• Social media activists created such uproar on January 18 that congressional leaders backing the SOPA / PIPA (Stop Online Piracy Act / Protect Internet Property Act) were forced to withdraw the controversial legislation.

• Online protests regarding the Susan G. Koman’s Foundations decision to no longer fund breast cancer screening at Planned Parenthood locations forced Komen to do an about face and revert to the original funding policy. Online positioning against Komen’s defunding position will create long-term damage to the brand, and forced the resignation of the person responsible for the defunding initiative.

• Super Bowl XLVI set a new record for social media engagement. Twitter saw an amazing 15 million tweets during the 2012 game compared to 3 million last year. That’s an increase of 500%! Facebook and YouTube also saw record-breaking engagement.

Are these three events connected? The first two – yes, obviously. But what’s the connection to the Super Bowl?

The Super Bowl social activity, especially when compared to previous year’s engagement, shows that social media usage is mainstream. It’s no longer just the geeks, the technorati or the 18-34s. It’s everybody and it’s all the time.

Social media’s mainstreaming has created an instantaneous platform for social, political and brand activists. It really gained momentum, just a year ago, with the “Arab Spring” uprisings in the mid-east, which were started and fueled by social media. This was predictor of things to come. But there was a major disconnect. By most of corporate America.

The “suits” who were promoting SOPA / PIPA and running The Susan G. Komen Foundation didn’t (and probably still don’t) get nor understand the immediacy and the impact of social media. And what they truly don’t get is that it is spontaneous. It takes off like a wild fire and blazes out of control almost as fast.

The suits, and in many cases, traditional brand and public relations practitioners, think that they can still control the messaging. (Hello! Motion Picture Association of America’s Chris Dodd, a leading proponent of SOPA / PIPA; and, Susan G. Komen founder Nancy Brinkman!) You make a decision that impacts a lot of people and you can’t contain it like you did in the “old days” of “push” public relations, where only your side of the story is presented to the public.

Writing in MediaPost’s Social Media Insider, Catharine P. Taylor said,

“…what you come away with is the knowledge that many people in official positions in our society are ill-equipped to deal with the voice that social media brings to millions of people. It’s no longer enough for high-profile institutions to get their stories straight and have concise, prepared statements for reporters; now, the role of communications is to gird for whatever might be unleashed in the Blogo/Facebook/Twittersphere and to weigh the power of the social media with the fact that it’s not a focus group.”

Peter Hirshberg, a well-known commentator on Internet and social media culture wrote on his Facebook page last Friday (before Komen reversed their decision):

“Two weeks ago internet activism killed SOPA. Today online protests swamp the Susan G Komen foundation and leaving their founder looking like she had no idea what just hit her. (Much as MPAA’s Chris Dodd did last week.) These are pretty responsive political feed-back loops fueled by social media. They suggest that citizen voices really are resonating more powerfully than before. It’s pretty empowering to find that what you say really does have impact, something the Arab world discovered about a year ago.”

The dynamics of both the SOPA / PIPA and Komen fiascos are indicative of the sea change in messaging. It’s about the old, traditional methodology of controlling the message versus the new reality of the tsunami of the digital age and social media.

If you are a brand, or a brand marketer, your social media needs to be managed by really competent professionals, like Ford has done with Scott Monty. These professionals should be in the room when major decisions are discussed and should also be part of the decision making process. You need to understand that you really don’t control the totality of your brand messaging.

If your idea of “social media” is still that of a college intern managing your Facebook page, your day of reckoning is somewhere on the horizon.

You may or may not be aware that Google has changed its search algorithm (the mathematical formula that is used to generate the results that you see when you search on Google) to provide personalized search results influenced by the behavior of your friends in Google’s online social communities (Google+ / Google Circles, Messenger and Hangouts). They call this “Search Plus Your World” (SPYW).

What does this mean? If you Google search “sushi restaurants,” you’ll get results based on what your friends using Google+ have liked, commented on or “+1-ed” instead of the type of search results that you’ve come to expect. Ah…that explains all those “Google+ this” icons that we see on every search result.

So, when you search using Google, you may not be getting what you asked for! There is a way to turn off SPYW, as HuffPost’s Larry Magid explains in this blog post. For a company that prides itself on the accuracy (through constant tweaking) of it’s search algorithm, it seems strange that the SPYW results are based on a lot of randomness – the friends in your Google social network, the number of that actually “Google+” something that they like, etc.

To me, that’s not very accurate. And, I don’t seem to be the only one. In a blog post on MediaPost’s Online Spin titled “Google You Suck” by Kalia Colbin, she says: “The reason you got a billion search users in the first place is because you’re really really good at what you do best, and the reason you’re failing so badly at social is because it’s so obviously not what you do best. Circles? Really? Doesn’t it occur to you that if that one issue were such a massive deal-breaker, Facebook wouldn’t have 850 million active users?”  And, later, “Google, remember how you became so awesome. It was by focusing on the user: by having a deep insight into the needs of people searching the Web and an empathetic understanding of the indicators of quality content online.”

Google, obviously, wants to be all things interactive to all people, with “social” at the top of their list. Google is envious of the social worlds created by Facebook and Twitter. And, by the way, Google and Twitter have their own little tussle going on, as described on TechCrunch.

But Google, with $36 Billion in revenue, may be jeopardizing that trying , again, to be something that they’ve never really figured out how to be.

What do you think? Does this impact the validity that you give to Google search results? Do you Google+?

Hidden away in all the press is an intriguing blog post by Chris Taylor published on Mashable. As Chris points out, when a company goes public, the SEC requires a lot of information that must be made public. This amounts to “full disclosure” of the risk factors that could negatively impact the business to anyone contemplating purchasing the company’s stock. Facebook listed 35 vulnerabilities. This number is actually not a lot. Recent digital IPOs saw Zynga list 44, LinkedIn had 42 and Groupon a whopping 55.

These risk factors include such things as the amount of stock owned by Mark Zuckerberg (28% of the company and 56% of the voting stock), which concentrates power and control of the company in one person. Others include potential bugs in the intricate software, possible security breaches and the fact that Facebook does not own its own all of its servers.

But one in particular that caught my eye is listed at #3. The fact that Facebook’s mobile platform doesn’t show ads! 

Last year, Facebook generated $3.7 Billion in revenue, mostly from ads (although 12% of their total revenue came from social gaming company Zynga – another risk factor, by the way). Of that $3.7 Billion in revenue, Facebook took $1 Billion to the bottom line. That equates to a profit margin of slightly more than 27%. So, 88% of their revenue came from ads – BUT, these ads don’t display on mobile platforms!

Couple this with the fact that we are rapidly becoming a mobile world, and that last year, there was more Internet access through mobil apps than search or clicking on links and you can see that Facebook could be looking down the barrel of a very big gun. If more and more Facbook access is by mobile, that means the fewer and fewer ads are going to be seen by Facebook users. Since ad pricing is based on people accessing the ads, fewer people seeing them = fewer people accessing them = less revenue.

If I were Mark Zuckerberg, or one of the honchos at Facebook, this is the one that would keep me up at night!

Apple didn’t invent the MP3 music player, but the iPod became synonymous with the category. Following that, Apple not only revolutionized the music distribution business with the launch of iTunes, it changed it forever. Apple’s iPhone blazed the trail for a whole new phone experience – the smart phone. The iPad wasn’t the first tablet, but within months of its introduction, it created a whole new product category as well as a method of how people consume information.

What has not been discussed as much as Jobs’ role in technology innovation is what he and Apple taught us about marketing. First of all, Steve Jobs was the consummate marketer. Dressed in the now iconic black mock turtle neck and Levi’s, Jobs’ product introductions combined PT Barnum with Harry Potter. He once described that little pocket above the right side front pocket on his Levi’s as the perfect carrying-place for the iPod, and immediately pulled one from that very pocket.

In the media coverage that immediately followed Jobs’ death, Fortune Managing Editor Andy Serwer discussed Jobs marketing prowess: “The magic of Apple and Steve Jobs is that he made us want to buy things that we didn’t know existed.”

I couldn’t agree more. But, how did they do that? Here are some marketing lessons that I’ve learned from Apple:

1) Design sells!  Apple products’ clean and simple designs, starting with 1998′s iMac, have won scores of design awards. From a marketing standpoint, design = cachet. The products are something that consumers want to be associated with because they are cool.

2) Deliver on the promise! The only technology glitch in recent Apple product introductions was the antenna malfunction on the early iPhone 4. At that time, numerous “insiders” stated that this was one instance where Apple turned to a relative outsider to ramrod the product design and technology. Those same reports stated that Steve Jobs went ballistic when this happened and the person responsible was quickly and unceremoniously fired. Steve realized that Apple could introduce and sell new and innovative products because consumers trusted them to work. The early iPhone 4 issues violated that trust.

3. Timing is everything! Very few remember the Newton, Apple’s early attempt at a tablet device. One of the (many) reasons that the Newton didn’t work was that, culturally, we were  still (literally) connected to the PC. It took the iPhone to initiate a cultural shift on how information was consumed to blaze the trail for the iPad.

IPad - the time has come.

4. Suspense sells, or at least creates demand! Apple product introductions are legendary. The buzz and conjecture reaches a fever pitch in the weeks leading up to the actual event. Apple aficionados consider these events bigger than Christmas/birthday/first kiss all rolled into one. Even the so called “disappointment” that the latest iPhone introduction was the 4S rather than the anticipated iPhone5 generated sales volume of 4 million units in just 3 weeks.

5. Intuitive operation! The magic pixie dust that is sprinkled through all Apple products is the intuitive ease of operation. It’s not over technical. When a 3 year old can take photos and listen to music on an iPhone, that’s the litmus test for intuitive operation. Don’t go “all technical,” in explanations.

6. Make it special! Relate to the consumer: “What does this do for them?” I can now carry my entire CD collection in my pocket or purse (iPod). I can phone/email/text/take pictures/ update Facebook from one device (iPhone). I can do almost everything that I do on my Mac or PC and Kindle on one device (iPad). When you do this it creates consumer cachet – everyone wants one and it’s cool to have one. And if there is limited supply at the beginning, that creates even more demand.

7. Create trust in the brand. This ties to #2 above. When you deliver on the promise, you create trust in the brand that allows you to, as Andy Serwer says, sell people things that they don’t know exist. Why do most mobile carriers score so low in consumer trust tests? They don’t deliver on the promise. They promise fantastic coverage, lightning fast speeds and show all kinds of capabilities in advertising that doesn’t take place in reality.

8. Create brand evangelists! When you accomplish all of the above, you’ve generated trust and an iconic brand. When we do discovery exercises with new and potential clients, we ask which brands they admire. We’ve recently rephrased the question to “Other than Apple, what brands do you admire and why?”

One more thought, as Apple moves into the post-Steve Jobs era: it is being helmed by Tim Cook, who has generated a significant amount of press in his own right. Tim may not be the charismatic product-introducer that Steve Jobs was, but he is the guy that, among other things, created the Apple Store and made sure that the product delivery chain put products on the shelves to meet consumer demand. I think Apple’s marketing is in good hands.

Frequency is the number of times a radio commercial airs over a specific period of time. When I was a radio sales rep, I quickly learned that an advertiser had to run a certain number of commercials for each event in order to motivate the potential consumers in my audience to take an action. For example, if an auto dealer was promoting a weekend sales event, they might run 30 or 40 commercials in the days leading up to the event. It seemed as if every time that you turned on the station you heard the commercial. That was good, because “frequency” drove the message home and caused consumer action. We knew that the consumer had to be exposed to the message more than once before they “got it.”

It's that commercial again!

Frequency also works on TV. Whether it’s Old Navy, Verizon or Apple, we’re inundated with their TV spots during marketing events.

But what about frequency for social media? Most of us, whether marketers or in our personal social networks, post one time to Facebook and Twitter and think that we’ve gotten the word out. Facebook and Twitter work just like radio and TV in that the audience is there for a specific period of time, and, unless our message is at the forefront on their wall or Twitter feed when they are, they are not going to see, or react to it.

We might check our Facebook page a couple of times a day. This is just like listening to the radio on the way to and from work.

If I want you to see my message, it needs to be on your wall or Twitter feed when you are looking at it. Not many people scroll back through all the posts since their last log on. So, to be effective, the message needs to be there when the consumer is.

There’s a lot of research that shows us Facebook and Twitter usage. One of the key periods for Facebook usage is late afternoon, just before people go home from work. They are killing time by logging on to their social networks (by mobile device if their company net has blocked them). To reach this audience, I might post at 3:30pm one day, 4pm the next day and 4:30pm on the third day. I’ve covered a 90 minute spectrum in this crucial time period. And, if some of my friends see the message more than once, that’s all the better!

The concept of frequency is what makes radio and TV effective, and it works the same for social media. There are several apps that allow you to pre-schedule posts and Tweets (we like Hootsuite) so that you can create frequency with your messaging. When you design a frequency element to your messaging, develop three or four versions of the message – after all, this is “social” media.

Once you apply “frequency” to your social media messaging, you’ll see a greater return in consumer engagement and action.

Most of us have slipped into “summer mode.” Vacations have happened, are happening or will happen soon. Some cyclical businesses slow down during the summer months. Customers are on vacation, or normal consumer spending drops so that discretionary money can be spent on trips, summer fun and family.

People’s routines have changed. Kids are out of school. Maybe their social media habits have changed too? Nope!  The analytics show that people consume social media at the same rate during the summer that they do the rest of the year. So, you shouldn’t assume that because it’s summer that you should post less often to your company Facebook page or Twitter feed. What you might want to do to keep your customers and fans engaged is to go into summer mode with the content on your social sites. Remember, “social media” is “social.” It’s not about always selling your products or services. So be social and engage your consumers the same that you would talk to your friends about summer.

Sadie, our Director of Security, on her summer vacation.

We just experienced a huge surge in activity on a blog site that we manage in a promotional partnership with a major TV station. One of the things that we did to drive traffic and engage our community over the Fourth of July weekend was to create and post a comprehensive list of all the fireworks displays in our market. The response was overwhelming! We had the info up early enough for Google to index our site and Google was a major driver to the site. We posted links on our Facebook page and Twitter feed several times leading up to the Fourth of July and saw major bumps on those two social applications.

Be relevant!  One of our favorite sites, allfacebook.com, offers 5 tips to make your Facebook page relevant during the summer.

If you have a blog, talk about summer events and things to do in your area. You could run a promotion and ask customers to take your product on vacation with them and submit a photo to your Flickr stream showing your product in new and fun places. Run a promotion and give away a summer picnic for a family reunion or a block party. Humanize your company by showing that you enjoy and participate in summer too!

Maybe your social sites need a summer makeover using summery graphics or skins. Most importantly, don’t let your social sites go “dark” for a week or two because the person responsible for them is on vacation! Use an app like Hootsuite to pre-schedule posts to your social sites while they are on vacation. Or, have more than one person posting to your sites so that engagement is ongoing.

See ya’ at the beach!

Pure Tacqueria in Atlanta’s Inman Park looks like one of those bars run by American ex-pats along the Mexican coast – maybe someplace like Isla Mujeres off the Gulf Coast. It takes its name from the old Pure gas station signs prominently displayed outside and in. The functional interior, kind of 50s formica meets Ikea, feels light and breezy on this sunny summer afternoon. It helps that the USA vs. Mexico Gold Cup Futbol match is on the flat screen behind the bar, adding to the Mexican beach ambiance – and the Braves day game vs. SanDiego is on the other screen. Sports nirvana!

Pure Tacqueria, Inman Park, Atlanta, GA

It’s 2:30 in the afternoon, a little early for a drink, but a bit late for lunch, so I decide to combine the two. After the requisite chips and salsa are placed before me, seated at the bar, I ordered one of my faves – Texas Margarita on the rocks. It comes in a “rocks” or whiskey glass, much preferred by me. I try to pry the “secret sauce” of the house-made mix recipe from the bartendress, but she’s mum. You can tell from the first sip that the base mix is house made. It doesn’t have that kind of metal after taste that some commercial mixes have. The bartender does share with me that the house tequila is Pepe Lopez, from a Mexican family that has been making tequila since 1857. The ice is cubed, not crushed – I think that this makes a big difference in a drink.

I close my eyes and take the first sip. I let it linger in my mouth before swallowing it. I swear that I can hear the surf and smell cocoanut oil from the tanning loation worn by the couple on the next beach towel… er, at the end of the bar. I can hear seagulls. A few more sips and I’m totally in beach mode. Maybe it’s the old sailing regatta t-shirt, the frayed shorts, the flip flops and The “Foxy’s” cap I’m wearing, but for a moment, I am at the beach!

Maybe it’s a combination of the décor, the vibe or the perfect chips and salsa, but I rate Pure Tacqueria’s Texas Margarita 4 limes!

The purpose of the new site is, according to Google, to “provide a unified (interface) to search in multiple channels.” Wait a minute! I’m confused. How does this differ from regular old Google? Just what are these “multiple channels” being touted?

I decided a test drive was in order. I pondered as to what I really “love,” at least for the purpose of this test drive, and settled on the term “Italian food.” Here are my results.

Whoa!

This page is so “un Google,” compared to the regular Google search page that we’ve come to expect after thousands of searches. There are large blocks and splashes of color. Glancing at the page, I’m invited (by Google) to find Italian food nearby via Google Maps, or watch videos of Italian food via You Tube, or search blogs or start a discussion, or create a a photo album. I’m starting to get overwhelmed… and then the light goes on. Every one of the search results employes a Google app or product. Look at my results for “Italian food” and you’ll see the specific Google app or platform is listed in blue type under the headline in each box. So, WDYL is, in reality, a Google promotional site that allows them to show you all the way that they can deliver information across their many platforms. Granted, it’s difficult to keep up with all the functions and applications that Google has launched, and this certainly showcases them, but for me, it’s more than I need or want. And there’s a social element, but the “social” is limited to Google’s “social tools” – Buzz and GMail.

I must give Google credit where credit is due. Prior to searching on What Do You Love, I would never have considered looking up patents on Italian food products, or viewing Italian food in 3D on the web. Not that I will now, but good to know that the option is there!

It seems that Google still hasn’t learned from the almost non-adaption of “Buzz”  - that creating products that only work in “Google World” don’t generate the universal (pun warning!) buzz and adoption that they’d like to get. Maybe “What Do You Love” isn’t really asking me what I love. Maybe Google should change the name of the site to “See What We Do.”

Give What Do You Love a test drive at www.wdyl.com and tell us what you think.

Susan Lucci - "All My Children"

ABC cited declining ratings in the target demo, Women 25-54 as a reason, and the numbers don’t lie. All My Children has lost almost 1/3 of its audience since 2007, falling from a 1.9 to a 1.3 demo rating during the four year period. One Life to Live has similar performance problems, dropping from  1.9 demo rating F25-54 to a 1.4 over the same four years.

What happened to the audience? Where did those 25-54 year old women go? While some will posit that female-centric cable channels such as Lifetime, Bravo and Oxygen siphoned of audience, the numbers don’t add up. The gains of Lifetime, Oxygen et al don’t account for the soaps’ losses.

So where did those women go? Farmville, that’s where!

Yes, “social gaming,” particularly Farmville and Cityville on Facebook are HUGE with women! Nielsen reports that “social media” is the number one activity on the web, accounting for 43% of all time spent on line. The number one social media online activity? Facebook. But here’s what’s interesting, what do you think is the number one activity on Facebook? It’s social gaming – specifically Farmville and it’s newer city cousin, Cityville. Social gaming differs from online gaming, such as World of Warcraft, in that it takes place within social applications, and Facebook is the 800 pound gorilla in this category, with 83% of all social gaming taking place there.

The numbers for Zynga’s Farmville and Cityville are mindboggling! As of today, May 19, 2011, there are some 48 million monthly Farmville players and an astounding 100 million monthly Cityville players. At any one time, 15% to 20% of the people on Facebook are playing Farmville or Cityville.

But who are these players? In the US, the typical Farmville player is a 48 year old female. That is, or was, the core viewer for the TV soaps. The female 25-54 audience has shifted from “TV viewers” to “online gamers.” There are some sociological implications here. The 48 year old female online gamer went from faux relationships with popular characters on TV soaps to real relationships with friends through social gaming.

80 million monthly users

But we know even more about these social gamers via a PopCap Survey: 55% are women; 46% of these women are 50+. Two-thirds of social gamers play daily and 60% of those play for a half hour or more. One out of ten plays 3+ hours daily! These are not all home managers or stay-at-home moms playing while the kids are in school, 41% of women social gamers are employed full time. For those stay at home moms, it allows them to engage with friends online during they day when they might not have the opportunity for other social contact. Are social gamers engaged? Yes! Farmville raised over $1 million for Haiti Earthquake Relief selling virtual goods through the game.

100 million monthly users

Farmville launched in 2007, and soon had explosive growth, reaching 80 million monthly players. Cityville blew Farmville’s doors off when it launched this past January. In just 40 days, Cityville had 100 million monthly users! Oh, and during this time, viewership of those venerable daytime soaps was less than a million. Think of it this way, All My Children has an audience that is 1% of those playing Cityville!

So, the next time one of your Facebook friends reaches out to your through Farmville or Cityville (and whatever happened to Cafe World?), stop and think that tyhis is just a microcosm of activity that takes place everyday in the world of social gaming.

What about you? What social games do you play?

This week, I picked her up on Tuesday, the day after my birthday, celebrated the evening before at my daughter’s home. Following the obligatory singing of “Happy Birthday” and my birthday strawberry short cake, Lexie gave me a present that she had picked out for me all by herself. It was a “Mrs. Sock Monkey,” a stuffed sock monkey doll with a shock of bright red yarn hair. Lexie’s mom was perplexed, and didn’t understand why Lexie had, without hesitation, said that she wanted to give me a sock monkey for a birthday present. It has to do with a 4 year olds’ perception that the single sock monkey on a shelf in my bed room is lonely and needs a companion.

On the ride home from school, we discussed the purchase of Mrs. Sock Monkey. Lexie informed me that I can expect a whole flock or gaggle, or whatever package they come in, of future sock monkeys on future birthdays. I asked her where she was going to get them. She told me that “Mommy takes me to the store to get them.”

When I asked if there was a “special” sock monkey store, Lexie said “No, just a regular store. I think it was Target because Mrs. Sock Monkey is red.”

There you have it – a not quite 4 year old associating anything that is red as coming from Target because, that’s right, the store logo and branding is red. She also told me that “…things that are green come from Publix…” Publix is a regional grocery chain with a green logo.

Target didn’t discover red as a branding color. That may have been Coca Cola. I remember back in the day that there was a specific PMS color for “Coke Red.” Lots have brands have based their branding around a color. Those unique Tiffany boxes. Kodak Yellow. Home Depot Orange. And more recently, in the digital space, Facebook blue, Yahoo purple, the graphite and red of You Tube.

Color is a key element in building a brand. When a 4 year old acknowledges color as part of a branding statement, it obviously works. Colors are emotive and associative. Marketing psychologists have long known that the colors red and yellow excite people. When a person sees red or yellow (or both together) the heart rate increases and the pupils dilate. These colors motivate people to take action – to buy something. Blue exudes trust and intelligence. Green represents health and the environment.

There’s a site, cymbolism.com that associates the attributes and feelings of different colors. It might be worth a look to see what the color of your logo is projecting to your customers.