Category: Social Media

#KloutBomb: how to game the social media gamers

Hey kids! Tired of the same old influence metrics? You know, click boring stuff like intelligence, expertise, relevance (ho hum) – the stuff your grandpa used to figure out if people were worth listening to?!? What if there were a system that let you make anybody look influential about anything online? Well there is, and it’s called Klout! (And we Beg to Differ.)
That’s right kids! On planet Klout, I’m a Unicorn expert!

Wait Dennis, when did YOU become a unicorn expert?!?

Well, funny story. I never did. And I barely ever even discuss unicorns – apart from this one blog post. But I was young!

No, my Klout page says I’m influential about unicorns because I’ve been hit with a #KloutBomb.  Other folks playing #KloutBomb (like Jeff Esposito or Amy Vernon – both excellent targets by the way) told Klout I was influential about Unicorns, and so, like magic, I am!

And sure, all of this *may* just show how hollow and game-like the whole Klout ranking system really is. But rather than railing against it, opting out, parodying it like Klouchebag by the brilliant British wag Tom Scott, or even taking a measured thoughtful approach (yawn), why not just game the Klout game for pure, deviant fun?

And here’s how you can play #Kloutbomb too!

  1. Go to a friend’s Klout page – preferably not one of those stuffed shirts who actually takes their Klout score seriously. On second thought, yeah, especially one of those! I recommend Jeff Esposito. He adores getting a good #Kloutbomb!
  2. Click the “See All…” link that appears under “Influential about (X) Topics”. This will take you to their Topics page.
  3. Give them +K. If they’ve already gotten a #Kloutbomb, you’ll see odd and humourous topics like some of those shown at right. If so, just click on the “Give +K” button to add to their score and bump up the #Kloutbomb topics in their list. You get five +K points to give out for every day you visit Klout, so don’t blow them all in one place!
  4. OR: You can add new topics by clicking on the “Add a topic”. So for example, today I gave Jeff a new topic: “Fabricated Rubber Products, Nec (Rubber Toys, Except Dolls)”. But note, this costs you five imaginary Klout bucks, so you can only do this once a day.
  5. Announce your #Kloutbomb to the world by Tweeting under that hashtag.
  6. Then, please let Beg to Differ know! Share your favourite #Kloutbomb topics in the Comments below.

Important caveat:
Keep them 1) clean and 2) as obviously ridiculous as possible please!

While it might be fun to tag your boss with “Masturbation” (yes it’s really a topic), this is the public Internet, so don’t be a total jerk or commit professional suicide. Or if you do, just don’t tell them we sent you.

Random stuff I learned at SocialMix 2012

So yesterday, I had the priviledge of meeting a bunch of my online heroes in real life at the Social Mix 2012 conference in Toronto. And while stuff is fresh in my mind (okay not *fresh-fresh* after a *few* post conference beers), here are a few things still bouncing around the old coconut.

So yesterday, store I had the priviledge of meeting a bunch of my online heroes in real life at the Social Mix 2012 conference in Toronto. And while stuff is fresh in my mind (okay not *fresh-fresh* after a *few* post conference beers), price here are a few things still bouncing around the old coconut.
Photo by Gini Dietrich of me (left) and Geoff Livingston (right).

Stuff I learned at Social Mix 2012:

  • Danny Brown and his team at Jugnoo throw a mean conference – and on pretty short notice from what Jugnoovians Lindsay Bell and Hessie Jones tell me. They put together a top notch group of speakers with a great venue and a great cause to make one really memorable event. Congratulations to all, buy more about and to Hessie’s question: “should we do this again?” YES!
  • Danny has a great accent (“rogue with the brogue” they called him), but despite that handicap, he’s a brilliant communicator, and all-around great human. Imagine a heavy Scottish accent while Danny says awesome, off-the-kilt stuff like this:
  • The biggest, and most pleasant, surprise of the day was Tim Burrows who manages social media for the Toronto Police Force. Yup. A cop. Talking social. And he’s a brilliant, self-deprecating speaker who demonstrates how focusing on your core brand values allows you to do your job better, respond to a crisis fast, and win back jaded hearts and minds for the forces of law and order. Deeply inspirational.
  • Gary Vaynerchuk owns the stage. It was my first time seeing him live. But I’d seen video, so I already knew that he swears a lot, and that sometimes he says stuff that really pisses me off: like “What’s the ROI of your mother?” But the thing is, in person, you still get pissed off, then realize a moment later that he actually does understand, care, and is keenly aware of Return On Investment in his own business. So yeah, he pokes sticks at lots of sacred cow nests (huh?), but he’s such a great performer, that you still end up in the palm of his hand.  That’s his shtick, and it works.

“Marketers ruin everything.” Gary Vaynerchuk

  • Gary’s actually at his best when he’s “off-shtick”. Yesterday, we saw him deftly handling questions yesterday from the three kinds of fans he seems to attract (1. sycophants, 2. brown-nosers, and 3. sycophantic brown-nosers), but he spikes their loaded suck-up questions back at them, and then riffs out a series of long, cogent, scary-smart ideas.
  • Gini Dietrich and Geoff Livingston are superstars and nice folks, who can lead an engaging off-the-cuff session. Yesterday they free-styled on their book Marketing in the Round. Which is hard, because they’re still in the middle of a long and (from the sounds of it) arduous tour. But even so, they made some time for a riotously fun evening out afterwards That’s Gini’s picture of me (left) and Geoff (right) at a downtown pub.
  • Geoff is a scary, scary man. In a totally cool way. One might almost call him punk. Almost.
  • Susan Murphy is spooky-good at networking. Not that I’m impressed by – or jealous of – social media “A-listers”…. no really! But holy crap my Ottawa friend Susan Murphy is good friends with a whackload of them! Including Gary, who never struck me as a huggy dude, but he veered out of his way on the way out the door to run up and give Suze a massive bearhug.
  • Matt Hixson from Portland Oregon is a smart cookie, and his company Tellagence is onto something with the idea of intelligently mapping and predicting social connections based on people’s real influence in specific interest areas. That’s all I can say… okay, it’s all I understand. But stay tuned. There’s cool stuff to come from this company.

“I don’t care about your friends or followers. I care about relationships you build – in context.” Matt Hixson

  • Apparently I have a very loud laugh. But the origin story? Not so interesting…

Updated: check out their sites

Labatt: “Our goal was simply to protect our brand.”

Twitter to Labatt: we Beg to Differ!

This quirky little illustration by pop artist Gary Baseman was used in Labatt’s Blue ad campaign: “A lot can happen. Out of the Blue.” Indeed it can…

Twitter to Labatt: “We Beg to Differ!” This quirky and macabre little illustration by pop artist Gary Baseman was used a few years ago in Labatt’s Blue ad campaign: “A lot can happen. Out of the Blue.” Indeed it can… let’s hope the brand magicians at Labatt can put this one back together.

Out of the Blue.

It’s true. A lot can happen like that. 

You can be sitting at your desk working when a strange Tweet appears in your stream about a severed foot being mailed to the headquarters of the Conservative Party of Canada. Whoa. Weird.

Or next, page it can happen that a weird, twisted news story unfolds in all its evil awfulness on every media channel, so you can’t even listen to the news or look at a news site online while your kids are in the room. Weird, and annoying.

Then the story can get worse with tales of kitten killing, serial-killer-dating, and cannibalism. Weird, annoying, and kind of upsetting, because it became clear very quickly that all this was being staged by one narcissistic young slimeball to have exactly the effect it was having.

Then the Internet good guys can rally their troops to try and help find the guy, and the guy can be caught. Because he was Googling himself for hours in a public Internet cafe. A great relief actually (and can we get a clean-up at terminal 7?)

And we hoped, such a capture can signal the end to the stupidity, butchery, and media manipulation.

Seriously. All of that can happen.

But then, you know what else can happen? Out of the Blue?

Someone working at a major Canadian consumer beer brand – let us call that brand “Labatt” – sees that the Montreal Gazette has skimmed a photo of the evil perpetrator  from the (do I even need to say “alleged” any more?) killer’s Web site. The photo is splashed all over their online coverage like so factory-produced beer across a freshman dorm room.

And, horrors! In the photo he is holding their product Labatt Blue!

Board rooms are booked. Meetings are convened. People speak in urgent voices.

There is a BAD man. In a PUBLIC newspaper. Holding OUR BEER!

Suitable horror is expressed by all, minions and executive washroom keyholders alike, and a powerful, simple idea emerges:
we must protect our brand!!!

Now this is where, out of the blue, somebody got the idea. An idea which isn’t a bad idea if you’re the sort of person paid to have such ideas. It just seems that way to the rest of us…

They send a lawyer’s letter ordering the Montreal Gazette to take down the photo.

So what happened then?

There’s a name for all of this, as Dabitch reminds me: “the Streisand Effect”, wherein a brand tries to “protect” itself from a media storm but ends up wading into an even deeper mess. And you’ll note that Labatt has already secured itself a spot on the Wikipedia listing for Ms. Streisand’s eponymous Effect. How’s that for exposure?

But the part that got me was this quote from Labatt’s vice-president of corporate affairs:

“Once the Gazette explained their position, we promptly thanked them for their response, dropped the matter and we will not be following up further,” Charlie Angelakos wrote in a statement. “Our goal was simply to protect our brand.”

Now dear readers, you tell me: is that how brands are protected?

Or is it perhaps how brands are dismembered, cannibalized, and made notorious for all the wrong reasons?

After all, a lot can happen…. Out of the Blue.

A tricky balance: social etiquette

I took some flak last week online from a long-time online friend for sending her a LinkedIn invitation-to-connect, but without (gasp) adding a personal message….

Can we learn social etiquette from 1908? Tricky. Read on…

I took some flak last week online from a long-time online friend for sending her a LinkedIn invitation-to-connect, unhealthy but without (gasp) adding a personal message. Now, buy information pills I was catching up on a bunch of LinkedIn stuff and realized there were dozens of friends and colleagues I wanted to invite. Also, I’ve been using the standard “Dennis Van Staalduinen would like to connect with you” template for years without thinking about it, and never stopped to think how impersonal that might be.

But her reaction got me thinking of Social Etiquette in general and how the online world and the “norms” of the offline and online worlds get a bit muddled up. And how, without a manual, it’s easy to cross lines and offend people without realizing it.

Which brings me to the manual – and yes there really is one. Or should I say “was”? Below, I stitched together a few iPhone / Instagram shots I took from a delightful old book I have in my office from 1908 called the New American Encyclopedia of Social and Commercial Information.

As you can see, things change a lot. But do they really change that much?

The book – which is awesome – was an ambitious project purporting to teach upstart Americans all kinds of “useful” European skills like how to play the violin, dance, speak German and French, and play polo, among other self-improvement pursuits. How about a magic trick where you pull a cannon ball from a hat? It’s in there!

The section on Letters of Introduction is to the right. What do you think? Could that serve as an etiquette manual for introductions on LinkedIn? I’m not sure, it’s pretty heavy. But it certainly sounds like what my friend was trying to tell me about my lapse in social judgement.

But a few things have changed: 1) the tone of snooty confidence,  2) the idea that all things on earth can be contained in one volume (who needs Google?), and 3) the classic old illustrations – including one of an early form of “planking” (see above).

If you’re interested, I can post some more nuggets. Or if you’re really eager, you can find the whole book in PDF form here. (Warning: it’s HUGE.) Particularly interesting are sections on “Health for women” (spoiler: not very progressive), “The automobile” (debates whether steam, electric or gasoline will prevail), and the dancing section (check out the Polka instructions which are just hilarious).

5 ways Social Media is changing branding forever

Brand managers: Social Media is here to stay. Deal with it.

Beg to Differ gets asked three related questions all the time: should brand managers really care about this Social Media thing? Isn’t it just a flavour-of-the-month fad? Does it really change anything in the branding universe? The answers: Yes. No. Oh merciful heavens: YES! Here’s why.

Sea change: just another great turning point (Turner's Trafalgar)
Sea change: just another great turning point (Turner's Trafalgar)

1) Push marketing is dead (along with the other P’s)

Remember the old “Four P’s of Marketing” – Product, price Promotion, doctor Price, and Placement? They’re dead. Or rather, they all still play a role in marketing, but the big assumption behind them is dead – what I call the “Silent Fifth P”: PUSH.

It’s just not enough to buy a gazillion dollar ad on the SuperBowl and just watch your earnings roll in (although to be fair, it never really was). With the massive proliferation of content sources and the corresponding death of the old “big media” model, you just have to work harder today than you ever did before.

The trick for brand managers: learn to stop pushing and start listening to the real owners of your brand: your customers.

2) The owners are speaking; can you hear them?

Last month, Senior VP of Marketing Clyde Tuggle summarized the big lesson learned from the New Coke fiasco 25 years ago: “You don’t own your brand; your customers do.” (Great summary here).

If that was true then (and it was), it is painfully obvious now, as the owners of your brand have a louder and more sophisticated voice than ever. And when things go wrong for a brand like Toyota or United Airlines, you don’t have time for old fashioned PR damage control: these bad vibes are travel at the speed of human thought.

The trick for brand managers: make sure you are using Social Media to build a) communities of support and b) the capability to respond.

3) Crowd-sourced creative is changing the game

There is a lot of hand-wringing in traditional advertising and design circles about this stuff – witness this blow-up from our favourite brand design blog Brand New or the comments on this 2009 Beg to Differ post.

The dirty word being used here is “spec work” – that is, companies that should be able to pay a professional to do this stuff are instead using contests or other means to get creative work from a broader range of players. And while I’m a big believer in paying people for a good day’s work, I also think that the debate sounds a bit too much like the music industry going after 12-year olds who download MP3’s. It kind of misses the point.

The trick for brand managers: how can you use the power of crowd-sourcing (without burning too many bridges)?

4)  Open-source branding will change research

But the idea of  crowd-sourcing goes way beyond getting a logo from 99designs.com. It is actually changing the raw DNA of brands by throwing open the gates of the branding process to all interested members of the brand’s audience.

It’s similar to the Open Source movement in software – except the “code” being exposed is the values, character, and passions of your customers for your brand. (Great summary from Ryan Anderson here).

A couple of recent examples: this Google research cleverly packaged as a YouTube viral video, the A Brand for London project, or Fluevog.

The trick for brand managers: how can you tie open source ideas into your brand management routines? (Hint: call these guys for ideas).

5)      Humility is sexy again

Have you noticed the new tone in advertising lately – led by the newly humbled auto industry? It seems like companies are racing each other to out-humble each other. And that can only be a good thing.

The trick for brand managers: maybe it’s time to stop telling your customers how great you are. It doesn’t work on a first date, and it certainly doesn’t work in a relationship. The alternative? In the immortal words of Otis Redding: Try a Little Tenderness.