In celebration of the Obamas recent announcement to build more fuel efficient cars. I thought it would fitting to give away a wallpaper of a hot rod and a hot chick. Why a hot rod? Well I wanted to use a Prius but found that it just did  not look good decaled up!

This photo illustration I did a quite some time ago, and was in a group Hot Rod show at Vancouver's now defunct Moon base Gallery run by Atomos.

There are lots of sizes and even included an iPhone size so that you can add some sas to your mobile desktop. Let me know if you would like a Blackberry size and I make that too.

Wallpaper Sizes [Preview]: 1024x768, 1200x1024, 1280x800, 1440x900, 1680x1050, 1920x1200, and the iPhone

I had the pleasure of being able to participate in Wolf Blass' 75th birthday celebration last Monday at the Hotel Vancouver. I had intended to write about it on my personal blog but after hearing Wolf speak about his early days of guerilla marketing, I realized the story belonged here instead.

II was not sure what to expect for this around-the-world birthday celebration, which was part PR for Wolf Blass Winery, and part lead-up to the launch of Blass' new book. We tasted wine and ate appetizers for nearly an hour before he and his travelling partner George Samios, from Fosters Wine Estates, hit the stage. In a thick Aussie accent, George introduced him as "Wolfy," and I quickly understood that this was a man who liked to have fun, make great wine, and knew how to sell it in every way.

Born and trained in winemaking and viticulture in what was then East Germany in 1934, Blass immigrated to Australia's Barossa Valley in 1960 with only 100 pounds in his pocket. There, he worked as a sparkling wines manager for Kaiser Stuhl Co-operative. Initially, he had wanted to go to Venezuela because of what he referred to with a wink as more "Cha, cha, cha," but there was a civil war on, so he shifted plans and wound up in Australia. I suspect that things may have been very different in the wine industry had Blass made it to his original destination. After 10 or so years as a technical advisor to many different wineries, he decided to make his own wine, and in 1973 created Wolf Blass Wines International. Wolf said the atmosphere for drinking and understanding wine in Australia was rather rudimentary-after all, this was beer country; thus, wine would have to be positioned and marketed very differently.

First, Blass identified a target group whom he could most easily persuade to drink wine. Wolf recognized that Australian women were typically not included in social drinking, and decided that "bubbly" would convince them otherwise. He then looked around at what was popular at the time, and as he put it, "Australians are mad gamblers and they love their racing and football." He noticed these popular sports featured a bold colour aesthetic on jerseys worn by the athletes. One very popular football team had a bright yellow jersey he particularly favoured, and believed yellow was a colour that the target audience would relate to. So, his now world-famous first line of wines was named Yellow Label and as he stated, "It just took off, and from then on it was going to be colours and not varietals." Inspired by Johnny Walker whiskey and its coloured label approach, Blass' colour choice for the second label in his line was adapted to green for the product's launch in Ireland. Blass' colour-coded system was easy for people to remember, as they could ask for it by Yellow Label first, and varietal second. The system has been so successful, in fact, it is now being used by the French for Cognacs and Bordeaux wines. Hell, the Scottish are even using it for the selling of fine whiskey!

When Blass started, there was very little money for advertising and he needed to think about how to maximize his limited funds. Back then, the football fields were not ringed with end-to-end billboards as they are today. When football matches were being televised, there was only one camera filming the games. Wolf would hand-paint advertisements on bed sheets, and hang them over the fence at the far end of the field. He worked out a side deal with the camera man to exchange a bottle of wine for each frame-up on the branded sheet. Quite often as the action was happening at the other end of the field, the camera would be fixed on Blass' banner, to the puzzlement of viewers. Those were the early days of guerilla marketing; Guy Kawasaki would be proud.

Wolf stated his belief that opportunities start with a conversation, and that is why his conversation is now personally taking him on a worldwide speaking tour to talk with brand loyalists and fans of Wolf Blass Wines. His discussion of the role of technology in the way people and brands are now connecting made me think of the new wine conversationalist from Wine Library TV, Gary Vaynerchuk, Although Gary doesn't make wine, he talks about it passionately and has similarly broken down barriers to entry. Through social media and modern guerilla marketing techniques, he is marketing wine in ways that resonate with real people. It's interesting to see what is old become new again.

From clear and easy to remember packaging systems, to low-fi guerilla tactics involving homemade bed sheets and cases of wine for cameramen, Wolf Blass has made a huge impact on how the world thinks about wine. Not only did he become a master vintner, but unlike so many artists, he knew how to sell it to people that didn't even know they wanted it.

In a recent Adage article, using data from the research firm Hitwise, t was reported that Facebook now accounts for more referral traffic to some sites than Google. Facebook now has a confirmed number of registered users in the range of 200 million. Social networking has grown a whopping 93 percent since 2006; the amount of time people spend communicating online has increased from 18 to 32 percent of their total online time.[1] The actions performed in Facebook are shifting as well; users spend a good portion of their time on the newly redesigned newsfeed page, where they can quickly scan for status updates and user-recommended videos, products, and  articles. Similar streams in Twitter and FriendFeed are also becoming powerful recommendation engines. Further, the low click-through rate of banners on social media sites is even further below the already shockingly low industry average of .01%-.02%. These low results are primarily due to the highly focused activity performed by users on social media sites, and also explain why media placement companies have bluntly told me, "Social media does not work for online advertising."

The numbers:

• Last fall, it was reported that 40 hours a month are spent online by the average internet user in North America.[2]

• Of those online, 75% are spending time in the social networking and social media space.[3]

• The the industry attributes a .1%-.2% click though rate on most web banners and that number drops further on social networking activity.

• Social networking has grown 93% since 2006.[1]

Now, let's look at some of my anecdotal social media link click-through activity. According to mrtweet.com, a Twitter user recommendation site, I post an average of 42 tweets a day. 28 percent of my posts contain links; that's about 12 links per day. I use Hootsuite to post links, as it enables me to measure the stats of those who actually click on the Hootsuite to post links, as it enables me to measure the stats of those who actually click on the links I post. Last week, I had a total of 1250 clicks[pretty graphs], either directly or through re-tweets[4], on 84 links. That gives me an average click-through rate of 7%. I have approximately 1200 followers, and there are hundreds of thousands of Twitter users with substantially more followers than me. With the growing number of Twitter users alone, recent rumours of the company's acquisition by Google make sense. I post about half the number of links on Facebook as I do on Twitter, but can't measure the click-throughs as Facebook currently lacks the requisite analytical tools. The total number of online social media users across the various platforms-Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon, Del.icio.us., etc.-provide a clear indication of where consumers spend their time, and why it's important for companies and agencies to create content and campaigns that are viral-worthy.

So where does that leave the web banner? Should we abandon the staple that has given hope to so many web start-ups and sustained others? The answer is no; the web banner has its place in delivering brand presence and campaign messaging online. Perhaps if the web advertising industry had not hung its collective hat on CTR, this issue may not have seen so much back-peddling as there is today. The industry was so keen on proving its relevance in the web's early days that it differentiated itself from other mediums through the highly measurable CTR. Unfortunately, what wasn't considered were the lack of novelty and typically bad experiences users often associated with the click.

However, banners are still important in that we can track their impacts by measuring all customer impressions through comprehensive analytic tools. I believe it is all part of the mix, but the final destination of any campaign must be relevant and engaging enough to hold the attention of users, and contain content that will compel them to share it with others. Creative agencies play an important role in orchestrating compelling ad campaigns that customers can relate to, but ultimately, the method of directing viewers to those destinations is shifting from the once almighty banner ad, to the terrain of "the people's media."

[1] This, according to a survey conducted by Netpop, based on the 105 million U.S. broadband users.

[2] Comscore

[3]  PEW Internet research, March 2009

[4]  A re-tweet is when a Twitter user likes your post so much and recommends the link to their followers through the method of  what is called re-tweeting.

I will be joined by top Vancouver social media experts Shane Gibson and Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vega for practical advice on expanding your network and increasing sales through social media marketing. The night will consist of networking, presentations and the three panelists answering questions from both the moderator and the audience.
 
Won't you join us the evening of Monday April 13th at the Harrison Gallery. Where we will answer the question. "How can you get social media working for your business?"

 
More information and tickets here>>

There is an arms race, of sorts, going on. Yes, another one and it's really no surprise. The reality is that Twitter has dropped and ad agencies are guiding their clients down the same path as they did with Myspace, Facebook and pretty much any other popular social networking site that has emerged over the last five years.

This is what I am hearing and seeing in agency recommendations. Get as many followers as you can quickly then blather out a bunch crap and useless messaging at your followers! Yes another old school one way communication platform has hijacked Twitter. When will they learn? We are back to the eyeballs measurement again because that seems to be the only measurable metric that  makes it into the quarterly campaign review decks. It's not just traffic and eyeballs anymore. Comscore needs a new set of measurement tools. The measurement is brand interaction in the Twitterspace. The numbers matter if you are interacting well with many, then it counts.

Celebrity has really pushed Twitter to the tipping point in recent weeks and sure some of them are doing it well and others are really doing it bad! Agencies should  not build out their Twitter plan and campaigns following the lead of people like P-Diddy and Ellen. Maybe Snoop Dogg because he gets it big time, but for the love of God not P-Diddy. *Disclosure* I am a west coast guy and prefer the LA rap anyway.

Twitter is 140 characters of content. That content has to be engaging, insightful, helpful and maybe even carry a narrative. The problem is that agencies are already having trouble boiling down narrative from a 30 second TV spot to a 9 second web banner. Now they have to get down to 140 characters and it freaks them out further to even contemplate that. Hell it freaks me out but that is the new canvas. Figure it out soon before the next and even more confusing communication channel emerges.

If you gather up a ton of Twitter followers and have nothing relevant to say. Your brand will become dull and tiresome quickly and the giant swath numbers your brand has worked hard to get will have zero value.