Business

I was recently able to experience an interesting campaign that paired two companies that you would not immediately think of together.  The partnership between Hanes and JetBlue. Now call me weird but when I think of underwear I don’t immediately jump to airlines as the most likely partner.

Before I continue – the disclosure: Since 2009 I have been part of the Hanes Comfort Crew, a panel of Social Media advocates and advisors. However, they do not in anyway pay for content. They do make opportunities available to the Comfort Crew and we are free to use our discretion as to whether we accept them or not. This post was not requested or paid for.

What I liked about this was precisely that. The pairing was unexpected. This is smart marketing. The instinct to reach for the most obvious partner or association in what we perceive to be the mind of the consumer is the downfall of many marketers. I am a big fan, for example of the work of David & Goliath, the agency behind the Kia commercials. After all who puts a full size Sock Monkey on a mechanical bull as a way of selling suv’s to soccer mom’s?

So what was the idea with Hanes and JetBlue? Actually they hit upon one of the things that passengers are most concerned about, Comfort. Both brands are very focused on comfort. Hanes from a wearable perspective, JetBlue from a traveling perspective. They partnered up to try and bring comfort to the passengers of the early morning east bound flights in the US. The red-eye or Shut-eye as JetBlue calls it is certainly a place where passengers seek comfort.

I traveled from Denver to New York City on a JetBlue flight which departed from Denver at 00.50 (for those that don’t do military time, that’s ten minutes to 1am). The gate was surprisingly busy with a lot of people catching a few more minutes of sleep laying on the floor, slumped in seats, or sitting against pillars. If ever a bunch of people needed comfort this was it. As fate would have it, I was greeted at the gate by none other than Molly Lynn who is not only a great crew member for Jet Blue but a Social Media maven in her own right. She had been “warned” I was coming and that I’d be taking pictures & possibly video.

Warning or not Molly treated every passenger extremely well, again something that everyone flying at that ungodly hour wants. At boarding time, the passengers were advised that on boarding they were welcome to take a free Hanes t-shirt. This tied in with commercials that Hanes had been running both online and on TV for their new T-shirts with a no roll collar. Again part of the comfort angle. For this to really work it would have been better if each passenger had been handed a T-shirt at their seat, but as I later found out, that many t-shirts in boxes would have been way too much weight for the aircraft to carry around.

Some of the passengers didn’t take a t-shirt, especially those who were obviously headed to a business meeting at the end of their flight, others simply eyed them suspiciously as though heeding the security announcement that they shouldn’t take things onboard from people they didn’t know. The people that did take them were the ones you would expect to take freebies, kids, student aged travelers etc.

Overall this campaign gets my Smart Marketing nod because of the unique pairing. The execution was very difficult because of the physical limitations but for a company as traditional as Hanes to try new and innovative things is a great sign. For all of its buzz, Social Media will only take you so far. Getting closer to the customer in the real world should always be a part of a Smart Marketing campaign and not reaching for the obvious is definitely the way to make things memorable.

What Smart Marketing have you seen lately?

Image used under Creative Commons License by HowNowDesign

We broke this news on our Facebook Fan page yesterday (come & “like” it) and today we announce it to the world. We have officially expanded our operation to Latin America by opening an office in Mexico City, Mexico. The office and the Latin America operation will be run by Fernando Braojos – you can read about him on the About Us page.

I’m extremely excited by this news, we have already executed one project in Mexico and are in the process of signing more clients as I write.  This is a major step for a company that only celebrated its two year anniversary at the beginning of this month.

What next?  Over the next year we will continue to expand our operations across the US & in Latin America. Our next obvious target is Europe and I am looking at various options for partners in London with which to gain a foothold there. There also a couple of individuals on my radar who I think would be an awesome fit for the IncSlingers team so we will see where things go from here.

Speaking of awesome individuals, our other major news is that Aronado Placencia of Startup Lucky has joined the IncSlingers US team as Creative Strategist – again you can read about him on the About Us page. Aronado will lead our sales & marketing efforts in the US. Seeking new clients that are looking to partner with real communicators who will ensure that their message is delivered.  See why Aronado decided to join IncSlingers in his video.

Last week Fast Company launched the Influencer Project. A simple concept, add your picture, send the link to your page out to your network, see how many people click the link. Apparently this offended many of the Social Media glitterati. With posts a plenty telling Fast Company how their project was flawed, how getting people to click a link is no indication of influence. How they were measuring Ego, how they weren’t measuring anything. How the real influencers wouldn’t even bother with their stupid game and so the results would be pointless.

Of course they did all this by doing what? Oh yes that’s right, posting links to their posts and asking people to click on it! Where do they think their influence came from? Did they just wake up one morning with all these fans and readers and subscribers, nope they produced good content (definitely key) but then they had to do the donkey work of promoting that content. Which online means putting the link out there and telling people why they should click on it.

Every time a popularity contest comes around, be it the Mashable awards, the Shorties, or whatever a whole section of the Glitterati get their undies in a bunch over it. It so happens I have a theory on this, it’s called… Low Self Esteem. You see the people that get most concerned about this are the ones that can’t fathom why they are already popular. They suffer from fragile ego’s and a certain amount of paranoia and worry that it will all just disappear if someone else becomes popular.

I know this sounds very condemning of me. The reason I can take this stance is quite simple. I suffer from the same concerns as well. I understand that we all get a little paranoid sometimes and worry that our good fortune might just evaporate, that someone somewhere is smarter, better, sharper than us (actually I know for a fact that they are).  However, telling a company like Fast Company, you got it wrong is not the right solution. See the opportunity in this project. I’m already discovering people who I had no idea existed before that have got some good things to say. The blogosphere is too big for us to know everyone. We find a “jerk circle” (thanks to Jason Falls for that term) and we stay in it. We know the people we know and we stick with them.

So instead of simply writing the Influence Project off as lame, why not take a second look and see what you can actually get out of it.

Oh and my Influence Project link is fcinf.com/v/byxg

With the term “Social Media Expert” being added to just about every company and consultants profile these days it is hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. What follows is my opinion on how to identify a Social Media partner for your business or organization. I want to explain why I am writing this post, it is the product of several conversations with people, clients, prospective clients and just friends who all asked me this question.

Disclaimer

Before going any further with this post it is important that I acknowledge that I & my company provide Social Media advice, guidance and execution as part of our service offerings as an integrated Marketing communication company. However, what follows is in no way an advertorial, I will not be promoting our services in this post.

The Basics

A quick search of Twitter profiles turned up 80 Twitter users just on one results page that included the term Social Media expert in their profile. I think most people know to be wary of “self-proclaimed” experts. However, just in case you aren’t, you should be.

So ignoring those who will loudly proclaim their own expertise how can you find someone to work with who can provide you and your organization sound advice? There are several important criteria to consider when evaluating a potential Social Media Partner:

• Longevity
• Experience – Doing Not Saying
• Results
• Shiny Object Syndrome

Longevity

How long have they actually been doing this? Some people maintain that Social Media is so new that it is impossible for anyone to have gained expertise in the space. I disagree, Social Media has only been new to those who didn’t recognize it for what it was – primarily the mainstream media. Social Media has been around a long time in one form or another. Podcasts used to be called Webcasts, they pre-date the iPod by several years (I launched my first series of webcasts in 1998). Blogs have been around at least that long, admittedly you had to have some coding skills to create one and they weren’t really recognized as blogs per se, they were referred more to as lifestreaming or online journals (posted my first one in 2002). So to state that the space is so new that no one has gained enough knowledge to have expertise seems to me to be a way of making excuses for those who, after 3 months of Twitter use hang out their shingle as a Social Media expert. As with any “consultant” check and see how long they have been in the field.

Experience – Doing Not Saying

This is where I prefer the term Practitioner rather than Consultant – its a semantics thing, and at the end of the day the job title doesn’t really matter. However, in my experience consultants are usually very good at talking about a topic, not necessarily good at executing. When considering a Social Media Partner find out if they have actually had personal success with Social Media. When I think of Social Media Practitioners I think of people like Chris Brogan who doesn’t just talk about Social Media, nor does he just consult with companies on the topic, he “does” Social Media and as such has gained recognition as a Social Media Influencer, being approached by brands to be an online evangelist for their product. At a more local level to me, here in Austin, we are very fortunate to have some excellent Social Media practitioners. One that jumps immediately to mind is the very talented Shelia Scarborough. Sheila is a blogger, Social Media trainer and practitioner. As a travel blogger she was invited to go on a tour of China to experience the growth and changes in that country. You don’t get invited on trips like that simply by calling yourself an expert, other people have to recognize your ability and your practice in the space.

Results

Does your prospective partner know how to get you results? Can they cite previous examples of having gained results for others? Remember that in this age of sometimes semi-transparent business practices, some companies demand that external consultants sign strict Non-disclosure agreements that prevent them from using the company name on any marketing materials. So don’t be overly surprised if they aren’t able to give you a name and number to call for a large project, but they should be able to produce data at a detail level such that they aren’t faking it.

Shiny Object Syndrome

If your potential Social Media Partner wants to talk endlessly about the latest new technology, new platform or widget that they think you should be using, proceed with caution. While a good knowledge of upcoming trends is essential, the habit of simply running to the latest and greatest platform and dragging you & your organization with them isn’t good for you. Remember that Social Media isn’t about technology, its about people. The platforms we use now will be very old hat in 2 years time. Being obsessed with the technology won’t lead to a successful Social Media strategy.

Hopefully you have some things with which to separate the wheat from the chaff when considering a Social Media partner. What qualities do you think I missed, what would you add to the list?

Image by Neil Rickards

I used to think Mashable.com was a pretty good online publication. Certainly enough to pitch them ideas and actually have a few posts published by them, but of late, I really think that Pete Cashmore and his organization has lost the plot. Mashable used to be “All That’s New on the Web”, now they are titled “The Social Media Guide”. Unfortunately they aren’t either.

The posts they now put out are mostly lists, now I know that blog readers like lists, 10 best this, 7 ways to do that, 18 plugins for this problem. But seriously are there not enough bloggers out there already producing those types of posts. If you have a visitor base of some 1.5m unique visitors per month (according to Compete.com) don’t you think you could try and be a little bit different?

Has Mashable gone the way of its print cousins and become so focussed on Ad revenue that they have decided it is better to turn out the same old stuff that everyone else is doing and play it safe?  One post today just made me laugh, 18 Wordpress Plugins for RSS – this is one of the laziest types of posts, and takes about 5 minutes to pull together. Just go to the WordPress Plugins Directory type in the resource you are looking for, and viola you have a list of plugins.

For example here’s how to produce a post called 5 WordPress Plugins for Podcasters:

Type in podcasting, get the following result:

Now just rewrite some of this info which comes from the developers and you have a post! No magic to it, no effort either.

Perhaps I am holding them to too high a standard, perhaps I shouldn’t expect anything approaching journalism from what is really “just” a blog. But I do, if Social Media is to progress, those that put themselves out there as “leaders” in the space need to try harder, need to raise the bar, not just produce the same old junk that any hack can pull out in a pinch.

Whilst I agree finding new and interesting Social Media stories is hard work, if you are truly going to be “The Social Media Guide”, then guide don’t follow.

Mashable Image via CrunchBase

Marketing Profs sent out their Marketing Inspirations today with a message from Liberal talk show host and blogger for Huffington Post Cenk Uygur.  In that article he argues that Kellogg’s decision to drop Michael Phelps as a brand spokesperson is a major marketing error.

I have some major issues with this article, Cenk Uygur is a political commentator not a marketing or brand expert, so I am not sure what his qualifications are to talk about branding decisions are. His position is that Kellogg is going to alienate a large portion of its customers and potential customers by deciding to drop Michael Phelps.  He bases this on his claim that 42% of the US population has smoked marijuana. He further claims that even those who have never smoked it see nothing wrong with it.

He of course doesn’t supply a source for these claims, he also fails to point out the difference between those people who may have admitted that at some point they once tried marijuana and those who are currently regular users of the drug. Because Omega & Speedo have decided not to drop Phelps, apparently that is enough reason that Kellogg should. Here are my questions. Do Speedo and Omega perform drug tests on their prospective employees, in their contracts do they have a clause that allows the company to have unannounced random drug tests? Many large employers do, my own company – which is still less than 10 people conducts drug and criminal checks before hiring. So if those companies do the same what message does it send to their employees? Oh we will test you but Michael Phelps is different because he is famous.

I have heard the defence that he “made a mistake” – how do you accidentally smoke marijuana? The mistake he made was getting caught. Cenk Uygur is trying to promote a political agenda and proposes that brands, by taking a stand on a particular issue will alienate potential customers. Did I miss something or did he just become a raging capitalist – profits at any cost?

Will 42% of the buying public in America suddenly decide that they are not going to eat Kellogg products because they dropped Mr Phelps for smoking dope? Will they suddenly see Kellogg as not being “cool”? Uygur is quoted as saying “You are no longer protecting your brand when you are prudish and overly careful,” he says. “You just seem out of touch.”  Out of touch with what precisely? Parents who are buying cereal or the kids who eat them? Is the premise that kids see a role model smoke dope and endorse cereal therefore the cereal is cool, or that adults who smoke dope will get the munchies for Kellogg cereals because of their fellow marijuana user?

Either way, I think it is Uygur who is out of touch. Stick with the political commentary and leaving brand advice to those who know better.

San Antonio recently played host to the Freelance Camp. It was my first experience of an unconference. For those of you not familiar with the concept here is how it works:

All the attendees are encouraged to be session leaders. A timetable is put somewhere accessible, each person that wants to lead a session puts their topic against a time and room slot. After about 5 mins you have yourself a schedule of sessions that people can attend.

I didn’t have a lot of faith in this as a concept when it was explained to me. My guess was no one would sign up to do anything and there would be a hundred people just sitting around chatting. Wow was I wrong. It was an extremely energetic day. I found myself leading two slots. The great thing about this is you act only as an enabler. The whole point of these sessions is that everyone in the session has something to share and that we can all learn from each other.

I came away very energized, very tired and full of lessons learned.  Big thanks go to Luis Sandoval and team for making it happen.

The two sessions I led were Big Tools for Small Business and Finding Time for Social Media. I hope you like the videos.

One of the tools that I talk about in the first session is Qipit.  Using that tool I was able to capture the notes from each session:

Big Tools for Small Business – View the notes here

Social Media Map – View the notes here

Without giving too much away, watch for one of these Camp’s coming to Austin soon!

Recently those wacky folks at Hubspot released another of their Grader tools. This one is for Facebook. It joins the others in their stable of Press Release, Website & Twitter.

I like Hubspot, I like some of their tools. I use Press Release & Website Grader as they provide a pretty decent overview of a press release or website and allow you to focus in on the areas that can stand some improvement.  They are great tools for small companies that can’t afford to call in an expensive consultant.

When Twitter Grader came out, I wrote a post about it and did a comparison between it and Twinfluence for Mashable. At the time, I pointed out that this smacked somewhat of a high school popularity contest but that there was some use for it in terms of an approach that can be learned for engaging in Twitter.  When I used Twitter grader there were currently 5000 Twitter users being graded, so whatever grade you achieved it had to be measure against that fact. Right now it measures against just over 1m Twitter users. That seems a reasonable sample, actually its less than 25% of all Twitter users, so even now its real value is limited.

Enter Facebook Grader – this, in my opinion is one tool too many.  Firstly it is even more skewed as it is an early tool and currently is only measuring against just under 7000 Facebook users – that is 0.04% of the Facebook community. So basically the number it produces is, to all intents & purposes meaningless. Now I agree that for some these tools can be seen as “fun”. Sure why not. However, there are those who will take these tools seriously and use them to convince others that they are some kind of Social Media whizz just because they scored XX on one of these sites. Worse still, companies looking for some measure of success might actually start using this as a metric against which to assess their Social Media campaign.

What I do like about Facebook grader, Yes there are somethings, is the fact it analyzes your profile and points out where you have gaps in it.  Perhaps you missed the part on your profile for “Hometown” or “About Me”.  These are good things to point out and are more in line with Press Release Grader & Website Grader. But please take away the numerical score or at least make it relevant to something else.  More to the point, please take away the Facebook “Elite”.  Social Media is not about “Elitism” it is about community. Perpetuating the myth of popularity equaling Elitism is serving no good at all.

Recently there has been some discussion about Twitter monetization. Its the same conversation that has been going on for the past few months as people become more aware of Twitter. Unfortunately all the conversations seem to come back to the same suggestions, how Ads can be worked into the Twitter stream without annoying Twitter users.

What I would like to see is some new thinking, instead of simply assuming that if its online then it has to be ad based how about coming up with something better.

Here I propose 5 elements that Twitter could incorporate into a Twitter Premium Service that would allow for some monetization without having to resort to Ads at all.

1. Bio Search. Right now this is extremely hard to achieve and for the most part is fairly hit or miss. It would be a great idea to have a keyword search for the bio section of a Twitter users page. I would definitely see both power users and commercial Twitter users paying a premium to get at this data.
2. Extended Tweets – yes I know there are 3rd party services that will allow you to do this for free but if you could do it from within Twitter or better yet within your Twitter application through the use of an API Key which would allow TweetDeck or whatever tool you use to recognize that you are allowed to extend your tweets to says 300 characters I think people would pay for that.
3. Priority Bandwidth – one of the biggest criticisms of Twitter since it first went live has been its flaky servers. So first they would need to fix that, but moving certain accounts to more reliable servers with greater bandwidth would certainly be a premium service that some would be willing to pay for, especially those that micro-blog from events, such as CES etc.
4. The ability to DM non-followers. Now I know the TwitterVerse, will, for the most part hate me for even suggesting such a thing – after all it opens up Twitter to Spammers even more – but you get spam anyway. Being able to target Twitter users as a result of good search and send them directed messaging is a Marketers delight, and I am sure they would pay for it.
5. Make the Sign Up Info available to developers of third party applications via the API. Twitter asks for very little information about you when you sign up, and what it does request it keeps to itself.  Making this type of information available to certain developers would allow those tools to become more useful and powerful and allow for better integration between Twitter and other Social Media platforms. For example you cannot currently export your Twitter followers and then import them into say Facebook to see who is also on there.

Well those are my 5 ways Twitter could monetize its Premium service, what are yours?
Image via CrunchBase

I took part in the Alltop promotion by signing up and allowing the site to send Tweets out under my name. I did this for a few reasons, I thought it was a neat way of marketing something and I wanted to see if it worked, I like Guy Kawasaki’s approach to business and figured this was a way to be a part of something he was setting up and because I couldn’t see the harm in it. I believe I got all of those reason correct. What I also got, which I wasn’t expecting was a free copy of Reality Check, Guy Kawasaki’s book.

I am on my second time through it at the moment. Now I am a voracious reader, but to be honest, I don’t much go in for business books. I see them in the bookstores, I see them at the airports, I even occasionally see someone reading one of them. For the most part I have always felt they were part of the “must be seen to be doing” effect. Like owning certain gadgets, or other brands.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not disrespecting business writers or business books per se. I am sure many of them have a lot of value. I just prefer to get my business knowledge by doing rather than reading. Of the few business books that I have read, which include things like “In Search of Excellence”, Reality Check is a stand out book. Most notably because it isn’t a business book. Although it is sub-titled, quite cleverly, The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition, I would have sub-titled it (with a nod to Dr Reuben’s book) “Everything You Wanted to Know in Business School – But Were Too Afraid To Ask”.

I have never been a fan of B-School. There, I have said it out loud, go on get over it. Perhaps its a cultural thing, the MBA has yet to really catch on in the UK (we are perhaps more like Missourians – we are the Show Me country). I’d rather hire someone who has actually done it than someone who has sat and listened to someone who hasn’t and then taught them how it might be done.

That’s not to say I haven’t encountered some very smart people who have MBA’s, Guy Kawasaki has one! But it is my belief those people were smart before they went to B-School, not because of going to B-School.

So having set the stage, what did Reality Check teach me?

1. Its cheaper than an MBA and a lot more useful: Ok so I have already shared my thoughts on MBA’s, not going to beat that subject. Reading a book that so encompasses the business mind set like this, that takes you from concept to launch to daily operations, do you really need $000’s of student debt and two years out of your life, why not read this book and then invest that money in yourself and your idea. You will learn a lot more from reading the book and then actually doing than sitting in a classroom.
2. It isn’t just about the technology: My company is a service provider, we don’t develop or produce technology (although that is my background – yes I am a geek). So does any of the start up part of this book really apply to me and my company? Yes absolutely. Just because the references are to technology ideas, the principles that Guy shares in the book apply to any organization of any size, from a tech startup to a florist. The product you are developing is going to go through all the same stages.
3. Whether You Believe You Need Funding or Not, You Need To Know How VC’s Think: A lot of focus in business writing concerning VC funding centers on the next great “killer app”. Well if you aren’t in the business of producing the next great killer app or you have a big enough bank account of your own to bank roll your idea why do you need to know about VC’s. In my opinion what Guy shares about VC’s is not just about investors in the traditional sense, its about anyone investing in your company, and that most certainly includes your customers – especially your early customers. Treat them like VC’s, talk to them in a way that recognizes the risk they are taking and be aware that they are quite likely experienced and can smell Bull-Shiitake from a considerable distance.
4. Why Money Isn’t All That Important: Ok we all know this is a lie, money is the one thing every business, especially new businesses need buckets of, or at least that is the conventional thinking. Guy points out how that paradigm has changed, how he started Truemors & Alltop for less than the average “traditional, VC funded” startup spends on having their business cards designed. Guy shares that it cost him approx $10,000 to start Alltop. How many credits at B-School would that buy you?
5. Entrepreneurs are everywhere: This is the really interesting part of the early chapters of the book for me. It recognizes that not everyone either wants to or has the drive to go out and start their own business. However, it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t think and act as though their piece of whatever organization they work in isn’t their own enterprise. Invest in it, not with money but with time, attitude and approach. If more organizations encouraged rather than stifled their Intrapreneurs, as Guy calls them, then they would find a resource that would truly help them Outsmart, Outmanage and Outmarket their competition.

Of course to some this will simply seem like a lovefest for Guy Kawasaki, it isn’t, though I happen to think he is one of the smartest marketers in the world, mainly because he is so honest about how and why he does things. Don’t believe me, come back tomorrow and read the five things I asked Guy Kawasaki and what his response were.

image via Amazon