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I’ve been thinking a ton about digital marketing for global brands as I prepare for 2010 business planning. My perspective on the importance of “where” experiences happen has shifted in the past year. In addition to the experiences we create on rented, loaned, or borrowed space on others' websites, brand marketers need to create meaningful digital destinations of our own. I believe this is critical.

I used to think that location of interaction was relatively unimportant. “Fish where the fish are.” was the best strategy. Quality of outcome and the number of the “right”consumers reached were what mattered. I now believe location of the interaction can be equally important. Who are your partners? What is their role in your overall strategy? What do you expect from your brand owned properties? How will your partners help build your brand owned properties in the long term?

What if you didn't focus on building your own presence for consumers and staked your brand’s primary community claim on myspace? How would you be feeling when what would have been inconceivable three years ago happens? Would you be concerned when myspace announces a layoff of 30% of staff (around 420 employees)? Maybe you didn’t invest heavily in myspace. I’m sure facebook is a safe bet today. Really? Things change and they change fast for digital marketers. Jim Banister thinks facebook will fail. He makes some good observations about specific approaches winning over time vs. general approaches. Will facebook be able to deliver “specific” without ruining the “general” it so clearly excels at? Only time will tell.

How about video? Surely we can continue to rely on YouTube as the place to consolidate our video views. Or can we? Silicon Alley Insider (with data from Credit Suisse) proposed in April that YouTube may be doomed because it will lose close to $470 million in 2009. NY Times (with data from RampRate) says YouTube’s loss will be only $174 million in 2009. Either way, those are losses that someone must be paying attention to. Do you want your entire video strategy to rely on YouTube when radical business model changes could be right around the corner for the video portal?

Maybe YouTube and facebook will win. Maybe myspace will stage the comeback of all comebacks. Something I've learned through experience as a digital marketer is that the digital invincible sometimes fail and longshots occasionally win. The best way brand marketers can be prepared for the success or failure of whoever comes and goes is to build something you OWN that is awesome. Build something exclusively focused on your brand, that your consumers/fans can count on over the long-term, and that is open enough to connect to whichever external general purpose platforms win in the future. And I mean OPEN with all caps. Maybe true openness will be a future post.....

I have lots of good friends who participated in the Tide social media night. They include both P&G peeps and agency folk. Looks like they all had fun, that the P&G marketers learned, and that a charity benefitted. That's a win-win-win. And I'm not jealous Peter Kim. I can meet with most of the people who participated anytime I want, especially those that are good friends. I've also been invited to talk with P&G marketers as recently as last week so I'm not feeling left out at all.

That said, I didn't really like the Tide exercise. It ruined the vibe in my social neighborhood for several hours. I resented Tide doing a live experiment that I couldn't escape from without shutting down my social tools. I issued a snarky post, I'll admit it. When I did, I received more than one direct message from friends who were participating advising patience and that it was just an experiment. Seems that even some of the participants knew the exercise was super annoying but they were whoring out their friend lists and networks for the P&G marketing lab anyway. The messaages kind of reminded me of an NPR pledge drive except for the fact that NPR *gives me so much* every day that I don't resent the time needed to solicit pledges at all. P&G wasn't giving me any value here and they haven't built up the daily goodwill and personal connection that I have with NPR. Tide was just sucking up my neighborhoods social bandwidth and filling what was left with offers where I have the opportunity to pay them money to wear the Tide logo and make a tiny contribution to charity.

P&G friends please forgive me but..... I didn't want a Tide t-shirt.  I'm all good on charitable contributions and not looking for additional opportunities to give. I was bummed that the quality of the content from people I follow went to zero for several hours during the exercise. I'm glad P&G marketers learned but it left me liking P&G less for doing it. Whether it is for charity or not is immaterial, it's just annoying uninvited brand messaging being thrown at me by typically awesome folks who were temporarily Tidejacked and it makes me less a fan of Tide (and in some ways, the participants) than I would be otherwise.

Update on Saturday, March 14, 2009 at 6:39AM by Kevin Doohan

Check the comments link below for more discussion on what I'm calling the Tidejack. Thanks for reading! Please leave comments of your own if you're inspired.

On a recent trip to California, I read Groundswell cover to cover while flying.  It's great stuff.  Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff have done a fantastic job telling readers about what they call the "groundswell" and its impact.  The groundswell is: A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather from traditional institutions like corporations.

Something in particular that I like about the book is that it's very easy to understand for business professionals who are not digital pros.  Half the battle sometimes is describing what is going on with the web social experience for people who aren't "in it".  I often get confused looks or quick dismissals like "oh, this is a flash in the pan"  or "twitter is only for the geeks" or similar.  Yeah.  Twitter might be for geeks.  For purposes of conversation let’s say it is... 

The underlying consumer need that the groundswell is coming from is absolutely NOT short term.  The transformational nature of these tools, combined with always-on broadband access is NOT short term.  And the evolution of mobile devices into real computers is NOT short term.  These are all life-changing, business-influencing changes in human behavior and corporations need to create strategies for participation or risk becoming irrelevant.

Control is gone.  Forget it.  Data wants to be free and it will be.  Examples in the book documenting the loss of corporate control to the crowd are excellent.  Here is one.... Someone publishes a top secret DVD encryption code.  It gets pushed to a high ranking on DIGG.  The industry asks DIGG to remove the link.  After threat of a lawsuit and some consideration, DIGG removes the link.  The groundswell takes effect.  The link is posted *everywhere*.  It continues to get high DIGG rankings in various forms.  Someone even makes a video and sings the secret code in it and posts it online.  The code can't be contained.  The industry was silly thinking it could possibly stop the code from being discovered and shared. 

In another example, pictopia takes 12,000 photographs of the California coastline to show effects of erosion.  In one of the photos, Streisand's house is visible.  Barbara Streisand sues to have the photo of her home to be removed from the site.  The groundswell takes hold...  Not only is the photo not removed.  But bloggers everywhere begin posting it.  Photos of the house remain easy to find on Google image search.  The Streisand case created so much buzz that Streisand Effect became the commonly used description for a phenomenon on the Internet where an attempt to censor or remove a piece of information backfires, causing the information to be widely publicized.

Two great examples above.  Many more cool examples in the book.  It also includes nice frameworks for assessing your target's participation in the social web and recommendations for action.  Bottom line, this is a good read.  I recommend it for digital veterans and novices alike.  Especially recommended for novices as it's written in normalspeak and helps bring make the dramatic shifts in communications understandable. 

I read last night that Charlene Li has started a new company, Altimeter Group.  Based on her work in Groundswell and her years of leadership at Forrester, I expect big things and wish her all the best!

Check out the trailer for "Baby Mama" below. At about 2:14 in the video, Amy Poehler suggests a usage occasion for PAM that I never considered. I'm thinking childbirth applications would call for original PAM or maybe PAM Organic Canola Oil. No need for special flavoring (Butter or Olive Oil) or high-heat formulations like PAM Grilling or PAM Professional.

A user comment as displayed on YouTube. Just brilliant.

found this video at adrants. So funny. Reminds me that the stuff I follow is so NOT in the mainstream. What a marvelous, geeky world I live in.