Category Archives: brand engagement

Jan 10 Comments comments
advertising, brand engagement, mash-ups, social media, television

Social mashup goes mainstream: Pepsi Hit Refresh

Pepsi Australia Hit Refresh social mashup

Pepsi Australia Hit Refresh social mashup

Earlier this week, Pepsi Australia’s Hit Refresh social media and heavyweight outdoor campaign started it’s promotions activation phase, via a Twitter treasure hunt and the engagement so far has been extremely high. This is a campaign I’ve been working on since late 2009, and I’ve really enjoyed seeing social brand advocacy in action at a grass roots level in the Gen Y and Gen Z demographic. Particularly on Facebook, Fans of the page are spontaneously sharing their love of Pepsi, requesting the treasure hunt come to their city, and enjoying the MTV TV spots.

There are a few points about this campaign that makes it distinctive in both the social media and advertising landscape in Australia:

  1. The Hit Refresh site acts as a social aggregator so removes any barriers to entry. Being on Twitter is not a requirement to follow or participate in the treasure hunt (winners get a $250 Refresh card to spend as they choose). Instead, they can watch the clues turn up on the Twitter section of the website, or watch the clues turn up on the Tweets tab of the PepsiAustralia Facebook Page
  2. The site is a mashup of social APIs. It uses the Twitter API  but filters it via specific hashtags to only show treasure hunt clues. Hit Refresh site also uses Twitpic’s API, filtered via hashtag to show only those tagged as #refreshwin. It makes it easy to follow only clues, and winners. The Google Maps API displays the region for each of the daily hunts.
  3. There is a hashtag structure related to the geography of the Twitter treasure hunt, so those who are advanced Twitter users can set up a search specific to the city they’re wanting to follow clues on, e.g #refreshsyd, related to Sydney specific clues #refreshmelb, on the days the hunt is on in Melbourne
  4. The Twitter followers are a range of those who follow because of the treasure hunt and those who are interested in the campaign from a social marketing point of view.
  5. Twitter’s being seen/used as the channel for the clues and treasure hunt specific interactions, whilst Facebook is being seen/used as a more general brand engagement, conversational channel.

A lot of overall campaign feedback, some negative some positive, can be read on the comments on the mUmbrella and Campaign Brief posts, most of them focus on either the creative, or the mechanic. What’s been missed is the bigger picture: that we finally have the Australian region of a global brand embracing social media, for one of the heaviest weight outdoor campaigns in Australia’s history. It’s one of the first times a multi-channel social media campaign has hit the advertising mainstream in Australia.

Australia is the first PepsiCo International market to launch the new look Pepsi trademark across the four Pepsi brand, but the Hit Refresh campaign is a year behind the US in terms of re-brand launch. In the US, the new look Pepsi was launched a year ago during the American Presidential inauguration. A year on, the latest US campaign - Pepsi Refresh Project launches 1 February 2010. It’s already generating huge interest and buzz, by allocating funds normally earmarked for Superbowl advertising to giving away millions of dollars in grants each month to fund great ideas. The Refresh Project concept may or may not be used in the Australian market, but either way Hit Refresh is a significant step forward for the maturity of social media in the region.

Pepsi Australia has chosen its social channel names carefully: PepsiAustralia is used on Facebook and Twitter, a recognition of the benefits of social media not just being short-term tactical campaign support, but as part of a long-term “always on” brand strategy.

I’m interested to hear your opinions of the social aspect of the campaign, please share your thoughts.

Dec 06 Comments comments
advertising, brand engagement, film, social media, television

Why filmmakers should care about social media

Why should you care about social?

I gave this presentation at the 17th Annual World Congress for Science and Factual Producers in Melbourne on 4th December. The audience was mainly documentary and science filmmakers from around the world who came to find out about social media and what it could do for them. The majority of the story/speech is in the Slideshare notes so have a good look if you’re interested in

Many thanks to Daryl Karp from Film Australia for giving me the opportunity to speak at such a prestigious event, along with fellow panelists, Guy Gadney from the Project Factory and Simon Goodrich from Portable Content The audience seemed to get a lot out of the session which was called “What the Hell is Social Media (and Why You Should Care?)”

The common theme from questions? How can busy filmmakers find the time to socialize their content? My answer: its important enough to sacrifice other activity, and 1 -2 hours a day is a fairly small commitment that can be shared between a few people.

Nov 11 Comments comments
brand engagement, social media

Radical Authenticity: MC Hammer at Social Media Club Sydney

MC Hammer at Social Media Club Sydney

MC Hammer at Social Media Club Sydney

Social Media Club Sydney (SMCSYD) was transformed last night, 10th November 2009, spellbound by one unique individual, the one and only MC Hammer. As programming director I was the one of the first to find out that MC Hammer was coming to Sydney thanks to Iain McDonald and his Twitter relationship with Hammer, which again shows the power of connections made in social spaces. We moved venue to the University of Technology Sydney to accommodate the format that Hammer had used with the Harvard Business School, and it gave the talk the gravity it deserved.

Hammer, listed as one of the top social media users on WeFollow is passionate about social media and entrepreneurship. What makes him so engaging is his deeply personal point of view: everything was related to his own experience with Twitter his blog, and the people he interacts with online.

Hammer’s insights are related to what he’s gained transforming his personal brand into a social personal brand

  • wanting to engage directly with the audience and he tweets for himself - “never let anyone else tell your story”
  • he’s a “supergeek” and is connected all the time - “I have this phone and that phone and this device and that computer”
  • Likes to be at “the centre of the flow of information”
  • he uses Twitter to address any issues as they arise because “perception is most important”
  • if people are negative - “you block ‘em”
  • what you can’t touch - “you can’t touch the concept Hammer time”
  • transparency is paramount, its important to be yourself
  • the way he’d reinvented himself more than once from rapper > social media advocate > Harvard Business School lecturer
  • the power of social media to transform the world

Hammer also spoke a lot about being an entrepreneur and music and the people he’d met and become friends with like @Ev. He did have some advice for brands not to run and hide from social but to embrace and own the space Sure, it may have been stuff we knew from our own experience or had heard before, but not like this. Hammer was transformative because he had lived every moment of it - none of it was theory, it was all personal truth.

What made it complete for me was to watch him live his personal brand, to the last degree, to talk individually to all the people who waited for photos and autographs. He responded to questions, engaged genuinely, one-on-one.

I’ll finish with a story he shared with us when commenting that he really liked my husband Mal Damkar’s tie. He told us the story of how he went to an upmarket restaurant in NYC with Ev from Twitter, and it was the kind of place that they wouldn’t let you in unless you wore a tie. Ev, being the casual kind of guy, had to go out and buy a tie to get into the restaurant. Hammer (immaculately dressed for SMCSYD in a suit, tie, shirt and cufflinks) thought this was hilarious, so he took a photo of Ev and tweeted it out.

Hammer, to me, represents the new type of social brand: radical authenticity, when social persona and reality are one.

Oct 12 Comments comments
advertising, brand engagement, social media, social networking

what are the rules of social media?

Parking Public Tour, Brooklyn, NY
Creative Commons License photo credit: grifray

Its so easy to get caught up in “shoulds” especially with social media. I firmly believe that social is what you make it - the only rules of social media are conversation and participation.

UPDATE: One can extrapolate that there are rules of polite conversation and participation,  social media accountability is one way of putting it. As Anne McCrossan commented, its about “‘blatant integrity’. The social web is a great opportunity for us to up our game about social behaviour.  [link here]

So it bothers me when people try to tell others what to do - without any understanding of how social media works at either a social media marketing level or a personal relationship level.  A friend who runs a very successful business was contacted via email recently as he’d been held up as a “How not to use twitter” case study at a marketing event.

The person who emailed said this:

I’m sitting in an Internet Marketing seminar in Sydney at the moment, and you and your business have just been presented as an example of what NOT to do online.

I’ll keep this short and do hope you get the point:

If you have people decide to follow you on Twitter from your [business] website, they are probably looking forward to receiving tips [on your business services].  Chances are pretty good they are not interested in hearing about football or “pregnant chicks at Ikea” or “hiding the sausage”.

Thought you would want to know you have just been held up to ridicule in front of some 300 people at this event.  (The event is being repeated tomorrow in Sydney and twice this week in Melbourne.)  Guess the good news is there’s 300 people who have heard of you and your business who probably didn’t know of you til now.  Bad news is, it wasn’t a good news story.

Here’s a suggestion:  Get a separate Twitter account for your business.

While the person who emails this may or may not have had good intentions, there are a bunch of reasons why they are just completely wrong and inappropriate in judging at all. I’ll start with their Twitter profile:

  1. The person who wrote the email lists themselves as “guru”. They’ve tweeted a total of 30 times. Their Mr Tweet statistics really show up how little they use the channel they are a so called expert on. Their Twitter stream is full of the same plug for their website - over and over. There is no conversation at all. No surprises that the “guru” has so few followers.
  2. There have been countless blog posts on the way Twitter is cutting down the barriers to creating conversation and injecting personality into faceless corporates. Yet this self-proclaimed “guru” is telling my friend not to have any personality at all, and not to be a conversationalist, be human, and crack jokes.
  3. The marketing presentation that held up my friend’s Twitter stream for ridicule also took the tweets completely out of context. They only showed one side of the conversation - they did not show what the @replies were replies to. And they did not clarify that @replies are only seen by those who also follow those who are being conversed with, that the tweets would never be seen by everyone.
  4. Its great how these professional speaker circuit type seem to forget, when it suits their argument, that twitter is an opt in social medium. So the people who follow my friend, are his clients and peers, and if they don’t like what they are presented with, its a very simple thing to unfollow him.
  5. In my friends business, he deals with and talks to people on a very personal level -  for up to two hours at a time. If his clients don’t like him, same deal as Twitter - they don’t go back. In fact, Twitter allows for people to see who he is and the type of personality that he has and has done a lot to build his business since its inception. So his twitter account represents him and his business - faithfully. My friend, also believes in honesty in communication, rather than some corporate, bland sanitised push marketing message.
  6. My friend has picked up a lot of business by being himself on Twitter. He’s had blog posts written about his inimitable style and great busines. He’s picked up a lot of followers who love his fun attitude to life, his jokes and he’s become a real Twitter personality. That same personality has translated to genuine brand authenticity, both online and offline, and he’s built significant relationships using social media by being real. I could write a detailed post on how he’s used social media effectively to build a social brand and social business. In fact - using the same examples given by the emailer, I could write the exact opposite case study about how my friend  -  “How to use Twitter effectively to build a social brand”
  7. And to finish, I’d like to compare and contrast the “gurus” 30 tweets to my friends 10,000 plus tweets and my friends Mr Tweet statistics

I like to say there are no failures in social media - only failure to participate. And for all those so called “gurus” who say Twitter is not for marketing or not for being yourself or not for being honest, or not for being human - they are clearly wrong. Because there are millions of people on Twitter who are using it the way they want and making Twitter what they want it and need it to be.

Oct 05 Comments comments
advertising, brand engagement, social media

the cornerstones of social strategy

DSC_2605.JPG
Creative Commons License photo credit: imgdive

I’ve been working on a number of social media campaigns lately, some really long term and some short term. What do they have in common?

  • Defining social objectives
  • Social media monitoring
  • Channel strategy
  • Content strategy

The combination varies from client to client but its really important to have these cornerstones to help build a  social media conversation.

What I’d like to add to this list is a retention strategy. Particularly for the short term campaigns. What happens to the Fans of the neglected Facebook Pages? They find out their brand is just not that into them. I wonder about the effort that goes into building up a community if you’re just going to leave it behind.

This is intended an introduction to social strategy, I’m going to cover off each of the cornerstones in the following posts so stay tuned. In the meantime, is there any time you’ve been let down by a social media campaign that left you in the lurch when it ended abruptly? Did you feel differently toward the brand as a consequence?

Sep 16 Comments comments
brand engagement, change management, social media

HabitatUK return to Twitter

It was in June that HabitatUK learnt the power of social media when they jumped on Twitter and used trending topic hashtags (the most tasteless was the Iran Election) to push signups to their marketing database and furniture discounts . As the blogger who broke the news, and then watched it break all records on Social Media Today, I am very relieved to see them back on Twitter. The case has been used as a benchmark of the cynical use of hashtag spam, been written up on countless posts, news stories and talked about on Twitter. Even though HabitatUK apologised through me via another blog post, and then promptly blamed their intern as the cause of the hashtag spam, they didn’t respond back on Twitter. Until now.

HabitatUK back on Twitter

HabitatUK back on Twitter

There seems to be a marked shift in adopting basic principles of social media

I’m really happy they’ve got back on the metaphorical horse and have listened and learned. And I’m hoping this will end up being a new type of case study: the best social media recovery for a brand.

Aug 26 Comments comments
advertising, brand engagement, social media

Are you marketing to your ego?

bulbust
Creative Commons License photo credit: Modified Enzyme

David Meerman Scott will be at the next Social Media Club Sydney (SMCSYD) event to talk about how marketers can “understand social personas and stop wasting money and resources”

David has many case studies on his blog and his book World Wide Rave, but the post that leapt out at me takes it one step earlier in the process referring to the marketplace being the outside world and not your office.

His question to all of us marketing in the new social era:

1. Do you market to your ego? Or to the external marketplace?
2. Focus on your buyers, not your bosses.
3. The marketplace is the outside world, not your comfortable office

Many large companies and those that have huge market share are guilty of these sins, whether one or all three. Smaller companies and those who live in smaller countries and market globally are the much more focused on external marketplaces because they need customers for survival. In the coming era of social commerce, the companies marketing to their own egos/bosses/offices will whither and die.

So before we even consider social personas we need to consider whether we are focusing on buyers rather than pleasing internal stakeholders. The next stage is finding where those buyers are, and engaging with them in the social channels and the ways they like being communicated to.

I’m looking forward to finding out what David’s recommendations are for understanding social personas. If you can get to Melbourne, he’s running a Social Media Masterclass

Aug 12 Comments comments
brand engagement, social media

A social media elevator speech

As today was designated Recycle a Blog Post Day, I decided to go back to my very first post, which was written to explain web 2.0 as a digital trend to a traditional advertising agency I was working for at the time. The only thing I’ve changed is the title and added and substituted “social media for web 2.0 in the post

One of the first questions people ask me about digital trends is “What’s so great about social media?” The easiest way to describe it is to use the 30 second elevator speech.

Web 1 was about pushing information to people - a bit like getting on a soapbox and ranting at people. The soapbox guy was too busy talking to notice/see how many people were listening or indeed whether anyone was there.

Social Media or web 2.0/web 3.0 or 4.0 (or whatever you want to call it) is all about collaboration, its a two way dialogue,  having a conversation. If you are the website owner, you are the initiator of the conversation, so you start talking, but this time, you are keen to listen to what your audience is saying back to you.

They can do this via features such as forums on your website, responding to your blog, generating content for you (if you ask them to) or emailing you via a good old fashioned email address. See a stack of fantastic web 2.0 site features at my favourite online magazine site http://nymag.com/

If you give users a range of ways to feed back to you, they will be more inclined to offer their opinion, and depending on the type of website, they will be more engaged, and spend more time with you. The more time they spend with you and enjoy the process, the more they will buy into the whole experience, and as a consequence you will build some fans.
Social media is a fantastic opportunity for user engagement - which translates to building brand advocacy via virtual communities. More on that later… stay tuned

Jul 14 Comments comments
advertising, brand engagement, social media

How social media influences trust in advertising

Hands and Red Pushpin
Creative Commons License photo credit: Artotem

Last week Nielsen released the 2009 Global Online Consumer Survey of over 25,000 Internet consumers from 50 countries.  The survey covers degrees of trust consumers have for advertisers/brands. The top 3 are worth highlighting:

  • 90% of consumers surveyed trusted recommendations from people they knew personally
  • 70% trusted opinions from other consumers posted online
  • 70% trusted brand websites

There has been an explosion of user generated content, and as a result, consumers have a new way of assessing brands, products and services.  The report quotes:

“The explosion in consumer-generated media (CGM) over the last couple of years – we are now tracking over 100 million CGM sources – means consumers’ reliance on word of mouth in the decision-making process, either from people they know or online consumers they don’t, has increased significantly”

Forms of advertising ranked by changes in levels of trust from April 2007 to April 2009

Forms of advertising ranked by changes in levels of trust from April 2007 to April 2009

However when compared to the 2007 study, 2009 shows increase in trust across the board for all forms of advertising except newspapers. So what’s happened in the last 2 years to cause this? Nielsen offers:

“it’s possible that the CGM (consumer generated media) revolution has forced  advertisers to use a more realistic form of messaging that is grounded in the experience of consumers rather than the lofty ideals of the advertisers.”

The key takeaway for me is that “strangers” opinions posted online offer as much trust to the consumer as the company website. That can be a glass half full or half empty depending which side of the social fence you sit on.

  • For companies not engaging in the social media marketing conversation with their customers, they miss out on a literal world of opinion, market research, feedback and customer service opportunities.
  • Even these traditional, push marketing brands have had to increase their transparency, and be more honest about their offering because consumers can go and search for the truth online, offered by virtual strangers.
  • Those companies who value the opinions and expressions of their customers by displaying them on the company website have the most to gain. By demonstrating complete transparency, companies build trust. See Skittles.com for the most extreme form of aggregated social consumer opinion. See Crispin, Porter + Bogusky Beta website for a more sedate version.

What influences your opinion about a product, service or brand? Do you publish your opinions online? Has any brand you’ve published an opinion contacted you?

Jul 06 Comments comments
advertising, brand engagement, social media

the customer experience lifecycle of a social brand

With the definition of customer experience lifecycles, marketers can calculate the most strategic influence points on the path to purchase. What interests me is the multiple touchpoints in a customer’s lifecycle where brands who use social media marketing can make a difference to a customer’s experience. I found inspiration in this post on How to define social media strategies by using the customer experience lifecycle

A standard customer experience lifecycle includes the following stages:

  • Realisation - Recognition of a problem or need
  • Awareness - Connection between need & product
  • Evaluation - Consideration of product
  • Transaction - Money is exchanged
  • Consumption - Product is used
  • Service - Post-purchase support
Customer Experience Lifecycle of social brands

When using social media marketing we can add another layer which relates to social influence:

  • Influence awareness of need
  • Influence  connection to product
  • Influence  awareness of benefits
  • Influence  perceived value of transaction
  • Connect sharing of product experience
  • Connect sharing of service experience
  • Build ongoing relationship

Around the points of the connection to the product and awareness of benefits, we are likely to receive (or we reach out and ask for) brand feedback. And finally there are key points around the product and service experience (if great enough), will create brand advocacy. Or conversely, if the product & service experience is not so good, we still have opportunity to to respond with reactive customer service in response to negative feedback.

Its a simplified process, of what is essentially a two way conversation throughout the entire customer experience lifecycle.  If it works properly, we build ongoing, social relationships with our brands. Are there any brands you feel that are doing this particularly well?