Recently while having dinner with a group of friends, all professionals in our own right, I made reference to my Facebook profile. Suddenly our stimulating conversation was dampened by snorts and giggles, a couple of eyerolls and the akward question, “Aren’t you too old for that stuff?” The defense begins: Hey, I’m in advertising, it’s important to keep our finger on the pulse of interactive innovation. See what the kids are doing. Y’know. After a few I-guess-that’s-an-acceptable-excuse shrugs later, the conversation diverted, and I was left to ponder my defense.

The next day at the office I started taking an unscientific poll of coworkers activities on several of the perceived cyberspace timesuckers: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, iGoogle and YouTube. I found even within the creative field of advertising, there’s a perception, particularly among senior staff and supervisors, that these pop culture phenomena are to be played during off hours, as an “after-school” activity and not on-the-job research. So my question is, how can marketing people think up great big ideas for integrated advertising campaigns that involve an online community if they’re not part of these communities?

iGoogle and Facebook are two of the best places to play with and learn about widgets, which, according to our agency’s digital media guru, are the new “30-second spots.” Pulling personalized, real-time data into its tiny container, a widget typically lives on blog pages or the computer desktop. Every morning I take a quick look at what my friends, Art Center students and coworkers are up to on my Facebook home page. Sure there are funny pictures of drinking nights gone bad, but it’s also the place to see what new widgets people are playing with and passing around. Not to mention the way they make it SO easy to share widgets you like with your own little community. And this “little” community is growing by the second.

Twitter is a fascinating study in taking this emerging community-based technology to a higher level. Allowing users to receive 140 character updates on those they “follow” throughout the day is appearing to have more uses than just to extend the reach of water-cooler gossip. I follow Zappos.com’s CEO Tony Hsieh from keynote speeches to his backyard BBQ’s. While in San Francisco earlier this year he “twittered” that he would buy a drink for anyone who met up with him with “Zappos” written on their hand. Over 200 “Zappos enscribed” Twitteroti showed up, although I’m sure the exposure (including this article) was more than worth the expense. He’s twittering all day long, and runs a billion-dollar company. And the best part? Until this year, Twitter had no traditional advertising. (That’s something for you online community-resistant executives to chew—or preferably blog—on.)

I wanted to see what makes a CEO such as Tony twitter so fervently, so I “twittered” him via a “Direct Message” to find out: 


GW: Why do you twitter?



TH: It's a great way to stay in touch and form deeper, more personal
connections with friends, employees, and customers!



GW: What professional/personal benefits do you see from twittering?



TH: Our #1 focus as a company is our company culture. Twitter is a great way for employees to meet up with each other outside the office as well as gain more perspective on each other as people rather than just as co-workers.



GW: What are the downsides to twittering?



TH: There's a big hump for people who are new to it to get over. It's not easy for a new person to get started, especially if he/she doesn't have a network of friends already on twitter. To help with that, we've written up a quickstart guide (for everyone at Zappos).



GW: Since your "bar promotions" have now become twitter lore, what inspired you to do them? Do you still? What is the benefit (other than drinks with like-minded twitteringprofessionals)?



TH: It was a great way to meet people that we would potentially want to recruit for Zappos. Basically, through twitter I just a) did research on my subject matter for this piece, b) got in touch with a prominent CEO directly, not through his “people” or dozens of emails; I had one-on-one communication with a social community thought leader, and c) received insider knowledge on what makes this particular CEO tick. How long would it take to have the same conversation through “traditional” tactics?

The BMW 1 Series campaign was another example of an extremely successful use of social media. According to Forrester's "Best and Worst of Social Network Marketing 2008," the campaign "What Drives You?” successfully rallied fans on Facebook. The secret of their success was to create tools and encourage community members to be creative and "graffitti" a BMW 1 and share it. The innovative ideas that have worked well on the Web have been about connecting people to one another, and connecting beloved brands to their customers. But beware, if you talk the digital talk, you have to walk the digital walk.  

Recently a young, hip and cool advertising agency launched their site combining Wikipedia/Flickr/YouTube/del.icio.us/Facebook to house all their agency content with a very clever overlay for navigating it all. The site oozes wired, fresh and cool. Yet the first review of the site I read dinged their CEO for not having a Facebook page. It reasoned that if you say you are wired, you also have the responsibility to “act” wired.

The next time your supervisor sees you surfing MySpace or Facebook and tells you to get to work, tell them you’re working on community research. Ask to see their page. When they roll their eyes and shake their head “no,” hand them this article and tell them “everything will be ok, all the enlightened CEOs are doing it.”
 

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