Five by Five

Yesterday Nick Owen (Data Planner) and Mike Phillips (Social Media Executive) went to Monitoring Social Media in town yesterday. Here’s their key take-aways:

Alan Moore (Not the Watchmen author) but Author and Founder of SMLXL: Spoke for a long time without saying much and was really just setting the scene. He said that Social marketing intelligence is the third dimension of consumer insight, which is nice.

Neville Hobson (Head of Social Media WC Group): People are discussing and creating brands without the brands involvement or even knowledge. Ethical behaviour is a key part of maintaining trust. Authenticity through transparency. Provided a line to a best practice in disclosure when engaging with consumers.

Neville’s deck on SlideShare.

Antony Mayfield (VP, Head of Global Media, iCrossing). Spoke about Howard Rheingold and his media literacies .

Said its important to focus your attention on certain areas of social media, because you can’t look at everything. Spoke about network theory and how it needs developing and said that monitoring wasn’t just about real-time but that it was also about long-term and monitoring how it develops and is influenced.

Antony’s deck on SlideShare.

Ann Longley (Digital Strategy Director, MEC) Stressed that listening is the first piece of data to educate the organisation. Reputation is based on: Strength of network/fanbase, Market leadership, Responsiveness and Product and service innovation. A new approach to this would be: Listen, Plan, Respond and Evaluate.

Tim Callington (Comms Consultant, Edelman) Referred to Kipling quote in terms of it being important to measure ‘What, Who, How, Where, Why and When’ of social media.

Katy Howell (Managing Director, Immediate Future) Presented well with some interesting slides but didn’t really say anything of import.

Celia Pronto (Marketing Director, STA Travel) This was one of only two case studies, in what was claimed to be a social media campaign. It wasn’t really. They created a non-corporate, consumer friendly site where consumers could interact with the consultants that STA travel use to explore and research their product. It was nice CRM with a social twist.

Next came a Panel discussion: The ROI of social media monitoring. The team succesfully avoided answering the question, ‘How do you measure ROI for social media?’ but didn’t manage to sell themselves well and belittle a number of people from the audience who asked questions. The only thing said of any use was by David Cushman (Managing Director 90:10 Group) who used the term ‘aggregated attention’ as a way of expressing measurement and reach of social media activity, but didn’t properly define it.

ROI could be hard of soft. Cash, or Reach, Sentiment change, Level of engagement, Better customer service, the cost of not engaging with customers with complaints and queries.

Lunch was good. Nick had a bowl of turkey and mushroom stroganoff stuff with very tiny potatoes. Mike had fish and profiteroles.

Paul Alexander (CEO, Beyond Analysis) was next and he was beyond dull. Apparently they do data mining and he said it might be a nice idea to use Social Media data in that. What a revelation! What he did say though, which was quite interesting, was that selling social media to stakeholders is about placing it in the context of other data sources used to inform marketing decisions and customer service.

Giles Palmer (Founder and Managing Director, Brandwatch) Nothing said which we didn’t already know, but conveyed with great energy and wit. He’s grown a moustache for Movember and someone tweeted that he looked like Magnum PI. One thing he did say was that SEO is very important for social media monitoring but that it doesn’t focus on the long-tail but social media tracking tools need to and that is where the spam lives. That should improve in time, but the ability to gauge sentiment probably won’t. Still needs human interaction.

Brad Little (Director, Industry solutions online, Nielsen) Echoed the point about the importance of human interaction. He also stressed that Quantative measures alone are not a measure of influence, we also need to understand what people are saying. Numbers are not insight. He stressed the importance of combining research methodologies with social media monitoring tools - Listening and Asking. Strange he should say that seeing as that’s what his company does…

Next was a panel discussion of what’s wrong with social media monitoring tools. I actually felt a bit sorry for Giles and Brad at this point with the panel and audience taking the opportunity to vent their frustrations with various aspects of different packages. Until one bright spark pointed out that they’re a damn sight better than what they haven’t got.

Lastly was Robin Grant (Managing Director, We Are Social) who presented a case study of their work with Skype. The key thing here was the creation of a conversation platform for handling customer service inquiries and complaints. They recognised that while these sorts of conversations happen across the broad spectrum of social media its not always appropriate or practical to handle them where they originate and that its much better to direct people to a hub. He also explained the monkey butler approach with We Are Social starting the activity, then training Skype staff before handing it over to be done internally.

So, main things learnt from the day were:

1.    Value of off-the-shelf conversation platform for engaging with customers

2.    SEO can’t be separated form social media

3.    There is a natural progression for social media engagement (Agency > Training > Goes internal with consultancy retained by agency)

4.    Social media tools have a lot of issues but better than nothing or free tools and still need human analysis contribution. Investment needs to be made in skills as much as tools

5.    Numbers alone do not = insight.

Some of our esteemed creative folk went to Click London last week. Here’s the 10 most interesting things:

1. People don’t talk about advertising - they talk about what interests them and sometimes it’s advertising.

2. For a digital initiative to work it needs to be useful, easy and delightful: See this from AKQA for Fiat

3. Banners and micro sites are adverts advertising adverts. Your microsite needs to do something markedly different than the advert, it can’t just reinforce the advert.

4. Media is communities. Most of the agencies yesterday didn’t buy media at all, they just focused on the ideas.

5. Don’t pay for media - make your content so interesting that your audience does it for you. See this from Sony for AC/DC, the world’s first Excel video: 1.6 million views on Youtube, multi-award winning, album no. 1 un UK and Europe cost: £500

6. Clients get the work they deserve.

7. “If I ‘d asked my customers what they wanted they would’ve said a faster horse” – Henry Ford.

8. Too many agencies focus on the future, you should live in the now.

9. The copywriter/art director model is dead. Everyone’s responsible for creativity and bringing a vision to life it’s not divided into creatives and everyone else anymore.

10. You don’t need a social strategy, you need your business plan to be social.

Contributors: Martin Flavin, Chris Townsend, Nicky Standing, James Golding

1 … something that lives in the marketing silo

It disrupts the entire business model meaning you have to listen to customers and change your mindset and behaviour accordingly. Can the marketing department deal with customer services complaints? Senior management buy-in is integral. Social media requires a way of thinking which includes a willingness to listen to customers, make changes based on feedback and trust employees to talk to customers. Integrating with your other activities – marketing and business – is crucial.

2 … just about Twitter

Brand outposts such as a Twitter or Facebook may well be a cornerstone of your social media strategy but don’t start there. Have a robust strategy in place and understand your objectives and how you can connect with the passion points of your consumers.

3 … a quick fix

Social media should be treated with the same reverence and long-term engagement as your brand. It is not a one-shot deal. It’s a long-term commitment to openness, experimentation and change that requires time to truly bear fruit.

4 … free

A constant stream of engaging social currency, deployed across brand outposts and through trusted influencer networks, allied to user generated content, e-commerce with real-time response and moderation, isn’t easy. It needs the right financial commitment. Even taking free software like WordPress and making it function as an effective interactive site, with e-commerce and company brand style sheets takes more than time. It takes skill, experience, and investment.

5 … immune from measurement

One of the oft heard complaints about social media is that it can’t be measured. Bollocks. Engagement, influence, infectiousness, share of voice, sentiment, increased traffic leading to sales. All of this is measurable today. Pizza Hut’s iPhone app delivered $1m. Dell’s Twitter activity alone realised $1m incremental revenue last year and at a recent Revolution event, Michael Buck from Dell stated that a 10% reduction in customer service calls would enable the investment in social media to breakeven. Fundamentally it comes back to your objectives and making sure they have measurable components baked-in to them.

Matt Burrough, Senior Account Director

matt.burrough@fivebyfivedigital.com

twitter.com/@mattb45

Brands have value which make them important company assets needing to be evolved, remain compelling and provide return on investment. Providing disruption, impact and engagement, traditional media and press, whilst important, only provide part of the story in a digital world. Social brand interaction empowers us to contribute, both directly and indirectly, which in turn informs, is measurable and interpreted by brand owners.

Unlike a consumer-led society where products were king, in a media-driven, celebrity society, entertainment is king. Although now in sharp focus, the concept of branded entertainment has its routes already established. Disney recognised the potential with its inclusive entertainment model of films, videos and theme parks providing compelling and true delight at every brand touch-point to grow the corporate brand. Record companies consider bands as brands. They don’t start off as such but, through popularity, adopt a consistent attitude that appeals to their target audience in the music they produce, the way in which they go to market and in the way they live. They become role models for as long as this is the case in effect they are living brands.

Brands existing as entertainment have the potential to develop longevity through engagement. Consider Corrie or Friends and the potential association by a brand with shared values would achieve. Being synonymous with a programme rather than sponsoring it or arranging product placement can provide long term consumer relationship potential based on entertainment and shared values subliminally keeping the brand front of mind over extended periods of time. Diesel has achieved this with Diesel:U:Music engaging it’s global, edgy, fashion led audience with video, detachable content, live music and no adds. They have developed a brand outpost for information and engagement.

Developments in technology now provide us with the ability to access content where ever and when ever we choose. We have almost limitless options and access potential for information and entertainment when ever and where ever depending on our needs and moods at that time. Trusted sources are paramount in this over-supplied environment and “trusted brands” with ‘brand outposts’ have a big role to play. Search engines have started to achieve this role albeit in a narrow sense. Google and Microsoft have expanded content from search into news and a variety of specialist areas, comparable with any traditional mainstream magazine, with the added advantage of a more regular update to stay fresh and attract. News media networks like the BBC and CNN are inherently and naturally ‘trusted’ brands for rich information and entertainment and recognising this lead the way in providing detachable content.

Consumer brands like O2 and some informed drinks companies, Carling, Bacardi, and Stella have built entertainment brand association by promoting music and leisure events. Leveraging social media activity helps these brands assess consumer reaction; channel appropriateness and relevance, participation and importantly achieve commercial growth. The objective is for consumers to associate great experiences with the brand, producing affinity and permission to extend involvement – trusted brands.

In 2002 BMW took branded entertainment a stage further with ‘BMW Films’ incorporating famous actors and celebrity directors producing a series of 8 film shorts under the series title ‘the Hire’. These shorts featured story lines far beyond product placement, capturing and endorsing the spirit and qualities associated with the product brand and achieving a staggering 100m viewings. In the States the concept of branded entertainment has become part of everyday life with TV series like ‘Hottest Mom in America’ produced in association with Medicis Pharmaceutical cosmetic injection brand Restylane. The talent show is produced for, and contributed by, the target audience with Restylane being the seamless facilitator with powerful consumer associations.

More recently Staples has worked with NBC to leverage their version of ‘the Office’ going beyond product placement and feature their MailMate shredder as a solution within a series storyline. In Portugal, in 2005, the global home improvement retailer Leroy Merlin integrated their wide product range into a popular TV DIY renovation show which helped increase sales for Leroy by 72% in 2 years and become the country leader in the segment.

Recently, Five by Five’s Director of Content, Paul Shurey, whilst at Tiger Aspect/IMG Media was Executive Producer for Model.Live which served to both increase traffic to, and dwell time on, the Vogue.tv website, to stimulate fashion sales via Express.com and to promote both brands to a wider audience via Bebo.

This cross-platform project was funded by Vogue and Express.com and ran over 3 months, with up to 12 pieces of content being posted daily (videos, photos, audio of phone calls between models and their agents, blogs etc.). It was designed to stimulate maximum interactivity with the audience (12m video views to date) and to reveal the reality of being a new young model as opposed to the glossy sanitized impression given by TV shows such as America’s Next Top Model. It played out on both Bebo and Vogue.tv and was made available via the Hulu VOD service in the US.

It was also generated e-commerce via Express, with the clothes worn by the models (or similar items) made accessible via click through links. This proved to be far more successful than anticipated with approx $1.5m of sales generated over the run of the series.

Contagious, in their ‘Branded Entertainment’ report, predicted that; “As planning and projects evolve, branded entertainment will become more sophisticated, encompassing multiple touchpoints and technologies.” With devices like iPhone’s, social media applications, pod cast content and mobile access for TV shortly to arrive, that time has surely arrived. Brands need to take the next step in embracing entertainment or they will become irrelevant.

At Five by Five we help clients optimise branded entertainment strategies by carrying out a brand ‘health-check’ in order to answer the questions:

· Is the current brand positioning relevant as a social brand?

· Is the proposition compelling and true?

· What are the differentiating attributes of the brand?

· How is the brand positioned?

With these questions answered we then develop social brand strategies to listen, engage and manage reputation with target audiences and measure everything.

Brand communication planning in a digital age is social and has just become a whole lot more entertaining. Scary or exciting? Very, very exciting!

Author: Graham Freeman, Brand Planner

graham.freeman@fivebyfivedigital.com

twitter.com/grahamblog1