Social media Archives - Otis Regrets... or not

You can’t hide in social media

Over the last few months I’ve been involved in two situations which could not have happened before the advent of social media. A friendly acquaintance had made a commitment (in one case to do something, in the other to look into it) and I emailed at the appropriate time to remind them about it. There was no response. I then took to other means—Facebook messaging in one instance, Facebook plus LinkedIn in the other—with the same reminder in case their email wasn’t working or I ended up in their spam folder. Still nothing.

At this point, you have to assume that the other party is receiving my messages and for whatever reason is ignoring them. Presumably they’re no longer able to meet the commitment, but why can’t they just come out and say that? It’s not that big a deal. I’m a bit inconvenienced, but not to the point of being harmed or angry about it. We can still be friends. I should also say there’s zero possibility I have done anything, directly or indirectly, that would make either of them not want to continue a relationship with me.

Now, the lack of follow through has led to a social media radio silence. I know these folks are okay because they continue to post on Facebook about the usual stuff. I’ve rattled the cage by liking or commenting on a couple of their posts. In the normal course of events we would have had a bit of back and forth on one topic or another. But, possibly because they’re embarrassed, these two people are unable to engage with me in any way.

I will add that one of these folks is a copywriting colleague who moved out of state so it’s unlikely anything will happen to resolve the issue. But the other is someone I regularly see at local events. It’s inevitable I will run into her sooner or later at which point I expect I will ask her about it face to face and she will give me an answer and an apology for not responding sooner. But why can’t she do that online?

Has anything like this happened to you? Of course it has. What do you do about it? I’m interested because it’s a social phenomenon that could not have existed in an era when letters got lost in the mail or voicemails got erased by mistake. Now that we have no place to hide, is there a way to make ourselves selectively invisible? If not, should we even try?

Instagram, iPhone and the photo-based social network

A couple I know bought a fancy camera before the birth of their first baby. It’s sitting in a drawer somewhere. Turns out that their trusty iPhone does everything they need: they can shoot a pretty good photo, touch it up with Instagram, and shoot it out to their friends immediately.

Instagram is interesting. Dave Kerpen wrote an article about it over on LinkedIn called “And the Future of Social Media Is” and the answer is… not Tumblr, just acquired by Yahoo, but Instagram. His 10 year old daughter and her friends used it to exhaustion on a recent weekend trip, adding insta-apps to expand the conversation as they went. As opposed to Pinterest, which sends lots of traffic to my food blog but seems mainly a scrapbooking application, Instagram really works as a fully functional social network–and it’s a lot easier to shoot and share a picture than to write an update.

One of those apps, Instafollow, allows users to automatically follow or unfollow up to 160 users per hour, up to an ultimate count of 20,000 users, simply by following followers of a user. That’s a lot more power than Twitter and a lot easier to execute. No wonder my own kid, who’s fairly responsible on Facebook, got me in so much trouble on Instagram that I had to delete my account. Snap a picture, slap some text on it, and you’re good to go.

I just put the account back up and already I’ve got new followers and a writing opportunity thanks to Instagram. My username is otismaxwell if you care to meet me over there.

Applebee’s out-ironics The Onion with its new campaigns

Have you seen this? According to a media commentator, Applebee’s has a new campaign in which they are urging hipsters to dine at their restaurants “ironically” which makes sense since they are never going to get them there through conventional advertising. Take a look:

Funny thing is, Applebee’s actually is running a social media campaign that is far more bizarre as this, called “Girls’ Night Out. Life is better shared.” A Betty White character harangues ladies for spending too much time online, then tells them the solution is to get down to Applebee’s for some facetime. Take a look:

There’s also a tumblr page that anchors the campaign and has links to Pinterest and Twitter pages (no Facebook, maybe because it’s a regional campaign). All the elements of a well thought out and expensive social media campaign.

Speaking of social media, Applebee’s is also marketing a life size inflatable dummy you can leave at your desk while you sneak out for lunch. This one is on Facebook, where you can take the Desk Lunch Diagnosis Quiz (I am the “Break Room Hero… people are tired of cleaning up the microwave after you”).

Does this stuff work? The “goddess” video above has over 50,000 hits but how many of those are potential customers? There are only 400 plus followers on the Twitter page and the selection of inflatable dolls on Amazon was originally 7 but is now down to just 2. The bottom line is that Applebee’s is still Applebee’s (check the hashtag #applebee and you’ll get a far more realistic snapshot of Middle America’s view of the chain) and there’s only so much you can do to get hipsters to change their behavior… unless they do it ironically, perhaps.

Best practices (and not) for recovering account passwords online

Barclaycard forgot password page — Barclaycard Ring MasterCard “forgot password” page

[THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED.] Yesterday I mentioned a problem I was having with the Barclaycard Ring MasterCard “forgot password” page. Today I’m taking the extra step of showing the page because this is something I don’t think has a lot of customer service advantage. They’re using the same page whether you are setting up a new online persona OR you have forgotten your password in which case you simply have to choose a new username.

What else could Barclaycard have done? Send an email at the user’s request, with a unique URL that expires after a few hours. That way the account is secure, but the user stays in control of it. This is the nearly universal practice, and it’s interesting to see an exception and mull the pros and cons.

Requiring a new username is particularly onerous for Barclaycard Ring because it’s supposed to be a social networking community. If I change my username, what happens to the badges and contacts I’ve built up under my old username? But I think it’s not a very good practice in general, and this big international bank must be somehow very stretched for programming resources.

While I’m at it, here’s another not-best practice: confirming the new (or old) password by sending out an email that contains exactly that password in unencoded text. Yikes! What if I’m reading my email in Starbucks or an unsecured wireless hotspot at the airport? Even if I’m in the comfort and sanctity of my home, I’m still going to have to delete that email now. The merchant or marketer probably thought they were doing me a favor by sending me a handy reminder. In contrast to Barclaycard, this is one we’ve all seen, probably several times. Don’t do it.

UPDATE July 3: got a call from Meagan in the Barclaycard digital marketing department and she had a little difficulty reproducing the above page on a test account; possibly I had done something like enter the wrong password too many times that caused the system to “clear out my account”. What I should have seen was a reset page with my security image and with her help I was able to get to that. More important, she and I discovered that if, instead of creating a new user name in the screen captured above, I entered my current one (after confirming who I was with the challenge info above) the system would accept it.

The GOOD news was that when I finally got into my account my screen name had not changed at all; must be different from the username the system recognizes. So all my badges, if I had them, would be intact.

Meagan says this is the password reset procedure used for all Barclaycard products but she does understand how it might be a good idea to present it differently (and tell people they can keep their current username if they like) for the Ring cardmembers. Will be interested to see what they come up with.

What P&G and AT&T are doing on Facebook

AT&T's Facebook page — AT&T is pretty happy with its 2 million adoring fans...

The Wall Street Journal article on GM pulling its Facebook advertising mentioned that General Motors is third in U.S. advertising spending, behind P&G and AT&T. This prompted me to go take a look at what the other two companies are doing with their Facebook presence.

P&G does not appear to have a corporate Facebook page. That is, if you search “P&G” or “PG” or “Proctor & Gamble” you’ll come up empty except for some odd special-purpose pages. Makes sense because P&G does not generally market itself as a brand but rather as a family of brands, each of which has its own brand manager. And indeed a random search turned up pages for Charmin which offers “SitOrSquat”, an app for finding clean public restrooms, and “Charmin Fan Perks” which are cents-off coupons available in limited quantities at preannounced times (generated repeated visits to the site).

There’s no brand page for Prilosec, another random choice, but there’s one for Pringles. Here you can find the “Tournament of Flavors”, a collection of fan-submitted videos, and “Make Us Laugh”, a joke contest which seems to be in Arabic. In short, P&G’s brand managers seem to have figured out how to use Facebook in a way that is appropriate to the medium and encourages user involvement.

AT&T, U Suck — ...but the feeling is not entirely mutual.

ATT, on the other hand, makes GM look like a social media maven. Their page is all over the fact they’ve gotten two million “likes” (Pringles has 19 million) with a big “two million thank yous” graphic at the top and a “two million thanks” link just below this. (The link actually leads to something interesting: on May 22 the ATT “house band” is going to start pumping out “thank you” songs written for people who sign up and submit personal information to be used in writing the lyrics. Sort of like the Old Spice Man.) Yet the rest of the page is full of gripes from customers about AT&T. They should do something to moderate these, or at least respond to them.

The moral of this story? With three so different approaches to Facebook, by America’s three top advertisers, this is still a very young medium. Or as Clint Eastwood might put it, we’re still waiting for the ball to come down after the opening kickoff.

General Motors doesn’t like Facebook… and the feeling’s mutual

GM Facebook page — GM's got a fan page on Facebook!

So General Motors has pulled its Facebook advertising because it determined its ads had little effect on consumer behavior, according to the Wall Street Journal. Marketing VP Joel Ewanik says the company “is definitely reassessing our advertising on Facebook, although the content is effective and important.” And by “content” he means the pages GM isn’t paying for, as opposed to the sidebar ads.

The story goes on to say that GM had a $40 million Facebook budget, only $10 million of which actually went for ads. The rest “covers content created for the site, agencies that manage the content and daily maintenance of GM’s pages, people familiar with the figures said.”

I took a look at what we can assume is the flagship page for the company, http://www.facebook.com/generalmotors. You can see it pictured here, but you should go check it out for yourself. Then go check out a few other pages, like Chevrolet (NOT “Chevy”) , Camaro, Chevrolet Volt and Corvette. Notice anything interesting? Yeah, the layout and content design is all the same. The whole thing is probably auto-filled by a content management system. If this is worth $30 million I want that gig!

Now notice what GM is doing to promote itself: promote ITSELF. There’s news of what this brand or that brand is doing, Guy Fieri driving a Corvette at the Indy 500 (let’s hope it doesn’t get stolen like his last car) and some proud customers pulling up to a plant in their car on a road trip. Yes, there’s a blurb at the top, “Welcome to the official GM fan page [sic]. Share your thoughts, tell us your story and join in on the discussion.” But nobody’s actually doing that. How about inviting readers to interact with you by sending in photos of their cars, telling stories about their first car, and maybe giving them a chance to WIN something?

And, almost none of these pages has any sidebar advertising. I’m guessing that Facebook pulled all the ads in a fit of pique, to make the pages even less interesting than they are. But here’s an idea: now that you’re spending 75% of your budget to build a “web presence”, is it worth the other 25% to give people a call to action and maybe buy something?

Probably not, if everybody is like GM executives and other WSJ reader: in a poll accompanying the article, 93.4% said they “rarely or never” are affected by Facebook advertising. What more proof could you want that this whole Facebook thing is a flash in the pan?

A crowdsourced credit card… WTF?

BarclayCard Ring MasterCard — My invitation from BarclayCard. Click to see it on their website full size.

Well, this is different. This afternoon I got an email from BarclayCard, with the subject line “Crowdsourced Credit Card – Join the Conversation”. Inside is a message that starts:

Believe it or not, we’d like to see the credit card industry change just as much as you would. We’re people, too. With bills. With families. And we think it’s time for a change. We believe we can give you a simpler credit card product, still make a profit, and then ultimately share that success with you. We’re inviting you to join Barclaycard Ring—a credit card that’s driven by its community of cardmembers. Your actions will determine the financial performance of the community, and the better the community does, the more profit we’ll be able to share with you through our estimated profit sharing program called Giveback.™³

The actual terms of the card are pretty good. 8% annual APR, no annual fee and no balance transfer fees. But what’s really interesting is the Giveback feature. So it’s like a rewards program, except the reward will be determined in part by the above mentioned Giveback program.

There’s very little about this card in Google at the moment, and it appears I may be an Alpha recipient. Nerdwallet has a good writeup in which they quote this little bit from the Barclay’s website: “This profit sharing feature is not based on the actual profits of the program. Instead, the Giveback program contains a transparent calculation that is used to determine what will be shared with the community members and which may or may not approximate actual profits.”

Color me a bit suspicious and cynical, especially because I have no idea how this solicitation made its way to my inbox. There is no attribution to a third party transmitter, and looking at my email archive it does not appear that I have a relationship with Barclay’s unless they are the same folks who sell wine by mail. But, I’ll go ahead and check it out and report back if I find anything interesting.

What happens when your viral video doesn’t go viral?

You put your heart and soul and best marketing smarts into a YouTube video campaign expecting it will go viral and quickly spread across the globe. And… not all that much happens. That’s disheartening but a useful object lesson.

In my little town of Saratoga Springs, NY, the Chamber of Commerce decided to make a promotional video in which thousands of local citizens are captured by a roving camera as they lip sync to a medley of songs from the pop group Train. (Local connection: Train’s drummer hails from Saratoga.) The C of C was up front about the fact that they wanted to emulate the success of a similar video from the city of Grand Rapids, MI which has gotten over 10 million hits.

The Saratoga video is now live, and in the first week, it’s gotten about 36,000 hits. That’s about what you might expect if each of the people in the video sent the link to a few of their friends. By comparison, surveillance videos of a couple of drunks knocking over a statue of a horse (Saratoga is a horse racing town) have gotten over 100,000 hits. Of course, things could change but as local blog All Over Albany points out, most of the traffic to the horse video happened in the first few days after the video went live.

A comparison of the Saratoga and Grand Rapids videos yields some ideas of what works in viral and what may not so work so well.

First of all, the Saratoga piece is obviously a promotional effort. It opens with the producer’s logo, and the first few seconds are archival footage of a thoroughbred race. Many of the participants throughout are waving signs or wearing logos to promote their own organizations. That’s fine for civic pride, but maybe less so for attracting interest from those who don’t already know you. Second, the Train music is just not that good or that catchy; critics have complained that many participants don’t appear to be lip syncing but the songs aren’t really sync-able.

By comparison, the Grand Rapids video has a “wow” factor both in the choice of scenes (including pillow fighters, zombies, an outrageously hamming mayor and a quick pan to what looks like the entire police and fire departments driving down the street waving in unison) and the “how did they do that?” production which looks like a single take. (It isn’t; you can get details in “The Making of the Grand Rapids Lip Dub” which itself has over 112,000 hits.)

It also has great music which ties into a heart-tugging storyline. The video was made to dispel the image of Grand Rapids as just another dying smokestack city, and the music fits in perfectly: a 10 minute concert version of Don McLean’s elegiac “Bye Bye Miss American Pie.” Which, ironically, was penned as McLean was sitting in a bar right here in Saratoga.

I’m a member of the Saratoga Springs Chamber of Commerce myself and would like this video to become successful. My first suggestion is to remove the producer credit and stock footage and to start with Sam the Bugler strutting toward us. Second, now that everybody’s had their moment in the sun try some creative editing of some “best of” clips like local celebrity Garland Nelson in the park, really selling it. Third, sponsor a competition for local citizens (or anyone who wants to try their hand on YouTube) to remix or even parody the original… some very interesting things can happen when you do that.