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Gaga tweeted “she is the future.” And Maria Aragon’s career was born, while Lady Gaga’s brand was further humanized, introducing a remarkable story that we can’t stop sharing.

(In case you missed it, here’s the video that sent Maria jetting to multiple talk shows and has earned her phone calls from agents and producers. As of this post, up to 17MM+ views in two weeks.)

There was no user-generated contest, no copy written, no casting. Just a community member who loved a song and let her passion show. The Mother Monster found it, tweeted the link, handed the keys to the community, and launched a rocket.

She could have just said ‘Thanks!’ As many brands are wont to do in social media. Instead, she rewarded her creative fan with a tweet that compelled millions to click — “Can’t stop crying… This is why I make music. She is the future.”

Last night was the culmination of chapter 1 in this story, as Maria Aragon performed live in Toronto with Lady Gaga, thanks a quick hook-up on Toronto’s Virgin Radio.

This is Lady Gaga’s best video. Better than Bad Romance, better than Telephone.

A single tweet earned Lady Gaga a ridiculous amount of positive press, a new level of respect from her existing fan base, and consideration from a broader market who would normally dismiss the cigarette-sunglass-wearing oviparous pop star.

What could you do to hand the keys to a community member? Sometimes, you have to do more than just say thanks. Trust me, you’ll thank me for it.

Cannes!

I really don’t care about Cannes. I don’t even know how to pronounce it properly.

(I do, however, care about pronounciation, so… Wikipedia says it’s pronounced “kan,” like “plan.”)

If you’re in to all of that, great. If winning a Lion for your ad is what gets you excited in the morning, fantastic. In fact, if that dangled carrot fills you with passion and drive that pushes you to excel on a project I happen to be working on, I’m even happier.

But it’s not what drives me.

To be fair, if we won one, I’d celebrate it and congratulate all those involved. I’d be proud of it. But I’m not clamoring for it.

I measure my personal and our collective success differently. I want to know:

• Did we strike a chord with our target?
• Did we create an idea that people will talk about?
• Did we build loyalty; build a community or tap into any others?
• Did we sell the product or the brand, not the product type?
• Did we increase sales?

I believe the best way to manage a creative team and create great work is to understand what drives each individual, and figure out how that plays into the project. We’re not all there to stand up on stage with a golden cat.

Now, let’s go out and make some magic. The awards will come.

“What are we actually DOing?” I often puzzle fellow marketers and advertisers with this question.

The brief is written to focus on the most important message for a campaign, and many times we jump to the presentation of that message. How the slogan will appear in print; what stock photo will best represent our target persona (but don’t forget the element of diversity); which voiceover artist best conveys the gravitas of the campaign? In social media, many jump to the hope that our friends and followers will parrot the message. But this is a flawed, presumptuous distortion of word-of-mouth (WOM). Even the most repeatable slogans seem pretty ridiculous when tweeted. (I pick on Nike here because I used to work for, and still love the brand…)

Instead of starting with “how do we make them talk about us,” why not start with “how do we make them absolutely love us?” People love to talk about brands they love. Brands that actually DO something, instead of just talking about it.

Brands that take action.

This question strikes at the heart of humanized brands — after all, the judgement of our peers is based on their actions, not just their words.

How you and your brand can take action — Some examples:

Level 1: KLM

KLM recently “experimented” with social media by listening to public posts and giving gifts to people who checked-in at their terminals.

Level 2: Tide

Tide has extended the Loads of Hope campaign they began during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and is now cleaning clothes in Haiti.

Level 3: Pepsi Refresh Project

The no-super-bowl-for-us Pepsi movement continues to build a following.

Level 4: Open Forum by AMEX

AMEX has created a unique and thriving online community for small business owners and entrepreneurs.

To help you move your next project away from sloganeering, here are some calls-to-action:

Give

Help

Educate

Connect

Empower

So, what are you DOing?

Whoops

Google made a splash with their demo launch video for Wave. The ripples flowed through the social web as some, me included, anticipated great things. It was Google after all, and when do they fail? (more often than you’d think, it turns out). Beyond the great Google stamp of awesome though, any communication product that could translate two-way conversations on the fly surely was a game-changer, right? That feature wasn’t even core to the product, in fact, it was almost mentioned as an afterthought — “… by the way,” the demonstrators seemed to say, “this Phaeton also turns into a plane. Moving on…”

Later, (though, probably not soon enough later) the Wave was unleashed to general users with “limited” invites. They joined, linked up, and tried to ride the Wave.

And, if Google Trends had been hooked up to Wave, the highest term would have been “uh… What now?”

Days later, the Wave never hit the shore.

So now that it’s gone, what can we learn?

Even the savvy users didn’t get it. (perhaps some of the savviest did, but I digress) What was the purpose? What problem is this product solving? It was undefined, or too complex.

Google seemed to go against it’s own process, so giddy on it’s own cleverness. What happened to Marissa Mayer and her crusade for simplicity? When the iPhone launched, it didn’t offer the app store or iTunes. These features were introduced later. Even when Google itself launched, it was a search bar and a results page. The value revealed itself, and seemed to work as if by magic.

So the Wave team didn’t answer the most crucial question – who is it for? Did Google understand it’s customer, or just focus on the product? As Steven Gary Blank describes in “The Four Steps To The Epiphany,” companies that are creating a product for a new market must sell simplicity. If it’s a new concept that I have to try to understand and a new set of behaviors I have to adopt, you’d better make it easier for me than whatever I’m already using (waaay easier). Moreover, did Google think past the launch – how the product would roll out socially as well as technologically? To what influencers did they roll the product out, first? As in the case of the recent Flipboard launch, where Robert Scoble tested first and was very happy to extol the virtues of Flipboard at launch. Wave could have partnered with not only individuals, but organizations to demonstrate through case studies or events just what it was for, and how it improved our lives.

Instead, the launch was pseudo-Steve-Jobsian, a tablet-on-the-mount speech that blew us away, but had no pay-off. With iPhone launches, however, there is physical social currency, whereas passionate Wave advocates and avid users were hidden. Which brings us to the most important point – one that Google of all companies should understand and execute without fail: Connection.

Connection

Ironically, this is what Google Wave set out to improve, and yet this is what it failed to provide. Modern services developed for widespread use must connect with other services. Wave didn’t even connect properly with Gmail. The most basic connection, notifications, required a hacky plug-in and a significant time investment. Of course, once one user had installed notification, there were few other users with it, so the Waves would stall anyway. Further, there was no connection to other tools and services that we use on a daily basis. If Wave activity was associated with a user’s existing social profile, on Facebook or Twitter, the product might have had a fighting chance.

Like Apple’s Newton, this could be another case of too much, too soon. As with Apple, its Newton and its iPhone, the market wasn’t ready for the technology or the change in behaviour. We knew it would happen, eventually, but there was still a long way to go. Will it be Google that reintroduces the wave concept in a few years, or will it be another provider, say Facebook with it’s unmatched engagement and depth of profile to facilitate Wave 2.0’s introduction; or an entirely new provider, with a more disruptive vision and an understanding of the future of on-demand, live, ubiquitous connection? Will it be you?

Regardless of whom starts Wave 2.0, at least we’ll always have the Pulp Fiction Wave:

Coca-cola sticks to its old-school guns with ‘the single largest marketing push the soft drink giant has ever run.’

CherryFlava gives us the rundown here: http://www.cherryflava.com/cherryflava/2010/04/coca-cola-quest-world-cup-2010-ad.html

I’ve got nothing against the effort put in and the 3d awesomeness that has been created, but I’m pretty bored by the idea that Coke just wants to interrupt arguably the most passion-driven event in the world show us some stranger getting thirsty from jumping on robots and reaching for a Coke.

All this opportunity to connect and interact with the beautiful game and its singing, screaming, crying and cheering fans (the actions that make us thirsty), and Coke wants to interrupt those actions to shut us up, bring us down from the high and remind us to pick up a case of Coke before the next game.

But, please – I don’t want to make this a monologue – what do you think?

PS – COME ON ENGLAND!

When you’re a movie maker, could there be a more positive inquiry from a potential viewer?

Isn’t that what trailers are designed to do? How many hours are spent creating trailers? How much money? How much time and effort is spent crafting the perfect show-a-little-leg-but-not-too-much tease to get people to sit forward in their seats and expand their pupils by the time the name of the movie and the opening date fades in?

And yet, thousands of people asking “What movie is this from” doesn’t seem to be influencing the poor decision made by the lawyers representing Constantin Film, who have decided to systematically destroy what is probably the most successful marketing campaign they’ve ever been a part of (Well, at least since the NeverEnding Story).

Constantin Film AG is the production and distribution company behind the movie “Downfall,” which is also the source from one of the Internet’s most hallowed memes.

Read the rest of this article on Threeminds

How much would you pay for million subscribed fans? How much time would you invest to build such a huge audience? Sometimes all it takes is a few minutes — just set up the right execution with some real insight.

The “Mom, mom, mommy, ma, mom, mom, ma, ma, mommy, mommy… WHAT!!… hi! (endquote sic) Facebook fan page has crossed 5 million fans, with no content whatsoever; it’s powered solely by the social currency traded amongst friends as they fan this page with a nudge and a wink.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mom-mom-mommy-ma-mom-mom-ma-ma-mommy-mommy-WHAT-hi/231423647287

It’s hard to describe the insight this fan page creator has leveraged – only a parent can fully understand the experience of moving from ceiling-clawing annoyance to cheek-squeezing adoration as their child vies for their attention…

Now, the page creator sits on a gold mine of news feed access… which begs the question, should brands change the topic?

Read the rest of this post on Threeminds

Tucked away near the end of one of the best Slideshare’s I’ve come across, is this lil’ gem of UGC brilliance. Musicians C-Mon & Kypski need a little help with their music video, and it’s crowdsourcing that makes this video memorable (and affordable, I imagine). They’ll show you a frame from their video, and all you have to do is mimic it via webcam.

But before I tell you why I love this so much, let me share the Slideshare presentation with you – In “Stop Saying Viral – A Case For Spreadable Media,” Eva Hasson of Trendspotting makes an argument against “The Viral” strategy on which so many agencies and brands are stuck. If you’re a marketer, the best thing you could do today is open your mind to Hasson’s Wisdom Bombs…

Read the rest of this post at Threeminds

There’s a lot of buzz about the Pepsi Refresh project and how they’re pulling their usual investment in Super Bowl Advertising and moving funds to a broader social strategy. It’s exciting news for people like me who work on big brands and are trying to bring perspective to the old-school Mad Men wanna-bes who still crowd this industry while the world moves away from traditional one-way advertising to deeper experiences. But, even as Pepsi tries to break new ground by cancelling their standard multi-million dollar 30-second football spot, their television ad agency proceeds to fumble the ball by blatantly ripping off a brilliant YouTube video to sell the new social initiative.

Here’s the Pepsi Refresh ad:

And the original music video that Pepsi “Refreshed”:

Much more magical, don’t you think?

Imagine if they contacted SOUR and worked with them to take SOUR’s concept to a whole new level, as opposed to just blatantly copying it. Wouldn’t that be more in line with the ideals of the new Pepsi Refresh Project? Imagine the positive wave of support from SOUR’s fans, and the 1 million+ other viewers of this video who surely would like the band to succeed. Please agencies — it’s not about you anymore. It’s not about your ads. It’s about the customer; the consumer; the user; the publich; the individual. It’s about The Human.

Sketch-a-Move from Superflux on Vimeo.

(via @karrio)

In Hockey, there is nothing more hair-raising than a perfect Dangle.

Disclosure: Full-on own-horn-tooting coming up.

I’m really excited by some of the work we’re doing at Organic for Nike at the Olympics. Steve Dangle’s back, and he’s blowing up Vancouver with his YouTubian magic. How can you make Team Canada even more exciting? Invoke the Dangle.

I’m loving how we’re humanizing this brand.

Look for more of his videos at http://youtube.com/niketraining and he’s tweeting live from pretty much every Team Canada hockey game at http://twitter.com/niketraining or @niketraining.

Update (Feb 21, 2010): Dangle sits down with Bilodeau and his magic medal.

Update 2 (Feb 28, 2010): GOLD! (Sorry, but YEAAAHHH!!!)

Merry Xmas everyone. Here’s some holiday magic.

Ford’s astonishing and inspiring thought leadership in the online space continues, as they fully embrace WOMMA’s Code of Ethics with their rules, including:

“We want both positive and negative reviews of our vehicles.”

“In social media, it must be your authentic opinion or it doesn’t count.”

“Apologize quickly for any mistakes we make.”

Factsheet – Ford’s Rules of Online Engagement

It’s an unfortunate topic and circumstance, but this video sets the bar for Real, Authentic, Human social media to build a brand…

Too bad it’s often this type of situation that initiates this type of content, format, message and transparent leadership.

Harley-Davidson is ceasing production of Buell brand bikes, and this was posted on the Buell homepage:

So Erik Buell, I hardly knew ye.

A very interesting conversation is going on over on http://www.uxbooth.com. As the need for beautiful things and big ideas evolves into a need for usable things and open platforms, the role of the Creative Director is changing.

Enter the User-eXperience Designer, the man (or woman) “with the plan” for how the experience will work, grow, spread and evolve. Some argue that this is still the CD’s role, and others see the new emphasis requires balanced influence from more than one skill set. They overlap, sure, but just as the copywriter/designer team was shown to work best in the past in the advertising industry, so too this matchup will become the norm, I predict. It works for building architects and designers; car companies; event planners; game designers… but agencies still seem to struggle with it.

If you’ve hired a UXD, it’s not too late to elevate and socialize their importance and impact. If you haven’t got one yet, it’s not too late. Just be ready to create some Exceptional Experiences.

The buzz words are changing. As the term “Web 2.0” becomes antiquated, and the masses embrace social media, brands, corporations and organizations are starting to understand the implications of the new paradigms of the web.

Transparency is what’s driving consumer decision now, and the trust that is formed through the authentic collective voice of a brand’s management team, employees and customers.

At this point, I’m starting to feel dirty just saying the words “messaging” and “tone” when discussing “campaigns.”

In Boy Scouts, young campers are taught to start a one-match fire – focusing one’s skill on building the framework of the fuel so that it catches with only one match. I’ll do better than that. I’ll give you six matches to start the transparency fire in your organization.

Here are six catalysts to spark your new focus on authenticity and transparency.

Authencity drives consumer choices…

1. Joseph Pine defines the new Experience economy in this TED talk from 2004, and how “Authenticity is becoming the new consumer sensibility.”

… and they trust only human voices…

2. The Cluetrain Manifesto celebrated its 10-year anniversary with a new edition published this year. It describes how consumers are finding trust and truth through human voices within your organization, or elsewhere – that is, however they wish. From the book: “The corporation pretends to speak, but its voice is that of a third-rate actor in a fourth-rate play, uttering lines no one believes in a manner no one respects.”

… and some of these voices are much “louder” than others…

3. Chris Brogan and Julien Smith’s Trust Agents just hit the New York Times Bestseller list. It’s a how-to guide, defining and training the individuals in your organization best practices to be honest as they build genuine relationships. From the cover flap: “Trust Agents wield enough online influence to build up and bring down a business’ reputation.”

… so organizations must find a new way to communicate…

4. Shel Holtz and John C. Havens’ Tactical Transparency presents a framework for dealing with all the scary situations that big brands fear as they dip their toes in to Social Media. From the book: “Tactical Transparency provides dozens of case studies and interviews that address the implementation of transparency tools at the highest levels of the organization and the lowest. Transparency succeeds when it is embedded into the culture of a company, not implemented as a program designed to be exercised by only a few.”

… and it must go all the way to the top…

5. Organic’s CFO and COO Marita Scarfi explains the opportunity CEOs are missing if they don’t participate in Social Media and open conversations, in this recent Threeminds blog post. “Being engaged with your customers allows you to produce better products/services which, in turn, leads to improved customer loyalty. Ultimately this helps increase sales and fosters stronger company financial performance (e.g. increased shareholder value).”

… just like these numerous examples of management-level-driven open conversations.

6. The NewPR Wiki lists dozens of blogs written by Management-level contributors, where issues are being discussed, and trust is growing in brands… and the people that are behind them.

One last tip, campers: Campfires start quicker when the team works together, and when the structure of the tinder allows in oxygen… Keep it open.