One of the most common questions we get asked as digital consultants at Launch is, as We Are Social noted this week, ‘Where should we start with social media?’
There’s no quick and easy answer, as every company’s challenges and opportunities. However, for complete newbies (newcomers), a social media audit is a great place to start.
A good social media audit should help you analyse your current position online and in social media, identify potential influencers to engage and fertile ground for active to be targeted at.
We’ve put together a short simple template to help guide your thinking. Of course, if you want us to actually carry out the audit for you, you’ll have to get in touch.
Friends and colleagues haven’t been able to escape me talking about Mad Men recently. I’m EXTREMELY excited about season five kicking off on Sky Atlantic on March 27th. It’s the best show on TV at the moment, and not just because it resonates so strongly with people like me who are in the business of client servicing.
The promotion of the show’s return has been carefully orchestrated, with a range of teaser images and videos appearing on both sides of the continent. In America, this has ramped up considerably of late, with AMC and various US media devoting huge chunks of space to interviews and other behind the scenes gossip. So far, so standard.
What Matthew Weiner and the execs at AMC couldn’t have expected (but potentially SHOULD have) was the effect that the show’s fans would have on the hype that is surrounding season five. First there was the minimalist poster that appeared around NYC, which was swiftly converted into a meme by creative street artists (check out the best of them here. I like the Superman one the best).
Then this weekend a new Tumblr was set up full of people ‘draping’. Draping, in case you’re not familiar with it, is people uploading pictures of themselves in the classic Don Draper, ‘one arm across the back of the sofa’ pose.
People on Twitter were asking whether these two (especially Draping) were marketing/PR stunts. I doubt it. You could make a cogent case to say that the white background of the teaser poster was an invitation to creative and street artists, but I doubt this was the defining factor in their decision.
Both memes are happy by-products of a TV show that has captured people’s imaginations, and become so important to people’s lives that they want to create content of their own volition. It’s the purest form of advocacy. When we’re putting together an all-channel campaign for our clients, it’s our holy grail.
What AMC and Matthew Weiner will be conscious of is the fact that, however careful they are with their own promotion of the show, this kind of unplanned fan activity only serves to ramp up the expectations around its come back. Already delayed by a year, season five will have to kick off with a real bang to escape the inevitable ‘jumped the shark’ accusations.
I have no doubts it will more than live up to the hype.
(my Mad Men Yourself photo is below. A great example of AMC’s marketing!)
I know I’m a bit late to be commenting on the Snickers Twitter hornet’s nest from a couple of weeks ago, but today’s announcement about the new Digital Trading Standards Group and the post-Super Bowl buzz threw everything back into focus.
In case you missed it, the Digital Trading Standards Group has been set up to develop a set of industry-wide principles aimed at reducing the risk of ad misplacement at impression level. And in case you missed them, the Super Bowl showcased the usual headline advertising campaigns, alongside a record number of mentions in social media.
Back to Snickers – the reason its ‘takeovers’ of celebrities caused so much debate, and a certain amount of opprobrium in certain quarters, was that it was using Twitter PURELY for awareness building, rather than encouraging any form of action or advocacy. Most people follow brands on Twitter to get something from them – special offers, customer service, competitions, even just entertainment (as with someone like Betfair).
The Snickers activity was a self-contained package, with a message, but didn’t add any value to any conversation or provide anything but a message to the celebrities’ followers. And it was created and executed by AMV BBDO, which is an advertising agency. Spotted the link? It was essentially an advert. Played out over a series of tweets.
It grabs your attention, keeps it going for a short amount of time, before revealing the denouement. Just like an advert.
There’s nothing wrong with it – it’s a perfectly fine piece of awareness building (and almost as newsworthy as some of the Super Bowl ads), but it’s slightly disingenuous of Snickers to have not paid Twitter for the placement (I’m sure the celebs were handsomely rewarded). We could spend hours debating whether or not it affected Snickers bottom line, but that’s probably not really the point (I very much doubt it did affect sales). The guerrilla ‘ad placement’ is an issue Twitter themselves need to sort out – all the trading standards groups in the world, or the ASA, won’t stop creatives trying to get out of paying for placement – especially when they can get so much for free at the moment.
Online communities form whenever people with common interests are able to interact. This could mean the ‘community’ is a forum, profile page, blog, group or any other similar space, and these interactions can take the form of buying, selling, collaborating or simply the coming together of likeminded individuals around a specific topic.
When they come together, these groups can have a huge impact on businesses – both positively and negatively. For example, a negative review left by disgruntled customer could dissuade others from engaging with the same company, but a group that have independently assembled in support of a company, product or service represent a golden opportunity to utilise their passion. By managing online communities themselves, brands are in a position to influence public perception and build long-lasting relationships with influencers – the results of which can be incredibly fruitful.
Despite the obvious power of online communities, many brands still struggle with the concept of interacting with customers and would-be customers in this way. Here are our top community management tips:
Engage: Managing, or simply contributing to online communities gives you the opportunity to engage in multi-way conversations. However, it should never be considered merely as a channel topromote your latestproduct or service. Communities give you the chance to grow relationships long-term and provide your members with something genuinely useful and interesting (think news, images, video or a unique point of view). Before creating or engaging with a community you should consider just what exactly you will be offering your audience in return for their interest
Dedicate Resource: Communities take time and patience to grow, and this means that you need a committed resource manage it. The absolute biggest inhibitor for any community member is the feeling that their contributions are going unheard or unnoticed, so it’s vital that community managers ‘show’ their faces on a regular basis. This means finding a way to engage with your audience on their level
Show Personality: You may be in a position of authority, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a personality. In fact, we’d say it’s mandatory. Consumers are far more comfortable engaging with a familiar face as opposed to a nondescript company ‘entity’ that shows no warmth or passion. All of your interactions should match the personalities of the audience you are engaging
Monitor, but don’t over-censor: Of course there needs to be clear rules for the community you are managing, but there is a fine line between maintaining a calm space and debilitating freedom of speech. Outline at the very beginning what is acceptable and what is not
Be Adaptable: Communities are living, breathing entities,and you should expect them to grow and change.Keep members in the loop whenever this happens, such as when new features or tools are being added or removed. Think hard about your audience – how can your community better serve them?
Measure Performance: This is essential in growing your community and adapting content when necessary. Everything from sentiment analysis to Google Analytics will highlight opportunities for improvement and areas that aren’t working as hard as they should
It’s the end of the year, and I’m a big fan of making lists (I always do my top ten albums of the year without fail), so I thought put together a short list of my favourite All-Channel campaigns from the past 12 months.
Not in any particular order (although obviously all of the Launch campaigns would be top of the list if we were ranking them). And also, even though my own specialism is digital, this is not a list of ten digital campaigns. However, most of them do have a strong digital element (but of course)
Here we go:
Betty Crocker – Whoopie Moments
You can read more about our All-Channel Betty Crocker campaign in the case study here, but to give you an executive summary: we built a bespoke Facebook app on the Betty Crocker UK page for fans to ‘share’ or ‘give’ whoopie moments (little bite size moments of joy) in celebration of Whoopie Pies launching in the UK. 12,000 new fans and 750 competition entries later, we’d spread joy around the UK (and Ireland) and made a considerable splash for Betty Crocker.
Heinz Get Well Soup
OK, so I did say this wasn’t a list of ten digital campaigns. However, I reserve the right to put digital campaigns in here. And I absolutely loved the simple genius of We Are Social’s Heinz Get Well Soup campaign. Launched at the beginning of cold and flu season, users could go onto the Heinz Soup Facebook page (using a specially designed app) and send sick friends a personalised can of Heinz soup. That’s it. A sentiment perfectly in keeping with the brand’s identity, and real ROI for Heinz (they obviously charged for the service). Very clever.
The Vaccines – User generated Instagram music video
Another campaign that I have blogged about before (complain if you like, but it’s my list) but it really was an inspired piece of theory and execution. The Vaccines partnered with Instagram and encouraged fans and photo-enthusiasts to upload their summer festival pics to a bespoke microsite. From the resulting images, a music video was cut together showcasing the best of the work. Great user generated content, viewed by (as of December 2011) one million people, saving Sony Music cash (real ROI) in the process. Genius.
Launch were approached by Virgin Holidays to generate mass awareness for their January sale, so we put together a big, quick-to-execute All-Channel campaign that secured coverage in the Metro, Daily Mirror, Evening Standard, The Times and The Daily Star. We took the idea of a ‘summer holiday’ in December as our motif, and held the world’s largest ever swimwear queue outside Virgin Holidays brand new swimwear emporium on High Street Kensington. It’s a great example of our all-channel approach, bringing together experiential and social media that results in fantastic media coverage.
Jay-Z – Decoded
At Launch, we’re well-schooled when it comes to combining experiential and digital, so it made us all warm ‘n’ fuzzy to see an outdoor + digital campaign rewarded at this year’s Cannes Lions awards. For the launch of Jay-Z’s autobiography, ‘Decoded’, agency Droga5 put every page of the book in a real world location. The digital element of the campaign came through a Bing Maps-enabled scavenger hunt, allowing the audience to uncover clues and locate pages.
A big idea, a truckload of ambition (exactly what you’d expect from Jay-Z) and big client demands all resulted in a truly innovative and memorable campaign.
Capital One – Credit Made Clearer
If you mention credit cards to people, they’ll probably talk about their latest purchases, or how they have a mountain of debt to pay off. They probably won’t know their current APR or what travel insurance cover they have as standard. That was the challenge Launch faced when Capital One asked us to help build consumer awareness of their Credit Made Clearer initiative. So we put together an All-Channel campaign that mixed handing out information to people in airport departure lounges, organising competitions and a blogger panel with a range of family, parenting and personal finance influencers, alongside three media relations stories that looked at lack of awareness around the detail of credit cards. The results? 18 pieces of national coverage, 502 pieces of coverage overall, and credit card awareness in the front of the paper, instead of the back.
Something of a theme here, with campaigns using maps APIs to create great content. Red Bull’s collaboration with Google Street View is another example of simple ideas always being the best. Red Bull used its clout to compile a database of the best street art from around the globe, then created a simple web portal that uses Google’s Street View technology and allows you to view the art in situ. It’s almost like being there.
Looking a little further afield, this campaign from Australia caught my eye. The National Australia Bank, to try and dissociate itself from the other major Aussie banks, publicly broke up with them on Valentine’s Day. This simple idea was moulded and adapted into an All-Channel approach – 60 couples broke up in public places, creating news stories and video content. The campaign also extended to press, outdoor, radio, mobile billboards, street teams, street chalking, and helicopter banners. The effort also ambushed execs from the other banks in their offices and elsewhere. Bold, typically Australian, but undoubtedly effective.
The NatWest Secret Cricketer
Sometimes, marketing campaigns simply make you smile. This is exactly what NatWest’s Secret Cricketer videos did for me. The bank signed up former England cricket captain Michael Vaughan, and persuaded him to dress up as an old man, and turn out for officially the worst cricket team in the UK. Their opponents needed to be none the wiser, and so he strode out into the middle and unleashed his signature cover drive. I would suggest you watch the video to find out what happened next.
Heard of The Banker? It’s an FT-owned publication, and as such, is subject to media compete issues when it comes to securing coverage. Launch ripped up that issue this year when creating awareness around The Banker’s annual ‘Top 1000 World Banks’ industry rankings. Using a mixture of briefings, news hijacking and good old fashioned news hooks, we secured 22 pieces of national / international coverage, as well as nine pieces of broadcast – across BBC, CNBC and Sky News. Highly targeted, highly talkable and hugely impressive. Even if we do say so ourselves.
Put together an all-channel PR and digital campaign to launch the new range of Betty Crocker Whoopie Pies in the UK
Challenge
Both Betty Crocker and Whoopie Pies are already well known in the United States, neither has strong penetration in the UK
Strategy
Working closely with General Mills, Launch Group helped come up with the concept of ‘Whoopie Moments’: those little unexpected and amusing moments which make you ‘whoop with joy’. It could be the time you baked the perfect brownie for someone special, or when your partner surprised you with a gift
Launch Group designed and built a bespoke Facebook application for Betty Crocker’s UK page. It allowed fans to ‘Share’ their Whoopie Moments for a chance to win prizes, or ‘Nominate’ others to receive a Whoopie Moment of their own
The Facebook application formed the focus for ALL of the marketing around the launch of Whoopie Pies: TV advertising included a call to action to ‘Share your Whoopie Moment’, as did the radio advertising. Facebook advertising and PPC activity (run by Launch) also helped to drive traffic to the app
A full PR campaign, including a launch XP event at the Good Housekeeping kitchen, perfectly complemented the digital and ATL activity – providing mainstream coverage with a call to action to visit Facebook
Results
750 competition entries across the two mechanics housed within the app
An increase in 12,000 fans of the Betty Crocker UK Facebook page
34,000 views of the Whoopie Moment tab
4,800 people talking about the page at the campaign’s peak
17 pieces of PR coverage (including the Mail Online)
Launch started life as a consumer brands project PR agency in 2001. We were one of PR Week’s best new agencies of the year, attracting great people and great clients alike.
In 2005, our offer began to integrate media relations, digital and events. We launched our corporate team around this time too.
And now, towards the end of 2011, we’re talking to people about our all-channel PR offer.
Innovation is good in business. In fact, if you don’t innovate, your business quickly loses its shine and appeal.
All-channel PR?
It’s logical – whatever you have to communicate, to whichever audiences, we consult around the key PR channels-to-market to do it. And we have all the capability in-house.
Clients should be guided, clients should be advised, and they shouldn’t feel hampered by one dimensional offers. There’s too much at stake in the real / virtual / consumer / corporate inter-connected world and the relationship between experience / content / digital and media needs to be well explained – and bought in part (if that’s the need against the audience), or in whole.
Some clients come to us and say – ‘we’d love a bit of that.’ And that’s great. Others come saying ‘we’re not sure, you tell us’. And that’s equally, if not more exciting.
One size doesn’t fit all. Having all the channels open and available has to be in a client’s best interest.
Add amazing people, brilliant thinking, collective culture and nice coffee and you’re probably on to something.
It gave me great joy this week to finally see the fruits of the collaboration between The Vaccines and Instagram come to life online, and not just because ‘Wetsuit’ is one my favourite tracks from their ‘What Did You Expect From The Vaccines?’ album.
No, the other reason for joy was that, working in digital as I do, you spend a lot of time discussing ideas such as user generated content, community building and online platforms, and not as much time putting theory into practice.
In case you’re not familiar with what the campaign was about, The Vaccines (and label Sony Music) put together a joint collaboration with the popular photo app/sharing service Instagram. Fans of the band were invited to share, via Instagram, an image which encapsulated ‘the perfect summer of music’. A microsite was built for images to be showcased, and all people had to do was tag their images with #vaccinesvideo, and they were in with a chance of their image being featured in a bona fide music video.
You can check out the final results below –
Here’s why l like it so much –
1.Devastatingly simple idea
2.Simple and flawless execution
3.Uses a new platform in an interesting way
4.Tapped into two growing communities – Vaccines fans and Instagram users
5.Generated a great piece of content (and probably saved Sony Music a few quid as a result)
The competition had 2,433 entries, numerous pieces of coverage and the video has nearly 300,000 views since it was uploaded on Thursday. Clearly spreading the word about both parties involved far and wide.
Facebook announced today (via Mashable) that it is changing the metrics that it uses as the basis for its Insights reporting tool on Facebook fan pages.
The new ‘People Talking About’ metric aims to provide admins and advertisers with more quantitative detail to user-initiated fan activity on pages.
It comes as part of a number of changes to the metrics used within Insights, adding extra detail about fans and they way they interact with each other, not just with you and your brand. There will now be four categories -
- Number of Likes for the page
- Friends of Fans (how many people are your fans connected to?)
- Weekly Total Reach – how many mentions of your page have there been within the Facebook universe?
- People Talking About (as referenced above)
Facebook, as Gordon Macmillan accurately posits, are worried about losing advertisers to other media channels. Advertisers thrive on quantitative data. Hence the change.
However, it got me to wondering, will this mean that people in general will start to shift away simply being impressed by the number of ‘fans’ a page has? Is this is new introduction the first step into having a default, universal measure of engagement that can be used for benchmarking campaigns. We certainly hope so.
It may be a corny phrase, but it’s certainly true. It’s not necessarily the size of your online community, it’s what you do with it that counts.
We had some exciting news at Launch towers this week, as the first details of Reputation Online’s Top 100 PR agencies made their way onto Twitter, c/o Vikki Chowney.
Launch is incredibly proud to be on the list at number 29 (you can check out a scan of the page below).
It’s a testament to the great work done by the whole team on a range of digital projects across a range of clients, including Disney, Royal British Legion and Tesco to name but a view.
As an integrated PR agency, we obviously put digital at the heart of everything we do, and encourage all of our staff to get involved in all aspects of activity.
I’d like to give a particular shout outs in recognition of their work to (in no particular order): Rachel Clark, Andy Nash, Rich Benson, Harriet Murphy, and obviously not forgetting our CEO Johnny Pitt, whose vision gives us the opportunity to work on such great projects in an innovative way.
You can pick up a copy of the full list in this week’s NMA. A microsite with details of all of the agencies featured launches next week.
We’re obviously sorry to see Reputation Online go, as well as the print version of NMA, and best wishes go out to everyone involved and affected.
