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Erik: What tools and processes do you use to try and encourage clients to think more
creatively?
Mike: I think that’s very difficult and I think that’s something that I’m working
on, not that talented at. For me it’s more about getting them to accept what is currently
out there and getting the mo participate in that. So, what’s becoming one of the best
tools that we’re leveraging now is that traditional media has been picking up on the
new media and talking about how it’s the future and being able to email that to the
client is kind of the best kind of resource that I have to make them think, this is not
going away, these crazy things that I told you are not going away. As new media is being
bought up by traditional media, I guess Huffington Post was just acquired by AOL, you know they’re
all seeing the signs that those blogs we talked about to a client years ago and those things
that we talked to them about years ago that they should participate in that they thought
was not going to be big and we were right saying you know this was big and now they’re
seeing that the relevance of these, uh for us I guess our biggest resource is going back
in time and telling them that we made these claims and that they should have listened
to us and followed through and now they’ll listen to us when the new things come about.
Erik: What’s that creative conversation, what’s that creative conversation look like
right now?
Mike: You know I think we’ve gotten over for the most part brands feeling scarred about
user generated content, they know it’s not going away, they know they have to be proactive
about it. That was the fight we had about two years ago was telling brands, “Listen,
if you’re not going to want to have a conversation with your users and your viewers and your
customers online, they’re going to have it without you anyway.” And I think you
know as we get phone calls from all these different brands we’re now seeing the spectrum
of even the most boring, guarded brands calling us saying, “Hey we want to be involved with
social media.” So, I think that battle was won. I think the next battle is the real time
part of it, at least with user, you know having a conversation they feel like they can vent
that. Mobile offers a much more real time environment and now real time becomes something
that scares them because they have to react quicker and they want to be able to have this
go through lawyers, or their PR department but having to act real time with mobile now
I think is something that is the next hurdle to kind of push them, push them forward.