Earlier this week Kiva, one of our pilot customers, was voted in as a Top 5 Finalist in American Express’ Members Project contest. Over the next twelve days, Kiva and four other nonprofit organizations will vie for a $1.5 million first prize. Congrats to the entire Kiva team!

Now, we’re guessing that many of you are familiar with Kiva’s inspiring story, but it bears repeating that Kiva is THE standard-bearer in the world of technology-for-social-good. Its revolutionary person-to-person micro-lending platform has enabled countless people to help entrepreneurs across the developing world. And the organization continues to scale at an amazing rate.

Over the past six months, Involver has had the opportunity to work very closely with Kiva and its marketing team: together and through our video campaign platform, we’ve been able to establish a strong beachhead for Kiva on social networks. Its Involver-powered video campaign on Facebook, for example, has alone generated over 160,000 video views so far; in addition, this campaign’s 1,400+ influencers have shared Kiva’s campaign video an average of 12.7 times.

We’re thrilled to help Kiva in its homestretch Members Project run. A few weeks ago, Kiva unveiled the following video as part of a larger effort to reach a Top 5 spot. If you are an American Express cardmember, please vote for Kiva today by clicking the “VOTE NOW!” button below! And tell your friends to do the same!

Due to some heavy demand from big and small brands, agencies, nonprofits, and other marketers, we’ve decided to push out the end-date of our Pilot Program to Friday, October 31. This extension will allow us to gather and act on even more product feedback: as we prepare for a public launch later this autumn, we’re going to make sure to listen to and implement your great suggestions!

If you haven’t applied yet for access to our turnkey video campaign platform, please do! Just complete this simple form and we’ll get in touch!

Today leading business resource Inc. Magazine released their annual frontpage story covering the “30 Under 30: America’s Coolest Young Entrepreneurs.”

We’re happy to announce that our co-founders Rahim Fazal and Noah Horton were both selected for this feature spread! You can read their joint profile here. Noah and Rahim were chosen alongside some great young entrepreneurs, including the visionary folks behind Wordpress, Mint.com, and Box.net.

Inc.’s intro article to the “30 Under 30″ starts out with a reminder:

“While there’s no magic formula for success in business, it never hurts to be quick on your feet, able to brush aside fears, and come armed with a fresh perspective. It’s no wonder we’re seeing more and more young entrepreneurs these days.”

In addition to describing the values that make our co-founders tick, the statement above also incidentally describes some of the guiding principles that are driving the Involver platform forward. We’re motivated by a fresh perspective on video — one that focuses on the need and opportunity for real video engagement. And we’re convinced that the “magic formula” for effective video marketing is a matter of challenging the assumptions of flat and passive video display.

Thank you to Inc. Magazine for featuring Involver!

We’re thrilled to announce that the Serena Video Campaign has won an OMMA Award for Best Business-to-Business Integrated Online Campaign in 2008! Involver and its agency partner Brief Attention Span Communications received this special honor at an awards ceremony yesterday in New York City at the OMMA Global Conference and Expo.

The annual Online Media, Marketing and Advertising Awards celebrates the most innovative brand marketers, agencies, content providers and their pioneering creative work. Our end-to-end video campaign platform for social networks was recognized in particular as a powerful and easy-to-use marketing tool for brands: Involver recently built and ran a Facebook video syndication campaign for Serena Software, a leading enterprise software company that serves 96 of the Fortune 100.

Our congrats go out to Serena and creative firm Brief Attention Span Communications. And thank you to OMMA — we’re absolutely honored to have shared the nominee stage with Coca-Cola, Oglivy, Paramount, Digitas, Walt Disney, Nike, and all of the other 2008 nominees and winners that are pushing the creative envelope.

Earlier this week, Involver delivered a feature presentation at NetSquared’s NetTuesday event in San Francisco. Nikki Serapio, our Marketing Director for the social-cause community, gave a talk entitled “Involver: How Nonprofits Can Create Video Campaigns on Social Networks.”

A great crowd came out to learn more about our end-to-end, self-serve platform. More than 60 leaders from various nonprofits (like the American Cancer Society and the Craigslist Foundation), startups, and other tech companies engaged in a lively and thoughtful discussion about how video campaigns can help organizations meet their “bottom lines for social good.” Using a case-study approach, Nikki described how Involver’s powerful syndication features allowed Kiva to create a community of real enthusiasts on Facebook. Kiva’s campaign stats speak for themselves:

- Over 160,000 video views
- Over 1,400 people have posted Kiva’s campaign video to their FB profiles
- On average, each campaign member has invited their FB friends to watch the video 12.7 times

Chirag Shah, Special Projects Manager at Kiva, also spoke at NetTuesday. Chirag gave a wonderful presentation, emphasizing the high level of viewer engagement that Kiva was able to generate via its branded Facebook application.

Involver is extremely happy to help nonprofits achieve their unique marketing goals. Our Pilot Program for using our video campaign platform is accepting applications until the end of September, and we invite all cause-oriented organizations — both large and small — to sign up!

Thank you again to NetSquared, and special thanks to Britt Bravo for inviting us to speak!

We recently received word that our video campaign for Serena Software has been selected as a finalist for three prestigious OMMA Awards, including awards for the “Best Integrated Online Campaign” and the “Best Viral Campaign” for online advertising!

Winners will be announced at a ceremony at the Marriot Marquis in New York City on September 18th. Read this press release for more info.

We’re really grateful to be recognized by the OMMA Awards, an annual celebration that honors top-shelf brand marketers, agencies, and content providers and their visionary work. A quick look at the past years’ winners reveals a definite Who’s Who from the Marketing and Creative worlds: Involver joins agencies and other OMMA-nominated organizations that have built breakthrough rich media campaigns for Visa, Warner Brothers, HBO, Discovery Channel, and Nissan, among others.

We look forward to the awards ceremony! Also — congrats to our partner Brief Attention Span Productions, which created the video commercial for Serena’s Involver-powered campaign. (Click here to view the video if you haven’t already.)

We’re excited to be featured this week in an exclusive case study by MarketingProfs, the leading online resource for marketing professionals. We’re big fans of MarketingProfs’ in-depth reports and newsletters, and we’re grateful that our platform is receiving special, frontpage exposure — to over 319,000 MarketingProfs members!

The case study examines our recent “@#$%” video campaign for Serena Software, a company that serves 96 of the Fortune 100. It describes how the Involver platform helped Serena “beat the odds” with effective Facebook marketing.

MarketingProfs’ Kimberly Smith does a great job explaining some key learnings from the campaign:

“Facebook can be a viable B2B marketing channel. Since it already used Facebook as its company intranet, Serena was confident that there were other business professionals networking on the site, and it found a fun way to connect with them. The company took a risk in advertising the video solely on Facebook, given the site’s notoriously low response rates, but it found success by creating an interactive application experience that mirrored regular Facebook activity, as opposed to advertising with banners. The bleeping video sparked intrigue, and the succinct calls to action and follow-on content were effective elements for guiding users through to the Serena Web site.”

Stories like Serena’s prove that there is much more to video marketing than video display. Increasingly, we’ve been talking to companies and organizations that are searching for an effective alternative to traditional video-sharing sites like YouTube. Which is to say — they’re actively looking for something beyond a simple “click-to-view” solution, and they’re looking for something that provides measurable ROI.

We believe this is where Involver comes in. Our end-to-end platform is the easiest way to syndicate videos to Facebook and other social networks. And our robust set of features and services — MarketingProfs focused on our rich video plugins — gives marketers the tools they need to create immediate and long-term viewer engagement via video.

Thank you to MarketingProfs for featuring the Involver platform! Click here to read the full write-up (subscription required).

Kiva.org chooses Involver video campaign platform to tap into Facebook and MySpace.

San Francisco, CA / August 26, 2008 — Involver today announced that over 100,000 Facebook and MySpace users have discovered Kiva.org, with thousands sharing the
“I lend because…” Kiva video on their personal profiles. These users are now promoting micro-lending to their personal networks, extending the reach of Kiva.org to an audience that was largely unfamiliar with their cause.

Kiva chose the Involver video campaign platform to tap into Facebook and MySpace, attracting a new audience to their person-to-person micro-lending website. Kiva understands the power of connecting people for a common cause, and hopes to empower members of social networks to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world.

“We want to extend our community beyond Kiva.org and join the conversation on social networks like Facebook and MySpace in a very personal and dynamic way,” says Premal Shah, president of Kiva.org. “Involver’s deep integration with the leading social networks let Kiva deliver a very emotional appeal and introduce micro-lending to a new audience in a clear and simple way.”

Involver recently launched the pilot program for its video campaign platform to transform the user experience for video marketing from simply passive (”watch this and hope they click”) to active and engaged. The Involver platform lets viewers immediately interact with video in a simple, non-obtrusive way, dramatically increasing engagement.

“Our video campaign platform automatically built branded Facebook and MySpace applications for the Kiva video, allowing people to discover and share the campaign with friends in a non-intrusive way,” says Rahim Fazal, co-founder and CEO of Involver. “We have created a dynamic and personalized way for lenders to communicate and extend the Kiva experience to a new audience.”

Involver is accepting applications to join its pilot program and plans to add new companies as they expand to support additional large video campaigns. Involver plans to open access to their video campaign platform later this year.

On the eve of his 22^nd birthday, Usain Bolt makes track-and-field history.

Tonight in Beijing in the 200-meter final, the Jamaican sprinter surged to his second Olympic gold medal, crossing the finish line in a staggering world-record time of 19.30 seconds. The previous 200m mark was held for over 12 years by Michael Johnson, and no one thought that it would ever be broken… let alone smashed by an ascendant star who finished this race about four body lengths ahead of everyone else.

Bolt is the first runner ever to break both the 100m and 200m records at the same Olympics, and the first since Carl Lewis in 1984 to win the “Sprint Double.”

We’re excited to be a part of this amazing moment in sporting and Olympic history. Over the next week, we’ll be posting new video content to the Involver-powered chasingBOLT campaign, so please make sure to check back here.

Join us in congratulating Usain! Through Puma’s chasingBOLT Facebook app, you can send him a personal photo message right now. Submit anything — a written note, a picture of you and your friends celebrating Usain’s world records, etc. As a bonus, Puma will mail some Limited Edition Gold Medal/World Record T-shirts to the campaign members who send in the best photo submissions. (Usain will do the choosing — he’ll be watching the app constantly!)

To send a photo message to Usain Bolt, simply log in to your Facebook account and then go to the app homepage. (Follow the links in the big yellow box).

Congratulations, Usain!

9.69 seconds — That’s the new 100m world record set today by Usain Bolt, the star of Puma’s chasingBOLT video campaign. Usain won his Olympic gold medal in astounding style, smashing his own previous world record in front of a sellout crowd of 91,000.

Read the full story in this New York Times article. The headline says it all: “Bolt Is World’s Fastest — by a Mile.”

Stay tuned for some great video updates to the chasingBOLT campaign. It’s time to celebrate!