I must give props to Nissan for this commercial. It actually made me stop what I was doing to figure out what it was for. The image of a Polar Bear walking in a cityscape was able to breakthrough the clutter. I actually missed the beginning of the commercial and had to look it up on YouTube. Nissan did a few things right and there were a few things they could do better. It was great that they had a YouTube account called Nissanusa and uploaded a copy of the commercial onto YouTube. The quality was excellent, the title was clear/searchable, and it seemed official due to the account name. The video has already garnered over 700,000 views and over 1,100 comments.

A few things they could have done better:

• Have a better description that includes more keyword terms to make it more SEO friendly. The description doesn’t mention “Nissan”, “Leaf”, “Electric”, “Car”, “Automobile”, “Eco-Friendly”, etc. All keywords I’m sure Nissan would like to associate with the LEAF.
• Have a link to the Nissan LEAF website from the video. It really should be easier for viewers to find out more about the car. I just saw the commercial then I had to do a Google search to find the website (btw, it’s http://www.nissanusa.com/leaf-electric-car/index#/leaf-electric-car/index…you can thank me now Nissan). If Nissan had just put a link within the description, it would be an simple trigger point for viewers to engage more with the vehicle.
• Speaking of the website, have some imagery or reference to the television commercial. Even something as simple as posting or linking to the YouTube video would create some cohesion and relevance to the advertising campaign. The commercial could be a good starting point to introduce the vehicle to the consumer if they hadn’t seen it on TV. Since the money was already a sunk cost for the commercial, you might as well reuse the content to maximize its value.
• Add social media links to your website. The Nissan LEAF Facebook fan page (http://www.facebook.com/nissanleaf…thank me again Nissan) has over 73,000 fans, why isn’t there a clear link to this from the official website? Possible consumers of the Nissan LEAF are most likely social media savvy. Again, make it simpler for your company to engage with your potential buyers.

In the end, I worked pretty hard to find information about the Nissan LEAF. I had to do multiple searches to discover more. Nissan could have easily optimized their efforts with a few simple changes. I see this less of an technical implementation hurdle but rather an internal communication one to get all of these touch points connected.

I’ve been out of the country on vacation for the past 10 days so I missed the initial launch of Google Instant. I’ve only started to play around with it over the past few days and here are some instant initial thoughts.

1. Unnecessary – I’m not sure I gain much from seeing additional links and text description flash below the Google search box. In general I know what I’m searching for and I’m planning on typing in the entire search term. It seems more like white noise at this point but we’ll see over the next few weeks of use.
2. Unused - In general, I’m a shortcut power user and when I’m web browsing I’m no different. I often hit CTRL+K to go to the browsers search box to type in my search term. I rarely type in http://www.google.com and then enter in my search term so in most cases I wouldn’t even see Google Instant results.
3. Uninspiring - I like the spin they are trying to place on Google Instant — supposedly you can save 2-5 seconds per search — but in the end I don’t think anyone will care. Google is still the dominant search engine. It’s the first and only choice that I go to perform searches. Having “instant” results doesn’t make me like the engine any better and it probably won’t change the way I search. In the end its one big shoulder shrug of what’s the big deal.

I’ve been messing around with Google Realtime today and it’s definitely pretty interesting. It’s basically a constantly updated list of news updates from sources like Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, etc. In the screenshot above, I’m checking out the activity for my brother’s company, 3Par, which is right now in the middle of a bidding war between HP and Dell. I definitely like the timeline above the results as it shows the concentration of when there’s the most amount of chatter and buzz.I think each spike in the timeline is when a new offer to buy the company was made.

As Google starts to refine its listing and figure out what users want to see, you can bet that this feature is going to be more prominently featured within the main search engine. Three things come to mind to what would make this page more interesting:

1. Updates/tweets/feeds that have been shared or retweeted the most.

2. A listing of the top links that were being shared. Apparently that’s exactly what the top links are in the right hand nav. Cool!

3. Being able to filter the graph by Tweets, Facebook Posts, etc.

Although I’d been a part of Foursquare for sometime now, I really hadn’t been too active. The reason? My circle of friends in Los Angeles are not members of the Foursquare community and the app being so social in nature had less appeal.

Everything changed this past week when I was up in the SF Bay Area for work. I decided to really use Foursquare and chronicle my trip with digital footprints. As an added bonus, My friends within Silicon Valley were power users of app which made it even more interactive. I was constantly getting pushed alerts of their activities and conversely they were receiving mine.

After using Foursquare heavily for a week, I can definitely see the appeal of geolocation apps. It lets you know what your friends are doing without asking them or checking a social media network for a status update. It was actually fun to get badges (I’ve upped my count to 7 in a weeks time) and discuss with your friends the tricks to get certain ones. It was also addicting. Every place i went the iPhone came out to check-in.

As a marketer I truly see this as the future. With Facebook’s timely release of their new Places feature, they seem to think so as well. By just using Foursquare for a week, I had already begun to look out for “special deals” nearby my location and was being influenced by the tips that people left about businesses I was considering patronizing. I also tied my Foursquare updates to both Twitter and Facebook. By letting my social circles know where I was and what I was doing, spurred comments and recommendations for places to eat, see, etc. — a truly social experience.

I’m definitely on the bandwagon for Foursquare and similar geolocation/tagging apps. I’ve continued using it even in LA. I can’t wait to see the adoption rates with Facebook Places now that geotagging is readily accessible for millions of active users to try. I’m expecting it to be high and if everyone likes it as much as I did, the question becomes how as marketers can we capitalize on it?

10. BART is really efficient and I’m amazed that I never took it during the 5 years I lived in the Bay Area.

9. In order to have a successful presentation you need to have profanity mixed in and have pictures of yourself waking up in the morning embedded into your powerpoint.

8. Google can read text in images and search video audio tracks and use them both within search.

7. People can tweet really really fast.

6. Internet speeds really suck and should definitely be faster especially at an Internet conference.

5. Tchotchkes and free books never get old….they still draw crowds and traffic.

4. I really like Foursquare (I unlocked 4 badges during my trip).

3. I’m not alone. I sat in rooms of people just like me!

2. No one on Twitter is real. We’re all have fake profiles and are having fake (yet seemingly real) conversations with each other.

1. Everyone has an iPad and I desperately need to get one!