“Imagine if you work up this morning, and the branding in your life disappeared. No burger King, No Geico cavemen, No beer comericals.  Would you behave differently?  Nope. You would continue to buy the best products and services for the money you are willing to spend.” (17).  The book Branding only works on Cattle explores branding from the perspective of that much of the branding out there has little worth.

In the 1980s Pepsi had a very famous taste test.  The test shown that people choose coke over pepsi that they saw the can.  But when they tried the products in paper cups pepsi won in the contest.  What is often overlooked about this much publicized advertising campaign is that Coke’s advertising made the drink taste better to consumers.  So coke red can with it’s classic logo and reputation  made coke taste better for people.

What does it take to make your branding efforts sucesful and not tossed aside.

What makes a bad brand

The word Brand “Is the eight hundred pound gorilla that crushes every conversation about itself.  Nobody in the orgination defines it the was same way marketers do, and I guarantee that there’s no consensus with your own marketing department what it means either.”(187)  When some says that “this will help the brand ” it seems to be helpful but it is not. Compare to saying the car engine has a problem.  People tend to say “of course” and let it go because they don’t want to speak any further about the matter out of lack of knowledge.

Difference between marketing and branding.

“Marketing is the intended to deliver actions, during a set period of time”

“Branding is conceived as far more subtle, intangible contributor to business performance.” “perceived by any number of anecdotal measures.” (p. 36)

The brand is the Longterm image while marketing are more short term actions to position it with competitors and consumers.

The conclusion of this book is a set of different measures that need to be taken to help the brand process advance.  “The business challenge is to recongize this behavior and figure out ways to enable it while not getting in it’s way.”(144)

If Facebook was the television that you grew up and loved, Twitter is the satellite dish.

When used effectively, Twitter is less about forming or maintaining personal relationships and more about the sharing of comments that are free from the pettiness of social media applications such as Facebook. So instead of dressing up what you have to say to impress your circle of friends, now you are laying bare your ideas.

Once you get into Twitter it starts to feel like a swingers club for exchanging information. Instead of telling people about yourself, you are jumping right into what you want to say with random people. You start by finding subjects that you want to talk about. Then you locate a few people to share your interests, which will offer new perspectives and experiences about the topic. By linking with others you are able to gain more insight into topic of interest.

Twitter is often seen as a simple internet fad, the new thing to waste time on.  There is truth in this. Here is a cartoon that points out the many faults of a typical twitter user.

“What’s Twitter?”
“da da da, latest social networking micro blogy thingy”
“I’m not interested”
“Damnit Derek, You are a young, hip, tech savy 20 something, and I will not let you turn into my father, come on.”
“Where are you taking me”
“Into the Twittershpere…”

It is true that the majority of Twitter users do not have much to say, But with a bit of searching you can find interesting and informed opinions on a vast array of subjects, especially on the internet and technology.

Often Twitter is called a mini blog which is misleading it is not a micro blog at all. Twitter is the blog interstate. Once you have started build your twitter network your roads will include information with links to blogs, videos, and posts funneled to your page. These messages or tweets are targeted information coming from your Twitter friends. If you like golf you don’t stop have to stop at friending Tiger Woods. You can also find other golf friends who enjoy sharing golf information with you. This information includes articles on great places to golf, videos on techniques, and egocentric messages on their recent scores.

From this giant pool of twitter people there are people who are interested in a variety of subjects but are not looking to get to know you personally. Unlike email you don’t have to worry about your message inbox filling up. And if someone is annoying with a lot of dumb messages you simply stop following them.

You can listen to anyone: celebrities,  politicians, captains of industry. It is less about following a huge group of people than it is about selecting and shaping the noise that is coming from your orchestra of Tweets. It can be a great resource as long as you choose those who have a pertinent point of view.

Like it or not, this simple web application is influencing how the world web is spun and read. Here are three examples.

The first example demonstrates that one of the best uses of this tool is for marketing. “Alecia Dantico is a professional tweeter for Garrett Popcorn. A growing number of businesses are embracing social media by hiring full-time employees, like Dantico, to man Twitter, Facebook and similar sites.” “Social media is all about being social,” says Nora Ganim Barnes, a marketing professor and director for the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. “It’s not called selling media. The biggest mistake companies make is using social media to hawk products. It’s a turnoff.” AP – MSNBC.  When used for marketing it is important how one talk to their followers.
(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32661618/ns/business-careers)

Secondly, Twitter helped narrate the news story in Denver of a 737 plane sliding off the runway and injuring 38 people on Dec 20 2008. “Passenger Mike Wilson tweeted his miraculous escape.” -The Business Insider (http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/12/twitter-holy-fucking-shit-i-was-just-in-denver-plane-crash)
Since Mark chose to use Twitter on his phone instead of calling someone. The information was received much differently because of the choice he made. Instead of having one friend on the other line there were multiple Twitter followers. The conversation was computerized text so that meant it could be easily quoted and pushed through the internet.

Finally, “Twitter is also influencing other big Internet players like Facebook. Facebook’s latest face-lift was clearly a response to Twitter’s overwhelming influence, even though Facebook has a substantially larger user base.” -Feross.org.
(http://www.feross.org/new-twitter-layout/)

Since this entry was originally posted Twitter has changed their prompt to “What’s happening”  from “What are you doing”.

“The change acknowledges that Twitter has grown far beyond the more personal status updates it was originally envisioned to convey, and has morphed into a sort of always-on, source-agnostic information network that is wholly unique. Twitter says they don’t expect the change to at all influence how people actually use Twitter, but might “make it easier to explain to your dad.”  -Mashable http://mashable.com/2009/11/19/twitter-whats-happening/

Once people stop shouting and begin tuning their voices, others will really begin to start harmonizing, eventually resulting in communities tightly bound in productive dialogue.

“Do you use Twitter?”

The statement do you use Twitter pesters people because what you are stating  is “I use Twitter do you?”   The feeling that you are most likely feeling from just reading word Twitter, is what I would like to classify as the Twitter Stigma.

You hear about Twitter all the time is very commonly joked about and discussed, but very rarely will you hear about people mentioning that they use it.

So what is keeping people from using this software? The Twitter stigma stems through what Geoffrey A. Moore calls the software gap. - Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore If you look to the graph on the right you can see 4 differnt portions of this Graph.

Twitter is currently in the early market stage a simple push and the sensation will become more common place for your average user.  If Twitter wants to be a household product instead of a household name something still needs to occur.   One solution is something called diffusion of innovation or word of mouth marketing.  Steve Knox claims that word of mouth is the strongest way to pass a message. When a friend or family member mentions that they like or dislike something their message goes a long way to influencing your decision. What someone else tells you goes a lot further television, radio, print, and even internet advertising can do.

What Steve has help shape while working at Tremor is the concept of  trend-setters and trend-spreaders.

Trend-setters are clearly what make up Twitter’s user base. These people who’s “personal equity is about being different”. A Trend-setters don’t spread the message at all. A trend-setter will discourage others to join in to stay different. Messages are passed along really by Trend-spreaders. A trend-spreader has a “social networks that are five six times larger than normal person. Have a deep propensity to talk about new ideas within their social network”. -Steve Knox Listen to Steve Knox keynote adress at Duke free on ItuneU These trend spreaders are the ones who enjoy letting other people know what is new and up and coming.

If Twitter wants to be more than a product for simply the elite computer user.  They need to reach out to build something these Trend-spreaders can grab onto.  The image of  Twitter will change from elitist to the common product once it’s functional in a way that the average user can jump into.  For Facebook it was the photos and friends, Myspace webpage building, and yahoo had it’s revamp with it’s news and celebrity gossip.  It is still yet to be seen if Twitter will shape its product to become a website for the typical web consumer.

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