Lessons from the AMP and Illegal Alien Controversies

In the world of digital brands and social media, people have power over brands like never before. Well, yes and no.

This time last week the tweet meter looked like a fan, so fast people were registering their outrage on Twitter about the new AMP energy drink iPhone app that let guys shoot lame pick-up lines and alert friends in the unlikely event they scored. Surely, the conventional wisdom went, PepsiCo would pull the app immediately rather than risk brand damage.

To the soft drink brand’s credit, they apologized to anyone offended by the app. But, to the surprise and chagrin of the offended, the good folks at AMP returned to selling energy drinks and kept the app on the shelves of Apple App Store.

Contrast that with this week’s consumer brouhaha – the sale of a Halloween mask depicting an obvious space invader with a heavy mustache. Think E.T. meets Frito Bandito (for those of us of a certain age), hence the name “Illegal Alien.”

Once the complaints started on- and off-line, Target and other retailers (rightfully) pulled the costume faster than Speedy Gonzales could say “Andale`!”

Why did outrage have immediate effect in one case and seemingly none in the other?

Simple. Because the people offended by the Amp iPhone app are not buying Amp drinks and aren’t going to do so. Offended Target shoppers, on the other hand, are far more likely to leave stores shelves clogged unsold items.

So what lessons can we learn from these two events?

If you’re a consumer, use your brand power wisely and pick your battle’s carefully. You may be offended by a company’s products or actions, but shooting at the wrong brand – one that isn’t likely to care if they’re in the bull’s eye because you have no relevance to the brand – only diminishes the power people have to influence business decisions.

Adult women complaining about an obscure, downloadable iPhone app attached to a product purchased in bulk by twenty-something single males is the wrong group to prompt action. Parents and social advocates complaining about an offensive product targeted to children are the perfect people to force change in Halloween costumes.

If you’re a marketer, make sure you really do know your customers/prospects and the people who influence them before launching a controversial product or promotion. Be ready to pull the plug in a nano-second, but also be confident enough to know that not all critics are right and not all criticism requires a dramatic response.

You can't ignore the conversation, but sometimes, all you need to do is agree to disagree.

The End (of the Legacy Media) is Near

The End of the World is suddenly cool, what with the movie 2012 debuting soon and cable TV airing a program a day about the Mayan calendar or Nostradamus. I’ve made my own prediction about the End of Times, or rather the end of The Times (metaphorically speaking). Events of this past week make it clear the end is getting closer.

All you have to do is look at the illustration of Rupert Murdoch in the latest edition of Vanity Fair. He’s holding a laptop, sideways as if reading a newspaper. Murdoch - never especially Internet savvy - wants to charge for online news content after proclaiming at Beijing’s World Media Summit there is a trend toward charging for content. Never mind that most analysts, academics and other prognosticators say it’s too late to charge readers for general news content.

Murdoch had at least one ally in China - Associated Press CEO Tom Curley who complained that search engines and bloggers are siphoning off revenue from content creators like the AP and Murdoch’s News Corp. Both were quoted as saying it was time for content creators to take back “control.”

By control, of course, Murdoch and Curley mean revenue.

Murdoch’s a master at the legacy media, but his inability to manage technology ventures is legendary. Take a look at what's happened to MySpace since NewsCorp paid $580 million for the once high-flier in 2005. MySpace has lost more than five million monthly visitors, four million last month alone, not to mention the more than $350 million in red ink spilled this year by the once profitable MySpace.

Likewise, the AP has other avenues for making money without attacking the very people who have keep general news content alive while printed pubs decline. Hint: it’s online readers who drive Web traffic to AP member publications by sharing news content on personal blogs, Web sites and social network sites.

And if you needed any more evidence that printed newspapers are doing everything they can to make themselves irrelevant, the Atlanta Journal Constitution announced with great fanfare they will no longer endorse political candidates. Local content is supposed to be the savior of daily print publications, but clearly Cox Newspapers has other ideas.

Change is coming. Even Mr. Murdoch predicted it in 2005 when he said “Technology is shifting power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media elite. Now it’s the people who are taking control.”

The only question is when.

The Truth Shall Set You Free

My Mom, a person of deep faith, on more than one occasion assured me while I was growing up that if I would only fess-up to my alleged youthful indiscretions, my life would improve. Seems my Mom and the Federal Trade Commission have the same instruction manual. In the first major change in endorsement rules in nearly 30 years, the FTC’s new transparency rules apply to bloggers and user generated content.

While there is some wailing and gnashing of teeth, the Commission’s rules for disclosing endorsements are really common sense and in keeping with the best practices of social networking. Transparency is at the heart of the new rules and bloggers and content creators who remember that will be fine.

Those who don’t may get to contribute $11,000 to the federal treasury.

If you’re a blogger or you create content for social media, all you have to do to comply is disclose you are being paid or provided with free product in exchange for your words or pictures. Most legitimate content creators do that now, but the FTC rule is a good reminder that transparency is the currency of the social media realm.

If, though, you’re rating products for hire, ghost tweeting or blogging for hire without revealing your sugar parent, then the new rules are trouble for you.

This is when my Mom would tell me that “be sure your sins will find you.” This time, though, it will be federal regulators who are watching.

P.S. – Mom, it’s possible I did relocate the neighbor’s fake pink flamingos from their yard in 1980. It’s been so long ago, I just don’t recall.

The (Un) Friendly Skies

I have a confession to make. I don’t turn off my mobile phone on airplanes. Yet, I have never failed to make it to the correct destination because of some mythical “interference with the aircraft’s navigational equipment.”

Keeping mobile phones in the off position on US airlines has always been more about making money and keeping the peace than getting lost in route to LaGuardia. Thanks to non-US airlines, that may be about to change.

Just about all the US legacy and low-cost carriers are rushing to add wi-fi to their domestic fleet. What they are also finding is that crafty passengers are (easily) finding a way around the blocks that are supposed to prevent VoIP calls in the air. Browsing and chatting online are okay. Talking, according to Delta, AirTran and others is not.

The airlines claim the FCC, FAA and passengers themselves want to keep the friendly skies a call-free zone.

While I’ve always enjoyed the sanctuary offered by hurtling through the air in a toothpaste tube at 600 mph, I’ve also longed for the option to make or take a call if I wanted to do so. There’s that whole consumer control issue again – I’ll make the decision, don’t decide for me, thank you very much!

Without knowing it, I had allies in my clandestine fight to keep my phone powered up after the boarding door has closed – European and Asian airlines. They, it seems, have cracked the code and figured out how to solve the real technical issue – interference with cell towers – and how to make money while doing so.

Emirates Airlines already offers the ability to use your mobile phone in the air and British Airways will offer the same in its new London City airport to JFK all business class service.

US regulators and airline operators take notice. No passenger riots from too loud phone conversations and no planes landing on taxiways in the wrong cities. Imagine that.

Chalk up another win for those brands that believe in letting the customer decide.

The Return of the Brand

You may have missed this tidbit - what with Kanye stealing a little girl's limelight and Joe Wilson forgetting he was a US Congressman not a member of the British Parliament during PMQs - but it seems there's a whole lot of trust going on in the world of brands. How'd that happen?

We all know that brands have been beaten and battered by the double whammy of a shattered economy previously built on consumption and the rise of social media, where a company becomes the caretaker of a brand - not the owner.

Consumers, too, have become incredibly mistrustful of institutions - especially large corporations, the government and the media.

I take heart that perhaps the tide is about to turn. The brand and reputation equivalent of "the recession is over, but the recovery will be slow." Here's why:

A study by Capstrat of Raleigh, NC shows the slide in consumer trust in brands has stopped the death spiral and is now climbing back up in some cases - including trust in bank brands. Trust in the media continues to spiral down the drain, though.

Trust is a two way street and it seems that Wall Street is also more willing to trust Main Street, to use a well-worn cliche`. Nine companies have announced they will follow new executive pay rules proposed by The Conference Board that is based on increased public transparency and shareholder involvement. Among the first nine, AT&T, HP, and Cisco Systems. Microsoft has adopted a similar policy.

"You can't be in the top 25% in pay if you're in the bottom 75% in performance," Bill Ide, director of the Conference Board's Task Force on Executive Compensation told CNN. "That's universal. We think all regulators and policy makers would be comfortable with that."

With trust breaking out all over leading companies, let's hope the rest of the brand community falls in line, too. Soon.

Life Advice from the Technologist-in-Chief

Life's full of little ironies. On the same day former British PM Tony Blair was telling David Letterman about how he got his very first mobile phone AFTER he left office, President Obama was telling school kids to watch what they post on Facebook.

Blair, only 44 when first elected Prime Minister, told Letterman about how his first attempt to send a text - not realizing his name was not attached to the message - resulted in a reply of "who are you?" Humbling words for the man who. 24 hours prior, was the second most powerful politician on the planet.

That, by the way, was only two years ago.

Fast forward to now, only hours before Blair's Letterman debut, when the current most powerful politician in the world was dispensing sage tech advice to school children across the country via a video and Internet link.

Responding to a question about how to succeed in business or politics, the first words from President Obama's mouth were not eat a good breakfast, wear clean undies or even finish school. His recommendation: be careful what you post online - words, pics or video.

Good advice, since what you write at 15 will still be around somewhere at 25, 50 and for your obit writers to mine for pithy quotes like "LOL. Wasted. Again." Your future employers will be looking, too, according to recent stats, and they are notorious for having even less of a sense of humor than your parents. Hard to believe, but true.

President Obama's words on the topic of social media probably won't join the ranks great presidential quotes. Hopefully he did, though, save a few future leaders from explaining how the YouTube video of them jumping naked into a frozen lake in January seemed like a good idea at the time.

Not that I have any personal knowledge of such activities. Really.

Chickens vs. Eggs

I recently had a lengthy debate with my youngest daughter about the eternal question: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? As it turns out, it was a good warm-up for a business discussion.

Remember when you were a teenager and you argued everything with a passion worthy of death row appeal? That’s how it was with my high schooler after watching Jurassic Park. I made the mistake of quoting some article I read that said a T-Rex is more closely akin to a chicken than a lizard. Darwin aside, we launched jaw first into the classic Chicken and Egg argument. When you’re fifteen, there is no “agree to disagree,” there is only ”I win, you lose!”

What does this have to do with business? Well, it wasn’t too many days afterward that a request came across my desk from a prospective client wanting a social media marketing (SMM) campaign to help drive revenue.

ME: “Do you have any research that shows how your ideal customer uses social media?”

THEM: “No.”

ME: “Do you have a profile of their Web habits?”

THEM: “No.”

ME: “Then why do you believe a social media marketing campaign will be successful?”

THEM: “Because we were told social media is less expensive and we want to try it to win new customers.”

This was a discussion as timeless (and endless) as the chicken/egg debate. What comes first, the strategy or the tactic? Social media marketing is the new toy that everyone wants to play with, but even toys come with warning labels about appropriate use.

Not all social media techniques are effective in every situation. It takes research and planning before making the decision if, and, if so, which SMM tool is appropriate for your organization. Not to mention, you have to make sure your goal is appropriate and realistic.

Take the time to develop an appropriate strategy before assuming SMM is the right thing for you. Otherwise you may end up with egg (not chicken) on your face.