Wallflowers need not apply

Coolness from Zappos

Mmm. . .Sexy

Ok. . .now I'll be the first to admit that I'm a huuuge fan of sexy. Sexy clothes, sexy cars, sexy ideas. If it's sexy, there's a good chance that my radar will pick it up, I'll check it out and give it some love. Good or bad, for better or for worse, sexy gets our attention, time and time again. The only problem though, is that often (and not neccessarily always), sexy is temporary, fleeting and surface. On many occasions sexy is the draw, with no main feature.

For the last eight years, social media, on a sexy scale from 1 to 10, has been a 12. Books have been written, gurus have staked their claim, and magazines have declared how it will change the way we live.

Now digital media is affecting how communication is beginning to be shaped here, early in the 21st century, but let's not get carried away.

Technology is great, but just because you're sexy today, doesn't mean you'll be sexy tomorrow. Being a media darling means nothing. What needs to be understood is: sustainability. Today's "products" of technology cannot exist in a vacuum.  There needs to be an understanding of how they relate to business and culture and how they impact, feed off, and converge with one another.  The web 2.0 echo chamber/hype machine is so loud about you needing to get on the train (before you get left) that being savvy, knowing what actually drives business, and understanding what real value is, gets lost somewhere in the shuffle. What can happen is that after it's all said and done, what you're left with is, a bunch of sexy tech fluff.  

A few examples:

Friendster - not successful (financially) until it was purchased by a South East Asian company, seven years after it was founded and used in conjunction with an e-commerce platform. The social part didn't generate revenue. The e-commerce platform probably will.

Myspace - Last year, in June, the Rupert Murdoch owned outfit slashed 30% percent of its workforce.  Additionally, traffic has been constantly declining and revenue (as of November 9, 2009) was down by 26 percent .

YouTube - Purchased by Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion dollars, has yet to get much bang for all those bucks. As stated by Trip Chowdhry of Global Equities Research, "YouTube has ended up being a management, operational and legal overhead and a drag.”

Twitter - Now last year in June I wrote about how Twitter was definitely being hyped above and beyond what it really was. I could have been wrong (it happens on occasion), but just a couple of months ago RJ metrics did their own twitter data analyis. A few conclusions:

• A large percentage of Twitter accounts are inactive, with about 25% of accounts having no followers and about 40% of accounts having never sent a single Tweet.
• About 80% of all Twitter users have tweeted fewer than ten times.
• Only about 17% of registered Twitter accounts sent a Tweet in December 2009, an all-time-low.

Now online social networks aren't going anywhere. They will continue to impact us and affect the market landscape, but it's time that the wheat get separated from the chaff. Spending time and resources on sexy is cool, no problem. Just keep in mind, if you've got an Aston Martin DB9, but with no gas. . .well that's an easy equation:

Sexy + Empty = Going Nowhere

The intersection is soooo sweet. . .

What happens when you converge motion graphics, stop motion animation and live action production into a one compelling piece...the badness. . .

Electrocinema

Go Gaga for creativity...not marketing

It's always interesting when folks are discussing "brands", "marketing" and "how to" tips. I often read and just shake my head thinking to myself "hmmm. . .close but no cigar."

It's like stating that a BMW is the ultimate driving machine by expressing how awesome the tires are, but not speaking to or understanding the significance of the engineering that makes it go.

I was especially thinking about this when I was reading  a blog post by Jackie Huba, discussing Lady Gaga and the "secret" to her success. Now from a documentation perspective, she does a great job in laying out some of the tactics that Lady Gaga has used to help her connect with her fan base in a very successful way. I think she misses the boat completely, though, by saying "There's a lot marketers can learn from artist and musician Lady Gaga."

It's almost as if Kobe were conducting a "how to make fans go wild" workshop with a session on doing between the legs, around the back dribbles, that turn into a fade-away, nothing but net, jump shots, for an audience of NBA coaches. Now coaches help to make teams successful, but they're not skilled at making crowds go wild with athletic, and creative abilities on the court. Coaches can learn about Kobe's skills but they'll never be able to do what he does.

Marketers can learn lessons from Lady Gaga but they're not going to be practical or very useful because:

#1. Her success is because of her, and the connection that exists between who she is and her own creativity. It's the internal gravity she has with her own "space" in the entertainment world that has allowed her the success that she has, and that creativity, on so many levels, is what's compelling. As mentioned in an Ad Age week article . . ."as all parties who work with her on her label, management and marketing teams cite Gaga herself as the ultimate brains behind many of her creative and social-media ideas and tactics."

#2. Marketers are not Lady Gaga. I've read, I don't know how many times, marketers say things like "want to present like Steve Jobs?...here are ten steps to be a great presenter (grrrrrrrr). You're not Steve Jobs. I'm not Steve Jobs, so you and I will never present like him.  Nobody is Lady Gaga except Lady Gaga so what she does will NOT work for you.  Find your voice, your skills, your creativity, and do you. 

The single biggest issue with brands is that there is very little creativity in terms of how they exist in the market or how to understand creativity with the right orientation. So the goal isn't for your brand to be creative in an "artist way", but to create and present, interestingly, the value of what you offer, from your own unique perspective.