Being successful and innovative with crowd sourcing (and digital marketing for that matter) is the holy grail of ad agencies, working tirelessly in an effort to nail what works, and what’s not. Old Spice is probably my favorite example of all times, T-Mobile’s Dance and Welcome are another example, Coca Cola Village too, from an Israeli perspective.

Now I can also add Firefox to that list, with their Firefox 4 Twitter Party, which introduced the latest browser version to the world, using a beautiful visualization to encourage people to join. Every tweet which included the #fx4 hashtag was automatically added to the party, creating the FF logo, made of people’s faces. Hover over a pixel and the tweet pops out.

Should be interesting to see Firefox’s stats, analyze the numbers. I used Firefox for 5-6 years (mid 2000), up until Chrome came to (a stable) life 3 years ago. The party actually triggered an action for me – gonna download, give it another try.

Definitely worth visiting Firefox 4 Twitter Party site to see the logo growing.

Update [March 24]: Firefox 4 just passed 14,000,000 downloads, according to http://glow.mozilla.org/.

On the last day of February I’ll be attending FONSI – The Future of Nonprofit Summit Israel conference, at Nalaga’at Center, Jaffa port. The Future of Nonprofit Summit Israel [FONSI] is designed to showcase the best tools, latest trends, and best practices in order to advance the third sector in Israel.

I’ll be on the ‘Is Social Media Overrated‘ panel (scheduled for 16:30 – so please stay , along with Olivier, Kfir, Hadassah and Florence, speaking about the status of social media, specifically how (and if) nonprofits can leverage the tools and services to their advantage. Will share best practices from my own experience, like Alfa Romeo, Nokia World 2010, and others.

Register here, sponsors here. See you Feb. 28th !

For the past month or so I’ve been reading and sharing a lot of ‘top 10 of 2010′ lists, and true to my nature – why not post a wrap-up of my own. So, here goes.

My numbers for 2010

During 2010 I wrote 62 posts (down from 118 in 2009 – damn I wrote a lot in 09!) that received almost 19,700 page views from 12,668 visitors who spent an average of 1:11 min on my blog.

Top pages you were viewing (hopefully reading too, in no particular order) were: The 101 of getting married in NYC (BTW, did a Jewish wedding too, in August), About page, The real life facebook Like button, Nokia E72 – day 1, Just how big is social media, Day of mourning Carmel Fire, Interlude.fm, Fidd.me take Techonomy 2010 by storm, Lotus Notes Traveler, Old Spice case study, and FIFA World Cup 2.0.

In the countries section, we have a mini-revolution: Israel surpassed the US and was the #1 referring country, with almost 4,500 visits (US with just over 3,650). Impressive. I write in English since starting to blog some 8 years ago, so knowing that my words are read mostly by Israelies means a lot – Toda Raba people!!!

Just under 15,000 visits from 2,788 cities

A total of 2,788 cities from 132 countries sent traffic to my blog, and the top 10 countries are: Israel, USA, United Kingdom, India, Germany, Canada, Australia, Italy, Netherlands, and France.

Now, some interesting details…

Mobile devices accounted for 700 visits (5% of site total) – iPhone, Symbian, iPad, Android, and iPod make up the top 5. Time spent and pages/visit are obviously down (people on the go, less time to read, screen size), by 17% and 10%, respectively. I’m positive these numbers will increase in 2011.

15:00-19:00 is the period in which most of you (almost 40%) visited my blog, and another 20% of you read me later, probably at home (19:00-24:00).

In terms of Time Spent on Site, interesting metrics – Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Palestine Territories are among the top 10, with over 2:30 minutes spent here. Maybe my blog will bring peace in 2011, who know…

Somewhat of a disappointment, but I’m not judging anyone – 30% of you opted for Internet Explorer, 37% Firefox, and 21% Chrome. Hope to see a change in 2011..

May was the top visited month with over 2,400 visits, probably due to the fact that it was the most posted month (8 posts).

Facebook, twitter, and LinkedIn are #1, #3, and #5 top referring sites (26% of total traffic) to my blog, with planetlotus.org (once an IBMer, always an IBMer I guess) and google taking slots #2 and #4 (all respectively). Social has been a huge content promoter for me in 2010, and I see no reason for this to change in 2011.

Google is the #1 in Search Engine sources, and by far. It accounted for 6,100 visits – more than a 1/3 of total visits, growing month by month – from 250 in January to 800 in December.

Finally, to the 12,668 people who visited my blog in 2010 – it was a blast, I hope you enjoyed, and looking forward to seeing you in 2011.

Thank you and a Happy New Year!!

Last week I gave a guest lecture to the students of Digital Marketing and Social Media course, at which I serve as assistant lecturer (to Lior Zoref).

It is the first time the course is being offered at The College of Management, and the topics cover most aspects of the discipline, including social networks, micro-blogging and blogging, online advertising, web analytics, location based, video and more. Our goal is to provide the students (all of whom working in marketing departments and ad agencies) with the understanding of what tools and platforms are available, and what is the best way to leverage them.

My lecture focused on the fundamentals of web analytics and Google AdWords platforms. The presentation I used is embedded below and can be downloaded from my slideshare page (recommended – have embedded videos and animation). Replay of the lecture (in Hebrew) can be viewed on Lior Zoref’s uStream. Comments are welcome.

If you’re reading my blog long enough you know I have a soft spot for crowdsourcing/digital and how brands are leveraging these technologies and platforms to boost sales, strengthen customer loyalty or create demand.

T-Mobile UK is one of the companies who are doing an excellent work online, and in my opinion can be credited with the flash mob phenomenon.

At the end of October they shot another flash mob video, this time at Heathrow Airport, International Arrivals Terminal 5. Watch and learn.

Back in July I wrote here about the 1st foursquare campaign in Israel, Club Seat, a bold activity at the time, and even now. 4 months later, and thanks to Lindsay for reminding me, here is best practices for launching a foursquare campaign post. The post is based on data I collected on facebook and foursquare, along with personal insights, from my experience and my understanding of the digital marketing space in Israel. The charts comparing the ‘official’ venue vs. Club Seat venue are a visual aid, based on actual foursquare data collected October 26th.

1. Confusing rules

I’ll start at the end of the contest, a status update (see screenshot below) from a participant wondering why he hasn’t won 1st prize. Before you say anything (sour looser, etc) – the dude has a valid point: the winner should be the Mayor of the venue (Galina) that received the most check-ins during the contest. The response from Club Seat, although agreeing with the participant, doesn’t help clear the air (4th comment in the screenshot below): “The club that had the most check-ins by August 31st was Gazoz, 2nd was Galina, 3rd was Sublet. OK, say we believe it (stats anyone?). But wait, it gets better: The Mayor at both Gazoz and Galina, as of August 31st was Michal Y., who declined accepting the prize. Hence, the Mayor of the 3rd venue, Sublet, is the winner”. WTF?!?! How did they deduce that?? Who is Michal Y. and why did she decline a flight+vacation to Ibiza? Where are the check-in stats for August 31st to support the decision? But the most awkward thing is the logic they used for picking an alternate winner. Just so we’re clear, Runner-up refers to an actual human. Not venue. Confusing, but even more, something’s fishy. And that’s not a term one wants associated with one’s brand.

Club Seat post-contest discussion

2. Duplicate venues

Google’s mission is to ‘Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful‘. Foursquare, as any other User-Generated-Content service (youtube, twitter, go-walla, facebook places, etc) are working hard on eliminating duplicate and triple content, in order to minimize storage space – and make it easier for us, consumers, to find what we need. I understand it was important ‘branding’ the club with ‘Club Seat‘, making it unique to the contest – but I think that’s wrong. There are plenty of methods to measure traffic and check-ins to existing venues, no need to create duplicates. Plus, by using the existing venue already on foursquare (Gazoz, Galina and Sublet) you give incentive to the current Mayor to ‘keep his chair’, by increasing his/her visits – basically ‘using’ the Mayor’s own need to remain, well, the Mayor.

Foursquare stats: Galina vs. Galina Club Seat

3. Leverage evangelists

As I wrote back in July, this campaign will be interesting to watch, as foursquare is considered early-early stage in Israel, around 1,000 active users (who checked-in in the past 30 days) in my opinion. Any digital marketing campaign must include early adopters of the technology in question and community hubs – people that have 1000+ facebook friends, 2000+ twitter followers, 300+ foursquare friends – that will act as a powerful magnet, bringing more traffic, making some noise. Maybe Grey Interactive had such evangelists, but even if they had, I haven’t heard about it – and I’m pretty out there, socially speaking.

4. People, not venue, oriented

CEOs, CFOs, CMOs, CIOs – it’s all about the consumer. When doing a location based contest, people count, because tracking their movement and analyzing the data will bring you added value. Premiere value. To strengthen my first point (confusing rules), when the winner (Mayor) of a venue declines a free vacation to Ibiza, give it to the person Runner-up, not the venue. Now, the charts – although Gazoz and Galina (Club Seat) have more check-ins than the official venue, people-wise – they loose. Twice. Because those 114 and 203 people (respectively) could have joined the contest, boosting all metrics, simply by seeing all those other Seat clubbers checking-in.

Foursquare stats: Gazoz vs. Gazoz Club Seat

5. Bring the business on-board

In my opinion, the #1 reason this campaign didn’t go as planned – minimal business involvement. There are hundreds of clubs/bars in Tel Aviv, all striving to survive, 60% will close within 24 months (actual stat). If Club Seat would have worked with Galina, Gazoz and Sublet, offering an incentive to those checking-in (free keg to parties of 4+, 1st beer on the house, etc), this contest could have taken another route altogether, increasing awareness, boosting sales and helping both Seat and the clubs win the crowd.

Foursquare stats: Sublet vs. Sublet Club Seat

Couple of months ago I wrote here about FIFA World Cup 2010, pointing out the digital campaigns of the major sponsors. Last week, the translated version was published in issue 7 of Marketing Now, a quarterly newsletter by The College of Management, School of Marketing & Advertising. You can read the online version here (Hebrew, IE only) or download the PDF (again, in Hebrew).

Disclosure: I work as assistant lecturer at The College of Management, and also completed my B.A. in Finance and Marketing at the institute.

Following the phenomenal success of Old Spice ‘Response’ campaign, it was only a matter of time until we’ll start seeing some numbers. As with any marketing activity, it’s all about generating sales, and I believe Old Spice met their target. Obviously the buzz generated by the campaign is priceless, and will be taught in business/marketing courses for years to come.

But enough talking, time to listen: Old Spice Social Media Marketing Campaign Case Study, by W+K (Old Spice’s agency). Enjoy!

I’ll start with the bottomline of this post (aka The Title): Where can I buy Old Spice?

In a marketing space, driven by numbers, ROI and sales graphs, I imagine the Old Spice (twitter/facebook/youtube) finance people will be interested to know they’ve gained at least 1 new customer. Me. It doesn’t matter how it smells, will I like it or not, who uses it, how much it costs – really, I just want one, to be like Isaiah Mustafa (aka Old Spice guy/dude/man). So, where can I get Old Spice in Israel? Don’t know, will find out. A friend visiting Israel already said he’ll bring me his – thanks Dovid!

Plenty of words have been written about Old Spice campaign, as the 2nd phase broke previous records and defined new rules for brands’ engagement in social media (aka digital marketing). I will link to three posts by marketing professionals I trust – Lior Zoref (Digital Marketing Consultant, ex VP Marketing for Microsoft Israel; post in Hebrew), Lisa Barone (Chief Branding Officer at Outspoken Media), and Hillel Fuld (Tech blogger, marketer, twitterer, writer). All three, specifically Lisa and Hillel, have analyzed Old Spice campaign, and produced a must-read list for marketers.

The tweet that started it all

And BTW – don’t forget to create a personalized voicemail and download the screensaver, wallpaper or ringtone. It is truly, as I wrote in a comment to Lisa Barone’s post, a campaign that will be taught in business schools for years to come. Enough talk, let’s watch some videos. More (about 120 of them) are available on Old Spice Youtube channel.

Looking forward to the Globes event on Monday, hear what influence this campaign will have on the lectures and the theme of the event.

UPDATE: How the Old Spice videos are being made (ReadWriteWeb)

Original video – The Man Your Man Could Smell Like

Old Spice 2nd Phase – Questions

Re: @jsbeals | Old Spice – Marriage Proposal

Re: Gay Kawasaki | Old Spice

Re: @Orli | Old Spice

Re: GQ | Old Spice

Re: @GizModo | Old Spice

Re: @TheEllenShow | Old Spice

Re: Lisa Barone | Old Spice – $$$

Re: @aplusk (Ashton Kutcher) | Old Spice

Re: 12755JDH | Old Spice – probably a robot

Re: Everyone | Old Spice – The End