The BeanCast 198: Specifically Targeted

Listen to the show.

Yesterday I joined The BeanCast for its 198th episode alongside some illustrious and fun folks: social media/digital director Chris Baccus of AT&T, vp marketing/social Jeremy Epstein of Sprinklr, and founder Joe Jaffe of Evol8tion. We covered a lot of ground, including:

• The value of earned media (versus paid)
• Advertising on The Olympics
• Mid-roll advertising's video virtues
• Geofencing: is this THE YEAR?
• Crowdsourcing with Starbucks

If you're familiar with the show, you'll know that at the end we also share the topics we'll be watching this week. I'm watching the technology coming out of AT&T's research department, which could make a lot of people happy but also pose a lot of problems for privacy to those being watched at a given point in time.

A prime example of this is the The Drive Safely iPad app, developed in tandem with AT&T and some Israeli developers (a lot of incredible tracking and identification tech is coming out of Israel right now). This pretty little beast enables parents to track their teens' driving in real-time -- great for parents, not so good for teens (although what do they know, their frontal lobes aren't even fully formed yet).

Take a listen! You'll dig it, I promise.

Diggin' Dr. Horrible

See trailer above, watch episodes at Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Put together by Joss Whedon, the first three parts will be available until midnight on Sunday. After that you'll have to buy your fix on iTunes or on a series DVD.

Read more about it at The Globe and Mail.

I love Whedon's work, and the show's already got some geektastic zealots behind it, but I'm not convinced fans will pay to float it online. (It would be nice, given that this is probably one of the best web series I've seen.) I guess we'll see.

Late last year Radiohead released its album In Rainbows online and on a pay-as-you-wish basis. Only 38 percent of downloaders made a payment, with US customers paying an average of $8.05 and international ones $4.64. But comScore claims the album nonetheless gleaned $3 million in its first month, and Thom Yorke considered it a success: "In terms of digital income, we've made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together forever."

Big statement. The point is, there's money online for a great product, even if the payment model looks less than promising. (And it definitely helps to have a religious fan base like Radiohead and Joss Whedon do.)

I suppose you just have to trust the crowd.

Oh, But We ARE Alarmed

Wikipedia isn't digging Modernista's siteless redesign. In fact, it's playing saboteur. (Ironic.)

Here's the story (gleaned from Adrants so I don't have to repeat myself):

For its latest site redesign, Modernista did away with elaborate imagery, hype-laced content and the notion of using a website at all.

Now users that run a search for Modernista -- and that click on the link to Modernista.com -- will be redirected to the search engine they used. In the upper left-hand corner they'll find a funky red nav bar.

Clicking on "ab.ou.t" will give you the option of bookmarking Modernista and visiting the agency's page on Wikipedia or Facebook. "wrk" drives users to flickr images of Modernista's client efforts, organized by client, category or medium. "n3wz" sends you to recent Google News stories about Modernista, and "cont@ct" will give you USA/global contact info to copy onto a clipboard, as well as a link to job and internship options.

Direct visits to Modernista.com now point to the Wikipedia article.

Okay. All that happened yesterday. Early today, Wikipedia tore down its listing for Modernista. Hours later, the Wikipedia results for Modernista (and thus, visits straight to Modernista.com) point to Los Sieste Modernista, a Mexican band.

The Modernista nav bar continues to hang pathetically -- but bravely -- above the article, assuring users: "Don't be alarmed, you are at the Modernista! site."

You'd think a crowdsourced encyclopedia would've have been the first to applaud the agency's attempt to surrender to the zeitgeist, warts and all. But noooo. Then again, you asked for it, Modernista. This is part of taking the good out there with the bad (and exposing potential clients to all of it).