Impulse Control and Social Media

22 Nov
Control Those Impulses!

Control Those Impulses!

You’ve been there before- you are walking along, going about your business, when an amusing thought crosses your mind, and you think, “That would make a great status update”.  Well, congratulations- Facebook has invaded your mind.

Now, when the clever thought occurs to you, do you post it instantly via your iPhone? Do you wait until you get home and then share your undeniable wit with everyone then? Or do you let the clever thought fall by the wayside, figuring that every passing thought is not worthy of spilling to the world?  I admit that I usually tend towards the latter course of action, but it takes a certain degree of willpower.  Without a certain degree of impulse control, it can be too easy to let the use of social media become an extension of the ego.

This idea that people feel compelled to express every opinion, joke and observation is not just limited to tweeting our physical locations and updating our status constantly.  I recently read the blog of the San Francisco Chronicle’s Mick LaSalle- a film critic who I like to read more for his skill with the written word than for this reviews of movies- and he wondered whether the people who leave mean comments all over the web are disproportionately mean individuals, or are normally decent folk who let their id run wild.  Anonymity, after all, means never having to own up to your rudeness (ironically, the people who left comments on this blog post were very well-behaved).

This brings us back to the idea of why people leave traces of themselves all over the internet.  It’s a medium for self-expression, for connecting to others, and in a way unlike we connect in real life.  There IS indeed more anonymity, more immediacy to it all.  And yet.  Just as we write ourselves on the web, we read others on the web. And just as we can grow tired of the rantings and ramblings of our friends and family- even those we admire; have you ever tried following ?uestlove of The Roots or marketing guru Guy Kawasaki? forget it!- others, naturally, can grow tired of us.  If we choose to let our brain leak out onto our feeds at all times.

A bit of impulse control is in order.  I don’t tweet from my phone and rarely use Facebook from my phone, precisely to avoid the impulse to share those random brain droppings with the world.  I have many amusing thoughts (or at least, they’re amusing to me).  But it is rather nice to keep most of them to myself.  I see Facebook and Twitter more as fun tools for connecting, personally and professionally, than as a way of projecting myself to everyone. Ick. I still cherish some sense of privacy (you’ll notice this blog is NOT under my real name).  Is it possible to impose some level of control on our more social, more connected online selves?  Let’s hope so.

“What do you Identify with more, the Leban or the… exican?”

15 Nov
Salma, the other Lebanexican

Salma, the other Lebanexican

Yes, the above question was actually posed to me just a couple of day ago, by my boyfriend, who is aware that I am half Lebanese and half Mexican.  It’s a natural question to ask, and hey, if I met, say, Salma Hayek, I might ask her the same thing (mil gracias, Salmita, for being one of the other Lebanese Mexicans in existence.  You help people wrap their minds around my ethnic background)!

But in all seriousness, the question of how much a mixed person identifies with one side or other is not just a matter of public fascination, it’s the essence of being mixed.  A bit of background: one of my proudest accomplishments is having been one of the founders of M.E.S.H. (Mixed Ethnicities Student Headquarters) at my alma mater, UC Santa Cruz.  So I have been identifying as a mixed person for some time, and I am familiar with the issues that define us mixed folks. In the past (in the pre-M.E.S.H. days),  I admit that I often felt either not Lebanese enough or not Mexican enough.  And through meetings that M.E.S.H. would organize each trimester, which usually consisted of simple gatherings of curious students, we would discuss our cultural identity and our families.

So what did I tell the boyfriend when he asked me the question that gives this post its title? It’s the Exican, stupid.  No, really, although my last name and face are decidedly more Arabic than Mexican (and what does Mexican look like? That’s a subject for a future post!), having grown up with my Mexican grandmother and great-grandmother living at home with the family (my great-grandmother passed away at age 100 when I was 18), speaking Spanish in my home as a child, and being in closer proximity to my Mom’s family than my Dad’s (his family is spread along the East Coast; my Mom’s is all in California), all lead to my feeling just a little more Mexican.  More importantly, I think it is significant that while my Mom is from Mexico, and is therefore closer to her culture, my father’s family is much further removed from the Lebanese/Syrian culture, since our ancestors came to the U.S. in the 1880’s.  All of this leads to my identifying closer to my Mexican culture than my Lebanese side.

Of course, the whole story could go much longer, as cultural identity is a topic rife with material to be explored.  Since being mixed informs how I see the world, and I intend for this blog to be a source for exploring trends in politics, Web 2.0, and marketing (especially the kind that targets Hispanics), I may revisit this topic more in depth or from a different angle in the future.  For now, suffice it to say, I’m a little less Leb and a little more exican.

Why Gap Should Have Stayed With the New Logo

20 Oct
Old Gap Logo, Meet New Gap Logo

Old Gap Logo, Meet New Gap Logo

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That was the prevailing wisdom when Gap recently suffered backlash from its unveiling of a new logo (to the right in the image at left).  The ensuing Gap flap left people wondering not only why Gap would abandon its old logo, but also why it would roll out the new one in such a hasty manner- and then backtrack, calling the whole debacle a failed experiment in crowdsourcing. Oh, if I were Gap’s Director of Social Media Marketing.

For one thing, I would have had a better idea of why the new logo was replacing the old one. Was it as part of a broader rebranding strategy? Targeting a newer demo -people who like sparse, Nordic design? Surely the new logo was part of an overhaul of old aspects of Gap brand marketing. A new ad campaign would be announced, new in-store materials, perhaps new spokespeople? And at a time of year that was natural for big pushes from retailers (back to school or Christmas, when Gap’s campaigns excite)?

Nein. Nyet.  No. Unless I missed something, Gap simply introduced the new logo, waited to hear feedback from people who are online all day (not that there’s anything wrong with spending all day online- some of us do it for our jobs!), and thought things would work out well? Naturally, people didn’t like it.  Cause it was new and people don’t like change.  But, rather than defend its bold new logo as the first step in a bold new direction for the company, Gap retreated. Big time. So long, new logo, hello old logo.

This indicates to me that Gap didn’t have a strategy in mind. It was reactive rather than proactive. On defense rather than offense.  And claiming that the whole effort was an experiment in crowdsourcing? Lame.  I won’t venture to guess what is going on in the marketing department at Gap, but I will say that the logo didn’t get a fair shake.  If you’re going to begin a radical redesign, stand by it.  In my opinion, the new logo is light years better than the old one.  The old logo has a font out of the 1600’s, whereas the new one has a refreshing white background, allowing the light to dark blue swatch to stand out.  And the slimmer font in that very black black is just what the Gap needs: a shot of boldness.

Next time, know ahead of time why and how you are executing your brand redesign, and by all means, stick with it.  Your reputation is on the line. ESPECIALLY online.

There is no More Privacy. Period.

13 Oct
Tyler Clementi

Tyler Clementi

For me, the sweet irony of the movie “The Social Network” is that, despite Mark Zuckerberg’s continually shrugging off the concerns of privacy advocates who say Facebook doesn’t do enough to shield user’s privacy, Zuck himself has had his character (or some version of it) laid bare for the world to see in this movie.  Try as you might, but as one of my favorite songwriters, Jorge Drexler wrote, “Nada es secreto en los vericuetos de la informática” (Nothing is secret in the winding paths of the information superhighway).

To a certain degree, we’ve all become accustomed to this fact in 2010.  I often think of how different online use is now from back when I first began exploring these winding paths in the mid 90’s, when my friends and I in high school would enter AOL chat rooms and pretend to be models in New York City.  The internet was a place to subsume your real identity and surf anonymously.  Now, Google and Facebook know everything about what you’re looking for and what you’re clicking on- and it can all be traced back to YOU.

In this new internet age, we boldly assert our likes and dislikes online, through Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and blogs.  We choose what we broadcast to the world- but not necessarily what others broadcast about us.  Which leads me to the twin cases last week of Tyler Clementi and Karen Owen.

Tyler Clementi had, quite possibly, the world’s worst freshman roommate.  Maybe I’m a little too old for my generation, but I cannot comprehend how someone could record their roommate remotely, via webcam, without said roommate’s knowledge, and then broadcast it to other students.  I can’t sympathize with that impulse to humiliate, especially as someone who was humiliated.  So did Tyler kill himself two days later because of bad grades, family trouble, a broken heart?  Signs point to the young college freshman taking his own life because of the humiliation of having his private moment broadcast for all to see- without his permission.

Sometimes humiliation comes at the hand of a slut who gives herself a personal high five for every varsity athlete that she has sex with.  There are a myriad of questions raised in the mock thesis written by hoebag extraordinaire Karen Owen– lack of sexual discretion, modern hookup morés, how a girl like her could have gotten the SAT scores high enough to be admitted to Duke University.  Out of prurient curiosity (and a dull Thursday nigh), I perused Karen’s thesis.  It felt like rubbernecking at a car accident, and I had to stop.  Once again, chalk it up to generational differences.  I don’t read the nastier gossip sites, because I want to gaze and admire, not snicker and sneer.  I can’t delight in laughing at other’s shortcomings (I can’t stomach D-listed). So I can’t call it feminism when a girl shares every last detail of her every sexual experience in college for her friends to see.  Has she never heard of the forward button?

So I feel for the young men in these stories, who had their intimate sexual experiences broadcast for the world to sneer at.  Nothing really is secret anymore in the winding paths of the information superhighway.  At least not when we share about others what (we would hope) they would never share about themselves.  And then we laugh at them.

Thoughts on the California Elections, or, She Ain’t Heavy, She’s my Maid

6 Oct
The Latina in this Election- Meg Whitman's Former Maid

The Latina in this Election- Meg Whitman's Former Maid

Is it just me, or is it crazy that in a state where some 1/3 of the population is Latino, the only way a Latino is remotely involved in the race for governor is when a candidate’s former housekeeper comes forward with allegations of mistreatment?

I know, this doesn’t have the upbeat tone of my previous post, “Still Waiting for that Latino Revolution”.  But it irks me that of the four candidates for governor and senate- Meg Whitman, Jerry Brown, Barbara Boxer and Carly Fiorina- are hopelessly white and out of touch in California, the most diverse state in the Union. California is home to every culture, every religion, every language in the world (well, I don’t know about that last part, but you can get a court interpreter in Armenian if you need one.  Not sure they offer that in Tennessee). And yet we get these milquetoaost, run of the mill candidates, bland in every way.  And I mean the incumbents, too (sorry, Barb).

Never mind the fact that the two men running California’s two great cities, and doing great things in both of them, Gavin Newsom and Antonio Villaraigosa, opted out of the Democratic primary, leaving us with Linda Ronstadt’s former boyfriend.  Why did Antonio not run? I’m sure pixels and pixels have been spilled over the reasons why, but suffice it to say, L.A.’s handsome, Telemundo-loving lothario-mayor could have been California’s great chance for a Latino in the Governor’s mansion in Sacramento. But it was not to be.

Granted, I am not a believer in identity politics-  I don’t vote for candidates solely based on race or gender. Nevertheless, I believe that there should be some sort of representation of the electorate by its leaders.  It’s no coincidence that Hawai’i, a state that has an Asian-American majority, is represented by two Japanese-American senators.   And yet California, Mexicalifornia, state of brown, black, yellow and pink, has a candidate for governor whose knowledge of Latinos and their concerns comes from her acquaintance with her housekeeper.  Will this be the case in the next gubernatorial election- will Latinos remain on the sidelines or will we take center stage? I certainly hope it is the latter.

Univisión: Una Relación Amor/Odio

28 Sep
Don Francisco Presenta

Don Francisco Presenta

Univisión- si trabajas en el marketing hispano, no lo puedes evitar, y si crecías en una familia hispana, a lo mejor conoces los programas y los personajes del canal televisivo.  Para mí, y creo que es igual para muchos hispanos jóvenes, les choca la programación de Univisión.  Y a la vez, les encanta.

Admito que aún esta noche, hace unas horas, no vi nada en la tele que me interesaba.  Y cuando eso pasa, pues, qué hago? Muchas veces, voy a Univisión.  Ahí encuentro telenovelas sobre galanes que siempre terminan enamorándose de una mujer hermosa, de orígenes humildes, y siempre tiene que luchar Contra Viento y Marea para estar al lado de su enamorado; programas de entretenimiento que dan a la gente sin talento una oportunidad de cantar frente a un Chacal enmascarado; partidos de fútbol con el mejor comentarista, Andrés Cantor; y mucho, mucho más.

Da vergüenza admitir que conozco toda clase de programa ofrecida en Univisión, pero sé que no soy la única. Me considero una persona culta, bien educada y con gustos refinados.  Conozco la poesía de Gabriela Mistral, las películas francesas de Francois Truffaut, y más.  Pero todos tenemos nuestros gustos que admitimos al mundo y los que ocultamos.  Y Univisión es un secreto que escondo de los demás.

Como feminista, me ofende que las mujeres en Univisión deben ser ex Miss Universos para ser presentadoras de televisión, y que en algunos programas de entretenimiento, pues…olvídalo.  El sentido de humor muchas veces es misógino.  Los valores promovidos en las telenovelas- la forma de avanzarse en la sociedad es casarse con un hombre rico- vienen de otro siglo.  Para resumir, mirar Univisión es como escapar de un mundo moderno y vivir en el mundo (y los valores) de nuestros abuelos.

Y sin embargo…es entretenedor. Esas telenovelas pueden hacer que una hora pase en unos segundos.  Y Sábado Gigante, a pesar de todo, me recuerda mi querida bisabuela.  Tengo muchos lindos recuerdos de pasar los sábados con ella mientras se moría de la risa al mirar las tonterías de Don Francisco- y muchas veces junto con mi papá, que no habla ni una palabra del español! Durante el día laboral, hablo un español de empresas.  Pero si no fuera por eso, simplemente no tendría la oportunidad de escuchar mi querido español.  Creo que para muchos de nosotros, ver Univisión nos da la oportunidad de escuchar el español, no importa si lo hablamos con soltura o si sólo entendemos unas palabras.  Es la lengua de nuestra infancia.

Latinos Networking : Thoughts on Latino2

20 Sep
Latino2

Latino2

Though I am feeling tired after 5 hours on Highway 5 from L.A. back to the Bay Area, I write this from my home in San Francisco with a sense of pride and contentment that I am working, though in a small way, to improve the landscape for Latinos in social media.  I feel like I ended up in this field almost by accident, but I’m so glad I’m here, participating in the conversation.

Held at the L.A. Convention Center, Latino2 brought together the efforts of blogueras, like Ana Flores of  SpanglishBaby, ad agency executives representing firms such as Sensis, and culminating in awards presented to top contributors to the California Latinosphere (I helped assemble the awards, woohoo!).  Despite valuable presentations by the different panelists, I always feel at professional conferences that the best part of attending is meeting interesting people who are passionate about the same things I am. And in this sense, Latino2 did not disappoint.

What can I say? Latinos who are passionate about technology, about connecting, about pride in their cultural heritage and in helping brands and marketers reach us in the best way possible- this is what I found at Latino2. Intelligent, passionate creative individuals who are doing their part to advance the conversation around Latinos, marketing, and social media.  I met some great people- young, old, male, female, Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, and more. And all Latino.

Still Waiting for That Latino Revolution…

14 Sep
San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro

San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro

Last week, I just missed the Thursday night chat on Twitter for Latinos in Social Media, and so was grateful to be able to peruse the transcript that was later posted by Elianne Ramos, one of the forces behind LatiSM.  I admit to perusing the chat and not reading it all (4 hours or so worth), but I noticed a trend.  When will we Latinos become a force in politics? When will our voices be heard? When will we stand up and be heard?  When, when, when.

I don’t know if this strain of self-pity/self-questioning is unique to Latinos, but I have always noticed it- and I admit, I’ve participated. A lot.  We tend to look at the African American community and wonder why we don’t have an Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson (to which I say, THANK GOD).  We tend to look at the Asian American community and wonder why we don’t have similar levels of success (i.e. college graduation rates, test scores). The mainstream media often speaks breathlessly about the impact Latinos will have on elections, entertainment, sports, and more.  And yet we still feel invisible.  Por qué?

Perhaps it’s because we feel that our power in numbers is not reflected in mainstream media news stories (an abysmally low number of stories are about us).  Perhaps it’s because we watch mainstream American sports and don’t see ourselves reflected in the teams (I mean American Latinos, not foreign-born Latinos.  But we still love you, Big Papi). And my theory as to why we seem invisible politically? Time zones.  By the time Pennsylvania and Ohio had helped put Obama into the win column in the 2008 presidential elections, the heavy get out the Latino vote campaigns in Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico were an afterthought.

My personal pet peeve regarding the national dialogue about Latinos? This constant idea that we’ve just arrived.  And hey, many of us have.  But many of us, perhaps even most of us, have roots in the United States that go far back. My maternal grandmother was born to a Mexican family in Garden City, Kansas.  My Mexican-born mother grew up in East L.A. listening to Elvis (sorry to reveal your age there, Mom). Her friends all grew up in the barrio and all have deep roots in this country.  So we have been a part of the fabric of this country for a long time. When will our impact be felt?

Who knows.  I sympathize with those who wonder when it will be our time.  I still see portrayals of Latinos in the media that make me cringe (most provided by Carlos Mencía).  I wonder when our political impact will be felt.  Yet I feel hopeful.  Poco poquito, we’re making our presence known.  We’ve got Sofia Vergara on Modern Family. Zoe Saldana in the highest-grossing movie of all time. Robert Rodriguez making a movie starring the most feo actor in Hollywood.  And in the political arena, mayor of San Antonio Julian Castro is impressive.  No se preocupen.  Organize and act.  Our day is coming.

Let’s Bury the Term Anchor Babies Now and Forever

7 Sep
Anchors Away

Anchors Away

There are a lot of angry white people in America these days, and they are angry about many many, things, such as that insidious problem known as the anchor baby.

Ah, the anchor baby, a two-word term that makes my blood boil. Which came first- the movement to strip babies born to non-citizens of their citizenship, or the term which reduces the mothers of said children to bulky ships, using their children to “anchor” their lives of living high on the hog in America?  One ugly idea, it seems, supports and breathes life into the other.

I will leave for the sociologists the question of why, at this historical moment, during the presidential term of our first President of color, there has been a rise in elderly white angst.  Though I’m no expert, I’ll wager that most of the individuals rallying around this cause (how we determine who is worthy of earned citizenship and who is not has yet to be addressed by these yahoos) feel that a) America is becoming latinized, and b) that is a very, very, very scary thing.

So what’s to be scared of?  In addition to sociology, I am also not an expert at economics.  But I know that this country has a dire need for fresh workers during this recessionary time.  And during these lean times, it is easy to scapegoat the people who look and sound different from us for our woes.  Yes, there is an economic argument for not clamping down on immigration, or the children of people in this country with no papers.  But there is a moral argument, too.  Referring to a mother giving birth to a child as someone dropping anchor is crass and wrong.  It shows a profound misunderstanding of why immigrants, be they legal or illegal, come to this nation.

People go through harrowing conditions, traversing nations, dangerous highways and scorching deserts, leaving homes and families and starting from zero in a foreign land, for the chance to drop a kid or two in the land of the free and the home of the brave, right? Right.  In reality, people live their lives.  They come here with children, or they come single.  Husbands and wives welcome additions to their families, and formerly single people meet in a new land, fall in love and have children.  As simple as that.

As my Dad, a second generation Lebanese-American, once elegantly put it, “Everyone talks about Mexicans coming to this country and multiplying as if it was a bad thing”.  Now, the man married a Mexicana.  But he has a very good point.  Dad, my sentiments exactly.

472 Ways to Go Viral, or, What makes you a Social Media Expert, anyway?

1 Sep
Social Media Marketing Expert

Social Media Marketing Expert

I’ll be the first to admit it- though I work in social media, I am far from an expert.  Before December of 2009, I had no idea how to use Twitter, and thought it was for narcissistic loners.  I’ve come to embrace Twitter as a business tool, and it seems as though every day in the Twitter feed there is a steady stream of links to blog posts with names like “How to Maximize your Facebook Page as a Tool for Converting”, “My Top 10 Ways to Increase the Impact of Your Social Media Strategy”, and on and on.  Which makes me wonder, what is with the proliferation of social media experts? And what, exactly, makes one an expert?

The very nature of social media is democratic.  My 14 year-old second cousin is on Facebook…as is my 52 year-old first cousin.  Everyone can figure out the basics, but what many of us seek guidance for is how to BEST use social media.  How to find influencers and become influencers…how to generate business leads…seek the latest industry news…and read what Dwight from The Office is posting on Twitter (for reals, he is funny.  Check out Rainn Wilson!).

I recently attended a professional conference on search engine optimization and social media strategy, and the conference program was filled with the smiling faces of a litany of…experts.  I appreciate technical advice, but when a social media expert instructs me to “focus on what you know” or “use these tools to connect with others”, I can’t help but think…isn’t this obvious?  And who is listening to any (or all) of these social media gurus? I suppose there are people out there who really need the reminder that social media is about being…social.  And listening.  But who can tell amidst the chatter of all of these experts?

Now, it’s my turn to listen to you.  Am I being overly cranky here? Is there a way to tell who is a truly valuable social media expert amidst the many out there in our newsfeeds? Is this generic advice about the importance of communication not that obvious to others? How do YOU think social media should be used?

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