Tag Archive: Best Of

Southwest Shows Us The Way

Written on February 14, 2010 by Adam in Marketing & Advertising
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If you’re a normal person, you spent the weekend with your family, friends, relaxing, enjoying some well needed rest and relaxation, and tuning into the Winter Olympics. But, if you were like me, your eyes were transfixed on twitter instead of the TV. This weekend we watched a very angry Kevin Smith (yes, that Kevin Smith) vent his frustration at Southwest Airlines.

Let me give you the high-level version of the story:

  1. Kevin Smith is booked on a Southwest flight; he purchased two tickets…which equals two seats
  2. He changes the flight
  3. He flys standby…in flying standby he only has one seat, no longer two
  4. He’s a large man and does not fit into one seat; thus violating Southwest’s pre-existing policy
  5. Southwest kicks him off the plane, offers him a $100.00 voucher, and rebooks him on a later flight
  6. Kevin Smith launches an explicative filled tirade against Southwest on twitter

Southwest is known for great customer service. I, like many people, watched with fascination as Southwest tried to deal with the situation. Would they buckle under the weight (no pun intended) of Kevin Smith’s followers and clout?

Well, they handled the situation with calm, grace, honesty and most importantly EQUALITY. They offered up several tweets, phone calls and finally a blog post.  The Southwest blog has been inundated with traffic, which has ground their site to a screeching halt. With that in mind, here’s the full text of their blog post response to the situation.

NOT SO SILENT BOB

Many of you reached out to us via Twitter last night and today regarding a situation a Customer Twittered about that occurred on a Southwest flight. It is not our customary method of Customer Relations to be so public in how we work through these situations, but with so many people involved in the occurrence, you also should be involved in the solution. First and foremost, to Mr. Smith; we would like to echo our Tweets and again offer our heartfelt apologies to you. We are sincerely sorry for your travel experience on Southwest Airlines.

As soon as we saw the first Tweet from Mr. Smith, we contacted him personally to apologize for his experience and to address his concerns on both Twitter and with a personal phone call. Since the situation has received a lot of public attention, we’d like to take the opportunity to address a few of the specifics here as well.

Mr. Smith originally purchased two Southwest seats on a flight from Oakland to Burbank – as he’s been known to do when traveling on Southwest. He decided to change his plans and board an earlier flight to Burbank, which technically means flying standby. As you may know, airlines are not able to clear standby passengers until all Customers are boarded. When the time came to board Mr. Smith, we had only a single seat available for him to occupy. Our pilots are responsible for the Safety and comfort of all Customers on the aircraft and therefore, made the determination that Mr. Smith needed more than one seat to complete his flight. Our Employees explained why the decision was made, accommodated Mr. Smith on a later flight, and issued him a $100 Southwest travel voucher for his inconvenience.

You’ve read about these situations before. Southwest instituted our Customer of Size policy more than 25 years ago. The policy requires passengers that can not fit safely and comfortably in one seat to purchase an additional seat while traveling. This policy is not unique to Southwest Airlines and it is not a revenue generator. Most, if not all, carriers have similar policies, but unique to Southwest is the refunding of the second seat purchased (if the flight does not oversell) which is greater than any revenue made (full policy can be found here). The spirit of this policy is based solely on Customer comfort and Safety. As a Company committed to serving our Customers in Safety and comfort, we feel the definitive boundary between seats is the armrest. If a Customer cannot comfortably lower the armrest and infringes on a portion of another seat, a Customer seated adjacent would be very uncomfortable and a timely exit from the aircraft in the event of an emergency might be compromised if we allow a cramped, restricted seating arrangement.

I love Kevin Smith. I love his movies, except Jersey Girl. Mallrats, specifically, holds a special place in my heart. So, as you’d imagine, part of me was pulling for Kevin Smith. Initially…that is. But, as I watched Kevin Smith act like a petulant child, my allegiance switched. And, then after reading their official blog post response, I was 100% in the Southwest camp.

See, celebrities love to think they are above everyone else. You only need to read TMZ to see the countless number of examples that validate that sentiment. Where as many companies would have simply kissed Kevin Smith’s derriere and treated him with kid gloves, Southwest did something simple, but remarkable. They treated Kevin Smith the same way they’d treat everyone.

Southwest has a simple policy. Kevin Smith was clearly aware of the policy…seeing as he normally buys two seats. Those two simple facts alone make this an open and shut case. If Kevin Smith and every other potential and current Southwest customer wants to avoid this problem in the future they should simply put the donut down.

As someone who flies every single week, I can tell you that it’s simply not fair that I pay for a seat, but only get to use 2/3 of it because the person next to me is taking up 1 1/3 seats. This wasn’t a new policy from Southwest. They weren’t singling Kevin Smith out. What Southwest was doing was being simple, honest and fair. If only every company out there was like Southwest.

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Why The Agency Of The Future Looks Like My Fantasy Baseball Team

Written on January 24, 2010 by Adam in Marketing & Advertising
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You know what I love about fantasy sports? I get to play the role of general manager and customize a team to my liking. I’m an Atlanta Braves baseball fan. And as much as I love my Braves, the reality is at the beginning of the year, I’m stuck with the team they’ve put together. But, when I’m playing fantasy baseball I get to choose the combination of players I want…the ones I think are best for my team philosophy…the ones who will help me be a champion at the end of the season.

Essentially, what I get to do is create a custom team. Custom is a beautiful thing. It’s the kind of thing that people are willing to pay more for. Whether it’s clothes, cars, jewelry, kitchens, houses, shoes, etc.; people pay more for custom.

But, think about the traditional client-agency model. It’s not custom at all. Client X choose agency Y. Agency Y now puts together a “custom” team to work on that client’s business. There’s only one problem. This custom team is being put together from a small pool of talent. It’s a small pool of talent because a good portion of the agency’s talent is already assigned to other clients. Most of the A level talent is stretched too thin or pre-allocated to a specific existing client. So when the agency wins a new piece of business they ultimately combine internal talent (limited pool) with external new talent (also a limited pool) to create a “custom” team.

Hmm…that doesn’t seem very custom does it? Enfatico, was an attempt to create a custom agency offering to support one client: Dell. It was created at the request of Dell, not at the request of WPP leadership. It failed. It failed miserably. It didn’t fail because of lack of effort. No, it failed because Martin Sorrell “drafted” the wrong people to put on his team. It failed because Enfatico, was owned by WPP and therefore had to leverage the WPP network for talent, operations, logistics, etc. Essentially, they shrunk the draft pool and after shrinking the draft pool they drafted horribly.

Despite Enfatico’s failure, I think they were on to something. I think they were on to what the future of agencies will look like. Dell was bold in asking for a custom agency to support their business. They saw that the traditional agency model was not going to drive them to success. But, they made a mistake in using an agency holding company as the general manager/contractor.

You’d think with Enfatico’s rapid demise, I’d be supporting the status quo. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. See, I think clients are going to learn from the mistakes Enfatico made, but leverage the strengths of the concept. Let me break it down:

  1. You’re a client. You want the best of the best working on your business. You’ve finally realized that the old way of shopping for an agency just isn’t working.
  2. You also realize that it’s time to stop nickel and dime-ing your agency partners…and if you’re willing to pay more than you have in the past, you also want something better than what you’ve gotten in the past.
  3. That means, you’re ready to pay for custom. So instead of hiring a consultant to lead an agency review, you hire a consultant that acts more like a general manager/contractor. Their role is to assemble the best collection of talent against a defined set of roles. In short, they are responsible for recommending the draft choices. Ultimately, the client gets the final say on who gets “drafted.”
  4. Now, because you’re willing to pay for top talent, the entire market is open. The draft pool is equal to the size of those people in the industry or simply interested. Everyone, is an option.
  5. So, you might score person X from Ogilvy to be your lead account person, person Y from Edelman to head up PR, people form W+K, Crispin, BBH, etc. for your creative team, and the list goes on and on. Literally, imagine a situation where you the entire universe is your talent pool, you can draft a team of high quality talent, sign them to contracts (ensures continuity), and then let them run wild on your business.

That’s the future of the client-agency relationship folks. There’s no doubt about it. Of course, future, is a loose term. It might not happen in 2010 or 2011, but make no mistake, it’s coming. Agencies that start snatching up talent, regardless of existing need, will be the ones who make it. Look how smart Edelman was to lure David Armano away from Dachis and then pair him with Steve Rubel. You could literally argue that Edelman has positioned itself as the de facto leader in interactive strategy, social business and consumer insights.

This isn’t a crazy concept.  For years this is how broadcast production has been done.  Agencies came up with the idea and then worked with the best producer, director, editing house, etc. to come up with the best execution.  In the last few years we’ve seen the same thing happen with interactive/digital production.  Perhaps my favorite example of this was when BBDO rode Big Spaceship to a Cannes Lion…and then of course didn’t credit them for any of the work.

If there’s one thing that’s always on every agency’s business plan every year, it’s the need to improve the talent. Unfortunately, not many agencies are willing to commit the time and dollars to do it…and to be honest, why should they, when clients historically have refused to pay more for that added talent.

I’ve got a feeling that’s all going to change. CMOs, VPs of Marketing, agency executives, and the like; stop reading AdAge and stop doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results.  Instead, start learning how to play fantasy baseball and pick up a copy of Moneyball. The future of your business just might depend on it.

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How To Kill Off The Paparazzi

Written on November 28, 2009 by Adam in Marketing & Advertising
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We know that celebrities hate the paparazzi. Hell, I hate the paparazzi. In my personal, but not professional opinion, they are one of the lowest forms of scum on the planet. But, they exist because publications like OK!, US Weekly, and TMZ exist. We can safely assume that the public has an interest in celebrities. You need only look at the check out aisles of grocery stores to know that’s a safe bet.

Ok…lately we’ve seen a lot of talk about access to content. From Murdoch cutting off Google’s access to Chris Anderson’s great post and book Free we’re all talking about the value of content.  There’s a reason we’re all talking about the value of content.  Once you assign a value to the content, we can determine it’s worth and how much we should charge for it.  More importantly, once we know how much it’s worth, people, rich people, will start to determine how much they’ll pay to own the source and distribution of the content.

With the recent sale of BusinessWeek to Bloomberg for ONLY $5,000,000.00 I got to thinking…which can be a dangerous proposition mind you. Let’s look at the dots we have:

  1. Celebs loath the paparazzi
  2. The paparazzi exist because publications pay them for content
  3. Consumers by purchasing this content are directly (e.g. magazine purchase/subscription) or indirectly (e.g. visit to a website that is selling ad space) funding the existence of the paparazzi
  4. Print media usage and the value of print media companies is declining dramatically
  5. Celebrities are rich and have a common enemy (see #1)

If BusinessWeek sold for $5 million, how much do you think OK!, US Weekly, Star, and the like are worth collectively? Well, for argument’s sake let’s assume they are collectively worth $500 million. I realize it’s an absurd number, but let’s roll with it for now. If the top 10 richest celebrities pooled their money they’d be able to purchase these publications dozens of times over and then shut them down completely. With all the publications gone, who’s going to pay the paparazzi? With no one to pay the paparazzi, they’d have to turn to other meaningful, less scummy ways, of making a living.

I contemplated the concept of simply paying off the paparazzi not to act like leaches; kind of like a reverse IZEA scheme, but I quickly realized there are too many of them to pay off, too many who could pop up and want to be paid off, and more importantly they were a symptom, not the problem.  The publishers are the problem.  If you cut them out, everything else falls apart.

I ran this concept by my wife to make sure I wasn’t completely nuts.  After all, if this was so simple why hasn’t someone else thought about it?  She asked, “well, wouldn’t someone just create another site like TMZ or create their own new magazine?”  Hmm, well it’s possible.  Hell, it’s likely.  But, here’s the problem I see with it.  In this kind of game it would be too difficult and too expensive to go from start up to success ASAP.  Think about it.  You’re the editor at OK! Magazine.  You get bought out by this celeb conglomerate.  They fire you and dissolve the company.  So you say to yourself, “I’ve got connections, I know people, I know this business, I’ll create my own publication and stick it to them.”  Hmm.  Well, sure, you could bootstrap a tiny operation, work out of your basement, and put together a great concept.  But, you’d need cash to pay the paparazzi for the content.  You’d need cash to advertise your existence.  You’d need cash for distribution and printing (assuming you decided to go magazine style).  That’s a lot of cash and the reality is they celebs can outspend you left and right.  If this were a pay-per-click game, you’d get eaten alive.  And guess what, you’re going to need PPC to make a dent, because your company would have ZERO awareness.

Crazy? Sure. Totally possible? You bet. Would it work? I have no idea, but when you consider Nicholas Cage spends $250,000 on dinosaur skulls, it’s not like it’s not worth a shot.

Hmm…maybe all that thinking I was doing, wasn’t so crazy after all.

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Do Thought Leaders Need To Be Practitioners?

Written on July 28, 2009 by Adam in Marketing & Advertising
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One of the things I love about twitter is the free flowing dialog that can take place. I found myself in an interesting conversation with one of my favorite tweeters @schneidermike. What I like about Mike is that he always has an opinion and he’s not afraid to take a different point of view. Honestly, on twitter, that’s a unique characteristic. In truth there’s too much “playing nice” on twitter. Mike gives it straight and I love that quality.

Our conversation tonight stemmed from this tweet in which he said, “Besides @chrisbrogan, who are your favorite CRM experts?”  As we traded tweets back and forth I was taking the position that, Chris isn’t a CRM expert and he certainly isn’t a Social Media “thought leader.” Again, I’m entitled to my opinions, just like Mike is.

The one tweet that stuck out to me in our exchange was this one, in which Mike said “whoa there buckaroo! a thought leader does not need to be a practitioner.” Mike was responding to a tweet I wrote that stated “@schneidermike you’re killing me – thought leadership in social – show me the portfolio, what has he done?”

In short, Mike’s stance was that you don’t have to “do” to be a recognized leader. I realize I’m paraphrasing by the way. While, my point of view is that a true expert and leader should be able to practice what he/she preaches. What I don’t want is someone that walks into a room, talks a bunch of philosophy, but then can’t deliver.

Think about this situation…you meet with a lawyer because you’re being sued. You ask to see his body of work…his credentials if you will. He responds instead with a passionate speech about the legal system, due process, and American value that would put Al Pacino to shame. You’re pumped, you’re excited, and then you realize the lawyer totally avoided the question…because in truth he has no credentials and has no ability to go from THEORY and PHILOSOPHY to actual practical means. Total bummer.

To me, my exchange with Mike shows the big problem I have with our industry and social media as a whole. We have too many theorizers, talkers, and philosophers who become seen as experts despite their inability to put together a solid actionable plan. This screws it up for every single smart strategist, marketer, etc. out there, because we get tainted with the smell of people who are essentially all talk and no show. Not cool.

Am I wrong? As Mike says, “a thought leader does not need to be a practitioner.” Do you believe this? I don’t. I think there’s a big difference between talking about hitting a baseball…the science and physics behind it – and the ability to actually hit one.

Your thoughts?

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The Next Evolution Of Publishing – Or How I Can Save Traditional Media

Written on May 12, 2009 by Adam in Marketing & Advertising
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You know that scene in every action movie where someone says, “you know, it’s so crazy, it might work.” Well, this is one of the scenes. Tools like WordPress, Blogger, and Drupal have empowered everyone to be a potential publisher. That’s right, YOU, can make and report on the news…or just about anything for that matter.

News networks like CNN have even created programs that let the public create the news.  The day Google News started including blogs with traditional news publications (eg WSJ and NY Times), it was clear something was changing…or maybe it had changed. Individuals were now being given near instant credibility by Google. Very cool.

The media outlets like Fox, MSNBC, and Tribune Co. continue to have their journalistic credibility questioned. This happened throughout the 2008 presidential election. Hell, it’s still happening if you listen to the jokes at the White House Correspondence Dinner.

OK so we have:

  1. Technology enabling people to become self publishers
  2. New networks leveraging people for stories
  3. Individuals being given near equal credibility to long established publications
  4. A certain level of public mis-trust of the media

So what am I missing? Oh, two other things:

  1. The concept of personal branding is at an all time high
  2. Newspapers are closing down left and right

This is the part now, where I lean in, and almost with a whisper say, “I’ve got an idea so crazy, it might just work.”

I want to turn the publishing model upside down. I think people would pay publishers to let them have a daily, weekly, or monthly column. Yeap, that’s right I think people would pay the NY Post to have their name seen in ink. REAL INK. Not just digital ink, but real ink on paper.

Think I’m crazy? Ok, walk with me for a second. Companies are always pitching publications for a chance to have a featured column. Really. Companies kill themselves trying to get 1,000 words. You know why? Because their name and their company in a publication carries clout with the industry, analysts, clients, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a mutual exchange taking place when it actually happens. AdAge for example gets great content from Steve Rubel, that their readers want to read. In exchange Steve is able to build his brand and Edelman’s. Seems like a fair exchange.

I think this could work. It’s a win-win. People build their personal brands, the publications/newspapers/etc. get fresh content and a revenue stream, and the public hears from real people.

So that’s my plan. Wall Street Journal – I’ll pay you $12,000 annually for a weekly column. You game?

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We’re Being Shackled

Written on May 6, 2009 by Adam in Marketing & Advertising
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Everything we do on the web is measurable.  Every click on a site, search on Google, and video watched on YouTube is measurable.  That concept is the bedrock of why investing in interactive makes so much sense.  With data comes insights.  With insights comes the ability to optimize.  When we optimize we become more successful.  Makes sense, right?  I’m sure many of you have even had similar conversations with clients and colleagues.

So, how is it, in this era of “transparency” that two of the biggest players (Facebook and Twitter) in the social space refuse to give us access to analytics?  Have you ever wondered how many times your twitter profile was visited?  Who was checking it out and from where?  If you’re a brand that information is invaluable.  Tumblr, does offer the ability to do some of this, because you can integrate Google Analytics into your Tumblr profile.  It’s such a powerful feature.  Now I can look at the AGGREGATED traffic and engagement taking place on this site and on Tumblr.  With real estate being king and the unique visitor metric meaning less, we need the ability to measure the collective footprint a brand has on the web.

If we’re really moving into the era of the social web how is it we can’t measure a good majority of it?  Great, you’ve got 15,000 Facebook Fans.  But, does Facebook give you the tools to measure who those people are?  For example, age, location, and gender?  Nope. What about how often they visit the page?  Nope.  At a narcisistic level, wouldn’t you like to know who and how many people are looking at your Facebook profile?  LinkedIn lets you do this if you have a “pro” account.  Seems simple, so why isn’t Facebook offering it?  I’d pay for that feature.

Maybe the reason we’re being shackled is because the data that we view as a critical component to being successful is the holy grail for monetization.  How much would you pay to have access to data about your twitter profile page?  Maybe not much if you’re an individual, but what if you’re a brand or managing a brand’s page?  Wouldn’t you you like to know more than simply how many followers you have?  Of course you would and you’d pay handsomely for it because it justifies the existence of the presence on twitter.

Make no mistake about it, we’re being shackled and it’s about time we were unshackled.

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Rethink The Funnel – Why Real Estate Is King

Written on May 5, 2009 by Adam in Marketing & Advertising
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By now those who know me are tiring of my constant cry, “Real Estate Is King.” I’ve been telling anyone who’d listen for the past year and a half that your brands need to be owning property all over the monopoly board. Just owning Boardwalk isn’t going to cut it.

What does that mean? Since the dawn of the internet we’ve all been following the same funnel based model for success:

  1. Run a bunch of advertising
  2. Have the call to action for the advertising be to the brand’s site
  3. Get people on to the site
  4. Convert the people

In applying this model we were trying to drive traffic to 1 destination. In doing so, the focus was always on Unique Visitors. The baseline and focal point for success rested on increasing the number of unique visitors. If you were estimating a conversion benchmark of 10%, having more unique visitors increased the total number of conversions. Makes sense.

But, in leveraging that model, we didn’t take into account all the other interactions taking place throughout the web. Often these interactions were smaller…micro if you will. Despite being small, they definitely mattered; and they still do.

As companies look to engage consumers where they are (Twitter, Blogs, Facebook, etc.) something interesting is going to happen. Unique Visitors to the site are going to decrease. They’re going to matter less because the funnel isn’t linear.

Best Buy and Amazon recently announced that they are going to make their inventory available to any and all developers who want to create apps, widgets, or the like so that sales of the product could happen on this site. The idea is that they don’t care where the sale takes place, so long as it takes place.  The path to purchase isn’t linear. Think about it. You could be on Facebook with the Amazon App installed, see a deal on that book you added to your wish list, and then buy it right there…with NO need to visit Amazon.com. Now, that’s value.

But, what are we going to do about those decreased traffic numbers? The implications are huge. Online publishers set their value based on their audience size. Is your site less valuable because it now gets less traffic? Again, maybe the real point is we need to look beyond unique visitors when determining what success looks like.

Make no mistake about it, real estate is king. If your focused on hoping people land on Boardwalk you’re going to lose this game. Start buying up property now.

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It’s Not About Where You Are – It’s About Who You’re With

Written on May 1, 2009 by Adam in Marketing & Advertising
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A few weeks ago I wrote a post titled “It’s Not Who You Are – It’s Where You Are.”

Several things have happened over the past few weeks that have me thinking about how to extend that concept.

  1. Had several great exchanges via twitter with Norbert Mayer-Wittmann about communities.
  2. Read some interesting posts by Stephen Baker about the concept of “friends” and “friendship.” It’s something I’ve been pondering for a while as well. Specifically the definition of a friend on Facebook.
  3. Unlinked my twitter feed from my Facebook account. This meant people I was friends with were no longer seeing what I was doing and saying on twitter. Since I did that, I’ve received a lot of thank you messages from my Facebook friends. I also haven’t updated my Facebook status since I unliked the two.
  4. Started experimenting with Tumblr.
  5. Read this great post from Stephen Baker and Ben Elowitz regarding how to make Business Exchange better.
  6. Took another trip to MySpace and quickly left.
  7. Created my Google profile which links all my profiles together.

Basically I’ve been doing a lot of reading, conversing, and learning about communication, communities, and integration.

Conceptually, I’ve always believed that it’s not about twitter vs. Facebook vs. MySpace vs. something else. I’ve generally prescribed to the fact each network has it’s own reason for being.

Earlier today, I felt like I made a breakthrough in my thinking. It’s not about where you are, it’s about who you’re with. The reason I don’t use MySpace (beyond it’s horrible interface) is that none of my “friends” are there. The reason I’m struggling with Tumblr (despite the fact I love its interface) is that none of my “friends” are there.  Where your “friends” are leads to the joining and retaining of you in a community.

I remember as a teenager going to a really crappy movie just to hang out with my girlfriend at the time. I tolerated a bad movie, at a less than desirable theater, that was 45 miles from home, and had bad popcorn. Why? Because I enjoyed the company. We make similar decisions every day.

Where our friends are can impact where we work, where we eat lunch, the gym we belong to, and yes the social communities we join. But, here’s the thing – your work friends aren’t the same as your old high school friends. Communicating with all your friends the same way is a recipe for failure. Consider who your friends are and where they are – when you do that you just might rethink how to communicate with them.

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Twitter Has Gone Mainstream

Written on April 18, 2009 by Adam in Marketing & Advertising, Misc., News
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Yesterday, April 17, 2009 will mark the day twitter went mainstream. Oprah dedicated an entire segment of her show to twitter. As part of the show she proclaimed Ashton Kutcher the king of twitter for beating CNN for the right to be the first member of twitter with 1,000,000 followers.

Folks, the levy has broken and twitter is no longer a cool, niche, and quaint community of bleeding edge participants. Get ready to see your mom following you on twitter. Scary. I know.

In full disclosure, I’m not a fan of Oprah. However, her segment on twitter was brilliant. These two videos do a great job of helping anyone and everyone understand the birth of twitter, why it exists, and how to use it.

The key quotes from the videos are twitter “democratizes media” and “in some ways this is kind of a commentary on the state of media – because I believe that we’re at a place now with social media where one person’s voice can be as powerful as an entire news network, an entire media network.”  Pretty powerful.  I expect those quotes to be over used in presentations from agencies and marketers to their clients.

So What Does This Mean

  1. We’re going to see a shift from push to pull. No longer is it going to be the agencies and bleeding edge trying to get clients and brand managers to embrace twitter. They’re going to start asking about it. So you better be on twitter. If you aren’t; you’re not going to have any credibility.
  2. The noise to signal ratio is going to skyrocket. The number of new people joining twitter will be enormous. As these new people try to “figure out” twitter, existing long time users will see the quality of tweets decrease.
  3. We’re going to need metrics…real metrics. As I’ve stated hundreds of times before if you just evaluate a tweeter based on the number of followers, Britney Spears with a whopping 119 updates would be #3. Those 119 updates have come over the last 7 months. That amounts to roughly 4 tweets a week. Qualitatively, the tweets are useless making the numbers even more polarizing.
  4. Now, more than ever, we need a method for evaluating the quality of a tweeter. I’ve long pushed for some type of thumbs up/thumbs down approach that’s similar to Pandora. If millions of new people to twitter simply follow the people with the most followers (it makes sense to take that approach) they’re going to be disappointed with twitter and never see the full value. We all lose if that happens.
  5. Long time twitter veterans and power users (aka us geeks) will start flocking to other sites like Tumblr and FriendFeed. Why? Because you lose the cool factor when you’re at the same bar as everyone else.  This is a critical point because it’s not about twitter or Facebook or Tumblr.  It’s about ALL of these things.  You don’t need a twitter strategy or a Facebook campaign – you NEED a social media strategy.

The next few months are going to be interesting.  One thing is certain – if you are in the PR, marketing, interactive, web, or technology space you need to be on twitter, if only to understand what the hell everyone is talking about.  I suggest you join now, it takes less than 2 minutes.

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It’s Not Who You Are – It’s Where You Are

Written on April 8, 2009 by Adam in Marketing & Advertising
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For years marketers have focused on who the consumer is. Are they male? Female? 18 – 24? Making more than 35K? And the list goes and on and on. Marketing mix models are based on and rooted in demographic data about consumers. Inevitably, this leads to a conversation where a brand manager says ”we need to target the right consumer segments.” After all we don’t want any other segment buying our product.

This has always bothered me. Wouldn’t it be better if everyone bought our product, independent of their demographic information? Look at the iPod. Do you think Apple cares that both 60 year old men and 14 year old women buy the iPod? Of course not; a sale is a sale. There even going to start selling iPhones in Wal*Mart. I’d venture to guess if they focused only on “who” Wal*Mart would not have been a distribution option.

Loopt Screen Shot

Loopt Screen Shot

Lately, it seems people are catching religion and evolving beyond pure demographics. My feeling is that we’re just about ready to jump on the “where are consumers” band wagon. Tools like Loopt and BrightKite cater specifically this concept. They allow users to see where are other users are. The new version of AOL Instant Messenger and Tweetie apps for the iPhone both offer the ability to see where other users of that app are. The applications and tools are nice, but it’s the sophistication of mobile devices and their adoption by consumers that are enabling this shift to happen. Hell, the iPhone has built in GPS so that you always know exactly where you are.

So why does this even matter? Simple – the demographics become irrelevant on some level. This is a huge win for the consumer. The offers they’ll receive will be high value and designed to generate a sale immediately. Offers won’t be tiered because everyone is in play.

Think about the following scenario.

  1. You’re in downtown Chicago on Michigan avenue
  2. You’re just about to call it a day
  3. As you approach Ohio St. your phone beeps alerting you to a special buy one get offer at the Gap
  4. While you don’t REALLY need anything specific, how can you pass up a buy one get one offer
  5. So you saunter into the Gap and end up getting two new t-shirts
  6. As you leave the Gap, your phone vibrates
  7. You look down to see a Thank You message from the Gap and an eReceipt from your purchase

We’re not too far away from this happening. Coupons Inc. is already serving up coupons inside of Google Maps. That’s a step in the right direction because Coupons Inc. and Google Maps don’t care who you are – they only care about where you’re going.

We already are operating in a world of RIGHT NOW. It’s the reason that interactive marketers are so excited about twitter. It’s about the here and now. Well where you are is the here and now. How fast will we move in this direction? Are marketers ready? Are consumers ready?

This is exciting.

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Interactive marketer, innovator, boat rocker, continuous learner, movie lover, risk taker, dad and all around good guy. I'm always up for a spirited conversation. These are my thoughts and ramblings, not those of my employer.
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