Did you Hulu it?

by joseph.young.2009

Source: wikipedia.org

Two things recently happened to me relating to Hulu. The first happened last night when I was talking to a classmate at Rady about the most recent episode of The Office, and a funny bit about “microgement.” The gist of the conversation went as follows:

Joseph, it sounded like Jim just messed up the line in the show.

Did you Hulu it? I think he intentionally made up the word.

Did you just call me a name?

My classmate had not heard of Hulu yet. But shortly afterwards, we were able to confirm that it was “microgement” and not “micromanagement.” But how is this different than trying to look it up you YouTube? 1. It’s legal, the show is posted by NBC, and Hulu created tools to allow sharing clips via e-mail and social networks easy. Very easy. 2. The video quality is great. I can’t emphasize this enough. What makes Hulu stand out from YouTube is that the production and video quality is high. Some people thought that YouTube meant the end of television. Partially because you could watch illegally uploaded television there, but partially because people thought that there was enough good user generate content to overwhelm network television. They were wrong. As I’ve emphasized before, it just means that crappy content goes to the wayside, and great content rises to the top. Whether it’s in games, movies, television or any other form of entertainment.

The second interesting tidbit about Hulu is that it’s on the tipping point of going huge. Becoming genericized. I’m definitely not the first person to say this. But within the span of 12 months, Hulu has gone from the top 100,000 websites in the world, to the top 400. There’s a shift in the consumer’s mindset who now considers Hulu as a network rather than a portal. You can watch what you want, when you want (some limitations), and in great quality. And all you have to do is sit through a couple of 30 second commercials.

While I’m on this topic, there are some people that are understanding how to advertise on Hulu, and other who do not quite get it yet. The one who gets it is the team running Christina Aguilera’s advertising campaign. Tradition television take a commercial and blasts it at the consumer over and over again. We’re smarter than that (at least we think). So if you play the same commercial over and over again, I’m going to take a 30 second break between segments rather than a 2 minute break, or fastforward. Christina’s crew created 4 separate 30 second commercials that formed a single 2 minute commercial that was unique and kept me interested. I’m much less likely to go on a bio break if I know the commercial is a continuation of a whole mini-show that happens to be a commercial.

Hulu did television on the internet right. Other’s are sure to follow with competitors, or if they’re smart, partnerships with Hulu. There’s already great technology and leadership behind them. It’d only be smart to build your own site if you have deep pockets.

Play Conference and New Business

by joseph.young.2009

Source: playconference.org

Attending the Play Conference at UC Berkeley brought about a key insight about business school that ties in to the new way of thinking. Intelligence is moving away from knowledge and moving towards algorithms.

Growing up in a Google world, people learn about information via tools rather than concrete facts. A growing population thinks about intelligence as how quickly you can access data. If we can pull it from memory, retrieval time is in milliseconds. If we can’t think of an answer in memory, the growing Google thought process is to use an algorithm (proper question) to get the information we want. This pushes out our knowledge beyond what’s stored in our brain to what we can find very quickly on the internet.

The same is true for business. Instead of pure skill set that you can bring to a company, it is also about surrounding yourself and the ability to find people to complete your team. Sites such as LinkedIn allow people to have a Rolodex in their head, or computer, or phone, or on the Internet. What makes it great is that it allows you to find people beyond your knowledge base via networks. Again, we use algorithms to find the right person for the job.

Business school (especially a full time program) allows people to build their network and learn tools for enrichment. Rady has afforded me the ability to meet a top class of talent who I will tap in my future business endeavors. Beyond that, they provide me with their network so that I can hire trusted employees who will help my businesses succeed.

Creating a Brand Ecosystem

by joseph.young.2009

Source: http://www.provenmodels.com

A brand (or business) ecosystem allows customers to live in your brand constantly transitioning from product to product or service to service, or a hybrid of the two. Here are some examples.

Microsoft Windows and Office keep your productivity in the Microsoft brand. Moving between the different applications, Word, Outlook, Excel allow you to do what you need to do everyday under the Microsoft umbrella. You’re become engrained in your workflow that requires Microsoft products indefinitely.

Google does the same thing, wrapping the majority of what you do on the internet in the Google brand. Searching is now “googling,” news is google news or google reader, workflow is moving online in google docs. You spend enough time there, and you’re living in the Google ecosystem.

Game have tried this in the past, but now they’re a larger push. I believe this is a result of general content improving on all levels, requiring people to work harder to keep their audience’s attention. One case of this is between Fable II and Fable II Pub Games. The player could play the Xbox Live Arcade game (secondary interface) before the game came out and allow them to build up a gold balance to spend in the main game (primary interface), Fable II. Another recent attempt is in Tiger Woods 09. They’re tying a cellphone game and console game to keep you thinking about golf all day long. The result of these campaigns should see increased sales over other titles. Fable II is off to a great start selling 1.32M units in just a few weeks. The affect of the new cellphone title on Tiger Woods 09 should be iteresting to watch. Last year they sold under 1M units on a single SKU with Tiger Woods 08. Let’s see if the ecosystem can get the title back over the 1M unit mark on a signle SKU like they did back in 04 and 05.

Great Social Marketing Primer

by joseph.young.2009

If you’re new to social marketing or are a veteran, this is one of the best presentations I’ve heard about the new channel for marketing. Very honest and accurate video. Professor Karsten covered this material for an entire session during Research for Marketing Decisions course, but this is a great complement.