The Quisenblog

It’s certainly not news that all ads are not created equal. Some grab us by the throats (or the funny bone) the very first time we see them. We remember them. We tell others about them. We might even look them up on YouTube. Other spots? There are many we have been exposed to dozens of times but never paid them any mind. Such is the nature of creativity in advertising.

It doesn’t take a genius to conclude that ads that do a better job of engaging or entertaining us also do a better job of selling. Yet there are some in this business who still tend to discount creativity in advertising to be somewhat of a commodity. They see “entertainment” and “selling” as somehow being mutually exclusive. These folks for whatever reason have yet to buy into the notion that the quality of creative corresponds directly to the success of a marketing program. As support, they may point to the success of spots such as the infomercial-esque “as seen on TV” ads as proof that it’s what the ad says, not how it’s said that matters. And they have a point: interrupt people with $30 million in paid media, and the needle will move.

But more and more, we are moving to a model of opt-in content. Less are we able to interrupt the consumer with whatever message we feel like and expect them to pay attention to it.

The dynamics of Social Media illustrate this perfectly. There are no multi-million “buys” on YouTube, Facebook, blogs or the like. The barrier to entry is non-existent. Access to Social Media platforms has been democratized. Anyone can post anything. And the success of that content isn’t how much the creator puts behind it. It’s on how many users feel inclined to pass it forward and to talk it up.

In the opt-in world, you’re only as good as your content. A great illustration of this point would be to compare the results of a recent Social Media success (The Old Spice “Man Your Man Could Smell Like”) to one that’s not-so-successful (Cisco’s “Ted From Accounting” series).

In the Old Spice campaign, Social Media users were invited to correspond with The Old Spice Guy. Old Spice’s agency (Wieden & Kennedy) then shot nearly 200 “personalized web videos” addressed to fans (and Social Media heavyweights) over a couple of days and posted them online. The resulting buzz generated an estimated 1.4 BILLION views, hits and mentions over the period of a few weeks. (Oh, and sales were up over 100% over that period.) You can view some of the spots here.

On the other hand, Cisco’s “Ted From Accounting” series was launched as a web series in hopes of going viral.

Response to the web videos was less than overwhelming (fewer than 10,000 views, despite a huge PR push). One commenter on their YouTube page summed up reaction to the campaign this way: “I am embarrassed for your marketing department. This is the sad result of a poorly orchestrated attempt at some sort of viral leaching by a room full of middle aged guys, who’s (sic) kids saw something on YouTube that they thought would be a good idea to copy.”

Ouch.

Granted this is hardly an apples-to-apples comparison. The Old Spice campaign started as a mass media campaign and extended to include the digital component. But while “Ted in Accounting” didn’t have that mass media lift, my bet is that you could have put millions behind it and viewers’ reactions wouldn’t have been any different than the YouTube poster above.

The digital world is proving what we who have developed offline content for years have always known: people aren’t going to waste their time with boring content.

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Mickey Creative, Media, New Media, On Customers, Social Media cisco, old spice, Social Media, success stories, ted from accounting, viral video

Social Media has been a trending topic for quite some time now. Tomes have been written (here and elsewhere) about the quick assimilation of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, et al into the lives and media habits of Americans of basically every stripe. And plenty of examples exist of how mainstream companies and products have scored big paydays by immersing themselves into Social Media. Yet, despite all of this, only about a quarter of American businesses have jumped into the deep end of Social Media.

So what’s the hold up? Well, as the accompanying graph (courtesy of eMarketer.com) points out, the big hiccup in the eyes of many organizations (more than 1/3) relates to ROI. How will they know if the expenditures on Social Media will pay off? Is Social Media truly a brave new world where the tools are free and your followers do all the “selling?” Or, is it a giant black hole that’s going to demand more and more resources with precious little to show for it?

Business leaders can be excused for their skepticism of Social Media as a platform for selling more widgets. They see how their teenagers use Facebook. They read about people tweeting what they had for lunch. They see YouTube as a venue for cute cat videos. And, unfortunately, folks in my position haven’t been a ton of help when we talk about Social Media as a forum for “engagement,” not for “selling” (without explaining in down-to-earth language how that engagement is a critical element in the selling process).

One way to approach the ROI barrier is to take a look at how we determine it with traditional media like TV, radio, magazine, outdoor, etc. that we know works. None of the ROI is up front. It’s all after the fact. We spent so-and-so on media for the quarter, and our sales were such-and-such. You can chart year-over-year incremental sales and attribute the extra sales (or increased margin) to your ad expenditure.

In other words, you’re doing it on faith. Not ill-placed faith to be sure. But the naked truth is that you are betting numbers with lots of zeros behind them on projections. On forecasts. The same way you decide how to dress based on a weather forecast. It is only after-the-fact that you see if your projections were correct.

But for many business leaders, this kind of faith has no place in the discussion of Social Media. What we need are hard numbers.

The irony is, of course, is that Social Media gives you access to plenty of hard numbers. Hard accurate numbers. Even free analytic tools allow you to measure your impact in Social Media with a real-time accuracy that would be the envy of any offline media, which still pretty much rely on historical data from set-top boxes and diaries.

Analytics can show you how many people are talking about you, what they are saying (positive, negative or neutral), how many are joining your communities, how many site visits you have, how many downloads you’ve issued, where your visitors come from, how many times they’ve come to you, how many thought leaders have linked to you, and so on.

But alas, even these numbers have little to do with sales or ROI. In fact, I would submit that the most important aspects of a Social Media program will never be measured. Because Social Media is conducted on a one-to-one basis (in front of thousands of spectators), Social Media’s strength is its ability to strengthen the relationship between marketer and customer. To resolve customer service issues before the customer decides to take a powder (or vent elsewhere). To reward frequent and loyal customers with special access and considerations (and giving them the tools and permission to talk you up in their communities). To get input from customers on possible product offerings and initiatives. To conduct quick-and-dirty surveys. To work casual customers up the loyalty ladder. To provide several new portals through which to engage the organization.

Just because you can’t measure stuff like this doesn’t mean it won’t have a huge impact on your business’s bottom line.

All it takes is a little faith.

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Mickey Media, New Media, On Clients, On Customers, Social Media eMarketing, faith, ROI, Social Media

We’ve written often about how the dynamics at play in Social Media aren’t new. Once you get past the nomenclature many have adopted for Social Media (“crowdsourcing,” “the long tail,” “viral buzz” etc.), what you really have are just people sharing something with others, peer to peer. In Social, what you want to “share,” you pretty much just put it out there for everyone to see, and if someone likes it, they can join you, or pass it on to others through their own networks.

The following video probably tells the story of Social Media simpler and better than any blog post I could hope to write. It is an amateur video (approximately 3 minutes in length) taken at last year’s Sasquatch Music Festival at The Gorge.  It starts off with one guy in the crowd doing his own goofy dance. Slowly, a few other join in. After a while, it appears as if the “dancers” outnumber the rest of the crowd.
Check it out.

The first time I viewed this video, I was struck by a couple of things. First, that the original guy was REALLY into his dance. He was doing his own thing, going for it 100%. And he kept at it. He was the only one doing the dancing for quite some time.

Next, there was guy number two. For whatever reason, he thought the dance thing looked fun, so he jumped in. He was key because it provided “permission” for all those that followed to join in. Same for the third guy.

Once this small community got into it, it wasn’t long before people started joining in ever larger numbers. While it took more than half the video to get past the first few guys, the Tipping Point had been reached early in the third minute of the video.

But back to the first guy. Was it his intention to get others to join him, to “start a movement?” Who knows. All we can tell is he was really into it, and he kept at it for quite a spell. I would venture to say his enthusiasm for what he was doing is what attracted others to at first check him out, then join him. The same can be said of creating a Social Media program. If we start out just wanting others to “join” us, we’re doomed to failure. We have to do what we do well—and what we enjoy doing—if we are to get anyone’s attention. And you need to draw attention before you have any hopes of getting anyone to join up.

Note, also, that building a true community takes a while to build. You don’t want to “rent” followers, you want people who really get it. And that’s going to take some time. But if you keep at it, and stay true to your intentions, your community will grow.

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Mickey New Media, Social Media crazy dance, peer to peer, Sasquatch, Social Media

What does it take to attract a half million fans to a Facebook page in the span of seven days? A celebrity? An event? A monstrous give-a-way? A cause, like donate to Haiti or breast cancer awareness? A Super Brand?

Not necessarily.  What has attracted over 500,000 fans (and growing) is…a pickle.

That’s right, a pickle. On a Facebook page titled “Can This Pickle Get More Fans Than Nickleback?”  fans are signing up at the rate of about 3,000 per hour.

Pickle Facebook page

Silly? Definitely. But it speaks to the power of Social Media, and how a simple premise with a unifying hook can spread like a virus through social communities in a blink of an eye.

What brought people to the page? Was it a deep-seated hatred of Nickleback? A curiosity? A desire to belong to a group of like-minded people? A hunger for controversy? A chance to be silly? Or did they come just because their friends did?

The great thing about a page like this one is that you can come and join for whatever reason. You don’t have to say. You don’t even really need to be aware of the reason why. Just know that it’s possible. Something catches the fancy of America, and boom! The amplifier of Social Media gives you the tools to spread it instantaneously. Past phenomena were inhibited by the lack of  “social viscosity” of the time. Think back to the seventies. How long did it take to sell 500,000 pet rocks?

Because Social Media works quickly, it helps to be prepared to work quickly as well. Opportunities appear then disappear with the frequency of the critters in a game of whack-a-mole. Deep reflection is not something that is rewarded when it comes to Social Media.

That doesn’t mean you have to fall back to a ready-shoot-aim model of dealing with Social Media. It primarily means once you understand your purpose, what your value is to your followers, and discover your voice, the reactions should come naturally. You won’t have to make an executive decision every time you see an opportunity come out of the woodwork, whether in the form of a user comment, a shout-out from a blogger or a quirky social phenomena.

After all, if a pickle can do it, so can you.

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Mickey New Media, Ramblings, Social Media Facebook fans, Nickelback, Pickle Facebook, Social Media

A lot is being said and written about Toyota’s recall of thousands of its units due to faulty accelerator pedals. The media is talking. Customers are talking. Late-night talk show hosts are talking. But Toyota itself? It’s not talking.

To be fair, Toyota spokespeople are talking. It’s just that they’re not saying anything. Peruse this ad that ran in this Sunday’s paper, and you’ll see what I mean.

While I have no doubt that Toyota’s intentions are good and that the company’s priority is the safety and satisfaction of its customers, one would never know that from the way the company is behaving. Its take-it-slow, let’s-get-to-the-bottom-of-this-and-have-all-the-pieces-in-place-before-we-go-public approach isn’t doing much in the way of maintaining trust. Customers have urgent questions now. Is my car affected? Is it safe to drive? When will it be fixed? What assurances can the automaker give me it is safe?

With all the questions that abound, not just from Toyota owners but from dealers, the media and the general public, this close-lipped approach is proving to be a violation of the trust Toyota has spent decades earning among the car-buying public.

The reality is this: if you’re not out there telling your story, somebody else will be. And you never know who that’s going to be. In these days of Social Media, where anyone with an Internet connection has a microphone, there’s going to be no shortage of commentary. But without a corporate voice, there’s no filter for this information, and the public is left with the uncomfortable feeling that, “There’s something Toyota’s not saying.”

Why is it when there is some major auto recall that the manufacturer gets sweaty palms about the whole notion of transparency? It is the ONLY thing that will contribute to maintaining/rebuilding the trust that is necessary to regain its former position. One need only go back to the Tylenol tampering episode of 1982 to see how it can be successful.

Adopting a “you-know-what-we-know” stance, if taken with the interests of the customer in mind, would go a long way to soothing buyer/owner/dealer anxieties and also nip a lot of the media finger-pointing and speculation in the bud. Accept the fact that you’re going to be fodder for late-night comedians for a while. Don’t stress the fact that some of the answers you’re giving are uncomfortable or uncertain. Trying to do business behind a curtain during a time of crisis management is opening the door to long-term erosion of loyalty.

Toyota’s #1 asset during this time is its base of loyal customers. But how can your most passionate owners stand up for you if they don’t know what’s going on?

From a practical standpoint, there’s a lot Toyota could commit to in order to minimize the damage to its reputation. Offering a 10% discount on new models when owners trade up from a recalled model. Offering an industry-best 10-year warranty, retroactive to 2009 models. Offering free upgraded loaners immediately to those affected.

But above all, be transparent. Take the attitude of, “If I were a customer, how would I expect the company to take care of me?”

It’s the feeling that “there’s something they’re not telling me” from all stakeholders here that is sewing the seeds for discontent.

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Mickey On Customers crisis management, customer satisfaction, incentives, loyal customers, Social Media, Toyota recall, transparency, trust

With the explosion of blogs and other “user created content” has come the growth of what some in the media have coined “citizen journalism.” The idea here being that in today’s information-rich world, often the “media professional” is no more than a middle man or filter through which information passes, and that a dynamic is on the rise whereby ordinary citizens are using inexpensive web tools to make and report news to thousands (and sometimes impacting millions).

With the growth of Social Media, could the same dynamic be at play in the world of marketing? Could we now have Citizen Marketers who operate outside the basic control and auspices of marketing/advertising professionals who are so adept at crafting the message?

In a word, absolutely.

Conversations are going on online about every subject you can think of, and in nearly all these cases, these are authentic communications initiated by consumers for the consumption of other consumers. Occasionally a brand or its representatives may be involved, but most of the time, beyond creating the initial framework of the community, the brand serves more as observer and facilitator than contributor.

This speaks to the importance of transparency in the process of online communication. Attempts to control the message, set forth an agenda, or “spin” the news are often met with consumer indifference or outright anger. Key to keeping communities engaged is to make the primary voice in the conversation that of the consumer. A recommendation from a fellow customer, or a impartial rating from someone who has tried the product or service carries way more weight with the casual consumer than any corporate message will.

Let’s be clear, however. While there is unequivocal value in many of these conversations between visitors, there’s also a great deal of superfluous noise and pointless navel-gazing. Here is an opportunity for the marketing pro—to delve into the conversations and determine how to insert a brand in a meaningful way.

So rather than shying away from communities, embrace them. You want to be talked about. Even when conversations go in a way that you wouldn’t necessarily script them, keep an open mind (and an open ear) and ask what you can contribute. Remember, most people are online because they are looking for some sort of solution. See what you can do to facilitate that solution for them. You’ll earn high ratings from John Q. Marketer.

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Mickey New Media blog, citizen journalism, citizen marketers, online communication, online communities, Social Media

Well, according to the judges at the annual International Cannes Advertising Festival, it is. A simple “help wanted” ad was the anchor of an integrated social media campaign for a small tourism board of a little-known destination. The campaign won three Grand Prix Awards at Cannes, the first time in history any campaign achieved such an honor.

The winning campaign was called the “Best Job in the World” and was essentially a tongue-in-cheek online job search conducted through social media for a new “caretaker” for Hamilton Island in Queensland, Australia.

The campaign achieved stunning results, including over 34,000 video entries from applicants in 200 countries, and more than 7 million visitors to the site who generated nearly 500,000 votes.

Fast Company featured this campaign as a reference in the article “6 Lessons in Creating an Effective Social Media Campaign.” They provide some good pointers, and you can read the entire article here:

6 Lessons From the Best Marketing Campaign Ever

I have to take issue with the content of the campaign, however. “The Best Job In the World” is the guy who gets to write about campaigns like this.

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Mickey New Media Fast Company, Grand Prix Awards, Help Wanted ad, island caretaker, marketing, Social Media

For decades, we in marketing have had little choice but to subscribe to the paradigm of “media attrition.” It goes something like this: “If we hit 1,000,000 people with the same message, we’re bound to influence the behavior of 1%.”

That means we spend money to deliver the same message to 1,000,000 folks with the expectation that we may actually get 10,000 of them to take action.

The Internet turns this notion of scale on its head. What the Internet doesn’t deliver in numbers it delivers in impact and influence. The Internet is about whom, not about how many. You no longer have to intrude on 1,000,000 people to influence the behavior of 10,000. You only need to take really good care of 1,000.

Those 1,000 people you take care of just happen to be 1,000 of your best customers, the ones who relish hearing from you, who look forward to engagement with you, and who will (with a little coaxing on your part) be the medium of singing your praises within their spheres of influence and beyond. Before long, you’ll find their numbers swelling to a number of 10,000 or more.

So whereas 1,000,000 used to equal 10,000, now 1,000 does.

One of the arguments against social media and online campaigns is that they operate on too small a scale. It is unrealistic to expect the number of eyeballs from an online campaign that you would get from a traditional mass media campaign. But if you think of it in terms of “engagement,” it can be suddenly competitive in scale with mass media.

An excellent example is the “Rollerskating Babies” video produced by Evian. It garnered more than 3 million YouTube hits in the first week after launch. That’s 3 million opt-in views with no paid media (and that’s before the morning news shows got on board).

There are other variables, of course. But the point here is that social media and online campaigns shouldn’t be dismissed strictly on the basis of reach.

Do the math.

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Mickey Media, On Customers Evian, mass media, media attrition, online campaigns, Rollerskating Babies, Social Media

What could be more ironic than this? A so-called digital media “expert,” who when sent to present to a Fortune 500 company on social media, gets bit on the butt by…you guessed it…social media.

It happened recently when an executive named James Andrews from Ketchum in New York posted an unflattering Twitter entry while en route to present to the worldwide communications group at FedEx in Memphis, Tennessee. Andrews tweeted:

No doubt Mr. Andrews was playing to his buddies back in New York. But this particular microblog blew up in his face. Turns out a FedEx employee found it online and forwarded it up the ladder to much of the FedEx corporate brass. The shake out was swift and sure. To say Mr. Andrews presentation was not well received would be an understatement. And I wouldn’t be surprised if this 24 word entry costs Ketchum a major piece of business. At the very least, it would make any thinking executive question the agency’s “expert status” when it comes to social media.

This is a great lesson on the power of social media and the Internet. Once you put something out there, it’s out there, for all eternity. It’s sorta like being overheard at a cocktail party, except there are 80 million people who might have heard you, and your conversation is recorded for all future guests, in case they missed it.

These days, anything you say online (or anything that is said about you online) is a simple Google search away from everyone. And we mean everyone. Your customers. Your employees. Your co-workers. Your boss. That account you just pitched. That employer you just interviewed with. Your second grade teacher. Your cousin in Wenatchee. Everyone.

So maybe you oughta think twice before putting those drunken photos from Cabo on Facebook. Or sending that vitriolic rant to the local paper in support of marijuana decriminalization. Or, in Mr. Andrews case, making disparaging remarks about the hometown of one of your key clients.

To sum it all up, you are what you post.

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Mickey New Media advertising, marketing, microblog, Social Media, Spokane, Twitter

One of the things I love about technology is that every so often, you’ll come across something so amazing, intuitive and unique that adds real value to your life. I came across one of those things last week, in the form of a web site called Tabbloid.

If you’re like me, you probably subscribe to a number of interesting blogs and e-newsletters. Problem is, after a while, my inbox gets a little unruly, and it’s a challenge to keep organized or make sure I haven’t missed anything. Hence Tabbloid. Tabbloid is a way to manage your incoming blogs, e-newsletters and other RSS feeds. You just type in the URL, set the intervals you’d like to receive them (you can even specify the exact time of day) and Tabbloid emails you a customized PDF of the most recent editions of your favorite blogs, organized much like a newspaper. You can read it on your computer screen (with the embedded links still live) or you can print it out for on-the-go reading.

So who is responsible for Tabbloid? None other than Hewlett-Packard. Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? HP, whose core competency is printing the written word, coming out with a great reason to print the written word. Is Tabbloid going to be responsible for the sales of thousands of more laser jets? It’s debatable. But what it does do is give users a very good reason to acknowledge that paper is still an imperative part of the office environment, regardless of all the talk of the “paperless office.”

An ongoing challenge in marketing is to continually find interesting, unique, surprising ways to execute your Brand Vision. Sort of like HP did with Tabbloid.

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Mickey Uncategorized advertising, marketing, print, RSS, Social Media, Spokane, Tabbloid