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Yesterday I had the great pleasure to have a lengthy conversation with Kevin Martin, vocalist for the band Candlebox. For those of you not familiar with the band, they are one of many to come out of the Seattle music scene in the 90s (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains). Grunge groups burst onto the national scene and connected with a large segment of the population from the onset.

The conversation with Kevin kept my mind racing during my return trip last night. His outlook on the music industry was refreshing and contained many items we can apply to today’s web. I want to touch on a small list of them – authenticity, having a holistic view, staying humble, and making real connections.

Be authentic

Fan or not, the biggest complaint about top 40 radio today (Nickelback, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus) is that it’s all manufactured fluff. It’s fake and built from the ground up to sell copies today and churn through musical acts as tools for profit. What they’re lacking is authenticity.

Compare this to the Twitter streams of ComcastCares and General Motors. In the case of ComcastCares, you clearly see that Comcast employee Frank Eliason cares about a customer’s experience and loves what he does. Contrast this to General Motors, who’s account GMblogs is not much more than an outlet for carefully crafted press releases and littered with responses shamelessly pushing the company line. One company is building good will and value, and the other is extending the perception of an out-of-touch and deaf company.

Have a holistic view

As a band member, if you’re only concerned with your role, then you’re accomplishing nothing more than making noise. Members of a good band understand the instruments of their band mates and how those instruments work together to create something larger than the individual pieces.

Kevin made a great point during our conversation in saying that a good drummer plays to the bass line and listed a number of the other connections between instruments. When the individual understands the role of another, he knows when to let him take his solo, provide fill/assistance in the moments of need, and when it’s ok take his own place in front and center. The same is true in your approach for your website, mobile presence, marketing efforts, and social media strategy. At any given time resources need to be shifted to find the correct positioning and response for the current environment.

Social media is all of the rage at the moment, and rightfully so, but that doesn’t mean it’s right for every business or that you should be setting a certain percentage of resources aside for it. On the other hand, your market may demand that it’s the single largest expenditure during a given period. The same is true of your website, mobile presence, and marketing efforts. Step back, take a holistic view and find what works for you.

Stay Humble

No one ever got to their current situation all on their own. It takes a great team behind Candlebox to put on each show. There is equally as many people you never see, than those on stage. Candlebox has a great crew which provides support in setup, tear-down, and shine in moments of emergency. Kevin and the band know this and haven’t let multiple chart busting songs swell their egos. He’s approachable and appreciative of what he’s done and what he has been given.

Just because your company may have found success with a hit product or service, don’t let that get to your head. Success is an ongoing process, and one which requires more than a single hit. Stay humble as a company, keep your ear to the ground, and take feedback when starting work on your next hit.

Make real connections

Among the long list of nationals my band has opened up for in the last year (Saving Abel, FUEL, Smile Empty Soul, etc.), I’ve seen none of them connect with their fans the way Candlebox did last night. A number of actions combined to show that the band wanted much more than to just play through the set and then head back to the tour bus. The guys stayed over an hour and a half, equal to the length of their set, to take pictures, give autographs and talk to each and every fan in attendance. Every single one.

Whether it’s engaged two-way conversation on Twitter or offline events, the need for real connections has never been greater. Simply sending out a generic email campaign isn’t going to cut it. Being willing to spend your time to have a conversation, showing appreciation to customers, and embracing new communication channels are not just “nice to haves” today, they’re the baseline.

If you’ve been unplugged from your favorite social network the past few days, you might have missed one of the most impressive social web campaigns in recent memory. If you’ve been active on Twitter or Facebook, I’m not sure how you could have missed this: Procter & Gamble launched an amazing social campaign to promote their Old Spice body washes.

Combating the notion that body wash is only for ladies and recognizing market research shows that women purchase as much as 70% of the shower gel for men in their households, P&G’s partner agency Wieden & Kennedy based in Portland, Oregon launched the TV campaign in February called “Smell Like a Man, Man.” The commercials feature actor Isaiah Mustafa speaking directly to women of the household while portraying an over-the-top manly man that does not alienate or belittle men, but reaffirms that it’s okay (and even desirable) to be a masculine man.

The original commercial became an Internet phenomenon, already gaining more than 13 million views on YouTube. The Old Spice Man returned a couple weeks ago with a new commercial, and this time popular social networks were seeded with solicitations for users to submit questions for the Old Spice Man.

In the past few days, the Old Spice Man has posted an amazing 184 video responses to the Old Spice YouTube channel. Most of the responses are 30-60 seconds long, and are directed at various individual questions and comments on a variety of social networks. Some are directed at celebrities like Demi Moore and George Stephanopoulos, some at influencers in the digital world like Digg founder Kevin Rose and Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis, and many more at average unknown internet Joes.

These short videos have become amazingly popular, flooding Facebook and Twitter with shared links and retweets, and gaining much more attention as a collective whole than they ever could on their own (although they have individually gained between 25,000 and 340,000 unique views). The real victory is that for at least two days, the entire Internet has been talking about the Old Spice brand.

So what makes this campaign so successful, and what lessons can be extended to your own social campaigns? Here are a few of my observations:

• Respond in Real Time: Social interaction via web exists in the here and now – often something is “old news” in these contexts within a matter of hours. Although the Old Spice Man responses weren’t completely instantaneous, having a professionally created video response from a commercial spokesperson the same day your question was posted is pretty impressive. If nothing else, a quick response communicates one important thing: your brand is listening.
• Engage the Influencers: By responding to and engaging with some of the most influential people in social web, the Old Spice brand quickly became the talk of the Internet. When you engage influencers, they influence others on your behalf. The campaign even went so far as to send real-life flowers to actress Alyssa Milano after a back-and-forth exchange on YouTube. Your target audience may not always be the whole of the Internet like Procter & Gamble, but targeting key influencers in your niche market can help your message spread to your audience quicker.
• Give Community Managers Freedom to Speak for the Brand: If the Old Spice Man video writers had needed to get corporate approval for every video script, there is absolutely no way they could have generated 84 personalized videos in 11 hours on Tuesday (an average of one video every 7 minutes not counting breaks). By trusting those managing your social web presence to speak freely on behalf of the brand, it is much easier for them to respond to individuals quickly and directly – resulting in greater impact for your brand.
• Give the Audience Freedom to Extend the Brand: In response to a popular request on Reddit, the Old Spice Man provided users with the tools to create voicemail messages using his voice, and users used it to create an online voicemail generator. This extended the Old Spice brand to the personal voicemails of their audience, a place they themselves never targeted. By giving the audience access to some of your brand assets, they may extend your message to locations you yourself may have had difficulty reaching.
• Engage the Audience on a Personal Level: Although the sheer volume of requests from the audience for replies far exceeded Old Spice Man’s ability to respond to each of them, his very public responses to individual people (and not just celebrities) made the entire audience feel like they too could get a response. When your audience feels like your brand cares about them personally, they too will personally care about your brand.

The campaign wrapped up Wednesday evening with two response videos that expressed the personal connection that defined the campaign: a touching personal message to Mustafah’s own daugher, and a final farewell specifically thanking all of those who submitted questions and comments that time did not allow responses to.

In less than three days, the 184 YouTube response videos garnered more than 5.2 million views (where the Old Spice channel was the most popular on the site), grew the Old Spice twitter account from around 5,000 followers to over 66,000, and grew the Old Spice Facebook page to more than 592,000 fans.

How can you leverage these same concepts on a scale your brand can afford to grow your own web audience?

A few years ago, one of the main reasons agencies (PR, web and otherwise) were recommending companies enter social media was to establish a community who would respond on your behalf during a crisis (i.e. Southwest Airlines and Kevin Smith) and to have a “place” to respond as well. Fast forward to today, companies are faced with scrutiny from investors, customers, vendors, and everyone else publicly. And everyday companies try their best to ruin their reputations through poor online brand management. So what do you do if you’re faced with a “crisis” of your on and offline brand?

1. (Pre-Crisis) Ensure that online response protocols, sample responses, spokespeople, etc. are included in the organizations overall crisis plan (the plan should be well documented and distributed to key staff). Just like the rest of the crisis plan, run through several test scenarios and practice responses.
2. (Pre-Crisis) Monitor online conversations (using a monitoring service, Google Alerts, etc.)
3. Collect all relevant information to the situation (start date/time, geographical location and concentration of conversations, channels affected – on and offline, velocity of the spreading of the message, accuracy of the statements being made, intent of the person who brought the situation to light, profile information about all people who have contributed to conversation online)
4. Communicate the situation to the internal and external crisis team members (typically includes decision makers, key persons from the business group that was affected, legal counsel, communications team members, those who manage online communications channels)
5. Monitor online mentions
6. Determine response, spokesperson and channel for communication (internal and external – note: employees can often be the most vocal responders and the most frequently forgotten audience so communicate to them quickly, honestly and arm them with the tools they need to do their jobs) and post ASAP. In an online situation frequent, transparent and timely updates that are phrased in a conversational tone are standard expectations of participation online — don’t default to corporate jargon or legalese.
7. Monitor online mentions and evaluate the need for follow-up
8. (Post-crisis) Recap the situation, review and lessons learned
9. Continue to provide value to your online audience and expect the situation to occasionally resurface

In most situations the true long-term damage comes from how organizations respond to the situation, rather than the situation itself.

Clay Shirky has a new book out about and is speaking a lot on Cognitive Surplus. Shirky defines Cognitive Surplus as: the ability of the worlds population to volunteer, contribute and collaborate on large (sometimes global) projects. Cognitive Surplus, says Shirky, is a product of 2 primary ingredients. 1) The world’s free time and talents (in excess of 1 trillion hours/year) and 2) modern tools. Turns out, we (humans) have an ancient and fundamental motivation… and we were only couch potatoes before because that’s all the tools at the time could afford: consumption. With the birth of new media tools that are natively 2-way, our core motivation is at all of our (look to your right) disposal.

I like this. I agree with it.

What I like most, though, is Shirky’s position that ‘Cognitive Surplus is a resource we can design around’, and that ‘society gets what it celebrates’.

That’s important.

Here’s why.

Cognitive Surplus is a Resource you can Design Around

The focus of much conversation has been on community building, engagement, activation, etc. People are trying to figure out (and paying to figure out) how to build, inspire, persuade and create a resource – a fuel. As Shirky states, it exists. Don’t focus so much on how to teach it, create it or coax it. Focus, rather, on how to appropriately (optimally, for you monetization mongers) pair causes, events, and brands with the right aggregates of cognitive surplus.

That’s the beauty here – as we assemble communication, marketing and activation plans we can assume cognitive surplus. We can design for it instead of designing to create or encourage it. Liken it to architecting a colony for humans on a new planet and knowing you already have air or water. Check! Now you can focus on what those humans do and how they do it versus creating the elements to sustain them.

This assumption should alter how you think, plan, allocate resources, budget and build timelines. It should put emphasis on research, trend monitoring and aggregation and sentiment tools as pairing becomes the now must.

Society gets what it Celebrates

Assumed cognitive surplus paired with the notion that [a] society gets what it celebrates is crucial. (Feel free to substitute ‘community’ or ‘audience’ for society.) A grouping of people – connected through various social, economic, geographic, etc variables – pursues through creation, innovation, might, will, force(?) what it celebrates. Also, it achieves/realizes it.

If a society celebrates justice, accountability is sure to permeate all facets of life. If it celebrates knowledge, then mechanisms, institutions and protocol for access to and dissemination of knowledge will certainly be constant focuses. If a society celebrates humor, well, LOLCATS and http://icanhascheezburger.com/. Societies (at a macro level) tend to be self-fulfilling.

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If we accept this position, this means we’ve got the fuel and even a generic view of an outcome. We are charged with aligning and equipping. Identification of a ‘society’ and what it celebrates. Alignment with a cause, goal or brand (that can benefit from that celebration). We can also build the tools to equip the society for celebration. (The position supposes the society will build them instinctively, but we can accelerate.) Digital instances for convergence, production and work!

Cognitive Surplus and societies getting what they celebrate means the real sauce is aligning and equipping. More focus on anthropology and sociology. Data and data analysis tools become king. Let the fuel run the engine to it’s destination after that. Of course, stick around to reap the benefits.

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Personally, I think the really interesting bit will be the ability to identify and unite ad hoc societies based on or in right-time situations, confront them with tools and extract value on the fly before they dissipate (assuming a society based on right-time). Casual data analysis tools are the key there, I think.