Hello ladies, how are you?

Well, It’s official. The Old Spice Viral Campaign by Weiden Kennedy actually drove sales down. The drop was an immediate 7 percent according to Warc, an industry research group.

The reasons are obvious if you were raised on off the teet of the web (oft called net-natives). The web user culture is totally different from the newspaper reader culture of yester-year. Weiden + Kennedy was culturally out of touch. Ironically, if David Ogilvy was at the helm, I doubt this would have happened – even though he is a 1960′s ad man.

1. Stay Loyal to Your Core (warning: race discussion ahead)
If you have any market share at all, build on it.

Old Spice under Weiden + Kennedy created betrayal. Many of you are going to think the following words are nonsense but those who do aren’t in my client demographic anyways so I’ll spill the beans. Do you know what P&G Old Spice’s Demographics are? I do. If you’ve been in any University Club, LA Fitness, or Equinox men’s locker room with a bunch of naked dudes, it’ll be obvious to you.

It’s mostly 50′s and 60′s white guys with some military background. “Mustafa” didn’t offend many of them. But let’s, for the sake of arguement say only 3.5% of them were uncomfortable with “Mustafa”. Then, from my subjective, non scientific analysis, these men are people who take themselves seriously. They range from old school executives to unionized blue collar workers. If the comical tone of the Weiden + Kennedy’s ad only offended another 3.5% of their core, well, that would account for why Old Spice sales went down 7%.

Personally, I have guy friends who are successful corporate African-Americans too. I know for a fact that a few of them use Old Spice. But after that silly messaging of a masculine product, I have a hunch they’d be as reluctant to walk through a checkout line with Old Spice as they would with a box of tampons.

How would the cash register boy react as one of my African American buddies tried to pay for his Old Spice? If you think I’m being silly, as a Korean American, my experience in the checkout line is slightly different depending on whether I’m purchasing bread or rice. True story.

The ad campaign made buying a regular brand embarrassing.

2. If You Target Another Demographic, Rebrand
You buy products because they are exclusive to your psychography. Guys who wear Ed Hardy shirts will not wear Polo.

I can’t think of any situation where the only way to increase your market share is to betray your existing base. If you want to bolt on a totally different demographic, you do so by totally rebranding. Nissan created Infinity because they didn’t want to lose their core and make Nissans feel inferior. Honda created Acura. Toyota created Lexus. McDonalds created Chipotle.

You’ll lose your core if you diffuse your marketing – even more so with a viral campaign. If you insist on keeping one brand while going after two demographics, at least do what Verizon Wireless and Subway did. Get a race-agnostic spokesperson.

3. W+K was so concerned with the medium that they forgot their message
The medium is just a medium. Whether you’re on a street corner or in Carnegie Hall, the medium is just a medium. Focus on the message. Don’t get distracted by the bells and whistles of the medium. W+K was in such a hurry to prove that their old-school culture was hip and relevant to “the parlance of our times” that they lost grasp of their message.

After a cursory review of any of their viral videos, it becomes clear that even their front line ad copy writers were confused as to who their target was. Mustafa generally begins his pitch, “Ladies.” But the tagline is, “smell like a man, man.”

Before you launch your next advertising or marketing initiative, let’s talk. We might do well putting our heads together. Call 310 598 1606 or email bob.wan.kim@gmail.com

Posted via email from Social Media Marketing Strategies for the Closet Revolutionary

You and I both know that the decision maker who could be your next client is on Twitter. We also know that banner advertising, print ads, and even emailing him or her just won’t work.

If you could just contact him/her and roughly 10,000 more people who have the same demographics (even locality), you’d have found a gold mine of new clients. But how do you squeeze that level of data from Twitter?

Like this: CEOs in Houston

We also know that banner advertising, print ads, and even emailing him or her just won’t work

Let’s talk about your marketing strategy personally. We’d be happy to see if there’s a way we can team up and pitch in. Call 310 598 1606 or email bob.wan.kim@gmail.com … happy prospecting!

Posted via email from Social Media Marketing Strategies for the Closet Revolutionary

You can’t.

The concept of launching a marketing campaign that “goes viral” is a 2005 thing. It is. The smartest Harvard Medical School PhDs can’t even predict how much penetration a real virus like H1N1 will impose. So anyone who offers you a viral marketing campaign is either inexperienced or happy to defraud.

But let’s not swing to the other side of the room. There is a set of best practices and ingredients that are common to all the marketing campaigns that have achieved global buzz on a shoe string budget. We’ve outlined them below to help with your marketing efforts.

1. Identify Your Target Market Online
This one sounds like a no brainer. It’s not. The smartest people with MBAs don’t know how to do this. The reason they can’t is simple. When they got their Harvard or Stanford MBAs, There was no Twitter. There was no Facebook. Chances are, Google and definitely Youtube weren’t even around. The way the old-media marketing firms identified their target market was by reading a sheet of paper found in a publisher’s media kit.

New media like Google, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Posterous, Tumblr, and Digg don’t have old-media style media kits. You identify your target market using completely different methods (link TBA).

2. Don’t Try to Create a Viral Campaign
When I was just a lowly designer at a major Ad Agency in Southern California, my creative director gave me a morsel of priceless advice, “don’t try to win a design award. We are here to create sales for our clients, not to make ourselves stand out.” You can see why this falls into the “priceless advice” section of my memories.

Inexperienced marketeers will equate notoriety and “going viral” with sales. There’s no direct relationship – None. Consider one of the most aggressive viral campaigns of the modern age: Jehovah’s Witnessing. They come directly to your home. Movies, comedians, and talk show hosts mention them on prime time TV. As nice as they are, how many of your friends have converted? There is no direct relationship between notoriety and conversion.

Don’t try to create a viral campaign. Focus on creating sales.

3. Reevaluate the Medium – Constantly
In the ancient days, about 5 years ago, if had a successful marketing campaign through an ad in Time Magazine, even the best ad agencies and marketing directors wouldn’t reevaluate their marketing by considering People Magazine. If you love the LA Times, you wouldn’t reconsider the New York Times on a weekly basis. Car and Driver vs Road and Track; Wine Spectator vs Food and Wine; NBC vs FOX; KROQ vs KISS FM etc. That’s because reader loyalty and retention was as immobile as the rock of Gibraltar.

Find a way to make your product relate to a social phenomenon that’s pregnant with explosion

Now, by filling in your email and password, you can jump ship from Myspace to Facebook. You can leave DIGG for Reddit. You can uninstall Gowalla and Download the Foursquare App. NBC, FOX, and ABC can supply content to Hulu.com and Youtube’s traffic takes a nose dive into a puddle of water on a NYC sidewalk. Your target demographic scatters and migrates faster than you can say BP Oil Spill Related Bird Migration Disaster. And, the way you go about identifying your target market again requires completely different methods (See #1).

4. Differentiate Between Your Viral Marketing Content and Your Sales Driver
Advertising legend David Ogilvy (who launched the most memorable ad campaigns and slogans of the 70′s-90′s) was once inducted into some marketing hall of fame or something like that. He refused. He explained, “I do advertising. I don’t know the first thing about marketing.”

Do not confuse marketing with sales. Marketing is not designed to produce sales. Marketing is designed to market your products or services. Sales is designed to sell. If you create a viral marketing campaign designed to produce sales, it will fail (unless you have a zero resistance product). Even if your viral campaign goes to Japan and back, jumps from Facebook to Cyworld to Orkut and back, if your marketing is designed to produce sales, it will fail.

5. Design Your Viral Marketing Campaign to Lead to a Point of Purchase
What makes a viral campaign viral is that no ulterior motives are visible. What makes a viral campaign viral is that no ulterior motives are visible. What makes a viral campaign viral is that no ulterior motives are visible.

It’s a new phenomenon. Even if your audience is itching like crazy to click the “Share” link, if your viral marketing campaign has the slightest hint of an aroma of you benefiting financially, they will blackball it. No matter how witty, funny, or socially important your message, if Joe’s forwarding your message to his friends will make you rich, you’ll get stonewalled. Misery and poverty both love company.

6. To Go Viral, Find a Horny Host
Every virus needs a host. Every epidemiologist knows that the most viral viruses are the ones that are symbiotic with their hosts. If a virus is too strong, it will kill its host before he has a chance to sneeze in an M. Night screening.

When Martin Luther King said, “I have a dream,” it wasn’t just his dream. He was infecting millions of strong resilient hosts whose season had come. When Lance Armstrong sold yellow rubber bracelets to the world, he was talking to millions of resilient aging baby boomers who, for the first time in their lives, were confronting the reality of their own cancer risk. Every single viral phenomenon was nothing more than a single match lit precisely in the center of leaking barrels of oil.

Find a way to make your product relate to a social phenomenon that’s pregnant with explosion. Find a message that billions will want you to champion. Nobody wants to listen to why your product is better than your competitor’s. Everyone wants you to champion their dreams. Find a way to relate your product to something your market has been dying to get off their chest – enmasse.

Find out what Guy Kawasaki, Union Square Ventures, Andreessen, and Y-Combinator are investing in

7. Let the Web Venture Capitalists Pay for Your Marketing
When Google first bought Blogger, I started blogging. Every single one of my posts got thousands of views a day. That’s because Google put every Blogger post on page one of every search. When Google first bought Youtube, my videos racked up 17 million views. That’s because Google was spending millions promoting Youtube. I was the guy who married the girl who won the lottery the next day.

Find out what the big venture capital groups are spending money on. Find out what Guy Kawasaki, Union Square Ventures, Andreessen, and Y-Combinator are investing in and jump aboard. You’ll get all the benefits of venture capital without having to dust off that 80′s power tie.

There are 17 more do-or-die ingredients to the Viral Marketing Formula. We’ll send you the 17 ingredients only via email. Enter your email in our Viral Marketing Strategies: Members Only List…

Or, if you hate paint-by-numbers recipe books and would rather have an experienced chef cook up your very next marketing campaign, call Bob at 310 598 1606 or email bob.wan.kim@gmail.com – http://twitter.com/journik

Posted via email from Social Media Marketing Strategies for the Closet Revolutionary

OR, How to have as many Facebook friends as Lady Gaga:

“You’re Adding Friends Too Quickly. Your Account Will Be Blocked”

For many reasons including trust, rapport, history, and familiarity, my last post mentioned that 1 Facebook friend is worth about 22 Twitter followers. So now, if you set out to amass a large Facebook friend base, you’ll notice a little warning window threatening to block your facebook account for adding friends too quickly.

So what’s the rule of thumb?

Well, starting with a new account, I rapidly added 300 new friends before facebook threatened to ban my account. Since then, I’ve been adding about 20 friends every few hours. I don’t push my luck or go too far because there are warning signs. The suggested friends box normally has two suggestions as you can see to the left. Once you’ve friend requested about 20, it drops down to just one suggestion. That’s when I stop.

I’ve gone further before but after just one or two more friend requests, I get that infamous warnming message of impending doom. But still, 20 new friend requests times 3 sessions a day gets you 60 new friends a day. At the end of the month, you should be up to 1,800. That’s worth almost 40,000 twitter followers.

Regardless of all these technicalities, the real trick is to get people to become your Facebook friends without sending out a single Facebook friend request: http://sparkah.com/2009/12/07/how-to-get-1400-facebook-friends-without-a-sing…

If you have any questions, write on my facebook wall at http://www.facebook.com/bob.wan.kim or call 310 598 1606… Look forward to hearing about what you do…

Posted via email from Social Media Marketing Strategies for the Closet Revolutionary

After almost half a decade of Twitter and Facebook being around, nobody seems to clearly understand the pros and cons of either for use in marketing. In fact, I started Googling for a competitive matrix that compared all the key web marketing factors applied between Facebook and Twitter. I Fail.

So I just built one myself. Below is a table that compares these two social media marketing powerhouses across 15 key web marketing criteria. The terms used are industry terms so if you’re not sure what each one means, I’ve also included a video discussion of this matrix below.

In any case, while you can measure a googleplex worth of criteria, in the end, effective marketing simply comes down to how many hours did you have to spend to create a dollar? Will Twitter make me that same dollar faster than Facebook?

	Twitter	Facebook
Visibility	1 hour	12 hours
SEO	no. nofollow	no. nofollow and hidden links
CTR within 3 min	0.2% (1000 followers = 2 clicks)	0.05%
CTR within 1 hour	0.3%	1.2%
CTR within 12 hours	0.35%	5.3%
Conversion Rate	nil, null, ziltch	0.05% (2000 friends = 1 purchase)
Comment Visibility	only your followers	everyone in comment stream
Follower aquisition	almost impossible	easy but limited
Follower acquisition limits	1000 follows / day	20 / few hours
Loyalty	low	high
Spam Noise	medium	low
Privacy	none	medium
Mobility	high	medium-high
Learning curve	high	low
Content Richness	text only	text, thumbnail, video

So how do Twitter clicks look compared Facebook clicks over time? With Twitter, You’re going to see a jump in the beginning and a rapid tapering off. After about an hour, your Tweet gets buried. Facebook however doesn’t really have a CTR spurt. It stays constant over about a 12 hour period before your Facebook status post gets buried.

TWITTER:

FACEBOOK:

Now that you’re equipped with data that helps you project your marketing and advertising ROI, you’ll find that creating the above conversion rates and CTRs are not as easy as it seems. Especially since Facebook has a 5,000 friend limit, you’ll have to start using Facebook pages.

Then you’ll run into another can of worms. So if you’d like professional and experienced help marketing your company, call me at 310 598 1606 or just bring any questions you may have to http://www.facebook.com/bob.wan.kim

Look forward to meeting you.

Posted via email from Social Media Marketing Strategies for the Closet Revolutionary

Stephanie Marcus, a new Mashable editor, just posted an anecdotal list of the Top 10 Gowalla check-in locations. On the list are Disneyland, Pike Place Market in Seattle, Trafalgar Square in London, and surprisingly, the Alamo Draft House Cinema in Texas (Turns out Gowalla is a TX native and born from SXSW).

At first glance, this data seems like simple coffee table trivia. But it’s not. This data and visibility into consumer activity verges on divine omniscience. It will mean billions of dollars for one party and total irrelevance for others.

Think about the last traffic accident you witnessed, the last survey you filled out, or the last focus group you joined. All three witnesses called three different colors on the defendants vehicle. You fudged. And you said you’d watch “The Gates,” but you just kept watching “Fringe.”

People don’t know themselves. So marketeers and entrepreneurs have the darnest time predicting them.

Now, with Twitter, Gowalla, and Foursquare, projections about what you might do become fuzzy crystal balls. By mining data, they know exactly what you will do, when and how often. It’s like bing a 4th dimensional god in a world of blind 3d people.

Why You Will Let Evil Corporations Know Everything About You. The Consumer Benefits
This isn’t all bad for the consumer. Soon, eHarmony.com and Match.com’s million dollar business will go the way of the dot com. Seriously. If they are public, short them now.

Think about it. Instead of paying $20/m (or whatever these services that I DON’T USE cost), you just set up a location/demographic profile and corresponding filter. Basically, you describe yourself in a premium version of Foursquare and Gowalla and you describe your soul mate in your location based filter. My profile would look like:

Male
90401
Santa Monica
Very Attractive
Athletic
Wealthy
1977

Etc.

I’d then set up a location based filter to find:

Female
Los Angeles
Super Model
Athletic
Heiress
1980-1986
M.S. Columbia (JK! =p)

Etc.

And the moment she checks in, whether we are “friends” or not, we both get pinged. She can see my full profile and then has the right to opt-in to my precise table or bar stool geo-coordinates.

The potential is literally divine omniscient. You can ping for a cardiologist for that 57yo man who suddenly grabbed his left arm. You can ping for a lawyer as soon as you see the flashing lights in your rear-view. You can even ping for a mercenary wing-man as soon as that blond opts-in and smiles back.

Location based services will go this way. Integrate them into your long range corporate strategy. If you want me to help you do that, contact me at 310 598 1606 and bob.wan.kim@gmail.com … or just speak your mind at http://twitter.com/journik .

How Can I Help You Spread the Word?

Posted via email from Social Media Marketing Strategies for the Closet Revolutionary

You remember when you first joined a social media networking site like Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter? The first time was a breeze. You imported your email address contacts and immediately had a chunk of followers, friends, and connections.

The trouble is growing this network afterwords. If you want a strategy for consistently growing your follower base in Twitter, See: http://sparkah.com/2010/06/10/how-to-get-twitter-tweeple-to-follow-back-fast/ and see the rest of this post.

While you can use the above strategy for long term network building, you’d be amazed how powerful the following single tip / trick is at raking in a huge influx of friends, followers, and connections in one fell swoop. Nice part is that you can do this periodically. I do it every 3 months.

How to Export Gmail Inbox Messages as CSV
You Can’t. There’s even an export gmail message filter lab feature. But it only exports the filters – NOT the messages that are filtered. So what you do instead is to download all your gmail to a POP/IMAP desktop client like Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 or Microsoft Office Outlook 2010. Nice part is that if you google: Microsoft Office Outlook Trial, you can get it for free for 60 days.

Once you’ve configured your Outlook, it’ll take a day or two to get a whole bunch of exportable email messages:

How to Extract Email Addresses from Gmail Inbox Messages and Import them Into Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Sparkah.com

1.

2. Export as CSV but Delete Subject and Body to Minimize File Size

3. Import in Gmail Contact

4. Finally, Import Your New Massive Email Address Contacts Database into Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin

5. Drop me a hello if you think I might be able to help you with your marketing (or blogging – to establish credibility and repeated impressions).

http://twitter.com/journik

http://www.linkedin.com/in/journik

310 598 1606 – I’d love to hear about what you do.

Posted via web from I’m just amazed. http://journik.posterous.com/how-to-export-gmail-inbox-messages-as-csv-the

You ever feel like unless you’re already a bigshot, nobody will follow you back on Twitter? Well, this video will make you a micro-bigshot. You’ll atleast be big enough to have 70% of the people you contact follow you back… here’s how to get twitter tweeple to follow back fast: Followers:

Drop me a hello over twitter. Let’s team up and work together on whatever you are marketing. I’d love to hear about what you do.

Posted via web from I’m just amazed.