No matter what you say to a client about the value of social media for their brand, the bottom line is that unless there are metrics attached, your supplications might fall on deaf ears.
Enter Looxii. This new service can help you make the case for brand engagement on social media channels. Humongo tested this tool by running a report for…drum roll please…’80s MTV VJ Pauly Shore. If you’re interested in what is being said about Pauly, visit the sample traffic report.
Looxii offers three tiers, which can be accessed on a free trial basis. Best of all, this service won’t cut into your campaign budget, because the fees are capped at $20 per month. Personally, I might have run a search for DJ Pauly D, but hey, I’m all about the Shore!
Imagine if, as a marketer, you know what your audience is thinking and feeling when launching a product or service. Yes, market research, focus groups and beta testing helps, but what if you really knew what was going on inside your customer’s head?
The concept of neuromarketing is just that. According to an article from the Financial Post, “researchers use a variety of measurement tools (MRI, EEG, heart & respiratory ratse and galvanic skin responses) to measure changes in a person’ brain activity as well as physiologic states,” which “show how different emotional states (e.g., anger, pleasure) can be generated by different external stimuli.”
An appliance maker considering adding a new feature to one of its products conducted a focus group to ask women if they liked the new feature. Most of the focus group participants said they liked it, but by studying the participants’ faces in detail, the company learned that almost 4/5 of the test subjects actually disliked the feature.
Being able to pinpoint the true feelings of customers by monitoring the way their true reactions, not just the reactions they tell us they have, will probably provide some very interesting fodder for brands and impact the way they market, create and sell their products and services.
This concept is near and dear to me, as I have a B.S. in psychology and still have an interest in how the mind works and why it works that way. I frequently read the Neuromarketing blog penned by Roger Dooley, so if you have some interest in the topic, check out Roger’s blog. It is a good addition to your daily reading.
We’ve come a long way since the Zack Morris cell phone. Today, more and more business is being conducted through mobile devices, and has been found to be quite the profitable approach. Mashable recently reported on Samsung’s top mobile commerce trends for 2010. The top five include:
Bargain Hunting: Including the apps that let you scan bar codes to compare prices at other retailers
Mobile Ticketing - Which surely helped moviegoers snag the last few cramped seats for recent sold-out movies, including Inceptionand Avatar
Banking - Who doesn’t have to check their balance while shopping to ensure they don’t overdraw?
Tangible Goods - Ordering items from sites like eBay
Marketing - For the amount of time people spend on their mobile phones, it’s no wonder marketers have tapped into this opportunity
The gamer and comic book cult audience can be hard to please but when they are excited about something, they will let you know, as you can see from the above video.
Yesterday, for the second year in a row, Japanese gamer Daigo Umehara won the Street Fighter IV Championship at EVO 2010, which he will have to defend on his home turf later this year at EVO Japan. Take one look at Daigo’s Facebook fan page, and aside from the smaller following, Daigo is a celeb of the very niche gamer community. There are dozens of comments beneath each status update and he has fans that want to take photos with him, challenge him to matches and take pictures of and with him.
His win might not seem like a big deal to us, but Capcom, the creator of the Street Fighter franchise, couldn’t have planned it any better in terms of marketing. I hate to say it, but it is a bit like the LeBron James free agent situation, and Capcom is the Miami Heat. Basically, they hit the jackpot.
Check out more from EVO 2010 from Dave Rudden at GamePro.
While e-mail seems so old-school these days, it’s still a major method of communication. Moms have been a target of marketers for a while now, which makes sense since they control over $4 billion worth of spending a year. As e-mail is often the preferred method of contact, for the mom and the marketer, a question arises: Is mom really reading her e-mails?
With all of the tasks that many of these moms have on their plate, it would be no surprise if many e-mails went straight to the trash or were left unread. E-mails from marketers to consumers are expected to rise to an average of 9,000 annually by 2014, according to a study by Forrester Research.
So, is e-mail still worth it? The study found 8 in 10 moms still want to receive offers and information from brands via e-mail and 85% of moms said they want to receive coupons.
Moms will read if you give them what they’re looking for!
Fan Appz launched a platform yesterday to help Facebook page administrators create and distribute brand-specific polls, quizzes and promotions that fans can share with friends to extend brand awareness and drive traffic.
The platform, called Professional, provides built-in social marketing tools for businesses at a monthly subscription fee of about $50. Each time a fan takes a quiz or participates in a poll, responses can publish to their Facebook stream.
I feel kind of bad for laughing at this story, but it is a pretty hilarious example of what happens when creative “viral” marketing goes wrong. A woman in Los Angeles is suing Toyota for a campaign executed by Saatchi & Saatchi, in which people were nominated to be pranked by their friends.
Amber Duick claims she had difficulty eating, sleeping and going to work during March and April of last year after she received e-mails for five days from a fictitious man called Sebastian Bowler, from England, who said he was on the run from the law, knew her and where she lived, and was coming to her home to hide from the police.
I’m not really sure what this campaign even has to do with the Toyota Matrix, which it was supposedly promoting, but it scared the poor girl so much, “she even made her longtime boyfriend sleep with a club and mace next to the bed for protection.” (It kind of makes me wonder how she would have reacted if she had received one of the Frenzied Waters packages promoting Shark Week, complete with her own obituary.) What do you think, is Amber a dingbat who can’t take a joke and wants to make some extra cash, or did the marketing folk go too far?
Ben & Jerry’s popular “Chubby Hubby” flavored ice cream announced via its Twitter account and Facebook fan page last week that the delectable treat will be renamed “Hubby Hubby” through the month of September in efforts to throw the company’s support behind same-sex marriages in its home state of Vermont.
Talk about using social media to make a social statement! Very cute, yet profound marketing tactic – I love it. I truly appreciate brands that stand behind a good cause, regardless of how it might impact their image and sales among those who don’t support their platform. It’s these kinds of bold moves that incite brand loyalty among do-gooders like myself!
With the help of boutique interactive agency, Campfire, Gawker Media convinced members of the trade press that it acquired a blog by and for vampires named “Blood Copy”.
The blog was not actually real, but meant to be more of a slick advertorial for the second season of HBO’s True Blood (which is, if you haven’t figured out yet, about vampires).
Among those fooled into posting about the fake news was popular NYC tech scene blog, Silicon Alley Insider, which released the statement below:
“We also think that HBO, Gawker, and the marketing agency crossed a line … We’re all for experimental online advertising, viral marketing, etc. … In our opinion, however, this campaign is designed to trick people.”
The verdict is out on this one. Is the stunt groundbreaking creative work, or unethical and defiant?
T-shirt maker Threadless has partnered with Twitter to release two new shirts a week priced at $18 each. The witty catchprases featured on each shirt will be voted upon by Twitter users, making the selection process a true democracy.
The Twitter Tees site will allow users to log on using their Twitter identification and carry a running tally of the most popular tweets of the week.
Threadless will contact those whose tweets are nominated to get permission. It is offering those chosen $360 in cash and a $140 Threadless gift certificate. The first to nominate the chosen tweet gets $100 and a $40 gift certificate.
According to a social media study by Michael Stelzner, sponsored by the upcoming Social Media Success Summit 2009, 88% of marketers are now using social media in some form and 72% have begun within the last few months.
Key findings from the data conclude that:
Small-business owners are more likely to use LinkedIn than employees working for a corporation.
Men are significantly more likely to use YouTube or other video marketing than women (52.4% of all men compared with 31.7% of women).
For those just getting under way with social media marketing, LinkedIn is ranked as their number-two choice, pushing blogging down one notch.
Among those who have been using social media for a few months, Facebook is in second place. This group also has more Twitter use.
Twitter is used by 94% of marketers who have been using social media for years, followed closely by blogs. This group also endorses online video significantly moreso than the other groups
DiGiorno of “It’s not delivery…” fame is launching its new crispy flatbread pizza by way of traditional advertising and…Twitter! Let’s be honest, this is hardly the first brand on Twitter; however, the unique component to this is that DiGiorno is reaching out to influencers on Twitter and asking them to host “tweetups,” where the new DiGiorno product will be delivered for all to enjoy.
At first, I thought this was a really fun way to get people talking about the pizza, but then I started to think about the brand message and realized how off-base it was. I’m perturbed that a brand that prides itself on being a value-driven alternative to pizza delivery does not realize that their plan actually includes, uh, well, delivering pizzas.
Here’s a scary thought for PR people: the Federal Trade Commission is expected to adopt a new regulation that would hold companies liable for untrue statements written by bloggers who receive samples of their products. The Financial Times explains:
If a blogger received a free sample of skin lotion and then incorrectly claimed the product cured eczema, the FTC could sue the company for making false or unsubstantiated statements. The blogger could be sued for making false representations.
I’m not really sure how this rule is sensical or fair, since I don’t believe companies can be sued if a journalist writes something incorrect about their product. I know the line blurs in certain situations, but for the most part, I think bloggers should be treated like journalists. However, it appears the FTC sees bloggers as “advertisers” for products and direct mouthpieces of the companies that send them samples.
“The guides needed to be updated to address not only the changes in technology, but also the consequences of new marketing practices,” said Richard Cleland, assistant director for the FTC’s division of advertising practices. “Word-of-mouth marketing is not exempt from the laws of truthful advertising.”
As a publicist who has sent samples to many bloggers, I can assure you that couldn’t be further from the truth. It looks like the FTC needs a lesson in Blogs 101.
Have you ever considered hiring a someone to manage social media for your brand? An article from this morning’s Brandweek states that the social media marketer title will become a growing occupation as more companies hire full-timers to interact with consumers on their behalf via Facebook and Twitter. Some companies like Dell and PepsiCo have been early adopters of hiring social media gurus while others, like Coca-Cola, have decidedly started whole digital teams.
