I have been watching the Old Spice phenomenon with interest and admiration so don’t get me wrong; it will set the bar for great, creative work in advertising but is it a high point for social media?  I don’t think so.

The campaign, with its barrage of rapid-response YouTube videos distributed through Twitter, is modern advertising done extremely well; it acknowledges (and capitalizes on the fact) that we live in a world suffused with social tools, but it isn’t exemplary of them or the fullest expression of their potential.   It is still essentially a high-polish, broadcast campaign (technically one might better call it “transmedia“).  In fact, I would contend that this is exactly why the campaign has been so successful in bridging the gap from its origins as a television commercial.  They maintained the formula of high production standards that marked the original.   They kept the responses exclusive, selectively engaging people that would keep them “on brand” while maintaining a steady stream of high-quality content.

At the end of the day, the breathless analysis of Old Spice as the zenith of social media leaves one to wonder what the commentariat think social media is, and whom it is actually for.

I once read that in the 1960’s comics and counterculture figures began using profanity in part because they felt that the use of such language precluded their message/movement from being co-opted.   They were, of course, temporarily right and permanently wrong.  It took a bit longer but nearly every song of that age has found its way into an advertisement.  Its slogans have been re-engineered to suit – and peace, harmony (“I’d like to give the world a Coke”) and even songs critiquing material pursuits (Janis Joplin for Mercedes-Benz ) have been stripped of their original intent and attached to one product or other.

So it goes with the social media land grab currently underway as every major corporation rushes to stake a claim on our attention and our loyalty.   They are co-opting a medium whose fundamental and radical proposition is a promotion of interpersonal connection, many-to-many communication, and the privilege of social norms over business norms.

Further, the discourse that informs the way we define social media in practice is being shaped by an army of consultants whose personal stake in this game is deeply tied to the clients that they serve.  More often these are big corporations.  Thus the analysis of BP all too often focused on how BP could help itself during the crisis rather than how society at large might better use these tools to come to grips with corporate malfeasance.   The conversations about Nestle’s “failure” focused on prescriptions that supported the consultant’s value proposition more than the real-world context that surrounded the Nestle incident.   On a much more benign level the analysis of Old Spice would lead you to believe that it is the pinnacle of social media– when in my opinion it rises just above a clever extension of a broadcast message.

The transformative nature of social media lies in the fact that it enables a more equitable distribution of power, ingenuity and creativity.    The sea change that comes from realizing this potential is not about technology or marketing.  It certainly (from my point of view) isn’t about how corporations can profit or dominate.  It is all about how a major shift in our own sense of identity (we are all now authors and authorities), social norms and a new mode of production might give us a better world.   It’s greatest exemplars then are drawn from the grass roots, the marginalized, the entrepreneurial, the unintended and even the seemingly trivial.

Yes, let’s celebrate some interesting corporate case studies.  But let’s keep our eyes on the bigger prize and promise of social media.  Doing so is part of making sure that promise is realized.

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• Old Spice and the Return of Ad-Power: Are “Transformats” the Future of Marketing? (designmind.frogdesign.com)
• Old Spice: The Archetype of a Successful Social Media Campaign (Mashable)

“Video Killed the Radio Star” – The Buggles, Sept 7, 1979

The rise of MTV and the age of video heralded the end of the line for the ugly rock star.   Why?  Media places selection pressures upon the content that flows through them and a visual medium had no use for the likes of Foghat.

Media is Darwinian.  Which is to say the medium of communication inherently enables or inhibits certain traits.  Consider the rise of  literacy which promoted abstract thinking done in solitude versus orality, which favors skills of memorization and shared experience.

In similar fashion, Social media is  placing selection pressures on business (along with every aspect of society).   As more and more of our friends, customers and business colleagues begin participating on the web (as opposed to just reading on it)  it has become a fundamentally social medium; its operating principles now follow social norms more than they do traditional business norms.

What’s the difference?

Social contracts are founded upon trust, authenticity, reputation and reciprocity to name a substantive few.   While these traits have always governed our personal relationships, until the rise of social media most of business that was transacted was remarkably impersonal and asocial.

This leads to an obvious assertion that has huge implications:  Over time businesses that “get” social and adhere to a social contract will thrive – while those that do not, will wither.

Reading the Fast Company article on how Twitter is being used now as an accurate means of predicting sales or behavior.  In this case movies.  While the application of Twitter as an effective prediction engine is limited at this point – it yet again points to a positive reading of the “law of unintended consquences.” Twitter has proved itself useful in functions that its creators could not have imagined.   From the article:

We’ve all got the vague intuition that Twitter allows you track, in real-time, what people are concerned about or obsessed with. But this is a little freaky: Two researchers at HP Labs, Sitaram Asur and Bernardo Huberman, have discovered that you can actually use Twitter mentions to predict how well a movie will do in it’s first couple weekends of release. What’s more, the method works even better than the most accurate method currently in use, the Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX)….

Twitter might be more than just a mirror of mass sentiment–the service might also influence it. In other words, could you actually make a product launch far more successful with a really smart Twitter strategy?

John Battelle cited a post of mine today in his great FM Signal blog.   At issue were my thoughts on the Nestle Facebook fracas.  John makes a great point and his post helped me get clear on what I increasingly see as a divide within social media between theory and practice.  That is to say, there are a standard set of answers that garner complete agreement in theory but may not hold up so well in practice.   John writes:

I think I’ll open Signal with a response to this post: Why Social Media May Not Be for You… (Yet), from Joshua-Michéle Ross of Opposable Planets. I like the thinking in this post, but disagree with the final thought. Musing on the recent Nestle Facebook “debacle” (which I do not believe is, or needs to be proclaimed a debacle), Joshua-Michéle concludes: If Nestle neither wishes to change or defend itself on the merits – then they shouldn’t be operating in social media.

Well, yes and no. Yes, in that the sheer beauty of social media is that it forces questions to the fore, and thus forces companies to respond to those questions. But no, it’s not OK, as a strategy, to “not be operating in social media.” I sense, perhaps, that Joshua-Michéle was making the same point in a roundabout way.

My reasoning? Because all of our customers are already operating in social media. You can’t pretend otherwise. And it’s better to engage, make mistakes, admit those mistakes, and move on, than to not engage at all. I call this “conversational judo,” and suggest we all practice it, daily. Twice on Sunday, perhaps.

Here is the comment (with very slight clean up after further reflection) that I left on the Signal blog:

Thanks for citing my post. We are essentially in agreement but I think we are lobbying from a fundamentally different perspective. In my opinion the difference lies between theory and practice. In theory every company SHOULD get engaged for the reasons you state above. In practice many organizations aren’t yet prepared (culturally and structurally) for what is involved. If you are counseling a company that will get criticism but has no internal mechanism to either respond or change – then as their counselor should you really be advising they take the dive? The result in many organizations will be personally harmful to those who you are advising (most company punish “mistakes”).

Case in point: I recently counseled a client similar in size and controversial status over their FB presence. They also had very debatable policies (on social rather than environmental merits as was the case with Nestle). I advised them to develop a risk mitigation plan – essentially that that they needed to be prepared ahead of time to either defend, ignore or change in response to the potential criticism. They decided that (1) they had no influence over corporate policy (2) the policy was hard to debate on the merits, and (3) that their remit was still quite traditional marketing (brand awareness). Weighing these together they concluded that the risk outweighed the reward. I think they actually made the right decision given all the factors above.

Do I think that they should be more fully engaged? Yes. Do I think that they are ready? No. So while on a theoretical level I agree that all organizations SHOULD be engaged, they need to lay the groundwork first. I hope the distinction makes sense.

A few months ago I wrote a post for Mashable titled: Why Social Media Isn’t For Everyone.   I wrote it out of direct experience counseling clients who were rightly concerned about the  risks of exposing their brand to direct and visible customer feedback.

The main point of the article was this:

…when an organization makes an investment in social media it is a constructive opportunity to consider not only what could go wrong, but why it could go wrong. In other words, what are the valid criticisms that customers and employees might have and what you are willing to do about it. If you aren’t willing to consider the former and have no power concerning the latter, social media might not be your best bet. All too often the person making the social media investment has little control over (1) the quality of the product, (2) the pricing strategy, (3) the terms of use, (4) the company’s stance on cause-based issues (political, environmental, etc.), (5) the quality of customer service, and the list goes on. Yet these are often exactly what the customer wants to talk about.

The recent posterchild for ” Social-Media-Gone-Wrong” is Nestle.     I have been following the story at a distance and just read a post on the subject from BG Creative:

The short version of the Facebook disaster is this: Greenpeace is mad at Nestle over palm oil and a bunch of their members began taking to Facebook to express their outrage. They covered the Nestle Facebook Fan Page with wall posts and changed their profile pictures to altered versions of the Nestle logo to further make their point. The moderator of  Nestles Facebook page became flustered by the outpouring of hatred, and responded in a manner that was just a little too human. Comments such as: “Thanks for the lesson in manners. Consider yourself embraced. But it’s our page, we set the rules” certainly didn’t win him/her any fans.

The article goes on to suggest some ways Nestle could have dealt with the “crisis.”  In essence, “ignore it” “thank them and move on” or “respond with humor”  –This is solid enough counsel now that the cat is out of the bag but to me there is a much bigger point to be made: Nestle should have seen this coming a mile away. Did they not know that they engage in practices that have given rise to activist communities?  Did they not know that these activist groups are also very active on social media?

Deciding to get into Social Media should be directly related to a company’s willingness to either (1) defend a controversial position by having a direct and open conversation about it or (2) change policies to align with customer expectations.   If the company is unwilling to go with either of those options – then perhaps Social Media isn’t the right choice.   Specific to Nestle:  If they believe that Palm Oil is the best choice of ingredient and can defend it (economics, politics, environment etc.) then they should do so openly.  If they feel it is a policy that, when fully measured, does have serious negatives, then perhaps they should consider a shift in policy.  If Nestle neither wishes to change or defend itself on the merits – then they shouldn’t be operating in social media.

I am proud to be joining Stowe Boyd’s upcoming Social Business Edge as a speaker.  Stowe has been one of the leading thinkers on the Social Web and this event has a fantastic line up.   Below is a summary of the conference and a list of confirmed participants.

The conference promises to be intimate and, like Stowe, totally original.  The format stretches the notion of a typical business conference and should be fantastic.

Conference Summary:

Today, more than ever, management is reexamining and rethinking the basic principles of business: how to innovate and prosper. To that end, managers are looking to stay in step with a changing world, and the rise of the social web in particular. How should today’s business leverage what is being learned about the social web?…

Some of the leading thinkers in this area believe that we are at the start of something much larger than a retake on marketing. We are seeing a rethinking of work, collaboration, and the role of management in a changing world, where the principles and tools of the web are transforming society, media, and business. The mainstays of business theory — like innovation, competitive advantage, marketing, production, and strategic planning — need to be reconsidered and rebalanced in the context of a changing world. The rise of the real-time, social web has become one of the critical factors in this new century, along with a radically changed global economic climate, an accelerating need for sustainable business practices, and a political context demanding increased openness in business.

These issues cannot be dealt with one by one, but instead approached as connected elements of a new world order for business. Social Business Edge is designed to address these issues, and to bring together a community of visionaries, practitioners, and tool makers, to collectively explore what the form the social business — and our aspirations to design it — will take.

Other participants at Social Business Edge:

• Lee Bryant, co-host
• Sarah Kennon, co-host
• Adina Levin
• Baratunde Thurston
• Deanna Zandt
• Diane Hessan
• Dion Hinchliffe
• Euan Semple
• Jay Rosen
• Jamais Cascio
• Jemima Gibbons
• John Hagel III
• Micah Sifry
• Venessa Miemis

Transcript:
How many social media applications are we expected to keep up with? I am overwhelmed!! - Anonymous

I know just how you feel. We are going through a Cambrian explosion in new forms of communication and it is hard to keep up. I would give you this piece of advice: don’t try to keep up with the technology. Use the technology to subscribe to people that you trust – and follow their lead. These people can be a filter on all that information – pointing you to the right things to keep up with. I use Netvibes, an RSS reader similar to Google reader, to have my own custom technology newspaper delivered to my laptop every day. If it is technology you are interested in — put David Pogue, Robert Scoble, Steve Rubel, Jeremy Toeman and similar people on your feed.

I also follow like-minded folks on Twitter who share their links and tips. Twitter, in fact has become my chief source of information on what is happening, what I should be reading etc. In this manner Steve Rubel turned me on to Posterous and Robert Scoble vetted new platforms for managing Twitter including the one I use today.. Just as you might turn to a cousin who knows everything about electronics for a tip on what digital camera to buy – you can turn to others to get the support you need and it gets at one of the most valuable elements of the Social Web – it allows you to directly subscribe to people for valuable information and tips. If you use it the right way, these tools should make your less confusing not more.

Flickr : labguest

I came across this word today while attending (virtually) a session “What Comes Next For the Web.”

Apophenia is the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. The term was coined in 1958 by Klaus Conrad,^[1] who defined it as the “unmotivated seeing of connections” accompanied by a “specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness.” (Wikipedia)

Ironically this word, arriving to me as it did on the heels of a recent conversation in which I was discussing apophenia without yet knowing the word existed,  struck me as not random but as another meaningful signal from the universe.

We are at the beginning of a long rewrite of laws as a direct result of the rise of the Social Web.

Early this week, the FTC posted updated guidelines governing paid endorsements and sponsorships (first update since 1980).  It covers, among other things the role of paid sponsorship for bloggers.  The gist of the changes are summarized on the FTC’s website

The revised Guides also add new examples to illustrate the long standing principle that “material connections” (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers. The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service

While there was much gnashing of teeth on the particulars I am more interested in how much the law will change over our lifetimes as a direct result of issues raised by our move to the Social Web – where everyone is connecting, publishing, reading, gaming and transacting commerce in the cloud.

Consider just a few issues on the table:

• Redefining intellectual property and copyright laws
• The use of social networks in investigations
• Judges allowing Twitter in the courtroom
• Location-based data (from your phone of course) as forensic evidence in trials
• “Workplace bullying” replacing sexual harrassment as the number one workplace legal issue as employers and employees “friend” each other – then behave badly
• The ownership of personally identifiable information leaking everywhere will lead to a whole new crop of privacy laws (see my interview with Drew Bartkiewicz on Data Privacy in the Age of Social Networks)
• Jury selection and change-of-venue motions.  Consider that videos taken from mobile cameras and uploaded to the internet capturing the BART shooting in my town had over one million views within 24 hours.

These are but a few examples of current legal challenges where new laws will be made and precedents set.  Sponsorship and endorsement is just a drop in the bucket.

One of the most compelling “this is the future” videos was the original Cisco Human Network commercial (Thanks Ogilvy and Mather).

In that standout piece this was this standout line, “People will subscribe to people, not magazines”

It is the stem of that sentence – “People will subscribe to people…” – that carries so much impact.  Take your pick of what follows the negative: “…not magazines”, “…not newspapers”, “…not corporations”

I found myself again thinking of that line at a presentation I did with Sarah Milstein, author with Tim O’Reilly of The Twitter Book, to discuss the value of Twitter for business.   I opened by saying that of all of the social technologies, from blogs to social networks, Twitter is the only tool that has literally changed my life.   That comment caused some raised eyebrows and I was challenged to explain.

Beyond everything that is discussed about Twitter’s value for business – how you can use it to humanize your message, direct traffic, gauge market sentiment, extend customer service and so on, there is one key element that is consistently lost.  It is the element that, to me, is the most powerful of all.

Twitter makes you smarter by allowing you to subscribe to people. .

Before Twitter if I were interested in what someone like Tim O’Reilly had to say so I would read Tim’s posts on Radar.  Tim might post once a week.   With Twitter, I now follow not just what Tim is writing but who Tim is reading.  I can use Tim as a filter – getting insight on what he thinks is important and where he sources new bits of information.   I follow sociologists, anthropologists, communications experts, scientists and philosophers.  Together these people help me filter the enormous volume of interesting material available to me on the Social Web.  Following these people has been deeply enriching.

If you’re company is building an approach to Twitter – great.   If you are focused on using it to meet business objectives – great.  If you aren’t thinking about how Twitter can make everyone in your organization smarter – you are missing what I think is the biggest opportunity.