Grown Up Thinking

Of all the new ads, ideas, articles, videos, and trends we sift through every day, these are the fun nuggets that stuck with us last week:

- The Oxford Dictionary is the most generous in adding Internet jargon to the official English language. Check out the list of last month’s new additions, my favorites being: baby bump, bestie, infographic, meep, newb, social graph, and ZOMG.

- Axe Sprayaway lets you remove what you think stinks on the web. Negative YouTube comment? New pic of your arch nemesis on Facebook? Opinion you don’t agree with and want to lash out against in a non-threatening way? Make yourself feel better with this fun tool.

- This conceptual work for UNICEF, done by students at the Miami Ad School, poses a new way to contribute funds to education by donating your misspelled words. A very creative and inspiring concept.

- The launch of the Tweet Button adds an easier way to embed Twitter into your sites with options to show the number of times the item has been tweeted and preload mentions.

- The Intel® Museum of Me is our favorite rendition of the myriad “social history” tools we’ve seen.  Beautiful and well done.

- Improv Everywhere did a great stunt called “Gotta Share” – it gives the flashmob a facelift and has all the social media rhyming words we could ask for

What’s floating your boat this week?

Mayor Bloomberg tweeted yesterday that the roadmap to make New York the number one digital city has been published. Called “Achieving New York City’s Digital Future” the report is over 60 pages of present situation, public feedback and data, and what’s in store for NYC.

I strongly encourage poring over the whole report, which is beautiful and intriguing. Not only is it inspiring to live in a city championing to be the number one digitally, it is amazing that we live in a place where social is understood and leveraged to the public and the city’s benefit.

As a social marketing agency we were particularly appreciative that the City recognizes the importance of good social strategy. The report reads, “The City’s most successful social media strategies are goal-based, aligning with agency objectives from the start, and employing social media channels appropriate to their audience and desired outcomes.” Bravo.

New York is doing a lot already to foster the development of digital tools and an open government. Here are some fun snippets I didn’t know before reading:

- New York has six official apps. One is dedicated to finding free condoms based on location, and another offers sobriety tests and info on safe rides home. Go NYC.
- The NYC Big Apps (HAH!) competition provided city data to developers to create independent applications – there were over 100 developed using public API
- The Urban Canvas competition wrapped up and features 4 finalists whose designs can be downloaded by building owners to make scaffolding more appealing
- You can use the hashtag #askmike to get your question answered by the Mayor on his Friday radio show

As for what’s next, here are some highlights of the roadmap:

- A new Facebook presence will be unveiled during Internet Week featuring apps that support the open government infrastructure
- A Foursquare badge will be introduced by the City to incentivize residents to explore public places
- Implementation of a DataMine API that gives developers access to 350+ data sets including:

- Citywide Events and Festivals
- Wi-Fi HotSpot Locations
- Map of Playgrounds
- Bicycle Parking Locations
- Tree Census
- Art Gallery Locations
- Subway Entrances
- A hub for all New York City mobile apps
- The launch of geo-targeted mobile notification services for emergencies so you know what’s happening around you

What do you want to see in New York’s future?

Twitter.com just got an upgrade! It’s been a while since we’ve seen a new homepage as Twitter has focused much of its redesign efforts on improving user experience; however, this new landing page is very obviously geared towards acquisition of new users. Let’s take a look at what stayed, what’s gone and why Twitter made these changes. (Images below)

WHAT STAYED?

Value Proposition: Twitter kept one if it’s focal points focusing on the value prop to the potential user, but evolved it to be broad reaching when it comes to need-states of potential new users. They’re definitely trying harder to sell Twitter to skeptical consumers.

Search: The search feature is still there, but has been moved down on the page to bring more focus to the value proposition to new users. Searching comes after the value proposition, prompting potential new users to find out what Twitter has to offer for themselves.

Who’s Here: Highlighted accounts have been lowered, but expanded to show more breadth, though it’s no longer “who’s here” since Twitter hosts accounts for more than just people.

Sign Up: Sign up stayed, but evolved. Now Twitter can get new users without asking them to click through to another page and go through the process of creating a handle. This is an obvious indication that the process of finding an available handle has been inhibiting their growth.

WHAT’S GONE?

Trending Topics: Bye bye trending topics! Though they’re not eliminated from the platform all together, they’re no longer being used to show what’s going on to potential new users… maybe to make Twitter’s value and content less narrowly focused?

Top Tweets: This looks like another way for Twitter to make the platform seems more adaptable to user needs by eliminating any content that may skew a new users view of what the platform has to offer.

Discover Twitter: The tutorial video is gone. It’s probably safe to assume that anyone going to twitter.com is familiar with what it is, and if they’re not, Twitter wants them to find out for themselves.

WHATS NEW?

The World: Twitter obviously wants to showcase the fact that they connect you to news and updates from around the world. What better way to do that than to put a big map of the world in the background?

The Colors: Twitter has abandoned their classic robin’s egg blue color for a less vibrant shade of grey/blue with white/silver accent colors. Why the color changes? Probably to make Twitter look more sophisticated.

WHY THE NEW LOOK?

For a long time people have been skeptical about using Twitter. They don’t see the value over Facebook and don’t feel like they have enough to say on Twitter that warrants an account. Twitter has attacked that notion head-on by changing its communication to focus on keeping up with updates from friends, experts, celebrities, brands and news outlets while also eliminating any content that would give a new user a myopic view of what Twitter has to offer them.

The old Twitter home page

The new Twitter home page

We’ve found a lot that is inspiring and LOL-worthy this week (and it’s only Wednesday!) Here’s a shortlist – our spring gift to you, dear reader.

The @bronxzooscobra: Ok so it may be scary and awful that a 20-inch, pencil-thin, extremely venomous cobra is missing in the Bronx Zoo, but it is hilarious for us that our slithery, parseltongued friend is tweeting about her adventures.  Let’s hope that the zoo will find the amusement in this amidst their dismay, as 120k+ other Twitter users are.

Kraft Mac and Cheese “cnt sleep” Spots: With a speedy production turnaround reminiscent of Old Spice, these new clips (all are featured on the Kraft Facebook page) were inspired by consumer tweets about mac and cheese. One spot aired on Conan and Lopez Monday night, and it was so successful that agency CP&B repeated it again on TBS last night.

Stella Artois – Triple Filtered: From a gritty and sobbing Adrian Brody to this newest shabby and love-struck gentleman, the male cast of Stella ads play on a fun egocentrism that describes the brand itself.  In this London-created TV/Cinema campaign, our leading man finds himself chasing after a girl out of his league.  In three smooth steps he goes from scruffy to sophisticated.

Ashley Boo Facebook App – A take-down from the Hunter Shoots a Bear campaign, this Flash integration to promote Rounds (a video chat service) is intended to show the spirit and capabilities of the brand.  The fake profile of Ashley Boo gives you a taste of what you and your friends can do together using the service.

What’s on your radar this week?  Let us know in the comments!

Mr Youth’s splashy S-List party was a big hit down in Austin. Billed as a ‘seriously social SXSW soireé’, these handy booklets were snapped up like hotcakes by our invitation-only crowd. Our handy guide even got a shoutout by the socially savvy Eliza Dushku who was in attendance. So flip through below and get schooled, yo.

Back in the day, advertising was a one-way street. You took out an ad on the side of newspaper and hoped for the best. Now there is no excuse to believe that singular approach will work. Traditional media should no doubt be used if that is the best way to meet your brand’s goals, but producing a newsletter, a magazine, a video, or any other type of content may be the best way to interact with your consumers and make you a reliable source in the industry.

Welcome to the world of branded content.

Image courtsey of http://www.mailinglijst.eu

I attended the SXSW panel ‘Brave New World: Debating Brands’ Role As Publishers’ where the panelists on the journalism, marketing, and content production software sides discussed the positives and issues of a ‘brave new world’ of content produced by marketers. With an abundance of content production tools, brands are becoming producers in a subject-matter they can own. And according to the panel, 25% of marketing budgets are going to content creation. Twenty-five!

While it’s clear that producing content that provides utility can be an excellent way to connect with consumers, the discussion became heated when the panel talked about branded content following journalistic standards. Some questions that were discussed (with no real conclusion during the panel) were:

-Is branded content journalism? Should it be held to the same standards as traditional media?

-Will consumers (not us marketing-nerds) truly be able to decipher the differences between branded content and traditional journalism? With the line grayed, how does this impact consumer trust, especially during a crisis? Who do they turn to?

-Can we build best practices in branded content? Who is building guidelines for branded content? Or will this be self-regulated by the brands’ communities themselves?

-How are companies going to evolve to build content in the correct way? One solution: some companies are hiring ‘Chief Content Officers’ to oversee this.

With CMS tools popping up everyday and increased production ease, the separate worlds of journalism and branded content are blurring by the day. According to the panel, the best steps we can take is to educate marketers on journalistic standards at a young age and for brands to develop a long-term content strategy as a part of the overall marketing mix.

When it comes down to it, best approach for brands is to tell a story in the avenues that reach their audience. And always, always stay true to your brand characteristics and ultimately the consumer.

Very interesting panel this morning on how brands can be proactive and reactive to extinguish ASAP. Key takeaways:

- Come up with a strategy in the beginning – are you or are you not going to allow consumers to engage with you? Brands should really allow consumers to engage with them, but set ground rules up front so consumers know when their posts might be taken down.

- Absolutely use a suite of social listening tools so you can be proactive in detecting and addressing potential crises before they become detrimental.

- The most credible thing out there is consumers who jump in and help you solve your problems. Ideally consumer support should happen organically, you don’t want to have to rally. This will happen if you foster your consumer relationships and create consumer loyalty from the beginning.

- Everyone loves to write on a wall so that their feedback – positive and negative – can be broadcast. Know that creating a customer support tab will not stop this. Brands need to accomodate how their consumers want to provide feedback.

- If you have a specific call to action to “Like” a page when a consumer arrives there for the first time, the fan conversion jumps from around 25% to around 45%.

- DO NOT hire an intern to run your Facebook page. You need to have one experienced person who knows the social media ropes to run your page on a daily basis. It is a full time job that requires someone who knows your brand and consumers inside and out.

Panel information: http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP7900

I just sat in on a panel discussion hosted by Marci Ikeler, Director of Digital Strategy at Publicis. The focus was  on co-creating content in the social space and our need to adapt to real-time culture. As advertisers we strive to create ideas that will spread quickly among our audience. Ikeler says the key here is to adapt in real time and invite people to co-create in a way that’s comfortable to them without asking too much.

Marci says, “Whether you invite people into a community for co-creation or not, people are doing it on their own.” In the meme-tastic 4chan community, members can “bump” pieces of content as a way to self-select information they’re interested in. This is how members say they want to see more on this topic, and as Ikeler noted, “The best response you can get from your audience is that they want more.”

Will clients embrace a site like 4chan that can’t truly be regulated? She says they will because more and more things are being done in a crowdsourced way, advertisers will have to embrace that there will be content out there that’s off-brand.

So how do get consumers interested in produced or branded content when they could just go make it themselves? As one panel guest reminded us, “We as advertisers are the echo, not the boom.”

Ikeler talked through a few different strategies for effectively engaging your audience. “If you’re not creating ideas that develop naturally in a social environment it’s not going to work, you can’t just post any content in the social space and assume it will grow [...] Some videos aren’t as attuned to social spread and dialogue as more successful ones.”

Marci’s solution is micro-content: fast, small and sticky. Rather than coming up with a long-form, polished video, the most successfully social brands are posting micro-content more frequently. It can be risky to put that much content out there, but it allows advertisers to test which types of content and messaging will resonate best with their audience.

The most fascinating piece of this conversation, sparked by Mr Youth’s very own Matt Britton (far right), was the topic of anonymity online. As brands become people and people become brands, the online presence of every person will be the dominant record of your life story and personal brand attributes. As many teens start conversations online there is a trend of hiding behind a curtain in order to truly be themselves. Teens feel a need to create a persona online to express themselves and be someone that they don’t have the opportunity to be in real life (or don’t feel comfortable being in real life).

There are goods and bads to anonymity. It makes teens feel safe and allows them to test and learn without damaging their real-life reputation, but at the same time discourages them from being themselves in real life, accepting who they are, and merging their online world with their offline world. The internet creates communities of acceptance. Let’s make the real world like that, too.

On January 28th we posted our POV on the social media blackout in Egypt. Social media played a remarkable role in the ability for revolutionaries to communicate and mobilize, and this is not the first instance where social enabled incredible change for a country and its people.

With knowledge of the political and cultural power of their sites the executives of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google, and others have unique approaches to their resulting responsibility and democratic role.

Google isn’t afraid of taking sides. Becoming part of the revolution, they worked with Twitter to create Speak2Tweet, allowing the people in Egypt to skirt the online access restrictions. YouTube also played a role on behalf of the protesters by quickly curating submitted content to be shared with the world.

While it is unquestionable that Facebook knows their power as a tool for social change, there is no intention to partner with movements as Google and Twitter have done. In part this is a crucial stance on behalf of social justice. If Facebook promoted themselves as a tool for uprising or gave statements in support of this activity, the site would be blocked by some regimes in a precautionary attempt to avoid a repeat of Tunisia or Egypt.

Some advocates for human rights see this as a mistake (more on this specifically in this NY Times article). The trust and authenticity we find so appealing about Facebook can be devastating to citizens of more oppressive nations as it stems from the prohibition of false identities. Facebook’s response is always in defense of overall user protection, so this policy is not currently up for negotiation.

This does not mean that Facebook will idly stand by. Last month we all jumped on the security upgrade to prevent stolen passwords. This was Facebook’s response to actions taken by the Tunisian government, worded as a technical solution across the board for greater user security. Facebook has also shut down activist pages with falsified admin names, solidifying their stance against overall abuse to their terms.

All social media sites have been threaded into historical progress. What do you think of the differences between Google and Twitter putting themselves in the front line and Facebook sticking to the sidelines?