Why is GooglePlus so much fun right now?

Privacy advocates have gotten Facebook users attuned to the idea that not everything should be shared with everyone. So many, if not most, Facebookers have changed their default settings to ensure that their birthday party photos are shared with their friend list rather than the (default) entire world and some have even gone the extra step of creating distinct groups of work contacts, family members and the like.

It is this desire to only share certain things with certain people appears to be one of the main drivers behind the new Google Plus

Which makes it not the anti-Facebook, but the anti-Twitter.

Because Twitter is all about sharing everything with everyone. Particularly people who don’t know you. At all. Which is one of the things that causes certain people to have such a visceral reaction to Twitter: this notion that someone would give up all notions of privacy willingly, rather than because of an easily-corrected flaw in the technology.

Now the good news for Google and Twitter is that there is likely room for both. Right now use of the various platforms is largely based on one’s degree of tech savviness and willingness to be an early adopter. But as these social platforms become even more ubiquitous, I think we’re going to start selecting them based on what fits with our own personalities.

This often overlooked fact – that we are unique beings who feel more comfortable in some situations than others – is going to be a big factor in the future of social platforms. People will start to spend more and more time on the platform that best conforms with their sense of how much a person should share with the outside world. And it seems as if there will be a continuum, with Twitter and Google Plus each grabbing one side of the privacy line and Facebook in the middle.

I’m not seeing an either/or situation: plenty of people will be active on all three. But like the old chocolate, vanilla or strawberry ice cream dilemma, they’ll always have a favorite among the three.

UPDATE: I’ve been using Google Plus for about three days now. Everyone on there seems to be part of the tech community, so there’s a whole lot of tech-related chatter. Lots more conversation on posts, but I’ll attribute that to the newness of the platform and people’s desires to check it out. The ability to quickly post things to select groups is going to be the deal breaker here. An outlier to watch: Facebook gives users similar functionality with Groups, but it’s hard to use and hard to find. Entirely possible they’ll spiff it up if they sense Google making inroads.

This post first appeared on DigiDay Daily. You can read the original here, along with the follow-up, The Like Trap, by DigiDay Editor-in-Chief Brian Morrissey

For the past 15 years, “fish where the fish are” has been the mantra of anyone in digital media. At the end of the millennium, that meant “AOL Keyword: Acme Corp.”  In the mid-2000s, it meant the Acme Corp Second Life store. And in 2011, it means “find us on Facebook.”

Now marketing on the site du jour is not in and of itself a grievous error. It’s just that most brands get so blinded by the bright shiny objects, they forget even the most basic rules of marketing.

Let’s start with metrics: for many brands, the only sign of an effective Facebook page is the presence of many, many “fans.” (e.g. people who have hit the “Like” button.) It’s an easy number to achieve: there are actually companies that will guarantee you x number of fans by the end of the week. Do a Google search for “get Facebook fans.” You’ll get all sorts of offers. Judging by the top result, the value of attaining a fan is about six cents. But the fan count is a prominent number that plays well in the C-Suite since it’s a pretty bragworthy statistic: “Acme has 8 million Facebook fans, Bigglesworth. How many does Qwerty have?”

Then, of course, there’s that nagging question of ownership: Acme has 8 million Facebook fans who frequently upload photos and videos to Acme’s Facebook page as part of the numerous promotions and contests their agencies suggest. Only Acme doesn’t own any of those fan videos or photographs: Mark Zuckerberg does. Along with their email addresses, browsing habits and lots of other information that Acme would like to have. Want to integrate that into your CRM system? Good luck.

In addition to owning the videos and the photos, Mr. Zuckerberg also owns The Rules. Which means that he can change them any time he wants. Tabs on the top of the page? Think again. Being able to post as the brand away from your Fan Page? Surprise! It’s a classic example of the “Because We Can” attitude Facebook is notorious for and it can seriously disrupt your brand’s communications plan. Coke woke up one day in February to find the way it communicates with 24 million customers changed without notice.

There’s still another problem with those fans. Four years ago, I wrote a series called “Your Brand Is Not My Friend” and it hold even more true today: people come to Facebook to play Farmville or see their friend’s children’s wedding photos. They don’t really want to hear from brands and so many of them hit the “Hide” button as soon as that first post shows up in their News Feed. But a certain percentage won’t. These brand-evangelists-in-the-making eagerly await every new Acme post. But guess who knows their identity? Not Acme’s marketing department. Once again, the answer is Mark Zuckerberg.

So what’s a brand to do?

The answer isn’t sexy. It’s called “integrated marketing.” To keep the metaphor flowing, it’s basically driving the tastiest fish into the nets where it’s easy for the fishermen to scoop them up. It makes use of something many of today’s marketers seem to have forgotten exists: their own domain sites.

It’s fairly simple to build a contest page or microsite on your domain and iFrame it into a Facebook tab. (That’s still not against the rules.) That way, everything that’s posted on the Facebook tab is automatically synched with the domain site and vice versa. More importantly, all the content that’s posted on the Facebook tab is now the brand’s property. Not Zuckerberg’s. What’s more, the brand also gets to see the user’s browsing history once they’ve hit that Facebook tab.

But that’s only half the story.

The other half is driving those brand-evangelists-in-the-making further into your domain site. Which means actually paying attention to the domain site and giving them something worthwhile to do there. Now by “worthwhile” I don’t mean the tedious games and DJ mixes that websites used to foist on visitors. I’m talking a little interactivity and respect.

You have an e-commerce site? Let users rate and review your products. Your hardcore fans will take the time to write coherent and useful reviews. Want to get a read on what your hardcore fans like? Give them polls or MyStarbucks-like suggestion capabilities. Create a points and levels system with a leaderboard to reward them for their frequent visits and participation. Bubble up some of their comments or photos or videos onto the home page so that when all those less-than-hardcore fans come to the site, they’ll see that there are people who love your brand so much they’ve spend hours writing “how-to” posts about it.

Now a little reality check: the number of hardcore fans who’ll go to your domain and become power users is going to be miniscule compared to the number of people who click the “like” button on Facebook. So you’ve got to think of it as a funnel: Facebook is like the worm on the hook that draws all the fish. Your domain is where you drive the ones who stick around and take a nibble.

It’s the social CMS food chain, but it actually works: you get the people who really, really want to buy your product and Zuckerberg gets the people who really, really want to play Farmville.

Seems like a pretty fair trade-off to me.

The $41 million Color fiasco only served to point out how unreliable location still is on smart phones. Not to mention a hassle.

That in turn has turned the spotlight on companies who are seeking to remedy this through something called “persistent location” which broadcasts your whereabouts whether or not you have the apps on your phone open. The advantage is that it can track you as you move about your day, so you don’t have the lag time of the smart phone figuring out that you’re 10 miles from where you last checked in every time you open the app.

That’s also the disadvantage: the companies building this technology are also billing it as a way to push coupons at consumers when they are in range of your business. So if you are, say, around the corner from Starbucks, you’ll get a message inviting you to have a latte for 25 cents off.

It’s all opt-in and above board and, as of now, pretty novel. Until of course, it’s not. I have visions of walking down the street and getting assaulted by offers from dozens of companies. I mean I get that everything would be opt-in, but so is email, and think of how often you find yourself searching for that “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of the email. And how many times unsubscribing involves entering some long-forgotten user name and password to “modify your account’s notification settings.”

What’s more, getting a 25 cent coupon every time I walk past Starbucks may seem like a great idea if I’ve got a several-times-a-day Starbucks habit. But checking to see what’s making that buzzing noise on my phone, especially if I pass by Starbucks several times a day is going to get old fast.

Push coupons also seem to fall into the same category as internet banners: they’re asking you to stop doing something time sensitive (looking up your flight reservation, walking to a lunch meeting) to pay attention to their product. Location is particularly sensitive in this area: outside of vacation trips, how often do we find ourselves wandering the streets without a specific destination in mind.

Persistent location may someday prove useful, perhaps in conjunction with other data. (Imagine an app that tracked your location and cross-referenced it with periods of high or low productivity. That’s data you might be able to make use of.)

But pushing coupons at you as you walk down the street? That sounds like nothing more than the electronic version of a Middle Eastern bazaar.

This started out as a comment on the newly revitalized DigidayDaily, but evolved into its own blog post on The Toad Stool.

I’m not sure what I’m about to propose is technologically possible, if it’s been thought up before and dismissed, but it seems to make a lot of sense, so here goes:

Right now publishers can’t find anyone who is willing to pay for their content. When they try and put up a paywall (e.g. The New York Times) they create a whole lot of ill will. What’s more, there are still plenty of people happily giving it away for free (e.g. the Huffington Post.)

At the same time, many of us are paying somewhere in the range of $100/month for cable television service. We’re also happily shelling out an extra $15-25 a month for “premium” channels like HBO, NFL Red Zone or Showtime. And I’m thinking that we don’t seem to mind paying all this money because (a) since we’re for some level of cable service, rather than for particular show, it somehow seems like a utility, in the same class as our water and electric bills, and (b) because FIOS or Comcast has bundled up everything into nicely productized packages, we feel comfortable knowing that we’re getting the Basic model or the Deluxe or the SuperPremium: these are terms we know from countless other industries and they carry a meaning and cachet that goes beyond what the actual product is.

So what if the internet was packaged up the same way?

We’re already heading down the path towards convergence, when all our TV channels will be available over the internet, on demand, whenever we want. So what if our Deluxe package also gave us access to “premium” websites, like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal?

We could choose say, the “Celebrity Package” and get access to Us, People, TMZ, PerezHilton and the like, bundled together with HBO, Showtime and E!. An “Premium Sports” package would give access to the ESPN’s video content, including live broadcasts, along with everything currently on the website and then throw in say the MLB, NBA and NFL networks too.

I’m not a cable packager, but you get the picture: What I’m proposing is basically a reverse image of today’s internet where everything is free until someone makes you pay extra for it.

In this new world, sites would be closed unless you paid to have them open to you. Most sites would fall under a “basic cable” type umbrella and be included for free in whatever package you bought. It’s the premium content sites that would charge extra, and the cable providers would split the revenue with them, much as they currently do with the premium cable networks.

Sites like the New York Times would advertise to get people to subscribe via their cable provider, much like HBO does now. Because I’m thinking we’d have a lot easier time psychologically paying an extra $20/month to TimeWarner than we would paying it directly to nytimes.com, especially if that extra $20 got you a whole list of additional websites and TV channels along with the Times. You’d also get a lot more video content from the news organizations and other content providers (e.g. fashion magazines) as larger screens and increasingly faster speeds make this a more profitable endeavor for them.

(Of course there’d still be a whole lot of pirating, but we have that now with TV shows and live sporting events and the number of people getting their content the Bit Torrent way seems to be holding steady. Just another number to factor in when setting the price.)

Curious to hear your thoughts on whether this approach would work.

Community sites were traditionally built as bolt-ons to existing sites back in the very early 2.0 days. No one was sure what people were going to do or say on these forums (and they were always message board style forums) so the fact that they were hard to find and hidden in the navigation was actually quite reassuring.

And so, hidden from view, many of these community sites blossomed and grew. People who really cared about the brand (e.g. the evangelists) flocked to the forums, forming friendships and helping out the occasional newbie or “how do I do X?” poster that stumbled onto the boards.

As the social web grew, many brands added blogs to the mix. The quality of the blogs varied wildly, from well-thought out magazine style sites that were featured on the homepage to “the marketing department made us do this” sites that were updated once every few months with some orphaned press release. After an initial burst of “visit our blog” messaging, those blog sites were also shunted off to the “community” section and/or abandoned.

The last year or so has witnessed the flowering of brand Twitter and Facebook sites. Here again, quality (or more accurately, commitment) varies wildly, but the Facebook and Twitter feeds are usually featured on the homepage as a sort of “we get it kids, see, we get it” type attempt at establishing the brand’s “currency.” (“Currency” being the term-du-jour for “hipness” or “coolness.”)

So that’s your typical brand website, circa April 2011: a homepage featuring some sort of e-commerce function or current promotion along with prominently displayed links to the brand’s Twitter and Facebook pages. The community boards, dismissed as hopelessly 1998, are buried somewhere in one of the sub-nav bars.

That’s just plain wrong.

The external social web, the Facebooks, Twitters, FourSquares and the like are great ways to establish a low-barrier exchange with the brand. They’re the equivalent of a window display that gets customers to stop and take note of the store and what it’s selling. The most interested users, those closest to conversion and/or evangelism, need to be funneled over to the brand’s own website where they can bond with like-minded souls.

Unfortunately, today’s average website doesn’t allow them to do so.

Consider instead, a site that bubbles up user content – comments, photos, videos, blog posts—to the home page where it sits alongside similar editorial content. We currently have the technology to do that: to take a piece from the brand about how green the new Kitchen Sponge line is and combine that with user input around environmental issues in housecleaning, going “green” and kitchen sponges.

Basically you are turning the entire domain site into a community site, giving easy access to everything from message boards to product ratings to Twitter comments and giving users a prominent voice on the site. (A prominent voice, not the main one: user content should be visible but should not overwhelm the site nor should it interfere with the site’s user exprience by making it more difficult for users to accomplish the things they’ve come to the site to do.)

The benefits are pretty wide-ranging: for interested users, your future brand evangelists, it allows them to easily connect with both the brand and with other people who feel the same love for it as they do. It lets them know they are welcome and that their input is valued. It encourages them to set up their own profile and become active users of the site, the message boards in particular.

For casual users, an integrated site tells them that the brand actually does care about its customers and values what they have to say. (And if there’s anything consumers want, it’s for brands to listen to them.) So even if I have no interest in joining the brand community because it’s a low interest category for me, I’m bound to be impressed by the enthusiasm of the people who do care about the brand. In most cases, I’m going to be impressed by the fact that they even exist.

That’s a great strategy for creating a useful and appealing domain site in today’s social-heavy landscape. It’s also a lot more effective than crossing your fingers and counting on Google.

For years we’ve been talking about “convergence” as if it were some sort of holy prophesy that would change the world if and when it finally came to pass.

And now it’s happened. Netflix, who already eats up as much as 30% of network bandwidth in the US by streaming movies to our TV sets, is going to produce an original series. Or more accurately, a remake of an original series, House of Cards, that was quite popular in the UK. They’ve lined up Kevin Spacey to star and David “The Social Network” Fincher to direct.  And they’re going to be streaming it over the internet.

Specific details have yet to be announced, but make no mistake: this is the Convergence. It’s TV over the internet, when and where you want it – everywhere from your iPhone to your 55 inch HDTV.

In terms of details, I’ll take the leap and posit that the show will be available at a set time each week, with viewers then having the ability to stream it at any time they want. I’ll go one step farther and guess that Netflix will also ignore the time zone issue, so that if the show first debuts at 9 PM EST, people in LA are going be be able to see it at 6 PM, PST.  So the first thing to watch will be the impact of that sort of time-shifting on ratings and tune-in.

It will also be interesting to see how Netflix promotes House of Cards. Will it be an online promotion only, with banners on Netflix and other sites or will they run promos on traditional broadcast networks along with outdoor, radio and print?

The other interesting thing to watch is tune-in time: what percentage of viewers will watch the show at the exact moment of release, how many will tune in within the first hour and how many will tune in days later and/or watch several episodes at once.

One thing seems pretty certain though: whether the series succeeds or flops, it won’t be the last time we’ll be seeing something like this.

But I’m not sure that’s happening any time soon.

To begin with, I’m suspicious of reading anything more into sentiment analysis than the broad stoke trends we already know how to find: does it matter if 74% of users don’t like your new product versus 86%? Not really. Either way, you need to fix the product. Sentiment analysis can show a trend—are a lot of people suddenly liking or disliking something? Is there any demographic pattern to who is liking or disliking most intensely?

But beyond that, I think we are fooling ourselves. To begin with, people posting online are arguably not a good sample of the population at large. It takes a certain personality type (call them “online extroverts”) to publicly post their opinion of anything. It’s less an age or culture thing as psychological: there are lots of people who are loathe to offer public opinions of anything in real life, let alone online.

“Public” is the key word here: among close friends, these same people will open up, the same way they do in what they perceive to be a “safe” (e.g. closed) social environment. And right now, the sentiment analysis scrapers can’t peer that far behind Mr. Zuckerberg’s magic curtain.

Sentiment analysis is also not sophisticated enough to pick up on cultural mores: expressing unfavorable opinions is looked on as bad manners in many cultures. (My wife is from Tennessee, and Southerners tend to favor the “damn with faint praise” approach. So if you hated “Black Swan” you’d say something like “that Natalie Portman has the most beautiful skin” or something equally benign. That’s not the sort of clue an algorithm is going to pick up on.)

Finally, there’s value in checking sentiment by hand. You can pick out things people are saying about your brand that you hadn’t even thought to have a program check. Plus you get a feel for the type of people who are talking about you.

But in the end, it’s all about the broad strokes: people rarely know why they really like or dislike something, they just know that they do.

Some Highlights:

• New look and feel- We’ve updated the color scheme to a more modern look that brings us closer in line with KIT digital’s branding and simplified the navigation to make it easier to find what you are looking for
• Customer Showcase - We’ve made major changes to the customer showcase – many of our biggest customers have full detail pages that include a slideshow of screenshots, short descriptions of the work we’ve done and links out to case studies (where available). Even more important, each detail page links out directly to the KickApps-powered experience!
• Solutions - We’ve organized our customer case studies around six main “Solutions” – the most common applications of the KickApps platform. Each solution has its own page, accompanied by examples of related work we’ve done for our clients!
• Our KickApps Community- We’re saying goodbye to KickDeveloper and moving the forums, documentation, wiki, and tutorials to a “Developers” tab on our main site. Now developers can find all KickApps information in one place, and  can people who are new to KickApps can find the info they need more easily
• KickApps Everywhere: In addition to the Developer forums, which have always been powered by KickApps, we’ve added a series of widgets throughout the site (two on the homepage alone!) as well as the Social Engagement Module (which powers all the commenting on the KickBlog)
• Tons of Added Features: There are a bunch of additional features we’ve added to the site, like the ability to build a personalized list of bookmarked/favorite pages, the ability to embed links back to our site every time someone copies

So take a look around, and check out all of the upgrades we’ve made to our site.  Add pages to your “favorites” for a quick reference for later.  Learn about the different solutions we offer and browse the wide range of brands that are working with us to move social media forward. Enjoy!

“Respirator Ideas” run the gamut from TV spots to websites to social media promotions and the one thing they all have in common is that you can tell that at some point they actually were good ideas.

But then the punch line got cut because it might have been offensive. The prize went from a two week Hawaiian vacation to two nights at the EconoLodge in Utica. Usability went from a site that did everything for you to “well, I’m sure they’ll be able to figure it out for themselves.”

It’s an unfortunate aspect of business in general: people rarely know when to pull the plug on something that was once a good idea. But it’s perhaps the most important skill anyone in marketing can have. Because someone’s got to be “the one.”

The one who says “No one is going to laugh at this.”

The one who says “No one is going to want to do this.”

The one who says “No one needs a site like this.”

The one who says “No one will post this to their Facebook page.”

And then actually step in and kill the project.

It rarely happens because of all the politics involved. All the small cuts along the way didn’t seem like such a big deal at the time. And a very influential group of people are still in denial about what the “Respirator Idea” has become. In their minds eye, they see the original idea, not the corpse it’s become.

And so it’s risky to stand up to them and say “the Emperor has no clothes.” You’ll be accused of being a negativist. A bad team player. An obstacle. You’ll make people look foolish and they won’t like that.

But someone must stand up. Someone who is going to look foolish no matter which way the decision is made. Because if you make the decision to cut the cord, you’ll also look brave, not cowardly.

And in today’s business environment, that’s no small thing.

Moderator (and soon-to-be Digiday Editor-in-Chief) Brian Morrissey read out three hypothetical case studies that had previously been shared with the groups. They were given 3 minutes to come up with a defense-based or offense-based strategy and present it to the audience, who, along with Morrissey, tried to poke holes in it.

Team Offense

Ian Schafer, Deep Focus

David Berkowitz, 360i

Mike Monello, Campfire

Mike Scheiner, Porter Novelli

Team Defense

Chapin Clark, R/GA

Ana Andjelic, Huge

Jim Deters, Ascendant Technology

Tom Ajello, POKE

King Kong Bundy, Former Professional Wrestler

(It was billed as a cage match and Bundy did seem to know a thing or two about social media.)

Alan Wolk speaking at Social Media Week

What follows is a summary of their responses along with analysis by our Managing Director of Social Media Strategy (and the evening’s MC) Alan Wolk.

CASE STUDY #1: TUBULAR TELEVISIONS

Tubular is a well-known American manufacturer of television sets. They had a strong reputation back in the 60s and 70s and their TVs were considered both exceptionally reliable and cutting edge.

But Tubular did not keep up with the times and both quality and innovation slipped. Japanese, Eurpoean and Korean manufacturers came in and took away huge chunks of the market. BoBos, the “bohemian bourgeoise” upper middle class consumers on both coasts eschewed Tubular, which they associated with elderly Red Staters. Rap acts even mock Tubular TVs in popular songs.

Most of the chatter on the social webs then is about how much Tubular TVs suck. Which has been true until this year: after a concerted effort by their new management team, Tubular have produced a line of flat screen HDTVs that are even better than those of their overseas rivals. Trade journalists have been gushing over the new TVs, but Tubular wants to get their message out to a wide audience.

How does Tubular utilize social media to spread the word that they’ve changed? Can they use the social web to actually sell more TVs?

THE OFFENSE proposed a plan whereby consumers (and influencers) who were complaining loudest would have their TVs replaced with a brand new Tubular TV. A series of faux living rooms would also be set up in malls and big box stores where consumers could experience the new TVs and likely tweet/post about them.

THE DEFENSE proposed a plan whereby users would be invited to send in videos of themselves smashing their old TV sets. They would then receive new Tubular TVs.

ALAN’S ANALYSIS: Both sides were onto something: the key here is to get the product into consumer’s hands where it will speak for itself. I would focus on younger consumers who haven’t spent years believing that Tubular let them down. Tubular parties are another option, using a company like HouseParty to throw parties in Tubular owner’s homes so that their friends and neighbors could see a new Tubular TV in action.

One common thread found both here and in the following case studies, is that there is no easy answer, no “magic advertising words” one could use to make the problem go away. As one of the panelists (I believe it was Tom Ajello) said “this problem took two decades to create. You’re not going to make it go away in two days.”

Brands need to be patient about the impact that social media can make, especially in turning around the image of a product. While “Don’t Suck” is a good place to start, for brands whom merely “not sucking” indicates a giant leap forwards, there is much work to be done. Brands need to keep in mind that perceptions are hard to change and it will take Tubular a few years of consistently producing excellent ground-breaking products, to turn around brand perception.

Social media can facilitate the turnaround and help turn skeptics into believers, but it cannot erase the past.

CASE STUDY #2: SLOANE HARRINGTON

Sloane Harrington (née Staci Horowitz) is an American designer of high-end womens and mens clothing and accessories. Her lines are sold through her own stores and through posh department stores such as Bergdorff-Goodman, Nieman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue. Sloan Harrington’s “SH” logo is a widely recognized status symbol and she has been unrelenting in protecting it from counterfeiters.

Unfortunately for Ms. Harrington, she had invested her money with Bernie Madoff and now desperately needs to raise some capital. As such, she signed a deal with Wal-Mart to introduce a line of sportswear and home furnishings aimed at 20somethings under the “Sloane” label.

Although the line hasn’t even launched, her core fan base is up in arms. They feel that the brand is abandoning its identity and that the new lower-priced goods (at WalMart!) cheapens a brand many of them have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on.

Studies show that other high-end brands have introduced lower-end lines without harming the main brand, but Ms. Harrington’s fans are nonplussed and have been using social media to complain and organize, even going so far as to start a “Sloane Is Soooo Over” Facebook group with 30,000+ fans.

How does Sloane Harrington use social media to gain acceptance for her low-priced line which has been getting positive reviews from the fashion press?

THE OFFENSE suggested creating an exclusive, invite-only domain for fans of the high-end brand to show them that nothing had changed. Members of the exclusive domain would have access to special content and deals that were designed exclusively for them. Members of the anti-SH Facebook groups as well as prominent fashion bloggers would be invited to join.

THE DEFENSE suggested ignoring the naysayers and focusing on expanding the WalMart effort which promised a much larger market and greater profits. There was some debate between audience members and Team Defense as to whether WalMart was the problem (e.g. would the fans have been as upset if the low-end store in question was Target?) and what effect the elimination of a high-end line would have on consumer desire for the lower-end line.

ALAN’S ANALYSIS:  I think the offense is correct in trying to cordon off SH’s more vocal fans in an exclusive member’s only site where they can be mollified and their feeling of superiority indulged. I also agree that the WalMart audience could be huge and Ms. Harrington should pursue it with abandon.

I would suggest that Ms. Harrington reach out to the fashion press, influential bloggers and vocally dissatisfied fans by playing up her intention to bring fashion to “all the people” and how she’d always been interested in designing clothes for people who lived very different lives than her usual customer base: could she create clothing that was both stylish and functional?  From a product POV, I would recommend that Ms. Harrington ensure that there was no overlap between the two product lines: no handbags that sort of looked the same, no similarly cut t-shirts, etc.: the two lines must be kept completely separate. The logos should be as different as possible too, with the new Sloane logo looking markedly different than the SH logo.

Finally, SH should create videos of top fashion journalists talking about how much they love the Sloane line and what it stands for. While these will not “go viral” in the classic sense, they are likely to get picked up by fashion blogs and the fashion press and help create the impression among Ms. Harrington’s hardcore fans and other fashion insiders that the Sloane line is closer to “Isaac Mizrahi for Target” than it is to “Jaclyn Smith for K-Mart.”

CASE STUDY 3: AGRABAR

The Mediterranean nation of Agrabar is rich in history and natural beauty. The beaches of its coastal islands have long been the playground of the rich and famous. Tourists of all stripes and nationalities have come to see its famed palaces and the Hanging Gardens of Agrabar, one of the 8 Wonders of the Ancient World.

In 2007, the unpopular Sultan, a staunch American ally, was deposed by a violent populist revolution that dragged on for close to 8 months..

Tourism, which once comprised 40% of Agrabar’s GNP, stopped completely during the revolution and has not made much of a comeback. American reporters were attacked by crowds during the revolution and protesters frequently burned American flags and shouted anti-American slogans.

A new middle-of-the road government is now in power and they want to revive the tourism industry as part of an overall effort to mend relations with the West. But every time Agrabar is mentioned on travel message boards and the like, the conversation immediately veers towards how dangerous the country is and how much they hate Americans.

How does the National Tourism Board use social media to get across the message that Abgrabaris are a friendly people who welcome Americans to their country with open arms, while simultaneously reminding everyone of the beauty of the peaceful nation’s beaches and historic sites?

THE DEFENSE suggested that Agrabar focus on things like adventure tourism and eco-tourism, possibly even involving a Survivor-style reality TV show. The ultimate plan involved rolling out lots of little programs in a short period of time to create buzz and Google juice about the nation so that potential visitors would be more likely to see positive stories.

THE OFFENSE suggested using Agrabaris themselves as tour guides, encouraging them to embrace social media as a way to tell the world about their nation. Another intriguing idea was to invite artists and filmmakers to Agrabar, perhaps as part of an international festival. Seeing these up and coming celebrities vacationing and partying in Agrabar would help create the impression that it’s a fun, safe place that welcomes Americans.

ALAN’S ANALYSIS  – In my experience, tourism is a problem for Americans in areas with high crime and unstable governments regardless of politics – we are targets for people who thing we are rich and who know they are unlikely to be punished for attacking Americans. While the Agrabari revolutionaries may have been against the American government, they do not hate the American people. The new government appear stable and Agrabar seems to be under the rule of law. Therefore, I thought that both sides had good ideas.

If barebones ecotourism isn’t a viable option, Agrabar can build up ecofriendly high-end resorts stressing their “green” factor and modernity and put out a PR effort to let people know about the resorts and the A-list celebrities who stay there.

Another option would be to send travel bloggers on trips to Agrabar, especially those bloggers who “travel on the cheap.” This would tie-in with Team Offense’s suggestion to send artists and musicians to Agrabar, making it seem like a hip location. (More affluent travelers always arrive on the heels of the trendsetters.)

Here again, the theory that several years of damage cannot be undone by several hours of social media holds true. Agrabar needs a long-term plan to rebuild their tourism industry and they must be flexible and willing to make adjustments along the way as they gauge consumer reaction and interest.

Once again, thanks to all the panelists for their good spirits and insightful thinking. To the audience for some great questions. To Brian Morrissey for once again displaying his excellent moderation skills, and to JWT for hosting us.

For another excellent recounting of the evening, check out Kevin Haughwout’s Freedmarketer blog post