Citizen Marketer 2.1

Aaron Strout

The Next Big Thing? Lot’s of Little Things.

By 4 Comments

Cross-posted on The Engaged Conumer

If you haven’t met our VP of strategy here at Powered, Greg Verdino, you should try and remedy that soon. He’s a smart guy who brings a healthy dose of wit and snide to any channel you connect with him in. He’s also just written a book. A really good book I might add. One that is made better by NOT being about social media. Well, it includes many references to social media tools and examples… but the book itself is about marketing. MicroMarketing. If you’re wondering what that is, you came to the right place to find out.

microMarketing FTW!

Before I talk about what microMarketing is, I want to go back and provide a little context for this post. In helping my friend and colleague, Greg, get the word out about his new book, Mr. Verdino and I decided that rather than just send the book out to a bunch of influential folks and ask them to write about it, we’d ask them to cover a single chapter. I’m not in any way criticizing the traditional approach but in the spirit of “micro” we realized that shorter might be better. The roster of people that have agreed to speak is pretty awesome. I’ve included the names/dates/chapters they are covering and a link to their blogs below. As their write ups go live, I’ll swap out the generic blog links to those that point at the actual chapter posts:

Monday Sept. 20 – Chapter 1

Tuesday Sept. 21 – Chapter 2

Wednesday Sept. 22 – Chapter 3

Thursday Sept. 23 – Chapter 4

Friday Sept. 24 – Chapter 5

Monday Sept. 27 – Chapter 6

Tuesday Sept. 28 – Chapter 7

Wednesday Sept. 29 – Chapter 8

Thursday Sept. 30 – Chapter 9

Getting back to “what is microMarketing,” the title of the initial chapter of the book, “The Next Big Thing is Lots and Lots of Small Things,” does a nice job as summarizing the entire book. To that end, chapter one does a nice job setting the stage for the rest of the book by offering up examples of how the world is shifting from a mass to micro focus. With examples like “Sasquatch Dancing Man,” the Iranian election coverage by citizen journalists and Ashton Kutcher’s unlikely victory over CNN in a race to one million Twitter followers, the book demonstrates the loss of control by the mainstream media and in some cases, the government, over we, the consumer’s, time and attention.

If one were to summarize the entire book into it’s bare essence, this illustrative chart on page 21 pretty much says it all:

Chart: Seven Shifts from Mass to micro (p. 21 of microMarketing)

As a marketer or someone running a business big or small, it’s these types of prescriptive recommendations that make microMarketing so useful. When you take a quick look at the success of a site like Facebook with it’s 500 million members who share over 30 billion pieces of content each month, it’s not hard to understand that there is a new sheriff in town and his name is NOT “mainstream media”.

I promise that I won’t ruin the rest of the book for you. And while the reviews that you’ll get from my fellow bloggers over the next two weeks will be useful aids in understanding the new phenomena that Verdino writes about, it’s certainly no substitute for all of the useful examples and suggestions in the book itself. In fact, if you’re in the New York City area on September 27th, there’s a great seminar (I’ll be leading a panel with some of the folks mentioned in the book). You can also meet Greg and get your own signed copy of the book which comes with the price of admission.

If you’ve already read the book and have thoughts on Chapter 1 that I haven’t covered here (I’ve yadda yadda-ed over a lot), feel free to include them in the comments.

Surrounded by Smart People

By 3 Comments

This morning, we announced some very exciting news. Yes, Valeria Maltoni aka Conversation Agent (@ConversationAge on Twitter) has joined the company that I work for, Powered, as director of Strategy. In addition to being one of AdAge’s top 50 marketing bloggers, we’ve added a witty, hard working brand marketer to a fold that already included a few smarties.

While I’ll let Valeria’s work speak for itself (she is a must read if you don’t have her in your blog reader or Tweetdeck yet), you should also know about several other smarties we have at Powered. Some are pretty well known, others are “soon to be” well known. Here is a list of who they are and where you can find them on Twitter and in the blogosphere (alphabetically):

Yup, I’m pretty lucky. Now you know when you read this blog, follow me on Twitter or listen to my podcast that I’m just trying to keep up with my colleagues!

post script: I realized after I posted this that while the 10 people I highlighted will likely be happy for the love, the 70 other people I work with may feel like I’m slighting them. This couldn’t be further from the truth. To clarify, I tried to call out people at Powered that were regular bloggers (I’m sure I missed a couple of folks). I have nothing but love and respect for the rest of my VERY smart colleagues. 

Quick-n-dirty Podcast Recap 28: The Powered Acquisition News

By Leave a Comment

It’s always nice when you have a chance to mix business and pleasure. I guess you could say I do that every week on the Quick-n-Dirty podcast show I do with my co-host, Jennifer Leggio. Even though the show happens after work hours for me, I try and take full advantage of putting into practice things I learn at work into the show and vice versa. However, this week in particular, I had the opportunity to invite three of my new colleagues onto the show.

To that end, my company, Powered, announced this week that we had acquired three other social media agencies — crayon, Drillteam and StepChange. With those acquisitions came 35 new social media smarties including Greg Verdino, chief strategy officer at crayon, Steve Kleinberg, principal of Drillteam, and Kevin Tate, principal at StepChange, the very same three guests that joined us on the Quick-n-Dirty show.

Not wanting to muck things up too much, we did start the show off with our usual “social network or tool of the week.” I voted for Boxcar which unfortunately isn’t on the Android or the Blackberry platforms (a negative for Jennifer). The bottom line is that Boxcar allows you to surface status updates and messaging alerts to text messaging level on the iPhone. For instance, you can choose to be notified when someone DM’s you on Twitter, when one of your friends on Facebook does a status update or when your favorite blogger publishes a new post. The reason I like Boxcar is that I’ve found the “send to SMS” feature to be a little flukie. It also gives me the capability to set times to turn the alerts on and off (for instance turn the alerts on at 7 AM and turn them off at 11 PM).

Next up, was the guest portion of the show. To keep the new Powered team on the up and up, I agreed with Jennifer to swing around and sit in the guest seat with Jennifer playing the role of interviewer. She asked some engaging questions like, “do you really believe that Powered is the first full service social agency?” Why did we decide to maintain the StepChange and Drillteam names while folding crayon into Powered proper?”and “can Powered really call itself a full-service agency when it’s still made up of three somewhat separate companies?” (she pulled no punches!)

Pictured: Greg Verdino, Kevin Tate & Steve Kleinberg

This week’s featured “Twitterer” was none other than the fabulous Adele Mcalear (whom we know pronounces her last name “mac-a-lear”). Both Jennifer and I have followed Adele for a while and like her poise, sense of humor and smart thinking about the social space. As a nice bonus, Adele was listening in on the podcast and hung out in the chatroom so we got to interact with her as the conversation was going on.

Last but not least, we did our signature “point / counterpoint” portion of the show which wasn’t really much of a debate this time. Our focus was on “real social media leaders” or people that were learning and sharing based on actual experience in helping businesses tap into the power of social media. This was opposed to some of the motivational speaker types that don’t have any real business experience but rather are working hard at translating their own personal social media success into a viable business model. No suprise that Jennifer and I were both in strong agreement on this front.

Just a reminder, our live show is every Thursday at 3 PM PT. Archived versions of the show can be found on iTunes (search Quick and Dirty), on BlogTalkRadio or on my blog as a widget in the right-hand column. Write ups from the each episode can be found on this blog or on Jennifer’s ZDNet blog.

What Marketers Want

By 30 Comments

A couple of months ago, I wrote a post titled, The Start of Something Bigger? It came on the heels of Ants Eye View’s announcement that they had just joined forces with authors/consultants, Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell. Then last week white label community provider, Jive Software, announced that they had purchased listening platform, Filtrbox. All the while I watched with interest knowing that we had some big news of our own to announce in early January.

Let’s start with the news since I know that nobody likes to be left hanging. Today, I’m  proud to announce that Powered Inc is launching a full-service social media agency through the acquisition of industry leaders crayon, Drillteam and StepChange. The reason we’re so excited about this is because we feel that we are now better positioned to help brands (and their agencies) define and deliver comprehensive social media strategies that integrate with their traditional marketing mix. How shall we do this you ask? By leveraging tools and tactics such as Facebook, Twitter, blogger outreach, events, communities and mobile applications of course.

We felt like it was important to take this approach because up until now, marketers have lacked a “go to” resource that could meet all of their social needs. This does not diminish any of the smart, driven and successful other boutiques and consultancies out there that help their clients with their social initiatives but rather that none of them truly provide the end-to-end solutions necessary to meet all of a marketers needs — at least not with scale. While this may not have been a big deal in 2009 when the entire economy took a mulligan, it will be in 2010 as social media moves from experiment to mission critical.

Okay, I know you’ve probably got tons of questions. I’m going to try to preemptively answer a few below but you there will also be several opportunities to join us live this week:

As for the answers, here goes…

Why didn’t Powered just develop these additional social media capabilities?
We thought long and hard about the “build vs. buy” strategy, but in the end, we realized that we would dramatically increase our speed to market and add some serious talent (not to mention about 50 new brand relationships) to the Powered team by moving forward with these acquisitions.

Who are Crayon, Drillteam, StepChange?

  • Crayon brings extensive experience as a strategic social marketing consultancy to the table. They work with Fortune 1000 brands to develop strategies that positively impact customer relationships through the integration of continuous online conversations into traditional marketing programs. Crayon President Joseph Jaffe and his entire team will join Powered’s robust staff of marketers, content creators and social media leaders, with crayon and Powered immediately merging their capabilities.
  • Drillteam is an engagement marketing agency specializing in earned media.  Drillteam helps brands acquire and energize customer advocates, then sustain momentum through both offline events and online communities, and promotions on platforms like Facebook, niche blogs and Twitter.  Drillteam will retain its name and operate as a Powered company.
  • StepChange enhances a brand’s reach by extending presence into social networks and mobile platforms through Facebook development/applications, social site development, mobile/apps and Widget Ads.  StepChange will retain its name and operate as a Powered company.

Will Joseph Jaffe (Crayon) be staying on? If so, what role will he play at Powered?
Who is Joe Jaffe? Of course we’re kidding. Joe will play a big role in the new organization as “Chief Interrupter” of the group. He will continue to challenge the industry by providing prolific thought leadership, vision and guidance via his Jaffe Juice blog, podcast and TV show, keynote and panel presence at industry events and conferences, as well as his three books (Life after the 30-second spot, Join the Conversation and soon to be released, Flip the Funnel). More importantly, he will serve as a valued resource to Powered clients to “interrupt” the status quo, think through their social strategy and help conceive and flesh out unique and specific ideas and programs in the space.

Does the industry need another agency?
The industry certainly doesn’t need another agency that does the same thing as its predecessors. To be perfectly honest, we’re not exactly enamored with the idea of being called an “agency” at all. But this isn’t about us: It’s about the world’s largest, loved and important brands and what they need. Many members of our leadership team have lived, and successfully navigated through, several key advances in brand management, communication and emerging media innovation—led by the rise, fall and rise again of digital. We see the gaping void, disconnect or chasm between identification of need and the ability to fully deliver against that need. Social media is not another color on the media flow chart and it is not a subservient subset of digital either. Instead, we see social as a truly pervasive and transformational category in of itself that spans the entire marketing gamut—and even beyond it (touching P.R., customer service, R&D;, innovation and customer experience). For that reason, we believe that we will be one of the first—and certainly not the last—of specialist, best in class agents that are equipped, staffed and scaled to fully execute and activate against this growing capability, skill set, need and opportunity. 

What is a Social Agency?
A Social Agency or social media agency is an entity that assists companies and brands in the new world of conversational marketing. The confluence of digital, virtual and peer-to-peer networks is causing consumers to act more as a collective than ever before, and they are demanding a truly two-way conversation. We are looking to be the partner that will help brands enter and be successful in that conversation, by building a successful strategy that:

  • Connects business to social
  • Joins and manages network presence
  • Builds and manages branded communal spaces
  • Connects conversationally through mobile and physical events

The Social Media Agency is the horizontal layer that must be centrally managed but also closely integrated with all of the traditional vertical functions of marketing, such as media, interactive, PR and creative.

What else am I missing? A lot I’m sure. But as you kno
w, I’m pretty good at delivering updates real time through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, my blog, etc. Oh, we’re also planning a couple of big blowouts at OMMA Social (January 26) and South by Southwest (SXSW Interactive) in mid-March.

Let’s get it on!

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Categories