Old Spice: Put All The Kids In The Show, and…

Posted on August 16, 2010 by Scott Gould

… and all the parents come to see them perform.

It’s a trick as old as time, and a trick that schools have been using for years. When it comes to getting people to attend the school play, there is no better way than making sure you give every kid a part – because then the whole family comes to watch them.

That’s what Old Spice did with their campaign last month. If you haven’t heard about, to save me writing all about it, you can read this post at ReadWriteWeb. The gist of it is that they created YouTube clips based on what people said on Twitter, in near-realtime fashion. You can see all the videos here. Below is one that they did to celebrity blogger Perez Hilton:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ive3vXv-XRk

According to the guys at We Are Social, the Old Spice videos were watched 11 million times in the space of 48 hours (plus other stats here). I don’t know how much product Old Spice have shipped as a result, but they got more views that Obama’s victory speech in the same span of time, and their PR and awareness goals have no doubt been met and exceeded.

Putting The Kids In The Show

So now everyone asks “How do we do it? What was its success?” John Bell wrote a very good post on the real time nature of the campaign, John Cass wrote on its transparent inauthenticity, and Molly Flatt on the power of brand anthropomorphism. They all agree however that this isn’t something that can be replicated successfully because this is a market that rewards uniqueness just once. A clone won’t get the attention this campaign did.

For me, the takeaway lesson must be in the power of putting all the kids in the show, doing it in a real time fashion that was unique, and targeted key influencers.

Putting the kds in the show is about socialising your content. Consider threadless.com, who are a community who design and rate t-shirts by the community. Each t-shirt is always bound to have at least one customer – the person who designed it. But as their community has grown, and the average level of participation has deepened, more and more of their content has been socially created and incentives of purchasing these items has increased. People buy the t-shirts and support the company because they are emotionally invested in it, because they have co-created it.

This is the same thing I did in 2003 when I started Feedback, a youth organisation that was run by youth, for the youth. When we started out, we found it really hard to fill up our venue. Putting up posters and handing out leaflets was time consuming and largely ineffective. I remember our first event had 35 people, and we slowly increased in numbers until we jumped to 89 in March 2004 when we got a popular band from our college to perform. We jumped then again to 250 when we had our Battle of the Bands later that year.

We quickly learned that the best way to market our event and fill our venue was put people in the show who had existing followings – the same thing that Old Spice did by targeting Ashton Kutcher, Ellen DeGeneres, Lisa Barone, etc.

Skip to Like Minds in October last year, and it was the same tactic with those who we asked to partner with us on the event. By having local companies as partners, they brought in their clients to see them perform.

This is why Social Media is so powerful. You are invested in it, because you’ve co-created it. And because you are invested in, you bring people to see it and you can’t get away from it.

Your Leading Thoughts

When you look at a group photo, which is the first face you look for?
How have you socialised content to put kids in the show?
Where have you seen this tactic NOT work?

Photo courtesy of Brave Heart

Using A Community

Posted on August 11, 2010 by Scott Gould

I’m really enjoying Dan Blank’s blog at the moment. I first caught onto him through my close friend Andrew Davies at idio, and I’ve been following him for a while, but it seems these past few weeks I’ve really caught onto his writing a lot more.

Last week he wrote a post that I knew I’d love the moment I saw the title: “You Don’t Sell To A Community. You Support A Community“. You guys know I love a good strap line, especially when there’s aliteration. The great thing was that the post delivered.

It’s hard to pick a central quote (you can guess what the post was about), as it was one of those almost poetic pieces where each paragraph builds incrementally on the previous one, but perhaps the best part to me is this very accurate description of the latest marketing fad which is “build community”:

A brand should be careful about approaching social media as a sales funnel: to establish connections, build ‘trust,’ encourage a ‘community,’ and then market products and services to them. That’s not a community strategy, that is a marketing plan. And there is a difference.

This really rings home because recently I was having a leadership discussion in a venture that I’m involved in, and the painful point came up that whilst I was trying to explain we needed to build community in order to serve the community, the reality was that we were more interested in building the community in order to serve ourselves.

Turning it around is hard – we’re still in the process of doing it – and I’m learning some key lessons as I go.

Dan goes on to say that “building a community” for business is furthermore a hard and an expensive thing to do. It seems a stock answer at the moment to tell publishers in particular that they should “build community”, but I watch the people who say it and often they have never built one themselves. Dan actually argues that you don’t build them anyway – they already exist, and you help it grow.

My Experience with Community

I’ve nurtured many a community in the last 13 years that I’ve been ‘doing this’, but I think my most pertinent example would come from Like Minds.

I’ve said many times that my original intention for Like Minds was to show the local businesses that I was good at marketing, so that they’d hire me as a consultant. I was desperate to be accepted (many of the people who support me now didn’t back then), and I thought that if I could pull off a good event, they’d see.

After the success of the first Like Minds in October 09, a community – a tribe – was born in a day, but I still in mind saw that as a means to an end for getting work. Sure, I supported the community, but I didn’t see it as being a place that would be my main focus and income. I wasn’t selling to them – it’s important to clarify that – but I did see them as a way for me to secure more consulting.

It wasn’t until April this year that I realised how dearly I loved the community that was growing, and that if I focussed on serving that community, that would be far more fulfilling and rewarding. The irony is since I made that decision to not pursue consulting, consulting work has started to come in, and I turn a lot of it down in order to focus more fully on Like Minds because that’s where I’m seeing people really effected, which has always been my aim in the beginning anyway.

When a community really clicks (which I’ve been a part of many times), you know there’s no way that you can sell to them anyway. The things that they need from you, they’ll get without you blowing your horn, and you won’t given them anything but the things they need anyway, even if it’s not your thing that they need.

Your Experience with Community

Have you been on the receiving end of support and/or selling in a community?
Are you aware of any communities that actually grow based on a ‘selling’ mindset? (I don’t)
If supporting is what you do, how have you monetized that if you are nurturing a community?

Photo of Like Minds 2010 courtesy of Paul Clarke

Ecosystems: Riding on Them, and Creating Them

Posted on August 9, 2010 by Scott Gould

My friend Chris Brogan wrote a thinking peice last month on “Amazon and the Kindle Conspiracy” that many overlooked but I think warrants a deeper leadership discussion.

Chris discusses how Amazon went from book distributor to pretty much anything distributor, and how he suggests that the Kindle could do the same thing. He talks about how the Kindle also isn’t just a phyiscal device. You can have the Kindle on your iPhone, iPad, desktop, etc. It’s a distribution platform that lives on other platforms, something we talked about recently with Your Business, Ubiquitous.

That’s a big discussion there. Then Chris goes deeper into what is my favourite part of the post:

Don’t look at the device. Don’t fret about the device. Think of it as yet another way to gain ground in distribution. Keep your eyes on this, and also think about how this impacts your business. Think further on whether there are ways you could do distribution differently (better, partnered) and what that would give you.

This immediately makes me think of ecosystems. Consider Apple’s App Store and iTunes ecosystem. The devices that they can plug into this are potentially numerous, and as Chris suggests, it’s not really about the device – it’s the distribution of the ecosystem.

The way I see it, ecosystems are about flow of the river, the devices are the boat, and the person is the person. A good ecosystem means that a number of different boats can be on it in order to get people where they need to be. iTunes and the App Store is an ecosystem that allows many boats – the innovator boats, the late majority boats, the home boats, the work boats, etc.

I’m now seeing what were boats now become ecosystems in their own right. Consider Evernote, which is the handy note tool that remembers everything. Evernote created an API, and now with Evernote Trunk, serves as an ecosystem to boats that now ride upon it.

Facebook is an ecosystem, and so is Twitter. They are rivers that boats can flow on. Applications can be built for them. Communities live on them. You get the idea.

Riding on The Wave

The trick for startups and new things now is to use these ecosystems – to ride on their waves – in order to get our users to where they need to be. As Chris said in starting, the Kindle is about distribution. Why create a new ecosystem when a perfectly good ecosystem already exists that can distribute your boats where they need to be?

This is where socialising channels comes into play. Socialising our channels means getting your content to the places where people already are – the water coolers. If Facebook is where your people are, use that. If it’s Amazon, use that. If it’s the Kindle, use that. Ride the wave that gets your content distributed.

Creating Waves

The other option is to be the one building ecosystems – buliding the distribution channels that others can use. I’d be careful here. I’d only build an ecosystem where one doesn’t already exist.

That’s what we’re doing with Like Minds. I’ve noticed that the communities which are the most useful are the ones that become an ecosystem for others to sail on. The community and the events attached to it become enablers for the lives of others.

But the trick here is that we have to do it in a unique way – one of which being the Like Minds Club, something that I don’t know of any other event / community doing. The aim of the working club is to be an enabler for others to ride their boats along – whatever business, endeavour, need, etc, they might have.

I would say therefore, if was trying to define an ecosystem in a digital way, I’d say they are a platform that enable third parties and users to build and live from in a way that enhances their productivity through synergy with other users and shared benefits.

Your Leading Thoughts

As a leading and thinking person, your input here is valued and adds to the discussion and to this blog. Focus in on ecosystems right now, and use these points to help the discussion:

On a smaller scale, are blogs working as ecosystems?
What are the prerequisites for calling something an ecosystem?
What are the ecosystems that you are tied into?

Photo courtesy of Storm Crypt

Together

Posted on July 31, 2010 by Scott Gould

It’s a concern of mine that despite all our social media, people still don’t do things together.

Words like community, team, collaboration, relational, participatory, social – they are all over Twitter, but then when you share these links or comment on these posts, do you get a reply? When you ask people not what they say about social media, but if they are doing social media, how many are building connections and really collaborating?

The truth is that working together is hard.

It’s hard because we grow up today in a such a me-focussed world and live such me-focussed lives that the preference of others and putting others first that is required for team work doesn’t come easily.

Case in point: communication. Every Sunday at church, we have a team who handle the sound, the lighting and the audio/video content. They all link into each other, yet when Sunday comes and they are working together, I was rarely hearing them talk to each other, and as such, the whole Sunday experienced suffered.

Why was this? Because they were used to living in their own minds and focussing on their own angle, that they were almost unaware of the others around who needed their support and communication. Now that I’m teaching them communication and helping them see the need for the big picture and to give of themselves to each other, they are working far more powerfully as a team.

Malcolm Gladwell writes some very interesting stuff about this – particular in the area of focus – in his book Blink (affiliate link.) With focus, we tend to close off what’s going around and zoom in onto one thing. And I think that technology has heightened this ability within us – for good and for bad. Think about the hundreds of millions of knowledge workers who spend all day with computers, not uttering a world as they live inside their head and shift digital paper. What they are getting better at is having a tight focus. What they are getting worse at is looking up.

In order to get on together we need to look up. We need to prefer one another. Valuing the person in front of us. I’m shocked by how much ego I still see – people clamoring for the attention, to give their point of view, to ensure they are heard and that they get the credit. You know what I decided? I’m going to give the credit rather than get the credit.

Your Leading Thoughts

When did you learn to really work together? What was the time that switch you from being me-focussed to we-focussed?
If you could give one tip to people that would help them become team players, what would it be?

Photo courtesy of Jeff Bauche

I Don’t Talk Down To You

Posted on July 28, 2010 by Scott Gould

I was chatting to Julian Summerhayes yesterday and noting how many blog posts out there talk down to you. I don’t know if you agree, but let my quickly paint the picture I have of it:

They write as if they are teaching you, and you need them to say everything for you to understand, rather than appreciating the wisdom of their readers.
They write very much as if what they say is the authority, without drawing from the authority of their readers.
They tell you what to do, rather than ask what their readers think could be done.
They broadcast out ideas, rather socially discuss ideas.
They tag on the social cop out, “what do you think?“, rather than really drawing out from you, “what do you think?”

I used to write very much like this. In fact the peice on Innovation Over Tradition had the same prose feel that I think goes along with the above. Normally here, we’re talking things through.

The trick to much of this is what I learnt from Robin Dickinson – “under bake the issue.” In fact, we had a great discussion about this a while ago.

What I Don’t Know

The thing is, Monday’s post was an interesting read that got quite a few retweets (as I get so few), and certainly, there is a place for explaining things and being an active authority. But I think that can still be done without talking down to someone. I’m not sure.

Your Leading Thoughts

Do you notice different tones of blogging? Can we categorise them a bit?
Which writing do you respond to? Are there some blogs that you notice this “talking down to” in?
Are there, conversely, some bloggers who you can’t respect because they don’t speak with enough authority.

What’s In A Name?

Posted on July 12, 2010 by Scott Gould

I love this blog. I love the comments that you, the participants, bring. Last week’s post on What I Learned From Chris Brogan contained some exceptional comments that were full of value and utility.

One particular thread was very insightful, along the lines of remembering people’s names. As I said, it’s something that Chris did really well, and I’m making sure I’m as good as I can be at. You can’t underestimate the power of knowing someone’s name. In fact, one person even said the most important word in the world to anyone is that person’s name.

I just wanted to pick out a few practical tips:

Malcolm Sleath wrote:

The technique is a variation of what Chris has described. I take a sheet of paper and draw a simple map of where everyone is sitting. As they introduce themselves, I pay attention and write their name in the right place on the plan, and then one or two words of what they have said. Like Chris, I look at the people when they are talking, and just focus on the content instead of making judgements about it.

Once I have my map, during the early part of the meeting, I let my eyes go round the room, saying the names of the people in my head as I look at them. In the first half an hour, I make sure I do this a few times. Then, I play a little game and look at people at random, to see if I can say their name in my head.

The result is that when I do speak, I can remember who has said what and relate my contribution to theirs so they feel included. I come across as a much better person than I really am (I’m just as self-obsessed as the next person.)

Chris Brogan wrote:

* I look directly into your eyes when getting your name… AND/OR
* if I’m meeting you in person for the first time, but know you from the web, I double-up on my memory of you by looking into your eyes and saying your name as I greet you.
* I I repeat your name a few times, and make sure that others around me have met you. This lets me repeat your name.
* I store the moment as best as I can by not allowing my head to be distracted with other details. I try to shut out all the “what next” bits.

Sy Taylor wrote:

One of the best techniques I ever found for remembering something is close deletions. So to remember that term I’d write “To remember things I use [...] deletions”

Then set that as a reminder for 3 days time. Just as you’re about to forget, something like that hitting your subconscious buries it in. Our brains are ‘use it or lose it’ lumps of elastic learning capability.

Alastair Banks wrote:

I’ve always focused on this too – remembering people’s names, their partners names and interests is incredibly important – as you say, it shows you care. Chris does this on a new level and has made a big impact on my life since meeting him at Likeminds earlier this year.

Me? I introduce the person I’ve just met to someone else. Saying their name out loud is better than saying it in your head, and I can then link your name to the memory I have of introducing you to someone too.

Your Leading Thoughts

What practical tips can you share with us that you use to remember people’s names?

Photo courtesy of bemky

The Value of a Value Approach

Posted on July 9, 2010 by Scott Gould

You all know that I am sold out on having a value-based approach to, well, just about everything.

A value based approach is about giving more of you to people and developing deeper relationships, rather than having your thumbs in 101 pies. By not giving lots of little, but less of more, you can build relationships that have a great yield – in pretty much whatever you do.

I wanted to show you some of the returns, the value if you will, of a value-based approach that I’ve experienced this week. I’ve had a shower of love and recognition from a range of people recently, all as a direct result of this value-based approach.

1. First of all, I received a much appreciated link from Like Minds Alum Joanne Jacobs writing about the trough of disillusionment for social media strategies. Joanne has spoken at the last two Like Minds events, and I was thrilled to hear from her that since her keynote in February, she has received continual work from people who have watched the video or referred someone based on watching it.

How I built value: This is an instance right here of me getting to know someone and actually help someone who is greatly respected and I’d never think would be in the need of my need. It’s my honour and privilege to be associated with her – and it’s all because of value.

2. Secondly, there was quite a humbly moment for me when I discovered on this post from James Gordon that I am among the UK’s Top Marketing Blogs. I’ve been blogging now for a year, and to get that kind of recognition was really, really humbling – mostly because I haven’t focussed on getting blog recognition.

How I built value: I don’t focus on retweets and traffic but just engaging you wonderful people who spend time regularly commenting here. Together, we make ideas reality, and that is what is being recognised. To regularly get an average of 15 comments per post for a blog that might occasionally hit 200 uniques a day is pretty good engagement – and I’m only keen for it to become more!

3. Thirdly, I had a bittersweet moment when my latest intern Jonny Rose left the Aaron+Gould flock to fly to London’s shores to focus on his Masters. Jonny wrote this very loving peice on the time he spent with me, poetically entitled As Good As Gould. He is a person of unquestionable character, of sincere and genuine motives, and of incredible comic genius. I’m glad to say he’ll be blogging with Like Minds, so you can enjoy his unique style there and on his blog.

How I built value: Jonny has worked with us for the last two months, and it has been my pleasure to impart some of my experiences and insights to him. Every day that he worked, we talked about what he was learning, the bigger lessons, and about nurturing his skill set.

4. Finally, a fall-of-my-seat moment happened for me on Wednesday when Molly Flatt, James Whatley and my other friends at 1000heads named me as one of their 10 WoM Thought Leaders. To be recognised by my friends Molly and James (and I do mean friends) is a wonderful thing in itself – but then to see who I was named next to was just a whole other deal. Right next to friends and heros like Joe Pine, Chris Brogan, Joanne Jacobs, John Bell (who I’ve all met now!), as well as James Gilmore and Emanuel Rosen – I was ecstatic.

How I built value: Well, the whole story is here actually. All I did was give exposure to people I believed in, however small the exposure that I could give was.

Your Leading Thoughts

I know you’re all building value relationships. I’m keen to know which ones. Tell me who you’re building value with.

What I Learned From Chris Brogan

Posted on July 8, 2010 by Scott Gould

If you can’t see this video, click here, or watch on YouTube.

When we had Chris over for the Like Minds Conference in February, I had the pleasure of watching Chris operate and also spending some time with him too. I have no doubt that many cynical Brits were waiting to see if he’d walk the walk and be as social as he tells everyone to be. What I got to see was not only ‘Yes, he does!’, but also how he does this.

I haven’t shared this until now because I didn’t want to a fame monster, and I’m not writing this now for copious retweeting, but because there is one thing that he taught me above all else that has been of life changing value for me these last 4 months since February, and it will help you too. It’s changed my relationships, my business, my church and my marriage.

At the end of Saturday night at the Summit at Bovey Castle, I had been so impressed with how Chris had valued each person so highly, remembered everybody’s names, professions, details, and engaged in such valuable and meaningful discussion with so many people.

Now I’m good with connecting people, but Chris did it at a level that I’ve never seen before. People who he met once on Friday morning, he remembered the names and details of and called them by name Friday evening.

When I asked Chris how he did this, he looked at me and just said “I genuinely just love people.”

In two words, Chris Brogan taught and modeled for me this: love people.

How?

I learned from Chris to love people by valuing the person in front of you over playing on your phone. (He didn’t use his to tweet, not once, and there was kick ass wifi.)

I learned from Chris to love people by closing your laptop when someone walks in the room, and focussing my attention on them. (He did this to every person when he was working.)

I learned from Chris to love people by remembering their names and life details without fail. (He didn’t get a name wrong.)

I learned from Chris to love people by giving them your attention – all of it – no matter who is in the room. (He never excused himself from a conversation)

And finally, I learned from Chris to love people by valuing people equalling and forgetting about the power plays and games that stroke our egos. (He never ended a conversation so he could speak with someone else.)

Your Leading Thoughts

I’m sure you’ve learned similar things from someone in your life – who? How did they model this to you?

Building The Kingdom: Knowing Me, Knowing You

Posted on June 9, 2010 by Scott Gould

My friend Robin Dickinson had what I described as the greatest blog ever recently. His post “Share Words“, in which he gave hands on advice on assisting people with their own share words – short phrases to help him share what they are about – to every person who commented. The best bit was how the community began helping one another with their share words, and to date, there are 697 comments.

To be a king maker, you have to know your kings. The strongest teams are those who know each other inside out, and can maximise each other’s strengths and minimise each other’s weaknesses. This is why Robin’s share words are so important, because they help us know each other.

Knowing you, and you knowing me, means that we don’t compete with each other but we complete each other:

When anyone asks me who to speak to about digital publishing, I tell them it’s Andrew Davies and Ed Barrow at Idio.
If anyone needs measurement and integration consultancy with Social Media, I tell them they need to speak to Olivier Blanchard and attend Red Chair in London later this month.
Anyone who is overloaded I tell to read Robin Dickinson’s blog immediately and start developing diamond-focus.
Those who want Social Media advice and are in Bristol or Cheltenham I tell to speak to Chris Hall and attend Media140 in Bristol this month.
Any person who wants to really impact on a social scale I hook up with Stephanie Rudat and the exceptional work she is doing, or point to Jeff Hurt and Dave Lutz to learn how to improve learning.
For those wanting to take their organisations beyond marketing, I refer them to Ann Holman.

And likewise, these people are plugging people into me who need the strengths that I have.

The Multiplying Effect of People-to-People

When we talk people-to-people like this, we encounter a multiplying effect. A scripture in the bible that confounded me for years was “One can put a thousand to flight, two can put ten thousand to flight.” I never understood how 1+1 could equal 10, but then I began to realise that if I spend my day doing what I am best at, and let others do what they are best at, then I no longer have to waste my time and neither do they. My day becomes more productive, and our combined productivity equals a 10.

The big question of course is “do you know me?” – or rather – “do I know you?” The volume-based game that most are playing online booms with a resounding “No” because everyone is too busy building their own super personal ego brand, complete with logo and 30 day programme, that they don’t have the time nor the inclination to get to know you.

However people-to-people is not a volume but value play and we must know each other – and know each other well. Without this, we do not understand each other’s strengths and therefore don’t achieve this multiplication of strengths.

The answer then is plain: know me, and enable me get to know you.

Note: this is an active pursuit, and the one of a leader. Followers not necessary.

Your Leading Thoughts

How do you get to really know people, practically?
How are you managing those relationships successfully and ensuring that you build deep, value-based relationships rather than getting sucked into the volume game that most people play?

P.S. If you have no idea what that photo above is about, watch this.