But as with most online marketing and viral campaigns, it seems like it’s going to be a slow roll to get people talking about the movie. With a nationwide opening date of June 7th, there’s still time.

As was announced last weekend (we first discovered it via Facebook), ‘The Internship’ held a special Hangout On Air earlier today to debut the official movie trailer, featuring host Conan O’Brien and actors Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson live from the Team Coco studios in LA.

Google+ Hangout For ‘The Internship’ Movie

Here’s the complete recording of the Google hangout:

In what lasted nearly one hour, the three comedians joked and engaged with 10 participants in the hangout, including @iJustine, college students (and former Google interns) from UPenn and Harvard, and Ned, a digital advertising rep from NYC. (I personally was about 5-10 minutes late to the event, and it appeared they were just getting underway when I logged onto the live feed; based on Google +TheInternship comments, it seemed as though there was a technical problem that delayed the start and other users were having trouble viewing the feed initially.)

One of the most comical parts (for all the search marketers out there) of the hangout is the discussion about “Ask Jeeves” and the demise/retirement of Jeeves the butler.

Official Movie Trailer for “The Internship”

The hangout was livestreamed on the movie’s official YouTube channel, where the official “The Internship” movie trailer was also posted. (Note, video view counts will not update for at least 12-24 hours following upload time.)

Best cameo in trailer: Google Driverless Car

Best line: “We’re looking at some sort of mental Hunger Games against a handful of genius kids” – Owen Wilson

Google+ Obvious Platform Of Choice

Of course the film’s deep ties with Google means that Google+ and YouTube are likely to be the main areas of focus for marketing the movie. Between the Googlers, tech and search geeks on Google+, Google/+TheInternship has amassed a decent early following, outpacing other social network communities by far:

According to the  Google+ / Google Play invite page, just over 11K Google users were planning to attend the Google+ hangout. (We’re waiting to hear from Google+ to see if they can share any specific live view data with us.)

Tweets During Event Relatively Light

During the hangout, viewers were encouraged to follow along and ask questions on Twitter using the hashtag #TheInternship. O’Brien did ask the actors questions from Twitter users during the event.

Using Topsy’s free analytics tool, here’s how the activity looked for the hashtag and actors’ names leading up to and during the hangout:

Topsy Analytics for #TheInternship

Note also that the official Twitter page for the movie, @TheInternship only had about 170 followers at the time of the hangout.

Even host @ConanOBrien ‘s tweet prior to the even topped out at 100 retweets:

Google Trends

Searches for the movie did see an obvious pickup, but overall volume still low according to Google Trends:

‘The Internship’ on Facebook

As of this writing, the official Movie Page only had 1,000 likes and just a few views / shares of the trailer so far.

How do you think the movie’s digital marketing strategy is coming along so far? Now that you’ve seen the trailer, are you looking forward to the movie’s release?

The official movie poster smartly plays off the recognizable Google logo and search function:

The Internship, official movie poster, via Collider.com

Unfortunately, at press time, Google doesn’t yet have a search easter egg for “Hiring them was a brilliant mistake.” – perhaps that will change in coming months as the film studio and Google ramp up marketing efforts.

Meanwhile, the movie has already secured its brand page on Facebook and Twitter @TheInternship.

More Details About Google-Based Movie Emerge

We already knew that “The Internship” movie was being shot on location at the Googleplex in MountainView and the Georgia Tech campus was Google-fied to act as a backdrop for scenes in the movie.

Vince Vaughn on the set of “The Internship” filmed at the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA

Now, the movie poster confirms a release date of June 7th, and IMDB has an updated credited cast list  that includes fellow “Wedding Crashers” co-star Will Ferrell, John Goodman, Rose Byrne, and Josh Gad, the actor who is also starring as Steve Wozniak, to counter Ashton Kutcher’s portrayal of Steve Jobs  in the biopic “jOBS“, set to premiere this weekend at Sundance.

As Barry Schwartz also reported at SERoundtable, Googlers are buzzing about the movie over on their personal Google+ accounts, but there’s also a verified Google+ page for the movie itself:

It will be interesting to see how much marketing support Google will lend to the movie release, between G+ and hangouts and of course official movie trailer promotion on YouTube. No word yet on when that trailer will drop, but you can be sure we’re watching for it. (Of course, in the meantime, you can always watch J.B. Smoove talk about it on I Heard.)

Google Featured In Other Film Project

In related Google movie news, the documentary, “Google and the World Brain” opened up this week at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival here in Utah. The documentary focuses on the Google book scanning project and the quest to focus on cataloging the world’s information.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Previously, the YouTube sourced project, “Life in a Day” premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

So, hopefully my ears will stop ringing from the Foster the People performance and the DJ’d after party for 4,000 conference attendees… right now a VP from Adobe (John Mellor) is on the stage recapping our “digital self” and leading into Biz Stone joining us for the morning session.

“Search is just your brand’s phone number – which kind of bugs me, because you spend your whole lifetime trying to create a brand, then Google sweeps in to take all the credit”  - Adobe VP of Business Development John Mellor.

Digital insights report released by Adobe today – across these industries, here are the top referrers:

• Media:
1. Twitter
2. StumbleUpon
• Travel
1. Yelp
2. StumbleUpon
• Retail
1. Pinterest
2. (Missed it sorry..)

Ann Lewnes, VP of Adobe Global marketing is actually out on stage with Biz, and this is going to be a keynote conversation.

Biz Stone says his digital self is really his actual self, having been an early blogger / tech adopter. It’s a pretty accurate representation of his personal self.

(shout out to the Boston logan Sam Adams pub by Biz)

He does edit himself a little on his own Twitter account just for obvious reasons, he tones it down.

Biz shows the crowd a ridiculously awesome picture of his wedding day where he looks uber happy (and he says his wife looks like she just made the worst mistake ever, as she’s doing a one handed face palm.

Ooh.. Biz carries around a little book (reminds me of @MattCutt’s book…) around for notes and thoughts.

Biz says he likes to hire people who had failed at a job or startup company, because the lessons learned from the failures are valuable. He does tell entrepreneurs they have to go all in when trying to start up new businesses. If you’re hedging your bets by doing work on the side or trying to half-heartedly start a business, you will likely fail.

(ooh.. Ann just said don’t see any movie with Nick Cage.. I missed the leadin to that but don’t worry, it’s inconsequential- you just needed to read the slam on Cage.)

Biz Stone rolls his eyes over the Canadian journalists who misquoted him as saying too much twitter is unhealthy. But he is going to talk about the concept of social fatigue  - the takeaway is that we have to look at better ways of measuring social engagement.

Ann is doing a great job leading the conversation with a sometimes wandering Biz…

Design vs Data

Since Biz has a background as a graphic designer, Ann posed this question to Biz. He thinks design is very important and it creates a number of ways and paths to present content. For example, while he thinks NYT is a great web property, he thinks they could do a better job disseminating data and presenting the content in a much more interactive way than the print edition offers.

Apps for tablets are providing the path for showing that we can do these interactions more on the regular web in design.

Biz: “We have separate internets right now” – we have the Web, the facebook, the Android / Apple Internets, and tablets.

“So I built Twitter but I’m not necessarily a social media expert” …

He gives an analogy that if you asked any Google employee, ‘hey, how do I improve my page rank for my cousin’s dentist site” and that Google employee has no idea how the ranking algo works because he works on infrastructure.

This goes against ‘centuries’ of brand building and business lore, but there is value in vulnerability on social…

Privacy Issues…

Biz says this is a higher discussion, but we’re figuring out over the next (5 years) how much we’re willing to share on social media and giving information to various companies, etc.

“You need to let the individual user unwrap the layers of privacy”  - for example, location is very important for some people – that can be life or death.

Biz says he enriched the Twitter TOS so normal people would understand that even if they deleted a tweet, they’re still essentially screwed because it’s already been put out there and could have been screens shotted, shared, etc.

Moving on to the Obvious project he’s been working on.

The good problem to have is that they now so many resources to use – capital, engineering talent, marketing prowess etc, to build it out. But at one point, they have more resources than they can use on their own little projects, so they’ve invited startups to come co-work who are philosophically aligned with their values, but maybe aren’t going to make it without support and good direction.

Biz also says that he believes the future of marketing is philanthropy – which aligns with Arianna Huffington’s comments yesterday about cause marketing being a powerful vehicle for brands to get behind.

Don’t just look inside your company when you have a problem to solve – there are more smart people outside your company to answer the tough questions and help give you new ideas to solve problems that you’ve been unable to with internal resources.

Speed Round

One word association. (Biz wasn’t very good at this at first, he kept giving answers longer than a single word. )

Marketing? Unknown.

Friends or Followers? Religion.

Dogs or Cats? Both.

Lady Gaga? Monsters

Biz? Little boy

Arianna kicked off the keynote with several laughs from the crowd, but as she gets down to serious business, I’ll do my best to follow along and give key takeaways but I’m no pro live-blogger, so here we go:

- We really need to watch how social media (and all media) for that matter can be used to distract us rather than connect us.

- As a platform, the key is starting conversations around any given topic, and to date, the huff post has over 140 million comments are pre-moderated with technology and 24/7 moderators.

- The Internet is coming of age. There is a convergence between the things we value in our real lives and our online lives. Our lives are now more curated. We went from the search for information to a deeper search for meaning. If you want to tap into where the Zeitgeist is going, you need to be ahead of the game as a brand, to stay strong.

- The snake in the digital garden is that we are getting hyper connected. The paradox that we need to address, if we don’t learn to unplug, to disconnect, we are COOKED. (Amen Arianna!)

- Stop charging your devices by your bed! Read the sleep section on the Huff post for various studies on why being too connected is bad for your health.

- Eliminate the excuses that keep you from disconnecting. How do we reconnect with wisdom?

(Ok, Arianna just suggested that we might have a conference like this somewhere someday without Wi-Fi, so that we can really connect intellectually – that may not actually happen, or marketers heads will explode.)

Important For The Future Of Marketing: How Causes Can Be Used By Brands

Brands can sponsor a worthy cause for an entire year on Huff Post, there’s the reminder that this brand’s core value is about doing good, and can be trusted, it’s not just about the bottom line.

The “Good News” section has been a huge success at Huff Post – it’s a responsibility of the media to put a spotlight on the good that is being done around the world, with passion and ingenuity.

The way technology is being used to connect people and do good is exciting.

(so Arianna is diverging into famous nappers.. not really following that.. so I might take a little snooze… be back in a minute… )

Ultimately life is meant to be lived in a way that produces results and joy. It’s very difficult to do that if you go through the day exhausted, and it’s difficult to see the icebergs before they hit the Titanic. (+1 for a reference to the 100 year anniversary coming up)

If we can accept our own vulnerability as marketers and publishers we are going be better off in the long run.

In the brave new world, being involved on social conversations as a brand will bring authenticity – we should learn to take on all the challenges we’re faced with a new gratitude for technology.

Q&A Time With Adobe Exec Brad Rencher

- Arianna is first obsessed with Brad’s fancy shoes, now a part of his ‘digital self’.

- Arianna is now talking about their approach to headlines at HuffPo – it’s to give you an attitude off the bat before you even start reading.

- Sometimes the headline or most important point of the story is buried way down in the content.

We’re constantly thinking about how to engage readers in different ways. An upcoming road show is based on worthy causes and buzz built by core readerships.

Stephen Fry has more influence than Obama or Lady Gaga, even though he only has 4million followers (that’s like 20 million less than Ms. Germanotta, stupid auto-follow bots don’t really do much to RT and boost influence, now do they? )

Ah good question by Brad: how does being a woman in a male dominated industry affect the way you lead the HuffPo.

(basically, it comes down to having snacks in office, says Arianna… not just because she’s a woman but she’s greek and food every 20 mins is critical). But seriously, personal interaction is really important to how she runs the business – and thinks that’s possible whether you’re a small business or large enterprise.

Arianna’s biggest hope is that we as a society can help social entrepreneurs scale what they are doing.

She closes by distributing her email address to the 4,000+ attendees, encouraging them to send all their blog content, on any subject, as the HuffPo would love to have them.

For those marketers whose top priority in 2012 is creating and maintaining mobile apps to support their marketing activities, figuring out the functional requirements and features to make mobile apps appealing to their target audience is a daunting first step.

In order for marketers to leverage mobile platforms and generate measurable ROI from apps, it’s important to first take a look at how a mobile app would best serve the business goals – whether that’s generating inbound calls, mobile commerce transactions, online reservations, walk-in traffic to a physical location or generating revenue from in-app advertising.

Most marketers agree that having a deep understanding of what features would provide the most value to your core users keeps them coming back for more, leading to earning loyal followers and favorable reviews in the App Markets, ultimately generating additional downloads and new prospective customers.

As we learned from a recent study, mobile apps can support your branding activities by creating brand favorability and increasing purchase intent in people who interact with branded mobile apps.

The study also found that apps that were more informational in style — providing product reviews, deals information or cooking tips — were more effective in engaging users, as compared to experiential game- or entertainment-oriented applications.

While that all seems fairly straightforward as a marketer, building out the utility in mobile apps still seems to be a challenge in many first time app development projects.

If you’re planning to expand your mobile marketing initiatives by building out or improving your own branded app in 2012, but aren’t sure what features to include, it might help to get a little inspiration from a few mobile marketing experts by checking out their favorite app features and taking into consideration their insight into mobile trends.

Bill Dinan, President, Telmetrics

Mobile apps represent a monetization goldmine for marketers as consumer smartphone adoption continues to climb. As mobile users are on the go and ready to make buying decisions immediately (e.g., looking for a nearby restaurant, gas station, retailer, hotel, etc.) mobile apps are the quickest and most user-friendly way to gather the info needed for an informed purchase on the spot.

Because of this purchase immediacy, mobile app-driven leads are more valuable than traditional leads– leading to increased marketing opportunities for mobile local search publishers, mobile ad networks and app developers to charge more and to report on specific analytics regarding consumer actions within their apps, such as what maps/driving directions accessed, business called, reservation booked.

My favorite apps follow:

• Yelp: For finding a nearby restaurant that gets great reviews and is open when I want to dine or book a reservation, Yelp is my one-stop-shop app for eateries. Plus, it provides maps, menu pricing, phone numbers and the ability to book a reservation directly via OpenTable.
• Superpages: If I need a local business in any category–plumber, florist, dentist, you name it–without a doubt my Superpages app can find it and connect me immediately with the right business. Besides the ability to immediately access hours of operation, driving directions and customer reviews, my favorite features are the spinning wheel interface and “x-ray function” that allows you to see through walls showing the nearby business names.
• TripAdvisor: If I’m planning a trip or are looking to check into a hotel immediately due to a change in travel plans, TripAdvisor is my most reliable app for researching hotels for quality, pricing, and location. I can act immediately and get the best deals on the right type of hotel in the right area.
• SoundHound: I travel quite a bit and enjoy keeping my music collection updated. SoundHound is perfect for this as it grabs a snippet of a song based on your input and returns the song info, e.g., singer, group name, year recorded, lyrics, etc. It also gives you the option to download the full song from iTunes.

Monica Ho, VP of  Marketing at xAd

My top apps for 2012 are all location-based platforms. Because mobile is a purely local medium, it is taking local search to a whole new level. And consumers are taking advantage of those search advancements, as evidenced by my company’s network report that shows 75 percent of smartphone users conduct mobile-local search while mobile-local search traffic has grown by triple digits year over year.

In the same report I mentioned earlier, in-app search is growing faster than (and is on pace to eclipse) browser-based search, due, in part, to greater smartphone penetration.

With that in mind, there are tremendous marketing opportunities within apps. The ability to steer a highly qualified, purchase-ready consumer into your brick-and-mortar storefront within the hour can only have a positive impact on sales and your bottom line.

My recommendation for 2012 is to begin testing targeted search and display ads within apps. Due to mobile’s limited screen dimensions, those ads, when targeted properly, can help you leapfrog competitor listings to generate leads and/or achieve greater exposure.

My favorite location based apps are:

• go2 Local App: which is locally customized so you can access listings of what’s going on around you, including concerts, shows and even family fun. In addition, the app comes equipped with directory search, business info, ratings and reviews, and local deals.
• Poynt: thanks to its local features such as people search. But I use Poynt mostly to access movie times and gas stations with the cheapest prices.
• Google Maps: may seem like an obvious choice from a navigation perspective, but it really does a good job of helping me maneuver New York City. I’m a relatively new resident, so I often question the best routes; however, I rarely panic because I can instantly find my way with Google Maps’ help.

Brian Klais, Founder of Pure Oxygen Labs & Mobile Search Expert

Besides native iOS apps, my must-have-list includes the usual suspects, like Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, QR readers, and Yelp.

As a consumer, the apps I admire most are those that make life easier and understand what it means to be mobile:

• GoodPlayer: lets you stream home videos in any format over home wifi to the big screen without the hassle of converting, downloading, or saving them
• Sonar: lets you discover people you know from FB, T, LI, who are near your location right now
• Walgreens: what could be easier than reordering prescription in literally 3 clicks with no typing?
• Firefox Home: makes all your desktop browser bookmarks and history portable
• INRIX: get real-time traffic updates no matter your any location
• Find my iPhone: I’ve got 4 iPhones, an iPad, and 3 tween girls in my home (!)

When designing apps, marketers need to think more like a mobile consumer who’s on-the-go and rewards brands that use technology to respect their time.

A few other takeaways for mobile marketers in general:

1) Make it easier for search-dominant mobile users to find and download your app by optimizing app visibility in Google. No one likes searching the App Store or Android Market. When we search Google for a brand, the app should be ranked on Page1 to maximize reach, downloads, and app popularity. (I’ve written about optimizing mobile apps for search results recently at Search Engine Land.)

2) Ensure QR success by using only QR codes that are easy for phones to read (21×21 or 25×25 format) when displayed at a small sizes. Keep the URL to under 25 characters, including branding for easy recall, while being able to redirect the destination on the backend, without making the QR obsolete (See my article on creating QR codes with optimal URLs).

3) Engage local/social mobile users by claiming your brand’s social and local profiles on G+, Foursquare, Maps, Yelp, FB. But make sure to use tracking URLs to attribute “organic” web clicks to the source app. (I’ve also written about poor mobile app metrics and referral data.)

When users of standard apps like Twitter, FB, Yelp, or Maps click your profile URLs from the app, it loads the webpage without passing referrer data, because apps aren’t a referring page. So marketers are left with anonymous “direct” traffic in their analytics and little attribution.)

My Favorite Android Apps

To close out this article, I figured it’s only appropriate to share a few of my favorite and most often used apps on my Android smartphone. I’m also a relatively new iPad owner, and despite downloading a ton of game-based apps on both devices, it’s rare that I play any of them.

If I’m looking to my mobile devices to cure boredom, my preferred entertainment apps include Netflix, NBC & ABC players, NFL Mobile, Direct TV Sunday  Ticket and the official New England Patriots app.

Thinking about my own app preferences as a user, I definitely fall in line with the utilitarian approach, and I organize all my apps by type, so I have categories for Eating, Exercise & Activity-based apps, Entertainment, Shopping, Travel & Tools.

Within each, I also have a tendency to utilize apps where I am already a registered / logged in user of a service – such as MapMyRide, my SunTrust banking app, Marriott Hotels or Delta Airlines;  the Tanger Outlet Store app which offers exclusive deals and the Kroger grocery coupon app – these organizations could easily track my usage on mobile and offer unique promotions to me based on my activity as a loyal customer.

Outside of the above, other apps that I love, but have limited utility or are for highly specific activities, include navigating subway/lightrail systems in the cities I most often visit, or tracking powder totals on and total days skied on both my Snowbird Ski Resort and Ski Utah apps.