In his book, Buying In, Rob Walker coins the term “murketing”, and provides many fantastic examples of how brands are participating in consumer-level conversation in a way that entertains and catches one’s eye, all the while raising brand awareness and building stronger brand affinity.
So what is murketing? Like many things, it’s best explained through example, and here’s a truly creative one to drive the point home:
Sheep, LED’s and one of the world’s biggest CE brands. Who would have thunk it??!
It’s been a while since I’ve posted an entry, I realize. No, I haven’t been lazy… my father passed away unexpectedly and I’ve been away taking care of all his affairs and being sad in general. Yeah… I know.
But I’m back now – kinda anyway – and the events of the past few weeks have me thinking about our collective conscience, and the role social can play in mobilizing individuals to be better human beings all around.
For years now, we’ve all had to suffer through the irritating chain emails some of our friends and family members insist on sending to everyone in their contacts folder. Despite many of these messages being positive, uplifting and inspiring, I feel morally compelled to hit “delete” the minute I see the “FW: RE: FW: FW: RE: ” string in the subject line lest I contribute to any unproductive load on our networks. I’m sure you’re no different…
So how did we manage to screw this up? Shouldn’t it be easier / less offensive to share messages of joy and positivity?! Well, being the optimist I am, my thoughts are that it has to do with the medium we use to disseminate these memes, and not that we’re all cynics at heart. Email just doesn’t cut it, does it?
But, my friends, not all hope is lost! With a little creative thought, and through the intelligent application of social media, I think we can really make productive use of virality and contextual social interactions to share messages that our peace lovin’, tree huggin’ brethren of the 60’s would be proud of, and not totally piss people off in the process. In other words, we can use social to let these messages spread themselves, as it were, and to people who are interested in seeing them at a point of relevance in their daily life. How, you ask? Well, that’s for you to figure out – I’m just here to give you ideas
More seriously, though, here’s an excellent case in point. Check out this simple but powerful presentation – I’m all for that combination, as you well know – recently featured on one of my favorite blogs (Presentation Zen):
I don’t know about you, but I thought this was well presented, enjoyed the experience, felt good afterward and so on and so forth… and it didn’t even piss me off! Awesome.
Now, forward this to ten people and you’ll have good luck for the rest of your life… ;)
Jason Feffer is CEO and Founder of SodaHead (www.sodahead.com), an Encino-based startup in the social answers space. SodaHead is funded by Mohr Davidow Ventures and the Tech Coast Angels and other angels, including Ron Conway. Notably, Feffer was one of the original members of the team at MySpace, and most recently VP of Operations at MySpace.
In this speech, Jaosn explains how to make users stay active in online social community, shares lessons learned about bridging the gap between engineers and non-engineers, and gives insights about entrepreneurial mistakes.
Recently I’ve become increasingly aware of – and irritated by – the fact that there is so much emphasis placed on the “media” part of social media, or the “commerce” part of social commerce.
Google “what is social media?” and you’ll get a host of links explaining the various web and mobile based tools used for communication, collaboration, multimedia and entertainment. What you’ll see very little of is information that describes the way these tools are fundamentally enabling or altering the way we collaborate and co-create online. Rather than modifying the way we interact, in my view the best implementations of social media as a concept are those which allow us to behave and interact online the way we do in the real world.
In the past, the web as a complicated network of independent sites that served the lonely traveler. Today, it’s become a place for us to connect, find, share, collaborate and learn alongside and with our friends, family, colleagues or even strangers. More than ever before, the web is no longer lonely. Still, I think most miss the point… that it’s about people first, and technology second.
One guy who does get it is Michael Brito, social media strategist at Intel. Check out this clip:
Wonderful in its simplicity, this is social media at its best and embodies the core sentiment of social: it’s about psychology, sociology and human behavior. Oh… and there’s also some technology involved.
