ChasNote

According to Lenovo VP David Churbuck, the Olympics app for Facebook is exceeding expectations:

“Well, we’re just a month into the program and I can attest that it is working as planned. Big credit due to our partners at Intel -– Megan McDonagh and David Meffe really pushed the program and helped us figure out how to design and pay for it. Intel CMO (and fellow sculler) Sean Maloney’s drive to transform PC marketing through innovative digital tactics is transforming PC marketing and the promotional plan for the Lenovo Olympic Blogger program has benefited from Intel’s insights. I won’t divulge numbers, but we’re more than 50% of the way to our target and the Games haven’t even started yet.”

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.

AdWeek profiles several brands that are using Facebook as a platform to amplify more traditional sponsorships, including Lenovo’s work in Facebook to extend and reinforce its official sponsorship of the Summer Olympics.

“Lenovo has created 100 athletes’ blogs in an attempt to align itself with some less mainstream sports, such as field hockey and modern pentathlon. It gave the athletes laptops and video cameras to chronicle their preparation for the games.

“‘We wanted to do something that shows our tech prowess, not something that uses the Web as billboard,’ said David Churbuck, vp of global Web marketing at Lenovo….

“The blogging program is complemented with a Facebook effort that lets users virtually identify themselves with their country’s teams. Federated Media and Citizen Sports created country applications users can add to their profiles. So far, more than 100,000 have been downloaded….”

At one extreme, brands are building Facebook apps about themselves and their products, which deliver deep and relevant customer engagement — but the number of customers engaged might have only 4 digits or fewer. At the other extreme, brands are spraying banners across social networks to reach millions of consumers, though impact — let alone engagement — is suspect. In the middle is a sweet spot: Marketers collaborating with leading apps providers (in this case, Citizen Sports) to bring their brands to customers already engaged in a relevant conversations. Lenovo’s off to a nice start, with 100,000 customers so far primed to enjoy the Olympics through a Lenovo-powered feed in Facebook.

“[The] intangibles [such as positive buzz] were the lure of the Lenovo athlete-blogging program, said Churbuck.

“‘The old model of blunt impressions, the billboard model, is not going to do it for me,’ he said. ‘I’m far more interested in how many comments we drove, the traffic to athletes’ blogs, downloads of the applications. Those are more tangible expressions of engagement with the brand than clicks.’”

It’s worth pointing out that Churbuck isn’t easily swayed by the latest fad in online marketing, either. Back in March, he blogged about a panel of social-media marketing folks, including my boss and FM’s founder, John Battelle. Here’s what he had to say just four months ago:

“Battelle recounted a Dell campaign run in Facebook — seemed semi-interesting, but not earth shattering. Bell called out the move from 101 SMM to 201 and AP level discourse on the finer points. Indeed, moderator Polly LaBarre basically told the crowd of mostly clients that if they haven’t gotten the ‘transparent, authentic, marketing-is-a-conversation memo’ then they were essentially under a rock. Bell is working with me on a very cool Olympic play I’ll disclose next week. I don’t feel compelled to rush into Facebook anytime soon, and as for Federated — we shall see.”

(Congrats to Mike Kerns and his crew at Citizen Sports; the Lenovo team at Ogilvy and Neo; Megan McDonagh and the Intel Inside folks; James Gross, Jason Ratner, Pete Spande and their team here at FM for building a concept compelling enough to win over Mr. Churbuck.)

According to a colleague in Intel’s Latin America marketing group (I missed her data source), 70% of the online population in Mexico, Brazil and Colombia read blogs, and 35% of them write blogs. Sixty-percent of Mexican Internet users and 75% of Brazil Internet users are members of social networks such as Facebook or Orkut — versus 35% of Internet users worldwide.

Intel invites Facebook members to draw robots using the Graffiti application. Normally the Graffiti crew publishes the Top 150 on the gallery page, but for this contest they’ve made it a Top 250 to accommodate a bigger field of exceptional contributions. Take a look at the full gallery; they clearly made the right call. Here are a few:

I continue to be amazed (and I’m sure Intel is thrilled) that so many artists take it upon themselves to work in the sponsor’s brand. Here’s one among many:

That’s nice, you say, a few thousand consumers spending hours with Intel’s brand and a million or so of their friends seeing Intel’s messaging briefly as they swing through to vote for their favorite Graffiti. But is there more? Yup. Since it sponsors functionality that allows web publishers and bloggers to embed their favorite Graffitis, Intel’s robot-drawing contest is creating thousands of media objects that can be shared across the web — Intel commercials, in effect, that spread virally and show the world a richer, more visual web experience.

At a conference earlier this week, Intel’s David Veneski presented stats on Intel’s sponsorship of PopURLS Blue Edition for Enterprise IT. In May, visitors to the site, on average, were more than 100% likely to interact with content assets, clicking on headlines in order to read full stories. If the goal is to build something your customers want, the rate of active engagement is a great proxy for performance. In this case, Intel aced it.

I spoke at the Ascentium PDX onference, too. Here are some photos posted to Flickr.

Graffiti, the popular Facebook drawing app, adds a new feature today with help from Intel’s sponsorship dollars. When you see a Graffiti you like, you can embed the animated version — the artist’s virtual brush strokes as he or she draws the image — into your own site, just like you’d embed a YouTube video.

Here’s one I like from the recent Haagen-Dazs sponsored bee drawing contest by Priya S Patel:

Earlier this week Intel and Ars Technica teamed up on a new technology forum, one designed specifically to engage Intel engineers, tech leaders from companies such as Google and Rambus, tech journalists from Ars Technica and Real World Technologies, and the tech power-set that makes up the Ars Technica community — all in one place. Dozens of individual topics have sparked hundreds of posts from the Ars community, which have been read by thousands of others.

Separate from the conversations around visual computing and multi-core architectures, Jon Stokes, directing editor at Ars Technica, reached out to his readers for feedback on the concept. Is it OK to invite engineers from Intel — the sponsor — into an Ars forum? Here’s an excerpt of that conversation.

Reader: “Seriously, let’s not pretend that Intel’s sponsorship isn’t going to affect how the forum is moderated and beyond”

Jon Stokes’s reply is pretty convincing:

As Stokes suggests, the proof is in the pudding. This program only works for Intel if it also works for Ars, and it only works for Ars if it works for the Ars community. Since that’s all out on the table — and the community is watching — it’s hard to imagine the Ars Technica editors could let this conversation veer into an advertorial Intel pep rally. Partnerships work best when all the parties have skin in the game. I’m betting this partnership is going to work well.

Credits: Intel’s David Veneski, Universal McCann’s Kerri Vickers, Ars Technica’s Jon Stokes and Ken Fisher, and FM’s Josh Mattison and Jason Ratner put this sponsorship together.

Intel’s sponsorship of PopURLs Blue Edition for Enterprise IT is winning fans. Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb says:

“Now [PopURLs founder] Marban has partnered with Intel to create one of the most interesting ad campaigns I’ve seen in awhile, Blue.PopURLs.com. The site is a single page aggregator about hot enterprise IT news. Calm down, I know enterprise IT is boring — but the site is cool…..”

“The Intel partnership in particular is remarkable as a simple way for advertisers to deliver value to audiences in exchange for a little bit of mindshare. Next to the top enterprise software stories from around the web, you’ll find links to Intel white papers and blogs.”

I also love the disclosure attached to the post. FM manages advertising for ReadWriteWeb and Intel’s ads have been running on the site, but Marshall says he notices the campaign only after seeing Intel’s ads on another FM site, Boing Boing.

“Disclosure: The Blue ad campaign is being run through FM publishing, who also sells ads here on RWW. I just found the site through an FM ad on BoingBoing and thought it was worth writing up.”

Advertising works in mysterious ways.

Credits: The people behind this project include Thomas Marban at PopURLs; David Veneski at Intel; Josh Mattison and Jason Ratner at FM.

Intel has underwritten the launch of a version of PopURLs dedicated to enterprise IT content, PopURLs Blue. Another great example of Intel’s strategy to sponsor product enhancements at existing third-party brands that already reach their customers, like the launch of Digg Images, Digg’s Arc visualization widget, and a better music experience for My Space members.