Activating the Future

I have had the great pleasure of embarking on a great journey at work: Defining the Future of Mobility.

My agency, Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners, has taken on this noble cause as part of its work for BMW ‘s launch of the ActiveE: Its first-ever all-electric road vehicle.

While BMW is committing billions of dollars to research for alternative fuel vehicles and engineering, it is not diving head-first into the EV market without research. It had already launched a pilot program with its MINI-E electric vehicle last decade… which created much real-world data and field testing experience. Now, BMW takes things a step further with its ActiveE field trial.

The social media heavy marketing program for the ActiveE has recently launched. So far, we’ve created a user forum for MINI-E Pioneers and EV enthusiasts to host open conversations ranging from “Why EVs?” to “The Future of Mobility” to “What color will the cars be?”.  BMW is answering questions in the forum and encouraging collaboration and suggestions for their new vehicle, for the forum itself as well as an app ActiveE drivers and onlookers can use to calculate fuel efficiency among other things.

We have also filmed a four-part documentary called “Wherever You Want To Go”. To quote PSFK.com:

“The story is told from the perspective of influential scientists, academics and entrepreneurs, and is delivered via a four-part documentary that ‘paints a unique picture of technology, culture, cities, our past, present and how it all relates to the future of mobility’. The film promises no definitive answers – simply smart questions from smart people to generate discussion, creativity and imagination.”

Have a look at the film’s trailer

More updates coming soon. Excited to see this program unfold!

http://www.BMWActivateTheFuture.com

WOMMA Summit recap part two

So, here is part two of my WOMMA Summit recap.

I have to admit… I had a conference call at 8:30… and missed  a bit of the early portion of  day two. I did go out “sightseeing” the night before, however, being the father of a four-year-old and leading the agency lifestyle (9-10 hour work days then more work at home after dinner) has my tolerance for sleeping <6 hours pretty high.

The first full session I attended was called Building Brand Evangelists through Engaging Communities. The two brands who spoke were Verizon and Caterpillar (they both incidentally use Lithium as their community platforms).

Becky Carroll from Verizon had the usual things to share about her company’s social media and community forays: Initially Verizon saw mostly complaints by customers in social media monitoring… until they opened up their own channels and platforms (which was a little risky according to some inside Verizon). Now customers can find answers themselves and help each other out… and “red flag” people can be caught eary before they reach the boiling point and use social/Twitter as their breaking point/soap box. She cited some nice examples from the Verizon Idea Exchange. She said their most fruitful social platform is the Idea Exchange… but that will soon be less of a competitive advantage as it’s out in the open for all competitors to snoop (and I bet if they track domains, they KNOW AT&T, Sprint, etc. have been poking around).

Kevin Espinosa, eBusiness Platform Manager, from Catepillar was humorous in his delivery.. and definitely has had to walk the edge of upper managements’ comfort zones in the building of Cat’s social media presence. Now, through their communities online, they have direct conversations and work with their most valuable heavy equipment buyers and can help fuel the passion that CAT users have about their products… getting insights, early feedback on new products and info about dealerships.

Next up was lunch and the WOMMY Awards… a nice chance to network and see some great sizzle videos by some of the contenders. Check out the 2009 winners here. And a press release about the 2010 winners here. Best Buy’s Twelpforce (Congrats to Best Buy and their agency Crispin Porter & Bogusky) won the Grand Prix award (as voted by the attendees).

Then I attended  a session with USAA… one of the most admired financial services/insurance brands in social media. Their secret: Having a kickass product with strong emotional ties (the military)… and having a ton of social hooks to allow customers to shout their praises. No secret sauce. Just good blocking and tackling.   Another innovation in financial services: Just Ask Scott.

The day wound down with a nice keynote by Lois C. Greisman from the FTC’s division of Marketing Practices in their Bureau of Consumer Protection. It was really great to literally hear it straight from the Feds: They have rooms full of people (some undercover, some not) essentially monitoring the Internet for unfair acts and scams. They generally do use complaints directly to the FTC…but also troll boards and other online media for clues of abuse/misuse. She also gave one interesting cocktail party convo topic for us all to use: DO YOU EVER LOOK AT YOUR PHONE BILL? She said less than 15% of people read their paper phone bills. Less than 10% of us who use online-only/paperless billing read our bills. Phone bills are one of the biggest sources of complaints fielded by her office: Over charges, hidden fees, direct bill to phone, etc.

See a graphic designer’s interpretation of Lois Greisman’s Presentation here.

After a disco nap and dinner… was the “Style Your Sole” party brought to us by AmEx among others. It featured a talk from the head of marketing from TOM’S shoes and AmEx and also featured some pretty amazing swag: Water bottles from AmEx Members Project, a $25 voucher to a charity of our choice from AmEx, a pair of TOM’S shoes to decorate with lots of craft supplies donated by Fiskars and more. Great, fun, interactive idea (but most of us are marketers and not designers! Not a lot of award-winning shoe designs…ha).

See some of the wacky photos from the event here compliments of NING (sans the ones of @lalalula and me… what gives?)

The and last day (Friday) was a partial day. The kick-off was a great panel discussion lead by Jeremy Jeremiah Owyang, Partner of Customer Strategy at Altimeter Group. Two of the most noteworthy anecdotes:

“Most people only call an 800 # if a website is truly awful… especially if you are under 30!”

“Social ROI research is possible… just need to pay for it!”

The next full session I caught featured Comblu… yet another community platform company (I had never heard of them before… glad to have found them! They shared a bit from case studies with Dell, Discovery Channel, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation… and how they have helped these brands create online discussion and focus groups — with many of the participants getting nothing but praise and virtual points!

The final keynote was by Jeremiah Owyang, Partner of Customer Strategy at Altimeter Group and also author of the blog  named Web Strategy. He shared a study with us, outlining social media strategists/marketers in the industry and the salary, experience and demographic traits of we social folks. I will try to find a link to his exact preso… but looks like the nice folks at AmEx have harnessed his study for a post on their Open Forum (which, I love).

After the closing remarks, we all went on our merry ways.

All-in-all, a great conference. Loved the 45 minute sessions (forced presenters to get to their points), the fact that the expo/exhibits were open all three days, the progam/notebook adhesion, quality level of speakers and the general vibe.

Didn’t love: Weird conference tote bags (not so attractive), plastic ware/Styrofoam used in catering (I am a bit of a tree hugger), lack of organized networking/matching events. Also, most of the presenters said “these decks will be posted online after the conference… anyone know where?

Those minor issues  can all be remedied. I had to say something constructive 😉

Until next time…

 

ps: Check out a nice bullet-pointed recap of the conference here by Ekaterina from Intel.

WOMMA Summit 2010 recap

Apologies if this is more than a little late. Pesky clients who pay the bills are to fault. And Thanksgiving malaise. And being a busy NYC social media guy.

My workmate Laura (@lalalula) and I attended the WOMMA Summit in Las Vegas a couple weeks ago. I am happy to say we only missed one of the early morning keynotes (not due to late night gambling… it was client calls… honest!) and divided the program as best we could to take in the optimal # of speakers and insights.

First off, it was billed as being at the PARIS Hotel and Casino. Well, it sort of was. It was actually at the Bally’s Casino Conference Center a ten minute walk away. Minor detail… and it did allow for some window shopping in the connecting mall.

Not being a member of WOMMA, I was not exactly sure what sort of vibe the conference would have. It ended up being very professional but relaxed, thorough but not too long and high level (lots of C-level people) but not snobby… it was in Vegas afterall. I was impressed by the roster of speakers and the lack of the “pay to speak” vibe many marketing conferences have. There were no high-pressure pitches… and, frankly, not a lot of hands-on organization that many destination conferences have (which may not be a good thing if you are traveling solo… I liked that aspect personally).

After a quick welcome address by Kristen Smith and Walter J. Carl…The conference started out with the SVP of Idea Development from Forrester, Josh Bernoff. Great start. One of the actual talking heads from Forrester in the flesh! He was peddling a book (which we all got a free copy of thanks to Visible Technologies) and gave us some great stats on WHO actually influences online in the sea of chatter and opinion… and how to start determining which customers you are overvaluing. Nothing shocking… but great info. You can download the presentation and chapter one of his book at http://www.forrester.com/womma

Next up, I went to the session called Getting Social with B2B Marketing with Ben Edwards, VP of Digital Strategy at IBM. I had to admit, I was a little envious of the ease at which Edwards described his quest for social media mastery at IBM: So many sharing geeks in one place! It was more of a matter of channeling the energy than energizing squeamish staffers.

He pointed out the IBM Expert Channel (first of its kind on Slideshare) where forward thinkers at IBM showcase their work. Talk about transparency and thought leadership! Also, check out their Cannes workshop site for some B2B social smarts.

The next session called Measuring Consumer Advocacy featured SONY’s Christine Stahler. She, along with a sidekick from the newish Nielsen McKinsey Incite Innovation Center, shared a study that showed us how consumer sentiment impacts purchase decisions. It was a little stats-y (I loved it). A couple  little bits:

• They called Social Media “Unprompted Research”
• Product Reviews are a totally different animal than social media in general, as are blog comments

Final assessment: Good sentiment and a lot of it = better sales results

The final session of the day was called The State of Social Media Sponsorships by Ted Murphy… the founder and CEO of IZEA (Sponsored Tweets and formerly-known-as Pay-Per-Post). This guy used to be the whipping boy of the industry… being labeled and a party pooper. Fast forward 5 years and suddenly sponsored social media posts are OK and even government regulated. Nice recovery. (I used to use Pay-Per-Post to promote video content in my former life at Heavy.com).

Some interesting stats from his recent survey of social media folks:

• 88.3% of social media publishers monetize social media in some way.
• 87.4% of social media publishers have or would create sponsored content.
• The average social media publisher spends $711 per year on hosting, education, conferences and related social media costs.
• Twitter users earn 298% more in SMS for their blog than non-twitter users.
• 35% of pr, social media and marketing professionals are not aware of the FTC guidelines on endorsements in social media.

Download the rest here.

After the last session we had some cocktails and networked… where we bumped into the team from Rapleaf among others. Had an intersting conversation with them about their recent PR nightmare and what they have done to really streamline their offerings (and avoid any more perceived gray hat practices!). Good stuff… check their INFLUENCER RATING tools.

Days two and three coming soon. This blogging stuff is hard work. (Viva Twitter!)

5* Ways to Optimize Social Media Marketing (4As presentation)

Hear ye, hear ye…. the deck from my 4As “Socially Speaking” presentation today. A few tools on how to do more and better things with your time while marketing on social platforms.

Please do enjoy. Feel free to ask questions. It justifies all my hours of research and studying to share this soon-to-be-updated-and-outdated info!

iStragegy recap: The saga continues.

So you’ve made it to this second entry about a social media conference. Congrats.

Rather than go play-by-play, here are some thought clusters with a few nuggets:

Travel Channel: Employ paid bloggers/social outreach folks which they call “Sidekicks”… to leave comments on forums and inform the social web of their programming.

Dell experiences what you lose sleep at night about: Negative movement vs a brand in social media. DELL HELL

This Book was recommended by several people. I just bought it. More on that soon.

Sun Microsystem’s initial social media policy: “Don’t be stupid”. It has since changed, but I love the sentiment.

If your campaign/app/tool can’t pass the “porn or kittens” test, it will fail: In other words, it you can’t get people to stop what they normally do online, you don’t stand a chance with any sort of would-be “viral” campaign.

Great Clorox campaign that capitalized on an already existing media spectacle: A port-a-potty pyro in San Francisco last year. We heard all about that and more from their marketing queen Mary O’Connell in her Meet The Boss interview taping (is it just me or does the host have a big-time case of the Michael Scotts?)

Never trust drag queens with your social media (according to LOGO and case study notes about a Drag Race campaign).

According to Chris Tolles, CEO of Topix, location-based and review-based sites (like Yelp, 4sq) lack targeting and the ability for you to read reviews based on people of your demo or tastes. That is a mighty bold statement…and something I believe FB social graph can fix, ya?

Ted Gilvar, EVP and CMO of Monster, showed us how his team’s hustle (quickly jumping on a huge opportunity) allowed Monster to team up with Alicia Keyes to search for Keyes’ new blogger. A win-win for Monster and Alicia’s new project. Lots of valuable impressions and consumer involvement (and a great case study!)

Mr. Youth’s Doug Akin ended the conference with a bang (well, a few hugs and some awkward dancing) … and a ton of great examples of social media done right (case studies… yay!):

Dew DIY (old campaign… site slightly creaky)

Crayola Girls Night Out

Warby Parker eyeglasses -Socially (and technology) enabled glasses (with virtual try-ons!)

All-in-all, looking back, I am glad I attended. I have set up several meetings with folks I met there.

iStrategy Conference Chicago – Recap/thoughts

So I just got back from iStrategy in Chicago… and decided to dust my blog off (who has the time to blog these days?) after a busy summer of new business pitches, travel, family drama, parenthood and a few long weekends in between the non-weekends.

iStrategy was originally billed as a “CMO centric, high level social media conference” by the uber-persistent sales people from the conference organizers (and yet, everyone there commented on the aggressive sales techniques… but HEY, they bought in) . It was 2 days of keynotes and breakout sessions with networking lunches and dinners as an added bonus. It turned out to be a lot different than the original pitch… but I had a nice time nonetheless.

The conference was well attended: 200 folks in all… a mix of big and small brands with about 1/2 of the folks being agency types or offering services. As with all SM conferences, there was a vast array of experience levels and speakers. Can I say I learned anything besides some new anecdotes? Not really. Can I say I met a lot of great people and learned about their products, challenges and little tricks? Surely.

I flew in on Tuesday evening and stayed at the Hilton at ORD. My expectations were low for the first night, but was happy that a pre-event happy hour was organized. The hotel bar, The Gas Light,  at the Hilton at O’Hare is a MUST SEE.  Something straight out of downtown Vegas. Totally unexpected and fun. I ran into a few Silicon Alley vets then retired early to rest up for the conference.

The next morning we took what appeared to be a Hummer limo to the Hotel Allegro. I met Christine Carey, a well-spoken woman from Rand Corporation in D.C. who is a HUGE proponent of Vanguard (yay, client love!). She was looking for ideas and approaches on how to get her healthcare organization/think tank more visable via social media. Of course I gave her an earful of ideas.

I won’t go into great depth here, but you can see some of the top quotes by searching for #iStrategy2010 on Twitter, since all that work is already done by the Tweeps at the festival (including moi).

The keynote speaker, John Hayes from American Express started his speech with “I am not a digital person… go easy on me”. His speech was great and he smoothly answered some of the questions from the audience (he never mentioned the OPEN program, which surprised me due to its huge social hooks). As an avid AmEx card evangelist, I was charmed.

Next up was a panel lead by the funny/smart Chris Heuer from Social Media Club featuring a few execs from PepsiCo, Edelman PR and the Chicago Bulls. I had a chance to catch up with Heuer later at the festival… looking forward to staying in touch with him for sure.

I chose a break-out session after lunch with the Travel Channel’s Jonathon Sichel along with his agency sidekick James Clark (Room 214… and btw, his biz card made me lock myself out of my hotel room!). Interesting thoughts on “VIRAL vs SPREADABLE” (something @faris here at work preaches). It was nothing revolutionary, but very well stated and something all social marketers need to understand and have at the ready when the bossman asks “Why didn’t the commercial we placed on Daily Motion go VIRAL?”

VIRAL = Magic. Rapidly spreading quickly. Good luck.

SPREADABLE = Word of mouth. Usually gets passed on one or two levels then dissipates/decays. Many times SPREADABLE things go viral by chance. Most of your campaigns should aim at this unless you include celebrity, sensation or tap into a raw human emotion.

Then we watched Anthony Bourdain burn six tons of cocaine. This sorta went viral (that’s the point). VBS eat your heart out on this one 😉

More coming soon. Don’t want these posts to turn into a novel.

Social Media Monitoring: 1997 all over again.

I am in charge of social media marketing at a mid-sized ad agency in NYC. Very cool job, actually. I am tasked with learning the ins-and-outs of  all the tools, apps, platforms, aggregators and snake oils in the realm of utilizing social media/networking to spread the word about our clients’ products (or simply find innovative ways to better service clients’ consumers for them using social media).

One of the most frequently asked questions I get: “What do you use for monitoring and tracking social media?”

I am not going to give you that answer just yet… but I will shed a little light on some of my findings in meeting with 90% of the sales reps from the available social monitoring services out there (no easy task!).

1. There are are a couple all-inclusive, totally kick-ass providers. They will cost you min. $3K per month for simple reports.

2. There is a heap of clones with basic functionality that make up the rest of the pack: Some paid and some free.

3. Without shelling out for a company who can provide humans (aka “analysts”) to pour over our data: You are in for a hell of a lot of work if you want to provide truly accurate results on the most basic of reports.

4. Without proper set-up and filtering on day one… you will create a lot of extra work for yourself (and skew data as you figure out how to pare back/filter the data correctly).

5. If your brand or a competitor you are attemping to analyze is a common word or proper noun (“Barbie” or “Ross” or “Target”)… you are in deep doo-doo. Be prepared for an afternoon of fun.

6. Very few can actually accurately scrape Facebook data.

I am having flashbacks to the late 90s: Start-ups clamoring for market share in murky waters with companies of all shapes and sizes dipping their toes in. Experts are RARE. Warm bodies with experience in the field are rare or non-existent. Standards are evolving. Rules are sort of happening. Companies are wildily adjusting rates/fees a demand/budgets are materializing. There a many, many conferences full of scared sheep and “gurus” alike. Guys with funny glasses and sneakers leading the charge (or at least not seen as slackers).

If you lived through the dot-com bubble/burst with me. You know what I mean.

On the positive side: Technology, which is making the social monitoring revolution move quickly, is eons ahead of 1997. Everyone is on broadband now. There are no CD-ROMs involved. Web-based demos are saving us all time. Online research into these tools is much more readily available.

On that note… I am working on a report card of the industry… should be out in June. Soup-to-nuts analysis of the top 20-or-so tools with grades and pricing. Stay tuned.

Hello world!

This is a pretty exciting day. I have decided to resurrect the idea of having a blog. Why not? Right?

I cannot guarantee you seeing this updated more than once per week… but please do check in or just subscribe to my Twitter feed.