What is Sharkle Sharkle in press Testimonials

Social networking validated

Who Dey? Bengals Fans First in NFL to Express Team Passion via ViTrue Fan-Created Video

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ViTrue, Inc., pioneer of the world’s first user-created advertising platform, today announced that the company will power an official, fan-created video Web site for the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals. Beginning Oct. 1, during the Bengals-Patriots match up, fans were encouraged to submit videos demonstrating their support for the defending AFC North Division champions. Videos showing the most dedicated, yet appropriate, fan support will be featured on the official Bengals Web site, www.bengals.com.

“The Cincinnati Bengals is an organization infused with fresh energy, so it’s no surprise that this team is first out of the gate to engage fans by using the latest social media technology,” said Reggie Bradford, founder and CEO of ViTrue. “We are excited to provide this service to the Bengals and their fans, and we anticipate that other teams – and their fans – will not want to be outdone.”

Selected video submissions will be featured on Bengals.com in its FanZone section, which already houses fan photo galleries and other multimedia offerings. Each week, fans will vote for their favorite videos, with the chance to be shown on the Video Scoreboard during an upcoming home game.

“Adding fan-created video capability is a natural extension of our ongoing effort to connect with the Bengals avid fan base, the best and most loyal in the league,” said Katie Blackburn, Bengals executive vice president. “The ViTrue team used its proven technology to fully customize, create and execute the site in just a few weeks. The result is a site that mirrors our brand and is easy for fans to manage. We look forward to seeing Bengals fans show their support in this new venue.”

Approximately 16 million people per year visit the Bengals official Web site, www.bengals.com.

User-Generated Video: Funny or Not?
Wednesday, September 27th 2006 @ 11:30 AM PDT

TBS - you know, the "very funny" cable network - has teamed with ViTrue - will be soliciting user-generated video for its new "Funny or Not?" online community.

Hey, if you thought the "user-generated" video content market was already pretty funny, it might be on the verge of getting hysterical. TBS—you know, the "very funny" cable network—has launched a partnership with ViTrue to create Funny or Not?, a new online community launching in November on the network's tbs.com Web site. What's Funny or Not? The idea is that users can participate in the user community and upload their own comedic videos; the community will be promoted on the TBS network, and original video submissions may be aired on TBS between scheduled programming.

Funny or Not? will be powered by ViTrue's "User-Created Advertising Platform;" the company is best known for creating the Sharkle online video sharing site.

"As TBS continues to build its online presence, especially in terms of broadband entertainment, we are focusing on ways to engage our audience of comedy lovers in new and exciting ways," said Jennifer Dorian, senior VP of branding and network strategy for TBS and its sister network TNT. "ViTrue provides us with an engaging technology platform that enables viewers to interact with our brand in a compelling way, while also being in line with TBS's views regarding the protection of copyrighted material online."

TBS may be on to something: it's Very Funny Ads site seems to have found following with...well, people who choose to use the Internet to watch advertising. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

A more muted boom

By Joshua Chaffin

September 22, 2006

Bill Stumpf spent a lifetime dreaming up ways to make office furniture more comfortable and practical. When he passed away last month at the age of 70, his death rippled through the world of industrial design. 

But perhaps it should have also made waves among investment bankers, venture capitalists, media entrepreneurs and just about anyone else taking part in the second internet boom. For Stumpf’s most famous design was the Aeron office chair.

Created with Don Chadwick in 1994, the Aeron was a sleek, mesh and aluminium marvel of ergonomics. So ground-breaking was the chair that the Museum of Modern Art added it to its permanent collection even before it went on sale.  

It was only a matter of time before the Aeron, which retailed for $1,000 or more, transcended the world of high design to become a must-have item for overheated internet start-ups.

“We bought the Aeron chairs,” says Erik Stroman, sounding like someone recalling a boozy night out. He looks back on a frenetic, eight-month stretch as the head of marketing at iWin.com, an internet start-up. “It was fat back then. People were living large.” 

The chairs were hardly the only extravagance at iWin. There was, for example, the time when the company hired the Goo Goo Dolls, one of the biggest rock groups of the era, to play at a party. “What did we do it for? Gosh, I don’t recall,” Stroman says.

Yet as he and other media executives reflect on today’s internet boom, one of its remarkable characteristics is an absence of the rock-star excesses that defined the first. Google, MySpace and other internet stars are minting a new generation of millionaires. Headhunters are desperately recruiting executives who can sell internet advertising. But the culture that surrounds it has been far more restrained – at least so far. 

“This new order coming in is much more conservative,” says Stroman, who now heads a marketing firm that embeds advertisements in video games. “They’re playing their cards close to their vest.”

“It’s certainly more muted,” says Aaron Cohen, chief executive of Bolt.com, a social networking company. He quit Columbia Business School in 1994 to join his first internet company. 

Back in the day, Cohen was a digital zealot, exhorting fellow employees that their grandchildren would one day look back on them as heroes of the revolution. He also partied a lot. “We had parties constantly. We were part of the party culture,” he says.

Bryan Wiener, president of 360i, an internet search marketing company, agrees. “It’s much more of a business environment now,” says Wiener, who was general manager of Theglobe.com, a start-up that was briefly worth more than $1bn on paper before flaming out. “Back then, it was massage tables in the office and dreams of ­getting rich.”

Though it seems cringe-worthy now, there was a business logic that propelled some of the excess of the first internet boom. Chiefly, it was the belief that start-ups should do whatever it took to create buzz – even if there were no profits – in order to establish themselves in the market and to generate hype for an eventual initial public offering. Hence an escalation of ever-more-elaborate launch parties – and open bars – and overpriced advertising campaigns. 

“In the late 1990s, the mantra was ‘spend aggressively’ to get the first-mover advantage,” says Reggie Bradford, who as chief marketing officer of WebMD splurged on a Super Bowl ad starring Muhammad Ali in 2000.

These days, as chief executive of ViTrue, an internet advertising company, Bradford says that the venture capitalists who fund start-ups expect them to do more with less and to generate real profits. Rather than a hot IPO, the exit strategy is more likely to be a sale to a larger internet or media company, such as Google or Yahoo.

“It was exciting, but it’s a lot more fun today because it’s real,” Bradford says. 

If the culture of this internet boom is milder than its predecessor, it may not only be a result of the underlying business conditions. It may also have something to do with the executives themselves. Many lived through the first boom.

During the “nuclear winter” from 2001 to 2004, as Cohen calls it, they took refuge in established media companies like Time Warner and licked their wounds. Now they are more seasoned managers. They are also more settled human beings.  

Unlike in the roaring 1990s, Wiener and Cohen, for example, are both fathers, whose desire to rule the digital world must compete with concerns about pre-school and daycare. “I’m doing play-dates instead of parties,” Cohen says.

As the excitement around digital media continues to build, it is possible that such men will lose their bearings and once again be swept up in a champagne frenzy. But in the meantime they are trying to stay grounded. When Wiener talks about the “business focus” and execution at 360i, it begins to sound as dull as any other office. 

There must be some glittery, Aeron-type rewards of this boom for so much hard work? But when he is asked to name one, Wiener draws a blank. Then he shoots back: “If there were such a thing, I wouldn’t allow it in my office.”

Rest in peace, Mr Stumpf.

NEW YORK Frito-Lay plans to jump on the consumer-generated content bandwagon in a big way, turning over its Doritos Super Bowl ad to regular Joes.

The Plano, Texas-based Pepsi division will bypass its agency, Omnicom Group's Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco, in favor of creative from consumers. Doritos is soliciting executions through Yahoo, which will host a contest for users to vote on their favorite submissions.

This Week's Issue

Moe's to consumers: Don't just watch our ads, create them

Chain follows trend set by KFC, Carl's Jr.

By Gregg Cebrzynski

ATLANTA (Aug. 14) - Moe's Southwest Grill has joined a small but growing number of companies that are trying to engage consumers in advertising campaigns by having consumers create the ads themselves.

The 330-unit Moe's has partnered with ViTrue Inc., a platform for user-created advertising, to develop an online community that will enable more Moe's customers to produce and upload video ads.

The "consumer-generated content," or CGC as it's known, is one of the evolving ways that marketers are trying to develop stronger relationships with consumers, build brand loyalty and, ultimately, increase sales.

Last November, Burger King invited consumers to use their video iPods to create ads and upload them on Heavy.com. Sister brands Carl's Jr. and Hardee's recently launched their "Burger Slayer of the Month" campaigns, asking consumers to take photos of themselves eating their favorite menu item and then upload the photos to the burger slayer portal on the chains' websites.

Chevrolet, Coca-Cola, General Motors and MasterCard are among others that also have solicited consumer-generated ads.

KFC perhaps was the earliest adopter of consumer-generated content. In 2003 it asked consumers to create a commercial for its popcorn chicken in the form of a reality TV show. Moe's effort is designed to supplement its "A Moe's Burrito in Every Hand" campaign, which includes print and broadcast ads.

"We think it's a great opportunity to build the Moe's brand and spread the word for Moe's on a viral level rather than a traditional level," said Stephen M. LaMastra, president of parent company Raving Brands.

"We're hoping to engage our consumers in the advertising," he added. "We want our consumers to be a part of what we're doing."

The ads are featured on moes.sharkle.com. Sharkle.com is ViTrue's video-sharing community.

The popularity of YouTube.com, a website featuring user-generated content, is what prompted Carl's Jr. and Hardee's to launch their "Slayer" promotion, and it's causing more marketers to at least consider incorporating consumer-generated content into their media mix.

"Whether it's 1 percent [of the mix] or 90 percent, time will tell," said Reggie Bradford, founder and chief executive of ViTrue. "I don't think it will overtake traditional advertising but it's the ultimate form of engagement."

It's also a cheaper way to create advertising, he added.

"The average cost to produce a TV commercial is $350,000, and this costs a fraction," Bradford said.

For Moe's, the consumer- generated content also is a way to build brand awareness in new markets where it does not yet have a sufficient number of units to make traditional advertising media-efficient, LaMastra said.

Moe's has between 500 and 700 units in some phase of development, he said, and will have units in most states in about two years. Using consumer-generated content on the Web can generate brand awareness at lower costs, and it "leverages our consumers to market to other consumers," he said.

"We have such a compelling brand that our consumers will have a lot to say about it," LaMastra said.

Visitors to the website will vote for their favorite commercial. The grand-prize winner will receive Moe's "burritos for life," which means one free burrito a week for up to 55 years.

Moe's is using only its website now to solicit consumer-generated ads, but it plans to promote the effort with in-store material starting in September.

The initial ads submitted vary widely in execution. "A Burrito Under Every Wing" shows video of a parrot nibbling on a burrito. The bird flies away, and the ad switches to animation to show the parrot transformed into a streak of yellow light flying over a Moe's sign.

An ad titled "In Every Hand" shows an animated character who grows more hands to catch burritos that are dropping from above.

Any marketer who decides to use consumer-generated content will have an easy time finding it, according to Steve Hall, editor and publisher of AdRants.com, which provides news and opinion on marketing and advertising.

"People have been shooting these videos for years and watching them on their own TVs and laughing, and now there's this way to upload them for the world to see," he said.

Some comments on various ad blogs view consumer-generated content as a fad that's destined to lose its appeal, but Hall disagrees.

"I don't think it's going to go away," he said. "I think it's so new that we as marketers don't know how to leverage it yet."

Bradford of ViTrue offered a similar assessment.

"We're just scratching the surface," he said. "We think the restaurant category is untapped. Up until now, restaurants have not had successful Web strategies."

One reason that Moe's launched its campaign was to "really test the marketplace and see how effective this is," LaMastra said. "We will at some point try to measure it. We like what we see so far."

E-mail the author at: gcebrzyn@nrn.com