It's ok if your head is in the sand when it comes to social media, there are worse places it could be … like up your ____ .... and that is where it usually is when you are talking to many "professionals."
For many years the focus of marketers and advertisers has been to shout at consumers using their proverbial loudspeakers in the mass media. They measure their success through complex calculations representing their "return on investment." Use wikipedia and check out what that formula looks like. It's complicated and it sucks! I hate math!
I wonder what formula they used to make this gem appear a worthwhile investment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX-Zk_LNZWg
The fact is, and everyone knows this but everyone is afraid to say it, people can make numbers say whatever the hell they want. There are certain areas you cannot manipulate numbers ... say 1+1=2 ... but when you are trying to measure things that were never meant to be more than qualitative experiments from uncreative minds then you will always be doomed to data manipulation. A good idea is often universally acknowledged ... a bad idea or gamble is something you have to convince people of. Why do people continually buy cheap plastic s**** from China? Oh, it's because they are BRIBED by low prices to do so. You see what I am saying?
In the case of the Pinto ... if you are a car manufacturer in the 21st century you are going to know almost immediately when you put a piece of garbage off the assembly line. Within moments of a bumper falling off, or say an EXPLODING BUMPER (as the case of the Pinto) bloggers are going to be all over that ... sharing, linking, sharing some more. Perhaps in the 80's they could snuff the firestorm to buy some time, but now days that just wont happen.
But in all seriousness, there are other ways to measure your ROI and often times it involves the ancient (and rarely practiced) art of listening. Listening is to marketers as polka is to rock bands. It's foreign, it's unattractive, and for the cynical professional it's easy to write off as unfashionable. We're talking about humanizing an industry that revolves around numbers and calculations and lying and manipulation.
After all isn't marketing founded on the principal that if you say the same thing enough times, eventually people will believe it? (oh wait, that is what Goebbels and McDonalds said).
As Charlene Li, co-author of Groundswell (http://blogs.forrester.com/charleneli/) says, the number one rule for utilizing social media is to focus on the relationships and not the technology. Otherwise you find yourself with accounts for Twitter, Plaxo, Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, Linkedin and having never logged in since the day you signed up.
Translated, this means that it is not entirely necessary for your company to create a forum just because your competitor did so. Perhaps you can get the same effect by tapping into existing social networks on Myspace or Facebook. Perhaps you can save your company a lot of time and money by testing new ideas in these communities that already exist! That is what people mean when they talk about tapping into the Groundswell.
The world wide web contains forums, blogs, social networking sites and everyone is interconnected and possibly talking about you.
1. What can you learn from this swarm of interaction?
2. Better yet, how can you use this buzz to save your company money?
3. How can you corral these wild stallions and test new ideas?
Maybe I'll get the urge to write more next Friday when I find myself unemployed and crying in my 40 ... haha
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Advertising Age in Social Media
I've been having some crazy thoughts related to blogs lately.
Number one, no one reads my blogs. If I were to take a survey with myself and examine everything that irritates me in life, it would be the fact that no one reads my blog! That is a lie, but it sounds funny - and I know over the past few years many people have been frustrated and gone crazy over this subject.
The funny thing is that I know exactly what I can do to get some readers - because corporate America is listening. Call me a black helicopter person if you must, but it is true. I can say:
1. I love TILLAMOOK Cheese!
2. GENERAL MOTORS makes fine automobiles!
3. TOYOTA ... now those are some fine hybrids!
4. DANNON YOGURT ... I love you!
5. WALMART ... still not your local food co-op
6. RITE-AID ... hopefully people are saying nice things about you (jk)
7. BUDWEISER ... not American any longer
8. COORS LIGHT ... tap the ****tiest beer on earth
9. PABST ... still wondering how they became popular again
10. JOHNSON & JOHNSON ... when are you going to come up with a drug to heal my *******
But seriously folks ... social media (including blogging) is in the sites of all the greedy business people that we took to the internet to escape. Remember how annoying and useless pop up ads were in their hey-day? It was enough to make you hate whoever was doing that to you. Starbucks has recently been employing pop ups on my computer and it's bugging the crap out of me.
Banner Ads
Big corporations also came up with banner ads which were slightly less annoying but for all intents and purposes - useless!!! They probably assumed they needed a 2% return on investment to make the ads worthwhile ... but what is the sense in pissing everyone off along the way?
Myspace
Now I can't log into myspace without some huge Hollywood funded flash-ad that takes extra time to load and I don't care about anyways.
Tools
As my dad always says, when your only tool is a hammer all your problems look like nails.
Advertising agencies' only tools appear to be hammers (and the people that work there).
I just don't think they get it yet. I recently checked out the Oscar Meyer Weiner fan club and it was just the most dreadful site I had ever seen. It shows they are still treating people like they are not people but mere consumer-cattle to be branded and herded.
Businesses are considering social media to be the next big thing as far as advertising is concerned and so far most of their efforts have been for not.
Corporate America just seems to throw money at the problem as if money were water on a fire. It's like corporate America is some schizophrenic that thinks money will solve everything. Just throw money at it!
Tour de Fat
That is why I like small companies and businesses. I love the New Belgium Brewery for their advertising campaigns including Tour de Fat. I just don't want us to lose that organic edge as we find our lives revolving more and more around technology. That is also why I love social media. It's bringing advertising and marketing back to the people ... it's taking the tour de fat example and applying it in a like manner on the internet. It's rad. I'd really like to find some way to combine my interest in technology with town life ... community and social marketing.
Back to traditional advertisers!
There is a new web site called second life ... it's where all the deusche bags you meet from your daily life go to create a new life where they don't suck so bad. I have heard, and I can't confirm, that people's characters in second life can actually make money and then exchange it for real dollars. Talk about a great scam that I wish I had thought of! You create a virtual world full of fantasy's to make nerds feel like they are cool ... charge advertisers to put up billboards in that virtual world ... let Johnny idiot who is an out of touch business executive create a character ... and then trade him real dollars to make his billionaire computer character successful! Why didn't I think of this?
The other crazy thing about second life is what I briefly mentioned. Advertisers are paying to put up BILLBOARDS in the game! Isn't that nutsy? I mean it works for video games but to me this seems a little strange and a waste of money. How effective are billboards in real life? How successful are they going to be in Second Life?
Aye Aye Aye
Number one, no one reads my blogs. If I were to take a survey with myself and examine everything that irritates me in life, it would be the fact that no one reads my blog! That is a lie, but it sounds funny - and I know over the past few years many people have been frustrated and gone crazy over this subject.
The funny thing is that I know exactly what I can do to get some readers - because corporate America is listening. Call me a black helicopter person if you must, but it is true. I can say:
1. I love TILLAMOOK Cheese!
2. GENERAL MOTORS makes fine automobiles!
3. TOYOTA ... now those are some fine hybrids!
4. DANNON YOGURT ... I love you!
5. WALMART ... still not your local food co-op
6. RITE-AID ... hopefully people are saying nice things about you (jk)
7. BUDWEISER ... not American any longer
8. COORS LIGHT ... tap the ****tiest beer on earth
9. PABST ... still wondering how they became popular again
10. JOHNSON & JOHNSON ... when are you going to come up with a drug to heal my *******
But seriously folks ... social media (including blogging) is in the sites of all the greedy business people that we took to the internet to escape. Remember how annoying and useless pop up ads were in their hey-day? It was enough to make you hate whoever was doing that to you. Starbucks has recently been employing pop ups on my computer and it's bugging the crap out of me.
Banner Ads
Big corporations also came up with banner ads which were slightly less annoying but for all intents and purposes - useless!!! They probably assumed they needed a 2% return on investment to make the ads worthwhile ... but what is the sense in pissing everyone off along the way?
Myspace
Now I can't log into myspace without some huge Hollywood funded flash-ad that takes extra time to load and I don't care about anyways.
Tools
As my dad always says, when your only tool is a hammer all your problems look like nails.
Advertising agencies' only tools appear to be hammers (and the people that work there).
I just don't think they get it yet. I recently checked out the Oscar Meyer Weiner fan club and it was just the most dreadful site I had ever seen. It shows they are still treating people like they are not people but mere consumer-cattle to be branded and herded.
Businesses are considering social media to be the next big thing as far as advertising is concerned and so far most of their efforts have been for not.
Corporate America just seems to throw money at the problem as if money were water on a fire. It's like corporate America is some schizophrenic that thinks money will solve everything. Just throw money at it!
Tour de Fat
That is why I like small companies and businesses. I love the New Belgium Brewery for their advertising campaigns including Tour de Fat. I just don't want us to lose that organic edge as we find our lives revolving more and more around technology. That is also why I love social media. It's bringing advertising and marketing back to the people ... it's taking the tour de fat example and applying it in a like manner on the internet. It's rad. I'd really like to find some way to combine my interest in technology with town life ... community and social marketing.
Back to traditional advertisers!
There is a new web site called second life ... it's where all the deusche bags you meet from your daily life go to create a new life where they don't suck so bad. I have heard, and I can't confirm, that people's characters in second life can actually make money and then exchange it for real dollars. Talk about a great scam that I wish I had thought of! You create a virtual world full of fantasy's to make nerds feel like they are cool ... charge advertisers to put up billboards in that virtual world ... let Johnny idiot who is an out of touch business executive create a character ... and then trade him real dollars to make his billionaire computer character successful! Why didn't I think of this?
The other crazy thing about second life is what I briefly mentioned. Advertisers are paying to put up BILLBOARDS in the game! Isn't that nutsy? I mean it works for video games but to me this seems a little strange and a waste of money. How effective are billboards in real life? How successful are they going to be in Second Life?
Aye Aye Aye
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Groundswell
How swell that I should write a blog post about the book, Groundswell (www.forrester.com/Groundswell). If you haven't read it, it's a must read for all those web heads out there who are trying to make social networking work for their business.
It's funny that I write this in a voice that may suggest others will read it - but no one is reading the Fenbi blog these days. I am trying to figure out how to hook up an RSS feed but it requires a little bit of knowledge that I don't have right now.
Back to the Groundswell - the book is basically giving me hope that I can enter into a career or make one of my own based on community marketing. Community marketing is a term I learned only just the other day ... but it has been inherent in my upbringing. I grew up in a town that scared Rite Aid from moving into an old bowling alley ... and instead a Food Co-Op took its place!
To me - marketing and PR and communication in general have been welded together by the fabric of social networking. I don't even really know what traditional marketing is, but I have a feeling an understanding of it doesn't matter any more because the effectiveness of traditional advertising has diminished due to increased noise - due to do-not-call lists - in other words, back in the 50's there were 4 TV channels and now there are thousands. There used to be several radio stations, now there are thousands. I have never received a call on my cell phone from someone asking to sell me something, but when I was a kid I remember I almost signed my mom up for new light bulbs over the phone! The method of an individual or group using the old model for advertising and marketing to blast off a message just will not work because it will not rise above the noise.
I believe if someone uses social networking in the right way - based on research - you can save your business thousands of dollars and have more success reaching your target audience. After all, the majority of Americans and Europeans are using this thing called the world wide web - however, the world wide number isn't even 50% of the world population yet.
It is so strange that I happen to be reading the Tipping Point right now. The Tipping Point came out in 2000 before all this social networking craze. I bet in a matter of no time the author will re-write the book based on Groundswell and offer a perfect example of a word-of-mouth campaign that actually works! Or I could lazily try to do it right now ...
Say I worked for an outdoor clothing store.
My method for promoting the product based on social networking would start with web design. In today's day in age interactivity is key - and the ability to listen to the consumer has never been so easy. Imagine a forum where consumers could sound off about your products ... talk about what they like, what they don't like, product defects, enthusiasm ... you name it. In one internet forum you have the capacity for a never ending focus group and likely saving you hundreds of hours of work and thousands of dollars.
But how would you drive those people to the site?
The tools are already out there ... you have myspace, facebook, and a plethora of other programs that allow you to search through their members based on key words like 'outdoors' or 'camping' or even your brand name. These people are your 'connectors' and possibly 'mavens' (as defined in the Tipping Point). All it takes to rev these people up is a thousand points of contact - simple introductions with perhaps a dangling carrot like a $5 off coupon - and in the process you can easily redirect them to your site with a link. You can use google or technorotti to search blog posts and link to those folks not associated with those networks geared towards the younger generation.
However, as research from Groundswell shows, people in the older age groups are still very likely to visit the forum on your site and even if they don't participate they are very likely to read or critic the posts. But based on my own personal anecdotal observations, the older generation is starting to use Myspace and Facebook. For shits and giggles I looked up all the people over 65 years of age within a 250 mile radius of Eugene, Oregon and found 2,500 names. While some of those were kids pretending to be old, many more were genuine grade A old people! I find that very interesting ... and I expect that age group to balloon in the coming years. Consider it baby boomers trying to show they are still hip ...
You would also need to give people a reason to keep coming back to your outdoor clothing site. I would suggest a "family photo album" where users could upload photos of themselves wearing your clothing in different places and doing different activities. Patagonia has been doing this for years in their magazines, why not on the internet where thousands of people can submit photos.
I guess what I am getting at is that social networking has taken mass marketing and mass communication back to interpersonal communication. It's the technological form of what it must have been like in an era before television and radio. It is now easier to engage and listen to thousands of customers. An outdoor clothing line could easily think of funny and creative ways to make viral videos to go on youtube ... I just wish I had the positioning to put my money where my mouth is and really try some of these ideas out.
I wonder if colleges will start to have classes on how to fine tune your online sales personality?
My outdoor clothing line example was a little inarticulate and not very well thought through - but this is a post for the layperson ... this is a post for me to get my excitement out of my head and onto paper ... and this is mostly a post brought to you by the fine folks at Forrester Research who wrote an awe inspiring book ...
July 17th and 18th my firm has been so kind as to pay for me to go to the Internet Strategy Forum in Portland (http://www.internetstrategyforum.org/). It's crazy because my internship is over in less than a month, yet they are still forking out over $250 for me to go hear people speak on this subject ... people at the absolute forefront of this school of thought. I have to admit I feel excited to go ... and I feel lucky to have had the opportunity to work with the fine people at Conkling Fiskum & McCormick. In all reality I wouldn't have been thinking on this path if they hadn't been thinking about it first ... then encouraging me when I expressed interest in learning more. Although I dabbled in these strategies while in my last band, it is only recently that I feel I have really learned what it takes to harness the power of the web. Now if I just had a bunch of spare time, a new computer, and a company that would pay me to prove these theories. I would love to write viral jingles for the new century ... fight songs for your brand ... something drunken friends could sing during a fine summers night of merry-making! Yes!
Now, let's go check out some clothing sites and see if they have already enacted the principles of social networking ...
It's funny that I write this in a voice that may suggest others will read it - but no one is reading the Fenbi blog these days. I am trying to figure out how to hook up an RSS feed but it requires a little bit of knowledge that I don't have right now.
Back to the Groundswell - the book is basically giving me hope that I can enter into a career or make one of my own based on community marketing. Community marketing is a term I learned only just the other day ... but it has been inherent in my upbringing. I grew up in a town that scared Rite Aid from moving into an old bowling alley ... and instead a Food Co-Op took its place!
To me - marketing and PR and communication in general have been welded together by the fabric of social networking. I don't even really know what traditional marketing is, but I have a feeling an understanding of it doesn't matter any more because the effectiveness of traditional advertising has diminished due to increased noise - due to do-not-call lists - in other words, back in the 50's there were 4 TV channels and now there are thousands. There used to be several radio stations, now there are thousands. I have never received a call on my cell phone from someone asking to sell me something, but when I was a kid I remember I almost signed my mom up for new light bulbs over the phone! The method of an individual or group using the old model for advertising and marketing to blast off a message just will not work because it will not rise above the noise.
I believe if someone uses social networking in the right way - based on research - you can save your business thousands of dollars and have more success reaching your target audience. After all, the majority of Americans and Europeans are using this thing called the world wide web - however, the world wide number isn't even 50% of the world population yet.
It is so strange that I happen to be reading the Tipping Point right now. The Tipping Point came out in 2000 before all this social networking craze. I bet in a matter of no time the author will re-write the book based on Groundswell and offer a perfect example of a word-of-mouth campaign that actually works! Or I could lazily try to do it right now ...
Say I worked for an outdoor clothing store.
My method for promoting the product based on social networking would start with web design. In today's day in age interactivity is key - and the ability to listen to the consumer has never been so easy. Imagine a forum where consumers could sound off about your products ... talk about what they like, what they don't like, product defects, enthusiasm ... you name it. In one internet forum you have the capacity for a never ending focus group and likely saving you hundreds of hours of work and thousands of dollars.
But how would you drive those people to the site?
The tools are already out there ... you have myspace, facebook, and a plethora of other programs that allow you to search through their members based on key words like 'outdoors' or 'camping' or even your brand name. These people are your 'connectors' and possibly 'mavens' (as defined in the Tipping Point). All it takes to rev these people up is a thousand points of contact - simple introductions with perhaps a dangling carrot like a $5 off coupon - and in the process you can easily redirect them to your site with a link. You can use google or technorotti to search blog posts and link to those folks not associated with those networks geared towards the younger generation.
However, as research from Groundswell shows, people in the older age groups are still very likely to visit the forum on your site and even if they don't participate they are very likely to read or critic the posts. But based on my own personal anecdotal observations, the older generation is starting to use Myspace and Facebook. For shits and giggles I looked up all the people over 65 years of age within a 250 mile radius of Eugene, Oregon and found 2,500 names. While some of those were kids pretending to be old, many more were genuine grade A old people! I find that very interesting ... and I expect that age group to balloon in the coming years. Consider it baby boomers trying to show they are still hip ...
You would also need to give people a reason to keep coming back to your outdoor clothing site. I would suggest a "family photo album" where users could upload photos of themselves wearing your clothing in different places and doing different activities. Patagonia has been doing this for years in their magazines, why not on the internet where thousands of people can submit photos.
I guess what I am getting at is that social networking has taken mass marketing and mass communication back to interpersonal communication. It's the technological form of what it must have been like in an era before television and radio. It is now easier to engage and listen to thousands of customers. An outdoor clothing line could easily think of funny and creative ways to make viral videos to go on youtube ... I just wish I had the positioning to put my money where my mouth is and really try some of these ideas out.
I wonder if colleges will start to have classes on how to fine tune your online sales personality?
My outdoor clothing line example was a little inarticulate and not very well thought through - but this is a post for the layperson ... this is a post for me to get my excitement out of my head and onto paper ... and this is mostly a post brought to you by the fine folks at Forrester Research who wrote an awe inspiring book ...
July 17th and 18th my firm has been so kind as to pay for me to go to the Internet Strategy Forum in Portland (http://www.internetstrategyforum.org/). It's crazy because my internship is over in less than a month, yet they are still forking out over $250 for me to go hear people speak on this subject ... people at the absolute forefront of this school of thought. I have to admit I feel excited to go ... and I feel lucky to have had the opportunity to work with the fine people at Conkling Fiskum & McCormick. In all reality I wouldn't have been thinking on this path if they hadn't been thinking about it first ... then encouraging me when I expressed interest in learning more. Although I dabbled in these strategies while in my last band, it is only recently that I feel I have really learned what it takes to harness the power of the web. Now if I just had a bunch of spare time, a new computer, and a company that would pay me to prove these theories. I would love to write viral jingles for the new century ... fight songs for your brand ... something drunken friends could sing during a fine summers night of merry-making! Yes!
Now, let's go check out some clothing sites and see if they have already enacted the principles of social networking ...
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