Leveraging Social Media and Web 2.0 in a Product Launch

This morning I co-presented with Wilson Craig, PR Manager at Cisco for the Silicon Valley American Marketing Association's (SVAMA) networking breakfast. We shared the strategy, tactics and lessons learned from the recent Cisco ASR 1000 product launch where we leveraged interactive and social tools as well as social media outlets including Facebook, Second Life, blogs and discussion forums to spread its marketing message.

Here are the slides from our presentation:

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Leveraging Social Media and Web 2.0 in a Product Launch

Part of the reason I've been a lazy blogger lately is that I have been consumed with launching "the most powerful compact router every created" - the Cisco ASR 1000 Series Routers. It's been a fun launch and we pulled out all of the web 2.0 stops creating a Virual. Viral. Visual. launch. Here's a laundry list of how we leveraged Web 2.0:

• Pre-Launch Uber User Site - We leveraged light hearted videos on this site and posted them on YouTube to maximize visibility.
• Facebook Group - This was part of the pre-launch so I was able write about this one in an earlier post and even shared our process and tips here.
• Interactive 3-D Game - I would like to give kudos to the vendor - Somnio - who helped us create this very cool online game. "EDGE QUEST" offers our audience a fun and engaging way to learn about the product and interact with the Cisco brand - a no-brainer given the playing statistics of online games.
• Social Media Web Widget - Again kudos to Somnio here for the development of Cisco's first web widget that 'lets our content free' by allowing users to embed it on their site (as shown below).



• Social Media Release (SMR) - It's been nearly a year since I stumbled across and wrote about SMRs. What make them different from a traditional release? It's the approach and the fact that a SMR leverages and highlights all of the social aspects of the announcement.
• Second Life Presence - We were able to leverage Second Life pre-launch by hosting a countdown party and post launch by walking through a product demo.
  Other Stuff - We also leveraged sites like Digg, del.icio.us, Technorati, Reddit and StumbleUpon - we also have a focused blogger outreach program and a pretty cool looking launch page.

Want to know more about this launch? I'll be presenting on March 26 with Wilson Craig, PR Manager at Cisco for the Silcon Valley American Marketing Association to share processes, best practices and results.

Virtual Marketing is a Reality!

First it was virtual worlds, then virtual shopping now it's virtual workspaces! Qwaq, a company that creates 3D collaborative environments for meetings just grew their piggy bank by $7M to grow the company. Similar to Second Life it uses avatars so that each person has a virtual self - but with the focus on an actual 'workspace' there is a focus on sharing and collaborating office apps including Word, PowerPoint, Excel and others. Their initial customer list which includes BP, Intel and HP, is impressive and it validates the growing interest in virtual 3D worlds.

Virtual Worlds and 3D animations is also a growing trend in marketing. Here are a few things that I'm aware of:

3D Product Demos
Already companies like Cisco, Intel and even smaller companies like Mirapoint offer 3D product views. The virtual products are also starting to replace those that get shipped out for roadshows and tradeshows with the help of companies like Kaon Interactive which bring the interaction on a large touch screen so your products can be there without really being there.

3D Holographic Presentations
Musion Systems takes that a step further with true Star Trek 'Beam me up, Scotty' type of functionality where you can have a 3D holographic image of a person appear next to you on a live stage - even if that person is thousands of miles away!



Virtual World Events
A number of companies are hosting events on Second Life - here's a machinima video of a Second Life event I was involved with when we announced Cisco's Connected Life Contest winners.



Virtual Websites
Brookstone's 3D store is a good example of this for B2C situations. The Second Life sites like the one Microsoft has can also be considered a virtual website (or "island").

Demonstration of Brookstone's 3D Store

Here's a show-and-tell demonstration of Brookstone's 3D store.




Here are some related links for more information:

Brookstone Website

Brookstone 3D Store

Previous post mentioned in video

My First Second Life Event

I attended Crayonville's Virtual Branding event on Second Life (SL) this morning - naked!

For those who need a little background on SL before I go any further - it's a virtual world and is designed so that anything you can do in the 'real' world you can essentially do in SL. There are other virtual worlds (Active Worlds and There.com to name a couple) but businesses in general seem to have gravitated to SL as the platform of choice and use it as another medium to communicate with people. SL has it's critics and it's supporters - based on my experience I think I'm somewhere in the middle.

Okay, let me back up and recap my naked experience. When I first tried to join the event I had to log off my company's VPN which blocks SL due to security reasons (I don't really know the details of that). Then as I started the application I was prompted by SL to upgrade my platform which meant I had to restart SL. That took a few minutes but then I was finally in - but I couldn't see anything. I looked like a flashlight in the dark so I thought my screen was still loading but after a few minutes of walking around blind I realized that the app just opened up with a layered window that was covering my view.

Finally I'm in - and I can see. But now I don't have any clothes on! And my avatar looks pretty life-like, so I'm a little embarrassed. On top of that people keep asking me where my clothes are. All I know is that they're not on me! I figured out how to join a private chat and get some help but the function to put clothes on wasn't working - apparently it's a known issue that might be resolved by restarting SL (again) but I decided that I wasted too much time already and wanted to do what I came here to do - listen to the event.

The general message of the event itself was that virtual branding should complement what you're already doing (in the real world) and that measuring it is difficult. The event panelists explained that you need to look at SL as another way to engage in conversation with your customers - where they are. So if your customers are here, so should you. But are they here? Well there's a lot of debate on that one but one thing is for certain: the corporate community hasn't been too shy about building virtual worlds of their own (Cisco , Sun, and IBM to name a few). I know Cisco holds press conferences here, seminars, executive briefings and soon job fairs!

One of the cool things about SL is that while I was listening to the panelists I was able to participate in chat conversations - one person explained it as being able to talk to your neighbor as if you were in a live event. I have to admit that was pretty cool. And it was much easier to start and participate in a conversation than it is in the real world - plus you’re not limited to talking to the person to your left or right - you have the whole room.

I think SL has a ways to go and that Linden Research needs to focus on simplifying the user experience. If they can ensure a consistent and positive experience for users I think we'll see an uptake on the adoption rate. Personally I'm not convinced of the ROI but in any case SL isn't going away any time soon. As a marketer I think it's worth spening time to understand so I will be looking forward to the monthly events that Crayonville is going to host in SL as a way to get my feet wet.

B2B Marketing 2.0 – Conversation Enablers

Someone at work asked me how to 'leverage the power of Web 2.0' and what I have done to take advantage of some of the new technologies. I responded by saying that Web 2.0 technologies are useful for creating conversations with my customers, not just for pushing content (why pushing content isn’t good enough anymore is a post of it’s own). Then I was asked what training wheels I would suggest for someone looking to get started. I came up with this list of things I started with and would love suggestions from expert readers on others:

Blogging: Corporate blogs are becoming more common with companies like Cisco, HP, NetApp and Boeing which already active participants in the blogosphere. The common platforms for business or corporate blogs are WordPress, Movable Type and Leverage Software which goes beyond blogging to create communities.

Wiki's: Corporate wiki’s are collaborative websites which rely on a community of users to generate content and build pages. Wiki’s can be used in so many ways here are some example that come to mind –improve internal communications and expand the reach of your internal knowledgebase, use it to build a community within your customer base to create user generated documentation, use it with partners to co-create proposals. Some examples of external corporate wiki’s sites are: Linux Questions, IBM and Adobe. Three popular corporate Wiki platforms that come to mind are Confluence, SocialText and TWiki.

Social Networking: There are many social networking sites and although most of the one’s I’ve come across are personal in nature they do touch on certain business topics and can be exploited to reach a community that shows interest in topics related to your business. This site lists a few of the more popular social networking sites.

Second Life: Second Life is a ‘3-D virtual world’ – it offers a platform that can be used to host online events and collaborate with a broad audience in addition to just starting a hallway conversation with other avatars online. Notable companies on Second Life are Cisco, Reuters, Sun Microsystems and IBM.

LinkedIn: An online community of business professionals – this site can be exploited to build an expert within your company on a specific topic by taking advantage of the ‘Answers’ area of the site. It can be a good place to find potential clients and partners – and of course it’s more obvious use is finding potential job candidates.

I have limited this list to ‘conversation enablers’ – I'll be working on a follow up post around widgets and which ones are most likely to have “business value” which I think is even more interesting.