Darren Lister

This site will not be posting anything today in support of the SOPA Blackout. Please stop this bill that will change the Internet.

I just had to laugh at what Dilbert recently had to say about businesses in the comics.

…but then it got me to thinking, are all businesses built on liars? I have built my career working with many of the departments mentioned in his comic. Today the worlds of marketing, sales and PR overlap more than they every have through the platforms of social media which spreads their messages travel much faster than they every have. One “little” lie from any of these divisions will almost certainly be picked apart by someone “out there on the internet”.

I attended business school at BYU, a religious school that is noted for their emphasis on ethics. Does this reputation mean that that BYU excels in their teaching of ethics or that other schools simply fail in this respect? Or is today’s business world so corrupt that if graduates operate using basic principles of right and wrong stand out? I sincerely hope that the world has not become that place.

Every day consumers are bombarded with thousands of marketing messages from companies trying to sell their brand. Once upon a time it was simple print ads or TV commercials. Now they get hammered with product placements and spam to their email box. Over time consumers have found ways to adapt through TiVo’s and federal spam laws. As a consumer, I openly admit to practicing ever measure I can to limit this flood of unwanted data.

As a marketer, I understand that these approaches create top-of-mind awareness and sell product. As much as times are changing, brand recognition is still important and will remain an integral part of the marketing process. People buy the products they know.

Apple has launched iAds. A new marketing measure with a million dollar buy-in to place interactive ads in front of iPhone users (using iOS4). These ads place even more daily brand images in front of the consumer.

Nissan is one of the first to participate in this new form of advertising. They are using it to market their new Zero Emissions, 100% electric Nissan LEAF vehicle. The video below is an Apple ad, advertising the capabilities of the iAd platform while promoting the Nissan LEAF, essentially an ad selling ads.

Will it work? Only time will tell but I applaud Nissan and Apple for their willingness to explore bold new avenues. I will always appreciate innovation as I believe that marketing will always be about differentiation. In that flood of daily images, you must dare to stand out to succeed. What do you think?

***This post was created entirely on my iPad***

Recently, I came across the latest version of the Social Media Revolution on YouTube.  It is full of statistics of why Social Media is not simply a fad that will simply fad away in the near future.  I have often said that Social Media is fundamentally changing traditional marketing.  Historically, companies told consumers what to think about their brand.  Social Media has transformed that relationship into a two-way communication where companies not only tell consumers what to think but consumers respond in real-time with what they really think.  It truly is changing the the way we communicate.

A few months ago I gave a presentation at Cal-State – Long Beach to a group of students on social media marketing. In my presentations, I always try to give real world examples of what companies are currently doing in the world of social media. Given that I am constantly attending social media events and trainings to stay on top of the latest development, it really bothers me to hear about an amazing use of social media with year old examples. It must be current to be relevant.

The week of my presentation, Nestle’s social media blunder hit the blogosphere so I used it as a teaching moment. If you are not familiar with their experience, they made a statement on their Facebook account stating that they intended to protect their intellectual property of their logo and intended to have altered versions of their logo removed from people’s profile pics on Facebook. As you can imagine this created a huge backlash within the online community. Within hours, people were lashing out all over the internet with all kinds of negative sentiments towards Nestle.

Then it went from bad to worse, Greenpeace seized the opportunity to attack Nestle’s use of palm oil and how its use affects the habitats of orangutans using this video (caution: it is quite gory) .  Today, Nestle bowed to Greenpeace’s demands and  announced a “zero deforestation” policy in partnership with The Forest Trust (TFT).  This partnership will initially focus on amending its palm oil purchasing practices.

Regardless of which side of this argument you side with.  It is hard to ignore the power of social media.  I have often said that it is fundamentally changing the marketing relationship into a two way communication.  Companies can no longer only tell consumers what to think about their brand, they must listen and listen well.

I am on a quest. I want to determine if anyone can develop the perfect tool for the social media ecosystem. As I have mentioned before, this ecosystem is evolving so rapidly that staying on top of it can be more difficult than finding a 4G iPhone in a bar. I want to know if Apple’s iPad can provide the hardware necessary to make it converge more smoothly than all the other devices I have tried.

With that in mind, I got in line and bought a 3G iPad. Tomorrow, I will begin attending the Social Media Success Summit 2010 so I thought this would be a perfect time to share some of my initial thoughts.

1) it is much more pleasant to type on that I expected. I believe I prefer typing on it in landscape mode over just about any netbook that I have tried. I have not yet clocked my speed but I would expect that with practice, I might be able to rival a physical keyboard.

2) iPad apps look amazing. IPhone apps on an iPad…not-so-much. The resolution and reaction inputs just seem to work better on the “Made for iPad” apps. I am anxious to see how all of my favorite iPod/iPhone apps evolve to the platform to use the increased real estate. I believe I actually prefer the iPad TweetDeck app to the one on my tablet PC. It is clear that they have designed it for the large touch interface of the iPad verses the other way around.

3) Battery life is great! I am getting the stated 9-10 hours. I don’t get that on any laptop or smartphone I own when stressed under heavy use.

4) Lack of Java and Flash is going to be a pain. I went to pre-test the links for the online presentations of the Summit and immediately got the “please install Java” message. I have hit the Flash one several times as well. Please Apple, work this out.

I’ll keep you posted and look forward to my posts on the latest in Social Media as I attend the Summit over the coming weeks.

Isn’t Tax Day over?  Tonight, I attended a presentation on Mobile and Social Strategy at Intuit in San Diego and all the nightmares of the numbers came back.  It was good that the speaker, Dan Maurer, made excellent points to keep even the non-CPA’s in the audience awake.   His presentation focused on how they are adapting to the growing mobile segment, why social referrals are critically important to Intuit’s business model, and how they view their Live Community to be an extremely successful value-ad for their consumers.

Who really wants to sit at home doing their taxes?  Intuit recognizes that most people really don’t want to spend a lot of time on their taxes and if they can do it on the go, that is even better.  This has made Intuit’s iPhone apps some of the most popular finance apps through Apple’s App Store with fun features like taking a camera phone picture of your W2 which then inputs it into their software—wouldn’t that make for a fun first date demonstration of your net worth?  Moving back to the marketing application, mobile, time-saving applications can be a very effective way of reaching your target audience.

Dan surveyed the audience as to who uses their products and then joked that those in the audience who do not use the products should be recruited by those that do.  This made an excellent point, referrals are always a very effective part of the marketing mix but why do so many companies not formally integrate obtaining referrals into their marketing strategy?  Intuit states that 39% of its TurboTax consumers try the product because of a referral.  Don’t forget that referrals will always be important to your marketing.

When people find a product that they can believe in, they want to tell their friends about their discovery.  This is where social media must provide a platform for accomplishing this.  Intuit has done a very good job of doing this.  Its online Live Community is unique in that in the first 16 weeks of 2010 they had over 100,000 replies with a one retired CPA contributing over 48,000 responses.  Wow!  I would challenge anyone to find a more active online evangelist for any brand.

While we cannot get away from death and taxes, innovative marketing approaches can make at least one of those topics much more interesting.

The Library of Congress announced today that it intends to preserve every Tweet.  The Library of Congress is the  federal cultural institution of the United States Government which exists to preserve every form of written word imaginable including copies of every book pamphlet, map, print, and piece of music registered in the United States.  This is done for under the premise of research for future generations.  How do you feel about your 140 characters being stored forever? (via Mashable & the Twitter Blog)

After bouncing around the country for the last while, my family and I have finally getting settled in Carlsbad, California.  This is a wonderful area which we have fallen in love with which in our opinion is convenient to everything (the beach, San Diego, Orange County and lots of sunshine).  Now that the boxes are finally starting to get unpacked, it is time to get back to work with Social Media.

What many people don’t understand, which included myself when I initially started with social media marketing campaigns, is how much time social media takes up.  If you do not religiously stay on top of it, your followers can quickly lose interest.  We are in a impatient society which requires immediate information.  If you take time off to do something like move a household, it requires even more devotion to reinterest your following.  I hope that I will live up to that expectation in the coming weeks and I dive back into providing valuable insights into social media and marketing campaigns.

For over 11 years I have been involved in the marketing world.  My experiences have ranged from front line performing market research to analyzing the data to create complex marketing strategies.  In 2009, I completed my MBA from BYU and was greeted back into the business world by the complex evolution of social media.

I have found myself drawn to the strong learning curve of knowledge that this rapid evolution has created.  From my perspective, social media is a marketing medium that companies simply cannot ignore.  While it is built upon the basic principles of marketing, it is fundamentally changing the way that companies and customers are communicating. Companies can no longer simply “tell” customers what to think of their brand.  It is now a complex network of two-way communication where your customers are now telling both you and other customers how they feel about your brand.

In this blog, I will discuss how companies can effectively use social media and other marketing mediums to enhance their brand.  I am a very active traveler and networker.  This has taken me literally all over the world and to a great many trade shows and networking events.  I hope you will find the information I post both interesting and informative.