The Voice of Demand

Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

Studeo

Are people actually hardwired to buy guns in times of hardship? Is there some genetic predisposition that makes one person feel the distinct urge to own a gun? Are we talking some survival of the fittest, life-or-death, we need to “bunker down” and protect the fort logic? I hope not.

Since 4thquarter 2008, guns and ammunition sales are through the roof. All major US companies are seeing an increase in sales during this economic downturn. So this year, what plans do you have for your tax refund? 44-Magnum? Or, is the 45 Ruger more your flavor?

Equally alarming, is the increase in sleep-aids, antidepressant medications, fast-foods, diabetes, and bad movies. You like how we slipped in diabetes, huh?

So, as the economy helps a select few, what products are wasting their time advertising? Not one. But there are plenty of brands wasting marketing dollars in places that are far from recession-proof. What marketers must find is an emphasis on their true customers with local media—back to the basics of finding the target audience and earning their respect with sincerity and great deals. No more of this nickel-and-dime attitude! (hint, hint, wink, wink airline industry.) Need a cheap athlete or celebrity for an online campaign that’s recognizable to just the Midwest? Check out Brand Affinity’s platform! Need a localized approach to TV, Print, and Social Media? Turn to companies like Studeo Interactive or Recipe31!

Wal-Mart, an economic barometer in its own right, has the perfect business model during any recession. Beyond the cheap goods, they have a smiling face for a logo; typically become a small town center; have a great pharmacy program and sell guns and ammo to boot!

Great, just what we need—a bunch of Ambien and McDonalds loaded people buying guns and the latest DVD release, Beverly Hills Chihuahua.

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Posted in Brand, Direct Response, Marketing, Social Media | 1 Comment »

Studeo

Social Media and Marketing

February 19th, 2009 - By Anthony

To help marketers develop strategies for using social media we posted a presentation as news release.  The outline works through the intersection of marketing and social media as a series of discussion points.

To make it interesting, it is completely designed as 50 tweets.   All 50 points made in less than 140 characters, in case you want to forward them on.

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Posted in Marketing, Social Media | 1 Comment »

Studeo

The Pareto Principle states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. This is better known as the 80/20 rule. Applying this to social networking membership, you soon realize you are among a sea of inactive users just taking up server space. According to Facebook, the site has more than 175 million active users. They define “active user” as someone who has logged in to their account more than once in thirty days. –hardly active…

Anyway, the goal is to explore the personalities of these active users. We can easily examine these under three distinct behaviors and approximate their size with the 80/20 rule:

· Networkateers (9%): members who provide original content and interact with others

· King Cobras (11%): members who only comment on other’s content

· Fort Knoxians (80%): members who do not interact with others nor provide original content

Networkateers: Simply defined as the movers and shakers of the social networking world–people not afraid to air their laundry (sometimes dirty) and typically share opinions on a broad range of topics–the users posting links to videos, funny articles, or personal blogs. The same people not afraid to tweet, tweet, and retweet. The nine percent estimate is based on Facebook’s percentage of users who change their status message within a 24-hour period—which is one of the most basic functions of the website.

King Cobras: Not meant to be negative, but an accurate term to illustrate the behavior of this type of user. Much like a King Cobra that waits patiently, almost motionless before striking its prey, these social networking personalities only comment on others content. Usually, making calculated and overly cautious comments on others pictures, posts, and status updates. It’s safe to say, these users are worried that their online content could hurt them with future endeavors (jobs, relationships, etc.). In the blogosphere, these users largely go by aliases or stay anonymous.

Fort Knoxians: With the growing awareness of identity theft and internet scams, more and more people are just along for the social networking ride. Simply being a member grants access to friends’ pages and gives the individual user a window to their network, but they are reluctant to share any personal information or interact with other users—waiting for the day they can tell their friends “I told you so!” for over-sharing online.

Personalities are usually defined by the leading attribute (Myers-Briggs or Big Five) of extroversion or introversion. In the social networking space, extroverts could easily be a Fort Knoxian and an introvert could live a more social life (or a Second Life) as a Networkateer.

Facebook touts that the average user has 120 friends; or better explained, the average user knows only 10 people that actually post their own content and regularly interacts with others.

………no offense to Fort Knox Army Base or King Cobras!

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Studeo

“Dude, Let’s Buy a Bar”

February 6th, 2009 - By Andrew Re

So, if you don’t watch How I Met Your Mother on CBS, you are missing some funny TV! In a recent episode, Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) and Ted (Josh Radnor) are discussing a five word phrase that every man will utter in their lifetime, “Dude, let’s buy a bar!” They go on to discuss other details like having no “last call” and naming their bar “Puzzles,” Believe me we are not doing the episode any justice, you should check it out on the CBS website. Your work bandwidth is the most efficient and appropriate, ha.

Anyway, if you had a bar what would you name it? Is there some crazy, futuristic stuff you would want in your bar? FYI… the ice, hookah, and oxygen bar ideas have already been done, blah!

Clearly, the name is vital! If it can’t be yelled in two syllables, scratch that name. If you don’t understand the meaning…scratch… or pronunciation…scratch. And don’t try to be too clever. You wouldn’t name a racehorse “Down the Stretch,” nor would you name a bar “Around the Corner” “Drinking Here” or “Passing the Time.”

What about interactive technology? Remember when you could play Frogger and Pac-Man at your table? Those were the days… Other than playing Photo Hunt or Golden Tee, there is really no attempt by most establishments to engage the patrons.

Even the advertising in restrooms is shameful. At best, you see a digital sign that says “advertise here” or the empty brackets of a dying outdoor media company.

We need to do a quick brainstorm, here! If Blade Runner meets Minority Report meets Cheers, creates an interactive bar/restaurant….and discuss!

Here are a few…

  • How about the ability to order your food and drinks from an interactive screen? We download music, shop for books, buy clothes, so why can’t we order-pay for our food and drinks from a digital menu? Lose the worthless wait staff that is ignoring you anyway. The owners could measure customer satisfaction with some type of interactive drink-meal timer and interactive polling.
  • Have you ever been to a dueling piano bar? The good places make a lot of cash because the musicians/entertainers drive up the cost per song. That means Barry Manilow could win out over any Billy Joel song for the right price. So, why not make this an interactive experience? Instead of dropping $100 grand on a few new pianos, how about invest the money in an interactive digital jukebox –where from the customers’ seats they could outbid others for the next song on the playlist, and for the right price, stop a song in its’ digital tracks.
  • Create a REAL online chat room. Instead of spending your Friday night at home chatting away on the overheated laptop, come out to the bar and interact with total strangers from your table. You, “BigBear” (Table 2) says “heeeey, girl” to “SugarBunny” (Table 9), but gets no response. So, you break the ice by buying your crush a few drink credits for their table. Let them choose whether they cash them in or not.
  • Allow patrons to create and edit all their information online. Add pictures, add friends, and restrict access to the creepy, creepers out there. The bar could create a full network that broadcast their specials and promotes their events. With the profile information, it could always stay one step ahead of its customers and market products and events that are actually relevant. Another plus, the bar-club-pub could always control the guest list and the overall mix of people in their place. Have special invite only nights for compatible singles, with similar music taste or personality traits.

It’s only a matter of time before our social networking and real world lives collide!

Dude, let’s buy a bar!

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Posted in Audience, Marketing, Social Media | 2 Comments »

Studeo

I have often heard the phrase, “Your brand is not what you say it is, but what they say it is.”  And one of the great thing about social media and technology is the ability to get in and look at the conversation about your brand and see “what they say  it is”.

Do you wonder what people what people are saying about your brand?  Here are a few tools to give you a glimpse into what people are saying.  These two tools will help get an idea about the answers to two very important questions

  1. Are people talking about my brand?
  2. If so, what are they saying?

Social Mention

Social mention is great for helping you to see  if your brand is being mentioned in the blogosphere.  Go to www.socialmention.com and type in your brand name and see if and what people are saying.  They provide a social rank box to the right to help you understand how frequently your brand is being mentioned.  I like to use this box to compare one brand to a competitor or to a related keyword.  The left side of the page will give you a small idea of some of the things that people are saying.

Twitter Search

Another way to see what people are saying is to use the Twitter search.  Twitter is like a bunch of giant chat rooms and can give you a good idea of what people in general are talking about.  Go to search.twitter.com and type in your brand’s name.  See what comes up.  You will be able to see the conversations that are happening that involve your brand and what people are saying.  I think one of the coolest things about this is that you can see what people are saying in real time as its said.

For example, the Superbowl is this weekend.  If I were running and ad in the Superbowl, I might watch the search feature as the ad aired to see what people said as they saw the commercial.  People will Tweet about the ad they are watching as they watch it and you can get genuine response from your audience.

This is  a breif glimpse into the mountains of data that can be gathered from social media.  As we go through this data we will come to know our audience better.  Once we understand our audiennce better and understand what people are saying about our brands, we can design better strategies and campaigns to connect with our consumers and meet their needs.

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Studeo

The President Gets Social

January 20th, 2009 - By LJ Jones

This morning, our office gathered around the bank of TV’s to watch the Inauguration of the 44th President of the United States, President Barack Obama.  And as millions of Americans watched, the President’s team was hard at work, implementing the White House’s new social media strategy.

At 12:01pm as the President gave his Inaugural Address to the nation, www.whitehouse.gov switched from the old administration to the new and added a few features, one of which was the new White House Blog.  Along with the website, another item to transition from the old administration to the new was the White House’s Twitter account @thewhitehouse.

With accounts on Facebook, Youtube and Twitter, President Obama was the first Presidential Candidate to effectively use social media in his campaign.  He will likely also be recognized as the first President to actively use these platforms during his administration.  He recognizes the value of using these channels to communicate with the public(his audience) as he serves as President of this Nation.

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Studeo

30,000 Fans in 1 day

January 16th, 2009 - By LJ Jones
Captain C.B. Sully Sullenberger

Captain C.B. Sully Sullenberger

Yesterday January 15th 2009, a US Airways jetliner with 150 passengers and 5 crew members plunged into the icy Hudson River.  Due to the heroic actions of Capt. C.B. Sully Sullenberger and crew, all 150 passengers and crew are safe.

What does this have to do with Social Media?  When something happens in the real world it also happens in the so called “virtual world” of the internet and social media.  Today, less than a day after the crash, Capt. C.B. Sully Sullenberger has over 34,000 fans on Facebook.  Scratch that, its up over 36,000 just in the time that I am writing this post.  In fact now I am watching it grow real time, with about 100 joining with every refresh.  This also doesn’t take into account the Flickr images posted, Tweets from Twitter and blog posts about it over the next few days.

The offline world and online world are in fact so connected that one affects the other and vice versa.  They are no longer seperated by the closed off walls of “virtual worlds”.  Social media and new technology have just made it easier for people to communicate about what is going on in their lives, and have made it easier to talk about the real world in real time.

UPDATE:  Two days after this post there are now over 385,000 fans.  I also just learned that the first pictures of this event were posted Twitter by a person on the Ferry that helped rescue the people from the plane.  This means that, before a news crew or anyone else could get word out about the plane, it was likely first reported over social media via twitter, by a person who watched it happen.

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Studeo

If Facebook Were A Country

January 15th, 2009 - By LJ Jones

Announcing a week ago that it had reached 150 Million active users worldwide, if Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth largest country in the world just ahead of Nigeria, Japan and Russia.  This is a 50% growth in four months from the 100 Million active users it had in August of 2008.

People are becoming active in social networks in increasing numbers.   According to some research we did, 40% of Generation Y has a Social Network profile.  And its not just Gen Y.  People of all ages are active in social networks. My uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends and my mom are all on Facebook.  Even my grandma has a Facebook account and is active on it.

We are past the point of debating if people are using social networks and if brands should have a presence on them.  We are at the point where we need to be asking ourselves, “What are we doing about it?”

Some brands may choose to do nothing.  Its what Apple has done.  But that has been a conscious decision that they have made knowing full well that Apple customers would stand up for them in this space.  While Apple may not be active in the space, I am sure they are monitoring what is being said.

Every day people are talking about brands.  What are they saying?  What are brands doing about it?  Its time for brands to take a look at the social network and social media space and decide what is the right strategy for their brand.

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