Twitter for Madmen

I may be the last person who knows about this, but as I’m a fan of Madmen, I just had to share this in case it went by any other Madmen fans who read this blog.

Betty Draper is on Twitter.  (Latest Tweet: “Staring at myself in the toaster.”) So is Roger Sterling, Joan Harris and others.

Since the series started, fans of the show have created fictional Twitter accounts for there favorite Madmen characters.  In fact there are as many as 90, according to Brand Fiction Factory, a company that develops online content for brands and companies engaging with consumers through social media.  Indeed Brand Fiction Factory writers are the real world minds behind 16 of these accounts and they were recently named as a SAMMY Awards finalist in the category Best Twitter Branding Campaign for their Madmen endeavours. If I understand correctly, these writers weren’t paid, but created the content out of their love for the show, so this may be the first time we’ve seen a fan-based campaign recognized in this way.  That is if you can really call it a campaign.

Hat’s off to AMC, the company that produces Madmen, for recognizing the power behind this fan-based enthusiasm to intensify involvement and commitment to the series.  It’s amazing when you think about it.  The fans are extending the fictional narrative beyond television, and AMC has relinquished control and let them go with it.

I imagine Twitter could be used in a similar way for certain iconic brands to fuel the myth and stories that surround them and strengthen the emotional connection with their users.  What would The Marlboro Man tweet about, I wonder?  “Just back from the rodeo, my ass feels like silly putty and I need a bourbon and smoke.” He isn’t on Twitter.  (Although there is a real life cowboy from Nebraska who tweets under the name of marlboroman.) How does Betty Crocker manage to get through her day?  There is a Betty Crocker Twitter feed, but it’s hosted by the brand, not Betty herself.  Any thoughts on other brands that might do this?

By the way, you can also find Betty Draper on Linkedin, and she writes a blog.

Are we all going mad, men and women?

Vote for this man and help Hugo Boss democratize the modelling world via social media!

My friend Andre Zaremba has entered the Hugo Boss Runway Model Contest on Facebook.  (Is he hot, or what?)  You can vote for him there.  Just find him via the search box and vote.  He has also created a Facebook fan page.

Hugo Boss will select one male and one female winner who will walk the catwalk at the Boss Black Fashion Show in Berlin on January 21, 2010.  The event will be live streamed on Facebook.

Andre asked me for ideas on how he might rack up the votes.  Here’s what I told him.  Perhaps there are some ideas for you to promote your own personal brand.

Happy holidays!

Hi Andre,

here are a couple of thoughts.  The cool thing is that your fans can vote for you once every 24 hours.  Since they’ve already done it, they’re likely to do it again.  So they’re the ones from whom you are most likely to source the votes you need. “Strategically” it makes sense to give them a little nudge each day but do it in a way that’s interesting/entertaining, not annoying.  You do that by creating some content, that’s fun or interesting to watch, look at and read, indeed so fun and interesting that it’s “spreadable”.  I.e. people will send it on.

You could set up a YouTube page, give it a theme title related to the Boss contest, shoot a short video each day (do you have a Flip camera?) and post it there.  For example, each daily video could be about a different reason “Why Andre will be the Boss model to die for.”

Video 1 “Andre has a great body” (Andre posing like a muscle man in a bathing suit)

Video 2 “Andre has class” (Andre reading the Royal Opera House bulletin)

Video 3 “Andre has great taste” (Andre eating pate)

Each day a new video.  And each day you send the link to your network, post on your Facebook page, etc.  Get the drift?

Add a “call to action” text with a link to the contest.  And a call to action to “Please send this video to your friends.”

You could easily do the same thing as still-photos that you send out in an email to your fan base every day, or as a message on Facebook.

Set up a Twitter account.  You could build on this theme there and send out tweets to your Twitter followers.  A Twitter post can contain links to your Facebook fan page, or to the photos.  But you’ll need to build a group of followers fast.  First, search all your friends to see if they are on Twitter.  Then there are all sorts of offerings that help people build their followers fast. I don’t remember off hand any specific ones, but if you search “Twitter follower” on Google you find one.

Check out Buzzom.  This is a service that let’s you find Twitter users who are more likely to follow you because you have a common interest.  (Click on the people search option and then on bio).  Important is that the little bio on your Twitter home page reflects that interest.  So your bio might include words like style, fashion, aspiring model.  Buzzom lets you find others with those words in their bio and enables you to follow them several hundred at a time, and a day or two later, delete those who didn’t follow you back.  You can then repeat the process, and there’s a tool that allows you not to repeat following the people you’ve already contacted.

I like the idea of creating a blog.  Again make it fun, and about your quest to win the contest.  Send the link to all your friends, and invite them to send it to others.  Post daily or more often – your posts could be blog-appropriate versions of the above, you could update your followers on the number of votes, talk about your latest idea to help win votes, you could even ask your blog readers for their ideas.  Makes sure to include invites in the side panel for you readers to receive automatic notifications of your posts via RSS feed or email.  I use WordPress and it’s pretty easy to set up.

You should register at StumbleUpon and Delicious.  StumbleUpon is a site where people find sites, web pages, blogs, etc. by entering key words relating to a topic.  Delicious is a public bookmarking site. When you’ve registered, you can pretty much post any content to them with tags relating to the content (so again in this case your tags might be fashion, style, Hugo Boss, Hugo Boss contest, and other related words).  People searching StumbleUpon and Delicious can discover your content in this way (e.g. your YouTube page) and may vote for you.  Especially if they encounter engaging content and a clear link to the voting page.

Consider if there is anything you can give your community of fans that they would spread to others.  So maybe you could leverage that great body of yours to make a calendar, or post card of some sort, that straight gals and gay guys would send to their social online networks.  Think in that direction. What else could you create online that’s fun, related to the contest, that people would like to spread to their networks.  Of course whatever it is, include a call to action to vote for you and a link to Boss page where they can vote.

So those are a few things off the top of my head.  Now I have to go and vote for you again.

Pioneer Woman — how marrying a cowboy can turn you into an emerging web 2.0 superstar

The Pioneer Woman is Ree Drummond, a former city girl who met a cowboy, married him and ended up “in the middle of nowhere” with four kids on a cattle ranch.  Her original blog, which she started writing in 2006, has grown into a significant online media property.

As beautiful and polished as it looks — the photography and overall layout of the site are fantastic — and that fact that Ree clearly has a good instinct when it comes to creating a personal brand and public identity, she still manages to maintain her honest, down-home, “I’m just a wife and mother out in the boonies like you” soul.  Perhaps this, as well as her many recipes presented with easy-to-follow photos, is what keeps her estimated 2 million monthly readers (according to the LA Times) coming back to the site.  The photo archives of Charlie, the basset hound who thinks he’s a cattle dog, is just my favorite among many examples of the content on Pioneer Woman that keep it intimate and personal, indeed sometimes just down right corny.  (You can’t say that about Martha Stewart!)  It also helps that Ree has a style and a way with words that I suspect connects perfectly with her audience — like the way she refers to her husband only as Marlboro Man.

Pioneer Woman shows how web 2.0 enables us all to share our personal passions, lifestyle, thoughts and ideas with anyone, anywhere, and that even a mother-of-four, thousands of miles away from a media metropolis, can transform those passions into a commercial media property, while staying true to herself at the same time.

Still, it can’t be easy.  Wife, mother, household, 2000 head of cattle.  How does she do it?  It’s a challenge for me to write this blog at least once a week.  And the only animal (or child) around here is a parrot.  (Uh oh.  I hear him in the bathroom throwing the shower stopper around.  That means he wants to take a bath.  Gotta go!)

I love plaid. Plaid Nation that is

I fell in love with Plaid today.  Not the pattern, the Agency and its road show Plaid Nation.  Plaid is a small shop hailing from the mega-communications metropolis of Danbury, Connecticut.  They do some cool work creating online communities and social media programs for organizations and brands that include Boehringer Ingelheim, Iron Horse Bikes, Segway, Sony Music, Virgin Records and — how lovely — the Westport Country Playhouse.

I fell in love because everything about Plaid lives and breathes the best qualities of social media.  They’re open, real, honest, charming, relaxed, human.  And frankly I just like the design of their web site. It’s fun and funky.

The way I got onto them, though, wasn’t through the web site or their work.  I’d been hearing for awhile  about something called Plaid Nation on different blogs and podcasts.  I knew it was some kind of road show or tour, with a team that went across country meeting with anyone doing interesting, innovative things — people, companies, NGO’s, even other creative agencies.  But I didn’t know much more than that. Today I finally got around to visiting the Plaid Nation 2009 web site and getting behind the story.

The first Plaid Nation tour happened in 2007.  It began as an idea for Plaid to generate awareness and PR.  A group of company staffers made over a van in plaid and drove across country to visit — unannounced — brands they liked or would like to get to know.  Since then the tour has become, according to Plaid’s Darryl Ohrt in Ad Age, “a produced ‘show’ that profiles some of the world’s greatest, most interesting and innovated business thinkers.”

Indeed it does.  Go over to Plaid Nation where you’ll find interviews featuring:

• Scott Monty, Ford’s head of social media, talking about his recently completed tumultuous first year at the corporate giant.
• Steve Pacheco,  Director of Advertising for Federal Express.  Federal Express’s late-delivery rate is tiny.  But when you consider that Fedex delivers millions of packages on any given day, even a fraction of a percentage of late arrivals can amount to a significant number of complaints on Twitter.  In contrast, no one on Twitter is going to post that his Fedex package arrived on time this morning.  That’s just one reason that Fedex has begun to engage in social media.
• An inspiring visit to the Make it Right project, an organization started by Brad Pitt to help rebuild New Orleans’ post-Katrina neighborhoods with economically and environmentally sustainable housing.
• A talk with the people running the The Q Hotel  – the first green hotel in Kansas City and one of only 11 hotels in North Amercia that has been certified green.

And that’s just a small selection.  All in all this year’s Plaid Nation July tour spent time with inspirational movers and shakers in Detroit, Milwaukee, Chicago, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City, Branson Missouri, Jackson Mississippi and New Orleans.  And the tour members shared their experiences through a vibrant combination of videos, blogs, tweets and Facebook posts.

What strikes me most about the Plaid Nation tour is its generosity.  Of course Plaid launched the tour to promote their business.  But  they realize they have the most to gain by giving.  Everyone who visits Plaid Nation profits from the ideas and inspiration they discover there, while Plaid profits from the exposure, sharing the way think and work, and letting potential clients get to know the people who make Plaid what it is.  And of course the people and projects they visit gain through the exposure as well.

Apparently it works.  Plaid says the tour has been a major driver of new business since its inception.

So pay a visit to Plaid Nation.

And to Plaid Nation I’d just like to ask, can we hope to see you in Germany some day?

Acquiescence isn’t enough, marketers should actively embrace objectivity from their blogging partners

Much discussion has erupted lately on the topic of partnerships between mom bloggers and marketers.  It seems to have started with a call for a PR “blackout” from Momdot, a mom blogger community:

MomDot is challenging bloggers to participate for one week in August in a PR BLACKOUT challenge where you do not blog ANY giveaways, ANY reviews, and Zero press releases. In fact, we don’t want you to talk to PR at ALL that whole week.  We want to see your blog naked, raw, and back to basics. Talk about your kids, your marriage, your college, your hopes, your dreams, your house and whatever you can come up with for one week.

Burnout, not objectivity, is the reason behind MomDot has recommended a blackout.  They suggest that the array of product reviews, promotions, giveaways, etc. in which mom bloggers engage is distracting them from more general content about home and kids.  Nevertheless, the question of blogger objectivity has come up in posts about the blackout, and the issue of objectivity, paid sponsorship and editorial vs. commercial content has been a hot topic in the blogosphere for awhile, and recently in a New York Times article, as increasing numbers of marketers link up with bloggers for the purpose of reviewing or promoting their products.  Recently the U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced that it is reviewing its guidelines for “endorsements and testimonials in advertising” with bloggers in mind.

Compensation for product reviews takes on different forms — e.g. pay per review, free stuff, promotional giveaways — but what is common to all is that most bloggers will only agree to the deal if the marketer in question allows them to write honestly about the product.  While bloggers say this allows them to maintain their integrity, one has to wonder if  — even with the best of intentions — they can remain truly objective when being compensated.  Won’t there be a little voice, whispering from the subconscious depths of their mind, suggesting that, despite everything the marketer says, a negative assessment will reduce the chances of being offered a paid review in future?

That’s why marketers shouldn’t simply agree to honesty and objectivity from their blogging partners, they should embrace it actively and vocally.  Here’s why it’s in their interest to do so:

• The online social community space rewards transparency, while it sniffs out and exposes secrecy and collusion.  A marketer who tries to manipulate product reviews will be found out eventually.  That negative word-of-mouth will spread exponentially and the overall take away will be that something must be wrong with your product, if you weren’t confident enough to let the product speak for itself, free from manipulation.
• In contrast, a marketer who makes it known that it demands absolute honesty from its blogging partners builds trust and credibility.  It tells people that you’re completely confident in the quality of your product.
• Negative criticism isn’t a threat, it’s a fantastic source of knowledge and opportunity.  You can learn better than any focus group or quantitative test about the strengths and weaknesses of your product through an honest assessment from a blogger and the ensuing comments and online conversations about that assessment.
• The only thing you have to fear is fear itself.  The blogosphere will forgive a mistake, provided that you listen to the criticism, acknowledge the problem and keep everyone informed about what you are doing to fix things.  You have nothing to fear, and everything to gain, provided you listen, show that your listening, take action and follow up.

Several blog posts I read on the topic of transparency and objectivity talk about the steps bloggers should take to make their disclosure and review policies clear to marketers who approach them.  This suggests that bloggers feel the need to defend their wish to remain transparent and  objective when it comes to paid-for product reviews.  Similarly, the FTC’s actions to revise its policies regarding endorsements and testimonials to address online practices would indicate that it doesn’t think the marketing community is taking adequate steps to self-regulate.  The alleged need for these policy changes implies that, generally speaking, marketers are more inclined to manipulate online reviews and comments about their products, rather than encourage the transparency and objectivity that brings true value to both the marketer and the customer.

It’s hard to say definitively if marketers are “doing the right thing” when it comes to embracing objectivity from their blogging partners.  However, when I think of all the articles, posts and comments I have read on the issue, I can’t recall any I’ve seen that have come from a marketer.  If you have, please let me know.

Why is social media off to a slow start in Germany?

I came across two interesting blog posts discussing the fact that social media seems to be off to a slow start in Germany compared to the United States.  This reflects my own experience, as I find that most of the social media blogs I read (and podcasts I listen too) originate from my native land.  There are a couple of exceptions, and of course, as I am an American living in Germany, I have a certain propensity to read and listen to commentary in my mother tongue.  But still there is no doubt that compared to the number of blogs and podcasts originating State side, it’s slim pickings in good old Germany.

The post in ReadWriteWeb concerns itself mostly with a comparison between blogging and social media activity in the US and Germany.  More interesting are Felix Salmon’s 10 reasons why the blogosphere is failing to thrive in Germany.  While he writes specifically about blogs on economics, I think the points he’s identified apply to blogging in general.  These include:

• A high degree of respect for traditional standard qualifications and sources of authority.  (As the world knows, questioning authority has not been a historical strength of the Germans — at least not during the first half of the last century.)
• A general discomfort on the part of Germans to be seen as outsiders, as many bloggers see themselves.
• Less inherent respect for the voice of the people or the common man, compared to America.
• A propensity to be methodical and comprehensive in expressing a point of view, whereas the style of blogs (not to mention micro-blogs) favors the succinct, the sound byte and the spontaneous.  (Think of Wagner vs. Puccini.)

When people ask me about certain typical characteristics of Germans (respect for authority, heightened sensitivity to instability, initial caution and reserve in regard to strangers), I cite one of my favorite theories.  It all goes back to the Thirty Years’ War.  This was one of the bloodiest conflicts in European history, it was played out mostly on German soil, a substantial portion of the civilian population was slaughtered, and society as a whole was shaken to its foundations.  It was a watershed event that left a deep and enduring need in the collective German psyche to maintain social stability and established institutions.

I am more optimistic than the writers of these posts about the future of blogging and social media in Germany.  By virtue of the borderless social web, younger generations of Germans are being exposed to, influenced by and participating in this new style of shared thinking and ideas.  And in so doing, perhaps they are eliminating the last vestages of an ingrained, common societal “angst” and exaggerated caution when it comes to expressing themselves spontaneously.  One hopes this will set their social media spirit free and enable them to embrace the blogosphere and podosphere with the same gusto and enthusiasm as their fellow post-generation-Xers on the other side of the Atlantic.

The resurrection of an iconic German ice cream bar through online communities and social media

When I first came to Germany in 1989, I became enamored of an ice cream bar on a stick called Nogger Choc.  It was similar to a  favorite Good Humor bar variety from my childhood, the name of which I no longer remember.  Both had an outer chocolate shell, coating a creamy wedge of ice cream, and in the middle, as a crowning conclusion to the the whole taste experience, a delicious hard, chunky, chewy chocolate core.

In 2001, Nogger Choc was taken off the market by Langnese ice cream, a division of Unilever, never to be heard from again.  At least that’s what Langnese, and many consumers, must have thought.  But in 2008 Langnese reversed course and reintroduced Nogger Choc.  According to a presentation by Edelman Digital, it was the largest selling new product launch from Langnese.

The successful reintroduction of Nogger Choc was initiated by, and executed through, social media and online communities.  Above-the-line communications were not part of the picture.  And the impetus to bring back the brand didn’t originate with Langnese, it was thanks to a group of Nogger Choc passionate consumers.

It all started when Benjamin Gildemeister launched an online petition directed to Langnese, after he discovered that there were many others like himself who longed for the return of their beloved Nogger Choc.  Over five-thousand people signed.  But even more people, over 16,000, became members of the “We miss Nogger Choc” community on StudiVZ, a German online social network for students.

Langnese was impressed by the passion of these brand lovers.  And here’s what they did that was really smart.  They realized this was a business opportunity that could be best fulfilled by collaborating with the very online community that was calling for the comeback of the Nogger Choc.  And they initiated that comeback by starting their communications right where it had all begun — in the social web.

They kicked-off with an online video of the marketing director and brand manager announcing that Nogger Choc was back and thanking the community for alerting Langnese to the “big mistake” it had made in taking the brand off the market.  By engaging with the community to spread the word in blogs, forums and other online communities, Nogger Choc attained 150,000 impressions online.  That established the platform for generating traditional PR around the relaunch in mainstream media generating an additional 40 million impressions. (All figures from the Edelman Digital presentation.)

Blog post announcing Nogger Choc comeback

All-in-all, a winning case for the power of online communities and social media, complete with happy end.  Or is it?  There appear to be a few clouds on the bright new horizon for Nogger Choc.  The same social web that was the springboard for the relaunch is yielding a number of critical voices.  Some Nogger Choc fans claim the product isn’t the same as the one they know and loved.  Among other things, they say the chocolate core is too small and soft.  If that’s the case, Langnese should have known better.  You can’t pull the wool over the eyes, or the taste buds, of your most passionate consumers, whose disappointment and critique will spread like wildfire through the online community.  And from there it could eventually be picked up by more mainstream media, just as the relaunch was.

I haven’t yet tried the resurrected Nogger Choc, so I don’t know if it’s as delicious as the one I learned to love when I first came to Germany.  As soon as I do, I’ll let you know.

The Manic Mommies — now “trying to do it all” with Saturn

I’ve written before on this blog about the partnership between Saturn cars and the amazing Manic Mommies — Erin Kane and Kristin Brandt, two moms “trying to do it all, and then some…” according to the lead-in to their entertaining weekly podcast about the triumphs and tribulations of motherhood, family and career.

The Manic Mommies -- Erin Kane and Kristin Brandt

That cooperation has now moved up a notch.  In the past, Saturn’s involvement has been in support of specific Manic Mommy events.  But in a recent podcast, Erin and Kristin announced a new deal with Saturn involving an ongoing year-long sponsorship of the blog and podcast.

What especially struck me about this what not so much the deal itself, but the refreshingly open and transparent way Erin and Kristin informed their audience about it.

I’m not a mom, I’m not even a dad, except perhaps to my parrot Emil, who does indeed have the intelligence and temperament of a 2-year old.  Perhaps that qualifies me somewhat as a rightful Manic Mommy listener.  (I can certainly relate to leading a manic life.)  But since I work on the Pampers brand at Saatchi & Saatchi, and like to stay in touch with what’s on the minds of moms, and as I am also interested in social media, the Manic Mommies are a natural for me.  So as a loyal listener to the podcast, I also appreciated the way Erin and Kristin informed me and the rest of their loyal fans about their new relationship with Saturn.

Jill Lajdziak of Saturn

The centerpiece of the announcement was an interview on Episode 153 of the podcast with Jill Lajdziak, Saturn’s General manager, and — appropriately —  a mom.  Kristin talked with Jill about the sponsorship in a conversational way that fit perfectly with the tone of the podcast.  Jill, like other marketers who have been on the show, understands that to be effective in this space, they’ve got to be people first, marketers second.  (I wonder if this is due at least in part to a good briefing from Erin and Kristin.)  So before the ladies talked about the sponsorship, they first shared experiences about being a mom, exchanged thoughts about kids and cars, moved on to the topic of safety and, before you knew it, Saturn.  Saturn was built into the conversation, rather than the conversation being built around Saturn.

They went on to talk about what Saturn hopes to get out of the relationship with the Manic Mommies and their audience.    Saturn will set up a forum on the Manic Mommies blog.  This will be a place for special announcements, but Jill mainly sees the forum as a unique opportunity to connect with women in an environment that enables open and honest dialog.  This is pretty innovative when you think about it.  Sponsorship of a blog not merely to promote a product, but to leverage the relationship these two bloggers have with their community in order to talk with current and potential owners more freely and effectively.  Innovative as well is the fact that the forum will be built into the Manic Mommies community, rather than requiring moms to go to the Saturn web site.  So moms are on their territory rather than Saturn’s, which should lead to a much more open and truthful conversation.

You could tell that the Manic Mommies were concerned their audience might worry that we would now be inundated with commercial interruptions from Saturn.  So they reassured everyone that not a whole lot would change, and the main thing people  would notice would be the Saturn forum.  Kristin encouraged people to tell Saturn what they really thought “and don’t sugar coat it!”  Saturn wasn’t “just just looking to hit us all with advertising …  they really want your opinion.”

In their typical charming way Erin and Kristin stressed that Saturn’s support would enable them to provide even better content to their listeners and readers, for example by allowing the both of them to conduct more live interviews, spend more time writing on the blog, and as Erin pointed out, “actually spend more time thinking about the show rather than just four minutes before we start recording.”

It will be interesting to watch how the partnership plays out over the next year.  And if it stays true to the spirit of participation and conversation between the marketer and the audience, rather than becoming just a new way of pumping brand messages to “target consumers.”  From what I’ve seen so far from the Manic Mommies, I have every faith that we’ll be seeing something that stays true to that spirit.

So congratulations to Erin and Kristin on their deal with Saturn, kudos to Saturn for upping their involvement in social media, and good look to both in the coming year.  As Erin quipped at the close of Episode 153, “If the Manic Mommies can save the auto industry, you know, single handedly, my work here is done.”  Erin, I’d be thrilled as anyone if the Manic Mommies were to save the American automobile industry, but even if you do, your work won’t be done.  We’ll all still need our weekly fix of the Manic Mommies.

One last thing.  Erin and Kristin, if you’re reading?  I know I’m a guy, but can I join the Big Tent?  I don’t want to crash the party if it’s only open to “gal pals,” but I’d love to be able to visit the Saturn forum and see what your readers and Saturn are saying.

Inspired social media from an unexpected source — the Mayo Clinic

The Mayo Clinic would not naturally have occurred to me as a topic for Steve’s Social Media Soapbox.  Not because social media can’t create value for medical institutions and their patients.  On the contrary — social media and online communities can obviously be of tremendous help to people challenged by illness, investigating treatments, dealing with the side effects of medications and coming to terms with a host of other health related issues.  Similarly, the people who treat and care for patients can surely profit from the broad ranging opportunities for collaboration and sharing that social media tools offer.

But as a friend of mine who works for a health care communications agency told me, social media is fraught with legal implications and risks for pharmaceutical companies and medical institutions.  For example, a drug maker that hosted a web site allowing patients to share information about a particular medication would apparently be responsible for documenting and, I believe, investigating all claims of side effects that weren’t yet covered in established protocols.  There are also obvious issues with confidentially and patient privacy.

That’s why when the Mayo Clinic recently launched Sharing Mayo Clinic, a blog for patients, families and staff to share  stories, it seemed to be a breakthrough.  In an excellent interview with Shel Holtz on the For Immediate Release podcast (2/05/09), Lee Aase, who heads up social media for the Mayo Clinic, pointed out that there really wasn’t an issue regarding patient privacy.  According to the Mayo’s lawyers, “If someone decides to tell their story on our site, that’s them disclosing their information, not us disclosing their information.” (This and other quotes of Mr. Aase are from the For Immediate Release interview.)

The upside is tremendous.  In the past the Mayo Clinic posted patient stories on their web site.  But these were written by a freelancer, who first interviewed the patient, and then wrote the story.  According to Aase, they didn’t match the impact and authenticity of people telling their own stories in their own words as they now can do on Sharing Mayo Clinic.  And clearly this transparency is much more credible and trustworthy to patients seeking information about the character and quality of treatment at Mayo.  It’s also highly motivating for Mayo staffers to read these patients’ stories, which often praise the professionalism and humanity of the clinic’s personnel across the board.  Finally, it also costs much less than hiring freelance writers!

Sharing Mayo is only the latest of several blogs from the Mayo Clinic.   These cover — among other topics — health policy, clinic news and diseases, treatments and therapies.

Especially pioneering for a medical institution, the Mayo Clinic provides blogging guidelines to Mayo staffers and allows them to represent the clinic online.  Private sector companies should take these words of Mr. Aase to heart, and recognize the potential power their companies have within the organization to communicate with customers (or in this case patients, friends and families) through engaged, well-guided and social-media savvy employees:

“We have a half a million patients a year, we have 50,000 employees, and our goal with our social media team is to engage and empower them and to get them involved in the conversation, not having the top-down kind of messaging where we try to control and script everything.  My position is that we can’t afford to hire enough people to communicate all things that need to happen, but we’ve got these 50,000 employees who we’re trusting to treat patients and deal with patients everyday that they can probably handle a blog too.”

He finishes the last sentence with a chuckle, as if to say, “Wouldn’t it be silly not to entrust your employees in this way?”  But so many companies have yet to free corporate communications from the iron-fist clutch of the corporate communications department.  Surely the possible risks of this transparency aren’t higher for a Fortune 500 company than they are for the Mayo Clinic?  And the potential benefits are the same.

The Mayo Clinic’s social media engagement goes well beyond these blogs.  They run a Facebook page with at last count 4,990 fans, where you can watch videos on specific health issues and Mayo clinic treatments, link to news bulletins and the main web site, and also read stories of patients and their families.  These posts of course have particular word-of-mouth value as they appear on the pages of Facebook friends, coming from the most credible and trusted source of all, people they know.

The magic of Facebook was also apparent when I clicked on photos of Mayo Clinic buildings uploaded there.  I didn’t find the photos particularly good — the buildings appeared monolithic and kind of scary.  A place where a patient could feel lost.  But these two comments about the photos erased any such impression:

Colleen Manley Wells (Orlando, FL) wrote
at 1:24am on January 27th, 2009
Our favorite doctors in the whole wide world work in this building. Dr. Casler and Dr. Maples – the Wells family loves you!

Jill Hughes (Trenton / Princeton, NJ) wrote
at 5:10pm on January 26th, 2009
my second home

What a great example of “patient generated content” improving significantly upon an institution’s own official communications.

The Mayo also produces a large number of podcasts dealing with health issues of all kinds that can be downloaded from the website or from i-Tunes.

The only reservation I had about the Mayo’s social media efforts was a statement on their Blog Comment Policy page.  It said in effect that if you posted a comment on Mayo-sponsored blogs, you gave the Mayo Foundation the “irrevocable right” to “reproduce, distribute, publish, display, edit, modify, create derivative works from, and otherwise use your submission for any purpose in any form and on any media.”

This seems extreme and dictatorial.  Surely, considering the personal dimension of health issues, patients who share stories and experiences on Mayo online properties, which are beneficial to the institution, its patients and its stake holders, should be permitted some say in how their contributions are used beyond their initial appearance.  Perhaps it’s not an issue for many patients and their families, but I imagine that many people, presuming they read this regulation, would prefer not to tell their stories, or would not share as openly and honestly as they might otherwise.  Would you? … Knowing your words could be edited and published anywhere without your permission, at any time in the future?

Other than that, I was inspired by the Mayo Clinic’s wholehearted embrace of social media and the rich and positive  impressions it provided about the institution, its values and its dedication to patients and their families.  If, God forbid, you are ever confronted with a serious illness, this is the place you want to be.

The antidote for the TV network is called the world wide web

The rumors of my death have been wildly exaggerated.

Forgive me if I sound like I’m beating the proverbial dead horse.  But with all respect to Joseph Jaffe (social media maven par excellence and author of two terrific books — Life After the 30-Second Spot and Join the Conversation), I continue to struggle with the widespread assertion that the 30-second commercial has witnessed its heyday and will soon vanish from the face of the planet.  Note that I’m not saying 30-second television commercial.  The reason for the distinction will become clear.

I have written on an earlier blog post about how effectively this old format can tell a product or brand story in a remarkably efficient amount of time.  What’s more, while I am as excited as anyone by the possibilities social media and web 2.0 tools create for brands and “consumers” to engage on a much more personal level, we live in an and/and communications world.  Fact is, there are still times when people aren’t interested in a conversation (much less creating their own TV spot).  Conversation takes time, which is one thing most people have very little of.  If there’s a new, household product out there that is going to make my life easier, or if I’m in the market for a new mobile phone, then I’m not necessarily interested in a conversation.  Right now, I may just want to get a quick overview of the product choices available to me.  I want to hear what you have to offer — fast — and then get on with it.  A one-way message is just fine.

It’s simply not true that people have a problem with 30-second commercials.  They have a problem with bad commercials — ones that are unclear, convey no apparent benefit, or do so with an execution so tedious and irritating, they’d like to throw a brick through their TV screen.  Even more so, they have a problem with commercials, good or bad, for products or services that are irrelevant to them, and that show up as uninvited and disturbing interruptions to their favorite shows.

The problem isn’t the commercial, the problem is the distribution system.  Television networks are simply ineffective at delivering a specific message to the people for whom that message is relevant, and only to them.

Enter social media!

Marketers should think about online communities and networks as a new, superbly effective distribution system for their messages.  I don’t mean they should push commercials into online social networks uninvited, but instead enable individuals online to discover commercials that are personally interesting and relevant to them.  And then pass them along to others — friends, their communities, their blogging audience — for whom they think these will also be of interest.

A mom blogger who discovers a great new kids product will be connected to others who are in the same life situation, have similar needs and will also want to know about that product.  If she has access to a commercial that she thinks gets the product story across, especially if it’s executed in an appealing way, she will naturally pass it on.  All the more if she has tried and was happy with the product.  What she won’t do is share that commercial with her online connections for whom she knows the story won’t be interesting.  In this way the community becomes a self-regulating system that ensures the message spreads only to those people who will get value from it.  How cool is that?

It doesn’t necessarily have to be the traditional 30-second spot, although when people suggest to others that they take a look at a product message, 30 seconds are relatively risk free.  If, perchance, the story isn’t of interest, at least they only wasted 30 seconds of the their friends’ precious time.

So here’s something marketers ought to consider placing on the packaging of their next product launch, upgrade or line extension.  “If you like our product, please go to http://www.brandx.com, upload our TV commercial, and share it with your friends online who you think would also be interested.”  If the expression “TV commercial” seems too pre-web 2.0, then call it a 30-second video if that makes you feel more in sync with the age of “YouTube.”

It can’t hurt.  And it just might get your message to spread across a network of thousands of interconnected, prospective buyers for whom it isn’t an intrusion, but a welcome source of news and information.