Here in Washington, the community is abuzz with news that Wikileaks, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing whistleblowers a safe place to publish sensitive information, has released a gargantuan store of documents related to the war in Afghanistan. The documents paint a picture that is decidedly at odds with more official portrayals of the war.

The same day, the Library of Congress’ Copyright Office determined that “jailbreaking” the iPhone – a process that allows users to access apps not available in Apple’s App Store – does not violate copyright laws. Apple contends that jailbreaking can harm the phone’s user experience, and leave it vulnerable to viruses; the company voids warranties of jailbroken phones. The Copyright Office, however, said in its ruling that jailbreaking is “innocuous at worst and beneficial at best.”

Regardless of your opinion on the war in Afghanistan, the ethics of leaking sensitive information to the public, or the use of products in ways that weren’t intended, these examples serve to illustrate one principle of the changing information economy: You are not in control. Read More »

Surely you’ve seen the TV ads. Ex-football player Isaiah Mustafa, “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like,” taking his audience from a bathroom, to a sailboat, to a beach scene on horseback, all the while spouting an absurd, deadpan hyper-masculine monologue. It’s great advertising, a campaign that I think has helped shift Old Spice’s image away from “little white bottle in my grandfather’s medicine cabinet” to “cool, masculine scent that [young] women love.”

Now they’ve gone and outdone themselves, with a social media campaign that might be better than the TV spots. Last week, our Old Spice hero began making personalized videos for bloggers, Web celebrities, and a few average web users. Notable examples include a get-well message to Digg founder Kevin Rose, political punditry in response to George Stephanopolous, and a hilarious response to the Yahoo! Answers question “How many teeth do sharks have?”. Read More »

One of my favorite reads in the social marketing blogosphere is John Mack’s Pharma Marketing Blog. While John covers pharmaceutical marketing across all channels, his posts on social media present a nuanced look at the unique challenges pharma and other regulated industries face when trying to make headway in the space. Particularly interesting are the surveys he occasionally does of pharma marketers. Add him to your RSS reader, if you haven’t already; he’s also on Twitter here. 

John posted a thought-provoking interesting survey a few weeks back, asking pharma marketers what they thought the most important elements of a social media implementation plan were, particularly in the event of a crisis.  Read More »

I’m not the primary shopper in our household but I love wandering the grocery store aisles when I get the chance.  Even if I take my marketer hat off, I am mesmerized by the colors, images, and words of the hundreds of products on the shelves (okay, I don’t get out much).  What never catches my eye, however, are the refrigerated cases that hold the milk, yogurt, chicken, and ice cream I’m grabbing. 

That changed recently when I spent time visiting with marketers at Ingersoll-Rand, makers of Hussmann refrigerated cases.  In this day and age, I couldn’t imagine there was a lot of innovation in the design of refrigerated cases.  Their job is pretty simple – keep stuff cold while maximizing shelf space and minimizing energy use – and people have been building them for decades.  I mean really, what’s left to do with commercial refrigerators?!?  Apparently a ton. Read More »

By Laura Morris

Susan Wassel, PR Manager at Sharpie, launched a social media campaign with the help of a single fellow employee and now manages the project singlehandedly – with a $2,000 budget.  Her work exemplifies how your team can move forward even if you lack the resources necessary to bring on external support.

Video: Social Media on a Shoestring

Slidedeck: Social Media on a Shoestring

“Sharpie Susan’s” goal was increase brand loyalty by leveraging brand advocates they termed “bold expressionmakers,” who are Sharpie uber-users that gravitate toward new media.  To achieve this objective, Sharpie decided to showcase content from these “bold expressionmakers” that demonstrated creative ways to use Sharpie pens in daily life. Read More »

MLC’s survey data from 200+ companies shows that executive leadership of social media is critical to success.  Indeed, 57% of brands with CMO leaders of social media see strong returns on their social efforts, compared to just 18% of companies without CMO leaders.

The reason?

Social media enable brands to build strong customer relationships that deliver value to multiple functions e.g., new product ideas (NPD), answers to customer questions (Customer Service), or advocacy (Marketing).  Managing these shared relationships requires strong cross-functional collaboration, which only a leader with significant clout and authority can achieve.  As the customer champion, the CMO is uniquely positioned to play this role. Read More »

Jeff Hayzlett, former CMO of Kodak, keynoted at MLC’s opening executive retreat last week. Arriving in his signature cowboy boots, Jeff shared his fittingly defiant approach to leadership in the “Wild West” of social media. He also shared insights from his new book, “The Mirror Test”.

Adversarial Leadership

Jeff opened by saying:“my job as CMO is to create tension,” and explained how he challenged the status quo and broke the rules to get action on social media at Kodak. He once asked Legal how many people he would have to annoy before he got fired. When they said a third of the company, he decided he still had plenty of leeway to push his plans through.  Similarly, when we asked how to deal with Legal’s approval processes for social media, he answered “You’re in marketing, be creative.” Read More »

By Laura Morris

Last year at Blogwell, Nick Ayers, Interactive Marketing Manager at Home Depot, shared his perspective on how the company is using social media to revitalize its customer service reputation.  Check out the video below for extra details.

Video: You Can Do It, We Can (Still) Help

Slidedeck: You Can Do It, We Can (Still) Help

The Opportunity:

Home Depot found that previously overlooked “passionates” that sat outside the brand’s historic target audience were engaging with the Home Depot brand online.  The company would try to capitalize on this organic interest to use social media as a way to differentiate itself from competitors with the goal of recapturing a group of consumers they lost during the customer service slip. Read More »

“I’m particularly intrigued by the competitive differentiation that needs be thought through—strategically—before you can start to think about ‘What am I doing on Twitter?’”

–Jennifer Lavelli, Group Executive, Worldwide Marketing, MasterCard

At MLC’s recent executive retreat in New York, Jennifer Lavelli put her finger on one of the key traits distinguishing social media exemplars (the 10% of large enterprises that are seeing real business results from their social efforts).  These exemplars are focusing their efforts on areas that could change the competitive dynamics in their category. By the way, “changing competitive dynamics” is not taking a category by storm with a viral hit.  Those results, while good, are fleeting.  By competitive dynamics, we’re talking Porter’s 5 Forces here.

And this goes well beyond the typical advice offered by social media pundits.  They will tell you to think through the business objective first, before determining which social media to engage with or build.  That’s not bad advice—its just that it isn’t enough. Read More »

Best Buy’s Twitter-based customer service tool has created a lot of buzz over the last year. We asked John Bernier, Best Buy’s Social Media Steward, what makes it work behind the scenes. John is the Digital Product Line Manager and Social Media Steward at Best Buy. He develops digital products and tools for Best Buy employees and customers, while shepherding social media initiatives, such as Twelpforce.  He has worked at Best Buy since 2004, playing a variety of roles in marketing communications and marketing strategy. We spoke to him early last month. Read More »