Can Social Save Chevrolet?

Several months ago, shortly after it was announced that GM would be selling Pontiac, my friend Savannah asked me to write about marketing strategies that GM could use in order to maintain market share after the divestiture.

Shamefully, I neglected to write such a blog post at that time.

However, many months later, General Motors (or Chevrolet, anyway) is making some marketing moves that give me some hope for the company: Chevy is one of the sponsors for the South by Southwest (SXSW) Festival in Austin, Texas, March 12-21, 2010.

SXSW is an annual pilgrimage for many in the music, film, and interactive media industries. The conference showcases the top talent and thought-leaders from each of these industries (the music side alone features nearly 2,000 musical acts), not to mention that it aggregates nearly 200,000 creative, innovative, artistic, tech-savvy, and entrepreneurial attendees into one city.

Chevrolet is using SXSW as an opportunity to test some new interactive and social media marketing initiatives:

• Gowalla couponing - When smartphone users check in via Gowalla at any of several locations in Austin during the conference, they will receive text messages with free offers from Chevrolet and SXSW. One such offer: a ride from the airport to downtown in (what else?) a new Chevrolet.


• QR & iReveal augmented reality - Chevy will be placing Quick Response (QR) codes on its vehicles that are on display at SXSW. When visitors photograph a QR code using their smartphones, a microsite opens that provides more information about the vehicle. Plus, a mobile application called Chevy iReveal allows users to view 3-D models of several Chevy vehicles.


• "Chevrolet Volt Recharge Lounge" - Chevy provides a "charging station" for SXSW attendees near the northwest entrance to the Austin Convention Center. At the Lounge, visitors can recharge their electronic devices, grab a drink, receive a massage, and check out the 2011 Chevy Volt.


• "Catch a Chevy" - SXSW visitors can ride through the city of Austin in style, by hopping a ride on complimentary shuttles between several SXSW locations - in one of 14 Chevy vehicles, of course.


• "See the USA in a Chevrolet: A SXSW Road Trip" - teams from eight U.S. cities participate in an "Amazing Race"-style road-trip/scavenger-hunt to get to SXSW. Along the way, each team must complete 50 different "challenges" (all submitted by Chevy Twitter followers and Facebook fans). The winning team will be the one that completes the most challenges and interacts the most with their Twitter and other web communities.

Chevrolet seems to be putting forth a good effort to provide a fun experience for SXSW attendees and online participants. And, as Christopher Barger (GM's director of global communications and technology) was quoted in MediaPost's Marketing Daily, Chevy also hopes to use this opportunity to learn from the brilliant and connected visitors to the conference.

Of course, successfully [re-]building a brand requires more than an outstanding social media effort. The promotion that Chevrolet is doing at SXSW is just part of one of the "4P's" of marketing. The others - product, price, place - are just as important for creating what Barger calls "a better experience" for customers. Chevy needs to invest just as much - if not more - time in creating remarkable vehicles for their customers, as they do in creating a fun interactive marketing campaign.

Brands do not live by social media alone. But if Chevy can put the same amount of effort, service, and ingenuity into its products as it does into this promotion, I have reason to believe that this brand, indeed, will live.

Freedom Stones: A Start-up with Good Marketing?

Last week, some friends of mine invited me to check out the website of their start-up non-profit organization, Freedom Stones.

I was blown away.

Oftentimes, when a non-profit organization is just beginning, its marketing and promotional efforts are rather primitive. Its web presence consists of a Facebook fan page, or perhaps a website that looks okay by 1995 standards. Its print materials are 8.5" x 11" flyers that were created and printed from the founder's home computer. Its advertising occurs at random through garage-sale-signs and word-of-mouth.

And we, the public, are okay with that. We realize that the people who found non-profit organizations are usually passionate and skilled in issues like social justice, and are rarely passionate and skilled in marketing. We are happy that they are investing their initial time and energy and precious start-up capital in the operations of helping people, even if it means that their marketing efforts lag behind for a while. All of this is par for the course with a new non-profit organization. If the cause is a worthy one, we will support the organization anyway.

So marketing efforts like those of Freedom Stones come as quite a surprise.

Freedom Stones was incorporated just last year, and the site went live just a few weeks before I first looked at it. When I visited the site, I was thoroughly impressed. The design is beautiful - great layout, great colors, great photos and texture, terrific overall aesthetics. The navigation and organization are tight and easy to follow. The site is full of thick, rich, helpful, purposeful information - about the organization, its work, its staff, the issues it fights, the people it helps, the products it sells, and the ways in which supporters can get involved. And the site has a functional shopping cart system - not just a Paypal setup - for purchasing items and making donations.

Plus, the Freedom Stones website links to social media - a Facebook cause, a Twitter account (@FreedomStones), and the Freedom Stones blog. One might expect these accounts to have been thrown together, and to contain only a handful of posts about Freedom Stones.

Instead, Freedom Stones seems to have strategically planned and implemented its use of social media. The Facebook cause already has 664 members, with regular posts over the past 10 months. The Twitter account seems to have begun in mid-January, but Freedom Stones has been faithful to tweet well and often since then. And the blog, while low on posts as of yet, seems to be off to a great start.

When I see marketing efforts that look like this, I feel more comfortable with and confident in the non-profit. It seems that the non-profit is already well-established; that the founders are serious about this cause; that they have been thoughtful and strategic, and that they understand the "business" of running a non-profit; that this non-profit is well-funded, well-supported, and well-stewarded - that the non-profit is not destined to fail in six months due to poor money management or poor operational decisions.

I certainly do not begrudge start-up non-profits whose marketing efforts have not yet reached this level of quality. However, it seems that the founders of Freedom Stones realize the importance of having supporters to bring the work and mission of Freedom Stones to fruition. They have given some thought to how they will reach, attract, and communicate with supporters, in order to provide the financial and emotional legs for their ministry to stand.

And I fully expect that stand it shall.

Why Do We Do What We Do?

Gary Chapman would say that my love language is words of affirmation.

As such, few things brighten my day more than when someone pays me a sincere compliment or gives me a word of encouragement. In my work, I seldom feel more satisfied and useful and fulfilled than when a boss or a client or a coworker tells me that I've done an excellent job.

But sometimes, I find myself beginning to do things solely for the prospect of receiving praise for my work. Instead of giving 110% to a task simply because giving 110% is the right thing to do, I begin to give 110% because I want to impress my client, or because I hope that one of my dearest mentors will notice.

As marketers, do we act the same way?

Do we begin to strategize ways that our organization can be amazing, just so that our organization can achieve recognition and media coverage and positive word-of-mouth?

Recognition and media coverage and positive word-of-mouth are wonderful and worthy things, no doubt, but they should not be the reason why we do what we do.

Instead, we should strategize ways to be amazing, just because being amazing is the right thing to do. Because having radical customer service is the right thing to do. Because being dedicated to good stewardship of natural resources is the right thing to do. Because improving the lives of people is the right thing to do. Because designing innovative, aesthetically-pleasing, useful products is the right thing to do. Because creating a wonderful place to work and shop and do business and live is the right thing to do.

When we do amazing things out of a sincere conviction that those are the things we should do, then the recognition and awards and good press and outstanding brand reputation will follow.

When we do amazing things simply because we are pursuing those accolades, then our heart isn't right. And when our heart isn't right toward the things we are doing, sooner or later the facade will break down. Sooner or later customers will realize that our customer service doesn't really care about them the way it is reputed to. Sooner or later our brand experience won't match up to the stunts we pulled, and our customers will become disillusioned - and leave. Sooner or later we will cut a corner or two, and the media will find out, and the bad press will more than destroy the good reputation we had built.

Be exceptional in what your organization does, simply because being exceptional is the right thing to do. When you choose to be exceptional for the right reasons, the real praise and the real devoted customers will follow.

Text Messages and Serving the Customer

A friend of mine told me recently about a smoothie shop in her town that is making good use of mobile technology to serve their customers.

Visitors to the smoothie shop can sign up to receive SMS updates from the store. The shop sends a daily text message to its subscribers, telling them about the special of the day and sometimes offering extra discounts, such as "Visit us today and show us this text message to receive 50% off any large smoothie!"

Social media and other digital communications tools like SMS, Twitter, Facebook, and email can be a great way to offer something extra to your customers and to build a better customer relationship. Here are a few reasons (and rules) for why this works:

1. It's welcome. Perhaps the number one reason why these forms of communication can be successful at building customer relationships is that they require the organization to ask the customers' permission. (Seth Godin wrote a great book back in 1999 that explains how and why Permission Marketing works.) Your customers must opt-in to this service. They - not you - get to choose whether they receive your communications every day (or week, or what-have-you). Customers who view such messages as spam will not receive the service. Those who do subscribe to the service will not view your messages as spam (and if they did, they could unsubscribe).


2. It's expected. Your customers know what messages they will receive from you, and how often, because you tell them before they even sign up. You post point-of-sale advertisements in your shop that tell them how they can "sign up for free [daily/weekly] messages containing [updates/news/coupons/special offers] via [text message/email/Twitter/Facebook]." Or you print this information on your packaging. Or your sales clerks ask them if they would like to sign up as they check out (and then direct them to a paper or digital sign up sheet, rather than putting them on the spot by asking for their contact information verbally).


3. It's easy. Your subscribers get your information pushed to their email inboxes, Facebook accounts, or mobile phones. They don't have to go searching for your news and coupons on your website, via Google, or in your store. And your messages are short, so they don't take long to read. If you have too much to say (i.e. more than 140 characters, whether or not you are using Twitter), you give the customer a headline and a link to a webpage that contains all of the information. If they are interested in the headline, they can follow the link. If not, they can delete your message.


4. It's helpful. You send these messages for the purpose of serving the customer. You give them information that they would like to hear. You give them information that they care about. If your organization serves smoothies, you distribute links to articles about healthy foods and healthy living. If you sell bicycles, you distribute links to news about cycling and cyclists. If you provide business services, you distribute links to information about industry developments and best practices. And, when appropriate, you distribute special offers for your products and services. Every message you send to your subscribers should serve your subscribers.

For building customer relationships, these communications methods can be a great tool. But remember, as with any marketing effort, your SMS and social media communications should serve the customer, not just serve you.

Revising Your Holiday Gift-Giving Strategy

Last week, MediaPost's Marketing Daily published an article entitled, "Report: Gift Cards Are The New Fruitcake." That is to say, gift cards are the new "classic" Christmas present that nobody wants to receive.

According to research firm TowerGroup, store gift card spending is expected to decrease 7% for 2009; an October Consumer Reports survey revealed that only 15% of consumers actually want gift cards.

The MediaPost article and a video by Consumer Reports offer some hypotheses for the reasons behind the gift card's fall from favor:

1. Consumers want to spend money on more practical items (i.e. food and gasoline), not on the non-necessities sold by the typical gift card retailer.


2. Consumers are slow to spend their gift cards. According to Consumer Reports, 25% of consumers who received a gift card in 2008 have not yet spent the gift card.


3. 65% of consumers spend more than the face value of the gift card they receive, meaning that in order to use their own gift, they must spend money.


4. Retailers are maintaining smaller inventories this year; thus, by the time a consumer visits the store to spend a gift card (i.e. after the holidays), the items they might have wanted may likely be sold out already.

Adding to the "fruitcakey-ness" of gift cards this Christmas season is the loudness with which retailers have been peddling their gift cards. It seems that a person can no longer turn on the television or set foot in a store without a bombardment of advertisements touting gift cards as the "one-size-fits-all gift" or the "gift that won't be returned" or the "gift that people really want."

But if folks want to give something better than fruitcake to their loved ones this Christmas, they might be advised to avoid the gift cards and resort to the good, old-fashioned holiday gift strategy:

Giving actual, physical objects as Christmas presents.

When a person gives a physical item - be it a toy, a sweater, cologne, or a toaster oven - it shows that he took the time to consider the recipient's likes and dislikes; he spent time browsing the store aisles or catalog pages (or actually making a gift, like everyone did in the olden days); he spent time choosing a thoughtful and meaningful gift.

Instead of trying to persuade consumers to buy gift cards for their loved ones this year, marketers ought to help consumers pick out considerate and desirable gifts.

Social media seems like one natural venue for this. Help consumers use their friends' profile information (with permission, of course) to determine likes, dislikes, and wants. Design quizzes that enable users to report on their likes and interests, and then output suggested gift items. Enable users to create "Christmas wish lists" to post to their profiles. Create "secret societies" of friends that can share ideas for what to give to a certain someone.

In-store displays could also give helpful hints to gift-givers. What if stores showed lists of this year's top-selling items for different interest categories: "for the musician," "for the gamer," "for the animal lover," "for the skater," "for the outsdoorsman," "for the fashionista," "for the bookworm," etc.?

This Christmas, consumers may be returning to the notion of giving thoughtful gifts because they care, instead of giving "spend-as-you-like" gifts because a gift is expected. And if consumers are thinking more about the gifts they give, marketers should be thinking more about how to help those gift-givers give meaningful gifts.

Facebook, Birthdays, and Changing Marketing

Browse through nearly any marketing journal, and you will find talk on how Facebook and Twitter have changed (and in the case of Facebook, possibly birthed) the field of social media marketing.

I won't go into that whole discussion today; enough people smarter than I have spent more than enough words on it already, so you can Google them if you want to join that conversation.

I do, however, want to point out one tiny feature of Facebook that has changed our lives in a way that many marketers may overlook:

Birthdays.

Facebook has been the source of more birthday wishes than any other single tool I can imagine.

For example, of my Facebook friends, 99% of them are people I know personally (that is, I know and have met them in the flesh). Most of those 99% are people whose birthdays I would like to celebrate out of general love and goodwill, even though I might not see them or talk to them very often throughout the rest of the year.

But I have enough trouble remembering the birthdays of my ten cousins, let alone hundreds of Facebook friends.

Thanks to Facebook, I can "remember" the birthdays of each and every one of my Facebook friends. Since Facebook even notifies me of birthdays a few days ahead of time, it gives me a chance to buy a last-minute card or gift if I happened to forget an important birthday. But for the majority of my Facebook friends - those "Tier 2" relationships whom I do not see very often, who are friends but not close friends or family, whose birthdays they would not expect me to remember - Facebook's birthday notifications enable me to post a simple "Hope you have a wonderful birthday!" on their Facebook wall.

And on my own birthday, it is a special feeling to see a wall full of birthday wishes, some from people whom I have not seen in months, from whom a birthday wish is neither required not expected.

What are Facebook's birthday notifications really doing for us?

Facebook is enabling people to tell each other that they care. That they value one another. That they respect and appreciate one another's lives. That the people in their lives are important, even if they don't see one another very often.

It is a show of simple human kindness and caring. And in the kind of relationships that most of us have with most of our Facebook friends, this show of caring does not have to be a big thing. Just that unexpected "Happy Birthday" shows a little bit of love and consideration for one another.

That single purpose - showing that people care - is the core behind social media. We want to know that people care enough to notice us. That they like our ideas enough to listen. That they value our existence enough to converse with us.

That act of caring is what social media marketers must demonstrate in order to be successful, in order to really connect. What makes social media marketing different from many other forms of marketing, is that it enables marketers to stop doing all the talking. It enables marketers to listen to what the customer has to say. It enables customers to engage in the conversation with the brand and with each other. It provides a place where the customer's opinion matters.

The successful social media marketer recognizes this, and approaches social media accordingly. She engages in dialogue (not monologue). She takes time to listen, and to find out what individual customers care about. She recognizes the thoughts and opinions of her customers, and she communicates by her words and actions that her customers matter.

If you're going to engage in social media for marketing purposes, you must care about the customers, and then show them that you care. Otherwise you're just wasting everyone's time.

"I love my city. Don't send the Olympics here."

In less than five days from this writing, the International Olympic Committee will decide which city will host the 2016 Olympics. The top contenders are Chicago, Madrid, Tokyo, and Rio de Janeiro. Officials from each city have spent months (or years?) trying to convince the world (or, at least the Committee) that their city is worthy of hosting the Games. In similar fashion, a grassroots organization of purported Chicagoans has launched a marketing effort promoting the Olympic bid...for Rio.

The group's website, www.ChicagoansForRio.com, quite attractively displays information about the Olympic Games and why Chicago should NOT be the host in 2016. The main reason why not? Finances. These Chicagoans do not want their city to go bankrupt with all of the obligatory Olympic-sized construction and infrastructure projects.

The "Chicagoans for Rio" site features an animated counter claiming to show the "2009 City Deficits to Date," plus fun facts about the debt incurred by previous host cities of the Olympics, a photo slideshow of the now-unused 21 (out of 22) Olympic venues in Athens, and a scrolling marquee of supposed site visitor comments supporting Rio de Janeiro's bid over Chicago's. Other helpful (or amusing) features of the site include links to recent crime records from Chicago; a "head-to-head" comparison of Rio vs. Chicago; and links to purchase "Chicagoans for Rio" merchandise, to email the IOC, and to support Rio's bid on the Rio 2016 website.

Last Thursday, a Chicago Fox News station broadcasted the story of "Chicagoans for Rio", but was politely asked to stop talking about it, as the report "would harm Chicago's chances" for being awarded the bid. Ironically, this shushing only garnered more attention for the movement, as Drudge Report, Twitterers, and several online journals and blogs spread the word about the cease-and-desist.

The publicity about "Chicagoans for Rio" has also drummed up some questions about the group's veracity: given that the website lists no contact information, how do we know for sure that the group members are truly from Chicago? Who's to say they are not really from, say, Rio? And where are they getting their budget deficit facts, anyway?

Nevertheless, let's assume for the moment that "Chicagoans for Rio" truly is a group of Chicagoans willing to forego the honor of hosting the Olympics in exchange for some semblance of fiscal responsibility. Assuming that they are a spontaneous grassroots organization with no budget, here is what I would recommend if they truly want to dissuade the International Olympic Committee by Friday:

1) Get people talking. The shushing of Fox News generated some buzz already; "Chicagoans for Rio" needs more. Start a blog telling the full story behind the website, behind the Fox News story, behind the shushing - everything! - and include buttons to make it easy for people to Tweet, email, embed, Digg it, and post it to Facebook. Invite people to use the Twitter hashtag #chicagoansforrio to share reasons why the Olympics should be hosted in Rio and not in Chicago. Post YouTube videos in which Chicagoans share these reasons audio-visual style.

2) Get people involved. The whole anonymous website thing might be the "safe" way for the organizers to go, but they need some legitimate method of showing how many Chicagoans support Rio for the 2016 Olympics. They could start a petition (secure, of course) on the website in which visitors submit their names and email addresses to show their support for Chicagoans for Rio. Or they could start a Facebook group (the group "2,000,000 for the olympics in chicago" currently has only 99,540 members). Or they could invite Chicagoans to tweet their "send the Olympics to Rio" messages to the IOC (@Olympics).

3) Be the anti-Chicago2016. For everything that the Chicago Olympic Committee has done to promote Chicago as the host city for the 2016 Games, the "Chicagoans for Rio" group should do the same to plead against Chicago as the 2016 host city. So maybe they cannot replicate the entire Chicago 2016 site by Friday, but they could still create some videos or write some articles to counter the COC's arguments point-for-point. They could post a nice slideshow describing why Rio, rather than Chicago, is ideal for the 2016 Olympics.

But again, these suggestions could only be worthwhile if "Chicagoans for Rio" are truly in earnest. And even if "Chicagoans for Rio" do try some of these tactics, the plan could always backfire - the International Olympic Committee might vote for Chicago 2016 just to spite them.

Vending Machines of the Not-So-Distant Future

The next generation of vending machines may soon be coming to fast-food restaurants, food courts, and cafeterias near us.

America's old favorite Coca-Cola and newcomer MooBella are both doing beta testing this summer for their respective high-tech vending machines. Coke's Freestyle is a touch-screen dispenser of soda (what else?) that allows customers to select from 104 flavors of Coca-Cola waters, juices, sodas, and sports drinks. The machine uses PurePour Technology to mix the drinks from concentrate within the same space as a typical six- or eight-valve soda fountain. The Freestyle also uses Impinj’s RFID technology to collect data on flavors selected, which helps both supply chain management (by telling HQ when refills are needed), and market research (by telling HQ which flavors are popular - or not). RFIDNews has details on exactly how the RFID works in the Freestyle machines.

Soda-drinkers can't exactly create their own combinations with this machine (which was designed to collect data on which Coke varieties are most popular), but 104 flavors provides a lot of options. For the full list of flavors, see the Coca-Cola Freestyle Facebook Fan Page.



"Cooler" still, MooBella (an eight-year-old company from Massachusetts) has developed an automated vending machine for...ice cream! And these machines are not mere purveyors of pre-packaged sundries. On the contrary, each MooBella Ice Creamery custom-mixes 100% natural dairy ice cream with one of 12 ice cream flavors and one of three mix-ins to create made-to-order hand-dipped-style ice cream - in just 45 seconds! MooBella flash-freezes the ice cream (rather than slow-churning it), which enables the quick service. The machines also feature a touch-screen interface, a behind-the-scenes Linux operating system, and wireless technology that relays inventory and sales data to headquarters via satellite.



With these new vending machines, it seems that both Coca-Cola and MooBella are doing an excellent job of using new technology to provide great products, great service, and great info on customer preferences. Are they using new technology just as successfully in their marketing communications for these products? Let's see:

On a scale of 1 to 10, I give Coca-Cola a 4. They have a Facebook Fan Page with lots of great information on flavors and locations, plus they seem to respond quickly and aptly to fans' wall comments. However, their Fan Page has only 1,067 fans as of 11:36pm Central, 18 August 2009 - a rather small number for the "world's largest beverage company," don't you think? Coca-Cola Freestyle is also on Twitter (@ccfreestyle) as of 7 August 2009, but only has two tweets, 30 followers, and no profile pic as of 18 August. Any blogs or mobile apps for the Freestyle? I haven't found any yet. Video? A few on YouTube - from customers, not the company.

On the same 1 to 10 scale, MooBella gets a 2. They also have a Facebook Fan Page, with frequent and interesting wall posts (more interesting than those on the Freestyle Fan Page, actually). Sadly, the MooBella Fan Page has only 43 followers (ouch!). As for Twitter, there is a "moobella" account(@moobella), but it might or might not be the same company. It's hard to tell when @moobella hasn't tweeted anything yet. Blogs? Mobile apps? Not that I can see. Video? A YouTube search only uncovered two - both more than five minutes long; neither from customers.

Ah, well. Perhaps Coca-Cola Freestyle and MooBella will jump more fully into social media and mobile marketing after they release their respective products to the public. For now, I suppose we must wait for beta testing to end. (The Freestyle is undergoing beta testing in Southern California; Moobella in Boston.)

The Tools Need Someone to Use Them

Pablo Picasso once said, "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."

Granted, Picasso (who died in 1973) made this statement at a time when most computers were sophisticated calculators or analog machines used by corporations, universities, research labs, and military intelligence. This was before personal computers, before Apple, before graphical user interface, before 99.99% of humans knew what the "Internet" was, before MS-DOS, before the World Wide Web, before the dot-com bubble, before Web 2.0, before Adobe Photoshop and digital video and social media and Google and online news channels and - gasp! - blogs.

But even despite Picasso's assumed ignorance of the world of functionality that computers would one day offer, he makes a worthy point. Computers are tools. The Internet is a tool. Social media is a tool. Tools are useless until they are put into the hands of somebody who will use them.

Computers (software, networks, Internet, and other technology included) can provide you with information. Worthwhile information - about news, sports, politics, events, entertainment, products, services, advice, companies, customers, supply and demand, what customers want, how people live. They can connect you to people. Create channels of communication. Give you eyes, ears, and a voice to the rest of the world.

But computers can't make decisions for you. The entire Adobe Creative Suite can't create brilliantly designed marketing materials for you. The Internet and email and blogs can't build your brand for you. Social media can't generate followers for you.

You are the human. You are the one who has been designed to create. You are the one who generates ideas. You are the one who builds relationships. You are the one with the responsibility to add value to the world.

So use your tools. They are no good without you, the driver and creator and inventor and communicator and painter.

MySpace Has Found Itself!

Less than two weeks ago, according to TechCrunch (yes, the same publication now notorious for publishing the stolen Twitter documents - I'm almost loathe to reference them), MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta admitted, in short, that his company was in the middle of an identity crisis.

In an email to employees, Van Natta explained, "Our users don’t know if we’re a social portal, a music site, or an entertainment hub." He also reported that MySpace was taking steps to unify the site and "lay the groundwork to provide more clarity on our brand and business."

He wasn't kidding about taking those steps. MySpace seems to have made short work of that, announcing just this Thursday that MySpace will soon be repositioned as an "entertainment destination" specifically focused on gaming.

With Facebook and Twitter leading the myriad social networking sites, iTunes and Pandora topping the various music portals, and YouTube and Hulu dominating video outlets, online gaming seems like a good space for MySpace. The site already has several games available; it seems reasonable to believe that they could successfully expand that offering to define their entire brand. Perhaps MySpace will distinguish itself among other gaming sites by reconfiguring its "social network" aspect to remarkably facilitate and supplement its new gaming core.

Doubtless there will be much public discussion and debate in the coming days, weeks, and months, about the upcoming changes to MySpace. If minor updates to Facebook's layout can spark hundreds of "Change it back!" groups among Facebook users, it will be interesting to see what outcry arises from a complete brand overhaul of MySpace.

I, for one, am happy for the folks at MySpace, and optimistic about the future of the once-leader of social networks. This new identity may or may not be successful at rebuilding the brand; but without it, MySpace had no chance in the world at holding together. As Someone Wise once said, "a house divided...."

Social Media: The Results Are In!

For organizations still wondering whether social media is worth their time, this information might be encouraging:

MediaPost's Online Media Daily announced yesterday the results of a recent study by social media platform Wetpaint and digital consulting firm Altimeter Group on corporate social media usage and revenue growth.

The researchers reviewed and ranked 100 companies on their depth of engagement across 10 social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and others). The five most engaged companies, in order, were Starbucks, Dell, eBay, Google, and Microsoft.

Online Media Daily reports, "According to the study, companies with the highest levels of social media activity on average increased revenues by 18% in the last 12 months, while the least active saw sales drop 6% over that period."

If the results from this study can be extrapolated, it would seem that companies have one of two paths to take:

Path One: your company could spend six or seven figures on running a traditional ad campaign, not including payroll for the marketing and design masterminds behind the campaign. Your ad campaign would send an irrelevant message to potentially millions of disinterested viewers, who would ignore it, and you would fail to truly engage the customers would might really be interested. Your campaign may or may not even help to keep your sales steady in this economy.

Path Two: you could take an equally well-thought-out approach to social media, save those six or seven figures for investment in other areas of your business, and use that payroll to pay for social media masterminds. Your well-done social media campaign would engage customers (interested customers!), give you opportunities to actually converse with them to discover how you can serve them, and enable them to share their excitement about your brand with their friends. And your sales would likely grow.

I'm not suggesting that traditional advertising should be scrapped completely; I think it has its own place and purpose. But to refuse to invest in a virtually free - and shown-to-be-effective - communication tool like social media to reach your customers? That doesn't make much business sense to me.

Marketing a Cause: Mandela Day

On July 18, in honor of the 91st birthday of the social activist and former South African president, the Nelson Mandela Foundation is hosting Mandela Day. The day itself will feature a grand concert in New York City's Radio City Music Hall, with performances by folks like Stevie Wonder, Queen Latifah, Josh Groban, Aretha Franklin, Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Yvonne Chaka Chaka, Emmanuel Jal, and more. But the goal of Mandela Day is not so much a one-day celebration of a great man, but a re-commitment of people around the world to follow Mr. Mandela's lead by making a difference in their own communities.

To spread word about the event, the Nelson Mandela Foundation (with the help of ad agency Gotham - part of Interpublic Group) has launched a viral campaign. What a better way to inspire people toward a cause than to get passionate individuals to spread the fire to their friends?

TV, print, online, and web ads are being used to point people to the mandeladay.com website, where they can learn about Mandela Day, include themselves in a Mandela Day video, join the Imprint Wall (where they post their plans for serving their communities), read the Mandela Day blog, follow @MandelaDay on Twitter, join the Mandela Day fan page on Facebook, see Flickr photos of the Mandela Day art installation in NYC Grand Central Terminal's Vanderbilt Hall, and watch videos of celebrity support of the event. (Celebrities currently featured include former U.S. President Bill Clinton, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Morgan Freeman, Clint Eastwood, and more.)

I have not yet seen whether the Nelson Mandela Foundation has done much to take Mandela Day mobile, other than allowing people to submit messages to the Imprint Wall via text message. Are there any iPhone apps? A mobile site? Could the Foundation develop a mobile e-card from the Imprint Wall, allowing folks to send an image of their own Imprint to friends?

People can use their phones to record their own Mandela Day videos; I don't know how streamlined it is to upload the video to the Mandela Day site from a phone.

I was surprised that I could not find a link to the Mandela Day YouTube channel on the Mandela Day website; the channel features quite a few videos about the event (with some starring various celebrities).

I do hope that these interactive strategies succeed in helping word about the event to go viral. And I hope that Mandela Day inspires people to make the difference of which they are truly capable.

Musing about Twitter

I've been on Twitter for a few months now, and am still trying to explore and understand all of its potential uses. Recently, people to whom I have no connection have started to follow me. This set me to thinking and wondering:

1. I'm new to this phenomenon of having businesspeople I don't know start following me on Twitter.


2. It's weird. Perhaps I should be happy and honored, because ostensibly it means that more people are reading what I have to say, that they like what I have to say, and that they might someday be interested in hiring me.


3. But I wonder if they are just following me because they hope that I will follow them back.


4. How did they find me, anyway?


5. Is this what most companies are using Twitter for? Following others just to get them to follow back? Cialdini's old "reciprocity" principle?


6. I wonder if there is solid data yet on how and why companies are using Twitter?


7. Maybe it's just the sleazy, value-less ones who are doing this "serial following." Is it akin to spamming and pop-ups?


8. A couple of the strangers who just started following me seem to subscribe to services like www.TweepMe.com ("Get 4,000 Twitter followers for $19.95"); www.GetMeFollowers.com (Register; follow/refer users; get points; get more followers); www.TopFollowed.com ("reciprocal following"), etc.


9. Why? Reciprocal following makes sense, if it's organic. But why manufacture it? Why follow/be followed by people you don't care about? Do you really want quantity instead of quality?


10. Are there people out there whose goal is to get thousands of followers on Twitter, simply for the sake of being able to say they have thousands of followers on Twitter?


11. Why?


12. Are they viewing Twitter as a new [business] toy? Whoever has the most followers wins?


13. Is it based on the human desire to be heard?


14. Is it because they're expecting those followers to turn into new customers?


15. Don't they believe that if they truly have a great product or service, that they will gain loyal fans anyway? And those loyal fans will then want to follow them on Twitter? Not the other way around?


16. There's another stranger following me on Twitter, who tweets 20 times a day, posting links to other peoples' online articles. I wonder why.


17. Most of these people who seem to be "serial followers" (aka they try to follow as many people as they can, in order to get as many followers as they can), may have numbers of "following" and "followers" in the hundreds or thousands, but they have more they are "following" than they have "followers."


18. It seems to me that a well-known, successful company who is known to be excellent and has lots of loyal customers, will have a lot more followers than people they are following. As in 100:1 or 1000:1. Or maybe they don't follow anybody at all, but all of their customers/fans follow them.


19. That would be my measure of success for Twitter: is your Followers/Following ratio greater than 1?


20. If you're following more than you are being followed, it tells me that you don't have much of value to say. And why are you following so many people anyway? Are there really that many people whose words are meaningful enough that they are worth your time to follow them? I haven't found quite so many sources of excellence whom I want to learn from and emulate.


21. But perhaps I'm on Twitter for a different reason than these people are.


22. As for the people I don't know who are following me on Twitter, it would please me more to see them follow my blog instead.


23. If they follow my blog, it tells me that they like what I have to say.


24. If they like what I have to say, maybe we can have a conversation. Maybe they'll want to do business with me in the future.

But maybe I just don't "get" Twitter yet. Maybe I should read all those hundreds of articles on Twitter and why companies must use it.