by Brian Solis via PR 2.0

The latest viral video on the Web today isn’t related to an upcoming summer blockbuster, nor the next Chocolate Rain sensation or even the next Obama Girl. Today’s social video frenzy is a real time case study of what happens when the employees of a franchise use online video to inadvertently cause a global domino effect that financially and emotionally impacts other franchises, employees, customers as well as bruising the corporate brand overall.

Two employees from an individually owned Domino’s store shot and shared a few devastating videos that will appall anyone and everyone who can actually stomach them. Warning: If you like fast food or every question what happens behind the scenes, don’t watch these videos.

While those individuals claim that the antics were intended to be a prank and that no food was ever sent to customers, the mere prospect of something like this being potentially plausible was enough to inject doubt into the minds of paying consumers. The content was removed by YouTube, but spending a few minutes on Google or Yahoo Search will unearth a bevy of remixes and collages.

GoodAsYou ran the original videos and in turn, also corresponded with Domino’s corporate offices.

Tim McIntyre, Vice President, Communications led the effort to kill the videos wherever possible while investigating the clues that would identify the local store and the offending employees.

Email 1:

Thank you for bringing these to our attention. I don’t have the words to say how repulsed I am by this – other than to say that these two individuals do not represent that 125,000 people in 60 countries who work hard every day to make good food and provide great customer service. I’ve turned this over to our security department. We will find them. There are far too many clues that will allow us to determine their location quite easily.

Regards,

Tim McIntyre
Vice President, Communications
Domino’s Pizza, LLC

Email 2:

We just got off the phone with the franchise owner, who was absolutely dumbfounded by this. He has told us that he will be terminating their employment effective immediately. We suggested that he call them and get a written statement from them, asking them to “explain” (to the extent anyone can, really) their actions. We are also seeking legal counsel to see what kind of action we can take against them for damage to the brand.

You are welcome to use anything I’ve sent to you in the past 24 hours. I do want to thank you for bringing this to our attention…I just wish it hadn’t been posted so prominently on your web site…while it was certainly fair game, it does hurt the company and the thousands of people we employ in this country whether it’s intended or not.

Regards,

Tim

Tim McIntyre
Vice President, Communications
Domino’s Pizza, LLC

Domino’s will surely suffer significant financial losses as a result of these “fake” videos and the tidal wave of public disgust that will surely crash over social networks. Sales will thin similar to the cascading effect that we witnessed during the unfortunate Wendy’s chili fiasco.

Domino’s is on the right track. By removing the first wave of videos, the company bought itself time to regroup, research, and plan its next moves. As we all know however, the Social Web is a ripe and fertile playground for those seeking and sharing timely and material content, so the video and outlying conversations will escalate before they dissipate.

Listening, responding, and reassuring the public that this is an isolated event, using a combination of traditional and social mediums are instrumental in steering perception, slowing the bleeding, assessing damage, and ultimately creating and implementing a sweeping campaign to instill trust in the Domino’s brand. This must be done at the local and national levels. Each franchise is supported by its own locale and geographic community.

Amplifying the voices and the faces of trustworthy employees, customers, and managers can help us convey a believable and sympathetic persona that offers something or someone to connect to for those open to the other side of the story.

Ultimately, this will run it’s course. Steering it and limiting the monetary and brand damages is paramount now and in the days and weeks to come. In the end, Domino’s has a price to pay for these actions as its employees, whether or not they’re trained, managed, or guided, are the ambassadors for the company brand with or without customers present.

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by Brian Solis

Zappos boasts one of the most loyal and enthusiastic communities of customers on the Web. Prior to SXSW Interactive, Steve Rosenbaum of Magnify.net, Stephanie Agresta, and I brianstormed ways for ecstatic customers to capture and share the happiness that Tony Hsieh and the Zappos team have worked so hard to package in every box.

The idea debuted at SXSW. To kick things off, we invited several of our friends to help mark the occasion by ordering something special from Zappos. We shipped the boxes to Austin Texas where they allowed us to capture their BoxBreak on camera. Guy Kawasaki, Tara Hunt, Kevin Rose, Erica O’Grady, Frank Gruber, Erin Kotecki Vest @queenofspain, Chris Brogan, Cathy Brooks, Shira Lazar, and others shared their happiness with us and now we’re hoping you’ll do the same.

The video from the event is currently hosted on Zappos.tv

Introducing Zappos BoxBreaks…

BoxBreaks are an emerging phenomenon on the Web that features video of someone opening a box using a simple Web or Flip cam and sharing what’s inside the box with everyone on the Social Web.

In honor of the successful debut at SXSW, Magnify.net and Zappos partnered to host a BoxBreak contest for ALL Zappos customers. Just shoot a video of you opening your Zappos box and share it at Zappos.tv. The contest is already underway and ends on April 30, 2009. Results will post on May 1st.

Enter here.

Rules here.

Long live Zappos and the Zappos BoxBreak! Share your happiness with the world!

Pictures from the live BoxBreaks at SXSW in the TechSet Windws Mobile Blogger Lounge…

Chris Brogan

Guy Kawasaki

Tara Hunt

Erica O’Grady

Tony Hsieh

Additional pictures are on Flickr.

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Young. Female. Entrepreneur.

by Marissa Louie

Darlings, throw your effen hands up. I’m proud of you. Not only are you a Silicon Valley Anomaly, you’re probably really hot too. And under 40.

Fotki

Shabooya sha sha shabooya ROLL CALL! Who here is a young female entrepreneur? My fearless darlings, wear your company logo on your chest. Comment on this post and I’m your new girlfriend for life. Or call me/text me at (510) 375-1941 to join the Girl Gang. The Girl Gangster Entrepreneurs.

You know you’re a young female entrepreneur in the Internet biz when:

-TEAM-

-1- You work for The Man The Woman. What could be better?!
-2- You have an office suite in a Milpitas office park, but you primarily spend time in your Nob Hill San Francisco office space with a kitchen, backyard, overhead projector, and wi-fi. No wait, you turn a hip local coffee shop like Sugar Cafe into your third office so you can do Entrepreneur 2 Entrepreneur Office Hours with other cool people. Because you, honey, are VIRAL by nature.
-3- You’re the CEO but the rest of the team wants to take care of you. You might even be the youngest person on the team, but have no problem managing others who are twice your age. You have experience, balls, or both.
-4- Your venture has a 80-20 ratio of males to females. Out of your 16 core team members, only 3 are female. You make sure the females and males are treated by merit.
-5- Nobody can truly hurt you. But if somebody tries to hurt your team, it’s OVER for them.

PARTIES AND TIME MANAGEMENT-

-1- You sometimes get caught wearing full-on party gear by your Internet biz friends at non-tech events. And you get away with it. Just make sure your reputation is intact and that you have a healthy work-to-party ratio. Transition between being Plain Jane and Janet Jackson effortlessly.
-2- Angels and VCs – real or fake? You can tell a real Gucci purse from a fake, so you should differentiate the genuine investors from the fake. The genuine ones might be able to really help you. But if they really just want to waste your time fantasizing about you over dinner, Filter. Them. Out.

-REPUTATION-

-1- Your Woman Charm gives you home field advantage. Turn it on at the right times, because you are a rare specimen in the Valley. It helps you stand out in a crowd, at a party, at a press conference, during a video interview. It may even differentiate your blog. Advertise yourself and turn that into revenue.
-2- It’s 11pm and you’re at Safeway after the Digg party. You get introduced to a connector VIP like Sanford Barr of Stirr. He asks what you do. He has a puzzled look on his face when you tell him how your company got started, and you just know he’s seen everything in the Valley. Then he says he knows your company’s name. (You think he’s kiddin’ ya.) But then he even knows your last name. Nice!
-3- You are a rogue. A stubborn, fearless, rogue. You often do the stupid thing. It gets you in trouble at work, with family, with friends, and with love interests. If you channel it correctly and you get a little lucky, it can also propel you towards entrepreneurial success.

-LIFE HACKS-

-1- You no longer have to wear corporate raider gear but can wear lifehack gym clothes that pass as business casual all day long.
-2- On the Caltrain from San Francisco to Palo Alto, you ask an engineer from hi5 how old he thinks you are. He sneaks in a look at your website bio via wireless card. He says, “You can’t be older than 38. You’re definitely not 40. Are you 35?” ZOMG what a compliment.
-3- You’ve managed your own life so that you have no kids, no husband, and no responsibilities to run home to, giving you free reign of your time and energy. Ahh. If there is a male in your life, he is helping you take care of the responsibilities. You may want to consider a Massey Prenup if it’s not too late, though.
-4- You know you don’t need an MBA. Don’t waste the precious youth, vivacity, and money you could’ve spent on your startup on a tier-one B-school just to get contacts. If you really want to take the easy way out, work at a country club or SF Tennis Club for $8 an hour, lead gen, and become a trophy wife.

-HAPPINESS-

-1- Strangers, friends, and your family are proud of you. Except if you have rich a$$ relatives, they might not be so supportive (to which you pay no mind – just look at Paris Hilton versus the Hilton Hotel Family). Accept the good vibes, but don’t embrace it too much lest you get lazy. Don’t let it feed your short-term ego too much either. Because you might be future President of the Billionaire Girls Club and can give back to society for OPK (other people’s kids).
-2- You’ve come to love pain. Because you turn negative into positive like no other, and nobody can break you. You are fearless, fun, female, and you rock. The bounce in your step shows it.
-3- You could cast an entire Les Miserables play with your unhappy yuppie friends. A 5 year run, plus. But you, darling, are passionate and happy.
-4- You just do it. These are your dreams? D@mn the consequences. F**k the naysayers. Because you know that for every year that passes, your risk tolerance as well as your je ne sais quoi diminish. REVOLT! REBEL!

Young female entrepreneurs, if any of this rings a bell with you, JOIN THE GIRL GANG by texting me at (510) 375-1941 anytime because I don’t sleep.

Marissa Louie is the Founder and CEO of AD Village (http://ad-village.com) which helps bloggers monetize and advertisers optimize. If you liked this post, you might also like 10+ Funniest Angel and VC Blog Posts and The Future Co-existence of PR and Advertising. She also announces Entrepreneur 2 Entrepreneur office hours via Twitter.

What is viral marketing?

Friends in social media and social networks have asked me for my perspective at gatherings and recent conferences like BizTechDay and SNAP Summit. I used to work at Slideshare, which I joined partially because I was fascinated that it had spent $0 on marketing yet was ranked around 2100 on Alexa. During my first three months, I played a minor part in contributing to its skyrocketing from 2100 to a rank of up to 800. Talk about viral!

There is nothing more satisfying to me than spreading my love through viral marketing. When it comes to warm fuzzies, the more I receive, the more I give back.

Here, I break down the components of viral marketing. Viral marketing is like an interconnected set of gears, or wheels: if one wheel turns, it causes the other wheels to turn.

view on flickr

Here are the aspects of viral marketing you can start using now:

Content and Relevancy

• Viral hooks: I caught up with Dave Morin, a mastermind behind the really really viral Facebook Platform, at the SNAP Summit on Monday. He mentioned that every social network should have viral hooks that pull from relevant and interesting information.
• Leverage online presence: Tap into the online identity of your users across multiple channels. What are the online behaviors of your target audience? Where do they go to play? Blogs, social networks, social media, advertising playgrounds, news sites, etc.
• Brand memorability: Let your viral marketing campaign make use of your current brand value, and also use the campaign to reinforce and increase your brand value. If brand awareness is the goal of your campaign, do an indirect sales pitch (not a direct sales pitch.)
• Useful, relevant information: Make it so and your users will not only believe you, but love you and spread the love for you. Your product’s information must be distinctive and useful, not just average. Add value, don’t diminish it!
• Content – great, new, consistent: This increases your customer base, and furthermore your readership and subscribership. Cater your content towards attracting, retaining, and encouraging the increase of good clients. Let them rely on you, since you *are* a trusted friend.

Action:

• Call to Action: Trigger actions and behaviors by your audience. Make it easy for them to pass the word along. Then, boom! It can spread like wildfire.
• Call to Passion: Passion breeds virality. Trigger strong reactions. Or evoke the (love factor) with your product, service, or website: make them justifiably enamored. Make your audience want it, crave it, need it NO MATTER WHAT.
  

  Passion is the new voice of reason (I can barely contain my excitement as the CEO of AD Village. I *heart* my fellow Villagers.
  

• Authentic: Have a personal voice that resonates with your target audience.
• Forwardability, Transferability: Make something that others are compelled to forward to others. Once they forward it, don’t let the virality stop there: have follow up calls to action within your viral campaign. Push your medium: email, RSS feeds, pasted links, and sharing within instant message chat clients.

Source | Donate

Planning and Implementation

• Scalability: Make sure you’re ready for the traffic resulting from your viral campaign. Copy + paste the basic foundation of your viral campaign into future campaigns so that users can follow a common theme.
• Improvement: Monitor the metrics of your viral marketing campaign so you can improve its results and so you can compare it to those of future campaigns. Sales, revenue, page views, Comscore and Alexa stats, Google rank, new customers, and way more. Get user reviews. Let’s aim to build a solid company that can grow and scale!
• Take Risks: The shock factor. Awe, humor, passion, differentiation. Take a risk, elicit a response.
• Prioritize Time and ROI: Viral marketing does not always make sense for everyone. Make sure your viral campaigns are used to reach your target market.

Price

• Cheap: With so many avenues to do viral marketing, you don’t have to blow your advertising budget. If done well, cost-effective viral campaigns can accomplish your goals.
• Earn $: For the pros only. Make money off of the viral campaign itself. If you’re aiming to convert sales for your company via viral, do a direct sales pitch, where you’re blatantly pitching your product, service, or website.

Start turning a viral wheel today! Email me if you’d like to get together to spin ideas. We frequently do casual OTF (On The Fly) Entrepreneur 2 Entrepreneur chats over coffee and lunch in San Francisco, so make sure to follow my tweets on Twitter.

Marissa Louie founded AD Village (http://ad-village.com) to empower bloggers to maximize their ad space monetization and to enable advertisers to improve their audience targeting. She has written 10+ Funniest Angel and VC Blog Posts October 2008, 10 Types of Ad Targeting, Top 10 Tips to Increase Traffic to Your Blog, and dabbles in blog poetry like *I REVOLT* (A Blog Monetization Poem). She is one of the Geekgirl GFs (The Gigis) and gets esoteric on Twitter.

by Michelle Lentz

GoGrid has launched a viral campaign to inform and illustrate cloud computing. Now, I’m pretty sure I have my finger on the general concept of cloud computing, but really, how much do I need to know? Michael Sheehan, Technology Evangelist of GoGrid, explained it to me this way:

“The point about “the cloud” is that you shouldn’t have to worry about where the servers are (meaning where the provider of the cloud service is). You could have multiple data centers around the world, but to the buyer of the service, it is just that, a service. And to the end-user, it shouldn’t matter (much like you don’t really care where your Gmail account server is…you probably hit multiple data centers around the world depending on where you are accessing it).”

I found the GMail example really hit home. I think there are a lot of people out there who care a lot about where the data centers are located and such, but the average user? Not so much.  So, back to that viral campaign. GoGrid has several rather funny videos out there, accessible via the fun nohardware.com or via YouTube. I’m just going to post one, as video and I are often at odds, but here are links to the others:

Cloud Computing in Plain English (an homage of sorts to Common Craft), which made me laugh several times

NoHardware.com – video 1, with guns a blazing.

NoHardware.com – video 2, equally as fun and, yes, REAL. That one is posted below.

The point being, of course, is to stop worrying about whether your server is bulletproof and just get comfy in the Cloud.

–
Contact Michelle with your news, apps, and events via email, Twitter, Pownce, or FriendFeed. Visit Michelle at Wine-Girl.net and Write Technology. You can also catch Michelle presenting on Twitter at the upcoming DevLearn ’08 in San Jose.

Who is Bacon Man?

Is this a new viral video and if so, who’s behind it and why?

We found this series of videos very intriguing, but also pleasantly random, and some of us are even contemplating a Bacon Man costume for Halloween…it was either this or Tina Fey as Sarah Palin!

Enjoy #baconman!

Bacon Man Swinging

Bacon Man Hitchhiking

Bacon Man Tanning (Crispy Bacon!)

words and pictures by Brian Solis

Dave McClure lives up to his online persona of the Master of 500 Hats. He’s a successful entrepreneur, angel investor, conference organizer, connector of incredible people, and overall, a tremendous resource to the startup community.

Dave’s latest endeavor is a series of intimate, very exclusive, and incredibly valuable conversation-based dinners. Startup2Startup is a group of Silicon Valley geeks, entrepreneurs, and investors dedicated to educating and helping the next generation of Internet startups. The group meets monthly over dinner to discuss relevant topics in technology and entrepreneurship, connect with new people and companies, and most importantly share real world knowledge and experience – successes and failures.

The June 2008 event was host to a very special speaker, Chad Hurley, co-founder of a little site called YouTube. Hurley shared his experiences from inception to acquisition, and he held the audience captive until the end.

I’ll share some of the highlights from his trip down memory lane and also some of his insights and lessons learned along the way.

In the pre-launch days of YouTube, the team was absolutely focused on creating a video startup, but their business model and target markets were unclear. However, they soon realized that they needed to create a video upload site around a community, much in the same way Flickr was enjoying success with photos.

After a few days, the team brainstormed a good name and a memorable and consumer-friendly logo, which Chad actually designed. For those who don’t already know this, Hurley’s background is in design and it’s his attention to detail that provides the necessary perspective to accurately and successfully influence the look and feel, consumer friendliness, and new features implemented at the site.

Everything from the name, logo, and look was about popular culture. And as Hurley put it, “It was a chance to affect people’s lives.”

Like most startups, YouTube employees worked from their homes as well as the token garage that housed many startups over the years – going back to the early days of HP’s path to history.

They employed roughly 8 – 10 dedicated enthusiasts who were working without pay. Hurley told them, “that we’d work it out.” But, more importantly, he shared his tips for inspiring a team, especially a team not earning wages. This is the sweat equity that transforms into a form of real capital.

Chad emphasized, “The team believed in the project and in each other. It was about trust and friendship.”

He also reminded entrepreneurs that the biggest challenge of any startup is to find the right people to build a successful company, “You need a team to work well together to make it a reality. It’s the thing you can’t lose sight of. And, have fun along the way.”

The pains associated with the company’s early days would quickly become stories that they would tell to friends and family (and attendees at conferences) as a distant, but inspiring story.

Once YouTube hit the blogosphere and Slashdot, they never looked back.

Almost immediately, according to Chad, “the team evolved from the garage to working and eating at Sequoia’s office – the company’s initial investor.”

While at Sequoia’s office, YouTube hit one million video views per day.

His story for seeking YouTube’s Series A was fascinating and almost goes against everything entrepreneurs are conditioned to believe and follow.

The company started in January 2005 and closed its first round in November. They opted to bypass angel funding because they needed the level of financing that would help them scale along with the intense requirements that Web video demands.

“We didn’t have a presentation, we had a product and stats,” explained Hurley. “It wasn’t a business idea; it was a solution that we were pitching. We skipped the entire angel process because it was going to be expensive to store all of these videos.“

After making the rounds up and down the infamous Sand Hill Road, the team secured its first round of $3.5 million through Sequoia and its network of Paypal contacts. This initial round was enough to build out the infrastructure they needed to grow and be successful – for the time being.

I didn’t get a chance to ask, and perhaps if Chad reads this, he can reach out…my question is, did the Paypal connections allows them to cut corners? Obviously, Roelof Botha of Sequoia saw the vision, but what was the response from other VCs? Did they get it or would business plans and presentations have helped bring others onboard? What was the back story on the reaction of others?

As the company grew, the team realized that they might be onto something much bigger. Early on, Nike had a breakout hit with a soccer video. Hurley, Steve Chen and investor Roelof Botha went to Nike HQ in Oregon to talk about it. Although nothing came from the meeting, the team realized that YouTube could play host to commercial solutions in addition to personal use – helping people and brands reach a mass audience.

Concurrently, the team’s resources were focused on creating a community that fostered the discovery and sharing of videos and also protecting or removing the content based on the owner’s rights. Chad mentioned that one of YouTube’s biggest differentiators, a milestone that the press usually misses, is that YouTube was one of the first companies to automate the DMCA process.

While, there are now hundreds of competitors, YouTube has and always will be focused on building solutions for consumers, businesses, the industry, and also the content. They’re dedicated to providing free and legal ways to use content, and as Hurley explained, “Really what it comes down to, what people miss, is that we created a community around video – and it continues to grow to this day.”

As the company grew wildly, so did their reliance on scale, servers, and people. YouTube’s Series B extended the life of the company, but not indefinitely. As the company grew, they were always facing bandwidth, growth, and storage issues. Raising another series of financing later in the company’s lifespan appeared as a less attractive proposition.

Just to give you an idea of the infrastructure required to support a seemingly never-ending onslaught of video, the company today serves hundreds of millions of videos a day and receives over 13 hours of video every minute, and they’re still in the process of growing.

When it came to the state and future of advertising and online video, his honesty was also refreshing. As he pointed out to those wondering about revenue and monetization, Hurley expressed, “The ad market for online video is just developing. YouTube has only been around for three years. Traditional media has had 50+ years to work on its business model. One of the nice things about working with Google, is that we’re on the same page for monetizing content.”

The audience goes where the video is, and that’s why a library of content is critical. It creates and facilitates a network effect. Since its inception, YouTube wanted to build a community that was easy to use, and that philosophy continues today.

The company moved from San Mateo to San Bruno on the day the Google deal was officially announced. A funny little story he shared, is that the press showed up to their old office, allowing them to elude reporters.

What many didn’t realize is that the deal was actually closed within two weeks. It was an important decision to make, and it really came to a head the weekend before it was announced. But they knew it was the right thing to do.

Chad admitted, “I’m not sure any of this would have been possible without Google. Even today, they still let us run things our way, which is how we can keep our culture alive, not only in our office, but in the YouTube video community as well.”

YouTube continues to expand and grow at a blinding pace. The YouTube team, at the very beginning, wanted to create something that would allow people to create a real community around video. But in his own words, “We never anticipated when we started this site we would have such a profound effect on popular culture, that really just by unlocking this video solution and creating this global audience behind what we were doing, we’re really just enabling so many more people to express their views, not only their talents, but to get a message out there, and that’s what really drives us.”

He continued, “What continues to inspire us is that we’re providing an opportunity to prove the experience and express their views, help people monetize content, help candidates in political races, help people make money. We’re supporting and fostering creativity. We’re taking talent to the next level and helping people sign a record contract or a TV deal.”

Hurley provided a brief glimpse into what’s next for YouTube. The company views the community as a platform and through its API program, they plan on making that platform portable and pervasive. The future of online video is the ability to access it across the landscape of popular convergence appliances, such as the iPhone, TIVO, AppleTV, etc.

“We want to make YouTube a super distribution hub for your media, available on every device, around the world, in any language.”

The company is also innovating around its upload API to make it easier for people to share content outside of the PC. One such example is in gaming. The highly anticipated game of the year is Spore, and YouTube integrated its uploader for gamers to capture and upload gameplay directly to YouTube.

“We’re opening it up to expand the experience,” Hurley exclaimed.

Ultimately YouTube is an incredible story, one that is still being written today.

The founders and the team, built a system that relied on the community and as such, provided people with the tools to protect that community. To date, it’s one of the largest proactive communities online. Without content, there would be no community. And, viewers are the enabling force that determines the popularity of that content.

Now employing up to 350 people, the team continues to focus on its original premise. They’re providing solutions for people and businesses to share their stories, visually.

Chad and Steve created a new genre of storytelling, which has influenced the evolution of communities, communications, branding, advertising, broadcast media, and entertainment. It’s changing the game and forcing traditional media to adapt the new rules of engagement that companies such as YouTube, Flickr, and other community-powered networks are creating.

Most importantly, YouTube is leading the way for people to create their own destinies using video. We’re empowered with the tools and the community to express our creativity, thoughts, expertise, ideas, and passions, and with a little luck and strategic marketing, we can cultivate communities around our personal and professional brands.

YouTube, Broadcast Yourself.

Additional pictures from the event:

Roelof Botha of Sequoia Capital

Dave McClure

Eric Eldon of VentureBeat

Debbie Landa of Dealmaker Media and Jessica Alter of AOL

See my album on flickr for more pictures from the event.

For video from the event, visit Liz Gannes’ story on NewTeeVee.

See PR 2.0 for a deeper analysis of Youtube and Social Media. Also view some of the top videos from people who leveraged their success on Youtube into real world fame.

Connect with me on Twitter, Jaiku, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pownce, Plaxo, FriendFeed, or Facebook.