» Social Media Marketing

Just days before the 40^th anniversary of Earth Day, Procter & Gamble was poised to create awareness for its 30-year long support of bird rescue groups by launching a new addition to the “Dawn Saves Wildlife” campaign that began last July and featured $1 donations to wildlife for the purchase of specialty-marked bottles. This campaign was supported by a dedicated website and by social media marketing.

But then, a few days short of Earth Day, the Deep Water Horizon oil rig exploded. Had this campaign been hijacked by bad timing?

Procter & Gamble’s brand managers now found themselves making a tough decision, quickly. Do they continue to run the new Dawn campaign additions and run the risk of being publically accused of taking advantage of the timing of this disaster in the gulf? Or do they pull the campaign all together, which could also imply guilt?

Procter & Gamble took neither route, and instead they decided to shift the current campaigns emphasis from an inert support of wildlife to a specific opportunity for concerned consumers to assist in the cleanup of the gulf disaster with their purchase of a specially marked bottle of Dawn ($1 donation).

How they did it: Procter & Gamble quickly added a TV spot tag to the Dawn “Washed Away” TV spot to encourage consumers to support the gulf effort by directing people to the Dawn Facebook page for more information on how they could help.

Perhaps Procter & Gamble’s biggest achievement in rerouting this campaign was the emphasis of their new efforts on the Dawn Facebook, twitter and YouTube pages. Here they have focused on posting updates on the spill, detailing the numbers of birds washed and released, sharing of gulf oiled wildlife rescue stories and videos we well as information on how fans can get involved.

By sticking to their guns and with the use of social media, Procter & Gamble prevented its campaign from being “washed away” and instead helped connect consumers to Dawn’s ongoing effort to aid in wildlife rescue in the gulf.

Is this the message you wanted online?

Every marketer, PR agency and company knows that in order to be successful, you need to stay relevant. But nowadays, in the world of Facebook and Twitter, where news travels faster than Brangelina has babies, it’s easy enough for your brand message to get lost in the shuffle, let alone be in control of the content.

Google, while mostly known as the leading search engine, is a great tool to see what people are looking for in relation to your brand. Just start typing your search term and boom — up pops five of the most popular searches related to what you are looking for. You can’t get better raw statistics anywhere. But what happens when your brand is listed in conjunction with something completely unrelated?

We’ve all heard the horror stories — how one scathing review or editorial can ruin your entire quarter, launch or year, and unfortunately, the world of social media is no kinder. Instead of one magazine or one critic, you have millions of them. And although each one alone may not seem significant, the impact of the collective can be unstoppable.

For example, let’s take a look at food. There’s no denying that food is a hot topic. Between the TV shows, magazines and a plethora of food-focused blogs, it’s clear America’s appetite for everything culinary is only getting bigger. This growing fascination with food, restaurants and reality TV, has taken the chef out of the kitchen and into the spotlight. Nowadays, people are more likely to recognize Tom Collichio than Dick Cheney.

Is this Top Chef known for his sauce...or his saucy encounter?

Because of this love of food, BRAVO’s “Top Chef” is one of the most watched shows on television, turning home-town bakers into red carpet A-listers overnight. But once the show is over, and a new season returns, those old-time favorites fade into the background, with the exception of a key few. And what is it that keeps them on top? Their knife-wielding skills? Their delicate sauces? Their penchant for everything bacon? Sadly, no. For Top Chefs like Hosea Rosenberg (Season 5 Winner), his appearances on everything from TMZ to Page Six has little to do with his kitchen prowess and more to do with his extracurricular activities — namely, a romance with a fellow “Top Chef” contestant, Leah Cohen.

If you begin to type “Hosea Rosenberg” into Google, you expect to see the automatic suggested search term be something related to food or “Top Chef,” and you do see it (in the third, fourth and fifth result). But the number one search after Hosea’s own name? “Hosea Rosenberg Leah Cohen.”

For someone like Hosea, this sort of media attention — although not focused on his cooking capabilities — still benefits his business by attracting customers to his restaurants. But in most cases, it’s this type of random association that can dilute a brand or a product without the company even knowing it.

Therefore, it’s imperative to get your online messages straight. When everyone is a critic, it can be difficult to streamline a message. But here are three simple rules to get you started:

1. Support your concept: If you are going to label yourself as something and expect to be identified as such, you need to scream it from the rooftops (and everywhere else for that matter). So if you are a chef looking to be recognized as a chef –not a reality show star or a bachelor — you better make that clear.

2. Sync up: Whether you have a blog here, a Twitter account there and a Facebook page somewhere in between, everything should have the same look and feel and be linked together. Although Hosea (I’m sorry to say) lacks sufficient social media presence (his Facebook page is merely a holding place), there are plenty of YouTube clips, but they are not synched to any other pages. YouTube should be mentioned on Facebook , Facebook should be driving Twitter followers, and Twitter should be sending people to the blog.

3. Self-promote constantly through a diversified social media portfolio: Similar to point #2, if you are going to produce content (which Hosea has a lot of), it needs to be disseminated through all of the channels. If you only update on certain social media networks every so often, your brand message will lose steam and opens up the possibility for it to be diluted by outside sources.

Maybe if Hosea was a bit more active in his social media channels, he would be known more for his Chile-Citrus Shrimp with Coconut Rice, Gingered Peas and Red Curry Vinaigrette, than his smooch with a saucy single.

Photo by KAT / Meet The Famous via Newscom

“Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead,” a new marketing-meets-music book by co-authors David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan, has hit the shelves. The book details how the Grateful Dead fell into a business model that turned out to be nearly as noteworthy as its music. Throughout the years, The Dead broke almost every rule in the music industry book and profited as a result. The marketing lessons—and the effect the band had on the music industry and their fans—apply to businesses of all kinds.

We were able to sit down with David Meerman Scott to discuss his outlook on businesses and social media. Here are his thoughts and some great tips on how to navigate the social media world.

CerconeBrown & Co. (CBC): Why should businesses even engage in social media?

David Meerman Scott (DMS): The whole concept of social media is kind of misunderstood, and I think social media itself is a bit of a buzz word. I like to suggest that every organization on the planet be publishing content on the Web. All organizations should think of themselves as publishers of information, and most organizations don’t think that way. They think, ‘I’m an automaker, I make ski boats, I’m in the wine business.’ To reach people online, the right way is to think like a publisher of content and create really interesting information.

Now, social media is just one aspect of that, and my, sort of loose, definition of social media is that it’s content that people can add to in some form or fashion. So, a blog post with comments becomes social media; a video on YouTube with comments becomes social media. Facebook and Twitter are, of course, social networking services, which is a sub-set of social media as well. But, I think that when people think about social media, they tend to say that social media is only things like Twitter and Facebook. I think that’s a very wrong, and almost even dangerous, way of thinking about how organizations can use Web content to help drive people to their businesses.

David Meerman Scott

CBC:  What is the biggest challenge a business encounters when adapting to social media?

DMS: There’s no question in my mind that the biggest challenge is that businesses find it very, very difficult not to talk about themselves. Most of marketing, advertising and public relations is egotistical, and it’s companies talking about their products and services. If you look at any advertising, it tends to be focused on the products, but, in the social media world, nobody cares about products. They care about themselves, and they care about interactions. They care about meeting people; they care about solving problems. And none of those things are specifically related to products and services. So, the biggest challenge companies face with social media is how can they avoid and resist talking about their products and services. There are a lot of blogs, Twitter feeds and Facebook pages out there that are dying because no one cares about them, and the reason nobody cares about them is because they’re focused on the company’s products and services.

CBC: What is one piece of advice that you would give a business that is trying to expand its social media presence?

DMS: Most think the right thing to do is to think about who are the people you are trying to reach, who are, I call them “buyer personas.” Instead, think about who are the people that your organization wants to engage and what problems do those people have that you might be able to help them to learn about, or help them to solve. So that means that if you’re going to create a video, it shouldn’t be about your products — it should be addressing an issue that the people you want to reach have and somehow engaging them too, in the form of educating them or providing advice or whatever it might be. The biggest thing organizations can do to be successful is understand very, very deeply the people that you’re trying to reach, so that you can create the sort of content that will be valuable for them.

CBC: Do you think that social media a good alternative to marketing based on budget concerns?

DMS: I mean, yeah, it’s free to do a blog post, it’s free to do an e-book, it’s free to do a YouTube video — so certainly. These things don’t cost money in terms of media; however they do take time. Blog posts don’t write themselves, and videos don’t film themselves, so people have to figure out how they’re going to budget for the time required to create some of this stuff. What I’m recommending to a lot of organizations is if they do have a budget in place, or if there are resources that can be reallocated, that one of the best people to hire are journalists. I call it “brand journalism” when an organization creates content in the same “story-telling” mentality as a journalist creates content. So if there is budget, it means how can we allocate it away from just simply buying ads to creating some interesting information? And if there’s not a budget, how can we allocate time to create this stuff because the actual media is free?

CBC: What constitutes a social media expert? Do they even exist?

Scott's award winning book, "The New Rules of Marketing & PR"

DMS: I don’t know what that means. I’ve been doing social media for 25 years; I’ve been writing about social media now for about 10 years. I have, arguably, the most popular book in the world about social media marketing that’s published in 26 languages. I don’t consider myself a social media expert.

You’re right — there are thousands of people that consider themselves social media experts. I think what organizations need are people who are experts in telling stories, people who have a journalistic background, who are able to create things that are interesting for the people they are trying to reach. If I don’t know how to use twitter, or I don’t know how to create a YouTube video, that’s really easy to learn. So maybe you can ask a “social media expert” how to figure out how to get a twitter profile up, but I don’t think that’s valuable in terms of creating content, because those people — although there are a lot of exceptions — generally are not experts in telling stories; they’re experts in the tools themselves.

CBC: What is social media’s “big thing” so far in 2010?

DMS: I think the biggest thing in 2010 is that it’s become mainstream. I’ve been talking about this stuff for a long time, and I was a lone voice in the woods a long time ago, and now it seems like the whole world is talking about it, so it’s very, very interesting to me that I used to be a heretic and people wouldn’t listen to me — they would scoff at what I said. I think it’s fascinating now that there is so much interest in all of this stuff, so I’m almost amazed that the sorts of things I’ve been thinking and talking about now have become so popular.

The other thing are mobile applications with GPS components with them, like Foursquare and Layer — iPhone apps and other mobile device applications that the device knows where you physically are based on the GPS grid. That becomes fascinating because all of a sudden, using this from a marketing perspective, people know where you are, and it’s interesting on a lot of levels and I think we’re only scratching the service in the direction that might go.

CBC: Anything else you’d like to add?

DMS: Yeah, just one thing. This can be fun. I don’t know that people who have done marketing for 25 years like I have have always thought their job was really fun, but I think that these ways of communicating are really, really fun and I think it’s really heartening that our jobs now can be a lot more fun and interesting and exciting than they were in the past. I just want to make sure that people don’t think of this as work; it’s not work, it’s fun, and in my case, I can’t believe I’ve made a living having fun. It’s really exciting.

“Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead”  is currently available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble, among others.

Learn more about the new book at David Meerman Scott’s blog, Web Ink Now, and join the authors on their “Follow the Band” Book Tour (hashtag #GDbook), which will be updated at the “Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead” Facebook page.

Photos: Wiley, David Meerman Scott

Take a sneak peak into the jargon-laden world of social media. Whether you’re new to social media marketing, want to brush up on innovative terminology, or are just interested in what these foreign words mean, you’re in luck!

This week in Cercone Brown & Co.’s social media glossary, explore important terms that go on behind your blog, like “dashboard,” “atom” and “syndication”. Learn about  Twitter — better yet, get it as a widget!

Atom- I swear it has nothing to do with chemistry! Rather, Atom is a popular type of feed format that is used for syndicating content. It is an alternative to RSS. 

Dashboard- A dashboard can mean many things when it comes to software, but in the case of a blog, it refers to the administration interface area of your blog that allows you to post, upload files, and manage your posts.

Syndication- Much like the syndication of a television show, like my personal fave Friends, the syndication of your blog allows summaries of your content to be distributed freely on the Web (usually through an RSS feed or Atom).

Twitter- I’m sure at one point or another you’ve heard about Twitter. The social networking site uses short messages, or “tweets,” allowing you to update followers about whatever you consider the latest and greatest going on in your life. You too can follow other members, and receive messages up to 140 characters long.

Widget- In social media terms, a widget is a highly targeted — often niche — application that can be embedded into sites like a webpage or blog by any user who has authorship rights. This could range from a widget that shows you the weather to a widget displaying the latest posts from your blogging buddies. See the image above depicting a slew of available widgets.

SWIX is an online social media analytics tool that tracks and measures activity on company-managed pages on sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

‘Bros Icing ‘Bros website creates viral marketing phenomenon for drink brand Smirnoff Ice.

Boston PR agency Cercone Brown & Co. takes you through terms like URL and short code in this week’s edition of the Social Media Glossary.

Snack Brand Popchips Hires Ashton Kutcher as Social Media Lead, Paves Way for New Era of Celebrity Brand Leadership

Just the other week, Popchips Inc. hired actor and twitter master Ashton Kutcher as their new social media lead/ “President of Pop Culture.”  For those of you who have yet to hear of this company, Popchips Inc. is an emerging potato chip company that differentiates itself from competitors by offering chips that are “popped” (not fried or baked).

Although this announcement may come as a surprise to most (let’s be honest, what other social media experience does Kutcher really have other than providing the world with his daily overindulgent twitter posts?), Popchips is joining the list of companies who have chosen to utilize celebrity names as not just the face of their brand, but as the brains behind it.

Now, Kutcher will be tasked to help lead the emerging brand’s social media marketing efforts, and I must admit — I am interested to see what he has up his sleeve.  So far, since his first week as president of pop culture, Kutcher has posted several tweets from his personal twitter account about this announcement, as well as a picture of his tour at the Popchip factory in San Francisco.

Although this may seem minimal for now, with over five million followers to his name (more than both Oprah and Barack Obama), these tweets certainly do not fall onto deaf ears.  Since the announcement from his twitter account, the twitterverse has been flooded with users asking what are these chips that @aplusk is raving about and where can they get them.

Additionally, the company has scored major media placements in both The Wall Street Journal and New York Magazine with this announcement, which has helped to at least create some serious immediate attention around the brand; whether or not they agree or disagree with Kutcher’s new role, people are certainly talking about the company.

Kutcher’s new role is just the latest announcement of celebrities being chosen as not just brand ambassadors, but as key integral members of a company.  For example, earlier this year Polaroid named Lady Gaga as their chief creative officer, while Sarah Jessica Parker was also recently named chief creative officer of the fashion brand Halston.

In today’s society, it is a becoming a sometimes troubling, yet true reality, that celebrities are shaping the world that we live in.  They’re impacting what we buy, what we eat, who we vote for, and so on and so on. People are listening to what they say and following what they do, and companies are capitalizing on this.

Take for example, twitter.  Does anyone think it would be where it is today without its major celebrity players of Ashton Kutcher, Oprah, Lady Gaga, Ellen DeGeneres, Britney Spears, Kim Kardashian and John Mayer?  It is certainly no coincidence that the top 10 most followed twitter users are all celebrities.

So with Kutcher’s first week under his belt he has received great feedback from the brand’s loyal facebook and twitter fans, but has also already been facing some harsh criticism from experts.  New York Magazine’s Daily Intel posted,

“When Ben Bernanke said the recession was over September of last year, we were skeptical.  Only now that a celebrity who has risen to prominence doing mostly nothing is onboard to promote a product that is made of mostly air by doing basically nothing, do we truly feel that everything is going to be all right.”

I personally must admit I am quite curious to see what happens in the upcoming weeks and will keep my eye out for Popchips’ new social media strategies.  Although the terms of the deal remain sealed, I think we all must admit that regardless of what Kutcher does from here on out, Popchips has certainly emerged as a brand that has gotten people’s attention.

Photos: Popchips; Ashton Kutcher --Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images via Picapp.com

“Sorry, Twitter is Over Capacity.”

Since the commencement of the World Cup, the Web has been saturated with the likes of Cristiano Rinaldo, Kaka, Wayne Rooney, and the rest of Fifa’s stars.  From Facebook fan pages, to Twitter accounts, to mobile apps, and YouTube, there has been an unparalleled amount of World Cup social media initiatives, hence, the maddening sight of the Twitter Fail Whale.

Some players, like those of Spain, Brazil, Mexico, Holland, Germany, Argentina, and England, were forbidden to tweet, like, or check in with any social media tools. Some coaches, like Marcelo Biesela of Chile, even established a social networking curfew for their players, but that never hindered the explosion of social media in the 2010 World Cup.

Every single website that simply mentioned the competition had anything from online news to blogs, forums, and embedded videos. CNN teamed up with the social networking game Foursquare to create “World Cup Badges” for their avid users (check out Cercone Brown & Co.’s Tool Time to learn the ins and outs of Foursquare).   With this nimble collaboration, people from the 32 competing nations could connect while watching the matches.  Fans that traveled to South Africa to watch the games received the “South Africa Explorer” badge, and people that watched from bars, pubs, and public viewing parties received the “Super Fan” badge.

Aside from social networking tools, YouTube presumably played a part in this social media roar.  Nike’s World Cup ad video “Write the Future,” which featured some of the world’s top football players, flared up to an astounding 18.8 million+ views.  Some of the 33,487 comments about the viral video include, “Incredible!” “Brilliant!” and “I’d still love Rooney if he had a bigass beard.”  Other World Cup ads that rocked YouTube are the Shakira official World Cup song with over six million views, the adidas Star Wars ad with almost three million views, and the Pepsi and Optus ads with a combined number of one million views.

Not only did this social media evolution allow football’s best to interact with their fans, but it also allowed more businesses to join the unfolding of the future of marketing.  For example, Visa decided to utilize social media instead of traditional advertising by launching a campaign that generated a profusion of responses.  The credit card provider recently reported that at the end of June, its first-ever Fifa-themed global marketing campaign, “Go Fans,” reached 5.6 million views on YouTube.  The second component of their campaign, “Visa Match Planner,” was downloaded by well over 53,000 fans on Facebook.

It seems as if more businesses are catching on to this phenomenon.  Let the social media evolution continue…

Boston PR agency Cercone Brown & Co. takes you through terms like crowdsourcing and RSS in this week’s edition of the Social Media Glossary.