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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!