But there is one world-renowned titan who you can beat at his own game. And all it takes is money or a credit card that hasn’t reached its limit.

The game is shopping and the titan is Santa Claus.

Or at least that’s what Best Buy was proposing in its Christmas-shopping television commercials this past month, unified by the theme line, “Game on, Santa.”

All three of the Best Buy Christmas shopping spots I saw posed a competition between you, the viewer, and Santa Claus. Whether it was a giving competition or a shopping competition was moot, since the commercial seemed to equate the two. The three scenarios I saw just about complete the stations of Santa’s mythical annual visit (not to be confused with Christ’s Stations of the Cross):

1. A mother stops Santa on the roof at the chimney and warns him that she’s been to Best Buy.
2. A mother shows Santa the new widescreen TV she got for the family, making Santa gulp down his cookie with an expression that says that the news has shocked him as a “Hail Mary” pass that wins a football game might.
3. A mother is at the hung stockings, which are stuffed to the cuffs, taunting Santa with the fact that there is no room for what he has brought.

Note that in all three commercials the house was upscale and the competitive shopper was an attractive, but not beautiful, white woman who looked to be in her late 30s.

The commercials were as packed with unspoken ideological imperatives as the stockings were stuffed with junk in the one Best Buy spot. The most obvious ideological subtext was the reduction of all emotions or emotional manifestations to the act of buying something. A history of this centerpiece of 21st century American ideology would begin with the commercialization of Christmas and the gradual replacement of the custom of making gifts with the new custom of shopping for them.

Like the advertisements for and media coverage of Black Friday, the “Game On, Santa” commercials took a subtle post-modern step in the evolution of the consumerist ideology because what was being hyped was shopping in and of itself, and not as a way to celebrate a holiday. One characteristic of post-modern art is for the art to be about the process of making art, and not about something else.

But the commercial sunk a deeper ideological hook into viewers, though, and that was the premise that competition is good. The act of arranging Christmas according to the modern traditions became a game which produces winners and losers. Instead of the more obvious choice of a loser—that snooty next-door neighbor, the sister who always wins, that obnoxious shopper who wants to grab the last Xbox or the mother-in-law, the upscale mom was beating Santa, which means she was winning big-time.

We know that the consumerist ideology connects every emotion to the act of buying. The Best Buy “Game On, Santa” commercials also connected the act of buying to winning and losing, that is, competition, and by implication, to market competition. The free market ideology says an unencumbered market in which everyone pursues his or her own best interests will result in the greatest good for everyone. The hidden message is that the free market in which people are allowed to compete is a good thing. A twist to the message is that by buying things, you can be a winner in the free market. The “Game On, Santa” theme proposed that the greatest good in our mythical free market world is to shop.

The irony of the Best Buy series is that Santa Claus, like the advantages of the free market, is a mythical figure, a folk hero about whom we create stories for small children. Someone competing with Santa Claus is really competing with him/herself. It’s the ultimate potlatch, but instead of showing your neighbors how much you’re worth by destroying piles of your own possessions, you demonstrate your worth to yourself by being the smartest buyer of gifts, the “Sultan of Shopping” (“Sultan of Swat” was one of Babe Ruth’s many nicknames).

How does the self win against the self, that is, transcend the self and become a better self, a winning self? Is it through prayer, chant, right living, death, ritual, acts of kindness, study or group action, as a multitude of philosophers and religious figures have proposed through the ages?

No, in the American ideology, the redemption that “winning against the self” brings comes from being the best shopper you can be.

During the recent flooding in Central Pennsylvania, Facebook became an important tool for Pennsylvania American Water. First, it needed to dispense information quickly about a mandatory conservation for its Hershey customers. Secondly, it wanted to squash rumors that the customers there and in its Wilkes-Barre service area were hearing via local media and through the grapevine.

Being able to dispel rumors in real-time, answer questions from customers and provide updates increased its number of Facebook followers by 200 in one week. The spike in followers came at a good time: Pennsylvania American Water announced that it will donate $1 to the H2O Help to Others Program for each new Facebook or Twitter follower who liked its pages by October 15. The H2O Help to Others Program benefits low-income customers who may be having a hard time paying their water bill.

“Pennsylvania American Water is proud of our social media presence and the depth of information we provide customers through Facebook, Twitter and YouTube via status updates and short videos accessible through Facebook and YouTube,” says Josephine Posti, external affairs specialist for Pennsylvania American Water. “American Water’s overall social media presence is robust compared to other local utilities and is a benchmark nationally along with providers such as Florida Power & Light, ConEd in New York, or the DC Water and Sewer Authority.”

Water is critical for public health, essential to the hospitals and healthcare facilities in each of its service areas and information about service disruptions is essential, notes Posti.

“Social media has been a great tool in helping us provide real time information to our customers and the communities we serve,” she adds.

Posti was gracious enough to take the time to respond to my social media Q&A via email.

DC: What role does social media play in an organization’s overall marketing and communications strategy?  

Posti: An organization communicates to deliver a message and social media is necessary if an organization wants to talk to their audience where they are.  Facebook and Twitter usage grows with the proliferation of smart phones and provide an easy-to-use platform to get customers information in real time.

DC: Tell us about some of the most common misperceptions organizations have about social media marketing.

Posti: A common misperception is that negativity can highjack a brand’s presence.  Most people who take the time to follow a brand are advocates for the brand and the occasional negative comment can be a great opportunity for a brand to respond quickly and authentically, showing their responsiveness.

DC: What are some of the issues an organization could face without a successful social media strategy? 

Posti: Any organization that needs to provide customers with real time information is at a disadvantage if they’re relying on mainstream media or their website to provide information.  The platform provides an easy-to-use format for graphics, video, links, sharing and comments that can help tell your story.

DC: How can organizations better engage in social media? 

Posti: Start following others in your space.  See what kind of information they’re sharing, how you can share it with your followers and what their followers are reading.  The reciprocity that social media encourages can result in healthy collaboration and sharing of information.

DC: How has Pennsylvania American Water used social media raise awareness? 

Posti: Facebook and YouTube provide the perfect forum for us to create and upload short videos that easily explain some of our processes.  Now, customers can see what the inside of their water storage tank looks like, learn how we detect leaks underground and find out what our scientists do in our labs every day to ensure a high level of water quality.  We’ve also found social media to be extremely useful during emergency events.  During the recent floods in Central PA, we were able to provide regular, frequent updates to customers about a mandatory conservation, to dispel rumors and to provide accurate information about the flood’s impact to our service areas.

DC: What are some of your favorite social media applications/tools?  

Posti: We love the YouTube app for Facebook.  Our customers have found our short videos to be very informative and they’ve been able to peek “behind the scenes” on the water treatment and delivery process.

DC: Many of us can’t find enough hours in the day, how do you find the time on social media, and more importantly manage it?  

Posti: It’s a group effort.  Our four-person external affairs team works collaboratively; we all have administrator privileges.  When an emergency occurs we make sure someone is “on call” to monitor and update our social media presence.

DC: On a practical level, can a good social media strategy be outsourced, or does it need to be executed internally?  

Posti: My point of view is that managing it internally allows an organization to provide more authenticity and to have an ear to the ground when their followers have concerns.  There have been many times when a customer has brought an issue to our attention and we were able to identify the internal contact immediately, addressing their concern much more quickly than we would have if a third party were responsible.

DC: What things should we absolutely avoid in terms of social media posts and tweets?  

Posti: Everyone—customers and organizations—needs to communicate in the same manner we’d talk to someone we bumped into at the grocery store.  Bullying, defensiveness and profanity are all ineffective ways to get a point across or get a real response to a concern.  If it doesn’t work in “real life” it doesn’t have a place in other venues like Facebook or Twitter.

DC: Is there anything else our readers should know that I didn’t ask about? 

Posti: We started our Twitter and Facebook pages at the suggestion of a reporter.  During a severe weather event, I was calling local media every hour to give them status updates and finally a reporter asked me if I could just Tweet the updates.  We realized that an organization like ours needs to be in that space.  The service we provide is critical to public health, fire safety, business and quality of life.  People don’t realize how big a part of their life clean water is until it’s not there and our ability to provide real time updates has been welcomed by our customers, the communities we serve and the local media.  We’ve found a great deal of reciprocity among those audiences: municipalities and media who re-post our updates and customers who share our answers to their questions with their friends.  We’re currently running a promotion where we’ll donate $1 for every new Facebook “Like” or Twitter follower to the H2O Help to Others program which serves low-income customers who are experiencing trouble paying their water bill.  We’ve already doubled our followers and hope to triple them by the end of the promotion.

Josephine Posti has worked in public relations for most of her career, spending many years at Motorola before working for agencies (Burson-Marsteller and MARC USA).  She even ran her own business, having served clients like Motorola, Techinomics and Ascensium.  Today, she is very proud to facilitate external affairs for Pennsylvania American Water, the Commonwealth’s largest regulated water and wastewater service provider.  Her responsibilities include public relations, crisis communications and community affairs for seven districts throughout Western Pennsylvania including Pittsburgh and Washington County.  Posti received her accreditation in public relations (APR) in 2003.  This designation is a mark of distinction for public relations professionals who demonstrate their expertise and their commitment to the profession and its ethical practice. She has served on the board of the Pittsburgh Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America and also serves on committees within the American Water Works Association.   Outside of work, Posti serves as president of Mt. Lebanon’s school board, is a Girl Scout leader and teaches religious education in her congregation.

For more information on Pennsylvania American Water, visit them on Twitter @paamwater or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pennsylvaniaamwater.com. You can also find them on their YouTube channel @paamwater.

This article was reprinted from permission of Western Pennsylvania Hospital News where it first appeared.

Daniel Casciato is a full-time freelance copywriter,  journalist, and social media ghostwriter from Pittsburgh. In addition to copywriting and ghostwriting, he writes health, legal, real estate, and technology-related articles for trade magazines and online publications. For more information, visit www.danielcasciato.com.

On the surface, it had markings of a typical spot promoting tourism: people having fun doing things and eating. But right away, this commercial seemed different. The people in the ad joyously proclaimed that they were from four different states, all along the Gulf of Mexico: Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.  They seemed to be engaged in a very friendly rivalry over which state was the better place for a vacation.

But something seemed out of place, something seemed strange: The Floridians weren’t talking about theme parks.  The Louisianans weren’t talking about either Cajun food or riverboats.  The Mississippians said nothing of casinos.  And the Alabamans breathed not a word about football.  No one was talking about what made their state distinctive.

Instead every image was of people doing one of two things:

• Eating seafood, assumed to be locally caught.
• Enjoying the beach and water activities.

This act of extreme homogenization of four very different states and the distillation of their similarities into two attributes seemed bizarre. It made me feel a little ill at ease because I kept wanting them to “show me the Mickey,” or at least a football play.  I would have settled for a shot of a jazz band playing “When the Saints Go Marching In.”   I just couldn’t believe that anyone would think they could sell people on traveling to any of these four states just for a sandy beach and fried shrimp.

But it all made sense at the end of the commercial when we learned on an almost empty still screen that BP Oil sponsored the spot.

In other words, running this spot is part of the reparations that BP is paying the Gulf states for the 2010 Deep Horizon oil spill, which sent oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico for three months.

It looks to me as if the committee that cobbled together the concept for this spot used the heavy-as-a-Mack-truck touch characteristic of BP’s interactions with the public during the three months in which nothing the experts tried could cap the leak.  Notice first, the avoidance of the problem, much as BP tried to avoid speaking about the leak: Nowhere in the commercial does anyone say that the Gulf of Mexico shore had a problem. Instead we get the squeamishly happy assertions by proud state supporters that their state is the best place to vacation, all exemplified by the images of succulent seafood and pristine shorelines that prove that the Gulf Shore is fine. Only those who remember the images of oil-covered birds and enormous slick floating ovals will get the connection.

Note, too, how narrowly the commercial addresses the unspoken public issue of the spill’s aftermath and nothing else.  That’s why there’s no room to mentioned Florida’s theme parks or Louisiana’s red beans and rice. Every image and statement focuses solely on how the public issue plays out for people who want to go on vacation: beach activities and seafood. A lawyer must have figured that one out. It was this kind of narrow response that made BP chair Tony Hayward look so uncaring and uninformed.

Finally, note that way the message—that Gulf waters and beaches are clean—is married to a product for sale, to wit, vacationing on Gulf beaches. Someone on the committee insisted that as long as BP was going to do “image advertising,” some industry should benefit. 

Of course, none of the states will benefit from an ad such as this one.  No one says, “Honey, let’s go to a Gulf beach this next vacation,” the way they may say, “Let’s go to Europe” or “Let’s go to Africa.” It will take many years and more money than BP will want to spend to establish the idea of the Gulf as a region to visit. And why would any of these states want to homogenize their image? Why would Louisiana want to tell people that it’s “just like Alabama?”  Meanwhile, all of these states already have their own clear image to tourists, which depends to a small degree only on seafood and beaches. 

The ineptness of the ad would astonish if BP did not already have a track record for awkward and rigidly controlled communications.  It seems as if BP has a tin ear to how the public reacts to anything other than the price of gasoline.