Why Brands Have an Eye on Facebook -

Why Brands Have an Eye on Facebook - Vivian Manning-Schaffel May 25, 2009 With more than 200 million active users and counting, Facebook has proven to be a powerful and convenient way to reach consumers where they already are. “Many consumers are already sharing information regularly on Facebook—this is just one more way to quickly share information in a place where they are already spending time,” says Michael Donnelly, director, worldwide interactive marketing at The Coca-Cola Company. Many brands are guilty of creating a Facebook presence, gathering “friends” to gauge awareness of the community...and the buck halts there. Adam Ostrow, editor in chief of online social media guide Mashable.com, says it’s because the initial path to maximum reach wasn’t clear. “Until recently, Facebook was a confusing platform for brands—it wasn’t clear if the best way to go about marketing on Facebook was through groups, pages, or even just a regular profile,” Ostrow says. “But with the most recent upgrade to pages—or “public profiles” as they’re sometimes called—it’s become clear that pages are where brands need to be. From there, it’s up to the brand to use traditional marketing tactics, like promotions and good communications to make those fans stick.” The folks at Facebook have assembled a marketing page to help brands find their way around the platform’s ever-expanding myriad of tools. “Features such as psychographic and demographic information allow advertisers to precisely target their audience, but still maintain user privacy,” says a Facebook spokesperson. “Additionally, up-to-the-hour impressions and click tracking let advertisers quickly fine-tune ad campaigns by updating bids and changing budgets whenever they please.” Donnelly, who spearheaded Coca-Cola’s successful Facebook initiative, says it’s much like having a ginormous focus group at your fingertips: “The ease of creating content makes it so that we get very high engagement, far beyond typical page views. It also gives us a great platform to listen to the feedback we receive from our consumers. Every time we post photos, videos or status updates from the page, our fans are quick to tell us what they think. Their feedback is shared with their network of Facebook friends, exposing them to our fan page,” Donnelly says. But creating a brand presence on Facebook can present challenges of a larger scope to the novice social marketeer, the first being the conversational element integral to its very structure. “Facebook helps marketers interact with people in the same way that people interact in real life. But it’s not enough to broadcast a message to the masses: As the web becomes more social, users will expect to interact and engage with brands in the same way they interact with each other,” the Facebook spokesperson says. Some brands, like Starbucks, have embraced the opportunity to reach consumers with messaging that reads more one-on-one than broadcast. “In many ways, the coffeehouse is the original social network, so social media is a natural extension of who we are as a company,” says Alexandra Wheeler, director of digital strategy for Starbucks. “Facebook helps us get a pulse on what is important to our customers. We can have a real dialog with them about the values and ideals that they share with us.” So how does a brand, particularly a brand with a considerable legacy, pare down the broadcast messaging that works for traditional online media to create the kind of singular voice where this kind of dialog might take place? Starbucks used Facebook to reach almost 1.5 million “friends” to raise awareness of their brand while raising money for AIDS. “We posted an event inviting customers into stores on World AIDS Day (12/1/08), where $.05 of every handcrafted beverage was contributed to the Global Fund. It became the most viral event in Facebook history. So not only were customers excited about the brand, but they came together on one day to do something good,” Wheeler says.
	Instead of tapping viral marketers experienced in social media to create that singular Facebook voice, Coca-Cola took a unique approach and hired two fans of the brand, Dusty Sorg and Michael Jedrzejewski, to create the Coca-Cola fan page in September of last year. “When Facebook asked us to administer our page, we saw it as an opportunity to maintain its fan club spirit. In the first several weeks the page experienced explosive growth, quickly making it the largest brand page on Facebook.” This team takes full advantage of Facebook’s tools to keep their viral audience engaged. “We are constantly working to highlight content created by our fans that will be interesting to other fans, sharing status updates, photos and videos. Recently, we’ve begun using status updates to invite fans to share their Coca-Cola experiences. From time to time, we update our fans through Facebook’s update features and they react differently to videos, photos and status updates. We continually learn great stories from them that we may not otherwise be aware of,” Donnelly says. In the quick-shift world of social marketing, Facebook promises a direct line to your target consumers. “The Internet has long promised two-way interactive marketing,” concludes the mysterious Facebook spokesperson. “We see the future of marketing as one where brands create an ongoing, two-way relationship with customers and prospects whether they are driving demand for new or existing products.” Just be sure to stay flexible about how your Facebook-geared initiatives are executed. “Facebook does make frequent changes to its product, so it’s hard to project if something you plan six months from now will really be applicable to the toolset that Facebook will be offering,” Ostrow advises. “Facebook is constantly improving, sometimes with little advance warning. This makes it important that we stay on top of these changes and are hypersensitive to how those improvements impact the page and our relationship with our fans,” seconds Donnelly. What about ROI? Does Facebook offer a measurable return? “It’s hard to say,” Ostrow says. “Certainly, the key metrics to pay attention to for the time being are how quickly you’re adding fans to your page, how often those fans are interacting with your brand, and how that page is ultimately influencing your business, by way of more leads or referral traffic to your website.” Ultimately, finding new and improved ways to make new “friends” on Facebook is worthy of a slice of your brand development budget. Just be sure to update your status frequently.

3 interesting brand extensions from America

1. Burger King Potato Chips


2. National Geographic owning the Grand Canyon Visitor Centre and IMAX theatre in the Grand Canyon


3. Southeby's getting into real estate

Nokia colorful emails

Nowadays to create an original, creative website to present a mobile phone is a hell of a challenge. We've seen (almost) everything. Like in the case of the automotive industry creativity seems to be the hardest word. Competition is fierce, differentiation is weak, money isn't always there. So what should an agency do to introduce a new Nokia mobile phone which wants to challenge the Blackberry?

Try, for example, with a colorful and engaging interface. Then create a video which uses pictograms a smart way. Shake everything together and then add a tiny smart widget that give a touch of originality to your emails. Visit the new Nokia E75 website to experience all of this.

Clean, simple and effective in delivering the message. Very nice work.

The agency is Farfar.

Tinker.com:::Tapping into brand conversations on Twitter and Facebook

Tapping into brand conversations on Twitter and Facebook

Glam Media - whose first product, glam.com, positioned the company as a go-to online fashion information provider - has grown its focus to include health and wellness, shopping, luxury items, a new male-focused site (brash.com) and, most recently, a web-consolidation business in the form of Tinker.com.

This, Glam Media's latest venture, is a service that follows what Joe Lagani, vp/brand sales, calls "event streams" in real-time as they develop on various social-networking sites (most notably, Twitter and Facebook.)

So, when Oprah makes some odd kind of digital history by posting her first tweet, Tinker.com consolidates not just the original comment but a variety of feedback in one consolidated package:

With a less ground-breaking but far more functional purpose, Tinkerers are able to tap into an amalgamation of social-networking sources with one click. Witness Tinker.com's swine-flu presence:

In the course of a presentation before the American Association of National Advertisers' "Brand Building in Tough Times & Beyond" event earlier this month, Lagani explained, "Tinker aggregates and creates real-time conversations around events. It's the place where people can go to see what people are twittering about."

Following the original glam.com model ("We have 900 links from others' sites and 80 per cent of our content comes from other partner sites," Lagani said), Tinker's business proposition is designed to appeal to"new influencers - niche publishers and independent voices that want to become engaged in pivotal viral markets."

By aggregating content, he added, Tinker is cost-efficient in that it recognizes "the idea that 'If you build it, they will come' does not work in online [media] either."

"Consumers are moving from big sites to niche sites," observed Lagani, the former publisher of both Meredith Corp's Country Home and Condé Nast's House and Garden magazines.

"If you love Manolo Blahnik shoes, you want to get to your passion-point web site. It's part of the process of de-portalization, the rise of widgets, and the introduction of thousands of new media titles."

The "real-time" appeal of Tinker.com, he continued, is a reflection of a number of immediate observational engagements, ranging from reality television to online blogs, to social networks and the rise of what he called"micro-blogging networks".

Explained Lagani: "How do we deal with these issues? How can we leverage existing content to engage consumers where they spend time? How can we provide scale with niche targeting? We need to provide solutions that put content and advertising in niche sites where consumers go. Scale is important. But targeted scale is even more important."

The downside for marketers, he acknowledged, is not a new discovery. "How can you control what is being said?' And how can you control the environment? [These] are challenges fraught with danger."

Tinker.com, he continued, refines that process by offering filters that enable marketers to focus on precise digital discussions.

"There are all kinds of filtering elements - profanity filters, filters for discussions about competitive brands - that lead to good, solid, real-time conversations about brands. To find out what people are chattering about right now. To examine the top events that people are tweeting about. To check the population of an event [or brand] discussion."

From the Tinker.com home page comes a directory of on-going conversations:

For instance, for consumers who want to be part of an on-going conversation about Chanel - across Twitter and a variety of other social media - clicking on the company logo opens onto a consolidated conversation:

And, for marketers seeking to track daily discussions, a detailed discussion page features information about participants and daily conversation levels:

"The brand challenge on Twitter" Lagani insisted, "is how can you join these real-time web, people-to-people conversations? Better yet, how can you join a real-time conversation already happening about your brand?"

For Dunkin Donuts, Tinker.com created a prototypical site that demonstrated the potential of content in a marketing-directed environment.

"The conversations were terrific," Lagani said. "Some of the people were wondering how much they spent on coffee. Others were talking about how much they loved the copy - and that was nothing but free promotion.

"For a company like Dunkin Donuts, if they're able to assemble the conversation about the brand, they'll find out how they can manage to get in front of their customers."

Once a brand has a Tinker.com presence, "You can develop all kinds of streams. You can post them on Facebook pages, or anywhere it suits your product. It's a live feed, an on-going conversation about your brand. It offers you the ability to take a specific unit and put it out on the internet where people can experience it."

Does honesty sell?

"Men Wanted for Hazardous Journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success."


Ad written around 1900 by the famed polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton.

"???" in today's context of consumer cepticism and distrut, would plain honesty without the hyperbolic adjectives we're used to hear on brands' speeches, be the best and more effective way to reach people?

Afia TVC executions

When you are a pan Arab mega brand? What is the best strategy of your TVC’s communication

1. 1. Do you produce one and hope that “one size fits all”?
2. 2. Do you isolate the audio element and adapt it to local dialect?
3. 3. Or do you produce market specific communication while maintain core values?

Telecoms Viral

This viral is widely forwarded among Saudi Arabia forums, it adds another layer on marketing offering war between providers.

Simply it mocks up all mobiles there is and conclude with one to one assessment with blackberry powered by Mobily.

No official proof or statement that Etesalat is the creator/ promoter of this viral , however it’s mark is all over the place..

Kellogg's:::Football Superstar

Cereal brand Kellogg Nutri-Grain (KNG) sought to appeal to teenage boys (13-17 year old) and get them to pester their mums to purchase the brand. The brand already had a strong heritage with Iron Man in Australia, but this format did not retain relevance over winter months.
Kellogg recognized that teens were spending less time with traditional media, and so wanted to create engaging content for them.

The target audience loves sport and hanging out with their friends at a stage in their life where their body is transforming. So KNG launched the “Australian Idol” for football. This was a nationwide search for the next Football Superstar, culminating in a primetime, appointment to view, 8-week piece of branded content on the pay TV channel Fox8.

Teens had the chance to win a professional contract with Sydney FC, a scholarship to Macquarie University and the chance to be the new face of KNG. A multi-media campaign launched inviting 16-21 year olds (who are peers of influence and inspiration to our youngest consumers) to nationwide trials.

A final 15 were selected for the show and they lived and trained together for a month to battle it out to be the next Football Superstar, with one being eliminated each week. KNG was integrated into the show with branded balls and jerseys. This was leveraged with the Football Superstar website where people could find extra content from the show, training tips from Sydney FC players, interactive games and live web chats with stars from the show.
As a result, Football Superstar became the most successful series in terms of viewers across all FOX8 local productions, with an average of 120,000 viewers per episode. The online campaign reached more than 1.8m teens and ther were 26,125 visitors to the mobile site.

BRAND

Nutri-Grain

BRAND OWNER

Kellogg's

CATEGORY

Food

REGION

Australia

DATE

Feb 2008 - Oct 2008

MEDIA CHANNEL

human leadership::: What is common between Pepsi & Obama

Both "Brands"managed to read and analyze current people needs and wants.

Expressively, they taped into cultural –hopefulness, brightness-movement, spirit of optimism, thirst for positive change and Intense -passionate-desire of active participation.

In the core, they symbolizes and amplifying our crave for happiness , sense of achievement by releasing and realizing dynamics of change.

Pepsi plugs into a classic teenage dream with “Rising”, a TV advert in which a young man climbs a pile of seemingly impossible odds to fulfil his goals, finally reaching the mantra, “I can”. A young man sips on a can of Pepsi as he surveys a huge mound of objects. He sets off to climb through the symbolic collection, yelling “I can’t hear you” every time his peers, family and teachers discourage his dream.

PENGUIN

Most viewed video on YouTube

Using social media in increasingly potent ways

Josh Bernoff is Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research and co-author of the book "Groundswell." Keynoting this week's Interactive Advertising Bureau's Social Media Conference, he discussed how major marketers like Procter & Gamble are using social media in increasingly potent ways. With the social community effort detailed here in this video, P&G significantly increased sales of its tampon products.

the Arabic version

http://www.beinggirl-kalambanat.com/main/home.php