You probably know by now that I like to shake it up with something light-hearted on Fridays but I think today’s video sends {grow} into an entirely new orbit.  A new Twitter friend, Jennifer Kane, gave this speech last year at Ignite Minneapolis. It’s one of the few videos I have seen recently that literally made me laugh loud enough to be heard across the street.  It was too funny and creative not to share with y’all.  Fasten your seat belt.

Warning – There’s strong language in this video.  Make sure the sound is not turned up if there are children around.

P.S. Sally — You won’t like this.

I’m pleased to offer this entertaining guest post from {grow} community member John White, a marketing communications writer for technology companies. I think you’re going to love this romp from John’s offbeat and creative mind!

This week, I phoned my neighbor and favorite instructional designer, Gail Dana, to tell her about yet another social media presentation (YASMP) I’d seen advertised.

“Gail, do you get social media?” I asked her, italicizing the verb.

“Sort of,” she replied, “but I think it’s worthless. Or at least, I hope it is.”

“I know what you mean. A lot of us don’t know quite what to do with it. Anyway, wanna go listen to another young person try to explain it to us?”

Gail was up for that, so we drove across town to attend Melodie Tao’s presentation here in San Diego, “Social Media Design Techniques to Engage your Customer.”

Melodie gave a breathlessly energetic performance describing Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and even Foursquare, outlining design ideas for your presence in social media.  She described using social tools to enhance traveling, studying, spending time with friends, and accomplishing work tasks. I figured I must have done a lot of the same things at her age, but without recourse to social media. In fact, I traveled the world for four years and made only two phone calls home in all that time (one was a wrong number because my parents had moved).

It got me thinking about my blogs and my newsletter and my LinkedIn profile and the time I spend wrapped around the Twitter axle when suddenly I had … 

My Social Media Epiphany

I figured out why my social media efforts include so much head-scratching after all this time:  I’m in Category 4!

While Melodie paused for a hurried gulp of water during her speech, I managed to wrap my brain around the factors that go into social media winning and losing. Four categories occurred to me in the space of about 2.5 seconds, and whenever I can think that fast, I’m usually right.

Category 1: The Natural Networkers. We all know people like this, people with a seemingly boundless circle of friends. Attracting and retaining this circle is second nature to them. They don’t even call it “interaction;” it’s just what happens when they’re awake. They’re drawn to polls, giveaways, contests, coupons, comments and retweeting in their offline life, so doing it in a browser or on a phone provides an extra channel of exhilaration.

Social media is an online extension of their innate ability to connect to and build relationships with other people.

Category 2: The Geeks. Not strictly geeks, but left-brain, analytical personalities who see the patterns in keywords, practice SEO copywriting to apply them and understand the science behind building an audience and moving it from one point of engagement to the next. The tools of social media resonate with and challenge them. They figure out how to make money using these tools to build and distribute the right content.

Social media is an online extension of their innate ability to figure out how the lawn mower works, then turn it into a mini-bike, then a go-cart, then a fishing boat. (And get us to pay a nickel to ride along.)

Category 3: The Hemingways. These people are the ultimate raconteurs. It doesn’t matter what we’re doing online; if we stumble onto something they’ve written, we drop everything and read it. They write crisply, then infuse their writing with the story of their own interesting life, they make us stop and think and actually click on the link to the story they refer to. They write the posts that make the young girls cry… They don’t need SEO techniques; people retweet and forward their stuff because it’s just such damned valuable content.

Social media is an online extension of their innate ability to tell a story that resonates with us, the kind nobody interrupts with, “Yeah, well that’s just like the time I…”

Adrift in the Long Tail …

Now, if you’re fortunate enough to live in more than one of the preceding categories, you knock the cover off the ball. Long may you run. But let’s not forget the rest of us in …

Category 4: Social Media Purgatory. We start a blog, stick with it, and do as much as we can to promote it, considering we’re not in the other three categories. We have a Facebook and LinkedIn profile, we tweet from time to time, we have between a few dozen and a few hundred followers, and we’re adrift in the long tail. We read the advice and attend the webinars of people in the other three categories. We see how people turn tweets into interaction, and interaction into relationships, and some relationships into a career, but it’s a long way off for us, and besides, we have our day job.

Social media is an online extension of our innate ability to lean out on the carousel and reach for the brass ring. We don’t quite grab it, but we congratulate ourselves for staying on the painted pony and trying hard.

Of course, it’s entirely up to us to spend the rest of this life (and maybe a couple more) in social-media purgatory. But social media and its tools will nudge some of us out of Category 4 and into one of the other categories, in the same way that the Harry Potter series inspired hardened non-readers to get through 3400 pages, or that Microsoft PowerPoint has instilled in timid people the nerve to present in front of an audience.

So, on the way home from Melodie’s presentation I bounced my newly found taxonomy off of Gail. In doing so, I recalled a line uttered by the hapless Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, scratching his head at the difficulty that rich people find in connecting to one another:

“There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.”

Pick whichever set of categories makes the most sense to you, and stop being a social media loser.

John White of venTAJA Marketing posts about technology writing from the perspective of the marketing manager. It’s dirty work, but somebody has to do it. He also publishes a newsletter with more tips on working with your writers.

Illustration: Photobucket

This week Mattel announced a new video Barbie that has a tiny camera embedded in her chest (YouBoob?).  The iconic doll has fully joined the social media movement by leading her fans through a Foursquare scavenger hunt, Facebook puzzles and YouTube adventures.  She even has a Twitter account. Check out her tweet stream:

So here I am laying in a pile of naked Barbies again.  Feeling a strange tingly sensation. : p

@Skipper Of course I’m bitchy.  My boyfriend’s a eunuch.

Have you heard about new Blogger Barbie?  Sits at the computer all day. WTF?

Just got back from set of  Toy Story 3.  Potato Head was wasted again. #douchebag

@Ken No, no honey. Eunuch is Spanish word for HOT!  Luv U baby!

Let’s dress up!  I want to be Lady Gaga and shoot fire from my boobs!

Sitting at the Dream House watching #OldSpice on YouTube.  Yeah, well my man smells like polychlorates.

I would give anything to be able to take a good crap.

@mattel  So sick of pink I could hurl. Am I being sponsored by Pepto Bismol or what? #newcontract

Head just popped off again.  Not easy texting with nose.

@Ken LOL!  Polychlorates is the Spanish word for cinnamon silly!  Luv U baby!

I have now been under this damn couch for a week.  Need to get my drink on.

Being chewed up by the dog. Later!

For my friends around the world who are unfamiliar with Barbie, this was not real. It is supposed to be funny.

OK, we’ve heard all the great business success stories about connecting and learning through Twitter. But the human race is made up of all kinds of people and some of them have more important things to do. Like hooking their toilet up to Twitter.  I started collecting some of these random (and real) uses of Twitter and thought I would present this amusing list to my dear friends on {grow}.

Did you know Twitter can help you …

Tweet with vampires — The Twitter account @vampires will let you follow the adventures of the undead. Bloody great idea.

Befriend lactating cows — A dozen lactating bovines are hooked up to a monitor so you can read their teats er … tweets … after they’ve been milked by a robot.  The cows at a Buttermine Farms near Woodstock, Ont., has more than 2,000  tweets since the project began in December.

Tell secrets — Secret tweet allows you to post your secrets to Twitter anonymously.  Here was mine: I am writing this in the nude. Which means I probably broke some law in Singapore.

Rock out – Here is a list of the top 50 rock stars on Twitter.  The list includes Brittany Spears. I doth protest.

Let your pets make friends.  — Cats on Twitter is a site where cats can meet other tweeting cats and of course there is also the companion site, Dogs on Twitter.  There is one cat (@sockington)with over 1.5 million followers on Twitter.  Cat tweeting is apparently serious business. Really makes you take paws.

Water your plants — This device helps your plants tweet you when they need some H2O. When will  they make one for beer?

Be random — Twitrand lets you generate random tweets from your tweet stream. Why?  Why any of this really.

Learn the rules — The rules is a hilarious Twitter account which teaches you the rules of life in no particular order.  Today’s wisdom:  Rule No. 537: No speedos, please.

Get breaking news on Cheetos — I hate the orange stuff it leaves on your fingers but that doesn’t seem to bother Chester the Cheetah who tweets about a Cheetos wedding, the world’s largest Cheeto, snack impersonators and other tasty tidbits.

Watch the world poop — Everybody does it.  So of course somebody had to put it on Twitter.  TwttrPoop tracks the whole world pooping in real time. They should have called it Twitter Shitter right?  If you thought Twitter was a load of crap, well … now you’re right

Monitor a toilet — You had to know this one was coming. The HacklabToilet in Toronto has a Twitter feed.  Hacklab is a site for hackers in Toronto with a “a strong disdain for twitter” and an urge to wire things to the internet.

Say hello to PeeWee Herman — Hey, he has a new Broadway show now so let’s see what’s up with the ever-boy. Captain Carl rocked.

Follow an execution – In what may be the most distasteful use of Twitter (well, maybe tied with the poop thing) the Utah Attorney General announced the progress of a prisoner’s execution over Twitter.

Track the activities of Superheros — Holy Hashtags Caped Crusader!  You can now follow  Batman (my personal favorite), SpiderMan, and Superman on Twitter.

Get advice on bras — Your bra consultant claims that most women are wearing the wrong sized bra. I swear I had no idea.  So don’t be a boob — tune in for the web’s best bra advice.

Tweet while you drive — Ford announced they will produce a range of tweeting vehicles. The special app will allow the drivers to read their Twitter messages (huh?).  And you’ll be able to reply to tweets as a voice-activated function.

Secretly watch Steve — The Twitter bio description of the ShhDontTellSteve account:  “This is a Twitter page where I secretly tweet about what my roommate Steve is doing at all times.”  Hilarious.

Find people who are addicted to shoes — Here is a list of shoe freaks on Twitter.  A well-heeled group apparently.

Read headstones –@FindAGrave reports quotes from famous headstones each day. I wonder if they have ghost writers?

Follow your cat’s every move – Sony has developed a prototype cat tweeting device that has a built-in camera, an accelerometer, and a GPS so you will be able to tell when the cat is moving around, eating and sleeping.

So there you have it.  For better or worse, all the world’s showing up on Twitter.  Hope you had some fun with this list!

If you enjoyed this post, consider a free email subscription to {grow} by clicking the RSS feed button at the top of the page. Thank you!

Illustration: Geek and Poke

Before I convince you that Guy Kawasaki is the devil, let’s look at his secret identity as described in his “official” bio.

Guy Kawasaki is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm and a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine. Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. Guy is the author of nine books including Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. He has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

Impressive.

The man could probably get a job anywhere.  And yet his chosen occupation is Twitter Tormentor as he pays a staff of people to blanket us with tweets like:

GuyKawasaki

The wild and rampant sex of flowers http://u.nu/8c578

How to sell socks http://idek.net/1Qlh

How can sugar explode? http://idek.net/1Rav

How to make a shrimp from a bendy straw http://idek.net/1OuI

How to reprogram your brain in 5 days http://idek.net/1OVl

Booty-popping frogs. Eat your heart out Beyonce http://u.nu/6k28b

Guy’s content is like a never-ending game of Trivial Pursuit and he somehow lured 253,758 people into his private world of tweet hell.  Why Guy, why?

The truth!  Do you have a plant sex fetish?

Why is it so important to teach us how to sell socks?

Shouldn’t you be doing something more important than bending straws into crustaceans?

While this constant barking on my Twitter stream is somewhere between annoying and obsessive, I can’t look away.  I’m under his spell.  Is he REALLY re-programming our brains? Is it that impish, Bieber-like smile? Could it be the frog booty?  I don’t know, but damn you Guy Kawasaki!!  Damn you for being the most eclectic and confounding personality on the tweet stream!

It’s Friday and as we say around here, “Man does not live by blog alone” and when I saw this pic I laughed out loud and thought I would share it with you.

Too bad crayons don’t come with spell-check.

This came off of a Trendhunter photo gallery of the world’s worst parenting photos. Here are a few more …

I was rolling around on the floor with some of my young nieces and nephews and somehow the word “poop” entered the conversation.  Every time I said it, the kiddos would burst into hysterical fits of laughter.

Soon I was trying variations. Loud poop, soft poop, high poop, low poop.  There was Dr. Seuss-style poop. Ploopity-loopity-poop.

I would hold my breath, act like I was ready to burst, and then explode with poop … figuratively of course.

The kids were laughing so hard that soon the adults had tears running down their faces too.  It was one of the moments of contagious joy.

How I wish I could just bottle that up and share it with all of you.  So I thought I would start with this.

POOP.

Did you smile?  Heck.  I smiled just typing it!  So there.  It’s a start.

Where is all this leading?  Nowhere. But of course if you read this blog you’re accustomed to that. I just thought it was time to plow new ground.  First major blogger to use “poopy” in a headline.  A true milestone in social media history. Eat my dust, Brogan.

Sometimes it’s challenging to provide meaningful content on {grow} and have fun too.  I’ll often look back at a week of posts and think, “It’s time to lighten up man. That was some serious shit.”  Or … serious poop. Either way.

So thanks for hanging with me on a not-so-serious, offbeat post. Now, I double-dare you to re-tweet it.  People will think you’re crazy but this might be your only chance to legitimately use “poopy” in a tweet. That is my gift to you.   Share the love.  Spread the poop.

Illustration: My nephew Owen!

What did it take for you to “get” Twitter?

I was certainly in that vast number of people who resisted it.  The first tweet I ever received was “It’s 4 a.m.” … confirming that Twitter was indeed the stupidest thing I’d ever seen.

But then I had my ah-ha moment. I was bored at the computer one night and saw a trending topic for #NewFluName.  Mildly curious, I clicked to see what was happening.

Remember when the pork industry was having a fit about the swine flu?  It thought the name was hurting meat sales and asked the public to call it something else.  So hundreds of people on Twitter from around the world were coming up with HILARIOUS new names. Like …

• The Aporkalypse
• Porky’s Revenge
• This little piggy went to the bathroom
• Hog Flashes
• Porkenstein
• The Other White Flu
• Mad Sow Disease
• Hamageddon
• … and my favorite, “Hamthrax”

Yes, it broke the monotony of my evening. But something more important happened. I realized that I was witnessing a real-time, global brain-storming session.  And it dawned on me that at no other time in the history of mankind could that kind of conversation take place.  It was an awesome moment, an inspiring moment.  I was finally starting to “get” Twitter.

Over the next several weeks I witnessed Twitter serve as a powerful news source during the revolutionary activity in Iran.  I made my first meaningful business connections.  And I began to realize that Twitter was probably the most interesting and compelling educational tool I had ever seen.

But when you come right down to it, I owe it all to Hamthrax.

I think everybody probably needs to have that ah-ha moment to get them over the top.  What was yours?  Did it happen in a flash or did it sneak up on you?

Can you imagine being in charge of marketing and watch your product become the first-ever “viral” success story? 

It was just five years ago. YouTube was brand new.  Facebook was just being opened to the public.  And performance art with Mentos “geysers” became the world’s first video viral sensation.  If you haven’t seen some of this amazing fun, push play above!  Here’s an interview with Pete Healy, who saw it all happen on his watch as vice president of marketing for Perfetti Van Melle USA, makers and distributors of Mentos …

Mark: Pete, it’s hard to imagine a world without the social web. Tell us how the whole Mentos viral event evolved.

Pete:  It was something that could have come and gone in two weeks, but it ended up lasting nearly a year.  To be honest, we didn’t start the “Mentos Geyser Craze” of 2006, but I think we did a good job of inviting people everywhere to participate in the goofy fun. The fountain effect of dropping a Mentos into soda was already known and used by Steve Spangler and other science educators, but in 2006, the performance art duo “Eepybird” decided to make it theatrical by dropping Mentos into 100 bottles of soda simultaneously, with spectacular results.  They posted the video titled “Experiment #137″, an homage to the Bellagio Fountains in Las Vegas, and it immediately started getting attention–including ours.  By chance we had just re-evaluated the personality of our Mentos brand; and thinking metaphorically, we had decided that if Mentos were a celebrity, it would be Adam Sandler.  What better match than Adam Sandler and shooting off bottles of soda?!

 I’m passionate about building “brands that captivate,” and that means that every time a consumer is pleased by contact with a brand, they should have the chance for additional contact or “touchpoints.”   This approach led us beyond supporting an Eepybird sequel to a “DIY Mentos Geyser” video contest microsite, a chance to hang with the street team of the Mentos Roadshow tour, an opening video segment for a Blue Man Group national tour, and “Party with Mentos” photo uploads during Spring Break 2007.  The craze culminated in the first Guiness Book of World Records “Mentos Geyser” event at Fountain Square in Cincinnati, when 504 bottles of soda were “shot off” at once.  It was a hot day, so that soda splashing down on all the volunteers who turned out to help was kind of fun!

 When we talk about “viral” what did that really mean in terms of views or whatever?

The impact was amazing to us, especially since we were still figuring the social web out. Ultimately there were more than 7 million viewings of the first Mentos Geyser video and it took only five days to hit 1 million views of the sequel, “Experiment #214.”  From the standpoint of User Generated Content, there were more than 10,000 videos created and posted by people doing their own Mentos Geysers; the comic effect of the ones done indoors tended to offset any aesthetic shortcomings!  For our own “official” video contest, we had to pick a winner out of 200 entries.

While you facilitated the viral event, you mentioned to me that Coca Cola, the other piece of the geyser formula, reacted in a much different way.

Yes, the difference came out early on when the Wall Street Journal called me to ask our feelings about the spread of the first geyser video.  I could genuinely say that we were delighted by the creativity, fun, and whimsy of the effort. After all, Mentos is candy — fun by definition. The WSJ reporter told me that, in contrast, Coca Cola’s first reaction had been that this whole thing didn’t fit the Coke brand, although they later seemed to change their thinking.

It’s remarkable to me that you had the foresight back then to let the thing roll and disconnect it from a traditional marketing perspective.   What were the results?  Where you able to connect this event to sales in any way?

For better or worse, I guess my approach was the result of my own personality, along with my previous work at Jelly Belly, another fun brand with a lot of passion behind it.  My years launching and building Jelly Belly in international markets–including countries where people had no idea what a regular jelly bean was, much less a “gourmet jelly bean” selling at a crazy-high price, led me to a marketing approach that mixes a “why not?” attitude with some very carefully defined measures of progress.  In any case, the Mentos Geyser craze resulted in a year-over-year sales boost of 20%; this eventually dropped to a 15% y-o-y gain, but that’s still not too bad.

You’ve had a wonderful career in traditional marketing and are now at the forefront of the social web. What challenge do you see as these two worlds collide? 

Great question, and one I sometimes struggle with. There seems to be so much froth and frenzy over social media that I worry about marketers getting distracted by “bright shiny objects” to the detriment of making their brands truly more meaningful.  Until the day we’re all chained to computer screens 24/7,  consumers will continue to want contact with brands in many different ways and places, from in-store sampling to event marketing to fantastic customer service to active support for charitable causes. 

The social web clearly has the power to amplify the total brand experience; but brand marketers will be hurting themselves if they put all their eggs in that basket, either from infatuation or peer pressure.  

Pete, final question. In your career, you were also behind the amazing Jelly Belly marketing effort. If you had to describe me as a jelly bean candy flavor, what would it be?

Well, I’d have to go into the Jelly Belly flavor archives and say…Espresso!  Straight-ahead, high-octane, great balance … one of my all-time favorite flavors. 

Additional reading: Business Week article on how Coke finally embraced viral marketing.

Pete Healy is currently the director of Crowbar Marketing in Cincinnati, OH.

It’s going to be 66 degrees and sunny in Tennessee today. Discuss.  : )