Overload+

Some have estimated that the human brain, when compared to modern mechanical memory storage devices, can store something along the line of 2.5 petabytes [a million gigabytes] of data.

It has been said for years that we as humans do not utilize nearly all of our brain function. The recent movie Limitless addresses this and looks at what might be possible if we could access all of this capacity by taking a drug called NZT.

Does anyone have any NZT that I can have?

Google+ has been all of the rage as of late and Google has made a fairly good attempt at generating demand from curiosity by limiting access [and thus creating scarcity] by making it an invitation only type of event, a-la gMail years ago. Google+ may be the latest and greatest, but I am too buried in life, professionally and personally, to dedicate much, if any, time to this right now.

Maybe some time soon I will be able to delve deeper into it, but can’t see having the time to dedicate to another ‘social media’ tool that will take hours to set up and maintain in the name of having another marketing channel for OED. This may change quickly if Google+ over-runs all of the Facebook marketing real estate that has been developed over the past couple of years. I didn’t touch Facebook, after setting it up, for a couple of years until it really made sense to do so in 2009. Much in the way that design and development practices are dictated by browser usage on your site, marketing efforts via social media are dictated by who is using the media, and how often they are using it. I guess I had better go see if the OED MySpace page needs updating since 2006.

NZT, anyone?


Tod O'Brien
One Eyed Dog Productions
www.oneeyeddog.com
digital . delivered

The Youth Marketing Today YouthLetter® will start going out in the next week. Robyn has addressed some interesting topics involving marketing that is both directed to, and involves young people in the creative.

Lazy Marketing

A recent RIM television campaign for the BlackBerry Playbook has been released and revolves completely around the ability to play flash based web content on the tablet. The music is Queen’s soundtrack to the 1980 Movie Flash Gordon, and the voiceover talks extensively how the “best of the web” is now available on the BlackBerry tablet.

That is it.

RIM approved an entire campaign revolving around this difference. RIM and the agency that is taking their money need to get serious and stop jacking around. RIM is in serious trouble. They are watching Apple go farther and farther ahead.

Apple creates products that people desire. Technological superiority does nothing to promote brand desire and loyalty for the average customer. How are the sales of Linux Laptops going? People desire these products and form lines around retail establishments days before a new product launch. The iPad2 doesn’t play flash content and neither did the first iPad yet 25 Million units have been sold worldwide as of this month and not a single bit of flash content to be had on a single one of them.

Nobody cares that the PlayBook plays flash content. I have seen people who swore that a BB phone would be the only thing that they over owned again buy an iPhone or an Android based HTC based solely on the end user experience that these products provide.

Stop allowing your agency to be lazy. You can’t afford that right now. Your once innovative and stellar brand is dying in front of you and you haven’t done anything effective as of yet to revive it.

Should you hire a Social Media Expert?

As a follow up to something we addressed earlier, Who or what makes a Social Media Expert?, here are two different arguments for whether or not an organization actually needs one or not. Peter Shankman argues that social media is not a stand-alone profession and is merely a part of the larger marketing professional, and Rand Fishkin feels as though social media experts are deserving of more respect and perhaps a stand-alone title and responsibilities. To Mr. Shankman's defense, he does mention in the comments on Mr. Fishkin's blog that his approach is one that does not feel as though a social media "expert" cannot be someone who bills themselves as only a social media "expert" and know nothing else about marketing and what all goes with social marketing to make marketing effective.

What do you think? Let us know here.

While this topic has dominated the past couple of these forums, it may warrant sharing a few other interesting things regarding this new digital phenomenon.

The Social Business Imperative has a few interesting points regarding how social media reaches people here, and Digital Buzz Blog addresses the real cost of social media here, which is where the costs mentioned earlier were derived.

Who, or what, is a Social Media Expert?

Many businesses have cited low cost as a reason for moving more toward social media presence. Many businesses are actively recruiting ‘Social Media Experts’, and at a senior level.

What are these experts worth as businesses scramble to get a social media presence launched? Someone has placed a figure on it. $94,600 a year for a “Community Manager” that gets this community management completed in 30 hours a week. While this is an overall view of the social arena, it does place a monetary figure on this position, and gives a baseline to work from.

What are the requirements of a Social Media executive? It doesn’t appear to have a lot to do with Social media. The word social is only mentioned in the title and once in the body of the posting buried in a requirement along with design, and video. Do they want someone to design custom Facebook pages [Which is a skill-set in and of itself since FB decided to use a proprietary FBML language and not standard HTML] and craft tweets [a copywriter]? Do they need Facebook apps built and deployed [Application Development]? Do they need all of this? Do they really know or are they just convinced that they must have a Social Media Executive on staff to be able to tell clients that they do? It also seems as though prior agency experience is a huge contributing factor in being able to fulfill social media expectations in this particular case.

All of this social media is just a part of the larger marketing picture. Just because someone has a Facebook page and a Twitter account does that make them an expert at social media? I would assume not, but let me know if I am wrong. How does this Social Expert fit into the over all marketing strategy? Should this person be partitioned off from the rest of the marketing staff from a knowledge and expertise perspective? Should social media gurus, rock-stars, mavens, and divas come from an over-all marketing background and not just be some sort of niche subject matter expert? At this point in time what is that defines a social media expert? Is it like 1996 and if you know what HTML stands for you are a web expert? At the time, I guess that was the definition. It may be true today in social media.

If you can land a 30 hr. a week job making $94K, congratulations. You are a social media expert, although some might call you a great salesperson.

More later on why some folks say that they would never hire a social media expert and a counterpoint on why businesses should hire a social media expert…

Tod O'Brien
Director of Creative Services
One Eyed Dog Productions
www.oneeyeddog.com

Social Media Tracking

Have you ever wondered who is talking about you, or better yet, your brand or a client’s brand? Word-of-Mouth or earned media has been a long-standing high value marketing tool, but is has always been difficult at best to measure and provide some sort of tangible results to clients. It has been even more difficult to single out and identify the influencers within groups that are brand advocates. These are the 10% that the other 90% are watching. They are the ones who tend to be early adopters and very vocal in their opinions of brands that they are fond of. They are the people that marketers strive to identify and utilize due to the inherent power of word-of-mouth marketing.

Social Media has taken the traditional earned media and completely changed how consumers communicate about brands. In many ways the measurement of brand chatter, and identifying the ever-important brand advocates, has remained even more difficult since the amount of talk had expanded exponentially.

While many developers have been designing was to quantify actual online WOM [actionly, unilyzer, etc.], ReSearch.ly has an interesting online interface that allows you to search Twitter traffic by keywords, filter by gender, date & time, location, and by whether the comments were positive or negative all in real-time. They allow for 10 free searches and the system archives 1,000 days of data, and perhaps the most important feature is the ability to single out community influencers.

The concept is interesting and holds some degree of promise for online marketers that have always had to wait for more traditional results to come in regarding digital advertising efforts. This PeopleBrowsr might just make your life a little easier.

Facebook Studios

Anyone who has dealt with Facebook for their business or clients businesses knows that when Facebook decides to change the way that something is done within their platform, it can send ripples, if not wakes, through your world for quite some time. Updating landing pages, converting from FBML tabs to “apps”, and all of that can eat up a fair amount of time and effort that if not built into a client contract can cost you money.

At face value, it looks like Facebook has started to take a step toward making these transitions a little easier. Last week, Facebook Studios went live. It is billed as a community where agency creative can “share ideas, comment on campaigns, and learn what it takes to create a successful page for a brand.” I certainly hope it revolves around the third point the most, and does not become a breeding ground for back-slapping and ‘atta-boys’ and truly allows and fosters an environment that ideas can be shared and both successes and failures can be analyzed and learned from. This concern stems from the site content centers around a spotlighted campaign, six campaigns in a gallery, and a “most popular” section. All of this is then followed by the “learning lab” at the bottom.

Here’s to learning….

Tod O'Brien

Director of Creative Services

One Eyed Dog Productions

www.oneeyeddog.com/

Brand Identity Theft

Last week's subject was dedicated to the issue of Brand Reputation and how it can quickly and easily become a big problem if someone goes online a starts dismantling your brand via new media capabilities such as blogs, message boards, social networking sites, etc.

This same form of new media can also cause anyone with a computer and a connection to wreak havoc on your brand by committing brand identity theft.

This can occur when someone sets up a Facebook, Twitter, or other online account and names it something that could easily be taken as an official brand communication channel.

This happened to BP during the Gulf crisis spurred by the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig disaster. @BPGlobalPR on twitter was a fictitious BP Public Relations channel set up by an individual who broadcast messages that made BP appear both foolish and incompetent. This is very dangerous for a brand when these imposters are taken as the real thing and actually start believing that parody or malicious messaging is being send by the company when it really is not.

This situation can also affect personal brands as well. When Rahm Emanuel decided to return to Chicago and run for mayor, he was well aware of how well new media assisted his friend in attaining the White House just a few years earlier. He set up @RhamEmanuel on Twitter, which makes sense, and started keeping his followers, 16,746 of them, informed of his mayoral bid. The problem came to be when an anonymous twitter user set up @mayorEmanuel and started rather frequent postings laced with rather unusual language for someone running for office. Well, it was quickly figured out that @mayorEmanuel was an impostor, but again, if someone does not know this and assumes that this is him, it could have some adverse effects on his personal brand as he ran for mayor. Oh, and the bogus account has 49,458 followers reaching over twice as many people as the real Rahm Emanuel on Twitter and as a result of the content of the feed, gained as much if not more media attention.

Emanuel handled the situation well. In touching on one of last week’s points, do not overreact with overwhelming force. He could have easily dumped a few lawyers on the issue, made threats to sue, and things like that. But he didn’t. He offered $5000 to the charity of choice of the person doing it if they made themselves known. It worked and once Dan Sinker admitted to being the man behind it all, he got his 15 minutes of fame, Emanuel had de-fused the situation and the whole thing was a non-issue anymore.

Identity theft can happen to brands as well as individuals. This is another good reason to keep up with and engage with online communities. Someone may be talking for the brand and not in a very flattering way.


Tod O'Brien
Director of Creative Services
One Eyed Dog Productions
www.oneeyeddog.com


P.S.: Don't forget....Youth Marketing Today is an online community for advertising, marketing and brand management professionals; and young people who take an active interest in how they interact and communicate with brands and how those brands interact and communicate with them.

Brand Reputation Warfare

Companies and their brands are now fighting a new, and at times, elusive small-scale antagonists more and more frequently. The age of social media, while most often looked to as a brand-building tool, has also become the weapon of choice when it comes to attacking brands and their associated reputations by dissatisfied customers, disgruntled employees, or anyone else.

Virtually anyone with a personal computer, a web connection, and an axe to grind can become a major problem for a brand and it can happen seemingly over night. Brand reputation is difficult enough without the constant threat of brush fires of negative public relations issues popping up and spreading quickly. Management still has options in dealing with these situations while not tarnishing the brand any further and perhaps with the chance to actually build the brand even more as a result.

Below are few guidelines for dealing with these issues when they do occur:

Be calm and think first. Even if you are managing a large and well-funded brand, do not retaliate with an overwhelming show of force. Be professional, factual, and listen. Some may initially feel that a barrage of press releases, blogging, and social media responses would immediately be in order to extinguish and suppress the negative chatter online and elsewhere. This may not always be the case, and rarely is in the new socially dominated digital universe. A large brand in the midst of a knee-jerk response that is over-done can backfire and garner sympathy public opinion votes for the 'little guy' and only further their cause and not the brands cause.

Don't get bogged down in red tape. The response should be swift and relevant. If a mid-level P.R. professional in the organization drafts responses that are deemed reasonable and effective, go with it. Don't wait for upper management to go over everything and approve it letter for letter. This goes to the next point, by the way…

Empower members of your organization. This goes for almost any aspect of the organization, but it is especially true when dealing with these situations. People tend to believe other 'real' people who work at a company, and not a person who is lofting around in the higher ranks of an organization. These are often considered the very people who drove the brand to do what has them upset in the first place. When everyone knows and shares the vision and values of the organization, the story is natural and realistic. It is also more believable.

New media perpetuated the issues, use new media to help address the issues. New media is often considered a threat for the very reasons that we are discussing here. Some of this stems from most organizations not knowing what to do. Many have not laid out a contingency plan in the event that this happens, and most do not have the right resources in place to operate a new media campaign. Many companies do not know how to fight fire with fire because they have never used a match before. Be prepared, even if you were never a Boy Scout.

Know who your allies are. Know who really knows what your brand and organization is all about. Utilize them as needed if your brand takes a reputation beating. These are force multipliers that are taken much more seriously that a CEO when a brand needs defending. These people are more credible and believable to the public at large as an outside or third party reference involving the issue at hand. Influencers cannot only help build your brand; they can help maintain it in a crisis situation.

Again, be prepared. Part of preparedness in situations like these is first of all, being a good corporate citizen, and when this is acknowledged, keep it in your pocket to re-iterate when your brand is under attack. Being able to point to these times of brand responsibility can go a long way especially when they are current and relevant to the issue at hand.

New media is a great new force in the marketing world. It, like many powerful forces, can be a double-edged sword. Always keep your sharp to fight back when someone starts taking pot-shots at you from a distance.

If you would like occasional items like these regarding branding, marketing, new media, and such sent directly to you, please consider signing up for our newsletter here.

As always, thank you for joining us for this discussion.

Tod O'Brien
Director of Creative Services
One Eyed Dog Productions
www.oneeyeddog.com

Does a major brand drop its icon over political correctness?

The Aflac duck has been silenced. For now. Gilbert Gottfried has been let go as the voice of the voice of the Aflac brand Identity. While it is understandable why Aflac would drop Gottfried, and some may say it is just as hard to understand why they hired him in 2000. But that is not what I am getting at here. Gottfried decided to make a few tasteless jokes at the expense of the Japanese people and the recent disaster that they are suffering via his Twitter account, and Aflac felt that any continued association with him was un-sustainable in the name of brand management, public relations, and arguably; good taste.

Aflac does 70% of its business in Japan. It is reasonable that they would need to distance themselves from Gottfried. The question is how quickly did they come up with that decision? I am sure that an official corporate news release would say that it was not a hard decision, but the idea had to cause some serious corporate soul-searching. The Gottfried duck is a decade old identity. The duck appears in print but its main delivery mechanism was television and that medium directly associated the duck and the voice that they chose to accompany the visual.

Aflac has millions upon millions invested in building that duck into an instantly recognizable identity. It is a simple rendering of the animal and the commercials are a long running media tradition of sorts. You don't even have to watch the commercials. All that you have to do is hear it and know who it belongs to. I can't think of any other brand that can do that right now.

Aflac has initiated an open casting call to replace Gottfried as the voice of the duck, but it might be best to just move on to something else. Replacing a well known character, or even the voice of, for any reason has not been the best choice in the past. Just ask the Looney Tunes franchise when Mel Blanc died.

Need to be "Branded"?

Buzz words. There are tons of them, and even more people that use them. These terms are thrown around with such abandon that they lose some o their meaning. Other times they take on niche meanings that don't fully encompass the terminology.

One of these terms that really gets over, or maybe under used, is "brand". In this context, I use the word in relation to marketing and advertising. The use of this word often leaves out, and often pigeon-holes the term 'your brand' into a very narrow-casted role within the entire branding process.

I have clients ask: "Can you make me a logo to brand my company?" I then do my best to explain.

The biggest misinterpretation that I see both with people in the marketing field as well as outside of it is that a logo is a company's brand. This often carries the task of choosing colors in addition to shape and feel of artwork that the company will present to the public and use as its identity. While a logo has a definite role in the process of branding, it is not the brand in and of itself as many people portray it. It is the public facing identity of an organization.

While branding takes many different pieces of an at time complicated puzzle, some pieces are larger than others.

What does brand do? It makes you want to do business with a particular company or organization. It makes you think of that business or product when you are in the process of making a buying decision. It makes you comfortable with them and spending your hard earned money with them.

The single biggest business process that you can implement and instill in employees is great customer service. Hands down. How many companies do you seek out when buying or suggest to friends and family and say: "You should go to company XYZ. They have the coolest logo!" I can't think of any time that I ever have. I, and most everyone that I know, will bring up a great experience when dealing with that company. The company resolved an issue, made the time to explain a product, or just made things 'right'.

I know of many instances of people deciding not to do business with a company simply over a bad experience. No matter what the logo looks like. No matter what the annual advertising budget is. There are many businesses out there that have a loyal and devoted following that spend moderate amounts on marketing and simple take care of their customers.

While a professional and effective logo does matter, it is not your branding. No matter who does it or what is spent on it. Let your agency or designer worry about the logo. That is why you hired them. Now get back to your customers. They are waiting.

Tod O'Brien
Director of Creative Services
One Eyed Dog Productions
www.oneeyeddog.com

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