Daily Archives: 21/07/2008

Integrated Marketing Should Now Include Social Media

It’s not happening fast enough. It’s happening at a rate that will only hurt the everyone. Social media should be fully integrated into the strategy of a marketer. It should be an automatic and active ingredient. No longer should it be viewed as an afterthought, a piece of add-on service designed to impress prospective clients that

Ad agencies and PR firms are twin towers of the marketing profession. Both seek to enhance a client’s brand through positioning a brand image and by increasing sales. Both create marketing messages and then submit them to the public in some manner to carry out this mission. Both rely on the public to respond positively to these marketing messages.

Ad people and PR people like to say that their respective industries are completely separate from one another. They’re wrong. Ad campaigns and PR campaigns feed off one another and use another’s tools. If they’re not well coordinated together, it will often lead to failure. I’m often dismayed when I hear a prospective partner on a project show absolute ignorance as to what their client’s dealings are with the client’s representative in the other industry. From what I’m seeing, that’s more often true than not

The lack of coordination wastes time, causes embarrassment,  creates conflicting marketing messages, creates conflict, creates turf wars.  It delays projects, makes them go over budget, wastes money, screws up priorities.  Yep, that’s what it does.

Now add the aspect of social media, a whole new category that takes in elements of both advertising and PR, plus adds in a slew of its own.

Agencies today see social media as an add-on service. Perhaps one to farm out. One to farm out and control. Or, quite often, an afterthought that could be included to appear more hip to certain types of clients.

As I’ve written before, there still is a significant amount of resistance in agency people to introduce the concept of social media into their clients’ campaigns. The ad exec or the PR rep who knows little about social media doesn’t understand and doesn’t want their client know this. The marketing executive at the client company is often equally as ignorant and looks to maintain some sort of status quo campaign.

The problem here is that social media is not waiting.  It’s not waiting for agencies to develop divisions for social media.  It’s happening RIGHT NOW – all around them.   While many (often including myself) are pushing to get a seat at the table, the concept of social media has not brought in their own table.  And the action there is often initiated by some of the millions out there having online conversations about products, services, and companies.

All that activity can’t be controlled, but it can be harnessed.  It can be added too.  And yes, it can be managed, however delicately, with openness and respect.

Time to combine tables.

Give a kid the gift of fresh air

When I was really young, the area that I grew up in was semi-rural. There was a farm less than a mile away.  Had a little pond in the back, the type that’s filled with sunfish and turtles and frogs and ducks.  As the neighborhood grew, so did suburbia and farmland turned into highway. By the time I was seven, the farm was gone, replaced by an exit ramp. The pond was asphalt.

But I was lucky. Every Sunday from then I got to travel a whole 14 miles to visit a real farm. An this place was really out in the country. Cows. Horses. Goats. A lake with bass, trout, and an even occasional snake.

I used to love to explore the woods and pretend I was an early New England settler or Narragansett Indian, as my grandmother was a descendant of both.

Tall hardwoods like Oaks, stand alone Maples, and pine trees as far a you could see. The smell of pine on an early fall afternoon is the smell of fresh air.

I saw a calf being born. Saw it try to stand. Same thing with a colt.

And, I milked cows too. Just once.

I caught frogs. Green frogs. Leopard frogs. And one big ‘ol bullfrog.

I drove a tractor before I drove a car.

I was a lucky kid because I got to experience things that most other kids could only dream of. Part suburban kid. Part Huck Finn.  I’ll never forget the joy that the outdoors gave me.  Mother nature.  Clean air, clean water.

That’s why I’m so enamored with the fact that the company I’m working for, Abraham Harrison is helping the Fresh Air Fund offer inner city kids from New York City to experience the same type of things I was able to experience so long ago.

But there’s a hitch. Right now there’s 200 kids who are registered to be in the program who don’t have selected host families quite yet. They’re especially in need of families who would be willing to extend an invitation to a 9-12 year old. And they really need more families who want older children and boys.

These kids need a break. They need to see beyond their own relatively small worlds. Sometimes a world defined by anything but fresh air.

So, if you want to get involved, or learn more, please email Angie at angie@freshair.org. Or you can call 1 – (800) 367-0003 and ask for her.

A note on the Fresh Air Fund. It’s an independent, not-for-profit agency, that’s provided free summer vacations to more than 1.7 million New York City children from low-income communities since 1877.

Nearly 10,000 New York City children take part in free Fresh Air Fund programs annually. In 2007, close to 5,000 children visited volunteer host families in suburbs and small town communities across 13 states from Virginia to Maine and Canada. 3,000 children also attended five Fresh Air camps on a 2,300-acre site in Fishkill, New York. The Fund’s year-round camping program serves an additional 2,000 young people each year.

A blog war over cup of Joe on ice

Last week a cyber battle broke out between what sounds to me like a hypersensitive haughty elitist ninny and a clueless rigid anal muttonhead. All of it over a cup of joe.The ninny is one Jeff Simmermon, a Brooklynite who was visiting the Washington DC area this past weekend. The muttonhead, Nicholas Cho, is the owner of a coffee shop in Arlington, VA.

Simmermon has a blog, And I Am Not Lying, Cho’s coffee place is Murky Coffee. His site is essentially a blog surrounded by store info. Decent idea.  There’s another character here, Murky Coffee employee David Flynn, who must not be overlooked. He played a central role in the controversy.

So here’s what happened… Continue reading →

Delta Skelter won't ground the airline

I’ve been following this attempt by Joseph Jaffe to get Delta Airlines to make amends to him after they royally screwed up his trip from Newark International to Atlanta to Sao Paulo, Brazil. They really made a mess of his journey and he’s got every right to be angry. And they haven’t met his demands for some sort of restitution, so he’s now even more ticked.

So, as a result, he’s blogged about it three times (a one, an a two, an a three), podcasted, tweeted, made not one but two videos on YouTube, and even created a Facebook group in his cause. Oddly, he hasn’t put together a 30-second spot.
He’s one pissed off social media maven. In fact, I think he’s pretty much used up all Web 2.0 tools to get the word out. To garner that grassroots support via social media. To have others join the conversation to back his cause.

And I’m willing to be that it will be all for naught. Here’s why. Continue reading →