People Are Talking

At about 08:40 into this video, from the Social Ad Summit panel on Branded Experiences in Social Networks, Scott Monty, the Head of Social Media @ Ford, delivers a spot on recap of my Your Brand Is Not My Friend theory and why it's important.

Hat tip to Ian Schafer for posting the video. And of course to Scott, for actually quoting me. The entire session is actually quite interesting if you have some time to watch it. Oh, and since one good turn deserves another, you should also check out Scott's incredible Sherlock Holmes blog,

Authenticity Is The New Storytelling

Around this time last year, you couldn't go three paragraphs in any marketing or advertising blog post, article or conference report without encountering the word "storytelling."

No one was quite sure what it meant, but the new meaning most decidedly did not refer to a librarian's animated recounting of a Lithuanian fable to a room full of kindergartners.

Rather, it referred to some "story" that each and every brand allegedly had. One that consumers were allegedly jonesing to hear about.

Its most common usage was as a way to justify campaigns that had diverse elements in different media-- in other words, the fact that the microsite (remember those?) had nothing to do with the print ad was just "storytelling" rather than incompetence.

These days, "storytelling" has been replaced by "authentic" as the buzzword-du-jour. Everything that consumers touch is "authentic." Every vain attempt by a brand to hide the fact that it's behind a marketing effort is done in the name of making it more "authentic." As is every vain attempt at interaction: allowing consumer feedback-- no matter how many restrictive registration pages I need to go through, no matter how awkward the interface is-- is all about being "authentic."

Which is not to say that authenticity is a bad thing. It certainly is not. And it truly is something brands should strive for. But rather than creating authenticity, most of them are creating fauxthenticity - a word my friend Ian Schafer coined the other day - because true authenticity scares them: it requires giving up way more control that they're comfortable with.

But as the legendary David Ogilvy once said "the consumer isn't a moron, she's your wife." And the consumer knows full well when the experience is "fauxthentic" rather than "authentic."

So you can bandy about the word all you want. But unless you deliver, it's all just a lot of hot air.

"Have To" vs. "Choose To"

There's been a lot of discussion on the blogosphere about the new Microsoft "I'm a PC" campaign from Crispin, Porter & Bogusky.

Only the one thing I haven't seen brought up is the one thing I see as the core difference between the two: People often have to use a PC. Whereas they almost always choose to use a Mac.

Have to versus Choose to. It's an interesting paradigm. And having to use a PC can entail any number of reasons: it may be the platform your employer uses. Or it may be that you find Macs to be overpriced.

So, for me, the benefit of the new campaign is that it tells all those people who have to use a PC that they are not alone, that they are not dorks for having to use one and that in fact, lots of other cool people have to use one too.

Now how that plays out really depends on your psyche. There's the danger you could hear it as your mom pointing out all the other kids whose parents didn't get them the $120 sneakers. But I suspect that people who hear that will go over to the Mac side as soon as they are able. The ones who hear it as validation of their current situation and relative level of satisfaction with PCs are the campaign's sweet spot and it's likely to have a positive effect on them.

Most of the noise in the ad blogosphere has been against this campaign, partly as Dave Knox points out, due to a certain type of NASCAR Blindness that prevents them from believing that anyone sane could actually prefer to use a PC. It also stems from the fact that the campaign is a bit of a formula: many brands have done the whole "interesting people around the world are using our product" campaign.

And while the old One Show snob in me is nodding his head vigorously at this, the truth is that consumers don't pay as much attention to advertising as we do. So none of them really remember the (very similar) Cisco campaign that ran about 4-5 years ago. And if they do, they're not really bothered by the repetition.

I'm very curious to see where the campaign goes next: will they offer reasons why people use PCs? Or will they just leave it at "I use one" and let new, cake-like, post-Vista innovations answer the "why" part.

School of Hard Knox

Dave Knox has one of the more interesting blogs out there right now for a number of reasons:

1. He's a client. He's in the midst of transitioning from a job on the P&G Wal-Mart Customer Team to a job at Procter & Gamble proper (in Cincinnati) where he'll help boost their social media practice. As such, he looks at things from a different perspective than many of the advertising focused bloggers.

2. He's a midwesterner, born and bred in Cincinnati (or thereabouts) and as such, has not fallen victim to the NASCAR Blindness that afflicts so many in the ad community.

3. He's a smart guy and good writer who makes it a point to keep up on everything that's going on in the world of social media. I've learned a lot from his blog and his tweets.

If you're looking to expand your perspective beyond the same old/same old, then definitely check out his blog Hard Knox Life.

Subtlety and Advertising Don’t Mix

There’s an article (subscibers only, sorry) in today’s Wall Street Journal about how Walden Media and 20th Century Fox have co-opted a 15 year-old YouTube star named Lucas Cruikshank to shill for their new movie “City of Ember.”

Which is not a horrible idea in and of itself. Only they are going about it the absolute wrong way.

Cruikshank’s (completely homemade) videos have him playing a hyperactive 6 year-old named Fred. So he is in character the whole time. But rather than have Fred come out and openly shill for “City of Ember” the plan (which you can see the beginnings of in the video above) is to have him very very casually “discover” it in passing and slowly bring it up to his fans so that they too can discover it. Which seemed like a clever plan to one prominent ad agency creative director who told the Journal that “By not being so overt and making it look like he’s discovering the film for his audience, it comes across as less pushy.”

Perhaps. But it also comes across as lying.

Think about it: when celebrities shill for a product, you know they’re shilling. They may not honestly like the product, but it’s clear that they’ve been paid for the honor. We’ve been inculcated in this notion since the early days of television when words like “this has been a paid announcement for Ford” were the norm.

But social media is different. If I were to casually mention on here that I really loved the new iPhone, you’d probably not think much of it. If you later found out, however, that I wrote about my love for the iPhone because Apple paid me to write about it, you’d feel angry and deceived. You weren’t suspecting an advertising message. You were trusting that my opinion really was my own, that it was what Alan Wolk really believed. Not what he was paid to believe.

Well ditto Fred. Yes, he’s a fictional character, but he’s a creation of the filmmaker and we assume that the things he touches on are things that reflect that filmmakers artistic sensibility. Not things he was paid to mention. Product placement happens in TV shows and films, but those are not nearly as personal as Fred. They’re also made by professionals, whereas Cruikshank is clearly an amateur. The fact that it’s aimed at kids, who are by more gullible by nature, makes the whole venture even sleazier.

It’s fine to use YouTube celebrities in ads. It’s even fine to use them in ads, in character, on YouTube. You’ve just got to let us know that’s what you’re doing. Because if we find out you’ve been tricking us-- and we will, we always will-- we’re not going to like you—or your stooge very much.

And while we might forgive your stooges their naiveté, we won’t forgive you. Because after all people, Your Brand Is Not My Friend.

Ben Walker - You're No One If You're Not On Twitter

Enjoy. This is genius. (Thanks to Lisa Baldini and Danielle Knopf for the link!)

NBC's Lost Opporunity

So Tina Fey’s brilliant Saturday Night Live impression of Sarah Palin wound up getting shared on YouTube by everyone from major media outlets to Facebook friends.

Until of course, NBC made them take it down so that we'd all watch the Hulu version featured above.

But new YouTube versions keep springing up. This one, which may be down by the time you read this post, has over 759,000 views. So the question is why? Why are people watching it on YouTube when there's an official NBC version whose quality is about a thousand times better? Did YouTube initially trump the NBC version because it got better search results and people kept linking to it? Because it was up first? Because people remember how much the networks hate sharing any of their precious clips and decided that an official NBC site was the last place they should look? Or do they just not want to sit through 15 seconds of pre-roll commercial for the chance to get a more high quality video?

There's no way to really know, but any combination of the above sounds like a logical answer. The ultimate takeaway, however, being that there’s no point in trying to stop popular culture from being shared without your consent. The best you can do is make it easy for them.

What’s more, NBC missed a possible cross-sell opportunity here, giving people the chance to pay to download the entire episode once they’d watched the (free) clip. You know, something as simple as posting a comment on the YouTube sites to the effect of “Haven’t watched SNL in a while? Find out what you’ve been missing.” With a link to iTunes or Amazon. Or even simpler: "Watch the HD version of the same clip over at Hulu.com"

Maybe next time…

Sister Souljah Time

Free Advice Of The Day: If Barack Obama wants to win this election, he needs to take a page from the Bill Clinton Playbook and do a “Sister Souljah” on one of the legion of lefty journos who have been eviscerating Sarah Palin.

He needs to find a particularly nasty and unlikable journo, someone whose criticism seems mostly focused on Palin’s hair and accent and kids names and all that, and go to town on them the way Clinton went to town on Ms. Souljah for her comment about the L.A. riots.

And he legitimately can.

His mother was a teenage mother. She was on food stamps. He grew up without a father. He knows what it’s like to live outside the mainstream. To be the outsider looking in on that Starbucks and Whole Food world. And he desperately needs to remind people of that.

He needs to get pissed off, in a big way, that the message that’s clearly coming out from the Huffington Posts and Daily Koses is “How dare this white trash woman think she can run the world?”

Here’s why he needs to do this right now: Not liking Sarah Palin’s politics is one thing. But too many of the attacks seem to focus on her lifestyle. This is not lost on her supporters, the undecideds and everyone else in middle America: the disgust is about who she is, not what she stands for. Which just helps to cement the impression that Obama is one of the “we think we’re better than you” coastal establishment. And every moose joke, every online comment about “how could you elect someone who names her kid Track?” just cements this impression that the election is all about class lines and geographic location.

If Obama Sister Souljahs the leftist journalists, then he distances himself from the class warfare and bring the election back to the issues. There's no downside: it's not like the HuffPosties are going to stop supporting him or stay home from the polls. And if he can convince the undecided voters that he gets where they're coming from, that he doesn't look down on them because he was once one of them, then he has a real shot at convincing them to vote for him.