Cymfony's Influence 2.0

"Fallibility adds credibility"

This was a notable quote from David Weinberger at the WOMMA WOMBAT 3 conference in New Orleans. Well-known as co-author of The Cluetrain Mainfesto, David is always provocative and this is a provocative statement for marketers and PR people.

We communications professionals are taught that our messages, our positioning, the production values, etc. etc. should be perfect and we work very hard at it. But in the social media realm, striving for perfection is wrong. David cited Wikipedia's "warning labels" on articles where there haven't been enough contributors or there is a real debate among contributors; these articles contain a label that discloses that the article may not be 100% perfect. Rather than undercutting the authority of Wikipedia as an information source it enhances it.

I passed on this advice yesterday at the American Strategic Management Institute's Branding Excellence workshop. An attendee stated that his company wanted to engage in social media, but wanted to be sure to do it "right". I said not to worry so much, get started, and just be ready to take some criticism, adapt and change as required and move on.

Why is striving for perfection so wrong in this space? It is inauthentic. I spent Tuesday afternoon at the Business Development Institute's Authentic Communications conference, where we had a lengthy discussion about what authenticity is. I riffed on David's statement, saying that as people, we all know no one and no thing is perfect, so perfection, by its nature, isn't authentic. PS Fast Company has a good article on authenticity in the May issue.

I do depart from David on one point: at the Society for New Communications Research conference in Las Vegas, he said that spelling, grammar, etc. don't matter, that speed is more important, and that those little imperfections add to credibility. A couple of minor typos, OK (I know I find them in my old posts when I go back to re-read them). Occasional tense disagreements -- maybe. But total stream of consciousness with no self-editing doesn't cut it with me. It may be self-expression, but it's not communication. Too many grammatical violations will confuse the reader, and if they don't understand what you are trying to say, you as a writer have failed.

In summary: do the best you can, don't obsess over every little detail, be ready to fix something when you are called out, but forget perfection. As Martin Luther advised, "Sin boldly!"

WOMBAT 3 -- Day 1

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association's Basic Training (affectionately dubbed WOMBAT) got off to a great start yesterday with Chip Heath, author of Made to Stick. This book has been sitting on my desk for a couple of months, and I just haven't gotten around to reading it. Now, it moves to the top of the stack.

The book sprang from a question that intrigued Chip for a while: why do urban legends and other stories that are often false (like the "fact" we only use 10% of our brains) spread so far and become so engrained in our society while more important messages like the benefits of eating a healthy diet don't stick?

Like many of these books, he has an acronym made up of the first letters of the six criteria he discovered: SUCCES, for Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Stories  (Fortunately, he apologized for such a corny acronym).

I was most struck by his discussion of the criterion of Concreteness. Working in a new area like WOM, it is often hard to explain what we do in a way that people unfamiliar with the field say, "Oh, I get it!" We often try to make grand conceptual statements that encompass the entire breadth of our knowledge.

Wrong.

He gave examples of concreteness that invariably invariably involved seemingly small details: like the power management technology company whose products were used on the Mars Rover, or retailer Eddie Bauer who was able to exemplify their dedication to quality and service with story of their founder sleeping in a butcher's meat locker to ensure his new Artic Tundra sleeping bag worked.

What are the details that bring the new "consumer in control" and "2-way dialogue" aspects of the new marketing world to such vivid life?

PS. Seen all over New Orleans: T-shirts that say "FEMA: Fix Everything My A**"

O tempora! O mores!

Since when is setting a standard for civility an attack on free speech? Why does the blogosphere think it is exempt from the bounds of acceptable content in the offline world?

I'm sure many of you have been following the storm of discussion surrounding blogger Kathy Sierra (this NYT article sums up the whole thing). I'm astonished that at the end Robert Scoble is quoted that he is uncomfortable with the idea that there should be standards. I'm with Tim O'Reilly, "...managed civil dialogue is actually the freer speech."

I'm also surprised this is such a controversy -- and worried about what it says about the state of our society. We don't tolerate bullying by 6 year olds in our schoolyards. We don't allow it at public gatherings like Town Meeting in my little New England town. And don't even think about phoning a death threat to the White House ...

Why should we tolerate cyberbullying, just because it "virtual"? As Kathy described, the fear and revulsion that the threats caused are completely real. While the location may not be "real", one of the great things about social media is the reality of the relationships you create. And like all human relationships, they must be governed by some degree of etiquette, protocols, courtesy -- whatever you want to call it.

Like Cicero (I'm sure many of my readers are fellow Latin scholars ;-), I lament "Oh, the times! Oh, the customs!" that we as a society think the right of the individual to say and do whatever he/she wants whenever he/she wants with absolutely no boundary is acceptable. Of course, spirited debate must be allowed and encouraged. Topics that may be considered by some to be distasteful, or even offensive must be allowed. Irony, even biting sarcasm have a place and snarky remarks can add spice to the debate. Maybe some lawyer can correct me, but when the speech crosses the line into threatening "hate" speech, it is no longer protected.

For the record, I routinely delete all spam comments -- am I stepping on the spammers' right of free speech? I say no, he's violating my right to carry on a conversation of interest to all of you.

And I will delete any comments that are profane, abusive, threatening, and generally off topic. Not only do those things interfere with my right to conduct an intelligent, interesting conversation, they have no place in a civilized society.

Can this industry be saved?

A pair of articles this week got me really depressed about the state of advertising. They indicate that marketers' only response in this time of change is to shout louder and to make ever more outlandish claims. If the industry wants higher consumer "engagement", we'd better fix both of these problems really quickly.

First was Advertising Age's "Caught in the Clutter Crossfire: Your Brand." Not only does it cite a growing list of digital and physical places where ads appear outside of traditional media venues, it notes "TV commercial pods are fatter than they've ever been."

Then Business Week's "Why the Hype Just Keeps on Coming." Under increasing pressure to differentiate products, benefit claims are stretching farther and farther. The article quotes a spokesperson for the Body Vibe exercise product which the Better Business Bureau ruled made a false claim that celebrities and athletes used their product. Their defense:

"The sites and athletes who we are referencing do not use Body Vibe exactly but use the body vibration techniques and we will correct that in our Web site."

I have no doubt it is a better claim that the athletes use the product than that they use techniques that the product uses. But it is exactly these kinds of shortcuts that alienate consumers. And lest you think it is only small advertisers who make outlandish claims, the article cites a number of leading brands that have had to pull ads or promise not to run them again because the claims were deemed misleading.

Both of these are classic "tragedy of the commons" issues. Consumer attention and trust are the "common property" that all advertisers use, but there is no individual disincentive to abuse them. Meanwhile we can clearly see the impact of the aggregate overuse of the "resource": lower trust and more ad avoidance to all messages.

About a month ago, Ad Age had an article on the latest wave of proposed laws creating "do not mail" lists for postal mail. Another example where the consumer is going to privatize the commons to keep marketers out.

As co-chair of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association Ethics committe, I've spent a lot of the last year thinking about responsible behavior in the emerging WOM space. We have our share of tragedy of the commons issues as my fellow Board member Pete Blackshaw pointed out. But the stories cited above indicate ethics is a bigger issue than just WOM.

I know a lot of marketers think ethics is a mushy, altruistic concept, but evidence like this indicates we marketers are reaching the outer limits of tolerance for an attitude of "if-it-is-cool-and-we-can-get-away-with-it-let's-do-it" mentality. When we don't have our ethics right, consumers take more control to shut us out.

But I also believe the opposite is true: strong ethics will begin to emerge as a competitive differentiator and gain consumer engagement and loyalty.

A Shameless Plug for WOMBAT 3

The Word of Mouth Marketing Associations' Basic Training conference is coming up in two weeks.

You know you really need to find out the newest and best techniques in WOM. Register today and save $75 with our discount code: guestofcymfony. Details are at WOMBAT3 page on the WOMMA site.

As a WOMMA Board member, of course I'm going to plug the event! But I can confidently say that there is no other place where you can learn as much, across as wide an array of WOM tactics, from as many experts and practitioners, in as much depth as you will learn here.

What's really great about this conference is that this is all about rolling up your sleeves and doing it. No grand "future of Marketing" theorizing (well, OK a little), but detailed discussion of tactics like:

• How to use YouTube
• How to create customer evangelists
• How to Integrate WOM into your advertising
• How to use blogs to keep the buzz going

You get the idea! And that is just day 1!

Day 2 is all about the marketers and is jammed with case studies by:

• General Mills
• JetBlue
• Petco
• Intuit (my personal poster child for the company that is doing it best)
• Coca-Cola
• Nintendo
• Jaguar

And more!

If you can't come for both days, you can just come for one at a special rate.

See you in New Orleans (and if you register from this blog, let me know and I'll personally buy you a cafe au lait and beignet at Cafe du Monde!)