Al Pacino, in the movie The Devil’s Advocate said, “Vanity is definitely my favorite sin. Self-love, the all-natural opiate.”  He’s right.  Today we have so many tools and platforms, many of them free, that lets us have not only a voice, but a means to distribute, share and syndicate that voice.  The problem is that many of us seem to think that just because we have a platform and a voice that we are now worth listening to…and ultimately rock stars in our own mind.

I’ve argued often that social “media” has created a clear class system where the “elite” simply exist to pat themselves on the back and rarely, if at all, hold each other accountable.  I challenge you to find a situation where a social “elite” has openly disagreed with another.  Good luck.  You might find the needle in the haystack, but that’s exactly what it is…an exception to the rule.  This could only be happening for one of two reasons:

1. All of these people think alike, in which case, we’re doomed by narrow minded thinking and a lack of progressive thought leadership.
2. The culture of the elite is to simply nod your head, pat one another on the back and never rock the boat.

I lean toward #2.

Enter Empire Avenue, the latest social networking platform to grace the web.  What is it you ask?  Well, in their own words:

Empire Avenue is the Social Media Exchange, where you can buy and sell shares in any social media profile, meet new people, unlock Achievement badges, and earn boatloads of virtual cash by being active and social online! Buy shares in your friends, your followers, people with similar interests, brands you love, celebrities – anyone! All using a virtual currency and all for free!

The first half of the description is really all you need to know.  Have we jumped the shark?  We’re now treating people like stocks, where we can buy, trade and sell shares in them?  Needless to say the social media elite club believe this is the next best thing since FlipBoard (by the way how is that colossal failure doing?) or Google Wave (I’ll withhold my laughing).

Empire Avenue, is exactly what’s wrong with the industry at the moment.  We have an environment, akin to high school culture, where the elite stick together, rarely let the non-elite in (well unless you’re a client, with money) and create systems that allow for the perpetuation of ego building.  Do you think Jeremiah Owyang will ever “downgrade” Robert Scoble’s stock?  Not gonna happen.  Let’s treat this like the stock market…what we’re going to see is an over-valuation of people’s social media stock, that’s reminiscent of the dot-com bubble and Enron, because the elite will simply inflate one another’s stock.  That’s not a free market.  That’s not a stock market.  That’s a popularity contest.

Clearly, I have a specific point of view.  And, let’s be honest, one that generally runs contrary to the social media elite.  However, unlike them, I’m open to alternate points of view.  Scott Monty does a great job of explaining the platform, offers his perspective on why some people are flocking to it and outlines some of the bigger implications.  Though I’m nowhere near as bullish as he is about Empire Avenue, I think Scott does a great job of breaking it all down and giving us a reason to consider why Empire Avenue could find a niche.

I think I’m just tired of the vanity that’s in social media.  If social media is supposed to be about connected with people, sharing, being authentic, helping, and all these other esoteric and good natured concepts, why do we keep creating, perpetuating an investing the culture that runs counter to all of that?

If you’ve been working professionally for at least 1 year, I’m sure the phrase, “death by PowerPoint” is etched into your brain.  PowerPoint and how we use has become a joke.  A colleague of mine often jokes that with PowerPoint, it’s the one time that there’s too much time spent on foreplay.  I chuckle, but she’s right.  Stop me if you’ve heard this before; but here’s how the typical PowerPoint presentation is structured:

1. What we’re going to talk about (aka the agenda)
2. Why we’re (the people in the room) here
3. The challenge
4. The research done on the challenge
5. The hypothesis/point of view/recommendation
6. The budget
7. The timing/schedule
8. The obligatory discussion slide

Are you cowering in the corner, under the harsh light of this reality?  Me too, and I was the one who just wrote it.  Even Microsoft, the architects behind PowerPoint are fed up with this approach.  CEO, Steve Ballmer was recently quoted by the New York Times with the following insight about Microsoft’s decision to move away from death by PowerPoint:

The mode of Microsoft meetings used to be: You come with something we haven’t seen in a slide deck or presentation,” he said. “You deliver the presentation. You probably take what I will call ‘the long and winding road.’ You take the listener through your path of discovery and exploration, and you arrive at a conclusion.

I decided that’s not what I want to do anymore. I don’t think it’s efficient. So most meetings nowadays, you send me the materials and I read them in advance. And I can come in and say: ‘I’ve got the following four questions. Please don’t present the deck.’ That lets us go, whether they’ve organized it that way or not, to their recommendation. And if I have questions about the long and winding road and the data and the supporting evidence, I can ask them. But it gives us greater focus.

In theory, that sounds perfect. Doesn’t it? But, it rarely happens, in my experience, for a few reasons:

1. Lack of Accountability: We sent you the deck ahead of time, with the notes, but you still didn’t read it ahead of time.  Even I’m guilty of this one.
2. Lack of Trust: Similar to Gladwell’s points in Blink, it’s tough to believe the conclusion, without the foreplay.  All the upfront slides help sell the conclusion.
3. Reliance On Linear Story Telling: We’ve been taught from a young age that stories are told in a linear fashion, with a beginning, a middle and an end.  Telling stories in a non-linear fashion does not appeal to the lowest common denominator.
4. The Need To Make The Presenter Dance: And my personal favorite…if you’ve called the meeting to present your “deck,” then I owe it to the room to make you dance, sweat and present.

I’ve seen this behavior daily, especially in the agency-client RFP scenario.  The number of times we’ve been asked to present “credentials” in the final presentation, even though by now (usually round 3) you should know who we are, what we stand for and why you should trust what we say, is just immeasurable.  But, that’s the dance we dance.

It’s not PowerPoint that’s the problem.  PowerPoint, Keynote and the rest are simply tools.  And, great tools in the hands of poor craftsmen are disasters waiting to happen.

So how do we break this cycle?  How do we change this PowerPoint culture?  The short answer is, we won’t anytime soon.  So long as corporate cultures punish risk takers, applaud playing it safe and treat “innovation” as a buzzword instead of a mindset, we’ll be stuck in the PowerPoint Conundrum.

In my own organization, I’ve tried to break free of the PowerPoint Conundrum.  Ironically, I find the people above me on the organizational chart most open to change.  It’s not the top of the pyramid that struggles with change; in fact, they’re often the ones demanding the change.  It’s the rest of the pyramid that has the problem…or rather perpetuates the problem, because they believe the organization isn’t ready for change and it’s better to play it safe.

But, I ask you if MadMen, a series set in the 1960s can understand there’s a better way to tell a story, tell me why we can’t figure it out 50 years later?

Mad Men: The Carousel from ray3c on Vimeo.

It’s a shame, really.

A few days ago the inter-web was all a flutter (especially on twitter) about Chrysler’s decision to fire, New Media Strategies, the company handling their social media engagement. An employee, who was subsequently fired by New Media Strategies, erred when he tweeted the following, “I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to fucking drive.” on behalf of Chrysler.

AdAge did a nice job of covering the whole situation here . So I won’t rehash what they’ve already covered. What I will say, is that I find it hypocritical of Chrysler to:

1. Make enough mistakes that the government (and by the government, I mean ultimately the tax payers) had to bail them out. Think of the irony, this New Media Strategies employee, is technically keeping Chrysler afloat via his taxes, as part of the bail out, and gets fired for making a mistake.
2. Launch a new advertising campaign try to make us feel good about it being an American company and feature Emnem, a poster boy for mistakes and profanity. Is not a core part of our DNA as Americans to love the idea of redemption? Isn’t that what Chrysler is hoping resonates with the American public? That we would want to Chrysler to succeed through redemption?

You could argue the mistake could have been avoided. You could argue there was no reason to ever use profanity (by the way, if you’ve never used profanity, ever, please raise your hand). But, you can’t argue with the hypocrisy of not only Chrysler, but of New Media Strategies as well.

This is America. We make mistakes and when we do, we pick ourselves up, we acknowledge them and we move on. I guess Chrysler forgot that as they were creating cars “Imported From America.”

When you talk/text/tweet/chat with someone do you use conversation enders?  I’m guilty.  The brevity that we often use in our communication often leads to conversation enders.  For example:

1. Yes
2. No
3. Sure
4. Ok
5. Interesting
6. Makes sense
7. Thanks
8. Yeap
9. 4:15
10. 10 (yes that’s a real answer)

These are all conversation enders.  If someone asks you did you like the movie Inception and you answer “yes,” that’s the end of the conversation.  If you wanted the conversation to start…or rather continue, you could answer, “yes, saw it a few weeks ago. great story, solid acting, you would definitely like it.  are you planning to see it?”  Sure it takes a little bit more effort and yes more time, but the results are so much better.

Our account planners are amazing conversation starters.  They employ techniques that keep a research interviewee talking, sharing and participating.  The richness that we ascertain from focus groups comes from having a great moderator than can probe deeper and deeper, while making it seem like it’s all part of a normal conversation.  I am continually impressed with how well they are able to keep a conversation going and their ability to avoid conversation enders.

Of late, I’ve found my own communication habits leaning toward conversation enders instead of dialogue that keeps the conversation going.  When you’re in constant communication with a wide variety of people through a wide variety of channels and platforms, it can be insanely easy to answer with 1 word responses and short phrases that end the conversation.  We’re so focused on checking off our list and moving on to the next conversation that we have lost the ability to communicate well.

I often remark in presentations about social media, that we talk less, but interact more.  As a marketer, that’s a powerful concept filled with opportunity.  As a normal person, it makes for bad dialogue that eliminates meaningful dialogue.  That can’t be good for relationships, maybe that’s why I’ve failed with so many?

I was re-watching MadMen Season 4 to get ready for season 5, and in the last episode I was struck by a quote that I clearly missed the first time I watched the episode.  Faye, after hearing about Don’s engagement tearfully tells him, he only likes “the beginnings of things.”  It’s a pretty powerful statement.  And it’s completely true.  But, isn’t it true of many of us?  There’s a certain excitement that comes from the beginning of things.  At the beginning, it’s new, it’s fresh…there’s that bit of the unknown that keeps us hooked and leaning forward.

But, what happens when it’s no longer new?  What happens when it’s not the start, but it’s the middle, the end or somewhere in between.  What happens when the newness wears off.  What happens when it all becomes familiar, when we’ve cracked the code and what was new is now the routine?

How, do you make the what’s old, feel like the how it did at the beginning?  I’ll give you the answer; it’s actually quite simple: make sure whatever the “thing” is, is worth your long term interest.  Don’t pick a job, pick a career.  Don’t leave the one you love for the one you like because the one you like will leave you for the one you love.   Choose wisely and you won’t be Don Draper, only being great at the beginning of things.

There’s been a lot of discussion about Groupon’s Super Bowl ad from Crispin, Porter + Bogusky.  The ads were deemed offensive.

I won’t get into a debate, here, about whether people just need to learn to laugh or if the ads were really offensive. Regardless of what I believe, enough people complained to make Groupon CEO, Andrew Mason, write:

Five days have passed since the Super Bowl, and one thing is clear – our ads offended a lot of people. Tuesday I posted an explanation, but as many of you have pointed out, if an ad requires an explanation, that means it didn’t work.

We hate that we offended people, and we’re very sorry that we did – it’s the last thing we wanted. We’ve listened to your feedback, and since we don’t see the point in continuing to anger people, we’re pulling the ads . . . .

Insensitivity aside, the real reason the Groupon ad missed the mark is because it had NO offer. Think about that. Groupon is a site that’s all about deals. It’s about giving you an amazing offer. The ad focused on telling that story through irony and humor…but without an offer. How do you take to the biggest stage in advertising and not hit the world over the head with what makes your company unique? Does this really surprise you though when you realize that Crispin is their agency? More mind boggling is this quote from Mason, defending CP+B:

The firm that conceived the ad, Crispin Porter & Bogusky, strives to draw attention to the cultural tensions created by brands. When they created this Hulu ad, they highlighted the idea that TV rots your brain, making fun of Hulu. Our ads highlight the often trivial nature of stuff on Groupon when juxtaposed against bigger world issues, making fun of Groupon. Why make fun of ourselves? Because it’s different – ads are traditionally about shameless self promotion, and we’ve always strived to have a more honest and respectful conversation with our customers. We would never have run these ads if we thought they trivialized the causes – even if we didn’t take them as seriously as we do, what type of company would go out of their way to be so antagonistic?

On one hand, I applaud Groupon for sticking by their agency. Many organizations would have thrown their agency under the bus. Well done Mr. Mason for realizing you hired them, you signed off on the strategy (if there was one) and you approved the creative. But, on the other hand, you support the work from CP+B, but basically saying, “well yeah, I mean that’s why we went to them, because they you know creative controversy.”

Well, while CP+B was busy helping you create controversy, it also helped you miss the right strategy and took you away from your brand’s DNA. You spent $3,000,000 to introduce your brand to 25 million people during the Super Bowl and you didn’t bring an offer to the table? Talk about a lack of call to action.

If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time.

I was reading this article on Fast Company the other day about when you should leave a job or a project.  Since I originally read it, I’ve revisited it a few times. Beyond the business advice, which I think is solid, you can apply the thinking to the dynamics of personal relationships.

Make no mistake, we all play a game every day. We play it with the friends we keep, the family we’re stuck with and the job we’ve chosen. Many of us, including me, play this game pretty poorly. There’s no shame in that fact. Often we’re all playing a different game, at a different pace and of couse a different skill level. The chinese proverb that opened this post really nails why we all play so poorly:

If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time.

Let’s break the 3 elements down:

1. The Rules Of The Game: This is the foundation and it’s often very overlooked.  From the rules of engagement, to how you communicate, to what’s in-bounds, to even how you WIN, we forget the rules.  But, the rules are critical.  Without them we’re all playing a different game.  If this was pickup basketball, do 3 pointers count as 3 points or 2?  Are 2 pointers worth 2 points or 1?  Do you call your own fouls?  Are you playing till 21, 15 or 11?  In a relationship are you supposed to call before you go to bed?  Do the cooking?  Clean?  Say I love you after 7 dates ?  If you don’t have the rules established, you’ll never be playing a game you can win.
2. The Stakes: What are you playing for?  Bragging rights?  A promotion?  A raise?  Pride?  Determining the stakes helps you figure out how much to invest until you get to quitting time.  But, just like you need to make sure everyone knows the rules, you have to make sure everyone knows the stakes.  Because, if you’re playing for a raise, and your other half/team/boss/client is playing for bragging rights you’re going to have a problem.  If one of you is playing for marriage and the other for a casual long term relationship, that’s going to be a big challenge.
3. The Quitting Time: This is all about the line in the sand and/or the deal-breakers.  What’s the point where you say, you know what, this isn’t worth it.  What’s the one thing that’s your breaking point?  Do you have a certain title you want?  Do you have an arbitrary amount of time in mind before you move in, get engaged, etc?  Well, you better hope that you and the other “party” are on the same page.  You just need to know what those deal breakers are and you need to stick to them.  If you don’t, you’ll be miserabel.

What do you think? What would you add to the proverb or change? How would you apply it to personal relationships…which let’s be honest are things we deal with every day, even at the office?

Stumbled on to this late last night. Chilling and inspiring.

The theory of evolution claims that only the strong shall survive. Maybe so…maybe so…But the theory of competition says just because they’re the strong doesn’t mean they cant get their ass’s kicked. Thats right. See what every long shot, come from behind underdog will tell you is this. The other guy may in fact be the favorite, the odds maybe stacked against you, fair enough. But what the odds don’t know is this isn’t a math test. This is a completely different kind of test. One where PASSION has a funny way of trumping logic. So before you step up to the starting line, before the whistle blows, and the clock starts ticking. Just remember out here the results don’t always add up. No matter what the stats may say, and the experts may think, and the commentators may have predicted, when the race is on all bets are off. Don’t be surprised if someone decides to flip the script and take a pass on yelling uncle. And then suddenly as the old saying goes, WE GOT OURSELVES A GAME!

50% of marketing lead social media initiatives will fail. Merry Christmas to you too! That’s the sobering statistical prediction from Gartner. As bad as that 50% figure sounds, at least it’s better than the 30% success rate for IT lead social media initiatives.

Social media has become a self-propelled hype factory. After all it was in 2006 that Time declared the person of the year was YOU! Now, only a few years later, Mark Zuckerberg, the czar of Facebook is this 2010’s person of the year.

Every day it seems we have a new social platform (remember Tumblr?) to chase after, understand and then manage against. Frankly, as marketers we’ve done poor job of making social work hard because we’ve been too busy drinking the social media kool-aid and chasing every new, bright, shiny object. We love to chase bright shiny objects; from fourSquare to Gowalla, Groupon to Scavngr, Facebook to Genie. We collect, we harvest, we test, we test some more and then we get bored. We start proclaiming the death of Facebook and the rise of the sexy competitor du jour.

For every success story like The Ford Fiesta Movement there are 1000s of failed social initiatives. I promise you, there is no secret formula for finding success in the social space. If there was, I’d be selling it ☺ That said, there are some clear things worth avoiding to help set you up for success. With that in mind, here are 10 reasons your social media initiatives will fail in 2011.

1. You think of it as social MEDIA. When, in fact, it’s about social business. You can’t flight social. You can’t pull it. You can’t day-part it. And even though you can measure it against with impressions, you probably shouldn’t. If you don’t tie your social initiatives to real business drivers, you’ll never see the return you’ve dreamt of.
2. You’ve hired a social media expert or guru. In Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers he identifies 10,000 hours as the amount of time needed to reach expert status. If we take Gladwell’s data to be true it would take someone approximately 5 years to be an expert at social media marketing. So if we have “experts” today, that would mean someone would have been practicing social media marketing since 2004. For all intents and purposes that’s impossible. The concept of social media marketing is roughly 2 years old. Most of the tools and platforms, like Facebook, weren’t even around in 2004. So how, can you be an expert? The amount of snake oil salesmen out there is immeasurable and everyone is trying to take your money. The minute you outsource in a hands off approach to one of these gurus you’re starting down a slippery path to social failure.
3. You forgot to spend money to promote what you’re doing. Great Initiatives + Weak Awareness = Weak Results. You’ve got a great Facebook page, a killer app and you’re doing groundbreaking things on fourSquare. That’s fantastic…except you have very little participation from your audience. One of the biggest mistakes your organization can make is to think that you don’t need to support your social initiatives with some type of media buy. One of the reasons the Pepsi Refresh project has been so successful is the amount of money put into TV ads to promote the program. Yes, TV can still work! Social does not equal viral nor does it equal free.
4. You forgot about your own employees. I’ve seen this scenario happen too often. Your biggest evangelists are your employees. You need to think about how to arm them with information and access. Too often organizations offer no internal communication plan and in a situation I experienced at ConAgra Foods, they revoke access to sites like YouTube and Facebook. Think about that? You want to be social with your customers, but you won’t allow your employees to be social on a daily basis. As a client of our agency once said, “we trust these people with a phone, a computer and an email account. Why wouldn’t we trust them to be on Facebook?”
5. You copied someone else’s social plan. Raise your hand if you’ve looked at another company’s success and said, “why aren’t we doing that.” The challenge of course is that, even though this is a copycat world, you shouldn’t be copying what Dell does if you sell Teddy Bears door-to-door. Your business, your category, your culture, your product and your budget are unique to your company. Copying another organization’s model in theory sounds smart, but in practice can set you back months, if not years.
6. You forgot that social is a team sport and requires multiple groups in your company to be involved, engaged and accountable. Many organizations believe social belongs in Communications or PR or Marketing. Some even believe it belongs in IT. While you definitely need one leader to herd the cats, you’ll need more than one person for success. One of our clients as a cross-functional social business team that includes Marketing, PR, Loss Prevention, Category Management, Customer Service and a variety of other business units. If you want to go fast, travel alone, but if you want to go far travel together. It’s not just a proverb, it’s a fact in the social business landscape.
7. You entrusted your social business strategy to someone with no experience, right out of school, because “they understand” the space…after all they grew up on Facebook. This is a classic mistake being made by companies large and small. Would you hire a customer who’s been drinking your product for 20 years to run the marketing for the product? Of course not. So why would you do the same thing with social?
8. Just because you shouldn’t hire someone with no experience, doesn’t mean you should simply hire someone with a lot of experience. In fact, your social business initiatives might fail, simply because you’ve been hiring the wrong people. You need to rethink what a job description looks like and look less for at the years and degrees and more at the core skill-sets you want. Your ideal candidate needs to have a great balance of marketing and technology.
9. You didn’t mine the social space for insights. The social landscape is a rich data set; it’s the largest data set of consumer commentary that has ever existed. While, it’s easy to simply rush into the social space and “launch” a campaign, you need to apply the brakes and think about social as a research tool first. By leveraging social as a research tool you’ll be able to uncover opportunities you didn’t even realize existed.
10. You only focused on the big players, like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Social is so much more than those 3 players. Depending on who your audience is, the product you sell, the category your in and your competition, you may find that a site/platform that you’ve never heard of is the best place to invest your social dollars. Keep this in mind, could you really imagine a scenario where customers are willingly to publicly “Like” on facebook genital wart medication ☺

At my agency, we field calls all the time from clients (current and prospective) asking us for how to leverage social to make their business work hard. It’s a great question. As an innovator who loves being on the cutting edge, it’s often difficult to temper my enthusiasm and desire to be on the bleeding edge.

To sober myself up, I often ask myself this question, “If you were RC Cola, how, if at all, would you leverage social?” Think about it. If you have the type of money Coke has, you can afford to make a mistake in social (see Coke + Mentos as an example). But, if you’re RC Cola, you can’t. In fact, social could very well be the least important thing you do to maintain your shelf slots at retail.

You can void these mistakes. You can set yourself up for success, but you won’t be able to guarantee success. Step 1, put down the social media kool-aid and switch to a glass of “social business.”