lessons from the entertainment industry

while social media has been a boon for everyone (those who've taken to it anyway). the area it has most naturally fit into and leveraged exceptionally well is in the entertainment field. whether it's actors, artists (of all shades), bands, writers, performers, personalities and entertainment entities themselves (movies, tv shows, plays, etc), they all are woven well in the space.

the linchpin of it all is that those in the entertainment field (to varying degrees) have a network of passionate, dedicated and loyal followers, fans and other interested folks. they are cultural beacons we can all identify with our own select group out of the lot. it binds us to them and to others of a similar affinity.

how lucky they are and how so few in the corporate brand world are as fortunate. that kind of rapacious following can only be dreamed about for all but a handful of brands.

the entertainment industry has it real easy when it comes to engaging in social media. and there's lessons in there for us less fortunate stewards of brands in the space.

1. notoriety & celebrity
   this has always been and will continue to be a potent weapon. people love and relate to public figures very well. how can you tap into this directly or indirectly? how can you leverage some kind of celebrity and share in their spotlight?
2. they have the goods
   the entertainment biz and the personalities have the goods for engagement. content, access and rewards that are not just there, but at the core of what they do. do you have any of these, are they of sufficient quality, and do people actually want them?
3. they are experts
   it is all about them after all. they are their brands and obviously the experts on the subject. not only that, they are empowered to act or have empowered others to act for them. do you know your business through and through? do you have the power to be present in all your brand spaces and be a leader?
4. passion
   their livelihood is at stake everytime they put their face or product out there. it's no different for a corporate brand. there are people in every organization who are deeply passionate about the company and the business it does, but also social media itself. find the passionates and give them license.
5. know your tribe
   the entertainment business is incredibly adept at creating followings. the last 15 years have given them other technologies to build, maintain and message that following to all kinds of success. if you don't already, get to know your consumers and start keeping track of them. build a database, talk to them, get their input, send selective messages. build your loyalty as any band might do.
6. paid and owned channels
   these are the channels that you have some degree of control over (vs. earned which the consumer mostly does). these two media forms help fuel much of what happens in the earned side (ie. social media). there needs to be some critical mass to it to get you the requisite exposure. then the earned side can sustain you once the word is out there. but it has to be interesting, relevant and sociable. so little marketing is. do yo uhave a checklist to make that happen?
   
7. earned channel
   once you have the paid and owned stuff figured out, the earned side needs to be in full effect. but not in the old ways it ways. it needs to have value and importance. the entertainment business has the gossip sites and rags, news shows, fan sites/forums, and embedding in each other. these do a lot of heavy lifting for the industry. is your PR team lifting as much? and is it on strategy and message as much as it should be? it it consumer-centric and not the old corporate speak?

ode to content

content. i've been talking a lot about that lately. around all facets of clients' business, but mainly social media and search. it's the great enabler. let me explain.

let's start by settling a debate (or at least dismissing it). the debate rages about what's king: content or conversation. why do we have to crown something? they're not mutually exclusive and the real value of one isn't realized without the other.

without content, conversations have little to form around. without conversation around content, you're missing a key point of engagement and enhancement. not everyone wants to converse, but everyone wants to consume content. but the conversation is what you've earned and who we identify as being advocates, likely to work hard for the brand.

so let's stop declaring kings (much like we need to stop titling things as 'killers' - another post altogether). neither is the end, both are just components to the bigger picture.

with that put to rest, let's get back to talking content. i don't think it gets enough attention amidst the vast deluge of social media discourse out there. same in the search world. in social media, it is that which conversations are based on. in search, it is that which makes a link relevant to a keyword or consumer interest. in both cases, a brand has no license to partake without the appropriate content (we'll get to the ever important 'appropriate' part later).

previously, all content consisted of, from an advertiser viewpoint, was their ads. to varying degrees of branding, it was paid attention getting, whether wholly produced by the company or in a muddy way with publishers (advertorials). wither way, it was one-way and dictative. any resulting (minuscule amounts of) conversations were entirely brand-centric. very few were talked about and in a very limited way.

the new marketing world is shifting in what the definition of content is. the models for accommodating that are not yet (yet another entirely new post). ads are just one form of content, and a decreasingly influential one as the are now.

-related aside-
(i'm a heavy bracket user, but this needed more than what i think is an acceptable amount of bracketed words)
ads have evolved (if you want to call it that) to be jumbled messages of heavy marketing that are highly polished and mostly devoid of real deep consumer interest. they've become formulaic, outmoded, overly commercial and corporate in nature and rarely engaging. the typical names rise as exemptions to this epidemic: apple, nike and a select few others who have a moment of breakthrough. discerning, trained to tune-out consumers have less attention to give to these staid messages and our investment erodes in value. as content, as sociable spring boards, these types of ads are low probability contenders.
-end aside-

other content falls in three camps: 1) brand produced 2) consumer produced, brand shared 3) other content producer made, brand shared.

1) brand produced
it's just that. anything non-mass channel message that brand funds the production of. could be video, picture, podcast, whatever. it is typically (or at least should be) subtle on the brand integration and not heavy-handed with the selling. they are 'feel-good-about-the-brand' pieces made for pure enjoyment and sharing.

2) consumer produced, brand shared
what a place to be. consumers have taken to your brand and made something about it. where it turns into brand content is when it's celebrated by sharing it through a brand's channels.

3) other produced, brand shared
there's countless pieces of content that is professionally made that unto themselves are interesting. it's tapping into these affinity areas where we can align our brands to consumer interests and build our personality that way. could be an interesting show, video clip, song, whatever a brand can exploit to build conversations and sharing around the brand.

to address the appropriateness side of content, well it needs to be that. duh. it's not just developing or sharing any ole piece of content, rather it is doing it in a way that fits with the brand character.

content is essentially a doorway to participation. brands are brokers of content. their facilitation of it enables them to be included in the dialogue between consumers in the world of social and gain favorability by doing so. in the search world, brands can fully capitalize on consumer interests and drive traffic to their various outposts.

indicting the sacred cows

a main theme in all the things i do this year is to challenge every notion. to turn my skeptic eye on everything and as a first step to whatever, i question everything about it. it's easy to get stagnant, to rely on how you've done things, to make the same assumptions, to approach things as you typically have, or accept that it's worked so let's continue it.

so it was my delight that at yesterday's AToMiC conference, the first keynote was two gentlemen who like to blow accepted concepts up. their presentation was entitled 'the indictment' and consisted of 9 sacred cows (their words) that needed slaughtering (my words) for creativity to prosper and flourish in an organization.

at one point, there was a telling quote that concisely sums up their radical assertions to not stifling creativity.

landforms come from volcanoes

the meaning being that violent change, while unsettling for a brief period of time, results in stability in newfound ways of operating.

without any further adieu, here are those accepted modes of operation that are false:

1. all ideas are good ideas
   this is simply not the case because resources are finite. with infinite resources to process, ponder and evolve all ideas as we'd like, then yes, everything is meritous. but we don't and we also know that not all ideas are equal or equally good. to get at the best ideas and have the best resulting product (ie. a solid, well-formed idea the client can understand and approve) then we need to shift from a divergent method (an idea buffet that has ideas removed, the remaining ideas frankenstiened together and watered down) to a convergent method (not removing ideas, but focusing and revisiting each as a new jumping off point)
2. ad campaigns are an essential marketing expense
   to use accounting parlance, an expense uses an asset, and often incurs a liability. it is transient. the shift in thinking lies in looking at creating marketing assets that have permanence and are leverageable, not as a support service. the former is a more inclusive and integrated mindset.
3. disagreement = disrespect
   it's not about authority or a tenured viewpoint, it's just about varying ideas and opinions. we often hold back for fear of offending or being out of place, but creativity does not know these sentiments.
4. the best teams are a collection of superheroes
   most often we prize specialists and the very best of them. but the real value is in a broad range of skills. intersectional innovation requires generalists among specialists.
5. each employee should strive for perfection
   our typical evaluation systems focus on weaknesses but that doesn't foster creativity. our aim should be to create the perfect job, not person to optimize results of human talent.
6. creative leaders should be the most creative
   just because a person is really creative, doesn't mean they can lead others in that field. creative rockstars are the doers and moving them to lead puts them outside their skill set. leaders cause creativity, but don't necessarily need to be super creative themselves. identify people's strengths and reward differently.
7. bonuses should be objective and clear
   creativity isn't so easily boxed. this concept is very tricky, and standardized systems aren't always the answer. new subjective bonus systems should be developed.
8. marketing is a masterpiece to be revealed
   the marketing industry has relied on a system of holding our cards close and then gloriously releasing them in a big burst. the problem with that is what happens if we were wrong? the idea is to keep marketing in beta and have an iterative approach to launches and campaigning. this graph easily explains how this would look.
   
   
9. integration is the ideal
   we've striven for years to make campaigns and platforms and matching luggage. it's time to embrace the one-off. the unified campaign has too many moving parts and it's extremely difficult to align the stars and truly execute against that premise. by doing stand-alone efforts (while maintaining brand character and semblance) we can more quickly test and fail then move on.

all in all, a refreshing stance on what we've come to accept as operating systems. while all great, radical shifts in approach, can we change the matrices to implement?

redesigning the website

i took a spin of the recently released google fast flip (i know i'm late to the game, it's all about sidewiki now) and it got me thinking of how bothersome going to websites is these days. as fast flip rethinks how we read news, i believe a rethink needs to happen on how we view web content.

here's where we are in 2009: sites are all about stickiness and page views. ad supported sites deliver an incredibly cluttered experience for their audience, and the advertisers. a page is peppered with all manner of navigation, info-buttons, promotions, ad units (multiple), forms, calls-to-action, links, columns, and every-which-way to serve up the content in tiny slivers. the result is pretty ugly. the hope is that the more you readily see, the longer you will stay on the site because something might grab your interest.

it's all too much, really.

beyond the visual look of the site, it's about structure and experience as well that need an overhaul. content isn't seamless and integrated, it's linked out (still on site though). articles are spread over multiple pages. there's a lot of scrolling to get through a page in it's entirety (which means it's mostly ignored). social tools are rare. content types are siloed (video player vs. integrated with the page).

it can be quite onerous to navigate and enjoy.

i come at this from both an advertiser and audience perspective. as a site visitor, i'm being bombarded and am overwhelmed with the plethora of (mostly) garbage a site is throwing at me. as an advertiser (or agent thereof) i'm not getting the value out of my ad placements i could or should be.

yes, people wanted more at their fingertips so sites put more there. but they missed the 'more' part they should have focused on - more intelligence in structuring it, laying it out and presenting it ('it' being content). there's certainly a fine line between just enough and too much on a given webpage. more often than not, it veers toward the 'too much' camp, often wildly.

as an advertiser, i've seen the value of ad spaces on websites deteriorate over the years. you've got banners in inconsequential locations where they are out of the viewer's periphery, and a cornucopia of ad units littered across the page fighting to stand out. yes there's some new impact ad units that are starting to become more common, but that's not changing the standard much nor is it solving the experience.

here's some initial thoughts on what i'm thinking that would make for a good site design

• a site 'capsule' that is properly sized to maximize the user's browser window and usable space (vertically and horizontally)
• the centerpiece acts as a 'content' player so all media types are viewed in this window, not separately as is with text (main content), video (players), and photo (albums) now
• little to no scrolling (no more 'fold')
• ancillary content area served based on user interest, habits and inputs (not throwing everything under the sun at them)
• navigation that is tidy, concise and expandable to be more robust when interacted with
• 1 or 2 meaningful, integrated ad positions that are noticeable and have value (still accommodates custom units and over-the-page)
• powerful search capabilities (a must in these content rich times)
• strong social integration (a must in these social times)

maybe i'm off on this or alone in it, but i feel we need an overhaul or at least rethink how we see websites as experiences. right now, they're a cluttered mess and advertisers are not seeing the value they should. maybe it's not as drastic as outlined above, but work needs to be done.

all or nothing: drinking kool-aid and not doing favors

i read a lot of blogs on a lot of different topics under the marketing umbrella. most people sit in their camp and evangelize, from ivory towers, that their particular area is the king. it gets pretty discursive because there is no mediation. i spend my time not absorbing the content, but mostly applying a rational filter to the greater scheme of things.

it's kool-aid drinking at it's finest. self interest prevails and people start defending their area. it's in the language, the tone, and facts presented. you can include the absence of facts to that as well. mostly, it's the lack of context to the greater marketing picture that is most troubling.

the search people do it. the social media people do it. the online ad network people do it. the tv people do it. many others too. each trumpeting their wares and pedestalling them (yes i made a verb of pedestal).

each has strengths, each has weaknesses. it's a media mix, not a media exclusive. this is where a channel neutral media agency is so important. we take the inputs of glorification and meter them to a cohesive, cross-media plan for a client's communications.

we are in a time where the consumer has so much control over their experiences. the world is highly fragmented. it's an attention economy. no one thing is the savior. it's how many things work together.

media is content. content is media. media is social. social is media. it's all intertwined, and only one perspective sees it all and how it can work together - the media agency. we also have all the tools to measure all sides of a marketing plan and not in isolation of any one or all other components. it's holistic.

i know this isn't a popular view and angers a lot of specific segments as it takes some of the wind out of their sales. the point is two-fold

1. for the areas of specificity, stop the over-glorification of your area as the be-all and end-all of marketing. start thinking bigger picture and the role your media plays amongst a cross-media world, not a singular one as you often profess.
2. for the clients, start looking to your media agency as greater partners. if we are the purveyors of the landscape our consumers are immersed in every day, then our role is seemingly amplified.