We’re looking for two passionate, hard working folks to fill a few very important roles at Votigo. If you’d like help revolutionize online marketing send us your resume.

• Product Manager, Social Media

• Director of Social Media Sales

This Thursday August 7^th Mike will be joining an impressive panel of social media experts to discuss the topic of “Social Networks & User Generated Media as a Technology Challenge: The Platform, the Content & the Network”. The discussion will focus on what it takes to create and maintain a successful social network and user-generated media site. The panel is part of the three day Building Blocks 2008 conferences in San Jose, CA put on by Digital Hollywood, Inc. and CES. This is a great event covering the transformation of consumer electronics, entertainment and media across the platforms of mobile, broadband, social media, video and communications.

If you’re attending the event be sure to catch the discussion and say hello to Mike.

Kohl’s Department Stores Facebook Application Launches
We launched a new video & photo contest application for the Kohl’s Denim Story Video Contest on Facebook.  We worked with Kohl’s, appssavvy, Universal McCann, and Intuwin to strategize, design and develop the application.  Votigo handled all design and development.  We’re all very excited about the launch of the campaign!  Check it out http://apps.facebook.com/kohlscontest

This is a good article that talks about all the promotion being put behind the campaign as well as KOHL’s objectives.

We just announced the launch of L’oreal’s Shu Uemura Art of Hair Irondesign Style Challenge. We created a unique contest site with multiple photo upload and a sophisticated multi-criteria ranking system for user-voting as well as all the usual engagement features like commenting, customizable member profiles, sharing functionality, and friend/favorite connections.

Here’s a link to the press release

We’re pleased to announce that Mike will be presenting a case study on the user-generated video contest we ran for the Ethanol Promotions & Information Council earlier this year at the SWAT Summit conference in San Francisco this Thursday, July 17th.

This conference is for anyone who wants to be a leader in the next generation of marketing and advertising — and for the publishers, developers, and ad networks who work with them. We hope to see you there!

Calling all Artists, Designers, and Art Lovers! Pandora needs your help to support youth music education around the world.

We are excited to announce the launch of the Second Annual Pandora Poster Contest. The goal is simple: create a poster about Pandora - the rest is up to your imagination. Feel free to explore themes of music, technology, philanthropy, music education, or anything else that inspires you.

Last year’s contest was a huge success with over 800 amazing poster entries and we expect this year to be even better. Checkout the 2007 winners!

In conjunction with AMP Agency and Brand Image Productions Votigo just launched a very cool singing contest for Simon Malls. The Simon dTour Singing Competition is a karaoke competition that takes place at 24 Simon Malls across the country coinciding with the Simon dTour Live concert tour. What excites me most about this particular contest is how effectively it bridges offline and online marketing.

Contestants enter the contest in a specially designed video booth created by Brand Image Productions at malls across the country. Those video entries are then automatically uploaded into the Votigo system and entrants are notified via email that their entry is live and given access to viral tools and widgets to promote their entries.  It’s a pretty slick system!

Normally any marketing or promotion done at a mall or a physical location would be limited to that time period and location. By adding an online, social component to this campaign Simon Malls can extend their campaign and increase their reach.

To find out if the competition is coming to a mall near you or to view and vote for the entries visit the Simon dTour Singing Competition Site.  

This is the second installment in a monthly series on Adotas from Votigo, CEO Mike La Rotonda.

Engagement, engagement, engagement! That’s where the world of online advertising is going. Why now? What’s changed? What makes engagement so important?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years you know that the Web has become exponentially more social. It’s no longer simply another broadcast medium like television and radio. It’s a communication platform where friends, family, classmates, co-workers, brands and customers can gather and communicate with each other in a more vibrant way than ever before. If not already, the Internet is rapidly becoming our primary means of communication. Major contributing factors leading to this point include:

• 80%+ of active Internet users now have a broadband connection, so more people are getting online with connections that can handle the quick transfer of large amounts of data;
• Digital cameras have proliferated, making photo-sharing nearly as common as a telephone call;
• Social features like commenting, “share this” and tagging have become integrated into mainstream sites;
• Social networking, blogging and user-generated contest sites have developed and grown at such a rate that they have changed our entire notion of what Web content can be.

All of these factors lead to an Internet population that spends a lot of time online and actively shares and communicates with friends (and for some even strangers). For advertisers, this creates a perfect storm for engagement.

For the purposes of this discussion, I define engagement as the communication between a brand and its customer, a brand and its potential customer or between two customers. Put simply, for engagement to happen, there must be some back and forth between folks. A comment on a photo or blog post, the sharing of a widget ad, the submission of a photo or video into a contest or the emailing of a coupon to a friend are all great examples of engagement in advertising.

Three recent examples that I thought were particularly effective were the Scion Speak campaign, the India Jones “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” Facebook promotion and H&R Block’s use of Twitter.

In the Scion campaign users could create their own custom “coat of arms” to reflect their personalities. These coats of arms could be made into window decals or even airbrushed onto creators’ Scions. For Scion, this campaign reinforced the unique customization options of the car (a key selling point) and allowed Scion to learn more about the varied personalities of their customers. On the flip side, customers were able to express their individuality. Customers became engaged with the brand to create something together.

For the recent release of the Indiana Jones movie, “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” Paramount Pictures unleashed a massive campaign on Facebook that included custom applications, photos, videos, fan connections, and more. What I liked best about the campaign was it released 250,000 free Indy-branded Fedora virtual gifts. The first 250,000 Facebook users could send one of these limited virtual gifts to a friend. The Fedora’s were gone within 12 hours, a record for Facebook. Although simple, this is a great example of an advertiser integrating effectively into an existing social network and engaging with users without being interruptive and loud.

The last example technically isn’t even advertising. There was no media buy, no creative and no agency involved. During the past tax, season representatives from H&R Block monitored activity on Twitter for tax-related questions and offered suggestions from their H&R Block profiles. What a terrific way to communicate with existing and potential customers! The key to the success of this initiative was that H&R Block was transparent and it offered advice and suggestions without hard selling its services.

These examples show that consumers are hungry for and receptive to innovative approaches that appeal to their social needs without disrupting their user experiences. As social media and social networks continue to evolve, engagement will become the backbone of online advertising. As marketers, we must also evolve in how we evaluate the effectiveness of a campaign. I foresee click through rates and impressions being replaced by engagement metrics, such as, “how many interactions did users have with my campaign?” or “how many times was my message virally spread?”

Why is this so important? If you can engage with your customers you have built the deepest possible bond with them. And that’s good business.

Wow! This was an awesome contest with some very creative and original entries. There were over 50 commercials created by users to promote the benefits of ethanol. The turnout was amazing as the entries garnered over 170,000 views! Thanks to all of you who entered and voted. You can see the winners here. And stay tuned to as the grand prize winning video will be aired as a commercial during an upcoming Indy Car race on national television.