by: David Polinchock
I know, I’ve been quiet lately. Part of it is travel, part of it is work and part of it is probably ADD setting in and just losing interest in blogging. It’s been almost 4 years, so it’s not surprising that I’m losing some steam.
But part of it is also trying to figure out what else I can keep adding to the conversation. I’m using Twitter a little more these days, because I can just write something quick & get it out. With only 140 characters, I don’t have to think that much about what I’m going to say. I just say it and move on.
With the blog, of course, I feel like maybe I need to write something more in-depth, with some real thought behind it. But, maybe I can take from the twitterverse and just do some short, random thoughts. After all, no one likes to come to a blog with no recent updates. Is something better then nothing? Do I sound like Carrie on Sex in the City? And, what about Naomi?
It is interesting to continue to watch the ad industry continue to jump from tact to tactic. A few days back, someone twittered about how all of the cool people had community in their title. Now, I think they were really jjst being funny and all, but if you look back over the past couple of years at the ad industry, it’s actually a good indication of what happens.
After all, a few years back, everyone was talking "branded content." That was the future of our business (despite the fact that branded content was almost as old as content. Apparently known of the branded content gurus had heard the story of why they’re called soap operas!). I would love to know how many branded content firms were created back then! But more importantly, I’d like to know how many are still around today.
Next, we all became WOM experts. It seemed like even more then the branded content, thousands of WOM companies & experts popped up over night, helping clients understand the very complex world of WOM and being viral. (I was being sarcastic there.) And as we learned when we all became authentic, WOM can’t be manipulated. We said then and continue to say today, WOM is a by product of doing something well. It’s not a tactic by itself. And once again I’ll say, if you allocate X% of your marketing budget to WOM, doesn’t that have to mean you expect the rest of your marketing to be too lame for anyone to talk about? Shouldn’t 100% of what you do be designed to generate WOM?
Then we moved to Second Life & the virtual worlds. Suddenly, we had all these experts in the metaverse explaining why virtual worlds were the next big, frontier. Again, lots of companies started around this one, single tactic, while proclaiming it the future of advertising. Lots of hype, lots of money poured into Second Life and lots of mediocre results for the most part. Companies just didn’t understand how to use virtual worlds and most of the experts didn’t have any better handle then the clients did. And before you write me off as just not getting it, I did my first Adweek interview on advertising in virtual worlds in 1994.
Today, we’re all experts in social media and community. Once again being hailed as the future & savior of the advertising industry. Blogs, twitters, Facebook, Myspace, etc. And now everyone cool has the word "community" in their title. And for my friends in this new world of community, how many brand communities to you actually belong to? I mean, ones that aren’t a client and therefore paying you to be a part of.
And for all of the community experts out there, how many of them are recommending physical, face-to-face community efforts? I mean, lots of brands have billions of dollars of real estate that most community experts don’t even think about! Apple has a huge community and they do a lot of their socializing right there, in the stores. I love Twitter, but it will never replace actually meeting people. Just look at how the attendees of the recent Blogger Social talk about that event. Sure, online communities are important, but if you’re not talking to your clients about offline communities too, should you really be calling yourself a community manager?
And that’s why me and lots of other folks talk about experience so much. Because your brand is the accumulation of everything you do. You don’t succeed or fail based on a single tactic. You create compelling, authentic & relevant experiences across every interaction with your audience. The formula is really pretty simple (man, I wish I could make pretty pictures like David Armano does!):
Play & experiment with everything you can. Use all of the tools & tactics available to you. But understand, that a good blog or Twitter program won’t help you overcome a bad product or generally bad brand experience.
And maybe one, all of the cool people will have experience in their title.
PS — I’ll buy a beer for anyone who knows where the Naomi reference above!
Sent wirelessly from Nokia 9500 & T-Mobile
Original Post: http://blog.brandexperiencelab.org/experience_manifesto/2008/04/some-random-tho.html
