Go ahead, laugh. It’s not as ridiculous as it sounds. It’s certainly no more ridiculous than people calling themselves social media gurus.
No one can claim that title yet. Social is still too new of a proving ground to have any discernable best practices. What’s more, it almost evolves too rapidly to establish any.
So what does this have to do with a 900-year-old, two-foot-something Jedi master with a debatable grasp of English? Everything. Yoda’s mantras share the same common truths as the success brands are looking for from social media.
“Size matters not”
Every time I hear a client set Facebook “Like” goals, I die a little inside. Simply put, if you want a million friends, give away a million dollars. You’ll hit that number in a week. And your engagement needle won’t move.
We’re programmed to think bigger is better. But you have to ask yourself, what’s more powerful, an army of people who could care less about your brand or a crack squad of brand evangelists who will preach your good word to the masses?
“You must unlearn everything that you’ve learned”
As marketers, we’re taught to “craft and control” the brand image. We’re also taught that media is something purchased, like a hunting license on a private preserve stocked with our preferred prey. With social media, you can toss all that out the window.
First off, the second you enter the social realm, you are not in control of your brand. Swallow your pride and move on. In fact — in true democratic fashion — the more you turn control of your brand over to the people, the more successful you will be.
Secondly, you must remember your guest status in the conversation. You have to earn your right to be there. And uninvited guests are only welcomed when they are incredibly charming.
“Impossible to see the future is”
For years, marketers have talked about the “conversation” we’re having with consumers. Before social media, that was largely a lie.
With social media, you’re having a real-time, two-way conversation with consumers. And just like a regular conversation you’d have with a friend, it’s impossible to plan out what you’re going to be saying five minutes from now because it’s impossible to know where the conversation will go.
So as much as you want to plan out every post six months in advance so you can be positioned for a dynamic Q4, don’t bother. If you still want to be talking to people in Q4, follow the conversation closely and always have something interesting to say.
“A Jedi uses the force for knowledge and events, not for attack”
All marketers salivate over the engagement numbers in social media. Converting even a fraction it to sales translates into big-time money with an insane ROI. But here’s the bad news: social media is a listening device, not a direct sales tool.
In fact, social may be the best listening device ever created. If you’re willing to listen, you’ll never again wonder what your customer is thinking. Even better, your brand has the chance to respond to those thoughts with a human voice. That’s how brands become timeless.
“Do or do not, there is no try”
Obvious as it may seem, Yoda’s most memorable line seems to be the one brands most often forget. They seem to think that throwing up a profile is social media’s silver bullet. I blame that on the fact that social media appears free and sometimes effortless. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The most successful brands in social media either invest lots of time or pay lots of money for their success. Either way, they go all in.
More importantly, they realize that what drives any conversation is an idea. From Old Spice to Small Business Saturday, a big idea beautifully executed across many platforms was what got people talking, sharing and bonding with the brand. Find yourself an idea true to your brand and bigger than even the grandest post or profile, and “Master social you will.”
As near field communication (NFC) technology steadily makes its way into the mobile ecosystem, it’s becoming clear that there are still significant hurdles to overcome before mobile payments are an everyday reality.
According to a recent Forrester Research report, “Mobile Payments Enter A Disruptive Phase”, the rush toward mobile payments — and the successful navigation of these hurdles — could create a period of disruption that radically alters the landscape of prominent service providers.
Not only could mobile payment systems displace cash and catalyze change in related markets such as ticketing and transit, but new companies could gain market share at the expense of established incumbents.
Expect to see new partnerships, existing players expanding their roles and companies like Google and Facebook — who have had little if any footprint in commerce to date — begin to branch out into mobile payments. Partnerships are already underway, including ISIS, a consortium of established service providers that plans to offer NFC-based payments for their carriers starting in 2012.
Forrester predicts the disruption from the evolving mobile payments movement will be slow to occur. Consumer demand for mobile payments remains relatively low, with only 12% of U.S. adults with mobile phones making mobile transactions.
To facilitate consumer adoption of mobile payments, the transaction must have a value-add for both consumers and merchants. Simply yet another means of carrying out a transaction may be slow to gain traction, an application that adds other incentives — such as coupons or loyalty rewards — will likely be more appealing to consumers.
Merchants also require significant motivation — lower transaction fees, for example — to adopt new technologies and resolve business-model issues between merchants, carriers, and banks before they go all in.
Forrester’s viewpoint lines up fairly well with what we’ve been seeing in the mobile payment market thus far, and where we see that market headed in the immediate future. Mobile payments face a real chicken-and-egg problem when it comes to merchant support and consumer demand: merchants don’t see the point in offering mobile payments as an option until consumers start using the technology, and consumers don’t see the point in making mobile payments if few merchants support them.
At some point in the near future, it is likely that a tipping point will occur in relation to consumer acceptance of mobile payments. We expect micropayments to be the catalyst that will bring us to this tipping point. Look for NFC-enabled vending machines and public transportation ticketing to lead the way. Such payments are less likely to require PIN verification and will provide a clear convenience to users, driving adoption forward.
To get off the ground, mobile payment applications should also integrate with other services (such as rewards programs, location-based services, and the like), be designed to either operate with a potential array of multiple platforms or use their own proprietary system, and be aggressively marketed with an eye toward consumer education.
We are entering an exciting time for mobile payments, and a rare opportunity to get in on the ground floor of what is almost certain to be a vital technology in the near future.
Our new website mirrors our mission: driven by a smarter way.
Here’s how it happened.
The intention going in was to build a site that would be easy to update, largely organize itself, and showcase our creative thinking and the underlying strategic and technical ideas behind each project.
Mission accomplished.
The concept behind the site was to break down our content into multiple tiers, each representing a way of filtering our featured work. For example, if you navigate to the “Automotive” or “Financial” tier of the site, you are shown only work relating to those respective industries. In a similar manner, if you were to filter work based on our capabilities, you would navigate to “Social”, “Online Advertising” and other disciplines to see relevant examples of our work.
Each content tier comprises a series of content panels that start with a brief category overview, followed by specific work examples and a contact page.
Rather than using a page load to move from panel to panel within each content tier, we opted to slide each panel into view using a JavaScript framework known as jQuery. Using jQuery instead of standard JavaScript enabled us to take advantage of some terrific open-source plug-ins that ultimately decreased development time while achieving the desired panel-to-panel effect.
We developed the back-end content management system (CMS) from the ground up using PHP, MSSQL and jQuery. It allows practically anyone in the company to edit and make updates to the core sections of the site, regardless of their knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript or jQuery. Users can quickly edit and format text on the page as well as upload and manage related images and videos.
Cropping images and adding and maintaining content can be accomplished quickly and with minimal effort. This being Phase 1, you can expect to see even more work and information on the site in the weeks and months to come.
We’re proud of our new site. We hope you find it informative and easy to use. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions about the site, please don’t hesitate to drop us a note.
