Znetlady: Modern Media

Advice to Motrin: Put the Ad Back Up and LEAD

Replace it maybe, but Motrin should have not been so quick to take it down. 

If you have no idea what I’m talking about – see my Harper’s Index style post on the dust up.  In a nutshell, Motrin released an ad that got lots of attention over the weekend while offending some in Motrin’s target market.

If I were advising Motrin, I would have advised them to keep it up, but to jump on the opportunity immediately to lead and manage. Turn it around on a dime into a conversation about 1) what was offensive (content or tone); 2) why; 3) are they addressing an issue for baby wearers correctly – but in the wrong way; 4) are there other issues they should be addressing; ….and here is the big one:

5) LEAD the vocalizers into solutions for Motrin and maybe ultmately into helping Motin shape a better campaign (which might be suitable for carrying forward into print and offline). 

Taking the ad down from the Motrin web site is meaningless from a practical standpoint – the ad is up on YouTube as are the inevitable response videos.  I downloaded a local copy to use in presentations. It’s out there. Taking it down doesn’t mean a thing.

Leave it up and do the postmortem together. Get out of crisis communications stress mode.   Manage and most importantly, lead your customer.  So much more value could be gained from that than taking it down could ever.

Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester believes the conversation wasn’t so robust that it would adversely affect Motrin in searches.  I say that is short-sighted thinking (and a disappointing analysis to read from Forrester) - the equivalent of “we dodged a bullet.”  Motrin didn’t dodge a bullet, they angered some of their customers and, in the perception, betrayed a trust.

What is especially worth noting to all marketers is that the Motrin campaign is being characterized as a “social media campaign.”  But it wasn’t really intended to be.  It was "just" an ad on their web site.  But socialized media certainly turned it into a "social media campaign" - and really fast.

Original post:  http://freshtakes.typepad.com/enterprise_social_media/2008/11/advice-to-motri.html

Backchanneling MTV

MTV has clearly elevated the concept of socializing while watching television to an artfully modern parlor game. It’s called Backchannel. 

Here’s the nutshell.  Micro-blog funny or snarky comments in real time with others online while watching The Hills on MTV (you probably already do that). To play, log into a specialized MTV Backchannel game “chat room” while you are tuned into the tv show.  Viewers make comments (called tags) about what is happening in the show to the 100 other people or so in that room. Other people click on the comments floating around that they like - a la an arcade game.  Players get points as both a clicker and tagger with the goal of becoming a Backchannel superstar.  It is all timed and limited pretty ingeniously so the tagging and clicking isn’t overwhelming.  It’s way more compelling than it might sound, trust me.

The commenting goes on right through the commercials – yes, I hear the ad-people gears turning on the potential advertising metrics on that one…. Advertisers, are you ready to hear what people think of you?

Social media concepts personified.  MTV connects the audience to each other (one of our well-worn mantras here), and makes their TV shows interactive, more fun and socially powered. But just think about the insight MTV is gathering from the audience on the content of the show – not to mention a new value they can offer their advertisers.

MTV has mashed up TV with Twitter with gaming with social networking – they’ve done equally interesting things with virtual worlds, but that's another story.

I tell you. MTV are ones to follow (even if their programming may not always be).

Original Post: The Modohood: http://modohood.marcominteractive.com/2008/10/backchanneling.html

Goodbye, Mary: When Social Media Goes Campaign-y

This video is a beeeautiful illustration (satire) of why social media is not "a campaign." 

When you integrate social media you are “socializing” your media.  That means there is more than just “you” involved in it. It means there is some kind of  “we” in it.  It means a relationship (community) begins.  Why waste it?

credits:  video by Scott Blaszak

Original Post:  Enterprise Social Media: http://freshtakes.typepad.com/enterprise_social_media/2008/11/goodbye-mary-wh.html

Think of Modern Media as a Product

One of my mantra’s to clients is to “look sideways” to find opportunity.

There is so much modern media that hasn’t made it to the drawing board (or has yet to be discovered) for most organizations.  Based on our modern media presentations and client discussions, many organizations are still in the stage of learning about blogs, podcasts mobile media, social networks and the rest (trust me on this).  You, like so many we talk to, might be seriously considering how to use these tools for your PR or marketing; or you might be one of those organizations that for a whole host of business reasons and hurdles can’t move forward any time soon with the “conversation model.”

Serving your audiences with modern media doesn’t have to be about putting yourself “out there.” Just look sideways and you can find audiences and serve them with modern media - or even create new services within your existing PR or marketing initiatives.  Yes, you can be modern without blogging or putting videos up on YouTube.

A few examples of using an iPod for something besides creating a corporate podcast might better illustrate what I mean by “looking sideways.”

• The recently opened 21C Museum Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky asks guest about their music preferences during the reservation process and a custom music selection is downloaded into each guests’ in-room iPod before they arrive.

• The Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, in partnership with Samsung Electronics and Talpa, recently installed kiosks called “Fuel for Travel” that lets travelers load up their MP3 devices with music, t.v. shows, movies, guides and audio books before boarding their flight.

• Nordiska Kompaniet in cooperation with Ridderheims (fine meat and delicatessen products distributor) has put the iFood terminal in Nordiska Kompaniet’s upscale food hall in Stockholm.  The terminals let visitors purchase and download audio recipes to their iPods.  They purchase the recipes – and of course all the ingredients – while in that all-important “frame of mind” moment.

All three of these put a modern medium to use to extend the brand, engage the modern customer, and  provide a valuable service/solution.  And, it can even be a new revenue stream. 

Try looking at new media as a product.  It might help your organization side-step the hurdles or fears of going ”conversational.” And, it just might wind up changing other perspectives too.

Stop Conversational Marketing

I dislike the term “conversational marketing,” If your new media consultant is using it, please find a new consultant.  If you read it in a trade publication, assume the author is repeating something he/she thought was cool (and then take what they say with a grain of “buzz” salt).

If you are exploring the world of modern media for your public relations or marketing,   I sincerely hope you won’t use “conversational marketing”, or worse, shape your thinking or strategies around it.  In using the term you may sound very “Web 2.0” but you’ll be seriously damaging your thinking, your public relationships, and your efforts toward perfecting a new media strategy.

I’m not putting anybody down here.  I admit we are all searching for words to describe the indescribable - this massive expansion in the reach, methods and pervasiveness of human connectedness and how we successfully respond to it in our businesses.  But this term is just wrong.

It is being used all over the place today to describe a marketing methodology/campaign by which a customer can “talk back” or “participate” with a company.  Mircosoft used the term in 2001 or 2002 to describe their “speech server” which automated and “improved” companies’ telephone customer service through voice recognition.  We all know how well that is going. But, I digress.

Conversational Marketing is an oxymoron.  It implies we are manufacturing human interaction.  It screams a hierarchy in communications. It practically ensures one of us is going to be manipulated in the “conversation.”  And, if your customers hear you refer to your “New PR” or “New Marketing” programs or campaigns as “conversational marketing,” it’s over. 

“Conversational Marketing” is not the way to success with your new media initiatives!

Conversation - Absolutely.  Conversational Marketing - No!

Your modern marketing and communications is about connecting people to each other.  That doesn’t exclude you, but it definitely doesn’t put you or the brand at the center, either.

Friends, your publics don’t need you to structure the “the conversation” nor do they need a contrived invitation from you to “talk back.”   They are doing it all over the place.  The bigger question is are they doing it with you or without you in the conversation?

If you want to get your thinking around the role conversation plays in marketing, read this article published by Accenture, written by Brain A. Johnson and Paul Nunes.  It uses that dreaded term (unfortunately), but in the context of the person engaging in customer conversations rather than as a tactic.  While this article is rooted in 2002 and can’t specifically address the much deeper opportunities (or technologies) we have just 4 years later, its key concept is vital in approaching today’s new(er) media and connected customer: “discussions with customers are in the end “polyogues” - complex sequences of monologues and dialogues among numerous relevant parties.“

A couple of other key concepts from that article:

…”technology enables companies to interact intelligently with customers across time.” (my emphasis)

--“Gaining an understanding of the mechanics of good conversation can help business become more than just good companies - they can also become good company.”

…“ good communication is based on reciprocity.” (emphasis mine)

By way of offering an olive branch to those I may have offended, I do understand that the “conversational marketing”  term is used to attempt to encapsulate all those prophetic truths about marketing and PR found in Cluetrain Manifesto.  But, words shape our thinking as much as our thinking shapes our words.  This term is wrong and the thinking is dangerous. 

Forrester Research: Social Computing Report

Grab the opportunities.

Forrester Research says we are in an “era of social computing” in a report released last month titled, Social Computing: How Networks Erode Institutional Power and What To Do About It, by  Chris Charron, Jaap Favier and Charlene Li.  The thesis of the report is that today institutions - corporations, media, governing bodies, etc. – have less influence over us and individuals have more. 

A quote from the report via Steve Rubel:

“Individuals increasingly take cues from one another rather than from institutional sources like corporations, media outlets, religions, and political bodies. To thrive in an era of Social Computing, companies must abandon top-down management and communication tactics, weave communities into their products and services, use employees and partners as marketers, and become part of a living fabric of brand loyalists.”

Yes. And no.

The “yes” part is what companies have to do to thrive in today’s business environment:  weave in communities, socialize their marketing, and equalize communications rather than sermonize.

The “no” part is individuals have always had more influence on us than institutions, it just wasn’t as visible to us as business people, and the individual’s reach wasn’t wide. 

The significance for business today is that we can hear the influence, see it, follow it, measure it.  And, individuals have access to lots and lots more individuals they can influence due to their ability to communicate and publish via networks.

The significance of social computing is business opportunities, innovation opportunities, marketing opportunities.

Without networks business was largely working in a vacuum, making products and spending enormous amounts of money creating markets for them.  Now, we make products and services that answer market needs and cost less because we have access to markets and to their behaviors.

Access your markets by letting them access you.  “Social computing” are the tools.  Grab the opportunities.

I encourage reading the report, or at least the executive summary if you don’t want to spend the $299 for the full report. In it Forrester pulls together trends in behaviors that have been evolving over the last 15 years and that are now reaching critical mass.

New Media Training Launched

It has been a little quiet here on my blog in recent weeks.  I have missed posting, but we’ve been working diligently on creating a training program for marketing and communications pros on using new media tools.  We are calling it the Modern Mediasphere™ Training Series

These are actual hands-on classes in how to use tools like blogs, tags, social networking, RSS and more.  I found after asking “what is it?” most professionals can see the opportunities. They just don’t have the time to dig around and discover how to use the tools.  So, we are offering classes to bring people up to speed quickly by guiding them through the tools and giving them tips on getting the most from them.

We are offering the training in 11 cities in the U.S.  If you want more information start here.  Yes, we are still offering our seminars, as well.

Now that we’ve launched our training program, I will be back to more regular postings.  Thanks for staying tuned!

The Grok Factor. One Answer To Should My Company/CEO Blog?

Grok - a word Robert Heinlein gifted to our lexicon in his book, Stranger in a Strange Land.  It is such a great word - it expresses something we simply didn’t have a word for until he penned it.  It means understanding something so very completely that it is absorbed into oneself.

Millions and millions and millions of people grok living online.  It is simply a part of them; how they think, live, work, play, socialize, satisfy their curiosity, plan, buy.  “Google” is an everyday concept.  Step back for a moment and look your at own online, and otherwise connected, life habits.

We, as professional communicators and/or executives, who so grok “demographics,” “consumer behavior,” “audiences,” or “shareholder value” are truly facing the biggest shift in our culture since the Industrial Revolution began - and this one is happening a whole lot faster than that one did.

If you can just take a second and let that fact seep into your skin,  you'll agree, yes, that we really do need to go through this exercise of learning new tools.  We have to truly grok this “web thing.”  It is where our opportunities lie.  It is where our business lies.  It is where literacy lies.

You want to be effective.  You want your organization to thrive.  You want to be literate.  So, how do you start really “getting it”?

Blog.

Oh, yes.  I can see that look in your [rolling] eyes - just hang in with me.

You can’t know ice cream until you eat ice cream.  It isn’t more or less like chicken.

It’s impossible to understand a culture until you understand the words it uses, because its words express the concepts that a culture knows.

If you blog, you will understand the culture you are living in right now.  You will “get” Web 2.0 - beyond the “web site.”  You’ll understand social networking.  In a very short time,  you will grok what all the hype and buzz is, and what your colleagues (or I) can’t just tell you.  You’ll get where your opportunities are.

Blog about anything.  Blog about something that interests you - flying, cooking, kids - or blog little nothing thoughts you have - or even your ToDo list.  Audio blog if you hate typing.  Video blog if you love your video camera or, if words fail, create a photoblog (upload photos instead of writing words).  There aren’t any rules.

Just blog something. Otherwise, you’ll be stuck simply learning the mechanics of all these new tools. You won’t get what makes people tick online, and you can’t be effective if you don’t “get” them.  You know that - you wouldn’t be spending time on figuring out “target audiences” if you didn’t.

After that, you can practice with all those new tools you are hearing about -they’ll make absolute, perfect sense.  But until you “get it,” learning a new set of skills will be the awful, hollow chore you probably think it is now.

Robert Heinlein, when asked about the meaning of his book, Stranger in a Strange Land,  replied that he wasn’t “handing out neatly packaged answers to lazy minds.  [...] anyone who takes that book as answers is cheating himself.  It is an invitation to think - not to believe.”

Don’t cheat yourself.  Blog.  Just for a little while.

Tagging – What Is It Good For? – Part 3; Eighteen Ways to Use Tagging in Your Communications and Marketing

So, just what is tagging good for practically?   Hopefully Part 1 and Part 2 laid the groundwork for finally answering this question, discussing how tagging is shifting online searching and is a growing and powerful way to both organize and share web documents.  Now, the next step is putting it to practical use in your communications or marketing.

My last post reviewed specifically how tags work at del.icio.us and Technorati, but those concepts are much the same for all social bookmarking sites and tag search engines.  More and more online services are incorporating tagging. Dating sites like Consumating.com uses tags on dating profiles – you tag your own & others are able to tag your profile.  Evdb.com uses tags for worldwide events and venues. InfoWorld editors tag articles.  Dinnerbuz.com shares favorite restaurants via tags.  43Things.com uses tags for goal setting.  And, Amazon is experimenting with tagging in a concordance feature that shows the 100 most frequently used words (tags) in a book – and by clicking on a tag in the “tag cloud,” Amazon will display the sentences in the book that contain that tag word. 

The point is tagging is for finding and sharing stuff.  It is redefining all types of online search.  And, since search is increasingly important to all of your communications, media relations or marketing efforts, it’s time to start learning about tags, experimenting with them, and incorporating tags into your communications strategies. 

Here’s a start with eighteen practical ways to use tagging. While they will help others find you and streamline how you find important information, you might even find tags help you organize and find your own “stuff.”

• Search on social bookmarking sites for tags related to your organization, brand or industry.  If one exists, subscribe (via RSS) to those tags.  This is an easy way to track what people find valuable in your industry, what people are saying about you – even to spot potential customers, channels or marketing opportunities.  Start at del.icio.us, Blogmarks, Shadows, IceRocket and Technorati.  Also check out Yahoo’s My Web 2.0 (in beta).

• Look closely at the  “related tags” to your most relevant tags.  It’s very likely you will find unexpected perspectives or uses of your brand or content.  Use the insight to develop both tagging and communications strategies. 

• Watch for changes in tag clouds on social bookmarking sites.  See one here.  The size of the tag suggests what’s popular.  Use it to detect trends.  If you look sideways, you might even find some interesting clues for innovations in your markets.

• Tag your existing web content at social bookmarking sites with appropriate tags.  If a tag doesn’t exist, just create one.  Don’t forget to subscribe to it, so you will know what others are tagging with the same tag.  And, do look periodically at how the related “cloud” is developing around your tags.

• If you have a blog, tag your individual blog entries, as well as your entire blog. Check if your blog software supports categories or has other tagging capabilities. IceRocket and Technorati will use your blog category feature to tag your blog entries at those search engines.

• Use a blog as a newsroom and post your press releases and news items – and tag them.  Blogs are an easy way to incorporate tags immediately, as noted above, many popular blog services have category or tagging features that are then used by social bookmarking sites to include in tag searches.

• Use tags to organize your web site’s press releases, articles or media resources.  This is an easy way to guide journalists, analysts, customers, or investors to organizational or topical content that might be overlooked at your web site.  Point them via your web site to the relevant tag link on your chosen social bookmarking site(s) and show them the same content but organized by tags; and don’t be afraid to expand on your own content by adding bookmarks to relevant content on other web sites.

• Ask journalists that cover your industry if they are using tags.   A few are using them as a way to accept pitches as an alternative to email, as are some influential bloggers.  While this practice is not yet widespread, journalists are subscribing via RSS to tags and keywords to research and find story ideas.

• If a favorite journalist is tagging their blog or has a social bookmarking tag, subscribe to it via the RSS feed for that tag.  An easy way to follow what the journalist is interested in, writing about, or following.

• Create a set of “private bookmarks” and advise journalists what your tags are and invite them to subscribe.   When you update your bookmarks or content with tags appropriate to that journalist, they will be notified via RSS.

• Use social bookmarking and tags to create an ongoing “library” for your email (or RSS) newsletter readers. You will be creating a valuable growing resource for your readers – and they can also contribute to the “mind share’ by adding relevant resources.

• Use tags to gather and organize resources for customers, distributors or partners.  These can be public or private tags, but this makes it incredibly easy to organize and share reports, articles, whitepapers, data sheets, industry research, etc. that may be stored all over the web by simply tagging appropriate web pages.  Link to the social tag from your web site, intranet, or extranet.

• Contribute links to existing tags that point to relevant content on your web site or blog.  Do not engage in “tag spam!”

• Use tags on your internal blogs and web-based resources, extending your organization’s “corporate memory.”

• Create special tags for your presentations or training sessions.   We find this especially helpful for our seminar participants.  We gather all the resources discussed. such as web sites, studies, tools, etc. into one easy place for the attendees to reference post-event.  Attendees can also add resources they know of or find later, initiating a community among your attendees. 

• Create a “news aggregation” site relevant to your customers, brand, employees or partners by combining tags and RSS.   Use RSS and tags together to gather, filter and then automatically publish news or content items to a page on your web site, blog or intranet.

• Tag staff and employee profiles on your intranet related to specialized skill-sets or knowledge or experience.  This could be an unexpected boon to training, identifying internal experts, or maximizing internal resources.

• Use tags for your personal bookmarks and research.  Because tags are so much more flexible than browser-based bookmarks, it makes it easy to find relevant resources you might otherwise “lose” in your “Favorites" lists.  You can tag them with more than one tag, allowing you to find content evoked by differing circumstances or needs.  Plus, because they are stored on the web rather than your own computer, you can get to them from anywhere – including mobile devices or someone else’s computer.

There are countless ways to use tagging.  The important thing is just to start using them - your own ideas will soon surface.  I invite you to share your own ideas for using tags here via comments.  I’ll be adding more ideas in other posts - check for them in Categories here; look for the tagging tag!

Let’s Not Dumb Down Open Source Marketing

I smiled a couple of months ago when James Cherkoff got the marketing and PR blogosphere buzzing with his “manifesto” on open source marketing released on ChangeThis.

I grinned when I saw that he started a company around the concept.

I shrugged my shoulders when I learned the manifesto was translated into Dutch and Taiwanese.

I applauded when I read Darren Barefoot’s post.

I scratched my head when I saw it referred to as a “whole new theory” and “an outstanding essay.”

I swallowed hard when I read falling-all-over-it praise from many pretty seasoned and widely read blogging professionals who position themselves as “new communicators in the know” and old hands steeped in this “Internet stuff.”

But I gritted my teeth and took to my keyboard when I read in a marketing blog the statement that open source marketing was a concept conceived by Mr. Cherkoff.

Some of us have been around long enough to know this term comes to us from Chris Locke,, Doc Searls and David Weinberger. A quick search on Google will net you some truly thoughtful, deep – and prophetic - pieces on open source marketing, early ones dating back to 1999, by some people who really know what open source marketing [is] should be because they are the ones who started the conversation and who have since been developing both scholarly and practical thought leadership on its meaning to evolving organizations.

Back in June of 2000, our web site described our company this way: “a unique communications company built around a concept called ‘open source marketing’ which encompasses client, customer, markets and conversation.” In that same year, we produced a video webcast discussing the concept and how it was shifting the terra firma of organizational structure and marketing. Much of which is both scary and exhilarating to review again.

I am honestly delighted Mr. Cherkoff has stimulated the conversation into a wider circle, and I look forward to its evolution. However, I’m afraid I more than agree with Darren Barefoot’s post. The “What is Open Source Marketing?” manifesto is neither original nor thoughtful, and it in fact leans on shallow examples that do not exemplify open source marketing, but are mere marketing manipulations. Mr. Cherkoff defends his manifesto by saying he is introducing these “new market” concepts to marketers who would never go near the likes of books such as The Cluetrain Manifesto, We the Media, or The Cathedral and the Bazaar. First, somebody fire those marketers; and second, maybe we are better off than having them thinking this is open source marketing.

The hallmarks of anything “open source” are organic, self-organizing, and containing a value chain. Such systems are all center and no edges, and all edges and no center, meaning it is impossible to point to an apex of control – no one or no thing is in control. Open source marketing moves companies towards, as Geoffrey Moore so beautifully states, “designing themselves into the very fabric and standards” of markets. Who is accomplishing this? Apple, Nokia, eBay. Starbucks.

Having said all this, we learn by doing, and Mr. Cherkoff has put himself out there, and is stimulating the conversation and inviting the discussion. I sincerely applaud him for that. But, let’s not try to dumb down open source marketing for marketers and communicators who don’t take responsibility for learning and thinking and shaping their practice.