Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

Check out this Awareness Networks Article about General Mills and their blogger outreach efforts.

It’s a good read, but I was struck by just how good a job GM has done in acting ‘like a blogger’ with the blogging community -

1. Ensuring that they offer value. Kudos to them for recognizing that not everyone is interested in just having their voice ‘bought’, but making them feel special, by treating them in a special way.

2. Being fans of the bloggers, and giving props to them when appropriate.  Bloggers love FEEDBACK.

3. Staying involved, and creating opportunities to lengthen the conversation and relationship.  Once again, showing that the tools and learning from doing CRM can come in mighty handy in our wired world.  Connections matter.

Well done!

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I’m loving the video responses from the Old Spice guy.  You can take a look at the commercials here but the one below is actually a response to a tweeted request -  a guy asked the brand icon to help him propose to his girlfriend.

The Old Spice Guy answers tweets to the Brand’s Twitter account with custom videos - a nice use of engaging media for entertaining and extending your brand.  And it helps that media outlets are LOVING this campaign.

Check out all his custom videos here.

Via Mashable

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David on Demand is a social media experiment that brings the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival to life through the eyes and ears of a young advertising enthusiast David Perez via website with live streaming video. What’s more is that much of what David on Demand experiences at Cannes is directed by people via Twitter. Simply put, you Tweet David a request, he does it and you see it, live.

David on Demand – otherwise known as Leo Burnett Worldwide recruiter David Perez – will don webcam eyeglasses that record and broadcast a live perspective of his adventures at the elite weeklong celebration of global communication initiatives. In addition to webcam glasses, David on Demand is supported by a mobile broadband connection, walkie-talkie, crew, and of course, his Twitter feed.

Twenty-four hours a day throughout the week of the Cannes festival, David on Demand followers, will be able to look through his eyes, browse through his memory bank, but most importantly participate in the fun by Tweeting commands to David. Starting June 21, David on Demand’s every move and Twitter request will be documented at www.davidondemand.com.

It works: David is eating my menu suggestion: Steak Frites.

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This is a great video from Jake McKee (formally LEGO’s Global Community Relations Specialist) discussing how LEGO found, supported and incubated their biggest fans from around the world to help pull the company out of a pretty dark time to be back on top of the world, lead in part, by a strong social media strategy.

Diving into LEGO’s Strategy Behind Connecting Their Amazing Network of Fans — presented by Jake McKee from GasPedal on Vimeo.

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We are often asked whether or not a Global Brand should have just one presence on Global social media platforms. For instance, should there just be one Facebook page for your company?

Facebook prefers to have global brands only have one presence, and says that multiple presences fracture brands, and there are clear benefits to having one central presence -

• Larger numbers of fan/followers and comments – which can showcase the popularity, breadth and power of global brands
• Brand Temperature - a place where the ‘Global Pulse’ of the brand can be felt
• Consistent messaging – which is more easily centrally managed
• Efficiency and scale – in that fewer, more central teams are required for development and management of assets – which can allow smaller markets to get cheaper access to better content than if they had to create it just for their market.

And bear in mind that local promotions and communications can still be done, using market-based status updates and custom tabs that allow for users to select their market and get local content – making the page “Glocal”.

Many brands, however do not choose to implement a global page, but instead (or IN ADDITION TO) use local or market-restricted pages due to complexities like

• Operations - the challenge of planning and executing across markets can be one of the biggest hurdles companies face in creation and management of global platforms, due to the organization needed to corral Brand managers across markets into a unified strategy and editorial calendar.  Along with a strong central agency, some specialist partners can help with planning and implementation.
• Moderation – who will remove offensive posts and users who abuse the page or page visitors?  Moderation guidelines must be set centrally, but we recommend use of local or regionalized community management to ensure that fluent language speakers can catch nuance and hidden needs.
• Escalation – the community management action is generally well equipped to handle escalation, but many markets do not have a Consumer Affairs group ready to be the recipients of complaints or issues from this new channel.
• Legal/policy restrictions – legal variances exist for how companies must treat User Generated Content, and these policies and restrictions are still an emerging area for legal – standards are not fixed yet.
• Product availability – users may be upset when made aware of variances in products by market.  If you have starkly differentiated product lines (Diet Coke versus Coke) or consumer segments (your product fans versus your F1 team fans, moms versus kids), a unified presence may not make sense.
• Relevant content - Good old-fashioned local relevance can be a big factor.  Including language concerns, and if local promotions are a large focus of the page, you may still have some markets not served by global promotions, which can create unhappy users.  Again, a custom tab can help in this case.

Starbucks, for example, has a global site, but offers redirects to international local sites for increased relevance.  Adidas offers a local customization page on their global page, but you can also find Adidas Running, Basketball, and other specialty sites as well.  The oft-discussed Coke maintains one main, fan-powered site, and local market sites do not appear to take advantage of any centrally built applications.

Twitter also presents challenges since localization depends on users turning on location settings or a full profile - a rarity on that platform.  But that will be covered in another post!

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Stretching the idea that your average person is gunning for an endorsement deal from their products and services - Shortbord launches today!

It has good integration with Twitter and Facebook (but who doesn’t?) but I’m not sure that the people who do these kinds of things for money are really the right people to represent brands.  How many times would you read the status updates of someone who was more interested in getting paid for their endorsement than connecting with you?  For how long would they remain your friend?

For Cause Marketing, I think it has potential, simply because the updates are less annoying and interruptive, but Brands should remember that in order to get good ‘friends’ online you have to _act_ like a good friend.

via Thrillist

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A new article from TechCrunch outlines the current fight between Zygna and Facebook on the Credit System that they prefer (require) payments to go through.

The fight is interesting in that Facebook clearly would like to benefit from some of the amazing spend that some loyal users are throwing at the Zygna platforms, but also in regards to Brands who may wish to get in on the action.  When the payment platform that Facebook prefers/requires includes a cut for the ‘house’ then Brands have to think twice about playing.

We’ve spoken about the cost of participation on social platforms before, but this discussion also raises a few new questions about how to measure actions taken on the platform.  We can imagine some of the possible benefits for Brands working with Facebook to utilize, offer and redeem credits - whether or not those credits are bought, or earned through engagement on the platform.  After all, if the value of the experience that we are offering is great enough, why would some virtual currency not change hands? Rewards for positive behaviors may extend to offering these virtual benefits, which will then require more scrutiny as to their ROI than some current offerings/rewards schemes.

Via: TechCrunch

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In their article, Facebook Fans Valued at $3.60 Each, Mashable’s Christina Warren reports on the latest study by Vitrue (also covered in this Adweek article - hmmm this topic seems to have a lot of people interested in it…) showing that the value of a fan can be expressed in “earned media” - or impressions for updates that post to your user’s news feeds.

It’s good to know that there might be some marketers who feel they can relax a little bit now - after all, impressions at least are relatively understood. But the really exciting thing is how much of an iceberg tip it really is - since the actions by users like Commenting, Likes, and Shares are also big influences, and probably still unknown - the blog post just hints at doubling or tripling the impact!

Vitrue is pretty forthcoming about the best practices that we have seen emerge, however, regarding deeper connections and better penetration - no surprise that relevant content, rich media and engaging Acts are the traits of more successful Pages.

It’s a cool time to be working in marketing - and a cool time to be working with clients to determine what the value of participation in the social space means for Brands and their consumers.

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In their article Does Social Media Change Your Agency Relationships? I think the author missed the point.

The article (but more specifically several comments to the article) opines that marketers might need to bring aspects of social media marketing in-house because the agency’s role is to ’spin a marketing message’.

Really?  How old-fashioned is that?  Is this the 50’s?  Is this Mad Men?

I’d agree that the emergence of social media changes relationships, but to say it’s about whether or not your Advertising Agency is involved is to miss the larger change.  Wouldn’t we have to agree as an industry that social media has changed how COMPANIES can/should/must operate?  Not just Agencies, not just Brand Marketers, not just Customer Care and not just PR folks. Ultimately, the smartest marketers and agencies understand that Social is not a channel or even just a strategy, but a reality about how humans live their lives, and sometimes that reality includes Brands. That’s not to say that Brands have to participate in conversations - they don’t.  But realistically the conversation may happen with or without the Brand being a part of it, and therefore a chance missed to make a connection that is fundamentally different from a TV spot.  Social conversation is building relationships and co-creating with consumers, and, for better or worse, it’s a central experience for consumers now.

Brands need more than a strategy and process for what they want to do in Social.  They need partners to bring their values and benefits to life in the space, and processes built by students of Human Behavior to monitor, moderate, and participate in ways that grow and deepen relationships that people have with the Brands that they love.

But don’t get me wrong - the Brand Marketer (or the agency for that matter) that thinks they don’t have to change as well is in for a long, tough road.  In order for successful engagement to be built, the processes of vetting, judging, guiding and responding require commitment and organizational change from both sides of the Marketer-Agency relationship. For one thing, the old model of “take a few weeks to nail the statement and then we’ll run it by legal” doesn’t work when you have to react in real-time.  For another, the demands of an active community can seem like a new call center just opened up for Customer Service folks - it’s always on and they have a lot of questions!

I see it as 5 steps, with mostly shared activities:

1.  Agency(s) and Brand set the strategy, including input from all concerned parties like PR, Consumer Affairs Brand and Senior Management.

2.  The right channel, tools and voice(s) are chosen for each aspect to be participated in, and content creation loops are realized. Smart partner selection rounds out this step.

3.  Guidelines are set that push for flawless execution through whatever delivery channels.

4.  Metrics are implemented to ensure responsible and efficient use of resources (proving out the business case for the investment).

5.  Partners are leveraged to keep up with new opportunities, changes and innovations as they emerge.

The strain on Marketer’s organizations to deal with Social Media is enough without telling them to go it alone.  Why not share the load with your partners?

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In This Article on GigaOM,  Liz Gannes reported on some statements made at the OMMA Global conference by Mark Kvamme, an industry insider, where he basically stated that if marketers harness the power of Social Media, they shouldn’t have to pay for advertising anymore.

It’s a bold statement (which goes over well at industry conferences I hear).  And if you’re interested in the finer points of his argument, feel free to read through Gannes piece which seemed to cover the supporting arguments pretty well (shrewedly highlighting the vested interest the speaker had for at least some of his remarks).  But for the real fun – as happens so often in the online world – DON’T forget to read the comments.

I mean, sure – the idea that some new platforms like Twitter or Facebook or others have low or no cost of entry is wonderful, and when we are convincing stakeholders of opportunities for testing and learning we advise Clients to avoid sinking crazy amounts of money in developing ‘owned’ platforms.  But to take this fact and leap to say that user generated media equates to free marketing is missing some crucial considerations, and it can be misleading for Clients who are entering the space.

1.  Just because you have a message, doesn’t mean anyone wants to hear it. If we start from examining Human Behavior, then - don’t take it personally – no one wants to be ‘friends’ with your Brand’s Mission Statement. Brands should take time and care to determining their place, actions, and voice in social media, and ‘tune’ them in order to participate fluidly and gracefully.  This is not child’s play.  Look at marketers do it consistently well – do they seem to be careless in terms of  their approach?  Are they repeating their :30 tagline on their Facebook page?

2. And just because users can spread your message doesn’t mean that they will. Figuring out why people may want to pass on a message or ask their friends to do something has to be considered in the actual development of what that message or experience is.  This takes time, effort and yes, investment.  In fact you may need to be monitoring the space, because if they are already talking about you, they are quite likely not using your talking points.  And trust me, there are lots of companies out to make money on the fact that these tools need power and utility, as well as smart people to use them. Even Coke’s Facebook success in supporting a pair of fans who started their page is a tribute to targeted investing.  Coke recognized their fans’ serious skills –  then rewarded and supported them.  If passion in the community is there then you’ve got a good shot, but the work doesn’t stop there.

3.  There’s more to it than just ‘do it’. I find comments like ‘Brands just need to harness the power of social media’ or ‘you just need to figure out how to work in this new world’ are pretty glib statements.  Brands can test and learn here, sure, but perhaps an approach might be nice?  Maybe something that starts with questions like, ‘Are my customers using these tools?  Or are the influencers of my customers using these tools?’  Maybe I need to consider producing some content for users to interact with?  Be on the lookout for an article by Michelle Davidson, a colleague of mine, talking about the hidden high cost of User Generated Content.  She and others are talking about behavioral economics and user expectations in social media spaces – and yes, you may have to ‘give to get’. Placing any old content into any old free platform does not constitute a strategic use of social media, nor does it guarantee you an overnight success story in terms of viral buzz.

4. Speaking of viral buzz – just because a video ‘went viral’ does not mean that no money was spent on it. There are actually processes and procedures that marketers and agencies can put in place to help successful videos to spread faster and get into featured lists. And even if the production is done on a dime, the idea needs to be developed in the first place.  But don’t assume the inverse of this thinking proves the rule: your :30 spot may not have viral potential. Too often it is tempting to think that ‘We spent all this money on this commercial – of COURSE it has viral potential.’  Sadly, this may not necessarily be true, and all the preparation in the world can’t make up for the fact that there really are ‘different horses for different courses’.

I could go on and on, like how calling online marketing ‘Advertising’ gets my blood boiling, but in the end I think that a successful marketer will strive to understand the social space and how to use it, which takes investigation, thinking, planning, creativity and yes – investing.  I would agree with the speaker that social media has changed things for marketers hugely, and how they spend their money is one of the most important considerations they have to make right now.  But I don’t think that soundbites about marketing being free are helpful or accurate.  Free doesn’t come cheap.

Disclaimer: I was working in my office during the convention:  I wasn’t there.  Maybe he added some caveats?

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