Marketing Lessons from Al Qaeda?

It seems that everyone is trying to figure out how to navigate Web 2.0 and social media these days, including Al Qaeda. Yup, that's right. Al Qaeda. In today's New York Times, Radio Free Europe/Liberty Radio Senior Analyst Daniel Kimmage looks at the challenges Al Qaeda is facing as the Web moves from "anonymity and accessibility" to social networking, which is making it much harder for the terrorist group to control its message.

Funny that. Sounds pretty similar to the whole discussion that's going on here on the pr and marketing side of things. While I'm not one to compare even the most loathsome of corporations to the radical evil of Al Qaeda, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that corporate America is in the very same bind that Al Qaeda is in.

In the good old days, it was pretty easy to create a top-down message and disseminate it-in all its unpolluted, unquestioned glory-throughout cyberspace. Sure, it might not be embraced by the masses, but you didn't have to worry about entire communities openly and publicly commenting on and criticizing. Now, not so much. Create a crappy, questionable, specious product or message, and you're going to get called out. God bless democracy.

That's not to say that businesses-yes, even Al Qaeda-don't want a piece of the social media action, but many are still wedded to the idea of controlling the message. Why? Well, for starters it's a definite break from a time when every message could be moderated. Other reasons? Fear of the unknown, and for some, being called out for a shoddy product.

Which is exactly what happened when Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri solicited questions on the Web this past December. When his responses finally came out in April (months, Kimmage notes, after the initial call for questions-hardly striking while the iron is hot), experts pointed out how Zawahiri's responses revealed the numerous cracks in Al Qaeda's reasoning and motivation.

Sure, that may not have an immediate effect on radicalized young men (and the occasional woman) the world over, but as many argue that Al Qaeda's influence is on the wane, it is worth thinking about Web 2.0's role in that. And worth thinking about whether your brand and product have the power to withstand its influence. As accountability replaces anonymity, the veil is off, and we'd all better take a good, hard look at the value and authenticity of our work. Because the people are paying attention. God bless democracy.

And if Ayman tries to friend me on Facebook, I'm, like, totally saying no.

Social ME!dia

I'm a really big fan of silence. Time to think. Sometimes I take long walks without my iPod. I like to read books and newspapers and magazines. That said, I also spend a large amount of time online, reading blogs, connecting with people, checking in with social media, and generally doing all those things that are considered the flip side of an introspective life.

Maybe that's why I tend to think of myself as having a fairly clear-headed perspective on the latest new media-I don't get caught up in the frenzy, but I also am curious about what's going and like to be tuned in. So when I got an email from a friend last year asking me to join Facebook, I thought, I'm way too old, and then I thought, Actually, I might as well check it out, you never know...

In those first blissful months on Facebook, I was totally entertained and truly social. I connected with people I hadn't spoken to since elementary school (Matt? Works in advertising, not married, lives in Williamsburg, regularly posts amusingly clever status updates), students I used to teach (Graham? Had him in class when he was 16, now he's a grown up 20-something, posts ridiculous pictures of himself with cute girls, is generally endearing), and friends I'd lost touch with since college (Phoebe? My Spanish class buddy, who, it turns out, kept at it, moved to Spain and now lives with an adorable Spaniard). I was really feeling the social network.

And then it all started to change. I friended a guy from college who I wasn't super close to then, but who was always nice and interesting. This is the same guy who was also tapped right after college to be the president of a major national environmental group. Cool, right? But then he started posting links to his articles, his speaking engagements, his organizations, and his latest brilliant ideas. His status updates always told what exotic city he was traveling to next or what great event he would be attending. I began to get the feeling that this wasn't in the interest of promoting friendship and exchange, but rather to get me to ask, "Why are you going to Berlin/Tokyo/Chicago?" Oh, because you-and your ideas-are brilliant?

Suddenly, a line had been crossed. Around that same time, I started reading lots-and I mean lots-of articles, blog posts, etc. on the wonders of social media. Facebook. The new marketing tool. And more and more people started flocking to Facebook. Sure, many were just normal people looking to reconnect with their junior high school boyfriend, to find out who has kids, and all that other good stuff, but others were networkers, marketers, those business-savvy types who saw the potential for self-promotion. My status updates weren't so entertaining to read anymore. It was beginning to feel like that guy who can only talk about himself and his work had crashed my party. And that's the kind of party you end up leaving. Who wants to play captive audience to a bunch of self-involved narcissists?

Does that mean my brief love affair with Facebook has come to an end? Not exactly, since I can't really blame Facebook for its users' bad behavior. But it does make me take the whole social-media-is-the-best-marketing-tool-ever thing with a grain of salt. Yes, it's lovely to have access to vast networks of tuned-in people, but if you're going to abuse the trust they've granted by letting you into their social network, it's not much different from much-lamented interruption marketing. And worst of all, you're not only taking down your company's brand, but you're taking your personal brand down with you.

So feel free to tell me all about your professional exploits on LinkedIn-that's what it's for. But Facebook? Anyone up for a game of Scrabulous?

Twitter Reconsidered

Here at CVM we had a brief love affair with Twitter, only to break up when it got too clingy. Well, I can't speak for the rest of the office, but I think I may be in love with it again thanks to the Twitter Hall of Shame.

My personal favorite? It's a toss up between Obama's tweet, "In Columbus,MS & wondering how somebody who's in second place is offering the vice presidency to the person who's in first place. Vote Tues!" and the guy who gave a blow by blow of his firing from Yahoo. How can you help but love a service that allows for such snark and in-depth voyeurism?

UPDATE: Loving Twitter now. Nasa announces the discovery of ice on Mars...on Twitter.

We've Arrived: Our first legal threat!

I can't believe we didn't get around to mentioning this earlier!

A couple weeks ago, we received a fantastic threat from a New York law firm concerning our work with one of our clients (who is furthermore the archenemy of one of theirs). Why was it fantastic? Well, aren't threats always kind of fantastic? But besides the innate nature of the thing, it was written in old English!

I'm not sure why lawyers write like this, but it sure is entertaining. We had to write back and ask him to translate. He thanked us for our quick reply-for you anything, doll!-and then divulged the underlying meaning of his cryptic text.

Needless to say, we were very scared. So scared, that we conducted an image search of him, copy and pasted him into Photoshop, and added a fancy mustache and glasses to the picture that now serves as our dartboard. Lawyers are so dreamy (and so scary)!

"Seeing the Album:" The Dallas Austin Experience

Last night, Universal Motown Records hosted a show to introduce The Dallas Austin Experience to a group of NYC's power players (sorry, really wish I had a better term here). I'm not a member of this club, but I was fortunate enough to be the plus-one of such. The Dallas Austin Experience was good stuff. And by 'good stuff' I mean it was pretty brilliant.

Neither of us knew what to expect. My date thought it was a film by a musician and the invitation didn't offer much in the way of details. Then again, sometimes having no preconceived notions is the best way to go.

After an opening act by Colin Munroe (whose cool is derived from the fact that he can play about 75 instruments at once and sing), five bedazzled TVs were dragged out on stage and the show began...

Here's what it was: This guy, Dallas Austin, wrote and produced a short film "based on a girl he knew in Atlanta named Daze," and then created a live musical experience around it. The short description? It's what you get when you mix Purple Rain with Requiem for a Dream and top it off with a dash of Paulo Coelho's Veronika Decides to Die. Shake, stir, consume. It was fantastic.

Dallas Austin was the main performer and clearly the force behind the project. He was accompanied by a slew (by which I mean five or six) of insanely-talented performers, all of whom created a live sound track to a film about a girl dealing with a bad drug trip. Of course, I'm hyper-critical so I made some comment to the effect of, "Oh, another musician trying to pull the drugs-are-cool-and-so-am-I card." My date told me to give it a chance and wait 'til the end. Good advice. The end of the film, which I won't spoil, made me love the entire performance and respect the guy's talent.

At the show's end, Dallas got up and was deliciously humble (this made me very happy). He talked about his creation and about how he wanted people to 'see the album':

"You can't just buy one song; you've got to see the whole album. I want people to get back into albums."

(Well, it was something like that at least.)

Then some high-energy lady got up and told us how "fresh" he was, and another reminded us that the performance was a story. I'm glad we got that straight.

Authenticity Back in Fashion

 

The other day I was talking to our new intern Will about the fact that authenticity--the act of being yourself and telling your own story--is all the rage these days. Brand marketers have caught wind of this innovative new trend and are desperately trying to pull the authenticity card to promote their products. This stirring new development is causing them to dig deep into their products' collective cores to come up with a topic that they can legitimately discuss. Long gone are the days of simply aligning one's product with imagery that will speak to its target audience and give it an air of "cool" (or "intelligence" or "authority" or "whatever adjective/abstract noun they're hoping to take on"). Now, instead of coming up with catchy slogans and sparkly logos, and fabricating fairy tale quality 30-second spots, marketers are being forced to simply tell consumers what their products are, and in some extreme cases (brace yourselves), actually allow their products to educate the consumers whom they hope to serve.

"So, wait, all they have to do it is be honest? To tell their story? Well that must make their jobs a whole lot easier than coming up with all those weird jingles and stuff."

"Not so fast there, young blood. There are millions of dollars being thrown into the authenticity movement."

Advertisers and brand marketers, as you might have guessed, are trying to bottle the stuff up and sell it. When will they ever learn?

For a long time, brand marketers lived by the adage that, "People are stupid. We have to tell them what they like." And while many still do abide by this logic, they're the ones failing miserably in the age of authenticity.

For people like me and Will (not to mention, Kate, Mafalda and Nicole...and whoever else we hire), the era of authenticity will likely be our heyday. Standing behind a product, or a service we believe in, and then spouting its virtues? It's all so innovative, and real, and, well, totally easy if you you've been practicing it all along...which you should have been, and we have. But this isn't just a pat on the back to us... Okay, yes it is.

*I used to run somewhat of a fringe culture magazine out in California. Our fist issue included a piece called "Character Back in Fashion" by writer Blake Winter. While it's a complete caricature of the ideas mentioned above, it's a great read and shares a similar and humorous message. (That is, if you can enlarge it enough to read it.)

The Andy Awards: The Photographic Evidence

Last night, Jeremy Greenfield (editor of soon-to-launch PostAdvertising.com) and I headed over to the Andy Awards show in Tribeca. It was a great time for many reasons, not the least of which were: Jeans were par for the course. There was free liquor. There was free food. This is a winning trifecta in our book.

Some really cool work was honored. If I had to pick my favorites, though, I'd go with the McDonald's Fresh billboard and the Havaianas graffiti outdoor work. I've seen the McDonald's ad before but I didn't realize that A). the grass was real, nor that B). grass seeds were actually planted and left to grow into the below end result. Good stuff.

As for the Havaianas ad, I'm a sucker for graffiti (even if it does look like a blacklight poster). I'm assuming their market research led them to believe that their audience members are, too.

The highlight of the night, though, was taking these silly pictures. (Sure, I'll give a shout out to Yahoo! for the fun sponsorship idea.) Jeremy and I decided that we'd try to replicate old Victorian photo poses. One serious and one fun. Instead we got these:

Jeremy really pulled this one off.
I was clearly on the verge of cracking up.



Again, Jeremy nails it. I look like a killer clown.

It's cool, though. I think the video game and side alley backgrounds kind of give us away. Colonial America? Not so much...

If you want to see which ads won, check out www.andyawards.com/winners. They're not up yet, but I'm sure they will be soon.

We're a Bit Obsessed with Twitter...

Follow us.

Or, at least follow me. 

The others are a bit shy, but I'm working on them. I, on the other hand, don't have a shy bone in my body.

Obama in '08

We're feeling a little emotional over here at Channel V this morning. Like most sensible offices, we don't talk a ton of politics, but after last night's big news (in case you missed it-not sure how this could have happened, but just in case-Obama's pretty much wrapped up the Democratic nomination), it's been hard to keep our leanings under wraps. And, really, why bother? Especially now that we've figured out that Obama is-without a single dissenter-the house favorite.

Truth be told, I got a little weepy during his speech in St. Paul last night. Everything about it-the little affectionate moments between him and Michelle, looking at a crowd of supporters that was so diverse and really invested in their candidate, the feeling that at long last Democrats may have actually backed a winner-well, it was just too much for me. Hope. Change. Yes, we can!

So that's it. The cat's out the bag. Channel V is officially backing Obama for president in 2008. And that's big news. Huge news, really. Sort of like Oprah's stamp of approval. Sort of. Well, maybe only in the sense that we have a stamp of approval to give. In any case, we're going to be throwing our weight behind our favorite candidate for 2008 (without all the painful accidental rhyming). Who knows, maybe we'll even take a day off from business as usual (our self-deprecating term for the magic that happens here at Channel V) to help spread the Obama gospel.

In the words of the man himself, we are at the beginning "of a journey that will bring a new and better day to America."

(Admit it...you just got a little weepy yourself...)