Marketing 3.0.

13.11.09

Facebook fan page best practice [B2C]

For many brands a Facebook Fan Page is an integral part of their social media campaign. But, what elements help fan pages build up large followings and what can brands do to emulate the success of others? I’ve put together a list of specific elements that I believe have helped create fan pages with large, engaged, followings.

1. Networking with other platforms

Building a large following requires a network of other platforms, working in conjunction to drive visitors to your fan page. One brand that does that well is Victoria’s Secret with their PINK line.

As you can see, on their PINK landing page they have a link to their Facebook fan page and their MySpace profile. Victoria’s Secret leverages the traffic their home page gets and pushes them to their Facebook fan page.

Many companies lack this level of dedication, expecting their consumers on Facebook to find them automatically. However, that’s not usually the case.

When is the last time you went looking for a brand’s Facebook fan page? More often than not, a consumer will stumble upon the page, either through a friend or from a hub, similar to Victoria’s Secret’s PINK page.

Understandably, the fact that the demographic targeted by Victoria’s Secret PINK, aligns exactly with the demographic that is most active on Facebook, has helped grow the group as well.

Key Takeaway: Connecting multiple social platforms and a hub from the brand website, can help funnel consumers throughout the network.

2. Creating a resource

Some pages are used as connection hubs, but others offer information pertinent to their consumers. They use the information as added value to have consumers create a connection with the brand.

Dell has done a great job with their social media resource for small businesses. Understanding that small business owners buy computers, by offering them this resource, small business owners interested in social media keep Dell top of mind.

Although, Dell can’t explicitly gauge the success of this program in ROI, it is a branding exercise. Also, since they offer deals and updates on new products on the page – the page does have a chance to convert small business owners into Dell consumers.

Key Takeaway: Offering a resource page allows a brand to target a new demographic, outside of those that already know and love the business.

3. Creating contests that include participation

For brands that want fan pages to have added value (a reason for users to join the page, aside from brand loyalty), but don’t want to become a resource portal; offering contests and coupons specifically to Facebook users can entice consumers to join.

Sears offered fans a $10 coupon to use in stores, giving consumers a reason to join. Clicking on the coupon takes you to a page where Sears collects your information and sends you information about the coupon, deals, and offers. There’s no way to make sure the coupon is given to only Facebook fans, however like Sears, brands can require an email before receiving the coupon.

Key Takeaway: Offering something to consumers to join can help build a large community. Some examples of things to offer: Coupons, free shipping, weekly deals.

4. Empowering pre-existing pages

One of my favorite stories about social media involves the Coca Cola Facebook page. The fan page was created by two users who liked Coke. What started as a fan page for fun, turned out to be the largest product fan page on Facebook.

Coca Cola, instead of taking over the page and making it their own, rewarded the fans by bringing them to Atlanta and giving them a tour of the Coke facility. The fan page remains theirs, but now they have the blessing and help of Coca Cola.

By empowering the fans to keep their fan page, Coke ensures a passionate page owner.

The Coca Cola marketing team was also smart enough to realize that letting others know what happened here would work in their favor. The fan page creators were told to make a video of the history behind the fan page, and how Coke had reached out to them and rewarded them for this.

The video shows future ‘brand enthusiasts’ that creating successful groups around Coca Cola can result in rewards and recognition.

Key Takeaway: Taking over unsanctioned Facebook fan pages isn’t always the best idea. Instead, rewarding dedication can inspire others to do the same.

5. Targeting the proper demographic

Sometimes no matter what you do, your Facebook page won’t grow. This can simply be a side effect of Facebook’s demographic. There are just some brands that will not have a strong presence on Facebook.

Understanding the demographic present can help you decide if Facebook is worth it for your business.

From Quantcast estimates, we can tell that Facebook skews towards female youths. Interestingly, 53% of users have kids and a majority make over $60k a year salary. Obviously, over 50% are college kids. The demographics that make up Facebook are changing quickly, as more moms have begun to join and the college market has become saturated.

Armed with this knowledge, Seventeen Magazine jumped on to the Facebook fan page bandwagon. Their brand targets the demographic most prominent on Facebook, meaning a fairly quick and organic growth.

For companies whose brand does not target the optimal demographic, finding a specific line that does, works.

Consider the brand mentioned earlier in this article, Victoria’s Secret. Instead of putting the entire brand on Facebook, they targeted the PINK line, a line for college students.

Key Takeaway: Some brands cannot expect huge followings on Facebook. Brands or product lines targeting the demographic most prominent on Facebook tend to see the quickest growth.

seventeen magazine facebook fan page image

I purposely did not talk about using advertising to increase the size of a fan page, because although it can be useful to jump start a fan page, organic growth can help build a more engaged group.

Creating a Facebook fan page is simple, but getting it to work well takes time, dedication, and some planning. Don’t expect to create a page and then have a huge following instantaneously. Build good content, make it easy to share, and let people know about it, and over-time the community will grow.

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"5" Brands Using Facebook Fan Pages Well

We have noticed a shift in Facebook being not only a social network for personal use but also a platform for business use as well. More and more marketers use Facebook as a key medium for their brands online. Earlier this year I wrote a post for the Heavy Chef blog on Why Facebook is an important platform for Brand Building. In this post I looked at its redesign and opportunities it offered brands. Now we have experienced the redesign of Facebook’s Business Pages and Fan pages and this redesign has already proven successful. Let’s look at 5 companies using Facebook fan pages well and see what they are doing right.
1. CocaCola

The page was originally started by 2 fans of Coke before the company had their own presence on Facebook. Instead of taking the page down and rebuilding their own, Coke gave these users the power to run the page for them. In addition, Coke invited them to the Coke factory, showed them around and allowed them to take pictures. This aspect of the CocaCola fan page makes the page more genuine rather than a promotional campaign by Coke.
The Coca-Cola fan page has taken the brave step of displaying user created content in their main page’s Wall feed, something most brands won’t dare do. This means that the page is powered by user generated content, good and bad. Check out this discussion on the CocaCola fan pages as an example of how they deal with negative content on their page. Even though this is a very bold move to make, it get’s their fans involved with the brand and thereby the fans get value out of the page.
2. Red Bull

For Callan Green on Mashable “the Red Bull fan page is easily one of the best on Facebook simply because it has been able to break out of the typical fan page mold by providing fun content that encourages fans to interact with and ultimately connect with the brand”. Red Bull really placed all their focus on an extremely entertaining and interactive Facebook fan page. The Red Bull Facebook fan page focuses the attention of their fans on watching videos, playing ridiculously addictive games like Red Bull Soapbox Race, and listening to music. According to Anne Brannon “it’s fun, it’s engaging, it’s what a fan page should be – tailored to the target audience’s wants and needs”.
The thing that makes Red Bull’s fan page probably one of the best is their incorporation of Twitter. I’m not talking about simply adding the Twitter stream to their fan page – it’s a lot more than that. Instead of pulling boring tweets from their official corporate account, they are pulling tweets from sponsored athletes such as snowboarder Shaun White and skateboarder Ryan Sheckler. Isn’t that just wow? It is clear that Red Bull understands their audience and appeals to them by adding valuable features that would interest them.
3. Victoria’s Secret PINK

The Victoria’s Secret PINK fan page leads the fashion category on Facebook. With about 1.24 million Facebook fans, there are clearly some things Victoria’s Secret is doing right. Understandably, the fact that the demographic targeted by Victoria’s Secret PINK and that of the most active Facebook users are basically the same, has helped grow the page as well. The Victoria’s Secret Facebook fan page engages with their fans and offer them value through competitions and special offers. They start conversations on their wall posts and thus draw fans to join in on the conversation as well. Victoria’s Secret also posts a lot on their own wall and updates status’ which other fan pages forget to focus on. Also, it’s more than just posting for promotional purposes. Victoria’s Secret offers their fans high quality posts and not only self-promotional posts. Victoria’s Secret has also added a link on their PINK landing page to their Facebook fan page, thereby generating traffic to their fan pages through other portals.
4. Pringles

The Pringles Facebook fan page really focuses on adding videos. Yes, they still focus on engaging with their fans on different levels but their use of videos is what makes them so successful. Pringles has noticed its audience on Facebook’s liking to comedy and have used their fan page to spread of a set of videos that could potentially become viral. Videos are among the most commonly shared types of content online. Pringles videos are low budget productions with little editing, about people singing goofy songs. By making a simple video such as this, they have opened up an avenue that would spread the video across Facebook. By simply ‘liking’ the video on Facebook it would appear on the newsfeed of fan’s friends and expose a great deal of people to the Pringles brand.
5. Adidas

The Adidas fan page, like many others, offers a strong page. What makes them so successful is their use of their Facebook fan page’s features to promote their other social media and advertising campaigns.
Most recently, Adidas, along with MTV, ran an exclusive Facebook contest where a fan could win an all-expenses-paid house party. What made this campaign successful is that Adidas chose a prize and partner that would echo the Facebook user demographic. They also promoted the contest on their fan page before and after the campaign. Once they had chosen the lucky winner, they used their page to share the fan’s blog posts,photos and video from the party. This resulted in a whole lot of fan engagement and interest. The thing is, they pulled through with a follow up and that’s what offered value to fans. They could see how the campaign played out.
For Callan Green “fan pages that are doing it right are the ones that are actively engaging with their fans. These pages have creative content, two-way communication, active discussion boards, videos and images, and a fun and casual tone to match the medium.” Facebook Pages present an exciting opportunity for brands to directly engage with their existing and future customers and harvest new ones. It is and has been a known fact that the more time you invest in your brand’s Facebook page, the better response you’ll get.

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Tips and benchmarks for Admins of Branded Facebook Pages

General

1. Keep in a conversational tone
2. Ask a question
3. Keep it to two sentences max

Benchmarks of success

1-Comments on a status updates

For branded pages a percentage of 0.5% of your fans commenting back is the average anything that gets 1% or higher of your fans commenting back is an amazing result.
2-Unsubscribe rate
You are going to lose fans after every status update managing the level of unsubscribes is important. An unsubscribe rate of less than 7.5% is good.

Examples of good Australian Branded Pages

8.11.09

GEMAS Effie Mena Awards 2009

The GEMAS Effie Mena Awards 2009 made their debut at a glittering gala presentation ceremony in Dubai on 5th November marking a major milestone in the history of the region’s marketing sector.

The red carpet event attracted more then 500 marketing professionals from across the region who gathered to celebrate and applaud the most effective communications campaigns launched during the past 18 months.

There were some surprises, a few disappointments but a general consensus that the 2009 judging panel had elected worthy winners from the 68 campaigns shortlisted from the 200 plus original entries.

Mohammed Sulaiman Al Fara (pictured), GM corporate communications, STC was named The GEMAS Marketer of the Year; AC Delco collected the Grand Prix for its Yes campaign for which it also scooped the Gold Award in the automotive category. Etihad Airways was awarded a Grand Prix special commendation for its Etihad marries India to the world campaign having won the gold in the travel, tourism and hospitality category.

A full report follow in GMR December issue.

For now, here's the brief list of winners:

GRAND PRIX: ACDelco, The YES Campaign - Memac Ogilvy
Judges' Special Commendation: Etihad, Etihad marries India to the World - OMD

NON-FOOD FMCG:
GOLD - Pond's, The Launch of Pond's in GCC - Memac Ogilvy
SILVER - Band Aid, Cover theones you love - JWT
BRONZE - Carefree, Carefree ME Launch - Lowe MENA

FOOD & BEVERAGES
GOLD - Coca Cola, African Cup of Nations campaign - Fortune Promoseven
SILVER - Kellogs Special K, Special K Drop a jeans size - Leo Burnett Dubai & OMD Dubai
BRONZE - Doritos, Guess the mystery flavour - OMD
BRONZE - Kraft Cheddar Cheese, Winning the battle of sexes - JWT

BEST NEW PRODUCT LAUNCH
GOLD - Pond's, The Launch of Pond's in GCC - Memac Ogilvy
SILVER - Le Mall, Le mall Launch - JWT

BEST USE OF CSR
SILVER - Masafi, Masafi Corporate recycling initiative
SILVER - Oasis, Oasis - Water for Africa - Leo Burnett Dubai
BRONZE - General Motors, Buckle Up Child Seat Safety

BANKING/FINANCE
GOLD - MashreqBank, Get the Message, Wunderman

BEST YOUTH MARKETING CAMPAIGN
GOLD - Aveo, Aveo Totally Street
SILVER - Doritos, Guess the mystery flavour, OMD
BRONZE - Clean N Clear (Johnson & Johnson), Clean n clear, PromaxPR

AUTOMOTIVE
GOLD - ACDelco, The YES Campaign, Memac Ogilvy
SILVER - Aveo, Aveo Totally Street
BRONZE - Ford Fiesta, Ford Fiesta Launch, Team Y&R

TRAVEL, TOURISM & HOSPITALITY
GOLD - Etihad, Etihad marries India to the World, OMD
BRONZE - Bahrain City Centre, A Groundbreaking Mall Experience, JWT Bahrain

MEDIA/INTERNET/CONTENT PROVIDER
GOLD - ZEE Aflam, ZEE Aflam launch, Universal Media & Lowe MENA

REAL ESTATE
BRONZE - Bahrain City Centre, A Groundbreaking Mall Experience

Colgate: Don’t forget, Ice-cream

Don't forget

Colgate normally gives out small product samples at annual events like “Oral Health Month” to remind target consumers, especially kids, to take better care of their teeth after eating sweets. This method does not drive strong results as most consumers tend to forget the message, even if they have collected the samples. Instead of giving away product samples, ice cream and cotton candy were given out. The stick carrying the ice cream and cotton candy carries a hidden message. Once consumers are done the message printed on the tip of the stick shaped like a toothbrush reveals “Don’t Forget” with the Colgate logo. This simple message effectively reminded consumers to brush their teeth.
Advertising Agency: Y&R, Bangkok,Thailand
Executive Creative Director: Marcus Rebeschini
Creative Director: Noppadol Utiswannakul/Shen Guan Tan
Copywriter: Chanissara Ngampan
Account Director: Ittawin Ngoenwichit
Account Manager: Natphon Pholsong
Account Supervisors: Jaime Prieto, Sanjay Bhasin
Producer: Amornmarn Rattanarakpinyo
Art Directors: Kijchapon Patiwongphaisarn, Somchok Kunjaethong
Photographers: Jasda Trivittayanuruk, Yoothana Sasanatiang
Production House: Fiftyone Bangkok Company Ltd.
Agency Producer: Amornmarn Rattanarakpinyo

Colgate: Don’t forget, Lollipop

Don't forget

7.11.09

The hand from above

In the latest installation by Chris O'Shea, "unsuspecting pedestrians will be tickled, stretched, flicked or removed entirely in real-time by a giant deity"

Using the BBC's Big Screens, which are installed in various UK city centres, the Hand From Above playfully transforms passers-by

Hand from Above from Chris O'Shea on Vimeo.

"The BBC Big Screen is fitted with a CCTV camera, linked into a computer that runs the software then outputs to the screen," explains O'Shea. "The software picks a person based on their proportions and how apart they are from other people, then tracks the blob over time using optical flow. If the giant hand removes, flicks or shrinks a person, firstly it rubs out the person from the live video using the background reference pixels. Then the tracked person is redrawn over the top in relation to what the hand is doing, ie being picked up, or flying out to the left of the screen (not shown in this video). When the hand shrinks a person it redraws them into the video at half scale. When there is too big a crowd it resorts to tickling people, with a random selection."

Sounds by Owen Lloyd

Hand from Above is a joint co-commission between FACT: Foundation for Art & Creative Technology and Liverpool City Council for BBC Big Screen Liverpool and the Live Sites Network. It premiered during the inaugural Abandon Normal Devices Festival from September 23 to 27. It will next be on show at the BBC Big Screen in Cardiff from October 22 to 24.

Social Media|People-based, strategy Vs. Media-based Strategy

How brands should be using social media? The starting point for any business, is ensuring you know what you want to achieve – increased brand awareness, customer retention, a feedback mechanism and so on. “Next, establish who you want to engage – new or existing customers, a certain part of your customer group or more general. Then work out where these people congregate and what will engage them best.” The biggest mistakes companies make, he says, are implementing a tool-based, as opposed to people-based, strategy and simply choosing the best-known communities. “It may be that you just won’t be able to engage people in, for instance, Facebook,” he says, adding that sustained engagement is also key.

Working out why you want to use social media is an important step for any brand getting started in social media. Rather than just jumping on the Twitter bandwagon, or racing into Facebook it’s important to take a step back. Listen to what people are saying already about you in social media. Think about what you want to achieve. Then experiment with a passion and have a clear process for evaluating what has worked. And what hasn’t.

The four steps any brand should do when they are getting started in social media. We will look first at buzz tracking and how you can understand what is being said, where and by whom in social media. We will then look at how you should establish aims for your use of social media (and how you could measure these). Only then will we encourage you to experiment (with a passion). And finally we’ll look at measurement and ROI (and how you will know what’s working and what isn’t).

The aim is to give any brand who is looking to use social media (or indeed to use it better) a framework to work through, some ideas and also a lot of questions and decisions that will need to be made.

When brands are getting started in social media, they really benefit from understanding who is currently talking about them online, what they are saying, to whom and where. After auditing what your brand footprint currently is, you can begin to make decisions about where you should have a presence, the issues of interest to people in social media and the discussions and debates that your brand can both benefit from and contribute to.

A thorough audit of your current presence in social media (or perhaps just the presence of your brand through customers, fans and others) is the first step for any social media strategy. Whilst Google Alerts provide a useful source for the latest items that are indexed by its search engine, to understand properly what is being discussed by your brand it is worthwhile investing in some detailed buzz tracking.

The best results come from using paid-for services such as Radian6. These conduct and analyse real-time, deep searching into what people are discussing in public forums and social media online that is analysed according to the reach of the posts and discussions and the influence of the people discussing your brand. You can drill-down into your keywords, understand which discussions are prevalent across different social networks and online communities and identify, measure and track your main influencers online.

As with most of our advice, however, a good first step is just to have a go. To do this you need to first establish what your keywords are and then use some tools (paid-for or free) to see what people are saying. Your keyword list is critical here and time should be put into building a list of terms about your brand, organisation, market and customers. Then you are ready to go. And if you don’t want to invest in a thorough, paid-for service right, and you are willing to put in more work and use multiple services, then there are a number of good free tools in the market. Some of these are listed below.

Only when you’ve got a clearer view of what people are saying about your brand and how it is represented online can you start to really develop a strategy to get started in social media.

Some free buzz tracking tools

Earlier this year Econsultancy produced a list of free buzz tracking tools which provides a great starting point for any brand looking to explore what is being said about it in social media. The list republished below:

Addict-o-matic – Allows you to create a custom-made page to display search results.
Bloglines – A web-based personal news aggregator that can be used in place of a desktop client.
Blogpulse – A service of Nielsen BuzzMetrics. It analyzes and reports on daily trends within the blogosphere.
BoardTracker – A useful tool for scanning and tracking within forums.
Commentful – This service watches comments/follow-ups on Blog posts and similar content such as Flickr or Digg.
FriendFeed Search – Scans all FriendFeed activity.
Google Alerts –Daily or real-time alerts emailed to you whenever a specific keyword (chosen by you) is mentioned.
HowSociable? – A simple way for you to begin measuring your brand’s visibility on the social web.
Icerocket – Searches a variety of online services, including Twitter, blogs, videos and MySpace.
Keotag – Keyword searches across the internet landscape.
MonitorThis – Subscribes you to up to 20 different RSS feeds through one stream.
Samepoint – A conversation search engine.
Surchur – An interactive dashboard covering search engines and most social media sites.
Technorati – Search engine and monitoring tool for user-generated media and blogs
Tinker – Real-time conversations from social media sources such as Twitter and Facebook.
TweetDeck – Not only a great way to manage your Twitter account, but the keyword search means you can see what people are saying about you.
Twitter Search – Twitter’s very own search tool is a great resource. Can be subscribed to as an RSS ffed.
UberVU - Track and engage with user sentiment across the likes of, FriendFeed, Digg, Picasa, Twitter and Flickr.
wikiAlarm – Alerts you to when a Wikipedia entry has been changed.
Yahoo! Sideline – A TweetDeck-esque tool from Yahoo. Monitor, search and engage with the Twittersphere.

Once you have an understanding of what is currently being said about your brand in social media, you will be much better informed about the issues of interest to people, the opinions they have, who your influencers and advocates are and where you can start to engage with people in social media. The next step is to work out what you actually want to achieve.

For too many people, social media is seen first and foremost as a technological solution. People decide they want to ‘implement social media’ and then work out what they want to do with it. This kind of enthusiasm is great and people who want to harness and use social media for your brand should be embraced. However, for any business there is a critical question you need to answer first: “what are you trying to achieve”.

There is much talk about measurement and proving the ROI of social media. One way to ensure that you are able to show the impact that your use of social media has had is to make sure you have clear and measurable aims in the first place. Maybe you want to increase customer loyalty, reduce the cost of your current customer service channels, increase customer satisfaction, get new ideas into your business or reduce the cost of your customer insight spend.

A clear understanding of what you want to achieve should be the first step for any brand looking to get started in social media. This may be a detailed decision process or it may be simple, but no brand should try something without at least some aims. A simple three-step process for any brand is:

Think about your current business strategy. Consider what would make the biggest difference to your business. Evaluate where you can contribute in the short-, medium- and long-terms.
When you have thought through this you need to evaluate and refine your aims based on what is achievable using social media. Not everything is and not everything should be.
Finally consider each of the aims and objectives you have left and how you can measure the impact you are having. Think about what you should expect from social media, what return you should see and what return you would expect for the investment you are putting into your activities.

This is a simple but effective process. The most important thing is to critically evaluate what you want to achieve as a brand and then work with people with experience of using social media to understand the full and diverse range of things you could do, tools you might use and engagement methods you might employ to contribute to these. This is often an iterative process and will help you to refine what you are looking to achieve and make sure it is realistic and achievable.

At FreshNetworks, we have worked with brands who have started working in social media. They are doing great things and it’s great to see them experimenting. But without having thought through what they are trying to achieve, why and how they will measure it their social media efforts will more likely than not fail. If you are not clear in your mind why you are doing it, you can be sure that your users will not understand what they are supposed to be doing in your social media site.

There are too many stories of brands having tried and failed to use social media effectively. It may have been a disaster or, more usually, just not have had the impact and return on investment for the brand as it might have had. The most effective way to avoid this is to make sure that when you are getting started in social media you have done some effective planning first. Listen to what people are saying about your brand in social media so that you know what people are saying about you and where they are saying it. Then think about what you want to achieve with your social media strategy. Only by doing this will you be able to develop a clear and focused plan and, perhaps most importantly, measure the benefit your social media efforts are having.

Once you’ve got a clear plan it’s time to start thinking about technology and tools that you can use, and most importantly to start experimenting. This is where it gets fun.

When you are working out how to use social media tools, which to experiment with and how there are four main things to think about to help you get going:

Use your buzz tracking to understand where people are talking about you.Compare this with the people you want to engage in social media, those who will help you meet your aims. This will give you an understanding of where the people you want to engage and the conversations you want to join are. This obviously only gives you half the story as you may also want to engage people in a new place or in your own space online.
Decide which of these tools will help you to meet the aims you have set out. If you want to capture potential new customers, for example, using Twitter or Facebook may not be the most useful tool as these will not give you the contact details you probably want. If you want ideas into your business, there may be better ways of doing it than a forum or blog. Think carefully about what you want to achieve and the full range of tools available to you.
Get cracking. We’ve spent a lot of time thinking and planning so far. Now it’s time to just try some things out. One of the benefits of social media is that it can be relatively low cost to experiment. Start small and try a few tools. If you need blog then put one up quickly and invest time in getting it creating content and encouraging and growing engagement. Experiment with a small number of tools and evaluate how effective these are being, switching on more tools over time.
Work hard to get the engagement. Getting the tools up and running are really just the first step. The tough work starts when you start to engage people in social media, whether that’s in Facebook, on Twitter, in blogs, forums and other sites or indeed on your own online community. Engagement is hard and it needs a clear plan and dedication to make it work. The benefit of experimenting and having a go with different tools, and growing your use of social media in a controlled way is that you can see what is working, amend your techniques and try new things. If you have the right measurements in place you will know if you’re reaching your targets and if not you need to evaluate if you are using the right tools and if you are engaging people in the right way.

Once you have tools up and running the final stage for any brand getting started in social media is to make sure you are tracking and measuring your success.

For any brand getting started in social media, the most important thing is to be able to show the impact you are having. To be able to evaluate and assess what is working and what isn’t having the results that you might expect. To show the return on investment that your efforts are having and how this compares to other methods.

There is a lot of talk about social media measurement and it is true that in isolation it is difficult to know where to start. But for businesses with a clear social media strategy, it is actually much easier than many people think. We stressed earlier in this guide to Getting Started in Social Media the importance of thinking about the reasons you are using social media before you jump in to use any tools or to engage people. We talked though a process to define clear and measurablebusiness objectives and aims for your use of social media. It is important that you make these both clear and measurable. Typical objectives that a brand might consider include – acquisition of new customers, retention of existing ones, number of new insights or ideas into the business, or number of customer problems solved. These are just some of the objectives that brands may have for using online communities and social media, and all of them are measurable. At the simplest level they either save money for a brand or they generate revenue.

In the online communities that we manage at FreshNetworks a lot of time is spent defining the objectives and then working out first what metrics should be measured against these, and then monitoring and reporting on these to make sure we understand how the community is performing. It is important to establish a set of metrics that you can measure to assess how you are performing against your aims. In many cases you will want to measure a mix of things for each aim, but overall you should be able to show and prove what impact you are having.

Example: If you want to use social media as an efficient way of resolving customer queries, for example, you probably want to measure the number of unique customer problems you have on the site, the number of problems that are solved by other members of the community. You can then put an equivalent cost that it would have taken to service these queries through other channels and measure the actual reduction in, for example, call centre costs that you witness over time. This is what Dell did, and this is how Dell managed to work out that one member of its customer support community saved them $1m a year in support costs. That’s real ROI.

So the final stage to getting started in social media is to make sure you are ruthless about measuring what you are doing. It’s the only way you will know what works (and what doesn’t) and prove the impact you are having with social media. To do this you need to have clear objectives and these need to be measurable. Then you can measure the actual impact you are having on business aims. The actual benefit your social media strategy is bringing to your brand.

Febreze| " it’s a breath of fresh air"

Febreze: a fabric odour eliminator from P&G operates in a rather unsexy segment. The allure of the fragrance is dramatized in these set of spots.

Dawn| Cleaning up

View the current television commerical for Dawn and you’re nothing if not intrigued.

It depicts wild animals caught in oil spills being washed with Dawn dishwashing liquid. The visual images are powerful and the folksy sound track lends the feel of grass-roots activism to the commercial. There is no voice over. Only a few words of explanation appear, including the line “Tough on grease yet gentle.”
A close-up of a Dawn label says “1 bottle = $1 to save wildlife.” The consumer must visit http://www.dawnsaveswildlife.com and enter a product code from the bottle to activate the donation. The brand is committing US$ 500,000 in donations to wildlife causes to give the campaign credibility.

The campaign’s website walks the consumer through the donation process and demonstrates Dawn’s commitment to saving wildlife. There is educational information, some of it surprising: “Dawn dishwashing liquid has been a vital tool to wildlife conservation organizations, with thousands of donated bottles cleansing – and saving – over 75,000 animals in the last 30 years.”

The website includes a lengthy page of wildlife organization partners, and the opportunity to participate in Dawn’s “Everyday Wildlife Champions” Facebook page. Actress Minnie Driver is the campaign spokesperson. The promotion comes full circle with “Special Edition Dawn,” featuring three labels, each with a different photo of wildlife.
While the current campaign brings renewed relevance to an aging product (Dawn came to market in 1973), it may never have happened were it not for a charity’s persistence. The International Bird Rescue Research Center first discovered that Dawn worked on birds caught in oil spills in 1978. But Dawn’s maker, Procter & Gamble, “ignored requests to donate cases of the product, then finally agreed to do so in 1988,” says The New York Times (“Tough on Crude Oil, Soft on Ducklings,” Sept. 24, 2009).
Still, it was the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 that propelled Dawn to the forefront of wildlife conservation. Parent company Procter & Gamble has been active ever since. “Dawn has highlighted wildlife in advertising campaigns intermittently since 2002 but never tried so actively to engage consumers [as with this campaign],” says The Times.
Campaign aside, Dawn is a classic case of Procter & Gamble’s prowess in brand extension. The world’s largest brand marketer, Procter & Gamble began as a family-owned soap and candle company in 1837. Today it markets such well-known brands as Tide (laundry detergent), Crest (toothpaste), and Charmin (toilet tissue).
Procter & Gamble’s brand portfolio typically features an anchor brand with numerous variations added over time to grow the brand into a family of products. Tide, for example, started as a laundry detergent in 1943 and is now a multi-faceted group of products including powders, liquids, stain release boosters, “Tide To Go” pens, and even accessories with the Tide name, such as lint rollers. The rationale is that the consumer who trusts a brand name will buy additional branded products, even paying a premium price for them.

In similar fashion, today’s Dawn is more – much more – than a simple dishwashing liquid. Now there is:
• Dawn Direct Foam, a pump that “turns the liquid into powerful foam”
• Dawn Simple Pleasures, a dishwashing liquid bottle with built-in air freshener
• An entire line of Dawn PLUS products that have added cleaning agents, such as bleach alternative
• Ultra Dawn, a concentrated version of the product
• Dawn Pure Essentials, dishwashing liquid without dye or extra ingredients
• Dawn Botanicals with blended scents
• Dawn Power Dissolver for “the toughest greasy food soils.”

Dawn is the dishwashing liquid market leader, with over 35 percent market share, according to Information Resources. For years, though, Dawn has been in a horse race with second place Palmolive, the dishwashing liquid made by rival Colgate-Palmolive. Palmolive has followed suit with similar brand extensions of its own (Palmolive Antibacterial Soap, Palmolive Dry Skin with Aloe, Palmolive Oxy Plus). That’s why Procter & Gamble continues to innovate with Dawn.
Dawn and Palmolive both may have seen sales slip during the recent economic downturn. To save money, consumers may have turned to less expensive store brands for commodity items such as soaps and dishwashing liquids.
This could be another good reason for the timing of Dawn’s eco-friendly approach. The notion that Dawn helps save the lives of animals just might make a fickle consumer remain loyal to the brand.

Viagra 10 years anniversary

Brand: Viagra

Brand Owner: Pfizer

Title: The candle

Agency: BDDP & FILS

6.11.09

Intern Sweatshop: Boobvertising!?!

We just want to say that our intern came up with this topic all on her own, after doing extensive research, and had no prompting from any of us. Although we did discuss the title with her at length. All kidding aside, she does delve into an issue close to her heart, while drawing attention to an interesting campaign being run right here in our own backyard. Enjoy.

So that’s the trick to capturing this audience’s attention. Now things are starting to make sense. When exactly does objectification of the female body cross the line of morally acceptable and ethical advertising?

I have found busty ads that I consider controversial and one that takes a completely new and unique approach to advertising focused on “the girls.”

Does the slogan “Life’s Short. Get a Divorce” ring a bell? This billboard, featuring a scantily clad duo in provocative positioning, created quite a stir a few years ago. The ad was conceptualized by Chicago divorce attorney, Corri Fetman.

Fetman created so much buzz with the racy advertisements that she was forced to take them down. She then resorted to plastering the images on box-trucks to be driven around Chi-town. Fetman also claimed to have been the busty woman in the ads; it was no surprise she was later approached to pose in Playboy Magazine. Shockingly, she accepted the offer.

Another advertisement, for a procedure some consider inappropriate and many consider a great contributor to the objectification of women, is this one centered on breast implants.

It is not the content of the billboard that is the problem here, and sure, the imagery used is, well…a little risqué. But the real issue here is that this billboard was placed directly outside of a military base in Morongo Valley, Ca—a base populated mostly by males. Yeah.

I suppose it is assumed that while soldiers are leaving the base headed home, this advertisement would motivate them to purchase their girls at home a lovely set of…well…girls. I can’t wait to welcome back my soldier with a loving hug, a warm, home-cooked meal and my new efforts at becoming a Pam Anderson look-a-like, DDD’s and all. “Welcome home, honey. Thanks for the gift.”

The sheer concept of targeting this billboard towards men, positioned in a place where mostly men would see it, seems to be what I like to call the “bissue” – the big issue. Alright advertisers, let’s think this one through. How do you suspect a man would propose the idea of implants to his girl? “Oh honey, I saw this ad today for a boob job on my way home from work and immediately thought of you.” SLAP! Now ladies, if you want to enhance your bustline, go right ahead. I am all for it. But if your man is the one making the suggestion, well, your fist hurts even more when holding a roll of quarters.

On the flip side of all of this, I found an ad campaign that is entirely focused on women’s breasts but is done in a tasteful and professional manner. It purposefully causes some excitement, but that’s only temporary until one learns who is behind this campaign.

I was driving through Baltimore city when I noticed a sign similar to the one above. I was completely shocked. So, I went home and googled the tagline. Bingo, I responded in exactly the way viewers were supposed to. I succumbed to this example of effective advertising. And here is what I learned.

This new campaign is implemented by the Maryland Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Signage like the one above has been placed all around Maryland trying to rally support. The organization has also released other forms of advertisements to get the word out.

According to a press release from the organization’s Development Director, Lenore Koors, the campaign is “based on the premise of ‘telling your story’ and the physical and emotional connection to local breast cancer survivors and co-survivors.” These pro-bono marketing services were provided by PUNCH of Sykesville, Md., says Koors, as an attempt to let the “Thousands of Maryland breast cancer survivors know they are not alone in their fight and to offer them the opportunity to tell their stories – firsthand accounts of their struggles with this disease, their treatments and their successes.”

This concept was to include ten local survivors who were chosen based on their stories submitted to the organization’s website. These women provide real life case studies to be used in the campaign. They were also photographed and filmed for PSA and webstory materials. Koors adds that these women are the “Faces of this campaign, and the faces of hope.”

The organization also has a facebook page where other women can share their own empowering stories and submit pictures of themselves, yes indeed, supporting their own local breasts for a chance to win some fun Komen prizes.

http://www.facebook.com/komenMD

Check out some of the ads seen around town:

I personally like this campaign and the organization’s approach to capturing attention. With these innovative headlines and strategically centered images, Komen Maryland is driving the point home that breast cancer support is the most important thing to beating this horrible disease.

But I have to wonder, is this campaign acceptable to me simply because of the nature of the organization and because this is a good cause? Or is this a creative, tasteful and well thought out spin on what so many beer companies and car magazines having been doing for decades? After all, in advertising there is such a thing as too much boob. But as far as this campaign goes, those girls at Komen have this girl’s support.

-Amanda Gazi, Creative Department Intern