• by April 8, 2011

Havas Digital, the umbrella group for Havas Media's interactive agencies, says its "Listening Loop" aids brand marketers in achieving social-media success.

Rob Griffin, Havas Digital's global director of product development, says that while optimization for other types of media follows a straight path of steady improvement, optimization in social encounters difficulties because of changes in online dialogue.

Hence the "Listening Loop," a term coined about 10 months ago by Neil Kleiner, head of social media, Havas Media UK. The Loop starts by defining client objectives, moves on to real-time research and insight, then to strategy, implementation and measurement -- and then repeats.

With social media, brands need to strongly differentiate between monitoring and measurement, notes a new Havas Digital "Insight" report "How To Find Social Media Success."

While monitoring the abundance of conversations pertaining to brands helps advertisers understand real-time engagement, the authors (including Griffin and Kleiner) explain that measurement -- against predetermined Key Performance Indicators -- should only be developed based on the monitoring results.

"Monitor everything, but measure only the things that are relevant to the campaign/business objectives," the white paper advises.

The authors caution against setting up Twitter accounts or Facebook pages without clear business objectives; on Facebook, for instance, "no benefit...can be gained by recruiting fans that are not engaging or talking about the brand."

Noting that Facebook has emerged as a space for consumers "to engage mostly with entertainment and Twitter for news/information," the authors write that "creating an incentive for engaging with the brand would work best within a Facebook space, whereas disseminating information and tracking word-of-mouth would work best through a Twitter account."

The report points to two global clients that used each social tool appropriately: a Hyundai World Cup campaign in Brazil and O2Priority tickets in the U.K.

Using both Facebook and Brazil's Facebook-like Orkut to reach pre-existing football fans, "Hyundai engaged in conversations with their followers and stimulated more buzz with prizes." Targeted member goals were surpassed, and "they built a healthy impression of Hyundai within a football fan crowd that will last beyond this World Cup."

O2 rarely tweets only about its product, Havas Digital said, but instead "tends to engage its followers in conversation by personally acknowledging them, offering prizes and asking them to post photos of the O2 events they may have attended." While O2's followers "do not feel they are being used only for marketing purposes," the authors write, the brand "is gathering easily attained information from consumers by...using the platform the same way as their target audience does."

Brazil and the UK are the markets most active in using Havas Digital for complete social media campaigns, Griffin notes. In the U.S., says Micah Nyatsambo, director of emerging technology for Havas Digital's Media Contacts and another of the "Insight" authors, social campaigns tend to be shared between clients and multiple agencies. Media Contacts, due to Havas' "media buying heritage," is usually called upon for paid media, such as Facebook Marketplace and, now, Twitter's Tweets.

A recent example involved Media Contacts using Promoted Tweets for a Volvo campaign created by Havas' Euro RSCG. Consumers, via an iPhone or Android app, could play an augmented reality driving game on YouTube.

Moving forward, Nyatsambo looks forward to creating Adwords-type ads for Twitter. He says they will be unlike search ads because of their interactivity and the nature of the social-media audience.

Griffin, pointing out that tweets are now indexed immediately in search results, added that social, search and mobile "are on a collision course." But, he noted, neither Facebook's or Twitter's mobile apps have ads yet. "They need to figure out how to get ads onto those apps. ... Everyone else is making money [in mobile]."