Tag Archives: Mashable

Why Kanye West Should Be Twitter’s CEO

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Twitter should ask Kanye West to be its CEO — or at least a member of its board.

In 72 hours, Kanye has done more to make Twitter relevant and compelling than anything its beleaguered executive team has done during the past year.

First came the #SWISH moment on January 24, when he tweeted a hand-scrawled image of the track list for his forthcoming album, Swish, with the words “So happy to be finished with the best album of all time.”

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The low-tech picture ignited a fire. His tweet about the long-awaited album was re-tweeted 160,000 times and liked 210,000 times. But more importantly, he and Twitter both gained positive coverage in media such as Forbes and The Wall Street Journal — an incredible feat given that Twitter had announced mass executive departures the same day. For once, Twitter was not on the receiving end of doomsday coverage. Twitter rode Kanye’s coat tails and became relevant: one of the world’s biggest and controversial entertainers had chosen the platform to announce significant news.

And then things got weird for Kanye — and better for Twitter.

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How Four Teens Taught Brands a Real-Time Marketing Lesson

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You have probably heard the story by now: a 16-year-old Omaha resident named Tom White is a media sensation thanks to an amateur photo of White grinning with Sir Paul McCartney and Warren Buffett. But Tom White and the three teenagers who helped him create the moment on the streets of Omaha are more than a passing story. They have taught brands a valuable lesson about how to do real-time marketing right.

As reported via an interview with CNN, on July 13, White, with the help of his friends Luke Koesters, Jacob Murray, and Drew Tvrdy, captured what appears to be a fortuitous brush with fame. Murray photographed White grinning and giving a thumbs-up while McCartney and Buffett sat casually on a bench looking like they were just shooting the breeze. After White posted the image on his Instagram account, the photo went viral. Within 48 hours, the image accumulated more than 4,800 likes and hundreds of comments. Paul McCartney tweeted the photo, and news media such as ABC, BuzzFeed, and Mashable covered the encounter.

Far from being a random moment, the viral photo is a result of four kids hustling to create their own news. Here’s what White and his friends did right — and what brands should be doing more consistently with real-time marketing:

  • Listened. On the evening of July 13, White’s friend Jacob Murray noticed an amateur Instagram post mentioning that Paul McCartney had been spotted on the streets of the Dundee neighborhood of Omaha. In fact, McCartney was in town for a concert and was going out for some ice cream with the legendary financial wizard Buffett, an Omaha resident. Murray did what many brands strive to do on a larger scale: performed some good old-fashioned social listening. Credit Murray for being hyperaware of a rapidly unfolding event.
  • Acted quickly. Uncovering an opportunity is one thing; acting on it is another matter. Murray quickly notified his friends of the Macca sighting. Koesters, Murray, Tvrdy, and White hustled over to Dundee with their smart phones and personal belongings to autograph, including a guitar and Abbey Road album cover. In the CNN interview, note how aware they were of the need for speed. White notes that by the time they arrived at Dundee, the Instagram photo that tipped them off was already seven minutes old — correctly noting that seven minutes is an eternity in the world of real-time marketing.

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7 Ways to Make a Content Junkie Cry

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I am a content junkie. I read, watch, and listen to anything. The New Yorker, Vice, Rolling Stone, my daughter’s Instagrams, or Vine selfies from people I don’t even know: everything is fair game to be consumed at my all-you-can-eat content buffet. I even check my Facebook and LinkedIn feeds before I’m fully conscious of being awake in the morning. So it takes a lot (and I mean a lot) to lose me as an audience. And yet, some content publishers are trying very hard to do just that by polluting the digital world with tired, annoying content ranging from clickbait headlines to quizzes that test our tolerance for cultural trivia. Here are seven types of content that are ready for retirement now:

1. Stories that wallow in epic failure. 

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 2. Clickbait headlines. (Thank you, @SavedYouAClick.)

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3. 99.9 percent of all memes . . .

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. . . especially involving this kid:

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4. Political rants on social media. Hearts and minds remain unmoved. 

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5. Pop culture quizzes.

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 6. Definitely this guy. Everywhere. Every moment.

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 7. Articles that scold me for doing everything wrong.

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And what kind of content should make me vomit but doesn’t? Well, I know I’m destroying all crediblity here, but I’m a sucker for photos of cats doing strange things, and I can’t get enough of those YouTube clips of crazy Russian daredevils dangling off buildings and balancing themselves on tiny steel beams hundreds of feet in the air (although I usually keep all those posts to myself when I see them).  And that’s the rub: my inspiration is your soul-sucking waste of time. The lesson? Content is all about context. Content creates an audience, even momentarily. Content with context — shared at the right time to the right person — creates a loyal audience.

OK: what’s on your list of content that makes you want to curse the day the Internet was born?

The Good, the Bad, and Justine Sacco

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Only on the Internet.

As you probably know by now, on December 20, a PR executive named Justine Sacco became an unlikely news sensation when she tweeted a tasteless remark about AIDs, Africa, and race as she boarded a plane in London for a lengthy British Airways flight to Cape Town, South Africa. When she arrived in Cape Town Saturday morning local time, she discovered that the social media world had exploded with outrage over her single tweet while waiting for her flight to land. News media ranging from Mashable and The New York Times to The Huffington Post had covered the firestorm. She also brought out the good and bad in brands and everyday people.

The Bad

Her inexcusable remark was not the first tasteless tweet she had written, raising the obvious question of how someone in a high-profile PR job could exercise such poor judgment and how her employer, conglomerate IAC, could have overlooked her history of embarrassing Twitter behavior. But she wasn’t the only one behaving badly: in-flight WiFi provider Gogo attempted to turn the news into a real-time marketing opportunity by issuing the following tweet:

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Jason Del Ray of AllThingsD correctly lambasted Gogo for taking real-time marketing to an all-time low. Note to companies: it’s just not a good idea to turn negative news into brand-building opportunities. Common sense, right? Apparently not for Gogo or for a host of other brands who also committed similar missteps in 2013. (Gogo subsequently apologized.)

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The Innovative Sound of AM & Shawn Lee

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The rock and pop music industry is alive and well. The business of music as we once knew it might be dead, but musicians continue to thrive and innovate — if you’ll let them. Case in point: today AM & Shawn Lee released La Musique Numerique, a striking blend of rock and electronica that received a four-star (out of five) rating on Allmusic. Their new single (“Two Times”) and video were featured USA Today, which describes La Musique Numerique as “a blissful experience from start to finish.” I met AM at a concert in 2010, and we ended up creating an innovative co-branding relationship for AM and agency Razorfish, where I was vice president of marketing at the time. I’ve maintained a relationship with AM in my current role as senior vice president of marketing at iCrossing. I continue to be impressed not only by his music but by how he works. For instance, as Billboard and Mashable have noted, AM & Shawn Lee typically build tracks by sharing their music online across multiple studios (AM is based in Los Angeles; Lee in London) without collaborating face to face. Moreover, they boldly combine retro moog-synth sounds with contemporary dance and rock.
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So here’s my challenge: check them out. Give them a fair listen. If you don’t like them on first listen, try them again — remember, sometimes your ears need time to get accustomed to fresh music. See them on tour (here’s where you can find them — and you won’t need to fork over hundreds of dollars to experience their music as you would with the Rolling Stones). Their future is in your hands.

The value of small ball

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My latest post for the iCrossing Great Finds blog reflects on a recent Social Media Week panel appearance by Richard Dorment of Esquire magazine, iCrossing Chief Strategy Officer Adam Lavelle, and Jermaine Dupri, CEO of So So Def Recordings. Dorment, Lavelle, and Dupri had a lively conversation about Dupri’s bold decision in 2011 to launch his own branded social network, Global 14. The lifestyle community has blossomed into a tightly knit network of 33,000 passionate brand loyalists who share Dupri’s interests that range from fashion to hip-hop. Dupri’s personal approach — he blogs and corresponds with the Global 14 community frequently — provides a lesson in creating brand intimacy. It turns out Dupri is a trend setter. Since Dupri launched Global 14, Lady Gaga has announced the creation of her own social network, and celebrities are forming branded cable TV stations. What sets Dupri apart:

  • His personal involvement.
  • How he’s used Global 14 to broaden his brand beyond hip-hop and into fashion, relationships, and other lifestyle interests.
  • The integration of Global 14 with the offline world, as seen through his recent Crown Life 1414 Tour, which saw Dupri visit 14 cities in 14 days to introduce Global 14 members to each other via parties he hosted.

The Social Media Week panel gained coverage in publications such as Black Enterprise, Differences, Mashable, Heidi Cohen’s blog, and PSFK.  As I note in my Great Finds post, I think smaller, specialized sites like Global 14 are resonating because they speak to people and brands looking for an alternative to the sprawling and impersonal world of Facebook. What do you think?

4 technologies every CMO must know

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In 2011, IBM released a report that identified the four biggest challenges keeping CMOs awake at night: the explosion of data, social media, the proliferation of channels and devices, and shifting consumer demographics. Those challenges also represent growth opportunities with emerging technology as the catalyst. To help marketers anticipate and respond to a constantly changing marketplace, I have collaborated with four of my colleagues at iCrossing on a white paper, Four Technologies Every CMO Must Know in 2012.

Four Technologies Every CMO Must Know in 2012 uses (I hope) approachable, down-to-earth language to explain geeky sounding terms like HTML5 and Hadoop – and discusses their business impact on marketers. For instance, a section on the data management platform (DMP) focuses on how a DMP helps marketers segment audiences and customize content more effectively.

The paper is the result of the efforts of Doug Bryan, Mac Ling, Malcolm Leach, Matt Pouttu-Clarke, and myself. We combined subject matter expertise ranging from analytics to mobile. As we say in the white paper, it’s important that marketers get into the habit of becoming more comfortable with technology, and it’s also pretty easy to do so thanks to the proliferation of free content from the likes of Forrester Research, Gartner, and Mashable.

What technologies are you tracking?