Attention’s Colin Nagy recently spoke with Caroline McCarthy, Social Media reporter for CNET. She shared her insights on brands getting it right on Twitter, the future of mobile, what not to do as a startup, as well as the tactile merits of American Apparel swag t-shirts. In addition to her news reporting, Caroline blogs at The Social.
Name some brands who you feel manage to convey a tight, concise brand message while communicating across various social platforms (Twitter, Facebook, etc)?
The Obama campaign. “The Colbert Report” and its green screen challenges. Threadless. JetBlue and Virgin America — but I think JetBlue’s winning right now, since I think Twittering fare specials and auctioning off mystery getaway packages on eBay (perfect for the serendipity-and-quirk image that the “Happy Jetting” campaign goes for) is much more lasting than getting BoingBoing to endorse your airline.
Apple, obviously, but my favorite of their social-media campaigns has been giving away free iTunes playlists to college students who joined their Facebook group; what a great way to market to the BitTorrent generation.
The ABC TV show “Dirty Sexy Money” has been tragically disappointing, but I loved that they advertised by buying space in Gawker Stalker last year to put in fake sightings of the celebrity characters.
What do you foresee as emerging trends in digital media for 2009? (Besides lasers)
I’ve been talking for a long time about location awareness on mobile devices, and now that the iPhone 3G is out we have more evidence about what people are willing and unwilling to do. They’re very hesitant to catch onto location-sharing applications, which most of us didn’t expect; applications like Loopt and Brightkite were supposed to take off like wildfire once all those iPhone owners had GPS in their hands, and they didn’t. There’s still time, but I think this is definitely an indication of industry predictions not meeting well with the popular audience. But other location apps, like Yelp’s application that can direct you to the nearest Chinese restaurant or cocktail lounge, are doing great and are proving to be very useful.
Video search is obviously going to be big, too — there’s all this buzz around a new company called Videosurf that’s getting backed by Al Gore and Current Media. But hype hasn’t always been a great indicator in the video space recently; everyone thought Joost was going to be the revolution, and it thus far has shown few signs of emerging from its post-debut slump, and everyone thought Hulu was going to be terrible but it’s been a great success story.
What’s one piece of advice for early stage companies trying to build awareness online?
Do not try to get your name out there prematurely; this is something that applies both online and offline. I’ve seen companies sponsor parties, hand out T-shirts, and do other preliminary promotional work months before they even had an invite-only alpha. Even if they’re collecting e-mail addresses for when they do launch, this doesn’t work. At best, it’ll make it look like they don’t have their act together; at worst, people will start to label them “vaporware” when the better part of a year goes by before we’ve heard anything. Some early-stage companies might see this as a way to get a leg up on competitors, but that’s just counterintuitive. The fact is, if your competition puts out its product before you do and starts getting traction, it’s not going to matter whatsoever that you had some test screenshots on TechCrunch or used a chunk of your venture funding to rent out 111 Minna months ago.
What the best piece of swag you’ve gotten recently?
At genomics start-up 23andMe’s party this week, they gave out T-shirts — those really soft, retro gray ones from American Apparel — that said “I am genetically predisposed to be really, really ridiculously good-looking” on the back. You will see me wearing it at the gym. Frequently.
