Personal sans Professional

Working in the world of social media, there's often a dilemma that I feel is something worth discussing. Social Networks allow customers and clients exist on the same terrain, so it becomes quite simple to overlap the two. What this means is, that if I were a customer of Mercedes Benz and I found something on their Facebook page that I liked, I could very easily share it on my own personal space (wall).

The conflict that arises is, what about when they're your clients? How often do you plug your client's campaigns, apps, pages, etc. on your own personal space. I'm not saying, you shouldn't like their status updates or re-tweet any of their offer. What I'm specifically leaning towards is doing things like blatanlty tweeting, "check out this brand's awesome page xxxx wow!" (or the like) or tagging them in a Facebook status update "You guys should head on over to xxxx now!" (or the like)

So I went ahead and asked this on the Digital Media UAE Facebook page. In retrospect, I should have probably phrased my question a bit better, but in the words of Alexander McNabb, the internet is self - correcting, so my point was found out and debated. One of the sentiments agreed upon was that while it's nice if you do plug your clients, overdoing reduces your credibility. The most prevalent thought, the one many agreed with, is the only reason you should plug your clients is because you actually like the products or services that they have to offer. In fact, Wassim Moumneh went further to say that, "you'll not only look like a tard bumping [product] on your personal property, but will lose all credibility to do so when you're lucky enough to get the chance to work with something that you do believe in and want to support."

Nagham Akileh also shared her input saying, "you lose credibility if you plug 'em in posts unless you truly believe in the product/service/cause regardless of the work you do for it." However, my favourite answer to the thread was by Nora Bakhsh, a recent graduate from the American University in Sharjah, who said, "the whole point of handling a client's page is making it seem like they're doing it themselves."

I have to agree that, you should be able to successfully separate a personal social network account from any work that you happen to do on social networks. Suffice to say, you will rarely see me plugging my clients in my Twitter, my blog or my Facebook page. :)

Brand Bowl & a midget Darth Vader

As is the tradition, every time the Super Bowl comes around you have a huge bunch of corporates running around creating various TVCs that they want to air during that time, seeing as almost the entire North American populace is watching the telly. Not including Canada of course. Or Alaska.

Brands usually spend the around the same as the GDP of an African nation to secure a spot during the Super Bowl. Suffice to say, getting a spot is quite the pinch to the wallet, so much so that even the Super Bowl organizers do their own bit to track overall sentiment and who basically wins the Brand Bowl. Many iconic TVCs have been conceived, produced, aired and made popular by the Super Bowl. In fact, PepsiCo has been notorious for creating some of their most popular ads for the Super Bowl spots, including the celebrity gladiator match with Beyonce, Pink, Britney Spears or the Pepsi Stuff ad with Justin Timberlake.

Come Super Bowl 2011, companies release their ads to the hungry eyes of the world to see. At the time however, young Mali was asleep. The following morning finds young Mali sitting at his terminal at work, clicking and typing away furiously, social media guru that he is. (Yes, Mali occasionally refers to himself in third person). His good friend Arun linked him to something. He said it was a Super Bowl ad. He said I'd like it.

One minute and two seconds later, total productivity = zilch. Amazement = +infinity. Star Wars fanboy = +500 Force.

What I liked about this ad, besides a bite sized Darth Vader, was that the parent played along and boosted the child's imagination. It also represented VW in a more relaxed fashion, playing along consumer passion points. T'was refreshing!

My bid goes to VW for this year's superbowl. Have you guys seen their Beetle ad yet?

Oh dear, I've fallen into it again..

Well it's true, after spending a lot of time contemplating my return to the blogosphere, I did give in and will resume blogging, effective immediately! My initial concern was that I will not have enough to blog about or any specific things I may want to write about. However, what I did discover is I do have things I want to talk and blog about.

I will hereby turn this blog right around and you can expect to see me blog about the following topics:

1. Motorsports. I've recently joined my company's racing team. This adds to my previous track experience, so I guess it's about time I start talking cars as much as I love driving them.
   
   
2. Paintball. Cuz it's awesome. And now that I have all my gear, it's time to terrorize the office.
   
   
3. Video Games. I play a lot of them. It's time to take it a bit seriously.
   
   
4. Campus Radio ME. Along with Ritesh, I started this almost a year ago. Here, I will talk about recent news, updates etc.
   
   
5. Movies. I spend a lot of nights burning through DVDs. Why not share my views? :)

By any means, this list is not exhaustive. But possibly a teaser of things to come.

See you guys around!

M