SocialSphere, Inc.

The other day a friend of mine in the music business and I were talking about the state of the industry  -- and specifically the impact that the Internet's "long tail" can have not only on new and emerging artists, but also on the classic rockers that at least a few of us in the office grew up on in the 70's and 80's.  You know who I'm talking about...

While this isn't breaking news, or shouldn't be for hundreds of bands like Arctic Monkeys and Weezer who play primarily to college audiences and have close to 500,000 Facebook fans each -- this is news I think to classic rockers who still tour, produce quality music and have somewhere between "hardly there" and "emerging presences" on the major social media sites -- Ringo Starr, Mark Knopfler, Van Morrison and Boston's own Peter Wolf come quickly to mind.

The latest numbers on who's on social media are staggering -- and my latest factoid has caught many of my friends off-guard:

Did you know that there are about (give or take a million) as many people on Facebook in there 50's and 60's than in their teens?  It's true, check out iStrategyLabs' latest report.

In addition, the latest Deloitte study on "State of the Media Democracy," reports that at the end of last year, 46% of online Baby Boomers (ages 44-62) maintain a social networking profile -- up 50% in two years; and Quantcast recently told us that 44% of Twitter users are over age 35.

So let's go guys (I'm talking to you Van and your former roommate Peter Wolf) -- take these compelling numbers, sprinkle in a plugged-in website, a smart use of AdWords and Facebook Ads, some Facebook, MySpace and Twitter presence (tailored to fit your persona of course) -- and give the Boomers (and Xers) what they're looking for.  As I hope this short presentation shows, it's a win-win.

I’m writing this from an old cottage in the New Hampshire Highlands that we bought years ago when our kids were tiny, with the expressed intention of having a place for family time away from the blare of electronic media. In the mid-nineties, that meant NO television. For a few years, the plan worked. We had a landline phone, a mediocre stereo and, in the summer, a radio on the porch for Red Sox-by-moonlight. The children read Potter (Harry and Beatrix), played games, hiked, swam and built a monster tree house. Life was simple.

Then the technology began to leak in…

Along the way my employer forced a series of cell phones on me. I had managed to keep them confined to my car, each new car I bought would be immediately defiled by men with cordless drills, ruthlessly attaching brackets and fixtures to the shiny new dash, ripping up new carpets and upholstery to fish wires, cutting holes for the spiral antenna. All this, before the car’s first scratch. My commuting time was no longer my own, and the electronic perimeter had been extended, but it stopped at the end of the driveway.

While the last thing the world needs at this moment is more Monday, or as Martha Coakley would say, “Wednesday Morning Quarterbacking,” here goes…

In 1994, I had the honor of working pretty closely with Senator Kennedy’s campaign against Mitt Romney.   As he noted in his memoir, True Compass, it was by far, his most difficult re-election battle.

Although I learned tons in this campaign and every other one I was a part of – the central lesson was simple, but unfortunately lost on Martha Coakley and her team and one of the primary reasons she blew it big-time tonight (along with the fact that she apparently cannot a) say “jobs,” b) connect with the 50% or so of our state that are “independent,” or c) put the health care debate into the economic context in which it belongs.)

The lesson -- when you have a lead you do not go on vacation -- in my opinion is one of the most simple, but important lessons learned in Massachusetts politics over the last two decades.

In August of 1994, Senator Kennedy had millions in the bank and a fat lead against newcomer Mitt Romney and decided that he’d rather be at the Cape than campaigning or airing commercials in August.  That miscalculation, which resulted in Romney taking the lead in post-Labor Day polls nearly resulted in Kennedy’s defeat.  Luckily for the Kennedy campaign, there was another six weeks left in the race, a few debates and plenty of commercials to be aired – and Kennedy pulled out a less than comfortable 58%-41% win.

Remember 2009 when “authenticity” and “transparency” were all the rage?  I think much of this positioning was driven by political pundits who seemed to group fresh-faced candidates Barack Obama and Sarah Palin in the “authentic” category with  better-known Hillary Clinton and John McCain in the other category; whether Obama and Palin were more or less authentic did not matter (that can be debated in the comment section of this blog) --  these labels quickly transcended politics into the traditional PR and marketing lexicon.

And this week, there were two stories that jumped out of the papers (yes, I still read paper) that serve as great examples of the two sides of “authenticity.”

In the authentic category is Domino’s.  Earlier this week, they launched their advertising campaign and led with the fact that until this point, their pizza pretty much sucked.  And from this point forward, it won’t suck as much and we should try their new recipe.