April 2010

This week I’ve had several nights out for various business related events,  so I’ve come home earlier in the day to see my kids get off the bus and chill for a while. Of course, they want nothing to do with me so I found myself on the couch Monday afternoon watching “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.” I wouldn’t typically watch this show (nothing against it really, just not my thing), but the guest mentioned that she used to be a writer for the New York Times. I thought, “Huh. This should be interesting. A super smart person should go far!”

Sure enough, she breezed through the first several rounds. Then, at the round for $16,000, she got the following question (paraphrased), “In 2008, Google launched a new operating system to compete with Apple’s iPhone. Is it called… A) Zebra B) Spider C) Zephyr or D) Android.” I’m thinking to myself, “Crap, that’s the easiest $16,000 she’ll ever make.” She hemmed and hawed. No clear answer (as I’m screaming at the television). “I think I’ll poll the audience,” she surmised. Blippity-beep-beep-blip…the audience locks in its vote.

Results: Spider 60%, Zebra, 19%, Android, 18%, and Zephyr 3%.

“OK. B. Spider. Final answer.”

“Yahtzee!!! Whoa. What did you say? B??! Spider? No, you stupid writer for the New York Times! It’s Android! Google’s Android Operating System, dumbass American audience of hundreds!!!”

And, then it hit me. Most people don’t know that the iPhone has a competitor, little less what its name is. And for that matter, most people probably don’t know or care about Facebook’s new changes this week or want an iPad or care that Google is indexing social content faster than you can say “Zephyr!” Most people don’t care about Flash coming to the Android, they could care less about Hootsuite, Mashable, Foursquare, or Gowalla combined. Most people — the people who pay your paychecks in marketing — don’t know about or care about these things right now.

What’s my point of this post other than to completely annihilate your techie-little soul? My point is the challenge of perspective in the rapidly evolving world of digital technology. The pace of change right now is breathtaking. 100%, chopped beef and ketchup, American-style breathtaking. But as marketers, it’s easy to forget that we’re not in this to be first to sell these new technologies – no matter how tempting it may be – as viable marketing channels. This is not to say that we shouldn’t be the first to embrace and experiment with new technology. But when I get a phone call from someone asking me if we do iPad development – one week after launch – my answer is “for whom?” How many brands out there other than those that need to be on the iPad really have a captured audience at a small fraction of the 500,000 units sold? That’s when the marketing-to-the-shiny-object rather than marketing-to-a-consumer jumps the shark. (How many Americans know what “jump the shark” is? Well, now you do.)

Technology can really put the evil in devilish. Just as the economy swings back and marketers have a few more nickels to play with, is it responsible of us to start scheming all the cool ways clients could launch this’n'that app when they still aren’t even using email or search properly? Should we be worried about iPhone vs. Android when they’ve still got real Internet Explorer vs. Firefox issues? Are you really thinking about an iPad app when their .com conversion points still stink to high Heaven? Aren’t we just as concerned about the 400,000,000 on Facebook as we are the 1,000,000 on Foursquare?

Just because the nickels have come back doesn’t mean they weren’t provided by the internal bankers. The cries for accountability in marketing in 2008-9 didn’t go away in 2010 because the iPhone App Store hit a gazzilion apps. Remember, those got into the store because Apple blessed them, not because they have a market.

I’m all about cool and shiny. They represent the future and the future is brilliant. But the NOW better add up or you’ll be back to building crappy banner ads or fielding questions about the Spider operating system in no time.

Well, it’s finally happened. I have to write The Facebook Post. Waiting any longer will only continue to deny that Facebook has won and the Internet has lost. OK. That last statement is ridiculous, but suffice it to say that Facebook is a total and complete monster of a force in our culture and, increasingly, in our businesses.

Facebook is the new AOL. Whoa whoa whoa!! Hold on a second. Shut your collective pie-holes for just a second. There was a time when AOL was actually pretty cool. (OK. Now listen carefully. Do you hear that? Yup. That sound was just 10 million geeks all saying in unison, “AOL WAS NEVER COOOOOOL!”) Back in 1992 or so, it was an ecosystem that was relatively easy to use, anyone who got on could find something entertaining, and “You’ve Got Mail!” was something you actually looked forward to hearing each time you logged in. Let’s not forget that another little upstart company called Apple actually tried getting into the more commercial game when it replaced its AppleLink with an online community called eWorld. It was pretty cool too but died a quick death, arguably because AOL was killing it in terms of subscribers. (Just for giggles, let’s also remind ourselves that Apple killed eWorld so it could focus on launching the Newton. Now THAT’S funny.)

Facebook is the new AOL, however, for the same reason AOL was AOL: it is a safe, understandable (albeit clunky), predictable, walled-garden that attempts to keep its inhabitants together comfortably. I would say it’s doing a rather good job when you consider that it’s gone from nowhere in 2007 to 500,000,000 users worldwide. This is where I continue to really make some enemies with the traditional Internet crowd: for a huge number of consumers, the Internet is just too damn difficult to use. Every site you go to has been designed by someone different, you have to learn how to navigate it, and, frankly, so much of the content is pure crap (and, yeah, I’m talkin’ to you, Corporate America). At some point, a whole bunch of people — I know, that’s scientific — throw up their hands and say, “Hell with it! I don’t have time for that. If there’s something good for me to see Out There, someone will link me to it.”

So perhaps there’s a better metaphor for Facebook. Facebook is the Internet’s Green Zone. While there’s a war raging outside, Facebook is that place where your friends are. It’s nearly impossible to get accosted on Facebook. Why? Because Facebook is a universe almost entirely comprised of people you’ve selected to follow and engage with. The Internet is crazy town. Facebook is Mayberry. (Jeez, Andrew. Quit it with the roaming metaphors.) Just like real life, most people on this planet want to live in a Mayberry, where the kids can roam free, neighbors are on their front porches engaging in the talk of the day, and the police take care of the bad guys. Look, I get it too. Lots of people don’t want any of this. It’s too safe and pretty and, er, controlled. Designers hate Facebook because there’s nothing to do with it. Developers hate it because you have to code everything the way Facebook wants it. And of course the Internet elite hate it because it’s Facebook, just like they hated AOL and, before that, CompuServe.

As a marketer and communicator, it’s my job to go where the people are, and while Facebook has a long way to go to be ubiquitous, it does represent 500,000,000 people worldwide with considerable purchasing power. From teens talking about Justin Beiber to moms (and dads) desperately asking each other “OMG! Who’s this Justin Beiber!” Facebook is a serious force in this economy and in our culture. One last anecdote. In my life I walk into a lot of different businesses, and I can tell you who looooooooves Facebook: office receptionists. I’ve begun to take more serious notice, but I bet 8 out of 10 office receptionists right now are either messing around on Facebook or have it open in the background as they’re  faking looking at that Word document.

And it gets weirder. Increasingly, I’m finding myself in a more common position when working with a client to recommend a Facebook environment rather than building a stand-alone website. And I’m talking about some pretty unsexy stuff too. Recently, we’ve been setting up client sales teams on private Facebook groups so they can exchange client information, best practices, and market conditions. Why build an external community that would include all the built-in features of Facebook when you have…Facebook?

So, haters, bring it. Hate your Facebook. But unlike AOL (and most likely the Green Zone too), Facebook isn’t going away anytime soon. It’s time to wrap your head around it, imagine how your business plays in it, and love it. Why? Because remember, most of you hated the Internet too.

Right now, Facebook is holding its developer conference called f8. For coverage, visit here.

I am hoping that you will put this post in one of those time capsules, bury it under a pile of paper on your desk, bring it out in 2015 (that’ll be the next time you clean your desk), and say, “Well, gawldarnit-all, that Old Man Eklund may have been right…once.”

A million little things are said every day about social media. Of those, 842,653 of them are written by media people. (You know ‘em – nice glasses, fashionable jeans, iPad.) The remaining pieces are written by people talking about the media people writing the other stuff.

You know who doesn’t seem to be writing a lot about social media? Organizational development people. They should because of all the people within the economic ecosystem who will become most affected by social media, it’s the people who understand how organizations work, communicate, engender trust, and organize resources who will need to lead companies through the onslaught of billions of consumers wanting access to all layers of a company’s culture.

Marketing won’t lead the social media revolution. There’s no way. So, here’s my prediction for what’s going to go down.

1. Marketing will continue to be the pied-pipers. They will be the first to embrace intense customer dialogue. They will — as they always have — attempt to speak on behalf of all other departments when called upon. For example, when a cacophony of consumers ask a brand to address a product flaw, it will be marketing who will attempt to address it, not the product developers or product managers. Increasingly this will frustrate consumers as the answers they need outpace the flow of information that marketing can provide. Depending upon the circumstances, the consumers will rise up using their social connections to become a deafening cry for help.

2. When dealt with this type of situation, marketing too will cry for help. They will say, “The questions they’re asking are legit. They’re detailed. They want real answers.” Marketing will reach out to the product managers who will reach out to their product development teams, who at first will push back. They will ask marketing “How many people are asking this? Who knows about this problem? Why can’t you squelch it? Isn’t that your job?” So now marketing and the product development teams don’t like each other.

3. The VP of Sales begins receiving emails from sales people in the field. This product flaw has become ingrained into each and every sales discussion. It seems as though everyone knows about it. “Where did this come from? Who started it? What isn’t marketing making it go away? WHO’S ADDRESSING THIS PRODUCT FLAW??!” The VP of Sales goes to the CEO saying, “There’s a problem. We have a serious flaw with one of our products and we can’t sell it until we address it.” The director of customer service comes barging in the room. “Sorry to interrupt but our phones are on fire. There’s some problem with the product, and my people haven’t been trained to respond!”

4. The CEO realizes quickly the problem: for all too long, the company had treated the social networks like another marketing sound amplifier. She realizes that her long-held hunches were in fact correct. Social media isn’t “media” as in broadcast, it’s media as in a decentralized, cross-departmental, easily accessible connections ecosystem that needs broad participation (although perhaps not deep because, you know, people still have jobs to do), published rules of engagement, commonly held measures and analytics, and cross-functional leadership teams who listen and find efficient and truthful ways to respond to customers. You know what the CEO needs? Great organizational development.

Remember that time capsule? You can choose to print this piece and bury it for a while but I’m pretty darned sure the above scenario will repeat itself over and over again on many scales, from very small but important to large and potentially catastrophic (read: Toyota). I would encourage you not to bury it. At the very least take the above scenarios and have a conversation about how they would affect you if they came true. Ask yourself an important question: what if our social media plan doesn’t originate in marketing at all? What if our strategy shouldn’t originate in any department whatsoever but at the very top of the organization itself with leadership understanding the broad implications of a new type of marketplace where there is no longer any gap between a brand’s claims and actual brand experience? What if we co-create (hello, 2003!) our brand every single day, interaction by interaction? A very different company culture needs to be fostered to excel in that type of market dynamic.

There’s a comment section here for reason — let’s have an honest discussion about this. I look forward to it.

Last weekend I took my kids to see the marble replica of Michaelangelo’s “Pieta” at the St. Paul Cathedral. Of course I wanted them to be impressed young culture fanatics which would publicly make me look like Dad-Of-The-Awesome. While “impressed” with the feat of the Italian artist, nothing was as impressive to my son as the echo even the smallest of sound would make in the vast chamber of the Cathedral dome. He would make the smallest of “pop” sound with his mouth, only to hear it reverberate for what seemed like an endless amount of time.

Something tells me this may be the same experience R.F. Moeller jewelers is feeling this morning. I won’t go into great detail here, but suffice it to say that a very controversial ad appeared in City Pages this week where a man with a gun to his head is lamenting his decision to have purchased a diamond somewhere other than R.F. Moeller. This post is not to engage in a moral dialogue about the ad’s creative, rather to outline how even the smallest of sound in advertising — a quarter page ad in a city newspaper — can reverberate throughout, frankly, the world.

A quick DNA of yesterday’s events. The ad appears and immediately those who are offended begin to cascade upon the R.F. Moeller Facebook page to express themselves. In a bit of a sideshow, a friend of mine snaps a photo of the ad and tweets about it to his followers. I “retweet” his post, also expressing my outrage. The digital editor at AdWeek.com, who follows me on Twitter, decides to showcase the ad in his daily “AdFreak” site, a site extolling the non-virtuous of the advertising world. The ad writer apologizes to a local journalist. The local news covers it. And, as of today, the story continues.

I’m not sure how R.F. Moeller is taking all of this. As the old adage goes, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” Eh, yeah, don’t buy that, but that’s not what this post is about either.

Every ad, every marketing claim, every promotion now exists in an ever-connected echo chamber where it lives, breaths, is shared and interpreted over and over ad nauseum. The Moeller case study is not about a City Pages ad. No, it’s a story about never underestimating the power of the social echo chamber. A single ad can become a story can become a phenomenon. As a marketer, this excites me. As a brand, it should too. But without proper planning or expectation-setting, it can be a nightmare.

R.F. Moeller claims it did not see or approve of the ad prior to it being published. Something tells me that will never happen again.

Last week I put in my time as a traveling demotivational speaker.

Of course, that’s not how I went into the week. I went in all bright-eyed and bushy tailed ready to foment people into a digital marketing lather, all ready to tackle the world. I left the week wondering if I had just spent a week punching people in the face.

During four public speaking events, I addressed two resorts, one travel industry group, and a conference of non-profit marketers. Each group shared the same challenge — how do we reach and engage new audiences? My message was clear: if this is your business — to reach essentially anyone with a cell phone and Internet access — then whether you like it or not, you are in a technology business. You, as a marketer, are a technology person. You have a technology career. The separation between technology and marketing is no longer the Great Departmental Divide. I simply can’t see any way around it. You can no longer in-source, out-source or — gasp — ignore the realities of your field. Consumers across nearly all demographics have become technology literate, digitally nimble, voracious imbibers of content, and equally adroit sharers of opinion.

In Las Vegas last week, I mentioned to an owners group of a large Strip property that every day, thousands of visitors enter their doors armed with tiny story-telling machines called smart phones. En masse, they create and share more content in a single day than a brand may in an entire yearlong campaign. This content is first-hand, unfiltered, honestly communicated niche content which is exactly what we consumers wish to engage when considering brands. Sorry, but I just can’t find a way where any non-technologically enhanced or extended advertising program will ever compete with this onslaught of consumer-generated storytelling.

What this means to me is that marketing leaders are not only charged with creating compelling brand experiences but they themselves need to be the people to imagine how technology will enhance and extend — oops, said those two words again — the totality of a brand experience. Too often I see creative people develop ideas, then ask others to figure out how technology will work with those ideas. How can this possibly work anymore? And please don’t get me wrong on what I mean by “brand experience.” I don’t just mean, say, a branded iPhone app or other cool-factor program. I’m talking about every single touchpoint in a potential consumer’s consideration process, from awareness to tapping into the ginormous amount of consumer-generated content to extracting their wallets. Technology has infiltrated every single point in that process so as marketers we need to know better than anyone — A-N-Y-O-N-E — how we play in that world at the inception of marketing ideas, not at the end when the idea may become moot altogether.

Based upon my experience last week delivering this message to a wide array of audiences, I can tell you that there’s a real look of fear in people’s eyes. Seasoned marketers were not prepared to have to become technology people. In fact, a great many of them loathe the entire premise. I get it. But I just can’t see any way around it. If you are entering a career in marketing or advertising, prepare thyself to become intimate with consumer electronics, data, and applications. If you don’t naturally love them, learn to love them. If in the end, you simply cannot find yourself lovin’ the digital, then it’s hard for me to continue to recommend this rapidly changing field to you. There are plenty of great creative-only fields — but advertising and marketing isn’t one of them.