Jul/104
The Ubiquity of the Social Web, and the Questionable Sustainability of its Agencies
Let me preface this by saying I don’t write these posts simply to be contrarian. I just think that some perspective is in order.
I’ve said this before. My larger interest is in technology and how brands can connect with people through things that whirl and buzz. Taking a step beyond that is my interest in integrated advertising. So, count me as a member of the school of thought that no one medium can do the job of every other. That goes for social as well.
Too many social marketers believe that social will eventually take over the world. And for all intents and purposes, I agree. I agree that applications and experiences that are socially enabled and contextually aware is the future. The Internet of Things and the true semantic web are years away. But I do believe they’re on the horizon. Experiences that change and mold to fit who we are as individuals is the Holy Grail of advertising. Think of the scene in Minority Report where Tom Cruise’s character enters Gap. We’re already seeing it with Facebook’s Open Graph and the rise of hyperlocal information.
The use of technology and the internet has become so commonplace that anyone can do it.
Social and contextual advertising will, in my belief, reach a level of ubiquity that pervades every facet of advertising. And with that ubiquity, comes widespread learning and understanding. In an age where the internet has become inescapable, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who, at this point, has never at least Googled, or checked email. Using the internet is no longer a luxury of the technologically savvy. It’s a place anyone can access, and the cost of entry is as little as a standard cell phone.
That said, social marketing is not rocket science.
Too many self-proclaimed social experts feel the need to justify their jobs, pointing down at digital and traditional advertisers/marketers, claiming they don’t get social and that they’re doing it all wrong. But it begs the question: Why do you think social is so far outside of their scope of understanding? Social is human. And last time I checked, humans ran all the other agencies in this industry.
Advertising—good advertising—is based on understanding human behavior. It’s about either tapping into, or in some cases, creating culture. So, while I admit that most advertisers are accustomed to talking at consumers, it’s a time tested truth that they are no stranger to indoctrinating thoughts, ideas, and beliefs into the minds of the masses. They simply have to learn how to do it in new ways. And as was the case with the widespread adoption of the internet, it’s only a matter of time.
“The Last Advertising Agency on Earth” video suggests that remaining relevant requires agencies to understand that times are a-changing and we need to change with them. Most agencies know this now, and are taking the necessary steps to stay connected.
It’s grossly naive to believe digital and traditional agencies don’t get it and never will. Sure they’ll stumble. But haven’t the social agencies stumbled as well in proving sales-driven ROI? An agency is only as good as the “agents” it hires. And if the BDA’s hire people who “get” social, what makes them any less capable of kicking our collective asses? Not only do they have the client roster, but they have the funds, execution/production resources, and greater leverage for true campaign integration.
Digital agencies doubted traditional agencies the same way. But then what do you say about agencies like SapientNitro? And even then, I think the argument isn’t the same as the one social agencies make. Digital and Traditional advertising are two very different disciplines, and require vastly divergent skill sets. We, on the other hand, sit in a place that is primarily based on common sense rhetoric. As a colleague of mine says, we do a lot of talking.
Few social agencies can execute, let alone on the scale and with the refinement of a digital agency. Honestly, any programmer/designer team worth their salt can create custom tabs in Facebook. And even the strategy that leads a good social program can be developed by a digital agency that has at least one person who understands the best practices.
Understanding social, and properly executing against it, is not something reserved to the “great thinkers” of a space that is barely 10 years old. It simply necessitates that you behave more like an individual, and less like a brand hocking your wares. The foundations of good account planning and strategy were carried over from the other disciplines. But polished execution, I’m sorry to say, is something most social agencies just can’t do because they don’t have the production resources and expertise.
That said, thinking “socially” isn’t necessarily hard, it just requires you to think differently; but it doesn’t require an entirely new skill set. So, who’s more likely to emerge when the dust has settled? Social agencies who do a lot of talking about Facebook and Twitter, but lack the skills to execute against programs larger than a custom tab; or digital agencies who have the expertise to develop deeply engrossing experiences, but need to brush up on the (very elementary) do’s and don’ts of social marketing?
Here’s a hint: Social agencies; hire some digital creatives.
Apr/105
The Soul of Social Media, And Why “Agency” Shouldn’t Be A Bad Word
There’s something I’ve thought about for some time, and was perpetuated by Zach Lieberman, a speaker at the PSFK Conference last week. Lieberman, who is a creative technologist, had a talk about Engaging the Human Element, and “making deeply engaging, entertaining and meaningful interactions” through art and technology. He talked about the power of individuals, and touched on a trend of the shift from DIY to DIWO (Do It With Others); an interesting notion that speaks to to the heart of social.
Joseph (Jaffe) would say that social’s purpose for brands is to Acknowledge, Incentivize, Dialogue, and Activate (AIDA as opposed to ADIA) its customers who would then act as advocates for the brand, bringing new customers into the fold. That’s one way of looking at it, and a legitimate way to use it.
Many others in the industry see social is an opportunity for brands to go to where their customers are (online), in order to listen and engage in dialogue. And if there’s a real opportunity for it, act as a unifier, bringing like-minded people together around a common idea, belief, or hobby through a branded community.
But when I had a conversation with a peer of mine, a third angle came up; one that speaks to the point Lieberman made at the conference. Is social capable of being more than just a response/support/inducement tool? What is the purpose of launching a branded community? Are we facilitating conversations for the sake of having conversations? What is the end goal? Lieberman’s work, such as the Eyewriter and Drawn, is about leaving the screen behind. He talked about the “Open Mouth Moment”, when a person drops their jaw in amazement at something they just experienced. He described this as “the pathway to someone’s heart.” How do we create these social experiences? How do we move beyond the Facebooks, Twitters, and YouTubes of the world and get people talking again?
The advent of social media did not mark the beginning of people talking to each other, or about brands. It merely facilitates conversations, but it isn’t the reason why people talk. People talked about Lieberman’s Drawn because it was an “Open Mouth Moment”. It’s about a strong message or idea that’s worth sharing. Most self-proclaimed “social media experts” are internetologists (a point I won’t contend) who rely on incentives over emotions. Dare I say it, this is something social marketers stand to learn from the Big Dumb Agencies (BDA), as George Parker would call them. Whether it sits well with you or not, before Facebook’s founders were even born, these agencies rose to prominence on the backs of people’s emotions. And even then, people talked about and recommended brands.
An "Open Mouth Moment" at the Draw art installation by Zach Lieberman
Griffin Farley, a Strategy Director at BBH and author of Propagation Planning, recently discussed something missing from social media that has long guided traditional advertising: Brand Mantras.
“Good creative briefs can do a great job of inspiring advertising but recently I have discovered that they don’t do a great job of grounding social media actions. I think Brand Mantras do a much better job of this because they describe an emotion, a theme, a writing style that can be used as the guide for the voice of the brand in social media.”
He went on to cite a Brand Mantra in the form of a poem written for CNN. Guess who wrote it. Mother New York; Creativity Magazine’s pick for 2009 Agency of the Year.
“Agency” shouldn’t be a bad word. It’s only begun to take on negative connotations, but we shouldn’t equate the term to immorality. We should instead take hold of it, reshape it, and bring it back to a point of distinction. There are many things BDAs do well, and there are many things that they do poorly, like thinking small. But that same point can be turned around and said about smaller boutiques; most especially social shops. Logistics aside, like the inability to scale, social marketers have forgotten the pathway to people’s hearts. They’ve embroiled themselves so deeply in “Activation” strategies that they’ve forgotten human strategies.
Social media is missing its soul, if it ever had one. Strong ideas and “Open Mouth Moments” are all the reason people need to propagate an idea; not free shipping offers and discount coupons. The tools are merely there to help spread the word, but they shouldn’t be the idea itself. The Obama campaign had one strong, succinct idea that used the tools simply as a way to circulate it: “Change”. It was simple; but it’s that simplicity which made it stir the collective emotions of a nation.
Lieberman said “The process of creating art is in many ways an R & D department for humanity”. I implore this industry to remember back to what made us smile and cry as humans. To capture that raw emotion, and recreate that pathway to people’s hearts.
Apr/101
Thinking Small Is All The Rage
The idea of agencies and companies thinking small is no new notion. People have been saying it for years, including Greg, who’s gong to push the point further in his upcoming book, microMarketing. The problem is, very few have actually been practicing it. At the PSFK Conference in New York last week, Andy Spade and Anthony Sperduti of Partners & Spade gave a “Think Small” presentation highlighting the work they did for J.Crew.
Prefacing their lecture, they shared their passion for film, publishing, and product development, which helped guide the work they did for J.Crew. The brand’s menswear had little equity. Partners & Spade felt that regardless of how they tackled the problem, going in waving the J.Crew banner would make their plan fall flat. It was a big brand that everyone already knew, and expressly didn’t care about. They had to develop a strategy that shrunk J.Crew. Something that made the brand more intimate and approachable. Because, like the partners said on stage, “no one likes big.”
An interior shot of the J.Crew Liquor Store in TriBeCa.
To answer the call, the partners decided to open a liquor store. But not your average slipshod speakeasy. It was an abandoned TriBeCa tavern restored and restocked with J.Crew’s menswear instead of booze. The boutique is affectionately named “Liquor Store“. The shop is adorned in a way that gives it a lot of classic male character and makes is very distinctive from a typical J.Crew outlet; to the point that you wouldn’t know it’s a J.Crew store. The partners went so far as to staff the store with their own people, including Tremaine Romeo, the “Storetender”; sell some exclusive clothing and accessories; create specialized products, such as throwing darts and shot glasses; and even published a book, “What A Man Should Know”.
The Liquor Store was deemed a great success by the partners, and was written up in dozens of blogs and magazines who they said wouldn’t have written about the store otherwise if it had been branded as a typical J.Crew location. It was the small, cozy and personalized nature of the boutique that made people especially interested in it. In other words, a big brand acting small made it that much more compelling. The partners believe that the bigger a brand gets, the smaller it needs to act. An idea defended by a quote Spade likes to use: “For every accountant you hire, hire an artist” to maintain the delicate balance of big and small.
Jason Fried, co-founder and CEO of software development company, 37Signals, spoke at the AdAge Digital Conference this week and blasted “full-service” ad agencies, using the same grounds as those used by Partners & Spade: think small. He made the point that agencies are trying to do everything for everyone, instead of focusing on a small number of things that they do very well, championing specialization over full-service end-to-end.
“Companies end up hiring people to do these things they don’t know how to do, they get really big and then they slow down. That’s how you get big and slow and expensive. What’s wrong with doing just a few things really well?,” Fried said. He recently co-authored Rework which reiterated this point.
It’s easy for agencies to think too big. Oftentimes they assume they have to in order to stay competitive, or successfully launch a project. But the Liquor Store, and the story of 37Signals for that matter, act as as testaments that bigger isn’t always better. “Think small” is often looked upon as an idealistic buzz phrase, hardly ever applicable in real world situations. But there are numerous examples where thinking and acting small paid off. It’s about sticking to your guns when you have a good idea, big or small. Big Bang Theory sized strategies are not the best solution most of the time, and tend to be filled with elements that underperform.
Years ago, before giving up “the noble profession of journalism,” as my father puts it, I remember going to the CSPA convention and listening to a New York Times writer who said something that stuck with me to this day, and something I think applies here: It’s not about using big words. It’s about using the right words.
Apr/100
We Aren’t What We Do. We Should Do What We Are.
At the PSFK Conference 2010, Erik Proulx, creator, executive producer, and writer of the short film Lemonade, as well as the founder of Please Feed the Animals, spoke in front of the large crowd at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. It goes without saying that all of the speakers were inspiring, forcing ideas to spark off in my mind. But after hearing Proulx speak, and watching Lemonade during the lunch break (also available on DVD and through Hulu), a swirl of emotions stirred inside me.
He didn’t speak about a new technological advancement; or acknowledge some growing trend that marketers should heed. He spoke about something so basic in nature, that I think its simplicity has been lost: doing what you love. The film Lemonade is a nice accompaniment to Proulx’s Please Feed the Animals website; a blog for members of the advertising community who have lost their job to vent and look for a new one at the on-site job board.
The film highlights a number of former advertising executives who lost their jobs over the last year or so, and the moment of clarity they had afterwards that convinced them to uncover and take up the things they forgot they loved.
The title of this post is a quote that Proulx shared during his presentation and was something that really stuck with me. I look at my friends and family members’ lives and I wonder if they’re really doing what it is they love. My father wanted to be a marine biologist when he was younger. He affirms to me that he enjoys his job enough, but is “enough” adequate? I think of one of my best friends, who went from dreams about being a music producer to pulling all-nighters at a local Trader Joe’s. I’ve been fortunate enough to land a job, doing more or less exactly what I wanted to do with my life. I couldn’t be happier to be honest.
I wanted to promote Lemonade because it reminded me of something that I think people tend to forget, or think of lightly: do what you love. It wasn’t long ago that Greg (Verdino) told me that he actually wanted to work in the music business. There’s nothing wrong with doing what you’re good at (he happens to be good at marketing), but I challenge him to pick music back up again. Even if it’s something he only does on the weekend. In fact, I challenge you all to do the same.
Dig deep down inside yourself. Write down all the things that make you happy. All the things you’re passionate about. And find a way to fit it into your life. One of the women in the film, Michelle Pfennighaus, made the apt point that you don’t have to quit your job to make a profound change in your life. Whether it’s home-brewing coffee, practicing yoga, or painting, take a step back and do something for yourself. Find out whatever it is that makes you smile, and hold on to it; because it’s easy to lose yourself.
Mar/102
The Ubiquity of Facebook and Twitter
This post is more so a raw and unrefined observation/opinion of mine, rather than a picking apart of the two services. For some time I’ve wanted to write a blog post about how Facebook has become the new mass media, or how Twitter has seemingly morphed to a medium, but I think it’s probably even smarter to discuss the ubiquity of these two services as it encompasses both topics.
I think it goes without saying that Facebook and Twitter are huge. Taking a quick glance at their usage statistics, you’ll see they’ve grown into behemoths in the social space.
As a disclaimer, I’m well aware that Twitter’s advertised user base of 75 million is grossly inflated, being as only 21% of its users are actually active, according to a brand new study by Barracuda Networks. But that’s neither here nor there, and doesn’t change the point of my argument.
When you get a new client and they want to go social, what’s the first thing you think of? Odds are, most of you raised your hand for Facebook. I’ll give it to you that Twitter isn’t for everyone, but let’s focus on Facebook for right now, a name that has basically become everyday diction for us. Do you realize that we all seem to immediately snap to Facebook? As if you’re retarded if you’re not on it.
I’m not saying that it’s not without good reason. It’s a stellar social network. It’s got everything from profiles, to photos and videos, to status updates, to corporate fan pages and groups. And it’s only getting better. The mobile site is brilliantly designed, and has grown to become the most visited mobile social network . So, I’m not here to say shame on you for looking to Facebook, but I do want to challenge you with the question: Why? Is it because all your other clients ended up with a Facebook Fan Page? Do you have a genuine argument as to why it’s the first thing that comes to mind, or is it because that’s just “what we do” nowadays?
Twitter, on the other hand, has reached a status that to me is quite different from Facebook. Because of the nature of the two services, I feel that Twitter took a different path, one towards channelization. Facebook is a social networking site. Twitter is a medium. I could be getting ahead of myself here, but the fashion in which Twitter has grown and is used, has led me to believe that we could be thinking about it all wrong. I don’t think Twitter is a social networking platform anymore; it’s transformed (not transcended) into something instrumental.
I think on some level it’s become as ordinary and unremarkable as the telephone, or email. We talk about not focusing on the tools, and I wholeheartedly agree. But isn’t that argument used to make the point of putting strategy ahead of tactics. What if Twitter really is just a tool. A tool like my iPhone, or my Samsung/TiVo combo. What is Twitter used for? Communication. It’s only a communication, and sometimes entertainment, tool; no different from the telephone or television. And the way we’ve instructed clients to use it, reflects that.
We measure our clients’ customer relationships in Facebook fans. We measure their “address book” in Twitter followers.
Sure it’s because of their mammoth size, but does anyone else realize that we’ve turned these two sites into the “Break Glass In Case of Emergency” social media services. They’ve become ubiquitous with the term Social Media. When you explain your job to your relatives, what do you say? I’d be surprised if neither Facebook nor Twitter came out of your mouth. When did “social media” become synonymous with these two sites/services/tools?
It’s a hackneyed term, and the vast majority of us don’t deserve the title, but why aren’t we called Digital Anthropologist or Ethnographers? Regardless of how many people may hate the usage of that title (and rightfully so), those same people (I’d hope) also understand that at the end of the day our job is about human beings connecting with human beings. Aren’t we all just digital social workers, hopefully making some kind of difference in peoples’ lives through smiles, laughter, or tears?
When did Facebook and Twitter become the masters of the universe, which have come to define our professional existences? And when did we become tools ourselves?
Feb/102
There’s A Need For Integrated Social Media
Disclaimer: I started this post over a month ago and just never got to finish. Hopefully, it’s still halfway relevant.
If we’re being honest, I started on my path in marketing under the impression that I was going to be concepting billboards, television spots, magazine ads, working with emerging technology, etc. Partially because that’s what we’re taught in school, and partially because I was addicted to Mad Men (congratulations on the third Golden Globe). Nonetheless, it wasn’t so much that I was enamored with the idea of traditional advertising. It was that I strongly believed in integrated advertising. I still do.
I now find myself in social media marketing. A fairly new discipline, many times separated from the rest of the action by clients. And unfortunately, the problem is two-fold.
Social is usually cutoff from the rest of the marketing mix and placed on a petri dish, insulated from the outside world. And like a child who’s sheltered their whole life by anxious parents, it doesn’t socially develop properly (no pun intended). Social won’t ever learn to properly integrate with marketing plans unless it’s included from the jump. That’s not to say it can’t work any other way. Social’s been shoehorned into plans many times before, but how often has it felt like it was an afterthought? Or even worse, a social program shares no common messaging with the overall integrated campaign.
That’s only one part of the problem. The bigger issue is that social isn’t easy enough for brands and large agencies to adopt. They like the idea of social, and they’ll dabble in it; kick a program or two off. But the fact that social itself isn’t integrated is reason enough to understand why brands aren’t emphatically jumping at the opportunity to include a deep social program in their campaigns.
As you might have read in my About Me page, I work(ed) for crayon. That is until Powered came along. Powered used to consider themselves a technology company. They had clients and they did social media workshops and the like, but their claim to fame was their white label community platform. They purchased crayon, Drillteam Marketing, and StepChange Group to become the “first full-service social media agency of scale.”
We’re going through our growing pains right now, and working on integrating our various services to create a lean, streamlined organization. But in theory, this kind of organization is what social media marketing needs. After hearing our CEO, Ken Nicolson, tell the vision of the organization, I began to realize how worthy of a cause this was.
Currently, the main way clients handle full-scaled social programs is by hiring 2, 3, or 4 different shops to get the job done. This creates the problem of “too many cooks in the kitchen”, and it becomes a clusterfuck of a situation. I don’t blame companies for being apprehensive in getting involved in such a fiasco. After all, they’ve never had to go to so many different people to get a campaign done before. Why should they now have to interact with four different companies, who do four different things, to get one job done. Sure, they could go to a large agency who could subcontract the work out to four different shops on your behalf, but then you’re paying for added overhead.
The point is, the need for an integrated approach to social media was long overdue and desperately needed. We need fewer individuals talking about how smart they are in the space, and more individuals banding together to serve our clients better.
Nov/092
Jeff Howe Didn’t Mean To Be An Asshole
I briefly met Jeff Howe during the kickoff party for his book Crowdsourcing. He’s a good guy. Very charming, very intelligent. It’s not his fault he’s an asshole, having coined the term “crowdsourcing”.
I read an opinion piece on PSFK today by well-known author, blogger, critic, and fabled ad man, George Parker. In it, he pretty much lambasted the Boulder, CO-based agency, Victors & Spoils, for further perpetuating the argument of “What are agencies for?” To their credit, however, according to @BBHLabs, they’ve already gotten 5 letters from Fortune 200 CMOs in the first few days of them opening their doors.
The great debate of the effects of crowdsourcing on ad agencies is something I’ve always been fairly agnostic about. I was always a supporter of Jeff Howe, so I didn’t immediately write it off as the bane of creative agencies. But after hearing George Parker’s criticisms of Victors & Spoils, I think I might have to side with the agencies. And it’s not because I think agency creatives would be out of a job otherwise. There’s more to the argument than that.
First off, crowdsourcing your work does NOT guarantee quality product. Fast Company’s Cliff Kuang published a piece that took a look at some of the mediocre work that has come from crowdsourced efforts. I’m not suggesting that crowdsourced work can’t be good. And I’m not saying that it doesn’t help in shining light on many talented people who might otherwise be overlooked. Honestly, at its core, I don’t believe crowdsourcing, as a marketing vehicle, is such a bad idea. It promotes consumer interaction; celebrates their creativity; and all that other good stuff we like to say about the benefits of crowdsourcing.
Where I’ve decided to put my foot down is exactly where Victors & Spoils has decided to venture: crowdsourcing all of your work as a creative ad agency. I was impressed by the attention that they’ve been getting, but after further thought, I’m not so sure it’s well-deserved. Under this business model, can they legitimately call themselves a creative ad agency? I’m not so sure. If anything, an agency of producers and project managers sounds more apropos. Isn’t that what they essentially boil down to? And that’s the problem that Parker cited in this business model.
If you act as though getting agency quality work is as easy as logging onto crowdSPRING, then what the hell are we being hired for? Clients have their own project managers to oversee crowdsourced initiatives if they really wanted to. I don’t think the creative ad agency will go the way of the Dodo, especially considering there’s simply a different grade of work you get from dealing with “accredited” (for lack of a better word) agencies. I just think that it’s a bit pretentious to put yourself on a high horse and label yourself as forward-thinking when in reality, you aren’t doing any of the heavy lifting.
Having started my career at a creative digital agency, I naturally have a high respect for the work that goes into agency developed creative. I don’t think agency creatives have anything to worry about. Out of work art directors and copywriters aside, the best either already work for someone, or consider themselves too good to essentially work for free. And for those designers who do compete in crowdsourcing competitions, it’s a good way to get noticed, and perhaps find yourself with a job where you don’t have to forfeit valuable hours of your time contending with dozens of other designers working for nothing.
I’ll leave you with this comment from V&S’ announcement blog post:
You guys are kidding right?
You are not changing an industry you are helping hammer one more nail in its coffin. For years we fought the idea of advertising by committee and you are legitimizing it.
You are not calling creatives with spirit you are calling all those willing to be underpaid while you guys reap the rewards.
As John Lennon said, “How do you sleep at night?”