Hashtag branding: 7 social media lessons from #HeartMyYOW

ScreenHunter_163 Mar. 21 10.09UPDATE! As of 11 AM, diagnosis apparently this project is running all day, web so you can still Tweet to the @CBCOttawa hashtag I discuss below.

This morning, I heard Robyn Bresnahan on the CBC Ottawa Morning radio show telling listeners to Tweet photos of a day in the life of Ottawa before 8:30 AM, so they could win a prize package. I got excited! Then I got lost….

7 Lessons on Hashtag Branding

1. #BALANCE! Brevity, clarity, consistency.

Hashtags are hard. Let me say that first. It’s hard to get a hashtag short enough to be Twitter-friendly but yet intuitive enough that people can clearly see what the Hashtag is about.

But a hashtag for a Twitter project or event is also a BRAND. So as a branding and social media guy, there are a few lessons that I’d like to pull out of this story for those of you who might need to develop hashtags in the future. (Or contact me now if you really need help fast!)

In this case, I wasn’t listening closely to the radio, and by the time I realized I wanted to participate they had moved on to the news. I thought I heard Robyn tell us to hashtag “Heart My Ottawa”, but I wasn’t sure.  And since incorrect spelling makes a hashtag useless, I needed to check before I Tweeted.

2. #USEIT! Make sure your people USE the tag first and often.

ScreenHunter_163 Mar. 21 08.44Being uncertain,. My first step was to go to the @OttawaMorning stream on Twitter. Turns out, they hadn’t used or mentioned the hashtag at all today. Neither had host @RobynBresnahan, CBC social media guy @Luccidor (who wasn’t at work as I later found out) or a couple of other CBC accounts I checked. And worse, despite the major media push, it wasn’t trending in Ottawa on Twitter either (right).

3. #ABBREVIATEWITHCARE! Use easy-to-interpret short-forms.

ScreenHunter_163 Mar. 21 09.18

So I searched on Twitter specifically for “HeartMyOttawa”. Sure enough, the Tweet at the right came up – the most relevant thing I’d seen yet.  But it was the only one.

But then I looked at the embedded CBC Ottawa graphic  “Aha!” I thought. It’s supposed to be “#HeartMyCity”. So I searched… and… no luck. #CelebrateOttawa didn’t work either. Neither did #HeartMyOtt, #LoveMyOttawa, or #LuvMyOtt.

So I started thinking, is there a new way to add an actual HEART SYMBOL into a hashtag that I somehow missed…?

4. #YOWDOINGITWRONG! Avoid cool-kid slang.

But then, Robyn came to my rescue on the radio – kind of. She mentioned the contest again. And now I heard it clearly: “#HeartMyYOW“.

Now as most people in Ottawa know, “YOW” is the airport call symbol for Ottawa. And, I knew that along with the “613”area code, YOW is occasionally used as slangy shorthand for Ottawa – but mostly among Twitter power-users. But it’s not as widely used as the much more intuitive “Ott”, as used in long-running hashtags #OttNews #OttWeather #OttPoli or #OttCity. One look, and it’s clear to everyone what “#OttNews” is. “#YOWNews” just doesn’t scan.

So I finally had the right hashtag as of around 7:45 this morning and began using it myself. But even so, there were only a dozen or so Tweets to that tag by that point in the morning – with the 8:30 deadline looming. So I’m guessing I wasn’t alone in having trouble.

5. #CONSISTENTGRAPHICS! Manage the visual ID

But that’s not to say the CBC hadn’t been *trying* to brand and promote the hashtag. They’d used it before in February, and for months it seems, they’d been recruiting partners and local celebs to promote today’s effort – as with this Tweet from last week.

ScreenHunter_163 Mar. 21 08.38But the technical problems with the hashtag were compounded by a scattered design effort. Take a look at the three graphics on the right. All three are ostensibly supporting the same project. But the visuals are all so different, and the wording so all over the map, that you can understand how those of very little Monday morning brain (like me) could get confused.

If #HeartMyYOW is the tagline, and the whole project is meant to happen on Twitter, “#HeartMyYOW” needs to be the headline, logo, and call-to-action everywhere. And the visuals need to be packaged and managed like a brand for maximum impact.

6. #IFYOUTAGITOWNIT! Be part of the conversation.

ScreenHunter_163 Mar. 21 10.03Apart from making sure staff and social media accounts had been using the hashtag correctly before the conversation/event, it helps to ensure there is a human being actively engaging on the hashtag during the intended window of activity – particularly if that window is before 8:30 AM on a Monday morning (which, by the way, is not a great time to ask for photos of the city – as most people are either just waking up, having their coffee, or commuting).

The @CBCOttawa main account did get back to me as you can see – shortly after I’d figured it out for myself. As did @RobynBresnahan herself. So credit where credit is due – and thanks for the help!

7. #TALKTOME! Branding and social media are what I do.

In the end, eventually several dozen people did actually manage to Tweet their photos to #HeartMyYOW before the deadline. So this wasn’t a failed project by any stretch. But it could have been more successful, with a bit of help.

And that’s where I come in. I’m a branding guy AND a social media advisor (geek) AND a really active community promoter in Ottawa. So please please talk to me or Tweet to @DenVan if you have a local project you’d like to promote on social media, a Twitter hashtag dilemma, or just want to bounce an idea around! I’m happy to offer a few words of branding or social media advice to worthy causes, charities, and public good groups for free – EVEN THE CBC!!

If it’s a larger strategy project, training session, or if you need advice for your for-profit company, contact me anyway! For you, I’ll be happy to let you buy me coffee/lunch/beer and give you some thoughts, and a quote for more of my professional time and energy.

Ottawa Citizen “reinvents” logo, Website, the wheel.

My take on the new Ottawa Citizen design – and my hope for better in the future.

So here’s the big story in my local paper: “Postmedia and the Ottawa Citizen today unveil a reinvention of the local news business.” But after looking it over, it’s not the local news business they are re-inventing. It’s something far older. Something that already works

Here's my take on the ad campaign that accompanies the launch.
Here’s my take on the ad campaign that accompanies the launch.

The Ottawa Citizen is Ottawa’s oldest newspaper, tracing its roots back to 1845, when it was called The Bytown Packet then renamed The Citizen in 1851 – right around the time the city was undergoing its own rebranding from Bytown to Ottawa. Over the years, Continue reading “Ottawa Citizen “reinvents” logo, Website, the wheel.”

More than just tired. Sens arena renamed “Canadian Tire Centre”

Another stadium re-branding? Sigh. Here we go again.

So you’ve heard about the Ottawa Palladium? How about the Corel Centre? Scotiabank Place? Well forget about them all. As announced this morning, Ottawa’s professional hockey stadium is about to change its name for the fourth time since 1996.  

Your name here

The good part…

Stadium Brand names - sponsorship
Percentage of 111 stadiums for the “big four” professional sports leagues: NBA, recipe NFL, approved MLB, and NHL

Okay, I’m a branding guy. So I get the naming rights game. I’ve been part of board room decisions around JetForm park, and I worked at Corel during 1996. Big brands will pay a LOT of money to get their moniker on the side of a stadium, and into the mouths of fans and broadcasters. And that’s all good.

And we could choose a much more embarrassing corporate partner than Canada’s iconic automotive / hardware / electronics / now grocery brand. We could have a “Sleep Train Arena” like the NBA team the Sacramento Kings, or “Dick’s Sporting Goods Park“, the home of the Colorado Rapids soccer team.

And it sounds like the Senators ownership team actually chose this partnership:

Senators owner Eugene Melynk said of the discussions leading up to Tuesday’s official agreement. “The possibilities kept growing and growing and growing. They made up their mind pretty quickly. After that, they moved so fast. In the end, it’s very extensive. You’re going to see a lot of big changes.”

The annoying stuff…

Here are a few reasons this name change is annoying to me – and if Twitter is any guide (and it is) – it’s annoying many other Ottawa fans as well. Yeah, we’ll get used to the new name. Again. But before the anger dies, some thoughts on stadium branding.

  1. Another name: it’s hard to really develop affection for a brand – any brand – if it keeps changing its name every few years. I had just gotten used to saying “Scotiabank Place”…
  2. Generic corporate blandness: 86 out of the 111 stadiums for the “big 4” professional sports leagues have generic brand names. That’s 78%. A massive majority of hard-to-differentiate place names. Try this test: tell me where the Pepsi Center is. Minute Maid Park. Gillette Stadium. See? They could be anywhere.
  3. Back to “Centre” again?  The word “Place” wasn’t exactly rocking anyone’s world, but I counted: 17 out of the 30 NHL teams play in a building called “The <Brand Name> Center” or “Centre”. That’s more than 56% of teams in the same league calling their building the same boring thing!
  4. Lack of emotion: Distinctive names aren’t just more interesting and unique, they are durable. San Francisco sports fans demanded the return of “Candlestick Park” after 3M, then Monster.com bought, then abandoned the naming rights.  That’s a strong brand!
  5. You can be creative: Scotiabank also sponsors the Saddledome in Calgary, or as they call it “Scotiabank Saddledome”.
  6. Palladium is a strong name: and this is the kicker. We once had a strong, completely unique name for the stadium, and it’s still used as the street name for the stadium itself. There is no other Palladium in North America. And “Canadian Tire Palladium” isn’t so bad is it?

But enough about me: what do you think?

Seven reasons “Red Blacks” will never be a great CFL team name.

You only get three downs in the CFL. And Ottawa’s new team has used up two…

So there’s a lot of talk in Ottawa about a couple of potential names being tossed about for the new/old/here-we-go-again CFL football team.“Red Blacks” is the latest, and seems to be gaining a few admirers as well as a host of detractors – including CFL Hall of Famer Russ Jackson. But it may not matter. This name was fumbled. And it seems someone else may have picked it up…

RussJackson

First of all, let me just say that I don’t mind the suggested name. It’s not exciting, but then neither is “Cleveland Browns” or “New Zealand All Blacks”. It *could* have been built into a relatively strong brand, and I’m sure it *would* have grown on the Ottawa fans. Remember, “Rough Riders” was always an awkward name to start with – between Saskatchewan having the same name and being named after an American military unit.

And it’s not nearly as embarassing as the former team name “Renegades”. Or the Rapidz baseball team – who played three seasons under three different names (thanks to Rock Norris for the reminder – shiver).

But it will never happen. And here’s why.

Seven good reasons Red Blacks can’t be the name

1) The first down: Ottawa Rush Smacked down

The first down was a Hail Mary pass from OSEG quarterback Jeff Hunt. But  the really awful name “Ottawa Rush” was prematurely “discovered” after the Ottawa Citizen found a trademark application, and then apparently abandoned when the public reaction smacked the ball out of the air.

2) Second down: Ottawa Red Blacks fumbled

But then they made the same basic mistakes with their second attempt. Again, the Ottawa Citizen found an application online “to trademark several variations of the name Ottawa Red Blacks, for use with a proposed football team.” And the name was then confirmed as an option in an e-mail from Jeff Hunt.

Hunt explained OSEG hasn’t made a final call just yet, because the group is planning to do some focus testing on potential names first (and) release the team name… in late January or early February.

3) Naming contests kill good names

You held a naming contest, and that was a giant mistake. Take my word for this. As nice and democratic as it sounds, this never works. I could go on for hours about this, but in your case, the biggest reason is that it made the people who care most take sides too early. You basically set the stage for a large crowd of vocal people to be disappointed whatever the outcome.

4) Negative public reaction

But of course, it’s too late for focus groups when nine out of ten people in an online survey have already decided they don’t like it. Of course, OSEG could ignore this feedback and push on (at their peril). But there are several bigger issues that will kill this name before it flies.

5) Trademark threat 1: Semi-professional team in Watertown, New York

Watertown Red and Black: Okay, it’s not a Canadian brand, but Watertown is just across the border – well within the reach of TV and radio broadcasts. And this team could make the case for trademark confusion.

6) Trademark threat 2: powerful US College football team

redandblkforever_largeUniversity of Georgia Bulldogs Ever hear of American College football? Yeah, well they know the value of branding, and this team brand, fondly called the “Red and Black” by its fans (see t-shirt at right) is about as big as they come – having just won their 2013 conference bowl game. And the UGA student newspaper (Red & Black) also owns redandblack.com. So let the confusion – and litigation – begin!

7) Web Address: gone

It seems that for all of their work on the trademark front, it seems the team did not secure any of the key Web addresses it would need to really build a solid brand online.  As a matter of fact, “RedBlack.ca” and “RedBlacks.ca” were just scooped up yesterday AFTER  the media storm began. And I’m willing to bet it wasn’t OSEG that registered them with GoDaddy.com.

So now it’s third down…

So Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group. You’ve had two chances to launch your brand right, and both times you lost yardage. So your choices seem to be: punt or push on. But I’d like to suggest a third option:

Bring in a special team.

Branding – and particularly NAMING a new brand – is a tricky business, and it’s obviously not OSEG’s specialty. Call in the people who do this all the time. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least one local guy who could help.

But before I get too smarmy, any readers want to weigh in? What do you think?

Social brands: I love you RebelMouse. But the name?

Clever, visit this catchy, and utterly unhelpful.

In case you missed it, there’s a new buzzy social media tool in town called RebelMouse. And even in its early release phase, it’s not perfect, but it looks awesome and works (almost) flawlessly. So why is that grumpy branding guy DenVan going to complain about the name? Didn’t the almighty Seth Godin and his equally legendary counterpart Shakespeare say that names don’t matter? I Beg to Differ… and so does the world!

But first. What I like about RebelMouse

Here’s the DenVan “dashboard” page with all the bells and whistles.

Okay, before I get all Scrooge-y hater on the Mausketeers, let me just say, this is the slickest, most impressive looking new social media product I’ve seen in, well, ever. The team at RebelMouse knows exactly what they’re doing, and they’ve earned the incredibly effusive praise they’ve gotten from across the social echo chamber – from this rave in Mashable to this one in PandoDaily.

Here’s what they do right:

  • Frictionless sign-up: I’ve never found it so easy to set up a service. Never. Try it yourself to see how quickly you can go from tire-kicking to driving off the lot wondering how you’re going to explain this to your wife. It took me no time to set this DenVan page up.
  • Effortless blending of social channels: my page displays my Tweets, my blog posts, my Instagrams, and custom links – all in a format that’s as easy to scan as Pinterest. Many services do that in many different ways – as TechCrunch tries to explain in this taxonomy: 1) Social graphs; 2) Vertical content channels; 3) Aggregators. But it’s bloody hard to do elegantly.
  • Beautiful design: did I mention how clean and elegant it is? Well the mobile site is just as good – something most established social media stalwarts like Facebook and Twitter haven’t managed yet.
  • The team: and though the product has a way to go in terms of living up to its promise as a real Social Media network and/or tool set – and becoming more useful than a glorified “About.Me”. I’m impressed by the great pedigree and corporate story this startup has built for themselves. So I have confidence they can nail the product end of things.
  • The name: Huh? Wasn’t I supposed to be slamming the name?!? Wait for it. What I like about the RebelMouse name is that it’s not Squidoo. Or Jugnoo (sorry Danny). Or ShooBooBeeLooBeeDoo… okay I made the last one up. But I had you going didn’t I? RebelMouse is at least a clever and memorable memory hook.  But…

The name isn’t helpful

Sorry Mouse. The name RebelMouse just doesn’t help people understand your product at all – not even as a metaphor. In my product naming work, I try to help clients understand the tricky balance between the descriptive qualities of a name and the metaphorical / iconic qualities of a name. Strong names need a bit of both. Not everybody has to be a “Facebook” or heaven forbid “Friend Feed”. There is room in our brains for strong metaphors like “Google” or “Apple”. And that’s not to say RebelMouse can’t become a household name. As I say, they’ve nailed the product so far. It’s just that it will have to work a lot harder than a Facebook or a Google to equate that name with their service.

What do you think?

Are you impressed with RebelMouse? Confused? Does the name work for you? Comment away!