Twitter’s Black Friday Signals an Exit Strategy
I don’t vouch for the quality of twitip’s analysis, but it certainly seems plausible to me.

In sum, @nealwiser believes that Twitter, having announced intentions to bar third-party Twitter clients (such as Tweetdeck and Seesmic, which I and squillions of others use daily, is on a path to shore up its valuation.

Seen from another angle, it represents Twitter’s first move to close ranks, and cut off the ecosystem, and all the investment of time and energy that has been expended to make the platform the phenomenon it is today.

Either way, a sad day in the industry.

Coca Cola and Pepsi Logo

Originally uploaded by Stefan M Nilsson

This is slightly manipulative, since Coke has played lots of games with its logos as well, but the point is great at least at a branding 101 level.

I like this definition of a brand: “an enduring promise of value.” This infographic clearly illustrates the power of the word “enduring” in that phrase.

Enjoy!

Autumn in Harrisville, NH

Here we are in the first few days of autumn, 2010.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is running as far and fast from The Social Network as he can, and counteracting all of this imminent negative buzz with a gift of 100 million goal units (par value, $1) to Newark, New Jersey schools.

I called it “Tulip Time” for social media back in July.  Crazy hype.  Murky thinking.  Bad decision-making.  Errors.  Noise.

The pendulum on all of this craziness is shifting.  Is sanity to be restored to marketing as a profession, career, and strategic business function?

In Bloomberg Businessweek yesterday, another voice of reason, a little more clear light.  Well done, Greg Verdino, whoever you are.

What do you think?

I was reading an interesting post on PR[squared] about the usefulness of the web, web apps, iPhone and Android apps, and so on.  A key data point came from Pinch Media , citing the extremely short half-life of most downloaded smartphone apps.

Usage of free applications drops to less than 5% in less than 30 days.

After 30 days: 5% of downloaded apps are used!

As we move forward to Web n.0 (does yours go to 11?), I am stunned daily to see how much digital waste we are creating.  The digital landfill is cheap storage and disposable electronic devices.  But surely there is enormous waste of human productivity.

We download dozens (hundreds?) of applications for our smart phones, and never use them.  We generate (as I am doing here) millions of pages of content for consumption via the web — and an enormous percentage of it is “dreck” — pure unmitigated crap.

But it represents human effort to create, distribute and support those bits… a huge percentage of which is useless from a practical standpoint within days.  Doesn’t that bother you?

Shouldn’t we have higher standards of productivity, or at least usefulness, for the output of our labors?  Shouldn’t we demand more quality in all of these areas, and set standards for the improvement of our utilization of these digital assets?

What if Apple were to announce that if iPhone applications were not at 20% utilization 30 days after download, the providers would be given reduced rankings suffer reduced distribution of their gadgets or widgets?

What if Google said they would no longer index content that hasn’t had a visitor within the last 12 months?

Of course neither of these things will happen, but if we don’t impose higher quality standards on our digital output, something will have to be done.  Or we’ll start contracting diseases from the inhalation of all the web dust.

When I became a corporate “outsider,” almost three years ago, I felt that marketing as a business function was changing fundamentally.  I plunged into research mode to learn how the “old media” (print publications, radio, network & cable TV, with staff writers employed by giant media companies) were giving way to the “new” (citizen publishers producing content on the web for free).

I launched my consulting business by exploiting social networks, this blog, and free content (see Resources) in order to stimulate my network and tease out interest in project work ranging from part-time-CMO to white papers.  It worked.

I also witnessed “tulip mania” as self-styled (and genuine) experts emerged and captured the attention of almost everyone on a marketing career path.  For a time during 2009 old media events (conferences) were popping up left right and center headlined by new media gurus extolling one of the movement’s foundation principles: Give, give, give… listen, listen, listen… engage… and in the end you will be rewarded a hundredfold with opportunity (and, presumably, filthy lucre).  Become known as a source of quality content, and customers will beat a path to your door.

A couple of months ago, I spotted an ad on Facebook which quoted social media beacon Chris Brogan’s daily rate at something in excess of $20,000.  The offer was to gain all of that wisdom by joining a new community featuring Chris, Darren Rowse, and Brian Clarke — known as Third Tribe Marketing — for a mere $97 initial payment, followed by $47 per month.  As their blogs, collectively, have over 300,000 readers, even using the old school marketing yield on direct mail of 2%, that’s a neat $3 million (with an M) per annum!  Now that’s capitalism for you.  My guess is they timed that initiative just right.

Go for the promotional material on the website if you wish (after all, they’re amongst the best at web copy writing), but let’s be clear: as well as these guys have been doing living off the “give it away for free” model, these leading lights have clearly seen an opportunity to do business one $500-per-year subscription at a time.  Perhaps, like Lebron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh — it’s not about their ego or the money — they just want to win the new media world championship.  Time will tell.

Another recent observation: though the new media mantra of “inbound marketing” (nowhere more religiously observed than at Hubspot) poo poos the old-school outbound tactics of telemarketing and direct mail, I know many of us with marketing in our online profiles were bombarded with offers to sign up for the April Inbound Marketing Summit in San Francisco — notably as the conference’s dates were drawing perilously near.

So should this mini-bubble burst, should the petals drop from the precious tulips (and I believe it/they will), what can we take away?

First, it is true that the media have irreversibly changed. The problem is, the changes are not that dramatic, nor are the implications that difficult to understand.  There isn’t a huge amount of magic; no need for wizards; no new secret handshakes and shibboleths for the elite of this new marketing paradigm.  Brands are their own publishers, and they are largely in control of their own media.  A capability once outsourced to one or more agencies has moved in house, and media costs are heading toward zero.  That’s about it.  I speak to groups of young entrepreneurs from time to time… and after two hours of very high level teaching, they are off and running and becoming their own content foundries.

Psst… guess what… it’s not really that hard to figure this stuff out!

Second, brands (and marketing professionals in particular) need to take much more seriously the content responsibility with which they are now saddled.  We used to talk about a people to programs ratio of 40:60.  Leverage in marketing meant distributing costs 40% in human resource costs, and 60% in media and external programs designed to “drive the fish to the nets.”  Today companies need to invest much more heavily in the creation, curation, and distribution of content — using human beings to do so.  Marketing departments will be moving discretionary spend (which is easy to cut in case of a revenue shortfall) to personnel expense (which is difficult to cut, at least for most sentient humans).

Finally, marketing needs to attack with every fiber in its being the “signal-to-noise ratio” problem which all of this new media and social networking technology has created.  Zero barriers to entry for publishing and vastly expanding user-generated content volume conspire to create a polluted information environment which makes the BP Deepwater Horizon mess look like “On Golden Pond.”  In addition to relentless promotion of our own messages and achievements, we are going to have to exhibit leadership in filtering the extremely high volume of extremely low value information, and continuously enhance our web sites to make them more like museums, libraries, and exhibits — destinations for quality, creativity, and clarity — and less like cheesy storefronts.  Content curation solutions, like the one just launched by HiveFire, may be extremely valuable in attacking this enormous challenge.

What do you think?

I Love Boobies Bracelet

I love clever marketing — campaigns that gently walk the line between the clean-cut and cool.  Slogans that have you laughing a bit but remind you of an important issue or problem or opportunity.  I think of the “I ♥ Boobies / (keep a breast)” program as clearly in this category.  Right at the edge; funny; provocative.

However, education administrators see things differently.  School administrations around the country are banning the wristbands which are sold to raise funds to educate young women about the importance of early detection of breast cancer.  Out, out naughty teens and your filthy slogans!

Educators see things differently in South Hadley Massachusetts, as well.  In South Hadley, a remarkably large group of misguided and apparently unobserved punks (nine have been indicted at this writing), hectored, harassed, and hassled young Phoebe Prince with absolute freedom until, tragically, the object of their ridicule took her own life.

Hypocrisy is always worth calling out for scrutiny.  I find it astounding that our culture has reached a point where educators — adults responsible for how we shape and teach our youth — can see fit to ban perfectly harmless slogans in favor of a good cause, while in the very same news cycle they are revealed to be oblivious (and so far free of any retribution or legal responsibility) to the presence of evil in teenage form among them in a small New England high school.

Whither common sense?

Flickr: Swamibu

Sorry, but the iPad announcement was an iDud.  Steve Jobs looked and sounded weak, and I just got the feeling that the iPad was a LARGE TYPE version of the iPod Touch. So much missing. But perhaps he’ll get the sympathy vote and the product will recover.  Just such a yawn — and after all of that uncharacteristic leaking of information and features!

And the State of the Union?  Again, the anticipation preceding any speech from the Great Orator is always high — and I’m not sure even Chris Mathews felt the tingle up his leg after this one.

Are we in a marketing malaise?  A Sargasso Sea of cynicism?

Or just the winter doldrums?

Based on the roaring finish which was calendar Q4 of 2009 (at least for us), I think it’s precisely the wrong time to curl up in ursine slumber.  And marketing must continue to lead — to set the psychological tone months ahead of consumer sentiment broadly.

Let’s be bold, people!

Now, on the other hand, here’s a new web site that has done something extremely bold: GolfTripGenius.com.  Disclaimer: I’ve advised them over the past few months.

They’ve solved several of the most annoying problems facing golf trip captains — and done so with extremely powerful technology made simple.

Whoda thunk the golf industry had much room left for innovation outside club design and fertilizers to keep those desert courses green?

You?

In last week’s post, I asked: What was Coca-Cola’s long-term financial gain from the Coca-Cola Classic marketing debacle?

The answer: Coca-Cola’s long-term financial gain came as a result of recipe legerdemain which saved the company hundreds of millions in costs.

At the time the New Coke was foisted upon us, sugar prices had spiked to historic highs.  The original Coca-Cola product was, of course, made with sugar.

Under the cover of the brand darkness created by the New Coke, the company created a new Coca-Cola recipe, now know as Coca-Cola Classic, which was made with High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), not sugar.

The cost to produce the new product, which many consumers believed was “good old Coke,” fell dramatically.

Ironically, prices have equalized to some extent in recent years, and many vendors (notably, Pepsi), have brought sugar-based recipes back to the market.

To obtain Coca-Cola made with sugar, you have to buy the “hecho in Mexico” (made in Mexico) product.

There’s change in the air for “social media,” and even Chris Brogan — whose visibility on this “movement” is perhaps greater than any other’s — has recognized it.  Why?  Because I think too many businesses and revenue or profit-oriented business people just got fed up.

Here’s a recent interview I conducted with one particularly fed up, overhyped, victim of the Snake Oil salesmen, whom I’ll call FU.

TD: You’ve been getting worked up about the social media hype out there… why?

FU: I am getting sick and tired of the entire blogosphere.  It makes me want to stop blogging.

TD: Why’s that?

FU: Because the blogosphere is full of the most painfully self-centered a-holes on earth.  OK, it is not replete with them.  It is, IMHO, engorged with them, which, the more I think about it, is apropos.  But if you use the web’s metrics of the moment, there are hundreds of oft-read bloggers whose subject matter is so blatantly their eponymous greatness that I just find myself wanting to puke.

TD: Steady on, mate!  Why are you so angry about all of this?

FU: Think about these d-bags: thought of themselves as intellectuals back in college.  A liberal arts major, likely.  Had a decent career applying those skills to a field that, well, s*&t, wasn’t all that high minded — like, say, technology marketing.  Before long they refer to themselves as “serial entrepreneurs” and boast assignments as “executive in residence” with a VC firm in Waltham as though it were a f*&^ing Fulbright scholarship.

TD: Hold your horses, there Fred.  I was a liberal arts major — I’ve been in technology marketing for 20 years — I’ve done OK by this industry and while I admire my friends who followed their dreams… (FU interrupts)

FU: Along comes the web, and blogs.  No barrier to entry, and exploding adoption.  Unlike their high school classmates who sacrificed to be real writers and earn their living as authentic journalists, suddenly they, and the wisdom achieved persuading “senior business executives to optimize their business performance by accelerating innovation,” or some other bucketful of meaningless tripe, feel entitled to share the insight thus gained with the rest of the world.  So these people start sharing with the world their most mundane work habits and productivity secrets.  “What comes up on my iMac when I lift the lid at Oh-Dark-Thirty.”  Ten Twitter Tips, Thirteen Must-Have Plug-ins,  Nine Ways You Too Can Become a Self-Involved Twit.  Soon we’ll start reading these f#$#ing genius’ predictions about the f^%$ing future.

TD: Actually, I see that those have started already — including Chris Brogan’s prediction of the consolidation / rationalization of this whole social media space.

FU: They share all of this with their precious communities, their friends, their followers — for free — because they know that NOW it’s all about giving and if you give enough you’ll get back ten times over.  They use the no cost, no barrier-to-entry platform like a step class at the Boston Sports Club.  They step up to tell the world what a moron an executive at one of the worlds largest manufacturing companies is because he doesn’t watch YouTube videos between calls with his steel and rubber suppliers.  Then they step down, back into their pathetic near-anonymity, and see if the stupid s@#t goes viral.

TD: But it has to be said that sometimes those things do go viral.  And I think it’s a bit unfair to call these people nearly anonymous — big blog sites like ProBlogger get 10s of thousands of visitors per day, my man.

FU: Come on — you know one of these bloggers, don’t you?  Don’t you just hate them?

TD: I envy them, at least at the moment — they’re riding a fairly exciting wave, no?

FU:  Well any way, that’s why I think you should quit reading blogs, including this one.

[TD - post interview: or, share your thoughts about this post below!]

We are allegedly on the cusp of recovery.  Things are supposed to be improving.  All we need to see is those floodgates of new business open up and… we’ll be all good!

But I find that when I talk to customers and prospects, we are all frustrated.  We all want this recovery to take hold in a real way — real in terms of easier deals, more deals, less stress.

One thing that doesn’t seem to change, whether we are under stress or things are going great, is the self-discipline required to keep the basics of our marketing going.  Certainly I fall victim to this syndrome — I ignore the blog, fail to attend to my SEO hygiene, drift from the beloved Twitterverse for days on end.

An apple a day.  Once in the morning is not enough.  Pablum, but common sense.

Today, I got back to the blog — fixed some bugs, and got this post written.  Not sure what I’ll tend to tomorrow… are you ?

* – today’s blog title attributed to Christine Mann of Randori Partners.