RonAmok!

On December 9, 2008 at 6:10 p.m (EDT), Jim Oakes, administrator for a fan site called The Ranger Station posted to the group’s message boards saying that TRS is being attacked by the Ford Motor Company. Within two minutes the first response came in. Over the course of the day, 916 more posts flooded that thread, with all sorts of angry responses to the big bad Ford Motor Company who was obviously picking on a loyal 10-year old fan site. 22 hours and 26 minutes later, Jim Oakes posted Our (my) Agreement With Ford (remedy) to announce the resolution.

Frequently when an event like this happens, we acknowledge how well it was handled, perhaps write a blog post or record a podcast about it, and then collectively move on to the next example. This case contains too many of the subtleties of New Media to do that – subtleties that are frequently overlooked by executives who want to bring similar capabilities into their organizations. Therefore, I’ve spent the past week diving into the details to create a case study about it called:

The Ranger Station Fire: How Ford Motor Company Used Social Media to Extinguish a PR Fire in Less Than 24 Hours.

If you like it, please pass it onto a corporate executive near you!

Tags: Ford Motor Company Ford Twitter Scott Monty ronamok New Media Evangelist The Ranger Station Fire

Not only did I have the great pleasure of seeing Gary Vaynerchuk speak live at the Marketing Profs Digital Mixer last Thursday in Scottsdale, AZ, but as a bonus, I got to chat with him over lunch. Gary is one of those people who can recharge the batteries of everyone around him. He’s the New Media Evangelist’s New Media Evangelist. Very smart and very entertaining. His only flaw is that he’s a NY Jets fan (Says the Pats fan!)

I recorded his entire talk with my Flip camera, but unfortunately the sound wasn’t up to snuff. So instead, I went through his entire presentation and pulled out ten of my favorite Garyisms. Here I present:

Gary Vaynerchuk on…

…content: “If content is King, marketing is Queen and she runs the house.”

Pumping out great content is not enough. The best everything, is not the best business. The best running shoes are not the best sellers. The best song is not number one. The best Pinot Noir is not the biggest seller. Marketing is the difference

…changing the rules of Marketing:

At the end of the day, nobody cares about anything that you do unless you give them eyeballs to convert an action. When the eyeballs go to different places, you better go there. If the fish leave this pond and they go to that pond, be there.

…Word of Mouth:

The Internet is so different today than it was five years ago, it is scary. Word of mouth is on steroids. Here’s why. Because now we have tools that let us keep pushing the conversation forward. The word is traveling. Word of mouth is changing so much.

If somebody came to my store and loved Wine Library and got great service and she was the biggest socialite on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, how many people could that yenta have possibly told? A hundred? But now, if Chris Brogan thinks my wine is yummy, he can re-tweet that sh*t to 18,000 people. And 34 if them may think that is cool. And one of those 34 is me. I have 18,000 and I re-tweet it. And you know who follows me? An editor or producer at Fox — who tracks it back and all of a sudden your consumer is on the show.

Word of mouth, remember that. In your world, marketers, it’s the word of mouth that’s changing. Your fan-base, your friends, they’re the ones that are going to build you. They always were but the difference is that they are no longer armed with sling shots; they’ve got machetes too.

…Social Media technology:

Twitter, and Seesmic, and Facebook…are tools. They’re a screw driver, a telephone, a car. They don’t make a difference. You make the difference. Use the tools.

The tools are there. You just need to use them. Creating a Twitter account or making a Facebook fan page is like buying a house and not furnishing it.

Anyone who doesn’t spend at least an hour a day on search.twitter.com is making a huge mistake. The free data that is on search.twitter is amazing. You can search anything, and see what people are saying about it. You can eavesdrop on every conversation in the world. And it’s free.

…corporate resistance to Social Media:

We’re living in an age where the gatekeepers have been eliminated…companies don’t want to hear that they can’t control the message anymore…If your product your service is broken — you’re broken. ‘Cuz your intern or your cousin or your neighbor is going to expose you on the Internet. Try spending less time and effort trying to control your message and fix your message. You’ll be far better off. Because if you don’t think that every iPhone in 2010 is going to be streaming direct to the Internet live, then you have no idea what’s going on. You’re not paying attention. So if you have cockroaches in the back of your pizzeria, clean that sh*t up.

…Social Media Marketing success:

Everyone thinks this is some magic pill. There’s no magic pill. Here’s what works. Work. You’ve got to work. I don’t want you to spend a lot of money, but I want you to spend a lot of time.

Remember when your grandmother used to say, “Stores aren’t the same anymore.” When the butcher used to say, “Sally, you want some lamb tonight?” You can do that, virtually. And if you are outsourcing these types of activities to interns, then you’re dead. Please don’t do it. Outsource everything else.

It’s all about authenticity and transparency. You can build enormous brand equity…Way too many people are scared to ask for what they want. If you are transparent and authentic, there’s nothing to be afraid of.

…B2B and Social Media:

There’s only one thing that we consume. We consume brands. That’s what we do. When you have brand equity you win. So, depending on your space, my biggest game plan would be to build the biggest brand equity that will be attractive to all the partners in your B2B space. Always build brand.

…results:

Way too many of you in this room have had great ideas, and can make things happen, but you haven’t been patient enough. You didn’t see a return on your investment. It wasn’t worth it. Nothing comes easy. The great stuff is hard. And so I pumped out a show for 18 months, and then finally, one of them who was a New York Magazine writer that became a fan, and she wrote an article, and then Joel Stein read that article at Time magazine and he wrote an article, and then Conan’s producer saw that and put me on the air…and away it went.

…personal brand:

I want my DNA to be my personal brand. I want Gary Vaynerchuk to be my personal brand. I do not want to be known as the wine guy. I want to stay-on-brand that’s coming and flowing through my body, my DNA.

…Personal Brand vs. Company Brand?

You build both. Steve Jobs has personal brand and the company’s got brand. Understand who you are. If you are an introvert, be the greatest introvert that there ever was.

Tags: Gary Vaynerchuk Chris Brogan MPDM New Media Evangelist Ron Ploof Wine Library TV

Yesterday’s New York Times article In House, Tweets Fly Over Web Plan illustrates the intense emotions that surface when the “Get its” run into the “Traditionals.”

Since anyone can now operate their own printing press (blog), radio station (podcast) or television station (qik, Ustream, YouTube), average people now have extraordinary access to traditionally hidden events. The article centers on the ramifications of such access. Today, a Senator with a Nokia N95 camera and a service like qik can take his constituents behind the scenes to broadcast live interviews from the steps of the Capitol. Or, a Representative listening to the opposition’s arguments on a particular bill can Twitter live comments from the House floor. It doesn’t take much imagination to conceive how compelling it would be for C-SPAN to grab those Twitter feeds and scroll them below live video of a House debate! Technically it’s simple. And it’s just the type of thing to give the Traditionals aneurysms.

Traditionals in every walk of life are grappling with the fact that they’ve lost control of their messages. Marketing and PR folks are terrified that rogue content creators can make their lives a living hell. Politicians, who’ve traditionally been able to hide their discussions behind closed doors are afraid that their sausage-making techniques may not play well in Peoria. And the debate isn’t just limited to Washington DC.

Other battles are brewing in corporate America — such as in the area of Industry Standards. For those not familiar with standards and standards committees, they’re simply organizations that help companies build products that play nice with one another. For example, have you ever plugged something into the USB port on your computer and it worked flawlessly? Well, that’s because the manufacturers of the two devices you connected built their products to an agreed upon set of standards — an “Industry Standard.”

Although the nature of a Technical Standards Committees is altruistic, the members that make up those committees are anything but. The only reason high-tech companies invest time and effort into these non-profit organizations is to push their technology as the future standard. And just like a baby-kissing politician, they’ll do whatever is necessary to achieve that goal — independent on the benefits (or pain) it causes the end user.

But what happens if you drop a blogger into an Industry Standards committee? Pioneering Electronic Design Automation blogger JL Gray describes such a scenario in his post, Public Discourse and Open Standards, where the threat of losing control has the Traditionals running scared.

Marketeers, Public Relations professionals, Legislators, Governors, Mayors, Dog Catchers and Standards Committee members can no longer hide behind closed doors. The light of transparency is shining too brightly and is seeping through the cracks of their motives. They will lose control and ultimately lose power — I have history on my side to back up that prediction. But the only question this New Media Evangelist has is how hard they’ll fight before losing the battle? Power isn’t something that people relinquish that easily, and our bloodied past has shown the lengths that people will go to in order to protect their power.

If character is revealed through an individual’s actions when NOBODY is watching, what happens to everyone’s character when EVERYBODY is watching?

Tags: ronamok new media evangelist social media strategist b2b b2b blogging blog coach ron ploof Coolverification JL Gray New York Times Michael Falcone John Culberson Michael E. Capuano John A. Boehner Nancy Pelosi