Figure 13.1 Someone was having fun advertising the new media through the old.
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Social Media Is the New Creative Playground
It Seems Like a Free-For-All, But There Are Some Basic Guidelines
Social media is our global virtual coffee shop and, like any coffee shop, there's a new one opening every eight minutes. Among the many platforms out there (as of this writing) are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Periscope, Pinterest, Vine, Google+, Flickr, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and the 200 million or so blogs (the best two of which, according to some—us—are heywhipple.com and Creativity Unbound).
This is the new media landscape (Figure 13.2). It's undoubtedly changed since this writing, but you get the idea. Our customers aren't flipping through magazines. They're not sitting back listening to the radio. And if they are watching TV, chances are they have a second screen open on their smartphone or tablet. This is the social Web.
Figure 13.2 This is where your client's customers are hanging out. Open your own account on each platform and study how they work.
The first stage of the Internet had been relatively passive. Early Web pages were static. Visitors could basically look and read and maybe leave a comment. But Web 2.0 made it possible for users to share, interact, and collaborate with one another. They could create virtual communities, join social networking sites, start their own blogs, contribute to wikis. The social Web took control of content and distribution away from publishers, brands, and ad agencies, and put it at the fingertips of anyone with an Internet connection.
This enormous transformation and shift in power gave rise to a new marketing cry: “Join the conversation.” Bloggers, authors, and so-called social media gurus burst on the marketing scene declaring that traditional advertising would lose both relevance and influence. Everything predicted in the seminal Cluetrain Manifesto, published in 1999, was coming true. The Internet had “equipped individuals with their instruments of independence and engagement. Companies that spoke in the language of the pitch were no longer speaking to anyone.”
A lot of agencies were slow to catch on. The new social frontier belonged to a younger generation. The technology, the protocols, and the rules of engagement were foreign to the average 40- or 50-year-old creative director. According to Allison Kent-Smith, founder of Smith and Beta, a lot of senior ad people were fearful of being newbies when they were expected to be experts.
Brands and advertisers, used to talking at “consumers,” now had to connect, engage, create, and contribute to communities. Their charge was to listen first and talk later. And when a brand did talk, it couldn't be the tool at the party who goes on and on about his fine self. Somehow, marketers had to contribute to the new dialogue, add value, and celebrate the ideas of others before tossing in any self-serving comments. And even then those comments or ads would have to be funny, entertaining, or useful.
Since people join social networks to stay in touch with other people and not large corporations, any presence your brand has on a social platform needs to be useful, entertaining, or interesting enough to be welcome and shared. It's one thing for a brand to tell its own stories using social media, but our real goal should be getting people to amplify or even tell these stories for us.
No doubt you already use multiple social networks in your personal life. But you may not have thought about using it on behalf of client. So before you begin, ask yourself why are you doing this? What does your client want to achieve? What can they get from this community, by listening and engaging with people who are likely their best customers? And perhaps most importantly, ask what can they do for this community?
Mastering Good Social Media Practices
It's important to remember that social platforms are essentially gatherings. People are not there to interact with advertisers. Think of Facebook as a backyard neighborhood barbecue; Twitter as a big noisy cocktail party crowded with celebrities, news media, and digital friends; and Snapchat, while constantly evolving, as a stage on which to perform for your tribe. Each has its own language, customs, and protocols. So remember, “When in Rome.…”
It helps to go in thinking, “What can you as a brand do for these people?” This is a social platform, after all, and it's often best if a brand leads with its human side, sharing the kinds of images, ideas, and content that users are looking for on that particular platform.
So be honest and authentic. And work to fit in to the environment. You don't bring the same side of your brand to Snapchat as you do to LinkedIn or even Facebook.
Start by Listening
“Hey, buy this” is probably not a good opening line. First, you need to find out what people care about. We do this the same way any anthropologist does: by immersing ourselves in the milieu; by listening; by learning the language, both visual and verbal. What news stories are customers talking about? What are they sharing? What problems do they want solved that relate to your category and brand? What are they saying about you specifically? What are the themes and memes of the medium?
Good, now you know where you can start.
Talk Like a Person, not a Corporation
If it's you writing for the social media of a brand, your first step should be to think and sound like a person. It's like you're showing up at a party that's already underway. Maybe you were invited; more likely you invited yourself. So show some class when you arrive and, like a guest at any party, bring a gift; if not wine, maybe some interesting content, something beautiful, a discount.
Be Transparent
Despite all the anonymous content on the Web, going incognito in social media is not a good idea, especially if you're the one representing a company. Make sure everyone knows who you are, what you represent, and whether you're working for someone else or speaking on your own behalf. You don't have to add that to every post, but it certainly belongs in your profile or disclaimers in individual posts if appropriate.
Better yet, don't try to pull one over on people. Better to be honest, even if it's to admit fault. The best example of corporate transparency in recent memory is the extraordinary “Pizza Turnaround” CP+B did for Domino's. (Watch the video at whipple5pizza.)
After being nailed by customers across social channels for pizza that tasted like cardboard and sauce like ketchup, Domino's confronted the problem publicly and head on. They admitted their pizza tasted terrible, took their confession to social media via Twitter and YouTube,1 the same places the criticism started, and made public the entire story of their turnaround efforts. The result? Profits up. Share prices up. And store openings are on a rampage.2 Domino's earned kudos and a second chance not only for the improved quality of the pizza, but for the open, honest, and public manner with which they acknowledged the truth about their product.
Exercise Restraint
Have you had this happen to you? There's a brand you actually like and want to hear from, so you follow them on Twitter or like them on Facebook, and the next thing you know they're polluting your stream. They overpublish and push out way too much selling content. Don't be one of them. Make sure your client exercises some restraint in how much content they post. Maybe a couple of times a day to start. Or practice my rule of thirds. Make one-third of your content interesting stuff from other sources that your community might find useful. Make one-third of your content a celebration of your community's content. And then one-third can be about your client's brand.
Give More Than You Get
Helping beats selling. “Reciprocal altruism works,” agrees Scott Roen, head of digital marketing at American Express. “If you give something away without expecting something in return, you get so much back. That's what we've found, and the payback has been tremendous.”3 Gary Vaynerchuk, who built his first company, Wine Library into a $50 million business using nothing but social media, reminds us that “by giving away great content for free, you're building up a base of fans who know that, not only are you good for your word, you also know your stuff.” It works. Vayner Media, Gary's second company, which offers Fortune 500 companies a chance to cash in on the lessons Vanerchuk learned practicing social media, is one of the hottest emerging agencies in the country.
Carefully Think Through Where Your Brand Should Be
There are many places to post content today and the list is growing. So where should your brand be? It probably makes sense to have a strong presence on Facebook and YouTube, where most of the world spends a good part of its day. But think about what your brand is doing there and why. Are you there to build loyalty? Provide inside access to your brand advocates? Is Twitter where you post news and updates or where you deliver service? Obviously, if you're a fashion- or design-oriented brand you're on Instagram and Pinterest, perhaps Tumblr, too. But you may also want to be on LinkedIn, even if you're not a B2B marketer.
In recent years, Burberry has been a master of this approach. The fashion giant, which actually thinks of itself as a media company, maintains a presence everywhere but uses each medium in ways that make sense. Their destination microsite, “Art of the Trench,” invited users to upload their own images and built a huge display of everyday people wearing trench coats. On Facebook, where they know they're talking with customers, the retailer shares product campaigns, announcements, and store openings. On Twitter, they may not do much engagement, but they post behind-the-scenes close-ups from fashion shows and other Burberry events. And on Instagram the brand shares beautiful images of London and its weather. On occasion they even turn the mobile platform into a live stream, tapping Instagram's API and making it easier for followers to pull in photographs in real time.
Knowing how and when to use YouTube, Tumblr, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and all the other tech platforms is essential. Which is why your brand shouldn't be cross-posting, a term that refers to posting the same piece of content everywhere. Instead, consider why people use different media. Consider from what devices they're accessing those platforms and what kinds of information they're looking for. And then create accordingly.
Build Your Community and Pay Attention to It
There's great value in building your own digital community of fans and followers. You can learn from them, bounce ideas off them, get early feedback to new products or prototypes, even get help spreading a new ad campaign. The key is to feed them as well as attract them. Make it worth their while to engage with your content, whether that's by offering something of genuine value; acknowledging them with interaction, a retweet or a like; delivering rewards and incentives for specific participation or by showing how valued they are by letting them help design or cocreate products with you. While there's a recent trend toward building private communities away from Facebook or Twitter, it's still possible to drive reach, attract customers, and inspire loyalty and advocacy in social media.
Involve Users and Let People Cocreate
You may remember the beautiful Apple Christmas commercial from 2013. A seemingly detached teenager is on his iPhone, apparently disengaged from the family with body language that says “whatevs…” until Christmas morning, when it's revealed he was busy making and editing a tearjerker video of the family's holiday celebration.
We are all creators. And it's not just on YouTube. People are broadcasting on Twitch, publishing on Wattpad, telling stories to select friends on Snapchat. It might be a good idea to invite them to cocreate on behalf of your brand. Lowe's invites users to submit ideas for its “Fix in Six” videos. ModCloth has customers design entire collections of clothes. Starbucks inspired its coffee enthusiasts to doodle on its cups and then turned them into art-covered versions of the ubiquitous white coffee container (Figure 13.3).
Figure 13.3 Starbucks got 4,000 entries in three weeks and a heck of a lot of coverage, and not just on the cups.
You can make it simple, like Pepsi did when they asked fans to post images or tweets on why they liked Pepsi MAX more than they did Coke Zero.4 Or it can be a bigger production, like Lexus did when it invited 200 popular Instagrammers to cocreate a TV commercial one image at a time.5 Having customers cocreate with you not only generates shareable content, it makes your brand more social.
Learn the Ins and Outs of the Different Platforms
When Meerkat and Periscope first came on the scene, I thought I'd demonstrate my prowess with the latest social platform by broadcasting live a creative exercise in a workshop I was conducting. Wanting to be cinematic about it, I held my iPhone in landscape position only to find out after the fact that while I could see the wide frame, the only part viewers could track was the very middle section. Why? Periscope and Meerkat, like Snapchat and other new platforms, display only vertical video. And perhaps they should. It turns out that on a smartphone, vertical video generates nine times the views that horizontal video delivers.6 There are lots of little features and quirks about each platform you should take time to learn so you look like you know what you're doing.
For example, you always want to delete a long URL on a Facebook post after it's grabbed the actual video or image from the link. You want to know the sizes for photos on Twitter and Facebook so they show up properly in the stream and don't get cut off. It might take a few clicks using Google to find all the guidelines, but it's not that hard. Remember, your clients are expecting you to know how this stuff works.
Understand Hashtags and Trackable URLs
You may not be all that fond of analytics, but your clients will be. And anything worth posting is worth measuring. “The digital world gives you all the feedback you ever want,” says Tim Cawley. Analytics are not only useful for you as a creator, they're a tool to help you prove to clients that the best stuff wins. Even if you're not a data geek, learn to use trackable URLs and hashtags.
For example, you'll note many of the creative examples cited in this book are available at bit.ly/whippledigital. That's a trackable URL created using bit.ly. Every time someone comes to that YouTube playlist, we have a record of it. We know if our online resource is valuable to readers, and which parts of it. Data can be your new best friend, even if you're a creative.
The same goes for hashtags, those keywords preceded by the hash symbol (#). You probably see tons of hashtags now that people routinely attach one to every post as a kind of editorial comment. But the important part is, hashtags are clickable and searchable on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Vine, and other platforms. Social platforms index every hashtag, making them a resource for the creator and other users as well. And since they aggregate all mentions, you end up with a simple way to track and measure the hashtags you generate.
There are some basic protocols. Don't use tags that #stringthismanywordtogether. Instead #besimple. Associate individual hashtags with specific products, themes, or conversations. But again, avoid excessive use. If possible, perhaps you can find some unifying label that lets you refer to both your brand and the topic. For example #whippledigital, #whippleresources, #whippleexercises, #whipplesucks. (No, wait.…)
Different Tech Platforms Foster Different Creativity
As we noted, in the earliest days of social media, ad agencies were slow to catch on. But as more tweets, pictures, videos, and updates populate the Web and social platforms proliferate, creativity becomes an even more valuable marketing currency. The new social platforms offer lots of opportunity to exercise your creative chops. Use the next few examples to get your own ideas flowing and note how the media drives the idea.
Use Twitter to Serve Tennis Balls, or Sports Fans
Old Spice and Wieden+Kennedy may still own the benchmark with their Twitter Response campaign, but there've been many other innovative uses of the platform. Last year the NBA launched @NBAofficial, a Twitter feed that takes fans inside the instant replay booth to see exactly what the officials are looking at when they make a call.
A couple years back, the French bank BNP Paribas created a campaign called “Tweet and Shoot” to celebrate its 40-year partnership with the French Open. Tweet and Shoot connected Twitter users to a social media-controlled robot that let them serve tennis balls to French tennis star Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and help him train for the open. Short version: You can use Twitter for more than tweeting.
The Alzhiemer's Association Freaks out Facebook Users
In a recent Facebook campaign, Alzheimer Nederland found a way to leverage user participation to create the sensation of memory loss. The foundation and N= 5, Amsterdam's largest independent agency, found a novel way to hack Facebook users' timelines. Using advanced photo editing techniques, the creative team tagged and posted images of users at fake events they could not possibly have attended (Figure 13.4).
Figure 13.4 Can you imagine looking at your Facebook photos and seeing yourself at a gathering you have no memory of?
The campaign launched with the help of Dutch influencers who allowed themselves to be tagged and invited duped Facebook users to pass on the experience by uploading friends' photos who could be added to other nonexistent events.
The simple tagging technique left users confused and wondering for a moment if, in fact, they may have lost control of their memory, demonstrating what it might be like to actually have Alzheimers.
This experience, which users could feel rather than just read in some ad, succeeded in garnering millions of impressions in media coverage and increased donations to the charitable organization.
Coke Zero uses Slideshare to Promote Final Four. (Slide-what?)
Most people don't think of Slideshare as a creative medium. It's a social platform for sharing presentation decks. Which is precisely why Droga5 decided to use it.
For Coke Zero's tie-in as a sponsor of the NCAA's March Madness, the agency created a platform titled It's Not Your Fault. It's not your fault you have to watch so much basketball right now. It's biology, and this presentation was the proof (Figure 13.5). The deck, which could be shared, linked to, and embedded into blogs, offered a scholarly exposition of all of the reasons why man is physically unable to do anything but watch basketball during the NCAA tournament.
Figure 13.5 Coke Zero helped guys who were Final Four fans rationally explain their sloth and inactivity to wives and girlfriends.
Heineken Fans the Coachella Rumor Mill with Snapwho
If you've ever attended Coachella you know there's a never-ending guessing game as to who'll make a surprise appearance at the event. You're probably also keeping up with your social crowd using Snapchat. So Heineken, inspired by those two facts, launched an account called HeinekenSnapWho. Using SnapChat's signature disappearing images, it sent out visual hints as to what bands might appear at the brewer's sponsored stage. If you guessed right, you got an early confirmation and a chance to be there. Heineken, unlike most brands that simply use Snapchat as a broadcast medium, turned the platform into a relevant, two-way social conversation.
Mercedes Turns Instagram into Insta-Car
While some brands are busy uploading simple images to the photo sharing site, Mercedes Benz and its agency Razorfish let its Instagram followers tap their way to customizing their own new SUV, the GLA. Knowing how Instagram lets you link to other images, the agency created a database of hundreds of linked accounts and thousands of images to let users self-select colors, wheels, and roofs simply by clicking on that part of the car in one Instagram picture (Figure 13.6).
Figure 13.6 This is the Mercedes Instagram app. And this is also how most apps appear in student portfolios. 1.) Don't put apps in your portfolio. 2.) If you have to have an app, build it.
The point, of course, is that just because social media lets you post a straightforward status update or a quickly snapped photo, that doesn't mean you can't use it for fresh, creative, connected, and inventive ideas.
The secret is not to bring the same tactics and techniques you use on traditional media over to social media. Let your ideas be driven by the medium, by the ways that people use it. Then experiment, hack the platforms, find contextual ways to be relevant, and invite users to be part of the process.