How I learned to stop worrying and love Being The Product

You've probably heard everyone from bloggers to writers to watchdog groups decrying the fact that, when it comes to Facebook, Google or Twitter, you're not the customer, you're the product.

It's true, after all. These companies make their money by selling advertising space and by collecting and selling your personal data.  The more data they collect from you, the more money they make. Everything from your Google search history to your favourite books and movies listed on your Facebook profile is gold to companies who have figured out how to turn this into a profitable revenue model.

People have been decrying this for years. When Mark Zuckerberg declared – almost two years ago – that the age of privacy is dead, he was skewered by the media almost as badly as his movie version was in The Social Network. After all, nobody likes to feel like the product. It's demoralizing, right?

Maybe. But maybe not. There have got to be some benefits to being the product. So for my 2012 New Year's Resolution, I've decided to make peace with the whole concept. After all, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Therefore, here are my top 5 (ever so slightly tongue-in-cheek) reasons why Being The Product isn't so bad, and is actually kind of cool:

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The Shanahan videos: Lessons from the NHL on social media crisis management

Hockey season is back. And you know what that means, right? Yep, time for more what-hockey-can-teach-us-about-marketing posts. (Come on, you know you love them.)

This week, the social webs are abuzz with the series of videos being released by new NHL disciplinarian Brendan Shanahan, explaining each disciplinary decision being made. The videos, released after each controversial call, suspension or – conversely – decision not to suspend a player – explain, in a matter-of-fact tone, the reasons behind the decision.

Hockey bloggers and journalists are agog over these videos. Here’s why marketers should be paying close attention:

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Why does digital measurement lag behind traditional?

In digital marketing, we like to claim that we have a huge measurement advantage over traditional marketing. After all, we can measure everything, right? Every click, every interaction, every tracking parameter, every bounce, every goal conversion. The technology that we have takes the guesswork out of measurement and allows us an unprecedented amount of insight into exactly how each and every person is interacting with our brand.

The traditional marketers are at a disadvantage, or so the theory goes. The television and broadcast guys parrot the value of eyeballs and impressions, but can only guess wildly at what impact all those impressions actually have on sales. Even the direct marketing guys – the traditional measurement gurus – have to add codes to their pieces, and even then, they only have data for the small percentage that come back. They make sweeping generalizations about things like demographics, geographics, pass-along rates, and more, in lieu of more solid data. They run expensive market research surveys to try to correlate the data. Measurement in traditional marketing has always been a bit like decorating a grain of rice with a paint roller – effective, but not very precise.

Digital marketing ought to be better at measurement. Miles better. Instead, however, we're still lagging behind. According to eMarketer, as recently as last year, 50% of marketers cited "achieving measurable ROI on my marketing efforts" as their leading priority, but only 16% were measuring ROI for their social media efforts. When asked to describe in one word how they felt about online measurement, the words that marketing professionals came up with most frequently were "confused", "nascent", and "stalled".

Clearly, the potential for measurement in digital is enormous, but we have a way to go before we get there. There's a gap, in other words, that exists between the vision and the reality.

Here are a few reasons why this might be so:

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Anonymity, compartmentalization or multibranding?

Are we seeing a trend towards more anonymity online? What are the implications of increased anonymity? Does being anonymous necessarily mean having something to hide?

These are some of the questions that Mitch Joel asks in today’s blog post: The Next Big Thing Online Could Well Be Anonymity:

The knee-jerk reaction to anonymity is that the person creating the content has “something to hide.” It’s logical, but it’s not the entire story. Some people simply feel more liberated to speak their mind knowing that who they are will not become a focal point within that discussion.

(Full disclosure: I’ve been working for Mitch and the team at Twist Image for a little over three years now. You’ll likely see quite a bit of content from the folks at TI on this space. That’s what happens when you’re lucky enough to work with smart people who write thought-provoking content.)

I think an excellent point has been raised here. And it occurs to me that we may be talking about the wrong thing. Instead of “anonymity” versus “transparency”, are we really not simply talking about compartmentalization? Or, to put it another way, a personal version of multibranding?

In fact, I think this is a particularly appropriate topic for the inaugural post of a new blog, launched by a person with a digital presence in quite a few arenas. So here goes:

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The headspace experiment

The experiment: A new blog to discuss thoughts and ideas from the scary recesses of my brain related to the vast fields of digital marketing, social media, strategic marketing and advertising.

The objective: Contribute something of value to the conversation, without simply adding to the clutter.

The expected outcome: Optimistic.