The 5th Passenger on #iRoadTrip
crbrowning | Mar 23, 2009 | Comments 5
I recently created and led an exciting project, the Innovators’ Road Trip for a few clients at New Marketing Labs. The project focused on telling the story of innovation through the hearland of America and leveraged a nearly complete array of social media to share our experiences.
At a high level, the project did nothing dramatically new. People have been using blogs, twitter, video, podcasts, Utters, Seesmic live video to share information for a while. What was different was the focus on a single topic, by 4 individuals for a focused period of time. This focused use of the array of social media tools at our disposal was far more powerful than I had estimated.
Our communication goal: We used every communication tool at our disposal to share our experience with those that were listening. If you followed us, you knew where we were (we could tell you on Twitter), saw what we saw (uploaded through Twitpicts or Seesmic) and listen to us (Utterli). After our interviews we would compose more formal posts for the trip blog as well. We engaged with our audience and tried to draw them into our conversation – breaking the ‘4th wall’ to use a theater metaphor.
Speaking as one of the four in the Ford Escape on the #iRoadTrip – we never felt like it was just the four of us. Our continual conversation with the wonderful people that shared our adventure online, was just that – a shared experience. These conversations created a virtual fifth passenger; our audience, who was with us throughout our adventure. In our Ford Escape we had Scott Monty, Chris Brogan, Chris Kieff, Aaron Strout, Bryan Person, Jim Hunt, and many, many others in this fifth passenger seat.
On behalf of Jeff, John, Jim, and myself; thank you to those that listened and joined us. We are planning three more trips this year and we hope that you will join us as the fifth passenger on those too.
If you were one of the fifth passengers, we are eager to hear what you would like to see on the next trip. Please let us know in the comments below.
/colin
Filed Under: Social Media Tips • Theory
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Colin:
It was a pleasure being the fifth passenger during your journey.
Bryan | @BryanPerson
LiveWorld
Colin,
Love the 5th passenger comment. While I didn’t use all the tools y’all used (limited myself to Twitter/TwitPic) I found that same 5th passenger dynamic in my Mardi Gras Twitter experiment. http://budurl.com/TomMartinMardiGras
And I think that was the biggest, most insightful piece of learning to come out of the experiment. That through social media and embedded journalism, you can connect with your audience in ways advertising simply cannot fathom much less achieve.
@TomMartin
Three more trips!?!?
Gasp…
[...] is central and must be included in the conversation. In a prior post, I have discussed the Fifth Passenger concept on the Innovators’ Road Trip – indeed the audience should be thought of as an [...]
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