Rodney Mason Interview

I recently had the chance to interview Rodney Mason, a veteran of the marketing world and guru of new media. Rodney is currently the CMO of Moosylvania. Rodney can be found all over the interwebs. I first noticed Rodney as a "prolific commenter" in Ad Age Daily articles. He always delivered some valuable insight and often found a angle to promote his products and services...very savvy.

BT: Tell me about your career trajectory.
RM: I've been in the business since the mid- 80's. Advertising, Branding, Promotion and Digital for national and global brands like - Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Coca-Cola, Dr Pepper, Kellogg's/Keebler, McDonald's, In Bev and Capital One among others. I began working in the digital space in '97 - launched the first web site in the world for Inbev - Labatt Blue Canadian Beer Embassy.

BT: Tell me about your company.
RM: Moosylvania is The Great State Of Design - where extraordinary design meets deep insights. As an independent Digital, Branding and Promotion agency with a globally ranked research facility on site that is part of a national research network, Moose has what no other agency in the world can claim, an insane level of real-time insights. Clients include Bacardi Martini, Dean Foods, Enterprise, Nestle/Purina, Ocean Spray and Solutia among others.

BT: Was it "love at first sight" when you encountered social media?
RM: No. It's just a fact of life in marketing. Transparency rules, the customer is in charge and any marketed brand not accepting of that has deep issues they aren't even aware of.

BT: Do you see social media increasing or decreasing in importance as a marketing vehicle in the next 5 years? Why?
RM: Social Media will become the backbone of all marketing initiatives over the next 5 years. Social media delivers 30% of all digital messages, but is only used by marketers 3% of the time. That means it is significantly under utilized. As old media migrates to digital and social platforms, it will only grow in share of voice and importance. Social Media is the truth and trust and the most important medium a marketer has.

BT: How has being a "prolific commenter" positively affected your agency business?
RM: Being a prolific commenter is a tricky balance. Simply commenting without facts or value might increase awareness of your brand, but it can also diminish the perception and value of your brand. Therefore, it is important to be informed, factual and add value with ever comment. It's also important to understand when you are a prolific commenter, not everyone will agree with your opinion - there is social currency cost. It's best to evaluate each post to size up what that cost is and if it's worth the return. That said, our globally ranked research facility, intellectual white papers and published POVs give us an advantage and ability to be a prolific commenter.

BT: What brands are getting it right in the social media space? Why?
RM: Few. That's because marketers right now are testing tactics. They aren't taking a holistic overarching approach with a social media plan that includes objectives, strategies, social-monitoring and sound tactics.

Some brands doing a good job or making good progress.

Burts Bees - authenticity, relevancy and an overarching strategy consistently deliver their message across platforms.

Coca-Cola - leads the beverage industry. Success with new brand launches like Coke Zero and acquired brands like Glaceua have been heavily influenced by social media. There was a time not too long ago, when Pepsi in general had all the hot new brands and programs. That day has come and gone and social networking is the key differentiator.

Chicago Pizza Café - Frisco, TX - Small local chain that opened it's doors with 3,300 Twitter followers and uses each social platform for a specific strategic reason.

Dean's Foods - Launched a program last year - "Start Right End Right," that took over the blogosphere - especially with mom's to become the 5th most trafficked promotion site at the time on the web and netted over 100M free impressions. Over The Moon Milk brand is getting aggressive with sharing passionate fan posts. All of this comes from a company, not a trade or producer association, selling milk.

Google - ancillary products like Wave, Android all are text book examples, as they should be, of how to disseminate information and build a following.

Grey Goose - specifically targets the very most influential influencers in the world, better than any other spirit in the world.

Hollywood in general gets it in every way possible. Recent examples, pick a property. "Where The Wild Things Are," "Paranormal Activity," any unknown film nominated for an Oscar.

Kogi Korean BBQ Taco Trucks - LA - An avid following that shows up and lines up in advance of where the trucks announce they will be all through social media.

Kraft - overarching branding tools to help moms plan meals.

Nestle - Purina Brands. Pick a pet and a pet passion in the social world, Purina is there.

Poets, Priests and Politicians - Some of the very best social networking examples come from the arts, religious and political fronts.

Southwest Airlines - Simple, straight forward and always on their game.

Spirit Airlines - radical news making, over the top, unbelievable stunt social networking.

Starbuck's gets a lot of things right in the space - big followings on Facebook and Twitter.

Unilever - Axe - over the top in tune with their audience.

Dove - Pushing controversy and women's rights and respect. One slip - Axe, owned by the same company is counter to Dove as its communication objectifies women. Some backlash for Dove based on the association, but not too bad.

Ben & Jerry's has been doing social networking since inception even before social networking existed - they called it grass roots. Social Networking is the embodiment of the brand.

Whole Foods - See Ben & Jerry's

Zappos - See Whole Foods.


BT: Is the ubiquity of social media leading to fundamental changes in the way companies compete?
RM: The Truth and Trust now rule. See our white papers on how consumers choose brands and ascend the trust ladder.


BT: Any words of wisdom for those entering the advertising/marketing job market?
RM: Opportunity for careers in "Advertising" are limited. However, being prepared and understanding what's next, especially as it pertains to digital, CRM and social networking, holds significant opportunity.

BT: Any words of wisdom for those on the back half of an advertising/marketing career who want to become re-relavant?
RM: Get engaged and use the platforms to understand them. Every situation is different, but it's important to be open-minded and understand what once was, is no longer. If you don't believe that, just watch an episode of Mad Men.

Rodney's firm boasts a wealth of high profile clients. He also speaks very highly of the future of social media, and his firm seems poised to advise brands in a manner that will add value for those brands. One has to wonder how many firms aren't what they claim to be?

Rodney refers to the wildly popular AMC series Mad Men. But is it that different? It stands to reason that while advertising folks aren't weilding the power they once were, somebody is. I would speculate that those holding the scepter now are bloggers and social media strategists that are advising brands. They are the ones establishing protocol and developing best practices. Countless companies have sprung up seemingly overnight to proclaim they are the kings of social media. In fact, a Google search for "social media agency" turns up more than 1 million results. So the heydays of advertising have come and gone, but are we seeing a new chapter in marketing services?

Good News in Display Advertising

Google's announcement that it will be offering up metrics to measure banner advertising other than click throughs and impressions should be welcome news for advertisers. Brandweek explains the new Campaign Insights tool as a measurement of site traffic to advertisers sites by users post-impression vs. visits to advertisers sites for users without a display ad impression.
According to the Google AdWords blog, Google is guided by three principles when it comes to making display ads more appealing. Campaign Insights specifically tackles the issue of campaign measurability.

This has been a long time coming. With click through rates in the .1% range, display ads are the clutter gutter of the internet. They take up space in an otherwise useful medium. Any improvements to the display ad are welcomed.

But while this may sound like welcome news for advertisers, it could provide false positives for truly integrated marketing campaigns. The idea that Google will track post-impression activity of those who were served up the display ad is creepy enough in itself (privacy). The fact that Google will correlate post-impression activity to to the display ad itself is self-serving. Integrated campaigns can deliver a message in a variety of mediums from TV to radio to blogs and cocktail napkins. The new program from Google cannot measure where the initiative to visit the advertisers site came from, and therein lies its fatal flaw.

So integrated marketers take note of the new strides in display ad measurability, but also take those results with a grain of salt.

Keeping WGI On Track With Social Media

I recently had the chance to speak with Paul Hemingway of Watkins Glen International Speedway in Watkins Glen, New York. Paul is the Senior Director of Sales and Marketing at the track and leader of the track's social media efforts.

WGI was recently recognized by sportsin140.com in the first "Most Valuable Tweet" awards. I was interested in how WGI was using social media and Paul was kind enough to oblige.

BT: When did Watkins Glen start using social media?

PH: Roughly 2006 with MySpace

BT: What social media tools are you using?

PH: FaceBook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn

BT: How did you know it was the right thing to do?

PH: We didn't! Great thing about social media is there is very little risk/investment. Worth its while for trial and error. We took a look at the sports/entertainment landscape and saw less dependence on traditional communication methods.

BT: What are you trying to achieve through social media?

PH: Bridge a gap inside the consumers mindset of where they are now and where they want to be. Create track affinity.

BT: Describe a social media success story.

PH: Staged first IndyCar "tweet-up" at WGI in July. Created means for our followers to come together and mix/mingle along with IndyCar drivers/teams who embrace Twitter (Tony Kanaan, Ed Carpenter). Created a lifetime connection with fans.

BT: In your opinion, what businesses are using social media well?

PH: Zappos, ESPN, Phoenix Suns

BT: In five years, will social media be more or less important to businesses. Why?

PH: Interestingly enough, I think equal to or less. I think traditional media advertising will rebound with economy and sophisticated consumers will see through many rogue attempts to connect disingenuously through social media platforms. MANY businesses do not embrace social media, but do it because everyone else is doing it. If you don't own it as a culture, it becomes transparent.

A success that Paul attributes to Twitter was the Indy Car tweetup. He essentially took online offline and made followers "friends" in the true flesh-and-blood sense. This is a fantastic lesson in how to make Twitter work and give the online efforts a tangible result.

Paul presents and interesting viewpoint on the future of social media. Seemingly attributing a portion of the success to a down economy, the future growth of this new marketing medium may dwindle as the Dow climbs. In fact, recent activity on social media sites Twitter and Facebook show traffic stagnating. At the same time the Dow has cracked the 10k mark. Conspicuous timing that supports his theory.

The WGI contingent has truly embraced the social media technology and continues set the pace for other tracks around the country. To keep up with Paul and the gang follow @WGI on Twitter.

Some Brands Don't Get It

In an October 2 piece by Brandchannel blogger Peter Feld, he asks whether brand flocking to social media is marketing savvy or bandwagon jumping. If it is the latter, do Twitter and Facebook run the risk of alienating the individuals that made them social phenomenon to begin with?

Twitter, recently valued at $1 billion, is attracting a brand receptive audience. Even rather obtuse promotional Twitter campaigns by the likes of Ford are garnering some pretty impressive numbers. It's to be determined whether sales will follow. Companies like TGI Fridays and Starbucks are trading gratis product for Facebook friends.

Countless companies are struggling through the social media landscape with a broadcast-style mentality. They'll continue to struggle until they realize that social media is an analog style, one-one-one conversation, in a digital setting.

Is "friends for freebies" the true spirit of social media? I'll give you something if you'll be my friend. I knew some of these people when I was younger. I took their toys and then convened with my real friends who also took the toys.

What are people actually saying on Twitter? A recent study from Pear Analytics of the site’s public timeline revealed the following:

Tweets were placed into one of six categories, and fortunately for the skeptics “pointless babble”— was 3% higher than conversational tweets. Conversational tweets—those part of a dialogue between users or starting with the “@” symbol—made up another 37.55% of tweets. Tweets with pass-along value, also known as “retweets,” were much less prevalent, at 8.7%, and self-promotional messages made up just 5.85% of the total. Spam and news were even rarer. Re-tweets with pass-along value, important for marketers hoping to get their messages distributed as far and wide as possible, were highest on Mondays and Wednesdays, when they made up about 10% of the tweets per day.

Any self respecting brand manager would ask where is the efficiency in one-on-one conversation? In a word, it's not. It's not supposed to be. It never will be.

The question really becomes, 'how many customers equal one brand evangelist?' Effective (note: effective does not equal efficient) social media strategies should turn luke warm customers into fierce brand proponents. Brand neutral onlookers see this relationship between brand and fan and want to be a part of it. Why settle for a "human" online friend when you can befriend a brand, an icon, a larger-than-life status symbol? The psychology of Twitter supports this. Maslow's hierarchy of needs puts Twitter somewhere between having safety and possessing self-esteem. Let's just hope it is that important.

Full Disclosure

The FTC says bloggers must be a little more transparent with their content...really? Do we need government bodies regulating what our relationships are with the products we use and endorse? Probably not.

With fines up to $11,000 an employee out seeding the intrawebs with great product reviews for his companies products is a liability. This will have far reaching effects in the corporate world as companies will now have to institute SM policies. This goes for SM use at work and at home. With one in three companies not adapting to the new social media reality, there are a lot of liabilities out there. In liability lies opportunity as "social media policy consultancy" will surely be the next hot gig.

A few questions. Why is there regulation of positive comments on goods and services but no regulation feedback is negative?When "AdSense" serves up a Toyota ad next to your blog about your new Tacoma, are you being compensated for your blog? When Dell sends you a rebate for that new computer you just purchased are you receiving compensation from the company and therefore must disclose this? Will Publishers Clearing House have to roll a disclaimer that "results are not typical" when air a commercial where they ding dong a winner's doorbell? If I read a blog post praising a product, and I don't see clear and conspicuous disclosure should assume this person is not masquerading?

An Embarrasing Vanity Google

Making a concerted and renewed effort to reconnect online. Obviously set up this raucous blog, reconvened with Twitter, and went back to Facebook.

Any check of one's web presence is incomplete until the vanity Google. I did my my vanity Google and it's not quite the image I'm going for. Google it Brent Tyler and see what you get.

I'd Like You to Read This

private thoughts in a public forum...on marketing, work, school, family, friends, and whatever else I decide.