Going Social Now

Digital Drag Race Launches! Go Win

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 02:58:01 +0000

Intel is launching its new microprocessor, the Core i7, which is the most significant update to the Intel microprocessor since the Pentium Pro in 1995. But unlike any other processor Intel has produced, the Core i7 target audience consists of creative professionals, like film producers, gaming developers, and animators – a largely untapped audience for Intel. So they asked Razorfish to help them with the launch.

We conceptualized, designed and launched the Digital Drag Race in partnership with Intel. Graphic designers and gamers are given the same software, system build and set of design assets to race against the clock in a timed, motion graphics design challenge. Go to Digital Drag Race to watch and to cast your vote too. The graphic designers have to use computers with the Intel i7 processor chip inside. The winners are being posted on a YouTube channel and the final race will take place at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Let me know what you think. Does this meet your criteria of a successful social media campaign?

Can Social Networks Predict What You'll Buy?

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 01:59:50 +0000

I certainly believe so and was quoted in an Ad Age article discussing how this has already been proven in academic circles and is just seeping into mainstream digital marketing now. There's no question that by knowing what one person's interests are, you're likely to be able to target peers in his or her circle of friends more effectively. Also, people are most influenced by their social graphs than by any other form of advertising or influence dynamic.

Two companies were discussed in the article - the first was Media6Degrees which takes a tacit approach to leveraging somebody's social graph by using cookie data to target advertising to one's peers. The other is SocialMedia.com which uses a person's explicit actions as an advertisement for others in his or her social graph. They do this within the canvas pages of applications on Facebook. Both are very interesting approaches and time will tell how significant their results are.

One thing is certain, we're just beginning to understand how we can leverage our social graphs now that they're more explicit than ever before. To reduce this to advertising on a social network I believe is missing the larger point though that too has potential. I believe every website and every web interaction is going to become social and our social graphs will be a part of all those interactions. And just because we're harnessing our social graphs, it doesn't mean that brands won't have a place in those conversations.

For a more provocative perspective, read Kristen's post over at Social Times.

Academia meets Social Marketing

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 19:25:17 +0000

Adweek just published a piece by me on how we should start leveraging insights from academia once more to really tap into the power of social influence. A lot of what we talk about and practice has deep foundations in academic research and the goal of this piece was to draw attention to some of that research. Needless to say, each time I write an article like this it turns out to be a humbling experience as I learn how much I don't know!

Marketing has always had an uneasy relationship with academia. However, with the rise of social media and its transformative impact on digital marketing, there's a new imperative to look towards academia -- to understand how people form networks, influence each other and organize into online communities.

This article highlights some of the thinking we should look towards while navigating the uncharted territories of marketing on the social Web. It is impossible to be comprehensive, so treat this as a sampling encompassing some key thoughts in academia and how they should impact marketing.

Razorfish Report on Consumer Purchasing Behavior

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:39:01 +0000

Not surprisingly, our recent Razorfish Consumer Report uncovers that social media directly influences purchasing decisions. And not just that but "connected consumers" are comfortable with seeing advertising on social networks and 4 out of 10 made purchasing decisions based on the social advertising. 76% welcome advertising on social networks.

These findings are probably welcome news for the many social media platforms in the marketplace. With the slowing economy, many platforms including the social media ad networks are getting worried that fewer ad dollars will come their way. These findings tell a different story - a story about consumers pay attention to ads in social networks (even if they are not always clicking on them) and more importantly make purchasing decisions based off of what they see. Big news.

What's also interesting in the findings is that 7 out of 10 connected consumers are embracing social media like nothing before. 7 out of 10 have customized their home pages with content feeds, scheduled updates and other features. A startling 60 percent use widgets on websites. Little did we know how pervasive widgets were. It just shows much marketers need to pay attention to them. Other findings show that consumers value personalization and loyalty programs in purchasing environments - they definitely influence purchasing decisions.

Another interesting finding is that the social web has become the mainstream web. Regardless of which social media property consumers choose, they have spent a massive amount of time interacting with each other. The majority of them (75%) spend at least one hour a week on these properties with 19% spending more than seven hours a week on them. The report which also explored peer and anonymous influence showed that peer recommendations are playing a much larger role than ever before in purchasing decisions.

You can find the full report here in an interactive flash format or download the pdf if you want to print it. Don't miss my own article titled Twitterific on page 45! And lastly, here's some external coverage of the report.

Social Network Users Aren't Scared of Ads, Wired Magazine

Social Networkers Don't Mind the Ads - ClickZ News

Social Networks Rev Real When Mainstream Media Onboard - Media Post

Reap Rewards on Lost Content - Adtos

Social Networking Advertising Annoying or Effective - Marketing Pilgrim

The Changing Consumer Experience - Guy Kawasaki at The Open Forum

Fighting Social Influence Marketing Myths

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:31:40 +0000

For something as discussed as Social Influence Marketing, there are a surprising number of myths that still inhibit its adoption. Here some of the more common ones are debunked.

1. Social Influence Marketing is about targeting Generation Y. Some people equate social media with Facebook. They also equate Facebook with a college audience. Both assumptions are false. There is a lot more to social media than Facebook, or MySpace for that matter. And Social Influence Marketing is not just about targeting Generation Y on the social media platforms.

The largest demographic blogging in the country is the 25-34 demographic (36%), closely followed by the 34-44 one (24%). The 35-49 demographic is the largest on LinkedIn, with its 12 million visitors. In fact, LinkedIn increasingly competes with the Wall Street Journal for ad dollars online. For its own part, the Journal and Businessweek have just launched online communities catering to a much older and more affluent demographics. Finally, some of the most successful online communities are ones that cater to niche, older audiences whether they be Patientlikeme.com, Flixtser, A Small World or Café Mom.

Social Influence Marketing at Publishers Summit

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 17:37:01 +0000

On Friday I presented at our Razorfish Publishers Summit in LA to 400 publishers - the people on whose websites we buy media for our clients. I discussed what social influence marketing is, the new imperative for publishers and how it is up to them to deliver the social graph to advertisers. Here's the deck.

Welcome to the Social World

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: socialinfluencemarketing socialmedia)

HP becoming a truly social brand

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:36:23 +0000

HPs long running "The Computer is Personal Again" campaign has included some interesting social elements too. And those social media elements are making the brand increasingly social in a way that every brand needs to be.

Last fall, they ran a contest in partnership with MTV inviting participants to submit designs for a special edition HP laptop. Called "Take Action, Make Art" the winner was rewarded with his design featuring on an HP laptop. The event drew 8,500 submissions from youth across the world with regional winners being selected by popular vote and the final winner being chosen by a panel of judges. The site drew 5 million hits.

Back in 2006, HP ran a viral campaign around the Soccer World Cup. In that effort, an anonymous site showed a man performing soccer tricks using two fingers and a paper ball on a desk. Visitors were intrigued with the tricks wondering if they were even possible. The site drew 180,000 unique visitors to the site prompting huge discussions in the blogosphere.

More recently, HP has launched a line of computers targeted at fashion conscious women. They partnered with fashion designer Vivienne Tam to design and launch these laptops. And not surprisingly, the laptops look more like digital purses than computers. By their very design (and an accompanying clothes lines that matches the laptops), these laptops will become social artifacts taking people to place that one wouldn't expect. The marketing effort around this launch harnesses social media - and because it brings the worlds of fashion and technology together it has been attracting a lot more attention in the blogosphere than one would expect.

What allows HP to successfully run these campaigns? Its the fact that their brand has become increasingly social. The tag line "The Computer is Personal Again" is inherently a social one focusing on the lives of consumers versus touting features of a specific technology. They're making their brand social and are inviting customers to participate and take ownership of it in different ways. More brands need to move in that direction.

Blogging is not a youth phenomena. Brands take notice

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:22:18 +0000

I'm tired of hearing that social media is just a youth phenomena. Maybe because Facebook had its roots in colleges, people continue to believe that social media is just for Generation Y. People forget that there's so much more to social media than Facebook (targeting older demographics) and that Facebook too is getting older everyday.

The Technorati State of the Blogosphere report is another proof point showing that the average of bloggers is certainly higher than many people may have thought. 25-34 year olds make up 36%, 35-44 year olds make up 27%, 45-54 year olds make up 15% and 18-24 year olds make up only 13% of bloggers on the internet. Interestingly, more than half have a household income of greater than $75,000 and 59% have been blogging for two years or more. So the next time your CEO tells you that blogging is for children, show him or her these statistics.

Brands are also taking blogs a lot more seriously. They believe that within the next five years, 51% of internet users will get their news and entertainment information from blogs over traditional news sources. That's a fascinating numbers and highlights how much attention brands need to give to the blogosphere. What's interesting too, is that traditional media has been responding to this trend by becoming more blog like in many ways.

The Advertiser has lost touch

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 02:24:56 +0000

Here's a great clip passed onto me from my friend Terri. It says it all. How we're talking down to consumers when we shouldn't be. We're acting like we know consumers but rather we know segments and statistics. Time for that to change.

Social media goes global

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 01:57:01 +0000

I was interviewed for a DM News article recently on social media in a global context. The other interviewees were Scott Monty head of social media at Ford and Bob Pearson, VP of communities and conversations at Dell. It's a great article covering the ins and outs of taking social media efforts global. Below is an extract of what I said.

Social media as a marketing vehicle is still its infancy, but Shiv Singh, VP of social media and global strategies at Avenue A/Razorfish, says most brands already realize that what works in one market may not work in another.

“One of the major reasons why social networks and social media have become a runaway phenom enon is because it is very localized,” he says. “It is very much a local activity with local friendships and local relationships.”

It is important to also remember that culture plays an important role in social media behavior in a specific country. In some cases, online social media is considered an alternative culture movement and in others it is a natural extension of the physical world. Having worked in three continents, I've seen this first hand.

As a result, social media campaigns and other social media initiatives need to be looked at carefully for how they will work from country to country. One should also keep in mind that if you connect customers from different parts of the world together, it may result in some unexpected consequences. A brand can be incredibly strong in one region and very weak in another. Read the full article.

OMMA Global Whither Social Media Panel

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 01:26:19 +0000

A few weeks ago I spoke on a panel at OMMA Global here in New York. This main stage panel was hosted by Cathy Taylor from MediaPost and included Tom Arrix from Facebook, Bant Breen from Interpublic Group, Angela Courtin from MySpace and David Hahn from LinkedIn. View the video clip.

My key messages - look at social media as one component of a larger marketing effort. Think about how it touches every part of digital, integrate it into all your digital efforts, recognize that different tactics work at different points in the marketing funnel and most importantly focus on peer influence.

Red Bull leads by example with Facebook Connect

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 03:34:37 +0000

I am extremely impressed with Red Bull's Facebook Connect efforts. Residing within Flash, it lets people within a social graph see each other's comments to blog posts.

So when I login with my Facebook account, I see all the blog posts and then the comments by friends of mine from my Facebook social graph. What could be more useful. This allows for social influence among a peer group - among people know each other and share similar interests. I'd much rather be viewing the comments of my friends than of strangers and this allows for that. Beautiful. What's more, by encouraging me to post my comments to my Facebook profile as well, it tacitly encourages other friends to join this conversation on the Red Bull site.

We're going to see a lot more examples of Facebook Connect in the coming months. I'll be keeping an eye out for ones that really benefit users and naturally allow for social influence to take place. This one certainly seems to do so.

Google to research Social Influence

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 01:50:14 +0000

Businessweek and MediaPost are reporting that Google is going to study how influence actually works on social networks. This is a welcome change and if you've been reading this blog regularly, you can guess its something that I've been hoping for.

Now we don't know how exactly Google is going to do this but we do know what they're trying to do. They're trying to understand (as they should) which friends in a social graph play a bigger role in social influence than others. They're going to figure out which friends in my network do more to spread information, which start conversations rather than end them and which influence most other people to take specific actions.

Google is trying to create an influence rank, sort of similar to what folks like SocialMedia.com tried to do within the confines of a social network ad network (Facebook in their case). I can only manage how much easier it will be for them to sell ads once they have something in place especially if it also includes YouTube. Sounds pretty exciting, doesn't it? It is and a marketers dream.

The Future of Media Forum. What I learnt

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 00:09:44 +0000

This morning I attended the Future of Media forum over at the Times building a few blocks down from my office. With Mark Cuban, Cathie Black, Nigel Morris and others, it promised to be a provocative discussion and it certainly was. Here are some of my takeaways from the morning.

It doesn't matter whether you're old or new media, generation x, y or a baby boomer - no one has really figured out the direction that this industry is headed in. Everyone agrees that new monetization models need to appear but nobody knows what they will look like and how exactly the traditional print industry will be effected.

The ad agencies need to change as well. They're too focused on buying media and still too TV centric. A more holistic approach that also recognizes how we consume and interact with multiple forms of media in a social context and at once is needed. The work being done by ad agencies is getting commoditized as well. The only real differentiator over the long term - creativity with its broadest definition. Agencies that can attract the best talent and deliver the most creative work will win.

Social came up a few times in the discussion but mostly in the context of Facebook and YouTube not making any money. And I think that's where these speakers are missing something. Firstly, Facebook and YouTube do have revenue models and each year earn more money. Secondly, the social behavior on these platforms is so widespread that they cannot be ignored. Google maybe paying for YouTube with its search dollars but I am confident that a significant percentage of YouTube users would pay $1 a month if they had to keep using the service. That's all YouTube would need to make their service incredibly profitable. At the moment, Google doesn't need to take that step.

Another key discussion point was the importance of mobile devices and how televisions and other large screen formats will be incorporate the web into them all at the cost of desktop computers. There's no question that the Internet will keep getting more mobile but will that address the monetization issues facing a lot of media today? Probably not. It was interesting how the speakers struggled with thinking of media beyond the framework of channels through which to push content.

The Future of Media forum confirmed a few suspicions of mine. Some people are wedded to old business models and with good reason. In some cases, as with Hearst Publications this is because the business models still continue to work well. In other cases, it is because that's all they know. What's missing is that no one is focusing on how consumption behavior has changed and the importance (or lack of importance) we give to traditional media brands. They way we consume, appreciate and respect media has fundamentally altered. We recognize that change but no one is rethinking their business model based on that change. That's the problem.

Also check out this article on The Future of Media at Mediapost.

MySpace CEO at Techcrunch 50

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 00:04:53 +0000

Here's an interesting video interview with the MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe conducted during Techcrunch 50. He discusses MySpace Music, touches upon advertising and covers the financial aspects of MySpace. He also talks about MySpace's relationship with Silicon Valley.