Related articles:

• Turning The Tide: An Insider’s Perspective (darmano.typepad.com)
• P&G; Social Media Night: The Results (blogs.forrester.com)

I just wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone that helped P&G last night with our Loads of Hope program.  In just over 4 hours, we raised $50,000 for charity… a sum that was then matched by the Tide brand.  It’s amazing that through the power of Social Media and the support of some wicked smart people, you could raise $100,000 to help a great cause.  You can’t help but feel good about that.

If you want to get a feel for the event, you can check out the Twitter Stream (where Tide was a top 10 term last night) or read the great insights by some of the people that participated last night.

• Ad Age – “P&G Gives Its Marketers a Crash Course in Social Media“
• Cincinnati Enquirer – “P&G Tries Out Social Networks”
• Kevin Dugan – “Being Digital at P&G, Raising $100K for Disaster Relief“
• Peter Kim – “Recap of P&G Digital Night“
• Ian Sohn – “P&G’s Social Media Experiment: Loads of Hope“
• Dayton Business Journal – “P&G hosts Google, Facebook officials for digital marketing experiment“
• Forrester Research – “P&G Tests the Power of Social Media“

Thank you again to everyone for your support.  We helped a great cause and helped to teach ourselves about the power of digital and social media.

And I promise no more mentions of “buy this t-shirt” on this blog or Twitter.

* NOTE: Despite the plugs for Loads of Hope last night and today, this blog remains my personal blog and anything stated here is not the opinion of my employer.

One of my favorite minds in the realm of Social Media has to be Charlene Li.  Best known as the author of Groundswell (read it if you haven’t already), Charlene has been making the speaking circuit in support of her new company, Altimeter Group.  Her latest presentation, The Future of Social Networks, is a must read for any Brand Manager thinking about how advertising and marketing will fit in this new social world.

In this presentation, Charlene makes the point that in the future, Social Networks will “be like air.”  Thanks to universal identity and sign-in, your friends will be wherever you need them… literally their recommendations and thoughts will be at your finger tips.  Just as important, this social graph will help marketers provide more relevent information and advertising to consumers when and where they need.

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Thanks to the folks over the Digital Design Blog for the lead.

Mashable sparked an interesting debate on Friday when Dr Mark Drapeau made the bold statement that Twitter should ban brands from the site.  In the post “Do Brands Belong on Twitter”, Drapeau stated that:

Thinking about what might be best for people, in my opinion Twitter should not only not charge brands for membership, but also ban them altogether. Not unlike Facebook and other sites, every account would represent a person using a real name, location, and picture.

Drapeau explains his stance by arguing that a brand must have a person behind it:

Twitter is about people sharing information with other people. So how do one-dimensional organizational brands fit into this mix? When you really think about it, they don’t. As an analogy, when you call customer service, a human answers the phone (eventually) and tells you their name – and you’re not talking to “Sprint” or “Dell” but rather “Steve” or “Danny.”

Now while I completely disagree with that statement that Twitter should “ban brands altogether”, I do see the rationale that Twitter is about sharing information with other people.  I actually think the brands doing Social Media right are the ones that base their strategy off of this simple point.  If you just throw up your brand logo on Twitter (or any Social Media platform) and expect to have a conversation with consumers, you are doing it all wrong.  You are just trying to act the easy way out with one-way communication.

Brands belong in Social Media, but you need to humanize the brand

On the same day that Mashable said brands should be banned, the folks at iMedia highlighted “How to be a Twitter All-Star.”  Focused on brands like Flying Dog Brewery, Zappos and Southwest Airlines, the article proves the point that brands can enjoy great success on Twitter or any other Social Media platform.  But doing so requires them to humanize the brand by putting a person behind the logo.  And requires them to work with a different set of rules.

Christi Day, the Social Media face for Southwest Airlines, explained their approach as follows:

“Twitter empowers us to be authentic.  Getting real means being empowered, engaged and prepared. It is necessary to have the person in the Twitter role equipped to handle news management, customer communications, to be able to write compelling tweets and be willing to be engaged at all times.”

Let’s face it, this isn’t the type of marketing approach that most Brand Managers are use to.  But Twitter is just the latest technology to force us to think about change in our jobs.  If you haven’t sat down and thought about the impact of Social Media on your brand (and your career), maybe it is time you did.

NOTE:  Michael Brito from Intel joined in on the discussion with a great post on why brands do belong on Twitter.

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Over the past week, it would be hard not to notice the debate around social graphs and in particular, Facebook Connect versus OpenID.  The folks over at ReadWriteWeb summed it up best when they wrote:

This battle isn’t about “single sign-on” – it’s about the payload that comes with it (friend networks, personal data, maybe more), it’s about the developer communities, usability and ownership. It’s very important to the future of our user experience online and it’s a fascinating study in contrasts.

The importance was further embedded in my mind after I finished a stellar presentation from the folks at Razorfish where they envision the potential for social graphs for brands.  As they put it:

We believe that portable social graphs coming from Facebook, MySpace, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are going to transform how consumers interact with digital technology and each other. Marketers and web product managers must take notice today.

So what does this mean for Brand Managers?

[slideshare id=816160&doc=fbconnectrazorfish-1228360493956517-8&w=425]

In my eyes, Social Graphs have the potential to be one of the biggest influences on our Digital Strategies for years to come.

But don’t just take my word for it.  Consider what Forrester’s Jeremiah Owyang outlined as key takeaways from the Razorfish presentation.

• The social graph, when linked with traditional websites will radically change how we find, research, purchase, and support products.
• Reviews, ratings, and critiques about products will become more relevant as you can start to get information from your own network.
• Soon, social technologies will be pervasive and will impact every website –even if they choose not to participate
• Brands, and their interactive marketing agencies, are starting to include social elements in all aspects of their marketing efforts.

Consider these opportunities for brands that Razorfish outlined:

• Key influencer identification:  Brands make a lot of guesses today to determine influencers.  But imagine the potential if you could easily see the number of Twitter followers a person has, the number of Facebook groups they belong to and the number of posts they do on their blog.
• Product suggestions through profile scraping:  Amazon gets a lot of praise for their product recommendations.  But consider how much more powerful these reco’s would be if they could also use all the information listed in your online profiles.
• See reviews from people you know:  Pretty self explanatory.  I’d much rather see reviews from my circle of friends & co-workers than wade through hundreds of reviews from strangers.
• Consult your friends at the point of purchase:  If your Social Graph is connected to an eCommerce engine, you could instantly ask your friends for advice on a purchase without leaving the buying process.

Obviously the potential of Social Graphs should not be debated.  Instead, the debate should be on which format offers the biggest opportunity for Brand Managers.  Should we side with one format?  Or should we offer consumers both sign-ins as part of our digital brand experiences?  Or should we sit on the sidelines and see what consumers decide?  Or should we use our influence as brands (and holders of marketing budgets) to force the companies to work together to create a common Social Graph for the entire web?

What do you think?

NOTE: For another interesting take on social graphs, you should read the thoughts of Louis Gray of Google Friend Connect.

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