A couple of hours out of the gate and Red Bull already has a best practice!  Using a scavenger hunt type of game to get people to explore and look deeper into their new timeline.  I'm intrigued...So I visit their page.

Holy crap!  I love it :)  This will be fun for brands.  Here is what pops out:

1. That big picture!  What a great opportunity for branding.  Look out for some fun stuff from brand here.

2. App presentation is about 5 billion times better than the previous design and more graphical as well.

3. They give your friends that like the brand some pretty hefty screen time.  I wonder if my friend's posts               will be weighted more, making them more visible to me on the timeline? 

4.  The "bookmark" is a great way to highlight certain posts.  This is PERFECT for when your brand is having      a contest or has a bigger piece of content that they want to highlight over time.  It only lasts a week,                but this insures that certain messaging won't be lost in the stream.

5.  The timeline.  This allows brands to tell their story through posts, videos, and other media.  This is really      cool.  More on this below.

The Red Bull brand story is a good one and though I didn't see it as in depth as it may be in the future, I was impressed by them putting at least one post in each year since they were established in 1987.

The historic posts are great.  The fact that you can embed any piece of media like you can in any post, is great.  The ability to use pics and video to add weight to your story is fantastic!

Overall I'm really impressed and excited to see how brands utilize this new creative outlet for their pages.  Hoping to see a lot of creativity since Facebook has opened the doors wide open for brands to tell their story.

Haven't had a chance to jump into admin mode yet, but will share my thoughts as soon as I do.  Really interested in how an admin can orchestrate all of this.

Bravo to all the Red Bull peeps too for rolling out with a great representation of the new Timeline for Pages.

My love for the Red Bull brand should be no secret here on the blog.  They taught me much of what I believe in when it comes to branding and CPG marketing while I worked there and what they've done with their community on Facebook of now over 27 million fans.

The secret to Red Bull's success through social media is that there isn't a secret.  They've always been hyper focused on their communities and have been content creators before creating content was cool.  They spent untold money on amazing events and videos before there was even a way for these things to be shared and spread.  They won a long time ago.  Dialog with the customer was part of their DNA from 1987.  We can learn a lot by watching them...stepping off of my box now.

My first brand marketing gig was with Red Bull back when nobody but college kids could have a Facebook account. That job taught me a sonic mega-load about influencer, experience & event marketing and 85% of it still holds up today.  That's why I have a special place in my heart when it comes to guerrilla marketing teams for energy drinks & stories like this one.  I also still have a lot of industry folks in my Facebook stream and I tend to get these things fresh off the press.

Some things are ageless when it comes to experiential marketing.  One of them is perception.  When you're representing the brand, you are percieved one in the same as the brand you are working for.  There are two rules when you're out sampling energy drinks.  

1. Don't Yawn

2. Don't sleep in the car

As you can tell by the picture above, these poor kids are proving exactly why rule #2 was put into place.  It would suck for the brand to have anyone see you out on the streets sleeping in an energy drink van.  It would really suck if someone got a picture of you sleeping and it began to build the energy needed to create a nice little interenet meme.

I commend 5 Hour Energy for making lemons into lemonade and reacting quickly and with a sense of humor on this one.  As soon as this pic starting making rounds, they threw it up on their Facebook and with just a bit of egg in thier face, said "ok we've seen it and it's kind of funny, what isn't funny is the captions you guys have come up with so far."  

They created it into their own caption contest and though it's not the most original, it is quick and does the job.  It deflates it, and calls it as it is, 2 young workers that got caught doing something that doesn't match up with the brand much.  Workers make mistakes, what are you gonna do?  I'm sure they won't be doing it again :)

It's a small example, but shows that more & more brands are learning to not be afraid of Facebook & virality, but to accept it, harness it and use it right back.  

Nice work 5 Hour Energy guy!  

I REALLY think this is big for Facebook.  It anchors them into our lives and builds them into the fabric of our story and how we tell it.  It allows us to realize how much equity in content we have in Facebook, which will make it harder for people to walk away into using a new tool (Google+).

Check mine out below and please share your thoughts on the new Timeline.

In my first part of this series on Google Fiber in KC, I spoke about the big picture and decide that the subject was too big to fit into one blog.

I'm going to use these next few parts to draw a little more focus to how I see Google Fiber effecting parts of my life and other's lives in the city.  This week, I'm going to focus on how gigabit speeds could effect marketing agencies in town.

I work as an Interactive Strategist for a 25 person agency in KC called Muller Bressler & Brown.  When the plan was announced,we all were called in for a pow-wow with the owners to discuss what Google Fiber would mean for the agency (I expect there were a lot of these going on at the time).  The short and long answer is opportunity, but the size of that slice of pie will depend on an agency's ability to adapt and invest in what's coming.

Google will be laying down their first gigabit infrastructure in KC.  The technology that will run on these 8 lane super highways of data hasn't really been developed yet, especially for at home use.  As Google flips the switch, the first businesses to take advantage of the grid will be those that will be building the technology that sits on top of the gigabit infrastructure.  

App development that uses these speeds will be one of the avenues.  We're going to learn what cloud computing means fairly quickly, as applications that needed the processor power of a home PC become useable with less and less hardware.  (Examples would be data crunching, video editing, or anything that traditionally would eat up processor power)

My guess is that these companies that will be coming in will be 2 to 3 man businesses with a couple developers and a designer.  The agencies that can become a hybrid of a startup tech incubator and a full service marketing agency will come out ahead as these businesses will not have the cash flow that most agencies are used to making from their clients.  The agency that can take risk and work for a percentage of ownership of these startups instead of cash will see success.  

The agency that plays in this game will also need to be as quick & agile as the companies that are building these products and that could be a challenge from watching how agencies have struggled to adapt in the last few years. 

When digital first started building momentum in traditional agencies, a strategy that seemed to work well for them was creating another business that could work outside of the slow moving inner workings of the agency.  The new small shop could act that way and take on the entrepreneurial spirit needed to make something new.  I'm just saying that this may be the right time to bring this strategy out from the playbook.

You could do that or just wait for a small company to do it on their own and buy it at it's highest value down the road, but where is the fun in that?

As for the opportunities that are further out, if you want to see the industries that will be effected first, just look out for those that are pushing lots of data.  Medical, Insurance, Education and Entertainment to name a few.  Since these industries are so large and require a lot of specialization, the agencies that already play in these worlds will have the best opportunities to earn more business by working with their current clients to shake out what gigabit speeds would mean to them.

Agencies that already have this business specialization can attract new biz from being there first and sharing that knowledge.  Thought leadership can be tough to businesses that bill time, but it should be a top tier priority.  When new biz begins to look around the interwebs for those that can get clients to the next level, you want them to run into your content.

What do you think this means for KC agencies?   

Tune back in for Part 3, I'll go over what Google Fiber means for our SMCKC community.

I've had the awesome opportunity to drive some of Ford's newest cars this summer.  With how seriously Ford has taken tech in their cars lately, I was more than excited to drive one of their luxury class, the Lincoln MKX crossover for a couple of weeks in July.  

I'm not even going to pretend that I'm a car reviewer.  I could probably pick a carburetor out in a lineup, but my car knowledge is at about a 3, just above my knowledge of sports and Art history.

I will say that this car absolutely ruined me. You're not supposed to drive cars like this until you're able to buy one!  You remember your dad's Lincoln right?  The giant boat of a car that drove like you were riding on a cloud?  Well, it has transformed and gotten a lot sexier, been packed full of tech and the cloud thing stuck.

As for the tech, the car delivers...a lot.  Keyless entry, 3 LED monitors including a large touch screen, backup camera, backup sensor and a really sick little sensor that lets you know when someone hits their brakes quickly in front of you or is coming up quickly on either side, Sync system, and air conditioned seats (Yes I just said air conditioned seats).

I'll get more into the Sync system in another post, but the short of it is this.  If you put time into learning what it can and can't do, the Ford Sync system will allow you to be 100% hands free with almost all of your car and phone controls.  It's not only cool, but massively safer with allowing you to keep your eyes on the road. The BIG genius was Ford using your phone as the core tech and feeding that information and functionality throughout your car.  As soon as your phone is synced, you don't even have to take it out of your pocket again for the car to be able to utilize content like your music, phonebook, 3G connection and GPS.

The down side to this is that the controls are a bit confusing and that is coming from a guy who never met a VCR he couldn't program.  It's cool, but I'd have to say that the common driver just isn't there yet and would probably utilize about 10% of what the system can do.  Ford could use some a couple of lessons from Apple on the UI side of things, but it's a work in progress and very impressive for 1st'ish gen tech.

The Skinny: The Lincoln MKX car is basically a pimped out Ford Edge, but that's not a bad thing and it's also a really good amount of pimping :)

To say that I enjoyed driving the Lincoln around would be an understatement.  I'm was most impressed with the fact that most of the coolest tech (other than the air conditioned seats) is all safety related and really makes a big difference in how you safe you feel in the car.  Almost like it's an extension of your own perception.  My biggest hope is that this tech will become affordable enough to come standard in every car within a few years.  

I've been asked this question with more frequency lately as Google Fiber begins to become more of a reality for folks here in Kansas City, KS and KCMO.  Of course the answers are way more far reaching and deep than I can speak on, but that's never stopped me before.

I'll break this blog post up into 4 parts.

Part 1: Big Picture of Google Fiber

Part 2: KC Agencies and Google Fiber

Part 3: SMCKC and Google Fiber

Part 4: Just the nerd in me

My goal is to get some conversation started.  "With great power, comes great responsibility."  Yes it's a quote from Spiderman and yes that makes me a giant nerd, but it's fundamental truth that KC better get the hang of quickly because we we're being given keys to dad's porsche and we gotta make the most of it.

Google stated from the very beginning that, "they were building the sandbox and filling it with sand, but it was up to us to bring in the Tonka trucks and build the sand castles."  I love that quote by the way, but it simply states that they aren't providing us the answers or the opportunities that Google Fiber will create.  Tha'ts up to us, and so far I haven't been impressed with the amount of people stepping up to the plate.

Big Picture:

This is where I attempt to jump 10,000 feet up in the air for a minute and take a snapshot of the big picture.

national gigabit interent speed infrastructure will be crucial for the US to hold onto it's stake as the world's technology leader. Data is king and there is a whole lot of it.  In order to take advantage of it, we need to build bigger pipes for it to flow through and that MUST go all the way to the home.  It's all about the access.

It's a BIG win for small cities everywhere, not just Kansas City.  Just like small companies are able to act more nimble and adapt more quickly to change, it seems the same can be said for cities.  The implementation of gigabit speeds will come from small cities the size of KC first as larger cities have WAY more red tape to deal with as well as larger relationships with the telecommunication companies that may have interest in slowing Google's process.

Education:

I'm excited in opportunities that will be brought to our school systems and the next generation of Kansas City.  Gigiabit speeds will completely transform the way children and adults will be educated.  With schools already beginning to take cursive writing from the curricullum, we need to come to grips and grab hold of these changes and techologies and stop wasting time trying to hold onto the past.  Education systems that can adapt will reap the rewards and those that cannot won't survive.

The ability for a single mom to get a creditited MBA in her home is possible now,but with gigabit access to the home that degree may just come from Harvard School of Business.

Communication:

I think companies like SKC that deal in video teleconferencing are going to be really happy for the next few years.  Gigabit speeds mean a major jump in the experiences that will be possible with communicating across the country and the world.  So as more data is able to get through, say goodbye to crappy conference calls and choppy video that doesn't sync up to the action.  The closer this communication gets to the real thing, the more companies will let proximity decide partnerships and that is great for the midwest.

Medical:

Companies like Cerner that deal in medical data or school's like KU Med have had to be jumping up and down right after Google made their announcement.

Think about the ability to push a video or high res x-rays instantly across the world to a specialist in India or even test results across the city to your general practioner.  Though these things are possible now, the speed and infrastructure needed isn't. 

Hospitals have changed VERY slowly to new technoligies when it comes to communication and data organization.  it's a hefty task, and there is still a long way to go, but wider pipes of data will help.  With the processing power taking place elsewhere, there will also be a decrease in cost of the technology needed to run on this grid.  

Google Fiber is a BIG topic and I've just skimmed the surface, but in my next entry I'll talk about how I feel Google Fiber will effect the marketing agencies here in KC.

As I said before, this is meant to spark conversation, so please use the comments section to make this happen.  Link back to your own blog entry and put some content out there.

I'm constantly looking to get more from meetings, speakers, or any information that comes my way.  Organizing and breaking down large ideas is the only way I can wrap my head around complex concepts.  To many times I've looked back at notes that I've taken during a meeting and it's impossible for me to decipher my thoughts even a few hours after the meeting.

That's a lousy place to be, because there isn't anyway to get that meeting back or the information covered. 

I've recently found the conecpt of mind mapping.  It's a quick and visual way to break down ideas and thoughts into different buckets and connect everything fluidly.  You use a lot less descriptive text and it's amazing how much I retain even days after I have been exposed to the content.

It's visual and I love that.  Of course you can draw out your mind maps on paper, but unfortunately I am allergic to paper and have the hand writing of a trained chimp so it's just not an option for me.

Luckily I ran into iThoughts HD.  An iPad version of iThoughts that was originally launched on iPhone.  This app lets you make really quick and slick mind maps on the fly during meetings.  Of course that means you can bring in images, export them out and play with the data pretty fluidly.  It's a simple and impressive app.

I know there are a lot fo mind mapping apps out there, but this is my first and I'm impressed with how quickly I got the hang of things.  

Would love to hear from anyone else out there that is utilizing mind maps into their daily life and if there are any other apps out there that are worth the download.

Below is my first mind map that I put together to put my current life into some perspective.  Im proud of the simple visual and invite you to try your own!

We had our July happy hour at Innovation Cafe.  A new low cost collaborative workspace in the Crossroads District of KC.  An awesome space and we thank them for letting us use it.

The theme this month was all around the Kickstarter platform.  What is Kickstarter?  Well this explanation comes straight from thew website:

Kickstarter is the largest funding platform for creative projects in the world. Every week, tens of thousands of amazing people pledge millions of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film, art, technology, design, food, publishing and other creative fields.

A new form of commerce and patronage. This is not about investment or lending. Project creators keep 100% ownership and control over their work. Instead, they offer products and experiences that are unique to each project.

All or nothing funding. On Kickstarter, a project must reach its funding goal before time runs out or no money changes hands. Why? It protects everyone involved. Creators aren’t expected to develop their project without necessary funds, and it allows anyone to test concepts without risk.

Each and every project is the independent creation of someone like you. Projects are big and small, serious and whimsical, traditional and experimental. They’re inspiring, entertaining and unbelievably diverse. We hope you agree... Welcome to Kickstarter!

Basically it allows people with a creative goal to reach out and crowdsource the cash needed to turn it into a reality.

Pretty cool huh?

We've had a lot of successes in the KC area with the platform but we wanted to highlight our favorites.

We heard from 4 Kickstarters:

Heidi Van (@theheidivan) Fishtank Performance Studio

Heidi really brings the performance arts piece to the table and she knows what she's talking about when it comes to Kickstarter because she's raised almost $15k for multiple projects and has had success in each.  The awesome thing about Heidi is that her community isn't the traditional online social media kind, but people that visit the Fishtank for a show or artists that support the community.  She gets the word out to them using email and through touchpoints at the shows.  Very cool to have her out and good luck to her on all of the KCFringe Fest performances taking place at the Fishtank this weekend.

Mike Reinhardt (@heavenlybrew) and Nate Watson, Wilderness Brewing Co.

Mike and Nate made friends with everyone quickly as they were sampling some of the beers they've made so far.  These guys were really great and you could tell how passionate they are about quality beer making and giving people a beer experience they've never had before.  Mike & Nate not only have the largest money goals out of the group tonight with $40k to start their own Nano-brewery, but they also where the only ones that's goal was still active!  They are almost 45% their with only about week left-  Go give them some support!  For $1k you can get a beer named after you, so that is all kinds of awesome.

Renee Kloeblen (@ms_nene) Takes the Cake Bakery, CoffeeCakeKC.com

Our favorite cupcake master and social media diva Ms Nene raised over $8k to get her cupcake truck business up and running.  It is still going strong and she even has a new storefront space by the Boomerang in midtown.  Renee got to her goal leveraging her relationships that she made through twitter and she's a true example of how being true and honest to yourself, having a real passion and sharing it over social media can make a business work.  Reach out to her on twitter and get the truck out in your neck of the woods.

Jeremy Fuksa (@3rdmartini) Cocktail Napkin Podcast

Jeremy used Kickstarter to take his podcast, the 3rd Martini to the next level.  Jeremy brings a lot of energy to the discussion and it was great to see how he is tapping into his viewership to create a better product for them.  The best way to see what Jeremy does is subscribe to his podcast and check out one of his videos below.

Pecha Kucha from Jeremy Fuksa on Vimeo.

Pecha Kucha from Jeremy Fuksa on Vimeo.

We really had a blast and thanks for eveyone that was able to make it out.  

Was lucky enough to be in Lawrence, KS for another great Social:IRL Bootcamp event.  This one with Peter Shankman, who is the creator of many awesome things including HARO.

Peter kept the conversation centered on social media, but specifically how it is changing PR & Customer Service and how we can adapt to leverage it to our overwhelming benefit.  If you've never experienced 8 hours of Peter before, a quick visual may be the love child of Woody Allen & the Tasmanian Devil.  Free flowing, but smart, it almost resembles a social media Vaudeville act.

Ben reached out to those that attended the conference and asked me to share the 1 sticky thing that Peter said that really stuck.  Truth is that there is a lot of stuff, but I'll pick one and share with you in this blog post.

I'll now put on my customer service hat (which should be stapled to my head from now on) and try to summon the spirit of Shankman.

"99% of customer problems can be dealt with in 30 seconds if dealt with fast enough," Shankman exclaimed at around 11:15.  I remember, because the statement was enough to jolt me out of my pre lunch haze.  The main idea behind this is that problems online grow with time.  There is a 1-3 hour sweet spot after someone has posted something that you can squash quickly.  

Once outside of that window of time, the problem begins to grow, demanding more resources to deal with it (time & effort).  Just imagine what happens after 2 days without a response.  The lesson here is to deal with it.  Deal with it NOW! 

Let's say that means you have someone checking your streams once every 2 hours during a work day and make sure that someone gets pinged off work hours and weekends when questions or comments come in. Someone needs to pick up the phone when it rings.

While I'm on a roll, how about a bonus idea?  

Take the 5 most common problems that customers have and design a quick execution to answer these lightning fast.  Don't care if it's a template email, copy & paste or an application, just have it setup to push common instructions or answers to the 5 things that are most commonly asked.  We do this with a current client, and you wouldn't believe the amount of time and effort it frees up for us to put resources into being proactive.  Stop being reactive and get out in front of it.

So that's what stuck.  If you were there yesterday, please leave what stuck with you in form of a comment under this post.  (Make sure you take that comment content and use it for your own blog post too.)

My first Ford and first car, a 68 Ford Mustang

Thanks to my friends over at Ford, I'm getting a really cool opportunity this summer to test drive a different Ford cr for a week each for the entire month.  I'll be starting with a Fiesta, moving onto a Lincoln MKX and then getting a chance to take a 2011 Ford Explorer on a roadtrip/weekend vacation to Estes Park, CO.

My first car was a 68 Ford Mustang.  Beaten up almost beyond recognition, forest green and the interior smelled a bit like a locker room, but I loved that car. My second Mustang was a 1998 that I picked up on the cheap right around the end of College. Now 10 years later I'm getting another opportunity to sit behind the wheel of a Ford this time as a blogger.

I lost contact with Ford through the 90s Not because any dislike for Ford, but because I just didn't turn out to be much of a car guy. I was way more interested in the new model of Mac Book Pro than what upgrades the new Mustang had. 

Then a few years ago Ford came back onto my radar in a big way.  American car companies were at an all time low, along with the Amercan economy.   Ford ended up being the only one not to take a bail out and began a huge overhaul in their car designs and tech,but also with the way that they were going to market with a large focus on social media strategies.

When they brought on Scott Monty as a Social Media Strategist, I began catching Scott on a lot of the podcasts that I listen to daily such as TWIT & The Beancast. I followed as the brand gave us some really fun and successful activations within social media, such as the Fiesta launch and the Explorer announcement through Facebook.

Of course consumer and influencer engagment is important and with tools like Klout and mPact hitting the market, I realized it wouldn't be long before this data was used, but it was a BIG surprise when I got a call from Ford to drive some cars around and tell you guys what I thought.

So that's it.  No payment and no insturctions from Ford, just the keys to some very new and very cool cars.  So I invite you to follow my blog and see what I think of the cars and their technology and I weave them into my daily life.