The New York Times published an article this week detailing the new social media marketing partnership developed between General Mills, and the immensely popular Facebook game, FarmVille, created by the Zynga Game Network.

The agreement between Zynga Game Network and Cascadian Farm, a General Mills subsidiary, allows users to plant an actual Cascadian Farms product – organic blueberries. The aim of the in-game crop branding is to increase awareness, as well as educate consumers about the benefits of switching to organic produce.

Cascadian Farm’s integration into FarmVille represents a unique step forward in both social media marketing and in-game advertising. The majority of social games have incorporated ads that takeover the entire game, or are custom games designed for the brand itself. In this situation, Cascadian Farm is opting for a more subtle approach, and is simply sponsoring a single crop within FarmVille. By becoming part of the game, rather than take over the game, they avoid harassing players with excessive advertising. They give the user the choice to “opt-in” on their own, and choose to plant their branded crops.

Users who choose to plant the Cascadian Farm Organic Blueberries will be rewarded with shorter harvest times and larger cash returns. By adding extra value to the crop, players have an extra incentive to plant the blueberries. This is a savvy marketing move on behalf of FarmVille. Adding the extra value to the crop increases the likelihood of a user planting it, this, in turn, increases Cascadian Farm brand name awareness.

Will the FarmVille product placement generate brand awareness for Cascadian Farm? I think so, but only because there is an extra incentive for users to choose to plant the Organic Blueberries. Can Cascadian Farm educate users about the benefits of choosing organic products? Potentially, but I don’t have high hopes for this effort. Users don’t want to be directed to another website while playing FarmVille; they want to focus on their crops, not leave and go elsewhere.

The partnership between Zynga and General Mills is reminiscent of deals negotiated in the mid 2000’s, when the virtual world of Second Life was at the height of its popularity.  Many real-world corporations couldn’t establish an in-game presence fast enough. Second Life, like FarmVille, allows users to play for free, but encourages citizens to purchase the in-world currency to enhance their ‘second lives’ by purchasing in-game items.

However, while brands like Adidas, Coca-Cola, and AOL were clamoring to be first to open a store or sell products to Second Life residents, the citizens of the virtual world weren’t all that enthusiastic about being treated as ATM machines.  They were less than enthused by the new corporate invaders. Pay a visit to many of the real world corporate presences in Second Life today and you’ll more than likely find an entirely new and unrelated building, or more commonly, vacant land.  Ruins of a failed brand experiment deleted long ago.

Perhaps the most important question in the Zynga and General Mills scenario is whether or not the brand awareness generated through this in-game advertising will translate to actual revenue for Cascadian Farm? While I do approve of the method, I don’t envision much success at the cash registers. FarmVille users are logging in for an escape; to tend their crops and have fun online. They’re not coming to learn about organic produce and green living. Besides, who’s to say that the grocery shoppers in the household are even logging on to FarmVille in the first place?

Because of the added incentives offered to the user for choosing Cascadian Farm’s Organic Blueberries, I think that Cascadian Farm’s foray into branded content within FarmVille has the potential to succeed at increasing brand awareness.  However, I don’t think that this integration will generate increased real-world sales and revenue.  There’s simply not enough to motivate the user to actually purchase the product in the stores. 

For the last year or two, we’ve had an interesting book club at Flightpath.  Every couple of months, we choose a book, order copies for whoever’s interested in reading it, then get together over lunch for a spirited discussion.

This time out (on my recommendation) we read Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion by Social Media personality Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee).  While one staffer said the writing was at a fourth grade level and Gary could come off as a tool, the general consensus was that it worthwhile reading.

Even though I’ve kicking around digital marketing since the mid-nineties, I found Gary’s straightforward ideas around choosing platforms – from Wordpress to Facebook to UStream – to be thoughtful, to-the-point and informative.  I also agreed with the premise that social media success requires commitment and hustle and took to heart the concept that real triumph is predicated upon truly engaging with a broad community of bloggers, tweeters, etc.

Much of the Flightpath team discussion revolved around the concepts of passion and authenticity (agreeing with Gary’s thesis that if you’re passionate about what you’re talking about, authenticity will shine through).  We added a third attribute to the pyramid – knowledge – arguing that together, these three traits make for a compelling online (and real-life) presence.

Recommended for anyone interested in growing the influence of a blog, video blogging or social media in general.   A quick, quality read.  If you have future book club recommendations, feel free to leave them in the comments.

I think Apple's iPhone 4 is going to be great and I can't wait get my hands on one.

The competition is going to be tough, however.  Android phones such as the EVO are boasting comparable if not superior specs and a wider range of features.

But there is one area in which Apple still has no peer - the way they market and sell their products using sentiment and emotion. For a decade Apple has made you contemplate (Think Different), dance (iPod silhouette) and laugh (Mac vs. PC) and along the way helped its customers develop an emotional bond with their products that has yet to be matched in the technology/software industry.

Watch this iPhone commercial - who would have imagined that a commercial on video chat could be so moving?  Watch and weep happy tears....

There was lots of excitement about enhancing web design though CSS3, HTML 5, and Web Fonts at the An Event Apart conference in Boston last week. I’m just as pumped to use CSS3 drop shadows and gradients as the next designer. However the presentation “Learning to Love Humans” by Aarron Walter really got me thinking about where this focus on technology is all going.

Walter used Abraham Maslow’s popular 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation, to parallel the four levels of human computer interaction. At the bottom of this pyramid we have a product that functions. Meaning it accurately behaves in the manner in which it was designed. One step up we have a reliable system that functions consistently and predictably.

Once these two basic requirements have been met, we have a usable product. Useable is the culinary equivalent of edible, and users now have developed acquired tastes. This is where most websites drop off. It is when we add a pleasurable experience on top of the usable layer that a user can ultimately develop a ”love” of a product.

You mean to say just adding gradients and drop shadows does not create “pleasurable” experience? Unfortunately the novelty has worn off, and we, as digital marketers, can no longer suffice to design user interfaces that are simply functional; rather, our designs must simultaneously facilitate a compelling emotional connection.

Walters brought up some great examples of humanizing the web experience. MailChimp uses their chimp spokesperson to shell out complements and random non-utility conversation with the user. A favorite of mine is “I kissed a chimp and liked it.” There is a whole Flickr following dedicated to these hilarious messages.

The easy+fast+fun form builder tool Wufoo uses bright colors to remind its users that form-building can be fun. Kevin Hale, of Wufoo, put it perfectly. “The inspiration for our color palette did come from our competitors. It was really depressing to see so much software designed to remind people they’re making databases in a windowless office, and so we immediately knew we wanted to go in the opposite direction.”

Humans crave emotional interaction. Over the 160,000 of years of our evolution we have survived by working together. Today we spend more time alone interacting with our LCD screens than we do with our own flesh and blood. Our computers, iphones, tablets, ect. have taken the place of face-to-face human interaction we have cultivated since we were banging sticks together.

More than ever we must design digital interfaces that have a personality that is receptive to the user. Have your website make friends with the user, complement them, and be the HAL 9000 we always wanted.

The topic of emotional design is quite timely as we are currently in the final stages of launching a redesign for large pharma company. In this redesign we licensed a popular cartoon character to help deliver a fairly serious topic and tuned the messaging to speak in an empathetic tone.

Users don’t want to have a conversation with a binary being, however we can do our best with the technology available to create the illusionthat our product wants to be your friend. So go out there and design a website that has personality, voice, and loves your users back.

 

Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare (and seven years ago, NOT) let alone Flickr, LinkedIn, etc. etc. are not just gems of code and evolutionary trials and errors, but are real marvels of reflecting the most Maslowvian human needs of belonging, of loving, of caring. Social Media's rise from nothing to everything is an incredible nod to the robustness of the human spirit. The desire to share, to express one's humanity (aspirations creativity, ingenuity) truly conquers all comers- be they technical, political, financial or even society itself.

Social media has so much emotional umph behind it, it is easy to understand why all things sharable continue to mushroom. Wherever and now however emotional value can be created and shared-which is anywhere on the social web- the energy to support it shows itself. Even with all the Facebook privacy errors, it is not anywhere near a negative pain point of no return- just imagine any other industry that deals with personal information and how quickly it would have been dialed back if it had as many brush-ups or as deep a fall out with privacy.  American Express would possibly be done, let alone hated if it came close to Facebook's revelations of late. But emotional currency created from real relationship value, real connective tissue is a different corporate animal all together.

Before the "social medium" became the hottest thing ever, the thought leaders (management, R&D, marketing guru's) behind leading food brands, a wide range of entertainment properties and many automobiles showed incredible nimbleness by infusing and harvesting emotional value from many parts of the product experience and transactional food chain.  And, television the original emotional currency medium, has been there to be part of it all with event programming- like last night with finals of Dancing With the Stars, The Biggest Loser and American Idol all competing. That said, television on any night, tells and shares really an amazing range of narrative and brand stories seemlessly together right in the living room. But compared to the anytime, all the time reality of Twitter sharing or YouTube viewing, television is ill equipped moving forward to be anything but a supportive older sibling. Nothing stays the same for long, except human nature- and this, as most of us come to know personally, even changes over time!

Because social media has the emotional where withall to connect people to brands(and visa-versa), especially in categories that are already high in emotionally value- pet products, beverages, food to name a few- the emotional(and financial) value creation promises to be really significant and really exciting. Deeper, more predictable, more engagement and even more loyal relationships is the domain of social media. Now, that is something your brand manager or client may want to hug you about!

A lot more thought and insight on emotional currency in the weeks ahead! 

As Flightpath prepares to release some iPhone apps this spring, a few of us attended a New York iPhone Software Developers Meetup, featuring a presentation by Greg Raiz (@graiz) of Raizlabs– a Boston-based app development shop.

Greg shared a lot of valuable insights into the app business but a paraphrase of the one that resonated with me most is “don’t ship your app – launch it.”  This concept can have two associated wins:

1) Implementation of a comprehensive  pr/marketing plan for your app, can drive immediate interest via blogs & traditional media channels.

2) By going out of the gate strong, you can take advantage of the App Store’s built-in system/algorithm that rewards success.  (The more downloads you get in a short amount of time, the more prominent you become in the app store).

Articulate a good story about why your app is interesting, outstanding or unique and make it easy for bloggers/press to write about with supporting tools like:

• Screenshots
• Copy/Paste Quotes
• Press Releases
• Demo Videos

Another key nugget of wisdom Greg imparted was his take on the 3 biggest design decisions for an app:

• App Icon
• App Name
• First Screenshot

Wise decisions on these fronts can help minimize odds that you’ll end up in the app scrap heap.

Today is the last day of the #140conf in NYC. #140conf is an event which looks at what Jeff Pulver calls “The State of NOW” - the emerging real-time Internet and the effect on both business and people.

There was an excellent presentation by Melinda Emerson, (Twitter: @SmallBizLady), on Twitter and Small Businesses. She says, "If you're not seeing success with Twitter, you're not using it right." Here are some key takeaways:

1. Know your target niche customer. You need to communicate consistently with that customer. Make sure your content connects with them.
2. Participate in Twitter chat
3. Give to get: Use a 4:1 ratio - promoting other people's content to your own. Give them enough and soon enough your customers will sell for you. 
   
4. Use @ replies - Communicate with your customer - don't just retweet (RT) their tweet, send them a message about why you like their content
5. Use Auto Direct Messages. I'm not a big fan of Auto DMs, especially when it's impersonal. Melinda says Automatic DMs are okay if used properly. Don't provide a link to your website. Give real information - Introduce yourself and say what you do.

5 reasons why small businesses fail:

1. They don't realize what running a business is going to be like
2. They don't save enough money before starting the business. Keep in mind, there will be no paycheck for 1-2 years
3. They don't focus on target market
   
4. They have no network. Remember: "Your network is your net worth"
5. You need to know your financials/budget

Finally, Melinda suggests each business owner have their own theme song. What would yours be?

Last year, one representative from Flightpath traveled to the SXSW Interactive Conference in Austin.  This year we sent four – including me.  Next year, I hope we’ll send eight or more.  As I decompress from the last five days in Austin, Texas, I wanted to try and reflect on reasons why we need to be there. So, I crafted this subjective, Flightpath-centric list of the Top 10 Best Reasons to Attend SXSW Interactive.  Hopefully, next year’s Flightpath contingent will be able to use this list in planning for and experiencing the event.  I trust it’ll have some value for those beyond our agency as well.  

1. Identify and learn about new/innovative things can be immediately integrated directly into our work to deliver better experiences, provide more value to clients and make our day-to-day more interesting and productive. 

2. Get a broader understanding of the competitive landscape by seeking out and interacting with people from other agencies similar and dissimilar to ours.

3. Get to know other people beyond the agency world who are doing interesting things in other parts of the industry. 

4. Attend the Web Awards Show as a team – a very important way to stay on top of some of the best work in our industry. Share and discuss opinions on the award winning work during and after the event.  Similarly, seek out talks/panels with industry leaders in order to learn from some of the absolute best.

5. Learn and share things that aren’t necessarily directly aligned with your job but are relevant to others in our organization that weren’t able to attend.

6. Tweet, blog, and report on things of interest to clients, colleagues and others.  As was drilled into my head at countless SXSW talks: all companies, brands, etc. are content producers and programmers.

7. Meet with clients and partners who may be in Austin with you.  Make best efforts to plan meetings prior to traveling to Texas.

8. Go out of your way to identify new revenue-driving business/agency growth opportunities aligned with things you learn, people you meet or trends you identify.  Try and come home with a meaningful list.

9. Swap stories, ideas, learnings and experiences with colleagues while in Austin.  It’s an interactive conference and should be experienced interactively as a team – not individually or in silos.

10. Take advantage of the time in this creative environment to decompress and think about your role and day-to-day work  from a fresh perspective.  And while you’re at it, be sure to take advantage of the parties, food, music, weather, lakefront and everything else the city has to offer.

Thanks to everyone I met in Austin for being so open, enlightening, gracious and kind (except for the guy that tried to charge $300 of Patron shots and nachos to my hotel room).  I look forward to meeting more of you at next year’s conference.

Two designers from Google (@leggett and @darrend) made a fascinating presentation this morning at SXSWi around prototyping web apps (#prototypingwebapps).  Starting with the premise that your end goal is to “ship experiences people love” they laid out some guidelines and recommendations for quick, effective prototyping of web apps that:

• Help make your ideas awesome
• Get other people excited about your ideas

The opinion was shared that wireframes don’t really let you see what things look like, a mock up is better, but a prototype is ideal as it lets you see how interaction will work – this elevates the level of discourse and engagement from those who are providing feedback. Prototypes also help you see more flaws in the design.

PROTOTYPE TYPE 1 – Slideshow
A great place to start is with a straight-up slide show whereby clicking on any area on the screen brings you to the next screen.  How much code does it take to show an interaction? None!  Dump in a folder of comps and out comes a slide show.  One step further is to put it in a browser to make it reflect what your app will look like that much more.

PROTOTYPE 1A – Slideshow with Video
The straight-up slideshow  is hard to pass around so, a second approach is to make a video: A simple little 3 minute screencast of someone using the slideshow prototype with narration,  etc.  These get passed around really easily… hopefully, it leads to getting your app greenlit.   (Remember, of course, that it’s all got to be predicated on good feature design.) Adding a story, joke or some kind of surprise can make the thing that much more compelling. 

PROTOTYPE TYPE 2 – Hotspot
If you want others to actually be able to use it, construct a HotSpot Prototype.  This type of prototype lets you represent actual action and an advantage of this over a slideshow is that you can branch.

There are a couple of cheap ways to do it… Fireworks will let you export slices/click targets or you can throw it into Powerpoint, but these don’t really feel real.  (At Google, they have a script for doing some of this stuff in a prototype.)   You can add more than just click targets (like text or input fields) to ramp it up,  but at some point you eventually hit the end and it gets arduous to iterate, so be judicious with the paths/opportunities you enable.   A good rule of thumb is to think of the effect you need, think of the change of state you need and think of “how do i make it look like the effect that I need?”  The presenters like to “be as scrappy as we can be so we move on and iterate on our design.”

PROTOTYPE TYPE 3: HTML PROTOTYPE
When heading down this path, continue to keep it simple. Replace whole chunks of your app with an image whenever you can.   Determine “what do I really, really, really need to work?” Just code the pieces that you need to work.    If you’re testing a tool bar, code that, but you don’t need to make all of the menu options go anywhere.  A related trick suggested was to add things like a 2 second pause so it seems like there’s a server behind you.   This helps the ‘mental model’ for testers.  

SUMMARY NOTES
• Make a Linear Experience:  Show one awesome use case.  Just concentrate on the good stuff.
• Go high fidelity, every step of the way
• “Be Scrappy.  Iterate a lot”: Throw it into a slideshow and click, click, click.  Let you see how it feels before you send it out. 
• Make a commercial, not a spec when you’re trying to sell your ideas.
• Learn to code and be creative (you’re your own special effects dept).  Also, the best way to lose an engineer’s trust if you propose things that don’t work.  Learn/know what’s feasible in the browser.
• Let your prototype coupled with discussion be  your spec.

By following these rules, “you can do everything quickly and make everyone jealous about how fast you can make quick stuff.”  A couple of good, random final points that came up during the question and answer part of the talk:

• Avoid churn/client review cycles by showing small chunks (start with 10%)
• The speakers recommended guerilla usability testing a la the book Don’t Make Me Think, basically advocating getting anyone other than the designer to use it.  – But real testing in a lab is valuable too.
• The speakers don’t believe in rigid line between Interactive/Interaction design (aka Information Architecture), Visual Design and Usability.  All three off these things must be connected and interconnected with one another.
• The only real “wireframes” you need/want to do are sketches .  Knock these out really fast on paper.  There’s no value in high fidelity wireframes.
• Google designers use Jquery and/or write really sloppy, messy code that gets the job the done.
• Show things that have real meaning in your prototypes/comps. Don’t use Lorum Ispum in place of real text and don’t put in things like “description goes here.”  Think out the language at this stage of the game.

The speakers promised to put some resources up at SLIDEFOLDER.COM within a couple of days.  I’ll do my best to update this post at that time.