Charlene Li of Altimeter Group

Charlene Li, one of my favorite social media pundits, gave a speech at the PRSA International Conference this week and then gave a “press conference” to those of us (including me) who were designated “press” for the conference.

Li said that like most analysts, she is in the midst of developing her “outlook” report for 2011, and she gave us a preview in the press conference.

The two big trends Li is watching as the year winds down are:

1. the rise of “social data” and “social search” and
2. our evolving feelings regarding privacy and permissions in social media

On social data, Li is watching to see how all the volumes of data we are generating in social media are used. Marketers and others are quickly realizing that social media users are providing reams of valuabe information about brands, trends, likes and dislikes, but are just now starting to figure out how to gather and analyze it.

On privacy and permissions, Li sees us moving away from protecting our privacy and toward managing the permissions we give web sites and our contacts. She likened the transition to what happened when Caller ID was first introduced. Peoples’ first reaction was that it was an invasion of privacy, but after awhile, as they realized that it had value, it became more about giving people useful information that reduced life’s friction.

And that’s where this story starts.

I love step aerobics — it’s very challenging, it’s a derivative of dancing, which I love, and it’s high energy.

But step is dying. Gym members don’t really want to take step compared to other classes that are offered. Why? One big reason is that it’s hard to learn — even the easy steps. You’ve got to invest a few weeks looking and feeling like a dork before you can really feel at home in a step class.

That doesn’t fly with today’s gym-goer. They want a good experience from the get-go — and really, who doesn’t?

[Stay with me here -- this really does relate to marketing.]

The very first time I tried Spinning, I loved it. I got on a stationery bike in a room full of exercisers, and I pedaled and got a good workout. Yes, there was guidance from the instructor, but it was up to me to follow along as much as I wanted to. There was a nice music soundtrack to keep things lively, and the instructor’s job is half to run the class and half to shout out encouragement. I’ve now been back a half-dozen times, and can’t wait to go again.

Here are the marketing lessons I see in Spinning:

• It’s easy to get involved, but it’s not simplistic — there’s plenty you can do once you’re acclimated
• It appeals to everyone — if you can pedal, you can participate
• It treats everyone fairly — there’s no competition among participants, since we’re all on stationery bikes. You can exercise as hard or as easily as you want, and no one can tell the difference
• It’s a lot more fun because it’s being done in a group

Spinning class seems to be a metaphor for how people want to be treated in today’s world. That’s why I wanted to write about it.

Last thought: Spinning and Facebook have a lot in common.

Tiger should go full-steam ahead and plant his flag as “the new Hugh Hefner,” or in my shorthand (trademark pending), “The New Hugh.”

I’m serious here.

Hugh Hefner has made a bloody fortune screwing beautiful women and leading the party life. But he’s ooollllddd. I can’t believe he’s still going strong, supposedly.

Hugh ain’t gonna last forever. We need a new role model, a new Adonis to do all the things we dream about: Tiger.

He’s incredibly handsome.

He’s incredibly rich.

He’s one of the greatest athletes in the world.

He’s one of the greatest commercial pitchmen in the world.

He’s perfect.

Go for it, my man.  Stock your mega-yacht Privacy with hot-and-cold running hotties, Cristal and pate, enjoy it and cash in on it.

You have nothing left to lose.

On the hardware side, the options are pretty straight forward — HD or not, 720 or 1080, LCD (cheaper) or LED (much more expensive).

But on the content side — that’s another story. And not just which channels to get — it’s how to get them. You can get free TV (digital signal only), all sorts of cable packages, all sorts of satellite packages, and even TV from the phone company. If you have AT&T phone service, then the phone company’s offering is called U-verse.

But what, exactly, is U-verse?

I was intrigued by U-verse and so decided to research it to see if it was right for us. First, I went into an AT&T store in the neighborhood. Bad idea. Take a number, have a seat, and wait your turn to have a sales rep (who’s handling everything from iPhone to Blackberry to U-verse) talk to you. OK, I’ll call AT&T and surf the web.

At this point, I still didn’t know what U-verse was. With the other options, it’s pretty obvious — it’s in the name. But U-verse is some made up corporate brand, and it’s not like there’s a generic category that’s obvious.

Finally, when I reached a rep on the phone, I got the basics: it’s a fiber-optic signal that comes to a box in your house and then that box distributes the signal wirelessly to boxes attached to your TVs, using Internet Protocol, or IP.

Wow — wireless IPTV. Very modern.

But I wondered — how’s the signal? How’s the picture? How do people like it?

Again, it was a research project. It took a few attempts at phrasing my question to Google before typing in “quality of U-verse service” and getting some answers. The basic answer: it’s OK, not great. And it’s complicated to set up.

So there you have the answer to “what the heck is U-verse?” But my questions for AT&T are just starting: such as, why isn’t it obvious in your materials how the technology works? How come I can’t see a demo of a typical installation? Why haven’t you attempted to allay my concerns about how a wireless signal is going to travel around my two-story house? (I’m not the only target customer who lives in one, you know)

So I decided to write a blog post about this because this is not as much a technology problem as a marketing communications problem.

Bottom line: I’m probably going to stay away from U-verse because of these unanswered questions and stick with a better understood alternative, either cable or satellite.

• There has always been a Cartoon Network.
• The status of gays in the military has always been a topic of political debate.
• The nation’s key economic indicator has always been the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
• The Green Giant has always been Shrek, not the big guy picking vegetables.
• They have never used a card catalog to find a book.
• Margaret Thatcher has always been a former prime minister.
• Salsa has always outsold ketchup.
• Earvin “Magic” Johnson has always been HIV-positive.

And on and on. A few weeks back, I gave you a link to the report for now-19-year-olds in the Class of 2012. The Beloit Mindset list gets published annually to remind those us who are a bit older than the newest adults have very different world views than we do.

I kept waiting to see if the Obama team was just waiting for the right time to roll out its effort, but now that the news is that the White House is “firing back” at critics, it’s obvious that they went to Plan B because they didn’t have a Plan A.

Where, for example, is the Mile High Stadium version of a health care reform rally?

Where are the heart-rending stories from ordinary citizens who will be helped by the plan?

Where is the demonization of the huge interests who are opposed to reform?

Where is the one-pager that describes to the average citizen what the benefits of the plan are?

Why is it that even I, an informed and highly educated citizen, can’t tell you a thing about what’s in it for me and my family?

This last point is the reason why these wingnut shouters at Congressional town hall meetings are having so much success — because the absence of a common understand of “what’s in it for me” has created a vacuum and an opportunity to create a fear of “what I have to lose.”

It’s too late now to fundamentally change the game. The best the Obama people and supporters of reform can hope for is that the screamers will hit the limit of their effectiveness and that the Democratic majorities in Congress will deliver an acceptable reform bill.

A heck of a lot of people didn’t do any of those things, because they weren’t alive yet. Just like I have no clue about living through WW II or the Eisenhower years. Wasn’t born yet.

To get a kick in the head about how people entering adulthood see the world, check out the Beloit College Mindset list. It’s a compilation by some brainiacs at Beloit College about the sensibilities of the incoming freshman class. The list for the Class of 2012 is their most current (last year’s class). When they release this year’s list, I’ll post an update.

Here are some of their observations about people in the U.S. who are now 19 years old and if they are in college, starting their sophomore years:

• GPS satellite navigation systems have always been available.
• Gas stations have never fixed flats, but most serve cappuccino.
• Electronic filing of tax returns has always been an option.
• Girls in head scarves have always been part of the school fashion scene.
• WWW has never stood for World Wide Wrestling.
• Films have never been X rated, only NC-17.
• The Warsaw Pact is as hazy for them as the League of Nations was for their parents.
• Students have always been “Rocking the Vote.”
• Clarence Thomas has always sat on the Supreme Court.

Their lists go back to the class of 2002 — people who would be in their late 20s now.

Why should you care? Because people you may be pitching or working with may very well be in this cohort, and if you want to work with them successfully, it helps to have a cultural frame of reference.

But there’s a serious grain of reality in these man-on-the-street insights. Eight months ago, Obama’s PR machine had created a feel-good climate in which you would not have heard a Vegas taxi driver disparaging the President-elect. Now, everyone’s a critic. Why? Because, in my opinion, the Obama people haven’t done as good a PR job as they could and should selling this health care plan to the American people.

This should be a no-brainer — the facts are on their side. But Obama seems unable to close the deal. In this case, he seems incapable of clearly articulating in plain, clear and compelling lanugage how this plan will reform the health care system so more Americans get better and cheaper care.

I’m not clear on the politics of the situation — maybe he knows that the Democratic majorities will give him a good enough bill to sign and so he doesn’t need public opinion to be on his side. But I can’t see where appearing weak and defensive on this critical issue could serve either his current cause or future causes.

Maybe the guy is human after all.

But that’s nothing compared to the awesome job these guys have done with their VC firm web site, Foundry Group. I’m also a big U2 fan so I recognized the poses immediately. And doesn’t Brad Feld (3rd from left) look a little like Bono?

Main image on Foundry Group's home page

This, is a nutshell, is my fan-level reaction to Ticketmaster‘s new PR ploy involving its captive reseller program, TicketsNow. Ticketmaster had a big problem earlier this year when it was caught transferring ticket seekers from the original ticket onsale screen to the TicketsNow resale screen, where the same tickets that had just gone on sale were now supposedly only available for huge markups on TicketsNow.

Last week, Ticketmaster announced a so-called “Fans Up Front” program that claims to address the concerns of ticket buyers who believe that Ticketmaster holds back tickets from the original ticket distribution and then makes them available via TicketsNow at a markup. The program includes a side-by-side comparison of the original price and the scalper/TicketsNow price, and will tell prospective TicketsNow buyers whether there are still original price tickets available via Ticketmaster.

Here’s why it’s an attempt to use PR to solve an operational problem: both of these initiatives are lame-ass smokescreens. Two of the easiest pieces of information for a concertgoer to figure out are a) the list price of the ticket and b) whether Ticketmaster has any more original tickets for sale when you go online to get them.

What none of us understand is the answer to the question that Ticketmaster continues to evade: how is it that tickets are “sold out” minutes after they go on sale, only to be available for huge markups on the TicketsNow site and elsewhere, such as eBay? The answer, I and many others suspect, is that in the byzantine world of ticket sales, lots and lots of people have their hands in the proverbial cookie jar, skimming off the best tickets for themselves, for friends, for ticket brokers and for scalpers. What’s left for the average fan is the crumbs.

Until Ticketmaster addresses its operational problem — that far fewer than 100% of the available tickets are made available to the general public — then lame PR programs like “Fans Up Front” will continue to be seen for what they are: ineffective spin.