Billboard Proclaims The Death Of Old Media Through Old Media

In 2007, when I first started using social media as a marketing tool, it was just called “new media.” In the years since, digital marketers have made large strides, like dropping the vague term “new” and replacing it with phrases like “social network marketing” and, most significantly, adjusting the way that brands and businesses interact with their customers. We have learned a lot from our early experiences with social media. Here are some of the lessons social media taught us that are being applied across all forms of media, new and old.

Targeting the individual. One-to-one marketing is not just for social media anymore. With the recognition of the long tail has come permission to “waste” impressions. I am seeing more instances of marketers using traditionally mass media vehicles to microtarget niche audience.

Previously, to hit a highly specific audience like “Investment Bankers for Web-based IPOs” meant taking out a full page in a highly specific targeted medium like The Kiplinger Letter. This is changing.

Recently, Tim Ferriss wrote about an unusual billboard purchased by Zynga in Silicon Valley. He says, “There was no tagline, and I joked to my passenger, who was in the financing and IPO business, ‘I’m not sure who that’s intended to sell.’

The Tag-less Zynga Billboard

[His passenger] laughed and responded with ‘Dude, that’s not for end users. That’s to get the attention of the bankers driving from SFO to downtown.’

Leveraging Pass-Along and Word-of-Mouth. In that same article, Ferriss cites an example of not targeting your audience at all, but targeting the people who influence that audience. “At American Apparel, many of its best-known ads ran in obscure publications or in short bursts on niche websites. Millions of people know about them, however, because blogs thought they were so interesting that they wrote articles about them.”

The brilliance there is that the brand actually got more mileage out of their ad purchases by getting the pass-along value of what is essentially “free” advertising by highly influential bloggers. However, this type of editorial coverage and the buzz it creates is the type of advertising that big businesses have learned they cannot buy through a media broker.

Everything is Clickable. If someone is on a company’s Facebook page, the marketer knows that posting a clickable link will send many customers to get more information. With the increase of tablet PCs and mobile devices, marketers can now make this assumption with every medium. The QR code is an early integration of print with web. At the Smithsonian museums, visitors will see codes on the displays that are scannable with their web-enabled devices that will bring up apps, information and interactive learning.

Visual recognition programs for mobile devices, like Google Goggles, are being used by companies to deliver more information to their potential customers who take a picture of their products or even their logos.

As brands continue to understand the value of engaging with fans and seek metrics beyond impressions, we will see more integration of social, interactive, and location-based media with traditional media. Already, we see more restaurants posting the “Check In to Foursquare” window clings and counter cards to remind visitors to pair their physical visit with an internet visit.

A few years from now, when social media is no longer a “hot trend” but an additional, accepted marketing tool, I would like us to all look back and see that 2011 was the year that all media became “social.”

The other day I had someone ask me, “Hey, I saw that you know thousands of people on your LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter pages, could you ask one of them to get me a job?”

I felt utterly stunned at having to state the obvious, “I don’t actually know most of those people.”

I love social media sites. I spend entirely too much time on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter… especially Twitter, but I want to establish a clear distinction between social media sites and social networking.

“Social Media” is the term that generally groups together websites where the majority of content is created by the users. Typically they use log-ins, account names and personal profiles to connect people and focus on the “interactive” elements that have been key to the web 2.0 progression. We think of sites like Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Flickr. But “Social Networking” existed long before Web 2.0.

Mankind is a social animal with a long tradition of societal interdependence. Ashton Kutcher, the self-appointed champion of the Social Web, recently said:

“[H]uman beings are born not able to even sustain themselves, so at the end of the day, if you ultimately did something in your life that was great, you at least owe your mom.” –Ashton Kutcher from AK FTW, SKY Magazine, Feb. 2010.

Social Networking is the normal and timeless practice of making connections and helping people out. Using technology to facilitate these contacts makes it easier and more efficient, but just as in the past, “It’s not about the number of contacts you have; it’s how you use them.”

Another great quote about the effectiveness of this new tool today and its potential in the future comes from one of the all time greats in peer-to-peer marketing, Seth Godin:

“Social media is either a time-wasting, wool-gathering, yak-shaving waste of effort or, perhaps, just maybe, it’s a crack in the wall between you and the rest of the world. It’s a choice” –Seth Godin

Make your choice. Use your tools wisely.

I am looking for 6 to 8 Social Media Interns to work at our Sports Marketing Firm

Do You Love Sports and are you already spending hours of your life on blog sites (your own or others) posting comments and responses? Then you should be able to put your passion to work, be compensated for your skills, and be able to write about your ability on your resume.

If you would like a chance to prove yourself in the world of Online Sports Marketing, please send me an email or DM me on Twitter.

Please know that to be considered for this position, you must have a knack for online promotion, creating groups and collecting friends using MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. We can help you turn those skills into a resume-building asset, but you have to bring some know-how and a lot of passion. We are promoting an exclusive sporting event that will be broadcast on national television this fall. Let me know you’re interested by sending your resume along with links to your social networking profiles to my email: sbutler@sportslegendschallenge.com.

Location: Sandy Springs, North Atlanta
Compensation: $8 per hour/ 40 hours per week

Yesterday a co-worker asked me how I became so passionate about marketing.

The answer to the “How” question was rather boring: 4 years in undergrad, 2 masters programs, 5 years in corporate marketing with brands like Home Depot, Rubbermaid and Georgia-Pacific…

But the interesting answer is to the question he didn’t ask: “Why am I so passionate about marketing?”

Here is my answer to the unasked question:

• Because I love the psychology of buying; answering “Why do we purchase the things we do?” and “What makes this non-necessity item more desirable than another?”
• Because the symbols of the products and services we buy become more important than the Prod/Svcs themselves.
• Because “Consuming” is today’s Socio-political Religion. Like the Ancient Greek, who identified a fellow worshipper of Athena by the image of an owl or an olive branch, today’s Versace-wearer or Porsche-driver can quickly identify others of similar lifestyle and belief system.
• Because we are living in the era of the shift from Professional Advertising to Authentic Promoting. This excites me to no end. I have blogged before that consumers are no longer waiting around for Madison Avenue to identify the next must-have product, as they did four decades ago. Today, we each turn to our peers, to other people that we know and like–that we identify with–to gather opinions on the products that we choose to purchase.

Seth Godin said yesterday: “It’s quite possible that the era of the professional reviewer is over. No longer can a single individual (except maybe Oprah) make a movie, a restaurant or a book into a hit or a dud. Not only can an influential blogger sell thousands of books, she can spread an idea that reaches others, influencing not just the reader, but the people who read that person’s blog or tweets.”

No Bastilles are being stormed and no shots will be fired, but there is a revolution occuring in the way and reason that we purchase and consume. Rather we are informed or not, rather we are proactive or not, we will all be a part of this. That is exciting. For me, that is something I can get passionate about.