Through our social networks, we learn about products or brands we never knew existed; we share praise and censure for the brands we interact with daily; and we advocate on behalf of our passions. The volume of social brand chatter torpedoes the value of traditional paid “talking at you” brand advertising, while the value of “earned” endorsements and word of mouth skyrockets. Brands no longer control the message. Products and services - and consumers’ experiences with them – shape the brand story in social commerce. Reputation is indeed earned, not paid for.

The essential social commerce toolkit is pretty basic:

• E-commerce enabled: is it easy to purchase your product online?
• Ratings and reviews: do you provide a forum for consumer feedback?
• Social plugins: can consumers easily Like, Share, Tweet, and Pin your product?

In addition to the platforms above, the most essential element is the quality of your product. Does it deliver on its promises? Are you offering products and services that are talkable and sharable?

A wonderful illustration of the power of social commerce is named NoseFrida. NoseFrida the Snotsucker is a product of Swedish ingenuity. Essentially, it’s a plastic tube connected to a longish straw-like hose with a jaunty red mouthpiece attached. Mom or dad holds the end of the tube to baby’s nostril to create a seal, then vigorously inhales on the mouthpiece. With a wet, horrifying-yet-oddly-satisfying sucking sound, baby’s nose is miraculously booger-free. It sounds gross, but a flimsy yet serviceable hygienic filter keeps the icky stuff in the tube.

NoseFrida

Any parent of an infant knows that traditional bulb aspirators just don’t work. (To say they suck would be untrue.) When your kiddo is congested and miserable, you’ll do anything to make them breathe easier. One sleepless night, I rocked my stuffed-up newborn with smartphone in hand, lamenting my plight to my social media mothers-in-arms. A few folks sang NoseFrida’s praises. I’d never heard of it (and was in fact repulsed by the notion), but visited Amazon to learn more. There I found 717 glowing reviews that essentially said the same thing: “It’s kind of gross, but it works amazingly well.” After reading page after page of glowing (and often hilarious) reviews, I was convinced. $15 seemed a small price to pay for sweet relief; salvation was literally a click away. It’s that link that makes social commerce so powerful – the immediacy of the being able to make the purchase the second you’ve been convinced.

Two days later, Nosefrida arrived and I became a believer. Yes, it was gross. But yes, it worked. Wonderfully so. I proceeded to evangelize Nosefrida to all of my mom friends, who tried it and told their friends. It’s one of the most repinned items on Pinterest. It’s my go-to present for baby showers. I would never have believed I could get so excited about booger extraction. But here we are.

Have you ever seen a TV spot for NoseFrida? Me neither. But it’s the #2 selling baby product on Amazon.com. (The top spot belongs to Vulli’s Sophie the Giraffe teether, another word-of-mouth sensation.) #2 among thousands of products from powerhouse brands that spend millions of dollars on advertising. And that, my friends, is the power of social commerce.

What’s the takeaway? In today’s world of social commerce, efficacy trumps TRPs. Reputation is earned, not paid for. Make it easy for people to learn about, buy, and share your product.   Listen to what your consumers are saying, and treat your advocates well. And when your product truly does what it promises, it speaks for itself.

This year, as every year, a number of key messages have been echoed again and again by the speakers, panelists and attendees of the conference. So here are a few of the main ideas that I’m leaving Austin with in 2012:

Business as usual has ended: there is a New World Order.

I heard Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins say it about music, Anthony Bourdain say it about TV, and a number of smart advertisers saying it about advertising and marketing: the legacy business models that shape the media world are dead. As Bourdain put it, “Everyone knows it. The body is dead but the brain keeps kicking, refusing to recognize it.” We, and the brands we represent, keep doing the same things today that we did in the past and wonder why we don’t get better results. It’s time to change not only the things we do but the way we do them to remain relevant to consumers.

Digital isn’t a medium, it’s age in which we live.

This is one of the primary themes that was present in just about every talk that I attended. Digital is not a channel in which to run adds. It is a way of thinking, and a state of being, that pervades all of our lives. Brian Solis called today’s generation Generation C - Generation Connected, and it encompasses the majority of us, regardless of age. So much of our lives have been affected by digital connectivity and we have discovered so much control in the messages we receive, the media we consume and the media we create that we have largely begun to reject anything that doesn’t fit into this culture of connectedness and consumer control.

Just go make things.

This was repeated again and again, panel after panel at SXSW this year. With so many possibilities in front of us to connect with consumers these days, we as an industry of communicators seem to freeze up and struggle to communicate. And when we finally work up the courage to produce something, it’s often a retreat back to what we are comfortable with: print ads, TV spots, banners and landing pages. It’s time to be more agile, to stop talking ourselves out of action and just go make this that aren’t necessarily ads. Make apps, make prototypes, try new ideas in social and mobile. Make products. We will never know what works unless we pick up the tools, make things and put them in front of people to get a reaction. If it works, invest more there. If it doesn’t, move on. The age of planning a campaign for 18 months is over. The age of failing fast in order to succeed is here, and we need to embrace it.

Combining these three key points and a new model for the advertising and marketing industry begins to emerge. Our old way of doing business has ended, and we need to recognize it and stop trying to do things the way they were even 5 years ago. The connectivity and control granted to society through the growth of digital technology has fundamentally changed the way people live, and has altered their relationships with media and brands forever. So advertiser and their agencies must become more agile, try more things more quickly, and make things that people want rather than try to make people want things.

It’s the way things are, and SXSW is not the first place that it has been said. But our industry, and our brands, will need to stop talking about this new world order it and actually start living up to it in order to truly move things forward.

As we continue to push our socialization, experiences and identities out to the web, there is a stronger awareness of what’s left behind— our physical consciousness.

Thousands of attendees walked the halls of the SXSW campus with devices in both holsters, faces constantly peering into tiny screens watching the latest blow-by-blows through Twitter and GroupMe.   This persistent immersion has the most technologically advanced people in the country and from around the world worried about getting lost in the same technology that empowers them.

Into my first day, I listened to the Chairman & CEO of Aetna, Mark Bertolini.  He talked about technology that helped Aetna members manager their health care, but he also talked about meditation as an important part of his own health regimen.  

Amber Case, a cyborg anthropologist, spoke about the importance of location based content that enables us to live more in our physical selves. “I don’t want to miss all of my life when I look at the screen all the time,” said Case.  “The best technology is invisible and gets out of the way… enabling us to live in reality.” 

“The best technology is invisible and gets out of the way… enabling us to live in reality.”  — Amber Case

Actor Rainn Wilson espoused the importance of having a discourse of life’s big questions which he carries out with his followers on SoulPancake.com.  

Technologists Julian Bleecker and Nicolas Nova showed the present and the future where the mind is the interface with technology—a point where our own thoughts will activate the technology in the world around us.   We saw bikes and skateboards already using fMRI technology to do this.  This raised the question of the power of our collective consciousness. 

Legendary inventor and futurist, Ray Kurzweil spoke about biotechnology and a concept called singularity.  Artificial intelligence like Watson and Deep Blue and the convergence of machines within our own bodies are changing our view of what it means to be human.  Today, Scientists are placing blood cell sized devices in animals and Parkinson’s is being treated by placing technology inside the body. 

Technology raises big questions.  As we continue to design communications and engagement for consumers, it is important to recognize the importance and deep rooted desire in all of us to stay grounded in the outside world.  Let’s find ways to help our customers and get them back to their lives.  Intuitively, SXSW knew we would all need a little more soul after these heavy discussions.  The conference offered daily Yoga sessions to get folks back in touch with their higher selves!

“..right there amongst all us creative wizards, a prominent listing for an ad agency offering the latest breakthrough in marketing today.  Taa daa…sign spinners.  Just contact them and they’ll send out a guy in a gorilla suit to stand in front of your store and spin your message on a propeller-esque sign while occasionally lunging at passing cars.”

That raises the question, how is most advertising different than a guy in a gorilla suit holding a spinning sign that says “Buy Stuff at Main Street Mattress Warehouse?”

It isn’t.

Well, superficially it is. Yes, the gorilla might actually be Danica Patrick and the spinning sign may be the $100k 3D graphic of your logo that dances on the screen 25 seconds into your 30-second TV spot. But it is still lunging at passing traffic, trying to attract attention, just like the guy in the gorilla suit. Which is not very encouraging, when you think about it.

So I say, let’s stop spending so much effort lunging at passing traffic.

Let’s stop jumping up and down on the sidelines, waving our arms, trying to be noticed. Let’s stop spending so much time trying to interrupt people with things that, with very few exceptions, they really don’t care about.

Instead, let’s, as an industry of both brands and their agencies, be more like Bob, the helpful guy who works in Main Street Mattress Warehouse. The one who walks up and politely introduces himself when he sees a chance, not when you are talking to your husband. The guy who takes the time to explain the REAL differences between your product and the others. The one who tells you a bit about himself and the asks you about your needs, what would work best for you. The one who will listen to your complaints when there is a problem, and then work hard to fix them. And the one who gives you some valuable extra advice about getting a good night sleep, along with a free mattress-fluffer.

Will you know about Bob, the helpful, likable salesman in the Main Street Mattress Warehouse when you are driving down the road, chatting with friends in the car on your way to Starbucks? No. But you won’t care then anyway - you’re doing something else and thinking about something else.

Instead, you’ll hear about Main Street Mattress Warehouse when your friends who have been there and met Bob, or who have friends who have met Bob, tweet about the experience and talk about their great new mattress on Facebook, as well as in person. You’ll know that people who you know will be shopping there when you see it on Foursquare. Google searches will not only tell you where the store is, but, more importantly will show you all the people like you who have reviewed their great experience there talking to Bob and how much they love their new mattress, which they bought because Bob was such a genuine, helpful guy. And of course, they’ll tell you about the great, free mattress fluffer that they got just for stopping by, no sale required.

Yes, Main Street Mattress Warehouse still needs a sign out front, ads to tell people where they are, etc. But, given the choice, would you rather be the guy in the gorilla suit lunging at traffic as it tries to avoid him, or do you want to be Bob, who forms even a brief relationship with the people who visit the store?

The world needs both, I guess. But what type of brand do you want to be? What type of agency do you want to be?

There have been changes though in the last 30 years and ironically, most of the notable changes weren’t because of technology. In fact, it is technology that is actually swinging the pendulum back from change. The idea that people can connect with likeminded artisans online and that the Internet is creating a space for an American crafting renaissance permeated the SXSW 2012 CraftCamp discussion.

My mother’s generation learned how to macramé and sew in Home Economics class and my generation learned how to boil water in class. For those of us who love the art of making it ourselves, we are left in the dark with needles. That is until the underworld of young needle-touting women (and gentlemen) who have created an online Mecca. It started with a series of disconnected blogs individually cropping up. Slowly an infrastructure is being stitched together with aggregate blog curators. Patterns are being shared on Pinterest and Etsy. How to videos are replacing $250 instructional classes. Forums enable advice sharing. The online world of crafts has a long way to go, but now I have a network of like-minded “I can make that myself”-ers. No longer am I lonely in the basement, listening to “Thriller” on the turntable as I stitch on my Singer.

How is the craft phenomenon applicable to brands?
• People are hardwired to want to share their ideas (crafts or otherwise) with peers of a given trade. If those conversations aren’t being had offline and there isn’t a mature infrastructure online already, brands can become the hub for sharing.
• Crafting was the original crowdsourcing. People come up with amazing craft ideas and if brands allow customers to come up with product ideas and content ideas, the experience will be enhanced and people will be engaged.
• The upswing in crafting is indicative of a bigger trend of getting back to our American roots, people seeking outlets to be creative and shoppers redefining what quality and price points mean to them. Even if, as a brand, crafting doesn’t make any sense, the trend can give you insight about current consumer values.

Check out this craft-inspired Pinterest board, which includes DIY projects: http://pinterest.com/lindsayvaughn/sxsw-smarterfaster-com-board/

The first insight (but really no insight at all) was that the visual of an attractive woman “makes a man impatient and short-term oriented,” says Dooley.  On a video-game website enrollment form three designs were tested among men.  The first version was plain and had no women.  The second design featured a headshot of a woman and the third showed cleavage.  The version with the female had 65% more enrollment than the first and the boobs attributed to a 95% increase in enrollment from version one.    In fact, the title of this article may have just jettisoned the readership of my blog way over that of my colleagues.  So this isn’t really news with Paris Hilton’s Carl’s Jr. car wash ad and the antics of GoDaddy, but it is a reminder, that at the end of the day, stereotypes aside, we are hardwired a certain way. 

The second learning was about the Doppelganger effect.  Researchers showed respondents pictures of themselves drinking Coca-Cola.  The respondents desire to consume Coca-Cola increased simply from the visual.  The brain is more receptive to places, people, and things, when we already see ourselves interacting with them.  This means that dynamic content isn’t just about tailoring the product messaging we deliver as it does incorporating the personalized details of the person we’re talking to (with permission of course).  Check out the technology at St. Bonaventure University’s www.BecomingExtraordinary.net (which actually uses your Facebook picture on a student ID card) and www.TheDexterHitlist.com.

The brain is more receptive to places, people, and things, when we already see ourselves interacting with them. 

Lastly, we are wired for storytelling.  Researchers asked subjects to look at an animated drawing of a box that had one circle and two triangles floating out of it.  They were asked to explain what they saw.  Only a single respondent replied that they saw floating shapes.  Every other respondent told a story complete with metaphors, characters, plotlines.  Evolutionary psychologists explain that we need stories because that is how we define people and also how we define ourselves.  The Wall Street Journal is acclaimed for one of the most powerful direct response ads in ad history.  It is simply 10 sentences and tells the story of 2 guys who went to school together, graduate together, go to work for the same company and ultimately one is running a department and the other is the President.  The WSJ then says what made the difference was the things they learned along the way.  People inserted themselves into that story and concluded “I need to read the WSJ so I can be the right guy in that story.”    How many of the websites and Facebook pages that marketers create tell a story? 

Evolutionary psychologists explain that we need stories because that is how we define people and also how we define ourselves.

There is an opportunity to be more explicit with our storytelling and for brands to get into that same state of mind that consumers live in every moment of their day.  We have an opportunity through technology to insert our consumers directly into that story and use visuals that interest and motivate them.  The more we understand the brain, the more we can successfully engage consumers who are currently only using 5% of the conscious brain to tell us what they want.

Eventually, our features list is complete and we believe our design to be complete. At this point, we are balanced at the top of the Complexity Curve: the product is full of features and maximally complex.

Complexity takes many forms. It can result from poorly designed interfaces, too much irrelevant information, or actions that are difficult to complete. It can be caused when a user’s expectations are not met by the design and functionality. And when we ask users to think too much, or make too many decisions, it feels like we have created and unnecessary complex interactive product.

So how do we reduce complexity in the things that we create, making them simpler?

Shift the complexity from the user to the designers and developers.

Don’t make the user, the consumer, work too hard. It is your team  that needs to work hard in the design and development of the interactive product to ensure that your user has the best experience possible - otherwise they may not be your user for long.

Here are 10 ways to help reduce complexity and design for simplicity:

1. Clean up messy and confusing interfaces.  Basically, apply the principles of strong graphic design.
2. Get rid of indirect action. Don’t make people interact with one thing to affect another. You’ll just lose them along the way.
3. Don’t try to be everything to everyone. Focus on who you are designing for and what you are doing for them.
4. Give up on design by consensus. Cross-discipline teams and multiple points of view are good. Averaging the work out across the opinions of the team is not. Use the team to find the best solutions, not the ones that everyone will accept as a compromise.
5. Eliminate “nice to have…” It’s either essential or it is not. If a feature isn’t essential, get rid of it.
6. Stop copying solutions. Solutions to other problems can be inspiring, but probably won’t apply directly to the problem your team is trying to solve.
7. Don’t map structure of experience to organization or technology. That’s a long way to say don’t put a square peg in a round hole. Don’t shape a user experience into something it shouldn’t be because you are tied to a certain technology or organizational way of doing things. Consumers don’t care how your database is structured, but they do care if it impedes their interaction with your brand.
8. Don’t lead with technology. It often results in solutions in search of a problem.
9. Stop designing for yourself. Follow user-centered design. Think of their needs and design for their motivations and behavior.
10. Always exercise Critical Thinking. And definitely stop accepting assumptions. Think hard about everything that you are doing. Recognize assumptions and question them instead of accepting them Assess relationships. Optimize solutions.

And always remember what Einstein said: make everything as simple as it can be, not simpler.

This is a recap of the SXSW talk by David Hogue, VP of User Experience at Fluid, Inc.

I started my day in a mildly long line for my badge. Not too bad. As I walked out I noticed that mild line had quadrupled in size and was snaked throughout the Austin Convention Center. Exhibit A. The first day is really only a half day of panels, so grabbed some local fare at an off-the-beaten-path BBQ joint. Place was pretty empty when we got in but by the time we left there were 10 people waiting for a seat. Exhibit B. Oh, I did forget to mention it was pouring rain and the streets where beginning to flood … but i digress. I headed to my first hard-hitting panel, the SXSW ping pong tourney. I figured I’d have a little fun before the barrage of content took over my brain.

I had some time between games, so I popped in a panel titled “Hacking Your Brain.” I admit it sounded cool. The panel was one man’s account of self hacking. He changed his life around but I’m not so convinced of the merit of sticking a homemade 9-volt battery to my head. Wired published an interesting article on the subject (http://www.wired.com/magazine/tag/biohacking/).

What next? Oh yeah — the ping pong tournament. I met up with my partner and immediately played a best of three game against a tech company. We lost, but many said our technique was spot on. I’ll take that. I caught another cool panel (http://www.toyotapriusprojects.com/) then grabbed some free tacos and headed to the last panel of the day. So far, it was good but nothing was exceptional — save for my phenomenal pong play.

I sat down to “It’s Alive: Interactive Machines That Captivate.” Sincerely, I was blown away. This was the kind of creative that inspires people to be great. The four panelists created amazing expediences through machines. Each prompted a different but real emotional connection (see links below). Deeplocal, a Pittsburgh-based creative firm, had a great perspective on the approach to bringing these ideas to life. If a team member has an idea, he gives them 2 weeks to deconstruct the idea and to build a physical comp. If the idea still has legs then it is green-lit and is developed in more detail.

Overall, my first day was pretty good. It’s super crowded, rainy, and there are more beards here than a Hemingway look-a-like contest. But the content is also here… at least for now.

Why is everyone talking about making things that aren’t ads? Because the internet happened. What does that mean?

No mass audience = no mass media
No mass media = no mass advertising
No mass advertising = oh oh.

So what can agencies create and sell?

The answer begins and ends with consumer behavior. The future of marketing is not advertising. Agencies need to go from making people want things to making things that people want. Do it for our clients and do it for ourselves.

The most innovative agencies have within their DNA the vision that there is no separation between products and services. They don’t just provide marketing services, they create products.

Paid media driven connections to consumers, fixed deliverable projects, and an over-emphasis on the big idea. This is the Old Way, both offline and online. Even in the “new media” space there is such a thing as Traditional Digital (note: a term I’ve also been using for a while). This is still filling a hole on a page, but filling it with banners ads, landing pages, and emails rather than print ads, billboards and posters.

So the best agencies and the smartest clients are not just making ads - they are creating products. Sometimes these are physical products, and other times they are digital. And increasingly, they are a blend of the two, or so-called physical-digital, like the Nike Chalkbot developed by DeepLocal.  They are building things that enhance people’s live. And agencies, not just brands, are creating products and devices that serve a true purpose.

But agencies can’t make stuff unless you have people who make stuff. Once you see people making things, it’s infectious. But if you just hire people with ads on their resume, they’ll probably just make ads for you.

The Art Director + Copywriter team is awesome for making ads, but not much else. And the Creative Technologist role, as originally conceived, is defunct. We don’t needs a translator between creative and technology. We need creatives that can speak directly to developers and be understood.

When you hear things like “This whole ‘collaboration, we’ll work together as a team’ - I find it really difficult,” or “there are too many people around the table,” or “developers aren’t creative or idea people,” then you have the wrong people around the table. You have the wrong people on your team.

Progressive agencies are shutting their doors for a day or two for personal project time, group work sessions and hackathons. Everyone gets involved to make stuff, to concept it, to create it. They are doing this because coming up with ideas alone doesn’t give you an edge, it’s the ability to make stuff that sets you apart.

Your competitors (or clients) will make stuff with or without you. This isn’t maybe going to happen. It is happening. Brands are already doing this. Other agencies are doing it.

So get out there and make stuff that isn’t an ad. Here are 10 things to consider as you go:

1. What’s your reason for making things?

2. Find, or hire, your makers.

3. Beware of old ideas in new clothes.

4. Mistrust hierarchy, legacy structures and roles.

5. Give people time to create and to build.

6. Institutionalize collaboration.

7. Be agile in thought and action.

8. Establish a “No permission required” culture.

Why scripts are so inviting:
- It is easier to get approvals from constituents.
- There is time to make sure that the brand is adequately infused into the conversation.
- There is a sense of control.
- Did I mention that it is easier?

How to break free:
- As we heard in the “Top Chef: How Transmedia is Changing TV,” you should have an extensive plan in place regarding what type of content is served up on what media and how it all works together.
- Build larger, content rich campaigns as guide posts.
- Know your audience and types of conversation and trends that your brand is willing to activate to participate in. When you see “movement” among your audience towards these trends/conversations, you are ready to participate.