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The Twenty Most Important Social Media Buzzwords for 2010

My, how the digital times are a-changin'. We're downsizing to small screens, friending the world, thinking in 140 characters and downloading -- dare I say -- "billions and billions" of apps designed to make everything we do simpler, faster and more convenient (well, we think). And so, only days into 2010, I decided to kick off the year with an Ad Age column dedicated to the most appropriate buzzwords to describe our curious stampede to the social media and mobile future.  Here's are a few excepts and favorites from the piece. Read the full-article here. Anything missing?  Send feedback here or via my Twitter account (twitter.com/pblackshaw)

• SPURNED MEDIA: Just like it sounds, earned media that goes horribly negative, invades otherwise pristine search results or bleeds into traditional media. Bad customer service is a top driver of "spurned media."

• MOBILENECKING: The alarming tendency to have our necks titled down or shifted sideways -- ever glued to our mobile device. This anywhere, anyplace epidemic is increasingly common in cars, airplanes and crosswalks. Closely related to term "Eyevoidance," where no one looks at anyone anymore.

• JACK RIPPER: The device warriors who hog outlets anywhere they can find them -- in the airport, via the USB port of a colleague's computer, even a restaurant reservation desk. They get a charge from a charge.

• WIKI WART: A bad piece of news or an embarrassing brand episode (e.g., an activist protest or a social-media campaign that backfired) that just won't go away in a brand's Wikipedia description. PR pros often give false hope to brands of removing the warts, but relentless Wikipedia editors put them right back.

• OEDIPOST COMPLEX: The curious neurosis that compels folks to sleep with their Blackberry or iPhone. The afflicted can't stop checking -- even in late hours -- for responses to tweets or blog and Facebook posts.

• BRAND TEASE: A consumer who "friends" or "fans" a brand, only to never return for a second date. Brands feed the cycle by forgetting to court the consumer with engaging, interesting or sustaining content or value.

• APPTOSTERONE: The mojo that fuels intense "mine's bigger/better" conversation about mobile apps. "Dude, you got Bump, but I've got FourSquare." Marketing techies are loaded with Apptosterone.

• TWITSTOP: A bathroom detour from a meeting or conversation in order to check e-mail, Twitter or the latest and greatest via an app. (Swear on the Bible, I don't do this ... but I'm told lots of others do.)

• DIGITAL DETOX: What we all need -- at least in doses. As we've learned, total digital immersion has side effects. Let's all pursue a roadmap for balance in 2010. (This is likely the topic of my next book, so send feedback.)

Again, here's the full article.  Love to hear your thoughts. 

The "Conversational Customs Office" and other Painpoints in Participation

There's a certain irony that in this "age of conversation," we're increasingly compelled to pre-qualify conversation lest undesirable noise, garbage, or spam infest the airwaves. This latest chapter in the "Tragedy of the Commons" is not only a buzzkill, but borders on comical.  This evening, after reading a thoughtful post on viral marketing by respected blogger B.L. Ochman, I attempted to toss in a short and sweet "great post" comment.  Before it could go up, I had to type in the term -- I hope I get this right -- BROWNLABRADOODLE. You've got to be kidding, I kept muttering to myself.  Of course I promptly and predictably flubbed the spelling of this tongue-twister-on-steroids on the first two go-arounds, eliciting this annoying "error" message.  Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg.  For some blogs, you practically need magnifying glasses (and a code-breaker) to figure out the weird bends and contortions of letters embedded in the cryptic words.  It all borders on tragic.  To keep our airwaves clean, we now have little choice but to subject consumers or users to what we might refer to as a "Conversational Customs Office."   

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

Holiday Reindogs, Local Pride & Long-Tail (Literally) Video CGM

My neighborhood of Mt. Adams in Cincinnati has the most peculiar (yet beloved) of annual traditions in the form of the Reindog Parade.  Hundreds of holiday dressed pooches (most with antlers) and their fanatical owners (er, parents) parade around the neighborhood.  Last Saturday, the parade routed right in front of our house, so it was an irresistible occasion for some classic "long-tail" video CGM.  Heck, viral or not, I'll take funky looking dogs over our sports teams, the Reds and Bengals, this year!   

My All-Time Favorite CGM

Today my wonderful twins Liam and Leila celebrate their second birthday.  Dos anos for Dos Bebes!  Although I'm frequently stereotyped an an "industry expert" on CGM, I actually take far greater pride in being a "consumer" or "parental" expert in CGM.  The CGM that is most meaningful to me (as well as to my wife Erika) is what I do in my personal time, creating online photo albums, building iTune baby-tune playlists, creating baby-video mashups, and of course, building my Dos Bebes blog. The good news is that all this practice and experience, and ensuing gratification, makes the marketing side of the equation all the more obvious and intuitive.  Although I work for a large market research firm, I don't really need an ROI analysis to connect the dots on why "the age of participation" is taking root.  I, and millions of parents, are doing all this with the frequency of changing diapers.  Anyway, in celebration of Dos Bebes birthday, I thought I would share my all-time favorite piece of CGM dedicated to the twins. 

My Favorite Video Questions from the CNN/YouTube Debate

Great use of home spun humor to get the point across.

Great use of ironic juxtaposition?  Why can't we create a voting system that's as simple as ordering a latte at Starbucks?

Great example of a destabilizing question you'd only get through a format like this, to wit: "Would you work for minimum wage?" 

The wonder of CGM is that it can blossom from any place, any location, any source?  Here's an onsite question related to the situation in Darfur.

Part of what makes CGM so compelling is its sense of authenticity.  Does anyone doubt this person's story?

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 Co-Creation Wave Continues: Video Jingles for Pringles

The brand-consumer "co-creation" wave continues, this time from Pringles.  Yeah, I'd say these folks are engaged.  The big question, I suppose, is whether the earlier Mr. Pringles YouTube video  P&G's CEO A.G. Lafley cited in his ANA speech last fall faces real competition here.  More at Jingles for Pringles.

The 'Viral Video' Institute?

Nothing like a little industry self-mockery.  This is quite funny!  And so close to the mark!  (Transparency Check:  This video is by Ziddio, an online video service that is owned by Comcast, which happens to be a client of Nielsen BuzzMetrics, my "official" employer.)