One of the new features Facebook is currently playing with exploring is the Open Graph API that will allow webmasters to deck out any website with the tools previously reserved for Facebook fan pages. The API will extend Facebook Connect while being easier to implement.

From Facebook’s perspective, this move will strengthen its position as your one-stop gateway to the internet as well as lay the groundworks for a potential advertising network. For the user, it may not change all that much (except add to the confusion of your average non-geek onliner who thinks of their GMX webmail interface as “my internet”).

For brands … well. Of course, if you believe in the branding power of custom URLs, having that AND Facebook’s full feature set would be nice. And if your business model is in web-based services, content or ecommerce, driving traffic to your own site(s) is vital. But do I see the likes of Coca-Cola or Pepsi doing the full-stop u-turn to reallocate social marketing budgets to build a plethora of branded microsites? Erm. And even then, I wonder which of Facebook’s features are really intersting for owned media. Probably not the kind of applications that allow custom designs, discussion boards or payment within the limits of a Facebook page. Maybe tracking and analysis features - if they integrate well with or fully substitute existing free or commercial solutions.

From a marketing point of view, I don’t think that as long as Facebook is a relevant medium, brands can do without their own page. A social marketing strategy is very much an embassy strategy. If you want to communicate with people, you can wait till they come to you, but it’s better to have a premanent representation wherever they are - and to make sure you welcome them in and make them feel at home. And this includes Facebook as well as Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, wer-kennt-wen and any other place where your people hang out.

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The World’s Biggest Signpost from adghost on Vimeo.

It’s an interactive signpost, and also an act, kind of like an ambient, real-time Qype or Yelp. The Good Things signpost was entertaining and useful for people, while at the same time integrating Nokia’s product (Nokia Maps, Ovi, and the handsets) in an unobtrusive way.

Via Björn, via fubiz

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chat roulette from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

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Dominomania - image from Migros.ch

• buy a playing board (a bargain at 6 Euros 50)
• for every 20 CHF (about 13 EUR) you spend at a Migros checkout, collect 1 of 36 domino tiles (they’re wrapped to keep you guessing if you get one you haven’t already got)
• HOWEVER: max. 10 tiles per person per purchase
• HOWEVER: on “Double Dominoday”, collect 2 (TWO!) tiles per purchase value of 20 CHF
• PLUS: on one previously announced day, a purchase over 60 CHF got you a “Joker” tile
• Jokers are also available for successful players of a corresponding online game
• spare tiles can be traded freestyle or during special trading days.

In the end, what you get is a Swiss-themed domino board game (playable even with less than the full 36 tiles).

Unattractive incentive? And way too complicated? Apparently not.

According to a Migros press release, 50 mio. tiles found a new home, the corresponding online game got played 4.5 mio. times and tiles were traded on 53 trading platforms (Migros: Die Dominomania im Rückblick). Swiss blog publisher blogwerk.com, at one point, counted 563 concurrent auctions on Ricardo.ch. Today, a Google search on “Dominomania” (not really a common expression) finds 164.000 entries. Not quite bad.

What do we learn?

• collectibles work
• trading and swapping works
• a little bit of complexity is not necessarily doomed, especially if it builds on learned patterns
• the journey is the reward - and a good journey seems to be one with group activities and a bit of competition.

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Graph by Seth Godin

Yellow: If you post low virality content to huge numbers of followers, the viral distribution will soon peter out. Green: High virality content, even from a smaller reader base, will go quite a way. Purple: The higher the virality factor, the better the passalong.

So, forget about mass-following and comment-spam. The money (so to speak) is in quality. And while the graph is just mathematical gymnastics, the million dollar question remains: what makes content viral?

Read Seth Godin, Viral growth trumps lots of faux followers.

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(Via Mashable, some background info after the click)

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• increases unaided brand awareness by 42 %
• improves brand image by 28 %
• improves effectiveness (regarding relevance and recommendation) by 44 %
• increases contact duration by almost 50 %
• increases clickthrough in search ads by almost 50 %.

But is this relevant? After all, people in the study were made to search after they watched… The key is parallel usage. According to a recent eiaa study (Media Multi-Tasking 2009), 22 % of Europeans are using TV and internet simultaneously. That’s a 38 % rise over 2006. Media multi-tasking is the missing link that alleviates the media discontinuity of traditional advertising. The checkout may be a click away from your award-winning banner ad, but the TV is still a long way away from the shelf. Pairing ATL with SEM shortens this gap and picks up a fifth European TV watchers in the flow of their media usage. And according to the eiaa-study, media multi-taskers are twice as likely to buy online as single-purpose users.

Download the BVDW-study “TV-Werbung: Niemals ohne Suche” here.

Because, after all, if you don’t own the search results while your ad runs, your media spendings directly benefit the competitor who did invest in search.

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The break-off to four digits arrives at #14 (ProSieben, German TV station, 9.757 fans as of Jan 10, 2010). From #86 (PRINZ, a print magazine) downward, we’re below 1000 fans. That’s just over 60% with less than 1000 fans. The bottom 30% are below 170 fans. (Figures not adujusted for the fact that esp. in the lower ranks, sometimes two or more brands share one position, e.g. 7 brands with 11 fans each).

According to Wattig, about 30% of these sites exclude fan-comments from their walls, i.e. exercise very tight brand control, even within a social media campaign. This overall figure equally applies to the brands with 1000 fans or more. There’s no apparent pattern as to which types of media would allow fan-comments on their startpage. I would’ve expected radio (strong call-in tradition) to be at the forefront, but no.

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Now Pepsi is making a splash with its Refresh Project: USD 20m, originally pencilled into the budget under “Super Bowl” will be spent on a CSR initiative with a strong Social Marketing drift.

I love the elegance and simplicity of the site and especially the way Pepsi sets down the ground rules for what appears to be a no-nonse grant project, without coming across all German and bureaucratic.

Mashable worries that, commendable as it may be, this “campaign” might not be as (cost-)effective as the next escalation in the Pepsi/Coke Super Bowl ad face-off: “the company could wind up spending $20 million on philanthropic causes (which is to be commended), without getting the benefits of a buzz-generating ad campaign.” But by taking the funding for Refresh from a supercharged American cultural and advertising icon such as the Super Bowl, Pepsi made sure to leverage the secret weapon of Social Marketing: earned media. Mashable’s qualms only add to the free media buzz.

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All this with onboard Facebook features. Kind of “Ikea” to do it this way, isn’t it? Creativity has the power …

(On a related note: will Facebook, from now on, suggest they found a picture of me every time someone uploads an image with LACK in the background???)
(On another related note: Who said Social Media can only be used for marketing, not for sales?!)

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