Social media has long been synonymous with “owned” or “earned” media -- the kind you don’t actually pay for. But a new survey commissioned by Nielsen unit Vizu indicates that three-quarters of advertisers are spending on paid social advertising and nearly two-thirds (64%) plan to increase their social ad budgets this year. That’s welcome news to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others as they ramp up paid ad opportunities on their respective platforms. Still, social media budgets remain relatively small. Last year, the vast majority (70%) of companies earmarked 1% to 10% of overall ad spending to social media, with only 13% allotting 21% or more. And while social ad spending is expected to rise this year, the increases will be modest. Four in 10 marketers plan to grow paid social ad budgets by 1%-10%, while 15% said they expect to increase budgets by 11%-20%, and 11% by 21% or more. The increase in social ad spending will often come at the expense of other online and offline marketing channels, including online display. Social might be growing even faster as an ad category if businesses had better means of gauging its effectiveness. A lack of standard metrics for measuring ROI remains a major stumbling block. Less than one-third of both advertisers and agencies said social advertising is effective and produces measurable ROI. Two-thirds of advertisers said social ads “move the needle” when used with other efforts, or is a promising new tactic, but they’re not sure how to assess how well they work. The study noted that many marketers are using things such as “likes,” “pins” and click-throughs to evaluate campaign results, but prefer to apply more traditional metrics. More than half of advertisers and two-thirds of agencies said a clear link between social advertising and sales would increase their use of the medium. Many want to see a link to brand lift. “It is not a coincidence that these metrics translate to both offline and online mediums,” stated the report. “Media buyers should ensure that they are using these relevant metrics to get an accurate assessment of campaign ROI.” That’s especially true since paid social media is mainly being used as part of broader branding campaigns. Two thirds of advertisers run social ads with other online advertising; 51% do so with offline advertising. Social ads typically run most often in conjunction with online display, online video and mobile efforts. As part of cross-platform campaigns, marketers want to use the same metrics for social ads that they use for online and traditional media. “Very few media sellers, however, can actually provide this,” according to the study. Only 11% said they could provide the same metrics as offline along with some measures specific to online.
As image recognition gains momentum from consumers switching to a picture-based Web experience, Pinfluencer will show brands how to identify the images driving the most traffic from Pinterest and eventually the Web. The marketing-and-analytics company officially launched a parse engine Tuesday. The image recognition technology analyzes raw data based on URL patterns and SEO tags to help marketers identify images and products that are generating engagement for their brand on Pinterest and driving traffic back to their company sites. The technology supports Sephora, Etsy, Z Gallerie, Orbitz and others tracking hundreds of results from contests and sweepstakes on Pinterest, some of which averaged $0.64 in revenue per pin in December 2012. "We found images might appear on multiple pages and needed a technology that reports much more accurate analytics," said Sharad Verma, Pinfluencer CEO. Verma called the technology "image duplicate detection," described as "a multilevel negative selection algorithm" that filters images, not duplicates. Marketers want to identify the most visually stimulating images that will prompt consumers to share across the Web. Verma said Pinfluencer plans to expand its offering to collect visual data beyond Pinterest. It will monetize traffic to landing pages from social visits powered by pins, comments, recommendations and thumbs up on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and newer ecommerce platforms and shopping apps, such as wanelo, gojie, fab, and thefancy. Pinfluencer has powered more than 100 Pinterest contests and sweepstakes. Brands using the Pinfluencer Promotions platform saw their follower acquisition growth rate increase by 156%, while pins per day rose 125%. The company also supports integration with analytics providers Adobe, Coremetrics, and Google.
Twitter has attracted an investment fund from BlackRock to the tune of $80 million. The investment firm will buy shares from early Twitter employees seeking to liquidate stock options and holdings. The move values the company at more than $9 billion, slightly higher than an investment by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, which pushed the valuation more than a year ago to $8.4 billion. BlackRock, which declined to comment, had to contact employees to provide the means for the investment firm to make an offer, according to sources. Several hundred Twitter employees become eligible to sell their shares as part of the transaction, and some joined the company before 2009. Twitter is rumored to take the company through an IPO later this year. Facebook and Groupon are two other companies that took a similar path, using transactions and secondary markets to cash out existing employees. Estimates put daily Twitter searches at more than 1 billion daily. In fact, WordStream Founder Larry Kim puts that number at roughly two times more than Yahoo and Bing combined. Kim estimates Google searches at around 3 billion daily, worth around $250 billion. Marketers would agree that no other site like Twitter exists. "A $9 billion Twitter valuation is roughly one-twenty-seventh of the Google valuation, which seems about right if you consider their search volume and the work they need to do to more effectively monetize that," Kim said. "It’s roughly one-ninth versus the Facebook valuation." Twitter launched a mobile strategy virtually since day one. Google and Facebook continue to try to make mobile work. Advertising and marketing come naturally on the Twitter platform. "There’s no inherent expectation of privacy on Twitter," Kim said. "So, they don't run into the privacy uproars and EU probes that Facebook runs into every time they try to make data available to advertisers and third parties for monetization and advertising purposes." Twitter did not respond to requests for comment.
Diet Coke and six-time Grammy winner Taylor Swift have officially announced a multi-year partnership. Swift announced the news first to her Facebook fans (38.7 million “likes), via a YouTube video posted Sunday. That followed an Advertising Age story on Friday leaking the news that Swift would become a “brand ambassador of sorts.” Now, the brand and Swift have revealed some of the specifics, described as an “evolution” of Diet Coke’s “Stay Extraordinary” campaign. Swift will be featured in television, print and digital advertising schedule to launch this spring. Diet Coke’s social channels, including Facebook (nearly 2 million “likes”), Twitter (about 240,000 followers) and Instagram, will serve as a “backstage pass,” providing access to all of the partnership initiatives. The activations will include “extraordinary” access to Swift online and in person throughout her Red Tour, which kicks off March 13 in Omaha, Neb., according to the brand. Swift’s “I Knew You Were in Trouble” is currently in its second week at #1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Top 40 chart, the second song from her 5 million-selling current album “RED” to top worldwide charts. In the video, Swift calls Diet Coke “one of the loves of my life” and encourages fans to “like” Diet Coke’s Facebook page to experience “so many fun things” -- including behind-the-scenes looks at a commercial shoot. Swift and Diet Coke will, of course, now be engaged in a marketing duel with Pepsi and its spokespersons Beyonce and Sofia Vergara. Since becoming Pepsi’s spokesperson last month, Beyonce has been more in the public eye than ever, with her (reportedly lip-synched) performance at President Obama’s second Inauguration Ceremony. She is also scheduled to headline the Pepsi-sponsored Super Bowl halftime show. The Pepsi/Beyonce partnership has also come in for criticism from groups working to reduce Americans’ consumption of sugary beverages -- an issue that is presumably less problematic in the diet beverage realm. Meanwhile, in European markets, Diet Coke has just unveiled a “hunk” commercial starring British model Andrew Cooper -- a new entry in the now-legendary campaign that debuted in 1994 with Lucky Vanous featured as a sweaty construction worker. The new spot -- showing Cooper as a gardener who doffs his shirt after a can of Diet Coke splashes all over him (inspiring awe among a group of young women picnicking nearby) -- is expected to be rolled out worldwide if it’s a hit, reports BusinessInsider.
Chalk it up to one of those industry incongruities: While newspapers have lost something like 30% of readers in the last 20 years, the free-standing inserts that fatten them up are still gaining weight. (Kantar reports that last year, FSI coupon activity gained 0.8%, with CPG coupons up 2.4%.) John Andrews, CEO and founder of Collective Bias, a Bentonville, Ark.-based social shopper marketing company, tells Marketing Daily what’s afoot in shopper marketing, and why he thinks it all is about to change. Q: So shopper marketing is odd. Much of it pours into print, and, while for years people have predicted a bigger shift to digital, it hasn’t really happened. Yet, you think this is the year. Want to explain? A: Sure, I call it the “print cliff,” and this is the year. There is something like $10 billion spent on FSIs each year, and another $4 billion or so in-store circulars -- $15 billion can’t be wrong. Brands need to get information about new products and promotions and coupons out there. And they know purchasing FSIs are inefficient. As soon as those dollars can find a good situation, and if they can accomplish the same goals, they are going to flow in that direction. And yes, I think this is the year that this economic reality will hit advertisers. Up until now, they haven’t seen a scalable option. And of course, they want to know how to measure ROI. Advertisers want to be where consumers are, and that’s not newspapers. The eyeballs just aren’t there. Q: And your company is an alternative?A: Yes, companies like this one. It’s its own kind of shopper marketing. We are targeting the same trade dollars going into FSIs. The rise of social platforms created a huge need for media that wasn’t there. When I worked in emerging media for Walmart, we started looking at blogs that talked about Walmart’s core brand promise of saving money, and put that together as the ElevenMoms program, which has now been rebranded as WalmartMoms. And at Collective Bias, we sell media designed to travel across social channels, whether it’s YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, whatever -- anything that’s along the consumer’s path to purchase. We have a community of something like 1,400 influencers, with an average of 40,000 followers. Our average campaign will generate between 8 and 12 million in measured reach, and of course, we’re tracking overall share of voice. Q: So what makes social content a better way to connect? A: Take Duane Reade, a client of ours, as an example. One of our members may choose to participate in a campaign for a new fresh food it’s selling. And that influencer will get paid, usually between $200 and $500, for creating something his or her audience wants. So they create content that has some value to the user, maybe it’s a recipe or a how-to video or a photo montage. If I’m an advertiser, I don't really want an interruption-style advertising message, which is just some old ad model put on new technology. The quality of the content has to be compelling in order to get consumed. Q: You don’t think that makes consumers leery? After all, aren’t many trying to research brands without bias?A: Our influencers have curated an audience, and if they break the trust of that audience, and provide something that is not valuable, they won’t keep the reader. We are careful to make sure it is disclosed, so in effect it becomes known as a piece of advertorial content, and something I may choose to engage with. It’s something I might find valuable.
The simple practice of displaying an official program hashtag at the beginning of a television show can increase the social conversation by nearly two-thirds. According to the social analytics and monitoring company Brandwatch, viewers tweet about a particular program about 1,200% more when the show is airing and are twice as likely to use the official hashtag on broadcast day. Combined, the two statistics amount to a 63% greater likelihood that programs publicizing their official hashtags will become part of the Internet conversation. The study from the U.K.-based company analyzed Twitter conversations about five of the top U.S. and U.K. television shows during 2012. Three shows -- the U.K.’s “The Great British Bakeoff,” and U.S. shows “The Voice” and The “Biggest Loser” -- stood out by consistently engaging with their audience before, during and after the programs aired with the clear use of their official hashtags. (The study also broke down leaders by category. “Glee” in the U.S. was the leader among dramas, while “BBC Question Time” in the U.K. led factual programming. The U.S.’s “How I Met Your Mother” led comedies, while the U.K.’s “Hollyoaks” led the soap category. For sports programming, the leaders were “Soccer AM” in the U.K. and “SportsCenter” in the U.S.) Consumers are increasingly using multiple media at the same time, particularly when watching television. According to a recent poll of 1,000 U.S. consumers from KPMG, 42% of the respondents said they watch TV and access the internet via a laptop or PC at the same time. Another 17% said they watch TV while using a smartphone. Just over a fifth (22%) said they were using these devices to access a social media site while watching TV. To capitalize on this growing trend of “dual-screening,” the Brandwatch study reveals that there are a few simple steps programmers can take to increase the conversation around their shows. Among the most successful programs in the Brandwatch study, 83% used their official hashtag in most or all of the tweets they issued, and 61% regularly tweeted during the broadcast time to keep the conversation relevant.
Jaguar -- which introduced the F-Type, its first sports car in about half a century at last year's Paris Auto Show -- is launching a social media campaign to tout the convertible. The car is meant to compete with both the less expensive BMW Z and Porsche Boxster and more expensive Porsche 911. Jaguar also focused on the car at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit with an event the night before, in which the company talked about the coupe as a way to bring a new kind of buyer into the brand. The F-Type is also the least expensive car in Jaguar's lineup, at about $65,000. The #CaptureAJag online photo contest invites social fans, influencers, amateur photographers and Jaguar enthusiasts to submit their best photo of a Jaguar car for a chance to be among the first to test drive the new vehicle. The company has rolled out a complete social media campaign with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Instagram and FourSquare accounts. At the Detroit show, the company -- a division of Tata Motors -- revealed big plans to expand the Jaguar and Land Rover brands worldwide. The company, which said it increased global sales 30% last year, also announced that it will increase its global dealer count by around 25% with over 3,000 sales points in four years. The focus, as is the case with a lot of automakers, will be on the BRIC markets (Brazil, Russia, India and China), said company executives. In the U.S. the company has done fairly limited marketing for the F-Type -- a tactic that makes sense, given the minuscule number of people who can afford the car and want a ragtop coupe. The company last year launched a short film featuring actor Damian Lewis, called "Desire," with co-stars Jordi Molla and Shannyn Sossamon. The film and other info about the car also appear on a new site, www.ftype.com.
Social media has long been synonymous with “owned” or “earned” media -- the kind you don’t actually pay for. But a new survey commissioned by Nielsen unit Vizu indicates that three-quarters of advertisers are spending on paid social advertising and nearly two-thirds (64%) plan to increase their social ad budgets this year. That’s welcome news to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others as they ramp up paid ad opportunities on their respective platforms. Still, social media budgets remain relatively small. Last year, the vast majority (70%) of companies earmarked 1% to 10% of overall ad spending to social media, with only 13% allotting 21% or more. And while social ad spending is expected to rise this year, the increases will be modest. Four in 10 marketers plan to grow paid social ad budgets by 1%-10%, while 15% said they expect to increase budgets by 11%-20%, and 11% by 21% or more. The increase in social ad spending will often come at the expense of other online and offline marketing channels, including online display. Social might be growing even faster as an ad category if businesses had better means of gauging its effectiveness. A lack of standard metrics for measuring ROI remains a major stumbling block. Less than one-third of both advertisers and agencies said social advertising is effective and produces measurable ROI. Two-thirds of advertisers said social ads “move the needle” when used with other efforts, or is a promising new tactic, but they’re not sure how to assess how well they work. The study noted that many marketers are using things such as “likes,” “pins” and click-throughs to evaluate campaign results, but prefer to apply more traditional metrics. More than half of advertisers and two-thirds of agencies said a clear link between social advertising and sales would increase their use of the medium. Many want to see a link to brand lift. “It is not a coincidence that these metrics translate to both offline and online mediums,” stated the report. “Media buyers should ensure that they are using these relevant metrics to get an accurate assessment of campaign ROI.” That’s especially true since paid social media is mainly being used as part of broader branding campaigns. Two thirds of advertisers run social ads with other online advertising; 51% do so with offline advertising. Social ads typically run most often in conjunction with online display, online video and mobile efforts. As part of cross-platform campaigns, marketers want to use the same metrics for social ads that they use for online and traditional media. “Very few media sellers, however, can actually provide this,” according to the study. Only 11% said they could provide the same metrics as offline along with some measures specific to online.
As image recognition gains momentum from consumers switching to a picture-based Web experience, Pinfluencer will show brands how to identify the images driving the most traffic from Pinterest and eventually the Web. The marketing-and-analytics company officially launched a parse engine Tuesday. The image recognition technology analyzes raw data based on URL patterns and SEO tags to help marketers identify images and products that are generating engagement for their brand on Pinterest and driving traffic back to their company sites. The technology supports Sephora, Etsy, Z Gallerie, Orbitz and others tracking hundreds of results from contests and sweepstakes on Pinterest, some of which averaged $0.64 in revenue per pin in December 2012. "We found images might appear on multiple pages and needed a technology that reports much more accurate analytics," said Sharad Verma, Pinfluencer CEO. Verma called the technology "image duplicate detection," described as "a multilevel negative selection algorithm" that filters images, not duplicates. Marketers want to identify the most visually stimulating images that will prompt consumers to share across the Web. Verma said Pinfluencer plans to expand its offering to collect visual data beyond Pinterest. It will monetize traffic to landing pages from social visits powered by pins, comments, recommendations and thumbs up on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and newer ecommerce platforms and shopping apps, such as wanelo, gojie, fab, and thefancy. Pinfluencer has powered more than 100 Pinterest contests and sweepstakes. Brands using the Pinfluencer Promotions platform saw their follower acquisition growth rate increase by 156%, while pins per day rose 125%. The company also supports integration with analytics providers Adobe, Coremetrics, and Google.
Twitter has attracted an investment fund from BlackRock to the tune of $80 million. The investment firm will buy shares from early Twitter employees seeking to liquidate stock options and holdings. The move values the company at more than $9 billion, slightly higher than an investment by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, which pushed the valuation more than a year ago to $8.4 billion. BlackRock, which declined to comment, had to contact employees to provide the means for the investment firm to make an offer, according to sources. Several hundred Twitter employees become eligible to sell their shares as part of the transaction, and some joined the company before 2009. Twitter is rumored to take the company through an IPO later this year. Facebook and Groupon are two other companies that took a similar path, using transactions and secondary markets to cash out existing employees. Estimates put daily Twitter searches at more than 1 billion daily. In fact, WordStream Founder Larry Kim puts that number at roughly two times more than Yahoo and Bing combined. Kim estimates Google searches at around 3 billion daily, worth around $250 billion. Marketers would agree that no other site like Twitter exists. "A $9 billion Twitter valuation is roughly one-twenty-seventh of the Google valuation, which seems about right if you consider their search volume and the work they need to do to more effectively monetize that," Kim said. "It’s roughly one-ninth versus the Facebook valuation." Twitter launched a mobile strategy virtually since day one. Google and Facebook continue to try to make mobile work. Advertising and marketing come naturally on the Twitter platform. "There’s no inherent expectation of privacy on Twitter," Kim said. "So, they don't run into the privacy uproars and EU probes that Facebook runs into every time they try to make data available to advertisers and third parties for monetization and advertising purposes." Twitter did not respond to requests for comment.
Diet Coke and six-time Grammy winner Taylor Swift have officially announced a multi-year partnership. Swift announced the news first to her Facebook fans (38.7 million “likes), via a YouTube video posted Sunday. That followed an Advertising Age story on Friday leaking the news that Swift would become a “brand ambassador of sorts.” Now, the brand and Swift have revealed some of the specifics, described as an “evolution” of Diet Coke’s “Stay Extraordinary” campaign. Swift will be featured in television, print and digital advertising schedule to launch this spring. Diet Coke’s social channels, including Facebook (nearly 2 million “likes”), Twitter (about 240,000 followers) and Instagram, will serve as a “backstage pass,” providing access to all of the partnership initiatives. The activations will include “extraordinary” access to Swift online and in person throughout her Red Tour, which kicks off March 13 in Omaha, Neb., according to the brand. Swift’s “I Knew You Were in Trouble” is currently in its second week at #1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Top 40 chart, the second song from her 5 million-selling current album “RED” to top worldwide charts. In the video, Swift calls Diet Coke “one of the loves of my life” and encourages fans to “like” Diet Coke’s Facebook page to experience “so many fun things” -- including behind-the-scenes looks at a commercial shoot. Swift and Diet Coke will, of course, now be engaged in a marketing duel with Pepsi and its spokespersons Beyonce and Sofia Vergara. Since becoming Pepsi’s spokesperson last month, Beyonce has been more in the public eye than ever, with her (reportedly lip-synched) performance at President Obama’s second Inauguration Ceremony. She is also scheduled to headline the Pepsi-sponsored Super Bowl halftime show. The Pepsi/Beyonce partnership has also come in for criticism from groups working to reduce Americans’ consumption of sugary beverages -- an issue that is presumably less problematic in the diet beverage realm. Meanwhile, in European markets, Diet Coke has just unveiled a “hunk” commercial starring British model Andrew Cooper -- a new entry in the now-legendary campaign that debuted in 1994 with Lucky Vanous featured as a sweaty construction worker. The new spot -- showing Cooper as a gardener who doffs his shirt after a can of Diet Coke splashes all over him (inspiring awe among a group of young women picnicking nearby) -- is expected to be rolled out worldwide if it’s a hit, reports BusinessInsider.
Chalk it up to one of those industry incongruities: While newspapers have lost something like 30% of readers in the last 20 years, the free-standing inserts that fatten them up are still gaining weight. (Kantar reports that last year, FSI coupon activity gained 0.8%, with CPG coupons up 2.4%.) John Andrews, CEO and founder of Collective Bias, a Bentonville, Ark.-based social shopper marketing company, tells Marketing Daily what’s afoot in shopper marketing, and why he thinks it all is about to change. Q: So shopper marketing is odd. Much of it pours into print, and, while for years people have predicted a bigger shift to digital, it hasn’t really happened. Yet, you think this is the year. Want to explain? A: Sure, I call it the “print cliff,” and this is the year. There is something like $10 billion spent on FSIs each year, and another $4 billion or so in-store circulars -- $15 billion can’t be wrong. Brands need to get information about new products and promotions and coupons out there. And they know purchasing FSIs are inefficient. As soon as those dollars can find a good situation, and if they can accomplish the same goals, they are going to flow in that direction. And yes, I think this is the year that this economic reality will hit advertisers. Up until now, they haven’t seen a scalable option. And of course, they want to know how to measure ROI. Advertisers want to be where consumers are, and that’s not newspapers. The eyeballs just aren’t there. Q: And your company is an alternative?A: Yes, companies like this one. It’s its own kind of shopper marketing. We are targeting the same trade dollars going into FSIs. The rise of social platforms created a huge need for media that wasn’t there. When I worked in emerging media for Walmart, we started looking at blogs that talked about Walmart’s core brand promise of saving money, and put that together as the ElevenMoms program, which has now been rebranded as WalmartMoms. And at Collective Bias, we sell media designed to travel across social channels, whether it’s YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, whatever -- anything that’s along the consumer’s path to purchase. We have a community of something like 1,400 influencers, with an average of 40,000 followers. Our average campaign will generate between 8 and 12 million in measured reach, and of course, we’re tracking overall share of voice. Q: So what makes social content a better way to connect? A: Take Duane Reade, a client of ours, as an example. One of our members may choose to participate in a campaign for a new fresh food it’s selling. And that influencer will get paid, usually between $200 and $500, for creating something his or her audience wants. So they create content that has some value to the user, maybe it’s a recipe or a how-to video or a photo montage. If I’m an advertiser, I don't really want an interruption-style advertising message, which is just some old ad model put on new technology. The quality of the content has to be compelling in order to get consumed. Q: You don’t think that makes consumers leery? After all, aren’t many trying to research brands without bias?A: Our influencers have curated an audience, and if they break the trust of that audience, and provide something that is not valuable, they won’t keep the reader. We are careful to make sure it is disclosed, so in effect it becomes known as a piece of advertorial content, and something I may choose to engage with. It’s something I might find valuable.
The simple practice of displaying an official program hashtag at the beginning of a television show can increase the social conversation by nearly two-thirds. According to the social analytics and monitoring company Brandwatch, viewers tweet about a particular program about 1,200% more when the show is airing and are twice as likely to use the official hashtag on broadcast day. Combined, the two statistics amount to a 63% greater likelihood that programs publicizing their official hashtags will become part of the Internet conversation. The study from the U.K.-based company analyzed Twitter conversations about five of the top U.S. and U.K. television shows during 2012. Three shows -- the U.K.’s “The Great British Bakeoff,” and U.S. shows “The Voice” and The “Biggest Loser” -- stood out by consistently engaging with their audience before, during and after the programs aired with the clear use of their official hashtags. (The study also broke down leaders by category. “Glee” in the U.S. was the leader among dramas, while “BBC Question Time” in the U.K. led factual programming. The U.S.’s “How I Met Your Mother” led comedies, while the U.K.’s “Hollyoaks” led the soap category. For sports programming, the leaders were “Soccer AM” in the U.K. and “SportsCenter” in the U.S.) Consumers are increasingly using multiple media at the same time, particularly when watching television. According to a recent poll of 1,000 U.S. consumers from KPMG, 42% of the respondents said they watch TV and access the internet via a laptop or PC at the same time. Another 17% said they watch TV while using a smartphone. Just over a fifth (22%) said they were using these devices to access a social media site while watching TV. To capitalize on this growing trend of “dual-screening,” the Brandwatch study reveals that there are a few simple steps programmers can take to increase the conversation around their shows. Among the most successful programs in the Brandwatch study, 83% used their official hashtag in most or all of the tweets they issued, and 61% regularly tweeted during the broadcast time to keep the conversation relevant.
Jaguar -- which introduced the F-Type, its first sports car in about half a century at last year's Paris Auto Show -- is launching a social media campaign to tout the convertible. The car is meant to compete with both the less expensive BMW Z and Porsche Boxster and more expensive Porsche 911. Jaguar also focused on the car at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit with an event the night before, in which the company talked about the coupe as a way to bring a new kind of buyer into the brand. The F-Type is also the least expensive car in Jaguar's lineup, at about $65,000. The #CaptureAJag online photo contest invites social fans, influencers, amateur photographers and Jaguar enthusiasts to submit their best photo of a Jaguar car for a chance to be among the first to test drive the new vehicle. The company has rolled out a complete social media campaign with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Instagram and FourSquare accounts. At the Detroit show, the company -- a division of Tata Motors -- revealed big plans to expand the Jaguar and Land Rover brands worldwide. The company, which said it increased global sales 30% last year, also announced that it will increase its global dealer count by around 25% with over 3,000 sales points in four years. The focus, as is the case with a lot of automakers, will be on the BRIC markets (Brazil, Russia, India and China), said company executives. In the U.S. the company has done fairly limited marketing for the F-Type -- a tactic that makes sense, given the minuscule number of people who can afford the car and want a ragtop coupe. The company last year launched a short film featuring actor Damian Lewis, called "Desire," with co-stars Jordi Molla and Shannyn Sossamon. The film and other info about the car also appear on a new site, www.ftype.com.
As search becomes more personal, marketers will see an increase of technology supporting social analyses. Rio SEO launched a suite of social media marketing products Tuesday with technology from Seattle-based Meteor Solutions, which parent company Covario acquired in November 2012. The tools focus on analyzing social media data and augment the company's SEO offerings. It's all about personalizing the Web with what people think. In Yahoo's Q4 2012 earnings call, CEO Marissa Mayer said "For a long time, we believed search wasn't a moneymaker, which is almost absurd now, looking back." Marketers in the U.S. spent $17.58 billion in 2012 on search ads -- up from $15.10 billion in 2011, according to eMarketer. The data firm estimates that in 2012 there were 1.43 billion social network users, up 19.2% compared with the prior year. Social network ad spending worldwide will reach $8.9 million in 2013, and will jump to $10.9 million in 2014, eMarketer forecasts. For Covario clients, the integration provides support with three software products that enable marketers to analyze social-sharing, as well as social advertising initiatives and digital-influencer activation programs. Rio SEO provides software tools for search engine optimization automation and reporting. About 90% of the company's clients run social campaigns. Breaking out budgets between social and search gets tricky. When combining paid and organic search, Covario clients spend "quite a bit more" on search, compared with social. The ratio gets closer when taking SEO and social into account. The Rio SEO Social Media Suite includes Rio SEO Social Analyze to help marketers measure and optimize social marketing campaigns; Rio SEO Social Advertise, which delivers digital advertising directly to a brand’s most influential users and advocates; and Rio SEO Social Activate, an automation platform that fosters social engagement. Covario Founder Russ Mann credited Ben Straley -- co-founder of Meteor Solutions, who joined Rio SEO as vice president of social technologies -- along with the Seattle-based team for a smooth transition and a rapid integration of the technology. Straley now reports to Chris Reid, senior vice president and operating head of Rio SEO.
This is a parable, turned into an analogy, involving a consumed Oreo Cookie Shake and an unconsumed sweet potato. This week, traveling on my way to my hotel, I really had a craving for an Oreo Cookie Shake from Jack In The Box. I looked up the closest location on my phone and ended up going a little bit out of my way to get it. So, I get there and the shake machine is broken. No Oreo Cookie Shakes. In my head, I say “Damn you, world!” Out loud I say “Thank you, nothing else for me. Good night.” and pull out of the drive-through. But I find another Jack In The Box on my phone and start driving to it because now I REALLY want an Oreo Cookie Shake because I was SO close. So, I drive, get a little turned around, finally find the Jack In The Box and get my Oreo Cookie Shake. Success! And boy did it taste good. I mean, REALLY good. (For those of you who followed my triumph of losing 30 pounds in 90 days, you can understand why it tasted like heaven.) And it struck me as I'm drinking it, this one Oreo Cookie Shake isn't going to kill me. It's not going to make me gain five pounds. And it’s really making me happy at that moment. But, I think about how I drove by a huge Whole Foods twice and could have gone in and gotten a sweet potato instead to fill my craving. It wouldn't have tasted as good in the moment, but it would have still been tasty, fulfilling, satisfied my sweet tooth. More importantly, even though it would be really hard to see the effect of that ONE sweet potato, I would know that it did better things for me than that Oreo Cookie Shake. Which, finally, gets me to my point: today (and everyday) businesses using social media are going to have to choose between lots of different decisions – what to post, what to RT, what to respond to, what businesses to partner with, how edgy to get, etc. The question is: Are you going to choose an Oreo Cookie Shake, or a sweet potato? Personally, I’m reinvigorated to ask myself: Is this an Oreo Cookie Shake (satisfies a personal craving, something I am getting fixated on, doesn't have long-term benefits) or is this a sweet potato (less sexy, humbly satisfying, something done for the long term, will end up making you look and feel like a rock star in the long run)? Good luck on finding your sweet potatoes.