Learning to Adapt or Be Left Behind: The End of Business

Joshua Duncan recently presented and blogged about Brian Solis's new book, "The End of Business as Usual" by summarizing the 16 reasons why you need to read this book. These reasons where far to great to pass up, so I wanted to share them with you. And I quote (a transcription of the presentation by Solis himself):
"The End of Business as Usual – Presentation Transcript
1. A digital presence is just a way of life.
2. People will always talk about you so,Give them something to talk about.
3. Attention is a precious commodity.
4. The Millenial generation, or as they are often called, Generation Me, represent one-quarter of the American population. 70% of Millennials feel that once they find a company or product they like, they keep coming back. 47% will write about their positive experience online with companies and products online. On the flipside, 39% will share negative encounters.
5. You are the center of your ego-system. Your connections and networks build a framework for how, when, and where information finds you.
6. With or without realization, we have become curators, carefully selecting the experiences that move us, colored with our thoughts and observations, to cater to our audiences of our audiences and hopefully to those who, in turn, follow them.
7. Connected consumers understand that through the concentration of connections, their social experiences, digital literacy, and the value of content that populates their streams are intensified.
8. News no longer breaks, it tweets.
9. The audience within the audience redefines the living room. It is the new consumer landscape.
10. If in the real world, actions speak louder than words, in the realm of digital influence, actions speak louder than scores.
11. To understand the mindset of the connected consumer, one must realize that everything begins with search and intent.
12. Sharing our purchases and experiences serve as social objects, which are catalysts for sparking conversations and creating perceptions.At the center of this discussion is the product.
13. Discerning consumers not only expect immediate access to information, they expect CLOSURE .
14. We are competing for the moment. We are competing for the future. We are competing for relevance.
15. The rise of the socially connected consumer warrants much more than attention; it requires an understanding of what motivates them to click, act, and share.
16. Brands are either part of the conversation or they’re not and as a result, they’re either part of the decision-making cycle or they’re absent from the heart, mind, and actions of the connected customer."

I think that Solis has an insight to today's social world and business, and the direction it is going. He states plainly what we need to adapt to in order not to be left behind. This applies to many people beyond just businesses struggling to keep up with social changes and innovations. I think it is essential to embrace what he points out. What do you think of these 16 points, and what would you add to the list? 

Harnessing the power of viral marketing

Viral marketing facilitates sharing of web content that usually involves something amazing or hilarious, and is spread like a virus among pre-existing social networks. It is a way for a company to increase brand awareness, which is what Sun Drop and it’s producer Dr Pepper Snapple Group (DPG) aimed to do with their new marketing campaign. Sun Drop was created and marketed in the South and has had a loyal customer base spread through the south and Midwest for many decades. They are known for their original citrus soda of high caffeine content, but later developed caffeine-free, diet, and other flavors of soda. After a few efforts to reach a broader customer base, they decided they wanted to go national with their brand.

DPG partnered with MTV’s millennial marketing division, MTV Scratch Marketing Group, to reach the millennial generation (those born after 1980) through marketing and advertising strategies including different integration of product placement, social media, retail activation, etc. MTV Scratch and DPG chose Sun Drop as the product to help “reinvent,” with the objectives of competing nationally for the citrus category of soda and to drive brand awareness and purchase. They launched in January 2011 and started a new marketing campaign that launched in March 2011.

While this campaign contained many aspects that have made it successful, the focus we draw in on is the commercial/video they produced and launched nationally in March 2011. Their campaign with this video, Show Us How YOU Drop it, featured Snoop Dogg’s song “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” and how many people describe as a “funny white girl dancing.” The video was first shown to loyal fans on Facebook and Youtube before airing on MTV’s premiere of Real World-Las Vegas on March 25, 2011. This video inspired and encouraged parodies and remakes. With over 5000 copycats, with over 4 million views of it on YouTube within the first 4 weeks, combined with their video competition (“It’s gonna get hot today, grab a nice cold Sun Drop, and show us how you drop it”), the video went viral. Spreading and sharing across Youtube Channels, Facebook, twitter, sent in emails and texts, this video got the reaction Sun Drop wanted. They accomplished their objectives of not only increasing brand awareness, but also purchases, as they explain in their Second Quarterly Review, “Since its national launch in January, Sun Drop has grown by almost 90% adding 5 million incremental cases.”

Sun Drop is trying to harness the power of viral marketing; did they create a campaign that went viral or does it appear too inauthentic? I conclude that it was successful; the original and entertaining video spread among pre-established social networks and continues to be successful at promoting the video with the competition on their website. What do you think?

"Does social innovation equal social change?"

An article  by Huffington Post asks: “does social innovation equal social change?” This question comes in response to a few things: Occupy Wall Street, the Egyptian Revolution, and a recent Advertising Week event. At this Advertising Week event, a panelist suggested jokingly that they try to go an hour without saying the word “Twitter,” however in this hour they were discussing social innovation, resulting in a failure to that challenge.

 Why could they not go and hour without mentioning Twitter when discussing social innovation and the world events of Occupy Wall Street and the Egyptian Revolution? Let me tell you. Occupy Wall Street and the Egyptian Revolution are two major events occurring and spreading around the world virally, through mainstream media spurred on by social media. The participants are calling for social change, and they are doing it through social media and these events have actually pushed social media in new directions; it has inspired social innovation. Social media is allowing the activists a way to spread their revolution (if you will), throughout the world and a way to communicate to meet up and do this. This has been accomplished through social tools such as  Facebook, Twitter, meetup.com, other websites, and alternatives to Twitter and Facebook that have emerged to accommodate this social movement. Ben Rattray of Change.org  claims that “social change is less about the tools and more about the application of those tools.” It is less about the innovation, but more about the application of that innovation. He claims that social media supports  existing strategies and can also “spark something that didn’t exist.”

I think mainstream media is becoming more powerful because of social media, which draws in and gets attention of mainstream media. It builds community and brings communities together on the web and physically, as Rattray explains: "The best way to get people away from their computer is through the computer; you can't organize thousands of people in New York City [the way Occupy Wall Street has] without the web.” I think this is a great example of the social innovation sparking social change. I’m interested in what you think?

Mountain Dew: not just a product, it's a lifestyle.

  It is roughly 4:00pm on a Friday, and Mt. Dew simply makes one post that draws an overwhelming amount of support: "It's Definitely DEW:thirty." I happen to be sitting at my computer enjoying an ice cold Mt. Dew, so I was inclined to like this status, and when I did I noticed that 1700 other people did as well within just five minutes of the post. Over 200 people commented, sharing how they were also drinking Mt. Dew, and debating how Dew:thirty was not accurate. However, it is not even clear if this status refers to a time of the day. It's interesting how a simple misleading or obscure comment by a company can cause people to make a leading comment. It is also interesting how many people are enjoying this product right now and can share that with each other from all over the world. Facebook has brought fans, consumers, friends, etc. closer together.
A company's reach can be so large, and targeting consumers at a certain time of day (when maybe some people need that extra caffiene kick or just want to enjoy a soda) can be effective. Just looking at Mountain Dew's Facebook statuses shows great marketing tools that involves it's consumers and makes Mt. Dew appear more as a lifestyle than just a product or a soda. Here are some of their posts that has gotten over 12,000 comments on some of them: "You pick: cold green can or cold green bottle?" "Nothing goes better with a dew than___," "DEW: it's the only way to live," "sometimes one just can't sleep enough..." Social Media allows companies to give products a life they never had, allowing consumers to claim ownership in its branding, and making it more than just a product, a lifestyle.

Allowing social media in the operating room

Usually operating rooms are closed to the public, but yesterday one surgery was broadcasted live on Twitter right from the operating room. Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center performed brain surgery to remove epileptic sections of the brain to control seizures on Geoffery Nester whos medicine was not controlling his seizures. The surgery was performed while the patient was awake, and the hospital’s social media manager, Peter Balistrieri, was present in the operating room tweeting live news about the surgery, commentary the doctors had to communicate, and even what the patient wanted to communicate. He also tweeted back answers to what followers had to say, receiving both positive and negative feedback about allowing physical social media tools to be present in a sterile environment.

The hope in this case for providing a live feed of the operation was to broadcast and get the word out about this option and help ease fears and encourage those suffering like Geoffery to go through with the procedure. Only 10% of those who should get the procedure actually do. Aurora’s social media manager comments, “Our social media program is right up on top with some of the major players in the United States. We've taken a lot of steps to be more transparent and social media has been an excellent way for us to get out there." This is an interesting way to merge social media with surgeries, how do you feel about it?

For more information check out these articles:

http://www.wisn.com/r/29313013/detail.html

http://livewire.wisn.com/Event/Aurora_Health_Care_LIVE_Temporal_Lobectomy_Surgery?Page=3

http://www.620wtmj.com/news/local/130675193.html

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/health&id=8371141

Using Twitter to find parking on campus

I recently saw a bumper sticker at Western Kentucky University that read "if you see my professor, tell him I'm searching for a parking spot." To any hilltopper, this is funny and true. Parking at WKU is a fervent topic that stirs many frustrated feelings and tiresome stories about arriving to campus hours early to drive for what seems like hours searching for a parking spot; making students AND professors late to class and meetings. I hear students debating who has not moved their car in the longest, because they got a front row parking spot and do not want to move it, or fighting about who gets to drive that day so they do not have to re-park. Well here is an interesting solution to all this madness--using Twitter or social media to help people find available parking spots.
I got this idea from Louisiana State University, who has more than 23,000 parking spots on their campus and believe the solution to aiding students in parking is in fact social media. I refer to the recent article (http://www.wafb.com/story/15465490/lsu-parking-employing-social-media), which explains that the school has begun using a twitter account that students can subscribe to and follow to get update on not only traffic reports, but also on open parking spots in different locations. They already have 500 followers and continue to grow. However, that is not all. They have also added a phone app for smartphones called "Trans-loc" that tracks their buses in real time.
I am curious how a system or application of social media such as this would work at Western Kentucky University, and not only change the way students get to and from class, but how they work with and feel about WKU Parking and Transportation. I see how social media could easily be a solution to this parking problem, and maybe cause some students (and may professors) to take down negative bumper stickers about WKU parking.

"Would 9/11 have been more traumatic with social media?"

NY times re-tweeted Joshua Brustein this afternoon asking "Would 9/11 have been more traumatic with social media?" in reflection of an article he wrote about in his blog on New Your Times (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/09/on-911-the-seeds-of-the-infinite-grapevine/?src=tp) looking at what's changed in the past ten years since the tragic day of 9/11. Brustein was a personal witness of the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11 in New York, capturing it in photos. He notes that that September was one of the last times he had to actually wait on film to be developed, which is how he participated and contributed to sharing of that event to friends and family. Today, he would've been able to participate in a way we call "citizen journalist" (coined in 2003). In recent years since then, traumatic and major world events have been able to be captured in real time and shared across technology and social mediums to connect people around the world to the news, to understanding what is happening, and to witnessing via Tweets, blogs, youtube videos, FB statuses, etc. reactions and people's first hand experiences. Brusetin quotes Andy Carvin , a strategist for social media at NPR, about social media reactions to these events today: "If you see 30 or 40 people describing what was happening it almost becomes a form of situational awareness, like you’re floating above it in a helicopter." Considering this, the reaction and response to 9/11 would have been different if it were to occur today.
In 2001, people reacted through phone calls, submitting photos and videos online and via mail, email discussion groups, and online communities in real time. This was realized more so when curators at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History began putting people's images and videos of the attacks together, and realized there was a change happening in the way major events were photographed. As an associate curator there, Shannon Perich explains, "We quickly understood that this was a transitional moment. We understood what digital photography meant to the world at that point.” Back then, ten years ago, the activity happening was similar and basic to todays, however on a smaller scale. Today, social media brings events closer and seems to eliminate some distance, and intensify the emotional impact. Which brings up the point, is that really a good thing? Could social media have made the 9/11 events and aftermath too traumatic for some to handle? Some say it would have been too horrific and are grateful Facebook and Twitter were not around ten years ago. Brustein references a couple individuals' opinions in his article, such as Katherine Weymouth, publisher and executive chief at Washington Post Co: “'Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and all the technologies that have yet to be invented make all these events more real, and more horrific. Television pales in comparison,' she said, according to an account of the event posted on Poynter.org, a journalism Web site." Would real time updates and other aspects that social media brings to the world have added a level a trauma that would have been to overwhelming for people at that time? What do you think?