Marketers may soon add Pinterest into their attribution strategy. Studies have demonstrated the social site's ability to generate leads. Now a recent study suggests it prompts consumers to make purchases. Some 21% of respondents to a recent survey with a Pinterest account have purchased a product after seeing a picture on the site. The PriceGrabber survey of 4,851 U.S. online consumers conducted between March 13 and 26 reveals that respondents who purchased a product based on seeing it strictly on Pinterest were asked to select all items purchased: 33% said food and cooking; 32%, fashion and clothing; 30%, home decorating; and 26%, crafts. Some 37% of Pinterest account holders log in a few times weekly and most have created between two and five Pinboards; 28% said they log in a few times a month; 15%, once daily; 10%, a few times a year; and another 10%, numerous times a day. When Pinterest account holders were asked how many Pinboards they have created, 29% said between two and five; 26%, between six and 10; 19%, none; 16%, one; and 10%, more than 10. Searching for recipes remains the favorite interest. Some 70% of Pinterest account holders cite cooking and recipes as the top item pinned. When respondents with a Pinterest account were asked to select all of the types of items they pin, 70% cited cooking inspiration and recipes; 65%, home decorating; 53%, craft ideas; 41%, fashion and shopping ideas; 34%, entertaining ideas; and 33%, gardening. Even with all this action and multiple surveys chronicling success on Pinterest, there's still a lot of room for growth. Some 58% of consumers do not have a Pinterest account. Some 32% said they are not familiar with Pinterest. Of the respondents who do not have an account, 89% do not plan to sign up for one. Facebook and Twitter remain more popular than Pinterest. Of the survey respondents with a Pinterest account, 98% said they also have a Facebook and/or Twitter account. Of those respondents with a Facebook and/or Twitter account, 77% said they do not log in to Pinterest more than Facebook and/or Twitter; 12% said they log in the same amount, and only 11% log in to Pinterest more.
After finding itself at the center of a political controversy earlier this month, Ohio Art, maker of Etch A Sketch, has moved quickly to capitalize on having its name in the news by creating a social marketing program that ties directly to the controversy while encouraging voting. “This is one of those things that you work for,” Scott Mills, director of digital for Ohio Art’s agency, Team Detroit, tells Marketing Daily. “It’s a prime example of how digital and social can move quickly.” Earlier in March, Eric Fehrnstrom, an advisor for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, likened the campaign’s primary strategy to playing with the toy, saying: “It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.” Romney’s opponents quickly jumped on the statement, and the comparison become the subject of cable news (and late-night comedy) fodder. Rather than let the moment pass, Etch A Sketch jumped into the debate, sending out a series of three ads via Facebook and Twitter, saying that the brand was staying neutral in the presidential race. The ads feature the iconic product with headlines such as “Etch A Sketch is a lot like politics, there’s a lot of gray area,” and “We have a left knob and a right knob for each political party (But remember, when we both work together, we can do loop de loops).” “It’s the promise of digital that everyone has been hearing about for the past 10 years,” Mills says of the campaign -- “to come up with great, crisp, sharp ideas to be part of the conversation and stay on message.” Each of the ads drives consumers to a newly redesigned Web portal, that encourages people to “Shake It Up, America.” On the portal, people are encouraged to “exercise their freedom of expression,” and register to vote. In the near future, the company promises, consumers will also have the ability to buy either a blue or red Etch A Sketch, depending on their political leanings.
The National Hockey League and Electronic Arts Inc. are partnering for a promotional campaign in which consumers’ input will decide the cover of EA Sports’ NHL digital game. The effort, "Cover Vote Campaign," also involves BlackBerry. More on that later. The program will be in two rounds, followed by a 16-player bracket where a field of 60 NHL players is narrowed down to one. The winning player gets the spotlight as the EA Sports NHL 13 Cover Athlete at the 2012 NHL Awards on June 20 at the Wynn Las Vegas in Las Vegas. The consumer interface, at NHL.com/CoverVote, lets people vote as often as they wish, but there's also a social media element on Facebook and Twitter, where people can chat up their picks using #NHL13Cover. The list of candidates participating in the campaign features NHL scoring leader Evgeni Malkin, 2011 Hart Trophy winner Corey Perry, NHL All-Stars and some of the most popular players in the NHL. Keith Wachtel, SVP of integrated sales at the NHL, says fans can also vote on mobile devices and tablets. He tells Marketing Daily that EA, an NHL partner, approached the League with the cross-promotion idea -- an approach they had done with the NFL. "They came to us asking if we wanted to support it, and of course we said yes. The [EA NHL] video game is the biggest [digital] hockey game and the biggest digital sports game of any kind in Canada." Wachtel points out that what makes this program different from two-partner, cross-promotional relationships such as that -- well, it isn't just a two-partner relationship. "We were able to work with EA to bring on NHL sponsor BlackBerry to help with the effort," he says. "That enabled us to create more exposure through a promotion that BlackBerry is going to provide." He says that, unlike EA's partnership with the NFL around the Madden series, which involves ESPN as media partner, NHL is keeping media in-house on its NHL channels. "As a league, we always try to work to find ways that our partners work together to cross promote and enhance their programs." The EA/NHL partnership, which also involves the NHL Players Association, runs through the post season, which Wachtel says is the right time to keep fans engaged. "This is the critical time of the year for NHL," he says. "We are engaging fans at a critical time of the year and letting them engage with players; the real proof is in numbers. On the first day this came out [March 29], we surpassed two million votes. It's well beyond, collectively, what we thought would happen." The NHL network will run online ads on TV and online to promote the competition. The effort will also get support from editorial content on the NHL network and via an element of the social media campaign that involves the nominated players tweeting about why they deserve to make the cover of EA Sports NHL 13. "It's great when players are invested, and taking time to participate," says Wachtel, who adds that local broadcasters and the individual clubs will support the program with an assist from the League, which will provide teams with commercial web banners and ad creative. "Clubs are doing their own promotional activity but we are giving them assets," he says. The promotion ends in early June when the NHL announces who won the cover athlete competition during the NHL Awards in Las Vegas. A consumer promotion dangles a trip to the event, where the winner gets to meet the athletes and be part of the experience.
While TV programmers and third parties are scrambling around to craft second-screen experiences that capture TV viewers on smartphones and tablets, the viewers themselves may already have found their favorite second screens on existing social networks. “Users are ahead of service providers in this respect,” says Informa Principal Analyst Nick Thomas in a recent report on the future of TV worldwide. “Many [are] already using Facebook and Twitter and other tools to communicate via the handheld devices about the content they are simultaneously viewing on the TV,” he writes. Facebook potentially has an enormous role in the evolution of social TV on a number of levels, Thomas argues. The social network can help broadcasters retain audiences with added value for live content experiences even as over-the-top video and time-shifting behaviors erode old viewing activities. At the same time, TV on-demand entities like Netflix could use Facebook to cultivate communities around on-demand content. But Facebook could itself become a social TV platform, with video and social interactions running in parallel. In an Informa survey of TV, telecom and Internet executives, social networks were considered by 21.8% of respondents to be the types of companies that can persuade users to pay for digital content. Only 16.8% cited network operators like telcos as likely platforms for paid content, while 27.7% pointed to over-the-top services like Netflix and the largest share cited device manufacturers like Apple, Sony and Samsung. The big content winners are likely to be entertainment, cited by almost 40% of executives as representing the greatest opportunity for increasing viewer engagement. Sports and news and weather were seen as the biggest opportunity by 27.5% and 14.8% of respondents, respectively. But movies (9%) generally were not regarded as a strong content type around which to generate social engagement. Tablets emerged as the most important second screen among the executives surveyed, with 41.4% saying that tablets would be the dominant tool viewers would employ to access social TV features. 35% cited smartphones as most important; 15.3% said PCs and laptops. Significantly, only 8.6% of the executives surveyed felt that social TV interaction would occur on the TV screen itself. The results suggest just how far the industry has been moved by mobile and portable devices away from pre-existing “Interactive TV” models. Informa recommends that all of the stakeholders in future TV not rely solely on their own social networks and apps to develop social TV strategies. “[They] need to create a portfolio of external partners, including Facebook, to ensure their social offering is relevant to viewers’ needs. “ Informa also recommends that programmers build viable social TV ad models that work off of the main TV display. The second screen is where advertisers can more precisely target and segment the TV audience. It is “vital to future TV revenues, as old advertising models based on a mass audience become increasingly devalued,” Thomas writes.
Marketers may soon add Pinterest into their attribution strategy. Studies have demonstrated the social site's ability to generate leads. Now a recent study suggests it prompts consumers to make purchases. Some 21% of respondents to a recent survey with a Pinterest account have purchased a product after seeing a picture on the site. The PriceGrabber survey of 4,851 U.S. online consumers conducted between March 13 and 26 reveals that respondents who purchased a product based on seeing it strictly on Pinterest were asked to select all items purchased: 33% said food and cooking; 32%, fashion and clothing; 30%, home decorating; and 26%, crafts. Some 37% of Pinterest account holders log in a few times weekly and most have created between two and five Pinboards; 28% said they log in a few times a month; 15%, once daily; 10%, a few times a year; and another 10%, numerous times a day. When Pinterest account holders were asked how many Pinboards they have created, 29% said between two and five; 26%, between six and 10; 19%, none; 16%, one; and 10%, more than 10. Searching for recipes remains the favorite interest. Some 70% of Pinterest account holders cite cooking and recipes as the top item pinned. When respondents with a Pinterest account were asked to select all of the types of items they pin, 70% cited cooking inspiration and recipes; 65%, home decorating; 53%, craft ideas; 41%, fashion and shopping ideas; 34%, entertaining ideas; and 33%, gardening. Even with all this action and multiple surveys chronicling success on Pinterest, there's still a lot of room for growth. Some 58% of consumers do not have a Pinterest account. Some 32% said they are not familiar with Pinterest. Of the respondents who do not have an account, 89% do not plan to sign up for one. Facebook and Twitter remain more popular than Pinterest. Of the survey respondents with a Pinterest account, 98% said they also have a Facebook and/or Twitter account. Of those respondents with a Facebook and/or Twitter account, 77% said they do not log in to Pinterest more than Facebook and/or Twitter; 12% said they log in the same amount, and only 11% log in to Pinterest more.
After finding itself at the center of a political controversy earlier this month, Ohio Art, maker of Etch A Sketch, has moved quickly to capitalize on having its name in the news by creating a social marketing program that ties directly to the controversy while encouraging voting. “This is one of those things that you work for,” Scott Mills, director of digital for Ohio Art’s agency, Team Detroit, tells Marketing Daily. “It’s a prime example of how digital and social can move quickly.” Earlier in March, Eric Fehrnstrom, an advisor for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, likened the campaign’s primary strategy to playing with the toy, saying: “It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.” Romney’s opponents quickly jumped on the statement, and the comparison become the subject of cable news (and late-night comedy) fodder. Rather than let the moment pass, Etch A Sketch jumped into the debate, sending out a series of three ads via Facebook and Twitter, saying that the brand was staying neutral in the presidential race. The ads feature the iconic product with headlines such as “Etch A Sketch is a lot like politics, there’s a lot of gray area,” and “We have a left knob and a right knob for each political party (But remember, when we both work together, we can do loop de loops).” “It’s the promise of digital that everyone has been hearing about for the past 10 years,” Mills says of the campaign -- “to come up with great, crisp, sharp ideas to be part of the conversation and stay on message.” Each of the ads drives consumers to a newly redesigned Web portal, that encourages people to “Shake It Up, America.” On the portal, people are encouraged to “exercise their freedom of expression,” and register to vote. In the near future, the company promises, consumers will also have the ability to buy either a blue or red Etch A Sketch, depending on their political leanings.
The National Hockey League and Electronic Arts Inc. are partnering for a promotional campaign in which consumers’ input will decide the cover of EA Sports’ NHL digital game. The effort, "Cover Vote Campaign," also involves BlackBerry. More on that later. The program will be in two rounds, followed by a 16-player bracket where a field of 60 NHL players is narrowed down to one. The winning player gets the spotlight as the EA Sports NHL 13 Cover Athlete at the 2012 NHL Awards on June 20 at the Wynn Las Vegas in Las Vegas. The consumer interface, at NHL.com/CoverVote, lets people vote as often as they wish, but there's also a social media element on Facebook and Twitter, where people can chat up their picks using #NHL13Cover. The list of candidates participating in the campaign features NHL scoring leader Evgeni Malkin, 2011 Hart Trophy winner Corey Perry, NHL All-Stars and some of the most popular players in the NHL. Keith Wachtel, SVP of integrated sales at the NHL, says fans can also vote on mobile devices and tablets. He tells Marketing Daily that EA, an NHL partner, approached the League with the cross-promotion idea -- an approach they had done with the NFL. "They came to us asking if we wanted to support it, and of course we said yes. The [EA NHL] video game is the biggest [digital] hockey game and the biggest digital sports game of any kind in Canada." Wachtel points out that what makes this program different from two-partner, cross-promotional relationships such as that -- well, it isn't just a two-partner relationship. "We were able to work with EA to bring on NHL sponsor BlackBerry to help with the effort," he says. "That enabled us to create more exposure through a promotion that BlackBerry is going to provide." He says that, unlike EA's partnership with the NFL around the Madden series, which involves ESPN as media partner, NHL is keeping media in-house on its NHL channels. "As a league, we always try to work to find ways that our partners work together to cross promote and enhance their programs." The EA/NHL partnership, which also involves the NHL Players Association, runs through the post season, which Wachtel says is the right time to keep fans engaged. "This is the critical time of the year for NHL," he says. "We are engaging fans at a critical time of the year and letting them engage with players; the real proof is in numbers. On the first day this came out [March 29], we surpassed two million votes. It's well beyond, collectively, what we thought would happen." The NHL network will run online ads on TV and online to promote the competition. The effort will also get support from editorial content on the NHL network and via an element of the social media campaign that involves the nominated players tweeting about why they deserve to make the cover of EA Sports NHL 13. "It's great when players are invested, and taking time to participate," says Wachtel, who adds that local broadcasters and the individual clubs will support the program with an assist from the League, which will provide teams with commercial web banners and ad creative. "Clubs are doing their own promotional activity but we are giving them assets," he says. The promotion ends in early June when the NHL announces who won the cover athlete competition during the NHL Awards in Las Vegas. A consumer promotion dangles a trip to the event, where the winner gets to meet the athletes and be part of the experience.
While TV programmers and third parties are scrambling around to craft second-screen experiences that capture TV viewers on smartphones and tablets, the viewers themselves may already have found their favorite second screens on existing social networks. “Users are ahead of service providers in this respect,” says Informa Principal Analyst Nick Thomas in a recent report on the future of TV worldwide. “Many [are] already using Facebook and Twitter and other tools to communicate via the handheld devices about the content they are simultaneously viewing on the TV,” he writes. Facebook potentially has an enormous role in the evolution of social TV on a number of levels, Thomas argues. The social network can help broadcasters retain audiences with added value for live content experiences even as over-the-top video and time-shifting behaviors erode old viewing activities. At the same time, TV on-demand entities like Netflix could use Facebook to cultivate communities around on-demand content. But Facebook could itself become a social TV platform, with video and social interactions running in parallel. In an Informa survey of TV, telecom and Internet executives, social networks were considered by 21.8% of respondents to be the types of companies that can persuade users to pay for digital content. Only 16.8% cited network operators like telcos as likely platforms for paid content, while 27.7% pointed to over-the-top services like Netflix and the largest share cited device manufacturers like Apple, Sony and Samsung. The big content winners are likely to be entertainment, cited by almost 40% of executives as representing the greatest opportunity for increasing viewer engagement. Sports and news and weather were seen as the biggest opportunity by 27.5% and 14.8% of respondents, respectively. But movies (9%) generally were not regarded as a strong content type around which to generate social engagement. Tablets emerged as the most important second screen among the executives surveyed, with 41.4% saying that tablets would be the dominant tool viewers would employ to access social TV features. 35% cited smartphones as most important; 15.3% said PCs and laptops. Significantly, only 8.6% of the executives surveyed felt that social TV interaction would occur on the TV screen itself. The results suggest just how far the industry has been moved by mobile and portable devices away from pre-existing “Interactive TV” models. Informa recommends that all of the stakeholders in future TV not rely solely on their own social networks and apps to develop social TV strategies. “[They] need to create a portfolio of external partners, including Facebook, to ensure their social offering is relevant to viewers’ needs. “ Informa also recommends that programmers build viable social TV ad models that work off of the main TV display. The second screen is where advertisers can more precisely target and segment the TV audience. It is “vital to future TV revenues, as old advertising models based on a mass audience become increasingly devalued,” Thomas writes.
As a teetotaler I don’t even know how Captain Morgan’s alcohol brew tastes. Worse, as a middle-aged husband and father of a 20-year-old daughter, the rakish young male at the center of its brand image turns me off altogether. But I will give the pirate his due. He makes a damn good branded mobile game. And that is saying something. The Captain’s Conquest game for Android and iPhone is genuinely engaging and fun, while much of advergaming is still a matter of slapping logos on crappy and tired white-label game engines. This is one of the brand’s first journeys into mobile waters, and it bodes well for the brand. Conceived by Anomaly, which partered with London-based Unit 9 on the execution, the app wraps real-time local mapping with your social network around a simple aim-and-shoot mechanic that has role-playing depth. You call up a map that superimposes a period pirate motif onto your real neighborhood. You may run into other ships of real players or bots from the system, but there are always ships to challenge. The app taps into your Facebook and Twitter social networks if you like and even correlates the size of your ship to your influence within the network. That may explain why I was sailing a glorified rowboat. The gameplay is genuinely challenging and fun. You aim and shoot a cannon, but have to calculate against your own bobbing atop the water and your enemy’s maneuvering. You earn points that help you buy upgrades for the boat. The social element kicks in when you elect to join a fleet and vie to become the most powerful member of the team of marauders. In between contests you make port (check in) at actual sites in your area like bars and restaurants. The app also interfaces with your foursquare account. Coming into the mobile market with a game was a no-brainer for the brand apparently. According to Captain Morgan Marketing Director Tom Herbst, “the Captain Morgan target consumer over-indexes in gaming, primarily in mobile gaming, so from a brand perspective Captain’s Conquest just makes sense.” The social piece was important because the brand’s research showed that the target is very active, social and adventurous. “Creating a platform that rewards consumers for being adventurous in real-life via check-ins and interacting with those around them through game play is an ideal way to marry their personal life with their interaction with the brand.” The company says that the beta tests since February show very strong user response and re-use. In the past advergames were awful, but I am not sure even the brand minded. If the curious player picked it up and tried to sled the chocolate bar down the ski slopes or bowl with gum drops, then even those few minutes amounted to more engagement than an advertiser usually gets from a banner or interstitial. The Captain Morgan game is that rare instance where the branded game app actually pulls you in on a number of levels. Just seeing who in your area is using the app or checking in at actual hot spots is interesting. Being part of a fleet adds the competitive angle. But at core it is all about the essential game play. In the end the branded game needs to put the game first. This one is genuinely fun to play, and it is unique. This is not a skinned driving game we have played ten times before. The game is aligned with the brand but also unique. Captain. I haven’t a clue what you liquor tastes like. And if one of your customers gets within a yard arm of my daughter I will run him over with my badass Mini Cooper. But you know how to mix a good game.
A lot of things in life are better in threes; Stooges, for instance. Or, coins in a fountain. Or, little pigs. Or, Bee Gees. Or, Great Pyramids at Giza. Or laws of motion. Likewise, it’s becoming increasingly clear that when it comes to corporate social responsibility the great brands do three things lesser brands don’t: they treat their employees well/act ethically; they have a strong commitment to greening the world; and, they engage in corporate philanthropy and cause marketing. Time was when companies that face the consumer could pick one of the three and have a perfectly defensible position. But since 2008, give or take, consumer expectations of what constitutes meaningful corporate social responsibility have changed. By which I mean, they’ve gotten a good deal stiffer. Part of this is due to outstanding examples of corporate social responsibility like Starbucks, which has had the effect of altering consumer expectations and redefining terms. Starbucks pays its employees fairly and offers full health care benefits, even to part-timers. It sells fair-trade coffee to benefit its farmer-suppliers. It works to lessen its environmental footprint. And it does smart cause marketing and corporate philanthropy. Like no other large company, Starbucks practices what I call the “holy trinity” of corporate social responsibility. Starbucks, along with Coke, Amazon, Fedex, Apple, Target, Ford, Nike, Southwest and Nordstrom all made the April 2012 cover of Entrepreneur magazine as the “10 most trusted brands” today. Entrepreneur’s list represents, for the most part, companies that actively engage in the holy trinity of corporate social responsibility. Coke, Target, Ford, Fedex, and Nike practice all three elements of corporate social responsibility to varying degrees. Apple does cause marketing with (RED) and is getting greener. But the recent and ongoing worker suicides at factories where Apple products are made are both a human tragedy and a corporate black eye. Neither Nordstrom nor Southwest are particularly renowned for being green or engaging in cause marketing. But both have celebrated internal cultures. Amazon is, I think, the exception that proves the rule. Certainly Starbucks has been riding high these last few years in terms of cause marketing. In November 2011 the company launched a well-received red, white and blue wristband called “Indivisible” that generates funds to be loaned to small businesses nationwide. Since Howard Schultz returned to the top leadership post at Starbucks in 2008 after an eight-year hiatus, the company’s financial results rebounded impressively. After a restructuring in 2009, revenue, same-store sales, and dollars per transaction were up in 2010 and 2011 at company-owned stores. The stock currently trades at around $55 per share, up from less than $10 in 2009. Fortune magazine characterized Schultz as having the conviction of a preacher when he was asked about Starbuck’s approach to corporate social responsibility. “Companies should not have a singular view of profitability,” Fortune quoted him as saying. “There needs to be a balance between commerce and social responsibility… the companies that are authentic about it will wind up as the companies that make more money.”Research confirms Schultz’s assertion; companies that interact directly with consumers tend to make more money in practicing corporate social responsibility than those that don’t. In a study called “A Model for Corporate Philanthropy,” the authors found that there was a positive correlation between profitability and corporate philanthropy in industries where there’s plenty of competition and advertising. In low-advertising industries -- for instance, B2B services or defense contractors -- the correlation was negative; meaning that financial results actually declined for such companies that engaged in corporate social responsibility. The study’s authors, Raymond Fisman and Geoffrey Heal of Columbia Business School and Vinay Nair at Wharton Business School, came to their conclusions after comparing financial data for publicly held companies in the Compustat database against a second database of positive social actions with datapoints related to a company’s environment, social and governance records. Fisman, Heal and Nair hypothesize that corporate social responsibility is a kind of signaling device for consumers that the company and its products can be trusted. I think it’s an apt theory. While it’s true that companies have never been bigger, it’s also true that consumers have never had more power. Trust is what hangs in the balance. And companies that practice well the holy trinity of corporate social responsibility demonstrate that they can be trusted.