Many thanks to Jason Sem for thinking up this event series in the first place. It's been a robust opportunity for two different tribes to get together and share insights.
Who are you, and how do other perceive and learn more about you? Just a few years ago these questions typically required face-to-face communication or were facilitated with printed materials—a magazine profile, a book, a laminated portfolio. Not anymore.
Since Al Gore invented the Internet, the means by which your personal and professional identity is (or isn't) communicated has become increasingly more complex.
Who are you? Go ahead, do some "ego surfing." Type your name into Google. Then enter some friends, colleagues, competitors, employees, brands. Try the same approach on YouTube, where roughly 10% of all search traffic now occurs. Try Yahoo. Try LinkedIn. Try Facebook. Try Twitter Search. Try Technorati. Try Wikipedia.
This is primarily how the world comes to know who you are today. Or doesn't come to know. Or comes to know an aspect of your life you'd prefer they didn't, at least, not initially.
This circumstance is unavoidable. As a professional, as a personal brand, as an employee and employer, you simply can't or shouldn't avoid the care and feeding of your digital self.
The process isn't terribly laborious—much of it a one-time exercise. But there are all kinds of tips, tricks and best practices you can employ to improve, counter and otherwise maintain the portrait you'd prefer people see of you online. This is what Greg and I will be talking about on Thursday, July 9 at Grumpy's in Roseville.
Please bring your laptop. We're assuming Grumpy is hip enough for wifi. So the last half of our presentation will include a mini-workshop to help you activate the tools which best suit the story you're hoping to tell about yourself online.
Jake Nyberg (aka Mullet Like Me) kills it this time, driving the 2010 Camaro while interviewing its lead designer, Tom Peters. "When you meet Michael Bay and shake his hand, do explosions happen in the room?"
This coming Friday (June 26 - 8:00 a.m.) I'm speaking at Social Media Breakfast - Mpls/St. Paul (SMBMSP) event #16 on "The Impact of Social Media on the Advertising and Marketing Industry." Many thanks to Rick Mahn, founder of SMBMSP for inviting me and crafting the topic—because honestly, I wouldn't have chosen it. I mean, where do we begin?
Well, here's a podcast preview of the session with myself and fellow presenter Steve Borsch, and hosts Rick Mahn and Brad Bellaver. (My part starts 18 minutes in.)
My favorite piece of advice so far came via a Facebook comment from my former co-worker Paul Schauder, "You shouldn't even show up. Just send in a constant stream of tweets." Amen. I think.
Simply put, social media's impact on marketing and advertising is a bit like the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique from Kill Bill. The blow has been struck. The industry's still coherent, still walking around, but for how much longer?
The seed has been sown. It's growing. (Maybe my film analogy should be the original Alien.) Change is inevitable, but What, To Whom, When and How? Here's some initial thinking as I prepare for Friday morning.
What Isn't Advertising Today?
I got another good question from Mark Holterhaus via Facebook seeking an opinion on, "How the line between advertising and marketing has blurred, and whether or not the words are synonymous than ever." Adrian Ho wrote a great post, and nurtured a compelling dialogue, over on Zeus Jones' blog on this topic. Just look at Zappos to see how operations (e.g. Customer Service, Distribution, Product Development, HR) now act as forces of marketing and advertising. Every employee at Zappos is in marketing, in some fashion. The Internet in general, and social media specifically, has transformed formerly non-marketing, non-advertising aspects of business into vehicles and venues for communications—and not just outbound, but conversational interactions.
This means there are more cooks in the marketing kitchen. But more talent, too. Yes, it's a threat to the sanctity of creative and the primacy of paid media. C'est la vie. The challenge is to craft a compelling vision for all these new troops, to help keep one brand's legions on message. And that's about relationship management, which has always been a core strength of advertising men and women.
The Individual Rules.
Social media's opening the door, allowing one person to stick out as one person, to request greater personal relevancy. So in one sense, social media's made it harder—demanding marketers market and advertise individual by individual. Don't craft one message for all people. Write to me, and only me. Google's algorithms are the obvious immediate solution, but perhaps Facebook's graph offers a keener insight (Wired's got that story covered in spades).
Just look at Volkswagen's efforts on Facebook. It makes perfect sense—consumers provide volumes more data about themselves within Facebook than they'd ever dream of revealing to vw.com. Facebook makes it easier to be marketed to as an individual, and to market to individuals. To some degree, direct mail's been selling this story for years. But it was always about the brand still being in control. The algorithm goes both ways—the individual is as empowered as the brand to filter, enable and connect as they see fit.
Another impact here is a realization that data mining, content relevancy, and momentgraphics are not going away. If marketing and advertising is going to survive, the industry must further embrace the algorithms. On the upside, I see an opportunity for even more creative production, albeit less expensive units. Why bother being all subjective, winnowing down two or three perfect headlines for production when you can produce 20 and let the optimization engine tell you which ones consumers are reacting to?
Everyone's An Expert. Even You. Especially your customers.
But perhaps the greatest impact social medias (and really, inter-active technologies) are having on marketing and advertising are an unstoppable leveling of the playing field. In a word: empowerment.
Voices are emerging inside brands with distinct, compelling stories an ad, PR or design firm would never have imagined. Outside corporate walls, the efforts of enthusiastic, knowledgable fans often eclipse the highly-compensated efforts of industry professionals—perhaps not in GRPs, but in respect.
This also has a lot to do with transparency. Marketing and advertising are less and less a mystery. Everyone's welcome. Everyone's creative. Because the tools and the infrastructure exist to say so.
In essence, the impact here is to the collective ego. Marketers and advertisers used to merely compete with themselves. Now the whole world has the opportunity to step up and share their ideas about budgeting, strategy, ideas, media—the whole ball of wax that used to be sacrosanct.
See you Friday.
What do you think? This is a beginning. I'd love any perspective or insights you care to provide. Otherwise, we'll see you out SMBMSP #16, bright and early. I hear they'll have free bacon.
Joseph and I are talking about the Giro d'Italia just now. I'm not a huge cycling fan, but I admire the sport. He pulls up this image from yesterday's race.
This is the end of the year for many. The end of a path. The end of a sustained effort.
I just handed in my grades for the Future of Advertising class over at MCAD. The class is, in the grand scheme of things, a minor yet important part of my life. January to May. Five months of effort. But I didn't do it alone.
My students bring a lot of energy to the proceedings. They inspire. I learned a lot about the future of advertising this year, in part, because of their enthusiasm and curiosity.
But it wouldn't be the class I aspire for it to be without a great roster of guest speakers. We've been so fortunate to have so many (I counted 18!) guest speakers stop by MCAD for this course.
Many, many thanks to Joseph Rueter, Scott Litman, Alan Wolk, Nina Hale, Jennifer Iwanicki, TJ Shaffer, Jamey Erickson, Paul Isakson, Jim Cuene, Kristina Halvorson, Adrian Ho, Patty Henderson, Bob Thacker, Kathryn Pfriem, David Armano, Dan Grigsby, Mike Haeg and Michael Lebowitz. I truly appreciate your willingness and effort to prepare for and speak with our students.
And thanks as well to Zeus Jones and OLSON for allowing us to tour their facilities and meet their people.
"I’ve concluded: User-generated content—particularly blog commentary—is mostly inane and useless at providing clarity or enlightenment.
Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo, and the like are silly social networks, time-wasting toys...
YouTube, Hulu, and the multitude of other video sites are flashes in the pan, non-porn frolic destinations for man-boys.
I’ve concluded: Monetizing much of the above is a pipe dream."
Worse, it was written by someone I respect, Gary Johnson, the President of MSP Communications. Was he kidding? Maybe he was being ironic. I read it again. I had really high hopes for irony, misplaced. After all, this wasn't printed commentary—it was a blog post, with all kinds of social media tools attached. But I couldn't tell. So we had an email exchange, and it turns out Gary wasn't kidding. He meant it. In fact, he's since elaborated on the original "BOB" post with more clarity.
"I still believe that social media, particularly as a potential business, are vastly overrated...
...the monetization of high traffic locations that I refer to as “islands of attention” have not proven to be anything but benign gathering places that yield occasional marketing success stories."
Gary has a point. In our conversation, he spoke about the hype in the trade press which has focused almost solely on the commercial viability of these new venues and technologies. By that hyped standard, it's fair to judge what's occurred in less than 10 years as "a pipe dream."
And that's precisely where I disagree with Gary, and BOB. I think we're trying too hard, and using the wrong tools, to judge the efficacy or business value of what has only recently emerged. Nielsen started measuring television ratings in 1950, roughly eight years after the NTSC standard was developed, almost 20 years after television technology first reared its head. I'm fairly certain the spoken word industry wasn't clamoring for "proof" of monetization systems when Gutenberg rolled out the press.
[Image of Gutenberg by Edward Laning from WallyG via Flickr under Creative Commons license.]
I'm not convinced we've established appropriate systems of measuring whether or not Facebook, Hulu, Twitter or social media in general are properly monetized—especially if we're insisting on parallels to broadcast, print and direct response. After all, Oprah only joined Twitter a few weeks ago. I think we're asking the wrong questions.
At the very core of this discussion is the distinction between Actual and Potential audiences. Anything digital (e.g. Social media) is inherently measurable. We know if you clicked. You actually did something. We do not know if you opened the magazine you subscribe to. Potentially you did. (And if it's one of Gary's, I'm quite certain you did.)
Approximately $39B is spent annually on advertising each year, much based on the monetization of potential audiences. We should be so lucky over on the digital side. When, BOB, will the higher standard of actual clicks be applied to older media?
Snippiness aside, let's parse "monetization." In many respects, we've seen that social media venues and technology and behavior do not easily or directly convert to cash by existing definitions. Yet. But they offer other values, which older media could never easily provide.
Conversation comes to mind. Social media provides extremely low-cost, very fast systems for engaging marketers and audiences. What's being "converted" here are behaviors and insights we never had access to before—on either side of the conversation. What can be "monetized" in social media could never be monetized through print or broadcast.
Every innovation I can think of, every clever gadget, every great headline—was incubated in conversation. It is in talking with each other, in hashing out the perspectives, insights and opinions, that progress is made on any level and in any endeavor.
The past 48 hours have been a joy and an inspiration.
Many thanks to David Armano for the generosity of his time and wisdom. For taking the bait, and coming to Minneapolis to share his perspective first at MCAD and then at CATFOA. But also for being accessible, and eager to hear what other people had to say. Thank you, David, for your willingness to learn from us.
And even greater thanks to this marvelous community—for showing up, for having questions, for challenging each other, for congregating versus separating. It is incredibly rewarding to see so many people make the collective effort. We're fortunate to have each other.
So, thank you all so much for your output, ideas and discourse around assignment #3. I really appreciated seeing all the different approaches to the work, and the following conversations. As I put it in the video below, I think it's worthwhile being the least smart person in the room—the better to improve your own insights and skills. When I was studying jazz in Cincinnati, one of my teachers always advised trying to get into groups that played above your level, the better to improve your own playing. I think the same holds true for creative thinking and the development of ideas.
I'm not saying anyone was terrible. I am saying we all had an opportunity to learn from each other and improve our collective output.
Back to the assignment: Take an existing piece of work and evolve it into the digital space. So think of the existing work as "last year's campaign," and now you're working on "this year's campaign."
I was looking for evidence of research in your work. I was looking for insights that told you what not to do, as much as what to do. The trouble with social media these days is that there's too much of everything. So it's important to be able to gather lots of information quickly, analyze it quickly, and decide what not to do quickly—so you can focus on those realms and ideas that make the most sense.
Some of you did better than others in this regard. The odds said this would occur. But here's the truth—it's no longer enough to have an idea. You have to set it up, help us understand what you already understand and be able to defend your thinking robustly, in context. There's a section in the book Made To Stick that talks about "Tappers and Listeners" which applies here. The story goes like this: Think of a song you love, that you know by heart. Now, get a friend to sit down and listen. Then, tap out the melody of the song with your hands. Can your friend guess what song you've internalized? The study in Made To Stick says your friend will have no idea what song, or even if it is a song, you're trying to communicate—all they hear is random tapping—because they can't hear what's in your head.
When you're presenting work to other people, especially skeptical clients and co-workers, it's really important to remember this point. The other people in the room don't know the song (e.g. the idea) in your head as well as you do. So you can't assume they understand your tapping, your innuendo. You've got to convey more than the rhythm. Help us understand what you know, so we can be better prepared to like your ideas.
Now, don't stop! Just because you finished presenting your work for assignment #3 doesn't mean you're done. Keep working at it. Post it on your blogs, Tumblr, Behance and other sites. Share your work. Seek feedback from others (hello, @Oprah?).
Many thanks to Kathryn Pfriem from The Creative Group for coming in as well. Yesterday's class was really about your portfolios—first, the evolution of; then the discussion of. I really appreciated Kat's brutal honesty and humor. Fact is, this very likely is the worst time ever to graduate and try and get a job. And I thought it sucked in 1992. Well, the fact is, there are jobs out there. But there are also lots of other people gunning for those jobs along with you.
So Kat's insights were very helpful in thinking about your portfolio, how you network, how to get value from an informational interview, and how to work through a formal hiring interview. Lots of common sense, but I hope you took notes; because so many people, myself included, have forgotten to employ the kind of wisdom Kat was sharing with us.
And then we kicked off Assignment #4: Develop a campaign to launch and promotePeter Seitz - Designing A Life, the new book from MCAD about the man who, one can successfully argue, lit the fuse that ignited the community and created the culture of design that exists in the Twin Cities today. It's an inspiring book about a wonderful individual. We'll have a lot of fun developing a campaign around it.
So next week I need you to come prepared. Please read at least the first chapter and get a sense of what this book, this product, is all about. I'm also eager to hear who you think we should focus on to promote the book. Who's our target audience, and why? Where do they live, online? How can we best reach and convince these people? Those are the questions I hope we can answer together on Monday, April 27.
Spring Break was necessary and wonderful. Now it's back to work, albeit a week late. On Monday, April 6 we focused on the "Client Perspective" to the Future of Advertising. And we were very fortunate to welcome Bob Thacker, SVP Marketing and Advertising at OfficeMax. Bob brought Michael Graves to Target and commissioned ElfYourself.com for OfficeMax. He's the marketer with the motto, "Don't make ads, make news."
Many thanks to Bob for his gracious wisdom and good humor. Here's the video of Bob's presentation later that evening at the Fine Line Music Cafe for Conversations About The Future Of Advertising (CATFOA).
Wow. Tonight I saw over 300 people attend a fantastic session from MIMA on social media, the recession and the role of the community manager. Who needs to attend SXSW? We've got an amazing audience in Minnesota.
Especially big kudos to Paula Berg for making the trip up from Texas and sharing her expertise with Southwest Airlines, both during the event and long afterwards!
And truly, here's to the Twin Cities community.
It was amazing to see so many different people getting together to share, question and articulate the growing need for community manager/architect/firestarters. It's a pleasure to be a part of such a large group of passionate, invested people. We're lucky to have such energy here in the Twin Cities.
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