Small Talk and Social Media

Don’t you hate small talk?  I do, too.  But it teaches us something about Social Media.

The most banal of small talk happens in forced encounters.  Co-workers cross paths in the corridor or cafeteria.  Neighbors coming or going in their entryways.  “How are you doing?”  “Fine, thanks, and you?”  “Fine, thank you.”

The next level of small talk is more interesting because it reveals things about people.  Someone ventures a little more, maybe “We’re almost done with a big job” or “I’m hoping to get home in time for my son’s game”.

As that person steps away, perhaps off the elevator, what’s the response?  Nonchalant?  Good luck.  Cynical?  Good luck with that.  Encouraging?  Go for it! 

Small Talk and Social Media

Those exchanges reveal things about both people.  The degree to which the first one shares will tell us what matters to them.  The second person’s response is reflexive, in the moment, telling us if they are encouraging, friendly, sincere, cynical, robotic or humorless.

Much of Social Media is like this.  No one forces you into a how-are-you-oh-I’m-fine encounter.  You engage because you want to, on a topic that matters.  In the above examples, the first person is the one who blogged, tweeted or posted.  The second is the person who linked, retweeted or liked.

How does that work for your ongoing Social Media program?

3 Lessons for Marketers

1. Have a personality.  Social Media happens via technology but humans drive it.  Humans have personalities.  What personality fits your business, brand or product?  If this sounds like social media claptrap to you, consider that your brand already has a personality.  For example, if you’ve ever written a Brand Positioning document, you probably included a Brand Character or Brand Personality.  (Normally these are just words on a page that never seem to come across in advertising.)  More practically, your brand expresses a personality by its interactions with consumers:  calls into the toll-free number or service center, package copy or retail representatives.  Like it or not, these add up to a personality.  Think hard about what makes sense for your business, and apply it to Social Media (as well as other channels).
2. Put the right people on it.  Depending on the size of your business, you may handle the small talk yourself, or have one person handling it for you, perhaps even a department.  Whatever the scale, someone has to set the tone, following the personality you’ve prescribed.  Obviously this person has to be a skilled communicator, which takes emotional intelligence and a sense of judgment.  There will always be some deviations, but over time the personality should be clear and consistent.
3. Figure out what you’re going to say.  The worst kind of small talk is the self-absorbed, it’s-all-about-me variety.  In the same way, few people will engage if you’re just talking about your product or service.  People go places on the Internet to be informed or entertained.  Maybe that’s an oversimplification, but it’s also a good place to start.  How can you make it worth someone’s while to engage with your blog, Twitter or Facebook page? 

To that point, above all:  Be authentic.  If your personality is wrong, everything you do will seem forced.

What have been your best and worst experiences using Social Media?  What did you learn from them?

What Facebook Must Face



No app for strategy, nor a strategy for the app


It’s become fashionable to bash Facebook in the wake of their sub-par IPO. This post will not pile on, but point out some realities. I have no inside knowledge. This is strictly my view; take it for what it’s worth.

Social media isn’t immune to rapid business cycles. Internet companies come and go at supersonic speeds. We take it for granted that Yahoo isn’t what it used to be, but forget that it also emerged quickly. We know Rupert Murdoch bet wrong on MySpace, but forget that it was an overnight success story at the time. Today on CNBC, Ironfire’s Eric Jackson opined that “In five to eight years (Facebook is) going to disappear in the way that Yahoo has disappeared.” Personally I’ve been telling friends that Facebook and Twitter could become like Yahoo in five years, but what do I know? The point is that it’s absolutely possible. The Greeks had the agora, American pioneers had the general store, Mad Men had the water cooler. All of those social media lasted decades or even centuries; the cycle is much faster now.

You still need to have a strategy. The business world debates the relative merits of Strategy, Execution and Culture in an organization’s success. (Spoiler alert: All three are important.) In a world of rapid business cycles, maybe strategy sounds slow. You still need one, however, and I’m not sure what Facebook’s strategy is. Last year when I spoke at a social media conference, many attendees who had just been to F8 wondered the same thing. There’s a sense that Facebook makes it up as they go along. It’s evident in their scattershot approach to mobile, and of course from the IPO. Where do they want to go? How do they see themselves evolving as technology and consumer behavior influence one another? Strategy should answer those questions.

Complacency is subtle. I don’t think Facebook is arrogant, as some claim. Arrogance would say, “I have 900 million users; who cares what people think?” Complacency merely takes those users for granted. I confess I’d feel complacent if I had 900 million users: Most of those users won’t just get up and leave, abandoning all the personal photos and memories they’ve stored in their accounts. That still leaves the question of money. What happens if Facebook becomes harder to monetize? Advertisers are still learning how to interact with those 900 million users, and hopefully they will succeed.

Hopefully, Facebook will succeed. We shouldn’t wish failure on anyone. It will come, though, if we don’t face the cold, hard realities of modern business. Zuckerberg is now responsible to users and shareholders. He needs a plan.

Facebook and the Conundrum of Mobile

A Bronx cheer from the New York press

If you bought Facebook at $38 a share, I’ll offer you some hope for the future.


But if your eyes glaze over when hearing about audience measurement, then skip today’s post.

Facebook went public, then publicly flopped

The two topics are linked. This past week Facebook went public and then publicly flopped. You may have gathered from news reports the following causes:

(a) CEO Mark Zuckerberg pushed up the price too high

(b) Morgan Stanley mishandled the transaction

(c) Nasdaq’s technology failed

All three to some extent are true.

What really started the entire affair was audience measurement.

Audience Measurement flummoxed Facebook

Facebook dominates the online advertising marketplace. Over the past few years it’s grown to be about 60% of the market. For the most part this advertising is measureable because Facebook controls the inventory, distribution and analytics. If you spend money to advertise on Facebook, you generally know who you’re reaching and how they’re responding.

The audience data for mobile usage, however, isn’t so certain. The technology just hasn’t developed yet. Reuters noticed this fact and wrote about it, calling into question the projections of Facebook’s future advertising revenue. Since their source was Facebook’s own SEC filing, this wasn’t exactly an exposé but it was a total buzz kill.

This week’s events don’t necessarily put Facebook on the same path as MySpace and Friendster. It still makes billions on the ads it sells.

Facebook and the Conundrum of Mobile

Still, Facebook symbolizes the Conundrum of Mobile: Consumers have adopted, embraced and depended on it, but advertisers haven’t yet found their role.

The answer to the conundrum is: Advertisers’ role will increase as measurement becomes more certain. And it will.

So, hang on to your Facebook stock. When they figure out mobile, the share price will go back up.*


* Obviously, I'm not an investment advisor, and this post isn't investment advice.  I didn't buy any Facebook stock, so it's easy for me to opine.  That said, my opinion is less about Facebook's future than the future of mobile audience measurement, which can only get better.

This Is a Blog Post, Not a Foursquare Check-In

Need to see more of these

NEW YORK – I’m in the Capital of the World today, but you wouldn’t know it from my Foursquare profile. Regular readers know I quit Foursquare exactly one year ago.

I originally joined because I believe Foursquare is in the sweet spot intersecting mobile, social and retail. I stopped checking in because they never delivered on it.

As a business person, I’m rooting for them. As a consumer, I no longer saw the point. There was very little in the way of offers or enhancing the retail experience.

Hopefully that’s going to change. Keep an eye on American Express. Every time I read about some new program leveraging Foursquare, it seems American Express is behind it. They have a presence on Foursquare and there has been recent press coverage like this. Industry cognoscenti know about Amex’s broader social media strategy. and Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley’s address at SXSW.

If they can go beyond checking in for the sake of checking in, I’ll get back on Foursquare in a New York minute.

What about you? Are you using Foursquare? If so, are you using it as much as when you first joined?

What Mad Men Teaches Us About Advertising in 2012



The Diversity Committee will see you now

I didn’t watch Mad Men last night. I’m living it today.

There’s nothing wrong with nostalgia, mind you. That early 1960s era is of particular interest to me. On my desk is a small photo of my grandfather taken right about that time.

In addition, I believe history teaches us a lot. In the same way following world history makes us better citizens, following advertising history makes us better at what we do.

What we do is sell. And modern times are the best times to be doing just that. The last great upheaval in advertising was driven by television, but it only happened once. Digital technology drives new upheavals all the time. It’s happening so fast that few can keep up with it or understand it. Major CPG companies struggle; former Mad Men seem to understand. But as Matt Nelson of Tribal DDB put it, now is the golden era for advertising.

In a similar reflection, Duff Stewart of GSD&M said “a successful leader in advertising… today is defined by curiosity.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. (Well – I tried, here and here.) With such a menu of challenges and buffet of media options, more than ever we can say “it’s all advertising” and get to the task of selling in new ways. We have much to learn.

One thing Mad Men can teach us is how little progress we’ve made on diversity. There’s more diversity among media options than the employees who practice them. It’s the best time to be in advertising – but it could be better.

Olive Garden Review a Rorschach Test for Marketers, Journalists

A small-town restaurant review went viral and promptly became a national Rorschach Test for marketers and journalists.

If you’re a card-carrying member of the MSM, Digerati, Technorati or just a Flack or a Huckster, you’ve read or heard about the quaint review of a local Olive Garden and how Gawker’s Emma Carmichael featured it in a snarky post. Clearly, Carmichael found it amusing that an octogenarian prairie journalist reviewed a chain restaurant.

The comments section under the Gawker piece is the Rorschach Test for marketers and journalists. Some say Gawker gave us a “rude, spiteful” example of Big City superiority complex. Others claim the review was laughable even if you hail from Grand Forks, North Dakota. It’s a lively discussion.

3 Reasons Marketers Should Really Care

We all stopped to look, just like passing an accident on the highway. But what’s the significance? Why should we care?

1. We’re living in our own little world. OK, I’m not really going out on a limb with that statement. We can smirk all we want about what the Grand Forks Herald publishes, but much of it would be alien to many of us. That’s troubling because we’re selling to an audience we don’t understand. It doesn’t have to be that way, however. We need to get out more. It’s worth noting that Gawker gleefully “reported” on a provincial Olive Garden review in 2008. (Is the idea file really that empty?)

2. Journalism has gone Pro-Am. It may seem naïve to review a chain restaurant, but Olive Garden in Grand Forks lies at the intersection of It Matters To People There and Newspapers Have To Fill Editorial Space. Media owners aren’t in the media business, they’re in the advertising business – content aids and abets the process of selling ad space.

3. What Viral Is. Marilyn Hegarty has been writing restaurant reviews for 30 years and this month the Internet finally caught up with her. Gawker essentially re-ran an article from four years ago and it took off….in our own little world. This was a popular story among marketers and journalists but Grand Forks and Sioux City may not have noticed.

Putting snark on top of snark, the Atlantic concluded “The Secret to Food-Writing Success: Review the Olive Garden.” My conclusion is different. Someone who doesn’t get out much decided to run a story that her publication had done before, featuring a sincere personal account that went viral on that someone’s ability to imbue it with irony. The audience in which it went viral was really just people like Emma Carmichael. Marilyn Hegarty by all accounts took it in stride.

This confounds those of us who work in modern communications, but it shouldn’t. For every Subservient Chicken there’s a Grand Forks Olive Garden that nobody in a black turtleneck could have created. Come on, colleagues. We’re smelling our own exhaust. Let’s get out a little.

Spider Charts Are Just Wrong

If you work in marketing or advertising, chances are you’ve seen a spider chart. These are supposed to impress upon us the vast number of consumer touchpoints reached by your IMC plan.

Although actual arachnids have eight legs, most marketing spider charts have many more. The more the merrier! Surround the consumer! I call this spidermania. You can see some examples, here, here and here.

There is a corollary effect to spidermania: Matching Luggage. This is the persistent belief that all marketing communications for a brand or product must look exactly alike.

Where did Spider Charts come from?

In the days of Ye Olde Marketing the media landscape was known territory and easy to navigate for clients, agencies and consumers. Even if your map went beyond broadcast and print media to include public relations or sports marketing or – remember this one? – guerrilla marketing, the task of budget allocation was straightforward.

When cable TV exploded, direct marketing matured, the Internet emerged and shopper marketing was invented, the landscape looked like those parts of Medieval maps warning Here Be Dragons. We tried in vain to organize everything in a way that made sense. Spider charts became a widely used tool.

Spider Charts illustrate how Clients and Agencies Use Media

The problem is that spider charts represent how marketing and advertising people use media. This perspective distorts your view in three ways:

1. You can’t guarantee a consumer will see all these things. They may look nice on the conference room wall, but what if the consumer only sees one or two executions? Will you still achieve your goal?
2. Assumes a “push” approach to marketing communications. Reach. Frequency. Penetration. These are important but we can no longer succeed with them alone. Some legs of the spider don’t work that way.
3. Misses the role of dialogue among consumers. Word-of-mouth has always outperformed any advertising, it was just hard to know how – until now. Social Media is not “push” nor “pull” but friends recommending things to friends. Spider charts miss that.

So what’s a better way?

Gigantic Venn Diagram Illustrates How Consumers Use Media

Marketing communications today is like a Gigantic Venn Diagram, its design constantly shifting from client to client, and from project to project. It would be nice if all the various media would just stay still for a moment and let us plan a client’s marketing communications. But it won’t. There will always be some new medium, platform or tactic bubbling up in the minds of programmers, entrepreneurs or venture capitalists.

By the way, this is wonderful. The Gigantic Venn Diagram may be confounding, but it should also be exciting. This is the best time in history to work in marketing communications.

It’s also reality. Consumers use these different media interchangeably and simultaneously. TV and Social Media. Mobile and Retail. QR codes and Direct Mail.

So what looks good on the conference room wall?

You may like spider charts for presentation purposes, and if it works for you, at least proceed with caution. Here are three other ways.

· Divide according to the purchase cycle. Many of you use the path to purchase or a funnel diagram to describe how the different media work together. We have been working with McKinsey for the past three years utilizing their Consumer Decision Journey.
· Organize according to media usage. Imagine a chart that divides advertising (communication that interrupts and/or persuades) from information or entertainment (communication that invites participation). Consumers use these very differently and so should we.
· Draw a Gigantic Venn Diagram. Honestly I am not sure yet if the GVD is a good presentation tool or maybe just a way to think about things during the planning process. It has definitely helped immerse me in a particular project, but only after I’ve done my homework.

That homework is critical. The same consumer insight that drives a creative brief should drive a channel plan. If you haven’t done that work, then you won’t get anywhere.

In any case, my hope is that phony spidermania has bitten the dust.