John Hope-Johnstone

A couple of years ago, I had the honor of giving a talk about Social Media and Tourism to a class at Oregon State University. From that talk I made good friends with two of the students who both joined our firm as social media interns and one went on to become a full-time and excellent Social Media and PR Manager in the company.

What amazed me about this bright young woman was that her tastes were not of her own generation, nor even the generation behind, but they were for the 1950s!

As a CMO  I am intrigued about the power of nostalgia and I don’t think we are taping into it strongly enough. (With some notable exceptions like Chevy’s ad campaign for the Super Bowl. Take a look at this ad “Chevy Runs Deep”  .

As a country the U.S. in the Naughties (2000s) is a highly nostalgic place. In some respect we could replace “nostalgia” with the word “longing”. Many have a longing to return to a time when the weather was more stable, when the economy was more stable, when the dollar was strong and we actually exported something.

Any marketer who is involved in engaging people through social media today can do well to remember that from ages 28 through into the mid 60s our population needs comforting and they often get that comfort through nostalgia.

The word nostalgia derives from the Greek “nostos” (return) and “algos” (pain), suggesting suffering due to a desire to return to a place of origin.

The Future Laboratory co-founder Martin Raymond states that; “for many, the recession has been one stress too many. Hence, we are witnessing the rise of Revivalist thinking, a nostalgic yearning for all things past and comforting. Folk themes, folklore, folk fashions and the re-appearance of furniture and products with a quasi-nostalgic theme and a rose-tinted nostalgic viewpoint are all becoming more prominent.”

It’s not only the millions of Baby Boomers rushing into their mid sixties who are nostalgic. A recent study shows that many 28 to 40-year-old Gen Xers strongly reminisce about past times. If your last purchase was Star Trek, a Wispa, shoulder pads or school friend, then don’t fear, you are entirely typical of someone who lived through the Noughties,” says a report from financial services provider Standard Life, which concludes that more than any other decade, the 2000s were very retro.

Damian Barr, who wrote Get It Together (2004) about struggling 20-somethings, fears the generation that reached adulthood in the 1990s and 2000s could find themselves handicapped by excessive nostalgia. “We are less prepared for our difficult present by having had a very easy time of it when we were very young,” he says. “We grew up in a boom – we are living in a bust.” (Stephen Robb BBC News).

Tapping into nostalgia is tricky. You must know the generational cohort you are trying to reach very well. You must listen to their conversations and understand them and your message must be subtle and only hint of nostalgia not slap them in the face with it.

Thanks for reading. Please include a comment about your thoughts on nostalgia. Also, subscribe to the blog for more Social Media and marketing thoughts.

John Hope-Johnstone

A few weeks ago I was pondering Google + and where it was going to fit into my HPR Social Media Seminars and into my own social media world. I have no intention of abandoning my over 4,000 followers on my facebook business page and I don’t want to just repeat content from one platform onto another. I was trying to figure out how I could add value to Google + and my new friends on that platform. Usually a glass of wine or two helps but in this case I was stumped.

Then, a small unpretentious epiphany shone through the darkness…. why not ask my new G+ friends how they felt about Google + and the difference between it and facebook. WOW! Think of that, a marketing guy actually going to ask fellow consumers what they think, how original.

Well, some of the responses spelled out the obvious differences: Facebook still has the lion’s share and will be hard to beat as it comes up to nearly a billion possibly in 2012. However, Google has the advantage of “integration” with a huge arsenal of available tools to integrate with the social media platform such as: Google News, Entertainment, YouTube, Gmail and its Android platform and more. These will help create a fluid social experience on Google+.

It also has two failures behind it with Google Wave and Google Buzz. I say “failures” but like all good failures they were learning steps that Google had to take to finally get them to Google +.

Two responses from my new Google + friends were just what I was really hoping for. They speak about the present difference in the psychographics of the Google+ user over facebook. This, of course, will change over time.

Here is my original question as posted on Google+: 

“Hi my G+ friends, I have a question that needs your expertise. My firm teaches Internet and Social Media Marketing for brand promotion purposes to medium to large organizations. Personally I am floundering with Google +, which I like a lot, trying to determine how to differentiate my social media message on Google + vs Facebook. Any ideas?”

Here are the two answers that helped me a great deal in my quest:

From Dennis Rivera:

On G+, you have tech-savvy individuals and a ton of creative types looking to share, connect, and build a large community of individuals based on content or interest. So, regardless of whether or not you went to high school with someone, you’re connecting with the person because he or she is interested in the same things that you are. Businesses who think that they will have a single business-related presence on G+ will probably not do so well here. They will need multiple personal accounts, where employees are genuinely building connections with their audiences, relying on the intangible more than the tangible. I think that the Google employees on here are a perfect example of how businesses need to use the network. They are people first: interacting, sharing, being genuine, but at the same time, they are building brand loyalty.

This is a little scattered, but it’s midnight and I’m tired. I guess the general message to businesses is: The G+ community wants engagement.
Cater to the community and you will win.

From John Norris:

Maybe it’s just the folks I’m following, but Google+ seems to be a bit like Quora, some very knowledgeable folks in here at the moment. The communications the platform lends itself to seem to be more dialogs, and constructive ones at that.  Can’t quite put my finger on it, sort of a vibe I’m getting. Businesses will need to up their game to do well in Google+ at this time.

Thanks Dennis and John for your responses. They helped me a great deal.

Thanks to you for reading this post. I invite you to comment and add your thoughts about the use of Google+ and also subscribe to the e-newsletter if you haven’t already. If you have, great to see you again.

John Hope-Johnstone

At HPR Internet and Social Media Marketing Seminars we not only coach corporations and organizations to market their brand by using social media and other Internet marketing tools, but we also help them develop integrated strategies for their marketing. The two key words are “help” and “integrated”. If there is anything the last three years have taught us, it is that unless social media is integrated into a complete marketing strategy, including as many of the marketing tools as economically possible, its likelihood of success does not rise above the level of “brand awareness”. The other key word is “help”. We have found that if HPR develops the strategy solo it has less adoption possibility than if it is born out of collaboration.

Another discovery is the disturbing rise of a split in some marketing departments into legacy and Internet marketing under one individual and social media marketing under another.

The marketing industry has spent a lot of time working to get all the marketing tools under one leadership. One VP/Director of Marketing who conducts all of the instruments (tools) of marketing, not just a couple. Today, we hear more and more use of such terms as “marketing and sales”, “marketing and social media”, this is a backward step and leads to a bunch of marketing silos and should be discouraged. Sales is a tool of marketing just as social media is a tool. Social Media may fall under the PR department (in fact we believe it should), but it is a tool none the less. The fact is, there are many heads of marketing that really don’t understand social media and are confused by its role in the total marketing picture.

At HPR we encourage campaigns that integrate all the tools of marketing to create a maximum effect. Our collaborative strategies are often campaign oriented rather than only about brand awareness. Our campaigns utilize legacy media such as print, TV, radio, (where applicable), and Internet and social media marketing.

We don’t discourage ongoing “brand awareness” marketing, in fact, we believe it is vital. However, we develop our strategies around campaigns/promotions that involve a beginning a middle and an end and that are highly targeted and always have built in objectives and analytics to measure success. In this kind of marketing environment using as many of the tools of marketing that a budget will allow, being highly targeted, and highly objective oriented, the campaigns are nearly always successful.

We encourage you to subscribe to this weekly (sometimes we fail to be weekly but we try) blog,

and also we would appreciate your comments.

Thank you for reading.

John Hope-Johnstone

I have been enthralled with permission based text marketing ever since I stepped off a plane in Las Vegas, turned on my phone and received a text from the hotel welcoming me to Las Vegas and offering a 20% discount on my dinner in their main dining room. This was my first experience with permission based text marketing and I thought it was great!

I had given the hotels text marketing company my permission to use text marketing after making the reservation. (It was suggested on the reservation confirmation). I texted a given number, and in the text copy placed the name of the Casino. I could opt out at any time (and I did upon leaving the hotel at the end of my stay). I received four special offers during my stay, which saved me a goodly amount of dollars.

While text marketing at the moment is not main stream and seems to be used primarily by restaurants and attractions, it can be used by any bricks and mortar business who would like to develop a text client base to fill quiet periods. Its advantage, IT’S IMMEDIATE!

There are many good text marketing companies out there to be searched, but you must choose your provider carefully. Look at their client list, are they of the same quality as your company? Contact their clients and ask if they have been happy with the service and make sure that their policy is to NEVER resell your clients to other marketers, this could massively hurt your reputation.

The tourism industry is always looking for ways to measure conversion, could this be one of them?

In the advertising fulfilment piece, or on-line, it can be mentioned that IF the prospective visitor comes to stay in the region they should open a text account during the time they visit so that they can receive specials. As soon as you see action on that account through the analytics provided by your text marketing company, you will know that conversion has or is about to take place.

Thanks for reading, would love to have your comments or have you subscribe to our blog.

John Hope-Johnstone

Does social media marketing really work? Fewer than 1 percent of Website visits come directly from a social media URL according to research just released by customer satisfaction analytics experts ForeSee Results.

That’s not terribly exciting news. However, 18% of people surveyed say that they are influenced to visit a brand’s Web site OR purchase that brand because of social media. So here is my answer to that very important question, “does social media really work?”

NO! Not by itself but as part of an integrated marketing program it becomes a major influencer and a can double or triple the results of a regular campaign. At HPR Internet and Social Media Marketing Seminars and Coaching we have proven time and again that as part of an integrated campaign social media is a powerful tool. Left by itself it is valuable for brand loyalty but is not a “force” marketing medium.

John Hope-Johnstone

First of all I want to say that I have no authority to write this blog except hours of watching YouTube videos of the Arab uprisings and now the U.K.
riots looking for trends. Notice the difference in terms (uprisings/riots). I do lecture on social media but I am
not an expert on terrorism.

What has happened in the Arab world is an uprising against unjust dictators. What is happening in the U.K is not an uprising it is a series of flash riots by hooligans.

What some people are now calling “The Arab Spring Syndrome”, seems to be an epidemic of social unrest whether legitimate (Arabs), or just drunken hoodies looking to fulfill voids in the emptiness of their lives (U.K.),  both have one thing in common…social media and mobile devices that speed up communications that can organize a flash riot.

If we watch the TV interviews and YouTube comments during the Arab
Spring, they seem very different in their demographics than the U.K rioters.
The first model (Egypt) were more educated, slightly older (although many young), and if not upper income, certainly more middle income.

In the U.K. the interviews have shown unemployed youths with no
particular agenda that they can articulate, other than the “fun” of
creating mayhem and getting back at “the man” and most importantly
robbing and looting.

Clapham Junction

While the term social media is being used extensively in this
debate, really the kind of flash riots seen in Great Britain are being
organized more through mobile texting than social media platforms such as facebook.

It has been reported that Blackberrie’s BBM (BlackBerry Messenger)
has been used (mainly from one picture of a rioter), which is a proprietary
Internet-based instant messenger application included on BlackBerry devices which allows messaging between BlackBerry users. It was developed by Research In Motion (RIM), maker of the BlackBerry device (Canada). Exchanging messages is being used in private discussion or chat groups, which allow multiple BlackBerry devices to communicate in a single session and can spread news instantly.

Twitter could possibly be used with the use of hashtags, but it is too easily followed by the authorities.

In early August 2011, a similar event took place in San Francisco, where government officials shut down four cell locations along the BART public
transportation system in response to chatter about anarchist groups organizing
to protest the fatal shooting of Charles Blair Hill by Bart Police on July 3rd.
The move effectively silenced the undergrounds’ subway cell service from 4 to 7
pm and the protest ultimately did not materialize. However, as retaliation the
group hacked the Bart database.

The question now is one of possible overreaction. Prime Minister David Cameron and British Members of Parliament have proposed possible new powers for police in terms of how they could limit or block social media from becoming a tool for organizing riots.

Blanket shutting down of social media platforms or IM platforms, merely legitimizes those rioters that are just anti-everything and gives them credence about an Orwellian big brother Government.

Bringing in the troops, which has also been mentioned but smacks of
the very dictatorships we are against and how they handle political unrest.

Giving police the knowledge to beat the rioters at their own game of social media, by putting out disinformation to confuse their efforts via social media, would be far more effective.

Also giving the police the ability, with mobile black-out units, to create limited dead zones in certain areas where cell and Wi-Fi become unavailable is an option.

Basically, it is going to be a modern war of wits as to who can out tech the other, the hoodies or the authorities.

While all this is going on. Sociologists and researchers need to find out why in so many societies including America, have become so polarized.

After the last Congressional debacle over raising the debt ceiling. Congressmen and women went back to their constituents and according to reports,
(if they were accurate), where told to “fight harder for what your party
stands for” by their voters. This sounds like a country very divided and not in the mood for any kind of reconciliation.

In the U.K., good citizens are rising up to protect their property and their families. Even though sadly, three young men have been killed protecting
their community by thugs. This is the way a society shows that it is “we
the people” who govern a country not thugs.

Could it be the polarization of wealth into the hands of a few, after
the collapse of the Industrial era and the breaking apart of the middle class could be a root cause for all this polarization?

Your considered comments are, as always, appreciated.

John Hope-Johnstone

One of the most successful tools in social media marketing are “promotions”.

So what differentiates a “promotion” to just brand awareness? A promotion has a beginning, middle and end. It is of a relatively short duration and it has a set of very well-defined objectives along with an overarching goal that closely aligns to the overall marketing plan.

Although I had been involved with social media marketing since 2005, I really burst onto the scene in 2008.

During that December a series of bad storms over the Holiday party season threatened to close some of our top restaurants who rely on such parties to carry them through the doldrums of January.

We created a promotion that utilized some well established email lists, several popular business facebook pages and a massive number of Tweets.

All of this promotion had one very clear-cut aim, to drive people to a special landing page that would explain the new promotion called “Corvallis Culinary Week”.  If they entered their first name and email they would receive a link to download a coupon for two that would allow them to have a dinner at one of our top restaurants for only $10.

Food prep for Culinary Week @ 101

1,600 people downloaded the coupons within two days. Reservations were required and waiting lists were established by the fourth day before the first week of the promotion even began.

An added benefit was the establishment of a “foodies” email list that could be used by our restaurant community to communicate with folks who like good dining.

The promotion still continues in January each year and with about the same results. The local Gazette Times newspaper stated at the beginning of the 2011 Corvallis Culinary Week, “ Corvallis Culinary Week makes its valiant return Jan. 17-23 for the third annual celebration of local fine dining, an event so glorious it’s as though it were touched by the hand of God.” Fine praise indeed.

Here’s the tip. While social media marketing was the main marketing tool, we didn’t rely on solely on social media. Like all good marketing we integrated it within all the appropriate tools available to us. However, the insert in the local newspaper and a very small TV campaign all pushed towards the special landing page. Total campaign spend (small market) was about $2,500.

For this campaign my staff were honored by being presented with the Governor’s Tourism Award for a Social Media Campaign.

Governor's Award

HPR Social Media has also created special social media marketing promotions for other types of organizations. A recent one was for a large upscale health club in Corvallis named the Timberhill Athletic Club.

The goal was to use social media to promote a two-week complimentary membership for anyone clicking through to a landing page entering first name and email and then receiving a special downloadable membership pass for two weeks. They had to take a tour and exchange the downloaded pass for a smaller more official one from membership services.

Our objective was 80 downloads for the campaign over a twelve month period. Club management put a hold on the campaign after the club received 61 down- loads and 51 club visitations after only two months.

So what is the moral of the story? Promotions work well for social media, either Public Relation or sales promotions. Management love the because they are highly targeted and it is easy to define an ROI from the marketing expenditures. While costly in staff time it is not costly in marketing dollars compared to returns. Lastly, it proves that social media really works!

Thanks for the read, please leave me a comment on any promotions that you have enjoyed with social media.

John Hope-Johnstone

Although I have no empirical proof, I don’t believe social media would have been the phenom back in the 1950s as it is today, even if we had the technology.

The reason is simple, we were a different society back then. We were closer geographically to our families and friends. We were working more in manufacturing and most expected to stay with the same company for a long time.

Today 38% of Americans believe they are their own brand and hold no allegiance to any employer, as their employers have show little allegiance to them.

We have become a nation of small businesses, mostly service industry, and we have become our own personal brands. We search for that 15 minutes of fame to help promote our brand, and gossip seems to rule the day.

Steve Rubel, EVP of Edelman stated duruing a recent presentation at the Mashable Connect 2011 as reported by Erica Swallow, that we are entering an era on the Internet, where users are looking to find “validated” sources within the mist of the information overload that we all experience.

I agree with Mr Rubel. In our HPR Social Media Marketing Seminars we offer two sociological reasons why people respond to social media marketing:

1) Social Validation: Social Validation occurs when consumers do not have enough information to make independent opinions and so hunt for external clues such as; popularity, trust, rankings, etc.

2) Social Badging: Social Badging occurs when people validate their persona through the purchase of brands, or by the organizations with which they align. (40% of people who join a facebook business page do it for Social Badging. Exact Target and CoTweet Study 2010).

As Mr. Rubel stated in his speech: “The reality is, there’s too much content and not enough time.”  He related a startling fact “more content is created in one day in 2011 than existed in entirety prior to 2003. It’s no wonder that people are looking for “validation”.

Edelman publishes an annual “Trust Barometer” which gauges attitudes towards business, governement, NGOs and media across 23 countries.

In 2006 their study found that people trusted their peers the most when forming opinions about brands. Rubel points out the rise of social media to explain this finding.

In 2011, the Trust Barometer showed a dynamic shift, with academics, experts and technicians becoming the most trusted sources. The trust in comments by peers has declined by 4% since 2009.

This shift in authority Rubel proposes that people in 2011 are searching for validation or authority in content, through a cloverleaf of different media:

1. Traditional media which encompass the big media companies that have survived and thrived in the digital era
2. Tradigital Media, which include digitally native media companies that are often niche-focused blogs and have high social amplification.
3. Owned Media, this is content created by the brand themselves.
4. Social Media Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, driving increased engagement between consumers and brands and by pushing consumers to other trusted media spheres.

Rubel points out that there are five steps to using this new “validation” or “trust” clover leaf:

1. Elevate your Experts: Those that have street-cred and have followers who respect their opinions already.
2. Curate to Connect:  The word “curate,” lofty and once rarely spoken outside exhibition corridors or British parishes, has become a fashionable code word among the aesthetically minded, who seem to paste it onto any activity that involves culling and selecting. So in this aspect it means to search, obtain and code the most valid and important content in your field. Hence, becoming a trusted thought leader.
3. Dazzle with Data: “People on the Internet do not read” Rubel says. They will read 20% of a Web page before moving on;  57% never come back to that page. “We are a blobal planet of fruit flies.” Data and informational must become more visually entertaining.
4. Put Pubs on Hubs: Publish your company’s content where the fish are, rather than expecting the fish to find you.
5. Ask & Answer: Be a thought leader, be a source of good information. Empower all of your staff to be thought leaders and encourage them to ask and answer as much as possible. It builds staff knowledge and respect.

John Hope-Johnstone

Hola, the Internet has provided marketers with a sea of data that has sent them into a happy dance that doesn’t stop. That is, until they realize that they really didn’t know what to do with it all, or what it all really means.

An entire industry has grown up around this “happy dance” whose own self interest is to perpetuate the dance as long as possible.

Like all new knowledge we tend to take it to extremes and create new languages around it that sound important but really tell the same old story.

The study of how we gain knowledge is called Epistemology. Epistemology is one of the core areas of philosophy. It is concerned with the nature, sources and limits to our knowledge.

It tells us that while our technology changes and diversifies, humans really don’t change in their core needs and how we learn to satisfy those basic needs.

While there are many steps in a consumers travel towards a purchase, it all begins with needs, wants and desires. Most marketers do not have a budget to create a need or a want or a desire but they do have budgets to tap into those that already exist.

While the purchase cycle can be as complex as seventeen steps or more, it really can be boiled down into three major steps:  1: Brand awareness (if they don’t know you exist it is unlikely that they are going to search you out). 2: Information fulfillment (you need to be able to explain why your product is better than the competitions). 3: Conversion (you need to give incentive to the consumer to buy your product now, and then you have to KNOW that they have purchased).

Yes, I know there are many marketers out there right now loading their flintlocks ready to take aim at me. I agree with them that the above paragraph is a massive oversimplification. However, if there is one word I want you to have as a take away from this blog post, it is “simplify”. It doesn’t need to be all that complicated.

I used to be a pilot a long time ago and we learned at flight school that there were primary instruments, secondary and down to tertiary. You need a primary dashboard to tell you that everything is flying along nicely. These were your airspeed, artificial horizon and rate of climb or descent. Of course, the compass was kinda cool as well. When something went wrong you went to your primary, then to your secondary instruments and then you had a check list to go down. You need to have the same in today’s marketing environment.

Take all the analytics that are pouring into your marketing pot and see if they legitimately fall under one of the three following steps: 1: Brand awareness. 2: Information fulfillment. 3: Conversion. You DON’T have to throw the rest of the metrics out, they certainly can provide good secondary information but they wont be a primary ones.

Next ask:  ”If  we find that brand awareness, information demand, and conversion are slipping, what will we do with the metrics under each title to reverse that slide?” If the answer to one or more, is nothing, they should be relegated to being lower down on the information scale.

Next suggestion: “Don’t be a purist!” All the marketing data and information in the world is never going to exorcise the need for a good dose of intuition and yes, luck.

When I hear people say; “fans on facebook are not a good indicator of the growth of brand awareness because they might have blocked your posts from coming onto their profile page, or they might have died or left the country.” I laugh. It is true, they might have done one of the above but this has ALWAYS been true!

When we used to snail mail a brochure to a prospective consumer, we didn’t know if they had passed away in the interim, or had prospect regret and would chuck out the brochure without even reading it, or have moved. You cannot make a perfect marketing world. Keep your eyes on the consumer and not completely on the technology and platforms with which you communicate.

Oh, and lastly, don’t give up the “happy dance” just make it a happy dance that you have simplified all the data and feel that you are gaining good knowledge from it.

Thanks for reading this post, please give me your thoughts on the data that is pouring into your marketing bins. Please follow us on the following social media platforms: