Brands need to stop shouting at consumers and pull them up on the mountain to stand side by side. That's the message Frank Cooper, senior vice president and chief consumer engagement officer at PepsiCo Americas Beverages, sent attendees Monday during the keynote at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting 2010 in Carlsbad, Calif. "We remain in the middle of a brand marketing crisis," Cooper says, pointing to the rapid pace of loss of brand loyalty that leads to a decline in marketing budgets and return on investments. "The marketing model is failing its most basic mission." The model that most marketers have relied on for 75 years is broken, he says. Now more than ever, brands have an opportunity to become part of consumers' lives. Social media and social graphs will provide the online technology that enables marketers to achieve this goal. Marketers need to create what Cooper calls "identity value" to help consumers define themselves. He points to Pepsi's campaign "you're the Pepsi generation" to connect youth worldwide. Campaigns need the human connection, he says. It's not enough for brands to announce who they are, but rather help consumers define themselves. That basic mission to connect with consumers and help them build identity through the brand will become Pepsi's big push for 2010. To do this, Cooper suggests the industry must take three actions: rethink the fundamentals of brand marketing and make a shift from transactional to identify values, redesign the way marketers approach consumers, and rebuild brand identity around social networks. Not just social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, but through social graphs. It also creates an opportunity for technology companies to step in and create the technology to make this happen. Cooper told MediaPost the biggest challenge to succeed in social media marketing remains gaining access to the available tools to analyze campaigns. He says Pepsi will continue working with individuals at top universities to develop mapping tools to improve analysis. The analysis should help marketers identify the perfect point in which to connect with consumers. He also offered this guidance: Rather than shout down to consumers from high on a pedestal, brands have the opportunity to pull consumers up onto the pedestal with them by creating a meaningful dialog through a variety of platforms that can help consumers live their values. Adding value to people's lives will emerge as the basic way that brands can create that connection. Consumers in turn will reward brands with loyalty. Cooper's mantra to build closer relationships with consumers who love Pepsi led the company's decision not to run an ad in this year's Super Bowl. Not an easy decision after being part of the game for about 25 years. Today, creating a meaningful relationship with consumers requires brands to do something different. In this case it means that Pepsi in 2010 will generate deeper connections with consumers through social media. The decision not to run a Super Bowl ad -- supported by the theory that Pepsi would create and outpace any press the company could have received by running the ad -- proved successful, according to Cooper.
Word-of-mouth recommendations from friends or family remain the most influential resource on advice for those looking to purchase products and services, but overall, search engines are also becoming a trusted source. Young and highly educated consumers say online sources influence their buying decisions at a higher rate compared with the rest of the population, but social media resides down at the bottom of the list, according to a recent survey. Overall, consumers rely less on resources in social sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace, according to a survey from Opinion Research Co., sponsored by ARAnet. "Consumption of media will be increasingly online," says Scott Severson, president of survey sponsor ARAnet. "We are not seeing any indication that online media consumption will slow." Severson believes companies need to have more than one way to reach consumers online because not all will want to have contact via email or social sites. Companies will need search engine optimization (SEO) and paid-search campaign strategies, too. In other words, one campaign message will not resonate with all consumers the same way. Depending on the relationship with the company, Severson says he prefers email marketing. It helps him build a relationship with the brands that know his preferences. Since they know Severson's likes and dislikes, the brands send him relevant information. Severson also is open to building relationships with brands in social media, especially when the site makes him aware of companies he didn't know. When consumers were asked to rate the importance of 14 information sources before deciding on goods and services to buy, younger survey participants between the ages of 18 and 34 and highly educated Americans said they more often look online to search engines, articles, ads, email offerings and social media to find the answers. Overall, among survey participants, 49% who bring home annual salaries of $75,000 or more chose search engines as the preferred choice vs. 39% for all respondents. But break that down into participants between the ages of 25 and 34, and about 50% say they prefer search engines. For the age group 25 to 34, online articles are another trusted source of information, at 39% vs. 28%, respectively. Younger consumers also appreciate information in emails from retailers or manufacturers, at 32% compared with 20% for all respondents. Oddly, younger consumers believe online ads and social media have less influence than search, articles and emails from retailers or manufacturers. In the study, 30% of consumers age 25 to 34 believe online ads are influential, compared with and 31% for social media. Overall, most people participating in the survey -- 59% -- choose personal advice from friends or family members; followed by TV news or other broadcasts at 40%; search engines Google, Bing, Yahoo or Ask at 39%; TV ads, 36%; articles in newspapers or magazines, 33%; newspapers or magazines ads, 31%; online articles, 28%; and radio news or other broadcasts ads, 25%. The remainder of the breakdown follows. Direct mail came in at 24%; radio ads, 20%; emails from retailers or manufacturers, 20%; online ads, 19%; messages or posts on social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or MySpace, 18 percent; and billboards, 15%. The results are based on 1,029 interviews conducted by Opinion Research Corp. online from Jan. 7-8, 2010 among a demographically representative U.S. sample of adults 18 years of age or older.
How does the average college kid's social sphere equate to contacts across all digital channels? Exactly 87 email contacts, 146 cell phone contacts, and 438 "friends" on social networks. Without factoring in contact overlap, that means every student in the nation has a potential reach of 671 consumers, according to a new "University of Media" study conducted by Mindshare's Business Planning group in partnership with Alloy Media + Marketing and Brainjuicer. The study -- which examined where, when and how U.S. college students are using communication channels -- found that college men have more email and cell phone contacts, while their female peers have a much greater number of social network friends. "College women tend to be more sociable than the guys," said Debbie Solomon, managing director of Business Planning at Mindshare. "They have more friends and connect with them more frequently and in greater depth ... And when you think about all the contacts they have, it's easy to see how news and ideas can spread rapidly among this group." Of particular note, students aren't only "friending" people. On the contrary, four out of every 10 college students report having "friended" a brand on a social network -- compared to 19% of adults. Also, as unbelievable as it sounds, the study found that college students have an average of 14.3 screens (!) -- vastly more than the 5.8 screens that the average adult incorporates into his or her life. Three digital channels -- TV, the Web, and cell phones -- presently dominate students' lives. According to Solomon: "These media represent the primary ways that brands can communicate with them." What's more -- for brands, friends, and parents alike -- digital channels are now the primary means of reaching college students. Text messaging is their most common method of communication, while only 29% prefer face-to-face communication. Meanwhile, the vast majority -- 92% -- of college kids have watched at least one full TV program on the computer during the past year. A full 83% report accessing shows through a Web site associated with the program, 63% watched on a site "premium" like Hulu or Joost, while 54% used YouTube or another video-sharing site. During the study, 144 students between the ages of 18 and 24 were interviewed via hourly text messages over a two-day period. Survey questions prompted participants to respond with their current location, media they are interacting with at that moment, and any advertising in sight. The methodology concluded with an online survey to further explore consumption behavior and media exposure.
A client recently presented us with the ultimate challenge: over a short time frame (one month), show us what social media can do in comparison to AdWords. If you have any dealings at all with social media, you'll know this is nearly an impossible task. Social media is, by definition, social. It is designed to result in earned attention and permission marketing. This means that social media strategies tend to fall into one of two camps: "stunt" or "sniper" strategies (where a dramatic stunt or campaign is implemented in the hopes it will go viral) and "relationship" strategies (where time is invested up front in earning the right to leverage the relationship for business results). Our company's core expertise lies in relationship strategies; however, 30 days of relationship-building doesn't go very far towards the bottom line. North Carolina social media agency Ignite uses a 90-day rule of thumb before expecting social media to begin returning results. So the brief nature of the trial required more of a sniper, stunt approach. So, on the understanding that what you measure (in this case, clicks) determines how you behave, we focused on activities that centered around social media (bloggers), but used a more traditional public relations strategy. In order to show the best results possible for the brief time period, we contacted bloggers the same way a traditional PR firm might contact them, and sought to get them to embed the client's existing videos, review their products, and link to the Web site. There is significant value in PR-type outreach to bloggers; any review in a major blog will drive more traffic than the commensurate amount spent on AdWords. The long-term issue is one of predictability and sustainability. Traffic will spike following that review, but then that channel is saturated for the next six months or so, begging the question: how can you base any sort of forward planning on that kind of exposure? One thing paid search is great at is predictability. "We pay 93 cents per click," an AdWords aficionado will tell you. "Can social media beat that?" The answer, of course, is, "It depends." If your social media campaign is successful, it has the potential to generate the kind of exponential exposure paid search can only dream of. If it is unsuccessful, well, it dies. And so the question of ROI rears its necessary head, along with the question of how to make an apples-to-apples comparison. How, for example, do you measure 100 clicks from AdWords against 72 clicks, 27 retweets, seven Facebook mentions, and two forum threads? The answer lies in a paraphrased idiom: "In God we trust; everything else we test." Over time, you may find that 2% of your AdWords traffic converts to purchase while 7% of your social traffic converts -- or vice versa. There are topics that lend themselves more to the kind of lifestyle marketing social media offers, while there are others ("Mesothelioma" comes to mind) that are better suited to search. What is important is that your tests and comparisons be adapted to the environment they're testing. There's very little benefit to be had in comparing the number of clicks generated from a month of social media activity to the number of clicks generated from an AdWords campaign. If you want a horse, buy a horse. But don't expect your horse to be a chicken, and don't blame it when it doesn't cluck. Have you done any comparisons between social media and paid search? I'd love to hear about them, either here or @kcolbin!
Wanted: Tall, blue, handsome site with over 100 million friends who will invite me to your party. -- A. Marketer There have been so many big numbers tossed out about Facebook lately, you'd think the site was in the lottery business. Fellow columnist Cathy Taylor last week mentioned how Facebook provides nearly 8% of the traffic to Google and Yahoo, and how people spend more than three times as long as Facebook as on any other site. Days earlier, Facebook celebrated crossing the 400 million user mark. The number that stands out the most to me is this one: 100 million. That's how many mobile users access Facebook across a range of devices -- actually, it's more than that, and growing daily. The safe bet is in time that the mobile user base will nearly mirror the overall user base, and that most of its usage will derive from mobile users. Facebook is in an especially strong position to benefit from the mobile boom, as mobile measurement firm Ground Truth noted this month that 61% of mobile Web pageviews are served by social networking sites. Facebook is second to MySpace on Ground Truth's January list of top ten mobile sites ranked by page views, with other entries including Mocospace, FunForMobile, AirG, Cellufun, Mbuzzy, and Myxer (Google and Yahoo made the list too). The firm noted, "Just as eBay, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter popped up seemingly out of nowhere to join the top ranks of the wired Web, there is no doubt that some of the mobile Web startups from today or tomorrow will be standalone companies in the top 10 mobile Web sites of 2020." Some of that reasoning's a stretch. I talked to one mobile vendor recently whose business was largely based on feature phones, the catch-all category for anything that's not a smart phone. He said that they'll milk the much larger feature phone user base for the time being, and when that dries up and everyone's on smart phones, they hope to adapt to the new marketplace. Many such companies won't make it. The feature phone market will be alive and well for some time, in the U.S. and abroad, and Facebook even just launched Zero, a completely scaled-back mobile site for those with bandwidth issues. That has to rattle marketers a little. The whole promise of mobile was that it would open up new audiences who could be targeted wherever they were. Yet Facebook offers nothing like that. How dare Facebook scale down its site even more for mobile users! It's not like users could see ads or even easily access Pages before. Where are the homepage ads? What about geotargeted mobile alerts? Come on, Zuckerberg, give us something! Lisa Foote, commenting on Cathy's article, summed it up well: "Making the hill even steeper to climb is consumers' increasing use of Facebook via mobile devices... Marketers who are already late to the social media party are going to find it's not a static target --- making it even harder for them to catch up in 2010." It's especially hard when there's no proscribed way to market to these users. That's going to change, of course. It might not change for Zero anytime soon, which is more of an issue for global marketers, especially in emerging markets where the need for Zero should be strongest. The most lightweight versions of Facebook's mobile site won't appeal to its frequent users who appreciate many of the features available on the Web. So what about Facebook for iPhone, with 27 million active users, or Facebook for BlackBerry, with 15 million monthly active users? What's taking Facebook so long? First, they're biding their time and growing their user base. No one's forcing their hand here, as they've gotten to 400 million users without caring too much about what others think of them. The second is that they're waiting to pull the trigger on an ad model that makes sense for their specific site and how it's used. Facebook just dropped Microsoft's banner ads on its site because they weren't contributing to the Facebook experience. The engagement ads and self-service ads running currently are customized to work for Facebook, not anyone else, creating a new experience for consumers without totally reinventing the wheel on the back end for marketers. Expect Facebook mobile ads to be built from the ground up. No matter how long Facebook takes, marketers with mobile applications can currently take advantage of Facebook Connect. Any app that incorporates content sharing, messaging, or finding friends can use Connect to grow the app's audience and increase users' engagement with it. In some cases, Connect will be the predominant reason an app gets any social traction. Beyond the app scene though, marketers have to go stag. Facebook's perfectly happy expanding its audience of 100 million mobile friends and doesn't want any chaperones butting in yet.
Brands need to stop shouting at consumers and pull them up on the mountain to stand side by side. That's the message Frank Cooper, senior vice president and chief consumer engagement officer at PepsiCo Americas Beverages, sent attendees Monday during the keynote at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting 2010 in Carlsbad, Calif. "We remain in the middle of a brand marketing crisis," Cooper says, pointing to the rapid pace of loss of brand loyalty that leads to a decline in marketing budgets and return on investments. "The marketing model is failing its most basic mission." The model that most marketers have relied on for 75 years is broken, he says. Now more than ever, brands have an opportunity to become part of consumers' lives. Social media and social graphs will provide the online technology that enables marketers to achieve this goal. Marketers need to create what Cooper calls "identity value" to help consumers define themselves. He points to Pepsi's campaign "you're the Pepsi generation" to connect youth worldwide. Campaigns need the human connection, he says. It's not enough for brands to announce who they are, but rather help consumers define themselves. That basic mission to connect with consumers and help them build identity through the brand will become Pepsi's big push for 2010. To do this, Cooper suggests the industry must take three actions: rethink the fundamentals of brand marketing and make a shift from transactional to identify values, redesign the way marketers approach consumers, and rebuild brand identity around social networks. Not just social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, but through social graphs. It also creates an opportunity for technology companies to step in and create the technology to make this happen. Cooper told MediaPost the biggest challenge to succeed in social media marketing remains gaining access to the available tools to analyze campaigns. He says Pepsi will continue working with individuals at top universities to develop mapping tools to improve analysis. The analysis should help marketers identify the perfect point in which to connect with consumers. He also offered this guidance: Rather than shout down to consumers from high on a pedestal, brands have the opportunity to pull consumers up onto the pedestal with them by creating a meaningful dialog through a variety of platforms that can help consumers live their values. Adding value to people's lives will emerge as the basic way that brands can create that connection. Consumers in turn will reward brands with loyalty. Cooper's mantra to build closer relationships with consumers who love Pepsi led the company's decision not to run an ad in this year's Super Bowl. Not an easy decision after being part of the game for about 25 years. Today, creating a meaningful relationship with consumers requires brands to do something different. In this case it means that Pepsi in 2010 will generate deeper connections with consumers through social media. The decision not to run a Super Bowl ad -- supported by the theory that Pepsi would create and outpace any press the company could have received by running the ad -- proved successful, according to Cooper.
Word-of-mouth recommendations from friends or family remain the most influential resource on advice for those looking to purchase products and services, but overall, search engines are also becoming a trusted source. Young and highly educated consumers say online sources influence their buying decisions at a higher rate compared with the rest of the population, but social media resides down at the bottom of the list, according to a recent survey. Overall, consumers rely less on resources in social sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace, according to a survey from Opinion Research Co., sponsored by ARAnet. "Consumption of media will be increasingly online," says Scott Severson, president of survey sponsor ARAnet. "We are not seeing any indication that online media consumption will slow." Severson believes companies need to have more than one way to reach consumers online because not all will want to have contact via email or social sites. Companies will need search engine optimization (SEO) and paid-search campaign strategies, too. In other words, one campaign message will not resonate with all consumers the same way. Depending on the relationship with the company, Severson says he prefers email marketing. It helps him build a relationship with the brands that know his preferences. Since they know Severson's likes and dislikes, the brands send him relevant information. Severson also is open to building relationships with brands in social media, especially when the site makes him aware of companies he didn't know. When consumers were asked to rate the importance of 14 information sources before deciding on goods and services to buy, younger survey participants between the ages of 18 and 34 and highly educated Americans said they more often look online to search engines, articles, ads, email offerings and social media to find the answers. Overall, among survey participants, 49% who bring home annual salaries of $75,000 or more chose search engines as the preferred choice vs. 39% for all respondents. But break that down into participants between the ages of 25 and 34, and about 50% say they prefer search engines. For the age group 25 to 34, online articles are another trusted source of information, at 39% vs. 28%, respectively. Younger consumers also appreciate information in emails from retailers or manufacturers, at 32% compared with 20% for all respondents. Oddly, younger consumers believe online ads and social media have less influence than search, articles and emails from retailers or manufacturers. In the study, 30% of consumers age 25 to 34 believe online ads are influential, compared with and 31% for social media. Overall, most people participating in the survey -- 59% -- choose personal advice from friends or family members; followed by TV news or other broadcasts at 40%; search engines Google, Bing, Yahoo or Ask at 39%; TV ads, 36%; articles in newspapers or magazines, 33%; newspapers or magazines ads, 31%; online articles, 28%; and radio news or other broadcasts ads, 25%. The remainder of the breakdown follows. Direct mail came in at 24%; radio ads, 20%; emails from retailers or manufacturers, 20%; online ads, 19%; messages or posts on social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or MySpace, 18 percent; and billboards, 15%. The results are based on 1,029 interviews conducted by Opinion Research Corp. online from Jan. 7-8, 2010 among a demographically representative U.S. sample of adults 18 years of age or older.
How does the average college kid's social sphere equate to contacts across all digital channels? Exactly 87 email contacts, 146 cell phone contacts, and 438 "friends" on social networks. Without factoring in contact overlap, that means every student in the nation has a potential reach of 671 consumers, according to a new "University of Media" study conducted by Mindshare's Business Planning group in partnership with Alloy Media + Marketing and Brainjuicer. The study -- which examined where, when and how U.S. college students are using communication channels -- found that college men have more email and cell phone contacts, while their female peers have a much greater number of social network friends. "College women tend to be more sociable than the guys," said Debbie Solomon, managing director of Business Planning at Mindshare. "They have more friends and connect with them more frequently and in greater depth ... And when you think about all the contacts they have, it's easy to see how news and ideas can spread rapidly among this group." Of particular note, students aren't only "friending" people. On the contrary, four out of every 10 college students report having "friended" a brand on a social network -- compared to 19% of adults. Also, as unbelievable as it sounds, the study found that college students have an average of 14.3 screens (!) -- vastly more than the 5.8 screens that the average adult incorporates into his or her life. Three digital channels -- TV, the Web, and cell phones -- presently dominate students' lives. According to Solomon: "These media represent the primary ways that brands can communicate with them." What's more -- for brands, friends, and parents alike -- digital channels are now the primary means of reaching college students. Text messaging is their most common method of communication, while only 29% prefer face-to-face communication. Meanwhile, the vast majority -- 92% -- of college kids have watched at least one full TV program on the computer during the past year. A full 83% report accessing shows through a Web site associated with the program, 63% watched on a site "premium" like Hulu or Joost, while 54% used YouTube or another video-sharing site. During the study, 144 students between the ages of 18 and 24 were interviewed via hourly text messages over a two-day period. Survey questions prompted participants to respond with their current location, media they are interacting with at that moment, and any advertising in sight. The methodology concluded with an online survey to further explore consumption behavior and media exposure.