Category: SXSW ’08

Saturday, March 8th 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Tom Parish CEO, Tom Parish Inc
Brian Magierski Chief Dev Officer, BSG Alliance Corporation
Michael Smith Exec Dir, USAA
Ynema Mangum Exec Producer, BMC Software Inc
Rohit Bhargava SVP, Digital Marketing, Ogilvy

Why are CxO’s afraid of social media and social networking? How can they leverage social media with a social marketing strategy for business growth?

I think this panel was smart, but they didn’t really talk about metrics of social media. They didn’t really touch on how they track what they do at their companies (if anything?), so metrics weren’t really covered at all. The title was very misleading. We heard how to sell them, but not showing what it does after it is sold. There was even a question in the middle of the presentation to try and steer it back to metrics, but they still avoided it or talked around it. They just didn’t have anything real to say.

What is it about the CFO, CEO, why are they afraid of social marketing when there are no metrics?
Loss of control – how do you deal w/social media and control in a way you’re used to? You can’t!
The idea of impressions vs. engagements. I you’re looking for impressions – use a bad google adwords campaign. This isn’t effective. You want to measure time spent and who’s coming.

What is the big pushback? There are very different perspectives of social media looking at risks. What social media could do to the company. Brand control. HR is concerned about losing people. CEO: if i don’t do this will bad things happen to us? Is it in the company/shareholder best interest?

The control point is the biggy. It is a big loss of control. Old: you control message. New: fulfilling an experience out there. What is the harm? This is the direction things are moving and is how companies will compete in the future and you’ll need to embrace it at some point. The big issue is companies don’t normally offer a good company experience and by opening the doors all of that comes out.

Why? What Advice can you give a manager of a company with no social media experience?
Have people driving the community from bottom up and top down. The top down is important for meeting in the middle. The high ups need to be involved in the social media. Peer pressure is a last resort that works – find a colleague doing it and get them going. Teach them how to listen more effectively about what people are saying. Sometimes is is very eye-opening. They are already looking at traditional media is saying – why not pay attention to the social media – what real people are saying.

Is it important to self-assess your readiness for social media?
Phases 1. start listening 2. participate and listen 3. start leading (tools or platforms)
There are horizontal benefits in productivity when introduced internally. This shows that it could work externally as well. You have to be very confident in product/service before jumping in. Fix things first then dive into the conversation marketing.

What dept should be considered when thinking about social networking strategy?
Metrics will vary by dept. Marketing is much harder (hard to prove marketing). Watching blog articles or comments on the articles. There needs to be a new tool to measure social networking metrics. Getting smarter about what you measure. Very important things that can’t be measured. Count the number of times a product is mentioned in comments or if your message gets out in the “watering holes” of your product.

Questions:
How do you aggregate metrics or is there a score of their presence on the web for some sort of term?
-If you know where all of these are you an put these together for yourself. A social media report card of sorts by a vendor. You can put in all the places things exist and it will track it

Saturday, March 8th 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm

Henry Jenkins Co-Dir of CMS, MITDir of CMS, MIT
Steven Johnson CEO, outside.in

Dumbing down of pop culture of youth are the kids really “dumbing down”? Never underestimate the ability of parents to see their kids as dumb. They simply don’t understand what they are doing and are threatened. Young people are always (and always have been) early adopters of technology and will always look for ways to hide the things they do from their parents. Parental reaction to this (things they don’t know) is usually bad. They see the things they know becoming less and in turn the new “scary” things are bad.

There are many new literacys coming out of this that aren’t looked at. Is there evidence these new skills are there – how do you test for these skills. Maybe traditional skills are down, but there are quite a few new skills that quickly replace them and they aren’t being looked at or tested.

Knowledge of the crowd: There is more knowledge in 30 students in the classroom than there is in the one teacher in front of the class. It is the Encyclopedia Britannica model vs. Wikipedia. But how do we test this collective knowledge or bring it to the surface?

There are many new things coming out all the time. Even though you don’t think they are interesting that doesn’t mean they are bad or uninteresting or meaningful to others. People in general aren’t idiots, they do things for a reason. It is a matter of looking into that reason or why all these people are into something.

Which is better reality TV or Lost? Or The Wire vs. Lost. The Wire is more traditional tv where Lost has a huge community figuring things out online on their own and surround and push the show. What is wrong with America when someone spends 3 days creating a Lost map based on screen grabs and they aren’t stretched mentally in their job? There is a lot of potential there to go above and beyond or get people interested in the workplace if they’re willing to go to that extent for just a TV show community.

In a hunting society, kids play with bows and arrows. In an information society, kids play with information. What is the new information kids like? Kids today are more entrepreneurial and more political and less violent than ever before. They are much more engaged at many more levels. Looking at “we” vs. “I” in language used by kids vs. adults.

In this information society where people don’t stay in one place as long do we be part of community or be civically engaged. Games are taking that place. We take our friends with us on our back (facebook/myspace).

Saturday, March 8th 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm
John Gruber Raconteur, Daring Fireball
Michael Lopp Apple Inc

What is in the word “Design” – Deign, Sin, Sign

Good Design: The Mentos Box (the presenter used my of Mentos from Wikipedia!). It has a latch and it works well. This is one of those items where the design is invisible and it just works.

Design is a present – an unintentional discover you make
Gruber’s Present theory:
1. Open before Christmas
2. Open on Christmas – love the build-up
Apple designed for #2 – if you look online what other company do you see unboxing photos for?

OSX is framed by the Mac which is framed by the packaging which is framed by the Apple Store which is framed by the excitement of the keynote.

How does Apple do this?
screw up A LOT!
set the bar very high for themselves (pain fear blood)

-fear of design feedback
-fear of critics – there is no barrier to entry for design opinion for aesthetic things
-fear of ponies – people who want a pony something that is out of reach that they just want but can’t have – tough to deal with when those people have power over you.

Apple does pixel perfect mock-ups everything needs to look just right
10 to 3 to 1 – start with 10 (good!) designs down to 3 down to one – you get a lot of room to do the design then.

Paired Design Meetings:
1. Brainstorm (no rules)
2. Production (how it works)
3. The pony meetings where the bosses get in their 2 cents and help select the best mock-ups – get their opinions in there. It brings them into the meeting and into the project.

————

The better the design work, the less resistance there will be- NOT TRUE

“Better necessarily implies different” Different = Scary (something out of place notice and be worried of)
Comfortable is not great

It needs to be “exactly the same but better (different).” This doesn’t really make sense. How it it possible?

“Don’t try to be original, just try to be good.” -Paul Rand
the key is “try to” – you don’t create great design by trying to be original.

If you want something to look good in 20 years, project back 20 years and see if it would have looked good today.

We looked into the history of the IBM logo, UPS, and ABC logos by Paul Rand and the subtle differences between refreshes of those logos. You have to be able to say “no” and sometimes you have to be the bad guy. A designer is expected to be clever and people expect more. Are you willing to be called difficult? don’t compromise, don’t plea bargain.

Saturday, March 8th 11:30 am – 12:30 pm
Henry Copeland Founder, Blogads.com
Steve Hall Publisher, Adrants
Jeff Jarvis Blogger/Prof, Buzzmachine/CUNY
Rebecca Lieb VP & Editor-in-Chief, The ClickZ Network
Charlotte Selles Global Brand Mgr, Beam Global

Molson
ads on facebook – send us photos of use of their product (aka f’d up) – win a trip to Cancun

Carlton Beer
youtube video crowd of people showing beer bottle very viral – bad because you don’t know what the ad was for

PayPerPost
pay bloggers to post about products – mom got kids to smash camera because they want HP camera

Wal-Marting Across America
blog of family going across US in RV stopping at Wal-Marts on their way

SUXOR WINNER: HP and the mother blogger

Rahodeb
whole foods – CEO posted on forums on how wild oats was a bad co so that their price would go down and they could buy them

Cisco Human Network
wikipedia article on “the human network created by cisco” shill and get bloggers to write about it – socialize the term on the internet

Mentos/Diet Coke
When it first started, mentos jumped on board, but coke said this is crazy. coke finally came around – first they didn’t get it and said they didn’t get it but jumped on board after it took off and made it look like they got it.

Vespa
found people who actually used Vespa and got them to group blog about it – vespa lost interest and stopped talking to the bloggers and not return their phone calls – the blog died and went down and because anti-vespa

SUXOR WINNER: Cisco Human Network

Agency.com/Subway
going to work for subway video – ad agency putting together a pitch for subway to try and get the campaign. made a laughing stock

Target Rounders
have college kids talk about target on facebook and fake buzz marketing to get discounts etc. http://www.kayesweetser.com/archives/58 Bloggers found out and ran them into the ground because it wasn’t authentic.

Giuliani Campaign
his myspace page was closed and set to private after it was created – couldn’t get to info – they did nothing w/internet raised very little money etc.

All I Want for Christmas is a PSP
Fake blog about “charlie” who only wanted a psp for christmas – backfired. comments: good job turning your consumers off your product – everybody knew it was a fake

SUXOR WINNER: Agency.com Subway

Marie Digby (bonus contestant)
cover of a song “umbrella” on YouTube – not an impromptu video on youtube because she was signed and it was professionally shot though called one

Rules to avoid SUXOR campaigns: don’t lie – don’t corrupt us – don’t take advantage of folks (family bloggers etc.) – don’t get caught.

OVERALL SUXOR WINNER:
HP – PayPerPost woman has kids smash competing camera

Questions:

decent campaigns – just lacking transparency – why is it a big deal to be transparent?
-no real rules yet since it is still new

Would some of these be as successful if they wouldn’t have lied?
-some, but not all – full disclosure should happen

Saturday, March 8th 10:00 am – 11:00 am
Moderator: Anastasia Goodstein Publisher, Ypulse

Seven kids aged 12-17 answered questions about how they use the internet, mobile phones, and new media.

What are you favorite sites?
goodreads.com – find new books and book reviews
purevideo.com
myspace – like custom design and all friends are on it, used to communicate
facebook – use this more than myspace (this kid was looking at colleges and his friends were moving to facebook and away from myspace)
digg.com – finding news and game sites
mixmatters – find mix tapes and new music
17.com – find makeup and hairstyles, didn’t like that they didn’t show yo how to create the hairstyles
hipster.com
runescape – ORPG

*several of the kids admitted that they lied about their age on myspace because they were too young. They all had a myspace account, but only two (the older ones) had facebook. Those that had facebook said they liked it better and it seemed to be a maturity thing.

What annoys you about websites?
Ads and pop-ups!
NBA.com shows Miller ads in the videos
A friend’s myspace account was invaded and they got inappropriate videos
Additional crap loading on a site slowing it down when it isn’t necessary

How do you use MySpace?
It really hasn’t changed that much to make it better – facebook adds new things and has cool games and addons
All friends are on myspace, which is why it is used
Myspace gets used like e-mail for communication

Do you still use email?
only use email to register for things (created to get a myspace sign-in)
Use it to contact teachers
Email gets used more for professional contact (jobs or schools or college apps)
*none of them really use IM “we did when we were younger”

What phone do you have and how do you use it?
LG music phone – unlimited txt don’t use data because it is too expensive
Just got Blackberry Pearl – used for email SAT questions, play pac-man – data is too expensive
Trackphone – only for emergency – usually don’t have it charged
Older Sprint phone – call and txt – some games
Sony – listen to music – voice – no txt – some games
Verizon LG Camera phone 500 txt (not enough) – $3 ringtones – camera – no data too expensive
*they could all live w/out their phones

Do you use virtual worlds?
xbox live
zwinky (?)
yahoo avatars

Questions:

Would you take a photo/video for an ad campaign?
–for youtube some of them have created content but not really for ads

Do you consume news content – where?
-digg.com, google news – nobody used news agencies (cnn, nyt, etc)

Can you make changes from the web (PETA)
-not really, or not interested

Do you watch TV/movies online?
-vimeo to find cool stuff to watch
-watch missed shows on nbc.com or other network sites
-daily show
-DVR use is high

*All of the kids knew how to get around content blocking proxies etc.