Category Archives: Social Media marketing

A creative proposal with a kick ass social media plan

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Two agencies compete in a head-to-head pitch for a fictitious project based around the film “Casablanca.”  live in front of several hundred people at iMedia’s Entertainment Marketing Summit

Doug Schumacher and his badass team at Basement, won the pitch. Here is  the marketing strategy and creative thinking that won them the fictitious gig. Pay attention especially to the social media plan within the slides.

Here is the premise for the pitch:

“Shortly after winning the 1943 Academy Award for Best Picture, all the prints of ‘Casablanca’ were mysteriously lost. Although many stills, newspaper accounts, magazine articles and subsequent interviews with the stars of the film have long been available, nobody has seen ‘Casablanca’ since 1943.

“Then, in January 2008, an archivist stumbled across the prints in the Warner Bros. Burbank, Calif. lot. Excited by this discovery, Warner Bros. has chosen to do a limited theatrical re-release of this great but long-missing film.”

The mission:

The hypothetical re-release would be for Valentine’s Day weekend, 2009. The budget to work with was $350K-$500K for creative development and non-paid media, and $1,000,000 in paid media.

Here is the competitive landscape:

  • A Matthew McConaughey/Kate Hudson romantic comedy opening on the same day and date
  • A Michael Bay war-action-adventure flick, set in Iraq in a bit of counter-programming; same opening day and date
  • A long-awaited two-part “More Sex and the City” is airing on TNT, part one on Valentine’s Day eve

Here are the slides:

The trust factor in social media marketing

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I don’t know how much I reference Seth Godin but I guess it’s for good reason. I like what he says about marketing, because he uses a ton of analogies and for me, thats a good thing. I need examples, real world or not, but I need colorful descriptive analogous ways for me to wrap my arms around complex ideas and simple ethereal notions.

With that being said, I was reading something over the weekend and was re-reading an old post by him in which he says the following:

 Worry about people with passion and people with lots of friends. You need both for ideas to spread.

I’ve been writing alot lately about social media experts and last week actually compiled a list of what social media is not and subsequently received a tremendous amount of answers, but essentially the underlying theme is this: if you were to couple the question of what social media is not with the experts that are the in the social media marketing space, what you and i are looking for is TRUST. Trust that what I’m hearing is legit. Trust that what I’m reading is applicable.  Trust that I can utilize social media to connect with my audience, my customers, and my users.  Trust that social media is not just a buzzword.  Trust that social media and it’s experts are not just caught up in the jetstream.

One of the other underlying themes of social media marketing, as a marketer, as someone dipping their toes in the proverbial waters of soaicl media, is how do you segment  what you are hearing, what you are reading and what who you are listening to?, How do you separate fact from fiction, How do you know? How do you know what you know,? How do you know they know? I know it sounds sort of like a comedy routine but…

I know that there are some companies out there that do it right but Im going to guess that for every company that does it right, there are 5 who say they can and never have, in their efforts to capitolize on the trend. But trust in any setting business or otherwise, determines the outcome of any engagement, it requires a tremndous leap of faith. Just like marriage. or any type of relationship for that matter.

So going forward, as you venture in, who do you trust/ and why should you trust them?  Does someone who has expert status warrant your trust?  It reminds me of the time where our company needed a Cisco engineer to come out and do some work for us. At the time, his rate might have been $150 an hour. The company said, they were sending out the very best they had, their heavy hitter… So we waited, and about an hour after he was supposed to show, in walks this guy- a bit disheveled, sunglasses on, mumbles that he’s from Cisco. He comes with nothing, no laptop, no pen, paper, nothing, knapsack. I repeate…nothing! Oh and he wreaks of alcohol… First impression? Not so good… But it gets better.

So the guy asks about 5 or 6 questions sits down at a terminal, works for under an hour, gets up and says,”You’re all set”, and leaves. WTF? Blink blink.. ala South Park. We’re screwed.

Bottom Line?  It was done perfectly. He was a heavy hitter, he did his thing and he did it well. Though outward impressions notwithstanding, this guy rocked the house.

The morals of the story are many.  Do you go with your gut, let them do their thing, and sit back and see what they produce? Perception is not always reality? Go with what people tell you and trust them?. Word of mouth, in this case was correct? Company hype was dead on? It’s ok to trust the disheveled engineer whos breath wreaks of alcohol? Cisco engineers rock?

Ok so you’re asking “So what are the parallels to social media marketing you ask?  Well, per Seths point, when deciding what to believe and not believe, in regards to social media you can go 2 ways. You can listen to the person who has a huge following and is passionate or you can listen to the person who talks the talk on their website but does not have much more than tha,t that can be substantiated.

Case in point, when reading about social media marketing on blog sites i would want to read someones blog who has been around no less than a year or longer and or someone who has a pretty solid base of followers and is passionate and or someone who might be on the agency side who ‘does” or “is” the social media marketing person at that agency and has chosen to blog about it.

Who would you trust?   Who would I trust?  That will be in part II

Stupid corporate social networking site #312

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This just in:

Cats Flocking to new social networking site!

In the category of “I have a great idea and I know management will go along with it”, we have the Purina Breeze cat litter social networking site.  Courtesy of Marshall Kilpatrick over at ReadWriteWeb

Feel free to shoot me other examples of where Corporate America just did not get it right.

The definitive working list of what social media is not

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I had, awhile back, compiled a list of what i thought social media was not. This morning while exchanging tweets, Beth Harte mentioned that Amber Naslund had just dropped a post on what social media isn’t, which led me to thinking: “why don’t we create a list of what social media is not”! There are so many lists and blog posts out there that are touting what it is, that maybe we should clarify and quantify what it is not. I would like this to be a continuous work in progress and need everyone to contribute as little or as much as possible. So here goes:

From Search Marketing Gurus we have the following:

  1. Social Media Isn’t:  Easy
  2. Social Media Isn’t:  Fast
  3. Social Media Isn’t:  A Substitute for Sound SEO Practices
  4. Social Media Isn’t:  A Substitute for Sound PPC Practices
  5. Social Media Isn’t:  A Practice to be Done by Interns
  6. Social Media Isn’t:  Another Place to Distribute Your Press Release
  7. Social Media Isn’t:  Something That Will Work if Your Site is “Broken”
  8. Social Media Isn’t:  Something To Send Out Mass Emails For
  9. Social Media Isn’t:  Something You Can Do Without Participation
  10. Social Media Isn’t:  Something You Can Do in Disguise

Courtesy of Rachel Happe we have: 11. Social media is not community

B.L. Ochman says that:

12. Social media isn’t a one-shot deal 

13. Social media isn’t a technique

14.  It’s not a short-term project

15.  It’s not an experiment, 

16.  It’s not an event, 

17. It’s not a quick fix.  and 

18. It’s not something you throw money at.

Brian Solis tells us that Social media is not:

19. The final frontier

Robert Young from GigaOm, mentioned 2 years ago that 

20. Social Media is not Mass Media.

Is that still true? I think it’s not true any longer, nor might have never been. Its perhaps a function or channel of mass media though, or slowly becoming that.

John Gray writing for imediaconnection wrote that: 

21. Social media is not just for kids, and I’m down with that!

Don Schindler from Media Sauce Blog tells us that:

 22. Social media is not advertising or

23. It’s not marketing, it’s about connections.

Ike Piggot over at the Now is Gone blog mentions that, 

24. Social media is not a commodity.

According to the Deal,

25. Social media is not the next bubble. But that was 3 years ago.

26. Social media is not a direct response marketing channel according to the 10e20 blog

27. Social Media may not be all that it’s cracked up to be, this from Jennifer Laycock over at searchengineguide. What the hell does “all that it’s cracked up to be” actually mean? I never really understood that statement.

28. Social media is not about Links, this from Li Evans

29. For teens, social media is not technology, it’s life!

30.  Social media is not a free for all, thanks Luke Armour

Brian Magierski mentions that:

31. Social media is not just another marketing channel. 

Laura Porto Stockwell  believes that

32. Social media is not new

Thanks in part to Scoble we know that Social Media is not:

33. Newspapers

34. Magazines

35. Television

36. Radio

37. Books

38. CDs

39. DVDs

40. A box of photos

50. Physical, paper mail and catalogs and

51. Yellow Pages

And here are mine:

52. Social media is not up to them, it is up to you and your voice

53. Social media is not predicated on many to many

54. Social media is not one to one, but it can be.

55. Social media is not closed to anyone

56. Social media is not calm, sedate, unresponsive.

57. Social media is not passive

58. Social media is not laryngitis

59. Social media is not mainstream, yet

60.  Social media is not static

And here are Amber Naslund’s:

61. Social media is not Show and Tell

62. Social media is not a Popularity and Numbers Contest

63. Social media is not a Silver Bulllet

64. Social media is not just for “Experts”
 

Ok so I think 64 is a pretty good start. What am I missing here? Feel free to add yours or, feel free to tell me where some of these might actually be wrong. Let’s talk about it!

Social Media slides you can relate to

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For the sake of virgin ears, the actual title of this slide presentation is “What the F**K is Social Media”? and I wish I could have taken credit for this but it came from alisa leonard hansen’s blog site titled Socialized or thewebissocial,  which came from Marta Kagan take your pick. Subscribe to both their sites, they both have a good take on whats up. Though I am down with Marta’s genius. Per this, it’s amazing as you work through the slides how large the numbers are and yet how they ( social networks and social media per se) have not even scatched the surface.

Searching for social media experts

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I just read an article in Adweek about Ford hiring Scott Monty in its quest to grapple with and implement the monolith that is… trumpets please… social media. While reading the piece I couldn’t help but wonder outloud just how social media experts became social media experts in  a space so relatively fresh in our collective marketing, media and PR consciousness. Not that Scott is not one, but this thought came to me after reading that Ford ran 50 candidates through the gauntlet before choosing Scott. 

Which begs my first of many questions: Though they chose a good person, who made the final decision, and what was it based upon? Who were the other 50 and why were they not chosen? I know that there is always a bit of subjectiveness to this process but I think, given the “newness” of the space, that it had to be absolutely fascinating to see how the whole thing went down. I do have to give some credit to Ford for stepping up, now more than ever, and especially given the state of the economy and the auto industry in particular. Somebody, somewhere, within that organization had the foresight to get to a decision maker and say, “we need to grab onto the beanstalk that is social media.

Some other questions I had and I’m sure other likeminded organizations are probabaly grappling with are:

Do we, they become expert like from writing it so much that we begin to understand how it works? Do experts, or are experts people who have implemented  a or some social media campaigns of any scale, successfully or unsuccessfully? What is the criteria? Are they IT people? marketing experts?  PR experts? What determines the experts title as the “expert”. Who determines it? Their peers? The  nascent industry itself?

I do think that longevity in the space that is and has been marketing, PR and even IT/internet/marketing, certainly is a determining factor. Why? Well think about it, when we all got into the business of what we do, what we did then is certainly not what we do now. Our jobs, titles and positions have all evolved. They have morphed into what the public and our bosses have demanded, expected and required us to learn, on the fly. And currently for some of us, that is all things social media related.

With that being said, when I write about the top 30 social media evangelists, I write from a position of referring to these people time and time again about social media topics that are hot. I mention them because they have their fingers on the collective pulse of their clients, their usage of bleeding edge technology to leverage brands, and their willingness to share their experiences. I call them experts, because their names and their blogs come up in conversations, they are constantly pushing out valuable information, and they are essentially practicing what they are preaching. And I find myself going back to “them” because clients and what I do and we do on a day to day basis, requires that I learn fast and implement faster.

Funny thing though, even the experts are wondering who the real experts are!

And if you really want to know the truth. Social media has to be a “practice what you preach model”. Why? You can’t be successfull in the space by being quiet and stealthy. it’s all about the sharing and exchanging of information without pretense. That’s right, the conversation. 

But to be successfull in the space, it is eventually going to boil down to those who do and those who did and not those who have heard and those who say.

All I do know is that the expert does not or should not call himself the expert. I can’t place the quote but:

Anyone who has to tell you that they are “the man”, ain’t “the man…”

Social Media Marketing

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We talk, I talk, and everyone else talks a lot about social media, social networks and the impact it’s having on our online lives. Right now it has yet to hit critical mass, though you might not think that by looking at the lastest numbers.

With that being said, there are tons of those who wish to be on the inside looking out rather than vice versa. And those are the people that “work” for marketing companies, ad agencies, and Fortune 1000 companies. They have been approached by their bosses and they’ve been charged with figuring this social media thing out and how they, as a company, can leverage it for their benefit.

Problem is, trying to sort through the ones who have, the ones who claim they have, and the ones who wish they’d had. I recently encountered a company that HAS in a big way. If you have not yet determined how you are going to use social media for your company, perhaps your first step should be to undertsand the many uses. Once you see the many ways that it can be used to either brand a product, brand a company, or drive traffic, sales and eyeballs, then you can start to figure out what the big picture is of social media. But to understand the big picture, as I said earlier, you need to talk with people who HAVE done it.

I had the privledge of sitting down with Jason Breed from Neighborhood America awhile back to discuss their award winning Elavate platform, and their business model in general. A quick blurb about NA,  Neighborhood America was recently recognized for Best Social Networking Solution by The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) Winning a Prestigious CODiE Award.

Here’s some quick perspective for you; More than 1,100 CODiE nominations were submitted by 600 companies in a total of 76 categories. A panel of expert judges narrowed the field to 340 nominees, from which the 2008 CODiE winners were chosen.

The point of this post is this, if you are looking for guidance, direction, and advice from someone like Jason or a company like Neighborhood America who is smack dab in the middle of social media, and social media marketing, then you need to look no further. Of course, I know they are not the only company out there that can roll out a solution for you, but as a starting point, it sure is a good start. Seriously, if you were to decide right now, today that you were going to go out and evaluate social media companies, how are you going to do it? What will it be based on? What is your criteria? I do recall awhile back that Chris Brogan created a cheat sheet on how to evaluate a company for social media marketing services, you may want to check it out. At the least, Chris writes a good blog on all things social.

From a social media marketing standpoint, you may also want to check out Scott Monty’s blog site as well. You may find it usefull depending on your grasp of social media.

All of this though makes me think that perhaps my next worthy post should be a a listing of companies poised to help you figure out what your social media marketing initiative will be. If you know of some other worthy companies, I am certainly willing to listen. Besides, isn’t that part of the conversation that we are all engaged in right now?

One more thing for J Breed…. Go bulls…

Social media and customer service; a no brainer

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I’ve been thinking about this for quite some time. I’ve read iterations from other notable bloggers and marketers but my questions are these. Where does social media make the best sense in say, a B2B setting? Or. for that matter, a B2C setting? Could it be customer service?  It’s funny to think that in 2008 that a novel concept could be communicating with the customer! Reaching out to the customer. Talking with the customer, listening to the customer  before, during and after the purchase.

Now don’t get me wrong there are plenty of companies out there that do a good job in maintaining a relationship with the customer but… But the problem is, the model that they are operating from is cut from the “old school” of marketing and customer service. It consists of 2-3 major direct mail campaigns per year, a decent if not underperforming customer service call center in which most customer issues are resolved amicably, and a website that takes orders and ships them on time etc. etc. You get the point. I’m sure you can think of at least a half a dozen companies like that. You see them everyday. You interact with them EVERY day. They do just enough to satisfy your expectation of customer service.

However, when a company reaches out to you or goes above and beyond your expectations, you raise an eyebrow. You’re surprised. Why? Because your expectations are so low that you expect NOTHING! and when you do get a friendly note, someone that speaks with you instead of at you, or the least bit of CSR love, you a) are surprised and b) become a customer for life and c) you tell your friends.

Lets do  a quick test. Think of 5 companies that suck. And perhaps they suck because you have heard that they do, which in an of itself is not good. Why? Because maybe they don’t, though chances are they do, but the viral reputation dictates that they must suck because so many have said so. Ok so quick, think of 5.

Most of the ones that come to mind for me are airlines. How about you? If you talk to Joseph Jaffe, he’ll go off on Delta But I would guess that most of you, if you fly with an frequency, will volunteer an airline. Ironically, I’m thinking that because our expectations are so lowered when we fly now, that when we do have a good experience, we think of that as a WIN.

But here’s what happened. If you’re fed bread and water for so long, you expect it. When they add an apple, you consider it a treat. But the reality is that you SHOULD be getting a balanced meal, but your expectations have been lowered so much, an APPLE is considered a score by the customer. How pathetic is that?  What’s worse is that customer service representatives throw us bones and we snap them up and thank them up and down and then we tell everyone about the great customer service we just received. Again, I say to you, how pathetic is that? I mean look at Seth Godin, he’s amazed at this small act of customer service.

Becky Carroll, who has a blog called Customers Rock wrote a post called Social Media Empowering Customer Service: Guest Blogger Brian Solis in which Brian Solis and Becky blog about social media empowering customerservice. That’s my point, it makes perfect sense for social media to be an extension of what customer service does FOR the customer. As new media marketers and observers, it’s up to us to explain to large companies and even small ones, that, here is a way to find out more about your customers instead of the usual demographic info.

Social media does empower customer service, if it’s used for that. But how many get that? How many examples can you, me and everyone else out there, think of? I think what’s more of a viable statment is: “Social media will eventually empower customer service and social media should empower customer service”. 

Twebinar Mashup was a success

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Just got done with the twebinar hosted by Chris Brogan. It was an interesting way to push information out regarding social media. For those in the know, it gave them insight as to how some of the movers and shapers of social media, marketing and media think in regards to how social media is changing the game. It also was presented in a way that if someone who had “heard” what social media was, but was not entirely sure what IT was, could, perhaps in laymans terms utilize or understand it.

The mashup was interesting in that we had video, we had twitter, we had live webcam, we had twitter aggregators and we had live participants and we had half participants who were following the tweets and not perhaps the video. Even more interesting were the ways that participants were communicating. The primary means being Twitter, but in the Twebinar format, they were talking with individuals that were in the video, they were talking with the moderator, Chris Brogan and they were talking with each other.

Now picture that happening in any other type of moderator, speaker, panel, discussion presentation where everyone was, for the most part, talking at once. In this format it worked. It was staccato like in its essence, but it worked.

With a couple of tweaks here and there. I can definitely see this becoming some type of workable app for future conferences. Perhaps embedding the Twitter app in the screen of the presentation so that everyone could tweet and everyone could read everyone elses tweets without having to possibly toggle betwen Summize and the actual presentation? Either way it worked. Good job to David Alston of Radian6 as well. The good news? This is a 3 part series. What are you waiting for?

Shout out to Alltop

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I wanted to thank the fine folks over at Alltop for choosing to feature this blog as one of their sources for worthy information. Alltop is a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet. Alltop sites are starting points—they are not destinations per se. They enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed.

The bottom line is that Alltop collects stories from “all the top” sites on the web, which means we must be doing something right, and for that we are grateful for the love and the recognition.