Funny you should ask

The evidence keeps piling up that we're sitting on a branded entertainment powder keg here at FBE HQ. (So much so we're thinking of giving the bomb squad the heads up. More on this in a coupla weeks, when we indeed will have a Big Bang to report.)

So where do folks meet to talk about the hottest entertainment URLs? Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn, of course, which are spinning off numbers which suggest very strongly that digital social media is an absolutely vital brand dialog space.

According to data from market research consultants Anderson Analytics, some 110 million people in America visit Facebook or MySpace at least once every month. (Jeez, in my house, there's at least three of us on Facebook at least twice a day.)**

Here's the killer: 52% of those same people have already "friended" a brand—established a peer relationship online with a product—and a further 20% more would "like to" share more dialog from their favourite brands.

Anderson's test group was 5,000 strong; here's what these opinion leader/"early adopters" are up to:

Overall, the average user of web properties like Twitter and LinkedIn visits these sites on five separate days each week, typically doing so four times a day for around 15 minutes at a time.

Within this group, 9% of netizens stay signed in to their portal of choice throughout the day, and are "constantly checking out what's new."

That's an average of five hours a week that nearly two visitors in five to these sites are likely to interact with a brand peer2peer.

That's staggering compared to scattershot TV and print ad.s—and the Anderson numbers don't break out the building tsunami of mobile social media dialog with brands. (That roar you hear in the distance? That's the tidal wave of mobile, heading for shore...)

So where's all this brand dialog going? LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are the savvy brand marketer's go-to sites for now, especially LinkedIn, with its desirable $89K annual household income benchmark, well above Facebook's $61K AAHI. (The place to connect with the student body? MySpace, because it's the hot corner for music peer2peer; Twitter if you want to spread a clip or soundbite blurry fast.)

Now comes the juicy part: how do you connect with these content-hungry communities? What's the best context for a brand dialog?

That's the web-wide engagement question, right now.

We think (modestly, truly) it's us.

Want to start a memorable conversation at the pub or around the dinnertable? You tell a funny story, right?

Want to start a memorable brand dialog, one that engages from the brainstem up?

We'll get your brand talked about amongst the most articulate and most "likely to share" communities on the web, via episodic comedy experiences that'll burn brand into your target market's funny bone.

Call us. Let's talk webisode.

**with files from subscription-only Wall Street Journal (13 July 2009) and WARC.com (13 July 2009) links

The Grey Lady Speaks Fresh Baked

Well, looks like the universe is catching up with us here at Fresh Baked. In today's New York Times, right there on page B1, there's the low-down: rising broadband capacity and convergence—the public's willingness to play on any digital screen, not just TV—have conspired to create two tipping points.

The first is broadband capacity: it's now no longer a sketchy experience to watch a short film online—entire TV episodes are well established Hulu-fodder. (So much so, Hulu may move to a cable-eseque subscription model entirely.) And Hulu has grown 490% in a single year, making the site the second strongest online video content brand after YouTube.

Web video quality isn't IMAX yet but it's certainly lush enough for the (illicit) viewership of film and TV sites like Surfthechannel.com to explode in past year, never mind the US, UK and Canadian broadcasters cutting entire TV series loose online. Moreover, the proliferation of HD cameras in the hands of web-savvy filmmakers young and old portends a tsunami of content coming down the interweb pipe.

The second phenomenon is where we live. The web literally has no time constraints for streaming content; it's a natural home for short films, as MarketingVox notes, echoing the Times. And that's what we do: branded episodic comedy series for the web.

There's no question now: none whatsoever.

The future of engagement is online and the future of online engagement is video. Here's the gospel from on high, the dude at Nielsen, the measurability people:

"Historically short form, clip-length video has ruled streaming on the web - as demonstrated by YouTube's top spot month after month,” said Jon Gibs, VP, media & analytics, Nielsen Online. "Hulu, along with pure-play providers like Veoh and the TV networks, has spent the past two years trying to convince consumers that the internet can be a good place to watch full length programming as well. April's strong showings of Hulu, Fox, and ABC suggest that consumers are beginning to listen."

And the hottest viral content that consumers want—witness the bottomless online appetite for comic viral video—is comedy.

So, marketers: you want an audience with a vast appetite for comedy we can help you brand, help you build engagement and drive folks to the cash register...what're you waiting for?