there are some cool bad guy logos on the link above

The study shows how much social media has infiltrated the world of business. Take the case of Inc. Magazine’s 500 fastest growing companies (versus Fortune’s 500 list). Social Networking (e.g. Twitter) seems to be very popular among the Inc. 500 crowd, with 75% of the respondents saying they were “very familiar with it” in 2009 as opposed to 57% in 2008.

Jeff Bullas’ blog on the topic compares how the Inc. 500 crowd fares in terms of embracing social media compared to the Fortune 500 crowd:

• In 2007, the study found that only 8% of the Fortune 500 companies were blogging compared to Inc. 500’s 19%;

• In 2008, the difference was even greater, with 16% of the Fortune 500 companies blogging compared to 39% of Inc. 500;

• In 2009, 45% of the Inc. 500 companies were blogging.

For companies who want substantial growth without incurring too much infrastructure or overhead costs, it makes perfect sense to embrace social media. Microblogging through Twitter, and getting the news out through Facebook or via LinkedIn is so very vogue and real time. In this age of instant gratification, people want information now and they don’t want to pay for it.

The Caveat

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of social media and the digital “universal think tank” mentality. There’s no better way to share information and exchange ideas short of hosting a conference call or do video conferencing (without the costs). But not all the information that is shared can be reliable.

In other words, you cannot believe everything you read on Twitter and Facebook because they are not fact checked. They are opinions and should merely be treated as such. If you want facts, where do you typically turn to? Traditional media. I’m not saying The New York Times and Forbes are flawless – in fact, I know they’re not, and of course they have political bent. But as far as factual accuracy batting averages go, they are further ahead than social media (and blogs too for that matter).

Of course, in the not too distant future, things may change, and fact checking and verification may well become vogue for Twitter fanatics. But for now, a credible placement can be as valuable (if not more so) than a tweet or an update.

This is why companies who are growing need both: traditional and social media. After all, the best way to show your competition (and the public) that you can be both credible and get written about all over the place is to show them results from both forms of approach.

sadly the new york city map is one of the uglier maps…

A stroke of genius on some ad agency’s part? Not entirely. Props also go to the consumer co-creation efforts because this ad is an example of how “crowdsourcing” led to something so masterful and memorable. The idea of a fragrance that changes through its top , middle and base notes is pretty straightforward and old school to fragrance developers; however, customers thought it was a great metaphor for guys who need to constantly reinvent themselves to get a girl.

This is a great example of a campaign where tapping into the mindset of the purchaser yielded a cool result. While ideally the number of consumers who are tapped for a “co-created” project needs to be large (in this case it was a mere 25 people), the idea of co-creation in marketing and branding is rapidly gaining popularity (e.g. Clarins’ latest fragrance campaign on Womanity.com is an interactive site that welcomes people’s posts and video uploads).

The term “crowdsourcing,” of course, is not new. It was first coined in 2006 in a Wired magazine article, which described how the typical tasks of outsourcing to third parties were now becoming a collective consumer project.

As the world becomes more and more interactive, it’s not surprising that the “Wiki” concept has spread to branding. Since there are endless possibilities, it’s going to be interesting to see who will tap into this growing phenomenon, and what the consumer feedback will be like.