Geeks Love Zombies: What is behind this strange phenomenon?

Before you begin reading this, it’s likely a good idea to have a look at this infographic detailing the differences between Nerd vs. Geek personality types – will add some clarity to the post that follows.

This week is the return of AMC’s The Walking Dead and the buzz is starting to crescendo rapidly. AMC has put some great interactive muscle behind this Sunday’s premiere and why not, their target audience is online. If there’s a perfect pairing for us geeks it’s got to be zombies and the interwebs. Perhaps it’s just me (and it probably is) but have you ever considered the universal love of zombies by tech geeks?  There’s simply no question that geeks loves zombies, it’s everywhere, you hardly have to look for it. So let’s move beyond if geeks love zombies and start considering why they do.

I’ve a few hypotheses to consider. Most Americans love a good underdog story. Quite often this is manifested by some kind of sports underdog, the bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, some 6’6” Neanderthal wearing a Yankee’s hat throwing 120 mph….. That said, the jock underdog situation is not for everybody.   On the other hand, The Zombie “fantasy” if you will, serves up the perfect cerebral underdog scenario.   Zombies offer techie geeks the ability to have the “save the world” fantasy using a combination of brains and brawn in a 90:10 ratio (in favor of brains of course).  I mean, let’s face it (no disrespect meant at all to the geek world, I mean, I think I fall pretty high into a the geek camp) but geeks aren’t the quintessential hero types.  They’re stereotypically, well….geeks.  Not necessarily someone you’d go to if a big scary bad guy busted into your home to get you (thus why Clark Kent the “geek” was the perfect cover for Superman – other than the fact he looked like Hercules in a suit and glasses but that a discussion for another day.)

So, why are zombies are the perfect bad guys for geeks?  Well, we can consider how zombie movies are metaphors for the mind-policing of the world. There’s this subtext that when things go bad in the real world most people will fall into a lemming like mob mentality (like zombies) and you need a smart good guy or gal to rise above that. Plus, zombies are normally manifested as an amalgamated depiction of all the classic geek tormenters. For example, geeks love being smarter than dim witted creeps, jocks, high school principals, professors, rich and popular kids etc that have somehow made their lives miserable at one point or another. They’re scary, propagate quickly, plus hey, they want to eat your brains which is quite unpleasant particularly if you consider your brain your finest organ, and most geeks do. So ya get a geeky kid (like in Zombieland) who uses his geek smarts to outwit the zombies and engineer some solution to take over the mindless bad guys and save the whole world. Plus, the zombie movie often feature geeks expanding beyond just their normal capabilities to learn new non-geek related skills like accidently firing a shotgun and then within 10 minutes being able to wield this zombie blaster like a Marine.

Let’s take it one step further and turn this around. Put a geek up against Wolfman or Dracula and the geek is likely in more peril.  Dracula is strong AND pretty smart.  Wolfman, lacks smarts, but he’s a terrifying furry brute.  Odds are stacked in favor of Drac and Wolfy here.

Zombies give you some time to come up with a “master plan”, avoid falling into the zombie-pack mentality, be smart, and save the world. Oh yeah, and probably impress the girl – showing her you don’t need to be Captain friggin America to demonstrate your “awesomeness”.

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to get back to imagining the impending Zombie invasion and how I’m going to be the last man standing.

Zombies are everywhere these days. While their popularity seems to have been more constant over the years vs. the recent complete and utter obsession with all things vampire (especially by females, odd) zombies seem to be on the rise again. Ha get it, rise again, ok. Here are a few helpful zombie related links:

AMC’s Walking Dead Promo (Worth checking out)
https://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=320886124619305

Hey even the CDC got in on the fun:
http://www.bt.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies_blog.asp

Boston.com on the top Zombie movies:
http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/gallery/bestzombiemovies/

Note: This post first ran on Bostinno here: http://bit.ly/xGWvcM

Over the last couple weeks we’ve seen an absolute frenzy of media activity around Google+ regarding implications for search, massive spikes in traffic and users late in 2011, and more. All that said, if you’ve been spending a lot of time on Google+ lately (it’s OK, I know you probably haven’t been… you want to say you have, but you haven’t) you may have noticed something completely uninteresting – the content. I suppose I have nobody to blame but myself, after all I specifically asked for all this lame content – I asked for all the updates I could ever want from my “favorite” brands, SEO optimization posts, the latest and greatest social media measurement strategies, pictures of donuts (Dunkinis pretty active), two million updates from CES, Pete Cashmore’s giant face… the list goes on.

Perhaps “lame” is a little harsh – I mean it’s work stuff really. It’s content that I need in order to be better at my job so it’s important. Problem is, that seems to be the only content on Google+ — work stuff. Listen, I am passionate about what I do, I love to learn new things every day and then apply that knowledge to create strategy for our clients, but after a while Google+ starts to feel like a virtual
trade show where people are constantly yelling at you to come to their booth and learn of the latest “game-changer” and you end up slinking through the trade show floor avoiding eye contact or needing a drink to sit through a sales pitch. Where is the interspersed story about my upcoming high school reunion, the pictures of my nieces and nephews, mildly humorous links from my friends, information on new music? Alas, it’s not on Google+.

This leaves us to wonder, what is Google+ really? Everybody, including Google, still seems to be figuring it out. It seems to be volleying for a position somewhere amongst the following four platforms:

1. Twitter: Mostly comprised of people posting links to other stories that they didn’t write (myself included) with headlines that are creative or smart enough to get noticed and make them look good. Exhausting!

2. LinkedIn: Sort of similar to Twitter but with more information about the person posting said links to other people’s creations. Oh and a resume… and a picture.

3. Quora: I’m an expert, see I can prove it here with this long winded answer.

4. Facebook: Here’s my kid. And my dog.

Alright, so it’s not as simple as that, but Google+ does feel like a Facebook wall with nothing but a business Twitter feed and some stock photography. One can essentially do this today via LinkedIn but your content will only appear to folks that you are connected to, already limiting the opportunity to virtually introduce your brilliant thinking to a bunch of strangers that you want to get to know.

I’ve said many times that Google+ could very well be a better foundation on which to build the next great social media platform. I’m truly grateful Google+ is around — competition is great and will keep Facebook “honest” so to speak. However, without the right user generated content, there is a limit to how much that even matters. To illustrate, consider Verizon FiOS. They overbuilt a new fiber-to-the-home network touting all sorts of technological advances over the legacy cable providers. None of that would have mattered if they didn’t secure content carriage deals with the likes of ESPN, NBC, HBO, CNN, ABC, etc. If there was nothing to watch, see, consume, there’s no reason to even turn on the TV.

So why isn’t there great content on Google+? Part of the problem is motivation – if you aren’t out to make money on Google+ there isn’t much of a reason to post content right now, which is why it’s crowded with brand pages and people essentially trying to sell themselves. Trouble is, that type of content is not something I’m going to “lean in” to listen to – instead it’s encouraging me to lean back. It’s the kind of content that is interesting for a while but eventually I want to get away from. The only true indicator of the future health of a social media platform is the engagement level of its user generated content. Technology is a distant second at best.

Perhaps Google+ evolves into a social networking platform for work, a sort of intranet / extranet situation. A LinkedIn meets Outlook, meets Skype, meets Twitter kind of deal. That said, that sure is a lot for one platform to handle and handle well. Probably too much. In the meantime, I’m going to log back into Google+ and see if there are some new infographics, a SOPA update, or perhaps another social media prediction for 2012.

Where’s that martini?

Think of this whole social platform migration as moving your home. Today you live in a house, in a decent neighborhood, is it the greatest neighborhood of all time? Not really, but ultimately it works for you because your family is close by and your friends are generally there. Sure, some of your neighbors are a little pesky – you can seem them watching you out their windows, and you wish they knew less about you but you sort of just deal with it as a trade-off of living in this neighborhood. On top of all this, after a few years you’ve finally got all “your stuff”  in mostly in the right place in your home. It really took a long time for all that stuff to get settled where you wanted it. It wasn’t easy to find it all, look at it, sort it, figure out where it should go and if you wanted people to see it when they came over. What a huge pain, but now you’re done with all that effort and it feels good to have your home all decorated and set the way you want.

Now…

Imagine you have an opportunity to move to a new neighborhood. The developer of this place says he looked into all the things about your current neighborhood that you dislike and he’s fixed it! The house is a little nicer, there’s some additional amenities thrown in there, more square footage, a three car garage, a pool, an ingenious way to prevent those nosy neighbors you aren’t “really” friends with from poking around your property. There’s even a huge back yard with a high stockade fence where all your friends can hang out, and have a grand old time sharing stories about everything that is going on in your life without people you don’t know seeing what you are up to. There’s only one catch, there is almost nobody else in this neighborhood, it’s vacant, abandoned, crickets and tumbleweeds. So you’ve got to do two things:

1. Convince all your friends they should move into this alleged utopia with you
2. MOVE ALL YOUR STUFF

Oh dear, this new gleaming metropolis isn’t looking as exciting all of a sudden. Move? Who likes moving? Nobody, it’s one of the most painful activities you can subject yourself to. What seems to be lost in this whole Google+ / Facebook death match is that features really don’t matter all that much when compared to the benefit you are seeking in a social platform. As with every other aspect of humanity, it all comes down to content content content. Perhaps if Google+ and Facebook were built concurrently, the conversation would be different because it’s possible that Google+ is truly a better platform. But since Facebook has such a head start, it just doesn’t matter because people don’t want to take a month to move all their “stuff” to a new platform when after all that work, their friends probably won’t even ever live there. Facebook may be the equivalent of an online ghetto but it doesn’t matter because it’s still home for the people you care about.  In other words, there is no motivation to break the inertia. In this case the inertia is massive because it’s not simply co0njuring up the energy to move your stuff, you have to get many other people to do the same thing. Honestly, it’s about as impossible a task as I can think of unless Facebook makes some sort of catastrophic mistake that infuriates people to the point of action. This, also, is unlikely.

Google+ is a marble museum, it’s built well, it works, it’s efficient, it seems to be more set up for future success and expansion…. but it’s cold. Facebook is cluttered, and noisy, it’s loaded with crap you don’t care about, and it’s hard to figure out how to keep your boss from seeing your posts but it’s got more of a speakeasy feel, it’s just warmer.  Of the 800 million or so Facebook users, that counts for something.

History has shown that the best product will not always win out which is infuriating on one end but usually simply a matter practicality. Most folks don’t care exclusively about features a features arms race excites only a small subset of users. Folks care about the people that are important to them and until there are more if them  in the G+ neighborhood, they aint movin.

There was a lot of great music this year and thanks to my friends over at Spotify, I was able to spend even more time discovering stuff I might have sadly otherwise missed. This may read a bit like some sort of indy’s greatest hits of the year, but well, they are good songs and I’m not just gonna throw a bunch of esoteric B sides just to seem like I’m more in the know. Here’s a sampling of what you should have taken a listen to in the past year. This list is not in any sort of rank order, that’s really too much work and although lists are good old fashion fun, I don’t even know if I’ve really got that specific of an opinion to do that.

Here’s a link to the playlist via Spotify if you don’t feel like clicking on every damn video but know that some of these videos are quite excellent.

Music To My Brain – 2011 Playlist

1. YOUTH LAGOON: Afternoon - Apparently this is some kid that made an album over his college Christmas break or something ridiculous of this nature. Good for him. It’s got a bit of a dreamy feel to it and I like the how it builds and gets louder but never gets angry.

2. THE ANTLERS: Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out: One of those songs that you feel like you’ve heard before – before you actually hear it. Also, have you noticed how many bands these days are named after animals or animal parts? OK might be just The Antlers that qualify under “animal parts”

3. REAL ESTATE: It’s Real – No, not the masters of male repressed weepy angst Sunny Day Real Estate, it’s just Real Estate who, ironically, are much more sunny. This is such a nice little song, love the jangly guitar and the video – who doesn’t love a dog video. Plus I think I had those glasses the singer had in 1989 so I could see the board in math class and the bass player may have sold me an oriental rug last week.

4. KURT VILE: Jesus Fever: Hey what better time to catch a little Jesus Fever than right before Christmas right? Right. Anyway, love the odd chord changes in this one and it doesn’t have a whole defined and separate sounding refrain which I like on occasion. Besides, Kurt’s from Philly and reminds me a little of the late great Kenneth Keith Kallenbach.

5. OTHER LIVES: Tamer Animals: Haunting sound, that piano rattles around in your skull for a while after you hear it. Love when it kicks in a little

6. NEON INDIAN: Polish Girl – A few years ago I got the first Neon Indian album in part to annoy myself because I figured I could not possibly like something so electric. But damn it all, I started liking it and this second record is no different. Bastard writes some catchy songs:

7. DALE EARNHARDT JR. JR: Simple Girl – Hey who doesn’t love a little whistling right?  Simple girl simple song simply good.

8. M83: Midnight City – Well as far as I’m concerned this is the best song of the year. Love the synths and mostly the crazy 1980′s  / INXS style sax solo at the end. So good to hear the sax make an appearance in a pop song after about 25 years. Plus the video has this cool X-Men thing happening.

9. WASHED OUT: Amor Fati – I guess im finding myself listening to a lot of  electronica here. Where’s the Fleet Foxes? Why all this computer generated stuff? Why is there a guy in tightie whities in this video? WHY!

10. FEIST: How Come You Never Go There – Feist manages to summon the spirits of Stevie Nicks, Tori Amos, and Crystal Gayle all in one video. Also, this girl can sing.

11. EMPIRE OF THE SUN: Walking On The Sun – Great song, should be turned up loud, but Bevis and Butthead would have a field day with this video:

12. BEIRUT: Sante Fe: This is such a great song and the video – ah the video. I cant tell if it’s sad, disturbing, traumatizing or hilarious. I think I’m landing on hilarious. Got to love a dog that eats pizza. Great stuff here

13. PHANTOGRAM – Mouthful of Diamonds: OK I may have lied, it’s possible THIS is the best song of 2011. I love every part of this song, the low synth, the verse, the refrain, the bridge, her voice, the lyrics the way the song kicks back up after the refrain, the sort of sad desperate tone of the whole thing,  and of course that crazy high pitch “caw” sound that keeps playing. Brilliance.

14. UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA – Ffunny Ffrends: Yeah so is 4 minutes of low-fi messed up insanity. I don’t know if there are really any words here but, well, it’s pretty catchy.

15. THE BIRD AND THE BEE – Sara Smile: Ok, ok, ok, this didnt come out in 2011 but I started listening to it in 2011 so I’m counting it (this happens on this this list at least one more time). Anyway, I think Hall & Oates is insanely underrated as a legit pop/soul duo (yes, I’m serious). The Bird & The Bee decided to do a whole record of H&O covers and it is outstanding. Inara has a great voice and whole thing sounds great.

16. LCD SOUNDSYSTEM - I Can Change: Also, yes, 2010. I know. Somehow I missed the boat on the whole LCD soundsystem thing while they were still a band. There was a ton of hype around their fairwell show at MSG this year, I didn’t get it. Well, I do now. Sorry I missed them. If you don’t like this song and turn it way the hell up, there is something wrong with your brain.

17. BEST COAST: Our Deal: So this song is also not a 2011 release but the video for this is. I think I like it despite not being sure what I think of Drew Barrymore making this into a little west side story thing but who cares, it let’s me shoe horn in a Best Coast song and so I say yes to this video.

18. HOLY GHOST – Wait & See: Great groove to this one and the video is almost the best ever. The boys from Holy Ghost actually cast their dads in their place as they make their way through their cool hipster lives in NYC. One of the best ideas ever. See the story here.

19. YACHT – Dystopia: Couldn’t much get into the rest of the record but this song is a jam. Plus people just cant stop talking about that roof being on fire can they?

20. THE ROSEBUDS – Come Visit Me: Fell in love with this record this year. One of the better records I’ve heard in terms of listening straight through from cover to cover, great songwriting, very original, flows well together.

21. CULTS – Go Outside: I love me some Cults. Part of this lo-fi retro movement thing that seems to be going on, you cant tell if this song was penned in 2011 or 1961. Is that Ronnie Spector or a 20 something year old kid singing? Also, who doesn’t love a little xylophone in their rock and roll?  It’s summertime fun. Missed them TWICE in Boston and am not happy about it.

22. DUM DUM GIRLS: Bedroom Eyes: Hey while we are pretending its the early 60′s how about this little ditty from the Dum Dum Girls. It might be for girls. I don’t care. I like it too.

23. BON IVER – Holocene: I could probably put their whole record on here but this one sticks out a little more for me. I hear this guy and I can’t believe how good it is, it’s pretty much prefect music for me, uplifting no but its beautiful in it’s own simple introspective way. Thought the visual here was a perfect accompaniment for a cinematic auditory experience. Besides, I used to wander around and explore the outdoors like the kid in this video when I was younger, looks like he’s having fun.

24. TWIN SISTER – Bad Street: Sometime I hear songs like this and I have no idea why I like them. But I do. Plus I like this video which is essentially a bunch of regular nice looking folks having a birthday party in their backyard which is so different from the glossy, city, clubbing, overproduced, and too cool for school visual representation I expected.

25. DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE – Codes And Keys: This wasn’t my favorite DCFC record but I thought it was pretty solid nonetheless. I like the piano and the odd drumming and that creepy strings overlay. Very non conventional sound to this one and that has to count for something.

26. THE DECEMBERISTS – January Hymn: This is one of those songs I heard the first time and instantly loved it. Heard him play it live up here and he did such a great job with it that is stuck with me right away. A little bittersweet winter anthem, and I like that combination of concepts.

27. RADIOHEAD – Seperator: Radiohead released this record in 2011 in a way only they could – essentially in secret. Turns out to be a pretty great album. While there are a bunch of songs on this (see ‘give up the ghost’) that I thought qualify right up there with some of the great Radiohead songs of the past, this one is super listenable and similar to how I judge most of my music, you can drive to it.

28. FOO FIGHTERS – These Days: I remember walking past the record store while I was in college and seeing that ray gun poster from the Foo’s first record thinking ‘hey that nirvana drummer actually made a record’ – It’s still hard for me to believe how talented this goddamn guy is. In a sea of great songs from the foo fighters over the years this is right up there as yet another completely unabashed crank it up to 11 anthems that make you want to scream the lyrics and play air guitar or air drums. I love the construction of the bridge/refrain as well, it’s a little different and a little more complex than you expect it to be, the chord changes and such. Then just when Dave lulls you down he grinds right back into it. I missed them in Boston this year and I regret it. Loved this B&W version of the tune with the nod to a famous Ed Sullivan appearance. I dare you not to yell “easy for you to say” when the refrain starts.

29. STEPHEN MALKMUS AND THE JICKS – No One Is (As I Are Be): This is a good one from our old Pavement friend, simple but I love songs like this. They don’t need a ton of effect to be great. Minus 1 for using bourgeoisie in the middle of a great song but I’m giving him a pass.

30. TENNIS – Origins: Technically this record isn’t coming out until 2012 but I’ve heard this song here a few times and its super catchy so I’m going to add it here. I’ve been on and off with Tennis but this record has the fingerprints of Patrick Carney from the Black Keys and you can hear it in this track – slightly more rough, lo-fi, and edgy.

31. JOY FORMIDABLE: Whirring: You can’t listen to this and not wish you could plug in an electric guitar to a wall of amplifiers powered by plutonium. This song kicks major ass.

32. ELBOW: The Birds: I challenge anybody to find a better voice in rock. Saw Guy and company in a tiny rock club in Boston this year (The Paradise) and they were brilliant.

33. THE BLACK KEYS – Sister: So technically The Black Keys aren’t letting people stream this record but here seems to be a link (at least at the time of this publishing) that will get you to a great track from their new record: http://hypetrak.com/2011/11/the-black-keys-sister/

As you may know, Klout recently changed its algorithms for ranking social media influencers—and there has been a lot of fallout. (If you don’t know about these constantly changing metrics, it’s probably time to look into Klout, if for no other reason than to determine your own Klout score).

My favorite part about all this Klout Komplaining is that almost every blogger, pundit, critic, journalist always comes back with the faux aloof retort “I don’t care about my Klout score” or “nobody cares about their Klout score.” Oh… really? Something about their impassioned essays about how much they think Klout is irrelevant makes me wonder how irrelevant they actually find Klout to be. Let’s face it, this point of view is the grown-up equivalent of not getting invited to the cool kids party you “didn’t want to go anyway,” right? Like it or not, Klout, at least for now, is completely relevant and interesting and worthy of discussion.

Our anger over Klout is in part derived from the built in human emotion to want to be accepted and influential. We all at once crave and loathe being categorized, labeled, and scored. We “hate” it so much that we check in to see our score every day. It’s hard to find places in the world after college to get a “grade” to know how you are doing, to get a sense for how people feel about you. I suppose there are titles and such in the workplace but titles are really only an indicator of past performance, not a measuring stick against your present worth.

Alright, so Klout changed the rules a little on us mid stream (insert sound of baby crying). Was that fair? Of course it’s fair, why isn’t it fair, because we learned a way to game the system a little to inflate our scores? The alleged point of Klout is to measure how impactful you are socially, not how good you are at tricking Klout into believing you are more socially eminent that you actually are. Another complaint echoing around the social-sphere these is that Klout’s algorithm is shrouded in mystery. Well, how about that, a company that doesn’t disclose how it makes its special sauce, oh the nerve. Hell, if we are mad that we aren’t being told how exactly a company does their “thing” we should start going after Google, Coke, and that plotting and secretive Colonel from Kentucky Fried Chicken. If there was a mistake Klout did make, it was not just making a more clear declaration of what they were doing and standing behind it. “Hey, our data jocks over here at Klout realized we could do this better, so starting tomorrow we are tweaking our recipe for determining influence. Some of your scores will go down. Please don’t get too mad, it’s just the Internet. The end.”

There is a lot of anger as well over the fact that Klout went back in time and normalized scores to account for the new algorithm change. Why is this so annoying? I guess it’s just me but I don’t want to see my old “wrong” score like some sort of nostalgic trip down eminence memory lane. Hey put up the score that seemed higher because my ego is so fragile that I need to be reminded of a more pleasant time and place where I was cooler.

Alright so there are a number of potentially nefarious things also happening related to Klout. There are some alleged privacy issues, some concerns about sharing of minors’ information, it’s been hard to opt out, they might be selling information about you. All that said, what about any of this is new? I’m not saying it should be accepted as OK; it should not, but let’s not pretend any of these concerns are unique to Klout. Additionally, if companies are going to hire people, pay them, and not charge the user, they do need to actually make money somehow. This last piece always comes as a shock to notoriously miserly social surfers.

It’s true, nobody should be revolving their online lives around some kind of score or ranking. As with SEO, the best way to perform well is to just do what you do to the best of your abilities. Write good content, share good stories, stay relevant, and most of all, enjoy and be passionate about what you are talking about. Look, if you have a lot of extra energy laying around that you don’t know what to do with, you can use it to hate Klout, I guess. Trouble is they are the only ones really doing this right now—which makes it, for the moment, a de facto standard of sorts.

This leaves you with a few options; you can wait around for a better provider, provide feedback to improve Klout or just opt out. However, that last option involves not checking your score. Every. Day.

It worked for a long time. The yelling. The shouting. The screaming. The direct mail, so voluminous it darkened the skies on its way to your mailbox. The billboards, demanding your attention while battling the afternoon commute. The formulaic :30 TV spots featuring some unfunny story line for the first :15 seconds, making a feeble attempt to tell you about the product for :5, and talking up an offer for the remaining :10 with a sense of urgency so intense it seemed like the world would end if you didn’t “call now”. Fact is, we’ve managed to cram every marketing pipe so full of messages that ultimately the only decision the customer is left to make is how to tune it all out. And tune it out they have. DVR’s now shield viewers from TV commercials, direct mail ends up right in the trash especially if its source is an unlovable brand (and most DM is), radio is now so littered with advertising that many have defected by paying for mostly commercial free satellite radio. It turns out that consumers have found a way to reject, tune out, or just ignore all this megaphone marketing very well. Customers have turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to many of these one way conversations held on the terms of the advertiser. You see, all of these messages are delivered at a time and via a mechanism that works for us as advertisers, however, generally this is not in alignment with customer desire.
Enter social media marketing.

By nature, good social media marketing exhibits several key differences from our traditional megaphone marketing:
• At the core of social is listening, not shouting
• It’s ‘delivered’ on the terms of the consumer, eaten and digested when and generally how the consumer wants it
• Social marketing provides a platform for a two way dialog. Instead of a one way information flow, social allows the advertiser to generate curiosity which ultimately will get the consumer to “lean in” to the discussion rather than be blown back by the immediate call to action cacophony.

Any good conversation is a healthy mix of back and forth, give and take, question and answer. Ask yourself if you’ve ever walked up to a busy person on the street and just begun talking to them about your product while they were clearly already engaged in something else? Of course not, yet this is essentially how we disseminate our marketing messages every day. Conversations need to be invited and accepted by both parties, they can’t be forced. Social media marketing is all about conversation and customer engagement. Quality conversations also generally happen with both parties can “agree” on when they should happen. Herein lies the fatal flaw of traditional advertising, it is almost always executed solely on the terms of the advertiser in a one way direction without waiting to see if anybody is even interested in listening. On the other hand, social encourages prospective customers to lean into the message and engage in a dialog. This dialogue might be with the brand itself or it could be with other potential consumers. While both potential outcomes are favorable, the second allows for what amounts to third party propagation of your message and will be much more likely to be considered by additional consumers.

The reality is traditional marketing does still work. Brands are going to continue to spend on traditional media and send those mountains of direct mail as long as they get that 1% return. After all, if you yell at enough people some of them are bound to listen to you at some point. However, the issue brands need to ask themselves is “how well is it actually working?” and “what can I do to help my traditional tactics work more effectively?”. Developing a marketing mix which leverages traditional tactics while weaving in an intelligent blend of social media is most likely to yield the most favorable results and allow brands to get their customers to lean in. Customers that are leaning in are going to be much more apt to listen to what you have to say which ultimately is the whole point.

Rebellion, conformity, or just a damn sneaker?

Sometimes I really don’t know what my problem is. I’ve occasionally been plagued by hang-ups over the most esoteric random things. I mean really stupid stuff and I thought that perhaps when I got to my 20’s  (or 30’s) I’d grow out of it. I have not. A prime example of my distain of inane and ridiculous issues is over Converse’s Chuck Taylor sneakers. I’ve refused to wear them and have looked upon those that do with presumptuous distain.

Apparently “Chucks” became popular with the rebel crowd in the 50’s. They were cheap, boys and girls could wear them, and they looked good with jeans, a leather jacket, a white T shirt, and a bucket of Vitalis. Yeah, none of these attributes really apply to me growing up in the 80’s, I was just trying to get through high school without getting stabbed. It always felt to me that if you are wearing Chucks it’s as if you’ve got something to prove. You needed to make some kind of statement, I don’t think I’m a big “make a statement with inanimate objects” guy. Chuck wearers seem to need to either call attention to themselves or somehow explain who they are not.  It’s like these sneakers have become a type of uniform, a symbol of sorts worn by people that really want you to know “hey man, I’m an original, you can’t group me into some bucket of conformity here.” Their claim on individuality is neatly wrapped in retro canvas and rubber, subtly screaming for you to notice them as individuals. The problem is, sometimes when you try too hard to rebel, all you end up doing is conforming.  Hey nothing says “original” more than doing the same exact thing everybody else is doing too. If you’re so upset by the “norm” then just don’t pay attention to this norm it at all. You’ve seen the look, it’s on business guys wearing suits desperate to show they aren’t just a “suit” but a guy with a soul, it’s on slacker college kids eager to tell you they aren’t ready to be tied down to the 9-5 routine, it’s on guys in bands because well, it’s what guys in bands are supposed to wear apparently, oh and it’s on people that want to pretend they are also in a band or trying to be a part of some kind of “scene”. They are a big hit in the hipster community populated by snarky elitists wearing $400 glasses and throwing around bucket loads of pretention. For a crowd clamoring to stand on their own merits, they sure do look a lot alike.

The problem is that the damn sneakers are actually pretty cool. Let’s face it, the shoe has got to be one of the most iconic American designs in the last 100 years. The do in fact seem to fit almost every occasion from the suit, to the art kid, to the punk, the awkward teen, to the guy writing an article putting them down. Yeah that’s right, after all this yammering, I got a pair. I was in Marshalls doing my annual T-shirt buy and there they were. This rust color version that just seemed like they would match up with a bunch of my other clothes (geez who’s the snarky hipster wanna-be now) and they were all of $14.99. I picked them up unsure I would ever be able to wear them out of the house, or in the house for that matter, without a Wicked Witch of the West situation unfolding…

I left them in the closet for 5 months until one day (today) I decided to just stop this insanity and throw them on. They matched, they were comfortable, and guess what – nobody said a thing, the world didn’t end, I didn’t turn into a punk rocking rebellious ne’er-do-well. Nobody cared, and for god sakes I shouldn’t either.

Still…. it felt weird.

Wondering where the name “Chuck Taylor” originated? In1921, Charles H. “Chuck” Taylor, a player for the Akron Firestones, officially joined Converse as America’s first player endorser. Two years later, Chuck’s signature was added to the all star shoe. – helium.com

Next time somebody says this, say yeah and I heard Hyundai sold 2 million cars last year, you know how long it took Henry Ford to sell 2 million cars? I know, I know, not exactly applicable but the idea is the same, you cant compare the category creator to new entrants. I mean, it took Facebook 3 years to get to twenty million users for several reasons

• They were busy inventing the category and the platform
• They were restricted to a small segment purposely (college)
• Nobody knew what “social networks” really were yet
• They had zero brand equity, nobody ever heard of Facebook in 2007

On the other hand, Google literally had millions of people waiting for them to develop some kind of platform, they had a loyal following of brand enthusiasts, had built in connections via gmail not to mention search. To be honest, I can’t believe they only had 20MM people after 6 weeks. While it true that Google had this thing on lockdown for a while (with people begging to get on the beta) Google is an internally recognized mega brand with a trust factor and affinity to boot.

Now it will be up to Google to see if they can continue this acceleration. Right now FB has 800MM users to Googles 50. Getting big fast quickly was impressive, it’s a matter of if they can continue steady growth and stay big which will be impressive.