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By Vegasbab, February 6, 2010 7:44 am

It always irks me a bit when posts talk about social media not delivering on “promises”, that it “disappointingly” hasn’t grown up yet and it’s not an “enterprise” function of a business because it resides in marketing. All three statements point the blame to social media and some non-existent enterprise department. All three statements are baloney. Social media hasn’t delivered nor grown up because as marketers it’s YOUR fault. Social media hasn’t been seen as more than a marketing function because marketers don’t see it as more than that.

Let’s tackle the easy one first – social media not delivering on promises. Bullshit. Total and complete bullshit. It hasn’t delivered because (a) YOU (aka the marketer) didn’t set campaign objectives and (b) YOU didn’t come up with a measurement. If you launch a campaign with no goal and then tell your executives, “Well… it did great! We got lots of positive mentions.” Ummmm… I’d think social media failed too. But, in reality, YOU failed. You failed to set expectations and you failed to sell how successful the campaign was.

Now, onto the one that requires a little more thinking. Why does social media often sit with marketing? Well, not only do marketing departments market, but they also hold the keys to the brand and ultimately what an entire company embraces, or doesn’t. As the head of marketing, not only are you responsible for external marketing, but you’re also responsible for INTERNAL marketing. Think about it. What’s your company culture? Who came up with the tagline? Who designed the materials to internally promote that tagline? (Side note: Yes, I’m well aware that simply having a tagline does not equal company culture.) Aside from the President, which Executive is in charge of crafting that message? Oh yes, no company-wide initiative would work without the support of ALL Executives, but, who’s in charge of selling them on say, social media as a company-wide business plan? YOU. The Marketer. If ALL your employees aren’t on board – and I’m not saying they have to “get it” like “we” do – then YOU have failed, not social media.

It’s tough. Back in the day, marketers only had to market. Or, as agencies like to believe, marketers sat back and drank while the agency did the heavy lifting. But, not today. Today, the role of a marketing department has evolved into so much more. Today, it’s time for marketers to grow up. Today, it’s time for more marketers to start leading and stop “just” marketing. If marketers can’t do that, then social media is never going to “grow up”.

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By Vegasbab, January 31, 2010 11:03 pm

In the last few months, I’ve been amazed at some of the innovative ways companies are aggregating and using information from social networks. From Bravo’s use of Foursquare to We’re All Fans, wow. It seems like the economy has slowed the innovation of “new” and allowed marketers to really harness what’s out there. And, harness it quicker than ever before.

Surprisingly, tonight’s Grammy’s was the first event that twitter both spoiled and enhanced for me. Everything online, from the MSN homepage to twitter was reporting and commenting on the Grammy’s in real time. The comments made me excited and frustrated. I wanted to see the outfits and performances my “friends” were commenting on. But alas, being on the West Coast, I was three hours behind. For me, it was an interesting and new experience. And yes, it made me wish I was living on the East Coast that much more

One of the coolest parts of the Grammy’s was their use of social media. An institution that’s been around for 52 years continues to innovate and stay relevant. From an iPhone app to We’re All Fans, kudos to the marketers behind the show… We’re All Fans was one wicked cool and beautifully done aggregater of what fans we’re saying.

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By Vegasbab, January 13, 2010 10:00 pm

I love this. I’ve watched several videos lately about how powerful, refreshing  and transformative personal projects can be. Time is just an idea… enjoy the video!

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By Vegasbab, December 18, 2009 2:03 pm

If you’re an internet marketing geek, you were excited, intrigued and took notice when Google went live with their real time search feature. Alas, after seeing it in action for about a week, I’m sorely disappointed. I hope they fix it soon, otherwise we all might Bing instead of Google things

The buzz of course is that real time search will (a) change the SEO game and (b) bring your “social brand” front and center. Yep, all great (and scary) in theory. But the reality? Real time search is NOT relevant (yet). Unfortunately, the non-relevancy is sure to put a bad taste in savvy searchers’ mouths and confuse the rest of the population. Take a look at the below screenshot about a search for “Twitter Grader”. The top two (real time) results have nothing to do with twitter or a grading tool.

Google seems to see the issues and has removed real time search for larger queries (i.e. “Las Vegas”), but until they fix the algorithm, real time search won’t impress or help anyone.

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By Vegasbab, December 13, 2009 9:56 pm

Foursquare and how people are using it intrigues me to no end. From a personal standpoint, it’s creepy as hell.

Here’s some of the things that make me scratch my head:

• People will “friend” anyone, including brands. Why? It’s amazing that people are okay with friending random people, but don’t want targeted ads. The idea of privacy has certainly come a long way.
• Taking privacy a step further, most accounts are tied to a cell phone, email address or both. Really? You’re going to open up your personal cell to random people?
• With twitter, you often hear, “Why should I join? I don’t care what you’re eating for lunch or the rest of your mindless dribble.” Yet, Foursquare is EXACTLY that. People (including myself) update when they’re at the grocery store, gym, Starbucks, work, etc. Maybe I don’t follow enough people, but rarely does someone give a “shout-out”, let alone a shout-out that includes a link to an interesting article or something funny. What do the shout-outs usually include? The mindless dribble people give as the reason for not liking twitter
• Sure, many argue that with a tighter circle of friends (assuming you only friend people you know), your message is more impactful. But, when will the messages matter enough to be important?

From a business standpoint, I LOVE Foursquare. There are certainly some great opportunities, especially as more people join and the Foursquare team continues to make updates and open up their API. However, I don’t think we’ll see people abandon Twitter to solely use Foursquare any time soon. But, I do see both of them playing very nicely together.

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By Vegasbab, December 8, 2009 10:53 pm

Created by OnlineEducation.net

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By Vegasbab, December 6, 2009 1:24 pm

Every once in awhile, I enjoy reminding myself it’s okay to not keep up. Yes, it’s important to stay up to date with some of the latest and greatest, but, you also have a valuable and existing toolkit just waiting to be tweaked. As Bill Marriott says, “Success is never final. We can always do better with what we already have.”

In his post, Stop Looking for the Next Twitter, David Armano, puts it succinctly – “‘yesterday’s Twitter’ needs some care and feeding before you start looking for the next Twitter.”

Trust me, spinning your wheels looking for what’s next isn’t going to generate as much ROI as tweaking your current path to conversion or being more strategic about your customer relationship management (CRM). Make fixing your current strategy a top priority, and put trying to figure out the next “big” thing on a back burner. Unless of course, your current strategy is already 110% perfect

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By Vegasbab, December 5, 2009 6:16 am

I loved this post so much, that it was totally worth re-posting here. I never quite know how to explain what I do, but this is a good start

This post is for my Dad.
I don’t think he understands my job.
I work in advertising.
On the account side.
A lot of times people ask me what I do.
Here’s what I tell them:

When Churchill retired from politics he tried painting.
He set up his easel in his garden.
He got just the right size canvas.
He organized all his paints and brushes.
He’d chosen a perfectly comfortable stool.
He made sure everything was absolutely right.
Then he tried to decide where to start on the painting.
He stared at the pristine, white canvas.

Should he start in one area and work his way across?
Or should he sketch in the rough outline first?
Should he try to include the whole landscape?
Or should he pick one particular part to concentrate on?
How to begin exactly?

Two hours later his wife came out with a cup of tea.
He hadn’t painted a thing.
He was still sitting there thinking.
The canvas was still perfectly white.

His wife asked him why he hadn’t painted anything.
He said he couldn’t decide where to start.
So she picked up a brush and painted a huge squiggle in the middle of the canvas.
Churchill went ballistic.

“What are you doing, you’ve ruined a perfectly good canvas.”
She said, “Well now you’ll just have to fix it won’t you.”
And he started to fix the mess.
Scraping off the paint, and painting over it.
And pretty soon he’d painted his first landscape.

See what was stopping Churchill was knowing how to start.
What his wife did was take the start-point away.
She gave him a problem to fix instead.
The man who could lead Britain in a world war didn’t know what to do with a blank canvas.
Give him a problem to fix, a massive mess that no one else could sort out.
Fine.

But how do you start when there is no problem?
Creative people are good at fixing problems.
Good at responding.
Not so good at creating from nothing.
With no brief, no direction, no ideas, nothing to get hold of.

So that’s what I do. I draw squiggles on a blank canvas.

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By Vegasbab, December 4, 2009 11:38 am

Certainly one of the coolest and most fun events I’ve had the pleasure of participating in! The energy that night was out of control!

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By Vegasbab, November 15, 2009 7:45 pm

The story behind Elf Yourself cracks me up. It’s been around for four years. It’s a viral success story. But, no one seems to remember the first few years. You know, the years when it was NOT a success.

My favorite part about Elf Yourself is each year they tweak it, make it better. This year, it integrates Facebook Connect to pull in pictures and allows you to buy stuff with your Elf image. FINALLY, they’ve thought to monetize and really tie the idea back to the brand – Office Max.

In addition, it looks like they’re putting some serious advertising dollars behind promoting the campaign. The first push? The newly popular Flash Mob, this time in NYC.