Category: Social Media Marketing

19/05/2013

Web 2.0: Are you feeling exploited?

Here’s an interesting question for social media junkies like myself: is social media fun, or exploitation of free labour?

As part of the book I’m writing on social media marketing, I was going through critiques of social media. Of course, and as expected, there was a lot of criticism in relation to privacy concerns. However, there is also an intriguing stream of research that has been published around the idea that social media represents essentially exploitation of free labour. The argument is, that social media relies on people contributing content, which they usually do for free. For example, I’m writing this blog for free. I have a Facebook profile, where I post pictures, write updates for free etc. At the same time, Facebook (or other media platform) relies on this voluntarily and free contribution to make money. The question therefore is, is maintaining besides basically exploitation? This is particularly interesting, as clearly, many people enjoy “being exploited” in this way.

From a traditional “economic” perspective, where consumer and producer are strictly separated, I can see the point of this critique. However, I am also gaining something in return, which seems to be unattributed for, at least in the articles that I have come across. For example, while it’s true that I contribute free labour to Facebook in the form of maintaining my profile, Facebook also returns valuable services to me. For example, staying in touch with my friends. Of course, staying in touch with my friends has no immediate monetary “value”, but is still something very valuable to me. I’m not trying to dismiss the critique in articles such as this or this, but I’m slightly surprised that the argument here seems to be largely around monetary value, rather than taking a more holistic view off what value might mean to the individual. For example, the monetary value of something that friend gave me on a special occasion, may be very little or nothing when I try to sell it. But this is something might be very valuable to me.

However, I’m quite intrigued by the argument being put forward. How do you feel? Do you think that social media is inherently exploitative? Are we even potentially moving to a new form off capitalist exportation this article claims? Let me know what you think!

6/03/2013

Unilever & Social Media ROI

Unilever just announced that they will be curbing their social media spend – at least for some brands, as it doesn’t deliver enough return on investment. This is a really interesting case, as social media seems to work for them for some brands – but not for others. This could, of course have two reasons: The brands are simply not suitable for social media – or they used social media ineffectively. So in a rough and ready comparison I looked at two of their brands and how each brand used twitter:

First up: Marmite (@marmite).
First impressions: the twitter profile is clearly not very interactive, with little retweets or replies – no much of a communication going on there with the friends and followers.
The tweets themselves are all pretty much clearly a sales attempt: “Can you imagine a world without Marmite?” Followed a day later by “Finish the sentence: The thing I love most about Marmite is _____________” – and a bit of sales promotions thrown in: “RT & Follow by 5pm today for a chance to win a 250g jar of Marmite in our #MondayMadness comp”

In short: Sales pitches, incentives and no interaction – everything that social media should NOT be! Marmite is an iconic brand, a brand that lives by the “love or hate” debate they created a few years back. Is it really surprising that Unilever found that the ROI from this sort of social media campaign was less than running sales promotions in shops?

Second one up: Lynx (@lynxeffect)
First impression: where are their tweets? It’s a whirl of interactivity there! Retweets galore, interactivity central … These guys are clearly having a conversation!
What are they talking about? The Lynx astronaut. “Girls want to marry him. Men want to marry him, too.” … ermm.. hold on… aren’t they supposed to be selling a deodorant? Well, it’s clearly more a lighthearted conversation about their advertising character. Scrolling a bit further back, the conversation also offers sales promotions – but not the “win a bottle of lynx” type… but it’s all about how to prepare a perfect Valentine’s day.
In short: Clearly “living the brand” – it’s about girls, fotty and astronauts here. Following and interacting with Lynx will get you lots of [kind of sexist but possibly] entertaining tips on how to be the best bloke, conversation and banter – and sales are a minimum. That’s clearly the Lynx brand personality. The result, according to Unilever, is that they want to maintain their Social Media engagement for the brand, because “it’s a good fit” and achieves good ROI.

I’d say – actually it’s more more good social media marketing: Few(er) people want to follow someone who doesn’t talk to you, and just bluntly promotes their product. Social media is about the social: In social media people connect with friends (and brands) on an affective, emotional and social level, therefore, social means the funny, engaging and “living your brand like a human” side.

3/03/2013

What makes good Social Media Marketing?

If asked about what is the secret of successful social media marketing… try the following: What makes good Social Media Marketing?

OK, that seems a bit too easy… so maybe a trip down memory lane might show up a few hints: Let’s remember who were the first “social networkers”… It’s a bit debatable, but a list of the first social media websites probably looks something like this:
1994: Gay.com
1997: SixDegrees.com
1999: AsianAvenue and BlackPlanet
2000: MiGente
… lots of websites in the middle…
2005: Facebook

Thus, apart from sixdegrees.com, all of the first social networking websites were targeted at minorities: sexual minorities or ethnic minorities (I have the feeling a few other minorities could probably be added to this – but I’m basing this on an article by boyd and Ellisson, who list the main social networking sites). The obvious question is why would this be the case? Well, a possible explanation might be that an important function of [online] social networks is social support, that is, they give members of a community easy access to knowledge about practices and behaviours of “people like me” (aka ‘Mi Gente’ in Spanish). Therefore, the original social networks were a tool for free self-expression, even for self-validation, in a world of a perceived hostile majority community. They enabled living out one’s ideas, one’s “real” identity, although “just” in a virtual space, where community members were “not the weirdest kids in their class”.

Of course, social media has spread well beyond ethnic or sexual minority groups. But, the mechanics are pretty much the same: People are using social networks to find and communicate with other people “like me”. Brands and products are subtle clues about finding other “people like me” in the real world: Think Abercrombie and gay (see this discussion, for example). In other words, if your brand has a signal status of belonging to a particular group, then social networks – online and offline, are going to talk about your brand, like your brand, maybe even follow your brand on social networks. Of course, at that stage most of the followers are already customers… they are part of the “brand community” (I use this a bit loosely here, sorry to my fellow marketing academics). So what can you do to increase your brands emotional bond to the community? Overt sales offers? Certainly not. Clear support for the agenda of your community? Most certainly yes!In other words: Act like a supportive friend. Like someone who really cares what happens to the community members – not someone who wants to sell something. Of course, that is actually simply good marketing: the definition of marketing from the AAA emphasises offering something “of value”. In social networks the value of your offering is social – it’s the value of being a friend to your followers!

25/02/2013

Oscar Tweetlight

Dear Social Media Marketers…

After yesterday’s Oscar celebrations, it appears some of you have not quite learned the first lesson of social media: Social media, such as twitter, is for people to communicate with each other.

So, for example, during the Oscars, many people used twitter (or other social networks) to communicate with their friends, family members, followers, etc – hey even with their favourite brands. What they were talking about were movies, dresses, actors and actresses. Of course, as a marketeer, or a brand, your very much invited to join the conversation. But please bear in mind, that on social networks your audience is there not to hear you selling something, but to hear you contributing the discussion.

Funny tweets, adding something are cool. Because they make your brand look good, and you appear like an active participant in the conversation. That’s what you marketers call building a “relationship”. Take this one (with image) by Nintendo: “And now, a special message from Bowser… RAWR Wreck-it Ralph got robbed” (image here: https://twitter.com/NintendoAmerica/status/305859830650896384/) – good one. Plenty of retweeds, taking part in the conversation. Making a point. The brand acting like a friend who wants to chat.

Compare this with “Lincoln may not know what a cell phone is but even he can appreciate Truly Unlimited data while on the Sprint network” (here) are just … [deleted due to trying to be nice]. It’s simple: Dear Sprint (and others like you – and there were plenty), if you don’t want to join the conversation, but disrupt the conversation by inserting sales messages then social networks are not for you.

Nobody follows a sales person to listen to them selling something. If you think social networks are like opt-in sales lists, where every conversation can be prepped up with a bit of sales talk… then please return to the drawing board. It doesn’t enhance the brand, it doesn’t create positive vibes, it doesn’t create positive relationships… it’s simply annoying.

Please remember, most of the people who follow you are probably your customers already… so why do you want to bore them with… a little more sales talk? In social media, your brand is “humanised”, it appears just as all other humans. So, act like a human, talk like a human. Then people will interact with your brand … like a human. Unfortunately, if your social media personality is annoying door to door sales person, many people will treat you exactly like that: They will close the door. Sorry!

24/02/2013

Why Social Media needs qualitative research – not numbers

Social media (and the wider Internet for that matter) is full of numbers that appear to be explaining things… from 57% of users of network Y doing X to 46% of users of website B coming from C. The problem with all these numbers is that, although they seem to explain what is going on – they mean we forget to understand why it is going on. This is especially true in the case of social networks: many researchers (and marketing “gurus” at the same time) seem to treat social networks, and by that I mean anything from the classic social networks to forums, groups, everywhere where people interact online, just like any other mass media channel. Talking big numbers, rather than small stories.

The problem is, that, for the most part, these researchers forget that actually twitter users are not the same as people who watch ITV1, while facebook users are not the same as people who listen to Capital Radio. What many people forget is that social media networks are, for the most part, made up of circles of friends (or people sharing a common interest) who are using social media technology to do what they want to do. As Hart put it in 1992: The internet is a “growing community of communities”, or as more modern authors would call it “Tribes”. That makes social media very different from a traditional media outlet, even a traditional media channel for the most part. Understanding that “tribe members” are there with a purpose means that in many ways, social media is probably more and more like person to person conversation, or telephone conversations. Yes, social media can be measured more easily than say telephone conversations (Wouldn’t it be fun, if we could say “37% of telephone users mention brand X when speaking to their friends”) – but really, social media is and remains a big conversation between distinct networks of friends. When I talk with someone on twitter it is nothing like a TV advert, but it simply is a conversation that is public… that may be between me and all followers, or it may be between me and just one friend. And the ultimate dynamics that are governing the conversation are not numbers and probabilities, but quite unique relationship dynamics. Dynamics that may, span across different social networks: For example, I may be responding to something a friend wrote on LinkedIn by means of sending a @tweet. Or in fact, conversations may be strongly influenced by relationship dynamics which go beyond social media sites, when taking to someone I know in real life. Yet, all the quantitative tools and amazing numbers that we have won’t account for that. Sentiment analysis simply doesn’t account for irony or “in jokes”.

Of course, quantitative numbers aren’t useless… far from it. But when it comes to human interactions they explain some, but not all of the dynamics that are at work. And more often than not, what they do forget is that social media is actually not one big audience – but simply circles of audiences, tribes – or simply a few humans speaking to each other using this technology. And many conversations and relationships online are just as unique as those in real life. So we need to understand, more than simply “numerise”, what is actually going on, if we are trying to make sense of consumers, followers, friends, contacts and whomever else we talk with…

14/02/2013

Cute, viral… but effective?

It amuses me just how many people confuse viewers or exposures to use the correct lingo (I guess) with effectiveness. Take this quite viral video by a well known German company:

It has racked up almost a quarter of a million views on YouTube since being posted just two days ago. Not bad, even in terms of “traditional” advertising. It’s also quite good that it is subtitled in English to appeal to an international audience… which no doubt facilitated that I (based in the UK) got the video from someone based in the US (!).

All good then… Well… here’s the problem: The video might have gone happily viral, and it may be seen by a lot of people, but how many of these are likely to purchase the product (and I guess that is ultimately why they made the video?)? Well, the person who sent me the video had no idea what the video is about, let alone that it is an advert, and thought it was from a German TV show. I can understand he was probably confused because it was just too long … and you have to wait for a long time until you get to see what it is all about (and I’m not gonna tell you, but I dare you to watch it for that looooooong!).

Again it raises the problem, of what social media campaigns are actually designed to achieve? The product is a new product line, so how does “going viral” in a market where the product isn’t even available help? It is also evidently not a cheap production, so someone must have spend quite some money (and thought?) on thinking “How do I get that product known?”. Of course, it’s easy to suggest that social media is simply unpredictable (well.. sort of…), and that nobody is in control (sort of…). But that doesn’t mean that spending lots of money and have a “hit and miss” approach to media and campaign planning is the answer. Instead it means clearly that what marketing managers should be doing is be extra careful about what they do: how they integrate messages and how they ensure that messages are not just “cool” and “shareable” – but also achieve an objective. The sad realisation for many marketers maybe that in the end, social media is actually often not such a revolutionary media at all… but rather just another communications vehicle, with some characteristics that complement traditional channels. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make social media in any way immune to good old planning, rather it shows that established theories, models and (prior) research is even more applicable in an environment where messages travel at supersonic speed. And that when all is said and done, having a hyper “cool” video, a great viral ad or a gazillion-times shared pic doesn’t always mean you are successfully influencing behaviour, purchase intentions or even brand-connected emotions.

13/02/2013

Twitter vs Traditional: Which is more effective?

Here is an interesting argument: Apparently a brand “won” the advertising battle during the Super Bowl – not by advertising… but by tweeting (see for example, here – or here). While the tweet was, indeed, pretty funny… the question is was that tweet really “better” than a traditional advert? Well.. one critical voice is Mark Ritson, who argues in this article that no media is ever better than the other. I guess he has a point in saying that – at least from an impact perspective – an advert seen by several million people can hardly compare with a tweet tweeted to a few thousand followers. However, apart from a simple audience measurement perspective, there is another quite important point to consider – and that is who is most likely to be exposed to the tweet or advert respectively. I’d argue that is actually a crucial point – and that this makes quite a bit of difference when deciding who “won the battle”…

Let’s just think about who is likely to watch an advert vs who is likely to follow a brand on twitter (or facebook, or whatever). In the case of the Super Bowl, the audience is likely to be people interested in sport. If these are people who also like Oreo may (or may not) be the case. But in either case, the prime motivator for watching the game is not to find out something new/funny/entertaining about cookies. Alternatively, who follows Oreo (or any other brand) on social networks? Probably people who are quite involved (in an emotional way) with the brand already. That might explain why approximately 20 million of those cookies are eaten every day – but only 75.000 people follow Oreo on Twitter. Thus, having a brilliant tweet is hardly going to raise awareness or even remind people of the existence of Oreo (in case anybody needed to be reminded). But rather, a funny tweet is most likely to strengthen the emotional bond with already loyal followers.

The other important point is surely to figure out how any media (and media users’ characteristics) feature in the campaign objective. For example, if the main objective is to raise awareness of a brand, well, social media is probably pretty useless. Even if something is reweeted or shared, I’d wonder how much of this really has an effect that is more than very short-term. On the other hand, if it is to strengthen emotional bonds, or show a certain brand personality, then a traditional advert is probably less effective. At least less effective than tweeting and talking to a select few followers on a daily basis… (and occasionally being retweeted).

So if anybody is trying to answer whether or not Oreo (and social media by implication) should be crowned the winner of the advertising battle, I’d be a little skeptical and answer: “It all depends”. And of course, I do so while remembering that I retweeted a multicoloured Oreo sometime last summer (which a friend tweeted, from a friend, from a friend etc). While the image was cute, memorable and catchy… I also haven’t eaten an Oreo for several years now…. At least for their sales, not sure my retweet was a success.

5/11/2012

Social Media: Time to stop the hype…

Recently, I’m starting to turn into what could be described as a social media contrarian. Maybe it was some work I was doing with some rather ineffective social media users, but if I hear one more time that social media is some form of magical golden bullet I may have to start screaming loudly….

Let’s be clear: social media is a communication tool. I think it’s sometimes fast, and yes, it can potentially reach many people. But… the emphasis here is on sometimes and potentially. It’s also full of hot air – and even more so surrounded by people who believe the hot air. My particular favourite at the moment are people who have “just launched an app” (why that in itself is social is a little beyond me), and are so in love with their own app, that they completely forget why people would use the app… Or they have just (welcome to 2012!) started on twitter – and are now expecting hordes of people to follow – and amazing act upon what they say (preferably when they are actually not themselves interacting at all). My absolute favourite in this aspect must be a particular doctors surgery. They really did have the (insert suitable word here) to tell me, that they had posted on twitter (!!) that they had started flu vaccinations – and now expected most of their regular vaccinees to turn up. Funnily… they didn’t (especially not those over 65 for some reason…).

While this incident may be comical to the extreme, it does highlight the complete ignorance that still exists about social media – it’s effectiveness and the totally overhyped reach of those messages. Compare it to good old traditional advertising: The message may not be particularly effective (on a per person basis) but many people will still see it. So there is a pretty good chance a few will act. So a nice advert on Downtown Abbey will reach a few million people – and a few might act.

If you come to social media, suddenly everyone seems to be counting people that are “on it” as their own personal “reach”. Well… the problem is they are not. Take said doctors surgery… They have 50 followers on twitter. Many of whom are not exactly human (but “follow backs”) – so their reach, when you count what looks like humans, is somewhere around the 30 mark. If we assume they have about 10.000 patients on their “list”, then… well the reach isn’t exactly promising, is it?I don’t even wish to point out, that all they have ever done is blast a few “news” items at their followers – rather than interact in any meaningful way. So why would anybody even notice what they are saying?

The problem with social media is, that really no matter how important you are, you have no exclusivity of voice – and there are many, many voices. So how do you attract attention? Well, not by randomly blasting out news items as if you are the state news reader from North Korea. It’s all about adding value (oh no!). And the best way to do that is to engage with the people that follow you, just act as “human” to make people connect emotionally - and then your reach will grow and social media will add value to the followers. Other ways are, of course, to offer discounts (many brands try it that way)… amongst other ways… Either way: if you fail to engage or add value… well… you may just be a social media lone wolf.

18/06/2012

Mobile Advergames: Is it ok for 4 year olds to play with beer?

I’ve recently been looking a lot at various advergames across different platforms (such as mobile phones, online etc). An interesting point I noticed was the “age rating” given by Apple’s iTunes store – which seems very strange compared to normal practice. Take the example of Grolsch (beer in case you need reminding!). Their website is only accessible if you “prove” your age, i.e. when you enter a birthday more than 18 years ago. Of course, this is very much in line with both the industry pledges as well as the guidelines by the Advertising Standards Authority that alcohol promotions should not be targeted at minors. Now, I’d have thought that this also extends to games played on phones. I’m not sure how many parents really do activate the parental controls of their phone (particularly when they give to children to play with) – but at least they are there in case the parents are concerned. Anyway, the obvious answer in terms of age rating seems to be wrong. So if you check what age the NHS Drinks Tracker is – then the restriction is 12+. Apparently, this is because of “Infrequent (Really!! Infrequent?? In an alcoholic drinks tracker??)/Mild Alcohol, Tobacco, Drug Use or References to these”. Now, I can understand that. Presumably someone under 12 really should not be needing the app to track how many units of alcohol they are consuming. I’m not sure they would do it anyway, given how massively complicated and, lets face it, totally unexciting the app is (see previous post on not so exciting social marketing apps for more).
Now enter Grolsch: If you want to download their game you need to be 4 years old (see screen shot above). While indeed you need to enter a birthday the first time you run the app, after that the app remains a “4+” app – i.e. if you activate parental controls, the app will still be visible and playable – allowing children to “play with beer” on the phone.
Maybe it’s time Apple tightened the controls over their apps? Can it be that BBC News is higher rated (12+) than an game potentially familiarising children with an alcohol brand?