Influential Marketing Blog

How Social Media Will Change History

There is a cliche that many people often share about history, and how it is written by the victors. The conquerors across the world, for the most part, are the ones who transcribed the history for others to read. We have terms like "revisionist history" to account for the fact that we realize the truth may be quite a bit grayer than those historical accounts we read lead us to believe. And it is often the sole dissenting voice that points us toward what the true history may be - some in between version where the good guys are perhaps not quite so good, and the bad guys not so bad.

It is easy to think of these shades of history while traveling in Greece (where I spent the past week), because the evidence of this is all around. From the city of Acropolis high over Athens to the softly smoldering volcanic remains in the caldera of Santorini. What was once religion is now called mythology, a sign perhaps that our religion of today may befall the same fate. Amongst those ruins of temples and palaces, there is the beautifully frustrating knowledge that we will probably never know what these really looked like or how these people truly lived.

The history today will be different. With technology and social media, we have the effortless ability to capture our individual truth and experience in minute detail and save it on shared servers for the world to access hundreds or thousands of years from now. Ironically, this fact may make the study of history that much more complicated, as historians in the future will have many versions of truth to study and contrast. Rather than piecing this history together through buried bone fragments and stones with the rare written account as they have done for many years, they will do it through compiling and sorting data, analyzing imagery and watching video.

Combined with global historical initiatives such as the Internet Archive and Google Earth, the portrait of our world as it stands today will be far more complete and multi-experienced for historians of the future than any other age that has come before. For those of us who write blogs or upload photos, the scope of our actions are easy to forget or minimalize. But we are the new historians of our time and our content will one day be history - and probably for more than just ourselves. It's a humbling to imagine your own words on this scale ... particularly when you think of who could be reading them a long time from now.

I Am Sooo NOT Tweeting This!

Sometimes I think I live an overtweeted life. I'm on nearly every social network and I revel in the instant-on real time pleasure of knowing what people are craving or bitching about anywhere in the world at any given moment. Despite the incessant distraction of this "ambient awareness" - I'm a keen believer too that it helps me get closer to people that I would otherwise never have the chance to get to know, and smarter about the world in general. For the interconnected life I lead, though, I love my time away from it as well. It's not uncommon for me to "go dark" on Twitter most weekends, or to randomly take a break from blogging. Those are the moments when I'm part of my real world, being a Dad or just decompressing. And I pride myself on not being the guy in the corner tweeting every moment of a party (even if it's full of social media geeks like me). I'd rather just talk to people. The point is, there's a time when all this stuff needs to be shut off.

For me, that time is going to be this coming week - when I take a vacation to Paris and then on to several Greek islands with my wife (and no kids). I plan to relax, to write and to spend some time in a beautiful environment getting inspired. Most of that doesn't really involve Twitter. So tonight I'm scheduling a few posts with photos to go live on my blog over the week (as a virtual way to share where I am going to be) ... but otherwise I'm hanging up the proverbial "gone fishing" sign and planning to be back on June 1st with more posts and more than likely a few marketing lessons I have learned along my journey. After all, I may be able to leave Twitter behind ... but I'll always be a writer at heart and have my Moleskine and pen by my side to capture ideas as they happen.

For a digital guy, I'm still old school like that.

The Worst Hotel In The World

Imagine for a moment if you were the marketing director in charge of a considerably seedy backpacker hotel in Amsterdam. The property you are responsible for promoting is so spartan that they have pictures of chairs on the walls as an ironic replacement to having an actual chair in the rooms. There is no guarantee of toilet paper in the bathrooms. If you were like most travel marketers, you might decide to find a great photographer with a very wide angle lens and considerable creative talents. Then you'd find the best possible way to photograph the property and focus your marketing on some other angle, such as cost or location.

For Hans Brinker Budget Hotel in Amsterdam, the right strategy was exactly the opposite: embrace their awfulness and talk about it honestly. For 15 years, the hotel has been promoting itself as the "worst hotel in the world." As anyone who has ever worked on promoting a destination or travel property knows, sometimes expectations can set you up for failure. Some frequent fliers expect to be upgraded to a seat they didn't pay for, and then get angry when they are not. Patrons of luxury hotels expect perfection, and often feel justified to complain about any little thing, no matter how small. The solution, reasoned Hans Brinker's agency KesselsKramer, was to lower expectations to a point where people could no longer be disappointed. Thus the concept of the "worst hotel in the world" was born.

The hotel uses innovative posters and direct marketing to promote their "experience" to their target audience of young backpackers. After all, what twenty-something wouldn't want to return home to boast to their friends and family that they stayed in the worst hotel in the world while in Amsterdam? The campaign has turned the property's biggest negative attribute into the only reason for people to stay. And it has worked, with a 42% increase in occupancy. Their success has even led to a newly launched book. What's the lesson in this for travel marketers?  Sometimes being honest and giving people something to talk about is the only thing that really matters.

NOTE: This post was originally shared on the new Ogilvy PR Travel & Economic Development blog called Being There, Doing That ... which I am a member and contributing writer of. Check it out for lots more great travel marketing tips and thoughts.

BzzAgent Tackles The Elusive Problem Of Brand Communities

What if all the people who were truly passionate about your brand had a single place to gather? Somewhere that they could share content and opinions, organize real life events, ask one another questions, and just about any other activity that happens in a real community. It's pretty obvious to see the value in something like that - which is probably why many companies have tried some version of it. Yahoo launched and then abandoned their Brand Universe concept. Sites like Squidoo, Ning and Alltop arguably had some version of this vision in mind when they launched as well.

Today, word of mouth marketing company BzzAgent is launching their effort, called BzzScapes. I had a chance to take a preview demo of it recently, and the thinking behind the site is that if you can give members of the BzzAgent community (who number over half a million and are already self-described "brand enthusiasts") a place to share content about their favourite brands, they will create a valuable community for any brand marketer (and advertiser) to be part of.

The real problem of creating communities like this, though, is taking a role as the primary destination that other brand content can fit under. Can any one brand community become the place to gather photos on Flickr, YouTube videos, passionate bloggers, individual tweets and just about any other form of content about a particular brand? In cases of extreme passion, sites like Moleskinerie ... but for most brands, this may be too much to hope for. So instead, someone needs to encourage customers to create these communities and make it easy. BzzAgent wants to be that someone.

In theory, the site is meant to sit at the intersection of what everyone wants:

1. Brands want to find people who are passionate about their products/services and help them spread the word.
2. People want to be recognized and supported (either through sample products or insider knowledge) by the brands they love.
3. BzzAgent wants to be the one to bring these two together in a measurable way (and charge for it).

If you are like most brand marketers, you might be skeptical about the potential for this because many people have tried it before, and failed. The difference, in my mind, is that this time around it's being launched by a company whose entire mission is to give people real experiences with actual products and services. In most communities that talk about brands, the way for a brand's marketing team to participate is not usually clear - and the benefit participants get (apart from conversations) isn't clear either. BzzAgent can add this clarity on both sides ... and help everyone get something out of it. If anything helps this effort to take off where others have failed, that will be it.

NOTE: This is reposted from the original version on the Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence blog.

IdeaBar: APM - Automated Printing Machines

Have you ever wished it was easier to print something out while you were on the road? Whether it's a boarding pass or a list of local restaurants, or a guide to a local attraction you are standing in front of. Right now, we can carry 20 GB hard drives in our pocket, and access the internet through many kinds of portable devices. Printing, however, remains a chore.

To print at a hotel business center, you need to email a file, then open it, send it to a printer and hope that all the fonts work out and things look ok. And you pay exorbitantly per page. If you happen to be out and on the road, you're pretty much out of luck. Which brings me to the idea of this post ... why can't HP or Canon or any of the companies that make printers create an APM?

Working in the same way as an ATM, an APM or Automated Printing Machine would allow anyone on the street to walk up to a kiosk, send a file in a variety of ways (USB flash key, bluetooth, infrared, etc.) and get it printed. You can already do this to print photos in drugstores. You can do it for directions at a rental car agency (though it's limited). Airlines also do this at the airport with boarding passes already as well.

So why can't I go to a kiosk on the street in Manhattan and print that really long email from a friend telling me where to go, or get a printout of those crucial 4 slides a colleague is sending me on my way to a business meeting? One day I suspect we'll see these APMs - because despite how digital our lives have become, sometimes you just need a printout.

About the Idea Bar: Working in a creative team, the life of our business is new ideas.  We come up with them every day for clients, but sometimes there are ideas that just don't fit a client.  They are too big, too different, or just not quite right. Inspired by John at Digital Influence Mapping Project, the IdeaBar is a category of posts that are meant to be "open source" and offer new ideas for marketing.  Take them and use them ... all I ask for is a link back to this post if you find these ideas useful and talk about them.  Read more IdeaBar posts on this blog.

Untangling Your Brand: 4 Marketing Lessons From Lost

Last night was the season finale of the TV show Lost - and just in case you haven't watched it and have it sitting on DVR waiting for you, don't worry ... there are no spoilers in this post. Actually, though I'm an enthusiast of the show, the reason for this post isn't to gush about how great I think it is. It is about what you learn from how the show has been promoted. Like many recent dramas, it is not an easy show to follow. It isn't about nothing, and you can't just miss a few episodes and still get into it. Yet as I wrote about in PNI (search for "Lost" with the Search Inside feature on Amazon - it is Page 108) - the show's unique format of taking you into the backstory of each characters builds an emotional investment from the viewer in a way that many other shows never manage to do. You believe in the characters because you know about the situations that make them the way that they are.

There is a marketing lesson in that, as there is in several other choices the show's producers and marketing teams have made. Here are a few things that the show does and the marketing lesson that you can learn from them:

1. Share the backstory. As I mentioned above, giving viewers a look at where the characters come from gives each of them a sense purpose and allows you to feel more empathy towards them. As any good screenwriter knows, the point isn't for you to love every character - it's for you to feel something towards them. Once you do that, you're engaged in the show. Marketing Lesson: Make sure you share the story behind your brand so you can give people a reason to believe in it.
2. Untangle the complexity. One of the smartest things the show does is they feature a simplified 3-5 minute version of every episode untangled (see video below in this post). These descriptions are from the outside looking into the show, referring to a character who wears too much eye makeup as "eyeliner" and poking fun generally at the actors in the show and the way they portray their roles. Alongside this irreverance, Lost Untangled explains the plotline of every episode in a way that allows you to understand it despite the complexity of time shifting, multiple characters and hidden clues. Marketing Lesson: If you have something complicated to sell, get creative about how you can simplify it.
3. React to your critics. Early in the show, the creators were criticized because they got people emotionally invested in the core characters of the show, and then introduced new characters and shifted the focus. Many viewers were confused because the characters they knew had essentially vanished. Though this was presumably part of the broader story arc, the producers recognized that viewers needed some connection to the characters they already loved, and found a way to bring that back - while still progressing their story and introducing the new characters they had planned to. Marketing Lesson: Don't ignore your critics, but don't change your strategy because of them either.
4. Have a finite ending. As the trailers after last night's finale noted, next year will be the final season of Lost. For a top rated show, it cannot have been an easy decision to let the show end at what seems to be the height of its popularity - yet having a finite end is important for both audiences and for the writers of the show. Everyone knows that the show is leading toward something. There is a sense of anticipation and excitement, as well as urgency to watch. It's not a soap opera where people go into comas, die, wake up and go on again. Marketing Lesson: Having an ending is important - even if it's just a campaign that ends so you can start a new one.

The Greatly Exaggerated Death Of The "Who's Who" List?

Are you old enough to remember the "Who's Who" list? Actually, it's not just one list but many companies that offer these sorts of lists. Usually they are billed as professional networking groups of influential people and they actively recruit new members through flattering emails and letters talking about "exclusivity" and "rare achivements." In the past, most people used it as a sort of virtual rolodex to extend their personal networks and find leads of people to hire or partner with.

Over the past few months as I have been contacted by several of these lists to be part of their "exclusive" 2009 publication. They have names like Presidential, Continental and Marquis - and they all promise things like blasting my bio on a billboard in Times Square, and accessing a site where I can connect with all sorts of other highly influential people that I may not know yet. All in exchange for my paying a small "listing fee" to augment my "free listing" which apparently will be part of the directory anyway.

With the rise of online professional networking tools like LinkedIn and social networks like Facebook - you might have thought surely these Who's Who lists have become a forgotten relic of the past, but they seem to be alive and well. Though it may be hard to imagine people still pay for this sort of thing for someone like me who is active on social networks and publishes content to connect to more people, perhaps this Who's Who list subculture is the secret engine really driving business relationships and networks. Am I missing something here, or are these Who's Who lists a virtual ego stroke destined to join Encylopedia Brittanica as tools of a past age that our digital lives are making obsolete?

Ogilvy On Recession

When it comes to selling services in a downturn, sometimes the best message to send is that we are all feeling the same pain. The economy has been extremely tough for marketing, forcing many companies to lower their overall spend, or at the very least to get smarter and more careful about where they spend. That's a big deal for marketing agency like the one I work at because we depend on clients to see the value (as we do) of continuing to invest in marketing during a downturn. Some time ago, the collective Ogilvy network launched a website at www.ogilvyonrecession.com to share an agency-wide point of view on how our clients might strategically weather the storm and optimize their marketing in the process.

The site features a collection of white papers and thought leadership on how to optimize your marketing strategy in a variety of categories. Yes, you do have to register some details to see them as the site is built for lead generation as much as to share content - but I've seen several of them and the insights within are worth taking the extra step. There was even a great piece over on Behance featuring some promotional business cards that were put together by Leonardo Borges to drive people to the site and bring home the core message that you can save on budget but still keep the big ideas coming. It's a message I definitely associate with. Now all I need is to convince someone to let me get myself some of those business cards.

Disclaimer: I'm definitely biased with this post as it is all about the agency that I work for (Ogilvy) - but I was not part of the team that actually put this site and content together.

How To Get Your Lawyers To Let You Do What You Want

In the field of medicine, sometimes a patient armed with the right information can make an impact in their own healthcare through self diagnosis and get the right treatment faster as a result. This idea of self diagnosis is relevant in the legal world as well, only it's not about diagnosing a problem. There is one thing that every lawyer needs in order to make any kind of argument - a precedent. Precedents allow arguments to be made in court based on other arguments that have been made previously, and they are what the legal system in America is built on. A landmark case is only considered such because it creates a precedent that all following cases can use.

So if you want to get your lawyer's attention and have a chance of getting them to buy into what you want to do, you need to find a precedent for what you are trying to do. This is what the EPA did in order to get approval to run a video contest by using a precedent from 1927. Their challenge was getting around strict rules of government procurement, and the solution came from the precedent of the government running a contest to find the winning design for the Memorial Bridge back in 1927.

Today there are legal blogs in just about every industry (even the highly regulated pharmaceutical industry) and they can offer clues about new legislation that can help you make your case. You can also find out about new campaigns from your competitor, or even from another division of your own organization to demonstrate precedence.

Many marketers like to blame their lack of innovation on their lawyers. They are an easy target - but remember, their job isn't to help you sell more stuff or engage your customers. Their job is to minimize risk. The problem is that often great marketing is inherently risky. So your best chance of getting your next big idea through legal review is to give your lawyers a defensible position. Find a precedent and you'll be far closer to getting your lawyers to let you do what you want - or at the very least make it harder for them to say no.

Inside The Non Profit Social Networking Survey

A few weeks ago, I received a link to "NonProfit Social Network Survey" - an effort focused on analyzing how nonprofits are using social media and networking tools to connect with their supporters and raise money. I was intrigued, but had a few additional questions for the researchers from that report. They kindly responded and below are their responses to my questions. The authors of the report and answers below are Aaron Biddar (referred to as "AB" below) and Jeff Patrick (referred to as "JP" below). If you have anything to do with nonprofit work, some of their insights and responses below should be illuminating. Be sure to check out the full report online as well.

1. What was the most surprising thing for you about the research?

AB: That the average Facebook Cause had only generated $500.00 while house social networks have been generating $10,000 or more over the last year.

JP: The very high level of commitment by nonprofits to Facebook and building their own house social networks.  75% of nonprofits have a presence on Facebook, and 1/3 are building their own house social networks. We're seeing a lot of interest, but we were surprised by how much commitment is ALREADY in place.

2. Why do you think Facebook seems to be emerging as the dominant social network for nonprofits to be on?

AB: It is the first social network that has found a way to tap into the “giving” generations.

JP: There are several reasons:

• Facebook is larger than and growing faster than any other social network.  MySpace growth has flattened out, Facebook has picked up significantly. MySpace total audience is smaller than Facebook.
• Facebook continues to get incredible press worldwide - so it ends up being the most obvious choice for nonprofits.
• Facebook makes it easy and provides options to nonprofits to create an initial presence quickly and for free. Think, Facebook Groups, Pages and Facebook Causes (nonprofit specific application for creating a presence and fundraising). 

3. Did you get any sense about whether these nonprofits were using these networks solely for community building or what percentage of them were raising real contributions?

AB: Mostly built for awareness, understanding that awareness will lead to future giving.

JP: Yes, we had several questions that related specifically to revenue from fundraising (and other sources). The quick facts here are as follows:

• 39% of nonprofits who'd raised money on Facebook community (any amount of revenue)
• 25% of nonprofits who'd raised money on their house social networks (any amount of revenue)

4. What role does content creation play in how nonprofits are using social tools?  Are many of them doing it, or are they just participating in social networks for conversations?

AB: User Generated Content is the key to nonprofits’ success.  User Generated Content is fresh, relevant content that other like-minded individuals will want to engage with on a regular basis.  The icing on the cake is the removal of the burden many small and midsized NPO’s have in continually generating that content.

JP: We asked about the ROLE of the social network: Marketing was the most important role (getting the word out about their organization and programs), followed by Market Research (better understanding their audience and their interests/needs), which was the second highest.

Anecdotally, I don't believe nonprofits see these sites as a strictly social platform - for meeting other people. I think most nonprofits see them as socially enabled platforms for promoting or delivering their programs and mission.

5. Were there any identifiable trends in terms of types of nonprofit causes or industries that nonprofits focus in and how prevalent their use of social networks were (ie - health oriented nonprofits versus environmental nonprofits, etc.)?

AB: There seems to be a good balance between health-related, environmental and religion.

JP: We did segment by vertical.  Some verticals were more clearly pursuing the technology than others. (NOTE FROM ROHIT: I am contacting Jeff directly to get more information on this, which he has offered to provide.)

6. What is one piece of actionable advice you think a nonprofit organization may be able to take from your research?

AB: Get your arms around the fact that social media is here to stay.  It is in its infancy but will absolutely become the core focus and hub for all marketing, fundraising and awareness efforts in the near future.

JP: Your peers (other nonprofits) are creating and experimenting with social networks in many different ways, and in relatively large numbers. They are allocating small but real budgets and resources to the projects, and some (a few) nonprofits are seeing real success (ex. 600,000 person community, hundreds of thousands of money in fundraising revenue).  Given this combination of evidence, it looks like the early adopters are paving the way for mainstream adoption. As a nonprofit, think about getting started - this social networking wave appears to have real potential.