Volvo Cars of North America is aiming for the nexus of design and lifestyle with a new social-media campaign on Pinterest to get people to look at the new Volvo S60 T5 AWD, and vie for a chance to take a road trip. The campaign, "Volvo Joyride," the company's first social media program. The program, which runs through the 26th of the month, encourages users to create a Pinboard called "Volvo Joyride" on which they can pin the Volvo S60 T5 AWD and elements of their fantasy road trip, including things like the destination, places to stop, attractions, outfits one might bring along, songs to listen to, and whatever else -- within reason -- would constitute the perfect road trip. Three winners, those who get the most re-pins, will get to actually do their trip, getting a four-day lease of the S60 T5 AWD, a two-night stay at a hotel in their chosen destination city, a $250 gas gift card, a $250 gift card for food and beverage, a $250 clothing retailer gift card, and a $50 music gift card. Joseph Barbagallo, social media manager for the Rockleigh, N.J.-based North American unit of the company, tells Marketing Daily that Volvo's relatively new social media team says the visual focus of sites like Pinterest and Instagram -- in which Volvo is also involved -- felt right for the brand. "It's a huge platform right now for a lot of brands, and I see them tending to do similar things, posting product and focusing on that," he says. "But with Volvo being a lifestyle brand, we saw an opportunity to use that to focus on the design of a new vehicle." "We looked at Pinterest as having a unique, very design-focused audience, so it's a great activation; it's an opportunity for us to carve a voice and niche," he says. Volvo is partnering for the program with design influencer Victoria Smith, who writes design blog SF Girl by Bay (SFGirlbyBay.com). She stars in a video about the promotion on Volvo's YouTube site and the Pinterest site in which she takes her own road trip with a friend to Lake Tahoe, describing what music she likes, outfits, and waypoints for the four-hour trip. Barbagallo says Volvo also has a strong social-media fan base already on several of the usual social-media suspects, "so we are looking at activating on those channels and bringing those fans from sites like Facebook and Twitter onto Pinterest. Volvo has lots of consumers who take road trips, so it's a natural with what people are already doing. This lets us put products in their hands." The company will base ROI on things like traffic referrals to its Web site. "It's a watch-and-learn scenario," says Barbagallo, adding that the company did a soft launch on Pinterest that started with 155 followers. Now that the number is up to over 500, the goal is to get volume through re-pins. "We want to spread the message, so we'll look at re-pins, views on Victoria's video site, and brand chatter afterward.”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged disappointment with the company's stock performance since going public in May, but voiced optimism about its nascent mobile business as a long-term growth engine. Speaking publicly on Tuesday for the first time since Facebook's botched IPO, Zuckerberg addressed a wide range of topics about the company before a packed hall at the TechCrunch: Disrupt 2012 conference in San Francisco. The most immediate issue is the social network's plummeting stock price, which has been nearly halved from its $38-a-share offering price. Some analysts have suggested that Zuckerberg is overly focused on building products with little regard for Wall Street's focus on quarterly profits and growth. But the CEO suggested the company mission to “make the world more open and connected” doesn't conflict with achieving financial success. "Building a mission and building a business go hand-in-hand,” he said. “We need to do both.” Asked about the impact of the depressed stock price on employee morale and retention, Zuckerberg admitted the steep decline “doesn't help.” But he said the company is not a stranger to controversy and outside criticism and will be able to weather the current difficulties it faces as a newly public company. What's more, he argued that the drop in Facebook's stock price makes it a great time for new employees to join the company and existing ones to “double-down” and benefit from an eventual upswing in the value of their shares. One of the biggest questions feeding investor uncertainty is about Facebook's ability to monetize its mobile audience of more than 500 million and growing. The company only began running mobile ads in March, but Zuckerberg emphasized the huge potential that mobile offers for revenue growth. "Over the next three to five years, I think the biggest question on everyone's mind, that will determine our performance over that period, is really how well we do with mobile,” he said. One of the key steps Facebook has taken in recent months was to ditch HTML5 in favor of building native apps for iOS and Android devices. Zuckerberg called the company's bet on HTML5 its biggest mistake to date, acknowledging that the programming technology in the near future wouldn't be able to deliver the same capabilities as native apps. Facebook's recently updated iOS app has been well received and Zuckerberg said a new Android app is coming soon, without being more specific. The CEO also reiterated that Sponsored Story ads running in the mobile news feed are performing better than the standard display ads that run on the right side of Facebook pages and generate the bulk of its revenue. Early results from outside ad firms this summer indicated that mobile ads were earning 2.5 times more than traditional ads. "We're going to make more money [in mobile] than on the desktop," said Zuckerberg on Tuesday. A forecast released by eMarketer last week projected that Facebook will make just 72.7 million in U.S. mobile advertising, but ramp up to $629 million by 2014. A far more bullish outlook from Doug Anmuth, an analyst at JP Morgan, one of Facebook's IPO underwriters, predicts the company will earn 200 million from mobile ads this year, and 900 million in 2013. One mobile project Facebook won't pursue is a branded mobile phone. Zuckerberg denied repeated suggestions from interlocutor Michael Arrington that Facebook is building its own phone to compete directly with the iPhone and Android. Rather, he said it makes more sense for Facebook to work across multiple platforms to reach the widest mobile audience possible. However, Zuckerberg didn't rule out competing more directly with Google at some point in search. “That's one obvious thing we could do in the future if we were excited about it,” he said, noting that Facebook already generates 1 billion queries a day. The company last month did introduce search advertising, allowing marketers to run Sponsored Results that direct users to a specific Facebook app, group, event, or brand page. Did Zuck's talk do anything to reassure investors? In after-hours trading, Facebook shares were up 3.3% to $19.43. Not a strong vote of confidence, but better than hitting a new low.
When asked, most marketers are happy to explain why one social network is better for business than another. According to new data, however, different networks lend themselves to different strategic objectives. “Not all channels in the social space are created equal,” according to Diane Kegley, CMO of RichRelevance. Facebook, for instance, dominates as a source of traffic. Indeed, shoppers who click through from Facebook account for the overwhelming majority of shopping sessions at nearly 86%, per new findings from RichRelevance, a provider of personalized recommendations for ecommerce sites. Pinterest and Twitter trail far behind with an 11.3% and 2.9% share of the driven traffic, respectively, RichRelevance finds. Pinterest appears to drive larger orders -- nearly double that of other social channels. While shoppers who come to retail sites from Facebook and Twitter purchase more often, Pinterest users spend dramatically more than either: $168.83 on average compared to average order values of $94.70 for Facebook and $70.84 for Twitter. Also working in Facebook’s favor, RichRelevance reports that shoppers who started on the top social network ultimately browse more -- and buy more often. Shoppers who enter retail sites from Facebook tend to stay longer -- nearly seven pages per visit compared to nearly three for Twitter and just over four from Pinterest. They also purchase somewhat more frequently, with conversion rates of 2.63% -- compared to average conversion rates of .93% among Pinterest users and 1.09% among Twitter users. “Every social network promises a new way of connecting consumers with retailers and brands,” added Kegley. Yet what they actually deliver is often another story. RichRelevance based its Shopping Insights study on nearly 700 million shopping sessions across top U.S. retail sites between January and August of this year.
Volvo Cars of North America is aiming for the nexus of design and lifestyle with a new social-media campaign on Pinterest to get people to look at the new Volvo S60 T5 AWD, and vie for a chance to take a road trip. The campaign, "Volvo Joyride," the company's first social media program. The program, which runs through the 26th of the month, encourages users to create a Pinboard called "Volvo Joyride" on which they can pin the Volvo S60 T5 AWD and elements of their fantasy road trip, including things like the destination, places to stop, attractions, outfits one might bring along, songs to listen to, and whatever else -- within reason -- would constitute the perfect road trip. Three winners, those who get the most re-pins, will get to actually do their trip, getting a four-day lease of the S60 T5 AWD, a two-night stay at a hotel in their chosen destination city, a $250 gas gift card, a $250 gift card for food and beverage, a $250 clothing retailer gift card, and a $50 music gift card. Joseph Barbagallo, social media manager for the Rockleigh, N.J.-based North American unit of the company, tells Marketing Daily that Volvo's relatively new social media team says the visual focus of sites like Pinterest and Instagram -- in which Volvo is also involved -- felt right for the brand. "It's a huge platform right now for a lot of brands, and I see them tending to do similar things, posting product and focusing on that," he says. "But with Volvo being a lifestyle brand, we saw an opportunity to use that to focus on the design of a new vehicle." "We looked at Pinterest as having a unique, very design-focused audience, so it's a great activation; it's an opportunity for us to carve a voice and niche," he says. Volvo is partnering for the program with design influencer Victoria Smith, who writes design blog SF Girl by Bay (SFGirlbyBay.com). She stars in a video about the promotion on Volvo's YouTube site and the Pinterest site in which she takes her own road trip with a friend to Lake Tahoe, describing what music she likes, outfits, and waypoints for the four-hour trip. Barbagallo says Volvo also has a strong social-media fan base already on several of the usual social-media suspects, "so we are looking at activating on those channels and bringing those fans from sites like Facebook and Twitter onto Pinterest. Volvo has lots of consumers who take road trips, so it's a natural with what people are already doing. This lets us put products in their hands." The company will base ROI on things like traffic referrals to its Web site. "It's a watch-and-learn scenario," says Barbagallo, adding that the company did a soft launch on Pinterest that started with 155 followers. Now that the number is up to over 500, the goal is to get volume through re-pins. "We want to spread the message, so we'll look at re-pins, views on Victoria's video site, and brand chatter afterward.”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged disappointment with the company's stock performance since going public in May, but voiced optimism about its nascent mobile business as a long-term growth engine. Speaking publicly on Tuesday for the first time since Facebook's botched IPO, Zuckerberg addressed a wide range of topics about the company before a packed hall at the TechCrunch: Disrupt 2012 conference in San Francisco. The most immediate issue is the social network's plummeting stock price, which has been nearly halved from its $38-a-share offering price. Some analysts have suggested that Zuckerberg is overly focused on building products with little regard for Wall Street's focus on quarterly profits and growth. But the CEO suggested the company mission to “make the world more open and connected” doesn't conflict with achieving financial success. "Building a mission and building a business go hand-in-hand,” he said. “We need to do both.” Asked about the impact of the depressed stock price on employee morale and retention, Zuckerberg admitted the steep decline “doesn't help.” But he said the company is not a stranger to controversy and outside criticism and will be able to weather the current difficulties it faces as a newly public company. What's more, he argued that the drop in Facebook's stock price makes it a great time for new employees to join the company and existing ones to “double-down” and benefit from an eventual upswing in the value of their shares. One of the biggest questions feeding investor uncertainty is about Facebook's ability to monetize its mobile audience of more than 500 million and growing. The company only began running mobile ads in March, but Zuckerberg emphasized the huge potential that mobile offers for revenue growth. "Over the next three to five years, I think the biggest question on everyone's mind, that will determine our performance over that period, is really how well we do with mobile,” he said. One of the key steps Facebook has taken in recent months was to ditch HTML5 in favor of building native apps for iOS and Android devices. Zuckerberg called the company's bet on HTML5 its biggest mistake to date, acknowledging that the programming technology in the near future wouldn't be able to deliver the same capabilities as native apps. Facebook's recently updated iOS app has been well received and Zuckerberg said a new Android app is coming soon, without being more specific. The CEO also reiterated that Sponsored Story ads running in the mobile news feed are performing better than the standard display ads that run on the right side of Facebook pages and generate the bulk of its revenue. Early results from outside ad firms this summer indicated that mobile ads were earning 2.5 times more than traditional ads. "We're going to make more money [in mobile] than on the desktop," said Zuckerberg on Tuesday. A forecast released by eMarketer last week projected that Facebook will make just 72.7 million in U.S. mobile advertising, but ramp up to $629 million by 2014. A far more bullish outlook from Doug Anmuth, an analyst at JP Morgan, one of Facebook's IPO underwriters, predicts the company will earn 200 million from mobile ads this year, and 900 million in 2013. One mobile project Facebook won't pursue is a branded mobile phone. Zuckerberg denied repeated suggestions from interlocutor Michael Arrington that Facebook is building its own phone to compete directly with the iPhone and Android. Rather, he said it makes more sense for Facebook to work across multiple platforms to reach the widest mobile audience possible. However, Zuckerberg didn't rule out competing more directly with Google at some point in search. “That's one obvious thing we could do in the future if we were excited about it,” he said, noting that Facebook already generates 1 billion queries a day. The company last month did introduce search advertising, allowing marketers to run Sponsored Results that direct users to a specific Facebook app, group, event, or brand page. Did Zuck's talk do anything to reassure investors? In after-hours trading, Facebook shares were up 3.3% to $19.43. Not a strong vote of confidence, but better than hitting a new low.
When asked, most marketers are happy to explain why one social network is better for business than another. According to new data, however, different networks lend themselves to different strategic objectives. “Not all channels in the social space are created equal,” according to Diane Kegley, CMO of RichRelevance. Facebook, for instance, dominates as a source of traffic. Indeed, shoppers who click through from Facebook account for the overwhelming majority of shopping sessions at nearly 86%, per new findings from RichRelevance, a provider of personalized recommendations for ecommerce sites. Pinterest and Twitter trail far behind with an 11.3% and 2.9% share of the driven traffic, respectively, RichRelevance finds. Pinterest appears to drive larger orders -- nearly double that of other social channels. While shoppers who come to retail sites from Facebook and Twitter purchase more often, Pinterest users spend dramatically more than either: $168.83 on average compared to average order values of $94.70 for Facebook and $70.84 for Twitter. Also working in Facebook’s favor, RichRelevance reports that shoppers who started on the top social network ultimately browse more -- and buy more often. Shoppers who enter retail sites from Facebook tend to stay longer -- nearly seven pages per visit compared to nearly three for Twitter and just over four from Pinterest. They also purchase somewhat more frequently, with conversion rates of 2.63% -- compared to average conversion rates of .93% among Pinterest users and 1.09% among Twitter users. “Every social network promises a new way of connecting consumers with retailers and brands,” added Kegley. Yet what they actually deliver is often another story. RichRelevance based its Shopping Insights study on nearly 700 million shopping sessions across top U.S. retail sites between January and August of this year.
The world watches and waits for Mark Zuckerberg to announce a search engine to rival Google, but the search engine the Facebook CEO plans to build will integrate capabilities closer to Ask.com. Zuckerberg told an audience at a TechCrunch Disrupt event in San Francisco Tuesday that he believes search engines will evolve to provide some sort of question-and-answer (Q&A) type query. Facebook members will type in more than a keyword and ask for something relevant in return. "I have a specific question; answer this question for me," he said. "Facebook is well-positioned to answer questions, such as what type of sushi restaurant have my friends gone to during the past six months in New York, and liked?" Facebook processes one billion queries daily without trying, Zuckerberg said. The vast majority of people search to find other people, but a significant portion of the queries are people trying to find brand pages and apps. Some link the act of searching to commercial behavior, and he believes there's a big opportunity in search related to questions and answers. When will we see Facebook listed in comScore's list of "explicit" U.S. search market share statistics as a Q&A site? Not this month, but perhaps by the end of the year. In August 2012, queries on Bing, Ask and AOL rose sequentially, while Google and Yahoo declined. All but Yahoo saw a year-on-year increase. Macquarie Securities Analyst Ben Schachter tells us Bing's share rose sequentially to 15.9% in August, up from 15.7%. AOL also experienced an increase in market share, up 20 bps sequentially to 1.7%. And Ask queries rose 8% in August compared with the year-ago month. Ask's share of searches in August was 3.2%, compared with 3.1% in July 2012 and 3.0% in August 2011.
According to a proprietary 2012 College Marketing Report from the Barnes & Noble College Marketing Division, despite the prevalence of social media and Internet usage, college students still consider TV ads the most effective form of advertising. They prefer to receive emails over texts from marketers; their engagement with brands on Facebook tops all other social networks; and most are very open to direct brand engagement, including supporting on-campus ambassador programs, says the report. Based on a survey of more than 7,500 college students from campuses across the nation, the study was able to glean an understanding of today's college student that marketers might utilize to connect students with brands, products and services that enhance their social and academic experience. Best Way To Reach College Students by Company or Brand (% of Respondents) Medium% of Respondents Email 20% TV commercial 19 Coupon 14 Facebook ad 9 On-campus WOM 9 Social coupon 8 Print ad 8 Website ad 5 Radio commercial 4 Texting campaign 3 Source: Barnes & Noble College Marketing, September 2012 Significant findings from the 2012 College Marketing Report include:
Social analytics will become the next tool to identify whether social buzz and campaigns can support search engine marketing, as more marketers integrate a variety of media. Determining the success of social campaigns, however, remains challenging. One method that Greenlight's COO Andreas Pouros believes will make it easier points to a pay-per-performance model. Digital marketing agency Greenlight will offer a pay-per-performance service based on delivering actual results. It will measure, analyze, and test the monetary value of consumer actions such as Facebook likes, Twitter retweets, G+ replies, and others. Spearheaded by Pouros, a group of 30 company analysts and econometricians will support the model. Some Greenlight clients have tested the model. In a six-month test, for example, the retailer Master of Malt grew the number of conversions by 10,000, driving up online revenue by 540% in one year. The model can connect Facebook likes back to the company's key performance indicators, such as sales, conversions, customer acquisitions and keyword searches on engines. One challenge to achieving this type of success that marketers face is the inability to quantify how social advertising influences search and conversions. Pouros suggests that marketers tie social media campaigns to pre-defined URLs that can map and track the progression from one form of media to the next. It identifies the path. For example, a social media campaign may provide a discount for consumers. That discount code is specific to a social media campaign the brand can track back to identify a direct cause and effect. "There are a number of econometrics methods to isolate cause and effect away from expected query and traffic trends that are already used for things similarly ambiguous," Pouros said. "Buzz can be contextualized; its impact tracked on search queries and other KPIs through tracking codes in promoted content. A brand sending out a tweet with a link could add a tracking code to that link, so any resultant activity from it can be tracked back." The key becomes driving up search engine queries and producing sustainable traffic to Web sites and social campaigns. Pouros said marketers who can identify an uptick in traffic using some of these methods can become "reasonably confident" that query increases were the result of the social buzz.
Media and technology has changed so much in five years that saying anything other than something radical seems naive. Who would have predicted five years ago that Apple would be the most valuable company on earth and that the iPhone would have the largest share of any smart phone on the market? Saying such a thing ten years ago would have people calling you absolutely crazy. My firm belief is that banner advertising is the past, and so the boldest form of my prediction and one that is likely to only be partially correct is: There will be no banner ads in 5 years. Banners do not work for top or mid funnel awareness and intent generation. The opportunity for brands on the web is to harness all the attention migrating away from other mediums, including television, to do something as powerful as story-driven as television commercials. Banners do not fill this need. They will not be an integral part of the future media mix. The caveated version, and the one that's a bit safer and almost certain to be correct is the following: In five years, brands will not use banners for top and mid funnel marketing. The vast majority of banner display that remains will be direct-response, and the Facebook Exchange is likely to be an incredibly dominant player. Premium publishers and direct sales forces will sell social content-driven programs that are native to their sites. This will be a return to the great story-driven and word of mouth advertising of the 50's and 60s. Social and story will supplant banner as the defining online advertising vehicle in five years time. *(Hat tip to Mark Andreessen for the "eat" term: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903480904576512250915629460.html
"$138 million is not a lot of money." Yep, I said that. In a fit of frustration. Publicly. On video. You see, an audience member asked a question at the tail end of our panel at last month's Social Media Insider Summit. A question that presupposed Pinterest was overvalued and overfunded at $138 million in funding. Thus: "$138 million is not a lot of money." (Jump to the 21st minute to see my fit. I appear pretty calm, but I'm actually stewing inside. Oh, yeah, and I’m the one in the striped shirt.) Mind you, I'd be doing an Irish jig for a week straight if I won that in the lottery. But, it's just not a lot of funding. Let's look at the numbers and check out some funding from just the last month alone.