I’ve been on an intentional hiatus the last week or so (yes, it was also Chinese New Year here in Singapore so it’s been busy with public holidays and visiting and all that), but also to take some down time to think.
Something that I keep thinking about (partially influenced by Seth Godin’s Linchpin) is wondering who matters.
Why do we chase digital business from the huge corporations who say they want digital but time and time again the end result is “go peddle your social media stuff somewhere else” and buy a TV ad.
Because the big organisations look better on a company portfolio than the mom and pop shop who really does want to embrace digital and probably will pay you less?
Why do we spend hours on decks and creative for an audience that isn’t receptive?
Aren’t they the equivalent of your whining customers that we always tell ourselves (or our clients) to sacrifice and go after those who love you, your business, your service instead?
Seth Godin has a great 14 page pdf on ChangeThis titled Brainwashed.
What brainwashing does he speak of?
..to teach you that you’re average. That compliant work is the best way to a reliable living. That creating average stuff for average people again and again is a safe and easy way to get what you want
Believe you me, no one understands and relates to this statement more than someone who grew up in the Singaporean education system. The system itself is great (I think I benefited from a stressful education) but the mentality of playing it safe is overwhelming.
And so generations of students turned into generations of cogs… We were brainwashed into fitting in, and then discovered that the economy wanted people who stood out instead
Too true isn’t it? That’s why the idea of personal branding resonates so much with Generation Y. We’re not here to fit into pigeon-holed roles. We love dealing with other people who stand out instead of people who blend into the background. It’s a delight to meet someone passionate about their beliefs, even if you don’t share them.
You were being trained to be a compliant cog, someone who could mindlessly follow instructions as opposed to seeking out innovation and surprise
Yes we were. No one is asking anyone to disregard instructions, but it doesn’t mean we should follow them blindly. Just because the your boss receives something that is different from her point of view, doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
The rest of the article is really good, and provides actionable tips on reinventing yourself, mostly using social media. Read it. And perhaps more importantly, put it into action. I know it’s something I’m going to be referring to every three months or so just to remind me that I shouldn’t be a cog in the machine.
At this point I want to congratulate my friend Ping from Pixel Pastry who arguably did not get brainwashed and has been unveiled as junior art director at Tribal DDB at the ripe old age of 23. Congrats!
Late upload (all my fault) but here is the 6th episode of The GennY Podcast once again with Dorothy and myself talking about things that that happened at Ad:Tech 2009, and our observations.
The show notes:
00:00 – Starting off “live” from Ad:Tech
00:24 – A slight comparison of Ad:Tech 2008 and Ad:Tech 2009 and trends we’ve noticed
00:51 – First trend: The audience still seems to be semi to largely clueless!
01:51 – Is there a trend of inertia of companies not wanting to get their feet wet?
02:52 – Second trend: The idea of strategy vs tools. Shouldn’t this be common sense?
03:20 – There really needs to be a bigger strategy than “collecting followers”
03:32 – Should marketing move up from the tactical level to the strategic level?
04:52 – There should be a budget shift from expensive TVCs that no one is watching, especially when numerous presentations show data that TV isn’t as powerful as it used to be
05:45 – If your digital initiatives aren’t working for you, prove that your traditional media initiatives are
06:36 – Maybe the truth hurts? The blind faith of buying an ad makes you feel better?
07:22 – So how do you deal with intangibles? Maybe you can’t have it both ways?
07:49 – Maybe online interactions have a different angle. Maybe it’s not about sales. Maybe it can be used for feedback?
08:12 – Are advertisers just conning themselves? What does 4.5 million eyeballs even mean?
09:00 – Dorothy sighs in utter exasperation. You’re doing this to her advertisers! You!
09:08 – Maybe we’re just in a stage where we don’t know what the different numbers mean
10:50 – How is employing one person to take care of your social media presence a more expensive investment than producing and buying a TV ad?
11:08 – In the future, advertising should be come “invisible” and woven in
11:52 – There seems to be a universal Generation Y culture
13:27 – Maybe they just want to reach more people, but as Seth Godin says, the world has shifted from the “how many” to the “who”
14:32 – Hopefully we’ll have the rest of the crew back soon and we’re trying to make this regular!
I chanced upon the banner ad rates offered by one Singaporean company awhile back, and saw that a prominently placed banner ad goes for S$4,000 a week, with the promise of “reaching” millions of “eyeballs”.
In Seth Godin’s book “Purple Cow”, there’s a chapter called “law of large numbers” where he bought 300 million banner ads for US$600. That’s more than one banner impression for one person in the United States. The result? He made a loss. Selling $500 of merchandise in total. He doesn’t specify what merchandise, but does it matter?
To break even on S$4,000 a week, you need to sell:
8 16gig iPhone 3Gs (about one a day)
10 Amazon Kindles (about 1.5 a day)
50 Xbox games (about seven a day)
400 movie tickets (just over 50 a day)
and that’s on revenue, not profit.
The flipside of this is of course, there’s no guarantee that some people of the 300 million saw the ad, and bought the merchandise some time later, thus making it untrackable. But isn’t it the same as any TV, radio or print ad you buy anyway?
Do you think you’re going to do better than Seth Godin’s case study? I’m going to leave the parallel of “reach” and “eyeballs” to traditional media to you.
If you’re in marketing, you’ve probably heard of the old adage “I know half of my marketing doesn’t work, I just don’t know which half”. The good news is if you’re employing banner ads in your marketing “arsenal”, they automatically fall into the half that isn’t working.
But that’s just one case study, if you’re buying banner ads, I’d like to ask you: How have they worked for you?
There was an allusion to “Tribes” a couple of times in yesterday’s post, listen to Seth Godin talk about it for more than an hour in this special edition of the Marketing Over Coffee podcast. It took me a long time to finish it because my daily commute is five minutes, but so worth it.
Generation Y, Digital Natives & Millennials
Workplace 2.0: Motivating and Managing Millennials – Very short (12 pages total, about 8 pages of content) PDF file on managing millennials (aka: us). It doesn’t actually give much of a “how to”, but it does lead you to understanding us more. I must say he is right on about fervour, hard work and tireless labour. I’d work overtime, for free, for a job that’s rewarding in an industry I’m passionate about.
Digital Natives are here by Mitch Joel – Again, great post to help the people in management understand the digital natives. I feel a lot of people still aren’t ready to accept that our generation is a little bit different and that being constantly connected is more of an empowerment than a distraction. But those organisations who do grasp that, are going to be able to channel us much more efficiently.
Social Media Strategy
The Strategist and Social Media by Kami Huyse – Great slides in there that you should read if you’re beginning to think of a social media strategy, especially points about risks of social media engagement, and the Sea World case study.
MTV to MySpace: Post Our Content, Please – you might remember in my review of the book/rant Cult Of The Amateur by Andrew Keen that he called Viacom (parent company of MTV) suing YouTube a “powerful message”. I say the partnership between MTV and MySpace is a) a more powerful message b) a sign that at least one player in the industry waking up to reality.
The Top Ten Reasons iTunes Sucks – I agree with every single point mentioned here, and it absolutely sucks that Apple obviously doesn’t care what people are saying, with similar issues existing in 2006. At this point I hate iTunes so much, I’d pay money for a programme that would solve these problems.
As always, share your links with me in the comments, or you can find me on delicious.
In the wake of the historical moment that happened earlier this week, there have been tons and tons of blog posts on President Obama’s victory. In this special edition of weekly links, I present five of them that really caught my attention, four of them marketing and/or social media based, and one commentary based.
1) Marketing lessons from the US Elections by Seth Godin. – I haven’t read Seth Godin’s “Tribes” yet, but from hearing about it and reading his blog, it’s pretty intuitive what it’s about. Find out how tribes (and stories) played a part in the elections.
4) Online Facebook Efforts Prove Successful for the Obama Campaign by Louis Gray – Some interesting data on the Facebook community engaged with Obama. Louis asks if John McCain’s loss could be a result of the lack of social media efforts. I certainly think it’s a key reason.
5) Obama: The morning after and some last thoughts by Steven Hodson at the Inquisitr – I picked this because a) it appeared in my Google Alerts for my name, and b) because it collects some really heartfelt comments from people around the internet, and not all of them American, demonstrating how truly global this election has been.
If you weren’t big on the elections and the marketing/social media efforts, have no fear. Regular round of Links For The Week will be right up tomorrow!
Haven’t done this in awhile, but I really wanted to direct you to two resources which I found to be extremely valuable just yesterday.
Word Of Mouth Manual II Dave Balter who co-authored Grapevine (which I remember reading two years ago) has a new book out called the Word Of Mouth Manual Volume II. Since focusing more and more on social media, I had actually thought in recent weeks about re-visiting the book and seeing what is still relevant today. I first came across the link from Mitch Joel and I don’t want to copy and paste the URL here because it’s a unique URL (excellent for measurement), so head on there if you want to download the book for FREE! (otherwise it costs you $45 on Amazon).
Also, the way the news got out was great, targeting a few key influencers online like John Moore from Brand Autopsy, John Bell from the Digital Influence Mapping Project, Todd Defren at PR Squared and of course Seth Godin among others. Given that these posts appeared in my feeds alone, I’m sure spread out over the targeted blogs, many more people interested in communication and word of mouth would have come across it as well. And appearing numerous times in numerous blogs also sends a strong signal: These many people have found it worth their time, it’s probably worth yours too.
Feedly
As always, Louis Gray brings the best in all things feed-related. I’m not going to just scrape the details from his blog because his write-up is so thorough, there’s probably nothing more I can do but to help spread the word by directing you to his coverage. I’ve just installed Feedly and am finding it a lot to get used to, but I can see certain elements I like.
You might remember my “Why Students Should Blog” post in response to HackCollege’s contest. I finally caught up with episode 26 of the Hack College Podcast today by Chris and Kelly, and was thrilled to find that I made the final four to win a Hack College t-shirt!
The segment starts at about 18 minutes and I think the collection of answers are really good. I appear in the episode as a tweet. I know people go on about how social media and blogging and whatnot in North America doesn’t always apply here, but this one does.
In any case, I didn’t win that t-shirt, but dammit I’ll keep trying. Failing which I’ll just buy one for myself when I head up there later in the year. (But that’s not an excuse to not let me win, HackCollege!)
If you want to discover more, check out “The Case For Student Blogging” by HackCollege, I think it’s pretty good stuff. If you’ve been agonising over the perfect phrasing of your resume since forever, why not take a look at this and find a better way to supplement your case for future employment.
Hack College posted an article on the Case for Student Blogging and @KellySutton posted the same question on Twitter as part as a competition to win a Hack College t-shirt. I’ve been wanting to write about this for some time, so it seems like a good time as any.
I’m going to write a few segments:
Whether you already have a blog
How it can get you an internship/job
My personal experience
Other intangible benefits
Whether blogging restricted just to people like me, ie those interested in social meda.
But I Already Have A Blog!
Actually, no, you probably don’t. Having a Meepok Blog (ie one where you talk about the meepok you had over lunch) is not a blog. It is a blog in that you’re capturing down your thoughts, but it’s not a blog where you’re adding value. And that’s the kind of blog you need to have if you’re in school, especially a university looking for an internship and/or employment.
Seriously? A Blog Helping Me Find A Job?
Yes. An article got featured in the New York Times about Christopher Penn’s (from Marketing Over Coffee) social media resume about the same time that Seth Godin questioned the need for a resume at all. ie: Your blog should speak for itself. Granted, we’re early days into this line of thinking, but if you’re just entering university now, a lot can change in the four years till you graduate and join the workforce. In fact, I just saw a social media internship today saying that including a blog and/or Twitter stream would be helpful.
My Personal Experience
I started this blog with no expectations except to contribute to the community. However through it I’ve gotten an invitation to advise a company on internal/external blogging, to be a panelist at a conference that costs $680 to attend and three internships. (Full disclosure: I couldn’t take up two of them, the third has yet to be confirmed). Ultimately it doesn’t matter whether or not it works out. The point here is: When was the last time you heard of offers coming your way just via a blog? No formal submission of resume, no cover letter? It’s a whole new world that frankly, surprised me as well.This can happen to you. But you have to start right now.
Other Intangible Benefits
As the world progresses, more and more of our lives are going to be lived online. Blogging/Tweeting/Podcasting etc creates and online presence and reputation for you. When your prospective employer Googles your name (and believe me, they will), you don’t want the first thing they see to be a story of you drunk at a club via your friend’s blog. You want them to see a thoughtful article you’ve written. Online reputation for your personal brand is priceless, and the difference between a good or bad one is how much effort you put in to develop it.
Another intangible that I’ve found particularly for me, is that it helps me write better and faster. I take an average of 20-30 mins to punch out a blog post. That translates to my school work where I’m writing papers and it takes me 45 minutes to get two pages out and send it for editing. Lightning fast.
Final point on intangibles, the great thing about everything being online is relationships. Whatever you blog about, the chances that someone will pick it up is always there, someone may be scanning Twitter for keywords that you mention in your blog, or simply Googling randomly or using StumbleUpon. Why not provide them an opportunity to connect to you?
But I Don’t Blog About Social Media!
It doesn’t matter. Your blog can be on anything. Drawings/sketches if you’re looking to be a creative in advertising. Commentary on the sub-prime crisis if you’re in finance. What changes in interest rates mean if you’re studying economics. Anything that you can point your future employer to and say “Look, I’ve been on top of this stuff for awhile now, and that makes me more valuable to hire than the other person who just submitted a resume with his grades.”
So what do you think? Are you reading this right now and thinking “Bullshit”, or are you thinking of what to name your blog? Let me know. If you’re thinking of starting a blog but you’re unsure of what to do/how to get about doing it, feel free to drop me a comment as well. I don’t claim to be an expert, but I’d like to help if I can.
This is late so I’m going to jump straight into it. My choice for the March podcast of the month goes to Six Pixels of Separation for the interview with Seth Godin in #93. I also listened to #94 – #97, and #97 is the episode where Mitch talks about Social Media Breakfast: Singapore, so you might want to check that out as well.
Other podcasts that I really think you should check out:
With that said I also enjoyed Shill’sthoughts on SXSW coverage happening literally everywhere else, and how that feels from people not at the event. I really felt their point of view because I was one of those people getting bombarded non-stop on Twitter about SXSW. Probably something everyone will have to figure out for the next event.
Joseph Jaffe also weighed in on the SXSW coverage and Intellagirl’s challenge in Jaffe Juice #107 as well as facing outward from the fishbowl. An observation which I think is spot on.
Two new podcasts I picked up are For Immediate Release which comes out so frequently I can barely keep up but some good, thought provoking content in there, as well as Inside PR, whose discussion on ethics in PR to be very enlightening in #103 and #104
As always I am open to any and all suggestions for new podcasts to listen do. Just drop me a comment! While you’re at it, why not check out the podcast of the month for February and January as well?
I’ve been on an intentional hiatus the last week or so (yes, it was also Chinese New Year here in Singapore so it’s been busy with public holidays and visiting and all that), but also to take some down time to think.
