Facebook launched a mobile camera app.

You may be wondering why Facebook launched a mobile camera app (quaintly called, Camera) just a short while after purchasing Instagram in a heart-stopping billion dollar acquisition. Everywhere you turn online, there is discourse about this app. Most of the discourse is a quizzical wonder as to why Facebook would even bother (especially because many people think that it is inferior to Instagram's capabilities).

Facebook Camera is not for you.

If you have Instagram, odds are that Facebook Camera is not for you. If you read this blog, odds are that Facebook Camera is not for. Facebook wants more and more people taking and sharing pictures (one of the biggest and most important functionalities of the online social network), and they're smart enough to know that trying to get more and more people to join Instagram (another online social network) is probably a lot harder than launching a camera app that automatically syncs up to your Facebook profile. Facebook's new camera app is for everybody else. It's not for us.

It's a mobile world.

You know it. I know it. Facebook knows it. Putting the IPO issues to the side and the many challenges that the company will now face as a public one, Facebook Camera demonstrates that the company is both serious about mobile and that it's going to do everything it can to move forward fast. This speed is crucial because we are quickly leaving the browser-based/web-based Internet as we have known it to date, into a world of hyper-connected individuals who are highly untethered (no more fixed stations).

Facebook Camera is for everyone.

Will it be a raging success? It's way too early to call. Should Facebook have simply integrated Instagram? Who knows? Regardless, this camera app has allowed them to take another step into the mobile world with something that everyone - who is already connected on Facebook - can use (in a very fast and simple way). It's hard to see a downside in this move. My only critical comments are for those online who are quick to judge as if everything and anything that is released should be aimed at the early adopters or more sophisticated users. Remember: the majority of people use the cameras that came with their mobile devices. The majority are not early adopters. The majority are not all that sophisticated with their technology. If Facebook Camera makes it dead easy to take, play with and share photos, this could become a runaway success...

Whether us eager beavers like it or not.

By Mitch Joel

In a sea of content, how do you make your stuff stand out?

This was one of the questions I was asked during the Burning Questions Panel at this morning's C2 MTL conference. In short, my answer was: Be awesome because mediocrity is very obvious in a world where everybody can publish. On June 28th, 2008 (nearly four years ago), I penned a blog post titled, Mass Media Or Mass Content - What's Worse? In this blog post, I stated: "I don't comment and share as much as I would like to. I skim, graze and peruse everything. Because there is so much Mass Content, I'm beginning to feel like I'm not even able to give the truly great stuff the time it well deserves." Even back then, it was becoming abundantly clear that for all of the amazing things that social media has brought us, there was an increasing amount of content for people to consume and connect with. So, while we were busy lamenting the strict limitations of traditional media (i.e. three major television networks who are telling us what and when to watch), the trade-off to a world where everyone can create and publish content may have brought us to the same, frustrating, conclusion: there's a lot of stuff and we can't capture it all.

The book of awesome.

Neil Pasricha's The Book Of Awesome has become a runaway international best-seller. In the spirit of its simplicity, here is The Blog of Awesome (or, how to start thinking about your content in a way that may enable it to reach a wider and more interested audience)...

The Blog of Awesome.

• Awesome isn't easy. If nobody is reading or connecting to your content, you have to either change what you're writing about or dig deeper to find an audience that will connect with it.
• Awesome is the long haul. There are no short cuts. Some capture lighting in a bottle, but they are the rare exception. Most people who have become awesome have put in their 10,000 hours worth of Malcolm Gladwell Outliers-esque practice.
• Awesome is obvious. There's a famous line from a government official who was asked to define "pornography." His answer was: "I know it when I see it." Awesome is the same. You know it when you see it.
• Awesome takes time. If you're just banging out a piece of content, it probably won't fly. The stuff we all qualify as awesome takes time and nurturing to create.
• Awesome is a function of creativity. If you think you're not creative and your function is to create content, you're starting off in a bad place. This is your art. You art must be creative.
• Awesome is fun. I was stopped during a break at the conference by a peer who asked me about my blogging regiment. They were saying that their team members can't even produce as much content as I do. I asked if their team is having fun doing it? They replied that it's their job. While blogging is a part of my job, it's much more of a joy than work. People who create awesome are having fun (even if they're tortured during the creative process).
• Awesome is universal. It speaks to anyone and everyone, everywhere. This doesn't mean each and every human individual, but it does mean that it universally applies to everyone that it is targeted too. I'm hopeful that my content resonates as much with someone in the United States as it does to someone in Romania.
• Awesome is not big. In a big world where everyone is connected, awesome can be universal to a very small, specialized and select niche group... and there's nothing wrong with that.
• Awesome demonstrates skill. Skill is not originality. Skill is aptitude and ability. There are a handful of individuals who don't create much original content, but they are curators extraordinaire (I'm thinking, in particular, of people like Jason Hirschhorn and his Media ReDEFined feed).
• Awesome is now. Slowly, over time an audience builds (hopefully). But in a Twitter-speed world, Janet Jackson sung the gospel with her words, "what have you done for me lately?" Awesome is now. I know many a-listers who were awesome... but they're now just not that interesting. Awesome is also hard to maintain.
• Awesome is not tactical. I do not believe that there is a roadmap. I do believe that awesome is as subjective as art and music. My awesome will be your drudgery. Your awesome may be of little interest to me. It's a big, brave world and there's lots of room for everybody to find an audience that thinks that they're awesome.

I am not awesome.

It's nice to be complimented and I love it when a blog post, podcast or client work at Twist Image starts to spread, but I don't think of myself (or this blog) as awesome. I'm humble enough and have the humility to know that what I do connects with a select audience, and that's just fine by me.

Are you awesome?

By Mitch Joel

"I'm not a very detail-oriented person."

I find myself saying this to many people all too often. The funny thing is, that I have been lying. Yesterday, at the C2 MTL event being held in Montreal, Ian Schrager (world famous for Studio 54 and the boutique hotel movement) said this (and I'm paraphrasing here):

"You never know which little detail is going to be important, so they all have to be great."

It's beautiful and true... isn't it? I typically think of myself as not being detail-oriented when it comes to things like project management and human resources (both of which are not my forte). If I shift that thinking to my unique abilities (or my core duties at Twist Image), it turns out that I fall into the Schrager camp of being detail oriented (to the point of fanaticism). Take for instance, this blog. I look at every word and grapple with finding a better one. I look at the overall flow to ensure that there is some semblance of cohesion in terms of content flow and how the headlines within each blog post will, hopefully, keep a reader engaged and moving forward. I struggle with headlines (choosing a touch of vagueness over a ball-peen hammer to the face). At the end of the post I ensure that every key word is both linked to and tagged appropriately (one of the things I love most about digital content).

God is in the details.

As I sit here typing this on my MacBook Air, I'm thinking about how this computer (and the operating system) pushes a user to create with it. It's not the amazingly small and light shape and body, it's all of the little things: the backlit keyboard, the multi-gestures and the visual flow. It's all of the tiny little details that create a complete picture. It forces us to stop, think and appreciate how everything comes together to make it one great product.

Anyone can focus on all of the details.

When I go out for a fancy meal, I am constantly reminded of the one time that I went to an expensive steakhouse. The ambiance, food and decor were pristine, but do you want to know what I remember most about the experience? It was the fact that my water was constantly refilled throughout the evening. Not only did I never have to ask, but I never even noticed the wait team refilling my glass. That one small detail of training the wait staff to be invisible is a remarkable detail that most restaurants don't do... and they don't even think about it. It's a grand example of details. Most restaurants will train their team by saying: "always make sure that the customer's water is refilled." This wait staff was probably told: "always make sure that the customer's water is refilled, and do this as discreetly as possible... let me show you how."

There's a mile of difference between those two sentiments.

Here's the beauty of stressing over the details: anybody can do it. You can do it. You can start doing this now. You probably did it when you first started your business or started working for a company. Then, we all get lazy. We experience a modicum of success and those little details slip and slide away. For the majority of us, we don't even notice how that focus on detail has disappeared. It's a crying shame.

Don't sweat the small stuff? Dumb. Sweat the small stuff... sweat the teeny tiny details.

By Mitch Joel

It seemed like everything changed in business overnight.

At one, unique moment in time, we shifted from a world where we dreamed about being able to collect data and information about our customers, to a world where personal computing was a reality. Not only was this a world where there was a computer on every desktop, but Moore's Law (the notion that computation power doubles every two years) started kicking in, and we were able to capture, slice and dice larger and more powerful data sets and output them into offers for customers that were more personalized and relevant.

The truth is that business technology actually got too good at capturing customer information.

We went from a dry and desolate data desert to drowning in a sea of data. Marketers spent decades trying to crack the code and come up with cost-effective and timely ways to capture, slice and dice this endless depth of customer information gold. Few companies had the financial wherewithal, human capital and marketing resources to harness this information fully. With the onslaught of social technologies and mobility we have arrived at a moment in time where the technology is both cost effective and consumers are sharing more and more in public forums. This combination of customer data captured at the business level and people self-identifying themselves in spaces like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest creates the perfect storm for brands to leverage the power of social commerce and the value of a strong loyalty program.

Imagine a world...

Imagine a world where you swipe your Air Miles card at your local supermarket and you're suddenly getting coupons, discounts and offers that are one hundred percent personalized and customized to the brands you like. Imagine a world where companies (like that supermarket) are sending out unique offers to each and every one of their customers. Hundreds of thousand of different coupon books. Does it sound like something we might see in the near future? It's happening today. Right now. And, it's the work of Bryan Pearson and his two thousand-plus employees at LoyaltyOne where he is President and CEO. Pearson heads six global enterprises (including Air Miles - which seventy percent of Canadians use) that connects to a knowledge base of more than one hundred and twenty million customer relationships. In short, Pearson not only knows why you buy, but when, how much and how often you'll come back. With a passion for enhancing shopper experiences and over twenty years under his marketing belt, Pearson just released his first business book, The Loyalty Leap - Turning customer information into customer intimacy (Portfolio - 2012).

Making The Loyalty Leap.

"Inside of me, I always felt that there was a book that was screaming to get out," Pearson said during a conversation held last week in Toronto at the Canadian Marketing Association's 2012 CMA Summit. "What I saw in the marketplace was that all of the concepts we bring forward in the loyalty game... and have been talking about for over fifteen years... have come to the point where we are truly enabled to capitalize on all of this potential. I felt that there was this opportunity  - a moment in time - to publish a book and see if this can create a sea change of movement. Despite everything we hear about digital media, the vast majority of companies are very much stuck in an old paradigm."

What is this old paradigm?

Pearson thinks that it begins when companies spend way too much time being, what he calls, "product obsessed" while the customer becomes this thing on the side (the group of people that we sell our stuff to). "It starts in the infancy of the business," says Pearson on the genesis of this traditional paradigm. "They know who they're trying to serve, because they grow, develop and expand the product line but then they start to lose track of that customer. The idea of the leap is an attempt to shake the organization up from being product obsessed and focused on operation efficiencies, to shift the corporate conversation to start thinking about what they would do differently if they really became customer committed. I want businesses to take advantage and use this data analytics and technology that the world has to deliver what is possible: which is a true one to one and unique experience. Businesses need to start thinking about how that would change who they are, and how much more loyal it would make their consumers."

This is less about manipulating consumers and much more about creating a better marketing experience.

The challenge with data is always around the social contract between the consumer and the brand. Without trust and a candid understanding about how all of this data gets captured and used, consumers have a low-level of trust. When done well, the relationship can be magical for businesses. Pearson acknowledges that consumers should, rightfully, be skeptical, but he still believes that we're in the very nascent days of having a consumer that is truly social and engaged with a social business that delivers a much more relevant experience. Consumers are demanding it and now, businesses of all shapes and sizes are capable of delivering on it. This is less about "if" loyalty will continue on with its massive growth and potential to do that much more at creating better consumer experiences, and more of a question of "when." For Pearson and many others, that "when" is now (and that's why businesses need to make this loyalty leap). Technology is no longer the roadblock.

The roadblock has become our traditional and non-consumer centric ways of thinking.

The above post is my twice-monthly column for the Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun newspapers called, New Business - Six Pixels of Separation. I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original versions online here:

• Montreal Gazette - Focus back on the consumer, loyalty lord says.
• Vancouver Sun - not yet published.

You can listen to my conversation with Bryan Pearson in its entirety in an upcoming episode of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast (which will be published in the coming weeks).

By Mitch Joel