Affinitive's Social Media Playground » web 2.0

Political Campaigning in a 2.0 world

Affinitive — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 17:46:33 +0000

Although Affinitive does a slew of work in the video game space, I am far from a “gamer girl.” However, as I’ve grown with the company I have enjoyed getting to learn about this quickly growing industry and how influential it can be on both its loyalists and the mainstream consumers. I might not be a gamer, but I’m certainly impressed, inspired, and intrigued by this growing vertical.

I guess that is why I am not surprised at all by this blog post on GigaOm that verifies that the rumors are true, Obama’s media placement team has in fact placed advertisements for him within Xbox games.

Last week they reported unconfirmed sightings of an “Obama for President” billboard in the Xbox 360 racing game Burnout Paradise.This week they have confirmation from Obama’s camp that those were placed as part of the overall strategy.

Interesting? Yes. Surprising? Not really.

No matter what your political affiliation, it is hard to deny that this Presidential campaign, like any other modern media campaign, has a mix of the traditional and the non-traditional.

John McCain’s daughter, Meghan, has a very regularly updated and family driven blog (I’ll admit, I love it!) that draws an impressive monthly readership. If you Google it you get over 1 million hits. Not too shabby.

Obama was going to announce his VP via SMS prior to the AP blowing it for him.

Both Obama and McCain have their own “official” YouTube channels.

Obama’s site has a blog, a tv channel, various download and share tools, and a “My” section that allows people to aggregate in groups based on location and help him campaign. Political street teams, if you will.

Providing consumers with the tools to be your advocates is the same whether you are Pepsi, the Gap, or perhaps the future President.

Possibly inspired by some of the tactics employed in many of Affinitive’s brand-based community-driven programs, McCain’s site allows people to join the “team,” “recruit” friends, and earn currency for donations and recruits.

What is the verdict? Companies (and candidates) who aren’t deploying various non-traditional media outreach and tactics and involving “web 2.0″ and social media into their mix are missing the boat.

I am only sad (talk about missing the boat?!) I didn’t pitch a full-fledged Obama (or McCain) community a year ago, both have resulted in an insurmountable pile of User Generated Content, a very high Word of Mouth reach (I’d love to look at those graphs!), and would be millions strong…and counting.

Disclaimer: the point of this post was to simply address the level of influence certain personalities have over consumers and is not an endorsement of any particular party or candidate.

Getting a “Kick” Out of Facebook Apps!

Bob Troia — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 22:57:51 +0000

Earlier this summer Facebook announced they were opening up their platform to allow developers to create social applications that could deeply integrate with their functionality and data (and in turn, take advantage of the “social graph” of their 30 million members).

We see the potential here as being enormous, and are already hard at work integrating social applications into our clients’ word of mouth/social media marketing mix. We’ve just released our first app, called Pass the Soccer Ball.

The premise is quite simple – you pass ‘balls’ to your friends who can in turn either pass it down the field to one of their friends or take a ‘shot’ at the goal (with each successive pass improving the odds of scoring a goal). The very nature of the game takes advantage of the “social graph” and spreads virally. In fact, we quietly released the first version of the application last week with no promotion and over 1000 people installed the app in just the first few days (it also boasts an “active user” base in the top 15% of all Facebook apps, according to Adonomics).

This is a sign of bigger things to come, as Myspace, Yahoo, and even Google are rumored to follow suit and release developer APIs that allow deep integration with their platforms. Social networks are becoming the new operating systems

Got a Facebook account? Why not check out the app and pass me a soccer ball?

Hey! Hey what? Hey! Nielsen – Making Opinions Count

Bob Troia — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 08:51:32 +0000

For the past 9 months we have been working with The Nielsen Company to develop an innovative social media platform that allows consumers to become a collective voice of change and, in turn, influence the decision makers in the entertainment industry, while also helping Nielsen reinvent the ways it conducts audience measurement in our DVR time-shifted, ipod using, web2.0 world. Today we’re happy to announce the “public beta” launch of Hey! Nielsen.

Part “opinion engine”, part social network, and part buzz tracker, it’s been a true labor of love for our team (including many late nights and weekends), and has given us the opportunity to work with a group of extremely talented folks acrosss all of Nielsen’s divisions (including Nielsen Media Research, Nielsen Entertainment, AC Nielsen, Nielsen Buzzmetrics, Nielsen NetRatings, Billboard, Nielsen Trend, and Nielsen Wireless & Interactive).

We’ll definitely be posting a more in-depth case study in the near future, but why not check it out for yourself? In the meantime, we’re going to go catch up on some sleep but you can check out some of the latest buzz here:

- Hey! Nielsen: Influence the Ratings through Social Networking (via Mashable)
- Nielsen Rates Social Network Site a Must See (via CNBC)
- Hey! Nielsen screencast demo (via Demogirl)
- Hey! Nielsen Beta (via Being Peter Kim)
- Exlcusive Look: Hey! Nielsen Private Beta (via Muhammad Saleem)
- Reviewing Hey! Nielsen (via Pulse 2.0)

We’ve Reached 100!

Bob Troia — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 10:27:22 +0000

It’s been a busy summer here in Affinitive-land (seriously, where did the summer go?), but I wanted to take a moment to proudly announce that we have just been engaged to develop our 100th consumer-centric marketing program! It’s a huge milestone and truly validates that word of mouth and social media marketing should be an integral part of any company’s marketing mix. We have shown that it can be done in an honest, ethical and transparent way, can be measured, and can provide both short- and long-term ROI.

I would also like to thank all of our clients old and new who have believed in us, as well as everyone on our team who continue to amaze me by coming up with innovative ways for companies to engage, empower and connect their most passionate consumers.

See you at 200!