Who Will Watch the Marketers?

For those of you who caught my ‘Watchmen’ reference in the title, the premier is only a week away. For those of you who didn’t, well, consider yourself lucky you don’t speak geek.

 

So I’ve been thinking a lot about Twitter lately. Everyone knows what a huge fan I am of the microblogging service that only gives you 140 characters to say something important (or completely irrelevant). The reason I’ve been thinking so much about it is because lately there seems to be a surge in rule or etiquette discussions, specifically in how to use DMs, criteria for following people, what should and shouldn’t be discussed, etc.

 

I’m not sure if that’s because my circle consists mostly of marketers or if these conversations go on among the business coaches, real estate, aspiring actors and porn stars who also take up residence on Twitter.

 

In the marketing community, at least, we analyze what someone should tweet, if it is relevant content, how its ROI can be measured and how others use Twitter or should use Twitter in general and what purpose it serves.

 

To that point, I think it only makes sense that we are put in charge of policing Twitter. Think about it – we weren’t as strict with the other social media channels and look what happened to them: MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook. The pedophiles and musicians took over MySpace. LinkedIn was practically handed over to recruiters and liars. YouTube, well, no one will ever plant their flag there. And now Facebook is slowly starting to sag as microblogging gains in popularity.

 

Face it. You want us on that channel. You need us on that channel. As marketers, we eat breakfast, lunch and dinner less than six inches from our computer screens. We are used to telling people how to do things when it comes to personal brand. With us in charge:

• You won’t have to worry about impersonal DMs
• No one with under 50 followers allowed to be cited on #FollowFridays
• No more ‘make money from home’ tweets.
• Any tweet containing the phrase ‘check out my book’ will be met with a one day ban.
• Tweets containing sexual innuendos will remain legal but only between the hours of 9 p.m. – 7 a.m.
• Anyone under 21 will be permitted only after we receive notification that their mom is following them.
• People will be limited to seven RTs a day.
• Anyone using Twitter to promote their social media campaign will have to submit a projected ROI for our approval.

(NOTE: These are just a few of the rules we’ll be enforcing. We’ll consider other legislation but it must be marked with a #TwitterPolice.)

 

People, Twitter is growing at an amazing rate. It has neared  the 5 million user mark. 20 percent of them joined in the last 60 days. The porn stars have already infiltrated Twitter. Don’t wait any longer. Let us, the marketers, protect you before it’s too late.

 

Hate the ‘dope’. Not the dope.

A lot of talk still regarding Michael Phelps getting caught hitting the bong. I’ve heard arguments from all sides, but my opinion throughout remains the same: it’s ok to be mad at Phelps. But not for what you think.

The reason people should be upset with Phelps is over his stupidity and lack of judgement in smoking in plain view of several partygoers with camera phones. (And I swear you can almost hear Cypress Hill’s Hit from the Bong playing.) You may hate the actual act of smoking pot, but that doesn’t give you the right to judge him as a good or bad person, role model/not a role model. If it’s me, and I had to explain it to my kids, I would hit one major point: people are always watching–in other words, your private world doesn’t exist. You have total transparency to your audiences. Always a good lesson to heed, from the high school basketball star to the Fortune 500 CEO.

And while I’m talking about Phelps, what is with the moral police lately? Not sure if you heard the news about Chris Brown being pulled from playlists at some radio stations, including Cleveland’s KISS FM, but if you haven’t, you need to sit up and take note of this blatant censorship that’s going on. Maybe I’m in the minority, but celebrity bad behavior doesn’t surprise me. Granted, Brown’s case was different because violence against women is inexcusable. But that should’t impact a radio station’s decision on what music to play/not to play. If you started using moral character as a gauge for who you play and don’t play, you will be running the risk of dropping a lot of artists. (I don’t know about you, but I need my R-Kelly fix.)

And I guess that’s my point. Where do we draw the line regarding what we expect/should expect from celebrities? We’ve been debating role model/not a role model since the days of Barkley and his Nike commercial.

 I think in today’s day and age, with so many channels/tools to obtain photos of celebrities doing anything at any time, we can’t expect the image we have of them to match what they really are – human.

Heard enough about the Super Bowl commercials? Too bad.

As I’m sure you were, following the Super Bowl, I was bombarded with blogs and write-ups reviewing the commercials, claiming winners and losers.  Rather than waste my time doing that, I chose to spend my time celebrating the Steelers win and defending their win to bitter Browns fans.

However, that doesn’t mean I am going to pass on an opportunity to critique the $3M spots. I should spend some time criticizing the fact that companies paid $3M a spot while 600,000 jobs were cut in January, but that will be another time.

I’m not going to list my best and worst; I’ll leave that to a guest blogger in a minute. Instead, I’d like to discuss what I think is the death of the ‘great Super Bowl commercial.’ It seems that era is over. I think with the popularity of YouTube, Hulu, etc., there’s no way to create a ‘big’ spot anymore. With social media a fixture in key demographics, concessions have to be made in ads to generate pre-game and post-game excitement. In a way, it’s forcing companies to market a campaign instead of advertising it – you know, the way things should be done.

However, with that approach comes a decreased focus on the ad itself, resulting in weaker ads that don’t have as much staying power. Combine that with the fact that the smart companies are putting more money into social media programs, because they can maximize their budgets, and you’re left with a weaker line-up starring Go Daddy and network shows rather than Apple, McDonalds and Coke. So maybe it’s not that the ads were bad as much as it is the bar has been lowered.

That being said, I loved the Dorritos Crystal Ball, Cash 4 Gold (why didn’t MC Hammer talk about this on Twitter though?) and Monster commercials, in that order. I absolutely couldn’t stand Budweiser (enough with the horses) and Careerbuilder (I wanted to poke my eye out by the end of that commercial).

So, I mentioned that we had a guest blogger today. You ever have one of those friends who you thought belonged in film, print, etc. — just a larger stage? Well, I do. One of my oldest and best friends, actually. This guy can break down anything you want to know about; and I’ve heard him do it all. From best movies to best and worst presidents; here, Jeff Hoffman breaks down the commercials as only he can:

Bad # 5 – G (Gatorade)  for weeks we’ve had lame ass “Thats G” commericals.  Now we get the big one and I know they’re going for motivational figures but the high school kid who hit 6 threepointers while no one guraded him in a blowout?  It was more the ongoing annoyance of “That’s G”

 

Good # 5 – Monster.com with the moose head in the bosses office and the ass in the room behind.  Not hilarious, just kind of clever because you know you’ve wondered where the body went when you’ve seen a head on the wall.

 

Bad # 4 – The tire commercial in space.  Yes it was nice to hear a little House of Pain with Jump Around, but then the rover got car jacked which was just dumb.

 

Good # 4 – Careerbuilder.com.  This was the repetitive spot with the lady screaming in the car.  It was funny in the sense that Family Guy is funny because they take something stupid and just keep it going and going.  Coming back to the lady like 6 times made it funny.

 

Bad # 3 – Coke One, Troy Polamalu playing the role of Mean Joe Green.  The first is a classic, this one was kind of lame.  I think it was the annoying Coke One guys coming in and Troy ripping off the white collar shirt that made it dumb.

 

Good # 3 – NFL Story.  I liked the Saints DB sitting with his dad and his dad making fun of him for being lousy at serving slushies or whatever he served at games.

 

Bad # 2 – The MacGyver spot.  When the best part of a commerical is the fact you ahve Richard Dean Anderson in it you’ve made a lousy spot.  The only thing that hinted MacGyver at all was the bad wigs.  Maybe if the guy could’ve used the can to diffuse the bomb or something, but really this spot was stupid.

 

Good # 2 – Hulu.com.  The spot with Alec Baldwin was great with Baldwin confirming that Hollywood wants to rot your brain.  This easily would’ve been #1 had they not added the little alien blurb at the end.  The spot was great without it.

 

Good # 1 – There really wasn’t anything great, but I kind of liked the Bob Dylan/Will I Am spot comparing generations.  I’m a bit of a nostalgic guy anyways so this spot was the most interesting.

 

Bad # 1 – I really want to go Anheuser Busch altogether here.  I hated the Bud Light spots with the skiing and Conan’s spot stunk.  But it was Budweiser that really drove me to the point of bitching at the TV during the commercial.  I hate the clydesdales.  They were kind of funny with the Zebra replay spot years ago, but now they are just annoying.  The immigrant one was stupid and historically I’ll bet the people would’ve eaten that damn horse on the boat.  The one that drove me crazy was the lovey dovey spot with the damn circus horse!  What the hell, I don’t know a single woman who drinks Budweiser and yet we seem to be marketing to fair girls?  Maybe its my love of the product that makes the Budweiser spots so damn annoying.