ITster!

When a company is seeing a major decline in their market share, they have a couple of options. Their advertisements could play it safe and focus on the traditional approach. Or, they could be like Proctor and Gamble and trust the direction of their creative agency to turn the Old Spice brand around and throw all assumptions out the window.

By now I’m sure you’ve seen the widely successful Super Bowl Ad for Old Spice body wash. Old Spice recently followed this up with a second advertisement using the same unique and unusual creative stylings. However if you thought that a couple of funny and unique videos was all the company had up their sleeve, then what took place on the @OldSpice Twitter stream (combined with other social media activity) during the last few days must have you reconsidering that position.

A relative new-comer to the microblogging site, Isaiah Mustafa and the Old Spice team turned the Internet on its head when the started personally interacting with their fans online. It all started out with the relatively innocuous tweet:

“Today could be just like the other 364 days you log into twitter, or maybe the Old Spice man shows up.”
What we saw was one of the most original and innovate uses of the Internet and social media since Zuckerberg stole a series of yearbook pictures from the Harvard student body. (or a couple of rainbows appeared in the sky)

As fans interacted with Mustafa, he would respond to their messages via short YouTube clips. The responses were done in the same random, post-modern, uber-meta style as the rest of the Old Spice advertisements, which made them entertaining and addictive; it was impossible to just watch one clip.

And oh yeah… It was in real time, as in you could make a comment or ask a question and within minutes hopefully watch a response from Old Spice.

Target the Audience

The brand capitalized on influencers, like Kevin Rose and Alyssa Milano, and used them to spread the campaign beyond Twitter. Sending personalized videos to both “web” celebrities and media outlets promotes the brand and this advertising campaign to even broader communities.

You could easily write this off as a really cool idea, wish that you had thought of it or think that it’s only possible because of the enormous budgets multinational brands like Old Spice have available…

Or you could think about what the lessons are for your brand.

What Are You Doing?

Old Spice has effectively shown the internet what social media promoters have been telling brands for years: successful usage of social media requires you to honestly listen to and interact with your users and then provide them with relevant information and content to consume.

Should you run out and start recording a bunch of personalized video responses to questions and comments posed by your audience? Are you’re willing to take the risk needed for fast turn around times?  Do you have chutzpah to create entertaining videos that capture users attention? Video responses work for Old Spice because it’s the format viewers expected from the brand.  What medium and what type of conversation will your users expect from you?

Run with It

Even if you don’t think the format will work for you, there are tonnes of lessons your marketing department can learn from Old Spice:

• Its not enough to just respond when you feel like it – if you’re really listening, you need to respond when your audience is ready and with the information they’re expecting.
• You already have interesting and relevant information or marketing to share;  if you can share it in an engaging manner then people are going to spread it for you.
• Old Spice broke down our silo assumptions;  that Twitter is for Twitter responses, blogs for blog responses and YouTube for inane comment responses. Instead, they connected various platforms together in an incredibly effective way.
• We’re not done innovating yet, and it’s always possible to take simple ideas and combine them into a new and interesting way of presenting information.

If you want to read more about what’s going on behind the scenes of the the Old Spice shoot, there have been a few great interviews with the creative team of Wieden+Kennedy.

The second Canada 3.0 Digital Media conference was held in Stratford on May 10th and 11th, and despite the choice to hold it in a freezing cold hockey arena, the event was able to attract over 1,500 attendees who gathered to help craft a digital media strategy for Canada as we get closer to Canada’s 150th anniversary.

I’ve read with interest David Eaves‘ thoughts on the two day event and he summarized exactly how I was feeling after I left Stratford. I have some positive thoughts but unfortunately I’m disheartened by a lot of the rhetoric coming from traditional institutions and the lack of encouragement of the grassroots communities and poor attempts to include them in honest discussions.

My time at Canada 3.0 was largely in the Creating Stream, but I did attend a few sessions elsewhere. I won’t pretend to have a complete grasp on all the conversations that took place over the two days, but I’m sure my experience was much like many others. To put it bluntly the conference did not even remotely live up to what the organizers promised on the front page of the Canada 3.0 website;

“Your voice will be heard.

Whether you’re a Content Creator, Tool Maker, or Tool User, this is your chance to influence our national digital media action plan. Become part of the discussion to ensure Canada can not only compete, but also lead the world, in today’s new digital economy.”

Unfortunately nothing could be further from the truth. Only lip-service was given to honest interaction and community involvement. Throughout the event  it was clear that the agenda had been set before the event, and the sole purpose of the conference was to get industry leaders together to pay homage and ratify a predetermined outcome.

The organizers also promised “camp-like discussions”. I have experience running and attending camp-like conferences, and there was nothing remotely like that at Canada 3.0. Nor was there even the opportunity to have any type of community driven session.

When it came time to wrap up on Tuesday, the chairs of each stream were invited to present ‘action items’. These were ideally to come from the participants and were supposedly to help build Canada’s digital strategy. None of the items that were presented from the Creating Stream reflected the comments that the attendees had made publicly.  Worse yet, they all came from the first session and seemed stilted, fake, contrived, and designed to appease the traditional mainstream communication channels.

Which leads to the single most major issue with Canada 3.0. The event had the potential to realign Canada’s digital future and to create and foster new and innovative ideas, models and platforms. Instead it focused on bolstering traditional positions and industries; like the big three telecoms, television networks like CTV and Global, and mainstream media outlets like newspapers and radio. Funding announcements designed to benefit tired business models, old-fashioned copyright reform that encourages conglomeration instead of independent and innovative creative works were championed, and traditional failing ideas were propped up, solely because they were Canadian.

Not all is lost though, there is a grassroots movement, full of content creators, small industry professionals, tool makers and developers, who are all working to create a digital environment in Canada that will take us as leaders into the 21st century; we can position ourselves as innovative and relevant, ready to do business in the digital media space on a global scale. However, we’re going to need to shake off the ball and chain that is the traditional broadcaster and we’ll need to be prepared to move forward without government assistance, but ultimately we will succeed.

Several of the staff from rtraction have spent that last two days in Stratford Ontario at the Canada 3.0 Digital Media Conference. The main focus of this event has been to build a digital media strategy for Canada so that by our 150th anniversary in 2017 everyone in Canada will be digitally connected. The organizers are calling this the “Moonshot” in reference to Kennedy’s 1962 speech in which he outlined the U.S. push towards space.

However, there has been a major issue with determining what exactly it means to be “digital”. There is no consensus between the stakeholders across Canada about what we’re measuring. Therefore we’ll never really know if we’ve reached  our goal. Additionally there is a variety of disagreements about who should be leading this charge and how far do we need to go with public consultation by government instead of action. Finally, there seems to be a big push to work within existing models and platforms of broadcasters and “old media” and ignoring new systems and potentials.

Despite these challenges, the conference has been a great opportunity to connect with content creators, brilliant developers, industry leaders, and corporations.  As the second day continues we’re invigorated to keep these conversations alive and encouraged by the community that we’re seeing that already exists across Canada.

When we get back to London we’ll review our notes and our twitter streams and we’ll present much of what we’ve learned on this blog.

Until then, how well do you think we’re preparing for 2017 and what goals should we be looking to measure in the lead up to this date?

Yesterday Twitter CEO Evan Williams gave a keynote interview at South By Southwest Interactive and as expected released a new feature on their already wildly successful platform; Twitter Anywhere. This feature is very similar to Facebook Connect, it allows you to pull info from a Web site to Twitter but also use your Twitter credentials to sign in to various places around the web. Now the connections that we make on Twitter can now be extended to many other online properties.

While it is still early and all the details have not been released there are a number of positives to look forward to:

• For new users the barrier of entry has been lowered; it will become easier to discover people and interests.
• Relationships are strengthened as users find more people and businesses to interact with.
• However there is a lower signal to noise ratio as you only connect with people relevant to your interests.
• Contextual data can be easily added to websites, applications and online services to facilitate these connections.

With this release Twitter is working to position the service as an information network where people can easily share content and learn from each other across a variety of different websites.

Recently events have illustrated Twitter’s ability to easily and safely bring people together; Iranian elections, the Chilean earthquake and conferences around the world. With today’s announcement they have extended this functionality to everyone and both users and businesses of all sizes will benefit.

I had the benefit of being able to attend the e-marketing conference at Fanshawe College last Monday. It was a great day to connect with other Londoners who are all striving to understand social media and apply it to their business.

The day started with the keynote presentation by Mitch Joel of Twist Image in Montreal. He delivered his Six Pixels presentation in which he reiterated the need to understand that we are facing a radical shift in the way we communicate. One of the great things I took away was that with social media, customers still have the same amount of control as they always have. However now there is a greater amplification of their voices. Its easy now for anyone to become a competitor of a traditional business and to succeed.

Mitch delivers a rich and engaging presentation and it was a great way to start the day because it got the attendees all riled up and excited. He provided the groundwork to the day that allowed many people to start on an equal footing.

Following the keynote there were a number of breakout sessions. I attended Brady Murphy of Vortex Mobile’s session on mobile marketing and was able to connect with him about a few interesting things I’d experienced in the space. Brady talked about many of the challenges that mobile developers face when dealing with multiple platforms and service providers. I’ve mentioned before that I believe mobile to be the future of social media and 2010 will be an important year towards that development. This session reiterated that belief, and introduced a lot of new people to the concept.

However, the highlight of the day was the release of PolicyTool. David Canton presented on the legal issues surrounding social media and at the end unveiled the free social media policy generator. David was also asked to present PolicyTool at the final wrap up, so all the attendees were introduced  to it. We’ve written about this already, including the resounding success that it has been.

I enjoyed my time at the conference and was glad to connect with lots of other people over the course of the day. Hopefully this is just the start to many more social media conferences in London.

In the week since we have released our free social media policy generator and the PolicyTool website, we have been blown away by the excitement and interest thousands of people have shown. Since March 5th, over 10,000 people have visited the sites and 1500 different companies have taken the first steps in creating a social media policy.

We never would have gotten the traffic and the interest we did without the help of our social media friends. Mitch Joel sent several tweets out to his network and we are thankful for his interest in the tool and the role he’s played in promoting it. PolicyTool has also been mentioned at numerous conferences including the Great Ideas Conference and the NL Conference in Amsterdam.

From there hundreds of people have re-tweeted messages and shared the tool with their friends and coworkers. In fact as of today our PolicyTool was mentioned every 14 minutes on average. It also looks like people will be continuing to refer back to the site since hundreds of people bookmarked it on delicious.

But it wasn’t limited to Twitter. Lots of people have written blog posts reviewing the tool, sharing their policies, and discussing the overall need for a social media policy within any organization. Simon Fodden wrote a post for the legal blog Slaw.ca reviewing the policy generator.  Beth Kanter used PolicyTool as a springboard for discussion around Not-For-Profits and Aaron Robb for wrote about our incentive for releasing the Social Media policy tool for free.

A big thank-you to everyone who has taken the time to share their thoughts through various social media channels. We’ve heard your comments and are working to make the changes you’ve proposed.

As more and more companies have started to build their online presence using social media tools, it has become important to have a policy to guide employees on what they can and cannot do online.

So in order to fill this need rtraction and technology lawyer David Canton are pleased to announce the release of our first PolicyTool, a free social media policy generator.

After answering a few short questions about your business and your employees roles online, you are provided with a full social media policy. We have worked with David Canton to review other social media policies, and relied on his legal perspective to build a strong and reliable tool that we are excited to share with the community.

This is being released as a free resource because we hope that it will encourage businesses of all sizes to start engaging in online conversations and feel safe doing so.

If you would like to see other policy tool modules, or have suggestions for improvements to the Social Media Policy Generator, then please submit them to our feedback form.

To learn more about social media, and how your company can take advantage of the many different technologies available, please check out services with specific questions.

The team at Tweetdeck just released an update to their social media monitoring application. If you’re not familiar with Tweetdeck I urge you to check it out now. It allows you to engage with a number of  platforms, and update you status across services like Twitter and Facebook and to monitor online conversations easily.

With this most recent update, the Tweetdeck has added YouTube and Flickr to their list of supported sites. You can now watch YouTube clips and view Flickr photos all within Tweetdeck. Now if one of your friend links to one of these site, you don’t have to leave the application.

One very neat update is column navigation. Now you can quickly jump to any column by hovering over a link a the bottom of the window. You no longer have to scroll horizontally across a screen.

There are also a couple of back end improvements. The Twitter API rate limit was increased and Tweetdeck now makes 350 calls per hour. This is great for anyone managing multiple accounts, or interacting with a high number of followers. We have also been given the option to edit search terms without having to delete the query and start over.

Its great to see the group at Tweetdeck constantly improving their application. Tweetdeck is quickly becoming the one program to easily manage your social media activities.

While it is still early, 2010 is definitely shaping up to be the year of the mobile device.

There are a number of applications that allow you to share your location with your friends. Gowalla, Foursquare are two that have made this into a game, allowing users to collect points and “dropped items“.

Metro’s recent announcement that they have partnered with Foursquare has taken these applications from permissible non creepy stalking to useful tools.

Metro newspaper is a free daily that is handed out at transit stations in major Canadian cities. They have also been active participants in new media, with numerous Twitter accounts and casually written blogs. They claim a circulation of over 800,000.

When a user checks into a location near a site that Metro has a reviewed, a Foursquare tip will be displayed on their phone with the option to read a full review.

There are other applications like AroundMe or CanPages that use you GPS location to return search results related to your location. However Foursquare has the benefit over these application of being crowd sourced and therefore updated more frequently.

While this announcement only speaks about reviews, there is also the potential for breaking news to be shared in the same way, a featuring lacking in other proximity applications.

While augmented reality could arguably be considered more interesting, there is still a barrier of entry (for example the need to install applications to your device). Foursquare and similar services are web based and are easy to use, therefore encouraging more users.

What Is Your Business Doing?

Social media gives businesses of all types the ability connect with their customers. And potential clients are asking to be connected with you. So what are you doing to converse with them? The tools are available and just waiting to be used in news and interesting ways.

The seminar is a beginner-level primer on the tools and techniques of social media, but is open to everyone, regardless of knowledge level. The what, the why and the how of social media will be answered in this 90 minute session, with specifics on how your business can start engaging clients in new ways.

A substantial portion of the time will be devoted to answering your questions. By the end of the session you will understand:

1. What social media is and how it helps you to build a relationship with your customers.
2. Why social media is relevant for your business or industry.
3. Some of the tools you should use – Twitter, Facebook, RSS Feeds etc

Course is currently offered on January 27th and February 24th at 9 AM and both sessions are limited to 25 participants. For more information and to book your spot: