Curation Revolution

Live Events & Social Media
Love this quote:

"Social media is a fantastic complement to compelling, live television content," said Toby Byrne, president of advertising for Fox Broadcasting Co. "Not only is it a great marketing tool for us ... [it also] opens up additional ways for us to connect brands with our audience."

Duh! This new partnership is a victory and a defeat. Victory because it signals brands are getting social media. Defeat because the new partnership seeks to make social media just another push network.

Let's hope people smart enough to realize social media can rock live events also understand "live event" means there are threads that should be followed instead of simply pushing more disconnected ads at us.

HBR makes a conclusive case for why SURPRISE creates the most effective marketing. Surprise is another way of saying exceeding expectations and I AGREE.

The warning shot is if we market ONLY to what we see in our data we become increasingly predictable. We KPI surprise OUT of our thinking and marketing.

Great article on how to build positive surprise into your marketing process and thinking.

Google Header Eats Los Angeles

Yes the Google+ Header just got bigger along with 41 other feature improvements to the leading search engine's social network. Recognizing that the most popular content on Facebook is pictures, Google+ boosted its ability to compete. Here is a quote from the Economic Times post:

"But the most compelling new attraction may be a new photo-management tool that promises to test how much control people want to cede to computers. It will also further blur the lines between a real moment in time and augmented reality."

The Same Message Over And Over
Social Is Different and we keep getting this message over and over. The problem / opportunity with social media marketing is it doesn't respond well to typical Stimulus - Response advertising so favored everywhere else.

Once you break the S - R curve TIME changes. When you reinforce a behavior you created it feels like you gain brand advocacy. I think you make a transaction and advocacy comes AFTER the sale. 

Social media flips this response. Social media builds a relationship first, secures advocacy and then comes money. If that sounds EASTERN and not very capitalist you are right and beginning to see some of the reasons we S - R marketing pros are having such a hard time with social media marketing.

The answers are NOT to attempt to simply cart one set of tactics from paid to social. No, the answer is to form and find new ways to judge ROI vis brand advocacy and social support. Soon we will see just how much social media creates a base for success IN ALL OTHER MARKETING. 

Marketers are a distrusting lot. Instead of looking hard at our efforts and preconceptions we want NEW things to walk and talk like OLD things, things we understand and trust. Life in a digital age can't afford such singular thinking.

Fuzziness prevails and the over, what we stand to gain, exceeds the under, what we stand to loose well enough to demand and open minded participation as we define the new marketing on the back of the thing we trust (paid).  

I'm old enough to remember having knockdowns about paid too. There was a time when what is trusted NOW was distrusted then. Best to keep that truth close at hand since it reminds us how important ACTING and LEARNING have become in modern marketing. 

Personality Sells

There is a real "anti-sales" movement afoot. I'm sitting in a car dealership as I write this and I blame them (lol). The archetype of a used car salesman who believes deals can benefit him and him alone is a hard archetype to shake.

Willy Loman is long gone. Anyone, used car dealers included, who don't create mutual benefit will be hard pressed to survive in a time when I am using a car dealers wifi to type this post.

Once the web is present it is much harder to create unilateral benefit. Even car dealers, the good ones, realize every action creates an equal and opposite reaction in social media these days.

We are still a distance from where we need to be, but progress is clear and unmistakable. We will know we are there when car dealers sell cars like Apple sells iPhones.

So my favorite tip from this post is #3, use social media to create a personality. Personality is truth since it is impossible to fake that you are over time. Short term anyone can lie and fake anything, long term not so much.