We all learn that we can feel less anxious if we can control what is active
in our awareness. So, we use various things to increase control of what is
active in mind. In our teens and twenties, we use substances (booze, drugs) to
help avoid awareness of what is uncomfortable. Then, perhaps becoming more
productive, we learn to focus on work, or on play, or both.

Friends might say, “Afraid of flying – - – just keep your mind off
it.” OK. Fine, as long as it works, it works. But there comes a time when
it won’t work. When there is too much stuff to keep stuffed, when there are too
many things that can cause distress, concern, uncertainty, etc., we can’t keep
it all at bay. Once that strategy breaks down, we can never again get adequate
relief with that strategy.

Reminds me of Humpty Dumpty. Once he falls off the wall and shatters, he
can’t be put back together again. We keep gooey anxiety stuff hidden away
inside this egg. The egg is all smiles. But when the egg falls and comes apart,
the goo is everywhere. We can’t get it back inside the egg and seal it up.

That’s when we need to give up that strategy. What some do is just back off
from scary stuff, and stay home. A better strategy is to make a 180 and become
MORE – rather than less – aware.

Initially, that is hard because being more aware of anxiety-producing stuff
is overwhelming. Don’t look at it all at once; look at it all piece by piece.
That’s what a client does with a good therapist. In therapy we may look at just
one small part of the person’s problems for weeks, digging into it deeper and
deeper. And then switching to another, and weeks later to another.

There
is an interesting – though old – thing in psychology called Yerkes-Dodson Law.
When stress hormones hit, they make us pay attention to one thing fully. When a
second thing happens right away, it causes another shot of stress hormones. The
second short of hormones demands that we pay 100% attention to the second
thing. Conflict arises. Conflict causes anxiety, so we want to turn away. No.
We have to prioritize: to look at one first, solve it. When we reach a plan of
action, good. We commit to the plan of action. At the moment of commitment, a
signal goes to the amygdala to stop producing the stress hormones. Then, we
look at the other, solve it, produce a plan of action, commit to it, and get
rid of the stress hormones. Voila. No stress hormones at all.

But when we use the old method and stuff keeps building up. Like an
alcoholic who has to hit rock bottom before he or she finally decides to turn
around, so does the person plagued with anxiety. The only question is whether
we turn around now, by our own determination, or do we wait until there is no
place else to run. Agoraphobics who end up at home may finally end up in one
room, and still be anxious.

It is harder to make the decision now. But it is easier to work back to
health now than it is later. I can tell you one thing; whenever I have had a
fear of flying client who had become agoraphobic and worked back far enough to
grapple with flying, they KNEW they they wanted to go forward toward greater
awareness. None were tempted to go back where they had been.

Worldcom Execs Discuss The Network Benefits

Every Monday I try to read news on Social Media, Digital Marketing, and so on. I allow myself a couple of hours of internet browsing before the “week” starts to attack me and I end up on Friday totally defeated..  Today I found a very interesting blog that tries to explain the five stages of a Social Engagement Journey. Let me reproduce you parts of of it and give you the link for the complete article after my comments.

Stage 1 of the journey is traditional command and control. One-way communication with customers is the norm, and the various functional units in a company operate relatively independently.

- Well,  I would say more than Stage 1, this would be the status where most of companies that have more than 10 yeras of existence normally are.

Stage 2 usually involves 1-2 individuals or teams who begin experimenting with social engagement. These mavericks can appear in any part of the organization but are often in marketing or support groups. There may be multiple mavericks in a company, but they are not yet connected to each other. Teams in this stage emphasize direct customer engagement, likely breaking or bending internal rules to make it happen

- This is totally true. Problem is that the speed of implementation of social engagement will depend on how high in hierarchy are these people, and how open minded is the top management. Some managers still look at numbers and only at numbers..while they should look at the people who allow them to have these numbers, that is, their customers.

Stage 3 is when companies begin getting serious about social. A formal team may be empowered to  help operationalize social engagement, or there are informal internal communities that drive progress. At this stage, companies emphasize training, policies, measurement frameworks and common engagement platforms.

- And this is the stage when everyone goes crazy and either loses faith in what they do, and this is transmittable to the customers, or just produce enormous process to fulfill easy things. One needs to be careful at this stage and try to implement those processes and programs that naturally fit with the nature of our business.

Stage 4 usually means social engagement is delivering real business results. Executive support is broad, and engagement efforts are built into forecasts and annual plans. Customer listening is the norm, and multiple individuals within business units and functional groups are empowered to engage directly with customers and prospects

- This is the ideal stage, but only achievable if we have gain the confidence of our customers to engange with us. No matter how many social programms we do, unless we do offer quality information, and quality time to our customers, it wont work.

Stage 5 is probably nirvana given that many of the tools to achieve this stage don’t exist yet for enterprise-level companies, but we call it the Fully Engaged Enterprise. In it, companies experience breakthrough business results based on deep customer engagement. Customers say things like “You know what I need before I do” and “my life is better because of you,” or “I trust you.” That said, there’s a lot of foundation work to do in Stages 1-4, regardless of technology.

- Of course. Yes, this will be the final goal. But, do you really think there is just one single company capable of offering: “the need before you feel it ?”. I believe this stage would rather be the results of driving the marketing strategies based on the outcome from Stage 4.

These were my comments, and this is the link for this intereseting post: http://www.churchofcustomer.com/2010/12/the-social-engagement-journey.html

I am copying the post here, but if you want to go to the source – click here.

Five Types of Social Media Integration*

*And they are all harder than you think

We have been pushing our “integrated social media” for a few years now – probably sooner than we should have. When we said ‘integrated’ a year ago generally we meant integrating marketing, communications and customer service. Implicit in that is a second interpretation of integrated, this time to mean the combination of owned, paid and earned media strategies and platforms. That’s what tends to get the biggest impact in social media from marcom programs. 

Now integration means something more to the top brands who have been experimenting and applying social media over the past few years. Both Jackie Huba and Jeremiah Owyang recently published posts on “the year of integration.” Each has good experience consulting with major brands to call on. Jeremiah’s recent survey with social media strategists at major brands revealed a natural conclusion – to get the most out of social media, brands need to integrate it across the enterprise. 

Five Types of Integration

Brands face five types of integration. They are all important and most are hard but necessary. 

• Paid, Owned, Earned 
• Global & local
• Across the Enterprise
• Inside & Outside the Organization
• Inside Every Job

Paid, Owned, Earned - When you combine the power behind your own Web site and Facebook page (insert brand social web properties here), with some purely social strategies like engaging influencers or inspiring a community to share with sympathetic advertising geared to increasing reach and presence you will have a more successful program. I am not dismissing the basics of having a great product or service and customer service with their ear to the ground. Those I take for granted. Once you move beyond the unshakable foundation towards pro-active marketing, an integrated approach works better every time. 

This model implies a commitment and routine of the marketing and communications teams within the company working together. Often these groups have a different reporting structure. Sometimes they are a bit competitive. Once in a while it is hard to guess they even work for the same company (or customer). 

The “ceneter fo excellence” federation model has worked to bring these disparate teams together. 

Global & Local -   Big multinationals in B2B and B2C often split budgets between the corporate center, often called ‘global’ and the local market. Since different regions of the world are developing social media differently and at different rates, not every local market feels the pressure to adopt social media marcom techniques….yet. I have seen many situations where the social media ambition of the corporate center whether based in the US, EU or China isn’t matched by the local marketplace. And often the local marketplace has explicit or implicit power over the issue.

Most often the marcom budgets are bigger at the local or regional market level and the global team must rule by attraction versus fiat.   It’s one thing to impose social media governance rules to limit the uncontrolled growth of brand Facebook pages. Most local markets will understand the issues there. It’s another to pressure a local market to shift budget to social strategies when you are hammering them for sales targets at the end of the week. Nothing new there. If brands want to incent markets to change, they will need to give them room to do so and exhibit some global leadership that says ‘this is important.’

Across the Enterprise – HR, IT, Legal, Finance and Product Development are just three examples beyond the marcom and customer service units that are increasingly affected by social media. If its not protecting intellectual property from some bone-headed blurt on a Facebook wall (“we finally had a breakthrough on our battery technology by using…), its wrestling with the demands of video-heavy network traffic on the IT backbone as people stream video for legitimate and illegitimate reasons. The social media guidelines we all created 5 years ago to tell our employees what they could and could not do via social media now seem quaint. 

If your marketing culture is to embrace social networks than it does no good to have your HR leadership restricting access to Facebook or YouTube on the network. Integration across these units is critical going forward. And yet this is where a lot of paralyzing conflict will arise. Just look at the crisis management scenarios when legal needs to restrict what employees say in relation to the crisis due to their litigation implications. Communications leadership often wants to get out and walk the walk of openness and plain-speak and just say “sorry, we screwed up..” but can’t and stay in sync with legal. 

Inside & Outside the Organization – What does the staff at the brand do and what do their agencies do? Never mind which agency type. The question of what is handled internally versus via a partner is going to be a work in progress for years. Should agencies manage the Facebook wall? Early wisdom was that brands should not delegate the conversation to an outside party. Well, many agencies are as close to the Brand and the business as any staff member.

We have seen a demand in our Conversation Management services (which include Facebook Activation & Management) grow considerably. Now I believe this is temporary and that over the next 3-4 years, brands will settle on a staffing commitment to handle these responsibilities. But the question remains, how can you best integrate your internal and external resources in a medium that demands authenticity, responsiveness and transparency? 

Inside Every Job – We aggressively train everyone in the agency. Someday, we believe ‘social’ will be a part of everyone’s job just as ‘digital’ has become. We will stop using the word ‘social’ as a qualifier for certain tasks and responsibilities, e.g. ‘social strategy’ will just be strategy. While we need ot make social media a part of everyone’s job, we have a long road to get there. Still, brands are working hard to deliver the training that will help grow proficiency and confidence. 

Training goals, onboarding procedures and even hiring diagnostics that identify how socially savvy new recruits are will help get to this integration. 

This is the year of integration for many brands. I doubt we will all make equal progress against these 5 type of integration. I suspect it may break down like this for many:

2011 Enterprise Integration

• Paid, Owned, Earned: big integration gains 
• Global & local: Facebook progress but otherwise it’s just a start
• Across the Enterprise: just a start
• Inside & Outside the Organization: somewhere in the middle
• Inside Every Job: its a start  

I’m Not Kidding: Three Steps to be a Better Listener

At a recent kid’s story time event at the local bookstore, I overheard its storyteller with directions for the toddlers. “Before we get started, what do we need to do?” she said in her kid-friendly voice, reminding attendees of the rules of story time (complete with helpful gestures perfect for the 2- to 4-year olds and their parents).

Together, they all said:

1. Open your ears
2. Close your mouth
3. Eyes on me

Brilliant, I thought. These three strategies can work for anyone who needs to listen, or who wants to improve their listening skills. It’s amazing that much of what we learn as kids can translate to the workplace, and often how quickly we forget simple but powerful principles that could make life at work a whole lot better.

- David Grossman

Right  – let’s think. Times are changing –hey, excuse me, didnt Bob Dylan sung something similar..25 years ago?  But yes, journalism, media, ad agencies, social media..everything is changing. OF COURSE!

I personally think  the real problem is over population and ego. Let me explain. All of us who work in PR, Marketing, or Social Media tend to find our solution the best for the client needs…but the client also follow trends. So if the client is constantly reading about social media he will want to do something in social media. So, our ego makes us say “Yes, we can do it”, even if we dont have the right people – then we subcontract a social media expert company. What happens is that probably the social media expert company has clients who also want to send press releases and they say “Yes, we can do it” and they haven’t got a clue.

So why is everybody talking about the future? Are we all expecting that some “divine” force will put some order here and clarify who does what?

I decided to write this post after reading another one called “The future of Ad Agencies and Social Media” from Mashable. I suggest you read it!

China’s Flood of iPad Flankers

Ashlee Vance/The New York Times A number of iPad-like slate computers have become available in China, including these two systems that are about half the size of Apple’s device.

China has rather quickly emerged as the home of the iPad Flanker.

An iPad Flanker, by my definition, is a device that’s not really good enough to “kill” the iPad but is different enough to challenge the iPad with certain audiences. Most of the flankers seen to date run Google’s Android software, have touch screens and cost less than the iPad.

There are full iPad-size devices like the iWonder from Foxconn. And then there’s a new crop of smaller devices that have just hit the market. These things take the notion of a supersize smartphone to a whole new level.

Richard Brown, a marketing director at the chip maker Via, was kind enough to show me some of the latest flankers that are available in markets around China.

A Chinese company named Eken makes a white 8-inch tablet-cum-slate flanker that is available for as little as $110, Mr. Brown said, and G-link makes a similar device, only black.

Like Android-based phones, these devices have lots of icons on the start menu and handle your basic computing tasks. They also have a type of smart alarm clock/smart photo frame setting that’s handy.

The touch functions are far less responsive than what you’ll find on the iPad, the software is pretty clunky over all and tasks take longer on these products than they do on the iPad. But these devices are super cheap and super light. To me, they actually seemed better suited for watching a movie while you’re laying down, as they’re easier to grip than the iPad.

Of course, the industrial design on some of these products seems lacking. One device looked like it had been attacked by a drunken BeDazzler with its little plastic do-dads arranged on the front screen in a not quite symmetric pattern.

Via, which makes low-power x86 and ARM chips, has found cause to celebrate these devices and others like them pouring out of Shenzhen. The company looks to get its chips into what it sees as a disruptive class of product.

“This is a new market, and China is going to make it happen,” Mr. Brown said. “It certainly remains to be seen, but I think completely new brand names will come out of this tablet market.”

The small Chinese outfits that have spent the past few years learning how to build smartphones have seized on the slates and tablets as an opportunity to lead rather than follow, Mr. Brown added. These companies certainly have diversity on their side, selling devices in all manner of shapes and at prices going from about $100 to $500.

The major computing heavyweights like Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Acer continue to show off prototype slates but are taking their sweet time actually bringing something to market.

That situation may just change next month when the Computex trade show, the computer industry’s annual fete,  kicks off in Taiwan.

Until then, it’s time to celebrate the iFlanker.

The advantages of having fans on Facebook, according to Nielsen
April 21, 2010

The memory, awareness and purchase intention increase when users see on their Facebook home page ads. This is one of the conclusions of the first study that Nielsen has undertaken in collaboration with the social network where 800,000 members have participated and 14 brands from different categories and highlighting Ad Age. The impact of recognition and remembrance is even greater when they see their friends have become fans of this brand.

 The ads on the Facebook home page generated an average of 10% increase in memory, a 4% increase in brand awareness, and 2% in purchase intent between users who saw ads in comparison with a group of similar characteristics who did not see them.
But the increase in thebrand  memory grew by 16% when users saw their friends  became fans of a brand and 30% if the brand was mentioned in the news of the wall of users by comments from friends fans. The visibility and purchase intention increased also  in the same cases.

 
According to Nielsen about 18 million users of Facebook ads were studied for this work, of which only 130,000, 1%, click on the adds. But about 40,000, or 4%, they became fans of brands because their friends were.

According to one of the leaders of the study, the results indicate how important it is for brands to have fans if they want their advertising on Facebook to be effective

Today is Saturday and I have a bad cold that I caught last wednesday watching Barcelona – Stuttgart at the Stadium .. Yay!! We won!! .. But it got reallllly cold.

So, here I am home, and I decided to check the couple dozens of news letters I have received in this past week. What do I think everytime I sign to a news letter?  Will a little dwarf jump out of my computer , camp in my ear, and read them to me??? ( This reminded me of the Babel Fish by Douglas Adams )…

Anyway -  I open an email from “A Small World” , which is a Social Network I did sign for and I hardly enter – I have enough with LinkedIn and Facebook. So I scrolled down the email and I found the word “Jetrosexual” — What is that??  Oh my! Men who own Jets!!!! 

I’m copying down here the headings since I need my password which I obvioulsy dont remember to keep reading the article…

The Private Jet Set: Men and Their Jets  

by Editorial Staff

Harrison Ford

There’s owning your own plane, and then there’s owning and piloting your own plane. The 67-year-old actor — who favors a Cessna 208 Caravan — has a flight record so clean that the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association recently hired him as spokesman. Ford also gets air cred for flying his plane back and forth to Haiti with supplies after the earthquake. And you thought you were helping by texting!

Now – this could be the author is playing with the name to resemble it to “metrosexual” and the author might think than that “metrosexuals” are men who travel by metro??

Then I am thinking ….we all know what a Metrosexual is, right? An urban guy who takes good care of his body and image and could be mistaken by the model? So lets check the wikipedia which lateley seems to be the only source in the world ( I still have my 21 books of the English Chamber’s Enciclopedia in some boxes….)

The term originated in an article by Mark Simpson^[1] published on November 15, 1994, in The Independent. Simpson wrote:

The term greatly increased in popularity following Simpson’s 2002 Salon.com article “Meet the metrosexual”, which identified David Beckham and as the metrosexual poster boy. The advertising agency Euro RCSG Worldwide adopted the term shortly thereafter for a marketing study, and the New York Times published a Sunday feature, “Metrosexuals Come Out”; the story trickled into local news outlets across North America.

Simpson’s Salon.com definition is more nuanced than the term’s common use today.

So, going back to my first question: Are Jetrosexuals  metrosexuals who own jets? Or did the author tought that metrosexuals were urban men who use the metro?

“Well yes, I phone him and left a message on his voice mail, he sent me an email to my Blackberry, then I text him an sms to his cellular phone, he then send me an email to my work email, I send him a message through myspace…and we never end up meeting. I wish we could go back in time where we only had ONE phone and ONE answering machine with ONE tape and when you got home you either had a message or you didn¡t. Now I have to go through seven or more platforms to know I am rejected”

And I laughed. And I just laughed again after checking my outlook, my gmail, my facebook, my twitter, my linkedin, my xing…before going to bed.