A few weeks back I was invited to talk to an upper division marketing class at the University of Montana on how they could incorporate new media and social media marketing into their final projects.  One of the groups had a VERY commodity product, and one that at first glance was/is pretty boring. The group was disparaging of trying to find a way to use the “cool” technologies that I had just spent an hour talking about (twitter, facebook, blogs, foursquare, yelp, etc).  I gave them a pretty simple answer that they loved and I thought I would talk about it here b/c it has recently come up again for a current client.  That answer is Mascot.

The student group had beef jerky.  Now except for the “SNAP INTO A SLIM JIM!” commercials of the 90′s beef jerky while admittedly delicious has never really been what one would consider Hight Tech, or a candidate for social media marketing.  But a beef jerky mascot on the other hand could be.  I told the group to create a rancher or possibly even a chicken (a la Chick Fil A with their cows) but don’t just create a little image of this mascot, but go full out. Make a backstory for this mascot, mascots are a chance to go completely creative.  Maybe Hotrod the Chicken (maybe it’s spicy jerky) grew up with Monty (the U of MT mascot) and they picked on the younger Slash (the Missoula Mauler’s mascot),and back then he was just called Rod. but one day Monty stole Rod’s girlfriend b/c Rod was just kinda boring. And on that day Rod changed his name to Hotrod and vowed to NEVER be boring again! (ok, yeah, a little simplistic, but you get the point). So now we have this cool backstory and graphics for Hotrod, this is where the new media comes in.  At no point has there existed a technology to immediately connect with people and actually interact with them on the scale that we now have with social media. So use it! Create a twitter feed for Hotrod showing him doing all kinds completely outrageous things (like surfing ON a shark off the Great Barrier Reef). Create a #hashtag for Hotrod’s out there to post about their adrenaline fueled activities. Create a facebook account and fan page. Treat Hotrod like he was a real person, responding to emails, joining adventure clubs and talking with people.  The biggest thing is to treat him as a larger than life celebrity and people will know him, and then by extension your product that Hotrod supports in the same way that sports stars endorse wheaties, or Ashton Kutcher those cameras that he’s got. The great part is that except for some app devo, and some graphics Hotrod could exist completely on free social media sites.  Give him a twitter feed showing pics he took while jumping out a plane, or scuba diving. You could prbly go several months before you would even (if you really want to) need to create a costume for you mascot.

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A Good article that I found over at: MattShaw’s Blog. You should check out some of his other stuff.

Every so often you come across one of those strokes of brilliance that makes you ask the really important questions: Is there another way of doing things? Is everything I know about XYZ-topic completely wrong? Why aren’t we all doing this? (And, of course, why didn’t I think of that?)

Recently I came across one such idea. HubSpot, thought leadersextraordinaires in the inbound marketing realm, recently became the first B2B business ever to launch an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) to promote their products.

The premise is simple: HubSpot invented a company, Kronus Media, and told all of their followers that Kronus had issued a Cease & Desist order that forced HubSpot to shut down inboundmarketing.com, their thought leadership arm. The same day, HubSpot launched a Ning network — captaininbound.ning.com — dedicated to solving the mystery behind the evil Kronus Media and their motivations, and eventually to get inboundmarketing.com back up and running. To solve the mystery, the proprietor of the network (who goes by the name “Captain Inbound” to protect him/herself from violating a non-disclosure agreement) points out “clues” left on HubSpot’s various social media sites and asks people for help figuring out what they might mean.

Here’s why this is brilliant:

1. It’s instantly engaging. The Inbound Marketing University is shut down?! How could they do something like that?!
2. It requires subscription. Part of the fun of the game is discovering clues. Where are these clues? On HubSpot’s Facebook page, in their Twitter updates, on their blog, etc. In order to find these clues, you have to be actively monitoring HubSpot’s social media accounts.
3. It promotes followers. There is tremendous incentive to be an active part of a game like this for several reasons. First, it’s reasonably high-profile, which means that there are lots of eyeballs scanning your content. Second, participating in — never mind winning — the game gives you a chance to show off your analytical skills. And third, it levels the playing field for exposure. Anyone can find a clue, anyone can solve a riddle, and anyone can win the game. So why wouldn’t you participate?
4. It promotes an ideology. The very nature of this game is to pit those people interested in the Inbound Marketing University — who are, for the most part, modern and forward-thinking marketers — against Kronus Media, a company that represents the exact ideology against which Inbound Marketing rebels. The success of HubSpot as a company revolves around their ability to make people understand that this dichotomy exists, and that HubSpot’s side is the side to be on. This game helps to reinforce that idea.
5. It creates a positive sentiment. I don’t know what this game will do to drive business for HubSpot — I’m thinking it won’t drive much, but that’s me being skeptical. To be honest, though, I don’t know that HubSpot is thinking about this game in terms of ROI. Any return that they’ll get from this game will be entirely metaphysical in nature. There is an unspoken value in the number of times someone says, “Hey, did you hear about that cool game that HubSpot’s running?” To have the words “cool” and “HubSpot” in the same sentence, multiplied by a couple of thousand, adds up to the kind of achievement that they probably couldn’t have accomplished otherwise.
6. It happens in a natural environment. HubSpot isn’t asking you log into some third-party website to access the game. You don’t have to download anything, you’re not using some kind of game widget. You’re doing things that you were probably already doing: interacting with HubSpot on their blog and on Twitter and Facebook. You already do that (or if you don’t, it’s really easy to start doing it). So there’s no barrier to entry.

There are a lot of people who were upset about the way HubSpot launched the game. I’d like to address some of those concerns on Monday, if you’ll give me the weekend. In the mean time, tell me what you think about www.captaininbound.com — A cool game or a spectacular failure?

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