If you’re in Ottawa on October 27, please consider attending Babes 4 Breasts benefit for breast cancer research. Leela Gilday, Annabelle Chvostek, Amanda Rheaume, Tara Holloway and Ana Miura will be benefitting the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation’s music program at their Survivorship Centre.

If you can not attend please purchase the album through iTunes or at participating stores – click the image above to find locations and more information!

Many people call me an Apple ‘Fan boy’ – I’m not really sure why. I think its an easy way for some to try and insult my loyalty to something and someone that they’ve never stopped to look deeper into and try to understand. It doesn’t apply to anything else in life I choose to support – clothing brands, musical tastes etc. I guess I’ve always dismissed the comment as a cheap shot for no good reason. People are mean, what can I say? (fuck them is what I usually say).

I’ve traveled to San Francisco to see Steve speak at MacWorld. I’ve bought most products from Apple – even ones that I didn’t understand at first. I’ve emailed Steve Jobs when some idiot sales person was spewing shit at Future Shop about how bad Apple products are. I’ve visited Apple Stores in numerous countries – I’ve allowed myself to be fully engaged by a company and immersed myself in the experience that Steve Jobs has envisioned. Truth be told, I’ve never done it because I thought that Apple was the best, or the fastest, or the cheapest. I did it because I don’t want to live in constant judgement and comparison of what is fastest, bestest, or cheapest. I just wanted someone to manage the experience for me.

And this is why Steve Jobs means a lot to me. Because the experience that I bought into with Apple is the experience I want people to buy into with me. Even when I was a child that was bullied and called names. Even when I was a popular teenager. Even when I was an executive in the 9 to 5 world. And even now as a business owner and marketing strategist. Even as a parent and husband.  I just want people to see how passionate I am in what I do – and allow me to guide them and share what I am passionate about – whether work or otherwise.

If I can take one thing from Steve Jobs it would be that people should be passionate – about their lives and about the people they want to share their lives with – work, life, everything. Nobody wants to die. Everybody should celebrate being alive.

We have clients who are champions on Facebook – Revolution Organics to name one. They successfully extend the reach of their brand through great social events and network extensions. They are a successful health and beauty company that is exemplified by the tremendous non-paid endorsement of influential people – in magazines, on the red carpet of awards shows, and on Twitter and Facebook.

But for most of our clients their sales cycle and product categories don’t include repeat purchase behaviour or social interaction as a function of the brand or marketing plan. For example, Tamarack Homes doesn’t rely on its endorsement by all of its satisfied homeowners who have ‘Upgraded Their Lives’. They do benefit from the extension of their brand into Facebook via normal conversations and interactions of their customers – but they don’t pursue customers on that platform.

I see Facebook becoming more relevant for regional companies in the next few years as their ROI for small business improves (they’ve just hired Sheryl Sandberg to help run small business advertising  (she had a lot to do with Google Adwords)). For now, their market place is expensive and experimental – the domain of brands with a cross-over appeal and intention to explore new area. Expensive to the point where we recommend Facebook ads to be bought on a CPM versus CPC/CPA basis.

For the rest, and for all, Google Adwords still represents a sound investment in advertising to qualified consumers (whether b to b or b to c). If a customer is searching for your business – whether by brand, category, region – you need to spend on Google Adwords to keep traffic coming to your website – hopefully ahead of your competitors.

I was at Bluesfest on the weekend to see The Tragically Hip and saw something I had never seen before (see photo below – click to enlarge).

Its not the guy standing at the bottom (I didn’t blur him out – but I don’t know him either) – its the guy a little bit up in the photo – do you see him in some sort of public peeing place? (notice how everybody is balding in the urinal area? Consider this observation to be my public contribution to sociology (and the porta-potty marketing association) as identifying the main demographic that needs to pee so bad that they do it in a retardedly public way!)

When did public urination become acceptable? I could hardly believe that boys were willing to stand there while all the world watched them pee. Am I a prude? Too British?

It was to urination what a g-string bikinis are to swim suits. No signage, just a bunch of guys standing there having a pee.

Anyways, weird.

Side Note: Wish Bluesfest would learn how to create lanes for people to move – the whole night was filled with people pushing others out of the way as they made their way to and from the beer stands. How ridiculous to have to fight to stay in one spot because there are no walking lanes. One girl had a panic attic in front of us and sat on the ground – barely escaping the throngs of beer travelling, texting, smoking people who seem to not come to the concert to watch the show but walk around during the show – its an accident waiting to happen.

One of the things that I try to reinforce with clients when it comes to internet-based marketing relationships is to be sensitive to the fact that there is a relationship in place – and users are easily able to opt-out and ignore unwanted messaging.

Consumers who are easily able to opt out of email marketing should not be inundated with useless and too frequent solicitations for business.But many businesses think they can send out non-offers and poor solicitations without consequence. And often times they lose all possibility with consumers – and sometimes even warrant spam complaints.

This lack of understanding of the marketing relationship that exists uniquely in a digital world often exposes businesses for their real view of marketing – they don’t respect the importance of how their brand is perceived in all facets. They think that all they need to do is come up with some ‘hook’ to get people in the store and then everything will take care of itself.

One example of relationships getting out of sync can be found in Facebook’s reaction to application spam. To the those of you who don’t know, application spam refers to useless messages that Facebook-based apps send to people’s Facebook walls in an attempt to solicit interaction between users and to increase their userbase. I can’t tell you how much it annoys me – up to half of all traffic on my wall is spam – stupid amounts of spam about Farmville and horoscopes – and other meaningless drivel.

I was reading an article today on Facebook’s attempt to quash the worst offenders – and at the same time to introduce tools that would allow it to begin its next evolution – to rival app stores and itunes-like stores of Apple Computer. To the uninitiated it might appear that this would be out of a requests by users for less spam. But the real likelihood is that Facebook is trying to create longevity by not screwing with its revenue source – advertisers. It isn’t good for business if people stop going to Facebook because of spam – because real ads will be drowned out. And real ads are what Facebook is hoping will give them longevity – and opportunity to grown. Just like Google did – you see less and less spam sites on search results, don’t you?

Social media spam – will Facebook suffer if it doesn’t let its app eco-structure permeate its ‘wall’ channel? We’ll see.

I was reading a case study article on a new cereal from Kelloggs this morning at Clickz. The article was talking about an ad campaign to promote a cereal aimed at the lazy male demographic (18 to 35 – ‘lazy male’ are my words) who would eat cereal 3 times a day if there wasn’t so much seeming peer pressure to not do that. The idea behind the ad was to sell the notion that you could eat cereal any time of day because  ‘it was breakfast time somewhere in the world’.

Now, not commenting on the campaign itself, I was interested to see the commentary on what was done to support the mobile channel for ads. A representative from Augme Technologies, who handles the mobile platform, discussed how QR and SMS were used for ‘reward content’ – a QR code was placed on the back of cereal boxes and, when scanned, would take the user to a video that showed someone dressed in the fashion of a location in the world where it was breakfast time. And he called it reward content – nice phrase, I may start to use it. I’m just not sure that the video represented ‘reward content’.

This phrase describes more accurately ‘branded entertainment’. Not something I’m sure is useful for a QR campaign. And not something rewarding, either. Why? Well, if you ask someone to scan a QR code there had better be a reason for it – not just something cutesy – you’re promising a reward for entering into the ad relationship, afterall.

Now, if the QR led to an exclusive cartoon to watch while you ate your cereal, then that might be rewarding (and if the demographic is 18 to 35 year old males you can imagine how raunchy the cartoons could’ve gotten!). Did you read my blog from when I was in NYC a few weeks ago? There was a blurb about how a bookstore had QR on the posters in their windows that, when scanned, would allow you to download the first chapter of a book the poster was promoting. That is good QR.

So, if you’re looking to use QR to help with ‘lift’ on a campaign – and are playing with ‘reward’ – make sure its worth the customer’s investment in the scan.

One thing I enjoy talking about with clients and prospects is brand; and I can’t emphasize to them enough that brand is put simply – everything a consumer touches, sees, and hears about your company – and that includes logos, products, packaging, facilities, people, language, phone greetings, parking lots etc etc.

So, to my surprise, when I went to the local Metro store today to pick up some milk for the office – I was greeted with this:

Why on earth would you let this happen?  Talk about brand value going to crud.

Emarketer had an interesting article on the increasing use of the Facebook  associated ‘like’ button in older people the other day. The thing I found interesting was that they refer to a click on the like button as ‘engagement’ with a brand. I suppose in some remote sense it is – but I’m also beginning to wonder what the ultimate significance of the like button is.

Of course its a credibility marketing opportunity.

But is clicking the like button a way to extend your reach through word of mouth? Or Is it an endorsement of an already-happened experience? (Like Yelp). Is it like ebay feedback – saying ‘yes, do business here’? And when people read on your wall what exactly it is that has been liked – is there a difference in message depending on whether its a link – or a promotion – etc?

We’re getting close to the end of the Facebook Novelty for business – on a personal level, FB is to many young people what the water cooler at work represents – its the hangout of their generation. And for older people its about catching up with old friends – and friends who are not geographically in proximity.

So what is Facebook going to mean to business as we go from here? Surely the days of the social media guru are about to end. And surely the days of old-world agencies trying to run up billable hours through ‘earned media’ claims are running thing with clients.

I hope the future is realizing that social channels are just channels. They haven’t invented conversation. They’re just channeling it in a way that allows the experience to be commoditized/commodified to some extent.

And as for the Facebook ‘like’ button, how much of a client’s budget can be devoted to credibility marketing?

The thing I’m really looking forward to is using social channels to help extend other marketing channels and to run simple engagement contests and event awareness opportunities for clients.

We are having more and more intelligent discussions with clients about social marketing. Its great to see the channel mature to a point where business owners can make decisions based on information – and not hype. The one thing that seems to have become defacto is that there is an opportunity to extend word of mouth marketing by having a ‘like’ button on your website (or in your email campaign, etc).

Beyond this, I think each business has its own unique set of qualifications that must be considered when determining the usefulness of social media – business category, sales cycle, repeat purchase frequency, and most importantly – willingness of customer to partake.

One of the things that we’re also seeing is that paid advertising (CPM, PPC) on Facebook is dropping significantly after a few weeks. Not only do you need to come up with new creative but you have to market different products. Social media seems to have a very short memory – and commitment to business.

Interestingly, Facebook has grown by 1.7% during May overall – less than normal. And that growth was not in North American as Facebook users (identified as logging in at least once per month) dropped by 6 million. But that can’t be read in isolation.

Facebook is relevant to many people on a personal level – we get that (love the photos and links to talking dogs!). But to business – especially to those of us in the trade – its a commodity – it represents a medium for our clients to make money with. If not from advertising, then from an earned-media perspective with pages, like-links, wall posts etc.

So, this drop is worth noting. But, it doesn’t spell the end of the world. We have a lot to learn about Facebook behaviour – time on site, repeated exposure to advertising, etc etc.

Looking for an intelligent discussion on social media. Like me!

I see a lot of sign-up forms; I bcc myself on many of our clients form submissions so that I can keep an eye on programming as well as trend the increases and decreases in promotions. I’m often fascinated by the sorts of responses that clients submit for surveys and other comments.

But its not too often that I can share these comments due to privacy issues.

I’m not sure if my moment of immature enjoyment is due to a run-in with a Mr. Bill T-shirt at the NBC shop at Rockefeller Center or just a general soft spot for such childish language. However, I bring to you my favourite useless submission.