With 30-second Super Bowl spots commanding as much as $3.5M, marketers are relying more heavily than ever on social media. So reports the Financial Times (and others). Advertisers aren’t replacing broadcast with social media — they’re integrating the two for more impact.

The real change, as the Times alludes, is to a social-media-first approach. Companies like Honda and Acura (basically the same company) are “leaking” their broadcast spots (or shortened teasers) via YouTube video in order to generate interest in the full-length spots that we’ll see come Super Bowl Sunday.

Super Bowl spots are among the most viewed and talked about spots every year, and competition among advertisers is fierce, with each betting the farm they’ll create the cleverest and most popular spot. A winning spot will end up on YouTube and receive millions of views, giving it extended life and pass-along potential long past the day of the big game.

Some spots, like last year’s Star Wars-themed Volkswagen spot, with nearly 50 million views to date, are huge hits. Others, like Groupon’s ill-conceived “Save the Money” spots, which mocked popular causes and charities, like whales and Tibet, were dismal (and sometimes offensive) failures.

Tags: groupon, honda, acura, matthew broderick, super bowl, spots, advertising,

On a recent Way With Words podcast, a caller asked whether a half-full trash can should be referred to as half full, or half empty, and whether this trash can was symbolic of optimism or pessimism.
 
The question is in relation to the expression “is the glass half full or half empty?” In this expression, the glass is presumed to have something good in it, cold water, wine, etc., so the optimist sees it as a half full glass and the pessimist sees it as half empty.
 
I would argue that the trash can variant is not a word or language related question. The problem is that the trash can variation breaks the metaphor of the original expression due to sloppy or inattentive thinking. One cannot rationally subsitute words or phrases in a colloquial expression, metaphor, etc. because the original is not literal.
 
A person who says they are hungry enough to eat a horse is not offering to do so. They are merely saying they are very hungry. This person is also not offering to eat a spectrum of animals, such as zebras, dogs and raccoons. Substituting these animals does not offer a new situation that is of any use. The expression “I’m so hungry I could eat a raccoon” means nothing.
 
One more example. There’s an old British expression “carrying coals to Newcastle.” Newcastle, England used to be the hub of the British coal trade. There was so much coal there it wouldn’t have made sense for a person to carry more coal there. So the expression basically means an ineffectual, pointless or redundant act. Now, let’s say I bring several large bags of marshmallows to Newcastle. What, I wonder, does “carrying marshmallows to Newcastle” mean, in a philosophical sense? It means nothing.

I had a quick hint for public speakers and speechwriters on how to make a speaker more statesmanlike. Don’t have important people make “housekeeping” remarks, like:

• I’d like everyone to thank our sponsors
• There’s a great buffet at the back of the room
• Don’t forget to attend those birds-of-a-feather sessions this afternoon
• Drop by our solutions booth out there on the tradeshow floor for a chance to win a Zune
• Take your game card around and have it stamped at all of our partner booths
• Etc.

Could you imagine Churchill starting a speech this way? Or JFK beginning his famous 1961 Berlin speech, “First, I’d like to thank Lufthansa for kindly providing us with a DC-9 while we’re here in Germany. Please stop by our hospitality suite at the Brandenburg Gate. OK, let’s get started. I’m sure you’re all anxious to get out of here and visit the biergarten.”

Here’s a perfect example of the right way to do it, from a video of a Steve Jobs keynote. I believe this was taken at Apple’s sales conference in Hawaii in 1983. He starts with a four-word intro: “Hi, I’m Steve Jobs.” This is actually a joke, since everyone in the room knows exactly who he is. Without missing a beat, he launches directly into his prepared remarks:

“It is 1958. IBM passes the chance to buy a young, fledgling company that has invented a new technology called Xerography.”

There is nothing extra here. It is spare and clean. There is nothing to detract from Jobs’ stature. He is confident, almost courageous. Some people use housekeeping remarks as a form of “um uh uh um” to help them warm up and collect their thoughts. Too much of this and they sound less statesmanlike and more like a gameshow host or an actor in an informercial.

The current standard length of a lecture or talk is 60 minutes, sometimes comprised of a straight 60 minutes speaking and other times approximately 45 minutes speaking and a 15-minute question and answer period.

The 60-minute lecture, its format and its purpose are obsolete. No one has 60 minutes to sit silently and listen to anyone but maybe Stephen Hawking chat for an entire hour. A good lecture stimulates reactions, thoughts and ideas that can’t wait an entire hour. And a bad lecture stimulates deep and relaxing sleep, or a desire to visit Starbucks.

While there are some speakers who imagine themselves gurus imparting their sacred ($199) wisdom to the masses, most speakers recognize that everyone gets more out of an interactive talk. With ground rules and moderation, a participative talk can be much more effective than a one-way talk with an expert speaking at (not to or with) a captive audience. On the other hand, some structure should be in place to allow the speaker to express his/her unique knowledge and experience, else why would they have been invited in the first place?

Inside the walls of the corporation, everything is done in 60-minute intervals. Some audioconferencing systems even require 60-minute meetings. Outlook automatically assumes 60-minute meetings which you can then adjust. Business people have become accustomed to 60-minute time slots which are easily filled with the 45/60 formula described in the first paragraph above.

Social media has been a catalyst for changing this outdated, often inefficient formula. Information has been democratized. One hopes an expert speaker has useful knowledge and experience about their topic, but that does not mean participants don’t have something useful to contribute.

The typical live talk today might be “covered” by people live-tweeting on Twitter, or writing on their blogs. While these trends have their detractors, it can’t be denied they are happening, and the lecture is no longer a formal one-way event, nor is it confined to the four walls of the hotel ballroom or auditorium.

There is an outright rebellion against the formal structure of conferences and talks. Some organizations are holding “unconferences” http://coworkingunconference.eve… with “unspeakers” like those sought for this 2009 event: http://www.netimpactaustin.org/b…

Green Business Camp was born out of a desire to reverse the trend of passive consumerism at conferences. Many of us have previously gone to conferences to consume what other have to give to us. Green Business Camp is creating a new event culture of sharing and collaboration - with everyone leaving the event having given AND having received.

Is the conventional lecture irrelevant? Should expert talks be more interactive? Is their a role for social media to extend the usefulness of a talk, or is it a distraction?

This post is from my response to a question on Quora: What is the optimal length of a single lecture?

Last week I had the privilege to be in Lisbon as the main speaker at the APAN 2011 Seminar. (Associação Portuguesa de Anunciantes is a large Portuguese marketing and communications association).

The first speaker, António Gomes, Managing Director of GfKMetris, presented an extensive study on Portuguese media consumption habits, looking at age, income, geographic location and every form of media such as Internet, radio, television, etc. Also of interest was a look at the habits and effects of media multi-taskers, which is less evident in Portugal than in the U.S., but like everything else, on the rise.

I was really happy with the outcome of my presentation, titled brand:redefined. My premise was that a company’s brand now encompasses both customer experience and online conversations.

I define brand as:

Our experiences with a company’s products, services, employees and customers, and the way they shape our perceptions of the company.

If there’s anything “new” here, it’s the addition of customers to the formula. The modern perception of brand is influenced by experience, and partially “owned” by consumers. For example, a visit to an Apple store a Starbucks outlet is not shaped merely by the products offered inside. The decor, the lighting, the attitude of the employees and the overall experience make up our new perception of brand. And more often than not, we make decisions based in large part on the opinions of our friends and associates through Facebook, Twitter and so on. A quick Twitter search on any brand will reveal hundreds of candid first-hand experiences that influence purchasers.

My presentation was greatly enhanced by research provided by Joaquim Cannas, Patrícia Dias, Patrícia Gonçalves, and Patrícia Nabeto Damiao, some of the great students who attended my talks earlier this year at Universidade Católica Portuguesa.

My talk was followed by a moderated panel of a half dozen students ages 16 to 18 discussing their media habits. APAN was kind enough to provide me with spontaneous translation for much of the program, so I did learn quite a bit from this panel. As always, when I hear kids talk about media and the Internet, I’m blown away by their sophistication and with the ease with which they use all of the latest apps and services.

The Portuguese are slightly “behind” the U.S. in adoption of social media at the corporate level, but not much. This does not stem from a lack of creativity or ingenuity in Portugal, but rather from infrastructure issues. Portuguese Internet access has been lower than that of the U.S., and lower than much of the rest of the EU, but it is rising steadily. Mobile Internet access is on the rise as well. Major brands like Portuguese airline TAP, and Banco Espirito de Santo are using Facebook for marketing and communications with great success. TAP, for example, found that its Facebook page became a dynamic and powerful communications hub when the Icelandic volcano closed European airspace.

As if this wasn’t enough, my girlfriend Donna and I met, and sat with, the Deputy Prime Minister of Portugal, who was at the conference to announce the nation’s new public television channel.

The event was held in the auditorium of  Millennium bcp, a Portuguese bank. I did not know this, hence my awkward inclusion of competitive bank Banco Espirito Santo in my presentation. It turns out that in the basement of Millennium’s corporate headquarters there are amazingly preserved ruins from Roman and even pre-Roman times! The bank has preserved these in a subterranean museum, and Miguel Magalhaes Duarte and Pedro Rebelo, communications directors for the bank, arranged a private, guided, after hours tour for Donna and me of this amazing site.

Pedro is a longtime blogger and social media expert in Portugal. Check him out!

Tags: Portuguese, Portugal, APAN, Associação Portuguesa de Anunciantes, Millennium bcp