Brand Building via Twitter?

Marketing author Andy Beal believes Twitter offers promise as a brand building tool. His tips:

1. Start conversations with notable peers.
2. Share valuable industry news.
3. Build your blog audience.
4. Stay connected at conferences and trade shows.
5. Monitor your Twitter reputation.

Blogger Dave Rosenberg isn't so sure, wondering whether brand building through Twitter is "cool or creepy." On the positive side, he writes, "There are some great users like the guys from RedMonk, who have gotten so used to Twittering everything that it's like having them in the room. And their content is interesting and funny. It's a great branding tool for them and theoretically should be for others as well." But on the negative side, he wonders if "online stream of consciousness" can really serve as a marketing tool. "Conversation or crap?" he asks.

My answer: probably a little of both. If the analysts from RedMonk can do it, why can't everyone? Well, because not everyone can do it well. There are useless tweets, useless blogs, useless web sites, etc. It's just like every other marketing tool. In the rights hands, it can start conversations. In the wrong hands, it's crap, as Rosenberg would say.

Virtual Real World

I'm not sure if reality television is real, so I'm even less clear on the reality of virtual reality television -- especially when it's not even on television. Confused? Me too.

Enter MTV UK's MTV House, a sort of Second Life Meets MTV's Real World. MTV House will contain a number of rooms where users, through their avatars, can interact with one another and with MTV characters. But unlike, Second Life, MTV House will have a decidedly marketing feel, offering advertisers the chance to reach MTV's audience through generic advertising, branding opportunities, themed 'rooms' and sponsorships.



This move certainly extends MTV's brand beyond TV, offering new opportunities for viewer interactions (and for other promotions, sponsorships, etc.). This model of branded virtual world for kids and young adults, which also includes Disney's ToonTown and Nickelodeon's Nicktropolis, is on the rise.

"The kid's space is exploding," said Sibley Verbeck, CEO of the Electric Sheep Company, a virtual worlds media and technology agency. "The non-kids space, for teens and adults, is growing quite a bit as well, and we're seeing [longer-term] projects and fewer quick hit marketing projects."

This approach is different from that taken in Second Life, for example, which existed as a game/community first, and a marketing opportunity second. While companies moved to establish a virtual presence in Second Life, not all of them lasted.

"People jumped in without a strategy or a plan; there was no quality content to tie to a brand, so user [went] in and moved on," said Christopher Sherman, executive director of Virtual Worlds Management, a media company. "Now you're going to see content tied to the brand, and high quality content coming out of Disney and Warner Bros and the CSI stuff. Just like any advertising medium you have to tie your brand to quality content."

Time will tell, but it seems that those communities with an established following in the real world (MTV, Disney, etc.) may have the best chance for success in the virtual world.

The Role of Social Media in Marketing Communications

Ford recently hired a social media czar and a five-person social media team. This follows on the heels of like efforts by Intel, Dell and Pepsi. They are not alone, according to AdWeek's Brian Morrissey. "Social-media experts are in high demand as companies attempt to figure out how to adapt how they talk to customers and even among themselves," Morrissey writes.

Social media are moving beyond an interesting niche, evolving into a "catalyst for changing how companies operate." "The biggest challenge is moving away from thinking about it as marketing and PR," said Peter Kim, a Forrester Research analyst. "It's about product development, it's about IT. It's got to cut across all functions of the company."

It's also about moving away from the top-down, "Stalin" approach to marketing, as marketer Scott Goodson calls it. Goodson calls authentic dialogues "cultural movements," which are "about curating culture and creating communities and platforms for people to circle their wagons around an idea that is relevant and important to them. A Cultural Movement is about being passionate, militant almost. It's about joining a movement that you care about."

To Goodson brands will suffer if they are not authentic: "Fakes and phonies will be found out. The consumer is now the truth junkie who never forgets, who puts two and two together."

The lesson here, even for those companies that have hired social media czars, is to be authentic and to allow organizations to evolve. Simply shoehorning social media experts into traditional marketing roles is not the answer. An ad is an ad even if it's on MySpace.