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On Having Been Brave

When Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World decades before the advent of the Internet, he portrayed future society as an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of understanding the future. His work was a study of the possible, probable and even preferable in terms of this future.

I feel like that same description applies to the two and a half years I’ve spent here at Brave New Media. Now, as I prepare to embark on the adventure of my own future, I wanted to reflect on what it’s meant to me to be here, and to have been Brave.

Huxley’s futurology seeks to understand what’s likely to evolve, what innovations are likely to happen, and to understand what’s truly novel. The team here at Brave New Media goes a step beyond: it’s not just about understanding these things, it’s about creating them.

Pushing past conventions of marketing in order to build new concepts of engaging audiences. Moving beyond hundred-page brand standards to embrace the heart and soul of storytelling as the ultimate framework.

Making even the most stubborn skeptics embrace that digital is not just another medium, that in fact it is our era.

To work here has been a master class in this level of bravery. Bravery that’s not at all chest-thumping, but rather a humble, driving curiosity that will never be satisfied with an answer that begins with the word “because.”

To work here has been a constant study of not only what’s likely, but the outer limits of what’s possible. This is the first place I’ve ever worked where the conversation is never about an idea not being feasible, but instead about when and how it will become possible, and whether or not we’re immediately capable of creating that possibility.

There’s a reason that it takes a compound sentence to describe this place when people ask “where do you work?” It’s because there presently isn’t a widely-used noun for this. It’s an environment of the future.

So as I move on from here and look forward to my own future, it’s with an enormous gratitude to Craig, and Damian, and this team, for having garnered a much better understanding of what that future is: not just in terms of what I do, or how I interact, but who I am.

Alissa A.

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Back To The Future: Timeline for Facebook Brand Pages

by Alissa Ausan (@ajausan)

Timeline format for Facebook brand pages isn’t just a rumor, anymore. As we learned this morning, it arrives March 30, 2012.

Timeline for individual users has been met with mixed reviews, so obviously brands share some trepidation over what the roll-out of this new interface means for their online strategy.

Essentially, it means this: content isn’t just king, anymore; it’s been promoted to Emperor.

Timeline gives personal users a narrative organization of one’s life as lived online. It provides an easy way to highlight significant moments and easily recapture content shared in the past. In this sense, it deeply reflects the fundamental aspect of all great content strategy: storytelling.

The eternal challenge of great storytelling, then, is also magnified: content simply won’t survive if it’s not interesting. Brands won’t flourish unless they tap into the resonant moments in their consumers’ online lives, and present visual content that users will share as part of their own narratives.

The challenge Timeline really puts forward to brands is one that’s existed all along, and is the secret sauce of brands that have had ongoing success with their Facebook strategy. That challenge is for brands to authentically interact with their consumers about matters that are important to them. It’s much different than providing an incentive for consumers to interact with the brand about what matters to the brand.

According to Nigel Morris, CEO of Aegis Media America, it’s no longer about a brand message; the new brand page interface allows brands to get into “rich, adaptive, storytelling,” providing users the opportunity to tell their own stories with and through brands. Of course the challenge is that “we need to talk to them, too.”

Walmart founder Sam Walton understood retail to be a fixture of local communities: in place to anticipate and fulfill the resource needs of its neighbors. In the past few decades, retail has been able to predict and respond to consumers’ needs on a much larger scale and more accurate level, thanks to market research and consumer insights. On Facebook’s Live Marketing Talks, Walmart CMO Stephen Quinn explained that now, social is bringing retail “back to the future” of where it was thirty years ago: a community participant on the local level, with the added benefit of additional tools and metrics gleaned along the way. Facebook’s enhancements to brand pages reflect this evolution and bring brands and communities toward deeper levels of understanding and engaging with one another.

What of paid advertising across Facebook? Undoubtedly this is a mainstay for brands, but Timeline shifts even more focus toward “Sponsored Stories.” Facebook users want to read, see and experience their what their peers are publishing. Timeline and its focus on visual narrative brings this even more to the forefront of smart brands’ strategies on Facebook. Brands who use their paid media dollars to leverage sponsored stories are wisely placing user-generated content tied to their brands’ stories front and center on the News Feeds of millions of potential new customers.

So how do you make sure to stay ahead of opportunities and out from underneath challenges of the new format?

1: Adapt. “A brand will become obsolete on Facebook unless it takes the changes into consideration, because pushed messages will no longer be received,” says Shannon Baker, Director of PR and Social Media at GatesmanMarmion+Dave. “Communication on Facebook would revolve much more around relationships.”

Put it into Action: shift editorial content from pushed messages toward visual content and direct calls to action.

2: Order Up Some Apps. We’re not talking about chicken wings. Timeline makes apps more prominent on users’ pages, so any interaction with your brands’ applications are going to be amplified to users’ News Feeds. Creating an app that shows up on a user’s profile = engagement. Posting a status update facing only your own community = tree falling in the woods. Descartes wins again.

Put it into Action: Develop applications that offer users personal incentive to engage. Contests and promotions are always a winning strategy. Outside your capabilities? Check out Wildfire’s Page Manager.

3: Be Visual. Facebook’s evolving algorithm (as well as the new EdgeRank algorithm) puts increasing emphasis on visual content. Just remember that, while worth a thousand words, a picture could always use just a few more. Always include words with posted media to provide users with context.

Put it into Action: Does your brand have tangible products? Get fabulous photos and post them with status updates. There’s a reason that Pinterest is taking over your free time. People are visual, channels are evolving to reflect that.

What are you most excited about in light of these changes? What do you anticipate being the biggest challenge?

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Preventing Piracy by Censoring Services: What SOPA Means for You

by Alissa Ausan (@ajausan)

Wikipedia is blacked out. Google—ever the homepage chameleon—is wearing a censor bar over its logo. At the heart of the hubbub: confusing acronyms.

When 4 capital letters get together and cause an uprising, one of three things is usually happening:

1)     A building is burning (let’s say a theater, for a little nod to our First Amendment);
2)     Someone has sworn on an FCC regulated TV network;
3)     There’s some controversial new legislation in Congress.

Courtesy of Google.com

What we have here is a solid example of #3. SOPA and PIPA are two bills currently in the legislature. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), otherwise known by it’s less sexy name, House Bill 3261, aims to curb online piracy by targeting foreign websites that illegally stream intellectual property belonging to others. (And by “others”, let’s be honest: we’re largely talking about three entities: movie studios, the recording industry, and Rupert Murdoch.)

PIPA is basically SOPA’s Senate cousin, the Protect IP Act. It is not to be confused with Kate Middleton’s kid sister. Pippa Middleton looks fabulous in jeans, whereas PIPA threatens a free and open Internet.

SOPA and PIPA target “rogue” websites, and the first alarming implication is that this definition of “rogue” is pretty vague. Who gets to decide which sites are rogue, are what recourse is available for sites unfairly branded with a big scarlet “R”?

These bills are new but their aim is not—remember the epic battle of the early 2000’s, Metallica versus Napster?

Pirates of the Internet are a lot like pirates of the high seas: they like pillaging, and are generally not headquarted on US soil. This latter fact is the crux of this legislation: it’s very hard to pursue the pirate sites themselves, so instead, SOPA aims to cut off their access to services provided by US entities that the government can oversee, including search engines and payment systems.

With definitions squared away, the biggest question remains: What does SOPA mean for me, the websites I love, the businesses I buy from, the payment method I use to make purchases, and ultimately my government’s legislated view on censorship?

In an oversimplified nutshell, our current legislation (provided largely by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act) works on a “notify, take down” basis. Copyright owners are provided a process to notify sites of a violation, and those sites take the offending content down. The onus for policing copyright violations rests with the copyright owners. The responsibility of sites (like YouTube, for example) is to respond when claims are made, and remove content that violates a copyright.

Under SOPA, website themselves would be responsible for proactively policing all content to ensure its legal status. On the surface, this sounds fair enough, right? Even if you secretly love streaming Californication from an off-shores website instead of paying for Showtime, you probably know that those sly little sites with the shifty URL’s are doing something illegal. But this seemingly fair assumption gives way to broadly sweeping implications that factor in almost everything that takes place online.

Using YouTube as an example again, SOPA doesn’t only provide that YouTube would be held responsible for all the videos it streams, but also ads purchased on its paid advertising platform, and the content that exists wherever those ads lead consumers. Further, it applies to user-generated links to outside content that are placed on YouTube.

YouTube reports that 48 hours of video content is uploaded every MINUTE. This is 8 YEARS of content added every day. Imagine the implication of holding YouTube accountable for verifying copyright status of each and every new upload, let alone paid ad placement and outbound links.

That’s not the end. Think about illegal sites and the content they offer for a fraction of the legal version’s cost. There’s still a cost. And how is it paid? Online payment portals like PayPal and Visa. SOPA covers this too. Visa and PayPal would be in violation of the legislation if they processed payments that were made in exchange for illegally distributed content. Again, on the surface this seems reasonable. But imagine the volume of transactions per day, and payment portals having the added responsibility of verifying the copyright status of each and every purchase made.

Arguably this is where SOPA makes some marginal sense, much like arguably, payment processing systems are where the rampant online pharmacies of just a few years ago should have been more vulnerable to exposure. But the overarching question still remains: when a site features illegal content, to what degree of separation should guilt extend to unknowingly complicit parties? If YouTube and PayPal can be held accountable for an errant link or an unethical transaction, one that simply served as a bridge between a potentially unaware consumer and an illegal distributor of content, how will that impact those sites’ ability to carry on with business on the whole?

Are the financial interests of those most affected by online piracy more important than the financial impact SOPA may have on others who use the same online systems to conduct business as the pirates do? More importantly: is protecting the ownership of a minority of the content found online worth infringing on the internet’s ability to foster an open and creative exchange of ideas?

We’d love to know what you think.

Read more:
Minnesota Public Radio featured a great discussion about online piracy on Wednesday, January 18. Listen here.

Gawker’s post helps even non-nerds know the SOPA facts.

Google invites you to take action with a quick and easy online petition.

Looking for a Pro-SOPA perspective? Rupert Murdoch unleashes on Google and President Obama on Twitter, Huffington Post has the story.

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If You Tweet It, They Will Come…

by Alissa Ausan (@ajausan)

Friday night was a quintessential dose of Americana at Target Stadium: baseball, brats, and…blogging?

Micro-blogging, to be more specific. The Minnesota Twins invited fifteen power Twitter users to take part in a social media “Deckstravaganza,” bringing a cross-section of social media personalities to the Twins executive deck to amplify the game’s broadcast via their own established social channels in addition to FSN’s televised and online coverage.

I was honored to be among the invited guests, and found the event impressive on many levels. It’s no secret that the Twins organization is top-notch in terms of hospitality, and this was no exception. A catered buffet and complementary brews awaited our arrival, as did key members of the organization including team president, Dave St. Peter (@TwinsPrez)!

I had opportunity to chat with Chris Iles, Twins corporate communications manager, about the team’s earnest foray into the reigning major leagues of social media: Twitter and Facebook. He shared some intriguing insights as to the exciting challenges and opportunities teams face online, where ultimately, all content is owned by the league.

The Twins (like most sports teams) are in a unique relationship with the league when it comes to marketing and a team’s ability to monetize it’s own electronic content. The must-follow John Bonnes (@TwinsGeek)–who is also a new friend, thanks to Deckstravaganza meeting and greeting–puts it best in his post “Twitter and the Twins”. (Bonus: as a long-time Twins blogger he also offers some great perspective on the evolution of social media relative to traditional broadcast channels!)

Secondly, the breadth and diversity of people and perspectives at Friday night’s even reminded me of why the Twin Cities is truly an interactive hub in this country. From rising stars of the online marketing community, to communications executives dedicated to bringing social into their organizations from top-down, to seasoned sports bloggers, to a neighboring state’s Miss USA delegate: this was truly a cross-section not only of who’s who on Twitter, but representative of fans in the stands.

It’s like wandering the halls of the new Twins stadium or hanging out in it’s Town Ball Tavern and seeing photographs of local ballparks from around the state: wherever you’re coming from and whatever type of Twins fan you might be, at least one of us on the social media deck probably represented your voice. Which is the bottom line, after all, when it comes to social: consumers’ voices being heard in company offices, and businesses speaking to consumers directly, in their language, on their channels.

Hats off to the Twins for testing a cool engagement strategy, reaching new pockets of their potential fan base, and having a lot of fun along the way.

Do you follow the @Twins on Twitter? What are your favorite teams/events to follow along with via social media? What untapped opportunities do you think exist for sports teams in social?