![Pay-Per-Friend, Social Matchmaking Just Became Big Business!]()
by John Cataldi | Mar 31, 2011 | Brand Strategy, gPad, Internet Marketing, Media Convergence, Pay-Per-Friend, Social Influencers, Social Listening, Social Media, Technology Innovations, Viral Marketing
Money can’t buy love, but it can buy you millions of guaranteed friends to support your politics, purchases, or personal pursuits.
I just generated over 100,000 friends, followers, and fans for 4 separate clients over the past 96 hours! The catch phrase immortalized by the Beatles “Money can’t buy me love”, has been repeated as the golden rule of relationships for decades by hopeful hearts and probably poor romantic novelists has now been proven a farce. What seemly separates social friend fishing as opposed to true personal interaction is the message relevance and method of continual, hierarchical engagement. The expected end result is not to collect friends, followers, and fans, but to create an army of like minded individuals that can be lead to a specific action. Whether that action is one of capitalism or cause, integrated socialization into any media campaign can create exponential results.
The idea of pay-per-friend came from my initial pay-per-call platform I built years ago, in which you only paid for qualified client calls generated from our advertising. Unlike pay-per-friend, pay per call is a one shot, one kill deal, when a call comes in the advertiser answers, the interaction is now over. Referral potential from a call in client is low. In a pay-per-friend model, targeted friend is engaged, we continue to feed the target client relevant interaction, which create additional interaction with the target friends circle of influence, thus semi-viral fellowship begins to grow exponentially.
Pay-Per-Friend campaign basic steps – minus social technology details
Step 0: Start with the end in mind – simply put, in a perfect world what is the end result? Do you want 10,000 calls into the governor’s office? Change the perception of consumer confidence in a specific product or brand? Or promote your stock to those most likely to buy? All is possible, but the goals need to be set ahead of time.
Step 1: Set the stage / Client targeting via digital listening – this means selectively harvesting followership by listening to the interactions within the social sphere and create immediate engagement based upon the relevance of the conversation which compliments a per determined position.
Step 2: Socially class engaged as a leader or lemming – simply stated, does the engaged follower have their own following. Dependent upon the influence of the engaged participant, semi-automated to personal social interaction may be the best course of action, as opposed to the lemmings that will follow and syndicate a social conversation just to be a part of the group, cause, or conversation.
Step 3: Cross connect social, mobile, and traditional media platforms – Create tasks that help identify your social army, and allow you as the brand, advertiser, or agency to connect those identified as influencers to cross pollinate to other social mediums. The easiest way this can be achieved is to give influencers access to social, mobile, and ad mob tools to elevate their influence status.
Step 4: Seed social action and let leadership take form – plant a single seed in the mind of an individual, and potentially change the world. Carefully crafted and timely interactions will yield a predictive result. Those of social influence will lead an army of followers to an end action. Dependent upon the levels of influence of your social sphere, interactions can range from syndicated to highly personal.
Step 5: Create a rewards system – rewards can be a powerful motional tool, but like any compensation, the expectation must meet reality. Doesn’t promise and not deliver, or you will create a viral A coup d'état.
Step 6: Measure the social success, optimize and repeat – from step 0 to now, friends were engaged, mobilization occurred, and most likely new opportunities emerged.
Step 7: RECYCLE – Just because you won the war, does not mean you throw your army away!
by John Cataldi | Nov 10, 2010 | Apple, Brand Strategy, Consumer Electronics, gPad, tablet computing, Technology Innovations
Hey Here’s an Idea, Let’s Create a New Brand, the GPAD Tablet to Compete against Apple’s iPad and Samsungs Galaxy for the Christmas Season, with little budget, resources, and time, just because some guy bet you a dollar you could not do it! I should have walked away, but he double dog dared me!
John Says, "for the GPad Life marketing strategy, we had to just reinvent all the rules of consumer electronics marketing, because they just did not fit into our timeline".
Have you ever looked in the mirror and said, what in the hell was I thinking? It all started when I had the pleasure of having a front row seat to a private session of Google, Apple, RIM, and a few other heavy weights talk about the future of developing applications (APPS) for smart phones at an Emory’s Wireless Forum event. In sitting on the first row I noticed a lot of iPads, so I had to ask Google, "I understand this session is about app development, but we should also have a question about supporting devices. So my question is Mr. Google (I rather not call him the Director of App Development for all Things Android or you’ll know who he is) when are you going to get man up to Apple and start developing a tablet friendly OS, before Apple gains any more market share. This is where I get into trouble without an entourage, because I am too encouraged to speak my mind without filters. Google looked at Apple, Apple Looked at Google, and Mr. Google answered it’s something we are discussing, and we have partners launching with our 2.1 and 2.2 OS. Another panel member stated that there is only one other competitor the Samsung Galaxy 7’ table hitting shelves Christmas. So I did a little research as well, and found one other minor player, which is a no name Chinese brand in Kmart which if anyone buys me one, please leave the gift receipt.
Anyway, to make a short blog post longer, I saw first the opportunity, as a Media ROI Evangelist, to help bridge the market between East and West, but when I talked to several Chinese manufactures they really only wanted to sell product, not build a brand. I felt their strategy a little shortsighted, since I see electronics as more of a commodity, especially in China.Then the ahha moment hit, I have launch dozens of brands into the marketplace, for a lot less than big brands spend. Plus, I have a fairly good rolodex of rainmakers that could compensate in areas which I was weak. To seal the deal, comes my long time friend, Bob who said, wow, very complex; you need at least $20-50+ million to launch out a brand to compete against those guys. I said naaaa, blah, blah, 3 minutes later we just bet a dollar that I could not create a competing national brand in 6 weeks.
Then it happened, I drank the Kool-aid, and became the first Gpad Life Evangelist. The more I researched the marketplace, the more a really saw a need for the market to change. If you LISTEN to what your consumers are telling you their needs, it is easy to meet their demands by… well I don't know, building the product they want, at the cost everyone can afford. Rumor has it that the first release of the GPad may even have a camera and 2x the memory than the iPad, and is bigger than the Samsung Galaxy, but these are only unsubstantiated rumors. 🙂
Anyway Bob… you will owe me a dollar this week, and for all of you buying a GPad Life this Christmas and beyond, be vocal, tell us what you want, tell your friends, rant, rave, or make fun of us. At the end of the day, all reviews are good reviews, because your helping us build a better product.
If anyone would like to know the details of what we have actually done (including very little sleep) for Project GPad aka GPad Life.. heres our first 5 weeks…..
1) Did all of the legal corporate crap… Corporate filings, CPA, Bank acct, etc
2) Used digital listing and influencer interviews concerning the iPad and people potentially looking for a second trusted source
3) Found several factories producing a better product than Apple (practiced my Chinese)
4) Created the brand GPAD, which I actually did previously for a prospective client, but he never paid me, good news is that I own the trademark.
5) Build a website, ecommerce store (launching in T-96 h)
6) Integrated the ecommerce engine into a fulfillment house
7) Established Logistics and reverse logistics protocols
8) Got cap less merchant account a great rate
9) Created Branding materials
10) Created a media partnerships launching on Radio, TV, Print, & more
11) Established call order center
12) Established customer service center (offshore) – I know but to expensive onshore
13) Tomorrow I am pulling in some a few hundred thousand to increase project staff, ad budgets, and overall project revenues.
All this done for A LOT less than most think, we should to make the project profitable for under $250,000 and 4 bodies. By the way, we also have other clients that we managed as well. The secret is let your vendors do the heavy lifting, and pay them on performance, not time. In the end, stuff gets done faster, and it saves you lots of money.
But what happens next? I have no idea. Let’s see if any of these GPAD balls come crashing down around my ears. For the time being, we may actually sell a few thousand pads, and change the way people perceive retail electronics marketing, and potentially creating new competitor to the tablet market by pulling in rapid consumer support and product adoption.
So tune in for the rest of the story as it unfolds. Good news is if we do well, feel free to buy GPad Life for 1 gazillion dollars, or you could always hire my firm Adreka for your next marketing launch 🙂
![Pay-Per-Friend, Social Matchmaking Just Became Big Business!]()
by John Cataldi | Oct 14, 2010 | Apple, Consumer Electronics, gPad, Mobile Technologies, tablet computing, Walmart
In a Tech Crunch interview, HP executive, Todd Bradley, estimates that tablets will be a $40 B market that is now in its infancy, within the next few years. Ironically, most major electronics manufactures missed the 2011 holiday season of tablet deployment expect Apple’s IPad that just entered into Walmart distribution hubs for national deployment.
Apple announced that it was ramping up its iPad production with aspirations to produce over 2M iPads per month. This could be seen as a defensive posture for Apple in an attempt to saturate the market in anticipation of Google’s android approach, but in the absence of any competition, I believe there will be the demand. The social rumor mill is a buzz about the Walmart – Apple partnership to include Walmart's “strong recommending” to their electronic's vendors NOT produce tablet computing platforms that would compete against the iPad, thus greatly decreasing the potential for other thin clients in entering the market prior to the holiday rush according to one consumer electronics importer wishing not to be identified.
What is gold for tablet manufactures is poison for any manufacture in the PC space as thin clients may soon replace the laptop, or even desktop. But given processing speed, battery life, applications, and even limitations in conductivity I wouldn’t throw away your desktops until next year.
My predictions for this Christmas season expect to see a lot of independents push into the marketplace. Distribution channels are key for a competitive lockdown in the market place. Those that have product, marketing, and distribution in place prior to the November 15th holiday rush stand to do very well this holiday season.
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