Redefining "Social Media"

Our friend, Wikipedia, defines SM as:

"Media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers."
source

I don't think this is correct anymore. Social media may have started out as a voice of the people, but now that we've evolved and businesses are involved, it's become much more of an exchange- informational and media based. With the potential for so much growth, "social media" should ensure additional factors are incorporated.

Social media is still about allowing users to have their own voice and allowing people to connect directly with an organisation. But what about the organisation in an ROI sense? Not enough activations in social media pool results together to give businesses solid data about their customers in the context of the business in question. In fact, I don't think enough organisations are thinking about social media outside of a marketing context.

A lot of the tools that have been developed in social media allow businesses the resource to reshape and reformulate purchasing cycles to effectively minimise resource and maximise return. The data stream that can be gathered internally is incredibly valuable. A company has the potential to tailor products and services based on exactly what their customers are asking for. When companies go guns blazing on the YouTube, the Twitter and the Facebook, they lose the potential of taking a well thought out internal approach which can increase sales dramatically.

This type of business change works very well for service based industries, where there is a large exchange of information required from both the individual and the business in terms of what the business offering is. It's a long term initation. For FMCG and the like, it's a lot closer to the existing models- short, sharp promotional activations.

So, the sum of the parts of social media becomes:

1. Exchange of interaction/information between consumer and business through some form of a social media engine- here companies can understand what their consumers really want from them.
2. Companies analyse data to understand where their customers are headed and isolate areas of the business which can answer these needs
3. Businesses reshape offering and resell these back to those interested customers.

The process becomes a universe where users actually attain what they're after in a timely fashion. On the flip side, a business makes sale. Everyone wins. How can you argue with that?

Everybody, Get on! It's the social media ride!

As I nibbled on petits fours and sipped afternoon cocktails in yesterday's summery sun, I had the lovely experience of discussing my favourite* social media conversation for the umpteenth time:

Social Media Conversation numero 63:
We're making Facebook groups for all of our sub brands. It's great! What do you think?

It is great that this company has decided to make a move into the new marketing opportunities that have become available. I'm happy that they're trying new directions. But when I began to probe and asked "Why are you going on the FB? Who are you trying to reach and what are you aiming to achieve?" - I was and am often faced with blank stares and silence. It quickly became obvious that the only objective was to put a tick next to "Set up Facebook page" on the to-do list!

Who on earth is going to want to see the page besides staff? And that's often because they have to! If there is no incentive for any of loyalists, indifferents or even detractors to have a look- then forget it. Replicating information from a website is not creating a social media page.

Prior to social media conversation numero 63, it often helps to ask:

• Do we have reason to be on a social media site? Will it help grow our offering in the right way?
• Do people care about us enough to want to engage with us in a social context? Can we create that context?
• What will our objectives be? Sales, awareness, promotions, spread, customer service etc?
• Do we want to engage with interested audience or motivate new user bases?
• Do we have enough to push our page through to the long term? And is there a strategy to keep content fresh?

If even a couple of these questions are answered, it's a good starting point. And at least if some of the initial strategies don't work, it's an easy enough fix to reoptimise and keep moving forward.

*The use of favourite here is to be taken lightly.

Mastercard Moments: A case of the short term feeding into the long term

The Mastercard Priceless idea is about special moments that have a simple hook. The hook is a common human truth, making the moment more accessible to everyone.

Moving from a campaign level, Mastercard have gone to the next stage and adapted their rewards program to be more functional for their user base. The rewards that they offer can become moments and priceless experiences. Mastercard Moments is a natural progression in both a business and marketing context.

Their adaptation of their rewards program is an aggregator of their offering inside a simple social media framework. When I say simple, I mean a user has access to only their profile (not the universe) and can access those offers that are right for them, setting the ones they like to a wishlist. The mechanic is that it seems to allow users to find and discover what rewards they're after and access it easily. Consequently allowing Mastercard to know what their customers want. It's a tool which seems to meet needs without wasting time.

It's a no brainer. Much smarter than using your audience to create your content - ie Mastercard could have asked users to submit their own Mastercard moments into a repository. But that begs to ask the questions-

1. who cares about what Joe the Plumber has been up to?
2. Why is relevant for a user to filter through what becomes everyone else's irrelevant experiences?
3. What purpose does that serve to the Mastercard user?
4. What purpose does that serve to Mastercard?

Here we get an ongoing adaptive process. Feed successful marketing campaigns into new long term business solutions and allow those business solutions to feed back into short term campaigns. Using the business solution as a guide. For example, Mastercard can see which offer motivates most users and work towards short term communications to maximise returns on that offer. Very Nice.

And as long term solutions create a direct communications exchange with consumers, business find opportunities to give consumers what they want. One feeds the other and we end up with businesses maximising their returns.

...it's taking all my strength to hold off on a priceless gag....

We aren't in Kansas anymore Auntie Em

This, is the biggest storm in a teacup since they put visible hearing aids in John Howard's wax dummy at Madame Tussaud's.

Hey Hey it's Saturday's Red Faces is an Australian heritage. You could compare this to how racism in America used to be the right way to go. Taking the piss in the land of Oz just is.
Yanks don't get it, that's why Georgie would always tug my arm and tell me he was "taking the piss" whenever he told a joke, most often at my expense. Georgie is used to the Yank not understanding because they simply don't. Even when it slaps them in the face.

This type of non-journalism makes me sad. This is in actual fact a witch hunt. No one thought there was anything wrong until that gimp made Daryl apologise. And then, the media took it and ran. With the apparent uproar in America, which basically means they had nothing else to write about, the local journos have resumed their America envy. Shame on you Australia for being UnAustralian. The worst insult around.

There are also 3 facts that I would like to draw your attention to:

• Those guys did this skit 20 years ago. No one had a problem then and racism in this country seemed to be largely unaffected from this tomfoolery. However, in the US, racism seems to have hit a new high. The events coined "Rodney King" and "beers in Obama's Rose Garden" come to mind.
• Michael Jackson is white. His death does not change that.
• And as one FunkyDreddUK said on YouTube:
  "I don't believe they intended to offend but in America this is higly sensitive because of the history of black Americans and how they were treated. However, Americans are quite happy to portray Arabs, Asians and pretty much everyone else in a negative and offensive manner on tv without much controversy..."

So yeah Harry, where were you 20 years ago? Huh? Huh? Take your book burners, your fun killers and that weird drooped face you now have back to your jazz club and stay there. America's history is its own and Red Faces belongs on an entirely different spiritual level.

For a touch of luxury where you need it most

...and you'll never guess where- a lady's cha cha:

"The U by Kotex Platinum range of tampons and ultrathins brings you a touch of luxury where you need it most. The range is packaged in stylish cartons and includes unique product features to help you take the ultimate care down there."

It's so nice that Kotex has considered the luxury option for when Flo comes to town. If feet can have Prada, should punani not have these same options?

As I passed the bus stop with this ad, I thought the same exact thing. I've really been pondering for a while now why there is no diversification and growth in the feminine hygeine market. Luxury and concern for vajayjay appears the optimum choice.

The tagline really takes it to the next level "a touch of luxury where you need it most". I'm not sure about that. Does hoo-hoo need this kind of attentiveness? Luxury seems to have always been something that's on display. Being able to show those premium wares goes with the territory. To make something which is hidden a luxury, seems odd. I'm sure the research was done and women wanted their fancy pads, but was it looked at in context?

...unless. Unless Kotex is talking about the packaging and this needs to go on display. But I dunno. It isn't a Platinum Amex, we're talking about periods and most women don't really want that information on parade.

There seems a disconnect. But feminine hygeine is a tough product. Kotex, I sincerely hope you do well. I don't know if you're thinking social media, but just take some lessons from Tampax's foray into social networking before you tamper with that angle.

2 obsessions that have me bamboozled

1. Usage of the movie Downfall in the mocking of any advertising scenario
Well, I think Mr Servant of Chaos Heaton did it first with the Age of Conversation. He got lots of backlash, really for no reason. He started a trend.
There was something recently with George Parker and Enfatico's actual downfall. Good work
And then there is this lovely shot at iSnack2.0. Great writing, really solid.

I am loving this Downfall obsession. It is making great appropriation of content and there are lots of others out there that aren't just marketing related.
As soon as a brand gets involved as the instigator, this whole phenomenon will be toast!

2. The dancing Flashmob

What is the deal with this?
Those prisoners in the Phillipines doing it was cute and great. They have nothing better to do with their time, it just fits for them to become a dancing ensemble.
And Improv Everywhere have been doing it for ages with free people. They are/were great.
Then there are lots of other dancemobs, everywhere. They aren't that good anymore, it's getting very "boy who cried wolf".
With this latest dance mob, I at first thought Oprah just wanted to get on the bandwagon, because she does that. In fact she loves doing that- taking things from people and making it her own. But only at the very very end did I notice it was for T-Mobile. They love this shizz. But is it really doing anything for their brand? They just tack their logo at the end of selected song. It's sucking. T-mobile- stop it. Please. For the love of god. Let the prisoners have their candy back.

Unhappy little Vegemites vent their fury over iSnack 2.0

Julian Lee, SMH It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. But no sooner had Kraft trumpeted the name of its new Vegemite variant, iSnack 2.0, than it was met with almost universal condemnation by customers.

i-GeValt iSnack2.0
When I saw this campaign, I thought 2 things:

1. I've seen this name that flavour thing before - Smiths is doing it with the chip flavour thing, and they copied that with Walkers Chips. Winegecarribee library even had their own renaming competition for their young adults section and they did it back in June to win an iPod. The list should go on, but 3 is enough, enough to make it unoriginal. (there's a crap load of others here)
2. If I've seen this scenario before, it's been a case of that meeting room discussion:
   "We'll, this is working pretty good in the market right now, why don't we do it too. If all is going well for them, the laws should dictate that it goes well for us."
   Wrong iSnack 2.0. The first law of new media is that if you copy something without appropriation or amendment it will be doomed to fail. Not only because it is a copy, but because you have put no thought in to how your brand should behave in conjunction with the particular activation.
   The second law is that the consumer is 7 steps ahead of you. If you do something that the consumer is doing now, their ADHD won't handle a repeat.

And it's great that Vegemite has shipped 3 million jars of the cheesey vegemite spread, and in the end this discussion will blow over by the end of the week. BUT, and the big but, is why do agencies take the lazy route and recommend things to their clients without thinking them through properly? Or, for that matter, attempt the new stuff? Australia is lucky enough to have a relaxed enough consumer community to really push the envelope and here you are trying the tried, true and boring! Step up to the plate, use your options and make happy little vegemites proud!

...and I'm taking a holiday from cliches.