The ever-updating Twitter board at AJ Bombers

So why would I bother to write about a bar/restaurant? Especially since I despised this neighborhood when growing up here.

AJ Bombers is the mecca of social media. They get it. The owner says that their popularity was built almost entirely on Twitter and Facebook, a fact that the employees love to tout. Plus, they’re unusually friendly and upbeat, which is rare in this neighborhood considering how friendly Wisconsinites are reported to be.

If the World War II bomber theme doesn’t hit you right away, it might be the elaborate peanut dispensing flying bombs with targets along the wall. Or it could be the stenciled phrases on the walls and doors. Or the beer bottles hanging from parachutes above the submarine periscope-like silos of peanuts (spelled p-nuts on the sign.)

The 40″ flat screen displaying the latest tweets and retweets from the owner (@AJBombers) is pretty neat too. But before I even got my award winning (Travel Channel) cheeseburger, the Milwaukee Burger, I found out that I was already second degree friends with half the staff. By the time my drink arrived, I had 3 new followers, all of whom happened to be standing in front of me.

The P-Nut delivery system at AJ Bombers via WWII era bombs

Just take a look at the activity and prowess that AJ Bombers has on social and you can quickly dismiss the more uptight naysayers of social media, if there are any left.

Steve, an employee at AJ Bombers says that they are different because they interact with locals in a personal way before, during and after they come in for burgers and beers. It is well exhibited too, I knew of the place well before moving back to Milwaukee via the Tweetup notifications all being held at the bar/restaurant. It’s not just mantra, it is the way these people operate. Even the bartender is a PR graduate and stated openly she was quite happy working at such a PR savvy place.

Even the wifi network SSID is “DontForgetToCheckInOnFoursquare”. Brilliant.

Most restaurants just blast out specials like ASCII diarrhea but in the parallel universe of social, it seems that being more human, not less, builds business relationships. Not anything new to people on Twitter at all, but it is still rare in the restaurant business.

Congrats, AJ Bombers, you get it.  And yes, the Milwaukee burger is worthy of the hype.

For those of you that do not follow such nerd-dom, it is worth restating that  in mid September Google changed the way the Adwords Keyword Tool compiled data. Simply put, the end result of your PPC campaigns did not change, but the estimate of the data from the Keyword Tool will now be significantly reduced. This is because the search volume estimate is  now coming from google.com results only, not the included partners like ask.com and aol.com.

This is significant because certain people use certain search engines. I have noticed for  years that Yahoo is used by older generations and depending on your keywords, and ad copy, your click through rate will show that.

It is always important to get a second opinion with other tools like wordtracker and using your own analytics. At the least, update your projections based on the new data.

Overzealous lawsuits are common in the US, especially by those with cash and no brains, but there is an interesting effect with lawsuits other than your secret mansion being exposed: Links. I know it sounds ridiculous, but they tend to be juicy back links. Everyone loves to point out ridiculous lawsuits like chubby girls suing McDonald’s for their food choices and robbers suing their victims for injuries, and naturally they get passed around quickly.

That is why I was not too surprised to see SEO Book list Suing Google as their #62 link building suggestion. Yes, it works, but they rightly put “Proceed with Caution” nearby.

It seems that useful, relevant content would be the way to go. I say grow up, stop externalizing your link building efforts to the courts and learn to take responsibility for your decisions. If you do get those links, I hope you spent just as much money on content, if not more.

For those of you out there that are considering such plans in social media, networking or whichever term you use, the statistics are quite staggering.

Check it out here:

http://ow.ly/175Qk

So what was their point? They were just gate keepers, and sites like Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia along with direct to consumer campaigns by hotels and airlines opened the gate to the masses. I know what you’re thinking though: Orbitz and such are the travel agents now. Yes, they are if you consider bundling hotels and flights together, but now Kayak just takes your straight to the airline site if it is cheaper. In either case, we are more informed and pay less for the access to information. If you ask me, travel agents were the epitome of segregated information elitism. They could have done things to prevent themselves from being here now, but their inability to adapt to new media killed them.

And now advertising agencies are doing the same thing. Ad Agencies don’t own the product or brand, they don’t own the connection to the media and they don’t have any tools us regular folk have either.

Social Media is the thorn in ad agencies sides. They call it snake oil for two reasons:

1. The mindset of a traditional marketer is the exact opposite of what is needed on Twitter or Facebook. You can’t repeat the same message without being interactive and expect people to read it, or care, or not get frustrated. Why hire people that usually blare one way messages to your customers to run the interactive communication?
2. The magic behind the campaign is transparent. There is no glamour in being a top social media worker. It’s like having the title Best Conversationalist With An Agenda. You are going to have to love your product, your customers and your product category. Agencies can’t love them all at the same time.

So run your own social media campaigns. Set up multiple Twitter accounts, get your fan pages and groups up and running on your own. Encourage your employees to use those sites, with some scrutiny, to build more content than the next guy. Sooner or later, you’ll start to see the swell of a community that is a perfect marketing opportunity and by then you’ll know more about them than any agency could figure out.

The best thing about social media, is the instruction manual is in the medium itself. You know your products, customers and their quirks, why trust it to some agency that doesn’t know what you know?

Other agency services are up for grabs too.

Need a logo or graphics you can’t do yourself? Why get 3 to choose from in a agency and pay thousands when you can pay some $200 and get 221 to choose from at contest based hatchwise.com. The logo at the top of this page was produced there and I’ve used it for 3 other company logos. It’s great, cheap and gives me WAY more options. I can collaborate with the designers, message them directly and get really specific on what I would like and designers are more than happy to help out if that means they win the prize.

Need an ad produced? Crowd source. The best performing ads at the Super Bowl this year were ideas from customers, or produced by customers and in some cases written, produced and starred customers. With iMovie, Adobe Premiere and other easy software to use, a little bit of research and some time you can pretty much do anything an agency can, for less, without the attitude.

Why do you think agencies in special niche agencies pop up like new media and interactive marketing? It’s because most other agencies drop the ball in these areas. If you really don’t think you have the skill, then hire a specialized agency in that field.

Finally, we are seeing a tilt towards the small business owner. And that’s the way it should be.

Why? Because those big agencies have not adapted their vision, or their staff, attitude or their mission. And they better if they don’t want to become the next travel agency.

• Home Building & Remodelling Expo (Milwaukee, USA) – I can’t remember one single memorable item from this show that I have been to at least 5 times, except one. A patio deck manufacturer that had a fully built deck as a booth with all his staff wearing cooking aprons. I do not remember the package or the product, but I do remember that aged white bearded man, standing on his deck holding a pair of tongs and handing out hot dogs.
• HH Backer Pet Industry Christmas Show (Chicago, USA) – I was with a retail team that was in the mood for new products. We walked through hundreds of booths and met vendors from all over the world. I still remember one logo better than any other, and it was on a wheeled box: UrineOff. We didn’t carry it, but I remember it better than any other product.
• Defcon (Las Vegas, USA) This congregation of hackers, crackers, script kiddies and wannabes is something you have to see. There are contests to out the FBI agent and lock picking contests. My most vivid memory? Aside from the roaring laughter of news of a US defence contractors plans to make weapon deployment systems web browser based, it was the first time I saw the video to Benny Bennassi’s Satisfaction.

What do these strange cross section of memories, industries and experiences have in common?

All of them made no sense from a traditional marketing perspective, but they worked. I am not saying they were necessarily intentional, but that’s not the issue. The fact is that one man on a deck 16 years ago handing out grilled meat still reminds me of outdoor living and cooking space. One cardboard box (probably the one thing a pet wouldn’t soil) rolling past me burnt the purple and yellow logo of a urine remover in my brain for over 2 years. And the Benassi video, well that caused me to not only realise how starved some of the convention participants were, but led me into a whole new genre of Euro Electro House, later of which I which I bought albums of.

The reason this isn’t easily replicated is because of the psychology at the time. Marketers often search out the best scenarios in which to operate in for the best result. But marketing is not just a simple wave of the flag, or attention grabber, it’s a fully orchestrated symphony of signals that is supposed to achieve the same end. The most successful vendor in a convention or trade show floor is the one who does not understand sales, but who understands the microcosm that trade show floors are. UrineOff provided the most convenient and biggest carrier for all you free stuff (swag). A hacker in Las Vegas, was able to guess my subconscious thought that the male to female ratio was over 4:1. A deck and patio manufacturer may have had enough floor experience to know that interior decorators are a dime a dozen, and that his product represented everything great about the home building experience for men. For any other marketing situation, these would have been out of place, weird and even inappropriate but they nailed it, at least with me.

Marketers, just like business school students, are always trying to one up each other, and tend to be more concerned with image than anything. Marketing also uses people’s natural politeness to their advantage. But when people are bombarded and on the border of ad nauseum (pun intended), there is a vacuum that can be filled with a little generosity by marketers. Trade shows are exhausting, competitive and ironically solitary, so why not be the epitome of helpfulness while also achieving your objectives?