A spell for LinkedIn

I appreciate the people here looking to educate, share resources and decolonise minds—not only around imperialist, racist, and patriarchal structures, but around the belief that economic growth is the primary metric by which we should value ourselves, others and "progress".

I also get that many people are just trying to get by. They want to promote their businesses, cheer on successes, humblebrag, thought-lead, boost morale. That's what this platform is for. If I want something else, I can go to another platform and look at humblebrags of kids and vacations instead. If I'm sick of that, maybe I'll read a book, talk to actual humans or take a nap, instead of getting mad about how social media doesn't reward full-spectrum humanity. It's here to make money, not fulfill me.

With that said—the emotional gotchas, the rage-baiting, the "us vs. them", the zero-sum self-righteous judgment flowing through here now? They're not helping anyone. They're not paving the way to enlightenment. It's fast-acting venom that's making us sick. I don't know what the long-term effects will be, but they won't be good. The nausea I feel after a cursory scroll feels like radiation poisoning.

Stories are powerful. Words are powerful. Our energy is powerful, and it bleeds through screens. When I say "powerful" I don't just mean mentally. What impacts the body—our organs and cells, our guts and blood—starts in the mind and senses. We can heal and harm in the most literal sense without ever physically touching one another.

We can make each other ill for years, or try healing ourselves and those within proximity. We're responsible for wielding our powers mindfully.

It's important to understand this: Stories and words aren't just "technology," or vessels devoid of purpose. They live. They bite and suck and squeeze. They kill and maim. They can also restore, rejuvenate, and create fertile vivid possibility in concrete corsets over scorched earth. They can plant wild runaway gardens inside us and others.

May we use them kindly, judiciously and well. May we not poison just to poison, or curse others and ourselves. May we heal. I wish this for all of you and I wish this for me.

Brands in My Newsfeed

Just a snapshot of the brands that popped up in my newsfeed yesterday afternoon. They practically hit me one after the other. My responses to them:

• I read the Obama one pretty closely, as I found the photo compelling and relatable -- two things Obama happens to be good at in the social space.
• I usually peep Good but didn't this time; I'm kinda over the existential humans vs chimpanzees ruminating, and the infographic had that ugly, hard-to-read background colour.
• Method I read because I'm a hardcore fangirl. Usually the imagery is more interesting but I did go through all the comments out of curiosity. I identified with the people who were like "My Target doesn't carry all that" and noticed Method didn't really reply, which vaguely embarrassed me because HEY, FANGIRL.
• YSL -- I read the text because the photo was cute and wanted to know the story behind it. And then I got kind of weirded out by this whole "the most Amazonian of Parisians" description. Did I find her Amazonian? Not sure.
• The champagne ad: I looked at it because the colours were pretty but didn't feel it particularly spoke to me. This guy is maybe two shares away from me de-newsfeeding him, actually.
• LOVED the Game of Thrones share. Even though this group's English is horrible they often find shareable GoT stuff that I end up sharing with other people. And what girl doesn't love Daenarys? I ask you, what girl? If you find one, I don't want to be friends with her because ew, she probably likes Sansa.

Social Strategy. It's Complicated.

This Buddy Media/Luma Partners illustration of the complex social media marketing mix is about as hairy as you want to make it; all the brands featured here aren't necessarily going to play a role in your marketing campaign. But it does show to what degree social media marketing's become -- what's the word they used? -- right, complicated.

Let's talk about pitching social strategy from the outside. This is a scenario that happens more and more often. 

When I go into a pitch there are so many things to teach, so many routes that lead into others, so many platforms to walk the client through, and worse still, half of them still can't see past Facebook. Let me clarify: they don't know what any of this other stuff is, but they somehow always "know" that they "need" Facebook. (Indeed, many will admit that their less sophisticated markets haven't got a website up, but nonetheless found the time to produce an empty Facebook page generating handfuls upon handfuls of gratuitous Likes.)

You've prepared your presentation. It is neat, logical and has a clear chronology. It is loaded with helpful charts. You get into the work of rehashing the pitch, elaborating your spin on the pitch, identifying certain existing challenges between Consumer and Corporate. Then you begin selling Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter for CRM and whatever-else-have-you. You show how each contributes to the consumer journey and leads to certain calls to action, certain touch points. They will be trackable in real-time, with KPIs that, over the long-term, carry the brief to its solution. They will be unified in design and in message. They will be manned by a dedicated person(s) trained in crisis management, who knows the company well and ideally comes from inside it.

Blank looks. "Where's Facebook?" somebody says. "What is all this other stuff?"

You put Facebook in its proper context. Slowly. Then you leap to the addendum slides explaining what those other things are, their figures, their respective growth trajectories, and why they're relevant to the market in question, but already that's another conversation so loaded with information that you know -- while talking -- that none of this will be retained. Then some smartaleck in the back of the room opens his laptop, checks out Pinterest, runs a search for his brand and -- hey presto! -- finds some crazy naked lady who's used a Sharpie to draw "makeup" on her face. He snickers and shows it to his seatmate. She has a freakout and turns to you and says, "This is not for us, we can't be associated with it, and by the way, what's the ROI of social media?"

The ROI of social media. 

What the hell did you guys bring me in for if you're still debating that question?

So suddenly it becomes your role to sell social media as a whole, which you thought they had already come to terms with because they brought you here to pitch a strategy to them. (Whose idea was it to organize that before the leaders weren't ready?)

You give the earned media spiel, run quickly through some case studies that you kept in your pocket just in case to demonstrate how social media better engages customers, rallies customers, improves employee productivity and brand perception, lowers R&D spend, lowers marketing budgets, lowers product development costs, lowers PR rates. Among other things. You show how it can be transformative. You pass around a David Armano illustration of how a company can move slowly in the direction of transcendence.

"We don't care about any of those things, we have sales people," somebody says, pointlessly. "We've never really needed to talk to the consumer. This is not that kind of company."

You circle back to THE BRIEF! and your step-by-step path to the aforementioned transcendence, which you hope will bring everyone back to the matter at hand. They keep staring at you, less blankly now and more with smirks. They are still asking about Facebook and ROI. At this point you're not sure what kind of answer they're looking for because you're pretty sure you covered everything in the whole universe excepting particle physics, was anybody taking notes? Is this game rigged? You're starting to talk in circles, little clichés, and the heads of marketing are giving each other knowing looks.

You go home, defeated and spent after having stolen a donut in the lobby. You get feedback a week later. Social strategy's been pushed back for now, you're told. The company's decided it's not a priority, and your presentation was not at all what they expected. 

"Why?" you ask.

"There was no clear recommendation," they say. Oh, and by the way? "There are currently also no plans to engage in e-commerce of any kind, at least not directly to customers, so the work was irrelevant. There are sales people for that."

And then you just die.

Ad People: Just Funner at Parties.

This weird infographic by Heat and iThink has been circulating.* It pits the social media use and sentiment of ad and marketing people against those of "normal" people, but curiously also tosses in sections on who's more likely to:

• Use illicit drugs (us by 26%, versus 3% of the general populace)
• Throw up from drinking (us, 37% versus 9% of Norms)
• Hook up with a coworker (us, 26% versus 8% Norms)

I'm not sure to what degree any of that contributes to us being disproportionately bigger fanboys (and girls!) of social media's merits, but perhaps it reassuringly suggests we're both more social online and offline. (Because if you're drugging up and alkie-vomiting by yourself in front of Twitter, then ... wow. Just wow.)

---

*By "circulating" I basically mean here and thusly in my AdVerveBlog Twitter feed. I know. I live inside an echo chamber.

How and Why You Should Write a Social Media Will

From usagov:

Social media is a part of daily life, but what happens to the online content that you created once you die? 

If you have social media profiles set up online, you should create a statement of how you would like your online identity to be handled. Just like a traditional will helps your survivors handle your physical belongings, a social media will spells out how you want your online identity to be handled. 

Like with a traditional will, you’ll need to appoint someone you trust as an online executor.

I know we totally need this and it's very important, but it's such a surreal thing to see on USA.gov.

Yes, more surreal than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Safety Guide for a Zombie Apocalypse. But it is possible my judgment on this point is skewed.

The BeanCast 198: Specifically Targeted

Listen to the show.

Yesterday I joined The BeanCast for its 198th episode alongside some illustrious and fun folks: social media/digital director Chris Baccus of AT&T, vp marketing/social Jeremy Epstein of Sprinklr, and founder Joe Jaffe of Evol8tion. We covered a lot of ground, including:

• The value of earned media (versus paid)
• Advertising on The Olympics
• Mid-roll advertising's video virtues
• Geofencing: is this THE YEAR?
• Crowdsourcing with Starbucks

If you're familiar with the show, you'll know that at the end we also share the topics we'll be watching this week. I'm watching the technology coming out of AT&T's research department, which could make a lot of people happy but also pose a lot of problems for privacy to those being watched at a given point in time.

A prime example of this is the The Drive Safely iPad app, developed in tandem with AT&T and some Israeli developers (a lot of incredible tracking and identification tech is coming out of Israel right now). This pretty little beast enables parents to track their teens' driving in real-time -- great for parents, not so good for teens (although what do they know, their frontal lobes aren't even fully formed yet).

Take a listen! You'll dig it, I promise.

Pinterest

Does my Pinterest reveal more about me than my Tweets or Facebook updates do?

Probably not, but it illuminates a nuance: desire.

Even the infographics douches can't resist the siren's call of personal pinning, and what I find fascinating about Pinterest is its inherently aspirational quality. People pin wedding dresses, interior design ideas, branded goods, exotic destinations, and photo after photo after photo of Audrey Hepburn. (Including this creepy baby Holly Golightly.) It isn't all projection, though: you'll also find a menagerie of recipes, hair and makeup how-tos, and home crafts -- tying the site to the everyday lives of some.

Barriers to entry are low -- you can get to Pinning in a minute -- and once you start Repinning, you may never stop, creating a long and ever-evolving psychographic footprint. One infographic (aptly Pinned) claims that Pinterest hit the 10 million US user mark in record time.

Then there's the question of how brands are using it beyond mundane product packshot archiving. If you're attending SXSW, especially for the first time, check out GSD&M's SXSurvival page. And I recently discovered Gary Vaynerchuk's Wine Board, which is delicious to skim and to read and made me thirsty for Pomerol. (I also find it hilarious how often he uses the description "citrus candy".)

After Hours, Will You Pass the Social Media Sobriety Test?

Boulder-based Webroot is an antivirus and internet security firm, meaning it is in one of the most neglectable industries in the four corners of the Internet, especially if you're a Mac user. :P

So it's come up with a way to get attention: the Social Media Sobriety Test, a Firefox plugin that does for your networks what Gmail Goggles did for the victims of your triumphant 2 AM whiskey-fueled emails.

Once downloaded, the Sobriety Test asks you to set a period of time in which you'd like to be protected (for example, after 11 PM every Thursday). You can customise what sites you'd like to be blocked from during this highly probable intoxication period, including Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Tumblr, some custom URLs and web-based email accounts like Gmail or Hotmail. If you try to access them, you'll be made to pass a randomly-generated online sobriety test.



Basically, it's a condom that prevents your uninhibited stupidity from bearing fruit in the one place it will most likely be immortalised for all time. Although I really hope this auto-update option is, uh, optional:



Awkward. UPDATE: the press guy says it's totally optional. Whew.

The tagline ties it all nicely back to pithy ol' Webroot: Protecting you from all possible threats. Even yourself. Work by TDA Advertising & Design, Boulder.

"Hello": Agent Provocateur's '09 Social Media Foray

I was really impressed by "Hello" when it came out; it had a low-key attitude with a wit and intelligence that I found intuitively sexy. Finally: lingerie marketed to real-life grown-up women!* I read the blog, I followed the tweets. That persona - intuitive and truthful, fallibly human - is what convinced me to walk into an Agent Provocateur store for the first time.

(And I bought things! So many things!)

This video falls flat in comparison, though. The script is poor, that background music is lame, there are no statistics. I don't really understand why it exists, apart from that it half-heartedly revives memory of a promising campaign that was snuffed, inexplicably, shortly after launch.

Humor me ››

Demystifying Social Media

Demystifying Social Media: Navigating All that Noise

View more presentations from luckthelady.

Here's the presentation I gave for the PDMA on Thursday on behalf of hypios. It's essentially a stab at changing social technology perception, with emphasis on:

• Following your DNA when choosing a social technology
• Trusting users and letting your degree of openness develop over time, like it would in any real relationship
• Prepping beforehand: both for failure and for success
• The idea that brands are stewards of a product or service, and that it's users who have true ownership over what they're representing

Lots of examples in thar. Hopefully you find it useful. Catch you guys back on the other side of the Atlantic!

Also, photos here.

Just So's You Know

Will be tweeting/liveblogging for Social Media & Community 2.0 Strategies. Follow me @luckthelady and watch blog updates on http://community20.blogspot.com/.

Also, if you want, you can see me talk about demystifying social media in Hoboken on Thursdee.

Demystifying Social Media

I promise not to do this.

At the invitation of the PDMA, I'll be speaking on Thursday of next week at the Stephens Institute of Technology. Here's what I will cover:

• The current social media environment. There will be a specific focus on Twitter's role here: why it is used, how it is relevant to brands and innovators, pros and the cons
• How do you decide what social media outlets are right for you? We go over the benefits and demands in terms of time, maintenance and user expectations.
• How do you respond in a social media/PR crisis?
• How do you choose your brand voice? A quick exercise on honing in on your brand DNA.

It's a lot of stuff, but I don't plan to dwell long and will keep lamesauce jokes to a minimum. Bring your iPads so I can watch you try taking notes on them.

Registration link. Cost is $15 for students, $30 for members and $40 for non-members. Maybe we can all kick a ball around after.

Poll Tahm: Is Social Media Synonymous with...

...radical, transformative change?

On Why We Launched a Podcast ... in a Podcast.

Social media manager Esteban Contreras of Samsung (@socialnerdia) was recently kind enough to have Bill Green and me on his Social Nerdia podcast. We discuss social media, up-and-coming versus traditional agencies, the merits of having a complete context (no matter WHAT you've been asked to do for a client) and why Bill and I launched AdVerve.

Humor me ››

IKEA Turns Facebook Tagging into Brand Advocacy

Tag yourself on a $30 lamp. What do you win? The lamp. What's IKEA win? Impressions -- and the likelihood of more participation -- across your Facebook network.

(Via VOTW.)

Center Stage, On tha Mic!

Podcast junkies: AdVerve Episode two is up and available here. Topics by timestamp:

00:04 – Bill makes me do an uncomfortable dance about limits and the French market.
05:20 – Our approach to podcasting.
13:30 – 10 for 10 -- a topic association game.
42:22 – The agency/PR landgrab for social media.
49:45 – On being a creative octopus.
54:09 – Wrapup and GO.

Housekeeping shite:

• Still working on finding a good content platform for the website AdVervecast.com, but in the meantime listen to the first ep here.
• We are pending approval on iTunes. Here is our show feed; you can also subscribe from FeedBurner.
• Houston, we have email. Hate or love can be sent to advervecast@gmail.com.
  

Rishad Tobaccowala Talks Brand-Building, Damage Control and the Art of Seduction

At ad:tech Chicago last week, and prior to his opening talk, I approached Denuo CEO Rishad Tobaccowala in hopes of scoring an interview later on. He was in a hurry and answered in a way I found brusque and upsetting -- which ended up colouring my feelings about the keynote.

He emailed to apologize immediately after reading the article I wrote, and was also good enough to give me almost three hours of his time in an interview -- more of a conversation, really -- later that week.

We never did get around to a formal Q/A. But he taught me so much about branding and relationships that most of the gems would be lost if I didn't whip out the cam and start recording.

Four Things Your Brand Shares with Your Soulmate:



Second Chances at First Impressions, and Thinking Fast When Your Brand Gets Sullied:



This is the longest of the videos. At the start, Rishad gives advice on what leaders should do when traveling abroad to impart wisdom: Google yourself in the country to find out "who" you are to the inhabitants.

He also details how he approached remedying our first impression -- and why he plans to turn it into a case study for brands. For him, it was a colourful example of how marketers and clients need to resolve issues now: in real-time.

And I realized that there's an intuitive "ethic" associated with being a persuader (like a blogger). After he took action to ramify our awkward exchange, he consulted with his social media team to gauge how I might react. They gave him three possibilities; I did them all within 24 hours.

Rishad's Exercise for Building Your Personal Brand:



It sounds simple, but it's hard; I've spent two weeks trying to nail the first part. He also reveals his own results.

And that was that. Once we wrapped up, I crept around his house touching porcelain, glass and stone things that I probably shouldn't be touching. He was cool about it, and wrapped up our afternoon by showing me an amazing view of Chicago from his terrace.

It's incredible what kind of power comes with taking a bit of time to bandage a bruised user experience. Because today, whenever somebody says something about Rishad Tobaccowala, sunbeams and rainbows come shooting out of my face.

United Breaks Guitars.

En route to Nebraska, musician Dave Carroll witnessed baggage caddies at United Airlines manhandle his $3500 guitar, resulting in some serious damage.

He pursued the usual channels of complaint, but United didn't cough up any compensation -- so Carrol decided to disseminate a YouTube music video of his experience. It's circulating internets as we speak. (Via et via.)

Fun fact from Ben Kunz of ThoughtGadgets: "The 'United Breaks Guitars' video has spawned 950 additional complaints/comments in 1 day since posting. Yikes."

Reason #4302984302843908 why brands need to closely monitor social media channels -- and, on top of that, pay attention to the customer service experiences clients get on the ground floor. Otherwise, you get a big taste of what social media "gurus" call "the cost of not participating."

Marketing 2.0 Paris: Deconstructing Scott Monty

One of my favourite Marketing 2.0 talks, besides the Paula Berg stuff, was by Scott Monty, Ford Motor Co.'s social media man.

The guy's been alternately lauded and lashed, but I think he's the real deal. It's not even just that he's a nice guy; he's not afraid to express a scathing truth from top-of-mind, even if it stings. Social media's all about that: finding out who people really are, before they can terrace their images.

I didn't take any video (bummer), but I'll let you in on a priceless moment during his Q/A, when Sandrine Plasseraud of We Are Social asked about ROI tracking for social media campaigns.

Monty scoffs and goes, "ROI is a campaign metric; social media is a commitment. [...] What's the ROI of putting your pants on in the morning?"

Later, Plasseraud pointed out Monty can say that kind of stuff because he happens to have the kind of freedom most enterprise social media practitioners lack. Soc-med lackeys typically fall under a more traditional micro manager -- and micro managers always want metrics.

That may be the case, but the guy's no tyrant. And considering the power Ford's given him to do what he likes, he's certainly not out of touch. To start with, he's always accessible via Twitter -- no matter who you are.

And while he knows the Ford brand gets undeserved flak, he doesn't behave defensively. Most of his current efforts are about getting people that haven't tried a Ford in the last five years to try one now, for free -- the better for dispelling old brand perceptions.

I found him alone in the break room shortly after his talk, and upon seeing me he actually put his BlackBerry down and shot the breeze for 20 minutes. However much it rang, he didn't look at it once. (Not even my mom does that.)

This time last year Monty was working with Crayon. Ford approached him for the social media gig, but he turned it down. (Crayon was stretched thin at the time, and frankly, he didn't want to move to Detroit.)

A month or so later, they approached him again. His name keeps coming up, they said, so why not come down to Detroit to get a feel for the culture?

Monty did. He did some reading and went down to home base -- then positively fell in love with what he found. (His eyes light up when he says this.) Ford's a legacy brand: people, their children and their children's children ascend its ranks. And it's not just about that: the loyalty, and the talent just waiting to be tapped, moved him.

So he accepted. And now he sits in his chair and sort of fidgets, looking giddy like a kid. While we chat, some guy walks over and expresses gushy praise for his presentation; Monty grins, turns back to me and says "I will never get used to that" in this down-home, aw-shucks sorta way.

But small-town vibe aside, Monty's also painfully practical. When I expressed interest in Ford's refusal to take government bailout cash, he nodded gravely and said something to the effect of, "People are happy with us now because of that, but we can't ride that sentiment for long. We have to keep moving."

Hear, hear.

Snapshots from Marketing 2.0 Paris: Wincing Lunch Away with Facebook, MySpace and Fred Cavazza

This session razed the Richter Scale of Awkward for too many reasons.

To start with, I don't think reps from Facebook and MySpace were supposed to speak together. They were placed on the same panel in the interest of saving time.

Everyone was anxious for lunch -- which, it turns out, was more of an appetite-whetter than a satisfier; moderator Fred Cavazza spent most of the panel talking about other stuff; Damien Vincent of FB expressed a Freudian allegiance for the other team; and -- oh yeah! -- Cavazza conducted makeshift photo ops during the presentation.

MySpace's Olivier Hascoat was cool though, except for that moment where he reluctantly poses for an iPhone shot while Vincent's talking. Way to be a sport, man.

In the event that you didn't catch all that, take an audio/visual tour:

Fred Cavazza hijacks Facebook/MySpace talk.




Cavazza monopolized at least the first 20 minutes of the program. He's smart and I like him, but he's no presenter -- though he did cover a lot of ground: social media metrics (granted, in an uncomfortably abstract way), and even skittles.com at some point.

We were all there for Facebook and MySpace though. And you could see the reps at left, getting progressively antsier. (See vid: Hascoat HELLA shook his head, all contemptuously and whatnot.)

Meanwhile, in the audience, my stomach eats itself. Wanna know the best part? This was what lunch was like (photo credit: 13stock). It was gone in 8 minutes, give or take. And no, there weren't any plates, which effectively ensured we all remained equally hungry.

Damien Vincent's Facebook faux-pas.

Vincent, top brass of sales for Facebook France, gets so excited about wrastling the mic away from Cavazza that he forgets where he's working.

"Hi, everybody. I'm Damien. Um, so I joined MySpace -- I'm sorry, Facebook..."




Vincent plugs the filter factor.

He could've done more with this topic -- like exploring Facebook's potential as an internet-wide entertainment curator and aggregator. No such luck.




Vincent on various Facebook ad formats.

Jump to 1:26 real quick: Cavazza's got his own agenda.




Olivier Hascoat wraps up by saying brands are just consumer perception.

Food for thought, pun only slightly intended.