Social Media Tips for the New Marketing Grad
Last night I had a wonderful opportunity to meet with a group of students from Elon University’s Ad Club (AAF). As part of my talk I shared a few simple tips and bits of advice around social media to help new graduates entering the PR/Ad/Marketing client and agency world. Grab the slides if you like, or read on for some extra commentary.
Talking Retweets, Viral, and More on The BeanCast
Last night I had the pleasure of being a guest on TheBeanCast marketing/advertising podcast, with host Bob Knorpp (@TheBeanCast), Valeria Maltoni (@conversationage), Stuart Foster (@stuartfoster), and Michelle Tripp (@michelletripp). You can get the show notes, MP3, and iTunes subscription info here.
It was my first time on the show, and ended up with some great conversation that’s still got me thinking – so expect a post or two this week as I expand a bit on what we discussed.
In the meantime, I definitely recommend subscribing to the show on an ongoing basis. Bob manages to pull together some amazing groups of marketing, PR, and ad professionals to talk about the hot topics of the week. It’s the perfect commute podcast, and well worth the download.
A catchy dance video, and a social media near miss
This is a wonderfully cute new video from Samsung for their Galaxy 580 smartphone, with a tagline that fits perfectly with what I talk about here all the time:
“use your influence”
Watch:
What this commercial (seeded “viral” video, actually) positively SCREAMS for is some kind of action to be taken to help you, the viewer, “use your influence” to share the video, interact with it in some way, connect with the dancers or music, or engage in some fashion with the brand or product.
The concept is cute, and nicely done. Anyone with kids will recognize their own in this little girl as she just lets her imagination spill out all over the dance floor, meaning millions of people could instantly relate to the ad and likely (like me) want to pass it around.
But this is a great campaign concept that, to my mind, is only about 25% done. It could get enormous payoff by extending it across the social media sphere in some manner, inviting viewers in to interact and share it with their friends and networks. A viral video attempt is great, and I suspect this one will get some moderate steam. But take the next step and pull me, the viewer, in deep.
And no, getting me to use this as a social media “near miss” case study doesn’t count. Yes I’m using what influence I have to share it on my blog, but I’m doubting “marketing bloggers” were a target market on the original Samsung campaign brief. I’m talking about doing this at scale.
The Lesson of Old Spice: TV is Simply a Starting Point
If you were anywhere near almost any social media tool earlier today, you probably heard about the remarkable personalized response videos from “the Old Spice guy” (“I’m on a horse, backwards”). It started in what seemed like a one-off, then quickly picked up steam as short, quickly produced personalized videos started popping up with Mr. Old Spice, clad only in a towel, replying to tweets, blog posts, Facebook comments, and YouTube replies from all over the Web.
In some cases, such as with the actress Alyssa Milano, she tweeted and got her own response video (several actually) with an hour or so (and the wide-eyed optimist in me is hoping that part wasn’t staged in advance). All in all it gave the impression that a small creative team from Weiden+Kennedy were camped out in a small stage (or hell, a large bathroom) with the actor and some live social monitoring tools, creating what will go down as one of the best examples of integration between advertising and social media yet seen.
There are a lot of lessons to be had – the value of engaging with the community and how you shouldn’t just aim for the celebrities but engage with fans across the board; the power of realtime social media monitoring tools; the impact of smart humor; the potential payoff from brands that are willing to take risks; etc.
What resonated with me however is the idea that this stunt, more than any other I can recall, cements the fact that the once-glorified 30 second TV spot is no longer the epitome of advertising – it’s merely a starting point. TV is now more than ever simply one channel, among many, to seed your content out into the marketplace, so it can be built on and blown out through creative use of new social channels like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and more.
This isn’t a new idea, of course, but sometimes it takes a truly creative campaign to shock your eyes open to both the reality and the possibilities of all the new toys we’ve perhaps grown too used to. Hats off to the team at WK and Old Spice, today was definitely a pleasant and exciting jolt and a hint of what’s to come.
As we all know, the world marketer's face has changed forever, and here is yet another oddly named blog to help you navigate it all. I'm Kevin Briody, lifelong marketer, ex-Microsoftie, startup and nonprofit veteran, current agency -type, and your host. 
Comments