Archives: Social Media

Move over 40 Under 40 recipients...(myself, included)!

These up and comers are making waves as Forbes’ 30 Under 30. From advertising to journalism, these young bucks are shaking up their perspective industries while challenging the status quo.

http://www.forbes.com/special-report/2011/30-under30-12/30-under-30-12_m...

So I see AIGA (our design industry association) has just launched a new Web site http://www.aiga.org

They state the new features include:

Enhanced profile pages (exclusive to members)
Ability to share links and write short blog posts (exclusive to members)
Conversations, a place to bring up topics for discussion and ask questions
Tools & Resources, a section that collects all of AIGA’s advice—articles, case studies, publication and more—in one convenient spot
Why Design, an area devoted to design’s capacity to benefit society
Chapter spotlights and featured student portfolios
A more visual experience overall

Just wondering what others think of the new version.

Our clients are always looking at new ways to bring awareness of their business value and/or products to new customers. They hire us to think of out of the box ideas (and sometime in the box) to drive awareness and promote selection within their markets. So I love it when I see organic ideas like this one http://tinyurl.com/3pjrb7z pop up. The Greenwood-Phinney Chamber was working on a better way to market the neighborhood to bring customers into shops, restaurants and art galleries. So they are developing a website that is focused on promoting neighborhood businesses with a tag line "Do Phinneywood." In this day in age it's crucial for company's to be able to communicate who they are and why they matter in an effective and captivating way to their customers, online. It looks like the Greenwood-Phinney chamber gets that. Although the site is not live yet, I hope it will feature areas for people to post and make comments and potentially rate the businesses they frequent. At PBDH we've developed many organic sites (similar to what this one will hopefully be) that rely on realtime dynamic content from users/customers to promote the business they patron. It's paid off for our clients as I hope it will for this fabulous neighborhood!

Mobile usage is continuing to grow at lightning speeds, and with that, our connectivity to the digital world is becoming merely an extension of our daily lives and routines. It is estimated that 788 million people will access the web solely through their mobile device by 2015 and many will use it for activities other than talking. Our digital footprints or data, along with geographic location-based services, will only allow more companies and applications to tap into our mobile device's capabilities and serve up deals that "reward" us for our behaviors with targeted, customized, and on the spot special offers.

Hotels will continue to reward loyal guests with free nights for more Foursquare check-ins. Living Social will drive traffic to certain businesses by offering us deals tailored to our location and time of day. And new apps like
LocoPing will track our history and give us the ability to connect with people/other users we may have encountered within the last 24 hours (at a convention, in an office building, or at the local coffee shop). And just yesterday, the introduction of Google Wallet. Wow.

And companies can work together to share this data to cross-sell and expand their customer base. Data and the technology used to process that data, can offer more relevant, personalized and rewarding service to all of us, which in theory improves our daily lives. But at what cost?
What's the trade off between exposing more personal interconnected information, and gaining more social currency (whether credits, points, badges, or connections from the past 24-hours)? Just maybe pulling out the good old pros & cons list will help:

Pros:

• You get the information tailored to you in the right moment, making your life better.
• You're "connected" everywhere you go, all the time.

Cons:

• Your personal information and life is transparent and exposed.
• You're "connected" everywhere you go, all the time.

Obviously there are pluses and minuses to having our lives increasingly interconnected with the mobile web, and much of it is based on personal preference. I for one am interested in striking a fine balance between human life, content sharing and technology. I'll adopt some of these tools, but with caution in so that I don't become interchangeable with my mobile device.

This was the old thinking if you changed your logo: make a big splash. The reasoning is sound. Use the redesign as a marketing opportunity—a chance to introduce audiences to the sexy new mark and control the story. "Big splash" and "control" were the benefits of this approach.

Now, social media has taken "big splash" to a whole new scale while making "control" a lot harder to achieve. In the last month or so, we've launched two new identities, one for Marylhurst University and the other for Woodland Park Zoo (with help from Betty White). Both have big groups of engaged audiences who are active on social media. While the challenge was the same—introduce audiences to the new identities—the organizations used different approaches to their respective unveilings. Marylhurst University debuted the new mark at well-attended on-campus events and on Facebook as part of a comprehensive brand launch. Woodland Park Zoo unveiled the new mark—without a specific announcement—at Thrive, the Zoo's fund-raising event, and has so far left Facebook out of it. Two very different approaches. And there are pros and cons to each. Here's a high-level overview of these different approaches.

Approach: "Hard" Launch, inclusive of social media.

Pros:
— Transparency. Lets audiences understand exactly what's happening and why.
— Momentum. Builds excitement and signals change.
— Definitive. Creates a pivot point between the past and the future.

Cons:
— Criticism. The reaction to new identities is—almost always—universally negative. See the comments on the Starbucks page for that company's new logo. (Howard Schultz is widely regarded as a marketing genius, but that didn't stop the first commenter from calling him a "bonehead." That's exactly the the kind of illogical, emotional response new identities engender.) This does not mean they aren't great identities. What it means is that we're hardwired to dislike something new that replaces something we're already familiar with. (But fast forward just a few weeks, and most all the dislike is gone.)

Approach: "Soft" Launch, without social media.

Pros:
— No Criticism (or, at least, less criticism). By not overtly calling attention to the new design, the mark is introduced in context, without inviting any debate about whether it's liked or disliked. At its core, social media asks us to "like" or "dislike" something—either by saying so explicitly, or commenting on something shared. If the coming-out party for a new identity doesn't include social media, the platform for this "like" or "dislike" conversation is greatly reduced. But that comes at a cost . . .

Cons:
— No Conversation. While weathering an initial storm of criticism (see: The Gap) can be hard on any organization, most case studies show that this criticism is temporary and, given a chance, new identities eventually win people over. Don't believe me? See any redesigned logo for a professional sports team. Did the new logo initially freak fans out? Almost always. Did people stop coming to the ballpark or, even more tellingly, stop buying merchandise with the logo on it? Not a chance. Besides, criticism is a form of engagement, and engagement is what everyone wants for their brand. In Marylhurst's case, some early negative feedback by students even led to bigger discussions about governance, which in turn inspired the revamping of student government. Change inspires change. And that is healthy.

Both approaches are effective, and it's likely one is more-suited to your organization. It's just important to know the benefits—and costs—of each.