We’re Losing Credibility With These Top 5 Lists

Top 5 ways to get more followers on Twitter!
Check out these 5 mistakes marketers make in social media!
5 things that will change your business…
Top 5 worst top 5 lists.

My Twitter feed is cluttered with them, and I don’t click on a single one. I don’t speak for the world, but I’m going to make an assumption here: the world is tired of them too.

I get the heart behind them. They’re simple and memorable (plus the High Fidelity reference is too good to pass up). Good advertising…good design is simple and memorable. But as we strive to be simple and memorable, let’s not forget that curse word that we all avoid like the plague: cliché. You may have great content to offer on behalf of your company or your firm, but it’s time to get creative again and figure out a different way to share it.

Lists can be fun and comedic, no doubt, but when the objective is to build a brand or distribute knowledge, you’re getting scrolled right past, no matter how valuable your content may be. We’re going to have to keep adapting faster than we used to; this is a trend that needs to retire. Don’t worry, we can bring it back in a decade or two.

It’s not your content or your voice we’re ignoring…it’s your list.

Anticipation > Fulfillment

Remember the worst part of Christmas as a kid? Answer: the day after.

Personal confession: I’m suffering through the worst part of the year…suffering, for 3 primary reasons.


1. It’s hot and muggy. This leads to mosquitos and higher electric bills.
2. It’s baseball season…JUST baseball season.
3. Every decent show on television decides it’s time to take a hiatus until September.

You see the issue here? I’m suffering. But there’s redemption in this sob-story. Countdowns. I’m counting down the days to cool weather (which are typically accompanied by Christmas cups at Starbucks, fireplaces and warm weather clothes). I’m counting down the days to football and basketball seasons (which have about 3 months of overlap – horrible planning there). I’m counting down the days to Mad Men, Parenthood and, ehhemm, Biggest Loser lighting up my tv again. There’s joy in anticipation. But the picture I paint in my mind won’t come fully to life.

In the middle of my Saturday afternoon football game in November, my anticipation leaves out minor details like kids not wanting to take naps, work pressures, etc, etc, etc. Even IF living it out is everything I hoped it would be, it’s short-lived…then it’s over. Anticipation is better than fulfillment. It’s more fun. Remember when the JJ Abrams movie, Cloverfield, came out a few years ago? The interactive microsite, the videos, the games all tapped into the fun of anticipation. The movie was decent but didn’t come close to the fun or duration of the anticipation.

Don’t forget how much our audiences crave anticipation; even if they tell you they’d prefer immediate fulfillment/gratification.

Learn Like You’re Going to Teach

Speaking makes me nervous. Yeah, I know it’s an incredibly rare phobia, but I get antsy speaking in front of people. Repetition absolutely eases the comfort level, but I’ve found that the majority of my nerves come from a feeling of inadequacy.

Who am I to be teaching these people?

This isn’t some sort of false humility so that you’ll reaffirm me. I often feel inadequate but give it my best regardless. Now think about how much more inadequate I’d feel if I didn’t know the content. I get up there rambling about inappropriate illustrations and uncomfortable jokes without knowing the content front and back from which the audience may actually glean a nugget or two. With this added motivation to teach, you better believe I’m a diligent learner. When I know I’m going to have to communicate to others, especially verbally, I learn in a completely different and more productive way. I have a feeling that’s not just me.

We learn to ace a test. We learn to get a promotion. Our intrinsic motivation is weak when this is the end game. Sure, it feels good to ace the test or get the promotion because you were the only person in your company who took the time to learn social media, but our drive to not only memorize, but comprehend, increases exponentially when we know we’re going to have to apply it in the context of one of our biggest insecurities.

So, is it possible to discipline ourselves to learn everything as though we’re going to have to teach it, whether we’re actually going to teach it or not? If we can, we’ll skim a lot less, re-read a lot more, take a lot more notes and spend a lot more time in reflection, rather than hurriedly turning the page. That I’m sure of.

Note: Credit Daniel Pink for the reference to intrinsic motivation. If you get a chance, pick up and read Drive (and A Whole New Mind for that matter). His arguments and philosophies have changed the way I approach learning, management and parenting.

Who Refers Work to a Competitor?

I took a call from a client. They asked for something that we can do but don’t do particularly well. I decided to refer the project to another shop that does that one thing very well. The other shop also has some competitive overlap with us. What am I thinking?

To compete or to collaborate? Beyond that and a seemingly crazier question: to block work from competitors or refer it to them? I’ve prioritized getting to know as many people in our business as I possibly can in the Houston market. I often have coffee with direct competitors. I often share ideas and work with people that could easily replicate it and take credit. It’s quite possible that I’m too young and naive to realize the risk I’m taking on…I acknowledge that.

However, I can’t help but feel like the creative community in a city like Houston (not typically known for its creative brilliance) is strengthened by the collaboration of competitors. Sure, we have to survive and protect our client relationships. But in the interest of authenticity, efficiency and quality, don’t we do our clients a disservice by attempting to do work we know we’re not very good at instead of referring it to someone else that does it very well? Will the client view that as an act of good faith and honesty? Or will the client walk right on through the open door you’ve just presented to them and leave you standing in the cold? Either one is possible, and if you do this long enough, both will probably happen at some point.

So let’s look at this from the perspective of the Marketing Director and the perspective of the agency.

If I’m a Marketing Director, I want the shop that (1) I can implicitly trust to be authentic and honest at every turn, whether that means turning down money or not and (2) has my best interests in mind and actually shows me. I don’t want the shop that tries to convince me all I need is video, when I know video is what they do best. When I ask that shop to help me with some SEO work, I sure hope they’ll refer me to a specialist if all they’ll be doing is taking my money and Googling SEO.

If I’m an agency Account Manager, it’s in my best interest, long-term, to maintain a good reputation in my market. I may pitch against you, but I’m not going to talk poorly of you to prospective clients to win work and I’m not going to accept work that you could do far better for the same price and at the same speed. (Note: If you don’t have something that you do better than everyone else in your market, than you may want to stop reading this blog and work on that) As I discussed in a guest blog post for Hullabalog, these competitors may become clients prospects, and many of them do. Yes, I would say that there’s a “plethora” of reasons to respect your competition and maybe even befriend them.

I’m confident in saying that you’ll get burned far more if you’re the cut-throat business owner that will tell your client anything to win more business and disrespect your competition. Sure, both approaches have worked in the past. But we’re also not currently living in the past. Cut-throat competitive and management strategy isn’t going anywhere, but it’s success rate sure is. Treat people well. Your employees, your clients and yes, even your competition.

What do you think? The words of a naive “kid” in the business who needs a few more rodeos under his belt?

Real-life Games

I sat in my chair yesterday evening at 5:00pm CST and anxiously awaited CBS to reveal the tournament bracket for the 2011 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. There’s a show for it…every year…in prime time…and is one of the most popular sporting “events” that does not actually involve the sport itself. Sure, I’ve got a team that I root for relentlessly, but the cache of the tournament has very little to do with your team; it’s about the game.

Think fantasy football or the movie “Rat Race“. These things tap into the competitive part of our psyche, but what makes them unique is the real-life nature of the playing board. We’re much less fascinated with moving pieces around a board and putting it back in the box when the game’s over. We still want to play, and we still want to win, but we’ve firmly jumped on board with the concept that we can play these games with the actions of real people – and that makes it far more engaging. And we spend exponentially more time playing (or watching to see if we got it right). Ultimately, we want to root for someone. Very few watch sporting events where they don’t care about the outcome. We begin to care about the outcome when there’s a story we’re following or a game we’re playing, which directly affects whether we win or lose. And that’s what we want right? We want consumers to care and become emotionally invested…maybe even evangelists for your brand.

If you’ve read any marketing/branding book, you probably know that telling stories is essential to creating emotional attachment to your team / brand. Have you ever thought about giving them a low-risk, real-life game to play? I specify “low-risk” because if you’re a publicly-traded company, investors are already playing a real-life game, but your consumers can’t take that level of risk. No specific ideas here, but an application to think about. This is a very real aspect of our current media-driven culture that heavily impacts the revenue success of college basketball and the NFL – but it’s rarely tapped into.

Guest Post on Hullabalog

I had the honor of contributing to Texas A&M’s business professionals blog last week. Thought I’d share:
Three Powerful Words

Digital Downtime

JWT just published their annual “What to Watch for” deck, and I was uniquely intrigued by a trend I noticed throughout: digital downtime. The ever-increasing technological presence in our day-to-day lives is actually starting to freak me out a bit. I’m the one that complains about the fact that none of us can keep our faces out of our smart phones – yet I was checking my e-mail while my two-year-old played in the bath last night. WHAT???

As I’m reading a book to that same toddler that same night, he’s asking me “Daddy, what’re they doing?” and pointing to every picture. On one illustration, there were two people talking, and he answered his own question: “oh, they’re checking their e-mail.” Well, crap.

I’m already worried for me and what having a monitor in my face throughout the day is doing to my creativity and even productivity. You better believe that kid is going to be asking me for an iPhone by the time he hits Kindergarten.

And I have no solution. None. It’s the way the world is going, and if I want to rebel against it, I’ll end up living in the woods somewhere. Clients and co-workers expect accessibility 24/7. Again, it’s the world we’re in, and I’ve adapted to it (and sometimes even thrived in it), but it doesn’t erase my concern for my kids not having an imagination by the time they hit their teenage years. If JWT is right, we may start taking care of this ourselves, universally recognizing the need to disconnect for the sake of our creativity and the health of our close relationships.

Is this something we could apply to our business cultures, or is it simply an individual discipline? Do you even agree with the need for it?

My Twitter Train is Slowing Down

Not in terms of users or media attention. It’s still a dominant force in the world of product marketing and customer service. My Twitter activity has swelled and retracted numerous times, but my strategy has always been to just throw everything out there. No distinction between what I use Twitter and Facebook for – both are just tools that help me live my professional life online.

Well, my Twitter train is slowing down. It could just be that I’m bored with it. I’m not going to try to dissect it anymore than that. I used to be a dedicated student of the platform and excited by the possibilities. Now, I’m just fascinated by creative ways of using it – not the platform itself. The platform just…is. That’s what happens with innovation that sticks – eventually, we forget the world without it.

So, I was close to abandoning Twitter altogether (my personal profile). I was posting a couple of times a week, more out of obligation than anything. There wasn’t a lot of value behind what I was posting – just sharing personality and a few things I found interesting. But I had a problem and realized Twitter could be part of the solution.

I end up transitioning from one task to another all day. Rarely am I in the bubble of a single task or project. This leads to tiny little pockets of waste. And when things are busy, I’m just doing – I’m not improving outside of the experience I’m obviously attaining. I’m not disciplined enough to just declare one morning that I’m going to start being more productive. I need accountability. Not necessarily someone knocking down my door ensuring that I’m consciously making myself better, but I need someone I report to. I don’t care if they care or not, but it has to have life. I already check Twitter daily, so I’ll have a consistent reminder to find something to improve my value that day if I haven’t already.

Yesterday, I started this. Today, I read an article on depreciation methods. Tomorrow – I’ll figure it out, but I’ll do something and let the Twitter world hold me accountable. At the very least, I’m being held accountable to a commitment and the Twitter world is getting some ideas of how to spend their throw away time.

I’m using #imbettertoday on each applicable post. We’ll see how this little experiment goes.

Social Media Is Turning Me Into A Social Delinquent

This is nothing more than an observation and a bit of confession. No solutions here – you’re going to have to figure those out on your own. Feel free to reaffirm me, however, if anything I say rings eerily true.

I’m a pretty social guy. I enjoy talking to people, not a lot intimidates me. As I’ve discussed too many times on this blog, I’ve run the gamut on social media, going from neck deep into the subculture of social media marketers, to a “social media cynic”, to finally understanding it’s value and being able to analyze it’s power objectively.

Now, I’m running a business with two partners. Forget the marketing value of social media for a second. Of course, it’s a daily topic of discussion internally and with our clients, considering the nature of our business. I’m starting to find that social media can be an inhibitor to the social aspect of business just as much as an enhancer. Here’s where I keep screwing up:

Conflict: I’m awful at conflict to begin with. I hate it. It leaves my stomach in knots until it’s resolved. But now I’m worse. I try to solve problems over fb messages and drawn out e-mails as opposed to face-to-face discussion. It’s pathetic. My reasoning is that I have the opportunity to arrange my thoughts, present them respectfully, yada yada yada. Has anyone actually been confronted over fb and been pleased? I don’t care how well-presented the argument or confrontation is – you can’t have healthy conflict over a fb message, chat box, whatever, and I won’t go into the reasons why that is. My comfortability on these platforms allows me to be a huge sissy in delicate situations.

Identity: Online, we get to be whomever we want to be. This is just a fact. Have you ever noticed how differently people behave behind a computer screen or behind the wheel of a car? I have a tendency to fake expertise in fields in which I’m far from an expert…who’s going to call me on it? And even if you do, I can just go Google an answer and fake that as well. This makes me less effective in debate and one on one communication because I get so used to just faking and not perfecting the communication of my true abilities and skills orally.

Internal Communication: We’re all creatives. Whether we execute or not, if you’re in this business, you want to be and you’re pretty good at it, you’ve got some creativity in you. This usually means that we don’t like meetings because that’s what “corporations” do. Meetings are nothing more than a real life platform to openly discuss and get things done. Whether it’s planning meetings with your partners or meetings with employees, you have to get in front of them. I far too often take the easy way out and consolidate thoughts in a weak, bulleted e-mail.

I like social media and certainly appreciate what it’s capable of (yes, I ended a sentence in a preposition – thank you). But I do think it’s time I start paying attention to the compromises I make as a leader and consultant by allowing it to become my norm and comfort zone.

Creating and Sustaining Loyalty: A Suggestion for Apple

We look at the top brands in the world and see fantastic products, insanely high revenue and therefore, a lot of money to create fantastic content. The Coca-Cola’s and Apple’s obviously have legions of dedicated customers who evangelize the brand. As you bring your customers along the scale, moving them from AWARENESS to TRUST to a PURCHASE DECISION to EVANGELISM, you’re growing the strength of your brand. No one has done this better over the last decade than Apple (yes, I know this is an over-used example but it’s the best one). But I foresee a peak in brand loyalty approaching for Apple if they don’t tweak their approach. Here’s why:

Observation
My mom just bought a Macbook Pro. She has no idea why, but she did because all of her friends have them. She uses her computer to check her e-mail, look at photos and update Facebook – that’s it. Remember all of those Jetta’s and PT Cruisers with the Apple sticker in the back window. That used to tell us SO much about a person before even meeting them. Apple had built a community, then an army of loyal followers that swore by the product, and if you were a “Mac” person, we knew a lot about you before you opened your mouth. Now my Mom is a Mac person – and she has no idea why. That sticker just got a lot less cool and exclusive because the army is being infiltrated and the personality diluted. Being a Mac person is starting to mean a lot less.

The second part of my observation is psychological. Let’s look at loyalty patterns outside of consumer behavior. Are you an American? Are you a Republican or Dem? Are you from the North or South? Are you a Texan? Are you an Aggie or a Longhorn? What fraternity were you a part of within that school? Notice that the questions get more and more targeted, and as they get more targeted, we become more loyal.

I’m an American. I felt an unbelievable loyalty to my country in the times after 9/11…during the Olympics. I’m a Texan. Now, I don’t swear by my state, but I know many who do. New Yorkers may be on my team during the Olympics, but outside of that, they’re competitors. I’m an Aggie. We all may be Texans, but you better believe that the Aggies do not like the Longhorns and vice versa. And then within my university, I had a specific group that did not get along with other groups on campus. During basketball games and football games, all Aggies are on the same team, but once we leave that stadium or arena and find ourselves back in our university bubble, we find smaller groups to whom we assign loyalty. This process keeps going until we’ve narrowed our loyalty to a very small group.

Interpretation
Loyalty becomes stronger the more targeted our group or team becomes – when we feel relied upon or missed if we’re not there. Why do so few of us vote? I’ll answer for you: we feel like we’re too small to make a difference. Why do we all show up for A&M football games? Well, the team needs us! Why do we join a fraternity? Because A&M has 45,000 students, and we need to be a part of something more exclusive – where we’ll be missed even more if we’re not there.

In regards to Apple, it’s just moved another rung up the hierarchy. Metaphorically, it’s not Texas A&M anymore; it’s the state of Texas. And we’ve already established that our loyalty typically dilutes the higher up we go. Now people from the state of Texas may tease New Yorkers and the other way around, but the intensity of that rivalry pales in comparison to when A&M plays Texas on Thanksgiving Day. I’m loaded up on apparel and house decorations to express my loyalty to Texas A&M. I don’t think I own a Texas flag or anything with one on it. (I do realize there are many Texans who are very passionate and loyal to the state, but I would argue the majority of even those folks are more passionate about a group they belong to within that particular group.)

Application
What does this mean for Apple? Follow Facebook’s footsteps. As Facebook expanded to include such a large percentage of the population, participation meant virtually nothing. In response to this growth, they began to focus intensely on creating groups within the overall population. Facebook is still a brand, and an incredibly strong one at that, but they’ve managed to create a hierarchy that allows people to belong to much more exclusive groups than a 500 million user population. Can Apple do the same? I don’t think it’s as simple as segmenting the community based on products. If the psychology behind what makes us more loyal is applied here, Apple actually has to create sub-communities that literally don’t like each other. Sure, they all love the brand and the products, but that’s not enough anymore (Aggies and Longhorns love the state of Texas equally but focus more on their differences than what they have in common).

I realize this isn’t easy and it’s risky. Most would assume that dividing the brand would weaken it. Once you’ve reached a level this high on the hierarchy, however, general behavior indicates dividing it is exactly what you should do to sustain that loyalty. Otherwise, the design and young adult community may decide that if Mom’s now a Mac Person, it’s time to find the next thing.

One more observation: passionate people require exclusivity. Remember in high school when you found your new favorite band, went to every show and wore their shirts? Then, the pop radio stations picked them up and everyone was listening to them. What happened? You ditched the shirt and started looking for the next unknown band you could “discover”. Apple people are passionate people. They’re creative people. They may stick with the product until something better hits the market, but you better believe the sticker is coming off of that Jetta until they’re provided with the opportunity to join a more exclusive team.