I recently talked with Jason DeLuca, Managing Director at Allscope Media, an independent mid-size ad agency that delivers fully integrated communication strategies, about the important relationship between creative and media buying. How do creative choices affect media buying decisions and conversely, how do media buying decision influence the creative process? We sat down for a quick Q&A.

From the big idea to campaign integration, to media  strategy, it’s all about developing the best creative concepts and making the best media choices to reach the right audiences with the right messages and calls to action. So, does amazing creative succeed without the right media strategy? Can great media save bad creative? Or working together, can they make any product or service successful?

David Murdico: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Jason DeLuca: I always thought that the chicken came first, but after much contemplation I came to the same conclusion as Aristotle once did, that both the chicken and the egg have always existed together at the same time in harmony; much like the relationship between creative and media.

DM: What’s your background and what brought you to Allscope Media?

JD: I’ve spent the last 15+ years working closely with some of the worlds most iconic brands, helping them manage every aspect of their online media research, strategy, planning, buying, content integration, targeting, tracking, reporting, analysis, optimization and reconciliation needs.

What brought me to Allscope was the opportunity to marry my digital media expertise with a successful group of traditional media professionals to create a truly integrated media services offering.  Since traditional media accounts for such a big majority of all marketing dollars spent, it’s critical that we, the digital media mavericks, find creative ways of integrating with traditional media touch points.

I work with lots of startups and brands in the areas of creative digital marketing, PR and social media, and the biggest challenge for any startup is rising above the noise and grabbing that initial customer attention. Whether you’ve recently launched, are about to launch…

How do you go from zero to sixty? 

How do you use digital marketing and PR to interact with your consumer base when you don’t have a consumer base yet? 

How do you compete with other startups and brands that already have the jump on you in your space? 

How do you explain a brand new product or service and make people not only notice, but care and get involved?

Unless you’ve created something so unique, so earth shatteringly original and so needed by everyone that word spreads like magic, or your investment partners are so famous that their story carries yours, you’ll have to fight it out with everyone else. Many startups turn to social media marketing because of the seemingly low barrier to entry and low cost. While launching headstrong into social media can indeed be cheap, doing it effectively and producing results isn’t always so.

BIG BRANDS VS YOUR STARTUP

The most apparent difference between brands and startups is that brands already have lots of customers, many of whom are also fans. You don’t… yet. Brands also have name recognition, which plays a big part in both social media and PR as they fight for attention. You don’t. Nobody knows who you are… yet.

THE BIG SECRET

Social media is like a stream that leads to a river that leads to an ocean. Your startup, products and services, are still at the top of the stream. Some of your potential customers are in the river, and most of them are in the ocean. You need to get from the stream to the river as fast as you can before one of three things happens:

1. Your money dries up
2. Your competition passes you by
3. Your product or service becomes dated or irrelevant
4. You burn out and quit

The big secret is that you’re going to have to: 

Lots of people try to convince me that social media marketing isn’t about sales. It’s about building a community, interacting with people, showing the fun side of the brand, you know… being social and stuff. I really want to slap them in the forehead and ask why they’re even doing it then. Pull the plug. Stop wasting your resources on it.

Marketing is supposed to influence consumer behavior, but what happens when marketing becomes a two way conversation and the people who are in direct contact with consumers are not thinking like salespeople? The conversation keeps going and nobody buys anything. That’s really fun, but it won’t keep the business in business, which is an important part of business.

There are a million things we do every day that make us feel like we’ve worked hard and accomplished something. Social media is one of them. Today your social media team connected with lots of people, and you drove conversation and awareness. People commented and you commented back and all this activity can be measured, even.

What about those sales? Did anything get sold? That’s when the excuses start to fly.

1. BUT… SOCIAL MEDIA IS ONLY ABOUT RAISING AWARENESS, YOU KNOW… LIKE BILLBOARDS

The difference between a billboard and social media marketing is that if you talk to a billboard it can’t talk back. Billboards can’t have conversations, answer questions or talk you into doing stuff. They can make you aware of something, but then you have to go somewhere else to learn more… like a website, call a number, or Google it if its one of those movie billboards that’s supposed to make you make you curious about what it is when all you see is a date.

2. BUT… THE PRODUCT IS CRAP

So what? Lots are. Even turds get swarmed by flies. Your job is to sexy up that turd and gather up some flies. If it’s really that bad you shouldn’t have taken the job. Find the right audience and connect with them. Do your job

One of our Supercool Blog readers left the following comment on a recent post.

“I have been contacted by or contacted social media companies for 3 years. I have been a customer of 5 or 6 companies to help me with social media. I have yet to work with a social media marketing company who provides me with the results I am seeking. What questions should I ask of a social media company? The barriers to entry are easy to say, I am a social media company. How is a person to know the skill, knowledge, and competency of a social media company?”

So instead of a quick reply, here’s a full article to address his  comments and questions. You’re welcome.

Yes, there are a lot of flakes and posers out there but at the same time, social media encompasses a million different things. Not every social media company is good at, or has experience in, everything.

• Most social media companies, and really most marketing companies in general, will tell you they can do anything, regardless of whether or not they have experience doing the specific things you need. The simple reason for this is that just like you, they’re in business to make money and it kills them to turn you away. To your comment…

“I have yet to work with a social media marketing company who provides me with the results I am seeking”

First, are you being super clear about the results you’re seeking? The best way to do this is to start with your goals. What are you trying to achieve with social media? Don’t say “more likes and followers” or I will slap you right through the internet. I mean, how will social media contribute to your overall marketing and sales?

Next, specifically what do you need a social media company to do to help you reach reach those goals? What are the tactics and measurable actions that will help you get there?

• Do you have clearly defined goals and objectives and need a social media company to develop the strategy, plan, tactics, measurable actions and manage the execution?
• Do you need help defining your your goals and objectives and laying out what social media can do to get you there?
• If you already have a strategy, do you need the company to do specific tasks like set up and manage your social media channels, make videos, blog, share content, run contests, reach out to blogs, publications and influencers?

Once you’ve got that figured out, match up

No, not the dog… the kind that wears gloves and punches people in the face. My agency / production company Supercool Creative has cranked out comedy viral videos for some of the biggest brands and coolest startups around, and in the process I’ve observed the fickle relationship between videos and their fans.

I was trying to come up with what the ideal comedy video would be if it were a person, fighting its way up the YouTube charts, dodging fan comments, thumbs up, thumbs down and appropriately enough, it’s a boxer. Boxers aren’t typically associated with comedy, but what they do know is how to earn respect, keep moving, use the jab, play the rope a dope and deliver that unexpected, knockout punch.

1. COMEDY VIRAL VIDEOS HAVE TO EARN THE VIEWER’S RESPECT This all starts with the original concept, the script, the actors and finally the production. Above all, no matter how wacky , zany, over the top or understated the direction is, the brand has to own it. If the brand is insecure about what they’ve produced, the viewers will smell fear and as every boxing fan knows, fear leads to defeat.

Most viewers want to be entertained. They’d rather laugh than find fault. So give them something real, without a lot of marketing mixed in. Just make it really funny and then get behind it 100%.

2. COMEDY HAS TO KEEP MOVING Slow down and your viewers will click out. A couple of ways to do this is to keep the performance energy high and edit out anything that doesn’t either add information to the  story or make people laugh. Ideally, you’ll have taken this step during the writing process, but in post you’ll have another chance.

The perfect branded video series combines elements of entertainment and the same addictive qualities that keep people coming back to watch their favorite TV series. The trick is to plan out how you’ll build a fan base, appeal to your audience, get your message across without unleashing a series of ads, let people find and share, and be consistent. You want to get consumers hooked, telling their friends and coming back for more. That’s where you begin to tap into the key metrics of reach and frequency and where the brand message begins to emerge.

1. Plan a viral marketing strategy
Long gone are the days when simply posting a video to YouTube was enough. Your viral marketing strategy should include a combination of paid and earned views.

Paid views are derived from:
• banner ads
• YouTube promoted videos
• Facebook ads
• in-game views
• paid blog posts that appear as content rather than ads

Earned views come from:
• social media sharing across Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn
• blog and publication outreach
• fans who voluntarily share the paid views

Each person that shares a paid view brings down the cost of that view by 50%. For example, if you pay for one million views and another million people share organically, you’ve cut your paid cost in half. So what are the things that will make them do that?

We’ve been seeing a steady trend towards increased public safety laws for some time now, including seat belts, motorcycle helmets, bicycle helmets and now… office helmets? State lawmakers are calling for a law that would require all employees who work in offices to wear helmets at all times to protect their heads against office accidents.

“The head is the most important part when it comes to office work,” asserted Representative Irene Camden in an interview with The Coolaid earlier this week. “Construction workers have to wear helmets all the time, and they don’t even need their heads,” she added.

Detractors, including most HR executives who see more paperwork heading their way, believe that a person’s skull is more than sufficient to protect their brains from even the most daunting office injuries, but following the credo of “better safe than sorry,” Camden says she’s pressing forward.

As you select which digital marketing approaches and tactics you’ll be including in your 2013 video game marketing campaigns, keep in mind that it’s not always which tactics you fit into your budget or the budget you spend, but how smart you are about how those budgets and tactics are used. A huge part of this relies on how you manage the social media strategy. Social media is what holds together and drives digital campaigns, and your attention here will determine how effective your campaigns are, and ultimately how many games you sell, which is what this is all  about in the first place, right?

1. MAKE YOUR FANS INTO ROCKSTARS
This is so important! As you grow your fan base leading up to the release of the game, create and look for opportunities to promote your fans. You expect them to share and promote you, so return the favor. Encourage fan-created content like fan art, videos, graphics, tweets and comments, then post them everywhere, giving liberal credit and accolades. Promote individual contest entrees so others will notice. This not only paints you as a game that gives back and gets very involved with their fans, but also invites other fans to be more involved.

Too many campaigns get launched and set on autopilot. Dig in there on a personal level and engage your fans, ask questions, give answers. This isn’t advertising. It’s a two-way street.

2. MATCH SOCIAL MEDIA VOICE TO GAME PERSONALITY
When fans find your game on social media channels, they expect to encounter the game, not a corporate representative. With that in mind, establish what the game would be like if it were a person and then wrap everything you do across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, G+, forums and other social media channels in that voice. Establish a strong social media voice for each game and for the brand itself, or you risk coming off as insincere, which doesn’t play well with social media.

Video is a tool of social media. So, as many social media responsibilities are being taken on by PR departments, we are seeing public relations teams becoming more actively involved in the creation and deployment of social video content. Viral videos, branded entertainment, web series videos and video game trailers top the list along with original, entertaining product launch videos. This new breed of video content, rather than simply supplementing the efforts of PR teams, is often spearheading them.

Supercool Creative Agency has been working with some of the most innovative PR agencies and internal PR teams, and here’s my list of the top 10 ways video should be used by PR professionals to help brands and startups tell their stories.

1. Social media marketing
If social media is UPS, video is the package. If social media is the rocket launcher, video is the rocket. Video can be branded as heavily or as lightly as the creative and messaging dictate, and the larger story can be shared and developed via social media. Having a PR message go viral across Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other video sites and social outlets creates a new story that can then be pitched to, or organically picked up by, mainstream media outlets — enabling the message to reach TV, radio and print audiences as well.

2. Product launches
Viral videos and branded entertainment are high-profile ways to announce new products and refresh old ones. Video gives PR teams a visual, entertaining and engaging tool around which to center campaigns. We’re currently involved in launching 2 new iPhone apps and are relying heavily on pitching fun, cool video trailers we’ve produced to blogs and publication, along with descriptions and  backstories of the apps.

Lots of people out there can’t wrap their heads around the idea that your social media job is a real job. The irony is that everybody still thinks it would be a cool job to have, but they look at you with the skepticism of someone evaluating a waiter that says they’re an actor. Here are 5 reasons why I think this is happening

Your job is something most people do for fun

Most people’s experience with social has been tweeting about their dinner, posting selfies and creeping on their friends. They can’t imagine you could have a job that gets to do that all day. “It must be like working at an ice cream place,” they say, “or a bar that never closes.”

The job is really hard to explain without sounding like a boring wizard

Truth is, social media management isn’t as glamorous as it seems. People may ask you about it, but by the time you get through the list of all the things you really do, they’ve lost interest in the question and are tapping through their iPhones.

The flip side of that, is their expectation that you can perform amazing feats of wizardry and get instant likes, followers and views with a wave of your magical social media wand. They’re often disappointed when they find out you’re going to need more time, budget or at least a solid bribe for such last-minute miracles.