Remember When Content Was King? It Still Is.

I’m still relatively young in this industry. I have a tendency to speak having garnered only about half of the information I actually need before forming a solid opinion. That said, I’ve recently gravitated to the history of advertising. In just about everything we do, few would argue the importance of historical knowledge: what people did right and what they did wrong – we learn, repeating the right things and avoiding the wrong things…we become more efficient. I’ve noticed a trend with those in my “generation”: we love the idea of becoming “experts” in social media because it changes every day, and expertise in this field could not be more subjective. We like to think the old guys “just don’t get it”, and this becomes our unique value to our clients or our organizations. I would plead with young marketers and advertisers to get to know your history as I still am. You’ll be amazed at exactly how much hasn’t changed.

Where we were

I’ll keep it brief because you know the bulk of it. The copywriters were the heros. The “big idea” thrived. Think Clairol’s “does she or doesn’t she?”, Nike’s “Just Do It” and the Marlboro Man. These are ideas that built and sustained brands for decades. The idea feeds the content, and the content was great. These ideas and this content gave the brand a face and a personality. People trusted, bought and eventually evangelized based on the strength of this message and the content that communicated it.

Path we’ve been on

- Traditional to Digital
- Outbound to Inbound
- Building followers to building communities

Note that variables in which we’re seeing a shift are primarily media and engagement strategy. Does it make sense to reallocate budgets, skewing toward digital? Sure. Do we need to consistently be re-thinking how we’re engaging with our customers and prospective customers leveraging new platforms? Absolutely! But in the aforementioned list, I’m, first of all, not necessarily convinced that the latter is going to replace the former. They’re going to co-exist as they’re co-existing now. We need to feel as though this is moving in a direction that is going to simplify our jobs (i.e. traditional media and advertising is going to be obsolete). As I’ve mentioned before, it’s getting more complicated – not simpler. But in all of this change, evolution and innovation, there is a common denominator: great ideas and great content. In most cases, when industries evolve, it’s advisable to not lose sight of the common denominator. Many of us are losing sight of the fact that we still have to generate brilliant ideas and great content to get our audience’s attention.

Where are we landing?


If you look at our current thought process from the most zoomed out perspective possible, I think this is what we should be seeing. This is the forest. I went into detail on this process in a previous post, so I won’t go into it here, but as my business partner and creative director pointed out, everything up to “Public” is pretty stinkin’ obvious, and it hasn’t really changed. And if I took the time to highlight this diagram, I’d smother “Story” and “Content” in bright yellow.

While we’re struggling to keep up with the daily changes on the right side of this diagram, many of us are neglecting the importance and even necessity of a brilliant and consistent story.

Here’s the application: brands have facebook pages now. Few of us are still struggling to convince our clients why they need to engage in social media. They all have Twitter and the bold ones even have YouTube. But they’re doing it for the sake of doing it, and we’re helping them fail. I’m not mean enough to call on any specifics here, but I can’t count how many Facebook pages I’ve been to that have a list of announcements…and 50 fans (or people that “like” it…for goodness sake).

Now check this out: Old Spice homepage and Facebook page. These guys were losing market share daily from Axe. Their audience was old and dying (forgive the insensitivity, but it’s true). Someone had the idea to evolve Old Spice’s story and create great content to support it. Their engagement strategy? Post the videos. Post the one-liners. They’re getting about 1200 responses per post and generating true social currency, regaining market share and making Axe look like a teen brand. (Check out this Fast Company article for a good overview on generating social currency rather than just a giant list of followers).

That’s a big idea and great content that works anywhere. Sure, use the appropriate mediums available to you and debate how to engage, but don’t take the centerpiece off of the table. A great (big) idea hasn’t become a bunch of little ideas as I’ve often heard it put. This leads to disconnect that a struggling brand like Old Spice could’ve never overcome.

Build your story. Generate great content to support it. Your customers aren’t going to engage with you because you crowdsourced your logo or announced a bunch of promotions on Twitter. They’ll engage with you when you create a personality they like and find a great way to communicate it. If you’re a social media fiend, I don’t at all mean to downplay that. But think about it this way. You meet two people at a party. One does nothing but tell you every trip he’s ever taken and everything he’s ever accomplished. The other listens to you, generates your trust with the way he carries himself and is generally someone you like and enjoy being around. Which one are you going to want to hang out with again?

Why I’m Abandoning Foursquare and Consolidating Platforms

I hit my boiling point this past week, and I’m taking it out on Foursquare (and tweaking my overall approach a bit – see next post).

By the end of this year, it’s projected that about 130 million Americans will have smart phones and data plans (for a reference point, there are just over 300 million people in the U.S.). We’re a progressive people – our nature will always be to want more of what we already have or the next big thing, moving on from the old entirely. We have our Facebook and Twitter apps and easily share status updates, photos and videos from wherever we are. Insert Foursquare, where we now are just simply posting where we are. I’m not a naysayer. I absolutely see the value for consumer businesses: promotions based on check-in amounts, free impressions every time your customers check-in, etc.

Smart phones have the technology that would literally allow you to see a grid of all of your contacts (who also have smart phones) and their exact locations. This obviously is a major privacy invasion, so Foursquare capitalized off of the technology to allow users to opt-in to revealing their exact location. Most can’t generate a significant following on Foursquare alone, so they integrate with Facebook and Twitter, announcing to all of your friends and followers when you’ve arrived to work or the vet. I’d never speak against it if I hadn’t tried it myself, so for the last couple of months, I gave it a shot.

I’m not going to suggest that Foursquare doesn’t work and no individual or business should adopt it. But for the sake of my friends and followers, though, I’m not. It clogs up Twitter and Facebook feeds – like, Guy Kawasaki style. How do I decide where to check-in and where not to? I’ve either got to commit or abandon ship, and I’m jumping over-board. If I want to plug a restaurant, I’ll do it. I don’t have to “check-in” to let you know what I like and don’t like. I’ve never actually ventured to a location because someone that I wanted to talk to checked in there. I don’t care how far down this road we go – that will never be socially acceptable. So with all of that said, this experiment is over. I don’t mind you knowing where I am, but I’m going to move forward under the assumption that my comments, thoughts, opinions and facilitation are more valuable. I want your impressions with my personal brand to be valuable and beneficial in some way – if I add clutter and useless impressions, I’m devaluing that brand. Foursquare : Personal branding :: Banner ads : MySpace

If Facebook is to maintain it’s purity, I would suggest blocking integration with platforms like Foursquare. The day I look at my news feed and see 20 maps of where people are having lunch is the day I start looking for new platforms to invest in. It’s time for consolidation for the sake of efficiency and for the sanity of my friends and followers. Goodbye Foursquare.

Brand Humanization: Who’s Doing Business with a Logo?

I’m sure you’ve heard it. Whether you believe it or not is a different story altogether, but piggy-backing on the prevelance of social influence marketing is the thought/saying, “consumers don’t want to work with logos – they want to work with people.”

A large number of brands have been very intentional in putting a name, face, personality and/or voice (which we were always supposed to have) behind their brand. Zappos has Tony. Apple has Jobs. GE had (and still has to most of us) Jack Welch. Comcast has….Frank?

Before we even had the option of using Twitter for a brand or developing a facebook fan page, certain companies recognized the need and capitalized on the opportunity to humanize their brand. I believe and hope I would have always argued in favor of this approach. But now, it’s getting painfully obvious. Most, including myself, would make the assumption that the face and personality of the brand should be the CEO (and if your CEO just isn’t that charismatic, you get a celebrity to do it for you).

In many cases, as I detailed above, this is the case, but the successful variations are ever-increasing. Tony Hsieh had a tremendous business model with a unique (and simple) philosophy to which he’s unwaveringly committed. But here’s the thing with Zappos: he’s not the only face of the brand – his whole company is. You can find every single Zappos employee on Twitter, tweeting about whatever their hearts desire. One would assume that there’s some level of governance, but it doesn’t come through that way. They come through as people who fit into a well-defined culture that’s about people.

Sweet Leaf Tea, out of Austin, TX, is another perfect example. CEO, Clayton Christopher, is all over Twitter. But he’s not tweeting behind a logo. I was recently in the audience for a panel with Sweet Leaf’s social media lead, April Riggs. April cites the unique culture at Sweet Leaf that allows for this model (Zappos, obviously, falls into this category of having a strong and well-defined company culture). I think she’s right. However, if we accept that consumers want to buy from and work with people, not logos, then shouldn’t brands adopt this model whether they have a unique culture or not?

Onto Frank. Frank has added a little bit of white paint to the bucket of evil jet black that Comcast has been for so long as it pertains to customer service. Use Twitter as a customer service tool! Frank proposed. Frank’s not a CEO. Frank’s not a celebrity. He’s a person, and that’s ultimately what we care about. We don’t want a logo, an automated recording or even a person reading a script. We want a person who will listen and intelligently respond. A person who may be a master in his or her industry but who also loves the Boston Red Sox.

We have a greater opportunity to humanize our brands now more than ever because we have the tools to do it. Edward Boches, of Mullen, has qualified consumer desires to work with people as a consumer trend worth blogging about, and in our interaction, he specifically makes the point to say that the CEO may not be the face of your brand. I agree with him. There may be a lot of faces behind your brand. You need to (1)trust them and (2)ensure they fit into and represent your culture (if they work for you, they should anyway). It’s yet another reason to become a student of these new tools and platforms.

As a student, I don’t have this all figured out yet. Here are some questions I’m still dwelling on:

1. Governance seems to be an obvious need for individuals representing a brand. But does that contradict what this is all about? Is governance trying to create a person that doesn’t really exist?

2. I recognize that developing a web ‘personality’ is key. If 20 people are representing my brand, am I disconnecting that personality?

Social Media: My Job Just Got A Lot More Complicated (IS Conference ’09)

Preface: I believe in social media. I do not believe it is a fad – I think it will change the way marketers and advertisers think, permanently. This is a summary of my presentation at Houston’s Interactive Strategies Conference (IS Conference ’09).

This video began circulating around our office a couple of weeks ago. If you haven’t seen it, my guess is, you’ve seen one like it.



Excited? I was the first time I saw it.

Now I realize that the credibility of this video has essentially been torn apart over the past couple of weeks, but that isn’t the point of this post. This video is merely representative for my purposes. The conclusion that the creator of this video wants us to get to (a bit forcefully and deceptively) is that we’ve found the next golden egg in our business. Pour your investment into social media and watch your return – low cost, high visibility (incredibly high visibility according to videos like this) – how could you go wrong? Get your Facebook fan page, Twitter account, YouTube channel and LinkedIn profile set up – then sit back and revel in the results. After all, there are hundreds of millions of people accessing these channels right? The message we’re hearing is that it’s just that simple. Is it that simple?

I could go on for pages on this, so I’ll compress it to 2 central arguments and spare you my illustrations (if you’re interested in more detail and missed the conference, dm me on twitter or e-mail me and I’ll be happy to expand):

1. I hate to pull personal experience into this, but I’m going to have to (and I only do so with the confidence that most of the readers of this post can relate). My grandmother refuses to use e-mail. Refuses. She won’t even own a computer. She moved from Houston to Austin a few years ago and we got her a computer so we could keep in touch more often. She sold it within a week. She doesn’t want to have to learn something new. “Just call me if you want to talk,” she’d say.

My dad (babyboomer) not only doesn’t understand Twitter or Facebook, he mocks them. “Why would I want to know what you’re doing all day? That’s stupid”, he’d say. Now I realize that the fastest growing age demographic for Facebook is 55-65 – this is significant, no doubt. But if you want to talk to my grandmother or my dad, you better think about some different channels. Know anyone like this?

2. We all love stats. Having a big chart to back up our argument gives us a little warm and fuzzy. The video above is loaded with them. Let’s assume, for the time being, that the stats are accurate. Here’s the problem: they’re being used manipulatively. If they reinforce what we want to hear, we won’t dig a little deeper to find the usable data behind these stats.

A couple of examples:

MySpace announced 3 years ago that they surpassed 100 million user accounts. That’s a staggering statistic. I have four. I also haven’t accessed any of those accounts in at least 2 years.

Twitter has 30 million+ accounts (I don’t know the exact number, but it’s a lot). If we took the time to not accept this stat at face value, we’d see that 80% of those accounts have tweeted less than 5 times. We’d also see that 75% of tweets come from 5% of Twitter users. There are a lot of people you can reach using Twitter, but do yourself (or your clients) the favor of making sure the stat is usable before adding it to your pitch or presentation.

One of the only usable stats I saw in this video was that 78% of surveyed consumers trust recommendations from online peers while a mere 14% trust ads. Whoa, now we’re onto something! But wait. Razorfish just released their Social Influence Marketing Report (“social influence” marketing is their non-conformist terminology for social media), in which they concluded that “consumers are more likely to trust television ads than online friends when making purchasing decisions.” Scratching my head. I’m not discrediting research or the importance of it – I’m merely noting how far people will go to get us to see their point of view. I’d like to see the profiles of the users surveyed for the video above.

Here’s my conclusion: social media is no golden egg. It doesn’t make our jobs easier – in fact, it makes them far more difficult. When we respond to the pressures of, “where’s our facebook fan page?” or “throw up a Twitter account; it’ll take 5 minutes!”, we’re buying into this manipulative crap (forgive my cynicism – that’s usually not my style). When we build our strategies around social media or reach for the channels before deciding what we’re using them for, we’re metaphorically pulling tools out of the toolbelt before we’ve decided what we’re building and who we’re building it for.

The toolbelt is growing with far more dynamic tools than we’ve ever seen before. This requires us to be creative, smart and thorough. We haven’t found the golden egg (or “magic beans” as Seth Godin refers to it) of this generation. It’s quite the opposite, in fact. We now have more tools…incredible tools that will change our thinking forever. But it shouldn’t change our high-level thinking. Most would agree that social media doesn’t reach everyone. It doesn’t reach a lot of consumers. Therefore, we can’t abandon the fundamentals. (1) Identify your target audience, (2) develop your strategy and messaging and (3) start pulling tools from the tool belt that make the most sense. We can’t help but strategize in light of these new tools – but we can’t strategize around them.

So, is it that simple? Absolutely not. Things just got a lot more complicated.