Nike Running: A Social Media Mistake

Posted on September 20, 2011

Or should I say total marketing blunder? First of all, everyone knows in business that you keep your public discussion about your industry and competition positive. The public, even your fans, are turned off by your negativity about other companies.

Nike’s #EPICFAIL

Nike really screwed the pooch on this one. Their Facebook post seemed innocuous enough: “FACT: Friends don’t let friends wear shoes with five toes” it read. No big deal, right? They’re just having a little fun with a trend that has captivated the running world, right? Those five-toe running shoes are kinda goofy, right? Haha, everyone?

Oops. It turns out a vast chunk of Nike’s audience have tried the toe-shoes and like them, or have seen them, or at least respect the attempt at innovation and industry leadership. Vibram, Merrell, Fila and a couple of other companies are making these weird-looking shoes for ‘barefoot’ running. And apparently Nike has not caught on. Maybe it’s because of a patent, or they think it’s a passing fad, or their internal scientists really feel that these shoes are sub-par, unsafe, uncomfortable, or offer inferior performance. I could understand that.

But this petty little post on Facebook doesn’t have much science behind it, besides psychology. It’s a little like watching a jealous high-school cheerleader gripe about the new popular girl. After a long string of posts that make complete sense for a global brand selling stylish performance apparel, suddenly the company attacks a proven and validated technology.

It’s About The Brand, Not The Shoes

I’ve seen these shoes in action on the hiking trail. Apparently they are better for the feet, as well as for a hiker’s or runner’s ankles and legs. It may be a different thing to run in them than the sneakers we are used to, but it represents a performance enhancement that has definitely caught on. It reminds me of the deep-cut parabolic skis. I thought they were a fad a few years ago, and was among the last to buy a pair. Today I can’t imagine life without them.

Maybe these five-toed running shoes will be a flash in the pan, or maybe they will become the thing we can’t imagine not having in a few years. Either way, that is not why Nike has made a mistake. These shoes right now represent innovation, something that is constantly in demand in the running world and in all of sports. Nike often claims to represent the latest in athletic shoe technology, and it’s difficult to imagine a serious manufacturer belittling a clear advancement in its industry, no matter who created it.

This isn’t like Coke versus Pepsi. It’s more like if a maker of electric guitars bashed a company that makes acoustic guitars. Many of the most avid fans will try other manufacturers’ products and probably respect and own some. These are people who take running seriously. The focus on style may work for the fashionistas, but the serious runners aren’t concerned about that. For a company that just wants high school kids to wear their gear because it looks cool, this Facebook post was a smart move; but for a company that is trying to appeal to serious runners, it was a mistake.

And It’s About The Fans

Some of the Nike-defenders on Facebook have asked “So why did you like Nike’s page?” Well, it’s because these are serious running fans who own Nike products. It isn’t as if Dick Morris’ followers ‘Liked’ Michael Moore’s page so they could post on Mike’s wall and bash his followers directly. Nike’s followers on Facebook are actually interested in the company and its products, but they also favor gear from other companies, and this childish behavior from Nike will rub most of them the wrong way.

I myself follow (Like) the company’s Facebook page, and that’s how I saw this catty little status update. I own a pair of Nike running shoes, but I prefer my New Balance and Asics runners and when I hike, I wear Merrell. I probably follow or ‘Like’ those companies too (seriously, I don’t really know without looking), and if one of them did this I wouldn’t be a fanboy; I would be embarrassed and ashamed.

Maybe It’s Brilliant, (But Probably Not)

The majority of commenters are highly against what Nike has done, and this will be seen as a mistake by the company. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were developing a similar product right now. If this update is simply part of an elaborate reverse-pshychology marketing campaign, this may be the beginning of one of the most clever and elaborate buzz-building schemes in the history of online marketing.

Let’s see what chapter two will bring. For now, Nike stands with egg on its face.

How Do You Achieve Total Marketing Immersion (TMI)?

Posted on July 28, 2011

PowerPoint, Flash, Whiteboards, Video, Podcasts, Banners,
Whitepapers, Webinars, eBooks, Newsletters, Surveys, Social Feeds, Blogs…

Anyone else sick of it all? Maybe I’m a little tired from playing with my children (admittedly something I put every ounce of energy into), but I feel like I’m starving for something. The products and tactics above have become unbearably dull to me.

Now let me offer this caveat; I’m lucky to be a marketer. After all, I don’t ever have to run into burning buildings or duck bullets. But then again, marketing is not all that important. I don’t teach children, perform surgeries or save lives. If I am successful, somebody buys products from me. If not, they buy elsewhere. And either way I go home to play with my kids.

Lately I’ve been wishing there was some other method besides the ones above for successfully engaging customers. I talk about engagement a lot. To me it’s a broader term than marketing and communications. It implies more than just a bi-directional exchange of content. It is about highly contextual discussion, focused on individuals, not segments, and multiplied by thousands.

Even with the software to automate this approach (which itself implies a cynical failure to grasp the concept of engagement), who has the energy for this kind of complex, multi-faceted behavior? I can barely keep up with one email inbox. As much as I talk about engagement, I have a very hard time practicing what I preach.

Yet I know people who seem to be everywhere I browse. They ask and answer questions on LinkedIn, they speak at trade shows, they exchange cards (with QR Codes) at cocktail parties, they fly somewhere every week, they tweet (and make direct replies) 75 times a day, they blog daily, and they’ve already mastered their Google+ accounts. These are people who also have jobs, kids, families, and presumably have hobbies and chores like taking out the trash.

These folks go beyond marketing. They are all about their craft. Marketing is not a job to them; it is a state of being. It is not something they do; it is what they are. And that doesn’t mean they are glad-handing automatons, these are decent people. But to me they are like another species from science fiction, where the aliens are always smarter and stronger. They experience Total Marketing Immersion.

What can be done by a person can also be done by a brand. If a marketer is constantly busy creating content, linking to it from various places, and following up with interested people, that’s immersive behavior. If a company does the same thing, a team of people who can write, create graphics, manage websites and maintain a social presence should be able to mimic what the truly immersive marketers can do.

Maybe. These are pretty amazing people. They work at the best companies (that they probably founded), and they are the go-to for speaking engagements, panels, interviews, and thought-leadership.

Copying some of their behavior ought to help an average marketer create marketing and communications programs that build and support a brand. Your industry has these people. Find out what they are doing, what platforms they are using, what events they attend and go there. Copy what they do. It still takes effort. I’ve found that even this kind of cynical behavioral copying is difficult to master.

So my hat is off to those who are able to not just do marketing, but to live it.

Why Did Salesforce.com Buy Radian6?

Posted on March 30, 2011

By now, you probably know that Salesforce.com is buying Radian6 for a total of $326 Million. On the heels of Salesforce.com’s investments in HubSpot and Seesmic, I’m not at all surprised at this move. HubSpot’s unique lead generation and engagement platform is great for pushing content, while Seesmic is a cool self-service social network management tool. Radian6 can add some amazing analytical value to the mix.

But Salesforce.com? SFDC’s client list is a who’s who of global businesses with one thing in common: they are either commercial product and service companies or the commercial divisions of very large consumer-oriented businesses like Dell and NBC. Yet, social platforms have largely been considered consumer media. So does this investment make sense for SFDC?

Of course it does.

Remember that Salesforce.com is not a trend follower. It is a vision maker. The company helped create the Software-as-a-Service meme, as well as other terms like Cloud Services, which seemed to pop up on their own. They didn’t. It took companies like SFDC to help define and market these terms.

Until now, any buzz monitoring platform could be seen as a useful social analysis tool or a gimmicky waste of time and money for marketers trying to justify their embrace of a fad, even the good ones like Radian6.

As someone who has experience dealing with both, I find this very interesting for several reasons:

Salesforce has not bought an email service provider, and I always figured that was because it enjoys strong relationships and technical integration with several ESPs, and preferred not to jeopardize those.
Salesforce may have had the opportunity to enjoy similar partnerships with various social media monitoring and engagement platforms, but has obviously decided that for this model, direct ownership is more important than partnerships.
Radian6 will be a very powerful tool for tracking the online buzz behavior of business contacts already stored in Salesforce, and it is obviously true that business users use social tools as well.
It makes me wonder if Salesforce has something planned for a consumer-oriented CRM product or service.

I believe this represents a major milestone in social marketing. With this acquisition, SFDC is spending the considerable value of their brand to legitimize a current business trend, changing everything. Thoughts?

Cookie Cutter Social Media Strategies (For Cookies Only)

Posted on June 15, 2010

Look, I’m new to social media, so I won’t shovel you expert advice about building a huge following. Your Twitter mojo is probably a thousand times mine. If you rock the social media house, keep doing whatever you’re doing. I’m probably learning a lot from you.

(The truth is, I’ve never worked for someone who saw any value whatsoever in social media, and I wasn’t able to sell it to the boss. So my opportunity to jump on the social media bandwagon was spent doing old-school stuff; powerpoint decks, data sheets, press releases. I know, I know. That’s another post.)

But like everyone else, I do have an opinion on how best to use social media to grow your business. That’s what it is ultimately about, right? Growing your business? Building a base of people in your community, so that you have a wealth of knowledge and experience to draw on to help you deliver a finely-honed service or product to the people who are willing to pay you for it? Creating mind-share? Getting noticed?

I’m looking for all of that, too, and the advice I’ve found on how to use social media in my marketing strategy follows a massive bell curve. The range seems to break down like this:

The advice in the middle approaches a ‘best practices’ tactic for social media in marketing. Although I think we’re still a long way from that. If you are a thought-leader who publishes new material all the time, social media is exactly what you need it to be. You can gain a massive following and if you’re good, you can monetize that following.

But a cookie-cutter strategy won’t cover everyone. No more than a great cookie recipe will help you make a cheeseburger. If you’re selling air conditioner parts, the best social media model really isn’t there yet. If customers found out about you through Twitter, it’s a safe bet you’re a long way from a sale. You should use social media to build a community and get links, but not leads. And that reality will drive your strategy more than anything else. For the average B2B company, social media is still a luxury.

So if you’re not a constant online publisher, why worry about strategy? You’re still in the “Just Do It!” stage. Jump in.

Look at email marketing, which was the Wild West about ten years ago, but is now a (variably) respected marketing and communications tool that offers tracking, best practices, compliance guidelines, and an entire realm of best practices and expertise. Social media looks at email marketing the way email marketing looks at postcards. The strategy will come.

I’m not going to prescribe any specific approach, except to suggest that you take advice that works well for a publishing model with a grain of salt. In ten years it will be easy to know the best way to use social media, but today, despite all the hollering, we know nothing. I’m just saying; “Relax!”

What is a “Real” Social Media Success Story?

Posted on April 28, 2010

Whenever you read about companies and celebrities using social media such as Twitter and Facebook, you hear all the stories about how these organizations and people have become huge social media success stories. They have expanded their reach to more followers and created another portal for constant engagement and brand-building.

A rundown of these social media success stories usually includes the following:

Oprah Winfrey
Ashton Kutcher
CNN
Walmart
Apple
Skittles
Marriott
Kodak
McDonald’s
CVS
Hershey’s
Staples
Intel
Cisco
UPS
The Home Depot
PepsiCo
Discovery Channel

Do you notice what they all they have in common? They all existed before the rise of social media. Beyond that, they were all huge before the rise of social media.

Oprah, for example, got famous for creating one of the better daytime talk shows, and making it the cornerstone of her media empire. Every day, she touched a nerve with viewers and guests, and stayed away from the circus atmosphere of some other daytime shows (you know who I mean). She covered topics that were touching and interesting, and developed a brand that was largely based on her personality and interests.

In other words, she was a social element before the medium she could really exploit was even born. And you might notice that her show is still on television, and is still the foundation of her empire. Her followers would not be her followers without it. So is Oprah really a social media success story?

Similarly, Ashton Kutcher was not unknown before the rise of Twitter. It turns out he was already a very talented and funny actor, and the star of a hit television show, a veteran of several movies, a teen magazine heartthrob, and his posters graced the walls of girls’ bedrooms everywhere before he ever sent his first Tweet. Without all that, he’d probably be a geeky-but-dreamy guy working at Wal-Mart, known for his ability to make friends, but not a social media legend.

While we’re on the subject, Kutcher challenged CNN to gain more Twitter followers. He won, and claimed the victory showed that “Social media and social news outlets can become as powerful as the major news outlets.”

But CNN still seems to be standing. 90 million people subscribe to it through their cable providers and several million viewers tune in each day. Kutcher relies on reruns, movies, Nikon ads and tabloid covers to keep his name on everyone’s mind. When he covers a foreign war, humanitarian disaster, or the daily economic report using only his Twitter account, I’ll be impressed.

Speaking of Wal-Mart, you might have noticed that the company is larger than some countries in revenue and total square footage. This had nothing to do with social media, and neither will the company’s future. Wal-Mart’s only possible strategy with social media is to strengthen its relationship with followers, most of whom shop there only because of low prices (based on forcing its manufacturers to exploit slave labor overseas).

Apple took a lot of flak until very recently for being late to the party, and even discouraging the use of social media tools. The company is now on board, but with such a dedicated base of followers and some of the most innovative consumer-oriented multimedia tools, it’s surprising they didn’t lead. Apple’s finally building outposts using social media is not an example of a success story.

Skittles are tasty, fruity sugar drops that got to be one of the biggest sellers before the Internet was even around, so what is the point of a candy having a website anyway? Well, the Skittles marketers thought the same thing and replaced their website with a Twitter window and a little Flash with promotional offers and links to Facebook and YouTube. It’s brilliant, but is it a social media success? Skittles isn’t even a company. It’s just a brand sold by Wrigley Bros., which in turn is owned by Mars, Inc.

So what exactly is a social media success story?

It has to go beyond creating an outpost and generating buzz. A true social media success story should have been virtually unknown before using social media, and should be a legitimate business. A business is something that fills a market need, has a sustainable revenue model, and has the potential to enrich more than just the owner, but also its community, industry and audience. A lot of people make money from their blog, and they advertise their blog through social media, but have they created something that can continue to operate and adds value for others?

There are a few examples:

Zappos
http://blog.davemadethat.com/2008/07/09/communication-20-zappos-a-social-media-success-story-interview-with-tony-hsieh/

Bacon Salt
http://www.baconsalt.com/

Cold Stone Creamery
http://social-media-optimization.com/2007/07/social-media-marketing-success-stories/

MyWorkButterfly
http://mashable.com/2009/04/28/grow-social-network/

Indium
Finally – a success story that more closely matches every marketer’s situation: How to take an existing business with a small budget and little name recognition and gain market share using social media.

http://www.indium.com/

Nike’s #EPICFAIL

It’s About The Brand, Not The Shoes

And It’s About The Fans

Maybe It’s Brilliant, (But Probably Not)

Follow “MyLeftOne”