Headless Body Seeks Topless Rule - OWS Town Hall Meeting

What Happened at the OWS Town Hall Meeting?
Social Media Insiders Explain the Real Significance of Open Source Thinking and Self-Managed Groups

Headless Body Seeks Topless Rule

If it weren’t for the fight that broke out in the second hour of this Town Hall Meeting it would have been merely interesting. Social Media has gone from a dating, teen popularity management and marketing phenomenon to a revolutionary movement thanks to Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, Spanish indignados and so on.

When a Wall Streeter at the meeting objected to being photographed after making an impassioned statement about how hard he worked and how much he deserved the American Dream, the clash of cultures became apparent.

Any netizen would accept being photographed in a public setting as simple transparency but his group saw it as a violation of privacy. Social Media, when applied to organizations that only know top-down management of the opaque kind is an existential threat. Keeping out of the news is a big deal. Showing your face is asking for trouble.

That generational divide is evident at many levels. Even the founder of Social Media and our lead speaker, Andrew Weinreich, who created the prototypical social media site, sixdgrees.com back in the 90’s, had doubts about the power of this movement because the numbers, he noted, are still small. Only a few thousand show up at Zucotti Park vs. millions in the Arab World, Spain or for that matter, Israel. Even the money it has raised, is a mere $500,000. Obama will raise $1 billion for his next campaign.

He would not be alone - industry types often underestimate its power because they saw this as a consumer business and not a battleground for the politically disenchanted who would be so inspired as to put themselves in harm’s way. Nevertheless, most of the public seems to get the potential. They are well aware that just one police strike generated 953 Occupy movements in 84 countries within days. 

Headless Group Seeks a Topless Government.

The recurring complaint is that Occupy Wall Street has too many messages. Perhaps. Yet anytime they focus on one, it can be devastating. The numbers on the ground may small but the numbers at home or on their smartphones are immense. Americans may like to do their protesting from their couches but as long as a symbolic number are willing to take to the streets, the power of Social Media seems to hold.

What we are really witnessing is the battle testing of open source thinking vs. the old hierarchies. Like the civil war, where the bullets were more powerful than the military strategies of the day, there may be large and unexpected casualties. This may be more powerful than its creators imagined and harder for people in power to resolve than they know.

Thanks to our meeting, we have generated a few ideas - but they won’t be easy.

Legless and Headless

The courts may be the next testing ground. Yetta Kurland, is a legal activist and TV host who helps represent a Law society observer at an OWS protest who was run down by a police motorcycle. The police use these vehicles to control crowds and in the past, if an innocent person got in the way that was just too bad. They will arrest them, make up a story and bring them before the courts which would generally assume that the police are telling the truth. In this case there are widely distributed videos showing that the police mowed down this innocent observer, trapped him under the wheels of the vehicle and then beat and cuffed him as he writhed in pain. He now has to defend himself in court against some type of obstruction of justice charge. This charade continues even though the video is common knowledge thanks to YouTube and numerous cable TV news shows. One would imagine that the charges will be dropped but the issue will probably wind up costing the city dearly when it goes to Civil Court. The biggest cost to the NYPD, however, will be their credibility. Somewhere, heads will roll and a new management will have to rethink their practices in a world where everyone is watching.

Media Reorganization

Greg Galant, the founder of the Shorty Awards, arguably the “Oscars of the Twitterverse” talked about its impact on media. Journalists are now using Social Media tools like Storify, Klout and Hootsuite to keep tabs on the movement. Equally significant is the reshuffling of the media ecosystem – the blogosphere is generating stories that feeds the mainstream coverage while doing its own coverage of the traditional media’s reporting. Now that Google+ is adding journalists’ bios to the net, there is a channel for readers to communicate with them, thereby making the conversation interactive in all media.  Besides, as Kurland pointed out, the mayors and police chiefs are using Social Media to discuss the issues among themselves too - Social Media’s influence has become inescapable.

What Color is Your Social Media Parachute?

John Havens, the author “Tactical Transparency” cites Facebook’s 900 million users and $21Bn in ad sales as the transformational issue in the business world. If CEOs haven’t already been alerted by those numbers, then the Occupy movement is surely their ultimate wake up call – and the Social Media industry’s single greatest advertisement. Companies need a crisis protocol for Social Media. More importantly, CMO’s must know that the brand doesn’t entirely belong to them although they bear ultimate responsibility for it. Jet Blue still seems to be the poster child for this type of approach, with CEO David Neeleman responding to customer issues with a heartfelt and slightly ruffled apology on YouTube. Admission of responsibility and promises to change seem to be the mantra. To keep the promise, JetBlue now has a team of people with the power to respond to Twitter complaints on the spot. The last storm showed that the problem could sill recur, yet so far the response has been relatively tepid.

Damn You – I’m Good

Stuart Tracte, who runs his own geek talk show “Beer Diplomacy” notes that Apple has no Social Media effort to speak of. Steve Jobs put out occasional text statements when he hurt his faithful and almost none of their products are actually made in the US. He just makes a “damned good product and you want it.” From Stuart’s perspective, OWS is not a Social Media movement as much as a human movement: people don’t want business in their government. They want to end that unless, of course, that business is as good as Apple’s.

Topple the Banks

Co-host, TJ Walker of Worldwide Media Training noted that the movement lacked the kind of single message that animated the anti-Vietnam War and Civil Rights movements. He announced his own eBook “Bust up the Big Banks” as an antidote to this, since the banks in his opinion, are the real issue. Then again, as he noted, thanks to Social Media he is now competing with 40 books on the topic of Occupy Wall Street.

Too Promotional to Fail

So where’s this all going? The city believes that winter will put OWS out of business but I doubt that. What better advertisement for a hip new camping company than supplying them with thermal tents and sleeping bags? Ski clothing is so good these days that freezing temperatures are just a fun fact. The movement only needs a few hundred people to keep their foothold – any number of interchangeable volunteers who can do this in shifts seem to be endlessly available thanks to the 10% unemployment figures.

Going Public About Being Public

Generally, the powerful will try to co-opt the groups they can’t crush. But OWS is a leaderless group. There are key influencers but they could be anywhere and if co-opted they could be replaced at any time by another influencer. Over time, it is quite possible that the group will dig in. If they raise enough money, they can buy the protest property they want or, in the ultimate irony of ironies – they could go public. They generate income, so why not sell stock? In theory, they could wind up acquiring the companies they oppose – the first publicly traded anti-Wall street company on a hostile takeover frenzy. When you consider that the NASDAQ OTC has not one but two technically illegal medical marijuana companies, MJNA and CANA, the idea is not so far-fetched.

Headless vs Bodyless: The End of Two Party Democracies

The real issue is this clash of civilizations: what happens when an amorphous, open source group organizes synchronously and multinationally against the World Order? Anyone who has grown up with Wikipedia knows that it works. Anyone who grew up with a set of Encyclopedia Britannicas still can’t accept that it’s for real. Democracies are really based a binary system – its either Democrats or Republicans, Labor or Management with a revocable dictatorship granted to the majority. Over time, the power concentrates near the top where it is open to manipulation by the highest bidder. That might have been fine when there were majorities but today we are more diverse and the ruling party is really the one with the best plurality of constituents of which most are not really served.

As Ross Perot and Jack Nader proved, we can’t handle a third or fourth or fifth party but in an open source environment, you can sustain a plurality of voices without affecting the core functioning of the system. Most governments, when not unduly influenced by special interests, can function quite well in a transparent, self-organizing, user-operated fashion. That would lower costs and doom a lot of bureaucratic guilds whose first priority are self-protection and poliferation.

On the other hand, leaders can try to learn from Apple: become a cool cult while providing incredibly good and inventive programs.

The public may stand to benefit either way.

Warning: to be a cult you must have somehow died and come back to life. On the other hand, if you are incredibly good and inventive in politics, your opponents will help you with the former.

See article in NY Convergence 

Video Highlights to come

What if Corporate America Actually GOT Word of Mouth & Social Media Marketing?

Plus - a few thoughts about Mad Men, Apple and some other exploits

By Alan Brody

As co-sponsors of Andy Sernovitz’s Word of Mouth Supergenius event on July 21, I finally get a chance to weigh in on a number of issues that have been weighing on me for a while।

Social Media is hot, most players are making very little money out of it but it does provide low cost advertising if you don’t mind doing the work and more importantly, reinventing who you are. That’s the part that gets me and it really showed up at the Word of Mouth summit because WOM is about the idea and not the medium, which is what Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and all those social media are।

The reason these media can be so annoying is because most people are using them poorly. It's as if the New York Times offered all comers free ads. The average person has nothing to say except "Hey I’m going to the beach and I love cotton candy.” Actual marketers go hey, we can do what we did for free and they find ways to spam you. Most realize they have to give something away, and so they organize games, offers and promotions – which is something they understand and that definitely works, but only for a while।

Only the really smart understand they have to be something different। That’s where the gurus kick in. Be lovable. Be outstanding. Be honorable. Be a cult. Be a linchpin and so on.

Now for the fun part. How many of these corporations could actually do that? How many popular products are remotely outstanding? Even if the conference attendees get it, imagine the conversation when they get back to the board room. You want us to what? We can get sued. We don’t want to talk to the consumers. We aren’t like that…॥ B-school never trained us to give up control to the customer and so on।

This leads me to Mad Men because, as a student in 50’s advertising research I can tell you that corporate America was similarly shook by a cultural shift when Madison Avenue was introduced to the unconscious। It wound up with the kinds of odd interactions you see in Mad Men. Except there, the client just had to OK an ad and hold on. With WOM/Social Media, they actually have to change.

So here’s a quick breakdown of this cultural gap as evidenced with our Supergenius interactions।
 

1.   Tony Hsieh and Zappos.  Use your customers as your advertising by indulging them – with the money you save on customer acquisition, you can afford to indulge them, thus attracting more customers। True and Tony is an amazing exemplar of the CEO who lives and breathes his mission। Hard to imagine BP following this (they should). One secret advantage about the shoe business – as my 50’s motivational researchers pointed out। “To women don’t sell shoes, sell beautiful feet।” In other words if you want to wrap your feet in a bargain you go to Payless but if you want to indulge your foot beauty fetish then the unique people at Zappos are there to oblige. And no one in their right mind asks their fetish master for a discount. Except Elliot Spitzer - and look what happened to him!

2.   Who really knows what they are doing? PR Exec talks about creating stories – that sell। WOM is not just about telling stories – it's about telling stories that make you want to tell other people. That drives them toward an action that leads to becoming a customer of some kind. So my reasonable question is – you’re an agency, how do you test which story ideas will work. Answer: we don’t - if Henry Ford asked farmers they would have told him they wanted a faster horse. My answer is yes, and that horse is called a Mustang. Research is not the answer - it is guidance for your creativity.

      Gevalia reinvented itself in Social Media because its affiliate marketing program made it look like a spammer। Many companies are probably viewing Social Media as a cheap ad or ethical spam machine. Gevalia did the right thing and got their customers in on the action – made them heroes, part of a club that even helped named their product. It also happens to be extraordinarily good, if expensive coffee. Now, could you imagine if Kraft or General Mills or Hormel went up that warm and fuzzy route. Wanna blog about Kraft American Cheese, PopTarts? Join their fan group. Read their labels?

4.   Culting of Brands.  Wiley was all over this conference with their Social Media Marketing Books so this is ground zero of who buys and arguably, reads these books. Flip the Funnel (spoil your existing customers and stop chasing for more and more prospects at their expense) or the Marketing Lessons of The Grateful Dead (acid sells!), Ignore Everyone Else and so on are read and paid attention to here. But imagine if you tried to turn Exxon into a cult. Or Chrysler. Or General Mills.

Steve Jobs and Apple come up a lot। So here’s the memo: the word cult comes from the Latin “cultus deus” - the care and worship of gods. So unless you are willing to deal with life and death (most cult brands have come back from the dead, overcame some amazing obstacle or represent people who did - and don't forget the Grateful Dead) don’t waste your time. Settle for fickle fans. This way you go home at 5 and have the weekends with your families. PS there is no second coming for BP or Napster. But they can try.

5.   Be a linchpin.  Right – and get ready to lose your job. Companies hate irreplaceable people and if you are one, they will spend a lot of time thinking about how to replace you. Not only that, but you become a target for all the other company wannabes. Not that you shouldn’t strive for this but without the accompanying book on how to protect, conceal and generally keep the linchpin status in an unassailable spot, this is dangerous information. Ask Carolyn Kepcher, who looked too big for Donald Trump and so on. Usually, linchpins are hidden or look deceptively ordinary. And they definitely don’t give it away for art on the company’s dime. That would make them a lynch pin.

Look out for more on my Mad Men rant and advertising from the 50’s in my book and radio interviews on Cigarette Seduction (why does President Obama smoke Marlboro and why is he unlikely to quit until we exit Afghanistan) and other ideas you really hadn’t thought of lately।

Next iBreakfast on July 28 – Exploding eBooks & iPad Market

If you are interested in the Word of Mouth/Social Media issue and how corporate America is really responding, tell us - and we'll have an iBreakfast.

Report from the Sold Out White Plains iBreakfast: Social Media for Business

Michael Terpin, Social Radius
David Berkowitz, 360i
Selina McCusker, Personal Branding
Stephen Gilberg

Alan Brody introduced the this first-time event by talking about the Obama campaign as more than a new way of succeeding in politics but rather as a whole new way of doing business - and a key indicator of how other businesses need to reinvent their customer relationships. The difference between economically thriving vs. contracting regions seems to be whether or not they are in on the conversation about the use of new technologies. The iBreakfast is all about the conversation.

Michael Terpin talked about the impressive “Yes We Can” video video used to help turn the Obama campaign around on Super Tuesday. The important element, he said, was getting the middle universe of bloggers at the largest section of the bell curve, interested in their message.

David Berkowitz began by offering his 4 Basic Rules of Social Media and then other elements of his Social Marketing Playbook. He followed that up with the ways Fortune 500 companies are using Social Media to engage customers.

Selina McCusker talked about using Social Media in unexpected ways for corporate clients.

Stephen Gilberg showed how he built his following of 37,000 in the wine business by focusing on the oenophile's desire to share notes on their favorite wines, and then monetizing it by selling them quality wine at below-market rates.

Notes: Sign up for the WineTwits beta site. To see the overall map of Social Media see the Conversation Prism.

Does your town need to be part of the conversation? Talk to us about opening an iBreakfast in your city.

The Obama Campaign and White Plains iBreakfast: Social Media and the Tipping Point

Michael Terpin, who helped engineer the "Yes We Can" viral video with will.i.am is speaking tomorrow. Aside from telling us how he got to 40 million viewers and tons of press - this is a great time to ruminate on the power of Social Media. After all, it brought us an entirely new kind of President.

We all know the usual - harnessing the long tail, word of mouth, crowdfunding etc. But what about the gradual mass change of opinion anticipated by Obama's literary doppelganger, Malcolm Gladwell. While he never mentions Obama, Gladwell, whose 3 books (Tipping Point, Blink & Outliers) are still on the best-seller list was talking about a change in state, and he too is bi-racial. His books talked abut the paving new ways while paving the way.

Social Media, in other words, is not only a tool but a kind of change predictor and instigator. We're going to learn more about this tomorrow. But one thing is sure - we have entered into a new world of doing business, the likes of which we have never seen before.

We need all the change predictors we can get!

“Blogola” – FTC to go after paid blogs

Defining a new Social Media Contract
[More on story reported in BusinessWeek]

It’s about time that we got real with the Social Media world. If you have an audience and you want to pay off your rent/mortgage/student loan/Tesla Roadster, you’re going to have to confront the issue of getting paid for your blogs.

Companies will offer them to you – generally in the form of goods – but sometimes cash. So why shouldn’t you take it. I don’t have a problem with it although most Social Media orgs do.

My only issue is transparency – if you’re getting paid, let me know. Not only that, but what is the level of sponsorship? Are they giving you stuff or money and is it your unfettered, if perhaps biased impression? Or do they have the final word or feeding you the talking points? There’s quite a difference and an industry symbol cold clear that up in a heartbeat.

Like advertising, once the public realized that ads underwrote their newspapers and TV, they accepted it – it was a social contract. We clearly need the same thing here – and business will take off.

Since the Social Media community couldn’t develop its own Social Contract, it appears that the FTC will take a crack at it. Hope it works……

[iBreakfast’s March Social Media Report Anticipated FTC Action on Blogola]