Posts Tagged ‘business’
The Rise (and Potential Fall?) of King James
Wednesday, November 10th, 2010
Unless you have been living under a rock for about the last 6 months, you have probably heard about the circus that followed Lebron James’ announcement that he would “be taking his talents to South Beach.” James announced his decision to switch from the Cleveland Cavaliers to the Miami Heat in a media debacle that will forever be remembered as “The Decision.” The backlash from Cleveland fans and the media were harsh. Footage of Cleveland fans burning James jerseys were shown on every news channel. Sports personalities were criticizing and judging him about the way he made his announcement, saying that he made it look like a self-indulgent spectacle that didn’t take into account the fact that Cleveland fans that have been so loyal to him for so many years. So now that James’ NBA season has started, the big question is: did he make the right decision?
From a marketing standpoint, there are many different ways to look at it. What novice NBA fans have to take into account is that today’s NBA is not what it used to be in the 80s and early-90s. Not only do players have to worry about winning, now many have to think about their “Brand.” That’s right, their Brand. And who can blame them? most of them grew up watching Michael Jordan rise from a relatively unknown in college to an NBA legend, endorsed by companies all around the world. Players were once told “Hey, if you make it big in the NBA and get some endorsements you could be a millionaire!” But now with the way players’ contract payouts are skyrocketing and endorsement deals are coming from all angles, there is no reason an NBA superstar can’t bea billionaire.
Yet even though Lebron has done nothing criminally wrong, there is arguably no one in sports (aside from maybe Tiger Woods) that has taken such a hit to their brand image. Q Scores, a company that tracks the appeal of celebrities, showed that James’ likability dropped from 4th among active athletes to 78th-, behind even Ben Roethlisberger, who was recently suspended by the NFL for inappropriate sexual conduct. While this could be looked at as bad news, some say that from a marketing and business standpoint, “The Decision” was sheer genius.
Since followers of the NBA could see James’ free agency coming a long time ago, his next destination became the “it” conversation, and has stayed that way for about the last year. There is possibly no better evidence that the Lebron James’ brand is thriving than by simply examining his presence in the social networking arena. James first opened his Twitter account two days before “The Decision,” and while not everyone is a supporter, he now has over 900,000 followers. With almost 4 million Facebook friends, there is no doubt that more and more sponsors will come running to have James be the face of their company.
Yet, some aren’t so quick to forgive. Just ask Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban what he thinks. Cuban has gone on the record to state that James orchestrated the” greatest public humiliation in the history of sports.” This coming from a guy who regularly sticks his foot in his mouth at just about any opportunity. Cuban goes on to say that leaving Cleveland, a city that molded its very identity around James, was so selfish that it could never be forgiven. Adding a monetary value to the debacle, Cuabn believes James lost over $1 billion in brand equity and maybe, more importantly, -his legacy.
It’s hard to argue with the numbers, though. The top-5 gross ticket selling games already belong to the Heat, Heat merchandise sales are already up 500% from this time last year- doesn’t hurt that you’ve also got Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh next on the roster as well. NBA fans have yet to see how his recent move will affect his legacy; but as we have seen before (i.e. Kobe Bryant) nothing shuts up naysayers like some wins… except maybe a few championships.
Going Mobile 101
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010
It’s not enough to have great print or TV ads these days, hence the reason I have a job and am able to write this blog. It’s not even enough to have great print, TV, and social these days. In a time when everyone is walking around with a device in their pockets more powerful than the $4k Packard Bell (yes, you read that right) my dad brought home those many years ago, brands are scrambling to create an all-encompassing experience with users – a seamless brand agnostic of medium, screen size and location – and mobile is the last bit of that puzzle.
But, how do we go about creating a mobile strategy? What do we need to think about? Here are 10 steps to creating a mobile strategy that not only works for your brand, but that works for your customers/clients/and users.
01Know your targets
Paramount in any sort of marketing, but especially so in the world of mobile. Users are potential brand advocates and expect to be treated as such. Know the mobile habits of your targets and start there. Whether it’s online research, ethnographic research or good old fashioned observation, take the time to know your targets.
GigaOm recently posted a piece showing that Symbian users in the U.S. are 2.7 times more likely to click advertising on their mobile devices than Apple iPhone/iPod users. This simple fact not only is a bit of a blow to the recently-announced iAd platform, but it’s an important thing to think about when you’re looking at where to push your mobile ad buys.
Image courtesy of 02 Go local
While it will more-than-likely go the way of the buffalo, location based services (LBS) are an easy way for small and medium businesses to connect with regulars and create brand ambassadors through rewarding loyalty. Brands on the small-ish side have seen a great opportunity with LBS integration and promotion. Now, it’s easy to say “OMG, we should be on Foursquare because I saw all these articles and I know that’s what we need,” but truth is, it might not be. You need to first find out where your targets are and go there, not pick an LBS and hope they show up. Below are a few of my favorites:
Foursquare
Obviously this is the most widely-used location based service out there and brands are flocking to it trying to figure out exactly how they’ll use Foursquare for their brands. You couldn’t go anywhere at SXSW without hearing people talking about checking in, and this was in the town that birthed Gowalla. Brands like Tasti D-Lite, Lucky, and others are harnessing the herd power of Foursquare and quickly finding out best practices for the tool.
Download: iPhone – Android – BlackBerry
Whrrl
Seattle’s own LBS takes on the Foursquares and Gowallas of the world and does a pretty good job. Their focus on bringing connecting the virtual/mobile with the actual/physical is fairly interesting and their tips of nearby places make for a good night out. The experience is pretty fun and I feel like the tips and interactions within the actual UI are more useful than some other apps/services. Their only hurdle at this point is user base – it’s small (but growing).
Download: iPhone – Mobile Site
Gowalla
Austin’s own LBS tool found its way onto my phone when I was in town for SXSW, but I’m not going to lie, I stopped using it shortly after coming back to the PNW. It’s a fairly simple tool to use and worked well when I used it, I just don’t have that many friends using it.
Download: iPhone – Android – BlackBerry – Palm
Yelp
Probably one of the most “old school” of the LBS joints out there, Yelp is a great community filled with passionate users. If you’re able to harness the power of your loyal patrons/clients on this network, chances are you’ll do fairly well.
Download: iPhone – Android – BlackBerry – Palm
– Mobile Site
03Hedge your bets
The mobile world is still evolving (at the speed of light sometimes), so offering brand interaction points for users on multiple carriers, hardware lines, etc. means you’ll have an opportunity to grow user bases with a few options, not just one. If your user base is active in different areas of the mobile web, use testing and analytics to find the most-efficient ways of interacting with those fans and fully realize the ways they like to interact with your brand in those areas.
04Usability over message delivery
While the end game is always creating brand awareness, the mobile world isn’t one where constant bombardment with messaging is very welcome. While yes, some users expect to see a number of marketing messages a day from their mobile devices, they will respond better to great brand experiences with engaging content and excellent usability. It’s been said that content is king, and that’s definitely true in the mobile environment where you’re working with a pretty tiny space (when compared to other mediums). Bring your ‘A game’ in design and usability of your mobile properties and your users will reward you by taking that community to the next level.
05Sometimes there isn’t an app for that
Of course app developers and interactive agencies want to create a custom-built app for you – that’s their job. What most won’t tell you is that many times those applications aren’t necessarily the best way to reach your audiences, let alone keep them engaged. Bring your brand experience to their palms in all you do in the mobile space, don’t rely solely on a application.
06Actually have a strategy
I know this should’ve gone first, but I’m a big fan of keeping you on your toes. Creating a well-thought strategy for understanding and working for your communities in the mobile space means a better chance at success. Don’t build an app because it’s the hot thing to do or go around changing all your content for the mobile web until you’ve got a plan. Then, once you do…
07Let it run
The average time for a new mobile trend to catch on is between 3-6 months… and that’s talking about actual trends that have become “something.” Remember that putting your new mobile content out there doesn’t guarantee instant traction, regardless of the size of your existing social communities. Plan for success and manage for shortcomings in a time period that’s doable for your program, then take time to evaluate and move forwarded as needed.
08Extending, not creating
Ask yourself this with every piece of your mobile campaign “are we extending the brand?” If you’re not extending the brand, but trying to create something else through your mobile efforts, you’ll more-than-likely be sitting in a conference room some time down the road talking about why your mobile efforts fell flat. Using applications, mobile-driven campaigns and ongoing programs to extend existing brand image and community should be the goal.
09Keep innovating
The mobile world is like the wild wild West right now – wide open. What is hot today will be luke warm tomorrow, so keep a finger on the pulse of the mobile world. This makes sense, right? Sure, everyone wants to keep up with the mobile world so they can keep up with competitors – WRONG. Keep up with trends in use among your publics to see what’s next and move in that direction (even try to get out in front if you’ve got the resources).
10Don’t be afraid to fail
There’s nothing wrong with failing once in a while. Some of the best ideas have come after colossal failures and you can always remember that even the highest-paid major league baseball playings are getting paid millions of dollars to succeed only about 4 out of 10 times (a lot less if you’re talking about the Mariners). This rule doesn’t just pertain to mobile, but I’m willing to bet that there were a hell of a lot of failtures before there were monumental successes in the mobile world. Also, so I’m on a cool visuals kick today, check out this ode to failure at Portland-based Wieden + Kennedy.
In the end…
Mobile strategy is constantly changing and anyone tasked with running this area of ongoing marketing efforts has a heck of a job ahead of them, not to mention a lot of sleepless nights. As with any new/reimagined area of marketing and advertising, the mobile space offers near-endless opportunity heavily guarded by near-fruitless endeavors. The ability to track, know, and see what’s next is probably the best set of abilities any one person or group can have – and even these are changing.
Bake (AKA Embed) Your Tweets and Eat Them Too
Thursday, May 13th, 2010Last week, Twitter released a new “hack” feature (http://media.twitter.com/blackbird-pie/) that allows tweets to be embedded in websites, blog posts, and so forth using html. No more screen grabs, no more cropping, no more image uploads.
Here’s what a few people are saying on Twitter, using the new feature of course:
http://twitter.com/adamwc/statuses/13383678914
Hey – check it out – I can embed Tweets now using Twitter’s Blackbird Pie. Awesome. http://media.twitter.com/blackbird-pie/ #fbless than a minute ago via Tweetie
Adam WC
adamwc
http://twitter.com/luigimontanez/statuses/13386076622
Cool idea, but incredibly long embed code: http://media.twitter.com/blackbird-pie/less than a minute ago via web
Luigi Montanez
LuigiMontanez
More important than your embed method of choice is how businesses can refer to and use tweets to complement their relationship building and branding efforts. What people say about brands is more important than what brands say about themselves, and thus embedding positive and even critical tweets can add value and create opportunities for genuine engagement.
If Twitter saw value in promoting its new feature, which it doesn’t need to, the company could do a Twitter Search (http://search.twitter.com/), find tweets that capture positive feedback like the former tweet above, and embed in a blog post to highlight what people have to say. Again, how people perceive Twitter and its features is more important than how Twitter perceives itself.
Embedding tweets voicing concern like the latter one above can (be selective and think it through) add value as well. For example, Twitter could capture tweets that critique the new feature (e.g. how it can be improved etc.), embed them in a blog post, and let their readers know that they’ll be addressing these and making updates accordingly. This would show that Twitter is listening, wants your feedback, and isn’t going to ignore it even if somewhat critical.
By embedding both positive and critical tweets when and where appropriate, companies can highlight positive perceptions of their product / service and likewise show that they’re addressing concerns head on.
100 Million People Taking Facebook on the Road
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
We’ve all seen the stats that texting while driving has similar effects to your vehicular dexterity as downing a case of Kokanee (a nod to our Canadian friends up the road). But maybe we’re not actually texting. Is it possible we’re all Facebooking?
A few weeks ago, Facebook announced the following:
“Today, we hit another milestone…with more than 100 million people actively using Facebook from their mobile devices every month. This usage happens on almost every carrier in the world and comes less than six months after we announced 65 million people on Facebook Mobile.”
Some marketing teams still have giant whiteboards with doodles, where they are “strategizing” a Facebook road map for the next 12 months. But, isn’t it high time marketers stop thinking about Facebook as a Web site, and instead focus on how it will follow you around everywhere you go? I agree with Mediapost’s David Berkowitz, who says the following:
“The safe bet is in time that the mobile user base will nearly mirror the overall user base, and that most of its usage will derive from mobile users. Facebook is in an especially strong position to benefit from the mobile boom, as mobile measurement firm Ground Truth noted this month that 61% of mobile Web pageviews are served by social networking sites.”
So here’s the question for the marketer who still has a 2008 Social Media Strategy in 2010: Do I need to catch up, or can I just jump ahead to mobile? Starbucks and their 5 gabillion Facebook fans may be an inspiration to Fortune 500′s across the nation, but maybe the smarter move for large laggards is to skip the whole catch-up game and join the mobile party. Meanwhile, SMBs may want to investigate hyper-local, location-based mobile social media strategies.
It won’t be about ads popping up on your mobile Facebook page, but a tighter integration with PayPal and potentially some partnerships with folks like Whrrl, Foursquare, and Gowalla, could allow you to buy a beer for your friend at a bar, while you sit in a movie theater across town. Or, you could order a Sounders jersey while your friend is at the game, and have him pick it up at the souvenir stand.
So, fear not brave marketer. If you missed the original social media wave in 2007, look at the 100 Million Facebook users on mobile devices, and realize you get a second shot at the growth curve.
Spring Creek Group Rocks #Twtrcon
Monday, June 1st, 2009
Spring Creek Group made it down to Twtrcon and the 140smiles launch party in San Francisco this weekend, had a great time, and participated in a ton of great discussions and presentations. For those of you who missed it, here’s a quick rundown of what went on.
Saturday: The 140smiles launch party was kicked off by Operation Smile, hoping to raise enough for 140 cleft palate and facial deformity surgeries. The party was packed, and due to a poor AT&T signal (therefore no iPhones) and only intermittent Wi-Fi, the attendees spent a lot of time networking and getting to know each other, which was a good thing. Without having that 140 character limit to fall back on, the crowd got even more actively real-world social. By the end of the night, we’d spent hours talking with @davemcclure, @jacobm, @ericoverman (from Operation Smile), and @ginasmith888 (who ran a lot of the conference).
Sunday: At Twtrcon itself, Guy Kawasaki answered our question regarding how he feels about farming out his personal brand to assistants by saying that his ultimate goal is to promote his business, and since his Twitter presence is larger than Alltop’s, he’s satisfied to leverage it.
Everybody’s Heard About the Word (of Mouth)
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009Word-of-mouth has been one of the strongest driving forces in the marketing world since- well, since there has been a marketing world. Create a happy customer or user experience and that person tells someone who tells someone else who tells their hairdresser and before you know it, your widget factory is in need of new space to keep up with the demand.
In today’s world where word-of-mouth is more often word-of-keyboard, how do we track and analyze these messages that are passed on, built up and broadcast?
Sure, you can use readily-available tools like search engines to comb the interwebs looking for mentions, tracking the story and seeing where it originated, but that takes time and time, my friends is money. That’s why, at Spring Creek Group, we work with, associate with, and generally pay attention to leading-edge companies that are solving those problems of tracking and analyzing the word of keyboard side to your online presence.
One of those groups of folks we always pay attention to are our old friends over at Meteor Solutions. Ben Straley, CEO of Meteor Solutions, was recently profiled in the Seattle Times. Here’s the nugget:
“Word-of-mouth is an organic activity. You can’t purchase it, for any price. When it occurs it can produce a fantastic boost for your brand.”
While you can’t buy word-of-mouth activity, you certainly can keep your finger on the pulse, and that’s what we do here. By keeping an eye on how a client’s messages are living on the social Web once they’ve cleared the press rooms, Spring Creek Group provides statistics and qualitative feedback that helps create and refine future marketing – ultimately, it’s money (and time) well spent.
Engagement
Monday, March 30th, 2009Our Services
Social Engagement
and Campaigns
- Experienced “Social Media Marketing Engagement Leads” team.
- Social media outreach, content syndication, and marketing campaign social graph promotion.
- Personal, direct, conversational marketing to complement your existing media buying.
- Identification and outreach to key strategic communities.
Direct customer engagement programs, branded social media communities built and managed, and custom brand marketing campaigns driven through earned media, all designed and delivered by a team of Social media channel experts – We gather your creative marketing assets to syndicate and promote them around the web transparently as representatives of your brand. We design, build, manage, and maintain branded off-site communities in strategic social media locations of high value to your business and customers – typically in sites like Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Ning, Twitter, Hi5, and Live Spaces. We identify relevant blog posts, forum threads, and community conversations in which your brand or products feature prominently and engage consumers in ways that are always transparent and ethical, add value, solve problems, and that simply help connect people to useful information and content via personalized posts. Our Interactive Creative Content Team can plan and/or develop everything from branded backgrounds to sites and apps integrated with Facebook and other social media marketing platforms.
Strategy
Monday, March 30th, 2009Our Services
Channel Guidance
and Strategy
- Your brand’s opportunity identification: Where you could – and should – invest in a managed brand presence across the social media web.
- Collaborative strategic marketing plan development.
- Resource, budget, channel strategy, marketing plan deliverables.
- Content. Technology and editorial plan development.
Culling through the options to develop an efficient multi-channel brand marketing campaign – Now more than ever, large and small companies are forced with the decision of how to introduce Social Media into their Marketing, Customer Service or Product Development organizations. Executives face difficult questions around how to staff the team, what attributes to measure, how to provide content, who should own the responsibility and how to communicate this new philosophy to the organization. If your organization is tackling these issues, Spring Creek Group can help you with answers to these questions.
Once you are ready to implement your program, Spring Creek Group is ready to help you build a cogent and effective strategic one. The Social Media Web offers a sometimes confusing array of options, including the latest ‘white hot stars’ like Twitter and an endless ‘long tail’ of potentially valuable but difficult-to-target specialty blogs and forums. Social Media is more than just deciding when you focus your brand marketing and engagement efforts on Facebook, YouTube, or other key sites. Should you invest the time in building out your own blog or publishing comments to other blogs? How could you use Twitter for your business? We’ve developed a sophisticated social media marketing methodology that answers these questions and more. The outcome is a data-driven, strategic, and targeted social media marketing strategy custom-built for your brand and business goals.
Philosophy
Monday, March 16th, 2009About Us
Our Team | Press | Philosophy | Ethics | Partners | Associations | Jobs
Caveat Emptor: A bit of a treatise…
Social Media Marketing is now old enough for methodologies to have been developed, but new enough for rules to still be written. We have been involved in this process of trial/error/success/ data/analysis/learning/improvement/repeat from the start, and we are presently among the largest and most experienced marketing agencies on the west coast focused on this exciting and evolving online marketing field. We now boast a team of 25 Social Media brand analysts, marketing campaign leads, and outreach and engagement leads. While we’re small enough to be laser-focused on every client, scale does matter, and we’re large enough to cover the entire Social Media Web with ease. Each team member is skilled across the Social Media spectrum, as well as a subject matter expert in a few particular channels. So no matter what your brand engagement or marketing campaign requirements, we can build a customized Project Team matched to your analytics, strategy, or brand marketing campaign requirements.
While we work with a number of clients on a direct level, we also know that you have had long relationships with talented creative and advertising agencies. That’s why we’ve carved out our space as Social Media strategists and practitioners in a way that we can work and play well with your current agencies of record. We typically don’t develop our own creative, shoot videos, design print ads, buy media, or write code, which allows plenty of opportunities for your talented creative agencies to focus on these core competencies. We should add, however, that we can offer any and all of these capabilities through close sub-contract relationships we enjoy with a number of leading social media creative development agency partners. Feel free to learn more about them here. We are well accustomed to partnering with your existing creative agencies, PR firms, and design shops so that their work is being seen by more people – and more relevant people – in as many of the right nooks and crannies of the conversational, social, user-generated, crowd-sourced, networked, 2.0+ World Wide Web. Connect us, and we will all work together for a positive outcome. And in the event you don’t already have an agency partner who can bring a particular concept or creative content idea to life, we have some friends who can make it happen too.
We’re not here to simply build you a blog or a Facebook page and walk away. Nor do we want to – We don’t believe that makes sense for any business and brand looking to make a real commitment to connecting with their customers in social media. Just like everything in life, benefits require commitment – and commitment takes time and effort. Our scale allows us to license the strongest measurement and analytics tools available, so we can learn quickly where your brand is being discussed, where it’s strong, where it’s weak, and where we have some work to do in order to catch up to your key competitors in the key locations online. You may tell us, “I think I want a MySpace page”. But if what you mean is, “I think my customers and competitors are in this channel, I don’t think we’re where we need to be and doing what we could be doing best there, and I think I need some help,” well then, we want to help. We use powerful brand analytics tools and a data-driven methodology to determine which of the social media options are best suited for an efficient and effective campaign – specific to your brand. We’ll help design a Social Media Strategic Marketing Plan and Editorial Calendar for your business that makes sense – in the short run and the long run. We can provide a ready-to-go team of Engagement Leads deployed on your behalf to drive your marketing campaign content and brand outreach to relevant audiences across the social media Web. And then we’ll measure how well we (and you) are doing, and where we need to shift course or re-allocate our resources.
While we’re on a bit of a roll, a note on the “viral video” phenomenon… One thing we don’t do is “viral.” A virus is something that you catch by accident. No one tries to catch a cold – it just happens sometimes. Instead, we plan, analyze, and execute brand engagement campaigns that are purposeful, logical, and measurable – and designed for the long term. If you want to make a single video, push it up to YouTube, cross your fingers, throw salt over your shoulders, and hope it gets 22 million views, we’re probably not your guys. If you want to analyze the current state of your brand presence across the web and benchmark it relative to your key competitors, to design a thoughtful brand awareness and engagement campaign, and to invest in the social media channel in an efficient manner that’s focused on better understanding and addressing your customers needs, well then, that’s music to our ears.
On top of all this, we recognize that Social Media agencies are sprouting up all over the place. This is a dynamic, energetic field with new ideas and campaigns launching hourly. Sometimes, we may not be the right agency for you, and we’re happy to refer you to a better fit. But we’d love the chance to at least talk to you about how your organization can start to implement a Social Media philosophy into your culture. We’ve been doing this a while, and can help guide you down the right path from the beginning.
Finally, we have proven ourselves capable of scaling up to service an all encompassing, multi-channel campaign. We’re flexible, service-oriented, and our services pricing model was designed from inception to work to the advantage of our clients. So whether you want a deeper understanding of your brand presence and equity online, support in building and maintaining a trust-worthy 24/7 Social Media presence, or just a solid marketing plan for the channel which you can execute yourself… we want to help make any or all of these things a reality for your business.
Strange Craziness Looming at SCG Headquarters
Thursday, March 12th, 2009First, the stars align in such a way that allows for two consecutive months to contain Friday the 13th.
Next, two airplanes align to create this–
–outside of the SCG Global World Headquarters.
As we have learned in the past, seemingly unrelated occurrences such as these should not be taken lightly. Ominous events are obviously forthcoming.
Don’t worry, though: if anything crazy or dangerous goes down, we’ll make sure and log into our Twitter account and then set up a live video stream instead of notifying the proper authorities in a timely fashion.
