SocialMedia with Obama As President

Ellen McGirt of Fast Company asked a couple of questions about the new administration and SocialMedia which she summarized in a moving, personal post that combined fresh reactions to the President-elect and perspective from a wide range of respondents. The two questions and my quickly prepared response follow:

Radiohead Recognition for Art, Innovation

Radiohead has received a lot of attention and press as a result of their forward-thinking approach to consumer engagement, marketing and sales in the digital channel and age. Last year, the band gave away their music for a limited time with mixed results based on who you heard it from. Clearly these guys aren’t one-hit-wonders in music or in marketing innovation. In a “make tech cool in a popular culture sense” move, Radiohead and Google are partnering on data visualizationas you can see in the House of Cards video below. Data geeks can download the inputs, create their own versions and post to the Radiohead YouTube site. The partnership also includes an iGoogle homepage themeand embeddable gadget for the video. Pretty simple, but effective stuff, especially when backed by the distribution of Google. This video has already earned over 2mm views as of this posting.

How can this approach work for digital marketers in other product categories? Consider the ways innovation can create a halo effect for your brand and seek out those innovations that tie closest to your brand values. Many brands require repositioning or reappraisal, and your marketing message and approach can be as talkable as any singular message crafted. In this case, the marketing is the message.

Share your thoughts or ways you’ve used marketing innovation to earn reconsideration below.

Transformers and Me–More Than Meets the Eye

I’ve got a lot of robots and Transformers in my office. The quick explanation is “they’re cool.”

The more involved version follows.

I have a small collection of 1950s-60s space/atomic era rockets in part because I love the naive notion that “science will save and lift us” and the object lessons this notion offers.
I added robots—some original and replicas—to my “save and lift” collection.  FWIW, I share the starry-eyed optimism in all pursuits. And I have enough experience to know that there’s another pole to that perspective.