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Do Social Ads Make Sense for Your Brand? Don't Get Carried Away by the Hype

I can foresee the future.

Unfortunately my ability doesn't extend to anything that could make me rich, like knowing which stocks to pick or what lottery numbers will win. Nor does it help with anything useful, like knowing that I will break the heel off my shoe just before an important meeting, or that my little niece will throw up in my car.

However, I can predict that marketers will flock to the latest, new marketing opportunity, as if it were the latest fashion accessory. It's happening right now with Facebook, just like it did with MySpace.

Marketers are busily adding Facebook pages, because, well, social advertising is the latest marketing fad. After all, Facebook has 52 million active users; why not throw something at the wall and see if it sticks?

But the wrong tactics lead to an erosion of focus and a waste of resources. Here are some questions that will help determine if Facebook Social Ads make sense for your brand:

• How will Facebook Ads help achieve my marketing objectives?
• Is the Facebook target audience consistent with my brand target audience?
• Do current customers regard the brand as a way to identify themselves? (There are brands that are badges, such as some fashion and music brands, and there are brands that aren't. If it's not, setting up a Facebook page won't change things.)
• How will I attract fans? What's in it for them? And what will I do to keep them once I get them?
• How is my Facebook page different from any other web page?
• How will I measure the results?

If you decide that social advertising makes sense as part of your marketing mix keep in mind that there are lots of social networks out there besides Facebook et al., and more are popping up every day. Smaller networks may be more eager to provide customized opportunities to build relationships rather than one-size-fits-all solutions and it may be easier for your brand to stand out.

Are Social Networks Killing Email?

Social networking encourages intimacy that is only possible with frequent, effortless communication. And, "on a social network, you don't send e-mail to an address, you send it to a person, just click on their name and create a message. That's a very different experience conceptually and emotionally from e-mail." (CNN Money)

Younger users are the predominant social networkers, but older users are catching up. The fastest growing demographic on Facebook, for example, is those 25 years and older. (Facebook) And those 40+, can join a social network dedicated to their age group if Facebook isn't their cup of tea. Some examples include:

• Gather.com, described as "a scholarly MySpace with less hook-ups and more intellectual stimulation."
• TeeBeeDee, "the place for people over 40 who believe that life is still to be determined."

But don't count out email just yet. GigaOm suggests that email could be the "ultimate social environment," less a social network and more a "relationship and interaction manager that aggregates various social web services - that doesn't require rewiring our brains and changing our behavior." He points to two examples of beta email services, "Xobni," which scans your Microsoft Outlook email database and "quickly establishes relationships among the people you email, and ranks them according to frequencies and relevance." (Xobni spells "inbox" backwards.)

"Xoobit" brings a wide range of web services to your email inbox, making it possible, for example, to "see photos on a grid, muchlike you wonld on, say, an iPhoto." (GigaOm)

The bottom line? Email isn't going anywhere in the foreseeable future, not with the emergence of social features, and particularly with it's stranglehold on business communications. Email also provides a boundary between users' personal and professional lives, a line that no one seems eager to cross just yet.

And the cause of social networks isn't helped by their image of being, well, social. A growing number of businesses are restricting access to social networks because of their perceived negative impact on productivity. Of course, the time we spend managing our email every day is lost produtivity, but unlike social networks, email isn't much fun so I guess that makes it a more acceptable way to waste time.

Facebook Launches Social Ads - What Marketers Should Know

There's been a tremendous amount of 'buzz' around announcements by Facebook Ads. So, what's the big deal?

Currently online advertising from Google, Yahoo, et. al., is based on keywords. Both Facebook and MySpace announced this week that advertisers will now be able to target their users based on their profiles, the information about themselves, such as age, gender, interests, hobbies, etc.

But Facebook is going one step further: advertisers will be able to access a user's social graph, the trusted, interconnected relationships that users create on social networks. Advertisers hope that this access to individuals' social graphs will enable them to leverage the trusted recommendations that occur within those relationships. After all, when it comes to trusting opinions, it's friends and acquaintances who have used the product that online consumers trust most, says a Forrester survey conducted in January, 2007.

Here's what you can do with Facebook Ads:

Set up a Facebook page for your business with interactive applications (called Facebook Beacon) such as booking/reservations systems, wishlists, ticket purchases, etc. When Facebook members use these applications they will be given the choice of having a 'story' of their use being displayed on their profile, or they can opt out. Users can become fans of the brand and interact via 'Wall' messages, upload photos andparticipate in fan discussion groups.

Use Facebook Ads to combine information a a user's website activities---purchases, reviews, wishlists, etc.---with an advertising message. The resulting "Social Ads" are displayed within a user's news feed as sponsored content or in the ad space along the left side of the site. Users cannot opt out of these social ads or turn them off unless they conceal their information---which defeats the purpose of joining a network.

Utilize Facebook "Insight" to gather information and analyze results.

The Guardian's Jack Schofield blogs that Facebook Social Ads are a "...clever way to capitalize on the rise of 'fansumers: the sort of people who buy products as a way of making statements about themselves and their aspirations: in other words, it's the off-the-shelf lifestyle business. (Usually, the 'statement' is that they have more money than sense."

Techcrunch points out that "...advertisers have to be real careful, because if these ads seem too much like ads, people may actually lose friends over it. And those once-happy customers could turn irate quickly."

True. After all, it's one thing to like a brand, even alot. It's quite another thing to bring it into your virtual social circle, er, social graph.

Will users perceive any difference between Social Ads and advertising? Will users be induced to sign up or to change their allegiance? Duh. Okay then, how will that impact acceptance and effectiveness of social ads? What quality controls ar ein place to protect user and company data, and to ensure that social ads to become yet another intrusion?

Despite the inevitable missteps to come, FaceBook Ads offer an exciting opportunity for brands, particularly those who have strong relationships with their customers, and who are willing to cede control of their brands in exchange for a stronger relationship with consumers, er, fansumers.

BTW, you can now access my blog entries on my Facebook page---hey, gotta keep up.:)

Trends: Google & Media Companies---Can't We All Just Get Along?

Google has made their intentions clear; they want to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

While there seems to be little doubt that Google will achieve their mission, the road to success has been a little rocky of late as media companies such as Viacom and CBS, have pulled their footage from YouTube. At issue is who controls content and the attendant ability to generate revenue from it. At stake for Google is their ability to generate revenue from the reported $1.65 billion purchase of YouTube. It's one thing to postulate a financial model, it's quite another thing to execute it. At stake for media companies is control of content and advertiser relationships. But the ability to generate revenue is dependent on the ability to effectively distribute it. And advertising agencies, traditionally the 'middle man'---what happens to them?

This article from Knowledge@Wharton provides an overview of some of the complex issues that are reshaping the media and advertising industries. It may also serve to stimulate thinking about how these changes may impact the way you market your brands.

And while we're at it, Blogspotting points out that YouTube has another hurdle to overcome - ensuring that U.S. advertisers reach U.S. viewers since just 23% of YouTube viewers are from the U.S.

Trends: For Magazines, The Truth Hurts

And the truth is, with Gen Yer's more likely to go to the Internet for news, information and networking, new publications targeting twenty-somethings, have their work cut out for them. 2006 was a tough year for Hachette Filipacchi's "For Me" and independent "Budget Living" both of whom folded. According to mediaweek.com, Bauer, publisher of "In Touch" and "Life & Style" hopes new launch "Cocktail Weekly's" mix of content on "relationships, fashion, beauty and health" will appeal to the increasingly elusive twenty something target.

According to Journalism.org, News magazines, who'd hoped that 2006 would be the "bounce back" year after a 2005 that saw declines, were also disappointed. Although drug manufacturers and retailers increased ad pages, the drop in automotive pages erased any gains leaving most news mags flat for the year. 

Journalist and media consultant Jeff Jarvis believes "magazines with communities can be in good shape if they learn to enable those communities to share their knowledge and passions---and that will happen online, not in print." He also warns that "general-interest magazines could be doomed in the age of the  of niches."

Trends: Sex in Advertising and the "Vampire Effect"

BrandNewDay blogger David Kiley gives ex-Wal-Mart employee Jule Roehm some advice: "...enough already with always pushing the envelope, at least as it relates to sex. We all like entertaining and engaging ads. But in the history of automotive and mass-market retailing, I have never once seen ads pushing the sexual innuendo envelope build a brand."

Roehm, who, before her Wal-Mart stint was director of marketing communications for Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge, approved a Lingerie Bowl sponsorship to try to attract young, affluent males, Dodge's hard to reach target audience. Chrysler later backed out of the deal.

The decision to try to sell with sex, says Advertising Age columnist Bob Garfield is "dangerous for a company like Chrysler with multiple brands and constituencies, because it's difficult to pander to the baser instincts of one customer base without offending the others."

In a print campaign ripped from current headlines, Moet & Chandon. recently launched "Be Fabulous," featuring a bevy of hard partying, fashionably but scantily clad Paris Hilton doppelgangers, bottles of Moet champagne in hand. The ads are guaranteed to attract attention---but is that enough?

Research on sex in advertising yields some interesting conclusions. Sexual imagery definitely attracts the attention of men (how women react is a post for another day). But guess what? The sexual imagery draws the attention of the men away from the other elements of the ad, in a phenomenon that research firm MediaAnalyzer calls the "vampire effect." The vampire effect results in lower recall for sexual than nonsexual ads.

There's nothing wrong with sexual imagery in advertising if it's consistent with the brand. But used indiscriminately as an attention getter reflects the mistaken belief that 'awareness' is advertising's only objective.

Moet Campaign via Fadtastic, MediaAnalyzer study via BrandAutopsy

Brands: Microsoft's Ms. Dewey Vs. BK's Subservient Chicken

When Burger King launched the "Subservient Chicken" it became a viral success. Microsoft says their launch of msdewey.com is "really an experiment for exploring different ways to introduce people to search and Live Search specifically, according to sfgate.com. " Referring to Ms. Dewey as "The anti-Google," Forbes notes that the character is "pre-loaded with clever and often cheeky responses to search queries --ask for her phone number, for instance, and see what happens. Ms. Dewey pulls her results from Windows Live Search, and seems like a big fan of Microsoft's hit video game Halo --not surprising, since she's an employee of Microsoft."

According to sfgate.com, Microsoft says they are not actively promoting the site, "but simply putting it out on the Web for discovery." Photo from Forbes Digital Download blog.

Trends: Your Avatar Is Calling

Sometime in the not-too-distant future you may find yourself strategizing a campaign where your target audience consists of avatars living in a three dimensional virtual world. According to Paul Kemp, author Avatar-Based Marketing, "Advertising has always targeted a powerful consumer alter ego: that hip, attractive, incredibly popular person just waiting to emerge (with the help of the advertised product) from an all-too-normal self." According to Kemp, the online personae of consumers, represent a huge population of “shadow consumers who can be analyzed, segmented, and targeted.”

SecondLife.com, is the best known, three-dimensional virtual world, where, once you download the free software, you can participate in a variety of real world-like activities, such as socializing, shopping, etc. Founded in 2000, SL counts over 1.3 members. Harvard Law School is holding its first class in SecondLife. "Law in the Court of Public Opinion" is open to anyone, not just Harvard law students. There are also a growing number of organizations, from Starwood Hotels, to the Centers for Disease Control, who have established outposts in SecondLife.

Recently CNNMoney proclaimed SecondLife “the Internet of the Future.” It is, indeed.

Illustrations from SecondLife website

You Say Tomato, I Say Tomahto – The Fight For Strategic Control Between Traditional & Interactive Agencies

There's lots of debate over which type of agency is best equipped to rule the roost when it comes to strategic planning for advertisers. The interactive folks say they're more versed in analyzing ROI while the traditional folks say they are better at developing integrated strategies. The rationale espoused by both is that it's what's best for the client---of course.

Well, I say bah humbug, balderdash, hooey, to both camps. The interactive companies and the traditional agencies need each other. The interactive folks have a lot to learn about branding and they're struggling with how to assess factors, such as engagement, that don't immediately result in a sale. And the traditional camp? There's lots of media and account planners that have yet to visit YouTube, a blog, vlog, or any of the new media that is rapidly becoming a part of many advertisers' plans. There's a small but growing group of planners who are ambidextrous in both new and 'traditional' media strategies. An integrated perspective that doesn't have a vested interest in either camp is what will benefit advertisers most.

BTW, if you want to learn more about all those mysterious C-terms, such as CPC, CPM, and CPA, and what they have to do with analyzing online advertising results, take a look at this informative article from Clickz Network.

Advocacy of ‘Engagement’ Metrics is a Slippery Slope

Proponents of online media have long espoused that one of its advantages over traditional media is the ability to measure return on investment (ROI).

So why are some in the industry now proselytizing about online engagement, and how it relates to the value of a site to an advertiser?

ZDNet reported on "Consumer-Generated Media's Role in the Engagement Equation," a session held earlier this week at the Ad:Tech conference in New York. "There is a 'steadfast need to adopt engagement' as a complement to traditional exposure measures," says the Association of National Advertisers, the American Association of Advertising Agencies and the Advertising Research Foundation according to ZDNet, "and they aim to spur that adoption," as well as create metrics to measure engagement.

What clients want, and what they have wanted from advertising practitioners for a long time, is a way of determining ROI for their advertising dollars. Online is particularly suited to provide those metrics. So why muddy the waters with nebulous terms like engagement and site 'valuations'?

When a client has spent a boatload of money on an online campaign that doesn't deliver, engagement is a way to justify the expense, pure and simple. And don't think clients aren't smart enough to realize that. MediaPost Publications recently quoted John Stichweh, director of global interactive marketing for The Coca-Cola Company, as saying the company would continue to experiment with various online tactics, such as their recent use of an Eepybird clip in a contest calling on consumers to submit their own video. But he commented that the concept of engagement, as well as other metrics such as brand awareness" serve as "proxies for sales," falling far short of what marketers require."

Don't get me wrong---I love data as much as the next person. Clicks, conversions, engagement, site valuations, are all factors that can and should be explored to better understand the response to a campaign or the lack thereof. But make no mistake---metrics for these factors explain the why of ROI, but are not a substitute for it.