Brand Rants

Does the "Starring You" viral video technique still work?

Can your brand benefit from the wildly viral "Staring You Media"?

I am not a fan of Sweden's "voluntary" TV-tax. However, I am a big fan of the campaign they have launched to induce me to pay it. Why? Well, it stars moi (and you too, even if you don't live in Sweden).

I've often said that much of web 2.0 is fueled by the ego and vanity of its users — you and I. If you can harness that energy, you will have an online blockbuster on your hands. Nothing drives that point home better than this breed of viral media that Tech Crunch has dubbed "Starring You" media, or SYM for short.  

I've posted on other SYM in the past including the Obamicon poster craze and Paltalk's "Is it True?" video, as well as OfficeMax's Elf Yourself campaign. Some of you may even remember a SYM version of "It's a Wonderful Life" by JibJab that The Duffy Agency sent out at Christmas a few years back.

Today a client in Denver wrote me to ask how his brand might use this technique. That got me wondering if the SYM prank is played out.

The Swedish tax SYM has taken the genre to a new level. While the idea is certainly borrowed, the quality of its production helps it gloss over the lack of originality (glad to know my TV-tax dollars are producing some form of diversion).

So could your brand benefit from SYM? Yes, but there's a catch. With each new entry the bar is raised. If you do produce such a video or image, it will need to surpass the last SYM your target starred in. It would be better still if they had never seen SYM before, but that demographic is dwindling.

You might also think about integrating your brand message into the plot a little more than the previous examples have managed. I'm not saying that's easy, I'm just saying it's optimal. AMF Pension Fund in Sweden managed this last year with their "age yourself" campaign. If you uploaded a picture of yourself they would send back a image of you at 70 years old. Clever, but it also solved a marketing problem because young people can't imagine they will ever be old and therefore are not interested in thinking about retirement no less saving for it. This campaign made the topic fun, engaging and very personal. 

After three years of everyone I know Elfing themselves, I can say I've grown a bit weary of SYM in general. But as soon as I see myself starring in a new film or poster, those concerns abate. Because of this appeal and their wild ability to go viral, I think we will see increasingly more clever, sophisticated and technologically advanced versions of SYM going forward. In fact, I bet you'll be starring in your own feature-length film before long. Please invite me to the premier. 

Thanks to @karelbabor for sending me the TV-tax film. To kick off the Christmas Season, my next post will be on the story behind Elf Yourself: Lessons for clients and ad agencies alike in the Season of Giving. 

Social Media: It's not just for kids anymore

Truth is it has been a very adult channel for over a year. But we still have clients telling us "We're not interested in social media because we are a serious company with no interest in conversing with 12-year-old girls". (you know who you are:)

In the spirit of reinforcing the truth, I'm sharing these beautiful new graphics from Nielsen published on BNET. You will note that for each of the major social media platforms the clear majority of participants are over the age 35 in every case — even the more youth-oriented sites like MySpace.

Combine this with the fact that Facebook alone now has an audience of over 300 million users and its easy to see why marketers across the board are developing new respect for these platforms. 

 

 

 

RESET: 10 ways to create a competitive advantage in the new economy

A workshop given for Alfa Laval's global marketing team

I would like to thank all those who participated in our marketing workshop "RESET: 10 ways to create a competitive advantage in the new economy." The talk maintained that the recent hiccup in the economy was fundamentally different than previous recessions. To borrow a phrase from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, we are in the middle of a "global economic reset." The shift was triggered largely by developments online. Collectively, many of these developments have been labeled "Social Media."

We used the terms "peer to peer media" and "earned media" to identify the drivers of this online transformation. That's because the term "Social Media" is really a misnomer. It has caused many to dismiss these fundamental changes in our economy as a teen-oriented fad.

 

The premise of the talk was not that these changes have affected marketing. Instead, we maintained that the more salient issue was how the "peer to peer" and "earned" media phenomena have affected business-to-business consumers. These changes are not just limited to the way they view the web and communication, but extend to many areas of their professional lives including the way they view purchasing, decision-making, service standards, time lines, value, corporations and advertising.

So whether our company feels social media is right for our brand or not, we must still face the reality that it has changed the perceptions and behavior of the people who buy our products. And, as marketers, that is something we need to address with or without the social media tools available today.

The group explored the 10 most significant changes and how savvy marketers are adapting to and profiting from them. Participants then spit into groups and applied what we had discussed to real marketing challenges at Alfa Laval.

Thank you to Peter Torstensson for the invitation to speak and to his global marketing communications team for their inspiration and great ideas. I look forward to seeing some of them implemented at Alfa Laval in the months to come. You can download the slides here (19.5 Mb interactive PDF) with the password I provided during the talk.

If you would like to learn more about this talk, contact me at sean@theduffyagecny.com

About Alfa Laval: Founded in 1883, Alfa Laval is the world's authority in engineering solutions requiring heat transfer, separation and fluid handling. Alfa Laval's expertise can be found across almost every industry with an emphasis in five key areas: energy, environmental conservation, food and water supplies and pharmaceuticals. As such, their work benefits millions of people all over the world every day. The company has its headquarters in Sweden and employs 12,000 people with sales in around 100 countries and its own sales organizations in over half of these countries. The Duffy Agency and Duffy Consult have been working with Alfa Laval since 2001.

David beats Goliath: Vermonster flows in the Green Mountain State

Social Media scores a victory in Vermont.

I posted previously about Rock Art Brewery and their legal troubles with beverage Goliath Hansen. You'll be happy to know the incident played out pretty much as predicted in my post. After receiving a considerable amount of bad press both online and off, Hansen dropped all demands on Rock Art. The Vermonster beer brand is no longer in jeopardy. Matt Nadeau posted a big thank you to all the people who blogged and Twittered on his behalf.

Matt would like us to support his derive for the reform of Trademark legislation. I don't think he'll have many takers on that, at least not the people who blogged on his behalf. I suspect they were more interested in the David vs. Goliath aspect of his dilemma than the actual legal ramifications.  If you are interested in the case, Matt has posted the time line on his website. He concluded his comments saying:

"America, you have contributed to a powerful tool, traditional media combined with social media, what do you want to do with that tool as we move forward?" 

A good question. Now that we have seen the power we collectively have, how will we use it? We need to find our next digital damsel in distress. Let me know if you find one. I'll do my part to help rouse the troops again.

Social Media & Marketing Lecture at the Lund University School of Economics

International Marketing & Brand Management Program

Thanks to all of you in the International Marketing & Brand Management program for attending my Social Media in Marketing lecture this week. I hope you all left the session with a few insights. I gained quite a few from our discussions during and after class.

As we discussed a big part of succeeding in social media is contributing. So for those of you who will be working to refine your marketing skills in the space, I invite you to start with this blog. Jump in to comment on posts and suggest posts you would like to see.

I spoke to some of you about your thesis projects. Feel free to contact me to continue the discussion.

The slides from the lecture are available with the password that was emailed to you. You can download them here.

Thanks to Veronika Tarnovskaya and the Lund University School of Economics for the invitation to lecture. 

Twitter Lists Triad Part 3: Six Twitter List Revelations

This post attempts to define the insights gained from working with Twitter Lists. I will not cover step-by-step instructions for creating lists.If that's what you are looking for, please check out this excellent post by Mashable. And then come right back!

AKA: Six things I wish I knew before I made my Twitter Lists

Creating my Twitter Lists forced me to spend some real quality time with my followers and with my Twitter home page. I set out to arrange all of my followers in lists. That didn’t work out so well, but on my road to failure I learned six lessons that I am grateful for and happy to share. 

1. Don’t believe the bio
The first thing I realized is that the bio people write often has little relation to what they actually wind up tweeting about. So you need to decide if you want to sort people according to what they state in their bios or according to the actual content of their Twitter stream. I’m more concerned with content. That means to accurately list people, I need to assess their stream one at a time from my Twitter home page. That takes a loooong time.

2. No more courtesy follows
Friends have become relatively high maintenance now. Since each person I follow now requires some personal attention, I’m getting into a real less-is-more mindset with my followers. I know there is a contingent of my followers who don’t give a rat’s elbow what I have to say. There are others who write on topics I have no real interest in. Yet in both cases, we keep each other around. But that was back when friendship was free. Now that there is maintenance involved, I am actively looking to trim my numbers (sorry in advance to all the inspirational-quote bots out there).

3. Guru be gone
Looking objectively at the Twitter stream of those I follow caused another minor revelation: I discovered that several of the most web-famous people I’m following have vapid, self-absorbed streams that offer little value (unless you value what they ate for breakfast, who they’re meeting for lunch or how their emotional state is). When I thought of all the one-sided conversations flowing over my desktop from these people, I had a real WTH moment. So at the risk of being completely out of the loop (or ostracized all together), I’ve recently purged several Twitter icons. It gave me a sort of guilty pleasure. I can highly recommend it. After all, this is supposed to be “earned media.”  

4. Keep your filing system private
Today there is no way to tell if a Twitter List is recommending people or simply organizing them (unless the name gives it away). So I’m not sure if Joe’s list titled “Social Media” is simply all the social media people that Joe follows or social media people that Joe recommends. If it’s the former, I don’t know if Joe included people because they claim to be into social media in their bios or because he looked at their streams and they actually have something to say about the topic on a regular basis. Until the dust settles on this, I’ve decided to keep all my Utilitarian lists private. Apologies to those of you who were on lists of mine that subsequently disappeared. They are safe behind the curtain for now.

5. Listorious has a future
Six million Twitter accounts. Each capable of spawning 20 lists. Yikes! If this catches on there will be more lists than Twitterers. You can imagine that finding the right list to follow will soon become more difficult than finding the right individual to follow. That’s where Listorious comes to the rescue. This is the fist app that is dedicated to helping you sort through the millions of lists out there. I bet many of us will become well-acquainted with this list directory in the months to come.

6. Give Up
Even with all my categories sussed, I still found it mind-numbing to pack my 2,300 followers into 20 little boxes. In fact, after spending the better part of both Saturday and Sunday afternoon on my lists, I had only managed to get 10% of my followers listed. I did a little math and figured at my current rate (about 50 people per hour) it will take 45 hours to complete my lists. That’s when I developed a new Twitter List strategy: Quitting. I’m going to wait until someone develops a third party app that will make my list building go a lot faster. Until then, I’ll rely on my TweetDeck groups.

That's my take-away from a weekend at home with my Twitter Lists. What have you learned from your time creating lists and what advice would you have for your fellow Twitter users using lists?

Read Part One: Twitter List Triad 
Part 1: Why you need them

Read Part Two: Twitter Lists Triad Part 2: Four types of Twitter Lists and how to use them

Twitter Lists Triad Part 2: Four types of Twitter Lists and how to use them

This post attempts to provide a way to approach and organize Twitter Lists. It won't cover step-by-step instructions for creating lists. If that's what you are looking for, please check out this excellent post by Mashable. And then come right back!

Before you set up a Twitter List, ask yourself what, exactly, do you hope to achieve with it. Two options will present themselves immediately: You can either make the list to help yourself or make it to help the community. Once you decide which master you would like your list to serve, decide which need your list will address. I was able to identify two needs I could satisfy for myself and two that may satisfy the community.

UTILITARIAN LISTS

These are practical lists that are made to help you get organized and make sense of your Twitter world, even though they can be of only marginal benefit to the community. I found two ways that such a list cold benefit me. You can probably think of many more ways such a list could benefit you.   

            

1. Lists to segment your followers
There a bazillion ways to segment any given list. For me, most of my followers tweet about marketing in one manifestation or another. They have unique expertise that I would like to channel so I can access and interact with it more easily. So I separate them into different lists accordingly to stream specific content. This is probably the most utilitarian use of lists, but be warned: It is very time consuming. That’s because the only way to assess a stream is to look at it objectively (don’t bother going from the bio, it often states a tweeting intention that just as often bears little resemblance to what the person actually winds up writing about). Given the current layout and speed limitations of Twitter, this can take an eternity if your followers number more than a few hundred. More on that in tomorrow’s post.

Here are my segmentation lists:

• Brand & Strategy
• Marketing
• Marketing - Pharma/Biotech
• Advertising
• Social Media & SEO
• Marketing Profs
• TAAN
• Green
• Web Tech
• News Bots

2. Lists to rate your followers
This is a more subjective segmentation, but every bit as useful. I have also created eight of these lists — all of which I keep private. For instance, signal-to-noise ratio (the ratio of personal chatter vs. useful marketing information) is important to me, so I have a list where I flag people who may provide valuable input, but to get to it require wading through endless online conversations and updates on their cat’s antics. I also want to keep tabs on my clients' streams and support them where I can. Same goes for my family and friends. So these are my private subjective lists:

Here are my rating lists:

• Signal to noise ratio – People who dispense good content with lots of other stuff mixed in.
• Fire Starters – People who may be willing to help me online if ever I need to spread the word about something.
• Friends and Family
• Clients
• Client-related – Typically, this involves listening in on key opinion leaders from categories related to my clients' businesses.
• Tweeple I’ve met – Twitterers who I have met face-to-face. 
• Tweeple of interest – Basically, my favorites. Admittedly, not all of these folks are marketing-related. Some are just fun to follow like @macygrayslife or @newmediajim or @earthquakenews
• The Others – Followers who seem to be sincere, even though they have no relation to or apparent use for marketing information.

ALTRUIST LISTS

Lists intended to help the community first and foremost by means of recommendation or classification. Placing someone on a “Utilitarian” list does not constitute an endorsement of the person, other than whatever endorsement may be gleaned from the mere fact that you bother to follow them at all. Altruistic lists are different. These lists are created for the benefit of other Twitter users. Here are the two ways I found I could address the needs of the community with an Altruistic list.

1. Lists to identify and recommend reliable sources for any given topic or purpose.
Many people are creating pre-validated lists of Tweeters they personally recommend. These are extremely useful lists that should make it easier for all of us to find and follow those people who exactly meet our needs. My most flattering inclusion in such a list came from @ryanevans who included me in his list of “people who are awesome” (I’m still blushing). I’m not sure how many people feel the need to be awed on a daily basis, but if that’s you than be sure to thank Ryan for his list. I think that Anita Hall (@anetah) is one of the sharpest hands-on social marketers on the corporate side. So in addition to including her in my list of social media experts, I was quick to follow her list of Corporate Social Media Strategists (@anetah/corp-soc-med-strategists). I’ve also seen lists of people who are most likely to RT your tweets and lists of Tweeters you would like to date.  

2. Lists designed to express an opinion, flag a certain type of tweeter, help tweeters self-identify or simply amuse.
It will be exciting to see how lists are used creatively to communicate in new ways much in the same way that Twitter itself has been used for so many different ends. Lists of known spammers of phishers could provide a valuable service. Lists of people with cool avatars or page designs would be useful to some. I like @Orli ‘s list of fakers (@Orli/fakers) or @kitson’s list of people with one letter Twitter handles (@kitson/one-ltr-twitter-handles). The NHL were the first I know of to commercialize lists by creating a system whereby fans could reply to a tweet from @NHL and automatically be included on their team's fan list (I’m on @NHL/bruins-fans). Not being on a list can say volumes as well. As a Bostonian, I’ve been thinking of starting a list called “Red Sox fans who are rooting for the Yankees tonight.” Any takers?

What lists are you into? Please let me know if you come across any offbeat lists or creative use of lists for marketing purposes.

Read Part One: Twitter List Triad 
Part 1: Why you need them

Read Part Three: Twitter Lists Triad Part 3: Six Twitter List Revelations

Twitter List Triad Part 1: Why you need them

This post attempts to answer the question: Why should I make Twitter Lists? It will not cover step-by-step instructions for creating lists. If that’s what you are looking for, please check out this excellent post by Mashable. And then come right back!

Like millions of other Twitterers, I spent a good chunk of my weekend working with the newly launched Twitter Lists. Twitter Lists allow all of us to create up to 20 lists. Once set up, we can designate the list either private or public and assign different Twitterers to whatever lists we feel apply to them.

How you use Twitter Lists depends entirely on how you use Twitter. When using Twitter on my own behalf (as opposed to using it on behalf of my clients), I rely on it to identify, connect and interact with like-minded marketers. I also rely on our collective good judgement to sift through the thousands of marketing articles we come across each day and to filter out and flag the gems that are worth reading. Given that, how could Twitter Lists help me?

Being a strategist at heart, the fist thing I asked myself was: “Why make lists in the fist place?” After all, I have already sliced, diced and segmented my followers on TweetDeck. Why do it again?

The biggest reason is that my TweetDeck lists do not follow me around to the other Twitter apps I use. Presumably, all Twitter apps will incorporate lists in the weeks and months to come. Aside from Listorious (an online app dedicated to Twitter lists), I believe Seesmic is the first mainstream Twitter app to incorporate lists. TweetDeck has announced they will be incorporating lists soon and I suspect Tweetie and others won’t be far behind.

So although I’m OK with my groups on TweetDeck now, I’m creating lists to hedge against future developments. Of course, this assumes I will keep using Twitter, but that’s pretty much a given. And since the number of followers we all have tends to grow, I figure getting my Twitter house in order now will pay back dividends in both effectiveness and time savings later on.

For the final verdict, ask me a year from now if the hassle of spending my weekend sorting followers into 20 boxes was worth it. Until then,what's your take?  Why do you think its worth the hassle to create lists (or not)?

Read Part Two: Twitter Lists Triad Part 2: Four types of Twitter Lists and how to use them

Read Part Three: Twitter Lists Triad Part 3: Six Twitter List Revelations