social media is like sex

I was trying to explain social media to a friend in advertising the other day. She's one of the smartest art directors I know, who can ferret out meaning from the most obtusely written brief.

"I don't get social media," she said. "What the heck is it, anyway?"

I told my friend not to feel bad. Lots people still don't get social media. Even those who claim that they do. I quoted something making the rounds on twitter recently: Social media is like teen sex. Everyone says they're getting it, but few really do. (An adaptation of another tweet from a Google analytics guru.)

As I began describing Twitter streams and Facebook widgets and analytics and vlogs, her eyes glazed over. And I realized another reason social media is like sex. You can talk all you want about the mechanics to people. But until they do it, they can't know what all the fuss is about.

Last week Joseph Jaffee wrote a piece on social media for Adweek. Many commenters accused him of being condescending to ad agency types by writing a primer too basic for them. Some of the comments were personally insulting and Alan Wolk referred to this backlash in an article on a new era of meanspiritedness on Madison Avenue. Surely, for negative commenters, the piece was too basic. But I think those of us immersed in SM often overestimate the degree of conversance normal people have with it.

Ad agency revenue models are still tied to client spending on media. And social media is still perceived to be free. (Fred Wilson called it "earned" media, but isn't that PR? How about the more robust CGM--Consumer Generated Media.) Not surprising if creatives at global AORs are still encouraged to think of social media as just one more shiny charm to add to their campaign bracelet.

where is @don_draper when you need him?

Like many twitterers on this circuit, I was followed by Mad Men. At first it felt strange to receive updates from fictional characters. (@Don_Draper: Taking Betty to Birdland tonite to hear Coltrane or @Peggy_Olson: Hope Belle Jolie account is ok. Worries me actually.) But I found they integrated seamlessly into my stream of tweets (because who isn't a fictional character in cyberspace) and I began to look forward to their 140-character dispatches of daily doings and angsts circa 1962. I even began to interact with them directly, exhanging a friendly banter of girl talk with @Betty_Draper (who promised to try Jackie's milliner at Berdorf's.)

What brilliant marketers are folks at AMC, I thought. First, Sterling Cooper business cards as promos. Then, wrapping the Times Square shuttle (a train Draper takes). Now, they reach outside the (tv) box again to send their characters into Twitterville, connecting with (and recruiting) fans, maximizing entertainment value of their content, pushing it further, making it even more seductive-- which will make the show more seductive to advertisers, too. Of course (thought I) folks who display masterful grasp of last century adland would prove equally conversant with present-day marketing opps.



But, alas, I was wrong. I woke up this morning to a post from Alan Wolk reporting that most Twittering Mad accounts have been suspended. Why? No official word yet, but MG Siegler writing for VentureBeat reports that AMC invoked the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to convince Twitter’s support team to suspend the accounts. (As of this posting, you can still tweet @Betty_Draper--perhaps, in keeping with sexist attitudes of the era, execs at AMC don't consider her a threat?)

I'm a content provider myself, so I understand how producers could be ruffled by others co-opting the characters they've worked hard to create. But rather than acting impetuously, hostiley, stupidly shutting down a growing opportunity to extend its fan base, shouldn't someone in marketing recognize the potential and put itinerant Mad Twitterers on the payroll, or sustain the effort in-house? Surely Don Draper would get it, if he was around. Despite the fact that, as devoted fans know, he'll be turning 79 on September 25.

UPDATE
Good news for some, annoying news for others: Nudged by Deep Focus, AMC's digital agency of record, Man Men's' Twitter accounts have been reinstated and the cast has resumed tweets.

facebook, myob!

So, I have to admit, I am new to the whole facebook thing. ("How did you meet friends without facebook when you were in college?" my kids wonder.) I think of facebook as an electronic version of the obnoxious nosy neighbor sniffing out everything about you you'd rather keep private: who you talk to, who you email, IM, chat with, twitter, what you are buying (or even thinking of buying) online. For this reason, I am insulted to log on today (for the first time in weeks) and see an ad (just for me?):

Cure dandruff naturally.
The reduce dandruff brush discreetly kills 88 percent of the fungus that causes dandruff. Made from copper, a natural fungicide.

Um, shouldn't there be a hyphen between reduce and dandruff? But I suppose punctuation is too old school for new media.