TicketMaster Empowering Scalpers

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.

Kasparov and Sting

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.

Gap ModelMaker, As If

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