Social media marketing initiatives take many forms. Perhaps the best is ice cream, which is how the gracious folks at Ben and Jerry’s reached out to us today. Thanks to the wonders of Twitter and Nikki’s always tactful stalking of the fine folks that run @benjerrystruck, we finally were paid a visit and it didn’t even involve a restraining order. Look at how happy they made us.
Also, happy Canada Day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h18mVQ7wv4
I seriously can’t stress how much there is to glean from this clip about the importance of a support hierarchy and external brand affirmation!
Consider this the start of an anti-TED reading list. People have become way too mired in Technology/Entertainment (that’s really what the E stands for)/Design fetishism, and it is leading to some very bad precedents being set (such as Facebook and the new Apple policies) with most of us gleefully following along because things are super shiny and make us feel a little special.
Society of the Spectacle (the book, not the movie)
The Century of the Self (not a book, and available for free on the internet)
Books on Pataphysics… just because it might make you more well rounded.
Also, please feel free to ask me about luxury branding. I’m very good at it.
I’ve been thinking quite a bit about how things tend to progress on the Internet, particularly in social arenas. Below is a diagram of the conclusions I’ve come to…
Or maybe it works more like this…
Have markets become so saturated that ad agencies and branding firms now see the only possible avenue for expansion of existing brands as the alt or hipster subsets of the demographics that they’re already targeting?
Take for example:
Does there really exist a sizable market segment consisting of people in retirement communities buying lame hot pants? I think not, but I suppose it is larger than discerning babies who might own an Apple product, shop at places such as Urban Outfitters, and control their household’s grocery spending.
However, such things have not gone unnoticed (just Google “Gerber hipster babies” or the like). Unfortunately, I suspect the noticing and commentary from such social media pundits (young people with Macs) will only drive these campaigns into overdrive as they shall be seen as evidence of their success. All of this will lead to the alienation of such alternative verticals and the eventual collapse of Western style capitalism. What comes after? An economy based on personal currencies pegged to an individual’s retweets and Facebook likes.
Do you think viral is getting a bit obvious?
I remember when viral marketing and memes were for big corporations and kids that might have wrote/read zines.
One thing that has always bugged me, is why do wizards wear glasses? If they’re so awesome, why don’t they have better vision? I understand that everyone that reads books about magic is probably a little awkward (or at the very least wears glasses, since all the cool kids read vampire books) and you have to do everything you can to let them identify with the protagonists… but shouldn’t such a glaring hole blow away all suspension of disbelief?
Since this week is New York’s Social Media Week, I’ve decided to weigh in on something troubling me: I’ve yet to encounter anyone that can fully grasp the significance of social media. This might be due in some part to the only people I speak to on a regular basis being Facebook stalkers or randoms so taken with my 140 character missives that they must track me down via Foursquare/Latitude… but at the end of the day these should be the very people exposing its fundamentals rather than waxing poetic about their last awkward lunch date. I say this because social media has exposed us all for what we really are: geniuses. We are all Brian Wilson, but a Brian Wilson that went to bed before making Pet Sounds. That is to say: we create mighty inescapable works, (suffer a nervous breakdown), and the world moves on with our endeavors forgotten or relegated to a heap of Web 2.0 ephemera. I suspect this is why I’m fascinated with Quirky. It is such a refreshing break from the typical collective blathering. We can finally make the products of late night ramblings, cafe frustrations, or cubical quandaries into physical bits rather than strictly electronic bits. Or failing that we can scrape up the remnants of last decade’s snark and so eloquently crush the hopes and dreams of those more talented and successful than ourselves.
