Brand Rants

Social Media ROI vs RODN

Has anyone ever asked you to demonstrate the ROI of a $1M TV spot or $25K brochure? Me neither. But suggest to a marketing executive today that they spend a few thousand on a social media initiative and they won't budge — unless you can prove ROI beforehand. And it's not the recession that's to blame. These are the same marketers who still invest in traditional media without any more ROI data than "that's the way we've always done it."

That is one reason why I find Erik Qualman's attempt to explain the convoluted world of social media ROI more useful than most. Like his previous social media video, this one excels at providing perspective. For instance, it reminds us that only 18% of TV spots actually generate positive ROI (and they are probably infomercials). The author of Socialnomics, Qualman also raises the second-most important question in the ROI debate: "Why are we trying to measure social media like a traditional channel anyway? Social media touches every facet of business and is more an extension of good business ethics." While I think categorizing social media as "an extension of good business ethics" underplays the real financial benefits it can yield, his point is well taken.

Connecting almost any marketing investment to the bottom line is a tricky business. However, social media provides us with more data to support its efficacy in terms of precursors to sales like reach, frequency, response/interaction, awareness and positive perception than tradition media has ever done. And feedback is in real time allowing us to make course corrections to improve and increase results as we go.

What's more, we can also document the growing number of business and private consumers who are engaging with social media each day. Which brings us to THE most important point in the ROI debate: What is the return on doing nothing? 

Old dogs & new tricks: Saatchi and the Yaris social media debackle

Four years into the social media surge and I'm still not convinced that many of the large agency networks get it. The same way they didn't get branding in the late 80's, or the internet in the early 90's. The large agency chains that populate conglomerates like Omnicom, WPP and Interpublic seem stuck one evolutionary step away from their origins as media brokers. It's been 100 years since James Walter Thompson retrofitted a creative department to his media brokerage. Since that brave step, agencies have never demonstrated any capacity to evolve further. If they can't see 15% commission in it, they're not interested. 

Today, media commissions are usually half that and the media landscape has been turned upside-down and inside-out: Yet the agency groups at the top of our industry's food chain seem determined not to adapt. Yes they are "using" social media, but they tend to use it as fodder to push through their traditional media channels. Like buying a Model T Ford in 1908 and then hitching horse to it and using it as a buggy. The example of the Yaris social media debacle in Australia is the latest case in point. 

Long story short, Saatchi created a rather lame film competition to launch Yaris without having bothered to build a community first. As one might expect, no one cared. Saatchi panicked and brought in a ringer to make a film that not only "won" the competition under dubious circumstances but also wound up being so offensive and off-brand that it triggered a major wave of negative publicity. I first learned about it when my TAAN colleague John MCCallum posted this video on his agency's blog.

For the full story on what happened behind the scenes, read Tim Burrowes excellent post on mUmBRELLA titled How Saatchi & Saatchi’s Toyota social media disaster unfolded. It is a case study in how NOT to approach social media. It should be required reading for any marketer entering the social media arena with a major brand.

The fallout from these types of misadventures is that clients become even more skeptical of social media. One client cited this case to me as support that social media just doesn't work for certain brands. I disagree. As Tim Burrowes concluded "In the end, it wasn’t social media that created this disaster for the brand – it was the lack of social media savvy."

So why are great agencies like Saatchi making such spectacular flops? I think a big part of it is they are treating social media like traditional media and missing out entirely on community building which is the real force behind social media. They will never make 15% media commission building a community, and that I believe will keep social media from being taken seriously by many large franchise agency chains for years to come.

Yaris has learned that using social media to push a message out to the market is a risky and costly endeavor. Whether Saatchi will learn that lesson is yet to be seen. In the mean time it will remain up to those independent ad agencies who are well vested in social media to take up the slack. Glad to be of service.

An anthropological introduction to YouTube

This is a video of a speech Dr. Michael Weschgave gave to the library of congress. As you will see, Dr. Weschgave is a delightful speaker and a lot more down-to-earth than the name given to his area of specialty at Kansas State University: digital ethnography. I'm not embarrassed to admit I needed a dictionary to figure out that it means a branch of anthropology dealing with the scientific description of specific individual cultures. He is interested in how digital media is impacting this. Academic? Yes. But also very interesting and applicable to anyone working with (and striving to understand) social media and its impact on markets. You can also find Dr. Weschgave's blog Digital Ethnography here.

Be warned: The video is almost an hour long. But I found it was worth it. It offers a new perspective on You Tube (and social media in general) with lots of insights and examples.I'd be interested in hearing if any other marketers find this info useful.

Social Media: Giving entrepreneurs a new edge

I never knew you could study to become an entrepreneur. I was enlightened when I received a call from the School of Economics and Management at Lund University in Sweden. They asked if I felt social media had any relevance for their Master Program in Entrepreneurship. It got me thinking and,of course, social media is relevant for them. So we arranged a lecture to see what the students thought.

The experience left me with the impression that entrepreneurs may have the most to gain by harnessing the power of social media. The reason is that most entrepreneurs I know share a few traits in common: a) they are highly motivated to succeed, b) risk tolerant, c) open to new ideas, d) usually operating on sweat equity and a shoe-string budget, e) extremely knowledgeable about their subject matter, f) hands-on and g) yearning to engage and learn about their market. I wish all marketing professionals shared this profile.

I want to thank Marie Löwegren, Dr. Tomas Karlsson, and Stina Johannesson from Lund University for the invitation to speak and helping with arrangements. If you were in the class, you can download the slides here: 10 ways for entrepreneurs to win in the new economy. Please use the password that was emailed to you or contact Stina to get it.

Does the "Starring You" viral video technique still work?

Can your brand benefit from the wildly viral "Staring You Media"?

I am not a fan of Sweden's "voluntary" TV-tax. However, I am a big fan of the campaign they have launched to induce me to pay it. Why? Well, it stars moi (and you too, even if you don't live in Sweden).

I've often said that much of web 2.0 is fueled by the ego and vanity of its users — you and I. If you can harness that energy, you will have an online blockbuster on your hands. Nothing drives that point home better than this breed of viral media that Tech Crunch has dubbed "Starring You" media, or SYM for short.  

I've posted on other SYM in the past including the Obamicon poster craze and Paltalk's "Is it True?" video, as well as OfficeMax's Elf Yourself campaign. Some of you may even remember a SYM version of "It's a Wonderful Life" by JibJab that The Duffy Agency sent out at Christmas a few years back.

Today a client in Denver wrote me to ask how his brand might use this technique. That got me wondering if the SYM prank is played out.

The Swedish tax SYM has taken the genre to a new level. While the idea is certainly borrowed, the quality of its production helps it gloss over the lack of originality (glad to know my TV-tax dollars are producing some form of diversion).

So could your brand benefit from SYM? Yes, but there's a catch. With each new entry the bar is raised. If you do produce such a video or image, it will need to surpass the last SYM your target starred in. It would be better still if they had never seen SYM before, but that demographic is dwindling.

You might also think about integrating your brand message into the plot a little more than the previous examples have managed. I'm not saying that's easy, I'm just saying it's optimal. AMF Pension Fund in Sweden managed this last year with their "age yourself" campaign. If you uploaded a picture of yourself they would send back a image of you at 70 years old. Clever, but it also solved a marketing problem because young people can't imagine they will ever be old and therefore are not interested in thinking about retirement no less saving for it. This campaign made the topic fun, engaging and very personal. 

After three years of everyone I know Elfing themselves, I can say I've grown a bit weary of SYM in general. But as soon as I see myself starring in a new film or poster, those concerns abate. Because of this appeal and their wild ability to go viral, I think we will see increasingly more clever, sophisticated and technologically advanced versions of SYM going forward. In fact, I bet you'll be starring in your own feature-length film before long. Please invite me to the premier. 

Thanks to @karelbabor for sending me the TV-tax film. To kick off the Christmas Season, my next post will be on the story behind Elf Yourself: Lessons for clients and ad agencies alike in the Season of Giving. 

Social Media: It's not just for kids anymore

Truth is it has been a very adult channel for over a year. But we still have clients telling us "We're not interested in social media because we are a serious company with no interest in conversing with 12-year-old girls". (you know who you are:)

In the spirit of reinforcing the truth, I'm sharing these beautiful new graphics from Nielsen published on BNET. You will note that for each of the major social media platforms the clear majority of participants are over the age 35 in every case — even the more youth-oriented sites like MySpace.

Combine this with the fact that Facebook alone now has an audience of over 300 million users and its easy to see why marketers across the board are developing new respect for these platforms. 

 

 

 

RESET: 10 ways to create a competitive advantage in the new economy

A workshop given for Alfa Laval's global marketing team

I would like to thank all those who participated in our marketing workshop "RESET: 10 ways to create a competitive advantage in the new economy." The talk maintained that the recent hiccup in the economy was fundamentally different than previous recessions. To borrow a phrase from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, we are in the middle of a "global economic reset." The shift was triggered largely by developments online. Collectively, many of these developments have been labeled "Social Media."

We used the terms "peer to peer media" and "earned media" to identify the drivers of this online transformation. That's because the term "Social Media" is really a misnomer. It has caused many to dismiss these fundamental changes in our economy as a teen-oriented fad.

 

The premise of the talk was not that these changes have affected marketing. Instead, we maintained that the more salient issue was how the "peer to peer" and "earned" media phenomena have affected business-to-business consumers. These changes are not just limited to the way they view the web and communication, but extend to many areas of their professional lives including the way they view purchasing, decision-making, service standards, time lines, value, corporations and advertising.

So whether our company feels social media is right for our brand or not, we must still face the reality that it has changed the perceptions and behavior of the people who buy our products. And, as marketers, that is something we need to address with or without the social media tools available today.

The group explored the 10 most significant changes and how savvy marketers are adapting to and profiting from them. Participants then spit into groups and applied what we had discussed to real marketing challenges at Alfa Laval.

Thank you to Peter Torstensson for the invitation to speak and to his global marketing communications team for their inspiration and great ideas. I look forward to seeing some of them implemented at Alfa Laval in the months to come. You can download the slides here (19.5 Mb interactive PDF) with the password I provided during the talk.

If you would like to learn more about this talk, contact me at sean@theduffyagecny.com

About Alfa Laval: Founded in 1883, Alfa Laval is the world's authority in engineering solutions requiring heat transfer, separation and fluid handling. Alfa Laval's expertise can be found across almost every industry with an emphasis in five key areas: energy, environmental conservation, food and water supplies and pharmaceuticals. As such, their work benefits millions of people all over the world every day. The company has its headquarters in Sweden and employs 12,000 people with sales in around 100 countries and its own sales organizations in over half of these countries. The Duffy Agency and Duffy Consult have been working with Alfa Laval since 2001.

Twitter Lists Triad Part 2: Four types of Twitter Lists and how to use them

This post attempts to provide a way to approach and organize Twitter Lists. It won't cover step-by-step instructions for creating lists. If that's what you are looking for, please check out this excellent post by Mashable. And then come right back!

Before you set up a Twitter List, ask yourself what, exactly, do you hope to achieve with it. Two options will present themselves immediately: You can either make the list to help yourself or make it to help the community. Once you decide which master you would like your list to serve, decide which need your list will address. I was able to identify two needs I could satisfy for myself and two that may satisfy the community.

UTILITARIAN LISTS

These are practical lists that are made to help you get organized and make sense of your Twitter world, even though they can be of only marginal benefit to the community. I found two ways that such a list cold benefit me. You can probably think of many more ways such a list could benefit you.   

            

1. Lists to segment your followers
There a bazillion ways to segment any given list. For me, most of my followers tweet about marketing in one manifestation or another. They have unique expertise that I would like to channel so I can access and interact with it more easily. So I separate them into different lists accordingly to stream specific content. This is probably the most utilitarian use of lists, but be warned: It is very time consuming. That’s because the only way to assess a stream is to look at it objectively (don’t bother going from the bio, it often states a tweeting intention that just as often bears little resemblance to what the person actually winds up writing about). Given the current layout and speed limitations of Twitter, this can take an eternity if your followers number more than a few hundred. More on that in tomorrow’s post.

Here are my segmentation lists:

• Brand & Strategy
• Marketing
• Marketing - Pharma/Biotech
• Advertising
• Social Media & SEO
• Marketing Profs
• TAAN
• Green
• Web Tech
• News Bots

2. Lists to rate your followers
This is a more subjective segmentation, but every bit as useful. I have also created eight of these lists — all of which I keep private. For instance, signal-to-noise ratio (the ratio of personal chatter vs. useful marketing information) is important to me, so I have a list where I flag people who may provide valuable input, but to get to it require wading through endless online conversations and updates on their cat’s antics. I also want to keep tabs on my clients' streams and support them where I can. Same goes for my family and friends. So these are my private subjective lists:

Here are my rating lists:

• Signal to noise ratio – People who dispense good content with lots of other stuff mixed in.
• Fire Starters – People who may be willing to help me online if ever I need to spread the word about something.
• Friends and Family
• Clients
• Client-related – Typically, this involves listening in on key opinion leaders from categories related to my clients' businesses.
• Tweeple I’ve met – Twitterers who I have met face-to-face. 
• Tweeple of interest – Basically, my favorites. Admittedly, not all of these folks are marketing-related. Some are just fun to follow like @macygrayslife or @newmediajim or @earthquakenews
• The Others – Followers who seem to be sincere, even though they have no relation to or apparent use for marketing information.

ALTRUIST LISTS

Lists intended to help the community first and foremost by means of recommendation or classification. Placing someone on a “Utilitarian” list does not constitute an endorsement of the person, other than whatever endorsement may be gleaned from the mere fact that you bother to follow them at all. Altruistic lists are different. These lists are created for the benefit of other Twitter users. Here are the two ways I found I could address the needs of the community with an Altruistic list.

1. Lists to identify and recommend reliable sources for any given topic or purpose.
Many people are creating pre-validated lists of Tweeters they personally recommend. These are extremely useful lists that should make it easier for all of us to find and follow those people who exactly meet our needs. My most flattering inclusion in such a list came from @ryanevans who included me in his list of “people who are awesome” (I’m still blushing). I’m not sure how many people feel the need to be awed on a daily basis, but if that’s you than be sure to thank Ryan for his list. I think that Anita Hall (@anetah) is one of the sharpest hands-on social marketers on the corporate side. So in addition to including her in my list of social media experts, I was quick to follow her list of Corporate Social Media Strategists (@anetah/corp-soc-med-strategists). I’ve also seen lists of people who are most likely to RT your tweets and lists of Tweeters you would like to date.  

2. Lists designed to express an opinion, flag a certain type of tweeter, help tweeters self-identify or simply amuse.
It will be exciting to see how lists are used creatively to communicate in new ways much in the same way that Twitter itself has been used for so many different ends. Lists of known spammers of phishers could provide a valuable service. Lists of people with cool avatars or page designs would be useful to some. I like @Orli ‘s list of fakers (@Orli/fakers) or @kitson’s list of people with one letter Twitter handles (@kitson/one-ltr-twitter-handles). The NHL were the first I know of to commercialize lists by creating a system whereby fans could reply to a tweet from @NHL and automatically be included on their team's fan list (I’m on @NHL/bruins-fans). Not being on a list can say volumes as well. As a Bostonian, I’ve been thinking of starting a list called “Red Sox fans who are rooting for the Yankees tonight.” Any takers?

What lists are you into? Please let me know if you come across any offbeat lists or creative use of lists for marketing purposes.

Read Part One: Twitter List Triad 
Part 1: Why you need them

Read Part Three: Twitter Lists Triad Part 3: Six Twitter List Revelations

Are MarketingProfs Digital Mixers really worth the time and expense?

The short answer: Yes. Need more convincing? Here’s my take on the MarkingProfs Digital Mixer which concluded yesterday in Chicago.

If you are interested in social media then you have probably heard of MarketingProfs, a Boston-based marketing organization. They have positioned themselves at the forefront of thought leaders on leveraging social media in marketing. About a week ago I had sent a tweet to my brother Kevin in Boston asking if he thought it was worth attending. Before Kevin could reply Ann Handley, Cheif Content Officer at MarketingProfs, Tweeted me back encouraging me to attend. That was impressive. I decided to go but knew little about MarketingProfs beyond their presence on Twitter and had no idea what the content would be like. 

So I arrived at O’Hare a skeptic. I flew in from Sweden to attend the event. This would be the fourth meeting of digital marketers I’ve attended this year. And over that time I’ve grown allergic to “Social Media Gurus” with their catch phrase “It’s all about the conversation”. After all, how can anyone claim to be a guru on a subject that, for all practical purposes,  is barely three years old? Truth is, most “gurus” may have mastered a tactic or two, but in the big scheme of things they are trying to makes sense and business from social media just like the rest of us. 

So imagine my delight when the fist speaker of the session, Michael Stelzner, began his talk with:  “I have to say, I’m not a social media guru. I’m a writer who's experience with social media is less than a year.”  He then went on to present a brilliant case study detailing how he, as a novice, generated over a million dollars in revenue for his company with a social media campaign he put together over a weekend. No theory, just common marketing sense and very clever execution. This was just the first of about a dozen talks I attended all of the same caliber. No gurus, no hype, just a lot of smart people sharing their ideas of how social media works and how we can make it work for our brands.
 
That alone would have made a 9-hour flight in economy class, worth it.  As a bonus, the two-day event was planned in such a way that there was plenty of time to mix and mingle with other marketers. I believe I learned as much from them as from the speakers. For instance, I had a chat with Lisa Petrilli from CEO Connection. I explained that my company has made great strides in running social networking campaigns but where we found the biggest challenge was convincing CEO’s that these programs are worth it. She said “CEO’s may not understand the internet and marketing, but one thing all CEOs know is networking. They get that. That’s the way to broach the topic with them.” Her response blew me away.  A beautiful and actionable insight.

After two days of such meetings and conversations I have more new ideas than I know what to do with. I’ll post on some of these ideas  over the coming weeks. In the meantime if you would like to know more about the event, I can recommend an excellent post written by Mack Collier.

So the final tally. Attending this event cost me a couple of thousand dollars for airfare, hotel and conference fees. It took two days plus 18 hours of flying. Was it worth it? Yes. Applying my own ROI calculation to the event, I’m confident that my company will easily earn back the investment 100 times over by applying what I have learned.  My thanks to MarketingProfs for renewing my flagging faith in social media conferences. I can’t wait for the next one. 

Social Media enters the curriculum at Lund University

Tomorrows marketeers cut their teeth on social media

I’ve just gotten back from guest lecturing at Lund University with their post-grad marketing program. This semester we are discussing social media: what it is and how it got this way. Now that we all understand that advertising is no longer a game of pushing your message onto large chunks of the population, but rather a pull-focused two-way conversation, hopefully we’ll see a brighter future for both agencies and clients. When I meet bright and engaged students like I did today, I can see the future is in good hands.

This semester I'm supplementing the lecture with a real-life social media exercise for one of our clients again. All social media plans submitted by the teams from the class will be reviewed by The Duffy Agency and our client. The top three campaigns will be selected and the best ideas will implemented in a new product launch across Sweden next spring. I hope to post the outcome of this exercise as soon as the product launches.

For those of you from the class, thanks for your participation. The client and I look forward to seeing you blaze new trails in social media with tactics that no one has seen before.  

You can download both the presentation and assignment here with the password I gave you in class. If you have questions, feel free to email Carlos@theduffyagency.com. I will get back to you with answers as quick as possible. Good luck.