A relentless focus on value.

A year ago, Peter Shankman posted this epic rant on social media “experts.” (I highly recommend it. The post is an ideal 101-level course on how to take a controversial but defendable position that drives conversation. Heat from readers isn’t always a bad thing.)

But I digress. Peter re-shared the post this week on his Facebook feed. One of the Facebook comments that followed really hit home:

"... I 'defriended' a business last week that asked me ‘What are you doing this weekend?’"

Feeds are cluttered. Lives are cluttered. Brains are cluttered. As social evolves, marketers can't be trite or disingenuous. We have to develop and continually sharpen a relentless focus on value when we engage our audience. People have 47 million other choices to which they can and will immediately turn.

A grammatical error or two may be forgiven. Valuable content is rewareded, even if it lacks some polish. But boredom, irrelevance and disingenuity? Those mistakes are punished immediately. 

Stop the hysteria: Social media isn't ludicrously complicated.

 Business Insider is getting lots of buzz by re-posting this graphic with the ridiculous headline "This INSANE Graphic Shows How Ludicrously Complicated Social Media Marketing Is Now":

Graphic via Buddy Media

What percentage of these logos are totally useless to a marketer trying achieve his or her goals? Eighty-plus percent? Ninety-plus percent?

A media buyer could create the same graphic out of TV networks, TV shows, cable providers, satellite providers and DVRs. Would Business Insider blare the headline "This INSANE Graphic Shows How Ludicrously Complicated Television Advertising Is Now!!!"

No. With a TV buy, you define your audience and select the networks and or/programs that your audience watches.

Hmm.

Know your target audience. Listen and discover which social platforms it uses. Then narrow the field and engage in the few areas that matter to helping you achieve your goals.

In fairness to Buddy Media, that was the point. And that's what they help marketers do: listen and narrow the field. The graphic went viral, so good for them.

And yet, I can hear the trees screaming in the forest right now as armies of social media shysters print this graphic and shove it in front of prospects to scare them into buying services to spread their messages to places it doesn't need to go.

Listening and learning isn't ludicrious, or insane, or scary. It's how you make the complex more simple, more focused. It doesn't matter if the subject is social media or cold fusion or baking cakes. The upfront work helps show the path.

George Zimmerman's attorney goes on social media offense

Beth Kassab profiles the social media strategy used by Mark O' Mara, George Zimmerman's defense attorney:

O'Mara may be the first criminal-defense attorney to use social media in this way.

[...]

It's easy to understand O'Mara's motives. He has already helped humanize Zimmerman and wants to maintain control over his image. He wants to correct falsehoods circulating about the case. And he wants to monitor the online conversations, hoping to glean nuggets of information that could be helpful to the defense.

But he's also providing another forum — as if there weren't enough already — for people to spout unsubstantiated theories and opinions about the man who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin and is claiming self-defense.

Some of the Facebook threads have more than 100 comments. You have to wonder whether O'Mara is helping to calm pretrial publicity — or fuel it.

"I hope you get Zimmerman acquitted so that I can go to Florida, stalk people because I don't like the way they look, and then shoot them if they dare defend themselves," one poster wrote on the Facebook site.

There's more like that. And worse.

I disagree with some of Kassab's assumptions. First, online comments and conversations will take place no matter what. Time Magazine called the Casey Anthony murder trial, the "Social Media Trial of the Century." Zimmerman's case will create a similar level of dialouge. So of course O' Mara's should participate. Why wouldn’t he enter the conversation, to share his points-of-view and better understand detractors. There is high value in both actions.

Second, O’ Mara isn't attempting to calm pre-trial publicity, as Kassab states. He doens't have the power to do that. What he can do, through his Facebook page, Twitter feed, and blog, is:

1)    Ensure his side of story comes through unfilitered, through direct conversations that allow his team to stay on message and refute sentiment the team believes is incorrect.

2)    Measure public sentiment and review a wide range of opinions, which will help guide jury selection, the defense process and PR efforts. 

Of course O' Mara will draw heat by engaging online. But he and his client are taking plenty of heat anyway, and the upside he gains in sharing his message, listening and learning far outweighs dealing with the headaches.

O' Mara's level of direct participation may seem odd today. But it will become the norm in cases that generate contreversy and conversation -- locally or nationally. As is the case with business, there is too much upside to not participate.

The University of Florida Lost the Computer Science PR Conversation Before it Began. Here's How to Avoid the Same Mistakes.

The University of Florida hates computers - or so says the Internet. In case you haven't heard, Florida's flagship university announced that, in the face of state budget cuts, it was cutting the research arm of its computer science program. This was a hard and unpopular decision, but one made based on a clear set of priorities. 

Unfortunately, the priorities and reasoning were buried deep inside a four-page PDF which the university issued last week. Because of its inability to clearly and succinctly state its position, the university was quickly drowned out by critics online and ultimately chose to rethink its decision. Steven Salzberg, writing for Forbes.com, wrote an article that quickly got a lot of traction: 

University of Florida Eliminates Computer Science Department, Increases Athletic Budgets. Hmm.

Wow, no one saw this coming.  The University of Florida announced this past week that it was dropping its computer science department, which will allow it to save about $1.7 million $1.4 million.  The school is eliminating all funding for teaching assistants in computer science, cutting the graduate and research programs entirely, and moving the tattered remnants into other departments.

Let’s get this straight: in the midst of a technology revolution, with a shortage of engineers and computer scientists, UF decides to cut computer science completely?

[...]

Meanwhile, the athletic budget for the current year is $99 million, $97.7 million, an increase of more than $2 million from last year.  The increase alone would offset the savings supposedly gained by cutting computer science.

Politifact refuted some of Salzberg's story:

It's true that UF is struggling with budget cuts while athletic funding is up. But the blog post details are questionable. The computer science program isn't going away, for example. And it's not quite so easy for the university to move money from athletics to academics.

Salzberg told us he got his information from various news articles and the UF athletic budget, which he found by searching online. Budget documents for the UF Athletic Association show that total expenditures for 2011-2012 were $97.7 million, about $2 million more than the year before.

Meanwhile, UF is attempting to save $1.4 million by overhauling one of its engineering departments. But the department, Computer & Information Science and Engineering, isn’t being eliminated. Instead, UF is considering merging it with another department, Electrical and Computer Engineering. No one's major would change, and course offerings would remain the same.

[...]

It’s part of a total $4 million cut that the engineering college has to deal with, its share of a $36.4 million cut to the university — which is UF’s share of a $300 million cut to higher education statewide.

A few days later, Florida president Bernie Machen waved the white flag:

As many of you know, the proposal has been met with overwhelming negative response, much of which I believe has been based on misunderstanding. Nonetheless, it is clear that the University of Florida must figure out a way to make it through these financially difficult times in a productive manner. I am optimistic we can do that.

This week, the chairmen of the departments of Computer and Information Science and Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering have come forward together with a framework of a new proposal that would help meet the college’s budget target. It also would address issues raised during recent discussions, namely, clarify and enhance degree offerings while preserving the research mission in both computer science and computer engineering, achieve efficiency in teaching and bring faculty workloads in line with other departments of the college.

Misunderstanding. The university never had a chance to let its plan work, because it failed to clearly and simply define its narrative from the outset. Florida allowed itself to be painted as the villain. From the school's perspective, the villain is Florida Governor Rick Scott and the state legislature, which has cut UF's budget by 30 percent over the past six years. (In fairness to Salzberg, he shares this link deeper in his Forbes story).

But Florida never shared that narrative, never gave itself a chance in the furious debate that was sure to follow a tough decision. Florida should have lead with a few succinct message points that would have framed its story:

• State budget cuts -- an absurd 30% over six years -- has left the school in a very precarious position from which it must chose from a bad set of options
• To guide its decision process, the university has defined its priorities and will make cuts based on those priorities
• Restructuring the computer science program, which unfortunately affects current jobs and research, will allow the university to preserve its computer science degree programs and serve a state badly in need of engineering and technology talent.

Florida's failure to effectively communicate its position allowed the story to get out of control.

The takeaway is clear: You cannot control the message anymore in our connected world. But you sure as hell better be concise and clear coming out of the gate, with your message and proof points in order, or you leave yourself with an exposed glass jaw. And you will be knocked out.

The evolution of outdoor advertising

Leave it to a man named Cowhead to bestow marketing wisdom.

A few days ago, the Tampa-area radio host talked about how digital outdoor billboards are changing the way he promotes his show. He said he can now, from the studio, develop new creative on the fly and upload it for instantaneous rotation in the ever-proliferating fleet of electronic billboards around the city. So if they have monkeys running loose in the studio, he can snap a photo, add a tagline and share it immediately.

The Tampa Bay Rays are smart about using the medium in real time, too. The team shares scores as games are in progress, hoping drivers will be intrigued and tune in.

Essentially, outdoor is another connected screen for us to look at, a river of updating information that marketers need to approach differently. Digital billboards have been with us for awhile. What is more recent, I think, is the ability for marketers to leverage the Internet connectivity of those billboards. Today, outdoor is much more like Twitter and much less like print. At least smart marketers are approaching it that way.

For outdoor, the way messages are planned and implemented changes drastically. Strategy becomes even more important; carefully crafted campaigns less so. A clear understanding of a campaign’s goals and the desired positioning provide guardrails for a series of more nimble, on-the-fly messages. Take Cowhead for example. The overarching strategy is to communicate the outrageous and entertaining nature of his show. The ability to share the outrageous events occurring on his show, in real time, provides the messaging and evidence to support the strategy. Carefully crafted copy become far less important. But those crafting messages on the fly must clearly understand the strategy so they stay within the guardrails and keep the campaign on track.

So again, opportunity evolves for marketers, and the changes are fascinating. Gary Vaynerchuk likes to say that smartphones have destroyed outdoor media. “You think drivers are looking at your billboards?” he asks audiences. They aren’t even looking at the ******* road!” Maybe he's right. But then again, outdoor that looks more like a smartphone screen may be more compelling.