Feel like a creative misfit? The latest from V Raw

by Marketing ON 20 May 2009

I have followed V Energy Drink’s V Raw campaign over the last few years as they used MySpace to offer dream jobs to young people.

This year I have been impressed with the blog-style site, with lots of content and resources, which drives traffic. The site is built for the particular audience needs – news, podcasts, music exclusives, film, advice, and interaction.

The focus of the campaign is heavily on releasing creativity and I am impressed that this year as V Raw is offering more creative jobs in hard-to-get-in industries, such as music, film, fashion and so on. With the economic climate this is a great initiative.

I have got involved with the team that has brought this together to help them with their blog outreach and advocacy aspects of the campaign. As a result I have noted that a program like this takes a lot of work from key partners from the client, OMD Fuse, The Glue Society and Modular Ideas to launch and keep momentum going over a lengthy campaign period. That was refreshing and personally it has been good to be part of that team.

It has opened up my eyes to the fact that a brand like V Energy and a mainstream agency can build multiple agency and specialist relationships, with no ego to get to the end game. They have demonstrated a total commitment to offer a chance to young creative people in industries hard to break into at any time, even harder today.

The agency has taken an interested view of using social channels to promote this campaign with only two exclusive promotional channel deals, the first much focused on MySpace and the second also working with Channel V.

The key points for me that points to a successful campaign outcome for V Energy and their agency groups are:

They listened
They learned
They have a collaborative model of specialists and people who have brought this together with their various expertise
The have provided content, but not controlled the distribution of content
They are being useful, and
They are enablers: providing rich resources to help people to do what they want to do.

V Raw has provided opportunities for 80 people so far and that number is set to increase this year as the campaign will offer at least a dream job a week, as well as an international placement. You can check it out here www.itallstartswithv.com.au.

Download the mp3 here.

Get Social Advice – demystifying the social media landscape

by Marketing ON 13 May 2009

getSocialAdvice (GSA) is a new collaborative effort with the aim of demystifying the social media landscape for business. The people behind GSA are social media specialists: Fi Bendall, Neerav Bhatt, Gavin Heaton and Dorothy Polka.

In a recent video conference, Marketingmag.com.au put some questions to the team to uncover more.

Why the need for getSocialAdvice?

Fi: We felt that there is more to the emergence of social media than just marketing. It is the change in thinking that organisations are challenged with. With our collective experience and networks we felt we could provide a collaborative set of individual skills to help organisations.

Dorothy: I think there is a need to bridge the gap between those building the channel and those (corporates, etc.) trying to utilise the channel. GSA brings them together.

Neerav: Connect organisations with people who are social network natives, speak the local language and can act as a tour guide.

How is this different from the other social media bodies out there?

Fi: We wouldn’t describe ourselves as a body. We are a co-operative and can deliver a range of experienced independent seasoned social media practitioners through our networks to work as a collaborative team to help and enable companies to get to grips with the organisational changes that social media has brought with it.

Dorothy: In Australia there appears to be a lot of agencies trying to help companies, but rarely are they talking to the people who are in the social media space and engaging with thousands of customers/readers every day. GSA bridges this gap.

Neerav: An agency has a fixed pool of talent to draw from. In comparison we are hyper-connected and can bring in talented people to assist with projects on a case-by-case basis.

Do you think there are social media experts in Australia?

Fi: Social media expert is an over-used word that is getting some flack! The reason is we are all learning and one of the changes organisations face is learning how to be fluid and adapt to the changes as they are occurring on an on-going strategic and educational basis. That said I am pleased to be collaborating with colleagues who have been early adopters, have been blogging for many years and who have built large audiences. That is valuable experience.

Dorothy: I don’t like the expert term in a field that is so rapidly changing and to an extent, so unknown. I believe there are thought leaders and some very knowledgeable people in the field who have developed their competencies in this field by action.

Neerav: There are no rules, this area changes too fast for anyone to claim expert status. We are all still experimenting.

Why do you think marketers are having trouble deciphering the social media landscape?

Fi: It is about the art of conversation and dialogue. It means the old message board: customer wheel, brand wheel and tools they have used are not applicable to this channel! Open networks are complex as are human networks, so it becomes a behavioural science not an advertising science. Speed in response is also an issue.

Dorothy: I think marketers are used to using channels such as TV, magazines where the medium is traditional. The traditional medium talks at customers. The new medium is interactive and requires companies to talk with customers. It breaks down barriers and requires companies to be honest, accountable and visible warts and all.

Gavin: For social media to be effective, there are some significant changes required within the business. For example, in the heavily-regulated financial services industry, there is legislation that can actually prohibit the kind of two-way dialogue that is fundamental to social media. In addition, social media has to be resourced – you need people who are trained, knowledgeable and authorised to act/initiate change within your business. It is something that has to be thought through very carefully. So it is not necessarily that marketers don’t get social media – it is more a case that they are not yet organised to respond to it in a serious, committed manner.

Have you seen any successful social media campaigns coming out of Australia?

Fi: Well, obviously I would direct you to the Amnesty International case study! The top slot for me, executed with a 360 approach would have to be the dream job from Queensland Tourist Board.

Dorothy: I agree! The World’s Number One Job caused a big groundswell with so many channels being involved – Twitter, TV, websites, blogs. It was extremely visible.

Neerav: I’d say that long-term success will come to companies who try to become respected embedded participants in social networks by helping people and sharing information honestly as opposed to being involved on a campaign basis for a few weeks or months and then leaving.

Gavin: The Movember campaign was fantastic, as was Earth Hour. The challenge with social media is that if you are not part of the target community, then it is unlikely that you will hear about it.

How do you measure the impact of a social media campaign? What do you tell your clients?

Fi: It can be measured in a number of ways and is dependent on the objectives, but in basic terms:

Measure changes in the online conversation pre-and post-actions and track online conversations to measure changes of the ratio of word of mouth
Track recommendation rates and how they change
Include an online element that allows use of web statistics and online feedback to measure reach and participation levels
Use web statistics to track social media referring domains to your website, and
Report on the impact on the brand reputation as a result of the new social contact methods.

Neerav: Objectives need to be clear from the start of planning. Tracking referrers can be useful as well as analysing trends in the volume of discussion about specific keywords/phrases.

Should marketers approach social media as part of their digital strategy or separately?

Fi: As part of their digital strategy.

Dorothy: As part of their digital strategy, ideally the campaigns should be complementary to each other and be integrated.

Neerav: Ditto.

What are the pros and cons of choosing a specialised social media agency over a generalist traditional agency?

Fi: There are neither pros nor cons. You need to simply have seasoned people who have been using the online social space for a long time and who understand how to build online audiences and understand the implications of social media to the organisation. Whether they are employed in a mainstream agency or a specialised agency or an independent

Dorothy: I agree with Fi on this one. I believe whoever is chosen needs to have experience in this space.

Neerav: I concur.

Where do see social media in a year? Five years?

Fi: In a year, I think people will see it become more and more granular with focused social groups of like-minded individuals. In five years, I wouldn’t like to comment!

Dorothy: I don’t think anyone knows where it will be in three months let alone five years! I do think there will be a higher level of participation from the general consumer.

Neerav: Impossible to predict, this area is too fluid.

What initiatives will you be doing with GSA and where can readers find out more?

Fi: We will be building collaborative teams of experienced individuals to help clients work through the unique organisational changes they are facing.

More information is at www.getsocialadvice.com.

Why do we need Social Media Club?

by Marketing ON 9 April 2009

Warning: The tone of this post has a healthy degree of cynicism and sarcastic undertones. As a result of tone and content, expect a healthy degree of negative comments and sideswipes. Let the fun begin…

Over the last few weeks we have seen the casual get together of the social media coffee mornings now generate the US originating brand Social Media Club in Australia.

So what about this club?

From www.socialmediaclub.org/about I gleaned that:

Social Media Club is being organised for the purpose of sharing best practices, establishing ethics and standards, and promoting media literacy around the emerging area of Social Media. This is the beginning of a global conversation about building an organisation and a community where the many diverse groups of people who care about social media can come together to discover, connect, share, and learn.

Pity no one mentioned the users in this. On the web, the best, best practice is determined by the users not the channel or the medium or the ethical standards, or the media literacy or even the technology.

I will watch with interest, because these guys might have something interesting to say, but I wont have to join to benefit from that. However, I will also reserve a decree of cynicism. Social Media took off with kids, talking directly to each other, sharing their thoughts, pictures, hobbies, music, etc. None of them joined a club; they were drawn to it – what needs fixing about that. Commercial infiltration is whats going on here. But, commercial infiltration of the social media space is anathema to these people. Think of it like a park. Nice place to hang out with your friends and share in activities with others. As soon as the place gets filled with advertising hoardings, burger vans and park wardens telling you not to tread on the grass, you just move on because the place is no fun any more.

Social Media Club is now an organisational structure that has currently been set up in all the metro areas of Australia and seems to be run by self-designated individuals who have decided they are there to lead the rest of us minions in social media, with the best benefit being, we can get together and talk to each! We can listen to a speech by a self-appointed social guru, the guy that set the club up and next month, you can listen to one his mates, if you are very lucky. We don’t have to pay for the privilege here in Australia (at the moment) isn’t that just bloody marvelous value.

Initially I actually thought the concept could be good. I submitted ideas for speaking topics, etc. Then I started to see the manifestation of it and like Gavin Heaton who withdrew from nomination on the Social Media Club board, I ditched the idea as a bad one. I actually joined Social Media Club Canberra on Facebook as opposed to SMC Sydney, as a bit of dig, as I won’t be attending any events in Canberra as I live in Sydney!

Jye Smith stated on his blog:

I am a little uncomfortable with the idea of creating social media clubs. I smell rules and policy.

I actually smell a PR sell to clients, Oh yes Mr. Client I set up the Social Media Club and chair the board.

What we need is to leave social media to evolve through test and learn techniques and strategies with our respective clients. I don’t believe that clients and their agencies want to have open debate on their evolving social marketing practices. It is hard enough everyone getting his or her head around this channel. If there is something to share then that’s what case studies are for.

When it comes to networking with my peers, I can pop along for coffee on a Friday (although I rarely do, as I am not a morning person). But get this novel way I want to share with you, when I need help and insights from my peers in the social media space, I pick up the phone.

Why do I need a club?

Social Media Club I envisage will soon be publishing industry guidelines, then charging and telling us of all the benefits of paying to join their club and to follow their pre-determined rules to enforce us to behave in the way they want us to. Pre-program the masses to behave, there is loads of money in it, and just wait for the pay-to-attend SMC Conference, the regional Chapters of Social Media, it is like a setting up a religion and I believe there is loads of money in that too!.

Back in 2008 Laurel Papworth questioned the policy of WOMMA (The Word of Mouth Association) policy. This policy WOMMA said was only to accept membership from organisations not individuals. Totally farcical, given that the social media landscape that generates WOM (Word of Mouth) is individuals. Maybe that’s why the new leaders of Social Media Club in Sydney, slammed this entrepreneurial social media practitioner, she may dare to question the forthcoming rules that they, our self-appointed leaders, have in mind for us.

The web is very fluid. I picture it a bit like a lava lamp. Initiatives like social media emerge, take off, take shape and grow and then fade and disappear as another bubble comes along. Sir Tim Berners-Lee put the www together to be open, free and unregulated. Creating rules for any facet of it is going to be like herding bubbles. These bubbles have a short life of their own and defy regulation. Governments from America to China have tried to regulate, but ultimately they fail because the users choose not to be regulated. And so it is with social media. Everything, including the users, are too fluid. As soon as you have it all organised, documented, certified and protocoled, you will wake up to find that it has faded and the users have moved on to the next disposable web-thing and then your club is a bit pointless.

So, I guess you realise The Club is just not for me, granted it maybe for you. Now off to meet a few of my peers for some chilled unstructured sharing time!

The independent digital specialists frustration honour roll

by Marketing ON 30 March 2009

How to quickly to get on the wrong side of people who can help you!

There are many brave, bold, wonderful people, who have left the corporate world, to be independent, offering their highly tuned skills, experience and networks to organisations. They are intensively experienced in their individual space and deserve to be recognised for their contribution. Sadly they are often exploited by organisations that gladly take their IP and represent it otherwise. Unfortunately the value of the advice on offer is negated by more established traditional forms, resulting in mistakes being made as our communications ecosystem has changed, which is an ever-growing trend with the emergence of social media.

This article is in support of the many individuals who offer highly valuable services to organisations as individuals and who deserve to be recognised for the exploitation factor they have to endure.

This is the frustration honour roll for all of those wonderful people who are at the heart of the digital industry!

The frustration honour roll

1. Ask these independent specialists to come in and drill them to give their thoughts free of charge (in return for coffee!).

2. Get lots of proposals and thought leadership thoughts, don’t pay and represent these ideas as your own input to company strategy – cut and paste …Yawn!.

3. Pay them the minimum and screw as much work value out of them over and above cos you think you can!

4. Tell these people, that the organisation isn’t quite ready for these ideas after they have given you the route to real commercial value through new spaces, like how to do social media properly, then try and do it yourself with no experience other than your Facebook page.

5. Make them work with some (NOT ALL BEFORE YOU BEAT ME UP!) badly educated agencies that earn buckets loads of more money for executing these ideas badly because they haven’t had the benefit of hindsight from the specialist who gave you the idea in the first place.

6. Don’t pay on time, what little you do pay

7. Never give credit where it is due. Publically announce at speaker events that these initiatives are your own

From Twitter responses, specific to digital complaints from these worthy people:

8. Prefix every site with The. ie – We want to be on the Twitter and have people rate us on The Digg. @jaredwoods

9. People that leave comments who are only interested in link building. @inspiredworlds

10. Use the word fad in reference to the internet. @joelyrighteous

11. By writing fake comments on peoples blogs! – el stupido behaviour. @neerav

12. They hate it when you get your zeroes and ones mixed up. One sure way to piss them off. @sboiling

13. Overt plagiarism – note this from @neerav

14. Leaving Twitter comment aside for a moment, last but not least: just not recognising the value of individual contribution to a company because it doesn’t come neatly packaged as traditional marketing services but offers better focused value, is a poor excuse for not doing your job properly in today’s evolving marketing climate.

I have had many experiences, over 22 years in business to form an opinion from agency-owner, agency-side, client side and independent. I currently operate through a collaboration with many individual digital specialists and bloggers internationally that has made me realise the fantastic talent available in uncovering the experiential value of the individual.

I listen and learn, many hours a day. I read and re-educate myself as the digital space evolves, to extend my day to many hours during the working week. I know there are many like me, where value is knowledge. But what value is put on that knowledge?

Crumbs from a king’s table and late payment are not worthy of the experience that these many highly knowledgeable individuals have. This is not a whinge, personal or otherwise, knowledge is paramount in this evolutionary period we are all working in. Sharing that knowledge has a real tangible value.

Google, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, but where the hell is Microsoft?

by Marketing ON 20 March 2009

Markus von der Luehe from AdKnowledge, emailed me the other day and asked who I recommended he interviewed on their use of social media. He wanted to use the content in a presentation he was making. I really wasn’t going to give names in the industry, what was the point? So I sacrificed one evening of my kid’s time, in return for bribes of Tim Tams, to give him their insights.

I did warn him that a 16-year-old and 14-year-old are pretty vocal about likes and dislikes, and as predicted they made their viewpoints very clear!

After leaving Markus for a couple of hours with the teenagers, I am not sure if he thought I was like Madonna and never let my kids watch TV or if actually the truth really hit him. If they do watch TV, they watch it online, only about an hour a week do they sit in front of a box. They spend the rest of their media consumption online. There is no Madonna mummy status from me. In fact I am wondering why we have TVs in all bedrooms, the rumpus, the kitchen and living room. None of us use them anymore.

The teens are using new media at every available opportunity, always on in the background is the web, laptops sitting next to the mobile phone that is sms’ing and iPod plugged in one ear. It is not just an entertainment channel, Generation Y are researching on the net for student assignments, for content that forms their opinion on everything from religion to their music choice. In my day we had to pile through textbooks! The net is just a natural fabric of their society and they do not see the difference between the world of physical reality and the virtual world.

While considering their conversation with Markus, I couldn’t help but realise where the hell is Microsoft in all the play about social media channels? Facebook, Google, MySpace, Twitter, Blogger and so on that dominate the pages written about social channels, yet Gen Y is using a Microsoft platform continually for their online social-ability; they are all over MSN messenger. In our home, messenger is permanently pinging messages to and from these teenagers’ laptops. They evolved the MSN language, they use it more than all forms of social media for ongoing connectivity, so where the hell is Microsoft’s strategy to expand messenger in to a wider social channel like Twitter is? They have a gold mine, a nugget and seems like they don’t get how important this emerging generation of consumers is for them. Worse for Microsoft, the brand of choice, when Markus asked the teen brigade was “Apple”, meaning on a channel they are using weekly up to 20 plus hours there is no brand association with messenger, MSN and/or the Microsoft brand.

Microsoft has lost the battle for Yahoo! you would think they would look at ways of developing their own Twitter style tool on messenger, much like Facebook are endeavouring to do. For me messenger is potentially the most important untapped channel of influence of this emerging influential consumer. In fact just generally you would think Microsoft would be coming up with some pretty cool technologies and tools for the social media experience.

Also to add I have recorded our families search habits in a diary and Google isn’t so hot anymore! We are collectively using over five key sites to get our information… Microsoft Live lose again on this one, I wonder if the Google world domination is ending too and we need to re-wire our thoughts about the future even more? Crikey!

Social not-working, surely not?

by Marketing ON 9 January 2009

Social networking is a just a phase – the headline jumped out at me, the shock, the horror, surely not? I had just read this quickly on a newswire while my computer was supposed to be absolutely turned off/dead over Christmas and New Year.

It got me thinking, is it a phase? Social networking is a long-known art, as social networking was going on long before a computer even existed. So will our entire social media careers be dead now? Just down to a fad, a phase, a thing we liked at the time?

So I considered some of the issues that we may be facing with this new found channel.

Issue one: Its all about money: isn’t it always? Social networking, it seems, is difficult to monetise. Google has begun to make less than optimistic noises about it. Google CFO George Reyes has said: We have found that social-networking inventory is not monetising as well as expected”. Is this plain speaking for oh shit?

Issue two: Are there too many players flooding the market? Particularly white labelled channels (i.e. a site full of pre-made functions, which can be branded so that people can create their own versions of Facebook for instance). The more this happens, the more dispersed and fractured the user base becomes.

Issue three: Corporate intervention in social media, with over commercialisation with what started out as a one to many tool, soon becomes a corporation to consumer tool and all the people get fed up with being sold to and may go somewhere else.

Issue four: Inaccurate member data on sites. This is less important to socialisation so users don’t care. With identity fraud, users purposely load inaccurate data. From a commercial perspective, this can create problems: CRM is only as good as the data validity. All that effort aimed at the wrong people. Some say as many as 33% of users load duff info into their profile.

Data privacy has the potential to unravel the network. You may think that this couldt happen, what with all the regulatory concern and cautionary tales. But then again, Facebook had already been caught tracking and releasing user habits back to developers and others involved in advertising initiatives. And what if your average Joe wants to leave? Well have you noticed that no matter how often you opt-out or don’t opt-in, the level of spam keeps going up? You have to think that the data options are being somehow abused. Surely not? Well think again, it’s a bit like a religious cult. Once you’re in, they don’t let you leave. These are the very things that may eventually dissuaded users from enjoying social media sites and lead to their abandonment followed by collapse of the network platforms.

Issue five: Social network fatigue, with people getting fed up with maintaining multiple spaces on multiple platforms. Its further manifested itself with people just falling out of love with the whole thing because it just isnt’t what it used to be. It might not sound like we have that problem at the moment, but on closer inspection, there are people writing PhD theses about it. After this peak, will we see a decline? Perhaps because of the tedium of the operation, or something else happens, it stops being the next best thing.

So how do we make sure this doesn’t happen.

We keep it all together, increased the marketing value to business, re-enfranchise the users and make some dollars on the way.

In the spirit of Rohit Bhargava with his SMO (Social Media Optimisation) rules, and in light of the above issues, here are some of the SMM (Social Media Marketing) rules or maybe New Marketing Rules – NMR – a new acronym! How exciting!

Our Grandfathers and Great Grandfathers knew the social before we did – don’t forget what they told you about honest communication, it still works today online or offline.
Social media is social – the best who know social, know how it works. Listen, say less, and use two ears and one mouth, in that proportion!
Emotion stirs us all up – a relevant message to the right audience in the right place works; we want to hear, what we want to hear, when we want to hear it – don’t bug us otherwise.
Its not always about money and conversion and transaction – it is about relationships. Think of the value return of the relationship, as opposed to quick wins and quick bucks.
Social media marketing is about listening. Do your research before jumping in.
It is about you as an individual and your personal brand as much as your brand’s personality,

Please continue the list on in the comment box below. There are many more thing at the heart of this!