Takes advantage of pop culture: Breaking Bad is hugely popular with its fans, so rather than try to compete for their attention, Scheer simply used the Tumblr platform to make himself part of a conversation that was already happening.
Promotes the brand rather than sells the brand: Rather than doing obvious self-promotion, Scheer uses the blog to storytell about himself and build a community for other people who appreciate his general brand of wackiness. Aside from Breaking Bad fans, the blog is going to spur anyone with a taste for psychedelic rainbows and flying Pop Tarts to turn to his friends and tell them to watch. Their interest in Scheer’s work and their attraction to him as a personality will probably follow him long beyond the Breaking Bad finale.
With this Tumblr campaign, Scheer is on his way to joining a class of A-list performers like Betty White and Louis C.K., whose savvy use of pop culture and technology helped them build their star power and propel their careers to new popular heights.
SMIRNOFF: Doing It All Wrong
Oh my God, why did you even bother, Smirnoff? This post shows that the brand has no clue how the Tumblr platform works.
Inane text: You tell fans, “Need drink ideas? Check out @SmirnoffUS on Twitter.” Why should they? What have you offered in this post that would make any liquor connoisseur believe that Smirnoff has anything interesting to say?
No link: If the goal were to encourage Tumblr fans to start following Smirnoff on Twitter, wouldn’t it have made sense to add a link taking them there? Consumers have the attention spans of mosquitoes—you have to do as much of the work for them as you can.
Boring photo: It’s bad to use a still photo on a platform where you have the option of posting exciting, attention-getting animated GIFs. But Smirnoff could have redeemed itself had its creative team at least done something artistic with the photo, like Absolut did back in the 1990s. What value could they possibly bring to their consumers with a stock photo of a Smirnoff bottle? Even simply making the bottle move from side to side would have been more interesting than this.
FRESH AIR: Knows Its Audience
For a staid media company, NPR has shown surprising and admirable savvy as it has successfully rebranded itself from a radio broadcaster to a disseminator of information and entertainment across all digital platforms. Its arts and culture talk show Fresh Air shows a similarly astute sensibility with this example of perfect Tumblr micro-content:
Native art: The only drawback of animated GIFs is that they don’t translate well to the book page, so only by going directly to Fresh Air’s Tumblr blog will you be able to experience the full effect of the repeated loop of this scene from the Merchant-Ivory film A Room with a View, in which George, played by Julian Sands, passionately kisses Lucy, played by Helena Bonham Carter, looking sweet and innocent in her pre–Bellatrix Lestrange days. But it’s totally worth going to the site to see Fresh Air’s perfect execution in their blog post commemorating the passing of screenplay writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.
On-brand text: Normally, this much text on Tumblr would be a turnoff, but this content was created for the NPR audience, and the NPR audience is made up of avid readers. It would have been out of character not to explain why the blog had previously ignored Jhabvala’s death. In addition, the text is so personal and so Fresh Air you really get a sense of the human beings behind the blog.
ANGRY BIRDS: Playing Toward Emotional Investment
The Tumblr blog where this art appears was nominated for a 2012 Webby award. Rovio, the parent company that created a cultural touchstone with the video game Angry Birds, created the art. Angry Birds then combined it with another cultural touchstone, Star Wars, to create the mega-successful Angry Birds Star Wars. There are many reasons why the site is so popular, but there is one detail that warrants special attention, because it shows that the company really gets Tumblr:
They invited the community in. You’d expect the quality of any art put out by Rovio to be of the highest caliber. But if you look at the banner on the left side of the image, you’ll see that Rovio didn’t create this art at all. A fan made it. And Rovio has taken pains to make sure that everyone knows it. That’s an incredibly smart move on the company’s part. The Tumblr family is a deeply committed community, and Rovio wisely realized that if it invited followers to participate in the blog, and not just follow it, they would transfer much of their demo’s emotional investment to the blog. It’s an excellent way to build community and drive brand awareness.
LATE NIGHT WITH JIMMY FALLON:
Fanning the Flames of Greatness
Jimmy Fallon’s Tumblelog, packed with reblogged material from fans creating animated GIFs with clips from his show, provides an excellent example of how to storytell on Tumblr. Post after post, we’re entertained by the lunatic facial expressions and funny lines of his guests and fellow comedians like Amy Poehler and Retta Sirleaf. With this particular piece of micro-content, Fallon uses two animated GIFs as a gateway drug to the hard stuff, piquing our attention so that we’re compelled to click on the link that takes us to YouTube, where we can watch the interview with Adam Scott in its entirety. This content succeeds on every level:
Makes use of content originally posted by a fan? Check.
Acknowledges said fan so that other Tumblr users can find her? Check.
Animated GIF? Check.
Word-of-mouth-worthy? Any Tumblr follower who just turned forty or knows someone who’s about to could share this content, and gauging by the more than two thousand notes it earned, measuring how many times this GIF was liked or reblogged, it looks like they did.
AMAZON MP3: Throwing a Straight-Up Ask
I love this right hook mostly for the mere fact that it exists. It may bear the Amazon name, but the Amazon MP3 store does not have the brand awareness of its juggernaut parent company, placing it much closer in rank to an ordinary retail store. I get a lot of questions about how retailers should play on social, and this is a great example.
It’s interesting to note how much black-and-white images overindex on Tumblr. Obviously the Amazon MP3 store is working with promotional materials for Justin Timberlake’s album, so maybe this choice was just lucky. Regardless, the team knew well enough to take advantage of a striking, dramatic image.
The copy is crisp and on voice for the audience and for the album: Just two words—“affordable luxury”—make us feel like we’re getting a premium product for a bargain. The link takes us straight to the product and store—no hunting around necessary. And finally, right there in the copy, the price—$7.99 through Monday. Nothing coy, nothing bashful. This is not a half-pregnant ask.
This micro-content encapsulates the message of this entire book: If you jab properly beforehand—through bringing your customers value in the form of a chuckle, or infotainment, or breaking news—you can say “Buy now!” and “Buy this!” without sounding like a carnival barker. Strong jabs buy you permission to throw unabashed right hooks.
WWF: Undermining Its Own Great Resources
There is a very small part of me that takes pleasure in critiquing this piece by the World Wildlife Fund. It’s a little retribution for all the pain I suffered after the WWF forced the World Wrestling Federation, which also went by WWF, to change its name to World Wrestling Entertainment.
World Wildlife Fund has some gorgeous photographs on its blog. This picture of a man with a small child in his lap is one of them. Unfortunately, WWF has done nothing to make it memorable. There is nothing boring or dry about the issues championed by the WWF, and yet their Tumblr blog is about as inspiring as an empty sandbox. There is no story to grab our attention, no reason why we should stop to find out who is depicted in the photo, and no clear call to action.
Dry, boring text: “Just uploaded one new photo on Flickr.” And??? Then, when we click to Flickr to see the photo, we’re confronted with such dull copy it feels like it was cut and pasted from a database. There is no storytelling going on here.
Weak call to action: It’s not until we click on
the link to WWF’s Flickr account that we learn that this is a picture of a community leader in Borneo and his five-year-old son. It informs us that this community is engaged in something called the Kutai Barat project, which “helps communities along the River Mahakam secure land tenure rights and livelihood skills.” Then, the only additional link takes you back to the WWF home page, not to a page dedicated to the Kutai Barat project.
WWF has access to all the resources it needs to tell some of the most compelling stories on Tumblr, but here it missed the mark, and badly.
DENNY’S: Showing Some Delicious Moves
This is just one example of the tremendous work Denny’s is doing on Tumblr.
Great GIF: They are pros with animated GIFs. In this post, a fork repeatedly scoops up a soft heap of steaming hot pancake dripping with syrup.
Great link: Above, if you can tear your eyes off the GIF, you’ll see four huge links to the company’s Twitter feed, Facebook page, Tumblr archives, and corporate website. You can’t miss them.
Great text: The text plays off the popular YC song “Racks,” demonstrating that this brand, traditionally popular with families and retirees, knows how to talk to Millennials, too. So much so, in fact, that a blogger who goes by the name Synecdoche, a New York–based writer with a large Tumblr following, felt compelled to reblog this post to all of her followers. For a corporate brand to get praise from an anticorporate personality like her is like getting welcomed to the in crowd. It’s the kind of word of mouth that has major impact on your business, the kind that can drive a car full of hungry rap-loving Tumblr users to pull into a Denny’s parking lot.
TARGET: Hitting a Bull’s-Eye
To see a pitch-perfect example of native storytelling and a strong right hook, take a look at this page on Target’s aptly named Tumblr blog, On the Dot. It shows a dress. Specifically, a skater dress with a keyhole back. And in 3.7 seconds a flashing animated GIF allows us to see every version of it—black with studded collar detail, black and white stripes, bright floral, turquoise with white polka dots—while at the same time demonstrating the swishiness of the skirt.
The piece has a clean look: The animated GIF of the dress stands out against lots of white space and a bare minimum of elegant black script.
Direct call to action: Immediately below the GIF, three links (the polka dot dress is in-store only) let you pick the dress you want and take you straight to the Target website so you can buy it. The tags are perfect, too.
Somebody at Target knows exactly what he or she is doing.
GQ: Showing Mad Smart Tumblr Skills
To celebrate Mad Men’s sixth-season premiere, GQ announced “Happy Mad Men Day!” on Tumblr, accompanying the post with a photograph of many of the show’s characters indulging in yet another cocktail hour. Here’s why it scored more than two thousand notes:
They paid attention to pop culture: Millions of people were waiting with bated breath for the return of their favorite midcentury ad execs. GQ was smart to capitalize on their enthusiasm for the show.
Smart links: Not only is there a link below the photo, but the photo itself links to a meaty article, “The GQ Guide to Mad Men,” which GQ published a year earlier on the eve of the show’s fifth season, serving to remind followers where they can go to get more in-depth Mad Men coverage.
Appropriate tagging: Tagging is an extremely important part of Tumblr culture, and here GQ made smart use of it, including keywords like “Television,” “John Slattery,” “Jon Hamm,” “Don Draper,” and “Mad Men.”
Questions to Ask About Your Tumblr Content
Did I customize my theme in a way that properly reflects my brand?
Did I make a cool animated GIF?
Did I make a cool animated GIF?
Did I make a cool animated GIF?
ROUND 8:
OPPORTUNITIES in EMERGING NETWORKS
Every year, the world becomes a little smaller, a little more social, a little more connected. Creating content that allows us to share our experiences, thoughts, and ideas in real time is becoming an intrinsic part of life in the twenty-first century (in fact, it’s getting to the point that we’re making a statement when we don’t share or choose not to connect). That’s why it’s smart to consider the jab-and-right-hook potential of platforms that aren’t particularly social. It’s just a matter of time before users adapt them, or demand that the developers adapt them, to provide the social layer people increasingly expect and crave. Whatever isn’t a social experience now soon will be.
LinkedIn
Launched: May 2003
200 million members
Every second, two new members join.
More than 2.8 million companies have a LinkedIn Company Page.
Executives from all 2012 Fortune 500 companies are members.
Students and recent college graduates are the site’s fastest-growing demographic.
I predict that in the next twenty-four months, checking in to LinkedIn will be like checking in to Facebook—a regular part of our daily existence. Each social network will serve a distinct and vital purpose in our lives, like rooms in a virtual Downton Abbey. Facebook will be our dining room, where we entertain and get to know one another; LinkedIn will be our library, where we get deals done.
LinkedIn is already working hard to encourage more content creation and evolve from mere networking tool to professional hub. Users can now share articles, reviews, and examples of their work with their connections. The site has also launched the LinkedIn Influencers, where leaders contribute articles on their topic of expertise. All of this mirrors much of what can already be done on Facebook, and LinkedIn still has a long way to go to match the juggernaut’s scale. But in one regard LinkedIn does have an advantage. As an exclusively business-oriented site, it provides a natural platform for B2B marketers, who have so far not seen much reason to bother with Facebook. If you’re an office supply company, or a lawyer, LinkedIn can be an interesting place to tell your story, especially now while there is little to distract your fans. It is fertile jabbing ground for all business and brands, though, B2B or not. For more incentive, just imagine the spending power of the LinkedIn audience. LinkedIn’s relevance hasn’t reached a level where you need to post content at the same pace as you might on other social networking sites, but it would be wise to keep yourself in play here.
LinkedIn will be where you have the most freedom to indulge in long copy. Consider what people are looking for when coming to the site. They’re hungry for information, they’re looking for a job, they need to find an in or an edge, they want to meet professionally like-minded people. There have to be creative, smart ways you can make yourself indispensable to someone in that frame of mind. You can afford to be less flashy, maybe a little more serious and thoughtful. Or maybe not. Maybe you steer clear of slang and OMG and LOL, but you still add a welcome breath of levity to a serious environment. The key to giving your brand momentum on LinkedIn will be to offer native content that’s completely different—and that has completely different value—from what you offer fans on other social networks.
Google+
Launched: June 2011
500 million users
The future of Google+ as a viable marketing platform is one big question mark. Right now, Google+ is where Twitter was in 2006 or 2007. It has a big selling point: its implications for a Web property’s SEO. Google gives preference to its own products, so having a Google+ account influences your search rankings. Still, so far it’s really only the early tech influencers who are there, just like they were on Twitter in the early days. The platform hasn’t caught on as quickly as Twitter, however, because there are more alternatives now than there were when Twitter came on the scene. Most of the world just isn’t that interested in Google+ as a stand-alone product, because it offers little that people can’t already get through Facebook.
The numbers say differently. Google+ points to its 500 million users as proof that it is steadily gaining a fan base. But the numbers
are as overinflated as the lips of a Beverly Hills housewife, because Google requires consumers to sign up for a Google+ account if they want to register for any other of their product accounts, like YouTube. Look closely and you’ll see that a large percentage of all those Google+ accounts are dormant. It is completely reliant on the scale and power of Google’s other products.
But if Google Glass takes off in the way I think it will over the next half decade, Google+ will have a shot at rivaling Facebook for consumers’ hearts. Why? Facebook and all the other social media platforms are scrambling to adapt for mobile. But Google Glass could conceivably replace mobile devices. It’s going to allow users to record everything they see, and stream it live. It will be capable of putting a map directly in your line of vision, show you Google results on command, and it will be entirely voice-activated and hands-free. With that kind of technology, who’s going to need a cell phone?
Now, there are two ways this could go. Facebook will want to develop an app to let its users see what their friends are streaming on Glass, and Glass would understandably want to take advantage of Facebook’s scale to build its user base. However, Google could also decide to make the product a closed network, requiring anyone who wants to see content on the glasses to log in through a Google+ account. If the glasses capture the public’s imagination, and the only way to use it is through Google+, they’re going to start spending a lot more time in those now-dormant accounts. As Google continues to natively integrate Google+ into all the other Google services and devices that people already love—Search, Gmail, YouTube, and Android devices—it’ll be a knockout win for Google. And since the platform is so similar to Facebook, it won’t require marketers to wrestle with reinventing their content strategy.