HP’s social media tales

Posted on Published by Antony Mayfield
Image: HP's Marketing Impressions blog
Image: HP's Marketing Impressions blog

Online Marketing Blog‘s interview with Tac Anderson, who combines heading up social media at HP with being “entrepreneur in residence” at a VC firm (an interesting job combination, if ever there was one), is well worth a read.

As m’learned colleague Alisa Hansen never tires of reminding the world, social media as a term has a limited shelf life. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just that the term is useful right now as we come to terms with the way that the web is evolving. As Alisa says, “the web is social”.

It’s nice to hear that perspective echoed by Tac:

I used to get a lot of people ask me about the difference between Web 2.0 and social media. I explain Web 2.0 as the technologies and tools that enable social media (RSS, JAVA, blogs, wiki’s etc) and social media is the trend in online content/media/whatever that enables people to communicate with each other directly. It’s media that you help shape and influence.

I don’t get the Web 2.0 question much anymore, I think that peaked in early 08 and I’m already seeing a lot fewer questions about social media. We’re really getting to the point, that we all knew we would, where all online content is social in some way. If it’s not now it will be in the next 2 years.

He also has a deft phrase to sum up why blogs are important for a big tech firm like HP – the “two Gs”:

If your customers are CXO’s (CEO, CIO, CFO, CMO) then the reason you have a blog is because the two most influential factors to a CXO’s decision making process are the Two G’s: Google and Gartner. Google is speaking to the importance of all search and Gartner is speaking to the importance that analysts play. Blogs are great for reaching both. There’s no lower bang for your buck tactic to reach the two G’s than having a high quality blog.

Even if Gartner‘s not that important to your business, it’s likely that there are other influential stakeholders it’s sensible to connect to via blogs.

Also worth taking a look at is the HP marketing blog – Marketing Impressions – which Tac mentions, which has accounts of HP’s various engagements and programmes in social media.

B-b-b-b-b-word crisis: is advertising spam?

Posted on Published by Antony Mayfield

 

Image: Adriana's B-word T-shirt
Image: Adriana's b-word t-shirt

I am sticking to my don’t-mention-the-b-word in January resolution, inspired by Mark Earls for the moment. B-b-b-b-b-but it’s very hard when Tom Hopkins et al start talking about the b-word crisis#mce_temp_url# and I want to blog about it.  It’s even harder when I contemplate recording an audio version of the B-Words in Networks e-book myself and the iCrossing team put out at the end of next year…

It’s even harder when I remember I have to record an audio version of the B-words in Networks e-book I published with iCrossing toward the end of last year… As I a wise man said, d’oh!

 

Image: Advertising or art?
Image: Advertising or art?

 

Anyhow, we’ll soldier on, quoting Tom and resorting to Watergate transcripts expletive deleted techniques where necessary… 

Today’s crisis in [expletive deleted] feels somewhat more intractable, although the response has been the same. The onslaught this time, of course, is coming from consumers retaking control over their media environment.

Clay Shirky today took an interesting viewpoint on twitter: “when someone asks ‘how does this social media stuff really scale?’ they really mean ‘how do I become a spammer?’.

Was mass meida advertising SPAM? I think Russell Davies’ analysis is the clearest discussion of this I’ve read: advertising is tolerated when it is part of a value exchange; everything else is SPAM.

Russell Davies’ analysis is, unsurprisingly, spot on. And Clay Shirky’s Twittist reductionism is sweet, sweet truth… 

Russell thinks about the ad-spam issue outside of just web display ads too, looking at the proliferation of logos and ads slapped on to anything and everything. As digital media merges with the physical world, this will become an even greater issue. 

Ooh, ooh, there's a bit of building without an ad on it!

Celebrated in the marketing press often, these “guerilla”, “ambient” tactics are celebrated in the marketing and media blogs and publications, but as Russell puts it “one person’s fun is another’s spam”. He continues: 

And this matters for a couple of reasons. (Probably also obvious) Firstly, because living in Bladerunner brought to you by Cillit Bang would be horrible, just as a person. Secondly, because I think it actually makes for counter-productive marketing. Annoying your potential customers in more and more places is not a useful strategy for businesses.

Or one day we may go a guerilla digital ad too far and get regulated into the ground, like Sao Paolo? And then someone can make an ad about the ad-lessness… Ah, what an industry…