“What’s wrong with the sound?” I said when my son turned on the TV to watch a World Cup match. “Have killer bees come to Chicago? Are they swarming inside our set?”

This was my first exposure to the buzz heard round the world, the supposedly traditional, really really LOUD 127 decibel South African stadium horn. (I’m a little dubious of that claim; plastic horns like this have been around for decades, and they didn’t come from Africa.)

In the short time that the  vuvuzela has gained the world’s attention, marketers are horning in on the buzz to build visibility for their products. But it will all be over in a few weeks with the winning of the World Cup.
•    Just in case you’ve been living in a cave, you can hear what it sounds like: An online virtual vuvuzela, sponsored by McDonald’s, as well as a vuvuzela endurance test.
•    Of course, some people need a user’s manual for the vuvuzela.
•    Now that you know what it is and how it sounds, you can get an anti-vuvuzela noise filter, for home use, using MP3 technology.
•    Or take advantage of a therapy product to alleviate hearing loss caused by exposure to vuvuzela din.
•    Coca-Cola World Cup promotional cups use the vuvuzela as a design element. (Idea for next generation: combination drink cup and vuvuzela horn – drink the Coke, unplug the bottom of the cup and it becomes a horn?)
•    Of course, there’s an iPhone vuvuzela app (You didn’t think they’d miss this one, did you?) It’s “the No. 1 downloaded free iPhone and iPad app in more than 50 countries, according to iTunes.”
•    And a vuvuzela Twitter feed, where you can be the first to find out about important news such as “GOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNZZZZZZZZZZZZAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLL
LLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.”
•    In Cape Town (where else?) there’s the world’s largest vuvuzela – 35 meters long, sponsored by Hyundai.

•    And finally, a marketing blogger who makes noise on behalf of her clients: “I am a professional Vuvuzela in the industry, creating a beesquito buzz for the organizations, products and services I represent.”

What does it all mean? Not very much. But it does highlight a few simple truths about viral marketing around a fast-growing trendy idea like the vuvuzela.
1.    Better do it fast. Tactics are all, so reserve your strategic planning skills for something else.
2.    Everyone and their brother will try to jump on the bandwagon with you.
3.    Your chances for success are random and unpredictable, based on undefined factors that have little or nothing to do with features, benefits and differentiation.

First there was the old saying: “Saw off the branch that you’re sitting on.”

Then “Destroy the village in order to save it,” from the Vietnam War.

And now we can see what happens when:
“More brands will compensate bloggers and social media users in an attempt to generate chatter about their products”…from a recent Brandweek article reporting that spending for sponsored conversations rose 14% to $46 million in 2009.

Does anyone else see what a bad idea this could be?

Marketers who pay for social media mentions may gain a short-term advantage. At the same time they may be setting themselves up for a long-term disaster. Imagine that Brand X is realizing the advantages of marketing through social media: The credibility that comes from having one “friend” recommend Brand X to another. But what happens if friend number two discovers that friend number one is being paid by Consolidated Megacorp, the makers of Brand X?

Using social media is one powerful way to build relationships with customers. Customer relationships are built on trust.  But trust will disappear when customers find out that you’re bribing their friends.   And before long, all social media users will be asking themselves: “Is this a real recommendation from a source I’ve always trusted? Or are they just getting paid to say this?” Everyone’s social media marketing – both paid and legitimate, unpaid conversations – will suffer for it.

But some marketers will go ahead and do it anyway, because they believe they can gain the elusive “sponsor control” that’s missing in marketing through social media. And because they’ve got organizations like Forrester Research telling them to “Add Sponsored Conversations To Your Toolbox – Why You Should Pay Bloggers To Talk About Your Brand.” (Evidently it’s OK if you say it’s a paid conversation, and identify the sponsor. But this makes it an ad, not a conversation.)

Some marketers have short memories. They forget the controversy and loss of credibility that rose from another kind of “paid conversation” when brands like Sony, Turi Vodka, and Freedom Tobacco decided to indulge in undercover marketing, initiating real life (not virtual) conversations between unidentified brand representatives and prospects in bars, clubs and coffee shops.  Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, Blink and The Outliers said: “My problem with undercover marketing is not what happens in the moment. It’s what happens a week, or two weeks, or a month down the road, when we discover we’ve been duped. And I think that the moment when we discover we’ve been duped causes a backlash. Companies who engage in this practice are courting that backlash. And that’s a very, very dangerous thing to play with.”

Are You On The Social Media Bandwagon?

Fortunately, not everyone’s jumping on the bandwagon. At Social Media Today Augie Ray says: “I’ve observed that discussions about paid blog posts tend to focus on the logical reasons why brands and bloggers believe they can engage in sponsored conversations. This approach to the topic is fundamentally flawed; it considers only brands’ and bloggers’ justifications, but since trust is imparted and felt by readers, our justifications are meaningless. We cannot create trust where it does not exist by presenting cogent and reasoned arguments.”

When I first read about Bill Simmons’ idea to mobilize Celtics fans’ chants via Twitter, I knew that social media’s role in sports just entered a whole new realm.

First, sports journalists used Twitter to report on breaking news, prior to published articles on the web.  Next, athletes would tweet during games, only to be fined per NBA policy.  Now, Twitter in sports has ramped to the next level: Simmons, a devout Boston Celtics fan, created @CelticsChants to help organize the Boston faithful in cheering against the opposing team.

Being a diehard Celtics fan, I was more than happy to have Simmons lead our fanbase with his snarky cheers via Twitter, suggesting that Rashard Lewis of Orlando took HGH and LeBron James would be happier as a New York Knick. Because of Simmons’ tweets during the Orlando and Cleveland series, the crowd became engaged to the game in a whole new way; social media ramped up the intensity level.  Maybe we’ll even see @CelticsChants mobilize the crowd to such an extent that the Boston TD Garden would rival the atmosphere that the infamous Cameron Crazies give to Cameron Indoor Stadium during every Duke Blue Devil’s home game. Fandom aside—as a marketer, I was elated to see this medium blow up into a whole new element.

Especially in the realm of guerrilla marketing campaigns, this tactic could really make an impact.  A message can be changed instantaneously and adapted to a specific situation.  Imagine if Nike, Reebok or Underarmor were to use this tactic in an event like the Super Bowl; with fan support, whatever message they wanted to be conveyed would be nearly impossible to ignore within the stadium, as well as to the millions of viewers worldwide.  Better yet, imagine if adidas unveiled a Twitter-based guerrilla campaign during the World Cup final in South Africa: not only could the hypothetical campaign unify thousands of fans from different nations within the stadium, but also be exposed to hundreds of millions of television viewers worldwide.  Does this idea seem ridiculously tough to pull off?  Without a doubt.  But could it happen, and would it be incredibly cool?  Most definitely.

Potential marketing campaigns aside, tonight marks the first NBA finals game in Boston where @CelticsChants will be leading the heckling.  Watch out, Kobe, Pau, and LA.  The Boston Faithful will be using social media to taunt you every time you’re at the free throw line.

My hopes ran high when I ran across a recent Brian Solis Advertising Age column headlined “The Social Media Style Guide.” “Excellent!” I said to myself. “At last, best practices for new media where no one really seems to know (or is willing to say) how to do it right. I’m ready to be impressed.”

But now I’m depressed. The column was no help at all. It’s not that what Brian Solis says is wrong. In fact, it’s absolutely right. His Eight Steps to Establishing a Brand Persona include (condensed version):

Core Values. “… we need to specify what we stand for and weave it into all we do.

Brand Pillars. ”…establish the principal, central themes that convey our uniqueness and value.
Promise. “What is our mission and how does it introduce value to those who align with our purpose.”
Aspirations. “…representative of the stature and mission we seek today and over time.”
Brand Characteristics. “…the traits we wish to associate with the brand represented through our actions, words and overall behavior.”
Opportunities. “…that emerge that allow us to connect to those seeking solutions we had yet to identify.”
Culture. “People need something they can align with, and it is our culture that serves as the magnet to our purpose and aspirations.”
Personality. “If the brand was a person, how would it appear? How would it sound? How would it interact with others? How would others describe it?”

Been there, done that
No argument here. These are good guidelines for all kinds of effective brand communications. But we’ve heard it and said it all before – it’s what our agency or any other competent resource would tell a client about using any media to communicate with customers and prospects. Unfortunately, they’re pretty useless as a guide to using social media for marketing, except maybe as a reminder. There’s nothing here that addresses the special circumstances that can make social media difficult for marketers to use.
•    Traditional marketing communications actively pursue customers and prospects. But social media is less aggressive – you invite them to discover you.
•    “Selling” is the fundamental goal of traditional marketing communications. But any kind of hard sell is anathema in most social media.
•    In traditional media, the marketer is in charge of the message. But in social media customers are in charge of a good deal of the content; the marketer loses control.
•    Most marketers demand some kind of success measure for their communications. It’s still unclear if this is possible with social media.

A better way
So what’s a smart marketer to do, to get a clear idea of what works and what doesn’t in social media? Google to the rescue – look for sites with practical advice and real life examples, like ZeusJones “Best Social Media Marketing” and Chris Wallace’s recent article in Promo magazine.

And take a look at this column that appeared in Advertising Age on the same day as “The Social Media Style Guide.” Hadji Williams talks about so-called marketing gurus, and asks: “What if all the gurus, particularly those of us in marketing, PR and social media, just said: “I don’t know” — out loud?

I missed it! March 19^th was the first National Day for Unplugging, an event designed to celebrate the Sabbath by asking people to give up, for 24 hours, use of cellphones, GPS, computers, TV … in other words, most of life as we know it. But then, the very nature of the day is contrary to finding out that it exists. It’s an intriguing idea, given the all-pervasive technology surrounding us. Apparently, some participants struggled, while others found it refreshing.

The idea of staging events on specific days or weeks has been around for many years. We have National Popcorn Day in January, as opposed to National Popcorn Poppin’ Month in October (popcorn brands take note – a little marketing integration needed here).  Next month, May, prepare yourself to celebrate Teen CEO Month (scary), Tennis Month (Alan Maites take note), as well as Revise Your Work Schedule Month (less for me, more for you), National Vinegar Month (eeuuhh), and National Meditation Month (ohmmmm).

Now clearly getting a day or month event to work effectively in marketing requires more than just saying this date or this period is “yours”.  First you need an official sponsor, a marketer to pay the bills. And you need to host some events, get some publicity, have others talk about it and join in the fun/celebration/remembrance.

To add to the ideas above, I’ve thought of a few examples of technology-inspired National Days:
1.  National Day of Unfriending – One day when you can un-friend as many of your 1356 closest Facebook friends as you like, without getting hate emails. But you could send snail mail – maybe the U.S. Postal Service should sponsor this one.
2.  National Day of Twittering – A 24 hour period when you need to twitter ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING you do, staying awake all night to detail every tedious aspect of your existence.  This could be a charity fundraiser for On And On Anon Ymous, the 12-Step program for people who talk too much.  Or another excuse for people to behave like Chad Ochocinco.
3.  National Erase Text Day – The sponsor for this is obvious: TigerText, the new iPhone app that limits text message lifespan, inspired by the celebrity who escapades were revealed when he crashed his Escalade. (Shhh. We’re being discreet here.)
4.  National Jobs Day – No, not a spur for employment, but a chance to honor Apple’s Steve Jobs, who seems to be on the cover of every magazine and have product placements in shows like ABC’s Modern Family.  The idea here is you celebrate by standing in line outside of an Apple store.  Wait a minute, wasn’t that last Saturday at the iPad launch?
5.  National Day of Spam – One day, just one, when you’re required to read all spam and junk emails.  In return, the spammers would have to provide you with their own personal home street addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Hmm, on second thought this might end up being a one-time event.
6.  National Day of….? Now go ahead and make your day. If you had to promote a ‘National Day of …” what would it be, and why? Who would sponsor it?  Best idea wins a precooked meat product in a distinctive blue and yellow can, made by the Hormel Foods Corporation, in 13 delicious varieties.

(The following was delivered to Robinson & Maites in a plain brown bag in the dead of night. We do not attest to its veracity.)

“Suckers.
Easy marks.
Chumps.
But now they tell me we gotta call them ‘best prospects.’”

That’s what an anonymous informant known only as Louie told Crime Times, the trade journal for ethically-challenged entrepreneurs (AKA “crooks”) in their report on Blippy.com, the new social media service.

It’s an extreme example of how small business is embracing new technology to improve their marketing. Legitimate small businesses are using Facebook and YouTube.  But burglars, muggers and blackmailers are reaping the benefits Blippy users posting all their credit card and online purchases online for the world to see. According to Blippy.com:
•    “Blippy is a fun and easy way to see and discuss the things people are buying.”
•    “Share your favorite purchases from any credit card or these online stores.”

According to Louie: “I don’t know nothing about this target market segmentation stuff. But why get wasted trying to figure out who’s the chump – uh, sorry, I meant to say prospect – when with Blippy I can get them to raise their hands and tell me what they’ve got that’s worth stealing?”

Before Blippy the bad guys would expend enormous man-hours trying to find the right score. Burglars cruised neighborhoods looking for mail and newspapers piled up on porches. Muggers watched for show-offs with big bankrolls in their pockets. And blackmailers rooted through garbage cans looking for “No Tell Motel” register receipts.

“No more of this hanging around in dark alleys in the rain at three in the morning,” Louie told Crime Times. “Now crime’s more like a 9 to 5 desk job. I can tell people I’m into marketing. It’s even inspired a new motto for my business. With Blippy I just grab my mouse and go:
Click click,
Now I’m slick.
I take my pick
Of conspic-
Uous consumers.”

Louie is even thinking of sponsoring an annual marketing award for most effective campaigns using Blippy.com. “We’ll call it the solid gold shopping cart.  Actually it’s someone else’s idea that I found online. But what the hell, I’m a thief.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same. The old-time traveling medicine show has evolved into the “experiential” road show.  The obsolete cigar store Indian is now the giant inflatable display. And now Brandweek reports that the traditional Tupperware-type sales party has transformed itself into the new venue for high-tech and high-ticket products from Ford, Verizon and Microsoft.

But we believe there’s an even bigger opportunity for companies to be the life of the party, when they match their marketing with the right kind of party.  After all, you wouldn’t promote chewing tobacco at a wine and cheese party, or retirement communities at a rave, would you?

Party in a pigpen
So why should Tide detergent restrict itself to tennis superstar promotion, when it can go where it’s really needed? Tide can party hearty at down and dirty Mudfest events in Louisiana, Missouri, Texas, Florida and more.  Both participants and spectators are perfect prospects for Tide, and it’s the ideal showcase for the Tide Mobile Laundry truck.

Party with pride
For McCormick Spices, forecasting flavor trends is marketing that preaches only to the foodie choir. The people who really need McCormick are the cooks and the diners at the West Virginia Roadkill Cookoff. McCormick can party with pride, because they’ll be continuing a long historical trend: The Spice Trade was driven by the need to disguise the taste of spoiled food.

Companies can also create their own parties, especially if they’re marketing products that even satisfied customers are unlikely to recommend to their friends.

Provocative parties
One example that comes to mind is condoms. The Trojan brand’s recent advertising campaign has been pretty suggestive, but it’s difficult to turn that kind of attention into action. Even in our supposedly sexually-liberated times, guys’ locker room talk rarely turns to a detailed comparison of condom performance. But party marketing is the ideal opportunity for sampling. Should the parties be coed? Should the samples actually be “test driven” at the party, or just distributed there? We’ll leave that up to the condom company that pioneers this kind of party.

Hold a “party’s over” party
Another example of party-partial product categories is caskets. Brands like Batesville experience an insurmountable barrier to word-of-mouth advertising success, because even their most satisfied customers have nothing to say. Up until now the big news in casket marketing has been free next day delivery, and distribution at Walmart. But now casket marketers can invite Major League Baseball fans to game night parties, where they can try on a casket with their favorite team’s logo. Party marketing puts the “fun” into “funeral.”

Just when a marketing technique seems old, worn out and irrelevant, it comes creeping back in a new disguise.  If the lingering Tupperware association still bothers you, think of party marketing as social media marketing, with the “social” part being accomplished the old-fashioned way: Real flesh people interacting face to face.

On January 18 BtoB Magazine launched their first Social Media Marketing Awards program. So we have to ask: Does the advertising/marketing business really need yet another way to congratulate itself?

And we have to answer: Yes…but only if:
•    BtoB is serious about choosing its winners based on the results that the entry form requires: “Describe how the program met or exceeded its objectives, including quantified results such as growth of brand awareness, sales, conversions, customer satisfaction, etc.”
•    Those results meet the needs of large businesses, which can have very different needs than those of small businesses using social media marketing.

To meet the needs of large businesses, the “quantified results” will have to go beyond the current criteria for social media measurement.  This is a subject we’ve beat over the head in previous posts – Social Media’s Failure To Communicate, Back To Basics for Social Media and Social Media Bubble – where we objected to the usual vague, soft, fuzzy feel-good results that social media gurus are so fond of quoting.  We’re not alone; we agree (well, maybe not 100%, but close enough) with:
•    Forrester Research: “It doesn’t matter that you have followers, fans, or a community; those are assets, not returns. It is how you use those assets that matters.”
•    Keith Kochberg in DM News: “While there are basic metrics available — number of Facebook friends, Twitter followers, blog mentions — they don’t necessarily correlate to increased sales or leads, which for an advertiser have historically been the true measure of a campaign’s success.”

Small business vs. big business
There’s already pretty good evidence that many small businesses can market effectively through social media and read the results. In most cases they’re marketing to a very tightly defined audience, and it’s the only marketing they’re doing. Barring some coincidence that can’t be predicted (like being part of a front page news story), if their business goes up it’s the social media marketing that’s driving it.

But it’s not so easy for a big business that markets many products and services to many kinds of customers in many media. This makes it difficult for them to read the results of any one tactic or marketing discipline they’re using. Right now many large enterprises are jumping onto the social media marketing bandwagon. They usually don’t even know why. Eventually they’ll jump off if they can’t see a direct relationship between the money they spend in social media and the qualified leads, new accounts, increased sales and above all incremental financial returns that social media marketing generates for them.

So far it seems like this new BtoB awards program is a step in the right direction. Because they’re specifically asking for quantified results. Business-to-business marketers are a lot less tolerant of BS than consumer marketers. Maybe social media marketing is getting down to business at last.

By now you’ve read all about Pepsi’s pullout from its 23 years of Super Bowl sponsorship. Instead, they’ll be running a social media program for the Pepsi Refresh Project, inviting consumers to create and vote support for thousands of worthwhile local community projects. Everyone seems to think this is a really important marketing move. But there’s little consensus on exactly why Pepsi is doing this, or what they hope to get out of it.

Reading all the press responses was like listening to the old story about the blind men and the elephant (one touched its side and said it was like a wall, a second touched its leg and said it’s like a tree, a third touched it tail and said it’s like a rope).
•    According to DM News, it’s a sign that “Direct marketing is now the centerpiece of all advertising.”
•    Advertising Age asks: “Is Pepsi’s Pass on Super Bowl an Offensive or Defensive Move?”
•    Business and technology group blog Techdirt is sure that online is the key factor: “Pepsi Drops Super Bowl Ads… Goes With Online Promotions Instead.”
•    Naturally, for Social Media Today, social media is what matters: “Pepsi Drops the Super Bowl for Social Media.”
•    For green business news site Environmental Leader, doing good is the core concept: “Pepsi Drops Super Bowl Ads in Favor of Cause Marketing.”

And so forth and so on. My R&M colleagues contributed some less biased, more insightful opinions:
•    Lowell pointed out the trade channel angle: “Since the dawn of Super Bowl advertising, in conference rooms all over the country there have been comments like: “We’ll get to take our best customers!” and “This is a great way for the sales guys to schmooze the customers.” But now Pepsi has signed merger agreements with Pepsi Bottling Group and PepsiAmericas – 80+% of their North American beverage volume. No need to schmooze your own people.”
•    Bob said Pepsi’s always been a copycat: “Pepsi looks at Coke on how to be a brand and then copies them. They act inferior, instead of having their own vision. But now that they’re doing something on their own, they’re doing a me-too again, copying the American Express Member Project program from a few years ago.”
•    And according to Alan: “What’s missing in a lot of what you read is what they really hope to accomplish in overall profitability, because between the cost of marketing and the cost of the Refresh program funding, they’re not saving any money. How does this work to build Pepsi business, and how will they know that it worked?”

We never thought we’d find ourselves classifying social media with Super Bowl advertising, but we’ve got to ask: Is this a big breakthrough for Pepsi (and other giant marketers)?  Or did the wheels just get too squeaky on the old Super Bowl bandwagon, so they jumped to the new social media bandwagon? When it you’re choosing something as simple as a cola, what’s the real driver: Clever and spectacular, or involving and relevant?

So what do you think? Is Pepsi’s pullout from Super Bowl advertising like a wall, or a tree, or a rope….or what? Comment, please.

Now I’m really confused.

I was sitting there sipping my morning coffee, searching through the “usual suspects” websites – Ad Age, Wall Street Journal, Promo, Brandweek and others – looking for ideas that might help our clients, or inspire a blog post, or just make me a little smarter

8:49 AM: At BtoB I saw this headline: “SMBs Adopting Social Media As A Key Marketing Tool.” I learned that “Small and midsize businesses are aggressively using social media to promote themselves” and “45% also have a presence on Facebook and Twitter with the express intent of promoting their businesses.”

9:50 AM: Same day, second cup of coffee, still searching. On Bob Bly’s Blog I spotted this headline: “Small Business Says Social Networking Doesn’t Work.” Interesting, I thought, as I read that “more than three out of four small business owners have not found social networking sites to be helpful in either generating new business leads or expanding their businesses during the last year.”

Hey! This contradicts what I just read!

Who should I believe? The BtoB article reported on a survey 2400+ selected small businesses by Internet research company Internet2Go and social network MerchantCircle. Bob Bly’s post was a response to a Marketing Charts report on Citibank telephone survey of small businesses.
•    I’ve always enjoyed, respected and usually agreed with Bob Bly’s take on marketing, especially his recurring demand that social media marketing demonstrate some kind of measurable, meaningful business results.
•    As far as I know, Citibank has no stake small businesses using or not using social networks for marketing. But MerchantCircle may have such a stake, because it’s a social network for small businesses.
•    On the other hand, Greg Sterling makes a very good case for why MerchantCircle/Internet2Go’s research trumps Citibank’s.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said “The mark of a first rate mind is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

I guess my mind is not first rate. I’m really confused. Won’t you please comment, and help me make up my mind?

“What we have here is a failure to communicate,” says the evil prison warden Strother Martin as he sentences Paul Newman to a night in the box (a small, hot punishment cell), in the classic 1967 film Cool Hand Luke.

Fast forward to today.
Exactly the same words could be used to describe the disconnect between social media advocates and their prospective customers. Those advocates risk a night in the box – or maybe a box on the ears – when they fail to speak the language as CMOs, CFOs and CEOs. It may be one reason why so many Cs say they’re “sick of hearing about Web 2.0 and related buzzwords such as ‘blogs’ and ‘social networking’” in a survey by the Marketing Executives Networking Group.

You’d think that in the communications business, the value of clear, effective communication would be taken for granted. But you’d be wrong, because some of our contemporaries require constant reminders, as in this Small Business Trends post by Zane Safrit.  He reminds us that “The story CEOs and CFOs want to hear is the story of numbers that go up and numbers that go down.”

Speak to the Cs.
It’s an issue we touched on a few months back, when we said “Help them decide in your favor by demonstrating ROMI — Return On Marketing Investment.” Now we’re wondering if Rosetta Stone could create a special version of its language learning software to teach social media advocates how to speak the language of business. It would turn social media’s jargon into a fluent translation for real-life business:
•    From “tweets, trackbacks, links, rss feeds, feed readers, community members, blogtrolls, stalkers, spambots, and organic SEO…”
•    …to “qualified sales leads, conversion rates, sales per customer, revenues, customer churn and cost of acquisition.”

It’s late summer now — back to school season for many marketers. And time for social media advocates who want to sell to Cs to go back to school themselves, before they receive a big “F,” which stands for “Failure to communicate.”

It is possible that the social networking world is headed toward a pivotal moment. Three separate signs appear to point the way.

“I am out of here.”

Sign 1: Word came earlier this week that Bill Gates is giving up on his Facebook page. Seems the number of friend requests he got was just too much trouble. He says that 10,000 people wanted to be his friend. The fact that he bailed isn’t the sign of the approaching social networking apocalypse. The sign is that only10,000 people wanted to be his friend! Come on people! This is one of the two richest guys on the planet. You would think that millions of social media denizens would be trying to suck up to the guy. Heck, if people will become a fan/follower/apostle of a beer brand in hopes of scoring a free brew, you would think more than 10,000 of them would chase a Benjamin or two. It’s obvious that Web 2.0 has pulled a lot on slackers into the social media world.

Uploading Made Easy

Sign 2: On Monday I learned about Posterous, a free service that takes all the hassle out of uploading text, pictures or video to Facebook, Twitter, flickr, etc. Now it is faster and easier for every clod on the planet to share their random thoughts and boring pictures with every other clod on the planet. I actually view the need to have some rudimentary computer knowledge as a sort of filter to keep the really hopeless from broadcasting every detail of a life most people don’t care about. Plus the need to upload separately to each of the social media sites offered the slim hope that they might nod off before they finished. Now it is faster and easier for these poor souls to share their every waking moment with an unsuspecting world. Server farms are going to spring up all over the world because storage is going to get used up at an alarming rate.

Don’t Follow Me!

Sign 3: And just when I thought all hope was lost I stumbled across a site selling just the type of apparel I need. With bold statements such as “Don’t Best Friend Me” and “LinkedOut” they will soon be the rage for every social media curmudgeon. Mine should be here any day now. Can’t wait to upload a picture of the latest fashion statement to my Facebook page!

While the word that Starbucks beat third quarter profit expectations was seen as good news by many, there are indications that they still have a tough road ahead. The continuing decline in revenue, same store sales, and the number of transactions indicate that recession-weary customers may have departed to less expensive alternatives or are dropping in for a latte less frequently.

“No company can save themselves to prosperity.”

Fans don’t equal customers.

One last point: The comments by Mr. Schultz on increased competitive activity by McDonald’s and others being  a help for Starbucks is a double edged sword. While it may have raised awareness of the coffee category, it has also seen the competition raise the quality of their coffee and their overall marketing game. The atmosphere at Starbucks was one of the reasons for their initial success. The fact that they delivered a much better cup of coffee was probably a bigger one.

Sketch Me is a Facebook app that instantly creates a pencil sketch from the user’s profile photograph.
Another Facebook app, Crappy 80s Gifts, lets you “send your friends totally tubular 80s stuff that is like so lame, dude.”
iBeer, an iPhone and iPod Touch app, fills your screen with virtual beer. When it’s tipped the beer drains.
Bubble Wrap lets you pop away all day on a virtual version of the popular packaging material.
Voodoo! for Palm devices features a voodoo doll and a long pin. You figure what to do, to who.
And the list goes on and on: iFart, the Have2P restroom finder, Deviled Egg Bowl, Medical Poetry and more.

Consider what all this could mean.  Is it a symptom of decadence, a sign of the imminent collapse of our civilization, as rich and privileged people with computers and PDAs waste their money and time on silly applications that hardly ever get used after they’re downloaded?

We think it’s more like a grownup, more expensive version of the old Johnson Smith catalog (now six different catalogs), where preteen boys traditionally spent their allowances on novelties and practical jokes like joy buzzers, whoopee cushions and ice cubes with flies in them.

It’s play, part of the price we pay for creative thinking in any activity. Wise teachers know that play is the work of children, critical to their emotional and cognitive development.

We believe that play is also an essential part of the work of adults. Apple believes play is important in the development of software. And in our agency’s business, marketing communications, a playful attitude assures that the creative is more than just a rehash of the marketing plan. (You should see some of the ideas we don’t present to clients. Or maybe you shouldn’t.)

So the next time you see another silly app for sale, remember that when it comes to creative thinking, playing around eventually pays off.  Do you agree?

PS. Check out my friend Mike Kelly’s new app for iPhone, SwitchWith. It may be weird, but it sure is fun.

Our good buddy Coaster saw an article a couple of weeks ago that caused him to leap into social media with both thumbs. It seems that a bunch of wineries, brewers and spirits producers are jumping on to Twitter to promote their brands. Coaster saw an opportunity and boy has he been disappointed.

Alex, I’ll take Potent Potables for $400.

To understand his disappointment you need to know a little about him. For as long as we have known Coaster, he has always liked a cocktail or two at almost anytime of day. Though he stopped short of getting the “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere” tattoo during the Cabo trip, his life-long ambition is to be an answer on Jeopardy! in the Potent Potables category. So when he saw that  half dozen brands including King Estate Winery, Smirnoff and Michelob are active on Twitter, he figured now was the time to join the social media frenzy to score some free adult beverages. He had visions of free samples, coupons and rebtes. Unfortunately a lot of federal, state and city laws are standing in his way. So is the ability of some brand owners to connect the dots.

Ask for Ed at (fill in the name of a local bar) and he’ll buy you a tall cold one one us.

But before I could chalk this up to just another alcohol-induced day dream, I spied an article in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal about upscale food trucks popping up in cities across the country. These are not your typical roach coaches. They deliver gourmet lunches and snacks created by owners who are highly trained chefs. As they roam the city they alert followers on Twitter to upcoming stops. It strikes me that this may be the end game in 140 characters or less. Don’t tell them how you are feeling, tell customers where you are. Sort of like the good eating version of a floating crap game.

The wine, spirit and beer barons might want to take a page from the book of these upscale entreperneurs. Instead of using Twitter to broadcast a brand ad one snippet at a time, use it to tell folks that your sales guy Ed is at a local pub and for the next hour and he’ll buy a shot/mug/goblet of your brand for anyone who asks. It’s legal in a bunch of states. And probably goes a lot further toward building a community and a viral following than tweeting followers that the cabarnet franc in Pope Valley may be developing a touch of mold.

Think about it. We know some nice folks who can help you make it happen.

Hold on a sec. Coaster just shot me a text that he got  a tweet from King Estate that Heather is hosting a wine tasting from 3 to 6 PM today in Homer Glen. Now that’s very social media. Well done King Estate!

Later.

A May 31 New York Times article describes how Darren Herman, president of Varick Media Marketing, tests online advertising:

“From the “Mad Men” era until now, advertising has been about a catchy tagline, an arresting image, the Big Idea. But Mr. Herman and his competitors are bringing some Wall Street-like analysis to Madison Avenue, exploiting the huge amounts of data produced by the Internet to adjust strategy almost instantly.

“It’s putting numbers to an industry that never had numbers before,” says Mr. Herman, 27, who started and sold three media and technology companies before founding Varick last summer. “It’s nice to be able to tell your brand manager or the chief marketing officer which audience is interacting with the unit, what time of day, what day of the week, and what the response is on certain types of offers. Before, nobody could really tell you that.”

Wall Street-like analysis for advertising is a very good thing, but it’s not really all that new. Direct marketers have been doing it for years. Doing it on the Web just allows marketers to test and measure a far greater range of variations and to respond to them far more rapidly.

The real breakthrough opportunity may lie elsewhere, in providing the proof of performance that marketing through social media really needs. Everyone talks about and wants to do “social media.” But so few are sure of exactly why they want to do it…except that they want to look cool, and they don’t want to be left behind. So until now, social media marketing has been measured in terms of traffic, awareness, perception. For the most part, it has not been measured in its ability to directly improve business, in terms of sales leads, transactions and revenue.

Could Herman and his colleagues apply their techniques to business-related measurements of social media? If so, how would they test and measure multiple versions of a Tweet, a Facebook page, a blog post, a YouTube post, etc? It won’t be as simple as ad vs. ad.

And if this can be done, why isn’t someone doing it now? In part because it treads on other people’s turf. Barriers to this positive trend will come from both old fogies and new fogies.
•    From big agency attitudes, even among those who start their own data operations. Evidence: Remember what happened when big agencies started their own sales promotion operations, then treated them as second class citizens.
•    From social media advocates, who may be reluctant to have their babies put to the test, and shown that they’re not so cool anymore.

So the real push may have to come from the client side, insisting that agencies forget about turf battles, forget about “cool” and get back to basics by demonstrating how social media marketing contributes directly to business improvements that the board of directors will understand.

So after I posted this a couple weeks ago I kept wondering if this could really be true.  How could Comcast really credit Twitter for improving its customer satisfaction by 9% in Q1?  Really?  Seriously?  You gotta be kidding me!

Well you’ll have to excuse me because I didn’t know about this guy.  Frank Eliason, or “Comcast’s Twitter Man” as headlined in this BusinessWeek.com article.

Fascinating stuff about how Comcast is using Twitter to solve customer problems and Frank is a true rockstar and innovator.

But as I read it I kept wondering…is Frank really just the lone guy bailing water relentlessy at the back of the big sinking ship?  Is good Twittering strictly limited to improving customer service only?

Or can companies effectively use social media like Twitter to actually plug those holes?  To fix the processes and mistakes that are causing all of the leaks to begin with? Can they take the information they’re gathering from Twitter and change how they do things?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m impressed by Frank.  But I’ll be really impressed when somebody figures that out.

1.    Link into partners and their social networks. Instead of monetary rewards, give away a partner’s products, and have your partner(s) promote your promotion on their site. You’ll increase cross-traffic, and in the process, get search engine attention. You’ll also save money because while a dollar costs a dollar, a partner’s product can be negotiated.

2.    Don’t over-expose yourself. It’s better to receive full margin than give big discounts. Print delivered coupons let you limit your liability by only offering discounts to select targets – the rest pay in full. A viral marketing discount opens the floodgates for everyone. Fine, if that’s your goal – a store-wide sale so to speak. Weigh the two, and test.

3.    Give your social media sweepstakes a true business objective. Just letting everyone and their friends simply click and enter can be much ado about nothing gained. Social media is your chance for the Internet equivalent of a restaurant’s family night or a hotel’s convention business. But if none of your guests pays up, what’s the point? Make visitors punch in codes to win – available on your product packaging. Have them form teams to compete for the prize. Let them enter for free, but if they include a purchase proof, give them reward points. Deliver a coupon for entering – for a group purchase.

4.    Beware too much YouTube fun. I’ve seen major brands send PR releases boasting the winner of their YouTube video contest from among 150 entrants. 150 entrants for a national brand promotion! The more difficult it is to enter, the less participation.  And there’s the big risk that the image-bashing entry becomes the viral rage.

5.    Make groups go all a twitter about social shopping. Offer an $X discount if 10 order together, And $XX discount for 11 to 29 orders and a $XXX discount for 30 to 50 orders. And consider a prize entry as well for every order – for a social group vacation.

6.    Consider contests instead of a sweepstakes. Sweepstakes require a free alternative entry vehicle. But a bona-fide talent contest can require a purchase to enter, because legally, winning isn’t based on “chance.” But run your rules past a bona-fide legal firm first.

7.    Sample your event. If you’re doing event marketing, entice groups by letting them personally share the experience. Preview the performances, have a chat session with the guest celeb, make a virtual reality version of an event, provide a hand-held video tour of the previous city’s event, and of course, offer group discounts. Don’t forget to provide Twitter, Facebook, RSS and other easy share links. 

8.    Make social groups focus groups. Test your promotions and new product ideas with these avid fan (or non-fan) bases. Instead of ten questionable profiles, you can evaluate bigger, more concise target groups. Let them know that they are your most important and valued knowledge base. Offer them beta tests. And as with focus groups, provide something for their trouble, like a group dining gift certificate.

9.    Have a private but social retail event. A social network with an interest in your product is priceless. Treat them accordingly with an exclusive after-hours in-store event. Not only do you get real face-time, but 40-70% of in-store sales are unplanned purchases. And you’ve got a captive audience!

10. But before anything, establish your criteria for social media promotion success. Surprisingly, most don’t because they’re so enraptured by the fifteen minutes of fame and fun they envision on the social networking scene. What do you want to achieve and how will you measure it? And remember, sales is a legitimate social networking end-objective.

While enjoying Mike’s post on the King of All (Social) Media, I thought I could hear echoes of the past or was I just experiencing a little deja vu? Today it seems like all marketers talk about is social media this and social media that. Everyone is talking it up, trying to find a way to jump in on it, looking to exploit it or rummaging around to find a way to make money off of it. But such wild exuberance should give wise marketers pause … especially if they remember the dot com hey days of the 90′s.

“Twitter has no current revenue stream to balance costs.”

Those were the words of Gartner Inc. analyst Allen Weiner in the May 26th Wall Street Journal. Sounds more like a hobby than a business. Then on Thursday morning I caught the interview with the Twitter founders at the All Things Digital D7 conference in Carlsbad. It didn’t reassure me that they know what the end game is. They also looked a bit concerned when the interviewer cited some recent research showing that 51% of Twitter members use it less than once a month and less than 1/5th use it at least once a day. Might be the old 20/80 rule without knowing much about the 20.

Is my Webvan account still active?

While listening to Evan and Biz I closed my eyes for a moment and thought I heard voices from the past. Just like in the 90′s the goal is to have an idea, run with it, convince investors to give you carloads of cash and then sell it for bigger carloads. Back then anything with a dot com after it was a money magnet. Seemingly smart folks with finance MBAs from the finest schools threw piles of cash at sock puppets selling pet supplies and grocery retailers with no stores … and no customers. Most of these ideas were sold with ginned up research and cute little anecdotes. As the bubble burst investors wished they had paid some attention to the man behind the curtain. But it was good for the consulting firms that harvested huge fees for months on end taking clients “on line.” To the cleaners may have been more accurate for many. How many of them are trying the same shell game with social media? How many agencies are?

2 questions and 1 simple sentence

Before following the other lemmings over the edge you might be well advised to ask a couple of questions when considering social media. The first one is To what end? It happened in the 90′s as everyone jumped on board the train without stopping to figure out if it was taking them somewhere they really wanted to go. Advertising people and marketers were sure it was a place called “cool”. During a recession it’s best to make profit the ultimate destination.

The second question is What else could I invest the money in? If you think of marketing as an investment, you always ask this one. But don’t fall into the cost-per-click ROMI model/trap. Use the only metric that counts: sales.

Finally, it’s always a good idea to follow the lead of someone with demonstrated success. The man that alternates between the top 2 spots on the richest in the world list might be a good choice. Before Warren Buffett makes any investment the acid test is one simple sentence that first appeared in his 1977 Letter to Shareholders. It described the businesses he would invest in or acquire outright. It has helped him make billions and reads,”We want the business to be one that we can understand, with favorable long-term prospects, operated by honest and competent people, and available at a very attractive price.” Come to think of it, it sounds like a pretty good way to select marketing tools or an agency.

If you would like to learn more from Berkshire Hathaway, here’s a white paper you might enjoy.

Later.