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Five Scary Client Stories To Tell In The Dark 0

Picture it: You’re sitting around a campfire and swapping stories of your worst client engagements — tales beyond moments of annoyance, and way past discomfiture. We’re talking the sorts of experiences that could be called disastrous were it not for the fact that ultimately it’s only advertising.
In general, I detest stories that place the blame on clients — or agencies for that matter — when an engagement is supposed to be a partnership. While it will be clear from these stories that partnership was not the client goal in each case, the agency bears responsibility for these snafus as well. But each of these incidents makes both a good story and a great opportunity to learn from the mistakes and missteps of others.But at the time people were going through these events, minds and stomach linings were consumed in prodigious quantities
Oh, enough of my caveats. I interviewed a few agency people to collect some good “horror stories” for your amusement and edification. Each teaches a lesson — to both agencies and clients — about how to make relationships and projects work better.

Scary story 1

Losing tens of thousands for lack of a $30 credit checkAn old friend tells of a time that an agency — a big ‘un — got so excited about the prospect of a massive web project that it jockeyed for the account without doing any due diligence on the company it was courting:

They were looking for a big e-commerce site, which would have given us the opportunity to show how well our team was aligned with a back-end web dev company that our holding company had just acquired. The prospect client threw out a budget that was astronomical — three or four times the cost of any previous web project we had done. We jumped at the chance and signed a contract within three days of the initial inquiry.

The instant the contract was signed, the client became an absolute nightmare, speeding the timeline by 60 percent and tearing out the hearts of four project managers who were assigned to the account in succession. The average tenure for PMs on this gem of an assignment was about four days. One person quit the industry as a result of the project:

Finally, the agency found someone in the account team who could deal with the evil and bile, and the project got on track. A week or so in, the A/P team first sounded the alarm that the initial payment had never been received. There followed several weeks of “it’s in the mail,” “we have record of it being signed for,” and “how dare you ask me about this again.”

About four weeks into the project, someone typed the names of the website founders into Google. The results page exploded with lawsuits, complaints, and invective-filled blog posts about the clients and how they had garnered web work in the past without ever paying a cent. The agency called the client to tell it work would stop until payment was received. And the agency never heard from the client again.
Lesson for agencies and clients: A credit report costs $30 or so. A Google search even less. Don’t be intimidated into foregoing basic due diligence. Separately, clients need to ensure that their agencies have the financial stability to do jobs as well. While this wasn’t an issue in this case, that is a problem that happens with some frequency these days.

Scary story 2

The client that wanted the agency to take the legal riskI heard from one person who was working on a vitamin supplement brand. That person was directed to put certain claims in banners that would be extremely compelling, if they were true:

We got started on the project before all of the terms of the contract were agreed to, but with a payment already made by the client to cover the costs of early development. Fortunately, the copywriter had worked on supplements before, and was aware that the FTC has strict rules on what can be said — and not said — about supplements.

When the client sent back the contract terms and conditions, it had crossed out provisions that stated that the client bore ultimate responsibility for the legal risk. In short, the company was unwilling to back the very claims it wanted made in the advertising.
Despite great pressure from the client, the agency refused to traffic the ads and lost the business. And likely averted tremendous legal consequences for false statements:

Soon after, the individual client was fired from the company. Turns out that the company as unaware of what this marketer was trying to do until the agency’s refusal to run the ads.

Lesson for agencies and clients: Think about the potential legal implications of projects before you take them live.

Scary story 3

The client who cried “innovation”Many agency folks spoke of clients who demanded innovative ideas but only ever bought the most offer-focused banners and other kerplunk direct-response programs. What drives this, I think, is a desire to be at the forefront of the industry but ultimately being beholden to very strict performance objectives.
Tens of thousands of brands have tried virtually every sort of digital tactic, but the reality is that a subset of digital is virtually always better at driving DR metrics.
What agency people told me was that this all becomes problematic when clients want the sort of creative campaigns that will serve to “make their career” and ”deliver their number.” DR tends not to be sexy like that.
Another respondent told me:

I once worked on an account that asked us to run DR-focused banners on ultra-elite pubs — sites with CPMs $30 or more. We explained that this was unlikely to deliver great DR metrics, but the client persisted. The idea was to enhance the brand image of the service while also delivering some sales. And besides, how do we know it wouldn’t work? When the first performance reports came in, it quickly became apparent that more efficient audience-based buys were far more effective and that brand goals — which weren’t even being measured — weren’t serious considerations for the client. They were wants not needs.

The resulting scramble to refocus dollars proved that old adage, “It’s not a DR campaign until the first reports come in.”
Lesson for clients: For best results, communicate bona fide objectives. Tell us what really matters.
Lesson for agencies: Be strident in alerting clients to bad direction. We are ultimately paid for our expertise, not our agreeable natures.

Scary story 4

Six months of Mars-Venus relationships for want of three Southwest ticketsAn old friend tells me that her agency has had a client for six months and has never met anyone from the day-to-day team face to face.
The client expects to do about $800,000 a year in creative business, and place more than $10 million on banners through Christmas. The account is very low margin for the agency owing to a tough round with procurement, but it keeps a bunch of designers and planners working and gives the shop a modicum of prestige.
My friend is convinced that the work could be much stronger if the agency team felt more ownership and had a better understanding of the business:

Our people would be more energized and do better work if they actually knew the people they present to on conference calls. Issues and problems arise because the people on both sides are disembodied voices to one another.

This client refuses to pay for three airline tickets to send the account person, the creative director, and the lead designer to the home office. They feel it is an unnecessary expense.
The agency and client towns are served by Southwest. I just checked, and the supersaver fare is $59.
I pointed this out to my friend and asked, “Why doesn’t the agency just pay?” The response:

Well, the contract indicates that the client pays for travel. So you may find it penny wise and pound foolish for the agency not to spring for the tickets. But there is a principle at stake. And when you start making exceptions to procurement-driven contracts, the slope gets awfully slick awfully fast.

Hmm. Would a site visit improve the work? It certainly seems worth three $59 tickets plus cab fare to find out.
Lesson for clients: Find a way to get face to face with the agency, especially at the outset of a relationship. It doesn’t cost very much relative to the amount you are probably spending through the agency, and I promise you it will mean better work.
Lesson for agencies: See lesson for clients. And if the terms of a contract are so onerous that you can’t afford a couple of Southwest tickets, don’t take the contract.

Scary story 5

The “huddle” and bad feedbackI once had a remarkably overstaffed client that involved a CMO, SVP of marketing, three VPs, five brand managers, and four assistant brand managers in every creative meeting. Yep, it was a CPG company.
Having lots of decision makers is not an unexpected part of the territory. What generally isn’t is “the huddle,” where agency people are ejected from the meeting to allow the client team to privately debate and discuss the campaign. Ostensibly the huddle is to enable the less-experienced assistant brand managers to speak more freely. I get the idea (though I would point out that in 25 years I have never worked with an assistant brand manager who was afraid to share an opinion). The huddle is also said to ensure that the agency gets one unified set of direction. That is appreciated — but the act of kicking the agency out puts distance between the teams.
While I personally find the huddle off-putting, I understand the desire to talk privately for a short period. What wasn’t reasonable was being made to stand in a hallway for an hour or more while the client team members debated the executions.
The most prolonged huddle was more than three hours. The executions under discussion were Flash banners — DR banners.
What could they possibly have been talking about for three hours?
Lesson for clients: If you want your agency to act in your interests as part of the team, involve its team in discussions. Oh, and contemplating every word in a banner for 17 minutes apiece is a tad excessive.
Lesson for agencies: If something in the client’s process is counterproductive, have the courage to tell them and explain why. We bitched about it amongst ourselves but didn’t explain why it was a problem.
Conclusion
Advertising is a service business, and agencies need to adapt to clients. And it would be wrong to look at the stories above and conclude that the clients always sucked. Certainly in the case of the company that had no intention of paying for services, that was the case.
But to look at all those stories and say it’s the clients fault is destructive behavior.
We all need to be masters of our own destinies, and the desire for short-term harmony shouldn’t outweigh the airing of genuine concerns. It isn’t always the client’s fault any more than it is always the agency’s.
Our role as individual participants in this process is to do what’s right, not what’s easy.
And of course, never, ever, ever forego running a credit check.
Thanks to iMediaConnection for running this first.

Posted on: 11-2-2011
Posted in: Oldest Living Digital Marketer

How Amazon Fire is Saving Civilization 0

Oh what a seemingly overblown headline. And yet, if you think about it, it’s not that far from the truth. Because with its broad potential reach, and its likely ability to get people to pay for valuable content, the Fire seems poised to provide a counterbalance for a “free” web, while also giving people the freedom to choose.

Such heresy! The idea that people who make content should get paid directly for what they produce. Hey, I am no enemy of free content. As a fairly prolific blogger, I am well aware that providing free access to content is an incredible force for free expression.

And it appears that Amazon is more than aware of that value. In fact, it has created a browser to help people get and consume the free content of their choice more quickly and easily.

 No, I am talking about the other side of the content equation. The one where professionals make great stuff that is rather difficult to properly monetize in the current environment. The situation where professional reporters get laid off in droves because publications cannot pay them on the meager revenues they generate from the online web.

 Reversing this decline in professional content is absolutely critical to maintaining a real culture and civilization.

Without a way to monetize what pros produce, our culture really does suffer. We need investigative reporters, independent film producers, full time authors, and the like to provide the richness of our society, and the checks against growing government power.

 And besides, the free web really isn’t free. What’s happened is that hundreds of billions in investment capital – a synonym for which is our pension and 401K money — have been subsidizing the “free” infrastructure of pipes and pictures and videos and words. Oh, there are also ads to monetize it – something like an average of 14 blinking ads per page – many sold for less than a dime per thousand.

 But that arrangement hasn’t favored “good,” it has favored “all,” which is marvelous on some levels, and has made more than a few people millionaires from its democratic largesse. But we also need to ensure that the best and brightest can make their livings producing content.

 And that’s also where Amazon Fire fits in. A device that tens of millions more will be able to afford versus iPad. A device created in large part to monetize content through purchases made by those that choose to consume it. A MOBILE device that is sufficiently different from a PC that most expect people to be willing to actually pay for the good stuff. Paying for the best content out there. So great content producers can make their livings creating great content.

 I am very grateful for the “free” web – especially in an era when a handful of companies own virtually all American media. I am grateful as well for an FTC that is trying to promulgate net neutrality. But I am also grateful that Amazon has launched Fire – a device that holds the promise of helping the best content creators make enough to live on. Because they are just as important to the preservation and expansion of “civilization.”

Posted on: 10-7-2011
Posted in: Oldest Living Digital Marketer

Start-Up Watch COD: Wingsplay Rewards Influentials for Distributing Your Vids 0

Viral distribution has always been one of the Holy Grails of digital. The idea of people seeking out your marketing messages and then distributing them for you – at no cost – has activated the salivary glands of many a brand leader.
But for most brands, it shares another characteristic with the Holy Grail: elusiveness. Many brands have tried to create “viral” programs, and very few have succeeded.
Part of it is our own fault. We fail to recognize that our ham fisted marketing messages aren’t the sorts of things that people care about or want to share. But there’s another thing. Some brands jump the hurdle of relevance and make content that people would share if they knew about it. But those same brands often fail because the would be spreaders never see their content.
Enter . What this company does is offer a platform through which you can work with influential people in social media to distribute your videos on a cost per view basis. Instead of paying a publisher to drive plays, you reward influential voices online through Wingsplay.
So let’s start with the first question on your minds. Is it “OK” to reward people to distribute messages in social media? A couple of years ago there were some shady businesses driving blog posts about brands without disclosing the compensation they were providing. This ain’t like that. Rather, I’d liken it to paying a celeb to drink your Pepsi or use your basketball shoes.
Says Wingsplay Founder Olivier Lasry,
As celebrities are paid to lend their name and image to campaigns, Wingsplay rewards influential social media users to share the most entertaining viral ads. But this democratization of endorsement goes way further: contrary to working with big celebrities, influential social media users have strong ties to their social connections and 2-way conversations with these friends, fans and followers. They consequently generate much more engagement and visibility,
Online content is more likely to be played and interacted with when it has been posted by a friend versus a celebrity simply because the former values their comments and interactions much more than the latter.
Wingsplay also ensures that every post made as a result of the platform transparently communicates its sponsored nature. That ensures you live up to the letter – and the spirit – of the FTC regulations.
Not just anybody is flogging your videos. It’s not like that at all. Rather, you choose your target audience, and then set a CPV for the program. Then, those that LIKE YOUR CONTENT and are interested in your program distribute your video to people with a high degree of likelihood to be in your target audience. They are then compensated based upon the plays they drive. Obviously, programs that offer a higher bounty are going to attract more influencer attention, but in my view most of these influencers will ultimately select content they like best. But a healthy CPV wouldn’t hoit!
I like this approach. I am a huge believer in the need to seed video distribution. While we may think or hope that millions of people are constantly scanning the web looking for messages, the reality is that there is so much content out there that even the best stuff sometimes dies on the vine. I constantly find good content online that never really went anywhere because you had to really be digging around to find it. And most people aren’t spending time online doing that.
With a service like Wingsplay, you get passed the initial awareness problem so that your ideas are seen by thousands – maybe even millions. Additionally, you get to target the sorts of people who you want to expose to your video. Where it goes from there, of course, is up to the quality of the creative idea and the content itself.

Posted on: 09-25-2011
Posted in: Oldest Living Digital Marketer

Start-Up Watch COD: Wingsplay Rewards Influentials for Distributing Your Vids 0

Viral distribution has always been one of the Holy Grails of digital. The idea of people seeking out your marketing messages and then distributing them for you – at no cost – has activated the salivary glands of many a brand leader.

But for most brands, it shares another characteristic with the Holy Grail: elusiveness. Many brands have tried to create “viral” programs, and very few have succeeded.

Part of it is our own fault. We fail to recognize that our ham fisted marketing messages aren’t the sorts of things that people care about or want to share. But there’s another thing. Some brands jump the hurdle of relevance and make content that people would share if they knew about it. But those same brands often fail because the would be spreaders never see their content.

Enter

Wingsplay

. What this company does is offer a platform through which you can work with influential people in social media to distribute your videos on a cost per view basis. Instead of paying a publisher to drive plays, you reward influential voices online through Wingsplay.

So let’s start with the first question on your minds. Is it “OK” to reward people to distribute messages in social media? A couple of years ago there were some shady businesses driving blog posts about brands without disclosing the compensation they were providing. This ain’t like that. Rather, I’d liken it to paying a celeb to drink your Pepsi or use your basketball shoes.

Says Wingsplay Founder Olivier Lasry,

As celebrities are paid to lend their name and image to campaigns, Wingsplay rewards influential social media users to share the most entertaining viral ads. But this democratization of endorsement goes way further: contrary to working with big celebrities, influential social media users have strong ties to their social connections and 2-way conversations with these friends, fans and followers. They consequently generate much more engagement and visibility,

Online content is more likely to be played and interacted with when it has been posted by a friend versus a celebrity simply because the former values their comments and interactions much more than the latter.

Wingsplay also ensures that every post made as a result of the platform transparently communicates its sponsored nature. That ensures you live up to the letter – and the spirit – of the FTC regulations.

Not just anybody is flogging your videos. It’s not like that at all. Rather, you choose your target audience, and then set a CPV for the program. Then, those that LIKE YOUR CONTENT and are interested in your program distribute your video to people with a high degree of likelihood to be in your target audience. They are then compensated based upon the plays they drive. Obviously, programs that offer a higher bounty are going to attract more influencer attention, but in my view most of these influencers will ultimately select content they like best. But a healthy CPV wouldn’t hoit!

I like this approach. I am a huge believer in the need to seed video distribution. While we may think or hope that millions of people are constantly scanning the web looking for messages, the reality is that there is so much content out there that even the best stuff sometimes dies on the vine. I constantly find good content online that never really went anywhere because you had to really be digging around to find it. And most people aren’t spending time online doing that.

With a service like Wingsplay, you get passed the initial awareness problem so that your ideas are seen by thousands – maybe even millions. Additionally, you get to target the sorts of people who you want to expose to your video. Where it goes from there, of course, is up to the quality of the creative idea and the content itself.

Posted on: 08-2-2011
Posted in: Oldest Living Digital Marketer

Start-Up Watch COD: MyLikes rewards influencers for taking brand messages viral 0

If newspapers and magazines and TV stations and web sites get paid to communicate brand messages, why not brand fans? Millions of people talk about and endorse brands in social media every day – and more and more brands are exploring ways to encourage more such sharing.

With the remarkable credibility of personal endorsements, there should be no doubt that we are going to see more and more marketers search for ways to dial up the social influencing in support of their brands.

is a social media advertising and marketing tool that helps brands do just that. Essentially, MyLikes is a community of influencers who are offered compensation in exchange for TRANSPARENTLY communicating messages about brands in their Twitters, FaceBook Pages, Tumblrs and Blogs.

Users join the community by linking to one or more of their existing social media presences, and then identify their passions. By communicating their favorite topics and items to MyLikes, users get a customized dashboard of company offers that fits their lives. If you care about entertainment, then you are going to see offers related to movies and TV shoes and whatnot. If you are a cook, expect to find offers related to food and recipes. You get the idea.

Users select the offers that match their brand interests and communicate them to their social graphs. For every click that these communications spawn, the influencer is compensated.

When I joined, the offers I received ranged in potential compensation from four cents to fourteen cents per click. The four cent offers were generally for people to click and participate in online activities, while the 14 cent offer was to communicate information specifically about an Acer computer. It appears that the more overtly salesy the offer, the higher the compensation. Which stands to reason since the advertiser herself is setting the compensation figure.

One of the offers I received on my MyLikes offer page was an invitation todistribute the link to a quiz rating how much like Charlie Sheen’s the respondent’s partying style is. By posting a message linking to the quiz, I would be compensated 7 cents for every click the offer received.

The service prepopulates a Tweet that you can of course edit. When the Tweet appears in your stream, it is identified as an ad and the source is shown as MyLikes.

So I looked at the offers, picked one that I liked, Tweeted it. Easy peasy. Then I sit back and watch the money roll in.

(And just in case you are curious, I don’t party like Charlie Sheen. Shocker to those that know me, I know…)

That’s the consumer side to all this. On the brand side, the advertiser pays only when an influencer drives a legit click. One of the big questions I had about this was how they plan to avoid spammy clicking behavior. Their model actually monitors the community by analyzing extraordinarily high click rates, and each member’s behavior to ensure that the visits driven by the platform are legitimate.

In fact, all member profiles are public, as is the list of likes that have identified. This is another tool to help the company and its clients separate the evangelist wheat from the spammer chaff. You can field a campaign in moments using their searchwords-like ad platform.

My Likes has already garnered a set of leading advertiser clients, including The Coca-Cola Company, Microsoft, Unilever, Sony Music, and Universal Pictures. Check out a whole mess of 20-second case studies here. (I need to remember this awesome case format the next time a client asks for these on their site. Nice.)

I like the simplicity of this platform, and how singularly focused it is on the problem of getting brand likers to become active evangelists. It delivers the transparency the FTC is looking for, and actually ensures that people who work hard on behalf of brands get compensated for their efforts.

Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.

Posted on: 05-14-2011
Posted in: Oldest Living Digital Marketer

Start-Up Watch COD: MyLikes rewards influencers for taking brand messages viral 0

If newspapers and magazines and TV stations and web sites get paid to communicate brand messages, why not brand fans? Millions of people talk about and endorse brands in social media every day – and more and more brands are exploring ways to encourage more such sharing.

With the remarkable credibility of personal endorsements, there should be no doubt that we are going to see more and more marketers search for ways to dial up the social influencing in support of their brands.

is a social media advertising and marketing tool that helps brands do just that. Essentially, MyLikes is a community of influencers who are offered compensation in exchange for TRANSPARENTLY communicating messages about brands in their Twitters, FaceBook Pages, Tumblrs and Blogs.

Users join the community by linking to one or more of their existing social media presences, and then identify their passions. By communicating their favorite topics and items to MyLikes, users get a customized dashboard of company offers that fits their lives. If you care about entertainment, then you are going to see offers related to movies and TV shoes and whatnot. If you are a cook, expect to find offers related to food and recipes. You get the idea.

Users select the offers that match their brand interests and communicate them to their social graphs. For every click that these communications spawn, the influencer is compensated.

When I joined, the offers I received ranged in potential compensation from four cents to fourteen cents per click. The four cent offers were generally for people to click and participate in online activities, while the 14 cent offer was to communicate information specifically about an Acer computer. It appears that the more overtly salesy the offer, the higher the compensation. Which stands to reason since the advertiser herself is setting the compensation figure.

One of the offers I received on my MyLikes offer page was an invitation todistribute the link to a quiz rating how much like Charlie Sheen’s the respondent’s partying style is. By posting a message linking to the quiz, I would be compensated 7 cents for every click the offer received.

The service prepopulates a Tweet that you can of course edit. When the Tweet appears in your stream, it is identified as an ad and the source is shown as MyLikes.

So I looked at the offers, picked one that I liked, Tweeted it. Easy peasy. Then I sit back and watch the money roll in.

(And just in case you are curious, I don’t party like Charlie Sheen. Shocker to those that know me, I know…)

That’s the consumer side to all this. On the brand side, the advertiser pays only when an influencer drives a legit click. One of the big questions I had about this was how they plan to avoid spammy clicking behavior. Their model actually monitors the community by analyzing extraordinarily high click rates, and each member’s behavior to ensure that the visits driven by the platform are legitimate.

In fact, all member profiles are public, as is the list of likes that have identified. This is another tool to help the company and its clients separate the evangelist wheat from the spammer chaff. You can field a campaign in moments using their searchwords-like ad platform.

My Likes has already garnered a set of leading advertiser clients, including The Coca-Cola Company, Microsoft, Unilever, Sony Music, and Universal Pictures. Check out a whole mess of 20-second case studies here. (I need to remember this awesome case format the next time a client asks for these on their site. Nice.)

I like the simplicity of this platform, and how singularly focused it is on the problem of getting brand likers to become active evangelists. It delivers the transparency the FTC is looking for, and actually ensures that people who work hard on behalf of brands get compensated for their efforts.

Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.

Posted on: 05-14-2011
Posted in: Oldest Living Digital Marketer

The Internet’s Greatest Marketing Bloopers 0

Everyone loves a good blooper — until your own brand becomes the butt of the joke. Let’s examine some digital flubs and what we should take away from them.

Who doesn’t love a TV blooper? They are fun to watch — flubbed pronunciation, forgotten lines, double entendres. You don’t even need to be a mean person to enjoy them because bloopers are mistakes, but not deadly ones.

In an environment as dynamic and ever changing as digital, it’s natural that even the smartest in the digerati make bloopers in judgment or execution. Many such online marketing bloopers are the result of the changing reality brought on by the advent of digital, and as such are quite understandable. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from them.

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results, then perhaps this article can help us avoid straightjackets by pointing out a few digital bloopers and what we should take away from them.

1) Don’t assume you can isolate messages

The web provides enormous opportunities to segment and tailor creative messages. But it also breaks down demographic, geographic, and other boundaries. Segmentation and tailoring does not prevent some segments from hearing and seeing what you are saying to others.

Remember this ad from Absolut, which depicted the pre-1848 Mexican and U.S. borders? Run only in Mexico, the ad was designed to be a funny nod to Mexican pride. The brand surely felt it had found a powerful visual to help la gente identify with the brand. Unfortunately, right-wing American bloggers got hold of the ad, and within hours were lined up to ban Absolut, call it reverse racist, and on and on. Former CNN personality Lou Dobbs switched to Grey Goose over it.

Now, in large part due to income disparities and population, Americans drink more Absolut than Mexicans. So the company had to scramble to apologize to Americans who might have been offended. Here’s what the brand issued:

“This particular ad, which ran in Mexico, was based upon historical perspectives and was created with a Mexican sensibility. In no way was this meant to offend or disparage, nor does it advocate an altering of borders, nor does it lend support to any anti-American sentiment, nor does it reflect immigration issues. Instead, it hearkens to a time which the population of Mexico may feel was more ideal.”
– Paula Eriksson, VP of corporate communications, V&S Absolut Spirits

But from a digital perspective, the key takeaway is that you need to assume that everyone can see everything.

2) Avoid building the branded destination website

Most of us have created a digital something in the misguided hope that significant numbers of people care about it and our products as much as we do. If you’re like me, there’s a $500,000-plus error in your past that reflects this sort of “Field of Dreams” mentality.

It wasn’t so long ago that lots of brands were building massive websites in hopes that consumers would spend half their online time interacting with branded games, participating in brand chats, talking to brand experts, etc. While less common these days, the branded “destination” site still appears periodically in the digisphere.

It’s fairly unlikely that you can attract and hold the sort of audience you are dreaming of. Why? Because just as The New York Times shouldn’t go into the chewing gum business, you probably shouldn’t go into the content business. It’s not what most of us do. Better to stick to what you know.

The classic example of this is Bud.tv, a $30-million experiment that folded in 2009. Now, hold the phone. I am not ragging on Bud here. If any brand could develop a compelling content destination, it’d probably be these guys. After all, the company “gets” its customer and knows how to bring the funny in a 30-second spot.

But even Bud couldn’t define and deliver a place where its customers would want to “live” online. The hype and anticipation of Bud.tv were ultimately met with lukewarm consumer response — despite a broad range of decent-to-good video, activities, and game content on the site.

The hard, cold reality: Bud makes beer, not movies and games. And you make pine-scented air fresheners or electronics or weekend getaways or whatever it is that you make. Not entertainment.

3) Don’t field social media programs just before the weekend

Arguably, no one is better at marketing to moms than Johnson & Johnson, so its misstep on Motrin was a bit surprising. Motrin developed a tongue-in-cheek ad that poked fun at moms who love baby slings — fabric baby carriers that keep your child right next to your body. Motrin suggested that moms who wear them cry more than moms who don’t, presumably due to back and neck strain. Here’s the ad:

The video went up late on a Friday. While of course social media is a 24/7/365 proposition, most marketing and PR people are at home on Saturdays, and probably not monitoring the social sphere for consumer reaction. But as Motrin soon learned, mommy bloggers and mommy Twitterers do not take Saturdays off.

The maelstrom of was , and it built throughout the weekend. By the time Monday came along, Motrin faced a tsunami of angry moms.

Motrin responded quickly. Down the ad came, and with its disappearance the controversy more or less ended.

We could dissect the ad and try to take creative lessons. But hindsight is 20/20. I think its best that we remember that we live in a connected world, and individual opinions matter. And when we don’t participate in the dialogue about our brand, bad things happen. So never field campaigns or social media on the weekend. Because listening to early reactions is critical to ensuring success. Had the campaign gone out on a Monday, J&J could have addressed the concerns in near real time, provided it was using one of the many social insights platforms currently available. Nothing good comes from not being around at launch time.

4) Never claim “hackproof”

When a medium reaches more than a billion people, it’s safe to say that there is someone out there who can hack whatever you can make. How long does it take before Microsoft launches its latest security update before the next virus hits?

It’s not just software that has been hacked as well as shamed online. The people who make Kryptonite bicycle locks found themselves in a whole mess of negative publicity http://www.engadget.com/2004/09/14/kryptonite-evolution-2000-u-lock-hacked-by-a-bic-pen/ way back in 2004 when Engadget was able to pick its signature high-end lock using only a ballpoint pen.

And of course there’s LifeLock http://www.lifelock.com/, which famously posted its CEO’s social security number everywhere to prove how protected its members are. While said CEO was able to use the service to avoid damage to his credit, his identity was stolen many times. Meaning people used his social security number in a variety of ways, but none had material impact on his credit. Because LifeLock had stated or implied (tomato-tomahto) absolute security, it lost the PR battle, even if its CEO can still easily get a new mortgage.

In short, claiming hackproof is like waving a red flag in front of 6.5 billion bulls. You might be able to outrun the pack, but at least one is getting its horn into your gut.

5) Don’t “wing” it without a social media policy

It seems that many companies have recognized the importance of social, and the value of a “live” company presence in social media. Unfortunately, some jumped straight to social media execution without first developing a sound social media policy.

Hospital nurses cell-photoing an embarrassing X-ray and on a social net . Earnest social media managers making statements that are inappropriate. The number of examples in which companies would have been helped by offering explicit and well-considered social media policies is legion.

Fortunately for those who made or are making this misstep, many organizations have made their social media policies public, and reviewing these can help companies understand, anticipate, and address potential issues before they arise. With all these examples publicly available, there’s no reason or excuse to wing it anymore. Naturally, companies need to strike a balance between natural and genuine thoughts and opinions with the need for strong corporate controls. Fortunately, more and more companies are succeeding.

6) Don’t ignore privacy concerns

Most industry participants are certain that advanced targeting technologies pose no threat to consumer privacy. That doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is that consumers and the government think that they pose a threat. The WSJ article last July was just one of the stories that are slowly rousing public concern about online privacy.

You can say people are confused. You can say people are being paranoid. Or moronic. But you are in the people-pleasing business, not the people-judging business.

“Judge not lest ye be booted out on your snotty arrogant a*s, you self righteous b*stard.”
(Book of Jim 1:1).

Ask if privacy concerns matter. Or now defunct http. Or better yet, ask , FTC chairman .

The self-regulation efforts from a cross-industry coalition, encapsulated in the “Power i” program, have created a great means of informing the public and enabling cool, rational decisions about advanced targeting. Get on board.

Many thanks to the fine people at for publishing this first.

Posted on: 01-3-2011
Posted in: Oldest Living Digital Marketer