ToppsTown: more football updates

Here's the rundown of some major additions to ToppsTown... we're now in the football phase of things, and there has been plenty of growth in the past week or so.

New games have launched! The games landing page has changed a bit so that you can now see our full offering of games, divided into sport. In the graphic above you can see three thumbnails for the new football games. The games are:

-->Halfback Hustle: a game where you must duck and weave as the opposing team tries to tackle you. Rack up points by how many times you make it to the endzone and how many yards you cover. (Use your new ToppsTown football cards on this one-- choose the player with the best speed.)

-->Pigskin Pileup: a more puzzle-y game... Elaine describes it as "reverse Tetris."

-->Perfect Pass: wait until your teammates are open and then snap the ball to them. Also playing along are mascots, fans and more. (Use your ToppsTown card with the best accuracy on this one.)

Once you've raided the new games you can break the bank with a whole mess of new football items in the ProShop. Also look for two new themes for your avatar-- a full robot ensemble and a haughty heiress type.

You can print your own Avatar card now. Simply click on your card to pop it up, then choose the "print" option (see below).

BTW, how do you like Sir Sushi Sushi's makeover?

And a huge change I probably should have started with... football cards! You have an entire new Binder at your disposal-- just click on My Binders in your left-hand bar and it will drop down your options. You can choose to launch the Binder, or just change it so that you can trade with those cards. The Trading Zone is still fully functional, and the Topp Card of the Week has changed to football.

And your hard-earned baseball cards are still within reach, so fret not. You can toggle between football and baseball Binders at will.

There are still more updates I haven't covered, but I need to pace myself! Anyone interested in getting a more in-depth look at any of the games?

Check here for other posts about ToppsTown, including other football updates.

Creating a monster

You might think that, as marketers, we might be at least a little more immune to marketing. Surely with all that we read and study up on and imagine and practice, we'll be impenetrable!

Today I was at Fountain Square with a coworker, Eric, just to walk off some of our lunch. There's always something going on at lunchtime at this hub of Cincinnati, and today was no different: people were congregating around a bunch of dirty cars and a tent.

Upon closer inspection we saw that it was a demonstration for Mr. Clean AutoDry Carwash. (We have no affiliation with this brand, it really is just an observation.) They had brought some dirty cars up and were washing them with almost no water-- the ground was completely dry. There was a dude with a mic explaining the whole process.

At this point, Eric and I started talking about marketing... and even in that hyper-conscious state we couldn't escape it. Knowing that we were being marketed to did not decrease our desire to huddle closer to the tent, or pick up some swag, or ask about pricing. We were still going through the scripts that Mr. Clean's agency must have dreamed up: "Wow! Did you see how little water that used?" "Whoa! They take your car from the Fountain Square parking garage while you're at work or shopping?!" "I wonder how much something like that costs!"

And of course: "Man, my car is filthy."

We talked about it. We gawked. I am blogging about it right now.

Am I complaining about marketing? Of course not. I just feel like good marketing transcends being tricked. I didn't feel duped into talking about it or dirty afterwards. This was a product demo that interested me and made me want to talk about the experience. I love when advertising steps beyond "let's invade this user's media space" and lives more in the space of "what would even a marketer be interested in passing on?"

ToppsTown updates by the boatload

Are you starting to think about football? WonderGroup definitely is, as it's time to start transitioning ToppsTown from baseball to football.

Expect a good chunk of ToppsTown update posts from me in the coming weeks, because there are a lot of new features rolling out. I've pulled a few to show off today, in case you haven't logged on to notice them yourselves.

First up: you can now customize the color of your avatar border. (In the Friends tab of my Binder, I can tell who works at WonderGroup by whether or not their border is still blue.) It's simple to change it-- just head to the Avatar Builder, and under Frame there's a new Border option.

Another big customization feature takes place in the Clubhouse, where you can now change your ceiling color, floor color, and wall color independently of one another. Again this is simple to do: go to your Clubhouse and open the tab where your items are. Scroll all the way down and you'll see your color options.

Here's a closer look at the color options:

And then there are some adjustments in the Trading Zone. There's an entire new section called My Recent Trades, where you can see a list of the 20 most recent swaps you've made. I am excited about this new addition-- I think it makes the Trading Zone much more functional.

And here's a small little tidbit: trades now expire in two weeks. You can see how many more days your trade has on the Accept/Review tab, at the very bottom of a trade you've requested (see below).


That's not all, but unfortunately that's all I have time for right now. Log on and see if you can find some of the other additions (hint: check your Avatar items) and I'll be back later to clue you in on what you may have missed.

Timeshifting, or The Concert that Almost Wasn't

I had a horrible afternoon but at least it got me thinking. The short version of my mishap was that at 2:45pm I realized that the post office closes at 3pm. This is important because the post office is 15 minutes away, and they had my overnight'd Weird Al tickets. (Yes, I'm seeing the concert again.)

I made it, by the skin of my teeth. And on the long and heart-pounding ride home it made me realize what a backseat time has taken in my life.

Of course it's technology's fault. As the days roll by I get more and more accustomed to things working on my schedule. I timeshift my favorite shows with DVR and watch them when I'm good and ready. I buy books and music online whenever it strikes my fancy. I can do my work during business hours or on Saturday nights if I so choose. While there is a basic human schedule that ties pretty strictly to daylight, at this point it's only a suggestion.

So it's a rude awakening when I physically need a ticket in my hand to get into a concert, and the post office refuses to just shove the lightweight envelope in my mailbox or in my front door. And while I can't blame the venue or the USPS, I have to say that I do prefer the kind of situations where it's on my time. I'm thinking about how I bought my tickets online for Dark Knight and didn't have to turn my room upside down looking for them-- they were at the theater. I'm thinking of the sites that let me print off my own bar-coded ticket five seconds before I leave for the event.

Today was a wakeup call-- a hard, cold realization about how my own expectations have changed. And now it's time to breathe deeply and get ready for another leg of the Straight Outta Lynwood tour.

A Dark Knight for Theater Goers

Last night, I was lucky enough to be one of the people who got to see The Dark Knight two days early. My husband was excited as well, since he had been counting down the days for nearly six months.

The film is awesome and Health Ledger’s performance stands up to the hype—and then some. But this isn’t about the film—this is about the increasing efforts to protect intellectual property and the rights we give up as consumers.

With tickets in hand, we headed towards the theater to get in line. We stood corralled like cattle for almost an hour, eagerly anticipating the sneak peek.

About ten minutes before we were allowed to enter the theater to be seated, a security guard stepped in front of us to tell us exactly what we were about to go through before we could watch the movie. The man informed us that we would be escorted down the corridor and separated into two lines—one for males and one for females. We were then to open any bags and empty our pockets for search (presumably for recording equipment) and then wanded. It was implied that a pat down may have been in order if the wand detected anything—I can’t think of another reason we needed to be in separate lines.

After going through the security checkpoint, I assumed that was the end of it. I joked with a few people behind us that I felt like I had either just given up constitutional rights or was about to board a plane.

We sat through the commercials and then trailers and finally the film started. The first five or six minutes (which was leaked a week or so ago) are fast-paced and action-packed, so I was fully engrossed. Shortly after, the paced slowed and I happened to glance over to the exit aisle. I noticed a theater employee standing with his arms at an odd angle and took a closer look; I then realized he was using a handheld night vision unit to scan the audience. I assume he was monitoring for recording devices.

I must point out that the tickets were free and I entered the theater of my own volition after reading the rules printed in bold on the back. The rules indicated that we would be searched and monitored, but I had no clue that it would be to such an extreme extent. I was fine with the search of my person by a security guard since I was free to decline and leave, but was a little uneasy when I realized I was being viewed via infrared technology.

This experience got me thinking about how important and serious the protection of copyrighted material has become. Seeing the summer’s biggest blockbuster ten years ago didn’t mean going through the same security you would find at an international airport. The measures must be effective, since a Google search this morning did not turn up a full-length pirated version of the film.

In the future, I predict security measures becoming stricter, but I also predict that people will just become more clever when recording. People will always find a way around searches, DRM and other things that limit access and prevent sharing. Since it is almost guaranteed that someone somewhere will eventually leak the film online, I wonder what we will have to go through in the future to see a movie.

iPhone Buzz, Why?

I wish I had more time to work through this post but there's a huge stack of work on my desk that I have to address.

Yesterday I was listening to Buzz Outloud and one passing comment really caught my ear. They said something like, "All the hoopla over the iPhone is really about the interface, the hardware is not really all that great." Wow! I totally agree. The iPhone is really not the best smart phone out there and other phones have many more features, for example the Nokia N96. However, the implications of that simple fact are staggering. An elegant, simple, pretty interface is driving much of the interest in a product that is enjoying unprecedented and almost ridiculous "buzz."

Is that good marketing, product development, innovation or programming? The answer,... YES!

Web weirdness

Two sets of internet oddities: first, two very similar tweets in a row... one from our own Spidey, one from my friend Kate:



Who calls it a "sammich"? Apparently enough people that I get two of these back-to-back?

And then the other, which made me laugh... an article all about Dr. Horrible and how it's so popular it made the site crash for most of the day. Notice anything weird?


Here, let's zoom in and look at the advertisement.


Yes, right next to an article about crashing, an advertisement that crashed. Jeff & I thought it was a joke at first.

Nothing to write Leno about, just the small things getting me through the day...

Borders minus Amazon

I received an email from Border's today, which happens a couple of times a week due to their various newsletters. Today's was different; it touted their new online store.

Border's store used to be basically an Amazon sub-link, and they're branching out to handle their own e-commerce (for better or for worse). The reviews that I've read haven't been great, but I didn't take a look for myself until this afternoon's email.


I can understand some of the complaints about the experience. Border's is trying a "virtual bookshelf," where in theory you can shop like you do at the store. It doesn't exactly work, in that it doesn't feel at all like shopping at a Border's brick-and-mortar, but I'd like to jump to their defense-- at least they're trying something different. Relaunching a site that essentially looks exactly like the Amazon page they already had wouldn't generate much interest. At the very least they're trying to bring a fuller experience to an e-tailer site.

The site-- and perhaps because of this launch-- is slow. The demo video they want you to watch is the slowest of all, and the video itself is a bit exasperating if you're even the littlest bit tech-savvy. It's clearly targeted to the kind of person who doesn't do much of their shopping online; anyone who has would glean nothing new from the video.

To tell you the truth, this site hits right between two marks: it's not Amazon, and it's not a Border's store. If I wanted to browse casually, I would still go to the physical store because the experience has not been replicated here. If, on the other hand, I was looking for a specific book and I wanted to buy it cheaply, I would most likely still go to Amazon.

Check it out and let me know what you think. Does Borders.com fulfill some kind of niche that could make it work?

Updating Facebook and LinkedIn

Today I was working through a stack of business cards, that have been sitting on my desk for several months. This means, adding them to my contacts program, checking LinkedIn and sending invitations, and checking Facebook and sending invitations. Oh, and of course, finding them on Twitter and following them. It's just how you "do business" today.

But, here's the strange thing. It's also how you "do life." As I was searching Facebook, it suggested others I should add as friends. It was a huge list of previous acquaintances and family. I'm not THAT old, and yet, in my life time, my career has gone from people tilting their heads like a confused dog, when I would say, my job was web marketing to virtually every member of my extended family having a Facebook account.

Yes, I'm an early adopter, I admit that, but my point would be this; it's not that hard to predict the future. Find a geek and watch them. They embrace emerging technologies, that's a given, but they also embrace emerging marketing techniques. That's why we at WonderGroup, are working so hard to understand how word-of-mouth, viral and guerilla marketing work. Because without it, in the very near future, we could no longer have a career. But with it, the future looks pretty bright to me.

Oh, on last thing. For another way to think about this, check out Leisa Reichelt's post.

Dr. Horrible Day

As Kris reminded me within three seconds of my getting to work, it's Dr. Horrible Day! Act I launches today, Act II comes out on the 17th, Act III is on the 19th, and then it all disappears in a poof of smoke on the 20th.

But fear not-- episodes are available for download on iTunes. This is actually my first purchase from iTunes since I bought the iPod Touch apps a couple of months ago. Eep.

I know that Dr. Horrible will succeed. There is little doubt in my mind. A few reasons why:

--The marketing has been awesome and has solidly built a sense of presence. I already felt like part of a community before the show even launched.

--Neil Patrick Harris. Nathan Fillion. A couple of other people who I'm sure will gather a cult following after this'un.

--They don't have much to lose. Dr. Horrible is a low-budget, three-part show shot for the web. The majority of the effort went into writing the thing, and into making it something good. Can you imagine it? Spending effort on the quality of something, instead of focusing solely on the bells and whistles?

--Joss Whedon has a following that would jump off a cliff for him if they asked him to. (Which cliff, Joss? Eh? Eh?)

I'm not going to talk about the first act before people have had a chance to see it. So. Go see it.