For example…

In Zarrella’s samples, the circles represent the individual mentions of a piece of content by a single Twitter account. The larger the circle, the more followers that account has.  As you can see, although several popular accounts were instrumental in circulating this particular story, no single account was directly responsible for the story’s ultimate social success. you could remove any mention of the story (except for its initial creation) and it would still be considered popular.

Zarrella includes several similar visual examples in his summary, including many intriguing variations, but none of them relies exclusively upon one central popularity push.

So, what does this mean for your marketing strategy?

Buckshot and the Kitchen Sink

40 years ago, we only had three TV stations.  In those days, getting on TV was an automatic win because ABC, NBC and CBS owned the audience’s attention.  Odds were, 33% of the TV-owning country (give or take) was bound to see your story.

Today, we have hundreds of TV channels competing simultaneously with radio, print and Internet media, often via the same devices (TVs, computers, phones).  Getting your story on TV today guarantees you absolutely nothing in terms of audience awareness or recognition.  And while some media outlets are certainly more popular (and powerful) than others, there’s no more automatic win.

In the past, you could aim for a specific target.  Today, you need buckshot to increase your chances of a direct hit.

In the past, you could craft a single, elegant method of winning over your audience.  Today, you need to throw everything at the audience including the kitchen sink, in the hope that something connects.

In the past, you knew who the influencers were.  Today, every mention counts.

Where will your next popularity push come from?

Want more mentions for your brand? Follow us on Twitter or Facebook!

Image by Diego Lorenzo F. Jose on Flickr, who includes this description:

Who says an old dog can’t learn new tricks?

My dad just turned 60 and is newly retired. I got him an Ipod Touch to play with

Diego’s father isn’t alone in his newfound tech habits.

A new study from The Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that older Americans (age 50+) are adopting social media in growing numbers.  Among the report’s findings:

• Social networking use among internet users ages 50 and older nearly doubled—from 22% in April 2009 to 42% in May 2010.
• One in five (20%) online adults ages 50-64 say they use social networking sites on a typical day, up from 10% one year ago.
• One in ten internet users aged 50+ now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves or see updates about others.

Increased social media use among a wider demographic is obviously a good thing.  But it also creates additional questions for any company that uses these tools to communicate with its customers.

For example:

• Are you actively engaging customers of all ages on your social networks?
• Does your messaging change depending on your intended demographic?
• Is your website — or your Facebook fan page — intuitive for all ages?
• Does your social media strategy include a mature perspective?

And while these may seem like new challenges, this isn’t a new conversation.

Ten years ago, the exact same spike in general web adoption among seniors and baby boomers had marketers scrambling to connect with this “new, non-traditional” audience.  And sites like ThirdAge have been providing baby boomers with topical insights for over a decade.

Thus far, social media has been considered a youth movement.  With this growing number of mature voices and viewpoints, the gender gap is being closed — and this is a welcome opportunity for brands to reconnect with an audience they may not have expected to be paying such close attention.

Want to hear more?   Connect with us on Twitter or Facebook!

If you want to film a branded video on location, here are 7 tips we’ve learned — some of them the hard way — to help filming and post-production go as smoothly as possible.

1. Befriend and respect the location’s manager or owner.

If you’re filming in a business or office, track down the manager, owner or supervisor.  Be friendly.  Explain what you’re doing, and what your goals for the video are.  Ask them if they know of any obvious stumbling blocks to avoid, any shortcuts, or any particularly photogenic angles.  (After all, it’s their building.)

2.  When you’re outside, roll with the punches.

If you’re outdoors, be mindful of the public, the nearby property owners and the police.  What you’re filming probably looks interesting, and you may attract a crowd.  If you’re not controlling the crowd with barriers and security, they may linger.  This is good, because it increases the exposure for your shoot — but it also increases your opportunities for unwanted noise and distractions.

When we were filming this video with Joe Torre, Phil Simms and Terry Francona for Bigelow Tea, we had the restaurant to ourselves — but that didn’t stop curious passersby from taking cell phone pictures through the window.

3.  Listen for what’s not supposed to be there.

Does the location play music on a PA system?  Is the heat or air conditioning on?  Are the walls thin enough to let nearby conversations come through?  Does the floor vibrate when cars or equipment move past?

If you can hear it in the room, you can hear it on the video.  Make sure the audio that’s in your video is supposed to be there.  And if you can’t turn the noise off, be prepared to work around it (and hope you can reduce it in post).

4.  Shoot more than you think you’ll need.

Maybe your script only calls for 10 shots, and you’ve wrapped ahead of schedule.  Be proactive.  Get an extra introduction or conclusion.  Ask the interview subject a few unscripted questions.  Pitch some alternate ways that a product could be shown, or that a topic could be discussed.

It’s these unexpected additions to the script that may well turn a stiff, boring video into a human story with actual character.

5.  Stay loose.

No matter how comfortable someone seems in person, putting them in front of a camera is like sending them into battle.  People freeze when that red light comes on.  They panic.  They become acutely aware that the next words out of their mouths will be seen by numerous strangers, possibly for years to come, and that’s a lot of pressure.

Be personable.  Help the subject loosen up.  Make them laugh.  Get them comfortable.  Change the subject.  Ask them a question.  Change the lighting.  Move them to a new room.  Make a mistake, then fix it, so they see that mistakes can be corrected and recovered from.

Above all, do whatever it takes to ensure that the personality seen by the viewers is the same personality you saw on your subject’s face before the red light went on.  (And if all else fails, film them when they think they’re not being filmed.  It’s funny what some black tape over that red light can accomplish.)

6.  B-roll will save your life.

Get ample footage of the location, inside and out.  Get shots of every participant, even when they’re not looking.  Shoot labels, packaging and displays.  Shoot products, in all stages of assembly and execution.

If you’re filming a conversation between two people, get reaction shots from both of them.  Get shots of the table.  Get shots of the audience.  Get shots of their hands.

There will always be at least one place in the final edit where you’ll wish you had just one relevant clip to cut away to, over an emergency edit you had to make.  If you don’t have something to use, you can’t make that cut.  Never, ever shoot yourself into a corner.

7.  Always carry release forms.

You’re shooting on the street outside a business and you’ve only planned to get once scene with the company’s owner.  Suddenly, her favorite customer, or a longtime vendor, or her family members arrive unannounced.  What a wonderful opportunity to film a meaningful exchange with your client and the people who matter most to the success of her business!

Now, if only you had a release form that person could sign, so you could legally use their image…

For more business tips, connect with us on Twitter or Facebook!

On Mad Men, the ad execs of the 1960s rely on focus groups and psychologists to understand their clients’ customers.  Today, we have Twitter, Facebook and blogs.

Instead of employing tricks and misdirection to learn what people really think about a product or a brand, we’re now empowered to share our opinions with anyone who’ll listen, 24 hours a day.  But this generational shift from privacy to oversharing has created a whole new problem: we now offer too much input, rather than too little.

Thankfully, the web is loaded with tools to help you understand what your customers (and your competition, and complete strangers) are talking about.

• Wondering what’s on people’s minds? Start with Google Trends, and then dissect Twitter’s Trending Topics.
• Concerned about public sentiment?  Try any of these 25 social media tools for tracking online conversations.
• Have questions? Ask your customers directly with these online survey tools.
• Managing multiple campaigns? Keep track of them with rich metrics analysis from Radian6 or Scout Labs.

As you can see, there’s no shortage of ways to listen to your customers.  And now you can analyze what they say vs. what they really mean, all from the comfort of your laptop.

Of course, what you actually do with all that information is another story entirely — but at least you’ll never be in the dark again about what your customers really think.

Overwhelmed? We can help! Connect with us on Twitter or Facebook!

The web is crowded and filled with distractions.  A successful business finds ways to break through the clutter and deliver compelling messages to the people most likely to act upon them.

But how well can you articulate who your target audience is?

The New York Times recently detailed the upside of The Economist, a rare success story in this modern era of downsized magazines.  The standout quote from that article is:

“Whole Foods is actually a psychographic, not a demographic,” said Paul Rossi, The Economist’s managing director and executive vice president for the Americas. “One of the things people say is, ‘You go after an affluent audience.’ But we don’t define our audience by their demographic. We define our audience based on what they think.”

That’s a bold move — and, at least for now, one that’s paying off on The Economist’s bottom line.  But, to do this, a company must understand what its core audience thinks, wants and needs, and be able to deliver those solutions in a manner that resonates.

If you can do that… why stop there?

How Creative Concepts Helps Its Clients Expand Their Core Audience

When a client asks us to help them deliver a message, they often already know what they want to say and to whom they’d like to say it.  What they initially expect us to do is help them find that audience online.  And we do.

But we also help them tailor their original message to the tastes of multiple audiences, each of which combines to form different aspects of their extended customer base.

For example, Ecover is a multinational company that manufactures sustainable cleaning products.  Their obvious core audience is “green” moms in search of healthier alternatives to chemical cleaners.

But the list of customers who are, could, or should be motivated by Ecover’s solutions is much broader, including:

• Journalists
• Scientists
• Teachers
• Fathers
• Kids
• Grandparents
• Gardeners
• Cleaning staffs
• Corporate buyers

… and so on.

Likewise, tea might not seem like an obvious conversational topic for sports fans, traveling salesmen or history buffs, but our work with Bigelow Tea has helped expand brand awareness among these unlikely audiences.

And while Ouidad may be the “Queen of Curl,” the interested audience for her products extends far beyond the walls of her New York City salon.  As we helped Ouidad track inbound web traffic and blog comments, we found passionate customers from around the world — many of whom speak Spanish or Portuguese.  This prompted us to begin translating Ouidad’s content, in order to better serve her growing multilingual audience.

Understanding your core audience is a key to driving your business forward.  But finding different ways to deliver one message to multiple audiences is one way Creative Concepts helps our clients expand beyond their core customers.

Do you know how to reach your extended audience?

To learn more, connect with us on Twitter or Facebook!

Image by calonda on Flickr

The last month of US box office has been dominated by Inception, the latest thriller from director Christopher Nolan.  Despite Nolan’s pedigree (Memento, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight), Inception is still a huge box office surprise for one big reason: late summer is normally a cinematic dead zone.

With heat waves, family vacations and a general pre-autumn malaise ruling the day, this is the notorious timeframe when Hollywood dumps the films it doesn’t expect to be winners.  And yet, here we have a complicated movie without blockbuster stars, and it’s earned over $200 million.

Why?

Because people can’t stop talking about it.

Have you seen the multiple theories about its meaning on Slate?  Or New York Magazine?  Or Salon?  Or the blog posts and infographics created by the film’s rabid fans?  Or how it’s still (as I type this) a top-10 trending topic on Twitter a full five weekends after its release?

Inception succeeds because it’s a movie people can:

• Relate to
• Form opinions about
• Deconstruct
• Debate
• Satirize
• Be inspired by

Inception is a product that fuels its own hype.

Does your product do that?

As Amazon’s Jeff Bezos famously said, “Advertising is the price you pay for having an unremarkable product or service.”  And while that’s an oversimplified (and somewhat cynical) statement, it’s not entirely untrue.

The more people are willing to talk about you on their own, the less you have to convince them that you’re conversation-worthy.  When people are voluntarily talking about your product, it allows you to invest more time and resources on creating those products that delight your customers, rather than creating noteworthy (but temporary) illusions of interest.

Ultimately, a great ad campaign can make a good product sound interesting, but a great product starts conversations all by itself.

You should start a conversation with us on Twitter or Facebook!

So where’s the overlap between your goals (profit) and your customers’ goals (solving their problems)?

One Tip: Find a Common Enemy

Ecover (our client) creates ecological cleaning products.  As such, they’re naturally passionate about the environment.  They stress the need for sustainability in everything they do, from their product ingredients to their factories to their supply chain.

Ecover also knows that their core customers are informed and passionate (and, at times, frustrated) about environmental issues.  And that’s one reason they’ve asked us at Creative Concepts to help them build their Ecover Facebook page and Ecover Twitter account as forums for broader ecological discussions that go beyond the limits of buying and selling.

Obviously, Ecover wants to sell their household cleaning products.  That’s how they stay in business.  But if they didn’t occasionally shift their focus to the big picture (i.e., the real world), they wouldn’t be true to their ethics as a company.  And by giving their customers a platform to discuss the issues they feel strongly about, Ecover provides a secondary service to their audience: a community that’s actively engaged in improving the world we live in.

In Ecover’s case, finding a “common enemy” with their customers is easy: pollution, erosion, waste, ecological misinformation… the list goes on.  Each of those issues makes it harder for Ecover to do its job (cleaning without further burdening the environment), and each of those issues also makes it harder for Ecover’s customers to live a happy, healthy life.

Thus, spreading the word about global ecological problems — and, ideally, sharing practical solutions — is in everyone’s best interests.

So… where do you and your customers have a common enemy?  (Hint: It’s not your competition; it’s what you and your competition each exist to prevent.)

We may not have common enemies, but we can still be friends on Twitter or Facebook!

Today, Domino’s Pizza is celebrating.  Its second quarter profits were up 55% and the public is embracing their (heavily-promoted) new pizza.

So what happened?

Domino’s didn’t panic.

Yes, the situation looked grim in April of 2009.  But Domino’s calmly realized one key truth about humans:

People Forget.

Elsewhere, BP executives are breathing a sigh of relief.  After their oil spill dominated US headlines for three months, the spill seems to be over, and the news cycle has predictably cycled onward to newer topics.  (This, after BP was simultaneously implicated in helping free the Lockerbie bomber in exchange for oil pipeline rights in Libya.)

And how have these global PR calamities affected BP’s stock price?  We’ll know more in the near future, but judging by the way BP’s first-quarter profits doubled, we doubt any of their year-end bonuses are in peril.

So, if Domino’s couldn’t be toppled by blatant employee malfeasance, and BP couldn’t be dented by massive ecological and political disaster, what kind of negative PR could possibly ruin a company?

What about a bad joke?

I’m Only Laughing Because It Hurts

In 1991, Gerald Ratner told the same joke he’d told dozens of times before.  But this time, the punchline punched back.

This time, the media construed Ratner’s quip about “crap,” which was directed at the low-end merchandise sold by his family business, Ratners Jewellers, to imply that he was laughing at the outrageous prices his customers were willing to pay.  When Ratner tried to clarify and apologize, the media literally handed him enough rope to hang himself (or at least a toy gun and a front page photo), and his career was over.

The lesson?

Bad PR happens to every company.  But how a company reacts to that PR determines whether or not the incident causes a scratch or sinks the ship.

Domino’s apologized and fired the offenders.  BP burnished their image and weathered the storm.  And Ratners fumbled.

So when we see each new story about an unthinkable PR disaster — like Air Canada ruining a dying boy’s charity fundraiser — we should certainly be outraged at the parties who deserve our scorn.

But, as marketers, we should also be aware of a sobering (and sometimes sad) fact:

Eventually, people forget.

(Unless you make it worse.)

But don’t forget about us! We’re also on Twitter and Facebook!

But what about photos?

That’s where Flickr comes in.

While most of Flickr’s massive userbase are amateur or professional photographers, Flickr’s actual audience is as large as the web itself.  This makes Flickr increasingly attractive to brands seeking to capitalize on its unexplored traffic-driving possibilities.

Surely your company has dozens of product shots, photo spreads, news articles, in-house designs and personal candids that tell your brand’s story.  And those images might be interesting to long-time fans and potential customers alike.

How could your company use Flickr?

1.  Share your company’s history.

Bigelow Tea (our client) recently posted dozens of photos from their personal collection to Flickr, including family photos, building construction and classic product designs.

As a family business (for 65 years and counting), Bigelow’s history is a family photo album, and they wanted to share their memories with their customers.  But they also wanted to ensure that curious tea drinkers could easily find their way to the Bigelow website, so we at Creative Concepts embedded links to any relevant Bigelow products within the text descriptions of each photo.  (Because if that photo of a vintage 1960s Constant Comment canister looks good now, why not order a box today?)

2.  Promote your fans.

Ouidad (also a client) is known as “the queen of curl.”  Her delighted customers often post photos of their amazing post-Ouidad hairstyles on Ouidad’s Facebook page.  But why stop there?

With our help, Ouidad has begun cross-posting fan photos (along with product shots and “before-and-after” images) to Flickr.  And, as with Bigelow, each Ouidad photo includes a text description with links inviting viewers to further explore the Ouidad product line or join Ouidad on Facebook.  (Because if their hair looks this good, shouldn’t yours?)

3.  Use Pictures to Solve a Problem.

The Redwood Rollers (not a client, but we still like their moxie) are a roller derby league in Humboldt County, California.  While Flickr provides them with a home for their photos — over 2,000 uploads so far! — it also provides them with a means to overcome a possible business pitfall: audience perception.

The sport of roller derby is increasingly popular, but it still takes a few extra nudges to get a skeptical viewer to attend his first live event.  What better way to convey the thrills of a fast-paced sport than with visuals?  Being able to see the competitors’ personalities and camaraderie up close can provide potential fans with the emotional fuel they need to get involved and start cheering.  (Plus, you can’t get this personal at the major leagues.)

So… still on the fence about Flickr?

Don’t just take our word for it — check out what these other worldwide brands are doing, from 7-11 to Urban Outfitters.  And then think about all the ways your company can make use of those overlooked images.

And while you’re at it, check us out on Twitter or Facebook!

Everybody there is talking to somebody else — some in groups, some in pairs.

All except one guy.

A guy in a suit.

A guy who’s moving from group to group and arbitrarily shouting unwanted information at people, and then moving on.

He doesn’t care if you have questions.

He doesn’t even care if you respond.

He just wants to make sure that you heard what he had to say, because the only thing he’s capable of talking about is himself.

Does That Sound Like Your Brand’s Social Media Strategy?

According to marketing firm 360i’s recent report on Twitter usage, odds are, it probably is.

From the MediaPost summary of the report:

The six-month study from 360i reveals that 43% of consumer tweets are conversational — replies to other people tweeting. Yet only 12% of marketers’ tweets demonstrate active dialogue with consumers.

This means that while “normal people” spend almost half their time actively conversing with their fellow Twitter users, companies are only conversing in 1 out of every 10 tweets they send.

Which, obviously, begs the question…

What Is Your Company Talking About?

Do you use Twitter as a megaphone to broadcast company-wide news?

Do you use Twitter for sales, showering your followers with coupon codes?

Do you use Twitter for lead generation, littering your tweetstream with linkbait in the hopes that unsuspecting readers will click through to your sales page and be mysteriously compelled to give you money?

If so, you’re at the wrong party.

Remember to Put the “Social” in Social Media

If you only had one minute to chat with a complete stranger, would you rather tell her something about yourself or learn something about her instead?

Why can’t it be both?

On Twitter, people value (short) conversations.  The nature of the service lends itself to bite-sized interactions and splintered attention, which actually increases the need for meaningful connections in shorter amounts of time.

Yes, people like to listen. But they also like to talk.

The key is to make time for both.

Is your social media strategy a two-way street?

We drive on a few two-way streets: Connect with us on Twitter or Facebook!