The Most Interesting People to Follow on Twitter, Set to Music
The first installment of #SocialSong Saturday was surprisingly well received.  Gini Dietrich simply responded, “I love this!”  Mark Schaefer enlarged my head when he tweeted this: “A breakout creative moment in social media history.”

And in case you’re wondering, #SocialSong Saturday isn’t just a chance to embarrass myself in front of untold, endless audiences.  It is my way of adding some substance to the accepted style of #FF recognition (which, in its overuse, may soon be about as valuable an indicator of influence and import as, say, LinkedIn endorsements).  This week, I shower a little well-deserved Twitter Love  and thanks for useful content on:

@juntajoe
OK, so Joe Puluzzi is hardly a diamond-in-the-rough discovery; everybody in the gathering storm that is content marketing knows of Joe.  Still, he is not one to be taken for granted.  This week, I read his 2013 predictions compilation and also watched his webinar on the state of content marketing.  My favorite factoid? Putting video – just the image of video – in an email boosts the open rate by 53%.

@westfallonline
Chris Westfall is the “elevator pitch champion,” but his post “Transform Your Presentation in Six Words” applies to every form of marketing communications.  It reminds us that marketing is not about us, not about our clients… it’s about what’s in it for the consumer.

@heidicohen
The Princess of Pinterest hardly needs my stamp of approval, but I do appreciate her posts, which are consistently useful for either a) learning the social media ropes from scratch and/or b) keeping up with the incessant pace of social media change.  This week’s example:  “Are You A Content Rockstar,” which concisely serves up a spectrum of recent content marketing success stories.

@psfk
PSFK is a content creating innovation lab that creates bespoke communications and… well, suffice it to say, they are an eclectic, unpredictable bunch, and their massive online magazine-cum-cultural-compendium never fails to amaze, amuse or – gasp – educate. Consider these offerings:

• Lego Record Player
• Shakespeare invented the words “advertising” and “puke” (related?)
• A real wonder of a bread stays fresh for 60 days!

@daaveey
David Hitt owns Splat Productions, a digital marketing firm in Philadelphia and runs it with a compelling combination of design, technical and street smarts.  We’ve got an     on-going discussion about the future of SEO, content marketing and all the attendant considerations – including link building.  As to the latter, he was kind enough this week to tweet along a number of recent articles.

@mashable
Yes, I know that absolutely EVERYBODY tweets fom Mashable.  Nonetheless, I don’t think we should become inurred to the charms of Peter Cashmore’s cash cow.  Besides, where else are we going to find out that one-third of young adults use social media in the toilet?

@tamicann
Tami Cannizzaro, IBM Director of Marketing, is a relatively new inclusion in my Twitter stream; I’ll be attending an online chat of hers, and also watching a webinar with @TedRubin, which she recommended.

@PamMktgNut
Pam Moore needs no introduction to most of you, but I include her here because a) if you haven’t heard of her in social media circles, you should and b) she finally followed me!

Twitter has been a terrific place for learning, meeting, engaging – I hope this Twitter Love song has introduced you to a few people that you’ll really enjoy following.

Why is “the power of story” such a hot topic these days?  Largely because, in our over-marketed world, many feel that the straightforward sell, sell, sell, no matter how well targeted, is simply worn out, is increasingly ineffectual in convincing and converting ever-more sophisticated (or at least overexposed) consumers.

STORIES GET PROSPECTS TO SELL THEMSELVES ON YOUR BRAND
Instead of selling the prospects, brand storytelling – at least when it gets to the self-evident truth of a product or service – gets the prospect to engage, imagine, and ultimately sell them selves.  (Of course, our perspective at Creative on Call is that all successful branding and marketing depends on identifying and communicating the simple truth about a brand, whether you’re creating an elaborate story-telling campaign or writing your next corporate brochure.)

A couple of very different forces in the popular story-telling culture  –  Peter Guber, the Hollywood power broker, and Ira Glass, the NPR maestro of telling real stories – share their perspectives on the art of a story well-told:

And now, for something completely different, Ira Glass, creator of “This American Life.”  This is the first in a series of four short videos which are talking about what goes in to pure storytelling for TV and radio, but which are also instructive for anyone wanting to inject the power of story into brand communications.

I always find the annual Edelman Trust Barometer fascinating – but this year as much for one principal assertion by Richard Edelman as for any of the specific findings.  Noting that trust in government is down dramatically – and calls for regulation up significantly worldwide – Edelman pushes a need for business to shift from claiming a “license to operate” and instead “earn the license to lead.”  All theoretically well and good – but only actionable if you buy one simple but foundational assumption that’s almost buried in the executive summary: the claim that “Business is a force for good.”  Not “can be a force for good,” but definitively “is a force for good.”

“BUSINESS IS A FORCE FOR GOOD.”  CAN WE BUILD BRAND TRUST ON THAT ASSUMPTION?   In a capitalistic system where the highest corporate responsibility – or , if you still believe Milton Friedman, the only corporate responsibility – is to enhance shareholder wealth, that bald statement, if meant to apply to the greater good, is either naïve (and Richard Edelman is anything but) or near-sighted (which after decades of focusing on the day-to-day needs of business, any of us can be).  His forward to the 2012 Executive Summary also states that “Business should not go to the edge of what is legally permissible but rather stay focused on what is beneficial both to the shareholders and society.”

At least he’s employing the conditional in that statement –  but I’m more inclined to lean away from the blanket acceptance of the inherent goodness of business and toward the direction that Don Peppers and Martha Rogers explore in “Empathy, Self-Interest and Economics.”

ACKNOWLEDGE SELF-INTEREST IN SERVING THE CUSTOMER’S INTEREST   Acknowledging self-interest rather than some supposed corporate inclination toward self-sacrifice, Peppers and Rodgers note, as Edelman does, that companies need to earn trust through demonstrated, and not simply declared, empathy:

“Companies that want to earn their customers’ trust have to be willing to act in their customers’ interest—sometimes even when the customers’ interest conflicts with their own (at least in the short term). This is why iTunes will remind you that you already own a song you are about to purchase, for instance. And it’s why USAA won’t sell you more insurance than you really need, even if you mistakenly ask to do so.”

In short, as they encapsulate the argument, “In today’s interconnected world business success requires applying the Golden Rule: treat customers as you would like to be treated.”

DOES THE GOLDEN RULE HOLD UP AGAINST THE BRASS TACKS OF BUSINESS?    Here, even Peppers and Rogers go a little far for me. While I can believe that the long history of corporate lip-service now extends to a standard embraced by most of the great religions, unless we are to believe that corporations will, say, actually try to love their neighbors as themselves (that’s a whole ‘nother post… can corporations approach anything like authentic love?), then the supposedly simple Golden Rule can’t honestly stand up to the complexity of business life.   As one academic study featured in the Journal of Business Ethics put it:

“It is not as easy as saying, ‘‘Treat your customers as you would want to be treated in their place,’’ substituting employees, shareholders, or any other stakeholder for customers… then all stakeholders in a situation must be treated according to the Golden Rule. But stakeholders often have conflicting desires and may have conflicting needs, and the manager’s job is to balance those needs and desires to the benefit of ‘important’ stakeholders, those stakeholders defined by a firm’s enterprise strategy (Freeman and Gilbert, 1988) to be of primary importance. It is easier to focus on treating employees, customers, and shareholders than to focus on treating competitors, various community groups, and other stakeholders only affected as a byproduct of the decision being made and its action. However… these latter stakeholders must be treated according to the rule [if it is to hold].”

YOU WANT THE GOLDEN RULE TO DEVELOP TRUST FOR YOUR BRANDS? DEVELOP LEADERS AS GOOD AS GOLD.    I don’t think business as we know it is a definitive force for the greater good. But then, I don’t believe any institution in and of itself is a force for good.  It is only the people within that organization – and in business that starts at the top – who determine how much of a force for good or ill it is.  So cultivate, reward, or stretch yourself to become leaders that live the golden rule, who inspire it in their employees and fellow workers and who deliver it to customers.  Then, and only then, will you and your brands earn the trust that Edelman’s latest findings indicate we will need, going forward, to succeed.

CAN YOU CITE ANY EXAMPLES OF COMPANIES DOING BUSINESS BY THE GOLDEN RULE?