A thousand monkeys, typing on Twitter

Why are we nice to people? We tend to argue back and forth over whether social skills are learned or built in to human nature, but marketers in particular are interested in that question because we want to know what makes people like a brand, or why they talk about it. So it’s particularly interesting to note new research conducted at Duke University that suggests social reciprocity norms are hardwired into our brains. That’s a fancy way of saying that you retweeting a post often creates a social obligation for someone else to retweet yours. Neuromarketing outlines the experiment, which showed certain areas of a chimp’s brain lit up only when gifting juice to another chimp – Certain areas that scientists believe exist specifically to remember social gestures.

Just goes to show that giving someone a gift – a free ebook, a sample, a Liked post on Facebook – does more than you think. It makes you a resource, and it creates a lasting impression.

2012′s Most Popular Videos

Buzzfeed posted a list of 2012′s 10 most-popular videos on YouTube this morning, and mentioned a couple of pretty interesting highlights:

1. The most popular music video this year wasn’t American
2. YouTube’s investment in premium content didn’t result in a single video in the top 10
3. No vlogger made the top 10
4. The most expensive video on the list is the only one with any durability
5. Two of the top 10 were ads

The Internet of Things

“Queen of the Net” Mary Meeker delivered her annual “Internet Trends Year-End Update” at Stanford University last night, mainly adding fuel to the Internet of Things fire, by pointing out a few key statistics for 2012:

• 29 percent of adults in the U.S. own either a tablet or e-reader
• The percentage of internet traffic accounted for by mobile devices has more than tripled since 2010
• iPad adoption has grown at three times that of the iPhone, and Android adoption has grown at six times that of the iPhone

Content Marketing in the 1930s

Just a quick note to remind everyone that content marketing isn’t the new phenomenon that some seem to think it is in 2012. Tom Megginson found a copy of an old Labatt Brewery Drinking Songs Booklet in Ontario, and uploaded scans of what I think is the whole thing. He says it was used to help boost morale among employees, who could bring the branded ‘hymnal’ with them to bars and parties. So while it was technically an HR-focused project, you can see how word of mouth could spread, and how the brand could become an integral part of an emotionally satisfying experience.

Debbie Downer Monday Morning web tips for the Pragmatist

Just a quick reminder/downer to bring your pie-in-the-sky social media and marketing tech ideas crashing to the ground this morning:

• 82% of all web sharing is still done via copy/paste [link]
• Most people still use search engines to find stuff they want to buy (not Facebook) [link]
• The most effective digital ads are those that users share, not brands [link]

It’s always awesome when new stuff works. But if you want reliable results from a digital campaign, when the stakes are high it’s usually best to remember the fundamentals.

Lytro

I’ve apparently been living under a rock for the last year, and missed the launch of what looks like the coolest camera of all time: the Lytro. Based on a Stanford PhD thesis from founder Ren Ng, Lytro houses a sensory chip with hundreds of tiny lenses – rather than one single lens – that capture light from all different sources and directions. Why’s that important? Because multiple lenses means multiple focus points. Which means you can focus your shots after the fact with the company’s software, can change the perspective of your shot, and apply filters live on the go, rather than doing so in Instagram or CameraAwesome. Check it out and see what I mean.

Strategy is never dead

Data freak Nate Silver ruffled a lot of feathers between this latest election and the last by “predicting” the first outcome almost-perfectly across 49 states, and then, well, perfectly-perfectly across all 50 in the second. But if you take the time to read Silver’s book, The Signal and the Noise, it gets pretty apparent pretty quickly that the author doesn’t think information does a great job of predicting anything – Rather, in the words of Boing Boing, “the quintillions of bytes of data at our disposal actually make prediction harder, not easier.” Noise argues that data simply alerts us to the relative probability that a certain situation will occur. It can’t predict the future. And in most cases, it makes deciding on a course of action even more difficult.

That kind of truth makes strategic thinking, careful planning, and pragmatic reasoning more important in this day and age than ever before. Big data tells us people can behave in a lot of different ways, but it can’t tell us how or when. Just that they do. So before deciding that your customers “will be more mobile” in 2013, realize that a lot of them will probably be less mobile too.

Loneliness is not a tactic

Andy Braner would like to remind you in this morning’s Daily Beast that “social media is a means to an end, not a primary tool for building relationships.” Nina Strochlich’s article on Braner’s Camp Kivu – which requires teenagers to disconnect from their networks while attending – comes on the back of The Atlantic’s oft-cited article “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” which posited that sites like Twitter and Instagram create the illusion of friendship, but not the real thing. Sometimes it’s important for marketers to remember that fact – The best way to reach a customer isn’t through advertising, direct mail, or a follow, but through honest relationships, established in real life. When it comes to social media, the Principle of Integrity trumps all else.

A case for Small Data

Last week, Robert Plant wrote a few words on Harvard Business Review’s blog discussing his lukewarm attitude toward the Big Data trends that seem to be shaping the average marketer’s perception of their trade on the way out of 2012. “Companies would do better at satisfying and retaining customers if they spent less time worrying about big data and more time making good use of ‘small data’ — already-available information from simple technology solutions,” he says, reflecting consumer sentiment that says projects of the former sort are creepy, inefficient, and bothersome. The root issue he’s discussing is humanity, and how knowing everything there is to know about your customers on a high level often robs a brand of its ability to connect. Striking a balance is tough. That’s why when it comes to advertising, good creative and thoughtful social media programs are more important than ever, and why being pragmatic often trumps being on the cutting edge.

Back up your platitudes

The authors of Neuromarketing like to talk about how emotional reactions create chemical events in our brains that embed memories – Without those “peak experiences,” recall of events or information becomes short term. So if you want to induce a reaction, you have to remind somebody about an experience. Ivan Pavlov figured it out a long time ago, and marketers just apply it differently – We make customers drool by ringing a bell that reminds them of something they remember. Most try to link their brand to existing memories. A select few create their own.

While we can point out the fact that Felix Baumgartner’s RedBull-sponsored leap from space this past weekend generated 16 times as many concurrent livestreams on YouTube as the Olympics did, the true value of the brand’s stunt (pun intended) has nothing to do with numbers. For the rest of my life, I’ll remember the awe I felt on Sunday afternoon when I saw the picture on the left for the first time. It’s the rare instance when a brand makes you believe in their promise – “RedBull gives you wings” means something now. It means the peak experience they created, one that a lot of people will recall forever.

The 3 new ways Facebook is aiming to get paid

The world’s largest social network needs to start making money. Their investors know it, you and I know it, and if the number of new revenue streams introduced by the company over the past few weeks is any indication, they know it too. Here’s a rundown of the top three:

• Facebook Exchange – A new advertising model that lets marketers bid on the right to deliver personalized advertising to specific users
• Promoted Posts – For a small fee (about $7), users themselves can pay to have their posts appear higher up in more feeds
• “Want” and “Collect” buttons – Retailers are testing out a new kind of Like that allows users to create wish lists available to friends and retailers

Focus on What’s Fun

Over 60% of the world’s population is active on one or more forms of social media.  You’ve got to wonder what that’s about.  Why are people so focused on Facebook, so tethered to Twitter? On one level, this is an easy question to answer. We can talk about the fundamental imperative that drives human beings to communicate with each other. Talking is what people do: communicating with each other allows us to make smarter decisions, enjoy a higher quality of life, and attain goals more efficiently and effectively. READ MORE

Trust Issues 002

I took a crack at putting together Nonbox’s second Trust Issues mix, mainly to see how quickly I could find 30 minutes of ‘F’-word-less music I actually enjoyed that my coworkers would like. There are a few classics here – I’m a huge fan of ELO, and “My World Is Empty Without You” is my favorite Supremes song – but hopefully there are at least a few tracks here you haven’t heard before. You can download the whole mix, along with artwork and a matching iPhone wallpaper just by liking our Facebook page.

Native advertising: The new infomercial

An article posted earlier this week on Digiday asks an interesting question: Is native advertising the new advertorial? Or is it a movement that will provide actual value for customers? The answer, of course, is ‘yes.’ We talked a few weeks back about how clickthrough rates are being measured in thousandths of a percent now, and further back how the only kinds of Facebook ads that actually work are those that users distribute themselves. So brands benefit less from banner ads than they do from content that’s shared.

The question, of course, is ‘what stuff do people share?’ And the answer, of course, is ‘stuff that makes them look good.’ People share what earns them social capital – Interesting tidbits that those they want to impress don’t already know. But while brands have that interesting stuff to share, it’s tough to convince potential customers to believe you when you talk. Native advertising helps to bridge that gap. Drug ads in Sports Illustrated stick out like a sore thumb. Video seamlessly integrated into Facebook showing users why certain colors pair better with others helps them look impressive.

Social media doesn’t sell – But it still works

A new Forrester report making the rounds on the web this morning is perhaps the first by a major research firm to flatly state what most of us already know about retail: “Social tactics are not meaningful sales drivers.” Sucharita Mulpuru’s paper says “fewer than 1% of transactions for both new and repeat shoppers could be traced back to trackable social links,” a statement that should pretty much put the kibosh on sales and marketing budgets that put money into Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

We’ve said it before: Brands must resist the temptation to use word of mouth on Facebook or Twitter to sell products. Social media is best used to create a community of shared experiences, and to prove to that community that you’re adept at meeting their needs. That proof comes in the form of valuable content that provides an audience with tangible value. Developing those materials makes your social media program a resource, rather than a channel, which can go a long way to ensure your customers believe you when you talk. That makes your advertising more effective, and your customers more loyal. Which, despite Forrester’s report, eventually creates profit, growth and success.

The $35 Tablet

Internet idealists have to defend themselves from a lot of criticism when arguing that technology makes the world a more informed place. How can a tablet change the world, for example, when only a fraction of a percent of the world’s population can afford one? The web is only a democratic entity, after all, when everyone is represented equally.

That’s an issue the new Aakash Ubislate 7Ci tablet is attempting to solve. It’s small (7.5″), slow (comparable to an iPhone), and bare-bones (480×640 screen resolution), but it’s cheap. Ridiculously cheap. Only $35 for the tablet itself, and $2/month for 2 gigs of data. Educators in India are hoping to deploy millions of them to ensure every student in the country has internet access – Even those who who can’t afford electricity (the Ubislate can be charged via solar power). There’s some extended commentary over at TechCrunch if you want to read more, discussing how as high technology becomes more ubiquitous, the world gets a lot smaller, and a lot more informed. That’s an opportunity for everyone – Educators, advertisers, CEOs, students and consumers alike.

Sweet Bacon

Is bacon worth its weight in gold? Oscar Mayer sure thinks so. They’re sending Josh on a cross-country trip with a trailer full of bacon that plans to use as currency all the way to L.A. I think this is a great social media campaign. You can follow Kevin and his adventures at http://www.baconbarter.com/

Bic’s Lost Opportunities on Social Media

I love BIC Cristal for Her! The delicate shape and pretty pastel colors make it perfect for writing recipe cards, checks to my psychologist (I’m seeing him for a case of the hysterics), and tracking my monthly cycle. Obviously, I don’t use it for vulgar endeavors like math or filling out a voter application, but BIC Cristal for Her is a lovely little writing utensil all the same. Ask your husband for some extra pocket money so you can buy one today!

As of this morning, there are 56 pages of Amazon reviews for Bic for Her pens. Many of these are hysterically funny, while speaking to the peril of introducing needlessly gendered products. The reviews, many of which were added over the holiday weekend,  are being discussed everywhere, from the more feminist corners of the blogosphere to mainstream business publications.  It’s the type of publicity opportunity brand managers dream about at night. But when you look to social media to see what Bic has to say about the whole brou-ha-ha, you’re going to find a whole lot of nothing. READ MORE

The Power of Predictability in Social Media

All eyes were on the sky last week, watching the approach of Hurricane Issac. The storm moved slowly but steadily toward the Florida coast.  This was a problem for the organizers of the Republican National Convention, hosted this year in Tampa.

It’s never a good idea to minimize the potential impact of a hurricane.  Even smaller storms can do devastating damage. That being said, most people who live in the area have the knowledge and experience to weather the storm safely. Many of the people who attend the Republican National Convention, however, aren’t from Florida. Delegates came from all over the country—and many of them had never been closer to a hurricane than their television set. Ensuring the safety and security of all event attendees is obviously a top priority for RNC organizers.  What should they do? READ MORE

FYI: Windows has a phone too

Microsoft wants you to know that despite the brain-melting hype behind Apple’s newest iPhone announcement on 9/12, there are still alternatives to the king of mobile tech. Like its Windows Phone 8, for example, unveiled at a press event in New York City today. It’s interesting to note that the system is all about photos – A move that coincides with a lot of speculation that social media is moving farther away from text every day, and toward more visually-oriented sharing. Given Apple’s history of producing what eventually becomes the next big thing, it won’t be a real surprise when they start making similar moves too. But considering Microsoft has been The PC for the last few years, it’s refreshing to see the company making a move that makes at least a small amount of sense.

Lessons from Condescending Corporate Brand Page

Sometimes it’s easiest not to say what social media can do for a brand if done right, but how it can tarnish one when done wrong. So thanks to Condescending Corporate Brand Page for us a reference. The message here is one we say a lot – They know you know they know. But if you’re looking for a few specific, non-snarky takeaways, here are a few quick guidelines to keep your brand’s Facebook page from becoming an embarrassment:

• Don’t post for the sake of posting – Demand attention only when you have something valuable to share.
• Ask your audience to Like and share sparingly, and only if there’s actually something in it for them.
• A status update is a bad place for blatant advertising, so don’t even try.
• People don’t talk to brands, they talk to people. So look at your posts, be honest, and ask yourself: “Is this something a person would actually say?”

How does meaning change?

A new article by Derek Thompson and Jordan Weissman in this month’s Atlantic discusses why my generation is so cheap, particularly when it comes to cars and houses. There are a lot of factors, obviously – Low pay, student debt, bad access to loans… The list goes on. But let’s consider an idea that David Aaker’s blog discussed a while back: Relevance. “There was a time where [sic] cars… provided a community and a self-expressive benefit for young drivers,” Aaker said, and Thompson and Weissman put a finer point on that statement. Today, a smartphone is what enables community and self-expression – Not where you live, or the how you get there. Why drive when an inches-wide screen can take you anywhere you want to go without requiring you to even stand up? Why meet a friend at the movies when you can Facetime over a 4G network? What it all boils down to is that the meanings we ascribe to products aren’t static – They evolve, give up some things, and gain others. A car, house and white picket fence don’t mean what it did in 1972 anymore. And tomorrow, they won’t mean what they did today.

For the first time, we all like a Facebook update

If someone were to ask me, in general, what people want out of their apps, it’s convenience. Pretty obvious, right? Smartphones in 2012 are designed to make communication easier. That’s why people get so upset when their text messages don’t go through right away, or it takes more than a few seconds for a Web page to load. If communication isn’t instant, then how is owning a smartphone any better than waiting 15 minutes to use a landline or a desktop computer?

It’s good to see Facebook finally got that memo. Its mobile app has always been one of the weaker products the company offers – It was unresponsive, crashed easily, and took way too long to load. So it’s no surprise that for the first time in a long time, Facebook’s getting a pat on the back for rolling out an update that loads text faster, responds immediately, and doesn’t crash. Pretty crazy how those simple fixes delight customers more than new bells and whistles, huh?

Talking about ourselves and loving it

A new infographic posted this morning on hypebot adds another point of evidence to the argument that people care more about themselves than anything you have to say. A new report shows that about 80% of all posts on social networks are about the person who posted them. That’s a staggering number when you consider that every minute nearly 700,000 new status updates go up, and more than half a million tweets go out. Facebook is even experimenting with a program that will allow any user to pay $2 to highlight a status update. A great question to ask: Are consumers obsessed with social media, or are they obsessed with themselves?

So when it comes to applying that knowledge in a marketing program, it’s best to ask a question (one that you might’ve heard before): Two subjects are placed on two different streets, each holding a different sign – one reads “Will Work For Food,” the other “What if you were hungry?” Which do you think hauls in more patrons? Hint: They’re more interested in themselves than they are in the person holding the sign.

Native advertising and the creativity challenge

We’ve reached a point with traditional digital advertising where clickthrough rates are measured in thousandths of a percent. That should be a pretty solid indicator that 99.999% of consumers aren’t interested in anything having to do with banners, but most companies just keep plugging along. After all, as Mathew Ingram writes this morning, “there is some money to be made with that approach (provided you have billions of pageviews to throw at it).”

Some companies are learning some new lessons though, realizing that getting customers to hear a message means crafting content that they actually want to consume. Ingram refers to “native” advertising – a strategy aimed at weaving a brand into the fabric of a site, instead of an irritating sticker pasted over the top. As he says, “That’s why major brands of all kinds are pouring billions of dollars into developing their own content channels, whether it’s YouTube or a Tumblr or a blog inside Forbes magazine’s advertiser network.” Those are great examples of the most effective way to use social media to your advantage. But it’s also the toughest – Crafting interesting, engaging content is a lot more difficult than a standard banner ad.

Can You Crowdsource Creativity?

We’ve got to hand it to Mountain Dew.  They’re trying so hard to do social media right—especially when it comes to listening to their customer base and soliciting creative insights from the people who actually love their products. If there was a direct relationship between efforts and results, someone in the Mountain Dew PR team would be getting top honors right about now.

But something’s not working quite right.  Mountain Dew was searching for a name for their new green-apple flavored soda. They turned to the masses, and the masses responded—not always a guaranteed thing in this world! Unfortunately, the masses didn’t respond with really brilliant, insightful, sales-generating names for the soon-t0-be-debuted beverage. READ MORE

Covariation Theory & Belief

Melanie Tannebaum’s PsySociety blog covered a psychological paradigm yesterday called covariation theory, which says we tend to believe the validity of opinions or outcomes based on consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness. She asks us to suppose that a friend, Dave, is recommending a class to us for an upcoming semester of college. How do we determine whether the class is actually good? Covariation theory says that if most other students enjoy the class Dave is recommending (consensus), and if Dave dislikes most other classes (distinctiveness) but has always liked this one (consistency), chances are we’ll believe that the class itself is worth taking. However, if Dave is the only one who seems to like it, and he has a tendency to like a lot of others, we’ll tend to believe he’s just full of it.

Covariation theory can explain a lot about whether someone believes you when you say “my product is awesome.” Has that always been your opinion? Are there a lot of others who think the same? And can people make a distinction between what you do and what others do? They’re all important questions to ask when crafting a convincing message.

Golden Rules, in 140 characters or less

Fast Company published a list of their favorite tweets from their favorite contributors regarding social media best practices this week. It’s a long one, so here are a few of the highlights (i.e. “stuff I agree with”), and their writers:

• Stop & Ask: Would an ACTUAL person talk that way? - @heyitsnoah
• The only way to scale word of mouth: paid advertising. - @christuff
• Social media doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Make traditional media and social work together. - @dkroy
• People would rather talk to ‘Comcast Melissa’ than ‘Comcast’. - @kipwetzel
• The consumer is out for himself, not for you. - @aweinreich

Playing Chicken With Your Brand

If we ever needed an illustration of how social media has changed the dynamic of corporate communications, we need look no further than Chick-fil-A.

It’s no secret that the leadership of the quick-service chicken chain is openly hostile towards same-sex marriage; they donate millions of dollars to anti-gay organizations. Dan Cathy, son of the founder, uses what he calls Biblical principles to run the business. The restaurant is not open on Sunday; they operate debt-free.

How does this play out on social media? READ MORE

Trust Issues 001

As a creative, most of my life and well-being depends on trust. I trust instinct, intuition, my eyes, and my ability to seek out inspiration. The worst thing a writer, musician, or artist can do for their career is living in a bubble, because keeping ourselves from going stale is important.

It’s in that spirit that Nonbox presents Trust Issues – A series of music mixes, curated by our agency to help you stay inspired, and in-tune with what we’re listening to. You can download mine today, and all it’ll cost you is a Like on our Facebook page.

Twitter’s Political Index

Wired.com profiles a new service launched yesterday called Twindex (or the Twitter Political Index), “a joint effort between Twitter, Topsy, and two polling groups, the left-leaning Mellman Group and the more conservative NorthStar Opinion Research” with a goal to leverage Twitter’s massive stream of data to provide flash polls quicker than older-school services like Gallup. To be honest, I’m surprised something like this wasn’t created earlier, but I guess it makes more sense than ever now, with Twitter trying – desperately, it seems sometimes – to develop a cogent monetization strategy. Regardless of motivation, I think this is a great way to gauge the oft-insincere political leanings on the site, and give us one more point of reference as we head into the 2012 election. Expect to see a lot of people calling it out on CNN, at least.

Children’s media, the PBS way

TV programming for kids gets a bad rap sometimes, especially from adults who lived through the mindlessness of cartoons like Ren & Stimpy and anything by Hanna-Barbera. That’s not to say mindlessness isn’t great sometimes (especially on Saturday mornings), but it’s good to know broadcast networks like PBS aspire to something more sometimes. That’s why shows like Sesame Street, Barney & Friends, and Arthur have captivated children for decades, without making their parents tune out.

An interview with PBS’s Interactive VP on Wired.com last week discusses how the network is bringing that same sensibility to mobile devices. “It’s important that the mobile experience is consistent with the characters and worlds kids know,” she says, “so we have made a strategic investment to offer our content wherever kids and parents are — on TV, online, mobile devices, in the classroom — to be truly multi-platform. Our characters go beyond the television screen, and most importantly, our audience can expect to have a consistent experience with them whether they are interacting with them in a mobile app, watching them on-screen, or playing games with them online.” Sounds like Branding 101 doesn’t it? Funny how adults and kids aren’t always so different in what makes them comfortable.

BitTorrent’s plan to keep media free

If you’re the type of person (shame on you!) who likes to steal their TV, movies and music off the internet, you probably have at least a passing familiarity with BitTorrent, whose file-sharing protocol is today’s gold standard for digital media piracy. But it’s not like the company is looking to cut and run: Earlier this week it began offering ‘free download bundles’ in an effort to help artists “monetize the BitTorrent ecosystem.” BitTorrent plans on pairing bands and filmmakers with sponsors, whereby free media off the network will also come with an optional sponsored content download. For example, exclusive music from DJ Shadow now available from BitTorrent comes with an optional RealPlayer install – The music stays free, and Real pays the artist a royalty every time its software is installed. It’s branded content that gives the auteur more flexibility. The question here is whether the advertisers are going to be able to create content that people actually want. Slate.com, for example, asks a good question: Who do you know that actually uses RealPlayer?

Jack Daniels protects itself the right way

The internet has been chattering over the past couple of days about Patrick Wensink, an author who chose to “borrow” the Jack Daniels design for the cover of his newest book. A familiar brand demands protection, and so unsurprisingly, Wensink got a cease-and-desist letter from the manufacturer’s attorneys toward the beginning of July. Surprising, however, was how polite and supportive that letter was: All the company asked was that the author use a different cover on the next printing, even offering to help defray the cost of doing so. Score one for both parties involved - The artist stays happy, and the brand remains undamaged. Just another case study illustrating that people want to talk with people, not suits, and not bottles. That’s something we’ve discussed here before, but brands still tend to forget it.

Banjo

The Olympics start in three days, and if you don’t have a plane to catch and tickets in order, chances are you’re not going to be there to experience the events live. But a new feature from Banjo – an app that aggregates photos, statuses and tweets tagged with locations – might be able to help. It’s called “trending places,” and it allows users to navigate to any place in the world where Banjo is tracking a lot of updates, providing all of the pictures and updates people are posting from that location.

That approach alleviates a problem that many similar apps tend to have: Most people don’t seem to like tagging their location constantly, which means their networks often don’t have much to look at. But by consolidating all content in a given area with those tags, and letting anyone see it, Banjo can provide a more significant amount of content. It lets people unlucky enough to not have tickets to the Opening Ceremony get closer to the action through the eyes of people who don’t mind sharing where they are.

A community of litterbugs

People like to belong. It’s a need that ranks below only food, air, water, and safety in Maslow’s hierarchy. So a new study on littering outlined by the Freakonomics blog this morning shouldn’t come as much of a surprise: Researchers found that when there’s trash on the ground, people tend to throw more trash on top of it. Or, generally speaking, the prevalence of one action often leads to more of that action. So if you’re looking to influence someone to do something, it’s often best to make them feel as if they’re not the only one, whether they are or not.

A good first step when figuring out how to take a new product to market might involve thinking on how to show a customer that they’re not alone in their purchase decision – They’re ‘right’ for making it because a lot of other people are doing the same thing. It’s a tactic that’s worked before. The question is how to apply it to your own brand.

Silence is golden (sometimes)

Ryan Holiday asks a pretty good question in his book, Trust Me I’m Lying: “I posted something, but nobody responded. What does it mean?” For brands and journalists alike, he says, no feedback tends to indicate failure – A post on Facebook that gets no Likes is a bad post. But Holiday points out that’s not always the case. In the case of paid versus amateur articles on the Huffington Post, the former tends to receive about 20 times the number of comments that the latter does. But it also generates a rash of unproductive debate that amateur articles encourage less. What can we make of that fact?

Perhaps the lesson here is that in the digital space, silence is sometimes more valuable than we give it credit for. Good messaging inspires thought more than talk – That goes for journalism, marketing, sales, advertising, and branding. Noise can certainly help spread a message, but nobody buys something from the screaming guy on a soapbox – They buy from the person who seems interested in an actual relationship.

When does “useful” become “magical”?

Whenever I sat down in a communications class that used Google as a case study between 2003 and 2006, my professors reminded me that the company was looking to “organize the world’s information.” That’s an exciting idea for academics, but let’s be honest, those words won’t exactly inspire most. They certainly aren’t inspiring people to use Google+. So it comes as no surprise that lately, Google is trying to show a more emotional approach to its branding and advertising. Initiatives like Project Glass, and the company’s push to be more “delightful” and “magical” – outlined this morning in TechCrunch – show that Google might finally realize that business acumen and book smarts only get a company so far: At a certain point, people want to know you have a heart and soul too.

Social Media & the Power of Public Knowledge

We’re starting to hear the rumbles, here and there, from businesses of every type and every size. Social media, the marketing tool that was supposed to deliver amazing results, doesn’t seem to work very well for some companies. They say effort invested isn’t providing anything much in the way of meaningful results.

The first response seems to be platform flight. Facing Facebook failure, organizations decide to move on. They decide to focus on Twitter, and if that doesn’t pan out, they move onto Pinterest, perhaps, or Instagram.  It’s the digital equivalent of the African Savanna, where the herds are traveling ever onward, perpetually in search of a water hole that will quench their burning thirst. READ MORE

What is a pen?

A classic exercise in branding and advertising starts with a simple question: “What is a pen?” A pen, most say, is something used to write. Continuing the exercise, we ask, “Why do we write?” and the answer gets a bit more complicated – “To express myself,” someone might answer, or “to communicate.” So you can imagine how ridiculous things get when you ask the same question again: “Why do you express yourself?” or “Why do you communicate?” Discussing that question, at length, and ad nauseam, is how effective advertising is crafted, and how the best brands market themselves.

But where is the right answer? There are a million different responses to the deeper questions above. But George Orwell’s 1946 essay, Why I Write, lays it out in succinct fashion. The author says, “[T]here are four great motives for writing [that] exist in different degrees in every writer.” Those great motives? (1) Sheer egoism, (2) aesthetic enthusiasm, (3) historical impulse, and (4) political purpose. Taking that comment beyond writing – Aren’t these the reasons why anyone talks to begin with? And aren’t they the fires we need to stoke when we want to hear from customers?

The audience is an illusion – But it works

Reddit.com is like the Garden of Eden for viral content – It’s easy to lose hours of your life on the site, browsing through every variety of the newest digital media available, voted up or down by the site’s tight-knit audience. It’s perhaps the model for digital community. So it’s certainly a surprise reading that the site built itself on an audience of fake accounts, detailed by Reddit’s founder this morning in Mashable. We say it all the time: It’s not the size of your audience, but what you do with it that counts. But how can we justify saying that when the model did the exact opposite?

The lesson here is that community is built on belonging – It doesn’t exist if members don’t feel they’re a part of something bigger than themselves, and talking to no one helps nobody. So it’s important when crafting a content marketing or social media strategy to distinguish whether you’re building a community, or enabling one. If your goal is to add 500 followers to an audience of 70,000, you’re probably doing it wrong. If your goal is to build 500 followers from nothing… Well, what are your thoughts on more traditional advertising?

Buy Facebook – Sell GM

Last week I posted a short piece talking about why even if advertising on Facebook doesn’t work, fueling conversation is a more than adequate substitute, worth the time and resources invested in it. And this morning, lo and behold, Fast Company’s Kirk Cheyfitz posted a far more eloquent and lengthy article discussing the same thing. As he says, “Facebook’s current and potential value has far more to do with connections, e-commerce, and data than with the ad industry’s anachronistic appetite for paying to stick traditional digital ads and banners on the site… [it's] about replacing traditional ads with shared content.”

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: They know you know they know. A 2012 Nielsen report shows recommendations from acquaintances as the leading purchase influencer, followed by recommendations from strangers online. So invest first in a great idea, and invest in trust second.

NASA

People credit Barack Obama’s Executive Branch as the first prominent government agency to make social media its business. But if you want my opinion (and I know you do), I think NASA has done a much better job. Not that it should be difficult – They’re selling a great product. Thousands of pictures and videos of stars, planets, and human achievement capture the imagination like few other subjects. The content that starts conversation is definitely there. But beyond the glitz, it’s obvious that NASA doesn’t only do social, but is social. Sure, the agency has a Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube page, but its own astronauts have Flickr accounts that they update themselves from the International Space Station. Its employees have their own pages, unregulated by the agency itself where they hold conversations with those interested, even when they’re not on the clock. With all the talk from gurus and sherpas, we often forget that the most successful social media programs are those that enable enthusiastic employees, and let the brand speak for itself. Great business breeds great social media – Not the other way around.

Ask it again: Do Facebook ads really work?

If Facebook was a technology, instead of a service, and had no Mark Zuckerburg or army of publicists, its advertising features might be just as maligned as QR codes seem to be these days. A recent Reuters survey showed 80 percent of respondents had never bought anything they’d seen in a Facebook ad. GM pulled its billion-dollar account just before the network’s IPO saying the same thing. But maybe we’re all being a bit harsh – It’s common knowledge that gauging the efficacy of a social media campaign is tough to do. Really tough. So why don’t we give Facebook the benefit of the doubt? After all, when people think “social media,” “Facebook” is often the first word that comes to mind.

The company, of course, has their own survey coming out next week through ComScore that puts its value in more concrete terms: “Facebook ‘earned media’ ads — the kind that Facebook users distribute on their own, via ‘Likes’ and ‘Shares,’ do help sell stuff.” That’s a fancy way of saying what we say a lot: When customers talk about your brand, others pay attention. When you talk about your brand, you’re just a line of text to ignore.

Miiverse

This morning, Nintendo announced a new addition to its upcoming Wii U gaming console: A social network it’s calling Miiverse. It’s a move that’s long overdue: Sony and Microsoft have left the company in the dust with systems that are basically online multiplayer machines at this point. So it’s little wonder Nintendo posted a $460 million loss last year, when they’ve been so slow to adapt.

But maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to judge. Nintendo is a Japanese company, where videogame culture still thrives offline – Multi-level arcades in Tokyo still pull in thousands of customers every day, and gamers still like being able to play each other face-to-face. The social experience of gaming is different, but no less effective. And when you consider how important that aspect of gaming is, it starts to seem like the game itself isn’t so much the product as the emotional impact it enables. So don’t count Nintendo out yet: It might be late to the party, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be bringing the best bottle.

Tumblr Eclipse

It comes as no surprise to me that the term “Tumblr” may soon eclipse “blog” in Google search volume. Blogging is obviously one of the easiest ways for people from all walks of life to share their interests online. But as an avid Tumblr user, I can see how the site’s easy-to-use interface has opened up the gates to a community that was once reserved for only the most internet-savvy. That’s because Tumblr has done away with the learning curve often associated with great-looking original content – On the network, a budding user needs only to search a keyword to find ready-made material relevant to their interests. And later on, as they get more media-savvy, original content can be easily uploaded from a hard drive. The lack of any visible advertisements allows users to feel a part of an artistically credible community.  And while the verdict is still out on the site’s profitability, stats like these prove there’s a strong case behind it.

Is Dropping Facebook Ads a Smart Move?

The news that GM has decided to stop using paid Facebook advertising has created a big buzz. If the nation’s third largest advertiser isn’t getting enough bang for their buck from Facebook ads, the conversation goes, what does that mean for the rest of us?

GM reportedly spends approximately $40 million on Facebook. 75% of that investment is devoted to monitoring and maintaining GM’s Facebook presence, through the organization’s Facebook page. The remaining 25%, $10 million dollars, was going toward paid advertising. READ MORE

#SocialMediaDarwinism

With a rapidly expanding global user base, @twitter offers companies virtually unlimited #possibilities when it comes to engagement in the digital space. #duh But rather than being #innovative, a lot of companies are failing to adapt. “Tweets” usually seen through more traditional channels like print ads and radio spots fail to #engage the digital audience. Why the difficulty?

Some companies seem to have “twivertising” down pat. Global leadership company @DaleCarnegie #engages its audience with interesting articles and daily trivia, and frequently responds to and retweets its followers’ feedback. Family-owned Milwaukee restaurant @LaPerlaMKE has a “Question of the Day” giveaway, tweets #MKE @Brewers game updates, and brings attention to local charities. Tactics like these make a Twitter feed more engaging, and help companies reach their potential.

Safety in Social Media: An Impossible Dream?

Social media is a powerful tool you can leverage to build your brand, but it can also leave you vulnerable to the the cruel contempt of the masses who think nothing of trashing your brand equity one “Like” at a time. That’s the thrust of this article in AdWeek, which details any number of social media “fails.” One misstep by a marketer—a poorly posed model, or too much enthusiasm for milkshakes—and suddenly, there’s a tornado in the Twitterverse.

No one, we’re to understand, is safe.  Henry Copeland of Blogads was quoted as saying, “The hundreds of thousands, or millions, of people out there are going to take your idea, and they’re going to try to shred it or tear it apart and find what’s weak or stupid in it.” READ MORE

Your Daily Dose of Drama

Europeans allow for a lot: dessert and coffee after lunch, 3-hour midday siestas, shoes through airport security, and commercial-less TV programming. Shows across the pond generally run from beginning to end without commercials, with a 7-minute break for advertising in between. As a result, TV spots aren’t the best way to reach European audiences because viewers often occupy themselves with something else between programs.

That’s why TNT’s latest European advertising tactic, “Your Daily Dose Of Drama”, was so impressive. In the middle of a quiet square in Belgium, a red button was placed next to a sign inviting passerby to “push to add drama.” When it was activated, an array of dramatic events unfolded in the square, including a mishandled cadaver, a shirtless fight, and a scantily-clad woman on a motorcycle. TNT found a way to take the commercial out of the television. The drama went viral and was named Creativity Pick of the Day by AdAge. The innovative idea attracted attention across Europe and added a dose of drama to the calmest of siestas.

Connecting the Dots

According to a survey on SocialMediaToday.com, businesses asked about why they leverage social media sites overwhelmingly respond, “to connect with customers,” “to enhance visibility,” and “to self-promote.” Most realize the importance of an online presence: It allows for constant, and direct feedback, which makes a difference when it comes to sales. Just the other day I tweeted at Red Robin to ask if they had a veggie burger – It only took a minute for them to respond that they did. And it was delicious!

As a marketing student, the Four P’s are beaten into your head constantly – Product, Place, Price, Promotion. Product, Place, Price, Promotion. They’re all important for any brand. But when it comes to advertising – what I’m interested in specifically – Promotion is where my interests lie. But it seems like a lot of people forget to connect the dots: Promotion exists to explain the other three – differentiate the product, and explain the price, in the right place. And social media makes it easier than ever.

Personal Branding via Pinterest

Branded correctly, products can evoke certain feelings, and make us envision particular colors or styles. And people aim for the same thing every day: We brand ourselves through the clothes we wear and the way we carry ourselves. In the past, brands have had traditional advertising to broadcast their identities, but most people couldn’t do the same. Social networking has made “personal branding” a widely-realized concept, however, allowing us to share ourselves with the entire world.

Pinterest probably has the greatest potential for personal branding. With 11.7 million users, mostly 18-35 year old women, creating “boards” based on events, hobbies, and interests that are filled with self-uploaded photos, or “repinned” content from other users, it’s a visual means of self-expression that text-based sites like Facebook or Twitter can’t achieve. Pinterest caters to each user’s personal brand, enriching our generic information with the many facets of our personalities that make us unique.

Say Hi to the MU Ad Club!

Greetings from Herenthout, Belgium! Since I’m busy eating fries and mayonnaise, and marveling at the 50 pound turkeys kept in the yard across the street from the house I’m staying at, this week we’ll be featuring a series of guest posts courtesy of Marquette University’s advertising students. They’ll be sharing their thoughts on the industry, as well as their own opinions on social media, and new trends that they’ve noticed. We hope you enjoy!”

The Other Side of the Pond

To use one of the lamest catch phrases in existence, “I work to feed my family, but I play to feed my soul.” Typing that sentence out makes me groan, but it’s pretty true – Social media is what puts food on my own table, but if Napster had never existed, I like to fantasize that I’d be making my living playing guitar. About a year back, the band I play in was offered the opportunity to tour mainland Europe and the UK – And the people I work with were kind enough to let me indulge that fantasy. Over the next three weeks, things here are going to be a bit different, and you’ll get to hear from some other people with different ideas and perspectives than my own. I’ll be sure to check in on Monday, just to assure you I’m getting over the jet lag. And if you feel like following along, Instagram is a great way – I’m at @getpumped. Talk to you all soon!

If Likes don’t matter, what does?

Stefan Olander is Nike’s VP of digital sport, and he has a new book out called Velocity: The Seven New Laws for a World Gone Digital. At its launch yesterday, Olander had quite a few stand-up-and-cheer revelations to share about social media in 2012, saying “a whole industry is stuck on trying to force old metrics on to new channels.” It’s a new way to beat a dead horse: The size of the audience matters, but size is for naught if you can’t engage.

Nike of course launched the Nike+ FuelBand a few weeks ago, technology integrated with their products that makes it easier for users to keep track of activity using a smartphone. And more recently, the brand launched an initiative allowing customers to bid on products using their logged activity. The point of these efforts, Olander says, isn’t to advertise, but to add value to something people already do. “Once you have established a direct relationship with a consumer, you don’t need to advertise to them,” he says.

Understanding the Need to Belong

“America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy,” John Updike once said, and it was with this in mind that I took in a debate between Johnathan Kay, author of Among the Truthers: A Journey Through America’s Growing Conspiracist Underground and Webster Tarpley, author of 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA.

I’m not particularly interested in the substance of the conspiracy theory, really, beyond a rock-solid conviction that Han shot first. However, this conversation went in a particularly interesting direction, examining in some depth why people are drawn to and choose to believe in conspiracy theories. Read More

C&A Fashion Likes

Brazilian retailer C&A is bringing their Facebook presence into the real world with a new initiative that shows how many Likes an item has online, right on its hanger. It’s an awesome promotion for a number of reasons. First and foremost, C&A is enabling its digital community with a tool that can provide them with higher status – They are the ones determining what items are trendy, not a corporate entity. That engagement puts more C&A digital content higher in more user feeds, meaning more people outside the existing shopper community will see those items – Not only online, but in the store itself. And furthermore, it gives C&A administrators a concrete way to tie social media to the bottom line, simply by charting how well items with a lot of Likes sell in the store itself. It’s a human social media campaign, with measurable ROI. Where can we sign up?

What does The New Aesthetic tell us?

Gizmodo posted a concise, useful update a few weeks back on The New Aesthetic – an (arguably) unconscious artistic movement detailed in a long essay on Wired, and during one of SXSW Interactive’s more well-publicized panels. Each discussion described the movement as an effort to express the tension between digital and analog, or man and machine. You probably don’t even notice its influence most of the time, but if you look, you can see it: Pixelated images are a standard device now in art and video. Advanced animation in the GIF format has proliferated. And photos of people taking photos are so commonplace it’s near cliche. These are all reflections on the relationship society in 2012 has with technology – One where irony and detachment often masks the fear of losing humanity in an indecipherable mass of 1s and 0s.

If there’s one thing the movement recognizes, its that people still value relationships and reality over digital identity. Which means keeping humanity in the digital space is of paramount importance, especially when it comes to marketing and advertising. How do you keep yours?

Klouchebag.com

Turns out someone else has a low opinion of Klout too. After reading the same article on Wired we talked about last week, 27-year old Tom Scott decided to whip up his own response to what he calls “one of the worst ideas ever put online” – Klouchebag.com. In a short interview with Digiday, Scott argues that people who strive for a high Klout score are trying to “game an arbitrary and often-changing system. Imagine if all that time went into actually making interesting things, or caring about the people around you. To quote the WOPR computer from ‘War Games’: ‘the only way to win is not to play.’”

Klouchebag.com instead measures what you shouldn’t be doing on Twitter – ignoring those you follow, posting poorly written or negative-sentiment copy, or filling your feed with uniform, robotic, app-driven updates like those from Foursquare or Flixter. In other words, Scott’s site lets you know when you’re not being human. With any luck it’ll gain as much notoriety as the site it lampoons… But probably not with a name like that.

I have more Klout than the Aflac Duck!

A feature on Wired.com this morning takes a “deep dive” (for lack of a less-dumb term) into Klout – Arguably the Web’s most important tool for measuring influence in the social sphere. After about a thousand words discussing the perks its users get, its use in hiring, and the self-worth people ascribe to their digital identities based on their scores, reporter Seth Stevenson came to what I think is a conclusion worthy of a standing ovation: “I found my eyes drifting to tweets from folks with the lowest Klout scores. They talked about things nobody else was talking about… no brand would ever bother to advertise on their channels. And yet, these were the people I paid the most attention to. They were unique and genuine. That may not matter to marketers, and it may not win them much Klout. But it makes them a lot more interesting.”

Klout might be a good measure of how many people are paying attention to you, but it’s not a great measure of humanity. And when it comes to social media, being human is more important than any mysterious, proprietary algorithm.

Is social media really social?

If a recent article in the New York Times is to be believed, the myriad ways we connect with each other through 1s and 0s are actually killing our social skills. As MIT’s Sherry Turkle says, “E-mail, Twitter, Facebook, all of these have their places… But no matter how valuable, they do not substitute for conversation.”  It’s the same argument executives often make when pushing back against investment in a social media program: Who cares how many Likes our page has? That’s no substitute for a face-to-face meeting in the real world.

Your boss, the reporters, and the researchers are all correct – It’s tough to form a real, fruitful relationship with someone exclusively in a digital space. I agree: That relationship is ultimately more important than any hasty transaction. But as Mathew Ingram points out this morning, it’s easy to see that those who are social online tend to be social offline too. Which means online connections often spark offline connections. It all goes back to a point we’ve made before: Marketers need to resist the temptation to sell in the social space. Focus on bringing your online network into the real world instead.

The Olympic Athletes’ Hub

When it comes to social media, people are more likely to follow people than brands. So when putting together a marketing strategy that involves Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc., it’s often a good starting point to ask who you want to showcase, rather than what. Who do your customers want to hear from? Partners? Employees? People just like them? Or some kind of combination? There are a lot of possibilities.

For a company like Apple, Steve Jobs – an executive – was the answer. For an event like the 2012 Summer Olympics, it’s the athletes. That’s why a site like The Olympic Athletes’ Hub is such a great idea: It’s a site that organizes every athlete’s social media presence into one central location, giving fans a direct link to the people they want to talk to and hear from. It makes communication easy. And more importantly, it’s a tangible link to the brand – The Olympics are about the competitors, and the spectacle. Letting the audience become a part of the action is a compelling way to build trust, loyalty, and community.

Why Facebook acquired Instagram:

Facebook is in the business of data, and Instagram provides a lot of it.

Obvious isn’t it? Maybe, but it’s the truth, no matter what the “tech gurus” and “social media sherpas” tell you about why the former acquired the latter for $1 billion last week. Instagram was the first company to make sharing photos on the go easy and stylish. And in this case, simply being the first has put the company ahead of every other mobile photo-sharing service (including Facebook itself, arguably) when it comes to its number of users. Users = data. And more data = better insights for advertisers, where Facebook makes all of its money. It’s about as simple as that.

Caine’s Arcade

Nirvan Mullick’s short video piece, “Caine’s Arcade,” has been the internet’s darling over the last few days. It’s a pretty heartwarming story that’s worth the 11-minute watch if you haven’t seen it, detailing a 9-year old’s work building a series of cardboard games in his father’s East L.A. auto shop, before going viral. In less than 24 hours, supporters raised over $100,000 for Caine’s college fund. And in five days, Mullick’s video has been watched over 2 million times on Vimeo alone.

Mat Ingram at GigaOM has a great article this morning discussing how Caine’s Arcade is more than just another feel-good story about the power of social media though. Specifically, he points out a small group of raging evangelists can make big things happen, if there’s passion and humanity in the story. As he concludes, “Caine’s story proves that sometimes if you build it — no matter how improbable or crazy or unrealistic it might seem — people actually do come. And that is something worth celebrating.”

The Second Screen

Think back a few years, and try to remember how exciting digital cable was when it first rolled out. At the time, providers were explaining the endless possibilities that the new technology could enable – The ability to stream more data to your TV meant content previously only available on formats like DVD could now be paired up with live content. More options meant a more customized viewing experience. But flash forward to 2012, and little, if any, of that promise has been fulfilled. Social media and mobile technology have taken care of it instead.

CNN’s Julianne Pepitone wrote yesterday that 68 percent of tablet users say they’re using their devices “several times a week” while watching TV. That means the demand for integrated, extended content on television falls more and more every year, as long as Americans have an iPhone, iPad or Android at their fingertips. As Pepitone says, “slapping a Twitter hashtag on a commercial or hawking a Facebook page in the corner of the screen during a TV show, is becoming passé.” When it comes to advertising, it’s a trend that might mean shifting our focus from the content broadcast on the big screen, to the community enabled by the small one.

Project Glass

Google has certainly made a big splash with its just-launched augmented reality initiative, Project Glass. At least my Facebook timeline, and two million YouTube views would have me believe it. But when it comes to parades like these, there’s always rain soon to follow, and already the experts are poo-pooing, and the comedians have found a new subject ripe for parody. It’s probably good to keep things in perspective, but come on, they’re future glasses! Can’t we all agree to at least have fun thinking about it for a little while?

As Harry McCracken says his article for Time, “Even if the glasses that Google is testing are rudimentary, even if they’re annoying, even if they just plain stink — they’ll still be far more interesting than the Fantasyland version in the Project Glass video. Because they’ll be real.” What the detractors forget is that even if you’re looking at an idealized, corporate vision for an untested product, it still boosts belief to imagine it actually existing. That’s a big shot in the arm for any organization.

Wikidata

For large organizations in 2012, getting answers isn’t nearly as difficult as asking the right questions. Larger retailers can use a customer’s purchase history to nearly predict the future. But consumers, without access to that kind of data, are at a disadvantage – You and I don’t have access to years of demographics, and the technology to make sense of it all. For us, answers are a lot harder to come by.

The Wikimedia Foundation is aiming to change that with their first new project since 2006. Wikidata, according to this morning’s TechCrunch, will be a machine-readable, user-editable database of information, and it begins development today. The new service will allow users to ask questions like “What’s the average price of gas between New York and Los Angeles?” and then download that data themselves into a spreadsheet where they’ll be able to manipulate information without the aid of another agency. That’s an important revelation: Big Data is often a subject that makes eyes glaze over, but with projects like these, we can expect the informed consumer to become downright clairvoyant. That’s worth every marketer’s attention.

People Follow People

Quick question: Is it easier to have a conversation with a logo or a person?

A brand can do a lot for a product – inspire belief, trust, loyalty, and community – but when it comes to the practical mechanics of engagement, it’s tough to imagine an actual person having an actual conversation with a can of soda, or a stack of paper detailing an insurance policy. That’s why in the age of social media, a lot of companies are turning back to the mascot. It might sound hokey, but yesterday’s Wall Street Journal explains that providing an entertaining, human voice can often drive traffic to a page better than sound public relations.

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Social media is best used to create a community, not to sell products. Customers that use Facebook or Twitter want a relational, not a transactional experience. They’re more likely to follow characters than brands. So this week, you might ask yourself: Where is the humanity in my product? And how can I bring it to life?

#Kony2012

In the past five days, Invisible Children’s 30-minute documentary, Kony 2012, has racked up over 80 million views across YouTube and Vimeo. It’s one of the highest-trending global topics on Twitter, and it’s the subject of millions of Facebook status updates. It’s a textbook example of how social media can disseminate an idea quickly – In this case, a message that has a growing faction of detractors who claim it dumbs down a complicated issue, in the service of an organization with motives that are ignoble at best. Which side of the fence do you stand on?

Whether you think the campaign exists in service to the children, or to company executives, it’s undeniable that the phenomenon Invisible Children has stumbled upon will bring information about the issue to a larger audience. And building those kinds of metrics means more than revenue: People are drawn to big numbers – Politicians in particular. And even if the organization itself doesn’t make a difference, if five people out of the 80 million who watched their video do, then maybe the piece is more worthwhile than many give it credit for. The bigger question: What specific action will those five people take? Will it really solve the problem? And at what cost will it come?

Animated GIFs: The Birth of a Medium

Following YouTube’s move toward more traditional programming, PBS posted a short, 7-minute documentary on the site yesterday called Animated GIFs: The Birth of a Medium. It’s a great, succinct examination of an art form enabled by old Web technology, but proliferated because of new media. And while the subject matter itself is interesting enough – check out Cinemagraphs.com when you get a second – on a deeper level, the fact that a video piece like this was designed exclusively for online consumption is itself a wink to how the world consumes content in 2012. (#meta.)

Tweeting while driving = 100K followers (apparently)

Following a jet fuel explosion during the Daytona 500 yesterday, Brad Keselowski – a driver with ~85,000 followers on Twitter – picked up his phone, and started tweeting. By the time the delay ended, less than two hours later, Keselowski had gained an audience of over 100,000 on his page. Just goes to show how original, exclusive, and timely content from a credible source can spread, and how once again, creation wins over curation.

Facebook’s Premium Ads

The world’s most popular social network has what I think is a pretty exciting new vision for online advertising, leaked this morning by Fast Company. Text ads like those you see on the site now, and on other spots like Google, aren’t exactly renowned for their click-through rates, or their reliability – A banner on Facebook is most effective only when a user seeing it also notices his or her friends have Liked it. It’s looks like a lesson the company has taken to heart though: The new scheme brings more content from a brand’s page into the ad, letting users see not only if their friends have liked it, but what’s being discussed on the page’s Wall. Furthermore, users will be able to interact with the page from the ad itself – The extra steps of having to click the ad, find what you were looking at, and engage again are all eliminated.

We’ll see how this plays out, but the company is claiming an 80% boost in recall, and a 40% increase in engagement.

Mobile data is a big deal (duh)

Turns out that a lot of people are using their phones on the internet. Who’d-a thunk?

Cisco released a report yesterday that it’s calling the “Visual Networking Index (VNI) Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update” (?) discussing some of the company’s projections for growth trends relating to data transferred over cell phones, tablets, and other devices like them. A few of the more insane stats:

• 2011′s mobile data traffic was 8x the size of the entire global internet’s in 2000
• Average smart phone usage nearly tripled in 2011, and over 1 million smart phone users will be transferring more than a gigabyte of data apiece each month within the next five years
• By 2016, there will be 1.4 mobile devices per capita, and 2/3 of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video

Big Data and Biological Downloading

Remember a few weeks back when IBM announced they wanted to create a mind-reading computer within the next five years? And remember when you thought “oh that’s nice” and then immediately forgot about it, because that’s too insane to imagine? Well, it’s not, because researchers at UC-Berkeley were able to decode actual words out of raw brain activity during a series of experiments last week. Maybe it’s not so dumb to start worrying about the implications.

A question to consider apart from standard privacy concerns: What does this kind of technology mean for Big Data? We’ve already seen a factor-9 increase in online information since 2006. Imagine how much you’ll have to read if the effort of typing a thought into a computer is eliminated, and instead every idea is published automatically. Mashable said in an article this morning that Facebook’s IPO proves an immense thirst for human connection, but mind-reading takes it to a new level.

What does $5 billion do?

Late yesterday, Facebook finally filed an initial public offering seeking to raise $5 billion. Over the next few weeks, we’re going to learn a lot of interesting stuff about the world’s largest social network as they open their books, and address speculation that the organization is worth almost $100 billion – right behind McDonald’s, which sits at $101.5 billion. What does that $5 billion mean for users on the site though? Not much, at least in the short term. A big chunk of the money will pay off investors that have kept the network afloat, while another portion will go toward low-risk investments to make the company more financially secure. Also, Mark Zuckerberg will soon be classified as “insanely rich,” an upgrade from “ridiculously rich.”

There’s an interesting sentence in the Use of Proceeds section in Facebook’s filing, however: “We may use a portion of the proceeds to us for acquisitions of complementary businesses.” It’ll be interesting to see what the network’s newfound wealth will allow it to buy. While we aren’t going to see much of a difference in how we use the site tomorrow, who knows how this IPO will alter it 10 years from now.

The biggest tech IPO in history

Rumors flying around the internet say that Facebook will announce its initial public offering any day now, the prospect of which has brokers salivating, but not necessarily the rest of us. Not yet at least – But I think it’s interesting to think about what $10 billion in investment can mean for the  network’s customers (and Mark Zuckerberg).

There’s a great infographic, “Everything You Need To Know About Facebook’s IPO,” that’s been making the rounds over the past few weeks – You can check out here. Some highlights:

• Experts predict Facebook’s IPO will be worth more than three times Google’s, Groupon’s, LinkedIn’s, and Bankrate’s combined
• The company as a whole is predicted to be worth $100 billion – more than McDonald’s, Amazon, and Disney
• Despite all of that, Facebook’s projected revenues for the end of 2011 are $4.2 billion, which Apple makes in only 3 weeks

One Hour Per Second

I’m still a bit skeptical about YouTube as a replacement for traditional TV (obviously), but it’s fascinating to consider some of the stats surrounding the site. Google knows it – That’s why OneHourPerSecond.com exists. Browse through the clips they’ve posted, and you’ll learn a lot about just how much video YouTube is handling these days. Some highlights:

• If you waited 1:36, and then watched all of the videos uploaded to YouTube in that time, the Sahara Desert would have expanded by 500 feet
• Apollo 11 could reach the Moon in the amount of time it would take you to watch all of the content uploaded to YouTube in 1:15
• 3:45 of uploading would provide enough material for retirees on a cruise ship to do nothing but watch YouTube all the way from L.A. to Tokyo

4 billion views a day

Yesterday, Google reported a 25 percent traffic jump on YouTube over the past eight months of its service, claiming users are now streaming 4 billion videos from the site every day. According to Reuters, Google says roughly 60 hours of video are now added to the site every minute, compared to the 48-hours-per-minute rate it clipped at back in May 2011. That’s roughly a whole year of content every 2.5 days. Wow.

Those are big numbers, but they might be a bit misleading when you consider the type of content typically posted to YouTube. In 2010, the average length of a YouTube video was 4 minutes and 12 seconds, compared to network and cable programming which runs 22 minutes, or 44 minutes, depending on the length of the program. That translates into a lot more time spent watching regular ol’ TV – Indeed, Mashable reports that the average YouTuber spends 15 minutes a day watching videos on the site, while the average American spends 4-5 hours watching the tube. The death of traditional TV this isn’t – But we’re getting closer. All hail Hypnotoad.

Creation > Curation

At the DLD conference in Munich today, Tumblr CEO David Karp was asked about the role of content curation vs. creation on his site. By his reckoning, 90 percent of users on the network spend their time reposting material they find interesting instead of creating it themselves – An imbalance that spells definite advantage for artists, musicians, and publishers.

“[Original content] has a huge digital footprint,” Karp says. That’s an understatement: Tumblr has 41 million registered blogs, and when you consider the stat above, only about 4 million of them post their own material. The average original post on Tumblr is reblogged 9 times. That makes a pretty compelling case for coming up with your own material, instead of piggybacking on someone else’s.

SOPA & PIPA

On January 24th the Senate will begin voting on two bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) & the Protect IP Act (PIPA), which if passed would change the internet as we currently know it. It would also stifle business development, job creation and innovation. I agree piracy needs to end but not like this. All that’s needed is a little good ol’ fashion creativity, not unwarranted censorship…because all that will lead to is more piracy.

Today is SOPA Blackout Day & Day of action where various sites on the web have blocked or blackened their sites in protest. The most popular is WikiPedia. Google has also created an End Piracy, Not Liberty splash page with more information and an online petition…and have also gotten into the spirit.

This Is Why I’m Broke

The world is full of stuff you never knew you needed – Jet packs, shark-shaped personal submarines, bacon-flavored candy canes… The list is pretty much endless. And that’s why ThisIsWhyImBroke.com exists. It’s a blog devoted singularly to the pursuit of awesome stuff you can buy on the Web, that’s more interested in maintaining a sense of humor and the integrity of the site than a giant mailing list to sell useless nonsense. Because if there’s one product that’s the antithesis of “useless nonsense” it’s a mini-quadricopter that can be remote-controlled with an iPhone.

Beyond Farmville

In an interview posted yesterday on Socialnomics, former Game Director at Acclaim, Steve Altman, discussed his new startup, Socialtype. Altman says he is attempting to “introduce a form of advertising that doesn’t suck” for game developers, by providing new enterprise tools that enable players to easily share game experiences with their favorite social networks. Altman’s service takes advantage of the trust that exists between two friends, which is greater than that between a consumer and a brand they don’t interact with. By leveraging those relationships to drive engagement, the new startup might might help gaming companies take a step in the right direction in developing trust between themselves and new customers.

SVPPLY

I’ve been a fan and an active member of SVPPLY since the first day it went live. I’d used a bunch of other sites to try and keep digital lists of things, but SVPPLY has done a better job of keeping the site’s design understated and simple, and the social aspects useful. The best part is that SVPPLY lets you see what your friends are adding to their lists, which makes it easy to add new stuff to your own with one click. If you end up creating a profile, or already have one, don’t be shy - add me.

Drinking From The (ahem) “Fire Hose”

New research covered in The New Zealand Herald last week claims the amount of digital information we produce has grown by a factor of nine over the last five years. That’s a crazy amount of growth. Consider, for example, a typical low-volume fire hose ejecting 90 gallons of water per minute. Grown by a factor of nine, that same fire hose would spit out 400,000 trillion gallons of water per minute – nearly 9 billion times the amount of water that flows over Niagra Falls in the same period.

So maybe it’s time we reconsider our phrasing. Trying to drink from social media’s proverbial fire hose in 2006 was difficult enough when the comparison was apt – Today, trying to pull meaningful insight from the stream shouldn’t be considered a challenge, but a death wish. How do we as marketers begin to deal with that onslaught of data, much less help customers?

A Little Costs Alot

If there’s one person I can’t stand, it’s the guy who can’t laugh at himself. And in the end, the same goes for agencies. So it shouldn’t be any big surprise that Agency Spy called one of them out yesterday, not for posting a potentially (albeit accidentally) hilarious music video from one of their creatives, but for deleting the comments folks on Facebook made about it. That’s Social Media 101: most are unforgiving and unfiltered from behind a computer screen. So you had better be ready to respond to the good, the bad, and the vulgar – with a smile on your face – if YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are channels you’re considering.

Airbnb

In short, Airbnb let’s guests and hosts choose the experience they want to have. Want to get away for a weekend, week or even a month without breaking the bank? Airbnb allows people to list their homes so that people who are looking for lodging can rent a room, use of the entire home or even have the place all to themselves. There is a feedback feature on the site that allows you to read the experiences others have had with any home. You can check it out here.

Paul Rand

Twitter as an educational source. We all know about Paul Rand but we may not all know about Paul-Rand.com. Last week while checking out Twitter one of my friends posted a link to the site and I was blown away. Tons of Paul Rand awesome at my fingertips. Logos, identity presentations, standards, manuals, guides, articles, interviews, videos. You name it and it’s there. I particularly enjoyed the identity presentation. It’s always interesting to see how the greats presented their work to clients.

Watch The Throne

Listening to and reading all of the critique of the new Jay-Z & Kanye West album Watch The Throne has been very interesting and exciting. To me, any great body of work sparks passionate and sometimes heated debate. It also begs for a side to be selected, rarely do you experience gray area. People either fall in love or detest. Questlove, of the Legendary Roots Crew, wrote an “Official Unofficial Review” which is the best piece of commentary I’ve read on the album so far.

Are Great People Overrated?

Is it a better decision to hire one super talented person or to spend your time, energy, and resources creating a strong team of moderately talented people? Facebook’s recent hire of George Holz, reputed to be one of the computer programming’s world’s super talented people, has sparked a lot of conversation on this very question.

We thought it might be interesting to consider the issue from the Brand Modeling perspective.  Our goal is to understand and meet the needs of our Brand Lovers better than any other organization. With that in mind, there’s no aspect of our business that’s more critical to our organizational success than the quality of the people who work with us. READ MORE

5 Ways To Boost Marketing

Quick social marketing junkies, switch on your iPads, bust out your styli and jot down the name of  the next great marketing panacea. For lack of a better term, we call it – Bro-cial Media. But you can call it whatever you want when you present it as your own in your next big client presentation. READ MORE

Chitwood And Hobbs

Chitwood & Hobbs is a blog dedicated to sports, culture, passion and the desire to compete. Presented with a very clean, easy to navigate design aesthetic and little known interesting facts about sports in the 60′s, 70′s, and 80′s, Chitwood & Hobbs is easily one of my favorite conceptually well executed sports sites.

Inspiring Word Of Mouth – Integrity

A couple years ago, I was asked by nonbox partner BJ Bueno who is also the co-author of The Power of Cult Branding, to help contribute to the writing of , Why We Talk, The Truth Behind Word-of-Mouth. We came up with seven governing principles for inspiring WOM. The first is INTEGRITY. Essentially, people know you have an intention, and that you’ve figured out they known you have an intention. What this means from an advertising standpoint is that they know you’re trying to sell them a product, and you are aware they know they’re trying to be persuaded. Unless you get very adept at meeting their needs, you’re going to encounter a nearly-impenetrable barrier. READ MORE @beliefbrandman blog.