Virginia Miracle

WHO IS THIS WOMAN? BLOGGER? MOM?  WOM ADVOCATE?  WIFE?  STRATEGIST? She’s not confused, just multi-dimensional like you.

This week, I was honored to be asked to participate in IBM’s Social Media Marketing Summit.  The first speaker of the day was a social media standard, but someone whom I had not previously met: Frank Eliason, the man behind @comcastcares.  Frank has not only become a poster child for his company, he has become a go-to case study for traditional media getting value out of Twitter.  Frank had a lot of great nuggets of wisdom to pass along through sharing his journey, but there was one aspect that I got some additional questions on later: his very open, brave take on how personal and professional worlds fit together in social media.

Frank’s profile page not only bears his own photo, but links to his family’s personal websites.  This is Frank’s interpretation of a critical principle: people don’t create relationships with a company, they create relationships with people. He shares these links to personalize both himself and his employer.  While I agree with the underlying concept, my interpretation of what it means to bring this principle to life is different.  While my tweets, this blog, and my entries on the Ogilvy blog are all written in a very conversational style that reflects my personality, I do not have digital links up to family or (non-business-relevant) friends.  I am also pretty sensitive to the topics of what I cover and try to stay close to my mission of discussion social media & WOM-relevant topics with an appropriate slice of life on the side.  For the purely personal or “venting”, I usually use Facebook.

I truly don’t think there’s any right or wrong or black or white on this issue.  Over the last few days, I’ve been trying to figure out why I have consciously and unconsciously made these decisions.  Here’s what I’ve come up with:
I have clients – there is already a certain level of professional self-censorship on the stories I share as much of what I am exposed to is proprietary or sensitive for my clients.  Someone who is the face of a brand might feel a bit more comfortable sharing a larger percentage of their days and nights.

I’m female – I started blogging in the age of the mommyblogger explosion, but was not blogging about anything personal.   Because I am a mom who blogs, but am not a mommyblogger, I have probably veered a little dramatically to stay out of that category and pay proper respect to those who truly excel at sharing about their personal lives.  And like Rock and Roll Mama says: I’ve still got it.  Even when I am up to my elbows in Elmo and goldfish.

Virginia Miracle is a Professional Construct (or: Dad Ate My Google Results) – Virginia Miracle was born in 2004 when I married into an awesome last name.  Prior to that, I had a different, somewhat complex and very southern name that is extremely close to that of my Dad – my fabulous and extremely prolific writer father.  For a guy who just got broadband last year, he has a shockingly robust digital footprint.  Getting a new name coincided with the year that I found WOMMA and my career changed.   Thus, everything public that is associated with the name “Virginia Miracle” has stayed relatively professional and been highly correlated to Word of Mouth Marketing.

I don’t think there is a “best practice” here, but it is important to be conscious of your choices as you start that Twitter feed, create a YouTube video of your friends in Vegas, or blog about your parenting style.  Depending on how and where you share, it could follow you to your next job interview, background check, or family reunion.  Best of luck and happy social media sorting…

It’s been 3 weeks since the best WOMMA conference in years.  As I’ve been reflecting, one of the big things I’ve been trying to nail down is exactly WHY I am so sure it is the best conference in years and what ideas I have taken with me.  Here’s what’s stuck:

Content Buoyancy - There were a lot of great takeaways from YouTube’s Jeben Berg’s talk (captured here on the All Things WOM blog), but this is the concept I am still pondering some weeks later.  Given that no piece of content will stay at the top of the YouTube pile forever, content buoyance describes your content’s ability to rise back to the top of the heap.  Will it find new relevance what conditions change in the future?  Does the content have the ability to be evergreen and find new audiences over time?  The example used here was Nike’s Ronaldinho Touch of Gold video from 2005 that has garnered 28million views over the years:

In this case, its about great content that doesn’t grow stale.

Blowing Chunks – Blowing Chunks with Ted & John is not just a compelling name for a breakout, but an invitation to great conversations.  Fizz Corp’s Ted Wright & John Moore from Brand Autopsy not only brought beer, they brought a fun WOM construct – the “Nausea Avoidance Checklist”.  This invited participants to share their WOM mis-steps in a fun and safe environment.  It was like group therapy.

Pack Your Knives & Go

Location, Location, Location – This year’s WOMMA was just a few miles away from the previous one, but world’s away in terms of talkability.  The Ritz Carlton South Beach and its gorgeous beach setting was a breath of fresh air and WOMMA activities included lunch served by none other than Top Chef finalist Jeff McInnis.  Another divisive event element was the “naked” dessert spread on night 2.  Some people loved it, some hated it, but it gave everyone something to chew on which was, indeed, the point.

Positivity Reigns on Yelp - The conversational nugget that Goeff Donaker shared that Yelp reviews are 6:1 positive is something that I have already used in conversation multiple times.  People want to go out of the way to share POSITIVE experiences with others.  God bless altruism.

WOMMA not only knows how to throw a great conference, they also know how to host an online conversation.  If you have an opinion on where ethical boundaries should be drawn around “sponsored conversations”, please make your voice heard on the Living Ethics Blog.

<2 Part Disclaimer: My company (Ogilvy PR) is doing social media work with Ford.  We did not execute the project being discussed in this post>

The case “story” I shared with the AdTech audience a few weeks ago showed of a number of elements executing a digital influence strategy through discussing some of the work that Ford has been doing.  In one slide, I featured a photo of Brad & Emma – 2 Fiesta “agents” chosen to drive Ford Fiesta for 6 months prior to it becoming available in the US and take it on monthly missions.  Little did I know that @cupster – a direct connection to Brad & Emma and key player in their campaign site followthefiesta.com – would be in the audience.

After getting connected to them digitally, I asked if they would share some insight into WHY they wanted to apply to drive and spread WOM on a car they had never driven.  I also asked about the role of social media in their strategy.  After all, they DID get the car.  Here is some wisdom from @followthefiesta:

VM: You and Emma were clearly extremely passionate about becoming one of the 100 Agents in the Fiesta Movement.  How did you hear about the opportunity?  What appealed to you about the Fiesta?

FTF: We had a blast working on this project! I heard about this ‘contest’ from a friend that entered and it turned into a little ‘friendly’ competition.  The idea that we could hit the open roads in a new car (that no one has seen) and set out on adventures is what appealed most to us.  We work indoors in a live performing arts theater everyday. So, the excuse to get outdoors in the fresh air is an added bonus too!

VM: How did you decide what forms of social media to include in your Follow the Fiesta campaign (blog, twitter, youtube, google friend connect, other?)?

FTF: We searched around a bit to discover what other people that had entered were using as the key social networking components. We immediately purchased our domain name followthefiesta.com and then began branding this across the other forms of social media. Twitter, Youtube, Facebook Fan Page, etc all helped us try to get people to watch our audition video.  From the very beginning, we knew that we wanted to create a brand (followthefiesta) and a tagline (follow brad follow emma) so people would remember us through out the project. After we came up with the site name and tagline, we approached Adam (Cuppyyarrish.com) to see if he thought we could actually pull off everything that we felt needed to happen to get the exposure and grab the attention of the Selection Committee. We created the audition video and also several shorter videos (we like to call Nuggets) used to promote our brand.

VM: How are you and Emma resolving who actually gets to DRIVE the car?

FTF: The great thing about that situation is that we both work at the Craterian Theater (www.craterian.org ) and have the same identical schedule. We carpool to work and for errands around town. (So, not only did we win the contest but we are doing our part by keeping extra cars off the roadways by carpooling!) We do a pretty good job taking turns driving, and now that I’m not as ‘rusty’ with the manual transmission Emma may have to race me to get to the drivers seat first!

VM: I love your Ryan Stiles nugget video.  Any other celeb appearances in Follow’s future?

FTF: We’re always on the look-out for additional appearances and hope to get a few more down the road. Ryan was a great sport!  Stay tuned for a few more surprises that will include some well known personalities.

Note: this is cross posted at the 360 DI Fresh Influence blog.

Recently, some of us around the 360 DI team have spent some serious quality time with the  international advocacy-movement building experts at Purpose Campaigns.  Inspired by one of his Australian quotable quotes, I asked co-founder Jeremy Heimans to answer a few questions for the Fresh Influence blog.

VM: I recently heard you say that “newsletters are the enemy” for building advocacy movements.  Given that you have built a number of global  movements from the ground up (Global MoveOn compliment  Avaaz (pictured above), anti-nuclear Global Zero, and GetUp Australia to name a few), can you share a few core tenets of designing and maintaining a truly “action”-oriented brand? Read more…

I had never heard the phrase “pandemic flu” before my arrival at Ogilvy 18 months ago.  Having never worked in public health or (thankfully) lived through a scare, it wasn’t anything that crossed my consciousness.  Upon coming here, however, and learning about the great work this team did with the US Department of Health and Human Services Pandemic Flu Leadership blog, I started to learn about the role that personal preparedness will play in preventing a Pandemic and the power of social media in spreading that message.  It was also an example of the potent combination of a credible author (then Secretary of HHS Michael Leavitt) with a controversial topic and a social media platform for discussion.

In the last 48 hours, there have been some mainstream media articles pointing fingers at Twitter, where #swineflu has been the #1 or #1 trend for the last 3 days, as the culprit of spreading hysteria and bad information.  While I’m not particularly interested in long tail analysis on swine flu OR in taking medical advice from my Tweeps, social media can be a quick and powerful way to amplify some very credible sources of health information.  Looking at Twitter as a detriment is pointless when it can have power to spread correct information.  The CDC has embraced the tool and the 3 month old @cdcemergency handle is up to almost 40k followers who want to get their health information from the horse’s mouth, but on a platform that they already embrace.

Ogilvy in Asia has additionally put together a very helpful aggregation of up-to-the-minute credible sources of health information on the Swine Flu.  If you are wondering about something you have seen on facebook, the news, heard from a friend, etc, this is a great resource to check that information against the CDC and WHO.

Another source for interesting analysis from the science side can be found over at ScienceBlogs.com which has put together a great collection of perspectives on the issue from a peer-reviewed, science-based, hysteria-free perspective.  And with that, I’m off to wash my hands for the 5th time today.