Pushing another social promotional tool for its shows, NBC is launching a live social stream of conversation called NBC Live that will be synced to live airings of the network's prime-time shows. NBC Live, accessed through mobile devices like the iPad and laptops, will initially work with weekly live events, synced to the on-air broadcasts of the "The Office," "The Celebrity Apprentice," "The Biggest Loser" and the upcoming singing competition show "The Voice," which begins April 26 at 9 p.m. NBC says NBC Live is a moderated live social conversation allowing fans to interact with each other and the NBC Live staff. Fans can also share their comments across Facebook and Twitter and follow other users. NBC Live content features polls, trivia, insider commentary, and character quotes that will also run synced to the broadcast of shows. Actors, writers and others will host special events. For NBC's new big wannabe "American Idol"-type show "The Voice," from producer Mark Burnett, users will be able to vote for their favorite contestants. Vivi Zigler, president of NBCUniversal Digital Entertainment, stated: "We want to provide a place for fans to gather and provide them with unique insider information about each episode as it airs. It creates a live viewing experience that they can't get anywhere else."
Supplanting search engines and other traffic drivers, social networks are sending an increasing share of readers to Web publishers. During the first quarter of the year, Facebook and smaller social players drove 11% of all external referrals -- compared to the 41% sent by search engines -- according to new research by recommendation engine Outbrain. Not too shabby, considering that "most of the traffic sources we identify as 'social' have existed in a meaningful way for less than five years," says David Sasson, Outbrain COO. Of the six content verticals examined, stories in the news, entertainment and lifestyle categories were the most likely to receive traffic from social sources. "We assume that since these categories are heavily influenced by breaking news or what is happening in the zeitgeist, they are more likely to be shared among people's social circle," Sasson said. He was surprised, however, by some rankings -- "sports ranked lowest in the categories we looked at," he said. "We had suspected that people who were fans of specific sports teams would actively seek out other fans and be more active in communicating with each other." Unfortunately for social proponents, traffic coming from social sources had the highest tendency to bounce. "We have a hypotheses about it, but [it's] hard to know for sure," said Sasson. "First, we think that the social network as a starting point for content discovery lends itself to remaining the starting point. For instance, if someone clicks on an article link on Twitter, they are still fundamentally in the mode of checking Twitter updates and likely will return there to see what other articles people are tweeting. So their editorial loyalty is to their network, not to the publisher site they have landed on." By contrast, readers who go from one content site to another -- from USA Today to The Daily Beast -- were most likely to be engaged in what they're reading, presumably because they are already in what Outbrain calls "content consumption mode." Going forward, despite the continued growth of social, "we think trying to find ways to get your content linked from other publishers is, and will be, the most effective way to build a highly engaged audience," Sasson said. "The systems used to power cross promotional activity, however, need to improve to make sure links are well targeted to individual users and audience segments." During the first quarter, links from publisher sites made up 31% of referral traffic to content pages. Portal home pages (AOL.com, Yahoo.com, MSN.com) accounted for 17% of traffic, while social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Fark.com, reddit, Digg) sent 11% of traffic to content pages. News stories, at 42%, were the most likely to receive traffic from social sites -- followed by entertainment stories at 30% and lifestyle stories at 13%. Given the popularity of both Facebook and Twitter, Outbrain thought it was worth comparing their relative traffic quality to see what differences exist. Surprisingly, the two sites drive similarly engaged audiences in terms of page views per session, bounce rates and hyper-engaged reader sessions. The one key difference was in their relative reach, which Outbrain defines as the number of unique visitors per 1,000 sessions. Specifically, a session from Facebook was 40% more likely to be from a unique visitor compared to Twitter, whose audience was more likely to be made up of repeat visitors. For its study, Outbrain pulled a sample data set of 100 million sessions across more than 100 publishers -- defining a session as a series of page views within a publisher site with no more than 30 minutes between one page view and the next. Since Outbrain tracks traffic to content pages, it saw that about 33% of the overall sessions start from an external site. The remaining 67% of content sessions begin internally, from type-in traffic, bookmarks, clicks from the publisher's home page, or other in-site links, or are simply from unknown sources. For its study, it evaluated only the third of sessions that began off-site.
Virgin America is taking social media to new heights with the launch of a Terminal 2 Takeover promotion in conjunction with today's opening of the airline's new home terminal at San Francisco International Airport. A location check-in leaderboard encourages fans to explore the new Virgin America Terminal 2 and check-in via Facebook and Foursquare. The promotion was created by San Francisco-based Context Optional, a social marketing solutions company, using an application that dynamically aggregates and displays mobile phone location check-ins by Facebook and Foursquare users. In order to participate and be featured on the leaderboard, users need to first agree to Facebook's terms of service on the "Terminal 2 Takeover" application located on the Virgin America Facebook Page at Facebook.com/VirginAmerica. Prizes -- such as T-shirts, free WiFi codes and even free flights -- will be awarded to those at the top of the leaderboard. Users will receive status badges based on how many check-ins they have to encourage checking in to multiple locations in T2, according to Jill Okawa Fletcher, social media and communications manager for Virgin America. The social media experience aims to engage consumers and recognize and reward the first users of T2, she adds. The promotion is likely to generate a lot of buzz for the Burlingame, Calif.-based airline, says Henry H. Harteveldt, Forrester Research vice president and principal analyst, airline and travel research. "I like the fact that they are using both Facebook and Foursquare; that's smart. It shows Virgin's ongoing commitment to and engagement with social media, which is a big part of their customers' lives." What's unclear to Harteveldt, however, is how this promo will help the airline make more money. "I think that part of the challenge is, with social at least, how do companies use social to generate revenue?" he says. Virgin is not the only airline using social media in creative ways, he adds. KLM has a noteworthy social media program that includes surprising travelers with gifts and a "secret cities" program. "But Virgin is definitely among the leaders, as they always have been, with the use of social media," Harteveldt says.
Last month, popular Internet voice and chat service Skype rolled out display advertising in advance of its planned IPO. The offering is a pushdown-style unit in the "Home" tab of Skype for Windows, with ads appearing in the U.S., U.K. and Germany to start. As part of the launch, the company also partnered with Meebo to sell advertising for Skype in the U.S. With 145 million average monthly users across the globe, the service has enough potential reach to intrigue marketers. Already on board are major brands, including Visa, Universal, Nokia and Groupon. But how will all those users accustomed to ad-free Skype software respond to high-impact home page ads? Online Media Daily met up with Skype CMO Doug Bewsher to ask about that and other aspects of the company's new ad push. Prior to joining Skype, Bewsher was CMO at Singapore-based mobile social network Mig33, where helped double the number of registered users to 40 million. Prior to that, he held various marketing positions including heading the San Francisco office of digital agency Publicis Modem. OMD: Can you give a quick rundown of Skype's new display ad offering?Bewsher: This is obviously our first step into advertising. What we're offering is a premium home page, masthead advertising space. It's 650-by-170 [pixels] and expandable down, but it doesn't auto play. We could make it auto play, but what's really important for us is to understand how it impacts the user experience. So we're actually testing different ways to do things to see how the engagement is with advertisers, as well as the consumer response. We're going to experiment, but as we go forward we're going to do what's most complementary to the Skype experience. OMD: Given that Skype is a communications tool, is alienating users with advertising a particular concern? Has there been any backlash? Bewsher: We took two years doing research. We definitely haven't seen a backlash on it. Generally, people have said yes -- we understand that by doing advertising you can continue to invest in building out the other products, either group video calling or Skype on the iPhone or what we're doing on the enterprise side. People get that if you're not paying- -- unless you're using SkypeOut -- there's a trade-off between advertising and utility. What we have, and we're offering at the moment, is also something that isn't in the conversation. It's in that space between conversations. OMD: You've signed up some big name brands at launch. What kind of response are you getting from advertisers? Bewsher: What we're seeing is quite a lot of engagement from marketers that have a launch and want to get the word out quite quickly -- to movie studios, cars. They're looking for the broad kind of reach that Skype can give, but with rich media branding. We measure engagement metrics, so we're looking at our video completion rate, and with some of these ads, we're seeing a 90% completion -- very good compared to typical benchmarks. The response from advertisers is actually above initial expectations and several of our advertisers have even already re-booked with us. OMD: Visa has an interesting ad. Can you talk about that as an example of what advertisers are doing on Skype? Bewsher: A lot of people don't know that you can use your Visa debit card to take out cash from an ATM. And what Visa saw with Skype is that a lot of people use it because they're international, especially in the U.S. A lot of people who use Skype have international friends; they travel a lot. So they're connecting with that audience to say, "When you're abroad, why don't you use your Visa debit card to take out cash?" And then it's an interactive unit that shows you where ATMs are locally. They're trying to get the international set that uses Skype to relate to Visa. OMD: What's been the reaction among agencies? Bewsher: In terms of us talking to creatives, we have a big benefit in that almost everyone uses Skype, and we have a very strong love of the product. That opens the door for a lot of conversations. But they still are asking: "How do I make the most of this?" This is actually the first advertising we've launched within the U.S. One of the things we're seeing working with advertisers in the U.S. is that they're really trying to think quite creatively about how to use the tools that Skype offers in different ways. OMD: How do you position Skype compared to other online social platforms or chat tools? Bewsher: Just so you're clear on how this is sold, at the moment, it's a daily takeover. And if you look at the amount of time somebody is spending in Skype, they're spending on average a month, an hour and 28 minutes. And you've got Facebook out there at something like 6:56. But with a very basic advertising unit, it's hard to be dramatically creative there. Then you've got YouTube at the other end -- you can be really creative, but you've got very limited time for engagement. So you've got Skype in the middle -- where people really get engaged -- but at the same time, you can do something creative. Our term for this is the "creative engagement gap." So as a brand, when you think about a lot of time spent and a lot of engagement, what can you do with that? I'd love to solve that problem. OMD: How does advertising fit into the overall revenue picture for Skype? Bewsher: We want to make sure that we have different monetization streams. We launched our premium group video call offering, which is now a subscription-based service. .. and on the enterprise side, we just signed a deal with Citrix. We have Avaya as a reseller, so we're pushing hard on really positioning Skype in the enterprise as well. It's important for us to have multiple revenue streams; it's not going to be one size fits all.
Pinnacle Foods Group's 120-year-old Log Cabin Syrup has just launched its first Facebook page and Twitter feed as part of a campaign promoting Wednesdays as "Breakfast for Dinner Day." The campaign, like other recent Log Cabin efforts, focuses heavily on promoting that the syrup products contain no high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), as well as reinforcing the brand as a "family tradition." Actually, Log Cabin reformulated its Original and Lite varieties to replace HFCS with sugar back in 2009 -- making it, according to the company, the only HFCS-free branded table syrup (there is also a sugar-free variety). But with HFCS-free momentum continuing to build among national brands in a wide range of categories, the claim is clearly becoming an increasingly effective differentiator. This February, to mark "National Hot Breakfast Month," Log Cabin released results of a "Breakfast Table Traditions" family survey. Among other points, the results showed 94% of the 1,000 adult women and men polled by phone confirming that they start the day with breakfast, 56% saying they make a conscious effort to choose breakfast options "they feel good about for themselves and their families," and nearly half (49%) stating that they are trying to remove HFCS from their families' diets. The brand's PR efforts coupled highlights of the survey results with messaging encouraging families to "update their breakfast traditions by sitting down to share a hot breakfast they can feel good about that's high fructose corn syrup-free." More recently, some mommy blogs have been running a "Special Family Breakfast Log Cabin the No High Fructose Corn Syrup Giveaway" contest, with prize packages including the syrups, a cast iron griddle and spatula, and branded placemats and T-shirts. The new PR campaign declaring Wednesdays "Breakfast for Dinner Day" cites additional results from the breakfast traditions survey -- notably, that 60% of respondents indicated they have breakfast for dinner at least once per month. The messaging describes breakfast for dinner as a "fun, fast and affordable way to get the family together on a busy weeknight," again noting the HFCS-free element and the context of Log Cabin as a family tradition. As part of the campaign, the brand is holding fundraisers for regional organizations and in-store sampling events featuring pancake dinners -- and is employing its new Facebook and Twitter presences in part to let consumers know when these events will be coming to their areas. The social media networks are also offering polls related to the breakfast-for-dinner theme (and frequent "no HFCS" mentions in posts). Meanwhile, on a separate front, Log Cabin has been getting heat from Vermont -- specifically, U.S. Rep. Peter Welch and Vermont Agriculture Secretary Roger Allbee -- about Log Cabin All Natural syrup (a blend of sugar and 4% maple syrup), launched last year and promoted as the first nationally distributed all-natural syrup with "no artificial colors or flavors." Last September, Welch and Allbee wrote the Food and Drug Administration, asking it to investigate whether the brand was violating FDA guidelines by marketing the syrup variety as natural, given that it contained ingredients such as caramel color, xanthan gum and citric acid. While emphasizing that All Natural complies with all FDA regulations -- the FDA has never defined "natural," although it has voluntary guidelines regarding adding color (even from a natural source) to a natural product -- Pinnacle Foods quickly responded by agreeing to remove caramel coloring from the product. However, the company pointed out that xanthan gum and citric acid are "natural plant-derived ingredients." Welch and Allbee called the removal of caramel color a "step in the right direction," but continue to maintain that the product's packaging (jugs "nearly identical" to those used by Vermont's maple syrup producers, in their words) and all-natural name mislead consumers into confusing it with real Vermont maple syrup. The Log Cabin product, they said, is often shelved near real maple syrup in stores, whereas table syrups are normally shelved apart from syrups. In the latest volley, Welch and Allbee, saying Log Cabin had "ignored" repeated calls for it to change its packaging, in mid-March sent a letter to top executives at Wal-Mart, Kroger, Costco, Safeway, Supervalu, Hannaford and Price Chopper asking the chains to shelve Log Cabin All Natural apart from real maple syrup.
According to a new study by BtoB, 93% of all b2b marketers are engaged to some extent in social media marketing, with the most-used channel, LinkedIn, employed by 72% of survey respondents. Facebook (71%) and Twitter (67%) are nearly as popular, and together these three form the core of most b2b marketers' social media programs. Methods Currently Used For Social B2B Marketing (% of Respondents; Multiple Response OK) Social Site% of Respondents LinkedIn 72% Facebook 71% Twitter 67% YouTube 48% Blogging 44% Customer Community 22% Flickr 11% Digg 8% Stumbleupon 5% Tumblr 3% Source: BtoB magazine: Emerging Trends in B2B Social Marketing, April 2011 While most marketers engaged in social media are using a combination of channels, there are clear preferences. When marketers were asked to name the single most important method used for b2b outreach, LinkedIn again was the clear leader, chosen by 26% of respondents. Facebook was chosen as the single most important channel by 20% of respondents, with blogging (19%), customer communities (14%) and YouTube (7%) also cited. Despite being widely used overall, Twitter was selected by only 13% of marketers as their single favorite. Dan Rickershauser, marketing researcher with Landslide Technologies, notes that "... there is better attention paid on Facebook as opposed to Twitter... it's a little more clean and controllable... companies that are using Facebook marketing... are still relatively ahead of the pack." Branding is considered the primary strength of Facebook, blogging and YouTube, while customer feedback and researching competitive intelligence are seen as the major strengths of customer communities. The main virtue of professional networking site LinkedIn is its lead-generation power. Customer communities, by contrast, are seen as prime listening posts for marketers and natural ways to solve customer issues. According to the report, the Social Media Marketing Landscape is defined as: · LinkedIn: lead generation, web traffic · Twitter: Short and concise promo; social buzz: see who's talking about you · Blog: Search engine optimization; business and/or idealogy related written content · FaceBook: Branding and event promotions Companies of various sizes were represented in BtoB's survey, although small businesses predominated; 56% of respondents represented companies with an annual revenue of $24 million or less; 23% came from companies with annual revenue of $25 million to $499 million; and 21% represented companies with annual revenue of $500 million or more. Technology companies comprised 22% of the respondents, followed by: · Manufacturing (15%) · Consulting (11%) · Financial services (6%) · Internet/online services (5%) · Advertising (5%) · Publishing/media (5%) · Wholesale trade/distribution (4%) Lack of resources, cited by 70% of respondents, is the single most pressing obstacle to implementing a social media marketing program, says the report. Other hurdles include: 57% cited poorly defined success metrics and key performance indicators, and 44% said "lack of knowledge about social media" is holding them and their companies back. Management resistance, cited by 22%, may stem from the preceding three obstacles. For additional information, please visit B2B Online here.
Pushing another social promotional tool for its shows, NBC is launching a live social stream of conversation called NBC Live that will be synced to live airings of the network's prime-time shows. NBC Live, accessed through mobile devices like the iPad and laptops, will initially work with weekly live events, synced to the on-air broadcasts of the "The Office," "The Celebrity Apprentice," "The Biggest Loser" and the upcoming singing competition show "The Voice," which begins April 26 at 9 p.m. NBC says NBC Live is a moderated live social conversation allowing fans to interact with each other and the NBC Live staff. Fans can also share their comments across Facebook and Twitter and follow other users. NBC Live content features polls, trivia, insider commentary, and character quotes that will also run synced to the broadcast of shows. Actors, writers and others will host special events. For NBC's new big wannabe "American Idol"-type show "The Voice," from producer Mark Burnett, users will be able to vote for their favorite contestants. Vivi Zigler, president of NBCUniversal Digital Entertainment, stated: "We want to provide a place for fans to gather and provide them with unique insider information about each episode as it airs. It creates a live viewing experience that they can't get anywhere else."
Supplanting search engines and other traffic drivers, social networks are sending an increasing share of readers to Web publishers. During the first quarter of the year, Facebook and smaller social players drove 11% of all external referrals -- compared to the 41% sent by search engines -- according to new research by recommendation engine Outbrain. Not too shabby, considering that "most of the traffic sources we identify as 'social' have existed in a meaningful way for less than five years," says David Sasson, Outbrain COO. Of the six content verticals examined, stories in the news, entertainment and lifestyle categories were the most likely to receive traffic from social sources. "We assume that since these categories are heavily influenced by breaking news or what is happening in the zeitgeist, they are more likely to be shared among people's social circle," Sasson said. He was surprised, however, by some rankings -- "sports ranked lowest in the categories we looked at," he said. "We had suspected that people who were fans of specific sports teams would actively seek out other fans and be more active in communicating with each other." Unfortunately for social proponents, traffic coming from social sources had the highest tendency to bounce. "We have a hypotheses about it, but [it's] hard to know for sure," said Sasson. "First, we think that the social network as a starting point for content discovery lends itself to remaining the starting point. For instance, if someone clicks on an article link on Twitter, they are still fundamentally in the mode of checking Twitter updates and likely will return there to see what other articles people are tweeting. So their editorial loyalty is to their network, not to the publisher site they have landed on." By contrast, readers who go from one content site to another -- from USA Today to The Daily Beast -- were most likely to be engaged in what they're reading, presumably because they are already in what Outbrain calls "content consumption mode." Going forward, despite the continued growth of social, "we think trying to find ways to get your content linked from other publishers is, and will be, the most effective way to build a highly engaged audience," Sasson said. "The systems used to power cross promotional activity, however, need to improve to make sure links are well targeted to individual users and audience segments." During the first quarter, links from publisher sites made up 31% of referral traffic to content pages. Portal home pages (AOL.com, Yahoo.com, MSN.com) accounted for 17% of traffic, while social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Fark.com, reddit, Digg) sent 11% of traffic to content pages. News stories, at 42%, were the most likely to receive traffic from social sites -- followed by entertainment stories at 30% and lifestyle stories at 13%. Given the popularity of both Facebook and Twitter, Outbrain thought it was worth comparing their relative traffic quality to see what differences exist. Surprisingly, the two sites drive similarly engaged audiences in terms of page views per session, bounce rates and hyper-engaged reader sessions. The one key difference was in their relative reach, which Outbrain defines as the number of unique visitors per 1,000 sessions. Specifically, a session from Facebook was 40% more likely to be from a unique visitor compared to Twitter, whose audience was more likely to be made up of repeat visitors. For its study, Outbrain pulled a sample data set of 100 million sessions across more than 100 publishers -- defining a session as a series of page views within a publisher site with no more than 30 minutes between one page view and the next. Since Outbrain tracks traffic to content pages, it saw that about 33% of the overall sessions start from an external site. The remaining 67% of content sessions begin internally, from type-in traffic, bookmarks, clicks from the publisher's home page, or other in-site links, or are simply from unknown sources. For its study, it evaluated only the third of sessions that began off-site.
Virgin America is taking social media to new heights with the launch of a Terminal 2 Takeover promotion in conjunction with today's opening of the airline's new home terminal at San Francisco International Airport. A location check-in leaderboard encourages fans to explore the new Virgin America Terminal 2 and check-in via Facebook and Foursquare. The promotion was created by San Francisco-based Context Optional, a social marketing solutions company, using an application that dynamically aggregates and displays mobile phone location check-ins by Facebook and Foursquare users. In order to participate and be featured on the leaderboard, users need to first agree to Facebook's terms of service on the "Terminal 2 Takeover" application located on the Virgin America Facebook Page at Facebook.com/VirginAmerica. Prizes -- such as T-shirts, free WiFi codes and even free flights -- will be awarded to those at the top of the leaderboard. Users will receive status badges based on how many check-ins they have to encourage checking in to multiple locations in T2, according to Jill Okawa Fletcher, social media and communications manager for Virgin America. The social media experience aims to engage consumers and recognize and reward the first users of T2, she adds. The promotion is likely to generate a lot of buzz for the Burlingame, Calif.-based airline, says Henry H. Harteveldt, Forrester Research vice president and principal analyst, airline and travel research. "I like the fact that they are using both Facebook and Foursquare; that's smart. It shows Virgin's ongoing commitment to and engagement with social media, which is a big part of their customers' lives." What's unclear to Harteveldt, however, is how this promo will help the airline make more money. "I think that part of the challenge is, with social at least, how do companies use social to generate revenue?" he says. Virgin is not the only airline using social media in creative ways, he adds. KLM has a noteworthy social media program that includes surprising travelers with gifts and a "secret cities" program. "But Virgin is definitely among the leaders, as they always have been, with the use of social media," Harteveldt says.
Last month, popular Internet voice and chat service Skype rolled out display advertising in advance of its planned IPO. The offering is a pushdown-style unit in the "Home" tab of Skype for Windows, with ads appearing in the U.S., U.K. and Germany to start. As part of the launch, the company also partnered with Meebo to sell advertising for Skype in the U.S. With 145 million average monthly users across the globe, the service has enough potential reach to intrigue marketers. Already on board are major brands, including Visa, Universal, Nokia and Groupon. But how will all those users accustomed to ad-free Skype software respond to high-impact home page ads? Online Media Daily met up with Skype CMO Doug Bewsher to ask about that and other aspects of the company's new ad push. Prior to joining Skype, Bewsher was CMO at Singapore-based mobile social network Mig33, where helped double the number of registered users to 40 million. Prior to that, he held various marketing positions including heading the San Francisco office of digital agency Publicis Modem. OMD: Can you give a quick rundown of Skype's new display ad offering?Bewsher: This is obviously our first step into advertising. What we're offering is a premium home page, masthead advertising space. It's 650-by-170 [pixels] and expandable down, but it doesn't auto play. We could make it auto play, but what's really important for us is to understand how it impacts the user experience. So we're actually testing different ways to do things to see how the engagement is with advertisers, as well as the consumer response. We're going to experiment, but as we go forward we're going to do what's most complementary to the Skype experience. OMD: Given that Skype is a communications tool, is alienating users with advertising a particular concern? Has there been any backlash? Bewsher: We took two years doing research. We definitely haven't seen a backlash on it. Generally, people have said yes -- we understand that by doing advertising you can continue to invest in building out the other products, either group video calling or Skype on the iPhone or what we're doing on the enterprise side. People get that if you're not paying- -- unless you're using SkypeOut -- there's a trade-off between advertising and utility. What we have, and we're offering at the moment, is also something that isn't in the conversation. It's in that space between conversations. OMD: You've signed up some big name brands at launch. What kind of response are you getting from advertisers? Bewsher: What we're seeing is quite a lot of engagement from marketers that have a launch and want to get the word out quite quickly -- to movie studios, cars. They're looking for the broad kind of reach that Skype can give, but with rich media branding. We measure engagement metrics, so we're looking at our video completion rate, and with some of these ads, we're seeing a 90% completion -- very good compared to typical benchmarks. The response from advertisers is actually above initial expectations and several of our advertisers have even already re-booked with us. OMD: Visa has an interesting ad. Can you talk about that as an example of what advertisers are doing on Skype? Bewsher: A lot of people don't know that you can use your Visa debit card to take out cash from an ATM. And what Visa saw with Skype is that a lot of people use it because they're international, especially in the U.S. A lot of people who use Skype have international friends; they travel a lot. So they're connecting with that audience to say, "When you're abroad, why don't you use your Visa debit card to take out cash?" And then it's an interactive unit that shows you where ATMs are locally. They're trying to get the international set that uses Skype to relate to Visa. OMD: What's been the reaction among agencies? Bewsher: In terms of us talking to creatives, we have a big benefit in that almost everyone uses Skype, and we have a very strong love of the product. That opens the door for a lot of conversations. But they still are asking: "How do I make the most of this?" This is actually the first advertising we've launched within the U.S. One of the things we're seeing working with advertisers in the U.S. is that they're really trying to think quite creatively about how to use the tools that Skype offers in different ways. OMD: How do you position Skype compared to other online social platforms or chat tools? Bewsher: Just so you're clear on how this is sold, at the moment, it's a daily takeover. And if you look at the amount of time somebody is spending in Skype, they're spending on average a month, an hour and 28 minutes. And you've got Facebook out there at something like 6:56. But with a very basic advertising unit, it's hard to be dramatically creative there. Then you've got YouTube at the other end -- you can be really creative, but you've got very limited time for engagement. So you've got Skype in the middle -- where people really get engaged -- but at the same time, you can do something creative. Our term for this is the "creative engagement gap." So as a brand, when you think about a lot of time spent and a lot of engagement, what can you do with that? I'd love to solve that problem. OMD: How does advertising fit into the overall revenue picture for Skype? Bewsher: We want to make sure that we have different monetization streams. We launched our premium group video call offering, which is now a subscription-based service. .. and on the enterprise side, we just signed a deal with Citrix. We have Avaya as a reseller, so we're pushing hard on really positioning Skype in the enterprise as well. It's important for us to have multiple revenue streams; it's not going to be one size fits all.
Pinnacle Foods Group's 120-year-old Log Cabin Syrup has just launched its first Facebook page and Twitter feed as part of a campaign promoting Wednesdays as "Breakfast for Dinner Day." The campaign, like other recent Log Cabin efforts, focuses heavily on promoting that the syrup products contain no high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), as well as reinforcing the brand as a "family tradition." Actually, Log Cabin reformulated its Original and Lite varieties to replace HFCS with sugar back in 2009 -- making it, according to the company, the only HFCS-free branded table syrup (there is also a sugar-free variety). But with HFCS-free momentum continuing to build among national brands in a wide range of categories, the claim is clearly becoming an increasingly effective differentiator. This February, to mark "National Hot Breakfast Month," Log Cabin released results of a "Breakfast Table Traditions" family survey. Among other points, the results showed 94% of the 1,000 adult women and men polled by phone confirming that they start the day with breakfast, 56% saying they make a conscious effort to choose breakfast options "they feel good about for themselves and their families," and nearly half (49%) stating that they are trying to remove HFCS from their families' diets. The brand's PR efforts coupled highlights of the survey results with messaging encouraging families to "update their breakfast traditions by sitting down to share a hot breakfast they can feel good about that's high fructose corn syrup-free." More recently, some mommy blogs have been running a "Special Family Breakfast Log Cabin the No High Fructose Corn Syrup Giveaway" contest, with prize packages including the syrups, a cast iron griddle and spatula, and branded placemats and T-shirts. The new PR campaign declaring Wednesdays "Breakfast for Dinner Day" cites additional results from the breakfast traditions survey -- notably, that 60% of respondents indicated they have breakfast for dinner at least once per month. The messaging describes breakfast for dinner as a "fun, fast and affordable way to get the family together on a busy weeknight," again noting the HFCS-free element and the context of Log Cabin as a family tradition. As part of the campaign, the brand is holding fundraisers for regional organizations and in-store sampling events featuring pancake dinners -- and is employing its new Facebook and Twitter presences in part to let consumers know when these events will be coming to their areas. The social media networks are also offering polls related to the breakfast-for-dinner theme (and frequent "no HFCS" mentions in posts). Meanwhile, on a separate front, Log Cabin has been getting heat from Vermont -- specifically, U.S. Rep. Peter Welch and Vermont Agriculture Secretary Roger Allbee -- about Log Cabin All Natural syrup (a blend of sugar and 4% maple syrup), launched last year and promoted as the first nationally distributed all-natural syrup with "no artificial colors or flavors." Last September, Welch and Allbee wrote the Food and Drug Administration, asking it to investigate whether the brand was violating FDA guidelines by marketing the syrup variety as natural, given that it contained ingredients such as caramel color, xanthan gum and citric acid. While emphasizing that All Natural complies with all FDA regulations -- the FDA has never defined "natural," although it has voluntary guidelines regarding adding color (even from a natural source) to a natural product -- Pinnacle Foods quickly responded by agreeing to remove caramel coloring from the product. However, the company pointed out that xanthan gum and citric acid are "natural plant-derived ingredients." Welch and Allbee called the removal of caramel color a "step in the right direction," but continue to maintain that the product's packaging (jugs "nearly identical" to those used by Vermont's maple syrup producers, in their words) and all-natural name mislead consumers into confusing it with real Vermont maple syrup. The Log Cabin product, they said, is often shelved near real maple syrup in stores, whereas table syrups are normally shelved apart from syrups. In the latest volley, Welch and Allbee, saying Log Cabin had "ignored" repeated calls for it to change its packaging, in mid-March sent a letter to top executives at Wal-Mart, Kroger, Costco, Safeway, Supervalu, Hannaford and Price Chopper asking the chains to shelve Log Cabin All Natural apart from real maple syrup.