Digital Influence Mapping Project

3 Places to Get Smart About Content Marketing

More brands are considering how to put content at the center of their marketing. Coca-Cola has put a stake in the ground with “liquid and linked.” Ford is doing it with their Content Factory. Intel is committed.

Driven by the direct relationships brands now have through their social media platforms with customers, we are all seeing the value in not just using content more effectively but to operationalize it – get a bigger bang for a lesser buck.

It’s easy to believe this is a significant shift for marketers that will affect how budgets are organized, which positions are hired, how success is measured. It’s another thing to have the answers as to how all that will align for business as different as a global FMCG, a B2B tech company or a regional retailer.

Now is the time to get sharp, smart, educated, and generally collect a few different POVs. Here are three that I have found helpful:

 

Get wise about the various tech partners offering innovative services.

Jeremiah Owyang and the gang at Altimeter have shifted their sights on the content marketing space. I expect great insight from them over the next few months. It starts with a pretty good list of content marketing tech companies like Percolate,Visual.ly, Stipple and more. 

 

Start thinking about how to better organize your company to work across internal teams.

Rebecca Lieb and team at Altimeter drafted a great starting point for brands organizing around content. From the Executive Editorial Board to the Center of Excellence (this time for content vs. ‘social’), they cover some reasonable choices. There are more options out there, yet this paper does a good job of dispelling the idea that you are a mere brand journalist away from becoming an effective content marketing enterprise.

 

Keep reading and talking with the ‘community of practice’ around content marketing.

As you would expect, there’s tons of content out there about…content. I have found the Content Marketing Institute routinely valuable with their nuts and bolts articles about how others are doing this out there. This article on the 3 building blocks is a good example of foundational and smart stuff.

(Thanks to Just Jared Jr for the horrific image)

Related articles

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Tumblr Becomes the 4th Place for Brands

I just spent the last hour browsing my dashboard in Tumblr, “hearting” many posts and reblogging a couple that live up to what I am trying to publish in my Tumblr. I follow artists, designers, comic book artists, architects, map enthusiasts, photographers of empty spaces and much more.  For me, it’s about inspiration. And pausing from the frenetic pace and tension of my life to remember what I care about deeply.

"EVENT: Don't miss my interview this week with Tumblr founder, David Karp. 

A Conversation with David Karp, Founder of Tumblr: Brands Connecting Inside the Index of Passions -- Ogilvy & Mather Theater NYC February 20 -Time: 10:30am – 11:30am

Join us as for a candid conversation with David Karp who has created one of the fastest growing communities of people sharing what they care about most. How can brands participate in Tumblr with meaningful brand or business impact and how do we do it without spoiling the beauty of Tumblr? Join Social@Ogilvy’s John Bell as he asks David Karp about his vision for brands and Tumblr."

 

Tumblr is a place of passions, things we care about. Sure, it’s about “creators” but a broad, generous definition of creativity. As such it’s a network of people who care about the affinity that draws them there.

Many brands are more than experimenting with the site. You can browse some of the brand pages via the Brands on Tumblr page. The advantages are clear:

• Tumblr hosts interest and passion-driven content through the personalized dashboard
• Connecting with relevant microcommunities will become essential for brands in the next phase of data-driven social media marketing
• Tumblr pages are indexed by Google and enhance a brand’s discoverability
• They can be masked within a brand domain and therefore be part of the corporate domain
• The network of 150 million, highly engaged users has appreciable reach and a built-in social behavior - reblogging
• The simplicity of the platform supports brand ambitions to embrace content marketing
• They visual design of the service lends itself to visual expression and emotion
• There are some simple advertising solutions – two – that help brands be discovered

 

The 4^th Place

If Facebook is the key social network that brands want to master due to its broad global reach, Twitter is likely number two due to broad global relevance, it’s influencer status and suitability for service brand care. YouTube comes in next as the defacto platform for serving up video inside the world’s #2 search engine.

Pinterest? Instagram? Tumblr stands a better chance at earning the 4^th place position in social brand architecture for companies who know they need a searchable content place and who want to be inside a network of passions.

There are over 93 million Tumblrs (Tumblr blogs), users average 23 minutes on the platform per session and they clock 18 billion page views a month. It’s got reach and engagement. (Get some strong stats here)

Many arts-related brands have made a home here. Fashion brands are a strong niche.

Burberry: they established the Art of the Trench, the emotional “home” of the brand and are asking people to submit their photos of their ‘trench.’

Chanel: they keep it simple and post images that people can lust after and reblog

Dolce & Gabbana: An endless flow of fashion covers and spreads ready for reblogging and ‘hearting.’

Tory Burch: Torypedia is personal and luscious. Big, rebloggable pictures which si just what we want from fashion

Urban Outfitters: their pages start with the UP Community which aggregates a growing collection of pages that tie seamlessly into the ecommerce site. Check out the Swim Look Book in their site. Now check out the Tumblr.

 

Not just Fashion

Now is the time to explore in Tumblr. Brands like Ford, IBM, Amex and others are exploring how to use great content within this interest community.

The Lincoln Motor Company: our team did this work and created a poetic and beautiful site for Lincoln that taps the heritage of the brand.

Beautiful Creatures, the Movie: Hollywood embraces Tumblr as the platform of choice for new releases. Think about all those wasted dollars creating the Flash sites of yesteryear.

Coca Cola: the brand that embraced content marketing (see Content 2020) brings you a tumblr full of shareable images and gifs

Whole Foods: the Dark Rye Tumblr aggregates "pioneers of unconventional ideas..."  thus building on the brand story of Whole Foods as a disrupter. 

 

I know the guys/gals at Tumblr and have a lot of faith in their plans. They are embracing brands while staying committed to their original vision of a platform for creative-types. They have created an index of passions in my own words. That means emotion is part of what you will find there and as brands re-embrace the power of emotion and, perhaps, how to create great brand experience in a social world, Tumblr is the place to do that. They are innovating and working with brands now. That's why our team participates on their A-List and produces Tumblr-based ideas for Ford, IBM and other brands.

Facebook and Twitter serve to point to other content. Tumblr is content.

Related articles

Tumblr: David Karp's $800 Million Art Project

Tumblr's new notification feed: Is Tumblr trying to one-up Facebook?

Oh, The Places Tumblr Can Go

We Need Big Data People (More Than the Data, Itself)

For all of the hullabaloo about BIG DATA (so BIG it requires capital letters), the tangible examples remain ghost-like and hard to grip. Yes, I am sure that all the wonderful data-crunching recommendations I receive when logged into Amazon are valid examples. I even believe the data collection, mashing and outputs that drive Progressive’s Snapshot (collects data on how you and 1mm other people drive to build a personalized insurance rate) is a decent example of BIG DATA applied.

Still, we need more examples to better understand its potential and what are the best practices of applying BIG DATA to business.HBR has a section online dedicated to just this. It features stories on predicting movie blockbusters via data and...well, not too many more examples actually.  

A story in the NY Times this past weekend highlighted the use of data to derive insights from literature.

A study from the University of Nebraska used technology to crunch 3600 19^th century literary novels to reveal that, among other things, Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott are the proverbial ‘trail head’ of influence on other writers.

“The study, which involved statistical parsing and aggregation of thousands of novels, made other striking observations. For example, Austen’s works cluster tightly together in style and theme, while those of George Eliot (a k a Mary Ann Evans) range more broadly, and more closely resemble the patterns of male writers. Using similar criteria, Harriet Beecher Stowe was 20 years ahead of her time, said Mr. Jockers, whose research will soon be published in a book, “Macroanalysis: Digital Methods and Literary History” (University of Illinois Press).”

 

Big Data People

My vision of BIG DATA applied is not some automated process where if you simply combine the right massive feeds of data, even crunching them via some mind-bending algorithm, that actionable meaning shoots out the other side. If I simply look at my own world of digital intelligence derived form behavior and content online, it is all about the human analysis that converts it into meaning.

“Quantitative tools in the humanities and the social sciences, as in other fields, are most powerful when they are controlled by an intelligent human. Experts with deep knowledge of a subject are needed to ask the right questions and to recognize the shortcomings of statistical models.

“You’ll always need both,” says Mr. Jockers, the literary quant. “But we’re at a moment now when there is much greater acceptance of these methods than in the past. There will come a time when this kind of analysis is just part of the tool kit in the humanities, as in every other discipline.””

 We need to be growing new hybrid professionals who understand data analysis but understand other things as well.  Just look at assistant professor Matthew Jockers.  His qualifications span two unlikely worlds.

“Mr. Jockers, 46, personifies the digital advance in the humanities. He received a Ph.D. in English literature from Southern Illinois University, but was also fascinated by computing and became a self-taught programmer. Before he moved to the University of Nebraska last year, he spent more than a decade at Stanford, where he was a founder of the Stanford Literary Lab, which is dedicated to the digital exploration of books.“   

These guys and gals won’t graduate out of some “BIG DATA meets marketing” program, to focus on my industry as an example. We need to train and grow these experts now by investing, in my industry’s case, in “Digital Intelligence Teams” who are working with data sources everyday and applying them to real work. This applied innovation is where new, valuable capabilities will be born. It is also where the BIG DATA People will come from.

(image: thank you Brett Shollenberger for the perfect pic)

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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

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MySpace Attempts to Rise From the Ashes

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Filtering CES 2013: This Marketer’s Guide to What Matters

This week 156,000 people and 3000 companies will form a virtual mosh pit at CES 2013 in Las Vegas. What was once all about devices – TVs, audio, phones, computers – is broadening every year to include new technologies that don’t look like the traditional devices. Software in all its many forms will play a huge role.

CES is evolving to include all sorts of more embedded & connected technology (e.g. cars, home automation), key “human verticals” like health and fitness, and everywhere access (mobile TV). All of this offers glimpses of potential new human behaviors. But at such a scale, it begs thoughtful review and analysis even to find the most interesting bets. 

A marketers lens

Much of the show will remain focused on introducing devices with incremental feature enhancements. Ultra 3D is a good example, Any tablet that may be revealed is another. I respect that someone may be interested in those devices and each may represent potential big business for someone. I am much more interested in specialty areas.  I am not attending this year, but several people from the Ogilvy and the Social@Ogilvy teams will be. And while I believe that ‘being there’ will be the best experience, I am convinced that many of us can stay connected to select coverage of the show and learn more about what matters to us thanks to those brave souls trekking through the record 1.9 million square feet of exhibit space, endless presentations, interminable social events and more.

Best ways to follow the event

To plan out how you can tap into Ogilvy’s feed from the show and the most relevant coverage, check out our post – Suit Up For CES 2013: Your Coverage Guide.

 

Seven Topics to Watch at this Year's CES 2013 

More Social TV and the Second Screen Experience

77% of the time we are watching TV, we are simultaneously on another device.  22% of that time is “complimentary usage” meaning that whatever you are doing on the PC, tablet or smartphone has something to do with the TV (vs multitasking like checking email).

How will technology continue to shape this complimentary behavior? Twitter made some wise moves by really courting television media companies to integrate Twitter handles and/or hashtags to inspire a two screen experience. Services like GetGlue helped people build community around programs they love (i.e. “check-ins” to Walking Dead).

What will emerge at CES that further enables a SocialTV or complimentary second screen experience? One reason I am keen to see innovations here is because people have already changed their behavior and demonstrated demand. There are plenty of other technology innovations that did not catch on. Will 3D TV, now Ultra 3D, really go mass? Check out the focus on 2nd Screen Experience. 

 

More Connected Automotive

We all spend so much time in our cars. Smart connectivity and/or new behaviors that enhance that experience via utility or entertainment without introducing additional safety concerns are a big deal. We work with Ford. I own 2 Ford vehicles. I love what Sync and My Ford Touch have made possible. Sync plus Siri is pretty great. Finding a restaurant and calling for a reservation via voice commands and with 1 initiated step and 1-2 voice reactions is a bonafide improvement on tasks.

What’s next? I am productivity geek. I think in terms of time chunks. An hour long drive to me could easily be 20 minutes of voice-accessed email, 20 minutes of Mashable headlines and stories and 20 minutes of the new Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds recording (due next month).

Google’s great Multiscreen World research preso (get it here), points out how we initiate an activity on one device and continue on another.  How will the “buyer journey” change as I seamlessly continue a shopper activity started on a PC and moved to my drive to store/pick up/purchase location? (e.g. “hey Best Buy, I will be there in 20 minutes and can a TV sales specialist just show me three of the 60” 4K TVs that I tagged online?”)

Check out the automotive focus here. 

 

Next Gen Entertainment Content

Content marketing is the new “social media”. It is capturing the interest of marketers and will only be eclipsed when we actually know what to do with “big data” on an everyday basis. In its hugeness, CES 2013 has sections dedicated to content and specifically, they have a track called Entertainment Matters. If you want to get a sampling of what Hollywood-centered content creators are doing and thinking in terms of creating, delivering and monetizing new forms of content, check some of these sessions.

Our own Doug Scott, President of Ogilvy Entertainment,  will be driving a session Brands: This Is How You Work With Content Creators.

 

Attentive Computing

Computers/devices that can understand what I want to do by deciphering where my attention is, where my eyes are looking, where my hand points will change how we interact and rely on technology. (Check out an MIT view of Attentive Visual Interfaces here).

A neat example of this is Tobii Technologies “gaze interaction peripheral” which essentially will add eye gaze to the ways in which we control our devices. Freeing computer control from our hands driving some type of interface could lead to many unanticipated behaviors well beyond controlling Master Chief in Halo.

 

Connected and Enabled Healthcare and Fitness

Nike Fuelband adorns the wrists of at least half of my colleagues, or so it seems. Devices like the Fuelband or the Basis Band which launched at least year’s CES, are the tip of the iceberg in terms of how we will get healthier.  I also believe we have yet to see the fullest integration of game mechanics into everyday behaviors. What about a family healthy eating scorecard displayed on the refrigerator door (remember the screens that were integrated in high-end refrigerators?). Or community billboards of Basis Band data to pit neighbor against neighbor, so-to-speak.

The Digital Health Summit within CES 2013 will feature sessions that cover these devices but also how big data can be used to affect health behaviors, whether sharing can affect outcomes and how pervasive wireless devices can connect those with chronic health issues to health care maintenance that makes sense.

 

Appy Hour

If toaster ovens and VCRs answered what will we do with this great OS called ‘electricity’, then applications answer the question of what do we do with this great platform called pervasive computing.

At CES 2013, the Appy Hour will pit 25 teams against each other to develop a winning app and win the $25k prize. You can watch and hear CEA President Gary Shapiro @garyshapiro discuss the upcoming show with Mashable here. 

 

Eureka Park

It’s just as interesting who is forgoing their big exhibitor floor presence. No Microsoft. No HP. No Dell. No Apple. But clearly there are many more there including this year’s Eureka Park – a space dedicated to small startups. If part of the purpose of attending CES 2013 is to gauge possible trends, you are juts as likely to glimpse the seeds of one in Eureka Park as with the established companies still banging out size variations on tablets.

 

Celebrities

Clearly the most impressive draw (serious draw) is Vinton Cerf.  Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist. While I would love to see Lemmy from Motorhead who is there on behalf of Krussel (cases for electronics), I could pass on Snooki and some of the other celebs there just for booth draw.

(IMAGES respectfully taken from the CES Instagram feed)

Getting Internal Experts to Create Content

I am a firm believer in the business value of enterprise-level content marketing programs. That means working across communications, marketing, product development and more to have a unified approach to telling stories via a “social content plan”.

We look at this whole process of using content against real business objectives (e.g. reputation management, demand generation, lead generation, sales, building preference and/or intent to purchase, enabling the workforce, and more) comprised of four big stages: Strategy & Planning, Creation, Distribution, and Optimization. It’s a simple but big idea. When you look at it more closely, there is so much we do to make a successful content marketing program for a brand.

Getting Content from Insiders 

One of the challenges within the “Creation” stage is getting content from your experts. IBM is actively enabling and coaching its IBM Experts to create relevant content around business problems. Ford involves many of its experts in vehicle design, environmental initiatives and technology innovations. It can be hard. It can be like “pulling teeth from a dead-horse.” Here are four considerations to make it easier.

Find and enable your self-motivated contributors

We launched an ambitious content marketing program for a big, multi-national B2B company a couple of years ago. They wanted to establish their internal product and service experts as externally-recognized experts via a content marketing play. They have hard-core business goals from driving consideration and even lead generation.

They had plenty of smart people. Articulate, too. But there were so many barriers to actually sparing these guys and gals to create valuable, shareable content. These included:

• While they were smart and articulate, writing blog posts or outlines for useful infographics was beyond their current skill set. (forget about videos)
• The hours needed to write a cogent article, never mind a series, was beyond their current job description and how they were evaluated by their managers. Writing and publishing content was, for the moment, the “extra” thing to do.
• Many did not have loads of experience operating in social networks like LinkedIn , Facebook or even conversing across the world of pro-am blogs. They lacked confidence and were a bit paralyzed.

Lots of policy and infrastructure issues nestled in this list of obstacles. Rather than set out to resolve all of this immediately, it may be more productive to identify the handful of folks – maybe 1-2 people – who are self-motivated to make this work. They are enthusiastic and ambitious product managers or researchers who are willing to write and rewrite their first blog posts within that 11^th hour of the day. They are the ones that seem to immediately get a kick out of interacting directly with colleagues and professionals online.

Make them productive rock stars first. That success will help prove out the value of the content marketing efforts to leadership who are responsible for sanctioning content creation a s a core job responsibility. Their success will also create envy amongst their peers and will likely attract others to becoming content creators.

Train & coach the next class of contributors  

Creating valuable content in social-sized formats and chunks takes skill.  Just because your experts are successful at communicating internally doesn’t mean they are all prepared to write a great blog post, create a valuable 2 minute video or concept a shareable infographic.

Train your experts on great blog writing, self-publishing/promoting techniques, and on more advanced content creation capabilities like video and graphics (its more important for them to have concepting capabilities in the more complex visual arts than being a one-man-band of production). We have writing courses internally meant to train experienced writers to succeed in blog writing. We have scaled these into simple 20-minute on-demand training modules.

Having a coach or editor to encourage and improve the writing is also key. Before content creation becomes a sanctioned act by management, your early adopters could use a inspirational voice cheering them on, showing them analytics of how their posts are doing and also keeping the pressure of productivity and deadlines on.

Establish official and behavioral incentives

As content marketing programs prove out their results, it will be important to identify officially sanctioned time commitments. Writing and creating content must become an official art of people’s jobs. If you establish that 10% of an expert’s job should be committed to content creation, you are saying that between 4-5 hours a week of their time should be spent on it. Simple. Pretending they don’t need that time is a destructive cycle.

Here’s a place where game mechanics actually plays a great role. Creating a simple dashboard that highlights the top content or posts from a corporate blog or content site gets writers competing. Putting that dashboard in a pretty public location like an intranet or featured in a group meeting shines a light on contributors.

Hire a brand journalist

Paul Marcum, Director of Global Digital Marketing & Programming at GE, and I recently spoke at the LinkedIn BrandConnect conference as part of Advertising Week. He made a great point about the value of brand reporters.  Hiring actual journalists to find and report on the stories within a GE, a DuPont, a Ford or wherever, ensures you are getting great content and maximizes the contribution of many experts within an organization.

Asking a product designer 3-4 questions on a brand-relevant topic is light years-easier than begging that poor guy for a 300-500 word blog post.

Brand journalists can elevate C-suite executives to social media naturals without putting those execs into the driver seat. Scott Monty at Ford does a terrific job enabling and providing access to CEO Alan Mulally. The CEO wouldn’t really gain that much of an advantage by starting his own social accounts. Brand reporters can achieve a similar affect on senior leadership as well as other voices within a company.

 

Here are some other folks thinking about how to successfully stimulate great social content from within the enterprise: 

Who Will Create Your Content? 10 Essential Content Creation Skills By Heidi Cohen

Dealership Employees Blogging in the Land of Unicorns and Rainbows By Jeff Kershner 

Tap Your Organizational Knowledge to Produce Content By Toby Murdock 

Managing Large Teams of Writers Under Short Deadlines By Sarah Mitchell 

What is brand journalism, exactly, and is brand journalism the same thing as journalism? By Thomas Scott

7 Mobile Apps for Recognizing and Rewarding Employees by Liz Magill

1 in 100 Slides from Cannes 2012 Tells a Bigger Story

There’s a ton of slideology at Cannes. We all heard some of the highlights whether there or, as I was, sidelined back at home – JR’s presentation of his tremendous giant faces peeking out from some of the most tense places; and Paul Adams for Facebook.

Jesse Desjardins pulled together his annual 100 best slides from that onslaught. That meta-presentation is at the bottom of the post. 

The one slide that really stuck out to me (beyond the JR piece which must be in the favella’s in Rio) was this one simple blender slide from the Kraft presentation. I didn’t see the rest of the presentation. I almost don’t want to. This slide by itself is likely more aspirational than real but still speaks worlds about a key innovation happening around us.

We need new models of working together to produce the most effective, the most digitally-enabled, the most organically social, the absolute best new creative. It’s not just team structure, its not just a fresh organizational chart, its more. It’s a different business model. It’s social that is horizontal (vs. hierarchical) and networked. It’s incubated and special. It’s tied to a different measure of profitability on the agency side that stretches beyond the timesheet, the mark-up, and the procurement-optimized rate card.

Here Kraft crosses out workshops and think tanks to get to what fascinates all of marketing-dom now – silicon valley models of incubators and start-ups. Marketers are entranced by the apparent agility of small tech start-ups. They do move faster generally unencumbered by the bureaucracy of big, established businesses. But is it realistic that Kraft can establish a start-up set of behaviors?

If they really set up a start-up it is. That means removing the burdens of a traditional brand marketing team whose job revolves around incremental sales targets and where “innovation” is defined by a new package design or 50% less sugar.

We need new ways of working. I am not sure the blender model is the roadmap more than an artifact of one company trying something different. I had the chance to work at a major FMCG last week. We used their process to bring multi-disciplinary groups together to work on marketing and solution problems. It was one of those models that downplay channel choices till much later, focuses on ideas and generally tries to get smart people to set aside their narrower commercial interests to get to the best ideas. 

It worked pretty well. Still, it was designed “pre-social” and put no specific emphasis on driving advocacy. Would that process look different if the most important measure beyond sales was growth of positive customer advocacy?  

 

100 Beautiful Slides From Cannes Lions '12

View more presentations from Jesse Desjardins - @jessedee

The Quality of the Conversation on Facebook Matters

Last September Michael Scissons, president-CEO of Syncapse, used data to reveal that “Engagement on the Facebook walls of leading brands is down 22%.” He plotted engagement metrics on the top 300 brand pages. His hypothesis is that brands are not delivering long term value in favor of quick bumps from overuse of coupons and offers.

More recently the Facebook Timeline innovations seemed to improve overall engagement. According to Simply Measured, the change brought a 14% Increase in Fan Engagement. The format and the much industry-discussed launch called for lots more pictures and video content which saw a 65% increase in engagement (people interactive with multimedia content).

Are we good or are we in trouble? Are brands delivering the best quality interaction and value via their page content or is it all devolving? Are learning the hard lessons of the difference between a Facebook relationship and a broadcast channel?

Quality matters
My hypothesis is that many brands are not doing all they can to create a sustained and valuable relationship with their fans, followers, customers via these still new channels (facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc…). They too often fall into a habit of just broadcasting out content. Since the metrics say pictures and video do well, they try and create as much of that as possible. Sometimes they fly by the numbers alone without context. Rohit Bharagava has a new compelling book out now called Likenomics. It is not about Facebook. He makes a great point about marketers who steer completely by data without regard for context in the section, “Why Context Matters (And Your Sticky Website Actually Stinks.” He cites John Hayes from American Express with a thoughtful quote – “We tend to overvalue the things we can measure and undervalue the things we cannot.”  I would add one word in there - “We tend to overvalue the things we can measure easily and undervalue the things we cannot.”

Marketers are looking at readily available data on what drives the most interactions. They are not always weighing the benefits of a varied and enduring relationship with fans. I hope everyone knows that a small number of fans in any fanbase routinely do most of the interacting with content. That is a standard quality of many communities. Keeping that loyal core involved is valuable and just good business. And, yes, when asked, consumers cite coupons or offers as the number one reason they follow a brand. Again, let’s not over simplify and make every interaction a “10% off coupon.” That flies in the face of everything we know about building valuable brands.

The data should guide us. Not rule us.

Relevance too

AdAge recently needlessly took a jab at the social media specialists who champion a more conversational approach to wall content.

“Among the weirdness Facebook's existence has loosed upon the world is the idea that it's OK, and perhaps even good business, for brands to sidle up and give you verbal balm for your case of the Mondays, ask for predictions on the big game and offer random thoughts on things that have not a whit to do with their product or service.

The touchy-feely strategy is meant to be conversational -- human, even. But new data from Facebook itself tell us that what looks good on the social-media guru's presentation deck isn't the best approach for making Facebook work for the brand.”

Their true point and the point of the Facebook study is that content that relates to the brand – the reason people liked the page in the first place – matters. Users engage more with content relevant to the page topic which just happens to be the brand.

Clearly, relevant content is key, yet a conversational tone true to the brand can help as well.

Create the right mix
Different wall content drives different fan action. Likes, Shares, Comments all have value but not equal value. Object Likes (liking a piece of content vs. a page, also called “fanning”) are often devalued by brands. I had a spirits client who dropped them from KPI metrics since he felt, rightly so, that it was too thoughtless a gesture and was not indicative of any serious engagement. ‘Shares’ show up in your wall and therefore take bigger advantage of the network effect available in Facebook.

As Matt Creamer put it in the recent AdAge article, “Facebook to Brands: You're Posting Stuff Wrong”,

“Another important finding was that asking people to like a post indeed yielded more likes, but it didn't do much for the other forms of engagement, including the all-important share action that sends a brand's post into a users' timelines for all of their followers to see. Compared with likes, shares represent a bigger investment from the consumer and occur less frequently. Thus, shares are often going to be more meaningful from a marketing perspective. After all, they suggest the brand is tapping into that friend-of-fan network that's central to Facebook's viral proposition.”

We have found 7 simple types of content that each drive different types of user engagement. (See 7 Types of Facebook posts here.) Our Community Managers use them creatively and responsively with communities to drive long term and immediate actions. We listen and respond. If we drove simply by the data without context or a long term commitment then we would simply post remarkable picture after remarkable video – multimedia driving the most ‘shares’ in the Facebook study.

Quality of the relationship matters. Quality of the content, too. Brands can embrace a more fine-tuned and, yes, conversational but not irrelevant, cadence to their communications. Just using the Facebook wall as a broadcast channel will never justify the huge valuation in the Facebook IPO nor  the substantial bets that brands have made in their multi-million dollar ‘partnerships’ with Facebook.

The Quality of the Conversation on Facebook Matters

Last September Michael Scissons, president-CEO of Syncapse, used data to reveal that “Engagement on the Facebook walls of leading brands is down 22%.” He plotted engagement metrics on the top 300 brand pages. His hypothesis is that brands are not delivering long term value in favor of quick bumps from overuse of coupons and offers.

More recently the Facebook Timeline innovations seemed to improve overall engagement. According to Simply Measured, the change brought a 14% Increase in Fan Engagement. The format and the much industry-discussed launch called for lots more pictures and video content which saw a 65% increase in engagement (people interactive with multimedia content).

Are we good or are we in trouble? Are brands delivering the best quality interaction and value via their page content or is it all devolving? Are learning the hard lessons of the difference between a Facebook relationship and a broadcast channel?

Quality matters
My hypothesis is that many brands are not doing all they can to create a sustained and valuable relationship with their fans, followers, customers via these still new channels (facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc…). They too often fall into a habit of just broadcasting out content. Since the metrics say pictures and video do well, they try and create as much of that as possible. Sometimes they fly by the numbers alone without context. Rohit Bharagava has a new compelling book out now called Likenomics. It is not about Facebook. He makes a great point about marketers who steer completely by data without regard for context in the section, “Why Context Matters (And Your Sticky Website Actually Stinks.” He cites John Hayes from American Express with a thoughtful quote – “We tend to overvalue the things we can measure and undervalue the things we cannot.”  I would add one word in there - “We tend to overvalue the things we can measure easily and undervalue the things we cannot.”

Marketers are looking at readily available data on what drives the most interactions. They are not always weighing the benefits of a varied and enduring relationship with fans. I hope everyone knows that a small number of fans in any fanbase routinely do most of the interacting with content. That is a standard quality of many communities. Keeping that loyal core involved is valuable and just good business. And, yes, when asked, consumers cite coupons or offers as the number one reason they follow a brand. Again, let’s not over simplify and make every interaction a “10% off coupon.” That flies in the face of everything we know about building valuable brands.

The data should guide us. Not rule us.

Relevance too

AdAge recently needlessly took a jab at the social media specialists who champion a more conversational approach to wall content.

“Among the weirdness Facebook's existence has loosed upon the world is the idea that it's OK, and perhaps even good business, for brands to sidle up and give you verbal balm for your case of the Mondays, ask for predictions on the big game and offer random thoughts on things that have not a whit to do with their product or service.

The touchy-feely strategy is meant to be conversational -- human, even. But new data from Facebook itself tell us that what looks good on the social-media guru's presentation deck isn't the best approach for making Facebook work for the brand.”

Their true point and the point of the Facebook study is that content that relates to the brand – the reason people liked the page in the first place – matters. Users engage more with content relevant to the page topic which just happens to be the brand.

Clearly, relevant content is key, yet a conversational tone true to the brand can help as well.

Create the right mix
Different wall content drives different fan action. Likes, Shares, Comments all have value but not equal value. Object Likes (liking a piece of content vs. a page, also called “fanning”) are often devalued by brands. I had a spirits client who dropped them from KPI metrics since he felt, rightly so, that it was too thoughtless a gesture and was not indicative of any serious engagement. ‘Shares’ show up in your wall and therefore take bigger advantage of the network effect available in Facebook.

As Matt Creamer put it in the recent AdAge article, “Facebook to Brands: You're Posting Stuff Wrong”,

“Another important finding was that asking people to like a post indeed yielded more likes, but it didn't do much for the other forms of engagement, including the all-important share action that sends a brand's post into a users' timelines for all of their followers to see. Compared with likes, shares represent a bigger investment from the consumer and occur less frequently. Thus, shares are often going to be more meaningful from a marketing perspective. After all, they suggest the brand is tapping into that friend-of-fan network that's central to Facebook's viral proposition.”

We have found 7 simple types of content that each drive different types of user engagement. (See 7 Types of Facebook posts here.) Our Community Managers use them creatively and responsively with communities to drive long term and immediate actions. We listen and respond. If we drove simply by the data without context or a long term commitment then we would simply post remarkable picture after remarkable video – multimedia driving the most ‘shares’ in the Facebook study.

Quality of the relationship matters. Quality of the content, too. Brands can embrace a more fine-tuned and, yes, conversational but not irrelevant, cadence to their communications. Just using the Facebook wall as a broadcast channel will never justify the huge valuation in the Facebook IPO nor  the substantial bets that brands have made in their multi-million dollar ‘partnerships’ with Facebook.

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.