The people in the video who see this glass elevator dunk an Oreo cookie into a glass of milk are paying attention. I wonder how many of them grab a bag of Oreo’s on the way home. A cool, alternative way to push advertising.
This is serious news when it comes to business networking and social media, I see a serious win-win here for both parties. There has been some debate recently about Facebook and how seriously it can be taken when it comes to businesses using the Facebook network to extend their social media ambitions as well as advertise across it. I would argue that the LinkedIn/NYT partnership steps up the ante for both Facebook and MySpace; the NYT, one of the world’s great media institutions that has seriously embraced the internet to further its business, may be on a path to shaking off its “Grey Lady” image and LinkedIn, which, although having only 25 million registered users making it small by social network standards, is by far the doyen of social sites for serious business users. We’ll see how this one unfolds.
Kudos, once again to Marshall Kirkpatrick for breaking the story.
Studio Nemo is always hopping and it always gets the good stuff! This shoot was for Nike 6 with photographer Josh Letchworth behind the lens. The Nike 6.0 athletes were in town for Migration, a week of fun-filled activity and work all rolled into one. It’s like a giant meet and greet for all these kids from different areas of action sports.
Q. How do we reach these young people? A. You don’t, you wait for them to invite you
The social media folks and their blogs have been buzzing lately over a story that seems to have come from Deloitte but perhaps was more widely circulated by the WSJ. Josh Catone at Sitepoint drilled down further into the story from where it got picked up by Marshall Kirkpatrick on ReadWriteWeb.
Both Josh and Marshall have great points and their posts are a good read. Marshall’s post had the most provocative headline - Corporate Social Networks Are A Waste of Money, Study Finds. I thought I’d pick up the story there - A Waste of Money. Companies have a bad habit of throwing money at everything that moves, especially if it looks like “something we should be doing.”
Here are my thoughts distilled from my own writings on the subject and insights borrowed from Josh and Marshall’s posts:
Here’s an extract from my essay ‘On Social Media, Blogs and Advertising.’ - To understand and embrace social networking is to place the idea that says “technology makes this possible” to one side and embrace the idea of the basic human need to stay in touch with other like-minded people at all times. As Clay Shirky says “The desire to be part of a group that shares, cooperates, or acts in concert is a basic human instinct.” Read the rest of this post here.
With that thought what follows is:
Businesses can not “build a community” however much money they throw at the idea. They merely need to look outside of their own walls, find the influencers who are already championing their products and join the communities that already exist.
Businesses can not attract “visitors” as measured in traffic to their sites. People who enjoy their products will be talking about them elsewhere in other communities. See above.
Businesses have to realize that having a Facebook page for their products makes them look ridiculous and could actually harm the brand. See my post about Spraychel and “her” Facebook page brought to us by the folks behind I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter®
It is the way of businesses to make predictions about their market. They should not invest in software that makes predictions, or even social-networking technology, unless they have discovered a clear market need.
Positive word of mouth marketing by online communities that enjoy a businesses’ product is a far better metric than the ratio of visits to the corporate web site or its community.
Online communities led by influencers that champion a businesses’ products are doing just that, championing the products not the corporation that brought them to market.
So what should businesses do? Here’s a list that I have reworked to address businesses as it was originally written with rock bands in mind.
They should:
01. Run a blog to which actual company members post regular updates.
02. Ensure that the blogosphere is alerted to any new and breaking news or important posts.
03. Offer early access to special offers and discounts for their customers loyalty.
04. Give away free samples of their product.
05. Be active in their customers online communities.
06. Never push unwanted messages to their customers.
07. Ask their customers to interact directly with their product, for example through competitions and giveaways.
08. Allow the sharing of their products amongst a community.
09. Work closely with influencers.
10. Embrace radical transparency. Openly discuss their problems with their customers and allow negative comments to remain on their blogs.
That’s the top ten; number 11 in my list would include - have dedicated staff working on your company’s online communication 24/7.
Read more of our thoughts on Social Media here.
I love coincidences. Or maybe I should say that as you spend your waking time fully immersed in your daily activities you should deliberately give some of that time over to your subconscious, then there would be no such thing as coincidence; we would just call it awareness.
I posted my summer reading list recently and mentioned that I am buried in E.O. Wilson’s wonderful intellectual adventure ‘Consilience; The Unity Of Knowledge,’ in which he argues just that, the need for unity of knowledge - a common system of knowledge. Today in the New York Times I read an interview with Dr. Wilson and, not for the first time in his career, he is challenging common wisdom. He is arguing that the gene is not the only level at which natural selection acts and because he has new data about the genetics of ant colonies now believes that natural selection operates at many levels, including at the level of a social group. Interesting; what does this mean for all you social media advertising gurus?
He argues that we have long been conditioned to believe that natural selection favors only behaviors that help the individual to survive and leave more children. His studies of ant colonies, a passion of his for many decades, suggest otherwise. He says there is another level at which evolution operates - social groups. He suggests that we may have genes that underlie generosity, moral constraints, even religious behavior, that benefit a group at the expense of the individual. He will be working on these theories for his next book. I can’t wait to read it.
So what genetic code could Dr. Wilson possibly unravel that would explain the human proclivity toward having “feelings” for inanimate objects? Cars are cherished, protected and nurtured like family members. Ships are regularly christened with female names and referred to as “she” or “her.” Houses, cities, buildings, mountains - this urge to have “feelings” for inanimate objects is the same urge that drives humans to want to save the Earth; it is a controlling urge and is a by-product of Christianity.
All of which brings me to the brilliant Spike Jonze and his Ikea ad. [Full disclosure - Nemo and in particular our creative director, Mark Lewman, have deep ties to Spike.]
The ad works from a simple premise; play on our emotional attachment to inanimate objects - in this case a desk lamp that is discarded. In the first second, as the woman leans in to turn off the lamp, we hear a click of the switch or is that maybe a goodbye kiss ? The lamp is then dumped outside alongside a trash bag. It’s raining… How do we feel as the piano tugs at our heartstrings? We should feel nothing, it’s a ridiculous situation, but in many people it may trigger deep human responses to abandonment. That illusion is shattered by a man with distinctly Scandanavian/German overtones to his accent, who berates us for having such stupid feelings.
Spike spent exactly one minute reminding us, if we are really watching and tapped into our subconscious, that the human need to control other animals and inanimate objects is foolhardy and doomed to failure. It won’t stop us buying new desklamps though.
