Blog

17 Mar

Posted at 17:35h in influencers, social media by
This past week in Austin I organized and spoke on a SXSW panel called “Influencer Throwdown: Defining and Debating Influence Once and For All” with some marketing friends Saul Colt, Krista Neher and Kevin Dugan. Here’s a good recap of the session and a few quotes:
The panel began with some discussion around celebrities and how they are perceived as influencers.  The big (obvious) example used was Charlie Sheen.  Does he have influence?  The panel was split on this, and they each had their opinions on it.  David Binkowski cited that 8% of Americans trust celebrities.  I would tend to agree with him.
And we spent a lot of time discussion this:

23 Jul

Posted at 09:30h in advertising, Business, social media, twitter by
For the longest time I used to think that PR agencies didn't get social media. "Give me impressions!" was the public relations mantra because it meant that they could easily transfer their knowledge of publication circulation multipliers into the emerging field called "social media". Screw the long tail, screw review web sites, screw message boards and all of the other "unimportant" groups online because "they don't have reach". "We want to take on the ad agencies head on!" was the PR agency rallying cry, and even though most ad agencies are going down the wrong route, and no matter how many decks you presented to them that this gimmick marketing was the wrong approach, they continued to push to ignore the long tail, ignore communities and ignore what actually drives sales. What's come full circle is that the coveted social media reach play online that ad agencies have been great at have one thing in common: they don't work.