Mullen’s response: Kids Take Charge℠.

Launched this week, Kids Take Charge℠ seeks to educate consumers through a series of humorous videos starring kids. Nobody wants to talk about the life insurance process, but the program lightens the tone of the conversation and adds a sense of humor to an important but oftentimes uncomfortable topic.

Housed on the Mass Mutual Facebook page, the videos are a direct and emotional reminder of who life insurance actually protects…the kids. Mixing comical interactions and factual statistics, Kids Take Charge℠ is the industry’s first of its kind. The segments include scenes in which kids attempt to buy plans for their parents, evaluate an agent and quiz adults about the topic. By educating consumers, the program will better prepare adults to make key financial decisions that affect them and their families.

Through the use of social media, MassMutual hopes to spark the conversation around the importance, benefits and necessity of life insurance for adults.

Why life insurance? MassMutual and Mullen encourage you to find out.

But now there’s Instagram. Brands like Burberry and Olympus (a Mullen client) are getting more and more active. Should you? You’re getting pitched by Springpad, which just made it possible for users to filter their friends’ “likes.” Or perhaps you’ve heard of BlipSnips, which is anxious for you to create ideas that leverage their new video-tagging platform. There’s Klout, where you can tap into influencers. And, of course, let’s not forget all the check-in and and gaming sites.

And all of that is before you even consider Google+. Granted as a brand you’re not supposed to be on the new platform yet, but let’s face it, next month something big is coming for brands.

If you’re a marketer you may be feeling a little overwhelmed by social media these days. Perhaps even fatigue has set in.

Yet it’s important to keep in mind that while the proliferation of platforms can be exhausting – to users as well as marketers – social media is not going away. In fact consumers will spend more and more time in the new online spaces. And not just as viewers but as creators (witness the growth of Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram).

So what do you do? Do you focus? Or diversify? Do you jump on every new service that comes along? You probably don’t have time or resources for that. Do you wait until each becomes big enough to merit attention? On one hand that makes sense, but on another it risks being late to the party.

At Mullen, we’re recommending the following:

1. Focus on a few key platforms that align with customers and their preferred social engagement

It’s not about being on every platform. It’s about using them in ways that align with your marketing objectives and your customers. If you’re a retailer and you have teenage customers, be on YouTube and connect with the haulers. Try geo-based offers and rewards if you have physical locations. Stay with Facebook, obviously. And wait and see to what degree a younger community embraces Twitter. If, on the other hand, you’re in the world of sports or athletics, then obviously invest in Twitter. As more and more athletes use the service, they attract fans who are also your customers. For your big efforts, stay with the proven platforms.

2. Experiment with a smaller percent of your budget

Every company has an R & D budget to develop new technologies, products and manufacturing processes. Why not one for marketing? One of the big problems in the emergence of new social platforms is that we tend to evaluate them using the old metrics (reach, frequency, impressions, click-throughs). By those measures most will fail. But if we think in terms of experimentation and focus on learning how to leverage new services or get even better at understanding consumer behavior, it’s worth putting some time and money into the latest services. Take a look at what we’re doing for Living Language on Instagram: it’s a perfect example of trying a new app to showcase a brand. It may not have the scale of Facebook or Flickr, but it’s a great opportunity to see how much content we can inspire fans to spread around and talk about.

3. Concentrate on doing things worth sharing

On my Google+ page there’s a great comment from digital strategist Farrah Bostic that I’ll summarize here: Instead of putting resources against the creation of destinations – and that includes your Facebook page – that encourage you to spend time “marketing your marketing,” spend your energy doing things worth talking about. Make assets that are worth spreading across all the platforms. Or invent experiences that invite the creation of content that will migrate from one space to another. Remember that our real job in social media is to get others to do work for us – talking enthusiastically about our products and services. Here’s a perfect example, recently created for Tommee Tippee.

Whatever you do, remember this. You’re not supposed to work at social media as much as it’s supposed to work for you.

How do you hire for excellence today in a space that seems to change overnight? As agencies and brands alike continue their mad rush to hire social media savvy talent it can be difficult just to get the right people on both sides of an interview.

To add some clarity to the hiring process, here are five qualities I strongly believe you should look for in a candidate whether they’re entry-level or a manager. You won’t see much discussion as to the number of friends, fans, or followers a candidate should have. This is intentional.

1. Superior Writing

Traditional readers won’t put a book down because of a bad sentence or delete an email because of a typo. The same can’t be said for readers on the social web. If you want your message to be read and inspiring enough to be shared, demand crisp sentences with simple words, bright verbs, and witty turns.

How you assess a candidate’s writing talent is up to you. But if it doesn’t include samples of published web writing, some on-the-spot editing, and a few real-time responses, you’re taking on a big risk.

2. Emotional Intelligence

Given the regularity with which trolls stir up trouble and web-rustic brand managers freak out in response, you should only pursue candidates who can clearly think through the panic around them.

If you’re not good at getting candidates to ramble on about themselves, you can take a quick temperature check by digging into their social media presence. Do they use sarcasm and stir things up in their public-facing commentary? Capture those remarks and ask about them.

3. A Sense of Humor

Apart from being more fun to work with, a candidate with a sense of humor is vital for success on the social web. Make the time to develop a few examples of dry brand messaging and ask the candidate to rework them to be more fun. It’s not foolproof, but this will give you a quick look at how the candidate thinks and what it might be like to work together.

Yes, this will require effort on your part. But getting it out of the way now is a lot easier than spending the next few months telling your poorly-vetted hire to skip the potty jokes in Facebook updates.

4. Content Marketing Savvy

If you want people to see the messages you’re creating, it’s important to have a marketing plan in place that everyone on the team supports. Be wary of candidates who may have content marketing chops but consider themselves “creative writers” such that they’ll balk when asked to write around key phrases or with a certain tone.

If a candidate has succeeded on some level in marketing personal content online, perhaps through an active blog or other writing project, you can safely expect some baseline understanding of how to make a larger presence thrive.

5. An Appetite for Success

The effort needed to successfully launch a social web presence or even just revamp an existing one is mind-blowing to anybody who has never been in the thick of something similar. If a candidate isn’t obsessed with staying in front of the pack and putting in the work to achieve success, you’ll end up with somebody who may do a decent job during the 9–5 hours but who won’t bring anything else to the table.

Find out how the candidate approached workflow on previous projects. Were weekend check-ins a normal part of work? Were hours flexible enough to allow for a few late nights without resentment?

N.B. Make sure whatever salary you offer takes into account the extent of your expectations then demand the best. It’s worth it.

Custom illustration: Mark Dudlik.

When I was assigned to go to Kennedy Space Center to participate in NASA’s social media program on behalf of General Motors, I was amped to see a shuttle launch, but didn’t know what that would entail.

Furthermore, how would I use GM’s social media platforms to link NASA and the automotive industry?

First, some background: Robonaut 2, a.k.a. R2, was designed to launch into outer space aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery for his first real work assignment at the International Space Station (ISS). R2 is the product of an advanced robotics partnership between NASA and GM that began in 2007. The learnings and intellectual property is then shared to help create safer cars and safer manufacturing facilities.

Check out a video of R2 showing off his moves during one of his demos:

Though aeronautics and automobiles may not be as exciting to today’s generations whose ears perk at the newest iPhone update or Lil’ Wayne’s latest beat, NASA pulled together its loudest, most passionate “influencers” to spread the good word across various social media platforms. In fact, 150 influencers were chosen out of the thousands that applied to share their experiences at the #NASATweetUp on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, etc.

It was a three-day program with technology demonstrations, speakers (including astronaut Ron Garan and Twitter VP Josh Goldman) and behind-the-scenes tours. And, the passion of the enthusiasts was infectious. The tweeps posted live updates across their various networks – one tweeter even rigged his iPhone 4 onto the brim of his hat to live stream his experiences to his blog.

During the program, I (on behalf of GM) posted hyperlinks to NASA’s UStream live feed, shared videos of R2 doing his thing, retweeted the #NASATweetUp tweets and created a Facebook album of images.

This 26-year-old millennial had no idea how inspiring this “work trip” would be. Prior to this, space travel and robotics didn’t engage me; it’s just what the U.S. did. However, using social media tools and programs, NASA is effectively reaching out to its core constituencies to allow them to sing from the mountain tops about the cool things that are happening – and people are listening.

It turns out, it just takes a creative mind and social media, and perhaps some unbound thinking, to make rocket science and robots edge their way back into our social conscience.

New utilities from Facebook

At the F8 Developer Conference this week, Facebook didn’t just announce a few updates, they shared how their forward-thinking vision has come to life and forever changed the way people will share and become aware of information on the web.

In essence it’s all about connections. Facebook started this movement when they introduced the “like” button and allowed you to “like” a picture, posting or status update your friends listed. Next they announced they would be changing all “Become a Fan” buttons to “like” buttons. This week they revealed how through discontinuing Facebook Connect and launching their Open Graph API, “like” buttons would now be a permanent feature across thousands of sites on the web.

The Open Graph API allows developers to include numerous features such as Like, Recommendations feed and Activity feeds on their website. These features pull in info (like friends) from your FB profile. For example, on CNN you can see which of your friends have already recommended or “liked” an article in the Activity Feed (or on the article itself). You can also recommend an article by publishing it to your FB page with comments. This seamless linking between sites and Facebook will result in more pass along and organic views than ever before.

While specific advertising opportunities around this new type of sharing have yet to be determined, there are a few significant implications already evident.

The first is that Brand Pages on Facebook will no longer be a necessity. Once a user has “liked” something on a particular website, that brand can now update them via their newsfeed. This will eliminate the need for Brands to build followings on Facebook in order to message and converse with users. Their own sites will enable this.

Additionally, the Open Graph allows Facebook to not only infiltrate thousands of websites, but also to gather data based on your habits. Instead of relying on the limited data you provide when signing up, (and that you don’t update frequently) your profile will now be “connected” and updated based on your Likes. If done correctly, Facebook will be able to aggregate and sell targeting segments that are more granular, recent and relevant than any other company out there.

Another update is a Credit program called “App2User.” This allows companies to provide an option to its users to turn reward points into Facebook credits that can be spent in Apps.

Facebook launched the new Open Graph with about 30 partners. Check out Pandora where you can now see what stations your friends are listening to, Yelp where you can view your FB friends’ reviews or NHL where you can “like” and publish to FB who your favorite team, player, etc. is.

While some groups will certainly scream about privacy concerns, Facebook has taken a major leap forward in socializing the web and making the flow of information more relevant to all users.

Please let us know your take!

Twitter is like a more-manic version of Facebook networking – consumer interest only lasts as long as an item appears on their feed and users can remove followers from their list for any fickle reason:  they don’t get the user’s attention, they annoy the user or they just lose interest.

The trick is making Twitter more interactive for the user and spreading the brand name every step of the way. That’s where the new Twitter application TweetSwell comes in.

TweetSwell, still in beta form, is an engine for surveys, quizzes and polls that allows organizations a new way to engage with followers. We’ve been casually playing with TweetSwell for about a month and have been pleased with how interactive it is. We also appreciate the frequency with which the results are re-tweeted, spreading the brand name every step of the way.

How it works: Companies create a survey for the purpose of collecting consumer sentiment, sparking discussion or conducting product reviews. You write and manage the survey, then TweetSwell hosts it and uses your Twitter account’s design settings for a seamless brand experience. Once you publish the survey and promote it on Twitter, respondents can personalize their Twitter responses. TweetSwell collects all the metrics to show how successful the application is.

Other online survey and polling applications exist, including KwikSurveys and SurveyMonkey. For Twitter, however, TweetSwell founder Eric Chang saw an opening.

Chang acknowledges that Twitter-friendly applications already offer surveys and contests: TwtPoll allows you to create branded surveys on Twitter; PollDaddy offers easy, free polls that you can publish on your blog, Web site or social network; and CrowdCampaign allows users to create a contest while promoting a brand.

Where TweetSwell is different, Chang says, is that it focuses on creating customizable tweets from the surveys, so the survey is more engaging and has more marketing potential.

“Many companies have already been using Twitter to collect anecdotal feedback and address consumer questions and concerns,” Chang said. “What’s been missing is the ability to back this anecdotal feedback with some real analytics and do it in an automated way.”

Chang’s focus is twofold: to create deeper analytics for the clients, showing the “social reach” of the brand; and support better incentives for followers to engage companies through Twitter.

There are currently a handful of organizations testing the TweetSwell service. Chang hopes to use their feedback to better hone the design and metrics. One tester is the maker of men’s clothes, Bonobos, which is using TweetSwell to see what its customers want out of a good dress shirt: “Should cuffs have one button, or two?”

Once TweetSwell is officially up and running – sometime early next year – Chang says he’ll have a pricing system in place.

For now, he’s working on developing even more utilities for TweetSwell. He recently included a “roll your own tweets” feature that allows hosts to pre-populate the respondent’s “What’s happening?” box on Twitter, and the ability to add images to the surveys.

Marketers have been trying to depict consumers engaging with products since the first spear salesman scrawled images of the hunt in charcoal on a cave wall. Modern marketers rely on images of happy, healthy people running on the beach, or perhaps relaxing in side-by-side bathtubs. The goal is to hold the mirror up to us, the consumers, who will see ourselves in the images, and then (presumably) buy what’s most reflective of us.

Social media takes this traditional mirror marketing in powerful new directions, and we are just scraping the surface of its potential. Now, thanks to the online bits and bytes we trail wherever we go, it’s possible to aggregate word-of-mouth social chatter and turn it back on consumers so they see themselves reflected out from the brands they consume.

Consider what Sprint is doing with its Now Network that purports to show in real time what’s going on in the world, from the number of seconds until Doughnut Day to how many babies are being born from the moment you’ve clicked on the site. It’s hard not to feel that Sprint is dominating with a real-time, always-on positioning.

Audi also effectively took the social buzz about its e-Tron electric vehicle to the masses by aggregating all of the blog posts, tweets, YouTube videos and Flickr images in one place where it could be seen. Click on The Conversation to see its social footprint dynamically come to life.

For companies looking to selectively post tweets about specific on-brand topics, TweetRiver enables a real time customer testimonial tweet stream. So what happens when consumers see their thoughts and feelings about brands reflected back at them as marketing? Certainly they feel they are part of a like-minded community.

But visualizing what the masses think is only the beginning of mirror marketing. Facebook Connect puts your own profile photos and sometimes videos right into a digital scenario so you can literally see yourself reflected back at you. This twisted funhouse mirror has been well executed to promote a game in The Prototype Experience.

But at heart I think that social media marketing is really akin to a magic mirror, one that not only reflects you back to yourself, but also interacts with you, shares your dreams and aspirations. A Facebook fan page is probably the truest expression that marketers have now of a magic mirror. So I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that real world magic mirrors are emerging and revolutionizing the digital out of home experience with augmented reality where you can try on clothes in stores virtually.

Watching U2 perform on their 360 tour, where the stage was capped by a massive mirror disco ball spinning around to shine the light on adoring fans, it was clear that we’re all hoping to have our moment in the spotlight, to see ourselves as something better than we are today. And when our modern bard, Bono, had several fans join him onstage wearing masks with the face of Aung San Suu Kyi, he made them a mirror to multiply her voice.

One thing is for sure: we’ve come a long way as an industry from observing consumers via one-way-mirror focus groups, to traveling through the digital looking glass. I call this Mirror Marketing. As Alice would say in Wonderland, it’s only going to get curiouser and curiouser.

So how does one go about breaking through the clutter? Here’s an example from the tourism space that might be a model for you. Mullen’s Pittsburgh office partnered with GearJunkie to launch Choose Your Own Alleghenies Adventure. This was fundametally a contest to win an all-expenses paid trip for two to The Alleghenies in Southwestern Pennsylvania. But, it became a social media adventure as Gear Junkie Stephen Regenold and the contest winners descended on The Alleghenies for a series of hiking, off-road cycling, fly fishing and kayaking adventures. Gear Junkie blogged daily about the experiences of the group and captured photos and video for future YouTube and podcast promotions. The video captured many outdoor attractions for the first time, highlighted by the recently opened Allegrippis Trail system—32 brand new miles of International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA) singletrack.

RESULTS: The contest received more than 2,000 registrants, garnered more than 3.2 million paid media impressions in addition to more than 160,000+ direct impressions on the site and, ultimately, began a great dialogue in the social media space.

So whether you’re a travel destination, an automobile company or a consumer electronics brand, social media marketing channels are navigable with a little bit of knowledge of known entities and partnerships with key influencers in niche categories. Great content doesn’t hurt either.

At The Lost Jacket, Stuart Foster gave his opinion on exactly what a blog should be, whether for a company or an individual, and posed some of his own predictions about ad engagement and measurement on the open web.

And finally, Mullen writers contributed to the new, buzzworthy The Next Great Generation.  Brenna Hanley shared her personal rejection of paid tweets.  And Jason Potteiger posited his thoughts on the 15 ways Millennials think about brands.

Enjoy.

At Creativity_Unbound, CCO Edward Boches wrote a piece inspired by R/GA’s Bob Greenberg titled “Everything starts with the consumer.” The post suggests that if you start with the consumer, you’re more likely to build applications, communities and platforms that live beyond the campaign.  Edward also announced a new social media project called The Next Great Generation. Still in beta, TNGG is a blog/magazine completely powered by the Millennial Generation.

From our Winston office, David Mullen who blogs at Communication Catalyst posted a video interview with the Phoenix Suns Jeramie McPeek on the team’s use of Twitter.

Michael Bourne, who sounds off at Bourne Social, got a  lot of buzz for his comparative review of Radian 6 and Techrigy’s SM2.  Michael analyzes functionality, ease-of-use and price.  Pretty good stuff and a small example of of our growing determination to measure all of our social media efforts more accurately.

And finally, Stuart Foster, whose The Lost Jacket is a mini-phenomenon in itself, suggests ways to integrate a microsite into social media.  He offers up ideas on sharing content, creating relevant streams, and properly re-directing your URL.

Check them out. Let us know what you think. And keep in mind, these blogs represent the views of the individuals writing them, not necessarily those of Mullen.