3M Goes Viral for All the Wrong Reasons

Rather than paying a $2,000 licensing fee for an already viral photo, 3M decided to recreate a fake watered downed version and call it their own. Now, they are going viral but for all the wrong reasons. This is just one of many posts that have and will be written about their faux-pas rather than their savvy marketing. What they should have done is taken notes from Motorola's marketing folks. When Motorola saw the fame and viral effect of the "Backdorm Boys" they didn't try to steal their idea with their own recreation. Instead, they approached them with an offer that resulted in their participation in what ended up being the "most effective use of interactive marketing - new media" at the 2006 Asian Marketing Effectiveness Awards.

Next time someone should make sure 3M gets the memo...

Social Media Conversation with 1to1 Media - Part II

Here's the second half of the podcast from the interview with 1to1 Media. This session focuses on measuring and monetizing social media. From a Cisco perspective one of the things we look at is increasing the overall 'share of voice' we have online. Tac from HP shares some of his successes with search engine optimization through the use of social media with their AR / PR initiatives. Michael at Intel looks at trying to apply a quantitative value to the different results they receive. We then share our perspective of 'what's next' and end with advice for other marketers looking to 'take the red pill':

"Start with a few small wins that you can get under your belt and
expand your efforts from there" ~ LaSandra Brill, Cisco

"Set your expectations appropriately." ~ Tac Anderson, HP

"Take your time and don't rush into it." ~ Michael Brito,
Intel

For more 'words of wisdom' check out the 'Conversations Matter' blog which we all contribute to.

Social Media Conversation with 1to1 Media - Part I

July was social media month at 1to1 Media and I was asked to participate in an interview along with Tac Anderson of HP and Michael Brito of Intel. Why us? Well we all have jobs at Fortune 500 companies and our roles are focused on internal and external social media initiatives (and we all blog at Conversations Matter). The interview which is also available as a podcast (sorry, buzzing due to technical difficulties) was broken into two parts. The first part focuses on the challenges we faced when it comes to implementing social media.

Because the three of us have been practicing social media for sometime now and because we are all in positions where social media is valued in the organization, the challenges lie in the execution. How do you match the right strategy and tools to the people you are trying to reach and how do you ensure that your team is choosing to go down the social media path for the right reasons. For that Cisco has adopted Forrester's People-Objective-Strategy-Tools (POST) methodology (perhaps with an extra look at the Strategy).

However for the folks who aren't lucky enough to be at the next phase of adoption, I am commonly asked how I was able to get management on board to execute social media campaigns (like the ASR launch). And although that wasn't addressed in this podcast, I thought I'd address it here. For me the journey began with education to my team on social media and how it can benefit us to participate in 'conversation marketing.' The next phase involved testing the waters with small projects, successes of those projects led to the support of social media as a standard marketing practice with a team to support it. It's been almost a year since my team has been chartered with finding the right opportunities to engage in 'conversational marketing' through social media with our customers and we constantly live this cycle of adoption as we get deeper into social media.

Stay tuned for part two next week...

Same ol' Voice Brand New Megaphone

There’s a new facebook group trying to influence Barack Obama’s choice of Vice President. The story here is that in the old days, there really wasn’t any way for Barack Obama to get real time polling information outside of a few hundred poll calls and there certainly wasn't an effective way for a community to quickly ban together to influence such a decision.

But now there’s an outside chance 100k people might directly influence his VP pick – in real time. That’s awesome – that’s the power of Web 2.0. Other than physically assembling thousands of people for a riot or march or standing in front of Lucky's collecting signatures – how else can this number of people collectively have a voice in such a short time frame? This isn’t a petition – it’s a near real time shout. These aren’t just signatures, they’re virtual profiles that carry all the weight of an individual’s identity.

It makes you wonder if we’re still not seeing the real potential of Web 2.0 technology. Imagine if at Apple they wee thinking of a new color scheme for the iPhone. Why risk screwing that up? Just ask your 100k strong iPhone facebook group what they think. This is not a random poll. These are real people who’ve proactively built connections and who have confirmed identities. In fact, with some analytics, you could dissect the demographics of your group to get a better feel for the result.

At no other time has it been easier to assemble a few hundred thousand like minded individuals and get heard. The question for us marketers (and in this case, Barack Obama) is: are we ready to listen?

Wrap-up Interview from Forrester Social Media Bootcamp

Today we had Jeremiah Owyang and Laura Ramos of Forrester co-host a Social Media Bootcamp at Cisco. After the event I was able to catch Laura for a quick interview (unfortunately Jeremiah had to run off to another meeting). Check it out:



I wanted to address that last question again - should it be People-Objective-Strategy-Technology (POST) or People-Objective-Technology-Strategy (POTS)? Laura's response sounds logical and seems to be what everyone who responded to my Tweet agrees with but I'm still not convinced. In talking with Jeremiah about it one thing he said was that “strategy” and “technology” actually go hand-in-hand with some overlap. For example if your planning process led you to creating a blog the strategy that you put together would be very different than if you were creating a Facebook group. Perhaps the right methodology is POSTS so you can revisit the strategy after you've chosen the technology?

UPDATE: For more on the bootcamp read this post from my collegue at Cisco, Brian Ellefritz - "My first Social Media bootcamp, and it didn't even hurt"