Hee-Haw Marketing

Brooks on Psychology

David Brooks had a pretty cool article discussing the drawbacks of evolutionary psychology in Friday's NY Times. In it he says:

"But individuals aren’t formed before they enter society. Individuals are created by social interaction. Our identities are formed by the particular rhythms of maternal attunement, by the shared webs of ideas, symbols and actions that vibrate through us second by second. Shopping isn’t merely a way to broadcast permanent, inborn traits. For some people, it’s also an activity of trying things on in the never-ending process of creating and discovering who they are.'

My initial reaction to that paragraph was praise for the fantastic insight. Although, within a few minutes, the beauty of the language had worn off a bit and I was left with the sort of - well, no shit - feeling.

All these arguments tend to group themselves into neat little categories. Nature vs. nurture, good vs. bad, rational vs. emotional, when most of our world is far too complex and illogical to paint with such broad strokes. I mean really, it's in our nature to believe we are more of a product of nurture. It's our emotions that cause us to ascribe rationality to subconscious thought processes. It can be the bad in us that causes us to judge others for things we deem bad. We're all shades of gray swimming through overwhelming inputs seeking efficiency of story, often at the sacrifice of objective reality.

No real point here, but just got me thinking that a little balance, a little moderation of thought and humility could probably do us all some good.

Now time for you to say, "Well, no shit."

Meet the Yim Gnome. He Wants to Eat You.

Perhaps our relationship ended too quickly. We didn't give each other the proper time and care that allow relationships to survive and thrive. What can I say? Work got in the way. There were fights. He kept trying to eat me.

Plus he still had the stench of Kaitlyn on his breathe, which was difficult to take.

Anyway, with regards to Whrrl and Lauren over at Swarm Collective, I give you my evening with Yim Gnome.

The Shirky Doctrine

Clay Shirky at TED: How Twitter Can Make History

"In a world where media is global, social, ubiquitous and cheap, in a world where the former audience are now increasingly full participants, in that world media is less and less often about crafting a single message to be consumed by individuals. It’s more and more often a way of creating an environment for convening and supporting groups."

Top Non-Entertainment Brands on Facebook

Social brands clearly don't become so because of their social media strategy. They are so because of who they are. It's the fundamental misunderstanding that make those that call themselves "social media experts" questionable at best. The moment you label yourself by that name, you've removed yourself from the parts of the conversation that actually make brands work in the space. Instead they become tasked with building facebook pages, resizing twitter backgrounds until they fit, randomly following anyone who unfortunately utters a phrase remotely related to the products they sell.

And so I'm not misunderstood, much of that is still important. Understanding the nomenclature, the ability to differentiate and remain interesting in social spaces is critical. But doing so in a vacuum is merely a series of band-aids, not dissimilar to a brands sales spike during peaks in an advertising cycle. GM may know a thing or two about that.

But 20 of the top 200 fan pages on facebook are brand-related, minus entertainment, and that may sound pretty good. 10% would actually be more than I expected, frankly.

But a closer look would reveal a slew of unofficial pages fed by their fans, random memes, stuff like that. 11 of them are official, the largest of which was a true fan page that was taken over by the brand (in a good way). And of the top 20, only 16 companies are actually represented. Anyway, interesting to see how basic the vast majority of these fan pages actually are. Most didn't need to be tricked up too much, people wanted to share them already.

Point being - solving the social media problem means solving the social problem, which doesn't have much to do with social media.

8.      Coca-Cola      3,462,807 (unofficial, then given to or purchased by brand)
10.      Nut ella      3,205,591 (unofficial)
18.      Pringles      2,774,256 (official, doing some videos, etc.)
40.      Starbucks Coffee Company      2,307,465 (official, good feed)
55.      adidas Originals      1,944,196 (official)
61.      McDonald's      1,870,132 (unofficial)
100.      Toblerone      1,496,941 (unofficial)
105.      Nike Shoes      1,463,321 (unofficial)
109.      Converse All Star      1,450,969 (unofficial)
112.      CONVERSE      1,418,670 (unofficial)
120.      REESE'S      1,380,962 (official, doing some interesting stuff with college program)
132.      OREO cookies      1,334,269 (official)
139.      Starbucks Frappuccino      1,297,731 (official)
158.      PUMA      1,212,972 (official)
172.      ipods      1,175,028 (unofficial)
178.      oreos      1,166,410 (unofficial)
187.      H&M      1,133,591 (official, applications)
188.      MTV      1,133,246 (official)
189.     MTV     1,129,701 (unofficial)
194.      Red Bull      1,103,357 (official, good feed, applications)

Ranking via PageData Photo via Nicky Deez

Phoenix Phandom

First there was the Phoenix Lisztomania official video.

Then there was the much cooler piece of fandulation with the brat pack mashup.

And finally, similar to a movie remake, here's today's take on the brat pack mashup (called the brooklyn brat pack mashup). Very cool stuff.

It's interesting how these kinds of mashups tend to make for good introductions. For that video, a good amount of views probably just came from Phoenix fans looking to hear more of the music, but all the positive associations with the brat pack allowed new listeners to then shift their interest to the music, as well. Similar to how Roni used this video to transfer interest from a bunch of ad geeks like me.

I would assume the bulk of this mashup stuff isn't necesarily about transferance, but it certainly does seem to have particular implications for brands trying to create higher involvement from a low involvement category.