Jayme Soulati, Author at soulati.com

Social Media Conferences: Go, Gather, Gab, Gush

04/23/2013 By Jayme Soulati

This is a short and simple shout out to all you social media peeps sitting at home or in the cube with lack of energy.

I encourage you to register right now for the New South Digital Marketing Conference.

This shindig takes place May 17, 2013 in Myrtle Beach, SC, and presenters the likes of Jay Baer (that guy gets around, doesn’t he?) and…you better watch the video to see who else is speaking!

On a final note, social media conferences are #RockHot…you have to attend 1-2 annually to get the mojo up and at ’em!

Using Comics In Annual Reports To Cut Clutter

04/22/2013 By Jayme Soulati

Credit: Loew’s Annual Report via BusinessWeek.com

In Bloomberg Businessweek April 22 – 28, 2013, a story about a comic book as an annual report was fetching enough to inspire this morning’s article.

The funny thing was, I read the name of the corporation using a comic book to inform shareholders as Lowe’s, my favorite giant hardware, lawn and garden store. Alas, the brand is Loews, just a transposition error.

Loews is a holding company for hotels, sells business insurance, and produces energy. Imagine writing an annual report for a company as diverse as this.

Its comic book annual report, also being called a graphic novel, stars Lotta Value, an investment hunter, who gallivants around Loews’s holdings and business units on adventures.

The creative team obviously had to think harder for this one. One critic of comic books in the article said the illustrations are “dead.” I’m impressed, but who am I?

Earned Media

Actually, I’m most impressed with the public relations team that earned nearly a two-page spread in Bloomberg Businessweek for Loews’s first foray into comic books as an annual report; complete with all the illustrations used in the “13-page graphic novel.”

Corporate communications teams that write annual reports need to dig up inspired creativity to cut through communications clutter for shareholders, stakeholders and other interested audiences.

Using comics, however, is a crapshoot. Just the drawings alone have to be remarkable. For a corporation as diverse as Loews, the illustrations and copywriting have to be way above on the creatosphere. It boils down to whether the concept appeals or if the communications team just doesn’t care.

Bloomberg Businessweek’s take on all this is pretty believable, so I’m going with that:

“The bottom line: Loews wants to attract more individual investors to its stock, which has returned an average of 16 percent annually for the past 50 years.”

Using drawings and stories for annual reports means the company is ready to take a few risks and keep on going. With the birth of PI Lotta Value, the corporate communications team has a whole lotta (heh) opportunity to develop more communications vehicles featuring these cartoons.

I wonder if Lotta Value will become the next inspiration for a new TV series ala The Walking Dead?

Michonne of The Walking Dead

The Happy Friday Series: A Chat With Pooh

04/19/2013 By Jayme Soulati

“If I’m going to write about happy,” I explained, “I want that writing to lift the reader to that place – a happy place.”

“Who’s happy?” Pooh asked sympathetically. “Where does happy live?”

“I don’t know – exactly,” I answered.

Pooh looked at me suspiciously.

“You don’t know happy?”

“Happy’s not a person. It’s a thing. It’s a place. It’s how you make me feel. Sometimes. Like when you listen to me – quietly.”

Pooh smiled.

“It’s how the laughter and squeals of children make me feel,” I continued. “Johnny’s smile. Or the first glimpse of a rainbow.

A red, red cardinal chirping good morning to me. A flash of a firefly’s glow on a summer night. The roar of a Porsche at 6000 RPMs.”

“All that?” Pooh asked with surprise and wide-open eyes.

“All that and more,” I enthusiastically answered Pooh – and continued.

“Those first, cautious sips from a hot cup of perfectly brewed coffee – smooth, caramel and uplifting. That brings me to a happy place. Or the fragrant, citrus spray of a bit of orange peel squeezed gently, slowly under the nose.

A morsel of milk chocolate lightly seasoned with hand-harvested sea salt. Fresh bed sheets that were hung outside on a clothesline. These are just a few of my favorite things…

Or the gift of a friend. A lover. Or a stranger. The gift of themselves, their attention and their presence. Priceless!

“Oh! That’s a lot of things,” Pooh said with a heavy sigh. “How much will the postage cost?”

“I don’t know,” I replied as I tried to ignore the implications of Pooh’s question.

Pooh insisted.

“How are you going to get all that stuff here, sorted and portioned? And, then, how are you going to get it all to all of them?”

“I don’t know,” I replied again – but I knew Pooh was right.

Then it came to me – a clever solution. A Joycean epiphany.

“I’ll send it all – all of it and every wonderful detail – in a suggestion,” I told Pooh with excitement.

“And I’ll seal it in a smile.”

Pooh looked at me with suspicion, again.

“That’s… That’s crazy!” blurted Pooh.

“Not as crazy as having a conversation with a stuffed bear…”

Pooh nodded agreement and laughed – in my imagination.

But the real Pooh was actually thinking of something else – a problem that I hadn’t considered.

“But what if they don’t want to go to a happy place?

What if they need to be in the place where they are? A sad place, a serious place or an angry place?”

Pooh had me stumped again.

“Sometimes, we need to be in other places,” Pooh explained.

“Because that’s how we understand and grow – different kinds of learning happen in different places.”

I nodded in silent agreement.

Now, what am I going to do? I wondered to myself.

“I suppose that as long as it’s just a suggestion,” Pooh conceded, “they can take it or leave it. Or better still, they can take it like a gift card; they can redeem it at their convenience; they can visit a happy place whenever they want/like.”

I let out a loud sigh of relief.

“You are a very clever bear,” I said.

“Isn’t that why you talked with me, today?” Pooh asked and grinned.

“To be honest, Pooh, Horton was busy…”

“Horton who?” Pooh asked.

“Horton and the who are two different things. But Horton – if you must know – was busy with a who,” I answered him and lit a cigarette.

“I see,” said a grumpy Pooh.

“Does Horton like and share all your FaceBook posts about Doctor Who, The Walking Dead, and your fan fiction?”

Michonne of The Walking Dead

“No…” I answered.

“But, I’m not as important as Horton,” he added.

“But you are!” I assured him and laughed.

“I was teasing you. Of course, you are important to me, Pooh.”

“I don’t like that kind of teasing,” Pooh replied.

“I’m sorry, Pooh…”

“Don’t do it again,” he warned as he pushed the potato with my face painted on it – off the balcony rail.

Stan Faryna Potato Face

About The Author

Stan Faryna is currently digging 100s of square feet of flower beds for lilies, yarrow, milkweed, and butterfly bushes in his service to Creation. The butterflies, fireflies and hummingbirds should be pleased come summer. Just returned to the US from a long stay in Europe, he’s available for consulting on online strategy, start ups and game development. He’s @faryna on Twitter. He blogs deep here.

Stan Faryna

Soulati Media On The Street: Social Customer Service with @AdamToporek

04/16/2013 By Jayme Soulati

Soulati Media On The Street comes to you “live” (it was live then) with Adam Toporek, owner/blogger of CustomersThatStick.com. Adam has been featured in this series before from Social Slam 2012, and it’s been exciting watching his progress the last year with his social customer service blog.

Adam now has an e-book you can get free if you sign up for his newsletter, and he comes from the world of franchising (I admire anyone who works in that sector).

See what’s up with Adam from Social Slam 2013!

Brand Gamification Is Hot Trend in Social Marketing

04/15/2013 By Jayme Soulati

Credit: ZDNet.com

Whether the term gamification connotes negativity or it’s just a word taken direct from the video game industry to entice, the trend is pulsing through social customer service, location-based marketing, and social marketing.

You need to begin now to view gamification as something that inspires, incents and motivates customers, employees, prospects, and others who engage with your brand in a variety of ways, on mobile platforms, in-person, via phone, or other.

At the core of gamification is a study in human behavior.

There is a burgeoning and nascent industry around the psychology of human connectivity which also stems from how we’re wired to compete.

About Klout

Several years ago, Klout hit the social stage, and many pioneer users were up because the platform was assigning scores on “influencers” based on the number of tweets and +K awarded on a variety of irrelevant topics and levels of engagement. Was that really influence or was it selective tallying of whose on Twitter longer than most?

Flash forward. After many closed their Klout accounts in public protest, I just received last week my first Klout Perk — a free Sony Walkman. My Klout hovers around 60, and I can influence that score by three points sitting at Social Slam and tweeting and Facebooking and Instagramming all day in conference. Is a Klout perk bribery or good marketing? It’s probably good old gamification — incentivizing Klout users to tout, share, post, feel good, and compete, while sharing the good news in a blog post that a free Sony Walkman just arrived. (Yes, I felt compelled to write about that; it’s a high-quality product and I paid nada.)

About Foursquare

Meanwhile, earning badges and becoming the mayor on Foursquare drives my competitive streak. While recently on spring break driving 2,500 miles, I was the leading scorer among my Foursquare friends until someone in the UK racked up 1,000 points literally overnight. My 11-year-old kidlet and I were not happy; so I tried to unfriend that guy to no avail. We knew he gamed the system and cheated while I diligently checked in at each Hilton hotel to earn 50 points in the Hilton Honors program.

With these two examples from one person, multiply that by Pi. I’m not even a gamer; I’m in a much older demographic, and I hardly engage with the platforms that would allow me to compete at a furious pace.

What Gamification Means To Marketers

Website magazine’s May 2013 issue has a short piece by Evan Hamilton, head of community for UserVoice, on this topic. He references Zappos, Wired magazine, and Gartner’s prediction that 50% of brands will gamify by 2015 and 70% of the largest organizations will have at least one gamification app.

What he also writes is of interest:

“Gamification is not about creating motivation, it’s about reminding people of their inspiration.”

Think about that a moment…

Hamilton says…”If you’re trying to get your users more engaged, take a deep look into what inspires them. Then try building in gamification that evokes that inspiration and reminds them of why they’re doing what they’re doing.”

Social customer service is an area ripe for gamification. The frontline ambassadors need to realize that their motivation is not about earning a badge for the most calls completed; rather, motivation needs to be satisfied customers.

I find the psychology of human behavior behind gamification fascinating. As marketers, we need to delve into the crux of customers’ competitive nature and their need to be acknowledged. Blend that core element into product marketing, customer service, and mobility programs and platforms to motivate response via winning beyond just earning a badge or free dessert.

By Jayme Soulati