Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

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Do you believe in the power of grammar to move consumers?
In Canada, there was a recent controversy around the song "I Believe," the official anthem of Canada's Olympic broadcast media consortium. The lyrics go like this: "I believe in the power of you and I." The songwriter chose the word "I" over the correct word "me." Red pens were drawn; angry grammarians cried foul and forecast the apocalypse. The story was picked up by most of Canada's major news sources.  

Now those who create content know that it's an evolving, made-up language. Breaking the rules of grammar and contributing to its evolution is fun and part of the job. But rule breaking should always be part of a calculated plan to create something relevant and exceptional. Otherwise it can be interpreted as negligence or laziness. And that can lead to bad press like in the case of "I Believe."

Joanne Buckley, a professor at the Centre for Student Development at McMaster University, launched a technical attack on the song's language. She said, "Of course, we grammarians know that the words should be 'believe in the power of you and me' since 'of' is a preposition and takes an object."

But, in the court of popular opinion, Canadians didn't seem to care. We allow artists and song writers to break the rules all the time. The lyrics drew fire because the brand, in this case a consortium representing Canada, is expected to know better. A double standard applied. It's not fair. It's reality.

The best way to defend against bad publicity is to avoid the dubious mistakes that wake the cranky grammarians. No one attacked Snickers for making up the word Hungerectomy. And Koodo mobile wasn't called out by the Strunk and White set for inventing Big Billification.  

If you want to break the rules, do it in grand fashion. Go all the way. Do it with purpose, in a way that will create something exceptional and not be mistaken for illiteracy. And believe in your power to move consumers.

John Ellis

When I decided to bite the bullet and jump into the Twitter fray in earnest, I must admit it was for very self-centered reasons. It started out as an effort to gain knowledge. Frankly, I wanted to look learn more about this social media phenomenon that was exciting my coworkers and clients. With some time and experience, I got very excited about building my personal brand, gaining followers, being interesting to others. What I never really expected was the vast amount of information that is available to me in the home of little blue bird.  

I only started to realize the true power (and probably the future) of twitter on Saturday during the surreal anticipation of a tsunami hitting the shores of Hawaii.  Like many other folks on Saturday, I interrupted my day to check in on Hawaii. I did a quick check with CNN, MSNBC, and FOX NEWS to see how those folks in Waikiki were doing in anticipation of the 4:05pm (Eastern) arrival of a tsunami triggered by an 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Chile earlier in the day. I found myself sickly fascinated with the whole affair. Waiting, watching, hoping that it would come and hoping that it would not. The voyeur in me became very frustrated with the television news coverage and like any good attention deficit multitasking gal, I picked up my laptop and found myself on Twitter. In other words, I struck tsunami gold.

One glance at trending topics showed me that #hitsunami was the place to be. A quick search later and I was off to the races. There were 1000's of tweets per minute with real people sharing real stories about what they were experiencing in that moment. I found accurate and up to the minute reports of what was really happening, pictures of a nearly empty Hilo Bay, links to local news, and people in Hawaii connecting with each other. I also discovered Hawaiians sharing news of how to navigate a city whose main highways were closed, information on evacuation routes, and tweets from loved ones on the mainland. My favorite moment was when the entire #hitsunami twitter community realized that their tweets were powering CNN's television coverage. The validation that real people were not only reporting but also living and creating the news, in a whole new way energized everyone participating.

I have daily arguments with myself and others about the long-term value and future of Twitter. Why bother? It's a great resource! Do I care what this random selection of 'friends' say? What I've now realized is that my relationship with Twitter is a lot like the Hawaiian tsunami of 2010.  Sometimes my enthusiasm is as empty as Hilo Bay was on Saturday, and sometimes it pours back in a slight three-foot wave. Twitter has not met my expectations. There, I said it.

However, I'm finding value that I personally never considered. Frankly, I never even imagined that a real time search engine powered by millions of real live people could even be possible, and now it is a reality. I am sure that reality will continue to shape us in ways that we cannot even imagine. Before Saturday, I couldn't imagine tuning into television news to watch a natural disaster in real time. But I did, just like millions of others, and was horrified by my disappointment that the tsunami of 2010 was a non-event.

In the meantime, you can find me on Twitter: @teenord.

Teresa Nord

Just 18 months ago, I celebrated my 20th high school reunion. It was very well attended relative to past classes. I attributed the good attendance to Facebook, which I argued made it easier for everyone one to, a priori, know what fellow classmates were doing and what they looked like.

Subsequently, I have maintained contact, through Facebook, a number of classmates. One whom I was friendly if not 'friends' with in high school, Michael Miller, began chronicling his bout with a brain tumor on Facebook. I must admit that I was swept up in his status updates and felt that I had grown closer to him over the past year by writing a wall posting and personal note or two. It particularly hit home with me for two reasons - one, that a person my age whom I knew was ill; second, because my stepmother, Judy Palnick, had suffered from a brain tumor and had undergone a similar treatment. Judy recovered and is doing well.

Though as I checked my Facebook account last evening, I found out that Michael had passed away through another classmate's status update. This, less than a week after his last status update. I went to Michael's profile and read the wall of condolence notes -- addressed as much to Mike as to his family and other mourners. It was as if he still lived on through his account; at least, that's what I and other well wishers had seemingly dreamt and hoped. If only it were true.

It makes me wonder: is social media making it easier for friends and family to grieve, pay their respect and keep the memory of a loved one alive?

Jonathan Cohen

Could it be that it's good to NOT always get what you want - that the Internet's delivery of on demand content might actually be a less pleasing experience?

On a recent trip I was listening to Soul Town (Channel 53 on Satellite Radio). For every couple of songs I really liked and was familiar with, there were a couple that I liked less or was unfamiliar with. Additionally, there were songs I was so familiar with that I was just plain sick of them; after all, how many times can you hear Aretha Franklin sing "Respect"?

The problem was, I couldn't skip the songs I didn't like just as I'm accustomed to doing on Pandora and Slacker. Nevertheless, the thought occurred to me that having to sit through songs I wasn't thrilled about hearing, for whatever reason, was making me appreciate the songs I did want to hear even more. It was as if "traditional radio format", where you listen to what they play and not what you want at that moment, made for a better music experience.

I then started to think about another phenomenon that I've noticed in myself. I can listen to virtually any song by any artist at any time - R. Kelly, Frank Sinatra, etc. -- and I do. If for instance I want to listen to "Pretty Wings" and "Number One" in a playlist of my favorite songs, I can...and can listen to them incessantly, immediately. I suppose that in the 60s, I could have purchased "Rubber Soul" and worn the grooves out, but the fact that I can access all of this music virtually and instantly...and play it to my heart's content has resulted in my getting sick of music more quickly. I'm suffering from music burnout.

Whether listening my classic favorites ("When Doves Cry") or new songs ("Bad Romance"), on demand enables me to function like a Top 40 radio station, but without the filler and commercials to give me room to breathe, to listen to things I don't really want to hear.

Is delayed media gratification ultimately a better experience -- where the mind has time to gestate its appreciation of songs, where we don't tire of music so quickly?

Jonathan Cohen

So I get this email in my Gmail account, from some guy saying he's looking forward to meeting me tomorrow, and that he has included some details on this brand new proprietary manufacturing process they're developing, with an attached PPT file.

Obviously, spam, with a virus in the PPT right?

In fact, I was originally going to comment on what a fine piece of spam it was, as it was addressed to me, Elliott, in the body, plus it was quite well written and plus it had all the "this is really REVOLUTIONARY" and "we have to move first on this" style content that would tempt any curious person open the attachment in spite of their misgivings.

But before deleting, I looked up the name and the URL (noting it wasn't from Hotmail etc) and lo and behold, the sender really is an accomplished entrepreneur with his own agency who has even been featured on CNN Money. Go figure.

So I sent him an email pointing out that he had the wrong Elliott Smith, and he replied almost immediately and apologized for the inconvenience.

I'm still amazed that in this day and age otherwise intelligent people would send highly confidential business materials out onto the Internet to a Gmail account. And given that nearly every business scandal seems to involve highly accomplished executives who are incriminated because of their using email to discuss sensitive issues (see: Conrad Black, the Genuity Financial guys), it makes me wonder:

What is it about email that these people don't understand?

Elliott Smith

Jyri Engeström, Product Manager at Google who found his way there by co-developing the microblogging service Jaiku and selling it to the search engine giant in 2007, says that without a hands on approach to its business on all levels of management, the company will lose its touch with the reality.

Sounds rather obvious, doesn't it? But Engeström claims [in Finnish] that the world's biggest cell phone maker Nokia may have lost the crucial connection between what happens in the field and what happens in the managers' world. Where at Google, says Engeström, even the most top level managers are still contributing to the code themselves and monitoring the development of their products first hand, at Nokia the bosses are lost in their own chambers. At Google, the founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have even given up their personal assistants because they didn't want to get estranged from their workers and the people who use their products.

A recent post in the Harvard Business Blog talks about the change we're witnessing in the organizations around us due to the development of networking tools such as Twitter. The writer, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, recalls how America in the 20th century was called a "society of organizations." Formal hierarchies with clear reporting relationships gave people their position and their power.

In the 21st century, however, the world is rapidly becoming a society of networks, even within companies and other organizations. People with power and influence derive that power from their centrality within self-organizing networks that might or might not correspond to any plan on the part of designated leaders. Fewer people act as power-holders monopolizing information or decision-making, and more people serve as integrators using relationships and persuasion to get things done.

I bet that Nokia isn't alone with its problem. In fact, I think that most companies around the world that were born in the industrial era are struggling to change to become more like Google, a company mostly developed in the networking era of the 21st century, where a less hierarchical model of connecting and sharing ideas comes more natural.

In the advertising world, there is the debate about traditional vs. digital, and how to combine the things we have learned from both thus far to drive the future. The world we work in, in (digital) advertising, is going through constant change at a seemingly increasing speed with every new tool, piece of code, site and platform that becomes somehow meaningful.

Maintaining a good connection to what happens on the ground is a challenge, but it's easier for those who actively network and participate in the discussion, and who are willing to let go of the old hierarchical model of management. It doesn't mean that everybody needs to be a coder, a director, a designer and a hyperactive, visionary Twitter user all at the same time, but it helps to have done a bit of it all to have experienced it first hand, and maintain that connection to the ground through all the cycles of change.

As you grow, how do you maintain a good understanding of where you've been and how that may have changed?

Karri Ojanen

image credit:

quinn.anya / CC BY-SA 2.0

My friend's father says that people who use a lot of swear words only do so because they have a limited vocabulary (a comment that has prompted my current attempt to stop swearing).

I feel the same way about abbreviations.

I can't abide an LOL, a j/k, or, especially, a ROFL LMAO when there are so many beautiful words you can use!  I was thrilled by the advent of QWERTY keyboard mobile phones, since it meant I no longer had to slowly type out every word in my stubbornness. And hurrah for the iPhone, which lets me go on and on using words like "abhorrent" and "incubator" (okay, I've never texted the word incubator, but I like knowing that I could).

The same goes for Twitter. Those 140 characters present a challenge to get a message across as succinctly as possible. And it is possible. An entire day can be summed up by saying "The cheeseburger I had for dinner makes up for the fact that I drove into a pond this morning. Sort of." It's compelling, it's amusing, it's thought-provoking.

Compare that to this: I drv my car in2 a pond ths mrning, now have 2 pay 3k 2 fix, total #fail LOL. But hving awesome cheezburger now @TGIFridays w/pickles #ftw
I don't even want to try to read it. It makes my eyes sad.

The point shouldn't be to fit as many words as possible into a tweet by abbreviating them into oblivion. Twitter is an exercise in brevity; an exercise which I, perhaps masochistically, love. Probably because a good portion of my work life has included trying to fit my thoughts into a character count.

Some abbreviations are a necessary part of using the platform. Writing RT is both courteous and necessary, and typing "re-tweet" would take up too many valuable characters. And, in the same way that no one calls E-mail "electronic mail," no one actually types out "re-tweet," so RT doesn't even feel like an abbreviation anymore. And we can't avoid the jumble of shortened URLs which, while practical, are distracting and cryptic to read.

Still, even too many re-tweets, mentions and URLs can be distracting unless there is original content intermixed. I'm excluding niche feeds, like NYTimes, which consists solely of links to New York Times articles with short headlines. But, you'll notice if you follow that feed, they never abbreviate in those headlines. They even put periods between the letters in N.F.L.

So, the question: Do abbreviations save time and space, or are they just... irritating?

Jordan Miller

watching hypnotised on 12seconds.tv

In days of yore, people wrote letters to one another to communicate. If you read Jane Austen novels, you'll know that it was all very proper and romantic. Then we got phones so we started talking instead. Bye bye letters.

Not long after, we discovered email. Although we still use phones, email has become the primary mode of communication for many. It's efficient, you can talk to more people faster, and the give and take generally involved in an actual conversation is somewhat limited. It's a great tool for introverts, since they can avoid the face to face; and it's a great tool for extroverts, since they can "talk" to a ton of different people at once. It works for pretty much everyone who is not a technophobe.

Enter Facebook ... where we can carry on multiple conversations simultaneously. While IM'ing. In real time or delayed. We have substituted quality for quantity.

Then came Twitter, where conversations are limited to 140 characters, and you can amass thousands of "friends" whom you have neither met nor spoken with. On Twitter, you can talk at people for the most part rather than to them. You can do this on Facebook, too. In these tools, conversations become more akin to a spectator sport.

Fast forward to late 2009, where evolution has given us 12 Seconds TV. An invention where, if you are too lazy, busy, illiterate or narcissistic to even bother to pen 140 characters on your keyboard, you can just videotape yourself talking (uh, or whatever, have to wonder about that) for, you guessed it, 12 seconds.

I was tempted to do it but you know, I am wearing my glasses, it's late, makeup is gone, etc., but you get the idea. I'll link to some random person's 12 second spot instead. Maybe it won't catch on after all, if more people are like me than not!

Is the pendulum going to swing back? Will people begin to find value again in personal interaction? Or are we going to continue to talk at each other, failing to truly connect, and just watch each other with limited attention spans going off for 12 seconds at a time, or talking in 140 characters or less? What then? Who will bring you soup when you're sick? Give you a hug when you're sad? Talk with you in depth about anything? Smack you upside the head when you're being a jerk? Tell you they appreciate you and love you when you need to hear it? Next up, marriage proposals via Twitter and 12 Second TV.

To hell with it, I am going to go read Pride and Prejudice. Again. Nah, on second thought, I'll watch it. LMK when someone comes out with the 12 second version.

Tracy Cote

My wife and I were able to catch Wilco at Hill Auditorium on Friday, October 19. Before the headliner came out, we were treated to an outstanding opening act, Liam Finn. What a unique style. A one-man band, Liam plays a riff on guitar, loops it and then jumps on his drums, loops that and picks up the next instrument. The sound is very industrial with a DIY aesthetic. Check it out for yourself and you'll see his looping effect beginning around 3:30 in this video.

So it got me thinking. Liam took a piece of technology designed for perfecting music in a studio and turned it into tool for high-energy live performance. Just like any live show, it wasn't perfect, but the audience wasn't disappointed in the least. There were technical glitches, missed notes, but it didn't take away from the brilliance of the moment.

Of course, the equipment, guitars, technology would all be worthless if Liam didn't have the chops to make them work for him.  I could walk up to that same setup and drive a crowd away -- in other words, be ignored.

Could that be applied to anything we do on the Internet? Sure. We go live everyday with thoughts in our tweets, blog postings, comments, forum topics, photos, videos and so on. In the olden days (10 years ago), we read, proofread, edited articles in newspapers. Highly educated experts wrote our encyclopedia articles and music critics helped guide our next big find. In today's world, anyone breaks news, entertains and educates.

The cream, however, will rise to the top.

I recently took up photography as a hobby, but was reluctant to share anything on flickr. Finally, I figured, what's the worst that could happen? At worst, my pics will be ignored, unless they're really bad and become a viral joke. But what's the best that could happen? Well that remains to be seen. For me, I hope to connect with people in the community and improve on my hobby. Some (a.k.a. "the cream") rise to the top and their lives change.

So, if you have something to share, don't be afraid to step on the stage and go live.

Anthony Viviano

As if presenting a PowerPoint to a whole room of people wasn't stressful enough. Say the presenter is not very familiar with the topic, nor is as prepared as they should be, or has a particularly tough crowd, these factors increase the stress level exponentially. To celebrate the release of a new wireless projection link, the fine people at Imation have embraced just that. They are sponsoring a PowerPoint Karaoke (PPTK) contest. The premise is simple enough. Put someone up in front of an audience to present a previously designed PowerPoint that they know absolutely nothing about, and hilarity ensues.

This might be something to think about for the next Camp Organic. ;)

http://www.powerpointkaraoke2009.com/

Dave Knoph