Unlogo

Thanks Lester for the tip. Interesting AR project that aims at removing specific items from digital reality, rather than adding them. In this case icons from videos

Unlogo Intro from Jeff Crouse on Vimeo.

Brand Campaigns Drive Most Social Media Following

Nice insight... Cheers Brian. Via eMarketer

OCTOBER 18, 2010
Three-quarters of Facebook fans have signed up with pages after invitations or ads from brands

Research on social media users who follow brands has shown marketers the importance of offering deals and discounts on Facebook fan pages as well as the nature of brand following as a form of self-expression, through which advocates can show support for a company they love. But what triggers Facebook users to “like” a brand is typically some form of outreach.

Most commonly, that outreach comes from the brand itself. Three-quarters of Facebook users worldwide who had “liked” a brand told DDB Worldwide and Opinionway Research in September 2010 that they had been spurred to do so by an invitation or advertising from the brand they followed. More than half had also followed a brand based on an invitation from a friend. Many of those invitations are likely a secondary form of brand outreach as well, as marketers encourage current followers to become brand advocates on their behalf.

Only about half of all Facebook brand fans ended up following brands after their own research, making action by marketers critical in building up a following on social sites even though most users already know and like the brands they become fans of.

The effort brands must put into amassing fans doesn’t stop there, of course. While the top reason former fans gave for unsubscribing from Facebook pages was waning interest in the brand, complaints about the information offered on fan pages were also a major factor. Posting too often or posting uninteresting information, taken together, turned off nearly half of respondents.

“Unsubscribers, at 36%, are something to watch out for. And though the majority of fans now unsubscribe by deleting a brand from their friends list, brands, when trying to measure the value of their community, are going to need to be more mindful of those who just hide the brand's message in their newsfeed," said Catherine Lautier, director of business intelligence at DDB, in a statement.

Keep your business ahead of the digital curve. Learn more about becoming an eMarketer Total Access client today.

Check out today’s other article, “Online Video Big Draw on Health Sites for Marketers and Consumers.”

Meet YouTube's Most In-Demand Brand Stars

Great summary from AdAge about the future face of 'talent'


For Marketers, Web-Video Celebrities Offer Trusted Voices and an Engaged Viewership

by Irina Slutsky
Published: September 13, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) -- Once upon a time, YouTube was considered the Wild West -- its so-called "stars" more likely to produce cringe-worthy performances than to displace the pitch-men and -women of traditional media. But now big-time brands like Lancome, McDonald's, Ford and Kellogg's are trusting YouTube celebs with their money and reputations. "The reason we turned to them is because they have a valid voice in their community, and people trust what they say and what they think," said Scott Monty, head of social media for Ford Motors.

They've got trust and, it turns out, engagement.

"What these YouTubers have proven is that they have engaged viewers -- they comment, they talk on the YouTuber's Facebook page, on Twitter. The brands want millions of views, but they also want engaged viewers," said Caroline Giegerich, director of innovation at Initiative, which was one of the first agencies to run a successful YouTube stars campaign with Carl Jr's. "If they're engaged with the stars, clearly they are engaged with the brand ... it means someone is not just seeing an ad and forgetting about it."

In the beginning, neither the brands nor the YouTubers themselves had much of an idea how much they were worth. But the price of hiring a YouTube celebrity to pitch a product is now comparable to hiring a B- or C-level Hollywood celeb.

Ryan Higa publicly lists his starting rate as $75,000 per appearance, a fraction of what someone like Paris Hilton charged for her Carl's Jr. commercial. Some, like Joe Penna, a.k.a. MysteryGuitarMan, feel as comfortable pitching themselves to brands as they do their audiences. "I get millions of hits, and I know my demographic -- I know what kind of video will be in line with my channel," Mr. Penna, a 23-year-old former pre-med student, said. "The best thing the brands can do is come to me with a blank slate and ask me, 'What can you do with this product for us?'"

Ad Age teamed up with TubeMogul to find the stars racking up the views.

CHARLES TRIPPY

Charles Trippy

WHO IS HE? Mr. Trippy, 26, and Alli Speed, 21, vlog a "home-made reality show" called "Internet Killed Television" that is widely known as CTFxC. Mr. Trippy has been on YouTube since 2006 and continues to vlog almost daily -- he hasn't lost interest or enthusiasm for the venue.

CONTENT: Daily life vlogs with his fiance.

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 159,489,749

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 2,122,380

BRANDS: Gillette, Google, Xacti Passion

DUDEPERFECT

dudeperfect

WHO ARE THEY? Garrett Hilbert, Cory Cotton, Cody Jones, Sean Townsend, Panda, Coby Cotton, and Tyler Toney -- a team of trick-shot basketball entertainers from Texas

CONTENT: Impossible basketball shots

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 27,712,318

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 3,241,856 (top campaign for GMC snagged 1,917,028 views)

BRANDS:GMC, NBA (Sacramento Kings)

FRED

Fred

WHO IS HE? Lucas Cruikshank

WHAT HE MAKES: Videos in which he pretends to be a child in a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic mother

CONTENT: Screechy voice, occasional meltdowns

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 585,136,315

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 101,698,863 (includes promos for films and his own merchandise)

BRANDS:20th-Century Fox, Hot Topic, Nickelodeon, Taptivate

IJUSTINE

iJustine

WHO IS SHE? Justine Ezarick, 23, LA-based freelance graphic designer. Ms. Ezarick's almost unbelievable ability to create videos several times a day, her deft editing skills, her Apple obsession and her long, blond hair and good looks snagged her a young, male techie fan base.

CONTENT: Techie girl vlog

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 171,403,990

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 7,408,587 (top campaign was GE, with 1,913,481 views)

BRANDS:AT&T, Fox, GE, Intel, Mattel, Nikon, Mozy, MTV, Carl's Jr. and Dick Clark Productions

MICHAELBUCKLEY

Michael Buckley

WHO IS HE? Michael Buckley, 35, is a comedian who started with a public-access chat show called "Table for Two." He's benignly malicious -- the opposite kind of meany to Perez Hilton.

CONTENT: Celebrity memes/gossip

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 261,715,708

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 4,370,345 (top campaign was for Fox's Teen Choice, with 865,885 views)

BRANDS:ABC Family, BabelGum, 20th Century Fox, Discovery Networks, Fox television, Nickelodeon, OpenFilms, PriceDoc, Pepsi

MICHELLE PHAN

Michelle Phan

WHO IS SHE? A Vietnamese-American who gained popularity afterher Lady Gaga "Poker Face" make-up instructional got 20 million views. Before YouTube stardom, Ms. Phan worked as a waitress in a sushi restaurant and studied illustration.

CONTENT: Cosmetics tutorials

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 221,989,434

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 22,095,935 (of which Lancome Paris represents 12,234,338)

BRANDS:Colgate, Lancome Paris, PriceDoc, Sandisk, Verizon

MYSTERYGUITARMAN

Mysteryguitarman

WHO IS HE? Brazilian-born Joe Penna, 23, is an L.A.-based filmmaker, guitarist and animator who graduated from UMass with a pre-med degree.

CONTENT: Music videos and clever mash-ups of himself in his apartment in front of the camera

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 138,614,194

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 5,125,862 (top campaign is for Microsoft, with 8 million-plus views)

BRANDS:Garnier, Pop Tarts, Microsoft, McDonald's, Coca-Cola

NIGAHIGA

Nigahiga

WHO IS HE? One of the highest paid YouTube stars, Ryan Higa is a Japanese-American comedian from Hawaii who started making lipsyncing videos with his friends during college breaks. YouTube stardom followed, and his content is now varied and wide.

CONTENT: Comedy, short films, parody videos, "rants," how-to comedy videos ("How to Be a Gangster"), advertising spoofs

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 546,333,874

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 13,405,781

BRANDS:Google, Carl's Jr.

RHETT & LINK

Rhett & Link

WHO ARE THEY? Comedy duo Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal

CONTENT: Humor that's actually funny; not as viral but high-quality videos like "Facebook Song," and "T-Shirt War"; actual commercials

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 66,294,209

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 25,093,462 (top brand campaign was Microbilt, with 9,986,225 views)

BRANDS: Alka-Selzer, AJJCornhole (not a joke), Baby Ruth, Coca-Cola, Dentyne, GM, McDonald's, Spy Associates, Taco Bell, Microbilt

SHAYCARL

Shaycarl

WHO IS HE? Shay Butler, 30, lives in Idaho with his wife and kids and produces family vlogs with a funny, edgy "cool dad" twist. His user name is ShayTards, his baby is BabyTard, and his other children are PrincessTard and SonTard. You get the idea. His most recent Footlocker campaign takes place in a school cafeteria and involves a giant food fight.

CONTENT: Family vlogs

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 250,954,220

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 5,725,254

BRANDS: AT&T, A1, Google, Kia, Kodak, Sanyo, Footlocker

SMOSH

Smosh

WHO ARE THEY? Comedy duo Anthony Padilla and Ian Andrew Hecox, both 22, gained initial fame with the "Pokemon Theme Music Video," and this led them to be featured in Time Magazine's 2006 Person of the Year issue.

CONTENT: Sophomoric teen humor; video games

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 465,534,527

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 12,310,844 (top brand campaign was GE, with 4,717,047 views)

BRANDS: Carl's Jr., GE, Google (Nexus One), Kia, Nintendo, Puma

VENETIAN PRINCESS

Venetian Princess

WHO IS SHE? Jodie Rivera, 26, studied opera at the New England Conservatory of Music before becoming one of YouTube's first partners. Ms. Rivera has said, "I can make anywhere from the mid-five to six figures per one- to two-minute video with product placement."

CONTENT: Parodies of popular music videos

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 258,098,945

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 1,697,996 (top campaign, for Pop Tarts, notched 1,562,269 views)

BRANDS: Pop Tarts, Samsung

WHEEZYWAITER

Wheezywaiter

WHO IS HE? Craig Benzine, went to school for TV, radio and film, worked as a waiter at Big Bowl before YouTube success. He's a hungry up-and-comer with a promising start.

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 13,350,225

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 290,145

BRANDS: Ford

Pepsi's Stimulus Plan: Putting Up Money To 'Refresh' Communities

Thanks GENWOW for this on Pepsi's impressive take on how to engage with communities... going to be interesting to follow this one.

Call it the American Renewal and Refreshment Act.

First, Pepsi seemed to have taken its cue from Barack Obama when it refashioned its logo.

Now, it appears to be stealing a page from the Obama administration with the "Pepsi Refresh Project," a campaign designed to pay up to $20 million for projects people create to "refresh" their communities.

The whole thing gets underway in tomorrow's (Tuesday"s) Wall Street Journal and USA Today. According to the AP, the effort will fund thousands of projects, and could involve getting other businesses to participate. Consumers will list their projects online and vote on winners.

Not to be outdone, Coca-Cola seems to be taking a cue from Obama's diplomatic overtures in a campaign that will send three people - chosen by online voters - to 206 countries as part of its ongoing "Open Happiness" campaign.

How all this plays in 2010 - think about those president's-party-on-the-outs mid-term elections - remains to be seen.

Will Pepsi move past Obama to whatever's next to capture the zeitgeist?

Now that would be refreshing.

Read more, here.

P&G moves soap opera genre online

OK... work drowning out all chances of sharing some of the great sutff that's happening out there around, but in a rather pathetic attempt to keep the flame alive, here are a few of the little tidbits i've come across in the last few weeks. Enjoy

This from cincinnati.com about how P&G are taking some large steps into online content...

By David Holthaus • dholthaus@enquirer.com • October 4, 2009

Now that "The Guiding Light" is a part of soap opera history, the newest stars of a Procter & Gamble drama are not Reva and Josh of GL's fictional Springfield, but Suzie and Steve Barston of real-life Los Angeles.

The Barstons are the stars of a 12-part series called "A Parent is Born," found not on television, but on the newest medium of choice for the world's largest advertiser, the Internet.

The Webisode is the latest example of how P&G, the inventor of the daytime drama, has moved beyond the soap opera and into the digital world, but with the same purpose it had when it launched the "Ma Perkins" radio serial in 1933: to create an interested audience it can use to build loyalty to its brands.

With the demise of "The Guiding Light," which ran on radio and then on TV for 72 years, P&G owns only one soap, "As the World Turns." The company that once produced more than 20 of the daytime television staples has turned its entertainment attention squarely to the Internet, practically abandoning the daytime TV genre it invented.

"We literally moved from radio to TV, and now we're in the digital world," said Pat Gentile, who heads P&G Productions, the Cincinnati-based unit that oversees P&G's entertainment properties. "We're putting our focus on creating digital content."

Just as it did with the soaps, P&G is creating places where it can gather a big audience, with the goal of building goodwill toward brands such as Pampers diapers, Iams dog food, Febreze fabric freshener and Dawn dish soap.

Case in point is "A Parent is Born," which follows the real-life Barstons from early pregnancy through the birth of their first child in a series of four- to five-minute videos available on the Web. The series is sponsored by P&G's Pampers brand and is found on the Pampers Web site. A 30-minute version aired on DirecTV in late August, and P&G plans to syndicate the series in other online venues.

"A Parent is Born" doesn't directly sell Pampers but helps shape how consumers feel about the brand, building what Gentile and other marketers call "brand equity." Following the young couple as they learn the baby's gender, decorate the child's room and talk about their hopes for their budding family can build an emotional connection to the brand that is valuable for creating long-time customers.

For Pampers, a $9 billion P&G brand, the show helps position it as a product concerned not only about keeping babies dry, but about the well-being of families, a key marketing message in the company's plans to double Pampers sales over the next several years.

A just-launched Web site, www.dinnertool.com, like the soaps, doesn't carry only P&G advertising, but is meant to be a destination site that brings a like-minded audience together. Dinnertool is a meal-planning site that generates recipes from a given list of ingredients, giving Moms a place to go when they need ideas for mealtime. "It fits nicely with our brands," Gentile said, especially after-dinner cleaning products such as Joy, Dawn and Cascade.

Its other destination site is www.petside.com, designed for dog, cat and bird lovers. More than a million of them call up the site each month, Gentile said.

Like the soap operas that preceded them, the Web sites don't simply pitch P&G products, but are meant to be sites that people return to over and over again, creating an interested audience that may be more receptive to the P&G message.

"People believe you more," Gentile said. "They don't feel like you're trying to shove something down their throats."

Providing good information is the key to creating a loyal audience, said Chris Allen, a University of Cincinnati marketing professor. "It's about providing content that attracts specific communities of users," he said. "It's the future of marketing."

The Web sites enjoy a major marketing advantage over television: e-mail. Visitors to the sites are asked to register, enabling P&G to capture potentially millions of e-mail addresses that it can use for surveys, for regular e-mail newsletters or to tout new products.

"A big part of the whole agenda is building that marketing database," Allen said.

The decline of the soaps as a marketing technique is due partly to its limited flexibility as a one-way medium; we can only watch, not interact. But it's also due to their aging audiences, those that are outside the marketer's ideal demographic.

Losing To The Social Web: Visualized

Interesting post from Digital Buzz Blog. I guess my only real argument against this 'everything going social' idea is that just as we've all foreseen the death of TV and print, the reality is that these media, just like websites and microsites, have roles that they will continue to fill for the near future at least, even though these roles may well change. To my mind, there is never a single answer and smart use of digital will involve multiple presences and activities that cater to the myriad of ways people want to find, absorb, engage and share information. Marketing via content, utility and distributed services... hell yes, but don't rely on me wanting to check out your products in public while i hang out with my friends.
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A brands website has been the single biggest ”online” focus for 99% of businesses over the last 10 years apart from banner campaigns and microsites here and there, but with the evolution of social media growing at unheard of rates (Twitter is up over 3500% alone this year, while Facebook increased over 700% to finally overtake MySpace and then turned them to dust!) businesses really need to think about what’s happening to their website traffic…

I recently read a great post on Supercollider by Geoff Northcott (via Martina on Adverblog) that talked about the end of the destination web, along with adage, we are social and adweek about how the times are fading for websites and microsites are dead – Geoff posted a few good Google trends graphs, so I thought I might take that a little further, find a few additional graphs and look at why and where this traffic is going…

What you’ll notice from the graphs below (you can see them here) is that some of the biggest brands, websites and portals are loosing unique visitors hand over fist for the last 3 years. Doesn’t make sense right? More and more people are connecting online, brands are spending bucket loads of cash on digital campaigns, so website traffic should be the complete opposite? (note. the graph below with out a heading is the BBC.co.uk)

So with such dramatic declines in website traffic and rapidly increasing numbers of Internet connected people, where is all that traffic going? The Social Web – the emerging networks where everyone is connected, everything is relevant, and everything can be shared with a single click and browsed, summarized or bookmarked with ease…

There are 2 key reasons why website traffic is declining.

1. Social Networks (obviously) are growing and most people prefer to hang out there instead of searching the big brands websites for content to interact with. Your friends on Facebook and Twitter share what you’re already interested in. Everything is relevant and you don’t have to leave to get the best content from 10 of your favourite brands / websites.
2. Off-Site Content Distribution is rapidly growing, I’m talking RSS Feeds, Twitter, YouTube Channels, Facebook Fan pages and so on… All the best brands and websites now actively push their content (the same stuff you use to get from their website and still want to access) to as many various “off-site” sources and platforms as possible.So naturally this removes unique visitors from their main sites, channeling them into a maze of various networks, feeds and tweets…Oh, and ofcourse, widgets/apps – we’ve only just seen the start of these.

Over the next few years, brands will need to re-structure they way they deliver experiences to their customers online (the best ones are already doing it), and that means delivering unique content to anywhere customers want to experience it.

Maybe that’s the latest offers by RSS feeds, new product demos by YouTube, campaigns by iPhone apps, online shopping via widgets in facebook or branding exercises by seeding stopmotion viral videos (they seem to be all the rage!)?

The fact is, agencies and brands will need to work out how to deliver the relevant content, branding and experiences they are currently achieving on their own websites, into highly competitive social networks, feeds, apps and widgets, where every “campaign” or “offer” has to be groundbreaking just to get noticed… and then there was tracking…!

I don’t think websites & microsites are dead yet. There are still years and years of usefulness ahead for them, we’ll just need to come up with better ways to connect them and their content into the social lives of customers online…

The Most Engaged Brands On The Web

Thanks Techcruch for this post on the work from Charlene Li

The Most Engaged Brands On The Web

57 Comments

by Erick Schonfeld on July 20, 2009

What big brands do the best job with social media? A new study by analyst Charlene Li of the Altimeter Group and Wetpaint ranks the top 100 brands by social media engagement. You can find the report embedded below or on ENGAGEMENTdb, which was presumably created with Wetpaint’s site-creation software.

The study scores the engagement level of each of the top 100 brands across more than ten social media channels, including blogs, Facebook, Twitter, wikis, and discussion forums. Starbucks scored the highest, with 127 points. The top ten brands are:

1. Starbucks (127)
2. Dell (123)
3. eBay (115)
4. Google (105)
5. Microsoft (103)
6. Thomson Reuters (101)
7. Nike (100)
8. Amazon (88)
9. SAP (86)
10. Tie – Yahoo!/Intel (85)

The report categorizes brands into one of four types, depending on how many social media channels they participate in. The most engaged are “mavens,” while the least engaged are “wallflowers” (McDonalds and BP are examples). The study claims a correlation between social media engagement and revenue growth. The “mavens” saw revenues grow an average of 18 percent over the past 12 months, while the Wallflowers saw revenues drop 6 percent. I really doubt that their level of social media engagement had anything to do with their revenue growth, it is just that the strongest brands are the most engaged.

Get the report here:
ENGAGEMENTdb: Most Engaged Brands On Social Media -

KFC's reinvention plans

Thanks Mashable

KFC has put a lot of marketing muscle behind their new “Kentucky Grilled Chicken,” most notably with the free meal giveaway by Oprah. While that campaign generated enormous online buzz – some of it rather unfavorable as stores refused to honor the coupons – the chicken chain is now turning its attention to social media.

Specifically, KFC has launched a promotion on MySpace (), where the user that submits the best video ad for the brand will both star in an upcoming TV ad campaign and receive a lifetime supply of chicken. KFC will then pick three finalists, and users will get to vote for the winner. How much is a lifetime’s supply of chicken you ask? According to Brand Republic, KFC will be on the hook for around $16,000 USD, or roughly 2,600 two-piece meals.

KFC’s broader strategy, however, is called “unthinkfc,” and features its own website, as well as a presence on Twitter (), YouTube (), and Facebook (), where the company has amassed nearly 200,000 fans. There are also games – like uploading your own “chicken dance” and a “custom grillz” (get it?) application for iPhone.

Ultimately, KFC appears to be a company trying to re-invent itself somewhat, and they’ve setup a well rounded campaign that can certainly generate buzz if executed well. On the other hand, for fans to enthusiastically endorse KFC and participate, the in-store experience will also have to win them over. Having yet to sample the colonel’s grilled chicken, I can’t speak to how they’re doing, but given the clumsy Oprah launch, it would seem the company still has a ways to go.

Digital consumers more loyal to brands

Thanks WARC for this post... and thanks Gerry for passing it on

NEW YORK: "Digital consumers", defined as people who have previously used the internet to buy products or research specific categories, exhibit a greater degree of brand loyalty than the average shopper, Millward Brown says.

Based on over 100,000 consumer interviews in 24 countries, and 8,000 brand assessments, the research firm found that digital consumers have brand loyalty scores that are 15% higher than their "non-digital" counterparts, as well as forming "strong relationships" with more specific properties.

While digital consumers display heightened loyalty across all sectors, the difference between this segment and the typical consumer peaked at 93% for the airline category, a figure falling to 48% for IT hardware, and 45% for IT software.

Other areas where this difference was particularly pronounced included fragrances, on 29%, with apparel posting an uptick of 27% among women and 20% among men, while body care recorded an overall improvement of 22%.

Beer brands also saw an upturn of 12% compared with the norm, with mobile phone handset manufacturers, mineral water and banking brands all on 9%, haircare products on 8%, grocery stores on 7%, and soft drinks on 5%.

Overall, Millward Brown argues that digital consumers are "simply more interested in brands", a trend that is reinforced as they "develop brand knowledge" through conducting online research.

As evidence of this, the company reports that "the average difference is higher in categories where there are more digital consumers."

In terms of individual countries, Japan and Taiwan saw the greatest degree of difference between digital and non-digital consumers, with loyalty levels among the former group some 36% higher than those for the latter.

Hong Kong, the US and UK were also strong performers, with loyalty scores rising by around 30% among the digital demographic, with Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Korea also up by over 20%.

Among the lowest performers were Mexico, Russia, Thailand and Hungary, all seeing improvements of less than 10%, falling to a low of just 2% in China.

Internet penetration levels seem to have little influence on the overall situation, as, for example, India and Canada both posted improvements of almost 15%, despite the fact web access rates stand at 10% and 80% in these markets respectively.

While the profile of the average digital consumer varies by category, they are typically "younger, male, affluent and creative types who like excitement."

Overall, members of this group of web users are also twice as likely to be "transmitters", defined as "knowledgeable category consumers who influence others with their opinions."

Data sourced from Millward Brown; additional content by WARC staff, 08 June 2009

Big brands looking to Facebook

Thanks WARC

Big brands looking to Facebook

PALO ALTO, California: Advertisers including Coca-Cola, Starbucks and Kraft are all using Facebook, the social networking service, to generate consumer insight, but their varying approaches and experiences show marketers have not yet established a consistent approach to using the website.

Many brands have displayed an increasing enthusiasm about utilising social media as popular interest in the medium has grown, but the developing nature of this channel means that few "best practice" examples of how to do so have emerged as yet.

As previously reported, Coca-Cola's main page on Facebook was originally created by two brand enthusiasts, and now has over three million "friends", making it one of the most popular areas of the Palo Alto-based website.

Michael Donnelly, director of worldwide interactive marketing at the soft drinks giant, argues that “many consumers are already sharing information regularly on Facebook," meaning the fan-page was "just one more way to quickly share information in a place where they are already spending time."

He also asserted that the "ease of creating content makes it so that we get very high engagement, far beyond typical page views" by using Facebook, which also "gives us a great platform to listen to the feedback we receive from our consumers."

In support of this, he added that every time the company added "photos, videos or status updates from the page, our fans are quick to tell us what they think. Their feedback is shared with their network of Facebook friends, exposing them to our fan-page."

Starbucks, the coffee house chain, which currently has 1.5 million "fans" for its official page, has also previously employed the social media site to communicate with users about its efforts to raise money for Global Aids Day.

Alexandra Wheeler, the firm's director of digital strategy, said the initiative "became the most viral event in Facebook history," and meant that "not only were customers excited about the brand, but they came together on one day to do something good."

Overall, she asserted that Facebook "helps us get a pulse on what is important to our customers. We can have a real dialog with them about the values and ideals that they share with us."

Kraft, the food manufacturer, also launched an "app" on the site last December, donating six meals to the not-for-profit organisation Feeding America each time it was downloaded.

Over 230,000 people did so within the first six weeks of its launch, while an unofficial page for the company's Oreo brand has also acquired more than 1.3 million "friends."

Stephen Chriss, director of consumer and customer engagement, at the company's US snacks business, said that while the company currently doesn't "formally interact with fans" on Facebook.

However, it does "keep an eye on the content, conversation and number of fans" on the service, and is also "reviewing" its approach.

Victoria's Secret and Sears have also used the site to offer discounts on products, and Unilever's Simon Clift has previously encouraged brands to make full use of such social media

Ted McConnell, Procter & Gamble's general manager for interactive marketing and innovation, however, has warned against brand's trying to "hijack" the conversation between consumers.

Data sourced from Brand Channel/ClickZ; additional content by WARC staff, 26 May 2009
portals.

Truth in Vodka - cheers to that!

I believe that this article from Marketing Daily is a really interesting example of a premium Vodka brand from Poland, taking on other premium Vodkas by attacking the premium image....hmmm

Sobieski Expands 'Truth In Vodka' Campaign 

by Karlene Lukovitz

Sobieski Vodka is investing $5 million on a new round of creative and expanded consumer media exposure for its successful "Truth in Vodka" campaign, according to Chester Brandes, president/CEO of Imperial Brands, Inc., exclusive importer of the brand.

The top premium vodka in Poland, its country of origin, and the #7 premium brand in the world, Sobieski was launched in the U.S. in August 2007 and sold 255,000 cases in 2008, making it one of the hottest liquor introductions in years. The brand is 52% ahead of its projected sales for 2009 and on track to be the fastest vodka brand to reach 1 million cases in the U.S., reports Brandes.

Excellent timing is certainly responsible for some of that success. According to the Distilled Spirits Council, sales of super-premium vodkas are slipping in this wretched economy, while those at the premium price point continue to climb. Sobieski sells for a relatively modest $10.99 per 750 ml bottle and stresses value for the money.

The "Truth in Vodka" campaign, which urges consumers to focus on what's in the bottle rather than pay inflated prices to subsidize gimmicky marketing claims and showy bottle designs, has made the most of the brand's made-for-these times positioning.

Imperial initially focused on getting the word out to retailers via a $1 million trade campaign, moved into consumer media with a $4 million investment starting in mid-2008, and is now unveiling the creative for a more ambitious, integrated consumer push starting now but running primarily in this year's second half.

The latest round of ads from Meter Industries, the New York agency that created the campaign, continues to leverage the current value-over-status zeitgeist. Taglines include:

* Overspending on Vodka? That's So 2008.

* Flashy and Extravagant Are Out. We'll Drink to That. 

 * Ever Feel Like You're Not Getting Your Money's Worth? We Hate That Feeling.

* Buying a Vodka Because It's Filtered Through Diamonds? We Have a Ponzi Scheme You Might Find Interesting.

* Are You Paying for the Bottle? Or Are You Paying for the Vodka?

* Like Many Vodka Companies, We Used a Focus Group to Vet Our Product. It's Called 'Poland.'

The last tagline homes in on the heritage theme that's being stressed along with the vodka myth debunking. "Sobieski is a real product imported here from Poland," Brandes stressed to Marketing Daily. "Unlike some of our competitors, we didn't create it for the U.S. market."

The graphic approach continues to be minimalist -- nothing but the copy and a photo of the bottle on a solid black or white background.

The media plan, handled by Horizon Media, will include third- and fourth-quarter print ads in consumer magazines such as Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, Rolling Stone, SPIN and US Weekly and outdoor media (bus wrap shown in photo) in key markets nationwide. Online media -- including regionally targeted sites -- will also be tapped.

In addition, Cramer-Krasselt Public Relations has been added to the team for the latest consumer push. 

Tinker is no longer merely the name of my late cat.

Thanks to 3 minute Adage for their video on the launch of Tinker in which they described a service that aggregates and curates real time conversations online using Twitter as their platform. This has great potential for catching positive sentiments surrounding our brands... read more below in an article from Tech Crunch.

Twitter has become one of the most effective ways to catch and track breaking news in real-time. It also has become an invaluable resource for tracking chatter on major events, from conferences to the NCAA Basketball Tournament.
The problem has been that there has been no single place to easily track the chatter on Twitter. Hashtags, Twitter searches, and Twitter apps like monitter all have some functionality, but aren’t comprehensive approaches to event tracking.
However, Glam Media, a popular advertising and publishing network, has launched its solution to the event tracking problem. Dubbed Tinker, it’s both a social media service that makes it easy to track specific trends and news, and also a fully-fledged Twitter Web interface that has a monetization model for brand advertisers.

10 Tips for Social Media Marketers

Great post from the (now ex-market head at H&R Block). Thanks for this and the great work at H&R.

There have been many chapters in the book of my life, some sad but most really happy. I’m now at the end of another chapter and it is bittersweet. I’m leaving H&R Block to become the General Manager of a new online shopping site that will be launching this fall. I’m excited to start this new chapter as it is fulfilling one of my dreams, but, sad to leave behind a great brand and wonderful colleagues.

Over the last three years, the H&R Block brand has embraced the opportunity to communicate with consumers differently. We have been on the forefront of social media and been honored by positive mentions from thought leaders such as Shel Israel, Francois Gossieaux, Jeremiah Owyang, Jake McKee, Andy Sernovitz, and Chris Heuer. Traditional media has also taken note of the “tax company that could” with mentions in the Wall Street Journal, PC World, Advertising Age, ClickZ, and Marketing Sherpa among others. But most importantly, consumers have engaged with us in new and different ways through YouTube, Twitter, Second Life, FaceBook, Myspace and our own community site at hrblock.com.

This has been an incredible journey for me personally. The accomplishments we have achieved are the result of a team effort. I’m happy to know that I’ve had a positive influence on that team and overjoyed knowing that the team will be carrying the torch and continue to make a difference with our customers. There are some key learnings about social media that every corporate social media marketer should know:

• Every brand can be and should be “social” - Conversations about your brand and products are happening everywhere. You need to be part of the conversation and if H&R Block can make taxes social, your product can be social too.
  

• Just get started – It doesn’t take a big budget to get started in social media marketing. In fact, much of social media marketing is human capital. Start by listening. Set up Google alerts to look for conversations about your brand or product. Use TweetDeck and set up a brand search to monitor what is going on about your brand or product in the Twitterverse. Then participate in the conversation, just remember to be authentic, honest and transparent and you will be fine. If you take the first steps to engage in the conversation you will learn more about how your brand or product fits into the social media space and it will help guide any future programs.

• Integrated marketing vs. social media - There is a difference between an integrated marketing campaign that includes viral components or online/offline coordination and a social media program. A marketing campaign has a short life; it is singular in desired action and is usually focused on demand generation. A social media program is a commitment to engage and communicate with consumers where the consumer wants to communicate. If you are going to start a marketing campaign with social elements versus a social media program, you must start with the end in mind. The worse thing a marketer could do is build a group of fans, friends or followers without a clear exit strategy after the campaign is completed.
  

• Find your brand’s own path – What works for one brand in social media does not mean it is right for another. For example, the path of engagement with a movie franchise is very different than engaging consumers about taxes. Remaining true to your brand promise is the best way to approach social media. Utilize your brand promise as a guiding principle across all your social media efforts. Reflect it in the content that you create, the tone that you use, and the programs that you develop.
  

• Media $ versus human capital – I mentioned human capital earlier. Companies can spend a lot of money trying to launch a social media program. For the most part, I would really classify those efforts as an integrated marketing campaign. Your approach and funding of an integrated marketing campaign needs to be in line with the size and scope of your overall marketing budget. Social media programs can be a lot more cost efficient from a media budget standpoint, but, you still need human capital to run them. In many cases you may be trading media $ for the human capital needed to run a program. For example if you are taking the first step of listening and engaging in the conversation, there is no media buy necessary. However, you do need to have some person dedicated to scanning and responding. Ideally, that person is an employee of the company. Why this should be an employee leads to the next tip.
  

• Agencies play a great role, but the voice needs to be the company’s -There have been many company backlashes by having your agency respond in the social media space. Remember that the consumer wants to connect with you, not your agency. Your agencies can monitor and identify opportunities, but it is the company that needs to respond – authenticity is key.

• Your agency needs to walk the walk – I hate paying an agency to learn on my dime. When we started three years ago, social media was so new and changing so rapidly that we were all learning together. Today there are many different agencies that are building expertise in social media including public relations firms, interactive agencies and newly formed agencies focusing on social media. As you select an agency partner make sure that they don’t just talk the talk but also walk the walk. Are they active in social media? Does the agency blog or twitter? Judge the agency not solely on their pitch, but also on their actions.
  

• Get legal involved early – Your legal department can be an ally or a roadblock. What you need to understand is that in the area of social media there is not a lot of legal precedence to draw on. This makes your legal department nervous because it is more difficult to know the best way to protect the company. Involve your legal department early and help them understand your goals so you can build a partnership and not hit as many roadblocks. Ask your legal department to help you solve for the risks versus just state that you cannot proceed with a program. There are always solutions to mitigate risk. You and your legal department can find solutions together.
  

• Have a crisis management plan – The recent Dominoes episode clearly identifies the need of a crisis management plan. In a world of 24x7 communications, the brands that can respond quickly to a crisis will be the brands that weather the storm. A good crisis management plan must begin with active monitoring. Judgment will need to be exercised to distinguish a customer service issue from a true crisis management situation. Once a crisis has been detected, the brand will need to respond in a matter of hours not days. Early action will help nip a crisis in the bud before it explodes into something larger. No action or ignoring it will only exacerbate the issue. A brand that is already active in social media will also carry more credibility and rally more supporters to come to the brand’s defense.

• Selling the C-Suite or ROI – One of the most popular questions that I get asked is how to build support at the C-level. Having a clearly defined objective is critically important to gain support of any initiative. However, everyone is always focused on the ROI or return on the investment. I have defined ROI a little differently in this new and emerging space as Risk Of Ignoring. There is an absolute change occurring in how we communicate and seek information as a society. The millennial generation is the first digital native generation with very different expectations of companies and marketing. In the not so distant future the millennials will be a larger purchasing demographic than the boomers. Not understanding this segment will be detrimental for future marketers. Watch Shift Happens and share it with your senior leadership team. It is a great example of how we are living in exponential times.
  

The last topic is not really a tip but a reality of the brave new world we operate in – personal brands. The lines between all the roles we play as an individual are becoming blurred. Books like Me 2.0 are promoting self-branding. In the social media space there are divided camps and murkiness all around. Scott Monty has been accused of using his profession at Ford to drive his personal brand, when the reality is that Scott Monty has been using his personal brand in the social media space to promote Ford. On the flip side, individuals who participate in social media are experiencing the impacts of their personal communications being equated to corporate communications even when there are clear disclosures that the views expressed are their own. And we hear a news report every few weeks about how content that is shared publicly via FaceBook or Myspace is being used in employment screening.

There is not a guidebook on how to best proceed in the new age of communication. I play many roles. I’m a wife, mother, friend and employee. My communications take on elements of all the roles that I play. I know I’m not perfect and I’m making mistakes as I learn. The best advice I have in this area is for you to realize that the sum of all your activity through social networks does become your personal brand. Understand your goals for your personal brand. Are you going to use it specifically as a friendship connection, to maintain professional connections, or are you trying to build a personal brand to promote yourself? These are three distinct paths that will drive different types of communications. Understanding your end goal is the first step to navigating a space filled with landmines.

I know that H&R Block will continue to be a leader in the social media space because they truly care about engaging in customer dialog. I leave behind a great team of talented professionals who are as passionate about social media as I am. A bright future lies ahead for H&R Block and I will be cheering them on from the sidelines.

As sad as I am to leave H&R Block, I’m excited to start my new chapter. I’m also thrilled to start actively engaging and sharing in the conversation. Due to competitive considerations I have been limited in my ability blog openly, as I start my new adventure expect to hear from me more frequently. Stay tuned for more…

Axe does a Skittles

http://www.theaxeeffect.com/

Interesting to see companies creating their own 'webs on the web', rather than a a series of more or less independant sites and microsites. Having a series of branded and unbranded social media presences, linked to from a central hub and ideally plugged into freiend freed, tumblr and a load of other streaming platforms really does seem like a smarter way to get your brand online. I have to say i prefer Axe's approach to that of Skittles (http://www.skittles.com) as it gives that brand and how it like to portray content much more of a role (and a much more of a bill i imagine), rather than just tapping into content and keywords on existing sites.

Thoughts?

Interesting social experiment from 'old sckool' P&G

Thanks Cincinnati.com for this report on an social/reality TV mash-up experiment conducted by P&G. Fantastic to see a company like P&G, or any company in fact, stop the theory and speculation and really start putting things to the acid test. My only question is around the use of 'social media experts' in the experiment. Would be really interesting to carry out something similar here in Australia, but use 'normal' people instead. After all any success in the real world is going to have to come from engaging real people and them offering the right value/values that stimulate behaviour, advocacy, loyalty and all the other yummy social payoffs

P&G's digital summit socially adept

By David Holthaus • dholthaus@enquirer.com • March 11, 2009

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Executives from the evolving world of social networks had a meeting of the minds with Procter & Gamble executives Wednesday evening, as the 172-year-old Cincinnati-based giant held a four-hour, reality-show style exercise to help it figure out how it can best use rapidly growing online destinations such as Facebook and MySpace to target consumers.

With a potential audience of more than 300 million people and still growing quickly, social networking sites are seen as the newest frontier in advertising.

About 40 executives from major social networking companies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere were invited to P&G’s downtown headquarters to meet with about a hundred P&G marketers to help them unlock the potential of these online sites to reach consumers.

P&G set up an exercise creating four teams whose goal was to see who could sell the most Tide T-shirts in four hours, starting at 5 p.m., with the money going to charity, using only the Web and a $1,000 budget. With team members hunched over laptops in four conference rooms, they used Twitter, Facebook, Google and YouTube to appeal to potential T-shirt buyers.

The group used their professional and personal Facebook accounts and also their Twitter accounts among many social media tools. To follow the Twitter effort you can link here.. The group also launched www.tide2.com as part of the effort.

Two hours into the exercise, they had sold about 600 T-shirts at $20 a pop.

“We need to become skilled and effective at social communication,” said Lucas Watson, who organized the event as one of P&G’s digital team leaders.

Notably absent from the evening was anyone from Twitter, the explosively growing site where users can update what they are doing, in real time, in short takes.

“They’re growing so fast they haven’t had time to think about the commercial aspects of their company,” Watson said.

But Twitter was one of the main methods the teams used to sell their T-shirts digitally.

Using traditional advertising methods to reach consumers on Facebook and other sites won’t work, Watson said: “You have to be invited in.’’

The potential for advertisers like P&G is enormous. Time spent on social sites is growing more than three times faster than the rate of overall Internet growth, according to a new report from media tracker Nielsen Online.

Just as importantly, the audience is becoming older and more globally diverse, Nielsen found. Social networks started out with a young audience of college age and younger, but has become more mainstream over time.

This shift has been driven by Facebook, whose greatest growth in 2008 – a gain of more than 24 million users – came from people aged 35 to 49, Nielsen found.

“Facebook and social networking is actually becoming more popular then e-mail,” said John Burbank, CEO of Nielsen Online, who participated in the Wednesday night event.

The audience is a marketer’s dream – it’s considered engaged, diverse, global and relatively youthful.

But experts say tapping into this audience is more complicated than advertising in the traditional media of television, radio and print.

Users of Facebook and other social sites are usually online to communicate with each other or for entertainment.

They aren’t accustomed to finding advertising there and aren’t very tolerant of it, says a November report by IDC, a technology research firm.

Of all the Internet users in the U.S., only 3 percent would allow the sites to use their contact information for advertising, IDC’s survey found.

“To understand the social media space, you really have to step into it,” said Pete Blackshaw, an executive vice president with Nielsen Online and a team leader in the Wednesday exercise.

That’s what P&G Digital Night, as it was called, was all about. “Any social media environment is space where consumers are choosing to spend their time,” Watson said. “We need to learn how to connect with them there.”