The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) just held our WOMM U. social media and word of mouth marketing training event for brand marketers (check out the hashtag #womma for a blow-by-blow). I was okay tweeting a bit during the show but am only now getting to some blog posts. Just as well, This forces me to consider only posting those stories that have more than documentary value.
There were terrific sessions from Disney, Lenovo, YouTube, NBC and more. They were webcast at WOMMA.org. The face-off between Facebook and MySpace was tremendous as the two participants shared more about how to 'work' their particular platforms than I have gotten from sales reps in the past.
Facebook vs. MySpace
Heidi Browning , SVP Insight & Planning at MySpace and Chris Pan, Head of Brand Solutions at Facebook, agreed to go head-to-head to show how marketers can completely leverage each of their two ecosystems.
Heidi shared how Bruno (i.e. Borat) is using My Space. Completely in character. He promotes his other social Web platforms including "Facebuch" and Twitter. This is probably a rare example where a brand (movie) is perfectly suited to playing in MySpace as an individual might. Some might say that entertainment brands have it easy in socnets.
Let's sell Water
Vitamin Water is also well placed in MySpace with their Sync campaign - bottle codes entitled users to downlogad free songs, celebrity Vitamin Water Sync playlists (e.g. 50cent). They marry Vitamin Water with what MySpace is known for - music. Vitamin Water is supporting through traditonal marketing as well and the cap codes are truly driving taffic.
Chris Pan from Facebook shared how Vitamin Water has been using Facebook. The Great Debate features LeBron and Kobe in a popularity challenge. Chris challenged everyone to consider the value of the 350K fans of the Facebook experience with the approximately 20K UMVs to their brand Web site (a typical figure).
Engagement ads in the margin display video and have a click to become a fan.This is one of the unique values for brands inside Facebook - the ability to connect content with action. When personalized social data is attached to the ad (e.g. "my friend susan is a fan") they perform really well. You get that "friend endorsement." This is a perfect example of how brands can earn their way through the "Personal Message Shield."
Getting scale by using pages and ads in Facebook. Chris makes a really compelling case for the reach and engagement possible within Facebook.
Achieving Scale
You can think of Facebook as offering 2 important step-changes to scale:
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10s of thousands: the typical UMVs of brand microsites
- 100s of thousands: the fan postential of a well-designed brand page strategy in Facebook
- Millions: the power fo adding the right social engagement advertising inside Facebook to support the brand page activity
Tools
Chris suggested we all use the advertising link at the bottom of all pages to play with the targeting widget to understand who is on Facebook.
MySpace created MyAds for users to promote themselves via their "hypertargeting" use of the wealth of personal data people submit in their profiles. "My Insight" can help you in your planning of a campaign to better understand audience segments.
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Chris runs a "best-practice" page:Facebook.com/marketing
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Heidi shared a great resource: Myspace.com brandcommunityshowcase
Of course, there is no winner in this face-off. Most marketers overlook the power fo these two social networks. Personally, we add our Conversation Map insight and planning about what people are saying across the social Web to GSI's search intent modeling with either or both of MySpace and Facebook's profile segmentation to really understand what people are interested in and what they are talking about online. The value of the social networks is clearly in an integrated form of engagement and advertising for scale. Advertising alone won't do it. Engagement without letting more people know about it can be a lost opportunity for scale.
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