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Posts Tagged ‘Brand’

Studeo

Illinois Governor ImpeachmentSo, I was totally caught off guard the other day while watching CSPAN. They were airing the Illinois Impeachment trial of Gov. Rod Blagojevich and one of the State Senators began quoting from the FBI wiretap. He mockingly said, “I’ve got this thing and it’s “effin” golden, and I’m just not giving it up for “effin” nothing. I’m not gonna do it.” Of course he was referring to Gov. Blagojevich’s attempts to auction off the vacant U.S. Senate seat to the highest bidder. Politics aside, what really struck me was that the state senator used the word “effin” on a public stage to replace the traditional four letter word (it rhymes with duck).

At what point did this behavior become socially acceptable? Why is “eff” okay to say, it’s just one less letter –the expletive meaning is still the same. If President Obama said on the evening news, “Chill the eff out, I got this!” would you respect him more?–would you consider the President to be more in-tune with Main Street? I think not.

Actually, I’ve seen many variations in the online arena. F, F’n, eff and effin seem the most common. It seems our youth have found creative ways to circumvent the obscenity-censoring programs that many online communities implement to keep things clean. The popularity of “eff” has transcended the blogosphere and is quickly penetrating corporate and political America.

When does a phonic word become so well used that it replaces another word? Shh!? Already taken. Bee!? Already taken. The answer is never. Once hipsters get wind that their parents and politicians are using the word “eff” it will quickly lack the creative luster it once adorned. The raw four letter form will rise again.

In the meantime, I predict that baby names starting with the letter “F” will decline, and I’m adding “eff” and “effin” to my dictionary for good measure.

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Studeo

I have often heard the phrase, “Your brand is not what you say it is, but what they say it is.”  And one of the great thing about social media and technology is the ability to get in and look at the conversation about your brand and see “what they say  it is”.

Do you wonder what people what people are saying about your brand?  Here are a few tools to give you a glimpse into what people are saying.  These two tools will help get an idea about the answers to two very important questions

  1. Are people talking about my brand?
  2. If so, what are they saying?

Social Mention

Social mention is great for helping you to see  if your brand is being mentioned in the blogosphere.  Go to www.socialmention.com and type in your brand name and see if and what people are saying.  They provide a social rank box to the right to help you understand how frequently your brand is being mentioned.  I like to use this box to compare one brand to a competitor or to a related keyword.  The left side of the page will give you a small idea of some of the things that people are saying.

Twitter Search

Another way to see what people are saying is to use the Twitter search.  Twitter is like a bunch of giant chat rooms and can give you a good idea of what people in general are talking about.  Go to search.twitter.com and type in your brand’s name.  See what comes up.  You will be able to see the conversations that are happening that involve your brand and what people are saying.  I think one of the coolest things about this is that you can see what people are saying in real time as its said.

For example, the Superbowl is this weekend.  If I were running and ad in the Superbowl, I might watch the search feature as the ad aired to see what people said as they saw the commercial.  People will Tweet about the ad they are watching as they watch it and you can get genuine response from your audience.

This is  a breif glimpse into the mountains of data that can be gathered from social media.  As we go through this data we will come to know our audience better.  Once we understand our audiennce better and understand what people are saying about our brands, we can design better strategies and campaigns to connect with our consumers and meet their needs.

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