This week saw the debut of a YouTube video United Breaks Guitars by Canadian songwriter Dave Carroll that satirized United Airlines’ negligence and indifference to the way their O’Hare baggage handlers damaged his guitar. The video went viral and accumulated more than two and a half million views and over 14,000 comments in less than a week.

The attraction and impact of Carroll’s video demonstrates the enormous potential of social media tools when wielded skillfully and exposed the vulnerability of sclerotic organizations with no social media aptitude or capacity to engage their clients in substantive dialogue.

Do you want your SM content to have the same impact? Follow these lessons:

Lesson 1: Tell a story. Marketers continually preach the value of storytelling for a reason: stories stick. Carroll’s song tells his entire story from witnessing the guitar carnage at O’Hare to the denouement nine months later when his claim is finally rejected by the kind Ms. Irlweg. There was no recitation of United’s lost baggage policies, their industry ranking in bagage claims or even details of the damage done to his guitar. Raw data simply doesn’t have the impact of a well crafted story. No one who views his video will forget his basic narrative: United broke my guitar, they don’t care, they don’t take any responsibility for their negligence and he’ll never fly them again.

Lesson 2: Keep It Simple. Carroll’s song reinforces a simple message directed at United: You broke it, You should fix it. Simple, easy to grasp and powerfully true. If you click through to his personal website, he provides a written narrative that contains all the gruesome details of his nine month saga. But the song is actually more powerful because the core elements are all contained in his facile lyrics.

Lesson 3: Be Authentic. Authenticity is powerful and persuasive. Carroll doesn’t embellish his story, but relies instead on understated frustration and anger that thousands of his viewers can empathize with. Although he may be entirely justified in ranting against United’s casual indifference, his temperate presentation enhances his believability and strengthens his message.

For those wanting to emulate United, these simple lessons should help you enrage half a million clients yourself:

Lesson 1: Design Client Interactions to Maximize Anger and Frustration. One of the reasons that Carroll’s video resonates so powerfully is that it perfectly captures the indifferent response that so many travelers have encountered with the major airlines. While several upstart airlines like Virgin and Southwest have adopted business models that reflect a genuine concern for their passengers, the legacy airlines, including United, American and Delta retain business models that appear to be designed to antagonize and disappoint their passengers. Until the advent of accessible social media channels, they could get away with boorish behavior, but not anymore.

Lesson 2: Refuse to Engage Purposefully In Any Social Media Channels. United has a corporate presence on a single social media channel: Twitter.  And that presence appears to exist for outbound dissemination of ticketing specials and other company promotions, not to engage passengers in active dialogue. Is it any wonder that they appear coldly imperious and uncaring?

Lesson 3: Outsource Your Limited SM Participation to Public Relations. Visit United’s Twitter page and their profile reveals that the account is managed by their public relations department. Not by someone on the front lines of customer service. Not by anyone who has the authority to solve problems immediately. Nope, United apparently views Twitter as another media channel to be managed for their corporate interests, not as a method to interact in real time with their passengers. Want to complain? Not our department.

Lesson 4: Limit Your Response When Confronted With Execrable Behavior. In a case study for what not to do when confronted with appalling corporate behavior, United has limited their response to two brief Twitter messages (right) asserting that they intend to make it right with Dave Carroll and to use the video in future training so everyone receives better service from us. This anemic response is being overwhelmed by over 14,000 nearly universal negative comments attached to the YouTube video. As the video gains more exposure, it will be picked up in other media outlets and has the potential to inflict serious damage on United’s precarious brand image. But it appears that their ingrained, insular culture will trump any creative response that takes responsibility for their negligence and embraces serious change in their service delivery.

Imagine if all the social media tools and channels that we rely upon today were available back in the 1930′s while Stalin extended his dominion over the Soviet empire.

Eager to propagandize stories documenting the unrivaled success of his agricultural collectivization and industrial expansion, Stalin would have turned to his battalions of Party apparatchiks and impelled them to repeatedly Tweet the wonders of Sovietization. And like the advertising agencies slammed in today’s AdAge article, Stalin’s Soviet Ministry of Communications Enterprises and Functions (Digital Formulations) would have been an abject failure.

Mimicking Stalin’s command and control methodology, today’s behemoth advertising agencies are simply attempting to appropriate the assorted social media platforms as yet another ancillary broadcast channel where they can propagandize their uniformly one-way message.

Pursuing social media tactics that would have made the commissars proud, these ad agencies lack a few significant components that differentiate successful SM campaigns, including:

1. Transparency – the best SM programs enlist senior executives to participate in the conversations. They may not tweet with the regularity of their employees, but their participation sends a distinct message that dialogue with their clients is important for everyone in the company.
   The laggards outsource their SM chatter to ad agencies or other third parties, clearly communicating to their own staff and their clients (who will inevitably discover their dereliction) that social media is employed simply as another tactic, not as part of any strategic communication or brand building plan.
2. Authenticity – Twitter posts from named executives and employees resonate with clients and prospects. When the CEO pronounces his commitment to customer service or product quality in a global, open forum, that proclamation has significant meaning and impact. It’s not a nameless, faceless corporate voice, but Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh or Richard at Dell making these statements. Real people articulating real promises in their real voices.
3. Conversation – Social media is about dialogue, not broadcasting. Relationships aren’t built or strengthened when you yell your message at an individual over and over. He resents it and you derive no value unless your hectoring somehow compells him to purchase your product. Not likely. SM is all about generating conversations. Getting to know others online, building relationships, engendering trust and maybe, just maybe, finding a way to transact business together.
4. Longevity – Mars, Inc, the candy company that produces Skittles, followed the advice of their ad agency to make a highly visible commitment to convert Skittles’ entire online presence to Twitter. It turned out to be a huge failure. One of the biggest mistakes was for Skittles to cannonball directly into the Twitter pool and expect an enthusiastic welcome. Although their splash was huge, their welcome was not. Skittles had made no effort to create an online community, to engage with their customers or to provide any type of customer support or interaction. The strongest SM participants are in for the long haul. Their employees establish online reputations, contribute to discussions, interact freely with all participants and integrate their SM activities with their daily routines.
5. Community – Ad agency employees need a huge banner strung across their  ergonomically pure, ecologically sustainable Herman Miller outfitted cubicles reading: It’s Not About You. Self interest may be the single defining quotient of Twitter accounts that are managed by ad agencies. They formulate dozens of clever ways to announce their new product, to roll out a contest or slick giveaway and to link to their own promotional websites. What they don’t engage in is dialogue of any kind.

I read a post from Chris Brogan this morning about Dunkin Donuts’ new iPhone app designed to assist the office coffee runner who needs to keep all the orders straight.

Brogan’s blog post and accompanying screen shot exemplified how simple, effective and targeted design could deliver a terrific user experience while solving a common problem: how to collect increasingly complex coffee and breakfast orders from an entire office staff.

I intended to write a post about the effectiveness of simple design so I downloaded the Dunkin Run app, launched it and immediately decided to change the theme of my post.

3 Quick Steps to Devastate Your Clever iPhone App:

1. Compel your user to enter login information that refers back to an unnamed site where the user ID must have already been created.
2. Provide no instruction, hints, links or ability to create a user ID from your application.
3. Ignite burning hatred of your application that cannot be accessed.

I’ve got to wonder… did anyone from Dunkin Donuts’ marketing department ever take a look at this app?

Did no one consider that brand new users – without existing Dunkin Donuts user ID’s – would try the app and hit a brick wall?

Where was the beta testing?

Dunkin Donuts: FAIL.

Cheezhead this week wrote about Monster.com’s recent announcement that they will (for a hefty fee) execute a social media strategy for their clients.

What’s noticeable about this announcement isn’t that large companies are becoming aware of the value of social media and are trying to cash in on the gold rush of consulting fees that uncertain and unfamiliar companies will fork over to play in the social media pool.

No, the shocking thing about this announcement is that Monster.com has absolutely no social media presence themselves. They don’t tweet. They have no Facebook page. And I can’t find a Monster blog. All of which suggests that perhaps they’re not the best source of social media advice.

What’s also disturbing is that they don’t promise any tangible ROI, just a number of impressions. That’s right, for a mere $12,000 they will set up a Facebook page and Twitter profile for your comapny and promise that a banner ad will appear on 2 million Facebook pages.  Are you whipping out your checkbook yet?

Developing a social media strategy isn’t something that you can outsource to a third party. It should be part of your strategic marketing plan with specific objectives and an anticipated ROI. Company participants need to engage online in genuine conversations. Bloggers need to write about their real world issues. Problems. Successes. Difficult issues. Complex questions. With an authentic, human voice.

It’s not easy, it’s not cheap, it’s not quick and it’s not someone else’s responsibility.

Living in Cleveland, as I do, I have frequent conversations with executives who run prototypical rust-belt businesses. Heavy manufacturing, industrial distribution and professional services that support these core businesses that are decidedly unsexy and unremarkable.

What’s surprising about these discussions is how many of these executives view their own companies as unexceptional and nondescript. Which begs the question: If you don’t think your company is remarkable and unique, why would anyone else?

As the former owner of a manufacturing company that produced labeling machines (it doesn’t get less sexy than labeling) I can attest to the dysfunctional industrial mindset that dominates entire industry sectors. Manufacturers are obsessed with their physical equipment, not what it is capable of providing. Distributors are the sum of their products, not the value they add in knowledge, responsiveness and expertise. And service companies have absolutely no idea how to separate themselves from nearly identical competitors.

When I hear these executives describe their own company in these terms, I see boundless opportunity. In most cases, their competitors behave in exactly the same way, enabling a savvy, thoughtful  and creative marketer to create a distinctive and memorable presence in their industry sector. And with the proliferation of penetrating social media tools, the ability to create an impression and reach your targets with precision and frequency has never been greater.

So if I can see the opportunity, why can’t they? I hear the same excuses over and over, including:

1. My customers aren’t on the internet. I was wondering who it was that wasn’t on the internet at all. Turns out it’s always the clients and prospects of every industrial executive I speak with. Theirs are the ones who don’t use e-mail, never watch anything on YouTube, get their news exclusively from newspapers, still use film cameras, listen only to CD’s and still deliver presentations from a stack of transparencies. I don’t believe it. What’s more believable is that these companies have never provided any reason for any of their clients to use the internet to gather information, gain knowledge or, heaven forbid, entertain.
2. My customers buy on price, so what’s the point? The point is that you’ve never given your clients any reason to base their buying decision on anything other than price. That’s the fundamental problem. You need to become more valuable, and a thoughtful social media program can communicate your distinctive abilities, and reinforce the true value you deliver.
3. What would I say? At first, it’s not about what you say, but how you contribute. How can you help? What do you know that you can share? It’s about them, not about you. Link to articles that you think they would find helpful and interesting. Link to videos that are instructive and entertaining. Link to research that will help their strategic business decisions. And write about the successes that you’ve contributed to and the problems that you’ve helped overcome. Nobody’s expecting brilliance. Insight will do.
4. I don’t have the time. What priorities do you have that are greater than developing your business? Building close relationships with your prospects and clients is not something you can outsource to a marketing firm. Your web developer cannot substitute Flash for real conversations. Want to demonstrate your commitment? Spend some time each day participating. If you don’t commit and engage, neither will your staff.
5. I would lose control. For many old school executives, the concept of social media participation is downright scary. What do you mean people can leave comments? What if they say bad things about us? How can I control what my employees say online? For the command and control executive, the openness of the social media channels strikes fear in their heart. For these executives, I can only commiserate and offer the limited consolation that the new world of social media marketing won’t be that bad if you’re authentic, open, truthful and helpful. Now is that too hard?

I had a meeting this morning with Michael DeAloia, Cleveland’s former TechCzar, who has spent virtually his entire career involved in assorted aspects of business development. As the founder of several technology start-ups, an advisor to emerging technology companies, former director of technology development for the city of Cleveland, former company owner, CFO and director of business development for several Cleveland area technology firms, the TechCzar is intimately familiar with the essential financial elements that enable business growth and success.

He’s also a social media maven, with two blogs of his own, a daily fixture on assorted social media platforms and the founder of two social media startups. Basically, he’s got the credentials, the experience and the detailed understanding of the potential of social media to advance specific business objectives. So, when he talks about executing social media strategies, a lot of savvy people in town listen.

That’s why I wanted to hear his perspective on social media ROI – a topic that’s inflamed the Twittersphere since Olivier Blanchard published his series of blog posts that excoriated the pretentious social media gurus who promote unreliable and flawed ROI models.

So, does ROI it exist? Should it be tracked? And, if so, how should it be measured?

As Michael makes clear, an essential element of any social media strategy is how that strategy contributes to business development. And business development is clearly defined as activity that generates revenue. It really is that simple.

Salesforce.com recently introduced tools that integrate the online CRM system with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, thereby enabling their users to track contact and activity originating in the social media sphere. Salesforce’s integration an acknowledgement that companies need to track all of their business development activities, not just those emanating from the historic direct marketing channels. As marketing investment shifts to the new social media platforms, executives will need firm data to determine the efficacy and effectiveness of their assorted social media channels.

Sorry if this sounds so Web 1.o, but this is the real world, where investment decisions are based on hard data, not on warm feelings. Bottom line, if your social media efforts do not translate into an increased number of transactions, larger transactions, increased margins or reduced costs, then your insistence on the value of your conversations, retweets and Fan Page subscriptions is a pure and limpid farce.

As Michael concludes: “Dollars in the bank, baby.” Truth.

The blogosphere and Twittersphere have been buzzing this past week over a series of blog posts by Oliver Blanchard on his blog, The BrandBuilder, discussing how to communicate social media ROI to skeptical executives.

The posts sparked dozens of comments and hundreds of Tweets from social media aficionados that split between those who castigated Olivier for daring to introduce crass mercantile interests into the pristine world of social media and those who recognize the business realities involved with securing investment and executive support and need practical guidance to pitch their social media plans.

Olivier was precisely correct when he wrote that executives need to hear how any social media plan will generate a tangible and measurable return on their investment. These executives are responsible for dispensing a finite amount of corporate resources among departments. It is practical, desirable and reasonable that they dispense investment dollars to those projects that will advance the company’s financial position the farthest. That’s reality. Now how do you deal with it?

Once you understand their agenda – maximizing the return on their finite investment dollars – you can frame your social media plans effectively, in language that is compelling and convincing.

Rule #1: do not talk about Twitter followers, the number of retweets last month or the number of times a Fan Page was shared on Facebook. They don’t understand and they don’t care. Zip it until next month’s local SMC meeting.

Rule #2: Speak in language that they understand: Process, Plan, Cost and Return. CEO’s will want to understand the SM process and know that you have a precise plan to execute. By the way, it must be written, or it’s not really a plan.

Rule #3: Do not tell the CEO that the cost of your social media plan is zero or you’ll lose all credibility. Although Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and WordPress do not charge their users, their cost is not zero. Their actual cost must include the human costs of participation, engagement, content development and management. How many employees will be involved? At what level? How many hours per day? Per week? Although the company doesn’t write a separate check for social media costs, they are paying for participation, and the total cost may be significant.

Rule #4: Focus on Quantitative, not Qualitative returns. Qualitative returns include the impact of your participation on your company’s reputation and the value of extended online conversations in relationship building. The CEO doesn’t care. I know you do, and I know your CEO should, but that’s not how he measures success. He wants Quantitative metrics. How many new customers did your efforts generate? How many new sales? How much did the average sale increase? What impact did your efforts have on gross margin?

Rule #5: Understand how the F.R.Y. metrics explain and support your social media goals. As Olivier described in his blog post, a compelling social media strategy should improve:

Frequency Increasing sales revenue by shortening the interval between transactions.

Reach (breadth) Increasing sales revenue by increasing net new customer count.

Reach (Depth) Increasing sales revenue by helping customers buy deeper into the product line.

Yield Increasing sales revenue by driving customers to want to increase their average per transaction spending.

Rule #6: Be prepared to detail how you intend to track sales that emerge from the social media channels. You must be able to track results to prove that your SM participation justified the company’s investment.

There. That wasn’t so hard. Now head up to the CEO’s office and tell him how you’re going to improve the company’s bottom line. And you can blog about it later.

The publishing industry has been devastated by the Internet model that demands free content immediately delivered in a variety of user-chosen formats.

Newspapers are floundering, trying desperately to remain relevant when the news they deliver to your doorstep has already been read and digested for up to 24 hours.

And the news magazines are facing an even more perilous future, since the news they have historically reported is now delivered over a week after its occurrence. When Twitter can provide reports on, and photos of, an airplane landing in the Hudson as it happens, the prospect of a news magazine reporting the same event seven days later doesn’t seem particularly compelling.

Facing this historic business crisis, Newsweek decided to do something about it. They aren’t going to be just a weekly news magazine (despite their extraordinarily precise brand name), instead they are going to be….. a thought leader. And, to cement their long-term viability, they’re increasing the price of the now non-news week magazine so that their subscriber base can be simultaneously confused and impoverished.

Imagine if ESPN tomorrow were to declare that because of declining sports viewership, they were switching formats and would now broadcast nothing but classic comedies. And, oh by the way, they were raising their price for all of their previous sports viewers to continue watching. How long would you predict they would last on your cable system?

Apparently the arrogance of publishing executives cannot be tempered by anything as prosaic as business realities. These haughty decision makers have determined that the perception of the publishing brand that they’ve created, developed and reinforced for decades can be summarily dismissed and instantly rebranded with an entirely different focus and objective simply because they declare their intent.

I won’t delve into the recent reporting biases of Newsweek, which suggest that they’ve abandoned all pretense of being an objective news source, and focus on the seemingly genetic arrogance of the executives who intend to pursue a new purpose and create a new publication without any apparent need or clamor from their readers. Markets are supposed to react to demand. Has there been any demand from their readers insisting on lengthy essays on a variety of topics? Have any readers begged for some leadership so they could frame their thoughts correctly? Or is this reformation simply an extension of the publisher’s and editor’s desire to retain some semblance of relevance?

The new model appears to have avoided any attempt at serious design thinking – trying to create a new model to replace the failing model that they’ve always adhered to. Where is the surprise? Where is the integration of web-based elements with the new magazine? How are they remaining relevant to the millions of mobile users? How will they generate sustained revenue outside of their historic advertising model? Where are the innovative social media elements? Where, in fact, is anything distinctive or memorable? Why would I read this?

Cue the dirges, because this experiment is destined to fail. Quickly. Inevitably. And certainly. They are breaking their brand promise, they are trying to force a model on their subscribers without preceding demand and they are vainly clinging to a publishing model that has been demonstrated to fail. Without even a nod to the transformative nature of the web, Newsweek has simply changed itself from a Triceratops to a Stegosaurus. But ensconced in their insular, self-affirming and self-congratulatory echo chambers, they fail to acknowledge that both ultimately became extinct.

Sat at the bar at Champps this week where a shark fin shaped coaster caught my eye. It was the coaster for a beer named Landshark, and I thought it was a creative use of design to grab attention and notice.

The coaster sparked a conversation with the bartender about the beer. It was obviously intended to appear to be a microbrew targeted at the Corona drinker, and I was curious how a microbrew could land in a major restaurant chain and have their coasters placed under every drink at the bar. That’s an expensive proposition, and one that’s not entered into lightly from the chain’s perspective.

Something didn’t make sense, so I pulled out my handy iPhone and fired up the Google.

A quick search revealed that the Landshark beer wasn’t a microbrew after all, but was brewed by Anheuser Busch for Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville Brewing Company and launched as a direct competitor to Corona.

The Landshark bottle design is virtually identical to Corona’s, it is served with a wedge of lime to be squeezed into the bottle, just like Corona, and it is described on its label as Island Style Lager (though the specific island, or islands, is never specifically identified, though we can be reasonably certain that the island isn’t Manhattan).

The connection to Corona is even more apparent when you take a look at the Landshark lager web page on the Margaritaville corporate website, where the images of Landshark postcards appear to be a direct rip-off of Corona’s marketing efforts.

Seriously, Landshark’s materials are a direct lift of Corona’s look and feel images incorporating sandy beach, dazzling blue ocean and palm tree fronds dangling from the upper corners. Gentlemen, start your depositions.

Faithful to my inquisitive marketing nature, I ordered a Landshark to gauge it’s similarity in taste to its intended rival. The beer was similar in flavor to Corona, delicious with a wedge of lime, and immeasurably better than the major brewers’ other Corona rivals Miller Chill or Bud Light Lime. Which left me conflicted.

The product itself is fine, but I have qualms about how the beer’s marketing strategy is being designed and executed. Both the bartender and another Landshark beer drinker that I spoke with thought that the beer was a microbrew. In fact, that was one of Landshark’s primary appeals: it wasn’t a big corporate brew. Except it was.

Want to know how big and corporate Landshark is? They just acquired naming rights to the Miami Dolphins Stadium for one year. That’s seriously corporate.

At its core, my unease with the brand lies in its lack of any genuine authenticity. It pretends to be something it’s not. It has no island style, no island roots, in fact no legend or backstory at all.

Ultimately, that’s where Landshark, and their ad agency, fail. They obviously want to position themselves as the beer of choice for Corona lovers. But what’s the reason to order the imitation instead of the real thing?  With all the social media and web-based marketing tools available, it’s never been easier to create a legend and product persona. But Landshark has no social media presence at all, has intentionally avoided creating their own legend and appears intent on leveraging a glossy image and their substantial marketing dollars to gain mindshare and bar space.

Given a choice between the two, I’ll take the original Corona. With a wedge of lime, please.

Some of the worst advertising in the world is printed in industry trade journals. Those glossy magazines devoted to mobile home production or coal mining that are paid for with industry specific advertising from the titans of their industry sector.

Reading the ads in these magazines illustrates everything that’s wrong with most marketing efforts. They try to incorporate too many messages, they make outrageous claims of industry leadership or market domination, they are insufferably self-aggrandizing and they focus almost exclusively on the product, not the buyer.

As a followup to yesterday’s post detailing the 5 Essential Rules of Business Design, I now offer these 5 Essential Rules of Message Design:

1. Your message should consist of one thing. That’s it. One. Ideally, it should be one thing that appeals to your customers. The ad that you ran that declared your engineering prowess, commitment to service, ease of use, instant availability and unparalleled quality was so crowded and disjointed that it actually conveyed none of these messages. If you don’t know what sets your company apart, how will your prospects or customers know? Distill your capabilities down to the one essential thing your customers can’t live without. Then stick with it.
2. Your product/machine/service is not your message. Industrial companies are frequently run by the person who originally founded the company – who is often the person who designed and engineered their original products. You can tell from their advertising that they love their machines. Their full page ads are dominated by a picture of their latest beauty, which is nearly indistinguishable from their earlier machines, or from any of their competitor’s machines. But the difference, you see, is that the new Model 3550DX can run at 1700″/minute, not 1600″/minute. Get it? Actually, I understand if you don’t. What these company owners fail to grasp is that the buyer isn’t buying the machine, they’re buying the functionality of the machine. They actually don’t care a whit about the machine. Only you do. If you want to create an indelible message, focus on the benefits you deliver: ease of use, reliability, uptime, throughput – and leave the machine out of it.
3. Tell the truth. Your customers know who you really are. Your prospects who convert to customers soon will. If you fabricate an identity that has no connection to reality, you’ll alienate your customers, lose their trust and may never regain it. I worked with an industrial company that was # 7 in their industry sector, with annual sales of about $25 million. They competed with companies with sales exceeding $2 billion, yet made the claim that they led the industry in R&D, service and quality. It was an unbelievable boast. In reality, their strength was regional distribution, but they didn’t think that regional distribution was significant enough, so they puffed themselves up to appear larger and more important than they are. Their sales are down over 25%. Good luck regaining that trust, guys.
4. Commercial buyers are no different than any other consumer. Industrial producers frequently claim that their buyers are different from other buyers. And they’re wrong. The emotional appeals to industrial buyers are virtually identical to every other buyer. Compare the buying process of  a consumer preparing to buy a new car and an industrial buyer preparing to buy a new labeling machine. Both will investigate several buying options. When evaluating these options, both will likely consider the manufacturer’s reputation, reliability, ease of use, total cost of ownership, service requirements, warranties and performance characteristics. Although the total purchase amount may be many factors higher, the buying process isn’t far removed from any standard consumer purchase. This makes the design of your marketing message that much more critical.
5. Repetition works. Just because you tire of your message doesn’t mean that your buyer is tired of it. You see your message every day, in every e-mail that you send and in every view of your company’s web page. But your customers don’t see your message nearly as often. You may send them e-mails every week, but it’s likely that they delete over 70% of your messages before they’re even read. Stay on message. Over and over and over. Across all media, including social media. If your message is important, it’s worth repeating.