No, I don't mean MTV's award-winning series on musicians performing with acoustic (i.e. unplugged) instruments. I mean unplugging and taking a break from our cell phones, our texting, our computers, our iPads, our tweets, and of course our Facebook. And yes, blogging. (Which - good news - will make you feel, well, groovy, according to my friends Paul and Art!).

As a society, we have without awareness slipped into a new social norm; one with expectations of always being “on," instantly accessible, having your whereabouts and activities known to all, and finding out anything and everything immediately. Underneath it all is our dubious societal addiction to instant gratification.

Most marketers feed the notion that instant gratification is a good thing. We promise faster and faster, which we imply is better and better. There is however longstanding research that proves otherwise. Here's Wikipedia's summary of the classic Stanford Marshmallow study:

To test the theory of a person’s ability to delay gratification, the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment (1972), conducted by Prof. Walter Mischel, at Stanford University, California, studied a group of four-year-old children, each of whom was given one marshmallow, but promised two on condition that he or she wait twenty minutes, before eating the first marshmallow. Some children were able to wait the twenty minutes, and some were unable to wait. Furthermore, the university researchers then studied the developmental progress of each participant child into adolescence, and reported that children able to delay gratification (wait) were psychologically better adjusted, more dependable persons, and, as high school students, scored significantly greater grades in the collegiate Scholastic Aptitude Test.

Delaying gratification as a four year old is linked with happiness and better grades ten years later... amazing!

Can you pitch delayed gratification or slowing down as a good thing that results from your product or service? If so, think "benefits segmentation." Determine what segment of your market would value or perceive benefit from unplugging. It may be way more folks than you think!

P.S. Check out the new nonprofit Sabbath Manifesto and their 10 Principles. They have an app (no irony here) too to support people unplugging. And it is purely a happy coincidence that the first National Day of Unplugging started on my birthday!

On October 1st, I wrote a blog entry called The "Socially-Enabled" Search War: Facebook vs. Google and the "Like" Button. What I talked about - "social search" - is heating up! Today, Facebook and Microsoft's search engine Bing announced that they're teaming up to provide a personalized search experience using Facebook Instant Personalization. That means when you search for say a seafood restaurant in San Diego, you'll get the usual Bing results, plus results with a Facebook icon to indicate restaurants your Facebook friends like. More details on Mashable.

It's all based on Facebook profiles and "Like" data. (Hey, maybe LinkedIn should do a similar arrangement but from a business perspective, like when searching for a new project manager, recommendations from people in your network will show up). Next are plans to show search results from "experts" along with friends and the usual results. I see a social, connection-based internet (most likely some form of Facebook) becoming the default interface for the whole internet. Lots of major assumptions about friends, affinity and social judgement underneath this growing trend. What do you think about all this? And of course, what do YOUR friends think?!

There was a great story on PBS's Marketplace today about how over 2 million websites have added Facebook's Thumbs Up "Like" button to their pages in the last six months. Some call it the "one button survey." When you click the "Like" icon, say for a story on New York Time's website, or a new drink on Pepsi's website, you're providing the company access to your data and your friends' data.

The whole marketing dynamic is reversed. Essentially, we're shouting to companies "I like you. Pay attention to me! And bonus... here's a bunch of people like me you should also pay attention to. And double bonus, I'll tell my friends that I like you so that they can like you too. "

The next step is making it easy for your friends to see all the things you like. Which is the challenge for Google. Google search is based on the idea that people like seeing the most popular results. But as more and more of the web becomes "socially-enabled," people may prefer to see what their friends recommend, more than what search results are most popular. Looking for a good local restaurant? Will you go with what your friends like, what Yelp tell you, or what Google says?  What about searching for a doctor? 

I predict all forms of "recommendations" will have their place, depending on the product category. But friends' endorsement will have the edge- at least for things you think your friends know about!

P.S. Check out the bottom of this blog entry just below here...

I was the "branding guy" on a Social Media panel in San Diego yesterday. Most of the attendees were from biotech, pharma, and life sciences. I recommended these rules:

1. Just because you can, does not mean you should. Deploying social media has an upside and a downside for your brand. Do not make the mistake of automatically doing social media just because it is available and popular. It is a strategic choice that needs to be integrated into your overall business planning.

2. Assess the value of social media like you would any other marketing and communication tools. Separate out the "cool and trendy" factor and evaluate how each tool individually and collectively will impact your brand. Think of the variables that constitute blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, and other tools; things like speed, interactivity, reach, user control, etc. Each tool has its trade-offs.

3. If you do it, do it right. Maintaining an effective brand presence in social media requires a sustained commitment. You need to keep providing updated content of value, manage and moderate it, and track results. Otherwise, it will backfire as a broken promise.

4. In one word, social media is about engagement. Customer engagement with your brand leads to customer intimacy with your brand which leads to increased revenues (check out this Gallup study). Customer intimacy reflects a fundamental set of values and priorities that directly shapes how you do business and what constitutes success. Are you as committed as you want your customers to be?

We'll see you out there!

I like social media. I often advise clients to strategically employ social media. I use some personally. But there is a major downside. Like Doonesbury illustrates, it takes a lot of work to curate our "personal brand" on social media. (click here for a better view of the comic strip):

Social media is great to connect us with people and things we care about. But the "opportunities" to stay connected through social media can cost us staying connected with the people around us. We stray away from old fashioned "analog" social media, like talking or hugging or just being present with another person. As good as Facebook is, and Twitter is, and gosh darn Andy of Mayberry, even as good as this blog is, real life relationships come first. So there you have it. Gotta go... need to check status updates from my Facebook friends (just kidding!).

The greatest human lessons are found in the power of presence, says Rabbi David Wolpe of Temple Sinai in LA.

In this case, he's referring to being humanly "present" with other people vs. being technologically present. I think the idea of real presence applies to effective marketing too. How does Facebook and Twitter and even blogging (like this!) affect our presence? In my opinion, these pervasive technologies are great for (re)connecting and sharing information. Which is important for effective marketing. But in no way do they replace being personally present with someone. Because there's something magical about real presence with another person that I believe technology will never supplant. Good marketers know that deep inside we will all want human connection.