Fox, the creators of the hit series, The Simpsons have engaged their fan base into an organized community in a matter of weeks.  They have engaged the community online using their Simpsons Social Network and enhanced that engagement by creating real world interconnection points (i.e. through the creation of the Kwik-E-Mart store concept).

Why?  To promote the launch of the ‘The Simpsons Movie” opening 7/27/07.  More than a million fans have visited the movie site and thousands have created Simpson-style versions of themselves (mine is to the upper-right).  Check out the Flickr group of Simpsons Self-portaits here.

Now 7-Eleven stores (12 of them throughout the US and Canada) have been transformed into Kwik-E-Marts. The Dallas location is located at 6833 Northwest Highway.  Check it out to the right.

The marketing concepts were the brainchild of Bobbi Merkel’s team from FreshWorks (Omnicom).  FreshWorks calls the idea ‘reverse product placement’, taking fake goods from the screen and making them reality.  Now you can go into Kwik-E-Mart and grab a Squishe, a Krusty’ or a Buzz Cola.  Sadly you can’t get a Duff beer (the movie is rated PG-13).

Apple and AT&T just identified 500,000 alpha geeks for marketers around the world.  What does that mean for  your brand? Piper Jaffray is reporting that Apple sold more than 500,000 iPhones this weekend according to Tom Krazit of Crave.  Here are the details:

• 95% of buyers in NYC and SFO bought the 8GB model (versus the 4GB)
• 50% of buyers were new customers for AT&T (Verizon’s CEO is kicking himself)

If you can engage the iPhone community it means you can have access to 500,000 early adopters.  How?  Start building tools specific to the needs of the ‘instant community’.  How?  Hire guys like us or come to the iPhoneDevCamp in San Francisco this week.

That is the question on Chris Brogan‘s mind in a post he wrote earlier today.  Chris suggests, “It’s one thing to have a community of friends and an audience for your blog, podcast, or videoblog. It’s another thing altogether to have an activated community of people who will take action and bring about actual change at your request.”

In his post titled Activated Communities, Chris asks his community for help fleshing out his idea.  Ironically, the exercise to understand the concept of ‘activated communities’ will require that Chris’ community of social media people be ‘activated’.

How can you ‘activate’ your community?  We have talked about the idea of understanding your ‘higher calling‘ for sometime.  The idea is simple,

If you can determine what your company’s higher calling is you can direct your communication with your clients through this new channel. By working with consumers to answer this ‘higher calling’ the communication is no longer adversarial, but cooperative. Building a community around a higher calling can be very effective and fruitful for both the consumer and the company. You are no longer ‘company’ or ‘consumer’ but partners working toward a positive goal you both care about.

It is hard to simply ask your community to ‘Digg’ something for you if they don’t ‘digg’ it.  One surefire way to ‘activate’ your community is to build that community around a higher calling from the very start.  My question is, “can you activate any community around any idea?”  My theory is that most communities will activate around the underlying interest or ‘higher calling’ of the group (i.e. photography for Flickr), but activation will quickly dissipate as the ‘call for action’ becomes less and less topical. Obviously your friends will ‘Digg’ almost anything for you, but will soon tire of the activity if the requests continue outside of the communities ‘higher calling’.  Chris compiled this neat list of ‘tools’ for activated communities:

• A Digg account. – Use this for promoting stories and blog posts and podcasts that want higher attention.
• A LinkedIN account. – Build your own network, link it to mine, and then we both expand our awareness and our reach. Because if I’m seeking out someone in your network, I can now ask you to help me connect to them. This builds connectivity to people you might need to reach very quickly.
• A Twitter account. – To get the word out quickly. Re-twittering helps tons.
• A Facebook account. – I think groups on Facebook are a quick way to get mail out to people easily. It’s also a good opt-in / opt-out mechanism.
• A Flickr account. – What if some of our activation requires visuals? I guess you could add a YouTube account for the same purpose, just in case we want to shoot video.
• A PayPal account. Sometimes it’s just about a donation to a cause. When a friend says their servers are down because of bandwidth bills, it’s nice to be able to drop a few bucks in the till to help them over a hump. (Sometimes it *is* just about money).

Back in December, Big in Japan began a project with LEGO on their recently announced Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG). The project was only revealed to the world a week ago, but has been in discussion, development, and planning for a long time.

LEGO has partnered with NetDevil to create the game, and Big in Japan is helping out with community management. You see, this game takes a different tact to most games. We’re helping LEGO to engage various enthusiast groups in the actual development of the game. It is a LEGO game, after all!

Details are still thin due to confidentiality issues, but if you’re interested in finding out more, or pitching in on the project sign up for updates at:

www.lego.com/mmog

More and more details are going to be revealed in the coming months, so stay tuned. From what I’ve seen of the early development, this is going to be one fantastic game.

(On a related side note, check out this hilarious fan-created comic)

Jake volunteered to speak at the Community Next event and, through the “Community Choice” (i.e. vote from the people) was given one of the coveted speaking spots. He’ll be speaking alongside Guy Kawasaki, Tara Hunt, Ted Rheingold, and more community brains.

Here’s the skinny on the event:

Community Next – Feb. 10
Stanford University (California)
More info: communitynext.com

Jake will be speaking on the topic of “Community Ecology” – the idea that there is a balance that must be maintained when working with fan groups, and sharing a few techniques about the best way to find and maintain that balance.

If you’re in town, give Jake a shout. He’ll buy the beer (just make sure to let him know after the tab comes).