FRANKthoughts

From the youtube profile: “Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch (Oct. 23, 1960 - July 25, 2008) gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007, before a packed McConomy Auditorium. In his moving presentation, “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals. More about Randy here.”

Greenpeace is usually doing well using online to drive action from their participants.

Here’s the latest example, giving a whole new meaning to tree hugging:

Greenpeace wants you to share your love with/in/to the forest with photos and videos of love expressions like kissing, hugging and whatever else you can think of.

You can see the photos here. Will be interesting to see how this campaign unfolds.

Thanks to Osocio.

Social media is sometime described as the magic solution. Simply get a facebook profile/blog template/twitter account, start talking and voila - your target audience is now talking with you and about you, commenting, sharing and providing you with endless amounts of free word of mouth.

Hmm… it’s actually a bit more complicated then that. “The social media fallacy” is a new video presentation from David Spark (spark media). It shows the right way to approach building your online strategy - from the beginning, with research and planning. Take a look - it’s worth it.

Thanks to Shana Albert from social desire for the cool diagram.

Finding your online communities ROI can be tricky for brands and “measuring it” brings a up a debate anytime. This post and links from Three Minds are so educational I thought I’d post it here.

“Is Corporate Social Media A Failure?

It started with a post last week on the WSJ entitled, Why Most Online Communities Fail, which stated that less than 25% of corporate online community have over 1000 members and that 60% of them cost over $1 million dollars. Follow-up posts exploded all over the blogosphere from ReadWriteWeb to Social Media Today, each with their own explanations why the sector is underperforming.

At the same time, many articles were published about how White-Label Social Networks are exploding and lists of the corporate social networks that are succeeding (on Social Media Today and Mashable). So is the sector really failing? What are the biggest mistakes being made? Does it have anything to do with a need for a community manager that possesses the essential skills to get consumers involved with the brand?

Later the Wall Street Journal came back and announced that the 60% figure was really 6% of communities over $1 million, a pretty big typo. But the discussion still rages on… is social media succeeding or failing for brands?…”

Does anyone know about companies in Australia who employ a community manager?

Here are some important questions to ask before you decide what to do online. Even if you answer half of them you’ll find some insights, focus on your goals and might even come up with a great plan to promote your business.
Your brand:
What are you doing online? Do you have a website? Do you have a place where you engage consumers on your website? Are you doing all the talking or do you encourage conversation and feedback? Do you have any audio/video on your website?
Your competitors:
What are your competitors doing online? Have they already worked out how to have a conversation with their audience? What are the advantages of your competitor’s online profile and what will you need to do to beat them?
Your industry/community:
What is your industry doing online? Are there any online trends you should be aware of? What are the ideas you like? How can you play a bigger role in this industry?
Your audience:
Who are you talking to and why? Who are your evangelists? Where are they online? What is your niche audience? What do they like to do? How can you help make their lives better?
The creative concept:
What will get people talking about you? How can you be different? If your brand can produce a show - what will it be?
Production:
What is the scope, time line and budget? Who’s going to manage the team? What are the software requirements? Who will be doing the programming, design, audio/video production (if needed) and testing?
Marketing:
How will people know about it? How can you spread the word? What is the launch plan? What are the PR opportunities? Do you have a seeding plan?
Maintenance:
Who’s in charge of the following: data entry, linking to content, comment moderation, email list management and measurement.

This is based on a post I’ve written about a year ago at digital underwear.

Tesla is one of the coolest companies I’ve seen lately. Their cars look like a wannabe Batman sport vehicle and they are 100% electric! They also sell their batteries to other car manufacturers like Mercedes. With the rise of petrol prices and the entry of cheap Chinese made cars to the Australian market, car manufacturers will need to spend more money on advertising to get the same volume. The other option is to innovate and evolve. In the next 2-3 years almost every industry is going to change. Which industry are you in? What are the changes you can see in the horizon?

For more examples of future forward design visit Inhabitat.

The fact the music industry is changing is old news. Some choose to grab the opportunity and innovate. Others choose to scream, cry for legislation and sue their customers. Last week I’ve found The Music Industry Piracy Investigations website (or: MIPI) and thought I’ll bring you a few gems. First, this is the only site I’ve ever seen where a “print this page” link appears on every page both on top and on the bottom. I guess these guys didn’t hear about the environment. Or maybe their cause is too important.

Next: “In Australia, over 2.8 million people download music illegally and 1 in 3 of these are young people” - I’m struggling to see how suing all these people or punishing them is a good idea. Dear music industry, customers today need a different solution. We no longer pay for a record or a cd. We want to buy music, sometime by the track! (Yes, noticed your links to some websites with legal downloads. Can you make it any more complicated?) .

And finally: You can use the MIPI piracy report form to dob a pirate (yes, like your friends & family members) but watch out for incriminating questions like: “Have you purchased any of the pirate product?”, “Do you have the receipt?” and “Do you have a copy of the pirate product to send to us or to describe to us?”. Maybe it’s time to think about changing business models instead of trying to stop the inevitable?

Often, I see charts or marketing collateral that says things like “Benefits to User”.

Bah!  Stop cramming down the same stuff to me.  A flip solution would be:

“Customer Solutions” and “Making Life Easy”

It is a thin line and subtle difference in words but a flip in approach.

A far better way to approach things is by making it Customer Centric, not trying to shove me rewards and benefits that I would never use!  Fitness First gives international access to their gyms.. whether I like it or not.  Great story but useless to me.  And my guess to a large percentage of their membership.

A customer centric approach really starts from building the right culture within the business.  Finding out what your customers are having problems with within the category and provide a solution to create a better service.

Higher Price becomes justifiable when a greater Value is perceived (time, money, stress, etc).

Alex Bogusky is arguably the Steve Jobs of ad land.  Agency Crispin Porder + Bogusky has won the much coveted $300 million Microsoft account.  The brief:  Make Microsoft Cool

Fast Company June cover story featured Alex Bogusky on it’s front cover with a detail article on the history of the Microsoft brand and challenges it faces.

In recent times, Microsoft has stood by quitely as Apple took a blatant approach to mock it’s largest rival.  Mac vs PC ads are now pop-cult fixtures.  Continual large and innovative ad campaign approaches by Microsoft are often off mark and swiftly dissembled by Mac advocates.  The rapid growth of Google and it’s cult following has also left Microsoft further behind it’s tech competitors.

So how can Microsoft, traditionally viewed as a highly corporate, arrogant, and a bully, be “cool” again?  As Andrew Keller, Crispin’s co-executive creative director says, “To try to be cool is to not be cool”.

Crispin’s award winning and historic work on Burger King, BMW Mini, VW, and Truth, will now stand the toughest test with their new Microsoft account.

The question remains to be seen, can Microsoft beat Apple and Google?

See what this guy has to say:

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is talking about the future of advertising with the Washington post.

(You’ll need to wait until the ad is over and click on the third video named: future of advertising).

What do you think will happen?

Via MediaFuturist