Karan Chadda

Global digital marketing and communications leader

Communication

Social media’s new Medium

Twitter Founders Ev Williams and Biz Stone are in the process of hyping up their new sites, Medium and Branch.

Not being one of the fortunate few to get pre-launch access to contribute to either site, my snooping has been limited to exploring the content.

On first impressions, Branch left me cold. The concept of allowing more in depth conversation is solid, but I’m not really one for long-running conversations on the internet. I can see specialists gathering round to discuss their particular interests, but not broader society who are generally interested in many things. The first time I looked at a conversation on Branch, my immediate reaction was that it was just a web forum of the type that has been around since the 90s. Once the site’s up and running, and you’re able to search and navigate for conversations, I’m sure it’ll prove its worth. I can definitely see its potential for collaboration and building deeper communities online. I’d say the Jury’s still out.

Medium, on the other hand, blew me away. It’s slick, it’s clever and I can see it taking on the likes of Pinterest and Tumblr and winning. The richness of the media, the breadth of what you can do and the ability to collaborate as well as stand on your own seems to fill a nice gap that sits between the microblogging type experience offered by twitter and the deeper, more time-consuming experience needed for blogging.

The templates used by Medium are visually strong, the content on there at the moment is beautiful, but can that quality be maintained? I hope it will. I’ve only spent a short amount of time poking around Medium and I’m already eager get access and start using it. If it can make others feel the same way, then it has a very bright future.

This piece was originally posted here on CommsTalk.

How much is a company’s reputation worth?

Always a tricky question and one that no one has ever really nailed down. Is it a percentage (or even all) of the intangibles in its stock price? Is it an approximation of the value of sales associated with people who purchase your goods mainly because they perceive you to be good or ethical? Or is it the amount of money a company is willing to forgo for reputational reasons?

If the answer is the latter, then a small number of banks value their reputations in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The FT reports that a number of banks have ceased offering products that speculate in agricultural markets, citing reputation issues as the reason. With food prices rising in response to this year’s lower yields, many organisations have campaigned against financial speculation in food and other commodity markets. It seems that some banks have listened. This is in spite of the fact that the IMF and other international bodies have concluded that speculation in these markets is not driving up prices.

An executive at one German bank is quoted as saying that they will “be much more sensitive in future about [their] product range.”

Does this signal a shift in attitudes to reputation in the financial services industry? Perhaps. More importantly, it does help demonstrate, although not define, the very real monetary value of reputation.

This piece was originally posted here on CommsTalk.

Selling inspiration

Quite often I have conversations where I’m left defending the role of advertising, or more specifically, selling. In general, people don’t like being sold to. That’s a fact and there’s no getting away from it. People love to buy things though, so selling can’t be all bad. The key point, in my view, is that there’s a difference between selling something and selling at someone.

Nike’s Olympics-ad-that’s-not-an-Olympics-ad is a case in point. Title ‘Find Your Greatness’, it’s not selling trainers or t-shirts. There’s no plug for the latest football or bit of kit that can make you faster. Instead, it focuses on the achievements of amateur athletes. It lauds the effort and achievement of those outside the elite. It’s inspiring stuff and, crucially, it’s also selling.

It’s selling an idea, it’s saying that all sporting endeavours should be lauded. It’s saying that Nike applauds your sporting achievements. It inspires you to get out there and participate. In the process of all that participation, they’ll sell some more trainers and FuelBands, they’ll probably sell a lot of t-shirts too. It’s selling without selling at you.

Commercial disclosure

The Guardian is asking a very important question (in social media terms, at least) today: Is it ethical to pay bloggers to tweet? Sunny Hundal and Helen Lewis have taken opposing positions (Hundal for, Lewis against). The Guardian’s question relates to Sky News’s payments to bloggers in exchange for said bloggers tweeting about its Murnaghan Sunday morning political discussion show.  Applied more broadly, the question is a good one. So, is it ethical to pay bloggers to tweet?

Fortunately, this question ties in nicely with a discussion we’ve been having on CommsTalk about the ASA’s recent rulings about Twitter promotions. The central point, whether it’s about promoting trainers, chocolate bars, hair cuts or TV shows, is that undisclosed commercial promotions can be at best misleading and, in some instances, damage trust. When they do damage trust, they do so not just in the celebrities and commentators, but also in Twitter itself.

One of the best things about Twitter is its authenticity. Tweets have a sense of direct communication. They connect us with others – friends, businesses, celebrities, causes, etc. – in a very direct way. The conversation is instant and there’s a sense that it’s open and honest. It would be a pity if distrust started to seep in, in the way it has with other media. All the UK’s national newspapers are seen to favour one agenda or another. The BBC, generally respected for its quality and its balance, is shot at from all sides of the political spectrum for supporting “the other side”.

Of course, Twitter doesn’t create the content of tweets, so it’s less likely to succumb to the charge of bias. However, if people begin to become wary of tweets, fearing some alternative agenda and speculating at the commercial motives behind the tweets, then Twitter will become a less nice and less trusting place. It would be a pity if that were to happen simply because of a lack of commercial disclosure.

This piece was originally posted here on CommsTalk.

The ASA is your sensible friend

Snickers beat the rap, Nike were busted but are appealing and then TOWIE star Gemma Collins got a ticking off for getting her hair done. All ran forms of advertising on Twitter and every time it happened there was a bit of a Twitter brouhaha and some ranting at the ASA (including some particularly lucid points from CommsTalk’s own @simonhill).

The thrust of most arguments is that there needs to be a “common sense approach” and, in the ASA’s defence, I’d say there is one: it needs to be abundantly clear that you’re being paid to promote a product.

Twitter now has 10 million users in the UK, that’s roughly one in six of the total population, so Twitter is no longer a little bubble full of media and tech types, all eagerly enforcing accepted norms, cynically flushing out ne’er-do-wells on the net to vent their opprobrium. As more and more of the population sign up, the less we can assume that everyone’s able to tell what’s a paid-for promotion and what’s not. Beyond the hardcore mega users who tweet compulsively, there are an increasing number who simply listen or who tweet in an ad hoc manner. Twitter is something they dip in and out of. These users may only pick up snapshots and not necessarily entire conversations. Do they need to be safeguarded? No. Is it reasonable to expect ads to explicitly flagged so there’s no confusion>? Emphatically, yes.

The other argument usually thrust forward focuses on consistency. Well, of course there’ll be some inconsistency. Social networks are new and constantly evolving. Marketers are constantly thinking of new ways to exploit them. It’s unreasonable to expect regulators to draw a clear line and stick to it when the playing field is shifting. Change throws up inconsistencies. The ASA should be applauded for attempting to grasp the issues and protect consumers.

This piece was originally posted here on CommsTalk.