the hurricane inside my brain

There’s been lots of talk about the “death of advertising” and the increasing ineffectiveness of the media. There’s a tremendously well-researched, insightful and informative Bob Garfield post in Ad Age, with lots and lots of numbers supporting his version of “Apocalypse Now” for the ad industry. There’s no doubt that there’s agency layoffs, and client cutbacks and fear and uncertainty. So who am I to be the bearer of even an ounce of good news for the ad industry?

Okay, I won’t tell you this is good news. But I will tell you what I think is fascinating.

Throughout history, for every version of media, there has been an ad unit that is a miniature version of that very media. Advertising usually- in some form- mirrors the content of the media that surrounds it.

Ads in newspapers, for example, are rectangular shaped boxes that includes a “headline” and “copy”. Even the terminology is straight out of newspaper jargon. Pretty obvious, right? Television? The medium is 30 minute stories involving actors on a set. What are most TV commercials? 30 second stories involving actors on a set. With a little music thrown in, just like in the big boy shows. Radio? Started with dramas. The term ’soap opera’ was coined because soap manufacturers sponsored radio dramas in return for product plugs. Radio commercials thus become mini-dramas”; still at their best when they are theater of the mind for a brand story.

And then along came the Internet. Ahh, the Internet. I actually remember the day I first heard the term used. My friend Martha called me into her office. Told me I’d better sit down. Shut the door. My palms grew sweaty. She said, “Lisa, have you seen this thing called the Internet?” She called up a paragraph of html text on a screen. It was filled with hyperlinks and Martha showed me how to “click through” to layers of information. It was years later before the term “click-through” became ubiquitous for banner advertising ROI. But at the time I was in her office, there wasn’t a banner ad in sight.

So now we have a brave new medium – Social Media. And we’re all scratching our head, wondering what the ad unit is.

Do we stick little banner ads on social sites? Oh, please. Have you ever seen a TV “commercial” that is nothing more than a static photo and a logo? Trust me, it doesn’t work. Stick banner ads on social sites and you ruin both the media and the ROI. Best case scenario, the ads become invisible. Worst case, people run screaming from the media.

But then, what does an ad look like in social media? Is it merely conversations? Does all advertising become word of mouth among friends as Jeff Jarvis and others suggest?

Or…is the “ad” really a social ecosystem itself that a company sets up? The conversations with consumers that are now public combined with a fan page on Facebook and the photos on Flckr and the idea-sharing on Twitter and the YouTube videos. And is a new ad, perhaps, the way that the target audience shares content about a brand or company across complex and interrelated networks? A “display” ad is now a conversation that gets displayed in a public forum. Remember, just because you’re not screaming “buy this” with a sledgehammer doesn’t mean you’re not selling something. You’re selling the brand by engaging consumers across multiple touchpoints, just like the social web itself. It’s the online experience that engages the consumer and captures their imagination much the same way that television captured our collective imaginations back in its glory days.

Is the newest ad unit staring us in the face but we just don’t see it? Is it just a miniature version of the social web, the same way that past ad units were miniature versions of their own mediums?

Are we just afraid to call Social Media itself “Advertising” because we hold it so precious?

And for those who would argue that advertising is paid messaging, remember this. Social Media, or this new order of Social Advertising, or however we describe it, may appear to be free, but there is a cost to it all. There’s the time spent to do it right, to have individuals who actually hold conversations with the consumers. There’s the challenge of understanding how the brand story should be told across all the hundreds of touchpoints scattered across the web. There’s learning the new rules of etiquette – heck, there’s helping to *create* the new rules of etiquette. There’s building the network, or leveraging existing ones, and getting the people engaged in a way that’s genuine and authentic, and that comes from the very core of a brands values or a products benefits. And there’s a cost to understanding the potential of this medium, the cost to experiment, to make mistakes.

But on the flip side, the ROI could very well be survival for those who do it well and do it now. Get it right, and I truly believe you can re-invent a dying industry.

The best advertising has always been that which has captured the imagination of the public and becomes a part of the collective consciousness. What better time than now, what better media to do it with. Maybe advertising isn’t really dead at all. Maybe we simply don’t know what to call it.

~

This post first appeared on Damien Basile’s blog: The Cause Is The Habit

>> Guest post by Bob Minihan

Allow me to interrupt the digital jihad for a bit.

Read a Tweet last week saying that Apple now ruled the world with their apps. Clicked on the link they provided as proof.

It led me to an Apple TV commercial.

My reply pointed this out. 0 responses.

Hmm.

Was I the only one who noted the irony of Apple, the new digital emperor, communicating apps to the online world via a, wait for it, wait for it, a TV spot?

Insanely cool Apple using TV?

Isn’t TV all DVR’d, out of date, old school, not with it, unmeasurable, a waste of money and dying like newspapers? Could brands like Apple, VW, Burger King, and now Microsoft with their “I’m a PC” campaign be so out of touch that they’re still using 20th century media as a cornerstone?

Don’t they know that marketing managers today feel so besieged that they need to prove direct results for every message? Just so they don’t get fired by the accountants, measurers, cost cutters and procurers now running the process?

Perhaps.

Or just maybe, could these brands know something that no one online wants to talk about? That before preference, purchase, relationship, and advocacy, you still have to create awareness?

That without awareness, none of the above matter?

Hello? Does anyone else see this, or just the brands that are magically rising above the toxic sludge of the current economy?

Could TV, while not what it once was, still be the most effective way of creating awareness with mass audiences? Like, duh.

Don’t get me wrong. I still have the original Apple battleship grey laptop in my closet. I love my iPhone 3G. I led a creative team that won a gold Clio for interactive way back in 2000. I am as pro-digital, pro-social media, pro-Twitter, Mashable, Facebook, You Tube, Hulu, and whatever’s-next as the next person.

It just seems that everyone online now has an axe to grind. Maybe to relentlessly push online to further their own businesses and their own careers?

Maybe to convert all through the gospel of Digitology? Whatever.

I just think we, as marketers, owe our clients a little bit of objectivity.

But maybe that’s just me.

Let the stoning begin.

Bob Minihan is Executive Creative Director/Partner, ISM
“At ISM, we create Stories That Travel. We have proven that linking smaller brands to bigger stories is a tremendously effective way to compete with larger, better-financed brands, especially in these digital times.”

{{special guest post for “the cause is the habit”}}

There’s a scene in The Wizard of Oz I can’t get out of my head. The flying monkeys have attacked; the Scarecrow has been torn apart. What’s left of the Scarecrow laments: “First they took my legs off and they threw them over there! Then they took my chest out and they threw it over there!”And the Tin Woodsman looks down and replies: “Well, that’s you all over!”

I’ve got to think that’s what it feels like to be a brand these days.

Back in the day, I wrote several “brand guideline” documents for clients. You know the ones that say, “The logo should be no smaller than 3/8” high and always have at least ½” of white space around it.”  The effort was an attempt keep control over the brand – what it looked like, what it felt like, how it should be “presented” to the public. It always seemed a little silly at the time, now it seems downright laughable.

I mean, where does the logo even *go* anymore? Is there a place for branding “guidelines” in Social Media….

Read the rest on Damien Basile’s “The Cause is the Habit” blog.

I’ve been giving quite a few talks at colleges, and the day after one of those a student named Kelly contacted me with a request which I think is a sign of the times:

“Hi….I am applying for a business program this summer and the application requires a LinkedIn account with a minimum of 40 contacts and three recommendations. It is proving to be quite a challenge. I asked a friend today why she wasn’t on LinkedIn and her response was, “What’s that?”

A few interesting things going on here.

My first thought was “Uh-Oh” for the friend who said “What’s LinkedIn”, although some trend-followers speculate that the younger generation is not embracing Social Networking as much as the – er – older generation. Should they be? I just passed judgment on someone for not having heard of LinkedIn. Am I being overly judgmental, or is it just common sense in this day and age?

Second, it’s interesting that Social Networking is starting to be seen as a “cost of entry.” How soon will it be before companies looking to hire you will be checking out how large your network is? How soon before they start asking you to use your network to promote them? (more on that debate here.)

Third, anyone who has been doing this for a while knows how easy it is to get 40 connections, once shown how. I quickly gave her a strategy: Find profiles of companies that she has worked for on LI and search for old colleagues; find professors at her school, connect with them; and then, after you have a dozen connections you can start searching their connections to see if you know anyone THEY are connected with. Heck, I even found several alumni at her school that were part of my network and made introductions – explaining that she needed to treat my connections well and suggesting ways she could add value to them. 24 hours later I got a reply back from her: “Thanks! 42 contacts and growing!”

While Kelly’s group of 40+ connections may help her get into business school, I wonder constantly about the implications of all this. My 14-year old daughter and I sometimes compare notes about how many friends we have on Facebook. A recent conversation began: “Mom, I’m proud to say that every single one of my 950 friends is a REAL friend. Unlike yours.” Ouch! This led to quite an interesting debate over the definition of “real friend,” a discussion I am bound to have many, many times before figuring it all out.

I believe that having a lot of connections is a cost of entry for me as a Creative Strategist who is immersed in the world of Social Media. How else can I advise my clients on how to interact with tens of thousands of connections unless I myself know what it’s like to interact with tens of thousands of connections? My view is that I need to see what it’s like, I need to make mistakes, I need to learn how difficult it is to always treat my network as the valuable asset it is. I value both the quality and the quantity of my network. But…will there ever be a point when it feels like it’s safe for it to stop growing? That is completely unclear to me.

Your thoughts? Do you wonder whether employers, schools, colleagues, will judge people on the size of their networks in the future? I can picture sitting in an interview across from someone who scribbles down “15,000 followers on Twitter.” Am I being realistic or paranoid?

Conversely, will friends judge each other if their network is not filled with “real friends”?

Where do you see it going?

I used to think that the word “value” was the most overused, least meaningful word in the English language. People kept telling me: “In social media, you need give people something of value.” But what was that? Information? News? A how-to guide? Entertainment? Just something random and bizarrely interesting? A beautiful sentence? Surely there could be value in ANY of those things.

But then I discovered a meaning that makes sense to me.

And in the end, it seemed so obvious, that I felt a little stupid for not getting it before. So with that said, I will share it with you. : )

People come together in a community because they share common values. It may be common interests (knitting, photography, golf). It may be shared ideas, such a political views or religion. It could be  excitement around a product, or even a shared sense of humor. But whatever it is – people come together because they realize they only have a limited amount of time in this world and they want to spend their time doing the things they think are most important. And it’s nice to have others who share those values – people who think the same things are interesting or equally important.

So when I think about what to give a group of people that *has* value, I think about what values they share that brought them together in the first place.

This leads me down the following paths when creating things of value:

> Advice, information, how-tos that help the group as a whole will have value.

> An idea that is relevant to your group but gets them to see things in a new light will have value.

> Things that are funny because only people who are in that group really understand what you’re saying will have value.

> Something random and bizarrely interesting will have value only to those people in your group who happen to find that particular thing also interesting. Another way to look at this is that if your group is large enough, everything will have value to *someone* in it.

> News about what’s going on out there in the world has value when either: a) it relates back to the group or b) you are one of the first to pass it on. (it’s truly NEW, and thus the newness itself connects people).

> Sometimes advertisers try to connect their product to a group of people by associating it with what’s happening in the world. They try to jump on trends as a way of connecting people to their product. It works when there truly is a connection between the product and the trend. It rings false when there isn’t.

> If something has value to my group, I have a public conversation about it. If something has value only to an individual, I have a private conversation.

> If you have created a community, or group, or following or whatever that was created randomly, haphazardly and does not share certain values, it will be *extremely* difficult to figure out what is valuable to them.

There are those of us (and some days, I admit to being one of them) who want to find the one thing that *everyone in the world* will find interesting. And there are some things that are universally appeally: stories of men landing on the moon, or a pilot landing a plane on the Hudson.

But it’s really really hard to send a man to the moon or land a plane on the Hudson river every day.

And if you want to get out there and talk to a group of people every day, in a way that has value to them, I’d try this: first, think about what their shared values are.

It’s a Wednesday morning. Or a Monday afternoon. Or Thursday at lunchtime. I’m in a huge conference room with seventeen people or at a tiny table in Starbucks. There are people who I’ve never met. There is the person I’ve known for years. Sometimes I’m in my maroon suit, sometimes in jeans. I am a Social Media consultant, although, quite frankly, I have no idea how I got that title. It seems to have acquired me. As usual, I’m toting a strategic, creative, thoughtful presentation specifically designed for that meeting. All I have to do is get through my introduction.

It’s my turn to talk. I speak my name, and a few bits about my background. How I come from traditional advertising. Have been an art director, copywriter, CEO. And then I launch into what I believe.

“I believe two things. One, I believe that almost every business problem can be solved with social media. And two, I believe that in the very near future, all media will be social media.”

Invariably the clients will put down their pens, cross their arms. If there’s an ad agency person in the room, they lick their lips. Look a little nervous.

“Social media connects things. It connects people who want to buy with people who want to sell. It connects people who share similar values who never before would have known each other. It connects brand evangelists with people who have never heard of a brand. It connects people who have information with people who need information. People who have resources with people who need resources. And social media connects problems with solutions.

Can you imagine doing business without a phone? Without a computer? Social media at its best is the best of those two things combined. You can broadcast to thousands and talk to an individual. Often simultaneously. You can communicate your core values as a business, not through marketing-speak, but through what you think and say and do and how you treat people.

Here’s how it works best. In the old days, if you were a business, you only gave somebody something of value at the time of the purchase transaction. “Give me two dollars, I will give you a hamburger.” Nothing of value was given to the consumer until that two dollars was safely in the cash register.

But in this new world order, you find or create networks of people who share similar values. Because they share values, it is easy to figure out something they actually consider valuable. Go ahead. Give that to them. Before they make a single financial transaction, give them something of value and watch what happens. Give them information. Give them tools. Give them entertainment and thinking and connections and stuff they can use. Give them connections. Give them kindness.

‘But what will I get in return?’, you ask. That’s what everyone asks – if you invest – yes, invest – if you give away something of value before the financial transaction, what can you expect to get in return? In return you get people who are engaged with you and with each other. People who share your passion and the things you believe in. Your product. Your service. Your commitment to the world. In return, you get people who have a commonality of purpose. People who talk to you, who tell you what you could be doing better. People who act. And yes, people who buy.

The ROI for everyone is that you help solve your consumers problem and they help solve your business problems.

So let’s discuss your business problems. And together, let’s strategize a creative solution using social media. Because, as I said earlier, I believe social media can solve almost any business problem you might have. And that’s the reason – the only reason – that I believe in the near future, all media will be social media.

Are you ready to begin?”

A couple of things happened yesterday that got me thinking about life in this brave new world of social media. Each gave me an insight which was cool in its own way, but combined they gave me an “aha” so big I couldn’t wait to run out and tell the world.

1.) I saw some interesting blog comments. Surprising? Not a bit. But in several cases, I wanted to take ONE sentence, one insight, out of context and post it on Twitter. Obviously give credit to the person who said it, but without having to explain where the comment came from. It took me a while, but with help from @jakrose and @CoCreatr others I learned I could permalink to the blog comment itself (look for the link as a number near the comment, then shorten link with bit.ly). Obvious, once shown how. This led me to discuss with people that I wanted to be known as “Chief Bubbler” ~ someone who would bubble up the insights from comments on blog posts that might otherwise get hidden from view.

2.) I figured out the difference between Social Networking and Social Media. Okay, this is another thing that SEEMS like it should be obvious, right? But for the longest time, I couldn’t really articulate it clearly. Then, I got it. Social Networking is the connections between people, and the conversations you have with those people. Social Media is the sharing of content between people in those networks.

There’s some overlap, of course. Conversations become content, for one thing. But it helps me, strategically, to separate them in my own mind. Networking is something I do with individuals, focusing on the relationships I have with people and their interconnections. Social media is finding, creating and exchanging content that has value to like-minded groups of people.

3.). Media We is born. So I’m thinking about all this yesterday. The definition of media, and the creation of content. And the fact that I want to find new and unusual content that people don’t usually see. Content of value. But in order to do that, I have to research, and I have to edit, and I have to attribute properly, and make sure I’m sharing content *responsibly*.

As I’m thinking, I’m messaging people who have blogs, and I’m asking those people if I can set guidelines with them about how I can best use their content. And I think to myself: “I feel like all of a sudden I’m head of  *media relations* somewhere.”

“In fact, I feel like I’ve just been named CEO of my own personal media company. Media We.”

How the heck did that happen?

What do you think? Anyone else feel like they started their own personal media business without even knowing it?

I’ve heard it said that you need to try a brand new food five times before you really like it. (Try this, it’s a fun experiment!).

And I’ve also heard it said that it takes five impressions for an individual to actually internalize an advertising message.

So I’m wondering if the idea of “5 times” is applicable to how we engage with people in Social Media. If it takes 5 times connecting with other someone else before we trust them, say. Or 5 encounters before we are truly engaged with them. Or 5 times hearing someone’s name before they are “on our radar”.

What do you think? Would that change anything for you if it were true?

I was reading this blog post recently, and in the comment section was a something that caught my eye from Dash Chang. His comments are about technology and the Internet and future predictions, and are thought-provoking enough that I posted them all (with permission) below. But there’s one bit in particular I’d like to expand upon and talk about as it relates to social media for business.

Dash wrote: “Think blind men and the elephant.”

Have you ever gotten a group of clients in a room who are a bit naive about Social Media? Everyone there has a little bit of personal social  media experience. Five of the people are on Facebook, and three are on Twitter. One or two have a blog, and some use Flckr, and maybe they’ve heard about Ning, or StumbleUpon, or Tumblr. They are hanging out where their friends hang out, and they know enough to be excited about the one little corner of social media that works for them.

But none of them can see the elephant.

I believe it’s my job as a creative strategist in social media to help clients see the elephant. How?

Start by solving a problem. Start with clear-cut business objectives, not tactics. Before starting any social media program, I always ask: “What are your most pressing business problems? Do you want to expand your target audience? Get more conversions at that deep, dark end of the sales cycle? Do your customers make one purchase but then forget about you?  Is your largest competitor making a lot of noise, drowning you out? Do customers not understand your USP?  Let’s see if we can solve those problems using social media.”

Understand brand strategy. A brand is the story about your company that you want the world to remember. Branding should be based on a company’s values. The values should impact 1.) the way the company acts. 2.) what they say about themselves. And what better way than Social Media to show people your values, day in and day out, in real time, in the real world? What better place than social media to develop your story, understand what’s important and relevant, discover how people see you? Do consumers see your bigger brand story? Do they remember you in the way you want to be remembered?

Think big picture. Branding works best when you have a cohesive brand story tied together in surprising ways across a variety of different platforms and media. Social media works best when you have a cohesive brand story tied together in surprising ways across a variety of different platforms and…oh, hey, is that an *elephant* I see!?

How do you look at brands and social media from a big-picture, strategic level? Can you see the elephant?