Humping The (new) Media Landscape

Get F'ing Social

I am always happy to find good visual presentations to clearly and simply explain Social Media. I could make one of my own but go figure, people who make great ones love to share!

This one was recently shared by one self-proclaimed Bonafide Marketing Genius,  Marta Kagan (yes, you earned the right to that title didn't you! you go, girl!) is particularly perfect for me because of its use of the F word. I think use of such language just goes to show the enthusiasm that those of us who 'get it' feel and the way we know everyone else will feel as soon as we can get them to F'ing get it, too!

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Obey Dexter

I am thrilled to have something exciting to post about today, other than the iPhone and my dad's birthday (Happy Birthday, Chuck!)

In order to my my job just a little bit easier, Showtime has commissioned Shepard Fairey to create original art for Dexter at Comic Con!

If you don't know this guy you know his work he is a 'Giant' among the street/graphic artists.

You will definitely be seeing his Obama poster around this summer.

No Widget, No Cry

I love my job, but honestly, some days, today being one of them, I have to hear myself saying the word 'widget' so many times that... 

I make this face and then I hang my head and silently sob in my cube.

Dexter is grosser in Spain

And Portugal.

It has been very interesting to see the difference in promotional tactics when one of Showtime's series is premieres abroad.
Spain clearly went for the gross out factor for Dexter

 

And then there's this lovely experience Portuguese men were treated to:

 

To think people thought this US promotion for Dexter last year was tasteless - seems so tame now!

Hello World it's 7antasy Tuesday!

The world is telling me I should start blogging again on a regular basis. So here I go world...

Every Tuesday here will be 7antasy Tuesdays from now on (or as often as I remember). I will share a different marketing tactic I stumble across on my daily wanderings of NY City streets.

Spotted last week upon exiting 2nd Ave F train on Houston Street and 1st Ave.

I felt it was a very bold and innovative promotional move on the part of Monopaly Ent. Let's break it down.

Placement - Anyone coming out of this high foot traffic spot could not possibly miss it in fact I almost collided with it physically. When you come up from the station you are facing this fence about 2.3 paces front of you. There is no advertising competition on this space aside from the occasional dog walker sign and those are usually on much smaller white pieces of paper.

Material and Color - The selection of this vibrant marigold yellow was particularly effective on such a gray day. Also, everyone knows that marigold is the color of choice at Indian weddings and those are always great celebrations that you def want to get invited to. The paper is not exactly poster board but some type of thick craft paper possibly the kind that comes in rolls and is used by kindergarten teachers wrap a chalkboard in to create a springtime mural and that is a nice association to have (although a little bittersweet) because everyone knows that Kindergarten is the last year that school is fun.

Fonts, Kerning and Layout etc.- Handwriting while legible, is not too precise which is good because if it were too even one might think it was actually written by a kindergarten teacher. The words settle in a sort of inverted pyramid shape. The upward slant of the copy along with the slight decrease in font size from left to right gives the whole sign a positive uplifting feeling as if to say 'hey, everybody may be workin' for the weekend but who says you can't go out on a Tuesday? Live it up, tiger!' It also gives the illusion of depth it is as if the words are actually popping out of the page and then receding into space. Note the clever use of 7 for F in the word '7antasy' (thanks Craige for noting this unique spelling). This is just plain weird but the eye is just drawn to it. It's almost a Z and that says excitement! Could be a reference to something internety (you know how they do, r3placing l3tt3rs with numb3rs) or maybe a logo that 7antasy Tuesdays would like to eventually develop for their web presence.

Overall Grade: B+

OMMA Social notes

Media Post has a live blog from the event on their site:

http://blogs.mediapost.com/raw/

And were Twittering (of course!):

http://twitter.com/OMMASocial

Valuable by Any Measure: Metrics that Mean Something in Social Media

Moderator: Jodi McDermott, Clearspring Technologies
Heidi Browning, MySpace
Blake Cahill, Visible Technologies
Ian Schafer, Deep Focus
Adam Weinroth,Pluck Corp
Stephanie Pike, Circuitcity.com

Jodi brings up the fact that 50% of the women speaking at this event are on this panel. Thanks for bringing it up!
Adam: What do you do when the conversation moves around how do you get a consistent read when the conversational hub can continually shift?
Identify authors and influencers in each community and follow them to see if its the same person.
This is difficult to do however.

Stephanie: Metrics we use: conversion, percent UGC not just how many sign up for a profile but how many
to ultimately get customers to provide the content and save us the work.
Gross margin dollars per year contributed from SM - bottom line revenue.

Ian: We measure everything. It takes a special group of stats to graduate into a metric, most of which are of limited usefulness.

Heidi: All these many metrics that you can cull are great but unless the can be filtered into the traditional set that people already understand then it doesn't.

Take an all encompassing view and then provide different kinds of reporting to different groups.
Be careful not to get too inundated with measuring - you can measure 20 hours a day and still get in an argument. It is a challenge because we do have to keep justifying and pushing what people withing the company expect. Companies in a crisis or growth mode are most responsive to experimenting with SM.

Interactions online are recorded and archived and that drives SEO and traffic.

When you are using SM and engaging with customers at a very personal emotional level you have to just accept that it is hard to quantify.

Ian: Maybe we need to just be happy with anecdotal and sentiment tracking with SM. Leave metrics to paid media. Should we really be applying metrics to what is essentially corporate communication?

What is value?
You don't own your brand - Open Brand  

No one seems to know if there is an industry wide initiative to develop standards around metrics.
Web Analytics Association.org is working on something.

The web is no longer pages. I could go on and on and on from this statement!

You Are Not My Friend - AdWeek

And were done - the wifi has been so sluggish here that I am really glad to shut my machine!

Sink or Swim: The Best and Worst of Social Media Marketing

Moderator: Rohit Bhargava, Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence
Pete Spande, Federated Media
Josh Warner, Feed Company
Michael Nicholas, Carat

I am excited for this panel  - I like Rohit (note to self: pick up his new book.)
and picking apart sucky marketing is fun for everyone!

Here we go...

Rohit:
SINK - Google search for United Airlines Blog
own top results for your search terms!
SWIM - Google search for Delta Airlines Blog
have a blog weather it gets lots of traffic or not you can combat poor search by simply having one.
This is a great example - simple way to make a point about power of SM.

Peter:
SINK - Sprint puts CEOs email in a TV commercial. initially thought this was super cool so he writes to the CEO and gets a generic response. Boo.
SWIM - Dell's response to Dell Hel. Whipped up IdeaStorm website where users can make suggestions and vote on them and they responded in a rapidly with new products.

Josh:
SWIM - Cardosystems Popping Corn with cell phones video on YouTube.

Tapping into an existing dialog around their product. Yes it's a little irresponsible but they came in with the dialog quickly with the reveal so no one really got pissed. Once the video 'popped' they directed people to a microsite that explained their involvement.  I especially like the 'As Seen On YouTube'  - ha!
SINK - Sprint CEO campaign. Felt fake from the beginning.

Michael:
SINK - WALL-Mart on Facebook (and elsewhere) disingenuous. They disabled the commenting wall on the page so that there is no discourse. WALL Mart cant seem to be honest with the consumers because they are afraid and thus they miss a lot of opportunities to leverage the millions who do support their brand.
SWIM - Obama campaign online. They get group sharing. Everything they have built leverages what really works about social web.

It's not enough to just be authentic - you need to go out and create an experience that feels authentic.
Make sure you take full advantage of the platform you are using.

If you are going to engage in SM you must abide by a higher standard than journalists - you have to be more authentic and NYT. There is a percieved level of truth that is higher in SM is higher than MSM now.

We need to get people thinking about social media campaigns in the long term (again!). This is the ROI that keeps on giving if you are patient, think of it as a garden.

Behavioral Targeting: How to Connect with the Right People in Social Media

Moderator: Max Kalehoff, Vice President, Marketing, Clickable
Andrew Monfried, Founder and CEO, Lotame
Samantha Skey, EVP, Strategic Marketing, ALLOY Media and Marketing
Benjamin Sun, President, Community Connect Inc.
Paul Beck, Sr Partner, Executive Director of Digital at Ogilvy Worldwide

What is behavioral targeting in SM?
Cross referencing, the behavior and the demo online.
Anything you DO as a consumer.

What is achieved with segmentation:
Just because someone has the word 'Golf' as an interest in their profile do they really love it? Are they really engaged with it?

Behavioral targeting and contextual relevance through social media:
1) gender/age demo
2)VERBs of how you engage, what actions you take
3) Context

What are the rules of engagement in behavioral targeting with SN?
respecting the user
complete opt in terms
use the data to bring an excellent and relevant advertising experience.

College kids in a study are totally aware they are being targeted and don't care as long as it is used smartly. They are savvy, understand the technology and expect it to have a genuine value proposition and hate irrelevant targeting.

LEss ADs MOre Value. I think we'd all like to see that!

For SM to really scale it has to be embedded in the entire plan from beginning to end and top to bottom.

I couldn't agree more.

And break!

Data Dive: Mining Social Media Behavior to Build Brands

Moderator: David Honig, Co-founder, Media6°
Dr. Joseph Plummer, Adjunct Professor, Columbia School of Business
Matt Jacobs, Vice President & Group Director of Strategy and Analysis, Digitas
Shiv Singh, Vice President, Social Media, Avenue A| Razorfish
Melissa Davies, Research Director, Healthcare, Nielsen Online
Bill Alena, Vice President Advertising/Business Development, myYearbook.com

2:15 There are a lot of women in marketing and women rule the blogosphere so why is this the first panel with a woman included, today?? it's always the same at these things :(

Shiv: Ave A rarely separates out Social Media in a plan. It's about online behaviors.

Prof. Plummer: Emerging media - you have to turn the world upside down and start with the people that you want to be the prospects. The people are already engaged. It's a great learning tool - the term data-mining is a poor term to use in relation to social media.
Social Marketing is people!

Think about circle of influence around your targeted audience.

Melissa: Focused on healthcare  - is more buzz better for our brand?
Clients want to know what people think of them - quantitative and qualitative.

Again back to the idea that they need to tell clients to have Unconventional expectations. Social media may have a halo effect or a decrease in response or conversions.

How does engagement  translate into ROI? Well AGAIN what is the value of a relationship.

Hopefully, Neilsen and other companies will start producing reports that show how sentiment effects purchasing.

If you only have a transactional model in your head you will miss the greater value of a devoted customer over time. If you keep measuring A and not looking at B&C you will miss a lot.

No we dont have something as simple on the table as CPM clickthrough rates etc.. but if we keep poking around there is power in the interactions between people to teach us something. Where does this take people where else can we connect with them. SM has created a new model that is based on advertising to empower customers.

you can't think of SN as places you can place banner ads. People don't click on them because they are there to hang out with their friends. Think more about value of each relationship and each persons network.

The Professor speaks: There are 2 fundamental ways we learn, "the flash" instantaneous neurons connecting, "the creep" takes you brain a while to work on it. "creep" has a bigger effect on long term memory than "flash".