Live blog: Jeff Pulver #140conf @SxSW
By Ivo Vegter. Filed in sxswsa |Tags: advertising, jeff pulver, music, open government, photography, social media, sxsw, sxswsa, Twitter
Jeff Sass: hearing & listening
Social media is not an industry, just like word processing is not an industry. Social media is not a way to shout, it’s a way to listen. Transparency goes both ways. If someone thinks your product sucks, you’re going to hear about it, and more importantly, everyone else will hear about it.
There are tools to help you focus. You can search using keywords, using hashtags, and in real time. The fact that you can do all this listening in real time changes the way you think about things, and think about your customers. You can find the people who are really interested in your product. If you’re a movie studio, and you can get feedback on opening night, it can affect how you market it the next day. If you can listen and hear in real time, your whole sales pitch changes.
Social media also affects how you engage your customers. You can engage one-to-one. If you’re the CEO of a company, or a customer service rep, it doesn’t matter. You can step into the conversation at any time, and do so whenever, wherever you want. That kind of direct feedback is invaluable. When you do that on a regular basis, it changes the vendor-client relationship. Your customer feels like they can influence what you’re doing. They can become an army of evangelists, marketing your product for you.
I’m work with Myxer. It’s not my job responsibility to do social media listening, but I do it. I found out someone who wanted to marry the founder of Myxer. Got a message “Thank you Myxer for having Rosemary Clooney ringtones. I’m now a happy person :-)” — from @BornInATrunk.
@RoserMcGowan asked how to get ringtones that weren’t available on iTunes. Suddenly hundreds of people responded to her: you can use Myxer. Hundreds of salespeople not on our payroll. This is powerful.
Being helpful will always come back to you in spades, even if you’re not selling your product directly. Sell someone else’s product when that’s what people need or want, and they’ll remember your brand.
Accessibility is important. Make it easy for customers to get hold of you. And if you do listen, don’t ignore it. You must “h-e-a-r”, be helpful, engaging, accessible, responsive.
www.jeffreysass.com @sass www.myxer.com
Hank Wasiak — from MadMen to Twitter Hawk
Telling stories from his time at Benton & Bowles back in 1965, to now, at a company called The Concept Farm.
Advertising is not dead. Social media has, however, changed the marketing mix. The communications hierarchy has changed. The metrics of success have changed.
Advertising used to change linearly. But with social media, we’re not in Kansas anymore. The foundation is the same: product, price, place, promotion. We looked at social media as promotion. But that’s wrong. There’s a fifth P. People. What we need in a company is a people strategy, and it’s not just a target audience analysis. It’s how to engage people, deeply, profoundly. If you put a people strategy on the same level, it will change the way you organise, strategise, and run your business.
For years, the hierarchy of the ad business has been Attention-Interest-Desire-Action. That was okay then, but not anymore. Add E for Engagement. Consumers are going to talk about you before they talk to you. Add S for Sharing.
Most creative people don’t think that way, but that’s got to change.
Businesses need to run their companies to look at three tiers of profit. Money, social and greater good. That’s what people demand, and that’s what you have to deliver.
We’ve got to see social media as the greatest gift we’ve ever been given, in advertising. It’s not a pain in the ass. It gets us back to the roots: the art of one-on-one selling. We have to learn to listen, as Jeff Sass said. You have to get comfortable with giving up control, so you can give people confidence. It’s counter-intuitive, but if you’re honest and you have a great product, let it go.
New term: collabetition. (Trust an ad man.) Embrace it. The compensation will take care of itself.
Remember, we’re in the idea business. We’re a creative business. We’re not run by techniques, tools, metrics, analytics. My fear is we’re going to analyse social media to death, and miss the greater opportunity.
“An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it.” — Bill Bernbach. You wanna hang out with magicians. Don Draper wouldn’t like what he’d see today. I’m 66, and I love it. Everyone is much too rooted in where they are, but I can’t wait to see what happens.
Wm. Marc Salsberry, photographer of the geeks
@wmmarc on Flickr
Twitter & photography. The last three years have changed SxSW. I used to take pictures that might appear in newspapers. Now, everyone takes part in making each other look good, and photographs end up on the web.
How we view ourselves is just as important as how the world views us. We’re in a fishbowl, looking in a mirror, looking back at ourselves.
It’s easy to make beautiful people look beautiful. You can make pretty people look good. Photographers who shoot tech, who shoot what they love, always looks good. Leo Laporte isn’t good looking. (Blurry image of Leo crowdsurfing.) But he looks good, because he loves what he does, and I love what he does, and that comes through the lens.
A terrible photograph of a guy who isn't that good-looking. Yet this is Wm. Marc Salsberry, looking good.
Whether you’re a photographer with a $5000 camera, or a photographer with an iPhone, if you love people, you can make them look good.
Missed the name Possibly Paul Hyland…
2 wonky & geeky things you need to know about Washington DC.
Open government movement is big in DC. Combining citizen talent with open government data is producing applications for smart phones… here’s an example: a heat map of liquor licences overlaid with crime data. Cops knew this, by gut, but to see it confirmed is amazing. Census data about the neighbourhood where you are: demographics, emergencies, errand facilities, crime. I’ve got an iPhone app that gives me a colour-coded threat meter depending on which neighbourhood I’m driving through.
Data.gov — real-time datasets. Apps for Democracy. Look up #opengov, #gov20, digitalcapitalweek.com, #dcweek running from 11-20 June 2010.
We’re experimenting with mass collaboration, focusing on technology, innovation, and all things digital in the US capital. We’re action-oriented. We’re looking for people who actually want to do something. Congress is the problem in DC. The people and companies are the ones who do things. That’s what the open government movement is all about.
Bowen Payson: Virgin America
Our Twitter Story — how it… unfolded, matured, grew
We had no strategy, no plan. We just started to roll with it. It unfolded organically, and with that we stayed close to our audience. We now have 60k followers, influential and loyal. We have a great employee, Nick Schwartz, 23, who is our voice. He loves this stuff.
People don’t buy tickets every week. Our engagement with them is different from that of a supermarket. We’re not going to get conversion every time we talk to a customer. So we have to understand participation, integrate it with their other contacts with the company.
Big wins: tweeting from 35 000ft. We were the first to put WiFi on planes, so we got a lot of cool firsts.
Chihuahuas. RPC = Revenue Per Chihuahua. There’s too many chihuahuas on the west coast, and there’s demand in New York. So we got on board, and ended up working out that we got $20k revenue for every chihuahua we moved for the adoption agency we worked with.
@virginamerica @twoplank
Guy Kawasaki tried to tweet himself inflight drinks. We advise you use the call button, however. It’s more efficient, and you’ll get served more quickly.
Some other airlines are doing it, like SouthWest and Jet Blue. We talk with them, and we share some learned practices. There’s a lot of cooperation. There’s also cooperation with other industries, which makes the learning richer.
We have done ad hoc Twitter activities for passengers, like A Day In The Clouds.
Christopher Weingarten, has reviewed 1000 albums on Twitter. Music critic for Rolling Stone.
@1000timesYes
I reviewed 1000 records on Twitter last year. I invested a comically large amount of time.
There’s no publication that can cover all the music that’s out there. It’s up to individuals. Anyone can do this. The only difference is how much time you invest.
Steal as much music as you can. A RapidShare account is cheap. It’s worth it. Just don’t get caught. Then blog or tweet about them.
Rappers have embraced social media better than anyone. They realise that the future of music is not about making records, but about putting out music to support yourself as a brand. Music itself is worth nothing. It can get you in movie soundtracks, advertisements, and other paid gigs.
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Ivo Vegter says: It’s time to wrap up. Hope this gave you some inspiration or food for thought. I have to prepare for St Patrick’s Day in Austin, Texas. I’ve heard promising rumours about it. I have a green shirt, which says “I was drunk on 6th street when I bought this shirt”. That may be why I lost the other shirt I got, which says Austin Rocks. It does. But I don’t have the t-shirt anymore.
