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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.

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By Vegasbab, November 1, 2009 10:58 am

I feel a bit dirty jumping on the bandwagon and writing about Twitter Lists, but alas, they were shiny and intrigued me for a day. Now? Not so much. Well, at least not till Tweetie updates their app to include them

1. For most, Lists have become another way to feed the ego. It’s another thing to beg for and another thing to show how “cool” and “popular” you are. When will #FollowFriday turn into List recommendations? PS – the fact that that meme still continues shocks me. And yes, I have followers that still get upset when I don’t tout them in a #FollowFriday tweet… even though I haven’t participated in it for months!
2. Oddly, you can’t see @replies in lists, even if you follow the same people. To me, this is a downfall. I enjoy watching the back and forth conversations between the people I follow. Also, you’re missing the social piece of twitter.
3. Lists allow you to follow without following. I’m curious as to how this effects blocked users. In fact, I’m curious as to how this will play out altogether. Will you no longer hit the follow button and just add someone to a list? If you add someone to a private list, they’ll never know. Stalker much?
4. Like everyone else has hinted, Lists change your follower count. But, do they? Sure, people have created lists, but are they truly being utilized? Right now, lists are the new shiny object. But, they also require effort. You have to navigate to a new stream. You have to be on the twitter website (for now). Until Lists are integrated into the apps most commonly used or people change their twitter browsing behavior, I’ll take a follower over being on a list.
5. With lists, I think you’ll see a lot more replies and retweets that aren’t real time. Will lists change the real time dynamic of twitter?
6. Originally, I think Lists were meant to help filter and cut down the noise. But, when you’re twitter list consists of 100, did you really cut down the noise? Maybe. Maybe filtering everyone into the same category helps people digest information faster (I think that’s been proven somewhere). To me, it’s kind of boring. I like the randomness of twitter. I like my news interspersed with humor and my favorites? Well, too much a good thing, isn’t always a good thing
7. The interesting thing for brands? Lists puts brands in an grouping with their peers aka similar brands. Now, more than ever, brands will be measured and compared to what XYZ Brand is doing. It’s an interesting dynamic both for the marketers and the consumers.

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By Vegasbab, October 26, 2009 6:30 pm

Over the last week, I’ve been inundated with the statistic that only 14% of advertising is trusted. But, Word of Mouth (WOM) is trusted WAY more.

Here’s my question… when do we stop trusting Blogs, or Word of Mouth for that matter? With the ridiculous amount of kick backs and marketers being encouraged to utilize sponsored posts, get in bed with bloggers vs. doing “traditional” online banners, etc. when do we stop trusting even our friends? Even with full disclosure, when do the posts we write and things we tweet just become Blogvertising? And yes, I made up that word. Well, maybe it’s already out there, but I’ve never heard it. I wouldn’t want to plagiarize anyone

Okay, back to my point… even if we fully disclose one post, are we writing the next post to get a brand’s attention? Are we hoping that Brand XYZ is reading this and decides to offer us something, you know like a free vacuum? Are we writing a post with the expectation of better customer service?

Like I’ve said in the past, this whole new era of Blogvertising concerns me. It especially concerns me after seeing the rampant sense of entitlement from Bloggers attending BlogWorld. Yes, yes, businesses should move to a social business design, blah, blah, blah. But, as a marketer, I’m in the business of making money. Giving my product away to everyone who feels entitled to a freebie does not equal a profit.

So, where will all this Blogvertising take us?

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By Vegasbab, October 20, 2009 9:27 am

I love Augmented Reality. Seriously, the thought of doing something with AR makes me salivate, even if penetration is next to nil.

But, will it end up like Second Life? When Second Life debuted, it was touted as “huge” and “game changing.” The same words and feelings are starting to surround AR. Layar cofounder Maarten Lens-FitzGerald is quoted in Fast Company as saying, “Augmented reality is going to be huge. It might even be as big as the Web.”

No one said that about Twitter or Facebook. In fact, many still poo poo those sites. But, both have far out lived and outgrown Second Life.

Will AR end up as just the flavor of the day? A novelty? Or, will marketers and consumers get smart and use it to its fullest potential?

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By Vegasbab, October 18, 2009 11:26 pm

I love this post, Your Boss Doesn’t Care About the Conversation, by @MackCollier. It’s been sitting in my favorites for months, waiting for me to expand on it.

The piece takes no prisoners; just tells the truth – no boss cares about the conversation. What do they care about? MONEY. If you’re a smart marketer, you should also be caring about MONEY. And, if you’re truly a smart marketer, you’ll do the following:

1. Figure out how to talk to HIPPOS about social media in terms of money
2. Figure out how to turn that talk into action by measuring social media AND making money off of it

And right there lies the problem with most “experts.” They can’t do one nor two. Sure, they’ve done a great job with their virtual “personal brand,” but few (if any) can translate that into $$$ for a big brand. When they do, maybe I’ll actually hire one

To sum up Collier, STOP talking about “joining the conversation” and start figuring out what happens AFTER.