This is the third in a series about corporate Glue. The stuff comes in so many forms that you could use it to hold every company in the world together. But few people do. Let’s look at Glue out there in several companies in particular and industries in general – or even in American politics.
Since politics is actually a branding game these days with so many candidates running for president, it’s a hypercompetitive, constant campaignfest, and every one of those presidential wannabes is looking for buckets of Glue to stick them and their message to voters.
They try to fling sticky sound bites into microphones and across stages and at each other in debates. They launch Internet sites to talk and listen and blog and raise money. This is social networking your way to the Oval Office with a digital flourish. The very social media phenomenon that macaca’d Senator George Allen (R, VA) out of Congress is being viewed as the diametric opposite by these new candidates. They have MySpace pages and Facebook presence where supporters can blog and campaign and say good things about them until the ballots come home. If they can’t Glue their platform to the electorate, they’re parched peanuts.
If a candidate is serious, they have to be YouTubing and podcasting, monitoring and riding that 24-7 stream of constantly changing plasma known as the American psyche. Stump speeches are now Blackberried and iPoded. Ads are less polished, more real, and aim to make the candidate look like your best friend soon to be in high places.
Some companies have been doing this for a while, albeit not always with the desired results. GM has more blogs than Castro has cigars, yet it still hasn’t found the Glue that Toyota seems to squirt at will. And Hyundai is Gluing like there’s no tomorrow. Budweiser is sinking millions into BudTV.com, creating programming and hoping for some kind of social network love connection with its audience. As you read this, thousands more companies have tossed digital darts into the ether hoping something sticks. Regular people are creating websites that are better than any show on TV.
Apple and a few others have it down, but if you took the American companies that are not working on social media and networking plans and put them end-to-end, they would stretch to all the way to Pluto and back here to the offices of the very people who de-planetized the lonely spacerock last year.
If candidates understand it, corporate American needs to figure this out, because this election is the beta test for how to build the new total communication future. And it’s more than a company blog, as John Edwards, candidate for president, just found out when he had to fire a couple of his paid bloggers for angering some religious groups.
People listen to real bloggers, not adbloggers. They watch YouTube videos instead of popups because they know the gig. Even kids are smart enough to know when they’re being sold. This is old news. If you’re blogging your message, make room for their conversation too, because the one-way street of the past is now a tangle of constant conversations going back and forth like a cocktail party. And you can put your Glue in those conversations too. It fits nicely.
Sticky bloggers aren’t any easier to wrangle than a herd of cats. Blogs gained traction in the first place because bloggers were so cantankerously independent and said what they felt like saying. Social networking is not as clean as you may want , but just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. It works amazingly well. Ask George Allen.
Glue is powerful stuff. It’s not just a connection, it’s a message and a medium and a reality and a perception and a thing that can be measured if you have the right tools. Glue is invisible and totally visible, like wind. It can cool your day or blow your house down. It’s a plow and a sword and an AK-47 and an iPod. It’s also a smile and a toy and a big bonus check when your stock rips the roof off the exchange.
Nobody really understands exactly how this social media usage will play out in politics. But they’re going into the mix full-tilt, keyboards snapping, in hopes that they will align the candidate perfectly with the voters and Glue the whole thing in place. And they’re hoping those connections allow their applicant to fill the biggest job opening in the free world.
Social media is hot right now and some people understand it better than others. Technology is always like this. There are always a few of us who jumped on the fresh horse a long time ago.
During this election, will social networking efforts reach the tipping point Mr. Gladwell talked about and turn into a manageable medium? It is likely.
One thing is more likely, however – no matter what tool they used to spread it, whoever wins will be the one who has the Glue.
Glue is still the cash that stays in the wallet of human behavior, and only voters can spend that currency. Glue is the trust-ability and believability that causes connect-ability and therefore gives elect-ability. Glue has that ability. Without Glue, the candidates just have a bunch of electronic clutter feeding varying levels of lose-ability.
Teddy Roosevelt had Glue. FDR and Kennedy had Glue. Even though the pundits joked about Reagan being Teflon, he understood Glue better than the Gorilla Glue manufacturers. Clinton had Glue that was so sticky, it held him in office and in the hearts of Americans through some other sticky situations. LBJ needed Glue. Truman only got Glue after he was out of office. Nixon couldn’t find Glue at an Elmer’s factory and George W., who had an Oval office-full a few years ago, misplaced his tube.
If you want to be president of the country or president of the PTA, you need Glue.