A great friend and colleague of mine Jimmy Hendricks passed a great blog over to me earlier today and I felt compelled to write my thoughts and comments in the form of my own post. The post I read was by Edward Boches, Chief Creative Officer and Chief Social Media Officer of Mullen called 'Social media changes everything, except the need for creativity.'
Edward points out that three events have created the surge of social media marketing throughout the world.
1. The Recession
2. Barack Obama
3. A media circus
I agree that even 9 months ago I could probably count on one hand how many clients of mine were bought into the idea of social networking and community websites as a doorway out of the recession outhouse. Now many clients are going back to the drawing board to see how they can gain more fans, friends, and followers...all leading to membership and/or tickets sales, product sales, and ultimately profitability. This has obviously made my job a lot easier as a business and marketing strategist in the industry - yet we still have our work cut out for us.
Let's all agree that the trends we've seen in the past year with social media are NOT going away and if anything it's like pouring gasoline on a wood pile. Creativity is still and always will be the ignition for the explosive success one can achieve with a video gone viral on YouTube or a Facebook campaign generating a media frenzy.
I agree with Edward that traditional print and television advertising will decrease to a degree and I feel that if anything those advertising mediums will become simply another platform to promote the connectivity found on social networking sites. You'll start to see trends where products will begin fueling the attention towards their social sites like Facebook via television advertising.
Smart phone technology will absolutely revolutionize the way we all communicate from one another, from GPS enabled text messaging to fan produced content...innovation and creativity will steer us into the new era. Someone in the entertainment and music industry that I respect very much from a brand creativity standpoint is Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. Just released a few weeks ago was a fully downloadable HD video of a NIN concert, however it was all user and fan generated content. Talk about giving back to their fanbase, Trent definitely knows what it takes to be successful in this technologically social environment. If you're extremely bored (or just want to hear a true musical visionary discuss music marketing) check out this interview of Trent by Digg's Kevin Rose. I think you'll enjoy it.
Similar to this concept has been the smart advertising efforts by Verizon to promote their new product the Droid. Now as an iPhone enthusiast I don't think there's a cellular technology out there that can compete, but the television advertising left me wanting to know more. Immediately I found myself searching the Twitter-sphere for mentions of this 'Droid' product to be released in the near future. Below is my favorite of the Verizon commercials. Marketing and advertising excellence is what it is. So think of how you can break the mold of traditional advertising to create a frenzy on the web.
Great article. Along these lines, I think you'd love this 1 hour movie on the future:
Us Now
http://www.vimeo.com/4489849
Posted by: Kevin Koskella | 11/11/2009 at 11:09 AM