I'm a musical theater geek! ::Gasp:: ::Shock:: ::Horror:: So you'll forgive me if I quote Bock and Harnick by saying:

I got a puppy! If any of you have ever gotten a dog before, you know there are a lot of opinions out there on how to train it, many of which are contradictory. It can be a little overwhelming. I chose, from the very beginning, to follow the advice of Cesar Millan. More than just being the television personality known as "The Dog Whisperer" I had a friend and colleague who use to edit Cesar's books and claimed he had an unparalleled sense of natural psychology. This went beyond just dogs. He could read people through their energy. Enough said!
I got the book How to Raise the Perfect Dog and while it seemed appropriate, there was just so much information and it was so abstract, it seemed hard to implement. I was tried and frustrated–much like my dog, I'm sure–with the whole process.
It's no secret  I'm trying to raise my dog by Cesar principles, so when a friend told me that people were actually using Cesar's strategies on children and there was, in fact, an entire South Park episode about Cesar training Eric Cartmen, I of course had to go check this out.

Brilliant! But not just brilliant, the message was actually EFFECTIVE. After watching this show a lot of the principles Cesar was trying to impart in his book really came to fruition for me. I suddenly understood.
Ignoring: puppies want attention, so if you don't give it to them, you're teaching them not to engage in this behavior to get it.
The Tap: That's all over Cesar's book but the quick execution, I didn't realize that's how it was done.
Tsst: Well that's just annoying. Anyone (or dog) would stop if you did that a few times.
In the end, I learned more about Cesar's methods through South Park than I ever did through his books. Now maybe it's because it was short and funny and I was more engaged with it. Or maybe it says something about my generation. But it was effective and that's all that matters!
With marketing it's about getting your audience to pay attention. If that means distilling information into short, funny digestible burst, then I suggest you get out there and do it. Otherwise you're going to have more clients like me with Cesar's book–frustrated, unconvinced and ready to give up on the whole idea.

Everyone is buzzing about Tavi. The 13 year old fashion "fangirl" has hit, what maybe, the pinnacle of her career, landing a column in her favorite magazine Harper's Bazaar. Instead of embracing her for the talent that she is, or crediting Harper's for going out on a limb and getting ::gasp:: a real person's opinion–versus that another jaded view from an industry insider–fashion writers and editors have taken to mocking the magazine and belittling the work of this burgeoning blogger.

A Kid Could Do Your Social Media Directors Job
If there were any story that should shame your company into doing better with their social media marketing, it's this one. Thirteen year old Tavi Williams has been invited to Tokyo to attend the holiday party of fashion designer Comme des Garcons as their guest of honor. In just under two years her blog has become a huge talking point for media and marketing people alike. Social Media Directors should all be taking notes from this kid.

Mockery or Bad Product Placement?
For those who missed last weeks South Park, Living with Smurfs, the episode, while artfully mocking yellow dog journalism also had an incongruous story about smurfs. If it weren't for all the hype surrounding James Cameron's new Avitar movie the plotting would make no sense, but of course the creators tipped their hands in the end. While most have called it an ingenious parody, it felt more like an extended commercial written in the style of a South Park parody. The only reason I believe the latter is the almost intense lack of humor throughout the entire story. If I am right, this is probably one of the best examples of seamless integration out there right now. Funny or not, we'd have to say ku-dos Mr. Cameron!

Who is Lorenzo Von Matterhorn? Only about the best use of multi-platforming seen on television in forever! On Monday night How I Met Your Mother scored not just top ratings on television, but top ratings online. During the episode the character Bareny Stinson erected fake webpages and even a fake Wikipedia entry to dupe an unsuspecting conquest. A quick search revealed producers of HIMYM actually erected the same fake Wikipedia page and three webpages. For one full day the fake character name, Lorenzo Von Matterhorn became the #1 search term on Google. This weeks winner of knowing how to reach your audience definitely goes to HIMYM!

Microsoft Spontaneous Dancing Makes Everyone Uncomfortable in honor of their brand new flagship stores in California, Microsoft store workers just feel the need to break into "spontaneous" dance. Not sure if it's the grimaces on the employees faces or the fact that they're being forced to do a dance from 1993 that makes us all feel a little creeped out. Microsoft gets a big old thumbs down for their viral marketing attempts this week.

The problem with digital today is there are a lot people that tell you they can do something and very few people that can actually do something! I believe in action and measurable achievement. They joy of technology is that you can measure almost anything. If there is ANY company out there that tells that you can not judge the impact of social media, they're selling a bunch of crap! The greatest aspect of digital communication and social media is that everything is measurable. In page views, mentions, interactions, you can tell if a company is worth their weight in salt.

Which is why it annoys me that so many companies are willing to buy off on theory rather than stone  cold data. I don't want to sound like a Bitter Betty here, but in some cities there is definitely more talk than action. New York is one of the worst. Recently the founder of a site called Path101–a site that one its best month in 2 years had no more than 25k hits according to compete.com–was hired by a major VC as an evaluator and strategic planner says to me that people don't respect their data. Another associate ran a website that, granted, just launched, but on its initial entrance received no more than 33k page views. He's now advising for a VC that funded a company we consider our forefathers. (Just for the uninitiated look up any popular website on compete.com or alexa.com and compare it to the above sites. The insight will be staggering).

I don't want to be sour grapes, but the lessons here pertain to all aspects of digital, whether it's marketing or funding. Digital technology allows you to measure EVERYTHING! Even if compete.com  (where I found these numbers and you can too) is wrong by half of its evaluation, neither of these digital companies were, by any stretch of the imagination, successful. Simple analytics shows that. This opinion may not be popular, but it seems pragmatic.

While at one time the marketing world may have been capable of running on simple hypothesis and assumptions, that led them to believe something was working, in the digital age they have the ability to ask for more. Now you can judge, measure and parse just about any data. So why get pulled in to some fast speaking, easy listening "digital experts" when any strategic analyst can read a spread sheet? You have the ability and right to ask for more in this day and age. And you should!

And How/Why You Should Do Better
So by now you should all be aware of the mayo-hem over at The Colbert Report. You haven't heard? In their attempt to be bold, hip and irreverent, Miracle Whip decided stand out by making a commercial full of dated hipster references.

 It's great that they got the Polaroid, unfortunate they missed the Sparks and annoying that they feel positing such stereotypical images of their audience will attract their audience.

Colbert's shot back, calling for a Mayo-lution (replete with mayo bong jars and mayo keg stands), was well timed and incisive, addressing all the mistakes Miracle Whip made in their faux hip ad. The biggest mistake was assuming they "knew" their generation.  They certainly proved how well they knew their audience when the "bold" marketing team took out a full page newspaper ad announcing their intent to run nothing but Miracle Whip ads on Thursday's episode of The Colbert Report. Newspapers? Really?

In the end, Colbert's last word was right on the mark.

What was frustrating about this debate was not that the ads were bad, it's that they were inauthentic. Its as if an ad agencies read a copy of Vice and decided they knew how to speak to this generation. That would be the opposite of authentic and the antithesis of what this generation is demanding from you. Colbert may have been snide in his chastising, but he was also right. Your showing us a commercial with a hip people playing around a kiddie pool is like Stephen Colbert saying he is "down with it" in earnest.

The touch, the feel of brands, it's literally the fabric of our lives. So why is it that marketers still think of selling their brands in an adversarial push way when they ought to be thinking of their brand in a collaborative, collective way?

First we need to get past the myth that Gen Y hates brands (or that they're flighty with their brand loyalty). We don't hate brands, we love brands, we hate marketers. The problem is that marketers are always pushing their message on us in places that they don't belong. I was reading a really interesting post by Jason Potteiger today call 15 Way Millenials Think About Brands. Any marketer worth their salt, better get their butts over there right now and read it!

Essentially, though, he confirmed everything that I've been saying. Millenials don't want to hear a message, they want to be involved with shaping a message. We want to help craft the story of your brand because, in essence, when you put a brand out there, and we accept it into our lives, it is no longer yours, it is ours. So you better be sure that once you put a brand out there, it has the power to stand up to the test of user interaction and flexibility to let us mold the conversation around it.

Simply, create a good product–one that we want to embrace–and then engage us in a dialogue about it. That is marketing for this generation!

A lot of companies are struggling to figure out where social media fits into there company. On the one hand, a lot of the work being done is about communicating. Tweeting, blogging, staying in touch with communities and getting in front of bad messages before they spread, all sounds like the work of the publicity department. Then again, though, building brand loyalty, generating new customers through brand engagement, product positioning, that all sounds like the work of the marketing department. But then ad placement, buying social media space, it kind of sounds like advertising's job.

Yeah, well, see that's the problem. Along with breaking down the communication barrier, social media has also managed to destroy job distinction. Now it's not just the marketing department crafting a message, advertising selling it, and publicity communicating, its all three departments working together to see how their skills can best serve the community. Dividing up jobs and responsibilities fractures your social media message, making it less powerful.

In this postmodern world, there is no distinction between social media for publicity and social media for marketing. It's everyone bringing their combined skills and efforts together to form one cohesive unit, the social media unit. Until companies start understanding that, the small investments they put towards social media efforts here and there will be fruitless. 

I was speaking with friend today about why advertisers are disillusioned with ads on networks. One of the core complaints, when it comes to online ads you can't establish a brand identity.

A brand is a feeling, an emotion, an identifying trait that says, you are this, you are not that. Nothing could sum up this relationship better than this blog post I just read from the next great generation.

"PC is to BlackBerry as Apple is to iPhone and don’t get it twisted: I’m a Mac, NOT a PC. I was

faced with an existential crisis: Who am I? A BlackBerry, or an iPhone? This wasn’t just a choice

in product; it was a choice in lifestyle."

When it comes to building brand identity, advertising online isn't going to cut it. That's where social media marketing becomes a key player. Nothing is better for establishing the identity of your company than a strong social media marketing campaign. Don't know what I mean?

TGI Friday's is a fun brand. They've gone out of their way to show us that. Whether its the flair they sport on their suspenders, the load music rolling from their speakers or the audacity of hookin' up with JD to make the ever popular Jack Daniel's Burger. So what do they do when the economy goes south and people stop going out on Friday's? They take the party to them on social networks. With a handy, fun loving guy called Woody. He's fun, he does quirky stuff and best of all he's giving away free Jack Daniel sandwiches just for being his friend. 

Sure they could have offered a free coupon for a Jack Daniel's burger, but that wouldn't have been fun. By creating a character like Woody and getting users across facebook to interact with his page, they're creating a relationship and solidifying the image of fun in consumers minds.