ANA Marketing Maestros

Is Facebook Making You Frown? Social Media Marketing Is a Ton of Work!

By Cara Brooke Schultz

Social media burst onto the scene, but like any new medium, it has brought with it a slew of questions. Marketers are asking, “How do I deal with…

• Privacy issues in social networking?”
• Data safety—visitors can get hit by identify theft and frauds?”
• Negative or undesirable posts?” 

At last week’s Advertising Law & Public Policy Conference presented by Microsoft several of the speakers weighed in with their opinions. During the presentation by Douglas J. Wood, senior partner, Reed Smith LLP; Christopher Sloan, assistant vice president and senior corporate counsel, Liberty Mutual Group; Divya Narendra, chief executive officer and co-founder, Sumzero.com we learned that in order for a company to actively participate in social media the company must enable conversations, monitor conversations, influence conversations, react to conversations, and monetize conversations—which translates into saying, “no you cannot just set up a Facebook fan page and walk away.” 

Seems like a lot of work huh? Well it is, and it doesn’t just stop there—with your new social media sites your company needs to adopt a social media policy for internal and external communications. A key point to keep in mind as you dive into social media, “don’t ban what you can’t stop.” Social media is not ending anytime soon, in fact recent statistics state the sites are still growing at a rapid rate, “Two yeas ago, 20 percent of survey respondents were using social networks and social media, now that figure is 66 percent,” (Research Report: Harnessing the Power of Never Media Platforms for More Effective Marketing, 2nd Edition. ANA 2009). 

For more information about the conference, visit our Web site. 

Has Twitter Twiddled Out?

By Cara Brooke Schultz

It flew out with a bang—Twitter was everywhere—celebrities, athletes, and global companies were sending tweets across the Web. So are more people than ever sending tweets? Or are people falling off the Twitter bandwagon and deleting their twitter accounts like Miley Cyrus, Courtney Love, and Chris Brown.

According to ComScore’s assessment of Twitter visitors, “The site peaked with about 21.2 million visitors in July 2009 and dipped to 19.9 million in December.”

However some people are saying that Twitter users are more engaged with Twitter now then they were previously. Twitters users are following more feeds, have gained more followers, and are writing more tweets according to Web analyst HubSpot.

So where did the 1.3 million Twitter users go according to ComScore’s assessment? Perhaps they fluttered over to Facebook where users can continually update their status (similar to Twitter) post photos and videos, and chat live with friends. ComSore reported during the same time that Twitter lost users Facebook grew from about 250 million users to more than 350 million.

What is your assessment—will you still be sending and following tweets six months from now?

Tck Tck Tck: Advertising with a Conscience

By Susan Burke

At the 2009 ANA Annual Conference-The Masters of Marketing, David Jones, global chief executive officer, Havas Worldwide, spoke about a particularly important advertising program his agency recently created for the Tck Tck Tck: Time for Climate Justice campaign. The campaign, which grew out of Kofi Annan’s Global Humanitarian Forum, is focused on the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference. The conference will be held in Copenhagen on December 7, 2009. The purpose of the conference is to discuss and update international climate change agreements.

Tck Tck Tck encourages organizations and individuals alike to think about what is at stake in Copenhagen and express their desire for climate change reform. The campaign includes Web sites that contain information on climate change and real life stories, beautiful and thought-provoking print, Facebook applications, widgets, mobile applications, and videos. One video features several of today’s top musicians performing a song created specifically for the Tck Tck Tck campaign. 

Over 200 partner organizations have joined this fight for climate justice, including the World Wildlife Fund, Oxfam, Greenpeace, Amnesty International, and the National Resource Defense Council.  With close to 3 million people already signing up to declare their support for climate justice, the stunning advertising created for this campaign is positive proof that our industry can help to make the world a better place. How is your organization contributing to a cause of social importance?

To Tweet or Not To Tweet…

By Cara Brooke Schultz

It seems as if everyone is tweeting these days. In fact, your boss might even encourage you to write tweets. However, after reading an article on imediaconnection.com, I felt compelled to throw a few tricks of the trade out there. iMediaConnection rounded up a few sceneries when you should refrain from tweeting:

1. Do not tweet when you are in the middle of a crisis. If something terrible happens and you are dealing with a ton of negative feedback from customers, stay calm and try to rectify the situation prior to tweeting. One tweet announcing the change is enough.
2. Try to steer clear of all negativity on your twitter page. There is no reason to make fun of another company, a geographical location, or another person. Although you might think you are being funny, chances are you will offend someone.
3. Do not post everything online for the world to see. Always get the go ahead to broadcast breaking news, new deals or any developments that might come up in the office. Most likely, your boss will want to wait before making the news public.

I also wanted to add a few suggestions to the list:

1. Don’t write negative tweets about your competition. Your customers like you for several reasons, highlight those reasons and leave out the negativity!
2. Think before you tweet. Have well-thought out and spelling-error free tweets before making them live online. Remember, tweets cannot be edited once they go live, so do a thorough edit before posting.

Before writing your next tweet—take these ideas into account—it will help create a positive twitter experience.

The Twitter Revolution

By Irina Skaya

You know Twitter is powerful when the tiniest and the poorest country in Europe, Moldova, where I was born is tweeting to draw thousands of people to antigovernment demonstration in its capital, Chisinau following preliminary election results that show that the ruling Communist Party has won the majority in weekend parliamentary elections. Not only are the Moldovans are using Twitter to announce information about the organized protests, but are blogging and tweeting to spread the word to the West. In my opinion, that is their exact intent—if you did not know that Moldova was a country, now you certainly do.  If that wasn’t the case, they could have easily used Friendster and LiveJournal, which is still the number one choice of social networking sites for Eastern Europeans.  So how powerful is Twitter?

To illustrate just how powerful blogging is, one of the leaders of ThinkMoldova youth movement has posted a blog to spread the word about the demonstrations, and within hours, she was able to recruit 10,000 people to join the rally. That’s a staggering number period, but for someone who comes from a town of a population of 10,000, that is ‘ginormous’. 

This is not the first time the Internet has been used to gain support in political rallies, but this is the first Twitter revolution to date.  Why was Twitter so effective in organizing the demonstrations? One microblogger said, “When you follow somebody, you usually know this person, so you trust this person — it is coming from a real person, not an institution.”

In tough times, most companies do create new brands—they still to the well-known existing brands to avoid risk. My theory is as long as we create good products, consumers will use them and spread word about them via the Internet. But the Twitter revolution that took place in Moldova shows that social media and blogging is so powerful and is truly changing the way we communicate, marketing online, and do business. 

To Twitter or not to Twitter, that is the question…

By Barry Garbarino 

As a former employee of AOL and a few other hi-tech companies, I have always felt the need to be on top of whatever new technology that comes my way.  It could be said that I wanted to be an early adopter from an early age (well, as early as I could get, considering that I typed my last senior high school English paper on an IBM Selectric typewriter, but I digress.)  Social media and user generated content seems to be all the rage now.  I will fully admit that I do the occasional status update on Facebook and give a peak (to my friends) on what is happening in my life at that point in time.  From time to time I will also post the lyrics to certain songs (or YouTube videos) that I know will get stuck in people’s heads – it’s a public service that a few of us started a few years back and believe me, there are some whoppers that will take weeks to get out of your head.

For example the following was posted some time back on my Facebook page.  See if it gets stuck in your head (you got to love digital technology!)

That brings me to Twitter.  Some people absolutely love it and others have no idea why people would want to share all this information.  Many companies are jumping on the Twitter band wagon and are utilizing this tool to inform, entertain and connect to their consumers.  Consumers are utilizing Twitter to stay informed and to connect with a larger audience then they may have on other social media sites like Facebook and MySpace.

I came across the following videos on YouTube and thought that anyone who has an opinion about Twitter would get a kick out of them.  Let us know what you think!

Consumers "Crash The Super Bowl"

By Irina Skaya

In my last blog, I talked about the value of being innovative and engaging consumers during the economic slowdown. What’s more ground-breaking and engaging than user-generated advertising? 

The two best-rated ads during Sunday’s Super Bowl were consumer-generated ads for Doritos.  Every marketing conference I attend, I hear of the importance of putting ourselves, marketers, into the shoes of consumers. Our products must reflect the needs of the consumers. Consumer insights are a key to creating ads. So why aren’t more marketers letting their own consumers create ads for their products? Won’t these ads engage more target consumers and be more relevant?

User-generated advertising is much more cost-effective; it’s basically free! Plus, there is a tremendous potential for PR. The other benefit of user-generated content is the possibility of discovering brand new advertising talent—advertisers are always seeking the next big creative genius. So why aren’t marketers embracing consumer-generated advertising as much as they should? 

Don't be afraid of not receiving high-quality ads. There are plenty of campaigns that have launched contests for consumer-generated advertising, and have received high-quality content. Consumers also like the opportunity to be creative because they feel they have some impact and some ownership. They put a lot of time and thought into what they are doing.  There's something to be said about an ad created by someone who really loves the product, versus what you get from someone who is paid.

Take a look at examples from HP, Apple, Converse, and of course Doritos. Below is one of the Doritos ads from this year’s Super Bowl.

Technorati tags: Super Bowl user-generated consumer-generated Doritos ad Apple HP Converse consumer engagement

Meatball "Mon"dae - Embracing New Media

By: Irina Skaya

Last Thursday, I attended Seth Godin’s presentation at NYU based on his latest book called, “Meatball Sundae Is Your Marketing Out of Sync?”  I always knew that the owner of the world’s most popular marketing blog site and the best-seller author of nine marketing books is smart, but hearing from him in person was invaluable, inspirational and enlightening.

What’s a meatball sundae?

“[The combination of] meatballs and sundae are meant to be disgusting. If you use new marketing, the topping [the fudge, the cherry] just as a spin, you will fail,” Seth said as he slammed out one sound bite after another.

The Meatballs represent the 100 year-old marketing model which means interrupting the market and selling average products made for average people. The fudge and the cherries of the sundae are the toppings, which represent new marketing: blogs, YouTube, Google, Facebook, Wikis, widgets, etc. Meatballs and sundae are two things that don't mix, like just like new marketing and old marketing.

Seth raised some thought-provoking questions:

In the 1980’s, TV Guide sold for more money than ABC, CBS and NBC were worth all together. Today, how come when I go online to look for video - I go to YouTube and not TV Guide?

In the 1990’s America Online became popular because of e-mails and chatrooms, how come when I go online to find friends I don’t go on aolbook?

He then cited Josiah Wedgwood, an English potter who built an efficient factory organization during the Industrial Revolution, to emphasize if you change the media, and the organizations will change too.

Lessons learned:
• To drive sales revenue, marketers must restructure the marketing organization from top to bottom. 
• Embrace the medium, [referring to SEOs] NOT fight the medium.
• If you can own a variety of choices - you win. For example, iTunes get their reveunue from titles that cannot be purchased at any record store.
• Marketers need to establish a direct communication between themselves and the consumers-the more the consumer interacts, the better the company does.
• Authentic stories matter! Stories that work spread, stories that spread are true; stories that are true are authentic.
• If a marketer is trying to solve a problem people do not have, they are INVISIBLE. You cannot spam yourself to success!
• In the Internet Age, it doesn’t matter how many viewers will see your ads, but who the viewers are.

Got Meatballs?

Technorati tags: Seth Godin new media meatball Sundae

YouBama and the Next Wave of Political Advertising

By: Irina Skaya

In light of President’s Week, I want post about the 2008 primary state of affairs as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton slug it out for the presidential nomination. There are several things that interest me about this particular election, and it’s not the potential win of the first woman president nor the first black president. After all, we already had a black man and a white woman on the presidential ticket - Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988, and Geraldine Ferraro in 1984. What is is unique about this election is the viral online marketing campaign Obama has created. According to Time Magazine, no other campaign has tapped into social networks so aggressively, nor used the Internet to leverage the financial power of small donors.

Earlier this month, Obama scored highest among Democratic voters, ages 18-30 in the New York primaries. Why is Obama so popular among young voters? Is it because today’s generation of voters is colorblind or is it the emotional connection that Obama has created with them through social networking communities?

In one of his recent speeches, Obama stated that he wants to get people excited about politics again. I think he will achieve that--Obama is finding innovative ways to create a personal connection with potential voters, and to raise campaign dollars, using online social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. On Facebook, Obama has five times the number of Clinton supporters. Obama’s nearly 5-minute video response to President Bush’s “State of the Union” address became the most viewed video in the world. His own Website also features a community where potential voters may organize their friends, neighbors and networks. Members can build their own profile, form affinity groups, host events, write blogs, and, of course, donate money to his campaign. Obama even has his own user-generated channel called YouBama that features Obama supporters spreading the word on why he should be the 44th president.

Check out this powerful video, "Yes, we can" released by Black Eyed Peas' Will.I.Am, featuring a wildly diverse cross section of celebrity supporters:

Google trends show that in the last couple of months, the search volume for “Barack Obama” has exceeded the search volume for “Hillary Clinton.”

His online campaign has not only earned Obama $5 million more in donor dollars than Clinton’s fundraising efforts, but also allows him to gauge the pulse of his audience and know where to steer his campaign. So, who will win the democratic nomination? The candidate with a recognized brand name and relevant experience or the fresh face candidate who has superseded traditional advertising with buzz marketing, and as a result, leads the primary fund raising race?

Technorati tags: viral marketing 2008 presidential election Barack Obama Hillary Clinton social networks

Pondering Podvertising?

By: Irina Skaya

My daily 50-minute commute to work from Brooklyn to Grand Central station usually consists of reading the Daily News or more recently, listening to news podcasts on my iPod.  It is especially entertaining during the times the conductor holds up the train because of “the red signal ahead of us.” It makes time tick faster and feels like we’re moving sooner than we actually are. 

What moves me most about Podcasting is the convenience of portal media that allows me to download my favorite shows to my iPod and time-shift my listening to when it is best suitable for me, like on my way to work.  Today, consumers of Podcasting demand better content and a better personalized experience when they want. The shift in control from marketers to consumers are altering the way we approach marketing.

Podvertising is great tool for forward-thinking advertisers who want to try their hands at alternative media.  Podvertising allows marketers to target their niche audience and prevent ad avoidance at a small cost. Users are unlikely to fast-forward through your ad because they've already subscribed to the podcast and usually, do not mind listening to a 15-second ad. Also, with podcasting, small companies who could not afford to advertise on the big screen have the opportunity to reach their target audience.

How do you start advertising on Podcasts?

1. Sponsorships: sponsor a couple of target podcasts. For example: Gatorade sponsors Endurance Radio.
2. Offer giveaways and promotions: offer discounts and prizes in order to entice the listeners and prevent ad avoiders.
3. RSS feeds: You can time your podcast to be on your site at the same time as a new product launch. When people search for your info on your new product, your podcast will be in those results. If a user likes what he hears, he may decide to not only listen, but subscribe as well.
4. Produce Your Own: create your own podcast, featuring an audio informercial, video demo for new products, audio/video press releases about your product, etc.  Consumer-packaged-goods companies may use podcasts to enhance consumers’ lives and to build a connection with them. For instance, IBM produces podcasts on key business and technology topics. 

There is a great video on Podvertising that I couldn't insert here, but can direct you to. 

Don't underestimate the power of Podvertising! According to eMarketer, podcasting advertising will increase by 400% by 2011.