Digital Influence Mapping Project

Can Austerity Drive Social Media Growth in Business?

It’s easy to pay attention to the fast growth markets for social media – the Philippines, Indonesia, Turkey, Brazil, Mexico, China and a few more.  Its like being in that growth company that keeps opening stores. Let's just focus on the markets that are going great guns. Let's "open stores" where it is easiest. What about the established markets where people are already connected and where Facebook is 'old hat?' 

Coming back from Portugal and Brussels – both trudging along in their own ways under the weight of “austerity” – plenty of business people were asking whether social media has relevance in a time of stress and crisis. Often in times of crisis, business pulls back on marketing and relies generally on accepted practices.  You know, the stuff you were always told that works and won't get you fired.

4 reasons social matters in a tight economy like Europe

Here are four reasons why I think social media will grow in Europe even now when the region struggles to gain the financial stability it needs.

 

1. Some of the big social success stories were born out of crisis

Dell, Ford, and BP each committed to using social media at a time of crisis not when things were going great. Ford, specifically, faced a global financial crisis that suppressed car sales pretty much everywhere. In 2008/9.  Each of these brands could have pulled their head into the shell waiting for the smoke to clear. They didn’t. The got busy. They knew they needed a new way of doing things.  

 

2. Integrated social media is more efficient

Just look at the Integrated Social Media Sales Impact Study we did last year. Combining social media to the marcom mix can drive up consumption and sales for categories like quick service restaurants (QSRs).  If you are a C-suite leader for a company doing business in Europe, I would think you would be deeply concerned with getting more out of the budgets you do have as you work to drive sales back up.

 

3. People’s behavior is changing

About 70% of Portugal is connected to the internet. Of those north of 90% are active on social media. Mobile penetration exceeds 100%. Belgium is similar. Almost 82% of the populaion is online. Almost half the population is on Facebook.  People are changing how they form opinions and purchase decisions and it won't go back to the way it was before the financial crisis. If business wants to build enduring, profitable relationships with customers, they are going to have to shift to socially-enabled customer service, customer advocacy programs and building more value for customers through digital channels.  What Forrester calls the “always connected customer” has become the new reality and we must understand what that means not hide from it.

 

4. The competition is weightlifting during the crisis

Not everyone’s business is down. I spoke to one of the biggest food companies in Brussels, mobile service providers in both Brussels and Portugal, and several banks. Sales were up. Usage was growing. Innovation was introducing new competition. During any crisis – even a large financial one – not everyone is hurt the same way. Some businesses continue or flourish. The pressure of innovating in the face of competition never really recedes. The smart money is on those companies who know they are playing the long game and know they have to work just as hard now as in flush times to engage, satisfy and delight their customers.

Does Mary Meeker Consider LinkedIn a “Star?”

Mary Meeker, venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caulfied Byers and former Wall Street analyst, delivered her 110-slide “Internet Trends 2012” presentation at the D10 Conference. I have already seen slides from the preso show up in business presentations from some of our largest partners.

Three immediate stand out points for me:

• The “re-imagination” of so many services that will ultimately disrupt many established business models 
• The inevitability of mobile as a viable and leading ad channel
• And that LinkedIn might win the “slow but steady” vote of confidence from investors and users alike

 

Re-imagine everything

A big chunk of her presentation profiles dozens of different services or behaviors that have been disrupted by technology and behavior change. From Photography (e.g. Instagram, Hipstamatic) to Magazines (e.g. Flipboard) to Calling a Cab (e.g. Uber) – they are all in the process of being challenged by new ways of satisfying core needs. The jury may still be out on many certainly in terms of which technology startup will actually earn the leadership role, but the cumulative effect of her list is powerful. It is a reminder that market-making changes are happening across many, many sectors. Just this morning The Washington Post featured an example of “re-imagining real estate” with the site Popularise which allows community members to vote for the retail tenant in local storefronts.  

 Mobile will pay off

The criticisms of Facebook for not monetizing their platform accessed by mobile devices were overwrought. Recent decisions from Facebook like this weeks’ unbundling of premium advertising (advertisers can now buy mobile separately) point to the inevitable future – that ad revenue per user on mobile will grow and likely eclipse ad review from the desktop. Ms. Meeker points to examples in the Japanese marketplace like the mobile game maker, CyberAgent, where that is already the case.

 

LinkedIn may be the slow but steady winner

While all of the other high-profile IPOs have led to lower values, LinkedIn has grown 137% to its recent $100 share price. I am sure there are all sorts of VC-insightful explanations that I am not qualified to offer. I do think there is strength to the LinkedIn platform in the B2B space that many brands are getting wise to. Just look at your LinkedIn home page now. It serves as a business-relevant hub as good as any business magazine or portal out there.

I find it interesting that LinkedIn is increasingly popular in Europe – a not-so-fast-growing-region for social networking (compared to fast-growth markets like Indonesia, Brazil or the Philippines). Turkey is the one exception as a fast-growth market and it sits between Europe and Asia. ComScore's Top 10 Need to Knows on Social Networking puts it this way, 

 “Similar to Facebook and Twitter, the majority of LinkedIn’s audience now resides outside the U.S. While LinkedIn continues to generate the most traffic from the U.S., it shows its highest market penetration in the Netherlands, where it reached more than a quarter (27 percent) of the Dutch online population in October 2011. Western European countries also comprise five of the top ten markets for LinkedIn, showing promise for further expansion for the professional social network in Europe.”

Eric Savitz at Forbes summarized key points that Jeff Weiner, CEO at LinkedIn made at the D10 conference last week:

“Weiner: They have 161 million members, growing 2 a second. Mission is to connect all the world’s knowledge workers; global workforce is 3.3 billion people. They have three themes on the product road map: Simplify, for staters, as they upgraded mobile product to 2.0 version from 1.0. Second theme, continue to grow membership, localize – 17 languages so far. Consider to invest in monetization. And lastly, invest in everyday value propositions. Like the company’s iPad application. LinkedIn Today is another example ...”

LinkedIn’s role in professional development extends beyond recruiting and career management. It is quickly becoming a professional content  network delivering value to the jobs we hold today and those we aspire to tomorrow.

Kind of makes you ask yourself, what’s my LinkedIn strategy?

KPCB Internet Trends 2012

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.

Will you be Just-in-time or Too-little-too-late in Social in Mexico?

Marketers around the world are trying to figure out when to divert resources to use social media behaviors and technology in their marketing, communications and customer service. Too early and the best conceived plans on Facebook or customer communities will not produce enough results to survive the next budget season. Too late and an organization can find itself chasing after consumer behavior and losing reputation, if not business, to competitors. 

We have big multinational clients who are deploying Facebook community management as quickly as possible in 50+ markets. Many of these countries don’t come close to having even critical mass adoption of internet access never mind consumers flocking to engage with brands via social networks. Still, the brands have no question that the velocity of social media adoption around the world will be faster than we have all been used to. 

Mexico is a Real-Fast Growth Market

And there’s good reason for this. Just look at Global Web Index’s summary of the real growth markets in social network usage. Mexico outpaces the US and that isn’t just because the US is saturated. A lot of behaviors in Mexico outpace other markets. Smartphone (45%) and tablet (16%) adoption in Mexico also outpaces the US.  Habits are shifting now.

According to Forester, “Brazilian and Mexican (connected + urban) consumers spend more time online than they do watching TV.” Where people spend their time, what they are trying to accomplish and where they focus their attention should matter to marketers. 

As for internet usage, “By 2016, Forrester expects online adoption to increase in Brazil to 57% and in Mexico to 48% – vs. the current 47% and 38%.” Half the population online. 

The Biggest Change for Marketers

As people like you and I adopt apps, adapt to being always connected and discover new ways to combine communications and content, how we form opinions and make decisions (including purchase decisions) is getting more complex. When buying a new bed, I am likely to reach out to my social graph throughout the buyer journey to get recommendations, check my decision with friends and post-justify my purchase with celebratory image via Instagram. Sure, I will visit retailers and manufacturers Web sites and pay attention to targeted and even non-targeted advertising.  

But two things the customer journey is not is neat nor linear. Attribution is a beast. It is likely more important to gain an understating how social works in combination with other owned and paid media choices to help consumers towards their decision and willingness to advocate. 

The biggest change is learning how to use social media as part of a strategy to drive business not simply add it to the channel mix. As a channel, social disappoints. As a powerful, new set of consumer behaviors it will continue to change how we market for years to come. That new learning will take some time for big brands. We see this everyday as major global marketers try to scale the learnings in social from one market to many, embrace new digital measurement models and provoke “old dogs” in charge of marketing around the world to try out the new tricks. 

Innovation Not ROI

Brands in Mexico should be aggressively deploying social media strategies and increasing their spend. Consumers are changing fast and organizational change takes years. It is time to innovate and accrue an understanding of how a brand’s use of social media behaviors and platforms can drive customer advocacy, raise meaningful awareness and discovery and, yes, even drive sales. Set aside our well-intended focus on ROI for now. We will get there. Not its time to innovate.  

 

(image: thanks to Upper Playground for their image from the Mexico Contemprary Art Fair (MACO)

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. 

Social Shopping: Make My Philly Design Store, Please

Who really cares about fCommerce anyway? Social Shopping, sure. eCommerce, in general, of course. But all I am hearing about are storefronts that maybe connect to our social networks. Most ecommerce offerings have sharing functions or even Facebook open graph to allow buyers to broadcast their purchases or browsed products to their friends. I want something more.

There are some cool innovations. Even some innovative business models like Warby Parker’s disruptive approach to eyeglasses. But I was in Philly for the weekend and I wanted to buy local designers t-shirts, jewelry, messenger bags, unusual flotsam and/or prints. I love designers. Always have. When I travel, I like to find small design-focused businesses. I like to buy local and support the economy (great, high-minded view of shopping, don’t you think?)

So why don’t I have an app that collects designers in local markets wherever I travel? I am on to Vevey, Switzerland on business this week. I would love to just punch a button like I do on my weather app and collect a listing of local designers ready to connect with a sympathetic buyer. Why do I have to work so hard browsing dozens of Web sites to try and find my unknown friends out there? 

Make it Authentic

With Love from Brooklyn (thanks Springwise!)  kinda does it. While they curate mostly food products developed in Brooklyn, it is all for sale online. If I am in Brooklyn visiting, there is no storefront where I can go to stock up on Brooklyn authenticity. I guess I could go visit the various businesses individually but as you saw, food isn’t my thing. Philly has a few neighborhoods like any city but designers don’t clump up so nicely. So even though I can view all of these businesses in Old City on one web site, it’s about the neighborhood not about designers.  

I would have hoped that Design Philadelphia would have filled much of the role. Sadly, that remains more of an event website that gets relevant once a year and then goes stale (see all the content about the Design Week last October). Kind of a missed opportunity there. Etsy could also do this although it wouldn’t support their business model. They would need to adopt an affiliate marketing model if they started to give me my Philly Design map to let me visit artisans directly when I hit town. They could do it. They just won’t cause it’s not an important revenue stream for them. 

I have a set of persistent interests. Amazon knows this in a way. The recommendations I get fed are robotic suggestions derived from my shopping behavior. Clearly, they are not going to point me to storefronts in Philly even if they did sell what I am after in design. 

Reverse the Marketplace

I want a reverse marketplace model. I have some enduring interests - in this case local designer-made goods. I am a digital omnivore so, I want access on my mobile phone as I walk the streets, via my tablet as I sit on the couch and plot my trip and via my laptop as I take a “shopping mindful moment” at work. I should be able to express my interests (imagine me clicking on 20-30 Pinterest “pins” to teach my shopping agent what I like).  I need all ways to buy – online and when I am on the ground. I need every advocacy utility to post on Facebook, Twitter , FourSquare, etc… And I want to connect with designers who are keen to meet a potentially enthusiastic fan. 

Too much to ask? Perhaps, but its time to innovate.

Pinterest: Essential or Beguiling?

Almost everything you need to know about Pinterest is conveniently wedged into this infographic from lemon.ly. It reaches women like no other social platform. It delivers more traffic than YouTube, Google+ and LInkedIN combined (kind of like saying a country is bigger than Iran, Turkey and Pakistan combined – sounds like a lot but less than Russia, Australia and Brazil combined). Pinterest is growing very fast. 

Many brands are jumping on board. This raises the obvious question as to whether Pinterest is worth the energy and effort now or whether brands should wait. Is it essential to your business? Or is it an innovative platform for you and therefore worth some resources? Or is it simply beguiling – waiting to charm or enchant you and divert you from more meaningful programs? This last risk is a big one.

In Altimeter’s latest report on Content: The New Marketing Equation, Rebecca Lieb cautions,

“Bright, shiny objects, i.e. a fixation on newer channels and technologies, can distract from foundational channels, e.g. search, written content, such as blogs, and educational content.”  

Certainly many marketers are skeptical and even disgusted with the amount of attention Pinterest has earned. As a marketer, I don’t worry about that. None of us really know whether Pinterest will become a significant platform or become the next Empire Avenue (hey, even MySpace is making a comeback!)It’s more important to evaluate this platform and the others vying for attention and resources based upon how it can help your business today.

It’s Essential

If you are an ecommerce offering catering to women, you should jump on board now. Many retailers are doing just that. The number one ecommerce retailer in this space is Etsy. The haystack nature of that marketplace seems ideally suited for the visual curation that Pinterest delivers. The most remarkable Pinterest quality is really the women. While Instagram is also big with women, it doesn’t have the same referral traffic as Pinterest. If you have a product collection well-suited to this curation, have a storefront/product page to point people to and sell to women, then Pinterest is an easier choice. While you are figuring out the value of the “engagement” metrics (pin-ing and sharing, essentially), you can still look to count the referral traffic which is already a valuable KPI for online stores. 

A Worthy Innovation   

I certainly know plenty of big brands who are going all in on Facebook. Anything else – even Twitter – is a distraction. That may be a dangerous single-mindedness. We are all pushing our organization’s ability to adapt to new customer and stakeholder behaviors. We need to learn. We need to learn how to cope with the flood of choices available to people out there. Should you be on Google+? I think that one is a good bet. It may take another six months to understand its business impact but experimentation via limited investment is the only way to figure it out. 

If you want to specifically engage women who are energized by fashion, food, home design, graphic design or hobby, then it may be worth some effort and investment. These categories do seem to dominate and you can see it in the most followed users.

If you have a collection of visual images to share that are of natural interest to people or if your brand intersects with a theme/meme already gaining traction, then that gives you one more good reason to engage. It doesn’t make sense to take this platform on if you don’t already have the picture content or the theme that lends itself to pinning (bookmarking) images.

Give yourself a time constraint like 2-3 hours a week. Pick out the likely KPIs that might show progress from click-throughs to followers and likes. Benchmark yourself against other similar brands or against ones you aspire to being compared to. Every brand should have some tolerance for innovating on new platforms. With a logical decision tree and quarterly evaluations, it’s possible to keep the level of effort reasonable. 

Just Plain Beguiling

The simplest filter is women. If you are trying to engage C-suite decision makers (let’s face it - predominantly men) you are pretty far off your target. If you have no picture assets (e.g. catalogs) or objects that capture people’s interest, then the level of effort to create them and hope they are of intrinsic interest to people just isn’t worth it. The reason we are intrigued by Pinterest is the natural growth of the platform. Our job must be to understand it and make use of it, not try and game it.

SEO Blogger is skeptical of Pinterest's value today. He outlines a scenario to evaluate its potential based upon a crude ROI model. As a solo-practitioner, his criteria makes sense. For brands considering the platform, we are way off any ROI that matters. Simply know the platform, judge whether it is essential, innovative or merely beguiling and go from there. 

Great Pinterest pages:

• Etsy - probabaly the top page, how else can you find these must-have rings 
• West Elm - I love their collections. If I was currently shopping for furniture, thsi woudl definitely make it easier and more enjoyable
• Michael's Stores - how else can you make sense of all the craft supplies these guys sell? 

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(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.

Actionable 2012 Social Business Predictions: #3 Gamification Endures

No, it’s really not about gaming. It’s about good old behavioral economics using game mechanics. PFSK recently ran a series profiling how different organizations were using points, leaderboards and social proof to drive behavior change. They have sunk a fair amount of energy into reviewing the use of game mechanics in groups like RecycleBank, LetGive, Stickk and SuMo . They have also produced a report that is worth previewing and grabbing called The Future of Gaming.

The world of ‘gamification’ is certainly buzzy if not frothy. Loads of marketers are talking about it. Many startups are employing it as if it were the magic sauce that could overcome anything even a bad business plan. Still, there is wisdom underneath it all and gamification as a sometime appropriate feature to stimulate behavior change is here to stay. 

The background of this recent surge of game mechanics applied to everything from brand advocacy (our own Insider Circle platform or Crowdtap) to environmental or health behaviors to fundraising is all over the Web in sites like Gabe Zichermann’s  Gamification Blog and even the Wharton School of Business. My own quick summary of gamification’s role in behavioral economics is here. 

Too Much Hype? 

The hype feels too much. Ian Bogost,  a professor at Georgia Tech, calls it in his blog:

“More specifically, gamification is marketing bullshit, invented by consultants as a means to capture the wild, coveted beast that is video games and to domesticate it for use in the grey, hopeless wasteland of big business, where bullshit already reigns anyway….Bullshitters are many things, but they are not stupid.

The rhetorical power of the word "gamification" is enormous, and it does precisely what the bullshitters want: it takes games—a mysterious, magical, powerful medium that has captured the attention of millions of people—and it makes them accessible in the context of contemporary business…Gamification is reassuring.

It gives Vice Presidents and Brand Managers comfort: they're doing everything right, and they can do even better by adding "a games strategy" to their existing products, slathering on "gaminess" like aioli on ciabatta at the consultant's indulgent sales lunch.”

Using game mechanics has been over-hyped even before many mainstream brands have tried of applied it. That doesn’t mean there is no there-there. As a tactic to strengthen and support behaviors for which there is already a strong engagement value (a reason to care enough to pay attention and consider action), game mechanics can help reinforce actual habit. Like a lot of good ideas, it has its place in moderation. As the new social wonder drug, it will likely disappoint. 

Do:The application of relevant behavioral economics research in marketing is overdue. We have built our own planning model in social media marcom on some of the most rigorous and proven models to drive behavior change. So, the ‘do” here is to make sure at least your social media strategy team if not your overall planning team are incorporating relevant behavioral economics concepts to make programs more predictably successful.  As for the subset of tactics known commonly as game mechanics of gamification, find a program – either to enable employees or some type of advocates – and build a pilot program to gain experience in this valuable tool set. Choose a behavior a bit more complex than simply buying another box of product. 

Resources:

• The Gamification Blog – a steady stream of examples of game mechanics applied 
• The Gamification Summit Spring 2012 in SF – also put on by Gabe and his crew and last year’s looked great
• PFSK – a generally great source for trending topics and most recently gamification

Timeline: Make a behavioral model a priority in 1st Q. Run a specific game mechanics- based pilot  by 2ndQ.