Scalable Intimacy

Branding in the age of social media.

LaunchCamp Video

Posted on | February 8, 2010 | Comments

So here’s the video from my thing last week. The audio isn’t great, and it turns out I’m not as good looking as I’d hoped. If you prefer the slides and the VO, see here.

So you’ve been warned…

More video from the event on this Vimeo channel.

Category: Advertising, Branding, Holland-Mark, Social Media 101, Social Relationship Management
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Achieving Scalable Intimacy

Posted on | February 5, 2010 | Comments

Here’s my presentation from today’s LaunchCamp. The live version had a bit more energy, but this combination of audio and slides is easier to follow.

Anyway, here it is…

Achieving Scalable Intimacy

View more presentations from Michael Troiano.

What do you think? Were you at the event today? Any questions I can answer, or comments on the day?

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Category: Branding, Holland-Mark, Social Media 101, Social Relationship Management
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Livestreaming of LaunchCamp Keynote

Posted on | February 4, 2010 | Comments

The good folks at LaunchCamp have posted a livestream of the event on UStream, which you can see here:

Live TV : UstreamMike will deliver the keynote at noon.

You can participate in the social network activity around the event live here:

Category: Branding, Social Media 101, Social Relationship Management, Web 2.0 Gurus
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The Siren Song of Perfection

Posted on | January 26, 2010 | Comments

Three software development patterns mashed tog...

Image via Wikipedia

We’re getting close to the finish line on a handful of client projects right now, and I’ve observed that one of the biggest challenges “real marketers” have in embracing social systems is, for lack of a better term, cultural.

It’s almost a cliche now to say that embracing social media means giving up the sense of control marketing communications types are used to in other media. Like most cliches there’s a kernel of truth in that observation, but it’s only part of the leap we ask our clients to take.

The less obvious but in some respects equally daunting leap has to do with embracing the ethos of successful software development, which differs quite dramatically from the ethos of successful print and broadcast development.

Marketers are shaped by the awareness that a typo in a print ad is pretty much grounds for termination. A brand manager will spend hundreds of thousands on a TV spot to get it exactly perfect before spending millions to distribute it over the air.

But that’s not the way you build software. It used to be, when software lived on mainframes, or whatever. The “waterfall” methodology was a lot like the ad creation methodology, a system oriented to deep and thorough planning before a launch where perfection was always aspired to, and sometimes required.

The problem with this approach as applied to business software was that it took too damn long, to the point that by the time the system launched, the business issues it was intended to address had evolved. To be more responsive, software development methodology evolved toward the sprint or “scrum” methodology, which is all about iteration, and the perpetual beta was born.

Entrepreneurs and social folk have an almost religious conviction about the design-ship-evolve model of creating software. But it’s an unnatural act for marketing folk, with the effect that building social software in marketing applications puts stress on the relationship between provider and client.

Have you seen this? Do you agree with the diagnosis? And either way… what strategies have worked for you in mitigating it?

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Category: Ad Agencies, Social Media 101, Technologies
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How Social Media Is Like Cocaine

Posted on | January 19, 2010 | Comments

Bill Cosby did a stand-up video back in the day, called “Bill Cosby, Himself.” It’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen, and probably had a bigger impact on my parenting philosophy than anything outside my own family. You can get it on Amazon, you can also watch the video for free on Google Video.

At around 5:30, Cos is in the middle of a bit about drugs and alcohol, where he makes this observation:

…But the worst is that cocaine. I came across a guy once, doing a line, and I said, “Hey – Tell me… what is it with the Cocaine that makes it so wonderful?”

He said <snobby>, “Well, what’s wonderful about cocaine is that it intensifies your personality.”

And I said, “Yes, but what if you’re an asshole?”

In this sense, social media is like cocaine. It intensifies your brand personality. But not the one in your advertising. The one in reality.

For most brands, the best way to take advantage of social media is to do something worth talking about. Use it to make your product better. Deliver “remarkable” service, in the literal sense of that term. Listen, and engage where you can help. In the long run, that will take you further than 1,000 Facebook fans ever could.

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Category: Product Participation, Social Relationship Management
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