The BeanCast 198: Specifically Targeted

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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.

BeanCast 174 - Relationship Marketing Hits the Rails

The latest BeanCast, featuring me, Ted Rubin of Collective Bias and Mike Rynchek of Spyder Trap, is an accidental tribute to how much relationships play into the work we do. We cover rogue QR codes, malware, whether mobile advertising truly peaks at mobile display, brands young people like, and the UK's attempt to maintain a semblance of privacy on Google. Conversation gets hot and moody, just the way host Bob Knorpp likes it.

Read the full menu and listen to the show. You can also subscribe for autodownloading on iTunes.

PS. If you're wondering what's going on with the AdVerve podcast, we recorded a nice Halloween special for you. Just working out sound issues. Don't worry, it's comin'.

Get Your Enhanced Meat-Eating Experience, Right Here: The BeanCast 150

Against his own better judgment, last night Bob Knorpp invited AT&T's Chris Baccus, Modea's Kelly Eidson, the BFG's Bill Green and me onto the skypez for the 150th episode of The BeanCast: Enhanced Meat-Eating Experience.

Listen (here!) while a cast of old regulars struggles for anarchy against Bob's sharp new "stay on-task" skills. We cover mobile tracking and your privacy (or lack of it), Victoria's Secret's 12 million Facebook likes, mobile optimisation and payment models for digital content. The usual song and dance in media land.

That's right, this makes two podcasts for the price of one! What better way to fête your chocolate egg hangover? Oh, wait...

AdVerve Episode 66 - Relationships in Advertising

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Friend and fellow podcaster Bob Knorpp of the notorious BeanCast (@TheBeanCast) joins us to get intimate about relationships in advertising:

• How your personal life gets affected by strange work, weird hours and random traveling


• How love can bloom in the damnedest ways


• How a combination of loneliness and drinking can make even the most stalwart ad soldier a slobbering mess of hold-me-closies


• How intimacy can bloom in many awesome, dangerous or dangerously awesome forms. We talk Father Figure Complex!


• Prioritising personal + professional time


• NEPOTISM <-- this is Bill's favourite

The whole thing wraps nahcely with our homegrown takeaway relationships-in-advertising advice. And there’s a few stories in there that as usual will probably get us all into trouble. We live dangerously in these here internets.

Beancast 2010 Wrap + 2 Agency Holiday 'Cards' for the Road

'Tis the season for year-end wraps and agency holiday greetings. Though my hands are currently tied eating my weight through California, I wanted to pop in to point you in the direction of some cool it-shay.

Luckie & Co needs help deciding where to donate $6K. Help 'em out by casting your vote for puppies, children or creatives. Luckie's done a solid job of demonstrating its talent for sparking engagement and real American enthusiasm for old-school brands like Little Debbie; this effort feels no less authentic and in-right-place-hearted.

If you're a holiday hater, no worries, there's room for you too. Celebrate the 12 days of grouchmas with Traction, who's fueling your fire with an explosions-laced video every day for 12 days. Expect copious helpings of a creepy The King-reminiscent Santa figure who effortlessly gives us childhood trauma:

For an exhaustive wrap-up of 2010, listen to No More Rockstars, The Beancast's two-hour year end special. It features Ken Wheaton (his blog is the excellence!), John Wall, Bill Green, and me. This show is a tribute to Bob's organisation, tenacity and tireless effort to keep opinionated people on-track. Plus there's an unmissable awkward joke or two. (Three? Four...?)

Eggnog at the ready. AdVerve listeners out there, never fear: our holiday special's coming to town next week. Miss it at your peril.

AdVerve Episode 34: Bob Knorpp Saves the World

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As host of The Beancast, Bob Knorpp has had us both on a gajillion times, so we return the favor and let him go off on us. And journalists vs. bloggers. And Facebook vs. useless info. And a deeper look at his 3Six5 post that got a fair amount of attention, as well as Angela’s space travel. Do we want to spoil it and tell you about it? No. SO LISTEN NOW.

(Also, we identified the show throughout as episode 33 when it’s really 34. Sorry.)

Bob on Twitter.

Humor me ››

Everything from BP to Game Mechanics.

Had the curious and titillating pleasure of appearing on The BeanCast's 106th episode, "Shut Up Already," alongside Jonah Bloom (Breaking Media), digi-friend Herbert Krabel (Guerrilla Communication) and Duane Forrester (SEO manager, Microsoft). The chemistry was great and we even got to fluster Bob a few times, which is always fun. Listeny-listen.

Just So You Know That I'm Alive

Hokay, here's my wrapup post for MIPTV, which links to all the liveblogs I wrote for the conference over the course of the week. In terms of promise, creativity and where the future is, the last set of talks was my favourite -- and probably the least coherent in terms of post-session coverage.

One thing I got out of it was this data visualisation of SMSes sent in Paris when the New Year hit, courtesy of Orange and faberNovel!



Doesn't it make you happy to be alive right now, in a time when maps can share so much more than topography?

What's coming in terms of TV? More reality show fare, but the following three trends were cited as hot this year:

• Family/emotainment. And I don't mean friendly family fare like Step by Step; I mean reality shows about family members. One involved taking a mass of people and finding which family members went with which, then matching the completed family to their living room. Another locked strangers with vague and unknown familial ties together in a house, where a series of terrible events lead to the discovery of how they're related. There is much screaming and crying.
• Flashmobs.
• Mobile. You'll be seeing a lot of reality shows that incorporate smartphones heavily in the plot; networks like the BBC have gotten more imaginative, with live quizzes you can take on your phone while watching EastEnders, for example. (The quiz loads on your phone while the episode kicks off on TV. A microphone indicates to the software where you are in the plot, then shoots you an appropriate question.)

After MIPTV, drama involving a certain volcano turned travel into an arms race. Most of my UK-based colleagues for the week got trapped in the south of France. Not a bad place to be stuck, all things considered, but annoying nonetheless.

One of my favourite quotes of the week came from the editor of a major industry newspaper, who exclaimed, "A stupid volcano is affecting the TV industry! It's bloody inconsiderate."

(This is in the event you ever wondered which industry is more insane than advertising.)

I got back to Paris easily enough but not unscathed: since my return, I've spent most of my time emptying the contents of a red nose into enough sheets of Kleenex to clear a small community park. Sorry, Greenpeace.

Hope you missed me. As always you can catch my ad reviews on Culture Buzz or via AdVerve. Bob Knorpp recently also had me on the 100th episode of The BeanCast, where me and a pile o' smart girls talked about Twitter and, appropriately enough, who deserves to die. If you miss it, your soul will cry.

The So-Called Mobile Era: AAPL and GOOG Start the Sumo

Long-suffering Bob invited me onto the BeanCast yesterday, along with Christopher Baccus, Bret Bernhoft and Al Gadbut. The episode title is Worse than Cancer on account of some typically awkward thing I said after thinking Bob was done recording.

You can check out the topics in the above link, but the episode basically revolved around mobile coming into itself: ad men hankering to incorporate their brands more intuitively on this most intimate of technologies, as well as Google and Apple beginning to butt heads, what with the former going into mobile hardware and the latter dipping its toes into mobile advertising.

As the 'net embeds itself into all facets of our lives, we're gonna see more tech companies stepping out of their respective métiers and going head-to-head against each other in unexpected arenas: competing to own audiences in mobile search, for example, and trying to control points of entry for wifi and ad penetration. 2008 and 2009 manifested the beginning of this blurring of specialization; now we'll see prominent names and new services start taking shape in the melting pot.

Google's foray into lead generation also dominated the conversation; applications for it are endless, but I can already smell the realtors and car salesmen jumpin' on that like there's no tomorrow. =P

Oh yeah, and then there was that whole H&M PR nightmare. (*coughs up a hairball*)

Tastebuds tingling? Have a listen here.

A Couple 'Casts As You Count Down to 2010

Bill Green and I just finished recording AdVerve #11, our sexism show featuring Åsk Wäppling of Adland.tv. It's currently losing some fat to the cutting room floor, but in the meantime take a year-end listen to:

Adverve #10 - The Jordan Kretchmer Show. Listen to secrets behind the TwitteRFP and exclusive details on his new communications hustle, Livefyre.

The BeanCast's YES (Year-End Show). Join Bill Green, George Parker, John Wall and me as we jam fast and loose on all the shit in Ad Land that went down this year: crowdsourcing, pay-per-blogging, agency consolidations and the like, salted heavily by torrents of George. (Look lively, it's a two-hour segment.)

That's what-all I've been up to, in between holiday parties and torrenting Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging. Also keep a wily eye out for the aforementioned sexism show featuring Åsk; for those of you who like your "isms," we tossed in a little "nepotism" just for sport.

Two Things.

Thing 1: Indulgent Bob Knorpp invited me onto The BeanCast last night with Kelly Eidson, Joe Jaffe and Ian Schafer. The ep's called "The Cow Goes, Moo!" and we talk Black Friday, Wal-Mart, pay-per-Tweet and crowdsourcing, among other stizzy-stuff.

I warn you: there's more than one Blockbuster porn joke, and most of them originate with me.

Thing 2: In ongoing efforts to make sense of Google Wave, I've started a wave about the rise of the chic geek. If you've got a Wave account, you can participate by adding me to your list -- angela [dot] natividad [at] gmail [dot] com -- and asking to join the chic geek wave.

Say Hello to AdVerve. Bitches.

After months of discussing it (then rehashing it, then making jokes about it, then bitching about the lack of it), me and Bill Green of Make the Logo Bigger have decided to start our own brand-spankin'-new ad podcast.

Say hello to AdVerve!

Why? Because there are things that go unsaid about our industries -- advertising, marketing, online engagement and technology (but mostly advertising) -- that we'd like to say, not just blog about. Hopefully they're things you find fresh, validating and/or provocative.

We want you to feel!

Our first topic was racism in advertising. It features Hadji Williams, author of Knock the Hustle. Check out parts one and two:

Adverve #1 - part 1

Adverve #1 - part 2

For fans of The BeanCast hosted by the magnanimous Bob Knorpp, this won't affect anything we're doing there. (Me and Beeg are both regulars -- complete with jingles!) The BeanCast's about digging deeper into ad land's latest news and trends; AdVerve's about poking the shit out of stuff until we can finally see what it's made of and why.

Why the fuck not!

The show isn't yet available on iTunes because we don't have enough episodes, so bear with us while we gather bearings and whatnot. There's a coupla thoughts floating around for next session, but say something if there's a topic you'd particularly dig us analyzing the shit out of.

Also, and in case you wondered, yes, we are scared shitless. So 'scuse me for a sec while I recline, board-stiff, and listen to the 20th circulation of Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch.

PS. Thanks Kelly for being Our First Fan™, even though you haven't heard it yet.

Ducks -- Gone -- Wild -- !

Did the BeanCast last night with the distinguished Greg Verdino of Crayon and industry-weathered George Parker of bad-ass ad industry blog AdScam/The Horror!.

The title of the episode is Ducks Gone Wild, inspired by a tangent GP had about rubber ducks, Paris Hilton and blow jobs, followed by an anecdote from me about how ducks gang-rape.

Apart from all that, we talked about Amazon buying Zappos, Wal-Mart's bully complex, Twitter's free publicity, Target's magic touch and the Plaid Nation tour.

It's some salty shit. Click herey-here to heary-hear.

I Have Always Wanted a Personal Theme.

For reasons I can't begin to understand, probably having more to do with his kindness than my coherence, Bob Knorpp invited me back onto The BeanCast with Bill Green and John Wall.

This week we discussed:

• The future of email
• The Mardi Gras Theory™ (heh.)
• Whether Hulu is eating YouTube's face off
  
• The ability to bid for trademarks on AdWords (Google's PPC platform)
• The (apparent) trend toward anger-infused advertising
• Facebook's flirtation with a site-wide e-commerce model

...among other things.

Knorpp also surprised us with the inclusion of our own introductory theme music -- a gift that resulted in the three of us dissolving into flattered, slightly-embarrassed giggles.

Hear it all here. If so inclined, down a tequila shooter every time Knorpp hits "PLAY" on one of our personalized intros.

No, Man, We're Dead Serious.

Marketing 2.0 Paris took place this week and has swallowed my life, but I recorded a BeanCast the other day with some Objectively Awesome People™ -- Bill Green, John Wall and Bob Knorpp, the most disciplined podcast host in the known universe -- and wanted to get the link out there.

The episode is called "Amish Legless Hookers." Fuck* the blasé title for a moment and observe all the ish we covered:

• Netflix and Facebook
  
• Big brands tag-teaming on Cannes UGC ad contest
  
• Charmin on iPhone; the shelf life of iPhone apps in general
  
• Presidential Face-Time
  
• Rick Wagoner exiting stage left
  
• Making Money, Social-Network Style
  
• ExecuTweets and monetizing Twitter
  
• Facebook whoring for more cash
  
• How Alex Bogusky Looooves Small Agencies
  
• How Mike Hughes Looooves Newspaper Ads
  
• Asian AdFest Troubled By Prostitution
  

You can kinda get a sense of where things went horribly wrong and the episode title was born.

Anyway, I'm off to decompress with some Marketing deux-point-zero peeps. Will post photos and thoughts ASAP. (Promise.)

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*Do you like how I tossed in that expletive in the middle of a take-me-seriously transition? Yeah? Me too.