Marketers Studio - David Berkowitz's Marketing Blog

The Shorty Awards And The Social Iceberg

Originally pubilshed in MediaPost's Social Media Insider

You're invited to an awards show, or perhaps you pay a considerable enough sum to attend. Where would you rather be, in the room with the celebrity entertainers and everyone accepting the awards, or in the basement? Or would you rather follow along at home?

A funny thing happened at the Shorty Awards, the annual event "honoring the best producers of short, real-time content." The main event often proved to be a sideshow. It perfectly demonstrated an effect I'll call the social iceberg.

The award show, held at The TimesCenter in Times Square, took place in the upstairs theater. That's where you could see comedian Aasif Mandvi and various other celebrity presenters accept their awards, or broadcast recorded speeches. This was the hot ticket. It was the proverbial iceberg tip: highly visible, but with the participation confined to the relatively few people who appeared on stage. One would likely consider this group the most influential and the most coveted, but there are limited opportunities to reach them, and many there would consider themselves unreachable.

Downstairs, the overflow room was a much different scene. Instead of comfortable seats, there were a few stools. Instead of seeing Mandvi live, you could see him on screens and occasionally hear him over the din of conversation. There were several advantages here, though: downstairs had an open bar, and it had hundreds of people talking to each other. It started off with a handful of people who showed up too late or paid too little to get into the big kids' room, and then ended up with hundreds who were happier to be there. Even with my green VIP pin that allowed me access to anywhere short of presenter Jerry Stiller's dressing room, I chose to spend my night in the dungeon.

While literally down below the main event and out of sight, this layer just below the surface included countless social media luminaries, journalists, public relations execs to the stars, and some lushes who knew where the Dominican rum was flowing. No, there weren't the celebrities, or the people who garnered enough Twitter love to earn a slot as a finalist in the awards. Yet the room was largely self-selecting: a bunch of people who would rather create a meta-event alongside the orchestrated experience, full of unexpected connections and conversations with people passionate enough about their craft to partake in creating this parallel world. For marketers that make such a big stink about conversational media, this was the venue where it was possible to have a conversation. While drinks were sponsored (thanks, brands -- you know who you are), this was largely a missed opportunity, as there weren't those conversations between brands and participants.

Then there were the people watching along at home. It helped that there was a live video stream of the event, so people who wanted to follow along could do so far better than those in the overflow room. While there was no live conversation along the lines of what happened downstairs at the event, there was much more breadth and variety in the audience, including countless people who couldn't or wouldn't travel for the occasion. This broader universe allows the best opportunity for a brand to take over the conversation. It's akin to what Nike did during the World Cup with its "Write the Future" spot. It couldn't get on the field (tip of the iceberg) or in the stands (just below the surface) but it could and did become top of mind for anyone with any remote interest in the event.

It's not always as literal a scenario as you find at the Shorties: the few people upstairs on stage and watching it live, the disorganized but social crowd below, and the remote but wider audience that tuned in. It is a fairly common form of triage, though. As a marketer, you have the opportunity to plan in advance which part of the iceberg you want to focus on, and find a way to reach those participants accordingly. 

 

Shattering the SXSW Petri Dish

You see all kinds of weird stuff in Austin, like the Xtranormal mascots

Shattering the SXSW Petri Dish
originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider 

Some time between an earthquake rattling Japan and Operation Odyssey Dawn launching to protect Libya from itself, my world was consumed by a mere four letters: SXSW. In the metaphysical sense, it seems so remote now that I wonder if South by Southwest actually occurred. In the more practical sense, this marks the start of a yearlong process to determine how much it mattered.

It's hard to describe how much of a bubble Austin is during SXSW. One day, I visited the Meebo lounge and viewed a demonstration that had Yahoo News running in the background. I was so distracted by the idea that there was news happening somewhere beyond downtown Austin that I momentarily lost track of the demo.

SXSW is a Petri dish. All of us attendees were microbes colliding in close proximity, reacting to each other in unpredictable ways as outside forces -- marketers, app developers, conference organizers, food trucks, friends -- manipulated our environment. Then there was the meta-Petri dish, the collective attention focused on Austin by outside observers who at times could interact with the microbes.

The experiments now take their most interesting shape as the Petri dish is destroyed and the microbes fly back to their native environments around the world. Will the microbes act the same way in their native environments as they did in the dish? Will the native environments allow the experiments to keep taking shape? Have the microbes themselves changed in any way?

These aren't mere philosophical puzzles. The answers determine what, if anything, becomes the next Twitter or Foursquare, or what becomes any of the other thousands of technologies that appeared at SXSW one year only to fade into oblivion. Here are some practical examples of Petri dish effects to monitor:

Foursquare: With its relaunch timed for SXSW, the emphasis returned to racking up points for bragging rights. When I checked in at Austin Bergstrom International Airport, I got points for returning to Texas, traveling 1,000 miles, and checking in with various friends. Now I'm back to my typical schedule of home-work-lunch-work-maybe do something remotely interesting at night. How can I care about points again when the only way to top my inflated SXSW total is by going to SXSW 2012? Will people who weren't at SXSW care about points more because they didn't rage on point steroids in Austin?

Plancast: Should SXSW just acquire this site? This is the second straight SXSW where it seems like everyone I know used it, but I barely heard about it for eleven and a half months in between conferences. The Google Trends graph tells enough of the story. Note that when you try to view the trend for plancast.com under Websites, there's not enough data.

Hashable: For a few days, Hashable inspired some people to go without business cards and exchange information via the site and app. That was a great idea, until I came back, tried following up with people, and realized that I couldn't easily access some of their contact information; often the most I'd get is a Twitter ID. Does Hashable even work if you're not in the Petri dish? It didn't work well enough in the dish, so it will need to find a way to complement analog but user-friendly business cards without trying to replace them.

GroupMe: This group texting app stands a chance at surviving during the 360 non-SXSW days a year as teenage girls figure out how much fun it is to form private cliques, excommunicate former friends, and make their peers cry. Then, come March 9, 2012, every technology enthusiast will care about this again.

There are plenty of other technologies that got a lot of buzz but won't matter for a while, if ever. Most of the social check-in apps fall into this bucket. Beyond Facebook Places, which has scale, and SCVNGR, which is more about gaming, Foursquare's enhancements have made most of the other such apps irrelevant.

Then there are the technologies that get their share of buzz for meeting needs that safely no one has. Exhibit A: Bump.com, which allows you to register your license plate and communicate with other drivers. As a Manhattanite, I don't drive much, but when I do, most of the things I wish I could say to other drivers would make George Carlin blush in heaven. Yes, there are marketing applications of this technology. No, that's not a reason for marketers to use it.

What's far more common, away from all the hype and contests that bribe people to try an app, is to encounter people toiling away at making their great ideas better and using SXSW as an academy rather than a megaphone. A personal favorite of this breed is Skweal, which allows consumers to directly contact business owners and potentially keep negative feedback off public social sites. Personally, I think the focus now is too negative, as consumers can also share positive feedback, but it does fill a need for business owners and consumers, and it may well take off.

It's jarring coming back from Austin and adjusting to the real world of alarm clocks and conference rooms and hours of responding to email. Now that the Petri dish is shattered, though, there's a chance to discover what really mattered, how big an impact SXSW has made, and how many more dreams a few days in Austin will inspire. 

 

SXSW's Tower of Babel

Occasionally SXSW attendees like Jeremiah Owyang would look up from their mobile devices to have a conversation. This is proof.

SXSW's Tower of Babel
originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider 

"If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other." - Genesis 11:6-7

Picture this, as Sophia says on "The Golden Girls." It's Austin, 2011. You're at the most buzzed-about interactive media event in the world. You want to meet up with a couple of friends at one of the better parties among at least a dozen viable options happening right now. What do you do?

This should be the easiest thing ever. Here are tens of thousands of early adopters or wannabe early adopters spending most of their time well within a one mile radius of a walkable city's convention center. Most people will discover they're connected to each other within three degrees, and often fewer. Even for someone who's new to interactive media and coming to South by Southwest (SXSW) for the first time, just by standing on a busy street corner he or she will likely run into at least 10 people they know within the hour. Everyone has a smartphone, many have more than one, and mobile social technologies have made it easier to communicate with each other than ever before. That's the theory, at least.

Then along comes SXSW, today's incarnation of the Tower of Babel. Here's how people are really communicating and trying to get together.

Foursquare is extremely popular here. If you're near a venue that's buzzing, you'll see how many people are there. You can also scan your friends' recent check-ins and see if any kind of consensus formed or they're all over the map. That's a start.

Then there's Gowalla, which got a boost from its Mashable partnership. You can get notifications if friends are near you, but it doesn't have the scale to find friends. Some people are using it to rack up virtual stamps, win tickets to the Gowalla party, and keep track of what they've done.  There are many other check-in apps out there, but also because of scale, people aren't currently using SCVNGR, Whrrl, Loopt, or Facebook Places en masse to find friends.

Many attendees here are broadcasting their check-ins on Twitter, and sometimes Facebook. That provides a stream of disorganized content for people here, and a stream of worthless content for just about everyone else.

You can find your friends via personal messages via Facebook or Twitter. How are you going to see the messages, though? Do you turn on mobile alerts? Do you get messages delivered via email? Do you check your apps here and there? And then will they in turn see the message soon enough for it to matter?

Getting back to basics, email helps, but it generally adds to the clutter, and it's too unstructured, especially when coordinating with more than one person. Text messages (SMS) are useful for coordinating with one person, and it's often the first choice when friends want to touch base quickly. I've probably sent and received a couple hundred texts over the long weekend without relying on it heavily. On occasion, the whole phone thing works, but you can't talk during a session or a loud party. One of the only calls I made to someone here was a pocket dial.

Group texting is taking off, with the clear winners being GroupMe and Beluga. My first experience with GroupMe wasn't a good one, as I signed on via SMS and soon found my phone flooded with a rambling stream from a group of 25 people. There's also an app that can make the whole thing more tolerable. Beluga's app happened to work better for me, and some here are betting on it since it was acquired by Facebook. Interestingly, I heard nothing about other supposedly hot chat apps like Kik. While I'm not a BlackBerry user, I'm sure BlackBerry Messenger proved useful too, and GroupMe in particular should be concerned if the rumors are true that BBM will soon come out for Android and iPhone. Then it will be Facebook vs. BlackBerry, and little else will matter.

If you want to know what a lot of the geekier folks were using (as if all this isn't geeky enough), look to Hashable, and in particular its mobile app. You enter the Twitter name or email of someone you met and exchange contact information via the app, or you can give a public shout-out to someone you hang out with. It works very well, and some people I met who didn't have business cards were dependent on it. What I'm wondering is how easily I'll be able to grab Hashable contacts' information and follow up with them once I'm back home. It may work very well, but it presents a new change in user behavior. [Update: It was easy to access many connections' info and email them after, but some may need to register before I can reach them.]

The Tower of Babel metaphor fits too well. While I don't subscribe to divine retribution, we can see firsthand that when so many people are striving to achieve so much in changing the fundamental nature of how we communicate, a period of chaos ensues. The difference is that when this all of shakes out, we'll be in a far better position to speak the same language, and instantly connect with people around the world  -- some of whom may be walking right by us. It took a few thousand years, but mankind finally won. Nothing will be impossible for us. 

 

 

RFID and NFC presentation from SXSW

Whoa, that title's a mouthful. Interested in radio frequency identification (RFID) or near field communications (NFC)? Have no clue what either are? I hope the talk I'm giving at South by Southwest (SXSW) will be useful for both audiences, and I welcome your feedback. Slides are below, the short link is bit.ly/sxswnfc, and further resources appear at the end.

Thanks to Dan Shust for having me as part of SXSW's Future 15 convergence series. Tweet him the word "gimme" to get his slides on convergence trends - great stuff.

How Near Field Communications (NFC) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Will Change Mobile - SXSW 2011

View more presentations from David Berkowitz

A Mzungu's Guide to Social Africa

"Mzungu" means white person, such as the one pictured here at Zanzibar Serena Inn. "Mshamba" refers to a country hick, and it's so insulting that the shopkeeper made me insist I wasn't buying the shirt for a friend.

A Mzungu's Guide to Social Africa
orignially published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider 

Jambo! Karibu! All around Tanzania, people would greet us mzungus (white people) shouting, "Hello!" and, "Welcome!" and it felt like the most social and hospitable place on earth. I was convinced, midway through my February travels through Africa, that I'd come home and start waving to young children on the subway after getting into that habit while abroad. So far, I've held back.

Unlike my December trip to South America, I was fine staying somewhat connected digitally while in South Africa, Tanzania's mainland, Zanzibar, and Amsterdam during 17 days away. While visiting places that felt so foreign (I'll take getting woken up by monkeys instead of garbage trucks any day), it was fun to have a few comforts of home with me. That included dabbling in social media, often with unexpected results.

Facebook kept me the most connected with my friends and family. A series of 11 photos in my Mobile Uploads album charts the progress of the trip: souvenirs in Amsterdam's airport, cheetahs and schoolchildren near South Africa's Kruger game reserve, penguins in Cape Town (including a Cat Paint version), a Serengeti hot air balloon ride, the beaches of Zanzibar, and finally a strange reaction to oversized teacups back in the Netherlands. Since I've returned, I've been in the process of sharing hundreds of others, but the first batch does provide an apt summary, and it tells a natural story precisely because it wasn't clear day to day what would unfold.

A major part of the value of using Facebook while in transit came from friends' recommendations. When I mentioned I was in South Africa, my friend Tom Lynch offered winery recommendations for Cape Town. I hadn't realized that he started a South African wine importing business Worthwhile Wine, and his recommendations proved fruitful (pardon the pun). Later, as I sought to make the most of my stopover in Amsterdam, more than a dozen people chimed in with great ideas.

I basically avoided Twitter. It's more for work than for personal use for me, and I didn't want to work while away. I ran a few cross-posts from other social services, one job-related retweet plugging a client's campaign, and a couple "twout of twoffice" updates that I pre-scheduled via HootSuite to warn about my slow response times.

On Foursquare, thanks to the reliable Internet access at Djuma Vuyatela Lodge in South Africa and then the Zanzibar Serena Inn, I was able to become mayor of each property. Travel mayorships are fun but ephemeral, as there will inevitably be a tech savvy visitor staying for longer who will swoop in and steal it. My own contributions of tips may be more lasting.

I used Gowalla initially to get some country pins, and the South African flag is so stylish that I'm proud to sport it on my profile. It's also one app of too few today that seamlessly shares with Tumblr, so you'll see a bunch of check-ins on my makeshift Tumblr feed.

The biggest surprises during the trip came from FoodSpotting. When I was at the South African lodge Djuma Vuyatela, the food was among the best I've had anywhere. I had to share a couple selections on FoodSpotting. When you use the app in New York or San Francisco, you'll often find dozens of dishes within a couple tenths of a mile. Where I was, the closest dish spotted was 35 miles away, and the next closest was 63 miles away. That's why I was floored when, a day after posting a photo of crepes with strawberries and mascarpone cheese at Djuma, I received a comment on the photo from lodge owner Jurie Moolman thanking me for the compliment. My photos of the crepes and lamb chops are currently the only ones appearing for that property, so perhaps you'll see more there soon.

At Dornier Wines' Bodega restaurant in Cape Town's wine region, I had an extraordinary meal of flammkuchen, which is essentially a German twist on pizza also known as tarte flambée. After sharing a photo of that dish and the kudu steak entrée on FoodSpotting, the winery's owner friended me on Facebook.

One other app isn't necessarily social, but it was the best conversation-starter. I have the Star Walk app on my iPhone, but I had never used it, as you don't see too many stars in New York unless you've got front row seats during Fashion Week. When I checked out the app at Djuma, where WiFi worked even in outdoor common areas, everyone became a stargazer.

As for social media, the most use I'll get out of it is now, as I bombard Facebook, Flickr, and TripAdvisor with updates so that other mzungus (and anyone else) can see Africa for themselves, and learn where to get the best flammkuchen. 

 

Partner Plug: Join BDI for The Social Consumer Event March 23

Marketers Studio is an official media sponsor of this event. You can read my media sponsorship policy here.

For additional information, including registration, please click here to visit the event website. Use promo code MS for a discounted rate of$155.

Date: Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Time: 8:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Location: The Graduate Center of the City University of New York; 365 Fifth Avenue; New York, NY 10016
Registration Fee: $195
Website: http://www.bdionline.com/socialconsumer2011.html

About the Event:
We all know that consumer behavior is rapidly changing. This half-day conference will showcase very specific case studies that demonstrate how leading brands engage, influence and service consumers through innovative social programs.

We will answer the following questions:

• How are brands using content strategy and content marketing as valuable currency to attract and retain customers and prospects?
• What are specific examples of how consumer marketers provide better customer service through social CRM?
• How do you embrace mobile social strategies including location based programs to increase sales and strengthen your brand?
• How are leading brands engaging customers through social games?
• What are the best examples of how leading e-commerce brands embrace social commerce to increase sales and provide better service?
• How does Facebook's open graph and the explosion of the "like button" impact consumer marketing?
• How do leading organizations use and integrate social data to shape and refine their marketing and communications strategy?
• How do leading brands organize themselves to integrate social with their overall marketing, communications and customer service platforms?

Speakers:
David Berkowitz, Director of Emerging Media & Client Strategy, 360i
Bonin Bough, Director of Social Media, PepsiCo
Stacie Bright, Senior Communications Marketing Manager, Unilever
Marcy Cohen, Senior Manager, Social Media, Sony Electronics, Inc.
Mark Fishkin, VP Digital Sales and Marketing, Wall Street Journal Digital Network
Julie Lee, Executive Director, Engagement Management, Organic, Inc. for Kimberly-Clark's Kotex Brand
David Weiner, PepsiCo 

Hotel Sponsor: The Roger Smith Hotel is the official hotel of BDI's events. Use promo code BDI for 10% off rate by clicking here. 

Sponsors:
PRNewswire / MultiVu ; The Wall Street Journal Digital Network; Adrants; International Association of Business Communicators - New York;ipTVevangelist; MarketersStudio.com; Mashable; National Association for Female Executives; New York University School of Continuting and Professional Studies ; New York American Marketing Association; PR News; Social Media Club; Social Media Today   

For additional information, including registration, please click here to visit the event website. Use promo code MS for a discounted rate of$155.