ISSUE 22 June 2011 desktop desktop an UPFRONT MEDIA publication 2 3 5 7 9 The Real Cost of Social Media 8 Brands That Have Found Success onFacebook & What We Can Learn You Can’t Measure What It IsYou Do Not ValueSock Puppets & Social Media :Inside Ford’s Risky Marketing CampaignRandom facts, humor more... In this issue:
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Oreo is a global brand with over 19 million fans, and yet they still man-age to make things personal for their fans. They consistently run fun
content, creative pictures and links. They also have a “World’s Fan ofthe Week” that showcases one Oreo fan in their prole picture based
on uploaded fan photos.
Lesson: Share lots of photos, and ask your fans to share photos.
Facebook’s Photos remain the most viral feature of its platform.
4. Vitamin WaterVitamin Water has been trailblazing on Facebook for years, including
crowdsourcing an entirely new avor back in 2009. Today, they haveover 2.3 million fans with frequent posts featuring pictures, videos,
events and links. Most importantly, they are responsive to fan ques-tions and inquiries, breeding loyalty even when their answers aren’t
exactly what customers want to hear.
Lesson: Find the resources to respond to your fans questions and
inquiries.
2. Restaurant.com
Restaurant.com combines exclusive Facebook offers with lots of en-gaging questions. This drives higher results in users’ newsfeeds be-
cause of Facebook’s EdgeRank formula. Last week for instance, theyasked, “When the weather is nice, do you prefer to dine on the restau-rant’s outdoor patio or stay indoors?” and “Which American Idol nalist
would you like to dine with — Haley, Lauren, or Scotty?”
Lesson: Ask a lot of questions. You’ll get valuable feedback, plus you’ll be more likely to appear in your fans’ newsfeeds.
Any brand worth their social media salt has a presence on Facebook. But just because a brand is online, doesn’t necessar-ily mean that it is doing a good job. While it’s possible to suggest some tips and best practices, there’s no greater teacher
than learning from example.
Below, nd eight brands that have found success on Facebook, including some takeaways on what they did right and howyou can emulate their success.
1. The Pampered Chef
The Pampered Chef launched their Facebook page at a national con-ference in front of thousands of enthusiastic consultants. The page
earned 10,000 likes in its rst 24 hours and now has over 260,000 likes.
Lesson: Ask your staff, customers, vendors, and partners — who al- ready know you and like you — to “Like” your Facebook page rst .
5. BolocoBoloco is a Boston restaurant which has set up their Fan Page as
a “Place” Page, allowing people to check-in. In addition to using theReviews app to solicit and showcase reviews, Boloco is engaging and
has fun with their audience. Most importantly, as a Place Page, theycan leverage one of Facebook’s newest features, Deals, offering cus-tomers specic and local specials.
Lesson: If you have a physical location, use Place Pages and Deals to
drive trafc through your doors.
6. LOFT
Last June, LOFT upset its fans after they posted a series of photos ofsuper-thin models wearing their clothing. So the very next day, they
apologized and shared photos of their own staff, of various shapes andsizes, wearing the line. Fans responded enthusiastically, and since
then LOFT’s Fan Page has grown from 50,000 fans to 250,000 fans.They also post a lot on weekends, when their audience is online and
there’s less competition from other brands.
Lesson: Know your audience well, and when you make a mistake,quickly own up, do right by your audience and x the problem.
7. 1-800-Flowers.com1-800-Flowers.com was one of the rst brands to establish buying op-portunities inside Facebook, and now leverages in-stream sales. But
the most important thing they’ve done is to deeply integrate Facebookonto their website, putting the Like button on all products. Imagine
visiting an ecommerce website and seeing what products the personyou’re buying a gift for “Liked” — it would make choosing the right gift
a lot easier, wouldn’t it?
Lesson: Integrate Facebook outside of your Fan Page, on your web-
site, in as many places as you can. Create more compelling opportuni- ties for people to buy your product based on their friends’ Likes.
8. Brooklyn MuseumThis local non-prot has used pictures and an art app called Wall Pa-
per to attract more than 37,000 fans. One thing they do particularlywell is engage other entities. A look at their Wall shows lots of artist
pages and other organization’s pages interacting with the Museum’s
page — not just the fans.
Lesson: Find synergy with other organizations and entities, and then work together to promote each other’s Facebook pages so that every-
one benets.
These eight brands all demonstrate worthwhile lessons in Facebook marketing.
as OMG or LOL are in TXTING. No matter howmuch you believe in social media, the reality is
that management needs to know, what’s the ROIof Tweets in “the” Twitter or Likes in “that” Face-
book thing that all the kids are talking about?
Kidding aside, the future of social media withinyour organization and the value your customers
experience in their networks of relevance is inyour hands.
No one said this was going to be easy, and if theydid, they didn’t report to the management infra-
structure where you and I operate. Change isn’teasy. But, these are the times we read about inbooks and see in the movies.
A classic “Cinderella Story,” if you will. You are
the person who will rise against the odds to bringabout meaningful change within your organiza-
tion. Like Cinderella or any other character inan underdog story, you’re destined to take thebumps and bruises before you realize the glory
or validation you deserve.
The question remains however, what’s the ROI ofsocial media? It’s a question that is in all reality,
unavoidable, but achievable. The pursuit of theanswer denes your destiny.
Let’s start with a bit of the truth. You cannot mea-sure the ROI of anything when the R, or the re-
turn, isn’t dened from the onset of any strategy.
Nor can it be measured through the quantica-tion of the 3F’s (friends, fans, and followers) orany other simple math formula tracking Likes,ReTweets, comments, impressions, mentions or
sentiment.
This is the time to apply a bit more science thanhistory to better understand how to design social
media programs that measure a click to action.
Like Me? Why Don’t You Love Me!?
In a classic twist of fate, brands rushed to so-cial networks to seek acceptance in the form of
“Likes” and follows. Once there, they found
that connection was only the beginning.
At the heart of these new communities was just that, a community. And, communities
require an investment of not only time andresources, but value…value on both sidesThis is about going beyond Likes, this is
about loyalty, advocacy, and engagement.
HubSpot’s “The 2011 State of InboundMarketing” report spotlighted the critical im-
portance of Facebook and Twitter in 2011business strategies at 44% and 38% re-
spectively. That’s up from 24% and 21% in two short years.
With an increased focus on Facebook specically, businesses will needa better understanding of what it is consumers want and how it is the
company plans on delivering it within an interactive, peer-to-peer envi-ronment. eMarketer recently published a report, “Facebook Marketing
Strategies for Turning ‘Likes’ into Loyalty,” to help shed light on theimportance of meaningful engagement. The title of the report says it all
Businesses will need to invest less in supercial interactions and morein driving loyalty and steering benecial customer experiences. Every-
thing begins with dening the value and the experience customers areseeking. Yes, it goes beyond the ask, “Follow us on Twitter and Like us
on Facebook.”
The reality is however, brands aren’t outright expressing why consum-
ers should do so. Instead the entire premise of many social media cam-paigns is void of expressed value or meaning and therefore absent of a
solid foundation for measurement.
Measurement Starts with Benchmarking Against Progress TowardBusiness ObjectivesIn the early stages of social media marketing, brands experimented
with measurement by tracking soft, but still necessary metrics suchas awareness, engagement, sentiment, mentions, Likes, Followers
RT’s/mentions, comments, etc. Sometimes, these metrics were bench-marked against competitors to demonstrate position and change over
time. In an unpublished study that I reviewed, over 50% of businessesadmitted not knowing how or what to measure in social media.
Without connecting the dots between intention and cause and effect,we are measuring nothing more than activity. However, dening what
book, Twitter and YouTubewith run-of-the-mill social
media campaigns. Manyare guilty of replicating
the ideas of their more ambitious competitors while otherssimply hope to get additional mileage out of television spotsby placing them on YouTube. Not Ford.
On the heels of its successful and well-received Ford Fiesta
Movement and 2011 Explorer Facebook reveal initiatives,Ford has crafted yet another innovative social media cam-paign, this time to raise awareness and introduce consumers
to the 2012 Focus.
At the center of the campaign is Doug, an irreverent and ab-surd tweeting, Facebook updating and YouTube uploading
sock puppet serving as the spokesperson for the new car.
Ford has constructed multifaceted ctional characters in
Doug and John. John is Doug’s human companion — thestraight man of duo. Doug’s comedic, brazen and off-the-
cuff personality is the perfect foil for John’s more factually-grounded act. Together, they it about the country in a new
Focus, frequently updating their social media accounts withan assortment of content and playful banter.
The idea, says Digital Marketing Manager Scott Kelly, whoseteam is responsible for the campaign, is to use social chan-
nels as a medium to create invitational content.
“Doug is a multilayered character that’s more fun to get toknow in an interactive setting. A 30-second TV spot couldnever afford us the opportunity to engage with our consum-
ers the way the social channels do,” says Kelly. “The videosare an introduction to him and John, but the real fun begins
when people can talk to Doug and have him talk back.”
Untraditional and the opposite of politically correct, this socialmedia and content-heavy campaign is the riskiest one yet forFord.
Ford, widely regarded as a digitally savvy brand, is not guar-
anteed a home run with each swing. Anwith ctional characters engaging with brand fa
an outspoken sock puppet with a big mouth, and an agenthat manages the social media updates, Ford is asking fo
trouble. Anything and everything could go wrong.
Mashable spoke with Kelly extensively to get a behind-thscenes look at the campaign and a progress report on ho
its going.
Who is Doug?
In understanding Fordmotives for the spokespu
pet campaign, one murst understand who Dois and what he represents
“Doug is the latest additi
to a long history of spokepeople for Ford,” Ke
says. “Like the 100 agenfrom the Fiesta Movement, he’s someone who’s been loana Focus for a certain period of time and expected to get t
word out about what is, essentially, a brand-new car.”
Doug is symbolic of the redesigned Focus — he’s the oppsite of what you’d expect. “The 2012 Focus is nothing like t
past Focus, and Doug is supposed to serve as a provocatewho gets people to take a left turn in their day,” says Kelly.
The company intentionally made Doug a sock puppet so could say and do things that might not be acceptable from
human spokesperson. Doug is Ford’s license to walk on t
wild side.
Add to that John, “the straight man to Doug’s occasional asurdity,” as Kelly describes him, and you have a comedic p
in balance.
“[John] is the one with the real knowledge of the vehicle, so can correct misinformation when Doug says something lik
‘Every new Focus comes with an ejector seat and a licenplate changer,’” says Kelly. “Basically, he acts as a liaisondecency between Doug and the public, as well as letting
interject some vehicle features in a natural way.”
Did everyone catch the Mercedes-Benz Tweet Race back in February this
year? Well, they were a few days late due to some bad weather, but they made
it through and here is the campaign case study to prove it was a big success.
The campaign had almost 30,000 active participants with over 72,000 Face-book Fans and 77,000 Twitter Followers who generated over 150,000+ tweets
to power the cars. The campaign videos generated about 2 million views, whilethe twitter reach pushed over the 25 million mark.
Aside from the numbers, the Mercedes-Benz Tweet Race was a great way
to try something a little different, and by utilising simple ways to get involved,along with enough interesting, ongoing event content, they’ve created a verysuccessful campaign.
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May 25, 2011 from Mashable
May 24, 2011 from DigitalBuzz
Here is a neat little case study for Stads
sion, a small charity dedicated to helpinhomeless in Stockholm.
The “Homeless Banners” campaign
based around a blank, homeless bannerno website to live, a banner that has bee
sized, and waiting for a home…
When users got to the micro-site, they
promoted to copy the embed code, and pit onto their own website, essentially g
the banner a place to live.
The longer it was embedded and the m
that it was interacted with, the brightebanner became, helping to drive dona
and further emergency banner housinhelp spread the word…
After just a month, there were over 400 sites hosting the homeless banners, gen