mmda/ blog

The Communication ARP Week ended on November 10th with two excelent lectures in the afternoon. 

Around two p.m., Fernanda Romano talked about "Creating on social media time". Far away from giving a manual or a step-by-step of "how to create for" social media, Fernanda brought us a reflexion about what we are doing on communication and what is going on in the world right now.

Fernanda's talk was interesting because of the constant "pop-ups" of ideas and thoughts she had, making the conversation quick and pleasant, bringing cases and situations to give a larger perspective to the subject.

After presenting herself and talking about the great food she has been eating and the trips she has been making in the past six months, @FefaRomano raised a few questions we all should think about. I'm going to list some of them below with a little of my own reflexion: 

1. School "kills" creativity. We are all creative, but intelligence is not linear. Creativity is not a chemical formula to be decorated, so, there isn't a "manual of creativity for social media". Taking this into account, Fernanda remembered us that we all talk a lot about creativity, but we're constantly looking for formulas, following other people, examples and cases instead of doing things by our own.

To be creative when working with communication, we must work to be followed, and not follow.  

2. The world has changed. It is not something that is going to happen tomorrow, it already happened. In this moment, Fernanda talked about something really cool to give an example of this: what is going to happen when you die? 

Google your name. Check your Twitter's timeline or your Facebook's stream. Open your e-mail. All of this still will be online even after you die. 

Today, Facebook has a feature to transform the profile from someone who died into a memorial, and there are sites where you can save your passwords and messages for your family and friends if you die, such as If I Die. 

In Japan, a man married to a virtual character from Love Plus, a Nintendo DS game. As strange as it seems, it should not surprise us when we find out that the game is really popular and, according to Fernanda, some cities are offering tour packages for those who wanna travel with their virtual girlfriends. 

The point here is that our lifes in the cyberspace are as real as any other. For an MMORPG player, such as World of Warcraft, the experience of fighting dragons and trolls with the Alliance can be as real as our lifes as communication and marketing professionals. What is the difference, after all? 

3. So, we are not talking about tools, we are talking about how we are thinking and behaving. 

Our priority should not be think about tools such as Facebook, Orkut, Twitter, iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, and so on. We should be thinking about what people are doing and how they are doing it. 

Of course someone must know how to work with the tools and explore every detail. But this should be our north star when creating; people must guide us when creating. 

Closing the talk, Fernanda said something that sums it up: we still think about the technologies, but for children they are transparent - which immediately reminded me of this video.

So, how should we create on social media time? 

To Fernanda, companies need to stop talking about friends, fans, consumers. Sucessfull brands will have partners, which they must respect, be honest with, and committed to. 

People don't come into social network sites to chat with magazines ads, they want personality, they want to talk to other people. Therefore, your brand should do it too, and not just drop advertising slogans. You brand must be honest: do not lie to people because they will find out, always. And commit to them too, you can't expect a relationship where you are the only one winning - you will win nothing if you approach people this way. Talk to them, be honest, and make something out of these conversations.

The Old Spice campaign that put the brand in evidence again is a great example of this. The TV ad is awesome, and it was an absolute sucess on the internet. But why stop there? Why not continue to interact with people and answer them? And that's what ​​the brand made by responding with several videos, with the Facebook page, Twitter profile, and other actions. (but be careful, you may lose a good time with them = P)

For sure, I could not translate Fernanda's whole presentation here, and I've also mixed it with some of my thoughts, but I think it is ok. In the next few days, I'll write about the mind-blowing lecture of Jonathan Mildenhall, VP of Global Advertising Strategy and Creative Excellence at the Coca-Cola Company. It was incredible. 

@augustoyoh