Archive for the ‘Digital Media’ Category

When Granny Comes Callin’

For many of us, the dawn of the “Information Age” and computer illiteracy are far behind us, like dinosaurs roaming the Earth. Or even like buying encyclopedias from a door to door salesman (I was told at a young age that I was LUCKY to have my own set, HA!) Although for many Baby Boomers, finding information and products on the Internet is a daunting task.

For many of us, the dawn of the “Information Age” and computer illiteracy are far behind us, like dinosaurs roaming the Earth.  Or even like buying encyclopedias from a door to door salesman (I was told at a young age that I was LUCKY to have my own set, HA!) Although for many Baby Boomers, finding information and products on the Internet is a daunting task.

For instance, my grandmother still refers to the Internet as a person, like a faceless man in a suit with enumerable secrets locked away in a metal suitcase. “Yes, Grandma…I will ask the Internet.” And often I am forced to placate her, while taking a few minutes to play treasure hunter for her – whether it’s paying bills or buying items from the Disney store online, assuring her that you don’t have to go ALL the way to Orlando to get Mickey Mouse socks. They just don’t get it! Meanwhile, I find myself asking, “Why is Grandma suddenly calling to get information from me? What happened to the old ‘how’s work’ question? When did the paradigm shift?” Apparently, I wasn’t the only one with this problem …

Morey Wright, of South Florida opened Netcrossers, a service based firm that helps Seniors navigate the web in a way that’s comfortable, safe and convenient.  For as little as $199 a year, Seniors get unlimited access to a web specialist for search requests. This concierge tool can be used for a variety of things, like finding the perfect earrings, or helping Granny check in to the grocery store on Foursquare.

Ok, that last one was a joke. I don’t need another medium to find out a lady who used the 10 items or fewer line with 12 items (#killme). However, if it will help her get the information she needs without bugging me in the process, I think its value is inherent.

And while I didn’t invent this business, I’m happy Mr. Wright did.

So tell me, is $4 a week worth the price of catering to Granny’s insatiable whim?

3 Responses to “When Granny Comes Callin’”

  1. Morey says:

    Thanks for the write up Julie! At Netcrossers our mission is simplifying the lives of Seniors! And to answer your question, i think granny is worth the price of one Starbucks visit a week!

    Morey Wright
    Founder and CEO
    Netcrossers

  2. Julie Ruiz says:

    Morey, I think your business is the epitomy of innovation. I’ve been following your company recently, and I’m excited to see your employment goals come to life. Thanks for bringing jobs to South Florida!

  3. Jason says:

    Hey Julie, great article. I had no idea about this company but it makes sense. Like you said… most seniors just don’t get it. A phone call is so simple and it’s like… calling Google.. or calling Mr. Internet for an answer. Now the question is, how often can they call, up to how many hours of service do you get? I guess I’ll have to mosey my way over to the website now.

    My last question is… who will win the Heat/Celts game on opening night?

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Will Tweet for Dates

What do you do when you’re new to a city and newly single? You give yourself up to crowd sourcing, of course. Or at least that’s what one eligible bachelor who is new to New York City has decided to do. Meet Brian. He is on the hunt to go on 30 dates in 30 days with your help.

What do you do when you’re new to a city and newly single? You give yourself up to crowd sourcing, of course. Or at least that’s what one eligible bachelor who is new to New York City has decided to do. Meet Brian. He is on the hunt to go on 30 dates in 30 days with your help.

Brian seems pretty savvy in social media. He has the “Big Four” media covered: a webpage, a Twitter account, a Facebook fan page and a Youtube account. With all his bases loaded, Brian’s dating life is bound to be busy this upcoming month.

In a culture where we love to scrutinize others’ lives and where “reality” entertainment is king, Brian seems to be bound for viral stardom. I must admit, I’ve already followed him on Twitter, subscribed to his Youtube page and amcurrently debating which one of my NYC friends I can convince to go on a date with him.

Brian’s plan is genius. He combines two of Americans’ favorite types of entertainment: dating shows and shows where the viewers call the shots. Take the popularity of shows such as The Bachelor, American Idol, Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance, for example. Hopefully, since the viewers get to choose the girls for Brian, we won’t have another Vienna scandal on our hands.

Plus, how can you not want to watch a shy guy make awkward phone calls asking girls he met online on dates?

So what’s your bet? Will Brian be able to go on 30 dates in 30 days?

One Response to “Will Tweet for Dates”

  1. karthikeyan chandrasekar says:

    No way because there are many other brian’s too available in the city, who also wish to go on 30 dates in 30 days.

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Alternatives to the Comfort Food of Search

The way we search is changing. Whether you’ve noticed or not, more and more people are using content-specific alternatives to Google searching. Why? What does this mean to those of us trying to reach our audience?

Google is the comfort food of search

The way we search is changing. Whether you’ve noticed or not, more and more people are using content-specific alternatives to Google searching. Why? What does this mean to those of us trying to reach our audience?

Google is the comfort food of search

Image via Flickr @trekkyandy

We all use Google. I use it everyday. Josh Cole, an executive producer at Tippingpoint Labs, calls Google the “meat loaf, mashed potatoes and peas of search.” It’s hearty, straightforward and the traditional comfort food in the Internet search world. However, Google’s not the best search engine for finding a meat loaf recipe.

If I’m looking for a recipe, I go directly to Recipezaar or FoodNetwork or maybe even Yummly. I know that at all of these sites a search for “meatloaf” is going to return to me the most relevant search results possible. I’m only going to get meatloaf recipe results.

Now, let’s say I was looking for the title of an album by Meat Loaf, the singer. You know, the guy who sings “I’d Lie for You” and “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”? I wouldn’t use Google. I’d go right to AllMusic.com and search for “Meat Loaf” and I’m guaranteed to get only one result—Meat Loaf, the singer.

This is how I search when I know exactly for which type of trusted result I’m looking. I call these kinds of sites (search engines for recipes, music, movies or events) Branded Content Aggregators.

Branded content aggregators are the future of search

Search results for Meat Loaf on IMDB.com

I define branded content aggregators as “human-edited websites that deliver results from trusted sources delivering a consistent quality and volume of valuable content.” So, Amazon.com could be considered a branded content aggregator for products. Or IMDB.com (the Internet Movie Database) is a branded content aggregator for all things movie- and television-related.

These content engines are amazingly powerful and deliver a vast amount of focused, reliable and smart results designed to deliver exactly the information I’m looking for without having to search through pages of “ten blue links” from Google.

So, branded content aggregators are tremendous sources of information, but they also provide brands and community members with wonderful opportunities to engage and participate in an active community by creating, curating and editing valuable content designed to make their experience better.

The Semantic Web is here—and you helped build it

Tim Berners-Lee, proponent of the Semantic Web

For years, people have been advocating the standardization of all Web data, searching for a way to build a machine language that supports a more intuitive and content-rich experience. Tim Berners-Lee calls this the Semantic Web.

Here’s the deal, Tim. The semantic web is already here. Every one of the branded content aggregators I visit understands the content, the lexicon and architecture of their specific niche better than any machine language ever could.

If I search for “pineapple” on AllRecipes.com, I get a list of the recipes that include pineapple as an ingredient. I don’t get the history of the pineapple. If I wanted that, I’d head to Wikipedia. Millions of individual contributors on millions of branded content aggregators have built semantic understandings of their specific niches to address their specific lexicon. That means the semantic web is already being built.

Harnessing the power of branded content aggregators in two search engines—is this the future of search?



So what if you don’t know where to find a branded content aggregator for your specific need? Where do you go? Who can introduce you to new, trusted sources?

I use two search engines that draw only from trusted sources to provide relevant results and contextualized navigation. I suggest you head over to DuckDuckGo.com and Kosmix.com and try searching for “meatloaf” (the dish) and “Meat Loaf” (the artist) with both search engines.

Each is an innovative search experience and a great use of branded content aggregation!

3 Responses to “Alternatives to the Comfort Food of Search”

  1. Ron Blau says:

    What about WolframAlpha (www.wolframalpha.com), which calls itself a Computational Knowledge Engine? Though not a universal search engine, it’s very different and very informative.

  2. Andrew Davis says:

    Ron,
    I love Wolfram Alpha. I would call it a branded Content aggregator actually, because it’s the place I go for all things numbers! It’s great!
    Thanks for the reminder!
    - Drew

  3. Andrew Davis says:

    By the way, Ron, I highlight Wolfram Alpha in the session that inspired this post.
    Check out the video here:
    http://vimeo.com/13370259
    Thanks again for commenting.

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A Renewed Call for Creativity

In their latest issue, AdAge provides a summary of a UK report stating that award-winning advertising has more effective in-market results because it engages the consumer and creates real buzz for the brand.

In their latest issue, AdAge provides a summary of a UK report stating that award-winning advertising has more effective in-market results because it engages the consumer and creates real buzz for the brand.

The argument about advertising creativity is not new, but it has taken on renewed urgency as creative budgets are slashed and making the sale for any brand is tougher than ever due to the global recession.  The advertising and communication business has been focused on survival, cost-reduction and chasing digital expertise.  At the same time, many clients have been focused on short-term earnings, staff reductions and giving procurement more control in the creative process.  If it wasn’t so destructive it would seem comical.

The results haven’t been pretty.  Recycled campaigns from years ago, advertising that focuses on the pure sell vs. engagement and brand-building and agency firings/changes that make your head spin.

On top of this, creative research is stuck in a time warp.  Focus groups, persuasion-driven copy-testing and quantitative studies suck the life out of creative people—and ultimately the creative product itself.

It’s time for the communication business to take a collective breath, and focus on building brands in new and creative ways.

It’s time to find ways to inspire creative people who are uniquely capable of inspiring consumers.

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Taking an Online Gamble?

Chatroulette has become an overnight sensation for those in the know on the Web. Started in November of 2009, the concept is relatively simple: Chatroulette is a website that pairs random strangers from around the world together for webcam-based conversations. Similar to a speed-dating session, you can skip to the next chat at any time if your partner is boring you (or perhaps sharing too much skin—gross!) The site has become a favorite among college students; which was how I first heard of it. While taking a break from studying for exams, my roommate and I decided to take a spin on the site, and we soon found ourselves face-to-face with a wide array of different characters—pantless men, a pair of singing Japanese teenagers and a college-aged guy serenading us with his guitar were some of the highlights.

Chatroulette has become an overnight sensation for those in the know on the Web.  Started in November of 2009, the concept is relatively simple: Chatroulette is a website that pairs random strangers from around the world together for webcam-based conversations.  Similar to a speed-dating session, you can skip to the next chat at any time if your partner is boring you (or perhaps sharing too much skin—gross!)  The site has become a favorite among college students; which was how I first heard of it.  While taking a break from studying for exams, my roommate and I decided to take a spin on the site, and we soon found ourselves face-to-face with a wide array of different characters—pantless men, a pair of singing Japanese teenagers and a college-aged guy serenading us with his guitar were some of the highlights.

According to an article on CNN.com, one of the reasons why Chatroulette has become so successful is the sense of anonymity that comes with connecting to random strangers.  Like its namesake game, Chatroulette offers a chance to feel the rush of exhilaration in anticipating the unexpected.  However, is this the only appeal of the site?  If a similar venture were to be launched on a social-networking site, where one theoretically knew all of their contacts, would the appeal be gone?  I personally don’t see myself putting a service like this to much use. The limited numbers of my friends with whom I chose to Skype or video chat are the ones who aren’t  scared away by my messy-haired, no makeup, poorly lit, double-chinned self on screen. Call me vain, but I don’t see a lot of appeal in exposing that side of myself to the cyber world. 

What do you think?

One Response to “Taking an Online Gamble?”

  1. Kate says:

    Am I that roommate? haha. and you know i love chatroulette!!

    but i agree with you, if i knew the people on the other end i would run away!!!

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Old Spice’s “Man Your Man Could Smell Like” Campaign is Fantastic

Old Spice has been getting all sorts of praise for its “Man your man could smell like” advertising campaign. The premise is simple: jacked dude explains to women that if their men used Old Spice, they could smell like him—while all the while he is shirtless doing amazing feats (and riding horses… backwards). It’s cracked me up from the start and is absolutely brilliant in its absurdity. Understandably, the ads were instantly viral.

Old Spice has been getting all sorts of praise for its “Man your man could smell like” advertising campaign. The premise is simple: jacked dude explains to women that if their men used Old Spice, they could smell like him—while all the while he is shirtless doing amazing feats (and riding horses… backwards). It’s cracked me up from the start and is absolutely brilliant in its absurdity. Understandably, the ads were instantly viral.

With their new series of ads though, they’ve taken brand participation to a new level. The Old Spice twitter handle is written in the “voice” of the actor, which is funny and is a great way to make the brand accessible. But tweeting isn’t all—the company is also taking the time to individually respond to “@OldSpice” tweets with commercial-style video responses.

So when Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg.com tweeted “i’m considering buying old spice body wash just so they keep making these epic commercials – http://bit.ly/K87jz” while also complaining about a fever in a later tweet, Old Spice guy responded with this:

Absolutely love it. Now, I may not be a marketing guru, but I do think I know funny. And this, dear readers, is funny. Funny things get passed around and talked about. And that, I’m pretty sure, is marketing gold.

So what do you think: Is this an effective campaign? Do you think that as brands look to engage deeper and deeper with their customers we will be seeing more of this direct participation? Or, even more importantly, does a funny, viral campaign even affect sales? Will Old Spice be able to measure the effectiveness of this campaign?  Let us know what you think in the comments!

5 Responses to “Old Spice’s “Man Your Man Could Smell Like” Campaign is Fantastic”

  1. The thing that makes this advertising campaign so effective is it’s just ludicrously funny, and because no one knows Mustafa’s name (and he’s been signed as “talent” to NBC for a series to be developed), everyone keeps calling him “The Old Spice guy”. Brand, brand, brand.

  2. Lou Tamposi says:

    Steffani–I completely agree. If nothing else, this keeps the Old Spice brand buzzing. Do you think Mustafa is so linked to Old Spice that if and when NBC develops a series around him it will generate even more hype for Old Spice?

  3. Mike P says:

    Hype is 1 thing, but a more interactive and engaging experience with the brand would be to follow up with free “product” or attach coupon codes or other incentives to get people to purchase the product. That is a more integrated campaign, IMO

    Mike Pascucci
    @mikepascucci

  4. Barry Silverstein says:

    I agree it’s a brilliant campaign. It has brought an old, tired brand back to life. It’s not often agency and client teams are able to be bold and use humor in a way that has this much impact. I wonder what if any copy testing research was used or if they just went for it?
    Very cool.

  5. Jack Cahill says:

    I agree with Barry. I remember the first time I saw this ad, I did a double take and thought to myself, “that was Old Spice?!”. Great job of making me start thinking “cool” about a brand I had pretty much forgotten about. And Lou, it cracks me up everytime too. Nice post.

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Data vs. Insight: Make Meaning from What Matters

Thanks to the great folks at Dachis Group for inviting me to guest blog on their Collaboratory. They are doing terrific things for companies interested utilizing social business design to reinvent themselves. Thought maybe Verbatim readers would also enjoy the topic…

There’s too much data. Way too much, and it’s not helpful. There, I said it.

Social media monitoring, web analytics, quantitative market research, trackers, clickthroughs and opens… your ecosystem produces a firehose of data, but not a whole lot of meaning.

Thanks to the great folks at Dachis Group  for inviting me to guest blog on their Collaboratory. They are doing terrific things for companies interested utilizing social business design to reinvent themselves. Thought maybe Verbatim readers would also enjoy the topic…

There’s too much data. Way too much, and it’s not helpful. There, I said it.

Social media monitoring, web analytics, quantitative market research, trackers, clickthroughs and opens… your ecosystem produces a firehose of data, but not a whole lot of meaning.

How about some insight instead? Insight – what we’re really after – can create new businesses, grow existing ones, solve problems, tell stories and deliver real value to your organization. Businesses today are drowning in data and missing real insight. But they don’t have to. The same forces that are converging to bombard us with more data are the same ones that will help us. Customers today want to participate with businesses and brands more than ever before, which creates a real opportunity to use that connection for insight.

It’s great that your customers can give you feedback on products using the ratings and reviews, and being alerted to their dissatisfaction on Twitter is important. But what if I told you that you’re missing the heart of what really matters to your customers? CRM expert Denis Pombriant calls this “CSI approach ” to customer intelligence badly reactionary, and he’s right. How powerful would it be to truly understand your customers in a way that allows you to be relevant to them, right out of the gate?

To read the rest of this post head over to the Dachis Group blog.

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Amplitude vs. Fidelity

My husband, a journalist, has wide-ranging interests. Over the course of a single course dinner, his conversation can easily span politics, parallel universes (which can sometimes be one and the same topic), basketball, and Miles Davis’ use of modal scales. He’s also a audiophile (or “gearhead,” to use the more scientific term), so it was no surprise a few weeks ago that we discussed a recent study by the Pew Research Center on how news gets reported over the carrot-ginger soup and had advanced to top-of-the-line stereo systems by the time we’d scraped the last of the acorn squash off our plates. (It was a very orange meal.)

My husband, a journalist, has wide-ranging interests. Over the course of a single course dinner, his conversation can easily span politics, parallel universes (which can sometimes be one and the same topic), basketball, and Miles Davis’ use of modal scales. He’s also a audiophile (or “gearhead,” to use the more scientific term), so it was no surprise a few weeks ago that we discussed a recent study by the Pew Research Center on how news gets reported over the carrot-ginger soup and had advanced to top-of-the-line stereo systems by the time we’d scraped the last of the acorn squash off our plates. (It was a very orange meal.)

And over the chamomile tea, I realized that these two topics were at least metaphorically related.

The Pew study explored the sources, evolution and distribution of local news in Baltimore, and found that “much of the ‘news’ people receive contains no original reporting. Fully eight out of 10 stories studied simply repeated or repackaged previously published information.” While new media provided a means of accelerating the spread of news, it served mainly as “an alert system and a way to disseminate stories from other places,” rather than as a source of original reporting that would expand or deepen one’s understanding of the original story. In what the study authors referred to as “the growing echo chamber online,” social media served more to increase the noise and its spread than to shed new light on events that may have since evolved after Web sites and “Tweeters” had linked to it.

Like highly-compressed MP3 music files, the benefit of social media is to make content bite-sized and easily transferrable. But if you’re a music lover, you know that the price of compactness and portability is fidelity. If you want to hear the layers and texture in an orchestration or the nuance in a voice, you listen to vinyl records or CDs, preferably on a good sound system that is sensitive to dynamic range and complexity rather than ear buds that filter it out.

The same is true of consumer insight.  “Listening platforms” – the plethora of Web mining and brand monitoring applications – are great for following the sound byte on its progression through cyberspace. Social media accelerates and amplifies, but sometimes lends greater weight to an item than it may actually merit. And if you want depth, if you crave the nuance that lies at the core of every great insight, you need more than a passive listening platform. You need a well-designed room, a rich source of sound, and a fierce passion for hearing and making meaning from it. And that’s why the diverse and full voices in our intimate communities are music to my ears.

One Response to “Amplitude vs. Fidelity”

  1. Laura Carrillo says:

    Great post Julie! It is amazing how “important” something can seem when you look at the quantity of posts/buzz on social media sites like Twitter, when in actuality it rarely proves much and often only creates noise for a brief moment. Listening is an art that when focused on helps make findings from communities much more rich and meaningful. That is a very far cry from the self-promotion and other noise you get on public social media sites. Music indeed :)

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Social CRM: A work in progress?

CRM’s infatuation with all things social may be taking a bite out of its backside. Too often CRM vendors focus on outbound messaging through products like Twitter and Facebook while forgetting about Stephen Covey.

Stephen Covey?

CRM’s infatuation with all things social may be taking a bite out of its backside. Too often CRM vendors focus on outbound messaging through products like Twitter and Facebook while forgetting about Stephen Covey.

Stephen Covey?

You might remember him as the guru who told us about “The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People.” Remember Habit 5? “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” Brilliant stuff—something we all should have been taught at home though I confess I don’t recall that memo. My bad. I caught up eventually.

A recent article in The Economist brought a lot home to me. The article quotes work by Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, a Harvard Business School professor and one of his MBA students Bill Heil. According to The Economist, the researchers surveyed more than 300,000 Twitter users in May 2009 and reported results that include:

  • More than half said they tweeted less than once every 74 days
  • The most active 10% of Twitter users published 90% of all tweets

That last bullet should give anyone who believes in the wisdom of crowds reason to pause. What kind of crowd? Ought to be the first question we ask, followed by, who is in it? This goes right back to Covey—understand the audience before beginning your sermon. The first bullet proves another kind of wisdom; the kind that understands that membership is not participation.

Of course there are times when the proverbial (or Monty Pythonesque) blind horse could tell you all you need to know, as in when you start getting complaints that a product or process is broken. But that’s called feedback and often we confuse it with discovery.

When you really want to discover what your customers think—their attitudes, behaviors, biases, and unmet needs—it really helps to know that the data you are collecting is coming from a reasonable cross section, not the noisy ten percent. Just as there are names for processes like “feedback” and “discovery” there’s a term that describes that noisy ten percent. They’re often called outliers.

CRM’s work with social media so far seems focused in various ways on the outliers, and predictably vendors are still trying to figure out social media’s true potential. If you understand the value of communities, it should be obvious.

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Moving from Social Media to Social Business

Thanks to Diane and company for giving me an opportunity to share thoughts with you via Verbatim. I’ve been following Communispace since 2006, when I covered social computing as a research analyst; now I see the value of what the company is doing through a lens of social business design.

Over the past decade, we’ve been witnessing the rise of social media. While we are fundamentally social beings, technology advances and cultural preferences have driven proliferation of these behaviors online. The series of tubes that carry data are wider and reach further than ever. Moore’s law still holds true, as does Metcalf’s—to which 400 million Facebook users across a variety of platforms can attest. We have become conditioned to share opinions on anything and everything in our new digital forums, salons, and echo chambers.

Thanks to Diane and company for giving me an opportunity to share thoughts with you via Verbatim. I’ve been following Communispace since 2006, when I covered social computing as a research analyst; now I see the value of what the company is doing through a lens of social business design.

Over the past decade, we’ve been witnessing the rise of social media. While we are fundamentally social beings, technology advances and cultural preferences have driven proliferation of these behaviors online. The series of tubes that carry data are wider and reach further than ever. Moore’s law still holds true, as does Metcalf’s—to which 400 million Facebook users across a variety of platforms can attest. We have become conditioned to share opinions on anything and everything in our new digital forums, salons, and echo chambers.

At the same time, many of us seem to have realized that pursuing work/life balance ends up as corporate Samsara. Instead, we’ve intertwined work and life to the extent that we do what we love and love what we do. (Or perhaps have gotten much better at fooling ourselves about it.) Along the way, we started bringing our toys to work and realized that our personal technology was better than the company’s.

Good businesses follow the action and most brands finally realize that these trends can be harnessed for commercial benefit. But using social media for business is easier said than done—so far, many brands have been tacking on social real estate to campaigns the same way they’ve been doing with digital microsites and banner ads. To make social media work, businesses must participate in this space differently than consumers; in other words, they’ve got to take a social business approach.

I think Communispace provides a great example in helping companies participate in social business. Using a framework developed by Dachis Group, here’s how I see the company creating social business value:

  • The Ecosystem. Providing connections with prospects and customers to help extend organizational functions beyond those on the payroll, e.g. marketing research.
  • The Hivemind. Allowing brands to become more culturally calibrated with their customers. Understanding motivations paves the way for social calibration.
  • The Dynamic Signal. Bringing out insight from previously unheard voices. The silos in existing listening processes prevent weak signals from being heard.
  • The Metafilter. Moderating discussion and drawing out signals from noise. Listening requires a balance of automated filtering and manual curation.

It’s time to shift from social media and get down to social business. Finding the right partners to help you get there matters.

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