bigMETHOD Speaks!

By Greg Cargill | Published: March 9, 2010

Over the past few years John and I have been invited to speak at a number of great events. I was able to find a good number of them still live online and wanted to share the videos so you can hear some of our thoughts on social media. Thank you to organizers, participants and attendees from all of the events we have been a part of and all of the events to come!

Finding Social Influencer’s & Decreasing Your Cost

ZexSports: ROI Based Online Brand Engagement

Tedx Hollywood - Greg Cargill

OnAAir Interview*

The Perfect Pitch 2009* (39 minutes into the compilation)

SoCal Action Sports Network (6 minutes into the compilation)

Bryan Elliott / bigMETHOD - John Furnari Interview

Bryan Elliott / bigMETHOD - Greg Cargill Interview

*Non-embeddable video, check out the interview by clicking on the below image.

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A decline in social “junk” mail?

By Greg Cargill | Published: March 8, 2010

Maybe this is only happening to me but recently there has been a major decline in the number of emails I receive daily that are people just sharing funny / silly / profound social media content.

What has changed?

My educated assumption is now that the social web is settling in and users have had the chance to wear out all of the sillyness, and in doing so have annoyed and been annoyed by full inboxes, people are consuming content that they know matters to them based on personal value and sharing specific content in a more targeted fashion within their personal network when they find the gold amongst the pyrite.

We should be consicious of this as marketers - the true value in social media content is not about mass awareness that results in tons of impressions and very few interactions, it is about quality information to provide new or more easily consumed content to a specific group of consumers.

This brings me back to what I feel is THE must for everyone considering using social media to make money: do you have a good product that people need?

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Pepsi gives money for others to pursue “great ideas” instead of doing great things themselves.

By Greg Cargill | Published: February 22, 2010

Part of my job is understanding what others are doing on the web.  That means I spend time every day reading relevant blogs and exploring social networks.  I do this for the same reason that we as an agency do this for our clients; understanding the market you are engaging in will result in the most probable success.  Or, as it was stated over and over again in my high school, “prior planning prevents piss poor performance”.

A few weeks ago I read a post on TechCrunch titled Social Marketing Gone Awry: Pepsi Refresh Needs To Refresh Its Security Settings.  The article was about how Pepsi was using the $20 million it would usually spend on Super Bowl advertising to sponsor “great ideas” of others but had not properly tested the system for running their marketing campaign before going live, which in itself was interesting to me as a social media professional and reminded me of the “6 P’s”.   I sent the link to myself because I knew I had more thoughts on the matter as an entrepreneur; Pepsi is giving away money to individuals and organizations to explore great ideas and man-o-man do I have a lot of ideas.

Since bigMETHOD is my life and I am a very environmentally conscious person here was my big $250,000 idea: Take a small environmentally conscious US market, only a few hundred people with limited shopping options, and replace all current Pepsi distribution with a reusable solution as a test market to prove not only the success environmentally but also financially for Pepsi.  Specifically I am saying that they should:

  • give every community member a set of reusable beverage storage containers of varying size
  • replace all market / grocery plastic bottles and aluminum cans with large dispensers, just like is currently offered for filtered water in many grocery stores, that use credit card payment and are metered just like a gas pump (only pay for what you consume)
  • require all to-go restaurants to sell reusable containers provided by Pepsi instead of disposable cups or allow patrons to fill their own containers at a metered rate
  • (here is where bigMETHOD fits in…) use the social web to broadcast a constant stream of feedback from the consumers in this test market so that the rest of the world at large can be a part of this idea in action

Benefits include:

  • less waste
  • more efficient delivery (trucking just the Pepsi syrup like restaurants receive instead of the heavier pre-mixed bottles)
  • locally and globally consumers might choose Pepsi over competitors because of this new care for the environment
  • locally and globally consumers might choose Pepsi over competitors because a new social standard is set

Possible downsides include:

  • people might be so rooted in their process and not their brand loyalty that they might buy competitor products instead

Now let’s be clear about something, I don’t drink soda and Pepsi is not one of the “good guys”.  Did you see the movie American Gangster?  Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington), just like his mentor before him, gives away turkeys to the people in the poor area of town around the holidays and they love him for it while they ignore the fact that the drugs he sells are the major causes of their financial, crime, and social issues.  This is just like Pepsi “giving away” $20 million so others can do “great things”.  They sell sugar water that makes a great deal of money for their company while slowly killing people (diabetis, obesity) and the earth (plastic bottles and more).  We all know this but that knowledge has not stopped people from buying soda for lunch just like they would take the turkey for Thanksgiving dinner.

Pepsi, I know why you are doing this marketing campaign - it sets you apart from the competitors who are all doing expensive television ads and hopefully will raise more awareness than the advertising budget would have gained itself because you are doing something “selfless”.  This (well, and tax breaks) is why fast food companies donate to diabetes and obesity research, cigarette companies donate to lung cancer research, alcohol companies donate to M.A.D.D., oil companies donate to investigate clean energy technologies… But doing perceived good while you are being bad is still bad and sooner or later you are going to have to change.

So what am I asking from Pepsi?  What am I asking from all product manufacturers?  Be less like Frank Lucas and more like Tony Stark.  Make a change to prove to people that you care and give them something that they need, not just what they want, and “be the change you want to see in the world” instead of relying on others to do great things.  If there is one encompassing thing that the social Internet will bring to our world it is corporate accountability.  Remember, people follow leaders.

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Do you think Google ever Googles itself?

By Greg Cargill | Published: February 10, 2010

The big news yesterday was the launch of Google’s newest feature, Buzz, furthering their reach into social media (I am not going to recap everything that was said by others; check out the links at the end of my blog post if you haven’t already been carpet bombed with information about Buzz).

What does this mean?

Facebook, Twitter, Yammer, Foursquare, Yelp… beware the Ides of March! Ok that is just over a month away and maybe a little too soon to worry about specifically but Google didn’t dominate search on day one. That being said, they have basically dominated in every space they have entered. Now they are pushing into every area of communications and with their business model built around understanding their customers’ needs they are always a threat to those not making billions in advertising.

What is Buzz really?

Buzz is a stepping stone to get the world to Google Wave. Why do I (and others) believe this? Because Wave was ahead of its time when launched but it truly is the next evolution in how we communicate. Truth.

Will Buzz succeed?

Maybe. Google has been in the social space with products like Orkut and OpenSocial, although they have not been embraced by the U.S. market. Also, Twitter, Flickr, Blogger, YouTube (yeah, it is Google’s), and many other sites are officially supported by Buzz but for most content on these sites that only means you can access that information within Buzz and not the other way around.

The biggest issue for Buzz’s potential success is that it is not integrated with Facebook (yet?). Facebook has over 400 million worldwide users compared to Gmails roughly 36 million, so this integration is key to Buzz even being comparatively relevant to Facebook in the social expanse. But, connect the dots of all-things-Google and give users an open social world online…

What is Google missing?

Google still hasn’t mastered the sexy user interface, nor addressed issues like many users have multiple email accounts making logging into Gmail to use Buzz not a central destination for all contacts, like is more common place in Facebook or Twitter. The UI issue is something Google just doesn’t get, in my eyes, but the multiple email issue is something that could be addressed via a Buzz aggregating app or by Google themselves with the future re-launch of Chrome.

Why is Google so successful?

How much does Buzz cost to use? How much does Gmail cost to use? How much did you spend last year on your Google Analytics? Do I need to keep going?

Google wins because Google gives people what they want for free and is there to provide a valuable service (advertising) to those who need it, when they need it, at a rate that is set based on demand. If there is a better business model out there I know it not.

What does the competition offer? Well, Yahoo and Microsoft (Hotmail specifically) are cluttered with ads and sloppy navigation not to mention that they charge for “premium” services that are equivalent, if not inferior, to Google’s free services. Plus, Google develops on the principle of being OPEN! They make a great product that works with the user and is free.

Buzz is free, so how does Google make money?

Advertising; and they make a lot of money doing it.

If Google wins, what will our reliance on Google mean?

It could mean great things or it could result in a “too big to fail” situation. Google makes amazing products in virtually every space of our social communication and gives them away. But, at some point that model could change. When there is a changing of the guards there is always the chance that the new keepers will try make a few changes; they might try to take advantage of our loyalty to maximize revenues in the short term at the cost of long term success.

Will Google eventually fail?

Yes, and it might be Facebook that takes them down, but man, will they make a mint in the process.

Mashable and TechCrunch articles from yesterday about Buzz:

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Where the Grammy’s Fell Short On Bridging the Social Media Divide

By John Furnari | Published: February 1, 2010

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They’ve been fading away from relevancy for years.  The street-cred of the Grammy Awards has slipped in parallel with the steep decline of sales for the recorded music industry they celebrate.

This year was supposed to be different. A new strategy, and a call to arms. “We’re All Fans” was the tagline for the 2010 Grammy Awards, a flag in the sand establishing the Recording Academy’s footprint in the social media space. There were bonus clips online, real-time feeds of chatter about nominees, YouTube mosaics, and more. But it missed the mark, and here are a few reasons why:

  1. We’re not all fans. Specifically the online audience the RA was hoping to cater to with the new 2010 initiatives. Juxtapose the Grammy Award nominees list against the Hype Machine’s Zeitgeist of 2009. There are a couple of artists that overlap.  You’ll find Phoenix and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on both. Past that there is little in common between the artists the Academy heralds and the artists the internet heralds. And it absolutely does not go unnoticed. Twitter was buzzing with sarcasm related to this throughout the broadcast tonight.  If you are making a conscious effort to engage the 2.0 space, it seems shortsighted to overlook the music that has flourished in that world these past few years. A severe disconnect.
  2. Time Zones. An effective social media strategy for the Grammy Awards would approach the broadcast much differently today than in 1990 or 2000.  In 2010 time zones are irrelevant. The web is real-time. It’s happening right now, and in three hours it’s a thing of the past. By the time the show was slated to broadcast in Los Angeles, the east coast already had its way with things.  We all knew who had won, and what the rest of the Twittersphere thought of every moment.  This show should be broadcast live on both coasts.  You won’t see the Super Bowl air next week in LA three hours after NY, and the Grammys should be no different.
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  3. No Live Streaming. Think about the missed opportunity here by not employing something like Ustream’s Facebook integration.  To start, it would have added a unique and exciting element to a show many of us have already moved on from. Second, the viral syndication of status updates and tweets would have driven a significant level of interest in the show.  Third, and what should hit a lot closer to home, there would have been more eyeballs to drive up ad revenue with.  In 2010 a viewer is a viewer, whether they are on the web or in front of the TV. Digital citizens shouldn’t be treated like second-class versions of their terrestrial counterparts.  Lastly, and again related to revenue - consider the impact “buy links” next to the Ustream player would have on iTunes sales.   Perhaps millions of dollars lost on the deal.
  4. Substance. This goes back to point one about the Hype Machine, and it’s much bigger for the Academy to ponder than just their social media strategy alone. The same hip audience the Grammys were hoping to connect with via this year’s “We’re All Fans” campaign actually gave up years ago and it had nothing to do with the medium or the message. It has to do with the music.  Where the digerati judge music based on quality, the Academy judges based on quantity…of records sold.  I could be kidding myself, but it doesn’t seem like the Academy Awards ever became as much of a caricature as the Grammys have in this way. Underground film classics that most of us have never heard of win based on their artistic value, and it encourages us to see what we’ve missed.  The Grammys have gone astray from this over the past decade or so. It’s all well and good, and has been easy to see through for years. But never has it been so easy to point out, or to share in the sentiment of with millions of others.  If you’re going to embrace social media this is important to note.  Transparency and communication are great things, but should come along with an urgency to provide the greatest product possible. That’s not what we saw tonight, and outlets like Twitter and Facebook only magnify that.
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