Digital Influence Mapping Project

Getting the 1% to Do More

Or how to really engage the true brand fans to become more productive advocates (and save you money while selling more). 

So much energy and money is being spent on building what we all describe as big “fanbases” in Facebook, Twitter, or other social networks, that we lose sight of the fact that not all fans are created equal.

In our soon-to-be-released international study on brand advocacy, one finding is clear – the number of highly active and vocal fans for particular brands is quite small.  So what are you doing for your best, most connected customers (here “best” might mean most vocal advocates and not necessarily the biggest spenders)? What are you doing for the 1-5% of your fan or follower base who are actually sharing a lot and championing the brand?

Certainly acknowledging them with replies on Facebook or Twitter is good practice. But if you really want to cultivate strong advocacy from those most inclined to express themselves you may want to go further.

Fan Loyalty Programs

Brand have run loyalty programs for centuries. Most are geared towards encouraging customers to spend more. Data programs are run to filter and identify big spenders with tons of nuance about what they spend on and so forth. Our own Lasek Group are expert at designing and running some of the world’s top loyalty programs.

What are relatively new are programs designed to inspire and drive more focused advocacy from the most active advocates. These programs need three components to succeed:

1.  A technological platform that makes it easy to deliver messages and build insightful profiles
2. A steady stream of content, offers and access that the best advocates would find worth their time and their social capital
3. A program design and execution discipline based upon the key drivers of behavior

 

Technology platforms

We designed our own Insider Circle as a way to subscribe a group of ‘super-fans’ to a private club where they receive exclusives – content before anyone else, access to interesting people and experiences, product and service offers and experiences. We saw other platforms on the market but none really reflected the feature-set that we had learned from experience were not only valuable but also ‘right-sized’ to the market. That means baking-in social drivers like game mechanics and rewards and making it easy to use other behavior-drivers. 

There are other good choices out there now. Social Chorus is one. Greg Shove, CEO, has led a great team to create a useful platform that helps brands identify ‘social influencers’ and then subscribe them via the platform. There is a significant distinction between fans and influencers. Clearly having fans who have the attributes of potential influence (i.e. high-reach and relevance) is ideal. Still, identifying your most vocal fans and being mindful that they likely span the spectrum of high potential influence and to low potential influence is okay.

500 Friends sounds more like a loyalty-minded firm or as they would call it, “LoyaltyPlus”

“LoyaltyPlus empowers you to present your customers with relevant incentives, such as rewards, points, status, recognition, and exclusive access and promotions. Engage your customers at each stage of their lifecycle, from the time they become aware of your brand through conversion to loyalty and ultimately advocacy.”

The platform combines customer rewards, advocacy stimulants (they make it easy and provide incentives), and a way to capture reviews and other consumer generated content.

Now, Dropify adds some functionality to Facebook to deliver content to your community. You can literally lay on an exclusive downloadable video or white paper to your fanbase. It’s not clear of the platform will support targeting that to specific members of your community – like your 1%. It’s also not clear if this functionality is really a step above how we deliver content now through the Facebook Newsfeed. But its inevitable that Facebook and or the network of developers working within that environment will try to get real about the different levels of advocates in the myriad of brand fanbases out there and develop tools to treat them special.

A steady stream of value

Many brands are redefining budgets and staff to support the content needed to mange always-on social networks. It isn’t easy or a trivial matter. But its happening. Now, comes the question of what are you going to hold back and release exclusively to your best advocates?

Most brands are struggling to keep good stuff in the pipeline for the mass Facebook fanbase. Choosing to create exclusives for an even smaller group is tough. They must believe in the power of the ‘super-fan’ over the myth of the mass-engaged fanbase (my bias is pretty clear)

Key drivers of behavior

The more things change the more they stay the same. If your goal is to drive your most vocal fans to action, then you would use the proven drivers of social behaviors. Think Cialdini, Health Brothers, Ariely. If you just start with Cialdini’s ‘6 drivers of persuasion,’ you can see instantly how we bring those to bear. ‘Scarcity’ is what exclusive and limited run offers are all about. These are the assets we make available via the technology platform for a limited time. ‘Social Proof’ lets other advocates see what their peers are doing this reinforcing their own impulse to share particular content.

As you plan out the rest of your 2013 plan and identify next priorities on into 2014, what are you doing to embrace and activate your 1%?

Related articles

The Art and Science of Social Media 3.0

The Psychology of Advocacy: 3 Reasons Your Customers Love You

Rethinking the Marketing Spend Towards Driving Advocacy

Why I Love the New MySpace

Yup, they’re back (The Constellations, above, are a great band in the service). Many in the trades will get snarky about the rising from the ashes of the flameout social network that lost its way. In the apparent triumph of Facebook as the primary social plumbing of our lives, they might be right. Many more will criticize the celebrity backing of Justin Timberlake as a hail-mary pass of brand beyond hope.

I don’t think MySpace should be mistaken for Twinkies. That product brand is part of our history but hopelessly out of step with our healthful present. The New MySpace (I shall call it the “New MySpace” for about a year and then we can go back to just saying “MySpace”) is trying to be something new while at the same time getting back to its knitting – music.

 

Beta Beta

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot that’s messed up here. While wonderfully visual (I love the big type in the search function), the interface is a messy work-in-progress. Still, I give them credit for trying to mesh the big picture-swipes of the tablet world with an almost simple dashboard design.

Building a playlist that is a mix of songs, videos and full albums is do-able. The significance of what are “Connections” is not clear. That is the primary activity like Facebook’s “Like” or Twitter’s “Follow.” I can Connect with another user by also with any type of media. I got tired connecting to all the Nick Cave songs displayed. Unfortunately, no matter what or who I connected to, nothing ever appeared in my stream. Then I realized the interesting user experience twist – it’s all based upon a horizontal scroll. Clearly a way to distinguish from Facebook but also connect to the horizontal scroll/swipe of iTunes and many tablet functions including our own Web site at Social@Ogilvy.

Music Fans First

Upon registering, you will be asked to self-identify to a stack of creative titles (or the ubiquitous “fan” category). Even though they hint at serving visual artists, too, the actual content and experience appears to be all music focus now. Again, that’s the territory that “old” MySpace staked out at one time.

As a music fan, I hate being force fed a ‘top-of-the-charts’ experience. That’s what we have today in the service. I respect Beyonce, Adele, and even Justin Timberlake. That’s just not my turf. I suspect this is simply how the service launches. It took me only a few minutes to find J Roddy Walston tracks and a simply awesome Social Distortion video.

 

Pandora and YouTube and, someday, Tumblr?

Forget Facebook. That’s not the territory for the New MySpace. They seem to have staked out some interesting white space wedged between Pandora and YouTube. I love being able to build a playlist that is a mix of songs, albums and videos. It plays in the background. Once in a while, I will watch the video. Of course, Pandora’s magic sauce is the recommendations from their wonderful human-powered DNA analysis. Hard to beat that for music discovery. Currently, there is no real way to discover new music short of browsing endless pages of album art and photo thumbnails or selecting a handful of “related” links. I like recommendations pushed to me.

I have a confession. I love music videos. As corny as they can be, I grew up when MTV was born (“old” MTV) and worked on some of the first music videos seen on the channel. There just isn’t a great experience to find and watch music videos. I know YouTube has everything, but I like a bit of quality curation. I imagine that is what I get in the New MySpace.

Clearly, New MySpace starts with music and music fans. The ambition seems to be a space for all types of creators/creatives. In that regard they may be aiming for some of the territory currently blowing up in Tumblr where we are all asked to “Follow the World’s Creators.” Interestingly, it may just be the user experience that keeps those services apart. Tumblr is the epitome of simple (I love my Tumblr – Smoldering Embers). My Space requires more investment.  Tumblr is also great as it holds wonderful content – often visual – that the world can access and link to. I tried for 10 minutes to send a link to my wife to the Social Distortion video and gave up.

We’ll See

I don’t know if the New MySpace will flourish and survive. I don’t think anyone knows. It feels fresh to me. I hope that it evolves to allow more connections outside the service (e.g. Facebook Connect, Tweets).

I suppose part of their success depends on their ability to lure artists back into MySpace to interact (The Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds page is empty). I don’t think Top40 or even Top500 radio artists can carry the service. Lastly, many services have tried to navigate the licensing and legal quagmire of music rights and ownership and died trying. I hope they know what they are doing.

If you are a music fan, you have to try it.

Related articles

New MySpace opens to the public alongside new Justin Timberlake single

MySpace Attempts to Rise From the Ashes

MySpace relaunches with new design and Justin Timberlake all over it

The Quality of the Conversation Matters

Community management is the new black. Everybody is doing it. Everybody claims to do it well. But scan a random sample of brand Facebook pages and you will discover a broad spread of quality. Now check Twitter. Same thing. Brands get that they should be on these platforms. They understand the mechanism of growing or acquiring fans and followers. They even understand that the metrics of an engaged fanbase comes in some form of the “People Talking About This” number in Facebook, for example.

Well. Sort of. I am not convinced that enough brand marketers are committed to learning and codifying the nuanced differences of what makes for great interactions. The NYTimes covered how a Hollywood agency, theAudience, is doing it for stars and studios alike. They are using social networks to strengthen the value of celebrity “brands” including Russell Brand and appear to be paying close attention to the quality of the content and conversation they are generating.   

“The goal, explains Jeff Pressman, the chief operating officer of theAudience is “to develop long term emotional relationships.” He adds, “So when it does come time to ask something of these highly engaged fans – buy a ticket, click on a link – you have earned their trust and attention and they are willing to do it.”"

Pretty basic but true. Too many brands are trying to find that “high performing” campaign inside Facebook or even the single post that everyone clicks on versus playing the long game.

Here are three pitfalls that I have noticed lately in community management for brands: 

Pitfall #1: Letting industry stats drive the strategy. No big mystery but, statistically speaking photographs, drive more sharing on Facebook than other types of media. Sharing is what shows up in our own personal streams and depending on the vagaries of EdgeRank, it’s what shows up to our friends who follow you.  Does that mean you should use lots of photographs in your posts?

One coffee brand who shall remain nameless has produced an endless supply of images of coffee cups, some in clever scenes you’re meant to guess the reference of and absolutely all of them packaged carefully in consistent brand colors. I can just see the junior art directors sweating over their style guides now. In short, I think they may have over done the medium – photographs – in lieu of delivering a valuable relationship.

Sure use images. Russell Brand’s page is full of images and, yes, most of them feature images of Russell Brand. But they represent a mix of shots from the show, impromptu shots of him at home, internet meme postcards, the “gift” he gave David Spade for appearing on his show. It may not be fair to compare a celebrity page with a consumer product page.  But still there are lessons of great community management that can be found everywhere and have some application to other brands.

 

Pitfall #2: Letting your own data drive the strategy. Everyone should be analyzing Facebook Insights and other data to really understand how their content is doing. From the time of day for a post to the type of call-to–action to the “story” behind  series of posts, there’s plenty to watch. Still, if you are not careful, you can let your stats dictate too much of your strategy.

For instance, many brands have discovered the light-weight, conversational post commemorating a holiday or shared cultural phenomena. Nothing wrong with that. When you discover that your most engaging post in a while was Happy Valentines Day, don’t revert your content calendar to feature 50% innocuous posts on daily holidays. You might get a bunch of clicks and even shares but what that’s got to do with your brand and what your followers value from you is another matter.

Let your data inform your strategy, not become it.

 

Pitfall #3: Forgetting to define a brand voice. I like Hugo Boss. I have bought a fair amount of merchandise over the years (not that the brand ever noticed or cares who I am). So, I have an affinity for the brand. But visit their Facebook page and you’ll see that they resort to generic corp comms voice and haven’t put any apparent thought into the voice and personality behind the page.

Compare that to San Pellegrino. Their page is not only clearly focused on an enduring effort to bring us all closer to an Italian experience, the actual voice of the page is consistent and distinctive. H/she is friendly:

“When was your last San Pellegrino Moment?

Our friend Ellen sent us hers

San Pellegrino Moments - Send us yours!”

A hint: write a single paragraph personality statement that describes who the brand is as manifested in the social network of choice. Write another on the tone of the voice – are you playful, friendly, politely helpful, sassy, etc… Finally write a two-column grid of “Do’s” and “Don’ts” – what the brand will say and what it won’t say that brings the voice to life. Clear guidance like this will help you choose a distinctive and appropriate voice and guide the work of community managers ongoing.

 

The quality of the conversation matters. That's why brands should be investing more and more into their community managers and the content at their fingertips. We can use all the data in the world to make our approach to these communities smart. We just cant delegate judgment to data. Community managers begin to understand the community and what makes them interested.  They are perfectly suited to becoming accountable for quality not just performance metrics. 

Government Leads in Crowdsourcing “Massive Awesomeness”

How is the US government using social and digital media and data to bring value to the people? Too often criticized for bureaucratic sluggishness and cross-interest paralysis, the US government is doing some surprising things to innovate. Just look at the Health Data Initiative (HDI), a public-private initiative whose founding membership includes the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).   

Todd Park, the infectious (in a good way) US Chief Technology Officer, recently kicked off the Health Datapalooza in Washington DC. It’s one manifestation of the HDI, “the public-private collaboration that encourages innovators to utilize health data to develop applications that raise awareness of health system performance and spark community action to improve health.” The Health Datapalooza is all about opening up data and hosting crowdsourcing efforts that inspire the best and brightest to make use of that data. The DC-based event has inspired other health data, “hackathon” crowdsourcing events across the country.

Check out the Cajun Code Fest held in Louisiana. It brought 300 coders together to wrestle with code sets from the government that included:

• SCHOOL NUTRITION DIETARY ASSESSMENT STUDY
• BEHAVIORAL RISK FACTOR SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM
• NATIONAL SURVEY OF CHILDREN'S HEALTH
• FOOD ENVIRONMENT ATLAS

Among other issues, they rallied their brainpower to crunch data towards useful solutions to childhood obesity. Check out their Web site and browse through the descriptions of the 37 datasets like those mentioned above. Even a layman (non-coder; non-data junkie) can start to imagine some of the possibilities if we could just bash some of this data together to extract insight and utility.

The Fanboy of Health Data

Todd Park is a force to be reckoned with. Just watch his introductory speech to the 2012 Health Datapalooza. A self-avowed  “fanboy of health data,” his brightness and enthusiasm is just what is needed to inspire 1600 entrepreneurs to convene for two days and lay the foundation for innovation that uses government data in creative and useful ways.

His proof point for opening up data or as Thomas Goetz, Executive Editor of Wired Magazine, called it converting ‘latent data into powerful, actionable data’, is the opening of weather and subsequently GPS data. Those moves created $90b of “massive awesomeness.” That’s innovation creating jobs, better outcomes for farmers and others who rely on weather, and just a ton of entrepreneurship (think Weather Channel, think Google Maps).

 “Awesome” is clearly Todd's favorite word. Hearing someone so effusive and passionate speak from a government pulpit is a breath of fresh air. He seems to have grabbed onto a behavior made popular in Silicon Valley in the private sector and figured out a way to elevate it to public-service-meets-the-next-wave-of-entrepreneurs.  I hope other governments around the world pay attention to this model and try to apply it to solve the big thorny issues.  

If you want to get a sense of some of the emerging solutions that were highlighted during the event, Read David Maris’ article at Forbes.com. He covers off on the winners and some of the interesting highlights. The value of the event goes far beyond those that won.

I am particularly fond of data visualization as part of a behavior strategy. David highlights the team from Indiana University who “entered a mobile app that provides images and information about the overall health of the population of each state.  So calling up an image of Mississippi, pulls up an obesity-adjusted outline of a person with other health statistics, while the Colorado outline is noticeably thinner.”

Also, the winner, VaxNation from Baylor, Rice and University of Texas students is "an app designed to make it easier for people to keep up with their families’ immunizations"

Read more about Todd Parks' enthusiasm and leadership at Mashable. 

 

One of CMO's top concerns in teh private sector is how to manage - make use of - the flood of data now avaialble to them. Perhaps there is a lesson in these open inititaives or the technology hackathons that came before them. 

Bald Barbie Not Invented Here

Why do brands find it hard to respond to community requests? Recently, a grassroots effort started by Jane Bingham and Rebecca Sypin, each who lost daughters to cancer, manifested in the Facebook Page, Beautiful and Bald Barbie. They have earned 158K fans to date all rallied around the idea of motivating Mattel to create a bald Barbie for girls struggling from hair loss associated from cancer treatments and other situations. 

Four months later, Mattel has signaled that they will create and give away “a bald friend” of Barbie in 2012. This is after the Bratz doll line announced they are delivering a series of bald dolls this June. 

Deborah Weinstein over at the SocialCMO summarized the “we were going to do this anyhow” tone response from Mattel when they finally pulled the trigger, 

“This week – some four months later – Mattel finally stepped up to the plate and announced the creation of a Bald Barbie Friend of Barbie for distribution to children’s hospitals and charities in 2013. Company spokesman Alan Hilowitz was quick to point out that Mattel did NOT create the doll in response to the Facebook page, but rather because “they helped us realize how important this was for us to do.”

Hard to Surrender to the Community

As much as I share Deb Weinstein’s POV that Mattel missed a bigger opportunity to acknowledge the community discussion immediately, respond and finally pull the trigger to meet the clear demand, the fact that they did at all is probably progress for a traditional business like Mattel.  When companies like Threadless have an entire business model around crowdsourced and voted-on t-shirts, why is it so much harder for the Mattel’s of the world to just say, “wow, you guys are bringing up an awesome idea and we really want to make this happen…?”

The problem of ownership

Can you say legal, intellectual property(IP), and post-war industrial enterprise? Threadless is different. They are soliciting designs under a clear terms of service that protects all parties. They also weren’t born out of the culture of the fifties.  As much as Mattel may have wanted to rush with a positive response, their whole infrastructure has been designed to protect IP. An idea from an outside source suddenly puts them at risk. Who would own the doll suggested by two moms behind a Facebook page? Should they manufacture and sell it, are they at risk for ownership? Does that risk dilute the protections on the golden goose core Barbie line? 

 

The problem of management

And then there is the curse of the industrial age, creative company. Toy companies are creative businesses who are designed to deliver valuable ideas. Agencies are the same way. If it wasn’t created at Mattel then what the heck are all those employees doing in the design department? I know it’s not logical and we really aren’t talking about a creative breakthrough here (just look at the photo mock-ups people have made of Barbie with no hair – pretty simple, right). Still post-war, industrial-scale companies are where management became king. And management is meant to control and manage. Creative is meant to create. The impulse to reject outside thinking is pretty strong because that’s the way they roll. 

 

The problem of dialogue

Some companies have a hard time talking to people in anything but that highly-protected tone of the PR department. If there is one lesson that social media has taught brands it must be that learning how to have a conversation like a human being actually does matter to customers. Barbie’s Facebook page is largely about the character’s voice. Mattel’s page, on the other hand, is about engaging and natural as the accountants who come out at every Oscar Awards show to explain the judging procedures. 

It’s also where you see a doozy of “protect the IP at all costs” statement in their Info tab:

“As the world’s largest toy company, we receive thousands of product suggestions every year. Given this volume, it’s likely yours is the same or substantially similar to concepts we’ve already received or developed. While we appreciate hearing from our consumers, we rely on our large staff of designers for product ideas. Therefore, it’s our policy to not review any unsolicited concepts and we cannot retain your submission. We don’t assume any obligation in connection with your unsolicited concept. If you’d like to learn more about how to get into the toy business, you may wish to contact the Toy Industry Association at http://www.Toy-Tia.org.”

Part of the problem with Mattel’s response was how long it took. Four months is about 3 months and 29 days too long. They needn’t have assented right away. A simple “we hear you” and “we appreciate what you are all going through with your children and your love for Barbie…” would have started the ball rolling in the right direction. Part of the problem is the established tone of voice.

Perhaps Mattel still believes there is only one way to protect their position - the cardboard statement. So many other brands have found ways to talk like human beings without losing their commercial advantage. Could Mattel have done better? Certainly. I only hope they examine this situation with enough candor to see what the true opportunities for change are. 

The Pay Scale of the Community Manager Just Went Up

Many of us participated in Facebook’s Marketing Summit last week. We shared some of our early view of the implications here. One of the byproducts of the integration of the new set of advertising offerings with page management is a more complex job and set of skills for the person managing that page. Chances are, you are not paying them enough.

History of Community Management

At the risk of sounding like the doddering old man, I remember when community managers lived on message boards. They got to know the members – the outspoken few and the culture of the many. Their “job” – sometimes a volunteer position – was to steward the community. They helped maintain a healthy environment but in many ways, their job was to stay out of the way of those drawn there to talk about their shared interests and affinities.

We’re talking AOL forums, the WELL or, in my case, the forums we had on Discovery.com back when we rediscovered the wreck of the Titanic.

It’s Just Conversation, Right?

With the dawn of the social network era, we began to launch a new wave of brand and affinity communities on Facebook, MySpace (wait for the comeback), Orkut and more. Forums still mattered. We debated whether services like Twitter and YouTube really represented communities. For branded Facebook pages, we saw the challenge differently than stewarding a community brought together based upon their love for crafting, snowboarding or Lykke Li because people were “joining” brand pages.

They wanted something from the brand not just interactions with others publishing on the page. We even called it “conversation management” to try and distinguish from the seemingly old-school images of message board mavens asking members to be more civil as they debated the merits of different quilting techniques. Managing a Facebook page seemed so simple. If anything, you needed to hire someone who “got it” (i.e. think “young person”) and was willing to talk back and forth with the vocal minority. I even heard of brands delegating the job to the interns.

Protecting Your Investment

Fast forward to last week. As more and more brands invest in social media and in their Facebook commitments alone, the job of Community Manager becomes increasingly important. We are starting to see the benefits to business from community and ‘social relationship management.’ Cultivating millions of addressable customers on a Facebook page and letting them know that a new flavor just launched or that they and they alone could get a special deal became very appealing from a business perspective. The ‘measurability’ of all this remains a work in progress. But only the most stick-in-the-mud, ROI-first stalwart question the likelihood that this would significantly change business. If you are going to invest conservatively 10’s of millions of dollars in Facebook advertising as many big consumer brands are doing (I would guess that today’s FMCGs are ‘playing’ with budgets for Facebook alone that are 2-4% of total marcom spend), then you ought not leave the hub of that experience in the hands of anyone less than a race car driver.

Community Business Director

The community manager needs to be able to control the content of ads and the deployment of the units. In Facebook terms, they are emphasizing “story” over “ads” and suggesting that all ads be some form of valuable and relevant content. It is not just a semantic distinction. As ads can now be delivered to the Facebook wall vs. just the ad “gutter,’ it is critical that this content live up the same demands we put on our best Facebook wall content. It must genuinely earn people’s attention and action. You can browse through Facebook’s new ad “Offers” here and it will paint a clear picture.

“Community Manager” is a title that comes with too much baggage. The job is important enough that we ought to at least amp it up to “Community Business Director.” Here are the key responsibilities and skills:

• Define a strategy that connects business objectives to community and business outcomes
• Create content of all sorts from hands-on responsibilities to the capacity to direct a network of content specialists (e.g. spec the right video by the right production company)
• Plan, create and deploy advertising as part of a paid, owned, earned strategy
• Manage customer, fan, stakeholder dialogue
• Connect across the business with experts who can answer community members and solve issues
• Have strong technical and tools expertise (get the most out of systems like Buddy Media, SpredFast and more)
• Analyze data to find insight and define business performance
• Apply an understanding of key public affairs issues and legal positions to sensitive conversations online

The job requires new skills. Just adding the advertising or media planning and buying integration requires a new set of skills that used to be outsourced to a media planning function. Add on top of that the business maturity to get the most out of the community investment and you have a more important job.

It may require more than tuning up the right individual. It will likely require an organizational solution like a “director” who directs the activities of many managers towards a business outcome. I feel lucky in that our organization already has these skills integrated. What will happen to the PR firms out there who have no integrated media planning function or the small social media boutiques who cannot leverage buying power or are missing some other critical element.

No doubt that the image of the community manager spawned from Facebook’s announcement may be a bit aspirational. Still, we are heading to a much more sophisticated model and the time to put that person or team in place is now. We have.

 

(thanks to insites consulting for the image of their great cake)

Welcome to Social@Ogilvy!

(this post is also found in s similar form on our new Social@Ogilvy site)

The Social Imperative

Brands will spend between 17-18% of their total marcom spend on social media within 4 years. They will spend more on social business solutions. They are seeing value and expecting more every year. 

The key reason? 90% of us look to friends and family for the most trusted recommendations on products, service and issues. 70% of us count on consumer opinions online above traditional media. And it’s only going to grow. Millennials are three times more likely than Boomers to look for a social opinion on choices they make. 

The future is brand advocacy. And it cannot be faked, gamed, or outright ‘bought.’

There are only three ways to connect with and build a strong relationship with customers and stakeholders these days. 

1. Deliver highly relevant content or service. This could be advertising, media relations or what we call ‘owned’ content (including valuable services). Now it’s all highly targeted and tailored. No more 360 degree ‘onslaughts’ of interruptive advertising. Now our messages must be deemed highly relevant to our targets to earn their attention. Lets use the ‘10 degrees’ that matter. Useful content to run a sustainable business from DuPont. Better ways to use member ‘points’ from American Express. 
2. Be discoverable in search. When people search Google, Baidu or Yandex, brands need to be there for all the topics that intersect between a person’s intent and where the brand can add some value. Ford on fuel efficiency. Hellmann’s on Real Food recipes. 
3. Earn our way into their ‘social graph.’  To succeed in social media, we must become genuinely valuable to the people we serve and earn their attention, their advocacy and their business.   Inviting people as VIPs into the launch of the new Ford Explorer in Facebook. Sparking a social conversation about the dreams of the next generation of Chinese from Johnnie Walker. Helping Hong Kong parents celebrate their baby pictures in a much bigger way from Huggies.

How we form opinions about products, services and issues is constantly changing. It’s imperative that we make social a new way we do everything.

What is Social@Ogilvy? 

Social@Ogilvy is the global, cross-discipline team of social experts from across all of Ogilvy’s businesses delivering social solutions to all parts of our clients’ business. This is new. This is bigger than before. We have been designing and executing social media marketing and communications programs for 7+ years as 360 Digital Influence – a specialty practice born out of Ogilvy Public Relations. We quickly grew to deliver social solutions for all sorts of marketing and communications clients. 

Now we have grown into Social@Ogilvy. We are a true global network with a common approach. 

Integrated Social Media Matters More 

The whole PR vs. marketing battle is moot. Social media will inform every discipline and deliver business value for the foreseeable future. Social media as a standalone specialty doesn’t make sense. All the power and potential in social based solutions comes to life when you integrate it into marcom and other functions. 

We design integrated social solutions that combine deep disciplines like crm, public relations and shopper marketing and rooted in what drives behavior.  We plan around owned, earned and paid media working together for a compound effect and at its heart our work is ‘social by design’ – phrase used now by Facebook but that captures what we do quite well. 

A Global Shift

We do believe there’s a new customer and stakeholder journey defined by the increasing impact our networks have on purchase decision and our behaviors. How we buy, vote, and form opinions has changed. We tap into our 130 friends (the Facebook average) to discover, consider, compare, decide and rave about products, services and issues.

This shift is happening in one way or another all over the world. Growth markets like China, Indonesia, Brazil and Turkey will define the next episode of social media use. They are all growing their social network use and outpacing western markets including the US. That’s why we have grown the world’s largest global team delivering solutions relevant in each local market.  

And it’s more than just marketing, we design social business solutions that use the collaboration and advocacy strengths of social media to drive value internally and in customer relationships while at the same time managing risk. 

 

Join Us

We will be participating or hosting 23 events in and outside of Social Media Week this week in NYC, London and Hong Kong not to mention a dozen other markets. Join us as we launch this new ambitious business. It's been a wild ride to get to this point and we would love to see you. You can find out more at our new Social@Ogilvy site.

Will Data, the Crowd or Personal Guides Deliver the Golden Age of Travel?

Is it just me or is the social Web alive with travel innovation? This coming from a guy who diligently fed data into Dopplr for years without any apparent pay-off. So, I am a bit of a sucker for anything to do with travel. Still, I think there is reason for even more critical folks to be encouraged, excited even, about what is coming in travel innovation. 

A month ago, I met the CEO of Jetsetter when we both spoke at the Digital CMO Summit. That day, he introduced the new Jetsetter iPad app which is a beautiful gem. I love all of the Gilt group deal offerings. They are so not-Groupon. Essentially, the app takes a great idea and makes it look and navigate terrifically. It doesn't change it. That's where the personal guides come in.

Personal Guides

It's probably more accurate to call this new category of service 'personalized guides." Drew Patterson revealed that Jetsetter was starting a service for a fee where travelers could query Jetsetter experts from around the world for personalized itineraries in certain locations. Of course I lost my magic postcard which held my invitation to take advantage of that service. Still, I love the idea. 

Now you can do same through Fortnighter. For somewhere between $100-$250 you can get somewhat personalized recommendations from hotels to restaurants to activities. The service only lets you personalize so much. And it caters to the single or couples traveler. That leaves me and my family a wee bit left out. Still, I like the notion of concierge-like service and I believe in the premise - if I am going to invest a chunk of money and time to go to Istanbul with my family (true - going this July), then I would be willing for some local guidance on what to do there that deviates from the beaten tourist path while letting us find the really good pizza in town.

Still another example is really not an example fo a social enablement. Its more an example of how niche travel may find an audience. Political Tours offers travel itineraries around political history. A tour focused on Turkey Elections 2011 would include really cool events like this one:

"Day 3 Turkish foreign policy – moving eastward? A panel discussion with leading Turkish commentators. Lunch at Imroz in Nevizade with an introduction to the Tarlabasi district: urban projects and gentrification. Guided Walk through Tarlabasi with Constanze Leitsch, a migration expert. Visit to Kürt Kav, a Kurdish foundation, a Greek Church with Father Dositeos. Meetings with local artisans. Dinner with NGO activists"

I love this experiential approach to travel and wish I could "sample" it while there. My family would not appreciate a full immersive, multi-day focus on politics. Nor would they agree to me slithering off to do this on my own. 

The Crowd

While still people-powered, another way to go is Wizard Istanbul (thanks, as always, to Springwise) The service operated by the Culture and Tourism Ministry of Turkey, lets me ask a question via Twitter and Facebook and someone - presumably another traveler, resident or the Wizard, him/herself will answer. I submitted a couple of questions around whirling dervish ceremonies/performances and pizza. We will see what the crowd comes back with.

The service recruits writers willing to answer the questions. This is a terrific service from a forward-thinking ministry. I suppose it's possible that the service will get overrun by spammers or folks with commercial interests (disappointing to realize that most hotel concierges make recommendations for places that kickback a fee). For now, I prefer to keep my naive hat on and will plan on using the service before and while I am there.

Data

Marketers get frothy just thinking about how new access to data can deliver value for customers and brands. I remember a financial services company had an ambition to let member's access aggregate member data on the restaurants they most frequented - "X  members prefer Le Cirque over the Jockey Club." It fell apart when data revealed that most members went to McDonald's.

I tend to like to think of myself as the travel who shuns the usual touristy destinations (yes, same guy who asked about Whirling Dervishes in Istanbul). Aggregate data scares me as it suggests using the great median as a guide. 

 
But there are exceptions. These maps from Eric Fisher (and collected here on the Dohop blog - thanks to Datamining) plot out photographs from Flickr on top of city maps. Blue dots are from locals and the red dots are pix taken by visitors. This one is from Sydney where I just returned from. 

Here's why this particular data is helpful. We take pictures of memorable or remarkable scenes. Sometimes this is highly personal. Other times what I find photo-worthy, you will too. These maps tell me what others have felt worth a photo - something they found remarkable or memorable. As a traveler, I could use that. Imagine taking this data and mapping other data about the images (thumbnails or tags?) or from another source like FourSquare. Could we come up with maps of remarkable moments and vistas that others could tap into easily?

 

I tend to think that the more personal, human-powered services offer the most cool innovations currently. But data is on its way. We just cant forget that cool data can only get you so far. One must have a business model to support the services rendered, as well. 

Google's New "Like' Button or is it Delicious? (Take 2)

ADDITIONAL THOUGHT:

Google has relied on what it calls "signals" to understand consumer intent and target the right information like paid search listings. Essentially this is behavior like what you click on and where you have been. Facebook relies heavily on our profiles, what information we all share about ourselves and the connections we have made with other people to deliver relevant information (and advertising). For Google to deliver deeper value via more 'social' benefits, they have to get us all to create profiles like most social networks. +1 drives us to do that. In order for me to see what my Google "friends" have clicked on, we all have to have Google profiles. Many folks created those when they signed up for any of the services that Google offers from Gmail to GoogleDocs and more. 

The success of +1 is tied to two things. Will tons of folks create Google profiles and/or start taking theirs seriously? And does the actual +1 functionality deliver enough value. (note: it caused me to go in and add a bit more to my profile...)

 

PREVIOUS THOUGHT:

Not sure if Google's new "+1" button is more like "Like" or more like my Delicious account (which I will mourn the loss of when it goes away). Currently +1 doesn't allow tagging but that would be a natural next feature. I am trying it via Google Labs. 

And thanks to Fast Company. 

 

Let's Accelerate the "Consumerization of IT"

We are keenly aware of how social media will change business far beyond the narrow confines of marketing and communications. We believe that social media and all that we associate with that new phenomena, will deliver a business advantage for those organizations that discover its strength and apply it across the enterprise.

Social media helps in building more profitable relationships inside and outside the organization, providing a more fertile environment for innovation, and delivering the benefits of a complex, multinational community that talks a lot, shares ideas and leverages efficiencies. We won't get there by waiting for the next monolithic platform to be approved and deliverd via IT. As Ted Schadler from Forrester put it recently, we will get their by embracing, not resisting, the consumerization of IT. 

Employee Communication and Collaboration

How many companies have a great extranet/intranet? Go ahead, raise your hands. Even from my desk I only see one or two hands going up around the Internet.

The Nielsen Norman Group has their list of 2010 great intranets. These are from the likes of GE, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Walmart. There are a lot of good qualities cited in their criteria - social features, mobile interfaces, support for workgroups and role-based personalization - to name a few. I am sure some companies hit the ball out of the park and are delivering great intra/extranets with the adoption rate of Facebook. Most do not and we need a new approach. 

English Garden-growth and "Bright Spots"

Employees go rogue. We do it because we can and because we have to. There is a ton of innovation going on around how we all collaborate, communicate and, in general, thrive in organizations that are greater than the sum of its parts. Ted Schadler, whose new book with Josh Bernoff - Empowered, describes what I too often call the English garden-growth of social platforms within an organization. Chaotic yet beautiful at the same time, employees are trying stand-alone wikis, Basecamp, porting email to their iPhone, trying Yammer or Salesforce's Chatter with a closed community, setting up Vimeo accounts to share videos privately and more. 

We try new platforms, discover their potential for our work and then ...go rogue and just start using it. We did it ourselves by setting up a pbworks wiki 5 years ago to specifically share materials across a global team that had no common intra/extranet. There are quite a few other examples of this DIY approach to "getting sh*t done." There is a risk. Information security and governance was not born out of a paranoid mind. We do need to ensure our communications are not prone to misuse or access by a malevolent party. Still, IT has been consumerized and the role of the department formerly known as IT should be to recognize this implicit demand - fast, pretty-good, platforms that accelerate a part of business.

The Heath brothers talk about "bright spots" and it's applicable here. My wiki is a bright spot. It's an example where a boot-strapped solution worked - it delivers value and it has been adopted by users. 
Today's IT needs to figure out how to allow for experimentation with platforms, discover the bright spots and manage risk.

Holding back social media in the workplace is not an option.