Read all the details here:

Ultra high-speed broadband is coming to Kansas City, Kansas

From all of us at Agent X (formerly Steketee Greiner and Company) to all of you out there who put in all the time and effort and devotion at the local level around this initiative, we just want to say, in case no has or ever does, we were sincerely impressed, and you’re ALL winners in our book.

David

In my professional development, before being an employee with SGC, I joined a local organization called Ad 2 West Michigan; in a year I was elected to the role of Chair of Public Service, where I have worked with my friend and professional club associate Ray Cashbaugh (Chair of Creative), as well as the handful of dedicated, to build our charity campaign for the Wealthy Theatre (located in East Grand Rapids).

Ad 2, a division of the AAF (National), is a club for young professionals in Advertising, Marketing, and Public Relations between the ages of 18 and 32. In light of my involvement, I had planned to join the AAF and Ad 2 for their National Conference in Orlando, Florida, as a representative of Ad 2 West Michigan even before my employment with Steketee Greiner; imagine my pride to represent not only Ad 2 West Michigan, but also a rapidly growing company driven by an innovative spirit. The passion I have for my relationship to SGC allowed me to network with professionals in the Advertising industry with a vigor that perhaps Seth Godin would be proud of.

At the conference, my already deep respect for the AAF’s role in my industry grew as I saw the number of clubs that had come to represent not only their industry, but also their hometowns, in an effort to learn, network and most importantly, have fun! On the young professional side, I was awed that leadership flew in from cities such as Denver; Washington DC; San Francisco; Madison and even as far away as Honolulu, Hawaii to support the conference for Ad 2.

During the week, one speaking engagement stuck out as specifically motivating. Gary Ware, an Ad 2 member and professional from the San Diego area (Ad 2 SD) led a workshop on how to use Social Media effectively for a club and graciously allowed me to attend (I even offered to Live Tweet with the #aafconference Hashtags). As a professional engaged in the emerging industries related to digital communications and Social Media I found that Gary and I had much in common with our views of Social Media. What interested me most from this talk was that Gary had inspired a room of ‘traditional’ Advertising professionals to engage both him and their peers in an attempt to learn and share successes.

Knowing the times I’ve seen advertising and thought “hey, Social Media could really help out here…” it’s fantastic to see traditional professionals looking to merge industries – even if the cutting edge hasn’t been their primary focus so far in their career.

So special thanks to Gary as well as the AAF National Conference, for reminding me that it’s not just about advertising, and it’s not just about Social Media – it’s about getting the consumer engaged with brands we promote to the extent that they are willing to not only purchase a product, but spread positive Word of Mouth (WOM) across their social channels (both offline and online). The added benefit of Social Media to a traditional advertising campaign comes from the ability to measure this WOM and determine ROI faster, and more affordably than traditional surveying alone.

For example: Tampax produced a very unusual (or is it revolutionary?) campaign about an adolescent named man named Zach who struggled with getting a period won best of show at the Addy’s; I can’t help but think that ‘Zach’s’ engagement through Social Media led him to not only win Best of Show but the loyalty of the consumers he engaged with in the digital landscape. You can view the official clip from the AAF [Here].

All in all, I’ve returned more passionate about my industry; it’s a pretty amazing world out there, and I hope to continue to share my passions around Social Media strategy, emerging technologies and Advertising (AAF/Ad 2 specifically!) in the near future.

In the meantime, don’t hold back. Love us or hate us – find us on Twitter: @stekteeegreiner.

And as always, if you’re looking to talk to us about our innovative views in this market, contact us through www.steketeegreiner.com.

Additional Links:

You can follow Gary on Twitter: @GaryWare

His Presentation is loaded  [On SlideShare]

Credits for the Tampax Campaign:

Tampax “Zack Johnson”

Agency: Leo Burnett, Chicago
WW Chief Creative Officer: Mark Tutssel
Chief Creative Officer: John Condon
Executive Creative Director: Becky Swanson
Creative Director: Dave Loew, Jon Wyville
Copywriter: Dave Loew
Art Director: Jon Wyville

Post by: Andrew Rushmore

]]> http://blog.agent-x.com/2010/06/passion-for-advertising-is-becoming-passion-for-social-media/feed/ 0 http://blog.agent-x.com/2010/05/in-the-end-google-fiber-is-about-more-than-just-google/ http://blog.agent-x.com/2010/05/in-the-end-google-fiber-is-about-more-than-just-google/#comments Tue, 04 May 2010 21:33:18 +0000 david http://blog.agent-x.com/?p=631 When Google announced they would be taking applications from cities interested in receiving free fiber optic broadband, there was a surge of interest from cities across America – it grew into over 1,000 responses to Google’s request for information (RFI) – and, with some unspoken encouragement from Google’s RFI around community spirit, many of the cities involved in the initiative began to leverage digital media to raise awareness for their efforts, to drum up active support from community members and to show Google exactly how excited they are to be considered for the “grand prize.” In most cases, the people responded. Many who had an interest in bringing Google’s promise to their city acted as brand champions, spreading the story everywhere through both traditional and non-traditional channels. For many of these champions it became a highly competitive race to get Google’s attention, showing the vested interest participating cities have with Google’s fiber broadband technology.

As we began to monitor conversations around the initiative and the participating cities in the digital landscape, several cities stood out as clear leaders. These leaders had over ten thousand Facebook fans alone, with some breaking twenty and even thirty thousand. Pictures, tweets, blog posts, videos and more all supported the digital media presence of active cities, showing how very hands on participants became – fiber became a catalyst for community growth in cyberspace and beyond. And I say beyond, and this is a key learning for everyone, because the cities that controlled the largest share of digital voice were those that not only pulled together strategies for deploying digital media but carried it through to PR and experiential activities as well.

As Google’s March 26th deadline loomed closer we monitored even more excitement online as many cities saw last minute increases to their fan bases. This was likely tied to the flood of nationally recognized events various cities used for promotion, as well as the effect of word of mouth and the variety of media coverage that backed the buzz around Google’s fiber initiative.

So here we are, just over a month since the fiber ‘storm’ passed. It’s been interesting to watch how conversation around the initiative in the digital landscape waned. The leaders in the Facebook space continued to grow, but each added just a few thousand fans since the deadline. And many of the cities vying for Google’s fiber have seen a significant drop in their online conversation since the deadline for the RFI. Basically, Google thanked everyone for applying and relegated share of online voice to its position in its decision making process, and, for the most part, most participants gradually stepped back their efforts. Really, the only major additional event since the close of the application process happened on April Fool’s Day (April 1st) when Google changed its site name to ‘Topeka’ as a tip of the cap to Topeka, Kansas which changed its name to ‘Google, Kansas’ as part of its campaign.

What is surprising is how little uproar there appears to be from all of the cities that invested a great deal of time and money in participating in this initiative. We were expecting to find a good of negative sentiment against Google for not choosing a city faster and leaving America waiting with no clear date on when the selection would be made. With the large number of content contributors in cities such as Grand Rapids, Duluth, Topeka, Greenville (South Carolina) and Pittsburgh, one could draw the logical conclusion that a high number of comments and negative content speaking out against Google would appear in the digital space, or at the very least, the conversations would intensify generating more content around their desire for Google’s fiber broadband. But that isn’t the case. Something more interesting is happening: there are new initiatives being driven by cities that submitted applications to Google focused on creating local support for broadband fiber lines, regardless of what decision Google makes. That’s an interesting twist and a really brilliant example of how powerful WOM can be. In this instance, though Google created the initial groundswell, generating a mass of interest on a large scale, the bit of subject matter seems to be of greater interest than the actual Google campaign itself. That sounds like it should naturally be the case, but think about it. This is a solid example of WOM being used to sell a simple, good idea. I like to think that even if Google never intended to pull the trigger on installing broadband fiber anywhere, the awareness for the technology that this campaign raised would justify the investments.

To illustrate what’s currently happening, on April 15th “Google Island” (Sarasota, Florida’s Facebook page) posted:

“Due to the overwhelming support and momentum from the community…our leadership at city and county are putting together a team of key people to continue to push a broadband agenda.”

It sounds like Sarasota is pretty committed to fiber broadband (whether it’s from Google or not). That begs the question: did the mayor really need to jump into a shark-tank to spark activation with consumers? The honest answer is maybe. We tracked spikes in online conversation and activity around events such as the Google, Kansas rename, Duluth’s idea of renaming all firstborns Google and many other similar events that all certainly raised awareness for the fiber initiative and educated consumers on the value of having it available throughout their respective cities. The question now shifts from “How do we get Google’s attention?” to “How do we develop a strategy that will take the online interest generated by awareness for broadband fiber and translate it into something tangible for our community?”

Two people seem to be addressing that question. Jay Ovittore and Craig Settles started an initiative to carry the momentum of Google Fiber into something tangible by supporting communities and their leaders as they try to create fiber broadband on their own, without ‘winning’ fiber from Google. You can get more information on Communities United for Broadband here.

In another initiative that has popped up after Google’s deadline for RFIs had passed, Greenville, (South Carolina) has taken the initiative to make a website where people can vote for cities which they feel are most deserving of being awarded Google’s fiber. Not surprising, Greenville’s enthusiasm, which has been constant throughout the submission period, earned their city over 300,000 votes on the site. However, Asheville, North Carolina recently took the lead with over 400,000 votes. Duluth, Minnesota came in ‘third’ with over 12,000 votes with other cities on the list having far fewer votes, but the ‘ranking’ is open until May 6th.

The initiative is a great vehicle to continue to generate awareness, but there are questions as to how this site will ultimately contribute to getting broadband fiber connectivity. However it plays out, it will need to generate an opportunity outside of the Google initiative, because according to Greenville Online, a South Carolina news outlet, Google’s Product Manager Minnie Ingersoll said, “To be clear, our decisions will be based entirely on the responses and data we’ve gathered for our Request for Information.” She added, “This web site is not authorized by Google.” But the brains behind Greenville’s efforts thus far have been diligent, and it seems likely that they’ll look to create an angle to position their cause.

So where does all this leave us? Shark tanks, babies named ‘Google’ and more brought us to here, and now all the people who put so much time and energy into their efforts on behalf of their respective cities are playing a waiting game while Google decides how they want to proceed. And yet, many of the people involved in all of this don’t seem content to wait and are now turning their efforts toward picking up the broadband fiber torch independently of any help from Google and continuing their local groundswells in pursuit of what they set out for – better connectivity.

No matter how things turn out, the most relevant insight in all of this is that a good idea is a good idea (high speed broadband fiber connectivity), and if you craft a solid strategy for communicating its value proposition (like Google did), people will take ownership of the idea and respond. And regardless of who owned or owns the share of voice online for this initiative and ultimately who Google chooses to work with to install Google Fiber, this campaign is a fantastic example of how effective (and ineffective) traditional and non-traditional communications can be used together to not only generate awareness, but to inspire whole communities and affect real change.

On that note, and based on Google’s post on its official blog that it will be making its selection “…by the end of the year,” we have decided to take a step back from our weekly reports, evaluate the number of cities participating in online efforts around the initiative to make sure that we have the most inclusive list possible and then resume our efforts on a regular basis until Google makes its final decision. Again, we’re not saying in any way that Google is using online share of voice as a factor in its decision making process, but we still want to make sure that everyone knows who the top contenders are around this metric and what they are doing to try to get Google’s attention online. And given Google’s tip of the cap to Topeka today, the question has to be asked: does it hurt to go out of your way a bit to stay top of mind in the digital world?

So, look for our next report sometime in April, and thanks to everyone who continues to send in insights and requests on behalf of your city – we are taking as much relevant information into account as we can. In the meantime, make sure you continue to include your city in your tagging strategy, as we’ll continue to base our search for data on the participating cities, and please don’t hesitate to email me at david.greiner@sgandco.com with questions, concerns and anything else I should know is going on in your world.

Finally, and this is way past due, thanks to Martin at Zettaphile for his efforts in compiling the original list of Google fiber cities on his blog. It was our starting point.

Thanks and again, best of luck to everyone!

David

Below is the second in our series of reports ranking the online share of voice for the cities participating in the Google fiber initiative.

This report updates our initial metrics based on the insights we’ve collected from our research, which includes all of the direction submitted through blog comments on our first report and emails we’ve received directly. And on that note, thank you to everyone who took the time to contribute to this research on behalf of your city. As we hope we’ve shown in these reports, active participation is essential to any good online efforts, and yours is much appreciated.

Please note that if your city did NOT make the top 10 in our report, it is no indication that you are in any way not competitively positioned in the initiative. Again, Google has multiple factors in their decision making process, including how interested a community is in working with Google, community support, local activities, needs and resources, approved construction methods, local regulatory issues and area broadband speeds. And though most participating cities assert that online interaction in their campaigns will increase the chances of favorability in their selection, ultimately Google will decide which factors are most relevant.

The second report is available for download here. Just click on the image below.
And please reach out to us through the comments below or by email to david.greiner@sgandco.com if you have any questions or comments on the information and insights we’re presenting.

Download Media Kit (6MB ZIP)

With all of that said, our next report will cast a broader net in hopes of pulling in some of the disparate Facebook pages and other digital channels that need to be included for participating cities to be accurately analyzed and ranked. We will also be including some insights along the line of what I’ve explained above.

In the meantime, thanks to everyone taking the time to comment. Please continue to contribute any data that may be relevant to our efforts and tune in late next week for the next report.

Good luck everyone, and keep the conversations going. We’ll be monitoring.

David

Question: In this developing world of social media and digital marketing, we all know that we need to reconsider the way we’re delivering content to our audiences, but do you feel like you have things under control? There are threads everywhere discussing how we’re losing control of the conversations going on around our brands and how we’ve entered into the age of transparency in messaging. The rage today seems to be around monitoring and measuring and conducting damage assessment and control once a conversation is made public. But let’s consider content in the context of measuring and monitoring and think about how brands can move from “reactive content victim” to “proactive participant in a meaningful conversation.”

So then, how are you developing content in the new media age? How are you planning to update all the social media channels and blog(s) your company is launching, or has already launched over the course of the year? These are big questions, and unless you know the answers to them, you may want to consider scaling your digital media plan to accommodate your ability to create content that will effectively represent your brand effectively in a two-way conversation with your audiences. The key word there is “two-way,” because you’re entering an environment that is built on networks and opinions and transparency, and if you’re merely in a position to launch messaging (even if you’ve spent millions of dollars testing its relevance) into the digital space without being able to measure its effectiveness and, more importantly, without having a strategy on how to respond if a conversation erupts around your thought, you’re leaving yourself vulnerable.

As we get into it, here’s a little background on where we are and where we’re heading:

Web 2.0 has enabled a two-way dialogue. Audiences have become “search savvy,” information flows and, most importantly, the line between professional and amateur content has started to blur. The challenge isn’t finding information, it’s knowing what to do with it…

The new age of Web 3.0 is about semantics. It’s enabling a new distribution relationship around content/data centered around Filtering (information and content) and Context (delivering the right message, at the right time, to the right person, with the right device). This approach to content is creating an open source social structure that will allow databases to talk to each other and encourage social network content that urges audiences to use snippets of content as they please and where they please to reach new levels of meaning between brands and audiences.

These changes are creating a MARKETING STRATEGY SHIFT…

Web 2.0 asked us to build massive sites and drive traffic to a place where we could try to control messaging. Web 3.0 is asking us to create content that can travel throughout the digital world via conversations with multiple participants, creating connections that drive content consumption, data collection and new content generation.

So, here’s the rub, and it’s a simple “if/then” proposition: if we’re now in a position that requires us to create content that will enable and respond to conversations about our brand, then how do we generate content plans that aren’t simply focused on feeding information and stories out to audiences, trusting in their ability to run with it? The answer’s simple: plan. Build a plan that maps out your entire content strategy across all your channels for the entire year. Of course, you need to leave some room to be reactive, but if your marketing plans are aligned with your business objectives, you should be able to create a conversation that you can feed to your audiences and interact with in an organized, ongoing basis throughout the year. And if you do this well, you’ll be able to measure not only the sentiment of what’s going on around your brand, but also the effectiveness of your content (for good or bad). Once you know that, you can create a content baseline that allows you to generate planned, targeted content year after year that is valued internally for its measurable effectiveness and externally for your contributions as the subject matter expert around your brand.

The results are in. Interbrand has released it’s Best Global Brands 2009 report. Coke, IBM, Microsoft, GE and Nokia top the list. Click here to visit Interbrand’s site and download the complete report.

The marketing landscape is changing. It’s about open conversation and innovative ways to create new communications opportunities. We’re working hand in hand with our clients to help define where marketing goes from here. So, as the edit to our title post now says, marketing actually isn’t really dead. It’s just reinventing itself for the new age of Communications 3.0.

- David -