Pinterest Bursts Onto the Scene

Pinterest has come out of nowhere to be the hot new story in social media.

For the uninitiated, Pinterest is a dandy way to share images you like on the web. You just download their little "Pin It" button and then select images you like, pinning them to "boards" on your Pinterest page.

What has made Pinterest particularly pin-teresting is that women 25-34 are the most active users of the site. It has quickly become a hub for fashion, beauty and housewares, and savvy brands have already launched Pinterest pages to get into the conversation.

And predictably, there is some blowback. Pinterest essentially lives off the images uploaded to the web by others, so the big question is: is Pinterest trying to build a business solely on someone else's intellectual property? On the other hand, so much of the web is about linking and sharing, where's the harm to any individual copyright holder of an image being shown on Pinterest?

We'll be discussing the way brands can capitalize on Pinterest on a Bulldog Reporter PR University webinar, and some of the possible speed bumps, on April 20.

Financial Services Firms Finally Making the Move Into Social Media Marketing

Banks, brokerages and other conservative financial services industry firms have been very, very slow to adopt social media marketing practices -- and for good reason.

The regulatory environment for financial services firms that sell their services to individuals and businesses is very strict, particularly around the kind of "loose talk" that is so common in social media. The companies employ very highly paid "compliance" officers, using trained and experienced corporate lawyers, whose job it is to say "no" to most of the kinds of marketing that unregulated companies use on a daily basis.

But to ignore social media marketing is to stay in the buggy-whip era when everyone else is moving to gas-powered cars.

How to get around the problem of strict regulation? One solid strategy is for financial services companies to create a library of approved content that staff members can tweet or blog or post on Facebook. Another is to use third-party software from players like Hearsay and SocialVolt that is built to allow Compliance to review social media posts before they go out. Firms such as Northwestern Mutual and Morgan Stanley are starting to test these sorts of initiatives.

But make no mistake -- this is still a difficult industry to move in to the social media. Scary example: it's not okay for a Facebook user to "like" a post by an investment adviser, as it constitutes illegal word-of-mouth marketing. I get the regulation, but sheesh, something is going to have to change, since social media isn't going away.

 

2011 Trends from Social Media Guru Charlene Li

Charlene Li of Altimeter Group

Charlene Li, one of my favorite social media pundits, gave a speech at the PRSA International Conference this week and then gave a “press conference” to those of us (including me) who were designated “press” for the conference.

Li said that like most analysts, she is in the midst of developing her “outlook” report for 2011, and she gave us a preview in the press conference.

The two big trends Li is watching as the year winds down are:

1. the rise of “social data” and “social search” and


2. our evolving feelings regarding privacy and permissions in social media

On social data, Li is watching to see how all the volumes of data we are generating in social media are used. Marketers and others are quickly realizing that social media users are providing reams of valuabe information about brands, trends, likes and dislikes, but are just now starting to figure out how to gather and analyze it.

On privacy and permissions, Li sees us moving away from protecting our privacy and toward managing the permissions we give web sites and our contacts. She likened the transition to what happened when Caller ID was first introduced. Peoples’ first reaction was that it was an invasion of privacy, but after awhile, as they realized that it had value, it became more about giving people useful information that reduced life’s friction.

Charlene Li Previews Her Top Trends for 2011

[caption id="attachment_1342" align="alignright" width="225" caption="Charlene Li of Altimeter Group"][/caption]

Charlene Li, one of my favorite social media pundits, gave a speech at the PRSA International Conference this week and then gave a “press conference” to those of us (including me) who were designated “press” for the conference.

Li said that like most analysts, she is in the midst of developing her “outlook” report for 2011, and she gave us a preview in the press conference.

The two big trends Li is watching as the year winds down are:

1. the rise of “social data” and “social search” and


2. our evolving feelings regarding privacy and permissions in social media

On social data, Li is watching to see how all the volumes of data we are generating in social media are used. Marketers and others are quickly realizing that social media users are providing reams of valuabe information about brands, trends, likes and dislikes, but are just now starting to figure out how to gather and analyze it.

On privacy and permissions, Li sees us moving away from protecting our privacy and toward managing the permissions we give web sites and our contacts. She likened the transition to what happened when Caller ID was first introduced. Peoples’ first reaction was that it was an invasion of privacy, but after awhile, as they realized that it had value, it became more about giving people useful information that reduced life’s friction.

viagra

Altace

VC and Private Equity Fundraising is Very Tough This Year

It's no secret in the world of venture capital and private equity  that it's not easy right now to raise new money to invest in portfolio companies. But at the PEI Investor Relations and Communications Forum last week, I picked up some interesting datapoints from Alexander Leykikh, a partner with Atlantic-Pacific Capital, a placement agent [meaning they raise money for private equity and venture capital funds for a fee]

He said that VCs and PE fund managers had been expecting a 25% reduction in the money committed to their funds by institutional investors, but that in reality, investors are cutting back by more like a 50% reduction. Furthermore, he added that only 75-80% of limited partners (investors) are re-upping.

Dan Primack on peHUB reported some data today about one fund that certainly seems to bear-out this trend. He reported that Polaris Venture Partners, which last raised a $1 billion fund, initially reduced its target for its latest fund to $500 million, but has since lowered it again to $400 million, and according to a regulatory filing, they've only raised $233 million it to date.

ABS Capital Has Embraced Social Media - Have You?

ABS Capital is a growth equity investment firm with more than $2 billion in capital under management. Unlike many venture capital and private equity firms, it has fully embraced social media and is currently working on a new web site to make it even easier for Internet users to connect with the firm and its portfolio companies.

Stephanie Carter, head of marketing and communications for the firm, spoke today at the PEI Investor Relations and Communications Forum.

Carter said most of her social media efforts have occurred during the past year, after she brought in a 25-year-old intern who worked her way into a full-time job and who is "reverse-mentoring" Carter.

The firm has a Facebook page and encourages its partners to have their own pages. In recognition of the fact that some people research the firm on LinkedIn, Carter has worked with partners to update their LinkedIn profiles even if they themselves don't use the service.

ABS uses Google Analytics to track traffic on its web site, and one of the key discoveries was that most visitors spent only three minutes on their site looking for information about the partners or portfolio companies. So the ABS web site is being redesigned to make it easier to find that information, with less emphasis on developing written content about the firm that few visitors were reading.

ABS is focused on later-stage investing, so it is constantly interested in connecting with company CEOs, senior executives and board members. By being active in social media, Carter said that ABS is telling these people, "wherever you want to meet us, fine."

What's perhaps most remarkable about this case study is that ABS Capital is not using social media because it has a particular interest in Internet companies or social media as an investment. It is using social media because it recognizes that it's a valuable business tool to help it achieve its objectives.

We All Need to Be "Brand Journalists"

We all need to be creating content and sharing it with the world. This is lesson #1 of the Internet.

Almost no one does enough of this -- we could all do more. Many people don't do any, and that's a mistake. More and more, people are looking for answers by searching the web, and those who are providing the right answers are getting the business, while those who are not, while perhaps not suffering immediately, will become more and more marginalized all the time.

David Meerman Scott uses the term "brand journalism" to describe what we all should be doing, and his definition is so accurate that I'm just going to paste it here:

Brand Journalism is when any organization—B2B company, consumer product company, the military, nonprofits, government agencies, politicians, churches, rock bands, solo entrepreneurs—creates valuable information and shares it with the world. Brand Journalism is not a product pitch. It is not an advertorial. It is not an egotistical spewing of gobbledygook-laden corporate drivel. Instead Brand Journalism is the creation of Web content—videos, blog posts, photos, charts, graphs, essays, ebooks, white papers—that deliver value to your marketplace and serve to position your organization as one worthy of doing business with.

Get it? Now get going. It doesn't need to be a treatise or your greatest thoughts. It needs to be a little value-add. A few paragraphs. An interesting photo or video. A link and a reason why you're sharing it. That's it. There are only two requirements: 1 -- doing it. 2 -- doing it with some level of consistency. On the later, 2-3 times a week is a good starting point.

Networking and the Art of Business Development

Every piece of paid work I have ever gotten as a consultant was the result of some form of networking. I've gotten a few expressions of interest and requests for proposals from people finding me on the Internet and elsewhere, but it has never yet translated into a paying gig.

If that's not a reason to be a good networker, I don't know what is.

While networking is more fun than cold-calling, it's still a lot of work and quite uncertain. You can never tell in advance if an event is going to be a good networking opportunity, and you can never tell who you will meet and who will or won't be a good referral source or a possible new client. You just have to wade in and give it your best shot.

I've obviously been pretty good at networking over the years, but I could always be better. With the uncertain economy, myself and many others are seeing networking as a way to refill the business pipeline and search for new business development opportunities.

Someone who is way ahead of me in the networking game is Elke Heiss, vice president of Sterling Communications, a high-tech PR firm. Elke goes to lots of industry events all the time, trolling for potential clients and new contacts. Elke has had consistent success using networking to gain new clients, including Think London, Clickability, Harris Broadcast and Telestream.

She recently blogged about her techniques over at Sterling's blog, Gearheads. You'll have to head over there to get all her advice, but here are some highlights:

• Business networking is the process of establishing a mutually beneficial relationship with other business people and potential clients and/or customers. The key phrase here is mutually beneficial.


• Don't sell. People who are more focused on handing out their business cards than in having a meaningful conversations are usually a real turn off. While your main short-term objective may be to uncover new business leads, keep in mind that your ultimate objective is to build long-lasting mutually beneficial relationships. Show sincere interest in the other person and try to add value where you can.


• Build long-lasting relationships. In order to keep the lines of communication open and stay top of mind long after the event is over, it’s important to have a stay-in touch plan.  Research has shown that you need to connect with people at least 6 to 9 times to build a long-lasting relationship. Find opportunities to add value and make your prospects' jobs easier. Send congratulatory notes, share industry tidbits, schedule lunches, or meet for coffee on a quarterly basis, and arrange to catch up at future industry events.

My Spinning class is a metaphor for how to market in today's world

I'm a new Spinning enthusiast -- I've been taking Step Aerobics for years, but I couldn't find enough classes to go to.

And that's where this story starts.

I love step aerobics -- it's very challenging, it's a derivative of dancing, which I love, and it's high energy.

But step is dying. Gym members don't really want to take step compared to other classes that are offered. Why? One big reason is that it's hard to learn -- even the easy steps. You've got to invest a few weeks looking and feeling like a dork before you can really feel at home in a step class.

That doesn't fly with today's gym-goer. They want a good experience from the get-go -- and really, who doesn't?

[Stay with me here -- this really does relate to marketing.]

The very first time I tried Spinning, I loved it. I got on a stationery bike in a room full of exercisers, and I pedaled and got a good workout. Yes, there was guidance from the instructor, but it was up to me to follow along as much as I wanted to. There was a nice music soundtrack to keep things lively, and the instructor's job is half to run the class and half to shout out encouragement. I've now been back a half-dozen times, and can't wait to go again.

Here are the marketing lessons I see in Spinning:

• It's easy to get involved, but it's not simplistic -- there's plenty you can do once you're acclimated


• It appeals to everyone -- if you can pedal, you can participate


• It treats everyone fairly -- there's no competition among participants, since we're all on stationery bikes. You can exercise as hard or as easily as you want, and no one can tell the difference


• It's a lot more fun because it's being done in a group

Spinning class seems to be a metaphor for how people want to be treated in today's world. That's why I wanted to write about it.

Last thought: Spinning and Facebook have a lot in common.

Even Coffee-mate is Trying to Attract the Millennials

A couple of weeks ago, I shared a great new study of the rising generation of "millennials," the newest generation to come of age and start to have real spending power (let's be honest here, that's what it's all about in the Land of King Dollar).

Then I saw a bus shelter ad that nailed it: an American consumer product, normally associated with the wheelchair set, finding a way to link itself to a generation that is smart, individualistic and inked. That brand: Coffee-mate, Nestle's non-dairy coffee creamer.

Check out this ad:

How Things Really Get Done in Private Equity and the NBA

There was a great Dilbert strip several years ago in which Dogbert was telling the Boss how to be more productive. He said “Put all of your high priorities on one list and your low priorities on another. Then do everything on both lists even it if kills you, otherwise you're a freakin' loser."

Then there is this quote that I recently came across and put up over my desk: “If knowledge was power, college professors would rule the world. Execution is power. Execution is everything.”

Too often in the rarified worlds of venture capital and private equity, there is a lot of talk about taking big risks and getting things done. But in practice, I see too much risk-aversion, too many decisions-by-committee, too many people posturing about being doers rather than actually getting things done. I think in Texas they call this, “all hat and no cattle.”

But getting things done is harder than it looks (otherwise, we wouldn’t be talking about it). In my experience, there’s actually a fair amount of emotional risk in trying to get things done – the chance that you will fail or fall short and be humiliated, the chance that you will be misunderstood and be mocked, and the very real chance that you will make decisions or choices that upset other people, who then share their unhappiness with you.

One way to ease the transition from “talking the talk” to “walking the walk” is to have role models. And that’s what prompted this article: two very interesting and different role models who specialize in getting things done. One is super-angel investor Ron Conway, and the other is NBA insider Wes Wesley.

In its most recent issue, ESPN The Magazine has a first-person anonymous account of Wesley’s influence inside the league, while Ben Horowitz of VC firm Andressen Horowitz shares his first-hand observations about the secrets to Conway’s success on his blog.

Some highlights:

• Conway is religious about maintaining his network and he has high expectations of the people in it


• Conway is always working, and is always available to be present in a situation when it calls for it


• "Super human courage" says Horowitz. "Ron fears no man and he definitely fears no phone call. When you ask Ron for help, you don’t have to wait a week while he warms up a connection."


• Wesley helps basketball players cope with fame and fortune, but doesn't have his hand out. He gets paid by others.


• Wesley tells it straight, even when it's hard. For instance, he told a player to dump most of his entourage, and he told an agent to clean up the appearance of another player's entourage.


• Both men value connections and actions over titles and status. Their networks are made up of doers, not talkers and posers.

Millennials are "Generation Next": Well Educated, Confident and Tattooed

I love how we neatly categorize people into the years they were born: "Boomers," "Gen-X," and now, "Millennials." You can debate whether these labels are overly simplistic, but here are the date ranges that social scientists use:

• Boomers: 1946-1964


• Gen-X: 1965-1980


• Millennials: 1980 - ??

For marketers and other communicators, what's important about these arbitrary age groups is that they remind us that we don't all think alike, especially if we are significantly different in age than other people we are trying to reach out and influence.

Given that most of my readers are either Gen-Xers or Boomers, the group to learn more about are the Millenials, those who are 30 years old and younger.

Luckily, the Pew Research Center has just put out a comprenhensive report on Millennials. You should have it bookmarked and you should refer to it as needed.

Here's the opening of their Executive Summary for a flavor of their report:

Millennials -- the American teens and twenty-somethings who are making the passage into adulthood at the start of a new millennium -- have begun to forge their [generational personality]: confident, self-expressive, liberal, upbeat and open to change.

They are more ethnically and racially diverse than older adults. They're less religious, less likely to have served in the military, and are on track to become the most educated generation in American history.

Their entry into careers and first jobs has been badly set back by the Great Recession, but they are more upbeat than their elders about their own economic futures as well as about the overall state of the nation.

They embrace multiple modes of self-expression. Three-quarters have created a profile on a social networking site. One-in-five have posted a video of themselves online. Nearly four-in-ten have a tattoo (and for most who do, one is not enough: about half of those with tattoos have two to five and 18% have six or more). Nearly one-in-four have a piercing in some place other than an earlobe -- about six times the share of older adults who've done this.

But their look-at-me tendencies are not without limits. Most Millennials have placed privacy boundaries on their social media profiles. And 70% say their tattoos are hidden beneath clothing.

Tiger Should Go With His "New Hugh" Persona

Now that the stories about Tiger Woods have descended from "marital woes" to "all out sex/party maniac," I think Tiger needs a new strategy:

Tiger should go full-steam ahead and plant his flag as "the new Hugh Hefner," or in my shorthand (trademark pending), "The New Hugh."

I'm serious here.



Hugh Hefner has made a bloody fortune screwing beautiful women and leading the party life. But he's ooollllddd. I can't believe he's still going strong, supposedly.

Hugh ain't gonna last forever. We need a new role model, a new Adonis to do all the things we dream about: Tiger.

He's incredibly handsome.

He's incredibly rich.

He's one of the greatest athletes in the world.

He's one of the greatest commercial pitchmen in the world.

He's perfect.

Go for it, my man.  Stock your mega-yacht Privacy with hot-and-cold running hotties, Cristal and pate, enjoy it and cash in on it.

You have nothing left to lose.

What the heck is U-verse? AT&T doesn't make it easy to find out.

I've been planning an upgrade of the TV set-up in my house, and have started to research the options. It is almost a full-time job.

On the hardware side, the options are pretty straight forward -- HD or not, 720 or 1080, LCD (cheaper) or LED (much more expensive).

But on the content side -- that's another story. And not just which channels to get -- it's how to get them. You can get free TV (digital signal only), all sorts of cable packages, all sorts of satellite packages, and even TV from the phone company. If you have AT&T phone service, then the phone company's offering is called U-verse.

But what, exactly, is U-verse?

I was intrigued by U-verse and so decided to research it to see if it was right for us. First, I went into an AT&T store in the neighborhood. Bad idea. Take a number, have a seat, and wait your turn to have a sales rep (who's handling everything from iPhone to Blackberry to U-verse) talk to you. OK, I'll call AT&T and surf the web.

At this point, I still didn't know what U-verse was. With the other options, it's pretty obvious -- it's in the name. But U-verse is some made up corporate brand, and it's not like there's a generic category that's obvious.

Finally, when I reached a rep on the phone, I got the basics: it's a fiber-optic signal that comes to a box in your house and then that box distributes the signal wirelessly to boxes attached to your TVs, using Internet Protocol, or IP.

Wow -- wireless IPTV. Very modern.

But I wondered -- how's the signal? How's the picture? How do people like it?

Again, it was a research project. It took a few attempts at phrasing my question to Google before typing in "quality of U-verse service" and getting some answers. The basic answer: it's OK, not great. And it's complicated to set up.

So there you have the answer to "what the heck is U-verse?" But my questions for AT&T are just starting: such as, why isn't it obvious in your materials how the technology works? How come I can't see a demo of a typical installation? Why haven't you attempted to allay my concerns about how a wireless signal is going to travel around my two-story house? (I'm not the only target customer who lives in one, you know)

So I decided to write a blog post about this because this is not as much a technology problem as a marketing communications problem.

Bottom line: I'm probably going to stay away from U-verse because of these unanswered questions and stick with a better understood alternative, either cable or satellite.

Cartoon Network, Gays in the Military and Other Things 18-Year-Olds Think

As promised, here's a link to the Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2013, i.e., 18-year-old freshmen born in 1991 who are now entering college. According to this super-helpful list:

• There has always been a Cartoon Network.


• The status of gays in the military has always been a topic of political debate.


• The nation’s key economic indicator has always been the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).


• The Green Giant has always been Shrek, not the big guy picking vegetables.


• They have never used a card catalog to find a book.


• Margaret Thatcher has always been a former prime minister.


• Salsa has always outsold ketchup.


• Earvin "Magic" Johnson has always been HIV-positive.

And on and on. A few weeks back, I gave you a link to the report for now-19-year-olds in the Class of 2012. The Beloit Mindset list gets published annually to remind those us who are a bit older than the newest adults have very different world views than we do.

Obama is Blowing the Health Care PR Battle

I’m stunned by the amateur approach of Obama and his White House team to the PR aspects of health care insurance reform. While the opponents of the plan have done a masterful job of ginning up opposition to change, the White House has been caught napping and clueless.

I kept waiting to see if the Obama team was just waiting for the right time to roll out its effort, but now that the news is that the White House is “firing back” at critics, it’s obvious that they went to Plan B because they didn’t have a Plan A.

Where, for example, is the Mile High Stadium version of a health care reform rally?

Where are the heart-rending stories from ordinary citizens who will be helped by the plan?

Where is the demonization of the huge interests who are opposed to reform?

Where is the one-pager that describes to the average citizen what the benefits of the plan are?

Why is it that even I, an informed and highly educated citizen, can’t tell you a thing about what’s in it for me and my family?

This last point is the reason why these wingnut shouters at Congressional town hall meetings are having so much success — because the absence of a common understand of “what’s in it for me” has created a vacuum and an opportunity to create a fear of “what I have to lose.”

It’s too late now to fundamentally change the game. The best the Obama people and supporters of reform can hope for is that the screamers will hit the limit of their effectiveness and that the Democratic majorities in Congress will deliver an acceptable reform bill.

Really helpful guide to the mindset of 18-year-olds

I'm 50. So as hard as I might try, I have no clue what people under 40 think about the world. I remember when Johnson was president. I watched the moon landing. I lived through Vietnam and Watergate.

A heck of a lot of people didn't do any of those things, because they weren't alive yet. Just like I have no clue about living through WW II or the Eisenhower years. Wasn't born yet.

To get a kick in the head about how people entering adulthood see the world, check out the Beloit College Mindset list. It's a compilation by some brainiacs at Beloit College about the sensibilities of the incoming freshman class. The list for the Class of 2012 is their most current (last year's class). When they release this year's list, I'll post an update.

Here are some of their observations about people in the U.S. who are now 19 years old and if they are in college, starting their sophomore years:

• GPS satellite navigation systems have always been available.


• Gas stations have never fixed flats, but most serve cappuccino.


• Electronic filing of tax returns has always been an option.


• Girls in head scarves have always been part of the school fashion scene.


• WWW has never stood for World Wide Wrestling.


• Films have never been X rated, only NC-17.


• The Warsaw Pact is as hazy for them as the League of Nations was for their parents.


• Students have always been "Rocking the Vote.”


• Clarence Thomas has always sat on the Supreme Court.

Their lists go back to the class of 2002 -- people who would be in their late 20s now.

Why should you care? Because people you may be pitching or working with may very well be in this cohort, and if you want to work with them successfully, it helps to have a cultural frame of reference.

Does Obama Need a Hail-Mary PR Pass on Health Care Reform?

Back from Vegas, where the famously in-touch Vegas taxi drivers were 100% against Obama's health care plan. Why? Who the hell knows. Probably because the right wingnuts on talk radio are tearing it down.

But there's a serious grain of reality in these man-on-the-street insights. Eight months ago, Obama's PR machine had created a feel-good climate in which you would not have heard a Vegas taxi driver disparaging the President-elect. Now, everyone's a critic. Why? Because, in my opinion, the Obama people haven't done as good a PR job as they could and should selling this health care plan to the American people.

This should be a no-brainer -- the facts are on their side. But Obama seems unable to close the deal. In this case, he seems incapable of clearly articulating in plain, clear and compelling lanugage how this plan will reform the health care system so more Americans get better and cheaper care.

I'm not clear on the politics of the situation -- maybe he knows that the Democratic majorities will give him a good enough bill to sign and so he doesn't need public opinion to be on his side. But I can't see where appearing weak and defensive on this critical issue could serve either his current cause or future causes.

Maybe the guy is human after all.

Having Some Fun With Your Web Site

It doesn't all have to be serious -- you can have some fun with your business-oriented web site. For instance, I've decided to add my Springsteen writing to this web site.

But that's nothing compared to the awesome job these guys have done with their VC firm web site, Foundry Group. I'm also a big U2 fan so I recognized the poses immediately. And doesn't Brad Feld (3rd from left) look a little like Bono?

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="Main image on Foundry Group's home page"][/caption]

Ticketmaster Tries to Solve a Big Problem With a Little PR Push

One of the most important lessons of crisis communications is that most crises are not communications problems, they're operational problems. Communications can help in many ways to diffuse a crisis and calm people down, but if the operational issue at the heart of the problem isn't addressed, no amount of PR spin is going to distract interested parties from that fact.

This, is a nutshell, is my fan-level reaction to Ticketmaster's new PR ploy involving its captive reseller program, TicketsNow. Ticketmaster had a big problem earlier this year when it was caught transferring ticket seekers from the original ticket onsale screen to the TicketsNow resale screen, where the same tickets that had just gone on sale were now supposedly only available for huge markups on TicketsNow.