While widgets, like ringtones, have largely been about expressing oneself, there is a new widget paradigm taking place whose influence will be felt at the cash registers for many consumer marketers who have embraced social media and have dipped their virtual toe into the emerging widget economy. To these few brave organizations, your strategies will pay off and we salute you.
First up is TicketMaster, who just yesterday announced their ticket affiliate sales program. Not surprisingly, widget distribution is at the heart of their affiliate offering, and what better way to share the love (for money that is) than with a customizeable widget to show your support for your favorite touring band.
Ticketmaster’s new EventEngine widget allows registered affiliate individuals and organizations to create and post a customized Ticketmaster event marketing engine on their blog or web site that dynamically serves information regarding upcoming events with links to purchase tickets via Ticketmaster’s web site. Affiliates will eventually have access to Ticketmaster search buttons, banners, and link engines.
Widgets are an ideal marketing vehicle for getting those referral links out there. Hats off to the people at IAC and TicketMaster who found a way to make affiliate marketing engaging, in-context and profitable all at the same time. This is a trend that we will continue to see as marketers leverage social networks and develop sophisticated widgets that provide added value content as well as a way to monetize niche audiences.
This photo was taken nearly 8 years ago at an event I organized featuring a chess exhibition with World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov taking on Grammy-award winner Sting and his band. This post was made via Flickr.
Good marketing is like pornography, you know it when you see it. That’s how I felt about seat-of-the-pants apparel marketer Gap, the latest consumer brand to throw its hat into the widget ring.
Gap ModelMaker widget, distributed via WidgetBox, should come with a warning on the install, “ugly people need not bother.” The mini app does exactly as advertised, “instantly transform(s) you into a Gap model. Choose your pose, your outfit, and your scene–then add some bling.” If only it could do something about my receding hairline.
From the programming wizards at FancyGens, this engaging diversion should appeal to everyone’s vanity. Simply upload your picture (or anyone else’s for that matter), or point to a URL with your image and the wiget does the rest. It places the subject’s face in a model cut-out and, for all America’s Next Top Model wannabe’s, allows you to choose your pose, clothing and scenic backdrop for your 15 minutes of fame.
Whenever you get a consumer personally invested in a brand to the point of identifying their own image within the brand’s marketing persona, it’s a home run for the marketer. I’ve seen the new face of widget marketing, and its yours with the Gap ModelMaker. “I’m the face if you want it, I’m the face if you want it babe,” Pete Towenshend, The Who.
Here’s my son, Lucas, in his first Gap model spread.
Download Gap ModelMaker here
“Take your blog. Make it into a widget. Share it with all the widgetsphere.”
No, not a haiku, but rather the description on WidgetBox’s Blidget tool set that unlocks your blog headlines and sets them free in the form of a Blidget (blog + widget = blidget). Well, bad nomenclature aside, this tool represents the next step in the maturation of the widget marketplace, or “widgetplace.”
All that is required is a blog URL and presto-chango, you’ve created your own widget. Post the widget on your FaceBook profile. Better yet, create a developer profile listing in WidgetBox’s directory and distribute your blidget to the widget community, or “widgetmunity.”
You have a choice of displaying just headlines, or entire posts. And, you have complete control over style, format, color scheme, etc. It’s a great way to promote content, offering a dynamically updated feed with one-click install. In addition to Facebook, WidgetBox allows for easy-installs for many of the popular platforms. See image below
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WidgetBox even provides some basic metrics for you to monitor your blidget’s popularity. When open standards are adopted, you can imagine even greater possibilities for a tool set such as this.
The only thing I would have added is the ability to allow others to download the blidget from within the application, rather than back on the WidgetBox site. This would add to the blidgets viral capabilities and allow publishers to serve as their own distribution hubs. Otherwise, the genius of this application is in its simplicity and you have to applaud the 16 person team at WidgetBox for their ability to automate and commoditize the widget-building process - widgetations to all.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQYyPooETcI]I first started working for the world’s greatest chess player in 1999 and continue to work on behalf of his non-profit organization, Kasparov Chess Foundation. Garry is as skilled in world politics as he is in chess, as shown here in this YouTube video, thanks to the WordPress video widget.
