Random

    Social Media

    An Unexpected Show of Caring.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    My wife does Yoga at Fitness Incentive in Babylon a couple of mornings a week and she just retuned asking if I would smell her.  The instructor, you see, had sprayed some lavender on her at the end of today’s session, saying something about its soothing properties.  This was an unexpected show of caring on the part of the instructor. 

    Marketers would do well to learn from the instructor and offer unexpected demonstrations of caring to customers.  Bob Gilbreath, chief marketing strategist at Bridge Worldwide, is building a brand and a movement around Marketing with Meaning.  Is an unexpected show of caring marketing with meaning?  Most certainly.  

    Expected

    When leaving a store and someone says “thank you for shopping at ____” it’s nice, but not unexpected.  While at a restaurant with spoon to mouth and the proprietor sticks his smiling face in asking “Everything alright?” — this may be unexpected but it is not a real show of caring. While at Mary Carrol’s Pub and the bartender buys back after your third quaff, unexpected?  Not really. Good business, yes, but not necessarily a show of unexpected or caring. 

    Caring and thank you are two different things.  The latter requires thought; it’s a skill actually. Twitter can be used as an example of unexpected caring, used correctly.  A coupon dispenser is not caring.  Customer service is not caring, it’s the price of doing business. When Steve Jobs, as was reported in the news yesterday, answers an email to a customer it is unexpected. And it’s caring.   

    Let’s get on with it marketers!  When you leave the building each day ask yourself “What did I do to show a customer – not every customer – I care about them in a surprising way. Lavender anyone?

    Staples on Twitter.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

     staples logo

    A “social” friend of mine, Julie, turned me on to a Twitter site today that kinda follows one of my best practices for commercial tweeting. It’s Staples.  I preach to clients and friends that corporate users shouldn’t just broadcast promotional info and/or respond to help questions on Twitter. Rather, they should create a persona for their Twitter presence that embodies the brand and inspires positive thought and action. Think of it as a role in a movie with a motivation. The motivation should track to the brand plan and push the brand planks.

    In the case of Staples, the “tweet team” consists of five people, each with their own tag. Michelle is MO, Kevin AB, etc. This allows them to be identified and personalized, plus it shares the workload. At this point, I’m not yet sure if these people are SMEs (subject matter experts) or generalists.  It would be a smart if they had discrete areas of expertise and personalities to fit. 

    Buy and Multiply.

    More and more companies are hiring people to handle social media.  Some are outsourcing (stopgap), others using interns (big gap), the smart ones employ senior management who get the brand strategy.  The big promise of Twitter is not to make customers happy – one at a time – but to inspire customers to buy, share and multiply.  The key word here is inspire. Tweeters have to be engaging individuals…with personalities.  And just like in a retail setting they can’t be shills. They must be sensitive, funny and friend-like.  If you are on the receiving end of a commercial tweet you need to “feel” the company tweeter – and like her/him. The persona is key.

    Staples has made a good start here, let’s see hat they do with it. Peace on Haiti.

    Grey’s Anatomy’s Droopy iPad App.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    There is an iPad app for fans of Grey’s Anatomy, says CIO Magazine, developed by TV rating company Nielsen, that offers interactive social activities to viewers tied to events in the program. These events are “watermarked” to the show dialogue.  I’m interested.  Coolness.  I am always on the lookout for “1 plus 1 equals 3” mashups of media that go beyond the expected. That tread new ground.

    And then I read that the Grey’s Anatomy app pops up questions like “What do you think will happen next in the plot?” “Or tweet this to a friend.”  Droop.  The app also offers character info, games and quizzes. Droopier. 

    It sounds as if the media socialists on the show are making the app an extension of a fan club when there were so many other ways to go. The show is about medicine and doctors and hospitals, why not go that route?  Why not inform, educate, surprise?  Or how about offering up some type of production notes about the cast and the scene?  I’ll bet if the app developers actually listened to the audience in real time, without a social media engagement agenda, they might hear insights they hadn’t expected. Go deep. Think deeply. Think about strategy not tactics. Don’t extend, invent. Peace!

    Social Media… the new marketing selfie.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Many marketers using social media today are underperforming. One of the problems is that the programs are run by interns and tyro marketers – those recently out of school with dexterous fingers and, maybe, a marketing degree. More likely, a political science degree. People at keyboards without an in depth understanding of selling or buying. The second problem is the posts, tweets and promotional ideas are way too random. That is, not governed by an “organizing principle, anchored to an idea,” aka brand strategy.

    Random social media programs can and have worked. Toss enough out there and positive increments will happen. But marketing is not R&D. You can’t just spill some chemicals and invent Post-It Notes.  Just as good branding requires planning, execution and sticktoitiveness, so does social media marketing.

    No one loves the potential value of social media as do I. But today, social is to marketing what the selfie is to mobile phones. A picture of oneself, with little value to others. Peace.

    Coke Journey and Facebook Envy.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    The Coca-Cola Corporation marketing story is simple but has many layers. The latest layer is the Coca-Cola Journey — a website built to engage, entertain and build loyalty among the family of Coca-Cola brand drinkers and enthusiasts. It’s a corporate website so you can find Minute Maid orange juice, Sprite and other family members represented. Coke learned through its Facebook experience that if it could dally with drinkers and they dallied back – the result would be nice lifts in traffic and presumably consumption. So Coke now fancies itself in the content business. Ding dong, Bud TV anyone?  A business goal, one might surmise, would be to draw users back from Facebook to the new Coke Journey site. Normally, I would applaud this activity, but not if it is going to change the business. Not if it promotes non-endemic brand experiences and cross-product ones at that.

    You might say Coke is using only 5 or 6 full-time employees as content creators/curators – so how does that change the business?  I say these 5 or 6 may have large reach. And a few altered cells in the DNA can be a problem.

    Were I running this show, I’d continue to host sites for each unique brand. I’d add the full-time content creators to each site, but make the content specific to each brand promise. Have them support the “motivation” behind each promise. If AOL and Yahoo! can’t get content creation to run on all cylinders, why would Coke be able to? This is another story of Facebook envy. Mr. Tripodi, I think you went a little bit off-piste with this journey. Peace.   

    How to Charge for Social Media.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I was chatting with a friend at JWT the other day about how agencies can’t make money in today’s social media entranced marketplace  — and I may have solved the problem.  Here goes:

    Say you come up a with a big engagement idea. It’s for a new product launch and you have created a fun video demonstration of the product.  A couple of graduate students from NYU did the production at a cost of $4,500.  You work at Publicis and know you can post the video for free and the mark-up won’t pay for the pastry at the presentation meeting.  How do you price it? Staff it? Measure it? Is it done under a retainer? Oy.

    The answer is simple: You price it based on delivered reach, with a smidgen of frequency.  If the video is viewed 0-24,999 times (uniques) you charge $2,500.  If seen 25,000 to 75,000 times $4,500….and so on.

    If the video is linked to another site, Publicis earns a bonus based on other site’s traffic plus the additional views. If the video gets played on TV or a big portal, another bonus plus those views. Think of the model as part SAG/AFTRA, part pay-per-view, part Nielsen Ratings.

    Now that wasn’t that hard, was it? Piece. I mean Peace!

    Cull the Follow Herd.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I’m a big Lindsey Vonn fan.  It borders on creepy but not creepy enough to visit her Facebook page. Yesterday, Lindsey announced she pulled out of the Sochi games.  I learned about it on Twitter. She in in my Facebook feed, I think, but doesn’t show up so much as she’s kind of busy.

    As an adult and marketer, I have started to coalesce my thoughts on social networks. Readers know I’ve long said Facebook is for friends and school peeps.  LinkedIn is for people with whom I have done business (ish). Twitter is for all of the above plus likeminds and admirees.  Twitter is where I share my total persona. Some politics. Some personal philosophy.  Some troll-able business scat (not the dung).  It is where I hope to learn from others, often those unknown. Twitter is my most expansive social network.  

    Facebook is only as good as the shares — and sharing is magnified based on how close you are to the person. I’m not going Gaga over a 7th grade crush showing pictures of her kids in Clearwater (Facebook). Your feed is watered down if it has too many uninteresting posts. Burger King is offering $4.00 duck burgers. That said, I really don’t cull the “follow herd” and that’s an issue for Facebook.  Too much noise in the feed.

    What to do about it.

    Remove unwanted friends, peripheral people and brands from your Facebook community.  You can always add them back.  You can always find the brand if you need it. Play LinkedIn by the book and only connect with those you have done business with. The rest is spam.  And fly like a birdie on Twitter. Note to Twitter: don’t extend beyond 140 characters.  Where does this leave marketers? Better off. With more traffic to their own sites and ads that are more powerful because they are ads – not friends. Peace.

     

    Twitter’s New Ad Plan.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    It sounds as if Twitter’s new advertising program has been well thought out.  Sponsored 140 character Tweets, called Promoted Posts, will appear atop the results of key word searches.  If you search for Tacos, you might see a Chipotle tweet above all others.  Small type will let you know it’s a sponsored ad. And should you cursor over it the ad turns yellow. Twitter is stealing a page from Google by keeping only ads deemed relevant, i.e., that are clicked on, retweeted or direct messaged in reasonable numbers.  

    Twitter will charge advertisers on a CPM (cost per thousand basis), the way TV and print media are priced. (Read more about social media monetization here.) I suspect that in a while CPMs will be one price and clicks another, but we’ll see.  

     Next Phase of Twitter Ad Plan.

    Down the road ads are expected to appear in the midst of tweet streams surrounding conversations. The ads won’t result from searches but from the content within posts.  So if there are discussions about tacos Chipotle might buy its way into the conversation.  Whether these purchased posts appear in the stream or along side a la Google is still to be determined.

    This is just the tip of the iceberg.  There are so many other ways to monetize Twitter which we’ll all be reading about in the coming months and years.  I’m happy with the current approach – it is America after all – and I am happy that Twitter has tabled the in-stream advertising effort for a while. One bite at the apple at a time.  Peace!   

    Twitter Is the News.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Twitter is an important company. When Iraq took back Ramadi the day before yesterday, prime minister Haider al-Abadi, took to Twitter to make the announcement. In real time. A few years ago when China underwent a massive earthquake, the world was notified on Twitter. In real time. The Arab Spring took place, in great part, on Twitter.

    Twitter isn’t ready yet for Facebook size masses. It hasn’t settled. Maybe it’s currently stuck at a couple hundred million users. (Am I listening to myself? Did I say stuck?) Shareholders and Wall Street want Twitter to be a bullion user application. And it will be, but right now people need to chill. Twitter is important in ways we haven’t yet figured. I have my own beliefs about Twitter’s place in the social ecosystem, but they are not shared by everyone.

    Twitter is the Google of conversation. It is earth flattening. It will do more to create one global language than any other product.

    Twitter is in the news for a number of reasons: leadership, growth, diversity to name a few. Let’s fix the diversity-in-the-corporate ranks problem, then take a breath. And let this gangly adolescent grow. Peace.

     

    The Ascent of Marketing.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Back in the 1700-1800s (in the U.S.) if you needed stuff you either made it or went to the general store.  The Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalogue was the next marketing innovation (1888), showing pictures of products and published prices, allowing customers to purchase by mail. Among the 322 pages in the catalogue published in 1894 must have been products didn’t sell and had to be replaced. The birth of ROI? 

    Television

    The next massive marketing innovation was television. Television commercials which began in earnest in the 1940s became the most popular, effective form of advertising. But can you imaging trying to track sales to media and production back then in the very beginning? “Where’s the ROI? How do you measure this stuff?” Mad men. 

    The Web

    Fast forward to the Inter-nech. Banner ads and ad serving allowed us to count clicks. 2% click thru rates. Whoo hoo. Click to buy. Whoo hoo. But not everything could be bought over the web. (Discussion of that for another day.) CTRs diminished and web display ads became, so said the salespeople, a branding mechanism.

    Social Media

    Enter social media.  And consultants. When consultants out-number practitioners you know the market is in flux. The Altimeter Group, some very smart people let me just say, created a social media presenttion ‘splaining how to measure social media via a marketing analytics framework. Here are some of the measurables: share of voice, audience engagement, conversation reach, active advocates, active influence, advocacy impact, customer problem resolution rate, resolution time, satisfaction score, plus a couple of metrics tied to gathering input for product innovation. What’s not mentioned here, something Messrs. Sear and Roebuck might have added, is sales.  I love consultants ( am one) and the Altimeter Group is growing like a dookie, but until they and all of us tie these type of metrics back to da monies, we’re just making paper.

    A smart client at AT&T once said to me, “we collect all this data now we have to do something smart with it.”  That’s business. That’s return on strategy. Peace!

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