"Who Said This Isn't Media"

The "Digital" column in this past Wednesday's AdAge.com had a surprising headline: "P&G Digital Guru Not Sure Marketers Belong on Facebook."

It seems that P&G's general manager-interactive marketing and innovation, Ted McConnell, in speaking to a program presented by the Ad Club of Cincinnati, thinks that social networks are the wrong places for brands to be. The Ad Age article quotes him as saying, "What in heaven's name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?"

Hey Ted, a friendly piece of advice, in today's job market you may want to keep your profound lack of understanding of the social networking world to yourself. You know, it's bad enough you tasted shoe-leather with the Facebook line. But then you go and follow it up with: "Who said this is media?" Media is something you can buy and sell. Media contains inventory. Media contains blank spaces. Consumers weren't trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody. So it just seems a bit arrogant. ... We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it."

His Ad Club speech might have worked out better if he'd been invited to participate in P&G and Google's -job-swap program, where, in an effort for P&G'ers to understand Internet users better, and for Google to win a larger part of P&G's ad budget, staffers from each company spend time at each other's staff training programs and business meetings. (WSJ, Nov. 19)

Or he could have read Danny Flamberg's excellent and thoughtful recent post on MediaPost's Social Media Insider, titled, "Making Sense of Social Media."

Or, he could have simply done some homework to get a little historical context.

To anyone who has been paying attention, the proliferation of social media shouldn’t be a surprise. Ever since 1985 when Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant began the Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link, which became The WELL, people have been flocking to converse with, learn from, and establish relationships with each other in an environment free conventional time and geographic restrictions. These “virtual communities”, as Howard Rheingold called them, were powerful lures to a universal, deep-seated desire to reach out and be social in a way that creates local, people-operated neighborhoods in a global context.

This ability to create communities around shared interests, as well as the instantaneous connection of email was a powerful driver of the first online services, like AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy.

Social communities like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn, are simply the latest incarnations of this quest to connect. From the start, though, marketers have failed to understand the Web as the interactive environment that it is, and have continued to engage as if it’s one of the passive mediums they’re comfortable with. It’s as if brands and marketers are the online equivalent of the ugly American tourist who travels abroad, and when the locals don’t understand their requests, simply repeat it slower and louder, as if the listener is simple-minded and deaf.

We need to help brands (as well as brand "Digital Gurus) understand that the Web isn’t a magazine with hyperlinks or TV with text. It’s a constantly evolving environment where information will always want to be free, it’s a democratic publishing forum, and it’s a place where dishonesty is outed at the speed of sound. So, s’il vous plait, before you open your mouth, learn to speak the language.

*Photo by Tarnie

The Ad Men Get Bitch Slapped, The Cable Guy Tweets

In today's NY Times, Stuart Elliot reports that the attendees of this year's American Association of Advertising Agencies (Four A's) leadership conference found a very different event from previous years. Instead of the usual agenda of drinks/golf/and self-congratulatory bullshit, the attendees were dished a series of verbal whuppings followed by workshops on digital media. If this sounds like agency-abuse, it was actually self-inflicted. The conferences of the past several years were so thin on content and relevant information that, Elliott reports, some wanted to do away with it altogether. So this year, the format was changed.

Tom Carroll, TBWA Worldwide president and ceo, laid it on the line:

Mr. Carroll acknowledged that it would be hard work to “change the way we do our business,” but called it a necessary response to the profound shifts in media, consumer behavior and technology that are remaking the advertising landscape.

“All industries recalibrate themselves,” Mr. Carroll said, illustrating his point with a rhetorical question, “How’d you like to be in the CD business?”

My hero, Lee Clow, showed even less mercy and here's where the bitch slapping started in earnest:

“Stop whining,” Mr. Clow told the estimated 380 attendees. The new realities “shouldn’t be scary,” he said, because they offer “a huge opportunity for us” to become far more useful to marketer clients as they seek more effective ways to sell products.

“If you want to participate, you’ve got to start hiring young people,” Mr. Clow said, “and don’t tell them what to do — ask them what to do.”

Apparently, the crowd received their flogging enthusiastically and flocked to the digital media demonstrations. All of this warms my heart to read, but it makes me wonder, if agencies were so hot to find out about transforming their business and really integrating digital media in meaningful way, what in god's name have they been waiting for???

Today's Social Media Insider Blog by Catharine Taylor, reports about the opposite end of the spectrum - a company that doesn't need to be bitch slapped in order to wake up and smell the coffee. Comcast has appointed a customer service rep, Frank Eliason, to be their Twitterer, under the name Comcastcares. Taylor writes:

The fact that Eliason’s job even exists illustrates the serendipity required for most companies to get with the social networking program today. His emergence on Twitter is the result of his own long-held interest in tracking customer sentiment — along with a nudge from a Comcast executive a few months ago to check out what people were saying about the company on the micro-blogging service. Eliason just observed Twitter at first before tentatively wading in. But earlier this month, his dalliance with Twitter burst into the blogosphere, when he noticed a tweet from Michael Arrington, who runs the highly influential blog TechCrunch. Arrington was complaining that his Comcast Internet service was inexplicably down. Eliason reached out to help, and Comcast soon dispatched a team to Arrington’s house to fix his Internet connection. It was, Eliason says, a turning point, but not in quite the way you’d think. Sure, Arrington’s experience with Eliason turned into a lengthy post on TechCrunch, but what seems to have interested Eliason more is how his Twitter followers rallied around him when some said that Comcast had only helped Arrington because he was Arrington. No, his supporters said, he’d helped out many other people too. Comcastcares was forming relationships.

So does this mean Comcast has succeeded, where agencies have failed, in molding themselves to operate and succeed in a digital interactive world? I'll bet anyone who's called their customer service lately would vote no. But, as Michael Arrington blogged about his experience:

But wow, they’re doing at least one thing right. Well before most people, they have identified blogs, and particularly Twitter, as an excellent early warning system to flag possible brand implosions.

Maybe next year the 4 A's should be held in Philadelphia.


advertising, 4 A's,consumer behavior, customer service,interactive