Posts Tagged ‘News’
The Blogging Battle Royale: A Closer Look
Wednesday, October 26th, 2011Here at Spring Creek Group, we’re big fans of Tumblr and we’ve been driving out clients to evaluate the platform in their social media programs. We love the platform not just for its crazy/wonderful memes (like Selleck Waterfall Sandwich, Garfield Minus Garfield and Teenage Mutant Ninja Noses) but for how straightforward it is to use, and for how quickly you realize the point of Tumblr is as much about exploring others’ content as it is about sharing your own.
With over 30 million blogs to date, it’s only in the past year that we’ve seen big brands make a foray onto the platform. Publishing and broadcast media brands like The Economist, LIFE, Sesame Street and the Travel Channel were quick to embrace the platform’s multimedia-friendly design and to share behind the scenes or bonus content with followers. Recent Tumblr blogs from companies like IBM, Bungie and Huggies have showcased the platform’s flexibility in creating a blog right for each brand.
It was big news this week for Tumblr when President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign launched its own Tumblr blog, but the article that piqued our interest was this quick blog post from Compete.com’s Damian Roskill: “Tumblr vs. WordPress vs. Blogger: Fight!” To kick it off, Damian illustrates that when it comes to unique visitor rates, WordPress is head and shoulders above the rest while Tumblr is ascending and Blogger is seeing steady drop-off.
According to Compete.com’s data, 2011 has seen huge gains for Tumblr, with the platform tying WordPress for overall blog visits. The most compelling (and frankly, astounding) chart Damian shared outlined page view trends:
While Tumblr trails WordPress in unique visitors, Tumblr’s visitors are viewing a dramatically larger number of pages. This illustrates Tumblr’s true potential: it encourages visitors not just stop by, but to stay and explore.
We agree wholeheartedly with Damian’s assertions that Tumblr’s success is likely tied to the platform’s emphasis on reducing barriers to publish content and making it easy to tag content across blogs, while also encouraging users to build a network of bloggers with whom you mutually share content. Make sure to check out the rest of Damian’s post for some other interesting tidbits about the three platforms.
We’re excited to see how Tumblr’s future plays out and what brands create using the platform. In the meantime, make sure to sneak a peek at two of our Tumblr guilty pleasures: Barack and Gary, BFFs and Scanwiches.
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
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.
Apple + Ads: Must-Skip to Must-Touch
Thursday, June 10th, 2010
I’ll admit, I read a lot of magazines, but mostly only when I travel. The only magazine that gets sent to my apartment is actually in my roommate’s name and involves a small, furry, woodland creature and a very old man with way too many girlfriends. So, for me, a lover of WIRED when I’m on a plane, the fact that they were one of the first publications I cared about to release an iPad application was pretty huge. What I didn’t expect, though, was that instead of flipping past the ads like I did in my use-to-be-a-tree copy of the rag, I actually stopped and looked at the ads because (get this) they were actually engaging.
For the first time, rather than just telling you about a product, service, or idea, brands are able to bring you into the experience through clickable links, video, audio and animations.
Now, the iAds announcements of late don’t necessarily play into the experience of in-application advertising with the likes of The New York Times, WIRED, USA Today, etc., but Apple is quickly becoming a best friend to advertisers looking for a way to showcase their brands not only in traditional and non-traditional mediums, but in mediums where the experience is heightened to levels never before seen.
Developers will be able to create ad experiences in tandem that can work both in the iAd environment on the iPhone, and as integrated ads on the iPad in publications and applications, each delivering targeted info to publics that are more likely to be receptive to the message.
While I don’t have any numbers for advertising included in WIRED or the likes, you can bet that brands are paying top dollar for a chance to be part of the next wave in the field. Apple did, however, say they already have $60 million worth of advertising committed to their iAds platform for H2 FY10. That platform goes live July 1, 2010. The brands on board for the initial launch read like a who’s who of the big brands world: Nissan, Citi, Unilever, AT&T, Chanel, GE, Liberty Mutual, State Farm, Geico, Campbells, Sears, JC Penny, Target, Best Buy, Direct TV, TBS and Disney.
During that same portion of the WWDC keynote, Jobs also said that iAds are projected to account for 48% of all mobile display advertising in the second half of 2010. Add those numbers to the number of people taking more than a passing glance at the ads in publication applications and you’ve got a whole new ballgame. The recent news about Symbian users being the most-active ad clickers in the mobile space could easily read much differently a quarter from now.
To tide you over, until we get a snazzy photo carousel on the blog, check out these eye-catching pages from the latest edition of WIRED on the iPad:
Did You RT Me?
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009
Did you RT me? I RTd you. We’re all RT-ing each other.
If you’ve been living anywhere but under a rock these past couple weeks you’ve no doubt heard the retweet news and have probably also thought “what does this mean for me and my brand?”
While we’ve talked about our ideas on this a bit, University of Washington professor Kathy Gill (@kegill) took the time and effort to write a great piece about the retweet changes and what they mean for Twitter users.
She also pulled a great screenshot, if we do say so ourselves…
RE: We Paid Someone to Ghostwrite This
Friday, March 27th, 2009Case in point: This was most certainly not a good idea.
We Paid Someone to Ghostwrite This
Friday, March 27th, 2009
Everywhere we look this morning, a similar conversation seems to be taking place, as there’s a big hullabaloo going down about the presence of these so-called “ghost-tweeters” on celebrity or otherwise well-known Twitter accounts.
Some folks seem genuinely surprised by this news, and others are taking it in stride. We find ourselves leaning more towards the latter camp, as we can’t really discern a logical difference between someone “ghost-tweeting” for a celebrity and the general activities that Public Relations professionals do all the time. As far as those “fake celebrities” go, as long as they aren’t doing any harm to anyone or breaking any laws, we really have no problem with them either.
Ghostwriting (authorized or not) happens all the time, and the fact that it’s now occurring on Twitter should be seen as something neither shocking nor unexpected. If anything, it simply shows that while basic celebrity name recognition may get people’s initial attention and may attract followers (yawn, Faith Hill) it’s really the quality and freshness of your content (howdy, Shaq) that will keep users entertained and coming back for more.
Exciting News Over at Visible Technologies
Thursday, March 26th, 2009Congratulations to our friends and partners over at Visible Technologies! Last night, at the Washington Technology Industry Association’s annual awards ceremony, Visible’s TruCast solution won in the “Best Commercial Product or Service of the Year” category.
We’ve known for a long time that Trucast is a great product and service that allows companies to measure, listen to, and engage with their customers in the social media sphere, and it’s good to know that others are starting to not only take notice, but are also beginning to officially commend the Visible gang on the great work they’re doing.
For more information, make sure you check out Visible’s take on the announcement.
SCG Out on the Town: In Which Spring Creek Group Discovers Its Love for Drew Carey
Friday, March 20th, 2009It’s been a tough time for sports in Seattle, but last night marked the start of something refreshingly great. Yesterday was the inaugural game for Seattle’s professional soccer (FOR BRITISH PEOPLE, “football”) team, Seattle Sounders FC. We here at Spring Creek Group, being fans of organized sports, yelling, and beer, were of course in attendance. Part-owner of the Sounders and full-time Bob Barker replacement Drew Carey kicked off the event with a rousing keynote address.
That is but one picture of the evening, but let us assure you, the following events happened: 1) The game resulted in a 3-0 (“THREE – NIL,” British people) Sounders victory. 2) The SCG Team had a wonderful and memorable evening. 3) An unfortunately headlined newspaper recap was written.
Welcome to Seattle, Sounders FC.
Social Media Spending is Up
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009As things have progressively gone from bad to even more bad in regards to our country’s current ecomonic climate, more and more marketers have begun to take notice. Less value is being placed on the benefits of a high-powered advertising buy, and more emphasis and resources are being directed toward building lasting and effective relationships with one’s customers.
Forrester recently acknowledged this trend in a post that focused on social media’s ability to remain “recession resistant” in spite of the fact that most other current economic news and spending trends have been less than stellar. Included in that report is this following pie chart, which is a great representation of the post’s main point: 
These survey results, taken from the responses of 114 marketing professionals, help us confirm that more and more people are starting to grasp an idea that we’ve felt strongly about all along– the idea that social media is a great place to invest time and resources for a big impact at the bottom of the customer funnel, as it helps brands better connect with, understand, and engage their target customers for the long term.
Apparently, it’s becoming a pretty popular idea.
