Agency Spy

Over on the Forrester blog, Jeremiah Owyang takes a look at the result Dell/Facebook campaign, which aimed to improve Dell’s products to be more eco-friendly and get green leaning consumers feeling good about the brand. More details can be found at the ReGeneration site.

The campaign was success in that it managed to capture consumer attention with one million votes logged, 1,000 ideas submitted and 197 blog mentions. However, Owyang points out that the concept was a failure in other respects. It was the same point I was making about the Scion/Strawberry frog campaign. Here’s Jeremiah’s much more eloquent, but similar complaints:

“When it comes to social media, the mentality of short lived campaigns should go away. Communities existed before a brand reaches to them and after the campaign stops. Marketers should plan for long term engagements with these people, rather than short two week spurts. There was clearly traction here and now’s the time to step on the gas and continue forward.

Secondly, the artwork created by the winners (and runner ups) should be included in future products, such as digital wallpapers, in the primary branding for Dell, and even the artists should be given an option to continue as sponsored artists. With the relationship forming, take it to the next level. Encourage artwork to be part of next generation green computers, with proceeds going to non-profits or back to the artists to continue forth.

Thirdly, the campaign was limited to Facebook, which isn’t the extent of artists on the web, as well as limited to other social networks such as Bebo or MySpace where similar communities can be found. The contest should have been created not just within the walls of a closed gardens, but also spread to the open web.”

Damn straight. Think bigger, longer and beyond the narrow box of whatever primary social media technology your campaign centers around.

See the entire Social Media series here.

Advertising world - meet danah boyd, a PhD candidate at the School of Information (iSchool) at the University of California (Berkeley) and a Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. She got her Master’s at MIT’s Media Lab. Her current research focuses on how people negotiate a presentation of self to unknown audiences in mediated contexts. In particular, her dissertation examines how American teenagers socialize in networked publics like MySpace, Facebook, LiveJournal, Xanga and YouTube. In the past, she studied blogging, social network sites, tagging, and other forms of social media. She’s an expert. If you haven’t checked our her paper on Facebook and MySpace users, read it here.

As part of AS’ series on social media, we asked the very in demand Danah two questions regarding SNS, considering that advertising agencies are on it like white on rice. Hopefully, it’ll offer you a little insight on how to best approach these networks.

“What do you think are the biggest mistakes that brands make when attempting to connect with users of social networking sites specifically?”

“Social network sites are “a place for friends.” Most users, especially youth, have no interest in being contacted by brands. That said, there is great value to having a brand identity there so that when users want to look you up, they can. The only way to be truly relevant in the context of SNS is to provide something that they want. This is why movie promotions like X-Men and Transformers worked - both included access to new features. It’s also why promotions can drive more traffic than generic profiles. But, frankly, most brands don’t belong on most social network sites as anything other than a digital representation for look-up and potential identity-driven friending. I honestly think it’s foolish that so many marketing gurus are encouraging brands to jump in and friend folks - that’s more likely to make enemies (and fill your network with spammers) than do any good unless you are a brand that is completely relevant to the population in a sociable context. I think that most brands make mistakes because they don’t understand the social dynamics. Think of MySpace/Facebook as a public hangout space. When is it socially acceptable to go up to a group of friends hanging out at a pub or having a picnic in the park? If you treat it that way, the boundaries are much more logical. If you have something relevant to add to the conversation, you might be asked to pull up a seat/join the mat. If not, you will be seen as sketchy and annoying. You are always welcome in the backdrop, but don’t expect to be included just because you’re there. And be careful.. there’s a fine line between being an active participant on an SNS and being seen as a spammer. You’re often better off being a legitimate participant (a.k.a. buying ads) than trying to coldcall folks.”

And, what do you envision is the evolution of social networking sites?

“Mobile. If the carriers wold stop getting in the way.”

Did you hear that? Mobile. Start working on it now. Unlocking is rampant. Carriers will eventually, (I’d argue sooner rather than later), be forced to set their users a bit more free. In any case, you should be practicing with say, Sprint’s new GPS network and Verizon’s Loopt. As Ice Cube says, “You can do it, put your ass into it.” Seriously.

Social media… is it the Saviour or the Antichrist? Who knows? So far, we’ve got three parts to this tale of woe:

Part 1- A look at StrawberryFrog’s new social media campaign for Scion
Part 2 - AdWeak takes a look at the troubles of measuring the metrics
Part 3 - Deep Focus’ CEO shares some details about his agency’s social media practice

This morning, we decided to ask Tangerine Toad, an advertising blogger who spends oodles amounts of time blogging about social media, to take a stab at creating a primer of sorts about brands and social networking sites.

“Social media can prove to be a real landmine for marketers who cling to old ways of thinking. They’ve failed to grasp the crucial fact that while traditional advertising is all about delivering product news in an engaging manner, social media is all about delivering customer utility in an unobtrusive manner.

As a live demonstration of this sort of utility, I’ve pulled together a quick primer for those who are afraid they’ve missed the boat:

Your Brand Is Not My Friend

Remember this above all else. I am on Facebook or Twitter or a community message board to commune with my friends. Not your brand. And it’s kind of creepy when you insist on interrupting us with your unwanted presence and unwanted messages.

Unless, of course, you are a Prom King Brand. Prom King brands are those brands inexplicably imbued with a sense of cool (Apple, Starbucks, Virgin et. al, plus most any movie, TV show, sports team or music act.). I actually do want to hang out with those guys and be their friend. I’ll gladly add their badges to my Facebook page and even wear a hat with their logo on it. So they get to play by different rules.

If you’re not a Prom King brand, you’re not totally screwed. You just need to find a way to provide people with something they actually want. This is a tough one for most traditional marketers since they (a) have trouble accepting the fact that people don’t really feel passionately about their brand, and (b) nevertheless insist on inserting the brand’s granular offline marketing message into the social utility space where no one wants to hear it.

Now a good example of a non-Prom King brand that’s done Social Media right is TripAdvisor.com and their Cities I’ve Visited Facebook app. (Which is just that—an interactive map where you can kill an hour or two checking off all the places you’ve been to and then comparing it with your friends maps.) There’s no obsequious branding message lurking about the app and popping up like some latter-day Uriah Heep—the only message is that travel is a lot of fun and the only branding is a TripAdvisor logo. That’s it. They make their point, get out of the way and let you enjoy yourself. At its peak, the app had over 7.8 million users.

Social Media is a great research tool. As Ian Schafer mentioned in his previous piece, people actually say what they think about you and what they say isn’t always flattering. But you need to hear it. Need to hear that your new product isn’t as great as you think it is. Or that the only thing you’re doing right isn’t the thing you suspected. It’s where you want to start having conversations with your consumers and not dismissing them as “cranks.” Because a brand that listens to its customers is a brand they may someday call a friend.

Social Media is still in flux. We’re all still figuring this out daily. Unlike Web 1.0, most of the change in this space is driven by new technology. That means you have to stay up on what’s going on (e.g. do you know what Kyte is?) and keep an open mind as to what each new technology might make possible. Or, to put it another way, to always bear in mind that YouTube was originally supposed to be nothing more than a simple site where you could post videos for your in-laws.

Good luck.”

The social media and advertising agency conversation continues today. For this third installment, we wanted to take a closer look at how agencies are tackling the unwieldy beast that is social media and its assoicated technology. We ran down Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus, in effort to see how one agency (who already has a social media division) is handling things.

We said, “Hey, Ian? What’s the mission statement for Deep Focus when approaching social media? The definition of social media and its associated technology is always being debated, so what are you defining that as? What are you offering clients and what are you working on right now?”

His responses are after the jump. They should make a good conversation starters. The man has a few thoughts about this one. Read the rest of this entry »

The metrics. It’s always the damn metrics. Brian Morrissey, the only dude who’s Tweets we follow, has written a damn good piece about the problem of social media monitoring and metrics. Here’s the thesis statement:

“But with the rapid growth of social media has come the challenge of measuring the new ways consumers are interacting with and sharing advertisers’ content and brands. In many cases, the biggest difficulty is not just figuring out what to measure but what to ignore — and how to square the need for metrics-driven accountability with the more qualitative feedback endemic to conversation-based channels.”

Word. Brian quickly covers all the issues regarding how agencies are viewing the problem of metrics and possible brand value that come with using social technology.

This social media track is going to continue today. Next up, we got some answers coming from Ian Schafer of Deep Focus, which is one of the few agencies that actually has a social media practice. If you missed Part 1, go here.

There’s been a lot of talk about whether advertising agencies are up to the job of handling social media. Remember this:

“Clients are placing more emphasis on mastering social media but find their agencies ill equipped to help them succeed in that space, according to a new survey?”

Agencies are trying to get it together with every shop trotting out some form of social technology or media buying on a social media site no matter the campaign. Consider McCann’s weak attempt with Applebee’s. Just get on the band wagon, guys! Don’t think. Use YouTube!

The latest addition is StrawberryFrog’s new website for their client Scion. The agency has launched a social networking campaign titled Scion Speak.

“Scion Speak is one of the best examples of tan integrated Social Media brand campaigns in the market today. It targets existing owners to stoke their passion for the brand and spread the word about the brand,” says Kevin McKeon, Executive Creative Director of StrawberryFrog. “Most social media campaigns are promotional, as in ads on Facebook, we wanted to do something completely different. We wanted to use the existing Scion fan base as our own media channel, with the aim of reducing Scion’s investment on conquering new customers and increasing the passion for the brand among its core fan-base. Scion Speak does just that.”

Scion Speak.com is a “new symbolic language that allows individuals within the Scion enthusiast community to create their own visual fingerprint that represents their lives and their passions.”

Hmm… wanna check it out? Let’s go. So… here we are at Scion Speak where users can create a crest, check out other folks work and then watch some videos. Not a bad idea considering that it allows users to extend their image across the brand, which Scion owners love to do. Owners are notoriously community oriented. On the current Scion website, owners can already create a mini-toy version of their car. They can upload pics of their ride and watch videos featuring Scion’s users across the country. They can also compete against one another as the “top dawg” enthusiast club and check out Scion radio.

So, question - why is this addition by StrawberryFrog so flat? Users create the crest, download it and then post to the gallery. Yawn. Once you’ve done that, then what? You can’t send it to your friends. You can’t download it to your phone. Car owners can save it at the largest size (21 x 16) at a resolution of 96 that is to small for print (minimum is 150), which means you can’t put it on your automobile. Why? Scion users are big on making their vehicle their own. That’s kind of the thing they love about the brand. Hunh… What else? Now what?

The concept of creating a new language for Scion owners is genius and Da Frog has the right imagery, lexicon and attributes for Scion users on the website. Yet, it’s pretty uniform. The language could have been built out by users themselves. Scion owners have their verbiage sort of like the Urban Dictionary. Why isn’t there a Wikipedia like attachment where owners can create the Scion dictionary - visually and with words?

At the least, make it Facebook and MySpace friendly. You know, make it easy for folks to cross platforms with the crest? Spread the language? There should be a button that will automatically upload it to your website if you’re using a blogging software like WordPress. Why can’t owners order stickers, print quality products for their use? Why isn’t this crest attached to other Scion brand messages like music through a widget? Where’s the mobile or fun, game angle, basically the meat of this thing?

It ain’t bad, but it also isn’t badass. Scion is a brand that’s willing to take risk, break the rules. Da Frog should of taken advantage of that and created an outstanding social media campaign that stood out, made some noise.

This is a much larger conversation. Stay tuned for part deux.