Posts Tagged ‘YouTube’

Who Really Won the Big (Marketing) Game?

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

According to Reprise Media, who just released their 5th annual Super Bowl Search Marketing Scorecard, there were a few ads that not only kept everyone entertained, but also seamlessly integrated themselves with online search marketing and social media.

One of the best in Reprise’s eyes was Cash4Gold.com, who used the universal appeal of Ed McMahon and MC Hammer’s golden parachute pants (as well as prominently featured URL’s) to drive searches to a corporate blog that featured imbedded YouTube videos for users to check out. Pepsi’s adoption of some well-known NBC characters in some of their spots, as well as their integration of Hulu.com and YouTube in others, was also deemed a success. E-Trade.com’s release of “viral video outtakes” through various social media channels prior to the actual airing of their ad did wonders to drum up interest and excitement in the spot.

While we agree for the most part with Reprise Media’s assessment of winners and losers, we’d like to nominate one more campaign to the list of effective and social media friendly Super Bowl advertisements.

(more…)

Visible Technologies and Spring Creek Group Partner to Deliver Robust Social Media Management and Engagement Solutions to Fortune 100 Clients

Wednesday, January 14th, 2009

By BusinessWire

SEATTLE, BUSINESS WIRE –

Visible Technologies:

  • Visible Technologies, an industry-leading provider of social media monitoring and engagement solutions, today announced a partnership with Spring Creek Group, an innovative online marketing agency. Spring Creek will offer its customers Visible Technologies’ social media analysis and engagement software platform, TruCast.
  • The strategic alliance allows Spring Creek to extend the capabilities of its social media management (SMM) services by enabling clients to more accurately measure their online brand awareness and the effectiveness of their social media marketing programs.
  • By deploying proven SMM methodologies and leveraging robust technology tools like TruCast, Spring Creek gives clients such as Microsoft the ability to track relevant brand conversations online, gain actionable marketing intelligence and engage with the social media communities that matter most to their brand.
  • Spring Creek Group is an innovative online marketing agency that helps companies of all sizes improve brand awareness and increase site traffic through social media-based online marketing methods. Spring Creek helps brands connect with their customers via innovative social media marketing programs such as branded online communities, blogs and social networks that result in higher brand awareness, increased sales and deeper customer loyalty.
  • Visible Technologies provides brands, including Microsoft, Panasonic and Hormel, the ability to bolster brand reputation, build revenue and measure the success of social media engagement. The company’s TruCast2.0 social media monitoring and engagement platform launched in May 2008.

QUOTES

  • ‘Engaging with social media is not an option for marketers today ‘ it’s an imperative. Consumers are using social media like blogs, consumer-generated reviews and social networks to compare our products and determine what other people are saying about them. Working with Spring Creek Group and using Visible Technologies’ TruCast platform, we’re able to create social media marketing programs that actively engage customers in a dialogue with one another, and then track and measure the effectiveness of these programs to drive sales and build brand value.’ – Marty Collins, Microsoft Group Marketing Manager, Windows Interactive and Digital Marketing
  • ‘Over the past 18 months we have been building our relationship with Spring Creek Group, working in concert with them to help industry-leading clients like Microsoft achieve their marketing objectives through effective social media monitoring, measurement and engagement.We look forward to replicating this success with current and future clients.’ ‘ Blake Cahill, senior vice president of marketing, Visible Technologies
  • ‘Our partnership with Visible Technologies has proven to be a huge success helping companies like Microsoft launch, measure and optimize social marketing programs to achieve real business results. The TruCast software platform strengthens our established social media management methodology by allowing brands to easily monitor and track millions of simultaneous online conversations, articles and posts.’ ‘ Clay McDaniel, co-founder and principal of Spring Creek Group

SUPPORTING RESOURCES

About Visible Technologies

Visible Technologies helps companies listen and learn what consumers are saying about them online, and it enables brands to participate in the right conversations with the right influencers at the right time. With this real-time business insight and response, companies build relationships with customers, bolster their brands and grow revenue. Its innovative TruCast platform is the industry’s first complete solution for social media analysis and participation. Visible Technologies also helps brands and individuals manage and protect their online reputations with the powerful TruView’ search engine solution. For more information, go to http://www.visibletechnologies.com, or follow the blog at http://www.visinsights.com.

About Spring Creek Group

Spring Creek Group is an innovative online marketing agency that helps companies of all sizes improve brand awareness, increase sales, and drive site traffic through social media-based online marketing. Spring Creek Group is made up of experienced, skilled, and results-oriented online marketers with a passion for using the most innovative marketing tactics ‘ including branded communities, interactive content, and next-generation social networking’ to drive measurable business results. Members of Spring Creek Group draw on deep e-commerce and online marketing experience at companies such as RealNetworks, Microsoft, Amazon, Judy’s Book.com, Salton, and Disney Internet Group. The company’s clients include both local growing companies and nationally established industry leaders like Microsoft, Corbis and Paramount Farms. For more information, visit www.springcreekgroup.com www.springcreekgroup.com.

Predictions in Social Media for 2009

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008

1
As the economy continues to frantically zig and zag, LinkedIn usage will accelerate.

2
Twitter will be forced to monetize or it will be eaten and digested by the Fail Whale.

3
More and more businesses will realize that social media is an effective way to retain customers.

4
Sites that use black-hat SEO will start to look extremely dated as people catch on to more effective ways to get their content indexed by the search engines.

5
Newspapers will embrace blogs more fully. This arranged marriage of old and new media will creative dozens of Gawker-like networks slanted toward local content.

6
iPhone App Designer will be the next hot job title.

7
Effective market research will mean more lurking online and less lurking behind two-way mirrors.

8
Successful Mom & Pop shops will tend to be international, online businesses more than local, brick and mortar businesses.

9
YouTube comments will continue to make us doubt our faith in humanity.

10
It will be a very interesting year.

Back from Federated Media Summit

Friday, October 17th, 2008

The Spring Creek Group returned today from the Federated Media Conversational Marketing Summit. We’ll try to punch out a few posts commenting on specific news and insights we heard, but the general takeway is that people are desperate for some way to track the success or failure of Social Media campaigns.So far, the only thing everyone can agree upon is that there is no right formula yet. How much is it worth to have someone watch a YouTube Video? Or to create a new one? In fact, the value of User Generated Content seems to be a slippery crocodile for big agencies to grapple with. What is the incentive for “Big Agency X” to launch a campaign designed to get 25,000 people to create their own ads? While Agency Creative teams are desperately trying to control the message (and the work), there are tons of people with a camera, a laptop, an idea, and now a giant platform to talk from.

All of this makes the ROI argument more relevant. An agency needs to be able to justify why spending $xx,000 to have their NYU Art School guys build a MySpace page or YouTube video is better than the company giving a couple of film school kids a handycam and a credit card. And since there is no way to value the return yet, it’s hard to quantitatively make any kind of argument.

What does this mean for firms who specialize in Social Media? Well quite simply, it means the industry is growing up. People don’t care about ROI on having a salesperson buy someone coffee. But they care if they are going to send her to New York for 4 day conference. ROI only matters when you identify a place you want to spend a lot of “I” in. When that “I” was a few hours of an intern’s time to build a Facebook page or write a blog post, no one cared. But the fact that ROI is becoming so important indicates Social Media is becoming a real line item on the Marketing Budget, not part of the “Other Channels” bucket. And no matter what, that is good for everyone in the space.

Spring Creek Group Presents at SVC Tuesday

Sunday, October 12th, 2008

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. Marketers are more confused than ever about how much budget they will have in 2009, and how to maximize their investments. Blogs, Facebook, Forums, YouTube – we run you through the best ways to use your existing marketing assets to help retain customers and turn them into evangelists. We’ll talk about all of this at “Social Media for Business,” on Tuesday’s at the School of Visual Concepts.

All the information can be found here. We hope you can make it.

Experience Wii Uses YouTube In a Clever Way

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008

Here at Spring Creek Group, one role we play for clients is to make sure their videos and other assets are easily findable across all the major video syndication channels. On a future post, we’ll detail out why it’s so important to manage this channel yourself, as part of your overall media strategy.

Everyone is well aware that YouTube is a great place to post this video. But while most people are merely re-purposing content, YouTube also lends itself to the marketer’s imagination, especially if the right client finds the right creative partner. And with that as an introduction, we invite you to check out the channel developed by Experience Wii, to promote the new game Wario Land: Shake It.

Editor’s Note (October 20, 2008) – At the Federated Media Summit, we actually heard from Hashem Bajwa, the Digital Strategy Director at Goody Silverstein, who I believe led the team who created this page. Hasem said that there is no ‘rate card” for something like this. You basically go tell YouTube what you want to do, and how much you have to spend, and then you negotiate from there. I think you’ll see more of this “arbitrary pricing” form of advertising investment based on shifting budgets, unclear metrics and a flexible inventory of real estate.