In fact it’s hard to find much positive sentiment anywhere. The Occupy Wall Street movement targeted the financial giant at every opportunity. A  congressman from the bank’s home state of North Carolina went after them for greed and abuse. Consumers pummeled them with complaints after the bank announced an ill-advised $5.00 fee for debit card use, a decision from which they quickly backed down. And just this past Friday, the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) turned Bank of America’s San Francisco ATMs into “truth machines,” covering them with non-adhesive stickers that offered customers a slightly different option menu. ATM visitors could invest in coal-fired power plants, foreclose on American homes, bankroll climate change, or fund executive bonuses. Pretty funny and clever stuff if you ask me.

Anyway, call me too modern in my thinking, but I’m not sure an ad campaign will solve much of this. No doubt we’ll see executions that pat the bank on its back for funding inner city growth, helping send kids to college, providing entrepreneurs with money to launch new businesses and practicing corporate philanthropy with efforts that include free admission to hundreds of museums.

Such messages might make management and employees feel better, but they’ll ring rather hollow to consumers. Ads will feel contrived, controlled and anything but transparent. Accomplishing the latter is likely to be particularly difficult, given the bank sought to achieve more openness with its last big campaign effort. And look where they are now.

Bank of America is trying to do away with this closed image of banking with its new, $40 million ad campaign that attempts to portray the Bank as more open and transparent. From MyBankTracker, 2009

A recent glance at Bank of America’s Twitter news feed shows an abundance of self-promotional updates, but not a single acknowledgement of recent image problems. I figured for sure there would have at least been a “touché,” tweet to RAN. Even a beleaguered bank needs a sense of humor once in a while.

The suits in Charlotte need more than a new ad agency and a $300 million ad campaign. They need a new mindset for how to solve their marketing and image problems. The “us and them” strategies that yield fee hikes rather than collaborative programs have to go. The bank should “design” its way toward good will and trust, starting with a new way to engage and a better connection with its detractors. I might even do something really radical and invite someone from RAN or Occupy to join the board. Or at least an advisory committee.

It will probably take years and multiple behavioral changes for BoA to prove themselves. You only have to read Bill Bernbach to know that peppering us with paid media to tell us how great they are, or even to celebrate the accomplishments and spirit of their customers, won’t change public opinion.

What do you think? Thoughts on what the banking giant should do? Should I make this an assignment for my class at Boston University? Is it possible to strategically and creatively  turn Bank of America into good guys?

What everyone in Silicon Valley and “Venture Land” conceive of as the real game-changing model involves capturing and capitalizing on the “interest graph. The company that succeeds in doing so would be “close to the Google search paradigm because it would be right in line with demand generation and with discovery that relates to product purposes.” Thus, it is the interest graph that defines the middle ground between Google and Facebook — between search, advertising, and the social graph.

The above paragraph comes from a year-old post in Tech Crunch, following last winter’s Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco.  It was a prescient sentiment for sure.

Just look at the current landscape. The new emerging social platforms are less about the social graph and all about the interest graph. Pinterest, Springpad, Svpply. We’re seeing an evolution from people centric social media (who I am connected with) to interest centric social media (what I care about, want to buy, hope to do.) Users are jumping on platforms like these and others in part because they make it so easy to express one’s self by posting stuff you like or find interesting.  Add in the fun of discovery and the rewards of sharing and it’s likely we’ll see accelerated user growth.

Springpad lets me discover and save stuff I want then finds me the best prices on the web.

For brand and marketers, this is good news. It’s a lot more lucrative to tap into intent and desire than it is to try and penetrate communities where you’re uninvited. Even the best conversation strategists can’t necessarily turn engagement into sales. And it’s become pretty apparent that collecting likes on Facebook will never be the Holy Grail.  Just go to any Facebook brand page and take a look at the metric revealed by dividing fans “talking about this,” by those who “like this.”  The percentages are typically pretty low.  For Harley Davidson half of one percent of fans are paying attention while Old Spice’s number is only slightly higher.

In a recent video Gary Vaynerchuk asks an interesting question. “What’s the Dunbar number for brands?” He notes that most consumers have liked so many brands they don’t even remember which ones. As marketers should know, fans rarely visit a brand’s Facebook page and unless they engage on a regular basis they won’t see brand updates in their stream either.  How many brands can we actually have social relationships with? Ten? Twenty? Certainly fewer than the number of people we engage with.

But we can like or want dozens of products and places. Books we want to read, movies we plan to rent, places we hope to visit, restaurants we know we’ll eat at. Offer that up to a marketer and it’s gold. It’s also likely that the right kind of message or alert or incentive to act, served up in a tasteful and polite manner, will be more than welcome.

Expect to see some pretty interesting (no pun intended) developments in 2012. Pinterest may have great momentum, effortlessly converting consumers’ interests into inbound links for the benefitting brand, but there’s more compelling stuff on the horizon. Springpad, a company whose board I serve on, goes beyond interest to identifying deferred intent, then delivering relevant alerts and information that convert interest to action. That’s a benefit for both a user and the brand whose product or service fulfills an obvious desire. Springpad has a slew of significant enhancements coming in February that will make it even more productive and incredibly social.

No doubt there will be others, too. I recently met a new startup called Aditive that offers yet another way to tap into intent. By making online ads social and shareable Aditive encourages readers to share offers with friends who they know might like the product or promotion being offered.  When executed right, this simple tactic multiples click-through and effectiveness by a factor of 10 because it’s allowing consumers to identify interests that their friends might have.

In March, I’m on a panel at SxSW to talk about deferred intent and the brand opportunities inherent in social media as the interest graph evolves. Between now and then I’ll probably return to the topic a few times.  Until then, I’d love to hear your thoughts, ideas and, of course, your interests.

Thanks for reading.

Other links:

Storify:  The Interest Graph

A recent Twitter exchange between John Winsor of V&S and Marty St. George of Mullen client, Jet Blue

Most successful ad agencies have been built around a combination of the two:  relationships and ideas. The former yields the kind of partnership that lets a brand team totally immerse itself in a client’s business, work as a partner rather than a supplier and take a vested interest in the success of the business.

That’s not to say that relationships are more important than ideas. After all, it’s the latter that goes into the market, attracting attention, generating buzz, driving results. No one gets famous from a relationship; it’s the ideas that make you immortal.

But you could argue that relationships contribute to great ideas in a big way. A strong relationship results in trust, which invites braver thinking. It yields a partnership that encourages client and agency to work through challenges and problems together. And it motivates creative teams to work even harder than they already do. We all want to please a client who appreciates what we do for them.

But if Will Burns, the founder of Ideasicle, is right, the relationship side of things just might be diminishing in value. In Will’s words, many clients care less about relationships and more about getting an idea faster, cheaper and more efficiently. He should know, having held senior account and new business roles at agencies that include Wieden, Goodby, Arnold and Mullen.

In response to that “trend,” Will created Ideasicle, an expert-sourcing agency.  Similar to the crowdsourcing model of Victors & Spoils, which also posts briefs to a vetted community of creatives, Ideasicle calls on an even smaller stable of hand-picked, experienced, award-winning creatives who have joined as “experts.” All of them have worked with Will in one of his previous positions, so he has a good sense of how to match them with assignments.

When Ideasicle secures an assignment – sometimes from an ad agency needing to augment and internal effort, but more often from a brand advertiser looking for fast, affordable access to top talent – it posts the news to members of the Ideasicle community. Those who are available agree to work on short notice as a swat team. They collaborate with each other online — conceiving ideas, revising them, making each other’s concepts better – but stay invisible and anonymous to clients. Hired guns, they work for the joy of creating and the guaranteed payday.

Ideasicle offers clients what it calls "expert sourcing."

Knowing my interest in crowdsourcing and new models, Will showed me a quick peek behind the curtain. The talent is impressive. And despite their anonymity, more and more clients are embracing the model, caring not who works on their business but rather what comes out of the process.

Like Victors & Spoils, which has generate impressive PR and clients – Harley Davidson, Levis’, Virgin America, General Mills, Discovery Channel – Ideasicle is challenging the traditional models as being inefficient and over-priced.

I’m not saying I agree totally with that sentiment. In a world where the only real trend that matters is hyper-connectivity, you could make an argument that brands need a deep relationship with an agency  like the one I work for, where a dedicated hyper-bundled team can deliver creative, paid media, earned media, mobile and digital all working together to produce coherent brand experiences that consider everything from context to culture.

But it’s also likely that the new models, anxious to prove the maxim that abundance breaks more things than scarcity, are to be taken seriously. Perhaps we should embrace aspects of what they do ourselves, finding ways to source ideas from more people and places and deliver them even more quickly and efficiently.

What do you think?

Benetton's new campaign (right) gives a nod to the past and this 1991 kissing ad.

In The Age of the SWARM*, when every news outlet, blogger and tweeter jumps on the story of the moment, it’s no surprise that on November 16, we saw thousands of Benetton-related headlines telling us that the “Vatican threatens legal action,” and “Benetton pulls pope-kissing ad.” After all, that was the day that all hell broke loose over Benetton’s new ad campaign featuring global leaders kissing each other.

But if you looked beyond the echo chamber of RTs and redundant posts there wasn’t much in the way of real analysis. Sure the Pope was PO’d. But was the campaign any good? Is the cause it supports worthy? Was the controversy a surprise or the objective of the campaign in the first place?

It strikes me these are all questions worth considering for those of us interested in branding, advertising and social media. So I thought I’d weigh in.

The Cause:  UNHATE fits perfectly with Benetton’s history of social advocacy

These days it’s common for marketers to jump on the social cause bandwagon in an attempt to generate good will. But taking a stand and supporting causes has been part of Benetton’s DNA for decades. The brand has a long history of social responsibility (or in some cases advertising disguised as such). It’s run campaigns and launched programs to subvert stereotypes, protest war, fight famine and challenge the death penalty. There was even a campaign to encourage entrepreneurialism in Africa.

If you haven’t checked out Benetton’s new initiative, you should. Benetton’s in-house agency Fabrica (working with outside agency 72andSunny) didn’t just launch an ad campaign for the sake of generating buzz, it created  the UNHATE foundation and introduced a series of programs it hopes will contribute to a culture of tolerance. The effort appears to be much more than lip service.  It includes educational programs and support for international NGOs that teach tolerance, a Global Tolerance Index, efforts to promote human rights and support for art programs that bear witness or contrast hatred.

UNHATE may or may not be its biggest or best effort to date – it’s too soon to tell, despite the fact that SWARM thinking wants instant conclusions – but perhaps we should credit the Italian apparel maker; it chose both to speak out and to put resources behind a worthy cause and message.

(I did come across one face worth noting in writing this post: while Benetton is a brand that prides itself in social responsibility, it ranks rather poorly in certain related behavioral traits you’d expect the company to do well in, including carbon emissions, environmental policy and labor conditions.)

The Creative:  Not the best effort

If the main job of a creative execution is to get noticed, then this campaign works brilliantly. But if we want to apply higher standards – taste, cleverness, originality – then the kissing campaign does not rank among Benetton’s best.  Take a look at some of the United Colors of Benetton ads of the past.  The integrated family. The vials of leaders’ blood, all of it the same color. The white baby nursing from a black breast. The images were not only startling, but less expected. There’s something about the kissing joke that feels a little too easy and obvious.

Past Benetton campaigns were more clever and charming and still unexpected for the time in which they ran

Then again, it does give a nod to another great Benetton kissing ad featuring a priest and a nun, produced 20 years ago. I suppose that for the few of us familiar with Benetton’s history you could argue it’s an inside joke.

We all know it’s easier to be critical than to come up with a better idea yourself, but it doesn’t help that Oliviero Toscani, the photographer who created the most famous Benetton ad images slammed the campaign, calling it “pathetic and the product of a beginner’s art class.”  Ouch.

On another note, the website is pretty good. It’s clean, well designed, easy to navigate and invites participation via the Kiss Wall.  Perhaps what this effort and campaign really needs is just some time.

The Controversy:  Intentional or accidental?

If you want your next ad campaign to generate millions of media impressions just add a picture of the Pope in a compromising position. Search “Benetton Pope” and you get pages and pages of coverage. It’s hard to imagine a better viral scenario. The cynical among us have already ventured that the entire campaign was created for no other reason to generate press coverage.

It’s unlikely that Benetton will admit whether or not they sought such a reaction, but it’s hard to imagine it didn’t cross their mind to expect comments like Father Federico Lombardi’s declaration that the doctored photo exhibited “a grave lack of respect for the Pope, an offense against the sentiments of the faithful and a clear example of how advertising can violate elementary rules of respect for people in order to attract attention through provocation.”

Marketers often find themselves deluged by unexpected reaction, whether in response to a calculated risk or a innocent mistake. Just witness Qantas’s #qantasluxury fiasco yesterday. But in Benetton’s case the brand had to know from past experience.  In response to Benetton’s Death Row ads in 2000 Sears removed all Benetton products from its stores and terminated its contract with the company.

Last year Benetton net income fell 33 percent, a fact Benetton attributed to the economy. Perhaps a little free publicity and controversy is just what the brand needs to jump start business and stay top of mind.

It may not be a strategy for all brands, but it seems to work over and over again for the Italian company.

Questions:

• Is UNHATE a good cause? Or is it too generic? Would it be better to choose a cause that would generate customer participation more meaningful than posts to a kissing wall?
• Do you think the work rivals the Benetton campaigns of the past, particularly those photographed by Toscani Olivieri?
• Is generating controversy a smart marketing tactic? Is it too risky? Could more brands take advantage of it?

Please share your thoughts. If you are a teacher, consider using this as a topic and discussion guide.

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The SWARM: a quick and concentrated focus on a topic fueled by social buzz and the inevitable drop off the radar

The SWARM is my new term for the digital echo chamber we live in. It’s an acronym for the Social Wave Amplified by Repetitive Media. We see it all the time. A story breaks — maybe in the traditional press, maybe online, maybe on Twitter — and in order to be part of the story bloggers, tweeters, and every one with a presence in social media feels compelled to link, RT or somehow declare they’re in the know, creating The SWARM.  If you like this acronym, feel free to use it as a hashtag.  If you want to link back to its original explanation here, you can do that, too.

Thanks for stopping by.

More links and images on Storify.

I am adding this video after the fact. Creativity Magazine recap of the campaign in its five best of November 23. A good perspective on the comprehensiveness of the effort.

But many times, the conversation doesn’t end up back on the blog where it started. Instead it gets carried out on Twitter, or Facebook, or Google + where, let’s face it, there are many more people hanging out. You could have been the one to start the conversation, but as far as Google juice goes, you’re not getting much.

Now, thanks to Livefyre’s new social sync, any conversation that emanates from your post ends up back in your blog’s comment section, accomplishing two things. First, and perhaps most importantly, it aggregates the conversation – opinions, provocations, disgreements – in the one place where it really belongs.  Easily accessible for reference now or months from now. (Try searching for old tweets.) And two, it gives you, the content originator, the SEO credit you deserve.

I was one of the very first bloggers to install Livefyre. In part because I’m a big fan of founder Jordan Kretchmer, who once worked for me. But also because I’ve always liked Livefyre’s mission to replace static conversations with dynamic, real-time dialog that actually builds community. Jordan knows that blogging and journalism are as much about conversation and community as they are about writing and reporting.

Livefyre has been at it now for two years and continues to get better.  The company’s platform is now installed on more than 14,000 websites, from small-time bloggers like me to big publishers such as The Sun, Sugar Media, Talking Points Memo and MIT Tech Review.

Given that they just closed a second round of funding and stuck another $4.5 million in the checking account, I’m expecting the platform to get even better.

Do me a favor. Chat this post up on Twitter so I can see how well the new features work.

And let me know what you think of Livefyre as a comment system.

Last year's TNGG FutureM event played to a packed house.

It’s less than a week away. Boston’s second annual week long, multi-location, future of marketing event takes over the city starting Monday, September 12. My week looks insane. Besides attending opening night to hear friends Frank Rose, author of Art of Immersion (you should read it) and Rishadt Tobaccowala (his one word bio simply reads Reinventing) here’s what I’ve got going on.

Tap Into Gen-Y
Monday, September 12
2:00pm–4:00pm
Microsoft Nerd Center

I’ve been invited by FutureM’s student group to moderate a live focus group of Gen-Y doers and thinkers, including student body presidents from schools that include Harvard, Boston College and BU along with young professionals now making their mark in Boston’s startup community. Intended for both marketers who want to get better at engaging with this digital savvy generation and young professionals eager to market themselves, we’ll talk about how to connect with Gen-Y using social media and inbound marketing, the basics of personal branding, and Millennial’s perspectives on what does and doesn’t work as far as their generation is concerned.  I figure I’ll learn a lot. Want to know more in advance? Check in with organizer Harvey Simmons on Twitter.

Digital Media Convergence:  Startups, VC’s and Agencies
Tuesday, September 13
2:00pm — 4:00pm
Microsoft NerdCenter

As advertising becomes more about technology and technology becomes more about social media and connecting people, it makes sense to explore the world from from both sides. BostInnovation has put together a half-day event that brings startups, digital agencies and VCs together to inspire a new kind of collaboration among the three. I’ll be part of a panel on the future of advertising. Comprised of agency leaders and tech-startup CEOs and moderated by the sage Mike Troiano, we’ll talk about the changing digital landscape, how advertisers are (or aren’t) keeping up, and what seems to be effective.  More information here.

Start Something: Speed Networking for Innovators and Change-Makers
Tuesday, September 13
6:30pm –8:30pm
Mullen
40 Broad St.

I’m really excited about our TNGG event where we’re connecting entrepreneurs who have launched and built something with students and recent grads who aspire to start a company, initiate a movement or simply create something new and meaningful. We have a great list of 15 entrepreneurs — Laura Fitton of OneForty, Dianne Hesson of Communispace, Jeff Janer of Springpad, and Jules Pieri of Daily Grommet are but a few — and a format that should be awesome. Speed networking.  Startup aspirants get three minutes to share their idea with and hear feedback from five different C-level leaders. I’ll be joining my TNGG friends Alex Pearlman and Christine Peterson as a co-host of the event. It’s invitation only but if you want to come and haven’t been invited contact Christine on Twitter and if there are any slots left (and you have a good idea) we’ll try and get you in or put you on the wait list.

From Neo to Trinity:  The Matrix Re-invented
Wednesday, September 14
11:30 am to 1:30 pm
Christian Science Monitor Building
177 Huntington Ave. 24th Floor

I guess you could say I helped bring this one to FutureM.  Three rock star women — the inimitable Cindy Gallop, the brilliant Farrah Bostic and Mullen’s own mobile maven Brenna Hanly – are conducting this very cool mobile workshop where attendees actually invent something for the mobile space. If you have ever seen Cindy speak, engaged with one of Farrah’s presentations, or been inspired by Brenna’s energy, you will want to be there.

A description for the event:

Cindy Gallop, co-hosts from Neo to Trinity with Farrah Bostic and Brenna Hanly

It’s time to reboot our understanding and use of mobile as a platform for engaging audiences and customers. WHAT mobile can do and HOW people use it demands a completely new approach to designing digital and social experiences and the abandonment of some of our old habits; WHO uses mobile technology is rapidly changing beyond the early adopters (we’re way past that now!), the tech enthusiasts, the stereotypical young adult male who loves gadgets – forcing us to reappraise who we design these new digital and social experiences for and open up our clients to new prospects and previously underserved customers.  In this action-packed, hands-on workshop, we’re going to demonstrate how all the old digital divides melt away with mobile, and engage thought leaders and emerging talent in a ‘status quo hackathon’.  Get ready to reimagine brands, products or services -using mobile tech – to reach valuable, underserved audiences and shake up the way you think about mobile.

I had hoped to join a couple of other great ones as a speaker, discussion leader or judge, — including The Future of Cause Marketing 2011 and College Faceoff: Social Media for Social Good — but alas, too many other conflicts.

Should be a great week. Hope to see you there.

N Star's Twitter stream left much be be desired

Last night at 3:00 am my power came back on after 40 hours of no electricity. I could hear the NStar crews out on the streets in the middle of the night, working under makeshift lights as they cut away fallen branches, repaired a transformer and restored the neighborhood’s electricity. 

So these guys (and women) really do work through the night like the relentless PR claims say that they do.  Good to know.  At least someone at the utilities is doing his job.

It’s hard to give anywhere near as much credit to the people who manage NStar’s social media, however. Or its website. Or its phone lines.  It’s one thing to expect customers to go without electricity after a hurricane. But it’s another to assume they should tolerate even a temporary void of accurate information in an age of social media and digital technology.

In Massachusetts, NStar offered a call-in number to report an outage. But every time I got through I found little or no information at all about which towns were out or when they might be back online. A website was even less useful. Updated every four hours it simply said the same thing over and over: recent hurricane conditions had produced numerous outages, crews are working hard, you might expect to go without power “for several days.”

A Twitter stream did demonstrate NStar’s ability to be consistent. Here @NStar_News pushed out tweet after tweet claiming that crews were working hard to restore power. Good to know. But what I really wanted was useful information. A response to my inquiries. A way for customers to share updates with each other. I learned more from other users I found on Twitter by searching my community and keywords such as “outage” and “NStar” than I did from the utility itself.

It seems that in this day and age it would have been awfully easy to put up a map of where crews were working and show where they’d go next.  Easier still to create a way for customers to see where others in their neighborhoods or communities did or didn’t have power so they’d have a sense of whether they were an isolated case or part of a large pocket. Why not equip crews with a simple device that lets them automatically check in where they’re working so that families in a blacked out area at least know if they’re being tended to? And at least get a real person onto YouTube providing hourly updates of where you are and what you’re doing, instead of a five month old video about a “Walk for Children.”

My loss of power was a minor inconvenience compared to those whose homes were flooded or damaged by downed trees.  And I don’t fault utilities for taking days, even longer, to restore power when they often have to go house to house. Like I said, the crews were out at 3:00 am.

But in a day and age when we have the tools, the platforms and the technologies to keep customers updated in real time, when we can even invite those customers to be part of the process, there’s no excuse for leaving customers in the dark when it comes to information.

NStar, if you want, I would be more than glad to offer advice and guidance on how to develop better, more effective social media practices.  Let me know.

#fail. Amex brings me stuff I have no interest in.

Have you linked your American Express Card to your Facebook page yet? Apparently thousands of people have in the hopes that Amex will find them truly relevant deals and bargains based on their likes and their friends’ likes.

It was just about a week ago when I included examples like the above – turning the stream into usable content – in a post on the newest social media trends  and obviously this is an attempt to do just that. Though in my Amex case it’s an utter failure. At least so far. While I am a loyal and long-term (35 years) American Express customer (they have the credit card industry’s best customer service), their latest experiment needs a little more work.

For example, it offered me a discount on a cruise (a team of Clydesdales couldn’t drag me onto a cruise ship); savings at Lord and Taylor (I don’t shop there); and an exclusive opportunity to attend Glee in 3D (not a fan and don’t even really like 3D.) The problem of course is that American Express thinks that my friends’ likes might actually coincide with my likes. Wrong. In fact given the too many people I have as friends on Facebook I can’t even say with certainty that I like my “friends,” never mind my friends’ likes.

But there is something interesting in this, both for users and for marketers. If we get to a point where we can harness the stream in such a way that it becomes valuable as searchable content long after the moment of a post, we can use it as individuals to make better decisions and find stuff that we do want. And as marketers we can finally leverage those likes, using them to influence new or prospective customers.

There’s a great post in Business Insider by Jeff Janer, CEO and co-founder of Springpad (note that I’m on the board), which is among the first companies starting to harness the potential of  likes and deferred intent.

While the social web has been highly effective in giving us ways to express our “likes” of things we’ve already done, it has yet to address the other side of the interest graph: the trusted referrals and recommendations we receive from our friends, as well as the things we discover on our own, and want to buy, read, visit, or listen to later. In other words: our “wants.”

The rest of the post goes into greater detail about how to make this work.

The problem with American Express’s service, if I’m using it correctly, is that I can’t filter my friends based on what I know to be their qualifications to make recommendations.  For example, friends who have good taste; or travel to exotic places; or share my taste in restaurants; or have valid opinions about literature; or know their electronics. If that were possible, perhaps Amex would deliver me far more relevant offers.

Hey wait a minute? Sounds a little like Circles. Maybe all of this is starting to come together. Presuming we don’t mind Facebook, Google and American Express knowing even more about us than they already do.

“It’s when a technology becomes normal, then ubiquitous, and finally so pervasive as to be invisible, that the really profound changes happen. “
Clay Shirky

Remember when we talked about social media and mainstream media as two different things? Not anymore. Today, social media is the mainstream media.

True, on Google + we may be talking about the novelty of Google +. And there may only be a few of us puttering around on Percolate or scrolling up and down on Shuush. But despite the never-ending introduction of new social platforms, social media in one form or another has pretty much become everyone’s primary source of content and interaction.

So what does it mean now that we’ve all joined the conversation, mastered the art of engagement and embraced the concept of transparency? Your guess is as good as mine.  But one place to start thinking about it might be the following trends.

Influence gets more influential

Initially I thought that Klout was a superficial measurement of influence.  And while it still has a way to go – it needs to add Google +, Instagram and others for a start – it represents the next wave in social media marketing: learning to identify and leverage influencers.  Already Klout can pinpont influencers by category (sneakers, beer, social media) and geography and help brands connect with them.

Perhaps more telling is the slew of new tools to measure, promote and identify influence. We’ve always had Hubspot, but just this week Edelman launched Blog Level and will no doubt be encouraging clients to use it.

As marketers begin seeking out such influencers it’s only inevitable that more individuals strive to become one. And why not? It’s easier than ever to share expertise, whether blogging, tweeting or answering questions on Quora. And as marketers covet your connections, you’ll benefit further from the validation.

If you’re a marketer you should be developing relationships with all the influencers who can use your product and invite them to play a role in marketing it.  If you’re an individual with any specific area of knowledge, share it, engage, build a following and raise your score. It could help with everything from making a few bucks to getting a job.

Individuals are the new filters

We, as individuals, organize the people we follow into columns on Tweetdeck. We place them into specific circles on Google +. We use them to filter the content that comes into our lives. We create our own magazines with Flipboard and Pulse.  And eventually (see below on the stream beyond real time) we’ll search, using our categories of friends, for recommendations from their past likes, shares and posts. The challenge of course is how any brand or marketer maintains some degree of control over what it stands for as it passes through those individual filters.  We all remember what happens in the first grade exercise where a message gets whispered from one end of the room to another. It comes out as something entirely different than when it started.

For brands and marketers, it’s more important than ever not only to stand for something clear and simple (Zappos and happiness; Jet Blue and service) but to assure it gets passed on and represented accurately (if that’s even possible) by consumers. Clarity will become more essential, along with behavior and tools that mirror what you claim to stand for.

Content generation and sharing gets even easier

Burberry's Instagram via Statigram

Percolate makes it easier to blog by giving users content based on their interests. Instagram has enabled anyone, including the vocabulary-impaired, to fill the stream and attract attention with quickly generated and easily doctored images. Pinterest, a visual bookmarking service has a social component to it that makes it a little like Tumblr, the latter now more popular than WordPress.

What this means, of course, is that more people will generate more content than ever. As they do the stream will rapidly become a waterfall of never ending, rarely memorable digital bits, making it even harder to stand out, get remembered or inspire enagement.  I recently saw someone tweeting about how they had abandoned their nightly hour of television to scroll through their Instagram feed instead. He found the images and imagined stories behind them more interesting than network programming.

For those of us in the business of attention and engagement, we’ll find it harder to be noticed.  We might get on the radar for a moment or two, but the real trick will be mastering the network effect and getting more people to generate content for us. Quantity as well as quality may be our friend. Burberry has 55,000 followers on Instagram, but if 25 percent of them also generated content and used a hashtag calling attention to the brand it would be even more valuable.

The stream moves beyond the moment

I don’t know about you, but I miss 90 percent of what flows through my social networks. Going back and filtering or discovering stuff that might be genuinely meaningful is hard right now.  I can save a tweet, or throw a link into Trunkly, but what if next month I want to search what the 10 top creative directors have shared as links over the past month? What if I want to know what new books have been liked more times by my trusted Facebook or Google + friends?

These capabilities are coming.  New platforms like Postpo.st, while still buggy, could make Twitter a far more valuable resource. I know one company in particular that will soon turn Facebook likes into real social currency. When that happens, we will all have more reasons to encourage social response to our products and content.

Wondering what the value of a “Like” is now? Imagine what happens when it becomes a searchable source of recommendations. Don’t think it matters what someone says about you on Twitter a day or two later?  Think again. For marketers it means sharpening your engagement and content strategy with an understanding of the long term value of a Like or a +1 along with learning to earn rather than buy them, ideally from people whose influence is meaningful.

C2C rivals B2C as Mesh-type businesses proliferate

We have too narrow a definition of crowdsourcing if we think it’s about soliciting cheap content. Its real value comes from the new platforms that encourage sharing. Sharing tools, apartments, cars and more. If you haven’t checked out Airbnb, (or read Lisa Gansky’s bookz The Mesh) do so.  Sure you can find the exotic igloo in Greenland, but there’s a room with your name on it in just about any city.

Fueled by environmental concerns, economic realities and the possibilities of the web this trend is just starting to take off. It will inevitably grow and affect lots of businesses, from car companies to hotels, bicycle manufacturers and toolmakers. And if my familiarity with Gen Y is any indication, there will be an entire generation more open to this way of living and sharing than either Gen X or Boomers.

Brands should create their own versions of these networks. It may be too late for a credit card company to invent Groupon or for a camera maker to think up Instagram. But if you’re a business paying attention to what social media is doing (care to share your breast milk?) then you’re thinking about how to create new business models yourself.

There’s a consistency across all of these thoughts.  And it’s this. The individual –content generator, media force, smartphone toter, uber-connector – is driving the bus. She is influencing, searching, producing, accessing, connecting and deciding with more control than ever before. Time to move beyond the basics of social media and learn to be even more creative in the new spaces.

Thoughts?  Other trends – personal data, images, visualization – you think are as or more important?  Please share.

But yesterday I ordered a Road ID, one of those useful bracelets that cyclists wear in anticipation of the inevitable crash that might leave you just a little too dizzy to tell those first responders who to call. It includes your name, address, contacts, etc. I do actually recommend you wear one if you cycle solo and especially if you commute in traffic.

Anyway, today I got the simplest email. Titled “Road ID – Tell a Friend Coupon,” it revealed in the subject line exactly what it was. The note thanked me, complimented me on my intelligence, and offered me 20 $1.00 discount coupons for any of my friends or followers, which I can distribute simply by giving them this code: ThanksEdward6560457. (Redeemable here.)

It went on to do the most obvious thing that any brand can do in an age of effortless digital sharing: the email asked me to spread the word. It even offered me a cut and paste tweet, complete with a link and the above code along with a gentle suggestion to talk to my kids if I were still among Twitter’s yet to be initiated.

Finally, and perhaps most impressive, instead of being sent by some robot whose address is No Reply, this note came from a real live person — company founder Edward Wimmer — to whom I could actually respond.

Good to know that there are actually marketers our there reading Flip the Funnel and The Thank You Economy.

I’m not in the habit of promoting other people’s products without getting paid significant retainer fees, but I figured that in this case I’d make an exception in hopes that a little shout out for Road ID might encourage them to keep up their respectful and useful marketing efforts and perhaps get others to do the same.

Plus I think that cyclists should wear one. Along with a helmet.

What do you think?  Do you see more bad examples of email marketing? Or can you share other great ones?