I’m talking about the Super Bowl commercials, of course. Over the past decade+ they’ve become an event unto themselves. Each year, brands spend ludicrous sums of money to secure a spot, then additional ludicrous sums of money and creative talent to develop a 30+ second spot. The hope has become that the conversation about the brand and its spot carries over into social media.

This year it definitely did. In a way I’d never seen before. And it was… weird. Tide’s campaign was #LaundryLater. Which is actually pretty good. It recognizes that nobody likes to do laundry, but they (might?) worry about stains. Decent insight, really. And the execution seemed designed with social in mind. Which is interesting. And then… this happened. (Go ahead. Scroll through).

Seriously. Avocados from Mexico chimes in with a guac shirt. Then Pepsi, and Burger King, and Chips Ahoy, and Pandora. Then Palm Bay Spritzer calls out Tide for tagging the wrong Emily Hampshire.

It’s like when Google had to shut down that AI experiment: the AIs were talking to each other in an encrypted language they invented and we couldn’t crack.

I don’t blame the brands, though. They were just trying to do what brand strategists and social media consultants have been telling them to do for years: be an “authentic” part of the “conversation.” We’ve created a monster.

As Megan Averell points out: “the inter-brand chatter was largely unfunny and fairly forced— likely something the industry was watching but was a head-scratcher for if anyone is winning on engagement or just looking ‘thirsty’ AF.

So, what’s a brand to do?

Three actionable ideas to get your brand voice right on social media.

1. Remember that guidelines for humans are different than rules for computers. They’re meant to be fuzzy. If your brand strategist or social media consultant tells you to “be a part of the conversation” don’t just dive in and blurt out something and tie it back to your brand.
2. When in doubt, be quiet. Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
3. Remember you’re not in this for the likes or shares or retweets or followers. You’re in this to influence behavior. Specifically, (brand nerdout time!!) to build positive implicit memory. Which, eventually leads to SALES. Revenue. So, sure. You might get some impressions. But are they the right kind from the right people?

I’m sure there are more things. But it’s #SuperMonday, and I have a super workload to get to. What’d I miss? What would you have done if you had the reins of those brands’ social accounts?

Yes, that’s a bald dude with glasses, whose initials are SG. But, no. Not me.

Regardless, I love this interview. Particularly the bit starting at ~6:15 about the perils of technophilia and kids:

“Screens bring everything to you, and demand nothing of you. And as. a kid, you gravitate towards the easiest thing and expect that every time. So, if you make life incredibly easy for kids all the time, they’re not gonna wanna do anything that requires any effort.”

It resonated with me for a few reasons.

1. I’m a father of 4. Yeah, 4. And yeah, we’ve figured out where babies come from now, thank you. Kidding (<– and dad puns ) aside, y’all ad, tech, and content creators are really damn good at your jobs. My kids will watch a talking head video of a person playing a video game. For hours (if we’d let them, which we don’t). Our youngest absolutely loves watching videos of other people unboxing and playing with toys. Think about that.
2. As a UX strategist, brand strategist, and all around marketing nerd, it got me wondering: when entertainment becomes advertising (cough Disney or EA or about a million other entertainment companies cough) and advertising becomes entertainment, where does that put our culture? What does that do to our expectations of art? Has it always been this way? In Fight Club– one of my favorite movies of all time– Tyler Durden talks about “single serving” friends. Do we now have single serving culture? Disposable, transient, as ephemeral as a wisp of Homer Simpson’s combover? Is that a good thing, a bad thing, or just a thing? What does that mean for strategists looking to dig up cultural tensions and human truths?
3. As an employer of Gens X and Y (and Z?)… it. makes. so. much. sense. now. Millenials came of age with a supercomputer in their pocket which brings the world to them and demands (almost) nothing in return. It also reminded me of  a fascinating article in The Atlantic from a few years ago, called The Overprotected Kid. The subhead reads: “A preoccupation with safety has stripped childhood of independence, risk taking, and discovery—without making it safer. A new kind of playground points to a better solution.” Worth a read if you have a few more minutes. Anyway, over the past couple decades, we’ve stripped kids of their independence and given them the world on a platter screen. Is it any wonder, then, that millenials and Gen Y– and whateverthefuck we’re calling the generation after that– have drastically different views on work, life, and how the two should balance?

Every generation decries the changes wrought on culture and civilization by their younger counterparts. It signals the transfer of influence, control, and power. This ain’t the end of civilization. But, it does have profound implications for any strategist at a digital agency.

What’d I miss? Or am I now the old dude on the porch shouting “get off my lawn!”?

As an Ohio SEO consultant, I love Moz. For real. It probably borders on obsession.

Anyway. The thing about tools that gather data is– even though they’re getting smarter all the time at a frighteningly fast pace– they’re still not always right. A while back I got the keyword suggestion “versace sunglasses 2012.” Seriously.

For an Ohio SEO consultant that specializes in bringing your brand to life online, this is… Really dumb. The dumbest. Hyperbole aside– and for more run-of-the-mill SEO keyword suggestions– you need to know what you’re doing with the data. Why you’re collecting it. What’s good, what’s not so good.

And no amount of data will spontaneously produce an insight for you. No insight, no strategy. No strategy, no bueno. Most times, research informs an idea you already have.

People prefer search engines to find local products

Add to that some data from an eMarketer writeup:

80% of internet users said they’ve used a search engine in the past week to find local goods or services. Only 63% used a company website.

Printed phone books had absurdly low weekly usage last year, at 13-16%. If you’re still buying ads in there, you should take that cash, light it and a phone book on fire, and stream it live on Facebook*. You’d probably get more interest that way. But! There’s hope. Once they’re ready to buy, internet users prefer a company website to a search engine. So, you better be using your site more for conversion than awareness.

People like using a search engine to find a local brand or product more than they like visiting a brand’s website. But, when they’re ready to buy, they prefer a brand website. Hope you’ve got a badass SEO agency to make sure potential customers find you, and a killer content strategy to increase the likelihood those potentials turn into actuals (if not, I’d love to help).

What a good Ohio SEO agency can do for you

Anyway, all that might seem like a no-brainer. But let’s put it in context, albeit a bit generically: I recently worked with a global retailer to create and edit SEO copy on certain portions of their website; within a month, roughly a dozen key pages shot from pages 4, 5, and 6 of Google search results to the first page; and generated $2M incremental revenue. In a month. Now, to be sure, there was more to it than keyword research and amazing copy written by the amazing team I put together. The client has high domain authority, and they’ve been laying additional groundwork for a while. But we were pumped the client liked the copy we wrote. And we were Hans & Franz pumped to hear about the ROI.

So. Make sure you’re paying attention to the keyword research, consumer insights, and cultural trends when developing your SEO strategy. If you need help, please reach out to a professional. And stop buying phonebook ads.

*This is a joke and is not intended in any way as advice. If you’re dumb enough to light something on fire and live stream it, please be smart enough to do it responsibly. And don’t blame me.

While the basis for his argument is sound: people need to be able to trust that if they spend time/resources on a platform like Google+ or Inbox, that platform will be around long enough to be worth the investment. His only suggested remedy is a public product roadmap, which obviously isn’t enough.

Because it completely ignores one critical factor: the tech adoption lifecycle. You know, the bell curve that starts with innovators and early adopters, all the way through Iowa-seed-potato-adopting laggards? No, seriously. That tech marketing framework was originally developed to describe the behavior of seed potato adoption. Anyway, Yes, these product executions are correlated with a lack of trust. But it’s not the root cause.

The root cause is Google products getting stuck in the chasm between innovators/early adopters and the early & late majority. The root cause is that Google is so big, even a dud has millions of users adopt it relatively quickly. But they’re the innovators, the ones who want to try new tech for the sake of trying new tech. Or they’re the early adopters, who want to use the new tech to gain a strategic advantage. They want discontinuity. Disruption. And then… nothing. For years. The products Google kills sit there in this yawing gulf between nerds like me and the early majority.

Early majority doesn’t want discontinuity. They’ve already invested in infrastructure and systems, and/or they’re not willing to become technically savvy enough to use a clunky product. They want the new things to fit into their existing paradigm and increase productivity, efficiency, etc. They want continuity. So, in that sense, yes. Google killing products = brand problems.

But not for the reason most people are suggesting. Because the majority was never going to adopt Google+, or Inbox, or Google Hangouts “Classic” anyway for one simple reason: the products never found a killer use case for continuity-seeking majority. The products being killed required behavior change from the users. Don’t post to Facebook, post to Google+. Don’t use Skype, use Hangouts.

Google has a history of large product launches that then fall flat because adoption is slow or stagnates. Big marketing blitz, flashy demos. But, in reality, these are products built for innovators and early adopters, not for the majority. Too much discontinuity with existing behaviors and workflows. Not enough sticky, productivity-enhancing-ness. Is that a word? Is now. And then? Those products don’t get used. They languish in mediocre product purgatory. Then, when Google finally kills them, the tech press says it’s causing brand problems? Nah.

Google’s problem isn’t that they’re killing products. Google’s product problem is that they’re launching bad ones.

You want more responsibility, recognition, and rewards? You want respect? Earn it. Do something worth noticing. Take smart risks. Think long-term. Challenge the leadership and offer up a better way. Do what’s good for the organization, not just what’s best for you– it’ll serve you better in the long run anyway.

You have talent. But that’s not greatness. Consistently summoning that talent at will and applying it, though? That can lead to greatness. And promotions.

Today is very similar. Data is everywhere in digital advertising. Google analytics, Moz keyword rankings, Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics. And it begs the same question: how might we best apply our knowledge about digital advertising effectiveness to future campaigns? And I don’t think that traditional Account Planning is going to cut it. And SEOs and digital marketers often don’t have the chops to develop the insights needed for The Big Idea. So, we’re left with Big Ideas developed around traditional branding and advertising techniques that have been shoehorned into a digital medium, like Cinderella’s chubby stepsister shoving her piggly wigglys into a glass slipper.

A lot of times we don’t need a singular Big Idea. We need marginal and continual adaptations. I’m not saying The Big Idea is dead. I’m suggesting that The Big Idea shouldn’t be some statue we construct and then sit back and admire. The Big Idea needs to be a living thing that we launch, watch, and continue to mold.

The Big Idea is dead. Long live The Big Idea.

I heard myself say that at the best Ohio ad agency this week… and vomited a little in my mouth.

In advertising, the age-old argument of “Art vs. Science” is a false dichotomy that misunderstands both. Art (creative) doesn’t seek the abstract, and science (analytics/measurement/effectiveness) doesn’t seek certainty.

Both seek understanding. They feed off of each other to make something better.

You need art and science to accomplish the client’s goals.