The age of brand functionality?

The web should have been the death of the brand.

The web was measurable and rich with meaning, meaning that could be extracted and associated with tangible goods and services (Planting a garden? Buy a shovel now!).  Things that are less tangible, whose only unique differentiator is brand identity itself, should have faded away.  It should have been the rebirth of advertising, providing information on differentiators and attributes so consumers could make informed decisions on the product or service that was just right for them.

But brand advertisers were tenacious, and were used to aggressively spending without measurable results. They tried their best to exploit the web.  They created sites with games, sites that entertained, and while they and their ad agencies won many awards,  ultimately a brown fizzy liquid is just a brown fizzy liquid. And really, there's just not much more to say about it. While one can create a perception of value in more traditional, less data-oriented media, it is much, much harder in an information-rich environment.

Then social networks came along and saved the brand.  Like chugging a fizzy brown liquid, social media is, at its best, immediate and fleeting. While it rarely provides value in revisiting (and more often than not embarrassing in retrospect, though the facebook timeline feature may prove me wrong -- or right), there is a persistent, nagging longing for more.  Thus the challenge for brand advertisers is that they must maintain a constant presence in and around these networks, ready to exploit those brief, fleeting moments when they are #mentioned.

There is another way. What if brands built and delivered web-based functionality that made their customers' lives easier, better and more efficient? Functionality that reinforced brand expertise and unique selling propositions? For example, what if realtors, who expend enormous amounts of effort and money to endear themselves to neighborhoods and communities, instead built a website to support community interactions (calendar, bulletin board, directory, etc.) and gave it away free?

The challenge, of course, is when trying to make people's lives easier, intrusions (er, advertising) can greatly diminish the offering and experience.  Sure, the real estate company's name would be omnipresent but it would have to be non-aggressive and of less visual weight than the functions that attracted folks to the site in the first place. Of course, tasteful and subtle are not necessarily popular notions in branding, but in the long run, delivering functionality that improves your customers' lives will pay far greater returns and be a much better investment than spending on social media buys.

Are social networks driving the rebirth of the handwritten note?

I think social networks have begun to influence the offline, er, real world.

How?  Well, it may be highly anecdotal, but I have noticed a dramatic increase in notes on car windshields. One could suggest it is the holiday season what with people sharing good tidings and all, but the notes I have seen are not of the particularly friendly sort.  Here's my thinking -- as more and more people feel empowered that their opinion actually matters and must be shared, that swelling of conviction can no longer be contained within the boundaries of the Twitter or the Facebook. So wherever a social injustice may occur (or one simply has an opinion on something) people now feel they have the right -- nay the obligation -- to express their outrage. Perhaps someone could come up with a line of notepads that express generic observations, and all the user (er, person) will have to do is fill in a blank or two to contribute their thoughts and feelings.  Now that's the offline equivalent of Facebook...

And by the way, to the person who left a note on my car claiming I blocked them in, next time don't pull thru and park your SUV in front of a pile of debris, leaving a legit parking space behind you. If I only had a notepad and a time machine...

The era of the perpetual job seeker?

Over the last several decades, the level of trust between employee and employer has corroded.  While there are many causes for this decline, the bottom line is most employers no longer hesitate to slash employees, and most employees do not hesitate to jump ship for better opportunities. And each party is fully aware of the other's intent.

So what does this mean for average Joes like you and me?

It means that your employer is going to continually look for new and exciting ways to squeeze productivity out of you (more on this to come soon).

And it means you are going to have to change from the traditional passive model of "job hunting when necessity strikes" to being ever vigilant and alert for new opportunities.

First, the easy part -- get your personal "brand" polished and ready to go at a moment's notice. At the moment, LinkedIn seems the be the primary mechanism to do this, tho other social media matter as well.  Whether you use Facebook or Twitter or some other site, these social media outlets need to collectively communicate your strengths, and hopefully few of your weaknesses.

Second, you need to find ways to always be on the lookout for that next gig. This is the real challenge -- traditional job posting web sites like Monster or Careerbuilder are tiresome to wade thru, as is Craigslist (which seems to be on the wane from its glory days as a job site) and newspaper sites. LinkedIn appears to have the lead here, but other than using your network to suggest connections, technologically it is not particularly interesting.

Jobfox is little more interesting in their approach. Sure, they have job postings as well, but you use your resume to build a profile on which the site performs an automated categorization of your skills.  This enables Jobfox to recommend jobs that you might not find on your own as the title, keywords, or details may be different from the kind of job you would normally search for. Of course, when you automate categorization it is rarely 100% (for example, my profile came back with Linux, which was not on my resume, as a skill -- and while I can fat finger my way around VI, I am by no means proficient).

A way to make the categorization more effective is by applying semantic technology. Being able to eliminate options that are in the wrong context increases the overall quality of the associations.  And the ability to mine for non-obvious associations provides insight into opportunities that would have remained hidden.

Bottom line, whatever the technology, being able to have relevant, quality, networked opportunities delivered to you as they occur will certain help you prosper in the era of the perpetual job seeker.

Twitter, the first ten days.

I tried to stay away. Really, I swear I simply am not that keen on sharing 140 character thoughts, notions and witticisms...but frankly, for better or worse, it appears that one is increasingly considered out of touch technologically if one is not tweeting, blogging and doing whatever the hell it is you do on Facebook. Particularly if you are in marketing, which certainly is part of what I do. So I got a Twitter account recently, and have been gently dipping my toes in the swirling chaos of millions of little thoughts.

A few observations:

At first I was puzzled why so many tweets were in initial caps. What was it about writing a tweet that inspired tweet authors to write like journalists of old with screaming headlines? Um, nothing, it turns out. The truth came to me when I decided to comment on an article from the New York Times -- most sites "prompt" you to tweet by offering the headline as tweet.  How thoughtful -- should I not care to craft a witty insight of my own I can just use what they provide. Easy!

Second, I was fascinated by the number of folks who always appeared to looking off the side (generally the viewer's right, so as to look as tho they are gazing lovingly at their tweet). This particularly seemed to be the case for what appeared to be professional, or business folk. This in fact inspired one of my early tweets, which I will repeat here (which is the point, isn't it?):

"New study shows 3 out of 4 twitter users unable to stare directly at camera."

Still makes me giggle.

Now, here's the thing I still don't really get -- most tweeting is simply retransmitting what smarter, more informed people have already written elsewhere. And generally, as noted above, with little added insight, other than reinforcing whatever beliefs that person already has.  Which is fine, I guess, but certainly makes much noise to filter thru, especially if you follow people with similar interests, as they are all tweeting and retweeting the same damn thing. 

What Twitter has motivated me to do is seek out people who are amply capable of making witty and clever statements worth reading. So far I have found Sarah Silverman to be worth reading, as well as The Onion (whose use of initial caps is perfectly acceptable).  Admittedly, I have not sought out too many others yet, but I am saddened (but respect them even more) by those who have chosen not to tweet, like John Waters (just the film maker from Baltimore, please) -- but I bet if he did they'd be particularly clever.

On a final note, it appears the dead are prolific tweeters.  Kurt Vonnegut has been active lately (and kudos to him, he only chooses to "follow" one single person -- Mark Twain), and you know what, when his writing is broken down into snippets and doled out one at a time -- it really works, but only because he was such a damn good writer in the first place.