January 2010 Archive

In the aftermath of the catastrophic Haiti earthquake that struck on Jan. 12, social networking powerhouses and high-tech companies have risen up as the main philanthropic force in aiding Haitians recover from the quake.

While the U.S. and U.N. sputtered to acquire resources for quake relief efforts, companies born out of Web 2.0 or took advantage of social media were able to galvanize support and collect donations in break-neck pace. The Red Cross has already raised $5 million for earthquake relief through $10 donations via simple text messaging, and Google has contributed a $1 million donation of its own.

Other Internet big-names have seized on the crisis and have updated their services to go towards helping the cause. For instance, Zynga has raised $1.2 million using virtual goods in its games like Farmville, while Skype has sent $2 vouchers to customers in Haiti, allowing them to call their loved ones in the U.S.

Facebook, Google, and other tech giants are showing us they can create and galvanize global communities, take advantage of simplified distribution channels to acquire large amounts of money, and spark global discourse all for an issue, cause, or charity.

What these social media giants have seized upon is the concept “Good Social,” flexing social media capability for ethical and philanthropic efforts, but more importantly (yes, they are businesses after all) brandish their social media might on a global scale.

By helping out, social networks ultimately help themselves by portraying themselves as thought leaders in global community discourse, and all things social. Or so says my marketing background.

Social media enthusiasts, mommy bloggers, small business owners, and corporate big shots alike all came out to The Graduate Center of the City University of New York early Wednesday morning to talk social integration. The agenda consisted of breakfast, an impressive line-up of guest speakers, and two round table discussions where we were allowed to chime in on the dialogue.

The overall message was clear: Social media can be a powerful and necessary tool. Instead of writing about tedious details, I’m going to boil all my learnings down to eight important key take-aways.

1. Within social media, consumers become producers – Michael Mendenhall, CMO of HP

• HP used social media to host an online contest that challenged people to express themselves creatively through video for a chance to win $300,000 in prizes. By doing this, HP allowed their consumers to generate the content of the contest and also promoted their brand as being cool and connected to the online community.

2. Marketing strategies have to move from making impressions to making connections – Joshua Karpf, Senior Manager of Pepsico

• Pepsico launched The Juice Campaign to promote Tropicana juices to mommy bloggers via BlogHer. Instead of a generic print/media campaign, The Juice Campaign engaged key opinion leaders in social media within the mom community to make genuine connections with their consumers and executive one of their most well-received campaigns.

3. When executing social media campaigns, companies must accept “authenticity factor” i.e. Do not censor – Brian Kenny, CMO of Harvard Business School

• Although Harvard Business School would like to hold a certain brand image in people’s minds, they will not censor their material for fear of being viewed as unauthentic (even if it results in online photos of their students dressed as drag queens and getting arrested by police officers for fighting).

4. Embrace the technology shift, but always pay attention to your brand in the social media realm – Brian Kenny, CMO of Harvard Business School

• The brand image of Harvard is very important, and although they will keep up with the shifts of technology and social integration online, they strive to preserve that image across all platforms.

5. Few can sound like many – Michael DiLorenzo, Director of Social Media of NHL

• The NHL decided to hold a tweet-up for the Stanley Cup, which is the most important trophy in the NHL, and although there were only a handful of people in the nation that actually participated, the event was widely recognized and brought a lot of publicity for the NHL.

6. Give people a reason to be excited about your brand – Michael DiLorenzo, Director of Social Media of NHL

• Michael is a strong believer in keeping his customers happy by giving them free stuff. From free tickets to free cup-holders, your company’s gestures will reach its consumers.

7. If you are not authentic, people will scream and run the other way – Lynn Mann, Director of External Communications at Michelin NA

• In a playful anecdote involving her nieces and the fake Michelin Man, Lynn conveys the importance of authenticity when communicating with customers.

8. Stop. Look. Listen. And then Respond – Richard Pesce, Social Media and Digital Communications with Sprint Nextel

• A company shouldn’t just communicate to their consumers when it comes to crises. Customer service is extremely important, especially in the service providing industry, and using social media allows companies to respond in real time.

“Lavender”

“Black”

“White”

“Nude”

Look familiar? Well if you have a Facebook account and had signed into Facebook anytime last week, you’d recognize this peculiar trend. These status updates, which are mainly from girls, are the colors of the bras they were wearing at the time of the update. Scandalous. Why again? Because of breast cancer awareness.

Have you watched the bikini-clad girl taking a shower and singing the song of your choice through a showercam? Just choose the song you want her to sing and the bikini you want her to wear and watch her take a shower through a “guilt free” showercam experience. Obviously, this would lead you to go out and buy a breakfast burger at Burger King.

And did you hear about Skittles streaming a twitter feed right onto their home page for everyone to see? Well, even if you did, I’m sure you didn’t give it a second thought until right now.

Social media is a fantastic tool that has the power to spread news at phenomenal speeds and engage your audience ways that were impossible even 10 years ago. However, it’s important to remember that not all social media can help you meet your goals. Using viral methods can prove to be useless if it has no direct correlation to your brand message and especially if there is no call to action after the fact. Although it may generate buzz, it doesn’t motivate people to act or purchase, which is presumably the goal of the marketing campaign. The same applies to the Burger King showercam and Motrin Mom and countless other social media campaigns gone wrong. Not only did they stray from their marketing message (eat burgers, buy Motrin), they managed to offend and isolate large groups of people, most of whom were in their target audience.

With all that being said, there are those companies who hit the nail right on the head. Starbucks’ “My Starbucks Idea” gained rave reviews from their customers just a year after they were thought to be oversaturated and irrelevant. “My Starbucks Idea” encourages customers to co-create the next new Starbucks trend by allowing them to submit ideas on a website and then vote and discuss. The most popular ones get implemented. Not without its risks, but according to Adweek, Starbucks even surpassed Coca-Cola as the most popular brand on Facebook last year.

So what it really boils down to are the fundamentals of any marketing 101 course: know your audience, don’t offend people, align with your brand identity, and for god’s sake, be interesting! Because if you miss everything else, at least you’ll have your 15 seconds.

I read an article a few days ago about how a series of books for young adults written in the 1980s-90s are being reissued and updated to reference contemporary technology, meaning all the references to cassette players and land-lines would be replaced with (one imagines) iPods and cell phones in an effort to make the books more appealing and relatable to the current technology-savvy generation of pre-teens. This is all fine and well until you consider that the plots of almost all the books (which largely concern the trials of a team of capable thirteen year old babysitters in the suburbs) revolve around not being able to utilize the immediacy of technology in anxiety-provoking scenarios: not being able to get in touch with a sick child’s parents, or being snowed in without any grown-ups around for the weekend. As easy as it might be to inject some texting and g-chatting into these books, it’s much more difficult to reconcile the plots with the pervasive effect of 2000s technology.

In a roundabout way, this reminded me of a funny montage I saw awhile back that highlighted the way that the existence of cell phones have thrust a monkey-wrench into the plot devices of horror films, which universally rely on having characters isolated and cut off from civilization so they can be more easily picked off by the villain. The montage features clip after clip of horror movie characters realizing they mysteriously don’t get service in whatever location they happen to be stranded. The no-phone-service twist seems to be the only turn of events screenwriters have been able to dream up in order to create situations of true anxiety and danger in an era of constant connectedness.

Contemporary technology and social media certainly offer us convenience and immediacy, but they also homogenize daily life and lower the stakes of anxiety-provoking situations in entertainment and in reality. I suppose in real life this is a good thing, but in fiction, it’s just a boring thing.