The Great Debate: How to Treat Social Media

There are big questions about how brands should use social media, that's not new. But there are newer debates that seem to be focusing on whether or not social media should be treated as a broadcast channel like other, more traditional mediums (i.e. TV, print, web). A lot of marketers seem to be up in arms about trying to measure, monetize and analyze what's happening in the social space. The controversy is not only centered around how that analysis can be done, but if it should be done at all.

Three recent Ad Age articles rounded out the debate. The first two articles are based around followers' engagements and what their interactions (or lack there of) really mean to your brand. Matthew Creamer provides facts about the actual number of people interacting with brands they follow, while Simon Dumenco explains his opinion on why low consumer engagement "doesn't matter".

Lastly, an article by Zach Rosenberg details a process of How to Turn Tweets Into Rating Points. While the article is interesting, some readers' comments are even more interesting:

"This is not only unnecessary, it's wrong. Twitter is a dynamic conversation driven by consumers, TRPs are a static estimation of passive commercial delivery."

Since this is my blog, I'm going to give my opinion. Yes, Twitter is a conversation tool, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be measured. All forms of advertising are a means for brands to communicate with their consumers, that's the whole point of advertising. It's true that social media provides the biggest opportunity for consumers to talk back, but that doesn't mean it's the only conversation.

Markers aren't martyrs. If your brand is engaging audiences on social media, you have an ulterior motive that isn't simply "let's have a conversation". Sure, that is the goal of social media, but that's not your reason for participating. You participate in that conversation to express brand views, try to pinpoint brand advocates, forge more positive opinions, etc. If your brand is using social media, you're using it as broadcast channel that needs to be measured.

A Subliminal Relationship is Not a Relationship

The first instance of subliminal advertising occurred in 1957 when James Vicary supposedly flashed the words "eat popcorn" and "drink Coca-Cola" across the screen at a movie theater. The words were only there long enough for viewers' subconscious' to recognize, and snack and drink sales shot up. Of course, this was all a hoax and Mr. Vicary had made the whole thing up. Since then, subliminal messaging has been a constant and controversial topic not only within the advertising industry, but around the world.

If this subject is so commonly discussed, why beat it to death with another blog? Because a combination of two writings have given me a new perspective on the topic. First is the recently published Advertising Age article, "Ignore the Human Element of Marketing at Your Own Peril". The authors, Bob Garfield and Doug Levy, proclaim 2012 to be the beginning of The Relationship Era; where "the new currency of commerce" is trust.

Second is a book called Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy, written by Martin Lindstrom, in which a series of experiments utilizing brain scanning technology sheds new light onto how your brain, whether consciously or not, effects the purchasing decisions you make. In the book, Lindstrom claims that people aren't really sure why they buy the products that they buy. He believes that "our unconscious minds are a lot better at interpreting our behavior (including why we buy) than our conscious minds are."

Lindstrom makes a very good case as to why this is true, but here's my problem with that finding: there's no relationship. If you buy a Coca-Cola because the store you're in is red and your subconscious links that color with the brand, it doesn't matter. Sure, it's a sale, but you don't know why. If your brand doesn't have a relationship with that consumer, the next thing you know they'll be in a blue store buying a Pepsi.

So, Corporations, I challenge you with this resolution as you enter into The Relationship Era: make sure every consumer knows why they chose your product.

If you give them a good reason to buy, odds are they'll do it again.

Spartans Helping Spartans

Since September, I have been working as a Marketing Writer Intern for a great company called TechSmith. I get the opportunity to write a bunch of different things for them; everything from tutorial video scripts, to landing page copy. Recently I had a change to interview another employee and write a blog post for a Michigan State University blog, Spartans Helping Spartans.

So, if you're just itching to read some more of my writing, check out Spartans Helping Spartans!

What's Black and White, but NOT Read All Over? Logos.

As usual, this blog post was inspired by a recent conversation with a friend. We were talking about a logo and briefly considered using it as part of a tag-line for a class project. We quickly realized that it wouldn't work because no one would actually read the logo; they would look at it, observe which brand is associated with it, and then read the copy.

With all of the logo-changing craziness that has been going on recently, this got me thinking. Obviously the use of a logo is critical to a brand. It establishes that omnipresent "look and feel", constantly connecting the brand and its executions, no matter what. That's why changing a logo is so risky; it is printed everywhere, on everything that is an extension of the brand. And if the logo doesn't truly represent what the brand stands for, it could be disastrous.

However, despite the importance of the logo, no one actually reads it.

The Walt Disney logo, for example, has been accepted by generation after generation. Everyone knows what the logo looks like and what it is associated with, but a lot of people have a difficult time realizing how the "D" in "Disney" is actually formed. Doesn't it seem like being able to read the name of the brand would be vital to its success? Apparently not. Even after people recognize how the "D" is shaped, they still have to work to see it. I believe that, for the most part, they will just look past it, take in the whole logo and know what it means.

This realization made me think about Starbuck's recent logo change, in which they removed all text. At first, I thought this was kind of dumb. I understand that they want to expand their product line to include more than just coffee, but I always thought, "Ok, so just take the word 'coffee' off the logo, but leave the word 'Starbucks'." Now, I think it was a brilliant idea. The only people that would actually take the time to read the logo would be those who are unfamiliar with the brand and/or their logo. Also, because the logo image is essentially the same, it isn't unrecognizable to the brand's loyal followers. Without the words, Starbucks will be able to stamp that previously mentioned, omnipresent brand voice on every product they choose to create, simply branding it as "Starbucks," not as "coffee".

This could also be one of the many reasons why the Gap logo redesign was a complete failure. Even though the text of the logo was exactly the same, it didn't matter. Because no one bothers to actually read it, the only thing that mattered was how the logo looked. Gap (momentarily) decided to completely abandon its iconic design and go with something that did not seem to be a good representation of the brand, and the brand's followers were not happy.

Anyways, I'm sure you've all read enough about these two logo makeovers to want to read anymore, but I thought I'd open up a (hopefully) new school of thought....Logos are important, but what they say is not a huge contributing factor to their success.

Not all Target Markets are Created Equal

As marketers, we like to categorize people into groups: Gen X, Baby-boomers, married, single, multi-cultural, etc. For the most part, putting people into these categories makes our job easier. You are able to find out who is interested in your product, put a name to that group of people and put some ads in front of them.

Recently, however, I was in a situation that made me realize that there are large groups of people that don't fit into the typical categories that marketers use to target their products. That sentence might make me sound naive, but let me explain my story before you judge.

Over the holiday, I was playing Catchphrase with my sisters and cousins and I had to get them to say the word "Twitter." I described it as being "a popular social networking site...not Facebook." My younger sister was able to guess the word, but once I announced that Twitter was, in fact, the popular social networking site that I was referring to, my teenage cousin from kind of huffed...he thought it was ridiculous that I would refer to Twitter as a popular site. Sure, he's heard of it, and he uses social media (he's very active on Facebook and MySpace)...but Twitter? Not something that he would consider using.

That's fine, I know a lot of people who don't enjoy using Twitter, it's not as easy nor as interactive as Facebook...but all of those people would, undoubtedly, still consider the site to be immensely popular...or would they? If you are a high school boy that doesn't use Twitter, and none of your friends use Twitter, and the only people you know of who do use the site are famous-for-no-reason-celebrities and unreliable news channels, you probably wouldn't consider it to be popular.

Now, I'm not saying that marketers are incapable of finding and filling the holes within a target market...After all, I'm an advertiser and I discovered this little lapse of "Twitter acceptance." I'm just saying that it often becomes easy to group people into a category that seems to fit your product, but a good advertiser, a good planner, looks deeper than that.

Do you see what I see?

I'm sure that almost everyone has seen these images before. They're classic illusions: do you seen an old woman or a young woman? Do you see a rabbit or a duck?

If you stare at these illusions long enough, trying to decide how you want to categorize them in your mind (young or old? rabbit or duck?), you will eventually get a headache and stop looking at the pictures. Similarly, if a company is trying to force themselves into multiple categories in the consumer's mind, the customer will become confused and, possibly, form a negative opinion about the company or its products.

To avoid this confusion, a company must choose one category, one position, to hold in the consumer's mind. They can't be both a rabbit and a duck, they have to choose the one category that best suits them and truly own that positioning.

That's where advertising comes in. Even though the client can be seen as both a rabbit and a duck, research has found that the target market likes rabbits better because they're cuter. It is then the agency's job to figure out how to make consumers focus only on the rabbit. How can you get someone to look at that picture and only see the rabbit, not the duck?

That's the perpetual problem, and I love solving it.

Self-fulfilled

There is a very well known psychological theory called the "self-fulfilling prophecy". An over-simplified example of this theory is that if you think you are going to do poorly on an exam or in a sporting event, you will. The basic concept is that if you have an attitude or believe something about yourself, it will come true because you will either subconsciously or consciously take actions to make it come true.

For the most part, this theory refers to personal/inner thoughts and feelings fulfilling themselves in an outward manner...but I've recently noticed that this phenomenon can be more powerful if your self-related thoughts are made public. If you write something down, post something to the internet or tell a friend, I think your chances of self-fulfilling are much higher. Once you've consciously recognized that thought, or even shared it with others, your subconscious desire to fulfill it skyrockets.


I've noticed this even in myself. There is a section on Facebook located right underneath your profile picture that asks you to, very simply, "write something about yourself". This box is big enough only to host a sentence or two, so I felt that if I was going to write only one sentence about myself, it better be something good. I noticed that some of my friends had written things about their families, jobs, hobbies or quotes from famous people. So I did some thinking and web browsing to find something clever to "write about myself". Finally I decided on a quote I found that says, "I say luck is when an opportunity comes along, and you're prepared for it."


I've never said that quote aloud and I don't know if anyone has ever even read it in on my Facebook page...but ever since I put that "personal thought" about myself in a public place, I've noticed that more of my actions lead me towards fulfilling it. Because I chose to publicly associate that quote with my personal characteristics, I think that the self-fulfilling prophecy kicked into turbo-mode because if I didn't self-fulfill, I wouldn't be the only person to realize my "failure".

There you have it; my belief about the self-fulfilling prophecy: If you publicly announce something about yourself, your rate of self-fulfilling that sentiment is higher than if you were to keep it to yourself. Take it or leave it.

Technology and Culture

One day I was riding in the car with my parents and we were listening to XM Radio, "60's on 6". The station only plays songs that were released during the 1960's. I couldn't help but notice that my parents knew almost every song...and when they didn't know a song, they thought it was strange that they had never heard it before.

This made me wonder what songs XM Radio would play if they had a station that only played songs that were released between 2000 and 2010...and I quickly realized that there would probably be a lot of songs I wouldn't recognize. Right now, I have over 2,000 songs in my music library and I feel like that is a pretty average number. But, if you were to compare my library to a random person's, I bet we wouldn't have many of the same songs. Even though I love the music that I listen to just as much as the next person loves the music that they listen to, if we aren't listening to the same music, is it weakening our culture?

In 1965, music wasn't as available as it is today, at least not in such copious amounts...and it definitely was not as easy to store all in one place. While those may seem like negative things, I think it made that generation's cultural identity stronger.

The massive amounts of music, television, news and other kinds of culture we are exposed to on a daily basis is great; you can find a niche that you really love and immerse yourself in it. BUT, has the technology (MP3 players, DVRs, satellite radio, etc) that has enabled us to explore all of these options actually weakened the overall sense of commonality across our generation?

Connecting the Generational Gap

The weather this week has been beautiful here in Michigan! Abnormally warm for the end of March/beginning of April. It was like someone flipped the switch and turned spring on. As a result of all the great weather, there were so many new activities going on outside. It seemed like everyone was outside either playing corn hole, frisbee, or (the college-town favorite) beer pong. Everyone crawled out of their winter holes to take in the sun and enjoy the nice weather outside.

While I enjoyed seeing and participating some of these outside activities, there was one thing in particular that has really stuck out in my mind. Earlier this week, I was walking to class on campus and I noticed a father and son playing catch. Fairly typical, I know. But the interesting part was that the father was using a baseball glove and the son was using a lacrosse stick.

It is a very simple thing, but it really caught my attention. It made me think of a generational gap that this father and son were able to overcome in order to spend time together. Perhaps the father enjoys a more traditional baseball-style catch, while the son's interests lie in the more modern, newly popular lacrosse-style catch. It made me think that they were able to find a way to find a connection, a similarity, between the new and the old, the traditional and the modern, and they were able to use that connection to spend time together in a way that met the standards of both the father and the son.

I think there are so many other similarities between new and old that can be connected together to make a cohesive team and encompass multiple generations, just like this baseball glove/lacrosse stick example. The one thing I can think of off the top of my head is Facebook. While it was originally designed just for college students, it is now popular among a much older demographic as well. Here, the game of catch (or the common factor) is ease of communication. The ability to easily stay in touch with relatives and long-lost friends could be considered the baseball glove, while sharing your latest YouTube discovery or updating your friends on your spring break plans, would be the lacrosse stick.

I'd say, if we were able to find those connections in other products, and portray them that way to consumers, we'd have a pretty good way to expand the product's demographic to multiple generations.

Consumer Perspective

Advertising is at its best when it takes the consumer's point of view into account, anybody who is even remotely interested in advertising knows this...but it's much easier said than done. I've noticed some new campaigns that, in my opinion, speak directly to the target successfully and some that really fall short.

Last week, Kotex launched their U by Kotex campaign, which asks young women to help "Break the Cycle" of the taboo that surrounds the menstrual cycle. As soon as I heard of this idea, I loved it. I went to the site, I watched the videos, I took the polls. I did it all. And I was shocked at what I saw! One poll showed that the majority of young women didn't feel comfortable telling their friends when they were on their period...if you aren't going to talk to your friends about your period, you certainly aren't going to talk to many other people about it. Their first launched commercial serves as a parody of all other tampon/pad commercials, pointing out how those tradition commercials fantasize the realities of your menstrual cycle. Ahh, it was like a breath of fresh air! Thank you, Kotex and JWT for standing up for women, giving young girls an educational tool and helping break the cycle!

While the products that go along with this campaign don't seem extremely different from the traditional, the feeling and movement behind the campaign is what is going to sell. This is the best example I can think of of a campaign successfully talking directly to their target. It is what they want to hear, it is how they feel, but no one else has said it before.

However...some other brands really seem to be struggling to reach their consumers on that same level. Allstate just launched a website asking for media placement ideas to be submitted. Where's the strategy there? It's as if they are begging, "Hey everyone, tell us what to do because we don't know how to reach you!" Allstate has worked with Leo Burnett and Starcom for a while...if those two agencies can't help Allstate with a few successful media placements...I don't know how much luck they will have with this approach. I'm interested to see how it works for them and will definitely be following along to see what they decide.

"You can't love someone until you love yourself"

Recently I was reminiscing about my first crush. I was probably 11 years old and what makes this experience so memorable is the humiliation that I felt when I tried to tell him that I liked him. ...That kind of thing just doesn't go over well with 11 year old boys. Then I started wondering why that is the case for young people, but as you get older, it is not so taboo to express your feelings to a person you "like". Obviously, there is the fact that young people are immature and shouldn't be having relationships in the first place, but I wasn't curious about the relationship aspect, but the fact that as you grow up, it becomes easier to tell someone how you feel.

It might be because when you are older, people are actually looking for relationships, or because people are more mature and you know that (most of time) someone won't laugh in your face for asking them out. But I think it goes deeper than that.

When you are very young, you don't know yourself very well. You don't know what things you like about yourself, what values you possess or even what makes you, you. Most relationships form because the other person has characteristics that you see as important or as having value. So, if you don't know what is important to you, like most young people, how can you expect to successfully tell someone how you feel? Odds are, they won't feel the same way simply because they don't know what is important to them.

Of course, as you grow older, you begin to know yourself very well. You might know, for example, that you are very goal oriented and, as a result, you could never be in a relationship with someone who is not. Therefore, you would not be attracted to the high school drop out that still lives in his parent's basement that your friend keeps trying to set you up with. So, I guess what I'm getting at is, as you grow older, you are more comfortable telling someone your feelings because you are more confident that the person you have feelings for is compatible with you. This confidence is a result of knowing yourself, your qualities and your values, and being certain that the other person has similar values. Put simply (and very cliche-ly): you can't love someone until you love yourself.

Norms

Today, in my 300 level Spanish class, a student was answering our teacher's question (in Spansih, of course) and he made a very rudimentary mistake. He misspoke the word "thirteen". In Spanish, this mistake is not only rudimentary, but pretty funny. Everyone in the class immediately recognized the mistake, including the student who misspoke; however, no one laughed at this mistake until he did.

I suppose this isn't a very unique thing to notice. Most people pick up on social cues, such as when it is ok to laugh at someone. It could simply be viewed as common courtesy...but I believe courteousness has evolved with time just as our anatomies have. Other people's past experiences in social situations have given us insight into human behaviors and have helped establish the social cues/techniques that we use today, whether we realize it or not. No one forces you to obey the social norms of your culture except for the strength of taboo and judgment, and that seems to be enough.

Avoiding taboo isn't a bad thing. The example from my Spanish class shows how social norms can spare another's feelings. All norms help create a culture, and without a culture, we'd all be the same and boring...so, thank you social norms, for steering us away from humiliation and creating a foundation for our cultural behaviors!

The Old Pals: Nature and Nurture.

First I should probably apologize for my lack of blogs...the end of the semester was very busy for me, but I made some notes about things I observed and am going to try to put them out here while I'm on break.

The other day while I was at a restaurant I noticed an older married couple sitting at the table next to me. They didn't seem particularly happy...they weren't looking at each other or even talking to each other. Then, once their salads arrived I noticed something a bit more interesting about them. They both unwrapped their straws, rolled the paper up in a little ball and set it in the center of the table. Next, they both unfolded their napkins and laid it over just one leg. Then, they mixed the dressing into their salads the same way. These similarities went on as their meal continued, all the while they weren't even looking at each other. As usual, this got me thinking...

The classic nature vs. nurture battle: How many of our actions and emotions are learned because of the people we are always around and how many are actually unique to ourselves? If nurture were the winner, at least one person of the married couple from the restaurant has not always rolled their straw wrapper into a little ball. One would have picked it up from the other without realizing it, and so it would be with many of the things they do. However, if nature were superior to nurture, it would all just be a coincidence.

Personally, I am inclined to believe that nurture reigns supreme in this case. However, I also believe that if you are aware of an action or a personal quirk that you believe is unique to yourself and then you meet someone else whom you discover has that same quirk, you will be more likely to be compatible with that person. In other words, maybe our natural actions attract us to people and as our relationships develop, the nurtured actions keep them strong. Maybe there is no battle between nature and nurture, and they have really just been working together all along.

The Importance of Acceptance

Growing up, parents try to implement certain values in their children. One good lesson a parent always gives their child is to be themselves, regardless of if you are accepted or not. That is to say, it is more important to be true to yourself than to be accepted for something you aren't.

This thought occurred to me when I was talking to my little sister about her college applications. I started thinking about how important being accepted truly is in our society. Even from a young age, you have to try out to be on sports team. Then when you are a little older, you have to request entrance to certain clubs and organizations. Then when you are older than that, you have to hope to God that the college of your dreams accepts you into their program. The list goes on and on...

There are many important parts of life that you have to be accepted into, there is no other way around it. You can't grow and gain new experiences if you aren't accepted into these things, and I think this fact sheds light on the reason why so many people long for acceptance in every aspect of their lives. Because, when viewed from this standpoint, society links acceptance with success.

People are EXTREMELY Different

I love rowing. And I always say that people who stick with rowing, have to REALLY love it. They are rowing extremists, if you will. Because if they aren't, the amount of work and pain involved would cause them to quit. I know that rowers have been called crazy for many different reasons: we wake up at ungodly hours of the morning, we sit for hours at a time on ergometers, our "sprint" races are 6-8 minutes long, we spend thousands of dollars on racing shells and regattas...the list goes on.



When I hear people say these things, I can understand why any non-rower would think that rowers are psycho...but I rarely think of myself, or rowing, as insane. To me and the rowing community, it's the norm.


Yeah, yeah, I love rowing...but what's my point? Glad you asked.

Tons of people are extremists. Everyone from fashionistas to crazy cat ladies. It may not make sense to me to spend $500 on a purse or to own 18 cats, just like it doesn't make sense to them to wake up at 4:30 in the morning to go row 10 thousand meters. The point is, is that it is their norm and everyone's norms are different. It may seems outrageous to outsiders, but to you, it is simply apart of your everyday.

Leaping Culture Gaps

One night I was falling asleep with the TV on and I heard a commercial for "Elmo's Tickle Hands"...which is a strange product in and of itself, but what really sparked my half-asleep mind was the very end of the commercial, when Elmo shouted "Yeaaahhhh, boooooooiii". I wasn't sure I had heard it right, so I looked up the commercial on Youtube the next day, and sure enough, there was Elmo quoting Flavor Flav.

Once I noticed this first instance of hip-hop culture in children's advertising, I started seeing the same cultural leap in other places. I actually found out that Chris Brown was a guest on Sesame Street, although the episode is no longer showing on cable because of Brown's arrest.




Around the time that I first noticed the Elmo commercial, a video started spreading across the internet of a baby dancing to Beyonce. I also come across this video of two young children dancing to T-Pain's song Low.

I find it truly entertaining that Elmo says things like "Yeah Boi" and his audience of toddlers doesn't think anything of it. I love the fact that in today's society it is easy to cross even the most opposite of cultures in modern media!

Stereotypes Through the Ages

A few weeks ago, I was watching The Breakfast Club with my cousin. I got to thinking about all of the stereotypes portrayed in the movie:


I thought each of these people seemed so timeless and so relate-able to every person's high school experience. But when I really started to think about it, I figured that these stereotypes certainly were prevalent in 1985, I don't think they necessarily still apply today, at least not with the same terminology.

Have new, modern stereotypes replaced the classic five-some of The Breakfast Club?


Later in the week, with the concept of modern stereotypes on my mind, I noticed the overwhelming existence of hipsters. So, I did some reading around. One blog gave a detailed, definite description of the characteristics of a hipster, including drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, listening to Indie Rock music, and just being all around non-mainstream. Actually, an article in Advertising Age, proclaims that sales of PBR have increased due to the "word of mouth campaign that made the long-declining brand an "ironic downscale chic" choice for... younger drinkers who viewed the beer as a statement of non-mainstream taste."

Also, there is a popular "hipster spotting" webiste, "Look at this F***ing Hipster", where hipster-haters can post pictures of extreme hipsters. Here is an image of what "stereotypical" hispters look like:




Another modern stereotype that has caught my attention is that of a bro. Bros is defined on urbandictionary.com as "an alpha male idiot...white, 16-25 years old, inarticulate, belligerant, talks about nothing but chicks and beers..." the list of compliments goes on. Living on a college campus, I am exposed to a lot of "white 16-25 year olds" and have come across many "bros". From my point of view, this description is fairly accurate. However, to a true bro, being considered such is not at all a bad thing -- They are proud of their "bromance". MTV briefly produced a show entitled Bromance in which men had to compete to become Brody Jenner's best friend (or bro).




All in all, times change, so why wouldn't stereotypes? While The Breakfast Club will remain a classic movie, I believe that the era of the "kook" has ended.