Experience Manifesto

TikTok and Music Discovery

Unlike most folks my age (60), I'm actually on TikTok quite a lot these days. Started as research for a client and frankly, was pretty addicting for me. In fact, I recognized Charli D'Amelio before I recognized Boomer Esiason in the Sabra hummus Super Bowl ad. She has about 1.7 billion view of TikTok, far more than most brand views I've tracked on the site.

Yes, there are a lot of things that are just silly and yes, most of what's happening on TikTok isn't fundamentally different than what's come before it. Frankly, many of the things I watch on TikTok are sort of things we did when I was in high school, we didn't record it. To be fair, according to my daughter, we just barely had electricity when I was in high school.

But one thing I've really liked is the amount of new music I've discovered on TikTok. Not surprising, given where it started, But they've made it very easy to find the songs used in the various videos and that's made it very easy to find new artists. For example, even though Roisin Murphy has been around for a good number of years, I had not heard of her until her song Ramalama (Bang Bang) became part of a dance challenge on TikTok. Once I created a Ramalama station on Pandora, that led me to a variety of artists that I had not heard of before.

I know that TikTok has issues related to privacy, but the teens who spend an average of 52 minutes/day on the site don't seem to be worried. And honestly, what SM site these days doesn't have a privacy issue? I have seen some inappropriate material and a few fake news pieces, but I'm still on the surface even though I watch a lot. And I've only posted twice, both times about dogs we have that are looking for their forever homes.

According to a recent article in Forbes, TikTok was downloaded 123 million times in the US, about a third of our population. And we're far behind both India and China in total number of users. The average time spent per day is just under an hour, and most videos are under a minute. They've had some controversies around the monetization of the music on the site and they will need to address that as they continue to grow.

You don't need an account to watch videos on TikTok, so if you haven't checked it out, you should. I've posted some of the music I've discovered though TikTok below in case you need some new artists to follow. I might start posting more, so say hi to Old Fart if you actually have an account.

The Importance of Context for Brands

A while back I wrote about Little Brother, all of us who snap, Tweet or otherwise document life around us. I talked about what the the lack of context created by all of us little brothers can mean in the future.

Currently, United is facing a storm of criticism over a story that exploded because they told some passengers they were dressed inappropriately for their flight. The world went crazy, slamming United This is the kind of story that proves my point. The initial postings had no context - people flying on employee passes have to meet dress code - and suddenly a monster is born. There's outrage, consternation and thousands of people sharing what's essentially a non-story. And now United is forced to deal with it. Of course, their initial "we reserve the right" response didn't help, and neither does United's generally non-customer service experience that they regularly deliver.

But the fact remains, that the original story contained no context and in our 'share first, think second' world, context will be even more important, especially for brands. This one was clearly a tempest in a teapot for me.

• People are freaking out that United told women they couldn't wear leggings on a flight — here's what really happened
• How two teens in leggings became a PR mess for United Airlines
• Outrage, Explanations After United Turns Away Girls From Flight For Wearing Leggings

Big Brother vs. Little Brother

A few days ago, another video surfaced of a woman berating a cashier at Michael's. She went on for quite some time and the video has been viewed over 4 million times since it was put up. Later, David Armano asked if it was appropriate to continue to shame her and what the appropriate response was to what she had done. Many people were passing around her name, address, etc., and people have raised over $22K for their cashier involved.

In part because I was part of the Glass Explorers program (I wore Google Glass every day), and in part due to all of the privacy debates happening right now, I’ve been thinking about Big Brother vs. Little Brother in today’s society. Now, I don’t remember where I first saw the term Little Brother, but it was used to describe what happens when regular people are recording everything you do, not the government. And that started me thinking about the role of context in this discussion.

I’m not going to debate today whether or not the government should be doing what it clearly has been doing, that’s for a much longer post, but let me start with this premise. It is the hope, that the government is doing what it’s doing with some sort of context happening. That it is using the data it’s collecting and reviewing to look for patterns that might indicate potential problems. Yes, I know that there are a lot of issues with this and I do not mean to gloss them over. But for the sake of this discussion, think about the patterns they’re looking for. It’s about putting your actions into context, so that they have the opportunity to make us safe.

Little Brother, however, is not about context at all. It’s about taking a moment in time and making that the whole story. So it’s the woman who videotaped her experience in Dunkin’ Donuts and ended up making herself look bad. Who knows, maybe she had lots of bad experiences there (although everything indicates she did not), and this one time, she was not being herself. But that’s now we all see her. There is no context at all.

And that's what happens with your brand too. You can have thousands of great customer interactions, but thanks to Little Brother, that one bad experience is now how everyone see's you. And without context, the audience doesn't know what lead up to the experience they're watching.

Are you prepared for Little Brother? Thanks to everyone having cameras on their phones and things like Google Glass coming into the mainstream, Little Brother is growing every day. As I said in Really, You Do Control the Message:

People amplify the message you start. Start with a great message and that's what people will amplify. Have a bad message and that's what they'll pass along.

And thanks to SM, people can really amplify that message today. I use to enjoy watching people on "Smile, You're on Candid Camera" and watching all of those crazy reactions. Well, today, you still have to keep smiling, but the camera is no longer hidden! Are you ready for your candid close-up? Is your brand?

Teens Talk at SXSW

What a great day we had! A full house, an attentive audience and lots of questions! We got a lot of great feedback on Twitter and through email and we've already been invited to do the presentation again this fall in Norway!

Some of the key take-aways include:

• When it comes to content, Gen Z snacks and eats full meals. Yes, they like short form content to keep them occupied, but they also enjoy long form content as well. They just don't always have time for it, but that doesn't mean they don't want it. As Sydney said during the session, she's read two books in the last three days.
• William made some excellent points about paid vs free content. The most important is that if the experience of free is better than the experience of paid, then they won't be paying!
• As I wrote about here, they are creating their own social media. Neither really uses Facebook, although William has an account so he can log into other sites. The do use smaller social networks like Google Hangouts, but the key is being where their friends are.
• Both agreed that the actual technology that they used didn't matter, as long as it gave them access to the internet and everything else they wanted.

As you know, they put together a survey that they sent out to friends and posted on various newsgroups and talked about the results during the sessions. We're still looking to continue the survey as we update the presentation, so if you can share with people under 25, please send them to this link.

Some key points from their survey:

No surprises here!

It was surprising to see how their talk about privacy issues contrasted with with their actions.

While it was expected that they would say they didn't like ads, it was more surprising how few people paid attention to ads.

Very surprised to see how high their awareness was about their data being monetized.

And while they love to say they'd prefer to not have their data monetized, close to 80% said they wouldn't pay for things instead.

And here's their final list of the best ways to connect with them.

Over 200 people stayed through the entire presentation to hear William & Sydney talk about their views on technology, privacy, content and other topics. Of course, they ended with some key do's and don'ts, but you'll have to download the full presentation to see those! You can click here to download the full presentation.

In all, it was a great SXSW experience for Sydney & William and the audience and we were thrilled by the response we got -- you can see some of the feedback below. We'd like to thank everyone who attended and please let us know if you'd like to be updated on the survey as we get more responses. Email me to receive those updates.

Some of the great comments we received:

• I work in a Norwegian bank and had the pleasure of listening to you, your daughter and her classmate at SXSW. To be totally honest, this was without doubt the best, most interesting, insightful and fun presentation at SXSW. - Sven-Erik Bergman
• Anyone think these 13 year olds are better public speakers than some of the executive panelists? Nicole Emerick #sxsw #teentalk
• Loving this #Teentalk so many brilliant insights from two very smart kids and a fantastic facilitator. Sarah Stovold #sxsw.
• Great #TeenTalk panel with an utterly terrified audience of adult marketers. Simon Jones
• #TeenTalk= surprise hit of SXSW. Kristine Smith
• ‏I was skeptical about this two-person teen panel. But these "kids" are terrific. Scott Hess #teentalk #SXSpark #SXSW #PostGeneration
• ‏The line to hear Millennials talk is about a mile long. Erica Schuckies #teentalk #SXSW

Conversations with Digital Natives at SXSW

As you know, Sydney and her classmate William, will be speaking at their first SXSW next month and they're pretty excited about it. They've been interviewing their friends and classmates about a variety of topics and now they want to expand the discussion to see how other Gen Z members feel about these topics.

If you're under 25, could you take a few minutes to take the Teens Talk at SXSW Survey. And please feel free to share this survey with anyone else who could help! We'd really appreciate it! This is their first big speaking gig and we really want to make sure it's a great session!

Conversations with Digital Natives - Teens Talk

Gen Z is set to be one of the largest segments of the population and is very different than previous generations. They’ve grown up with tech & a very different media world. They’ve come off a recession, changing their view of work & money. They’re more connected than ever before, but in smaller circles. They are the DIY generation, coding, using 3D printers and not afraid of what tech can do.

Sydney & William, two 13 year olds from the NY Metro area, have been interviewing their peers to get a better view into how they live and their relationships with tech & media. You’ll hear first-hand what this generation, of teens, is doing, thinking and making. What are the trends they're seeing and what do they think the future holds? How do they feel about the pressing tech issues of the day? Do they share the same concerns of tech that older generations have? In addition, they will share video interviews with other students from their school, to show a broader range of thinking and opinion.

Conversations with Digital Natives - Teens Talk

Conversations with Digital Natives - Teens Talk

Very excited that a panel we pitched got accepted at SXSW for next year. Called "Conversations with Digital Natives - Teens Talk," I'm bringing Sydney and a friend to talk about what teens are really doing today. As I recently wrote in Evernote as Social Media, I would've never thought about using Evernote as a social media. Some of the topics that we'll touch on, include:

• How are teens engaging the technologies around them?
• Are they really involved in the maker movement?
• Do they feel differently about content than older generations?
• What social media tools are they using and what are they staying away from? What different ways are they engaging their friends?
• What do they think are the most important trends that will impact them when they're older?

William and Sydney are classmates at MKA and they're both pretty excited to be attending their first SXSW program. And we're pretty proud of them to get picked, not that many 8th graders have the chance to speak at SXSW!

They will be creating a website for their session and looking for questions and input from folks as they build their content. I'll post again when it goes live. But if you have any questions to start them going, please feel free to leave them in the comments.

And, if you're going to be at SXSW next year, please come hear them speak!

Conversations with Digital Natives - Teens Talk at SXSW 2015.

Evernote as Social Media

Earlier this school year, I asked my 13 year old daughter if she wanted to have a Facebook page. Two of her school friends, people she had known for several years moved back to their home in England and I thought she might want to keep in touch through Facebook. Nope, she replied, she's fine. Her friends had set up an Evernote page as a way to keep in touch and share things with each other.

An Evernote page for social media? I would've never thought about that. But my daughter and her friends figured it out and use it every day. Kids using something in a way that it wasn't designed is nothing new. I'm sure I did that if I thought about it, I did that when I was a kid too.

Nothing against my daughter and her friends, but I just can't imagine they're the only teenagers who are using Evernote this way. Today, we look at specific channels as "social media," but my daughter is already proving that anything can be turned into a social media tool.

I'm Still Asking - Do we Really Want to be Friends with Brands?

Yep, I've been asking this question for a while and some recent posts/Twitter conversations stirred it up again for me. Do we really want to be friends with a brand?

Without a doubt, there are brands that we maintain more of a relationship then we do with others, but in most cases, here's what I think we want from brands:

• That they deliver. Tell me you're going to do something, I expect you to do it.
• That they listen when I have a problem. I don't want you to listen to me 24/7, but when I have a problem and reach out, I expect to hear from you within a reasonable amount of time. Reasonable depends, of course, on what my issue is, I don't actually think brands need to respond in real time to every comment someone makes. As a side note, I had some serious issues with United airlines a few weeks back and I'm still waiting to hear from their Twitter team.
• That they give me deals. My guess is that a vast majority of people who follow brands on Twitter or like them on FB do so mainly to get deals.

As I said some time ago, SM in business isn't really about friendship, it's about business. We wrap SM up in the language of friendship, but more often then not, it's about generating business. If you're following more then a few hundred people, do you really have a relationship with them? Or are these new tools just another distribution channel to get our information out? Look at how many companies still use Twitter or FB as a one-way communication tool, not And BTW, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. It's OK to conduct business, that's what businesses do.

But, if you're going to talk about relationships, then you need to talk about how relationships really get made. We need to really define what business friendship means. Autoresponders don't work in relationship. Hiring someone else to speak for you doesn't work in a relationship (except for Cyrano de Bergerac and that worked for the wrong person!). And honestly, you can't be friends with millions of people.

So, maybe it's time to put this entire social discussion to bed. There are lots of great companies, big and small, that people love and admire. And people liked them long before we had this whole social thing going on. They made great products. They delivered on their promises. They took care of me when I had a problem. They rewarded me for my loyalty. Companies doing that aren't social companies. They're smart companies.

Are We Overhyping this Whole Tribe Thing

Challenging Conventional Wisdom

My Social Media Blog Posts

Report: Facebook Ad Performance Is Abysmal

A few years ago, I made the observation that just because a lot of people go there, doesn't mean it's a good place to advertise. For example, almost everyone visits funeral homes, but that doesn't mean they're a good place to provide advertisements.

So now Webtrends is out with a new report that shows that maybe, just maybe, advertising on Facebook isn't really driving that much, at least as it relates to click-throughs. As they say in the article, many brands use Facebook for more then just their click-through rates, so maybe this isn't a deal breaker.

Still, putting your ads in front of people because they're there, doesn't seem to be driving business. Content without context is just noise.

UPDATE: You can go here to see more details about the report.

Facebook’s advertising business is soaring. Yet the performance of the average Facebook ad is abysmal.

At least that’s according to a new report issued by the analytics firm Webtrends that recently examined 11,000 different Facebook ad campaigns which totaled 4.5 billion impressions. Webtrends found that in 2009 the average click-through rate on Facebook was 0.063 percent. That figure slipped to 0.051 percent in 2010.

Because of that decline, CPMs on Facebook have crept upward, going from 17 cents in 2009 to 25 cents last year.

The only ad categories that were able to crack 0.1 percent click-through rates were "tabloids and blogs" (0.165 percent) and "media and entertainment" (0.154 percent). The worst performing ad category on Facebook, per Webtrends, was healthcare, which generated 0.011 percent click-through rates and an average cost-per-click of $1.27.

However, Facebook’s CPMs are still relatively low in the grand scheme of things (consider that video ads on Hulu can sometimes fetch $50 CPMs). And while many advertisers turn to Facebook to drive traffic or sell products, many traditional brands use the site for its social value, not its propensity to drive clicks.

Yet even "social ads"—at least as defined by Webtrends—are only effective for so long. “Out of the ads we measured, we found that interest-targeted ads began to burn out after three to five days,” reads the report. “Eventually the rotting CTR leads to Facebook deactivating the ad, and it’s back to the drawing board.”

Regardless, advertisers continue to flock to Facebook. According to eMarketer, ad spending on Facebook will reach $2.19 billion in the U.S. in 2011 and close to $4 billion worldwide.

Report: Facebook Ad Performance Is Abysmal.

AdScam/The Horror! : shit you need to know!.

Challenging Conventional Thinking - Polinchock's Ponderings.

Social Networks + Advertising = Amway - Polinchock's Ponderings.

Shouldn't We Make Place Special?

Last week, during the NRF Big Show, there was a lot of talk about how to change retail to be successful in today's world. I spent a lot of time with Bob Phibbs and Marge Laney walking the floor and talking about what we were seeing throughout the show.

Dozens of companies were showing mobile apps (to be truthful, they were trying to show mobile apps. Thanks to the incredibly crappy cell service at the Javits, they frequently didn't work.) and it was the hot topic of numerous presentations throughout the program. The emphasis was on putting information into the hands of the people.

And, mobile shopping tools certainly seemed to be a big part of the 2010 holiday season as well. Anecdotally, it seems that the use of cell phone based price-checking tools was on the rise this holiday shopping season. Best Buy reported lower sales and speculation was that people were looking at the items at Best Buy, but buying somewhere else. I know lots of people who do that. Yes, I do it too.

Look at some findings by a recent survey by Motorola:

A majority of retail associates (55%) said that 2010 holiday shoppers, driven by increasing availability of online shopping tools and mobile phone applications, were better connected to consumer information than in-store associates, according to a survey by Motorola Solutions.

The survey found that retailers that aren't investing in technology to stay ahead of increasingly tech-savvy shoppers are hurting their own bottom line. Nearly three in 10 (28%) store visits ended with an average of $132 unspent due to abandoned purchases driven by deal-habituated behavior, out-of-stocks, limited store associate assistance and long check-out processes.

As the Motorola survey confirms, a lot of the conversations and presentations was about how since consumers couldn't get help from the sales people on the floor, just give them the information they need on their cell phone.

There was also a great deal of conversations about making the physical retail store work and act like an online store.

Now, I'm a big of creating Oneline™ brand experiences and have also been speaking for many years about the need to e-tail your retail. So, I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't give your shoppers more information or deliver it through tools like mobile, QR codes, etc.

But, based on many conversations I've been having lately, I'm also starting to think that we're missing a big opportunity to emphasize just what makes place special. As I've said in the past, I continue to think that there's a coming trend to socialize the retail environment instead of just merchandising the real estate space. And the more we try to use the space for our purposes rather then our guests, the more they'll stay away.

Can you afford to have hundreds of thousands (or millions) of square feet of retail space and all of the expenses that go with it, and just have it act like windows for people to do online shopping? And they may not even shop online at your store! Can you continue to support online social media efforts while creating physical spaces that are almost anti-social? Sure, open up your info so that I can get it on my cell phone. But shouldn't you also hire better people and do more to train them? And create better physical spaces?

I think that retailers with physical stores need to spend a little more time looking at what makes place special. Stop trying to compete with the online world by making your places more online-like and start competing by your rules. Use place to your advantage.

Every time I go to an Apple or Lululemon store, I wonder why more retailers don't copy their model. They work. They generate great loyalty from their consumers. And they generate great return for their investors. There are plenty of other examples of retailers, big & small, that use place as an integral part of their business success.

If you're putting more effort into turning your stores into a web site, rather then capitalizing on what makes place unique, you might want to start looking for a great real estate broker to help you sell off your stores.

Motorola Survey: Shoppers better connected to information than store associates | Chain Store Age.

Download Sticky Soul - Some Thoughts from a Retail Walkabout

Riddle Me This...

More Thoughts on the Value of Place.

Polinchock's Ponderings: Customer Experience.

Polinchock's Ponderings: Retail News.