Who’s Ted McConnell? He’s the “general manager-interactive marketing and innovation” for one of the world’s top consumer goods companies — makers of everything from potato crisps to detergents to personal care products. And in a talk at a digital media forum back in November 2008, he was quoted as saying:

I have a reaction to [Facebook] as a consumer advocate and an advertiser: What in heaven’s name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?

Ted also reportedly said:

Who said this is media? Media is something you can buy and sell. Media contains inventory. Media contains blank spaces. Consumers weren’t trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody. So it just seems a bit arrogant. We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it.

Ah, monetizing. That’s old-school advertising thinking. Fourteen months later (an eternity from a technological and consumer adoption standpoint), we know that conversation-centric marketing is not about buying ads around the conversation… it’s about spurring and participating in the conversation.

But back then, Ted’s sentiments were greeted by some as refreshingly honest and true, as in this blogger’s reaction. Finally, someone would expose social media as the marketing fad du jour.

Well, things have changed.

In fact, P&G just announced that it will be making a major push in social media in 2010. You may also want to check out P&G’s Pringles fan page on Facebook, home to nearly 3 million fans!

Now, to be clear, this is not about mocking Ted’s certainty about the frivolousness of social media as a marketing channel. It’s to point out one simple truth — a lot of people felt that way. Just like they did when “this internet thing” was getting started. And it’s less important to dwell on the past, and more important to see the opportunity now.

I think we should offer kudos to P&G for joining the party, in a very big way. Heck, you may even want to send a congrats message to Ted.

On his Facebook page.

Related articles:

• Mike Fruchter: P&G Embraces Facebook as Big Part of Its Marketing Plan (adage.com)
• Proctor and Gamble embraces Facebook (nevillehobson.com)
• Facebook, Twitter and P&G (ventureblog.com)

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First, I’d like to introduce you to our xTeam, which is an internal team that is responsible for staying plugged in to what’s happening across the entire media landscape, including owned, earned and paid channels. The team evaluates all emerging media to determine if and when they might have a place in our marketing toolkit. This provides a lot of peace of mind for our clients who don’t need to try and keep up with everything that’s going on.

The team drives Media Logic’s commitment to media neutrality, which we’ve practiced since our inception and is a concept that is more important today than ever before. The xTeam was formed many years ago and includes our exec CD, director of media integration, director of interactive marketing, marketing director, a member of our IT team (who is an über user of mobile and social media) and me, the agency president.

Another important role of the xTeam is to “share the wealth,” which leads me to our second piece of ML jargon, xBOTs. xBOTs are forums in which we help everyone at Media Logic “Expand Our Bag Of Tricks.” Simply put, we share what’s happening so we’re all on the same page. Whether part of a staff meeting or done as a “brown bagger,” the goal is to get everyone connected so we can collaborate as creatively and effectively as possible.

Clients are always welcome. If you want to participate, just let us know.

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.