Image: Kilroy's Links.

Everywhere you look these days there’s another instance of a brand being caught out for disingenuous, duplicitous or unconscionable behavior. It’s almost as if they can’t believe either a) this Internet thing is here to stay, or b) that it requires transparency. So in an effort to shunt to process forward, let’s look at two different business situations – one negative and one positive –  in which an open kimono stance is highly recommended.

1. DAMAGE CONTROL: For every social media PR disaster there are just as many happy endings (Ford, Zappos, Comcast and JetBlue to name a few). Yet for some reason many major brands are still reluctant to accept that they might as well come clean. For instance, BP tries to understate the amount of oil spewing in the Gulf, it doctors photographs of the affected areas and tries to shut down twitter accounts critical of the brand. Nestle tries to delete posts and squash Facebook accounts populated by Greenpeace protestors ogbecting to their harvesting of palm oil becuase of its impact of local orangutans. Honda seeding it’s own positive customer reviews of the Crosstour to counter customer criticism. The list goes on.

Such tactics reflect a fundamental ignorance of the dynamics of social media. It’s like telling a young kid not to touch something. Suddenly they have nothing better to do. Instead, brands clutch their cards closer to their chest only to invite more trouble on themselves. As difficult as it may seem, brands must embrace the notion that they owe the same duty of disclosure to their customers as they do to their shareholders. Why? Because customers are stakeholders in their business and its impact on the world. And their purchasing power is critical to corporate profits.

2. SOCIAL OUTREACH: CSR (Corporate social responsibility) is now commonplace among major brands and it contributes meaningful resources to critical areas. That said, such positive efforts often backfire on brands due to their disingenuous motives. Sponsoring a charity, getting your staff to volunteer or starting a foundation is pointless if it only serves to cover-up the ills of a corporation or to burnish its image in the public eye. Consumers are not that foolish or uninformed. Greenwashing, causewashing and its recent variation, localwashing, are all terms that should have brands on point as to why they are doing outreach in the first place. Not only is it misguided because consumers become twice as mad when they feel like they’re being played, but its also robs the brand of all the potential upside of using outreach to reinforce a brand’s authentic narrative. Here’s what I mean.

If a brand really takes the time to define and articulate what it stands for and then makes an outreach on that basis, every charitable effort will reinforce the core brand because they are congruent. That means extra bank for every marketing buck. But if they have not done that work, outreach invariably comes off as ad hoc, sanctimonious or pandering to public opinion. This doesn’t mean a brand has to be limited in what it does. It just means that any contribution should be relevant to what they do and that they should do it because they mean it. For example, as a beneficiary of the ocean, it would make sense for BP to invest in marine ecology. It’s a simple as that. So brands must work out who they and why they are doing such outreach if they want to reinforce their own brand and resonate most loudly with consumers.

It’s important to note that this phenomenon of consumer response is not some fly by night fad of well-intended activism. This is the new marketplace and this trend is in its infancy. Consumers will continue to socialize, organize and demand that their voice be heard. This is being propelled by three powerful forces over which brands have no control. The wake-up call of corporate corruption that was 2008, enhanced awareness of the multiple global crises our planet currently faces, and a renaissance of connectivity thanks to social media. The result of which is a connected, engaged and concerned consumer that my be into recycling, donating money to Haiti earthquake victims or signing an online petition to boycott BP and expecting to their brands to do the same. Consumers want brands must their share of responsibility in the well-being of all. Or as I said at the Cannes Ad Fest recently, they want a better world, not just better widgets. So in this new social ecosystem brands must really think through their motives and reach out to consumers with authenticity, transparency and accountability. Otherwise the only reason someone would buy their product is to throw it at them.

Do you feel most brands are really putting it on and pretending to care? Or do you see a genuine shift in the corporate mentiality?

• July 12, 2010 -- Social Media as an Instrument of Change: Cannes seminar slides (5)
• July 19, 2010 -- Top ten ways your ads can s(m)ell like the Old Spice ads (6)
• July 14, 2010 -- Attention please: How you help brands change our world (2)
• July 6, 2010 -- Why customers, and not social media, are your key to brand success (4)
• July 4, 2010 -- Social media explained by a 9-year-old in one sentence (4)
• June 21, 2010 -- Cannes Advertising Festival Social Media Seminar (video) (1)
• June 20, 2010 -- Cannes Advertising Festival Seminar: Social media as an instrument of change (6)
• June 14, 2010 -- How brands use social media to re-invent themselves from the inside out. (1)

Last week Tim Leberecht of Design Mind suggested the future of advertising may soon be defined by transformats. He used the Old Spice television and twitter sensation as the best demonstration of this new dynamic. Here’s how he explained transformats.

- Transmedia: Transformats use a multi-modular presentation of narratives that extends the story across various media and allows a social web-enabled “audience formerly known as the audience” to participate in the story development. In the case of Old Spice, it went full circle: from YouTube to Twitter and back.

- Transcendent: Transformats transcend not only the original medium but also the original story, creating new meaning beyond the conceived plot. In the case of Old Spice, the main protagonist was given a life on its own and the power to directly interact with members of the audience. Thus, the story became an open-ended conversation, and the initial message faded amidst a chorus of issues (user-)generated by the cultural fabric of the social web.

- Transformative: Transformats advance marketing best practices and lift the state-of-the-art. Key here is that the design of the marketing program itself is the story (see meta-marketing), or at least an integral part of it. Case in point: The majority of coverage on the Old Spice campaign heralded its innovative quality, and many stories were background stories that shed light on “the making of.” Perhaps that’s the most powerful thing about innovation, from a marketing perspective: True innovation always is a story in and of itself.

What Tim does very well is break down the various levels on which the campaign operated but I fall short of calling it a new paradigm for marketing. Here’s why:

1. IT’S SIMPLY SUCCESS: It’s easy in this early stage of social media rollout to confuse technology with change. Yes, the Old Spice campaign did play better than any other campaign across traditional and social media but the use of twitter in the campaign does not make it a new format. In my mind its simply a demonstration of marketing success. Any strategically sound and well executed campaign translates across many media creating an echo chamber for the brand. As I have often said, social media is not an end in itself but just another tool through which sound strategic and creative work is to be funneled. As such, I think Old Spice is an extraordinary and duly praised success, but not a new phenomenon.

2. SOMEONE ACTUALLY LISTENED: For decades advertising has operated on the conceit that brands and consumers are in dialogue while in truth brands and their media companies held a monopoly. Thanks to social media that conceit is now true. What’s more, the polarity of the conversation has reversed with consumers often driving the conversation. The Old Spice campaign was a wonderful demonstration of listening – just check out their Facebook page where Isiah answers questions personal questions via video. As I have said before, the future brand success will be determined by ‘the quality of listening’. In this case the personalized tweets by Old Spice not only showed the brand was listening but compelled the twitterers to share the brand content again.

3. RULES DON’T APPLY: I am always hesitant to categorize or pigeonhole any creative exercise because it seems to stifle the creativity that made it so wonderful in the first place. It’s almost as if we want to own it, bottle it and take it to market. Successful advertising campaigns never worked that way. They simply took on a life of their own. This is more true than ever now with free-flowing conversations driving brand awareness across the web. In my mind the real trick here was to thread a needle that has always existed. How to define that intersection between what people think of a product, what’s happening in the category and what’s going on in pop culture at large. Pull that off and you’re destined for a hit. But what form that will take is different every time and no amount of labeling will make it repeatable.

Marketers and brands are facing challenging times. Not only must they surrender a some brand control to consumers but they must also embrace the fact that there is no formula or silver bullet in this nuanced and fractured consumer marketplace. Advertising’s history is replete with ‘me too’, formulaic campaigns that went nowhere. And it would be such a pity to constantly reduce the art and science of advertising to science alone. In short, the future of advertising is just as it has always been. Be human. Trade in emotion. Listen well. Get out of the way.

What do you think? Is Old Spice the new marketing? Or more of the same done darn well?

• July 19, 2010 -- Top ten ways your ads can s(m)ell like the Old Spice ads (6)
• July 12, 2010 -- Social Media as an Instrument of Change: Cannes seminar slides (5)
• June 21, 2010 -- Cannes Advertising Festival Social Media Seminar (video) (1)
• June 20, 2010 -- Cannes Advertising Festival Seminar: Social media as an instrument of change (6)
• June 18, 2010 -- The unseen side of the Cannes International Advertising Festival (4)
• July 28, 2010 -- Brands, if you really want to make money look to your motives (0)
• July 14, 2010 -- Attention please: How you help brands change our world (2)
• July 6, 2010 -- Why customers, and not social media, are your key to brand success (4)

This week legislation was signed by President Obama that finally drew attention to the issue of the ‘Conflict Minerals’ that go into making the batteries in the cell phones we use everyday. This deservedly made headline news with most stories focused on the tragedy that such mining visits on the lives of so many people in the Congo. This was in no small measure due to the amazing efforts of John Prendergrast and his organization, Enough.

Yet within this tragedy there are stories of hope and I wanted to share one with you. A few months ago I was in Austin, Texas, and I walked into this clothing store where some after hours event was going on. There were these odd whistle necklaces hanging in the window and when I got inside I asked where they were from. That’s when I met Sean Carraso (above), the Founder of Falling Whistles, a non-profit doing amazing work to rehabilitate innocent children swept up in the war.

Below are some of the powerful images that Sean is using to garner support. Anything you can do is hugely appreciated. The whistles are cool in their own right. They’re even sold in fashion stores as you can see above. But what’s even cooler is that they help to transform the lives of helpless children. Plus they serve as a daily reminder of how precious life is and how it should not be wasted -- ours or theirs. All you have to do is visit their site at and choose what you like.  As a Dad I find it especially powerful and inspiring. It also reminds me that when you work to change the lives of other, the life that often changes most is your own. Please take a look and do what you can. Huge thanks.

• July 20, 2010 -- This is your chance to tell NASA where to go (0)
• July 14, 2010 -- Attention please: How you help brands change our world (2)
• June 21, 2010 -- Cannes Advertising Festival Social Media Seminar (video) (1)
• May 12, 2010 -- #140conf LA meet-up: Social media inspiring social change (0)
• May 4, 2010 -- wecanendthis.com A living community ideation lab to end hunger (5)
• April 2, 2010 -- Educate Girls Globally: Interview with Lawrence Chickering and Safeena Husain (Part 3) (0)
• October 20, 2009 -- What GOOD magazine is doing to make us even greater (6)

I’m a huge fan of NASA – always have been. And now, thanks to Scott Henderson of Rally the Cause, we all have the chance to tell them where to go next. You see, Scott has the great privilege of making a major presentation to them about their future as social entrepreneurs. Better yet, Scott is inviting us to help him frame his presentation. This is such a great opportunity when you consider the brain and technology power that NASA can put behind something. So here’s my 2 cents worth and please visit his website and add your thoughts.

NASA could not be better positioned to play a powerful role in social entrepreneurship. As I see it there as two key elements that NASA can offer social change: insight and imagination.

Insight: Few facilities possess the experience, expertise, resources and goodwill of NASA to deep dive into a possibility. That is both a blessing and a responsibility. The expertise and technical savvy of its employee needs to be brought to bear on the first planet man stepped on – the Earth. That mission is not so different than the moon landing but, in their parlance, it’s now ‘mission critical’.

Imagination: What NASA did so well with the moon landing(s) was to marry possibility with execution. It’s time to do that again on an equally breathtaking scale directed towards the many pressing global crises facing our planet.

The world has many Think Tanks. We need NASA to be a Do Tank.

Best of luck Scott and, again, here’s Scott Henderson’s site where you can leave your ideas and comments.

• July 23, 2010 -- Conflict Minerals & Falling Whistles: How weapons of war become instruments of peace (2)
• October 20, 2009 -- What GOOD magazine is doing to make us even greater (6)

There is no shortage of great posts written on the deserved and phenomenal success of the Old Spice social media campaign that followed their hilarious TV. But apart from a good laugh or ten, what can we get from this great demonstration of the marriage between traditional and social media. More importantly, what do we have to do, or how must we think, to give us all a chance at creating similar success with your brand? Well, let’s look at what Old Spice did.

1. LAUGH AT YOURSELF -- Old Spice is a P&G brand. They’re not supposed to make funny social ads that become the benchmark for the industry. So how did they do it? Yes, they partnered with Wieden & Kennedy who are inspired, brilliant and consistently so, but they also gave their brand -- along with men and women everywhere -- licence to laugh at themselves. By doing so you make your brand human and likable -- two powerful qualities in the social media ecosystem.

2. ASSUME WHAT YOU HAVE TO PROVE: Strategically, Wieden and Kennedy didn’t try to prove that Old Spice makes you smell better (assuming a “man” smells good). They took that as a given and had fun with the fact from there. That way the brand has already pre-sold what’s its trying to prove and engaged you emotionally on that basis.

3. LISTEN UP: Not content to be satisfied with the popularity of their TV ads or the number of hits they have on YouTube, Old Spice and Wieden & Kennedy actually listened to the reaction. What’s more they didn’t listen to what it said about them but rather what it said about their target audience. And by keeping that focus it was a small step to create customized video tweets that were tonally consistent with the whole campaign. The shift in focus is the most powerful revolution going on in marketing today.

4. GET PERSONAL: Remember how you feel when someone forgets you name? Or, better yet, when they remember it? That feeling is an opportunity. By creating personalized tweets Old Spice not only credited their community with a voice, they celebrated specific people within it. Those people were then compelled to share the Old Spice work again because of that recognition. Basic human nature and communication yet so refreshing from a brand.

5. HAVE SOME MANNERS -- For a long time brands operated from the presumption that they were in control and perhaps they were right. Those days are over. And with that comes the obligation to get off your high horse (I couldn’t resist!) and be polite. That’s what Old Spice did when it said, ” Thank you”. If someone does something nice for you or says they enjoy your work, say thank you. Perhaps our mothers should be the new brand managers.

6. GO BACK FOR SECONDS: When your brand does connect with someone don’t run off to the next person. It’s like looking over someone’s shoulder when your talking to them. Instead, stay a while and toss about a little banter. That’s the power of grabbing someone’s attention in this over-saturated advertising world. Send them personalized tweets, a coupon, a discount or a tailor-made joke. In short, recognize you made a connection and value that opportunity.

7. REINVENT YOURSELF: We must all stop consciously or unconsciously defending how things have always been done. There’s no excuse now. Old Spice, a P&G brand is cool and viral and sexy (no less!). So think about your brand from scratch. Wake up your inner entrepreneur and look at the need you are filling and what your target market wants. And then burn your boats. If you don’t, your competitors are waiting in the wings to do it for you.

8. DEFY CONVENTIONAL LOGIC: You’re not supposed to use the same on camera talent and big budget production values on the web, let alone in tweets? Or are you? As we marketers try to stand out in this pea soup of content who’s to say anything is off limits. In this case the production value subconsciously demonstrated the importance of each twitterer to the brand. He or she deserved the very best from Old Spice  and this again was a tone and way of thinking consistent with the campaign. (BTW: Here’s how they shot the Old Spice tweets.)

9. KNOW WHEN TO LEAVE: Half the art of winning someone’s attention is to leave them wanting more, especially if you’re a brand. Viral success is so elusive it would be understandable for many brands to milk their success dry. But by leaving in a timely fashion, you leave the door open for even bigger expressions of the advertising campaign and ensure that your doting audience will come with you. (So let’s hope it was ‘a bientot’ rather than ‘au revoir’ from Isiah.)

10. FIND THE HUMAN IN THE TECHNOLOGY: If I had to sum it all up, I’d would repeat something I shared in my recent seminar at the Cannes Advertising Festival. We marketers have talked about “brand personality” for years, so it’s time for brands to act like we had one. Fortunately we are all innately qualified to steward them this this process. All we need is the gumption to do so.

So let’s take a look at what all the fuss was about. Here’s the personalized tweet sent to Perez Hilton to say thanks for his tweet about the Old Spice commercials.

It’s little wonder Wieden & Kennedy won the television Grand Prix at the Cannes International Advertising Festival this year and this social media campaign is only the cherry on the icing of the cake strapped to the back of a eight foot wing-spanned eagle soaring towards the sun at the moment of a eclispse. There’s no doubt it will become the social media marketing benchmark of the future as Mashable suggests.

But like any good crowdpleaser, the Old Spice man knew when to quit. So with tears all round, here is Sigh-siah’s (as the ladies call him)  heartfelt farewell to his millions of intimate internet friends. Kudos to you Old Spice man, and to your birthers, Wieden & Kennedy and Proctor & Gamble.

What’s your favorite Old Spice personalized tweet? What else do you think they go right?

• July 26, 2010 -- How Old Spice reminds ad folk what they forgot (4)
• July 12, 2010 -- Social Media as an Instrument of Change: Cannes seminar slides (5)
• June 21, 2010 -- Cannes Advertising Festival Social Media Seminar (video) (1)
• June 20, 2010 -- Cannes Advertising Festival Seminar: Social media as an instrument of change (6)
• July 28, 2010 -- Brands, if you really want to make money look to your motives (0)
• July 14, 2010 -- Attention please: How you help brands change our world (2)
• July 6, 2010 -- Why customers, and not social media, are your key to brand success (4)
• July 4, 2010 -- Social media explained by a 9-year-old in one sentence (4)

Emily Chang kindly pointed out this new Foursquare ad. As the copy explains, when you check-in on Foursquare at the “Earthjustice ad”, one of their donors will donate $10 to stop unsafe oil drilling.

This is a very interesting and powerful new way to leverage location based services for change, but more than that, it highlights one of the unexpected benefits of the tsunami of information now available on the web.

The demands on our attention from the millions of pieces of advertising, information and social media connections now available to us is so great that brands quite literally have to pay for it. And since they can’t demand that attention by talking about themselves, they are wisely commanding it by contributing to causes that are meaningful to consumers.

The upside of this is threefold:

1. Brands are slowly getting over their habitual exclusive self-interest and the marketing techniques that attended it.

2. Brands are realizing that contribution to worthy causes is now a critical part of good business.

3. By supporting brands in this new dynamic, consumers are incrementally changing the world for the better.

When you consider all the possibilities this creates – from texting donations to NGO’s in Haiti, sharing cause concerns on Facebook or checking in on Foursquare to trigger brand donations – and you factor in the number of people and brands now engaged in social media, it’s easy to see how this new dynamic is potentially transformative. It certainly makes looking after other people easier. So easy, I hope, that looking after others because a daily habit for the more fortunate consumers and brands around the world.

Do you think such a hope is possible? Or are people simply too lazy, busy or self-interested to care?

• June 21, 2010 -- Cannes Advertising Festival Social Media Seminar (video) (1)
• July 28, 2010 -- Brands, if you really want to make money look to your motives (0)
• July 19, 2010 -- Top ten ways your ads can s(m)ell like the Old Spice ads (6)
• July 12, 2010 -- Social Media as an Instrument of Change: Cannes seminar slides (5)
• July 6, 2010 -- Why customers, and not social media, are your key to brand success (4)
• July 4, 2010 -- Social media explained by a 9-year-old in one sentence (4)
• June 20, 2010 -- Cannes Advertising Festival Seminar: Social media as an instrument of change (6)
• June 14, 2010 -- How brands use social media to re-invent themselves from the inside out. (1)

I’ve had some requests for the slides from my seminar at the Cannes International Advertising Festival so here they are. Plus below is a short synopsis and a link to footage from the speech itself. If you haven’t used slideshare before, you can view and download the presentation. Thanks again to Alec Ross from the U.S State Dept. for joining me and sharing his invaluable insights. Special thanks also to InterCulture for sponsoring the event and making it possible.

SEMINAR OVERVIEW: The advertising world is reeling from change – and it’s not just because they have yet to fully embrace social media in their brand campaigns. The problems in advertising are much more profound—they literally extend deep into the heart of capitalism. The core issue is that advertising and capitalism need each of the survive. Both are being challenged by powerful forces of social change in today’s new world: globalization, digitalization, social media and a loss of values. At the root of these pressures is also a powerful motivator: consumers want a better world, not just better widgets. This is motivated by a growing global consciousness that the world is faced with many severe crises, most of which are due in fact by capitalism’s myopic search for profits.

Today’s talk addresses what the advertising industry needs to do to reinvigorate itself, if not simply to survive. Advertising must first begin by helping brands recognize that the future of profit is purpose.  Brands need to convey to consumers that they add meaning to life rather than simply feeding self-destructive consumer greed. Instead, advertisers and their brands need to show consumers a sincere vision of a better future infused with values, consistency, and transparency. As such advertisers and brands must ultimately become architects of community, helping brands engage with consumers and build sincere relationships based on loyalty, empathy and trust.

The most powerful tool in this transition is social media, the focus of this talk. Advertisers no longer hold monopoly control over the story behind their brands, as consumers are now able to write, distribute and curate brand content around the web. Between social networks, video, mobile phones, and location-based applications, consumers now have the power, the channels of communication, and the personal connection to endorse or condemn brand messaging or behavior. Advertising needs to adjust accordingly. In fact, everything about how advertising communicates to consumers needs to be reversed—push must become pull, talking needs to be replaced by listening, and monologues must transform in to active, daily dialogues.

Ultimately, the future of advertising lies in making capitalism sustainable. To that end advertising must master social media and take control of the stewardship of their brand partners in this new intimately connected global community. By doing so, advertising will not only ensure its own future but transform capitalism into an engine of global prosperity.

• June 21, 2010 -- Cannes Advertising Festival Social Media Seminar (video) (1)
• June 20, 2010 -- Cannes Advertising Festival Seminar: Social media as an instrument of change (6)
• July 28, 2010 -- Brands, if you really want to make money look to your motives (0)
• July 19, 2010 -- Top ten ways your ads can s(m)ell like the Old Spice ads (6)
• June 30, 2010 -- Top ten reasons social media should not (and will not) kill traditional advertising (5)
• June 23, 2010 -- Cannes International Advertising Festival Round-up: Social media’s impact on advertising (0)
• June 3, 2010 -- Cannes Festival: Where new media & advertising meet (Part 2) (3)
• July 26, 2010 -- How Old Spice reminds ad folk what they forgot (4)

Here is the second part of the interview I did with Rob Kramer regarding his new cause action platform, Poprule. You can watch Part One here.

HAITI:

SM: Rob and I were going to get together a few weeks ago, but he suddenly disappeared off to Haiti when the tragic earthquake happened.  Tell us a little bit about what you’re doing there, and what the plans are moving forward.  I understand you’re doing something to provide long term solutions.

RK: So I’ve been involved in the clean water space, and when I was in Haiti about a week after the earthquake, I discovered that water is a catalyst for all kinds of social change.  So if you deliver clean, safe water, mothers can be home, they can become teachers and the kids get educated.

SM: Instead of four miles for four hours one way and four hours back to carry water.

ORPHANS:

RK: Exactly.  Then there’s economic opportunities that are presented.  The one issue that we’re focused on in Haiti—and water is the catalyst which introduced me to this issue—is that before the earthquake, there were about 380 thousand orphans.  Now there’s close to one million orphans.  If we don’t do something about that and create a holistic solution and teach them schools, the country will never rebound.  It will be a lost generation.  And so what we’re doing is we’re putting together a project to build a home, a school and a community center.  The school will actually house certain kids who are orphans who have no other place to be.  We’re going to redefine this notion of what it means to be a child without parents. It will be more like a boarding school.  Within that boarding school there will be an opportunity to interact with the community, to have activities, to have weddings, to have soccer fields.

SM: So you’re rebuilding community, not just giving a place for orphans to live.

RK: That’s right. Orphans and water that we provide becomes the catalyst and the fulcrum upon which everything else is laid.

LONG TERM SOLUTIONS:

SM: Time and time again, as I hear different people working in the non-profit space, one of their frustrations is that there’s a lot of run and done organizations that will go in and do some pretty cool, priceless management work, which is important in its own right, but over the long term you need the investment to rebuild the infrastructure, to rebuild community, to rebuild schooling and so on.  So it’s fantastic that you’re working in that area.  How does anyone have a look at PopRule, how do they get involved if either they’re a consumer or a brand?

RK: PopRule is not particularly consumer-facing at this moment in terms of its website.  We’re in stealth-mode so a lot of our relationships are very one-on-one, but we are spending lots of time with ad agencies and brands to develop varied strategies to create education action platforms, finance action platforms, how we deal with jobs.  So anything that is action oriented; that’s social, economic, humanitarian, political, cause oriented.

HOW BRANDS AND AGENCIES HELP:

SM: So if you’re an ad agency, brand or publisher how would they reach out to you?

RK: They can reach out to us through rob@poprule.com or go to poprule.com and you’ll see the various verticals that we address, although basically it’s just sending an email to get in touch with us.  And then we usually do some go-to meeting demos with the folks.  What we’re essentially building is an online-offline action platform that is a bit like foursquare in that it’s location based, but it’s all based on this premise that action is no ethos.  That, in order for us to create social or political change, we have to take action.  We can’t just talk about it, we can’t just read about it, we have to inform ourselves, but we have to move into action. Poprule’s platform helps organizations.  Essentially, a non-profit organization that only expects people to come to their website is missing the point.

It’s fantastic what Rob is doing.  Please, if you’re a brand or agency, support in any way you can by visiting poprule.com

• June 11, 2010 -- How brands use action ads for immediate positive change: Poprule with Rob Kramer. (2)
• July 28, 2010 -- Brands, if you really want to make money look to your motives (0)
• July 19, 2010 -- Top ten ways your ads can s(m)ell like the Old Spice ads (6)
• July 14, 2010 -- Attention please: How you help brands change our world (2)
• July 12, 2010 -- Social Media as an Instrument of Change: Cannes seminar slides (5)
• July 6, 2010 -- Why customers, and not social media, are your key to brand success (4)
• July 4, 2010 -- Social media explained by a 9-year-old in one sentence (4)
• June 30, 2010 -- Top ten reasons social media should not (and will not) kill traditional advertising (5)

Large and small brands are now embracing social media as a means to reach their customers but many still make easily avoidable mistakes. For instance, many persist in seeing these tools as an end in themselves rather than an extension of traditional media that has always been social in nature (whether it’s television, print or radio). Instead, they look at social media as a weapon with which to advance their brand’s interests or to damage control a crisis.

This could not be further from the truth. The tool that either promotes or comes to the defense of a brand in any given situation has and always will be the customer. Let’s look at a few recent examples for proof.

On the negative side we see the backlash against Nestle for deleting Facebook posts and YouTube films that exposed the deforestation caused by their palm oil harvesting. Or the worldwide backlash against BP when it tried to shut down Boycott BP Facebook accounts and mock twitter accounts critical of their handling of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

On the other side, we saw loyal Prius drivers come to the defense of the brand on the basis of its longstanding commitment to quality and the environment when Toyota was justifiably attacked for major safety concerns.

The true value of social media is its ability to deeply engage customers engendering good will, loyalty and positive word of mouth advertising. When you do that you create embedded ambassadors promoting the brand among their friends. It’s these customers that social media must serve so they can then promote the interests of the brand. It’s a subtle distinction but it’s important in terms of guiding where and how a brand and its advertising agency focus their energies. To that end here’s a great post by Valeria Maltoni (@conversationagent) that lays out 6 ways for brands to connect with their customers.

Do you agree that brands still struggle with this distinction? Or do you think social media tools are an answer in themselves?

• July 28, 2010 -- Brands, if you really want to make money look to your motives (0)
• July 19, 2010 -- Top ten ways your ads can s(m)ell like the Old Spice ads (6)
• July 14, 2010 -- Attention please: How you help brands change our world (2)
• July 12, 2010 -- Social Media as an Instrument of Change: Cannes seminar slides (5)
• July 4, 2010 -- Social media explained by a 9-year-old in one sentence (4)
• June 21, 2010 -- Cannes Advertising Festival Social Media Seminar (video) (1)
• June 20, 2010 -- Cannes Advertising Festival Seminar: Social media as an instrument of change (6)
• June 14, 2010 -- How brands use social media to re-invent themselves from the inside out. (1)

Not long ago I took my daughters to the Portland Children’s Museum – wonderful place – and I couldn’t help but notice this quote written on the wall above the clay making room. To me it so effectively distilled the essence of social media that so I wanted to share it.

The quote reads:

When I make my art about a flower it is not showing you who the flower is, but to tell you about me.

From the mouth of babes! There are several powerful thoughts here communicated in one simple and authentic statement. Here’s what I see that relates to the practice of social media:

1. People reveal themselves through their interests, concerns and interaction.

2. We must listen to what we’re being told about the speaker, not just to what he or she is saying. (More on corporate listening here.)

3. We should respond in a way that lets the speaker know we see them, not just what they said.

As marketers we would do a darn fine job if we managed to pull off all three consistently. When we engage using 1-3, we automatically establish an emotional connection through which we can create a brand advocate. It’s so easy to forget that all the information, words, ideas, images and, yes, drivvle, we share are really just different attempts at reaching out to each other. In fact, here’s a few great examples of brands using it well during the World Cup in a post by Brian Solis.

As with most things in life, this simple approach to social media is far harder to do. But lucky for us, every so often a child like Elyssa comes along to help us.

• July 28, 2010 -- Brands, if you really want to make money look to your motives (0)
• July 19, 2010 -- Top ten ways your ads can s(m)ell like the Old Spice ads (6)
• July 14, 2010 -- Attention please: How you help brands change our world (2)
• July 12, 2010 -- Social Media as an Instrument of Change: Cannes seminar slides (5)
• July 6, 2010 -- Why customers, and not social media, are your key to brand success (4)
• June 21, 2010 -- Cannes Advertising Festival Social Media Seminar (video) (1)
• June 20, 2010 -- Cannes Advertising Festival Seminar: Social media as an instrument of change (6)
• June 14, 2010 -- How brands use social media to re-invent themselves from the inside out. (1)