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Changes have already come, the site is just lagging

February 4, 2010

in Site News

My independent consulting days through Social Mallard LLC are on hold for, hopefully, a good long while: Kevin Briody joins Ignite Social Media:

At Ignite Social Media, Kevin will work on our partnerships with key accounts, as well as our partnerships with third-party firms to evaluate the best platforms and services for our clients and the best way to implement those solutions.

Needless to say I’m pretty excited about the change. It’s not only a move across the country, but an opportunity to work with a team that is doing some amazing stuff around social media for major brand (Intel, Microsoft, Nature Made) marketing initiatives. More to come later.

As for this blog, my new job will shape my direction here. I hope to start contributing to the social media blog over at Ignite, and will mirror some of those posts here. I also plan to significantly pick up the pace and post at least a few times a week. A name like “Social Mallard” is just too odd to let go unused after all.

So the “Services” and “Clients” pages here will go dormant as I focus on transforming this back to a personal view on things that inspire and impress me in social media marketing. Should be a fun ride.

Remember to subscribe to the RSS feed or follow me on Twitter.

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Dusting off the old to delight your true fans

December 18, 2009

in Brand Management, Marketing

I’m a big fan of the classics – not necessarily classical literature or classical music, specifically, but anything that through quality, uniqueness, fan love, and time gains the aura of “a classic.” Be it a vintage hot rod, iconic brand, or a genre-defining product, I am just fascinated by most anything that retains a devoted fan following years, decades, or even centuries after what should have been its useful life.

Companies constantly dust off those classics they have rights to, and either repackage the originals or infuse new products with some defining “classic” elements, to appeal to new and old fans alike. We see it everyday with cars, especially those coming out of a Detroit constantly striving to recapture its old magic. We also see it in music, with covers of old classics by modern bands, or repackaged, remastered originals wrapped up as greatest hit albums.

What’s truly inspiring is when the original classic is redone with an all new light, in such a way that it perfectly delights both new and old fans. From the world of music – classic rock specifically – the acoustic or “unplugged” remakes of the old classics “Layla” (Eric Clapton) and “Hotel California” (Don Henley/The Eagles) embody this perfectly.

Just listen to those songs, and especially the live fan reactions when they were first performed, and try not to get the chills. In both cases, the original musicians tease with an intro that maybe hints at what the song will be, but never quite tips off the audience (except maybe that one guy in the back of the room who starts hooting in joy far to early). Then they play some defining cord that fully and dramatically gives away the song.

The audience reaction is electric, even if the instruments are not. In both songs, once the fans realize what they’re listening to, they scream in delight both at hearing an old favorite and at experiencing it in an entirely new way.

Both Layla and Hotel California are immensely popular classics. They have been packaged up, remastered, and resold countless ways over the years. Fans have bought up greatest hits albums and re-releases of the original tracks by the millions.

Even then, when you would expect fan fatigue to set it at least a bit, Clapton and the Eagles dusted the classics off and reinvented them completely, risking the ire of the purists yet delighting so many more while introducing the songs to entirely new generation of fans.

What’s the marketing lesson in this? If you happen to be lucky enough to be stewards of a classic, by all means keep exploring ways to continue to sell it to fans both old and new. Just don’t be afraid of reinventing it, even at the expense of purists, to give it a whole new life.

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Creating a retail splash with Facebook courtesy of IKEA

November 25, 2009

in Brand Management, Social Media

Credit to the Forsman & Bodenfors agency in Sweden for coming up with this Facebook promotion for a new IKEA store. It’s almost a textbook example of using a social platform (Facebook), viral features and behaviors (photo tagging, link sharing, etc.), and a time-tested retail promotional trick (free product giveaways, “first-come, first-served! Hurry!”).

The only downside of this is I can’t see it having staying power – it’s a fantastic campaign to create a short-lived storm of attention and buzz, with a bit of media coverage after the fact, but once all the products are given away there doesn’t appear to be any hook for people to stay engaged.

But honestly, that’s a small downside, especially given the agency’s mandate was to promote the opening of a new retail store. Short-term buzz is perfect there, and again, this looks like an excellent social media campaign. The video case study below walks you through it.

Update: Mashable just wrote this up as well.

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More social media stats than you knew existed

November 23, 2009

in ROI and Metrics, Social Media

Fantastic stats and bits of news in this video:

Oddly, the one I find most amazing is that apparently this year Boston College stopped providing email addresses to incoming freshmen. As integral as email is to my generation, as passe as it seems to be to the next.

Found courtesy of Jake McKee/Community Guy.

UPDATE: Just found the source data over on the video producer’s blog. Bookmarked…

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The Great Tweet Ad Debate

November 23, 2009

in Advertising, Social Media

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Ads in Twitter streams seems to be the hot topic du jour, brought into the tech mainstream most recently by a NY Times article “A Friend’s Tweet Could be an Ad,” referencing Twitter ad services such as Ad.ly and Likes.com.

To sum up the Times piece – there’s a ton of activity and opportunity for Twitter ads, alongside an equal dose of risk and uneasiness. Any time you find a communication channel that involves high volumes of messages and equally high volumes of opted-in followers of people they (in theory) trust or value, you’ll find ad folks salivating. You’ll also find people more than willing to dive in and take those ad dollars.

The uneasiness comes for both followers and tweeters – in a relationship implicitly built on trust and direct communication, do ads sour the mix?

After being quoted in the Times article saying he’d unfollow anyone who places ads in their Twitter streams, Robert Scoble weighed in again over the weekend with to clarify his stance:

In it I said I unfollow people who put ads in their Twitter stream. I should have been a little bit more clear. Putting ads in your stream, if you disclose them, won’t automatically get me to unfollow you, but it does cause me to look at the value I’m getting out of your stream.

My emphasis on “disclose” added, as I think that’s the key point, along with both volume and relevancy. Those three factors will determine whether I continue to follow someone who mixes ads with their normal tweets. Looking more closely:

1. Disclosure: This should be obvious. If you’re being paid to tweet something, let me know. Throw an #ad hashtag on the end, or lead with “AD”. Your choice, just be clear and consistent. Don’t open yourself up to the “paid duplicitous shill” accusations which plagued the introduction of paid blog posts a few years back.

2. Volume: Scoble recommends no more than 5% of your tweets should be ads; Likes.com is supposedly limiting their participants to no more than one ad every other day. The jury is definitely still out on this one, and it varies dramatically by the volume and frequency of your tweets, along with how commercial your Twitter stream is in the first place. Experiment, watch others you admire for how they do it, and listen to your followers. High twitter ad volume is the new spam – tread carefully.

3. Relevancy: If you’re known as an expert on books, limit your ads to book-related promotions. If your followers expect to hear your thoughts on gardening, don’t randomly spam them with ads on financial products, no matter how much they pay. Keep the ads relevant to your established expertise and the expectations of your followers.

Personally, I’m not a huge fan of in-tweet ads – I largely agree with Scoble though and certainly won’t unfollow someone simply for mixing a few well disclosed and highly relevant ads in, but will quickly drop you if you start to reek of spam.

Andy Beal posted a survey for his readers on the topic, and it seems to reflect the same kind of ambivalence, with 45% “Yes”, 21% “No” and 34% “Not Sure” responses to his question of “Will you unfollow those that place ads in their tweets?” (as of the time of this post)

As for brands and agencies: Twitter ads are something I’d recommend any brand or agency tread *extremely* carefully around. You don’t want to be one of the first case studies on how NOT to do Twitter ads, no matter how much you crave being innovative. Maintain tight control over the volume, placement, and relevancy of the ads you place and who you place them with, and quickly reconsider any service or ad network who doesn’t play by those rules.

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