Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

image courtesy of doozzle

With the advancement of sensor-laden networked vehicles, the future of automobile design is converging with interaction design. Fiat's eco:Drive is a great example.

Now Nissan is developing an iPhone app for their upcoming electronic car that allows the user to check the battery level, among other things, remotely. This is a great avenue for digital agencies to collaborate closer with their auto industry clients and open up new business opportunities.

PCWorld talks about how Nissan is building the app to promote energy efficiency:

"The application [...] links to the car's IT system to check the status of the Lithium Ion batteries that power the car. Using it, owners will be able to monitor charging of their cars while away from the vehicles. The system could come in handy, for example, when cars are parked at public charging stations and owners want to fully charge the batteries before driving away. [...] The information also includes the current temperature inside the car and that ties into a second function of the application: remote control of the car's air conditioning system. That might sound like a random and perhaps strange function but it's all in the name of energy efficiency."

Editor's note: Nissan continues to break the mold with customer interaction as Craig Ritchie first talked about here. Could this be the next phase in building their community of eco-conscious prospects?
  
Fang-Yu Lin

With social networks booming we have become used to putting information about us out on the Web that used to be rather private information only a few years ago. Actually not really! When I signed up for my Facebook account, I did so with the intent to connect with friends and family. Somewhere along the way I accepted the fact that now when I type my name into Google, my LinkedIn and Facebook profile turn up as some of the most relevant search results. What happened here?

Facebook has received criticism in the past few weeks about its privacy practices. Supposedly, an outraged blogger claimed that Facebook allowed a 3rd-party advertiser to use the picture of his wife. Facebook posted the following note today:

"Worried about privacy? Your photos are safe. There have been misleading rumors recently about the use of your photos in ads. Don't believe them. These rumors were related to third-party applications, and not ads shown by Facebook. Get the whole story at the Facebook Blog, or check out the Help Center."

I believe them. However, I still made sure that my privacy settings are updated. Facebook does have the right to use your information, unless you explicitly tell them in your privacy setting that you do not consent that your information is used in social ads.

Social networking is all about user generated content. Social networking is also about relevancy. Facebook is asking you if you are willing to share your interest and information with others, in turn, FB can serve you equally more relevant ads. The irony is that in a world of the open information flow, it's almost impossible to know where your information ends up and how it is perceived.

I do think that consumers need better protection. And we as consumers should demand it, which I don't think we have quite done yet. Why are privacy policies often a bit more convenient for the company then they are for the consumer? The default should always be to opt-in versus opt-out. A company should ask me for permission and not just assume I gave permission. Whether the story of the bloggers wife's picture in the dating site ad is true or not, it sure made me think to make sure I understand how my information is used.

Sonja Scharrer

photo credit: Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times

Starbucks is up to some trickery and it could cost them some customers. The Huffington Post reported how the coffee giant has "unbranded" one of their Seattle stores to give it "a community personality." It sounds like Starbucks is trying to capitalize on the trend to buy local and get back some of their lost market share. It might be because consumers perceive the local mom and pop coffee shop as cheaper, but just as tasty as Starbucks. One reason might also be the trend to buy local in an effort to support your local economy.

I asked consumers if they'd be more apt to buy from a local café or Startbucks? The majority (44% as of this post) said they do try to buy local when they can. The remainder of the respondents were divided (almost equally) between Starbucks, other chains and brewing their own.


[You have until 08.07.09 to add your vote.]

This deception by Starbucks is wrong.
Look at the sign for the new store above. Their use of the word "neighborhood" is misleading. If Starbucks really wanted to help the community (or gain community), they should do it openly and honestly.

Here are some better ways they could connect with the community:
1. How about partnering with a local shop and doing a sort of co-op? Wouldn't that give them a better wrap and cause people to return to the Big Brand once their paychecks pick up again?
2. Serve local fare. Allow smaller, family run local bakeries to rent out space to sell their baked goods and lunch fare.
3. Sell fresh fruit from local farms.
4. Display and sell artwork from local artists.

Starbucks should consider their roots. They once were a local shop, too, that happened to be so likable they decided to grow their business. What was it that made them so attractive to the locals to begin with? Yes, it could be the "local" draw.

With the Starbucks trickery, they might potentially see an increase in sales at the disguised 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea. But once patrons find out the shop isn't really who they say they are, Starbucks just might lose some customers for good.

Steph Jorgl told me why she buys local:

"I tend to buy local - especially if the café states something like "locally grown" on the outside. There's a café like that with amazing coffee right by my house in San Jose called Roy's Station. The place is a piece of history, the coffee and the atmosphere there are amazing, and they serve their coffee in real glasses if you're dining in. There's a certain feeling you get drinking coffee from a real glass or mug, and there's also certain art to the preparation and presentation of every Roy's mocha. They take pride in their coffee and are kind to their customers, a feeling I don't get from every Starbuck's barista. However, I have to admit that if I'm in a rush and in the car, I'm a sucker for the drive-through Starbuck's by my house!

It could be little perks that Starbucks needs to continue to keep their market share and attract new customers, though. Jay Bain told me:

"One thing that has me more likely to walk into a Starbucks these days is (more) seamless free ATT WiFi for my iPhone.  Although most local cafes offer free wifi these days, the 'instant-on' effect is gratifying."

Would you still buy from a "local" place if you knew they were owned and run by Starbucks?

Sarah Jo Sautter

This Thai Pantene commercial recently made the rounds thanks to a glowing review and article on Seth Simmon's blog about how to use storytelling in advertising.

"Do you identify with her story in some way? I did. Struggle, disappointment, rejection, and eventual triumph in spite of great odds are things we can all relate to. If a shampoo company finds value in advertising that isn't directly about shampoo, is it possible that you might find value in telling stories that aren't about you? I think so. It's not enough to just grab any old story and tell it. You need to find a story that resonates with a message you want your brand to be known for."

Seth Simmon's goes on to explain just how you can find stories that are "not about you" out their in the social media world (or make them up) and then use them to illustrate the message of your brand. It's a good message. We are all moved by the power of stories. They connect us emotionally to an otherwise inhuman, intangible brand. But a word of warning, if you are telling stories that AREN'T your own, you can be perceived disingenuous... or worse, manipulative.

Organic employee Fang Yu Lin had a very different take on the Pantene ad:

"I have a different perspective to offer regarding this shampoo commercial. The story over which Seth Simonds went ga-ga doesn't seem truly 'extraordinary' to me but yet another melodramatic saccharin fest typical for east Asian commercials (wait till you see our soap opera). Seth's post exemplifies the problem with self-appointed cross-border cultural agents. They quite often fall into one of these two traps that they dig for themselves: naïve misunderstanding or willful misrepresentation."

While I can't speak from the cultural perspective that Fang can, I too felt the emotional manipulation of this "melodramatic saccharin fest". (I swear my tears were only pregnancy hormone induced). It felt painfully over the top, and a thought kept dragging down on me through out the entire piece... in the end, this is about shampoo?

Maybe brands resort to making up stories or overdramatizing their customer stories, because they don't know how to tell their own stories in a way that makes feel them human. But there are plenty of companies out there, such as The Moth, who can teach anyone the art of telling THEIR OWN story. Something I recommend to everyone in this field. Because if you can't speak with genuine passion about your own life or product, how do you expect anyone else to care.

Marta Strickland

Augmented reality is something geeks always dream about. The above video shows TwittARound, an application for the iPhone 3GS that uses the GPS, compass and camera to show where Tweets are coming from. Pretty cool and pretty scary, once you think about how social media is now being used to conduct cyber warfare. Turns out the big Twitter and Facebook outages yesterday were not caused by a Twitter zombie takeover as many had hoped. But instead, the downtime might have been the result of Russian lead DDoS attacks targeted at one man (cyxymu), a Georgian blogger who was known for criticizing the Kremlin.

What Not So Scary Stuff Happened This Week?

To Tweet Or Not To Tweet, Teens Are In Quesiton
While some things about Twitter users are fairly inarguable. Twitter is big at conferences (duh!), Twitter not so big in the places that ban it... like China or the White House, although many users find a way around that barrier. But there is one target demographic that has been the subject of MUCH debate. Do teenagers tweet? Morgan Stanley and Nielsen claim they don't, but the 123 Social Media blog says that Google data disagrees.

Microsoft On The Up & Up
It's really weird to wake up one day and see nothing but pretty positive articles about Microsoft in my RSS feeds. Bing is still growing, and is possibly stealing market share away from Google. Claims that Bing results are Microsoft-biased are getting disproven, and it even looks like they have found a catchy new jingle for their search giant. In an ironic twist of merger fate, the long negotiated Yahoo!-Microsoft FINALLY goes through after Microsoft proves they don't need Yahoo! to conquer the search market.

The Dead & The Resurrected
A recent report has established that while the big social networks are growing, other social sites are stagnating or losing engagement. One year ago, there was a lot of social media watchers placing bets that Imeem would overtake a lot of share from MySpace, due to its music focus and unique features. One year later, Imeem growth has fallen flat, and while MySpace has been bleeding traffic and engagement, they are still at least fighting to survive. Most recently MySpace has unveiled their version of Facebook Connect, leveraging open standards to integrate with sites around the web.

Other people up for a fight, namely against Twitter... Digg and Delicious. These social bookmarking sites have lost a lot of that "link love" behavior to the allure of Twitter, where everything is real-time and easily retweetable. Over the past week, the two sites have added some features to try drive traffic back. Delicious added filters, graphs, and a real-time news tracker to their home page. While Digg opened up, adding a read/write API that will allow third-party developers to add "digg this"

Marta Strickland

image credit: elev3n

I found a couple compelling thoughts/reminders while recently reading David Meerman Scott's World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories. I have to admit, the book wasn't too enlightening. (I already sold it on Amazon.) However, two of Scott's quotes validated what I already knew.

1. Forget about your products: "Nobody cares about your products and services except you and the others in your organization. What [they] do care about is themselves... [and] solving their problems."
 
2. The Web should not be used as "lead bait": "For decades, companies have created Web content as lead bait. But the goal should be to get the word out...not to misuse the Internet for the sake of an outdated technique."

Not always easy to do. Too often clients get caught up in spotlighting their product so much that they forget about the customer. Clients should ask themselves, "Who is my customer? How can I help them right now?"

Scott could have expanded on his second quote. Tactic is only a sliver of the pie. Messaging can make or break your web strategy.

Now, if I could only convince more clients to try these theories.

Sandy Marsh

Murmur Study from Christopher Baker on Vimeo.

Consider it a real life version of Twistori, an online social experiment that aggregates all the status updates on twitter associated with common human phrases (i love, i hate, i think, i feel), or similar site We Feel Fine. Christopher Baker's Murmur Study also searches Twitter and Facebook status updates for common phrases (argh, meh, oooo), but goes a step further by printing out these updates in real time into a long ticker tape waterfall that rolls up into piles along the floor of the installation.

While We Feel Fine and Twistori aim to make the diverse online community seem more connected to each other and embrace people's desire to share life's ups and downs in the digital space, Murmur Study does quite the opposite. By bringing our digital thoughts into the real world, by physically printing them out on ticker tape, the study hopes to highlight how our seemingly personal thoughts are collected, sorted, and archived by corporations, without us really paying attention to it.

Thanks to Bonnie Chu for the link, who was impressed with the "nebulous notion of turning online buzz tracking into something tactical which we can all see, hear, and touch".

Marta Strickland

Unlikely innovator USAA Bank has pushed the bar in the financial industry and in mobile banking by allowing customers to remove one of the final paper roadblocks in an otherwise fully digital banking system: depositing a check. USAA Bank will now let customers deposit a check by taking a picture on their iphone and sending it in via a mobile app.

The point-shoot-submit application model is nothing new. QR Codes have been around since 1994, but still haven't really caught on in North America. Now, slick smartphones like the iPhone are making applications like this more consumer friendly and easier to implement.

So I asked Organics to get creative about the future of mobile applications. It might be bank deposits today, but what about tomorrow? What do we want our phones to be able to do next:

• Take a picture of notes on a whiteboard and be able to send it to a server or app that turns it into a text file and lets me distribute it to the team


• Take a picture of a house for sale or rent to get more info instead of having to call the agent or go to a website. This could be done with a QR code in the "for sale/rent" sign


• Have a 'municipal complaint app' similar to the one they have in Boston. Take a photo of a street light that needs fixing, a park that needs cleaning etc and send it to the city ...or with complaints/nuisance that can't necessarily be solved by the city, be able to send pictures to other groups, companies, associations and volunteers


• Have friends in my mobile pics automatically tagged through facial recognition (with the option of setting privacy to disable that)


• Take a photo of a rash, cut, bruise, swelling or any visible symptom and send it to my doctor or a webMD-like site to get instant feedback on whether I (or my kid) need stitches, etc or can give me a diagnosis and prescribe a remedy


• Take a photo of a flower or plant while on a walk and get the name/species, characteristics about what it needs to grow and save it to a file that auto organizes all my favorite flowers by shade, sun, height, etc so I can plan my yard landscape


• Somehow take a picture of the food I'm eating in order to keep a daily calorie count. I don't know how the image identification could work considering foods look so different, perhaps this just starts with CPG food with barcodes and clearly defined "packaging"


• Take a picture of my face in order to get hairstyle/makeup/beauty care recommendations from a high end beauty brand while I'm in the store or at the salon

Thanks to Karri Ojanen and Sarah Jo Sautter for the application ideas and Ted Hoot for the mobile banking link.

Marta Strickland

image credit: Tom Lin :3=

An experiment by 9elements demonstrates the potential of HTML 5 to help developers offer up rich interactive experiences in your browser* --without flash, without plug-ins.

They're serving up scripted particle-based animation + interactive motion + Twitter integration + music. Totally sweet if you're using Firefox 3.5, Safari 4, latest Google Chrome beta, or latest Opera beta. But there are still some kinks to work out.

To Make it Stick
The HTML 5 working group needs to unite to establish a truly universal standard that can be supported fully by different browsers and operating systems. If the intention is to free rich internet experience from proprietary plug-ins, they can ill afford to have more disputes such as the recent video codec controversy.

One issue that needs to be addressed is HTML 5's implications to content accessibility. I'd like to hear more from accessible technology experts regarding how to build ADA compliant HTML 5 websites.

The Potential
The installation base of HTML 5 browsers is still small comparing to Flash plug-in's. Plus, there may be a learning curve for programmers and designers. Thus, in the short term it's unlikely to have a market impact.

However, due to the spotty Flash support on mobile devices, once the mobile browsers fully support HTML 5 it may become a dominant technology to deliver multimedia content and RIA to smart phones and tablets.

*Make sure you are using Firefox 3.5, Safari 4, latest Google Chrome beta, or latest Opera beta. Then click the "click here to launch the experiment" link on the webpage.

Fang-Yu Lin

HP's "personal" story commercials have built a solid and expandable platform for their brand. The visual storytelling is memorable and the celebrity partnerships are intriguing. Others have tried to use the "we're-invoking-3D-objects" "magic fingers" visual technique in their commercials, but it usually appears forced and awkward. HP's iconic headless celebrities magically demonstrating how they use their laptops has grabbed huge view counts on YouTube and have been inspiration for countless other video parodies - boasting impressive view counts themselves.

Enter HP's "You On You" contest.

Leveraging the firmly established platform, You On You asks users to (as marketers often do) upload a video to the HP user-generated content campaign. However, instead of requesting the usual "tell us how you use our product" videos, which is in fact the overt message of the celebrity personal story commercials, HP asks that you simply "Declare your story." Tell HP about you in a video - just don't show your face.

There are many great elements to this campaign - the awareness-creating "related video" seeding; the inclusion of multiple countries and languages; the use of the HP channel and the standard YouTube interface and social mechanisms; and the authenticity of the product placement to name a few...

But the exceptional element here is Kenna's Launch Video, which sets the bar and lays the foundations for creative minds to enter the contest. In an authentic way, this video alludes to the idea that HP wants videos that are like their own commercials. But, as Kenna demonstrates, it can be low-fi and you don't have to know Blender or Premiere to qualify. He does, however, keep the high-quality pace, concept and level of creativity that entries will require. Too often, introductions for user-generated content campaigns lean the other way, tossing up an upload button and using copy to explain what kind of video the brand is hoping for - or, worse yet, broaden the ask too much, saying that entries can be still imagery or text.

Kenna flows through the options, using lots of tidy and varying illustrations and a just a little post-production to inspire headless YouTubers to get creative.

I get it, and I'm inspired to act. What more could a marketer want?

Craig Ritchie
@craigritchie

Hack days are events in which participants are encouraged to create web applications in 24 hours using APIs and open source libraries. The first Music Hack Day specifically organized for the digital music community took place in London, UK about a month ago. Supported by BBC Music and a few established digital music services like SoundCloud and Last.fm, Music Hack Day brought together 200 delegates and 'hackers' who explored the possibilities of using open source software for new digital music apps.

Among the hacks created during the event were the SoundCloud iPhone Music Visualiser, and Citysounds.fm, which fetches musical creations from SoundCloud and organizes them by the cities they were created in. It also pulls pictures for the cities from Flickr. There are a lot of electronic music producers on SoundClound, and that can be heard on Citysounds as well, but listening to sounds created in Auckland, New Zealand and Sao Paulo, Brazil, shows how distinctive places around the Earth can sound.

Karri Ojanen

The Two Big News Items This Week

1. Facebook + Friendfeed
The big announcement this week was that Facebook acquired Friendfeed. The alliance wasn't a shock to some, as Facebook had already took some features (news feed, like) from the microblogging platform. Still for others it was more of a confirmation of Facebook's move to be more like Twitter. Between that announcement, Facebook's move to make user updates searchable and the slimmed down Facebook Lite version, it seems more and more like a reality, despite Facebook's insistence that Facebook Lite is merely for low bandwidth users.

2. Project Retweet
Just yesterday, Twitter announced on their blog that they will be officially supporting retweets in a way that Twitter users have never experienced before. The new APIs come in four flavors that sound a lot alike to me: retweets in the new home timeline, retweeted by me timeline, retweeted to me timeline, my tweets retweeted. Whatever each of those flavors mean, the idea is that this is going to change the retweeting experience, but not necessarily for the better. As ReadWriteWeb points out, the new format could break a lot of the old conventions... confusing third party analysis engines, as well as frustrating users who are no longer able to add their own words of wisdom to each retweet.

For those of you not from the Bay Area or familiar with the hyphy subsegment of the hip-hop universe, the name Mistah FAB isn't going to ring any bells. But for the rest of us, I can't help but wonder if this seemingly unlikely digital partnership has a commercial twist. Is Twitter using FAB as a promotional vehicle to unlock an urban market? And paying him to do so? Or is FAB just using Twitter (presumably with permission) to create new levels of access for his fans and extend the reach of his personal brand? Or am I overthinking all of this and he's just name checking a social-media trend, the way rappers name check everything from cars to cognac?

Anyway, I guess there's only one way to get some answers. I'm fixin' to do what the song said  and hit him on Twitter. Any revelations will be added to this post in subsequent updates.

Daniel Turman

Update #1: MistahFAB@dturman appreciate the love an the world will find out soon the answer to your ?
dturman@MistahFAB Ha! I figured that at the very least if you givin' them breakfast for free, then you're about to make them pay for some lunch.

Digitally, habits between the generations vary. While Gen Yers tend to focus on entertainment and communication, older generations prefer utility and information. So, when I came across Jack Welch's latest online endeavor, Everybody's Business on MSN, I was pleased to see how it bridged entertainment and utility for a Boomer audience.

From a strategic lens, the site is nothing short of exceptional. First, the content is compelling. Jack and his wife, Suzy, are two of the most respected business thought-leaders. And in their web series, they lend their expertise to companies interested in launching new products or services; companies such as Hertz and Dominos. The show takes users on a journey - into the board room, into the back offices, and onto production lines to see how the companies operate and how the business is driven forward. It's like the Apprentice, except from the perspective of senior management instead of marketers on the ground.

Second, the delivery of the content is brilliant. The experience caters to someone that's an information hound. It takes into account that people will likely poke around the site; so as users explore, the video player reacts by pausing and allowing previews of upcoming scenes.

Here are a few reasons why this experience is a best-in-class example of delivering content through an engaging and interactive manner:

Integrated Polling: Viewers participate in polls every few minutes. They appear over the video as it plays, and then shows the results of the community after you enter a vote.

Dynamic content delivery: To the right of the video player, a box presents relevant content to the discussion in the video. For example, as different people speak, it gives their background and some information about their objectives. This experience is like a modern-day take of VH-1's pop-up videos - delivering interesting information that can't be voiced-over.

Smart Previews: Similar to Hulu, the video player allows viewers to preview scenes to come by holding down the scroll bar. Another great feature is that the videos in the Extras section will play in-place when users simply put their mouse over them. These smart previewing options result in a higher completion rate of videos while still feeding the impulse of viewers to explore.

Extras: These "behind the scenes" clips deliver an experience similar to director's commentary. Viewers can see footage that was left on the cutting room floor and get a deeper understanding of each of the executives at the company.

Automatic Pausing: When users engage with content, the video player pauses - allowing people to jump in and out of parts of the site without having to re-start the video from the beginning.

Branded Content: The box above the footer navigation delivers rotating call-outs to Microsoft white-papers. Users can click on the content to download, which does not interrupt the video from playing.

ALT View: By clicking the Overview button in the top right corner, users are given a different way for them to view the content. The simple ability to change the layout of the site is a feature that almost every site lacks, which is another reason that this one is exceptional.

Nailing target behavior proved a hit in this experience. Think of how you might entice your audience to engage more if your delivery changed.

Kai D. Wright

It's a huge debate around the Organic circle and it doesn't appear many CEOs are. Out of the 2009's Fortune-100, only 19 (gasp) have a personal Facebook page. But don't go shaking fingers just yet. What I found even more shocking was that only two had Twitter accounts -- one of which has ZERO tweets.[1] Wait. I'm not done. None had blogs.

Some of the Organic pool seemed to think that was okay. But the rest of us think they're missing a huge opportunity. The bigger question is, does your CEO need to be participating in social media? According to Organic's CFO and COO, Marita Scarfi, the answer is absolutely.

Her reasoning? "Being engaged with your customers allows you to produce better products/services which, in turn, leads to improved customer loyalty. Ultimately this helps increase sales and fosters stronger company financial performance (e.g. increased shareholder value)."

Customers usually know what they want today, yet they don't always know what they want in the future. This engagement can help companies lead the innovation and development of future products -- a critical part of the CEO's role. It's really not about the tool. It's about communication with your customers.

What Does This Have to Do with Facebook?
There's a rampage in the social media world driving companies to get on the next big social network. First it was MySpace. Then Facebook. Now Twitter. Sure, customers are there. But before you go pushing your unsocial-savy CEO to Tweet, ask him (or her) how he likes to talk to customers.

Part of the company's social media strategy should take into account the CEO's personality and what tool is best at helping them feel comfortable in their dialogue. They can start by simply talking to customers face-to-face, unstructured. Then maybe they try posting some short thoughts on Twitter (Marita's pick). If they like that, it's a good fit. If 140 characters just isn't enough to express themselves and they're finding it tough to inject their personality into anything coherent, they should try another means of conversing with their customer.

This is different than the brand presence. While the brand can sustain a Facebook page, it doesn't seem plausible that most CEOs can. It takes a lot of work to attract a following and keep them engaged. Work that a CEO just doesn't have time for.

Yeah, Like I Have Time To Be Updating My Facebook Status
Realistically, you can't expect a CEO to be logging on to Facebook a few times a day, or even every day, for that matter. They first have to figure out what to focus on. If you're interested in driving shareholder value, then you do that through knowing what your customers want or trying to predict what your customers want. That insight comes via dialogue.

Isn't That What I Have a Customer Service Department For?
This is different than traditional reactive customer service. It's more than answering questions or addressing complaints and feedback. Still your customer service department, or better yet, your social media specialist can help. Enlist them to help you listen. Then get someone to summarize the chatter, pull out the themes and put together a plan of action. That will tell you what your customers need to hear from you.

Only the CEO can communicate that transparency, because their job is to see the company holistically. Other positions are simply too specialized and focused. When it comes from the top dog, it's much more believable.

Help! I Have Writer's Block
If a CEO doesn't feel comfortable posting him- (or her)self, he might consider a ghostwriter (a la community manager) to do it for him. The point is that they should be responding to their community (read: customers and potential customers).

It's also important that they be authentic. Forget marketing-speak. Customers can get that from your ads. If you were having lunch with me, what would you say? Forget lawyers. Forget PR. I'll read right through that. Put yourself out there. I want to know what's really going on. Consumers these days want to be part of the process. Hence why when done correctly, crowd-sourcing projects are so successful (think Dell Idea Storm, My Starbucks Idea, etc.). 

Another reason this is important: according to the 2009 Edelman Trust Barometer, faith in companies is at a 10-year low. And "The Most Respected Companies" in the Global Pulse 2009 Study from the Reputation Institute all have one thing in common. Brands such as Johnson & Johnson, Costco, Whirlpool, Google and FedEx are open and honest about what they're doing. That resonates more with customers, who tell their friends -- on- and off-line. You can't do that through advertising alone.

The study further reinforces the benefits of transparency:
"54 percent of consumers would give the most reputable U.S. companies the benefit of the doubt in a time of crisis and that perception of a company's ethical behavior and transparency in business dealings holds the most weight..."

The Institute goes on to recommend that by communicating to customers, companies "will create a connection with the U.S. consumers that with garner them resiliency and support in any situation."

A Few Are Doing it Well
• Marita likes how Costco's CEO Jim Sinegal gets out in the stores and talks to his employees and his customers. She believes you can do the same through social media.
• Fred Smith, FedEx Chairman, President and CEO, frequently contributes to the Company's "Citizenship Blog."
• Tony Hsieh of Zappos.com Tweets, blogs and interacts with employees face-to-face. His social media astuteness has become the company's mantra.
• Sun Microsystems' CEO Jonathan Schwartz writes a well-read blog for industry insiders. His open dialogue philosophy has become core to Dell's business strategy.
• Most of the CEOs on Twitter are from tech companies and the like. And while that appears a natural fit, I'd like to see more CEOs from the CPG industry -- the products I use (or could use) every day.


CEO's, the worst thing you can do is be silent. Consumers want information. If nobody is giving that to them, people will come to their own conclusions or write you off altogether.

Sarah Jo Sautter

1 Source: CEOs and Social Media from UberCEO

So I probably care more about server usage stats than most people. (Don't judge me, I have too). I just sort of stumbled on a page on the BBC site which displays their stats public, in real-time and sliced up by continent. It even covers what's hot where, and whether or not usage in an area is above or below normal (and by how much).

Kinda neat. Good for a solid 45 seconds of entertainment. But i also wonder if it influences which stories people read. Are you more apt to read what everybody else is reading? Share what everybody else is sharing?

David Freedman

Old experience without ads

Let's talk about ads. Some people love them and some people hate them. As brand stewards, we're looking for places to put our messages; aperture moments in which consumers are receptive and likely to pay attention. But to consumers, all they see are roadblocks to desireable content. Roadblocks often manifesting themselves as commercials, pages in magazines, and homepage take-overs online.

New experience with ad

But imagine if advertising enhanced the way consumers interact with desired content. Some brands, such as Dove with Go Fresh, have begun to air mini series during commercial breaks for shows like Gossip Girl. Since their commercials feature one of the show's stars, Dove has successfully turned a roadblock into a connection opportunity. And in magazines, advertorials have long blurred the lines of selling versus informing. But online, making ads work with the content that someone seeks has yet to be perfected. Well, so I thought.

This week, while visiting a site I frequent almost daily (dictionary.com), I was startled by the advertising. Not startled like, "Oh look at these dancing babies for Evian water," but, in a good way. For those that have visited dictionary.com, then you share my sentiment that the experience is marred by its cluttered layout. On the site, users are forced to wade through an experience lacking the nurturig touch of a good experience architect (XA). This week though, the site seems to be trying something new: using the ads to clean-up the user experience. And they want to know what you think of it too. (There's a link to email them feedback dead center on the home page.)

Although the advertising is featured quite prominently, the ease of searching is significantly enhanced. To illustrate, upon landing on the page now, the search field is moved to the center of the page. There are no distracting columns of text and banner ads. Rather, the new layout delivers a clear nod to search engines such as its parent company, Ask as well as Google and Bing. And with the ad more prominently featured, I'm sure dictionary.com is making more money than its traditional banner unit inventory.

So, we now have a win-win situation - improved UI for the visitor and probably more money for the site. An experience that has been enhanced due to the advertising. (Gasp.) I wonder how long it will take Google, Bing, and Ask to start wrapping their search fields in a advertisement?

Kai D. Wright

There's a video on YouTube called "Social Media Revolution" that in the past three weeks a lot of people have linked to on Twitter, Facebook and in emails. The video asks whether social media is a fad, or the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution.

Using stats like "social media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web" and how it took less than nine months for Facebook to get up to 100 million users, but 38 years for radio to reach only 50 million listeners, the video goes to show how this thing called "Social Media" is a real revolution.

But wait. It's not new and revolutionary that we share and talk, is it? It's not new that we are social beings. The kind of social things - sharing, joining and connecting - that we, hundreds of millions of us, are now exercising so vigorously online are part of who we have always been.

"There's nothing new about 'social media' except scale, reach, and speed."
-Scott McFadyen

We, people, need to belong to groups, whether through shared interests, family bonds, religion, nationality, or sports teams. It feeds our sense of who we are - it defines us as human. And then through sharing, connecting, listening and talking, stories evolve around the groups.

The technology we have now opens up wider groups of people who share our interests, and so the groups become bigger, and better informed, and the stories more complex. That is the real revolution we're experiencing now. Through this technology, the social things we have always been doing now have an immediate, global reach like never before. The Internet didn't make us social, but it opened up huge new possibilities for being social.

What this means to marketers is that the one-way model of mass media that was enough to shoot the message to the masses in the industrial age, when media and distribution were scarce and expensive, is no longer effective (if it ever really was). Brands are not the same kind of substitute for a recommendation as they were when we didn't have instant access to peers for recommendations, reviews, and opinions online, nor the kind of set of imagery and design they later became. Brands are now the sum of constantly changing, ever evolving two-way communications between the company, the service, the product, and the consumers. Markets are conversations. To be part of the game, marketers need to jump into those conversations to interact with the people who are already interacting.

Karri Ojanen
with thanks to Scott McFadyen, Tomas Roldan and Craig Ritchie

image credit: JMR64

There have been a lot of discussions in the press lately around online ad effectiveness. Is online display advertising really dying? Or is there simply a need for new metrics?
 
Over the years we could all observe the significant drop of click-through rates (CTR) from 5% to 0.1%. This could indicate that either online display advertising is dying or that consumers refuse to click on the ad unit.

The introduction of rich media formats allowed marketers to bring a user experience from the website to an advertising unit. So now that the consumer can get the experience without leaving the online ad, it's more apparent that other metrics are needed to measure the full range of interaction that might take place with online advertising.
 
On one hand, the recent trends created a huge challenge for the online industry. On the other hand, they created a big opportunity to introduce new success metrics which would replace rather obsolete CTR and help to prove online ad effectiveness.
 

image credit: WilLiao

Today's New York Times business section features an article on Twitter. Specifically, it discusses how much its growth in popularity is being fueled not by teens - the usual source of exponential growth in new Internet technologies - but by adults, more specifically those over thirty. My colleagues have been pointing this out to me for some time - that teenagers are not tweeting as much as expected.

The article posits that young people are more frequent "texters" and prefer other social networking tools that broadcast messages just to their friends and not everyone in the Tweetosphere. It quotes a teenage girl as claiming that her parents wouldn't approve of her telling her thoughts, etc. in a public forum - the reason being older people preying on youngsters.

The one question that the article doesn't quite answer is why adults are tweeting.

One possible explanation is that there has been such an intense, mass media swirl around Twitter - perhaps even more intense than for Facebook - that "grown ups" just decided to sign up and give it a try.

I do wonder if there's something more to the phenomenon.

Does Twitter provide a means of self-expression and connecting to others that adults feel they have lost over the course of time  - that as they get older, work 70 hours a week, have families and tons of responsibility, that they lose the opportunity to air their thoughts and feelings? They have no one to speak to and no outlet - that no one's listening. Though Facebook is also enjoying a surge in popularity amongst older adults - my mom who's 61 sent me a friend request a few months ago! - it broadcasts messages to a mutually selected group of friends.

It lacks some of the psychological anonymity of Twitter, where one's audience is comprised of three main segments:

1. people you know, but who probably might not pay as much attention to you because of heavy tweet volume and the very ephemeral nature of tweets
2. people you don't know, but who follow you for whatever reason
3. those random people who search the Tweetosophere on particular topics 


Facebook and Twitter are just different. Though Facebook and third-party apps are trying to make it easier to align Facebook and Twitter accounts, relatively few people appear to be using this functionality, and those who have, soon unlink the two updates. Is it because people find the constant stream of updates on Facebook annoying? It could be that users want to broadcast different messages to different audiences, and select the appropriate social medium to do so.
 
Twitter is way noisier; the din is high, so you're less likely to be in the spotlight and people are less likely to know you personally -- or sometimes even professionally. For the over thirty crowd, that might increase their comfort level. It gives you a chance to bounce ideas off people who might hold similar interests, say something outspoken or even simply vent to outside those of your long-standing friendships and family. Your Twitter followers might not necessarily judge you for a belief that your private connections (on Facebook) don't share, if they even catch your Tweet at all. Twitter feeds move so quickly. 

People would be less likely to say something outrageous or overly personal on Facebook (so far as I can tell.) There's more attribution; on Facebook, your status update could remain on your profile indefinitely unless you actively deleted it.

I think there is a great opportunity to do some more research to understand the Twitter phenomenon. It might be worth beginning a longitudinal study that asks the question (among many others): Will teenagers as they age into their 20s and 30s be more prone to use Twitter? Why or why not?

I'm happy to join bandwagons, but I really do like to understand the psychology behind why particular audiences are exhibiting particular behaviors. As one tries to develop a social media strategy, such information and insight can really drive appropriate approaches and solutions. Twitter is not just a box to check; for a brand to effectively leverage the tool, they need to understand the variances and subtleties in how different audiences use it.  

Jonathan D. Cohen

Eagle Point Dr, Sherwood, Pulaski, Arkansas

On the blog Art Fag City, there is a fantastic photo essay from the IMG MGMT series featuring a recent work by Jon Rafman, a Canadian artist previously known for his Kool-Aid Main in Second Life project. His current series called the Nine Eyes of Google Street View features specially curated imagery extracted purely from Google Street View.

"The world captured by Google appears to be more truthful and more transparent... Street View collections represent our experience of the modern world, and in particular, the tension they express between our uncaring, indifferent universe and our search for connectedness and significance."

In his essay, Jon Rafman wavers between speaking from the perspective of himself to commenting on the perspective of Google. He starts his essay being a mesmerized spectator, similar to a photojournalist who is able to capture imagery of an emerging event or a documentary-style artist who is entranced by the powerful emotions of "nostalgia, yearning and loss" that manages to come through these images.

58 Lungomare 9 Maggio, Bari, Puglia, Italy

But soon begins to comment on both the power and detachment of Google's omnipotent gaze. Google has a perspective that artists rarely get the benefit to express. They are able to draw focus to the raw material of our everyday lives without overwhelming that reality. But at the same time such power, in the words of the author, gives them the aura of "an indifferent Being".

"The collections of Street Views both celebrate and critique the current world. To deny Google's power over framing our perceptions would be delusional, but the curator, in seeking out frames within these frames, reminds us of our humanity. The artist/curator, in reasserting the significance of the human gaze within Street View, recognizes the pain and disempowerment in being declared insignificant. The artist/curator challenges Google's imperial claims and questions the company's right to be the only one framing our cognitions and perceptions."

Thanks to Elizabeth Stewart for the link.

Marta Strickland

Editor's Note: Augmented reality has been a hot topic on the blogs lately as the release of iPhone OS 3.1 is supposed to enable use of the camera, GPS, and compass to layer virtual data over our physical world. While this is not supposed to be live yet, Mashable just announced today that Yelp sneaked it into their new app release via an easter egg technique.

I just installed this and even up on the 4th floor of Organic's San Francisco office it seems to work pretty well. Once you've completed the Yelp app update, shake your iPhone 3GS three times to turn on the 'Monocle' button in the UI. From there you'll see the 'video camera' screen with Yelp links hovering over places or in the direction you're pointing your phone.

Observations so far:
- Well designed and impressive to see Yelp data on top of the 'real world'
- The icons 'hovering' can be a bit jittery as you move your phone around. I found it hard to hold my phone still enough so that I could select the icon on the screen for a Yelp review
- Both portrait and landscape mode work with the Monocle feature; portrait lets you see a taller 'stack' of Yelp icons but landscape seems more intuitive for moving your device from side to side panoramically

As the Mashable post notes, apps with AR are not supposed to work until the next OS release sometime next month. It should also be noted that other devices already support AR functionality. Overall, this first entry in AR apps works great and demonstrates the potential AR has for location-based services on the iPhone and other mobile devices. Could a flood of AR feature updates to other current applications be available in the near future? I'm betting on it ;)

Jay Bain

You would think in this information overloaded world full of statistics and bloggers and Wikipedia, that finding an answer to your everyday professional questions would be easy. Instead, all I find is more questions... more than I had before I started...

What's Being Questioned This Week?

Teens and Twitter, Can We Make A Decision?
After the release of a highly retweeted New York Times article called "Who's Driving Twitter's Popularity? Not Teenagers", the blogs have a field day of different reactions. It's funny because I remember this happening not to long ago when a certain 15 year old intern for Morgan Stanely said the exact same thing. And so the questions begin... are we sure? Teens don't really tweet, or do they? Or if they don't, are they going to start soon?

Organic strategist Jonathan Cohen took a slightly different approach to the question. Instead of concentrating on teens, let's talk about why adults (an inarguable Twitter demographic) are driving such high usage numbers in Twitter.

Augmented Reality, Do We Want It, Need It, Have To Have It?
According to readers in a recent ReadWriteWeb poll, 45% feel that augmented reality is important. Others however feel that augmented reality will fall the way of other technology promises like voice recognition and RFID, as an unnecessary and often complicated addition to an otherwise pretty intuitive process like finding a restaurant to eat dinner at. Well, Yelp certainly hopes that is not the case, as they launched an augmented reality extension to their iPhone app today, and according to Organic's Jay Bain... it clearly demonstrates the great potential this technology has to offer.

The Real-Time Web: Is It Hype? Who Will Own It?
I think by now we can assume it's pretty much not hype. Twitter has become a support system for the news industry, for networking and marketing, and even for the sale of physical products (Korean BBQ anyone?). This has lead people to ask just how much power Twitter has in our world today. Are they winning the battle against Facebook or has Facebook's new introduction of a Twitter app put them at a competitive advantage? Win or lose, is now the right time for the real-time front runner to sell, and to who?

Marta Strickland

Have you found digital radio to be a good place to discover new music? Regrettably I haven't. I use three music services, one of which I pay for, two of which are advertising-supported. I've been a Rhapsody subscriber for about three years and have come to love the ability to listen to nearly whatever I want whenever I want...as long as I'm tethered to a computer - PC or Mac. I also use the Pandora and Slacker iPhone apps, particularly when I'm at home (via Wi-Fi) or at the gym (via 3G).

As I listened to various stations across the three services - some "programmed", some "custom" - I've started to wonder if they really lead to new music discovery. Specifically, I'm wondering how deep into a catalog do they delve beyond hits, how their presumably dynamic playlists are generated and how much they play music you haven't heard before, but would most likely like.

If the stations are dynamically generated, what informs what they play? Is it people who have indicated they like similar songs a la Amazon's suggestions? Does it also include people who have said that they DON'T like particular artists or songs that you've given the thumbs down to? How does the system decide when to add new music into the playlist? Is this done manually, where an employee force feeds a track into a particular radio station? Or is it done more organically, where X number of users request a particular track (like Mr. Hudson's new single "Time"), and the system begins to accumulate requests, which correspond in Y number of spins?

I've begun to wonder about this particular issue, because I've found that I'm not really discovering new music as much anymore. I used to forage around message boards, reading postings by fellow music fans I knew (virtually) and then seeking out the music. I came across Amy Winehouse and Jamie Lidell this way, whose first albums were initially only available as British imports. I also found about "new" album re-releases on these boards as well as through some e-retail channels, like Amazon.

As I've grown older, I have less time for such endeavors, and I've been consequently letting the programmed cloud "introduce" me to new music, but I can't say I've had any extraordinary finds. I suppose I first heard "Blame It" on Slacker, but is that really discovery? It's more like an introduction to an obvious hit produced by T-Pain. I've also been re-introduced to The Puppini Sisters, a modern day, retro-40's singing girl group from the UK that covers "Bugle Boy from Company B" (pretty good) and "Panic (on the Streets of London)", which is like doing a camp version of "Street Fighting Man". Permissible by right and art, but absolutely dreadful to listen to and completely unaligned to the song's lyrics. I have repeatedly told Slacker's Vocal Standards station that I don't like "Panic", but it must think I just need a few more listens to be won over.

I guess my point is with all of the convenience of the cloud, I feel that I've lost control of the joy of true discovery - that virtual crate digging that I had been doing since 1995. If my virtual, dynamic playlists are programmed according to other people's tastes, I fear that the music that I'll be exposed to will be the common denominator - a reversion to the mean. The type of music for people who think that a 40s girl group version of "Panic", "Street Fighting Man" or Radiohead's "Loser" is really witty and high art. I also fear that I will be subject to a music programmer's whim, which might be subject to a record label's promotions department.

Just as I thought we were escaping the gravitational pull of mass-inspired taste of Top 40 radio and formats, we could potentially be getting more of the same.

Everything new is old again. Or is it? What were you introduced to? Did it inspire you to purchase the song?

Jonathan Cohen