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!

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!

OK, Twitter-head, can I ask you a question? Only if it has less than 140 characters. This action-packed exchange was in a recent Non Sequitur comic strip. 

Is tweeting good or bad for communicating what matters? I say both. And here's why (in less than 140 characters!). The upside is the good judgment needed to be effective and concise. The downside is no judgment and tweeting about meaningless things.

Check out this very funny "SuperNews!" animated comedy sketch that was on Current TV:

And bonus... here are Soren Gordhamer's four insightful Taoist tips for better and balanced tweeting.

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.