Social Media is not a new invention

Social Media is as old as Dial-Up Connections on computers. In 1969 CIS, or CompuServe Information Service, was started. CIS remained a major player through the middle 1990’s. CIS charged by the hour, and when AOL launched an offer of a monthly plan instead of an hourly charge, CIS was sidelined.

Internet Forums were an offshoot of Bulletin Boards, known as BBS and had a SysOp (which we would now think of as a moderator). They were popular in the 1970’s to the mid 1990’s.

There was also another service which used an X.25 dialup, called Prodigy. It was founded in 1984. By 1990 it was the second largest online service, trailing Compu Serve (CIS). Prodigy provided what was a forum for many people to meet and discuss similar interests and issues. One of the groups on an Electricians Forum was featured by Prodigy due to the success of bringing people from across the country together in one place. That particular forum was primarily educational, and there were electricians there who mentored other electricians. When I look back at the nature of the group and their dedication to Electrical Safety, done initially in a DOS setting on Dial-up, we are talking about a dedicated group of Social Networkers.

There are other sites, and this is not meant to be all inclusive, but it is meant to illustrate that Social Media has been around awhile and in different forms:

1969 CompuServe (CIS)
1984 Prodigy
1994 Internet Forums
1999 Blogger (Prya Labs)
2003 TypePad, WordPress
2003 MySpace
2004 Digg, a Social News Website

2004 FaceBook
2004 Yelp
2005 Reddit (Open Source by 2008)
2008 Posterous

If you are a marketing professional, it is important to take a step back and think about your business and marketing strategy mission, and then integrate the applicable Social Media within your tactical elements. All too often, I see or hear of people who are doing it all backwards, and more often than not, this leads to ineffective use of some unique tools for today’s world. However you choose to use Social Media, keep in mind that the goal should always be to build your brand first.

What is the point of using Social Media as part of your business strategy?

One of our firm’s professional services is Integrated Public Relations. IPR requires stakeholder respect and is a model used for companies and organizations that are socially responsible. This is done online and where appropriate, off-line. A tactic that is considered in our assessments is social marketing. One of the big mistakes we see organizations make is that they have bought into the belief that they can employ social media without any effort.

In marketing communications, as in life, very often you reap what you sow. When you invest in having a marketing communications firm manage your strategic communications, your results will generally be different because they are responding to commentary based on sound business and MarCom principals.

Let’s look at Social Media. When choosing one, it is important to utilize the type achieves your marketing and business goals. In some cases you may need to do several, and integrate their message. Common marketing and business goals include:

Expanding Reach
Engaging new customers
Developing and improving customer relationships
Announcing new products

Essentially, whatever you do on Social Media should build your business. The operative words here are “build YOUR business.” In order to do that, you need to have some measure of control over the platform that you use, and you also need to be aware of what control you do or do not have, and invest your time accordingly.

Beware of Practicing Digital Age Ageism

Many of us have our BlackBerry or iPhones, our Netbooks, our Ultraportables and iPads, as well as a desktops computers. We’re all abuzz about CR Codes and Social Networking; however, we should remember as business people that not all consumers are computing equally. Granted Face Book and Twitter, Blogging, and Yelp may all be second nature to many Gen X, Gen Y and certainly the Millennials, but many assumptions, often misplaced, have been made about the Boomers and the Greatest Generation.

Considering that computers were invented during in the mid period of the 1900’s, and Dr. Grace Hopper invented the Cobol programming language (1959-1962), technological advances and applications were no stranger to this generation, although widespread application use was mainly limited to businesses until the mid 1980’s, when the Personal Computer first made its appearance.

One of the largest demographic generational groups has been referred to as the Baby Boomers. To make looking at the Boomer Generation meaningful, one must recognize that Boomers are not one monolithic group, but at least two groups with segments and sub segment target markets. Defining it as one group with such a range of time cohort socialization experiences does not adequately capture the psychographics. Jonathan Pontell, a social and cultural commentator, had identified the Boomer Group to be comprised of:

Boomer, born post war to 1953
Generation Jones, born between 1954- 1965.

So often I have assumptions regarding “older” people who are unfamiliar with technology. While there are plenty of Boomer and Gen Jonesers who are technologically savvy, we also need to remember that the Information Age was born from part of the Boomer group.  Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are both Generation Jonsers. We know how President Obama’s election campaign relied heavily on Social Networking. He too, is of Generation Jones.

When we look at generational cohort groups and technology, it is more appropriate to segment these groups in terms of lifestyle and psychographics. Looking only at age cohorts is not only misleading, but fraught with errors. What does occur when it comes to thinking about the older generation and the Boomer Segment, is that often people make assumptions based on ageism. When we stereotype, we are bound to make decisions based on false assumptions.

In Cultural Marketing, we not only look at ethnic subcultures of the “Big Four” in the USA (Latinos, Asian Americans, African Americans and Native Americans), but we also look at stereotypes and how they serve to not serve us. Remember, it wasn’t all that long ago that stereotypes about Asian Americans included the assumption that Asian Americans cannot be creative or good leaders in business. Tell that to Tony Tsieh, of Zappos, or Guy Kawasaki, or Christine Poon. Kawasaki is also a Generation Jones, that “older” generation that created the Internet, and revolutionized the way we do work and communicate using Microsoft and Apple Gen Jones products.

Speaking of the Internet, don't forget Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners Lee, the inventor of the Internet and a Boomer segment member of Generation Jones.

Sometimes it's not about age, but more about segmentation and lifestyle aspirations.

Why social media should not be your only marketing tactic

It’s here to stay. Social media is considered de rigueur for marketing communications. Social media should be a part of, that is an integrated part of, your company’s total Integrated Marketing Campaign (IMC). For most companies and organizations, it should not be your only tactic to reach your target market. By definition, if your firm’s target markets are segmented and identified, there is a good chance that you will find that social marketing will actually miss a portion of the market that you are trying to reach.

There has been an interesting trend of late, where organizations are choosing to use FaceBook and Twitter as their primary communications channel to the publics. Some organizations are heavily pushing the use of CR Codes as the way to reach the tech savvy generations. The problem is that some companies have been only using Social Media. Why is this a problem?

1. Without integrating your marketing message across different media, the opportunity to get it reinforced via hearing it multiple ways is lost.

2. Using Social Media only reaches those who are online, and only that segment of the population that is online and receiving your message. By only using Social Media, you exclude not only that part of your target market that may not be online and on the site you want them to be, but you can be missing those who for some reason or other, aren’t connected to the Internet or aren’t users.

While most of my friends have their iPhones or BlackBerry phones, iPads, Ultraportables and Netbooks, not everyone is online. We tend to have friends with similar interests and lifestyles, and technology fits in this category. However, a February 2010 Survey reported by CNET indicated that in the USA, 40% said they had no Broadband access at home, and 30% had no access at all. The report states that:

“People with higher rates of broadband access tend to be younger, white or Asian, highly-educated, married, and with higher incomes, while those with no broadband are often seniors or minorities, less educated, and living in non-family households with lower incomes or unemployed.”

While this demographic may appear to be the one you want, it is important to recognize you will be missing your secondary target. The secondary target may be the group that influences the primary target, especially if they are seniors or disabled persons with limited incomes but with families and friends with whom they have influence. Also keep in mind that there is often the assumption that people with low incomes lack education, but due to economic downturns and high unemployment, this is not necessarily still true for all persons with low incomes.

Multicultural Marketing is more than a language issue

One of the biggest mistakes companies can make when they are trying to reach ethnic markets is to lump everyone by racial characteristics. For example, when trying to reach the Hispanic Market, often attempts are made to use the Spanish language in all media. While this can be effective in reaching the immigrant population, it can fall short for the large and growing population of Latinos here in the USA who speak English as their primary language, especially the older generations of Latinos.

I have also seen this occur when companies try to assume the Hispanic population is one group. They are one group in that the immigrants generally all speak Spanish, but the Spanish language has regional differences. Cuban and Puerto Rican Spanish is different from much of the Spanish spoken in Central and South America, particularly in pronunciation. Certain words in one country's Spanish can mean something completely different in another country, so reaching your audience, if it is appropriate, in Spanish needs to be done using a non-regional and non-national approach.

For older generations of Americans of Latin descent, not all speak Spanish, or speak Spanish fluently. Many of our friends can understand Spanish if they hear it, but cannot speak it or read or write it unless they have studied it formally. Therefore, using print media in Spanish to reach a 3rd or 4th generation American of Latin American descent is not necessarily the best tactic, and it also sends another message that may not be well received.

Asian Americans are actually a very straightforward group to reach, however the segmentation is more complex. The immigrant generation can be reached in their native language, but for most Asian Americans, the common language that binds them is English. Depending on the cohort you are trying to reach, cultural and sociological knowledge and history are important for effectively knowing how to make your products and services relevant, or in some cases, not making them irrelevant.

However, when reaching later generational groups, trying to reach certain subcultural segments in another language can be almost insulting, especially given our country's history and treatment of Asian immigrants at the turn of the 1900's. Marketers and companies who try to do this are sending a message that they may not intend to, and worse, it can be very insulting because it taps into the Perpetual Foreigner Syndrome.

The same analogies can also be made for other types of cultural marketing when we look at generational cohorts such as The Baby Boomers. While it is a generational group, it needs to be strategically defined and segmented for effective reach and relevancy.

Understanding Japanese American Generational Terms

Due to the Tsunami and Earthquake events in Japan, we've been receiving many questions about the Japanese American community, in general.

Due to demographic and experiential differences, what were terms that made sense for one cohort can cause confusion when discussing another cohort.

The terms Issei, Nisei, Sansei, Yonsei refer to first generation, second generation, third generation, and fourth generations of Japanese and Japanese Americans, respectively. These terms developed amongst the Japanese Americans.

Originally, the term "Issei" or first generation, referred to the immigrants who came from Japan to the United States, mostly under the "Gentleman's Agreement" between Japan and the United States. The bulk of the Issei came here between 1885 - 1925. Because of legalized racism, immigrants from Asian countries were barred from becoming US Citizens, in contrast to immigrants from Western and Eastern Europe, who were allowed to apply for Citizenship. European and African immigrants who came after the Issei were allowed to apply for citizenship. Immigrants from Japan could not become citizens until well past the middle of the 1900's, after the Civil Rights Act of 1963 was passed. It was not until 1952, that the McCarran-Walter Act giving first generation Japanese Americans the right to citizenship, and thus the right to vote, and the racial restrictions of the 1790 Naturalization Law were repealed.

This is a very important distinction, because when you bar a person from becoming a Citizen of the country they have immigrated to, they are prevented in voting and in fully participating in American society. They are excluded from ever becoming full Americans, not by choice but by law.

The term "Nisei" refers to the American born children of the Issei. By birthright, Nisei were American Citizens, something their Issei parents could never be at the time most Nisei were born. Most of the Nisei and their Issei parents were interned as a result of EO 9066, if they lived on the West Coast. By contrast, the sizable Issei and Nisei populations in Hawaii were not.

The Sansei refer to the third generation of Americans of Japanese descent. Like the Nisei, as Americans they have also experienced scarring due to the effects of having their grandparents and parent's singled out on the basis of race, but this generational cohort as a group has tended to be more outspoken and more active in understanding the effect of voiding civil rights based on race alone. The Sansei are the first generation to have gone through the American socialization and educational process with no governmental interruption, unlike their Nisei parents, for whom their educational pursuits were interrupted as they were forced to leave the schools they attended and forced to leave their homes, their belongings and anything else they could not carry with them.

There is a unique pschographic involved when discussing the Japanese American cohort, because the older generation of immigrant descendants have this in their history. Other older groups of Asian American immigrant descendants also have similar experiences, because they too were excluded from fully participating as Americans since all Asian immigrants could not become citizens until the mid 1900's, despite having been here often long enough to see their grandchildren born here.

The Kaisha is another term to refer to Japanese in America, and it refers to those who have come to the USA as a result of working for Japanese Corporations who have sent them here. This group is different from immigrants because their intent is primarily to come to the US for work, but to then return to Japan, having fulfilled their International requirement.

New Issei is a term being used within the Japanese American community to refer to new immigrants from Japan. Most have come here around the 1990's and later. For obvious reasons, their experiences as immigrants here are radically different from that of the Issei of over 100 years ago.

For additional reading, see:
The Issei Immigration
Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project
Heart Mountain, Wyoming Foundation

The Amazing Japanese Sense of Order in a Disaster

While media coverage shows long lines of people patiently waiting for food, in the wake of the Tsunami, Earthquakes and other natural disasters that have hit Japan, many of us have been amazed that there is no looting, thuggery and other common crimes that we see here in the USA during times of similar strife. This morning, on WGN's Mike McConnell's segment, this was certainly a topic of interest, fascination and much conjecture.

In our work, we look at things in context of culture. In Japan, there are several major factors that make the culture unique.

Japan is an ancient culture, with a long history of cultural refinement that occurred well before many other areas of the world, except for in China and a few other Asian nations. They also have a historically high educational level. Add to this the fact that the Japanese are renowned for their sense of aesthetics, beauty and order.

Culturally there is much self discipline. Japanese tend to be inward seeking, which accounts for a different type of competition that seeks to continuously improve the self. The manufacturing quality concept of kaizen comes from Japan. It is a nation that has a huge population, of over 127 million people. Our population is around 310 million but we have more land. The physical space that Japan has is roughly equal to the state of Montana. Population density in Japan is very high, in Tokyo about 10% of the nation's population resides there: 13 million people! The nation has learned, rather well, how to live with among so many others.

Japan, as many Asian and Latin American countries, has a strong group orientation versus a "me" or "self" orientation. The concept of shame is a part of this culture, which translates in that one does not do things to bring shame upon their family. The concept of family is very important in Japan, as, again, we are looking at a very old culture where the ties of family and friends go back for centuries upon centuries. When you bring dishonor and shame upon yourself, you do so to your family, as well. This isn't only a Japanese concept, but it seems to be more of a non-USA concept. Anyone familiar with Jane Austin's "Pride and Prejudice" would recognize the same theme when a selfish and immature sister nearly brings shame upon her family, with the seriously real potential of ruining all of her sister's chances to improve their lot in life by marrying good partners." Many US subcultures have similar versions, where guilt is a major piece of the cultural mix.

Shintoism also exists within the Japanese culture, and is a part of daily life, and perhaps more of a philosophy rather than a religion when we compare it to how well it is integrated in society and life. Seriously practiced, Shintoism respects life, and honors the God within all forms of life. It also can co-exist with the practice of other religions.

When one takes into account all of these known factors, and the prevalence of Shintoism that is a part and fabric of Japanese culture, one can better comprehend the sense of order and respect that prevails in a manner that is uniquely Japanese.