Walter Oliver Neal
Branding today is much like a grassroots movements. It is a conversation about ideas people can believe in. If a brand is not communicating like a person, people tune it out sooner or later. These ideas then turn into movements; people working together to affect change in some way. The effects of these actions are people buying things or services, but the smart marketers of today are not launching with bottom line motives.
Building a brand is as inevitable as karma when projecting authentic ideas and passions online. Remaining consistently true to our beliefs is essential over time because we will develop a following that will eventually interact and engage with us.
Kevin E. Taylor
Our brand is defined by our very ideas. Not the other way around. The loyalty and make-up of our following is also defined in this way. This notion turns the old “target marketing” idea on its ear. No longer should we define our audience and create a marketing strategy to attract it.
Simple truth and complete understanding of who we are as people and a strong personal belief in our own truth makes a clear center point from which to emanate out.
“Centered marketing” focused on messages based in the truth about what people believe in are the heart of social media. What follows is as unpredictable, surprising and rewarding as karma.
Kevin Taylor’s art depicts how “over time, civil responsibility has ordered a physical detachment from nature, however a deeper mental architecture remains intact.” His art makes me think about how in marketing we can become detached from the natural human way of communicating and how important it is to re-engage.
It’s another rainy day here in Southern California. These wet gray days are my favorite because they are scarce, solemn opportunities to cuddle my thoughts. The sunny weather here can become very loud sometimes; beckoning you outside to play even when you’re mood dictates differently.
Anil Nene - Rainy Day
In the past week or so I’ve contemplated ego and the large space it takes up in our lives as a culture. I’ve always thought that I didn’t have a very large ego until recently coming to the realization that thoughts I have and habits I’ve kept for years are just manifestations of my huge ego. Then I began to think about this social media revolution and what’s driving it.
We have not changed as a culture, we just suddenly have these tools at our fingertips that are a perfect smorgasbord for our voracious egos. Everything we do on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, this blog is screaming “pay attention to me!”
Even if you’re of the variety that completely balks at the social media craze. You seek out ego feasts in other ways, with a particular circle of friends or activities that make you feel “seen” in a light that enhances your identity and makes you feel better.
I’m sitting here on a rainy day, exercising my Twego because I want to be seen. We all do, in the way James Cameron defines in his Avatar world. We only need to recognize it and be honest with ourselves. This honesty brings Twego closer to us and makes dialog more authentic.
I’ve learned more about social media in marketing from my 10 and 12-year-old sons than any webinar or conference. While we’re all scrambling trying to figure out how to use social media in business, the next generation is busy building businesses using this technology.
by Journey Streams
Last summer both of my sons convinced me not to send them to summer camp for the first time because they wanted to have time to explore their own interests and not be forced into daily activities decided by camp counselors. They’re both excellent students so we felt giving them some unstructured time and allowing them to relax was a good call.
My son Journey, age 10, launched his media company: supertechnonerd.com. This wasn’t a complete surprise to me as our house is filled with his art work and he already self publishes a comic book and distributes it at school. (He holds “book signings” once a trimester.)
by Journey Streams
He story boards show ideas for his YouTube channel with his friends using iChat, they call them “board meetings,” and he uses his Flip camera and tripod to capture all the fun on video. His friends and their parents love it!
When my husband set up Jouney’s hosting account on GoDaddy he asked him if he minded having ads at the top of the page. My son’s response was, “It wouldn’t be a real website without ads Dad.” He also signed himself up for Google AdSense and monitors his web stats daily. He communicates with the YouTube subscribers by giving them incentives to subscribe and encourages his peers to get involved.
My older son, Harmony, came to me early in the school year and told me he was now a part of Journey’s production team and a member of supertechnonerd company.
Harmony reads a book every two days, fantasy fiction mostly. His love for reading makes it difficult to keep him in books so he tells us about new authors and titles that he discovers through YouTube vloggers turned authors and we order them on Amazon for him. He’s getting a Kindle for Christmas because his bookshelves are full in his room.
Harmony’s also my World of War craft level master. He made it to level 72 over the summer and recently reached level 80 and started a new character over the Thanksgiving break. He’s made countless friends through the game and they communicate sort of like old-school pen pals. (No WOW during school though, Mom has to set limits.)
The skills their building with these activities are enumerable. My plan is to keep feeding their interests and taking notes!
Traditionally marketing has been an instant gratification, billion dollar business, reserved for only a select few. I’m a huge fan of the show Mad Men which perfectly depicts the beginning of an era and glorifies the hay days of the ad industry in spite of its contradictions with modern-day political correctness.
Social media is drastically changing the world of marketing in ways that other technologies, like radio and television were unable to in the past. It’s leveled the playing field for individuals, while leaving corporations in a sort of no man’s land.
In my last consulting position part of my role was consulting chief marketing officers (CMOs) of Fortune 500 companies. Of course, ad agencies were part of the plan, but the central question was always sustaining a direct connection with customers.
It seems the CMO’s have begun to solve this problem using social media.
As evidence, I went to a Twitter conference over the summer and attended a panel that featured a representative from Starbucks, his only job was to Tweet and respond to Tweets all day. Whole Food’s Twitter rep made sure all store managers set up Twitter accounts and connected with customers regularly in their area, rewarding those with the most followers. This is a good start.
Persevere.
I have a market research petri dish in my house in the form of my 10 and 12 your old sons. They tend toward individually produced content. Like Natalie on YouTube and her wacky CommunityChannel videos. She’s really sarcastic and better than any sitcom show I’ve watched.
My son’s trusted brands are people who have gained online stardom from millions of views on YouTube. This gives these YouTube people huge brands value with the youth generation.
I wonder if the “Mad Men” of today are considering this in their plans? I know I am!
I watched a YouTube video explaining social media using the example of selling ice cream. The market had flavors with mass appeal and pickle flavor. Many people don’t like pickle flavor, but because of social media, pickle flavor ice cream makers could still reach their audience and make a profit.
One thing I managed to retain from classes I took as an econ minor in college are the basic laws of supply and demand. But in my professional experience as a marketer, I never saw these play out in the real world. Only the businesses with the largest marketing budgets and cunning ad campaigns won the market share leaving no room for the little guys to compete, regardless of demand.
The term, “there’s somebody for everybody” always applied to couples in my mind; you know what I’m talking about. That guy that just seemed undateable finally finds that girl who “gets” him. Well, with social media, there is this possibility in business too.
It levels the playing field for all businesses to 
find their audience with the product or service they’re offering without altering who they are to fit the masses or a budget to pierce the noise.
It’s possible for every person to receive their version of pickle ice cream.
If a business can decide the goal is “to create what is closest to the hearts of the people running it” not “to make a billion dollars” then the product or service is most authentic when delivered to the people who want it.
For consumers, this means you get products you actually want from people you actually like. For businesses, this means there is no reason to “sell out,” because you agree from the beginning to sell to an audience that’s into you, not the you that has to produce to sell billions, but the real you.
Now I want some of whatever flavor ice cream that is!
The reality is, most businesses are not going to make a billion dollars. Right? So if we just focus on the goal of making what we love for the people who love it, then prosperity will ring from there.
It’s no longer some hippie concept, now that we have social media.
At the start of most brand development, artists and business professionals alike focus on themselves. Plugged into the goals and aims of the idea at play so intently that there is little effort placed on the literal connection that will inevitably be made with the audience.
The social nature of this new economy has made every person the media. So connecting with our audience honestly, early, and often is imperative to success. The publishing and entertainment industries are beginning to understand. We see examples of success stories in people like the wine guy and author Gary Vaynerchuk and Grammy award-winning artist Chamillionaire. They each have over 850K and 220K Twitter followers, not to mention the vlogs, Ustreams and countless other ways they connect with their communities daily.
Their recent releases were chart toppers in their respective industries almost exclusively because of their intimate audience connections.
Consider this line of thinking, wouldn’t it be easier to sell tickets to a play if when casting for it you weighed talent and followers on Twitter and Facebook equally as variables for casting?
This new world is more interested in the human connection than buying “stuff.” Once artists and businesses alike make a human connection with people they will basically buy anything. (That’s not to say people are stupid, because every great marketer knows, you treat your audience like you treat your wife.) People want to be part of an experience; be a piece of a whole.
Connection with people at the beginning of an idea is what makes a brand. What you do with those connections; the possibilities are endless.
