It’s called “Izzy’s Flavor Up!” and it essentially allows customers to subscribe to their favorite ice cream flavors. Current flavors are updated every three minutes on its “flavor grid” web page.

With web site design and technology assistance from Bloomington MN-based The Nerdery (aka Sierra Bravo), Rogers MN-based RFID firm AbeTech, and CA-based tech vendor Phoenix Technologies, Izzy’s Ice Cream is now tagging all its 90+ flavors of ice cream in-store with radio frequency identification (RFID) technology.  Each flavor’s tub is tagged with a unique code that’s automatically scanned when placed in the dipping cabinet.

What it means for an ice cream lover is nothing less than nirvana. Customers can now know, with absolute certainty anytime around the clock, which flavors are available in-store. When new flavors are removed from or added to the dipping cabinet, Izzy’s web site, Facebook and Twitter pages will automatically be updated, alerting fans to the latest changes. Customers can sign up for email alerts for their favorite flavors – so they’ll always know when their favorite Hot Brown Sugar, Soy Peanut Butter, or Peace Coffee ice cream is available. My buddy Al Maruggi told me today that Izzy’s has the best coconut ice cream in the Twin Cities, too, as he licked a sample thereof.

We also learned that SMS or text updates are on the way, if you’d rather get your alerts that way.  In-store customers can see the technology in action via a large-screen monitor that shows which flavors are now being scooped.

“Our customers are extremely passionate about their favorite flavors of Izzy’s ice cream,” said Jeff Sommers, Izzy’s owner, in a statement. “Their enthusiasm, while motivating me to continue creating delicious flavors, can also prove to be a customer service issue. Before today, our customers had no way of knowing if their favorite flavors were going to be available when they walked through the door.  This system solves that problem and makes it easier for our customers to enjoy their favorite flavors.”  The title of a video that Izzy’s crack PR firm put up on YouTube says it all: “How to Subscribe to Ice Cream.”

The nameplates for each flavor in the store have RFID chips built in, which are then read by antennae anchored in the dipping cabinet. The inventory is automatically updated simply through the act of an employee changing flavors in the dipping cabinet. That act triggers an inventory update, which in turn publishes the current flavors to multiple channels: the in-store screen, Izzy’s website, its Twitter and Facebook pages, and it’s automated emails to subscribers of individual flavors.

Izzy’s isn’t just a retail business. It has a catering business as well, and a wholesale business that has signed up several upscale grocery stores and restaurants throughout the Twin Cities that now offer its products — Kowalski’s, just to name one chain.

Regarding its latest new wrinkle, “This is undoubtedly one of the first uses of RFID as a customer service application,” said the company’s statement.  Izzy’s has a history of embracing new technology, having installed solar panels in 2005.  Owner Jeff Sommers also showed attendees at his media briefing today an innovative new cleaning system he has implemented in Izzy’s kitchen called “Zap Water,” which is an amazingly more environmentally friendly way to maintain a germ-free, allergen-free environment.

Izzy’s gets my vote as a true Minnesota innovator!  Now, excuse me, I’m jumping onto their web site to check if my favorite flavor is still available tonight….

Web Innovation Is Everywhere in Minnesota – Even In an Ice Cream Shop! is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Fear not, oh noble marketer. The folks at Uptown (Minneapolis) marketing firm Hello Viking have spawned Curation Station to provide you with a bucket to help you bail the endless deluge of web content into smaller pools. (Minnov8 colleague Tim Elliot gave me a peek at the private beta.)

As you might know, collecting the flood of online information isn’t the problem. News readers, RSS feeds, email newsletters, blog subscriptions, and bookmarking services all help you see every drop of data coming from your favorite online tributaries. The issue has always been separating the clean water from the black or grey water. (Those who have ever spent anytime emptying the water tanks of an RV know what I mean.)

According to it’s creators, “Social media have forever changed the way that brands connect with customers. In a non-stop trail of Tweets, blogs, Facebook pages, YouTube videos and Flickr sites, customers discuss products and services.” They say, “Curation Station was created by marketers for marketers to harness these conversations and share participants’ best insights and experiences.”

Through a very simple dashboard, any number of feeds can be added.  “Users can start by adding RSS and OPML feeds or alerts from external websites such as Google News. They also use integrated Twitter, Flickr and YouTube search tools. But inputs to Curation Station can be from any online source – web pages, news articles, blog posts, videos, photos” – via their bookmarklet tool.

Once inside the Curation Station dashboard a simple click of an item can channel it to a “playlist” or back to the online ocean from whence it came. Once you’ve vetted the content it can be distributed through a custom widget that’s designed by you in a live WYSIWYG tool. This widget can be plunked down in a website or blog. You can display one curated playlist or many, it’s up to you. This makes you the tamer of floods and sharer of all that is relevant…at least as you see it.

This isn’t the first time a Minnesota company has attacked this aggregation with curation. Garrick Van Buren continues to address it with his Cullect application, now on hiatus. The big dogs are no stranger to trying to tame this beast either. Google has, through it’s popular reader, and Yahoo has through their Pipes offering. I myself continue to bang my head against a wall trying to get Pipes to produce a virtual curated stream that really delivers what I need.

What I like so much about Curation Station is it’s ability to let me apply a trusted human opinion, my own, to all of my feeds. The simple one click curation of a bunch of feeds might take a few minutes, a few times each day, but the result really is more of a reflection of the curator. The handy custom widget output is also very appealing and a slick way to deliver your curated masterpiece.

What I don’t like is  the cost of this really slick system of flood control. After a walk-through of Curation Station I was all, “This kicks butt, sign me up!” When I found out that the cost started at $500 per month, I was all, “Maybe I need to take another crack at that Pipes feed.”

It’s apparent that the price structure for Curation Station is more tailored to the large marketing firms and businesses, certainly ones larger than mine. These firms are perhaps more financially able to dedicate resources as well as being in more of a position to monetize the result of this curation.

Perhaps in the not too distant future Curation Station can deliver a more cost effective solution for the more thrifty class of web whisperers. Also, one has to give these folks credit for rising above the business of “free” that has so crippled the ‘business’ social media.

One last thing, though I’ve opted for the water analogy here, the Curation Station folks are positioning the application by comparing it to a radio station. “Just like DJ’s curate music, Curation Station allows marketers and brands to easily organize social content into different playlists.” As a longtime ‘radio guy’ I’ll give you playlists (and the handy alliteration for the Casey Kasem like headline)…but that’s about as far as the radio analogy goes as I can see.

Curation Station…Sweeping the Nation? is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

As part of said quest I called the folks at Best Buy to check on the health and/or success of Twelpforce.

For the sake of transparency I count many at Best Buy as friends. That said, my first of impression of the name of this initiative and it’s marketing campaign around the Twelpforce didn’t rank high on my cool-o-meter. To me social media is all about one-to-one contact and I didn’t necessarily think a TV add depicting a stadium of Blue Shirts (Best Buy employees) yelling out answers as the best way to showcase a concept and effort that is so darned positive and forward thinking…just sayin’.

I was curious and anxious to have the conversation. John Bernier, a Social Media Manager at Best Buy, and the one overseeing the Twelpforce initiative was happy to spend some time talking about it. This in itself is a good sign that a level of success is being attained.  

For those of you not familiar with Twelpforce, the concept is quite simple…enlist a legion of customer service representatives from the ranks of Best Buy’s employees to respond to questions and concerns about Best Buy products and services that arise in the Twitter stream. Twelpforce, as John noted is a “tool to talk with as well as talk to” the Best Buy customer or potential customer. He goes on to say that it’s in keeping with the overall focus of the Best Buy to deliver “dream support.” Whatever that means. Ultimately, of course one has to assume that the goal is to increase business and customer loyalty.

John outlined a bit of history as well as some numbers to demonstrate where Twelpforce is today. After three months (the “hard launch” with marketing via TV started on July 19th, 2009.) the original size of the Twelpforce has grown from 400 members (Best Buy and Geek Squad reps) to 2,200. They have responded to over 13,000 very public questions, concerns, and opinions. @twelpforce counts over 10,000 followers (13,404 followers and 2,059 following as of this writing), with about a 50/50 split between addressing actual break/fix issues and opinions. “We have made people realize that a year ago there was one voice (of Best Buy), and now they know that there are thousands of voices.”

So, how are they measuring the response to Twelpforce as they seek to deliver a tool that provides value for Best Buy? John noted, as do so many when you start talking metrics, “There is nothing that we can buy into that measures success.” This facilitated the need to build their own dashboard to at least assemble measurable pieces of the puzzle. That dashboard of course includes monitoring the number of followers but goes beyond that. The volume, or the pace and number of questions, now numbering between 100 and 125 per day according to John, the number of active Best Buy reps per week, the number of new reps, keyword sentiment, retweets and “follow Friday” posts are also monitored. Other tools include Twitter StreamGraphs and TweetStats (many are pictured) that will “Create a way for the business team to see trends.”

So how are those thousands of voices answering those questions? When Twelpforce rolled out and I made a point of following the questions and answers, I noted that many answers were of the “Stop into our store and we can help you with that.” type answers. John deftly answered that he couldn’t say how “many” answers there were like that, he did note that “Some answers will require a store visit.” He also noted that “the 140 character format of Twitter doesn’t always allow for a complete answer.” In fact, Twelpforce has developed some logical extensions to better respond without asking the customer to come to a store. “We’ll link to the Best Buy Forum to facilitate a more extensive answer and we’ll also link to a brand page and sometimes other info sources (like Engadget). We are the facilitator.” moving people form channel to channel. According to John, “You know what we know as fast as we know it.”

So, just who is answering these questions and concerns? What does it take for a Blue Shirt or Geek to be part of the TwelpForce? Are there restrictions or criteria to become a more audible voice of Best Buy? According to John, “There’s no real restrictions.” The fact that those that want to be part of the ‘force’ are employees means “they have been vetted by HR. We provide some training as well as a wiki that helps TwelpForce members best provide service.” He goes on to say, “We expect to be very good, not perfect.” at addressing customer needs. “There will be varying degrees of success.”

Moving forward John highlighted where TwelpForce will be going. In the short-term there will be more engagement, especially over the holiday season and much of that will be driven by another round of TV advertising. In the longer term the hope will be to move it beyond just Twitter. “We’d like it to be platform agnostic.” Of course when I asked how that might impact the name TwelpForce it was pretty obvious that it was a topic of much discussion at Best Buy. (FelpForce on Facebook? YelpForce for YouTube?) John also hopes to use initiatives like this to accelerate the adoption of social media by both employees and customers. “It’s provides us with the ability to prove ourselves every day. It’s not a campaign, it’s a commitment.” says John.

So can this be considered a social media success story? One that might rival that maternal pain reliever or pizza purveyor dust up? Without having an associated video it’s probably not as sexy, but anything that enables the conversation between brand and customer, as this clearly has, must be considered a success. John adds, “We’ve been able to meet our customers at the crossroads of need and time…Being there when and where they need us.”  I’d say that qualifies…

Social Media Success: How About a Little Twelp? is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Traditional display advertisements constantly seek the ultimate hook — designed to be catchy, relevant, and timely. Their sole objective is to capture the attention and imagination of a (publishing) website’s visitors long enough to prompt a click on the graphical ad that steers traffic to another, completely independent (advertising) website — which, ideally, is a targeted landing page. At this point, there are numerous desired outcomes depending on the objectives of the advertising campaign, not limited to:

• conduct a transaction/purchase
• provide personal data in the form of a “lead”
• offer feedback or take a survey

However, the reality here is that, more often than not, display advertisements under-deliver. Why? Because they don’t authentically engage users or offer them any real value. If viewers aren’t simply ignoring ads, they’re blocking them or defrauding them — thus the believably low click-through/conversion rates (based on the standard measure of clicks per one thousand impressions). It’s no wonder that most web surfers report an increasing aversion to online ads or have conditioned their viewing habits to ignore them. True, there have been notable improvements to the display ad model over the years — specifically Cost-Per-Action (CPA) pricing, contextual ads, and niche networks — but there’s still a long way to go before display ads become as effective as they can (and should) be!

So — what’s the Adaptive Avenue advantage?

Adaptive Avenue yields measurably improved results while delivering an interactive ad format that coordinates seamlessly with the advertiser’s existing distribution system. Of course, interactive ads are not new – but here we’re talking about an embedded product catalog — or “mini storefront” — with broad and deep selection and user-defined control. For the visitor, this format simulates essential aspects of an actual shopping experience without leaving the publisher’s page — by providing category/product navigation search and discovery before redirecting them to the advertiser’s site/page. Users are directed to a specific page within the e-commerce site only after they have focused on / committed to a specific item that they choose to purchase or research further. Simply put, fewer steps = increased brand engagement.

Another compelling advantage of the Adaptive Avenue formula is the linkage of site-based product inventory, details, and specifications with the ad in real time. Want to change a price or run a promotion? Simply change it in one place, on your database, and the price(s) within the network will simultaneously reflect any adjustments to your site. Did you move the bulk of your inventory overnight or did you just sell out? Not to worry — again, your ads are communicating with your database autonomously. The technology is ideally suited for products with volatile and perishable inventory such as retail promotions.

In addition to the obvious time-saving benefit to the advertiser resulting from decreased complexity and cycle time, this approach provides a more positive interaction for the visitor/shopper. Even short of actual purchase, user interaction with the ad provides the advertiser with an unprecedented source of consumer insight — such as brand, category, or product interests.

Recognizing that advertisers have gained greater control and influence over their ad spend, Adaptive Avenue has adopted a performance-driven revenue model. Additionally, the technology has the operational agility, scalability, and light footprint that enables any advertiser, large or small, to build a data-driven ad in minutes — without creative or technical intervention.

Adaptive Avenue founder David Quimby, knows that traditional display advertising is a broken model — yet, he sees tremendous opportunity in techniques that can deliver noticeable improvements in ad ROI. Hence, the creation of his solution. David’s background includes user experience / user centric design. He worked at Stanford Research Institute, where he collaborated with Doug Engelbart — inventor of the computer mouse / GUI and developer of the first operational hypertext system. His education includes a BA in economics from UCLA and an MBA from UC-Berkeley.

Listen to an interview with David Quimby here.

Adaptive Avenue’s Next Generation Ad Technology is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

According to notices from both MIMA and MinneDemo the track will consist of “a curated slate of entrepreneurs who will showcase their internet and web innovations and demo real working software.” The ‘Best of’ slate from past MinneDemo presentations will be featured in groups of three with Q&A time allowed throughout the day.

While one might ask, taken as a whole, what do demos such as these have to do with MIMA’s interactive marketing focus, the ability to showcase our local innovators and startup community is always welcome. MIMA President Matt Wilson, echos that sentiment. “I think a lot of our members are going to be incredibly impressed by the technology talent here in town and hopefully this added exposure will mean more development work stays here.”

Of note is the mention in the MinneDemo communication of a fall MinneDemo event to be held in November. It’s the first mention of the follow-up to May’s MinneDemo at Intermedia Arts. We’re also still awaiting news of a MinneBar. We’ll let you know as soon we hear more…

MinneDemo Joins MIMA Summit For Tech Track is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQdBoHJfIVI

Closing Thoughts From BlogWell is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Brad graciously billed at as a joint podcast wiht the SMBMSP. But like most things, 80% of success if just showing up. Thanks for inviting us to join Brad. Catch a bit of video from the impromptu gathering at http://www.qik.com/video/2364510.

A Joint Podcast with Social Media Breakfast is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Called “PR 2.0: The New Tools of the Trade,” the event will be held Monday July 13 from 8:00 am till 4:00 pm at the Westin Galleria, 3201 Galleria, in Edina, MN 55435.   The keynote presenter is Jason Kintzler, founder and CEO of PitchEngine, “a social media release service” that enables PR professionals to package stories and share them with journalists, bloggers, and influencers via the social web.

Jennifer Kane, founder of Kane Consulting (pictured here at left with colleague Kary Delaria), said in announcing the event, “If you’re in the business of sharing facts, telling stories, starting conversations, and monitoring dialogue about your company or client, this is stuff you need to know.”

The conference will also feature eight breakout sessions reflecting the most cutting edge and innovative thinking on how to navigate this rapidly changing industry.

Breakout sessions include:

•  “Using Social Media Behind the Firewall” - Gary  Koelling, Best Buy, and Cameron Gross, GreaterThan Media, a consultant to Best Buy.
•  “Pitching Using New Media Tools” – Eva Keiser, Senior Vice President, Risdell McKinney Public Relations.
•  “Online Reputation Management” – Greg Swan, Digital Strategy Manager, Weber Shandwick Digital Communications.
•  “Incorporating Podcasts and Video Into Your Marketing and PR Mix” - Albert Maruggi, founder of Provident Partners and Producer of the Marketing Edge podcast.
•  “Self Publishing for PR” – Arik Hanson, ACH Communications/Chief Blogger, Communications Conversations.
•  “How to Monitor Your Brand Through Social Media Channels” – Connie Benson, Chief Community Officer, Techrigy.
•  “Optimizing Content of Press Releases and Beyond” – Jolina Pettice, Senior Account Manager, TopRank Online Marketing.
•  “Small Brands. Big Results” – Blois Olson, Executive Vice President, Tunheim Partners.

In addition, there will be open lab periods where attendees can network with others and explore new online PR and marketing tools and applications.

The organizers tell me that remaining space is limited, but registration may still be available as you read this.  To register and see the list of those attending to date, here’s the PR 2.0 event registration page. You can also see the press release for the event here: a PitchEngine release, of course!

Can’t make the event but still want to schmooze?

You’re in luck. Kane Consulting also announced they’re holding a “TweetUp” after the conference from 6:00 to 9:00 pm at Tavern on France!  You may have seen some buzz about this on our local Social Media Breakfast (SMBmsp) site — well, now it’s official.  It’s your chance to meet Jason Kintzler of PitchEngine and hob-nob with the local PR digerati.  But you must RSVP here for the TweetUp.  It’s open to all.  There’s no cost to attend this evening gathering, and you can simpy order food and drinks off the menu.

See ya there!

Event in Edina July 13 to Explore ‘PR 2.0′ is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Of course you’re paying attention to the always-on, always connected culture of participation online that is fundamentally shifting how we connect with one another, get our news and alerts, are influenced by people we trust and increasingly making our voices heard when we like or don’t like something a company or organization is delivering to us.

If you’ve read Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky, Wikinomics by Don Tapscott, or even the seminal book on the topic, The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki, than you know about the acceleration in companies looking to figure out how to embrace their customer base and ecosystem for fun and profit (but mostly the profit).

In a growing number of conversations I’m having with business leaders, virtually all of them are either engaged in some form of outreach to their customers, prospects, partners and employees and learning how to engage them in new and online ways. With enough input and smart decision-making, the ability to build and deliver the right products and services goes up dramatically. I thought it a good idea to visit this topic now, especially as there now signs the economy is growing and we’re beginning to experience growth in our trend forecasting businesses, typically one bellwether pointing the way in the housing sector.

Best Buy is the “poster child” for this sort of engagement on a host of fronts. From the employee-only BlueShirtNation (now “Mix“) to Giftag to the relatively new and well executed IdeaX, they’re highly focused on driving forward and engaging on as many fronts as possible.

Though Best Buy is quite public with their offerings — along with an unusual level of transparency and engagement — General Mills is also going out with initiatives like MyBlogSpark to engage women who blog (dubbed “mommybloggers”) in order to engage the typical decision-maker in a household and are the ones who usually drive the family nutrition.

Back in March, the site ReadWriteWeb had a guest author, Tom Powell from Co-Innovative, who wrote this fabulous post on the topic and categorized leading idea and suggestion management vendors with an extensive writeup. 

Powell pointed out these three categories of idea and suggestion management vendors:

Centralized Aggregators:

• Get Satisfaction
• SuggestionBox
• FeVote
• Featurelist

Anyone can start a product or company page on these sites to submit ideas, suggestions, or complaints, which are then voted up or down, Digg-style, and commented on. Companies pay for access to this data, more powerful features, and the ability to “claim” pages and register official employee moderators. Like review sites such as Epinions, conversation happens on these sites with or without you.

Tool Providers:

• SalesForce Ideas Management
• UserVoice
• IdeaScale
• Get Satisfaction
• Kindling

These systems provide similar functionality to that of the centralized aggregators listed above but are controlled and run by the companies themselves. They include features such as ratings (or up/down votes), moderation, the ability to limit the number of votes per user or the access of certain groups, time-limited contests, and automatic searching for duplicate idea submissions.

Integrated Innovation Management Suites:

• Imaginatik
• BrainBank
• SalesForce Ideas Management
• Brightidea
• Spigit

The idea management portion of these suites generally have more robust capabilities, such as weighting the contributions of users according to expertise and trust, creating virtual currency systems, providing enterprise-class security, and customizing captured information. By integrating idea capturing and prioritization into a more robust and sophisticated system, companies can then evaluate the cost of ideas, put ideas through a formal review process, and track their performance from conception to execution.

So which aggregators should you be paying attention to? Which has the greatest reach? The strongest offering?

Read more of Tom Powell’s post here to discover more.

Category to Watch: Idea & Suggestion Management is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

The event will be held at Nicollet Island Pavilion and feature Scott Thomas (aka SimpleScott). According ot MIMA you’re invited to “take a look at how the Obama campaign looked before (Scott) and other designers, joined the team for the last election season.” and promises “You’ll see how it was, how it evolved, and the lessons learned along the way. ”

Scott Thomas, aka SimpleScott, was invited to join the New Media team at Obama for America during the campaign and it led to him becoming the Design Director of the historic Obama Presidential campaign.

MIMA Presents Obama Online is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

As I left my car and embarked upon a 15 minute walk from a parking lot to a building in downtown Minneapolis, I was pleased to have remembered my headphones as I fired up the iPhone MPR application developed by Minnesota-based Codemorphic (get the free app here for your iPhone from the iTunes store) and continued listening.

What I didn’t expect was the two minute story about a breakdown of Winchester’s car in the middle of nowhere in China, his iPhone, and what happened next.

After hearing this story and a bit more, I was so intrigued by the program that I wanted to hear it in its entirety, so the next day I went to iTunes and downloaded the 5/4/09 show and, for good measure, subscribed to the MPR Midmorning podcast. Either can be done here on iTunes if you’re interested in hearing the whole show.

  Click this link to listen to the story…

MPR, iPhone and a Codemorphic App is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rTzIAWI4Ms

Best Buy CMO on the Cluetrain is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

The event offers attendees a chance to hear how a panel of local business leaders have transformed their organizations to thrive in the digital marketplace — and I am privileged to be one of those panelists:

• Paul Douglas: CEO, Weather Nation (and former chief meteorologist, WCCO TV)

• Jan McDaniel: CEO, JTM Vision (and former CEO, American Red Cross Twin Cities)

• Phil Hotchkiss: Founder, BigCharts.com

• Joel Kramer: Founder, MinnPost.com (and former Publisher, Minneapolis Star-Tribune)
[Note: Minnov8 syndicates some of its content to MinnPost.]

• Graeme Thickins: Founder, GT&A Strategic Marketing

• Andrew Eklund: CEO, Ciceron Digital Marketing

A special reduced rate of $195 per person is available till May 3 at this registration page, with a group rate of only $395 for up to five people from the same organization.

Ciceron is a web marketing and consulting agency based in Minneapolis. It offers full-service solutions from professional search engine optimization and email marketing programs to in-depth metrics and performance tracking. Its clients have included such major brands as Home Depot, Nascar, USBank, Andersen Windows, Best Buy, Target, and Pepsi. For more about Cicero, check out their about page, their full client list, and here are their management bios.

I hope to see you at “Radical ROI: Seizing the Potential of the Digital Marketplace” on May 11.  Again, use this registration page before May 3 to get those preferential rates.

Panel to Discuss the ROI of Digital Marketing is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

KARE-11 Spot on Social Media is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

• Starbucks built an on-line consumer community called MyStarbucks.com that facilitates open discussion of how to improve the Starbucks experience. Howard Schultz, CEO, claims that MyStarbucks.com has re-invigorated his innovation program by focusing business priorities on customer needs, like free Wi-Fi in all stores

• Threadless.com won Inc. Magazine’s most innovative company award for 2008 for their “customer as company” business model. Threadless has never had a product intro bomb; they only produce what their customers want to buy

• Dell Idea Storm is an example of a social media execution. Idea Storm was launched by Michael Dell with the goal of repairing its customer service credentials, but it changed the way Dell does business.  On Idea Storm, customers, programmers, and the like post their ideas for improvement or enhancement.  Due to the successful use of Connected Innovation strategy, Dell has been able to reduce their product development cycle time by 6 months.

Connected Innovation is the business process of using on-line tools like user communities, blogs, innovation portals and social media to mine, connect, and route ideas, employees, consumers, customers, vendors, brands, and technologies. More specifically, on-line communities, innovation portals, and social media strategies not only create new connections, but also allow the extraction of value from these connections.

My employer, General Mills, has given me the opportunity to explore the Connected Innovation concept. Over the course of the next six months, I will benchmark and research the best practices of leading organizations engaged in building connections to evolve their innovation capacity. My research will also provide a framework for building successful Connected Innovation web sites, both inside the corporate firewall and external to customers in a B-C relationship. I will also be a contributor for Minnov8, sharing insights collected along my journey.  I look forward to the opportunity to interview and collaborate with Fortune 500 companies, social media and innovation thought leaders, and the broader digital community.

During the coming months, you can connect with me here at Minnov8, at my personal blog “Perspectives on Connected Innovation and Collaboration”, and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/djsmith4. I am very interested in engaging in dialogue with you on this subject and look forward to connecting with the broader Minnov8 community.

Bigger ideas. Faster. is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=whzN-7uCiZw

(found via @graemethickins and @garykoelling)

Open for Business: Best Buy’s Social Strategy is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

One key trend Minnov8 is closely tracking in 2009 — especially when it comes to Minnesota startups or companies involved in it — is in the area of social media aggregation along with social marketing, analytics and communication extensions to existing products and services.

If you’re one of the accelerating number of people that are always-on, always-connected, and  participating all over the ‘net — or are an organization trying to figure out how to get online, be socially connected, and in a position to build an audience, community or ecosystem surrounding the space in which you’re involved — than trying to ‘herd the cats’ and get them to behave (either your social media participation with your digital stuff left all over the place, or a company trying to figure out how to reach influencers in some given category and reach out to them while measuring the impact of their effort) is an incredible challenge and coordinating and orchestrating either of them seems impossible!

The good news? Many of you reading this are already using a wide variety of emerging aggregation tools and you’re trying to figure out what approach works best for you as this space evolves. Minnesota companies, who understand that millions of people participating online is a meaningful place to be as a marketer, are looking at ways in which to herd their cats. Fortunately for both sets of needs, new tools are proliferating and there are many thought leaders working hard on methods to make our use and management of increasing social participation online significantly easier to manage in 2009.

Yahoo's MyBlogLog Service Enables a Participant to Aggregate Multiple Social Media Services

Several developments occurred in 2008, gained traction in 2009, and are poised to make big inroads this year. Ones like OpenID, a “single sign-on” for all of your Web applications, social media sites and social networks are key, but others that are promising to make our social connections more portable are emerging:

• Google’s OpenSocial: A set of common application programming interfaces (APIs) for web-based social networks, so that applications developed using the OpenSocial APIs will be interoperable with any social network system that supports them. Some critics point to the limited adoption so far and its capabilities
• Facebook: They created their own application platform that developers can use and have eschewed the Google OpenSocial approach
• “Friend Connect”: In competition with OpenID, Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect were both introduced to leverage the huge mass of users already using their respective platforms
• DiSO Project: DiSO is a project that today is focused on the WordPress platform, but the people behind it (and many others) understand that, “Social networks are becoming more open, more interconnected, and more distributed. Many of us in the web creation world are embracing and promoting web standards – both client-side and server-side. Microformats, standard APIs, and open-source software are key building blocks of these technologies. This model can be described as having three sides: Information, Identity, and Interaction”
• Cliqset: is “a social development platform designed to enable an open mesh of innovation and creativity across the social web. Acting as the system of record for your social identity, Cliqset empowers developers to build socially aware applications that create, share and define your social data on behalf of you, enabling a social experience unlike anything that exists today“
  
• Open Mesh: Though that title is used in several different contexts, Marc Canter (founder of MacroMind that became Macromedia and now founder of BroadbandMechanics) has a concept of all of the elements that need to come together to form a holistically coordinated and orchestrated mesh of online services. Makes my brain hurt just trying to absorb it though.

Along with infrastructure pieces like those above are hosted Web applications that have positioned themselves as your “social graph aggregator” or what your content participation is being referred to more frequently as: “lifestreaming“. The objective of these applications is to bring together all of your online digital stuff in one place, including your friends stuff, and provide you with better opportunities to connect with others using various social media services that exist today as well as those not yet invented:

• The Flock web browser whose approach is to be a browser-centric aggregator of all your social media services
• Friendfeed and even a Firefox web browser add-on for it called “MySocial 24/7“
• Plurk, who says that they’re, “A really snazzy site that allows you to showcase the events that make up your life, and follow the events of the people that matter to you, in deliciously digestible short messages called plurks“
• SecondBrain: “Secondbrain makes it easy to manage all your social media, bookmarks and files in one place. Organize everything in your library, follow your friends’ updates and discover good content“
• …and many more.

Lastly, on the company-needing-to-connect with social media participants side, we’re seeing an acceleration in analytics tools and, as I suspected last year, a major enterprise-class vendor entering the social media services and analytics space:

• There are several social media analytics startups doing very interesting work and with solid approaches: Collective Intellect; Radian6; Techrigy; ScoutLabs, Visible Technologies, Cymfony, and Keenkong
• Last week, Salesforce.com released their Service Cloud, that has as this stated value proposition, “The Service Cloud is the next-generation platform for customer service. You can tap into the power of customer conversations no matter where they take place. Harness know-how from the right experts, whether they’re on a Web community forum or having a dialog on Facebook. Suddenly, you’re part of those conversations.“  With a relatively inexpensive price and several key features like customer relationship management; campaign management; along with hundreds of 3rd party applications in their AppExchange facilitating bolt-on capabilities that extend the Salesforce platform.

Minnesota companies and startups are also seeing this social media coordination and aggregation trend and are beginning to capitalize upon it:

• Target, General Mills and Best Buy (the latter doing much more with Remix, Giftag and other initiatives) are in the early stages of dabbling in social media
• OnePlace, a team collaboration, project management and personal productivity, recently added Twitter-like communication capabilities called “TeamCentral” for their collaborative offering with significant management capabilities of it
• Cullect, is an offering that helps you find and share the relevant, important stories from your huge array of news and blog feeds. They also created a branded URL shortener for MinnPost, a very important tactical requirement for many social media uses like Twitter requires, enabling MinnPost to make it easier for social media participants to link to their articles
• Tumblon, a site for parents of young children that helps them track their children’s development and, most importantly, understands that giving these parents the power to publish (either private or publicly) through an easy blog publishing for family and friends is an imperative in today’s social sharing world.

You’ll see more and more approaches to leverage all of these infrastructure developments, hone the aggregator/lifestreaming methods, and make it easier to collect and deliver all of your digital breadcrumbs. If you’re a company looking to market to, or connect with, social media participants, the ways to do that with superior analytics tied to campaign and customer relationship management will continue to accelerate and make it simpler to enter and leverage the social media space.

Of course, that doesn’t do anything about you collating and delivering stuff of value that your friend, family or future connections might care about (see my personal post, “It’s the Value, Stupid” for more) or that companies identifying discussions and people using social media — and deciding on how to enter into conversations with them, engage them in crowdsourcing, or build an audience or ecosystem around their company or products — still needs to be done properly, ethically and above-board by organizations using them. But the opportunity will be there and the tools and solutions to do so in a meaningful way will be yours for the asking as they continue to evolve and emerge in 2009.

Herding Your Online Cats is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

As we’ve written here before, Best Buy is one of the leaders in the adoption of social media in the retail industry. Their CMO, Barry Judge, has started blogging and has taken to Twitter. He’s very transparent in his exploration of conversational marketing in interviews like this one. But probably the best overview is a video we posted here last month that features an interview with Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson who clearly is behind their use of social tools and techniques.

Target, in contrast, is opaque on all things social and their CMO, Michael Francis, seems from the corporate model of a brilliant planner, not innovator. Although they have been involved in conversational marketing — I recall meeting blogger Robert Scoble some 3 years ago after a day of meetings at Target — their efforts to date have been mixed. A well planned Facebook campaign was marred by controversy. And there was that episode with bloggers who took issue with a billboard in New York. Not the kind of case studies you would want from a company who clearly is a leading force in retail brand advertising.

So I will be tracking each company and their marketing efforts over the next several months and posting highlights here. If past is prologue, my gut tells me we’ll be seeing a lot of innovation from Best Buy, particularly in their use of social media. But the folks at Target might also surprise us. In these difficult times, the most innovative will likely win.

Marketing Innovation: Best Buy vs. Target is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Following opening comments from SMBMSP head cheese, Rick Mahn, Minnov8’s own Graeme Thickins, who coordinated Meerman Scott’s appearance, introduced the online media evangelist to a packed room.

The bulk of his presentation centered around the need for companies to adopt social media and interactive methods of marketing for one simple reason…that’s where customers go to find what they’re looking for. He noted that whenever he asks any group, organization, or gathering what their habits are, when it comes to finding what they want, the web always impacts nearly 100% or them, yet marketers still cling to those methods (direct mail, mass media, etc.) that have much less impact.

He calls the activity of using online and social media marketing as “Spreading the message by word of mouse.” There is a clear need for businesses, individuals, and marketers alike to “think like a publisher” citing that, “We are what we publish.” What reason is given most often as to why a company or individual can’t do that? “We’re a ________! We can’t do that!” where the blank represents a company’s business practice or product.

He proceeded to highlight his Rules of the Rave as a road map to success in online media. Morsels included:

• Nobody cares about your services or products but you.
• No coercion required.
• Put down roots.
• Create triggers that encourage people to share.
• Point the world to your doorstep.
• Play nice!
• Get found!
• What do you have to lose.

All in all the presentation, though “preached to the choir” in a room full of social media types, was very motivating to all present. His use of video examples (The Cadbury Gorilla, Where the Hell is Matt?, and CWS Toilets) throughout served to inspire the room as well as encourage discussion on how to “sell” media to individuals and businesses that are hesitant to get involved.

The following presentation from Partner Up CEO Steve Nielsen started with the “What business do you associate Deluxe with? (Checks and …well…checks!) Steve devoted his time talking about PartnerUp and Deluxe focusing on growing other business opportunities and products.

Overcoming the perception of Deluxe being only a check printing business will be a daunting task but one that Steve emphasized was a focus that the company is dedicated to, at all levels.

On a side note: Steve mentioned that he felt that Deluxe was a bit “late” joining the social media ranks. I will assert that there is no way you can ever be late. Just as you can never be late to a conversation that you are willing to start.

The final presentation was given by Marty Wetherall and Aki Spicer presented Fallon’s latest Twitter campaign for Eureka. They used what they called a “micro-budget” to launch  @_S_A_R_A_H_, the Twitter name of the Self Actuated Residential Automated Habitat house on the popular geek TV show. If you’re not familiar with the show, S.A.R.A.H. is an artificial intelligence that runs the show’s main character’s, Sherrif Jack Carter, household. Acting as both surrogate wife and mother, S.A.R.A.H. handles all the daily chores, helps Carter’s daughter Zoe with schoolwork, and also provides emotional companionship.

The unique approach used for @_S_A_R_A_H_ on Twitter is that she…or…it personally responds to Twitter posts about the show and her…um…character. Even after much pressing the boys from Fallon stuck to the story that S.A.R.A.H. actually does the responding and not a writer. This clearly highlights the challenge of being able to tackle the daunting task of giving a voice to a character 24 hours a day. Imagine the playbook for anyone who must serve as S.A.R.A.H. so that continuity is maintained.

Thanks to all associated with the presentation of Social Media Breakfast this week including Rick Mahn, Graeme Thickens, Deluxe, Partner Up (cool travel mugs, BTW) and New Horizons Computer Learning Centers for providing many with a free copy of David Meerman Scott’s book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR.

It was a morning well spent. Look for the next Social Media Breakfast on November 20th at Best Buy featuring Jeff Pulver.

Great (Meerman) Scott! What a Social Media Breakfast! is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.