Going Social Now tag:www.goingsocialnow.com,2007-09-28://8 2013-02-05T15:31:37Z This blog covers the social media space - from the businesses and the applications to the users, behavioral patterns and cultural affects. The views expressed in this blog are personal and are not attributable to my employer, Avenue A | Razorfish. More information on me at www.shivsingh.com. Movable Type Pro 4.23-en Twitter is really smart to acquire Bluefin Labs tag:www.goingsocialnow.com,2013://8.6698 2013-02-05T04:07:45Z 2013-02-05T15:31:37Z It was a little over two years ago that I came across Bluefin Labs and Deb, its charismatic CEO. It was before Bluefin had a product (it was a technology only) and definitely well before they had any sort of... Shiv Singh http://goingsocialnow.com Bluefin Labs and Deb, its charismatic CEO. It was before Bluefin had a product (it was a technology only) and definitely well before they had any sort of sales or marketing team. Deb and I discussed how GRPs needed to evolve as a measurement format for broadcast television and it was at that time that I coined the phrase "GRPE" in a Harvard Business Review piece. 

Our conversations led us, at PepsiCo Beverages, to first use Bluefin Labs to power the Pepsi Music Index at SXSW 2011 and then to become one of the first brand clients for their Social TV platform. So it is no surprise that I'm excited to hear that they are being acquired by Twitter. This acquisition is important and it means a few things in my opinion for Twitter and the social media ecosystem:

1. Twitter believes in Social TV's future. They're really placing big bets on Social TV recognizing that the discovery and engagement feedback loop with television has been responsible for considerable growth on the Twitter platform and will probably continue to drive growth in the future. They also know that this phenomena translates into advertiser interest which requires tighter metrics. That's where Bluefin labs enters the picture. Social TV has been a smart play by Twitter and continues to be one.

2. Twitter wants to build its own measurement ecosystem. Everyday of my life I get to talk to a lot of different people in the media and marketing industry. Some of them have strong opinions of Nielsen and don't particularly appreciate its dominance on everything measurement related. While that dominance simplifies my life on the brand side, I can understand why it may make certain media companies, publishers, brands, platforms and technology companies nervous. By acquiring a social analytics firm, Twitter is saying that it wants to control and own its own measurement destiny. It also sees opportunities to monetize its data more directly and doesn't want to leave that to Nielsen or anyone else. Smart again.

3. Twitter recognizes that marketers really want better metrics. If there is any single thing holding advertisers back from spending more in digital and more in emergent social media platforms, it is the rather raw measurements of this space. There are too many measures, not enough standardization, limited co-relation to broadcast and other forms of media and in some cases weak ties to ROI. This issue is exacerbated among the social media platforms. Twitter and Bluefin both recognized this and this acquisition signals that Twitter believes that it can make measurement and broadcast measurement co-relation a differentiator. The other social platforms can learn from this.

4. Twitter is comfortable in its own skin not competing with broadcast. If there's any a time to say that Digital has truly come of age, it is now. The fact that Bluefin labs and by extension of that now Twitter (with its 100 million users) believe that the platform can be used to gauge the effectiveness of television advertising shows how much has changed. Furthermore, Bluefin believes (as do its competitors like Networked Insights and Trendrr), that its tools can be used to make much smarter, cost effective and impactful television media buys. Influencing those spends is something what Twitter wants to do. It elevates Twitter from being just a social media platform to something more insight led.

5. Twitter's competitors should be getting more and more nervous. We all know that Facebook is a massive success and its aggressive move into mobile will play dividends. But what people don't talk about it is that it's never been very successful in the Social TV ecosystem (It's telling that Twitter was mentioned in 26 of the 52 national Super Bowl 2013 commercials while Facebook was in only 4). One can argue that Facebook can surive and continue to grow immensely without playing in the Social TV space or at least at the same scale as Twitter. But what does this mean for Pinterest, Tumblr, Path and the other social platforms? Each are incredible platforms but they need something to juice their next wave of hockey stick growth. It's unlikely that it'll be television and the Social TV ecosystem now with Twitter obviously doubling down in this space.


]]> Four Digital Trends to Worry Media Companies tag:www.goingsocialnow.com,2012://8.6622 2012-08-15T14:11:24Z 2012-08-15T14:21:12Z If there's any sign that the media ecosystem is on the verge of dramatic change, then these four digital trends bubbling to the surface are the latest proof points of that. These aren't random trends but are illustrative of... Shiv Singh http://goingsocialnow.com pepsipulse111.jpg
If there's any sign that the media ecosystem is on the verge of dramatic change, then these four digital trends bubbling to the surface are the latest proof points of that. These aren't random trends but are illustrative of tectonic shifts that will change the media business dramatically. Tectonic shifts of the type that we have witnessed in the music and book publishing businesses with the rise of the internet. Shifts that won't change the media landscape in time for the next upfront, but will reshape the landscape over the next five years. Here they are and what they mean for advertisers, agencies and the traditional media companies alike.

This piece was originally published in Ad Age on August 14th, 2012. Featured above is an image from Pepsi.com where the Twitter fueled Nicki Minaj concert was live-streamed. It serves as an example of brand-led original programming.
]]> 1. Inescapable real-time feedback loops
It is easy to confuse the NBC Olympics prime-time ratings for validation of their Olympics broadcasting strategy. But just because the ratings were off the charts, it doesn't mean that the audiences were happy. I believe all it showed was that the Olympics are more popular than ever and not NBC's broadcasting strategy -- an opinion that the Twitter conversations identified and a more recent Gallup poll corroborated. While the NBC broadcast strategy may have been about raw economics, it was a big reputation hit. And while ratings drive a business today, its reputation drives it tomorrow.

The problem is that NBC tried to ignore the real-time feedback loops. Even if a much smaller percentage of your audience watches something in real-time, it doesn't mean that the rest didn't want the option to do so. This is because they are forced to participate in the real-time feedback loops through their social networks whether they like it or not. Especially with sporting events, reality TV and breaking news, nothing can be saved for prime-time alone anymore. This is going to have significant implications in how programming is scheduled, viewers are kept engaged and advertiser demands are met. You can't turn off the real-time feedback loops and if you hold off the actual broadcast, your audiences will revolt.

2. Cutting the cord but not the content 
Just as there's an important lesson to be learnt from #NBCfail, there's another one to be drawn from #takemymoneyhbo. For those of you not familiar with the hashtag, a group of citizens petitioned HBO to allow them to sign up for HBO Go without needing to be subscribers of a cable TV provider. They were willing to pay $10-$15 a month just for HBO Go. HBO Go allows you to stream your HBO programming (plus all episode archives) to any digital device via the internet or through a cellphone signal.

The way we pay and consume media digitally is dramatically different to how we're being asked to do so via cable operators. When you watch something online you're not expecting to pay for 299 other channels. Nor are you expecting to sign up with a service for a month (at roughly $100 that, too). You're getting TV a la carte. As a result, our expectations of TV service have changed, too. The HBO Go petition embodies that expectation. People want to cut the cord while seeking greater connectivity just to the content they care for. Cable and media companies have to find a way to catch up to that future by building out the right revenue models to support it. To HBO's credit, they made a great leap forward with HBO Go but it is obviously not enough.

3. Snacking, recording and pinning all media
The other night I saw a "Daily Show" episode in which Chris Rock and Jon Stewart were lamenting the fact that standup comedy wasn't the same anymore. In the good old days you could create material that would last you months if not years. Material used once could be repurposed again and again for new audiences in different locations and cities. As long as the audience was hearing the jokes for the first time, all was good. However, with cellphone cameras and YouTube, once a joke is uttered many more people than intended view it. This puts incredible pressure on the comedians to keep producing fresh material, which both Chris Rock and Jon Stewart worried (jokingly?), wasn't sustainable.

There's a larger point here and one not just for the aspiring stand-up comedians among us. It is about the nature of snacking and pinning. We've seen this with Flipboard, YouTube, Pinterest and now video services too. Media is snacked upon in bite-sized fashion but even more so it is being recorded and pinned into new spaces all the time, changing the very nature of media discovery, content freshness, composition and badging. This user behavior has even reached television too. We're treating media as ingredients for our own, personal narratives vs. finished products to be consumed passively. As a result, advertisers will rightfully want to be associated with the pinning activity vs. the ingredients behind it. Shows will be publicized through pinning activity and consumers will yearn to be able to slice and dice the content in new ways.

The sales teams and lawyers at media companies will hate this until new business models are built around this user behavior too. Content creators will be nervous also. But this is coming to all of us and it is going to change the nature of what constitutes content. Audiences have become participants for better or worse.

4. Brand-led original programming
The explosion of digital is complicating the lives of marketers. It begins with the realization that it is getting possible for marketers to produce original programming and distribute them without the active support of a media company. This may not seem to be on comparable scale to anything happening in the television ecosystem but that's changing.

Call it a return to the branded content business. Or a recognition that consumers don't care who created the content as long as it's good, but some brands like Nike, Virgin, American Express and even Intel are moving aggressively in this direction. Others will follow as brand-led YouTube pages; websites and mobile applications compete for more and more attention and deliver on scale based on the quality of their content. Brands will become not just publishers but producers too.

The relationship between the media company, the advertising agencies, the media buyers and the brands will evolve through this. This isn't a mutually exclusive. Media companies have special relationships with their consumers that brands will always want to tap into. But it won't be the only way to reach consumers. That's for certain. One small example of this is something that we at Pepsi are doing on August 14th at 9:30pm EST. We're running a Twitter fuelled live stream concert starring Nicki Minaj available at twitter.com/pepsi and pepsi.com. We're doing event in close partnership with our partners in the media ecosystem, but the way we're doing this is different to our relationships with them in the past.

When you're playing the prediction game it is always much easier to determine what to predict vs. when it's going to hit. That's the case here; we're seeing these shifts starting to take place, when they scale up is anybody's guess. But it behooves anyone connected to the media ecosystem to pay close attention to them. The trends of real-time feedback loops, cutting the cord but not the content, the pinning of media and branded content are all about to hit you. And if you're not ready for them, you'll become the Borders, the Blockbuster or the Sony Walkman of the media business.

]]> Facebook Earnings. What it means for marketers tag:www.goingsocialnow.com,2012://8.6610 2012-07-27T03:17:13Z 2012-07-27T11:49:22Z Today's Facebook earnings call was illuminating on several fronts. However, two pieces of information stood out the most. They both in my opinion represent the future of Facebook. Everything else matters less.1. Mobile monetization will be through sponsored stories. That's... Shiv Singh http://goingsocialnow.com
1. Mobile monetization will be through sponsored stories. That's smart and insightful. No mobile experience can truly support a variety of ad formats. Mobile banners are certainly not the right approach for Facebook. And their own other ad units will significantly degrade the mobile experience. Sponsored stories is the only ad format that doesn't do that. Sure there are privacy questions that remain with the use of sponsored stories but if there's any type of advertisement that I'd be willing to accept amidst limited real estate that's a cell phone, it would be a sponsored story telling me about actions that a friend or a brand has taken. This will scale up in time especially when you throw in location specific sponsored stories (not just on the targeting end but localizing the sponsored stories based on where you are.)

2. Investors and even many marketers don't understand the potential. The second key takeaway for me was that most investors do not understand the potential of the Facebook social graph. In my mind, it's like the intangible brand value associated with iconic brands. You have to put a dollar value on its very existence as it can be monetized in ways yet to be reflected in the marketplace. Mark Zuckerberg seemed to hint at this issue when he said, 

"Imagine a day when you buy a new car and log in to the car's computer with Facebook and it lights up with [music, friends' addresses and retail locations] targeted to you based on your friends and interests," he said. Then he added, "Our vision for the platform is bigger than most people perceive."

Can you put a valuation on this potential today? Do you think many investors are thinking about this? Probably not but that's what's going to be at the heart of Facebook's future because 1) no one else can create social experiences in a similar fashion without access to the Facebook social graph 2) as the generation that's growing up with Facebook starts to have real spending power they are going to expect their social graph to travel everywhere with them...into their cars, refrigerators, televisions and hotel rooms. I'd suggest that marketers don't understand this potential completely either otherwise more companies would be thinking about creating Spotify and Pandora type applications on the platform and leveraging the social graph in more unique ways into their own products. Facebook on its part needs to share of its payments and mobile strategic roadmap.

What does all of this mean as a digital marketer thinking about Facebook?
Well first and foremost, I was hoping for more details on the Facebook advertising products and how the company plans to further evolve them. Lawsuits aside, Facebook continues to bet heavily on social advertisements even though that may limit its revenue growth. That's a relief. The last thing I would want is for Facebook to over-monetize the way MySpace did and degrade the experience for users and advertisers. The downside to this is that these are ad units that the marketing ecosystem isn't too familiar with. A lot more education and measurement will be required as a result. No surprise that the Facebook headcount has gone up dramatically. I suspect a lot of the new employees are sales people who will probably share the details of the evolving Facebook advertising strategy in 1:1 meetings.

Secondly, a lot can be gleaned by what a company chooses not to talk about during an earnings call. The company didn't talk about why the Fortune 100 advertisers aren't spending more on Facebook and what the company is doing to address that challenge. It maybe early days for this but I'd love to see Facebook be more transparent in how their advertising machine is performing and what the major barriers to driving more advertising growth are. I loved hearing about the three brand examples. I think that's really an important step to transparently demonstrate the impact that Facebook advertising can have. I want to see more and more specifics though and a much deeper Nielsen partnership. Maybe even something tied in with Catalina or an SymphonyIRI. Talking about the brand studies is valuable, but it isn't enough. More is needed.

Lastly, but not the least what's obvious is that Facebook is being coy in how it plans to use all the data it has about its users and its advertisers. Along with the social graph,  I believe this data trove is one of Facebook's most valuable assets. An asset that can be monetized as a real-time research product for brands (with anonymous data of course). Arguably, the data can even help governments, businesses of all sizes, researchers, students and scientists. How my brand is talked about relative to competitor brands on FB can be a leading indicator of brand health and sales in a way no other measure maybe.  How people live their lives as reflected by their online conversations with certain friends is massively powerful insight for companies. Facebook has access to that data and the metrics that they share publicly today are severely limited and arguably not always credible (Like counts, Chatter analysis and PTAT data). There's a lot more that could be shared. The earnings call pointed out that Facebook is no rush to open this data to marketers. That's a pity.
]]> Marissa Mayer & Yahoo. What's missing tag:www.goingsocialnow.com,2012://8.6606 2012-07-24T08:34:45Z 2012-07-25T13:08:29Z I've read more than a dozen stories about Marissa Mayer's move to Yahoo. Many of them miss the fundamental point. Let me get this straight first though - I think Marissa Mayer is an awesome choice for Yahoo and she... Shiv Singh http://goingsocialnow.com
But most of the stories in the press discount what Yahoo needs most and why Marissa Mayer is such a smart choice. There's no use in Yahoo thinking of itself as a media company or a technology company if it doesn't understand user experience deeply. That's why Steve Jobs was special. That's why Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook is too. That's also why two decades ago David Filo, Jerry Yang and Marc Andreessen stood out at Yahoo and Netscape. The Yahoo CEO needs to understand how real people want to engage with digital products. But more than that the person has to have a specific vision for how people will engage with them in the future. No focus group will answer that for the CEO. It is the most critical skill/intuition that any leader who works in technology must have. The Yahoo CEO needs to use that to guide every decision. And it is different from having product chops.

Not enough senior executives have that brain muscle. Many of them (no offense meant), grew up being forced to spend inordinate amounts of time looking at excel spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations in MBA programs or early job assignments that stifled creativity. Not enough spent those years creating wireframes in Visio, pushing pixels in Photoshop or sketching in notepads on their weekends. Not enough were liberal arts major or sociology graduate students. This may not matter for brick and mortar organizations that change slowly and have much deeper barriers to entry and where business processes and efficiences drive the business. But it isn't in the case with digital. A Yahoo CEO cannot be rooted in media, technology or even content. Yahoo desperately needs a user experience visionary. It has all the assets in the world and if there's anything that Facebook, Flickr, Instagram and Pinterest has taught us, its that this is not about the technology either. 

Steve Jobs described the need perfectly when talking about Bill Gates in a story on how Microsoft lost its mojo. Here's the quote from the Vanity Fair story that captures his view -

Bill likes to portray himself as a man of the product, but he's really not. He's a businessperson. Winning business was more important than making great products. Microsoft never had the humanities and liberal arts in its DNA."

Yahoo needs to recover. A lot of us still remember the day the directory was launched and want Yahoo to succeed desperately. The board  of Yahoo did its job in choosing someone who has a history of making great products and focusing on the user experience. Now its time for Marissa to do hers.
]]> Facebook can sell soup and lots more if... tag:www.goingsocialnow.com,2012://8.6602 2012-07-10T03:50:56Z 2012-07-11T03:28:04Z Shiv Singh http://goingsocialnow.com Facebook would disappear by 2020. I thought he was dead wrong. Since then a Comscore/Facebook study has been released, Facebook has announced its real-time bidding exchange and has shifted its focus in payments. I think this is just the beginning both for Facebook as a stock and as a powerful platform for marketers. Here's why I'm more bullish than ever about the platform with some thoughts on what Facebook needs to do to really prove that analyst wrong and convince marketers that its integral to their futures -

  1. Give us real ROI measurement: Most Facebook skeptics (think about a certain auto manufacturer) may not realize that just because the platform measurement isn't as strong as they'd like it to be, it doesn't mean the platform doesn't work as an advertising medium. It is hard to argue against the scale, targeting capabilities and raw engagement that the Facebook platform can provide now. You couple that with a strengthening mobile experience, and you know you have a strong marketing platform on your hands. If I were Mark Zuckerburg though, I'd strike a much deeper partnership with Nielsen, Symphony IRI or ComScore right away so that the measurement ghost can be laid to rest once in for all. For example, I'd love to learn how Facebook engagement can drive brand health and offline sales for CPG brands. I know display advertising and search advertising do that effectively already. I need to be able to do that with Facebook as well. Facebook must invest in this area today.

  2. Be audacious but stay grounded as well: Wall Street in turn needs to focus a little less on what Facebook is today and instead on what it can become. There's no question that user growth is stalling but that was bound to happen. The world's population growth isn't keeping pace with Facebook adoption. It had to plateau sooner rather than later. When Wall Street thinks about Facebook, they can't just focus on the current ad revenues in the market place today. They need to think about the potential alternative revenue streams through a user base that's so large and so loyal. 

    I would suggest that Facebook is on the verge of having its iPhone moment. It has all the ingredients to launch something truly transformative the way Apple did with the iPhone (and I don't think it should be a phone). Something so big that it changes the entire company. That's going to happen and it'll lead the next wave of revenue growth for Facebook. Similarly, focused brand initiatives like Shipyard may result in similarly transformative initiatives for brands. However, for Facebook to really tap into this opportunity, it must match its audacious goals with humility. Having just the former or the latter won't be enough. The truth is that cars will still be sold, toothpastes bought and bank accounts opened without Facebook. FB needs to prove everyday to marketers that there are better ways to get consumers to do that stuff by marketing on the platform. In the way that Google has mastered.

  3. Payments, payments, payments. Did I mention Facebook payments? The revenue potential through payments. All of a sudden, it may put Facebook in the same league as American Express or Visa. Imagine knowing how 800 million people communicate, influence each other and then actually act upon that influence via payments over time. That's the power of the Facebook payments opportunity - in creating a closed loop experience that helps Facebook and its brand partners understand how a consumer goes from a thought to social influence/validation and then on to purchase a hundred times in a year. Once their payment platform takes off (now with real currency), the idea of a Facebook credit card or mobile payment mechanism (think PayPal mobile payment type solution) isn't that far off. Facebook can become an Amex, Mastercard or Visa competitor. I'm excited about this direction. I don't know if it'll fulfill the social commerce promise but that may matter less.

  4. Fulfill the real-time marketing vision with better insights: Real-Time marketing is about going from insights to action and measurement all in a matter of minutes. Readers of my blog may know my real-time marketing point of view. But there are few platforms that can enable this more powerfully than the Facebook platform. What's missing is access to stronger, deeper and more powerful insights. Facebook needs to open up its insights to brands. It has all the data anonymized. Just make it public or sell it to brands and agencies. Once we have access to those unique insights in real-time, operationalizing against them will be easily and hugely powerful with tools like Buddy Media's platform. This is another area where Facebook needs to invest significantly and quickly. With all the IPO money, it should ramp up its insights function dramatically. Marketers are used to getting a lot more data (anonymous of course)about its consumers. Give it to us. We get a lot of great data from Twitter, we need anonymized data from Facebook.

  5. Learn more aggressively from others: I'm starting to feel that there's one company that represents the future of Facebook. It is doing a lot of what Facebook can be doing but isn't as yet because of its size and all the distractions that come with an IPO. And that's a relatively small company called Lockerz. They take the user from influencer and social discovery, to content engagement, onto commerce and finally to loyalty all at once. You could argue that they're vertically integrated. Facebook needs to learn from them. I'm waiting for the Facebook rewards system, a smart social commerce framework and mechanisms to connect the digital world more harmoniously and smartly with the physical world (Facebook places has a lot of maturing to do). I'm not totally convinced that I need another verb or "want" button. In a similar fashion, I believe Twitter is an extremely powerful platform. Rather than trying to compete with it, Facebook should think about ways to complement Twitter and dare I say integrate with it too. The same applies to Google Search (Google plus maybe another story)

  6. More credible public metrics: Last but not the least, Facebook needs to move to more credible public, metrics. I've never been excited about the "like" metric as it is a reach metric that would be confused for an organic, affinity one (the truth is that you can quickly increase likes by purchasing Facebook ad units in a certain way). People Talking About This (PTAT) is also another less credible metric as it is heavily influenced by paid digital media investments. If Facebook has any public metrics, they must be truly credible, authentic and sincere the way the rest of the platform is. Only then will marketers take the platform more and more seriously. The sooner the platform moves in that direction, the better it will be. I would suggest that the metrics need to be so powerful, so compelling and so smartly designed that they travel around the Internet and elsewhere too just as the Like button has. We're still in a world of GRPs (gross rating points) with reach and frequency measures. Facebook has the opportunity to really fix this and maybe bring other major digital players along for the ride, it should take that lead. Is it around virality or more authentic people talk about us? I don't know, maybe.
The next few years are going to be exciting for the marketing ecosystem and Facebook in particular. I for one believe that it'll be around in 2020 but how much of a force in our lives and with our brands depends on the decisions it makes over the next twelve months. Facebook can sell soup and lots more if its as smart over the next twelve months as its been over the last.

]]> Social Suites Grow Up: What does it mean? tag:www.goingsocialnow.com,2012://8.6574 2012-05-30T03:33:26Z 2012-05-30T04:34:48Z Barely six days ago, Oracle announced that it was buying Vitrue for $300 million. Tonight rumors are spreading (thanks to Peter Kafka of AllthingsD) that Buddy Media is going to be picked up by Salesforce for $800 million. How time... Shiv Singh http://goingsocialnow.com Peter Kafka of AllthingsD) that Buddy Media is going to be picked up by Salesforce for $800 million. How time flies and a category of software that didn't exist a few years ago (yes, I remember being pitched by them all when they had fewer than five employees each) is now a billion dollar plus one. But where do we go from here and why are these companies so valuable? Here are a few thoughts.

  1. If you're able to put aside the noise around the Facebook IPO and what certain auto manufacturers may say, you'll realize that social media marketing is here to stay on a mass scale. Every day it only gets bigger and bigger and CEOs of Fortune 100 companies are recognizing this. Both the Unilever and the P&G CEOs talked about social media during their recent earnings calls. Just look at time spent online versus dollar spends or how companies like Ford, American Express and Nike (not to mention us at PepsiCo) are marketing through social media to see its importance. Social Suites which make it really easy to publish engaging experiences on the social platforms are valuable and for companies manage the global/local tension of social media, these suites are going matter more.

  2. Unfortunately, the links between a company's CRM database and its social media fan base has always been broken. In fact, they've been treated as two separate, distinct and disjointed CRM marketing efforts. As a result, without realizing it, many brands have developed competing CRM efforts. You harness your CRM database for effective email marketing in a certain way and then with a separate department you reach your Facebook, Twitter and YouTube consumers not knowing if there's any overlap or which is more effective for specific types of communication. Any company that can help solve this problem is going to win. That's why Oracle+Vitrue makes sense and similarly Salesforce+Buddy Media (if the rumors are true) do as well. CRM Databases have always been extremely valuable and when you tie them in with social media engagement, they become so much more so. All of sudden you can understand your customers not just by what they purchase and what marketing you throw at them but also by their loyalty and advocacy towards the brand.

  3. Just as important is the ability to execute real-time marketing effectively. Last summer, when I introduced a Real-Time Marketing framework at John Battle's Conversation Marketing Summit, I fully knew that not all the pieces were in place. It was indeed hard to go from strategy to execution in a matter of minutes or seconds as I proposed was the future of marketing. Companies that can help brands do that are going to win. Social Suites play a critical role in that, not necessarily because they do something that no one else can do (you can custom build a lot of the functionality) but because they make it fool proof and quicker to deploy. Building for engagement and not just on Facebook but elsewhere across the web and on a global scale gets really easy with these social suites. And don't forget the power of this form of marketing when it becomes hyper local and mobile specific. If I want to roll out a Facebook marketing campaign that's unique for each of Nielsen's 210 DMAs, the only way I can do that quickly is with a social suite.

  4. But wait, there's more to this than meets the eye. Let's take Salesforce as an example for a moment. They already own Radian6 which means they have a powerful tool through which brands can gather real-time insights and engage in Real-Time Response. With a social suite platform like Buddy Media, they would now be able to participate in Real-Time Engagement as well. By harnessing the Brighter Option Facebook ad marketplace solution (recently bought by Buddy Media), those brands can juice up their social media engagement with paid digital media in real-time. By tying this all into their Salesforce CRM databases, the brands can get a real-time end to end view of their customers -understanding their brand preference, intent to purchase, actual purchases, loyalty and lifetime value. Not to mention, they can also better understand which marketing tactics worked best. Powerful stuff (as long as they figure out the potential privacy minefields).

  5. Last but not the least, Social Suites have evolved into a lot more than Facebook tab canvases which is why they're so valuable. Many of these players have cross platform solutions that allow you to create once and deploy in multiple places in ways that are appropriate for each social network. Furthermore, they let you measure the effectiveness of a particular campaign, piece of content or engagement activity more holistically and in a more benchmarked fashion. They also institute workflow that reduce business liability with legal checks. And with globalization capability they smoothen the roll out of social in countries where the brand may not have a large digital team.  That's all really valuable for brands.

In my opinion, the potential acquisitions of these social suite players by the major CRM companies represent the final nail in the coffin of social media. No more is it something separate, disconnected, cute and experimental. It has just moved to the heart of all marketing efforts and the stock price movements of Facebook will not change that. Social Media Marketing is on scale and needs to be at the heart of your marketing efforts right now.
]]> Two Must Read Books: Do or Die & SIRFs-Up tag:www.goingsocialnow.com,2012://8.6573 2012-05-30T03:14:07Z 2012-05-30T03:24:34Z I should have drawn attention to this book many moons ago when it was published last year (especially since I was interviewed for it). It's Clark Kokich's Do or Die. It's sharp, insightful and thoroughly engaging. Most important of all... Shiv Singh http://goingsocialnow.com Do-or-Die-book.jpgI should have drawn attention to this book many moons ago when it was published last year (especially since I was interviewed for it). It's Clark Kokich's Do or Die. It's sharp, insightful and thoroughly engaging. Most important of all and unlike many books, it has a differentiated point of view on marketing and the evolution of brands. It's case study driven and makes a compelling argument for why traditional advertising and the historically safe forms of marketing aren't enough to succeed in today's world. You literally have to do versus just say. Not surprisingly, I'm a big believer in that philosophy and talked about it at the time of the Pepsi Pulse launch. 

Once you're done reading Do or Die, a very different book to pick up is Rex Briggs's SIRFs-Up which explains how measurement and marketing effectiveness should really work. I've always been impressed by Rex's thinking and his contributions to our industry. He won't let you down with this book. Covering spending levels, medix mix, forecasted sales and performance metrics it'll help you answer the tough questions that you may get from your CEO or CFO. I was also interviewed by Rex for SIRFs-Up.

]]> Add Organ Donor Status to FB Profile. Brilliant. tag:www.goingsocialnow.com,2012://8.6559 2012-05-01T11:00:52Z 2012-05-01T11:15:15Z Today Facebook is urging its US members (roughly 161 million of them) to add their donor status to their Facebook profiles according to the NY Times. There are around 7,000 patients waiting organ transplants. In addition to encouraging Facebook members... Shiv Singh http://goingsocialnow.com NY Times. There are around 7,000 patients waiting organ transplants. In addition to encouraging Facebook members to add their donor status, the company is also encouraging everyone to list their birth dates and schools to further create peer pressure to further push people to add their names to the rolls of registered organ donors.

I couldn't be more impressed with the initiative. It's been done on a smaller scale by other companies on the platform but Facebook is scaling it up. It's an imaginative idea and something only Facebook can do in a uniquely Facebook way on mass scale. Uniquely Facebook in how the social networking site is depending upon peer influence to spur action among millions of people. Best of all it takes very little effort by anyone for this to happen. More companies should think this way. It's a lot easier (and less expensive) to make a change, to positively impact the world around you than you may often realize.

As a tiny show of support, for the first 10 people that do this and tweet or DM me a pic of their Facebook profiles showing that they've done so, I'm going to send a free copy of Social Media Marketing Dummies to them (second edition which just came out)
]]> Sosolimited via The Creators Project tag:www.goingsocialnow.com,2012://8.6546 2012-04-07T04:55:46Z 2012-04-07T04:59:29Z An inspiring perspective and worth watching. This isn't about digital marketing or about social media but how Sosolimited thinks about bits and bytes is how brands need to think too.... Shiv Singh http://goingsocialnow.com An inspiring perspective and worth watching. This isn't about digital marketing or about social media but how Sosolimited thinks about bits and bytes is how brands need to think too.]]> Breaking down the Paid, Owned & Social Media Chinese Walls tag:www.goingsocialnow.com,2012://8.6542 2012-03-26T03:54:30Z 2012-03-26T13:33:49Z It is easy to forget that social media marketing has one critical challenge. You cannot scale it consistently. If your plan goes really well, it'll scale on its own. Similarly, if things go really badly your marketing efforts (much to... Shiv Singh http://goingsocialnow.com
Hence the rise of Facebook and Twitter as major marketing platforms. Facebook's revenues appear to have more than doubled year over year. They realized as did many marketers that while social media marketing is critical, it alone without highly synchronized paid digital media investments won't give the consistent scale that a marketer needs to achieve business results. That's why dollars are shifting to Facebook and Twitter so dramatically. The platforms allow for organic, authentic social media engagement to be scaled up with paid investments through advertising products like Reach Generator and Promoted Trends.

This leads to another challenge though - and that's in how you do budgeting. Historically in most corporations, social media spends have been tied to digital cash budgets and separate from the digital media spends. Those budgets were aligned more tightly with the TV, Radio, OOH and Print spends. Certainly not through the same lens as the social media organic spends. In many cases, they even had different budget owners and organizational hierarchies around them.

Now the two sides of social media marketing need to be executed together and therefore the budget needs to sit in one place as does the accountability. Separating out paid digital media as a separate budget bucket from organic social media makes less and less sense. Thinking of paid, owned and social media as fundamentally different is wrong too. They're intrinsically linked. However, your organization is probably not making that change. It probably even uses different agencies to manage the different dimensions of social media marketing. That's a problem. Break down the paid, owned and social media chinese walls right now.

For more on this read the 2nd edition of Social Media Marketing for Dummies.

]]> Interview with MediaPost on how Facebook is growing up in the eyes of marketers tag:www.goingsocialnow.com,2012://8.6540 2012-03-24T12:10:58Z 2012-03-24T12:14:35Z Shiv Singh http://goingsocialnow.com Online Media Daily spoke to me,  to discuss the upgraded brand pages, the new ad offerings and analytics tools Facebook introduced in February. Interview below.

OMD: What's your take on the new Facebook brand pages incorporating Timeline?

Singh: The first version of brand pages did not always engage consumers around a brand. This version does a few different things. One is putting the Wall front and center even more strongly -- that's a big step forward. With Timeline integrated as well, it acknowledges brands have historic, deep relationships. Having a more visual feel to the pages helps us tell our story, and engage and interact with our consumers in ways that make sense for us and for them.

OMD: What about the fact that brands can no longer set a default tab on pages to drive "Likes" for particular promotion or content?

Singh: We never felt the number of Likes was the measure of success. Facebook itself has evolved to move away from a strict Like metric as the be all and end all. We're all about emotionally connecting with our consumers. So the direction Facebook has gone makes total sense for us. We look at all these metrics closely, whether for Pepsi or Mountain Dew or any of our other brands, and all the attention is on the Wall. The Wall is what matters to consumers -- we engage with them on the greatest scale on the Wall. 
]]> OMD: Shifting to the new premium ad offerings Facebook introduced, how do you view the new formats and expanded analytics?

Singh: Facebook is bringing a lot more sophistication to their paid advertising formats, and the results of them, which we never had before. You can justify a spend only to a certain extent without the appropriate metrics. Now we're getting a lot more metrics.

OMD: You mean with the addition of real-time insights for brand pages?

Singh: Yes. It actually has two parts. One is the real-time insights, and the other is the relationship with Nielsen, with the Online Campaign Ratings. It's all the stuff behind the scenes they're bringing together.

OMD: What kind of data in particular are you looking forward to getting now? 

Singh: One really valuable metric, which hasn't launched yet, is when we can see in real-time how well a particular post is doing. So for the performance of a post, we can give it additional reach by adding a paid piece to it. That, I think, is a game-changer. Someone on my team might post a message on the Pepsi page and it gets a lot of organic attention -- we know its resonating with our consumers and fueling engagement. In those cases, we want to double down on it with a paid investment. 

Typically, we would only see those results several hours or a day later, by which time the moment has passed and you can't scale up that communication or interaction. With the real-time insights it becomes very different.

OMD: Do you expect PepsiCo will spend more on paid advertising with Facebook as a result of the changes?

Singh: It's hard to predict because there are a lot of factors that drive our budget and media planning process. For example, it depends on which consumers we're trying to engage with, how we want to engage them, which ad units are performing in the market, and how the Facebook programs are working. But I can say, with this latest round of changes, every day we get more bullish.

OMD: Do you have any concerns about users having a negative reaction to seeing ads popping up in the News Feed, both on the desktop and in mobile?

Singh: We do a lot of marketing on scale, and what we've found is people care less about the source of the message and more about the substance of it. If we do a good job in providing valuable, meaningful content that's aligned with our brand and connects with our consumers. that wouldn't be an issue.
]]> Super Bowl Digital Advertising Madness tag:www.goingsocialnow.com,2012://8.6520 2012-02-01T04:11:43Z 2012-02-01T15:16:51Z Super Bowl is upon us as is the advertising madness around. There are a few key themes that will hold true this year for sure and are already surfacing:1. Releasing ads online early is becoming table-stakes. Nearly everyone seems to... Shiv Singh http://goingsocialnow.com SuperBowl461.jpgSuper Bowl is upon us as is the advertising madness around. There are a few key themes that will hold true this year for sure and are already surfacing:

1. Releasing ads online early is becoming table-stakes. Nearly everyone seems to be doing this and with good reason. It's about building momentum into the Super Bowl typically done with a mixture of paid and organic promotions of the TV ads online.

2. The smarter advertisers are constructing narratives around teasers, the TV commercial and what should happen after the ad airs. Some are even focusing on second screen social TV experiences (we being one of those).

3. A much smaller subset of advertisers are recognizing that there's more to the Super Bowl than just the advertising or their own advertising. As a result, they have a more integrated, cohesive strategy build around the entirety of the Super Bowl experience. More will move in this direction next year.

4. Hashtag mania is taking hold. Lots of advertisers will be promoting hashtags. Many over their Facebook urls or website address. Time will tell whether these are valuable or if they get lost in the clutter of the moment. How many people will use those hashtags that are promoted?

5. Ad-meters galore for certain. Last year we got to experience lots of different ad meters. This year there are going to be even more with many varied measures of success. What's certain every advertiser will probably have at least one meter that they will be able to point to and say that they did well! In another year or two, the ad meters will reduce in number.

For more on the Super Digital mania, read this Reuters piece and this Ad Age story where our Pepsi plans are discussed (there's more detail in the Ad Age story)
]]> Two steps forward, One step back tag:www.goingsocialnow.com,2012://8.6506 2012-01-11T11:36:58Z 2012-01-11T11:47:22Z Working with very large brands in large organizations means not knowing whether you're taking two steps forward, one step back or one step forward and two steps back in any given moment. We all like to say that there's light... Shiv Singh http://goingsocialnow.com
Yes, we absolutely live in a real-time world and we have to be hyper-quick. But at the same time changing consumer perceptions of a brand sometimes can take years just as meaningful competitive marketshare moves take time. Influences affecting consumers are more varied, more random and less controllable than ever before too. They're also global and hyper local all at once.

It is indeed a fascinating time to be in marketing. And while some facets of marketing make it an extremely sexy discipline, others make it a more difficult discipline than ever. In this world, the adage, don't mistake motion for progress gets infinitely more complex to recognize.
]]> TV Ads' New Digital Role, HBR Piece tag:www.goingsocialnow.com,2011://8.6474 2011-11-12T21:38:28Z 2011-11-12T21:42:21Z Television advertising has undergone significant changes in the last 30 years. However, it is arguably on the verge of its greatest changes ever. From where I sit as the Global Head of Digital at PepsiCo Beverages, charged with navigating our... Shiv Singh http://goingsocialnow.com Television advertising has undergone significant changes in the last 30 years. However, it is arguably on the verge of its greatest changes ever. From where I sit as the Global Head of Digital at PepsiCo Beverages, charged with navigating our brand's foray into the digital world, I see three big changes:

  1. The value we put on an advertisement will change as we seek to account for engagement metrics in the pricing.
  2. The narrative arch will change as we think of the advertisement as a trailer versus the whole story.
  3. Location-aware technologies will force a greater degree of engagement on a format that had historically been passive, impersonal and certainly without any extensions.

When you look at the statistics, the reasons are obvious. According to a recent study, 60% of television viewers also look at their mobile phones while watching TV shows. 33% have their laptops open in front of them and most interestingly, iPad owners spend the most time in front of the TV with their tablet than any other activity. It makes sense for TV advertisements to be thought of as an element in a broader narrative arch for the brand - a narrative arch that allows the brand to tell a more complete and a more interactive story. But what are the implications for marketers today? Read the complete post on the Harvard Business Review website and catch the earlier piece that I had written for them too.
]]> Physio-Digital + Cause + Shopper Marketing tag:www.goingsocialnow.com,2011://8.6467 2011-10-28T03:29:20Z 2011-10-28T03:33:43Z Probably one of the most exciting parts of working at PepsiCo Beverages is in seeing the physical and digital worlds come together especially as the whole cause marketing space gets more directly integrated with brand marketing. This PepsiCo 7-Eleven program... Shiv Singh http://goingsocialnow.com

For every 20 oz. Pepsi product bought from 7-Eleven, we will donate five cents to the good cause. If the person also checks in using Facebook Places, we will double that donation. Feeding America provides emergency food assistance to those who are food insecure. Its network of food banks supply food to more than 37 million Americans each year, including 14 million children and 3 million seniors. The program is being promoted both in-store and online, with case cards on Pepsi end-caps, and advertising on Facebook and participating food bank websites.

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