Carrot Creative is stoked to announce a partnership with the world’s leading snowboard manufacturer, Burton Snowboards, headquartered in Burlington, Vermont. Specifically, Carrot will be assisting Burton with social media research, recommendations, and digital best practices—all designed to meet Burton’s objective of providing best-in-class service and support for their riders. The Carrot Creative team has been riding a high since the contract was signed.

Stay tuned, as Carrot and Burton ramp things up for Winter 2012…

About Burton Snowboards: In 1977, Jake Burton Carpenter founded Burton Snowboards out of his Vermont barn. Since then, Burton has fueled the growth of snowboarding worldwide through its groundbreaking product lines, its team of top snowboarders and its grassroots efforts to get the sport accepted at resorts.  In 1996, Burton began growing its family of brands to include boardsports and apparel brands. Privately held and owned by Jake, Burton’s headquarters are in Burlington, Vermont with offices in California, Austria, Japan and Australia. For more information, visit burton.com.

The Carrot team took a few quick photos while up in Burlington—enjoy!

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The MTV Music Meter’s been getting some great press lately (like this awesome video from CNN), and Carrot’s proud to have worked on it.

The MTV Music Meter allows users to discover new music with a daily Top 100 list of artists. This ranking is determined by their online popularity from “tweets and other social mentions, blog posts, news articles, streams, and purchases for over one million artists”. In addition, the Meter provides a comprehensive library of artists to listen to song samples, view their latest news, bio, and photos—all in one location (and now, application).

Last fall, MTV came to us to design native apps for the iPhone, Android and iPad. We helped solve the fun problem of making sure the design and UX was suited for each platform, while still connecting and relating to the web version.

The app is now available for the iPad, iPhone, and Android.

Happy music hunting!

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“Alright, guys, listen up. Now, Adam… pay attention!”

I cannot begin to tell you how many times I’ve heard that statement over the past 3 months, but I can tell you why. Anomaly approached Carrot Creative in October of 2010 to collaborate with them and one of their flagship clients, Budweiser. Mike Germano’s eyes lit up at the opportunity. He yelled “Mmmmerica!” and soon banned any other beer than Budweiser to be allowed in the Carrot fridge.

Carrot designed and developed the Grab Some Buds application, bringing a whole new level of excitement to the Facebook event creation app that everyone knows and loves. The application does what Facebook’s doesn’t – it gets attendees pumped for their upcoming event. Users can access the application via the Grab Some Buds tab on Budweiser’s Facebook page, where they are prompted to create an event, choose from 15 different scenarios (bachelor party, birthday, vegas, no reason, etc.), invite guests, and choose a location. When users select their message, they are provided with a sample audio message that will be personalized for each attendee on the guest list. The personalized messages can be delivered via voicemail or Facebook notification, and are delivered on the day of your event. If voicemail delivery is chosen, the attendee will also receive a text message with the location of the event.

Carrot is beyond thankful to have the opportunity to work with the good folks at Anomaly as well as an awesome brand like Budweiser.

Do you have an epic night coming up? Well, what are you waiting for? Get out there and GRAB SOME BUDS!

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On Monday Chili’s released a new 2 for $20 sweepstakes on Facebook called Spin 2 Win. For those unfortunate few that have never enjoyed a tender baby back rib from this fine establishment, Chili’s boasts quite the deal of an appetizer plus 2 full sized entrees for just $20. Better yet, with the new Spin 2 Win application that Carrot produced, you can now enter for a chance to win a $20 gift card to Chili’s – making that feast virtually free! The only problem is you have to go to the home state of @mikegermano and @fromatok to get there, the closest one to the city is 3 2nd St, Jersey City, NJ.

The application takes a new approach to the pick-a-friend sweepstakes we so commonly see on Facebook. Instead of you picking who you want to go with (and attempting to avoid those awkward conversations with your friends that you didn’t pick), Spin 2 Win will leave your dinner guest to a game of chance. Take a spin through a Vegas-style slot machine of your friends, pulling the lever and watching the reel roll before locking on a randomly selected Facebook friend. Don’t like your odds? Spin again and hope for a better payout. In this game the odds aren’t stacked in the house’s favor: you’ve got nothing to lose, only 20 clams to win! Just think how many Awesome Blomssoms $20 can buy!

We’re totally pumped to work with such great brand like Chili’s and this makes our decision for where to have the next Carrot team dinner waaay easier.  So, if you’re a fan of Chili’s or want to give their pepper a bite, take a minute to play Spin 2 Win and maybe you’ll win you and your friend a meal fit for kings!

Don’t forget to tip!

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This mystery client is Tucker Max. We’ll be building a fully integrated website and digital strategy for his upcoming feature film, “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell” based off of the New York Times Bestseller book of the same name.

We had an awesome time meeting Tucker in person earlier this week for a private screening of the movie (if you like his stories you’re going to love it) and to discuss ideas as to what will really light it up. The great thing is that Tucker is as open and excited about our ideas as we are and isn’t afraid to push the limits to what we can do. When you have that kind of trust from a client, it’s always refreshing and makes our entire team want to start immediately.

The movie opens September 25th nationwide so the website will be up prior to that. We’ll keep you updated on the launch of the project and other cool promotional tie-ins Tucker has up his sleeve to get this going.Trust me, they’re going to catch your attention.

On a side note, if you know the history of Tucker Max (and you can check out his website or book if you want to really dive in) you can tell that he knows how to push boundaries and step on toes. While we here at Carrot have many clients interested in getting into social media, some aren’t willing to jump over the big walls and try things that may be a little risqué for the current status quo. Sure, this is totally fine, but if you take a look at the campaigns that really take off, it’s from the companies that push limits and make a loud statement. This is the exact reason why we chose to work with Tucker Max. He embodies all of this and we’re going to build a kick ass website and digital campaign to match all of these ideals.

Tucker Max wants a campaign that will excite everyone and stir some conversation. Carrot Creative is here to help with that.

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Sure, it’s great to build cool things. But, when there’s a great strategy to reaching an audience behind the cool thing—you need to take a bigger look at it. That’s what happened with the latest project we did for Dave Matthews Band.

As many know, the DMB fan base was collected and solidified through grass roots- the 90s viral, trading music from tape recorder to tape recorder. Just shy of 20 years later, the band’s fan base has grown, evolved and adapted as technology has done the same thing. Snail Mail gave way to early email lists, to forums (which are still booming), to social media platforms like Facebook. The means have changed, but the  fans’ passion is the same.

In recognition of this shift to viral digital platforms, Dave Matthews Band’s management Redlight Communications is promoting the Band’s upcoming album Big Whiskey & The GrooGrux King with some viral contests and interactive projects, the first of which we just finished up work on.

We’re pleased to announce the Facebook-based Advanced Listening Party contest, where users create a Facebook Event and invite friends in hopes of receiving an advanced copy of the album. The 100 Facebook Events with the highest members in attendance win a chance to dance to DMB before anyone else. They’re also encouraged to document their party with video, in order for a chance at a grand prize to win Front Row tickets, accommodations and a special meet & greet with Dave Matthews himself.

The contest launched Tuesday and already 395 events have been created. 395! In 4 days! Obviously, this group is largely influenced by promotions for Dave himself. but this is pure proof of creating a campaign for your audience, knowing your audience and reaching them on that level.

Some tips we’ve learned:

• If you’re using Facebook as a platform for the campaign, use the Newsfeed to your advantage. Your friends see your Newsfeed and are interested in what is going on. By placing a catchy title, image, etc…you’re already increasing the chance of people finding your item.
• Let your users and fan base spread the news for you. If you’ve built the proper amount of content for them to share, they’ll spread it on their own. Let them do it and watch with a smile on your face.
• Monitor it. The pick up and amount of links shared is important. Make sure you have a plan in place to track everything early on. Results are not only important for ROI, but it provides that OH COOL! factor as well.

Are you a fan of DMB? We definitely encourage you to take part! (And tell them >carrot sent you!)

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We’re happy to announce today that >carrot creative will now provide social media strategy, design and development work to Complete Control Management, a leading artist management and music marketing company.

Complete Control Management manages top selling artists including Tiësto, American Hi-Fi,Cary Brothers, Misstress Barbara, DJ Dan, Stacy Jones and Greg Collins, as well as new artists, The Downtown Fiction, Working For a Nuclear Free City, Shuttle and Classixx.

Stay tuned to the >carrot creative blog for more news about this exciting partnership and the work we’ll be doing with their team.

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Citizen journalism is the most informative innovation in the mobile space since the introduction of the camera phone, and our good friends at CBSEyeMobile are leading the way with their new application developed specifically for the iPhone. It’s already been featured on several sites including TechCrunch, Mashable, and TUAW since launching last week and is garnering fabulous reviews from all around the blogosphere.

We’re very excited to be working with the CBSEyeMobile team to build other amazing social network integration tools and can’t wait to see what else the team has up their sleeves.

Try out the latest craze to hit the iPhone here.

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This article is copyright © 2012 

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