I Said, OK

I was on a panel earlier this week about Social Media at an offsite for senior executive at one of the world’s largest media companies. It was an extremely interesting session and particularly interesting to be on the panel with Dennis Crowley of Foursquare and Jordan Glazier of Eventful.

The last question that was asked was: Tell us what we don’t know. What’s coming around the corner? What’s the future?

I was initially stumped by the question. How do you tell the future to a room of media bigwigs, some of who were in the industry when TVs were hitting living rooms for the first time? There’s so much that could’ve been said and yet, so much of that would also have been pointless. I mean, who knows, right?

Here’s what I get excited about. We’re going to figure out how to make sense of all the data that’s being created out of interactions with content, activities and people via the Social Web. We haven’t even scratched the surface of this yet. At best, we’re starting to get decent at creating experiences which people want to interact with.

Making sense of the data will allow marketers to communicate more effectively with consumers. It will enables us to program and deliver more relevant content, activities and connections to people. It will make advertising more effective and thus, more efficient and more valuable. It will take the guess work out of product development and messaging. It will make PR less of a bullshit discipline.

The list goes on.

When I talk about this to people the first thing I always hear is: it’s really hard.

This is true. Technology and the people that use it have a long way to go. Sentiment analysis is what people keep pointing to now. It’s a start but is very limited.

The key to all this comes down to a few things:

1. Language analysis. Yes, very hard to do. I mean, how the hell do you extract meaningful insight from Tweets, status updates, comments, etc.? You’ve got to look at aggregates and trends as well as meanings and use of words. My friend Frank Speiser is doing some very interesting work at his company Social Flow on this. I can’t claim to understand much of it right now (Frank has a much bigger brain than I do), but he’s onto something.

2. Profiling. This isn’t about the profile information you enter into a social network. This is about creating a profile of people based on all the data that they’ve willingly put out there about themselves. Every field in a public social network’s profile, photo or video upload, blog, comment, like, fan, prop, vote, etc.

3. Predictive placements and conversations. Again, from some of the conversations I’ve had with Frank, there will be a way to remove the guess work around when and how to reach people so that they’ll respond favorably.

4. Scale. Technology and tools aren’t there yet but neither are the people that use them. It’s still very labor intensive but this will change. We will blend human creativity with tools that enable us to get out there efficiently. It’s the only way this will work, otherwise we’ll be stuck dealing with pebbles and ripples as opposed to Tsunamis.

What’s the goal?

For consumers, better products and services that are more relevant and valuable.

For brands, finally seizing the promise of the Social Web.

So, it appears that Seth, AT&T’s blogger guy, works for its PR agency Fleishman Hillard. A question was posed on Twitter by Todd Defren about whether AT&T should have disclosed that Seth works for FH.

From a consumer’s point of view, that’s not really what’s important. For all intents and purposes Seth works for AT&T. By putting him out there as the mouth piece of AT&T, he is AT&T, so to speak. Sure, he’s a ‘blogger’ but do we expect anything impartial from he if he works for AT&T or its PR agency? I think Todd’s question in some ways has more to do with the flaws (and insecurities) of the PR industry more than what matters to customers.

The more important point to me is that AT&T is still missing the real opportunity. All they’ve done is more of the same, just a different wrapper. A different channel for the same old message and business practices.

Everyone of us knows when we’ve come across the real thing and we know when we’ve encountered bullshit. We know when the people in our social circles aren’t real. We know when advertising is bullshit. We know when PR people are doing their thing. We know. This ain’t real.

In leveraging the power of the social web the only thing matters is that AT&T is REAL about their business.

Simply put: do the right thing by your customers.

Create a great product. Sell it for what it is. Back it up and have customer service policies that put the customer first.

I’m writing this on a JetBlue flight where the TVs aren’t working. We’re all getting $15 coupons after the flight. JetBlue doesn’t have to do this. They could simply have an asterix in their advertising that says, “no guarantee of TV service.,” or nothing at all. AT&T, how about something back for all those dropped calls? Acknowledgement? A sorry? A cookie?

Using the social web successfully has to start with the business and the sooner people realize that it’s not just a marketing thing [no, boys, "it's marketing, you can say whatever you want," does not work!], the more successful they’ll be.

My problem with Seth (not him the individual but what he stands for) is two fold:

1. He’s nothing more than the same old wrapper of bullshit marketing. You see that ahead of you AT&T? It’s a giant wall of competitors and alternatives fueled by a new world competition backed by the social web.

2. The message is way off–see my earlier post. As an aside, it just hit me that maybe AT&T is being real with the message. Maybe they’re just whiny assholes, in which case, good luck my blue and orange friend. Who can benefit from this? Check this post out.

All is not lost though. Can they turn things around? Not if they stay on this path.

Look in the mirror, AT&T. Do you like what you see? Would you want to be treated that way? AT&T employees, are you proud of your work? Your company? Are you doing everything you can to build long and lasting relationships with your customers that can withstand the fiercest of competition? Say, when Verizon starts offering the iPhone?

Think about that and I’m pretty sure your next Seth video will be very different. Your next customer service call will be very different. Your next retail experience will be very different. Your next TV commercial will be very different. Your Facebook wall will start to feel very different.

My most recent job has me thinking about marketing agencies and the shift in marketing that has even the CMO of Unilever (not exactly the brand I think of when one talks about the internet or social media) ranting and raving about the impact of social media on marketing.

As I said in an earlier post, I find that depending on who you ask and what type of marketing they do, they’ll tell you that their discipline is the best suited to be the social media answer to all the modern marketer’s woes. To me that’s not even the point. I think that if you’re having a discussion along the lines of social media you’re having the wrong the discussion–I’ll address this point later, but first a rant on agencies.

Seriously, ask a PR agency guy what type of agency he thinks ‘gets’ social media and he’ll give you a hundred reasons why PR has all the answers. They’re the ones that have honed the fine art of reaching influencers after all. Sure, I suppose it makes sense that a social media expert from a major PR agency would NEVER do something stupid like this. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

Ask an ad guy and he’ll show you a bunch of commercials they created that they put on a YouTube channel that they convinced their client to pay a minimum of $500,000 for. People really want to watch TV commercials online, don’t they?! (Disclosure: I do this quite a bit actually, I particularly like the Nike ones. Wait…I’m in marketing, of course I think ads are cool. Nevermind.)

OK, rant over.

Marketers should be looking at how they’re engaging with customers. That is, the opportunity for a brand to establish and nurture a direct, lasting and loyal relationship with a customer in ways that haven’t been possible before. Social media to me is just one of the channels in which you can engage with a customer, albeit a very effective one.

On the brand side of the business, I look at all these disciplines as ways of meeting my business objectives. I use a mix of them because they all serve different purposes and when used correctly (by a brilliant marketer), at the right time, in the right ways, in the right mix, you win.

I’m not the first to say that the social web has changed the game dramatically for brands (especially media companies). You might even be so bold as to say that people are in control now–I don’t necessarily believe that to be the case entirely, but I do believe that the dynamics have shifted and there’s no turning back. More interestingly, the change seems to be accelerating (much like global warming).

So, what’s the right type of agency or marketer to deliver this?

In my opinion, it’s one that understands and can deliver a highly evolved offering of PR, advertising, search, direct marketing, content development, programming, events and community management, all integrated into a strategy that flows through the entire backbone of a business, and a deep ability to provide technology solutions to achieve all this.

More importantly, it’s a marketer that gets that all of this requires a fundamental change in the way a company operates, the way it handles customer service, product development, partnerships, etc., and transforms this understanding into engagement strategies and tactics that feed back into a companies business objectives.

Does an agency like this exist? Not that I know of.

Can it? I think so.

About a month ago, I had a conversation with a friend who doesn’t work in the same industry as I do about a phrase that she noticed is quite pervasive amongst the social media set.

“They don’t get it.”

This is used to explain the ineptitude and shortcomings of my brethren in marketing who work at brands, enterprises and agencies or all shapes and sizes, and pertains to their lack of understanding about social media and engagement marketing.

As an outsider, that phrase just sounded condescending, at best, and arrogant and obnoxious at worst, to her.

I tried to explain, as earnestly as possible, the context in which I’ve used that phrase to describe these small minded people. I’m sorry, I mean marketers. There are, after all, so many examples of marketers at brands and agencies that don’t get this new world of transparency and authenticity. Truth is, even when they try, most attempts at engagement marketing by seasoned marketers are true fuck ups and one can only conclude that they just don’t get it. Right?!

I mean, they just don’t seem to get that the world has changed. They’re obviously just freaked out and desperate to hold on to their old ways of doing business in the same ways that Conservatives talk nostalgically about the good old days of oppression and slavery (well, you get my point).

After awhile though I started listening to what she was saying (usually a good idea in a conversation). It wasn’t whether or not people get it, rather, this industry that I work in seems to be really caught up in its own bullshit. That got me thinking. Maybe I’m living too much in my little bubble of get-it-ness and I’m missing something.

A couple of weeks after this conversation I met a guy who works at one of these ‘don’t get it’ big agencies. This guy is a classic ad guy. Knows the traditional ad business inside and out. He seems to be really good at his job and he immediately earned my respect.

We had a conversation about the transformation of the ad industry. We talked about their existing business and the fact that doing 30 second spots for TV remains their bread and butter.

Wait, hadn’t he and his Mad Men friends heard about what we in the social media industry know to be Gospel? Isn’t TV dead? Aren’t million dollar ad campaigns dead? Isn’t it all about the social web? Ugh, another guy who doesn’t get it.

But here’s the thing, I think he does.

The fact is that any big brand (the ones that my industry cohorts bitch about) are faced with a reality of today’s business. Would you throw away millions of dollars that roll in the door today to jump on a bandwagon that, yes, will become THE way of marketing in the near future but isn’t quite there today? Any executive worth anything would not say yes to that. If they do, they’re idiots.

Rather, wouldn’t you just send your best and brightest out there to learn and experiment as much as they can with these new methods, knowing full well that you’ve got to very quickly develop an expertise in this new approach to marketing?

The measure of that executive is how quickly they understand and act on the balance of allocating resources between maintaining your existing business and ensuring that the company is ready to move in a new direction when the market conditions are right.

This is exactly what my new friend appears to be doing.

So, when I was asked tonight whether I thought he ‘gets it,’ I had to think about it for a second. My answer now is, yes, he does.

More importantly, I think I finally get it too.