Brandthony

I’ve been working on social media projects for a while. I started a videogame publication in 2001 which has relied solely on word of mouth in all its marketing efforts. I developed strategies for over a dozen brands at the startup social media agency, Conversation. I also worked on social strategy and was community manager for a handful of brands at StrawberryFrog. I even helped do a substantial amount of research for the just released book microMARKETING.

My hands-on experience has led to a lot of interesting opinions, most of which I voice here on this blog.

Then today I saw a post on PSFK called Does Your Brand Really Need To Be ‘Social’? and got to thinking. Out of those thoughts comes three questions:

1) What is your definition of social? Do you define it as a viral spread of a message or as a relationship-building process?

The vast majority of social media strategists say it’s all about “having organic conversations with consumers that engenders loyalty” and then cite examples like Dell on Twitter making $3 million. I laugh when that happens, because the Dell example is a terrible “relationship building” one. Dell made $3 million off @DellOutlet which periodically tweeted about really great sales on products when they had surplus inventory. It was all about deal alerts, not relationships.

That’s not to say that brands – or rather, people representing brands – can’t truly develop relationships that leads to sales. Ramon De Leon, a Domino’s franchisee in Chicago, used Twitter so effectively to build relationships that his stores were the only ones posting revenue gains over a year stretch. But he spoke to people as himself, not the brand. Same with tons of other examples like Coffee Groundz, NAKED Pizza, etc etc

And what about just really great ideas that tend to take off THROUGH social media but aren’t necessarily social? The Best Job in the World campaign where people could submit a video application to work a dream job on Hamilton Island in Australia generated over $150 million in media coverage and raised bookings to the island by 82%, but it didn’t build relationships… and it was all started by newspaper classified ads. It was simply a great idea that was shared through social media.

2) Can CPG brands use social as well as retailers?

Retailers have control over the selling environment and people walk into THEIR stores with THEIR brand name where people can buy THEIR products from THEIR associates. They’re constantly interacting with the brand, and you can do loyalty stuff – even super locational – because you have total control over every touch point. Because the process of building social relationships is through conversation and service, retailers can easily leverage social media channels since it aligns so well with their everyday business. You can even measure what percentage of sales comes from social connections much easier, too.

What about CPG brands though? What happens when your product is simply on the aisle next to a competitor who’s on sale? What happens when you build great relationships online but those people can’t find your product on store shelves because you have low distribution?

3) When you talk about social and the necessity of social in order to raise conversations about your brand and add it to everyday dialogue of consumers, how do you explain the Paradox of Apple?

They have only one Facebook and one Twitter page that does nothing but advertise the latest releases on the iTunes Store, but it’s the 4th most talked about brand online and its sales have continued to double (triple, quadruple, etc) year after year without any “TRUE” social presence by the definition given by social media marketers. Hell they’re notoriously silent and controlling. They’re the living, breathing opposite of all that is social and “open,” yet they’ve been performing incredibly well over the past decade.

When you walk into a Starbucks, what’s the first thing you think about? Is it checking in? For me, that comes in about 8th place after things like “I hope the barista is cute,” “Should I get coffee cake?” “Hmm, iced or hot coffee?” and “Is the bathroom vacant?” The list goes on and on.

I’m 23 years old and I’ve worked primarily on digital and social media marketing campaigns. Because of this, when I’m roped in on projects I’m usually asked what platforms could be tapped to make a campaign go viral. One of the tools mentioned most often these days is FourSquare, but I swear, I almost never want to suggest it.

To me, FourSquare falls squarely in the category of oversharing. I don’t use FourSquare because I simply forget that I have an account. The other day I was at a really cool event at the Zeppellin Hall Biergarten in Jersey City and after about 4 hours of being there I thought, “This is the kind of thing FourSquare is made for, right?” But then I thought, “But, I still don’t want to check-in.”

I reluctantly did and browsed the people who were also checked-in. It was cool to see that there were other people there, but I didn’t know any of them and could care less. So I checked-in, earned points, and essentially explored every feature on FourSquare…and promptly forgot about it.

Most people like to check-in for the social game within FourSquare. Hell, it can be cool since a lot of places are giving away free gifts to frequent visitors and mayors. For some reason though, that has never interested me and it’s only now that I realize why. I simply feel like I’m whoring myself to these establishments because by checking in I’m almost selling my presence to these companies.

Maybe I’m missing out on the FourSquare boat by tossing it to the side. But honestly, if I wanted to share where I was, I’d make it a tweet or a Facebook status.

If you know me, you know that I tend to overthink. Naturally then, it shouldn’t be a surprise that I also tend to overwrite.

I was sitting in Starbucks today writing a screenplay (cliche, I know) and saw this guy next to me showing a presentation to a colleague. He flipped past 6 slides chock full of information while saying, “So she wrote all of this stuff…”

“Stuff.”

This poor girl he speaks of probably spent 20 hours researching all the “stuff” on those pages. In one fell swoop, all of that diligent work was given the same amount of attention we spend reading spam.

It all reminds me of my own time spent working on PowerPoint presentations. I usually dig up so much interesting research that I want to show it all off in my presentations. I want to show the level of analysis my topics are given.

Every time I’ve done that in my career, those slides fall flat. But whenever I’ve thrown up 3 boxes with pictures and 3 powerful one-liners, those slides are gazed at for minutes at a time. My audience is in wonderment. It’s like the opening scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

So keep it simple. If you can communicate one point clearly, those slides will be so awesome you’ll want to share them with your friends.

What? You don’t believe me? 100 Beautiful Slides from Cannes Lions 2010 has been viewed 14,000 times. (credit: @jessedee)

I’m in the business of overthinking.

I recently started working in Strategic Planning at McCann Erickson NY after 7 great months of doing much the same work at StrawberryFrog. We analyze consumer behavior, figure out a brand’s stance in the marketplace, consumer perception, and try to figure out where the opportunity is for our clients.

We’re inundated with data; some qualitative and some quantitative, some useful and some useless. Our job is to distill it, to simplify. We have to find that core idea. And it’s hard as hell.

As planners, we are in the know about just about everything happening culturally and our scope of understanding not only has to pass state lines but also international time zones. We have to understand everyone everywhere. I read a book or two a week. I read 3-4 magazines a week. I click tons of distracting links on Twitter and e-mail newsletters every week hour.

All of the best ideas in the history of advertising  have been dead simple. Got Milk. Think Different. Just Do It. Hell, I’m not even going to bother naming all of the ones I know.

Dead simple advertising is inspiring, and I think it’s time to celebrate all of those campaigns that we admire for their utter simplicity and impact. Share your favorites in the comments below.

While the debate over whether media companies should charge for online content isn’t new, there have been a few interesting new developments in the past couple of weeks that have caused me to want to jump back in the ring on this.

I’m going to invoke an odd example for this post, but it’s a familiar one for me. One of the first entertainment industries which had a lot of media coverage online was the gaming industry, and that coverage reached its maturation point both editorially and technologically well before other industries because its independent media publishers established themselves early. In fact, the two largest sites covering gaming online, GameSpot and IGN, were founded in 1996.

Those two sites grappled with the issue of paid versus free content very early and provide a retrospective look at the debate. GameSpot and IGN both had intensive subscription models in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, and while they both still have subscription services, the amount of content that has been hidden behind those pay walls has been peeled back since their introduction. In fact, they’ve been peeled back so much that they merely allow access to HD versions of some videos and private subscription-only message boards that, in and of themselves, don’t warrant the monthly fee.

I’ll revisit them in a moment, but it brings me to the recent news that sparked this post. First, it started with Exhibit A from AdAge: Why Charging for Online Content (Mostly) Won’t Work – a somewhat interesting article, but a bit vague in the details.

Then came Exhibit B, which seemed to contradict A: Newspapers Grapple With How — or Even Whether — to Erect a Pay Wall.

FT.com has 1.6 million registered users and more than 121,000 paying subscribers — up 22% from a year earlier. Unique visitors and page views are growing at the same time.

Then came the nail in the coffin for all those “Internet loonies” claiming that media companies can’t charge for content in Exhibit C: Out of 25 Biggest Newspapers, Only Wall Street Journal Gains Circulation

As permitted by Audit Bureau of Circulations rules, The Journal’s paid circulation report includes subscriptions to its paid website. Excluding 407,002 such electronic subscriptions, up 14.4% from a year earlier, the core print paper actually saw paid circulation decline 2.4%.

Well, there you go, game over. See, subscription models can work, are working, and will work in the future, right?

Well, not so fast. Sure, on the surface the current data seems to suggest that possibility, but here’s where things get tricky. The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times demographics are not representative of the general population and the audience of most media companies. According to a 2007 report on the WSJ’s demographics by Scott Mayerowitz of ABC News:

More than three-fourths of them have a college degree, and their average household income is $234,909. The readers of USA Today and The New York Times tend to earn less.

The Financial Times attracts a similar, if not even more affluent audience.

Nest eggs for FT Wealth readers average £1,251,035 ($2 million USD), over twice that of the more common variety.

Growth in paid online subscriptions from those publications is not indicative of what, say, the USA Today would see if they put a wall around their content. The FT and WSJ attract older audiences who don’t see such subscriptions as burdensome.

And even if the New York Times were to put its paid model back in place and saw paid online circulation go up, the most important stat lies in who those subscribers are. We can only speculate, but odds are they would be older readers who fit a similar demographic profile.

Fact is, “Gen Y,” the twenty-somethings, do not like to pay for content. They have blogs which facilitate such information. They have web sites like BugMeNot, dedicated to fake logins so they can access content to which they shouldn’t otherwise have access. Hell, they could even use the near prehistoric (for their generation) Google Cache to check out those AdAge articles after AdAge gates them up behind their pseudo-subscriber wall.

And here’s the relevance of the aforementioned IGN and GameSpot subscription programs. They both started out during a time when the age of blogging hadn’t hit its full potential, and both were pulled back even before blogs exploded. Now they have to contend with blogs whose readerships are rivaling their own, and who PR people must respect and provide access to, limiting the amount of content those “mainstream” sites can put behind lock and key. They have to contend with Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and old school message boards, where all it takes is one guy with a subscription to post that locked content for the world to see.

Sure, subscriptions might work in the short term for older, affluent audiences, and the GameSpot/IGN examples provide an isolated look at the complete opposite demographic, thus giving only a very polarized view of The Great Debate. But time’s a-tickin, and Gen Y still poses the threat to subscription models, no matter what you think, Mr. Greg Harmon, CEO of Beldin Interactive:

Your most avid readers are the ones who are going to pay and they’re the ones responsible for the most page views,” he said. Papers should also be able to charge higher ad rates to reach those paying readers, he said.

The downside is that pay models can constrain growth in traffic, ad inventory and newspapers’ voice on the web. “Our voice is our greatest asset in many ways,” said Greg Harmon, CEO-managing director at Belden Interactive, part of ITZBelden. “Going paid involves thinking really hard about conserving and preserving and advancing voice.”

There is always a younger, cheaper, and voluntary voice willing to trump your paid reporters, even for nothing in return. And going back to what we do as social media marketers – ignite discussions about your brands – free content is freely indexed by Google, more inherently shareable on Facebook, Twitter, AIM, and good old-fashioned e-mail, and thus far more practical in today’s web culture.

So for all those now boarding The Subscription Express: welcome aboard, mind the gap between the train and the platform, and we’ll be reaching our final destination in just a few stops.

Over 8 million Americans have their identities stolen every year.

Why?

Because we’re stupid.

I know it’s not marketing related, as is the point of this blog, but this thought popped into my head today as I begrudgingly put my Social Security Number on a job application. I feared doing so because of someone mishandling the applications, or tossing them in the garbage without shredding them for curious thieves to find. Then, it came to me. The stupidly simple solution to identity theft.

Solution: When your social security number is used for processing by any company except retailers, the government should call the person with that social security number for their authorization. The government would have contact information tied to every SSN, which would be verified and updated every three months. The reason I exclude retailers is because that’s the domain of the individual banks and credit card providers, who seem to be doing a decent job in that department as of late.

Now, I may be naive and this may already be an existing solution that has just never found its way to me, but if it isn’t then I think it’s a viable one. If you’re concerned about the cost and man hours to process these requests, then let me kick some more data your way which shows we’re already sacrificing those dollars and hours already.

Time Involved in Being a Victim

• Victims spend from 3 to 5,840 hours repairing damage done by identity theft. This difference is due to the severity of the crime – for example a lost credit card versus the use of your social security number to become your “evil twin.”
• The average number of hours victims spend repairing the damage caused by identity theft is 330 hours.
• 26-32% of victims spend a period of 4 to 6 months dealing with their case and 11-23% report dealing with their case for 7 months to a year.

Monetary Costs of Identity Theft

• 40% of business costs for individual cases of identity theft exceed $15,000. The Aberdeen Group has estimated that $221 billion a year is lost by businesses worldwide due to identity theft
• Victims lose an average of $1,820 to $14, 340 in wages dealing with their cases
• Victims spend an average of $851 to $1378 in expenses related to their case

This isn’t my area of expertise so my suggestion may be, in fact, “too stupid” for those in the know. But if nothing else, I think it could make for a good discussion on the subject. What do you all think?