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Ad-Tech Diarist: Ten Questions on the "Art of Conversation"

This year's Ad-Tech, which I'm still attending, is very special.  Most importantly, the first "keynote panel" of industry experts focused on an issue that rarely gets top billing at industry confabs: the art of conversation. This is an important shift in our collective industry "attention" and "engagement," and while we're all far from finalizing the perfect white paper or case study about managing relationships with consumers in this age of consumer control, we're finally starting to talk about it, and at minimum, ask the right questions.  I was deeply honored to moderate this first diverse panel of industry experts, which included (right to left after me in the photo) Tom Asher of Levi-Strauss, Beth Thomas-Kim of Nestle, Jordan Warren of Agency.com, Todd Cunningham of MTV, and Rick Clancy of Sony Consumer Electronics.   I was also thrilled to debate, discuss, and vet out all the relevant issues in several spirited meetings and conference calls before the actual event.  (Key learning: the "conversation about the conversation"  as as important as the end result.) You can skim various blogs (or Twitter feeds or see a superb cNet News story summary) that recap the panel, but what I'd like to do here is simply list the key question we probed and discussed. I truly believe every marketer needs to hit the white-board sooner than later on these questions. 

1. In what ways does Web 2.0 or the digital space expand the boundaries and opportunities of having meaningful conversations with consumers? Does it reinforce or add value to what we are currently doing?
2. What makes conversations truly authentic and genuine?  Is blogging the answer, or is it just an entry strategy? What's the right way of setting expectations with consumers?
3. How do we keep conversation with consumers trusted and credible? In the age of consumer control, do we have a higher threshold to meet this torture test?   What is the relationship between search and brand reputation, and how is 'conversation' impacting what shows up on the shelf?  Can that be influenced?
4. If conversation is king, is customer service or consumer affairs the new marketing? What's the true value of listening and being responsive to issues consumers raise directly to the brand?  Nurturing loyalty and advocacy among enthusiasts? Garnering big insights?
5. If we agree consumer affairs is a new centerpiece of managing conversations with increasingly empowered consumers, why is this group so divorced from marketing or media planning? How do we change that?
6. How do we begin to train, or expand the wings, of customer service reps to embark upon these new conversations with consumers, even outside of the company's backyard?  Who else should be involved?  What's the right and appropriate way to enter a blog or online community and address or clarify an issue?  Or is that even appropriate?
7. Who should "own" the conversation among marketing stakeholders? Corporate Communications (Ricks' group), Consumer Affairs (Beth and Tom), the digital agency (Jordan), the research folks (Todd), or someone else?  Or is that the wrong question? How do we use conversation and social media to soften corporate boundaries and silos?
8. In what ways should employees be enrolled in conversational marketing?  In what ways can their passion and credibility be unleashed?  Are employees a more trusted ad channel? Can it go too far? 
9. What is the value of "internal" learning in this area? Can organizations become better primed to exploit the power of conversation, CGM, and social media through internal use of Web 2.0 tools, blogs, and beyond.  What can internal networks borrow from consumer innovation?
10. How does conversation impact the retail channel? What are Apple, Sony, and Levis retail store venues learning about the relationship between "service" and marketing. How does the consumer benefit from this mindset, both offline and online?
11. Bonus Question:  What can go wrong?  What if every marketer jumps into the conversation?  Nirvana or Spam 2.0?   What happens if we lose consumer trust?

Many of these themes will be tackled at many levels -- and with finer levels of granularity -- at the upcoming Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) conference entitled WOMM-U.  I provided background about this last week.  Here's more info.

Other Ad-Tech Notes:  Late last night, I was flattered to receive a special Ad-Tech industry achievement award.  I dedicated it to my recently deceased father, William Blackshaw, who taught me all that can be good in advertising -- provided we keep it trusted and credible.   Other industry achievement award winners included Rich Lefurgy and Kate Thorp, both of whom I deeply respect and admire.  My message to the audience was that if we continue to keep the consumer right smack in the center of our radar, everyone wins -- always. I still think there are so many important issues we need to pro-actively address -- privacy, word-of-mouth ethics, ad intrusion, and more -- so while awards are appreciated (even humbling), we still have so much more work to do.  But before we get too serious here, I'd be remiss not to direct folks to the full list of award winners, including "Elf Yourself," which swept three categories.

Business Week on Consumer Vigilantes: Customer Service, Emotion, and CGM in Focus

Business Week's 3/3 edition (available online now) features a very important cover story by Jena McGregor entitled Consumer Vigilantes: Fighting for truth, justice, and the right to speak to a manager. The issue also includes an annual ranking of "Customer Service Champs" -- many of whom, interestingly, have been profiled in either this blog or my forthcoming book, "Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3000!"  -- as well as a provocative (and spot-on) op-ed by Jeff Jarvis entitled "Love the Customers Who Hate You".  Importantly, McGregor writes:

"The sting of a bad experience can cut so deep that it transforms an upset customer into an activist no longer interested in just a refund." 

As we've probed many times in this blog (see tagged links), and in nearly a dozen ClickZ columns, marketers and business executives have yet to internalize the critical symbiotic relationship between brand/service "experiences" and "media" output (and I'm not talking about paid media). McGregor's piece helps make that connection more obvious and transparent.  The propensity to speak out (hence generate CGM or social media) is inextricably tied to depth of consumer loyalty or disloyalty, and its powered by the web's growing arsenal of megaphones that seem to get even more powerful every day thanks to the advent of multi-media (e.g. video, audio, photos) as well as "I second that emotion" community and social-networking capability.    The upside of extreme loyalty and brand emotion might be found in places like Facebook's 40,000+ member Southwest Airlines group or the nearly 70,000 member "Addicted to Starbucks" group (more perspective here). The downside of extreme disloyalty and boiling emotion -- what McGregor describes as "venom-spewed tales of woe" -- can be found in tens of thousands of places on the web's digital trail, from message boards to blogs to YouTube.  (As Jarvis suggests, just go to Google and add the word "sucks" to a brand query.)

So What Next?  Business Week does a great job diagnosing the problem, and the "winners" part shines light on a host of best practices (Fairmont, Lexus, Trader Joe's, Lands End, Enterprise), but I still worry whether there's a big missing piece of the conversation around "what next."  Importantly, are the marketing leaders -- the owners of the biggest discretionary budget, and arguably the most influential drivers of change in large enterprises-- internalizing the message, and translating these new insights around consumer behavior into better "media" models.  If "service is the new marketing," as they say, what's the blueprint for re-engineering the marketing department along these lines?  How should the CMO -- or the constellation of communications agencies (media planning, advertising, PR, digital) -- be incented to move in this direction?  And will there be rewards and recognition for the mostly undervalued (and typically non-strategic "cost center") owners of the call-center, email feedback, and more?   

First Things First: Since 2000, I've attended over a dozen conferences of the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals, one of the largest industry group's representing corporations and brands that own the "listening pipe." While not nearly as glamorous as the "new media" or Web 2.0 confabs and conferences, these SOCAP events always hit me like a refreshing cold-shower because they are grounded in the real nuts and bolts of listening, training the front-lines, adapting to an increasingly diverse (e.g. Spanish speakers) and demanding consumers, developing fair and consistent methods for responding to consumers, and navigating impenetrably complex legal barriers (and fear).  I have also learned that this department is consistently underfunded and under-resourced, and mostly divorced from marketing.  As boring and mundane as their work seems, it's hard not to conclude that if a company can't nail the "basics" of consumer listening they'll never get it right, or be credible, in the far more vexing and volatile social media zone. (Remember, most of the vigilantes Business Week's McGregor highlights initially reached out the company, but those experiences were poorly managed and only made the situation worse.)  So you have to start with the source.  That said, like the CMO, the consumer affairs and customer relations leaders also need to step up to the plate, a point I underscored last fall in a SOCAP keynote entitled "Wake Up and Listen to Consumer 2.0."  If they want more budget, more respect, more leeway to nurture meaningful consumer loyalty -- and hence positive word-of-mouth and CGM creation -- they need to make their case, and do so now at a time when the resource-rich marketers are dotting every third word in speeches and memos with the word "conversation."  My book lays out a host of strategies for making such a case, but short of even reading a book (or Business Week's story) business leaders simply need to take a long, hard stare at today's consumer and negotiate a new relationship.  The good news is that there's a growing laundry list of best practices in this area I like to refer to as Listening-Centered Marketing, from Dell's Ideastorm to the 800-number-all-over-the-place Zappos.com.  We're also seeing new metrics and measurement protocols (this is part of what I do in my day job) that make it far easier for brands to understand and act upon varying degrees of consumer emotion (the building block of consumer loyalty or even defection) flowing across the CGM landscape.

Final Question: And so I end this post with a simple question: how do we shift from consumer-powered "vigilantism" to company-powered "service vigilance."  Business Week's piece fires up that conversation, and I really hope it continues down the right path.

This Brand May Be Monitored for "Quality Purposes"...and Other Lessons in Consumer-Surveillance

In my ClickZ column this morning, Adapting to Consumer-Controlled Surveillance, I volunteer a dosage of tortured ambivalence about today's marketing environment:

"I often worry that in our sometime irrational exuberance over the benefits and wonders of conversation, brands are blind to what it truly means for consumers -- our coveted buyers and lifetime revenue streams -- to be constantly watching, monitoring, evaluating, and talking about us. At the end of the day, consumers are monitoring brands and companies "for quality purposes" 24/7, far more attentively than companies recording toll-free calls. And that has enormous consequences for how we promote, protect, and manage brands."

It's not that I lack excitement about "participation" and "conversation." I just worry that brands and their agencies -- and other brand stakeholders -- all to often sidestep the more difficult questions around how to truly manage and interact with consumers in this age of "consumer control." Romanticism sometimes suffocates realism. Marketing claims often simply betrays the facts.  This is big theme in my upcoming book, Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3000: Running a Business in a Today's Consumer-Driven World.  This isn't to suggest I have the answers, but I do know we need to get this particular "conversation" going sooner or later.  In my column I outline six key rules and principles to warm up our thinking. They include:

• We must rethink what it means to be truly credible. In a world of 24/7 consumer surveillance, credibility is everything. Today's infrared-enabled consumer can find every chink in the brand armor. My book outlines the six drivers of brand credibility: trust, transparency, authenticity, affirmation, listening, and responsiveness. Getting these drivers right not only neutralizes the impact of piercing consumer radar but also lays a foundation for a win-win.

• We must become better listeners. Marketers must shift from a paid-media marketing model to a listening-centered marketing model wherein all early signals, whether extreme or ostensibly insignificant, are absorbed and internalized across the brand franchise. This requires both internal brand radar, and processes and tools similar to what my own firm (and many others) provide for external listening.


• We must reposition customer service as the new media department. You can put Dove Evolution, Dove Onslaught, every Doritos consumer-created Super Bowl ad, and dozens of hugely popular user-generated ad spots into a blender, and they still won't come close to filling the Olympic-sized pool of negative media in the conversational airwaves implicating bad customer service. In categories like banking and financial service, conversation indicting customer service owns upwards of 40 to 50 percent of all discussion volume. In electronics, the number is around 20 percent. The consumer-controlled surveillance culture is actively taking notes on customer service, and the narrative -- the content it creates -- can cut in either positive or negative directions depending on how well brands nurture this arena.


• We must rethink the value and importance of indirect marketing, including human resources and operations. In a surveillance culture, consumers see three levels deeper into the brand. What they see has less to do with the message's polish and more with the brand experience's foundational drivers. Products that work require a superb operational backbone. Meaningful service experiences require a service profit chain of well-trained, motivated, loyal employees. Smart, interactive, responsive online interfaces require excellent business processes.


• We must close or integrate the silos. Brands need a united, cooperative front to contend with the elevated power and leverage of the consumer-controlled surveillance culture. At some point, it's just not going to work to have PR firms, advertising firms, digital agencies, and other supplier groups messaging against or with these new currents. We can't have eight different groups managing and interpreting influencers. We probably need to refashion and recast what we mean by holistic communication.

Here's a link to the full article.

Search and Reputation: Your Brand Standing Is Your Shelf Landing

My most recent ClickZ article, entitled Search & Reputation: Your Brand Standing is Your Shelf Landing, insists that "search and brand reputation share an inseparable, symbiotic relationship, and CGM is the dominant, if not final, arbiter of that marriage. That puts the exercise of managing brand equity on the thin, precarious line between control and capitulation." Further:

"In both pleasant and unsettling ways, companies are quickly learning their brand equity and credibility is the sum total, and composition of their search results. They're also beginning to internalize (usually the hard way) that CGM is now the fastest-growing source of indexed content in search results....That means, in essence, we're all hostage to the conversation."

This issue is a key theme in my upcoming book, and it powers one of my "six drivers of brand credibility" -- affirmation.  Brand credibility and reputation heavily rests on how well search results "affirm" brand attributes.  For example, after hearing a "we solve all your problems" ad pitch from a particular brand, a consumer might conduct a bit of extra due diligence on a search engine, or even Wikipedia. In some categories such as wireless, search results often "affirm" negative -- not positive -- experiences with the brand, hence eroding credibility. Every brand stakeholder needs to be attentive to these dynamics.   Again, here's the article.  If you want to dig deeper, John Battelle, not surprisingly, has written a fair amount about this topic.

Type in Pete Blackshaw into Google and

Official 2008 Buzzword Forecast

Must admit, I had more fun writing this last ClickZarticle ("The Official 2008 Web 2.0 Buzzword Forecast") than just about anything I've written this year.  And based on some early feedback, I vow to keep it growing.  If I am claiming credit for anything that's already been circulating in popular Web 2.0 vernacular, by all means let it out!  Here are the highlights.  Enjoy!

"Search moptimization": Yes, that's "mop," as in to clean up. This is the increasingly common, if not essential, brand practice of attempting to clean up negative search results against general or specific brand-related queries. For many brands, particularly in the consumer electronics category, hostile CGM is beginning to fill, even dominate, the organic search shelf, a zone that we all know has an unmistakable impact on the awareness and trial of new products. For many brands, the mopping process can take two to three years (often longer) and heavily depends on operational and product, rather than marketing, decisions. Dell, for example, still has lots of "search moptimization" to clean up Jeff Jarvis's two-year-old mess, though it's worth noting its customer service blog and IdeaStorm initiatives have already helped mop up or reroute some of the venom.

"Wombagging": This exercise tries to protect, or sandbag, your brand from negative or undesirable word of mouth (WOM). This could include anything everything from buying negative keywords on search engines to putting videos on your Web site featuring your CEO begging for patience and forgiveness. For some companies, wombagging might even include employing staffers in defense of bad buzz. But again, all this falls into the defensive branding arena, not outright promotion.

"Friendiligence": This will become very popular in 2008. It involves the extra layer of due diligence on friend requests on Facebook, MySpace, and all the me-too social networks popping up here and there. Friendiligence will also dial up as marketers oversaturate the social networking space with fan sites and more. Is this a real friend offer, or is it spam? Trust me, we'll all ask harder questions, and some friend lists will start to shrink.

"Converstations": Brands now have multiple entry points for meaningful dialogues or conversations with consumers. These are essentially converstations. Brands fully immersed in CGM or social media may have dozens of conversations, from the consumer affairs interfaces and toll-free numbers to the corporate blog. They all matter, and every brand manager should know his or her converstations.

"Social mediation": This is the process of rethinking or renegotiating certain advertising, marketing, and communications practices as a result of user backlash. What took place with the Facebook privacy backlash was essentially social mediation, and Facebook's own groups served as the third-party arbitrator between disgruntled users and Facebook (the company and policymaker)

"We-bargaining": A close cousin of social mediation, this is a bit more centered on brands and companies seeking peace, appeasement, or a lesser sentence with consumers when they screw up (particularly with viral, WOM, or CGM campaigns). It's a tough exercise, because it typically pits a brand against the wisdom of the crowds. Richard Edelman did a very good job of we-bargaining after the controversial Wal-Mart blog incident last year. He was open, forthright, contrite, and resolved to fix the issue.. So, too, was the CEO of JetBlue when he posted his apology to YouTube.

"Greenlashing": Woe to the marketer who over-claims or over-promises benefits on the green front. The market's just too transparent. Sites like TreeHugger, now owned by Discovery, are part of mainstream consciousness these days, and smaller green skeptics will vet out a green imposter faster than you can say "carbon neutral." As the number of do-good green blogs increases, you can expect even more greenlashing about brand missteps in this area. Mya Frazier of Ad Age deserves credit for firing the first big warning shot against marketers' bows on what she calls "greenwashing."

"Shamsparency": Don't get busted buying shills or engaging in unsavory activity. Just don't do it, or the forces of shamsparency will catch up with you. It happens all the time, and firms in the CGM monitoring space (like my own) make it easier to uncover the imposters. My recommendation: avoid this term at all costs, and write the WOMMA ethics code on the whiteboard 30 times.

"Credlining": Credlining is when consumers sift the good from the bad, the credible from the discreditable, and publish a scorecard accordingly. When protesters of Facebook's Beacon feed effort started posting lists of Facebook's advertising partners, credlining was in play.

"Facelifting": This is the process of taking a hard look at traditional conversational touch points ("contact us" pages, feedback forms, surveys), and slapping on a friendlier, more empowering face that the usual run-at-all-cost one. Brands must think harder about the sincerity and believability of the invitation. How do you make consumers feel important and valued?

"Blog groveling": This is the already-getting-old process of sucking up to bloggers and key influencers to try, test, or sample your new product or service. Usually it involves hokey headlines, repetitive phrases, and an unmistakable hint of desperation.

"World War 2.0": Face it, the battle lines are calcifying around Web 2.0. Ambiguity reins supreme on "Who owns the conversation?" and "Who owns the influencer?" Sure, we all talk a mean game of cross-functional harmony, but war's already erupting between the brand and IT departments, the PR agency and the digital agency, and, most important, consumer affairs and everyone else. Did I forget to mention legal? Top executives, meanwhile, fancy pitting one against the other in the impatient name of just getting it done. Expect to hear much more about World War 2.0 in 2008.

"MicroTubing": This is what's happening in TV and video development. New content forms are proliferating and appealing to smaller audiences. Small publishers, even mom-and-pop players, will continue to make inroads into the video publishing zone, many getting snatched up by brands and publishers for ongoing content.

"Lipsmacking": This is process of talking trash about brands, services, or goods, usually with a digital trail

Ten Important Takeaways From Steve Jobs' iPhone Pricing Apology

What an incredible year to watch and learn from CEO-level behavior in times of crisis and difficulty.  First we had Jet Blue, faced with an impossibly difficult situation, take to the airwaves on YouTube, apologize profusely, and announce a new passenger bill of rights.  While Menu Foods practically hid their CEO during the pet recall issue, Mattel put their CEO, Bob Eckert, on the website video airwaves to nurture trust and confidence in the wake of the toy recall (a still-in-progress case study).  Now we have Steve Jobs, who just wrote and posted the most remarkable letter in response to concerns about iPhone’s recent price decrease. He coupled an apology with a $100 Apple credit for all early-buyers of the iPhone.  This is classic Defensive Branding.  I predict it will be one of the most discussed, debated, and linked-to letters of the year, and so far I've already counted over 800 unique blog postings referencing his letter since 6 PM last night.  I'd thought I'd dissect the letter, and draw out key "takeaways."

Exact Text From CEO Steve Jobs Letter

I have received hundreds of emails from iPhone customers who are upset about Apple dropping the price of iPhone by $200 two months after it went on sale.

1. The Power of Listening: He read his mail, and he understands the core issue. Most CEOs wait for the formal report from the consumer affairs department.

After reading every one of these emails, I have some observations and conclusions.

2. The Power of Responsiveness He has listened, and now he is responding. 

First, I am sure that we are making the correct decision to lower the price of the 8GB iPhone from $599 to $399, and that now is the right time to do it. iPhone is a breakthrough product, and we have the chance to 'go for it' this holiday season. iPhone is so far ahead of the competition, and now it will be affordable by even more customers. It benefits both Apple and every iPhone user to get as many new customers as possible in the iPhone 'tent'. We strongly believe the $399 price will help us do just that this holiday season.

3. The Power of Restating the Rationale: He’s re-affirming excitement around the product, as well as rationalizing Apple’s core decision to lower iPhone price. He’s doing so confidently and rationally, and as a build up to his eventual apology.

Second, being in technology for 30+ years I can attest to the fact that the technology road is bumpy. There is always change and improvement, and there is always someone who bought a product before a particular cutoff date and misses the new price or the new operating system or the new whatever. This is life in the technology lane. If you always wait for the next price cut or to buy the new improved model, you'll never buy any technology product because there is always something better and less expensive on the horizon.

4. The Power of Empathy: Jobs is attempting to show empathy and understanding for those who have a tendency to buy products as soon as they hit the market. These are the coveted early adopters and enthusiasts, and they represent to sweet spot of the “new” marketing.  These are also the same consumers who ranted to loudest when Job's announced, barely 24 hours earlier, a 33% price slash. They are the influentials. 

The good news is that if you buy products from companies that support them well, like Apple tries to do, you will receive years of useful and satisfying service from them even as newer models are introduced.

5. The Power of Service as Brand: He’s underscoring Apple’s historic legacy of providing value and exceptional service, no matter when and how consumers buying the product.  (Caveat: a smart statement, but not 100% accurate. Apple still has service blemishes.)

Third, even though we are making the right decision to lower the price of iPhone, and even though the technology road is bumpy, we need to do a better job taking care of our early iPhone customers as we aggressively go after new ones with a lower price.

6. The Power of Accountability: In essence he’s taking accountability for not being sufficiently sensitive to these coveted early customers. He's also expressing resolve to right the wrong.  Key message: we can't afford to lose you!

Our early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust with our actions in moments like these.

7. The Power of Nurturing Trust: Job's is openly underscoring the undeniable role of trust in the relationship between the brand and the consumer.  Indeed, trust is what makes the world go around, and it’s one of most important drivers of credibility.

Therefore, we have decided to offer every iPhone customer who purchased an iPhone from either Apple or AT&T, and who is not receiving a rebate or any other consideration, a $100 store credit towards the purchase of any product at an Apple Retail Store or the Apple Online Store

8. The Power of Walking the Talk!  Jobs is putting a real, tangible value on consumer value. If you were there for us early on, we will credit you $100.

Details are still being worked out and will be posted on Apple's website next week. Stay tuned.

9. The Power of Imperfect Timeliness: Jobs didn’t have all the detailed worked out but he clearly saw the upside in communicating the basic concept as quickly as possible

We want to do the right thing for our valued iPhone customers. We apologize for disappointing some of you, and we are doing our best to live up to your high expectations of Apple.

10. The Power of Forgiveness: In the end, he is offering a sincere apology, but also advertising the degree to which Apple consumers expect and demand more.  In essence, his apology is reaffirming the power of the Apple brand. Here it's also important to note that saying you are sorry is a "consumer bonding" moment. It cements emotional connections.

Let's keep this case study alive.  And to that point, what promises to be an excellent thread has just started on WOMMA's Facebook thread.  My very smart WOMMA colleague Rick Murray of Edelman has fired off the first comment, suggesting that "entire episode was avoidable had Mr. Jobs done one thing: reach out to and listen to his most ardent fans.

Son of Kryptonite: Unlocking the iPhone

I couldn't ignore this "Unlocking the iPhone" video because it spikes to the top of the blog charts with unusual fury. Classic CGM!

The Giant Facebook Sucking Sound: Blogger "About Face" or Hedge?

Can you hear it?  Listen!  I'm talking about that unmistakable sucking sound of Facebook methodically drawing the marketing crowd into its orbit. Yes, I'm definitely a late-entrant, so take my Johnny-come-lately musings with a grain of salt, but I'm just sensing that the marketing community pace-setters are colonizing Facebook with unusual zeal and passion.  I just can't tell if it's a sustainable trend, or a land-grab by those (like me) who felt like we didn't hang up our shingle fast enough in the blogosphere to get the early, sometime blind, link-love.  All I know is that I'm now checking Facebook more than my blog, and I just sense the "A-list bloggers" have found a new center of universe -- some, perhaps, as a "defensive" hedge to ensure they are not rendered less relevant by the ever changing CGM currents.  What really gives, and I merely going to CGM-hop to the next fashionable party in the next few months? And why isn't this happening on MySpace? I frankly think a number of things are going on, and this is just one in a series of "About Face?" posts?

What's Up With Robert Scoble:   The first leading indicator that got my eyebrows going up was the intense activity by uber-influencer (and uber humble, I can't resist adding) Robert Scoble across Facebook.  It wasn't just that I got a "friend invite" from him that got my attention (although I was flattered); it's just that he seems to be leaving a dynamic, energy-rich digital trail all over Facebook. Is this deja vu!  Didn't he do this before?   Is his insanely popular blog not doing the trick on a stand-alone basis?  Then there's Kevin Dugan, one of the first PR junkies on the web, who's not only pushing the limits of PR communication (he sent me a well produced Facebook video on the future of impact of PR this weekend) but he seems to be leaving a digital trail all over the place.  Why is he running so fast?  More fulfilling?  Opportunity to finally leapfrog the indefatigable Steve Rubel via a new channel?  Or this just his natural state, more accurately expressed via Facebook than other platforms.   

My Own Addictions:  I'm blogging this because I feel the sucking sound myself, although I too feel like I've been here before, going as far back as early 1990s AOL forums...or even Compuserve Groups.  Gotta tell you, it feels good to seed the first harvest in your (real or imagined) area of expertise. Imagine my surprise (and joy) when I created a Facebook group on Consumer-Generated Media (yes, I was paranoid someone would beat me to the punch) and within days I had had 58 members (and with no advertising...until now).  Question is: can I keep this up, and how do I balance this with my other publishing platforms?  Does something have to give?   Interestingly, I'm already about to close one of the experimental groups I started on Facebook. There's only so much one can do.

Last Word: More Lemming Than Leader:  Now, don't think for a second I'm giving an unqualified endorsement to the Facebook platform.  Frankly, I don't really have a credible voice on the matter (as yet) as I'm still on training wheels. Indeed, I'm more lemming that leader at this juncture.  And it could for all I know be a big flash in the pan.  But let's push the exploratory a bit.  We can just blame it on Robert Scoble.  I welcome thoughts.

Can "Complaint Letter 2.0" Benefit From A Few Good TV Copy Insights?

This piece of CGM2 (consumer-generated multi-media) to well worth a peek, but not for the obvious reasons.  Frankly, I'm just not persuaded or convinced the complaint itself warrants a such a high production effort, and maybe that's in part because I just can't identify with the painpoint in the same way that thousands of consumers identified with the pre-YouTube Niestat brother's IPodsDirtySecret, which parodied the early iPod's painfully frustrating battery problem.  Nor can others, it seems, given the dearth of YouTube views and comments on the Cingular spot (relative to other service-gone-bad viral blockbusters.) 

What impressed me most was the degree to which the creator, Justin Calloway (I know his name because he reached out to me, and probably other bloggers as well), took the creative process to an entirely new level.  The video looks like a resume supplement to a job application for Disney Animation studios; he's quite good, and his work reflects the degree to which the line between professional ad man and amateur satirist is being blurred by  "better, faster, cheaper"  tools.  Calloway clearly has a bone to pick with Cingular, but the far bigger point to emphasize is that the site he created to exercise his feedback moment is better looking -- and dare I say, easier to use -- than most corporate websites.  Consumers have certainly come a very long way since the days of clunky product enthusiast sites like my own HybridBuzz.com, which chronicled my up-down-up experience with a hybrid car.   Indeed, since the time I founded PlanetFeedback.com, an early CGM "informediary" (that was the term du jour back then) that helps consumers send letters thousands of companies and brands including  wireless companies like Cingular, I've witnessed an almost mind-boggling shift in how consumers get their point across.  Not every complaint leaving a digital trail across the web is credible, but there's no question the content creators are starting to perfect the same art of persuasion, emotional bonding, and creative imagery my father (an ad man from what me might call "Golden Era" of TV advertising) perfected during his career.  Video in particular notches up the net impact of what we might dub "Complaint Letter 2.0" for the same reason TV has worked so well over the year: reason-to-believe & benefit visualization (remember the Bounty paper towels side-by-side), dramatic effect, and emotional bonding. 

Which leads me back to Justin's video.  I actually think Justin would have scored more views (he's got about 3000 so far) on YouTube if his video better internalized these core building blocks of the 30-second commercial.  Frankly, it's hard to relate to his frustration (e.g. -- burning out speakers with a mobile phone), and four minutes -- eight times the length of a TV commercial -- feels like an eternity to absorb his message and pain.  Indeed, the rules of attention and engagement apply as much to consumers as they apply to advertisers.

The Chaos Continues: Garfield on "The Post Advertising Age."

Next month I'm moderating a panel at Ad-Tech San Francisco entitled -- get this -- "The Next Big Thing: Is Advertising Still Relevant?"  The panelists I recruited represent a diversity of voices that touch and bond with consumers in far less traditional -- yet hugely promising -- ways.  Scott K. Wilder of Intuit is in charge of Intuit's massive online community of product enthusiasts; Beth Thomas-Kim is Director and Head of Consumer Services for Nestle USA (and President-Elect of the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals (SOCAP); Paul Woolmington is a founding partner with Naked Communications; and Marti Bledsoe is an interactive marketing strategist at spot-on (read my related ClickZ story)  Resource Interactive.

Garfield Helps Write the "Discussion Guide":  Needless to say, I'm more pumped about this panel than just about any session I've moderated in recent years -- and I'm doubly pumped because I feel as though Bob Garfield just wrote a big chunk of my "discussion guide."  In tomorrow's Ad Age cover story, Garfield continues his highly provocative "conversation" about the future of advertising with Chaos Scenario 2.0: The Post Advertising Age. ....a conversation that initially started with the original Chaos Scenario and then migrated to Listenomics.  Garfield covers a ton of ground, a chunk of which validates his initial forecasts, but perhaps the most thought-provoking part of his piece lays out "five reasons the online world will not online transform traditional modes of advertising, it will largely displace them altogether."  They include:

1. People Don't Like Ads
2. But they Crave them Information
3. The Consumer is in Control..No, Really
4. Diversion of Ad Budgets
5. Pay-Per-View

But why spoil the fun with a half-baked summary.  In fact, ignore the blog blurbs on Garfield's piece like this one.  Just read it!