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.

 

We’re not mailmen, for God’s sake

I braved the madness that was the blizzard of 09 – until Fox 8 labels the next minor snow storm the ‘Official Blizzard of 09′ – and ventured to downtown on Saturday to see ‘Rent’ featuring the original Mark (Anthony Rapp) and Roger (Adam Pascal). I’m glad I did; I have seen Rent before, but not with a cast as stellar as this. (Side note: thanks to the city of Cleveland for not plowing one bloody street. It looked like a parking lot.)

On my way to catch 77, I passed a mailman stuck in a huge snow bank, shoveling his way out so he could get in and drive three feet to the next nearly buried mailbox and deliver what I’m sure was a compelling handful of bills, Gold Clippers and direct mail cards (do people still do those?).

I asked myself why he would do this – why he would want to do this? Then I realized it’s because that’s his job. Save the ‘rain, sleet, snow’ jokes; they just have to do that. They have to deliver the mail. As Newman said, ‘the mail; it never stops!’. Every day they have to do the same thing – every day. Over and over. It conjured up memories of the famous Dunkin Donuts commercial.

It was at that moment that I realized something very important – thank God I’m not a mailman. Could you imagine? Doing the same thing every day? We’re in marketing people. We better not be doing the same thing every day. And if you are you need to take a look at your drive, your passion, for what your client does and more importantly what you do.

The world doesn’t let us do the same thing over and over. There’s always breaking news. A better way to communicate something. More and more clutter that needs to be researched and experimented with. More people to talk to; less people doing more jobs to talk with – that need your help. We work in a great field, this ‘marketing’ that we’ve chosen. Make it count. Do something new. Do something different. Don’t accept normalcy – on the first try anyway. Push yourself and your client. Make yourself do something different from the previous day. Every day.

After all, we’re not mailmen. I mean, mailpersons. Sorry. I forgot The Burger tests very well with female postal workers, 34 – 45. Shout out!

Take a penny, leave a penny

I found myself thinking about the penny tray today. It’s really an underrated gift that retailers put out for you to make life a little easier. I mean, who wants to carry around all that extra change, making all that noise in your pocket/purse. And then you run the risk of losing it because there’s so much to worry about.

Then there are those times when you need the penny because without it you dont’ have enough. And you know that the jaded cashier isn’t going to let you skate by, so you have to leave the line and put your Vitamin Water back. Then - THEN - you really appreciate that little tray of beautiful copper.

I don’t know why, but it kind of made me think how people view public relations. You don’t realize how much you need it until it’s not there. Expecially when you have a lot of issues making noise in your pocket, like failed product launches, poor channel marketing or (lack of) employee communications. Then there are those times when you need the PR penny to pay your total bill, like crisis situations, mergers and acquisitions, recalls and labor disputes.

Maybe I thought about this because many of us are preparing to face a challenging year. We have to be focused more than ever. We have to understand our value – know exactly where we fit within our clients’ organization. And more importantly, we have to do everything we can to reinforce why our relationship brings value to what they are trying to accomplish as they face their own crisis.

So take heed as you prepare for 2009. You wouldn’t want your client to come up a penny short in the lunch line.

It’s finally here. My top 5 beers of 2008.

I spent 2008 drinking a lot of lousy beers. But it wasn’t my fault.

Candis and I shared the responsibility of bringing home the coveted puffy vest that comes with completing The Winking Lizard’s beer tour. We got a late start (February 29) but finished last Tuesday – with roughly 36 hours to spare.

We weren’t that smart and saved all the bad beers for the end. Nonetheless, we finished. And I can say, that after 100 beers, my favorites are safe. Not one came close to even cracking the top five. Too many fruity, yeasty, crazy beers. That might be part of the reason why you are able to choose your beers this year (from a list of 150).

It did impact my top five list though. It got me thinking – here I am trying all these beers and I’m denying myself the ones I like the best. So, without further ado, here is my tribute to the old faithful brews that will always hold a place in my heart – and my list.

1. Fat Tire. (New Belgium) [previously: no. 1] No change here. Still the best tasting, smoothest beer I’ve ever had. Now, if I could just get them to ship that stuff east of Chicago, I’d be happy.

2. Yuengling Lager. (Yuengling) [previously: no.3] Despite a strong late-season surge from his brother, Black and Tan, I have to keep the Lager here, sound and secure at number two.

3. Christmas Ale. (Great Lakes Brewing Company) [previously: no.4] Despite a weaker than normal showing this Christmas, I find myself appreciating this beer more and more every year.

4. Oktoberfest. (Samuel Adams) [previously: no.2] Dropping a tad because of the great showing Great Lakes Oktoberfest had this year. And I’m starting to look forward to Samuel Adams Winter Lager a little more. Not sure if it’ll hold on next year.

5. New Castle Brown. (New Castle) [previously: unranked] Oh my this was hard. There are so many beers right there at number five – not to mention the one it bumped – Honker’s Ale (Goose Island). However, like I said in the beginning, I had an appreciation for those beers I just plain like. And I find myself defaulting to New Castle more and more.

Now, like I said, the final spot was hard. So hard that I have to mention the cluster that is 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, etc., etc.: Honker’s Ale, Samuel Adams Winter Lager, Yuengling Black and Tan, Great Lakes Oktoberfest, Great Lakes Conway’s Irish, Shiner Bock, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Sierra Nevada ESB, Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale, Bell’s Pale Ale and….LaBatt’s! Yea, I said it.

What do you like?

The first list of 2009

Ok, so this is cheating a tad. It’s really a list of 2008 movies.

I used to be ‘that guy’; the one who went to see every nominated film. Who searched high and low and drove to the obscure theaters to see the indy or foreign films that had that one performance. Now? Thanks to work and kids, I’m happy to see one a week thanks to Netflix. But occassionally I do sneak out and see a movie here or there.

I am happy to share with you my list of movies I liked in 2008 – not my top ten. Mainly because I didn’t see 10 GOOD movies in 2008. I have a feeling the good movies are on my list of 2008 movies I want to see (Slumdog Millionaire, Doubt, Redemption Road, Reader, The Wrestler).

Side note: it never really bothered me before, since it was my number one goal, but why is it so hard to find the showings for these movies? What rules are in place that all the good movies must be saved for the end of the year and then, when they’re released, must be peppered into small, expensive theaters with one showing? Hmmmm? Would it kill the studios to release these earlier then re-release later? Maybe even put them out on DVD around October so more people could see them. And don’t try to argue studio politics/awards season timing – that two bit logic is no good here at The Burger.

Now, on to my favorites of 08:

1. Dark Knight. I know, I know; I didn’t want to rank them. But I can’t pass it up. This was my favorite film. I know all the arguments (too long, hate Batman’s voice, too many characters) but it’s the total body of work. It’s fantastic. Not enough to crack my top 10 of all time, but still damn good.

Kung-Fu Panda. Not just a kids movie.

Iron Man. Most fun I’ve had at a midnight showing in some time.

Wall-E. Stop crying about no words in the first 30 minutes. It’s good. And the scene with people flying around in their chairs with a computer screen in front of them? Look around. We’re not that far off. Substitute computers for Blackberry’s and we’re there.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I rank this much higher than the other Apatow family film, Pineapple Express. Better story combined with lower expectations made this a good show.

Pineapple Express. Hey, I didn’t say I didn’t like it. And Huey Lewis, king of cinema soundtracks, did original music for the closing credits!

Hancock. How can I not put this here? One of the main characters is a PR guy?

Sex and the City. Yes, yes, yes; I actually liked this? However, I did see it on DVD with no expectations. But I thought it was a good romp; a little overkill with the tiebacks to the series, which, yes, I did watch, but all in all a good show.

For another opinion, click here for Stephen King’s top 10. A different look. And if you’re not reading his columns in EW, you should be!

What’s your favorite Olympic souvenir?

I heard a wild question on my way home – what would be your souvenir of choice from the Olympic games?

Let’s think about that – throw out the option of a medal but everything else is game – what would you say?

Me – I’d choose Misty May Traenor.

What? People don’t count? Ok, how about her headband? Too creepy? Fine. I’ll take Bolt’s shoes.

What else is there? What would you vote for? The dropped relay baton (two lucky people could get this)? A Chico kind of night from Mrs. Phelps? The Chinese team’s passports? How about Bela Karolyi’s sideburns?

Seriously, this is a tough question. Let me know what you would choose.

Coke’d out design

I came across this post on BusinessWeek.com about the design initiatives at Coke. They include moving to an aluminum bottle and incorporating new design trends.

Twenty years later I’m glad to see that Coke is focusing on changing the right thing – the bottle (not the formula). This new Coke tastes the same but is evolving to fit the trend of more personalized brands. After all, who wants to walk around drinking out of a red can just like everyone else?

The fact that Coke is evaluating its design – and has been for the last five years – should inspire any company to turn a critical eye on itself to make sure it’s evolving – but more importantly, evolving the right components.

I’m sorry!!!! The vacation’s over.

I’m sorry it’s been so long and you’ve had to look at that Batman poster forever. I was lucky enough to take some vacation and get some heavy work done – but now I’m back. And I promise I won’t do that again. Until next year. Here, let me make up for it. Look at the awesome Beach Volleyball team; my favorite part about the Olympics that isn’t Michael Phelps.

I thought of all of ‘us’ recently. And by ‘us’ I mean people    who care about communicating; people who care about social media forums and the power they give. I gave a presentation on eCommunications the other day, and as I was doing research it dawned on me how few companies take advantage of social media. A fatal flaw given how empowered consumers are through this tool.

Think about it – you are giving strangers the chance to write, in a public forum, about your products and services. I know we know that – but do you think others do? Are we just talking to each other up here in the choir loft?

I know adoption is high but are we converting anyone? In a day of too many brands I don’t think enough are taking advantage of these tools to differentiate themselves. The era of companies talking at consumers is over. The ‘e’ in eCommunications might as well stand for empowered. Consumers are empowered; they have opportunities to influence products and marketing. But are companies doing enough to empower their employees to take advantage of this?