When one mentions electric cars, what do you think of? Do you think of those golf cart type cars? Hybrids don’t count but what about the GM Chevy Volt or the Nissan Leaf? Those big brands are out there but don’t put your money down quite yet. There are some new kids on the block for your perusal.

Arcimoto has been catching people’s eyes– most notably the engineering folks and also celebrities like Castle’s Nathan Fillion who are prowling around waiting to pounce the new models to figure out which one they want to buy and how much they can amp it up.I first heard about this vehicle on Twitter when Nathan Fillion was talking about it. I had heard hushed mutterings about a car out of Oregon but hadn’t paid much attention. Once Filliion started tweeting about his test-drives in Oregon, I sent emails to the company and hoped to get a reply– and I did!!

Earlier this year, I got an email and phone call from Jeremy Bonson (Arcimoto’s Creative Director) saying they were going to be in LA and whether I would like a test drive. Never one to say no to something that is so ground-breaking, I jumped at the chance to see this car!

( New production model)

Granted it was a Generation 4 prototype (Generation 5 is the production model) Arcimoto ramped up the cool factor by bringing along the company president Mark Frohnmayer and a few other company staffers along with bringing the car to me to test drive.. I was so thrilled that I set up a quick video interview with Mark along with a drive around the parking lot. First, here are some specs on the vehicle:

Generation 4 Platform Prototype Specifications
Specifications are subject to change

Drive System HPGC AC50 induction motor
5.13 : 1 ring and pinion gear reduction
Front-wheel drive
Regenerative braking system
Estimated Range 40 miles, base pack, lead-acid batteries
80 miles, commuter pack, lithium iron phosphate batteries
160 miles, touring pack, lithium iron phosphate batteries
Ergonomics Fully comfortable front and back seat
Safety 3-wheel manual disc brakes
Mechanically actuated parking brake
3-point seat belts
Space frame design with full roll cage and crumple zone

Arcimoto Pulse

The cool factor is so much more than you can see just by looking at the photo or even seeing it on the video. It’s better to be in the vehicle because it’s

1) quiet
2) smooth thanks to amazing suspension
3) easy handling for manual steering
4) and once you pass 30 MPH, it flies!

Deliverator

Arcimoto is taking pre-orders now for the initial production run. There are four models to choose that top out at 65 mph. Definitely a car that can do local driving easily and has room according to their site “for groceries or golf clubs”.

Nathan Fillian (Castle) and co-star take a test drive of platform 4.

Here’s the video interview with Arcimoto president. Please note in these video segments that I have looped together,
that these were at the end of the day down at the beach and the wind was coming up. So crank up the sound a touch because there were no nics, not on their end or mine.
There are 2 different test drives: the first one is short and sweet. The second test drive takes you live with me driving a stretch and
and Jeremy is filming me while in the back seat and we are “flying” down the street- quiet (except for the wind of me driving), smooth as silk.

ARCIMOTO Makes Electrics Cars That Are Fun, Easy to Drive & Environmentally Smart!! #2 from stevie wilson on Vimeo.

As you can see, this is one unusual car, and the new upcoming production models provide storage as well as options that will make this a fun, affordable and energy efficient car to drive.

LT Option
Article first published as Arcimoto: Electric Cars Actually Make Going Green Make (Dollars) and Sense. on Blogcritics.

Stevie Wilson,
LA-Story.com

Related articles

• Arcimoto: Electric Cars Actually Make Going Green Make (Dollars) and Sense. (blogcritics.org)
• Revenge Of The Electric Car [Weekend Watch] (yuriartibise.com)
• Michael Rose: Revenge of the Electric Car Charges Into Theaters (huffingtonpost.com)
• Electric cars tour the Swiss Alps (travelnews.britishairways.com)
• Most insurers are ‘not ready’ for electric cars (money.marksandspencer.com)

Andy is the top Marketing Executive at Skeleton Productions, a corporate video production company based in the United Kingdom.  

Specialising in video marketing, Andy knows his way around a whole host of video and online strategies, targeting brands, businesses and blogs of all niches and sizes. His guest posts discuss a wide array of adoptable topical marketing strategies, from how to grow social media influences, video blogging set ups, quick SEO tips, Internet video hosting and everything in between.  

Admittedly it’s not easy to create videos that resemble Hollywood blockbusters on an everyday Webcam, but you can make impressive video content that is powerful enough to market successfully on the web. Such online videos can make sure you start to generate those high levels of website traffic, improved conversion rates and increased brand awareness so many organisations crave.Businesses, brands and bloggers alike are all rapidly turning to video blogging and Internet video as a resource for marketing their content and message. In the past creating such videos has been reserved for big corporate industries and global brands, but today individuals worldwide are creating effective videos using just a simple Webcam and their computer.

To help get you started creating effective Webcam videos I’ve outlined the five essential ways to make your Webcam video content as successful as possible.

1. Pick Your Location
A good location is essential to recording a great video. Decide whether you want your video to have the feel of an inviting desk-side chat, an engaging corporate business meeting or a casual, laid back living room gossip. Your location says a lot about your video before you even get started. You never want to record a video in a messy room or in a busy area with people walking in and out of shot, as recording in such locations can make your video fall flat from the very start.

Here are some good examples of the styles of background I’m talking about being used by an everyday blogger and a typical business:Business feel. Homely feel.

2. Check Your Lighting
Lighting in any video is very important. Webcam videos in particular are famous for struggling to deal with low light situations and natural sunlight. There’s nothing worse than recording a video to find out it’s been ruined by glares and reflections from your surroundings. If you’re recording has become disrupted by unwanted light or a lack of a light, there are ways to rectify it. The majority of good Webcams come with software, which allow you to adjust the contrast of your video, and many free editing tools in the likes of iMovie and Windows Movie Maker will allow you to correct the brightness in your video too.

In low light situations you can always make use of household lamps and lights to boost the brightness of your video, prior to recording. You’ll never need to go out and buy film standard fluorescent lighting rigs for your Webcam videos, in actuality you’d be surprised just how much difference every day household lights can make to your video.

If you’re still unsure about what constitutes bad lighting and good lighting here’s a few examples: Bad lighting. Good lighting.

3. Tackle Unwanted Sounds
Recording Webcam videos are easily susceptible to all sorts of unwanted ambient noises, from noisy pets to air conditioning hums. When you’re recording your video, be vigilant about the sounds in your environment. Turn off anything that could interrupt your filming, close all the nearby windows and keep all pets out of earshot. Do your best to mute all noises in the area as even your computer could give off disruptive sounds when you record your video. Unwanted noises will divert your audience’s attention away from what’s being discussed and it could even put of viewers from checking out your future content.

4. Keep Your Content Short & Simple
If there are two trends that occur time and time again in the Internet video world, it’s that so many video bloggers hit the record button on their Webcams and unleash a whole world of spiel at their unsuspecting audiences, while others waffle on and on to extremely disinterested viewers.

Internet video is largely so powerful and engaging to online audiences because it’s short and sweet. When you’re recording your Webcam videos try and keep them under the 5 minute mark, in fact keeping them under 2 minutes is absolutely perfect. We all know how distracting the Internet can be and keeping hold of an audience’s attention is always going to be challenge in itself.

Try to ensure your videos are not only short, but simple. If you’ve got a few topics to get across, make separate episodes rather than trying to cram it all into one over the top video. You can’t afford to ‘lose’ your audience in your videos and by over complicating them you’ll be on the fast track to receiving a low viewership for your video. When you keep videos simple you can get across your message clearly and effectively, which is an opportunity you don’t want to miss.

5. Be Human
The best quality of video blogging and Webcam videos is that their one-to-one nature helps to showcase one individual communicating with another. Such videos put aside brands and corporate image and connect with one individual at a time. This is one of the fundamental reasons why video blogging and Webcam videos are so popular.

The viewers of these videos want to see a real person on screen, one human being communicating with another human being. So many video blogs are full of individuals trying to be ‘like’ someone else, or trying to come across as more important than they are. Don’t try to be anyone or anything other than yourself on camera, as audiences can tell with a staggering amount of ease when videos are genuine or not.

Present yourself as a human being, in a location that viewers can relate to, in clothes they recognise and communicate with them in a way they’ll understand. It’s hard to connect with the ‘everyman’ when you’re recording a video in a palace, talking about buying an island dressed in a £10,000 suit.

By following these five pointers you can begin to create effective and engaging video content on your everyday Webcam that you can use successfully in your next Internet marketing strategy. Whether you’re tackling social media or advertising a product, having great pieces of personable video content in your marketing arsenal that you can host on your website, blog or YouTube Channel will be a fantastic asset to have when it comes to connecting with future, prospective clients.

Related articles

• FV TouchCam N1 Review – HD 720p Webcam with Built-In H.264 Encoding (jameswoodcock.co.uk)
• My logitech webcam’s effects wont work (wiki.answers.com)
• 7 Webcam Interview Tips For Better Online Video Marketing (reelseo.com)
• Buying Guide: What webcam: 5 reviewed and rated (techradar.com)
• Sweet Elderly Couple Tests Their New Webcam [VIRAL VIDEO] (mashable.com)

Some may seem more apparent than others, but bloggers continue to make a plethora of blunders as blogs become essential for both personal and professional use. Alana Brooks of Likeable recently wrote an article about basic blogging mistakes to avoid. She notes that “In addition to having truly stellar blog content, bloggers need to consider the look and feel of their blog.” This is exceptionally important because many bloggers rely solely on intelligent subject matter disregarding marketing techniques to draw in more viewers and followers.

Adding a soundtrack, overly colorful backgrounds and unreadable fonts are all to be avoided. A soundtrack is inappropriate especially if a site is being accessed in an office or professional environment. Additionally Brooks points out that viewers are most likely already listening to their own music, and yours will only interrupt them.

Backgrounds that are overly bright or dark can be daunting. Your subject matter should speak for itself and be supported by a flattering background. Keep your font scheme in mind, you should not have to wear sunglasses to read a blog post. Ensure that your font choice is easily identifying from at least a foot back. If your readers have to squint to understand your content, they most likely won’t want to download your RSS feed or regularly check back.

Brooks targets centered paragraphs as inferior to other text structures. I agree that they’re not as professional, but they’re not a code red mistake. Justified text is easier to read and more optimal for photo placement, but depending on your content, centered paragraphs may be justified by your brand.

Brooks and I are on the same page though when it comes to clutter. It’s the first way to check a blog off as immature or unprofessional. Sparkles, flash ads and an overload of buttons are a huge turn-off to visitors. A simple solution is to create a drop down menu or even move them to a separate page.

These are design aspects that it’s important to properly research. They don’t hide technical flaws or a lower quality of writing. They take blogs to the next level and make them easier to market but remember that content is the most important aspect of a blog, no matter what its mission.

Related articles

• Why You Should Document Your Blogging Journey (bloggingot.com)
• 4 Biggest Blogging Myths That Lead to Bloggers Giving Up (tjantunen.com)
• 4 Biggest Blogging Myths That Lead to Bloggers Giving Up (dailyblogtips.com)

New styles and methods of spreading messages and ideas are constantly evolving. Greenpeace has now raised the bar for the social media movement with its new Detox campaign.

The campaign aims to spread the word about toxic chemicals in product lines such as Nike and Adidas, among others. It is Greenpeace’s hope that one day toxic chemicals can be removed from all product lines in an effort to make things a little greener.

It has long been known that Twitter allows the average person (or in this case average organization) to get involved with large corporations who otherwise don’t pay attention to the average Joe. Greenpeace has utilized this ability to its advantage to send a message by “taking-over” the Twitter page of corporations such as Nike and Adidas to spread their message. One might ask, how is it possible to take over another’s Twitter page?

Greenpeace has, rather cleverly, devised a way to use the Twitter avatar to spell out the name of their campaign, which in this case is Detox. This particular campaign is run by a total of five people, who each post a message on the page of a large corporation. Because each person has chosen a letter of the word as their avatar, they post in a certain order to spell out the word. The person who has taken the letter X posts first, followed by E and so on. It is important to synchronize, as if one person’s timing is off, another posting might squeeze in and your whole campaign is botched in a matter of seconds. Once all members have posted, their avatars spell out the word “Detox.”

Some corporations and perhaps Twitter itself, may perceive this as a threat. After all it could be construed as taking over and spamming users, which in many cases is looked down upon in the realm of the internet. People (or corporations) can be finicky when it comes to their personal profiles, as it is their own personal and private space in a very open and public place.

If this technique is used in the future, organizations must use the power wisely. Things tend to get blown out of proportion on the web, and it should be the goal of all corporations and organizations to tread lightly. The internet is not a forgiving place, and many organizations and corporations have fallen prey to innovative campaigns which didn’t pan out. Whether or not this idea becomes mainstream, it is another example of how a little bit of ingenuity can go a long way. Social media is changing; the question is can we keep up?

Related articles

• GREENPEACE SLAMS VOLKSWAGEN, from a server in China? “Greenpeace decided to run its campaign from C… (pajamasmedia.com)
• Greenpeace trains its sights on Adidas and Nike (mumbrella.com.au)
• Tell #Barbie it’s over – Greenpeace animation for action (mendipmedia.wordpress.com)
• Greenpeace: The Detox Challenge To Clean China’s Waters (advertising.chinasmack.com)
• Cairn’s Twitter injunction backfires (guardian.co.uk)

We’ve all read our fair share of blog posts. Trends start to emerge; patterns in tone and mechanics and particularly urban legends of advice which we should all begin to ignore. Ali Luke over at DailyBlogTips has written her fair share of blog posts and targets the number one tidbit of blogging advice that she thinks is overrated-

Blogging Everyday.

Luke believes that there are several drawbacks to blogging everyday:

#1 You’re wasting your time

#2 Your posts are poor quality

#3 Readers don’t necessarily like it

#4 You’ll burn yourself out

It depends on the blogger. This may be true if you’re a young and developing blog written by an individual. Luke suggests that instead of blogging incessantly once a day  just to have something in by midnight, blog twice a week with engaging content that your viewers can look forwards to. Spend just as much time editing your post as you do writing it. Spend just as much time promoting your post on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook as you do editing it. Then communicate with your readers. What do they want to read about?

In fact, I’ll put this to my audience. Audience- what would you like to learn about? Tweet at @marcon or at @jenna_levy and I will take all of your suggestions into account.

If you are a larger company with an increased following, then I disagree with all of the above. At Abraham Harrison, we’re a communications firm dedicated to spreading the word about not only our clients, but advances in technology and social media, and firsthand media news. If we’re not blogging everyday then we’re doing something wrong, because we’re not providing our audience with entertaining and educational information as often as we should be.

Mitch Joel at Twist Image is of the same mindset and frames Luke’s opinions for company branding instead of individual. He sees blogging everyday as a necessity because it’s about practice and experience. Habits are hard to create.

Ultimately, Blogging is not easy, it’s not obvious and it’s hard (very hard) to get real traction with as a Marketing engine. Nothing happens unless you are consistent in your effort and work. It has to be relevant to your audience and yes, you need a high level of frequency in your publishing habits. But, you have to define what “consistent,” “relevant” and “frequency” means to you and your audience. Nobody can do that for you.

-Joel

Joel compares blogging for the mind to exercise for the body. Yes, the journey to the computer may long and arduous, but when you press publish, it’s all worth it for your brand. My favorite piece of advice by Joel is “…use your Blog as a sketchpad for your day and the industry that you serve.” Branding is up to you, blogging can only serve to assist it along its journey.

Do you think that it’s necessary to blog everyday?

Some brands and marketers utilize social media as part of their marketing strategies blindly. They don’t have a clear view on what part social media really should play in their strategies.

The issues raised by this carelessness can be solved by determining the expectations of social media from the customers.

Sally Falkow presents a list of what customers are expecting when they participate with your brand through social media in her “What Your Customers Expect in Social Media” :

What customers want and expect from a company organization:

• A collaborative relationship
• Marketing relevancy
• Choice
• Good value
• Trust/piece of mind
• Prompt dispute resolution (customers don’t care what department you are in)
• Feeling of importance
• Personalization
• Transparency
• Accountability
• Consistent presence
• Two way communication

To summarize the list, customers expect to connect to you, up close and personal, and look to build a relationship deeper than just a buyer-seller relationship.

These things should be taken into account if your brand is going to participate in social media. Of course the business itself should expect some things from utilizing social media to be able to address the future issues.

Brands should expect:

• Huge amount of noise and clatter. You are letting everyone be connected to you, therefore you will hear people from all sides of the room.
• Valuable insights. Brands should expect that there are lots of useful insights from loyal and customers that care about the brand.
• Tons of haters. “You cannot please everybody” should be implanted in every marketer’s mind. Sometimes the popularity of one brand and effectiveness of the campaign can be measured from its haters. The more the haters you have the larger the audience you have reached.
• Negative publicity and Destructive comments. Of course haters won’t just sit there and tell you they hate you. They will find ways to say they hate you that will resound over and over again or have a great impact on the campaign. Brands should learn to filter these and interpret them carefully to be converted into positivity.

Brands need to participate in a community, either one that they have created or a preexisting one that they have joined. Online communities can contribute to the brand’s influence and growth big time.

It is not necessary for a brand to create its own community from scratch, but rather it should build on the already existing community of people who care about the brand. Cultivate it and let it grow. With the help of the people in it and the brand itself.

Engaging in an online community means always contributing, not taking. Always contribute to the welfare of the community not always directly to the welfare of the brand. In the end, whatever good you do for the community, reflects on the brand, and thus stregnthens it.

Rich Millington lists some key rules for engaging in an online community in his “How Brands Should Engage With Online Communities“:

• Respond to discussions about the brand. Most communities have a search feature. Use this to figure out what people are saying about the brand and respond appropriately. If you can’t respond to a complaint directly, ask the member how they would like it to be resolved.
  Participate in debates not connected to your products/services. This is easy, safe, territory and establishes your credibility as a serious participant in the community.
• Make friends. Be genuine members of the community. Make friends with others. Engage in the off-topic areas of the community. Congratulate people on their achievements. Suggest things in the community. Be a person first, a company representative second.
• Ask for opinions on products/services. Be careful with this. But, occasionally, ask people for their opinions on a specific aspect of a product or a service. Giving members options or choices works better than generic What do you think of our new {widget}.
• Ask for help. If you need people to help your company with something, ask for help.
• Offer something exclusive to the community. If your company has the means to offer some exclusive products or run a competition, contact the community admin and see if they are ok with you doing it.
• Give exclusive information. Give members of a community some exclusive information about your brand or product. This doesn’t have to be big, but just things that will solicit interest and start some rumours about your work.
• Contact the community owner/admin. When possible, contact the owner/admin of the community. Ask if you can do anything to help or if there are any special brand guidelines to be aware of.
• Disclosure. Use the signature to reveal that you are an employee of the company you work for. Where relevant, include it in the text of your messages e.g. “I agree, at Widgetco we tried both of these options….”

What Not To Do

• Have a company account. Accounts should always be registered under individual names, not company names. If you must, mix the two. EA_Phil being an example, but never use a WidgetCo as the name of your account.
• Promote. Any direct promotion is likely to have an adverse effect on your efforts.
• Subtly promote. An entire category of pretending to participate but doing so in such a way as to promote your brand.
• Criticize. The rules are stricter for company representatives here than they are for the average member. I’d say never criticize anyone, for anything, at anytime. Especially don’t attack a competitor.
  Engage in religious/political debate. It’s just not worth it no matter how right you are.

The author of Socialnomics, Erik Qualman, once again finds a way of captivating the audience with a short video that shows some impressive statistics about the role of social media in the business world. The video has been viewed more than 200 thousand times since its release in November 2009, and of course, I wasn’t one of those viewers until now. I have decided to share it because I believe it will be especially interesting for those newbees like myself, who are still learning the number of possibilities that derive from social media.

What I found most interesting after learning about the number of successful social media campaigns out there, was the way in which many of these companies blend through the virtual world so easily that sometimes, ordinary consumers might not notice it is just another marketing strategy. For example, through the BK Whopper Sacrifice, Burger King managed to receive an estimated return of 400,000 dollars in press/media value (32 million impression). I found out about this campaign through Facebook and I enjoyed seeing my friends being sacrificed by others friends. I didn’t see it as another annoying marketing effort but just something fun to be part of and have a good laugh. The only reason why I didn’t particularly engage in this ritual was because there is no BK near my house, but had there been, I would have definitely jumped in that wagon. I also believe that getting people to go to Burger King wasn’t the only benefit of this campaign. The key benefit was definitely the press received and the number of people who got involved because, at the end of the day, it wasn’t paid advertisements that were all around the Internet, but rather friends (sort of) telling friends.

This goes to the next great point Qualman makes through Ford’s CMO quote “You just can’t say it. You have to get the people to say it to each other.” The great thing about social media marketing is that that the basic principle revolves around getting people to communicate your message to other people. This is extremely beneficial because people tend to trust what other consumers say than what a paid advertisement says and– in the case of BK Whopper Sacrifice– engage in an activity if their friends are also engaging. Most importantly, social media allows these messages to become viral. Just like a cascade, messages move fast across different social networks and groups. What starts of as a blogpost can be tweeted or shared on facebook with friends and followers; and if these find an interest in the post they will do the same. As a result hundreds of thousands of people are reached fast and at a small cost.

The theories behind social media marketing can be found all over the internet and I also believe that any person that has been raised in the Internet age, regardless of their high or low use of social media, can determine the benefits of social media marketing by themselves. However, it was great finding a video that shows surprising facts on the subject. Facts that to some might be nothing new but to others, like myself, can just broaden their interest in the subject.

Here is a warning to all of us who are doing conversation marketing, buzz marketing, viral marketing, social media marketing, etc. We have all been there and we have seen it many times before. Some of us have done it! Well, this must have stung quite a lot. I can’t wait to find out which agency did this. If anyone knows, please let me know!

I was just farting around Boing Boing Gadgets, enjoying the fine work over there, post amusement over seeing my business partner become immortal in a Boing Boing post and referred to as “a globe-trotting alpha male who spends winters rubbing elbows with bikini models down in Mauretius and summers either indulging in sport in Berlin or piloting yachts around Cape Horn.” Well, I started reading comments and there were some funny ones, and then an obvious comment spam about the Motorola Krave. Then, the wolves circled and the entire comment thread started mocking the shiller. Ultimately, Joel Johnson wrote the following awesome blog post, entitled, Motorola, could you please tell your viral marketer to get out of our comments?

Motorola, could you please tell your viral marketer to get out of our comments?

In John’s post about Steve Jobs’ purported tantrum, a commenter “MGOODE08″ made this remark:

I’m so glad my boss isn’t like that! I’m working with Motorola right now, and became a huge fan of the Krave (motorola.com/krave). I especially like the full touch screen display and html web browser. It’s awesome!

On the 14th, he made this comment:

Oh man this looks awesome! I hope they release a version for the Krave by Motorola. Ever since I started working with Motorola I have became a huge fan of the phone (motorola.com/krave). With a full list of features, like a full touch screen, I can’t stop obsessing over it.

“M Goode” loves this phone so much that he posted this at GigaOm:

This is a very good idea. I think it could be applied to any phones with a similar format. Ever since I started working with Motorola I have become a huge fan of the Krave. It has some of the same features, and I think a built in micropayment system would be great. It’s a fairly new phone, so if you haven’t seen it yet it’s online at motorola.com/krave. I wonder if they will jump on the bandwagon when/if a micropayment system is implemented.

When he’s not on tech sites, though, “M Goode” loves to relax with a good game:

I wish this game would get released for a mobile gaming platform, especially the Krave. I have been a fan of this franchise since it’s first release, and would love to have it on a cell phone, especially the krave. Ever since I started working with Motorola, I have become a huge fan of the krave. Has anyone else seen it?(motorola.com/krave) It’s so loaded with features, most important of which is the full touch screen layout. It’s DEFINITELY worth checking out.

He’s also really into the indie gaming scene:

I can’t wait to see this on a mobile phone platform! it would be so cool to see ti on a Krave! Has anyone else seen it? (motorola.com/krave) It’s a flip phone with a touch screen, 2 MP camera, full html browser and bluetooth functionality. Definitely worth checking out.

But uh oh! He might be considering switching from a Krave to the new Nokia:

My favorite phone right now is the Krave by Motorola. I became a huge fan of the Krave once I started working with Motorola. You can check out the full spec list online at motorola.com/krave. It’s definitely strong competition with it’s full touch screen

(He is also apparently working for Cirque Du Soleil, but we’ll let them pass for the moment because I love acrobats.)

“Follow the money,” they say, but in this case we don’t have to, because all we have to do is follow the link. Motorola, if you could be so kind as to tell your viral marketer to fuck right off we’d sure appreciate it. Perhaps you could spend the money instead on making your phones something that people actually want to buy.

P.S., I love our readers. Check out the replies they immediately started making:

I’m so glad my boss isn’t like that! I’m working for Burger King right now, and became a huge fan of the Mushroom and Swiss Steakhouse Burger. I especially like the cheese and mushrooms. It’s awesome!

I’m so glad my boss isn’t like that! I’m working for a pimp on the corner of wellwood and barrington and became a huge fan of Allie and her turrid backstroke technique. I especially like the pop and rock. It’s awesome!

I’m so glad my boss isn’t like that! I’m working with Cryptozoologia right now, and became a huge fan of the Trepanasaurus (Cryptozoologia.com/ Trepanasaurus). I especially like the way that, after the dinosaur-anteater hybrid rips off the top of a person’s head with its sharp teeth, it can suck out its victim’s brain with its nose. It’s awesome!

With all the discussion on what social media is, what it’s future will be like, who will control it, I often feel we fail to see the forest for the trees.

I see it as too diverse of a phenomenon to pin down with one easy definition. Its applications go far beyond the neat capsules that can be used to pick a particular department or function that should “own” it. Social media is creating, empowering, and accompanying a paradigm shift in the way we use all media.

Are we fully there yet? Of course not. These are only the early stages, part of an evolutionary process that often comes step by step. But those steps are happening and happening and soon we’ll look back and be amazed how far we’ve traveled. Then before we know it again, we’ll be stepping again and look back again and we’ll be amazed how much we’ve come from that first time we looked back.

Yes, organizations are going to have to harness social media in ways that they can benefit from, to reach ROI. This means trying to create some sort of structure for it without “siloizing” it. Very difficult indeed.

I’ve tried to lay out what I see social media as. Not from a specific definitional standpoint, but from a several miles up point of view.

Interested in your feedback…

Social media can be a practice within itself

Social media’s possibilities extend beyond any traditional established practice (advertising, PR, sales, etc.) to the point that it can be a practice within itself. It can be spread across many departments and, thus, will often need practitioners who can implement coordinated efforts within an organization. The strategic methods used will often have enough attributes on a stand alone basis that it shouldn’t come underneath the heading of another specific department. I’d put social media on the same par as advertising and PR. Full service social media firms have sprouted up such as Abraham Harrison to meet today’s needs.

Social media can be a service

Because social media is still in its nascent stages, clients and potential clients don’t always need comprehensive solution packages. They may need to know how to set up a blog and how to get traffic for it. Simple as that. Helping a company to start a blog is a service. So is creating a podcast. Many clients look to cherry pick services to satisfy their needs. For some in social media, providing a non-coordinated menu of services is where it’s at. While social media agencies are an emerging industry, there’s not widespread demand quite yet, leaving many practitioners as service providers.

Social media is strategy based

A company decides to let go of some (but not all) control of its marketing communications message. It views its customers and users on a somewhat equal level and not as blocks of ears to be shouted at and throats to have messages shoved down.

Another company uses blogs to work with customers to improve products or come up with new ones.

These are strategic changes that are being implemented. Social media can change the nature of an organization because it changes the way an organization looks at itself and its relationships with its stakeholders.

Therefore the strategy behind social media empowers change like nothing else can.

Social media is tactically based

The many tools of social media can be designed to manage a problem or a series of problems. That’s not something that necessarily changes an organization. It’s can implemented based strictly upon need.

This can cause a lot of frustration amongst social media strategists as we see a lot of potential opportunities for business not being fulfilled. For others, applying tactics itself is an opportunity. A foot in the door.

Social media is technology based

Social media can involve a host of technologies that are often complicated to learn and understand. Setting up RSS feeds, monitoring online conversations, designing a blog for better SEM, putting together a widget. It takes technical know how to implement much of these. And that’s a reason why so many ad agencies and especially PR firms have been resistant in adopting social media.

But the technology is constantly changing, adapting, growing, as is the myriad of ways they can be used for clients. It often takes someone who is comfortable with technology to succeed.

Social Media is theory based

Authenticity. Transparency. Community. Engagement. Listening. Give up some of your control. All constantly espoused by social media strategists. These are theories that often go against the grain of traditional thought. More on engagement and less on contrived messaged, push on people. This blog post is theoretical. The theories formulate the methodologies that are behind the practices and the services.

These theories are why so many of us blog and offer our opinions and commentaries. It’s why we read one another’s blogs, friend one another on Facebook and follow one another on Twitter.

Social media is rule based

Aren’t authentic or transparent? Watch out! You’re gonna get nailed by someone in the blogosphere and it will cost you. An instant case study as to how NOT do something. The rules of the game were collectively created and enforced.

We’ve seen traditional agencies, large and small, ignore these rules and push ahead with fake blogs and such. Ask the folks at Edelman and Zipatoni.

Social media is anti-bureaucratic

This may be one of the most important points of all. Because its capabilities go beyond the silos of the current corporate communications, because the public arena can embrace it as their own, because it is always changing, and because it involves giving up a serious amount of self control, social media bucks the bureaucratic structure within organizations while it fundamentally changes the relationship between the organization and its stakeholders.

Online as a whole can shift between advertising and PR, causing disruption. Social media adds to this by bringing in customers, users, and in some cases, communities into the mix. It resists authority when the authority becomes too controlling. And authority usually wants control.

Organizational bureaucracies will be changing soon enough because of social media.

Social media can be vertical – part 1

Again, I see social media as being often a separate animal from traditional PR and advertising. For that matter, online advertising itself first created that difference. Social media extends that difference. It has its own methodologies that are totally separate from offline advertising. The divisions here may not be silo based; but often the pool of knowledge for success in the social media arena can’t be found in traditional types.

Simply sticking it under a particular division within an organization can cause stifled growth as it will be badly nurtured by people with a particular preconceived mindset.

Social media can be vertical – part 2

It’s vertical in another manner as well. And this is more of a prediction than a statement of the current conditions, but we will soon see more and more specialized firms pop up that will be geared toward certain segments of the population. Just as there are agencies that are geared toward the Latino market and PR firms that are geared toward the GLBT communities, we’ll see social media agencies that have developed the expertise in reaching out to certain segments of the population. All you have to do is listen to the many mommy bloggers that complain about their constantly getting hit by pitches from agencies that have no clue on what it’s like being a mom.

Social media can be horizontal – part 1

From what we all hear, social media will have implications in advertising, public relations, sales, customer service, human resources, investor relations etc. It will take an enterprise wide strategy to implement all of that. And it will take an actual social media strategist who understands all of those departments and who understands the technologies behind social media to devise a plan for that enterprise. He or she will have to be strong enough to lead the way and manage a lot of personalities, but gentle enough to let each department blossom.

Social media can be horizontal – part 2

Outside organizations, agencies such as Abraham Harrison and others will continue to emerge and become successful because they will stay on the forefront of all that is happening and how it should be applied. Companies won’t have the internal expertise nor will they have the time nor the personnel to implement cross functional social media strategies.

So, just as we see ad agencies and PR firms today, we’ll continue to see social media agencies. There will definitely be a need for them.

Social media is push

Yes, social media still allows you to deliver marketing messages. It can be the conversation starter. A blog can be push as can a podcast. Maybe this is obvious but I’ve heard so much talk about sitting back an listening I wanted to add this. Yes, social media can be overtly promotional. It just has to be done right.

Social media is pull

Yes, listening is important. Then engaging is important. Done right it creates trust. Trust is pull. Pull is good. Social media is good.

Social Media can be web presence centric and dispersed at the same time

No need to dis the hub of a website. Core elements of an organization’s social media efforts can emanate from but then be dispersed throughout blogs, Flickr, YouTube, etc.

Social media can be created from within

This is obvious.

Social media can be created and enhanced by others

The greatest threat. The biggest fear. The challenging factor that causes many an enterprise to resist, to delay implementations. But those on the outside aren’t waiting.

So to me, social media is so multi-dimensional that it can’t be easily defined in one definition, explained in a singular context, bottled up in a particular department.

I’m gonna run with this concept of community for a while. I’ve touched on something that’s created a bit of a spark. In other words, I value the contributions people have made here and I want to keep the discussion going.

Chris Abraham, in a response to my previous post The Fallacy of Community, gives us a great synopsis of what they’re about. Jeremiah Owyang has another post that’s excellent, What Makes a Successful Marketing Campaign on Social Networks?

What got me thinking about this is an exchange I had with Marco Nunez of Aurelius Maximus and Richard Millington of Fever Bee. The discussion centered on the use and misuse of the word “community”.

I’m starting to think that many mistake great brands with enthusiastic users – users who may even evangelize – are brands with communities. Some manage to attain that status of course, but I’d say that the majority of them don’t. That’s because these brands often don’t have the users, the clients, the customers that CONNECT. What I’m offering is the thought that the relationship between community members, while not as vital a the relationship between member and brand, is still important. Or, if not the direct relationship, the experience one garners with the product brings out a intangible sense of belonging. That status could be based on enjoyment, on status, on a sense of mission.

So the users have to feel some sort of connection with one another. Marco mentioned Apple. Richard noted Harley Davidson. Chris brought up WordPress. I pointed out Red Sox Nation and Blog Her. These are brands with communities, quasi-organized entities whose members have developed a sense of camaraderie. The camaraderie is genuine. It isn’t necessarily corporate created and maintained.

I’ll add that entities such as marketer-created fan pages and groups on the likes of Facebook and MySpace are inherently not communities as well. They may be clever marketing tactics and they may eventually become communities. But a page on a website doesn’t within itself capture the essence of community. The members do.

Real communities are long-term, if not permanent entities that last beyond a three month marketing campaign on Facebook. Especially in this day of quickly created social media networking/marketing groups. That’s because quite often those groups last as long as a campaign lasts and hence, they aren’t communities.

I write all this because the idea of “brand” is one of the most important in marketing. There’s been debates for decades on what makes a great brand. Rob Frankel, one of the best minds in branding says “Branding is not about getting your prospects to choose you over your competition; it’s about getting your prospects to see you as the only solution to their problem.” Building a brand often takes an enormous amount of work, and many attempts fail. (Note to Richard: this supports your point about Guy Kawasaki and his work for Apple).

At this point we’re not even touching on brand evangelism. There are plenty of great brands out there that don’t cause their enthusiasts to evangelize. Someone may be dedicated to using Tide Detergent, but that doesn’t mean they’ll tell friends and coworkers…unless asked. As I mentioned in a previous post, Tropicana No Pulp Orange Juice is my “brand”, but I don’t evangelize about it. I just drink it.

But the concept of community goes beyond a great brand, it goes beyond getting evangelists. It means either organizing those evangelists – or helping them organize themselves. It means enabling the members to connect with both the brand and the community. It then means keeping true to the brand promise so as not to throw off the community members.

That’s what I see is behind an enduring, thriving connected brand community.

I’m going to go against the orthodoxy of my fellow social media practitioners. I’m going to commit heresy. I’m going upset the apple cart of the proverbial echo chamber.

The new 2008 version of Where the Hell is Matt YouTube video isn’t going to live up to it’s intended purpose. It will be something that many of us will talk about, blog about, pontificate about. Then it will go away.

Here’s the video if you haven’t watched it:

But that’s it.

Don’t get me wrong. I like the concept. I’m not against the concept. I, like many of you, find the idea of a this young American traveling throughout the world, visiting places, getting to know the people, the culture. And video taping himself, dancing, often with others, often many others. And often with children.There’s something touching about Matt Harding dancing in Jerusalem in one shot, on the West Bank in the next. There’s something inspirational seeing him dance with children in Zambia or Morocco or Bhutan.Regarding the “rules” of social media, it was done almost flawlessly. The company didn’t require him to wear a Stride shirt or hawk the gum or promote it in any way. All they got was a mention at the end in the credits. It was right in line with what I’ve been reading on all these blogs for the past two years. Subtle, not in your face. Makes us feel good.But that’s not enough. Not in today’s world. An ironic thought, considering the theme of the video. Here’s why.

It creates little brand awareness

One can watch the video several times and not have any idea that it’s a marketing effort by Stride Gum. In fact, I bet the vast majority of people that view it and/or forward it have no idea that there was a company behind this. The little credit line at the end isn’t enought. Sorry, social media folks, but that’s he way it is.

Gavin Heaton says:

There are 4 million people around the world willing to sit through almost 5 minutes of video. These people are receptive to the simple brand message offered by Stride Gum. That is 20 million minutes of brand engagement — opt-in.

Gavin, even if all 4 million (now it’s up to 6 million) viewed the entire clip, if they don’t know that this is in somehow related to Stride Gum, then it ain’t brand engagement. They’re simply watching a cool video on YouTube. Brand engagement means viewers must be aware that they are, in fact, engaging a brand. Ergo…

It has no brand connection

I’m betting the vast majority of people who watch this video are enamored by it. Hell, I am as well. Big time. Seeing all those people dance with Matt. I mean, CK’s in joyous tears over it. Yet she wrote a blog post about it…but didn’t even mention the sponsor’s name.

Dancing with some sort of small primates in Madagascar has no connection to chewing gum.

Neither does dancing amidst red crabs on Christmas Island.

I mean, if Matt wore one of those shirts from Stride – the one’s that everyone is trilled that he didn’t wear – in every, say, 12th location…so what? It would have helped the 6 million of us viewers understand what was behind this. The entire video itself it inspirational enough to overcome that. A little promotion here and there is not shoving it down anyone’s throat. In fact, Matt could have worn other T-shirts as well, saying things like “End Violence Now” or “Help Defeat Malaria”. THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN COOL.

So, yeah. So what if an occasional Stride T-shirt shot pisses off 18 social media marketers who want and demand a false notion of purity.

If you don’t know that there’s a brand behind it, or even related to it, then…

It creates no brand affinity

We all love Matt now. Don’t we? We think he’s a fine young man. We want to grow up/be like/have a son like him some day.

We imagine what it must be like to be able to travel to Tonga and Iceland and the Cape of Good Hope. We want to have that freedom. We want to be able to experience the world.

The affinity here is with Matt. This fine young man.

What was the name of that sponsor?

The current legal battle between Viacom and Google/YouTube is going to have significant ramifications beyond today’s headlines.  It’s getting surprisingly little play amongst much of the social media digerati, but it’s something we all need to be aware of.

The lawsuit and the proceedings around it are truly a sign of the times.  It’s a direct outgrowth of what we’ve been emerging via the internet over the past several years.  Sites such as YouTube have essentially become free communicative vehicles to not only view, but  share and alter video productions of all types.  The concept of “share” is important because most of us use it.  But in reality, it is a nice way of saying “distribute”.  And from distribute comes distribution – a fundamental with tremendous legal ramifications.

Alter is a tough one too.  The “mash-ups” that many in social media and digital marketing talk of enthusiastically can be as problematic.  As, I guess, it should be.  At least in some cases.  An artist creates an original piece of work.  Then distributes it, usually netting some sort of financial gain.  Others take it, and now because of new tools can alter it and redistribute it.  Many times this new process leads to lost potential revenue for the original artist.

Basically what has happened was that YouTube became extremely popular practically overnight.  So now we have tens of thousands of people posting videos – videos that may be copyrighted material (or at least contain copyrighted material).  Interested parties on the original creative/distribution side sort of stood by, trying to figure what to make of it.  That means artist, recording studios and major distributors.  Sometimes it makes sense to let things slide.  Other times it means lost revenue.  Copyright infringement.  But how the major players handle themselves at this juncture will probably set precedents for years to come.

All of this brouhaha is a result of overlapping laws, revenue distribution models, current legal precedents in related industries, and perhaps most importantly, the determination by key players to establish new legal precedents and business processes.

Part of the problem is that there is little established law beyond the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) that establishes a foundation to base anything on.  Consequently, it’s been up to the courts to decide what it legal and what it not.  This puts all parties in a bind because the likely solutions could create a lot of losers.

Currently, web properties that entail copyrighted digital content are required to get two licenses from interested parties.  One is a reproduction license from the record company as the record company often has sole rights for reproduction.  The second is a public performance license from the performers and/or their agent representatives.

But the problem is that its not that YouTube is getting those licenses them selves and then showing the videos – videos that can’t be downloaded and distributed.  The problem is that anyone can take a copyrighted video and uploaded it up to YouTube.  Now the video can be distributed as others can now download it.

Representatives of the music and entertainment industries are thus saying that YouTube would thus need a distribution license as well.  And these arguments have been paying off in court.  YouTube is acting as an enabler, intended or not.

It’s not as if Google and YouTube have been sitting still in all this, letting everything stupidly happen.  They’ve already reached agreements on  reproduction with major music labels and artist representatives.  But that, of course, doesn’t address distribution models.

YouTube is making some efforts – but it’s the nature of their business model that’s hurting them on this.  And the popularity of the service.

For one, they limit the time allowed for videos to 10 minutes.  This way, whole programs can’t be recorded and posted.  YouTube has also set up a “content identification system” that allows a content owner to set up a “reference file” on copyrighted work which enables YouTube to locate exact matches between a piece of copyrighted work and something that is posted.  The problem there is that anything can be altered, and alterations (those pesky “mashups” can throw the system off.  Once YouTube identifies a piece of copyrighted material, they then contact the artists and productions studios to inquire as to whether or not it should be removed.

Those that continually upload copyrighted material will be asked to stop, and if they fail to do so, can have their YouTube account suspended.

All in all, YouTube seems to be doing all it can to stop all of this.  But the current technological capabilities, coupled with the site’s enormous popularity have made it impossible to really have an effective system in place.  At least in the mindset of companies like Viacom.

Let’s take a look at the debate between Brian and Loic, point by point.

Point #1

Brian Solis: Understand You’re Not the Only Story in Town
Loic: Who cares about stories, you can get traction and users if you have a good product

Where do I start? First of all, Brian’s spot on in that many top executives in startups overvalue what the product or the service or whatever it is that they’re introducing. They don’t understand that the battleground for attention from key influencers and potential customers is filled with other players battling for attention as well. Sometimes it’s necessary to get someone to help craft a pathway through that battlefield, from someone one that understands which weapons and shields are needed. How to break through that clutter. Because on that very same battlefield are others looking for sweet victory as well. And that’s just the battle to get noticed.

Sometimes that’s having someone who can help craft and deliver a great story.

And, yes, sometimes, one of the best weapons is having established a blog and with that, a burgeoning community. Loic has done that and kudos to him for that. He is a great example of what he’s writing about.

Some of those competitors on the battlefield may not be direct competitors in business. No matter. They are still competing for mindshare of the audience a startup wants to reach.

CEOs need to understand this. They’ve worked their tails off for a significant period of time to produce something. That’s quite an accomplishment in itself. But many automatically think that whatever they’ve produce “sells itself” that it’s a “no-brainer” causing people to automatically understand why they should buy it. This is called hubris.

Hubris kills. For example, a trivia question. Guess who said this last fall:

“I’m in it for the long run. It’s not a very long run. It will be over by February 5.”*

History is filled with failed startups let by overconfident individuals that failed to realize they need some sort of marketing plan to get the word out, to position the product, to clarify key features and benefits. They decided to start companies and then implemented marketing as an afterthought. In other words, their companies have no stories.

While the atmosphere is much better today, I’ve seen decision makers that refuse to get this. It’s as if they seemingly believe that press rooms of major business publications had fax rooms where eager young interns hang out excitedly to retrieve their press releases and run to the editors with all of your important info. If you lack a story – and a decent product – it’s much more difficult to gain traction.

No, Loic, good stories are often needed. Stories can explain complex products. Stories can differentiate between competitors. Stories can offer insight that go beyond a series of sentences on a press release. Just as blog posts can. Blogging and trying to develop a community can work – but not really in time to help that start up. Unless they’re already a know quality like you. It also helps when you have a Web 2.0 type service that connects people such as Seesmic.

A second major point regarding Loic’s comments is that not all good products can get traction. Just as not every great guitarist gets that major record deal, just as not every great aspiring actress gets the big break, not every great product gets noticed. There are a bunch of factors that influence success. As Jim Kurkral commented on Loic’s post, “Even people with great products can still fail getting coverage.” Coverage in industry press, coverage in mainstream press, coverage in blogs. Nor will all creators of great bloggers be able to form online communities.

For that matter, not every product that meet with success is of top quality. Sometimes it’s luck. Previous reputation. Timing. Or a great story.

*Trivia answer: Hillary Clinton, (self)presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party in the U.S. Presidential race, describing how quickly she’ll win the nomination.

For the past two months I’ve been in a mental funk when it comes to blogging. Maybe it’s because I got caught up a bit too much following the political primary season and felt that I’d end up focusing too much on politics.

But now I have Brian Solis, Loic Le Meur, and Robert Scoble to thank for getting me back into the game.

Perhaps the one I should thank the most is Loic because I found much of what he wrote in response to Brian’s TechCrunch article to be misdirected toward his own experiences.

It started with Brian’s May 25 article in TechCrunch “PR Secrets for Startups”. Now that headline itself is a bit silly as it sounds as if it’s a headline used in an overhyped industry rag, but the meat of the artilce is pretty much straightforward. He doesn’t lay out secrets at all, just sound advice. And while I don’t agree with the fine line depicted between PR 1.0 and PR 2.0, but there is no question that all of strategic marketing communications is undergoing a transformation and that the internet – and social media in particular – are playing key roles in that.

In the article, Brian outlines a series of points that serve a great guideline for most younger startups. Loic tells us that Brian has many valid point in his post and that Brian knows what he’s talking about and that he really likes Brian and then he proceeds to write that what Brian is saying is bullshit.

Well, I like Loic and think he has many valid points and he knows what he’s talking about, but what Loic is saying is bullshit. Loic’s advice is correct for a finite amount of CEOs and a finite amount of startups from a finite amount of industries. It’s solid advice in certain circumstances.

I’ll start out with Loic’s major point:

Get a community and focus on your friends is the way to go.

Good grief.

It’s not that this is directly wrong, it’s that it’s ridiculous in that it’s a practically impossible to accomplish task to achieve in the amount of time needed to boost a start up. In fact, formulating one’s own community can be as difficult as successfully launching a start up in the first place. Establishing a community can take years – Loic himself talks of how it took him eight years – and there’s no guarantee that the community will stick.

Most prominent blogger don’t have communities. They may think they do, but they don’t. They have readers instead. Most companies don’t have communities. They have customers. Most products and services don’t have communities. They have users. Cultivating a community is similar to cultivating a loyal customer base…only more difficult. It takes time, it takes energy, it takes a special touch. More often than not, it’s an elusive accomplishment.

It’s not as if one can go down to the local K-Mart and buy a community – as if it comes in a box – one that’s on sale this week only for the low price of $79.95 – twenty dollars of the regular price of $99.95.

No, there’s no Easy Button to press in getting a community. As commenter Jeremy Toeman points out “Loic, I think your assessment is fairly biased to your personal experience. The truth is most companies and individuals aren’t nearly as well connected as you are, and to just dismiss PR by saying “just go build a community” is frankly, naive.” Which is soon followed by Vinh, “Where can i get a community? Is it expensive? What happens if I need audience now?” Bingo.

Loic himself proves the difficulty in establishing a community by writing “I took me 8 years since I started blogging in 2003 to have a community and it is no marketing.” First of all, he’s so exhausted from establishing that community that he’s added wrong. It’s either 5 years since 2003 or 8 years since 2000. Whether it’s 5 or 8 (and I believe it’s 8), that’s way to long of a time period for a CEO to wait to effectively kick in as he or she is launching a startup.

Allen Stern has two great comments regarding Loic’s claim…

First, he points out that it takes more than a desire to have a community to actually accomplish the huge task of establishing a community. “Loic – it’s important to remember that not everyone has the “instant-on” connections you do today. While I agree with what you are suggesting about a community completely – not everyone has “instant-on” that you do.” He follow this with a clear statement of total sense. “This is why I suggest you work on building your network while you build your startup. Don’t expect to finish your product and have a network ready to launch it for you.” Words of wisdom.

The reality is that the essence of community building is something that’s often elusive. One needs talent, time, luck, and a topic or series or topics that engender an interaction amongst readers. That’s rare indeed. Loic has been able to establish this over several years through hard work, a warm and colorul personality, and an effective writing style. He also benefits from the fact that he’s launched a company that, at its core, is at the heart of social media.

Community is one of the most dangerously overused terms in social media. It’s often bandied about by people who treat the subject matter as if communities already exist or are readily available. And this then underplays the importance – and the essence of community.

Next, I’ll look to take on the Brian vs. Loic debate point by point.

This morning, Norman Birnbach wrote an article wherein he suggests that I emphasize giving swag:

One of his tips is to “Give swag” — a point that Chris Abraham emphasized in a recent interview. The reason is that blogging is often a second career and there are few perks so swag can make a difference to get bloggers to respond.

He is not wrong, but I think I need to clarify my definition of “gift-giving.” I don’t emphasize giving away swag, necessarily — what I do emphasize is gifting — and giving ’til it hurts, “What a gift needs to be is super-valuable to the recipient — the value of a gift is based on perception.”

The following excerpt is from Be Generous, Not Stingy, When Engaging Bloggers (via Chris Abraham):

“Gifts don’t have to be free stuff — like books or iPods — gifts can be in the form of knowledge, intellectual property, insider access, or blogger exclusives; gifts can be informational, gifts can solve a community problem, or customer service issues.

What a gift needs to be is super-valuable to the recipient — the value of a gift is based on perception. You need to be willing to give the gift that the blogger wants and not the gift you are prepared or want to give.

What is not cool is half measures or crappy, throw-away gifts, the Internet version of key rings and a bowl of candy. Offering throttled, limited or restricted demos (without access to the full version when it is released); offering a single book chapter (without the whole book being an option); or granting “exclusive” access to something that is already released is just plain lame and will result in severe negative consequences.

It is pretty bad to not give a gift when you reach out to bloggers just because you feel entitled or represent a fancy client but it is worse to be stingy about the gift you do give. Make sure the gift is generous — give until it hurts.”

Rich Karpinski just wrote an article that’s featured on the front page of BtoB. The information in the article is basic. It’s not groundbreaking. It’s about a trend that, if you’re reading this blog, then you’re already familiar with. It’s about how businesses are now embracing blogging.

Karpinski points out how only aroudn 12% of Fortune 500 companies run corporate blogs. But he gives key examples of how companies such as Dell, Kodak, Intel, SAP, and IBM run coporate blogs.

The reason articles such as this can be important is because it is located in a targeted business publication. It’s readers, many of whom are at he very least involved in corporate markting at some sort of senior level, need to be exposed to more articles such as this. Larger publications such as Business Week feature similar articles that carry influence.

The more exposure senior managers – be they in marketing or technology or finance – get exposed to blogging and, more importantly overall, social media as a business cultural paradigm, then the more likely they are finally going to “get it”.

Articles such as these are a form of professional-word-of-mouth. Many of the decision makers – those that are in the 88% of the Fortune 500 that don’t have corporate blogs aren’t going to be reading social media marketing blogs. Many of them haven’t heard of Todd And’s PowerList or the Age of Conversation or ooVoo. They’re not on Twitter. They don’t care about any of that. And there’s enough of them out there that that’s fine…for now.

So that’s why wee need more basic articles like Rick Karpinski’s.

Andy Sernovitz’s blog’s name says it all, and definitely reflects my response to reading this: Damn, I Wish I’d Thought of That!, especially in his post Instant Word of Mouth for Restaurants. From our experience doing blogger outreach and blogger gift-giving, this is on-the-money advice you should all consider (Via Chris Abraham — Because the Medium is the Message):

Give every lunch customer 6 desserts to take back to the office.

Give them one desert and they will eat it.

Give them 6 and they will to announce to everyone that they just ate at your restaurant and you gave them snacks to share.

Lesson: One free sample is interesting. Lots of samples turn customers into evangelists.

Firstly, while we at Abraham Harrison do online publicity and blogger outreach exclusively, this advice rings true. First, let me define what we mean by “free samples” and “gifts” in our context.

Gifts don’t have to be free stuff — like books or iPods — gifts can be in the form of knowledge, intellectual property, insider access, or blogger exclusives; gifts can be informational, gifts can solve a community problem, or customer service issues.

What a gift needs to be is super-valuable to the recipient — the value of a gift is based on perception. You need to be willing to give the gift that the blogger wants and not the gift you are prepared or want to give.

What is not cool is half measures or crappy, throw-away gifts, the Internet version of key rings and a bowl of candy. Offering throttled, limited or restricted demos (without access to the full version when it is released); offering a single book chapter (without the whole book being an option); or granting “exclusive” access to something that is already released is just plain lame and will result in severe negative consequences.

It is pretty bad to not give a gift when you reach out to bloggers just because you feel entitled or represent a fancy client but it is worse to be stingy about the gift you do give. Make sure the gift is generous — give until it hurts.

For example, with Survivor Corps, not only did we make lots of full-chapters available for download and sharing, but we are making paper hardcover copies available to anyone and everyone who wants one — and the offer is transferable.

While the wide selection of chapters may be generous, offering only a partial book would easily be considered to be stingy and cheap if we were not willing and able to drop-ship complete copies of the book at a moment’s notice without ever demanding a quid pro quo.

Most of the bloggers might very readily blog about I Will Not Be Broken were I to only send a smattering of chapters; even so, the risk associated with not making copies freely available would be intense and is not worth it.

The cost of a hundred books sent to important niche online influencers who have promised to blog about Survivor Corps, whether they ever do is negligible compared to being pegged as cheap and ungrateful.

Even a blogger who has an advertising rate sheet and who would never consider doing a review without being sponsored or paid are often willing to blog on behalf of our clients – when we get the right balance between influencer-targeting, message-modeling, gift-giving, blogger activation, and following-up.

It works because this is relationship and conversation marketing. There are real people behind those blogs who are sick and tired of not being treated like people and if you can get the mixture right, magic happens.

When we do blogger public relations (often called blogger relations or BR), blogger messaging, or online outreach, it is essential to do everything possible to make sure that the blogger’s free spirit is appreciated and also realize that the blogger is under zero responsibility to blog about your client at all; and, for the same reason that bloggers are pursued by us PR and marketing professionals — their influence, platform, and voice — bloggers are fully capable of turning against you and your client.

Luckily, bloggers are people, marketers are people, even PR professionals are people; therefore, even if something goes wrong during an aggressive messaging and PR compaign, which they often do if you’re being aggressive and passionate, a human touch and human engagement usually does the trick to smooth feathers, clear the air, and make things nice.

Even when clearing the air isn’t possible, it is important to be brave and a little shameless: when you’re in this sort of business, 1% or more of all recipients will have a cow and there is nothing you can do about it, no matter how much attention, love, adoration, and mea culpas you’re willing or able to invest.

For the Survivor Corps campaign, we have been pretty aggressive. Even before we have delivered our first copy of I Will Not Be Broken to a single blogger, we have received almost 50 blog mentions and posts. Even if we had suffered a couple negative posts as a tithe for the 50 positive mentions, I believe it would still have been worth it.

If you need more proof you can read the mentions that bloggers have written so far about Jerry White’s book, I Will Not Be Broken, collected well before any actual books arrived via Fedex to the bloggers’ door, you will see that Blogger PR is well worth all of the time and trouble required to make it work right.

Let me know if you have any questions about what we do or how we do it. I would be very happy to tell you more if you contact me at Abraham Harrison.

On Monday, CBS Television Stations announced the launch of what I think will be a great step in the direction of web based mainstream and citizen generated news. They are launching the CBS Local Ad Network in which local stations will syndicate new content to local bloggers and social media sites. This news will be delivered via news widgets that will link to video and text news of the local stations.

IN exchange for hosting the widgets, the bloggers will receive a share of the local ad dollars that are sold by the station.

How is it a win-win-win-win situation?

The will extend the CBS news media brand both on a national and local level by integrating news content with local blogger with a following. While it takes some of the focus off the broadcast model, it could potentially easily be made up via web usage. The network will seem innovative while the local affiliate could develop deeper ties to the local community. Bloggers and social networkds could increase their visibility and bring in more traffic. Advertisers will get greater exposure.

I like the idea.

In my last post, I talked of the coming disruption of the three way relationship between marketer, agency, and media property. Essentially it centers on the idea that marketers (who are often behind themselves) are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the lack of digital savvy of their agencies and are now turning to media properties for strategic ideas and creative capabiliites. And these media properties are making themselves all the more ready, willing, and able to carry out the needs and wishes of the marketers.

I believe that that’s happening. But there’s still a big problem with that model. Consistent brand messaging

On a micro-level, this new way of doing things makes perfect sense. Crafting an marketing campaign tailored to the offerings of an online property could maximize the effectiveness of the campaign itself. For that media property.

But last I looked, most advertisers don’t use all their spend on one property. They’ll pick many properties in many channels. They’ll test here and there. They’ll sometimes concentrate on branding, sometimes concentrate on direct , sometimes (and the web makes this more possible, concentrate on both.

If the marketer – the company that is the end client – has to tailor each of its marketing messages to that of the publisher, chaos could result.

Publishers will need to realize this and further expand their services, sort of becoming almost full service for their advertisers. But still, this still could run into brand confusion as each publisher will owe it to their paying client to create the most effective campaign for their specific property or properties, leaving potentially different and confusing brand messages across several media properties.

Wise agencies should see this as the window of opportunity and work with publishers before they even get clients to formulate the framework for effective marketing campaigns that can perform very effectively over a cross section of properties and platforms.

I decided to put together a list of reasons why I think many marketing agencies “don’t get” social media. Some are legitimate reasons, most aren’t. Feel free to add some of your own.

1- Elitism

The marketing industries – advertising, PR – are considered to be ‘cool’ or chic. These industries (including social media by the way) are filled with people who are self-consciously aware of this. For years I’ve been on online forums filled with ad people trashing the industry, talking about the lack of creative talent the whole time positioning themselves as being above it all.

Enter social media and its marketing aspects and these self-important types have something else to look down upon. If that attitude is prevelant in an agency, then it means you’ve got an agency that’s closed off to innovation.

2- Lack of Vision

An agency gets an RFP for a major client. They have meetings to brainstorm. How to position the brand. What creative they should use. Where they should make placements. Do we look to bring in a spokesperson? What strategies, what tactics?

And the whole time, social media didn’t enter their mindset.

That may be because they’re too rushed to give their response to the RFP and, because they haven’t had the time to learn much about social media. When it comes crunch time, it never occurs to them to do something with social media.

3- Lack of Interest

A couple of years ago I contacted a mid-size ad agency to see if they were going to incorporate any type of online marketing capabiliites. They had no interest in it. It was more than a lack of vision. It was simply put, a fundamental lack of interest of what was happening around them

4- Unable to figure out the revenue model

This is an underrated and compelling reason. I don’t believe as some doom sayers do that advertising is on its way out. But it is changing and some of these new business models involve little revenue. If you’ve to a lot of overhead and a project comes in that could mean little revenue, you’re going to be flummoxed and scared shitless of this.

5- Terrified of Technology

Often, people in agencies play the “he’s a tech guy” routine. Cordoning off those who do online stuff as a whole as tech people. And tech people usually aren’t marketing types. So by placing that label on it, ad types both partially remove internet marketers from the decision making pro and set up a situation where they don’t have to deal with technology – and the unknown.

6- They undervalue what it takes to establish a capability

Other times I’ve talked to agencies that it seems they want to hire someone “young” and not pay them much and “teach” them about online marketing, even though those that teach no little of what they speak. Developing an online capability is viewed as a cost, not an opportunity and the idea then is to go as cheaply as possible.

7- Methodologies are still being developed

Yes, this is true. The field is very new and, while there have been many successes, the constantly changing nature of social media – blogs, social networks, microblogs, online video, is often in a flux. Methodologies have to play catch up.

8- Social media is largely unproven

No, this is not heresy. It’s the truth, plain and simple. It’s an emerging field and, while social media usage is growing phenomenally, it’s growing in many different directions. Each time it grow, new lessons have to be applied to new strategies.

9- Too much hype from social media strategists

“Engage or die”. “The customer is in control of the brand”. Overblown statements by ‘visionaries’ that usually aren’t true and turn off traditional marketers. Statements like that seem to be directed at other social media strategists where it becomes part of the echo chamber. Not everyone had to ‘engage’ and not everyone will die if they fail to do so.

I just asked a question via Twitter. And I’ll repeat it here.

Question for social media types…many complain about interference from legal dept. when it comes to social media, especially with UGC…so, are there any conferences, events, seminars, etc. that bring the two groups together to understand one another more?

Not to toot my own horn, but that’s a good question. And it’s one that needs to be answered.

Marketers are essentially in charge of defining, promoting, enhancing, and protecting the brand. Lawyers are essentially in charge of protecting the entity, the business, and, yes, the brand.

I got to thinking about this because social media strategists often, as part of their strategy, enlist, encourage, or allow a brands users to play a role in the branding. I got to thinking of a recent story involving a group of car enthusiasts putting together a picture calendar showing off their cars. They calendars were to be sold on CafePress. But there was some sort of communication screw up and it was halted I believe. Some social media strategists mistakenly blamed the car company.

But then I thought…wait…if the legal department did have reservations in this situation, is that necessarily a bad thing? Think about it….

What if one of the participants of an unsolicited consumer generated media effort has let’s say a problem. Like a police record. I mean, let’s say he’s the type of guy who could get nailed by Chris Hansen of Nightline. You know, a pedophile.

Ridiculous? If you think so, you’re missing the point. The point is that legal department and marketing departments are going to have to understand one another and work together to both reasonably promote and protect the brand through social media. Cutting edge vs. overly cautious won’t do. Lawyer potentially nixing or at least getting in the way of potentially effective programs or frustrated marketing types angrily rolling their eyes at the stupidity and interference of the legal department will only serve to stifle the brand, or, potentially worse, leave it unprotected.

I don’t expect Hillary Clinton to take my advice. In fact, I fully expect her to keep forging ahead, putting out negative ads against Barack Obama and push for the delegates of the rule-breaking states of Florida and Michigan to be counted. I think the intensity of 35 years of waiting and wanting to run for president will take over and make her not see logic that she basically can’t win the nomination sans an Gary Hart-like Obama implosion. And there are no signs of that happening. I fully expect her to pull no punches and either she or her surrogates will attack Obama viciously, making him all the more vulnerable come November.

Disclosure: I worked back in 1992 for her husband’s presidential run. Worked in seven states. Something I’ll never forget. A blast. Makes me patriotic just thinking about it. Running around New Hampshire. I’m an independent though. And more of a centrist. Hillary (and Obama) are definitely to my left. McCain, whom I respect, is to my right.

Hillary turned me off with part of Hillarycare. On something so large an encompassing, you start off in the center or center-left. Not hard left. I remember a provision that would force organizations to enroll in insurance that would provide abortions services. Organizations such as the Catholic Church. When the Church objected to this provision, the answer came back: tough shit. As a Catholic who is slightly pro-choice, I was offended. There’s a stark difference between allowing an action (an abortion) and forcing an entity to pay for that action if it is completely against it’s principles. Thus, Hillary turned me off.

Two days ago, I read a post on TechPresident written by Liza Sabater. She pointed to a blog entry written by Erin Kotecki Vest, the Queen of Spain. ;)

The Queen, a former supporter of Hillary, makes a passioned plea for the Senator from New York to step down from the race. That’s because the Queen sees Hillary now as a polarizing figure, one that divides. She defends Hillary in the end, however, in that she sees this polarization largely as the result of the mental makeup of those that Hillary turns off:

If you firmly believe that there is still time for you to change the hearts and minds of those rude and stubborn Americans who are voting with their gut when they see “Hillary” on the ballot-then please, prove me wrong.

Ewww. Queen, you disappoint me. Rude and stubborn. When will some people learn? ;) One must be careful when considering the motives of others when they vote. But you are still my favorite Queen!

But I’m here not to trash Hillary, but to help her. To help her save her brand. In fact, I disagree with the Queen’s appeal. You see, I’m not a fan nor a hater of Hillary. But I can cetainly understand why she has legions of both. To me, she’s performed admirably as a Senator. She wasn’t an idealogue like many expected her to be. And she’s been given high marks by Republicans for her ability to work with them. Yes, she has the ability to reach across the aisle. We need that and she’s not been given a fair shake on that issue.

So, here goes. Hillary, accept the fact that you have almost no chance of winning the nomination. Accept the fact that a flurry of negative ads by you attacking Obama will only turn millions of Democrats off. Off of you personally. Accept the reality that if you fully try to have those delegates in Florida and Michigan count, you’ll tear apart the party and appear to be desperate and sinister in what would look like a fanatical desire to become president. Nixonian.

Instead, campaign your posterior off in Texas and Ohio. And let’s not forget Vermont and my native state of Rhode Island. Strictly in a positive manner. Don’t show that lack of graciousness as you did when you didn’t publicly acknowledge Obama’s continual sweeps. No bawdy negative attacks. Lay out your ideas passionately. Advance that agenda that you believe in. Find that voice. Give it your all. Make some of those “rude and stubborn” people think twice. And do it knowing the whole time that there’s a 3% chance that you’re going to be the nominee.

And when and if you lose these primaries, bow out graciously. Congratulate Barack Obama for his hard fought victory. Acknowledge that he has indeed touched something in many an American soul.

Right now, you look like the Bad Hillary. The power hungry, it’s all-about-me Hillary. The one that causes people to vote against you because of their gut.

By campaigning in a positive manner, you will be closing out your campaign and you’ll leave a positive taste in the mouths of Democrats anywhere. They’ll see your passion and ideas as you lay them out and perhaps lead legislatively in 2009. They’ll see you as you should be, the Good Hillary.

You see, Barack Obama, the likely nominee, while inspirational, is still vulnerable. Ask Texas state Rep. Kirk Watson. Barack Obama’s lack of national experience may prove to be too much for voters. I’m not saying that should be the case…I’m saying that it could be. And come November, we could see yet another Republican take the presidency.

All of which would make you the front runner for 2012.

That’s if you stay positive and show passion.

But I doubt you’ll do that. Because it’s my guess is that you’ll show the Bad Hillary that have turned so many off, causing them to become rude and stubborn. And it will be unfortunate if that ends up being your legacy.

Check out this excellent post by Geoff Livingston regarding GM’s vision and strategy on how they’re using social media.  In The Word of Mouth is Driving Others, it shows that GM “gets it” by engaging automotive enthusiasts while understanding their own presence remains important.   It’s crossposted on Jason Fall’s Social Media Explorer

Let me first reveal that Abraham Harrison LLC, my employer and my company, is an online reputation management company — online reputation protection, promotion, defensive SEO, domain name strategy, and crisis management. That said, I could not be happier because online reputation management is apparently the new black, at least according to Techdirt, Forget Publicists, All The Cool Kids Have Online Reputation Managers:

It’s been well-documented that Google has become something of the mythical permanent record teachers warned you about as kids. There are plenty of stories about people losing jobs or discovering dubious information about dates using Google. A few years back, services popped up claiming that they could scrub your online record clean — though, how successful such services could be was certainly called into question. However, it appears that those services have morphed into a new, somewhat scary, category called online reputation management. While it’s to be expected that corporations might have people monitoring online reputations, it’s quite another thing to have individuals hire firms to do the same thing.

(Tip of the hat for the article to Scott Burns)

I have tried to explain defensive SEO to clients on pitches and here are a couple examples and analogies I have used in the past. I promise to come up with better analogies, but this is what I have at the moment!

Rockets on Israeli Settlements

Most of the time, defensive SEO is sort of like cleaning up a crime scene. There is a lot of manual labor involved in that cleaning. It requires pressurized water hoses, clorox, mops, panes of glass, lots of spackle, and some paint. The goal after a crime has been committed, is to return the scene to normalcy — as if nothing happened here.

Unfortunately, during a crisis situation, the crime is ongoing. I compare it to the daily rocket fire from Lebanon and the Gaza Strip falling randomly on Jewish settlements. Bombing of this sort is random and destructive and done not as a targeted attack but is known as “firing for effect,” which is to say as terrorism and a way of unsettling the settlers.

When it is the security and confidence of a community that is at stake and when there is no way to be sure that the attacks are ever over, returning these settlements in a state of destruction is unacceptable. There are Israeli task forces that have the single-minded job of responding to any and all rocket attacks immediately after the emergency responders leave. The trucks are mobile housing contractors. They have the ability to actively and quickly clean up any and all signs of a destructive attack within hours of the event.

All shrapnel pock marks are spackled, all burn marks are painted over, and all broken glass is replaced. While this may just be a futile act, it is essential for this kind of defensive strategy to continue and continue. Why? Well, this is a game of hearts and minds. This is a game of keeping up appearances to make sure that all the settlers feel safe in their every day life, day after day. This perceived safety is better than none at all. The reality of the day-to-day is enough; however, living in a home with broken windows and the pock marks of shrapnel is too close, especially for neighbors and new settlers.

Cleaning up these attacks daily and footing the bill and resources is the cost of doing business. It is a budgeted line-item, equally important to actually finding ways, both diplomatic and military, to stop the attacks some day.

If one were to wait for the attacks to be over, strategically, ignoring the tactical, then those same hearts and minds might very well decide that living in the settlements, living in Israel, or even moving to Israel is an unacceptable decision.

One must never underestimate perception of safety and its power over both settlers, government, citizens, visitors, tourists, and immigrants; same may be said with a company’s or person’s reputation: investors, employees, relationships, opportunities, and families may become insecure enough to abandon ship.

El Al Jumbo Jets Chaffing and Flaring the Skies

Unfortunately, one cannot hide El Al’s new Boeing 777, the world’s largest twinjet, when it takes off and lands. Not yet anyway. The 777 is a sitting target. One cannot do much about it. What can one do? Well, there are several things: you can have sensors that check to see if there are any service-to-air missiles either locked on or inbound — that’s a start. You can also make sure that your pilots have been trained in evasive maneuvers, which, unfortunately, are limited in jumbo jets. At the end of the day, however, you need to just make sure that the jet isn’t accessible to any SAMs.

El Al commercial aircraft are outfitted not with cloaks of invisibility but with “softkill” countermeasures. A countermeasure is a system (usually for a military application) designed to prevent sensor-based weapons from acquiring and/or destroying a target. Softkill measures generally interfere with the signature of the target to be protected. One or more of the following actions may be taken to provide softkill: reduction of the 777′s signature, augmentation of the 777′s signature, and the cloning or imitation of the 777′s signature. These techniques are used to generally prevent lock-on of a threat sensor to the commercial aircraft.

It is based on altering the signature of the target by either concealing the platform signature or enhancing the signature of the background, thus minimizing the contrast between the two. Some of these techniques include IR-decoy flares, serving to counter infrared-guided missiles (SAM), and radar decoys, in the form of chaff.

The Internet is very similar. Search engines are doubly so. It is impossible to stop flying. It is impossible to disappear the aircraft. And, it is impossible to delete, kill, or remove all threats in advance. Even if it is possible in the Internet to have an attack site brought down, it is simple enough to duplicate content, is simple for the attackers to create rally points, regroup, and then attack again. In fact, bringing a site down oftentimes results in redoubled enemy efforts.

Some of the only effective tools one can use to use “softkill countermeasures” — make sure there is enough chaff and there are enough enough flares in the search results so that when someone tries to attack your brand, their attack ends up getting lost on page 5+ of the returns while still allowing friendlies, “passengers,” and clients to easily and safely find their way to you.

How about them apples?

Me too.

You want to get back to the show, the game, the newscast. See the bad guy get his ass nailed, the final two minutes of the tight game, or news on the latest scoop on the election cycle. The last thing you want to see is a series of presentations about pills that can make you pee better, a car that supposedly makes you cool, and a law firm that chases ambulances.

Me too.

But every once and a while, you’ll watch something that will catch your eye. It will make you laugh. Chuckle inside. You’ll be able to relate to it. Or you’ll be impressed because it’s impressive, not because the commercial is trying to pretend that it’s impressive with itself. Or you’ll think, shit, how did they do that?

Me too.

If that’s what happens, then that’s a commercial that will likely end up on Firebrand.

Firebrand is a client of ours. We’re proud to have them. They’re a new media outlet – literally. We’re proud to have them. They’re a new media outlet – literally. They’re on the web at ‘re on the web at http://www.firebrand.com and on the ION network on cable in 95 million homes. They seek out and get the world’s best commercials and play them, MTV style. From the States, Britain, Malaysia, Canada, Australia, India.

Now, let’s talk football. Let’s talk the Super Bowl. I could go off on a tangent and first talk about the great commercials, but I’m a lifelong fanatical New England Patriots fan so to me, this Sunday means football. I had to get that in.Allright, so lets’s talk about those about great commercials that the Super Bowl is known for. They get plenty of press beforehand. People do stop and watch them and they then talk about them the next day. They remember them. And they wish that all TV ads were that good.

We’ll, this week Firebrand will be celebrating ads of Super Bowls past all week long. Then on Monday, February 4th, they’ll be hosting “Firebrand Monday”, showing all the ads from the previous day’s Big Game. Viewers will be treated to the likes of Terry Tate, Office Linebacker and Carmen Electra

Here’s the lineup for the week.

Monday January 28th: “BIG TIME ATHLETES” in classic Big Game commercials

Tuesday January 29th: “BIG BUDGET PRODUCTIONS” for classic Big Game commercials

Wed January 30th: “CHICKS IN CHARGE” in classic Big Game commercials

Thursday January 31st: “BIG TIME CELEBRITIES” in classic Big Game commercials

Friday February 1st: “BIG TIME BRANDS” in classic Big Game commercials

Monday February 4th: IT’S FIREBRAND MONDAY, THE DAY AFTER THE BIG GAME – CELEBRATE THE HOLIEST DAY IN ADVERTISING WITH THE OFFICE LINEBACKER, CARMEN ELEKTRA AND CLASSIC BIG GAME COMMERCIALS!

Don Frischmann of Rubicon Consulting wrote this great article for AdAge.   A great read.

Nothing is Insignificant When It Comes to Brand Fulfillment

Two articles caught my eye earlier this week.

One was an AdAge article entitled “So Much for Engagement; Buys Are Still Based on Eyes”. It talked about a recent study by Advertiser Perceptions. Marketers and media buyers are looking to spend more and more dollars online. That’s because their first and foremost metric is reach – and that’s were people are going today. Online. But they see it more as a results oriented medium and are not doing it for engagement purposes as they don’t perceive that the online is good for engagement. This study was based on a survey of 2047 marketers and their media buyers.

The second one was a press release of a report put out by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council. It described how measurable ROI is becoming an increasingly important factor for marketers as they transform dollars online. Accountabilty is of prime importance as marketers look to measure the value of the programs they’ve created and the investments they’ve made. A result of this trend in 2007 was the relative high turnover of the agencies used – ad, web design, and PR – to carry out these programs. The reasons for the severing of relationships was often tied into “lack of innovation” and “no value-added thinking”. Hmm…

ROI is often hard to prove in social media marketing. While most forms of marketing involve some sort of relationship building, social media marketing is almost completely based upon it. It’s effectiveness is not measured in short term or fixed period metrics – the heart of ROI, but long-term difficult-to-measure attributes related to brand affinity and customer lifetime value. It’s all qualitative analysis and not quantitative analysis.

If it’s true that companies are going to be spending more and more online with a greater focus on sustaining measurable ROI, then it doesn’t bode well for social media types if we have a recession that many are predicting.

Francois Gossieaux, in Emergence Marketing, makes an excellent point in refuting the heavy emphasis on ROI in marketing, period.

“by measuring ROI on discreet processes (i.e., a specific lead generation campaign), which most companies who measure ROI do, companies are reducing marketing to a collection of simple linear processes, when in reality it is a complex multi-variable and non-linear system. So by oversimplifying marketing to make it measurable, many companies will actually break marketing more so than it already is.”

Marketers have often complained – justifiably so in my opinion – of how marketing is often devalued within their organization. It can be viewed as a cost as opposed to an investment. The push for ROI to justify spend means that they could choose strategies and tactics that 1) they are most familiar with and 2) are the most measurable.

An amazing paragraph from the AdAge article reads:

So which medium is the most engaging? Survey respondents said it’s print — yet ranked print lowest for delivering results. Online was ranked lowest for engagement but highest for results, while TV was ranked in the middle for both results and engagement.

Let’s check this out…marketers are increasing their online spend because that’s where the people are. Online is the most interactive medium and by extension of that should be the best for engagement but marketers (and probably ad agencies) see it as the worst. Marketers now see it as being the best for results (the “R” in ROI) along with perhaps reach. This would seemingly say that they don’t yet value the various aspects of social media marketing.

And not only that, but print, the medium that’s both losing its share of ad spend and is considered to be the worst for results is considered to be the best for engagement by these very same marketers. WTF?

It’s no secret that many traditional marketers and media buyers see the online arena through their traditionalist eyes. We see evidence of that all the time. Facebook’s Beacon and Social Ads are recent examples of that. Fake attempts to tie into word of mouth. Facebook is hot. Lots of eyeballs lets do it. We’ll be hip and it’s “pushing the envelope”. It’s likely traditional types are trying to please whomever they answer to.

Mack Collier pointed out how in a conversation we had from his post “Companies Remain in the Shadow of the Blogosphere”:

“but I think many companies and their PR firms still see most blogs as having an audience of about 4 people, all family members of the author. I think that’s why you are seeing them treat the highly-trafficked blogs, the Tech Crunchs, as media sources. But for 99% of blogs, they don’t care and don’t understand why they should.”

He’s right. And that’s unfortunate. But the odd thing is that the key decision makers – marketing executives – are likely in their eternal search for ROI are hurting their efforsts for long term success by view the online arena as ineffective for engagement. And then by either choosing traditional minded ad agencies (and then complaining that they lack innovation) or by stifling the creativity of less traditional and more innovative agencies (by an unnecessary focus on immediate ROI) they are shooting themselves in BOTH feet.

This is a follow up on my last Post about Otto, but this time in English!

Before I start complaining again, I will give you a brief summary of my last post.

The “Otto Versand” is the major German Mail-Order Company. But once again there is a huge gap between American and European Online Business. I guess Otto hasn’t realized the importance of the Internet yet. They still focus on rural stay-at-home Mums who order by old-school mail and this is supported by their Online Marketing practices. They use long cryptic URL s on their Web Pages, have no innovative Affiliate Programs like the “Amazon Wishlist,” and when you try to Google them, you have to assume that they have never heard of search engine optimization (SEO). Otto operates the second largest market in the world, but their web appearance is from ages ago!

Those were my thoughts two months ago and, to be honest, not a lot has changed in the meantime! The URLs are still cryptic, there is no new Affiliate Program, and the one they still use doesn’t have a good reputation at all! However, all of a sudden they do appear in Google’s top search results about nearly any consumer good! Bravo!

Listen up Otto, this was a start, but if you want to catch up, there is a lot of work that needs to be done! Go Otto Go!

BtoB Online reports that 60.1% of B to B marketers will increase their marketing budgets next year. While that’s more than half, but still shows caution. It’s probable that many are unsure about the direction of the economy.

The good news is that 79.1 percent will be increasing their online budgets for 2008. Of all the methods of marketing, that stand as the highest. What we’re going to be witnessing is companies taking money out of traditional and going online. And we may see a lot of this happening.

Given now that we’re seeing consumer generated goods making their way successfully on the internet through the use of ad units, I’m going to guess that B to B will go that route as well. And a very healthy dose of search. Both should be essential.

I’m wondering though…will we see much devoted to social media. Educational/promo pieces on YouTube, increased blogger engagement, the use of podcasts for current customers. I’m sure this is being done, but more likely in the tech sector. I’m just wondering what other industry cultures will move in that direction.