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 in the process of pitching a potential client. From what I see, if this works out, it will be an excellent opportunity. They’re a marketing service provider that offers the traditional services to their client base. The methods they use are still very much needed, they aren’t out of date, and they won’t be out of date any time soon. But in this era of digital marketing, those methodologies clearly aren’t enough. Not when the users of their clients products are more likely to look online for those very products.

That being said, there were several aspects of conversations I’ve had with potential clients that have showed me why online marketing has yet to receive the respect that it deserves. Budget allotments, questions about handling things internally, executive level buy-in, a determined need to find specific, immediate ROI.   While I realize that the whole concept of online is still emerging, I nevertheless find this somewhat amazing. Most people today have integrated the internet into their lives, and have done so for many years. In fact, most of us use it for communication, or entertainment for research. But, still, there’s that initial resistance in many people in business.  It’s not only a reluctance to not only endeavor into this no longer new arena, but to also to take the very steps to learn about it.

So I’ve put together a few reasons why I think this is the case. Each may serve as an “objection” that will need to be overcome. Whether on a one-to-one level upon pitching a potential client. Or on an industry-wide basis.

Lack of Vision

When companies can’t see beyond their basic core services, when they don’t understand – or worse, when they don’t take the time to understand industry trends, they show an alarming lack of vision. And it’s a lack of vision that could kill their business. It goes back to that “where should we be in five years?” question. They don’t understand that they have to answer it constantly.

I’ve seen decision makers in some fields effectively make choices to not learn anything new. And it’s not just because they lack an understanding that they need to change, but they never display the curiosity to learn. The very curiosity that acts as the impetus in creating a vision that will create change.

I’ve noticed this in the political arena. In between elections, I’d be attending conferences that would discuss the use of the internet in political campaigns. They’d be attended by mostly relatively young people, all of whom were politically sharp and internet savvy. Come election time, they wouldn’t get a seat at the table.  The more seasoned members would praise them as being “upcomers” and they’d describe themselves to being “out of the loop” when it comes to “all this technology stuff”, but they’d always make sure that these young people they’re supposedly impressed with be kept in the back room with a microscopic budget and no say in any formulation of strategy.

The Disconnect 

The mentality seems to be, at best, that the upcoming changes (if they’re aware of them) don’t apply to them. Somehow they feel as if they’re separate from the rest of the business world.

The mentality is “Sure I do the majority of my business correspondence via email, and I just bought a book on Amazon for my brother-in-law, and my co-worker’s now engaged to a guy she met on Match.com, and I’m planning a vacation by looking at Hotels.com, and I have to check my bank account status today online, and I’m gonna read that story in the Post that my friend forwarded to me, and I should donate online today to Obama/McCain, and ooh, here’s an Evite to go to thank event by the river, and I’ve got to update and add some photos to my Facebook page, and I should read that restaurant review online, and I’ll just go to the client website to get information, and that was an inspirations quote I was emailed today, and then there was that hilarious video on YouTube, and here at work, I need to place an order through that online catalog, and I want to check out the site for that vet that I need to take Scruffy to, and I should order a film from Netflix.”

Then they think, “But I don’t see how the internet affects my business.  It’s not tangible to what I do.”
Lack of Priority

If one thinks in terms of traditional methods, then one is going to make traditional decisions.  If online is the constant afterthought, the add-on at the end, the low priority, then it’s never going to move up.  Again, if decision makers don’t take a step back to learn and see the entire picture, then it will never happen.  Or when it finally does happen, we get…

We Can Do It Ourselves

There’s a trend in business to day to bring in every aspect of markeing communications in house. That’s quite common here in the DC area with all of the associations and tech companies. Many of these organizations turn to the “folks in IT” to create the new site that to replace the old one sorely needs an update. This is the extension of the trend of having one’s nephew create something on his spare time and then put it up on the web. The result is often marginal improvements that add nothing to the brand or user experience. And by not examining beyond the confines of the offiice walls, they never see “what’s out there”.

An extra degree of separation

I don’t know if that’s the right term for all of what I’ll explain, but I see a lot of the traditional ad agencies and PR firms – the ones that are the first ones many potential clients go to – know so little about the fundamentals of online marketing – let alone the specialty of social media – that they muck up many marketing efforts.  Flash on homepages of websites, making them slow to download and invisible to search engines.  Things like that.  Blogs that post puff pieces and reworked press releases.

The problem is that those ad agencies and PR firms have the ear of the client, first and foremost. The marketing company hasn’t taken the time to learn new strategies, technologies, and methodologie while the client doesn’t know enough about to tell the difference.  The marketing company blocks new concepts from being brought up out of their own ignorance and territorialism.  The client says, fine, you guys are the experts.

The online folks are often then one degree of separation beyond this.  All too often the ear we have is that of the marketing company who may see us as a threat.

Soon, I’ll talk about what many in the online arena do wrong.

Guess, I’m just frustrated.  In a bad mood.

OK, at the beginning of the year I went downtown to a relatively prominent ad agency to talk to them about a client they had.  The client is a large business/trade association that’s involved (admittedly laggardly) in the digital revolution.  They’re somewhat, but not totally, dinosaurs.  An industry that has to change, is taking to long to do so, but has a large enough presence to stymie some elements of change that would actually benefit many of us.  And, the client, being a trade association, they are innately slow moving, averse to change.

The ad agency guy told me that they could use me (and Abraham Harrison) in two ways.

The first was advocacy.  Grassroots.  Online.  Offline.   Here in DC.  And througout the US.  The agency itself was a traditional  shop with decent interactive capabilities.  Neither the agency nor did the ad guy have any political experience.  I’ve done that.  So has Abraham Harrison. Solid.

The second was social media.  Their client wanted to do some “non-traditional” stuff.  They wanted to “engage”the public.  The need here was a rebranding campaign, as in “Beef, it’s what’s for dinner.”  An attempt to get the public to look at the industry that this association represents in a different light.   Again, Abraham Harrison.

I followed up how we’d work with him.  I gave him some ideas.  More than once.  It was always “let’s talk in a week or two”.  But I could tell that his lack of understanding of social media and political advocacy was a roadblock.  He had some fear about coming across clueless to me.  And he didn’t want to admit himself.  But I’m guessing he was terrified of coming across clueless to the client.

But the client is clueless as well.

I offered to have a conference call set up so we could not so much explain what we do, but to better equip him with idea on how effective social media could be in this case.  He demurred, saying that he would first meet with the client.

Bad move.  This means that the clueless meets with the clueless to discuss something they are clueless about.  Which means that neither of them brings it up because neither one wants to reveal that they are clueless about what they both are choosing not to talk about.  Yet they both know in the back of their minds that the thing that they don’t want to talk about is something that they need to  know, then talk about, then implement.

But if they don’t talk about it, and not look like idiots, and they can manage to delay all of this that much more.

So then they’re going to run this campaign old style.  Part of it is already online.  I’ve already seen the logo.  It looks like something out of the 1950′s.  Seriously.  It’s color scheme doesn’t make sense.  Nothing bold.  Lots of black and white photos to remind you of back in the day.  It says “We are a timid industry. In decline”   There’s a bunch of print ads, some outdoor ads, a few radio spots.  And one online ad.

They are trying to remind us how important they (or more accurately, they’re members) play a role in our lives. Yet they do nothing to integrate us into that equation.

And more and more, people are turning away from what they’re about.  I can see why.

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.

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!

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.

Millions of netizens – including me – have taken a great liking to YouTube. And for good reason. You can find videos of practically anything you want. It’s given us the hilarious, the creative, the intriguing. I’ve learned a lot from watching some old videos and have found scenes of old movies that I loved and wanted to see again.

That being said, NBC’s recent closing of its channel on YouTube and pulling of its videos content show us that YouTube, as an entity, is far from being completely vital to content distribution. When push comes to shove, it is actually expendable. At least, that is, to big media companies that have significant amounts of valuable content.

NBC shut down its channel because they’re launching their own service, Hulu. A joint venture with News Corp., Hulu is set to launch in late October.

I’d say this is a good move by NBC.  While it may initially cause some confusion at first, once it’s up an running, it will easily be found.  The traffic that goes to Hulu will be 100% traffic for the site.  On YouTube, someone can watch 10 minutes of something and then hop over to a video of a guy picking his nose.  NBC will essentially own their traffic.  They can measure it better, the can monetize it better.  They’ll be able to create greater brand affinity and loyal communities of interest.  The ROI could be excellent.  The model is unproven at this point, but so is YouTube.

With the issue of reputation management in the news, I’ve been thinking a lot about the recent discovery that many of the Mattel toys made in China were painted with lead-based paints. This had followed several other unrelated incidents that had previously caused embarrassment to either Mattel or to China.

A company such as Mattel needs to have a proactive online strategy that could meet the negativity head on, to help suppress those damaging rumors that could hurt the company both immediately and permanently. A company needs to understand what is being said about them in online forums, on blogs, and, if necessary, it needs to help blunt and diminish the negativity headed their way.

For Mattel, it was the recall of millions of other toys that contained small magnets that could fall out of the toy and could be swallowed by young children. And for China, it was the massive recall of pet food earlier this year.

Oddly enough, a controversy erupted when Mattel apologized to U.S. consumers. The company had done the ‘right thing’ – or what is now considered standard practice – as they trotted out CEO Bob Eckert and put him on video with him stressing that Mattel will immediately look into the matter and make changes. And he wanted us to know that he, as a Dad himself, was concerned. Relational empathy works.

But the problem was that as Mattel was apologizing to US citizens, they were subtlety making it seem the problem was ‘with China’…which, if not exonerating the toy company, muddled up their role in the fiasco. In the meantime, the Chinese government was not thrilled as most of the recalled toys had problems with their very design as created by Mattel as opposed to lax Chinese standards or poor Chinese workmanship. As a result , Mattel made an apology to China, even though lax standards DID cause some of the problems.

So, as it often happens, we don’t know really who is to blame here. Or if any blame is damning enough to have either the company or the country or both scorned. Now that may be good enough and the issue may go away. But today, with the blogosphere in full swing, with online forums abuzz, with citizen journalism being heralded as a wave of the future, my bet is that problems like this will last more than a bit longer.

So, to me, companies such as Mattel (or governments, or associations, or any type of organization) and their PR agencies are going to have to either learn about or invest in the services of a digital consultancy that can help them manage, repair, or defend their reputation.

Disclosure: Abraham Harrison offers those services. But hear me out.

Businesses are going to make mistakes. Some honest ones, some callous ones. There will always be forces out that the will – very legitimately – call them on these mistakes. But mistakes can lead to rumors to that can spread very fast, to activist groups looking for the killer punch, to media outlets looking for that big story…when there may be no story to speak of.

Traditional PR practices still make perfect sense. Put the CEO on video, develop an new (and more effective) set of guidelines, work with the media. But today that may be enough.

A company such as Mattel needs to have a proactive online strategy that could meet the negativity head on, to help suppress those damaging rumors that could hurt the company both immediately and permanently. A company needs to understand what is being said about them in online forums, on blogs, and, if necessary, it needs to help blunt and diminish the negativity headed their way.

It’s a whole new ball game.

Google hates high-design websites. Google needs plaintext. People hate high-design websites after they get past the wow-factor because high-design websites tend to lead with form over function, confusing people with innovations in design rather than innovations in usability. Graphic designers might be the bane of my existence as a technology strategist and an expert in SEO. PR folks aren’t the only people who don’t get Web2.0.

I spend most of my time undoing all of the mistakes that graphic designer have saddled my clients with: gorgeous sites made entirely with Flash, Shockwave, Quicktime, GIFs, JPGs, and PNGs.

If you want to develop a modern, powerful, informative, and current web resource, you need to lead with innovation, technology, usability, accessibility, and content. If you lead with design, you’re probably building a beautifully pathetic Web 1.0 web site, maybe even Web 0.0.

Abraham Harrison LLC specializes search engine optimization, Internet strategy, new marketing, word-of-mouth marketing, grassroots outreach, and online reputation management. My personal expertise is in what is known as Web 2.0.

These high-design site made of “sliced images” or “Flash blogs” are shallow sites devoid of text, architecture, copy, permalinks, meta-data, tags, categories, site maps, keywords, descriptions, or anything else.

After 15-years of surfing the web, you would think that graphic designers would learn to stop trying to bring print design to the web. There are many offenses that place graphic designers squarely in the camp of web 0.0 but the worst of which is the lack of the permanent link-to, making it impossible for bloggers, social bookmarking sites, or social networks to link direction to explicit pages on a larger site.

Many “Flash blobs” — web sites that are basically a platform for gorgeous Macromedia Flash-based websites — don’t offer ways to bookmark particular content such as the Contact page, the Directions page, or the Services page.

This past Thursday featured what looks to be the first of several “Presidential Candidate Dialogues” jointly hosted by MySpace and MTV. The event, held at the University of New Hampshre, featured former U.S. Sen. John Edwards talking to and taking questions from and audience of up to 300 attenedees, primarily made up of Univesity of New Hampshire Students, MTV viewers, and MySpace users.But that wasn’t all. It allowed for an online audience to submit questions via instant messager and also express opinions on Edwards’ performance. These opinions could be gathered collectively to create a consensus and then this consensus could be reported back in real time to the candidate. The whole lasted for about an hour and had a definite energetic feel to it.

Washington Post political blogger moderated the event along with MTV correspondents Gideon Yago and SuChin Park. I’ve always like Cilizza. He seems to have a pretty deep insight yet maintain a down to earth approach about him. And two veteran pollsters were brought in, John McLaughlin, a Republican, and Geoffrey Garin, a Democrat to handle the polling and online audience response feedback.

But here’s what I liked abut the event itself:

1) The continued dispersement of news and informational media delivery
While we’re beyond the period in which the vast majority of people (or at least those that are not directly involved in politics) get the vast majority of their news from traditional news sources – TV broadcast networks and their nightly newspapers and more recently, news oragnizational websites, we still haven’t quite reached a phase were the fragmentation of media outlets and delivery systems makes non-traditional outlets players. The CNN/YouTube debates held for the Democrats made YouTube a player, but the presence of CNN made it all the more legit.

What’s great abut this effort is that it involves two entities that are neither traditional media nor “news-centric”. Granted, MTV has a news bureau and has gotten involved in the political arena. But that isn’t it’s central mission. And MySpace was barely a blip on the nation’s consciousness at this point in the last election cycle.

Here we have two non-traditional players work together to host a forum in which is both both broadcast and webcast to potentially millions. Traditional media has a slight presence (Chris Cilizza of the Post), but it is MySpace and MTV that not only make it possible, but make it sizzle. And I bet this change is permanent.

2) Interactive audience feedback

While I wasn’t necessarily impressed with how it came out – it was mostly generic positive feedback – I like the idea that feedback can be made possible in real time. As this evolves, it should get more complex and may be used in future presidential debates between the two nominees. Can you imagine a candidate who gets too nasty or one who is constantly avoiding answering a question getting feedback live that he or she is looking idiotic or poor? It will probably happen. A major improvement over the tightly controlled events that we’ve had for the past few decades.

3) Candidate interaction to a targeted demographic in an interactive setting.

This might seem to be a combination of the first two and in a way it is. But this format can now be transferred to other non-traditonal media partners who can reach out to their targeted demographics. This means candidates will have to forego stump speeches from time to time.

I asked Kevin to write a blog post (which rocked) based on my assumption that the US is headed towards a recession based on the devaluation of the dollar, the housing market slump, and the war in Iraq. I believe that marketing and advertising online is recession-proof, especially as attention profiling and behavioral targeting strategies improve and ads become customized to each the unique hopes, dreams, needs, wants, and context of users online.

My premise, in short, is that folks will hunker down during this recession with only the “Internet” to keep them company, in the form of VOIP, IPTV, social media, MMORPGs, and networked video games.

Essentially, folks will spend all of their attention online so there will be more ad and marketing dollars spent online in order to reach them. During the upcoming recession, search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), new marketing, online outreach, online engagement, online advocacy, viral and word-of-mouth marketing, targeted direct marketing, and laser-targets online ad buys will thrive because they’re relatively cheap, focused, and where the people are, while print ads, commercials, and radio spots will plummet: too much buck for the bang.

We’re going to have a recession. let’s just make that assumption.

Usually, during a recession, ad revenues drop. My argument is that during a recession, people stay home more. Web surfing is cheap, amusing, plentiful, and also most amusing with broadband. While people may cut down cable, they will keep their Internet connection — and will hunker-down on the Internet while they’re low on personal spending money, on discretionary income.

My dad was an photographer and ad man in Hawaii during a recession in Japan that totally gutted the the Hawaiian economy. Traditionally, the first thing companies do when the shit hits the fan is pull ad dollars.

In that scenario, my dad’s company almost shuttered. What this shakedown did, however, was created stock photography and video, killing the bespoke day-rate on-site corporate photographer. Something always comes out in the end.

Downturns result in a need to make systems more efficient and more effective. It just wasn’t affordable for agencies to hire shooters to do shoots, bespoke. There were too many variables and all the risk was on the shoulders of the client. Stock photography changed all of that: cheaper and oftentimes better, since the shooter incurs the risk and the stock is “all the best of all time” and not the best that a particular day, week, or season had to offer.

How effective is plastering walls with bills or standing on a soap box when people are at home and online? How effective are commercials on cable channels people drop as a “luxury?” How worthwhile are those magazine ads when people drop their subscriptions to GQ and O?

The Internet is a commodity. Broadband is no longer a luxury — people are not willing to either go back to “rabbit ears” or to dial up. Folks will keep their basic cable, I am sure — it is a commodity — and they will keep their Internet, another commodity.

Is it very interesting time. I guess this is sort of a prediction. We’ll see if it all comes true. Check out that Canadian Loonie, eh?

Well, at the end of the day, I will always quote Kevin Donlan quoting someone else:

“When times are good, you should advertise. When times are bad, you must advertise.”

I don’t know who wrote this painfully-defensive editorial on the LA Times, but he doth protest loudly and irrationally that he unintentionally put another nail in the MSM coffin and put the mainstream media doomsday clock at five-minutes to midnight. Very sad; no, rather pathetic… Via USC Annenberg School for Communication’s Online Journalism Review

“The essence of good journalism is asking the right questions. Google, however, won’t ask anything of those who submit comments. According to the company’s announcement, its only interest is that the submissions are authentic, not that they’re relevant or even truthful. As a result, the comments section is likely to be larded with spin, hype and obfuscation. A seemingly heartfelt comment may carry the CEO’s name, but the words will probably have been typed by corporate flacks.”

“There will be some valuable responses too, plugging holes in stories or correcting mistaken impressions. Google, however, won’t help readers separate the factual wheat from the public-relations chaff — a reminder that Google may strive to be the world’s index, but it’s not journalism.”

Those poor journalists and reporters said the same thing about popular papers, tabloids, the radio, television, and now the Internet. Same shit, different decade.

So, how indignant is he going to get when he finds himself or herself put out to pasture out of irrelevance.

What happens to professors, reporters, priests, rabbis, and experts when people cease to ask their opinion?

When a quick Google search and a Wikipedia look-see offers better, quicker, and more satisfying results than anywhere else?

Here is the panacea: professors, reporters, priests, rabbis, and experts actually need to start adding value. They need to earn their keep. They need to attract a readership, they need to learn to communicate more completely. These experts can no longer rely on their affiliation or their degrees to bolster their relevance and importance.

Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Douglas Rushkoff, Malcom Gladwell, and Stephen Hawking are all media darlings because, although they deserved to be completely entitled, they didn’t act that way. They wrote accessible books for regular folks.

Stop complaining and start performing and competing. Your industry, expertise, has become privatized, and you really need to compete with everyone else, even Pink is the New Blog.

Sorry mate.

One of the biggest complaints I’ve had when it comes to political coverage is that reporters seem to get all caught up in insider games of personality, orfwho’s hot and who’s not, of silly battles. They don’t discuss issues from the trees or the forest perspective. They don’t cover deeper strategy. They don’t understand online strategies. All of this is evident in an article yesterday’s New York Times. Written by Adam Nagourney, it’s called Edwards Campaign Tries to Harness Internet.

It is basically a puff piece focusing on celebrity – Joe Trippi and Elizabeth Edwards – and not what they’re actually doing. I doesn’t talk much about the hows and whys of digital political strategy.

Colin Delaney of epolitics wrote an excellent piece on it. A cut and paste from his blog:

Ah, a celebrity puff piece! Now I have a framework for understanding an article about online politics that says almost nothing about online politics. Instead, we’re treated to discussions about how much Joe Trippi knows, how John Edwards and his wife “get it,” …What you won’t see: any discussion of social networking outreach, which the Edwards campaign embraced early on, or on the relative effectivess of Edwards’s videos compared with the Clinton Sopranos spoof and Bill Richardson’s job interview clips. Nor will you read much about online fundraising, a pastime in which I hear the campaigns are somewhat interested. I.e., you won’t see any actual analysis or context, and neither will you see any discussion of the campaign’s one unmistakeable success, their SMS fundraising effort.

Colin nails but good.

People love to hate Rupert Murdoch because of how he is destroying the media and the press. What a pile of shit. We blame him, is all. If that makes you feel smug, then fine.

“Murdoch isn’t an agent for evil or good, he’s a very efficient agent for change. The media industry is rapidly transforming, and Murdoch is one of the few in the business to have sense enough to clean up from it.” Via TheStreet.com

Instead, what Rupert Murdoch is doing is simply shamelessly and fearlessly profiting from a drastic shift in the market.

Since Murdoch doesn’t fancy the press as Holy, he doesn’t give a toss about journalistic integrity or objectivity. He’s smart and I admire him.

If Rupert Murdoch ends up buying the Wall Street Journal, my fave paper, he will have completed his goal of noting about the media, like the child in The Emperor’s New Clothes, “But he has nothing on!”

Why so newspapers still believe they can coerce readers into buying papers by keeping the most popular content items offline? I found this over at the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel: “Other familiar print edition features not online at this time include birth announcements, wedding, engagement announcements and comics.”

Die positiven Folgen der Prekarisierung?! Globalisierung und Flexibilisierung sind die Stichworte meiner Generation. Seit ich mich aktiv fuer meine Umwelt interessiere, wird sie von Katastrophen heimgesucht; Ich war 14 als die new economy zusammenbrach, am elften September 2001 war ich 15 und es ging immer so weiter. Arbeitsplatzabbau und die Hartz-Reformen, deren Message war; streng dich an, ein Arbeitsplatz ist keine Selbstverstaendlichkeit, du musst dich wahrscheinlich mehrfach umorientieren und den Wohnort wechseln, wenn es sein muss. Fordern und Foerdern.

Lebenslange Vollzeitbeschaeftigung ist ein Relikt des 20. Jahrhunderts, welches denUebergang ins neue Jahrtausend nicht geschafft hat. Dem Sozialstaat geht das Geld aus, Leiharbeitsfirmen haben Hochkonjunktur und auf einmal tritt der Begriff des Prekariats auf; die neue, abgekoppelte Unterschicht!
Gewerkschafter beklagen die Tatsache, dass das unternehmerische Risiko auf den Arbeitnehmer abgewaelzt wird, er hat kein Sicherungsnetz mehr und das Klassenbewusstsein verabschiedet sich gleich mit.

Doch man kann auch ein anderes Phaenomen beobachten, die so genannten Selbstmanager. Sie sind gut ausgebildet, nehmen oft nur Projektvertraege an und verkaufen sich danach meistbietend an den naechsten Arbeitgeber. Sie sind die modernen Soeldner der Business Welt, hauptsaechlich anzutreffen auf den Schlachtfeldern der neuen und alten Medien. Sie verdienen genug, um eigene finanzielle Reserven fuer schlechte Zeiten anzulegen und mit jedem neuen Arbeitsauftrag vergroessern sie ihr eigenes Netzwerk, welches sie langfristig vor Beschaeftigungslosigkeit schuetzt. Der Selbstmanager ist in diesem Sinne kein Arbeitnehmer, sondern eine kleine Ich-AG. Er nimmt sich als eine oekonomische Einheit war und investiert wie ein Unternehmen, zum Beispiel in Technik (Handy, Laptop) Netzwerkpflege (der angenehme Teil; Partys) oder Bildung. Was Gewerkschaften ein Graus ist; die kurzfristige temporaere Bindung und die staendige Notwendigkeit zur Neuorientierung, bauen sie als ihren Vorteil aus. Sie sind mobil und haben kein Problem oefter den Wohnort zu wechseln. Er steht fuer eine Generation von jungen, erfolgsorientierten Leuten, welche die Globalisierung nicht als Gefahr, sondern als Chance begreifen.

Der typische Selbstmanager fuehlt sich nicht unsicher, sondern frei!

Joe Jaffe is frustrated after reading that, yes, upfront is supposedly on the upswing. That’s understandable…although to me, it’s not about numbers, its about the attitude that upfront is back. It never left. It’s just not as strong. And it isn’t bouncing back. But it still exists and it will continue to exist.

But what got me thinking was the larger conversation that was brought upon in the comments. Two things actually.

A debate began to develop between Tangerine Toad and Paul.

Paul says that “Advertising is dead – the advertising that bombards you with crap you don’t need and brands you don’t care about. Any online advertising that does this is also dead.”

Well, yeah. But when was this not true?

He then adds “people don’t mind being advertised to at all! As long as it is relevant, interesting and engaging (the key one being relevant).” Bingo!! I’d add as long as it’s convenient. Not too disruptive. We have come to expect that advertising can be disruptive to an extent. Especially when the content is free or cheap. But if we’ve gotta completely change our experience to deal with it, then it now sucks.

Toad however, is more absolutist. He calls out Paul, saying his view on advertising is a “clichéd mindless crock you should be embarassed to repeat.”

WTF?

Sorry, Toad, but your above-it-all blather doesn’t work. You contradict yourself a bit later by quoting Howard Gossage. “‘People don’t read advertising, they read what they are interested in”…To Gossage’s point, it doesn’t matter what media your message runs in so long as it’s interesting.”

Interesting. Compelling. Relavent.

I then headed over to Toad’s blog where he has a very interesting and insightful series going on, here, here, and here.

From Part 1…one thing he points out makes total sense…

“Yet to listen to all the self-appointed Web 2.0 gurus, this is the wave of the future, it’s a matter of years before every single American- nay every single denizen of the planet- has a MySpace site and that hanging out on MySpace will replace watching television and anyone who disagrees with them is a fucking Luddite.

Okay.

Only there’s one thing they keep forgetting: The whole world is not made up of people EXACTLY LIKE THEM.”

Yes, how true. Everyone uses Skype, has a blackberry, blogs, has profiles on MySpace and Facebook. And of course owns a Tivo.

So not true. Not everyone is an pioneer or an early adapter. Right on, Toad.

But what gets me is what he says later…

“most people aren’t living in a city they weren’t brought up in, thousands of miles from their closest friends. They’re living with spouses and children who actually get offended if they spend a few hours online, which is a solitary activity, rather than joining the rest of the family watching “American Idol.” Which mindless though it may be, is still a group activity.”

Hmmm…seems to me that Toad is making the same mistake as he accuses the Web 2.0 gurus. Making the assumption that everyone is like them. Which is exactly what the decision makers dedicated to the upfront are doing.

Comes full circle, don’t you think?

Strumpette published an article by John Bell called Bell on Who Owns “Conversational Marketing”? Nobody owns conversation marketing. Conversation marketing is not a thing, it is an understanding and an agreement. It agrees that PR, advertising, marketing, politics, and business will stop resenting and reviling its very own clients, “the people.” Firstly, since when did the people become “them?” I am a person. You are a person, right? Oh, no! I forgot, you are a senior communications executive director.

Well, I own marketingconversation.com — and marketing conversation is really what new media marketing should be. I spent three years working at New Media Strategies, promoting movies for Buena Vista and TV shows for Sci-Fi “on behalf of” the client — and it works.

The true problem, in my very humble opinion, is that old PR — and Edelman is surely old PR, as I discovered in a mere 90-appalling days — really disrespects “the people” the way loverboys essentially disrespect women. They want them, they need them, but they feel essentially superior to them, feeling entitled to use them for fun and profit.

The title of this piece highlights the issue: “Who “owns” conversational marketing? PR, Advertising or The People!” — aren’t we all the people? Aren’t you and I — expensive consultants, PR wonks, and Admen — people too?

I taught a creative writing course to high school kids. One of the kids was much wealthier than the rest. One day, he came to me to tell me that the rich were people too. Well, Admen, PR wonks, and marketing consultants are people too.

Loud, inauthentic, and bombastic surely work when one is busy — in the short run.

Oh, and the award for the most naive thing said this week is, “Conversational marketing isn’t right for every client. But when it is, we need to be pushing our client forward into that conversation.”

Truth is, the movie “Singles” said it best with the quote, “not having a thing is your thing.” What “the people” are responding to is the grotesque feeling of entitlement that Old PR feels — the level of noblesse oblige that advertisers, politicians, marketers, and PR professionals feel… when I was told that I needed to write copy that aimed at 7th grade reading ease, it was not said out of love, it was said out of loathing.

What differentiates old PR from new PR is this: old PR loathes its clients and “the people” while new PR — or the most effective Cluetrain PR — must love its clients and “the people.” I guess I can boil it down to “love the sinner, hate the sin.”

While most PR folks cherish their address books, their contact files, and their lists of Times, Post, and Tribune reporters, very few of them realize that the men and women who run message boards, organize WoW guilds, build islands on Second Life, run television prediction market sites, organize IRC channels, and publish blogs are the new reporters, publishers, and editors.

I wrote an article called, “Online Communities are Real Communities of Real People” where I ask, “Do you think that people who play Second Life, World of Warcraft, Xbox Live, MMOGs, and MMORPGs are freaks? Do you consider message boards, forums, virtual realities, and virtual communities to be a waste of time, populated by losers?” and then answer, “If so, then you need to leave online advocacy, new media marketing, online brand promotion, online word of mouth marketing, online outreach, blogger relations, and brand ambassadorship to someone who has lived, loved, and connected to people in real ways online. And continues to do so.”

So, if you are saying that Old PR needs to stay away from New PR until it gets over itself, then yes, I agree; otherwise, I do have to hand it to Very Old PR Agencies like Edelman Worldwide for at least going out there and making all the mistakes in the book.