Posted by Kate Fleming on Fri, May 29, 2009 @ 09:15 AM
International jetsetter that I am (cough, cough), I was in London last weekend. I stayed with a friend who lives there so I had the pleasure of being privy to his British television preferences. In this case, that means Britain's Got Talent. (Which might be better called, Britain's Got Talent?, as in, the title is pronounced with an uplifted, wishful intonation rather than as a statement of fact.) The big excitement of the two episodes (two of the five semi-final episodes) was the much-celebrated Susan Boyle, who was back for her second performance after her dark-horse, come-from-behind showing in round one.
Susan Boyle. For the past few weeks she has been the darling of the media and of the public. You probably know the story: awkward spinster who lives with her cats (hey, don't knock it till you try it...) gets up in front of the camera and an unforgiving audience. People snicker and assume she has no talent because, apparently, the vast majority of people are pretty much shallow. She opens her mouth and sings and turns out to have some talent. OMG! People all over the world -- those who, one can only assume, have never read a book, taken anything away from religion, seen Shrek, or simply existed in the world -- are forced to admit that someone who looks like a frightful mess can still actually have other stuff going on.
Let the YouTube → Social Media → Oprah effect begin.
Next up? The backlash.
Really, it was inevitable. Because underneath it all, Susan Boyle is not particularly talented. Yes, she has a very nice voice, but so do lots of people you know. And once you get over the fact that something attractive can come from something unattractive, you arrive at a very simple conclusion: Susan Boyle is unremarkable.
So what lesson does that hold for all of us? Well, that the public can be fickle, cruel, generous, momentarily smitten, whatever, but while people get momentarily excited about something that shakes them out of their normal routines or expectations, in the end, they generally recognize a product or person for what it really is. (Well, maybe except in politics. Hello? Sarah Palin...) In the end, Susan Boyle is a not particularly attractive person with a nice-but-not-great talent who is very socially awkward and hard to love.
And let that, marketers, be a lesson to you. Sure, the public prefers good-looking people to unattractive ones; the talented to the untalented; the socially adept to the socially inept -- all of which should be taken into consideration when creating your awesome video or a cool Facebook application or some game on your site that earns raves from advertisers and gamers alike. You might even create something that goes "viral" and gets a ton of "buzz." I'm happy for you, really. But if you're going to create so much superficial hype, you'd better have the substance to back it all up when the sparkle fades. Because people are still always going to come back to the reality of your product.
While people's standards of quality and likeability inevitably vary, there are certain standards that are always going to hold a lot more sway than others. Like is this product well made? Is your service making my life easier? Does this seem like an honest, informed company? Is Susan Boyle's voice really any more remarkable than mine when I sang that Rihanna song in the shower this morning? What you produce may not be sexy or glamorous, but if it's made well, it's going to drive loyalty that's worth a lot more than any insta-celebrity.
So use social media, embrace the Internet, get out there and give people cool stuff, but know that it's not magic. It's not a flash-in-the-pan, get-in-get-out campaign that will -- poof! -- generate lots of new customers for your company who are going to stick around for the rest of their lives. Nope. That still comes the hard way -- by being truly exceptional.
Technorati Profile
Posted by Gretel Going on Wed, May 27, 2009 @ 11:12 AM
What is it about social media that has even the most sophisticated adults in a tizzy about establishing their online identities through proven tactics such as...tiling an arbitrary image across a virtual profile page?
I find it pretty intriguing to say the least and to my chagrin, we've been exposed to this oddity a lot lately in the form of calls from our clients requesting custom Twitter backgrounds. The oddity in question is not the need for a custom background, it's the urgency with which it's requested.
One client recently went so far as to take matters into his own hands and pay some online hack $35 to create a real mess of a background before talking to us. It was not pretty, to say the least. I still have nightmares of one day logging on with a browser that hasn't updated since having loaded his new background, only to find the dreaded, misshaped image staring back at me. Seriously, when all you can see is the top 15% of your head in your photo, it's probably safe to say that something hasn't gone as planned. [Quick fix: If you're in this situation and don't know what to do, go back to the standard background immediately! You can get there by clicking settings --> Design --> Change background --> Don't use a background image --> Save changes.] Crisis averted.
Before we get any further though, let's give this phenomenon its due diligence: When MySpace first entered the scene, I remember reading an interview with a marketing professional who self-righteously declared, "I really doubt people are going to waste their time decorating their profiles like they would their teenage bedrooms."
Well, we all know what happened next, of course. Sparkles. Lots of them.
Facebook got rid of all that nonsense when it introduced a sterile and unified platform--a welcome change to those of us who were sick of logging into the MySpace flea market only to witness the sad reality that was our fellow man's virtual wallpaper choices. Instantly, everyone appreciated the Catholic school uniform approach just a little bit more and subsequently pondered how their childhoods might have been improved had they not been responsible for expressing themselves outright through outfit choices on a daily basis.
LinkedIn, like Facebook, chose to focus on the content of the man's character, rather than the color of his...profile background. Users choose their connections based on what others bring to the table, which is a good thing or a bad thing depending on your view of capitalism, I guess. I'm not a huge fan of LinkedIn, but I dig capitalism. You know, in case you were wondering.
Anyway, back to Twitter and the case of the fully customizable background. I'm all for it if it's done right, so when clients express interest in customizing their pages (or, rather, threaten to never tweet again until their background "represents me!"), I get it. I don't think it's absolutely necessary considering that most dedicated users--those who are most likely to get the majority of their updates from this particular platform--are using "Twitter "clients" such as Tweetdeck or Twhirl to manage their friends and updates. Reason being, Tweetdeck, Twhirl, and other such technologies eliminate the need to ever login to Twitter.com again. At the same time, you never know who's going to stumble upon your page through an online keyword search or even as part of some deluded background check before doing business with you. (The nerve of these people to want to know who they're working with, right?)
So, long story short: Those who use Twitter primarily for business should definitely consider a custom background that offers information that won't fit into the 140-character bio line rationed to them. At the same time, don't stress yourself out over it. Providing quality updates is your biggest concern on this platform.
That said, if you do decided to customize your background, consider adding things like:
- URLs to other social networking profiles
- URL to a site or personal blog that gives your contacts more insight into your non-work life
- URLs to work-related sites such as a company blog
- Your email address
If you're working with a diverse audience, try to stay away from staunch "I am" statements that can work to pigeonhole you into a solitary category when, most likely, your expertise reaches far beyond that declaration. Also, keep in mind that the URLs will be images rather than active links, so don't expect to see a ton of traffic come in directly from your profile page.
Some quick tips on imagery:
- Don't tile one image a million times-find one that's fitting and enlarge it or incorporate it into a larger design. Admittedly, this is just a personal preference but it does reveal your lack of Twitter savvy.
- Remember that people will likely notice your background before they even read your first update. Be subtle unless you're boring and your image is really the only thing you have going for you (in which case, perhaps you shouldn't be broadcasting your thoughts to the world in the first place).
- Any information provided in the left sidebar (the standard area for any extra information you want to provide) will remain fixed so if you can't fit all of your information above the fold, know that no one will see anything beneath it as they scroll down your page.
- The dimensions of your background should be either 1600×1200 or 2048×1600pixels (although you can technically go smaller if you like).
- Don't hire an online hack for $35.
Oh, and to those who use Twitter for personal reasons...remember what you did to MySpace.
Posted by Kate Fleming on Thu, May 21, 2009 @ 08:38 AM
I guess if you live in California the contents of the following post will not necessarily be news to you, but it took me some combination of cleaning my apartment and NPR to learn about the Mars Fling, a new “chocolate finger” for the woman who wants to “pleasure [her]self.”
Yeah, I kind of have your attention now, don’t I? And not necessarily in a good way. While I won’t go so far as to say “train wreck” or “side-of-the-road crash,” there’s still more of I’m-kind-of-icked-out-but-I-can’t-look-away quality to the campaign. In the NPR segment on the product, the highly-sensible guest expert Lisa Johnson, the co-author of Don't Think Pink: What Really Makes Women Buy—and How to Increase Your Share of This Crucial Market, summed it up quite aptly: "It feels creepy."
Back to those “chocolate fingers”… Apparently working off of the ideas that 1) the feminine chocolate products industry is underdeveloped and underserved; 2) chocolate and sex both rank high on the average woman’s list of pleasures (when is the alcohol-infused version coming out?); and 3) women are unable to resist things that are pink and/or sparkly (guilty as charged), Mars—working with its marketing agency Taylor Global Inc.—conceived of the perfect chocolate bar, ahem, finger for women.
Fling.
Fling is described in all its glory at www.flingchocolate.com. Yes, it’s “naughty…but not that naughty.” And, hey, “You never know when you’ll want to have a Fling.” And where visitors are urged, “Let yourself go. Have a Fling.” or “Try it in public.”
Believe me I would. If I still lived in San Francisco, where I could buy Fling at my local Walgreens or Longs. Alas, I live in New York…
Quite honestly, the actual Fling sounds good to me. It’s chocolate.
But the whole marketing campaign? All I can say is, it kind of feels like they went all old school in building it out and doing their market research. Like kind of more that some people in some offices sat down and talked about what women want (Chocolate! Sex in the City! Pink and glitter!) then pushed it out. Sure, I have no doubt that they talked to a lot of focus groups and got good feedback, but it seems like they didn’t really figure out their target audience.
Which brings me back to one of our favorite topics: the value of social media. It seems like reaching out to online communities and social networks might be just as helpful in creating a product—and its surrounding campaign—as reaching out to those groups after launch. After all, all of those groups—of chocolate enthusiasts, women, sex-chocolate conflaters, etc.—no doubt have plenty of opinions on what they like and don’t like in their current crop of chocolate choices. And their ideas might just help build a bottom-up (ugh—now everything’s tainted. See?! Another…) new brand of chocolate that women really are excited about. Or how to make it feel like an illicit pleasure without resorting to silly—and kind of tired—sexual innuendo.
Because honestly, what is so appealing about the same people who brought me talking M&Ms suddenly talking to me about fingers and pleasure? Blarf. Add to that the fact that package looks like it might contain tampons or Hello Kitty! paraphernalia and I’m sort of confused and maybe not so much in the mood for chocolate anymore.
I’ll be curious to see what fortune holds for the Fling. As for me, I’m off to London this weekend where perhaps—if fortune smiles on me—I will be reminded of the true meaning of fling.
Posted by Gretel Going on Wed, May 20, 2009 @ 09:34 AM
We recently held an accidental one-day social media retreat where we over-analyzed every traditional marketing industry’s contribution to the social media space. This conversation came as a result of having been approached by a handful of larger agencies that want to partner on social media projects for their larger clients while they figure out how to roll out their own social media programs in-house. And on the flip side—having been approached by big clients that tell us that their big agencies can’t wrap their heads around social media quickly enough so the big agencies are outsourcing to companies like ours and still taking all of the glory. (Which we happen to be okay with.) So we got to talking: what’s so difficult about social media? The short answer? The “social” part.
The long answer: Looking strictly at the most traditional offerings of the different types of marketing agencies out there, we determined that it’s more than just hierarchy and bureaucracy that make it difficult for, say, advertising or PR agencies to roll out their “social media programs.” It’s that they have to, essentially, reorganize and introduce skills they never before offered. Social media done right requires more than just a slick application, which any designer/development worth their salt can conjure up at a very decent rate. (As an aside, we call this the “if you build it, they will come” approach to social media.) It also requires more than just a few witty updates and following/being followed by a million people, in hope that they’ll return the favor. (We call this the “Ashton Kutcher” approach.)
Social media requires the regular care and feeding of your profiles and engaging in continual dialogue with your audience. Social media should not be implemented as a “campaign”—this practice is a reflection of the type of company handling it (i.e. a traditional advertising company, which works in spurts or campaigns, will often naturally apply a campaign framework to its social media initiatives). Rather, it should be introduced as an ongoing program. Put differently, it’s the difference between the “fad diet” and an overall “change in lifestyle.” Sorry, couldn’t help myself.
So, here’s the breakdown of the different elements involved in a successful social media program. Of course, not all of these will be crucial to every initiative and there’s always going to be a difference between social media programs implemented by brands versus b-to-b companies versus the average Joe who just wants to socialize. And while I’m handing out disclaimers, I should also mention that none of this is to say that these agencies don’t belong in social media; it’s more so that they’re going to have to add new capabilities, which is the reason relatively smaller, newer and savvier social media companies like us can get in with big brands while they’re figuring it out. Thanks guys!
Content Creation
More than just a snappy tagline, your program needs an overall voice, tone and consistent message.
Application/Platform Development
Any agency with a design and development department should be able to create this for you. If this is the threshold on which you make your decision, you should probably rethink your strategy. This is the lowest common denominator.
Application/Platform Design
See “Application/Platform Development.”
Brand Campaign
A lot of times, a social media program can piggyback off a good brand campaign implemented by a brand’s ad agency of record, but it will have to be transformed into the more accessible, younger brother of the formal campaign. In other words, you don’t want to create a bunch of social media profiles that are branded with your logo and are, thus, off-putting. But it might make sense to take your tagline (and the promise that comes with it), and build an audience whose common interest is achieving that promise, not their innate shared interest in perpetuating your brand.
Media Coverage
Many larger brands like to start spreading the word of their new, fancy and glossy initiatives at the outset, but if your social media program is good, your audience will find them on their own.
Brand identity/Purity
This is ultimtely your company or brand’s responsibility. While you hope to work with a company that understands the ins and outs of your messaging and story, at the end of the day, you will need to be attentive to the initiatives taking place.
Audience Generation
This element is crucial and is not one that’s always understood by traditional agencies. For instance, PR agencies tend to approach audience generation from the perspective of conducting media outreach, and while these skills are somewhat applicable, the approach reeks of inauthenticity, which is the antithesis of everything that social media stands for. True audience generation emerges from a mix of attentiveness to and dialogue with your audience, and social media listening (described next).
Social Media Listening
This is an ongoing initiative that defines a lot of why social media needs to be a program rather than a campaign. You must dedicate resources to monitoring your social networks in effort to identify people talking about issues that are important to your overall goals and objectives (you do have goals for this, right?), as well as stand-out voices in your space. Follow, friend or otherwise connect with these people in order to build an audience of people likely to interact with your work rather than just an audience whose sole purpose is to boost your numbers for the sake of popularity. Quality, my friends. Not quantity.
Community & Social Responsibility
Bigger brands can get a bad rap for trying too hard in the social media space, as well as for being the entities responsible for destroying once-popular platforms with their overly-branded, salesy and often-intrusive efforts. A good way to negate this perception—as well as to connect with audiences on an authentic level—is to tie your initiatives to your existing social responsibility efforts. People will connect with a brand if it connects them to a good cause or if they can even benefit from that cause. Ask not what the community can do for you, but what you can do for the community…
Content Coordination
Who’s writing the content? This element is the one that differs most between consumer brands and businesses. While it’s okay for brands to assign someone to their content writing, businesses need to establish specific people as experts, and let those people share their insight (and personalities!). Many businesses will create profiles for their CEOs but then assign a minion to update the content. This almost always fails and, again, reeks of inauthenticity. As for consumer brands, there are agencies that will handle content for you and that will often do a great job with it (but many of them don’t do all of the other stuff listed here). PR agencies will also boast their writing skills (which good agencies should certainly boast). However, you want to make sure that your content and overall program is highly-controlled to maintain consistency. Also, if you’re doing this right, you’re building relationships along the way. You certainly don’t want a bunch of different people responding to messages from people who already have a dialogue with another person (confusing, right? Yeah, that’s how it is for your customers, too…). Again, you need a highly-controlled content strategy (we’ll write a detailed post about this in the near future), and you need to build authentic relationships. The bottom line is that keeping your social media program as tight as possible is always going to have the best outcome.
Internal/External Community Engagement & Response
This is related to your content strategy. If you’re running a community blog, for instance, you want to assign one person to be the moderator. This person will be the one to engage with commenters and communicate different happenings in between posts. This person will also be responsible for setting the tone of the platform—whatever it is—and I can’t communicate enough that this tone needs to be consistent.
Customer Service
Brands like Comcast and Intuit have shown the world how to use social media for customer service. Good customer service involves social media listening and weighing in on consumer comments. This activity is one that should be handled uniquely by your company if you’re a direct-to-consumer distributor. If you’re a brand that distributes to stores rather than directly to consumers, it’s okay to have your dedicated social media content person fill this role since you won’t be fielding complaints directly (well, at least not as often as direct-to-consumer brands), but you do want to make sure that this person has a direct line to someone in-house should a “social media crisis” occur in the public forum (i.e. someone bashing your brand).
Brand Advocacy
Because authenticity and transparency are such huge aspects of social media, you absolutely have to make sure that your social media team is 100% dedicated and sold on your brand or mission. Sure, you pay them to be your brand advocates, but if in the back of their minds, they’re just doing it for the money, then trust me, it will be obvious.
Overall Management
See everything above. And remember two words: “highly controlled.”
Interested in the way we approach social media? Check out our program, CVM Social: The 10-Step Social Media Standard.
Posted by Kate Fleming on Fri, May 15, 2009 @ 03:14 PM
So disregard that last post by Gretel--it no longer holds true. In fact, she was going to write a clever post to inaugurate the new site and layout (Now in New Readable Format!), but sometimes other resposibilities take precedence. Like producing great work for our clients. I, on the other hand, have hit my Friday wall, so here I'm am announcing the launch of the new Channel V Media blog.
In truth, the new blog will be much like the old blog (loaded with smart, insightful posts on the state of social media, online marketing and the like), but since we like the new format so much, we've sworn to post more often. And, really, it shouldn't be that hard for us. We're all constantly reading about the latest and greatest goings on, weighing in with our opinions (what? us not have an opinion? Ha!), and in general thinking about what needs to happen in social media, to build a successful campaign, and things like that. Which means we have plenty to say. It's just a matter of taking a little time out from our other work to say it.
I will post regularly on CVMonologues.
I will post regularly on CVMonologues.
I will post regularly on CVMonologues.
I will post regularly on CVMonologues.
I will post regularly on CVMonologues.
I will post regularly on CVMonologues.
I will post regularly on CVMonologues.
So you get the idea. We're back. We promise to blog with a vengeance. And we hope you'll comment when we say something smart (or stupid. Gretel...). More to come on Monday, when, if all goes as planned, my brain will be slightly less fried...