• by Abe Mezrich , September 30, 2008

The soft-drink social media plan jolts engagement

If you want to know the future of using social data for advertising, look to Dr Pepper. Specifically, the Dr Pepper fan group on last.fm. Kevin Menard, last.fm's senior vice president of U.S. advertising, introduced me to the social music site's multiple Dr Pepper fan groups. He sees these groups as key components in smarter last.fm ad buys. Last.fm allows advertisers to target ads by musical genre and artist; by studying the musical tastes of Dr Pepper
drinkers on groups like "Dr Pepper," Menard argues, the soft drink can target its ad placements to better match its users' musical tastes. For instance, at the time of this writing, the most popular artist among Dr Pepper group members is Oingo Boingo. Dr Pepper may want to run advertising when last.fm users play Oingo Boingo songs or similar tracks.

More than just offering a great approach to ad buys within last.fm, Menard may also have uncovered the key to finally leveraging social data in ad placements. Rather than looking to purely social data about which user is connected with whom, advertisers should look to the ways networkers connect over shared brand affinities.
While the social networking world has come far in targeting based on users' profile data, it's still in confusion over how to monetize the connections its members share. If I'm a 31-year-old male who jogs and reads Neruda, and my Facebook friend is a 25-year-old who watches boxing - it's not clear what that should mean to a marketer who's selling soap.

But maybe we're asking the wrong social questions. Rather than trying to understand the meaning of who's friends with whom, perhaps we should be looking for who has formed a bond around a shared taste in products, styles or brand affinities - the things that reflect, and directly impact, actual purchase behavior.

Take last.fm's Dr Pepper group member CoconutNight, a 17-year-old female from the Netherlands. CoconutNight's other last.fm groups include "For those who don't sleep enough due to staying up late at night for no apparent reason," "I Hate Early Mornings," and brand-oriented groups including "South Park" and "Nintendo Wii." Going through her groups, you get the image of a young person who is fully immersed in mainstream youth culture, and who could also use the more-than-occasional caffeine boost. That, of course, makes her a true target customer for a slightly off-beat soda. Certainly, there are other things that could identify her as the ideal Dr Pepper customer she actually is - and comparing her information with other "Dr Pepper" members could explain what those traits are.
But group memberships do more than just identify who likes a given item. By joining a specific Dr Pepper group, CoconutNight is saying that she enjoys Dr Pepper in the same way that the other group members do. She's using her social connections to define, and refine, her brand allegiance.

After all, different consumers enjoy Dr Pepper in different ways. Facebook's "Addicted to Dr Pepper" members would seem to enjoy Dr Pepper as a stand-alone beverage, while "Put Dr Pepper In UK McDonalds" members probably view Dr Pepper as one component of a broader dining experience. By studying who belongs to each group, Dr Pepper can better position its branding and its ad placements to satisfy each type of consumer's unique Dr Pepper brand experience.

So my suggestion to socially minded media planners is to leave purely social data aside and focus instead on who connects over what products, services and brands - and how. The new monetizable information you'll find may just be as refreshing as a tall, cold glass of Dr Pepper.

Abe Mezrich is manager of communications at Didit, an online media firm.