A very quick post to highlight the Call Elmo iPhone app because it is absolutely terrific and genius. The application essentially mocks the Facetime experience – but instead of a friend calling, Elmo calls. And once you pick up the call, your face appears in a mini-screen – just like Facetime. It’s brilliant in its simplicity… and in the model.

The app is $0.99 and comes with a couple Elmo calls and voicemails. But there are dozens of other videos that can purchased within themed packs. It’s terrific and you can tell by the smile in the app – kids love it.

There is no reason this couldn’t work beyond Elmo and for other formats / audiences. It’s too fun not to be popular.

Just a terrific, creative and well-timed use of the Facebook Timeline by Nike Basketball. Coinciding with the NBA Playoffs – and a handful of new sneakers for top stars like Lebron James, Kobe Bryant and Kevin Durant – Nike Basketball is releasing a series of basketball rules:

“Every EPIC moment has a story. And every story has a lesson.
Lesson No. 1: The deeper the bench. The stronger the squad.”

Each rule is placed atop a basketball poster that ties into the playoffs and relevant players. Two or three rules are posted a day (so far, 38 rules and posters have been loaded). Nike also mixes in other timely promos like a congratulations to Lebron James for his MVP award and this graphic for the evening’s Lakers / Thunder game:

It’s clever, fun, on brand and highly visual – which means it is highly engaging on Facebook. It is also something that only Nike can do (the talent, the imagery and the production) and something that really can only be done on Facebook and with Facebook Timeline (no offense to Twitter, but this would be neither as effective nor engaging).

This is pretty significant news out of Amazon: all seven Harry Potter books are now available in the Kindle Lending Club. It is the all-time bestselling book series and is a testament to Amazon’s willingness to put marketing muscle behind Kindle and the Lending Club. And considering the reach and popularity of the Harry Potter franchise – it is a win for Kindle owners, Harry Potter fans, and Amazon users.

It is also worth noting that it is a couple days from Mother’s Day and Amazon’s merchandising exists (upper right corner) but is far smaller than the Harry Potter announcement or the Amazon Local promotion. I would have assumed that the week would be dedicated to Mother’s Day preparation – particularly highlighting one-day shipping, etc.

So much is great about this: Porsche takes to Facebook to alert fans that the Macan is on Pinterest…. that drives 2,500 likes and 200 shares within 6 hours. That alone is interesting and somewhat ironic.

Then go to Pinterest. Despite 10,000s of impressions of their Pinterest post on Facebook (are you following?) there are only 700 followers on Pinterest, 2 pins, and 150 Facebook Likes.

So many potential comments including:
- kudos to Porsche for adopting Pinterest
- the concept of driving traffic circularly across networks is far from simple
- I’m not entirely sure Porsche’s Facebook fans understand what Pinterest is
- Which might be because Porsche’s fans are male (?) or because they Like things without context (?), etc

This is a fun, effective example of integrated / co-marketing done right. Grantland is ESPN’s new sports and pop-culture media hub (led by Bill Simmons). To simply sum up Grantland: it is a robust blog with great daily content and it is ad-supported – but the ads are premium (1-2 per page and from just a handful of key sponsors).

This is a little different though. Grantland’s header usually features key articles… and one of those is currently an article written by “Kenny Powers” (a fictional star of HBO’s popular sports show Eastward Bound and Down).
- It of course is eye catching: the Grantland audience will recognize Kenny Powers and be interested in the article
- It is relevant: the Grantland audience is an HBO / Kenny Powers audience
- It’s integrated & clever: Kenny Powers wrote something on Grantland? Much more interesting than an 250×250 ad unit
- It’s timely: the new season starts next week

Such is the online video content war: catalogs grow, compete and find their way into the homes / devices of as many eyeballs as possible…. after all, content wants to be seen and ultimately the economics for all are dictated on content being seen by as many eyeballs as possible. It’s why I believe that over time libraries will exist and overlap on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, web, app stores, etc. It’s inevitable… And here is:
- continued proof of that trend
- and yet another reason to be bullish on Amazon, Amazon Prime and Amazon Instant Video

And most importantly: Yo Gabba Gabba is now available with unlimited streaming from Amazon. Attention parents – this alone is reason enough to buy the Kindle Fire!!

amazon prime yo gabba gabba

Yesterday Living Social ran a promotion with McDonald’s: $13 for 5 Big Macs and 5 large fries.
With 15 hours to go, they have already sold ~260,000 deals… which equates to 1.2 million Big Macs.
~35,000 people shared the deal via Facebook (~13%).
I remind you: the deal *still* has 15 hours remaining.

What’s this all mean?
Of Big Macs alone, Living Social sold:
763 million calories
44 million grams of fat
60 million grams of carbs
and 31 million grams of protein

When you add in the fries, the total dent is:
1.39 billion calories
and 76 million grams of fat

Enjoy!

Editor’s note: Guest contributor Andrew Machado is the founder of Open Home Pro, which empowers real estate agents to give their clients a new type of experience when shopping for a home with just an iPad. Open Home Pro is a Dogpatch Labs Palo Alto company.

As I read Joseph Puopolo’s article regarding the WWE/The Rock and Social Media this weekend I was taken aback to see one key name missing from the article…Amy Jo Martin.  She carries with her 1.2 million Twitter Followers, has beaten breast cancer and most importantly she’s humanizing brands.

Amy founded Digital Royalty which works with great brands like Fox Sports, Nike, but most importantly people like Dwayne Johnson, Shaq and Dana White to improve their social media presence.  Her team has developed some extremely clever uses of social media over the years and I wanted to highlight three of them.

1.  Hunt For UFC

Over the last few years the UFC has not only grown it’s business ($465 million in ppv revenue in 2010), but if you look up their CEO on Twitter @danawhite you’ll see he is insanely active on twitter.  Nearly 12,000 tweets from him.  To put that into perspective that’s nearly 2x my Twitter volume and 3x Ryan’s.  

Why is he so active? Because Twitter is a platform that allows Dana to not only grow his business but it allows him to “humanize his brand“.

My favorite of their social media strategies is #hunt4UFC where they give away UFC merchandise and tickets in random locations simply by having Dana tweet out clues about where they are hiding.  The video clip below is especially powerful.  You get to see what happens within 60 seconds of the tweet hitting twitter.

2.  Shaq’s Retirement

A lot of people saw Shaq’s original video on Tout detailing his retirement.  In fact over 500k of you watched it within the first 3 hours, but of course the real magic behind all of this was Amy who is seen in the video above with Shaq before he drops the video.

My favorite part of Shaq’s retirement was not only did fans find out first, but he leverages social media to remove the red tape thats usually involved in an announcement like this.  Instead of seeing a press conference clip on Sportscenter, fans got to hear it first from the man on an overcast day in Miami.

3.  Team Bring It

Wait didn’t I just see that t-shirt on Facebook.  I uttered these words to myself as I watched The Rock roll on out to the WWE ring on RAW wearing his Boots To Asses shirt we had seen previously that morning on his Facebook page.

Previously and probably my favorite of The Rock’s social media innovations was when he took to YouTube to do a “shoot” interview about John Cena to increase buzz about their rivalry.  It’s filmed in a way that feels real, raw and resonated with viewers (500,000k).  It’s 11 minutes of pure unedited bliss.

As brands continue to adopt great tools like Instragram, Tout, Facebook and Twitter they’ll need to continue to find innovative ways to leverage each platform. Social Media presents brands with an entirely new, more visceral way to interact with their customer.

Be innovative.
Be real.
Humanize your brand.

The world’s first offline social network.
From FX’s The League. This is terrific.

Please excuse the poor quality… home video =)
And please excuse some slight profanity – but still kosher for TV!

I am a sports nut. That shouldn’t be news if you follow me here or on Twitter / Facebook. I also spend my professional life on the web and looking at new technologies. In part because it is fun to think about – and in part due to personal frustrations – I’ll put those two together and brainstorm how the major leagues (NFL, NBA, MLB) should improve their online product.

Note: obviously there are significant issues: content rights, ownership, players unions, etc. Let’s make the (ridiculous!) assumption those don’t come into play or that everyone wakes up and agrees these are important for leagues’ future health (NBA and MLB more so than the NFL).

1. Get an online identity.

Sounds simple and the below ideas are clearly focused on helping drive an identity. But look at these screenshots from NBA.com and NFL.com. I have no idea why I would visit these sites as opposed to ESPN.com or Twitter. They are mixtures of ads, promotions, stores, and news.

These sites are highly trafficked (see August list here) – but in August (when interest is at its max) NFL.com still represents just 40% of Yahoo’s traffic and 50% of ESPN’s. The brand is obviously there but the sites are not much more than navigational hubs.

The below ideas hopefully help create an identity and a reason for fans to visit and engage with their online properties.

2. That identity should be social.

I believe these websites should have four primary goals – probably in this order:

A. Promote the league, teams, players and partners.
B. Engage the fans.
C. Covert visitors to new properties / touch points: Twitter Followers, Facebook Fans, mobile users, etc…. recognize that fan activity is far broader than on your site.
D. Drive revenue (store, ads, etc)

The best way to directly drive points ‘B’ and ‘C’ and to indirectly impact ‘A’ and ‘D’ is by fully integrating social. More on the next point. But at the highest level, this means that the league sites should look more like a robust, branded Facebook Fan Page and less like your local newspaper site. Content should be dynamic, personalized and interact-able… not flat like your a local news article.

3. View me as an individual fan. Not a pageview.

Step 1 in making the sites more social is to view users as individuals… not as pageviews. How? Lets reimagine what NFL.com could be:

- via Facebook Connect, it recognizes my identity and prompts me to Like the NFL on FB
- it then asks me to like my favorite team(s)
- by ‘liking’, I automatically subscribe to team’s Facebook page (already subscribed to NFL)
- now NFL.com can feature content specifically crafted to my preferences and to my Facebook friends
- And they can quickly translate this from league to team to players

Those 20M uniques in August are suddenly *much* more valuable as connected users. And those 20M uniques are just the tip of the traffic iceberg… why? Those users are now:

- They are viral (hello Facebook Ticker!)

- They are shareable: instantly the NFL can have massive followings on Facebook & Twitter and can share that traffic with their teams.

- They are engageable: once you have users become fans / followers, the league can more effectively / efficiently engage with fans (and market / promote).

And now content flow can go both ways: on and off NFL.com. Just look at the Washington Post Social Reader as a good example.

4. Welcome social media. Don’t fear it. In fact, mandate it.

Encourage teams and players to use social media. Hell, mandate it. In the above example, you could have a Facebook page with 10M Dallas Cowboys fans. That’s as powerful as the team makes it.

Each team should have an official Facebook Page and Twitter account that is consistently named, branded, etc. The page should aggregate / promote the Facebook / Twitter pages of its players.

Fans should be able to subscribe to entire teams through a single follow button (ie a Dallas Cowboys officially curated Twitter list).

The league and its teams will clearly worry about player etiquette on Facebook & Twitter. But: they are going to use the platforms whether or not the league likes it… and the players will listen (and behave) if they appreciate the power of building a following & brand via social media. Bring in industry leaders to give crash courses in social. Make it a mandatory part of the rookie symposiums.

The end result:

- dynamic content that is unique to each league / team (unlike their news clippings)
- bigger followings for the league, team and players
- real-time connections with fans who are now more deeply engaged
- more control by the league and team

5. View the league as a set of teams. And teams as a set of players.

Connected to the two points above, think of the league sites as a collection of teams. And while it is the league’s duty to deliver league-wide news and promotions, it is also beneficial to promote each team. The above examples accomplished:
- building a social following for the league itself
- using that to promote individual teams
- and then using each team to promote its own brand and players

ESPN is beginning to figure this out with their personalities. See example here.

And just as the league should promote horizontally – the teams should also be asked to connect to others. Lightweight ways include:

- making sure all mentions are linkable (seems simple but so rarely done)
- official pages include links to other teams (on Facebook via favorite pages, Twitter via Lists)

6. Every league & team should hire a czar.

See the above screenshot. Enough said.

7. Go mobile.

The leagues are getting quite good at standalone apps (particularly MLB). But the same approach to social should be applied to mobile:

- There should be league apps.
- There should be standardized team apps.

Note: why team apps? for starters, the experience is better within a single app and the team can more proactively tailor content and brand. Secondly, traffic will be better (app store findability, promotion through team fan pages, etc).

- Those team apps should feature dynamic content beyond the box score (everyone has that).
- Leverage the above points to showcase team and player content
- Allow users to engage directly: follow, post, like, Q&A, etc.
- Deliver push notifications: alerts from favorite player. Scores. Injuries. Etc.

Those stand-alone apps should also pertain to in-stadium experiences / promotions. That obviously requires 3G and/or wifi to work in stadiums… which is a leap of faith today.

8. Make content available.

Figure out how to get around the rights issues and make as much content available as possible. Leverage the league website, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Full game coverage: allow me to subscribe to a team or league as I can with MLB At Bat (a perennial top grossing application.

Clips: make clips available and let users remix & share them. It’s a viral dream. You can even protect branding by controlling the experience either onsite or as a Facebook app.

Highlights: The NBA is great at releasing Top 10 Plays from Yesterday on their Facebook page. This becomes more powerful as their presence grows… and even more powerful as the team presences grow. My willingness to share a specific clip from my favorite team / player is far greater than from across the entire league.

9. Engage. Don’t just push.

Content is now a two-way street. Build experiences that encourage interaction by fans. And encourage personalities to be interactive. Learn from CNBC sports business reporter Darren Rovell – who really phenomenal on Twitter.

10. Welcome ESPN and the new media.
11. Similarly, concede what you won’t win.

Figure out strategically where it makes sense to leverage other properties and brands. In many cases, collaboration / aggregation will create a better product (again, see Washington Post’s Social Reader which incorporates content beyond WashingtonPost.com).

In other cases, it will allow the leagues to redeploy resources, focus elsewhere and still roll out better products. For instance, is the NFL really going to win fantasy sports? That’s ESPN’s domain. Work together and build ancillary products that support the experience and league.

More reading:

- ESPN Brings Twitter into Fantasy Football App. Getting Closer.
- Much to Learn from the NBA’s Facebook Fan Page
- My Response to Mark Cuban’s: Does ESPN.com Have a Twitter Problem?
- ESPN’s Mobile Application Strategy (and Ad Campaign to Match)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.