Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

It’s something my company, Marqui, pioneered four years ago, and (in doing so) launched an ethical debate that still rages today. This week there have been some very interesting debates on the ethics of sponsored social media because Forrester just issued a report called “Add Sponsored Conversations to your Toolbox.”

(I have to admit, I haven’t read it. At $749, I wonder how many will download the 8-page document… but I digress.)

Over at RWW, Marshall Kirkpatrick took issue with Forrester’s stance in a post titled “Forrester is Wrong about Paying Bloggers“. There’s fascinating dialogue between Marshall and Jeremiah Owyang, (one of the authors of the report) in the comments, as well as others chiming in - so take a moment to read them if you can.

In a post on his personal blog yesterday, Jeremiah listed brands and how they’re paying for marketing their products through the social web - including bloggers.  From Dairy Queen to Mercedes, big brands are experimenting with social media and enticing others with offers to play with them.

I’m absolutely fine with that, but did find (at Marqui) that our brand’s voice wasn’t heard in the debate until we began blogging ourselves, and engaging in the conversations that we were pulled into once the firestorm broke out.

The is NO substitute for having a seat at the table when people are talking about you - and yes, even for you.

So go ahead. Let folks drive your cars, eat your bars and give coupons to their readers… why not? But there are three things you must embrace - having been the impetus of this great debate - from WOMMA’s  Code of Ethics:

Honesty of Relationship: You say who you’re speaking for
Honesty of Opinion: You say what you believe
Honesty of Identity: You never obscure your identity

And I have to admit, it’s fun to watch the sparks fly, four years later, and have them scorching others for once. My hair’s grown back and I’m now concentrating on helping brands protect themselves from what I had to go through in the olden days…

In early January the CDC and FDA warned of salmonella in peanut products from the Peanut Corporation of America, a peanut plant located in GA. One of my clients, the Academic Network, jumped into action once early indicators began to surface.

(They’re a Stericycle company, whose job it is to help manage recalled peanut and peanut paste products by getting them out of stores and destroying them.)

The Academic Network’s role is to provide health care professionals to help answer questions about product recalls, and provide the social media “listening” services necessary to help companies anticipate product recall issues.

I set up the listening systems for them, and help monitor them during crises like this, the largest food recall in history.

Anticipating Risks to Mitigate Them

We started monitoring the web (Twitter, Facebook, other social media sites) for conversations about peanuts, and the experience was quite amazing.

Some highlights:

• We were able to predict the spread of the recall from people to pet food - days before any announcement
• We predicted the spread of fear from peanut products to peanut butter in jars weeks before peanut butter jar sales dropped off by 25%
• We reached out to associations (like the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association and the American Peanut Council) to help them handle the huge job of getting the right information out to people online. No one listened.
• People talk about peanut butter online a lot (probably second only to bacon) and we watched the hysteria grow exponentially the day after the inauguration, when Tweets and posts like this appeared:

…and it really hasn’t stopped. Victims of the peanut recall are not only the poor unfortunate souls, families and pets who ate the tainted stuff; but the businesses who are losing millions in sales of perfectly good products.

Traditional Response Fell on Deaf Ears - While Hysteria Grew

As the fear of peanuts, peanut paste and peanut butter spread in that first few weeks, no one from the food industry proactively reached out to consumers online. If they did, I didn’t see it.

Oh, sure, there were press releases announcing that products were safe, but unless you were subscribing via RSS to certain key phrases, they were falling on relatively deaf ears - as evidenced by the falling sales of peanut butter products of all kinds.

Apparently the food industry (and those who represent them) are glacially slow in their platforms and processes; and were unable to react to the needs of consumers and deliver information in the right channels of communication.

Meanwhile, Online…  People Reached Out to Help

From the beginning, the confusion was mitigated slightly when news reporters, bloggers, Tweeters and others shared links to the FDA site where, (weeks later) they’ve finally added search capability to help navigate the growing list of tainted products.

In a highly unusual - and I’ll bet expensive - move, today you’ll see ads and coupons in papers across the country from companies like ConAgra and Smuckers attempting to tell consumers their products are safe. That’s one way to try to recoup confidence in products.

And I’m finally seeing Google ads from providers - not just trial lawyers - on peanut butter searches:

Learning Our Lessons - Stopping the Spread of Fear

What should we do next time? (And there will be a next time, just change the food source and product…)

• Association sponsorship of a social web site dedicated to quelling the myths around recalled products, staffed by nutritionists, nurses and doctors - why not? It takes no time to put one up - if you know what you’re doing. And you can answer questions in near-real time. Imagine the resource that would be to consumers.
• Point searchers to it using PPC advertisements - engage search behavior to spread the word
• Mobilize the millions of social media connectors to get the word out - give us good information, and we’re delighted to help out

One of the pictures (and I love pictures) I’m most proud of during this mess is this one, from Google Insights:

See the regional interest in the recall? The Portland-based team supporting the Academic Network’s efforts has been highly engaged - and it shows.

I just hope next time we’ll have some industry partners interested in hearing how they might leverage the knowledge we’ve gained from this terrible scare much earlier in the process.

I’m sure there would have been millions of dollars in savings, much less hysteria, and (perhaps even) lives saved as a result.

This is a note I’m sending to my valued friends and family. I think it’s a great representation of what I’m doing in 2009 that’s different for me.

1. I’m repackaging my services to be extremely relevant to what brings me most joy and defines my best work
2. I’m asking (at the ripe old age of a Baby Boomer in full swing) for what I want (that’s very hard for me to do)
3. I’m asking my friends to help me realize my dreams of doing great work

As you read this note, think about how you might do something similar - need to refresh your services? Want to be more relevant in today’s markets?

I’m a firm believer that people love to help each other out, which is one reason I spend a good piece of every week networking with others, and in communicating in the social media realm… So here’s my note, in case it prompts some thoughts for you and your brand. And in the spirit of walking the talk… It’ll be interesting to see who ‘gets’ both the email and the blog post.

:::::::::

January 2009 - the sands of change are moving underfoot. The questions for many of us are: How will we keep our hopes and energy high, and how will we play a part in creating positive change?

I’ve decided to focus on enabling businesspeople to use social media.  I’m writing today to both encourage you to join the conversation, and to ask for your support in growing my business.

Here’s the context as I see it:

• Much of the world is shifting from defensiveness to diplomacy. Listening and learning are increasingly valued as organizational practices.
• People are turning to each other for information, transformative and sustainable ideas, products and support. Word Of Mouth is increasingly important in consumer and B2B decision processes.
• Technology is facilitating these connections largely without regard to geographic boundaries. And communities – like synapses – are forming around ideas, causes and concerns.

I’m focusing my work on businesses – from PR and advertising firms to product and service organizations – being in shape to safely enter online conversations online using social media tools and practices.

In a time when marketing budgets are being slashed to save jobs, social media is becoming an increasingly viable communications option.  What companies need in order to get desired results are: education, preparation and tools. Social media tools are relatively free, and measurable benefits await those who learn how to strategically implement a social media plan.

I’m ready and able to ensure that strategy, training, tool selection and launch of social media marketing fit each business like a glove. Most organizations can get the job done in 90 days. As you think social media, I would appreciate it if you thought of me.

I’d love to speak with you or your trusted partners and colleagues about what works and what doesn’t, and share some of my recent experiences. Of course, you can find some of this on my blog at www.janetleejohnson.com.

Want to jump in? I’ll call soon…

Cheers,

Janet

This morning I got an email from HighBeam Research letting me know my year-long subscription was almost up. In the note, it politely let me know exactly what would happen if I took no action:

I had found it to be a good research tool especially for clients in the health or biotech space, as it had catalogued many esoteric medical journals, etc. But not for $299.95. I decided to cancel my subscription. The friendly email reminder told me exactly how to do so, by clicking the customer service link in my account.

Imagine my surprise when I was made a special offer for those about to cancel:

I wasn’t surprised to see the special offer, that made sense. But see that last sentence there?

“…your annual membership will automatically return to the regular rate of $199.95 a year after one year.”

Having just been told my credit card would be automatically charged $299.95 for my next year, you can bet my next action was to say, “No thanks. Cancel my membership.”

Have I mentioned that nowhere on the Customer Service page was there an option to either speak with or chat with a representative?  (I could submit a form that would be answered within one business day. Never mind.)

I was a little nervous that canceling my membership early would shut down my account today (rather than waiting until Jan. 3) but was so irritated by their marketing and pricing inconsistencies that I took the chance. It would have been nice for them to spell that out on the cancellation page.

I was happy to find that I still had use of my subscription and a link on the cancellation confirmation page to a “billing questions” email form. So I sent them just a little feedback there… And Twittered about it, and am now blogging about it. I wonder which of my rants (if any) will get a response?

To try to milk people with accounts set up to auto-renew is appalling. I know many companies bank on auto-renew as their main source of recurring revenue… (how many of us ignore these messages/forget to call to cancel, etc.)

But to have your marketing be so out of touch with your billing policies (perhaps they submit forms to each other as feedback) in this day and age, is simply absurd.

I hear Google Book Search is now indexing magazine content. Undoubtedly, even the esoteric medical journals.

I think I’ll be just fine or now without HighBeam Research.

I’m working with a company in Redwood City, CA, called Smub. Think what you want about the name (I’ve been told ‘I love it,’ ‘I hate it,’ ‘it’s like a porn name…’), what it does is pretty cool.

With Smub, I can shrink and personalize any URL into a memorable link that I can easily share - and it also saves my links in a personal bookmark area in case I forget my “memorable” links. (Which happens.)

I wrote about how easy it is to share Smubs, even at 50MPH here earlier. (And over on the Smub blog I’ve been writing about how to set Smub up, how to use the Smub toolbar, and how Smub’s bookmarks work.) BTW, Smub is free, you just have to register for it.

I’ve honestly had many of my search, saving and storing habits transformed in a few short weeks using Smub. Here’s how:

My Smub Experience

To make a Smub, I just type in smub.it/ to the left of the http:// in the address bar of the page I want to personalize, save or share:

A window pops up and I’ve got the ability to name my Smub - I generally try to be contextual (vs. clever) in my naming scheme (clever usually trips me up later).

For example: this Smub (http://smub.it/jlj/90.9.1) is from the Forrester blog, and describes the 90:9:1 principle, whereby 90% of people read blogs, 9% will comment on them, and only 1% write them in comparison to their social technographics study, just released. (One thing that bugs me right now about Smub is that it’ll automatically change any character - like a colon - into a period. We’ll see if that can’t be changed as part of Beta.)

What’s cool is that anyone can access a Smub, whether they’re registered or not.

From here, I can give my friend Jacob up at Sur la Table a little more background on the concept, which we discussed last night over manhattans and martinis. (I’m certain my explanation at the time was enthusiastic, but a bit muddled…).

If I see him today, I can tell him the Smub, or I can email it to him, Tweet it, post it to my Facebook profile, or my MySpace page.

I usually tag my Smubs for recollection later in my personal bookmarks and can designate a Smub as “shareable” or “personal.” I have created personal Smubs for my bank login page, two clients’ Basecamp accounts, and for the three different email accounts I keep for clients.

The freedom and simplicity of a personal bookmark page is very cool, as I can access my Smubs from any computer (or my iPhone) connected to the web. I no longer have to clutter my browser or my iPhone with bookmarks, or be tied to my own system to be productive.

Sharing Searches, Sharing Sites

But the sharing capabilities go way beyond email, Twitter, Facebook and MySpace…

Now, I can set up a search in Craigslist for my friend Britt, looking for a marketing job in a non-profit organization in the Portland area. She doesn’t use Craigslist, so I can easily do the work for her, and she can check her Smub anytime to see the most recent listings for jobs in the PDX area - you can, too, by heading over to http://smub.it/jlj/marketingnonprofit.

It’s a handy way to share what you can do with those who might not be familiar with the sites you are.

I was on a web conference the other day where one of the invitees didn’t have the email with her access URL handy. Had the organizer Smubbed the page, she could have simply logged on by typing http://smub.it/_____/______. So easily readable, and quick to communicate over the phone.

But what I’m really excited about is the ability to share my Smubs with those who have the Smub toolbar installed. As I mentioned on the Smub blog, it’s a great way to shortcut shortcuts. Anyone who’s downloaded the Smub toolbar can flip among Smubs incredibly easily:

All I’d have to do is tell you the account (jlj) and the “Smubcut” 90.9.1 and you’re there. To see a video of Smub, you can switch to the “janet” account and type in “video.”

Or to see Thierry’s friend Mike’s bio, which he Smubbed for me, anyone with Smub can simply choose “thierry” and “mike.”

Imagine how easily you’d be able to share information with your work team. Two words is all you’d have to share. Go to ________, the Smub user name, and ________, the page.

Personal, memorable, easily shareable.

Smub.

It’s my new favorite tool. And I’m lucky to have ‘em as a client, too.