Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: advertising, Google, marketing, social media
Okay, so Google’s strategy is that customer value comes first and monetisation will follow. So here’s my take on how the customer value of Circles in Google+ translates to 2 pieces of genius from a marketer’s perspective.
In case you’re not familiar with Google+ and the concept of Circles: Google+ is the latest social networking site (started by Google, in case you weren’t sure) to hit the scene. Unofficial figures say that it’s reached 20 million users in less than a month, which makes it one to watch. Though it’s touted by many commentators as a ‘Facebook-killer’ the functionality is more of a Facebook/Twitter cross.
One of the key differences to both of the aforementioned is ‘Circles’, where your contacts can be put into separate groups as opposed to just being your ‘Friend’ or ‘Follower’. This means that content can be shared with a limited group defined by the user – on the one platform you can discuss work with your colleagues or share last night’s party photos with your party people, and ne’er the twain shall meet.
On to those two bits of genius…
I’ve been speaking to a lot of people who are trying to figure out what value their business can derive from social networks. A lot of people like to focus on the ‘glamourous’ side – giveaways, viral videos, gaining followers etc. Well, they’re important, but I really believe there’s more value in being able to target the right people at the right time and find out what they’re really thinking. So here’s what I’m hoping to get from Google+…
1. More sharing
Privacy is an interesting thing. It used to be that you could very easily keep separate parts of your life, well, separate. It was purely 1 to 1; f you wanted to write illicit love letters to 5 different people, they would only find out if they compared notes.
Then came technology, with email, blogging, social networking, microblogging, and more. We had 4 ways to share; 1 to 1, 1 to friends, 1 to every1, or ‘dammit I’m not telling anyone’. Most of us learnt this the hard way on Facebook. We wanted to share content with a limited group of friends, but suddenly all of our ‘friends’ or even the whole world could see. As a consequence, there were some types of information that we just stopped sharing altogether.
Here’s an example:
As you can see, you might want to share at several different degrees, but you often end up sharing with more or less people that you would like to.
Circles, as I’ve explained, allows you to share in degrees the way we want to. It means that you have more privacy – if you added up all of the bars above, you’d find that you are sharing to a lesser degree as a whole. However, you’re actually putting MORE information out there because you can limit the degree it’s shared.
More data being shared is marketer’s gold. Share more information and I can get a bigger picture of who you are, how you live, what you like and what you dislike. It tells me what I should share with you and when I should do it.
If Google can tap into more data, they have a very powerful tool for their ad network.
2. Ads in a social context
The jump to social media came from one premise; I am more interested in people I know than people I don’t. I care about what my friends are doing but I don’t really care what a stranger had for breakfast. I know that my friends have good taste in music and I’ll trust that more than a record company telling me their latest artist is fantastic.
As a marketer, I’m interested in two things from this; insight and influence.
Circles allows us to map social structure like never before.
Since each circle created represents a specific social group or interest, we know that if A, B, C and D are listed as being in the same circle by many people, chances are that if A, B and C all click on ads related to cars then D may be more likely to also click on a car ad. This ‘social logic’ allows us to imply insights from people that share their data to people that share less.
Since adding someone to a circle is a one-sided act, it is easier for us to see who influences who. If A is following B but B is not following A, B is the more influential. I can get more value out of targeted advertising to B as an influencer than A as the follower. (This one-sided mechanism is why Twitter is used as a better quick yardstick of influence than Facebook, except that Twitter does not have the mechanisms in place to take advantage of this.)
So what does this mean?
I’m not here to make predictions about whether Google+ will take over from Facebook or completely change the social networking game. However, I will say that if they manage to make the network a success, Google will have no problems in monetising it and getting businesses on board.
The two factors I’ve discussed may be subtle…but they’re also genius.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: advertising, Facebook ads, Reckitt Benckiser, recruitment, social media
It’s the quiet ones you want to watch.
There’s been commentary on the recent social media development spend by Unilever, the trials by P&G and the move to umbrella brands by both. But what about other FMCG companies?
Reckitt Benckiser has actually been doing much more on the social media front. I previously reported on their Clearasil site, which aimed to be a forum for young people to discuss issues relevant to them. Almost more importantly, within a week I had a response to my post (even though I wasn’t particularly nice).
But I’m loving their new recruitment Facebook app – poweRBrand.
It’s a virtual office game billed to help players improve their sales and marketing skills.
Players are sent tasks through an ‘inbox’ then must decide how much time to spend on specified activities using sliding bars. Some of these pop up through ‘phone calls’ where you have to make a decision under pressure. More pop up each day, like the real world.
uh oh. Tick tock tick tock...
Phew. After wasting 10s on a screenshot...success! Now hire me please.
After completing tasks players get money to deck out their office (including alll RB products), promotions or even relocations.
It’s a really interesting concept which I think will be great for recruitment (although maybe it tries a little too hard to persuade that there’s good life/balance –Â I wasn’t sure about one ‘ideal’ answer which says that to raise funds for a cause the effort spent on cleaning your office and waxing your body with VEET (I wonder who owns that brand) (what if you’re a guy??) combined should be more than running a marathon (I assume this is a fund-raising marathon) and asking agencies for help combined).
You can of course invite ‘colleagues’ who become your team members. I think that more team members increases the number of experience points you get per task.
Check it out, it’s actually kinda fun…best interactive facebook app I’ve seen so far!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: foursquare, microsoft, Ogilvy, social media, sydney, twitter
It started off with a few tweets on my Twitter feed. Then a few more.
And suddenly, Foursquare was being predicted as not just the Next Big Thing, but THE Big Thing for social media. Also know as, The Application That Will Actually Make Money.*
…the elusive superswarm badge.
Now, I’m told you can get one of these by having 50 people or more ‘check-in’ to a place at once. As you may know, on June 2 Ogilvy Melbourne decided to go for the world record for the number of check-ins at their office – unsuccessful, but still the first Australian location to get the yellow jersey badge.
Well, somebody at Ogilvy loves foursquare, because they’re using it to bring the blogger reward meet-up to the next level.
As part of the launch for Microsoft Office 2010 they’re getting Sydney foursquare mayors to check-in to Martin Place for the chance to win software, get some free food and do some networking.
For those playing at home, a foursquare mayor is the person with the most check-ins for a location. They get a badge too:
It looks something like this. Not embroidered of course, but the fact that you can now buy these babies is a scary concept.
The foursquare mayor concept is an interesting one in itself, encouraging more check-ins and allowing venues to see who their most loyal tech-savvy customers are. But the fact that Microsoft is specifically targeting mayors – is this a way of trying to separate the influencers from the rest of the pack?
[I wonder if any of this came out of the Microsoft Protegé competition?]
Well, if you’re in Sydney and you want to meet some other foursquarers (or is there a cooler term I’m not aware of?) here’s the details:
You only need to be one of the first 111 foursquare mayors to check-in to be in the running for free software, and the t-shirts are free game for everyone, so why not?
Now to get me a foursquare account…
—
* Their growth at least seems more credible than Twitter’s, as there’s less potential for robots called Britney1691 who are lonely tonight.
** Although Twitter has also seen limited success among Gen Ys I’ve talked to, it has a much higher awareness rate.
Filed under: 1 | Tags: brand rankings, branding, Cisco, IBM, intel, Interbrand, Marlboro, McDonalds, Nokia, Samsung, social media, Sysomos, Toyota
Agencies are always making up rankings to try and get noticed. So when I saw the Sysomos ‘Top Brands by Social Media Presence’ I thought hey, anyone could’ve counted up the number of social media mentions brands get, what’s so special?
But wait…here’s something a bit more interesting.
- The top-scoring brands for positive reactions are in green, negative reactions in red. (See the Sysomos page for actual rankings.)
They’ve done an additional ranking using their ‘sentiment engine’ (an accurate name but odd image) which analyses whether the mentions are positive or negative from their context.
It’s interesting to note that all of the highest scoring positive mentions are related to electronics – due to review sites perhaps? More surprising then that Apple and Google, the top two from the mentions rankings and general favourites, don’t feature in the sentiment top 5.
It’s also unclear whether positive and negative mentions could cancel each other out or whether they were separate scales.
Do you think it’s accurate?
Discovered Nokia’s viNe service the other day and it’s tripping me out.
Even if we’ve gone on in our lives to flatter and shinier things, I think my generation will always have a bit of a soft spot for Nokia because their basic phones were pretty much THE thing to have as your first phone back in the day.
We’ve also seen huge developments in the internet and mobile technology. So when I saw this on Nokia’s website:
…I just had to click.
Here’s the official vid:
This is taking blogging and sharing your life to the next level (and almost asking to be stalked, really).
My question is…do people really want that?
Already there’s a facebook backlash where people are discovering that having your entire life accessible on the internet can cause big problems. Social norms are still trying to catch up to the new political dramas of what you can write on other people’s walls, not to mention a tale of group membership being used for a character reference in court.
Nike did have some success with GPS-assisted trackers when they collaborated with Apple, but at least there it was for a purpose – helping the niche market of hardcore runners to track their personal progress or participate in races.
However, viNe seems to be aimed at the masses (as much as the number of people who can afford the N series can be called the masses).
What purpose does it achieve for them? Sharing their life?
viNe is a little more like being electronically stalked.
I can only think of a few uses…
a) You’re on holiday.
b) You want to be stalked.
c) You’re really, really bored.
None of these occurs every day (maybe with the exception of b) which means very few people will get into the habit of using it – which is why nearly a year after it was announced it seems to have joined the rapidly growing pile of internet junk.
It disappoints me because I do have that soft spot for Nokia and it’s a cool concept, but I can’t see a lot of benefit – for consumers or the company.
…and I wish this ad wasn’t.
“Be confident! But not too confident because your online friends don’t really like you.”
Clearasil seems to be struggling with mixed messages. On their ‘be yourself for real’ website they’re challenging image distortion on online networks by teenagers.
The premise is that you should ‘keep it real’ because making yourself look better online doesn’t improve you as a person. To correspond with keeping it real, three teenagers are used as role models to talk about how they deal with image problems and online friendship.
Interestingly, none of Clearasil’s ‘real voices’ have any acne problems at all.
The point about your Facebook friends not necessarily being your ‘real’ friends seems moot. Most of Clearasil’s respondents seem to acknowledge that online friendship is a different level anyway – according to ‘The Pulse’.
But there’s a whole other can of worms. They seem to be talking about looking cooler in terms of touching up your profile pictures on Facebook. (Makes sense – don’t use Photoshop, buy Clearasil.) This is only a small part of the image control that goes on; try quizzes, friend hoarding, camerawhoring, status updates, detagging, events, groups… Risky pool to dip your toes into.
Still so far the dialogue has managed to stay in safer territory, through control of the ‘shout box’ – questions asked by the ‘real voices’ and then answered by users.
To give you an idea of how much ‘dialogue’ is actually going on, as it currently stands their Alexa ranking is around the 2,000,000 mark and average time spent on the pages is 2.3 min per day.
They’ve tried to compromise between open dialogue and directed conversation. But you just can’t compromise on authenticity.
Though it might be an interesting resource for understanding how teenagers really feel about online networks.
Clearasil, if someone liked me just because I had clear skin, would they really be my friend? I’m worried about it. Like, srsly omg. Txt me bk.
Filed under: 1 | Tags: Hyperspot, Refinery Media, social media, supermodelme
So as reported earlier, this crazy new concept debuted today. The verdict so far…
- Login problems; uh oh! Had to sign up a second time to get access, I think anyone who registered before a certain time couldn’t get in. Big turnoff. Also couldn’t seem to load the first episode on the home page – either that or it wasn’t there. Okay, you’re in Beta, but so is Gmail…if you’re launched you should be fully functional.
- Having said that, content so far is decent.
Singaporean productions and reality TV are not my usual viewing, but this was slick and sure to appeal to the target. Was expecting more introduction of the contestants given the personality-based marketing, but the website profiles have done a pretty good job.
Finished the episode wanting to see the next one – it’s not Gossip Girl dying-for-the-next-one but they do leave you in suspense.
There’s also a slew of other videos which should keep even facebook stalker types occupied for a while. - On to the big kicker; is the Hyperspot technology as good as they say it is?
This is pretty nifty stuff. You click and one second later the person or item appears in the right pane as an icon you can click on later.
The problem is, fashion footage usually involves a lot of movement; zooming, panning, and of course models strutting their stuff. I’m not sure if the camera crew were briefed on the technology, because trying to click on a 2 second shot of Louboutins on a moving pair of feet required more mouse technique than a duck shooter game.
The clicking works well for people, but more gratuitous product shot would be required to really make use of the technology.
Overall: iron out some smaller problems and there’s real potential.
And is it a success so far?
The Facebook group has hit 1500, the views on the first episode as at the time of posting are about 80. Not huge numbers, but keeping in mind that it’s the first few hours of release and this genre tends to pick up viewers closer to the finish it’s not a bad start.
Agree with me? Disagree with me? Check it out and let me know!
the grass is greener on the internet 