Never get out of the boat: social media

Showing posts with label social media. Show all posts

Monday, February 17, 2014

'like' if you love cheese is not dead

Thanks to those cheeky Facebook data scientists for our Monday morning chuckle of the day.

AllFacebook reports on the introduction of the 'Pages to Watch' feature available to page admins.

Essentially the feature will alert managers when a post on another page they are watching (ie competitors and suchlike) is getting large amounts of attention and engagement (sic).

This little tactic is designed to activate home bias (aka the keeping up with the joneses effect) in hapless page admins, now futher driven to distraction.

In their paper 'Keeping Up With The Joneses and the Home Bias', Lauterbach and Riesmen (2003) describe this effect as follows:

'We argue that when individuals care about their consumption relative to that of their neighbors, a home bias emerges, that is investors overweight domestic stocks in their portfolios. Domestic stocks are preferred because they also serve the objective of mimicking the economic fortunes and welfare of the investor's neighbors, countrymen, and social reference group'.

The authors conclude 'The basic idea is that if investors care about their consumption relative to that of their neighbors, they would bias their portfolios in the direction of securities correlated with their neighbors' wealth.'

Perhaps 'like if you love cheese' is not dead after all.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

if you can think of it, it must be important

It's sobering to note that at the end of 2013 there are still people, clients, agencies and organisations out there who are in varying degrees of confabulation - driven by emotions ranging from blind terror to rapture - around the impact (both apparent and potential) of the social media for their businesses and communications.

This, of course, only contributes to further uncertainty and, as we know, under uncertainty, biases in judgement - most often created by too much (or indeed too little) information - will lead to errors of thinking (and doing).

While we could joke that this situation would be easier to navigate if only there were some experts out there to offer guidance?

Or some information websites on how to successfully leverage social media?

Perhaps even a webinar or two or a set of ebooks one could buy?

Ha, but the problem is clearly the former. Too much information.

And in this situation two cognitive biases exert disproportionate influence.

Firstly, the availability heuristic is a mental shortcut by which decisions are made based on how easily similar examples that come to mind.

As a result, we tend judge that those events or examples that are easier to think of are more frequent and possible than others. We routinely overestimate the likelihood of similar things happening in the future, and likewise we overestimate the importance of stories that seem to be everywhere (ie easily mentally available).

From a brand marketing point of view, this bias is one that can be extremely useful.

Brands that appear to be popular, that are easily noticed and remembered (mental availability) and with the best distribution (physical/virtual availability) tend to benefit from larger market share. For a small brand looking to grow then getting to grips with availability is crucial.

[Interestingly, and statistically, one is more likely to be killed by a refrigerator falling on one's head than in any act of terrorism, but incidents of terrorism come to mind much more easily and are believed to be far more common.]

On the downside, the idea that 'social media is the answer to all branding and marketing problems' is a hugely available idea, initially propagated within the social media itself by 'experts' and - not only but also - repeated, received-wisdom-style by all and sundry, so that it comes so easily to mind that surely it must be true.

The reality being that there are very very few examples of brands that have been built or grown substantially through social media alone. Go to a few social media conferences and you will very shortly collect the set as the same examples are trotted out at every event.

The idea that 'consumers' want to have deep emotional connections and engage with brands is also a hugely available idea, while statistically on any given week, less than 0.5% of Facebook fans will engage with any brand they are fans of.

Given that a brand's Facebook following will mostly represent but a tiny proportion of its customer base, and for the most part follow for (let's be honest) customer service and/or freebie purposes then it's not a great case for growth through 'engagement'.

A season spent on the conference trail will further compound as one notices the constant presence of availability's close cousin, the projection bias, in which we tend to assume that others feel exactly the same as we do.

Secondly, another close cousin of availability (and projection) and perhaps the most dangerous and widely visible of biases in the social media space is the confirmation bias.

Until recently this was perhaps best described as the social media bubble, fishbowl or echo chamber, in which members display tendencies to read material that confirms existing beliefs, pay more attention to information and people who confirm existing beliefs, and search for corroborative evidence to confirm existing beliefs.

Chuck in a dash of sunk-cost fallacy and it's easy to see why, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, there is now a whole industry of social media gurus who want the 'death of this or that' to be true, will cherry pick and spotlight anything that supports it, and then congratulate themselves on their accuracy.

The word guru has it's origins in Sanskrit, the primary liturgical language of Hinduism.

Much can be learned from ancient eastern wisdom, of course.
Not least a healthy skepticism of the self-annointed thought-leader or guru.

The Kularnava Tantra is an important and authoritative text of the Shakta Agamic tantra tradition and a major statement of Hindu spiritual thought, including this nugget.

‘…there are many gurus who may rob the disciple's wealth but few who can remove the disciple's afflictions…’

Humans are probably the only species with the ability to think about the future, yet that hasn't helped our ability to predict. In fact the only accurate prediction one can confidently make is that the majority of our predictions will be wrong.

My closing hope, as opposed to prediction, is that as an ad industry we can overcome our confabulation in the year ahead, understand properly the role that digital and social has in an overall communications piece (for a role they undoubtably have, but not the be-all and end-all) and focus on what's really important.

To be better at understanding the behaviour of people in buying situations and developing the kind of things and communications that have the best chance of influencing those behaviours.

And finally, to perhaps best illustrate that heady brew of availability and confirmation bias I leave you with this splendid cartoon, shared by Doddsy some time ago in an unrelated tweet, and one that has featured in a number of my presentations this year to illustrate some of the points contained in this note.

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

monkeys can do this

There was a minor story this week that is probably of no interest to anyone outside of the Australian communications business, but is worthy of a brief bit of commentary here.

The Sydney arm of PR agency Porter Novelli ran a 'job ad' via Twitter, they were looking to hire an account director.

Applicants had to tweet their 'application' as a cute one-liner and tag it #socialcv.

Predictably the hashtag got hijacked and turned into a joke.

Mumbrella (Aussie comms industry news site) have captured the story as it unfolded.

Here's a link.

While recognising the relative unimportance of this in the grand scheme of things I'm compelled to comment that, while it was not the smartest thing Porter Novelli will ever do, that's not the main story.

The comms industry as a whole seems to be infatuated with youth, and a result the assumption that 'youth' are best placed to manage social media comms simply because they know how to operate the tools and are 'digital native' or whatever is rife.

The cliche of 'social media strategy' being the domain of the hapless intern is a cliche for the simple reason that it is still very common.

As you will notice if you follow the story, finally towards the end of the day some grown-ups at Porter Novelli seem to have intervened and have been able to flip it and save some face.

But.

Theres a quote from Don Draper in season 2 of Mad Men that came immediately to mind.

In this scene the young (and still aspiring) copywriter Peggy Olsen glibly described one of her ad concepts to Don with the clarification that 'Sex sells'.

Don retorts 'Who says that?

Just so you know, the people who talk that way think that monkeys can do this...

...they can’t do what we do, and they hate us for it.

Stunts such as this one really mean that the joke is on us, as a whole communications industry.

To the outside looking in,we all look like those monkeys that Don Draper describes. If social media PR and and digitally driven comms in general is going to continue to have any credibility in business then we need to do much better than this.

Leaving children in charge of the shop is bad strategy.

And, in general, the idea that an industry publicly communicates that a candidate able to manage a clients business is likely to reveal themselves by their ability to tweet something funny doesn't say much about the likely quality of the thinking that clients are paying for.

In psychology they call this the 'effort reduction framework' and attribute substitution - a human cognitive bias which enables us to answer difficult questions by substituting the original question with an easier one.

This process is useful when choosing one kind of baked beans over another but choosing candidates to guide a clients business seems to me to be something that requires a bit more critical thinking, or else it's true.

Monkeys can do this.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

learn to play with nothing

This will be my last comment on the forget-about-the-tools and focus on the behaviours rant for a while.

It coincides with the Modern Lovers being on heavy rotation in the Boatmobile commute, and the fact that I haven't done one of these pic-quote posts for a long time.

The interviewer asks Jonathan what he still needs to learn, as a musician.

After 'getting along with cats and dogs' and 'playing quieter so as not to hurt children's' ears' he adds...

'And we have to learn to play with nothing, with our guitars broken, and it's raining'.

Friday, August 10, 2012

it's about the behaviours, not the tools

It's surprising that in 2012 there is still so much focus, effort and money spent on trying to work out how the deployment of social media technologies and tools will impact on the performance of marketing strategies.

Every week there's another Pinterest webinar or 'how-to' leverage Linked-in conference.

And countless articles speculating and instructing about this or that of Facebook and Twitter.

However the important thing is working out what's important.

Social media tools have been adopted principally because they allow us to do stuff we've always liked to do, easier and with more people.

We share things...
Talk about things...
Create our art...
See what others are saying, doing and yes, buying...
We can argue, agree, copy...
We can demonstrate how smart, connected or philanthropic we are...

What's actually important is getting a hang of people - and how they behave - to inform, develop and implement strategy.

Somehow this insightful cartoon that I found in an old Dr Feelgood tour program from something like 1978 seems to nail the problem.

Anyone can pick the guitar, plug it in to the amp and make a noise.

And many companies and brands are doing this.

Not many are making us move like Wilco and co.

It's about the people and behaviours, not the tools.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

participation inequality and sturgeon's revelation

After many years of batting back attacks on the science fiction genre from critics who asserted that ninety percent of Science Fiction was crap, the American science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon concluded that;

To say 90% of science fiction is crap is meaningless, because science fiction conforms to the same trends of quality as all other artforms.

In other words, we must judge all other culture by the same yardstick.
It must therefore be argued that 90% of all film, literature, products, marketing, advertising etc is crap.

This insight became known as Sturgeon’s Revelation.

According to Google, more 'content' is posted online in each day, today, than was created in the entire history of the internet pre-2003.

Yet upwards of 90% will, of course, be crap.
That's a lot of crap.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

four hashtags you rarely see coming out of social media conference twitterstreams

Just sayin'...

Thanks for the reminder @umairh

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

if mandela had tweeted

Here's Jonathan MacDonald giving a dynamite talk at TEDx Youth in Manchester tackling the conundrum around the impact of social technologies on social change.

Jonathan asks: 'Is it the tools in our hands or what's in our hearts?'

Genius, Conviction, Imagination, Passion, Persistence, Compassion and Bravery being the seven key attributes he identifies as being in the hearts of people who have changed the world in some way.

He reminds us that Facebook is not among that list.

We now have the tools to propagate what's in our hearts faster and further than at any time in human history.

What are we going to spread?

Thursday, July 22, 2010

flipboard

I'm liking the look of Flipboard. It's an ipad application that creates a 'magazine' containing all the content people are sharing from your various social streams, plus other content curated by flipboard, in a nice 'analogue' style mag format.

They say:

'Flipboard is the worldʼs first social magazine. Inspired by the beauty and ease of print media, Flipboardʼs mission is to fundamentally improve how people discover, view and share content across their social networks.'

I just need an ipad now.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

it's the real thing

Andy Warhol was a great fan of Coca-Cola.
For him the iconic Coke bottle encapsulated the dream of American Society in the 50s.

'You know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.'

Of course, while Warhol's brand and persona was contrived to be all about surface with no depth (though, everything he said had more depth than he would have us believe) you can't argue with that statement.

The parallels with modern advertising are apparent.

The democratisation of media and message brought about by the spread of social technologies means that it doesn't matter if you are Coca-Cola, me or the bum on the corner, you have the same access to You Tube or Twitter as anyone else.

This is the great leveller.

If you have a great idea, that people want to connect with and share, that people want to spread, then the mechanisms are there for anyone to use.

No amount of money can get you anything better.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

who killed bambi?

Poor X Factor winner Joe McElderry, robbed of his moment in the Christmas spotlight by a bunch of grungers from more than a decade past.

Gentle pretty thing
Who only had one spring
You bravely faced the world
Ready for anything

One cannot argue with the numbers:
X Factor with around 4 months of prime time telly pulling in 19million for the final show and uncalculable mainstream media coverage via daytime tv, newspapers etc rustled up 450,000 sales of Bambi’s ditty.

Versus

The Rage Against The Machine's 'fan' driven ‘campaign’ built up initially on Facebook with around 750,000 sign-ups where around 500,000 followed through with their 79p. In any marketing-speak; as a conversion rate it looks good.

What’s also interesting is that the X Factor itself had a sizeable social media backchannel through the duration, particularly real-time commentary on Twitter.

The idea to subvert the Christmas chart spread like wildfire because it adhered to some of the basic principles of ‘viral-ness’.

1 - It was easy to understand – buy the track within a certain time frame, if enough people do it, it will achieve it’s goal.

2 - It polarised opinion – You are eitheir ‘for’ or ‘against’ the idea.

3 - It was easy to participate – there was only a couple of things to do, pass on the idea and buy the song.

4 - It’s all about me – The participants have to WANT it to spread, participation makes a social statement about ME (I’m about proper music vs manufactured pop).

Meanwhile every Tom, Dick, Harry and Social Media Expert jumps on the Rage ‘victory’ as being vindication and proof of the corresponding ‘victory’ of social media over broadcast media ‘marketing’.

While it’s another case study in the continuing shift in control from broadcaster/brand to the users - and both wee Joe and RATM playing the role of social objects in a groundswell - from a music perspective it’s a bit depressing.

I made my peace with the X Factor some months ago once I realised it had nothing whatsoever to do with music.

As in life, in that for there to be good there must be corresponding evil, so also for there to be music there must be anti-music.

When I was a nipper we had a saying about Top of the Pops – ‘every Thursday until you die’. Tip of the Poops died out first, but the likes of X Factor are it’s natural replacement.

The Top 40 was the last bastion of the TOTP era, this latest subversion is surely one of the final nails in it’s coffin.

But If I were a Rage fan I’d be a bit miffed at ‘my band’ being reduced to mere spectacle, The biggest selling song of the year, yet any meaning reduced to it’s ‘symbolic’ interplay as a social device in a cod-situationist spoof.

The irony, of course, being that a 5th consecutive Christmas number one from the Cowell stable is not much of a story. This weeks events made sure that X Factor was still newsworthy.

So what happens next?

Bambi will surely be number one next week as – in another irony – the social media ‘campaign’ fireworks burst and go dark.

And we look forward to another 51 weeks of corporate hip hop, sanitised r’n'b, careerist pop and wishy-washy do-gooder rock at the top of the charts.

Which no proper music fan pays attention to anyway.

In 1977 when the Sex Pistols released their single ‘God Save the Queen’ it entered the UK chart at number one . That week the top 40 was the the Top 39 as the chart publishers refused to even list the song that had polarised a nation in the Queen’s Silver Jubilee week.

But then, you knew I was going to dig that one out...

Thursday, October 01, 2009

incorporation and commodification of subculture

As social media continues it's 'incorporation' into the mainstream I'm reminded of the 2 strategies commonly employed by the establishment (or petit-bourgeois, if you like – hence the nod to Barthes) in dealing with the 'other'.

The following has been largely influenced by sections of 'Subculture' by Dick Hebdige, a study of UK youth subcultures from the 50's to late 70's (a fantastic academic book. Fairly unique among academic writing in that it is actually readable for mere mortals)

First plan of the establishment is often to attempt to transform the 'other' into meaningless 'exotica'.
This is what Barthes describes as ‘pure object, spectacle, a clown’
Examples of this were the mainstream media outrage around 'facebook riots' (you know the drill, party invite goes up on facebook - 10,000 kids trash the house) add to that the, particularly bizzare, willing self-commodification by 'social media experts' trapped in some perpetual groundhog day of vacuous pontification about personal branding.

Or, secondly the ‘other’ is trivialised. What was 'otherness' is reduced to 'sameness'.
We can see this in the twitter-columns in the newspapers, who's main focus is highlighting what mainstream media celebrities are saying about each others divorces.
In effect a 'transmedia' amplification of the gossip magazines and daytime tv ;)

Advertising is of course now appearing to 'embrace' of social media (hey, it's all just 'media' now...) and the ultimate accolade for the first 'wave' of 'new media' celebrities is to be published in book form.

Note: I will undoubtably change my view on this the minute the phone rings or twitter tweets from a book publisher 'outreach'...

This incorporation minimises the ‘otherness’ and then ultimately defines the subculture in exactly the terms which it originally sought to resist in the first place. 'Punk' couture anyone? Acid house ad soundtracks? Phoney 'youtube' style tv ads?

So, as soon as the innovations that signified a subculture (web 2.0) are translated into commodities and become everyday they lose meaning, ie what were subcultural 'signs' become mass produced stuff.
What began by being symbolic as challenges (the 'other'), end up becoming the new conventions (#moonfruit anyone?).

'I believe in this, and it's been tested by research. He who f*cks nuns, will later join the church..'

Monday, September 28, 2009

Everything you ever wanted to know about social media

For any readers in the Cambridgeshire area (Huntingdon, to be exact) this Friday (October 2nd), there's an opportunity to take in David Cushman - of Brando Social and Faster Future - giving a seminar on 'Everything you ever wanted to know about social media but were afraid to ask'.

David will cover over the basics of the 'media' part - messaging; transmission; how content is created and distributed and also the'social' side: how the idea of 'communities of purpose' is disrupting and reconfiguring everything we do - from processes within organisations to politics, education, economics and beyond.

It's at Huntingdon Library, Princes St.
Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire PE29 3PA
Last few tickets are available from http://everythingfaster.eventbrite.com

Use the discount code 'Fastercommunity' for 33% off, though I understand there's only a handful of tickets left.

Saturday, July 25, 2009

hey! social media expert

The best answers are always preceded by intelligent, challenging questions.

Challenge yourself, challenge your brief, challenge the market, challenge conventions, challenge your client.

Understand different businesses have different strategic challenges and priorities.

We live in the real world, and this world is a combination of the analogue, digital, experiential, participatory, direct, indirect, active, passive, interruptive (!), and collaborative.

Any Tom, Dick, Harry or Social media expert can wheel out the latest 'shiny object' technology or platform, but to understand how and why people want to search, engage with brands, make decisions, transact and participate and consume means asking the right questions.

Especially of yourself and your own motivations.

(HT to Scott in our office who started this thought this morning)

Saturday, July 04, 2009

i'm sending the wolf

To the pr company or social media experts on the #moonfruit twitter trending thing, you are probably all slapping each other on the back right now.

No 1 trending topic on twitter!

Twitter users have been bribed to mention #moonfruit hashtagged in every tweet for a chance to win a laptop every week for 10 weeks.

But i have to tell you - this is empty, useless, devoid of any engagement, pure eyeball harvesting, impression delivering same old same old, just using the tool de jour.

At the end of the ten weeks you will be back to square one.
No-one gives a shit. And you are ten laptops down.

Sad.

The real trending topic on twitter (though less visible than #moonfruit) is what some people are calling 'the corporatisation of twitter' (aka jumping the shark).

The stampede of brands apeing the celebrity-broadcast model - even PAYING for followers FFS - continues onto the platform.

It was good while it lasted, but i'm sending the wolf...

Monday, April 27, 2009

growth category

Monday, April 20, 2009

i wish i was a nine inch nails fan

The latest in a long line of disruptive, innovative, 'connect-with-fans' initiatives from the nine inch nails people.

NiN:access is a simple iphone app which (amongst other things) not only connects NiN to their fans, but CONNECTS THEM TO EACH OTHER. It's location-based tech, via google earth, means fans in specific geographical areas can connect. See below. Sandwiches are a hot topic in post-grunge land ;) So what, it's up to them.

Found via chrisbrogan.com - he says 'Location plus peer-to-peer interactions = a huge win'.

We agree.

Now if only the music was not such a godawful racket.

Friday, February 06, 2009

the Shopkeeper's tweet readings

I've not been able to write anything here this week after watching Marcus's tweet reading series. I'm kinda thinking he has said the final words on social media/blogging etc. There is nowhere else to go after this. It's over...

Official Tweet Reading IV: Reading Valeria Maltoni from Marcus Brown on Vimeo.

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

for Precision Marketing magazine Dec 08: Twitter 2009

Here's a short bit on Twitter what I wrote for Precision Marketing magazine just before the holidays. An intro to twitter; yes people, there are still those out there who do not know.

Add to that this mornings revelations that social media is actually more popular than ever, and this nugget from hitwise which clearly demonstrates it's not just a US thing.

'UK Internet visits to Twitter have increased by 631% over the last 12 months, with 485% of that growth coming this year. Twitter is more popular with Brits than Americans: last week the site’s share of UK Internet visits was 70% higher its share of visits in America. Twitter cannot yet be considered mainstream in the USA, but in the UK it’s getting there.'

Anyway, here's the piece.

As Confucious famously said; ‘It’s difficult to make predictions, particularly about the future’ however I’m going to stick my proverbial neck out and venture that 2009 is going to be the year that Twitter enters the mainstream.

For anyone reading this and asking themselves, what is Twitter?
Twitter is increasingly pulling away as the leading opt-in, permission based communication and listening platform. Google it.

Anytime anything is being said about your company, products, or services you can monitor it and, most importantly, respond instantly if appropriate. In fact you can also use the various freely available tools to track what’s being said about any thing you fancy. Your competitors for instance.

Yes, Twitter gives your opponents and critics a voice too, but that means you can listen and act.

As Twitter progresses towards it’s critical mass it’s increasingly one of the most effective research tools in your box. Simply tapping into that stream of ideas, content, links and commentary focused on your area of business your research has so much more value than traditional focus groups, for example.

Traditional focus groups only tell a portion of the story. On Twitter, groups can form and unform on an ad hoc basis, self-selected around subjects that interest them directly.

It’s no surprise that among the top 5 UK Twitter users (in terms of number of followers) are; Stephen Fry and John Cleese. The trick to adding value is simple.
Have something interesting to say.

And unless you are part of the conversation you cannot contribute therefore you don’t add any value.

The last point is of particular significance for our politicians.

The recently launched Tweetminster.com is a portal that brings together the collected tweets of several UK MP’s, including Tory leader David Cameron, following the lead of the PMs office earlier this year who launched the official Downing St twitter feed.
And, while it’s disappointing that Barack Obama stopped Twittering the second the election was over , his team saw the value of connecting directly to a fanatical group of supporters with real time updates as the campaign unfolded.

The internet is about people, not technology. Twitter is people-driven; so if your business depends upon relationships and interactions with people it’s time to take notice of Twitter.

Thursday, December 04, 2008

Portable Social Graphs

Portable Social Graphs - Imagining their Potential

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: retail marketing)

This is a nice pres from Razorfish, explains the Facebook connect thing very well. Portable data and and all that.