Last night, after much speculation and grandstanding, LeBron James announced which NBA team he’d join via free agency. Congrats, Miami. At last, closure. Finally, the news, blogs and spam emails I enjoy every day can return to normal.

Mr. James’ decision — or the LeBronocalypse, as some have called it — goes beyond the public’s obsession with celebrity, entertainment and trending topics.

Love it or hate it, King James demonstrated how one brand (no doubt an international brand with global popularity and unprecedented access to the press) can overwhelmingly set the agenda for content and conversations, across all media.

The aftermath of “The Decision” speaks to the fragile nature of how the public perceives a brand. Overnight, James went from being a top attraction in the NBA — and one of the good guys — to a self-absorbed narcissist in the eyes of many and even a traitor (especially in Cleveland).

Brands and agencies should take note: One action, one press conference, one message can impact the goodwill, the momentum, the standing that your brand has worked hard to achieve. Sure, time — and PR efforts — heal wounds. But make no mistake: last night’s broadcast was a case study in what brands shouldn’t do.

And we are all witnesses.   

 

When HBO debuted its HBO Go online service, it set a new standard for online content distribution. Teaming with Verizon FiOS for a video-streaming service, HBO has laid the groundwork to ensure subscribers can access content on-demand. HBO’s parent company, Time Warner, reached out to its current viewers with a tactic undertaken to prevent losing them to competitors’ sites such as Netflix, Watch instantly, iTunes, and Hulu. This growing trend in television and media industry proves that content is being shifted to the world streamed entertainment.

Along with music players and cameras, non-cable TV households are experiencing a growth spurt due to consistent technological advances, meaning as long as you have a broadband connection, you’re set. This said, with the growth of companies grabbing their piece of the online market share, what would this do for online marketing? Simple:

• Online content is subjected to attachments of marketing tailored to specific audiences.
• The fifteen or thirty-second preview or pop-up banner you see before your movie or music video is just the beginning of marketer’s attempts to proactively sell branded content online. For example: Hulu has seconds of “limited commercial interruptions” every couple minutes.
• Interactive pre-, post-,or mid-rolls can include fields for zip codes, games or anything that involves engagement.
• Overlay is becoming more popular – text or graphics can appear along the bottom or top, with an option to expand or close.
• Companion ads can be banners that appear beside the video players, which coordinate with a pre-roll ad or overlay ad.

In conclusion: As fast as movies, music, and human interaction go via cable plug, so will ads.

 

Soon, instead of becoming a fan of your brand on Facebook, I’ll simply get to like it. Goodbye to the heavy lifting that fanning entails — now I’ll make more connections with companies and organizations than ever before, because it will feel like a “lighter action.” The change creates consistency and simplification. Or so says Facebook.

Possibly. I guess it does reduce the number of verbs. But I liked the conceptual clarity of the way we were: We friended individuals. We fanned organizations. We liked things that happened.

Liking on Facebook has always been an action of-the-moment. It is an elegantly simple (and brilliant) way of participating in something ephemeral, akin to verbal conversation. Liking feels powerful because it is highly visible and selectively applied. I like things that divert me, or grab my attention — otherwise, I ignore. It’s an expression of who I am, but it’s no big commitment. My likes may be noted and appreciated, but they are soon carried away by the flow of time. And the never-ending stream of posts.

Friending or fanning is slightly more substantial. If I appreciate you — as an individual or as a brand — I consciously invoke a relationship with you. Becoming your friend or fan means I don’t mind hearing from you, and gives me a chance to get to the good stuff: liking or commenting on things you say. It doesn’t mean I like everything you say — just the things I deem relevant or worthy. We may be in a relationship, but we have our boundaries.

Going forward, one verb will have two very different valences. You have to be someone’s friend in order to like what they share. Liking something shared by a brand, on the other hand, consecrates your relationship with them? That doesn’t sound simpler to me. It sounds tricky.

For what it’s worth, I think copy folks will be sad about this, too. “Fan Us on Facebook” is a nice, strong-sounding call to action, with a lovely alliterative quality. “Like Us on Facebook” sounds insecure. Referring to “our fans” in copy is nice and concise.* Using the phrase “people who like us on Facebook,” as Facebook suggests, is an awkward mouthful by comparison.

Ah, well. I’m sure I’ll like it after a while.

*PS: Facebook practically owns the word fan, but they don’t seem to care! Note that in the example above, I did not feel the need to write “our Facebook fans” — the Facebook part is assumed. I myself will argue that when you need to describe “people who like your brand on Facebook” in one word, “fans” is still an excellent choice.

 

Traditional News: News from professional journalists without a personal or political slant (in theory). They gather the facts, think things through thoroughly, pass through editing and get multiple stamps of approval before delivering the message to the masses. Oh, and they make a living doing it.

Bionic News: It’s content crowdsourcing or sometimes disparagingly called content farming — news from both pros and non-professionals (er, “freelancers”) and sometimes with a slant. They are regular folks who are in the throes of what they are reporting, by choice: Often, they don’t get paid or get paid a menial sum and have to pay their own way into the very events they are covering. Why? Well, it’s exciting and you get your name out there while chalking up a little bit of experience.  Plus there’s the cred that comes with walking around at cool events looking like you are part of it. Okay, to be fair, some folks are simply passionate about reporting, whether it’s for a salary or for fun. But, with this so-called “bionic” news you get the grit of the story and LOTS of it quickly from all sorts of angles. 

Take AOL’s Seed for example, introduced to the masses at 2010 SXSW. They recruited writers who “can follow directions … and that was the criteria.” The goal is to supply mountains of relevant content fast and cheap. Now, submissions do get passed through AOL’s managing editor before making the final cut. So, it’s not to be discounted as gibberish by any stretch. It’s the real deal, just different — kind of like blogging but with an assignment and probably a few rules. Plus, it has been known to lead to higher profile, paid assignments —so maybe a foot in the door at a major corporation.

Another major player is Demand Media, which produces on average about 5K pieces of content a day via its Demand Studios. Demand is a little different in that they also foster crowdsourcing for third-party organizations. Even so, basically Seed and Demand are to content what Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is to IT developers. 

On the complete opposite end of the spectrum is a recent Reuters’ policy that prohibits their journalists from breaking news on Twitter, in an effort to avoid personal or political slants in the name of news. It must first be broken on the wire, and even then they should seek higher-up approval before tweeting — which btw, has to be on a professional account, separate from their personal account. While they recognize the inherent value of social media and immediate news, they also have a “hard-earned reputation” to maintain and understandably so.

Traditional and crowdsourced content are like night and day, really. I say there’s an absolute place for them both. For content providers, it's partly dependant on your objective, subject matter, audience and medium. And for the reader, well, do you want the bay full of oysters or just a pearl?  

 

January seems like a fine month for some lexicography fun, with all the top-this-and-that-of-2009 lists sprouting out there. And yes there is such a thing as lexicography fun … if, say, you belong to the Word Nerd club at Springbox. (I don’t, but my friend does.)

Let’s start with some neologisms (new words) of 2009 from Merriam-Webster, where  I learned a delicious new word (locavore) and got a serious laugh (sock puppet). Really? Ah, as it turns out, “sock puppet” hadn’t previously failed to join the ranks of official words, it merely earned a secondary definition as a “deceptive online identity.” Not quite as charming as definition #1.  

So then I tried to figure out a few of the new definitions before I clicked on them. Here’s how it went.

Zip line: “Hey Milton why don’t you ‘zip line’ your TPS report down to auditing for me.” As in, get it there quick. Nope, it actually means zip line.

Memory foam: “Um, I had a late night Lumbergh … Forgot … TPS … report. [pointing at head] ‘Memory foam.’” As in, hangover brain. Nope, it actually means memory foam.

Okay, that was fun but fruitless. Moving on …

Merriam-Webster also has a Word of the Year 2009 list, which is based on searches and appears to be largely driven by politics, with the likes of such words as inaugurate, rogue and philanderer.

The Global Language Monitor has a few nifty lists: Top Words, Phrases and Names of 2009, with Twitter, King of Pop and Barack Obama as the chart toppers, respectively. Twitter was such the universal list-topping sweetheart of 2009, that its verb form “tweet” has landed on Lake Superior State University’s 35th annual List of Words Banished from the Queen's English (for misuse, overuse and general uselessness).

Yes, the year-end lists are infinite. But if you didn’t see the word, expression or definition that you hoped to see in one of these examples, submit it to Merriam-Webster’s open dictionary! Or for some real fun just browse the open dictionary.  While you’re at it, see if you can guess the definition of polates, aughties or sneeve.

This feels like an appropriate time to point out that neologism has two definitions.

1. a new word, usage, or expression

2. a meaningless word coined by a psychotic

It’s true.