Social Media and Future of Advertising

What is the future of advertising in Social Age?

Well, we may get as many different answers as the number of Social Media gurus and Advertising pundits out there, which by the way is not a small number!

“Nature of commercial message is not going to look like a display ad, it’s going to provide functionality and a different kind of interface for the user to act on something. People in Social context don’t want to be interrupted, instead want continue to be engaged and want functionality that eases a task they are about to engage in”.

Watch this excellent panel discussion and listen to what four real experts have to say on this subject. The experts are:

I like what Irwin Gotlieb says: “Nature of commercial message is not going to look like a display ad, it’s going to provide functionality and a different kind of interface for the user to act on something. People in Social context don’t want to be interrupted, instead want continue to be engaged and want functionality that eases a task they are about to engage in.”

Enjoy the video and do share your thoughts on what advertising will look like in Social Age.

Harish Kotadia

Calling for the Death of Consumption Guilt

How often do you lament the fact that you can’t get through all of the stuff in your reader? I know I’ve done it.

Do you feel guilty when you unsubscribe something or unfriend someone in your network? Why?

Consumption of content is not a democracy. Giving of attention is not a democracy. We each have to decide what we find value in, and leave the rest behind. If that’s one blog or no blogs or five Twitter followers or a hundred, it’s up to us. And there is no standard that’s fit for everyone.

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Old Spice: Now That’s Viral, Man!

If you haven’t followed the Old Spice phenomenon from this week, you’ve missed out. It’s a great example of a really strong performing viral campaign that harkens back to some of the classics like Subservient Chicken, Shave Everywhere, and Tea Partay.

It started on on television earlier this year with the following Old Spice commercial, “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” (link for those of you in RSS readers):

(If you’d like to see how this was accomplished, Leo Laporte has a great interview with the agency.)

That commercial, first aired during the Super Bowl in early February, as of this week has garnered over 14 million views. And then the next commercial, “Old Spice: Questions“, went up on YouTube:

Those ads are pretty funny to begin with and were passed around a good deal. But this week, Wieden + Kennedy, creators of the campaign for Procter & Gamble, took it to the next level.

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Love consumers… but don’t forget brands

It’s easy to give brands a bad rap.

In our warm and fuzzy social world, corporate has pretty much become a dirty word.

Scan social media on any given day and you’ll encounter a raft of articles called things like ‘how to become a business that cares’, ‘the latest social media fail’ and ‘dealing with detractors’ (yes, a few of them might be by us) that suggest brands are big, bad and struggling to engage with people on and offline.

But they’re what makes all this possible.

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Sniffing Out Real Expertise in Social Media

As the field of social media matures, there is the inevitable march of the unqualified and snake-oil sellers into this area of expertise. This is not something surprising given that social media *looks* simple, fun, hip, and sexy. Plus there is draw of, “yes you can be paid actual dollars to play on Facebook and Twitter.”

This march of the pretenders is not something new either. If you worked in the digital world through the booms of the Webmaster, push/pull technology, e-commerce or the early days of SEO, this new set of annoyingly unqualified competitors will be nothing new. However, this wave of shameless self-promoters is all the more concerning because they are using their social media footprint as their main qualifier. In a recent interview, a candidate for a job told me, “you can tell I’m an expert because I have nearly 10,000 followers on Twitter.” Hate to break it to you, but popularity does not equal expertise. 10,000 followers shows me that you are good at buidling followers, but anyone who truly knows the social media world appreciates that it is very complex and pointing to a single number as a demonstration of expertise only shows inexperience.

I have been thinking about a post on this for awhile and then I found an amazing post on the topic from Olivier Blanchard on the Brand Building Blog.

A few things about it really stuck with me:

  • A true expert is about more than numbers
  • They need passion that they can demonstrate through experience
  • That passion should easily come through in any conversation
  • They also need to be able to plan, but not a pre-baked, one-size-fits-all plan, but one that organically adapts to your organization

Read the full article. It is one of the best posts I’ve seen about this subject.

Rick Wion

Innovative Use of Traditional Metrics

Here’s an interesting concept: using traditional measurement tactics to determine the success of non-traditional (social media) marketing.

At first, it sounds as though this goes against my persistent encouragement for companies to measure the Return on Relationship rather than just the standard Return on Investment, but actually it doesn’t.

In his July 19 blog post entitled “The ROI of Social Media Marketing: More Than Dollars and Cents”, Forrester blogger Augie Ray introduces the Social Media Marketing Balanced Scoreboard. The key word here is balanced. Although he still uses the phrase “Return on Investment,” what he’s writing is actually about much more than the standard notion of return on financial investment only.

Ray writes, “Facebook fans, retweets, site visits, video views, positive ratings and vibrant communities are not financial assets—they aren’t reflected on the balance sheet and can’t be counted on an income statement—but that doesn’t mean they are valueless. Instead, these are leading indicators that the brand is doing something to create value that can lead to financial results in the future.” In other words, ROR – Return on Relationship!

This Social Media Marketing Balanced Scorecard encourages “interactive marketers” to measure success across four areas:

  • Financial
  • Brand
  • Risk Management
  • Digital

Notice that the scorecard doesn’t measure only financial success – nor does it measure only brand success. Both are included here.

Bottom line? While we social media marketers tend to be all about innovation, there is still room for some things traditional – when used deliberately and wisely!

Ted Rubin

Meet #MarketerMonday Greats on #MMchat !

MarketerMonday Chat or #MMchat for short was founded by @JeffAshcroft on July 26th, 2010 and every week since has featured a SPECIAL guest and generated an interesting and useful transcript.

Beginning on July 26th, 2010 we were pleased to announce that every #MarketerMonday at 8:00pm eastern we will feature a SPECIAL #MarketerMonday Chat guest on a LIVE tweetchat hosted by @TheSocialCMO !

These tweet chats will be conducted utilizing the hashtag #MMchat and can be followed through the #MMchat on Twitter search or through your favorite twitter tool! And our ongoing schedule for future chats as well as the links to transcripts from our chats already completed are always available at http://bit.ly/MMchat

Join us every #MarketerMonday evening to personally get to know, discuss cool topics and ask questions of our SPECIAL guests on #MarketerMonday Chat!

I’m VERY pleased to announce that our first #MarketerMonday chat SPECIAL guest on Monday July 26th will be none other than Rick Wion @rdublife Director, Social Media for McDonald’s and our topic for the chat will be Social Media Alignment! (Completed see blog post & transcript)

On August 2nd, 2010 our second #MarketerMonday chat SPECIAL guest will be Ted Rubin @TedRubin , CMO of #OpenSky and our topic will be Relationship Commerce.(Completed see blog post & transcript)

And on August 9th the fun continues with Karima-Catherine Goundiam @KarimaCatherine joining us to discuss Multilingual Social Media Platforms (Complete see transcript!)

On August 16th our very own world traveling storyteller @treypennington will join us to discuss Cut through the marketing clutter with storytelling(Complete see transcript!)

And on August 23rd one of the first and still most fervent #MarketerMonday fanatics Cheryl Burgess @ckburgess and Mark Burgess @mnburgess will join us to discuss the Agency Blueprint for Energizing Social Media Business! (Complete see transcript!)

On August the 30th we’re very pleased to have the orginator of #MarketerMonday on #MMchat @KentHuffman will be joining us for a discussion of Social Media Resources. (Complete see transcript!)

After a break for the Labor Day (Sept 6th) long weekend, #MMchat will continue on September 13th with SPECIAL guest @ScottMonty and our topic will be Encouraging Executive Participation in Social Media! (Complete see transcript!)

#MMchat SPECIAL guest on September 20th will be Jeff Wilson @jeffthesensei and our topic will be Online Demand Generation!
(Complete see transcript!)

REALLY pleased our #MMchat SPECIAL guest on September 27th will be Viveka von Rosen @LinkedInExpert and our topic will be Making the Most of LinkedIn Groups! (Complete see transcript!)

On Monday October 4th our #MMchat SPECIAL guest will be Cd Vann @ThatWoman_Is the famous Founder of unGEEKED and our topic will be Issues Surrounding Brand Authenticity vs Personal Integrity! (Complete see transcript!)

@BillBoorman a very prolific and vociferous tweetchatter will join us October 11th for #MMchat and our topic will be Marketing Benefits of Employee Engagement!(Complete see transcript!)

On Monday October 18th our #MMchat SPECIAL guest will be Judi Samuels @ChiefLemonHead and our topic will be True Love, True Loyalty (Complete see transcript!)

Our #MMchat SPECIAL guest on Monday October 25th will be @GlenGilmore the ever famous and original @Trendtracker to discuss what else but Tracking Trends via Social Media! (Complete see transcript!)

Our #MMchat SPECIAL guest on Monday November 1st will be @DannyBrown on the Increasing Role of Content as Engagement & Marketing Tool! (Complete see transcript!)

Our #MMchat SPECIAL guest on Monday November 8th will be Eric Qualman @equalman the Socialnomics dude to chat about The future: Social Search, Social Commerce & eReaders oh my! (Complete see transcript!)

Our #MMchat SPECIAL guest on Monday November 15th will be Chuck Martin @ChuckMartin1 to discuss It’s a Mobile World: Trends & Research (Complete see transcript!)

Our #MMchat SPECIAL guest on Monday November 22nd will be @ChrisBrogan to discuss The Role of Major Influencers in Cause Marketing! (Complete see transcript!)

Our #MMchat SPECIAL guest on Monday November 29th will be John Bernier @BernierJohn Empowerment Ninja of Bet Buy’s original Twelpforce and we’ll be talking Proactive Customer Service in a social media world!)(Complete see transcript!)

Our #MMchat SPECIAL guest on Monday December 6th was Amy @HowellMarketing and @AnneDGallaher to discuss the Impact and Value of Social Media in PR!(Complete see transcript!)

Our #MMchat SPECIAL guest on Monday December 13th will be Laura Fitton @Pistachio Author of Twitter for Dummies and pleased she has chosen #MMchat for the 1st stop on her virtual book Tour!(Complete see transcript!)

The #MMchat SPECIAL guest on Monday December 20th was @ShaneGibson Author of Guerrilla Social Media Marketing!(Complete see transcript!)

Our final #MMchat of 2010 is #MMchat The Year 2010 in Review with @JeffAshcroft on Monday December 27th. Reviewing all #MMchats held in 2010, suggestions for improvements and SPECIAL guests in 2011!(Complete see transcript!)

We continue to round out our future #MarketerMonday Chat schedule and are always looking for great suggestions for topics and SPECIAL guests so feel free to @ MSG or DM @TheSocialCMO with your suggestions.

So make the most of #MarketerMonday and get to know some of the people behind the GREAT suggestions of #MarketerMonday follows right here on #MarketerMonday Chat or #MMchat for short!

Cheers

Jeff Ashcroft

@TheSocialCMO

Relationship Commerce… the new definition

Long-term E-commerce success is in a big way relative to Relationship Commerce, building relationships and interacting with consumers. Relationships are extremely important. The relationship a customer has with a company can make or break the company’s success… this is perfectly exhibited with what Amazon does to nurture a relationship.

But what about true relationships that already exist online as the basis for commerce instead of the other way around? Bloggers, authors, celebrities, and any internet personalities who have a deep relationship with their followers can now get what I call ROR – Return on Relationship, with a new kind of Relationship Commerce. The company for which I am on the Board of Advisors and Chief Social Marketing Officer, OpenSky, connects people with existing relationships, we call them Influencers (sellers), to people who make great products, we call them Innovators (suppliers).

OpenSky provides a means for our “sellers” to connect their trusted followers to the products they write about, and are passionate about! All this happens in the OpenSky Distributed Cart without taking the users away from the site where the content about the product and relationship originated and exists. We help Influencers enhance their relationships and provide Innovators with a new means of distribution. Think of it as a Relationship Commerce ecosystem.

Ted Rubin

Don’t forget YouTube!

“Further positioning itself as a TV alternative, YouTube has launched a new user interface option named ‘Leanback,’ with which users can more easily browse content at a distance.” MediaPost, Thursday July 8, 2010

Awesome idea and functionality that will help lead YouTube to the forefront of next generation online video viewing. YouTube is so often overlooked as an incredibly viral social media tool and platform. Everywhere I go the speakers in the social media space are talking about Facebook and Twitter and forgetting the highly engaged value of YouTube.

If you are planning a social media strategy, and want visibility and consumer engagement, make sure to include YouTube… especially as Google adds functionality to the platform.

Ted Rubin