I was quite flattered to be profiled in Business in Vancouver Magazine last week. It was a real hit with the friends and family on my social networks when I posted it. Kidding aside, the timing could not have been better to be honest. We have been working non stop now for quite some time and it feels good to see that we are getting a little visability for it. There is also something very tactile with being in a print magazine. In our digital work space we forget that there is a tangible world of print. I scanned it to make sure that the wrinkles and 150 dpi where not lost on the viewers here on the blog. You can see the entire 'newsprinty' profile by clicking the details link.

With a new Yaletown agency address came the requirement for new business cards. That got me thinking...I really don't use dead tree cards that much anymore but not enough to cut them out completely.

So when I was cleaning out my office drawer I found an old box of Moo Mini Cards that I used personally. I thought that these could be the solution I was looking for. The response when I handed the little cards out personally was always the same. That of wonderment and affection. Those are emotions that I would love to have associated with the brand. They are also very Web 2.0 like us and as new employees come into the fold we could order them up easy peasy. That said they are so cost effective that even contractors could get a set. Couple that with the cool key chain case and it was a no brainer.

So with that I present to you the new POWERSHiFTER mini cards. [Cool black case sold separately].

The question arose the other night on Twitter, about user @bradinator retiring his personal persona account and focusing more energy on his corporate wine brand's Twitter account @Blackcloudwine. The question put forward was: "Is he committing social capital suicide by doing so and if so why would he do such a thing?". I have been wrestling with the same issue with my agency's @powershifter account vs. my personal @jaypiddy account, so I thought I would wrestle it out here on the PS Blog. Is the personal brand more important than the corporate brand, is it the other way around or do they share equality in the equation? The answer may be clear to those that are born of the web and social media especially who are themselves "the brand". If you are by definition a primarily a blogger then for all intensive purposes that is your "product" That means you engage users at a very personal level in social media and one might say that they are equal to the brand. The personas are the brands and are so intwined with the writing of the blogs and the Twitter posts it's hard to separate the two.

That is not the case for such things as packaged goods and or large service oriented companies. Those that are born brand first as is the case for the vast majority of brands and companies in the social media space must keep the brand first in the minds of it's customers. As much as a personal touch or the collective voice maybe important elements behind the brand touching the consumer in thoughtful and memorable ways, it is important to place the brand 1st and foremost.

Look at the top brands in social media today. Jet Blue, Dell, Starbucks, Whole Foods and WestJet just to name a few. They are all very personable and have clearly communicated as a group of people behind the brand that actually do care, but they do not place themselves before the brand. When I think of Zappos I have no idea what the names of the great people that helped me with customer care issues, and if I was not an in the advertising industry I would not be able to name Tony Hsieh as the CEO. Most of the Zappos customers only know the brand by name.

So back to @bradinator vs @Blackcloudwine for a few minutes here. What are the risks of abandoning the personal brand? As @paulrickett points out that 60% of those who follow @bradinator do not follow @Blackcloudwine so at first glance one might say that is a bad choice to abandon the personal account considering how often @bradinator tweets about his Blackcloud Wine. But that would be a very simplified view of the situation. @bradinator's personal account is very irreverent and has collected a huge following for that very reason. What if those 2030 followers could care less about wine and follow him just for his personal commentary? Then even if he could transfer his social capital over to the @Blackcloudwine account then it would be worthless. If 909 followers of @Blackcloudwine have a higher propensity to love wine and buy more wine and were attracted to that account due to the winecentric tweets in the first place then the smaller more qualified numbers are much more valuable. I will admit that I did not take the time to attempt to measure the quality of the @Blackcloudwine wine followers but I will bet that most are more interested in wine that on his other account.

Social media is just like traditional advertising when it comes to influence. It's not the number of eyeballs that count but rather the quality and relevance of those that follow you and your posts, tweets and feeds. Just because you have a follow count of thousands upon thousands on Twitter, your blog or Facebook page does not mean that you can market just anything to your potentially unqualified followers. Hell if it was a shear numbers game then why not just head over to fiverr.com and pay the five bucks to the literally hundreds of people offering to place your message or ad in their Twitter streams of 10's of thousands of followers. I'll tell you why. Proof that the clickthrough rate on those unqualified posts are incredibly low. All you need to do is pay one of the social media influencers a "fiverr" and then hand them over a message with a bit.ly or ow.ly link and watch your clickthrough rate. I will bet you that you will get fewer then 10 clicks on your highly un-targeted campaign. I am not saying that big numbers of followers don't work but they need to be qualified. Sure we may lead tribes but if I started to push Tampex branded tampons to my Twitter followers I am sure my tribe would not buy what I was selling.

Here is another reason that the personal brand in social media may not be the right way to grow your brand...scaling with grace and authenticity. We have seen what happens when a personal brand does not scale well due to the fact that there is a finite amount of you [personal brand] to go around. Usually when a personal brand takes off there is the need to automate the posts and tweets etc. That is usually done by way of hiring assistants to do the work for the personal brand...that's not very transparent now is it and can blow up quickly. When you choose to support a branded account the ability to authentically scale the brand is much easier to do. Sure it's through the same process of distributing the communication through others like assistants or social brand managers. The difference is that each manager can be identified as an individual behind a brand.

On an account that our agency set up for a customer we have three different people that tweet on behalf of the brand and are demarked by the "^" charachter and their initials. This clearly identifies that there is more than one person managing the account and if need be others can be added with out the feeling that there is any misrepresentation of the branded tweets.

So I ask the question again. Is it social capital suicide or just the death of another Twitter ID? Or is it just the birth of another one that may suit the brand better and in the end move more product and connect with it's customers in a much more authentic way?

In an Adage article by Patrick Sarkissian, he makes the claim that metrics are indeed killing creativity. His point is really about using metrics to make creative decisions exclusively. Metrics have always been in advertising and I suspect have driven the decisions of many clients that are too afraid to take risks in general. Metrics and measurement are always important, but so is the ability to take a chance with a creative campaign that may not have all the numbers and metrics to back it up. ROI and reduced risk for business is always an important thing to consider for campaigns, but so is taking a risk. Not taking risks will get you slow and steady returns with little ,to no loss there is no question. Risks can pay off huge when the creative resonates with the audience and in the end makes for a remarkable campaign that elevates your brand or product to new levels. 

 

Measurement is essential but the human spirit quite often surprises. During the Olympics crowds of hundreds, and sometimes thousands, would spontaneously breakout into the national anthem when they were finished quite often the crowd would do it all over again. I noticed that the anthem was notably missing from most ad campaigns during the Olympics. I am not sure if it was metrics or not but if there had been an anthematic ad campaign it would have resonated without a doubt. My point is that humans are not always predictable and great creativity connects in ways that metrics cannot always predict.

 

Metrics are important sure, but should they drive all creative choices for your campaign? Sure if slow steady returns are what you are looking for. If you want the potential of a "knock it out of the park" campaign you are going to have to take some "calculated" risks to make that happen.