Tag Archives: Social Media

Another Day

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February 10, 2012

On Sunday 5th February, What’s Hot was one of the 111.3m viewers who tuned in to watch this year’s Super Bowl final. For the third consecutive year, it attracted the largest audience of a TV programme in US history. At a price tag of $3.5m for a 30 second spot, it is the definition of primetime viewing. With the rise and rise of dual-screening, this year advertisers pulled out all the stops to make sure that, regardless of the platform, they had the viewers’ attention.

Ever since Apple’s iconic ‘1984’ ad, which introduced the Macintosh personal computer for the first time, the Super Bowl ads have become an integral part of the whole extravaganza. Hulu, an American online TV streaming platform, jumped on board this year and partnered with Advertising Age and Toyota to bring viewers the ‘ultimate viewing experience’.  The Hulu Adzone Player allowed viewers to watch the ads in real time as they aired on TV, to vote for their favourite ads and share the clips across social media. Thanks to Hulu, the ads instantly took on another level of engagement.

Coca Cola also embraced engagement by creating entertaining content that ran online throughout the evening, and nicely complemented their spot airtime ads. During the game, two of the brand’s legendary polar bears were decked out in team colours – one in a New York Giants’ blue scarf and one in a New England Patriots’ red scarf. Viewers who logged on to the Coca Cola site could watch the bears react in real time to the match (e.g. celebrating when someone scored) and could follow the bears commenting on Twitter and ask them questions.

Users were prompted to engage with brands featured during the ad breaks – 68% of the ads shown had references to websites and social media sites. As viewers of sporting events tend to be passive, the challenge is how do you convince them to interact with an ad? Simple answer: free stuff. Between Shazam and QR codes, goodies up for grabs ranged from two Camrys from Toyota, $50 off a new phone in Best Buy, and exclusive content from Madonna for the half-time show.

And the results? This year’s Super Bowl attracted 12.2m social media comments during and immediately after it – a 578% increase on last year, making it the biggest social media event recorded in the US. Tweets spiked at 10,000 per second. People weren’t just watching – they were interacting.

Looking forward to Superbowl 2013, it would seem that the lesson to learn from this is to keep your eyes on your screens – all of them.

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When You’re Looking Like That

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October 21, 2011

 The internet and social media have allowed people to define the terms on which they interact with the media they consume. For example, The X Factor may be seeing a drop in viewer numbers but this doesn’t stop fans from tweeting about the contestants or the judges. The latest figures show that 59 per cent of 16-23 year olds use social networking sites to discuss their preferred television programmes with their online friends. What does this have to do with us? Well recently 52 per cent of people have admitted to shopping online whilst watching television. What’s Hot decided that it was about time we had a look at how consumers are interacting with TV and digital simultaneously.

 The act of watching television whilst using another screen, whether that be laptops, tablets or smartphones, is known in the industry as ‘dual-screening’. Dual-screening isn’t particularly new, but only an astonishingly small handful of companies have used it to their advantage. Of course it is by no means unusual to see a television programme ‘#hashtagging’ to encourage Twitter interaction from their followers. However very few have embraced dual-screening for its marketing potential, perhaps the logistics of co-ordinating marketing on two devices limiting what they feel they can do.

 One company to attempt to incorporate dual-screening is Honda. After its highly successful ‘Grrr’ campaign, Honda decided to create something that could interact with its television advertisement. Their creation was a mobile app which could be ‘swiped’ at the television whilst the advertisement was being played. The application would recognise the soundtrack and automatically download a character from the advertisement, with a total of six available. This encouraged the consumer to actually interact with the advert, anticipating the next time it will be screened in order to download their next character.

Dual-screening may not be such good news for the television industry. Even for the most tech-savvy user it is practically impossible to be concentrating on the television content whilst discussing it on social platforms. Furthermore if consumers choose to use their second screen to research the brand or programme, whilst having it on their television, they are automatically transferring their concentration into the hands of the digital world. The television advertisement will have little chance to influence the user after they turn their eyes to a search engine or social network.

We are yet to see the direction dual-screening will take in regards to advertising potential. What is certain is that advertisers can no longer take for granted the effectiveness of any single media type.

 Consumers are communicating their likes and dislikes over many different levels, and advertisers need to keep an eye on it.

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Live and Tell

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September 23, 2011

On Monday 19th September, Twitter was buzzing with updates from (appropriately enough) the Social Media Marketing conference in London.
Hosted by Our Social Times (@oursocialtimes), the day was filled with all manner of goodies: the latest social media case studies; examples of advertisers learning from when they got it wrong; interesting panel debates; a showcase of the latest monitoring and management tools; and John Morter explaining how he beat the Xfactor using social media to get Rage Against The Machine the coveted Christmas No.1 spot.
The day kicked off with a panel debate around the future of social networks: has Facebook reached its peak, should YouTube be considered as a social network, and is Google + worth using? Most people agreed that Facebook is still evolving and is keeping up with its users’ changing needs. With the recent introduction to “Friend lists” – allowing users to choose what content goes to what groups, and F-commerce taking a popular turn, it’s clear that Facebook is still at the heart of social. Google + seems to be excelling at video and perhaps we will see a linkup between Google + hangouts and YouTube in the near future.
Although we were promised details on Social ROI – the first question from any Marketing Director these days is something about ROI from social commerce – there seemed to be a lack of hard metrics. Apart from saying they were “good”, attendees were left without anything to take away, and it was made clear that there is still no magic formula for measuring ROI from social.
Online retailer Brand Alley was at least able to share its findings on working out the value of a fan, saying that an exclusive sale on their f-commerce (Facebook shop) site made them £10,000 revenue from a total fanbase (i.e., “Like”-ers) of 30,000. Exclusive items on Facebook shops perhaps may lead the way to getting users comfortable with f-commerce. This will only continue to grow.
It’s now said that 27% of all PPC activity is being directed to Facebook pages, so Social PPC and SEO have never been as important as they are now. Discussions here were around Marcus Taylor’s fascinating experiments to find out whether a Facebook Like and a Google +1 affect the Google ranking. In short, a Google +1 will directly affect the rank, whereas a Facebook like will only indirectly affect it through traffic. A nice little trick by Google giving its own social network the upper hand!
The day was really worthwhile, I could go on in much greater detail about each speaker and the debates around their topics but I’m limited by space on this blog! For more details and slides at the SMM conference click here , or contact digital@the7stars.co.uk

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HEARTBREAK HOTEL

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August 19, 2011

 

Being a traditional media owner is a tough game. Anyone who doubts this should take a look at the latest financial results from Trinity Mirror, owner of Mirror Group Newspapers and over 150 local newspaper titles including Birmingham Mail and Manchester Evening News.

A 65% drop in pre-tax profits for the first half of 2011, whatever the reason, is a disastrous result and has impacted heavily on the company’s value. Trinity’s market capitalisation is now lower than the value for which it sold the Racing Post in October 2007.

There is no doubt the recent closure of the News of the World gave Trinity’s national Sunday titles (Sunday Mirror and People) a welcome boost. But here at What’s Hot we still think this will only have a modest long term impact as the Sunday market adjusts to the new environment. In fact, early indications already suggest the boost to circulation following the closure of the NOTW (and the accompanying marketing support to the Mirror titles) is beginning to wane.

Trinity Mirror is in a difficult place. There seems no end in sight to the increase in the price of core commodities needed for printing (paper and newsprint) or the big declines in circulation and advertising.

Sadly its plans to move into the digital space are still not fully formed and don’t really give any indication of how Trinity intend to turn things around. The Mirror’s flagship site is not yet fully functional – Google stats suggests unique visitors are at best flat year-on-year. And while the Mirror Football and 3AM websites are good examples of what an old fashioned content provider can do when it puts its mind to it; these sites are relative minnows and cannot ever hope to make up for the losses at the main titles. And that’s before we even factor in the impact of the social media phenomenon created by Facebook and Twitter.

Trinity’s problems have been a long time in the making; its traditional readership base has been declining for many years and it’s hardly new news that local newspapers have been hit hard by a move towards digital classifieds. At the moment we can’t see any way back for Trinity. Another round of cost cutting might keep investors happy but it’s definitely not the answer to a secure long-term future.

The shame of it is that the troubles at Trinity are not unique. Trinity just happens to be the only public company which publishes its financial performance.

It’s going to take a significant re-engineering of Trinity’s business model and some ‘seat of the pants’ investment in new products if the company is to survive this latest and probably greatest of challenges.

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The Masterplan

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July 25, 2011

Even if you haven’t received an invite yet, chances are you might have heard about Google’s latest (and perhaps final) attempt at social, Google+.

Orkut, Wave, Buzz…nope not the names of the Beckham’s next offspring, but the behemoth’s previous and spectacular failures in capturing the ‘social media’ glory that Facebook has basked in, but which continues to elude Google.

So Google+ is up and running and has already made significant headway among the intrigued, no doubt social media-driven set. Numbers suggest that 10m worldwide are now moving in new ‘circles’ – the shape reference here is to one of the lead functions in Google+ that allows you to cluster your friends into specific groups, or ‘circles’. You can then choose to notify any or all ‘circles’ with your status updates, photo uploads etc. Basically, Google + gives you the ability to ensure your mother doesn’t see the photo of your drunken misdemeanours meant only for friends.

Whether the new circles are vicious or virtuous ones remains to be seen, but this would certainly seem to be the last throw of the social dice for Google. They appear to have ditched the early Twitter love-in (with Twitter incidentally now in bed with Microsoft/Bing).

But with Facebook experiencing a certain amount of backlash and a definite levelling-out of new user growth (certainly in Europe), not to mention a wild increase in advertising costs, might Google gain some traction at last in the social space? Success in social integrated with its market-crushing dominance in search could spell even more impressive revenues going forward, particularly coupled with its success in mobile via Android.

Social media god Brian Solis used an interesting phrase, saying that Facebook and Google+ are attempting to become Social Operating Systems. So in the same way that we rely on Windows or Mac OS to organise our computing lives, Facebook and Google + want to do the same with our social lives. And of course, he’s spotted the way things are going. The cultivation of our social and interest graphs, the apps that further personalise the experience, and those that plug into other applications such as web sites, documents, collaboration tools etc, essentially do create a social OS.

In the long run, Solis believes that Facebook and Google will compete as a Social OS for all you do online (Google OS is already doing this in the cloud). Think about it. From grouping and coordinating work or activity streams, housing email, hosting phone or video chats to managing geo-location, Google and Facebook are already on a significant collision course.

One thing is for sure, social networks will always innovate. The question is: does Google really have social in its DNA? In the end we are the best judge of what works for us as users. Google+ certainly offers early advantages, but this is a long journey. Much of the success of any network will come from anticipating our future needs and developing ahead of the curve. It’s going to be an interesting race to watch.

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Half the World Away?

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July 25, 2011

We might not chat over the garden fence anymore, or even know our immediate neighbours, but it probably comes as no surprise that we are actually more social than ever, thanks of course to the continued march of the social web and the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, smartphones and Foursquare.

Where we are, what we are doing, what we’re consuming… many of us now like to tell the world, and guess what, brands are starting to listen, and in the best cases, are even joining the conversation.

Strategically, the social web is a place where, if a brand is useful, entertaining, engaging, it can generate ‘earned media value’ through the crowd propagating the brand’s message to others in their networks.   By smartly integrating channels such as Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube etc, a brand can build its ‘social graph’ so that, over time, advocacy becomes as, if not more, powerful than bought media reach.    In fact social media influence on purchases continues to grow, with recent IMRG data suggesting 20% of purchases are now directly impacted by social media groups, discussions or posts from brands.

But brands are only able to see a small part of the picture in the likes of Facebook. They typically cannot see and understand the relationships between their fans and their fans’ followers… if a fan likes them, does it follow that the rest of their network will too ?   And does this represent a bought media targeting opportunity ?

Step up a new age of online advertising networks that are promising to drive new customers by using data like this to identify who ‘truly connected’ within a certain network.  For example, there may not be much in common between the old secondary school friends who recently hooked up on Facebook, but there is lots between the two that regularly share YouTube video links.    It is these types of commonality that can now be understood and applied in social targeting.

Social targeting won’t completely change the digital advertising landscape but it will help to evolve advertising forwards and improve targeting yet further by making it more socially current.  Like retargeting (where tagging a user to a brand’s site means that they can be targeted elsewhere on their web travels with relevant messaging), seeking to understand shared beliefs and intention is a key dimension to making advertising more relevant.    If results from retargeting activity (analysis has shown up to 8 times better responses/interaction with retargeting) are anything to go by, we expect to social (re)targeting emerge as a strong contender for the performance-based online advertising pound.

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Reach Out

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June 22, 2011

Klout is the latest social media rating tool. It scores over 75 million people on their social reach using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn data to give you a rating from one to one hundred. Or one to Justin Bieber, as it currently stands.

It looks to be a popular metric, and has been mentioned in Forbes, The NY Times, The Wall Street Journal and more. On Twitter, Klout’s influence score is based on users’ ability to drive action through tweets and retweets. On Facebook, it examines how conversations and content generate interest and engagement via likes, comments and more. For LinkedIn, Klout analyses who users are influencing, how they’re influencing them and how much influence they have. Klout places a heavy emphasis on quality not quantity – so collecting connections won’t necessarily increase a user’s score.

Klout’s eventual aim is to be the stock measure of online influence and it’s making good progress. It combines the major social platforms and, perhaps more importantly, champions integration of its tool into other reporting systems. For example, Postling has partnered with Klout to allow business owners to get alerts when they have influential new followers. ReviewPro, a social media management provider for the hotel sector has integrated Klout scores into its product to help hoteliers interact with their guests. Social dashboards Hootsuite and Xobni are also on board.

Clearly there is a saturation of data on social media networks. Klout’s advantage to businesses is in its ability to quickly identify who is behind comments, assess the level of user influence and determine the most appropriate response. Prior to Klout the only way of measuring social influence was through friends, followers and fans. Nothing actually measured how social a person or brand really was and how well they were engaging with their audience or leading on various topics.

Experimental brands and businesses are testing out programs that provide special perks to social network users with high Klout scores. Brands like Disney, Audi, Hewlett Packard, and Universal Pictures have already been involved. Klout Perks are exclusive offers or experiences, given as a result of a users Klout. Perks allow brands to connect with influencers in their area of expertise. For example, Audi invited top design, technology and luxury influencers to test drive their new 2011 Audi A8 at exclusive events.

Klout’s latest addition, ‘+K’, allows those in a users’ social networks to effect their score on a specific topic of influence. The +K system puts a +K button next to all users’ topics and clicks tell the system that the user has recently influenced the clicker in this topic.

Klout does have its detractors. You don’t have to look far to find people slamming ‘another’ social media influence metric. For individuals that are getting good information from their networks, generating interesting content, having good discussions with people, making new connections and can find who they need to find and can be found, a score doesn’t really matter. But for brands who need to quickly and efficiently find influential users Klout looks to be a fantastic tool.
Read more

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Four-where?

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September 2, 2010

At last Facebook’s location-based service (LBS) has been revealed and launched in the US. Places allows users to “check-in” to nearby locations, such as Restaurants, Cinemas, shops, parks, workplaces etc. Facebook’s first competitive move against other location-based services such as Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp and Mytown.

Rumoured in the industry for a while, the arrival of Places seems somewhat late. However, Facebook has something that the others don’t – 500million users! Foursquare has been the LBS leader with 3million users worldwide and the others are in their hundreds of thousands. Although these users are biased to the US, they have created and developed a new way for marketers to communicate and reward users. Foursquare rewards users with badges and for the most frequently visited locations, a “Mayorship” award to which location owners can give away “free coffee” or “a glass of wine with a main meal”. While most of this can be seen as egotistical (presuming you share) it gives the user a sense of achievement and an incentive to revisit. Gowalla has created “trips”; The London pub crawl, Manchester Football stadiums Tour, The London Tourist Trot etc, for users to complete, unlocking achievements. Meanwhile Yelp encourages users to post reviews and rate services/places for others to base their decision on and MyTown fuses social gaming and LBS to allow users to buy their own town – almost like a real life Monopoly game!

Strangely perhaps Facebook Places does none of this. There are no incentives and arguably it brings a risk of check-in fatigue. In fact, all that Facebook Places is doing is bringing location-based services to the masses. So maybe the others have nothing to sweat about, and this is going to help their industry? The day after Places launched, Foursquare received the highest number of one day sign-ups ever. This could just be a coincidence – something to do with an article from The Times publicizing the top Foursquares Mayors, or the beginnings of LBS breaking into broader user base. Facebook is not just doing this for the market though.

Within 48hrs of revealing Places, Facebook announced the acquisition of Hot-potato, and this week is rumoured to be also acquiring Hotlist. Hot-potato is a service that helps people socialize around live events and share what they’re doing with friends. Although the purpose of the buy is currently un-clear, Facebook will inevitably be using this to develop the status updates within Places. Hotlist is an aggregator of trending places and has been described as “Facebook Events on steroids” providing event analysis including gender and age breakdowns.

So what does this mean for marketing? Targeting and Timing. There is already a wealth of information on Facebook for marketers to use, Places takes this a step further. Check-ins will be crossed referenced with user profiles providing data never before accessible. With 70% of Facebook Logins happening over mobile – Facebook will have to come with an ad-module fit for mobile users creating another real-time platform for marketers to target people.

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