Honda emailed all of its customers a link to their new spot

You’re probably thinking, oh great, another Superbowl blog post. I know that’s what I’m thinking whether I’m reading one or writing one. But there are some interesting developments worth noting. Given the cost of advertising on the game, the pressure to run a memorable spot and the vocal participation of viewers on Twitter, Facebook and online polls, advertisers have to pull out all the stops if they expect to win on both effectiveness and public reaction.

Here are some practices, if not possible trends, worth noting.

Super Bowl spots are getting longer

It ain’t cheap to run a commercial on the game in the first place — $3.5 million for a 30-second spot.  Nevertheless we’re seeing multiple brands running 60’s and Honda ponying up to produce a two-and-a-half minute spot for pre-game release, likely to be a sixty-second buy in the game itself. The cliché explanation, of course, is the need to break through the clutter. But the real reason is that no matter what you run, the pressure to do well – on polls, on Twitter, in the court of public opinion – is higher than it’s ever been. Twice as long may not mean twice as good, but it does leave more room for gags, humor and story-telling.  Some, like Toyota succeed.  Others, like Acura, don’t. Honda may or may not play as well in the on air :60 as it does in the online version.

Story telling gives frat humor a run for the money

I’m sure the latter isn’t extinct quite yet, but it does appear there may be a little more true story telling this year and maybe fewer formulaic reveals at the end. Honda’s Matthew Broderick spot is a miniature movie. It may not tell me anything I don’t know about the vehicle, but the length of the commercial alone will put it at the right end of the buzz meter and the charm of the performance will no doubt win plenty of votes on USA Today and Brandbowl. Granted that doesn’t necessarily turn into sales or even consideration – just because I like an ad doesn’t mean I’ll buy the car. Brand likeability may be a motivation to buy, but that remains different from liking a TV spot.

While Honda may have nothing to say other than it stands for playing hookie, Audi has some very specific features to share with us. Like the LED technology in its headlights.  The carmaker may have jumped on the overcrowded vampire bandwagon but at least there’s a relatable story in its 60-second execution. And as we all know, stories make things easier to remember and share with others.

User generated spots start to feel old

While I am a big fan of getting our customers involved, it comes with a huge problem: formulaic, highly derivative, re-cycled ad ideas. The Chevy spot in which a college grad thinks he’s getting a car is among the most expected. We’ve seen it done for everything from wallpaper to Pepsi in the famous Cindy Crawford ad. The Doritos dog trick spot is even worse.  Strategy: product looks, tastes, and is so good that customer can’t resist it. Seen it. Done it.  Plus I think Bud Light has used up all the jokes in that genre.

The use of social platforms grows

I am excited to see what Wieden does with the Coke polar bears. Given that they’re the guys who brought Old Spice to Twitter, I’ll guess that the execution of the bears’ reaction to the game, their respective teams (the bears are not rooting for the same team) and even the commercials will be fun, and ideally offer some genuine interactive features for the user. At least I hope so.  If it’s just more “pay attention to us,” but in different venues, that would not be very Wieden like. Will be yet another coup for Facebook.

We can also assume that everyone, or at least Bud Light, will have a hashtag, now that they know what they are.  A year ago, when Audi stuck one on the back end of an ad for a full half second, the press went nuts. “A hashtag!” What an innovative marketing technique.  Now, 12 months later, it’s practically mainstream and expected.  A reminder that it’s not about using the media, it’s about what you do with it. You still need a creative idea.

The “Mikey, he likes it,” metric matters more than ever

It started with USA Today’s Ad Meter. Then came Brandbowl. And now likes and +1s and embeds and views. It’s almost as if the only thing that matters is whether or not the ad and the execution win praise and thumbs ups. We may make believe that other numbers – reach, awareness, consideration, a bump in sales – really matter more. And, of course they should. But I wouldn’t want to be the agency whose work comes in the bottom third of the polls. Or doesn’t get a few million views on YouTube (even though many of those are paid for.)

The pre-release strategy goes mainstream

It was only a few years ago when Superbowl spots were kept under wraps and guarded at all costs until the day of the game. Now, we’re likely to be tired of the commercials before they ever actually run. After the whopping success of VW’s The Force in 2011, pre-releasing one’s Super Bowl spot appears to be the new normal. They’re on Hulu, on YouTube, on blogs and all over Twitter and Facebook. Not everyone welcomes the loss of surprise; there’s something culturally communal about having 100 million plus fans sees the same spot for the first time all together.  But the web has changed that. And certainly a marketer could argue that every view counts so extending them from before the game to after stretches the media budget. In fact the Honda spot went from no views to 4 million in the first 36 hours.

Borrowed interest still reigns

This year we have inspiration from Twilight, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Seinfeld. No doubt there will be more. Some will be clever. Some might border on brilliant. They’ll probably make us laugh or smile as they cover us in the warm glow of familiarity. But something in me wishes that advertising would work the other way around. That we would create the cultural icons worth borrowing or stealing from.

That would be worth even more than an extra 10 million views on YouTube.

Would love to hear your thoughts, and hope to see you in the stream on Brandbowl2012.com. The pre-game site is up now. But we’ll be rocking come game time. Remember: #brandbowl.

Below, one of my favorite spots so far.

Related posts:

Why Shazam won’t work, by @mrahmey

Coke’s Polar Bowl

Thought I’d share a deck I recently used to kick off Strategic Creative Development, a class I’m teaching this semester at Boston University’s College of Communication.

The premise behind the syllabus is simple: advertising is no longer about making ads. At least not all of the time.

Now it’s as much about digital experiences, gaming dynamics, mobile utility, Facebook apps, and creatively leveraging the interest graph as it is about crafting a message. Of course you know that.

Nevertheless, it was fun to create a journey just by looking at the automotive category. It telegraphs the change brilliantly.

In the beginning – presuming we all believe that Bernbach ignited advertising’s Big Bang – there was Volkswagen. Picture of the car, usually. Clever headline that juxtaposed with the image produced a “concept,” often telegraphing as much about the user as the car. “Do you have the right kind of wife for it?”

Twenty years later Amirati and Puris filled the awards annuals with iconic work for BMW. Picture of the car, usually. Clever headline that juxtaposed with the image produced a “concept,”  often telegraphing as much about the user as the car. “You’re judged by performance. Why drive a car that lives by a lesser code?”

No much changed in 20 years. Art and copy and bought attention.

But fast-forward 16 years and all hell breaks loose. BMW films in in 2001. The first big campaign to acknowledge consumer’s use of the web, the idea that advertising could actually be sought out, and that “commercials” need not be limited to 30 seconds. Mini-Cooper in 2002, a forerunner of imitators to come, so to speak, as a CB&B makes a brand social before there’s Facebook or Twitter to help it along.

A few years later we see Art of the Heist, and some of the very first trans-media story-telling. And finally the Ford Fiesta Movement, crowdsourced content that offered both insights about the customer and content to populate the web.
The evolution?

• VW and BMW: ads that buy our attention
• BMW Films: ads that we seek out and find online
• Mini-Cooper: ads that leverage community and membership
• Audi A3: ads that invite our participation and let us play along
• Ford Fiesta: ads that hand the brand and the content over to us

#BUSCD students will get to work on digital platforms, apps and experiences to introduce the VW Bulli

I used some non-automotive examples to demonstrate the dramatic change,too, including a comparison of the infamous Mr. Whipple with the Charmin’s most recent effort: the Sit or Squat iPhone app, a crowdsourced utility helping us locate clean, accessible public restrooms when we’re on the go. We’ve come a long way, baby.

Take a look at the deck if you’re so inclined. It includes some discussion guide and questions that might help anyone who teaches advertising and social media. It offers some thoughts and suggestions for aspiring industry employees to think about. And it has a few nice little sound bites borrowed from the like of Clay Shirky and Contagious.

Plus it includes a fun assignment at the end. The re-launch of the VW microbus, coming again as the Bulli in 2014.

If you’re a student, feel free to download. If you’re a teacher, take whatever you want to and use it for yourself and your students. Got thoughts to share? Leave them below.  And as always, thanks for reading.

(Special thanks to CP&B for sharing all its Mini Cooper work.)

Brandbowl is back with more features than ever

It’s that time of year again. The online Superbowl party that Mullen started three years ago to celebrate the age of Twitter is well into development. If you remember, we began our annual project when there weren’t very many ad types on Twitter. In 2009, most of the industry was still like “huh?”

A few of us at Mullen, the kind folks at Radian 6, and some friends like Sally Hogshead and Lisa Hickey made the effort to get ad land excited. We launched what was then called Trash Talk from the Twitter Section, shared instructions for how to sign up for Twitter, and encouraged people to open accounts. Today it’s hard to imagine that Twitter needed an introduction as recently as three years ago.

Now here we are for our fourth anniversary and we’re excited to introduce some new features. For starters, we’ve made the site, brandbowl2012.com, more interactive. (Note that at this posting it re-directs to last year’s site.) For the first time, users will be able to compare brands head to head in a statistical showdown. Whose ads are getting more attention or more favorable reaction? Brandbowl knows.

We’ve isolated a box at the top of the page, held high by a digital fan, to feature the best tweets of the game. Post something particularly insightful or clever and you could find your tweet featured atop the stream for everyone to see.

Brandbowl 2012 also has some new data to share. This year’s analytics will track the geo location of tweets and also the gender of the participant. Might be interesting to see comparisons between the sexes when it comes to talking about Superbowl ads.

The mobile experience will be better, too. Let’s face it, there’s likely to be more people watching the game with a smartphone in hand than a laptop resting on their knees. You’ll be able to check live rankings and post instantly from your iPhone or Android. Given that it’s a site, not an app, it will work everywhere.

And finally, we’ve been approached by Billboard, which wants to get in on the action. So we’ve offered them the featured tweet board for the half-time show. Madonna better watch out. Billboard knows what it’s talking about when it comes to reviewing music and performances.

Once again, our partner Radian 6 is back with its sentiment data and analytics. And for the second year in a row Boston.com is hosting the site and helping to promote it.  Given that Twitters active user base continues to grow and that social media advertising couch critics is an expanding population, we expect to get some pretty good data.

Hope to see you there. On brandbowl2012.com. Using the easy to remember hashtag #brandbowl. I know who I’m rooting for. The creative.

If you need a reminder or are interested in what this is all about, here’s a video recap of last year’s effort.

The bank we love to hate is looking for a new advertising agency. While still the second largest bank in America – JP Morgan recently snuck past BofA in assets, $2.289 trillion to $2.219 trillion – Bank of America’s stock – both on Wall Street and on Main Street has plummeted. It’s share price toppled by more than half in 2011 and its public opinion fell even more sharply.

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?

Fact: Twenty percent of the price of a new car is for the software.

My car didn't stop itself from hitting this tree, either.

Monday I take my seven-year-old car in to have the front end repaired. I hit a cement block in a local garage because my car didn’t let me know that it was there.  It tore off the bumper and part of the grill. As you can see from the image on the left, hitting things head on is a recurring problem.

If I had an Internet ready car, it would have warned me.  It would also have checked me in on Foursquare so that people would know where I was. It might have taken an Instagram image of the dangerous cement block so that others would be aware of it.

Looks like we can’t escape. The reason I’m still driving a seven-year old car is that it’s an Audi S4 Avant six speed. You can’t buy them in America anymore.  You can’t even get an A4 wagon without settling for an automatic. If you like driving, you don’t have many options these days.

But if you don’t like driving, life on the road will soon be grand. Your car will know traffic conditions before you go anywhere. Since it will have access to your calendar, it will let you know if you need to leave earlier than planned to make that meeting or if you can continue tweeting from the office instead of from the road. You’ll be able to tweet from the road because your dashboard will be an over-sized digital touch screen from which you can update your status, check your Gmail, and access your friends’ playlists on Spotify.

For me the best part will be the satellite connection that informs every McDonald’s I drive by that I’m in the vicinity, so it can send me real-time offers based on how many people are in my car. The heat sensors in the seats will let the cloud know if there are passengers occupying the back seat or just luggage.  And if they include digital scales as part of the system McDonald’s will even know if the car’s occupants are candidates for a Super Size meal or just a burger and fries.

Better yet, if the car can drive itself – inevitable within 10 years, I’m told – I can simply push the steering wheel out of the way and fire up the grill and deep fryer and make my own lunch.  Then I can even share what I’m eating for lunch on Twitter. From my car. While I’m not driving.

Have you ordered your Internet ready car?

Recommended song for this post: Baby you can drive my car.

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

The very fine Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi recently condemned Twitter content, particularly the postings of the many journalists now using the platform, as “depressingly self-centered.”

Journalism used to be about looking out your window on the world and telling people what you saw and then getting out on the street as fast as possible to report on what others saw. Now, it also involves looking in the mirror and telling the world, here’s some miscellaneous information about fabulous me. I’m in New Hampshire! I’m watching Mitt Romney! His hair is frozen in place and so are my toes! More later!

No doubt that the medium enables and invites even the most serious content creators to post any random thought at any given moment. And some do. But in many cases the culprits are the same alleged “journalists” we would see on TV (if we still got our news there) chatting away and making small talk while serving up fluff instead of conducting any real reporting.

Granted there’s no shortage of “who cares” updates. Details that are less journalism than journal. Even regrettable mistakes made in haste.

Not all journalists on Twitter post narcissistic, self-serving content.

But take a look at the journalists who know how to use Twitter – Jennifer Preston of the New York Times or her colleague assistant managing editor Jim Roberts come to mind – and you find reporters who make great use of the medium. Both of those journalists use Twitter to keep followers informed of important stories, to share useful and valuable content, and to call attention to articles from writers other than themselves. I often find interesting and relevant content from sources other than the Times by following Preston.

As a voracious consumer of news I consider Twitter the greatest contributor to journalism since Edward R. Murrow. In an era when most news organizations can’t afford foreign bureaus, it provides access to instant updates and content that reporters like Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Shihab-Eldin and NPR’s Andy Carvin use to make them better reporters. It enables ordinary citizens in parts of the world most journalists can’t get to, to provide updates and alert news organizations to everything from disasters to injustices.  And, in the hands of smart, social media-savvy journalists who understand that content has to go to the reader, not necessarily the other way around, it’s an invaluable means of educating and enlightening the community.

Joan Vennochi is right in criticizing reporters who abuse the medium with incessant personal updates. But it’s important we don’t confuse the medium with the messages we sometimes find there.

We weren’t going to do an original agency Christmas card. Everyone’s too busy. No one wants to take responsibility. It usually has to be approved by too many people. There are arguments over who’s ultimately responsible. So we sent out old-fashioned cards. In envelopes. With stamps. Seriously.

But one day, a couple of weeks before Christmas one of our developers, Joe Palasek, was teaching himself Canvas, the HTML 5 element that lets you draw on a web page.

He created snowflakes that changed direction in response to the movements of a mouse.

Because this developer sits in the middle of the creative department, the CCO walked by, noticed the snow, and suggested, “that’s cool; we should use it for something.”

A digital CD, who also has to walk by the developers on a regular basis, peeks at it and asks, “How would that look on Google Street View?” Joe lays it over Google and it looks pretty good.  He then thinks “Why not change the markers to different icons.” Ten different creatives, writers and art directors sitting within view, randomly throw in ideas. Two art directors sketch up 99 percenters, Elvis, a ginger bread couple, a Menorah and more.

Next, a creative technologist thinks we should make “epic cards” for locations that include Abbey Road and Stonehenge along with a “gallery” page that shows the most popular locations. So Joe, along with co-developer Luke Sideris, builds Snowify.me and wraps it in an interface so people can create and share their own.

A few years ago tech guys didn’t sit inside the creative department at most agencies. Creative directors didn’t start an idea by looking over the shoulder of a programmer and getting inspired by a rough rendering. Creative teams didn’t work so collaboratively in order to make someone else’s idea better.

But my favorite line and sentiment comes from Joe. “I was just playing around teaching myself Canvas. I had something cool, but it wasn’t an idea or a concept until other people made it one.”

Lessons?

1. Put technology and development inside your creative department.
2. Let everyone play and experiment and learn to make stuff.
3. Encourage collaboration beyond the two or three person team.
4. Create a space that fosters collisions.
5. Just do it.

Mike Markkula, right, Apple's first investor and father figure to Jobs. Fired by Jobs in 1997 his parting advice called for re-invention.

Like everyone else in America who still reads I am deeply engrossed in Walter Isaacson’s biography on Steve Jobs.

It’s a remarkably honest and thorough account. It introduces us to Steve’s early influences. It explains the genesis of his design obsession. It reveals his many flaws.

While the entire book chronicles the story of Steve’s life from childhood to the end, every chapter is a story in its own right. You probably have your favorite. The lost battle with John Sculley. The launch of Macintosh. The board trying to kill the best ever Super Bowl spot. (They failed because Chiat Day secretly refused to sell off the media.) Jobs’ questionably hesitant but triumphant return. The complex rivalry between Jobs and his sometimes nemesis, sometimes friend, one time savior Bill Gates. Or on another front, the confrontations with Michael Eisner that prompted Disney to back off its ill-advised attempt to re-write Toy Story.

Readers can cull endless lessons from these stories: how to simplify, how to believe in an idea, how to adhere to standards, how to trust your intuition, how not to back down. In some cases – personal hygiene, treatment of friends and family – we can also learn what not to do.

But one of my favorite lessons doesn’t come from Steve. It’s attributed to Mike Markkula. Upon his official return to Apple in 1997, Jobs fired Markkula from the board and then asked Mike to join him on one of his long walks. Jobs told the former chairman that his goal was to build a company that would endure. He asked Markkula’s advice. Markkula shared this.

“Lasting companies know how to re-invent themselves. Hewlett-Packard had done that repeatedly; it started as an instrument company, then a computer company. Apple has been sideline by Microsoft in the PC business. (by then Apple’s market share had plummeted from 16 percent to four percent). You’ve got to reinvent the company to do some other thing, like consumer products or devices. You’ve got to be like a butterfly and have a metamorphosis.”*

The language and the metaphor may not sound brilliant. But you sure can’t argue with the advice. According to Isaacson, Jobs didn’t say much that day in 1997, but clearly he agreed.

Lasting companies know how to re-invent themselves. I think the same might even be said for individuals.

Got a favorite story from the book of Jobs? Please share. And as always, thanks for stopping by.

Photo “borrowed” from Christopher Dernbach’s blog Mac History.

*Excerpt from Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs, page 320.

Nearly half of online consumers write comments to help others, not to engage with brands

This just in: 50 percent of all social media campaigns go unnoticed. They fall on deaf ears. Consumers don’t give a damn. And brands are wasting time and money. In large part because they don’t know how to listen to consumers or deliver content that matters to them.

At least that’s according to the recent TNS Digital Life 2012 Report. The study interviewed 72,000 people from 60 countries and discovered that consumers, particularly those in the US and UK, are pretty cynical. In those two countries 60 and 61 percent of consumers have no interest in engaging with brands via social media.

Are you surprised? I’m not. In fact, we probably don’t need a study from TNS to tell us this. Look how much mediocrity is out there under the guise of “brand journalism,” or “owned content.” Much of it might feel good to its creators, but it’s a yawn inducer for customers and prospects. The fact that anyone with a laptop and Internet access can be a content creator simply means we have “mountains of digital waste” cluttering a landscape populated by friendless Facebook accounts and blogs no one reads.

While some marketers are getting it right, most appear to be missing an opportunity.  Consider that almost half of all consumers willingly comment about brands on review sites – not to complain or praise mind you, but to share experiences and help others. So they’re using social media to engage. And they’re talking about brands. They just don’t want to have those conversations with the brand itself.

Ironically, when it comes to making purchase decisions, consumers rely as much or more on a brand’s content than they do on peer recommendations. They just want it on their terms and in a relevant context.

Let’s recap. Consumers want brand information and use it to make decisions. They willingly take the time to engage online, albeit for the benefit of each other. And too many brands, at least according to this study, can’t find a way to engage.

Why? TNS suggests inefficient targeting.

My conclusion would be a lack of creativity — a shortage of truly interesting, entertaining and useful ideas. Daily posts on Facebook – polls, questions, promotional offers (though the latter tends to work) – might cut it with a select group of  already engaged fans. But will they hold their attention long term? Or delight them on a regular basis. Or succeed in attracting new customers?

I’m a huge fan of earned attention. And owning content. And being in the publishing business. But the one downside of everyone and anyone — and that includes brands and companies — being a content creator is that just like cable television, the good stuff becomes a smaller and smaller percentage of all that’s out there.

We’ve all seen, and hopefully created, stuff that’s good. It might be an event that lasts a day. Or extends for a month. It could be a price promotion.  Or a new product launch.  A single app.  Or an ongoing story.  Even a Facebook page. When social content is great, when there’s actually an idea to capture our imaginations, when there’s an execution to delight us, we want to engage.

Social media may have changed everything. But not the need for new, interesting, useful, relevant, and well-designed ideas. Let’s make more of those.