All are being hailed as social media innovations and harbingers of the death of traditional advertising. More accurately, they are examples of big brands scrambling to cope with consumer empowerment and a fractured media landscape.

Pepsi’s “Refresh Everything” campaign is the most ambitious. At the very least it is a great stunt. The company made the news by deciding to not run Super Bowl ads. That announcement probably generated more media exposure than running Super Bowl ads would have. Beyond the stunt, the campaign is a brave experiment. Pepsi is gambling that distributing $20 million across thousands of bloggers/activists will gain more media exposure than $20 million spent during Super Bowl. They’re gambling on the social media “network effect.” And they are gambling that “do-gooders” will not be embarrassed to attach their ideas to a big corporate brand. We think Pepsi could have given the campaign more of a traditional media push. Regardless, if it works, Pepsi will have succeeded in killing two birds with one stone – they will effectively counter their “big bad global brand” image and multiply their media investment. What is notable about this campaign is that it is all about mission and has nothing to do with product.

Domino’s “Pizza Turnaround,” on the other hand, it is all about the product. It’s the story of how the company changed its standard pizza formula in response to customer feedback. No mission, but very conversation-centric. The launch video struck just the right note. It’s lighter and less ambitious than the world-changing Pepsi campaign, but then again we are talking about soda pop and fast food here. Because it comes off as honest, responsive and relevant to the product, this campaign is likely to connect. It will drive reconsideration and trial. Whether the “new” product can live up to the promise, well … Regardless, as an example of a good conversation-centric marketing campaign, it’s a hot four-cheese success!

Finally, the Taco Bell “Drive-Thru Diet” campaign. Hmm… Rather than leverage the conversation to address the company’s real product issues, like Domino’s is trying, or focus on a mission, like Pepsi, Taco Bell is attempting to use an integrated media strategy to do that old fashioned marketing trick – sell us a counter-factual pile of beans. They’re going to try and get us to believe that stuffing down fatty foods in our cars can help us lose weight. What? Who is going to buy that? I can believe that a Subway lettuce sandwich is a better choice than a greasy burger. But can I really believe that a Taco Bell “diet” will make me skinny?

Yet, despite the critique, I have to applaud all three efforts.

We are living in interesting times. And if there is one truth in our new conversation-centric marketing world, it is that brands need to be fearless and try new things. Cut the strings of caution! Experiment. Even if Taco Bell customers don’t lose weight, Domino’s doesn’t deliver and Pepsi falls flat, there’s little downside. That’s the irony of consumer empowerment. Brands have lost a lot of authority, but they’re no longer expected to be perfect either.

Some of us remember a similar transition about twenty years ago, when traditional graphic production (we’re talking galleys, xacto knives, spray mount, stat cameras and monstrous typesetting equipment) shifted into the computer age of desktop publishing. The tradesman-like skills of specialized dexterity, hand-eye coordination and endurance were replaced by amazing new tools – computer software, mouse and keyboard. Making the jump into modern production with a crash course in Quark, Photoshop or Illustrator (to name just a few) was intense, initially terrifying, but ultimately amazingly empowering. Modern tools have facilitated faster, easier and more sophisticated production of visual communications.

Gone were the days when it would take at least two people a full week to produce a single FSI. The specialties of typesetter and a paste-up artist morphed into one powerful resource: the graphic artist. Very much a blend of blue and white collar, graphic arts became a very rewarding way to apply one’s skills to “make” a living (not one you would like to see slip away into obsolescence). Fast forward to the Twenty-First Century, I would argue that our social world has upped the ante, and paved a new, wonderfully exciting avenue to further enhance that powerful resource.

Creating visual ways to communicate with each other very much entails strategic thinking, time-sensitive decisions and troubleshooting (the very nature of software and hardware playing nicely together requires this). Enter multimedia. A powerful new suite of proficiencies can be adapted from the skill and talent required by traditional print-based graphic arts. Good layout sensibility can be called upon and applied to rich media, which in turn enhances blogs, or enriches web experience, for example. Editing web content through custom (or not) CMS can become a slight side step from editing brochures in Quark or InDesign. The point here is that all those wonderful abilities, like a keen eye for high-end color, superior layout and composition, and incredible deadline driven organizational skills, can be applied, and I would say effectively enhanced by stretching into the new media frontier.

For me, unlike 1990, the demands and opportunities of this hot new transition is not nearly the stretch that Production 1.0 (pre-desktop) to Production 2.0 was. Computers as tools are now second nature, and we have all had to learn how to train ourselves on the fly. If we stay nimble and flexible, this new, infinitely networked world has unprecedented room for skill adaptation and unimagined growth.

Recent Media Logic rich media projects such as chooseMVP.com and our own CCM model (referenced above) and Zeitgeist & Coffee videos, utilized Adobe After Effects as a composition and animation tool, Final Cut Pro, and Sound Edit Pro to edit and enhance the Rich Media experience, and employed Flash to create the video player to make it all work online. Then our own holiday card employed Final Cut Pro, Sound Edit Pro as well as Flash to create an interactive microsite with “play along” functionality.

Throughout 2009, professionals on both the client and agency side have been scrambling to make sense of a new marketing reality – tighter budgets, mobile computing, empowered consumers – and get their heads around its implications relative to strategy, creative, media and budgets.

A few of the answers are coming into focus.

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The offense utilizes enormous linemen to form a protective barrier around the quarterback and a giant plow for running backs – keeping the defense at bay.

The defense emphasizes lane discipline, containing the opposing team within a complex matrix of position players to prevent it from advancing up the field.

With all its emphasis on control and discipline, is it any wonder why the NFL can’t quite understand social media? Like a rain-slicked fumble flopping about the red zone turf, the league just can’t seem to get a handle on it.

When the season began in August, Official League Policy dictated that no players, coaches, reporters or even spectators could utilize social media to comment in real time about practices and games. Obviously, this proved impossible to police, potentially illegal and extremely detrimental to media and fan relations – and the league backed down.

Some individual teams set policies forbidding their players and coaches from using social media such as Twitter and Facebook at all. As in, ever. On the field, or off. As their “employers,” this was well within the teams’ rights. But once again, nature found a way (to reference that great football movie, Jurassic Park). Players continued to tweet and post, and most teams decided that it would be impossible and ineffective to punish them.

In the meantime, these organizations and individuals have built enormous followings on popular platforms – the Steelers have a Facebook fan page with more than 400,000 fans, Chad Ochocinco’s Twitter page has more than 369,712 followers. These are fantastic opportunities for “customer outreach” and engagement marketing – yet another feather in the cap of this multi-billion dollar sport that continues to rule the fall/winter airwaves.

Of course, with this many “employees” who have a free agent mentality, there are bound to be negative consequences to their authentic conversation, too – some playful, others regrettable. A Vikings player reportedly tweeted something like “ZZZZZZ boring. Coach talking.” during a team meeting, and found himself doing a few extra laps that day. A Chiefs player recently posted a defamatory remark about gays on his Twitter page, and was banned from the team’s facilities while punishments were considered. He has since been released from the team.

But the communication/brand benefits of social media for the NFL – and really, any organization – clearly far outweigh the risks.

I was able to chat briefly with Sports Illustrated’s NFL columnist Peter King last summer when he was in town to visit Giants’ training camp. Nice, approachable guy. I commended him for being so social media forward (he has over 180,000 Twitter followers), and he laughed. “You know what,” he said, “I have no choice. If I don’t do that, people are going to stop reading my column. It’s just what you have to do.”

Indeed. Like a quarterback down by four points with seconds to go, the NFL just needs to let it fly.

Harness the power of social media. Register for your free presentation today and find out how you can use social media to build your brand and business.

The “Enjoy the Go” promotion is an attempt by Charmin to build buzz and drive awareness using a conversation-centric marketing approach. Twitter chatter has died down since last week, but we will be watching (from afar) to see how this promotion develops when it launches at the end of November.

Media Logic’s work with Penn Mutual on the development and launch of its Accumulation Builder Indexed Universal Life product (IUL) gives us a great example of how Brand Amp can be used in exactly this type of situation.

Now, when most people think of insurance, “exciting” probably isn’t the first word that springs to mind. But things around Penn Mutual have been exciting lately, as the company has been revving up its product development engines to address the unique challenges of our current economy.

John Hayes, Global CMO of American Express, summed it up nicely at a recent marketing conference when he said:

“The marketer that stops innovating in tough times is
‘carving their brand’s own tombstone.’ Companies that build
the infrastructure to respond to changing customer behavior
quickly will reap the rewards from customers who will be
looking to award their hard-earned dollars to those brands
which provide them with the greatest value and understand
their needs.”

Harnessing the power of Brand Amp, Media Logic and Penn Mutual looked at the shifts in the marketplace and identified key opportunities. This, in turn, led to development of a compelling value proposition and product messaging for “Accumulation Builder IUL” – an innovative new insurance product designed to unlock the potential of Penn agents’ current customer base.

To build engagement and increase product momentum, Media Logic also built proprietary tools that allowed Penn’s agents to get up to speed on the new product quickly and get ready to sell it confidently.

By taking advantage of BrandAmp, Penn Mutual was able to keep its offering in step with the evolution of its customers’ needs – helping ignite conversation and re-excite a target population.

I’d buy a lot of things, ideally. I’d talk to the NFL about being the sole sponsor of the Super Bowl, ideally. Print publications would let me get consistent placement in specifice content — not just covers, mastheads or TOC’s, ideally. I’d buy the patent to DVRs and toss it to the scrap heap (not really, but you get the point).

The difference between “ideally” and “realistically” is not simply a matter of desire versus budget. At least it shouldn’t be. The difference here is likely more rooted in an “I need some of that” philosophy regarding social media, with a dab of “but how” in the realistic-implementation department.

A huge problem in the world of media buying, planning and selling (don’t forget selling) is getting outside the comfort zone. It is easy and comfortable to continue with our GRPs, CPPs, CPMs, and happy reach and frequency scales. Neither the buying nor the selling side is often overflowing with creative solutions to the broken acronym system. Anyone who remembers the late 1990s in the world of advertising will recall the glory of the internet all rolled up into one tremendous “click.” Buyers and sellers were giddy with the word click the way Beavis was with fire. I mean truly, it was fascinating to sellers who no longer just sold impressions and reach; they could sell you an action. As it turns out, that action — minus some pretty serious engagement if not sales — is a pretty weak metric. And so here we are, an entire decade later. We’ve evolved tremendously, right? We are learning, right? Not so much.

I bore witness this summer to one of the most poorly conceived RFP answers ever received in my media career. A television station trying to sell one of my planners “tweets” at $50 a pop for a client’s campaign this fall. Let me put that into perspective for you, in case you are only laughing at the idea of paying for a tweet but are not familiar with the decaying math of media buying and selling. The aforementioned television station built the pricing on a CPM basis, or cost per thousand. So in essence you have the privilege of paying them $50 to reach their 1,500 followers. Ah-ha, social media solution, sell it like it is a thirty second television commercial. Return to laughing.

This is not to say that there are not opportunities to buy advertising within the social media ecosystem, or that those buys are not potentially very good for brands. Altimer and Wetpaint released a study this July which discussed how engagement on social media platforms benefits brands. Number one on that list is Starbucks, who not only does a great job of engagement on social platforms, but buys engagement advertising to promote their presence.

The evidence is overwhelming — the days of just hammering our customers with as many impressions as possible and waiting for the anecdotal reaction are dead. The consumer expects more and, frankly, demands more. Content providers and many brands are implementing a wide array of tactics to find what fits. These include, but are not limited to, the traditional sponsored approach but also include a localized “impact the social water cooler” method. Somewhat ironically, the advertiser in both linked instances is McDonald’s. I can’t fault them for putting their eggs in each basket, though I suspect they will get more out of their attempt to generate conversation than they will by simply associating with US Weekly’s Facebook content. Still sponsoring content is much more realistic (if not ideal) and certainly less laughable than buying tweets.