P&G Social Media Lab

Procter & Gamble’s Social Media Lab

P&G was one of the top 10 brands that our members wanted to talk to. So, we felt pretty lucky to be asked to participate in the P&G Social Media Lab.

P&G marketing has historically been known to try to impact consumers directly. When they can’t find solutions to help them reach the right people, they’ll pioneer their own, like Tremor, and Vocalpoint. Direct ownership of these initiatives by the brands gets into its own thorny issues about influencing consumers, and disclosure.

The P&G Social Media Lab, I believe, helps broaden P&G’s perspective on how to harness the power of passionate consumers — beyond the simple, direct control of them. By exposing their brand managers to a broad range of robust community sites in a learning environment, their marketers are afforded the proper structure to evaluate and understand the strengths of this delicate, but powerful new source of consumer connectivity. The Lab helps facilitate the conversation between partner and marketer by instilling an even playing field for learning, and, more importantly, a structure to define success. The lab’s focus helps the conversation not slide into the predictable marketing mode of “what’s the CPM and how many eyeballs can I get”. I find that trodden line can singlehandedly stunt the emergence of new models and lead to unnatural, force-fit projects best suited for old media. Instead, our partnership discussions have been directed to define how engagement, influence, and dialogue can be measured (and priced) to ensure that the right consumers — the interested consumers — are reached. Our projects are focused on impacting the buying process, and on developing metrics which measure our members’ purchasing influence. By being invited to help craft the right success metrics, social networks involved in the Lab are empowered to make sure that their ‘consumer conversation’ projects don’t go as astray as they have when demographic reach and frequency became the end goal.

We talked a lot internally about how the P&G Social Media Lab helped ‘even the playing field’ for us so that we could influence how P&G brands should define success with our community. Because we are hyper-focused on our members’ expectations and needs, we think we can easily create something that will leave our community and P&G better off than when we started. Can’t say that for most of the eyeball deals I’ve done.

For the more official story on the social media lab…see Deb Schultz’s blog.

Apple Store iPhone debut in New York, video courtesy of our intern Billy

We have a 19 year old intern from UCLA in our company this summer. He is pretty interesting because he’s got some great film making skills already under his belt. In discussing how to get us some great consumer video, he thought up the idea (the night before) to go to the iPhone opening in NYC. He got some great footage, edited it and put it up on the same day. Because he was in a self-professed “good mood” he left out the two “criticisms” that he heard that day about the iPhone (the whole thing about not being able to connect because of the problems Apple was having with their system). He even put together his own music.

His presence in the company is a fun reminder that fearlessness will always be a big part of entrepreneurialism. I hope you enjoy his creativeness to real consumer reviewing the iPhone!

2008 the year of renegotiating long term contracts

If you are in a long term contract, or about to enter one, think about reopening pricing. A few things:
1) retainer companies are losing clients as clients take a closer look at overhead
2) with the emergence of startup activity in 06-07 and outsourcing overseas, there is a lot of price competition in the service industry
3) you’d be surprised what a company with high fixed costs (ie staff) is willing to do to keep some semblance of a retainer

I signed a 12 month contract with webex.com because I just assumed the sales rep was selling me the right sized product. Turns out they had a cheaper product available online that the rep was not allowed to sell on the phone. I am trying to cancel the contract, and they are trying to keep me as a client. The conversation has been fascinating.

I’m not saying to try to nickel and dime your outsourced firms because they need to survive, too. But all is fair when you simply do your homework on what the current environment is yielding. Your partners need to stay competitive, and you shouldn’t be funding their other clients who may be getting a better deal.

Thoughts to come….maybe

I totally think I don’t have the time for this blogging crap.
“Post everyday”
“Post twice a day”
“Write on searched topics”
“Build a following”
“Have a point of view”

My god, if I had the time to do all this stuff, shouldn’t I be fired from my job? How do you people all do this?

My turning point was the sxsw Interactive 2008 conference in Austin Texas. Find some podcasts here. So awesome. So inspirational. So fun. Met and talked to bloggers, developers, cool people, who all seem to find the time.

So, I decided I’m just a loser.

I hope that I can post often, on searched topics, for a following, with a point of view. Doubtful, but let’s give it a whirl.

-D