Some really incredible work here at Weburbanist. I am a big fan of strong messaging right at the point of conversion/action. Advertising takes on a whole new life when it inhabits consumers’ everyday environment, and this work is visceral. It’s is killer creative from design to placement (which becomes part of the design).

Just a note re my personal qualms: I think the suicide prevention and pool death posters , while the latter especially is certainly very scary, go too far. There are people out there who’ve suffered terrible losses and don’t need this kind of unavoidable reminder. Yes, tough messages need strong presentation, and the starving child is proven effective even though it’s blatant guilting. Still. We all get to draw our own lines. (I don’t get the cleaver either, but that’s from a creative standpoint.)

Edited to note: every parent I know who saw this was affected strongly by the pool poster. It’s surely effective- pool safety is top of mind for a while – but I wonder if that is worth the pain that anyone who has lost someone to drowning would feel. Would love feedback on that.

I’ve talked about blogging vs. microblogging and do on occasion make my blog solely from my tweets, but I think one of the best uses of both forums is in a case where I want to expand past 140 characters on something that’s come up on the Twitter feed.

This came up today on Twitter – companies using recession/recessionary thinking in campaigns. Is this effective? (Yes, you’ll have to read the below Twitter convo bottom up just like in the Twitterverse.) The gist of this is: recession as marketing tool and is it effective, particularly in lifestyle businesses?

I don’t think so. I think consumers want reality, not recession talk. Instead of inflationary thinking (make your product so aspirational that you can charge whatever you like), they want realistic thinking (good product at an acceptable price point). That’s an appropriate response to recession. I think in olden days they called it “value”. Perceived value can be everything. Will write about that later, especially as it relates to digital entertainment content.

Anyway, the CEO of Citizens of Humanity denim gave me this excellent mini-case study. As a response to the economic climate, Citizens dropped a particular style’s retail price to $149 (Citizens jeans tend to start around $175, standard for premium denim). They did not reduce the quality – in fact they used a slightly more expensive fabric. Like smart businesspeople they asked their retail partners to participate in the bite and set the wholesale price a bit higher than normal, reducing the retail markup.

The jeans sold like crazy. Meanwhile- Rock & Republic, which is a highly aspirational brand- is not doing well with its “Recession Jeans”, which are actually called that, at an even lower price point.

Recession isn’t fun, and when we integrate it into our lifestyles as consumers, I think we want to call it “value” or being “conscious” – something that makes us feel as though we are gracefully relating to reality- maybe even making reality cool (as in, it’s now cool to downsize your lifestyle). I don’t want to wear the recession.

BTW, @bkm55 is Brian Mitchison, VP of Marketing at Blast Radius. They do GREAT work.

@bkm555 I don’t think “recessionista” has worked as a term that resonates with consumers, do you? Who wants to wear the recession?about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck in reply to bkm555

@bkm555 Exactly- the appropriate action in a recession is more or at least the same for less, not less for less with a cute name.about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck in reply to bkm555

bkm555@elizabrooks great example. I understand appropriate actions are required in a recession, but not marketing spin.about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck in reply to elizabrooks

@bkm555 Rock&Republic did “Recession Jeans” at about $120 & failed. Citizens did $149 jeans @ usual quality & no recession talk w/successabout 1 hour ago from TweetDeck in reply to bkm555

bkm555Using recession themes in mrk seems too contrived.about 2 hours ago from web

bkm555Journalist request: looking for companies that are using the recession in their campaigns. Not a big fan of this approach.about 2 hours ago from web

It would be amazing to have collective input from a huge pool of musicians on how they would design THEIR dream version of the entity which must eventually evolve to replace the record label. What would it do (the things artists can’t, won’t, or don’t want to do themselves?)? What part of its functions would be functions labels now handle and what would be new?

My Napster colleague (our VP, Product Development) Don Dodge has become a startup guru, running the Microsoft Startup Zone and conducting some of the most clear-eyed assessments of newcos I’ve seen, and doing some very cool angel investing (Zink is one). I had a blast last September at Techcrunch 50 sitting with Don in the “blogger zone”. Here’s Don’s take on the newcos at DEMO this year:

http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2009/03/best-of-demo-09.html

Just finished lunch with Marc Gobé, friend, mentor, and the man behind Emotional Branding (where I’m an advisor):
emotionalbranding.com
The topic of conversation was largely…conversations. The conversations brands have with their customers, the conversations customers have with and around brands, and how to aggregate the conversation in a way that makes sense. For instance, I’m working my way through and testing the available Twitter tools so that I can ask a question both here and on Twitter, and bring the various comments and discussions back here in one place, making the discussion more immediate and vibrant.

The conversation idea is of course not new. It’s the tools we have to engage it which are multiplying. But does every brand need a conversation? If I’m P&G and a majority of my brands improve various areas of the home experience, I’m going to build something successful like homemadesimple.com . This is an ongoing engagement with my customer and although my brands are present throughout, it’s not blatantly brandcentric nor intrusive, and in fact it’s possible to completely miss the branding (this is a good thing). So, P&G and Tide, Cascade, Dawn, Swiffer, Mr. Clean, Febreze, etcetera, definitely benefit from having this conversation and so do their consumers.

Marc and I wondered, though: does a company which makes, say, galvanized pipe for irrigation need a brand conversation? What attributes does pipe need to have besides being strong, not leaking,  and being well-priced in its market? It would seem ridiculous to have social actions for a pipe manufacturer, right? Well, yes, and no.
For the sake of galvanized pipe discussion, I looked at Morrill Industries . Turns out there are an awful lot of attributes to galvanized irrigation pipe, none of which are probably fascinating to brand people- but they definitely justify a conversation about “Couplers, Tees, Crosses, 90° Ells, 45° Ells, Hex Bushings, Bell Reducers, Reducing Tees, Street Ells……..” – in the right venue.
Facebook’s the wrong place for this, as is any broad-based social application which is difficult to shrink to a specialization- but an aggregated Twitter discussion group could definitely work. Morrill could have the only hex bushing for particular situations, and its audience would never know that if it were not engaged in the conversation. (I have absolutely no idea what a hex bushing is, btw.)

Moral of the story: yes, Dorothy, you can engage social media, but not in a paint-by-numbers way. Find the right destination; don’t just toss darts at Twitter and Flickr; and if what you do/sell is specialized, corral that community even if you do so within a larger social context .

My friend Derek Sivers, someone I am very fortunate to know and occasionally break bread with (should be more often) wrote an ebook for musicians on how to get music noticed- how to rise above the noise. He should know- Derek founded CD Baby, possibly the most successful independent music aggregator/manufacturer/digital distributor ever, and indubitably the nicest and easiest to do biz with. One of the most beautiful things about Derek is his generosity of spirit, and he makes this ebook available for anyone, free, from sivers.org. You can also download it here:

http://derek.s3.amazonaws.com/DerekSivers.pdf

Derek wants you to spread it around- just please, credit Derek Sivers and link to sivers.org. That’s all.

I was committed to never using the term “social media” on my website, but I’m afraid it’s going to be unavoidable in my blog. With the prevailing marketing chatter over the last 48 hours or so about the new skittles.com , there’s really no other term to employ.

To put it in its simplest terms, Skittles has removed a traditional home page from its website; instead, you hit the Skittles Twitter home page and an overlaid nav which will take you to: the Skittles Facebook home, the Skittles YouTube brand channel, a Skittles Flickr page, and yes, information about the (limited but tasty) Skittles product line.

I saw a tweet fly by about how this was an incredibly brave move and that courageous brand managers should sit up and take note.

Well…it’s still fairly cool for a mass-market brand to be active on Twitter (that’ll last about another four days). And I am happy that the Skittles team are together enough to have their, um, social media pieces sorted.Today it would be a bit sad, ok, unheard of, to not have one’s Facebook brand page and so forth set up.

But may I ask what all of this does for Skittles?

What exactly will Skittles-centric Twittering do to increase candy awareness and consumption? Is this where the Skittles core audience is to be found? To judge from Skittles-Twitter-Homeland, all Skittles has done is bait the Twitterverse into snarky comments. That doesn’t matter, it’s still discussion- but how is this discussion going to drive sales? Maybe one or two hungry Twitterers will develop a sudden craving upon the reminder of Skittle deliciousness, but it hardly seems that Twitter should be the Skittles focus area. I applaud the willingness to have unfiltered content displayed around the brand (the Flickr page is a random search)- it’s brave and could lead to some cool usergen content – but again, exactly how does this move candy?

Facebook and YouTube make a little more sense, as engaging a community around a brand is always a good move. However, again, the aggressive social stunt has only brought activity to these pages which is negative. It would seem the campaign is not reaching Skittles fans en masse, nor engaging discovery of Skittles.

There are exactly 3 videos on the Skittles YouTube brand channel at this moment. Wouldn’t it be far more productive to pour some of this energy into having more and better brand-related content? Or, if the point is to drive more Skittle conversation, why not center it around a new development or some really cool event Skittles is supporting?

If the Twitterverse were discussing how Skittles had just planted forests in deforested areas, or built houses in disaster-struck areas, the brand conversation would be a lot more positive, and a lot more interesting. They could even be rainbow-colored forests and rainbow-colored houses – but at least they’d be on point.

I can’t wait to see what this does for Skittles in the actual marketplace. Very curious.

AT&T offers me a full support center for the 3G microcell. Small problem: I can’t buy one yet. Then again, they’re ahead on their web buildabout 23 hours ago from TweetDeck

@Steve_Gonzalez may go to SXSW, figuring it out now. If you’ve never been by all means, go.

CNET on Lala, iMeem,SpiralFrog. Labels REFUSE to license DRM-free AAC /mp3 to SpiralFrog!? That’s what SpiralFrog says. http://bit.ly/VsOn10:13 AM Mar 2nd from TweetDeck

Is the #Skittles webpage “brave” bc it focuses on social media & less on the product? There’s direct nav to products front and center10:03 AM Mar 2nd from TweetDeck

Realized yesterday that I haven’t worked at a company since Napster where I could make salacious t-shirts for the whole engineering team8:24 AM Mar 2nd from TweetDeck

@guykawasaki the pool at the Hotel du Cap is better than almost all pools listed. Although the Icelandic geothermal pool is trés sweet2:26 PM Feb 28th from TweetDeck in reply to guykawasaki

Wouldn’t it make more sense for Bluehost to adopt a policy against hate speech rather than blocking countries w/ messy regimes? Free speech?2:23 PM Feb 28th from TweetDeck

RT @Scobleizer: It’s a real bummer that Bluehost is kicking off Iranian bloggers: http://tinyurl.com/ccsfqv2:18 PM Feb 28th from TweetDeck