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...

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.

Mediocrity of the crowds

Everyone may have a fundamental right to an opinion, but that doesn't mean they know what the heck they are talking about. And put enough of these people together, and well, welcome to the internet, 2010. Loud, anonymous and opinionated with little substance. Credibility and expertise be damned.

While the touted benefits of the hive mind help rationalize this embracing of mediocrity, it in fact makes it even harder to discover information of substance and value as the outliers, both superior and inferior, get clumped together as they are not of the "norm."

Practically speaking, this makes it harder to know what new books to read, what new music may be of interest, or if a movie or play is worth seeing. Not to mention the utter lack of meaningful serendipity. It is not for lack of opinions, but for lack of quality, substantive opinions. While the internet has made it exceptionally easy to solicit and contribute feedback or post one's grandest or most heart-felt insights to a blog (ouch), there is absolutely no guarantee the thoughts shared are of any value whatsoever. And even if there are postings of substance you may simply never find them, having to first wade thru dozens or hundreds of rants and ramblings.

A real problem with this clumping together of outliers is that it also makes it much more challenging to discover things that may be loosely but not directly of interest. Sure Amazon and Google can tell you what has occurred in the past (people who liked this bought that...), but they are lousy at predicting the future because it's, well, unpredictable.

The answer? Well, for as long as they are around, the best resources are still the traditional media, where people are directly compensated to articulate critical thoughts. Skilled writers and reviewers with years of expertise in specific domains. While one may not always agree with their opinions, there is at least respect for the wisdom applied. And by being trusted sources, they enable readers to make discoveries and connections that software simply cannot know to make.

The possible business benefits of social networks

I have to admit I have been slow to find value in social networks and social media, particularly in a business context. Sure, I've tried Facebook, but I closed the account after I decided I simply did not care enough about the comings and goings, minute-by-minute activities and phone-enabled orgy of idiotic imagery (for example, the image here shows a foul baseball that landed just under the front passenger side of my car, hit by my 11 year old last night at the little league playoffs (they won, BTW) -- without my iPhone, this magical memory would be lost forever) of people I had not seen in person in years, and frankly have little in common with anymore.

Same for Twitter -- I have enough frequent, brief thoughts of my own to organize and evaluate I don't need them crowded out by the pithy musings of others, nor am I needy enough to really believe I am doing a disservice to humanity at large and hindering the advancement of intellectual discourse by not instantly sharing my every thought. That's what blogs are for, which are only slightly better in that they allow for the all-too-often unused capability to produce multiple drafts.

Now, LinkedIn I do use frequently, but less for interaction with others and more for research. And the more features they add, the less interesting it becomes to me as it just creates more visual noise.

Which leads me to the enterprise.  While many people are keen on the benefits of social media within business, I have been much less so.  Businesses exist to produce goods and services for less than the market will bear.  Social networks are distracting, and combined with other distracting technologies like email and phones, it seems to be more counter productive than not.

But here's the thing, whether I like it of not. Social media and networks can be fun and engaging. And if people engage, they contribute.

This has been the classic challenge in knowledge management. Just because you install software to enable a "Community of Practice" does not mean people will contribute. And those who do may not be the ones you really need, as the people who are really good at their jobs are generally busy doing their jobs, and have little time for anything else.

Another approach has been to hide rewards within a system to encourage users to explore it, but that tends to encourage the people who like to find things and get rewarded, and have the time on their hands to do so.  Which, again, are most likely not the people who excel at revenue producing activities.

Social media may be different.

Social media, if woven into the work flow and processes, could bridge the gap so that knowledge capture is thorough, useful and painless. But it will need to be guided and managed to truly be successful.

NYTimes: Text without context

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/books/21mash.html

Really good article on the challenges facing online content and media, as well as the impact of those challenges on, well, all of us. The handful of books referenced seem worthwhile as well, I have already read Jaron Lanier's "You Are Not a Gadget" and I highly recommend it.