videos | Justin Levy

My Interview with Restaurant Business Magazine

November 15, 2010 By Justin Levy 2 Comments

During BlogWorld Expo 2010, my friends at PepsiCo set up some time for me to sit down with Sam Smith, editor of Restaurant Business magazine and MonkeyDish.com about my restaurant, Caminito Argentinean Steakhouse.

It was a fun, short interview about the issues that the restaurant faced when I jumped in as a partner to help my best friend. We discuss some of the specific actions that we took and how that helped lead us to becoming the #1 steakhouse in the Pioneer Valley.

If you can’t see the video, you can watch it over on PepsiCo’s YouTube channel.

If we managed to peak your interest and you wanted to read more about what we’ve down as a small business to build our community and increase sales at the restaurant using social media, you can find more here and here.

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Filed Under: Caminito, Interview, Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Strategy, Videos Tagged With: Caminito, Interview, Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Strategy, videos

Coca-Cola’s Happiness Machine

January 20, 2010 By Justin Levy 28 Comments

Imagine if you walked up to a vending machine, dropped in a couple dollars, made your selection and a soda popped out. Seems completely normal, right? Now, what if another soda came out. Possibly the computer on the fritz but kinda cool, huh? But, what if it kept spitting out soda after soda, started pouring the soda for you into a glass, gave you some flowers and a pizza? Think that would cause a group of people to gather ’round the vending machine? Of course it would. Now, what if that was all captured on video and shared online. High chance of going viral? Yep.

Well, that is exactly what Coca-Cola has done as part of their “Open Happiness” global marketing campaign.

As MediaPost explains:

Coke set up a special vending machine on a real college campus and rolled footage of students’ surprised and delighted reactions as the machine proceeded to dispense everything from free bottles of Coke to flowers, a whole pizza, a six-foot sub and balloon animals.

Coke couldn’t have scripted better responses: Students laugh and jump, pass the Cokes and gifts around, and even thank Coke as they hug the vending machine. But the footage is “all real students and real reactions,” according to Christy Amador, digital marketing manager, Coca-Cola global interactive marketing.

The video is the first video that Coca-Cola has released that was created solely for digital distribution without use in TV ads. Want to know if it was a success for Coca-Cola? Well, in the week since the video has gone live on YouTube, it has received over 700,000+ views.

Without further ado, here is the hilarious video from St. John’s University. If you can’t view this video, head over to YouTube.

Coca-Cola has been garnering a lot of applause from the social media community as of late, first, with the release of their 3 page social media policy and now with this.

Do you like the concept? How could other brands learn from what Coca-Cola has been doing?

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Filed Under: Social Media, Videos Tagged With: cocacola, Social Media, videos

Twitterville Video Book Review

September 9, 2009 By Justin Levy 15 Comments

Today I review Twitterville by Shel Israel. I enjoyed reading Twitterville because Shel does a great job of telling the stories that have come to make Twitter what many of us love. The book doesn’t provide you with a lot of tactical, go out and do it-type information. But, what it does do is tell you stories about how Twitter has been used to form communities, trust and relationships.

I definitely think it’s worth picking up, especially if you’re new to Twitter or still don’t quite get what everyone gets so excited over it.

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Reviews, Twitter, Videos Tagged With: Book Reviews, Reviews, Twitter, videos

Rhapsody Thinks Outside the Box

September 7, 2009 By Justin Levy 19 Comments

A few days ago I saw a tweet fly by from Todd Defren mentioning something to do with Jay-Z and Rhapsody. Since I’m a HUGE fan of Jay-Z I followed the link. The link took me to this amazing Rhapsody commercial promoting Jay-Z’s new album, The Blueprint 3. If you’re not a fan of Jay-Z then it will be a little hard to understand why this commercial is so cool. BUT, any true Jay-Z fans will notice that, in the span of one minute, the commercial seamlessly takes you through most of Jay-Z’s album covers.

I think this is a great example of a brand thinking outside the box. Most commercials, especially for upcoming music albums, are sheer promotion for the album. This commercial takes you back to all of the fantastic albums that Jay-Z has released over his career. While showing you the previous album covers, the new single, Run This Town, from The Blueprint 3 is playing in the background thus hyping you for the new album.

The commercial ends with a call-to-action to head over to the specially designed section of the Rhapsody site dedicated to the album release. There you can listen to the album, send updates to Twitter and Facebook of your favorite songs from the album, comment on the commercial, sign up for a subscription to Rhapsody and a whole bunch more.

There is so much that I think is cool about this but I want to know what you think about it. If this was a commercial for an artist you really liked, would the commercial and landing page make you any more likely to try Rhapsody and/or buy the album?

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Filed Under: Marketing, Videos Tagged With: jayz, Marketing, videos

Gary Vaynerchuk Treats People Like Goldfish

August 18, 2009 By Justin Levy 8 Comments

I bet if you were just cruising through your tweets or feeds, this probably caught your eye huh? You might be thinking that I’m just trying to create a catchy title to get you to stop on by, right? Well, if that’s what you thought then you’re partially correct. Of course, I love it when you stop by here and am incredibly humbled by it. However, in a recent tweet Gary stated that you should treat everyone like a goldfish. So, what did he mean by this?

Check out Gary explain what he means by that statement and why YOU should be treating everyone like a goldfish as well.

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Viddler video.

I completely agree with Gary and think that his analogy is perfect. This is what Gary lives by each and every day and one of the reasons why he has such a dedicated group of friends, fans, and supporters. Sure, it’s hard to scale that as an individual but as long as you’re connecting as often as possible with as many people as possible, others notice and are appreciative. Also, it doesn’t have to be long connections. Just a simple “congrats” can make someone’s day (trust me, I know)

But, I think you can and should take it one step past Gary’s concept. Instead of just connecting with someone like they were a goldfish in a bowl by themselves, how about connect with them and if possible, help them jump into a fish tank where they might have an opportunity with other fish that they may not already know. Be that connector and help others with no selfish reasons behind it.

You know who does this really, really well? Gary definitely does. But, also, others like Chris Brogan, Jason Falls, Amber Naslund, Brian Solis (all of whom YOU can connect with at the Inbound Marketing Summit) and many, many others, who spend most of their time connecting and helping others just because.

Are you treating everyone that you’re lucky enough to have the opportunity to connect with like a goldfish? Are you connecting with and helping your network as often as possible? Know someone that is doing it really well and want to recognize them for it?

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Photo by: a_trotskyite