Movin' Ahead

May 13, 2007May 13, 2007 kenekaplan Intel, Marketing, Moore'sLaw, Social Media, Socialmedia, Tech

Good Stories are Gifts

When creating videos with Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, it hit me. We wanted Adam and Jamie — and Carl’s Fine Films — to help us create a series of shorts that would be a gift for fans of Adam and Jamie’s TV show, “Mythbusters.” Something that really captured their scientific know-how, enginuity and funny-bone hitting antics. Something that Intel fans would see as whacky, creative and cool beyond Intel’s bread and butter storytelling antics — citing the wonders of Moore’s Law and how Intel’s chip design and every increasing transistor count keeps impacting the way we live.

My pal “simma down now” Larry said it succinctly: viral not commerical. Give a gift that keeps on giving. In that spirit, we released the three Adam and Jamie videos first on YouTube on May 8.

Then the next day, we played the videos on new laptops at the Centrino Duo and Centrino Pro launch, but this highlights video was created to kick off the presentations to the press and analyst on May 9 in San Francisco.

We tried many new things here, including me posting these videos on videos sites I’ve been learning about (see slideshare foil set). Another thing keeps hitting me. During all of this, I’ve never been more aware of my role of being an Intel employee, a video story director AND a fan living in the real world. It was the fan inside that helped me make the most important decisions, which kept these videos from becoming too commercial. After all, these were for sharing in hope that fans would enjoy and share with others.

May 13, 2007 kenekaplan Marketing, Media, PR, Socialmedia

Exploring Media Myths Uncovers Sound Advice

A communications pro pointed me to a 2006 media research paper by Ketchum. You can get more details inside the slideshare document, but here are a few paragraphs I liked best:

ROCKLAND: What do you consider the best practices for affecting word of mouth through public relations?

MARGARITIS: Focus on cultivating emotional appeal — trust, admiration and respect — and build reputation capital — your workplace and culture, reputation, stewardship, the quality of your products and services, and your integrity and ethics. Your corporate character and value system must take on a more prominent role in storytelling, but it also must be authentic. Find credible ways to get stories out that showcase all of these characteristics, and they should include local stories. It’s about focusing within your organization on cultivating service, and it serves as a way to earning your way to the word-of-mouth channel.

ROCKALND: This probably is the hardest question facing public relations practitioners. We know that influencers generate a great deal of word of mouth. However, not everyone is an influencer, and all conversations are not started by influencers. Maybe it comes back to basics, a good messenger with a “sticky” message at the right time in the right place.

ROCKLAND: How would you advise a company about its media communications as a result of this study’s findings?

MAFFEO: Deploy more personalized communications through diverse communications through diverse communications channels and platforms that effectively communicate your message among target audiences and in a way that best suits the audience and the medium.

SCIBETTA: Develop a highly customized and fragmented media mix. The intersection of new media, traditional media and the human element is the key for creating effective and strategic media relations. It enables companies to engage with consumers while also providing surround sound for their messaging.

SWERLING: Media is not one-size-fits-all. That’s the easy answer. People use different, multi-channel models when considering different types of purchases and issues. And those models are changing at lightening speed as new, technology-based resources become available. As a result, communications must have a thorough understanding of their audiences, and they must stay very current with the media being used by those audiences. The harder answer is that everyone in our own profession needs to be thinking about constantly reinventing what we do. Ours always has been a mass-media-centric business that has focused on building relationships. That models now must accommodate these new and emerging channels. And if communicators don’t build relationships with them, they do so at the risk of their organizations and their career.

May 10, 2007May 10, 2007 kenekaplan Entertainment, Intel, PodTech

Powers of Fun & Free Minds — Jamie & Adam Team Up for an Intel Gig

Size matters when you looking back at the advancements of computer technology. So does speed and energy consumption. It may not seem like computers are getting small, but they are and they’re providing better performance, more energy efficiency and style.

The ever shrinking transistor is a crazy race Intel scientists are bent on winning. Small allows for more and more efficient transistors on every new computer processor.

Yeah-year…heard it all before. So that’s why we leave it up to Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman — and Carl’s Fine Films — to share their wisdom, logic, trains of thought and all the production tricks they polished over the years of TV, commercial and filmmaking.

Our Intel team learned a lot by getting passionately involved in the production — we shared ideas, Intel anecdotes, desires for more branding — but in the end Intel stepped back and let Adam, Jamie and Carl do what they do best…visual storytelling and having fun! Nothing too commercial about these videos, and that will hopefully help more people see and enjoy these videos.

This whole great idea came from the mobility PR maven Connie Brown — thanks for bringing me along for the ride! And our pal Alison Wesley amazingly pulled together all necessary agreements in less than three weeks. Couldn’t have done it with out everyone having an open mind, a little time over a few weekends, and some Intel turtleskins. Glad those turtleskins went to a great group of people.

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May 10, 2007May 10, 2007 kenekaplan Intel, PodTech, Tech

Laptops Get Boost from New Intel Chips and Special Souce

We get to go inside Intel’s Mobility Demo Lab at the headquarters building just prior to the release of the new technology consumer and business-class laptops — Intel Centrino Duo and Pro.

Karen Regis knows the technical of technical marketing, but she also has fun sharing how new chips and integrated technologies really boost laptop performance.

Jeffrey Lo is in his element inside the lab. He’s a trusty “demo God” who has done some of the memorable demos for Andy Grove (back in the day) and has seen mobile computers advance from clunky, slow, toatable things to super stylish, sleak, super-performing computers that more and more people want…need in their daily lives.

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May 9, 2007May 10, 2007 kenekaplan Intel, Media

Moore’s Law Got Me

In late April, we got the chance to work with Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman and with the great San Francisco production company, Carl’s Fine Films to create three short videos. Shot in HD at the M5 Shop/Studios, this was pulled together in start to finish in about three weeks. The wonder and wit of Adam and Jamie mixed with the genius of director Carl Willat was full throttle all the way through today. Embedded videos coming soon.

April 26, 2007April 27, 2007 kenekaplan Intel, Measurement, Social Media, Socialmedia

Buzz Metrics & Finding Your Audiences

A timely post by Tom Foremski of SiliconValleyWatcher. The next steps are learning how finding, measuring and learn more about people who are interested and actively talking about Intel. We’ll always work to produce good stories and content for our audiences, but we can also always improve our ability to listen. This is how we can get closer to people we care about, and who care about us.

Highlights from Tom’s story:

BuzzLogic, based in San Francisco has developed tools that allow corporations to track conversations across thousands of online sites, blogs, mainstream media and anywhere else online, in almost real-time.

And those tools can also determine how influential a site, a blogger, a writer is. And who they influence. After all, there is no sense in galvanizing a response team to an unfavorable post on a blog if its influence is zero.

BuzzLogic recently moved out of beta and in mid-April launched its BuzzLogic Enterprise service. More than 160 customers, many Fortune 500 companies, collaborated with BuzzLogic in the beta phase to refine the service.

Todd Parsons, the chief product officer explains: “Just because someone is influential within one sector doesn’t mean that they are influential in other areas. Our algorithms can analyze influence and allow companies to focus on those sites that really matter. We can also track the rise and fall in influence of a particular site.”

Email alerts will warn of possible trouble in real-time. But each customer applies their own response. This can include contacting people and also getting involved in the online conversations.

It is a service that could be used in many ways, not just for brand management. It could uncover new types of buzz bubbling up that could provide business opportunities for some companies. And it can also be used to test the effectiveness of a public relations campaign.

Services such as BuzzLogic’s can give organizations an insight into how they are perceived without requiring focus groups. But most organizations don’t yet know what to do with such data and what the appropriate response should be. But they will figure that out over time.

UPDATE: Links to Ads on SiliconValleyWatcher — http://tibco.com/, http://blog.cohnwolfe.com/boomerang/

April 26, 2007April 26, 2007 kenekaplan Intel, PodTech, Tech

Sights and Sounds of IDF in Beijing

The Intel Developer Forum in Beijing gave us an opportunity to see how businesses, tech developers and people are working with Intel. This is a fun, visual romp through Beijing and the Intel Technology showcase during the week of April 16, 2007. Intel commissioned PodTech’s Jason Lopez to capture the buzz and his personal experience. This is not about specific products or announcements. It’s about people getting together and changing the world.

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