Archives for October 2010

We haven’t had a good blogging fail in a long time. But Maura Kelly of Marie Claire has delivered a major blog screw-up that’s making headlines around the globe. The ladies of The View, the wise sages at Fox News and everybody in between already has weighed in about Ms. Kelly’s controversial post, which contained some pretty heavy food for thought about obesity. More importantly, the readers and consumers of Marie Claire have bitten back and things have officially gotten ugly.

The Marie Claire writer found herself in deep doo-doo after she blogged about how she found the stars of CBS’s Mike and Molly to be “aesthetically displeasing.” She likened watching the overweight stars of the hit new sitcom to “watching a drunk person stumbling across a bar or a heroin addict slumping in a chair.” The sensitively-titled “Should Fatties Get a Room?” post took the show to task for what Kelly believes is glamorizing obesity. She went on to wax philosophically: “Yes I think I’d be grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other.” Yikes. Marie Claire, who rarely registers a blip on our collective media radar aside from its involvement with Project Runway, now has found itself washing its hands of Kelly’s opinions – even though Marie Claire editors approved the blog before it was published. Naturally, readers have responded, the media has ran with the story and (big surprise) Kelly has now written an apology on the Marie Claire website attached to the original blog.

So what’s the lesson here, kids? Controversial topics that alienate a group of consumers are the tackiest, most dated and frankly stupid kinds of blogs – just the kind that make people loathe the genre. Bloggers have a reputation for being snide haters in search of attention, like Kelly. While this may or may not be good for her career, Marie Claire the brand is the one who really screwed up. The magazine’s site undoubtedly has seen more traffic, but it’s highly unlikely that saying “I hate fat people” will translate into magazine sales.

With the mass amounts of mind-rotting, poorly-written tripe that clogs the Internet, content that enriches our online experience by being thoughtful, generally humorous or compelling is more likely to draw in repeat readers and more revenue. Maire Claire’s choice to publish a piece that bullies a section of its audience is a reminder that no one can afford to alienate consumers, regardless of how many headlines it makes.

The hubbub made over tablets like the iPad is certain to be one of the top tech stories of 2010. And the media frenzy on the tablets has yet to die down. The New York Times, which at this point could publish a special extra-large edition of the paper devoted to all of its past iPad articles, ran a piece in the Sunday edition about how Hollywood film and television makers are using the product to pitch new projects. The Wall Street Journal has run three stories related to tablets this week alone, and it’s just Wednesday.

In addition, Sony, Sprint and HP each have app-filled and marketing-ready tablets ready to launch in the next couple of months. The point is that tablets are here to stay, and with a plethora of new tablets to be released before the end of the year, companies are enticing mobile marketers and developers to go ahead and go tablet crazy.

Research In Motion (RIM), the makers of the new Blackberry PlayBook Tablet, understand that apps are the wave of the future for developers and marketers – so much so RIM has gone out of its way to make app production even easier. Instead of forcing developers to download special app software, the folks at RIM are inviting them to use Adobe Air, a product most developers use already. To inspire developers to get busy on special apps for PlayBook, RIM is giving away PlayBooks to selected developers who have their apps approved.

Clearly, RIM sees the benefit of having a fully stocked app library. Tablet fanatics are more likely to pick up a tablet if there’s a ton of apps already available. Nielsen found last month that most tablet users are app crazy. Ninety-one percent of tablet owners snatched up apps, paid or free. The study also found that games are at the top of the tablet app heap, with a monstrous 62 percent of sales followed by books, music and shopping, respectively. All of this tablet trending is certain to mean mobile marketing moves by companies big and small to get busy producing must-have apps.

Given our society’s collective disdain for anything resembling art which doesn’t involve people named Snooki (read: performance art), it is remarkable that museums, dance companies and arts organizations manage to keep their doors open in today’s troubled economic climate. Two years ago, The New York Times and other publications worried that museums and other arts organizations could be completely flattened by our cash-strapped country. But today, theaters, museums and arts organizations have dug deep into social media marketing to stay in business and to entice new audiences.

A New York museum that isn’t the Met and a fading dance legend are two shining examples of how the arts are collaborating beautifully with social media marketing.

The Brooklyn Museum, for example, has a killer social media marketing strategy that covers all of the bases. From blogs to Twitter and Facebook, the formerly struggling museum has jumped into social media headfirst. Its Foursquare initiative not only invites badge-seekers to visit and check into the museum but to explore the culturally-rich area of Brooklyn it calls home. Staff members of the museum use social media to promote local restaurants and other nearby places of interest. The Brooklyn Museum also employs Foursquare to plug monthly events, awarding visitors with special badges and paperless memberships to the museum. The museum makes headlines today both for housing unique exhibits and for not being on the brink of ruin.

Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet Company calls itself “America’s Company of Firsts” – so it is fitting that the company is one of the first dance organizations to really use social media to the hilt. Packed with videos and reviews, the company takes advantage of the power of Facebook. Yet the Joffrey Ballet doesn’t stop there: Over the summer, the institution scored a major win with a Groupon deal that saw more than 2,300 new subscribers to the Joffrey. It was a 50 percent increase in subscriptions and one that challenged art lovers to put their money where their mouth is. Plus, the Groupon promotion offered a great discount to sweeten the deal. Joffrey promoted the Groupon on its Facebook page and record numbers poured in. It’s an e-mail marketing, social media and arts partnership that could change the way theaters do business across the country.

But it doesn’t end there. The National Endowment for the Arts, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, The Getty Museum and dozens of others are using social media in hopes to survive and thrive. This country is nothing without our artistic and cultural institutions, so relying on the latest social media marketing techniques is something we think even painters of masterpieces would consider awe-inspiring.

A few days ago, you could practically hear marketers and SEO geniuses alike salivating at the new possibilities of social searches. Google recently included relevant Twitter updates in search results, and last week Facebook and Bing partnered up in an agreement which allows the search engine to produce results based on “Likes” made on Facebook by the searcher’s friends. Joe Devine pondered the implications this could have on SEO professionals over at Mashable.com on Monday. Some have blogged about social searches being a coup for analysts, while still others have wondered if social search has crossed a line into creepy consumerism spying.

For marketers, though, social searches finally may provide a glimpse into the effectiveness of our social media marketing strategies that previously relied on one-part guesswork and one-part blind faith.

While working on a social media campaign for a local small business, I was thrilled to find its name in tweets and on Facebook while doing a routine search engine trolling. My elation wasn’t solely based on our campaign being successful, but the ease of having all the social media mentions in one place. This is a necessary time saver for marketers and freelance PR wizards who keep a delicate balance between working and watching YouTube videos for, um, research. These social search results also can reassure a client who still hasn’t surrendered to social media marketing: Proof of effectiveness is now in black and white.

Additionally, social searches can give us a look at what brands are hitting social media marketing campaigns out of the park. If there are 100 tweets about a new Pepsi campaign on Google’s first three pages, for example, it’s safe to say the effort has been a success. If, however, a social media campaign has generated no search engine buzz, we’ll be able to tell right away where the glitches are. Mainly, social search legitimizes the importance of social media and the brand-generated conversations that take place on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Our customer’s voices soon will wind up on coveted Goggle searches – and that, in and of itself, is invaluable marketing gold.