Even though Super Bowls can be a bit of a let down, advertisers and brands swarm to get spots for the big game. Case in point, all of the Super Bowl ad spots were sold out before Thanksgiving this year. This is mainly due to brands wanting to get in front of one of the largest audiences to view television programs. It is predicted this year there will have been 100 million people watching (REUTERS) the Super Bowl; and at a price tag of $3.5 million dollars for a 30 second spot, it may seem like a deal. However, I’m not sure that the brands truly recognize the value of the spots or the return they may, or may not get from them.

The Retail Advertising and Marketing Association states that 73% of consumers who watch the Super Bowl ads, watch them for entertainment; entertainment, not for purchase. Only 8.4% of all consumers who watch the ads, say the ads influence their intent to purchase. Now that number is quite scary. Brands invest $3.5 million dollars for 15-30 seconds of the consumers’ attention and only 8.4% see that spot and think, “purchase.” I won’t even go into my concern that the brands aren’t even doing their market research on the audience. How many brands that advertise during the Super Bowl know they are advertising to their target demographic?

Are the Commercials More than Entertainment?
If it’s not purchase intent that brands and marketers are going after, what is it then? Is it brand affinity they’re trying to target? Probably not. The only two brands, and I’m sure that I’m not alone here, that come to mind in the memorable history of Super Bowl ads that target the brand in a building capacity, are Apple and Chrysler. Apple’s 1984 Macintosh commercial struck an emotional cord with all of us; it felt different, and it resonated with us to this day. Chrysler’s famous re-brand commercial, “Imported from Detroit,” not only set the auto manufacturer apart from the others, it gave all of us hope even though the majority of us don’t live in Detroit. Why did these commercials resonate so well? It’s because they weren’t selling a product, they were selling an idea–an emotion. This cannot be said about the other commercials that consumers consider “entertainment.” Try it out for a minute. Think back to the “entertaining” commercials of the Super Bowl. Can you think of the product, or even brand, they represent? If you can’t, how do you think a brand justifies the $3.5 million spend?

Another Attempt at Measuring Value
According to the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, companies that buy advertisements during the Super Bowl, end up outperforming the S&P 500 the subsequent week. Is this a good measure of the value of a Super Bowl ad? This could be just an inflation of the stock by traders in the anticipation of the brand performing well during the Super Bowl. Yes, brands that increase their value in the stock market are a good thing. The UWEC report also mentions that the inflated value comes down, in subsequent weeks, to normal. If I were a betting man, I would buy stock in the brand before the Super Bowl, and then sell the week after. It is a purchase, but most likely not the one the brand is expecting.

Brand Buzz
Another way some brands potentially measure the return is from buzz. Buzz in the form of online conversation, social buzz, and just overall sentiment from the ads. In the social media world, this buzz can be measured in the amount of brand mentions, product mentions, commercial mentions, tags, shares, comments, likes, etc. There are many forms of measurement for this category. However, buzz doesn’t necessarily mean purchase or purchase intent either. We are only talking about people talking about things. And most of the time, we’ll see consumers talking about the content in the ad, the celebrities, the jokes and the wit of the ad, and NOT the product or brand. So, if a brand is justifying return based on buzz, they’re justifying it on things that are not relative to the brand of product.

Is Social Media a Measurement for Success
Think of this Super Bowl ad for Acura NSX.
Yes, it does feature Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno fighting over the new model line. The ad is funny and entertaining. The ad also features a hashtag too, #JerryNSX. No doubt this ad got plenty of conversation and buzz. However, I argue, does the ad impact your purchase intent in any way? Will the brand or the car resonate with you beyond the first time you saw it? Most likely consumers will only remember Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno, maybe the brand, but not the car. Not to mention the fact that the car itself is beyond many of our price ranges. So, why spend $3.5 million per 15-30 seconds for this ad?

Social media is becoming more ever-present in the Super Bowl commercials and offers up another form of measurement: Engagement. Reuters stated that 60% of those watching the game will most likely be tied to another device such as a smartphone or tablet. This gives the brands an opportunity to engage the consumer off the television, and provide more content to the consumer beyond 15 seconds of entertainment. One key way of achieving this is through “innovative” social media tactics. Since the consumers are already on another device, the CTA on the ads will most likely be in the form of a social engagement. Join the conversation is too vague nowadays. Consumers require a specific call to action, especially with a captivated audience that breaks Twitter’s tweets per second records.

Budweiser used a hashtag in their Bud Light Platinum ad (#MakeItPlatinum) and Audi snuck in a hashtag in their vampire commercial as well, (#SoLongVampires). This represents an attempt by the brands to engage those consumers beyond the ad. It was a good attempt, however in execution, the hashtags seemed to be a bit of an afterthought. What am I, as consumer, going to talk about with those hashtags? Why is it relevant or is it valuable for me to discuss this online afterward?

Best Buy’s #BetterWay commercial featured well-known innovators and inventors in the digital space. The brand chose to align themselves to the inventors and speaking to a “better way” to do things. They’re getting closer and the hashtag was relevant to the advertisement and positioning of the ad. The ad itself resonated pretty well, but lacked the specific call-to-action with the hashtag. Again, this is another social media after-thought. As a brand, if you want the consumers to engage, especially on social media, you have to be specific with the call to action; tell the consumer exactly what you want them to do with your hashtag, just don’t throw it up there and assume they’re going to do something.

In the end, which brand did it right? You probably already have your opinion, you knew as soon as you saw the ad. And chances are it’s only one or two ads that you thought, “did it right”. In my opinion, I responded to Budweiser’s Return of the King and Eternal Optimism spots. These spots are historical in nature, but reflect something deeper inside of all of us. The ads strike a subtle emotional chord. They position the brand as one who has always been around and will always be here for us consumers; past to present. Interestingly, the brand did not use any social media tactics either. The ads were not funny, nor were they provocative. They hit it just right and they were on-brand. Not to mention, they can be re-broadcasted even after the “shock” of the Super Bowl is over. Even with the emotional chord, did that make you want to purchase Budweiser? Probably not. It most likely will remain in your mind. Even so, I ask, do you think it’s worth the $3.5 million investment? Unlikely.

Happy New Year! Our teams are back from holiday time with their families and ready for an exciting year ahead. But before we welcome 2012, we thought it might be fun to look back on some of our favorite stories of 2011. It seemed fitting to pick 11.

Here you have a list of eleven posts from across our offices, spanning topics from customer experience and branding to measurement and mobile. It’s a great overview of trends and technologies that shaped the past year of digital marketing.

We thank you for continuing to read Experience Matters and are looking forward to bringing you another year of timely and compelling points of view.

1. A New Breed of Resume
By: Andrew Turnbull, Associate Planner

2. Brand Consistency is Killing Digital Advertising
By: Jim Kim, Creative Director

3. 4 Ways to Optimize Your Brand’s Content Curation Process
By: Brad Halasz, Content Analyst

4. A Bad Case of Grouponitis
By: Celia Jones, Marketing Director

5. Transmedia Storytelling 101
By: Laura Studley, Copy Director

6. Increasing Traffic with HTML5 Microdata
By: Ben Truyman, Technology Lead

7. The ROI of Social Media ROI
By: Scot Wheeler, Marketing Science Director

8. Treating Customers Badly: Why Some Businesses Get Away With It
By: David Stallsmith, Insight & Planning Director

9. 12 Most Overrated SEO Tactics (That Don’t Work)
By: Bill Ross, SEO Associate Director

10. Engaging Mom? Make the Smart Call
By: Russ Rickey, Planning Director

11. No Love for Facebook Likes: When it comes to Buying, Consumers Still Prefer Old-School Reviews
By: Ian Roberts, Associate Consumer Researcher

Photo Credit: Richard Tseng

No one argues that games are a huge part of our culture (especially here, btw), but I’ve been hearing something you don’t often hear; we as marketers ought to be integrating the principles and qualities that make games enjoyable into our brand experience.

In yesterday’s keynote, Seth Prietbatsch showed how the mechanics of game play are being used successfully in some unexpected places.  From the classroom to loyalty marketing programs, game mechanics can improve poorly designed systems.  For example, “Grades are a naïve implementation of a status mechanic,” Prietbasch said.

After a few other examples, he used a crowd participation exercise to illustrate the power of a large group to achieve surprising results.  Each of the 2,500+ members of the audience was given a card with different colors on each side.  There were 5 or 6 different colors in all.  He issued a challenge to the audience; organize each row into holding up the same color, by trading cards with neighbors in front or back if needed, within 90 seconds.He said that he’d only tested the exercise on a group of about 25 prior to this, and in the end it worked.  Through cooperation, we were able to self-organize without the benefit of a leader and without being able to communicate to people beyond just a few feet from us.  This exercise was used to show how large unorganized groups could overcome complex challenges.

In the next talk, Jane McGonigal laid out her argument that “Far from being a waste of time, playing games is the most productive thing we can do.”  She too had an audience participation exercise: Massive Multiplayer Offline Thumb Wrestling  (MMOTW?).  We locked hands (both hands) with neighbors until the entire room was a singular mass of connected hands, and then McGonigal gave us the signal to wrestle.

The point she was illustrating was that physical contact and “gameful” behavior helps us make personal connections and feel more satisfied with ourselves.  She drew heavily on research (for her speech and her new book “Reality Is Broken”) and cited a study that shows people who use an avatar that they rate as attractive in an online or video game are more likely to feel self-confident and outwardly flirt with potential partners.  Maybe it was just me, but I felt that thumb wrestling was bad example of the connection she was tryting to show.

In an early session this morning, William Charnock and Andrea Ring of R/GA spoke about brands and branding in the digital age.  They pointed out that the old-line mass media focus on a brand story using metaphor to convey meaning, and that in the digital world it’s a brand system that relies on information for meaning.  But the intersection of those two models of thinking, they claimed, was purposeful play.  They showed a few examples of brands embracing play and outlined some rules for doing “play” right.  “Be Interesting” is hard to argue with, but the others (“Be real in real time” and “Be open experiments”) are idealistic and difficult for most of us to imagine actually happening.  I agree that purposeful play can be a great way to get people to form a stronger connection with your brand, and I would have liked to see and discuss some examples of brands doing it well.

Today’s keynote speaker was Chris “m00t” Poole, founder of 4chan and Canv.as. What I find most interesting about these communities is that they’re essentially a giant playground.  People engage with photoshop contests and riff on memes because it’s a playful outlet for their creativity (even if the subject matter is often nsfw).  I wished that Poole would have given us fewer examples of the kinds of jokes commonly circulated on 4chan and more of his thoughts about what it means that people use his site the way they do.  Why has this form of self-expression taken off?  How could it evolve into something even more purposeful? There’s still plenty of presentations to see, so I bet we’ll hear more about play and its relationship to brand experiences.

A wildcard talk in my schedule was a talk given by Justin Cox on Brand Consistancy that relished in the idea that a solid brand styleguide that locks down look and messaging can hold back the exact thing that it was created to propel – the brand. Perhaps it’s like green-washing, you gloss everything over with one message to the point it all carries the same meaninglessness. An example Cox put forward was a car grill that could have deposited on it any vehicle brand and look authentic as the auto brands all thrive on slick car shots that are not entirely unique to a specific brand.

Cox rightfully says “An integrated campaign feels nice, is easy: like crack and prostitutes” – it is easy to follow one message and image across all channels, but that doesn’t make it right – or good.

An interesting seed was planted in a conversation later in the evening – Star Wars’s duration in popularity stems from the inconsistant restraints placed on the intellectual property. It was allowed to be adopted by fans and rebuilt into the vision of the audience. Inconsistancy abound. But the inconsistancy is not with what makes Star Wars Star Wars – it’s inconsistancy in story line, sometimes tone, sometimes it fails to inheret all the characters even, but it still feels like Star Wars. That’s the keyword – feels. The brand feels consistant in this regard as it is applied appropriately, and like a verbal history its propogation is through those who know and create it.

There is also an inconsistancy with ownership – not only has a fan formed new content in the Star Wars universe, but has also invested time into it’s legacy, that person can feel a sense of ownership of the Star Wars brand. Inclusive ownership is one way of putting it.

Seth Priebatsch’s (SCVNGR) keynote presentation aligned to further this conversation. Though his conversationi relates primarily to location based services and it’s utilization of the game layer, the information fo presents can easily be extrapolated and abstracted elsewhere.

Intially Star Wars’s production was relative to the creator – exclusive ownership as Seth puts it, but the methodology employed by an early Star Wars brand was more around the opponent to exclusive ownership – inclusive ownership.

Inclusive ownership is the idea that anyone can own a brand through contribution. With location based services it’s about showing up, with intellectual property it’s about pitching in, and with products it’s about purchase. However it’s done, what it leads to is a greater infiltration into the concept of culturally owned property.

To this end decentralized networking becomes paramount. Another concept Seth presented built around the idea that many intelligent hands can do complex work, simply.

Imagine what the digest of all fan made content would look like. How many dimensions would it have? How many derivatives of derivates would there be? How many characters would die in one storyline and live in another? A complex twisted cloud of narrative is created, but because it is followed at it’s basic level in different branches the act of one person reading and posting their own is simple.

A brand attempting to accomplish the same thing on its own would be foolish.

I’ll finish this ramble with one last, perhaps pretentious, musing: what is more profound – a brand that is consistent in it’s inconsistancy, or one that is inconsistant in it’s consistency?

Darren is a Sr. Designer in our Calgary office.

At the beginning of the year, I featured a write-up by Paul Worthington, from Wolff Olins, regarding the evolution of branding. Since then, I feel the increasing adoption of smartphones and other mobile technologies has influenced the continued evolution of branding.

The initial three phases of branding, begin with the introduction of TV advertising and its ability to communicate to mass audiences in a visual manner. This was the ‘product age’ were brands differentiated on a unique product feature – creating the unique selling proposition.

However, product features can be easily duplicated by the competition, eliminating long-term differentiation. So, with the introduction of the PC computer and consumer research, we saw the introduction of the emotional selling proposition. This phase aimed to establish an emotional connection with customers by featuring how the product/service would meet their needs and wants.

Building off the desire to connect with the customer and the increased demand for transparency from organizations, we have seen the growth in experiential marketing. Enabled through the internet and social media, brands are able to engage with the customer soliciting feedback and fostering dialogues between the customer and the brand or with other customers.

But now, customers expect to have the best product features and understand how it satisfies their desires, while being able to engage with the brand at any time. So, customers are beginning to want more from their brands – expecting them and their products to add value to their daily lives – any time, any where.

With the growing dependance and demand for mobile devices, customers expect information and tools to aid them when most needed. This is creating the perfect opportunity for brands to extend their experience and provide a meaningful utility that is there for the customer when they need it most.

For instance, Nationwide Insurance developed an iPhone app to create a meaningful service for their customers. When someone gets into an accident they can call the police from the app, which geo-locates where the accident took place. You can take photos of the damage, complete the needed paperwork and send it off to Nationwide to begin the claim process. This is a great example of a brand developing a utility that allows it to add-value to the customer relationship when they need it most, creating the greatest impact further strengthening the trust for the brand.

So, when you go to create an engaging brand experience for your customers, take it one step further and determine how you can develop a meaningful utility enabling the brand to add value to their daily lives when they need it most – in the moment and on the go.

Nikki Armstrong is an Associate Planner in the Calgary office.

Last week I had the pleasure of attending The Art of Marketing Conference with a few colleagues from Critical Mass. It was a great day for inspiration with an amazing line up of Guest Speakers:

• Chip Heath – author of Made to Stick
• Gary Vaynerchuck – author of Crush It and creator of Wine Library TV (http://tv.winelibrary.com/)
• Sir Ken Robinson – author The Element and internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity, innovation and human resources
• Mitch Joel – digital marketing expert and author of Six Pixels of Separation
• Sally Hogshead – author of Fascinate
• Max Lenderman – Director of OuterActive at Crispin, Porter + Bogusky and author of Brand New World

The key takeaway I took from this conference was how important it is to have a strong, unique & motivating force guiding the organization forward in an open, honest and caring manner, because the digital environment has revolutionized the way consumers & brands interact.

As I’ve written in the past, consumers are more in control of an organization’s brand promise than ever before, since word of mouth (WOM) is on steroids thanks to social media. I think Gary Vaynerchuck described how brands must adapt to this digital environment brilliantly when he said that businesses have to go back to small town business values – where customers are people you interact with directly and shouldn’t be treated like faceless numbers. Under this principle, if you don’t deliver on your promise, consumers won’t give you their business and they will make sure to tell everyone in their community about your shortcomings. However, if you do deliver on your promise and care for your customers, they will be proud to recommend your brand to everyone they come across.

To reap the benefits of creating strong brand advocates with extensive reach, brands must change their perspective on interacting with customers in this highly engaging digital world and focus on their purpose to become open, honest & caring. An organization’s purpose stimulates the brand promise. This promise must be captivating & relevant to customers as the market becomes more competitive to give reasons to select/buy your brand over another-especially as brands become more global increasing the competitive set. Sally Hogshead described this as the need to fascinate in order to captivate & win your customer’s attention. This unique point of fascination & intrigue not only attracts customers who appreciate what the brand is all about, but it also attracts talent to the organization who feel they can contribute & help the organization deliver and even overachieve on its brand promise.

Chip Heath mentioned that it’s this kind of emotional motivation (a sense of association & identity) which helps stimulate change in an organization. Considering the importance of remaining relevant to consumers and interacting with them in a way that is meaningful in the current environment (i.e. encouraging socializing, sharing, collaborating & creating), an organization must continually facilitate change. Therefore, brand purpose helps motivate the organization’s talent to innovate & create new products/services to deliver on its promise, giving consumers a meaningful reason to select your brand over another. In addition, the purpose also attracts talent whose values align with the brand, enabling people to work on what they’re passionate about and be in their element, as Sir Ken Robinson mentioned. This makes it easy for them, and therefore the organization, to deliver on the brand promise, creating an organization that is not afraid to operate in an open & honest manner.

So let’s recap. To be a successful brand in this evolved environment, you must have a motivating purpose, which creates a fascinating promise to attract customers and top talent. Once you’ve brought in customers you must deliver on your promise & continue to care/listen/engage with them. If you fail to do this, the strength of WOM will surely lead the brand to suffer.

An organization may not control its brand, but it sure does have the power to strongly influence it by leveraging digital tools. It is important to note, however, that these tools do not replace traditional methods of branding, but rather offer additional ways to deliver on and influence the brand and further emphasize the reasons to buy!

Thanks to all the people responsible for arranging such a great day with an inspiring line-up of speakers!

Nicole is an Associate Planner from the Critical Mass Calgary office.

Nicole Armstrong | Critical Mass Calgary

Yesterday, I read the Fast Company article about the new logos Greenpeace followers have created to provide a more accurate visual representation of the brand, considering how out of place the green and yellow sunburst seems when, as the article puts it, “the defining image of the company is a dark blob spreading across the Gulf”.

This article made me immediately think – actions speak louder than words!

On BP’s site, they define themselves as:

“Helping the world meet its growing need for heat, light and mobility. And we strive to do that by producing energy that is affordable, secure & doesn’t damage the environment“

Unfortunately, the actions associated with BP (i.e. giant plumes of oil as big as 10 miles, long 3 miles wide and 300 feet deep, including oiled smeared beaches and pelicans dyed with crude) have gone completely against the image Beyond Petroleum was trying to create for themselves. This has seriously impacted consumer perceptions. Especially in instances like this, when actions cut to the quick of consumer’s values, the outcry against brands tends to be far-reaching and irreversible. In this case it has even led to new visual cues – like an oil stained logo at left.

What’s more, this is all consumer generated content. There has even been a fake BP twitter page created: @BPGlobalPR:

This page was created less than a week ago, and it already has over 46,000 followers, nearly 8 times as many followers as BP’s official twitter page. This site is making a farce of the BP brand with tweets like:

• It’s official, the phrase ‘All the tea in china’ has been replaced with ‘All the oil in the gulf” – Can’t wait for the royalties! #bpcares
• If Top Kill doesn’t work, we’re just going to toss a giant ‘Get Well Soon’ card into the Gulf and hope for the best.
• Negative people view the ocean as half empty of oil. We are dedicated to making it half full.

The consumers are beginning to reshape the BP brand – in fact they are making the BP brand as dirty as BP has made the Gulf!

It’s like I alluded to in my Semantic Web post – consumers are in control of defining the brand within the marketplace, based on that brand’s actions. And here we are seeing this happen to BP – going as far as consumers rebranding the organization themselves.

Nikki is an Associate Planner in the CM Calgary office.

As I have been reading the recently released Six Pixels Of Separation by Mitch Joel, I’ve been struck by the (still newly) awesome power of the personal brand within a corporate structure.

But what is personal branding? And why should your company care?

Wikipedia defines personal branding as the “process [note: not end result] whereby people and their careers are marked as brands…defined as the creation of an asset that pertains to a particular person or individual…leading to an indelible impression that is uniquely distinguishable.”

This is just a fancy way to say that who you are and all of the stuff you do can be packaged up into a composite image of sorts – especially online.

The Simple Old Days

Personal brands have largely been troublesome for businesses in the past. Strong personalities or images could draw attention away from the business, itself. Personal missteps could drag down whole companies. And these are just the C-level dangers!

Personal brands below the C-level suite were anathema for business in the past. It was unnecessary fragmentation. It put an individual above the company.

It was, in short, unthinkable.

Back To Mitch Joel And Our Fragmented World

Now, however, we are immersed in fragmentation. We get our news and views from a variety of sources through a wide array of mediums. Despite a few head-firmly-in-sand ostriches, almost all of us know marketing, advertising, and PR are forever changed.

It is in this new world, where everyone possesses the power to publish, that personal branding has irrevocably changed. Joel states that in this new environment:

“[I]t is not about how your business connects and communicates in online channels, it’s about how you (or your employees) as an individual build, nurture, and share personal brands. A company is no longer made up of anonymous people building one brand; rather, it is made up of many personal brands that are telling your one corporate-brand story in their own, personal, ways.” (page 126)

Don’t we see this every day? Comcast has Frank Eliason. GM has Scott Monty. But more and more frequently, brands see even greater success by opening the flood gates even more. Over 450 Zappos employees are on Twitter. Can you beat that evangelism?

I asked Dan Schawbel, author of Me 2.0 and award-winning and syndicated blogger at PersonalBrandingBlog.com, what he thought about Joel’s quote.

“Personal brands can support corporate brands in many different ways, such as with online recruitment of top talent, customer support, sales, brand monitoring and free promotion through social networks. By avoiding your most powerful asset, your people, you are at a severe competitive disadvantage. The visibility of personal brands will only help you build a stronger corporate brand, especially during this tough economic climate.

Are all personal brands created equal? I would say not, which is why companies should find their best spokespeople, who have the most passion and value and enable them to share their voice, without legal constraints.”

‘Nuff said.

A Personal Personal Brand Example

I don’t intend to bore you with rah-rah-ing my own agency, but I’d like to present it as an example of one company striving to use all of its human resources.

One of our most popular blog posts last month was From Chasm to Convergence: Technology Closes the Gap Between Manufacturers and Consumers part 1 and part 2. Authors Johnathan Bonnell and Jason Theodor received 14 comments (quite healthy for an agency blog post) and incited conversations on several blogs. So, how did this happen?

The posts’ success originated from many factors, including:

• Personal brand aids in distribution. Johnathan and Jason were already active in social media, having previously gained a following through their blog (Jason), Posterous profile (Johnathan), and their respective Twitter accounts (@jted and @digitalinfant). They used their already existing personal channels to notify their audience to the agency post.
• Internal support. Critical Mass’ internal marketing team has renewed their efforts to use the company blog as a forum for employee posts. In fact, last month Critical Mass’ blog, Experience Matters, featured 13 posts from 11 contributors – the highest rate of staff involvement in 15 months. (So, props to @CeliaJones and @KTBogda for starting – and keeping – this ball rolling.) Both employees and the agency benefit from using the official company channel to broadcast their thoughts.

Through fragmented social media – owned by both the company and employees – word of these posts spread much further than they could have through any one channel.

From The Authors

I asked Johnathan and Jason about their experience and how the personal/company brand interplay affected the post.

From Johnathan:

“I think what worked well with the Experience Matters post was the combination of the work coming from Jason and I, as well as Critical Mass’ credibility.

It’s a combination of what the brand brings (top tier digital agency that has experience in producing high quality work) and what Jason and I bring (authenticity, personal experience, and a unique point of view). That to me is what worked well with the Experience Matters post.”

From my point of view, Johnathan is describing the machinations occurring just under the surface. Correspondingly, Jason highlights how their message then moved from the post outward into the broader world.

“I was thinking about how Critical Mass and employees who broadcast through social media channels create a symbiotic relationship.

Consider a Venn diagram, with Critical Mass in a circle in the centre, and all the employees who broadcast in circles surrounding it [image shown at the top of this post]. When I write something and it is broadcast by CM, it sucks in and filters all of Critical Mass’ extended audience and aims them at me.

At the same time, as an employee but also as an individual broadcaster, I pull in my OWN audience who then get exposed to Critical Mass. Who benefits the most? I’d say both…”

How This Is Different From GM, Comcast, And Others

So, why is this special? And why should your company or agency consider optimizing the personal brands of your employees?

Two reasons are paramount: Many megaphones and home-grown superstars.

Many Megaphones:

While it is great to give Frank at Comcast and Scott at GM the huge company megaphone, it remains just that – one megaphone. By dispersing content creation across the company, each employee generates buzz around their personal post and the company, by proxy.

Home-Grown Superstars:

And while bequeathing a social media position is a great step, companies and agencies should recognize the benefit of growing their own superstars. Find the employee who stands out, puts in the extra time, and has an innate sense of suitable content. Making your company blog a meritocracy allows for unknowns to rise and keeps the focus on the content and the company, as opposed to any particular individual (especially important when considering employee turn-over).

Who Is Your Human?

So, will you integrate employee personal brands into your company’s brand?

Johnathan summed up my thesis well: “The interesting and important idea is that social media and networks have made it easier for companies to develop relationships between their brand and customers by tapping into their employees as brand voices.”

And why is this important? I’m sure I am not alone in saying it is because the most interesting thing to people is…other people.

Social media strategist Jay Baer concurs that social media is about people, not logos:

“Sometimes, the humanization comes from an employee [or customer] that has a unique job or an unusual passion for the company…

[Paraphrased from the video:] We (and our consumers) are attracted to other people, not faceless corporations. 6 under $6 [the Subway advertising campaign prior to the famous Jared spots] is just features and benefits. It’s much more compelling to be human…Who’s your human?”

Who personifies your company? Do you allow employees to use company channels to spread your message?

Or, are you hesitant to tap into employee personal brands? If so, why?

We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.