’11 points of #nonsense for the new year

1. 2011 is the year of Mobile. Wait, I thought that was supposed to be 2010, or was it 2009? No, certainly it was 2008; must have been 2007, the year of the first iPhone. #confused
2. Social Media begins to dominate customer service. As in-store customer service continues to decline, Social Media customer service will allow brands friendly, efficient ways to assist the customer without the long wait of an 800 number or the inconvenience of driving to the store. More brands will adapt the “Comcast model” and allow followers to see complaints by others, because the real story is how the brand solves it. Ok, this is a true story: I recently called customer service for a major computer manufacturer and was greeted by a guy with an accent like Apu from the Simpsons, who started off by saying, “Thank you for calling ____, this is Peter Parker, how can I help you?” I starting laughing so hard I forgot what I was calling about. #spiderman
3. #Hashtags will become part of everyday writing. People will use #hashtags to emphasize subjects, thoughts and events, even in offline writing. In a completely unrelated story, @BillClinton will declare “#hashtag” the greatest word ever. #stonedpimpxprez
4. Those willing to push the limits of creative and technology will be rewarded. Those who are doing the same thing they’ve been doing since 2009 will disappear. You know who you are! #buhbye
5. Honolulu will concede the Obama Library to Chicago in order to pursue a Dog the Bounty Hunter Library. #randyjacksonlikesyourname
6. Apple will release the iControlU, a chip that is implanted in the brain allowing users to instantly listen to any song or watch any video with a simple press of the temple. Unfortunately, reception issues will force users to wrap their head with oversized rubberbands. VGA output also proves to be rather tricky. #jobsarmy
7. Somewhere, some teen-aged boy will be beaten to a pulp by an angry middle-aged man for using the words #epicfail. With any luck, it will be Justin Beiber. #ohpleaseibegyou
8. Speaking of luck (this is more of a wish than a prediction), any chance Andrew Luck falls to #Jacksonville in the April draft? Here’s the prediction part: If David Garrard or Jack Del Rio are part of the Jaguars organization come September, the Jags will lose at least one fan. #falconsbandwagon
9. And speaking of #epicfail, @SethMacFarlane, (in Lois’ voice) Really? I had to watch Journey to the North Pole again just to get the bad taste out of my mouth from It’s a Trap. But, the failures are few and far between which is what makes #FamilyGuy the best show on TV. No real prediction here, just upset over the wasted $2.99 iTunes download. #bringClevelandbacktoQuahog
10. Online shoppers will become full of Gilt… and Ideeli… and HauteLook… and Rue La La. Brands and retailers will further monetize the trend with brand-specific “private” flash sales within their own sites. I would say my wife is addicted to flash sales, but the truth is, I have the Gilt Groupe, HauteLook and Rue La La apps on my iPad. #guiltypleasure
11. A whole bunch of exciting announcements will come from @RMM_Online. Follow us on @Twitter and @LinkedIn to learn more #video #backenddata #newwebsite #growingteam #bonusesforbloggers

Everyone at RMM wishes you a happy and healthy 2011!

In the past five years, give or take, product placement has gone from carbonation to technology. We’ve had the Apple logo shoved down our throats so much so that every time I eat a granny smith, I think about how much I spent on my iMac – no regrets of course,  just high tech advertising at its best.

Before digital media, the sponsorship heavy hitters included Coca Cola, Budweiser and car dealerships. When Brad Pitt drinks it, we drink it. Now that search engines, subscription and social networking sites have become “products” in themselves, we are seeing more and more of their presence in commercials, feature films and on our favorite TV shows.  So, just how far away are we from hearing the words, “this broadcast is brought to you by Twitter?”

Living rooms across the country were astonished by this year’s Google ad during the Superbowl. Does Google.com really need a commercial to grow its profit margin? “How much did that air time cost?” an eager Saints fan asked me. I have a good guess, but I bet Ancestry.com could tell you, considering they’re running Sunday ads on NBC during “Who Do You Think You Are.”

And let’s take the recent blockbuster graphic novel turned movie, Kick Ass. If any film could’ve snuck in a subliminal Pepsi can, Doritos or pizza, targeted at teenagers, it was this one. On the contrary – in this day in age, it was comic books, iPhones and MySpace.com. MySpace you ask? Yes – that blast from the past networking site is the communication device used to call the title character into fighting crime. Okay, a little behind the times in my opinion but perfect if they are trying to drive traffic back to  their site, right?

Is this an example of product placement? Absolutely. Free advertising? That still remains a mystery. Corporate sponsorship deals are very hush, hush – especially in the film industry. So, whether consumers will be rushing to their computers to join MySpace.com (again) or buy a set of nun chucks after seeing Kick Ass – that remains to be seen.

Move aside Pepsi and Starbucks – I’ll be drinking the iPhone and Facebook from now on!

First, a quick introduction. Guy is a notable blogger, serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist as well as a recent author.

The title of the presentation was Using Twitter as a Marketing Weapon, a bullet list of his points is available. He covered eight major things about using Twitter for marketing, and used plenty of examples. Here we go.

Monitor – Guy gave a few examples of using Twitter search to keep up with conversations that are happening around companies, industries, product lines, and even all conversation through a specific account. Nothing fancy here, just recapping the possibilities. The main point here is that Twitter search provides powerful means to keep up with conversations about you, your competition, or anyone else.

Engage – Your company should have an account on Twitter. He didn’t spend much time here, so I won’t either.

Sell – Its possible to use Twitter directly to increase revenue. I’ve covered this before. Guy gave a couple of examples that are noteworthy. Dell Outlet has generated millions by announcing specials online. At this point Guy gave a shout out to Dell for their creativity here, and asked if anyone in the audience works for them. When someone stuck their hand up Guy jokingly asked if he gets a computer for plugging them, and the Dell person said, “First you have to learn to pronounce ‘Inspiron’ properly.” Ouch! Snarky! Guy didn’t skip a beat; he went right in to his next example. Kogi BBQ is a single truck that sells Korean Mexican tacos throughout Los Angeles. They use Twitter to announce where they’re headed a few hours before they move, and they’ve managed to build their Twitter following up to 60,000 people. They said when they pull up to a new spot there are usually about 50 people waiting for fresh tacos when they arrive. THAT’s pretty awesome.

Support – He talked about two companies that are using Twitter to provide support, Virgin America and Comcast. Apparently a passenger on a Virgin flight once tweeted that the flight attendant forgot to serve his meal. Someone at that account got in touch with the pilots, who then relayed the message back to the attendant and the man received his food after all. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but if it is its a pretty powerful example of the use of Twitter.

Prospecting – This is the point at which Guy’s message started to capture my attention. He presented some pretty creative methods of finding potential clients through Twitter advanced search and Google’s search operators. Did you know that Twitter allows you to do localized searches, such as pizza in Austin? Suppose you want to sell equipment to wedding photographers, you can use Google to search through Twitter names (note that this will search through both user names and real names). Would you rather search through Twitter bios to find the person you’re after? That’s no problem! I have to say, I’ve known about each of these features of Twitter & Google, but had never put this together. Brilliant!

Get More Followers: Focus on Content – Here Guy stresses the importance of saying something that’s worth being heard. We’ve all seen tweets that aren’t worth reading, most of us have probably even posted a few. Guy provides a few sources for quality content, Alltop (of course) is an aggregator of news from across the web, StumbleUpon is content that people have voted up, and SmartBrief categorizes news into industry specific feeds. He attributes his success on Twitter (more than 200k followers) to regularly providing links to interesting/useful/insightful stories. His content is re-tweeted hundreds of times each day, which confirms his hunch.

Get More Followers: Tweet! – Once you’re on top of great content, take advantage of some tools that help you manage the flow of tweets through your account. Guy spent quite a bit of time talking about Objective Marketer, which is a service that allows you to automatically resend tweets throughout the day. Get 90 days free with the promo code “wiseguy”! Guy does send each tweet more than once; he said that over time he’s seen that when he sends a tweet a 2nd, 3rd & 4th time, the number of clicks on his links go up accordingly. So sending a tweet out for times in one day generates approximately four times the number of clicks. Once again, brilliant. He also introduced TwitterFeed & TwitHawk. TwitterFeed is a service that automatically tweets the contents of an RSS feed such as your blog. TwitHawk continually searches for a specific set of criteria and then will allow you to either automate a reply, or you can manually reply.

Tools – He spoke briefly about Twitter clients, you’ll definitely want one. Guy uses TweetDeck, I’ve tried several and it’s my favorite also.

On the drive back to the office, Nikki & I agreed that this was one of the best marketing seminars that we’ve attended. All of the info that Guy gave was relevant and helpful. I’m encouraged to renew my commitment to social marketing. And if I ever had any doubt, I’m now even more convinced that Twitter is greater than Facebook. Its openness and flexibility, when combined with the right tools, make it a pretty valuable weapon to have in your marketing arsenal. In case you haven’t done it yet, go follow Guy Kawasaki and RMM Online. As a bonus, if you want to get links to his talking points, you can text “alltop” to 44133.

Most of the Twitter birds that I found are vector based, but I also found a number of photographs of Twitter birds made in other media. There’s enough of a variety here to please any artistic taste. To find out who the artist is hover over the image and the credit will appear, or click on the image and you’ll be taken to the artist’s Flickr page, which shows more samples of their work.

I also found several that incorporate other media, which I think makes them interesting.

This next one is a little extra. It isn’t exactly a Twitter logo, but its still artistic and cool enough that it deserves to be in the list.

If you found this interesting, give us a shout on Twitter. @redmccombsmedia

Online is the present and the future of our advertising world. Connecting and being in-the-know, creating campaigns based around mobile, internet, SEO, etc. is a step many agencies shy away from. However, RMM is a forerunner in new ideas and innovation and that is why I was drawn to apply here.

I began my job at Red McCombs Media the week after July 4th. Having never worked in an agency setting, I am learning all new dynamics and methodologies that go along with the “agency life”. Specifically, interactive is a whole new bean, so-to-speak. I mean, I’ve had black beans and Ranch Style, but interactive is like chickpeas… It’s new, it’s fast, it’s EVER-CHANGING, and can be mashed to make an entirely different kind of food (hummus…yummmm). Everyday. Scratch that. Every MINUTE, the online and mobile realm revolutionizes. Transformation and flexibility is the name of the game.

Have you noticed that we are all copycats on the internet? I think the key to being successful for your clients is becoming the WOLF, the pack leader. Not a sheep who blindly follows, but a wolf who seeks out, knows what he wants, and creates his own destiny.

Facebook is king. Twitter, TripAdvisor, LinkedIn, and YouTube were all “firsts” of their kind (meaning most popular and first to have success in their chosen area). These are the wolves and the owners of social media. All other sites MIMIC the success of these core trendsetters. What does this have to do with agencies? We have to play the game and belly up to the bar. Unfortunately, a successful wolf attracts a huge pack, and these sites have become cluttered in a way that makes me wonder if advertisers benefit by solely investing their dollars in them… bold statement… but hear me out.

Look at twitter, for example. How awesome would this site be if say, AT&T had developed it? If AT&T had created this site, they would OWN it. Advertising for their services, phones, etc. They could encourage consumers to text in on their AT&T phone and have judges who awarded the #1 text of the day. That person could win some sort of prize from AT&T. Agencies have an overwhelming and challenging duty to create these ideas that directly benefit and hit the values of their client. We have such an exciting and creative challenge to get the word out in any way imaginable. We do not want to limit our abilities to simply putting advertising out. Why not create it from within?

Don’t get me wrong, I believe that all campaign strategies benefit by 360-degree marketing. Creating a site like the one above is just the first step, so next is getting the word out. As I said, playing the game of social media is pretty much a must for advertisers now-a-days. (I mean my mom and all her BFFs are on Facebook… it’s not just a college thing anymore.) The key element of social media is HUMANIZING your product, your company, your whatever. Because, we as humans want to speak out. We are opinionated, and we like being able to face-lessly vent. We like being able to hear, say, the new guy at ChipandDipCompanyA spout off about what’s really in the way-too-yellow nacho cheese at state fairs. We like the inside scoop, and we want to hear it from a TRUSTWORTHY source. It all boils down to that simple word; trust. Social media holds us as advertisers, businesses, and people accountable. As we’ve seen time and again, many advertisers have suffered like ChipandDipCompanyA will. Accountability in every sense of the word has become a core focus for consumers. They want to make sure you are being honest with them and others.

Honesty, creativity, and creating a campaign focused on the core desire of the advertiser are some of the keys, I believe, that create a successful social media campaign. Visibility and transparency, connecting with consumers, humanizing your company in a new way simplify your brand name. They put a face, a voice, a website to your company.

I hope you enjoyed my article! I look forward to writing again for RMM. Look out for more of my posts!

When Twitter took the web by storm, it was just natural that people would want to share photos there, and Twitpic was the answer. As much as I like sharing photos with friends, I couldn’t bring myself to use their service because Twitpic requires your Twitter credentials to play. So, each time I had a picture to share I’d post it to Flickr, shorten the URL and post it to Twitter. That’s a lot of steps and I’ll bet you can guess the outcome, I didn’t share many pictures via Twitter.

But now that’s all changed! Just yesterday Flickr launched a new service called Flickr2Twitter. It does exactly what it says, email a photo to a specific email address within your Flickr account, and it updates your Twitter account with a URL to the pic and your message. And, it handles this via Twitter’s API, so you get to keep your Twitter password to yourself.

Because you’re sending the pic via email, you can do all of this via your phone. Also, if you find a photo that’s already posted to Flickr (yours or a publicly available one), you can share the photo from directly within Flickr. That’s pretty handy.

Flickr, thanks for thinking of us. Stay awesome.