Snapshot Post--Mini-Musings on The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly Social Media-Enabled Criminals, Do Ya Feel Lucky?

Humans have a fundamental need to document their vacations. Early in the 20th Century, Kodak built a business around this behavior. Likewise with the publishers of picture post cards. "Wish you were here," became a ubiquitous phrase synonymous with 25-cent postcards sent by vacationing family and friends.

In the age of social media, the Kodak moments and post cards from the tropics have been replaced by photos, videos and text messages sent from a smart phone. "Wish you were here" sentiments are instantly sent to and received by a close circle of people who care.

But what happens when you've embraced FaceBook and Twitter to the point that you're posting those vacation photos and updates for legions of friends and followers, some of whom you don't know at all?

Say hello to social media-enabled criminals. They simply follow your social media footprints, and while you're sipping a fancy umbrella drink on the sandy shores of paradise, they're rummaging through your underwear drawer looking for valuables. (Isn't that where you keep your valuables?)

You can forward the mail, cancel the newspaper, and leave the lights on timers, but if your tweets tell another story, you're vulnerable.

Seems Israel and Noell Hyman, a couple from Arizona, did all those things and were burgled during their vacation. Hindsight being what it is, they blame Twitter. Mr. Hyman, the owner of an online video business that he tweets about regularly, thinks the stolen items (video editing equipment) were so specific that at least one of his followers must have succumbed to his (or her) inner criminal.

A cautionary tale, to be sure. But a potent sign of the times. Read more...

NOTE to any social media-enabled criminal who might read this blog or follow my tweets:

I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire six tweets or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

(Apologies to Clint Eastwood for revising this line from his 1971 film Dirty Harry--ever so slightly.)

Snapshot Post--Mini-Musings on The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly Wanted: Your Social Media Footprint and Passwords

The city government of Bozeman, Montana, population 27, 509 has managed to step into a social media mess, infuriating people to the point that the City Attorney has been receiving an email a minute, some from as far away as the UK.

What dastardly thing has Bozeman done? Ask their HR department. The city has impleted new requirements for potential job interviewees. People wanting jobs with the city of Bozeman must sign a waiver allowing investigation of not just their past employment, criminal background and credit history, but all of their online activity: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, websites, you name it. If that's not enough to ring your privacy bell, consider this: these job applicants are required to hand over their passwords to their accounts to whomever is taking their application.
　
Identity theft is one thing, but this may be a case of superhighway robbery with the masked bandits operating under the benevolent banner of local government. Not surprisingly, Bozeman's new HR policy has set off a barrage of social media crossfire; tweets are flying and a poll done by the local CBS affiliate, KBZK (http://www.kbzk.com), had almost 5,000 responses within 24 hours of the story breaking ... with 98% of respondents against the city's policy.

This situation underscores what can happen when a zealous few at City Hall decide to use the ugly side of social media, but it also points out that in an open society social media introduces a dose of self-correction ... the wisdom of the crowd can prevail.

The City of Bozeman's HR department is now looking into these hiring requirements to see if there should be limits on the social media footprints that they should follow. Read more...

UPDATE: Shortly after this post went live we learned that the City of Bozeman revised it's screening process for job applicants. Passwords are no longer required. But potential employees everywhere beware: your social media footprints still have a half-life that can come back to haunt you when you least expect it ... with or without handing over your passwords.

Snapshot Post--Mini-Musings on The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly Make Them Eat Grasshoppers

It's simple enough. You've changed your company name, rebranded yourself, and now want to get the word out. You want to get people's attention, get them talking among themselves about your company. What do you do?

If you're Grasshopper, a company that provides toll-free telephone numbers for small businesses, you spend two months compiling a list of 5,000 luminaries that included celebrities, TV anchors, bloggers, journalists, and CEOs. Then, you FedEx them all a package of chocolate-covered grasshoppers, with a promotional message and a link to a YouTube.

Bioterrorism? Hardly ... but definitely of form of viral marketing. The innovative campaign that blended traditional advertising with social media managed to generate news, videos, blogs, photos, and tweets. A quick look at the numbers:

145,575 video views with 162 comments

1,500 tweets

120 blog posts in one month

7 national TV mentions

Oh, and did I mention some of the people who received the suggestive snacks videoed themselves eating the chocolate-covered grasshoppers and uploaded them to YouTube? User-generated content at its best. Read more...

Snapshot Post--Mini-Musings on The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly Social Media "Ruining" Your Life?

Take one independent movie, a chick-flick to be sure, and a very small advertising budget. Add one social media-savvy actress, determined to get the word out and engage her audience. The result? An opening weekend with $3.5 million in box office revenues.

Faced with an almost non-existent advertising budget, actress Nia Vardalos (of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" fame) took matters into her own hands and employed a "personal" social media strategy to promote her new movie, "My Life in Ruins." Instead of billboards, bus stops and large space ads, she's using Twitter and YouTube. To date, her Twitter account has 5, 652 followers and 435 updates. Her YouTube posting has 18, 926 views.

"My Life in Ruins" debuted at # 9 in the top ten movie money makers with $3.5 million for its first weekend. Not bad, considering it's in less than a third of the movie theaters that show the big budget films. That's one way to go from ruins to riches. For Nia Vardalos, it's just a beginning. Read more.

Are Your Customers SCREAMING to be Engaged?

Here’s an idea that would have gotten you tossed out of business school just a few years ago: Take a multi-million dollar consumer brand like Doritos and turn it over to a bunch of 13 to 24 year-olds. Let them expand the product line, develop advertising campaigns and assume total control of the product’s image. A recipe for success you wonder, or the ingredients of a disaster?

That’s exactly what the folks at Frito Lay Canada did with their Become the Doritos Guru contest that ended in May.

The 11-week program encouraged consumers to come up with a new flavor for the Doritos tortilla chip brand and create a 30-second video commercial introducing it. To make things interesting Frito Lay Canada offered a $25,000 first prize and a 1% royalty on future sales of the product.

Using a social media strategy, combined with some traditional integrated marketing techniques, the contest, which obviously doubled as an ad campaign, produced phenomenal results. A quick look at the numbers tells much of the story:

There were over 2,000 official entries

There were 1.5 million unique visitors to the contest’s YouTube page

The Doritos Guru FaceBook page attracted 30,000 fans

Sales of Doritos in Canada jumped 22% during the contest

By letting so much user-generated content (UGC) go viral through their consumers’ social networks, Frito Lay Canada was able to engage their target audience in a way that simply would not have been possible a few years ago.

To be sure, there were other things happening in the background:

Doritos partnered with MuchMusic, a Canadian music video channel, who aired several of the videos under a “Doritospiece Theatre” banner. MuchMusic even had their VJs screen and critique several of the entries.

An in-store retail program hyped the contest by using special displays that featured white bags of Doritos with a dollar sign ($) on the front.

The contest was promoted on Xbox Live games like Guitar Hero 4 and Transformers. (Yet another gaming connection.)

Oh, and how about the winner? A 21 year-old Concordia film student, Ryan Coopersmith, and seven of his friends created a video showing people ranting, raving, and yelling in everyday situations. Though it sounds like anger management gone awry, it was oddly appropriate for their new flavor: Screamcheese (watch video).

The video cost Coopersmith and his team (aka Boo Ya Pictures) all of $300. While estimates of what one percent of future Screamcheese sales could mean for the group (Frito Lay Canada says it will likely be a six figure number), the filmmakers are wasting no time on their road to success. They are investing $15,000 of their winnings into their first feature film. Look out Sundance.

Not surprisingly, Frito Lay has already expressed a desire to maintain a relationship with Boo Ya Pictures. They’ll probably “do lunch” and discuss the future while sipping premium energy drinks and nibbling on Screamcheese Doritos.

The take-home lesson: Giving consumers influence over your brand is going to happen whether you like it or not, so why not collaborate with them on the new frontier. Now there's something to scream about!

How “Mis-Tweeted” Missives Can Make Anyone Look Like a Twit

Proving that it pays to know whether your social media tactics are engaging or enraging your audience, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich managed to shoot himself in the foot, via Twitter, not once, but twice in the last month.

First he threatened legal action against a Twitter user and Twitter itself, a false alarm stemming from apparent confusion about how the social media tool works. Then he tweeted some sizzling political invective in the direction of Supreme Court nominee and Court of Appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor, which he then had to recant.

Gingrich, an avid and stylish tweeter, probably misunderstood how tweets work when he instructed his attorney to send a cease and desist letter to a twitter user. The tweet was:

“Join @newtgingrich @sanuzis in signing the EFCA Freedom Not Fear petition at http://action.americanright… WSJ".

Gingrich opposes the EFCA (the Employee Free Choice Act).

The cease and desist letter claimed trademark infringement and threatened to sue the twitter user, Twitter and a whole list of others. What Gingrich apparently didn't know was that the @ sign with someone's twitter user name means that the correspondence is directed at them, like "Dear Newt Gingrich." Hardly a cause for litigation.

Then to make things worse, just last week, Gingrich joined with right-wing talk radio host, Rush Limbaugh, and tweeted his own message, saying that he considered Judge Sotomayor a racist, based on contraversial comments she made in 2001. The term "racist" bothered a few high ranking Republicans and a few days later Gingrich recanted, calling his words "harsh". He posted this recant on his website, claiming that his initial reaction was "strong and direct -- perhaps too strong and too direct."
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All told, Ginrich is to be applauded for using social media to engage his audience in new ways, even if he is tripping over his own tweets a bit. Newt has a wonderful future on the social media frontier. He just needs to remember to “think before you tweet.” A lesson for us all, to be sure.

Snapshot Post--Mini-Musings on The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly If You Read Their Tweets Backwards ...

In a move sure to generate millions of dollars and legions of new social media-savvy fans, MTV-owned Harmonix Music announced at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) that they will be launching "Beatles: Rock Band."

The game features 45 authentic Beatles songs and likenesses of the Fab Four in their prime. Surviving members of the band, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, were on hand to announce the new game, which allows single, multiple and online players to experience key events in the Beatles' performing life. Legendary shows, recording studios, and psychedelic dreamscapes (remember Sgt. Pepper, anyone?) are all represented. Instead of simply being a spectator, the players will actually be a part of the band.

It gets better though. To coincide with the game's debut, Apple and EMI Music are releasing the Beatles Remastered Catalog, which will contain all 14 of the Beatles' original albums. Now that will give fans something worth tweeting about. Even Paul and Ringo could have something to tweet about if it helps sales.

Be advised, however, that if you read some of their tweets backwards you'll find interesting messages waiting for you ... but that's another story.

Snapshot Post--Mini-Musings on The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly Did YouTube Miss the Boat?

Almost immediately after losing "Britain's Got Talent" with a second-place finish last Saturday night, Susan Boyle checked herself into a local clinic, being "exhausted and emotionally drained" after sailing through the media storm that buffeted her world for weeks. The first video of Susan produced the most downloads of any video in YouTube history (220 million). It is almost certain, that even with a second place finish, Susan will get a recording deal that will more than pay the doctor bills. People can't seem to get enough of her.

While Susan's ship has certainly come in, "Britain's Got Talent" and YouTube can't say the same thing. According to AP Entertainment writer Jake Coyle, the TV show and Youtube both missed the boat to the tune of millions in lost advertising revenue. When they begin to digest the real numbers, perhaps they're the ones who should be hospitalized for exhaustion. Read more...

Snapshot Post--Mini-Musings on The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly Wanted: A $70,000 a Year Tweeter

When Multnomah County, Oregon decided to hire a social media savvy person for a senior PR position, the public outcry was more than just a tweet or two. County citizens who had witnessed budget cuts, job losses, and general economic woes just didn't take kindly to a sexy new $70,000 job on the social media frontier. The job plan was nixed, but the social media strategy will live on ... with a twist. Read more.

Swim with the Social Media Savvy

Here's a quick way to assess whether you are stroking smoothly in pristine waters with the social media savvy or swimming against the current toward the island of Yesterday.

Scenario: You're trying to fill a temporary public relations position and over 34,000 people from almost 200 countries apply for the job. Do you:

1. Ask yourself if you actually have to read all of those resumes?
   
2. Consider the opportunity cost of all those interviews you'll need to conduct?
3. Delegate the job of screening applicants to a someone else?
4. Ask EVERYONE who wants the job to post a 60-second video on YouTube?

If you answered 1, 2, or 3 ... you're definitely swimming to Yesterday. If you chose 4, consider yourself social media savvy. Now, if you want to be really strategic about it, toss tradition to the wind, forget the whole idea of resumes and just ask everyone who wants the job to create a mini-advertisement about themselves, and by extension, your company, cause or brand.

That's exactly what Tourism Queensland in Australia did. Their "Best Job in the World" contest, launched in January, was designed to find someone who would take an "Island Caretaker" job for six months.

What is an Island Caretaker? Someone who's willing to move into a three-bedroom beach house within the Great Barrier Reef neighborhood. And while the job does include a few menial chores, the real purpose of this $110,000 half-year position is to increase awareness of the Great Barrier Reef by growing a global audience via blogs, tweets, photos, videos and podcasts from down under. Tough work, but apparently someone's got to do it.

The winner, Ben Southall, 34, from Great Britain starts his new job on July 1. But the real winner may be the folks at Tourism Queensland who harnessed the User Generated Content (UGC) of over 34,000 people who used their social networks, their creativity, and their earnest desire to land what is arguably one of the best "temp" positions on the planet, all in a surreptitiously collaborative effort to promote what Tourism Queensland sells.

According to Tourism Queensland's CEO, Anthony Hayes, world-wide response to the "Best Job in the World" campaign has been "nothing short of phenomenal."

Within days of its launch the campaign became virally charged as applicants posted and shared their videos on YouTube and numerous social networking sites. The number of applicants was soon paired down to a more manageable 50, who competed with each other to develop an audience by entertaining and educating their online followers with stunts, stats and schtick that stealthily promoted the greater goals of Tourism Queensland.

The group of 50 was reduced to 16 finalists who gathered together on a sandy beach in Queensland for a heavily hyped final round of interviews and activities that led to the selection of a winner.

Tourism Queensland spent $1.7 million on the campaign to reap an estimated $110 million in world-wide publicity. So while their social media strategy was far from free, the ROI was nothing short of incredible. More importantly, Tourism Queensland proved a social media maxim:

When you dare to let consumers define your product, you lose some control but you can gain a boatload of publicity, the kind that money can't really buy.

Now, get back in the water and swim with the current.