In 2009 I singled out a major problem with twitter…hashtags. That same problem exists today. You and I could be both watching the Grammy’s and tweeting about it. You might be using the hashtag #grammys and I might be using #grammys13. People following each hashtag will be seeing 2 very different conversations, although both hashtags are talking about the same topic.

In 2009, sponsored tweets didn’t exist. It’s existence today and use by companies softened the “chaos of hashtags.” But, the real game changer was the integration of hashtags into mainstream media, like TV shows. If you’ve somehow missed this, turn on American Idol, look at the lower right hand corner and you’ll see a prominently placed hashtag. That hashtag is telling all the people watching to centralize their conversation on twitter against that hashtag. Smart. But, that only helped close the gap; it didn’t eliminate it.

I think the big effort to close the gap came from Nike. No surprise there. Nike is one of the few organizations with the ability to see around the corner, tap into everyday culture and push the bounds of marketing. On January 1, 2013, after being woefully dormant on social media, they came to the party in a big way with their #makeitcount campaign. The hashtag was used in print, tv and of course twitter. But, in the first steps of its kind, it was also used in Instagram. Since launching, Nike’s account rocketed to the top of the most followed Instagram account. More importantly #makeitcount permeated society and became a way people from all walks of life could share their athletic efforts…however big or small.

There’s a general rule in marketing, when Nike does it, the evolution of marketing advances, but people will say, “yeah, but that’s Nike. We’re not Nike.” So the next thing that needs to happen is for P&G or Coke to do whatever Nike did. For whatever reason, that’s the validation we seem to need as a marketing community, before we try something different. Well, if Nike was the first shoed to drop, here’s the other foot:

Yes, you’re reading that right. It’s a hashtag on packaging. What? Yep, a hashtag on packaging. The hashtag is part of a pretty amazing campaign from Coke, called #showyourheart. It would seem that Coke is really on trend here, especially with Facebook’s very recent announcement that they will begin using hashtags as a way to search their social graph.

Admittedly, as a marketer who likes to push boundaries, I’m jealous of this effort from Coke. I think it’s smart, on trend, a bit edgy and different. That’s why we got into marketing right? Well, besides to drive the business. You get my point. What Coke did wasn’t just smart, it was cost efficient. It’s almost zero cost to change the printing plate to allow for the inclusion of a hashtag. Even if you didn’t want to go that BIG with the inclusion, you could simply replace the URL on the back of the can, box, pouch, bag, etc. with the hashtag…as an experiment. Folks, this is real time test and learn…at almost no cost. It’s certainly a less costly investment than Oreo’s Super Bowl ad with the Instagram hashtag call to action. For those of you who only paid attention to their “dunk in the dark” tweet, yes Oreo had a Super Bowl ad

In 4 years, hashtags have gone from something geeky to something that’s nearly commonplace language. What we’re seeing with Coke is the tip of the iceberg. With Coke and Nike invested, it’s only a matter of time before everyone else jumps into the pond. My advice, get there fast, while it’s still new, fresh, different and likely to generate an action. The minute it becomes too mainstream you’ll see conversion rates decrease as consumers are overwhelmed with options. Also, don’t stop at hashtags. We’ve seen the evolution of digital calls to action go from “AOL keyword {insert keyword} to URLs to Facebook icons to, now, hashtags. Something else will replace it.

The big lesson here is look for ways to bind your marketing efforts together. If you want to call it, integrating “paid, owned and earned,” have at it. Personally, I think those are bad labels, but if it’s what you need to think about integrating your efforts, great. At the intersection of culture and communication is the opportunity to stretch your dollars and make your marketing all the more effective.

Get your track shoes on. It’s going to accelerate and change fast. #hashtagsarenowthelanguagethatbindsus

Tonight, I watched the Super Bowl in Florida, during the iMedia Brand Summit. That basically means, I got to watch the Super Bowl with 200+ marketers. It’s a very different viewing experience than watching with your friends and family who aren’t involved in marketing, advertising, technology, digital or social media. I’ll let Mashable and every other major publication cover the lessons learned, best ads vs worst ads, winners vs losers, etc. They’re much better at it than I am. That said, I wanted to touch on 3 very quick observations.

1. It’s 2012 and not much as changed when it comes to “TV” and digital calls to action. Since circa 1997 digital folks have been begging their clients and traditional creative teams to include a URL in the ad. The traditional thinkers obliged around 2000 by putting the URL in the last frame and in 2 pt font (something a bit larger than legal lines in ads). The argument for not including it throughout the entire commercial or in a larger font is generally something esoteric like, “we don’t want to interrupt the viewing experience” or “adding the URL at the very end is the perfect bookend to the commercial; they’ll be more apt to take action when it’s the last thing they see.” Both are hogwash. It’s 2013 and URLs, when they’re included, are still on the last frame and are still barely above a 2 pt font size. When they weren’t included, hashtags were. Roughly 50% of marketers chose a hashtag to be included in their ads. Awesome. Makes sense, given all the 2nd screen usage during the game. But, 2013 is just like 2000. Yes, hashtags were included, but they were included in the very last frame and in small font sizes. Sigh. As an industry, we still haven’t evolved.
2. Including paid search to surround your Super Bowl marketing efforts, was something overlooked by many advertisers, 10 years ago. In my favorite example of how much of a mistake it was to forget about pad search during the Super Bowl, check out this post from AdAge about Ford and GM, from 2006. Yes, even 7 years ago, we were still making the same mistakes. This year, I’d say most marketers had paid search accounted for. But, they traded their former misses in SEM with not being tuned in to the real-time needs in social. Here’s a great example of what Oreo, Walgreens and Audi (in my opinion the best presence during the Super Bowl across all touch-points) did during the Super Bowl…when the lights went out. It’s impressive for a multitude of reasons, but to me, what impresses the most, is how well there organizations must be wired to move that quickly. Speed, in social, wins. It always has. But, today, it’s not just speed, in social. It’s speed in everything you do in marketing.
3. Marketers get more amped about the intricacies of what a brand did or didn’t do during the Super Bowl. The average consumer, in my humble opinion, doesn’t seem to care. When I looked at my own person social feeds on twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. it was clear that those talking about the ads the most were marketers, not “regular” people. The regular people were talking about the game, the half-time show and occasionally talked about the ads. When they did talk about the ads, it was generally a simple statement that made it clear they either liked or didn’t like the ad. It makes you think for a second, why do we listen to the arm-chair advice from other marketers, when it’s our consumers who we’re trying to connect with?

I think this was the first real-time and multi-screen Super Bowl. We saw it in the ads, the calls to action, the speed in brand responses and how consumers voiced their thoughts. The bar is higher than it’s ever been. If you’re going to spend roughly $4 million dollars on a Super Bowl ad, you need to think about the real total cost to cover social media monitoring, real-time content, the supporting digital elements, etc. Stepping on to the biggest stage isn’t just the media cost and the cost to produce the spot. There’s so much more. Consider that fact when you plan out, not just next year’s Super Bowl campaign, but frankly, every campaign you do.

The more I view the social media streams of my friends, colleagues and the people on social networksI follow, but haven’t met, the more I’m seeing social becoming a means for broadcasting “ME.” Oh, sure, it’s not just photos of yourself or tweets about yourself or videos with you as the star. But, make no mistake, it’s becoming social ME-dia. It’s becoming more about look at me. Let me break it down:

Instagram: Look at what I’m eating; doesn’t it look tasty?. Look at what I’m seeing; don’t you wish you were seeing it live? Look at what I’m experiencing; you’re missing out.

foursquare: Look where I am; don’t you wish you were here too?

Pinterest: Look at what I want; will you get it for me? Look at my style; aren’t I trendy?

Twitter: Look at how insightful I am about [insert topic]; don’t you share my insight?

Facebook: Look at my major life change [wedding, new home, new car, etc.]; please rejoice and applaud.

I’m not quite sure when this trend started. I don’t know if it’s always been there, but I was blind to it. But, it’s there, staring us in the face. But, here’s the problem. As brands we’re trained to make it all about us. Sure, we wrap it, in a warm velvety blanket called consumer value. Let’s look at this from a traditional brand’s point of view.

Instagram: Look at how great our photo is; won’t you please comment on it?

foursquare: Look at the deal you could get, just by checking in; won’t you tell your friends you’re here?

Pinterest: Look at all the great “things” we sell; don’t you want it?

Twitter: Look at how helpful we are; would you retweet us?

Facebook: Look at how interesting we are, won’t you “like” us?

Have you ever been in a room where two very confident extraverts are having a conversation? It’s funny to watch. You have 2 people who don’t know how to listen…how to make it about the other person. They try to one-up one another…oh really, you just got a new car? That’s great, I got a new house. Oh, you just became VP of something, I just became the youngest partner at XYZ.

Well, that comical experience, of which I admittedly have been a participant of, is strangely similar to the stand-off taking place between many brands and their consumers/customers in social media. There’s plenty of guilt to go around. This isn’t just brands being focused on their own interests. This is also about consumers needing to be less focused on themselves and more focused on actual partnership.

The greatest potential in social comes from unlocking the mutually shared passion and interests between brands and their consumers. Call it what you want…there’s lots of fun buzzwords, like co-creation. This is the gap. This is the gap you have to solve for. But, before you can solve for the gap, you must mind the gap…you must recognize it exists…you must understand why it exists. The reason why it exists will be different for every brand and every consumer in every category. That’s a reality.

But, if we, as consumers and brands, don’t choose to mind the gap, it will widen. If it widens, the potential that exists in social media will never be realized.

I’m a BMW guy. Always have been. Always will. Once turned down a job to work with Audi’s interactive agency because I couldn’t trade-in my BMW 530 for an Audi. Brand loyal and stubborn. If anyone was going to offer me a Klout Perk or ask me to test drive a new car, it should have been BMW. I begged BMW and their agency to do this in 2008. Sadly, I never even heard from them. Might help explain why they no longer have the business…but, I digress.  I’ve also been critical of Klout.  I think what they’re trying to do is ambitious and I applaud their efforts, but I still think their scoring model is not reflective of true influence.

Talk about an intro.  Well, with all the above stated, you could imagine my surprise when I received a Klout notification via twitter and email that I had been granted a perk from Chevy.  I was even more surprised when I learned that Chevy would be giving me a new Chevy Volt to play with for 3 days, as part of their Driving The Midwest campaign.  My Klout Perk read:

“The Chevrolet Volt is Yours to Drive
Klout, Chevrolet and DrivingtheMidwest.com invite you to be one of the first consumers to get behind the wheel of the all-electric Chevrolet Volt. Participants will receive a $50 gift card and an awesome driving experience which combines the efficiency and benefits of an electric car with the long-range capabilities of a traditional gasoline vehicle.”

I want to pause for a second and I think its important to talk about this whole program through two critical lenses:

1. The Klout Experience
2. The Chevy Volt Experience

The Klout Experience
Honestly, really solid.  Their notifications via twitter and email got me to click and learn more.  After seeing how awesome of a perk this was, I did start connecting some other social networks in an attempt to increase my Klout score and earn other perks.  Perks were a great motivator to link and sync more accounts…and in doing so, provide more information about me, to Klout.  The folks at Klout may not have mastered measuring influence, but they certainly are mastering gameification.  The entire acceptance process of the Perk was also simple.  Two clicks, if I recall, is all it took.

While the process of earning, accepting and ultimately redeeming a Perk was simple, I still question the value of Klout.  Think about this for a second.  I’m not influential about cars.  I don’t have car enthusiasts in my network.  Nearly everyone I know and am connected to has a foreign car.  Add into the mix, that I’m not a fan of hybrid cars…kinda hard to be be when you’re a BMW enthusiast, and you have to start to scratching your head.  Now, I will say, I have been a Chevy car owner before.  Around 2005 I was a Chevy Malibu owner.  It was a great car.  Prior to that car I owned a Suzuki Grand Vitara and a Toyota MR2.  After that car it was a BMW 530i and the BMW 328i I currently own.  I’m giving you this background, because I don’t understand how it is I “qualified” to earn a Perk for a Chevy Volt.  There’s no doubt a cool factor in being selected, but as a marketer, I hesitate about working with Klout.

The Chevy Volt Experience
The first thing I have to say is what a cool car. Seriously. It’s fun. It has oomph (is that a technical term?) that other hybrids lack. Having driven the Honda Insight and the Toyota Prius, I can say there’s simply no comparison. The Chevy Volt is a car, the other two are just go karts masquerading as cars. I was impressed with the style of the Volt. The exterior is striking and the interior has refinements that are usually saved for luxury cars. For example, not only is their a stylish, easy to read heads up display, but the center console has a large full featured touch screen display that basically controls the entire car. Having used BMW’s iDrive, I can tell you the usability experts at Chevy nailed this. The menus are intuitive, the iconography clear, the screen responsive and they’ve minimized the steps you need to accomplish a task. In most instances, I found myself needing only 3 taps.

There were some oddities though, that I need to call out. Leather seats? Check! Heated, leather seats? Check! Awesome, right? But, the seat adjustment options were all manual and quite difficult to use. The key fob was a mixed bag as well. It had remote start capabilities and didn’t need to leave your pocket to start the car. But, there was no keyless entry; yes, that means you have to use the fob to unlock the car by pressing a button. Even Toyota offers full comfort access where the fob never has to leave your pocket to open the door or start the car. Also, and granted this sounds like a nitpick, but I was stunned the car didn’t come with a moonroof. It just seemed like it would be such a great fit.

The handling was better than expected. Seriously. The steering was tight and responsive. I thought I’d feel every bump, but I didn’t. Honestly, when you consider how bad Chicago’s streets and highways are, this was a real accomplishment.

Ok, so what didn’t I like about the Volt? I think there’s really 5 big things I can point to; 4 of them Chevy could/can control and the other is just life.

1. The seats were uncomfortable.  I know they’re bucket seats, but even a 30 minute drive left my back and butt sore.  They’re leather and they’re heated.  But, they feel like a slab of marble.
2. The view through the back of the car was narrow and difficult. There’s a split in the hatchback window that makes seeing out the back nearly impossible.
3. Keeping with #2, the mirrors are either strangely placed or too small.  No matter how I adjusted them, I never felt like I could actually see to the left or the right.
4. The Volt is a hybrid.  To really maximize the value of the Volt you need to be driving the car on electric power.  Simple in theory.  But, to fully charge the car takes roughly 10 hours.  And, unless you live in a house or have an apartment/condo that has indoor/covered parking with charging stations, you’ll never be able to take advantage of the Volt’s amazing electric performance.  In my case, I have to park on the street.  That doesn’t exactly leave a lot of options for charging the car.  I will say this, charging the car, when possible, is easy.  You simply plug a cable that looks like an extension cord into an outlet with one end and into the car with the other.  Simple.  There’s really nothing Chevy can do about this. Even if they found better batteries, you’d still have the same plugin challenge.
5. Lastly, the cost.  Yowza.  The model I drove, ran roughly $45,000.  To put that into perspective…that’s more than a BMW 335i Diesel.  It’s more than a lot of cars.  Yes, I know we’re talking about two different mindsets for car owners, two different demographics, two different types of cars, etc.  But, still…