No intro…no warmup, just 3 thoughts on Facebook:

1. Facebook has 900M users worldwide. If they made Facebook a $10.00 a year membership and all they got was 25% of those 900M to signup (I tend to think it would be more like 75%) they’d generate $2,250,000,000 in year 1. Still think Facebook is a stock not worth investing in?

2. Long term Facebook needs to figure out mobile. Hell, we all do. But, I want you think about something; much like Apple choosing to make the iPhone available on AT&T only…initially, what would happen if Facebook made their app available to only Verizon users? Or Droid users? Or made it free on Verizon and Droid, but $1.99 on iPhone and other carriers? Are users more loyal to Facebook, their phone operating system of mobile service provider? Don’t for a second think that this hasn’t been discussed. With mobile service providers getting rid of unlimited data plans, how big of a win would it be for Verizon to be the exclusive provider of the Facebook app…AND…data usage through that app wouldn’t count against your monthly data usage? Huge. Crazy big. That’s the power of Facebook; they are the only company right now that could pull something like that and force the cellular carriers to change their ways.

3. Lots of talk about Facebook creating a Facebook phone. I don’t think it’s crazy. One way to beat Apple’s walled garden is to build your own walled garden. Think about it for a second. Facebook has Instagram the #1 photo sharing platform. They recently launched their own photo taking/creating/sharing app as well. They have Facebook Messenger, which is a iMessage and BBM competitor. They have Facebook Pages as an app, now, to let you manage your business pages. They don’t need something like Google Contacts, gMail, or a Google Calendar because those are inherently built directly into the Facebook platform itself. Facebook even has an app store now! The only thing missing is a browser, although…many could argue that much like AOL in the early/mid 90s when people viewed the internet as AOL…that many people today see the internet as Facebook. Ok, you don’t like that argument? No problem, so Facebook could buy Firefox, Opera, Dolphin, Sky or any of the other browsers out there. Facebook has a lot of the dots on the board. If they chose to line them up, a Facebook phone wouldn’t be crazy…especially if you combine this idea with #2. Yes, imagine, Facebook building their phone, then pulling their apps and restricting access to Facebook from all other phones? Sounds very Apple to me…and I wouldn’t put it past them.

Some of these seem far out there. But, the reason they become something plausible is because Facebook is now a public company. They don’t answer to their community anymore. They don’t answer to their users. They answer to Wall Street. And when you answer to Wall Street you often do things to make your numbers beat estimates…even if it takes away from the DNA of who you are as a company. I always look at to the meteoric rise of Fallon when we/they were a private company and the subsequent rapid fall after they sold to Publicis and became public. When you answer the to the street instead of the users, things change….and when you don’t hit your quarterly numbers in successive quarters you do desperate things like charge for access and create your own walled garden.

Amid all of the “advertising” discussion related to the first ever Facebook Marketing Conference in New York, there was another conversation taking place that didn’t quite get the attention it should have. That conversation was about the great digital/social talent war being waged right now.

For the past few years, in corners, bars and in places we don’t talk about, organizational leaders have been discussing the conundrum they are facing with respect to the exceptional digital talent they need, but don’t understand how to hire, leverage or retain. I’ve watched this up close from both the client side and the agency side for the past 15 years. I’ve watched companies trick themselves into believing they don’t NEED the talent, that the talent can be outsourced or that the talent could simply come the same places they’d been recruiting talent. I once worked in an organization that had more than 20 VPs of Marketing, but the highest ranking digital person was Director.

In perhaps one of the most important presentations I ever saw, an unnamed Global VP of Digital at a large CPG company showed a slide that had the logos of companies that had leaders of digital at the VP level and above vs. those with Director and below. On the left you had companies like Nike, Coke, P&G and on the right you had companies like Adidas, Pepsi, Kraft. She asked the question, which side would you want to work on? This was a presentation in 2004. She got it.

Well fast forward to 2012 to the Facebook Marketing Conference (aka fMC), on a very large stage, we heard progressive executives acknowledging that to succeed your organization will need digital talent. Not just any type of digital talent…EXCEPTIONAL digital talent.

Throughout fMC we heard several one-offs from executives like Nigel Morris (Aegis), Chris McCann (1-800 Flowers) and Ken Chenault (CEO of American Express). A powerful exchange happened early in the afternoon when Nigel shared:

The ad industry needs an “absolutely radical transformational change”, in terms of talent and organizational design. “We had to rip down all the silos.” Organizations need to be more collaborative, allowing specialists to work across different disciplines. “It’s really tough, it’s difficult, but unless our industry grapples that,” we’re not going to be able to satisfy clients.

That was followed up by Chris saying “Well, you can do all that, or you can just hire everyone under the age of 30.”

Agencies and clients are finally on the same page when it comes to what’s needed to continuing being relevant to their customers. It was a big “WOW” moment for me. In the hallways and breakout session areas, I found myself talking openly with people from agencies, retailers, CPG companies, research firms and Facebook proper about this talent issue. There was universal agreement that this will be the year we all look back and see there was a change…a true shift in how companies are thinking about digital talent.

Just so you don’t think I was full of it or cherry picking quotes to support my point of view, you should watch and listen to Ken Chenault’s fireside chat with Sheryl Sandberg. It’s nearly 30 minutes long, but it’s something you really should make the time for. In this conversation, you get a peak into how a very savvy organizational leader is embracing digital. The most telling statement from Ken during the “lightening round” portion of the chat, comes at the 24minute mark. When asked by Sheryl, “learn in the classroom or on the job” Ken makes no hesitation in saying, “on the job.”

Think about that. The CEO of American Express, fundamentally values real world experience more than books and degrees. That’s a big statement. And frankly, it something companies need to start understanding. The talent war in digital will be won, by those organizations willing to find the exceptional digital talent and be comfortable with the fact, that talent doesn’t neccessarily come from a “B” school. No, it comes from garages, agencies, start-ups, improv schools and many other non-traditional “learning centers.”

Have you heard the phrase, if you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got. Well, I ask you, how is it that genuinely smart people at the heads of companies fail to understand this very basic concept? You can’t simply turn the marketing guy who reads Mashable into the head of digital. You can’t simply hire the interns into Sr. Level spots because they grew up with Facebook.  You can’t simply take the head of IT and put him at the forefront of leading your digital strategy. You can’t simply hire someone with a Marketing degree from Yale and an MBA from Harvard…who worked at McKinsey or Accenture and let them lead something as complex as digital, because they have the “management” pedigree. It just doesn’t work like that.

The digital talent war is real. Forward thinking companies were attracting, retaining and growing their digital talent back before 2000. Smart companies were doing it between 2000 and 2007. By the time 2007 rolled around, those who were late to the party were woefully behind. They felt the impact of being late in their mindshare, stock prices, quality of partners and of course financial KPIs.

Despite having all of this knowledge, with hindsight being 20/20, there are still organizations who aren’t investing in exceptional digital/social talent, despite the fact their competition most certainly is. We’re not moving toward an always on, ever connected digital and social world. We’re already there. And to not make having the the talent needed to take advantage of this new world a priority is simply maddening.

This is the last of 3 posts covering updates, thoughts and ramblings from the past 3 weeks.  The first update can be found here the second one can be seen here.

1. I’ve had 7 conversations in the last 3 months, with large brands, all around 1 topic no one seems to want to talk about: Facebook is a “frienemy” and they’re driving many organizations to rethink how close they want to partner with Facebook. For example a few weeks ago many companies realized that their 3rd party (e.g. Hootsuite) published posts were performing horribly all of a sudden. Facebook and Hootsuite denied the situation existed. To compensate for the reduced reach, companies were investing more in Facebook’s “Sponsored Stories” advertising platform. The folks at Read Write Web did some digging, gave the situation more attention and then all of a sudden Facebook released an announcement indicating they were fixing their platform to send more “signals” to 3rd part publishing tools. Sounds shady to me. In 2012, the question I’ll be asking my team, my agency partners and any new potential partners is “help me create a 3 year exit strategy for Facebook.” More to come on this topic.
2. Here’s 3 iOS apps to check out: Oink, Ness and Super Retro.
3. I’ve been investing more time of late, into tumblr. Though it often gets lumped together with other blogging platforms I see it a little differently. Tumblr is for the “lazy” blogger. It’s great for bite size content. I think that’s why it excels for companies that are heavily dependent on photos. I’m going to give it a serious whirl for the next 45 days and then come up with a more formal POV.
4. A piece of advice to folks in “sales”…especially for social software and services: please do your homework. It’s not hard to Google, “head of social media walgreens” and find out who to contact. Spamming 50 people at my organization is the quickest way to get de-prioritized. It’s lazy, unprofessional, annoying and creates a lot of extra unnecessary work for me.
5. I’ve been attending iMedia summits for years. They’re the best conference for interactive/digital marketing and media professionals. I’ve attended the summits as a client and as an agency representative. I’m excited to announce that I’ve been asked to facilitate the Marketers Only Sessions at the iMedia Brand Summit February 5th – 8th in Coconut Point Florida. If you’ve attended a previous summit and have thoughts or recommendations, please send them my way.