Author: jeremyprobert

There Is No Secret Ingredient…………..

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Social Media and tagged , , , .

Those of you who – like me – thought ‘kids – how difficult can it be?’ and then went and got yourself a handful, will most likely be familiar with the film classic ‘Kung Fu Panda’ (2008). And I’m not kidding – it is a classic. Those of you who haven’t got kids, and haven’t seen it – stop what you’re doing right now, hie thee to Netflix with alacrity, sit back and enjoy.

So, having just done you a big favour (no worries, you can – as the Americans would have it – get me back later) I am going to reveal a big truth that will benefit us all. (Yes, it’s in Kung Fu Panda. I’ve not gone all Barry Norman on your collective ass not to make a point.)

It comes when Po (the eponymous panda) is running away from his destiny because he doesn’t understand the scroll of the Dragon Warrior. (See? I told you. Brilliant.) His adoptive father is a duck called Mr Ping, a noodle chef, who shares with him the secret of his famous Secret Ingredient Soup.

“The secret ingredient is…..nothing!……There is no secret ingredient.” At which point Po has an epiphany, which is explained, for an audience that is probably quite young and still slightly hard of thinking, when Mr Ping continues “to make something special, you just have to believe it’s special”.

Which brings me to my point. I don’t for one moment believe social media is special, but I am realising that there is no secret ingredient. And, of course, this has been the problem all along – why otherwise sane companies have chucked endless resource at social media (talking to an airline recently – 130 people on their social media team – think about that for a second or two), why organisations with no revenue-generation model are suddenly worth billions and why social media gurus are the rock stars des nos jours. (Probably a bit of an exaggeration, but you know what I mean.)

A mass breakout of Shiny Object Syndrome caused – and still causes – many to believe that social media are special in some way. And as Mr Ping said, the belief is enough to gloss over the inherent non-specialness. Worse, like Mr Ping’s Secret lngredient Soup – only were I to use a food-based metaphor for social media, it would be Secret Ingredient Tripe ‘n’ Onions – it has been assumed that there is, in fact, a secret ingredient. Something that’s not unakin to the philosopher’s stone of ‘virality’.

And, clearly, while these assumptions still hold sway, you average social media guru can get away with charging over £400 for – I kid you not – a Pinterest Marketing Masterclass. (I’m talking about you, Social Media Advance, of London EC2.)

But there is no secret ingredient. The same stuff that has always counted, still counts. There are still about five elements that will make your narrative a story. A picture will still do its business with a thousand words. The difference is that if the social audience like what they’ve seen, they’ll share it virtually, rather than really chatting to their mates about it down the pub.

But that’s it. You don’t need content prepared especially for social, on the basis that it’s somehow different. You don’t need distinct strategies. You don’t need gurus. You don’t need hundreds of people. You do need great customer service and unique product proposition – ‘twas ever thus – and, if you’re going to take part, you should be readily available to respond.

There is, of course, one secret thing about social.

It’s a new class of data called “social data” which are data that people create when they use social platforms like Facebook, Pinterest or LinkedIn – their likes, pins, favourites, retweets, status messages, the content of those messages and the people we are friends with.

Needless to say, I doubt you’ve given anyone permission to gather this data – but they’re mining it anyway.

The Next Big Thing Has Been Cancelled

Posted on by in Social Media, Writing, Writing and Language and tagged , , .

Thing about these pre-prepared bits of writing is that a) I have to think of a title (which – and if you’ve any experience of writing you’ll know this – needs to at least nod in the direction of the content, otherewise you’d be guilty of mis-selling and no-one wants to be the blogly equivalent of payment protection insurance, no we don’t) and b) I have to think of a preamble, because they’re actually a bit out of time. Which is not the same as ‘past their sell-by’, no it isn’t. Anyway, this piece is a little bit about the fact that, despite many an effort by the gurus and the evangelisers, there actually aren’t any new social media. There’s two – Twitter and Facebook – two is the number, and the number is two. Never shall it be three, although it might become one. Wasn’t that a terrible song – ‘two become one’? Anyhoo, The Next Big Thing keeps being touted but, actually, under scrutiny, none of it ever stacks up, and the dawning realisation is that there are no NBTs, nor never will be. Here I have a look at Anomo and Whisper.sh. What? (I hear you ask.) Nope. Me neither.

(Also in this piece is a brief diversion into my favourite topic of not-words, with a sighting of ‘tunnelised’. Apparently, there was uproar and outrage in the good ol’ US and A a few days ago when they heard two Popes had been canonised. Seems they think lethal injection is far more humane. (Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week.)

I know, I know. I’m an old Luddite, who’d rather be carefully inscribing illuminated script on a wax tablet, to be wrapped in a piece of fine Irish linen, sealed with the reddest of wax, imprinted with a seal (if the seal will hold still, if not, skip this step) and carried in the cleftiest of sticks by the fleetest of footmen, to the office of the Town Crier, in time for its contents to be oh-yea’d all over town. (Life was somehow simpler then.) Which is probably why I’ve only just come across Anomo and Whisper.sh.

Once again, I find myself short of time, patience and wordage – talking of words, as I wasn’t, I heard a perfectly acceptable English person utter the not-word ‘declarate’ just the other day, and read an article by Boris Johnson (Mayor of London) in which he maintained that the M25 would have to be ‘tunnelised’, I despair, truly I do – and I’m not going to bother with source material of references. Believe it, readers mine, or move on.

Anyway, Anomo and Whisper.sh are the two ‘next big things’ in social media. They already have a joint worth estimated to be in the brazillions. (OK, this isn’t true – but then again, I’m writing this now and you’ll be reading it then, and, well, who knows?)

So I thought I could be an early adopter. Finally, my chance to be in at the beginning of something! Sadly, however, it is quite clear that either I am genuinely incapable of grasping the subtle nuance of these two things, the refined essence that lifts them above so much of the mundane clatter that deafens our lives and obfuscates our vision or – and it’s a big one, folks – they’re both further extensions of the relentless ego-driven nonsense that characterises so much of the social space. Guess which I think it is?

So for those who don’t know – and such is my luck that by the time you read this, Anomo will be the médium sociale de choix of Barry, Dave and Helle, and Whisper.sh will have renamed itself SHOUT.grrr – Anomo allows you to interact with others in a similar space without revealing yourself, like Tinder for stalkers, and Whisper.sh, is a forum for selfies with the selfist’s thought written on them.

I’ll give you an example at random: “When I broke up with my ex, she decided to be a whore to try and get me jealous. Honestly I think its (sic) hilarious and I hope she gets an STD.” This charming sentiment attracts responses from like-minded individuals, who in turn, post a picture with their ‘thought’ on it. Eg “Same exact thing happened with me….” Someone shoot me.

Two things spring to mind immediately, one horrifying, one vaguely reassuring. The horror comes from the certain knowledge that it can only be a matter of time before the gurus start claiming that Anomo and Whisper.sh should be key pillars of your marketing strategy.

I read an article recently in which some plank called Gerry Underchuk (or similar) claimed that Snapchat was his main marketing tool right now. (Head in hands, people, head in hands.) The reassurance comes from the almost certain knowledge that these two simply cannot be revenue delivering. (Can they?)

Talking of delivering revenue – and value – I note that nice Mr Zuckerberg (when he’s not selling $1.4bn of shares to pay a tax bill) (or is he?) (maybe he’s simply saying that to cover the fact that he’s taking an enormous amount of money out of the company before it all turns into a rat’s arse?) is developing video advertising for Facebook, because that’s where the money is. Actually Facebook is not the best medium for video, because of the way it’s used, but hey – video works on TV, why not on social?

Hear that click? That’s the sound of something coming full circle.

Another dotcom bubble?

Posted on by in Internet, Social Media and tagged , , , .

It’s another one from the vaults. I wrote this in November 2013. Shocking, actually, to see how – in the intervening five months – so many things have changed and moved on. What has stuck – and grown, if you like – is the feeling that Twitter and WhatsApp and the rest simply aren’t worth the stupid sums being paid for them. We’ll see.

$11.2bn. As much as $30bn. As I write, now around $20bn. Oh, yes, dear reader, you know what I’m talking about. And still it doesn’t make a profit. Meanwhile, in what was quite clearly an attempt to start making a profit, I receive a promoted tweet from @BMWUSA asking me to show my support for Team USA, as we approach the winter Olympics.

Erm, an’ thank you most kindly, but why, exactly, would a Welshman with English overtones, resident in London, wish to express support for Team Merca? I’m sure they’re all lovely, with their splendid muscles and super hair and dazzling teeth, but – and it’s a small one, I know – nit-picky almost – they’re from a completely different country to which I have no links whatsoever, unless you count my ancestors’ compatriots’ vain efforts to shape it up a little.

So, a poorly targeted promotional tweet – well, I’m not the target market for much of the TV advertising I sit through (too lazy to reach for the clicker, d’you see), and this is simply the socially medieval equivalent.

But, of course, it isn’t. Because social ain’t TV – there’s no Strictly Come Tumblring or I’m a Celebrity Follower, Unfriend Me! – and promotional tweets aren’t big budget, glossy items, with soundtracks and celebrities and (this is most important, pay attention) paid for in advance.

(When I make this point, I’m thinking about the Louis Vuitton ‘L’Invitation au Voyage’ ad with David Bowie (or is it Tilda Swinton) and Arizona Muse. Not the Cillit Bang ‘Barry Scott in a big purple fighter jet’ ad with Barry Scott.)

No. Promoted tweets are cheap as chips for the tweet promoter. As long as I, the recipient of the promotweet, do not click ‘pon said spamulous item, nor neither follow the issuer of same, then the spamuliser pays nowt. Not a brass farthing. Which, clearly, means that targeting simply isn’t an issue, and is why I’m happy to call this stuff spam.

So now Twitter’s under increasing pressure to demonstrate its revenue model and to show some sign that it could, in future, turn a profit and reward the enormous valuation that’s been put on it.

This means, I’m afraid, considerably more of these poorly-targeted promoted tweets. Is it just me, or can anyone else see a flaw in a business plan that relies on the social equivalent of the Nigerian email scam for revenue generation?

Facebook saw an immediate 16% dip in its share price when ‘senior executives’ revealed that young people were leaving the site – in fairness to it, however, its share price recovered once it was realised that the audience hole was being backfilled with the young people’s parents and grandparents.

But the point remains made – young people, the valuable Holy Grail audience, trendsetters, early adopters, rainmakers – don’t like being sold to through channels they consider they ‘discovered’ or ‘invented’.

They don’t like their feeds being abominated with spamulous commercial messages. They – making a little leap here – don’t like promotweets. Which is, arguably, why the current valuations of various social media are a wee smidge on the high side.

Now we hear about £8bn for Dropbox (actually, I can see why Dropbox might be worth something) and Pinterest securing funding that would value the enterprise at £3.8bn, despite the fact that it has only recently begun to clarify its business model.

I think it’s clear that I don’t think much of social media as marketing or promotional tools. There are too many gurus telling you how to do, and not enough do. The Emperor is risking risqué with his lack of vestements.

But what is increasingly scary is that no-one seems to remember the rush of the lemmings into the tech bubble of the late nineties and what happened in March 2000.

One from the vaults……….

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Social Media and tagged .

I wrote this some time ago, for my column. Actually, it’s not a column. It’s three columns and a full page. I know, I know – how do I do it. Every month, you say? Yes. Where is the fecund wellspring of ideas that I must be drinking from? Questions, questions. Read! Enjoy. Or not. Your choice.

Readers, I gasped in disbelief and my goblet of schadenfreude(*) briefly ranneth over as I learnt that ‘Lego Group actively encourages all its senior management to sit exams about social media’. Is this one of the building blocks of their communications strategy, d’you think? (Ba-dum tish.)
It’s all driven by Lego’s director of social media, who must have the gravitas of a lead balloon, the tenacity of a just-dumped limpet with emotional issues and the persuasional ability normally associated with a large man possessed of a gun. And I assume this because Lego’s senior management are not sitting ‘an exam’ – no, as you may have noticed (not much gets past you, I know) it’s ‘exams’.
Genuinely – I despair – on umpteen different levels. What would you fill one social exam with – never mind several exams? Who – in a ‘senior management role’ – would have the time to do this? Who – in a ‘senior management role’ – would, for one moment, consider it a good idea? Who – in a ‘senior management role’ – having been inveigled into taking one exam, would be swivel-eyed loony enough for more?
All that being said – he wrote, turning on a dime – I can see the benefit of trying to teach senior management to get a message across in 140 characters. It would have the dual effect of a) generating appreciation for the fine, and necessary, art of brevity and b) demonstrating what a completely pointless comms tool Twitter actually is.
And, of course, there still isn’t much in the way of alternative. Again, you lot probably came across this weeks ago, but I thought it resonant. It’s one of those internet jokey things – like laughing cats, and dancing babies, but with words and lists – and it attempts to define social media using a doughnut metaphor. (This could all go horribly wrong, I know.) Anyway.
Twitter = I’m eating a doughnut. Facebook = I like doughnuts. Foursquare = this is where I eat doughnuts. Instagram = here’s a photo of my doughnut. YouTube = here I am, eating a doughnut. LinkedIn = my skills include doughnut eating. Pinterest = a doughnut recipe, yay. G+ = I’m a Google employee who eats doughnuts.
Clearly, when what was once hailed as THE socio-economic phenomenon of the 21st century is downgraded to wordplay involving doughnuts, when The Social Network is increasingly abandoned by the young people that it was using to create revenue through advertising – you begin to wonder.
When the slightly-covert appeal of Tumblr is stripped away by Big Purple’s megabucks and commercial focus and analysts question, on the day of the announcement, whether Tumblr actually has the potential to make any money – what you begin to wonder is whether the smoke is drifting and the mirrors are getting a bit smeary.
And, to my mind, there’s a big issue brewing – not so much on the horizon, rather more ‘lookout-yelling-iceberg-from-the-bow-of-the-Titanic’ proximitous – that could forever change (as well as limit) the way social is used and, importantly, can be used. Unsurprisingly, it’s privacy.
Zuckerberg said ‘privacy is no longer the norm’ and with regard to Leveson, to McAlpine and Bercow and in the cases of April Jones and Tia Sharp, like it or not, he’s probably right.
Not all cases directly related to social media, but all highlighting the need for change in how people use social media (it’s not just you talking to your mates, it’s open and indelible), and for greater control on the individual’s use of the internet (encompassing email and social).
And if Zuckerberg doesn’t think privacy is the norm, he should have no problem in handing over your data to the authorities. Changing forever the way people view and use social, and what they share.
And why is Prism trending? *innocent face*
(* My job isn’t perfect, but at least I don’t work at Lego.)

Word Rage

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Writing, Writing and Language and tagged , .

Here’s a thing that ticks all my boxes – in the same way that The Sound of Music has everything one wants in a film (Nazis, nuns and goats), this story has hippies (actually, an unbeatable combination of American and hippy), made-up words and food trends. I don’t know whether to squeal with delight or explode into incandescent rage and spontaneously combust. At least I know that, working (I use the word loosely) in close proximity to airlines, my ashes would be well taken care of.

So, for your delectation on a wintry Friday, here’s a story from The Wall Street Journal entitled ‘Brooklyn Foodies Supper In Silence’. Do the light clicktastic and have a look for yourselves. OK, OK, I know that you won’t – so many links unclick’d ‘pon, as the Bard might have said, o brave new communications medium that hath such pages in’t. So, as you persist in your churlish reticence and simple bloody-minded refusal to play along, I will tell you what the article says.

In brief, it seems that a restaurant in Greenpoint, Brooklyn (which I believe to be a suburb of the American capital, New Amsterdam), called Eat (got to love that ol’ US no-frills, does-what-it-says-on-the-tinness) recently hosted a pop-up dinner in which all 17 or so guests committed to a vow of silence during the meal. What I think is more surprising here is not that there was a silent rule for the meal, but rather that the guests found it difficult to succeed in the endeavour. There was a threat of plates being taken outside to finish meals in a ‘loudmouth’ fashion. Others went to the toilet to give themselves pep talks – out loud. It is not made plain whether smartphones and other devices were outlawed also – if not, I’m certain others kept their silence by concentrating furiously on Facebook.

Apparently, in the end, the silence became ‘good – the good kind of quiet’. On so many levels I find this beyond strange. The fact that one pop-up silent dinner makes a trend. The fact that the silent diners couldn’t hack it. The fact that silent dining is – in itself – considered so out of the ordinary that it’s newsworthy. The fact that hipsters are so unaccustomed to quiet that they’d never experienced comfortable quiet before. (Only in America, I’m afraid.) it’s not even as if it was the food that rendered the diners silent. No. They had to be ‘implored to ‘speak now, or forever hold your peace” in a rather unhealthy confusion of the spiritual and the corporeal.

How do you think this lot would have managed in Dans Le Noir? (Where you dine in the dark.)

Anyway, so far, so privileged American nonsense. Ridiculous hippies, with tales of ‘silent breakfasts (…) enjoyed at a monastery in the Indian Buddhist pilgrimage city of Bodh Gaya and stints in silence at meditative retreats, (and) hoping to rediscover that pastoral energy in a city-bound context’. ( Oi! Wall Street Journal! This is satire, isn’t it? We’re not actually taking these people seriously? Just checking.)

But then – oh, then. Why is it that our colonial cousins feel that it’s acceptable to select words. seemingly at random, and then forcibly bend them to their will, regardless of context or meaning? And, if they fail in this endeavour, to simply make something up, often without needing to do so, as there are (of course) a plethora of perfectly acceptable words that could be employed in most situations. I suspect it is because the United States and America are, clearly the homes of the brave and the lands of the free and if I can carry a high-powered automatic weapon in public, perfectly legally, wear dubious clothes at will and be umpteen stone overweight as a right, then I can most certainly obligate the American language to manglify itself around my need for expression without thought. I wish to engage mouth without having brain in gear.

Back to our silent dinner – one of the guests (Jessica Laser, a 27-year-old writer from Greenpoint, since you ask) (great name, Ms Laser, btw) who – just in case you missed it – is a writer, had this to say. “I tend to pride myself on my ability to articulate, so I’m eager to see what happens here.” Ms Laser is, by the way, a writer. She is also using the adjective as a verb – which at least shows some arms-length familiarity with the intended meaning – but is, of course, wrong. ‘To articulate’ does not mean ‘to speak’. ‘Articulate’ describes someone who can converse fluently, but it is not (Ms Laser) a doing word.

Thing is, I know where this came from. And it is insidious. A sort of creeping malaise. An American ill. I shall make up a word to describe it. In fact I already have done. Manglify. Only, were I a US citizen, that would not be enough. I would have to go a step further. Yes, gentle reader, I would have to go to ‘manglificate’. So, for example, the perfectly good verb ‘to oblige’ becomes ‘to obligate’ (‘he was obligated’), and – I shudder inside – the generally acceptable verb ‘to converse’ becomes ‘to conversate’ (‘we should conversate around this’). I suspect that the erroneous use of the word articulate was because of a confusion around conversate – and here I will simply say that when language is destroyed based on a misunderstanding over a word that doesn’t exist, all is pretty much lost.

Finally – because I know you’re almost bursting with the desire to know what our silent chums ate, at their inarticulate dinner – I shall tell you what the Quiet Ones aterated for their mute repast. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it was simply too much trouble for Nicholas Nauman (Eat’s 28-year-old managing chef and events planner) to describe his cuisine as organic and locally-sourced, so he called it – or maybe it’s not him (horrible thought strikes), maybe this is everywhere in the colonies – ‘organic locavore fare’.

Herbivore. Carnivore. Locavore. I went on t’interweb. I typed in ‘loca’ and requested a translation. I got the answer I thought I might. It appears that a locavore would be one who mainly consumes Spanish madwomen.

Manglificent!

Crime and the Social Media Generation

Posted on by in Social Media.

Yes, blog trotters all, social media are fuelling crime statistics! Someone call the Daily Mail! Middle England needs to know! Paul Dacre needs to froth at the mouth! Actually (calm down, dears, it’s only a newspaper article) it’s been reported that more than 1,000 criminal offences involving Facebook came to light last year. See here!

Which provides me with the perfect excuse to post this article that I wrote recently. Who knows whether it’s been published. Perhaps I simply write stuff and the recipients are just too kind to tell me that it is quite startling in the limited nature of its quality. No. Couldn’t be that. Anyway.

I thought I’d make a list of the good uses of a social medium – as-it-happens updates, time-sensitive information, news alerts – and the bad uses – cuddly kittens, selfies, what you had for breakfast, lolz – and see if, anywhere, on either of those lists, was ‘notifying the police either following the committing of a crime or with the suspicion that a crime is about to be committed’. Do you know, gentle reader, it wasn’t?

So it was with a certain degree of slack-jawed amazement that I read about one particular incident, in which a woman, alone in a carriage on a train to (I believe) Southampton, became aware of a drunken male, getting all leery and inappropriate. She tweeted same, and, on arrival at Southampton (Parkway, probably) said drunken lech was promptly arrested by the waiting police. It is, apparently, not the first time that such a thing has happened – the forces of law and order being alerted to proceedings of a criminal nature all through the medium of twat.

And indeed, in one sense, why not? It’s a communication medium after all, and it seems police forces have Twitter feeds, and if you can’t remember @herculepoirot, then there’s always the distinct possibility that one of your followers will. But, and here’s the thing, why didn’t our lady on the Southampton Parkway Express a) call the police and/or b) move carriages? What convinced her that the best way to deal with this situation was to come over all twitty?

My suspicion is that she was probably a phubber. Which, for those of you who’ve been living under stones in the Gobi for the past four to six weeks, is someone who – in a face-to-face situation – snubs the other person by checking their device for messages, making or taking a call, or being antisocial with social. I conjecture that this person was so plugged into her device that speech or movement were secondary options to that of posting a tweet. It was simple instinct.

Regardless, the end result was the desired and correct one. But it did make me wonder whether – in a broader sense – we’re seeing the rise of another phenomenon of social which I shall call (because I don’t think anyone’s got here first) the Tweet Potato.  The Tweet Potato (not wholly dissimilar to the tuber of the couch variety and its televisual predilections) is one for whom all the world is contained within social and thus there is no earthly reason to engage on any other level.  Which, now I think about it, fairly accurately describes the thinking of an entire herd of social media gurus………..

The story of the police and the tweets, of course, delivers us nicely to a far more serious issue that threatens social media (reminding ourselves that there are, really, only two social media) and destroy any commercial value that they may be perceived to have had. The irony is not lost that, while the messages have brought the law down on the miscreant, the medium cannot (will not?) do the same.

Again, for those of you under that stone in the Gobi, we’re talking about the recent spate of Twitter threats, which escalated to the point where Stella Creasy MP was sent a picture of a masked knifeman, and other high-profile women were sent bomb threats. Several days later, Twitter said abuse was ‘simply not acceptable’. Apparently the website has also clarified its rules on abusive behaviour and put extra staff in place to handle reports of abuse.

What it hasn’t done, as far as I can see, is pass the trolls’ data to the authorities. Is this because it can’t – or is it a misguided respect for privacy? Either way, it reveals the dark underbelly of social and its utter lack of regulation. On this basis, would you want your brand associated with social media?

When Brands Chase Ambulances

Posted on by in Communications Strategy.

So. Very sad to hear about Sir David Frost – didn’t know very much about him, to be honest, having watched him on the TV on a number of occasions, having been told that he was a legend and having seen him portrayed by Michael Sheen in Frost/Nixon, but there’s a feeling that it’s the end of an era in TV interviews. And it seems to have been all a little unexpected – Sir David was not, after all, and by the standards of today, an old man, and the tributes that have been published from those who knew him imply that he was still full of vim and vigour. A sad thing and, undoubtedly, a loss.

Sir David’s passing will, of course, attract a great deal of attention because of his fame and his achievements. Had he been a chip shop owner, or an old soldier, or a jobbing PR man it is highly unlikely that the glitterati would be composing encomia and the media falling over themselves to publish them. It is also unlikely that – in the case of the chip shop owner – Pukka Pies (if the brand still exists) would have seen his death as an opportunity to promote themselves and their links to the deceased – especially if our fictional chippie owner had died with a pie in his his mouth.

So it’s with some distaste that I read the comments by one Peter Shanks, Managing Director of Cunard Line, including the gem “Cunard had a proud association with (Sir David Frost) over many years”. (I’ve posted a link to a travel trade magazine, Travel Weekly, but Mr Shanks’ comments have been reported quite widely in the mainstream.) Then, ignoring the pleas of the Frost family ‘for privacy at this difficult time’, Mr Shanks goes on “on behalf of us all at Cunard Line (I would like) to extend our deepest sympathy to his wife, family and friends.”

Now, there is, admittedly, a fine line between sympathy and ambulance chasing. The Telegraph tells us that Sir David Frost had, indeed, played many a gig on Cunard Line ships, and he probably did have some form of relationship with the brand.

But for heaven’s sake, he died on one of their boats. Surely the decent and proper thing to do would have been to send private condolences. I doubt anyone expected, or looked for, the owners of the ship on which he died to make a statement. There are times when it is better to say nothing – and this was probably one of them.

I’d venture to say that this was not the time to stress your brand’s links with the departed, because – even done in the most innocent fashion – it looks like you’re making hay while the clouds gather. And it’s not a good look.

We Need To Talk About Privacy

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Social Media and tagged , .

I tried, rather ineffectually, probably, to address this point recently and, because I had a word limitation, didn’t really do the topic justice. What I was trying to get at, in a ham-fisted and blancmange-minded way, was that our relationship with privacy has changed, and is being changed, irrevocably, and no-one has really seemed to notice.

At least I assume that’s the reason for the quite awe-inspiring levels of apathy being displayed in relation to doing something about it. (And yes, I’m in there with the awe-inspiring apatheticals and in some ways, I’m worse because here I am writing about it, without the slightest intention of marching on the offices of Facebook or MI5, brandishing a banner reading ‘What do I want ? Privacy! When do I want it? Not going to tell you!’)

And speaking of Facebook, which I was, I read just last night of what it takes to get into their office as an outsider. Amongst other things, it involves signing  a multi-page and multi-section confidentiality agreement. Lest any of us have forgotten, this is the same Facebook that was founded – and is run – by the odious boy turd Zuckerberg, he of the belief that ‘privacy is no longer the norm’. Unless you’re him, or happen to work for his company, in which case, privacy is rather more than the norm, seemingly.

Privacy is becoming the province of the privileged. It’s something you’ll end up having to pay for, and it’ll be the few that can afford it. And how did this happen – grandchildren will asked their wizened, online grandparents – and the answer will come back in a regretful whisper ‘because we didn’t value it and we gave it away’. And – as I will take delight in exemplifying later – we’re doing it even though we know we’re doing it and even though we’re being told that we’re doing it, by those who are facilitating the doing on our behalf. See what I mean about apathy?

But quickly, before I get on to what is for me, anyway, the almost illicit pleasure of stripping the sequins off of social media (using social media in a very loose sense here), my target today – lovely blogtrotters mine – being the so-many-levelly ridiculous Snapchat, I just wanted to have a quick dig around the issue of privacy, just so posterity knows what I was on about.

Privacy works two ways, especially when it comes to the ubiquity of t’interweb. And in both ways, it is increasingly going horribly wrong – and for all sorts of different reasons. Even I cannot blame social media themselves for the avalanchical erosion of what used to be a valued and fiercely-protected right, no – it’s a combination of corporate profiteering, uncontrolled new technology (I’ve always maintained that the internet should have been regulated way back in the early ’90s – blame the media hippies) and the absolute propensity for being a complete cretin that characterises a (very) large proportion of the world’s population.

So privacy’s gone, because people give it away via a lack of understanding of what they’re doing, and the ramifications that their actions might have (I doubt Sally Bercow’s reading – she’s probably still wondering how she’s going to raise the money to pay McAlpine). Privacy’s gone because some people believe that, because others have started on the road to giving it away, it’s OK to take it (as amply evidenced by Leveson). But privacy still exists for those who arguably shouldn’t have it – the viewers of illegal websites that go on to commit horrific crimes – they have privacy not because they’re not giving it away (by using a computer with an individual IP address, you’re identifying yourself, or at least your whereabouts) but because – for one reason or another, the ISPs don’t want to share that data with the authorities.

All cock-eyed, d’you see. Mental. Privacy needs to be addressed. Maintained for those who will miss it later – no matter how hard they try to give it away – and stripped from the undeserving. Clearly, one solution would be to turn off the internet.

Pause.

Another solution would be to have some sort of global recognition system – a password unique to you – that you’d have to submit to before accessing the internet. The problem with that, obviously (and as was gleefully pointed out to me by someone who thought they’d seen the fatal flaw in my argument) is that you’d really have to keep your unique identity very private indeed, or some horrible gnoll would be masquerading as you before you could say ‘brazzers’.  But for those of us who are sensible enough manage to keep our passwords and PINs secret, so what’s the deal with a unique password. And even if enough deeply flawed people prove that it’s not going to work, then how about biometrics. Just thinkin’.

Anyhoo. Snapchat. Well, apart from sounding like one of those dodgy premium ‘phone lines that are advertised on the late night telly when you’re watching (or is it just me) Blade III on Five Star, it’s another photo sharing site. But what makes it quite mind-bogglingly ridiculous is that the pictures shared on Snapchat disappear after 10 seconds. Alright (you may say) this (ostensibly) means that the really stupid picture you took of yourself after eleventy-nine tequilas, and then sent to all of your contact list, including (d’oh) your boss, disappears. Phew. What a relief. Not like the very same picture that you posted to Facebook. Ooops.

But. And here’s the whole privacy schtick, in both its forms. Because if the pictures (ostensibly) disappear after 10 seconds, what’s to stop you posting stuff that even you, in your addled state, might have considered a bit de trop before? Yes, Snapchat is fuelling the rise of the ‘selfie’. (And, blog snorkellers mine, if you don’t know what a selfie is, then – well – google it. Stop! Not if you’re at work.) Apparently, 54% of Snapchat users in the UK have received an ‘inappropriate picture’ – and the mind literally boils over. More privacy being given away – in the simple belief that whatever you’ve shared won’t be  available after 10 seconds has passed.

Ah. Yes. Sorry. In a message to users, the company responded “If you’ve ever tried to recover lost data after accidentally deleting a drive, or maybe watched an episode of CSI, you might know that with the right forensic tools, it’s sometimes possible to retrieve data after it has been deleted.” Which means – and I’ll spell it out for the hard of thinking – that your image doesn’t disappear after 10 seconds. Not completely. No, it’s still retrievable from a server somewhere near Palo Alto.

So, thanks to Snapchat, we have ordinary people in the grip of internet Tourette’s sharing far more stuff that they may have done previously, even though they’re being told, quite clearly, by the purveyor of the medium, that the stuff they’re sharing, while it (ostensibly) disappears from their (and their contact’s) devices after 10 seconds, is actually being stored somewhere. And the medium – in this case Snapchat – is saying that it would take a CSI investigation to find it, even though some of it may be so out of the park that it should, actually, be sent directly to Interpol/the FBI.

Do you know, I was right to suggest turning off the internet. Until the human race, as a whole, is mature enough to deal with it.

It’s Such A Fine Line Between Stupid And….Er…Clever

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And I find myself experiencing an echo of the dilemma that faced Nigel Tufnel and David St Hubbins (St Hubbins – the patron saint of quality footwear) in that meisterwerk of the filmmakers’ oeuvre ‘This is Spinal Tap’, when I read this:

Social media nonsense

This – and I simply had to scan it, to display it in all its awfulness/brilliance – is taken from the Metro, an ubiquitous free morning paper of no renown whatever, that recycles news from the papers of the day before, although occasionally breaking an overnighter, its sole purpose being to occupy the dreary commute of (and here it gets interesting) literally hundreds of thousands of drone workers, every single day. This is an extraordinarily influential organ – getting people on their way to work, just as their brains are gunning up through the gears to their normal default velocity of barely-controlled-fury miles an hour.

Which makes this work of genius/idiocy all the more concerning. Someone might take it seriously. It’s printed on the business pages. Someone vaguely influential might read it before their inbuilt b*ll*cks detector has properly come on-line. Someone might take these ideas away and try and do something with them. Someone might – heaven forbid – promulgate the teachings of this clown Taylor. (Yes, it may, indeed, be a fine line between stupid and clever, but I have made my decision. I do not feel that David Taylor of 2010Media has come anywhere near crossing it. This is not his Rubicon. He is stuck in Stupidstan and has no means of getting to Cleverica.)

Where to start? No, David, social media are not specialist marketing tools. This has been amply demonstrated by the failures of massive companies like Pepsi, and Ford, and Dell to make any real correlation between social media and sales, and to create any meaningful revenue streams from social media. The only people who claim that social media are marketing tools are the charlatans that prey on the unwary and the foolish, selling the modern-day equivalent of charms and amulets guaranteed to turn base metal into gold and animate the inanimate. Are you a charlatan, David?

The point is, actually, well-made – if you’re having a conversation with a customer, then you don’t leave it to the work-experience lad to conduct that conversation, or decide what to say. But it’s a statement of the bleeding obvious. What’s dangerous is the assumption that you might ‘want your Twitter feed to sing and your Facebook page to be well(sic)liked’, implying that you somehow are obliged to have both of those items. Guess what? You’re not. You don’t have to use either of these media – it won’t make a blind bit of difference. Sure, there are some companies and brands that might wish to consider using social media as additional communications tools, and might be advised to, but for them somehow to be obligatory is nonsense.

And finally, if you want to be taken seriously, then have an eye to your own brand and corporate reputation. Just because you’re called Taylor, David, doesn’t mean that you should, or that you have to, have an alliterative title. Is your Twitter feed entitled @Taylor’sTwats? I suspect it isn’t. But ‘Taylor’s Titbits (fnaar fnaar) with David Taylor’ is arguably as close as you’re going to get.

The Kiss of Death – Yahoo Promise Not To Screw It Up

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So a truly enormous ’nuff respec’ (as I believe the young people would have it) to David Karp (who’s making ‘Koi’ jokes now, eh?) for getting Yahoo to pay a truly staggering £750m for his web creation, Tumblr. Yes, I realise that, in the great scheme of it all, when Glencore and Xstrata are talked about in hushed £76bn tones, that £750m is loose change, but – d’you see – here’s the thing – Tumblr, with all its 102 million blogs and 44.6 billion posts, doesn’t actually make any money.

In the aftermath of the Yahoo acquisition announcement, one analyst actually said that it was hard to see how it would (despite being data rich and capable of providing loads of information about its, mostly young, users). I thought that was a bit naughty of said analyst – mostly, they hold their tongues on this topic, at least until the smoke has cleared, for fear that it will all unravel. As well it might because, and maybe it’s just me, the way you’d normally value a company is on a multiple of its earnings. And if it doesn’t earn anything, well – you do the math. Or not. Because, of course, there isn’t any math to do.

In the meantime, while we’re pondering how nothing can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and Mr Karp is sitting in his bare garret in wherever it is (‘I don’t own any books’ he said – go figure) counting his couple of hundred million dollars and – apparently – not wondering what to spend it on (am I alone in finding it deeply sad and slightly suspect that a 26-year old with $200m, even if he is called Karp, is not, for example, buying a swimming pool and filling it full of Puligny Montrachet and inviting his girlfriend to ‘come on in, the white Burgundy’s lovely’?) the users of Tumblr are bemoaning the site’s apparently inevitable fate.

“A white-hot poker into the woodwork” was one such comment, although Tumblr and Yahoo are not, of course, made of wood, and even if they were, a white hot poker is not something you’d necessarily plunge into the woodwork, a chainsaw being that much more effective when dealing with woodwork, but you have to admire the sentiment as you do the simpler ‘Tumblr’s going to suck’. But how do they know? From what I know of Tumblr, I think it’s pretty ‘sucky’ (is that a word?) already.

I do note that Yahoo are talking about ‘light touch advertising’ – which doesn’t sound good – but I’m at a loss in trying to understand why – with 300 million unique users, people somehow think of Tumblr as being independent and in a way ‘theirs’. It’s not. It’s a commercial concern – or Yahoo would like it to be – and just because Big Purple has bought it, does not mean it is going to change significantly. They’ve promised that Fish Boy will remain CEO and his team will continue to run the business – this, also, does not mean that it is going to stay significantly the same. If you see what I mean.

Oh – and to my great joy, at least one pundit left the word ‘social’ out of his descriptor, referring to Tumblr simply as ‘media’.  Or maybe it was a typo.