What Matters Now

View this document on Scribd

Seth Godin, who describes himself pithily as a “writer, speaker, agent of change,” invited 69 smart folks to contribute observations on What Matters Now and then made the e-book available for free.

As we close out this decade that Time Magazine called the Decade From Hell, it is refreshing to read so many optimistic entries of What Matters Now.  Here are a few of my favorite excerpts:

• Mitch Joel on Compassion: Make compassion a core business value.
• Howard Mann on Connected: More megaphones don’t equal a better dialogue.
• Michael Hyatt on Vision: When times are tough, vision is the first casualty.  Before conditions can iprove, it is the first thing we must recover.
• Tom Peters on Excellence: There are 19 Es of Excellence …. Enthusiasm, be an irresistible force of nature.
• William C. Taylor on Most: Are you the most of anything?
• Guy Kawaski on Evangelism: The future belongs to people who can spread ideas.
• Michael Sifry on Nobody: Nobody has the answers … Nobody, but you, that is.
• And, of course, Seth on Generosity: If you make a difference, people will gravitate toward you.

Seth starts the e-book with a challenge — what matters now to you? So, I thought I would the end this post with my own contribution:

Good: When I was growing up, no one wanted to be good.  It wasn’t radical or rebellious.  It wasn’t cool or fun.  It was boring and passé;  average and ordinary.  It was schoolmarmish.  But good is making a comeback — helped perhaps by the endless scandals — financial, political, marital — that shook our institutions, our economy and our beliefs.  And, the Good that is re-surging is the good of being morally admirable: of people leaving Wall Street jobs and bonuses to build schools in Tanzania or businesses doing well by doing good or consumers buying products that do good.  It’s good to be good.

And, you, what matters now?

[tweetmeme]

Read Full Post »

Who are the people in your social network neighborhood?

Last month Nielsen’s Claritas division released data profiling the users of various social networks — which has been picked up by bloggers, social media consultants, like my friends at ClickMarkets, and now, today, by NPR.

In the piece, produced by Laura Sydell, teenagers talked about the social differences of social networks.

MySpace vs. Facebook

• Sixteen-year-old Nico Kurt (who attends an elite, private high school) lays out his view of the MySpace users this way: “It seems trashy to me. The only people who use it are trashy people.”
• “No one uses MySpace,” says 17-year-old Halie Pacheco, a student at The Urban School. She likes Facebook. “It’s safer and more high class,” she explains
• “By ‘high class’ I think she means organized,” adds 16-year-old Olivia Block. “With MySpace there’s a lot of clutter.”
• “I have friends who are white,” says 19-year-old Diego Luna. “They are my white people friends and they are mostly on Facebook. That’s why I use Facebook. My brown people are on MySpace.”
• Benito Rodriguez, 16, adds, “Not to be racist or anything, but there’s more white kids on Facebook.”

Virtual Imitates Real Life

The data as well as the students’ insights point to two truisms about social networks — whether online or in real life that marketers should remember:

• Birds of a feather flock together:  Demographers, social scientists and market segmentation experts like Claritas, know that humans gravitate toward people that look, think and act like them.  Look at any physical neighborhood or organization and you will find striking similarities of the neighbors or members based on race, income, education and even political views.
• Know your neighborhoods: Profiling and targeting are just as important online as offline.  Don’t just hop on a social network because it’s the most popular.  Learn who lives in that neighborhood.  Then, think about the profile of your desired target.  Would they live there? If so, that’s the network you want to join.

Read Full Post »

Mad Men: Boomers Rising

This was originally written for — and published in — MediaPost’s Engage: Boomers on October 12, 2009.

It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world and everywhere you turn, people are racing to embrace AMC’s Mad Men, a drama about an advertising agency circa early 1960s, on the eve of the political and social upheavals that would define the Boomers.  First, it was the marketing and advertising Twitterati converting their avatars into Mad Men characters this summer in anticipation of the show’s return; then the Emmys who conferred no less than 16 nominations to the show, which ultimately won best drama, and now Sesame Street, always au courant on cultural trends, with their sly nod to Mad Men.  And, in reaching this broad intergenerational audience, creator Matt Weiner may have inadvertently done more to introduce the Boomers to a new generation of Madison Avenue denizens than any generational anthropologist or media planner.

For the record, Weiner was not looking to add to the Boomer nostalgia canon. Instead, he was more intrigued with the America of the mid-1950s and early 60s; a time of peace and prosperity when bucolic suburbia enticed America to its leafy streets, well groomed lawns, and shiny new schools.  When husbands went to work in far away cities, mothers gathered at neighborhood coffee klatches and children — aka the Boomers – hung out unattended, un-play-dated, unscheduled. He wanted to tell the story of America at a time of surface happiness and inner dissatisfaction when the nation as a whole looked around and asked, “is this it? Is this as good as it gets?”

In capturing the cultural zeitgeist of the late 1950s/early 60s, Weiner gives non-Boomers a ringside briefing each week on the forces that ultimately form and fuel the Boomers’ rejection of the status quo.  Consider for example:

• The sexism that relegates smart career women like Joan to the secretarial pool or forces Peggy to make significant personal sacrifices to rise above that station.
• The racist segregation that prompts a restaurant manager to inquire if the black waiter is “bothering” Don in the first season when Don asks the waiter for his opinion on cigarette brands or startles Hollis, the black elevator attendant, in the third season when Pete Campbell asks him about television brands.
• The quintessential paradigm of suburban wife discontent that Betty Draper epitomizes and that Betty Friedan will chronicle in The Feminine Mystique (published, incidentally, in 1963) of college educated wives withering away in suburbia.
• The frequent drinking to numb the mundane-ness of their lives, which Roger Sterling insightfully notes to Don in the first season: you and your generation “drink for the wrong reasons.  My generation, we drink because it feels better than unbuttoning your collar, because we deserve it. We drink because it’s what men do…. Your kind, with your gloomy thoughts and your worries, you’re all busy licking some imaginary wound.”

Photo: Carin Baer for AMCTV

Boomers: Not Evident

And this briefing occurs with hardly a mention of the Boomers. They are present only on the periphery: as Don and Betty’s children, Sally, Bobby and new born, Gene; as advertising targets (“Pepsi for those who think young”) or, more recently, as two hitchhiking, pill popping teenagers willing to do anything to avoid the draft.  But, as Weiner and his writing staff work through season three and four, they will no doubt incorporate some of the upcoming social and political events that will bring these Boomer children into sharper relief – events such as the civil rights march on Washington, DC when Martin Luther King delivered his “I have a dream” speech, the publication of The Feminine Mystique, the succession of assassinations (John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X), and the arrival of the Beatles to America.  And, in doing so, they will continue to illuminate the Boomers for the two million plus 18-49 year olds who tune in each week – including the new generation of Madison Avenue denizens.

Read Full Post »

WTF?! Is that really your social brand?

Photo credits (left to right): Photobucket.com, Funlok.com

In the early days of my marketing career, I spent a fair amount of time both in front of, and behind, focus group room mirrors, leading or observing consumers play a brand personification game.  The game is simple: the moderator provides the name of a brand.  The consumers create a profile — using words, photos or other prompts to represent the brand as a person — complete with gender, voice, clothing, accessories, hair style, profession, relationships, and cars.   So, for instance, a Citibank cardmember might be a married, mid-level male manager wearing a department store suit, a Timex watch, driving a Ford Taurus, and living in the suburbs.  A Discover cardmember, on the other hand, might be a white construction worker, driving a 1970’s Oldsmobile with crackled leatherette seating.

We used these exercises to help uncover consumer insights about brands — both in terms of what the brand currently stood for and where we could take the brand — as well as the brand’s voice and personality which we then translated into marketing, product development, PR and advertising strategies.

While these exercises gave us an understanding of consumers’ perceptions of a wide range of brands, it also provided snapshots of the effectiveness of brand campaigns across consumer touchpoints.  The more consistent, the greater the consumer internalization of the campaign. For instance, throwing a pack of Marlboros on the table would immediately elicit the Marlboro man; a pack of Camels, Joe Camel. Some brands — insurance companies, manufacturers, airlines, pharmaceuticals, for example — were difficult for consumers to humanize; the brands were either too institutional or too diffuse, making it difficult for them to construct a “real” persona.

I’ve been thinking about those personification exercises lately as I skim updates of brands I have friended, fanned or followed.  Many of these brands’ social network presences are devoid of personality; their persona existing only as a broadcast channel spewing an endless ticker tape feed of news and sales promotions.  Others have developed a social persona painfully out of sync with their brand.  A brand that was most likely developed through diligent research, creative brainstorming and careful nurturing.  A brand that is supported by expensive broadcast advertising, strategic partnerships and product placements.  A brand created by branding and marketing professionals for both consumer acceptance and enduring competitive advantage.  A brand consumers can easily call up in a brand personification exercise, complete with voice, accent and lifestyle.

These out of sync brand personas do more damage to a brand than abstaining entirely from social network participation.  Don’t get me wrong: I do believe brands should participate in social networks; they are incredible branding opportunities.  However, the brand on a social network needs to be as meticulously managed as it is in any other manifestation.  You shouldn’t just “jump in”  — despite what many social media experts advise — without a strategy and voice alignment with the overarching brand.

Otherwise, you risk confusing consumers with what your brand stands for. Or worse, denigrating your brand.  And, if you are a premium brand, you can’t sustain your premium stature with a social brand that is unpolished, sterile or just generally out of sync.  That’s what many brands did in the early days of the Internet.  Then, like now, companies entered a new medium awkwardly: they knew they should have a presence, but didn’t believe it would really help their business.  So, they put the most junior person or persons on it; they gave them limited resources and they allowed technicians without a brand background to develop and execute the strategy.  The result? Sites that were ugly, dull, and undeserving of representing the brand.

So, is your brand Don Draper in all of its manifestations? Or is a there a “computer slob” counterpart representing Don on your social networks?

Read Full Post »

Your Personal Brand: How the Internet Sees You

Last week, Nicholas Patten turned me on to Personas, a component of MIT’s Social Media Group’s Metropath(ologies) exhibit which enables users to visual their online identities.   According to the site, Personas “uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data picture of one’s aggregated online identity.”

It’s a brilliant way to look at how the internet — or anyone who is going to google you — sees you.  The site is simple — you enter in your name and Personas scours the web for every instance of your name and attempts to characterize you.

Try it.  And enter your name a few different ways; it seems to be both case and nomenclature sensitive — as you can see from my examples below:

When I used my full name with capitals

When I used my full name, no capitals

When I used just my first and last name

When I only used annemai, my frequent online name

But is this really me?

Many people commented on Nick’s post that Personas was fun but flawed: it didn’t represent their “real” identity — or that it captured other individuals who happened to share similar names — definitely a downside to having a common name — and lumped them together.

I, too, initially had that same reaction.  But, the reality is, this is how the internet sees us — and how it projects us to would be employers, clients, headhunters, friends, etc.  It grabs snippets of us; it confuses us with people of similar names; it doesn’t capture our entire life; in short, it’s imperfect.

This is the battle that brand marketers fight all the time.  How does the world perceive them — and is this the way they want to be perceived?  And, like brand marketers, if you don’t like how the internet represents you, you can change it by creating your own digital content to change the perception. Here are a few suggestions to get you started.

• Get Your Name There are plenty services that make it easy to “own” your name digitally.  I use Network Solutions but there are other options like GoDaddy and even WordPress.  I have purchased my name in both long and short forms.  If you have a common name, consider how you might “own” the name.  For instance, Anne Bertelsen is a fairly common Scandinavian name.  Anne Mai Bertelsen or just AnneMai, on the other hand, is less common.  I own the domains to all three.
• Start a blog.  Using your name, create a blog.  While this blog happens to be written — and hosted — on WordPress, I have a personal blog on Posterous which is dead simple to use.  No CSS or html to learn.  Just email your content or post via web, mobile or bookmarking.
• Contribute:  Depending on what you want your brand to stand for, find places to add your thoughts, insights, comments on their blogs.  Write comments on other people’s blogs.
• Be Visible:  Join and participate in social networks (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In) and interest-relevant associations.  When you join those networks and associations, use a single, consistent, unique name — if you can — to separate yourself from others.  As I noted above, I tend to use my full name (first, middle, last) or my first and middle name vs. just my first and last name, which is more common.  In case you didn’t know, Facebook allows you to “own” your name for your Facebook vanity URL.
• Be consistent: As you join these networks, use the same name and photo.  It will help in aggregating search results about you as well as helping others get to know you online.
• Protect and Defend Your Reputation:  Finally, if you did something stupid online or just want a better way of tracking your online reputation, check out ReputationDefender.com.  It will search out and destroy damaging and/or inaccurate information about you online.

Hope these suggestions serve as an inspiration to manage and define your personal brand.  What suggestions or tips do you have?

Read Full Post »

Marketers Embrace Twitter Over Facebook — Too Bad Consumers Don’t

via emarketer.com

According to Burson-Marsteller, a little over half of Fortune 100 companies are on Twitter while only 29% of have a Facebook fan page. To me, it’s not a big surprise since Twitter has become such an easy way to “listen” to what people are saying about one’s brand.

via emarketer.com

But, interestingly, in a shift from earlier this year, marketers are including links to their Twitter accounts on email campaigns.  Unfortunately, the study doesn’t address why this shift is occurring.

via emarketer.com

Read Full Post »

Looking to Engage Customers? There’s an App for That

Or,  so it seemed at yesterday’s Digiday: Apps conference in New York. From cleaning oil slick animals to joining MLB fan community to connecting with favorite tv shows, marketers learned the ins and outs of creating mobile applications to meet their business needs.

In the after-conference cocktail hour conversations, though, it seemed that there were still skeptics: they believed smartphones users are a minority, that mobile apps are potentially just “fads” and most importantly, that they lacked tangible ROIs.

It’s unfortunate because smartphone usage is growing significantly and offers savvy marketers a platform to engage current and potential customers.

There are roughly 29 million smartphone owners in the U.S. and they are not a monolithic group as GravityTank, who presented at the end of the day, illuminated with their ethnographic and quantitative research on mobile app users.  Their results should ease marketers’ minds about mobile apps’ relevance, audience size and up-side opportunity.  Consider:

• Mobile app users are engaged with their downloaded apps: 40% of total daily phone interaction is spent on their mobile apps
• More than third (35%) feel that mobile apps have changed their lives
• More than half (53%) report that mobile apps have helped them, making their lives easier in some way
• They downloaded an average of 21 apps of which seven were used on a daily basis
• Of those seven used on a daily basis, five of them were paid for vs free.
• Significant majorities of respondents are interested or extremely interested in apps from brands — e.g., retailers, financial institutions, airlines, hotels
• Not surprisingly, given the time they spend on their apps, only 7% of them believe mobile apps are “fads”

In addition, GravityTank shared their segmentation of app-phone users who look and act differently:

• Recent converts: Recent converts are new smartphone users who experiment with apps. They think apps are fun and nice to have on a phone, but they don’t see apps as game-changers.
• Life Optimizers: Optimizers see their phones as digital extensions of their brains. They use them to manage their busy lives and to improve their ability to make the most out of the opportunities each day presents.
• Constantly Entertained: The constantly entertained use their phones primarily for social and media purposes. They are younger, predominately male, and seem to have a deep-rooted fear of boredom.

Of these three segments, the Life Optimizers and Constantly Entertained offer an existing sizable audience for marketers to engage — representing 73%-80% of Blackberry/Windows and iPhone/G1 users, respectively.  Demographically, they are a sweet-spot for most marketers.

While Kevin Nakano, of WhitePages, Inc. had not seen GravityTank’s research, his firm, nevertheless, understood the upside potential of launching a mobile app.  In the year since it’s launch first on iPhone and then Android and Blackberry, WhitePages, Inc. their free mobile app has generated 57cents per user in ad revenue with a ROI of 10 cents per user.  Revenues from their more recently launched premium paid mobile app will only add positively to the company’s financial statement.

Armed with these kind of insights, marketers should explore how mobile applications can support their business objectives. It’s not a fad and it’s not going away in the near future.  Rather, more and more consumers are going to transition to app accessible phones, relying on them to assist and entertain them on a daily basis.  Smart marketers will be right there with them.

Read Full Post »

What is Social Media

I think this is one of the best — and funniest — presentations on social media I have seen. Marta Kagan, the author, is a genius. And, I need to thank Bryan Fuhr, from AKQA, for turning me onto it.

While you may not want to use this with a client, there are certainly some wonderful insights and stats worth sharing.

Read Full Post »

Mitch Joel to Marketers: Burn the Ships!!

Photographer: Andy Caster

Mitch Joel , digital marketing visionary (he’s the guy Google taps to explain online marketing to the world’s top brands) and President of Twist Image, told the standing room crowd at the CUNY Graduate Center last week that we are living in a Brave New World where everyone is connected and where businesses need to be connected to everyone.  He exhorted the audience to “burn the ships” — alluding to Spanish explorer Hernando Cortez’s dramatic action in the Yucatan in 1519 to ensure success.  In Mitch’s words:

“There was no going back.  The only direction to go was forward.  The old ways of doing things were about to be rethought.  In fact, there were no more ‘old ways of doing things’; a new way had to be defined.”

In promoting his to-be released book, Six Pixels of Separation, Joel noted that marketers are faced with a similar challenge as Cortez:  the world has changed and the old ways of doing things are obsolete.  We live in an era where the internet allows anyone — and everyone — to be connected, where information is democratized, geography obsolete and traditional media disintermediated.

This era has ushered marketers out of the passive broadcast based model where brands push messages out to passive, receiving consumers and into a loud, and at times, messy participatory model where everyone has the right and access to contribute.  To prove his point, Joel shared a video he created riffing on Apple’s Air, replacing the Air with a Sony Vaio.

But, in a refreshing departure from most new media experts, Joel doesn’t believe that brands or marketers have no control or that the fundamentals of marketing — i.e., delivering the right message to the right people at the right time in the right medium to foster real interactions between people and brands — have become obsolete.  In fact, Joel argues that brands have control in this Brave New World — but they have to earn it:  they need to join in the conversations, provide meaningful, high quality content in the places that their consumers frequent and to be in the conversation for the long haul.  Only then will brands have earned the “right to get their consumer out of lurker mode.”

His advice is spot on — whether you’re a marketer, an agency or a publisher.  If the “ship” is about one-way broadcasts, it is time to burn it.  It’s time to connect, engage and participate in a conversation for the long haul.

Read Full Post »

Game Playing and the Economy

Two weeks ago, I posed the question whether there was a linkage between the economy and social media.  Ron Coyle at Concepts Marketing did a nice analysis correlating unemployment to site traffic to Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn.

Yesterday, Nielsen released a report that the economy seems to also be impacting purchase as well as time spent on video games.  You can check out the full story at Nielsen Wire as well as download the full report for free but here are the highlights.

• On average, individuals are playing video games an hour a week more than last year and almost three hours more per week than in 2007.  The biggest growth has come from males 18-24 and females 13-17.
  

  

  



• Consumers are increasingly buying used video games, not new.  And, here the economy also seems to have had an effect:  there are more titles available to purchase used than in the past.  Nielsen also notes that major players, like BestBuy, will start selling used video games.

• Finally, it appears that while gaming is up, movie viewing is down.

Read Full Post »