More Than Media, Social Is a Behavior.
Sometimes technology can be dazzling and amazing and everything seems either complicated or complex. Things are certainly different today than they were yesterday or 10 years ago. (Just ask Myspace, right?)
Ultimately, though, the object of the game is providing people with either a reason to try or, better yet, a reward for doing something.
That's why my approach to all things digital or technological is to put a person and a human need at the center of it. That's why I think of 'social' as something more than a media.
Social promotion
Naming YOLO was a hit ahead of a hit.
I worked with a Denver marketing entrepreneur in naming a social shopping platform "YOLO." The idea was to create a name that would identify with an audience interested in supporting not just local businesses but local causes. Because Denver is a extremely active community - many of the offerings involve adventures, interests and passions. YOLO has continued, as they say, to do well by doing good.
A year later, in 2011, there was a song "The Motto" that mentioned YOLO...but that's a little bit different story.
INTEL - tweetfitter
This was a special project launched by a colleague. We had been watching brands enter the twitter-sphere and noticing how little nuance or appeal was part of the equation.
We landed this project for INTEL as part of their trial of different digital media in support of holiday season platforms. Our work met the deadline - the others didn't- so we had the benefit of running as the only promotion.
Our approach introduced a few new wrinkles to the conventional twitter approaches and the results were substantial spikes across all the measures including not just click-throughs but time on pages.
Engineering an idea.
The short story is engineers tend to think about things. I think about people. By sitting with engineers and listening to them - we ended up creating something of a discovery.