David Armano wrote about this over on Logic+Emotion, and I think it’s well worth pointing out over here too.  Mark Simon has a column in AdAge this week called The 10 Most Asinine Trends Online and Why You Should Ignore Them.  Talk about a bold statement right there.  And some of what he deems "Asinine" and warns CMOs away from are trends that have already taken off.  Second Life anyone?  Twitter say wha’?

Mark makes a great point.  He’s very clear on the fact that CMO’s, and I’d argue everyone else who’s in charge of creating a brand, should maintain awareness growing online trends.  He also brings up the point that, because there’s practically zero startup costs, the online world is open to everyone.  This, in turn, creates a huge number of off-the-wall ideas that companies can choose to either leverage or ignore.  Right on Mark.  That’s all great in theory.  But you seem to have missed a couple of the points.

Twitter, specifically, and microblogging in general, is here to stay.  Armano already hit on the basic point, it’s a great communication tool.  But lets take it a half step further.  There are two points I want to make:

1. This is an opportunity for opt-in marketing.  As David pointed out, Dell’s got close to 300 people who have voluntarily signed up to be contacted by their brand within this medium.  That’s permission-marketing if I’ve ever seen it.  Any time you can get permission for your brand to be in touch with your consumers, wouldn’t you?

2. Second, and perhaps more importantly, is the user base on Twitter.  Yeah, most of us say 25 and up who didn’t start Twittering on a college campus somewhere or who don’t have a web connected cell phone glued to our hands 24/7 don’t get it.  But guess who does…the kids.  More specifically, the high-school and college kids.  The rebellious, stick-it-to-the-man, I ain’t interested in your $@#!ing brand kids.  The same way they latched onto text messaging when it started.  Seems to me there’s something to learn here.  Sounds like an opportunity for a brand to make contact, carefully, with an audience that’s damn tough to reach.

So, Mark, you’ve made a few interesting points.  But we think you’ve missed the boat on one or two as well. 

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