If advertising on social media is like going to a party uninvited, or even as a friend of a guest, marketers really need to see a good tailor. For their digital strategy, that is. Because while advertising on social media is more annoying than on other digital areas, Nielsen and NM Incite, a joint venture between Nielsen and McKinsey, find that a lot of people actually don't mind the ads if they are at least relevant to them. While about a third of social media users find ads on social networks more annoying than ads elsewhere online, the firms report that more than a quarter of users say they don’t mind seeing ads that are tailored based on their individual profile information or shared by a social connection. Furthermore, 26% don't mind ads that are ID'd based on profile information and 17% feel more connected to brands seen on social networking sites. And there are cultural differences. The firm notes that, arguably, the most engaged with social advertising are Asian-American consumers, who are most likely to share, like, or purchase a product after seeing an ad on a social network. Asian-Americans and Hispanics are both more likely to make any type of purchase after seeing a social ad, with the most popular purchase being a coupon through a daily deal or retailer site (28% and 19%, respectively). White consumers are the least likely to take any action after seeing these ads. They are slightly more likely to share an ad (13%) than to make a purchase (12%), and African-Americans are equally likely to share an ad or make a purchase (18%). The Social Media Report 2012 also found that nearly half of social media users engage with global brands for customer care via social. A third of social media users prefer that channel to the phone for customer care, or "social care." The use of apps accounts for a third of social networking time, and consumers have increased that channel usage by 76% this year versus last. On PC's Facebook, Blogger, Twitter, Wordpress, LinkedIn and Pinterest are the top social channels. For mobile apps, it's Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Google+ and Pinterest. "Asian Woman Using Cellphone from Shutterstock"
Dunkin’ Donuts is running two simultaneous Facebook promotions around the holidays. In a “Top of the WorlDD” contest, Dunkin’ is encouraging fans to submit photos or videos with happy New Year messages for their friends and families, through a tab on the brand’s Facebook page. The grand-prize winning video and photo entrants will each receive two round-trip JetBlue tickets, and their entries will be featured on Dunkin’s electronic billboard in New York’s Times Square on New Year’s Eve and into New Year’s Day. In addition, 10 first prize photo and 10 first prize video submission winners will each receive a $50 Dunkin’ Donuts Card. In the second, “Dunkin’ K-Cup Packs K-ountDDown” sweeps, Facebook fans can play once per day for the chance to win a prize pack that includes a Keurig K-Cup brewer, a six-month supply of Dunkin’ K-Cup packs and a $20 Dunkin’ card. The sweeps also offers a grand prize of $2,500 to be used toward the winner’s mortgage or rent during 2013.
Writing a letter (or sending an email) to Santa seems so quaint in the 21st century. To bring Santa into modern times, Verizon’s FiOS fiber optic service is giving people a direct line video chat with the big guy. Created by agency B-Reel and B-Reel Films, the interactive program sets up an interface that looks like a video chat with Santa, where they can type in their side of a conversation with Santa about what gifts they want for Christmas (and other questions). Depending on the gifts, Santa responds accordingly before being called away for a toy-making emergency. “We wanted to do something more designed and story-driven than the more direct marketing they had in the past,” Patrick Ehrlund, creative director at B-Reel, tells Marketing Daily. The goal of the campaign is to capture 25,000 FiOS-eligible addresses during this holiday season. So, users are required to enter their address before connecting to Santa (those who could use FiOS are shown an animation of the connection being made, while those who can’t use the service are just connected). Once the connection is made, users are given the opportunity to tell Santa whether they’ve been naughty or nice, ask for a gift and ask Santa any question they’ve always wanted, but have never had the chance. “He’s meant to be a simple playful character,” Ehrlund says. “If you ask him for a basketball, he tells this story about how he used to be quite a baller before his body turned into a basketball.” To accommodate the wide range of requests they seem likely to get, B-Reel created 300 scripts for Santa to use to answer any foreseeable questions. Though the company considered using voice-recognition for the interface, the technology isn’t developed or widespread enough to support it just yet, says Nicole Muniz, executive produce at B-Reel. “We did some prototyping, but the speech recognition isn’t available [on all formats],” she says. “We wanted this to be as broad as possible.” The company is promoting the Direct Line to Santa through FiOS’s social media channels and on Facebook and YouTube. The company is also offering a $200 gift card (packaged as a present from Santa) to help spread the world virally.
Music group Lady Antebellum is going back to the roots of the country to promote its latest holiday album, appearing in a frontier-set city building game. The popular country act has teamed with Gameloft to appear in the company’s “Oregon Trail: American Settler” game. In the new content, band members will appear as in-game quest givers, in which they challenge gamers to build a brand new concert hall in their frontier cities. Once the city is built, the gamers game exclusive content (including a welcome video and music videos from their new album) in the game. “Our work with Lady Antebellum [in] “Oregon Trail: American Settler” provides players with the chance to discover the band’s latest music through an innovative way to interact with the group,” Jessica Lewinstein, North American public relations manager for Gameloft, tells Marketing Daily. This is the first time Gameloft has incorporated a music act into one of its games, Lewinstein says. As with other partnerships (which have included brands such as Hyundai, Hasbro and Red Bull, and entertainment figures like Paris Hilton), the goal is to ensure the content makes an emotional connection with both fans and those unfamiliar with the brands. “One of our biggest priorities in establishing these partnerships is in ensuring that the content offered is a good fit for both our partners and the game,” she says. “Successfully integrating contextually relevant content into our games is a must if we wish to create or reinforce a strong emotional connection between the brand and our user base.” For the group, the game is a way to drive further consumer awareness about the band and its “On This Winter’s Night” album “within a large and fast-growing digital media outlet,” according to a statement from UMG Nashville vice president of digital marketing Dawn Gates. Gameloft will be promoting the Lady Antebellum partnership, which is available via a game update, through its Twitter, Facebook and corporate blogs, as well as through Lady Antebellum’s blog, Lewinstein said.
Friskies is launching an app that allows people to see themselves in cat form using cat photo templates and quirky captions. The app, called "Catify Yourself," allows users to choose a cat background template (including holiday-themed options) featuring a cat in a playful pose, and then add their own photo or a photo of a friend or family member. Then users can add a caption from the list. Friskies offers dozens of funny captions to fit a variety of expressions and situations including “Awkward,” “Somebody a grouchy bear today?” “I’ll explain later,” “Can you pick up some paper towels on the way home?” and “Do you feel as good as I look?” The St. Louis-based brand, owned by Nestlé Purina PetCare, has created a how-to video to get users started. The app is available for free. “Cats have incredible sensory abilities and playful imaginations,” said Shawn Brain, assistant brand manager for Friskies, in a release. “We’re fascinated by them, and this app lets us have fun with the idea of what it would be like to be cats for a while, at least in photos, and share those photo moments with family and friends.” In addition to sharing with family, friends, images created with the “Catify Yourself” app can be used as mobile phone wallpaper or social media profile pictures. Create and upload photos to share with us anywhere you’d use a photo of yourself, including Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and even LinkedIn. Friskies offers a variety of free tablet and mobile games and apps for cats and humans, including “Cat Fishing” for cats on iPhone and Android mobile and tablet platforms, and “You vs. Cat,” the first Friskies game you can play with your cat, for Android and iPhone tablets.
There's tailgating, an odd ritual involving parking a vehicle in the parking lot where an NFL game is being played, hanging out in the back with food and drinks and watching the game on TV. But the league, to promote the licensed products it sells through at the NFL Shop is offering a (much more sensible) take: homegating. In other words, having the party and watching the game on TV at home. To launch the campaign, which promotes things like countertop cooking appliances, NFL team-branded serving accoutrements and containers, crock pots, cutting boards, beer steins and wine glasses, the NFL tapped actress, host, philanthropist and football fan Holly Robinson Peete. On its Facebook page the effort uses a group of NFL Homegating personalities: The Couch Defender, The Grill Captain, The Master of Ceremonies, The Equipment Manager, The Décor-dinator, The Dipping-Back, The Sandwicheer and The Party Ref. The NFL FanStyle Facebook page (www.facebook.com/nflfanstyle) allows visitors to figure out which character they most embody and gives suggestions on ideal Homegating products. The campaign, for which Grey NY developed the creative platform, was also part of NFL "Fit for You Style Lounges" activated in Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Detroit, Baltimore, New Orleans, Kansas City and San Diego. There are also pop-up stores at different NFL stadiums throughout the season. The NFL launched the style lounges earlier this year. While the NFL Shop is a Web-based retail channel, the NFL ran a pop-up version in New York in March. The store sold a range of merchandise and touted new partnerships with Nike, New Era, Under Armour, Wilson and others. Peete made appearances in Style Lounges in St. Louis and Washington, D.C. A spokesperson said that this is the second year the NFL has pushed a campaign for Homegating but the first year of the digital Homegating “Player Profiles.”
Take that, Instagram. Only days after Facebook's photo-sharing network Instagram removed support for posting its images directly into Twitter feeds, Twitter strikes back. With app updates the company is promising for iOS and Android today, Twitter gains the ability to apply filters and do in-app photo editing before posting. The Twitter blog last night announced the new feature and included a demo video. Users can apply one of eight filters and even preview how each affects the image in a grid. Images can be pinched and zoomed for cropping. The app can also apply an auto-enhancement. The arrival of the in-app editing feature firms up the growing divide and competition between Facebook/Instagram and Twitter. Last week Instagram stopped supporting the Twitter cards platform that made posting its images to Twitter feeds more seamless. As both companies ramp up their respective ad strategies, especially on mobile platforms, the era of good feeling and traffic sharing that typified the early years of social networking appears to be waning.
Lenovo named We Are Social as its global social media agency of record, following a review.
We Are Social hired Layla Revis as senior director and Erin Dorr as account director.
If advertising on social media is like going to a party uninvited, or even as a friend of a guest, marketers really need to see a good tailor. For their digital strategy, that is. Because while advertising on social media is more annoying than on other digital areas, Nielsen and NM Incite, a joint venture between Nielsen and McKinsey, find that a lot of people actually don't mind the ads if they are at least relevant to them. While about a third of social media users find ads on social networks more annoying than ads elsewhere online, the firms report that more than a quarter of users say they don’t mind seeing ads that are tailored based on their individual profile information or shared by a social connection. Furthermore, 26% don't mind ads that are ID'd based on profile information and 17% feel more connected to brands seen on social networking sites. And there are cultural differences. The firm notes that, arguably, the most engaged with social advertising are Asian-American consumers, who are most likely to share, like, or purchase a product after seeing an ad on a social network. Asian-Americans and Hispanics are both more likely to make any type of purchase after seeing a social ad, with the most popular purchase being a coupon through a daily deal or retailer site (28% and 19%, respectively). White consumers are the least likely to take any action after seeing these ads. They are slightly more likely to share an ad (13%) than to make a purchase (12%), and African-Americans are equally likely to share an ad or make a purchase (18%). The Social Media Report 2012 also found that nearly half of social media users engage with global brands for customer care via social. A third of social media users prefer that channel to the phone for customer care, or "social care." The use of apps accounts for a third of social networking time, and consumers have increased that channel usage by 76% this year versus last. On PC's Facebook, Blogger, Twitter, Wordpress, LinkedIn and Pinterest are the top social channels. For mobile apps, it's Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Google+ and Pinterest. "Asian Woman Using Cellphone from Shutterstock"
Dunkin’ Donuts is running two simultaneous Facebook promotions around the holidays. In a “Top of the WorlDD” contest, Dunkin’ is encouraging fans to submit photos or videos with happy New Year messages for their friends and families, through a tab on the brand’s Facebook page. The grand-prize winning video and photo entrants will each receive two round-trip JetBlue tickets, and their entries will be featured on Dunkin’s electronic billboard in New York’s Times Square on New Year’s Eve and into New Year’s Day. In addition, 10 first prize photo and 10 first prize video submission winners will each receive a $50 Dunkin’ Donuts Card. In the second, “Dunkin’ K-Cup Packs K-ountDDown” sweeps, Facebook fans can play once per day for the chance to win a prize pack that includes a Keurig K-Cup brewer, a six-month supply of Dunkin’ K-Cup packs and a $20 Dunkin’ card. The sweeps also offers a grand prize of $2,500 to be used toward the winner’s mortgage or rent during 2013.
Writing a letter (or sending an email) to Santa seems so quaint in the 21st century. To bring Santa into modern times, Verizon’s FiOS fiber optic service is giving people a direct line video chat with the big guy. Created by agency B-Reel and B-Reel Films, the interactive program sets up an interface that looks like a video chat with Santa, where they can type in their side of a conversation with Santa about what gifts they want for Christmas (and other questions). Depending on the gifts, Santa responds accordingly before being called away for a toy-making emergency. “We wanted to do something more designed and story-driven than the more direct marketing they had in the past,” Patrick Ehrlund, creative director at B-Reel, tells Marketing Daily. The goal of the campaign is to capture 25,000 FiOS-eligible addresses during this holiday season. So, users are required to enter their address before connecting to Santa (those who could use FiOS are shown an animation of the connection being made, while those who can’t use the service are just connected). Once the connection is made, users are given the opportunity to tell Santa whether they’ve been naughty or nice, ask for a gift and ask Santa any question they’ve always wanted, but have never had the chance. “He’s meant to be a simple playful character,” Ehrlund says. “If you ask him for a basketball, he tells this story about how he used to be quite a baller before his body turned into a basketball.” To accommodate the wide range of requests they seem likely to get, B-Reel created 300 scripts for Santa to use to answer any foreseeable questions. Though the company considered using voice-recognition for the interface, the technology isn’t developed or widespread enough to support it just yet, says Nicole Muniz, executive produce at B-Reel. “We did some prototyping, but the speech recognition isn’t available [on all formats],” she says. “We wanted this to be as broad as possible.” The company is promoting the Direct Line to Santa through FiOS’s social media channels and on Facebook and YouTube. The company is also offering a $200 gift card (packaged as a present from Santa) to help spread the world virally.
Music group Lady Antebellum is going back to the roots of the country to promote its latest holiday album, appearing in a frontier-set city building game. The popular country act has teamed with Gameloft to appear in the company’s “Oregon Trail: American Settler” game. In the new content, band members will appear as in-game quest givers, in which they challenge gamers to build a brand new concert hall in their frontier cities. Once the city is built, the gamers game exclusive content (including a welcome video and music videos from their new album) in the game. “Our work with Lady Antebellum [in] “Oregon Trail: American Settler” provides players with the chance to discover the band’s latest music through an innovative way to interact with the group,” Jessica Lewinstein, North American public relations manager for Gameloft, tells Marketing Daily. This is the first time Gameloft has incorporated a music act into one of its games, Lewinstein says. As with other partnerships (which have included brands such as Hyundai, Hasbro and Red Bull, and entertainment figures like Paris Hilton), the goal is to ensure the content makes an emotional connection with both fans and those unfamiliar with the brands. “One of our biggest priorities in establishing these partnerships is in ensuring that the content offered is a good fit for both our partners and the game,” she says. “Successfully integrating contextually relevant content into our games is a must if we wish to create or reinforce a strong emotional connection between the brand and our user base.” For the group, the game is a way to drive further consumer awareness about the band and its “On This Winter’s Night” album “within a large and fast-growing digital media outlet,” according to a statement from UMG Nashville vice president of digital marketing Dawn Gates. Gameloft will be promoting the Lady Antebellum partnership, which is available via a game update, through its Twitter, Facebook and corporate blogs, as well as through Lady Antebellum’s blog, Lewinstein said.
Friskies is launching an app that allows people to see themselves in cat form using cat photo templates and quirky captions. The app, called "Catify Yourself," allows users to choose a cat background template (including holiday-themed options) featuring a cat in a playful pose, and then add their own photo or a photo of a friend or family member. Then users can add a caption from the list. Friskies offers dozens of funny captions to fit a variety of expressions and situations including “Awkward,” “Somebody a grouchy bear today?” “I’ll explain later,” “Can you pick up some paper towels on the way home?” and “Do you feel as good as I look?” The St. Louis-based brand, owned by Nestlé Purina PetCare, has created a how-to video to get users started. The app is available for free. “Cats have incredible sensory abilities and playful imaginations,” said Shawn Brain, assistant brand manager for Friskies, in a release. “We’re fascinated by them, and this app lets us have fun with the idea of what it would be like to be cats for a while, at least in photos, and share those photo moments with family and friends.” In addition to sharing with family, friends, images created with the “Catify Yourself” app can be used as mobile phone wallpaper or social media profile pictures. Create and upload photos to share with us anywhere you’d use a photo of yourself, including Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and even LinkedIn. Friskies offers a variety of free tablet and mobile games and apps for cats and humans, including “Cat Fishing” for cats on iPhone and Android mobile and tablet platforms, and “You vs. Cat,” the first Friskies game you can play with your cat, for Android and iPhone tablets.
There's tailgating, an odd ritual involving parking a vehicle in the parking lot where an NFL game is being played, hanging out in the back with food and drinks and watching the game on TV. But the league, to promote the licensed products it sells through at the NFL Shop is offering a (much more sensible) take: homegating. In other words, having the party and watching the game on TV at home. To launch the campaign, which promotes things like countertop cooking appliances, NFL team-branded serving accoutrements and containers, crock pots, cutting boards, beer steins and wine glasses, the NFL tapped actress, host, philanthropist and football fan Holly Robinson Peete. On its Facebook page the effort uses a group of NFL Homegating personalities: The Couch Defender, The Grill Captain, The Master of Ceremonies, The Equipment Manager, The Décor-dinator, The Dipping-Back, The Sandwicheer and The Party Ref. The NFL FanStyle Facebook page (www.facebook.com/nflfanstyle) allows visitors to figure out which character they most embody and gives suggestions on ideal Homegating products. The campaign, for which Grey NY developed the creative platform, was also part of NFL "Fit for You Style Lounges" activated in Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Detroit, Baltimore, New Orleans, Kansas City and San Diego. There are also pop-up stores at different NFL stadiums throughout the season. The NFL launched the style lounges earlier this year. While the NFL Shop is a Web-based retail channel, the NFL ran a pop-up version in New York in March. The store sold a range of merchandise and touted new partnerships with Nike, New Era, Under Armour, Wilson and others. Peete made appearances in Style Lounges in St. Louis and Washington, D.C. A spokesperson said that this is the second year the NFL has pushed a campaign for Homegating but the first year of the digital Homegating “Player Profiles.”
Take that, Instagram. Only days after Facebook's photo-sharing network Instagram removed support for posting its images directly into Twitter feeds, Twitter strikes back. With app updates the company is promising for iOS and Android today, Twitter gains the ability to apply filters and do in-app photo editing before posting. The Twitter blog last night announced the new feature and included a demo video. Users can apply one of eight filters and even preview how each affects the image in a grid. Images can be pinched and zoomed for cropping. The app can also apply an auto-enhancement. The arrival of the in-app editing feature firms up the growing divide and competition between Facebook/Instagram and Twitter. Last week Instagram stopped supporting the Twitter cards platform that made posting its images to Twitter feeds more seamless. As both companies ramp up their respective ad strategies, especially on mobile platforms, the era of good feeling and traffic sharing that typified the early years of social networking appears to be waning.
Lenovo named We Are Social as its global social media agency of record, following a review.
We Are Social hired Layla Revis as senior director and Erin Dorr as account director.
A friend of mine announced last week on Facebook that his mother had passed away. Sad news. I Liked this status update because I was engaged with the content and wanted to respectfully acknowledge my interest. Within 48 hours his status update received 115 comments, though only three Likes (my own included). Was it wrong for me to Like this news? That status update -- along with other sad status updates -- underscores how Facebook’s Like button can fail to align with content people find engaging, but are afraid to hit the Like button on for fear of offending or appearing insensitive. But if my friend’s status update had a Sympathize button, I’m sure it would have received a far higher volume of one-click votes and viral reach. For lazy humans, it’s a lot easier to respond to and engage with posts by hitting a single button, versus constructing and typing out (often from mobile devices) thoughtful responses. Perhaps there’s a grand plan to propagate the world’s largest social network with a higher share of positive sentiment. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s even been some innovation beyond the Like with Facebook’s Action Types for various objects, with focus on verbs that imply a liking of something (i.e., “read” or “purchased”). Indeed, Likes and similar positive verbs are important for marketers in the social age. Likes are an explicit endorsement of a message or object; an expression of interest and engagement; and often a consumer request to opt-in -- and they’re easy for consumers to use. But as an imperfect human, I know people are defined by a messy continuum -- things we like, things we don’t like, and things where we apply a whole bunch of nuanced verbs and adjectives to describe our preferences, feelings, motives and context. I like the Like functionality, though sometimes I wish I had the ability to one-click respond with more descriptive precision -- whether positive, negative or between. How about you? Which Facebook action or sentiment buttons would you like to see?
In case you missed it, there’s a war a-brewing for control of our photographic lives—a war being waged between Facebook and Twitter. Once half-jokingly dubbed “a photo sharing site with some chat attached” by noted VC Fred Wilson, Facebook stands as the reigning photographic champion, having gobbled up mobile photo champion Instagram in this year’s purported billion-dollar acquisition. Standing as the David to Facebook/Instagram’s Goliath would appear to be none other than Twitter, who is rumored to be close to launching photo features of its own. If you’re a travel marketer, you may have watched border skirmishes between these two with only passing interest. Now that Instagram has disabled photo viewing in Twitter, however, it may be time to pay a bit more attention. Photos are the lingua franca of social media. They transcend language, capture emotion, and root us to a social network unlike any other content. Study after study finds that photos generate 2x to 3x the amount of likes and shares of text-based content. And for that reason, they are digital gold to Facebook and Twitter—the holy grail of online content that increases user engagement, drives new visitor traffic, and builds user loyalty. The latest shot in the photographic turf war between Facebook and Twitter seems innocuous at first glance. Facebook’s Instagram now no longer supports photo viewing within Twitter. Instead, when a user tweets a photo via Instagram, it will appear as a link that followers will need to click in order to view the photo on Instagram. No big whoop, right? Not so fast. Instagram’s move, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch argues, is not in the best interests of users who want seamless photo sharing regardless of platform. Instead, it is a move driven solely by Facebook’s financial interests and desire to drive more traffic to its site. Twitter’s making similar moves. And so, we may be in the waning days of seamless, social media platform sharing with 2013 shaping up to be the year of the walled, social garden. The net impact of this shift is significant for travel marketers in numerous ways:
Remember when marketers were only responsible for small amounts of branding content that they distributed via print, TV ads, and radio spots? Times are rapidly changing. Today there are a growing number of social media channels -- Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn -- to consider as a marketer, in addition to the traditional channels. According to a recent study, social media accounts for only 16 percent of customer engagement today, but is expected to increase to 57 percent within five years. Today's brands are accumulating an enormous amount of visual content that they are struggling to manage. The combination of these factors has become an obstacle for brands to effectively engage with customers. First, it can be difficult for marketers to know the right piece of content to share with the right customers -- especially now when many of them are grappling with the globalization of their brands while still providing localized and targeted interactions. They are creating the animated graphics, images and videos that are being retouched and reused in numerous locations across an organization. The inability to accurately manage this workflow properly can cost millions of dollars in rights management lawsuits, redundant work, unbillable time and weak brand reputation. As a result, brands are facing a serious challenge: how to accurately track, distribute and manage all their digital content. Second, marketers must address countless media channels, from direct to social. A brand’s method of interacting with consumers is becoming more dynamic and consumers now have more of a say in how they want to be approached. Today’s consumers are liking Facebook pages, following company Twitter handles, subscribing to email newsletters, and overall sharing brand content like never before. As a result, marketers are constantly looking for new ways to grab customers’ attention and maximize the impact of the content they are sharing across every channel, in real-time. The solution in most cases is better brand management. Marketers today need to consider investing in rich content management solutions to address their massive amounts of media assets in an organized fashion. Understanding the benefits of these solutions, beyond IT, will help brand stewards better reach their marketing goals at a global level and also protect the reputation of their brand. These solutions provide a way to move visual content, like a video, through a creative process workflow and then efficiently store and manage that finalized video for easy use throughout an organization. Marketers can also quickly respond to changing content demands and avoid duplicating efforts by quickly locating assets in a centralized repository for reuse. Imagine the time and money saved when a marketer does not have to recreate a graphic for use on a Facebook page, but can quickly pull up the stored graphic they used on the Web site, knowing it’s the most up-to-date version and they have the right to use it. Having fresh, timely content at the fingertips of all authorized, customer-facing employees all over the world is crucial, given the real-time demands of consumers. The key for marketers is delivering the right message through the right channel to the right people at the right time. It’s about connecting with your customers and today, it’s about doing that visually. This fundamental strategy will not change -- but how marketers achieve it will. Brand stewards need to understand the benefits of creating, tracking, monetizing, and distributing visual content in an organized manner. Doing so will help them more effectively meet business needs -- and more importantly, will also improve their opportunities for meaningful engagement with consumers.
I have to admit that I have found some of the early marketing applications of augmented reality more than a little cheesy. I mean, how compelling is it to pose with a Brooklyn Decker overlay at the newsstand of your nearest Barnes & Noble? A couple of years ago, Esquire used this little stunt, combining geolocation, AR and its cover model. When you launched the Goldrun AR app in a B&N store at its newsstand a cutout of the model appeared in the camera view. I felt like an ass trying this one out. My wife refused to assist and just did the customary "I don't know him" trot in the opposite direction. It seemed reminiscent of low-end tourist traps -- posing with life-size standups of Ronald Reagan on Fisherman’s Wharf. And rather than make me feel more like that ideal Esquire metrosexual sophisticate, the exercise reduced me to a 15-year-old doofus appearing to shout out to his "buds," "hey look, dudes, me and Brooklyn Decker!" It made me want to join my wife trotting in the other direction. The basic technology and overlay techniques of Goldrun's AR app remain basically the same, but the approach is a bit more sophisticated now, says Goldrun CEO Vivian Rosenthal. "We shifted focus and call ourselves a mobile engagement platform around connecting brands and consumers through photographs," she says. For instance, for the Super Bowl-winning New York Giants and partner Tiffany and Co., the team’s Facebook page invites fans to use the Goldrun app to put on their own virtual Super Bowl ring or pose with the Lombardy trophy. “The photos are really ads posing as photos,” says Rosenthal. But rather than just being a mobilized version of the cheesy tourist photo, the program sparked fan creativity. People start playing with the overlay, often by posing with their own team jerseys or positioning the trophy to appear 20 feet tall, she says. “It becomes a creative form of expression.” They saw a similar effect in a campaign with Fox around the recent "Ice Age" animated film release. The cartoon characters in the AR overlays became elements in a creative toolset, with families cuddling around them or reducing them to palm-sized creatures in unexpected ways. For the client, the program just feeds the always-hungry social media mill. “The brand gets this incredible library of content that reflects its users,” she says. The images are all watermarked with the brand so it creates a real impression wherever the user spreads it. And the images are geo-tagged. “You can see where in the country people are engaging and which social networks they are using. It is a real-time market research tool.” Rosenthal says she is seeing brands like Kraft incorporating AR into the normal flow of social media and customer relations and offering regular calls to action around products. Clients are beginning to sign up for annual contracts so they can maintain a persistent dialogue using AR across Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and elsewhere. There is something to be said for the value of the virtual tchotchke. I am sure that I am not the right target for this sort of thing. But the basic model reminds us how valuable it is to give consumers the simplest of toys to let them make of it what they will. Engagement is not just a matter of enveloping the consumer in "experiences" with rich and overwrought UI. The best engagement is powered by the user, not the marketer. Toss them a toy with open-ended possibilities. Let them supply the imagination, the effort, the tone and the meaning. The silly virtual tchotchke can become an occasion not for you to "augment" reality so much as for the customer to augment your brand and apply his own overlay of personalization, meaning, even irony. Sponsor the sandbox.
Much like a real game of musical chairs, the virtual version also lasts between seven and 10 minutes. Blu Dot, which makes high-end furniture, began hosting a series of musical chairs games on Twitter Dec. 3 with winners receiving one of its new Hot Mesh chairs, valued at $99. This is the third quirky campaign conceived by Blu Dot and its agency, mono. Two years ago, a Real Good Experiment took place in New York when Blu Dot left 25 of its Real Good chairs on the streets of New York, waiting for someone to collect them. The catch of the campaign was, each chair was outfitted with GPS, and the newfound furniture owners were visited by the agency to be interviewed for an 8-minute documentary. See my coverage here. The company also hosted an online swap meet, offering an array of its furniture for odd and creative pieces. Winning swaps included a motorcycle made out of popsicle sticks and a share of Enron stock. A total of 100 games of musical chairs will be played, with 10 players per game, meaning 100 Hot Mesh chairs will find new homes. Those interested can visit musicalchairs.bludot.com to learn more about game rules, along with information on when the next game will be played. So, how does one rush for a virtual seat during a virtual game of musical chairs? Forget the fast feet; players need fast hands and sharp typing skills to grab a seat. Mono worked with the band Doppio to select the music played for each game, using seven of the band’s songs. When the music stops, a phrase appears onscreen that users must quickly type and submit in hopes of making it to the next round. The phrase cannot be copied and pasted. That was the first thing I tried, even though I figured winning a chair couldn’t be that easy. Some examples of secret phrases tweeted include: "140 character dash. #bludot," "Seatstakes. #bludot" and "Music you can sit to. #bludot." “Blu Dot's mission is to bring good design to as many people as possible,” said Michael Hart, co-founder and creative director of mono. “This time, we decided to take a more playful approach to getting good design in the hands of more people. And since they design some of the coolest chairs around, the idea of musical chairs seemed a natural fit. Then it became a question of how to do it in an inventive way. Twitter is the fastest, most immediate and still personal media. Putting the two together seemed right.” Games end Dec.12. Good luck to all!
Only a few minutes into a Email Insider Summit panel where panelists can't speak the name of the two biggest names in social media -- Facebook and Twitter -- and Loren McDonald, vp of industry relations of Silverpop, the moderator of the panel mention one of the companies names. Things came be that tough for digital media executives -- or the high Utah altitude. The effort is to show how marketers use new social platforms in conjunction with email marketing, as well as boosting other newer social media efforts, such as LinkedIn, Pinterest, Foursquare, Chatter and Instagram. Staten Hansen, marketing communications manager of Bing, Microsoft Corp, says in using social media to connect with email: "We use it as a complement, to further the conversation," says Hansen.
Every relationship worth anything at all is built on trust. Brands - which are trying to be cool and really want to be perceived as human - must earn trust, just the same as any relationship. For consumers, relationships with brands are about getting something in return, and for brands, they are about enabling the touch points that build trust. "Brands want to be people, too," says Evan Shumeyko of the Ogilvy & Mather South CRM & Engagement group (follow @ogilvydigital) in the opening keynote of today's Email Insider Summit. "The opportunity is real, as 72% of US consumers will share data in exchange for value," he says, opening the door for marketers to engage and build that essential trust.While much is made of the billion Facebook accounts, there are also 2.9 B email addresses in use today. Email is still a very important channel in socializing the enterprise, Evan says, because although social, search and web microsites are great ways for customers to be introduced to a branded experience, it's email marketing that is doing the work of follow up with well timed, data-driven, customized content. Evan reports that Ogilvy experience shows that of all the consumer touchpoints launched as part of a multi-channel campaign, the ones that led to a trusted, engaged relationship were enhanced and enabled by email marketing. That's good news for all of us here at the Email Insider Summit, email marketers everywhere, and frankly, also for all online marketers. It's silly to pitch channels against each other. It's not about which channel is "better" - it's about using each channel for what it does best. Evan kept going back and forth between benefits of the different channels - social, online, call centers and email. The point is that each has benefits. The power is in using them well together. In addition to way that email can connect social sentiment results back to individuals, Evan gave some examples of how email marketing campaigns (both B2B and B2C) were optimized with data and content keywords gleaned from social communities and search terms. This allows the email marketing to speak in the same language that the customer speaks. What a wonderful, happy, integrated multi-channel environment that will be! Where marketers can actually provide value across channels and use the data that we have to improve the customer experience. "The difference between consumer expectations and the reality of what is being provided creates stress in the relationship," Evan says. Stress is never good for building trust. "It's not integrated if you have a website and an email campaign," Evan says. Better, integrate information from social and online activity and customer feedback into the email marketing program. "It's about active listening across channels, which allows marketers to being what is often called the Holy Grail of marketing: A dialogue." A dialogue is only successful when it uses data responsibly across channels to create something unique and human about the touchpoints in a program, Evan says. This requires capturing data - both from consumers directly and through behavior -- and using it to customize the experience. Evan reflects that capturing and using data over time becomes true SocialCRM. To make all that work, you must have big ideas, big data and big technology. This allows marketers to use social and email and other clicksteam data in a structured what that opens opportunity. Evan challenges us to remember that We all have the ability to do. Email provides a touch point where consumers hand over information, and that allows us to provide value. Email marketing uses data, not just social inference. It's a strong combination for improving engagement across both channels.
Cisco is moving aggressively to experiment with social media sites beyond Facebook and Twitter. Take next month's Consumer Electronics Show, it plans to launch a content on Pinterest asking people to share their visual experiences, said Paula Wang, a senior manager in marketing platforms. “We encourage innvoation and pilots ... (and are) “very open to emerging networks," she said on an Email Insider Summit panel. Wang also said with the integration of email and social, Cisco is working in the opposite direction of many, spending a lot of time trying to use email to build social contact points -- a “social ID ... so we can link that back to our CRM database.” Cisco has also seen big growth in LinkedIn (three digit levels in the past couple of quarters), Wang said, while YouTube offers a chance to post video that can convey thought leadership in the b-to-b space Google+ has also served as a venue to drive search traffic, she said: “There's an inherent value to using Google+, they just need to do a better job with the platform itself.”
Evan Shumeyko, the Global Director of CRM for OgilvyOne, said Monday that social media is growing, but “email is still a prevalent and dominant platform.” One advantage is it offers is an ability to capture customer data that outpaces the social space. He cited a statistic that 82% of people are comfortable sharing personal information over email. “To me that is your competitive advantage,” Shumeyko told email marketers in a keynote address at the MediaPost Email Insider Summit. “That sharing of information via email is a powerful, powerful moment that you can exploit and it’s something that your peers in social do not have,” he added. With social, Shumeyko spoke about a Customer Spring (playing off Arab Spring), where customers have a major influence on brand perception. Social is “more than a buzzword for consumers because they now have the ability to control the conversation,” he said. Brands are focused on building Facebook likes and Twitter followers, which is a solid strategy for building customer relationships, but that can take on a short-term vantage point with a lack of thinking about a relationship for the long haul. Shumeyko said that with his CRM role he is interested in “active listening across channels,” where interaction with a customer may occur on the phone, but also via email with the same core message. That allows people to feel as if “you are really truly dealing with an intelligent being, not just a series of one-off touches.” Relevant content or personalization is critical, he said because that can help drive “earned” media, which is the most valuable among earned, paid and owned media. “That is that word of mouth, that one-to-one peer recommendation,” he said.
Relevancy vs. Frequency remains a frequent debate topic in email marketing. LivingSocial.com's Adam Lovallo, who heads user acquisition, says his company believes in a send-more-mail approach. Quite simply: if it were to send out 50% less mail, he thinks revenues would go down 50%. He said he's "100% on the frequency band wagon" and his company might still have runway to send out more messages. "I think it's primarily a frequency game, and we've actually been too conversative" on that front recently, he said. Lovallo noted one reason more mail works for LivingSocial is that it has established the expectation with customers about message loads. He added that he hopes the addition of third-party data and other tactics will help with efficiency, but he used the word "marginally." HP's Daryl Nielson, worldwide email manager, was a fellow "more mail" proponent. He said recently a European office was focusing heavily on reaching an active audience, but that was only about 20% of an audience base it should be pursuing. Sending more is needed seomtimes "or you lose your audeince," Nielson said. Separately, Nicole Delma, who works for the Huffington Post, says navigating the relevancy vs. frequency matter has a lot to do with brand perception. "If you mail more, there could be a detrimental effect," she said.