In the great Cameron Crowe Movie, Almost Famous, Russel Hammond the band’s frontman states with disgust to young William Miller, “We play for fans, not critics.” That blunt remark stems from William’s timid attempt at getting an interview from Russel’s band, Stillwater. While Russel’s comment was terse and harsh, it was completely spot on. Magazines, news papers, talk shows all exist to critique. But, if you create music that appeals to the only the critics, the pundits and the editors and you stop creating music for your fans… you’ll soon find yourself without an audience to create music for.

Pivoting into a direction, but with a similar theme, I’ve gotten more than a little caught up the Tebow mania. A few months ago, on ESPN 1000, a sports commentator (I forget which) said something very profound with regards to what John Elway, the General Manager of the Denver Broncos, should do about the fans demanding Tim Tebow become the starting the quarterback. He said, if you make decisions based on what the fans want, you’ll soon find yourself sitting along side those fans…watching the games.  I think the real point was that the fans aren’t well informed enough or qualified to be managing a team. They live for what they see on the field, not what’s happening behind the scenes.

With both situations, in both stories, there’s a simple and clear lesson – you have to know who to listen to and you need to make your decisions because they’re the right decisions, not because they’ll appeal to the critics.

One of the wonderful and sometimes maddening things about social media, is that it’s all on display for the world to see…for the world to pick apart…for the world to heap praise…and of course for the critics to play arm-chair expert. As I wrote last week in my post, Fortune Favors The Brave:

I knew when I recommended this program and when we launched it, that the social pseudo-experts would jump all over it. I knew we’d hear that you shouldn’t “sling mud.” I knew social meda “purists” would argue you shouldn’t pay for “social media.”

Sure enough, the social media critics came out in full force. Now, I’ll be the first person to admit that over the years I’ve critiqued commercials, websites, campaigns, hires, fires and just about everything else in between. I’ve always characterized these opinions as such. They weren’t facts. They were my opinion as an outsider. I can’t underscore enough the concept of being an outsider. As an outsider you lack an understanding of the goals, objectives, metrics for success, the strategy and of course the actual results. It’s easy to poke holes in something, especially when it’s controversial, without having any of that information.

David Berkowitz, a VP at 360i, who also happens to be a guy I’ve followed on twitter and respected for his thinking, was one of the dissenters. The meat of his blog post wasn’t really what I had issue with though. Again, we’re all entitled to our opinions. We’re all entitled to say, well, that’s not how I would have approached it…if you will, the end doesn’t always justify the means. No, the part I took umbrage with was actually a remark he left in the comments, in response to my feedback on his post. In his original post, David wrote, “The problem for Walgreens is that it’s bringing a lot of extra negative attention to the issue.” I questioned it, because by every evaluative tool we’re using, it’s just not factual. But, during our back and forth, he responded with regards to where all this negative feedback was coming from and his answer was:

“Oh, and the coverage from Ad Age, Social Commerce Today, my blog and others seem to be bringing added negative attention. Maybe it’s not a lot compared to other controversies Walgreens has faced, but it’s also potentially just starting. Even the tweets themselves include what – anecdotally from the dozens I’ve read in this unscientific sample size – I’d consider negative attention.”

On a lot of levels it’s comical. As an industry we demand analytics, results and ROI. We laud those who claim we can’t truly measure our impact in social media. We point to the tools that are available, the models that can be created and the case studies that exist, as proof that we can in fact measure social media.  Yet, when we measure social media, when we scrutinize it, when we evaluate it, when we have the proof points staring us in the face…we still poke holes if the data doesn’t substantiate our own opinions.

That said, let’s break this down, because this is an important concept for any person in a leadership capacity to understand:

1. Don’t make decisions on what AdAge, the New York Times, Seth Godin or any person/company/publication will think, unless your strategy is focused on making sure you earn their praise, support, etc. Their job is to cover the story and your job is to trust your insights and gut.
2. Never use anecdotal feedback as a proxy for real data. It’s not a good substitute and can lead you astray.
3. Remember insights lead to strategy and strategy leads to the plan. If your insights are solid and strategy grounded in those insights the plan rarely fails.
4. Understand your audience. Similar to #1, you need to know who you’re trying to reach and what message you’re trying to deliver. In this case, the people were trying to reach don’t read Ad Age, Social Commerce Today or David’s blog. Heck, they don’t read my blog.

So long as there are means to have a voice, like blogs, there will always be opinion makers. There will always be people who will sing your praises and those who will question. Don’t get too excited by the praise and don’t get too disappointed by the criticism.  Rarely, is either group, close enough to the situation to make their feedback justified.

Trust your insights and play for the fans, not the critics.

I see the digital/social world a lot differently these days. Transitioning from the agency side to the client side can have that type of impact. Blatantly stealing the concept of “10 Things I Think I Think” from Peter King at SI, I wanted to capture the 10 things on my mind for 2012.

1. We’re going to see a great deal more consolidation in the social services and software space a la Radian6 and Salesforce. This will lead to fewer options, less innovation, but greater adoption by corporate organizations.
2. The 3 social platforms I’m doubling down on are Get Glue, Pinterest and Google+. They have the right intersection of features, natural consumer behavior, and simplicity to generate scale and enterprise adoption.
3. Conversely, 3 platforms that have gotten a lot of attention, but I’m not bullish on for the enterprise are tumblr, Path (though personally, I love it) and Oink.  They’re all too niche or lack many of the necessary features needed by the enterprise to justify interest, dollars and adoption.
4. More and more organizations will hire “heads” or “leaders” of social to help them take advantage of the space. This will be good for the industry. These heads will hopefully bring balance by eliminating hype and keeping people who thrive on hype, honest.  Additionally, I’ve seen other prognosticators indicating an end of the “Social Media Strategist” role and I couldn’t disagree more.  While, that role may eventually change, morph, and probably fold into the “Marketing” or “Digital/Interactive” role, make no mistake companies like buckets and definitions. Social still being new, will lend itself to being put into manageable buckets by organizations. Those manageable buckets require titles and organizational structures that clearly define boundaries.
5. Facebook is going to see serious backlash from marketers. They will no longer be able to simply rely on the fact that they are the biggest social network out there. The lack of data transparency, real analytics and their constantly changing platform that’s skewed toward making your purchase ads to create visibility, will lead marketers to consider, “what is my Facebook exit strategy?”
6. We’re going to see a large number of companies launch in the social insights space. Our problem isn’t having enough data. If anything we have too much data.  What we lack are insights from the data.  Companies like Crimson Hexagon are in a great position to take advantage of this trend.
7. There will be an unfortunate amount of companies trying to socialize everything. This will lead to poor user experiences, bad marketing and jump the shark moments like GM/Chevy crowd sourcing their Super Bowl spot.
8. There will be a backlash similar to what we observed in 2001, where companies will no longer accept half-baked and poorly thought out strategies.  If you will, we’ll see serious curbing of of social ideas for social sake…or to check a box. There will be great rigor being applied to the evaluation of ideas.  Those companies speaking in a language of likes, followers and impressions are destined to earn raised eyebrows and clenched pocketbooks.
9. The social media “old boys club” will finally see real cracks. It will no longer be acceptable for social media thought leaders to simply pat one another on the back. As competition increases in this space, it will become counter productive to not call BS and hold others accountable for what they say, think and write.
10. We will see a major class action lawsuit or congressional inquiry into the privacy, or rather, the lack their of of social networks. Facebook will draw the lion’s share of attention, but companies like foursquare, Google, twitter and others will also come under fire.  People…the customers…the members will take back their privacy.

We’ll have to revisit this list next year, at this time, to see how I did!

It’s been a while since my last post. Too long. It’s not for lack of content. Believe me, I’ve had plenty on my mind, that’s worth sharing. A few things happened that brought my writing to a screeching halt:

1. I’ve been swamped at the office working on some very exciting new projects
2. I broke my hand which makes typing challenging at best
3. I’ve been doing a lot more travel than normal and using the flight time to catch up on sleep
4. I spent the last week in Florida with the kids at Disney World

Excuses, I know, we all have them. So with all that said, rather than write an ungodly amount of posts, I’m opting to condense all my ramblings into 3 posts with 5 focus areas. This is the first.

1. We launched 4 the first ever Walgreens Photo Blog, titled “Walgreens Snaps.” I got the privilege of crafting the first post. I’m excited about this blog because it’s content that our community wants and it’s going to drive serious SEO performance for our Photo Site.
2. Like many early adopter brands, we launched our official Walgreens Google+ page. We’re still figuring out how we’ll use Google+, but I can tell you that Hangouts will be a major part of how we find success on Google+.
3. “First To Know” launched on our Walgreens Facebook page. First to know is about rewarding our most plugged in community members. By signing up for first to know, Facebook community members will be alerted to great deals, special offers and more, before ANYONE else learns about it. The response has been great since launching 2 weeks ago.
4. Our Walgreens Social Media team won a Chicago Interactive Marketing Association award for our Flu Check-In program. While I’m not an award junky like Creative Directors at Leo Burnett, I think awards are a great sense of validation for the ideas we’re bringing to market. Part of our KPIs this year are 5 projects that meet the Return On Amazing criteria…with 3 of them needing to win awards. This helps keep the bar high and all of us focused on big ideas that drive the organization.
5. Our Social Media team started as a team of 1 and now we’re a team of 7 with 2 more hires to go. Sam Ogborn and Eric Gottloeb are our 2 newest hires. Both bring great experience…REAL experience, as opposed to “consultative” experience that’s focused on theory. To go from 1 to 7 inside of 7 months…and eventually 9, definitely shows you how important social is to our organization.