“I’m sorry,” my roommate said to me. “Whenever you talk now, all I hear is Sh*t Girls Say.”

Touché.

The compelling thing about the Sh*t ___ Say meme is that it is not only entertaining but also a sociological study in American linguistics and modern-day mannerisms. Richard Dawkins in the 1970s defined the term “meme” as a cultural unit — be it a toy craze, pop song, fashion, learned skill, and more — which spreads from person to person within a culture. By shining a reflective lens on how societal subcultures speak, interact with one another, and go about their daily lives, Sh*t ___ Say is, quite frankly, a meme about memes.

And it displays a few interesting points about American culture today. The following is a (not at all exhaustive) list of some of the social implications drawn from the various videos out there of people saying sh*t:

Everybody Wants Their 5 Minutes of Fame, and Nobody is Special

The minute someone made Sh*t Girls Say, copy cats started cropping up. While imitation is the key to a meme’s virality, the creation of multiple videos for different subsections of society has interesting implications for how Americans identify themselves. For instance: along with videos for Girls and Guys, there are also videos for Black Girls, Black Guys, Asian Girls, Asian Guys, Spanish Girls, Mexican Girls, and Latina Girls. As for the social subset of Moms? There are videos for Jewish Moms, Black Moms, Caribbean Moms, Jamaican Moms, Single Moms, Suburban Moms, Asian Mothers, Sri Lankan Mothers, and Baby Mamas. You get the idea.

What this implies, though, is that the “generic” videos about Girls and Guys came to be understood to be about White Girls and White Guys, despite the common phrases said in them. It could be argued that this impression was given off because Juliette Lewis and Tori Lord are both White, but both actresses also wore dark-haired wigs and never directly referred to their ethnicity. Given the growth of America’s Hispanic and Asian populations, I would be curious if a meme like this would have the same implications in 2042, when it is projected that minorities will outnumber whites over all populations, both adult and children.

“Have you seen this Sh*t Black Girls Say? …Kinda racist.”

America has always been a melting pot, and this is highly reflected in the Sh*t ___ Say to ____ iteration that this meme took on. Sh*t White Girls Say to Black Girls, Sh*t Straight Guys Say to Gay Guys, and so forth offer an interesting twist on the social discussion by focusing on how different groups interact with one another. In today’s world of political correctness, this playing of groups off of one another has ruffled a few feathers by highlighting misconceptions and “commonly asked questions.” But are these videos racist/sexist/homophobic — as some YouTube viewers might insist?

These are heavy accusations to make — and for the most part, misguided insinuations. Simply pointing out differences (and commonalities) is not inherently racist/sexist/homophic, but establishing a hierarchy among groups is. To quote Chescaleigh, the vblogger and creator of Sh*t White Girls Say to Black Girls, during her interview on Anderson Cooper’s show: “I don’t think that talking about ignorance is racist. . . I’m not labeling anyone racist because that would infer that the statements we’re saying meant someone is better than another race, and that’s not what any of the statements are doing.” This is an important distinction to make.

AGC v. UGC

Memes in general are a testament to the beauty of User-Generated Content. Or so some people might think. But who is the “user”? It could be argued that most campaigns asking for “User” Generated Content are actually looking for “Artist” Generated Content. Sh*t ___ Say is a prime example of this.

Inherent in the theory of memetics is that the strongest will rise to the top. In this case, the most-viewed videos were all created by “artists,” rather than the “average user.” The Sh*t Girls Say episodes all starred Juliette Lewis, an actress. Similarly, Sh*t Black Girls Say, Sh*t White Girls Say to Black Girls, Sh*t Asian Girls Say, Sh*t Single Girls Say, Sh*t Spanish Girls Say, Sh*t Gay Guys Say, Sh*t Yogis Say, and Sh*t Nobody Says, which each have over a million (or in some cases several million) views, were all created by entertainers, comedians, and/or vbloggers with already established YouTube channels. The answer for why this occurs is simple: 1)  artists want views, and 2) they have better quality equipment, went through training/practice, and possess inherent talent.

People Love Crunchy Snacks

Whether it’s Cheetos, Pocky Sticks, popcorn, or carrot sticks, for some reason all Americans — regardless of race, gender, or sexuality — cannot stop eating crunchy snacks while saying and doing sh*t. It’s nice to know that despite our differences, all social subgroups crave a good crunch.

It may be a bit early, but I think I’ve figured out my New Year’s resolution for 2012: to have Google make a Google Doodle about me.

How does one go about achieving this? Well, I looked up Google Doodles on Wikipedia (and then some other sources) to try to discern a pattern in the past in order to create a fast-track for the future. I therefore present to you my 2-Step Guide To Getting Honored in a Google Doodle:

• Step 1: Suck up to Dennis Hwang. Back in 1998, co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin designed the first ever Google Doodle in honor of Burning Man as one big “BRB” message. But since Bastille Day in 2000, Mr. Hwang has been the chief doodler. The Stanford grad, whose actual title is webmaster, also now has a team of designers to help him. (Disclaimer: my research found that a panel of Googlers actually decides what will be Doodled. But I figure it’s always a good idea to get on the good side of someone who’s in charge of portraying you somewhere.)
• Step 2A: Be revolutionary, visionary, the change you wish to see in the world, and/or the impetus for a historical event or major Google announcement. Today’s Google Doodle celebrates Robert Noyce, while past Google Doodle honorees include Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Andy Warhol, Hans Christian Ørsted, Albert Einstein, and Béla Bartók, to name a few. Other Doodles include events like the Lego block’s 50th anniversary, Pac-Man’s 30th anniversary, the 2010 FIFA World Cup Final, Google’s own anniversary, and The Royal Wedding. (A full archive can be found: here.)
• Step 2B: Alert Google to your awesomeness. Requests for doodles are accepted at proposals@google.com for review. (But please don’t spam Google — you are above that. In fact, this step is mainly rhetorical, as Google should already know how awesome you are.)
• Bonus Step If You Are In Grades K-12 And Don’t Feel Like Doing Step 2: Win a Doodle4Google competition. The grand prize is getting a trip to the Googleplex and getting your Doodle up on the site for 24 hours.

So there you have it. Good luck.

[Image via CNN]

Life will imitate art imitating life tomorrow, when hundreds of Guy Fawkes-masked protesters in London plan to storm Parliament in the spirit of Guy Fawkes Day, thereby recreating one of the final scenes of V for Vendetta. While the eerie black-and-white mask was famously worn by V, it has also lately cropped up in Occupy protests around the world and has been worn repeatedly by Anonymous, the notorious, international hacker ring. Malcom, a 44-year-old member of Anonymous, describes the mask as becoming “an international symbol for rebellion and anonymity,” and members of both movements plan to don them tomorrow night to protest rising corporate greed and social inequality.

In a generation of YouTube stars, reality TV shows, and celebrity bloggers, anonymity’s value has come repeatedly under debate. The reasons for wanting to remain anonymous online are varied, but in the parallel universe of social media networks, transparency thrives. These sites inherently depend on individuals being as open as possible online.

But at what point should your Internet self risk Real Life consequences? At what point does your online persona overshadow your Real Life one?

“This is not a video game. It’s a dangerous operation that puts at risk the lives of you and your loved ones. Don’t identify yourself as a member of Anonymous. You should never do it, but even less right now,” proclaims a video said to be by Anonymous in regards to the group’s planned attack against Mexico’s most violent drug cartel, Zetas.

It is a valuable reminder of the real dangers people face for their online activities. Yet, the actions of both Occupy protesters and Anonymous hackers prove too that while anonymity remains a personal choice, it does not downplay the significance of steps taken — or an individual’s courage.

The 5th Ave Apple Store this afternoon.

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.” - Steve Jobs, in his 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

This weekend I had a jarring and surreal experience. While perusing the racks at Club Monaco in Soho during the aftermath of Fashion’s Night Out, a familiar song came on the store’s speakers. I paused — it couldn’t be. They were playing Cut Copy?!

I felt violated. The PR side of me did the math: I’ve been to 4 Cut Copy shows within the last 3 years, and the audience that I’ve shared dancing space with at these concerts has been consistent — consistently not what I’d imagine the target customer for Club Monaco to be.

But perhaps I was misled. After all, who knew how far a band’s reach truly went across subcultures? That girl working the fitting room in a button down and riding boots could secretly love Big K.R.I.T. I personally know both bankers and teachers that donned body paint and glitter at Electric Zoo. And I can’t even keep track of the different types of people I’ve seen get down and belt along to Adele. Everybody loves Adele!

While social media continually asks us to define our interests, activities, and bios — to put ourselves into a character-limited, hyperlinked box — the Internet also allows for greater exploration into different (sub)cultures, which simultaneously cultivates and dilutes niches. Internet “darlings” like Vampire Weekend and the Cults experience fame early and quickly in their careers, while artistic “veterans,” such as Kanye West and Rihanna, have incorporated elements of other genres into their work.

The organic shift in audiences that results from this recently came under fire in this month’s issue of n+1, where Richard Beck criticizes the indie rock movement in his “review-slash-indictment” of Pitchfork. Beck writes:

In the last decade, however, indie rock has classed up, steadily abandoning these lower-class fans (along with the mid-sized cities they live in) for the young, college-educated white people who now populate America’s major cities and media centers. For these people, indie rock has offered a way to ignore the fact that part of what makes your dead-end internship or bartending job tolerable is the fact that you can leave and go to law school whenever you want.

In short, he asks the age-old question, “Has indie rock sold out?” To answer this requires defining what “genuine” music is.

To me, an artist’s “genuineness” is defined by the musician’s intent on creating a piece. If an artist’s primary intent is self-expression rather than money, it becomes irrelevant who picks up on and feels a connection to a song. The greatness of Pitchfork is that in the wealth of information online, a group of passionate writers weeded through the downloads and, in doing so, became tastemakers (albeit pretentious ones). Pitchfork reached an audience that certain genres did not at the time target themselves. Often fame and widespread adoption becomes confused with “selling out,” but instead, these bands should be given credit for bringing awareness of their genres to the masses, who may go on to delve deeper into the culture (or not). Rather than “abandoning” their roots, their ability to serve as gateway bands gives these artists a unique, valuable place in the music industry.

After all, every music snob can remember the first band or artist who essentially “introduced” him/her to Good Music. And every snob’s top picks ultimately face the same musical fate: the dubstep remix.

I’m starting to regard social networks in the same way I do cupcake shops. Every time I turn around, there is a new hotshot in town with a particular niche: They’re giant! They’re mini! They’re environmentally friendly/socially conscious/organic/made in Brooklyn! They cater to offices! They were only found in Georgetown but now they’re expanding to NYC! They’re integrated with Foursquare and Twitter! They have pretty pictures on Flickr — and a behind-the-scenes Tumblr blog!

Due to everyone having different preferences (in both their social and cupcake choices), there have cropped up a plethora of Anti-Facebooks, Answers to Facebook, or Next Facebooks. Either way, for better or for worse, these social networks are not Facebook. Just like, for better or for worse, your local cupcakery is not your mother’s baking.

Yet, despite of the “fad” aspect that makes me almost want to roll my eyes every time I hear a new social network is here, I couldn’t help but perk up when I heard that Google launched Google+ today, a new “social layer” to its already expansive capabilities. Maybe it’s the leading name (16 years of school have ingrained in me that “plus” will always be synonymous to “better,” after all), maybe it’s the history of failure (RIP Google Wave), maybe it’s the omnipresence of Google in my life already (Gmail/Gchat, Google search, Google Maps, and Google Docs make sure my world keeps turning), or maybe it’s all my friends who work at Google clogging up my Facebook Newsfeed with all their links (I see what you did there) — at any rate, I had to take a look.

And what did I see? A smart compliment to Facebook. Google+ does not replace Facebook, but rather fills in where Facebook falls short. Instead of sloppy Facebook Groups (and even more cumbersome Privacy settings), Google+ Circles makes it easier for people to share different information with different groups of people. Likewise, Google+ Hangouts is by far a more compelling, less clunky execution of inter-friend communication than Facebook Chat; for that reason, it also shows the most potential. Unlike in Gchat where users directly ask others to group chat, Hangouts allows users to “start a hangout,” which puts the individual in a video chat room alone, at first, while simultaneously sending a message out to that user’s friends, letting them know that so-and-so is “hanging out” if they care to join. Once friends (a max of 10) have entered into the video chat room, the camera then switches around who is on screen based on who is talking.

Google+ also rethinks the Facebook Newsfeed by creating Google+ Streams and Sparks, which combined could lead to hours of procrastination/time-killing, and offers better editing and organizational tools for Google+ Photos, taking cues from the popularity of Facebook Photos (really the main attraction on Facebook) and Instagram. In addition, Google+ will feature a Huddle application that allows users to group text their Circles, although it may be redundant for those that already use GroupMe.

In short, it appears that Google+ is banking on the idea that “if you build it, they will come.” While it inherently shows promise by displaying insight into how people communicate with one another, its sole value still lies in how many people will adopt it. After all, what’s the point of “hanging out” alone? But is the social space already saturated with too many different modes of connectivity? How many methods of communication do I really need to get in contact with my friends? And is it worth going through the trouble of re-friending everyone?

[Photo via G&A Sattler]

I’m pretty sure that between Facebook, Gchat, Twitter, and blogs, my entire life from high school onward is documented somewhere online. (Though granted, that information is all protected under a few privacy settings.)

Am I just TMI? Perhaps. But I’m not the only one who’s too lazy to scrapbook, but not too lazy to Storify.

While boxes in my childhood bedroom pile up with photos, show tickets, brochures, and other scraps, I’ve already moved on with my life — and just plain moved. The physical stack of memorabilia is much too intimidating to try to compile and organize into a cohesive narrative, only to be shoved into another dark corner of my room or left to gather dust on a bookshelf.

I’m sentimental, but why dwell in the past? (Alternatively: I like taking photos, but why carry around a camera all night when I can just ask a friend to tag me in photos later?)

I’ve recently realized, however, that this attitude rests on one very strong assumption: that my online uploads and musings — my weird form of scrapbooking — will remain permanently online for me to access. I have not, for instance, strongly considered the possibility that in the future I could forget passwords or, even worse, that the online platform I used at a particular point in my life would just plain vanish. Even though I may not actively be on, say, LiveJournal anymore, I still just like knowing it’s there and that I can, if I wanted to, see what I did/thought/looked like approximately three years ago.

I guess instead of a dweller I’m a hoarder.

Either way, this makes Friendster’s announcement yesterday that they will be deleting all users’ information — photos, profile info, friends lists, comments, messages, etc. — pretty disturbing. The social network, which was launched in 2002, is now trying to refocus itself on “entertainment and fun.” Though users’ accounts will remain active after this mass information depletion, individuals were told they’d have to use the Friendster Exporter to save anything.

“The impermanence of the Web used to be a way of life,” Joanne McNeil, who studies Internet culture, said to The New York Times in their coverage about the announcement. “A site could be gone in weeks, months. But Google and Gmail came along and changed that, and now we always expect to have a copy of our lives online.”

The fact that all those memories can be erased on a “corporate whim was jarring,” she added.

Similar to how listening to a particular song can take you back to the time you first heard it, social networks have become a source of nostalgia in and of themselves, representing a particular period in your life, but they also go beyond that. As an integral part to our everyday interactions, they are not just a time capsule, but also an ongoing, collaborative documentation of what will eventually become cultural history.

“This is the everyday neural activity of a world, of a society, scooped up and saved,” Jason Scott, founder of the Archive Team, said. “To me, that’s completely valuable and worthwhile to make sure it is saved for the future.” To him, Friendster’s actions represent a “critical cultural issue.”

Fortunately, there is no indication that Friendster’s actions will become an overall trend for social networks. Which is good, because if Facebook ever goes down, it’s going to take me a long time to download all 1,856 photos my friends have tagged me in — and that doesn’t even include my own albums. Or the ones I detagged….

[Photo via The Guardian]

It’s the end of an era.

Goodbye, unlimited, free articles from The New York Times. You were so good to me for all those years you were a part of my daily morning routine. My breakfast experience will never be the same without you.

Faced with a new limit of 20 free articles per month (albeit, in addition to the front page’s stories, which will all remain free) starting March 28 in the US and March 17 in Canada, I feel the same way I did when my parents told me they were no longer giving me an allowance because I should start earning my own money. Mainly because the first reaction that ran through my mind was, “Where am I going to get this money?” But that might just be because I’m a broke recent grad.

And in all honesty, The New York Times isn’t asking for anything outrageous. Digital subscribers can choose from getting one of three digital packages, the cheapest of which costs $15 a month for unlimited access to their website and smart phone app. Print subscribers will continue to have online access without any additional charge. And links to articles — from blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc. — will still continue to work, though links from Google will be limited to five articles a day.

Plus, now that I think about it, $15 is like one cocktail at a LES bar.

But that’s all besides the point. Because the point is really precedent. In The New York Times‘ own write-up of their announcement, they acknowledge that, “No American news organization as large as The Times has tried to put its content behind a pay wall after allowing unrestricted access.” What will this mean for online news and the ideal of free information as a whole?

Unfortunately, the only thing that’s for sure is that this move acknowledges the financial troubles of a struggling newspaper business. But as for its impact on information generation and gathering, well, only time will tell. For now, the implementation of a digital paywall appears to be more of an annoying obstacle rather than a wall, since there are so many ways to get around it. In fact, in today’s Mashable poll on whether or not people plan to pay for a digital subscription, an overwhelming majority (56.08% at time of writing) so far have said, “No. I’ll continue to access articles for free or through Google.” Only 7.34% so far have selected, “Yes! It’s a news source that I think is worth paying for.”

“The nature of how we access news online, in an episodic way throughout the day, tells me people just aren’t going to pay,” said John Paton, chief executive of the Journal Register Company, to The New York Times. “And of course there’s the 15-year history of people not paying. We’ve trained them not to.”

Update: In an interesting development, Lincoln has seized the moment by offering The New York Times‘ most frequent readers a free digital subscription for the rest of the year. Approximately 200,000 individuals were selected to receive the deal, and Lincoln estimates that about 100,000 will actually activate it.

“It’s attractive to Lincoln because it gives them the ability to reach a group of readers who are highly active and engaged with the site,” a Times spokeswoman told Ad Age.

The offer appeared in an ad on the Times website to these pre-selected readers, and, in the spirit of full disclosure, I received it via email, where one click took me to my Times account activation. Crain’s New York reports that there is “no catch,” except the need to be selected, and that “the offer is part of a larger program under which Lincoln is also sponsoring parts of the Times archives around technology and design topics.”

]]> http://intra.rfistudios.com/blogs/right-brain/2011/03/the-times-announces-a-new-age.html/feed 0 http://intra.rfistudios.com/blogs/right-brain/2011/02/event-spotlight-social-media-week-arts-culture-hub.html http://intra.rfistudios.com/blogs/right-brain/2011/02/event-spotlight-social-media-week-arts-culture-hub.html#comments Thu, 10 Feb 2011 21:14:05 +0000 Lucie Zhang http://intra.rfistudios.com/blogs/right-brain/?p=633

[Photo from The Wall Street Journal]

Along with the usual suspects like Martha Stewart, Al Gore and Pink are among the personalities Alex Guarnaschelli, the executive chef of Butter and bona-fide TV food personality, follows on Twitter. She likes the contrast, she explained, of waking up in the morning and seeing a tweet from Gore followed by one from Pink.

Her story is a perfect illustration of what Ben Leventhal, co-founder of Eater, called the beauty of social media today: the ability to follow, retweet/reblog, and read the opinions and thoughts of people you personally trust. The power of the chorus — or the clutter, depending on which side of the debate you’re on — was the hot topic today at Social Media Week’s “The New Food Reviewers: Is Social Media Making Us Savvy or Snarky” panel discussion, featuring Guarnaschelli and Leventhal, alongside Jeffrey Steingarten, Vogue food critic and author, and Doug Quint and Bryan Petroff, the founders of The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck.

“Snarky is a two-way street,” Quint and Petroff said. Snark leads to both good and bad attention — and with a name like The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck, it’s been a useful marketing tool as well. Their unique business strategy, which revolves largely around Twitter, has allowed for them to also create a uniform voice for their truck, and it is with that voice that they reach over 12,300 followers with every tweet.

“People appreciate the understanding that there’s a human behind the text,” Leventhal said. He added that he believes the people that go to Yelp to read reviews are also more likely be “savvier,” more likely to weed through the crowd of opinions in order to find the most credible and relevant ones.

What can get overlooked, though, in this age of crowd-sourcing restaurant ratings is the perspective that cooks in the kitchen along with restaurant staff are also human. Guarnaschelli joked that some days she wants to jump off a bridge while other days she considers herself “a lucky dog” for getting the chance to do what she loves for a living. She explained that to be a chef is to have your ability to express yourself creatively through the medium of food constantly subjected to the opinions of others — but it is simply a part of the landscape.

What separates professional critics from amateur enthusiasts, Leventhal argued, is that food critics “have a context that the rest of us don’t.” They have experience, they have developed a taste, and they have a basis of comparison, as opposed to a Random Person whose qualifications and background are harder to discern. And though both Leventhal and Steingarten said they believed that blogs are “more and more so” becoming as credible as print publications, the other side of the proliferation of online food media is that it has created the Anonymous Reviewer.

In print media, Steingarten argued, it’s considered unethical to write something and not attach your name to it. It’s also recommended, he stated, to not only wait for a restaurant to be open for a while and get its bearings before going in and reviewing it, but to also visit the restaurant multiple times before giving it a negative review — because writing one could ruin somebody’s livelihood. Too often, he complained, do bloggers and reviewers simply race to put the first review out there.

Additionally, the panelists espoused the importance of writer accountability. “We might tweet something negative, but it’s not anything we wouldn’t say to your face,” Quint and Petroff said. Since they work at a food truck (which has gotten positive ratings from both amateur and professional opinions), they added that often the reviewers have a more face-to-face experience with them than with chefs like Guarnaschelli, making Guarnaschelli an easier target to take a stab at.

“So what does it take to be a food critic?” an audience member asked.

You should spend some time working in a restaurant first, Guarnaschelli answered.

The term “critic” should not be taken lightly or used loosely; it’s a title somebody else gives to you, not one that you give yourself, the panelists explained. In fact, because of the popularity of sites like Yelp and apps like Foodspotting, Guarnaschelli said that the pressure on restaurants to be perfect 100% of the time is extremely high. For instance, if she had known that Martha Stewart had 2 million Twitter followers, she said, she would have put her food “through hair and make-up” before allowing Stewart to tweet photos of them to 2 million pairs of eyes.

At the same time, the constant tweeting, photo blogging, and Facebooking can come at an additional price, as Quint described: “I’ve had people stand next to the truck and take pictures of the ice cream from multiple angles, and it’ll start dripping down the sides, and I’ll be like, ‘You might want to eat that.’”

As for my own life, recently Priya and I attended the 2010 BrandsConf here in NYC, an 8-hour long conference of speakers addressing “the humanization of brands” — or, essentially, how brands can resonate with an audience so much so that they can come to represent a population of like-minded individuals, much like how the bits and pieces highlighted in the above four links have come to represent a year in the life of Americans. I point towards these online documentations of 2010 not just for their historical and entertainment value, but also because they illustrate what we try to create here as a digital agency: the funny, cute, serious, stunning, touching, and downright crazy moments that capture the public’s attention.

Every smart marketer today knows that brands need to be social, but BrandsConf did a good job of differentiating between the social butterflies from the social suicides. Intuitively, to humanize your brand, you have to start thinking of it as an person. This is definitely easier said than done, but a simple way to think about how to do this is to ask yourself how you (and therefore, your brand) should act/keep in mind on a date:

What people say about your brand is more important that what you say about it. Nobody likes someone who constantly dominates the conversation by talking about him or herself, and nobody trusts someone whose self-perception seems to drastically contrast with public opinion. Let me throw some statistics at you to prove my point: according to McKinsey, consumers now create 66% of the touch points with a brand and 60-80% of all buying decisions are made through input from friends or colleagues. This means two things: first, that people are talking about your brand without even being asked to, and second, that the majority of impressionable conversations an individual is having about a brand is not from the company, but instead from the public. Or, in other words…

A brand is only as good as the last interaction the person has had with the company or a user of the company. I’m sure all your minds are in the gutter, but I think my parents read this blog, so I’m going to keep it PG. (Hi, mom and dad!) Basically, if you have a bad first date, you’re less likely to want to go on a second one. End of story. While humans can be forgiving at times, for businesses, a bad interaction today not only means a bad impression of the company for that individual, but also a bad review on Yelp, which hundreds of potential consumers will read. Great brands offer great consumer experiences.

Successful branding relies on staying relevant. You don’t follow the news, you think “Black Swan” is just a darkly colored bird, you don’t like music, you haven’t read a book since the Goosebumps series, you think Africa is a country, you don’t seem to think anything I say is funny, and you’re racist? This date is over. 95% of decision-making is emotional, and I, just like everybody else, am looking for a “spark.” And once I find it, you bet all my BFFLs will hear about it — and all my Facebook friends probably will too once I change my relationship status.

Furthermore, staying relevant not only means affinity branding, wherein you align your brand image with the personal identities (or arguably, the personal brands) of your audience, but it can also be used effectively for culturally-relevant humor, as seen in Sesame Street’s spoof off of the Old Spice commercial. Either way, you know a love is forever when it’s tattooed on someone’s body:

Make sure your initiatives are attracting the right type of customer. You know those nights when you go out and the only people who seem inclined to approach you are… not your type, to say the least? Yeah. As a business, make sure that your campaigns are aligning with the passions of your target audience. Keep in mind that, while the number one reason why fans like a Facebook page is to get free swag or a discount, these incentives and giveaways do not inherently create customer loyalty to a brand. Instead, they create loyalty to, well, getting cheap stuff. You want that customer to need coffee and want Starbucks, not just whatever’s on sale.

Becoming social is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. Let’s say your first date went well, and afterwards, the guy (or girl) continues to text, send you Facebook messages, and reply to your tweets — but never seems to want to see you in person. Seems sort of strange, right? Avoid sending mixed signals by keeping in mind the overall big picture. Becoming social is really about becoming more transparent, letting the consumer into your company’s mindset, showcasing the brand’s culture, and making it easier for you to have a two-way conversation with your customer. But it is just one part, albeit an increasingly important part, of an overall business strategy. If the other aspects don’t line up with what your social media campaign seems to be saying, your brand will come off as disingenuous.

Don’t be desperate, overly needy, or just plain shady. Self-explanatory.