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By Vegasbab, April 28, 2009 12:06 am

Last week, VP of Brand, Jordan Kretchmer, for Current sent out a RFP via Twitter. He’s calling it TwitteRFP. It’s been interesting, funny and sickening to watch. Here’s my take:

What I Like:

1. Obviously, something like this is in line with Current’s existing model and/or it’s in line with the goal of their RFP.
2. It’s been really fun to view what each agency has done in response.
3. Similar to #2, it starts to show the attitude of an agency, more so than a standard deck.
4. I’m about to go into RFP mode. Selfishly, this saved me a lot of time and allowed me to get a sneak peak at a ton of agencies.

What I Don’t Like:

1. Can we say EGO much? Current’s ego, agency ego.
2. It smells of desperation. When do agencies cross the line between putting together a solid response and just reeking of desperation?
3. Kretchmer originally stated five agencies would make the first cut. Due to the response and submissions, he’s increased that to 10-15. If he’s wishy washy now, what happens later? Agencies beware.

A few tips from a Brand Marketer to Agency Hopefuls:

1. I understand this is social media and you have limited space, but spelling and grammar count! Well, at least to me. It especially counts when you’re commenting on a post. The lack of makes me cringe. It’s the little details that matter most. Don’t forget, first impressions count.
2. Answer the question!!! There was one very simple rule: “Reply @jkretch by Monday 8pm PST. Only requirements are to include your agency name, and what you could bring as Current’s partner.” Upon sorting through many of the responses, several agencies didn’t clearly and effectively answer the question. Screw everything else. The main focus should have been on a powerful, concise answer. If you can’t follow the initial instructions, why should I assume you’re going to follow instructions down the road?
3. Inside jokes between agencies? Yea, I’m probably not going to get them. I don’t live in your agency world. The only thing this is going to accomplish is you looking like a snarky, petty, douchebag. Only use humor that everyone can understand.
4. And last but not least, DON’T MISS THE DEADLINE. One minute after 8PM is still one minute too late. You had a few days. Other agencies got thier stuff in on time. If you wanted it badly enough, you would have too.

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By Vegasbab, April 26, 2009 12:49 pm

I follow a lot of brands on twitter. I like to see how each one utilizes the service. As I was cleaning my following list this weekend, I checked on several of them. More than a few have fallen to the wayside. Time and again, we’ve heard, “it’s worse for a brand to start and stop something than it is for them to never begin.”

Well, what about twitter?

Here’s just a handful of brands that started, engaged heavily and stopped the conversation as soon as their short term goal(s) was achieved:

1. Pepsi via @PepSuber. I even DM’d several times with the persona behind this one. He told me it was more work than he envisioned and wasn’t sure if he’d continue. Looking back, he stopped shortly after their Superbowl commercials. Same deal with the majority of Sobe personas (i.e. @SobeChris and @SobeRami). In fairness, @SobeWorld still tweets.
2. @MotrinMoms and @FakeMotrin. Yep, as soon as the Motrin Mom crisis died down they stopped. Basically, they tweeted for one day. @FakeMotrin’s last tweet even eludes to that fact – crisis over, time to peace out.
3. @Campaigns2008, @barackobama and any other account having to do with the election. Don’t you feel used?
4. @NewCastle. Not only have they stopped tweeting, but they set their account to private. I DM’d with them too. I have a feeling they never looked into the legal implications before starting
5. @Whoppervirgins and @theBKLounge. These two actually had quite the interesting stream. @theBKLounge even sent a Cease and Desist via a tweet to @Whoppervirgins. After the initial campaign launch they’ve stopped.
6. @MsProvocateur. This one makes me sad. I enjoyed the blog and the tweet stream. At least she told us she would no longer be tweeting or blogging.

And many more. Sad, huh? My comment about it on twitter got a few retweets, but I think most people missed my point. My point wasn’t about brands not participating, it was about this:

1. If brands are going to participate socially, they need to think of it as a long term strategy.
2. Participating requires a lot of work. People demand immediacy and attack if not provided with it. I think brands enter without realizing how much attention is really needed.
3. Social media, as of yet, rarely provides the short term ROI brands want/need. If you’re Direct Response focused, send an eblast

And food for thought… does jumping into twitter for the short term (i.e. for a Superbowl campaign, for crisis, etc.) do more harm than good? Does it matter? Do short term tweeters get enough traction to even make an impact?

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By Vegasbab, April 25, 2009 7:34 pm

Personally, I think companies should do whatever possible to retain their Superstar, A-List players. But, most companies don’t have that mindset. They consider you replaceable. In fact, they consider you replaceable by someone younger, greener and willing to do the job on a smaller salary.

But, if you’re in the business of hiring A’s and keeping them, it simply requires 3 things:

1. Give them lots of responsibility. Allow them to grow and take on new tasks.
2. Pay well. Don’t insult them with a salary that’s not in-line with going rates or simply average.
3. Give kudos. Everyone needs a pat on the back. People are insecure by nature. Everyone wants to know they’re doing a good job, you enjoy working with them, etc.

Honestly, it’s that simple.

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By Vegasbab, April 24, 2009 9:57 pm

This is a post with lots of white space. Today, I can’t organize my words succinctly or appropriately, so instead of continuing to struggle, this one’s blank. It’s blank to remind me that sometimes silence and tongue biting is the best action. And sometimes, white space is better than any words or pictures will ever be.

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By Vegasbab, April 21, 2009 11:31 pm

I have a dirty secret. I’m starting to like Ashton Kutcher.

For a celebrity, Ashton has some insightful viewpoints about the social web. To paraphrase some of his interview with Oprah:

My life is on display and not always by choice. …Instead of them [the media] publishing pictures I don’t like, I can publish pictures that have already been pre approved. …If there’s a fallacy about you, you’re able to respond to it in a genuine way directly with your fans.

Ashton gets it. He gets how to leverage the power of the crowd. He responds to the Average Joe. He shares funny and interesting links. He regularly lives streams. He updates his Facebook Fan Page often.

Basically, Ashton has removed that third party link and connects directly and efficiently with his fans. In some ways, he’s the @Zappos of celebrities.

But, by removing that third party (aka PR folks, the People and TMZ journalists of the world), what effect does it have?

• - Does it piss off the networks that have the power to put him on their covers?
• - Does it make their jobs easier?
• - Will it make their jobs obsolete?
• - Does it make celebs more “real” and remove them from their pedestals? Is that a good thing?
• - Will interacting with celebrities like we do with weblebrities (aka Chris Brogan) become the status quo?

I left journalism a long time ago. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t have the answers to the above questions even if I was still in that world. Who knows? Maybe by the time celebrities really jump on board we’ll be onto the next thing. You know, like Identi.ca, Tumblr or Flutter.

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By Vegasbab, April 21, 2009 9:13 am

The other day, @jeremymeyers tweeted, “I  really wish Twitter had used listen/listening rather than follow/following when it first started.”

The statement got me thinking. What if Twitter had used listen/listening vs. follow/following? Would the sentiment on Twitter be different today? Would it still be a contest to get more “listeners”? Honestly, yes. People are competitive by nature. We all have egos and the number of followers someone has is kinda like men comparing dick sizes in the locker room.

But, would different terminology change how people, brands and celebs use twitter? Would listening be more intuitive? Maybe. Would the race be more about retweets and @ replies vs. followers? Maybe. Would it encourage more silent participants and less conversations? Would it remind people to see both sides of an argument? I don’t know. I do know choosing your naming conventions carefully is worth thinking about.

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By Vegasbab, April 20, 2009 8:59 pm

I’m one of those people that celebrates Half Birthdays. Mine is April 21.

Needless to say, having my Birthday Twin in town coupled with The Killers and Paul McCartney opening the new Joint, I agreed to celebrate a bit early.

Below is one of my favorite pictures from the weekend. One day I’ll get better at taking pictures while drinking

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By Vegasbab, April 18, 2009 12:16 pm

I’m not a fan of Domino’s Pizza. While I applaud their innovative marketing efforts, I’m just not a fan of their product. To be fair, I’m not a fan of Pizza Hut or Papa Johns either.

However, I’m impressed with how quickly Domino’s handled their recent PR nightmare.

If you haven’t heard or seen it, two Domino’s employees made an awful video. The video even made it’s way onto Domino’s Wikipedia page. Admittedly, I only watched about 30 seconds of it. Thirty seconds was enough to gross me out. Suffice it to say, I’m not too interested in chowing down on pizza anytime soon.

A day later, Domino’s posted a response on YouTube with their President, Patrick Doyle. They also set up an official twitter account, @dpzinfo.

I’m impressed. For a major corporation, Domino’s reacted quickly. The speech was appropriate, well crafted and authentic. They responded to blog postings, specifically stating that the bloggers could post responses in their entirety. And, they are continuing to figure out ways to address this situation.

What I like:
Kudos to Domino’s for reacting quickly, but not in a knee jerk fashion. They waited just long enough to understand if they really needed to make a public response. Before making the response, they did their homework- found the store location, shut it down and took legal action against those in the video.

What Concerns Me:
There’s been talk about new commercials, emails, etc. that address the situation. I hope they walk on egg shells. Why alert people who haven’t heard or seen the video? According to Google Insights, most of the US population isn’t searching for it. However, even on Yahoo! Answers, there’s talk about it. I hope their future actions don’t make a mountain out of a mole hole.

More often than not, we’re seeing the social web craft the news stories of today. More PR agencies need to get on board. Otherwise, they and their clients are going to find a lot of cracks in their hulls.

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By Vegasbab, April 15, 2009 12:12 am

Honestly, I hate linking to Seth Godin’s blog or mentioning one of his posts. To me, it’s too commonplace. Besides the fact that tons of people read his blog, Godin says what everyone else is thinking with much more eloquence and brevity. Everyone finds their own meaningful take away from each of his posts.

So, of course, I’m being a total hypocrite and linking to Godin’s post of the day

As I prepare to take a company from zero to something in the interactive space, Godin’s quote really hits home:

Spend your money on the right stuff, ignore the rest. If you try to market and spend on every element of your story, you’ll be merely average.

Everyone is so enthralled with all this social media “stuff”, they  forget the basics. The right stuff. The base. The building blocks.

While I love new, innovative and cool, I’m a HUGE believer in the basics. Get the basics right and the rest will follow. In the book, Connect! Marketing in the Social Media Era, one of my favorite chapters is actually a satire about social media. The writer lists ten “online marketing 1.0″ initiatives and says, “If you’re not doing these, say NO to Web 2.0.” To be honest, I don’t know a single company that’s doing all ten of the Web 1.0 items on the list really well.

While you can’t move forward standing still, maybe it wouldn’t hurt for us all to be a little better than “merely average”.

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By Vegasbab, April 14, 2009 12:47 am

I could have sworn I had written a post about SEO vs. SEM way back when, but apparently it was all in my imagination.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about both Organic Search (SEO) and Paid Search (SEM). I have a sneaky suspicion that I’ll be rolling up my sleeves and getting quite dirty with them in the upcoming months.

If I had to put all my eggs in one basket in terms of long term strategy, hands down I’d throw the majority of my money towards SEO.

However, I’ve also spent the last several weeks watching my coworkers navigate to the company website. Personally, I have our website bookmarked in my toolbar on both work and home computers. I guess my coworkers don’t visit xxxxx.com as often as I do But, I was still shocked and appalled as to how ten C-Level Execs navigated to my site. They all knew the url. It’s five letters. It’s the company name. Yet, they didn’t type the address into their browser. Instead, they navigated to Google (which was the homepage for most. Google, not iGoogle, mind you), typed our FULL url, xxxxx.com, into Google search and then clicked on the PAID link. I kept my mouth shut, but I wanted to shake them and say, “Hello! You are wasting my marketing dollars!”

Their actions also make me wonder if SEM is such a waste. Maybe. But, I think the real waste is dumb/lazy marketers who don’t think. Time and time again, we’ve watched CP+B not buy campaign urls or Super Bowl advertisers not buy paid search or lawyers instead of US Airways buy terms.

I have no doubt that the debate between SEO vs. SEM will continue for quite some time. I’m also convinced that instead of pausing to think proactively, BDA’s will continue to forget the “little” details.

Today, before you launch Campaign A, stop. pause. Remember the little things.