» social media

New Gig at Cisco

Tim Washer — Tue, 04 May 2010 01:09:15 +0000

Started my new job today at Cisco as Product Manager for SureMute Technology (and by that I mean social media guy in the Service Provider group). I’m working in NYC, with a manager in San Jose, and a dotted-line into Jack Donaghy. Love this product placement scene on 30 Rock.

The Business Case for Nonsense

Tim Washer — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:42:11 +0000

I went to Harvard Business School.

But it was only for one evening. Last Thursday, I was invited to present a case study on using comedy in corporate YouTube videos, and shared “Mainframe: The Art of the Sale.” This video series we published in August 2006 continues to be discussed, simply because it’s funny. It’s listed as a case study in the second edition of bestseller The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott, published this month. (Congrats, David!)

Comedy done well has the power to cut through clutter and to influence, and that’s helped me get an honorable mention on Click-Z’s Social Media All-Stars list. My thanks to Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics.

Here’s my presentation:The Business Case for Nonsense: IBM Social Media

View more presentations from Tim Washer.

Mad Science

Tim Washer — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:01:30 +0000

Our new video series featuring John Cohn, from Discovery Channel’s “The Colony“

BtoB Mag: “Comedian Tim Washer and IBM’s viral campaign”

Tim Washer — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:38:34 +0000

From BtoB Magazine:

COMEDIAN TIM WASHER RARELY TAKES HIMSELF seriously, appearing everywhere from “Saturday Night Live,” to Budweiser commercials, to a plethora of late-night talk shows. But in 2004, the strictly humorous man landed a new job—this one with IBM Corp., whose brand would hardly be considered comical. IBM, in an attempt to poke fun at its newly established Mainframe Division, hired Washer for a series of viral videos featuring absurdist marketing humor for IBM’s then-new System z technology. The campaign took off, garnering almost 500,000 views for the six-part series on YouTube—with each video providing a link, and driving traffic, to the Mainframe informational Web site. Last month, Washer appeared at a Business Development Institute seminar on corporate social media practices. Though now several years removed from his Mainframe campaign, Washer praised IBM’s willingness to embrace creative absurdity in the corporate marketing world and warned the audience that fear was the greatest hindrance to a company’s ability to maneuver successfully in the social media realm. —Dillon White

Comedy, Social Media and Big Business

Tim Washer — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:59:50 +0000

David Wenger and I had a conversation recently on the role of humor in the corporate world, social media, and “stretching the boundaries of comfort when talking Big Business.” Read or listen to the interview on his blog.

Advertising Age: IBM’s Zany Viral Video Chief

Tim Washer — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:33:31 +0000

Earlier this week AdAge reported on the case study I discussed on the use of humor in corporate web video. I showed a few clips including one from our Smarter Planet campaign. “Mainframe: The Art of the Sale” earned some great press coverage. The San Francisco Chronicle blog “What are They Drinking in Armonk,” ZDNet compared it favorably against Microsoft’s broadcast ads with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates, industry luminary James Governor blogged “Selling big iron the David Brent way,” and Comedy Central selected it as a finalist in its Test Pilot’s contest.

Case study presentation from the BDI Conference:

View all six videos in the Art of the Sale series here.

NPR: social media gets the job done at work

Tim Washer — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:00:35 +0000

NPR’s Marketplace reporter Devin Dwyer joined us when we produced one of our smarter planet animations. Thanks to David Meerman Scott for introducing me to Devin.

And here’s the finished product:

Marketing’s Fifth P

Tim Washer — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:43:19 +0000

Congrats to our director/editor of this trilogy, Scott Teems, who won his second film festival (2 for 2) on Saturday night. View the full series at this link.

World Wide Rave, episode 1

Tim Washer — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 01:44:06 +0000

Yesterday I had the chance to speak at New York University on how to produce comedy videos, as part of David Meerman Scott’s book launch of World Wide Rave. We premiered the first episode of the video series Scott Teems and I produced to promote the book.