Posts Tagged ‘Facebook’
Spring Creek Group Joins Mediabrands
Wednesday, October 5th, 2011
Spring Creek Group was founded more than five years ago, during the emergence of social media in the form we now experience today. We have evolved and expanded our services for clients as content and social networks on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others have grown dramatically. Through it all, we have maintained a steadfast focus on opportunities to improve our clients’ customer advocacy and engagement. Simply put, our mission is to help customers better connect with each other and with the brands on which they spend their time and money.
Today, we are delighted to announce a major step in our continued growth and evolution as an agency. Spring Creek Group is joining the Mediabrands digital agency division of global media and marketing company Interpublic Group! You can read a little more about our exciting news here.
Spring Creek joins innovative digital agency leaders such as Cadreon, Reprise Media, and Ansible Mobile, and we will play a key role in the newly-formed Mediabrands Audience Platform (MAP). By joining Mediabrands and the MAP initiative, we are bringing our expertise in all aspects of social media marketing strategy and programs execution to our new agency partners across Mediabrands, including leaders in media planning and management such as UM and Initiative, as well as others. In addition to the opportunities that this move creates for us to integrate our social media services more tightly with our new agency partners’ offerings; it opens many new ways for us to introduce complementary services to our existing and future clients.
As a founder of Spring Creek, I am so very excited about this announcement and this new step forward in our growth. I believe that the strategic and - as importantly for me and my team – the philosophical ‘fit’ for Spring Creek Group within Interpublic’s Mediabrands agency group is perfect. They are extremely committed to helping us maintain our vision for the future of Spring Creek, while we also build a holistic digital media marketing services model through the MAP. Above all else, Mediabrands shares a similar set of values to ours. In short, we are thrilled about what the future holds for us, as well as for all of our clients and technology and software partners.
In closing I would just like to say THANK YOU to all of those client stakeholders, partners, and many others who have been so important and valued over the past 5 years. I owe my deepest personal gratitude to each of you who have been a part of our ability to arrive at today’s news, including everyone who has been a part of our SCG team. I am most excited about the myriad new ways this move opens new opportunities for client services innovation and social media strategic leadership for our entire Spring Creek team. Thank you for being a part of this journey with us this far… let’s keep it going.
Warm regards,
Clay
Fashion in a Flash: Amazon ventures into Event Sale E-commerce
Thursday, May 5th, 2011
Riding the wave of successful flash deal sites such as Groupon and LivingSocial, Fashion e-commerce websites dedicated to daily deals that flaunt their invite-only “exclusivity” are becoming increasingly popular. RueLaLa, GiltGroupe, and Hautelook are among the most popular of these sites. Yesterday, online retailer Amazon launched a “private fashion sale site” of its own: MYHABIT. Similar to other fashion flash-sale sites, potential members must request an invitation to partake in the get-it-before-it’s-gone shopping experience. However, unlike many of the fashion sale sites that begin in the morning on East Coast time, leaving West Coasters frantically scrambling for the fashion scraps, one of the most appealing aspects of MYHABIT is that deals don’t start until 9 a.m. PT/ 12 p.m. ET, giving East and West Coasters an equal opportunity to scavenge for their designer merchandise. Another big sell: MYHABIT also offers free shipping and free returns in the United States.
Amazon’s foray into the fashion world seems to be a natural expansion for the brand, yet it’s still a venture out of its comfortable world of practical consumer products such as DVDs and books. While Amazon.com does offer clothing, the e-commerce giant is tapping into a whole new niche market with the launch of MYHABIT and Amazon will need to prove its fashion savvy in order to compete with other sites that have already established their fashion authority. While Amazon is likely hoping to ride its reputation as a reliable online retailer, it will probably take a bit more than reputation alone to get the luxury consumers on board. The success of the site will depend on whether Amazon can reign in the coveted deals that will intrigue and entice the fashion community and also on how Amazon positions and markets MYHABIT, especially in respect to differentiating it from the competitors. Already set up on Facebook and Twitter, MYHABIT will likely be using these social networks to grow its community and drive people to the site. Through leveraging its e-commerce power, tapping into the niche needs of the fashion community, and using innovative campaigns to make a splash in a somewhat already saturated market, MYHABIT has the potential to send consumers scrambling for designer deals on the daily.
SCG ‘ombudsman’s note: we have worked with leading ecommerce companies on their social media strategies and programs, as have others in our city and sector. So while we have a front row seat to these new developments, as with all of our agency’s point of view publishing on our blog neither this post nor others are ever sponsored or promotional in nature.’ We take special care to make sure our content is fair and balanced and strive at all times to uphold the standards set forth in the WOMMA Code of Ethics.“Gamocracy” Crowdsources Video Game Design
Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011
One thing I’ve learned managing a client account in the gaming space is that gamers love telling game developers how to do their jobs.
Turning the tables constructively on this vocal majority, Swedish indie developer The Bearded Ladies have launched Gamocracy – an experimental game design project that puts creative responsibility in the hands of average gamers across the globe. In collaboration with Sony’s Official PlayStation Community, Gamocracy invites players to submit original ideas for a 2-D action platformer (think Super Mario Bros.) to be developed for PlayStation 3 and PSP by The Bearded Ladies. Check out this quote from their Facebook page:
Anyone can submit ideas [for Gamocracy] via the PlayStation Forum and each week the best ones will be posted to this Facebook page where a public vote will decide which idea is used. If your idea makes it through to the final game, your name will be added to the end credits, ensuring bragging rights and a possible first step on the game development career ladder.
“The People Need a Hero!”
Week 1 of the eight-week initiative, which began February 18, presented participants with their first challenge. Tasked with creating a protagonist for the as-yet-untitled platformer, amateur game designers submitted more than 400 ideas in 10 different languages to the Official PlayStation Forums (EU). After selecting 5 finalists and posting their ideas in a Facebook photo album, The Bearded Ladies called for their community to cast votes in the form of Likes on Facebook. Once all the votes had been counted, PlayStation Community member The_Sparta_Ghost emerged victorious with his protagonist “H7” – the alien-built android with body parts held together by force-fields and who detaches his head to vault into hard-to-reach places (why didn’t I think of that?) Here’s a peek at the community-driven character design:
Room for improvement
While the cooperation between Gamocracy’s creators and Official PlayStation Forums moderation staff is commendable, the logistics of this initiative are not without flaws. Notably absent are clear, consistent CTAs in the PlayStation Forums forwarding successful participants to The Bearded Ladies’ Facebook page. I’ll bet many international contributors didn’t fully understand that if their Week 1 design was selected as a finalist, it would be subject to a community vote on Facebook in the form of ‘Likes’. That would explain the extremely low voter turnout (109) compared with the number of submissions (400+). The solution? Show participants the path from the instructional post, through the submission process, all the way to the voting booth. Once your amateur designers realize they need the ‘Likes’ of everyone they know, visitors will flock to your page in support of their friends. (Note: Regardless of whether a change is made, I suspect the voting spread will be greater in Week 2 than in Week 1, where the closeness of Finalists’ vote counts [28, 11, 15, 24, and 31] demonstrated little awareness of Gamocracy’s unregulated voting system.)
The Bearded Ladies clearly have a submission collection process worked out, so I hope to eventually see published data showing weekly entries, to-date entries, and entries per region/language (my estimate of 400+ Week 1 submissions is based on overall forum post counts.) Measuring these data internally could prove useful in the short term for week-over-week changes in community outreach, and in the long term for post-initiative press highlights.
To hear from the developers themselves on how the Gamocracy experiment is going, check out their first dev diary:
Moving forward
This week’s design challenge, “War of the Worlds,” asks designers to dream up 3 unique settings for H7 to traverse with his unique self-dismemberment abilities. If Gamocracy keeps its momentum, the next 6 weeks will see a massive influx of crowdsourced game concepts from across the globe. My hat goes off to Sony in particular for for giving Gamocracy a chance and for seeing the value in empowering gamers to share their ideas with the world.
Do you have a caged creative beast inside waiting to be unleashed? Are you an XBLA junkie, a PlayStation Mover & shaker, or just a kid at heart with a Wiimote in hand? Try your hand at game design with Gamocracy - it looks like a hell of a lot of fun.
[This article was originally published at WASD in Translation and appears here with the author's permission.]
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.
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.
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.
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.
It’s a Love/Hate Relationship
Thursday, March 26th, 2009For as much heat and complaining that Facebook has been receiving lately from its users, they are still as dedicated and committed to their precious social networking site as ever. With the number of users nearing 200 million, Facebook is taking all necessary steps to keep its people happy – though they tend to be what caused the upset in the first place.
A few weeks ago it was the Terms of Service Policy scandal upsetting the Facebook public, this week the new homepage updates have caused some uproar. And in both cases, Facebook has not only given in to the pressure, but opened the doors (or online forum) for users to express their opinions and give feedback.
Apparently users were especially unhappy regarding the lack of filtering tools the new homepage offers. Recently, Facebook announced that they plan to change the current design to give users greater control over what updates appear in the main stream as well as make improvements to the Highlights section and overall design.
So what do you think about the new homepage? Better yet, what do you think about Facebook’s reaction to its users’ disapproval?
Is this a thoughtful, democratic approach to managing a social networking site? Or do Facebook’s users have its designers and decision-makers a bit whipped?
SCG Co-Founder Clay McDaniel on Facebook Advertising
Wednesday, March 25th, 2009One of Spring Creek Group’s intrepid leaders, Clay McDaniel, has recently written a great article for MediaPost’s “Online Media Daily” section. For any of you out there looking to get your feet wet in the world of brand management and advertising on Facebook, this article serves as a great primer (and continuing resource) for you to rely on while you attempt to make the most out of the various resources and benefits that Facebook can provide you and your company.
Hey, we’d still recommend that you read the post even if we didn’t know Clay, so make sure you check it out.
