• On your personal brand and why it doesn’t matter

    Posted on December 15th, 2009 by and currently 26 commenting.

    “You really should work on your personal brand. You need to be paying close attention to your personal twitter and you need to have a slick blog where you post regularly. You need to align all of the social media outlets you operate in for clear, consistent representation of you.”

    Actually, though, you don’t.

    Not that any of those are bad things to do. In fact, they are really smart things to do. But if you work for a company and clients through that company, the best development of your personal brand is devoting yourself to the success of those clients (and in turn, the success of the company). Their increased profitability will speak much, much more about you than your blog or twitter account.

    So, I’m not too sorry that I don’t update my website, twitter account, or Facebook page very often. My personal brand is to be the absolute best employee possible to Brains on Fire and the clients I work with through them.

    Sidenote: from experience, personal brand has played a very small role in potential employers’ consideration of me in the hiring process. Having a website and a twitter account increased my visibility, but in the end interviewers wanted to know how the work I performed impacted the bottom line for clients. Even if I had the best personal brand in the world, my ability to actually contribute to the success of a company or a client would eventually be what determined my value.

  • On devoting your time to what works

    Posted on November 17th, 2009 by and currently 7 commenting.

    Spike said in his last blog post that “technology can be a trap.” We rant all of the time around here about how ‘social media is a tool’ and how ‘it might not be best for your business’ and on and on. But it reminded me of a real story about technology as a trap. Do you remember way back, well, actually, a short time ago when Twitter first started to grab headlines and brands began to view it as a business tool? Companies everywhere started to question whether they should ‘be on Twitter.’

    Some time after that initial uproar I was out to dinner with my parents and our conversation turned to recent technological happenings. My mother, a real estate agent, surprised me when she said: “You know, I joined Twitter a while ago – lots of people are trying it and there’s lots of news about how it’s going to be a huge asset.” Impressed with her adoption of the new-ish service, I asked her how she liked it and how she was using it to help her. “You know, the thing that I don’t get is that it seems like a great connection tool, but the time I would spend on it generating leads, etc. is time I could be using to actually find houses, meet with clients, and sell property.”

    This idea is reiterated in a recent article titled ‘Social Media Can be a Sink Hole for Real Estate.’ I’m sure there are differing opinions on social media in real estate (from people who know more about it than me) and I’m sure there are a few people out there making a living in the business by pouring their time into social media. But the interesting thing about the write-up is that it seems many real estate agents are feeling pressure to participate in a ‘business practice’ that isn’t making them any money. And the author isn’t anti-internet; they actually point to the fact that having an online presence can be an indispensable tool.

    We’ve said it a million times, but these thoughts from the real estate industry are a great illustration: technology is changing the way we do business, but no matter the popularity of the service, if it isn’t making you more successful at what you do then it is not worth your time. It’s a trap.

  • Why you don’t care about KFC’s free grilled chicken day.

    Posted on October 26th, 2009 by and currently 5 commenting.

    Remember back in May all the hoopla around Oprah and KFC teaming up to promote the new grilled chicken offering? All you had to do is print out a coupon and wa-lah: free grilled chicken. So many people cashed in on the deal that most of the KFCs ran out of chicken. Oops.

    A couple of months later, they did it AGAIN.

    Third time’s a charm, right? Because today is – you guessed it – free grilled chicken day at your local KFC. And this time you don’t even have to bring in a coupon. Just walk in and ask for a piece of grilled chicken and it’s yours. Apparently there will be extra staff and, of course, a lot of extra chicken on hand.

    So why is KFC giving away chicken for the third time? I know I didn’t go the first two times, so why would I change my mind and go this time?

    Look, I can see why you would do the promotion once. And since they ran out of chicken the first time and had a bunch of angry “free lunch” customers on their hands, I can see why they would do it a second time to make up for it. But a third time? Come on. Now you’re just telling the rest of us that you don’t value your new offering, so why should we? There’s a KFC about a mile from the Brains on Fire world headquarters, but even though it’s free, KFC is still not going to make its way into my realm of consideration.

    Free is a trap. (And we’ve talked about it before.) Sure, it generates attention. But what next? From a previous post: Because just like the donkey, if you dangle that free carrot, it will do the minimal amount of work it has to do to get its prize. And then it’s done. At least until you dangle another carrot.

    The kids at Chick-fil-A gave away chicken strips a while back, but at least you had to work for it in that you couldn’t get the freebie unless you were wearing the logo of your favorite sports team. That creates some community support. That enforces some fandom. And it’s so Chick-fil-A.

    If nothing else, KFC will be making a buch of college kids happy (for the third time), but folks like that will always go where the freebie is. So KFC, good luck with that. I’m headed down the street to spend my dollars with the local guys anyway.

  • Social Media Bribery

    Posted on September 14th, 2009 by and currently 38 commenting.

    The latest traditional advertising push tactic in social media sheep’s clothing is the new “Become a Fan of Woody” campaign by TGIFriday’s. The long and short of it is that if you become a fan on Facebook of this guy by the end of the month – and they reach a half-million fans – then everyone gets a free burger.

    Hey, at least they can say they have a social media strategy, right?

    So what’s going to happen when the end of the month comes along and everyone gets their free burger? Do you think they will remain fans of Woody? Do you think that TGIFriday’s will be able to keep the attention of 500,000 people? What does success look like?

    This is social media bribery. And it’s a desperate attempt to throw a party by giving away free food and then hoping to god that people stick around. Guess what? They’re outta as soon as the next freebie comes along. Good luck in holding their attention, let alone them becoming a fan beyond clicking a button on Facebook.

    As long as there are channels to reach people, there will be marketers trying to figure out how to manipulate them and pushing out messages as fast and as hard as they can.

    Good luck with that.

  • Creating a movement at gun-point

    Posted on September 9th, 2009 by and currently 7 commenting.

    It doesn’t work.

    You can’t force grassroots efforts where there is no passion.

    Case in point: Energy Citizens (via the American Petroleum Institute), which is a group of over 60 energy companies that are staging protests all over the country in response to the Waxman-Markey climate change bill.

    So what’s the problem? Apparently, Energy Citizens is telling employees at energy companies that they are coming together for a day of free food and celebration. They put them on buses, ship them in, dress them in t-shirts (“I’m an Energy Citizen” and “I’ll Pass on $4 Gas!”), handing them protest posters and trying to fill stadiums – even though the people holding the signs have do idea why they are there.

    What have we said over and over again? PEOPLE first. TOOLS second. The above example is not only trying to force a grassroots effort to spring up out of thin air, but it’s not a-typical of what we’re seeing happen all around us – companies creating tools and trying to force them into the hands of innocent bystanders. These are empty-shell movements. They are hollow. You can dress them up in all the pretty clothes, but when it comes down to it, there’s nothing inside. No depth. No drive. No soul.

    The real beauty is that now these lame attempts get exposed a lot faster via the interwebs.

    Will this be the end of fake movements? Not even a chance. But the sooner these kind of attempts are exposed, the faster the rest of the world will learn what to look for. And we’ll all be smarter for it.

    (We take our hats off to kindred spirit and kiwi Roger Dennis for the heads-up to the Fast Company article.)

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