Brands: You can’t hide and then expect to participate in social media

Posted on June 25, 2009 by marc meyer

So I’m late. There’s a killer pick up game of basketball going on down at the park. I know they play every Monday , Wednesday and Friday at 5pm. For weeks I sit and watch them. This time I’m gonna play. There’s 11 guys including me. They pick up teams and I don’t get picked. WTF? I know I can play with these guys, their games are weak. Yet, I still don’t get picked. Why is that?

Because they don’t know me. Even though I’ve been watching them for weeks, they don’t know me. I could have easily played dozens of times over that span of time and yet I chose not to. Now when I want to, they don’t want to let me, because they don’t know me or anything about me. I’m not even a familiar stranger to them.

All I had to do was take that first step and become part of their little community. I don’t even rise up when they needed a 10th guy so they could run. Benny, Joe, Arnold, Rambis, Chris D, BV, California, Stick, Coach, and Jackie, could have used me but I stayed passive and quiet. Just watching. All it would have required was an occasional appearance in one of their games, and I could have played any time I wanted. Minimal effort on my part to get the ball rolling.

You’re a brand, thinking about social media. Thinking about community, about your customers, about growing your reach and your depth. Thinking about getting in. What should you do? How would you do it?

Is it really about being transparent?

Posted on June 18, 2009 by marc meyer

In Business, I don’t really have a hard time saying “I’m sorry”, I just don’t like saying it, because it constitutes either failure or the inability to “do” something. It conveys that perhaps you did not hold up your end of the bargain. And yet, a lot of people cannot say it or do not say it, or, do everything in their power to avoid it. That makes things worse.

I don’t like saying “No”, because it means I can’t or won’t do something for you. I am refusing to do something for you. Some people do not like to hear No, or in some cases won’t take No as an answer. Others, instead of saying No, agree or say yes, when they really shouldn’t. That’s not a smart thing to do.

I don’t like saying ‘Goodbye”, because it signifies that our current engagement is ending or over and sometimes you don’t want it to end. Other times saying goodbye is exactly what’s needed a “good” bye. Sometimes, it’s just time.

In life, and in business, some things are painful to do. We don’t want to do them because they hurt or we fear that we will lose business. The three things that I mentioned above are all communications issues aren’t they? But in each scenario, its a form of communication that is often times necessary but avoided. Which again, makes things worse.

Sometimes we do have to say No.

Sometimes we do have to say I’m sorry.

and Sometimes we do have to say Goodbye.

What happens to the marketing person, the social media specialist, or the PR pro that decides to incorporate those three words into their lexicon?

They get Respect. Street Cred. and probably more business. Is this about being transparent?

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Augment your social media marketing efforts with honesty

Posted on June 17, 2009 by marc meyer

Whatever you are doing for your clients right now isn’t enough. You may be doing what work’s for YOU because YOU know it works, but is it enough? Is it what is best for your client? Ok it may be, but I bet you, you could be doing more. Why do I think that? It’s simple and I’ll explain.

I was at a client meeting 2 weeks ago and after everyone had cleared out, the president of the company asked me a question. It was one of those make or break moment type of questions too.

He asked me what I thought.

I sat there and was getting ready to go down a path I had gone down many times before. It was going to be the part-pitch, part-what-you- should-do type of comment, when I stopped and decided right then and there, to take a different approach.

I took a big breath.

I decided to tell the president that if I owned this project/company, if this was MY company, this is what I would do.

I told him what I would do and why. It wasn’t the I’m good at what I do rant, it was the “this is broken and its not working and I need to fix it type of comment”. It was the, “here’s what I need to do to make it right comment”.

Simple, honest and dead on.

Guess what? It worked!

A lot of what I was referring to were elements of social media that needed to be in place to make an already thriving community/website more interactive and more conversational. Did it need to be radically changed? No. A new website? No. An overhaul of a social media presence? No. It didn’t need any of that. It needed some tweaks and some changes in strategy, that’s all. What it needed was a dose of reality sprinkled with honesty.

At the end of the day, it’s not about bangin’ the client for as much as you can get, or getting the project at any cost, or saying what they want to hear. It’s about you being honest and seeing the challenges of running a business from the perspective of the business owner.

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20 Twitter brands behaving badly

Posted on June 8, 2009 by marc meyer

I was doing some research for a Twitter webcast that I have coming up, and something caught me by surprise. I came across a post featuring the 100 most mentioned brands on Twitter. While the list is interesting, what I thought was more interesting and what prompted this post were the number of brands that were mentioned(talked about) a significant amount of times and the ones that I could think of, who did NOT have a twitter presence. Some might not think much about it. But to me, given what is happening with Twitter, I think it is somewhat significant. Why? What a golden opportunity to talk with people about your brand that already talking about YOUR brand!

Below is a list of large brands that are currently doing a really poor job of managing the Twittersphere. This easily could have been a much larger list.

As a marketer you are challenged every day for marketshare, eyeballs, mentions and anything else that can get people talking about and engaging your brand. For big brands, people already are talking about you. Good or bad They want to talk about you. Twitter allows you to do both. You can listen to what they are saying and you can create communities of brand champions. Yet these 20 are a) slow on the draw b) don’t care and or c) are too arrogant to “bother” with Twitter. We’ll see how long that lasts, but know this, There are many many more.

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The Pornification of Marketing

Posted on June 4, 2009 by marc meyer

There’s an article in todays online Newsweek about a Bud Light spot that came out in February with little fanfare and completely under the radar. However, the commercial rivals, if not leapfrogs over the Quiznos spot in terms of what they are suggesting, cancel that, in what they are implying, strike that, in terms of what it is saying. Bud Light has taken the game to a new level or perhaps has lowered the game to a whole new level.

Granted, the assumption is that this commercial is directed right at its sweet spot demographic; and that in and of itself is somewhat troubling if only for that fact that it tells you how much Porn has become accepted into mainstream America and mainstream marketing and advertising. The assumption being that nothing in this spot is really outside the norm for the demographic. Or as Newsweek likes to call it, we are undergoing the phenomenon of “Porn Creep”.

Decide for yourself. Has Bud Light taken things to an all time low? Does this make you want to drink their beer? Do you even care?

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Unmarketing

Posted on June 1, 2009 by marc meyer

Behold, marketers take it to another level with 3 spots I saw over the weekend.

In the immortal words of the Budweiser “dude”, “Seriously…Dude..Seriously..”

Are these chin ups? Or are they chin downs? Late night direct response marketing has just gone to a whole new level.

neck

Then there was the Quiznos Video. Or was it? Quiznos denies it.

Which leads me to ask..How does the pitch meeting go down? How do things like this get the green light? Which at this point allows us to segue’ to this..

godaddy

Another Go-Daddy Spot pushing the limits of acceptability..You be the judge.

Intuitive marketing by Honda

Posted on May 14, 2009 by marc meyer

Not sure who the Agency is that did this spot, but see if you do the same thing that a few of us did towards the end of the spot. Great timing, great spot. Intuitive marketing/branding at it’s best!

Where are you on the mountain?

Posted on March 18, 2009 by marc meyer

This post is inspired my Mother who is in declining health. She told me she was asked by her doctor, Where are you on the mountain, if your life is the mountain? Was she going up? Was she at the top? Going down? My Mom answered that she was on the backside of the mountain, but she had her heels dug in. Good answer Mom.

But this led me to a broader question about what we all do and how we do it, and it is this.

If you’re career is a mountain, where are you? On the way up? In a holding pattern? Trying to find an alternate route? Or have you given up and turned back, satisfied by how far you’ve gotten. Satisfied that you at least tried. Or are you going to recharge the batteries, reinvent, re-plan, and give it another go?

If you are a marketer, where do you guage your level of experience on the mountain? You are a social media marketer, how well do you know the space if your map is the mountain? Do you forge on? Do you try and follow the path? The road less taken? Do you do what the Sherpa tells you? Are you a team player? Or are you in it for yourself?How much do you help people tethered to you? Are you pulling them? Are they pulling you? Or are you pulling your own weight?

It’s funny but when you get to the top, you really can’t stay there too long. But some like going to the top so much, they do it over and over, and they are successful a majority of the time. However, sometimes, there are things that are out of their control that prevent them from reaching the summit. But it doesn’t stop them from trying again. Why is that? How does this reflect on you, and what you are doing now? Where are you on the mountain?