There is no shortage of great posts written on the deserved and phenomenal success of the Old Spice social media campaign that followed their hilarious TV. But apart from a good laugh or ten, what can we get from this great demonstration of the marriage between traditional and social media. More importantly, what do we have to do, or how must we think, to give us all a chance at creating similar success with your brand? Well, let’s look at what Old Spice did.

1. LAUGH AT YOURSELF -- Old Spice is a P&G brand. They’re not supposed to make funny social ads that become the benchmark for the industry. So how did they do it? Yes, they partnered with Wieden & Kennedy who are inspired, brilliant and consistently so, but they also gave their brand -- along with men and women everywhere -- licence to laugh at themselves. By doing so you make your brand human and likable -- two powerful qualities in the social media ecosystem.

2. ASSUME WHAT YOU HAVE TO PROVE: Strategically, Wieden and Kennedy didn’t try to prove that Old Spice makes you smell better (assuming a “man” smells good). They took that as a given and had fun with the fact from there. That way the brand has already pre-sold what’s its trying to prove and engaged you emotionally on that basis.

3. LISTEN UP: Not content to be satisfied with the popularity of their TV ads or the number of hits they have on YouTube, Old Spice and Wieden & Kennedy actually listened to the reaction. What’s more they didn’t listen to what it said about them but rather what it said about their target audience. And by keeping that focus it was a small step to create customized video tweets that were tonally consistent with the whole campaign. The shift in focus is the most powerful revolution going on in marketing today.

4. GET PERSONAL: Remember how you feel when someone forgets you name? Or, better yet, when they remember it? That feeling is an opportunity. By creating personalized tweets Old Spice not only credited their community with a voice, they celebrated specific people within it. Those people were then compelled to share the Old Spice work again because of that recognition. Basic human nature and communication yet so refreshing from a brand.

5. HAVE SOME MANNERS -- For a long time brands operated from the presumption that they were in control and perhaps they were right. Those days are over. And with that comes the obligation to get off your high horse (I couldn’t resist!) and be polite. That’s what Old Spice did when it said, ” Thank you”. If someone does something nice for you or says they enjoy your work, say thank you. Perhaps our mothers should be the new brand managers.

6. GO BACK FOR SECONDS: When your brand does connect with someone don’t run off to the next person. It’s like looking over someone’s shoulder when your talking to them. Instead, stay a while and toss about a little banter. That’s the power of grabbing someone’s attention in this over-saturated advertising world. Send them personalized tweets, a coupon, a discount or a tailor-made joke. In short, recognize you made a connection and value that opportunity.

7. REINVENT YOURSELF: We must all stop consciously or unconsciously defending how things have always been done. There’s no excuse now. Old Spice, a P&G brand is cool and viral and sexy (no less!). So think about your brand from scratch. Wake up your inner entrepreneur and look at the need you are filling and what your target market wants. And then burn your boats. If you don’t, your competitors are waiting in the wings to do it for you.

8. DEFY CONVENTIONAL LOGIC: You’re not supposed to use the same on camera talent and big budget production values on the web, let alone in tweets? Or are you? As we marketers try to stand out in this pea soup of content who’s to say anything is off limits. In this case the production value subconsciously demonstrated the importance of each twitterer to the brand. He or she deserved the very best from Old Spice  and this again was a tone and way of thinking consistent with the campaign. (BTW: Here’s how they shot the Old Spice tweets.)

9. KNOW WHEN TO LEAVE: Half the art of winning someone’s attention is to leave them wanting more, especially if you’re a brand. Viral success is so elusive it would be understandable for many brands to milk their success dry. But by leaving in a timely fashion, you leave the door open for even bigger expressions of the advertising campaign and ensure that your doting audience will come with you. (So let’s hope it was ‘a bientot’ rather than ‘au revoir’ from Isiah.)

10. FIND THE HUMAN IN THE TECHNOLOGY: If I had to sum it all up, I’d would repeat something I shared in my recent seminar at the Cannes Advertising Festival. We marketers have talked about “brand personality” for years, so it’s time for brands to act like we had one. Fortunately we are all innately qualified to steward them this this process. All we need is the gumption to do so.

So let’s take a look at what all the fuss was about. Here’s the personalized tweet sent to Perez Hilton to say thanks for his tweet about the Old Spice commercials.

It’s little wonder Wieden & Kennedy won the television Grand Prix at the Cannes International Advertising Festival this year and this social media campaign is only the cherry on the icing of the cake strapped to the back of a eight foot wing-spanned eagle soaring towards the sun at the moment of a eclispse. There’s no doubt it will become the social media marketing benchmark of the future as Mashable suggests.

But like any good crowdpleaser, the Old Spice man knew when to quit. So with tears all round, here is Sigh-siah’s (as the ladies call him)  heartfelt farewell to his millions of intimate internet friends. Kudos to you Old Spice man, and to your birthers, Wieden & Kennedy and Proctor & Gamble.

What’s your favorite Old Spice personalized tweet? What else do you think they go right?

• August 9, 2010 -- Three key social media lessons that brands will learn the easy (or the hard) way (10)
• August 2, 2010 -- The ‘Why” vs. “How”: What makes some brands extraordinary and others not (10)
• July 26, 2010 -- How Old Spice reminds ad folk what they forgot (4)
• July 12, 2010 -- Social Media as an Instrument of Change: Cannes seminar slides (5)
• June 21, 2010 -- Cannes Advertising Festival Social Media Seminar (video) (1)
• June 20, 2010 -- Cannes Advertising Festival Seminar: Social media as an instrument of change (6)
• August 11, 2010 -- Dear Brands, no amount of damage control can match no damage at all (6)
• July 28, 2010 -- Brands, if you really want to make money look to your motives (4)

This week I had the pleasure of speaking at Jeff Pulver’s #140conf meet-up in LA. It was held in the Comedy Store on Sunset Blvd (which is why I start by kissing the stage floor to honor the Comedy Gods).

The event was remarkable because of the great information that was shared but even more so because of the spirit that inhabited the room. The event Jeff and Eric Greenspan put together epitomized the best of social media -- smart, like-minded and well-intended people coming together to see what positive change they can create. (I explore examples of ways to do this here that may be helpful.)

After Jeff and Eric spoke (click the links to see their talks), there were two other speakers that were brilliant examples of this. Angela Shelton shared her powerful personal story that started out with her trying to make a comedy film and ending up exposing a tragic culture of child trafficking here in the U.S.. It’s little wonder that the film went on to be a social media phenomenon. Then the wonderful oncologist, @krupali shared her stories about how social media has helped to provide financial assistance to cancer patients desperately in need of treatment. We then had a spontaneous demonstration of this live in the room as money poured to the front of the room from attendees to enable a sick patient to fly across the country for life saving care. Truly inspiring stuff and I’ll post links to both their videos as soon as they’re up.

For my part, I spoke about ‘Timeless Truths of the Real Time Web’ and I thought I’d share it here. Sorry if the camera angle and sound is, well, stand-up comedy-esque. In case it’s helpful, I’ve added a breakdown of the key points below with additional links to deep dives on each topic. As always, I’d love to know your thoughts.

5 CONVERGING TRENDS

i) Social media

ii) Mobile

iii) Location based systems

iv) In-store apps

v) Social web

4 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION

i) Definition

ii) Values

iii) Purpose

iv) Dialogue

3 RULES TO REMEMBER

i) Find the human in the technology

ii) When you own the relationship you own everything

iii) The successful companies of the future will be distinguished by the quality of listening

• August 13, 2010 -- Worldnomads Footprint Projects: Lessons in smarter business and effective community building (2)
• July 14, 2010 -- Attention please: How you help brands change our world (2)
• June 21, 2010 -- Cannes Advertising Festival Social Media Seminar (video) (1)
• April 29, 2010 -- Gary Vee’s ‘Crush It’: Facebook, Twitter and social media marketing that makes money (12)
• April 14, 2010 -- Twitter’s ad platform: Will advertising be the death of social media? (15)
• March 11, 2010 -- Guest Interview: Riyaad Minty, Head of Social Media for Al Jazeera (9)
• August 25, 2009 -- Seeing through other’s eyes: Social media and compassion (2)
• August 11, 2009 -- Angry twitter, clever friendfeed: A lesson in creating desire (3)

Photo:Glass Home by Carlo Santambrogio and Ennio Arosio.

Jeff Jarvis wrote a great post yesterday about Facebook, privacy and the theme of his upcoming book – publicness. I can’t wait to read it – seriously, Jeff, write fast – as it provides much-needed clarity around the web’s hottest issue: privacy.

Critical to his post was the distinction between the ‘private’ public (that’s the one we create ourselves, for example, on Facebook or twitter) and the ‘public’ public (the one that extends beyond the limits we set to the broader public sphere). In practical terms he explained it this way:

In Facebook, we get to create our publics. In Twitter, we decide which publics to join. But neither is the public sphere; neither entails publishing to everyone. Yet Facebook is pushing us more and more to publish to everyone and when it does, we lose control of our publics. That, I think, is the line it crossed.

I think Jeff is spot on here and this raises an even broader issue: who is responsible for creating a ‘public’ at all, whether it be the ‘private’ public or the broader ‘public’ public by Jeff’s definitions?

At the heart of this question are the often unforeseen, little considered and perhaps unfortunate consequences of an open, real-time web. For as time, distance and access to information dissolved in the face of tools like the internet, Facebook and twitter, so did the role they played as the tent poles of our privacy. These were the tools we used to define where we began and where we ended for public consumption, but as transparency rose so control of our privacy declined. In short, what we gained in the form of access to information and connectivity on one hand, we lost in control on the other.

As such, I don’t think it’s fair to lay the blame for this at the feet of Mark Zuckerberg as the Mail & Guardian assert. As the founder of Facebook and pioneer of so much evolution in the social networking space, he is duty bound to cross these rope bridges to the future first – stumbling, falling and recovering all the way – as we all reach towards an ideal balance between the greatest benefits of an open web and the fullest protection of personal privacy.

In fact, the incremental concessions each of us made by joining social networks, sharing more and more of our lives within them and finally cross-pollinating that content has enabled this expansion of ambition to occur. As such we are all complicit and should not be surprised by what is happening, nor forget the benefits we have enjoyed so far.

In truth, I suspect there is no ideal balance to be had between the two. Rather, I believe we are witnessing the latest shouting match in the tireless cultural dialogue between the offline and online worlds that serves to re-negotiate a deal between the appetite of technology and the privacy tolerance of its users.

So, like Jarvis and Paul Carr at TechCrunch, I don’t think Facebook had gone rogue as WIRED asserts. It is simply doing exactly what it must do when you consider that Facebook is focused on realizing the fullest potential of an open web for its users. I suspect that Mark Zuckerberg, from his unique and high vantage point, has accepted that long-standing notions of privacy are now irretrievable. And further, that as the weight of the open web presses ever outwards, the responsibility for an individual’s privacy must rest with the individual in how her or she participates, what he or she shares and what personal communities he or she builds. Capacity does not mandate participation – that is a choice each of us, and not Mark Zuckerberg, makes. Yet we can’t have it both ways. If we enjoy the best benefits of an open web, we must re-frame our understanding of individual privacy and the deal we have consciously or unconsciously struck for ourselves.

So the rising tide of push back against Zuckerberg and Facebook – including Matt Cutts, Peter Rojas and Peter Kedrosky – is completely appropriate. This is the necessary exchange that occurs as the past and future move in lock step towards whatever is next. Facebook’s attempt to make the entire web social is not the first or last privacy battle to be fought, but without doubt it is a major and potentially bloody one.

For my part, I choose to focus on the positive potential of an open web and the benefits it may have in store for us all. My privacy concerns, while critical, take a close second place. This is a choice for each of us to make. Jarvis explains his position well:

I will argue that the more we live in public, the more we share, the more we create collective wisdom and value. I will defend publicness. But I will also defend privacy—that is, control over this decision.

Managing privacy and publicness is a delicate balancing act. But so is protecting who we think we are today and enabling who we can become. Armed with my participation or its withdrawal as protection, I am excited, hopeful and optimistic that an increasingly open social web holds in store unimaginable possibilities as to how we can improve our world together. How about you?

• April 26, 2010 -- Facebook’s Open Graph: Is privacy a given or a taken away? (9)
• June 7, 2010 -- Mark Zuckerberg: Everyone’s favorite privacy pinata (7)
• May 26, 2010 -- Is Facebook really the one with the identity crisis? (26)
• July 6, 2009 -- The Future of You as Advertising Space (7)
• June 2, 2009 -- ‘Powers of Ten’ for the Twitterverse (1)
• May 16, 2009 -- The Future of Social Media (a.k.a. “Leave me the heck alone!”) (4)
• August 19, 2010 -- Facebook (re)Places: What it means for Foursquare and Gowalla (6)
• August 17, 2010 -- How social networks reshape business by reshaping us (4)

The launch of Twitter’s own advertising platform, Promotional Tweets, is risky for several reasons.

Firstly, the monetization of these platforms, while inevitable, goes against the very attributes that made these new social platforms so compelling – people could connect free from advertising and its ulterior motives.

Secondly, as with any new business model, there is a learning curve during which the founders experiment running the risk of alienating much of their base while they work out exactly the right balance to strike.

Thirdly, advertising is an insatiable beast that will increase in volume, sophistication and penetration.

In short, my concern is this – as advertising penetrates further and deeper into the wormholes of social networking it may strike at the very heart of the open source promise that is the internet.

This promise, and the solutions it may reveal, are critical at this historical moment as the world faces with so many crises that compound the urgency for solutions.

I believe social technology is teaching us to be human again. It’s effectively re-humanizing us by allowing us to use synaptic tools to relearn the rules of effective communication, engagement and connection. As such it is awakening in us the hope of global renewal through our collective consciousness and efforts.

If advertising penetrates the virtual world as deeply as it has the real world, it may well, much like a cancer, cost us not just the part of the body that is directly infected but poison the entire social eco-system.

I realize that to suggest that social networks not monetize their platforms is naïve and unrealistic. But I caution them to consider to what extent they exploit social goodwill to serve their own interests for they might just become a casualty of their own ambitions.

What are your thoughts or concerns – is the Twitter ad platform a good thing and how do you regulate it?

• July 6, 2009 -- The Future of You as Advertising Space (7)
• August 11, 2010 -- Dear Brands, no amount of damage control can match no damage at all (6)
• August 9, 2010 -- Three key social media lessons that brands will learn the easy (or the hard) way (10)
• April 18, 2010 -- Chris Brogan on social media tools and how brands use them effectively (4)
• April 6, 2010 -- Is your brand on its best behavior? Ask BrandKarma (4)
• April 5, 2010 -- Brands, if you want a healthy community first take its temperature (6)
• March 11, 2010 -- Brands, explain yourself! (6)
• February 1, 2010 -- Brands beware: With the iPad things just got more confusing (13)