Dino Baskovic Can’t Lose

Five o'clock on Friday.  Quittin' time.  As the TGIF status updates spill all over Facebook and Twitter, I turn to my trusted bourbon of choice, Maker's Mark.

Not that I need a bracer so late in the day.  Then again, the night is young, I haven't blogged in a bit and I need some "spirited" material to end the week.  'Nuff said.

The above billboard photo is borrowed from the Maker's Mark Facebook fan page.  Like most bourbon/whiskey/spirits/beverage brands, Maker's is an active social marketer.  Bill Samuels, Jr., president of Maker's Mark, personally and frequently blogs with new recipes, sampling events and other good reasons to get my butt back to Loretto.  (Last time I visited, I dipped my own bottle in red wax, dined at their downtown Louisville steakhouse and ordered a personalized barrel which awaits my return.)

I am also a card-carrying member of the Maker's Mark Ambassadors -- and that's no joke, they give us business cards.  So when I stumbled on the fan page today, I was pleased to see the Ambassadors in action.  I don't know how this started, but the M.O. is to announce yourself as an Ambassador from where ever you live along with well wishes on their wall.

Now that is grassroots branding at its best -- from the Bluegrass State, no less.  Simple, personal, influential.  I guess all of those holiday tchotchkes they mail each year to Ambassadors pay off.  That, and some consistently good and reasonably priced hooch helps.  So what if Maker's Mark "only" has 40,000+ fans on Facebook, compared to one pickle's 1,500,000+?  Memes come and go, but the marketers will take a smaller but fiercely loyal fan base any day, myself included.

Hats off to you, Mr. Samuels and company.  Online and off, your sense of community is truly on the mark.  And now, I think I'll find myself a rocks glass.

I love Nickelback.  There, I've said it.  They're Def Leppard for the new millennium, their music is rife with radio-friendly riffs and cherry soda pop lyrics and I don't care:

"I love you.  I have loved you all along..."

That's me, singing along in the car like a sissy.  But before you stop reading in disgust, I've seen your iPod.  Manilow?  Puh-lease.

Critics pan Nickelback so widely that it's become an Olympic medal sport.  Love 'em or hate 'em, their music sells extremely well.  Like any big act backed by a major label, they have a flashy home page, fan sites, the requisite MySpace profile and more than 1,400,000 fans on Facebook.  Oh, and some friendly competition from a pickle.

As reported last week (Billboard, CHARTattack, Switched), somebody launched a Facebook page of a pickle (your garden deli variety) with the sole intent of attracting more fans to the pickle than Nickelback.  The pickle is well over the million fan mark and is gaining on the band fast.

Diehards and detractors alike are in on the action and the pickle has already spawned its share of mashups and merchandising.  At the end of the day, it's a harmless prank involving an inanimate object and all in the name of fun.

Or is it?

Keeping it kosher
I googled around and saw no response from Nickelback, their record company, any lawyers or publicists.  No word from from their web site, blog, even the band's own Facebook wall.  Not a peep to the press.  Nothing.  I'm assuming they know about the pickle, that by now somebody brought it to their attention.  Which leads me to wonder, "Do they even care?  Will they have a sense of humor about the situation, perhaps go so far as to root for the pickle to prevail?  Is the band staying mute and letting it blow over for some reason?  Or are they 'lawyered' up?"

Any variation of scenarios can play out.  You can see the band serenading a larger-than-life pickle live on stage, Flip cams capturing the footage and securing the gherkin a 60-second segment on a future episode of VH1 "I Love the '10s: 2010" for posterity.  The Facebook meme ultimately fades into obscurity, Nickelback releases another crappy album and I lap it up like a sick puppy.  We all move on.

Maybe the band has other plans.  Some musicians have zero, and I mean zero, sense of humor.  Even if Chad Kroeger and fellow band mates find the pickle utterly hysterical, that doesn't mean the suits-and-ties think likewise.

"We will vigorously defend our intellectual property"
It would not surprise me in the least to read of a cease-and-desist filed by the band or the label, even a lawsuit claiming irreparable damage to name and image.  At the very least, infringement of legal trademark.  And maybe it's not just the Facebook account holder that is disposed, but Facebook as well.  Any ISP that refuses to block their domain could find itself in the crosshairs.

Sounds far-fetched?  Welcome to marketing.  The music world has struggled with its love-hate relationship of the web since the advent of Napster and the iTunes Music Store.  Never mind that the tiniest blip of a blunder is tweeted and a musician's image is tarnished overnight (this means you, John Mayer).  While the dill debate pales in comparison to that asshat's gaffe, if ticket sales slump, you better damn well believe that pickle is going down.

For most of us, Facebook is fun and games.  We don't see the harm in a silly little pickle, nor care what repercussions the world's most popular social network may face should the subject of said silliness turn sour.  It's a pickle, for chrissake, I know.  But I get nervous posting copyrighted material to my blog, and I am very much in the minority when it comes to respecting original works.  Heck, the header graphic that leads this post is stretching it.

Regardless of my pathetic, bedroom poster-like devotion to Nickelback, I am pulling for the pickle.  I figure it'll top a million-and-a-half fans by the end of next week, if not sooner or a sexier Facebook fad swoops in first.  If the Canadian quartet is cool with the cuke, they may even be able to grab more attention, fans and $9.99 downloads.  Maybe the lead singer is the lone punman, that is a pickle in his leather pants and he is happy to see us.  Maybe that's TMI, but there's a lotta bread-and-butter on the line, and I mean the green kind that folds, not crunches.

Wakey wakey, egg on facey:

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Ah, the joys of being on a corporate build.  Of course, I'm going rogue on IE7 (the standard here is still IE6 on XP).  I can't get IE8 until our Windows 7 roll-out, so I'm told by super-secret sources.  Until then, I'll keep sneaking in my Mac.

Okay, another story on social media and security, or lack thereof.  Ho hum.  I almost passed on the podcast, but Pandora was slow today so I ceded.  And wouldn't you know it, the end of the audio was a telling tale.

Forget the hubbub about imbibing online and the inherent HR risks.  What if it meant denial of health coverage or jacked up car payments?  Ouch.

Moral of the story: social media = social morality.  Or lack thereof.

Wine is decidedly more accessible when served by a robot.  Snug Harbor was no match for The Spotted Cat.  Electric trolley cars of the past are the wave of the future.  And when you snap shots of sugary beignets with a BlackBerry at 3 a.m. thinking your Facebook friends will care, it's time to call it quits.

Hmm.  Thinking I'll have to convince the boss that New Orleans is our next conference destination.  Breakout sessions on Bourbon Street?  Put the "social" back in social media, I say.

                             

Click here to download:

A_steady_diet_of_status_update.zip (1597 KB)

From Twitter:

eBay/Paypal and MillerCoors are donating a cent per hashtag (via tweet, Facebook update, or blog post). The campaign is aiming for a Guinness World Record 'for the distribution of the largest mass message through social media' in one day.

Also: Social Media Campaign to Beat Cancer Eyes Record in Guinness Book (via Mashable)

What up, Parns?  I am such a slacker that I meant to post up yesterday just for the word play but couldn't make my own midnight deadline.  A precocious 5-year-old with a 104-degree fever will do that to a daddy's blog.

And slack I shall.  I have a few posts in mind (e.g. customer service clashes with PR, the web wages war with the AP, bloggers do battle with the FTC) but each of those require more research and writing than can be done in 140 characters or less.  Therefore, it is with great pleasure that I shoot off a few bullet points from other blogs at random, merely because I can:

• Sidewikis.  Just one more freakin' thing.
• GeoCities.  A small tear shed for my old haunt.  Otherwise, buh-bye.
• SocialSafe.  Finally, a way to back up Facebook, 150,000 limbo accounts notwithstanding.  Not necessarily a way to restore profiles, but it's a start.
• Mountain Dew and Pushead.  I am 13 again.  Not to be confused with AMP's new iPhone app which actually is targeted towards 13-year-olds.
• Dyson's new bladeless fan.  If Fast Company, Wired and Engadget are that enthralled (and two outta three thumbs up ain't bad), then I'll probably run out and buy one tomorrow then never use it like my Wii Fit.

See, this was good.  Cathartic, self-serving and an utter waste of time -- like most tweets.  Not a lick of context nor any real purpose.  I should scrape off my feed reader more often.  This is crazy delicious fun.

UPDATE: Gizmodo's review is the best.  True dat.  Double true.

Well, well, well.  Looks like I'm not the only one that feels pain.  Maybe I should've friended Scoble for faster customer service.

Luckily, I got my Facebook account back last week thanks to a kind soul with User Operations. What seemed like months to restore my account was really a few weeks. was a mere few weeks.  While not ideal -- I wanted it fixed in days, even hours -- it could've been far worse or simply never resolved.

I applaud CNET's Caroline McCarthy for being so fair in her assessment of Facebook's current database dilemma:

With over 300 million active users around the world, we shouldn't expect Facebook to be able to respond to every inquiry it receives. And Facebook is a free product, so it arguably doesn't have a customer service obligation on par with your cable company or the Web site where you bought your last pair of shoes. But this is still a real problem for the social network, which has become so ingrained in culture and communication that for some people it's replaced the address book, the e-mail client, and the personal Web site. Many of the e-mails [received] came from people who say that Facebook is their primary method of communication with far-flung family and friends. Others said it's crucial to how they do business.

It's true.  Facebook can only service the customer so much.  And when I lost my old Gmail account last month around the time I lost Facebook, Google was no help whatsoever.  And who can blame them?  The major players offer unlimited web resources with limited people resources, whether we like it or not.  It's a take-a-number mentality and until somebody invents a truly "human scalable" model of technical support, then please continue to hold...

This is why I laugh when I read fanciful approaches to customer service from bright-eyed and bushy-tailed startups like iPhone fitness app developer Gymfu:*

1. Answer ALL emails and tweets.
2. Build a support site that is SEO’d and contains all the questions people ask (support.gymu.com).
3. Find our evangelists and love them.
4. Find our haters and love them more than our own mothers.
5. Do whatever it takes to fix a customer’s problem, even if that means meeting them to give them pre-release code!

That's great if you're a niche mobile app with a loyal yet modest user base.  Not so realistic if said base grows by a googol.

Curses that I can't find the bookmark, but I recall an editorial from last year claiming how we want all want to be treated on a first-name, coffeehouse-cozy basis -- at big box retail with low, low prices.  The same customer service conundrum applies here.  The Facebook fallen want to be treated and released, but are instead forced to wait with the rest of the walking wounded.  Call centers, community-based support sites, knowlege bases, wikis and whatnot -- sure, they help.  Yet, they are no replacement for live chat, a friendly phone voice (even if in an odd dialect) or onsite repair. 

So what can we do?  Crowdsource customer service?  Saddle up the Mechanical Turk?  Or just grab a seat until your number is called eventually, hopefully, any day now?  I lived without Facebook for three weeks, and for all my whining it wasn't so bad.  Granted, 300 million Facebook fans can't all be patient, and you hear the growls whenever Gmail fails (rare) and Twitter whales (set your watch).  That, and patience is a hard virtue to come by in the Twitter era.

My advice to those suffering through this or a similar outage: relax, this too shall pass, have a backup plan and move on with your life.  It's what led me to start this blog.  Thanks, Facebook!  I think?

On a semi-related note, I just started working out five days a week, so I'll give those Gymfu apps a shot.  Provided it doesn't get me booted again, I may even link my Gymfu and Facebook accounts.  Though watch out, Gymfu: if something breaks, I'm putting your customer service through the paces.

* Hat tip to Steve Rubel for the repost.

Not that there ever was pressure to "publish or perish" as an adjunct, but when I did teach at Lawrence Tech just outside of Detroit, the faculty always wondered why my name didn't show up more in print.

I lectured on web design (and eventually, social media) for eight years, presented at conferences, panels, keynotes, committees, blah, blah, blah... but never saw too much press outside of my old blog.  This never bothered me, though maybe it should have.  Maybe I'd've won more business back in my consulting days.  Still, my best client hired me away from both gigs and now I do PR and social media for Amway.

So, it was nice to see my name finally in ink when the October issue of Direct Selling News hit mailboxes.  I tag-teamed with another Amway "tech guru" (inside joke) for part of a piece entitled "Building Relationships through Social Media" by DSN writer Barbara Pearce.  My quotes are bolded, not that my colleague's remarks aren't equally as important. I'm just feeling bold.

Every company Direct Selling News interviewed said that they’re integrating social media marketing into their marketing plans. For example, Amway recognizes that its independent business owners and customers spend a lot of time on social networking sites, so they got involved there, too. And they’ve noticed that the social media phenomenon is global and across age groups. But, just as they would in other media, they build their participation around business objectives.

“A lot of what we do is based on connection modeling,” says Michael Edwards, Amway’s Director of Digital and Consumer Experience Marketing. “We try to understand where the targeted group is connecting. The social media space is one piece of that. Social influence marketing is having a significant effect. From there, we determine how that plays in the overall mix of our marketing campaign. It fluctuates based on our campaign. Social networks on Facebook may play a role in one campaign, or we may find that blogs play a larger role in another.”

Edwards’ colleague Dino Baskovic, Manager of Corporate Communications, agrees, adding, “There’ll be customers who prefer to stay connected online. They may enjoy face time but prefer computer time. That’s fine. We’ll respect that, and we’ll explore and leverage it.”

Like other companies, Amway recognizes that its distributors are every bit as involved with social media as the corporation is, and they’re grappling with the right way to address social media in corporate policies. They want to be sure they’re doing it right.

“Suffice it to say, we want our distributors to succeed, so we want to empower them and give them the right tools for the job,” Baskovic says. “That includes the right rules of engagement when it comes to social media.”

Edwards adds, “Social media can be a game changer for a lot of companies. If they strategically do it right, it will change their placement in the direct selling industry. But if people jump in before they’re ready, it will have a negative effect. For those who do it right, it will have a positive effect.”

Maybe now I'll have earned the respect of the other adjuncts, even if I no longer teach alongside them.  I could finagle at the secret handshake, and I think I still have my secret faculty decoder ring...

Anyway, these are Mike's and my thoughts.  Ring any bells on your end?