Yesterday, I had a great opportunity to speak to the current classes at VCU's Adcenter. 150 graduate students in the #1 advertising school in the country. It was atypical for me as the head of a digital influence business within a public relations agency to be addressing these students who are all immersed in the lessons of Bill Bernbach, David Ogilvy and their descendants.
The session focused on the great opportunity we all have as communicators because of the confluence of social media, peer-to-peer word of mouth and technology. We can move beyond considering how to "reach" consumers or "target audiences" to how to "engage" this new wave of content creators. Engagement has been a foundation of our 360° Digital Influence team since the beginning. And I was just talking with Pete Blackshaw about his own initiative to define how to quantify and define "engagement".
Many thanks to Peter C. (great lunch, thank you), Karen, Ashley and Rick B. I had a terrific time. Your students are way sharp.
In the middle of the presentation, someone asked a hypothetical question about a dog named Oscar.
The Dog Controversy
Turns out it isn't hypothetical. While I know the Adcenter wants the story to go away, I see this as a valuable "teachable moment." But probably not for the obvious reasons. Here's the short story as documented in the press:
"It all began last week when Mike Lear, an adjunct professor at the Adcenter, gave his creative-thinking class an assignment involving his dog.
"Your assignment is to make my 6-year-old pug, Oscar, famous," Lear said, as part of written instructions to his class.
Then things exploded.
A user of MySpace, a social-networking Web site, made a blog posting that said he was going to kill Oscar online this week.
The user identified himself as Jason, a 19-year-old male _ a swinger _ from Richmond.
Around the globe, through the reach of the Internet, people began expressing concern and outrage about the possible online slaughter of Oscar.
The Adcenter began receiving calls from animal activists and others expressing alarm, administrators said.
Richmond police were contacted, and dispatched officers to the Adcenter.
Police subsequently issued a media alert saying it had been determined that "this threat is the result of a VCU student's assignment that went awry. We want to stress that at no time was any animal in danger."
""You cannot harm my dog in any way. You cannot kill my dog. And your idea cannot hinge on either," he said, in a written memo."
So, the student may be expelled. Everyone is outraged at the false threat - it smacks of yelling "fire" in the crowded theater.
A Great Lesson
But there is a better lesson here and one that the student should not be expelled for. I spoke to the students about honesty and authenticity in social media. And while I do not believe social media is inherently either one of these, it is those bloggers and vloggers whom I read and watch who do share something authentic and often from the heart that excites me most about this new wave in communications. We have a great opportunity to engage people online and respect their trust. Any kind of hoax whether it be LonelyGirl15 or Oscar tricks people when they are vulnerable. Any advertiser trying to build brand loyalty (unless the brand is "Punk'd") through these means may achieve awareness but they will never reach brand loyalty.
So, who cares what the smart aleck kid said. The fact that we are not talking about how to engage people honestly and authentically is the bigger crime. And I know the Adcenter, for one is very interested in doing just that. They have built a formidable training ground for the agency of today and are poised to make those additions that will train students for a different agency landscape in the future. That agency requires students smart in many disciplines: advertising, digital, PR, CRM, etc...
So, cut the student a break. Let's invest in more dialogue about how to marry the tremendous storytelling capabilities of advertising with the new demand for openness and transparency towards the goal of engaging people.
"Engagment" cannot be defined by how long I look at an advert. To me, it includes involvement (like conversation), time spent, relevancy and personal investment. Brands that engage me matter more.
I know lots of folks who would volunteer to lead this discussion.