Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

Monday, December 3rd, 2012

Viral and Values

It went viral.

Was talked about – everywhere.

Made headlines the world over.

Has already generated millions upon millions upon millions of results on Bing and Google.

Hundreds of thousands of people “Like” it and more importantly, hundreds of thousands have already shared it.

And there are no cute little kittens, goofy dances or dancers, crazy stunts, embarrassing moments or any other contrived “make me a viral” moments.

In fact – it’s a simple story.  The video was captured by chance and the actors and producer came together by the happenstance of life.

If you haven’t guessed yet…

New York City Police Officer Larry DePrimo offered a homeless man true human kindness – basic goodness – no strings attached, no dogma connected, no qualifications required or requested – religions have been started with less. And maybe that is why the world took notice – precisely because he represented us all, did what we all wish we would (and clearly can) do, maybe even made many believe again….

Abraham, Jesus, Muhammad…fill in the blank…must have been smiling…this one little act – so easy to replicate, so easy to follow, so easy to share – this one little act renewed people’s faith in people…real people who walk the streets, live real lives and shed real tears.

Frankly – what made it all the more poignant for me was that I took part in a discussion about “social sharing” and what kinds of stuff people like to share – hence, the kittens. No one mentioned this – or referenced it as a benchmark in terms of values that are important to people, values that we share in ways we don’t share Gangnam dancing or kittens making faces.

I fear we are losing the human dimension – the random aspect – the connection to values that defy the “Give Me One Of Those” (GMOOT) attitudes we seem to be developing as we look for what we think is the right face to present to the digital world – afraid of being seen as old- fashioned.

So…how about we let an icon of what we worship weigh in…listen:

“Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.” Steve Jobs

Tools proliferate in our world today. They have become as ubiquitous as the term itself – a buzzword for the latest and greatest, the game changing and paradigm shifting and standard setting…you get the point.

Have faith in people. Have faith in yourself. And use the most powerful tool in your collection as often as you can – human empathy – face to face….

What do you think?

Posted by David on 12/03 at 04:44 PM
  • The companies that are most successful online are those that, in my opinion, are built on solid values. Zappos, for example, has done very well on Twitter and is often spoken of whenever someone wants to share a case of good business behavior. This shoe company treats people with basic respect. They respond to any issues that their customers have. Too ...
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    Posted by Josephine@mozy on 2012-12-06 18:09:22
  • Great post David. I believe that the next challenge is to get the actual act of kindness go viral and not only a photo of someone else's act of kindness. With that said, it is definitely a step in the right direction, since awareness is the first phase.
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    Posted by Noam Fixler on 2012-12-04 15:04:37
  • So true David. I think the issue with most 'social marketing' is the same as that with traditional marketing – Despite what resides on powerpoint decks, most brands don't have or believe in living by any human values, which is why they find it easier to put effort and money into connecting with vacuous things like k-pop videos. It doesn't ...
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    Posted by Hari Ramanathan on 2012-12-04 01:08:24
Monday, October 22nd, 2012

Short-Term Thinking

You would have thought it was the Titanic all over again – in fact, the imagery is apt….

I am referring to the October 18 earnings release of Google that temporarily caused them to halt trading of their stock and lowered their price per share by as much as 11% on that fateful day.

There are so many levels to this story….

For a while Google’s value fell below that of Microsoft, after having passed them earlier in the month – a shocker, no doubt, to the analysts who think MSFT is old and worn.

One reason for the drop is that the market doesn’t like “surprises,” and analysts consider anything that doesn’t track with their dart-throwing predictions to be a surprise.

Of course the real surprise here is that a computer glitch (how ironic) caused the earnings release to be distributed early, without warning, and it was in draft form as well – no doubt adding to the feeling of OIY.

The acquisition of Motorola is a current drain – at a $12.4 billion buying price the market expected more of a return and, of course, was counting on a magic Harry Potter bounce for Google Mobile.

But let’s be clear…surprise or not – early or not – the numbers are the numbers and the panic that ensued, with all of its resident hoopla and expert punditry, is what’s wrong with the market – short-term thinking driven by short-term profit takers with short-term memories and a short-term commitment to anything.

Had they really understood the dynamics, they would have known that “search” is under siege – not that it’s going away – far from it.  It’s just that certain information can be found more easily in other places and through other means, including Amazon and soon, maybe, Facebook. And at the end of the day – as the true value of clicks becomes more and more clear – prices will be going more and more down.

Bottom line – Google is just getting going.  Its value to you and me is no less or more than it was before October 18.  The financial community will no doubt wring their hands for a bit, but so what – to those of us who are users, it is they who are the issue – not Google.  Do not limit the ability of this company or any company to innovate, evolve and develop by demanding results that have no basis in reality other than your own spreadsheets.

Mark Zuckerberg is no stranger to this kind of activity – he constantly talks about being in the game for the long term and had this to say in an interview in Forbes:

“We go through these waves. At times everyone thinks what we’re doing is awesome and I think it’s too optimistic. At times when people are super pessimistic, I personally – maybe it’s a perverse thing – I’d rather be in a cycle where people underestimate us. It gives us latitude to go out and make big bets and excite and amaze people.”

So if you lost value in your Google holdings I am sorry – but if you are a Google user or a Microsoft fan or a Facebook junkie – take heart: it’s just starting to get interesting….

“We need to see our work on innovation as involving disciplined practice, not the quest for short-term wins. This is an obvious problem in our instant-gratification, quarterly-earnings-based culture in which corporate managers (and politicians) are evaluated and rewarded based on their success at maintaining a continuous upward trend that produces immediate results. At times, it seems like the question ‘What have you done for me lately’ approaches the status of a business model. If resource allocation, decision-making processes, and career-path planning all obey a short-term logic, while the important challenges facing both organizations and society are mostly long term, isn’t the disconnect obvious?” John Kao

A final thought – listen:

“When you feel the impossibility of really thinking about the ten thousand year horizon, you’ve got to access that part in each of us which knows that the rational calculation is not the only reason we do things.  We celebrate doing things that are plainly irrational—loving our children, loving our country, loving our planet—even though we’ll never see any of those things come to the perfection we imagine.” Larry Lessig

And that to me is the key – who knows where Google will end up? Who knows if we will all be shopping only at Amazon, making friends only through Facebook and talking to each other only through Skype – chances are we won’t, but who cares? The ride is amazing and the view gets better and better – short-term thinking is pursuit of some rational rationale by short-term thinkers – never by real innovators.

Celebrate your irrationality and enjoy what you experience – it gets better and better.

What do you think?

 

 

Posted by David on 10/22 at 06:00 PM
Monday, October 8th, 2012

People Still Vote

Is it just me?

Am I getting jaded? Fed up? Bored?

And no, it’s not life that’s getting to me – that’s just fine, thank you – LOL!!!!

It’s the elections in the United States (sorry for being partisan) that I find tiring. But truthfully, as one who loves to follow these things globally, I sense the same in most democratic countries (not to mention the comic book proceedings in the non).

To be clear, it’s not the democratic process that I find exhausting – on the contrary, the democracy part – when and where it works – is still the best there is.

What I find draining is what we have made of it – and worse, what we have allowed our candidates to become. And maybe worst of all is how we have pretended that the digital age has changed it all – and we use democracy as the cover.

I think what brought this all to a head was the recent first debate between the two US presidential candidates.

Did you watch it? Read about it? See key snippets on YouTube or elsewhere?

For all the lead-up hype, for all the commentary and tweeting (most ever to date for a political event – but what isn’t the most ever to date…on Twitter?), for all the punditry and deep analysis – it seems to me to boil down to who was less bad in delivery and who had listened more to their media trainers.

In the US, we seem to feel there was a clear winner – and maybe by the rules of that particular engagement there was – but the way I see it, the winning was around style and not around substance – sort of like the Winter Olympics skating competition where the technical and freestyle are two different events.

And I’m hard-pressed to see what the digital effect was – particularly when the last US election was touted as having been decided by the brilliant use of digital channels by the Obama campaign (and there was some really clever usage for fund-raising and communication – some of which won Titanium at the Cannes Creative Festival). But today that same campaign machine is pouring tens of millions of dollars and more into – shudder – TV (whatever that means) and there is little talk of any millennial or other buzzword power giving anyone a winning edge.

Here is my take – the digital exponential force is always at work today – it’s a given – meaning that whatever we do gets digital power or amplification because it’s what we do. The problem is that somehow we have imbued digital magic – like shamanism – into the process and somehow think that a candidate will emerge from the mire like some great FX fantasy movie.

To me it seems that once again we confuse real life with digital – we mix up what is with what we hype – we lose the true magic because we make it mundane.

Bottom line – may the best candidate win, anywhere in the world – and may they all understand that at the end of the day it’s not the Twitter feed that ultimately decides – it’s the quality – because at the end of the day if the product isn’t good the digital exponential will take it down even faster than it brought it up.

And to continue my beginning cynicism I share the following…listen:

“If God had wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates.” Jay Leno

So there you have it – I only point out that we fly because we made great wings – so we can vote – we just have to make great candidates.

What do you think?

Posted by David on 10/08 at 06:02 PM
  • as do I!!!!!!
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    Posted by David Sable on 2012-10-11 09:25:54
  • Alexis de Tocqueville's famous quote, "In a democracy, people get the government they deserve," is both true and a sad commentary on the process in the U.S. The fact that people will make judgements based on stage presence or the fact that one candidate or another has the best "zingers" in a face-to-face encounter on TV does not bode well ...
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    Posted by Richard Tooker on 2012-10-09 18:01:57
  • While the TV spend is outrageous, it is limited in geographic area. Living in NY the only time I see any presidential commercials are when I am watching regional stations for sporting events. Most of the TV ad dollars are being spent in a handful of markets. Yet the ads do go digital. They are all posted on YouTube, and ...
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    Posted by Peter NYC on 2012-10-08 18:48:52