Well, time has come to sign off for 2 1/2 weeks while I enjoy some much needed and earned R & R. I will leave you with these parting photos of the place I will be hanging my hat and sun tan lotion.

In case you missed the new Wired article on Madison Avenue Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life you should have a read. My response is Bingo! Once again I ask, where is the return? If you've read this blog at all you know I love marketing. I truly do. But I love smart marketing, which means it's a good business investment as well as a good customer experience. Read my recent post on Luna Chix. 

Second Life I don't get. According to this article the NBA says they have received 1,200 visitors to date and that is good. Ahhh, according to who? The article also says a company can spent up to $500K on a Second Life program. So let's do that math. Giving NBA the benefit of the doubt and say they only spent half that, $250K. If they have received 1,200 hits to date that comes to $208 per click. WHAT? Good, Where? You could stand on the street and give away tickets to passer buyers for less money that that and would at least know you got more people to the game. Isn't that their top KPI.

Big brands like Coke, NBA, Sears, etc for some reason are following the hot trend of the moment and seems to have forgotten any connection to ROI. Show me how having a presence on Second Life has increased Coke sales, or increased sales for customers in the 18-25 age group that Sears is desperate to attract. It's quite a leap to think someone will like your clothes better because they saw your brand on Second Life. When has this worked before?

1,200 hits does not a campaign success make no matter who you ask, unless you are asking other brands running the same campaign. That's like asking people who have already invested in houses in the new neighborhood what they think of the neighbors. What do you think they are going to say?

Another great marketing story. Read on:

I didn't know anything about Luna Bars before a month ago. I am doing a triathlon next month and another woman at work sent me a email talking about an open water swim that was being organized by this group that called themselves the Luna Chix. I went to the training session and paid my $20 with all the money going to breast cancer research. The women running the clinic were all volunteers who just like to exercise and help other women train for athletic events. I signed up for their Yahoo groups and now I get emails whenever they have organized workouts. I hadn't made one single purchase but already I was loving this company and their brand was bringing me value.

I've spent a bit more time looking into the company. They have built quite a community experience focused on the needs of their target audience. They clearly understand the needs of their customers and have created experiences that will offer value to their customers. They host Lunafest a traveling film festival by.. for... and about women. There is a Luna moms group, social causes engagement, and Luna Chix fitness group.

Luna has built an strong, viral community relying on the positive experience of their customers to spread the Love. That's how I heard about it, through a friend. Not one single tv or magazine ad.

I was running through an airport last week and stopped at the news stand to pick up a magazine, water and power bar since I knew there was no food being served on my flight. Guess what bar I picked up? A Luna bar! Customer experience cycle complete.

Mashable reports that the four most hyped stories of 2007 (yes, it's only July) are the iPhone, Facebook, Twitter and Pownce. Having spent the last month buried in Live Earth details I'm just getting caught up on the latest hype details. So let's take a look at Pownce.

Not taking Mashable's word for it I searched Technorati and found 5,050 blog posts about Pownce. Not bad, but in comparison iPhone has 293,181, Facebook has 361,334 and even Windows Live has 269,675 posts. (Marty Collins has 1,024 - but now I'm just being silly!). So I'm unconvinced that 5,050 blog posts makes Pownce the hottest thing going, but let's keep going.

The first thing I notice is they are trying the gmail approach. In order to subscribe to the service you have to be invited. They give some reasons about service bandwidth, etc but from a marketing perspective this tactic is regularly used to drive demand up. The age old story of supply and demand. If you have more people asking for a product than is available it creates a higher value for the product. Now I have no idea how many subscribers Pownce has and I would bet my afternoon latte that information is not public. You can get invites through blogs like this one. And there are reviews and sneak peaks like this one. Now let's look at the marketing;

I like the tag line; "Send stuff to your friends." Simple, informative and tells anyone the products purpose. I'm guessing a lot of agency time didn't go into that one. Kudos!

Another thing they have done well is to get the buzz going. I'm guessing a lot of the initial interest came from the fact that the creator is also the founder of Digg. But I have yet to see any differentiator, and isn't that the basic of marketing.  What do they do better than anyone else? And how is that not repeatable? Those are the keys. I would agree with this post, it may do some fancy AJAX stuff but I don't see any new value add. In order to drive people to switch there needs to be a pain point big enough to overcome the barriers to entry.  In Social Networking the barriers to entry are almost always how do I get my friends on the network? That's a BIG one. Don' underestimate people will network where their friends already are. This I know...

Love free stuff! here's a free white paper worth checking out.

Well, it may be over but the music is still playing in my ears. What an amazing concert to be a part of. The line up of artists was spectacular and everyone was on their A game. You can get a complete play by play from the Live Earth blog.

MSN hosted a fabulous hospitality tent that we were lucky enough to help host. With a day as hot as this one was it was great to have a bit of AC in between acts. They also were showing other concerts on big screens in the tent so you could enjoy the global feel of the day.

It's really hard to explain how it felt to be there. The talent was as energized by the audience as the audience was by the talent. It all felt so much bigger than just one person or one act. Over the last months of working on Live Earth I've made definite changes in my life and tried to share those changes with my family and friends. I don't take bags at the store anymore if I can help it. I unplug whatever I can, I bike when I can, and I pass along the respect for the earth to my children. They don't know a life without recycling, turning off the water when they brush, and using Tupperware in their lunch boxes rather than sandwich bags. I have been changed by this event. Thank you to whomever - be it Al Gore or the many others involved. It made a difference to me and isn't that what it's all about!

Here are a few fun photos of the day.

Bon Jovi was by far my favorite!  Hometown boy brought down the house. 55,000 people on their feet for local boy done good. He was so excited to get out on the stage he didn't wait for Al Gore to finish the intro. He walked right out with no fan fare and started jamming.