2010 will be the year, in which (at least in Germany) companies will try to strategically integrate Social Media into their marketing mix. As opposed to previous years, when Social Media (often phrased as „viral“ campaign elements) was already part of the briefing due to the glitter and glamour, but nobody could actually pinpoint the relevance and contribution of the tactics.
Jeremiah Owyang is now providing some guidance for the first and essential question for companies trying to look at the subject wholistically: is it a brand play, is it a product play, shall we enter with a lifestyle approach or separate activities by location?
Companies that choose poorly will have wasted internal efforts and resources, set up false expectations for customers and may struggle with trying to redact a program in public where customers are already assembling. […] having no strategy means that product teams, regional teams, and individual regions will do whatever they want –causing clean up for corporate late.
As a first orientation I think this will serve companies quite well. Surely, each quadrant can be made more specific to each companies situation and needs, but that should be left for the individual Social Media consultant…
At the end there is short guidance on how to choose the right mix:
Foursquare and Gowalla are continously improving and updating their services. Latest news:
Foursquare is cracking down on cheaters. If your phone’s GPS determines that you’re not close to where you want to check in, you are not rewarded any points or mayorships.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t work with my iPhone, it won’t let me check into my Office, even though I am sitting in it. Looking at Google Maps, though, it seems that my GPS does indeed place me correctly.
This is a good move nevertheless. In the last month during my trip to Thailand I could well check into locations here in Hamburg whenever I wanted, enabling me to keep up the battle for the mayorship of your office here…
Gowalla in the meantime adds realtime feeds and activity streams based on the PubSubHubbub protocoll. This should enbale much more interesting mashup opportunities (since it is apparently faster than the user-specific RSS feeds that Foursquare uses). If this is the case it could yield an important differentiator for Gowalla, which to me seems to desparatly need something to effectively compete with the larger competitor Foursquare.
After 3 weeks of vacation, I am slowly digging through my RSS Feeds to catch up with whatever happened during my absence. Here are a few links of stuff I dugg up:
A new study with 1,500 consumers shows the influence of social media participation on buying intent: „over 50% of Facebook fans and Twitter followers say they are more likely to buy, recommend than before they were engaged.“
Will it blend? Of course the iPad also blends: http://bit.ly/9lXbOB (and you can fold it, too, apparently). Tom Dickson of BlendTec is at it again. It hurts, to watch that!
Google goes from „fan“ to „like“. I don’t like this. The reasoning: users click on „i like“ more often than „become a fan“. Of course they do. My opinion: once Facebook changes that, users will click on „i like“ less often, because of the fear of too strong committment.
Trying to plan the next social media campaign? Let the social media planner help you.
I am sure that there is lots more, the arrival of the iPad and all the craze about it, for example. Or the hundreds of other news items about facebook, twitter and/or foursquare, that are surely still waiting for me in my RSS reader, but I am very much tempted to just press „mark all read“…
Finally vacation! The first long holiday since September 2008, when I travelled along the west coast of the US. This time I am going to visit Asia – Thailand to be precise. In the same way I kept a travel diary during our trip in 2008, I will again update www.urlaubsnotizen.de (in german) on an almost daily basis, depending on internet availability on all those islands I visit.
The Superbowl has yet again been a large show off for TV ads. Even though some argue that the quality of ads has been lower than the previous years, one thing stuck out again: the spots not produced by a typical „Madison Avenue Agency“. Two Doritos spots, allegedly created by consumers, a Google ad produced internally,
NY Times hence wrote an article with the catchy title „Do-it-yourself super ads„, subtitle: „be afraid, Madison Avenue. Very afraid“. The article mentions the user generated spots and their „ranking“ on hulu.com and twitter, deducting that consumer know best what consumers want to see.
Well, that’s only one part of the story. And shall we say: the badly researched part of the story.
The first Doritos spot „Underdog“ was created by Joshua Svoboda a 24 year old, who works as a creative director. The second spot „House Rules“ was created by a writer/director from Hollywood.
Even the other Doritos commercials from the previous years plus other „UGC“ clips were apparently created by people already working in film related businesses, states the above mentioned article.
So it wasn’t brand fans or advocates who put in their efforts to create a brand message for the brand they like. It was creative people, producers, writers, who were probably more interested in promoting their own „brand“ through the PR associated with the clip.
It’s not really that surprising. However, the fact that this has not been picked up by the media correctly is suprising. In a way, I also fell for what might be the reason for the whole ignorance: the story of consumers creating ads with only a few hundred Dollars production costs, that are shown during the Superbowl with a mediabudget of more than $2.5 million, reaching more than 100 million viewers – it’s too good.
I work in an ad agency, so I shouldn’t like the idea of consumer generated ads. Yet due to my interest in social media marketing I did in fact like the idea. (And with everything connected to the setup of the contest, there would still be enough scope for agency work…) So it is rather disappointing to find out about the truth behind these famous examples.
In a blobpost by Leander I was linked to some statistics published by emarketer.com about the growth of Second Life in the last 3 years. It’s amazing to see how their user base has grown round about 30% since their „hype“ in 2007, and time spent within the world increased by ca. 20% during the last year.
In terms of money: the economy of Second Life has also greatly increased. The amount of money changing hands has increased to $567 Million!
That sounds like Second Life is slowly gaining ground, however this time without the hype that diluted their numbers. Now that all the hype seeking geeks, journalists and other curious cats have left „the building“, Second Life grows their natural user base, who ever that might be. It would be interesting to get some stats on their user base, anyone have a hint where to get that?
Wo ich sonst so bin...