Last week I talked about how marketers should leverage culture to promote brands. Today I would like to talk about why we also can (and should) change culture.

As I watched the video above I couldn’t help but ask myself, “Is marketing changing culture? Or is culture changing marketing?” Or in other words, are these ads changing our perception of beauty or is our perception of beauty changing the ads? I still don’t have the answer, but maybe it;s a little bit of both.

In the end it doesn’t really matter, the bottom line is that the concept of “ideal beauty” has been around for a very long time. However, that doesn’t mean that it has to continue, and as marketers we have a unique ability to make a difference. Because as marketers we, in part, define culture.

How To Change Culture With Marketing

Develop Icons – Cultures love a good icon. For example take a look at Donald Duck in Germany, they love him. A strong icon can be a powerful force with in a culture. And who creates icons? Marketers do, that’s who! If we want to change our culture’s obsession with ideal body types we need to work to develop more icons that embody realistic and diverse forms of beauty.

Change The Narrative – Maybe with the help of some of our new icons we can start telling some new stories. How about a story about a fully figured woman that men fight over. Or perhaps a movie about a funny young guy in a wheelchair that hordes of women lust after (wink). Stories shape our collective conscience and define the way we view the world. They also help define our own personal narrative, which gives us courage to be different and try new things.

Make A Profit – Remember that marketing is still all about generating wealth. With out wealth we can’t elevate icons or tell new stories. So we need to use the power of marketing to create consumer demands that redefine cultural norms. We need to start building brands that target individuals that deviate from the prevailing cultural narrative. We need fashion brands that market directly to consumers with wrinkles and body weight. We need to grow these brand’s revenue streams and make wrinkles profitable.

Quit Being Lazy – As I watched the video above I couldn’t help but think how unimaginative and uncreative the ads pictured were. Smart marketing is never easy. To redefine culture we have to be creative and try many different things and be willing to fail. Sometimes, it’s hard selling failure to our clients, which is why we need to demand and expect more courage from the companies and brands we work with. Most of you that work with large brands know that they are run by good people that want to do the right thing, they just often times lack the needed courage to do what needs to be done.

In the 21st century marketers are one of the most influential elements on our culture. We have the power to redefine ideas and conscientiousness and it’s our job to wield that power responsibly. This does not mean simply abstaining from the types of ads in the video, it also means taking an active role in the development of new trends that shape our collective identity. If we can effectively do that, we can use marketing to make the world a better place while generating wealth. And, to me that sounds beautiful.

Last year video went up 42.1% and it’s expected to keep in the double-digits for the next few years.

More spending, means claiming a larger share of the online ad pie. For video, it’s currently at 7.9%, just barely sneaking past Classifieds and Directories. The share is expected to rise to 15% by 2016, keeping it solidly in third place.

Add in search and banners and these three ads account for 80% of all ads sold. Search, accounting for almost half of all online ads by themselves.

The rise in video ad spending is certainly being spurred on by the rise in video consumption. Recent numbers from comScore show that 182 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 23.2 hours of video content per viewer in December.

Video is the new TV but it’s cheaper and easier to put ads on a hit YouTube series than on a hit TV show.

If you need more proof that online video ads are on the rise, answer this. When was the last time you watched a video that didn’t have either a banner or a pre-roll ad? I can’t think of one.

The first part is available right now (it’s free) and right off the bat you’ll find this little gem.

Comparing social media to high school isn’t an original concept, but I do like the way they’ve phrased it. It’s funny. It’s all true and it explains why social media is such a fickle beast.

Here’s another gem:

40% of social networkers log on
to a social site before they get
dressed in the morning.

No wonder General Mills is so set on making cereal boxes digitally interactive.

The report goes on to explain the history of social media, which is fun and fascinating. You should read it if you have a few minutes to spare, but I’m going to jump down to the next part, the forces that shape the web.

First off, we see that social media development works in a loop. Sometimes apps create behaviors and sometimes behaviors create apps. Facebookers write their location in the posts, so Facebook makes location a post option. Twitter takes microblogging to the next level, now everybody Tweets.

This two-way street is an important concept. Look at how your customers are using your tools and social pages then tweak where needed. The study talks about two large chains that have Facebook pages just for their most popular products. Doesn’t matter if you sell all types of clothing and accessories, if a large portion of your customers are coming for the shoes, make a page for the shoes.

All of this is meant to get customers to engage and have a good feeling about a brand. Now how about this fact:

60% – 65% of social networkers are more likely to buy your product if you answer their Twitter questions.

Funny how far you can get with a small amount of recognition.

Other important factors, simplicity and personalization. Social networkers want relevant content and they want to be able to act on that content in one or two steps.

Marketing Pilgrim’s Social Channel is proudly sponsored by Full Sail University, where you can earn your Masters of Science Degree in Internet Marketing in less than 2 years. Visit FullSail.edu for more information.

Think of the social web as a huge, high school lunchroom. People come in and they want to sit where they feel the most comfortable. Some will choose the cool table, others hang with the jocks and for many, the geek table is the place to be.

Which table are you? And more importantly, is that the table your customers would want to sit at? You don’t have to be the most popular, you just have to be the best fit for your crowd.

You can read the full report for free when you click this link: Untangling the Social Web Part 1

Of everything I have read, one quote summarizes it all from Wall Street Journal article. It comes from Veronica Stecker the media manager for Omaha, NE based retailer Gordmans. Simply put in just 44 words (or 255 characters including spaces according to Word’s word count function).

We still don’t have a huge correlation between Facebook fans and return on investment in an actual sales in store. Until that metric becomes a lot more solid, I don’t think our company or other brands are going to be full-fledged into Facebook advertising.

Agree? Disagree? Have an opinion? How will this observation impact Facebook as it tries to own the world?

Have a great weekend.

Marketing Pilgrim’s Social Channel is proudly sponsored by Full Sail University, where you can earn your Masters of Science Degree in Internet Marketing in less than 2 years. Visit FullSail.edu for more information.

One reason is social media. I decided to follow a few athletes just to see what they might say. I usually don’t do this for two reasons:

1. I like the games. The rest of the “stuff” that goes with it I can live without.
2. I don’t want to know too much about the players

Seems odd, right? Wouldn’t the players thoughts and insights be great and add value to the game? Well, that can happen but based on this tweet, which I have decided to keep anonymous rather than pick on one person, my theory of knowing too much played out in a way I wish it hadn’t. Of course, there are hints as to the possible ID of the player so if you want to sleuth it you can.

Every giant fan know’s that we are here to get a job done and we are going to play are hearts out this week. Damn I just can’t wait to play.

This shows great passion and desire which is great. That’s fun. That’s good. The pitfall for this player and many others, I suspect, is the revelation that whatever time they spent in college may not have been too close to the classroom. A person’s proficiency with the English language can be important for any athlete for one main reason: the ability to get endorsements which is additional income.

Marketing Pilgrim’s Social Channel is proudly sponsored by Full Sail University, where you can earn your Masters of Science Degree in Internet Marketing in less than 2 years. Visit FullSail.edu for more information.

Additional income for professional athletes you ask? Are you nuts?! They already make enough! That’s a popular perception but one that, like so many other popular perceptions, is wrong in most cases. The truth of the matter is that most of these players are not making multi-million dollar salaries. Also, most of these players have a very short window of opportunity to capitalize on being in the NFL since the average career is somewhere between 3-4 years. Finally, there are a lot of people dipping into these players’ salaries; agents, hangers-on, family etc. You name it. Why else would 70% of the players in the league be bankrupt just three short years after leaving the game?

So what you ask? For these athletes and for marketers who want to attach their brands to them, this kind of thing is critical. It may not be to everyone who follows these guys but it could restrict opportunities for the athletes in the rest of the world. These social media “interactions” are like tryouts for the athletes with advertisers. It’s like an advertising NFL Combine. Marketers can see who may have the chops and who may not. So unless someone is coaching these athletes or “handling” them they may be doing themselves a larger disservice than service through social media.

What are your thoughts? Do you care about any of this? As a marketer would you tie your brand to a player who may not be able to represent your brand to your standards?

Oh, and no matter what any of the players say or do it doesn’t change my mind one bit. GO GIANTS!

That quote shouldn’t take you by surprise. It’s the circle of life. A new crop of young, working, educated men and women who have discretionary income. In other words, the people you need to keep your business alive.

One hitch, a study by Bazaarvoice says that Millennials don’t make purchase decisions like their mothers did, not even like their big sisters did! Since Millennials are growing up in the social media age, they rely on the opinions of others more than any other group before them.

What’s really interesting is that millennials are way more likely to depend on the kindness of strangers than their forefathers. 51% said they were influenced by comments on the web made by people they don’t know. Only 34% of baby boomers put their trust in strangers. They preferred to hear from friends and family (66%). As for millennials, only 49% said they were influenced by people they actually know.

This means that consumer comments and reviews are extremely important to your business. But 73% of millennials surveyed said that consumers care more about customer opinions than companies do. They felt that companies don’t offer enough ways to share and that companies don’t take feedback seriously.

Marketing Pilgrim’s Social Channel is proudly sponsored by Full Sail University, where you can earn your Masters of Science Degree in Internet Marketing in less than 2 years. Visit FullSail.edu for more information.

Time to take a look at your own business pages. Are there easy ways to leave comments and reviews? Are reviews public? The good ones and the bad ones? What happens when someone leaves a bad comment? Does anyone follow up to solve the problem?

The bottom line is that whether they’re buying a car or lunch, Millennials want to assurances from others that they’re making the right decision. It’s up to you to give them the information and tools to find their own way.

NOTE: Thank you to Ian Greenleigh of Bazaarvoice for gently pointing out a typo in the title. It’s official, we’re not perfect .

Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

On the content side, it wasn’t much of a gamble. News Corp publishes The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, the UK’s Daily Telegraph and hundreds of other papers around the globe. They also had some experience with paywalls for online versions of their newspapers, but The Daily had to be all that and more.

What they set out to build, was a news source that truly took advantage of everything the iPad had to offer; interactivity, linking, video and audio all working together to tell a story.

Did they succeed? Well, here we are a year later and The Daily has 100,000 paid subscribers. Yes, paid, making them the third largest-grossing app on iTunes. That’s quite an accomplishment. It proves once and for all that people will pay for content, as long as its good content.

The Daily did a couple of things to assure this success. One, they hired journalists. Real newshounds who could break a story. Next, they created a look and functionality specifically for the iPad and now they’re doing it for Android tablets. This isn’t as simple as it sounds. They didn’t just take a website and push it to a tablet, they created a structure that is a mix of old school newspaper, magazines and websites.

Then, they layered it all with those tablet bells and whistles. When you read a review of a new CD, you can click the link and have it downloaded to your iPad in seconds. Heck, you can listen to it while you’re reading the review!

The Daily publisher Greg Clayman told Mashable that the feedback they’ve received from actual users has been invaluable. It’s helped them understand how people consumer their content. Do they read in portrait or landscape? Do they read at home on the couch or on the train to work? What kind of ads and other content are they clicking on? His team tracks the info on a “daily” basis and through that, the app keeps growing and evolving.

What News Corp has learned that marketers need to understand is that tablets aren’t mini-desktop computers. It’s not about how we take web content and push it to the tablet. It’s about how do we create a whole new experience with what the tablet has to offer.

The IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) put together this infographic (click through to see the full image) and a whitepaper taking a look at the mobile life of Giants v. Patriots fans. It was a close contest for sure and has no bearing on the result for this Sunday but it is fun to consider.

Sports is changing and mobile capabilities are helping to lead that charge. How do you intend to get involved in the game this weekend from an online point of view?

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What is most interesting is a list of 35 business concerns or threats that Facebook states could throw a monkey wrench into their money printing operation. They include mobile as a weak spot in the business and Zynga being responsible for 12% of the revenue of Facebook. But here is the one that I see as simply a preemptive strike against Congress looking at Facebook as the Google of the social world. It reads like this.

“We face significant competition in almost every aspect of our business, including from companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Twitter, which offer a variety of Internet products, services, content, and online advertising offerings, as well as from mobile companies and smaller Internet companies that offer products and services that may compete with specific Facebook features. We also face competition from traditional and online media businesses for advertising budgets.”

Well struck!

Marketing Pilgrim’s Social Channel is proudly sponsored by Full Sail University, where you can earn your Masters of Science Degree in Internet Marketing in less than 2 years. Visit FullSail.edu for more information.

If people are being honest Facebook’s dominance in the social space is going to be difficult for anyone to challenge. We are watching Google, who has tons of money, struggle to put a dent in Facebook’s position. Twitter isn’t truly a competitor because they address two different aspects of the social fabric online. And a startup coming in an putting a real dent in their position (which will only get stronger with the cash raised in the IPO)? I don’t see it. Google is struggling because it has a very bad track record in social and it must overcome its image of being a search engine that is overextending itself rather than improving its ecosystem. Other small players like Path are nice but we are seeing very real limits as to how far the average consumer is willing to go to manage multiple social network presences.

In other words, with Facebook’s position in the market they are going to need to “pull a MySpace” in order to stumble enough to open the door for a competitor. I just don’t see that happening. Of course, it can happen since any business can be viewed as being 90 days from extinction but it is not likely. If, however, you want to think that the whiners that call Facebook “MyFace” etc and say it is crap are a fringe element that would probably see a free gift of a solid gold bar as insignificant since it wasn’t two solid gold bars. In other words, they are idiots and don’t represent the vast majority of Facebook users.

So Facebook really needs to protect itself from government intervention. It actually sites that as a potential problem for them. So how better to keep politicians who maybe didn’t get a piece of the IPO out of your way? Throw up roadblocks like the claim that there is real competition to Facebook then crank up the lobbying effort. Reuters reports

Preparing to join the ranks of publicly traded companies, Facebook Inc is also beefing up its presence in the U.S. capital with a first report of money pouring into its newly created political fundraising arm.

A latecomer to Washington, the social networking site is joining scores of powerful technology companies such as Microsoft Corp and Google Inc that have political action committees (PACs) used to raise funds for donations to political campaigns or causes.

Hey if Stephen Colbert can put together a SuperPac and raise over $1 million imagine what Facebook can buy do in Washington, DC.

Let the real games begin!

Combine this with the fact that Tumblr is a free service that needs to turn all of those accounts into revenue and your thoughts probably go to advertising. But how and where? Well Tumblr thinks it may have a solution. Of course, in the name of journalistic integrity the “a” word is not mentioned but we are smart enough to read between the lines.

The New York Times reports

The popular social blogging site Tumblr is hiring writers and editors to cover the world of Tumblr.

Chris Mohney, a senior vice president for content at BlackBook Media, will be the site’s editor in chief. Jessica Bennett, a senior writer and editor at Newsweek and The Daily Beast, will be the executive editor and, she said, a kind of Tumblr correspondent.

“Basically, if Tumblr were a city of 42 million,” Ms. Bennett said, referring to the number of Tumblr blogs that exist, “I’m trying to figure out how we cover the ideas, themes and people who live in it.”

The talk is trying to keep people on the sites longer. While that’s a nice metric that will not pay the bills. How can they monetize the free service? There’s that “a” word again. It’s inevitable, isn’t it?

One can’t blame any business for trying to make money. After all, these free services that we all love to use and criticize are not public services. They are businesses. It’s making the move from free to “we need to make some money” model that seems to trip up most businesses like Tumblr.

So why does this happen? Companies like Tumblr have a hyper sensitivity to the relatively small minority of users that will cry foul when something of a commercial nature (that is generated by Tumblr not other Tumblr users) appears on the site. This content aggregation and curation model only makes sense if there is a revenue component to it. Tumblr will need to show some backbone during any transition because there will be whiners. It’s the Internet after all and people are curious in that they feel they can be outraged when things that are free to them change their little comfort zone. It’s not a healthy environment but it is very real.

Regardless of the ultimate goal, Tumblr’s new hires must have taken PR courses when they can produce the following

Mr. Mohney said that the forthcoming content will market Tumblr by highlighting how the site is being used, but, he added, “fun, cool, compelling and organic creation will go a lot further towards demonstrating the potential of this nascent creative population than simplistic or forced attempts at corporate boosterism.”

Ms. Bennett, when asked what statement Tumblr was making by bringing her and Mr. Mohney on board, said, “Tumblr is basically hiring a staff to celebrate creativity and innovation. How many companies can say that?”

That’s very nice Ms. Bennett but creativity and innovation don’t pay the bills. How will Tumblr make money from something like this is the real question. Any thoughts?