Twitter Quitter

I quit Twitter today. Oh, this isn’t going to be some minimalist manifesto, just a statement of fact.

I deleted my posts, all 1500+ of them, shared over the past two years or so. Some were moving, insightful. Most were fun. None were ever drivel. No one ever knew what I had for breakfast, I never foursquare’d myself into a virtual mayoral coup d’tat, no one knew when I was ill, and only occasionally did I mention the weather. I even gained a friend or two.

I just got tired.

I initially joined Twitter and other social media to remain up to date on the social media communities important to my clients. I even joined MySpace back in the day – closed the account when it became irrelevant to me.

I like to write, and Twitter and Facebook are good virtual water coolers for office at home types like myself. But they are an extension of me, that is, my personal brand, and before every tweet I’d have to consider that. That can be tiring, particularly for someone such as myself, given to dark humor and sarcasm – 140 characters is plenty of room for a zinger, but never enough for context.

So I’m not dropping out in some Luddite fantasy, I’m just lightening my load a bit. I can be distracted and Twitter is nothing if not a distraction. It was one more thing that took my time from things that were clearly more constructive, useful, profitable, enjoyable, important. Like all good business decisions when faced with limited resources (in this case, time) I had to determine if it was core to my business or life, and if I could justify the continued investment in it. The answer was clearly, no. It was not core, and there are other, arguably better ways to market myself and my ideas, and interact with others.

So my Twitter account is inactive. Of course, I’ll stay in touch, though my number of followers will undoubtedly fall sharply in the coming weeks (another invented preoccupation I'll not miss). I’ll follow the Twittersphere for news on how to leverage Twitter in marketing, and from time to time check on tweets from those I follow who continue to leverage Twitter expertly. The end of this relationship is amicable. I can tell you about Twitter. I can help you create a presence on Twitter. I can now see commercial purposes for Twitter I couldn’t see just a few months ago.

But for now, I’ll just be observing.

Why you need to be .co dependent

I urge you to .co-operate on this.

Right after you finish reading this blog entry, go to your domain host and purchase your company's URL ‘.co’ domain.

As of today, you can register .co just as you have .com, .net, or .org, and other more obscure ones, such as .me or .name

It will cost you under $30/year but save you headaches. I predict .co will be a popular domain because: a, outside the US, web users already are used to typing .co prior to their country code (eg, .co.uk, for the Brits, .co.nz for the Kiwis); b, it’s a letter short of .com, which is great for typo trolling sites, and of course, c, in the states, it is a suffix for legal companies.

Yes, I might be wrong about the eventual land rush for the .co domain. If so, you’re out $30. If I’m right, you could pay thousands later. I say that’s pretty good insurance.

That’s it. Just this timely advice. No snarky comments, no opinion, no sermonizing. Mostly because I can't, off hand, come up with a good pun using '.co'. If you have one, post it in the comments (the .co mments).

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• Dot .CO Domains Are Hot (mwd.com)

If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?

If your company or product were a fictional character, who would it be? It's one of the questions I ask when trying to determine the intended brand perception for a client. And I get more than my share of rolled eyes from the engineers in the room.

But consider your own response to this question: If you were thirsty, where would you likely find an ice-cold Obama? Next to the Dr. Pepper or nearer the energy drinks?

If you called your friend, would you expect to pick up and dial the McCain or are you more likely to just go online and 'poke' them on Obamabook? Maybe you'd discuss the McCain supertanker that is caught in a storm off the gulf coast, or the latest music player from iObama.

You can think about this when you pick up a snack of some organic dried fruit at Obama Foods for your flight to Chicago on McCain Airways.

Okay, the whole thing is silly. But now reverse that:

If you were thirsty, where would you likely find an ice-cold McCain? Next to the Dr. Pepper or nearer the energy drinks?

If you called your friend, would you expect to pick up and dial the Obama or are you more likely to just go online and 'poke' them on McCainbook? Maybe you'd discuss the Obama supertanker that is caught in a storm off the gulf coast, or the latest music player from iMcCain.

You can think about this when you pick up a snack of some organic dried fruit at McCain Foods for your flight to Chicago on Obama Airways.

Relatively speaking, the former made more sense, didn't it? And it proves out the power of branding on not only our perceptions of products, but perceptions of our leaders, our friends, and ourselves.

This important article was sent to me by a designer with whom I do much of Strategy180's branding work. It underscores the power of branding and how it may not only impact the can of soup we put in our grocery basket, but the future leadership of the world's last great superpower.

Perhaps now you might want to budget for that branding study, yes?

The (Burger) King of Online Advertising

While Outdoor advertising is mostly ugly, television ads universally inane, and radio advertising has arguably the worst creative (few creatives are experienced enough to use the medium well or have the budgets to maintain high production values) it is actually online advertising that I find the most annoying. However, as a nascent medium, the approaches used continue to evolve and banners, particularly flash banners, have continued to progress from the aggravatingly distracting (think lowermybills.com and their dancing video clips) to the growing movement toward branded entertainment. Google itself has created an entire department within their AdWords franchise to develop the concept.

Branded entertainment takes an established business model and moves it to the web. New content is being developed with the goal to entertain, not distract the user. The result is more and more engaged viewers, and a more positive brand association between the user and the sponsor. The latest 'name' to develop this type of material is Seth McFarland of Fox Television's "No Way I'm Letting My Kid Watch That" er, "The Family Guy". He is creating unique "webisodes" that will be syndicated through AdSense to sites targeting 18-34 year old men. The first ones from the Family Guy creator are sponsored by Burger King, which places an animated ad (also by McFarland) featuring the BK king mascot runs before the animated short plays. The content is ostensibly unrelated to Burger King or its products.

MacFarlane indicates that creating the webisodes frees him from the constraints of television (Really? It's Fox, its thirty minutes, not thirty seconds, and I don't find The Family Guy particularly restrained!) So McFarlane gets another creative outlet, Burger King gets access to prospective burger eaters, and those burger eaters are entertained instead of merely distracted.

Online advertising is quickly becoming the Cinderella of advertisers. Once only favored by media buyers, agency and other creatives are also now seeing the potential of building a brand online by entertaining and engaging customers online, not annoying them into submission.

The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce

This, from the New York Times:

"...nearby was Anton Zimin, 26, an advertising copywriter, who said he was quite familiar with (a recently deceased novelist, radical, and historian) but doubted that others in his generation were. He said people his age have lost touch with the struggles of their parents and grandparents.

"The problem is that now, it's all about consumption - this spirit that has engulfed everybody," Mr. Zimin said. "People prefer to consume everything, the simplest things, and the faster, the better."

The radical author to which the 26 year old refers is Solzhenitsyn. The consumerism he laments is not American, as the young copywriter is Russian. He speaks of the consumerism of Russia.

In this age of instant gratification and the global village of modern communication, what it took America to bring upon itself in 50 years of mass consumerism, Russia has done in half the time. In the dog years that technology offers, I figure they'll be mirroring our insurmountable national debt, credit crisis and housing crunch by next May. Sarcasm aside, there have always been those who looked to burgeoning economies abroad and spoke of the opportunities to be had there - and these still exist. Moreover, so do opportunities to do it better this time, correct old mistakes, and find new solutions. Unfortunately, between China's dismal environmental record and Russia's corruption, this opportunity may already passed for those countries' leaders, but not yet for the companies looking to build a better world there, and back here at home.

An Old School Measurement Discounts the Internet

In my salad days selling radio, one of the compelling reasons for radio was its influence on individuals at the point closest to the point of sale – that is, in the car on their way to go shopping. It intimated radio’s conversion - the power of radio to convert listeners to buyers. A recent survey took a similar notion – influence on the consumer’s buying decision – and it doesn’t look good for new media.

Regarding electronics, "The Internet and Consumer Choice” study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that just 27% of mobile phone sales were significantly impacted by the web. The figure was only 23% for real estate, and surprisingly (to me, anyway) only 17% for music choices. (I’m a big fan of Pandora.com and its ability to introduce new artists, so perhaps I’m a bit of an early adopter there.)

Still, the role of the internet in researching purchases has not changed – 90% of respondents indicated that they still use the web for product research. For marketers, that means that on the web, content is still king – and that market awareness, visibility, credibility and brand building are critical on product websites. Conversion, however, appears to remain elusive.

Think radio. My former employers would love me for that plug.