savvy moms.

My colleague Pete Spande responds to Adam Ostrow’s post at Mashable on the topic of Facebook applications and sponsorship dollars:

“I think the article misses the point and potential of Facebook apps as a business. There are supposedly 100 million blogs and most don’t make much money – even those with decent traction. Some however, and FM represents many of them, do very well and are seeing revenue growth that now rivals the audience growth they saw in previous years. I see a similar dynamic forming with FB applications. A handful of applications are making significant dollars through advertising, affiliate deals, etc. Others are seeing real promise. Most aren’t, and won’t, make much money ever.”

From the projects I’ve observed firsthand with Facebook apps affiliated with FM (Watercooler, Graffiti Wall and a few others), brands like Wacom, HP and Dell are finding large, high-quality audiences and significant marketing value. We’re only half a year into the era of Facebook applications, but I’m betting that marketers will do what they always do — send their advertising dollars in pursuit of their customers.

Anita Campbell announces a new feature to her site, Small Business Trends, “a new section here at Small Business Trends called ‘Marketing Tips,’ with the support of Hewlett Packard (HP). We’ll be creating special content with marketing tips you can use.”

Here’s the part I like best about smart marketing, “conversational” or otherwise: When a marketer adds value to the content experience — by funding product development or other new services — the brand benefits from the goodwill it creates among the community and the leaders of that community. Here’s how Anita puts it:

“HP has given us access to a number of in-house people so that we can pick their brains and include their expertise. That kind of access has been invaluable. As a result of their support I’ve been able to get additional help to pull together some special initiatives — and I think you’re going to be excited about those.”

UPDATE 11:30am: Here’s coverage at Sphinn, the internet marketing news and discussion forums site.

UPDATE 4:45pm: As I’ve watched the first conversation at Anita’s Marketing Tips site develop, I’ve been astounded by the names of the participants she’s enlisted — Seth Godin, Jackie Huba, Guy Kawasaki, John Jantsch and a dozen others. This is conversational marketing at its best: An authentic (”editorial”) conversation among smart people on topics they are already immersed in (several have published books — and all maintain blogs — on the topic). HP didn’t ask Anita or her community of marketing gurus, entrepreneurs and small-business owners to talk about HP products or the HP brand. Instead they made the decision to let the marketing gurus talk amongst themselves in a virtual meet-up space for which HP pays the rent. When marketers are brave enough to trust their customers, like HP did here, collateral benefits start to accrue. Anita is so pleased with the content and conversation in the Marketing Tips area, she added this plug on her homepage, alongside her own trademark avatar:

The folks who helped put this idea together include Ashley Houk and Wendy Cole at HP (who run a variety of programs, including co-marketing efforts between HP and Staples, under which this initiative falls), Jared Katzman here at FM, and Anita Campbell at Small Business Trends.

A year ago, HP signed on as sponsor to a collection of sites that cater to designers and digital artists, what we call (in FM-speak) the Graphic Arts federation. They took a PBS-style “sponsored by” approach to their messaging, and left the authors and readers of those sites alone to have their haute design conversations without any interference. Pay respect to your core audience, HP figured, and you just might win its affection.

The approach appears to be paying off. Jean Aw, author of “indiellectual” design and aesthetics site NOTCOT, blogged her experience walking the floor of CES: “I must say that i was proud to have our sites sponsored by HP when i walked into this booth… ”

iMediaConnection invited me to contribute to the Best & Worst of 2007 round up. My favorite campaign of the year: Ask.com’s sponsorship of Ask A Ninja. The campaign that made best use of user-generated content — if you count editorial posts on Boing Boing or OhGizmo “user generated” — was HP iPaq 510’s sponsorship of “voice posts.” The agency that, to me, went furthest in pushing the envelope was Goodby Silverstein for Sprint’s WaitLess.org concept, HP’s campaign around voice posts (above), and HP’s Blackbird gaming system launch.