Open The Dialogue

There’s a really interesting story in Editor & Publisher about the lack of recognition given to online news reporting. While that point alone has probably spawned a dozen panel sessions it was one line later in Pauline Millard’s piece that caught my eye:

“By nature, they (newspaper people) are not shameless self-promoters.”

Compare that attitude to the Internet, where almost all of us are promoters, looking for new and exciting ways to extend our personal brand. The reason there’s a discussion over whether Robert Scoble’s videos are too long and boring is because he’s out there pimping them. There’s nothing wrong with that – that’s just the way it is. Look at Twitter, which some days is lousy with updates that begin with “New Blog Post:…” We’re not just engaging in a conversation, we’re largely engaging in a conversation about ourselves.

So here’s what I’m going to do, beginning next week: No talking about myself. No linking to myself. No saying “When I said this back in June…” or anything that promotes myself. Oh I’ll still blog and all that, but will try to do so in a way that highlights the best of what’s going on elsewhere, not just the best of what I’m doing.

I’ve actually tried to do this to some extent already. I’ve been making an effort to leave more comments on people’s blogs. I love getting comments, maybe even a little more than if someone links to something I’ve written. It means they’ve decided to talk to me, not talk to their audience about me. So it’s a little more personal, and I like to think others have the same reaction I do when I see someone has dropped by and left a comment, which is to feel a little pick-me-up about what I’m writing.

Back to the story, the best of online newspaper efforts are deserving of recognition, and not just in a special “Best of the Web” category that automatically diminishes, in some people’s minds, the item being lauded.

If you’re a Cubs fan like myself than you (hopefully) accepted the fact that all the Tommy John surgeries in the world (not a reference to how many he could have, but actually did have) would not bring Kerry Wood’s arm back to what we all hoped it would be. I don’t even say “what it was” because it wasn’t healthy long enough for us to see what it was. We collectively had this belief until about 2005 that just one more trip into the operating room would bring back the pitcher we saw in 1998 striking out 20 Astros. But now we’ve largely given that up. It’s just easier and, frankly, more realistic.

But the corporate advertising world still seems to be stuck in the “It’ll all work out” phase familiar to Cubs fans, survivors huddled in the basement after nuclear wars and people who think J.J. Abrams has a plan for “Lost.” Advertisers still see a situation wherein a company or retailer faces the challenge of gaining market share or stemming sales declines and think that celebrities are the answer. Macy’s picked Donald Trump and Martha Stewart, meaning they can cash in both their “place” and “show” tickets “The Apprentice” window. Ben McConnell dissects this effort nicely. HP has tapped rocker Gwen Stefani for a new campaign, since she had that big hit “Color Cartridge #22″ and so is known as a printing industry guru. And don’t get me started on The Gap, which launches celebrity-driven campaigns with the same regularity Sisyphus pushes the boulder of the hill, and with about the same effect.

Wouldn’t it be better for companies to spend a fraction of what they are on lining up celebrities – celebrities that will endorse their competitors at the drop of a larger check – on seeing how they can build up their existing customers and empower them to spread their own word-of-mouth? They could create online communities where people talk about the brand, share their own stories and meet other like-minded people. And all this could probably done for a fraction of what Trump asked to utter a couple lines and pose for a handful of pictures.

People want to connect with each other – it’s a natural human instinct. The myth of the celebrity has been almost shattered by tabloids – both print and online – and that has taken much of their endorsement credibility with it.

Dear writers and editors for mainstream news publications,

Please do not label something as “viral” simply because it mentioned on a couple blogs. “Viral” should be a term we use sparingly for those instances when something gets passed around with little to no help from the marketing department. Very few of the examples in this article that are actual ad campaigns would get that designation. Things like Will it Blend? and the “Flagpole Sitta” agency video? Yes. Brawny Academy? No.

Regards,
–Chris Thilk

It’s kind of interesting to me that there’s a story in Brandweek today about how advertisers are slowly building momentum on Facebook. It’s interesting because it comes one day after I noticed, while writing up a post for my personal blog, that Sony Pictures had indeed discovered Facebook as a marketing tool.

A button on the official website for their new flick Across the Universe allows you to add the movie’s trailer to your profile with just a couple simply clicks. It’s really the first time I’ve seen Facebook integrated in such a way into a movie’s campaign.

MySpace, on the other hand, has become lousy with profiles related to new movies, most of which don’t add any value to the user. They’re mostly made up of content that’s just been repurposed from the official site.

I really hope that Facebook learns the lessons of MySpace and – at the very least – makes new mistakes as they progress. Right now I’m seeing value in Facebook that I never really saw in MySpace, even if I still don’t use it very much. Yes, there will be eventual burnout, but it can still be something that works with the community there instead of working against it.

I’m sure we’ve all been CC’d on at least 100 emails in the last year that include “viral” website/video/other as a bullet point for something that’s being planned. Everyone’s trying to replicate the success of The Blair Witch Project or Subservient Chicken or any of a number of other efforts that really worked and have subsequently become case studies.

So it’s important, I think, that we all bookmark/print out/include in our email signature this post by Mike Manuel. Mike correctly points out that things like YouTube are tools, that’s it’s the content that will ultimately decide whether the video/site/game/whatever will “go viral.” If we want something to be passed around from user to user then it’s our responsibility to guide the creation of compelling content. That needs to be followed up by work on making it findable through search or tags or other tactics.

After that it’s up to the audience.