I wasn’t supposed to go to Coachella (which, if you are over 30 you might not know is a music festival of about 100,000 people in the desert outside of LA showcasing a huge lineup of bands, mostly indie) but ended up there because of some good luck (thanks Christina and Asos.com!), in 97 degree heat, with a lot of sweaty people.

So, the first thing I did was of course, look up the sponsors and see who was doing what.  100,000 music fans are a good group to be able to get in front of for 3 days straight.  The demo here is an under 30, style forward, “I was listening to that band way before they were cool”, kind of group.  In other words – the cool kids.

Who Did It Right

H&M:  H&M got it spot on with their tent because they understood that being out here for 3 days (some of these brave souls camping) this group would have needs.  A lot of them.  So their tent wasn’t about jean shorts, paisley tank tops, or hoop earrings.  They had a tent full of something more valuable than gold here – deodorant.  By supplying basic items like deodorant, smelly sprays, sunblock, etc. they became so much more relevant to this audience.  Case in point: the line 50 people deep at some points during the weekend. H&M did provide several other things as part of their sponsorship,  this part was just the most creative.

Who Was OK:

5Gum. They made a nice dark tent that was somewhat air conditioned for people to take a break in, which was absolutely necessary for the heat that weekend.  Still, with the sensory coolness they are showing in their commercials they could have done something more interesting – piping in scents?  More tactile experiences using textured walls?

Then The Trouble Started:

Coachella is held in Palm Springs, Ca where there are maybe 50 cab drivers that work there regularly.  At 3AM, there are 100,000 people trying to get somewhere.  I managed to make friends with a driver right away and convince him to pick me up every night at the same time and place but from my window view I saw hundreds of kids trying to get to a hotel, or anywhere.  I asked my driver why there weren’t any cabs coming. “There aren’t enough.  Some of these kids will have to sleep here tonight”  They were hitchhiking, jumping in front of cars, seriously – desperate for a ride. I was thinking:

“wait a minute…..  isn’t Hyundai a sponsor of this thing?”

For the rest of the weekend, getting a ride was a common complaint at Coachella.  People waiting 2-3 hours to go somewhere.  As a sponsor, Hyundai could have saved the day by sending cars, golf carts, cabs – even if they just took VIP guests they could have come off as a hero here.  I honestly kept waiting for them to step it up but night 3 was as bad (if not worse) than the first night.

The Brand That Didn’t Sponsor But Was The Most Visible:

When Kanye West came onstage, people began to cheer and a funny thing happened that everyone in the crowd felt.  Everyone raised their iPhones to the sky – videotaping Kanye’s entrance.  The Jumbotron to the side of the stage captured and showed to the crowd tens of thousands of iPhones in the sky.  Even the occasional iPad could be seen taping the show.  People noticed.  A girl next to me said:

“this is like a religious thing, everyone praising the Apple gods”. I wondered who would actually use the recording of the show, which sites it would end up on, or who’s Facebook page the next day.  Didn’t matter, that Apple icon was on the Jumbotron hundreds of times.

So with all these people bringing recording technology into this festival, sponsors could have really gotten some great press here.  Just sayin’.

Trends From Coachella:

Boho chic, boho chic, and more boho chic.  We took dozens of photos of feather earrings and fringe bags. ( I bought this one right away when I got home). There were feathers in hair (from tasteful to outlandish), feathers on bags, and feathers on shoes.

Bright sunglasses and unique sunglasses. The huge oversize sunglasses trend seems to be out in favor of rocking your own style.

Waiting for a ride.

I have to say, I’ve been really enthralled by all of the logos making headlines over the last few months.  Seems like everyone wants a logo makeover and we’ve seen the good, the bad, the Gap, and now even Starbucks is joining in with it’s newest logo where they’ve opted to remove their name entirely.  Like Prince.

So why are all of these brands so eager to shed their logos in favor of something trendier, cleaner, more or less colorful, and just plain different?

I thought about it while I got my hair colored and cut over the weekend and determined that they do it for the same reasons that women make beauty changes.

It’s easier to make a change to your life when you have a new look.

You get more attention when you debut the new you.

People are going to  judge you on your look and maybe you’re trying to change their perception.

You are sick to death of your look and if you have to see it ONE MORE TIME…  or… maybe that’s just with hair.

So while I sat there changing my hue from lighter to dark-ish, I was thinking about the reasons that Starbucks is publicly giving for the change.  One article interviewed Mike Peck, the Starbucks Senior Design Manager and he revealed that Starbucks has “An Agenda Of Transformation”.

I like the idea of an Agenda of Transformation, it sounds serious.  It sounds like a non impulsive plan to make a change, which is, I think, how we should view any major self makeover (business or aesthetic).

But you know how when you get a gorgeous new cut, a new outfit, and you go out because dammit you just aren’t going to stay home when you look this great?  I’m worried that’s the reason for some of these logos.  That they want the attention, even if it’s negative, to get that pop on the social media reader.  They change their whole persona for a bump in ‘online buzz’.  So here’s the thing, if ladies know that you can don a pink wig on New Years Eve and get that same boost in attention, why haven’t brands found a wig equivalent to changing their logo?

pink hair photo credit

The minute I saw this simple site I started thinking of all the ways that different industries could use the concept. It’s a site that’s set up so that the default is ‘dear Copenhagen’ and then visitors can use 250 characters to tell Copenhagen what they think of their city.
Here’s the best part:
Comments are divided by category into colors – so traffic comments are yellow, talk about social issues (like noisy streets) are blue, and so on. This way viewers can see at a glance what the most popular topics are.
People can ‘agree’ ‘disagree’ or comment on the comments.  It’s all share-able.  Suddenly, Copenhagen has a place for people to discuss things with each other that’s not on a boring city forum.

photo credit: Julie and Katherine Hat tip for the Copenhagen site find: Guerrilla Innovation

I am sort of a phone addict.  Not in the ‘can’t have a conversation with you because I’m too busy eyeing up my phone’ kind of way (I cannot believe how many professional people do this incredibly rude thing) but definitely in the ‘check it when I’m bored’ kind of way.  Obviously, I’m not the only one that’s doing this sort of thing but here’s a scary graph to back it up:

The rest of the article goes on to outline all sorts of horrors about how tons of people are checking their online presence in the car, while they are in bed, while they are at work, at home when they are with family, basically everywhere.  We could go on all day about if this is healthy (maybe not), if this makes us less productive (probably), and if some rehab facility is going to make a killing off of people who can’t stop Facebooking (I bet it’s in the works now).  What I do want to discuss is that money spent on mobile phones was up 24% since last year which is a lot and people even say that they are EMOTIONALLY attached to their iPhone as a brand. As opposed to say, warm and fuzzy brands like Hershey’s or Fruit of the Loom. Here are the top 20 —->

So what does the fact that people are spending tons of money on phones, accessing their phones ad nauseum all day, and emotionally loving their phones mean for the average marketer?

That there’s opportunity here.  The good news is, that while most brands have caught on to the whole ‘Facebook, twitter’ thing most have no mobile presence at all.  So while you might be tempted to continue to spend tons and tons of time catching up with you competitor’s awesome Facebook Page, you could go another route entirely and come up with a great mobile strategy and come out on top.

The truth is, people aren’t accessing your page from just their laptop anymore.  They are coming from their iPad, Blackberry, iPhone, and whatever other devices they are checking while driving.  It’s really important to plan for this on your site.

1) Is your site even visible on a smartphone?  This is an easy one so you should start here.  Get someone with a smartphone to try and access your site.  Make sure that it comes up and looks good. If it doesn’t, talk to a web professional right away.  Check other devices and see how your site looks on those as well.

2) Apps aren’t just games anymore.  A lot of b2b brands and more professional services think that an app. isn’t for them because they have only seen game apps.  Not so.  For example, I really wish I had thought of this app.  TeuxDeux.  It’s a site that’s basically just a simple To-Do list online. Then they added an iPhone app version of it.  I love it because I can add items to my to-do list on the go and when I get on my computer, there are all my new items along with my original items.  I don’t have a lot of time for games but I can certainly respect a brand that makes my life easier.

Is there a portion of your site that you can turn into an app to make life easier for your customers?

3) People are getting more comfortable with purchasing on their devices other than a laptop.  I personally think it has to do with iTunes and Amazon making it ‘push of a button’ easy to purchase things but people are okay with setting appointments, checking balances, and buying services and goods without ever talking to anyone on your staff.  People are going to think of doing this while waiting in line, in the car, picking up the kids, etc. so the need for easy purchasing is going to get bigger and bigger.  Explore options now so you can provide this for your own customers.

I haven’t pointed out any social media projects that stand out lately but this one from Tiger Beer has definite style points.  First, they made an artsy video about rewarding curiosity while they spray paint a guy that blends in with the wall.  Then they connected it with their Facebook that focuses on ‘knowing the not known’ and while the philosophic verbage on it is slightly confusing it is a great new way to offer ‘special deals’ to their fans without using the tired language of ‘special deals and offers’.

It looks like their Facebook fans are then privy to special events that are ‘not known’ and other hidden gems like this blog about bicycles.

Everyone has seen the good, the bad, and the really, really bad on basically every online platform. The Twitter feed that reads:
“We’re having a sale 50% off”
“Stop in today – big sale”
“35% off everything”

It’s like someone taking out a huge cartoon Acme sledgehammer and hitting you over the head while calling you dumb. It’s annoying and the brand typically has under 100 followers to show for their efforts. I kind of feel bad, they’re trying…..
So since we don’t want to hit our clients and beloved customers over the head with cartoon weapons of any kind it’s important to learn to be a little more subtle in the social media space.

There are great examples of brand subtlety everywhere – just take the Adidas ad on the left.  Marketers are doing pretty well with just a hint of advertising speak on a visual ad.  Yet when it comes to social media where a lot of the content is written, is when people start stumbling and writing things like “check out our newest…..” and you’re customer’s friends online don’t talk that way so they know you’re a brand and not a friend and maybe shouldn’t be trusted.

A call to action can be like crying wolf. In real life your network might tell you about products they like that you should check out but they don’t do it every single time they open their mouths.  This is the mentality to have when online as well.

A connection made inside your head is better than someone connecting all the dots for you. This ad advice is really old but it’s so applicable to social media conversation that it’s worth mentioning.  When you tell your friends about your workplace you paint a picture over time about the kind of company you work for.  Maybe one day you tell a funny story about your boss, then about how you decorate your office, and then about some new feature you’re working on.You want people to think you have great customer service?  Maybe instead of saying “we have great service” (sledgehammer) you might say “just got invited to a customer’s 50th birthday party! Awesome!”  and let your customers do the connecting.

Another great example of letting people connect their own dots is the Wonderbra campaign:

You’re going to see them again. The difference between your online network and advertising is that with an ad, you are reaching someone just one time and you’ve got about 10 seconds – better tell them what you want them to get out of your message.   If someone chooses to follow you, friend you, or otherwise become part of your network you can talk to them once a week, once a month, or every day.  Telling them your bottom line every time you see them would be…. weird.

photo credit – from moon to moon

When I saw author of “Eat,Pray,Love” Elizabeth Gilbert speak this spring she said “every afternoon I take a silence bath” in which she basically just sits in a room quietly and hangs out with her cat or falls asleep.  “Rough life” I thought “must be nice to be an author with a gazillion readers so that you can take silence baths every day”.  Sometimes I don’t even get to take a real bath every day and  the only silence I get is after I offer up a great idea at a meeting which is frankly less than tranquil.  So yay for Elizabeth and her silence baths.

But the idea stayed in my mind for months.  I wondered if this silence bath was more than lazy meditation or relaxation.  I began to think maybe it was more of an incubation period and perhaps similar to a process I call “marinating”, the secret ingredient to the strategy process.   Also why my bigger projects take me over a month to craft.   Here’s where it fits into the strategy timeline:

1) Read tons of articles.  See films, listen to music, watch plays.  Look at blogs, people’s Flickr feeds, design. Read more articles, go to speeches, watch TED videos ad nauseum.

2) Start thinking of strategy ideas.

3) Marinate.

4) Think some more. Work on other projects.

5) Develop full strategy.

6) Deliver strategy and listen to applause and general adoration.

Though my marinating is far less silent than Elizabeth’s it is still an incubation period of sorts for an idea.  Sometimes an idea marinates for 5 days and there are some I’ve been marinating on (like opening a coworking space) for years.   During the idea incubation process I do all sorts of other things like work on other projects, write content, or develop new processes for my business but it’s still in the back of my mind.  “If I were this or that brand’s audience…..  what would I want to see them writing about?”  This idea of incubation isn’t new but it is frequently skipped because, well, people are busy and being busy to the point of insanity is important at a lot of workplaces.

Sometimes I walk into an office where everyone is uber busy and think “how do people come up with good ideas here?”.  You can tell people are just totally stressed and running from meeting to meeting (sometimes actually running).  In some cases, this busy-ness seems more of an “if you have time to lean you have time to clean” type of thinking where people feel like they have to be insanely busy or they are a complete failure.  I know lots of business owners that feel this way.  They would feel incredibly uncomfortable just “marinating” on an idea and maybe they already have good ideas.

So why is it so important to incubate?

Because coming up with good ideas isn’t really that hard.  Developing them to the point where they are right for the situation, the timing is correct, the resources are there to complete the idea, and a million other factors takes time.  There are so many examples these days of a decent idea in social media strategy and I can tell the team was probably pressed with a 5 day deadline.  No one was given time to draw from their reading, their experience, something they saw that made them connect dots, etc. and it was put out into the world and was unremarkable.   Ideas that are rushed out the door tend to be the most obvious idea and can be full of rookie mistakes.

If you want to try the silence bath, incubation, marinate start by giving yourself two deadlines.  Make your first deadline where you would need it to be if you hurried the process and then make the second one 5 days later.  Don’t use this extra time as a way to procrastinate the project.  Use the extra days to add in some thinking time and maybe you will add some features, an extension of the idea or a partner that will pop into your mind as a perfect fit.  During these 5 days you can and should work on other things but build in an hour or two for your idea and go to a thinking lunch during that time or spend it explaining your idea to someone who isn’t part of the project to see what kinds of words you are using to describe it and what kind of questions it garners, you will inevitably come out with a better strategy.

Photo by Erin Dollar

The topic of Facebook Fan Pages is coming up more and more regularly as people and brands try to decide whether they should spend a lot of time and money to have an amazing fan page and how they are going to get it above 6 fans that aren’t married to or otherwise related to them.

Now there’s research out there that suggests that people that fan your brand are also much more likely to recommend or buy from you.  Then there’s research that tries to figure out a dollar amount on the “how much is a Facebook Fan worth in dollars in cents?” issue.   All of this studying of Facebook Fans has whipped marketers and brands into kind of a Facebook Fan Page frenzy.

Before you run out and start a fan page or yell at the marketing team for having a crummy fan page you should also read this article about “slacktivism” and Facebook. You know, how people hit the “like” button on everything because it’s a totally non committal thing to do?

Ok so here’s the skinny on the Facebook Fan Page:

If You’re a Brand -It’s altogether possible that you should have a fan page especially if your audience is a heavy Facebook using audience.  (provided you have the time resources to do it ) However, you should NOT treat your Facebook fan page like a mini website or an extension of your website.  What you should do is come up with a specific goal for that page.  Check out Red Bull’s Fan Page for example. Their goal is to put up info, news, and video about extreme sports 95% of the time and 5% product or brand info.  They don’t devote the page to Red Bull photos or reposting everything they have on their site, or everything from their blog.  It’s a cool little spot to get info on extreme sports that you won’t find anywhere else on the Red Bull Channel.  Also, people know what they are going to get when they reach their Facebook Fan Page.  Are they missing some of their fans that aren’t into extreme sports? Yes, but if they try to reach everyone their page is going to be all over the place and no one will be happy they came there.  You’ll see that Victoria’s Secret does the same thing with their page – they highlight models and bombshells 60% of the time.If You’re A Personal Brand - Ex. Realtor, Author, etc.  I think it’s more than acceptable to not have a Facebook Fan page if you are allowing some crossover between your clients and your friends already.  You will need to surrender the idea that you will be able to put intensely personal items on your Facebook Page but if you are a brand that’s trying to create business online you are at some point going to have to find out where your line is with personal information online.  Gen Y is already really good at this, there’s no real sense of “here is my personal persona” and “here is my professional persona” and there’s no crossover between the two, it’s already seamless for them to have clients know that they *gasp* go out to dinner.  Other generations may struggle with it a little more but when it comes to Facebook, it’s  a personal space so having to update 2 pages with “professional me” vs. “Personal me” can feel a bit split personality-ish.

Having an event used to involve getting out the stamps and sending invitations but now there are so many online resources that help you manage your guest list (and some even make them look really pretty) that it’s difficult to imagine life without them.  With summer in full swing and events galore I thought it might be helpful to do a quick overview of the tools out there that I have used to coordinate an event (wish I had these when I had an actual events company).  Here’s the cream of the crop and how to use them:

Evite – The first step is to set up a free account. Get a list of all of the info you’ll need to set up your event so that once you start you’re ready. The things you’ll need are time, date, location, and the email addresses of all of your attendees. Once you sign into your account you can “Create An Invitation” and it basically leads you through the process of setting up the invitations including what you want them to look like. Once you have all of the info in you can determine if it’s an open invite (your guests can invite others) and send messages to all guests with updates, etc. When you come back to your account you can tell who has responded yes or no.

Pingg – This is a really great site to use for invites if you want to pay more attention to the aesthetics of your invite. They use artists, illustrators, and many other types of artists to populate their art bank for you to use. Additionally, you can use other forms of delivery such as text message, postal mail, and Facebook to send your invites although they charge for some of those deliveries. Pingg has some of the same guest managing tools as other online invitation sites like Evite.

MyPunchBowl - The standout feature of mypunchbowl is the polling feature. Once you sign up for a free account you can design your invites and add polls to allow your guests to help determine things like “what time should this party start?” and “should this be dress up or casual attire?”. It also has a feature that helps you find a vendor in your area if you need one, such as caterers or tent companies.

EventBrite -  Business group owners pay attention – this one is great if you have more than the occasional event and works especially well for businesses.  There’s a huge number of features including adding payment options should you choose to charge for your event (this adds a small fee to your account).  What I love about this site is that it allows you to add all sorts of helpful functions like managing waitlists and generating name badges.  Hospitality industry – you should try these for your events and just see how much more manageable your overcrowded event becomes.

Facebook – Ah yes, good old Facebook allows you to manage events as well. Just sign into your Facebook page like you normally do and click the “events” section (it’s under your profile picture when you are on the main newsfeed page). Once you’re there you can select to “create an event”. Facebook is a good one to use if you are already Facebook friends with most of the people you are going to invite otherwise it can be kind of a pain. Use Facebook if it’s an event that you are trying to get a lot of people to come to because people can publicly tell all of their friends that they are coming once they RSVP.

I create social media strategies for a living.  I have clients that are big companies, small companies, and everything in between and one of my jobs is usually helping brands figure out where they should spend their money online.  We look for specific sites and online audiences, spend a lot of brainpower on how we might be able to help or be a resource, convince CEO’s that conversations online are important, and then collect our budgets to ask these communities how we can help them.

One of the BIGGEST roadblocks to making this happen is the sales staff at these sites and communities.

Recently I was building a plan and picked out a whole slew of amazing communities and wrote them emails telling them that we liked their site and that we’d like to give them some money and come up with some cool ideas to work together. MOST of those sites didn’t respond.  So I wrote another one.  Still nothing.  So I wrote a little more aggressive email that if they could possibly find just one second to call me I’d like to talk with them about doing some social media projects with them.  I got one email politely sending me a traditional media kit and said I could email her back with questions. I had no questions.

This, my friends, is why most sites have no sponsors or revenue.  Traditional advertising can sometimes get done by emailing a media kit.  Social media means that you might have to talk to brands about a unique way for them to fit in.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love email.  I am a digital kind of girl but sometimes when  I have  bigger ideas to shoot around with a site it’s just easier to get on the phone for a few minutes.  Some salespeople would apparently rather die a slow death by leprosy than talk on the phone.  I would love to tell you just how many sites have lost a lot of dollars (it’s a lot) and which ones you’d likely recognize the names of (seriously) but this post isn’t about calling out specific sites.

It’s about teaching your sales staff to recognize opportunities that come along that are outside the media kit because a lot of the opportunity online these days isn’t a banner ad or even a sponsored blog post.  Some of the best social campaigns to date clearly didn’t come off the media kit menu so it’s important that your sales staff have the authority and the incentive to work with social media folks.

I suspect that the moment I say “work together” and “social media” some salespeople think “no commission” and don’t bother.  This isn’t good because when I do have to buy a banner ad it’s never, ever the star of the campaign and it certainly doesn’t make me, the brand, or the sales person look like rockstars.

This is also  a shame because “social media partnership” sometimes means $10,000 a month for the community.  Sometimes it’s more.  That’s a lot of revenue for some of these mid-size sites that’s lost because the brand can’t get past the sales team that isn’t aware that they can sell off the media kit.  Yes, it’s more labor intensive to have to talk about video ideas than it is to just sell off of a media kit but the payoff can also be far better for the site and the sales team.