Archive for the ‘Good Ideas’ Category
Tour de Awareness
Wednesday, July 14th, 2010
I’ve already written about how you could stay connected to your hobbies through Twitter using cycling as my example. I’d like to point out another very powerful and positive role that social media can play. While following cycling and, at the current moment, the Tour de France, I was made aware of a great campaign for a cause.
First, a little background: Every year at the Tour de France people paint, write in chalk or otherwise cover the roads of France with messages. Most often messages to their favorite riders or expressing their national pride with flags, and even on occasion some sort obscenity to get caught by the unsuspecting helicopter cam for a laugh.
During the first broadcast on TV and later through my Twitter feeds, I began to notice chatter from folks about the CHALKBOT. “What is a CHALKBOT?” I thought. Harnessing the power of social media and following the cycling tradition of writing messages along the course of the Tour de France, folks at home can follow on Twitter, like the Facebook page and sign up at LIVESTRONG.org to send a message of inspiration to the CHALKBOT, a van with a giant “chalk-jet” printer towed behind it following the route that the Tour de France riders will be racing. Your sent messages are then printed out by the CHALKBOT along the route for all to see. With 10’s of thousands of fans daily along the route plus a plethora of video and TV feeds from cars, motorcycles and helicopters filming the race, these messages will be viewed all over the world.
Lance Armstrong wants to promote cancer awareness and is using his celebrity to do so, coupled with social media. A pioneer of viral marketing, the LIVESTRONG organization has had great success with organic, grassroots awareness campaigns. Remember the yellow bracelet craze that raised 100’s of million dollars? They are no stranger to social media, and with the CHALKBOT they have taken it to the next level. Log on, Tweet your message, see your message on a road in France during the Tour de France. Nike will even send you a picture of your messages printed on the Tour de France with a GPS coordinate for you to see it on the road. In addition on the LIVESTRONG website there is an interactive map with coordinates for folks who posted messages.
Today was stage 10 of 21, meaning there are 11 more days left in the tour. This year’s tour is 21 days long, with 3596K or 2234 miles. That’s plenty of room to for your message to be chalked. With so many people tweeting pics of their messages, sharing them on Facebook and LIVESTRONG forums, this is easily one of the coolest and innovative campaigns that I have seen. I tip my hat to Lance Armstrong, LIVESTRONG, and Nike for giving people a chance to participate in something this worthwhile. And it’s nice to see social media acting as the proverbial bicycle that the team rode in this Tour de Awareness.
Starbucks Hearts Seattle
Thursday, May 20th, 2010Talk about giving back to the place from which you came. Starbucks is kicking off a little Seattle love with their Friday deals dedicated to showing the people on the Puget Sound just how much they appreciate their patronage with a little something they’re calling “We-Love -You Fridays”
Here’s the skinny from their site:
This week’s perk for Seattleites is the chance at a free ticket to see the Seattle Mariners (maybe) win.
Here’s the paid promotion I saw on Facebook that drove me to the site:
Looks like I need to build some time into my Friday morning routine to account for a Starbucks run.
Windows 7 Launch Rides the Wave of Social Engagement
Thursday, February 25th, 2010
When you’re Microsoft drumming up buzz about your biggest product launch in recent history isn’t all that hard. The challenge, even to one of the largest, most-known brands in the world comes when you look at that buzz and decide what to do with it. In this latest case, the Windows 7 OS launch, Microsoft and the Windows team linked their goals of creating awareness with new consumers, engaging existing consumers, and building advocacy and empowering champions by monitoring and engaging in the online communities where today’s consumers live out their lives: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, and forums specifically.
Laying the Groundwork
While the excitement around the campaign drove large quantities of engagements, the Windows Team was out for months before launch, building support and creating lines of communication in the communities. The study lends weight to the practice by noting that the Windows Outreach Team was able to scale to fit needs during the natural product lifecycle.
Through the LookingGlass
With the addition of Microsoft’s own tool, LookingGlass, the group was able to not only monitor volume and sentiment around the launch, but also create an information loop as the chunks of info from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, blogs, and forums were streamed to their tool for all to see on their Social Media Hub. For the first time during a major product launch, Microsoft fans and critics alike had a near real-time look at the information their fellow Web colleagues were discussing and were able to jump into the conversation themselves.
The Case Study
Wrapping Up
For more information, visit Marty Collins’ blog – Marketing Today.
*Full Disclosure: Microsoft Corporation is a client of Spring Creek Group
I Didn’t Write This, My Personabot Did
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
Last night’s SMC Seattle event at Swedish was one for the history books, or one for the future books, depending on how you look at things. The social media Twitterati were out in force, yet again, to sell out another SMC Seattle event which featured Gartner analyst Adam Sarner. Sarner’s talk focused on how the Web will look in the future as it relates to CRM – definitely an intriguing topic given the crowd on hand.
Basing the majority of his talk on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Sarner wove a tale of a Web-filled future where Personabots (automated, personality infused, self-learning, self-replicating, virtual representatives that will be used as a tool for facilitating life events) do our bidding in the virtual world, thus enhancing our actual lives in the meat space. Sound a little like the Matrix? My favorite example was a person sending out 10,000 Personabots on 10,000 speed dates to find women that the man would be compatible with. Sign me up— that’ll cut my bar tabs significantly.
If you can get past the actual thought of thousands of Rons running around the virtual world, the leap to a future where online personas become testing and learning grounds for not only how we as humans live, but how businesses and brands interact in that future environment the possibilities open right up. Sarner spoke a bit about how brands would interact with Personabots in these virtual environments and take on characteristics of those Personabots they come in contact with by using the example of someone noticing a tennis racket in the back of someone’s car and using that as a conversation starter. Much in the same way, Sarner sees these virtual brand ambassadors taking stock of traits, likes, and dislikes in Personabots and using those characteristics to communicate in the virtual world. When you think about it, it’s basically what Facebook is doing when serving you ads already except it’s you, not your Personabot who sees the ads.
We try not to make wide-sweeping generalizations about what we think the future of computing and the Web will look like (we’ll leave that to Gartner), but you can bet we’re pretty excited to send our Personabots out into the wild virtual world to go skydiving.
Also, for those of you born in at Swedish (or have had a child there), you can join the Swedish Facebook page just for you: http://www.facebook.com/swedishbabies. Our very own Aaron Graham is a Swedish baby, so you’ll soon see him sporting his t-shirt.
Again, and we can’t say it enough, a big thanks to the SMC Board and Swedish for making this happen. After getting a chance to try out the Da Vinci robot, we’re trying to write a business case for buying one for the SCG offices. We’ll let you know how that goes.
For a snark-free look at the talk, check out Veronica Sopher’s post Jeramy Rich’s post on the SMC Seattle site.
Local company PM Photobooth was on hand to take wacky pictures – Aaron obliged.
Three Things Coca-Cola Got Right in their Social Media Policy
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
In the culture of American business, you know something has “made it” when the legal team writes a policy around it – such is the case with social media these days. The latest large brand to do so was The Coca-Cola Company, which just released its concisely three-page Online Social Media Principles.
Here are the top three things we think Coca-Cola got right:
Kept It Simple - While the legalese can quickly become overwhelming in similar documents, the Coca-Cola attempt at a social media policy speaks to its audience in terms they know and use. Less chance for confusion means less chance for breach of the policy.
Covered All Their Bases – By saying the following, Coca-Cola put their employees and everyone else connected with the company on notice. In today’s digital age, where your agents are many and direct oversight is sometimes murky, having a policy that extends beyond physical walls and across the globe makes all the difference.
“The Company adheres strongly to its core values in the online social media community, and we expect the same commitment from all Company representatives – including Company associates, and associates of our agencies, vendors and suppliers. Any deviation from these commitments may be subject to disciplinary review or other appropriate action.”
Gave the Power to the People – Coca-Cola knows that the social media landscape is expanding faster than the physical universe. They also know that no matter how much conversation tracking they do, they can’t keep up with the real-time pace of the online world. By empowering all Coca-Cola employees, regardless of their position in the company, to bring pertinent information to the attention of their online representatives, Coca-Cola has effectively created a team of watchful users that will increase their total number of attentive eyeballs on the Social Web.
There’s been an obvious evolution of large brand social media policies over the past couple of years and that’s the way it should be. More importantly, though, is the fact that these policies are being shared as living documents and added to on a living basis as the Web (and all forms of communication) morphs and changes.
Well done, Coca-Cola.
Facebook Privacy Change Cheat Sheet
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009Last night, Mark Zuckerberg took to his keyboard and sent a 515 word note (that’s 2,938 characters, or roughly 20.9 tweets) to Facebook’s 350 million users regarding upcoming changes to the current privacy model as they relate to networks and information sharing.
You can read the full post here, but we decided we’d save you the trouble by creating this short summary of the post and upcoming changes:
In
- Ability to control who sees each piece of your content
- Simpler privacy settings page
Out
- Networks
Important Numbers
- 350 million – number of world-wide users
- 50 percent – Percentage of users who belong to regional networks
- 100 million – Estimated number of users who will have more control over their information thanks to the new privacy settings
The Big Idea
Facebook has grown so quickly in its just around five years of existence that security and privacy have become real concerns. Facebook is taking steps to reaffirm their commitment to being a place where users can live their online social lives with the peace of mind that they want and need. Highly-customized privacy settings will allow for a richer overall experience in Facebook, one where users are able to share more with the people they want and less with those they want to keep at a digital arm’s length.
SMM for SMBs: Five Tips to Get You Started
Friday, November 13th, 2009In a recent article, the NYT outlined the ways small businesses are using Facebook to bolster business in a time when every dollar counts and each invoice can make or break these businesses that are, essentially, the backbone of the American economy.
Now, there are many out there that will charge $5,000 or more to simply set up a Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace page for your business that is guaranteed (in their words at least) to increase sales and generally turn the world into unicorns and rainbows. By taking a holistic approach to your social media campaigns and looking at the long-tail effects, you’ll ultimately bring more of that magical “ROI” everyone keeps talking about. We always tell our friends that they need a data and a plan if they want to be successful in social media – and we stand behind that.
To help out our SMB friends, we came up with five tips for the small business to think about when they start using social media:
1. Free doesn’t mean it won’t cost you anything – While it’s free to start a Facebook Fan Page, Twitter account and many other social networking accounts the cost isn’t incurred when starting these properties. Creating and maintaining a presence on these sites can become a time-consuming task. When your time is money you need to think about how much time you can devote to these tasks and how much you expect to gain in return and find the happy medium.
2. Target, analyze, repeat – Facebook engagement ads offer a relatively easy way for small businesses to target their ads. Geographically specific targeting might not yield a high number of impressions, but if you’re a fly fishing company in eastern Washington, you can focus on winning the hearts and reels of your target audience. These ads’ simplicity also allows for easy A/B testing that helps you maximize your dollars.
3. Social media presence doesn’t make up for bad customer service – Social media sites aren’t a replacement for good products and great service. While having a presence in the social space can allow you to monitor and even provide a place for discussion about your brand, your online presence needs to amplify the values of your company, not act in place of them.
4. You can’t please everyone – The social Web isn’t a nice-fest, that’s for sure. You can expect to see some comments and feedback that isn’t represented on your in-store comment cards – that’s OK. Use everything you get back from your online experiences to change the way your company acts in the real world. You’ll be glad for that feedback when your customers keep coming through your door.
5. Make friends – Small businesses on the social Web can create a mighty thunder when they team up with friends and like-minded companies. Mutual referrals and post-trading make for a better ecosystem and can only help in the long run. It’s like the chamber of commerce in the digital space, but without the awkward brunches.
Those are just a few of our tips, but we’re always willing to hear more. What would you say to the small and medium business owners looking to get into social media?
Facebook’s Legitimacy Problems: Are You Who We Thought You Were?
Thursday, October 15th, 2009
A recent post outlined steps Facebook is taking in requiring page owners to prove their connections with the brands they represent on the ever-growing social networking site. What does this mean for agencies? What are the short-term and long-term impacts? How will this affect your brand? Let’s take a look.
Prove It
Facebook essentially is providing page owners three ways to verify that they in fact have rights to develop and maintain a brand page and they can be found here:
- Add a badge or Fan Box widget to your Website – This is simple, really and can be done by sending a bit of code to whoever is code monkeying your site. It also provides a great focal point for driving traffic to your Fan Page.
- Add an official e-mail address to your personal Facebook account that can be used to verify your affiliation with the brand (this can also be that of an authorized outside entity like PR, marketing, advertising agency, etc.) – This is easy if you’re a recognized agency, but a little harder if your roles are mostly behind the scenes.
- Add another admin who has a legit e-mail address – This is probably the easiest thing to do. Simply add your client contact to the admins of the page, giving you instant legitimacy.
The Agency
For agencies that are building and maintaining Fan Pages for brands in the Facebook environment, this could be a bit of a sticking point as they have to work out, with their client, the level of visibility they want to have as to who is actually doing the legwork. However, in most cases, a client contact is already (or should be) and admin of the page so they can not only lend their legitimate e-mail address, but also their watchful eye to the account.
The Short Term
In the short term, proving the authenticity of these pages is going to create a bit of extra work, but the short-term rewards greatly outweigh the time needed to get your stamp of approval (is there actually a stamp of approval?). Like with Twitter, brands have always been able to make a case for deleting unauthorized accounts based on copyright law, but now Facebook is taking that a step further and actually making it easier to drive out those pages which might be representing brands in a less-than-authentic fashion.
By simply claiming your brand pages and legitimizing them, you’re essentially eliminating those other pages and, in some cases, Facebook may fold those pages’ fans into your fan base, giving them a legitimate source of interaction on Facebook— and you a broader fan base— in one fell swoop.
The Long Term
Long term, this seems like a strategy by Facebook to not only cut down on clutter and misinformation within the Facebook environment, but also a move toward offering brands added benefits for operating within Facebook. Don’t be surprised if these Facebook Fan Pages start developing multiple levels of functionality and complexity based on dollars spent on Facebook Advertising and direct buys. The team at Facebook is smart enough to make a move when they see an opportunity like this.
Unanswered Questions
While this is still a new(ish) issue, Facebook needs to provide a bit more information around the topic of what this actually means for brands. Will verified pages show up higher in search results, regardless of fan base and searchability? What’s the lag time between reporting a brand page and action being taken to remove that page? What are the criteria for moving fans from a page that might not be verified to the verified Fan Page?
Hopefully we’ll have answers to those, as well as the mounting pile of questions that will undoubtedly come out of this shift.
Building Campaigns That Work
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
Yes, social media is great. Yes, social media is the hot topic right now. Yes, social media is what we have a passion for and what we, here at Spring Creek Group, love to talk about. However, it’s not the end all.
The fact of the matter is, regardless of what’s hot and what area of communications and marketing we here at Spring Creek Group work in, we recognize the importance of fluid, cohesive campaigns— all aimed at similar goals.
We see ourselves here at SCG sitting basically in the middle of the marketing triangle, which is why we see the importance of putting together the right team around a campaign. That’s why we have team members from the PR world sitting next to those from the analytics world who sit across from people from the advertising world – it’s an amalgamation, not superiority in one part of the marketing mix that is driving brands today. By having team members with different backgrounds, it helps us work with partner agencies because we’ve been there and done that.
We’ve been the player. We’ve been the coach. Heck, we’ve even pulled the Pete Rose player/coach (but stayed away from the betting. We’re still hoping to get in the HOF).
Here are our tips to building your marketing dream team:
Five Ways to Kill Your Brand Before It’s Even Born
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009It’s easy to jump on Twitter, Facebook and any other social networking site, call yourself an “expert” and start advising away. It’s something completely different to actually have the backing of research, analytics, experience and proven tactics – we like to think we represent the latter.
That being said, here are five things you can do to stick your social media foot in your mouth (and some helpful hints on how to avoid it):
