Comments (0) I love this holiday email from SPG (aka Satrwood Hotels). It’s smart. It’s cute. And, coolest of all, it used all the data that their customers provided them to not only give us our data back in a bigger and better way, but to also give us some insights into hotels and cities that we might want to explore. Kudos SPG! One more reason to love being an SPG Insider 
The fascination with Facebook has always boggled my mind. Lately, I’ve become ultra sensitive to the CTA’s on ads from brands and the amount of ones that drive to their Facebook fan page vs. their OWN website. I shake my head thinking, “There’s another advertiser that spent $100,000 to give free advertising to Facebook.”
I won’t ask the question, “What happens when Facebook is no more,” because too many brands are focused on short term vs. long term goals, especially when creating advertisements.
As non-sensical as it is, I think I finally have the answer to why marketers do this. It’s simple really. Are you ready? Wait for it… It’s because so many brand marketers, the ones making the advertisements, don’t have control over their own websites! The websites are run by the “eCommerce” or IT team while most Brand Marketers sit in a completely different area, most of them not having any online experience whatsoever. While the eCommerce team drives direct revenue, the branding team drives, well, branding.
Unable to speak the language of the eCommerce team, it’s difficult to effect real change on the website, let alone have a landing page created that is a sensible transition from the CTA on the advertisement. With their hands tied, there’s nothing else to do but drive to Facebook where they can effect change.
It’s a sad day when departments within a single brand can’t even talk and support each other for a better long term goal. The age-old question becomes, how do you break down internal silos?
Now this video is the future of social and mobile. It’s not Facebook, twitter or any other platform, it’s integration in life.
I liked the thoughts in this post so much, that I’m reposting them here. While the post is short and sweet, the thoughts and ideas it generates are more complex.
When approaching a social marketing effort (or really any marketing effort) think:
I’ve been thinking a lot about silos lately. In my new role as a consultant / agency person, I get a clear outsider’s view of the silos in a company. It’s amazing and mind boggling to me. Half the time, my “clients” have never interacted with departments outside of their marketing realm let alone know the leaders of those departments.
To me, it’s eye opening. It also makes me realize how truly lucky I was to work at the places and with the people that I did. While it took time, the organizations I worked for had few, if any silos. The call center supervisor who had the graveyard shift knew my name and I knew hers. She also knew what to route to me and I knew what to route to her. In my naivety, I thought that was a standard practice. Low and behold, most brand marketers haven’t even met the person that runs corporate internal communications (yikes!?).
It’s part of why I love to watch companies embrace social media. If they’re doing it the right way, then brand marketers discover that they need to break down a whole lot of silos to be successful. Ultimately, it’s helping to make stronger marketers. It’s also helping to make others better at their jobs.
The piece that I’m even more grateful for is my experience with embracing and including other departments. Mention PR or IT to a marketer and the reaction garnered is more often than not a groan and a face twisted in dread. These three departments are usually battling each other. In fact, when I tweeted at a conference that IT should be a key stakeholder in a successful test and learn culture, I started a mini revolt. All too frequently, we’re fighting internal battles vs. coming together to fight and solve for external ones.
While we’d like to think so, we as marketers aren’t experts at everything. We haven’t been in the IT or PR day-to-day trenches for 10+ years. We don’t nor do we have the experience (yet) to see the world through their eyes. It’s why I think it’s integral to have them at the marketing roundtable from the get go.
Today, I came across this article and the below chart. Coming from a direct response, data laden organization, I’ve been touting some of the metrics on the left (and more similar to those) for over three years. Why? Because I’ve worked at companies where IT, PR, Database/CRM and Marketing all had seats at the same table. Over the years, they’ve taught me to start seeing the world the way they do and vice versa. Together, it’s made us all stronger in our own areas and as a whole, it’s allowed the company to excel well past its competitors. I think if we all did more sharing and including of other departments we’d come to the conclusion of charts like the below a whole lot faster than we’re doing today.
This idea by a UK band, the Kaiser Chiefs, is genius. In a world of unique content creation and curation as well as more “illegal” music downloads, this is a brillant idea to help drive sales.
They are inviting fans to participate in — and profit from — the distribution of their new album by creating customized versions. Visitors to the site are invited to select 10 songs out of 20 recorded by the band for the new release, design the cover, and pay £7.50 to download the album. For those fans that want to profit from their unique version of the album, the site offers unique landing pages where album creators can subsequently earn £1 for each copy they sell. Not only is the idea radical, but it provides increased fan engagement, a much larger and stronger distribution network and a better understanding of the types of songs fans want to buy. And, the website is fun as hell to play with Personally, I had no idea who the Kaiser Chiefs were. But, I spent a good 30+ minutes listening to their music and designing my own personal album.
Google’s +1 button arrived almost 90 days ago to lots of fanfare and speculative blog posts. I sat and I waited and I watched. I read the opinions. I watched Google search results evolve. And I clicked a few +1 buttons on articles I liked. Oddly enough, in all the opinions I’ve read, my take hasn’t appeared and thus I wonder if I’m off kilter. Nevertheless, here it goes…
Google’s +1 cannot succeed without the support of the mainstream sites. Think Yahoo, Yahoo News, MSN, USA Today, etc. If I must, I’ll add Facebook too, but this is really about “traditional” mainstream sites. In my mind, the mainstream sites are never going to integrate a +1 button into their articles. Why? Because they all have alliances with other search providers (ahem, Bing, Yahoo Search, AOL).
In a very broad perspective, and taking out all the deal sites and cute kittens, the articles that are most commonly shared on the web are from news sites – New York Times, HuffingtonPost, CNN, etc. In addition, if you’re not on the bleeding edge nor is your homepage Google, then it’s probably Yahoo, MSN or AOL. In those articles, while there may be a “Like” and “Tweet this” button and even a “Share,” there is certainly no +1.
Sure, you can +1 anything within Google’s search results, but you can’t +1 them on the actual site. How many are +1′ing things based on a snippet of text or finding something they want to +1 via Google search results? I have a feeling it’s a small majority.
Unless Share This integrates a +1 option into their offerings AND the mainstream sites don’t notice nor remove the option, then I have a hard time envisioning sites larger than personal blogs hoping for an SEO leg up integrating +1 into their site offerings.
What do you think? Is their +1 functionality that I’m missing? Is their an incentive for the mainstream sites to ever add a +1?
The buzz and defensiveness this week about Empire Avenue reminded me about the conference experience I had in Paris and how angry it made me. Sure, the conference was good. Not great, not horrible, but a solid conference. However, the bullshit that went on behind the scenes due to social media angered me. While I’ve written about it before here and here, I had forgotten how far along it had come.
Here’s a few choice examples from the conference:
The question becomes, is our lack of honesty via social channels hurting our ability to innovate, to become stronger marketers? Is it hurting our ability to stand up for ourselves and our beliefs? I’m not sure about you, but I’m certainly not ready to become a lemming.
It always impresses me when big brands are able to move fast enough to capitalize on current events.
While not a new video/viral concept, kudos to T-Mobile for having the foresight to spoof the Royal Wedding in a fun, appealing way that the masses can relate to.
As a marketer, are you keeping abreast of current events that might tie to your brand? Is your brand, your team and your Executives open minded and limber enough to make a move when inspiration strikes?
Inspiration is all around us. Remember to stop and take the time to let it soak in.
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