6/12/2009

A Definition Of Social Media

Someone asked me recently how I defined social media and I said that, all technology and buzzwords aside, social media is an opportunity for every brand to have an "over the counter" relationship with their customers.

If you were a general store owner years ago, through daily interactions with your customers, you were able to learn their names, what they liked and didn't like, how often they came in, and how much they spent. If you cared enough to ask, you also had the chance to find out why they bought what they did and what it would take for them to choose something different.

Centuries pass and things like head offices, marketing departments, and CRM strategies appear. In this new landscape, customers become demographics and pie charts instead of people with quirky reasons for doing the stuff they do. So, if you happen to be someone working on a CRM strategy in a marketing department of a head office, how do you keep in touch with the folks who pay your salary?

In my most recent role, one of my favourite parts of the job was grabbing a coffee in the morning and checking in with the conversations on our blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc. There was always something new, like a question that I could easily answer and save a bunch of calls to customer service; a positive comment to boost our collective egos; or someone willing to lay out in very specific terms why we "sucked" (the best market research we could ever get). And this was at a retail brand which has a really cool policy that all of their marketing people have to do an in-store shift every month.

The lovely thing about social media is that these over-the-counter relationships are available to brands that don't even have a counter. The opportunity's the same whether you're B2C, B2B, on Main Street, or online.

5/06/2009

Lemon Daiquiri Anyone?

This completely changed the face of advertising fifty years ago.



It's one of the brilliant VW ads that came out of DDB in the early 60s. It set a new tone for engaging your audience and is credited with launching the "creative revolution" (if no one has ever made a Che Guevara-style poster of Bill Bernbach, maybe it's time). And a big reason why they worked so well was that they broke away from the over-polished ads of the 50s -- the ones that were lying at worst, exaggerating at best, and just generally painting a picture of everyday life that wasn't very realistic -- and chose to be straightforward and genuine instead (while being wittily written and skillfully art directed, of course).

For decades since, people in the industry have dissected the greatness of these campaigns while searching for that new idea that would usher in the next revolution. I don't know if it's exactly the "Lemon" ad of our time, but I'd like to submit this for your consideration:



It's a series of videos called "Will It Blend?" from Blendtec (a maker of food blenders) in which Tom Dickson, the company's founder, uses his product to pulverize everything from iPhones to two-by-fours in a matter of seconds. And maybe this isn't exactly what the future of the ad industry is going to look like, but it definitely feels like a huge step in the right direction. Just as the VW work was a breath of fresh air from the polished fantasies that came before it, the "Will It Blend?" videos are a huge improvement from the 30-second failed-SNL-sketch-ideas that account for the majority of today's output.

As I understand it, the Blendtec work was done in-house, on a small budget -- and it obviously shows. But in the day of people consuming more and more video content through YouTube and posting intimate, unpolished details of their lives through blogs, Facebook, and Twitter, I don't think anyone really cares. Instead of hiring a celebrity chef or actor for a 30-second commercial that would cost a ton of money to produce and a whole lot more to get on air; these guys created a video that's three times as long, and put a face to the company that is more knowledgeable and genuinely excited about the product than anyone they could have ever cast. And, if I happen to like what they did with the iPhone, I can watch all the other videos they've produced, check out the microsite, or go straight to their website to buy the blender this second -- after all, if it can handle a bucket of golf balls, I'm sure it will do just fine with some ice cubes. Done.

Like I said, this is definitely not the pinnacle yet of what's possible in this landscape of new media opportunities and new audience expectations. However, there's something really engaging about it and I'd love to see where it goes in the next twelve months.

3/27/2009

Who's The Amateur?

I've never worked inside the music industry (sadly, not even a second-hand record store) so I can't imagine all the factors and compromises made along the way to making a music video. Still, I know what I like, and I like this:



Naturally, this isn't the official, label-endorsed video for M.O.P's "Ante Up". I'm guessing that would be this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhCNFaaTq1Q
(Wow, I just finished writing this post and went over to YouTube to grab the embed code for this video to find out that embedding was disabled by request. Who's doing the web strategy for these guys, my dad?)

Which one do you prefer? I think the first one is brilliant -- watch it again and check out the great work done on syncing up the puppets' mouths to the lyrics. I don't know how long that took, but definitely well worth every minute.

The second one is your typical "let's get some extras in a warehouse and make them go CRAZY for this song" approach, and the results show. The first video is creeping up on 3 million views and the other is not even half that.

The "amateur" video was made by a 23-year-old. Most likely, at home, on a laptop, for no money. And he even provided links to Amazon where you can (1) buy an MP3 of the song and (2) buy Sesame Street DVDs that this footage came from. If anyone's lawyer contacts this kid with anything other than a juicy "thank you", they're completely out of their mind.

I found this video on a blog a few months ago, loved it, sent it to a bunch of people, and a few minutes later, gladly gave iTunes my 99 cents for the non-clean version (cleaned-up hip hop is like decaf, no?). Now I'm blogging about it with the video embedded, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. How long before musicians put out their music for free and people like stianhafstad get a cut of every concert ticket sold? Then again, what the hell do I know, I still own a few Wham! CDs.

2/23/2009

Specialized's Riders Club



I've been following Sean Moffitt's Buzz Canuck blog for a while now -- Sean's a smart guy and the site's always a good read. There's a great post from last October that has an interview with Chris Matthews -- Global Marketing Integration Manager for Specialized Bikes -- about their own online community, the Specialized Riders Club.

The site has a few different features -- people can create profiles, post their favourite rides using Google Maps, keep a journal, etc. -- but at the core, its goal is to help you find cycling routes in your area. Nice, simple, and very useful. And, like many other user-generated sites, the community gets richer as more people join and post their own content. I searched for Vancouver, Canada and found two in my area. The cool thing was that one of the routes was posted by a local bike shop, Velocity Cycles, that has their own ride twice a week, inviting anyone interested to join them. It's amazing how a big company's marketing exercise could have a trickle-down effect to a small shop wanting to get some local exposure. As luck might have it, among other brands, Velocity Cycles also carries Specialized. Best case scenario, someone thinking of upgrading their bike will start showing up for these weekly rides, get to know and trust the folks from Velocity, and when it's time to crack open the wallet, they'll choose to go with Specialized. Worst case scenario, that same person finds a decent route in their neighbourhood, starts posting a few of their own, maybe meets some other cyclists in the process, and all with Specialized's help. That's not a bad place for a brand to be.

And that leads to my favourite part of the interview. Chris says that when it comes to this online community, their objective is "simple, and really honest: we want to help people ride more, more often". I don't know if that's Specialized's overall brand vision, but it would be cool if it was. Because a company that wants to help you get out there on your bike more often and get some fresh air in your lungs, gradually starts looking less like a "company" and more like a group of people you wouldn't mind meeting up with for a ride and a beer (or protein shake). And if they're that passionate about cycling, well then they can probably build a decent bike, too.

I love this approach to marketing. In fact, I'd love it if Specialized went even further. What if instead of being an offshoot site, the Riders Club community was at the core of specialized.com? Right now, the mothership site is so down-to-business, leading straight into things like bikes, components, shopping cart, etc. Now, all of those things are necessary and it's good that they're easily reachable from the homepage, but it's like jumping right to the sale as soon as I walk into your store -- it's very impersonal. On the other hand, the Riders Club site is all about personality, but it has very little information about Specialized as a company or their product. If the online community was the main metaphor that the rest of the site revolved around, a lot of people would come to specialized.com before even deciding that Specialized is the brand they're interested in. And as a byproduct, the company would get gallons more Google juice from all of the cycling-related conversations happening within the community.

The challenge at that point would be to figure out a strategy that incorporated Specialized product into the site. One option would be to add a "my gear" option to everyone's community profile. This wouldn't necessarily have to be limited to Specialized bikes, but those that did, could directly link to the online catalogue for more detailed product information. And given that a good number of the community members are Specialized employees and sponsored riders, you'd get a lot of great cross-promotion. Of course, all of this would be supported by a traditional navigational structure leading to all of the same content, but it would be interesting to see which path actually generated more qualified leads.

Before I stop rambling on about this, I think there's one more benefit to this approach. I came across yet another Specialized site today. This one is iamspecialized.com, and from the copy in the "about" section, it appears to be dedicated to featuring athletes sponsored by Specialized. If the same effort went into integrating this content in the Riders Club community (which would actually be the backbone of specialized.com) everything would be integrated under one umbrella, and Specialized would keep building equity in a single URL (can you even remember the other two URLs?), and they wouldn't have to keep spending the time and resources to maintain (at least) three (expensive looking) sites!

Alright, enough back-seat driving from me. I'm sure Specialized has thought of all of this at one point or another and they have their own reasons for doing what they're doing. As for me, I'm going for a bike ride :-)

2/09/2009

On Figuring Out Cluetrain

As I'm working away at figuring out our interactive strategy, one of my goals is to take advantage of social media as much as possible. In some cases, it's for pure, functional, "why reinvent the wheel" reasons, like using Flickr to manage and share images with our customers. On the other hand, a brand like ours has a ton of potential for social media engagement, and even without us doing much in this arena, there's already a good amount of online chatter -- most of it positive -- about us.

In the few cases where we've launched something to see how it would work, the response has been great. It seems as if there's a desire to talk to -- and about us -- and as soon as something appears to address that need, it's very well received. For example, a couple of months ago, we launched a simple blog. We didn't see it as a huge risk since we were investing a bit of money for set-up and our own time to update content. In the two months that we've been up, we're averaging about five new posts per week, traffic has gotten to a nice daily average, we've received over 600 comments, and we're slowly reaching that nice area where our visitors are starting to answer each others' questions via threaded comments.

None of this is earth-shattering news and you could definitely say that we're late in the game with even something as simple as blogging. The point is that when it comes to social media, a lot things are really hard to predict. You can build something with the best of intentions but if no one shows up, if people don't start engaging with you, then it's all seen as a waste of time and money. Compared to traditional marketing, like TV or print, you don't have the same issue because you can create the ads, buy your media, and you can be fairly certain that a given number of people will see your message. I guess this is one of the challenges we face sometimes in trying to get organizational buy-in for things like social media. It's hard to sign over a budget, take a leap, and hope that people show up.

Then again, maybe the best way to approach this is small and slow. As with our fledgling little blog, you try something, see if it works, and if it does, you do a bit more. This is what made me think of the cluetrain manifesto on my way home the other day. I've read it a few times now, and for years I've had a tough time really understanding it. I mean, on paper it sounds fantastic. Especially for anyone in this industry, you read cluetrain and nod your head knowingly as you go along. Then, you consider putting the same ideas into practice and getting sign-off from your CEO and the nodding slows down a bit. I guess it's because the ideas in the manifesto challenge the way that business has been done for decades, if not centuries.

So here's the thought I had. Maybe "figuring out" cluetrain isn't about sitting down and crafting a social media strategy that takes full advantage of all these media and audience shifts. Maybe it's a pipe dream to have one of these strategies sail right through C-level approvals. Maybe it's more like learning a new language. If you didn't grow up speaking English, you wouldn't jump straight into reading Shakespeare or Chaucer -- you'd start with "Jane has an apple" and move on from there. Maybe the best approach for us is to launch a handful of these small "Jane has an apple" initiatives over the next year; measure and tweak along the way; try to directly learn as much about (and from) our audience as possible; get the rest of the organization more comfortable with our presence in this space; and take another run at "King Lear" twelve months from now.

What do you think? What's been your approach to figuring out how social media fits into your marketing mix?