A Hundred Miles An Hour

Inbound Marketing, today's marketing model

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Campbell) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 02:19:00 +0000

The massive upgrade Google gave to Google+ just this week - along with the ongoing evolution we're seeing through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, as well as millions of blogs, forums and other online communities discussing every conceivable topic - are forcing a massive shift in marketing best practices at their core. Adapting to this new, profoundly different environment is a tremendous challenge for all marketers. We're understanding how to apply this better and better as the weeks go by, and many in the industry are doing exciting things to take advantage of the seismic shift in the way billions of people access, use and engage with media around the world. It's an exciting time.

As I've reviewed before here, marketing is shifting away from traditional outbound messaging toward toward "getting found" by their audience through Inbound Marketing, especially as outbound approaches continue to lose their effectiveness in a world where so much information is published, shared and discussed every day. Nowadays marketers are finding they have to "earn their way in" (by publishing helpful, search engine optimized information on a blog, for example) in contrast to outbound marketing where they have to "buy, beg, or bug their way in". This infographic tells the story in a lighthearted way that I think anyone can understand. The movement is revolutionary - and has completely upset the long-established outbound marketing model.

Echoing the graphic above, Inbound Marketing for marketers consists of the three interwoven, ongoing elements:

1. Content Creation involves crafting and publishing information your prospective customers are looking for, enabling you to help them address a perceived need - and bringing value for them in the process.

2. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) enables your potential customers to find your content through search engines - particularly Google. Ideally on the first page of search results. SEO involves structuring your site and inbound links in order to optimize your site's ranking in search engines - where most people naturally begin their online purchase cycle.

3. SMO (Social Media Optimization) amplifies the impact of your content - as social media is where people are spending their time - and boosts organic search rankings in the process. When your (valuable) content is distributed across and discussed through social networks, it "finds" its audience and grows in influence, and therefore attracts qualified customers to your site.

These elements have converged in exciting ways to make connecting people with relevant ideas, services and products possible in ways simply not imaginable just a few years ago.

A good but not so obvious example of success is The Atlantic - a magazine that changed it's approach and has grown by leaps and bounds as its competitors have closed their doors.

The "Consumer" Marketing era is (thankfully) over

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Campbell) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:48:00 +0000

AdAge's Bob Garfield and IMC2's Doug Levy collaborated to create this ambitious look at how marketing has shifted in recent years - despite the fact many still practice the old media version of marketing:

Ignore the Human Element of Marketing at Your Own Peril - Forget Product Positioning, This is the Dawn of the Relationship Era

While the content of this article - the most buzzed about in months - should be a given, to many it's not... yet. The era of mass/outbound marketing is over, and the era of relationship/inbound marketing has very much arrived. If you haven't yet been educated - while not a perfect explanation - this is worth a read.

I highly recommend tapping into the abundant information HubSpot provides about Inbound Marketing, as no company investigates and publishes the changes in communications better. I blogged about it here.

After 11 years, I got it

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Campbell) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 12:29:00 +0000

I remember it like it was yesterday. Having excitedly unwrapped the latest monthly issue of Automobile Magazine, I was greeted with details of the much-anticipated 3^rd generation BMW M3. I was standing in my Minneapolis apartment, just a year out of college – almost 11 years ago exactly. Then and there I swore I’d get one as soon as I comfortably had the means. Unlike the Ferraris I grew up lusting over, this amazing car was within reach.

And I’ve dreamt of this day ever since. For the first time in 18 years of having a driver’s license, my daily driver will be the real deal (i.e., happiest when going 3 times the speed limit through every curve or straightaway).

It’s the reason and excuse I’ve had for pushing myself, and now… it’s here.

A few pictures my brother took:

Here’s in part why this car is so special:

- At the time of the car's introduction, the engine developed the highest specific output of any naturally-aspirated engine ever made by BMW (except in the McLaren F1). It produces 333 horsepower at a dizzying 7900rpm. The car goes from a standstill to 60mph in 4.8 seconds.

- Its engine employs the innovative double VANOS system (infinitely-variable timing control on both intake and exhaust camshafts), individual throttle butterflies for each cylinder with drive-by-wire throttle control and M Dynamic Driving Control (which allows the driver to select a 'sport mode' for the throttle, providing quicker response to throttle inputs). Put another way, it makes a relatively small engine extremely powerful throughout the rev band, and the throttle nearly directly interprets every move of the driver's right foot. It’s an incredible feeling to drive it.

- It’s transmission, SMG, uses technology derived from BMW’s F1 racing program. It executes split-second shifts while enabling the driver to stay focused on the road. Even today, the technology’s application is limited mostly to high-performance Aston Martins, Audis, Ferraris, Alfa Romeos, and Lamborghinis.

- Then there are the suspension and brakes, which are pretty incredible too. I'll get a feel for them over the next few months and let you know..

In 2009, Road and Track magazine named the E46 M3 outfitted with the SMG transmission as its “favorite sports car of all time”.

The Legacy of Steve Jobs

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Campbell) — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 20:00:00 +0000

In the midst of all the talk about Steve Jobs and his "resignation", (I saw someone on Facebook call it a "really long... much-deserved vacation", which I also prefer), I’ve found myself soaking in this explosion of information about someone I believe will be remembered as the most important American in technology, entertainment, media, and business of our generation. Who else but Steve Jobs?

I thought I'd share some of the highlights with you, so you can get a sense of what the fuss is over and THEN we can all get back to our busy lives...

The meaning of Steve -

This is brilliantly written, and surely describes Jobs's legacy better than anything I've seen.

Josh Bernoff goes on to explain how Steve's innovations changed the world five times (only Edison comes anywhere near this kind of impact):

1) Apple II - made it so anybody could have a computer. My first experience with a computer - at my computer lab in elementary school - was with an Apple II.

2) Macintosh - made computers easy and interactive. Suddenly made computing something fun, something interesting for everyone.

3) iPod - brought the MP3 player and the music store together, made it easy, and ultimately the standard

4) iPhone - real-time portal to the world, in your pocket. We'll never look at phones the same again.

5) iPad - changing the way we compute, adding new dimensions of interactivity. We'll never look at media the same again.

And there's more on the horizon, too. His work just may change the world again. We'll have to stay tuned for that.

It's also worth noting that for a brief period a couple weeks ago, Apple was the most valuable company in the world - even eclipsing mighty Exxon.

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005 -

I've blogged about his one before, and have watched it at least 20 times. Watching this is about the best way you can spend 15 minutes, in my opinion. Here you also get to see him as a person, as he tells the audience a little about how and why we did what he did.

Steve Jobs’s Best Quotes -

A few highlights:

“It will go down in history as a turning point for the music industry. This is landmark stuff. I can’t overestimate it!” [On the iTunes Music Store, Fortune, May 12, 2003]

“Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. … One is very fortunate if you get to work on just one of these in your career. Apple’s been very fortunate it’s been able to introduce a few of these into the world.” [Announcement of the iPhone, Jan. 9, 2007]

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” [Stanford commencement speech, June 2005]

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.” [Stanford commencement speech, June 2005]

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” [Stanford commencement speech, June 2005

From the WSJ on "Jobs Quits as Apple CEO" -

Largely tells his story, with plenty of clever graphics to illustrate.

Steve Jobs's Ultimate Lesson for Companies -

"The lesson the world should take from Apple is that a company needs to become multi-dimensional. It needs to mix the core business with the disruptive innovation. It needs to combine the intellectual with the artistic. It needs to maintain within it the rational and the lunatic."

His Technical Drawings - Wow.

Finally, a couple videos from those who knew and worked with him from the beginning:

Wozniak on Steve Jobs's Resignation

Guy Kawasaki on Steve Job's Resignation

Social Commerce has arrived

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Campbell) — Sun, 15 May 2011 16:46:00 +0000

I started actively tracking Social Commerce in January – referencing my thoughts for colleagues and clients over and over. The subject matter has grown and evolved incredibly quickly. Frankly, I could write a book on this topic better than I could write a blog post; social commerce has sensibly mushroomed into one of the social marketing industry’s most hotly-anticipated challenges. And I think this movement has more to do with timing than it does the limits of technology or developers’ desire to make it effective for marketers and “users” alike.

With Buddy Media's (disclosure: they’re a former employer) announcement this week of their acquisition of Spinback, I've been thinking more than ever that maybe - at last - social commerce is ready for prime-time. As many of us know, just because the technology can be built to enable something ground-breaking to happen, it still won’t happen until the timing is right. Sometimes that means months, and sometimes that means years. Everybody at the table - especially the marketer and the end user - needs to be ready to support it.

The need to move beyond Facebook Page Management into Social Commerce
The passage below echoes something I realized over a year and a half ago: Facebook page management isn't a sustainable business. Read here:

"This acquisition of both the team and technology follows our predictions that expensive Facebook Page management services are becoming commodified by companies offering free products, so the Page management industry needs to explore new revenue streams by expanding into ad buying or ecommerce through partnerships and acquisitions."

The market is driving this shift, and the innovation it unleashes will create opportunities never before possible for marketers and end-users alike.

The infographic below does a nice job of laying out the timeline and big movements last year. Certainly the 2011 infographic – if produced – will dwarf this one:

Indeed, Social Commerce has been around a while. Innovators in the space include Best Buy, Starbucks F-Commerce or Disney's ticket-buying app, and I've seen other marketers selling directly through Facebook (Victoria’s Secret, 1-800-Flowers.com and Delta Airlines - to name a few). But really – who cares, unless it adds significant value to the user experience?

Given the tremendous user base of Facebook, the overwhelming acceptance of social plug ins as part of the browsing/sharing experience, and the legitimate value that comes from people sharing information about products or services with their social graph - bit by bit the need has become very real. When you stop to consider that 1,000,000 sites have implemented Facebook's Social Layer and 150,000,000 people engage with Facebook on external sites every month, it's clear the infrastructure and user acceptance is here. A few more stats:

So let's take a step back and review how the process empowered consumers evaluate and buy products and services has changed - and the opportunity it represents for marketers eager to change the outdated model that just isn't as effective as it used to be.

The NEW Consumer Decision-Making Process
Social commerce involves a completely new decision-making process - as detailed in the McKinsey study referenced here, the new consumer decision journey is "CEPEA – Consider, Evaluate, Purchase, Enjoy, Advocate". The process used to involve just the first three letters – “CEP”.

“Smart social commerce should focus on the consumer decision journey, with the objective of helping people make smarter shopping decisions – where they most need that help”

"79-90% of marketing spend goes to advertising and promotions that hit consumers at the consider and buy phases, but consumers are often more open to influence at the evaluate and advocate stages"

“Social commerce may be primarily a Loyalty Loop solution (suited for stimulating loyalty rather than acquisition)”:

“Social commerce solutions have a natural fit with the Advocacy phase of the consumer decision journey – where consumers themselves become brand influential brand touch-points”:

Marketers must abandon media-centric marketing in favor of customer-centric Customer Experience Planning (CEP) strategies:

F-Commerce at work: ASOS
Some particularly interesting social commerce examples include what ASOS (the UK's answer to Zappos) and JCPenney are doing with their F-Commerce sites leveraging the Usablenet platform. It looks like the process is packaged and ready to go, though surely that “Request for Permission” step turns off half the people who go to use it.

With ASOS, the process is as simple as anywhere else online:

F-Commerce at work: Dove
Unilever has built an interesting platform for Dove - potentially offering F-Commerce- exclusive items to avoid conflicts with bricks-and-mortar retailers - using a Facebook storefront and Amazon back-end.

Dove leverages its Facebook page to sell international products already available on Amazon:

Unilever seems to understand that social commerce works best when you offer something worth talking about – i.e. something new, something unique and something exclusive – all they’re selling here:

Measurement
Finally, with the ability at last to measure how all these social actions add up and translate to revenue, Spinback’s analytics dashboard measures social sharing and the resulting traffic, conversions and sales. Spinback claims that companies using its tools have seen, on average, $2.10 in incremental revenue from each Facebook "wall post," and a 10.9% conversion rate for Facebook "shares" that lead to purchases:

Google's on-going quest to crack social

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Campbell) — Sat, 14 May 2011 21:07:00 +0000

After watching Google try and fail again and again at social, I was starting to wonder that maybe they’d cracked it. After all, if Facebook was scared enough to launch a smear campaign – maybe Google had gotten the mix right this time?

The movement toward social search has been in the works for a couple years - yet it hasn't been adopted as a natural part of information-seeking for most users. But I’ve been thinking that's about to change… for a while now.

The big story circulating in the press over the last 24 hours centers around how apparently Facebook hired Burson-Marsteller to smear Google’s Social Circle. TechCrunch, in particular, has been slamming Facebook over it: here and here.

Skimming through the New York Times blog post, I found the details on what Social Circle actually is:
“Social Circle shows how Google tries to personalize search results by adding items your friends have liked on various social sites.

Google users can choose to connect their social networking accounts from services like Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn and Quora to their Google profile at profiles.google.com. Then, if they are logged into their Google accounts, search results on a given topic will include items posted by one of their friends on the topic. For example, a search result for “best restaurant San Francisco” might show that a friend has recommended a restaurant on Twitter.

People can also see recommendations of links posted by friends of friends, which Google calls secondary connections. Google users can see who their direct and secondary connections are by visiting google.com/dashboard and looking at the section on Social Circle and Content.”

This sounds incredibly exciting to me, so I clicked on the links and did some looking around. I ended up here. If you’re a Gmail user, you can try it too. It keeps an inventory of all your direct and indirect contacts, as you can see below:

Nothing too scary - or exciting, for that matter. The idea is eventually when you do a search on, say “best restaurant in NYC”, your friends’ recommendations will come up. But it doesn’t work yet. Or something.

Upon doing more clicking around, the only tool I could find that gave me social commentary was Google Real-Time.

Digging in, I found myself on Quora, looking at the "Will Google figure out social?" thread.
Silicon Valley insider Robert Scoble is one of the more respected technologists in the space. So, have they – or will they crack social? He certainly doesn’t think so. You can read his comments here.

It's not like this is an easy problem to solve. But it will be solved, and probably not by a behemoth like Google. It's tends to be the agile, unencumbered start-ups that figure these kinds of problems out, make some strides and THEN get acquired by a behemoth (or simply driven out of business by one).

Whenever Social Circle - or a more effective version - materializes, it will solve a big problem for Internet users, make life harder for traditional marketers, and make it much easier to find what your friends are saying about a product or service. Regardless of whose side you’re on, we're definitely moving this direction - and it's going to accelerate the changes we've already seen in marketing driven by social media. The potential of social search is enormous. I am eagerly looking forward to seeing how it shakes out. As always, time will tell.

Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Campbell) — Sun, 08 May 2011 02:11:00 +0000

I find myself thinking quite a bit lately that the folks at HubSpot are pretty smart. They've pushed hard the delineation of Inbound Marketing ("earned" and "owned" attention, attained through blogs, social networks, organic search, etc.) versus Outbound Marketing (paid attention, broadcast through TV, print, radio, etc. advertising messages) - and the growing importance, and possibility, of Inbound Marketing as an attainable and scalable solution for any marketer. I agree, and I think it's an exciting time for any marketer with a worthy product or service. If you offer something a group of people desire and will value, and if you employ an effective digital marketing strategy, they'll find you. Creating either, of course, is much easier said than done.

Someone painstakingly took the time to read the writing on the wall and attach some meaningful graphics to it. You can see the full deck on slideshare.

I grabbed a few of the more compelling slides (in my opinion) below. A picture, as they say, is worth a thousand words - and I think they captured some important points we should all be considering as move forward:

Some practical tips marketers must now follow:

The 2011 New York Auto Show

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Campbell) — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 02:31:00 +0000

In the 8 and a half years I’ve lived in New York, I’ve eagerly anticipated attending the New York International Auto Show every April (If you wish to see my comments and photos from last year, click here). It’s always interesting to get a sense of the auto industry's confidence as reflected in the latest cars and displays the automakers bring together.

This year, it was bigger than ever. The audio/video displays throughout were over-the-top. Ford typically puts on a big production, but this year – unlike years past – Hyundai and Chrysler/Dodge also had a huge presence. Hyundai has come incredibly far since they entered the U.S. market back in 1986. And Chrysler/Dodge – under Fiat’s guidance, has invested in building new, compelling product which is generating a great deal of positive buzz – something they need badly. It shows, and I’m impressed with what I saw.

Ford is stronger now than at any other point in my lifetime. Their display focused on hybrid technology, the impressive new Explorer, the Mustang Boss 302, and cutouts showing the technical components of the cars – including the engines – which is always fun to see. I didn’t take photos of the Ford display, as it was our first stop and I just hadn’t started snapping yet.

Notably absent (unless I missed it) was GM. At least this was the case on the main floor, which is devoted to cars – as I didn’t feel like carting Hannah’s stroller downstairs to see the trucks. And then it’s always a disappointment when Ferrari/Maserati, Lamborghini and Bugatti don’t show. But they don’t have to.

On to the photos:

Nissan (Skyline) GT-R.
Though it’s been around a few years, it’s getting meaner and wilder. It’s a perfect halo for Nissan, especially when the comical Murano SUV/Convertible was sitting on the other side of the room, inciting snickers and killing Nissanstreet-cred.

Chrysler
The 300 has perhaps too much body cladding, but the design overall is good. It doesn’t stand out like the previous 300 did, but it certainly doesn’t tarnish the legacy built by that last model. I’m hopeful it will sell well.

I also think the positioning Chrysler is taking on is smart – promoting the idea of American toughness as something unique and special in its own right. The steadfast steelworkers of Detroit building luxury cars. Neither the Germans nor the Japanese can touch that.

Fiat
After the forced marriage with Chrysler a while back, Fiat now has access to all of Chrysler’s distribution channels – and they’ve put a heavy push behind the retro 500. It’s been getting a surprising amount of positive press, but I just don’t get it. Americans like big cars. Why would they care about this little thing that looks like it should be on the streets of Rome? MINI deservedly received a tremendous amount of positive buzz and the cars have sold well, but their package was so much more compelling. They truly had an exciting angle – a more affordable, compact BMW-engineered hot-rod with British charm. I don’t see the angle here.

VW Microbus. Awesome.

Hyundai dominates.
They’re clearly the new Toyota – in that they’re quickly moving up the sales charts, and selling cars that will appeal most to the middle-market.

Hannah in the midst of the crowd.

Given how the tragic tsunami profoundly affected the Japanese automakers, their recent efforts have most likely been focused elsewhere than the auto show circuit. Secondly, production has suffered greatly given their crippled infrastructure.

Toyota invested less this year in the Toyota brand and more into Scion – perhaps because Scion has remained unscathed by the quality controversy still likely affecting public perception of the mother brand. Not surprisingly, Toyota had videos running emphasizing the quality of Toyota cars. Is their strategy showing a little too much?

I thought this concept from Scion was cool – and quite a crowd had assembled around to check it out.

The MINI Countryman – it’s not so mini. Again, Americans like big cars. I can’t blame MINI for coming out with a bigger model to capture additional sales the brand otherwise would lose to another make.

The Porsche Panamera just saddens me. Why can’t they put all that power and capability into a smaller car? While this beast is impressively fast and surprisingly agile, I can’t help but think they could have invested all those engineering resources into a smaller, lighter car and created something so much more compelling. There are only so many people who can afford to buy a $100,000+ four-door anyway, right?

Cayman as utility vehicle (note the bike rack and focus on the tiny trunk)? Come on! It’s a blast to drive! Leave it at that.

I got a kick out of the Facebook.com/Porsche call-out on this million-mile 911. Reminds me of Aol keywords from a decade ago.

The Audi display was out of this world.

The R8 remains stunning.

Saab is working on making their comeback after being brought back from the dead last year. It’s convincingly cool and different. It’ll be interesting to see if they can make it work. I think most of us have doubts.

The Spyker (Saab's new, struggling owner) – the only hardcore, bespoke exotic I saw at the show.

The Lotus Esprit – first all-new Esprit since what – the ‘80s? I think their long-held emphasis on light bodies with compact, high-strung engines and well-engineered suspensions just might get some traction in today's market.

Mercedes and BMW were enormous as usual. And as usual, crowds of people were gathered there. It always pleases me to see Mercedes has its mojo back after Chrysler drained their resources in the last decade.

The Ducati next to the C63 AMG seems appropriate, but not really (the brutish German next to the sonorous Italian) – and why? No matter. It’s nice to get the two in the same frame.

What's with the baby-blue SLS with orange trim? I realize it looked great on the late-‘50s Gullwing SLs, but what were they getting at here? That you can order it in ANY color you like? It’s still gorgeous – and people were snapping pictures of it left and right.

The QR code with the 3-pointed star logo is very clever.

Mercedes-Benz has been getting quite a lot of press over the A-Class concept (NYTimes and Jalopnik). It looks like a mini Batmobile. For the money, I’m not sure why anyone wouldn’t get a GTI for $10k+ less. Then again, I gather the fuss over this model is that it was envisioned as a truly global car (introduced within days in Shanghai and New York) – notably the Asian market.

The BMW M cars cross the model range now, though I’ll probably always lust most for the M3. We've all got to have our something. The 1-series M Coupe (couldn’t call it an M1) has a killer combo – big engine, M-tuned suspension, and a compact and lightweight body.

BMW got the 6-series design right – leaning on the styling initiated in the re-designed 7-series from last year.

Finally, the auto show can be exhausting. The trip out to the Javits Center is brutal enough. Then there are the crowds and acres and acres of displays. It got the best of Hannah.

On a separate note, I wrote this post using a different method than before. After spending a couple hours at the show – and after Hannah fell asleep in her stroller – I recorded a 13-minute Voice Memo capturing my comments as I flipped through the photos on my iPhone. I’ve been writing presentations and proposals after recording Voice Memos lately, and I similarly found that using this method to blog is incredibly efficient, too. Here I was able to articulate my reactions while they were fresh, and then transcribe them into written form once I had a few minutes to devote to writing the post. If I’d had the patience to use the touch screen display to type, I could have crafted the post on my phone. The tools readily at our disposal today are truly amazing to me in how they can enable us to not only be more efficient, but empower us to communicate with the world through multiple mediums using a hand-held device just about anyone can afford. Year by year, it’s getting easier to share our thoughts with the world – in whatever form we care to do it. I find it all very exciting.

Why we need Architects

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Campbell) — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 03:18:00 +0000

If you want to build something, you're going to need the right tools. But what if you don't truly know how to apply them?

A hammer, for instance, is an immensely valuable tool capable of helping to construct amazing things. But if you don't know what you're building - and why you’re building it - that hammer will never come close to realizing its purpose. That should be obvious, right? Yet it’s not.

You want to build something remarkable, or merely effective? You're going to need an architect. Preferably a good architect – one with creativity, perspective, experience and vision. The cost is too high otherwise.

The information explosion – and what it means

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Campbell) — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 15:55:00 +0000

“Between the dawn of civilization and 2003, five exabytes of information were created. In the last two days, five exabytes of information have been created, and that rate is accelerating” -- Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google

Mind-boggling to think about, isn't it? But what does it mean, really?

It means a lot of things. It means the world is changing faster than it ever has before, and that the rate of change will only increase. It means that we have the ability to create opportunities we couldn't have imagined years - even months - ago. It means innovation will skyrocket (more on that below). It means we'll have seemingly unlimited access to information and ideas we couldn't have imagined a few years ago. It means we'll waste much less time on redundancies - as it’s easier than ever for us to learn from other people, build on it, and share it so others can build on our contributions. The list goes on and on.

It also means there will be more distractions than ever - and it's getting harder to stay focused on the things that matter. Yet its clear there is far more good than bad resulting from this information explosion. We'll adapt - as we always have.

Above all, it means we need to hold on tight, pay close attention, and open our minds to completely new ways of thinking, communicating and getting things done. We're living in the most exciting time in history - and we’ve only seen the beginning.

- The abridged briefing below gives a little more food for thought on what innovation means today.
- To download the full “Future Trends of Innovation” presentation, click here.
- For a summary, click here.

Future Trends Briefing

Orabrush - the best social marketing program (on a budget)

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Campbell) — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 02:50:00 +0000

The brand story that undeniably gets people's attention and makes smaller brands with smaller budgets think twice about investing big in social media marketing is Orabrush.

Orabrush's web presence demonstrates the benefits of integration, puts clear and compelling content at the top where it should be, gets the story out where people are spending their time (Facebook, YouTube and their smartphones) and lures them in (to the online hub) to learn more - and ultimately, buy. Importantly, it also gives people something worthy of sharing. A groundswell of buzz has resulted, and now retailers are opening their shelf-space to a once unheard-of brand from Provo, Utah. Behold the power of social media...

Orabrush’s story, as quoted from an article in the New York Times:

“People have viewed Orabrush’s YouTube clips 24 million times (actually, they're nearing 35 million as of this posting). Orabrush has sold $1 million worth of the $5 tongue brushes through YouTube, and major drugstores are beginning to stock it on their shelves.

Almost 40,000 people have subscribed to get e-mail updates every time Orabrush posts a new video, making it the seventh most-subscribed channel, ahead of brands like Disney, BMW and Nintendo Wii.

'YouTube videos reverse big companies’ marketing equations', said Jeff Davis, Orabrush’s chief executive and a 23-year P.& G. veteran. 'What P.& G. taught me is a different model — you have an idea, build a prototype, have a test market, scale the product, find a retailer and distribution, then turn on marketing,' he said. 'This was the reverse. We basically launched the entire brand on YouTube and Facebook.'"

The call-to-action is clear, and the content is easy to find:

"It’s the type of product you can’t sell with search, you can’t sell with display, but it’s uniquely able to sell because of the power of video’s medium,' said Salar Kamangar, co-head of YouTube. 'These are user-choice ads, things that people are choosing to click on."

Orabrush's YouTube channel has received more than 34 million views by keeping their presence simple, compelling and worth sharing:

Focusing on the User Experience - Orabrush's YouTube channel is smartly integrated with the most intuitive navigation I've seen. They've simplified the user experience with a video library, which makes people want to stick around to learn more:

The hub site is to-the-point, easy-to-use and integrated with every key digital channel:

Orabrush brings its Facebook feed and its advocates' respective social graphs to the hub - and they don't make it complicated for the user:

From the hub, people can then go mobile with an iPhone app that they can actually put to use - and just may talk about with their friends:

Old Spice Man – the best social media campaign ever?

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Campbell) — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 18:07:00 +0000

I've been meaning to write this post since July. Typical of what happens these days, I’ve stayed active with Facebook and Twitter while the blog sits unattended. Blogging requires quite a bit of time to do well, and I simply lack the bandwidth to give it what it deserves. It's true; 140 characters IS easier when work and life get in the way! But I’d blog every day if I could..

Anyway, imagine the scenario. You’re a Proctor & Gamble brand marketer and you need to figure out how to make an un-hip deodorant brand cool. I can tell you – as someone who has developed strategies for hundred of brands – this is a tough assignment. Who wants to have a relationship with their deodorant? Axe notwithstanding, it's rarely been achieved. Yet millions of people buy the stuff every day, they want to make a quick decision at the store they can feel good about, and so indeed it is a worthwhile challenge.

I was and continue to be captivated by the solution Wieden + Kennedy and P&G developed for the “Old Spice Man” campaign last year. If you don't have time to read the full post, consider these points:
1. It got people to think about Old Spice in a very new light – an extremely difficult task
2. Sales went up 107% the month after
3. 186 million video views on YouTube and counting

I've heard the argument over and over that the campaign was heavily supported by traditional media (which I think is good, because it shows a truly integrated approach). The trigger ad, “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like," (below) was launched online and on TV last February. Impressively, the ad received more than 2 million views online in its first two weeks. By the end of Spring it had 11 million views and now stands at nearly 30 million:

The success of that ad prompted the sequel, "The Response Campaign," where on July 13th - 14th Wieden + Kennedy produced 186 videos featuring Isaiah Mustafa, the "Old Spice Guy," responding to tweets and Facebook updates from social media influencers at the speed of the internet (several videos were produced every hour, with turnaround taking about 30 minutes).

Some of the astounding numbers from that 2-day push:
- 186 video responses
- 5,900,000 YouTube views on day one
- 2,700% increase in Twitter followers
- 300% bump in traffic to OldSpice.com
- More than 1,000,000,000 impressions across all of the different channels

The key links:
- Facebook.com/OldSpice - Over 1.2 million “likes”. Click the Old Spice Guy tab, sit back, and laugh. Notice each of these videos was created in response to user-generated questions (posed largely on Twitter):

- Twitter.com/OldSpice - Over 120,000 followers, and a public forum for all of them:

- YouTube.com/OldSpice - click “responses” (Old Spice Man Internet Responses) - Over 186 million views!

But did it accomplish the most important task – did it drive sales? Yes – the chart below covers some of the results, including an overall 106% bump in sales:

As covered in Adweek: “the popular TV effort from Wieden + Kennedy spun out into a social media salvo that took its main character -- the super-suave, Old Spice Guy, envied by men and adored by women -- and plopped him smack in the middle of the real-time Web.

In two days, Isaiah Mustafa, the actor who plays the ever-shirtless Old Spice guy, made about 200 short videos responding to comments and questions directed his way via Twitter, Facebook and social sites like Reddit.

Wieden decided to center the social media push around YouTube and Twitter. YouTube is hosting the videos, while Twitter provided the bulk of the distribution.

The effort involves a team of writers, art directors, producers, editors and social media strategists. The social media experts initially identified a crop of popular bloggers in key areas like entertainment (Perez Hilton), technology (4chan) and advertising (Adweek's own AdFreak), as well as regular YouTube and Facebook commenters. Some videos were pre-shot, but the vast majority (were produced) over 48 hours from a studio in Portland, writing and producing them on the fly.

The social media team scoured the Web for comments related to the Old Spice campaign. They fed the ones that were funny or from interesting sources to the creatives, who then determined which made good fodder for humorous videos.

They were typically shot in a take or two. In all, Wieden was able to go from comment to video response in as little as 30 minutes.”

It’s an impressive but manageable operation which showed a keen understanding of people’s media consumption habits today – and catered to them in real-time.

Mashable wrote: “This campaign really is a perfect storm of viralty — not only does it target specific bloggers (who are then more likely to cover the whole thing), it also reaches out to less prominent individuals who can be made more aware of Old Spice. Moreover, they become personally invested in the brand because they have actually become a part of the world they have created.”

The campaign responded to numerous tweets from hundreds of influential tweeters – including:
- Christina Applegate
- Allyssa Milano
- George Stephanopoulos
- Rose McGowan (Charmed)
- Perez Hilton
- Demi Moore
- Ashton Kutcher
- Kevin Rose (founder of Digg)
- Huffington Post
- Gizmodo
- TheEllenShow
- Starbucks

And lastly, a few of the many compelling articles written on the subject:
- Five Things The Old Spice Man Means For Advertising
- 3 things you don't know about Old Spice's success
- How Old Spice is tapping into the real-time web
- The Old Spice Guy Now Making Custom Videos for Fans via Social Media

B2B marketing case study: GE

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Campbell) — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 22:41:00 +0000

I find myself in discussions about social media and how it applies to marketing and communications often. In debates around the topic, I hear comments from people questioning the value of social media for B2B marketers. Since I eat, breathe and sleep the stuff the evidence of success and best practices are all around. Yet I understand most people can’t justify spending the time I do staying on top of all the developments going on every day.

So I thought I’d give an example here. GE is regarded in social media circles as a respected innovator for their efforts modernizing their marketing infrastructure – a daunting challenge for the world’s 2nd largest company with more than 300,000 employees running dozens of business units in over 100 countries. If you want to learn details of the company’s history and what encompasses GE today, their Wikipedia profile is worth a read; this is a company that’s smartly evolved with the times. And of course, I can’t possibly adequately summarize their strategy in a single blog post – especially as an outsider.

The bulk of their business involves selling directly to businesses (B2B), not “consumers” (B2C), so there’s no real need for them to market the company to the masses. Yet given their stature and global presence, they still need a visible public face. It’s just that there is no need for them to advertise heavily in mass media to sell products like, say Proctor & Gamble or General Motors do, as the mass audience isn’t who buys their products. So when you stop and think as if you're in GE’s marketing team, it's quite a challenge to promote the company in a cohesive, compelling way that moves the needle and generates a meaningful return for their marketing dollars. Their solution has been to develop three campaigns:
- Imagination at Work – for general awareness
- Healthymagination – for all-things health product related
- Ecomagination – for all-things energy product related

CMO Beth Comstock

For an insider’s point of view on the marketing revolution at GE - and how their marketing organization is organized, CMO Beth Comstock’s audio interview and co-authored article gets into the details. A few points she covered:

During the Jack Welch era, GE focused on acquiring businesses. When he left, they shifted to growing from within. New leadership paid close attention to the changing business climate, and began to invest in new technologies and marketing the organization more effectively in key global growth areas – like India, Brazil and China.

Strategic marketers are key to innovation in those markets. GE marketers now apply a reverse innovation process - an important trend. For instance, they interviewed customers and found that they needed an ultrasound machine the size of a briefcase to go to rural markets, so they came back and engineered the product around those needs.

Another example she gave was about GE Capital, which has had some tough challenges over the past couple years. They used data and analytics to create a "war room" – where the key players met frequently to analyze customer trends, competitors, and GE's value propositions. Doing this, they were able to generate insights to help them develop the offerings customers would value most coming out of a very difficult economic climate.

At GE Aviation, listening to feedback from the field drove them to create essentially a mobile tablet for airline service maintenance folks to use to gauge the performance and condition of engines.

A very important point she made was that by analyzing all this data they were able separate the perceived from the real. Having these fact-based insights enabled them to move fast with certainty in a world filled with uncertainty. Put another way, they were able to turn crisis into opportunity, decline into growth.

Social issues internet users care about

With Healthymagination and Ecomagination, they have wisely aligned themselves with two movements nearly everyone can support – the need for improved healthcare through better technology, and environmentally-responsible energy production. With that message, they have optimized their presence to the social channels where people go to look for information.

GE is playing in the right space; internet users have shown a tendency to be interested in the issues GE is addressing through these initiatives - like solar energy, climate change, and energy issues:

Promoting the Smart Grid

Well known for innovative marketing programs, GE's Smart Grid program stuck with me most. Using innovative, easily-accessible technology to promote innovative, easily-accessible technology resonates in people heads. It's a smart approach.

Try it for yourself here.

Ecomagination – Well-integrated across the key digital and social channels like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube - all elements feed into the hub site, and all channels encourage users to "like", "follow" or subscribe to stay in the loop:

Ecomagination actively seeks audience input – and makes it easy for people to contribute:

Healthymagination – Similarly to Ecomagination, Healthymagination's presence has also been well-integrated across the digital and social channels. It's a different audience with different objectives, but the need to build a presence that makes it easy for your audience to find the type of information they're seeking is universal for all brands - as is the need to engage people in a long-term relationship with the brand wherever possible:

GE has established a series of platforms to seek out feedback from people on what they want to see from the power grid and other efficient power generation initiatives. Given it's such an interesting topic that affects so many, they're getting meaningful feedback:

GE Reports - In addition to the campaigns discussed above, GE Reports ensures content is distributed to places where people are most likely to look for information about GE, its product categories, or its investments:

Subscribing to GE Reports is easy; if the content is relevant to you, simply enter your email address and GE will then have the ability to engage with you directly through email on an on-going basis:

Internal and External Communication and Collaboration - A very informative article on GE went into further details about how GE is utilizing smartphones and social media to enable valuable, timely functions simply, quickly, with the user experience in mind, and across the organization:

"The company has created more than 45 applications, both for the market and for internal and external communications. A global giant with total revenue in 2010 of $150.2 billion, GE’s businesses reach from aviation to power transformers. It uses mobile technology to do everything from promoting employee fitness to explaining its health care business through a game (below).

Railroad workers can use GE apps for handheld devices to stop an approaching locomotive or to calculate the number of trains that have crossed a stretch of track, their horsepower and their average load. An engineer with an iPad can check out a power transformer off in the wilderness and see whether it needs repairs before he drives out on a dirt road to inspect it.

'Everyone from field service engineers to sales team members to senior executives are playing the mobile field, whether it’s BlackBerry, the new iPhone, the iPad, Android,' says James Blomberg, IT team leader for new-media technology. “So we’re trying to make sure we have the right tools at their fingertips on those platforms.”

A program called PR Insight tracks and sorts what people are writing about GE in newspapers, on personal websites, on blogs and elsewhere, a task that would otherwise be impossible in a worldwide company. GE plans to make it available on smartphones once new BlackBerry software is released."

Conclusions

Integrating all the digital channels to full advantage to promote what GE is doing in plain English makes it easier than ever for interested people to engage in a long-term, on-going relationship with them.

If a multinational conglomerate's goal is to be perceived as a thought-leader, this is an effective way to go about it. These campaigns communicate well that GE is an important, innovative company with tremendous resources and big plans - which speaks volumes to a decision maker mulling over a substantial investment.

Technology is amazing

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Campbell) — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 05:51:00 +0000

I got an iPhone 4 today - a gadget with features that will become commonplace before we know it. Though not enough people have one to make this feature truly usable YET, that I can make a video call on my phone anywhere I choose with someone who is anyplace else is nothing short of astonishing to me. And that's just one of hundreds of features on this tiny, very affordable device that would have been unimaginable just 10 years ago.

I remember my parents telling me in the middle of an Oklahoma summer how they didn't have air-conditioning or power windows in their cars when they were kids - something unthinkable to me at the time. What kinds of stories will we tell our kids? Here's one: "When I was a kid, I couldn't call my grandmother half-way across the country and talk to her face-to-face for free". Technology is amazing, and we almost never stop to think and allow ourselves to be mesmerized by all the progress we've made.

To hear comedian Louis C.K. tell it better than anyone, take a look at this interview he gave on Conan last year. If you haven't already, watch it. If you saw it last year, it's worth watching again:

And here's what really gets me going: we ain't seen nothing yet.

Serenity

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Campbell) — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 14:46:00 +0000

Stumbling upon this a few minutes ago, I was knocked out by it as I always am - and felt I should share.

Serenity prayer

God grant us the Serenity to accept things we cannot change, Courage to change the things we can, and the Wisdom to know the difference. Patience for the things that take time Appreciation for all that we have, and Tolerance for those with different struggles. Freedom to live beyond the limitations of our past ways, the Strength to get up and try again even when we feel it is hopeless.

You can’t add anything to that.

Social media PR disasters

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Campbell) — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 17:18:00 +0000

I'll preface this by complimenting a feature slideshare has. They have forced me to blog today, when I really don't have the time. I saw a post linking to the presentation below on Twitter, flipped through it quickly, and with a few clicks was able to post it to my blog. It's a great feature. While writing a compelling 140 characters isn't as quick as it should be, it's much quicker than the narrative that a blog deserves. And as a consequence, I tweet far more often than I blog - and it frustrates me; I could blog all day and never come close to saying all I want to say.

The deck at the bottom of this post is a fascinating look at PR debacles that have been made possible or were amplified through social media over the past 10 years. I've added in images of the ones I find most interesting just below. I don't believe that many of these "screw-ups" were bad ideas or poor in execution. The reality is that the forward-thinking companies who experimented early and got burned by social media had no way of anticipating what might happen. Yet they went forward anyway, and it's hard not to respect that. Also, their failures have given our industry the collective perspective needed to get things better more often - which is undeniably a good thing.

The first - over 4 years ago now - is Diet Coke + Mentos, the YouTube video that spawned the term "viral". Initially Coke didn't respond favorably to what was happening, but soon saw the Groundswell and wisely embraced it.

Next is Wal-Mart's blog, failing to represent that they were behind it's development. It created a huge backlash, and companies learned fast that they couldn't mis-represent themselves without major consequences.

After this damning story got out, Comcast was in hot water. To address these types of issues - and to prevent them from happening again - Comcast launched the very successful Comcast Cares on Twitter. Later, Best Buy launched Twelpforce, which I blogged about here.

Then Motrin created this ad - which countless moms found offensive and were anything but quiet about it online.

Kevin Smith got mad at Southwest, and then got even by broadcasting his ire to the million+ followers who couldn't help but hang on to his every tweet. United had an irate customer whose guitar was destroyed by careless baggage handlers, which I blogged about here.

While Skittles had an innovative approach, they optimistically failed to consider what the audience might do.

My wife is one of millions who read Heather B. Armstrong's blog - Dooce - passionately. After a horrible experience with Maytag, she spread the word. And then Maytag had no choice but to move mountains to take care of her.

And finally, the full deck on slideshare:

Social media Screw Ups - A History

View more presentations from Social Media Influence.

Tesla and electric sports cars

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Campbell) — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 14:55:00 +0000

I’ve questioned the viability of the electric vehicle for a while now, yet I found myself thinking twice and feeling inspired by the cover article about Tesla in the latest issue of Wired. It got me to reconsider my point of view about electric cars – that you take one inefficient means of powering a car and trade it for another (think coal-burning plants) – with this key point: “One gallon of gasoline could be used to generate enough electricity to power an electric vehicle for hundreds of miles.” It’s exciting to see that a start-up company in a capital-intensive, mature industry has a shot at making it – while perhaps performing the needed task of weaning us off of internal combustion engines in favor of compelling alternatives.

After making his fortune as a co-founder of PayPal, Elon Musk helped get Tesla off the ground in 2004 with an initial investment of $6.3 million. Their strategy smartly included the following three phases:

1. Leverage an existing sports car (the compact and impressive-handling Lotus Elise), add Tesla’s lithium-ion battery pack (generating 200 kilowatts of juice—sufficient to propel the 288-horsepower pocket-rocket from 0 - 60 in less than 4 seconds), and prove to enthusiasts and the press that electric vehicles are a compelling alternative. Enthusiasts raved. According to Motor Trend: “The Roadster is a cool automobile technically, a cooler automobile to drive, and an historic game-changer in our perception of battery-electric vehicles.”

2. Develop from scratch a luxury sedan to showcase Tesla’s technology and the long-term viability of the company. With a $465 million loan from the federal government and an enormous factory they acquired for pennies on the dollar from Toyota during the financial crisis, the first Model S is set to begin production in 2012.

3. Then, by far the biggest challenge, produce hundreds of thousands of electric vehicles for the masses.

Curious to see Tesla’s social media presence, I located their Facebook page. They’re doing a nice job – the content is relevant, updated daily, easy to browse, and worthy of sharing. They have a nice balance of photos, on-going stories, links to mainstream media sites featuring glowing reviews about the cars, and blog posts. While the URL is correct for search engine optimization, titling the page “Tesla Roadster” limits them to one model instead of the line-up – something a small manufacturer should seek to avoid. It could be successful as a marketing vehicle if they crank up the volume and drive the audience to learn more about the ownership experience and how they, too, can have a Tesla.

While we’re waiting for Tesla’s mass-market EV, GM is set to release the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan the Leaf. Linked to the article is a good read on the state of EVs – clearly laying out how these gasoline alternatives are not only practical and incredibly efficient, but occasionally affordable.

Mercedes, Audi and high-end start-up Fisker are jumping into the mix with some exciting EVs as well:

Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG “Gullwing” E-Cell: 525 horsepower, zero to 60 in four seconds, and a 48-kilowatt-hour battery. Former Formula 1 racer David Coulthard after driving one: “You will not believe the performance.”

You can see additional photos and a couple videos of the E-Cell in action here.

Audi e-tron: Four motors, 313 horsepower, and supercar-like acceleration.

Fisker Karma: With 403 horsepower and stunning sheet metal, the battery will run for 50 miles before a gas-assist engine starts up to keep the battery running.

It should be interesting to see how the fledgling EV market unfolds. For sure, we have good reason to pay close attention.

The never-ending trial

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Campbell) — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 19:46:00 +0000

After three weeks sitting on a criminal trial, the jury I sat on found the defendant not guilty of sexually abusing his step-daughter.

A few thoughts:

The court system is woefully inefficient. I don't think they understand that we're in the 21st century yet. The process is maddeningly slow and completely disregards the obligations jurors face in their day-to-day lives.

Don't kid yourself; if you get selected to serve as a juror, you might as well clear your calendar for the upcoming month. The crazy thing is you can. What could we accomplish if we took a month away from obligations (putting aside the realities of the financial pinch, of course) to focus on something truly important?

I'm a workaholic.

Queens County IS the most diverse in the country.

Anyone reading this is obscenely lucky just for where you were born and who your parents are. Think about it. To give an example, the Peruvian/Columbian family I learned so much about slept between 6 and 10 people - depending on the time period - in their tiny one-bedroom apartment.

Was he guilty? Only the defendant and complaining witness will ever know for sure. When you have 12 people of totally different backgrounds who must come to a unanimous verdict based on limited testimony, it's really hard. Over 3 days of deliberation, no stone was left unturned. Every thought, emotion, personal reflection, and prejudice was put on the table - and the fine folks I served with inspired me with their decency, perspective and commitment to fairness.

The new business of media

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Campbell) — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 17:40:00 +0000

Listening to iTunes this morning, I observed that there are 6,340 songs in my database, and it would take over 20 days to listen to all of it. This is by no means an unusually large music library, either. I regularly add to it, one track at a time, for about a dollar each.

As recently as 10 years ago I’d get in my car and drive all over town to find and buy a $17 CD just for one track. Back then, there was money to be made in the music business. Obviously things have changed – dramatically.

Similar changes apply to media of ALL forms. The “good old days” of creating, distributing and selling content at scale are over – or at least severely diminished. Good content today doesn’t sell when people can get it quickly and easily for free elsewhere. Yet influence – in a widening sea of chatter – sells more effectively than ever. Seth Godin, for instance, doesn’t make money when I read his blog every day. Yet without his daily blog posts feeding into my BlackBerry, his insight wouldn’t be on my mind every day – and I wouldn’t be one of the many lining up to buy his books or pay to see him speak. And my wife probably wouldn’t have thought to buy me my very own Seth Godin action figure for my birthday this year (true story – pictured above).

We have access to information like never before (which is incredibly exciting to me for countless reasons). Among many other things, the internet has totally disrupted well-established and profitable business models throughout media. This is horrible news for anyone in the publishing or broadcast media business, of course, but times have changed and fighting it only slows progress. Content is no less valuable today, it’s just that we now have nearly unlimited access to it (and the ability to share it), through social media – driving the price for it down to nearly zero.

So how do we build profitable businesses around media today? On the most basic level, circulate as much relevant and insightful content as you can to your best customers and advocates. That content will be the mechanism that drives your on-going relationship with them – effectively reminding them to do business with you, and to tell their friends about you. Once you see the change for what it is, it’s an enormous opportunity for any business willing to devote the resources to add ever greater value to their customers’ lives. Done well, they will reward you with their business and they will bring their friends with them.

Doing this well, of course, is complex and challenging. It’s what I do for a living, so I know the transitional pains as well as anyone. Yet it’s clear as day this is where the greatest opportunity in media lies – and the implications for organizations that act on this now and consequently make huge leaps forward are staggering.

Making me believe it

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Campbell) — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 02:00:00 +0000

Watching TV on the cardio machine at the gym the other night, I had the rare "pleasure" of watching the same ad three times back-to-back in commercial breaks. I normally tune ads out, but this was far more exciting than any show I could have been watching! Why can't advertising always be this good?

"Inspired and humbled by all of the great cars that came before us, like the BMW M5 or the Mercedes E63. We didn't see this time as something to cherish, but more a starting line from which to keep pushing."

I don't know who Cadillac was targeting with this ad, but if it was someone like me... Well done! You nailed it.

The ad doesn’t tell me anything new – but I recognize I’m in the minority. Since I’m an enthusiast, I know that Bob Lutz was the inspirational force behind GM's product renaissance. I know the Cadillac CTS-V has a blistering 556 horsepower - a figure unimaginable to me just a few years ago. I also know that the CTS-V is the fasted production sedan around Germany's famed Nürburgring race track. Knowing this brings me a satisfying pride in American cars that I've never before felt – beyond the classics from the ‘60s and before. It's good to see Detroit come back, even if it's now a shadow of its former self. I've long believed that this massive restructuring was necessary for Detroit to re-imagine what American cars should be, however painful the transition has been. Yet when I see this ad or see one of those cars on the street, I finally believe that Cadillac might once again be "The Standard of the World" the way it truly was for Elvis’s generation.

Emma's story

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Campbell) — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 14:06:00 +0000

I have to admit I wasn't sure this story was going to have a happy ending. Thanks to Facebook and the people of Canton, Massachusetts, Emma is now home with her family after a 3-day hunt that held hundreds if not thousands of people captivated.

My friend Lindsay's dog, Emma, frightened by a big storm 4 days ago wandered out of the backyard of their suburban Boston-area home. After struggling to find Emma on her own, ever-resourceful Lindsay went to Facebook – posting on her profile (below):

She also posted on the Canton, Massachusetts Facebook page:

The administrator of the Canton page graciously got involved, posting frequently over the course of the hunt to ensure the community's 1,800 members kept an eye out for Emma, or clues to her whereabouts:

Over the course of the several-day hunt, Lindsay refused to give up. While I'm sure the outpouring of concern and support helped deal with the emotional strain, it also kept the community concerned and actively engaged:

Last night, the community banded together to form a search party:

Someone heard some rustling leaves, and trapped in a hole 10 feet down a hill, they found Emma - starving and frail:

The aftermath was captured on video and posted on the community page:

Such a great story! And the comments below tell the story better than I ever could:

When Facebook made the fan page truly useful last March by enabling Wall posts to feed directly into fans' news feeds, it was clear to me that a game-changing communication channel had been born. Yet it never occurred to me that this tool would see such wide use that it would eventually be applied to band a community together to find a very sweet and frightened dog. But it happened, and Emma is living proof of the power of social networking.

Stay hungry

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Campbell) — Sat, 22 May 2010 17:08:00 +0000

I keep thinking back to these two incredibly insightful videos. The first is Steve Jobs’ 2005 Commencement Address at Stanford. He shares three stories:

1) Paraphrasing: You have to trust in something, because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart.

So true, yet everything around tells you to follow the well-worn path. You have to ignore that fear, or at least keep it far enough at bay that you have the flexibility to do the work you know that you were put here to do. It’s hard to keep that up day-to-day, but Steve Jobs is saying it – and you can watch it over and over again on YouTube if you need a reminder.

2) “I didn’t realize it at the time, but getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have happened to me.” The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again. He was less sure about everything, which freed him to enter one of the most creative periods of his life – ultimately creating Pixar, and leading to the development of the phenomenal products like the iPod and iPhone, things today we can’t imagine living without.

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” Odds are, you won't find it the first, second, third or tenth time. “Keep looking. Don't settle. You'll know when you find it.”

3) He asks himself every morning, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today? When the answer is 'no' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something."

Then he goes on to explain how death is the ultimate change agent in life. There are only so many hours in a day, days in a year, and years in our life. If we know we have only a finite amount of time, does it change how we spend it?

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice; it somehow already knows what you truly want to become… Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”

The second is Sylvester Stallone's story, as told by Tony Robbins:

Truly, this is a guy who started with nothing and ended up with everything. He refused to settle. Sly wanted to be an actor since he was a kid. He relentlessly pursued it, but only got a handful of walk-on parts as thugs. He was starving. So why didn't he just get a day job? Because he knew his hunger was his only advantage; if he burned all his other bridges, he'd have no choice but to follow through - and his dream wouldn't disappear. So he changed his approach and became a writer. One night he saw a Mohammad Ali fight and got an idea. Over the following 20 hours he typed the script for Rocky. Originally the producers wanted Ryan O’Neill (can you imagine?) to play the part, but to Sly it was an all or nothing deal. So he got the part. And the rest is history.

The Social Media Revolution

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Campbell) — Wed, 12 May 2010 01:09:00 +0000

The video here and below will blow your hair back, whether you’re like me (eat and breathe social media) or merely a casual observer intrigued by how the social media phenomenon has changed the way we communicate online and in “real-life” forever. It’s a must-see for anyone not hiding under a rock over the last couple years.

To elaborate a bit, it’s an update on the Social Media Revolution video posted 9 and a half months ago by Erik Qualman on the Socialnomics blog. Social media has evolved so much in that time, though, that an updated version was necessary – as the original was long out-of-date.

Among my favorite points made:
- Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30-years-old. 96% of them have joined a social network
- Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S.
- 60 millions status updates happen on Facebook daily
- Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
- 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
- Years to Reach 50 millions Users: Radio (38), TV (13), Internet (4), iPod (3)… Facebook added over 200 million users in less than a year. iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months
- 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation. We no longer search for the news, the news finds us
- We will no longer search for products and services, they will find us through social media
- Social Media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate
- Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like Mad Men - Listening first, selling second
- The ROI of social media is that your business will still exist in 5 years

What’s especially interesting about it – I think – is how it spread so quickly, and without a dime spent promoting it. I saw it initially when @MichaelDonnelly posted its YouTube link on Facebook five days ago. Of course, I turned around and posted it as well. When I clicked through to view the video, I recall it already had around 1,400 views. When I went to view it on YouTube again tonight, it had over 140,000 views! All from people like you and me, appreciating what it is, and telling our friends because we thought they’d get something out of it. How many will have seen it by the end of next week? If anything like the original - with nearly 1.9 million views on YouTube - it could impact a substantial number of influential people.

This is how ideas are spread today. If compelling enough, millions of people might know about it within days. It’s an incredible opportunity that we’re only beginning to understand.

I'm afraid you'll have to earn it

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Campbell) — Tue, 11 May 2010 00:51:00 +0000

I read the following posts within minutes of each other, and they bring compelling perspectives - especially when combined:

1) Simply explained:
You can buy attention (advertising)
You can beg for attention from the media (PR)
You can bug people one at a time to get attention (sales)
Or you can earn attention by creating something interesting and valuable, and then publishing it online for free: a YouTube video, blog, research report, photo, Twitter stream, ebook, or Facebook page.

2) "Our ability to create information has far exceeded our ability to manage it"

The Internet currently holds as much information as 1,700 Libraries of Congress.

Seems it's going to get a lot harder to buy, beg and bug your way through.

Indeed, it seems from now on we'll have to earn people's attention, and it's not going to get easier. Scary as it is for many, it's actually the biggest opportunity of our generation.

Starbucks and “f-commerce”

noreply@blogger.com (Brent Campbell) — Sun, 09 May 2010 16:23:00 +0000

I really like what Starbucks is doing with social media. They’re getting it right on so many levels, and only a handful of marketers can say the same.

Yet as one of their most dedicated fans (I freely admit that much of my productivity over the last 3 years in particular was made possible by Starbucks’ high-octane coffee), it’s frustrating that I didn’t know about this feature before reading about it from a link I picked up on Twitter. Why aren’t they promoting this through their seven million Facebook fans’ news feeds or in their email communications to us? I truly want to know this kind of thing, because it simplifies my hectic life.

While adding the My Starbucks functionality to the Facebook page does little more than bring the website features to Facebook (not very “social”, is it?), it’s possible there’s more traffic on the Starbucks Facebook page (7 million+ fans!) than their website. So it makes sense that they should add this utility to their page.

Had I not received a promotion in the mail to tell me about the My Starbucks feature on the site in the first place, though, I probably wouldn’t have signed up to use something that 1) makes going to Starbucks as easy as a swipe of a card, and 2) ensures that I buy coffee at Starbucks instead of its many competitors. That they’re putting this feature front-and-center on their Facebook page is a smart move, but they need to make sure all of their best customers know about it.