Marketing Monster

Tonight, Twitter was featured on ABC World News with Charles Gibson. The piece talked about Comcast performing acts of customer service magic by watching the Web for signs of disgruntled customers and then acting as digital detectives to help solve those problems. The report went on to say how companies like Dell, JetBlue, Southwest Airlines and Kodak were all on Twitter “aggressively protecting their brand, often giving those who complain amazing service.”

Watching search.twitter.com (formerly Summize) in the minutes that followed the ABC report showed a flood of new Twitter users signing up with expectations of their customer service woes being heard. Here are some examples of first tweets, all of which used the tell-tale generic avatar of a newbie:

With expectations like those, it’s hard not to be disappointed. And if all of those concerns are not addressed, as Tracy Wilson Tracey Lee Wallace’s were in the report, then in the eyes of those customers, the brands mentioned have failed them again.

I feel sorry for Comcast. Their ten “digital detectives” are going to be very busy keeping up with the new complaints channel. But, thankfully there is a (mostly) reliable search engine, because you can be almost certain these new Twitter users won’t know that they’ll be seen faster by using @comcastcares.

UPDATE: A manual search in search.twitter.com conducted 6 hours after the piece aired in the East, revealed more than 100 Tweets attributed to new users as a direct result of the ABC report. This does not account for new users who have signed up and not yet posted or have made their updates private (which, in itself presents a customer service issue for companies on Twitter who won’t see those tweets). In the search, I discovered a tweet from none other than Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter welcoming the new users. And to their credit, despite the reservations of users, Twitter did not go down as a result of the coverage.

I’ve come across very few people who don’t love Commoncraft videos. This week I came across Commoncraft in Plain English, a parody, done by @ZoeDisco. In her post, Zoe explains why she did it and he video has received kudos in the comments. But, most importantly, it has attracted praise from Lee LeFever himself.

Also this week, Commoncraft released a new client video explaining LinkedIn. Looking at their list of free videos, their catalogue of work is impressive. My all-time favourite is their Halloween special, Zombies in Plain English. What’s yours?

On June 26, 2008 decisions were made in Paris that will profoundly change how the Internet looks in the future. For marketers, it opens up a whole new world of possibilities and challenges.

ICANN, the international body that regulates domain naming, announced their unanimous vote to open up restrictions on top level domains (TLDs). Starting in Q2 2009, it will be possible to apply to have just about anything as a TLD.

So what does that mean for you?

• You are no longer restricted to the current 21 domain extensions like .com .net .org
• Brand names can be used as extensions. Think of .coke .nike .ebay
• You can more narrowly target geography. Imagine .london .nyc .hongkong
• Be more specific with what you offer. Appearing soon .sport .news .sex
• Extensions will not be restricted to 37 Roman characters. Watch out for .العربية .日本語 .Русский

Although cnet and others are reporting that the applications for new TLDs will cost $50,000 to $100,000, ICANN has said it will be “in the low six figure dollar amounts,” according to Dr Paul Twomey, President and CEO of the non-profit organization. The money raised will go to recouping the $20 million in costs for the proposals. “The costs of developing and implementing this policy will be borne by the applicants,” Twomey said.

With the cost of an application fee, it is unlikely that individuals will control new TLDs. What will prove interesting in the coming year is how the generic names will come to be acquired and who will control them. ICANN says there are already consortiums forming to seek control of city-based names. Who will own names like .sport? Well, anyone who’s got the money and resources to seek it in an application. However, according to the BBC, ICANN has said that if their arbitration process fails the extension would go the “highest bidder” in an auction, which could create unprecedented bidding wars.

Heads up if you manage a major brand. Don’t think that you have any rights to your trademarked name as a TLD. ICANN has said that trademarks are not automatically protected. However, there will be an “objection-based mechanism” to hear trademark owners’ complaints. This will open up a whole mess of trouble for some brands if other well-funded entities are able to acquire their name as a domain extension.

Some are saying this news is a non-starter, noting that recent additions to TLDs like .info .mobi and .biz have failed to catch on in mainstream usage, leaving .com to continue to dominate domain demands. VentureBeat reports that these changes may threaten the domain speculators the most if ICANN is sucessful in educating people and persuading them to use the new extensions. Speculators rely on the “type-in” traffic generated by people searching for generic terms ending in .com. This is how some domain names can be auctioned off for millions of dollars, as ReadWriteWeb reminds us how business.com fetched $350 million in that way.

With the addition of non-English characters, ICANN predicts an explosion in TLD applications from Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Russia. For global brands, this means yet another area of domain management that could represent millions of dollars in applications, arbitration, lawyer’s fees and potential auction bidding to secure names in strategic markets like China and India.

The question to marketers is, how much is too much to spend to protect your brand name on the Internet in other markets? At what point will the variety of naming possibilities become unmanageable for companies? It is easy to think in the short-term and be convinced that .com is the only term that carries clout. But, at this pivotal point in the evolution of the Internet, will global brands be willing to gamble their future on those three little letters?

Things got a bit silly over on Phreadz with this advertising meme, but it’s perfect levity for a Friday afternoon.

(Click the green button to autoplay all videos in sequence or select the thumbnail to play individual posts.)

This week has taken on a PR theme. On Monday night I had the good fortune to spend time with Shel Holtz and Joe Thornley of Thornley Fallis who were in town for 3rd Tuesday Montreal, a monthly social media event. Both of these men understand the changes that social media has brought to PR and have embraced them.

At the same time I was sitting with Shel and Joe, Brian Solis of FutureWorks had a lengthy guest post on TechCrunch on PR Secrets for Startups. This led Seesmic founder Loic LeMeur to take a stance that PR is overpriced, irrelevant and ineffectual for start-ups; instead, he feels getting involved in the community is all that’s really needed. This sparked a lively debate on whether there is even a need for PR with all the social media tools widely available. Everyone from Robert Scoble to Stowe Boyd were chiming in with their thoughts, generating hundreds of comments in the blogosphere, and detailed clarification by Solis.

It seemed everywhere I turned this week, someone was bashing PR and marketing, using the terms interchangeably with equal distaste. (Look here and here for the difference.) The general feelings were that PR and marketing folks have lied to people for so long, that they are no longer to be trusted. And that authenticity and transparency, the tenets of social media, could never possibly be adopted with any reliability by the flacks and hucksters in PR.

All of this negativity towards PR leaves me wondering if poor practices have irreparably injured public relations as a whole. If PR has truly changed with social media, perhaps they’ve done a really poor job of convincing people of that. Or maybe these are still early days and the changes have yet to be proven.

This period in the evolution of PR reminds of what was happening in the advertising industry in the early ’70’s. Back then, advertising as a profession was seen as “innately immoral”, where no standards of conduct were in place and a wild west mentality threatened to have the whole industry regulated by governments. Advertising took steps to become self-regulated. Is PR at the same stage now?

(Update: The Phreadz embedded player has changed since originally posted. Click on the green arrow to play the entire conversation in order, or, click the thumbnails to view individual responses.)

Additional resources mentioned in these videos:
Background on Truth in Advertising: The Robert A. McAlear Memorial Award
Will fake business blogs crash and burn?
The Worst Social Media Ad Campaigns of 2007

So, tell me: what do people really think of PR? I’d love to know.

Recently, TechCrunch and TechCrunch UK featured Phreadz, a new threaded social multimedia conversation network. Now that the cat is out of the bag, I’m pleased to say that I’ve been part of the “clandestine pre-alfalfa” testing on Phreadz for more than two-months.

Comparisons to Seesmic are inevitable because both services feature recorded video conversations. But there are few similarities beyond that. In fact, Phreadz has the ability to integrate desktop and mobile video, images, text, audio and links, making it more akin to Utterz. But, its easy-to-navigate way of viewing threaded conversations and a veritable bounty of other features makes Phreadz unique. I could go on about the array of features, but you may as well hear about them directly from Kosso, the sole person behind the creation of Phreadz.

I am pretty enthusiastic about Phreadz for many reasons, but one thing that is really encouraging about its long-term viability is that, unlike many new social applications, Kosso actually has a business model in place from the beginning that does not rely on advertising. Instead, Phreadz will offer custom-branded channels, in addition to the open-access public service.

From a marketing perspective, having a dedicated channel with a custom look and feel, gives you ability to open up a dialogue and build a community with people within the context of your brand. Because of Phreadz ability to weave multimedia into the conversation, participants can choose the media that suits them best, and can do it from a desktop or mobile. For example, people can record an audio question from their phone, reply with a photo to describe a technical problem, make a video and include notes and links, and it will all be threaded together in a way that allows for context and offshoots of new discussions. Channel managers will have tools to set who can start a conversation and whether posts will take replies, much like blog permissions. Participants can reply to each other, forum-style, which will build community amongst your channel’s visitors.

Think about how channels could be used by brand managers for product launches or by market researchers for focus groups. What about using it for customer support? Use a channel to promote an event and engage people to interact, not only with you, but with each other, creating a community.

Here’s the first post from my channel marketing.phreadz.com which talks about branded channels and the difference between Phreadz and YouTube’s Rolling Stones Living Legends promotion. (Note: the site is only open to testers at the moment, and so you will not be able to see my channel until Phreadz goes into the “open beetroot” a.k.a. beta phase. However, posts can be embeded for all to see.)

Do you find this type of tool useful, from a business and marketing perspective? How you would use a dedicated branded channel? I’d love to know what you think.

(Disclosure: I do not represent Phreadz as a client nor am I being paid by Phreadz or Kosso. I am not an investor. I am simply a tester, and on the basis of many positive experiences, I am now an evangelist.)

I must admit that I was overwhelmed by the incredibly welcoming and supportive response that my first blog post brought. There were more than 50 comments left by an incredible array of heavy hitters from Twitter and the social media scene, people who were new to me who kindly took the time to reach out, dear friends and even a few of my sisters. After a day or so, I realized I was standing face-to-face the curse of the sophomore slump.

We all know it.

A band releases a stellar first album with hit singles and major sales only to return with a follow-up that doesn’t match up to first. The second album curse sees reviews that are harsher, sales that are lower and fans who are fewer. Sometimes the second album is so poorly received, the band will crash and burn, forever known as a one-hit wonder.

In sports, there are the vast majority of winners of baseball’s Rookie of the Year award who go on to have rather mediocre careers. Football sees this curse too.

And, students who face an exciting first year of university where they perform reasonably well, become discouraged in their second year by the difficulty and sheer volume of work ahead of them.

Brands have this trouble too. Just look at the success of Dove’s Evolution campaign. Ogilvy & Mather Toronto followed it with Onslaught, which from a viral perspective, didn’t perform nearly as well. Then Unilever was called to task over the mixed messages they were sending by promoting the Dove Self-Esteem Fund on one hand and the sexy girls of the Axe brand on the other.

The fear of the curse stopped me in my tracks. I didn’t want to be a one-hit wonder or mediocre. I was beginning to see the work that writing a blog on a regular schedule would take. And, after not posting for 3 weeks, I didn’t want to betray the faith of my early supporters with what appeared to be a lack of commitment to this blog.

And then, I got over myself.

Just like everyone who faces their second attempt at something new, I will make mistakes and may second-guess myself. I will have to learn new habits and be realistic about my own capabilities. And ultimately, like any successful band, athlete, student or brand I will have to learn from failures, chart a plan and keep at it. I’m in this for the long-haul.

At the new year, Jeff Pulver posted his “Bucket List” to Facebook, an outline of things that he’d like to accomplish, more so than a New Year’s resolution. Jeff tagged Merlene Paynter, who then tagged me, along with social media powerhouses Laura Fitton (aka @Pistachio) and Jim Long (aka @newmediajim). It was then that I knew the jig was up.

Merlene didn’t know about my dreaded secret. A fact so dark and horrible in social media circles that I felt it was only a matter of time before I was discovered and shunned, amish-style, by the community.

The thing that kept me awake at night: I don’t didn’t have my own blog.

Sure, I’ve had a few attempts at a personal blog when I was home alone with a baby, but I quickly got bored with the “cheese sandwich” aspect of it. Professionally, I’ve participated in social media in many other ways:

>I contribute to the OneDegree blog and Media Bulleseye. I’ve guest blogged too.
>I comment on blog posts regularly (here, here, here, here, here and here, for starters).
>I am a heavy Twitter participant, starting discussions, contributing, offering support.
>I started the Twitter Punks Flickr group for like-minded rabble-rousers.
>I helped to start the wiki for SXSW Twitter buds and participate in other social media wikis and groups.
>I use Seesmic and Utterz.
>I share my bookmarks on del.icio.us and my photos on Flickr.
>Of course I’m on LinkedIn and answer questions. I’m on Facebook and was a group Chief Instigator.
>And I’ve lost count of how many different social media sites I’ve puttered with, because every week there are more to play with, like BrightKite and FriendFeed.

Despite all of those efforts, without a blog of my own, I felt like a social media fraud.

Thank you, Merlene, for unwittingly making me overcome one of my biggest self-imposed obstacles to success. Just like your Bucket List, I want to tap into the best part of myself too. So, before this year gets away from me and the shiny has rubbed off of good intentions, I’m coming clean and stepping up.

Welcome to my blog.