So it’s been about a month since I last posted anything. Time has been flying with creative production, constant meeting s, and a ton of presentations to give to the client. In fact, this week alone our creative director and I presented to the Census’ Joint Advertising Advisory Review Panel (JAARP) as well as the Department of Commerce and Congress.
As stated in my prior post, this is an extremely important step in the creative process. You see, JAARP is comprised of selected members of the Census’s Race and Ethnic Committee (REAC), which speaks for itself. The presentation to JAARP and gaining their approval is one of the final “hoops” that our creative teams have “jump” through to finalize the creative concepts and prep them for the media. As you can imagine, this is also the most important one for an ethnic agency.
When in the meeting, we presented our creative concepts to representatives of ethnic organizations. These individuals represent the interest of “their” ethnic groups and in turn, have very critical opinions on our representation on “their” ethnic groups. What makes this process a little bit easier is that we are part of “their” ethnic groups.
In some cases, these representatives are very aware of the creative process of marketing, though in most cases, we have to ask for their understanding and patience. When we show rough cuts for television, as well as placeholder tracks and images for the radio and print creative concepts, individuals have difficulty grasping the fact that things will change prior to the concepts reaching the media. This leads to many concerns about quality as well as cultural sensitivity. Concerns from these representatives are not taken lightly. These stakeholders have the ability to eliminate any creative concept they deem unfit, so we do whatever we can to make sure that all of our creative pleases these stakeholders while keeping the best interests for our audiences in mind.
A day after showing off our work to the client and their stakeholders, we made our way to the Chamber of Commerce where we gave the Secretary of Commerce a presentation on our work. This would be the final “loop” we would have to jump through for approval on the creative. As it happened, our stakeholders were pleased with our work, the Secretary gave us the “two thumbs up,” and we were give the go ahead to go public at the Capitol with our creative work the following day with our presentation the Congress. Now it’s time to finalize our work and prep them for media distribution.
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What is Social Media? Why does Social Media matter? Where do I fit in? These are some of the questions constantly being asked in offices and cubicles around the country and around the world every day. In actuality, the questions are more direct and less casual; driven by fear many ask: but what’s our ROI? Social Media, the buzz word, has a safe place among serious integrated marketing campaigns, so let’s be clear about what we’re talking about. Social Media or New Media is a conversation that bridges the divide between a social cause and an activist, a product and a consumer, or a tag-line and a consumer. Marsha Lindsay wrote a nice piece on social media about the evolving conversation economy.
Social Media matters: traditional, unidirectional, media won’t reach all main stream audiences; it certainly won’t target in-language ethnic communities – an increasingly important ability. As some bloggers have noted on recent Census survey information, including Allied Media Corp.’s Johanna Kinsely, the American consumer continues to become increasingly segmented. Social Media matters today because it allows large organizations to hold conversations both internally and with their respective audiences. Of course, the implicit assumption here: increasing information leads to better understanding.
We all fit in. Social Media in all of its metaphysical glory has demands. Social Media must be: user centric, agile, omnidirectional and creative. Social Media is content, as Guy Kawasaki takes note of Brian Halligan’s notes. Content within content – that’s deep. Before I digress, Social Media allows for individual agency and this can be explored through tools such as Twitter. Last Friday, I had a chance to listen to Shel Israel speak at the last Blog Potomac unconference speak about his latest book Twitterville. It was an interesting conversation about conversing online. We all fit in. Go find your voice and jump in. I’m looking forward to your comments – thanks!
