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Something I’ve been mulling over for a while was solidified over the course of several recent conversations with my colleague, Alan Kercinik.

It has to do with the way brands traditionally launch a product/service versus a more optimal approach that can take better advantage of earned conversations.  At the heart of the discussion is what we call the Conversation Chasm.

And while not new thinking - I’ve seen people write about the topic and a Google search reveals several mentions of the term, including a rough version of a post on my personal blog about a month ago - I do think it’s worth revisiting the topic.

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I’ve noticed something lately I can only describe as the Personality Paradox (mostly because I’m a big fan of alliteration).

It’s simple:  When it comes to engaging in social media, bigger brands (alliteration! OK, I’ll stop pointing it out.) tend to have smaller personalities.  This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise.

In the case of a big brand there are myriad factors that can cause this Paradox.  First off, having a big personality takes a ton of effort and focus.  Add to that regulatory/compliance issues, organizational challenges, multiple marcom agencies, new management and a million other things, big and small.  Or worse, simply losing sight of the customers who got you there in the first place.

The perfect parallel is a rock band.  The unsigned band playing half-filled clubs is going to cherish every fan – no autograph unsigned, no photo request denied, no interview not granted, no Tweet unanswered.  But as that band gains a following and eventually breaks, the demands on their time and attention increase, forcing them to (1) triage inbound requests and (2) start speaking to their fanbase as a whole, rather than as individuals.  Oh, and as their egos inflate, they often quickly forget their most loyal base.

(photo courtesy of Arne Hendriks)
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Here are a few funny, entertaining and inspiring things I collected along the way this past week.  The only common thread is that I’ve seen all these things discussed in numerous places, both online and offline.  What did I miss?

GOOOOAAALLLLLL

If you missed the US Women beat Brazil to advance to the World Cup semi-finals, you missed one of the greatest games I’ve ever seen.  In the final seconds of overtime, Megan Rapinoe landed a ball on the head of Abby Wambach, who finished with authority.  This sent the match into penalty kicks, where the US prevailed (since then, the US has advanced to the finals).  The Internet exploded with excitement, and despite FIFA’s best efforts, it can be found here (the break starts about 5 seconds into where I linked the video).

By the way, this is what you get on YouTube when you search for the official video clip of the goal [insert sad trombone here]:

Kenny Powers - MFCEO Of K-Swiss

Not since Old Spice have I seen a brand receive so much Internet love as K-Swiss did this week.  Eastbound and Down is an HBO show about a has-been professional baseball player called Kenny Powers.  Kenny is pretty much the most despicable character on TV, but in a really funny way.  Anyhow, K-Swiss broke a brilliant campaign this week in which Kenny Powers is named CEO of K-Swiss.  There are a series of great video clips on Funny or Die (NOTE: the language is not for the modest) and a cleaner TV version.  Like it or not, this is a brand doing something big, bold and inescapable.

GIFs GIFs Everywhere

Animated GIFs were all the rage this week, apparently because you can post them to Google+.  GIF Shop seems to be the go-to source for creating them yourself, as I’ve done.  Fascinating, I know.  My apologies for not including a cat, which seems to be pretty standard.

How New Yorkers See The Rest Of The US

Thanks to Ogilvy’s Gavin Becker for this gem.  As a former New Yorker I know there’s a lot of truth to it.  The LA-SF note is my favorite.  Click on it to expand.

I remember back in 2005-6, when I worked at Nokia, an anecdote that blew people away was something along the lines that Nokia was the world’s largest manufacturer of digital cameras.  It didn’t take much imagination to picture a world with billions of photographers, capturing and sharing images in near real-time.

That’s obviously happened.  Every day we’re bombarded on Facebook, Twitter and blogs with images of Ossobuco; chubby-cheeked little babies; cats - lots of cats; keg stands; post-card sunsets; and new Manolos.  To each his own.

(continued …)

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I’ve got a lot of thoughts about SxSW.  Frankly, I’m not sure how I’ll synthesize them all into a longer-form post with a modicum of value (perhaps I should hire one of the unbelievably talented Ogilvy Notes artists).

Starter for 10, I pulled a slightly incomplete word cloud based on my Twitter output from Friday-Monday (courtesy of Wordle).

What it tells me … I obviously liked it.  Clearly I met a lot of  great, funny people.  Apparently the iPad was on my brain.  Austin made a big impression on me.  I liked a lot of people, places and things.  I responded to @virginiamiracle quite a bit.  My outfit of choice was jeans.  And I crowdsourced a new word for when someone accidentally takes your drink at Starbucks - Starpluck (I am on an Urban Dictionary kick lately).

Again, I’m still trying to sort out what resonated with me.  Broadly speaking, here are the themes that sparked second and third thoughts, and which I hope to explore in the near future:

Video: I sought out and loved a few sessions on video.  How to make it compelling.  How to make it interactive.  How to make it beautiful.  There is some unbelievably creative stuff going on right now on YouTube, and the future promises to blow our minds.  Check out what the Fine Brothers are doing with ‘choose your own adventure’ style videos.  The opportunities seem endless.

Experimentation: Something I heard everywhere - regardless of the topic at hand - was that experimentation wins.  It’s faster.  It’s more agile.  It often leads to bigger breakthroughs.  Idea to execution in the shortest time can be a winning approach.  Duh, Ian.  I know, but hearing it so many times in so few days is very reinforcing.

Humor: Between the Oatmeal and Baratunde I had plenty of laughs.  Humor entertains.  And entertainment can be a form of engagement.  There’s a right and wrong way to be funny in, say, 140 characters.  What intrigues me is the permission (or not) brands have to be funny (or try to be funny) in social media.  Get it right - you’re beloved.  Get it wrong - get the gong.

Relevance: Our own relevance, that is.  Lots of discussions.  How do we stay relevant?  How do we stay passionate?  How do we discover the next great thing?  How do we innovate - for ourselves, our agencies and our clients?  How to we keep learning?  One answer I heard over and over  (and over and over) was delving into side-projects.  Little things with friends or colleagues.  Not necessarily to make a buck, but rather to make something cool and energizing.  The lingering question … how willing are employers to give their people the white space to experiment?  3M and Google have thrived off this model.  Are you willing to follow that path?  Check out Method & Craft for a really inspiring example of passion-turned-side-project.  Wonderful stuff.

Branded Content Creation and Curation: The role of brand as creator and curator of content was a pervasive theme.  Besides one very dogmatic journalist I saw, everyone seemed to agree that brand as content creator is an unstoppable force. Fraught with issues yet to be sorted?  Sure.  But it’s happening and only promises to grow.  The topic of brand as curator wasn’t as widely discussed in the panels I attended, but I’d argue that’s where the debate should be taking place (best-practices, editorial obligations, rights issues, etc.).

That’s all I’ve got for the time being.  By the way, having been on the outside looking in, I know how ‘noisy’ SxSW seems via Twitter.  I can assure you the madness and mayhem of SxSW has been grossly exaggerated.  It’s quite manageable, sane and enjoyable (with a little planning, and plenty of flexibility).

As you’ll likely hear in every wrap-up post, it’s the people that make SxSW amazing.  So many old and new faces.

Dive in next year - I’m happy to hang with you in a quiet bar over a beer and BBQ.

Disclaimer:  Due to several conflicts (including children, work, wife, The Office, Jersey Shore and sleep) I had to  schedule this post 12 hours in advance of it going live; meaning I might not have the latest information on the talks between the concerned parties.  However, that has no material impact on my main points.  Trust me, I’m a journalist.

With that out of the way …

By the time you read this the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between NFL owners and the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) will most likely (see disclaimer; and even if there is a 24-hour extension of the CBA, as reported Thursday afternoon, this thing will eventually come to blows) have expired, leaving the two sides without a labor agreement and the 2011 football season - or at least part of it -  in serious jeopardy.

As a sports fan, I’m totally turned off.  As many people will tell you, this is billionaires fighting with millionaires over sums of money unfathomable to the vast majority of fans (Charlie Sheen excluded, of course #winning!).

As a marketer, and one who currently focuses on social media, I’m keen to keep a close eye on how the dispute plays out in public, particularly in social media.  This is the first pro-sports labor dispute of the social media era (the last being the National Hockey League during the 2004-5 season, when MySpace was hardly a hotbed of sports discussion and Facebook was just blooming as a place for Zuckerberg to exact revenge on a girl who slighted him - at least that’s how the movie goes).

It’s 2011 (you’re welcome for that nugget) and I can’t help but imagine the stream of opinions flowing effortlessly from the Twitter feeds of NFL players, owners, media and fans as the dispute moves into the grind-it-out-let’s-pretend-we’re-all-working-towards-the-same-goal-when-really-we’re-just-interested-in-protecting-no-actually-growing-our-pile-of-money phase.   In fact my crack research staff tells me that between February 15-28 there were 11,000 Tweets mentioning “NFL and lockout.”  Just since March 1 there have been the same amount.

The NFL is a public relations juggernaut, second only (in my opinion) to the NBA.  And it’s worth noting that basketball faces this very same situation next year; though as many sports writers have noted, the NBA actually needs a battle like this to realign a really broken compensation scheme; whereas football seems to be in pretty good shape.  In any case, I’m sure commissioner Stern is paying very close attention to the public sentiment as owners prep for battle with the NBA players union.  In fact I bet this post makes his morning clip pack (#DavidStern #Stern #DStern #NBA #TallAndRich #TheDecision #GoBulls).

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Mashups are nothing new.  In fact on this very blog we recently provided some historical perspective related specifically to music.  OK, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way …

In the last few days I’ve come across three really rad examples of people/organizations continuing to embrace the mashup movement.

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Between The World Cup and LeBronapalooza I’ve had sports on the brain for the last few weeks.

As I followed the media coverage I thought I might be able to take some of the tired clichés and re-fashion them into lessons for social media practitioners.

My original plan was to post 10 items, but I could only muster up nine.  Anyone care to help with the 10th?

1. Singles and doubles start rallies. Not every social media program has to be a round-tripper.  In fact starting small - listen, test and learn - can lead to bigger and better things down the road.  The groundwork gives you permission to swing for the fences.
2. The “12th man” is your greatest advantage. Give your fans something to cheer about - something exclusive, entertaining, educational or utilitarian.
3. Don’t hold your stars down.Let your most popular personalities represent you in social media.  Do you have a rockstar product manager?  A charismatic executive?  Give them the tools, forum and role to be a voice of your organization. continue reading
   

Day one at the WOMMA School of WOM, and a key theme has already emerged … Advocacy.

It’s on the tips of everyone’s tongues - mentioned in every session yesterday.  What I took away …

• Advocacy is a marathon, not a sprint.  Takes true commitment.
• Scaling advocacy efforts are crucial to driving sustained WOM.
  
• Share everything that’s great about your organization (and even, in certain circumstances, what’s not so great) - the honesty and transparency will engender trust.
• You gain vocal advocates by focusing on people’s hearts/minds versus their eyeballs/ears.
• Desire + Direction = Change (per Dan Heath).  The path to success is to stir up that emotional desire ->  give people clear motivation to advocate on your behalf -> make the behavior visible to make it contagious.
  

Let’s see what day two brings …

Getting jazzed for the WOMMA School of WOM confab in Chicago (my hometown) on May 24-26.  A few thoughts and tips …

Sessions

The conference is packed with great sessions.  I’m seriously impressed.  A few I’m personally keen to catch …

• Jeffrey Hayzlett of Kodak speaks on Monday from 2pm-3pm.  You might know that Hayzlett recently announced he’s leaving Kodak, which could make for a very candid session.
• Also on Monday (4:30pm-5:15pm) , Pete Blackshaw and John Stieger lead a session on P&G’s customer relations efforts as a spark for WOM.  I’ve never met Blackshaw, and am looking forward to doing so.
• On Tuesday morning, Sarah Hofstetter and Roberto Mastracola deliver a case study on Coke Zero.  When Coke speaks, I listen.
• The Tuesday keynote is from Andrew Mason, CEO of Groupon.  These guys are darlings of the Chicago scene.  Very eager to hear what he has to say.
• Ogilvy’s very own Kaitlyn Wilkins will join Ford’s Marisa Bradley on Tuesday to talk about building a more social Ford Motor Company.  This is a topic near and dear to my heart; and knowing how passionate Kaitlyn is about her Ford work, I’m sure it’ll be a great discussion.
• Jason Anello of Yahoo will lead a session called “How 20 Purple Bikes Generated 20 Million Impressions.”  I’m a big Y! fan, and I’m really looking forward to hearing Jason deliver an overview of this program.

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