August 2008 Archives

Apparently, even entire cities can be Integration Points.

As Beijing ended the 2008 summer games with a bang, London ships in a double-decker bus to do the handover London-style.


The Integration Point?  Beijing.  The UMV?  London.

One of our Integration Spotters, Diana Sabrain (who teaches women how to use their "Unfair Female Advantage") says it well:

Amazon.com has so many Integration Points (both at the Traffic & Transaction Streams) that it seems like a jungle in there. Given the example: If you were to search for Mark Joyner's Simpleology book, you'd be offered deals like "Better Together" (option to buy the 4HWW by Tim Ferris), Special Offers, Product Promotions, "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought"  (option to buy related books like The Irresistible Offer, etc) and many more. And we have just only covered the Traffic Stream! Once at the Transaction Stream, there will be another cross sell: "Customers Who Bought/Shopped for Simpleology" and "Customers Who Bought Items In Your Cart". Let's not even touch on the automated personalized recommendations Amazon gives you when they do email marketing.

Just remember that the psychology of shopping carts and single-path sales processes are totally different.  People at Amazon are in "shopping mode" and are picking stuff up before they hit the checkout counter.  If you clutter up a single-path-sales-process with too many UMVs you might just confuse your customer right out the door (before stopping at the register).

The first "Where's Matt" video, featuring Matt Harding doing his goofy dance in locations around the globe, was so successful that Stride Gum gave him sponsorship. They paid for him to travel around the world and film himself dancing - all to integrate a simple UMV: their branding message at the end of the video and a link to their site.

Big thanks to today's Integration Spotter: Neil Campbell of Internet Marketing Digest.

Step 1.  Visit the Integration Marketing Deal Board

Step 2.  Click on the Link for the Yammer Board

Step 3.  Click on The Sticky Post You See in the Picture Here


Step 4.  Tell Us What You Saw (Full Instructions in the Above Post)

Step 5.  If It's Great, We'll Make You a Star (with Link Love and All)

With 47 million views on Youtube the above video posted by "guitar90" is an astounding web phenomenon.

There is some interesting Integration Marketing happening here, but fist let's take a look at the back story.

According to the New York Times, the actual person in the video is not "guitar90" but "funtwo" (Korean guitar virtuoso Jeong-Hyun Lim).

If you read the info section for the video it is written in the first person and one would get the impression that it is the voice of the guitarist himself.  No one knows who guitar90 actually is, though ...

And here's where the genius Integration Marketing comes in - there is a plug there for a guitar training system and an implied endorsement.

Now, I'll refrain from comment on the ethics of snagging someone else's video and implying that you are the author.  I only want to marvel at the brilliance of the Integration Marketing example.

What you have here is an enormous Traffic Stream (the Youtube video itself) and a well-placed UMV (Unit of Marketing Value - in this case the endorsement of a guitar training course with a built in response-mechanism: the link).

I wouldn't recommend snagging someone else's video to do this.  Of course claiming the video as your own and then using it in advertising is just, well, completely uncool.  (I could be wrong here - maybe funtwo is getting cut in on the action - I sure hope so.)

Either way, you get the point:  Create a viral phenomenon and then integrate your UMV at the appropriate Integration Point.  Note that I doubt this would have been anywhere near as effective if it were in the format of an infomercial.   If they had integrated their UMV inside the video itself it would have seemed disingenuous.