Marketing in Real Life

It would be silly to think that some of the biggest celebrities in the world man their own twitter accounts (even if some do, some of the time.). But there is no reason to ruin the illusion if you’re running a “brand" account when the bran itself is a person. One great example of this disconnect was a post made by Justin Timberlake’s twitter account this week. The post read: “Justin’s new album the 20/20 experience is now out!" But wait, aren’t you Justin? There are two simple answers - just say “my album" or change the handle to make it clear that it’s an official but not personal account. In the end, we all want to believe that twitter is a direct line to athletes and celebrities. If you’re running one of their accounts, don’t ruin that illusion!

I watch a lot of tv - and I mostly love Twitter - but I often wonder why the networks are so focused on making sure everyone loves Twitter. I think the answer is actually very simple.  Twitter is one of the last bastions of the group, live experience with information and commentary being shared in real-time. That means it is also one of the few ways that the networks can really drive live, measurable engagement  with their viewers. So, shows like American Idol and The Voice are forcing all of their contestants and judges to tweet and pushing hashtags to show advertisers that they matter while they are happening (although the lack of social authenticity can be jarring.) In a DVR world, you have to admire that networks are at least making a valiant effort to give people a reason to watch together, whether they are in the same room or just sharing the online space.

Hey Twitter, I'm not sure I get you any more. I thought we had a good thing going but I am concerned. First of all, I love you Twitter. Even if I understand why others don't. I use you for work to keep up with the marketing, tech, and research industries. I follow companies I like, brands and people I find interesting, and those that I compete against. If knowledge is a gift, than Twitter for me is Christmas 365 days/year. But with brand pages and other enhanced features I am starting to worry about you. I feel like you are trying to be everything to everyone. You want what Facebook has and what Google is trying to take away. I get it. Facebook is printing money and all the cool kids love G+, but they don't have what you have Twitter. They don't have the constant influx of valuable content and the connections with like minded strangers. They don't have the beautiful simplicity of many mobile apps that make tweeting and reading tweets easy n any dev...

Today on the Research Brief Blog , Genesys, with Greenfield Online and Datamonitor/Ovum analysts, estimated that U.S. companies lose an estimated $83 billion each year due to defections and abandoned purchases as a direct result of a poor experience. More and more often customer experiences are not a face to face or even face to phone interaction. Often times it is web-based or through social media. Making sure these interactions are in alignment with your brand has never been more important. And it has never more important to measure social media within your customer satisfaction and loyalty research programs. When conducting customer satisfaction research we have always spent a lot of time putting the customer experience in context of the brand and making sure the two are aligned. More and more this involves understanding alignment and use of social media from both a marketing perspective (what most companies are doing) and a customer service perspective (what smart service organizat...

Here in Boston it has become tough to digest a Super Bowl week without our beloved Patriots involved. Given my love for the food and music of New Orleans and the fact that CMB's President, Anne Bailey Berman is from Louisiana, I'll be wearing black and gold when big event arrives. But what are other people thinking and tweeting about as the "big event" approaches? Using Voxtrot Opinion (a cool way to monitor and analyze online conversations from our friends at Crimson Hexagon) I looked at what people in the Twitterverse (Twitter users) are talking about this week. The first finding, "the big event" isn't necessarily the game itself. In fact, just 38% of tweets related to the game and the two teams involved (24% in favor of the Saints, 14% in favor of the Colts). So what else is on the table? From discussions of who is (Focus on the Family featuring Tim Tebow) and who isn't (Pepsi) advertising this year to planning and attending parties to questions...

As we do more and more work around understanding and strategizing for comanies deciding whether or not to get involved with social media, the bigest misnomer seems to those who only think about Facebook or Twitter. That's why I loved this quote from AMD's CMO, Nigel Dessau, from an interview on B2B online . "To use social media effectively, you have to have a very strong sense of what is and is not social media. At a minimum, social media is a two-way conversation that emphasizes relationship-building with your audience and customers. It's a means of spreading messages and influence, and something that should be equally applied across all corners of your brand. On the flip side, social media is not just a new way of push marketing. For us, it's not just a Facebook or blog strategy alone. And it's not just for business-to-consumer marketing. We have a thriving online community with our partners and enterprise customers who appreciate the value of having AMD emp...

With all the talk about social media and specifically social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, it is amazing that most of the research associated with social media revolves around counting numbers and presenting them in pretty pictures (everyone loves a word cloud). Well, we love word clouds too but have found that just getting a count of what is going on is not enough. And not paying attention to message boards, blogs, etc. can lead to some wild misrepresentations of the truth. Especially when you consider, according to our neighbors at Harvard University, that only a tiny fraction of the world is actually posting on twitter. Both in stand alone projects and in conjunction with trackers, we use a multi-faceted approach to understanding what is going on, what best practices exist, the rules of engagement and what you can do about them. Counting is important, but these mediums are about information exchange and emotion. Want to learn more? Still not sure what social media is a...

With all the talk about social media and specifically social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, it is amazing that most of the research associated with social media revolves around counting numbers and presenting them in pretty pictures (everyone loves a word cloud). Well, we love word clouds too but have found that just getting a count of what is going on is not enough. And not paying attention to message boards, blogs, etc. can lead to some wild misrepresentations of the truth. Especially when you consider, according to our neighbors at Harvard University, that only a tiny fraction of the world is actually posting on twitter. Both in stand alone projects and in conjunction with trackers, we use a multi-faceted approach to understanding what is going on, what best practices exist, the rules of engagement and what you can do about them. Counting is important, but these mediums are about information exchange and emotion. Want to learn more? Still not sure what social media ...

With all the talk about social media and specifically social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, it is amazing that most of the research associated with social media revolves around counting numbers and presenting them in pretty pictures (everyone loves a word cloud). Well, we love word clouds too but have found that just getting a count of what is going on is not enough. And not paying attention to message boards, blogs, etc. can lead to some wild misrepresentations of the truth. Especially when you consider, according to our neighbors at Harvard University, that only a tiny fraction of the world is actually posting on twitter. Both in stand alone projects and in conjunction with trackers, we use a multi-faceted approach to understanding what is going on, what best practices exist, the rules of engagement and what you can do about them. Counting is important, but these mediums are about information exchange and emotion. Want to learn more? Still not sure what social media ...

Mirroring the comments of Chadwick Martin Bailey's Chris Neal pointed from a recent webcast on Cloud Computing ( watch for yourself here ), The Metro has an interesting article on Google's free business apps and their impact on emerging businesses, specifically startups. “Today you can start your own company from your living room at almost no expense,” says Louis Rosas-Guyon, author of the new book “Nearly Free IT.” “That’s why the recession has led to an explosion in entrepreneurship.” Google apps and other free or inexpensive business applications are a boon to all of us trying to do more with less. And it is not just for documents and email. We recently discovered this when figuring out how to make sense of Twitter posts and found numerous free downloads that could help identify trends instead of spending money on paid solutions before we needed them. Now as researchers we are able to take advantage of these free solutions that present data simply and make them useful for ou...

In marketing pubs and blogs you often see people raving about the power of social media and web 2.0, but our friends at Domino's had quite a different experience last week. In case you missed it, two uniformed employees posted a video of them making a mess of someone's order, boogers and all. Not surprisingly this made its way around the web in record fashion. Watch the video here. The lesson: Not all buzz is good buzz. It will be interesting to see if there is a real impact, but at least for a few weeks many consumers will think twice about what toppings they are really getting with their Domino's pie. Here is a great article on how one YouTube Video can ruin a brand, including some research on the video's impact. ...And the pretty well thought out response from Domino's

In marketing pubs and blogs you often see people raving about the power of social media and web 2.0, but our friends at Domino's had quite a different experience last week. In case you missed it, two uniformed employees posted a video of them making a mess of someone's order, boogers and all. Not surprisingly this made its way around the web in record fashion. Watch the video here. The lesson: Not all buzz is good buzz. It will be interesting to see if there is a real impact, but at least for a few weeks many consumers will think twice about what toppings they are really getting with their Domino's pie. Here is a great article on how one YouTube Video can ruin a brand, including some research on the video's impact. ...And the pretty well thought out response from Domino's