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parsing the social media marketing hype

in working with many clients this year, we’ve spent as much time talking marketers down from ledges or away from knee-jerk entries into social media efforts because there seems to be this compulsion to keep up with the next guy (or last guy or that other guy). compounded by the fact that many clients believe social media marketing is free… because the channels are ‘free’ (facebook, twitter, etc.) and the assets we already have are ‘free’ (video lying around, old campaigns or messages yet to be released through these channels)… the net result becomes a hodge-podge mess that does more harm to a brand than good.

we’ve begun working out some models or ecosystems that help separate the issues and begin solving the problem in a more systematic way and i’ll share that here in a more general sense in a future post. until then, i wanted to share an outline i felt boiled this down nicely based on some work we’re collaborating on with a brand agency partner.

Client Question
How should we proceed regarding social media as part of our digital strategy?

Answer: Start with Objectives
Use a framework for discussing marketing objectives and address how social media can help achieve these objectives. The four objectives are:

Listen
Talk
Converse
Integrate

Of course, these objectives are never mutually exclusive, nor are they a linear progression. However, thinking of them as separate things at least for a moment can help profide insights and clarity that will lead to better reasoned, level headed answers. Here’s some detail on each…

Listen: Use social media to listen to what consumers are saying about you, your brand, your products, or services

Identify keywords on/in brand, competitors, topics
Identify channels to be monitored (key blogs, social sites, media sharing sites, etc.)
Setup tool(s) to monitor
Refine listening ‘algorithms’ based on feedback
Consider talk/conversation areas downstream based on findings here
Integrate reporting between social media, website metrics, and advertising activities
Identify staff or partner to support listening/reporting initiatives

Talk: Become a credible and visible source for advice and education outside your normal bounds using the web and social media as a platform from which messages are broadcast.

Identify differentiating topics and align with clearly defined brand goals
Identify and create ‘personas’ from which messages eminate
Identify outlet channels (key blogs, social sites, affiliates, etc.)
Begin ‘broadcasting’ messages
Calibrate ‘listening’ activities to ‘talking’ activities
Identify staff or partner to support talking initiatives

Converse: Develop ways to engage select targets in two-way conversations and test alternative messaging/creative/programs using the advantages of social media vs. other media.

Identify on-brand topics
Target engaged consumers, advocates, or other customer/persona types
Identify bloggers, internal staff, pundits, etc. to become the voice of your brand on particular topics or as defined personas
Identify staff or partner to support and fuel conversation initiatives

Integrate: Support critical marketing initiatives in a more comprehensive, integrated and interactive way to engage targets with existing and yet-to-be-created online experiences.

Map the online landscape of existing brand properties, complementary properties, social platforms, etc.
Create an ‘ecology’ of media nodes, identifying strengths and weaknesses, cross-channel feeds, etc.
Develop roadmap for integration initiatives
Begin integration initiatives
Build advanced marketing programs based on integrated capabilities
Develop advanced reporting capabilities to monitor and maintain the desired ecosystem
Identify staff and/or partner to support and fuel the desired ecosystem

The “agency” business model

The genie is out of the bottle in terms of changing what an “agency” is.

The baggage with the word is heavily loaded and tiresome. I’ve written and spoken on changing the definition of the word frequently already this year. It’s nice to see the big boys coming along (and being called out by their clients).

In a recent article at suite101.com, the topic is discussed by the likes of Euro RSCG and was recently a hot topic in Valencia at the “Festival of Media” where topics like the role of media agencies were taken to task and speeches from agency network CEO’s indicated that they didn’t believe that they themselves could figure it out. Topics like “reverse internships” are now celebrated where old talent is being required to sit with newly hired “kids” to help figure out how this here Internet thing works. It’s like the thrashing of a dying animal. Can you change an agency of thousands with an approach like this?

At any rate, celebrating Crispin, Porter & Bogusky, in some cases IDEO, and agencies like Manifest Digital who are willing to reinvent how the work gets done and thereby completely ignore the “rules” established by old-line agencies (media, ad, direct, digital, content, or whatever), makes for a much stronger solution. and more importantly, one where clients won’t say what could be the most damning thing I’ve seen in print/out loud in a long time:

Becky Saeger, chief marketing officer for Charles Schwab added that “if I were an agency, I would be really worried about being disintermediated,” a financial industry term meaning elminate the middle man. More worrisome, Saeger said: “More and more, agencies are almost in the way sometimes.”

I guess if you’re reinventing the word, you have to reinvent the business trappings around the industry. Oh well. Good for the consumer. Good for the client. Good for us.

agency models back-slide

as market needs continue to shift, agency models and service offerings are sliding around as well. when they move without purposeful intention the offering as a whole risks becoming muddied, delivering bad services, missed expectations or worse. i was heartened to see an excellent example of an entirely new-style engagement effort on Wendy Piersall’s blog. it’s a case study of Kmart’s effective holiday campaign through influencer marketing (thanks to Christine Mortensen for giving me the heads-up, too!).

the post does an excellent job summarizing the effectiveness and likely reasons for success. the campaign worked from a blogging base, transcended ‘social media’ channels like facebook and twitter, but integrated them into the conversation with the target audience (mom’s and other frugal shoppers). this entirely new offering originates out of IZEA, which calls itself a ‘social media marketing’ company.

there appear to be two flavors of these: 1. Digitally-Progressive PR companies, or 2. Communication-Rich Interactive companies. traditional PR companies are struggling to create the right digital tools to meet the delivery and tracking requirements of digital communications. interactive companies are struggling to create meaningful content that is more than one message or blast and remains on editorial strategy for a prolonged duration. the right place to be, and the one our clients need us to fill, is as usual right there in the middle.

for our own part, creating a meaningful offering includes the development of a content service that behaves like a moderately robust PR agency without pretending to be a full-on PR service. whichever direction you’re headed, be aware when you’re backsliding into someone else’s business model. then consider reaching out and sharing details on the models converging. you might find a partnership or new perspective that completely changes what you both are doing. i know i am…

we’re building a content-agency offering. not a PR model, but more of an out-sourced publishing model for our clients. a for-hire reporting pool that follows editorial guidance (or develops in when appropriate). haven’t found anything like it out there yet and our clients are responding strongly to it already.

plublishers stumble, but who's really in trouble?

i continue to tell our clients about the irony of the publishing industry. a need couldn’t be any more distinct in the market right now. we all need to be behaving more like publishing organizations, from the individual level all the way up through corporate. it’s all a matter of becoming more responsive and engaged in the conversation your audience may be wanting to have with you.

i have to publish more often and in order to do so i have to setup an editorial calendar of sorts for myself. i have had to align myself with great minds… from which can come great thoughts… through which i can share my own thinking with you.

in the same way, corporations need to be communicating as if they were nimble sentient beings… not cold hulking monoliths that ring hollow when you approach. shifting their behavior is even harder while the requirements on them are very much similar to what they are on the individual… set up an editorial calendar, align yourself with smart people–if not reporters. and get the message out! once out, respond!

guess who does this better than anyone (or any other company) on earth right now. publishers. guess who’s at a painful inflection point right now. publishers. guess why. because greedy business people with upside-down business models bought them up and forced them to perform to standards that make no logical publishing sense. under advertising models that were hyper-inflated and are presented now as if the plummet is a fall from the norm. it’s not. it’s a fall to normalcy. now they’re forced to go through the gyrations of laying people off, becoming for economically ‘efficient’ and the like… all because their ownership structures didn’t allow them to change in the meaningful ways they needed to when they needed to.

moreover, the rest of us need them desperately right now. we need these people to be teaching us how to operate more efficiently in a publishing-driven world.

the old stories about bloggers coming for their ground, undermining their credibility are all bunk. there was never any threat to quality. meanwhile, we’re forced to see the world through the cracked lens of a panicked machine that is fighting for its own life… while it tries to reflect back to us the changes we are going through and what they mean. yay for us… we get further polarizing behavior amongst fox, msnbc, and al jazeera. organizations turning news into reality-show-style entertainment instead the inquisitive real reporting we need. but, before i go too far, let’s not glorify the days of old. any publisher has an agenda. let’s just publish those agendas in the same way any other corporation would.

meanwhile, let’s free up these brilliant publishing minds to do what they do best… and welcome them into our corporate structures as heads of Customer Experience or Corporate Conversation. whatever it is, companies are being asked to do more with less and the answer is right under our noses… in a business that is oddly damaged, but not because it’s systemically flawed. it’s broken because financial engineers screwed it up.

a couple very insightful articles on the same came through yesterday from AdAge. the first, It’s Not Newspapers in Peril; It’s Their Owners is right up the middle of this issue. the second is a bit deeper, but points up an entirely new business model as yet to be implemented but likely to be figured out soon. Making the Case for Micropayments in News is an insightful interview with a former Time editor who is at the center of a lot of these decisions. he even admits some missteps in the early days of his online publishing efforts. regardless, we work with our own clients who struggle with monetizing their highly valued content (gating strategies, subscription models, and micropayments among a handful of compelling new models all under exploration).

the gist of it all is that providing value is still valued. removing the advertising structure that has fueled and biased the models we have to-date is gut-wrenching but also enlightening. who better to get us through than those who have been in the middle of the storm for thirty years but who didn’t drink the financial koolaid of the past 10?

we are in a moment (speech)

the interaction’09 conference sponsored by the IxDA was held this year in vancouver. it was a tremendous experience on a number of levels and our ability to sponsor was an honor. part of that sponsorship gave us the opportunity to speak to the attendees on the final day for breakfast (and they had to listen because we were buyin the bacon and eggs ;o). this is currently one of my favorite topics to speak on… the fact that we are in a moment of great change and one that should include strong leadership from the design community in order to redefine the world we are in. great design minds have often stepped to the fore to guide us, one of my favorites being Daniel Burnham in the late 1800′s. his leadership after the great chicago fire helped to redefine our city and provide a focus for one of the greatest world-wide events at the time, the World’s Colombian Exposition. it was held only twenty years after 1/3 of the city of chicago was leveled.

we are amazing beings, capable of reinventing ourselves and the structures that guide us when all else appears lost. we are in a moment now where things appear scary and lost. they aren’t. instead, we are in a moment of tremendous change and we need to take the reigns and make that change happen purposefully, artfully, elegantly… so that the world we create on the other side is one of transparency, authenticity, and amazing opportunity going forward.

i’ll continue refining and redesigning this particular speach, but hope you enjoy its current incarnation as delivered at the interaction’09 conference.

best,
–jim

Jim Jacoby, manifest Founder and CXO, Presents “UX Designers as Business Leaders” from manifest on Vimeo.

frogloop calculator

someone worked their brain real hard over at frogloop (a non-profit communications and marketing blog). they’ve built a tool that helps measure the cost/benefit of ‘social media marketing.’ at first blush, it’s enough to make your head spin. upon further review, it’s exactly the kind of pragmatic, honest assessment that needs to be done on any marketing effort. the fact is, ‘social media marketing’ hype is another marketer’s false dream of a magic bullet (if not the news media’s misdirected reporting on the same).

at any rate, check it out. it’s worth a hard look (and the hard work) if you’re going to begin employing these techniques on your own behalf or on behalf of a client. give yourself some honest accountability against which your efforts can be judged. makes down-stream decisions a lot easier, whether you like the outcome or not…

laser-guided shotgun blasts

a colleague brought a great article to my attention. as recently seen in AdAge, Brad Jakeman (CCO at Activision), talks about how marketers need to think of themselves as content producers. i continue to thit the same topic with our clients. you have to shift your model, no matter the business you are in, to act more like a publisher. i continue to be amazed at the irony of publishing businesses in chapter 11 when so many traditional businesses need to be adopting everything they have been great at for the last 50 years.

Brad says…

Media is giving us an enormous ability, and more and more channels, to reach consumers. The irony is that in an environment where there are more and more channels to reach the consumer, it’s never been harder than it is right now to engage the consumer. The step before consumer action, which we all hope to get, is consumer engagement. And consumer engagement is driven by innovative, fantastic content that stands out from the rest, captures the consumer imagination and differentiates the brand.

We are living in an age of content, and if advertisers and marketers start thinking of themselves as content producers that are tasked with engaging consumers around their brand, that is a much more enlightened view than people who think of themselves as disseminators of the information that the company wants consumers to learn about their brand. If you’re creating amazing content, consumers will find you and they will engage with you. The “Bike Hero” viral video (spoof on “Guitar Hero” last year) got over 2 million hits and had people spend like four minutes watching it. That’s the new model — it’s creating compelling content that draws consumers to you as opposed to crappy content that you push out and impose on broad-scale media.

the result, you have to be as broad as you need to be. immediately after you take your shot, every communication you’ve sent needs to be laser-guided so it reaches its mark in a meaningful way. the further away you are, the broader your blast, but the less likely you can pull you individual pellets on-course. a matter of relevance and understanding the customer. perhaps there’s another dimension worth considering in addition to how compelling your content is (which i’d certainly be selling if i were in the video game business and had that strong advantage). the other consideration is proximity to the customer, the closer you are (the better you understand each other) the more likely you are to serve up the right content at the right time.

holy hell

it’s becoming more and more apparent that part of the inflection point we’re experiencing is a mixture of yin and yang, eastern and western, have’s and have-nots… etc etc. we’ve been talking a bit inside our company about the Be Here Now concept and it has led to some interesting findings. i’ll post my full write-up on our be-in-the-moment philosophies which drive our creative thinking and challenge our clients. In the mean time, i’d like to open a thread (if not a vein) for a few of my colleagues to comment in…

mixing cultures (and arguably metaphors here for a minute)… it’s been brought to my attention that a lot of what i’m talking about in terms of driving our marketing, communications, and technology efforts toward a higher ground is found in a full-blown philosophy developed years ago by Thich Nhat Hanh. his book, The Miracle of Mindfulness is a treatise on better getting into the moment. while driving toward self-awareness and bhudist concepts, it can be applied to business and internet-enable communications. probably not a coincidence that we’re stumbling into this realization.

as for the posting title here, a mixture of eastern and western can be a holy vs. hell balance in itself, given either one or the other getting off-kilter. ironic that the US is sizing up to counter-balance China in the long run? i think not… how we go about business is going to be a fascinating meeting of minds in the coming years.

the convergence comes to manifest

we were pleased to host the Chicago Convergence this week. more than twice the expected attendees came; a clear indication of the excitement and energy behind this movement. Jim Cohen led the group for very early stages of focusing work effort for the upcoming tasks of preparing for the september conference and focusing our energies on interim activities well before then. much more to come as this year’s Convergence efforts gain steam!

We look forward to hosting an upcoming leadership meeting in our new digs!

your manifest move

Manifest Digital is on its way to a new home at 600 West Chicago here in this city by the same name. Here’s a quick glimps into the festivities this weekend. Watch for the big reveal on our new space coming next week!…

hey, back off, Mark. I didn’t ask you to come in on a Saturday. Talk to Doug!

EVERLASTING NOW

an exploration of moments

Tag: Be here now