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Where social media meets cause marketing

BlogPostman — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 13:47:09 +0000

Bob Gilbreath, chief marketing strategist at Bridge Worldwide and author of “ Marketing with Meaning, ” spoke concisely and actionably — two of SmartBrief on Social Media readers’ favorite attributes! — at yesterday’s IAB Social Media Marketplace session “Social Media, World Events and the New Face of Cause Marketing.” He led with stats that got the attention of the 300-plus brand representatives in the room: 71% of consumers are giving as much or more now as they were before the economic downturn. 87% of consumers would switch brands based on association with a good cause. 50% of consumers would pay more for products from brands that support causes. As a preface to a fascinating discussion with BlogHer founder Jory Des Jardins and Quincy Jones Productions (think “We Are the World” ) Vice President Adam Fell, Gilbreath offered this excellent, short list of cause marketing do’s: Create a cause linked to your brand purpose . E.g. Pepsi Refresh Project . Beware of greenwashing, pinkwashing and jumping on irrelevant bandwagons. Make sure it’s meaningful . E.g. the MAC Viva Glam initiative , which gives 100% of all purchases on an annual basis. Invest in it for the long haul . E.g. Yoplait’s Save Lids to Save Lives, which is 11 years strong. Create something employees can get engaged with . E.g. Innocent Brand’s The Big Knit project, which got employees learning knitting from elders and making hats to benefit Help for the Aged. Act quickly . E.g. Tide’s Loads of Hope . Trucks filled with washers were sent to help Hurricane Katrina victims clean up. Something that’s brand-relevant . E.g. Haagen-Dazs Help the Honeybees initiative, which sent lobbyists to Capitol Hill to participate in the honeybee shortage. Rules to prosper by — and feel good about. Image credit: DeVries Public Relations greenwashing

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Where social media meets cause marketing

Are apps part of your social strategy?

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 11:34:19 +0000

Today’s Q-and-A is with Chris Cunningham , co-founder and CEO of appssavvy , who will speak at the nearly sold-out IAB Social Media Marketplace in New York on April 5. At the IAB event, Chris will be up against John Battelle in an annual ritual: a session where social media experts pitch major marketers on what high-impact strategies the brands should put into play. Chris, we won’t ask you to reveal your prospective pitch to GE, but are you nervous about the competition? GE is, of course, one of the most respected companies in the world, and I welcome the challenge. Am I nervous? No. Having the opportunity to share our vision for social media fires me up. The moment to engage in social media is now. Not only can brand objectives be met around reach and earned impressions, but also the ability to benefit and enhance the user experience is incredible, and if we can share that in a debate and educate the industry, that’s the best outcome. Given your expertise in sales, what ROI advice do you have for brands as they develop social media campaigns? Forget about the click-through rate and other standard metrics. Brands and agencies need to think about social differently. The first questions should not be about ROI, they should be around what are people doing via social media. How can you be invited? How can your brand provide value? If you get that part right, you then need to understand what can be tracked. It may be useful to think about standard metrics as you do the roll on your dinner table. It’s nice to have, but is by no means the main course. We look at each campaign and create Key Performance Indicators. These range from interactions with branded virtual goods, to coupons and trial offers, to name just a few. Each campaign is measured differently. How do social and mobile applications fit into the picture? Apps are the cornerstone of appssavvy. We see apps as key to interacting with social media from a brand perspective. These creations, whether on Facebook, the iPhone or another emerging platform, provide great opportunities for brands to partner with a relevant audience. The key here, as we see it, is “partner.” Apps are not about building your own — leave that to the vast amount of really smart developers — but rather partnering with an existing, established app and audience, where you can join relevantly and add value. It is also important to view these channels as connected and not as silos. Should small businesses be adding social applications to their marketing strategy? Apps are for any company. A challenge, however, for small businesses, is they are not necessarily suited to traditional online marketing. Apps aren’t about banners and buttons, they are about joining the conversation the people using the app are having. Give us an example or two of clients who have successfully utilized these targeted applications to reach diverse audiences. A recent great example I’ve called, “The blockbuster social media campaign of 2009,” was for Universal Studios Home Entertainment’s Blu-ray and DVD release of “Public Enemies,” starring Johnny Depp. We connected “ Public Enemies ” with the popular social game Mafia Wars . The campaign’s key performance indicators were a branded “Public Enemies” job, which upon completion unlocked “Public Enemies”-branded virtual goods. During the week-long campaign, more than 44 million jobs were completed and there were nearly 55 million interactions with virtual goods. Remarkable engagement. Another example is the recent integration of fashion retailer H&M into the popular location-based iPhone game MyTown , played by nearly 1.5 million people. H&M engaged players checking-in at locations relevant to its stores, including retail, shopping center or female-centric venues such as spas with a campaign designed to generate brand awareness and encourage store visits. Check-ins were in the hundreds of thousands and H&M virtual good product images were delivered more than 10 million times during the two week campaign.

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Are apps part of your social strategy?

What might Twitter’s monetization plan mean for you?

BlogPostman — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 13:36:15 +0000

We were packed in among thousands — not to mention those relegated to spillover telecast-viewing rooms — last week for the now-infamous South By Southwest Interactive keynote interview of Twitter c0-founder Evan Williams. Instead of the much-anticipated announcement about his company’s monetization plan, Williams unveiled in the first few minutes of the session @Anywhere , an app that allows people to access Twitter from anywhere on the Internet. Kind of interesting, but not what everyone was hoping to hear. In short order, the egress began, and by the end of the session the ballroom was a big black cave filled with armies of empty chairs. Considering that the audience did not actively revolt as it did during the Mark Zuckerberg debacle of 2008 , I’m not sure if I’d go so far as FastCompany’s Alissa Walker, who said that it “was likely the most horrifically devastating keynote presentation in SXSW history.” But, man, was it boring. So much, in fact, that “as bad as an Evan Williams keynote” became the simile of choice among presenters and attendees for the remainder of the conference. Given all this drama and buildup, the Twittersphere was abuzz again yesterday when Williams’ co-founder, Biz Stone, dropped a few breadcrumbs in a CNBC interview at CTIA Wireless 2010 about the soon-to-be-revealed plan to make Twitter a sustainable business. Click here to view the embedded video. Granted, there’s no real news yet. Still, what hopes and fears do you have in advance of Twitter’s big announcement?

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What might Twitter’s monetization plan mean for you?

The Facebook skillset: Social networks, cultural context and the war in Iraq

BlogPostman — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 13:34:14 +0000

Slate Magazine and the New America Foundation recently co-sponsored a program titled “Manhunt, From Saddam to Bin Laden,” during which panelists discussed the utilization of social networks in the hunt for Saddam Hussein. In the early days of the war in Iraq, U.S. forces concentrated their efforts on searching for individuals with close connections to Hussein. Despite quick captures of many of the regime’s “most wanted” members, U.S. forces were no closer to finding the “Butcher of Baghdad.” Hussein’s eventual capture was because of a departure from traditional military strategy. Instead of continuing to dissect the old regime’s hierarchy and pick off powerful members, U.S. forces under Col. James Hickey used an understanding of Iraqi society and culture to create a Facebook-like web of the deposed dictator’s personal network. Examining his network with this new lens brought to light key personal and familial connections that were not directly associated with his regime. Ultimately, these tactics led to the individual who would direct troops to the infamous spider hole in Tikrit, where Hussein was found on Dec. 14, 2003. One of the distinguished panelists at the event was an Air Force interrogator (speaking under a pseudonym to protect his identity), who said that an understanding of online social networks has transformed the way he sees young interrogators operating in the field. He discussed the notion that having home-grown exposure to social networks, specifically Facebook, has provided U.S. soldiers with an intuitive skill set that has taught them both a new way to look at the enemy and analyze and extract the necessary information and intelligence from the populous in order to advance investigations and operations. He noted that today’s soldiers: Are open-minded about culture. Have a thirst for knowledge and the ability to be empathetic. Understand networks and use cultural knowledge to build relationships. Understanding Iraqi culture was a key component in the dissection of Hussein’s personal network. Having a basic understanding of social life in Tikrit helped interrogators and other military personnel search for the right people and ask the right questions to reach their goal. As the panel’s interrogator pointed out, “Knowing that sometimes you have to work down to work up, and that innocent people may not have the information you need, but might know the right questions to ask,” U.S. forces were able to utilize the Facebook-style web to pinpoint the individuals most likely to know the whereabouts of Hussein. Social networks have transformed the way that many of us are doing business. As a marketer, do you find that you use your knowledge of cultural landscapes and social networks to help reach the appropriate influencers? Do you think that the everyday use of social networks has made you better able to understand social dynamics across cultures you are marketing to? Image credit, Kheng Guan Toh , via Shutterstock

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The Facebook skillset: Social networks, cultural context and the war in Iraq

Will augmented reality be the bridge to Web 3.0?

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 12:40:30 +0000

Last week at SXSW Interactive, I was shut out of a session that I (and everyone else) was excited to attend called Extending Your Brand? There’s an App for That . In Tuesday’s SmartBrief on Social Media , we featured a Mashable story on a few fashion brands that are doing interesting things with location-based marketing and augmented reality. Meanwhile, the top spot of today’s newsletter is dedicated to an interesting article called “Can Augmented Reality be a commercial success for e-commerce? ” Does all this buzz mean that augmented-reality applications are the next big thing in marketing? By now, most folks have seen some version of AR in action. There are many downloadable iPhone apps that allow you to hold your phone up to the world and be directed toward the nearest Burger King or Starbucks. To get a real sense for the promise of the medium, however, check out Microsoft Bing Maps architect Blaise Aguera y Arcas demonstrating augmented-reality maps at this year’s TED Conference . And if you really want your mind to be blown, watch this TEDIndia video of inventor Pranav Mistry demonstrating SixthSense tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data. Without a doubt, the technology is amazing, but the jury’s still out on whether it will be applicable beyond the world of retail. What do you think? Does augmented reality have a place in your business? Is this technology going to transform marketing as we know it? We welcome your opinions in the comment box below. And who knows, maybe we’ll interview you as the next thought leader to watch! Image Credit, shank_ali , via iStockphoto

Health and social media at SXSW: New channels take on old problems

BlogPostman — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:03:40 +0000

Today’s guest post is from Doug Naegele, an avid SmartBrief on Social Media reader and inveterate entrepreneur. His firm, Infield Communications , lives at the intersection of Health 2.0 and mobile solutions. At least 10 sessions centered around health care and technology last week at the South by Southwest Interactive conference. I attended eight and came away with a few observations that may be valuable to the health community and those that serve it: Infectious Disease & Twitter At the session entitled When Swine Flew: Embracing Innovation in H1N1 Response we learned that in 2009, The National Institutes of Health collected all the swine flu related tweets from one hour of one day – a total of 1300 tweets. They fed the tweets into a semantic language engine and analyzed the frequency of certain concepts. NIH saw patterns in the discussion, identified specific misinformation about the outbreak and had a head start on what topics to emphasize to the public. Follow discussion on this topic at #whenswineflu . Suicide Prevention and YouTube & Facebook The RT: I’m Going to Kill Myself. Preventing Suicide Online panel YouTube’s Safety Center , linked at the bottom of every YouTube page, offers videos from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline to connect troubled youth to prevention resources. On Facebook, status updates containing suicidal content trigger a chain of events starts on the Facebook back-end which may lead to a referral to the Lifeline and/or reaching out to the poster directly. Follow discussion on this topic at #preventingsuicideonline. Inactivity & Apps The Social Health Summit 2010: What We Learned wrap up highlighted a few gems, such as the social application Getupandmove.me which enables users to issue fitness challenges to their friends. (Think: I’ll do 15 pushups if you’ll climb two flights of stairs). Research shows that an asynchronous challenge, when two parties do things separately and not at the same time, is three times as effective as a synchronous challenge. (Think: You and I meet at the stairwell, and I do my pushups while you climb the stairs). Fascinating! How providers communicate with patients Many discussions at SXSW surrounded how doctors and hospitals can and should use social media to connect with patients, but two major roadblocks emerged. Many hospitals are hamstrung when it comes to social media because they’re concerned about opening themselves up to negative feedback. Even more complicated is the fact that patient satisfaction can increase or decrease reimbursement rates. Regulators are concerned that if the social media genie is let out of the bottle, HIPPA — the federal law that imposes strict penalties for compromising patient data — may be compromised. Many doctors and hospitals are so concerned about HIPPA that its mere mention stops every social media discussion before it starts. Follow the discussion on this topic at #er20 . Image credit: Cimmerian , via iStock

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Health and social media at SXSW: New channels take on old problems

The interactive community’s next challenge: sustainability

BlogPostman — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:51:51 +0000

SmartBrief editor Rebecca Pollack was in Austin, Texas, for the South by Southwest Interactive Festival . Here’s her take on Sunday’s keynote address. “What if social media was actually about social impact?” That’s one of the questions that Valerie Casey , founder of The Designers Accord , posed to the audience as a keynote speaker at the 17th annual South by Southwest Interactive Festival. Casey called on designers, creators, developers and strategists in the interactive community to take on a leadership role, after having been “virtually absent” in the conversation around sustainability. Why now? Casey showed a image of the open-air burn pits in Iraq. Last month, an Institute of Medicine panel started to investigate the sites, used to destroy waste, as they have been linked to illnesses, such as respiratory diseases and cancers, in war veterans and contractors. Casey showed another slide: A child sitting in the middle of an e-waste dump where 133,000 computers and 100 million cell phones are added every day. And then she asked: Why does a salad cost more than a Big Mac? Why us? Rarely are industries, silos or other groups able to take on such challenges. The Interactive community has “systems thinking” in its blood, she said. So often, groups make excuses because a task falls outside of their expertise. Yet these systems thinking skills are necessary to help us look at environmental, sustainability, cultural and social issues with a fresh perspective. We bring creativity and optimism. We can be the bridge to the other communities. Depending on our collective wisdom, Casey believes that “the Interactive community is the connective tissue [among] all universes.” SXSW shows its green side. Meanwhile, Austin is welcoming more than 20,000 SXSW attendees this year, and the festival is continuing its environmental leadership . In the past two years, the Interactive and Film departments have transitioned to online registration, while Music portion went paperless in 2003. SXSW became a carbon-neutral company in 2006. It also added solar panels to its building in Austin about a year ago that have produced more than 7,000 kilowatt hours of clean energy. Most of the SXSW “official hotels” also are invested in green initiatives, including using CFL bulbs and water-conservation fixtures and installing gray-water recycling for irrigation. To stay dialed-into this conversation, sign up for SmartBrief on Sustainability . Image credit, Vladimir Ivanovski , via Shutterstock

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The interactive community’s next challenge: sustainability

Moon 2.0: Opening up space exploration

BlogPostman — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:54:17 +0000

Social media really is changing the world – and beyond — as an enthusiastic South by Southwest Interactive Festival audience learned during one of the most “holy cow!” sessions at this week’s conference in Austin, Texas. Moon 2.0: The Outer Limits of Lunar Exploration , moderated by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Veronica McGregor , who began tweeting in 2008 as @MarsPhoenix , addressed the topic of space exploration as a social experience. The first panelist, Nick Skytland , is the co-founder of openNASA.com , a collaborative experiment in open, transparent and direct communication about the U.S. space program. Skytland is the perfect champion for public access to the experience of planning for, executing and learning from space missions, given his experience simulating human responses to space flight. In his introductory remarks, he talked about Twitter as a way for astronauts to tell their stories in more human ways that can give NASA some personality. A number of astronauts are live tweeting from space, including: @Astro_mike , the first to give behind the scenes perspectives via Twitter, has the biggest audience at 1.3 million followers. @Astro_soichi , is particularly adept at using Twitpic to capture and share photos from space. @Astro_Jeff ordered his wife flowers from space as his first Twitter activity. Just think for a moment how cool that is. Skytland and his team have recognized the benefits of bringing discussions about space exploration into forums where public conversations are happening. His current push is using all the NASA channels – Facebook.com/nasa , @nasa , their OpenNASA.org blog — to encourage participation in President Barack Obama’s open government initiative , in which citizens are urged to communicate directly with lawmakers about issues and programs they would like to be addressed. “How do you want to participate with NASA?” Skytland asked the room. “$5 million has been set aside by NASA to act on your ideas, so let us know .” (As of this writing, tomorrow is the last day to submit ideas , so hop to it!) Two other panelists, Amanda Stiles and Dave Masten , brought the non-agency perspective to the fore. As online community manager and Google Liaison for the Google Lunar X PRIZE , Amanda is a firm believer in “space for the rest of us.” Dave Masten is the private entrepreneur who rose to the X Prize challenge and won $1 million towards continued space flight experiments. He’s motivated by the fact that only half of today’s population was alive when the “U.S. abandoned the moon” on Dec. 14, 1972. He wants to go back in a sustainable way so that more people can be involved with it. “We need more engineers,” Masten said, and he hopes his Web site , which features YouTube videos not only of successes, but of mission failures, will inspire the next generation of explorers. The fact that space exploration is no longer the exclusive domain of the government was underscored by the final panelist, Cariann Higginbotham, co-owner and co-host of Spacevidcast.com , a private high-definition video company on a mission to dispel the idea that space is boring and frought with missteps. “The media mainly covers things at NASA that go wrong. But there’s always something interesting happening in space, and people need to know about it.” Hers is one of three Web video podcasts covering space, educating people and getting them interested in exploration. Teachers and enthusiasts around the world tune into their videos via Skype. “If you want to watch a launch and treat it like a tailgate party, you can!” Cariann exclaimed. “Space geeks are very, very cool.” This whole topic is so cool, it’s somewhat difficult to return back to Earth — and onto the next session. You can expect more SXSW coverage throughout the week. Image credit, Merritt Colaizzi

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Moon 2.0: Opening up space exploration

Live from SXSW: Igniting U.S. fans for the 2010 World Cup

BlogPostman — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:29:30 +0000

Online marketers of all stripes could relate when Chris Hall of the U.S. Soccer Federation quoted basketball great John Wooden at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas: “Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” The Federation is ramping up their online game in anticipation of the June 11 start of the 2010 World Cup , the most widely viewed sporting event in the world. Tuesday’s SXSW Interactive session World Cup 2010: Engaging U.S. Soccer Fans Online laid out its numerous branding and execution challenges: The U.S. Soccer Federation has no broadcast rights to the World Cup. The World Cup 2010 brand, all game footage and multimedia belong to FIFA . Soccer as a spectator sport is barely on the U.S. sports radar. There’s an ardent underground community of fans, but the sport is just beginning to gain a foothold in this country’s sports consciousness. American soccer fans’ allegiance is largely local, yet the U.S. Soccer Federation has no local presence. Many soccer fans in the U.S. are in the Hispanic community. Marketing to a bilingual fan base adds layers of complexity. Organizationally, the U.S. Soccer Federation is still in the process of shifting from a command-and-control culture to a culture of empowering nonstaff to have brand control. The danger zones for social media tend to be politics, religion and sports. The organization expects they will have uninterrupted wireless access in South Africa. But it can’t bank on it. To rise to these significant challenges, the digital team at the U.S. Soccer Federation has: Done its homework . As the joke goes, English football fans are likelier to change their spouse than change their team allegiance. So the U.S. Soccer Federation talked with European football club peers to tap into their online strategy: Treat supporters as part of the family, give them what they want and keep them engaged. Decluttered its Web site . So far, the team’s Web work has focused on making ussoccer.com easy to find (via search engine optimization) and engaging in a way that drives passion, providing unique, behind-the-scenes perspectives, player interviews, off-the field footage that captures the excitement of the sport and videos of what the team is doing to prepare, travel to and experience the competition in South Africa. The team has also unified the site’s look and feel. Previously, the blog wasn’t connected to or telling the story of the U.S. Soccer Federation brand, so it was recently moved over from Blogspot to give a sense of brand consistency. According to Hall, the Federation considers the site a work in progress, not a one-time redesign. Activated brand evangelists . They’ve made it easy for fans to embed U.S. Soccer Federation video onto their blogs, sites and social networks. To enhance this sharing experience, ooyala.com has implemented an anchor-tag system which enables users to point directly to specific moments in the video that are relevant to them. Created foundations for real-world community . Pluck Media , recently acquired by Demand Media , has assisted with the Federation’s social-media strategy and elevated the level of user-generated content via blog and forum commenting. The Federation has also implemented a bar program that allows local bars to self-identify as places where the games are screened so local fans can watch matches together. Since bars are not always appropriate venues, the organization is also exploring other ways to bring families of fans together offline, such as house parties and community screenings. This kind of grass-roots organizing will be a focus of the Federation’s strategy moving forward. Closely monitored what fans are saying and where users are embedding their videos. The room was packed during the panel, replete with soccer fans and geeks who devoured the presentation but were not satisfied with the pace of the U.S. Soccer Federation’s progress. In the Q-and-A that followed, audience members said they want more passion in the coverage, more power for the fans to contribute to the site, better mobile accessibility and more sophisticated geo-based services such as Gowalla and Foursquare. They also homed in on how behind-the-curve the Federation is on Spanish-language adoption. The reasonable but unsatisfying answer — that Hispanic audiences are an important of the equation long term, but short term, they’re a small portion of their traffic — did not seem to satisfy these, the harshest critics. Still, the changes are a step in the right direction and can serve as guideposts for the rest of us who are reinventing and fine-tuning our own online strategies. Image credit, JM-Design , via Shutterstock

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Live from SXSW: Igniting U.S. fans for the 2010 World Cup

Live from SXSW: FCC addresses national broadband plan and digital divide competition

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:39:02 +0000

Today’s guest post is from SmartBrief reader, telecom guru and 24-year South By Southwest veteran Stephen J. Easley. Steve is vice president for government affairs and general counsel of F2 Technologies , a wireless data technology company, and was formerly vice president and general counsel of American Cellular Corp., a representative to the CTIA Board, and senior technology counsel to MCI Telecommunications before its acquisition by WorldCom. The FCC finally got its turn to address its national broadband plan to Congress this week at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival . Unfortunately, it came a mere 36 hours before the detailed plan will be released, and the FCC representatives at SXSW were unable to address a number of detailed questions from the enthusiastic and knowledgeable audience. Nevertheless, Elana Berkowitz, director of economic opportunity for the National Broadband Task Force, and Dr. Mohit Kaushal, the task force’s health care director, reached out to the Web and development communities gathered in Austin. Berkowitz noted that the FCC Twitter feed is the third most followed in government, after the White House and the CDC , but admitted that their 300K followers paled in comparison to Lady Gaga (we are at SXSW, after all, and the music festival is right around the corner.) Berkowitz urged attendees to test their own downlink and uplink speeds via the FCC’s new broadband speed app . This will assist the FCC in meeting a goal set out in the new plan: to provide consumers with actual download speed data to compare with providers’ advertised claims, allowing them to make more informed purchases. Three other plan initiatives aim to make government more transparent and accessible: Video.gov, a planned site that aims to offer a central location for the government’s vast video archives that will be accessible to the public. Mypersonaldata.gov, a site that the FCC hopes will offer citizens a secure, central repository for all government data gathered on each us. A site where all Freedom of Information Act disclosures will be posted to allow everyone to review previously released information. Dr. Kaushal said the plan promotes efforts by private-sector entrepreneurs and developers to come up with solutions such as apps that monitor health and wellness 24/7 and communicate through broadband networks. To that end, he announced a competition to foster digital inclusiveness sponsored by the FCC and the Knight Foundation that will award $100,000 in prizes to creators of the best apps that promote broadband adoption by those on the other side of the digital divide. With expert judges and “people’s choice awards,” this challenge threw down the gauntlet for SXSW attendees. On the critical issues of increasing competition and promoting affordability, the FCC panelists avoided specifics and tried to assure a skeptical audience that the plan would propose practical steps toward solutions. Dr. Kaushal believes the plan’s goal of securing a further 500 MHz of wireless spectrum, including more unlicensed spectrum such as the 2.4 GHz band, and Universal Service Fund reform will go a long way toward promoting competition and affordability. Image credit, Tudor Voinea , via Shutterstock

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Live from SXSW: FCC addresses national broadband plan and digital divide competition