Joel Pinkham

But I think it’s bollocks, and these types of comments are fast becoming my pet peeve.

I’ve just read a blog post about the value of a Facebook user (the rest of this rant won’t make sense unless you read that).

I have a habit that always makes me want to argue anything that’s come from someone biased, so here’s why I think this “detailed” report was a waste of time:

• It takes 18 pages to make the point that a Facebook fan spends more & and engages with you more. Here I was thinking that if someone was my fan then they hated my company.
• It puts a value on the average Facebook fan and then throughout the report it constantly states the obvious by explaining that every company has a different value for a Facebook fan. To me this basically says “the value is $136, but not really”. It’s merely a number to catch headline and for the social media racquet to pull out and impress in pitches and presentations.
• The recommendations are written as general as a horoscope “Loyalty, Spend, Recommendation, Fan Acquisition Cost, Affinity, and Media Value are the key factors that impact fan value. Brands need to develop strategies that address these areas”. In other words, develop the perfect business and the value of your Facebook fan will be higher.

Of course a Facebook fan is valuable, they’re your fan and they’re wearing it on their virtual sleeve.

But don’t believe the hype. My problem is that reports and articles like this have caused a common mentality of “wow, I need to get a Facebook fan page!!” as if it’s the magic answer, but it can easily turn into a meatball sundae. A lot of companies would be better off using their time thinking about how to make something remarkable enough that people genuinely become fans of.

The real value of a Facebook fan – it’s the perfect medium for your true “fans” to spread the word for you. Your happy customers have been doing this for centuries, Facebook just makes it easier for them to do so and much more effective for you.

Integrated Marketing Communications: one of those terms that marketing people throw around but are usually too lazy or in too big of a company to actually do it properly. This safety video is one of the best examples of integrated marketing I’ve ever seen.

The video ties in with their latest ad campaign and strongly communicates the positioning to an extremely captive audience, we weren’t escaping anywhere.

Extremely captivating, you can’t take your eyes off it. Although supposedly no 2 planes are the same, every single safety video is. This video however, is memorable and stands out from the boring stuff we’re used to while impatiently waiting to take off and reach our destination.

5.3 million views on YouTube so far, obviously others feel the same way as me.

These guys have been producing these videos for years now. It’s always amazing to see the latest stats, but apart from being cool and having a wow factor, it mystifies “social media” even further.

While I love these videos, they beat around the bush when it comes to business. Social media shouldn’t really make any change to “good” businesses, social media just makes it even more important to run a business well.

The main thing to take away is that you need to be very good at what you do and keep happy customers who are happy to endorse you. Of course this is nothing new, it’s just word of mouth…on crack.

Social media is simply the way the message about your product/service spreads quickly – positive or negative. These stats show just how quick the message can spread.

Yeah I know I’ve been slack on the blog, but I’m going to get back into it by making a bold statement that is admittedly out of my league. I’m also going to tell the story the long way, for the real juicy part – click here.

As I’ve recently moved to Sydney – I had the joy of setting up a new bank account. I did my research and weighed up pricing and features to see pretty much the same product. I got sold on the brand. NAB painted me a pretty picture of themselves, using bright colours and smiley face rainbows – they had me falling in love. Being new to the country, I hadn’t been exposed to the old “National Australia Bank” brand which is still used in ads along the train line to the airport for some terrible reason. If they still had this logo, I wouldn’t have lusted after them.

They’ve done a great job of making their brand appealing, but as soon as I had to deal with them, I was disappointed. Happy go lucky turned into old time processes that got in the way of pleasing me. I won’t go into the details – but it’s been two weeks and I still don’t have an EFTPOS card and wasn’t allowed to take cash out of the account for the first few days.

So here’s the obvious point: why did they rebrand to appeal to someone like me when they probably know that they can’t live up to that promise? 

Sure they need their processes to make the business operate, but making it seem like I’m going to enjoy it being their customer just makes them look worse and accentuates the pitfalls.

I previously dealt with a client who threw around the strap line ‘Making life easier’ like there was no tomorrow. The thing was, they didn’t make life easier at all. Their old way of thinking and processes made it bloody difficult for their customers. This company needs applauding though – their marketing team had the balls to strip the tag line from the brand because they couldn’t live up to it.

Marketers get too carried away with the warm and fuzzy. There was a time (or so I’m told) where consumers would buy whatever was advertised. Marketers had the power, now consumers have the power. We can see through the fuzzy. This is why it’s most important to get the product and service right, first and foremost.

If Yahoo! advertised and got warm and fuzzy on you, would it take you away from Google?

AdAge recently reported about chief bloggers being a new trend with corporates. Does your company need a Chief Blogger?

To start with; “Chief Blogger” is a wanky title. Hiring someone to blog is essentially the same as hiring someone to manage PR which defeats the purpose of blogging in the first place.

The best thing I’ve seen in company blogs is the passion that comes out of them. Google has their geeky engineers talking directly to other geeks. We love it. It’s not someone blogging trying to manage the brand; it’s the Google engineers being the brand. Sure the chief blogger could be passionate and be a part of the company, but he/she would still be out of the front-line where sometimes the best insight comes from.

It’s best when people are talking to people.