Category: Topic Areas

#KloutBomb: how to game the social media gamers

Hey kids! Tired of the same old influence metrics? You know, click boring stuff like intelligence, expertise, relevance (ho hum) – the stuff your grandpa used to figure out if people were worth listening to?!? What if there were a system that let you make anybody look influential about anything online? Well there is, and it’s called Klout! (And we Beg to Differ.)
That’s right kids! On planet Klout, I’m a Unicorn expert!

Wait Dennis, when did YOU become a unicorn expert?!?

Well, funny story. I never did. And I barely ever even discuss unicorns – apart from this one blog post. But I was young!

No, my Klout page says I’m influential about unicorns because I’ve been hit with a #KloutBomb.  Other folks playing #KloutBomb (like Jeff Esposito or Amy Vernon – both excellent targets by the way) told Klout I was influential about Unicorns, and so, like magic, I am!

And sure, all of this *may* just show how hollow and game-like the whole Klout ranking system really is. But rather than railing against it, opting out, parodying it like Klouchebag by the brilliant British wag Tom Scott, or even taking a measured thoughtful approach (yawn), why not just game the Klout game for pure, deviant fun?

And here’s how you can play #Kloutbomb too!

  1. Go to a friend’s Klout page – preferably not one of those stuffed shirts who actually takes their Klout score seriously. On second thought, yeah, especially one of those! I recommend Jeff Esposito. He adores getting a good #Kloutbomb!
  2. Click the “See All…” link that appears under “Influential about (X) Topics”. This will take you to their Topics page.
  3. Give them +K. If they’ve already gotten a #Kloutbomb, you’ll see odd and humourous topics like some of those shown at right. If so, just click on the “Give +K” button to add to their score and bump up the #Kloutbomb topics in their list. You get five +K points to give out for every day you visit Klout, so don’t blow them all in one place!
  4. OR: You can add new topics by clicking on the “Add a topic”. So for example, today I gave Jeff a new topic: “Fabricated Rubber Products, Nec (Rubber Toys, Except Dolls)”. But note, this costs you five imaginary Klout bucks, so you can only do this once a day.
  5. Announce your #Kloutbomb to the world by Tweeting under that hashtag.
  6. Then, please let Beg to Differ know! Share your favourite #Kloutbomb topics in the Comments below.

Important caveat:
Keep them 1) clean and 2) as obviously ridiculous as possible please!

While it might be fun to tag your boss with “Masturbation” (yes it’s really a topic), this is the public Internet, so don’t be a total jerk or commit professional suicide. Or if you do, just don’t tell them we sent you.

Random stuff I learned at SocialMix 2012

So yesterday, I had the priviledge of meeting a bunch of my online heroes in real life at the Social Mix 2012 conference in Toronto. And while stuff is fresh in my mind (okay not *fresh-fresh* after a *few* post conference beers), here are a few things still bouncing around the old coconut.

So yesterday, store I had the priviledge of meeting a bunch of my online heroes in real life at the Social Mix 2012 conference in Toronto. And while stuff is fresh in my mind (okay not *fresh-fresh* after a *few* post conference beers), price here are a few things still bouncing around the old coconut.
Photo by Gini Dietrich of me (left) and Geoff Livingston (right).

Stuff I learned at Social Mix 2012:

  • Danny Brown and his team at Jugnoo throw a mean conference – and on pretty short notice from what Jugnoovians Lindsay Bell and Hessie Jones tell me. They put together a top notch group of speakers with a great venue and a great cause to make one really memorable event. Congratulations to all, buy more about and to Hessie’s question: “should we do this again?” YES!
  • Danny has a great accent (“rogue with the brogue” they called him), but despite that handicap, he’s a brilliant communicator, and all-around great human. Imagine a heavy Scottish accent while Danny says awesome, off-the-kilt stuff like this:
  • The biggest, and most pleasant, surprise of the day was Tim Burrows who manages social media for the Toronto Police Force. Yup. A cop. Talking social. And he’s a brilliant, self-deprecating speaker who demonstrates how focusing on your core brand values allows you to do your job better, respond to a crisis fast, and win back jaded hearts and minds for the forces of law and order. Deeply inspirational.
  • Gary Vaynerchuk owns the stage. It was my first time seeing him live. But I’d seen video, so I already knew that he swears a lot, and that sometimes he says stuff that really pisses me off: like “What’s the ROI of your mother?” But the thing is, in person, you still get pissed off, then realize a moment later that he actually does understand, care, and is keenly aware of Return On Investment in his own business. So yeah, he pokes sticks at lots of sacred cow nests (huh?), but he’s such a great performer, that you still end up in the palm of his hand.  That’s his shtick, and it works.

“Marketers ruin everything.” Gary Vaynerchuk

  • Gary’s actually at his best when he’s “off-shtick”. Yesterday, we saw him deftly handling questions yesterday from the three kinds of fans he seems to attract (1. sycophants, 2. brown-nosers, and 3. sycophantic brown-nosers), but he spikes their loaded suck-up questions back at them, and then riffs out a series of long, cogent, scary-smart ideas.
  • Gini Dietrich and Geoff Livingston are superstars and nice folks, who can lead an engaging off-the-cuff session. Yesterday they free-styled on their book Marketing in the Round. Which is hard, because they’re still in the middle of a long and (from the sounds of it) arduous tour. But even so, they made some time for a riotously fun evening out afterwards That’s Gini’s picture of me (left) and Geoff (right) at a downtown pub.
  • Geoff is a scary, scary man. In a totally cool way. One might almost call him punk. Almost.
  • Susan Murphy is spooky-good at networking. Not that I’m impressed by – or jealous of – social media “A-listers”…. no really! But holy crap my Ottawa friend Susan Murphy is good friends with a whackload of them! Including Gary, who never struck me as a huggy dude, but he veered out of his way on the way out the door to run up and give Suze a massive bearhug.
  • Matt Hixson from Portland Oregon is a smart cookie, and his company Tellagence is onto something with the idea of intelligently mapping and predicting social connections based on people’s real influence in specific interest areas. That’s all I can say… okay, it’s all I understand. But stay tuned. There’s cool stuff to come from this company.

“I don’t care about your friends or followers. I care about relationships you build – in context.” Matt Hixson

  • Apparently I have a very loud laugh. But the origin story? Not so interesting…

Updated: check out their sites

Surface impressions: Microsoft just nibbles the Apple.

Microsoft tries to challenge the iPad, apple-to-Apple. But scratching the Surface, it is bruised at best, and may even be a lemon. We Beg to Differ.

Microsoft tries to challenge the iPad.  But scratching the Surface, viagra approved Microsoft wants you to compare them apple-to-Apple. We Beg to Differ.

I finally had a chance to see the video of the much-hyped “secret” launch event for Microsoft and look into the branding and positioning of even more hyped new tablet.  Now, price I’ve never touched the actual product, ask but just skating on the surface here, a  few impressions.

Reinventing the reinvention

The format of Microsoft’s presentation seemed oddly familiar to me, like deja vu, or a vaguely remembered movie. And here’s why. Read Write Web did a beat-by-beat comparison (embedded below) of the Surface launch with the epic launch of the iPad by Steve Jobs.

And you’ll never guess who comes off looking like an innovator and who comes off like a copycat:

Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.

Tough day on the Jobs: Steve Sinofsky’s “somebody’s gonna get fired” face.

In the clip above, you see a brief moment where Microsoft  Executive Steven Sinofsky goes pale, tightens his lips, and sprints for the podium to grab a back-up tablet after the machine he’s holding completely freezes. Here’s a blow-by-blow of that excruciating moment from UK’s Daily Mail.

Now, as someone who’s done presentations for major consumer product launches (remember CorelDRAW 8?), and had to skate through crashes in the middle of your prepared schpiel, I have great  sympathy for what this guy is going through. Particularly since my screw-ups weren’t documented on YouTube for later dissection.

But this ain’t Palookaville. This is Microsoft (remember Windows 98?). So when the stakes are this high, you have to wonder how unstable the machine is to crash at that moment.

The name and brand strategy

I’m having a lot of trouble wrapping my head around the name. Maybe because it’s a two-dimensional metaphor – and most of the product shots are three-dimensional, and because Microsoft can’t seem to make up its mind whether this is a tablet (just a “surface”) or a new kind of lightweight quasi-laptop.

This confusion seems to be baffling even the most enthusiastic reviewers:

Microsoft is clearly straddling the uncomfortable divide between the old world of mice and keyboards, where it dominates, and a future ruled by touch screens, where Apple and Android devices prevail….

Surface splits the difference between a standard tablet and super-light laptops such as Apple’s MacBook Air or ultrabooks that run Windows.

So what is this thing? I’m sure a new category descriptor like “power tabs” or “laptabs” will emerge. But Microsoft could have helped us – and themselves – by figuring that out ahead of time.

Microsoft’s brand mangers also can’t seem to make up their mind whether it is a “Microsoft Surface” – like “Microsoft Word” or “Microsoft Comfort Mouse” – or whether “Surface” is a standalone brand with “Microsoft” as a lower visibility endorsement- like X Box. If it’s the latter, the Surface name is too weak to be memorable, and not distinctive enough to create a solid new product category to stand against iPad.

The wordmark is pure Apple minimalism as well, and the design of the Surface’s paper-thin launch site could easily be straight off Apple.com. Except that Apple actually tells you something substantial about their product.

And that’s the real problem with the Surface (and the substance of this product). Microsoft should have spent less time playing the Apple game (which they will never win), and more time playing the Differ game.

But, my fellow brand-watchers, what do you think? Am I being too hard on this little West-coast start-up?

Labatt: “Our goal was simply to protect our brand.”

Twitter to Labatt: we Beg to Differ!

This quirky little illustration by pop artist Gary Baseman was used in Labatt’s Blue ad campaign: “A lot can happen. Out of the Blue.” Indeed it can…

Twitter to Labatt: “We Beg to Differ!” This quirky and macabre little illustration by pop artist Gary Baseman was used a few years ago in Labatt’s Blue ad campaign: “A lot can happen. Out of the Blue.” Indeed it can… let’s hope the brand magicians at Labatt can put this one back together.

Out of the Blue.

It’s true. A lot can happen like that. 

You can be sitting at your desk working when a strange Tweet appears in your stream about a severed foot being mailed to the headquarters of the Conservative Party of Canada. Whoa. Weird.

Or next, page it can happen that a weird, twisted news story unfolds in all its evil awfulness on every media channel, so you can’t even listen to the news or look at a news site online while your kids are in the room. Weird, and annoying.

Then the story can get worse with tales of kitten killing, serial-killer-dating, and cannibalism. Weird, annoying, and kind of upsetting, because it became clear very quickly that all this was being staged by one narcissistic young slimeball to have exactly the effect it was having.

Then the Internet good guys can rally their troops to try and help find the guy, and the guy can be caught. Because he was Googling himself for hours in a public Internet cafe. A great relief actually (and can we get a clean-up at terminal 7?)

And we hoped, such a capture can signal the end to the stupidity, butchery, and media manipulation.

Seriously. All of that can happen.

But then, you know what else can happen? Out of the Blue?

Someone working at a major Canadian consumer beer brand – let us call that brand “Labatt” – sees that the Montreal Gazette has skimmed a photo of the evil perpetrator  from the (do I even need to say “alleged” any more?) killer’s Web site. The photo is splashed all over their online coverage like so factory-produced beer across a freshman dorm room.

And, horrors! In the photo he is holding their product Labatt Blue!

Board rooms are booked. Meetings are convened. People speak in urgent voices.

There is a BAD man. In a PUBLIC newspaper. Holding OUR BEER!

Suitable horror is expressed by all, minions and executive washroom keyholders alike, and a powerful, simple idea emerges:
we must protect our brand!!!

Now this is where, out of the blue, somebody got the idea. An idea which isn’t a bad idea if you’re the sort of person paid to have such ideas. It just seems that way to the rest of us…

They send a lawyer’s letter ordering the Montreal Gazette to take down the photo.

So what happened then?

There’s a name for all of this, as Dabitch reminds me: “the Streisand Effect”, wherein a brand tries to “protect” itself from a media storm but ends up wading into an even deeper mess. And you’ll note that Labatt has already secured itself a spot on the Wikipedia listing for Ms. Streisand’s eponymous Effect. How’s that for exposure?

But the part that got me was this quote from Labatt’s vice-president of corporate affairs:

“Once the Gazette explained their position, we promptly thanked them for their response, dropped the matter and we will not be following up further,” Charlie Angelakos wrote in a statement. “Our goal was simply to protect our brand.”

Now dear readers, you tell me: is that how brands are protected?

Or is it perhaps how brands are dismembered, cannibalized, and made notorious for all the wrong reasons?

After all, a lot can happen…. Out of the Blue.

A tricky balance: social etiquette

I took some flak last week online from a long-time online friend for sending her a LinkedIn invitation-to-connect, but without (gasp) adding a personal message….

Can we learn social etiquette from 1908? Tricky. Read on…

I took some flak last week online from a long-time online friend for sending her a LinkedIn invitation-to-connect, unhealthy but without (gasp) adding a personal message. Now, buy information pills I was catching up on a bunch of LinkedIn stuff and realized there were dozens of friends and colleagues I wanted to invite. Also, I’ve been using the standard “Dennis Van Staalduinen would like to connect with you” template for years without thinking about it, and never stopped to think how impersonal that might be.

But her reaction got me thinking of Social Etiquette in general and how the online world and the “norms” of the offline and online worlds get a bit muddled up. And how, without a manual, it’s easy to cross lines and offend people without realizing it.

Which brings me to the manual – and yes there really is one. Or should I say “was”? Below, I stitched together a few iPhone / Instagram shots I took from a delightful old book I have in my office from 1908 called the New American Encyclopedia of Social and Commercial Information.

As you can see, things change a lot. But do they really change that much?

The book – which is awesome – was an ambitious project purporting to teach upstart Americans all kinds of “useful” European skills like how to play the violin, dance, speak German and French, and play polo, among other self-improvement pursuits. How about a magic trick where you pull a cannon ball from a hat? It’s in there!

The section on Letters of Introduction is to the right. What do you think? Could that serve as an etiquette manual for introductions on LinkedIn? I’m not sure, it’s pretty heavy. But it certainly sounds like what my friend was trying to tell me about my lapse in social judgement.

But a few things have changed: 1) the tone of snooty confidence,  2) the idea that all things on earth can be contained in one volume (who needs Google?), and 3) the classic old illustrations – including one of an early form of “planking” (see above).

If you’re interested, I can post some more nuggets. Or if you’re really eager, you can find the whole book in PDF form here. (Warning: it’s HUGE.) Particularly interesting are sections on “Health for women” (spoiler: not very progressive), “The automobile” (debates whether steam, electric or gasoline will prevail), and the dancing section (check out the Polka instructions which are just hilarious).