Experience Manifesto

Polinchock's Ponderings

The new blog is up, so please go to Polinchock's Ponderings if you want to continue following me. Thanks for your readership over the past 5 years and I hope that you will continue that habit in the future!

A Personal Note from David

This has been a long post in the making and possibly the last post here.  After over 5 years of writing this blog, we are currently in the process of closing down the Brand Experience Lab and determining how to split up everything between the partners.  While the economy certainly played a role in this decision, there were also internal differences about the future strategic direction of BEL and the in-cinema work that originated at BEL. I'm very disappointed by this development, but I wanted to let you know I'll be going back to my consulting work while options are being examined for final BEL disposition.  And who knows, maybe one day, the Brand Experience Lab will rise from the ashes again, like the mythical Phoenix!

"These days, many of us are so focused on the day to day that we lose sight of the incredible need to focus on future possibilities. David makes you see the world through a different set of lenses and imagine new ways to think and grow. The endless opportunities for business growth spew from this man's incredible creative mind in unimaginable ways. He is a talent you simply have to experience."  Mort Goldstrom, from the Newspaper Association of America.

I have received many supportive notes from people asking me what's happening next and how to reach me.  As the founder of Brand Experience Lab, I can assure you that I will continue with the spirit of Lab, wherever I go in the future.  I'm exploring a number of new opportunities and until I settle down, please e-mail or call me on my cell.  In the coming weeks, I'll be re-launching my blog and getting ready to announce a number of new partnerships and initiatives.

Creating brand experiences is just as important today, if not even more so, then when the Lab started almost 7 years ago.  In a world of social media and instant connections, brands need to have authentic, relevant and compelling brand experiences in order for the consumers to want to engage with them.  

While I explore my next steps, I will:

• Continue to be your source for the emerging technologies that you can use to create brand experiences. This includes cutting-edge technology experiences like group games, augmented reality and ubiquitous computing.
• Consult with brands & agencies on creating great, oneline brand experiences and help brands audit their experiences to see how they can be improved.  This includes brand ideation and storytelling charettes.
• Make presentations about emerging technologies or the importance of brand experiences.  I will also continue doing experience walking tours in NYC.  Other experience tours can be developed to meet your needs.
• Continue exploring the socialization of physical place and how offline interactivity can be used by brands as part of the experience strategy.

When we launched the Lab in 2003, it was one of the few, if not the only, R&D facilities in the advertising industry.  Today, more & more agencies are creating in-house labs to explore the breadth of emerging technologies out there.  That shows the importance of the work that BEL started.  Brands need to know what's coming down the road and how to use those new tools to communicate effectively.

"David is trying to connect technological thinking with making. He can think about interesting new technologies that work at 30,000 feet and, with the laboratory, he shows how it works at ground level."  Brian Collins, Former Director, Brand Integration Group, Ogilvy

Over the past seven years, we accomplished quite a lot at Brand Experience Lab, including:

• Helping move the experience conversation forward at a time when very few companies were even thinking about their brand experiences and helped many companies explore the role of experience as a part of their marketing strategy.
• Working with a number of companies to help them develop their brand story and their brand experiences.
• Helping introduce a number of emerging technologies at the Lab, including Magic Mirror (the prototype for AudienceGames), Synthetic Interview, directional sound systems and others, to brands and agencies.

I was very fortunate to have played a lead role in the launch of NewsBreaker Live, the first AudienceGames program, with SS+K and msnbc.com, which won a Gold Pencil.  I subsequently worked with the Volvo team to bring AudienceGames to the UK, which was called "one of the best marketing ideas in the world" by Brandweek magazine last year and brought AudienceGames to theaters across Poland for Orange.  AudienceGames was an excellent example of what we wanted to accomplish at the Lab.

"David's presentations engage the crowd whether they are playing an audience participation game on screen or hearing about new technologies that will help their business. He's always on the cutting edge and he doesn't just deliver a speech - he lives his message."  Marcia Tabler, RAMA Consultant

I'm excited as I move toward a new phase of my life.  I thank you very much for all of your time, the great conversations and the great projects we've done through BEL in the past.  I'm very thankful to have had the opportunity to speak around the world on the future of advertising, brand experiences and emerging technologies.  I believe that now, more then ever, you need an authentic, relevant and compelling brand experience to be successful in this economy.  I look forward to continuing to work with you in the future and would enjoy assisting you in creating those experiences.

David

United Breaks Guitars

I'm a little behind in writing about this, but it's a great example of how people can use social media to get their stories out. As of July 21st, 2009, this video had 3,547,771 views, but that's only part of the story. Doing a google search, I get 3,140,000 results. Bing comes up with even more results. Sadly, searching on a United response to United Breaks Guitars, doesn't really come up with much. In fact, the video response from Taylor Guitars (see below) actually comes up 1st in that search. And if you look at the videos or articles about this video, you'll see very little, maybe no, support for United. Not a lot of folks saying "Sorry they broke your guitar, but hey, they get a lot of luggage to the right place without damage." Nope, most people say "Yea, they screwed up and they should've done better." And those are the nice comments.

So now United is faced with a dilemma of how to respond. Of course, we all know that they're only trying to resolve the situation now because of all of the bad press they got. They lost my luggage for 4 days between LA and San Francisco and after fighting with them for over a week, I just gave up. Guess I should've learned to play the guitar! But since we know that fixing the problem wasn't their first reaction by a long-shot, we're not really going to think that they really want t help fix problems in the future.

The fix for United is a total overhaul of their customer experience training. And it has to start way up at the top. And the people up at the top need to really believe that creating the very best guest experience possible and taking customer complaints seriously is priority number 1. That's the problems brands have today. Put on a little band aid, fix it while people are watching and then get back to business as usual, and you'll see your business erode. We just don't have the time for bad experiences any more.

Taylor Guitars responds

Download Tripping Over Technology. You can read about my United experience from as few years back. It was probably 5 years before I flew United again and only because they were the airline partner for a client.

Smashed guitar, YouTube song — United is listening now - Travel - LATimes.com.

Radio Program with David Polinchock of New York :: Social Media Professor

I was very excited to be the guest on Trey Pennington's Social Media Professor radio show this morning. We talked a great deal about the importance of brand stories and how social media can really enhance an authentic dialogue with your audience. One key thought that we discussed was that:

Technology should enhance the experience, not replace it.

We also talked a lot about the importance of sharing your story internally and making sure that your team is all telling the same story. Trey made an excellent point about how having a great story is like having a compass that guides you through all of the decisions you make. Liked that thought a lot.

So, you can click on the link below to hear the entire interview, which runs about 25 minutes. I've also included two articles I wrote about storytelling that might also be of interest to you. Trey does a great show, so if you've never listened to it before, make sure you check out his program. He covers a lot of great information there.

Radio Program with David Polinchock of New York :: Social Media Professor.

Download Are You Telling a Great Story

Download Are you Just Hunting

A Tribute to My Dad

Five years ago today, my Dad passed away. While he had been sick for a long time, it was still a surprise when he died and it seemed like it all happened pretty suddenly. I still miss him every day and especially when things are going rough. He was a lot of fun, although I may not have known it at the time. I think of all of the times that he dragged me to do things with him and how much I sometimes resented it at the time. Couldn't I play with my friends instead of helping work on the car, I remember thinking back then. Now I'm grateful for the time that I had with him. Or maybe I'm hoping that Sydney feels good about all of the time I drag her to things.

We always had a lot of fun with my Dad. Well, maybe not always, but hey, who did really always have a great time with their folks! But a lot of times, we had a great time. He was a depression era child, and he brought that into his life for sure. There were things that just didn't happen in our house, we certainly didn't do things very extravagantly. But don't let that sound like a negative.

There were a lot of laughs in our house and our house was almost always a focal point of the neighborhood. We had an above ground pool and in the summer, our house was the frequent center for everyone. We had lots of pool parties and fueled by Uncle Tom's mystery jungle juice, we had a lot of bbq's when the adults decided it was easier to stay at our house then go home and cook. And, in the winter, my Dad would flood the back yard and we'd turn in into a skating rink. No jungle juice then, but we still had lots of fun!

Our house was always open for whoever stopped by and it seemed like there were always people there. I wish I had a bigger place now so I could open my house like my parents did. The spirit of hospitality that my parents showed us growing up has stayed with me today and I'm thankful for that. I hope that we'll pass that along to Sydney as well, it would be one of the best legacies of my Dad & Mom.

Dad could make me crazy to (something he's already passed along from me to Sydney!). One time, while I was visiting them with Sydney in Florida, I lost the car keys at a concert and it took me a long time to find them in the field. I got home later then I was expecting and there was my Dad, sitting up & ready to give me a lecture about being late. I think that I was 42 and he was still lecturing me about things like that.

One of my favorite stories of Sydney & my Dad actually occurred after my Dad's funeral. My father passed away when Sydney was just over 3 years old. My folks lived in Florida, so we didn't see them all the time, but Sydney spoke to my folks on the phone all the time and she has some remarkably strong memories of him. My Dad was sick for about a year before he passed away, but his death was pretty quick & unexpected when it happened. We went down for the funeral and it was Sydney's first time dealing with death, so we tried to keep her calm as much as possible.

After the funeral, Sydney & I went for a walk through their neighborhood, just the 2 of us. Near the end of our walk, she looked up at some clouds and said "That cloud looks like Grandpa watching down on us." She paused and then added "Or maybe it's a goat."

When we got back to my parents house, I told my Mom what Sydney said and we all had our first laugh of the day.

Another thing from my Dad was that we never, and I mean never, passed a cemetery without my Dad saying "You know, people are just dying to get in there." And it's really fun for me that today whenever we pass a cemetery, it's Sydney who says that!

In the five years since my Dad has been gone, a lot has happened in my life. But what I'm most saddened by is that he's not getting to watch Sydney grow up and become the great kid she's become. That's the hardest thing for me. Thankfully, my Mom is still around and doing very well and she'll be up near us in NJ this summer, so Sydney will get to spend a lot of time with her and her new beau, Bob, who we all like a lot. We're certainly happy to see my Mom happy, that's for sure.

I miss being able to talk to my Dad every Saturday when I walked to meet Kristen & Sydney at work, even if sometimes we only talked about the weather. I miss watching him play with Sydney and how excited she was when she got to fly planes with him on the computer. I miss his sense of fun and his enjoyment of life and I miss just goofing around with him.

So, rest in peace Dad. I'm sure that you're arranging all kinds of fun things for people to do in heaven and making sure everyone up there has a good laugh. I know that you look down at us and especially Sydney and you would love the person she's becoming. I miss you.

Sydney & my Dad would play on his flight simulator games for hours!

Virtual reality isn't just about technology, nous still counts. (28-JUL-95) Campaign

Was using the Google search timeline function (which is pretty cool, BTW) and came across this article from 1995. I said some pretty smart things, if I do say so myself! And this was really a fun gig to work on, kinda' miss my event days sometimes.

"When Joe six-pack can sit on his sofa," a delegate at Apple Computer's recent New Media conference in Los Angeles, said, "with Cindy Crawford in one arm, perhaps for $2.99 an hour, virtual reality will make crack look like decaffeinated coffee. "

Virtual reality., with its 3D picture of a made-up world, is a godsend in persuasion, since it provides the user with his own path through an information universe. But are advertisers ready for virtual reality as a marketing tool yet?

Virtual reality can be a simple three-dimensional world on a computer screen, through which the customer moves using the keyboard or a joystick. Or it might be "immersive", requiring a headset that displays a panoramic world. Either way, objects on the screen can be viewed, queried, selected or bought.

J. Walter Thompson took up the virtual-reality theme in a Kit Kat commercial this year. The film's director, Matt Forrest, set the action in a virtual-reality shopping mall, which a character flies through on a hi-tech magic carpet looking for a snack. "Sooner or later, someone was going to do a virtual-reality ad," the JWT creative director, Jaspar Shelbourne, says. "And I am very pleased JWT got there first."

Involvement is important, but a more measurable facet of interactive media is the feedback it offers on how a product is perceived. By letting a potential customer drive a "virtual car", for instance, the manufacturer can find out how attractive it is before the car is even built, perhaps giving the customer a discount guarantee if they commit to buying at such a nearly stage.

From her base in California, Aimee Rosewall, an independent marketing consultant, has watched virtual-reality technology develop. She sees it as a fragile extension of the traditional one-to-one selling relationship. "Rather than coming and talking at you, I can involve you in my message." she explains. "The problem with the way most modern technology is handled in marketing is that it is too complicated, or expects too much from people to make it happen. The danger is you have customers who are more confused than they were at the beginning."

One of the most impressive virtual-reality marketing applications to date is the Cutty Sark rum stand. currently touring the US. Rosewall helped Anheuser-Busch put the project together with the New York-based tour managers, CyberEvent. A visitor to the stand wears a headset while sitting on a small wooden bench with a boat's tiller in one hand.

In this virtual world, they experience the voyages of Captain William McCoy as he sailed his rum around the world. Steering the ship with the tiller, the Cutty Sark -- with brand name prominent -- is guided into harbour. On either side, other rum traders unload their products and, the soundtrack explains, water down their rum before selling it. Captain McCoy insisted on keeping his rum pure and, in doing so, coined the phrase "the real McCoy".

Dave Polinchock, the president of CyberEvent, thinks the Cutty Sark campaign is successful simply because it does not confuse the brand with the technology. Early experiments with virtual reality made a point of showing off the latest state-of-the art developments, but campaign managers found they were outshining the very product they were supposed to sell. "In the early 90s, people were using virtual reality as the story, rather than using it to tell the story," Polinchock says.

The first lesson for using any technology in marketing, he says, is to make the technology invisible and work on the content, not forgetting that people like to have fun. (Emphasis mine)

And entertainment is one of the three core values Paul Holt at CIA Interactive puts forward for virtual reality. As a consultant to British Telecom's ICE (Information, Communications and Entertainment) project, which is researching how to deliver commercial services into people's homes, Holt sees the technology providing a new angle, but it remains secondary to the message. "Inform, communicate and entertain. As long as you do one of those, you'll be fine," he says.

There are some significant obstacles to using virtual reality, not least the fact that badly understood technology results in an uncertain message being communicated to the user. Over-complicated technologies, or computers for their own sake, promote technophobia and turn people away from the message.

To this end, Holt suggests that anyone considering virtual reality should be thoroughly familiar with two-dimensional interactive media, such as the Internet, before moving into three. Learning to be creative with the online medium is a valuable lesson in how to construct a path around information that would be too dense in a linear format. The user must also be able to retreat still carrying a clear image of the brand.

It's obvious really. Polinchock uses what is becoming a wellknown metaphor in North American marketing: "If you went to a book conference and said you thought content was important, they'd look at you as if you were a moron. Yet we're talking like content is something new." (Emphasis mine)

Europe has an especially reserved approach to cutting-edge technology. Rosewall thinks it could be an advantage: "Europe will take a different route, and a little reservation could be beneficial. America is always pushing for the new, but faster may not be the answer anymore."

This is not a warning to keep away, however. "Mix the technologies," she says. "You can't just invest in one technology because you'll miss someone, and that doesn't make business sense."

COPYRIGHT 1995 Haymarket Business Publications Ltd.

Virtual reality isn't just about technology, nous still counts. (28-JUL-95) Campaign.

Life Happens in Person

Our friends over at Empire Force Events have put together a quick video with a simple message. It's about being in person, designed to help the somewhat battered, meeting industry. Just a few weeks ago, my good buddy Dave Peters from Absolute Amusements was telling me that the industry trades were talking about how events can't be about fun any more and we both had a good laugh about that. I mean next week is InternetWeek here in NYC and I can tell you there's about a million cocktail parties happening. Well, maybe not a million, but a lot. Since my days helping do events for the old NYNMA, I've always laughed about how often we'd go to cocktail parties to talk about how we'll be communicating online and all.

With all of the corporate financial troubles lately, a number of companies have had to cancel events at the last minute. Of course, canceling a meeting at the last minute actually costs more then it would to just have the meeting, but why let logic interfere when politicians can make a grand standing point about how they helped get a meeting canceled and saved us money. It's all ridiculous and it's costing the event industry money and jobs. So making Wells Fargo cancel an event just a few days before it was supposed to happen not only didn't save any money, but probably resulted in people losing their jobs. How does that help the economy?

So I liked the simple message here. Life happens in person.

Happy Anniversary Kristen!

About 17 years ago, a magazine I worked for went out of business, leaving me in NYC without a job. I called a bunch of friends in panic, trying to figure out what to do next. I ended up partnering with a very good friend of mine, Dave Peters, and that choice led me to where I am today.

But, before that gig started, I got hired to be a "White Flower" (one of the managers) at Santaland at the Macy's on 34th Street. It was exactly what I needed at the moment, a job that while it could be very stressful when I was there, ended when I clocked out. Plus, many of the people that came to Santaland were filled with the joy of the holiday spirit and I needed a lot of that at the time.

Now, I've always had a fantasy about marrying a redhead and that year at Macy's, there was a beautiful redhead named Kristen Weaver working as an elf. I had actually met my fantasy redhead! Because I was (and probably still am!) pretty childish, my first introduction to Kristen came as she was primping to take her employee picture and right after she got her hair just perfect, I messed it all up.

As the gig went on, I made sure to try & talk to Kristen whenever I could. She confided in me when the guy she was seeing set up a date just to break up with her. I also looked up her home address (yea, thank goodness it turned out she liked me, otherwise I was just a stalker!) and realizing that she lived not too far from me, I made sure to take my dog on long walks past her house in the hopes of "running into her" by accident. Sadly, that never happened. Santaland ended, I went home to Orlando for the holidays and we went our separate ways.

But in February, fate stepped in. I was in a little green grocer on Sullivan Street buying Devil Dogs or something like that and ran into Kristen as she shopped for some fresh vegetables. Looking at what I was buying, she made some comment about my eating habits and that I should eat better. I responded by saying any time she wanted to cook me a real meal, I was in. We took out our planners and picked a date.

I was psyched, but afterwards I found out that Kristen was initially thinking this was just "dinner with a friend" and it wasn't until someone she worked with said it sounds like a date, that she started to get nervous. She cooked a great dinner, we had a bottle of wine and our first "date" was pretty perfect to me.

So, we kept getting together and one night, I decided to kiss her goodnight on her front stoop. She now says that was the kiss that made her think I might be the one! It was then that I started to ask her to marry me. And let me tell you, she said no a lot. Like for probably a year!

But we dated, I moved into her small, but really cute one bedroom on Sullivan & Spring (with a working fireplace!) and I continued on a rather regular basis to ask her to marry me. She continued to say no.

Then one day, after a lunch with her Mother, she came home and announced that "If I wanted to ask her to marry me, she was OK with that." And for months after that conversation, I never brought it up again.

Of course, I was plotting and planning and looking at rings. And then I was ready. I made reservations at her most favorite Italian restaurant and printed up a certificate good for One Marriage Proposal and I was all set. In what would set a precedent for our marriage, Kristen decided to work that night instead of keeping our date and she blew me off! I was pretty bummed and now I didn't know what to do. So, I made up a cockamamie story that I had tickets to a show and the next night, we should have dinner and see if they would honor the tickets for the show we missed.

She kept telling me that no show would never do that, but she went along anyway. And right after we got the wine, I handed her the card with the marriage certificate and said Here are the tickets. Check out the show and, if you're not interested in it, we'll just have a relaxing meal.

Setting a second precedent in our relationship, she looked at the marriage certificate and said But what do I do with this now?

Well, she did redeem the certificate; I asked her to marry me and she said yes. We had a small wedding, but a lot of our friends came to spend the whole weekend with us in New Hope, PA and we had a great time. We got married at the Cuttalosso Inn, just outside of New Hope, 15 years ago today, May 1st. I had married my fantasy redhead and one of my elves to boot! Oh, I did leave the very next day for almost a month on the road with clients, but when I came back, we had a fantastic honeymoon in Ireland.

And 8 years ago, we had Sydney (technically Kristen had Sydney, I was just there when it happened) and we've continued to have a blast. Life hasn't always been easy, but we've stayed together as a family and that's helped us through the tough times. And, many nights, before we go to sleep, I still try to do something that makes Kristen laugh out loud, so that she falls asleep with laughter on her mind. Well, maybe that's not a plus, you'll have to ask Kristen about that!

So, I just wanted to take a moment to say

Happy Anniversary Beauteous Wife

Thanks for putting up with me for the past 15 years and here's to an even better 15 years (at least!) together in the future.

Bailed-Out Banks Face Probe Over Fee Hikes - WSJ.com

Back in September of '07, I was in London when they Northern Rock bank there ran into trouble and people started withdrawing money from their accounts. Over night, the bank had £1.5 billion and it went downhill for Northern Rock from there. Here's what I wrote back then:

It does beg the question as to how much loyalty Northern Rock created with it's customers before this all began. Too many brands use a crisis as the first real time they reach out to say "Hey, we're here for you. Help us get though this and we'll be there for you when it's all over." But when the crisis is over, they go back to business as usual. Do you think they'll offer to drop the interest rates on their mortgages for people who leave their money where it is? Or will they send your nasty notes when you're a day late with your mortgage payment?

You know, since I started reading about all of this, I can't help but think about Jimmy Stewert and the Bailey Savings & Loan. I can just picture him stuttering as he asks people to leave their money in the bank because it'll be safe. Trust me, he says. I live here too and I'll take care of you.

Watching the news today and they just had Ron Insana talking on msnbc about a report in the Wall Street Journal about how banks are now raising fees on everything and, with some banks now charging up to 29% interest rates, he used the term usury rates. But it's not just interest rates going up (and in some cases doubling, according to the WSJ article), every fee is going up. Late fees, charge fees, every thing's going up while the banks take our tax dollars. Look at this example:

Regional banks U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo & Co. offer "checking account advance" loans that allow customers with direct-deposit accounts to access funds before they are credited to a customer's account balance. The short-term loans carry annual interest rates of about 120%. (Emphasis mine)

Think about that. They're charging a huge interest rate to get your money faster. It's direct deposit. It's electronic banking. Why should we have to wait at all to get access to money that's direct deposit? Sure, they get your money right away and make a ton off the float, but if you want it, they'll charge you for it.

Of course, what's frustrating about this whole thing is that we're still not breaking one issue that got us into this mess in the first place. Wall Street is still pushing the banks for profit, which it seems they're delivering right now. So, they get our tax dollars to bail them out. Then they fee us to death to generate more profits. Then a relatively small group of people gets to make a lot of money off of their stock. This is just wrong.

But, from a brand perspective, it's really wrong. But it might also show something that we really don't want to admit. Because no amount of tweets and blog posts is likely to produce a single big bank willing to stop raping us with fees. So, is this really a time when consumers are in control? Can I challenge the social media universe to put their collective might into getting banks to stop treating us this badly? Will any bank step up and say "Hey, we'd rather have loyal, life-long customers by treating people right then by charging them 120% annual interest to get their own money a little faster."

Sure, we can get Skittles to change their home page, but I'm not thinking we have the strength to battle this beast. The gauntlet is thrown, who's ready to pick up the challenge?

The committee overseeing federal banking-bailout programs is investigating the lending practices of institutions that received public funds, following a rash of complaints about increases in interest rates and fees.

Since the Troubled Asset Relief Program was launched last October, banks bolstered by capital infusions have boosted charges on a wide range of routine transactions, hiked rates on credit cards and continued making loans criticized as predatory by consumer advocates. The TARP funds are intended to open lending spigots and make it easier for people to borrow money.

Last week, for example, Bank of America Corp. told some customers that interest rates on their credit cards will nearly double to about 14%. The Charlotte, N.C., bank, which got $45 billion in capital from the U.S. government, also is imposing fees of least $10 on a wide range of credit-card transactions.

Citigroup Inc., another recipient of government cash, is trying to entice customers to borrow at high rates. "You could get $5,000 today," Citigroup's consumer-finance unit wrote in fliers mailed to customers. The ads don't disclose that the loans often carry annual interest rates of 30%.

The interest rates "compare competitively to similar offers in the market" and vary depending on the creditworthiness of borrowers, a Citigroup spokesman said. Citigroup has received $50 billion in capital from taxpayers, and the U.S. government will soon own as much as 36% of the company's common stock.

"To continue to offer competitive products and services and responsibly lend in this current environment, we must adjust our pricing," said a Bank of America spokeswoman about the company's new fees and interest rates.

The U.S. government's ownership stakes in hundreds of banks, as well as political ire stoked by lucrative pay and perks, are raising the specter of new regulation on basic banking practices. First-quarter results due starting this week will be scrutinized for signs of how much taxpayer-funded capital is being funneled into loans.

Elizabeth Warren, chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel, the body named by Congress to oversee the federal bailout, said the panel is working on a report examining instances of potentially inappropriate lending by banks that got taxpayer capital. "The people who are subsidizing the activities of the banks through their tax dollars are the same people who are furnishing the high profits through consumer lending," Ms. Warren said in an interview. "In a sense, we're asking taxpayers to pay twice."

Last month, a Senate committee narrowly approved a bill that would rein in many credit-card marketing and pricing policies, including ballooning interest rates. Proponents of the legislation say many of the largest card issuers have received government aid and so should be subject to greater scrutiny.

Banks say that raising fees and rates, even on low-risk customers, is a legitimate way to recoup some of the costs of the bad loans still on their books. They also say taxpayers have a financial interest in seeing the industry quickly return to profitability. Any revolt over price hikes could intensify the crisis by depriving institutions of a key income source, say banks. New restrictions on these lending practices "may truly have an impact on profitability," said Gerard Cassidy, a bank analyst with RBC Capital Markets.

Bailed-Out Banks Face Probe Over Fee Hikes - WSJ.com.

Who Owns Social Media?

This article by Joseph Jaffe over at Adweek generated a whole lot of negative comments when it was put up earlier this week. Most of the comments seems to take Jaffe top task personally, for using the Adweek platform to support his own company, which may well be the case. The problem, however, is that a real message is getting buried in a lot of language that's not really the point.

Where I disagree with him is that social media is something that sits at the intersection of everything. And I certainly don't agree that it is "arguably-the most transformational opportunity we've been given in our professional lifetimes," as Jaffe claims. I think it's cool, it can be powerful and it can even generate some great results. But for everything he listed in his article that wasn't SM, I haven't really seen anyone define what was SM.

Of course, in our language, it's the experience that sits in the middle since SM still actually leaves out lots of place-based activities. Retailers are scrambling to keep up with online social tools, and yet almost none of them are looking to create SM at their physical locations.

We spent about an hour yesterday at the Burton store here in Soho with a group of retailers from South Africa and one thing that came through loud and clear is that they use the store as social media. Buses run every Saturday to a local ski resort and they've created a real community around the store. Yes, they use online tools to reinforce their relationships, but they start at the store, with the store employees. I'm not sure those relationships would be as strong as they are if it didn't involve the in-store experience.

As reader's of my blog know, I don't think that social media is something that should be broken out from everything else. I don't think there should be a social media AOR, it's sort of ridiculus when you think about it. With SM being so broadly defined as it usually is, so many parts of the company should be involved in the SM process. Today, no one form of advertising should sit in it's own silo. I actually agree with with Jaffe's conclusion that there needs to be someone sitting in the middle and I agree with his reasoning.

I won't go as far as to say everyone does it, but when agencies with different skill sets sit down at the table, even when they're part of one, big, happy, holding company family, they're still fighting for their piece of the pie. So most times, they're pitching that the most important thing a client can do is whatever they do. If it's an interactive agency, then interactive is the solution and the best use of their money. If it's an event marketing company, then event marketing is the answer to their question and the best use of their funds. I know that not everyone does this, but face it, when your salary & potential bonus are tied to your P&L, that might occasionally cloud your thinking.

When we started the Lab 6 years ago, we talked about brands needing a master storyteller. That brands needed someone who sat in the middle and protected the brand's interest. Yes, it should be someone at the brand, but they don't always have the skills needed to do this either. It was pretty easy in the older days of traditional media, when you only had a view ways to reach your audience.

Now, with so many choices available to communicate the brand message, brands really do need someone without a vested interest in a specific tool or tactic, to help them navigate the waters. As I've said before:

But the discussion by most in the ad industry about social media is just the latest tactic du jour. We had branded content, Second Life, viral, WOM, and on and on. Read the trades and look at how many times over the past couple of years, a slew of companies were built around chasing the tactic du jour. How many social media companies have been started in the past 6 months? But we do this instead of helping clients understand the true value of connecting with their audience by any means possible and appropriate. For many agencies and clients, they're just tactics that we jump on and jump off like they were a trampoline.

But a master storyteller, they own the story. They're making sure that the right story gets delivered to the right audience, in a way that gets that audience to act (and I don't always mean purchase. We could be asking for other action to be taken.). It doesn't matter to this person if you're using network TV (still the best way to reach my Mom) or Twitter, it's using the best tool for the audience and the brand. And, usually it's using more then one tool, all working together to deliver the same brand message.

The truth is, some of the traditional agencies could be great in this role and maybe even some are. But from what I hear happening out there today, lots of agencies are still more worried about protecting their turf then they are about delivering the right solution to their clients. That's how agencies like Naked and Mother and BBH and Crispin and R/GA and others got the foothold that they've gotten and why today we'll see even more, new agencies stepping up to really become the master storytellers. Because you should be protecting your clients turf, not your own.

And yes, we're one of the companies that we hope you'll call if you're looking for help in this area!

Perhaps the solution is to return to the clichéd "integration" drawing board and figure out how to ensure that all three sides of the equation are equally represented around the table. In this scenario, there's a definite and defined role for an "integrator" -- an independent third party (internal or external) that is the generalist to the physical, digital and virtual specialist verticals, with less interest in ensuring success in any one world than in simply ensuring your success, period.

Who Owns Social Media?.

Experience Manifesto: Social Media.