Recap from WOMMU

Posted by Andy Boyer in Marketing, Social Media May 15, 2009

So this is simply for the Social Media folk in the massive crowd that visits AndyBoyer.com. Here are a few notes I took away from WOMMU in Miami this week. This is certainly not representative of all the things that were said down there, but a few things I remember while jotting down notes on the plane.

Loved that a Disney SVP said, “You don’t own your brand. Your customers do.” I know thi sis not a revolutionary thought, but it’s noteworthy that someone from Disney said it.
There really is no good way from Seattle to Miami and back again.
Everyone Twitters. Everyone.
It’s time to stop bashing Motrin for the Motrin Mom debacle. Sure their ad was shite, but by now, Motrin actually gets more sympathy than outrage. Every conference in America talks about Motrin now, so in the long term, the lunatic fringe that attacked them to no end has actually done Motrin more good than harm.
Facebook no longer views MySpace as a competitor. Think about how intersting that is for a sec.
The marketing folks from Ore-Ida gave a brilliant presentation on how they used Social Media to sell Frozen Mashed Potatoes. When Frozen Mashed Potatoes are using Social Media, we are no longer in Innovator and Early Adopter territory. Social Media has reached Mainstream plus some.
I ran into two brand managers who’s clients had sponsored full-show in product placement on The Celebrity Apprentice. Cost to run these promos is multi-multi million dollars, and both brands felt they received a positive ROI.
BlogTalkRadio.com might actually be the coolest thing I’m not using but should be.
15 minutes of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. So when someone in your marketing department says, “We should create a Viral Video,” just continue with the meeting like you heard nothing.
If you go to Prime Italian, get the Kobe Meatball. Just know that the meatball is the size of a small moon, so your table only needs one.
The Lenovo Bejing Olympic Promotion is worth looking at from a case study perspective to see how to run a major international promotion.

More to be added as I remember.

Glasses Raised High for Two Seattle Events

Posted by Andy Boyer in Personal, Seattle May 11, 2009

I’m not exactly the biggest afficionado, aficccionado, affecionado….patron of the arts. While I enjoy most of the events I attend, somehow I end up at birthday parties, dinners and sporting matches more often than “cultural events.”

This past Thursday and Friday though, I was lucky enough to hit two places that I recommend to all who have the opportunity. The first is Teatro Zinzani, a wild mashup of dinner, acrobatics, juggling, drinks, chaos, love, music, ballet and dessert.

I’m shocked that it took me 8+ years to finally check out the show. Yes, it’s spendy. But do yourself the favor of renting movies one night and spending your whole weekend budget on this event, which makes for a fantastic evening. I promise you’ll have enough stories to talk about at cocktail parties to more than make up for the bill. Plus, it’s simply something you won’t get to see anywhere else.

On a completely different avenue in Crazy Town, I have nothing but great things to say about the train wreck of an autobiography that is Carrie Fisher’s life in “Wishful Drinking.” This really is a must-see show. Except, you can’t. It’s too late. It ended its run in Seattle last weekend, so you’re out of luck. But if you are travelling this summer and run across a town where Fisher is telling the sad, but hilarious tales of her messed up life, make sure you pop in. One, it will make you howl. And two, you’ll feel a lot better about any issues you think you have.

Beat the Bridge Run Next Weekend

Posted by Andy Boyer in Uncategorized May 7, 2009

I think I need to remind everyone about my favorite running race, the 5 mile Beat the Bridge Run. Once again, Team “No Runner Left Behind” will be giving it a go in both the 8k run and 1 mile fun walk. If you haven’t signed up for the team yet, please jump on board now at BeattheBridge.org. It’s unfortunate that the Beat the Bridge web site is darn near unusable, but if you spend enough hours, you can eventually figure out how to get signed up. See you May 17.

Offline, Un-Social Marketing, from Seattle’s Fuel

Posted by Andy Boyer in Human Behavior, Marketing, Seattle April 29, 2009

One of the funny things about Social Media is that the whole idea is based on the theory that the Product and Marketing teams care about what is being said out in the blogosphere. Sure it seems obvious that they would care, but then again….

Consider an offline situation I’ve run across from a Pioneer Square bar called Fuel. Other than being the proud host of a party hosted by Mary Kay Latorneau and DJ’d by her young husband, the bar’s claim to fame is being the home of the hardcore Sounders supporters before each home game. The bar is a natural choice for a rowdy supporters’ group because no one else really goes there. So the supporters can sing, chant and spend money for 4-5 hours before kickoff.

You’d think the owner of this bar would be appreciative. At least, if one of these customers mentioned to the waitress that the beer tasted of soap, that offline customer feedback would be registered, and the beer taps examined. I myself have been a victim of these soapy taps, going as far to recommend other bars to friends thinking of pre-game settings. It surprised me when I heard the same soapy beer was beiing served weeks later.

What’s shocking though, is when a bar owner serves the same soapy beer week after week, and instead of fixing the problem, basically throws a patron out for protesting the taste of soapy beer, using the rationale, “The rest of the crowd doesn’t seem to notice.” Now the people associated with that patron have shifted their dollars to the bar across the street, called McCoy’s.

So back to my point. Igoring what you hear in social media is no different than being a bar owner who ignores a patron. If someone is going to take the time to say, “Your product is causing me harm and pain. Here’s an easy way to fix it,” then you really should listen. Otherwise, you are simply the equivalent of an ignorant bar owner serving soapy beer.

The Official End of Time Magazine Being a Credible Source of Information

Posted by Andy Boyer in Media April 28, 2009

It really doesn’t get much worse than this. You know you’ve been hacked, you publicly admit the data is fantastically absurd, and yet you go forward anyway and announce an award.

Time Magazine’s list of Top 100 influential people was released, and TechCrunch brings to everyone’s attention that the list is an absolute farce.

Says Techcrunch:

The hackers of 4Chan have succeeded in completely gaming Time Magazine’s online poll for its Time 100 list of the most influential people on the planet. At the top of the list is Christopher Poole, aka Moot, the founder of the 4Chan online forum, whose members used some coding to get his name to the top of the list. Not only did they help moot win the poll, but they also arranged the next 20 names to spell out “Marblecake, also the game.” Marblecake is a lewd sexual reference, but is also supposedly the name of the chat room where one of 4Chan’s online collective actions, Project Chanology, originated.

So, if a magazine knows it is publishing something inherently inaccurate, and everyone else knows it’s inaccurate, how do you trust anything else it writes?

The Best Seattle Sports Day Since…..When?

Posted by Andy Boyer in Seattle, Sports April 26, 2009

It’s been well documented that 2008 was the worst sports year for any city in history. And 2009 started a little bit better with the Huskies winning a bad Pac 10 before being dumped out of the tourney early.

But is it too early to say that April 25, 2009 was the official inflection point in the resurgence of Seattle sports? Maybe the absolute bottom was the 2008 Husky hoops lost to Portland St. Or the Apple Cup. We saw a few nice things happen in 2009 to get us off the mat. Sarkisian was hired and UW football suddenly seemed relevant again. Then Griffey signed and the Mariners seemed interesting again. And then ths Sounders got off to their hot start and we once again had a 3rd sport to pay attention to.

But then came April 25.

The Seahawks get the player they wanted and needed, plus they got an additional 1st round draft pick next year. Now, if the Seahawks stink in 2009, they’ll go into the draft with 2 high picks to get both their QB of the future and fill whatever immediate need they have. And if they’re good next year, they won’t have any immediate needs to fill and will have the luxury to use Denver’s high pick on their QB of the future. Beautiful.
The Mariners win 9-8. The win keeps them in first place, and they finally do it by scoring runs, rather than hoping the other team doesn’t.
The Sounders bounce back from 2 losses, winning 2-0 to get themselves back in contention, just a half game back of first.
And there was excitement around the Husky Spring Game. When was the last time anyone cared about the Husky Spring Game? And better yet, since they were playing each other, one team of Huskies had to win, giving at least some players on that roster an emotion they hadn’t felt since high school.

I think we can say that Seattle sports is finally out of the cellar, and is on a good trajectory.

What Does Oprah on Twitter Mean for Social Media

Posted by Andy Boyer in Big Businesses, Marketing, Media, Social Media April 18, 2009

So this is a time sensitive topic, and I’m already a day late, so this quick stream of consciousness will probably not be very well thought out and hence cause people to vehemently comment about how wrong I am. Oh well.

So Oprah has joined the Twittierverse with the appropriately chosen moniker @oprah. She was basically dragged kicking and screaming into it by Ashton Kutcher on his race with CNN to One Million followers. (BTW, different topic, but you will never hear me say anything negative about Ashton Kutcher. He is very high on my list of business minded entertainers that I hope to meet someday, not for the star power or Hollywood “glow,” but for the business and marketing insights I could learn.)

Now the social media world has fallen into a few camps on this.

– Predictably, there is the camp who feels like their baby is being exploited now that Oprah has gotten involved. These are the same type of people who listened to Pearl Jam at a dive bar in downtown Seattle in 1990 and then got mad when they showed up on David Letterman and sold out Madison Square Garden.

– There’s a camp who thinks Oprah is late to Social Media, and shouldn’t be given any credit at all.

– There’s a group of people who have never heard of Twitter who are about to sign up for accounts just so they can follow Oprah.

– And finally, there’s a bunch of people in mainstream media who are going to be calling the “Social Media Expert” in their city to do a 90 second interview on this “blossoming company called Twitter.”

So here’s my synthesis:

Oprah never has and never will need Social Media. She has the most popular syndicated television program in the history of mankind. Combine all the impressions from the top 100 “social media superstars,” and I bet that number doesn’t even sniff the kind of eyeballs Oprah generates in TV and print. And let’s not even begin to joke about revenue. Take Harpo’s annual revenue in one hand. Start counting up all the revenue generated by Social Media Superstars in the other. And let me know when you get to an even balance.

I work in Social Media, so this may seem like blasphemy, but honestly, Social Media is what you do when you can”t get on Oprah. If I build the world’s first economical and reliable jet pack, and post videos on YouTube of me flying back and forth to work all day, guys like Michael Arrington and Guy Kawaskai are going to cover it. But if I get on Oprah, or even 60 Minutes, I better have an army of telephone operators ready to take orders. It’s a subtle but distinct difference.

Said more succinctly, Social Media is what we do to get NOTICED by Oprah’s producers. It’s not what Oprah needs to do to get noticed by us.

That being said, Oprah, as a teacher and educator, please use proper capitalization on your Twitter page. There’s no reason to join the Twitterverse and then show 50 million kids that the only reason to ever use the “Shift” key on their laptop is to create a smiley face.

So Oprah, welcome to our world here in Social Media-ville. This is what has been created by all of us with lots to say, but nowhere to previously say it. So come hang out for a while, and then remember us fondly when you are in front of your camera, in your studio, talking to 200 million people.