Slave to the Packaging

Posted on September 29, 2010 Written by 10 Comments
rush2112

Rush – one of the world’s greatest bands – has been snubbed yet again by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Not even a nomination, some 11 years after becoming eligible. At this point, not getting in becomes a bigger badge of honor. Who cares about a bunch of dinosaurs, anyway? What could you learn from them?

I mean, when they started, 8-track was still in vogue, and so was vinyl!

Slave to the Packaging

Artificial Boundaries

For a moment, think about how the music industry has changed through that period. Bands like Rush used to tour constantly. While on the road, they’d write the songs for the next album, often in the tour bus (or rental cars!) They’d jump off tour, spend three weeks in the studio cutting the album, then get back on the road. Every six months, a new album would arrive, a pace that would be considered insane today. [Read more...]

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Running with Scissors

Posted on July 8, 2010 Written by 16 Comments
running with scissors

There’s a business I wanted to help out once. For a long time, I thought they didn’t want my help; turns out, I didn’t know how to help them.

It’s a salon called “Hair Techniques,” and it’s just off the food court in the building a block away from my office. For months, I saw this sign as I ate lunch. (This picture was taken in April 2009, and has recently been added to @prblog’s wonderful “Signs of Social Media” project on Flickr.)

At the time, promoting a Twitter account was quite a novelty. The sign has been down for months now, and the @hairtechniques account is barren. Could be any number of reasons:

  • Apathy
  • Conscious decision
  • Forgetfulness
  • Employee with the password left
  • Lack of return on investment

It’s probably several.

No Engagement – the Root Problem

Looking at the Tweets, you can see they are all one-way: [Read more...]

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Stay on Message

Posted on February 18, 2010 Written by 4 Comments
offmessage

On of the communication challenges for any business or organization is sticking with your core competency and staying on message.

Below, you’ll find an example of how to fail.

…unless there is something in tainted Krispy Kreme doughnuts that spurs follicle growth.

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Digital Mercenaries in the Wireless War

Posted on December 16, 2009 Written by 8 Comments
death-star-att

Where to begin?

Maybe with my admission that I’ve been a sucker, and odds are if you’re honest you’ll admit you’ve been one too.

death-star-attCongratulations go to Verizon, for waging one of the most effective marketing/advertising/PR campaigns in recent memory. No, not for the Droid, but rather its successful effort to paint AT&T as some Death Star villain. It’s been years in the making, and in the process many of us have been assimilated into Wireless Tribes who do the dirty work.

The part that amazes me is no one is trying to connect dots, or trace paths of influence. There is a veritable army of people on the internet who will Tweet, Re-tweet, Digg and Share any link that refers to wireless wars. No one has questioned the supposed groundswell of Verizon Love that seems to exist, and here is why I have my suspicions:

We’ve been made to care about a distinction without a difference. The surveys indicate that when it comes to dropped calls or customer satisfaction, we’re looking at a hair’s breadth at most. A hair is enough to claim #1, but the truth is that coverage gaps and complaints vary wildly by market.

maps-for-thatWe’re comparing plastic apples to rubber oranges. Verizon is very proud of its 3G map, and is quite happy letting you think that “3G” is a universal standard. Verizon’s 3G is not nearly as fast, and does not allow for simultaneous voice and data. When you drop off AT&T’s 3G, you switch to an EDGE network that is just 20-percent slower than Verizon’s best offering.

Sure, Verizon’s map comparison looks fabulous, but when you factor where people use phones the most, you’re likely to have a faster and better experience with AT&T.

Somehow, most of the thought-leading tech writers seem to revel in the notion that AT&T is some evil empire — as though Verizon is some daisy-sniffing non-profit Mom-and-Pop that does things the old-fashioned way, like Ole Graham Bell intended.

Please. The dichotomy is apparent.

Eye of the Beholder

Truth is your own customer service experience is going to be your most influential factor. I’ve had great service with AT&T, but I never would have left T-Mobile if it hadn’t been for a bad personal experience. The network plays a role, but how you’re treated is huge.

Which gets me back to the Tribes. The greatest sucker-bait in the whole game is getting us at each other’s throats about the phones we use. The iPhone people, the Android Army, Palm Partisans, and the Windows Mobile folks who catch it on all sides.

Truth is, I really like my phone. I picked it because it does the things I need it to do, and does them well. I’m sure many of you feel the same way.

Now, imagine how angry you’d feel if you ditched something you’re otherwise happy with, and switched to something that wasn’t as advertised.

The “conventional wisdom” that AT&T sucks and that Verizon rescues puppies is too one-sided for me to believe it’s genuine and universal.

DISCLAIMER: I am in no way compensated by AT&T, nor have I ever been. I am on a rate plan that I was eligible for through a previous employer, and have never had a deal or offer that wasn’t publicly available to others similarly situated.

I don’t know how many others can say the same.

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Unearned Legacies

Posted on November 20, 2009 Written by 4 Comments
classof1987

Yesterday, I pointed out how Facebook’s automated attempts at peppering me with relevant information had the unintended consequence of creating a virtual seance – connecting with the dead. I don’t really blame Facebook per se, because no one has yet filed to archive Scott’s wall as a memorial account. However, there are still major gaps on the road to real relevance that will be critical for communication and networking, and the team that figures out the right algorithm for relevance will have the juice to dethrone anyone. This means you, Google and Facebook.

classof1987At issue is a simple invitation to related to my high school, that appeared within the ad stream:

Look up high school profiles from the Class of 1987 now. Reconnect with old friends from the Class of 1987 today.

Apparently, the ad server pulls information from my profile with regards to my birth date, but somehow ignores the actual graduation year listed in my Education section.

Yes, I am picking nits, but if you (as Facebook or as an advertiser therein) are trying to feign a personal touch, then get it right.

matrixmorpheus1Relevance is the missing link to the next age of the internet, because automated relevance that works takes social networks away from being an appliance that you actively engage, and into a passive extension of your intelligence. No, this isn’t Neo wiring into the Matrix, but it’s the serving of the information that you wanted before you knew it existed to want.

There are others exploring this space. Facebook has the most eyeballs attuned to the News Feed experiment, where the most popular and clicked items in your feed bubble to the top. As Peter Shankman likes to say, however, it ought to be populated with the people I am most connected to now, not with people who are popular but irrelevant to me today. (I would venture to guess that Peter is less than happy with the results he sees.)

AideRSS tries to attack relevance through PostRank, and algorithm that grades and pulls the very best of a feed. But that is only the best as rated by others, not by your tastes and discrimination.

Google Reader recently added a setting to Sort by Magic, which takes into account new items from the feeds you click on the most, or click on earlier in browsing sessions.

There’s a lot to consider in getting it right, and a number of approaches to the recipe. As there should be, because whoever plants that flag first stands a great chance of locking down the market for several years (or getting bought out handsomely by deeper pockets.)

But I won’t believe there are enough people working on it until I see invitations to connect with classmates who graduated with me in 1986.

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More Thinking Social

Posted on October 15, 2009 Written by 13 Comments

Yesterday, I shared some ideas about how cable and satellite companies could not only enhance user experience through their DVRs, but could generate significant revenue and affiliate streams by incorporating more Thinking Social into their software.

I promised another idea today.

Sonic Boom

The second idea is more specific, and revolves around the current campaign for Sonic. The premise for the ads is simple, based on meaningless front-seat conversations in the drive-through.

(Aren’t you glad I had auto-start turned off?)

The commercials work because they walk that fine line between the real and the surreal. It’s a situation we’ve all been in, and I’m pretty sure that my conversations with my wife and my brother have been no less alternate-universe.

So, here’s the opportunity for Sonic to step up with being Social.

Invite people to send in their own 20-second clips. Do it as an online audition. Let people vote. Then put as many of the ads to work as you can:

  • The winning ad gets added to the television rotation nationwide
  • Regional winners would be run on the air within their own hometowns
  • Local spots that meet the standard would be run on the web.

Obviously, you’d vet the spots to make sure there was no hidden nudity, and no one throwing in gestures for “shock value.”

How exactly would those local spots work again?

Run them online. Run them on Facebook, targeted to specific cities. Run them inside your friend’s list on Facebook. It’s not as intrusive as those ads that associate your picture with a product without explicit permission – this is a clear case of consent. (No one goes to the trouble of putting together a :20 video, with all the editing involved, on a particular topic, and submitting it through a portal and then gets shocked when it is used.)

Put the rest on a branded YouTube channel, and let people watch themselves over and over, all the while reinforcing your delicious tater tots.

The opportunities are there. You don’t even have to be good at Food Math.

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Thinking Social

Posted on October 14, 2009 Written by 20 Comments
chains

Do you hear that thunder in the distance?

chainsThat’s the sound of ordinary people unshackling themselves from traditional one-way media. And it’s going to get louder.

If you’re a business that relies on traditional advertising models, now would be a good time to figure out where those people are going with their newfound freedom, and maybe even make a buck or two as you make them happy.

What follows are a couple of ideas I offer to the business world, free of charge, after spending a few minutes thinking Social.

TiVo Judo

One of the great lessons a non-martial artist can learn from martial arts is the concept of using opposing energy in your favor. Judo – the codified sport version of Jujitsu – is all about taking your opponent’s momentum and force and redirecting it. Aikido (a beautiful art made famous as the “bits between Steven Seagal’s awful acting) accomplishes this in simple, circular movements. So how can traditional media benefit from the momentum behind TiVo and DVR?

One of the features I wish I had on my DVR is a bookmark. That way when there are touchdowns or key plays in the game I am watching, I can press a button and have a placeholder. Then I can go back and enjoy them faster.

Share the moments

Of course, Thinking Social means understanding how cool it would be to share those bookmarks with other viewers. The first DVR provider (Comcast, Charter, TiVo, DirecTV) to figure this out will have a huge leg up. We’re not talking about an expensive hardware update to make that happen, either.

But I am thinking even bigger. If the disruption of the DVR is a threat to traditional advertising, then why not redirect it? Yes, it would be problematic to share time-codes from DirecTV with Charter, and TiVo with Brighthouse. So let’s find a common platform: YouTube.

Instead of simply bookmarking the index on my DVR hard drive, give me the option to have that :30 clip of the winning touchdown uploaded to YouTube.

Regaining control

(But wait, Ike… that’s insane! In a popular sporting event, you’d have more than a million people uploading the same clip!)

Well, guess what? They’re doing it anyway. But if DirecTV is smart about it, when you click to bookmark and YouTube the clip they’ll handle it another way:

  1. The clip will be uploaded only once
  2. Instead of being tied to each individual user, it will instead be “Favorited” by your account
  3. The Favoriting will trigger any additional pinging, such as notifications sent to Twitter and Facebook and the new flavor of the day
  4. The clip will have a :10 or :15 ad built into the front of it.

DirecTV will only have to upload it once, and will have instant feedback about what is popular. It can also sell the interstitial ad (which is permanently “stitched” into the clip) and share revenues with the original broadcast provider. So, if it’s the SEC game of the week on CBS, CBS get’s 70% of the cut from those ad views. Or maybe CBS chooses to run a promo for its own programming in that slot.

Then, DirecTV (substitute your DVR provider as needed) gets to place ads around the video, and can even offer discounts and premiums to those who refer the most views. If you happen to come to my YouTube page and watch the video, there will be an icon you can click on to find out more about DirecTV’s super-awesome Social-DVR service (and if you buy through my referral I get a free month of programming, or something.)

Win-Win-Win-Win

There is a huge opportunity here, because they would be making it easy for me to share with the people who probably have compatible likes and dislikes. Content creators aren’t left in the lurch, because someone is paying the bills. YouTube will like it because it can make money on a single upload viewed 10,000 times moreso than 100 uploads watched 100 times. Advertisers will like it because it provides a real-time metric of what people will share, a buzz-worthy meter.

And I will like it because the (funniest happiest scariest) moments in (sports news entertainment) get shared as quickly and easily as possible.

So, DVR makers. Get to cracking.

Idea #2 comes tomorrow.

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