A Few Thoughts From Ad Week

Posted by Andy Boyer in Advertising, Marketing, Social Media September 25, 2009

To the faithful 49 of you, my apologies for my week away. I headed out to New York for “Ad Week” and a bunch of interesting meetings and assorted merriment. Anyway, I read an article a few weeks or months ago about some poor guy who told everyone on his blog that he was leaving town for a 2 week vacation, only to to return to a house devoid of all his valuables. So until I get a Doberman, I think talking about leaving town, or alerting people to when I’m out fo town, is a bad idea.

Now, I’m no prolific blogger who is going to give you a play by play from all the evnts at Ad Week in New York. Clay and I hung near the more social media related events and seminars, and here are a couple of things I took from the week.

1) I’m not sure where all the unemployed people are in New York, because every good restaurant in that town is still hard to get seated in, even at 10:00pm on a Monday night.

2) At the risk of annoying all my friends and partners in the Ad World, I posit this theory. It’s possible that the explosion of Social Media is a direct result of consumer backlash against advertising. People (aka Consumers) got tired of a one way communication channel. Then things like blogs, facebook and Twitter appeared, and suddenly everyone had a way to talk to each other and ignore the advertising. Only after the social media attack on advertising did the agencies decide to embrace Social Media. In fact, the agencies did everything they could to dismiss it as a passing fad. And so now, to hear all the agencies on stage talking about the power of Social Media and how they are integrating it into client strategy, is kind of funny to me. It’s kind of like a coal or oil company suddenly recommending what solar panels you should buy. It’s just my theory.

3) A quick note to all panelists and keynoters: Please dial down the hyperbole about “Social Media Revolutions” or “The Incredible Power of Social Media.” The reality is that consumers have always wanted to tell companies what they think of them. They’ve always wanted to tell the Slurpee Product Manager that Banana sucks and to quick wasting a spigot on such a dumb flavor. Or that the battery life of their laptop needs to be as long as a movie, otherwise it’s worthless. People have had these opinions forever. And now they have a megaphone, and their friends have megaphones. It shouldn’t be a gigantic revelation to think that people who spend money on a product they like would want to have interaction with that product and provide ways the company could make the consuming experience more enjoyable and effective. I’m not saying your keynotes are wrong, you can just dial down the rhetoric a little.

4) Before I get accused of being negative, I want to add that I think it’s great that the agencies are now going full steam into figuring out how to build creative campaigns for customer engagement. I’ve always believed the creative teams at the big agencies are more representative of Joe Consumer than Malcolm Corporation III. And now instead of using their creative powers of good in a way that cost them part of their soul, they’ll be able to unleash themselves in ways that develop connection and goodness. So I think we’re going to see some really cool experiments in the next 12 months.

5) I’m not sure what to make of the fact that Ad week was going on the same day of the UN sessions where Khadaffi (sp?) and the Iranian President (whose name I won’t even attempt Spellcheck to fight with) went off on crazy soliloquies.

Overall, we had a great time chatting with partners, clients, friends and colleagues. Lots of neat announcements and fun times. Thanks to everyone who made it a good, fun and productive week.

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.

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.