Student Winners from the Nashville area are:

• Adam Baker, Nossi
• Adam Jeremy Agee, Watkins
• Ali Hilton, Art Institute
• Amanda Smith, O’More
• Amy Davidson, O’More
• Andy Gregg, Watkins
• Andy Young, Watkins
• Barbara Ferguson, Art Institute
• Christina Cooper, Art Institute
• Daniel McClain, MTSU
• Danny Summers, O’More
• Evan Britt, MTSU
• Gerald Seiberling, Nossi
• Stephen Jones, Watkins
• Holly Matthews, Watkins
• Jaana Huusko, O’More
• Jacob Rhoades, Nossi
• Jaron Jackson, Art Institute
• Jason Dodson, Nossi
• Jennifer McClarney, Art Institute
• Jessica Appel, Nossi
• Jimi Button, Nossi
• Joanna Arnold, O’More
• Josh Shearon, MTSU
• Kayce Singleton, O’More
• Kristy Buchanan, Nossi
• Ligia Teodosiu, Watkins
• Michael Bromley Jr., Nossi
• Michael Curran, Nossi
• Michael Korfhage, Watkins
• Natalie Martin, Nossi
• Parker Bowab
• Ryon Nishimori
• Scott Reeves
• Tracie Stansbury
• Valerie Hammond

 But what really facilitated the ability for this system of donations to work? In fact, it was the business relationships that the mobile carriers have with their customers. With that established relationship in place, there was a mechanism to bill, collect and distribute the contributions. Without it, it’s just a bunch of texts drifting into the digital ether. This system can continue to work, but now the opportunity is also leading to a new start-up to facilitate payments through Twitter, a newer version of TwitPay.

What does this mean for the rest of us? For starters, consumer relationships are more than social connections. They are about financial transactions. Your relationship with your customer can begin, grow and be nurtured by social media. But at the core will be a transaction where value is exchanged for value, and where there will have to be a way to quantify and exchange that value. Social media – and really marketing of all kinds – is what we use to get to the transaction. Successful businesses can start by understanding what relationship they have with their customers now. What value do you provide and how are those transactions facilitated? Then you can apply marketing, media, PR and social strategies to further leverage those relationships, to expand services, increase purchase frequency, get referrals and build more loyal customers.

 Now comes social media, built not on entertainment, but on the connections between people. The kind of connection marketers really want to make. So instead of inserting advertising in the middle of entertainment-based programming, companies are hoping to get their messages intermingled with personal communication.

 In this environment, the challenge for companies is how to build a sincere relationship with customers so their communication is appropriate and accepted. But for media professionals, and more importantly journalists, the challenge is to be ethical and honest with their audience. Marketers want the benefit of the relationship that media has with their audience, but it can’t come at the expense of that relationship.

 Since the core product of the Tennessean Media Group remains The Tennessean, we deal with this directly. We’ve long had a church/state relationship between what we write about as news and what appears as advertising. Every week, more than 900,000 adults in Middle Tennessee rely on us for news and information they can trust. And that’s a relationship we value.

 That said, we have a lot of content that helps readers select the products and services they choose to buy. That role can naturally be combined with the help we provide local advertisers. But it’s our job to be sure we make those connections in a way that respects the relationship we have with our readers.

 Luckily, there are more opportunities to bring readers and advertisers together in a way that makes sense for both all the time. The evolution of technology has transformed not only marketing communication but the consumer. They are smart enough to know whether or not companies are being sincere, and they have the tools to filter what they want to let in. Meanwhile, companies are getting smarter about building their businesses on the true value they deliver and communicating it in a relevant way. If not, there is no celebrity, programming or third-party relationship that can help.

First and foremost, Black Friday continues to be a key barometer of the consumer psyche. This year, reports are that more shoppers came out, but focused mostly on the “door buster” deals, they each spent less, leading sales to be flat or slightly up to 2008. As for advertisers, there’s hope that marketers will come out of their spending slump to invest in the holiday season. For example, at The Tennessean we know we had more inserts than any time in memory. 

Online shopping may be even more robust. According to comScore, Inc., consumers spent $595 million in online sales this year on Black Friday, making it 2009’s second-heaviest online spending day to date. On Cyber Monday, sales reached $887 million, 5% more than a year ago. Much of this is likely still driven by traditional advertising, including print and broadcast. For example, according to a study by MORI Research and the NAA, 39% are motivated by a print ad to go online in some way. 

But this is really the first Black Friday of social media. In great numbers, retailers used Twitter before and during the day to post updates, and stores used Facebook to pre-promote their specials to their fans, like Sears, who held a contest for a $500 gift card and a chance to pre-shop their Black Friday deals. 

Here at The Tennessean, Ms. Cheap and the Shopping Diva, Cathi Aycock, kept their followers informed and up-to-date as they shopped on Black Friday. And of course there were the millions of tweets and posts from individuals sharing their great deals and mall experiences. 

So how will this change Black Friday? Historically, retailers have relied on the gift-giving tradition to drive sales, using deep discounts and loss leading “door buster” promotions to spur purchasing. All of which is marketing driven, born of the need to sell, rather than a true connection to the consumer. 

The marketing model closely tied to the growth of social media is more about the connection to the customer. It’s about using your connections to learn more about the customers’ true needs and wants, to get feedback on current and potential products and services, and to create relationships with your brand so you can deliver information in a welcome manner.

Success will come more from long-term relationships than one-day sales, particularly if the great recession has created consumers that value saving as much as spending, as some have predicted. Indeed, the things we learn in the new marketing landscape will likely change the shape of Black Friday in years to come. Who knows, you might get to sleep in.

But I don’t see it that way.

What makes Facebook in particular, and social media in general, powerful is that you choose who is and isn’t in your network. The growth of older adults doesn’t need to have an effect on younger users because they don’t need to interact, if they don’t want to.

I know what you may be thinking – that’s not what’s happening. Almost everyone I know who uses Facebook has received friend requests from bosses, co-workers they never talk to, people they’ve met twice in their lives and so on. In short, people who are not their friends.

Like so many other things, it’s not the tool, it’s how you use it.

I think it’s likely people’s behavior on social networks will change. For many people, social media is like a new toy. You want to see what it can do. But in the future people will do what is useful to them. Reaching out to everyone you ever met may not serve a purpose. But being more engaged with the most important people in your life, or continuing to develop a relationship with an old friend you reconnected with, may be.

The same thing is true in using social tools for business. What is useful for your business? How does it enhance your ability to serve customers, find customers, increase customer satisfaction? The race for more fans, followers and friends will abate. While the focus on how it helps you create value will be critical. As it always is.

So when I received an email recently from a local business that outlined plans for an upcoming promotional campaign, I shouldn’t have been surprised that they included “viral video campaigns.” But it did stop me. Mostly because I found the idea a little presumptuous. How did they know their message was going to go viral? I realize they wanted it to, but that’s not really how it works. 

Now I’m no expert, so I was pleased that my position was reinforced the next day in a post on AdAge.com that stated “a marketer or agency DOES NOT DECIDE WHAT IS VIRAL.” In this case the comment was about a video from Microsoft that it did not intend to go viral. But whether for good or bad, viral videos or other communication are exactly that – viral – because they spread without any real control. 

Of course, this desire to control communication when you don’t control the channel is nothing new. Traditionally, marketers have tried to control what gets reported and covered through the media. Whether it’s a company wanting coverage for a new product, or an organization seeking support for its cause, every day there is great energy expended to influence what you read in the newspaper or see on TV. But now so much communication is driven by the consumer, the blogger, and the teenager sharing what she thinks is funny with friends. So naturally, that’s who we want to control. 

The scary part is that at least most news outlets have guidelines about what they report. As cryptic as they may seem at times, seasoned PR people can learn to be successful. Can we do the same thing with the millions of people driving the conversation on the web? That’s yet to be seen. Just as the media has to get comfortable with losing some control of the conversation, so too do marketers have to get used to losing some control over their message. 

But what remains true today, as it’s always been, are the fundamentals upon which you build your business and marketing. Good products and services, genuine customer care, a strong sense of what your company stands for, and a willingness to be a part of the community in which you do business will always serve you well. Then you can work to communicate these things in fun and entertaining ways … and if you’re lucky, go viral.