*Note: This is a cross-posting of a post I wrote for AdFarm. Check it out here.

For some companies, social networks are kind of like monsters under the bed. Instead of thinking about the great upsides, these folks worry about over-sharing by employees, losing control over intellectual property, damaging their brands, losing productivity, fielding sensitive questions, unleashing embarrassing secrets and all manner of other bumps in the night.

But when you think about it, none of these things are any more of a threat because of social media. They stem from deeper business problems. And deeper business problems make prime fodder for snarky conversations on social networks.

So, while I believe it’s a great idea for every company to have a social media policy and a functioning understanding of the various channels, there are sometimes more pressing matters than choosing the right Twitter handle.

If any of the following apply to you, it might be time to work on something other than your Facebook Fan Page.

1. You’re leaky

If your company holds onto private information as well as a sieve holds onto water, the problem might be your employee training or internal security practices.

Journalists will tell you most of the whistleblowers and leaks they talk to are people who feel they’ve been silenced or punished for disagreeing with something they find objectionable. Fixing the problem might be as simple as training employees and managers on how to better voice and field complaints. It might also mean fixing what I call confidentially overload – or overusing confidentiality and secrecy to the point where they lose their seriousness. Product development memos are confidential. Birthday party memos probably don’t need to be.

2. You create customer service horror stories

If you’re a regular feature on The Consumerist, social media shouldn’t be your top priority. You may want to review your procedures before you start fielding complaints on the public stage. It’s a proving ground everyone can see, so if you say you provide great service, it needs to be a promise you can keep.

Handling customer issues can make or break your brand. And if you do a bad job, you’re undermining all your other efforts. That’s just as true online.

3. You ignore and/or take legal measures against your critics

If this applies to you, you’ll find your entry into social media a bumpy ride. Odds are there’s a flotilla of critics just waiting to take shots at you. And while I think you should absolutely face your critics wherever they may be, you need to figure out how you’re going to do it first.

Letting your lawyers do your dirty work only gives your critics an incredibly effective us vs them story to tell. Half-hearted apologies feel just as fake to those who receive them as to those who give them. Fighting emotion with pure fact works against everything we know about the human brain.

Honest dealings are the second most valuable currency online. The most valuable is reputation, and you’re not going to make a very good one if you can’t deal with disagreements.

Anything else?

Sometimes we all miss the forest for the trees. Take a step back and see if you can think of some other fundamental business problems that prevent companies from finding success in social media. I came up with three. Let’s see how many you can come up with in the comments.

Jacob can do horrible, unspeakable things with words. But he’s chosen to use his powers for good, not evil. Follow him @jacobedenfield or contact him directly at Jacob.Edenfield@adfarmonline.com.

Photo courtesy of http://jesshillis.com

Something stuck me today while reading this article on bacterial decision-making. We all need more receptors. Now, that statement doesn’t make a whole lot of sense without the context, so here’s the context:

“As bacteria’s ability to make decisions goes, E. coli is kind of dumb, which makes it easy for researchers to study sensing and information processing — essentially, decision making — in this bacterium,” says Alexandre.

E. coli has only five receptors that direct its decision-making process about movement, while Azospirillum brasilense has 48, making it comparatively much “smarter” in its ability to detect changes in its environments and as a result, to make complex decisions regarding where to move. (via www.ScienceDaily.com)

You see, the article was all about some pioneering research in the understanding of how bacteria make what would best be described as decisions. It’s all based on the input they receive from their receptors. The more receptors, the more information a given bacterium can use to make its decisions.

It’s the most basic form of stimulus-response behavior. But I think we humans can forget what an asset it can be, instead getting all hung up in our fancy-schmancy analysis and reasoning.

If you want to know more about the world, use your receptors. Learn something new that you didn’t know anything about previously. Listen to someone or read something you really don’t agree with. Put your hands in some dirt. Look under the hood of your car. Visit a museum. Take a trip.

Using your receptors will only make you want to use them more. And in a world where everyone’s a specifist and an expert, you’d be amazed how valuable a little bit of general knowledge and experience can be.

Cheers,

jae

I’m a fan of planning. I’m a fan of strategy. They’re absolutely essential in this business.

But there’s a side to me that bucks and chafes at limitation. Inevitably, there’s a lot of good stuff that simply won’t fit into a well-laid strategy. However, there are times when a bit of that good stuff really is too good to throw away.

There are a few instances when I’ve had an also-ran idea that didn’t really fit the core strategy and served a different yet arguably important objective. Just things that came up in the course of doing a thorough job. We should always make a place for those types of ideas. I like to call them bend to fit.

Bend to fit ideas are the cool, weird stuff that we should all be sandboxing and trying out. Try it in a pilot market. Give it a tiny bit of funding. If they flop, there’s not much to lose. If they soar, you’ve just proved something has merit in real-world market testing. Good times.

We should all leave a little wiggle room in our budgets and our thinking for the bend-to-fit ideas. They’re worth exploring.

You know that saying when it rains it pours? Well, it’s never been more apropos.

With economic woes, energy crises, renewable fuel debates, healthcare haggling and climate concerns, it’s not surprising that the importance one of our basest biological needs, water, has been sorely neglected. I’m not immune to the apathy; I was supposed to finish this post more than a week ago.

I guess it makes sense. The price per gallon of water is a pittance compared to what we pay for gasoline or diesel fuel. And for most folks in the U.S. access to water is as simple as turning the tap or spigot. It’s an incredibly important part of our lives completely taken for granted. But just because that’s the way it is doesn’t mean that’s the way it should be.

The U.S. debate about water will be a debate about access and rights. Who has the right to use a certain water source and how can they use it? It’s a tug of war that’s already starting to play out between states and between economic sectors. And the situation is only going to get more severe – because just about every good, service and action has a cost in water. It’s not just showering and brushing teeth. It’s the production, transportation, preparation and sanitation of the food we eat. It’s crucial to production of electricity and manufactured goods. It plays a role in every facet of our biology and our society.

The smart money in agriculture and energy is already looking at ways to make better use of water. Makes sense, as these two sectors are the largest consumers of water, according to a USGS report released in 2000 and updated in 2005. It’s the consumer market that’s lagging.

At O&B, we’re organizing some events to examine our office-wide and individual water use figures. It’s a way to shed light on an emerging issue that will have a profound impact on the markets we serve. And it’s a good way to remind ourselves to appreciate what we have, especially something as fundamental as water, which is a life or death issue for people around the world (See: Lifestraw, the situation in Mexico, MSNBC global shortage predictions, Foreign Policy failed state reporting, this World Bank worksheet).

I’d challenge you all (yes, all ten of you, dear readers) to take a look at the ways in which you use water. I’ll post some helpful links below. If you have suggestions for others, please leave a comment or send them via Twitter.

Water footprint calculator
Water use it wisely
Good magazine
WaterDrop

Cheers,

jae

Last week, messages started showing up in my Twitter stream with a birthday wish from @FarmerHaley (Mike Haley), an Ohio grain farmer and Simmental breeder. The wish: get the hashtag #moo into the top 10 Twitter trends at 1:00 p.m. EDT on Sunday, August 2. The reason: bring some much-needed attention to the economic plight of America’s dairy farm families, who are currently losing about 50 cents on every gallon sold at retail due to low milk prices and increasing costs of production.

In case you were unplugged this weekend, @FarmerHaley‘s wish came true! For about eight hours yesterday, #moo was one of the top 10 Twitter trends, rising as high as number 4 by my count.

I chipped in with thanks for my wife’s coffee cream and the wonderful cheeses that make up an enormous part of both our diets. I threw in a couple birthday wishes while watching the news, retweeted some important information while folding laundry and popped off a few tweets of support from the grocery store.

Turns out, about 1,500 other people were doing exactly the same thing. And once #moo started trending, even more people added to its strength with questions about the origins of #moo. California dairyman @RayLinDairy (Ray Prock) did a marvelous job getting inquisitive folks informative links about the trend and bringing light to the tough situation facing his fellow farmers.

It’s Monday now, and Twitter is mooing a bit less. But that doesn’t mean we should forget what’s happening on dairy farms (or hog farms, or ranches) right now. Support the folks helping feed your world. To read more, check out the following links:

Ray-Lin Dairy
Farm Bureau Voices of Ag
Gilmer Dairy

The best days are the ones where we come up with an idea that makes people scratch their heads and ask, “How the hell are we going to do this?” or, “Aren’t there any case studies that we can show?”

This job is about novel communications. When we do something that doesn’t have directions already written, that’s when I know we’ve done it well.

I’m off to be a case study – or a cautionary tale.

Cheers,

jae

At the moment, I’m acutely aware of my personal failings. Trying to quit smoking has a way of bringing it out. Maybe it’s all those quizzes they ask you to take to determine your triggers and the things you associate with smoking.

For instance, apparently I:

-Smoke as a pick-me-up
-Smoke as a reward
-Smoke when I’m stressed
-Don’t feel like I’m fully awake until I’ve had a cigarette
-Experience difficulty sleeping if I don’t have a cigarette before bed
-Have difficulty handling stressful situations without cigarettes
-Have difficulty handling boredom or slow points in the day without cigarettes
-Experience intense cravings to smoke before/during/after meal times or coffee
-Experience intense cravings to smoke when drinking alcohol
-Use cigarettes as a way to mark the progress of my day
-Feel cigarettes help my concentration
-Feel cigarettes help me relax

So, if they were grading my quiz, I’d definitely get an A for ADDICTED. (All caps are acceptable in moderation)

I guess that makes sense after more than a decade as a smoker. And, like I said in the beginning, all this time staring one of my biggest, baddest personal faults right in the face has put me in a fairly introspective state of mind. It has also made it really difficult to drag myself out of the doldrums and put together a blog post. Until today.

I got to thinking (a comma and quotation marks denote internal monologue), “What it would be like to live in a world where people confronted, acknowledged and attempted to rectify faults?” More to the point, what would it be like if brands did that?

I read a pretty good post by Peter Madden about taking a long, hard look at his own agency. Read it here. Maybe it was his candor – or the nicotine withdrawal, but either way I got on a tear about how best to handle bad brand behavior.

You could take the Terrell Owens approach, with a nod and a wink to the camera:

Or you could take the overtly scripted, stiff approach taken in so many ignominious public “mea culpas” by politicians and legal-department-approved press releases from corporations. I’m not going to link to any of those because it’s actually painful to read/watch that kind of contrivance.

If you’ve ever done someone wrong, you ought to know the best apology is one that comes with a future change in behavior. If you don’t plan to do that – or if you don’t even feel sorry – why bother apologizing at all?

So, if your company or one of your clients has engaged in some bad behavior, get that apology right. And please, please make sure you don’t do the same thing again.

Cheers,

jae

When I opened my eyes this morning, I realized I was already working on a project. The weird part is I’ve already done everything (and more) I need to before Tuesday. I just can’t turn it off.

Our agency is at our best when we start at the start, when we create a strategy based on solid market knowledge and understanding of the audience. When we get that entrenched in the material, it’s tough to shut it off, even for a long weekend.

That’s a sign of a healthy agency/client relationship. But for the sake of a healthy mind and body, I’m going to work it out of my system with a 20 mile backpacking trip. Work will still be here when I get back, and I can bring that new experience, and the accompanying endorphins, to bear on what’s waiting for me next week.

Cheers,

jae

I’ll admit it. I’ve anthropomorphized a time or two. In any creative profession, it’s an easy fix to ascribe a like mind to an object or creature. It helps make old stories new again or create a more compelling interpersonal narrative where one doesn’t naturally exist (see: Cars, WALL-E, Toy Story, the entire Looney Toons catalogue, the Disney empire, Babe, Charlotte’s Web, California Cheese marketing, Chick-fil-a’s long-running gag and the Honda Fit commercials).

You can see from the list, anthropomorphizing can be helpful. It can be fun. It can be useful.

Most of the things on that list I like, remember and enjoy, save the Disney catalogue. With a younger sister, I watched a crooning Caribbean crab serenade two young lovers one too many times.

But there are a few places where anthropomorphizing shouldn’t be taken lightly. Like the animal welfare debate. For every happy cow, there’s a very unhappy cow nipping at your heels in the Google results.

You see, people are very clever, but our brains are even more clever.

I once took a seminar on Philosophy of the Mind, and we spend a good chunk of time discussing Theory of Mind. Basically, it’s our ability to, by attributing our own self-understanding to another, figure out what he or she may be thinking, what he or she intends to do or what underlying motives the subject may possess. It’s the mechanism that helps you anticipate and respond to questions in a meeting before they’re even asked. It’s what helps us offer helpful advice to a fellow sojourner. It’s the reason you talk to your dog like a baby. It’s the mechanism that allows us to function as a society without coming across as total dullards or feeling as if we have to constantly explain ourselves.

Theory of Mind makes the world work. It’s also what makes it so easy for groups like HSUS to solicit enormous amounts of money with heartstring-tugging ads and so difficult to sell a story of animal care based on sound science. Being a science buff myself, I kinda hate those odds.

By the way, if you’re interested in reading it, you can download the CAST paper from that last link for free. It’s a good read if you’re the type of person who gives a damn about the conclusions of logical, critical minds who study these issues day in and day out.

So maybe it’s a good thing we have a heifer from Wagner farm in North Dakota tweeting her story, following in the footsteps of the first four-legged Twitter star, Sockington.

After all, it should be a hell of a lot easier for good-hearted producers and veterinarians, who spend time around them every day, to write a better story about our anthropomorphized animals than the people with all the bucks but none of the science or experience on their side.

So here’s a call to arms. For all the folks out there with the ability to do so, give a tweet on behalf of your favorite sow, hen, heifer or steer. People want to know what they’re eating, but you have to reach them in a way they’re compelled to pay attention to. All the science in the world doesn’t go half as far as a great narrative that exploits the built-in mechanisms of the brain.

Cheers,

jae

As one would expect, we have a good time around here. Case in point: at about 12:30 yesterday, I realized the right side of my desk was about an inch and a half higher than the left side.

Jason Yates and Jason Silvers did it while I was in St. Louis last week. Since Monday, I’d been compensating for the tilt with my body position. I got suspicious because I was making way, way more typing errors than usual. A slight offset between left and right hands makes a big difference, apparently.

The tilted desk, while clever, is not the most devious prank I’ve had pulled on me recently.

Read on:

About a month ago, my green Klean Kanteen water bottle went missing after a morning presentation. I have a tendency to leave it sitting somewhere and forget about it, so this wasn’t an uncommon occurrence.

Then this note showed up with the temp receptionist. She said a white-haired man had dropped it off without leaving a name:

The Ransom Note

There were three variables in the office on June 1. Two were clients. One was Aaron Perlut, Managing Partner of Elasticity, founding member of the American Mustache Institute and a prominent, outspoken bacon enthusiast. If you’ve never met Aaron, this video of his defense of Jason Giambi’s mustache on ESPN’s First Take will give you a decent idea why I immediately suspected him of hijinks:

Over the next week the ransom notes escalated. I sent Aaron harassing e-mails and got confused and confusing responses. I knew he was the culprit. The fax header had the St. Louis financial services fax number on it, and he sits near there. Plus, there was the suspicious detail of him giving me an awesome miniature cassette case/Vanilla Ice bubble gum package on his way out the door on June 1 – only moments before I received the ransom note.

The Vanilla Ice bubble gum, Exhibit B

Two weeks ago, I find my beloved water bottle hidden underneath one of the oversized noise-making Hulk hands in Shanna’s office. After finding it, I hid it in one of my desk drawers and drank out of a glass like a commoner. One water bottle in the drawer not being used is better than one water bottle in the hands of a ransom artist not being used, after all.

Today, one month and one day after the initial ransom note, I walk into my office to find this confession:

The confession. We did it.

It was added to my Wall of Stuff:

My Wall of Stuff

It turns out, Jason Yates, one of our art directors in Kansas City – to whom I ranted and raved for an entire month about what possible motive someone could have for ransoming my water bottle, with whom I puzzled over the possible meanings of the number 14.63 in the initial note, to whom I revealed that I’d had my wife helping me in the evenings trying to figure out if anyone was selling my water bottle online for $14.63 or if the number held any special significance as a date or as a geometric ratio – was responsible for the theft all along. I’d left my water bottle sitting on his desk one too many times, and he took me for a monthlong ride using his Keyser Soze-like diversionary tactics.

Mr. Yates, thank you for robbing me of the enjoyment of a month of evenings I instead spent worrying about the motives of the culprit and the possible significance of the numbers 1-4-6-3. You’ve pranked me worse than anyone before – including the still unknown hooligans who covered my windshield in Vasoline back in high school.

Aaron, I’m sorry for the accusatory e-mails, and I’m sorry Yates didn’t fill you in on the scheme. I’m sure you would have happily contributed to my undoing.

St. Louis financial department personnel, I’m sorry for my angry faxes. You just got caught in the crossfire.

The sad part is, the only things at stake were a water bottle and the most arbitrary sum of money imaginable. Nevertheless, it kept me up at night. I guess that’s what makes it such a good prank.

Cheers,

jae