A few months back I did a fun interview with Susan Wassel, the social media voice for Sharpie pens.  Susan made me a believer. If you can bring pens to life over Twitter, just about anything is possible. 

So here is a debate I have with my customers: Do you have a real person (like Susan) represent your company on social media or a corporate logo with a rotating line-up behind the scenes (like most companies)?

Susan represents the ying and yang of this argument.  On the positive side, she has built a faithful following of nearly 4,000 who tune in to hear the latest Sharpie adventures of her friends and family.  She is an enthusiastic, charming woman who has come to personify the brand online.

Now the downside.  Some day Sharpie Susan will move on.  Remember the feeling you had when they replaced the first “Darren” on Bewitched?   That was hard to take.  There was a pretender in the role.  I don’t want a SharpieKim or SharpieFred or even (gasp) SharpieDarren.  I want my SharpieSusan dammit.

This is the ultimate two-edged sword of establishing your company’s voice online.  What happens when a solitary person BECOMES the brand?  Where do all those followers go when your spokesperson leaves … and joins your competitor for more money?  Sure, the company will survive, but why make the investment in developing the talent when you don’t have to?  Avoid the risk.

If you’re a talented communicator with a great personality interested in being a corporate social media persona, this is great news by the way.  Becoming your company’s social media rockstar may be the ultimate job security.  Or, you might be sentencing yourself to social media hell. Do you really want to be the company Pat Sajak for the next 20 years?  Any way, we will certainly see a growing number of popular corporate bloggers whose importance and value to the company will grow exponentially.

To close the loop, my recommendation to my customers is to provide a real face to the world. Nobody wants to relate to a logo.  But I don’t have answers to the hard questions I’ve raised here, either.  Let’s hear from you on the subject …

This is going to be one sweet blog.  It’s about donuts and ice cream.  What’s not to like?

Am I out of touch or does the following statement also strike you as deep-fried, chocolate-covered hooey? 

“Customers will decide what our brand is about. And there is nothing we can do about it.  And that is a very liberating thing. In the end, you can’t control it. And that’s the beauty of social media.  And that means marketers have to let go – a little.”

This is a comment made by Dunkin’ Donuts Brand Marketing Officer Frances Allen during last week’s OMMA conference in NYC.*

I had a visceral reaction to this statement.  It hits all the popular social media buzzwords about the power of consumers and letting go of the conversation … but let’s not sugar-coat anything (yes, that was intentional) — this  just strikes me as so wrong.

I don’t know France Allen and I’m not that familiar with the history of DD, but I do know quite a bit about Ben & Jerry’s (a U.S. premium ice cream brand) because I teach a case about the company in one of my classes.  Seems like this is a similar, sweet, occasion-based treat, so for argument’s sake, let’s lump the two companies in the same product category. 

There are so many ice cream brands on the grocery aisle, it can make your head spin.  But B&J stands out like no other brand by promoting three core values:

1)    Fun. Everything about B&J is playful: the names of the flavors, the packaging, the website, their crazy contests.

2)    Quality. It’s an expensive treat and B&J are fanatic about their ingredients and how they’re blended. One famous R&D innovation was developing the first real marshmallow stripes in an ice cream.

3)    Social responsibility. The founders of the company set out to show that you could create a company that can also take care of people and the planet.

The B&J marketing folks go to extreme measures to develop and market products that enhance this precious brand image.  And they have done a superb job, creating a powerful brand equity for the B&J name.

Who decided these three brand pillars – what the brand is about?  Consumers?  Perhaps indirectly, but no, a marketing team is responsible for the brand vision. No focus group handed it to them on a silver platter.

Are consumers in charge of the brand image?   No again.  While every nuance of their product offering is tested exhauastively, talented marketing professionals drive the image through brilliant products, strategies and advertising.

Have the marketers “let go” of their brand since the advent of social media?  I honestly don’t think anything has changed at all.  Sure, there are new tools to “listen” and “engage,” but marketers have ALWAYS listened and engaged. This is just a new way to do it.  I think it’s pretty arrogant of any marketer to assume they had control of a consumer conversation in the first place.  

So how do you reconcile the Dunkin’ Donut position with my views of social media’s impact on traditional marketing?  Or can you?  Are we flunkin’ Dunkin Donuts?

Disclosure:  I would choose a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cinnamon Bun Ice Cream over two dozen Dunkin Donuts any day.

*This comment was featured in a blog by Nitin Gupta, a regular contributor to the {grow} community.  I highly recommend his blog ‘Digital Marketing Today.” 

This might be the strangest marketing article you read in awhile but I’d like you to question  conventional wisdom about listening to your customers.  Sometimes, it’s simply best to ignore them.

One of the hottest buzzwords is “socialistic marketing” implying that social media enables you to place the brand power in the hands of the people.  I don’t think the world is ready for that quite yet.  Here’s why:

Customers don’t know what they want.  One of the most disturbing lines of commentary I see these days is the reliance people are putting on social media tools for new product development.  SM is a revolutionary “listening” device, but if you rely on it for development ideas, you’ll have a steady flow of incremental improvements based on customer complaints but it’s unlikely you’ll find the next big blockbuster.  That’s because consumers typically don’t know what they want it until they see it.  As the chairman of Sony famously said, they never would have invented the Walkman if they had asked customers what they wanted.

Big mouths dominate.  One of the biggest challenges with focus groups is that the most dominant participant tends to drown out the majority.  Their opinion overwhelms the true sentiment of the sample because they command most of the air time. Social media is like a focus group on steroids. It’s all about finding a way to get attention.  Are the people shouting the loudest on social media really the ones who represent your target market?  When you tune in to the social media cacaphony, are you hearing the signal or the noise?

They’re learning to play the game.  If somebody discovers that complaining means they can get attention, or better yet, a free product, a trickle of product complaints can turn into a tsunami, whether there is a real problem or not.  One company president recently told me they simply don’t address most consumer complaints any more because the cost of customer service became so high — they couldn’t afford to determine what’s real and what’s a scam.  Is that smart business?  I guess if it’s the only way they can afford to keep operating, it is.

Obviously today’s headline is a bit sensational — of course you need to embrace and cherish your customers.  I just want you to think twice before embracing this notion of marketing socialism and putting TOO MUCH power in the hands of consumers.  Agree?  Disagree?

Illustration: www.zazzle.com

Is it my imagination or is nearly every blogger claiming they are NOT a social media guru, expert or rockstar this week?  Humility is suddenly in fashion.

I see this as a grand opportunity to leverage a market niche.  Since nobody is willing to fill the role of Social Media A-List Pubah – in fact they are dashing away from it –  somebody needs to step up and capture this market opportunity, right?  It might as well be me.

So, now I am the one handing out titles.  I call dibs on “maven.”  The alliteration suits me: Mark, The Social Media Marketing Maven. 

Since Beth Harte called me a link baiter* this week, I thought about claiming the title of Social Media “Master Baiter”  but declined since there are several more worthy bloggers that come to mind for that title.

Don’t worry, there are still plenty of sparkly titles available, including ”kingpin,”  “commandant,” and “jedi master.” They will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis.

So get in line to claim your booty … so to speak. No pushing.

* She apologized.  But it made for a good joke, and enabled me to be the first person in history to use the hat-trick of “turd,” “dipshit” and “master baiter” in the context of a legitimate blog.  So you see Beth, it all worked out.

My son is a professional musician and has wanted to be a performer since he was a little boy.  Once I determined that this was his true life goal, not a “phase,” I figured I had better support him and do everything I could to help him succeed.  I wanted him to think a lot about the business and marketing aspects of the music business and I decided the best classroom for that was a KISS concert.   

For any serious marketer, a study of KISS should be a required curriculum.  I just read where the glam-band has a new album coming out and are preparing for a world tour.  So here is the question every savvy marketer should consider:   How can a quartet of 60-year-old men prance about in high heels, sell out a 25,000-seat arena anywhere in the world in 30 minutes, hawk millions in merchandise, and attract a passionate legion of fans known as their “army” nearly FORTY YEARS after they picked up their first guitar and discoverered they had no talent?  

Polish your boots, tune your guitar and turn it up loud.  We’re all going to the classroom of KISS: 

1) Give your customers EXACTLY what they want.  When you go to a KISS concert, you don’t get breath-taking improvisation and cerebral lyrics. You get pyrotechnics, explosions, costumes and decibles of sound that make your heart pound out of your chest.  You know every note and every word and can sing along in a fun and predictable manner.  This is what KISS fans want and this is what the band delivers — every time. At one point the band abandoned the makeup, tried more serious stuff and spectacularly tanked. That was their equvialent of New Coke. Put the make-up back on, and the fans returned.   Consistent brand image is essential.

2) Then give them MORE of what they want. The new KISS tour promises one of the largest, most extravagant stage productions in history.  Bigger, badder and louder for a band like KISS is their version of “now with lemon scent.”  That’s what keeps the fans interested and coming back year after year — a chance to see what new tricks are in store!  So innovate, but don’t ever abandon your core brand promise or your core customers.

3) Develop adjacencies. An adjacency is a new product related to your core offering that can provide new revenue streams. KISS has relentlessly spun off new ideas in merchandise, video games, toys, television programs and comic books that have attracted their own devotees.  Of course Gene Simmons has a reality show in the U.S. and Jeremy Bramwell told me he has a different hit show in the U.K., too.

4) Develop a brand and ferociously protect it.  One of the most fun KISS stories: When the band was just starting out and broke, they would surround their stage with mountains of empty speaker shells – none of them worked — to give the illusion that they were bigger and more important than they were (I guess that is like Twitter followers today?).  Was this tricking the customer?  No less than getting somebody to believe that Coca-Cola stands for something more than colored sugar water.  To be the biggest band in the world, they had to ACT like the biggest band in the world!

5) Put customers above everything.  I can’t imagine applying that kabuki make-up in a different city every night and playing the same songs over and over and over again … the same way … for decades. I’m sure they get sick of it.  But somehow (money) they find a way to approach their job, and their brand, with fresh passion every show because they HAVE to. They’re well-rewarded, but they also sacrifice a lot for their fans.  Say what you want about them.  KISS knows their customers and ALWAYS delivers.

What do you think?  What other business lessons can we learn from KISS or your favorite band?

In response to my post on the social media country club (perhaps ”fortress” would have been more apt?) many people agreed with the observations I made but also challenged, “what next?”

“We” can do nothing to influence the behavior of others except “unsubscribe,” which probably would not even be noticed.  The only thing I/you can change about the situation is myself/yourself.

I need to hold a mirror up to my own community and figure out what I can change about my role and accountability to create an inclusive and safe environment that promotes connection without cronyism. I know you will come up with much better ideas, but here are my own thoughts on this tough question:

If I were an “A” List blogger, what behaviors would I adopt to try to facilitate dissent, inclusiveness, accessibility, and innovation?

Humility.  First, I would never characterize myself as an “A” list anything.  That’s the beginning of the trouble right there.  This is probably easier said than done when your name is in lights. Remaining humble has to be a mindset and a daily objective.  For me, it is an element of my spiritual journey. When you see yourself in the really big picture, you have to be humble.

Leadership. When I first became a “boss” many years ago, I remember participating in a brainstorming session and learning a week later that all of my raw ideas were in some phase of implementation.  Why?  Because I was in a position of authority and people thought they were carrying out my wishes.  This made me uneasy.  I longed to remain part of the team with my friends.   But that was impossible. The way you act as a leader and the way you act as a follower is different.  Leaders have to lead.

My impression is that some of the social media elite have not come to grips with this.  After all, it’s at odds with the “authenticity” mantra, right?  If you feel “snarky” why not BE “snarky?”  It doesn’t work like that on this elevated level.  You can get away with it when you have 65 followers but you can’t when you are a representative of the discipline and a role model for many … which is what you worked hard to achieve.

For me, I accept being the leader of a blog discussion and conducting the forum in a way that is respectful and inclusive.  I need to try to be mindful that friendship and support are gifts, but undue favoritism is corrosive and disrespectful to those still finding their voice.  

Discernment – One high-profile blogger works for a company that retains Chris Brogan.  The person wrote a glowing review of “Trust Agents” on Amazon.  Is this good business, devoted friendship, or a conflict of interest?  You could successfully argue any of these positions, but the fact is that there could be at least an impression of impropriety.  So I think a lesson and best practice  is to avoid even an illusion of cronyism that could deteriorate trust and faith in me as a reliable and accessible leader.

A safety valve – I was really impacted by the fear people expressed in the comment section about disagreeing with the establishment. If I lose my way and start creating my own country club, how will I know?  Who will tell me?  As I become an authority figure to some, how do I help them still feel safe to dissent?  The idea I’m considering is a place on the blog for anonymous feedback that would only go to me. Perhaps that would be a way to establish a mechanism where anybody could say anything and beat me down a peg or two when I need it.  Need to think about that a little more.

OK, enough from the amateur.  What do you think?  What example should you and I set that would be a model for social web leadership?

P.S. I’m ready to lighten things up again. This stuff is too serious.  Tomorrow I’m going to write about KISS.  The band. Seriously.

I finally had time to read the Brogan/Smith book “Trust Agents.”  I thought it was “OK” at best – disjointed, repetitive, and even silly at spots (“much of journalism has a faux objectivism that can’t die fast enough”).   I think it’s a good book for social media newcomers.  But based on the take-your-breath-away reviews from the blogger community, I was expecting much more.

Why was my impression of this non-remarkable book so different than the biggest names in blogging?   Here’s my hypothesis:  The opinions were probably NOT much different than mine – but they just wouldn’t say so.  Why?  The “thought leaders” of social media marketing are a country club fearful of saying anything negative or controversial about another club member.  The real commerce of social media is trading favors and a negative comment breaks the favor chain.

Brogan and Smith express this importance of belonging when they write in their book: ”be yourself, which is to say, ‘be one of us’.”   They describe the clannish protectionism of those at the top when they say “(newcomers) don’t realize that we all know each other, that we we recognize the new stranger in our midst …”

I understand the human nature present in this situation.  Someone who wants to make it as a blogger is not going to rock the boat with a powerful individual who can influence their success by turning favors.  We all want to belong. That’s the way the world turns.   So if somebody wants to be a sycophant, why should I care?  Here’s why.  The nicey-nice world of social media blogging creates problems beyond the walls of the country club:

1) Group think. If you are unfamiliar with this term, here’s a good definition.  Among the top social media bloggers, there is little or no substantial debate over ANYTHING.  Sometimes an individual outside the “inner circle” lobs a grenade, which is usually deflected by a member of the inner circle in defense. The result is that essentially everybody expresses and re-expresses the basic opinions of the leaders without serious challenge or innovation.

2) Myth-making.  A few weeks ago I wrote a post about social media myths.  The ideas I chronicled probably seem ridiculous, yet mantras such as “it’s all about community” have become foundational tenets of nearly every blog I read.  As I’ve entered this arena and observed participant behavior, I’ve been astounded by how many people tweet, praise and re-blog anything uttered by the primary thought-leaders, no matter how insipid. It seems Marshall McLuhan was wrong in this case. The medium isn’t the message. In social media, the messenger is the message.

3) Lack of credibility.  Take a close look at the credentials (if you can find any) of nearly any leading social media marketing “expert.”  How many have ever had a real sales job or have been actually accountable for delivering new value in a marketplace by creating, testing and distributing a product on a meaningful scale?   Very few.  Yet these are our marketing “gurus?”  In a communication channel already dominated by porn-peddling, get-rich-quick nimrods, it simply doesn’t help our collective credibility to have our most visible advocates spouting incredibly naieve statements about marketing fundamentals they know little about.

4) An infrastructure of angels. If you get to the point where you are huge on the social media scene, shouldn’t you be able to pull enough strings to constantly surround yourself with enough positive tweets, reviews and testimonials to bury any authentic complaint?  The real strategy of Trust Agents is to build enough goodwill to call in favors forever.

OK, so let’s not talk about what’s going on “out there” any more. Let’s bring it to the here and now, you and me.  What would better serve MY social media strategy … or yours?  To provide an honest opinion that might upset the favor-makers, or to join the country club?

My friend Jayme Soulati sent me a great little story about getting new business through Twitter. I thought you might enjoy it!  Here’s Jayme:

The name of the game, as they frequently say, Mark, is developing relationship for ultimate Twitter success. I began tweeting for Cardthartic, a 16-year-old private greeting card publisher, in June.  Currently, we have merely 130 followers and 200 tweets.  Because the web site relaunch was not slated until September 2009, I knew I needed to establish a presence, build reputation and tweet about our passionate greeting cards in a sincere way.

Content is king. No doubt about that. While I could not drive traffic to the antiquated Web site, all I could do was tweet about the greeting within each card. To gain followers, I reviewed trending topics for “florists” who carry our cards that are nationally distributed and kept following people oriented to moms, grandmas, pet lovers, gift givers and florists. In a little over a month, I got my first authentic sale from Twitter! 

Here’s Jayme’s list for Twitter success: 

• Establish yourself with relevant and sincere content.
• Do not directly sell with offensive marketing gimmicks, like teeth whiteners.
• Personify yourself; a human is tweeting so who are you?
• While tweeting for a company brand is acceptable, come out from behind the curtain and be accessible.
• To convert a lead into a sale, ensure you pull in the traditional troops to close the deal.
• Monitor, monitor. Had we not been in close touch with the Tweets, we could easily have missed potential sales.

Now, in this final installment, let’s look at the LAME EXCUSES you might be hearing in the workplace. By the way, all of these excuses … I’ve really heard ‘em. Only the names have been withheld to protect the dim-witted.

1) This is a business based on human relationships dammit, not selling in a @%^#$@ chat room.

Hey bub watch your language. This is a family blog. Building relationships … that’s what social media is all about. And this is serious business. B2C is a flirtation — gimme a coupon and I’ll go out with you baby. But the intense, high-value B2B industrial relationship is like a marriage and that important, long-term bond can certainly be enhanced through the constant contact enabled by social media.

2) Our customers are not going to buy from a company based on what you say on Twitter. It all comes down to price and quality.

Every business is different, so you have to select your channel and your message carefully, especially in commodity markets. But I’ll point to three important trends you just can’t ignore: a) The time people spend on personal and business computer time is blurring, b) the time they spend on social media now exceeds email and c) social media has been shown to be a more effective source of word of mouth recommendations than traditional advertising. Your customers are probably online and they are being influenced by what they read.

I’ll also mention that if you’re in a business that is only focused on price and quality, it’s probably quite a dogfight. Why not look at using social media to differentiate your business through service innovations?

3) Our customers are not spending their time on social media sites, so it’s a waste of time.

This MAY be true, but don’t assume. Are you sure your conventional wisdom is still conventional?

I think the biggest danger for B2B companies is that they choose not to get in the game and then they let competitors and other hostile folks tell their story. There’s a good example of that here.

4) We know all our customers. We don’t need to build any more awareness.

Compared to the impulsive world of B2C, there are probably fewer opportunities to influence direct sales through SM in the B2B world. However, that’s just one piece of the sales pipeline. What about service? Technical support? Product development? Customer involvement and loyalty? How about finding new suppliers? Business partners? Information on markets, customers and technical developments? Engage employees, communities and other stakeholders? Are you gathering information on competitors?

5) Twitter is a waste of time and the stupidest thing I have ever seen.

This is true … at least for the first two weeks. The power of Twitter is not intuitively obvious. It’s an acquired talent. You need to commit, get coaching from somebody who knows the territory, and immerse yourself in the process to give it a fair shot. Believe me, your competitors are doing it, or will be doing it. For nearly any business I can think of, Twitter should be an essential listening, research and communication tool.

OK, you have the floor … what do you think?

In yesterday’s post, I demonstrated that even in the case of the most extreme B2B sales situation (one customer, long sales cycle, few competitors), there could be a place for social media marketing. Today I’ll tell you why it isn’t that simple.

Does my schizophrenia seem strange? I’ve been around long enough to know that even when there’s a slam-dunk business case for something, it doesn’t mean a company will do it. This has been quite apparent in B2B where hard-dollar social media successes have been few and far between, despite a lot of hype. Here are five good reasons why some B2B’s should NOT adopt social media right now:

1) The economy sucks. Unless a customer is screaming for social media, it’s not likely a struggling company is going to voluntarily get into a brand new marketing effort in the teeth of a recession. Even though most social media is “free,” it still takes valuable time and resources many companies don’t have right now. (On the flip side, your competitors are in the same boat – why not get a jump start on this now?)

OK, please let me pre-empt a few hot-blooded retorts bound to show up in the comment section … I’m not saying DON’T do social media. You know me better than that. I know that every one of these reasons I listed could be turned around as a reason TO DO social media marketing!