Social Media:It's Not What You Say That Matters, It's What You Do

Hey, what's a marketing podcast without some marketing this podcast was produced by timescape productions need help with online video or audio

That's us visit timescape media.com for more information now on with the show. Good afternoon

My name is Paul McAbee of McAbee group public relations, and I'm here to answer the question

Who is Paul Isaacson?

Paul describes himself as an independent design strategist and marketing innovator for hire

Other people describe Paul as one of the most read most quoted and most linked to voices in the web

Paul's ideas have been featured in wired USA Today Business Week advertising age in the New York Times

Until early October. He was the head of strategy at space 150 where he worked with clients

American Express Dairy Queen

General Mills Memorex and others prior to that Isaacson served clients such as Molson Coors Brewing Company and Sun

Microsystems some strange but true facts about Paul

He caused a worldwide stir a year ago when he began

anonymously tweeting as

Don Draper the creative director from the TV series Mad Men after which I believe he

Graciously gave the Don Draper Twitter account to the AMC network

He collects dunny toys look it up on the web

D-u-n-n-y they are three-inch high action figures made of soft smooth vinyl and

Perhaps most intriguing Paul Isaacson helped I mation create

PowerPoint karaoke a public ordeal described as following

Imagine this you have to deliver a PowerPoint presentation about a completely unfamiliar topic

With slides that you have never seen to an audience eager to heckle you if you're in your underwear

You're having a nightmare if you're fully clothed. It's called PowerPoint

karaoke

Not surprisingly Paul has been invited to speak on what's next in marketing and advertising around the world including last month at a

speech in Brussels at the union of Belgian advertisers their website said

Insightfully Paul Isaacson huge public air regal matik be dragon overhead cricket von modern merkin

In any language

Isaacson is a globally recognized leader in strategic thinking for the modern era of marketing

Speaking to you today on it's not what you say that matters. It's what you do

Paul is about to share with you

A strategic approach to social media that connects your brand to people in ways that inspires them to work with you

Not against you, please welcome Paul Isaacson

Thank you

Thank you, that was far too kind so yeah, it's not what you say that matters

It's what you do is the theme of the day. I'll probably repeat some iterations kind of that a few times

As I like to say this is the world's best social media

Presentation by me because it's the only one so far so

I'll quick just give you a little bit of background to me so you know where I'm coming from

The intro did a good job of that but for starters. I was Don Draper AMC didn't actually want the account

I don't know if I actually clarified that clearly on the blog

But I did a promotion then to try and give it away that they just didn't have time or resources to handle it

So it's actually being done by another person who's a fan of the show

I promised that person that it wouldn't reveal

Who they were that would be up to them when they wanted to do it so?

there was that and then

See I

Grew up in Colorado on a farm driving tractors

So pretty cool for a third grader to get to drive around big tractors

But I decided that farming was not for me not at all what I wanted to do great way to grow up

But not my career. I wanted to be a professional baseball player

I tried to do that got into college played a little bit and then realized baseball was not fun anymore

And read a book called truth lies and advertising and said oh crap

I want to be an account planner

So got into advertising and worked at a few Denver agencies for about ten years

The last one in case you're curious is pronounced sukle not how you might want to try to pronounce it

And then as we said I ended up at space 150 heading up the strategy department when I left

I read a blog

Kind of came out on my own to try and test what can happen for me

in doing this and

Just did that about a month ago came out and one of the big beliefs that that I have with social media is it's

Great at getting credit for what you're already doing

I'm very fortunate that this has been proven true just for myself as an example so by sharing what I write

It's spread around all that nice stuff that Paul said has happened because of what I write here

It's not through no self-promotion of my own through no

Pushing myself out there. It's just putting stuff

I think about up here

Thanks to some friends at integer when they said hey we're gonna miss your emails that you send around the agency would you start

Writing a blog so we can still get those

And so it's like yeah

I think I can do that

And started doing that and then through Twitter

Started sharing stuff as well so started sharing links to some of those articles that I didn't have time to write about and started connecting

With people so through Twitter and the blog all that amazing stuff has happened

Getting calls to come over and speak around the world going to London next month because of it. It's just

Took what was in my head what I was already doing and started giving me credit for it and

Again, I feel very fortunate for that

The other piece of that too, that's kind of proof is space 150

The they saw what was going on?

on with the stuff that I was doing and said, hey, how can we do that?

And so we started to try and write a blog and we just didn't have the energy or the

time and nobody had time to write out a full post.

But one of the things that we noticed within the agency culture was that people were getting

emails with cool stuff way before they were popping up on the trend sites, before PSFK

did, before Trend Central did, before all these places got them.

So we said, you know, we should get credit for that, that we're already seeing that stuff

way before these places do.

So used Tumblr and created this little site called Ideas Are Awesome to start sharing

that stuff publicly and trying to categorize it in different themes that we were tracking.

And then from there built a dashboard because a lot of the designers were using found to

track images and a lot of us were on Twitter, so built this dashboard called Think Freely

then that also showed that.

So just taking credit for what the agency was already doing and putting that out there

and it's starting to get traction and getting a following on Twitter and some different

places.

So that's kind of the background and diving into so why does social media matter?

A lot of you probably already know.

You probably know that social media is important, that's why you're here in these sessions today

on the social media track.

But a few stats, just two thirds of the global internet population visit social networks.

Three quarters of the US use social media today in some form.

Four fifths are participating in some form.

35 plus is the fastest growing demographic on Facebook, so it's not just young people.

There are over five billion minutes spent every day on Facebook.

That just blows my mind.

That's a lot of minutes.

And over a billion pieces of content shared each week and I think that number's just going

to keep growing as it becomes easier and easier with your mobile phone to put up messages,

to put up pictures.

Those pieces of content are just going to keep growing as more people adapt to these

behaviors.

And then Twitter has seen phenomenal growth.

This was from last year, but it's just going to keep growing as more and more people get

comfortable with the idea of following it or as Facebook and it start to merge with

the status updates.

So in some form, instant updates to things are going to be expected.

And then just looking at average tweets per minute on any given day is over 15,000 according

to tweet speed.

So just a lot of people putting stuff out there constantly now.

And what this is doing is creating a growing number of conversations, both in the real

world and online.

So it's not just happening here, but it's also happening out in the hallway here afterwards.

It's happening at the lunch tables, at people's offices.

It's happening wherever they meet in person.

You can go to the bars or events and see someone showing another person a YouTube video on

their phone that they thought was funny.

So people are sharing this and talking about it both in the real world and online.

And sometimes these conversations aren't important to your brand.

Probably often they're not.

But sometimes they are.

Sometimes people actually talk about your brand and say things that you can use and

that are meaningful.

So why does that matter?

Well, one reason is that people now don't have time to remember everything.

We're all being asked so much.

So we have to go find it.

Because we have access to it instantly from everywhere, we don't have to think about it.

We just have to say, Google, tell me what I need to know about this.

And what you're going to see as this stuff becomes more popular, those results start

to rise up in the ranks.

And so a piece of bad news about your brand can quickly rise and become one of the top

ranking results.

And you don't want that.

You want to be seen as you want the good stuff to bubble up.

And so paying attention to social media and know what's going on is very important.

Also, people's behaviors are changing.

So Forrester did a study that found out people's online behaviors and offline behaviors are

starting to intersect.

What people do online is starting to influence what they do offline.

They meet in person because of something that they found out about through a social network.

They use Facebook to decide where to meet now instead of calling each other.

So really what this is happening is it's creating a communication revolution that we're not

used to seeing.

We're not used to these behaviors yet.

We're trying to figure them out.

Clay Shirky, who wrote a great book, Here Comes Everybody, also was in this film, Us Now,

quote from the film, a revolution doesn't happen when a society adopts new tools.

It happens when society adopts new behaviors.

And clearly, society is starting to adopt new behaviors.

And so it's time for marketers and for us all to start adopting new behaviors, too.

We can't keep doing what we've been doing.

A strong belief that I hold is that the future of marketing is not about doing.

It's not about doing and saying things to people, as we've done for so long.

But it's about doing things with and for them and trying to give them things that help them

accomplish something easier or better or make life just a little more enjoyable.

And so with marketing and social media, it's not about marketing to people, as I just said.

It's not about saying things to them or marketing to them.

It's about being there with them and doing things with them.

Jason Calcanea, CEO of Mahalo, you know, saying people don't want you to come to their dinner

table and give them a marketing message.

The same thing is true in social networks.

Another thing that we run into all the time is something pops up and people are like,

ooh, we've got to have a Facebook.

Oh, we've got to have a YouTube.

Oh, we've got to have a...

And that's not true.

The focus gets to be on the tools, and it's not about the tools at all.

We can't focus on the tools.

Jeremiah Ouyang, who was with Forrester and now with Altimeter Group, said that companies

focus on the features, tools, and technologies, yet fail to understand the behaviors.

So, it's really about the behaviors that we need to focus on.

That's what we're going to get into.

And the reason that matters is that those behaviors is pulling people with like-minded

interests together.

They're self-identifying for companies to start to meet and start to understand and

start to inspire and start to collect information from them so that they can do things.

These people now, before we just had a one-way push to them through traditional marketing,

now they're coming in and identifying their true interests for us.

In other words, the real magic of social media is not what happens in social media, but

what's happening outside of it because of it.

Because these people are letting us know what they really want and what they're really interested

in.

If you look at what they're organizing around, it's not that different than how communities

form in real life, right?

It's just taking what we do in the real world and applying that to digital.

So it's location agnostic.

We don't have to be in the same city as someone to start to connect with them around shared

interests or shared beliefs.

We can do that from anywhere.

So how should we connect with them?

Groundswell, I think Charlene Lee was, both Charlene and Josh were at Forrester, now Charlene's

on her own, but Groundswell was a book that took a look at this.

Like we like to do in traditional marketing, they came up with technographics, right?

We've got psychographics that we can target.

We've got demographics, and now we've got technographics.

Right?

Yeah.

Interesting look at it, definitely.

They've come up with these groups, creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators,

and inactives.

But I think the caution here is as traditional marketers, we could be too caught up in looking

at these things, saying we're going to target them to do things to them.

But really, we need to look at the behaviors.

Again, it's not about what group they're in, but what the behavior is.

And again, it's because those behaviors are not the same.

The behaviors are merging offline and online, and that's how we can start to connect with

people and start to get them to really want to do stuff with us in the real world.

So what are people doing?

Broken this out into five big buckets, and they're pretty broad, but the two in pink,

creating and collaborating, are the smaller behaviors.

Not as many people are doing those yet.

It's a little less common behavior.

The blue buckets, connecting, sharing, and consuming, are the bigger, more common, easier

behaviors.

So there's a large effort to do those things.

So connecting, obviously, a lot of us are connecting with friends, family, people we

knew from elementary school as they find you through Facebook, different things in life.

And it's also strangers connecting.

I've got people reaching out to connect that I've never met in person who like something

that I wrote.

And so somebody from India can reach out and connect with me and start to share ideas with

me through the book.

So that's a big step.

You can do that on your blog, through Facebook, wherever.

An example of this, as it was covered, is Imation came to Space150 when I was there

and said, hey, can we do a search campaign or a banner campaign for this thing called

the Wireless Projection Link?

We don't have much of a budget, but we want to try and get some word out about it and

see what happens.

And so we took that assignment and said, OK, search and banners, that would be OK.

But with a small budget, maybe we could do something more interesting.

And just through following what was going on in geek culture and seeing what was going

on at unconferences and bar camps, people were doing this thing called PowerPoint Karaoke.

And we said, well, that's kind of interesting.

That could be kind of fun to promote the Wireless Projection Link.

So we took that idea back to them, and they loved it.

And not only did they love it for that, but they said, you know what?

The Wireless Projection Link needs some work done to it.

We're going to come out with Generation 2.

Let's just use this to start getting people thinking about Imation again.

Let's not make it about the Wireless Projection Link.

Let's just make it a way that shows people who are into these types of things that Imation

is a company that could be doing some things for them.

And so this started out as a US-based competition.

I think on day one, Swiss Mist, the design blogger, did a post about it that helped push

it out there to the world.

And we started getting comments back saying, hey, I'm in India.

Can we do one of these?

Hey, I'm in Singapore.

We'd love to host one of these.

Hey, I'm in London.

Can we do one?

And so we took that to Imation and said, you know what?

This is actually pretty cool.

We've got places from around the world.

You're a global company.

Can we open this up?

Legal department got involved.

But the client had the courage and was willing to push it.

And they did get it opened up.

It didn't happen as fast as we would like it to.

But three weeks to a month later, we were able to write those people back and say, yes,

you can.

And the deadline extended.

So just a very cool way of looking at what was going on in culture and how Imation could

start to connect with people through using some of the social media stuff.

We would have never known about all these PowerPoint karaoke things if it weren't for

social media and people sharing that and putting them up on YouTube and putting them up all

the time.

And so some thought starters that you can use when looking at this and saying, how can

you connect with people?

The first thing you really need to do is look at the values, look at your beliefs, and look

at your interests as a company.

What are those?

What do you really want those to be?

Who has those?

Who's like that?

Does your current customer base share those?

And if so, where are they spending time online?

What are they doing?

What can you do to connect with them there?

And then you can also look at it from a perspective of...

How can we connect those people who love us already with other people who are like them

that have shared interests?

So think of it like in real-world situations.

You have a friend who's really interested in, to use my stupid toys, the Dunnies.

And you say, oh, you know what?

I know so-and-so likes Dunnies too, but they don't know each other.

And once you connect them and they have a conversation and they meet and they have a

good time and just know each other, then they just feel better.

They feel better about you too.

And they're much more appreciative about you because you connected them.

And so there's a stronger bond there.

And this is something companies can do as well.

Once you start to connect with some people in social media and through social media,

if you can help other people come in and meet them, you start to form a bigger, stronger

community around you because you're bringing all these people together who share these

passions and interests.

So collaborating.

So people are collaborating in a variety of ways.

And now to where you've got some freelance people coming together project by project

almost as if a Hollywood studio model to where someone comes in and gets a project and goes,

you know what?

I know the perfect creative person for this.

I know the perfect writer for this.

I know the perfect social media person.

They're pulling together these little collaborative models of the agency world based on freelancers

who have interest in this to do projects.

And it's happening in other ways too.

Great example that I'm sure several of you heard of was Netflix wanted to improve their

algorithm for their movie recommendations.

So they put it out there to the world saying, hey, we'll give a million dollars to a person

who can improve this the best.

I don't remember what the exact percent was.

But put it out there and over the course of I think it was close to three years, they

finally got it down and rewarded the company.

And they want to do round two now.

They see this collaborating with their users, collaborating with people, using social media

to help spread the word about it to get the message out there is driving some really interesting

engagements.

I think the government I just read the other day, I'm not 100% sure it was them, but somebody's,

I don't know.

But they're looking for the new 60 watt light bulb in the same way.

Create a better light bulb.

So some thought starters here are not only how can you collaborate with people in a meaningful

way, but how can you help people start to collaborate with each other?

Again, it's not just about you, but how can you bring people together that want to do

things together?

And you can just play that role of give them the platform but stay out of the way.

Consuming.

So this is broad, right?

Everybody's familiar with a lot of these channels.

You can go onto YouTube and watch videos all day long.

You can read blogs endlessly.

There's just plenty of content to consume, probably the biggest bucket out there.

And people are doing this for a variety of reasons.

Another project that we did at Space to help with this was Cascadian Farm from General

Mills came over and said, hey, we think social media would be a good way for us to connect

with people in the organic community, but we don't know how to do it.

So we went and met with a bunch of people at the Cascadian Farm team and started to

receive that.

And they actually have a ton of passion for this, especially the group that's up in Washington

that works on this full time.

This has been their life forever.

And some of the people with Small Planet Foods, which is over at Cascadian Farms, are some

of the leaders in the industry and have been since the very beginning.

And said, you know what?

There's a ton of knowledge here and a ton of passion.

And so created a blog for them to start to share that and start to invite some key people

from the community to guest post and to bring that in and start to create that connection.

And also something they were doing was going to events and handing out samples and meeting

people.

And you could let people know where that is beyond your e-mail that you're sending out

because more people want to know about that than you have in your e-mail database.

So giving them credit for that.

And another thing we found through just looking at what people are searching for, organics

is huge with new moms and people who have young kids.

And maybe they don't know the easiest place to go look.

And so suggested to them that they create an aggregator of this is some of the best

organic content on the web that we feel is out there that people should be looking for.

And so it gave Cascadian Farms.

Cascadian Farms starts to help people find great content in the organic world.

Some thought starters here.

When you have expertise in house that people find valuable, what can you teach them that

are going to help them accomplish their goals, that will help them get to what they're trying

to do through social media?

What can you learn from people as they share things and you can apply that to becoming

a better marketer or to improving your product or service as they openly complain or openly

praise different things about your products or services?

And then in that, can you build in a reward system that encourages those behaviors and

shows both from when someone complains, can you make it public that, hey, we heard the

complaint and we fixed it so that they know it was done?

Or in the case of contests, reward people for engaging with your content and consuming

and helping you spread it.

Creating content, another smaller one.

People are creating all kinds of content, the easiest of which is, as I mentioned earlier,

picture through your mobile phone and immediately posting that to Facebook.

But some people are really putting a lot of time into this and putting a lot of thought

into it and writing articles that you would normally find in a much higher publication

but they weren't known so they just started writing it on their own and they're really

smart people and you can learn a lot.

And you find people that have passion for all kinds of things this way.

So 3M found out the other day from a friend that works there, just decided to take some

of this that they found that people were creating.

They kind of got beat up a little bit for what people were doing with Post-It notes

and not recognizing that.

But they're recognizing it with Scotch and they saw that people were making tape sculptures

and some pretty creative ones and so they're doing a contest around this now to submit

your tape sculpture and win $5,000.

So pulling from that existing behavior and rewarding people for doing it.

Just a couple of thought starters here.

What can you create that people will benefit from?

So maybe you have some interesting content that you could put out there.

And it would help them kind of reach us back to the previous one of teaching them things.

It can also be an example I almost put in here was Will It Blend?

That they wanted to show how strong the blender was so they created funny content, blending

iPhones, blending everything possible to show you and entertain you at the same time.

And what can you give people that will help them create?

So can you help them create stuff for you?

As an example of Scotch, giving people tips on how to make these sculptures so that more

and more people create content with your name out there on it or tied to it.

So that's a great question.

Sharing, possibly the easiest as we can now share things through Twitter, through Facebook,

through email.

An important thing to forget is email is still the biggest way people share things.

Today is talking about social media, but email is still by far the biggest way that people

share things.

We're so ingrained in our old behavior of copy URL, paste into email, send, that it's

getting easier now as people add little widgets to things.

But email is still a big one to remember.

Nike, you could probably plug them into almost everything.

Every one of these behaviors.

I think they're doing a brilliant job with a lot of stuff.

Chose to put them here because of what they're doing specifically with running.

So Nike plus creates data that gets uploaded to a site that you can share with your friends,

you can share with your family so they encourage you or they support you or they challenge

you.

And they're starting to build community around that.

They've created run clubs out of the Nike town stores.

They've put on races.

They've sponsored races.

And just really, really looking to connect with runners in as many ways possible.

To the point where Nike's belief is that they don't want to keep the media companies in

business.

They just want to connect with people however that's possible.

So a couple different thoughts are here.

What can you share that will help make the community better that already exists?

So how can you help that?

Nike's trying to make the running community better by bringing runners together and helping

them share data and information with each other.

And how can you help others share things more easily?

It's as simple as taking an existing thing like the share this widget and putting that

next to any content that you produce so people can share that however they want to.

If they like what you have, all they have to do is click the button and pass that on

through Facebook, Twitter or email, whichever their preferred way is.

So just a quick thought on how you can get people to do these things with you.

Mark Earls.

He was a planner at a few agencies in London, is now out on his own, wrote a book called

Herd.

And his point in this book was to understand what drives mass behavior and how can you

change it.

And what he found was as much as people like to report that they're individuals and that

they like to do things and they're creative and like to customize things, really we all

want to fit in with each other.

That's really our ultimate goal is we want to feel loved, we want to feel liked, we want

to feel like we're a part of a group or a community.

And thus the name Herd.

So the best way, if you think about this, again, tying to real world behaviors, is the

best way to get people to do stuff with you is to first join them in things they're already

doing.

So if you moved to a new city or you started a new company, you know, the person who's

just like, hey, I'm throwing a party, come on over.

Maybe you get a few people to come over.

But probably not as much as if you go in and you find people who are like you and you start

to do things with them.

And then build some relationships, build some friendships, and then invite them over.

What happens if you can't do any of this?

Legal department gets in the way.

Just do something worth talking about.

With how easy it is to share things now, maybe you can't get out there and get involved in

social media, but you can create a TV spot that makes people want to spread your brand

for you.

The Cadbury Gorilla.

It was done in the U.K., the only place it ever aired.

But it's spread around the world, been remixed, recreated several million times over because

it was funny and people wanted to pass it on.

If you can't do that either, just try listening.

Any of us can open our laptop and do a quick search and find out what people are saying.

And so listen for insights about what people are saying about your brand or your product

or your service.

Figure out how you can solve an unmet need for them that maybe they don't even realize

they have, but by what they're sharing, you can interpret that for them.

And listen for ways to make things better.

Nike again, this is their version of Starbucks and Dell have communities that people can

share ideas.

Nike's taken the oh, gosh, why did I just blank?

The group that Get Satisfaction.

So GetSatisfaction.com.

It creates a portal.

It creates a website.

It creates a portal where people can leave consumer comments.

Nike said we don't have to create our own because it already exists.

And so they just use Get Satisfaction to collect feedback and let people identify problems

for them and identify ideas for them.

A great way to do it.

And the thing with Get Satisfaction is your company may have something on there that you

don't even know about.

If you're a big enough company, Get Satisfaction might have created one for you.

Or some people who are frustrated with your products and couldn't get through your customer

service may have created a page for you.

And so, you know, another avenue to change.

Another avenue to check to see what people are saying and what they need help with.

And the last bit is the future belongs to those of us willing to get our hands dirty.

This actually is a really cool poster that on the back side is this charcoal ink stuff

and on the other side are these words and you don't know what it is until you rub your

hands over it.

And it reveals the message.

And it's very true with social media is the best way to figure out what to do here is

to just get in there.

Get in and get your hands dirty.

Get in and mess with it.

And just at a personal level, figure out how it works.

And see what people are doing and just watch and observe and what are people sharing on

Twitter?

What are they talking about?

What are they interested in?

And in doing that, you'll start to see the connections in your own head about how you

can start to relate to them or what you can do for them.

Because you understand your business and you understand the things that you're trying to

accomplish and now you can see the human side of what people are trying to do and what they're

using it for.

So just getting out there and doing it yourself is a great way to learn about it.

And that's really how it all pulls together.

It's not about saying things.

Saying things is the old way to market products and services.

It's about doing things with people and for people that helps them have a better experience

and get to know your brand better and get to know you better and want to be there with

you.

That's it.

I'd love to open it up for questions.

And if anyone wants to kind of make an open discussion.

It doesn't have to be just me answering.

Here's where you can find me if you'd like to connect.

I'd love to connect with any of you.

Always love meeting up with people for coffee or drinks after work or whatever.

So feel free to reach out any time.

I live here in Minneapolis.

Happy to do any of that.

Questions?

.

That's a tough one, and I'll open it up.

But my perspective is, first is it worth responding to?

And if it got to the point where it's a high enough thing in the blogs that it got way

up there, the famous example that I'm sure many of you have heard of Motrin moms.

I did a commercial that made people mad and search Motrin and it comes up fairly high.

They did a good job, I feel like, with trying to, maybe not as quickly as they could have,

but within 24 hours they got a public apology out there and said, we're sorry.

And made that known and then pulled the commercial down and tried to do some different things.

I think we were talking at the table over lunch with this and in some ways it's become

almost like a bit of improv because you don't know what's going to happen out there and

you have to be prepared for it.

And you have to kind of almost chaos scenario it out of to what could happen and start to

try and predict and how you would respond to that.

But I think the biggest thing through all of this is just trying to remember to be human

and be person and connect with people.

Yeah, Eric.

I'd say to add to that, I think you can, I think people are short-runners.

I think if you're willing to be humble and show some humility and ask questions, I think

you can do it.

And to your point, Paul, about looking for opportunities to make your service or product

better.

You can do that.

If someone's having a problem with your product or service, start asking questions.

You might be surprised how quickly you can flip that person, not only online, but in

real life.

Just start asking questions and say, you're sorry.

I think sometimes people are afraid to say, I'm sorry, when they're representing their

end.

My biggest thought would be on really, not just like middle or big companies, but like

people.

Just if something really kind of blows up.

So one example would be you just told me you made some kind of big campaign, and this was

when gas prices first started really rising.

So everybody was really needing extra use in general, so especially on these.

And this was supposed to be a positive campaign for them.

But not only blew up, but a lot of people ended up, I think what they did is they put

together, sometimes it's not necessarily a good campaign, but sometimes it's a good one.

They made some kind of a campaign, and it was supposed to be like a contest where people

would make videos, and they gave them all the tools, and they were just making videos

about this campaign.

And instead, people started making negative videos, and it really kind of blew up.

So that's one example.

But when something ends up that big, how do you deal with that?

I think that was, I believe it was, I don't know.

That was, I believe it was GMC Tahoe, or whoever makes the Tahoe.

And they put, so what they did is they had put clips up that people could make their

own commercials, and a bunch of environmentalists got on and told them how much they suck because

they make SUVs.

And they decided to leave it.

They said, you know what, if we pull this down, it's just going to make us worse.

That opinion is out there.

It's not hidden.

There's a lot of people who have that opinion.

There are other people who say, you know what, I don't care.

I've got three kids, and I have to take them and all their friends to soccer practice two

days a week.

I need a big vehicle.

So I'm sorry that I'm hurting you.

That's my opinion.

That's the environment.

But what are you going to do?

And so they know that those opinions are out there.

And they decided, I think smartly, to just leave it and let people decide for themselves

whether they agreed with it or disagreed with it.

One of the things, I can't remember when it was or which it was, there was an event in

town, and this question got asked by someone who works at Crispin Porter because they like

to stir the pot and make people mad, and that makes people talk.

So they said, you know, what do you do?

And this person said, I don't know.

And this person's response is, well, what we've learned is that just to shut up, because

people who like us will come and defend us, and that does more for us than if we jump

in the ring and try and defend ourselves.

I don't think there's 100% right answer anywhere, but I do agree with Eric that if you can humble

yourself and admit that you maybe made a mistake or that something was wrong and just show

that you're willing to work through it, then you're going to come off as the good person,

and if they refuse to play with you, then the person who raised the comment in the first

place is the bad guy.

Starts to show that they're not really about finding a solution, they just want to stir

the pot.

Was that?

Sir?

Yes?

Our company had a similar kind of experience, and one of the things that we learned in our

industry, there are some private networks that have discussion channels.

And if we were visible, contributing to that discussion channel in positive ways that weren't

promoting our company but answering other people's questions, so we were providing good

content, when somebody slammed us, they're not going to be the one that's going to stop

us.

our fans would come to our defense and we had to stay very little.

If we just lurked and didn't provide good content,

when we got slammed, our fans said nothing either.

So that was one of our lurks.

When you did stuff, people defended you, right?

Also, people need to remember that the market

will bear both things. They'll bear a Tahoe and a Prius.

And I think that's kind of the usual respect to know that there's both

of those things out there. There's people who are on Twitter and there's people who are not.

And it's having respect for both sides. We're not

quite as forgiving sometimes as marketers.

We respect that.

To that end, these conversations are going on and they have been

going on. We just now are able to listen to them.

One of the best quotes I heard about whether or not to participate is

not participating doesn't make you invisible, it makes you mute.

I think that the thing of it is, it's not that people

haven't been talking about it, but they've been having conversations. It's just now

that they're having them, they have broadcast channels to do so.

Facebook status or Twitter or whatever. But it has been going on

and it will go on. So the question is, do we want to know what people are saying

and do we want to have a voice in that or not? Because it's up to us whether

to join the conversation or to mute.

It is a good way to look at it. We've now got a window into people's living rooms

into the hallways, into whatever where they're talking at the dinner table. To Jason Mahal's

point, people don't want marketing messages at the dinner table just like they do on social networks.

That's the conversations they're having at those places.

I think also doing what you can so that your

word gets out there. Whether it be, the one thing you

don't want to happen is to have somebody who didn't even know about it go into Google and have

Dell sucks come up as the number two thing

when they search Dell. So by doing things like search engine

optimization and that type of thing, you're able to get your message up higher

and push the negative messages down lower so you do have a chance

to play in it. Because as marketers, we

really do have to try to get our message out there in a positive way and

that's one way to deal with the negative messages.

Not to eliminate them, just to sort of overpower them

with positive messages.

Yes? What's PowerPoint Karaoke?

PowerPoint Karaoke. I should have put a video in.

Give me a presentation. PowerPoint Karaoke is

taking

place at, like I said, these un-conferences and bar camps.

People would go to a bar at the end of the day or wherever they're having drinks at

that area and you would have to stand up if you wanted to. Of course,

no one's going to make you, but if you wanted to play, you stood up just like

I'm standing here right now, only what's projecting on the screen, I have no idea what it is.

It's someone else's presentation either from that day or what

happened is people started bringing presentations just for PowerPoint Karaoke.

If you go online and look, one of the funniest ones is an example where every

slide is something about chickens. The guy's just clicking through and he's

just saying the word chicken over and over and over again.

People were just forced to ad lib a presentation

and hilarity ensues usually.

Yes? I really like the dual approach to the

behaviors that you talked about, especially under create. You talked about

what can you create as a company that people will benefit from.

Mostly how can you give people, what can you give people that will help them

create something. What came to mind for me is the iPhone apps

and the software that they gave. They were willing to give away and look at the phenomenon

that that created and the positive buzz. People have quit their job

and they are full-time iPhone app developers, so it really has created

a community, it's changed lives, and it literally was just about them giving something,

a tool to these people.

That's a really good example.

I just wanted to say, there's a powerpoint

karaoke coming up.

SMBMSP.org

There's a powerpoint karaoke coming up, SMB...

The social media about this website has more information, so it's SMBMSP.org

SMBMSP.org

Thank you. Yes?

So you build a great tool, and you really

think you have something marvelous and social and

it's going to be viral and it just sticks.

Is there any redemption? Do you have ideas about how you would make that work?

Do you think there is

a ratio to fail tool? I think right now it's play as much

as possible and see what works. The cost to do some of these things

if you're willing to use WordPress and free tools that are

out there is really, really low. And once you get something that takes off, you can always invest in it more

and improve it and do something better with it. So you put an idea out there

and it fails, learn as much as you can from it. See if you can find out

why it failed. See if you can find out was it a bad user

experience or was the content not right or what was it? See if you can learn from

what people are saying. If they're saying anything, if no one's saying anything, it might be

just a lost cause and you've got to pull it down and try something else.

But seek feedback. If people aren't hitting it,

then use social media tools to push it out there and say, hey, we want to know

what you think of this. It's not taken off yet and we'd love to know.

We all have friends that we can reach out to that they talked about in the

lunch one, the Rays and Jill or whoever. We all have

those people in our everyday lives that we can reach out to in person,

that we know those people in person. And so if nothing else, you can just send them a link

saying, hey, let me know what you think of this. What's going on with it and see what

information you can get back, if any.

And what do you think is the next big thing?

The next big thing. That's a good question. For me,

what I think is the next big thing is simplifying

this mess that social media has created of all the content that's out there and organizing it and trying to make

it useful and trying to make it make sense. There's so much

data and so much stuff out there that we need somebody to

curate and aggregate this in a way that makes sense. And I think that's a huge opportunity

for brands. That's what Cascadian Farm is starting to try to do with the aggregator

there is that's a step toward helping people who are interested in learning about

organics for the first time have a place to come to that the brand is saying

we've looked at this and we think this is good content. And if you like our

products, then maybe you'll like it too. So I think that's the next thing

is trying to make sense of all this. The number of iPhone applications that are out there is

insane. There's no way. Something's got to rise to the top and someone's got to be able to help

you figure out what are the useful things, what are not. Especially as new users come into

the fold and try to figure these things out.

Anything else?

Okay. Thank you very much. I'll hang

out if anyone wants to talk.

Thank you.