Thank you

I attended a number of excellent sessions during Internet Week but feel there is still a huge opportunity to develop panels that are more tailored and give specific case studies as to which agencies and clients are doing excellent work in the sphere of social media.

A prime opportunity rests in marketing for highly regulated industries. Marketers in this field face specific challenges due to the complex and limiting nature of the business structures and regulations involved, particularly in financial and legal services. It’s a daily struggle to be able to create valuable, customer-centric, engaging campaigns while satisfying internal compliance demands and external regulation. Clients want to hear ideas and learn about case studies that are directly targeted to their unique challenges.

The nature of social media requires a lighting speed turnaround to inquiries, which makes it extremely difficult for the industry to respond. Some questions to consider are: What channels are appropriate for these industries? What is the brand trying to achieve? The answer usually involves a combination of lead generation, relationship building via the sales force, and brand awareness. These are all valuable opportunities that must be planned out and thought through at length.

It’s exciting to see companies like Morgan Stanley entering this unchartered territory. “In June, Morgan Stanley will launch a pilot programme allowing 600 of its financial advisers to market themselves and to share their ideas and expertise through social media – notably through Twitter and LinkedIn.” Insurance companies have also started to train their agents in building a local presence in their communities via Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

This is a growing space that is going to see a lot of development and experimentation this year. Its important to continue to monitor and create exciting events that are relevant and targeted to this industry.

I am absolutely a huge believer that marketing only really works when its an integrated multi-channel approach, hence I really love the Old Spice campaign. TV brought the character to life and social allowed for that personal, relationship building activation in an uber creative fashion. It won the hearts, minds and wallets of consumers (sales are up 107%).
http://nosharpstuff.com/oldspice/response/

The coolest sites seem to still be rocking big visuals with video components as the background and interactive navigational elements. I really loved the Wilderness Downtown site with its super creative use of HTML5 and pop-up windows.  www.thewildernessdowntown.com

The Monet site literally took you inside his paintings, providing a new prospective on viewing his work. A true masterpiece of a digital experience. http://www.monet2010.com

I love the “pay with a tweet” concept as a way to generate buzz. http://www.knarre.com/pwat_awards/

The theme of making people happy was seen in the Coke “Happiness machine” and “KLM Suprise”.

“Walking through” different digital channels seems to be a theme this year with Magnum Ice Cream (not in the Webby awards), Digital Story of Nativity and Sour MIRROR.

Not a moment into the Pepsi panel and the live twitter feeds on  either side of the stage were aflutter.  Someone had tweeted asking why  Pepsi had agreed to serve Aquafina bottled water, a plastic bottle made from  BP petroleum, which was currently leaking all over the Gulf Coast?  This  opened up a floodgate and the retweets started pouring in.  To Pepsi’s  credit, they never stopped the conversation.  It just sat there scrolling  on the screen as their marketing rep continued to expound on the work of the  Refresh project.

Consumers and brands never used to have this  type of relationship.  Grievances were either aired to customer service  reps or consumer publications.  CSR programs, if companies had them, were  privately invested in.  In the early days of the Internet, they may have  been a tab on a website.  But companies didn’t have to answer to  consumers.  You either bought their products or you didn’t.  Simple  enough.

But here we are in a new world.  One where the word  on everyone’s mind is “transparency, transparency, transparency.” Brands know  and fear this aspect of social media.  It opens you up to your consumer  in ways that are mutually empowering. You can talk to people more directly  about their interests, their passions, reach them where they are most active,  in the moment, one-on-one.  Consumers, in turn, can demand more from you.   They create a powerful network of influencers and tastemakers.   They expect you to answer to them.  They expect you to be honest  with them.  If they sense you are faking it, they will rat you out.

This was all one thing when it was just about selling  products.  But now companies have to work harder to sell themselves.   Consumers are more and more are demanding for brands to be “good”– to do  the right thing by your suppliers, staff, give back to the community and be  environmentally friendly. Its no surprise that Undercover Boss became such a  runaway hit. It’s as if the digital consumer is demanding, “Don’t just tell me  what you do.  Show me who you are and I will tell you if you can play in  my world.”  Facebook and Twitter provide easy and fast ways for companies  to appear to be doing the right thing, while continuing to drive profit and  brand loyalty.

Innovative new companies are leading the wave with  social good being part of their business objectives. David Dorfman, the  founder of Itzso, works with artisans in developing countries to create  fairtrade fashion and accessories.  While creating high-fashion products  that will appeal to the consumer is crucial, Itzso was primarily created for  the purpose of establishing sustainability in underdeveloped countries.   “These days the consumer isn’t given many fair trade, non-mass produced  options in fashion,” says Dorfman, “The more people connect with the fabric  they are putting over their bodies and the accessories they are decorating  themselves with, the more they connect with themselves and the world around  them.”  Dorfman believes it is not enough just to have a beautiful  design, it needs to be made in a way that honors everyone involved.  The  process of any company should be fair from beginning to end.  Imagine if  every company did its part, what would our consumer society look like  then?

Here is video of David speaking about being fashionably responsible:

Both  companies and consumers are continuing to define what it means to be socially  responsible in a social media world.  And each side is proceeding with caution, wondering who they can trust and just how much.  As companies  work harder and harder to campaign “goodness” in the social media space, consumers also have to work harder to ask themselves – are the right people  benefiting here?

We, too, have a responsibility to the causes we  support.

Pepsi Refresh
- 120,000 refresh ideas
- 4.1 million registered users
- 50+M votes in total

H&R Block
- Social media team motto – “our business and our job is about helping people” – VERY SMART
- Have a great process in place to deal with their various channels and platforms
- Beliefs:  Two big ears to one mouth + one brand voice
- Properties include – Q&A community (typically respond to questions within an hour), iPhone apps, Twitter handles, Facebook pages and Blogger outreach
- Community has 1.5M visits between Jan and April of 2010
- They have the highest rated financial services app
- YouTube – 101 tax prep info
- Policy for content creation – creating content once and using it at least 3 times
- Focus heavily on social listening (using Radian6), building trust and leveraging their subject area experts.

What’s Hot
- geo-mobile
- social to real world activities
- emerging companies GroupMe+Fast Society

Gaming
- Social gaming is most popular with women aged 35-50 who watch soap operas
- A big gaming hit is $1M for developers
- 40M people in 30-40 countries

Coke
- Shared the case study of their successful viral:

Formula for viral – unexpected, relatable, funny

IBM
- Shared their social strategy and properties, too many to mention but they seem to be doing a great job at driving innovation and empowering their communities

Small businesses such as the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck, J&D Foods and Cheezburger.com shared their stories – very inspirational. One thing they all have in common is the ability to be fearless, nimble and niche.

My favorite peeps – Threadless shared their story of being a brilliant, engaging and empowering community – creating a new partnership with Disney around Tron shirts.

Wikipedia shared its philosophy of being “something very special…a national park, a temple of the mind” – the founder, Jimmy Walesthat, does not want advertising (agreed).

Additional Lessons Learned:

An overarching theme we’ve heard across these conferences is that we have to educate our clients at the same time we are educating ourselves about the social media realm.  The ask from clients should not be for a Facebook page or a Twitter handle.  What we need to know is what clients’ business objectives are and where across all media are those objectives going to be best accomplished.  The trick is often not to be new or first, but to be innovative in existing spaces.

Another cool insight was why user generated (organic) content creators in communities are sooooo PASSIONATE (Wikipedia, Stickybits, YouTube, etc, etc.) and willing to do the hard work for free (in some cases). === Creation is the closest thing that human beings have to Godliness and creating something that can be shared with a community and appreciated is even more powerful.

1.  Facebook is a fast-growing utility – so beware

Brands are growing increasingly dependent on Facebook to build relationships with their followers.  But Facebook only answers to itself.  If it wants to change its design one day, it will.  If it wants to go public one day, it will.  If its servers go down for a week, we are all at its mercy.  Brands still need to invest in other earned and owned media in order to remain nimble.

2.  Location based services are going to grow in big and diverse ways

Places and Foursquare are just small examples of what LBS can accomplish for consumers.  Newer platforms like Group Me and Fast Society are making instant connections between groups of people in the moment.  Big opportunities here, especially for sports marketers.

3.  Consumers want experiences, not just deals

Coupons alone won’t do the trick.  In fact, Pepsi found they don’t even drive initial trial.  Consumers want a more immersive experience from discovery to purchase.

4.  A strong internal social policy is the strongest guarantee for a successful social experience for your consumers

Companies like Threadless and IBM have done so well in social media because their engagement with their employees .  IBM considers each of their employees’ Facebook pages and Twitter handles part of IBM’s social reach – as such, they encourage their employees to be active brand reps and social media participants.

5.  Consumers can educate you about the boundaries of sponsorship

Threadless has partnered with Disney.  Huffington Post runs sponsored content on their page.  The Kardashians affectively product plug.  The importance here is not to over-saturate and to stay authentic to your community.  Their response will tell you how far you can go.

6.  Bar code technology is cutting out retailers and brands

Companies like Shopkick don’t require big brand strategies in order to initiate bar code technology.  Consumers can attach any kind of digital content they want to bar coding.  Brands need to make sure they have in-store presence if they know their consumers are going to be using this technology to engage with their products.  Huge opportunities here for Foot Locker.

7.  LISTEN

At the heart of all successful strategies is insightful listening across all platforms.  Conversation is happening everywhere.  Even the smallest tweet can mean the difference between making a deal or losing a customer.  It also can’t just be about being talked to.  Brands need to be actively looking at conversation and getting involved even when they aren’t asked.  H&R block monitors tweets to see how people are feeling about their consultants and get involved when they see negative experiences, even without their consumers knowing their listening.

8.  You can’t be afraid to fail

One insightful quote we heard was that the first man to cross the Andes was not considered an “Andes Specialist.”  Social media is a continual experiment.  As the line between virtual and real experiences grows more blurred, the full definition of social media is also expanding.  Small risks can often be free and great litmus tests for future campaigns.  And big risks can often result in big rewards.  It seems more imperative than ever that all marketers understand what social media looks like now to better navigate where it’s going – wherever that may be.

Playtime is a part of their company culture, their new locale “will include the pool and pingpong tables, arcade machines, basketball and bowling games, and photo booth”. “Giving employees the freedom to take a break to play a game or socialize lets them know that management trusts them. ‘If you want people to do work that’s inspired instead of just punching a clock, you have to give them some freedom to do so on their terms,’ Nickell said.”

Threadless is also super successful at social media, creating an active and engaged community. “It’s actually a community of more than one million people who collaborate to design the t-shirts. Each week designers submit their design and the community votes on their favorites.”  Currently on Facebook they have over 150,000 fans and 1.5 million followers on Twitter.

The Threadless team motivates and gives their community tons of freedom and rewards from creating their own contests to fantastic prizes for design winners. The company is also a testament for quality, not needing to advertise for the first 8 years – WOM was the way people found out about the product.

My opinion about success in social media has always been that you have to have a real personality as a brand, and your staff and customers need to believe it. That is why you need a culture with a passion and character! Companies that force it won’t do well – social media does a great job of exposing fakes. I think Threadless is an excellent case study on what smart, innovative, re-defining corporate culture companies are doing – engaging their staff and clients for one fun shared vision. That my friends, pays off on so many levels. Cheers!

http://taggalaxy.de/

http://www.ted.com/talks/david_mccandless_the_beauty_of_data_visualization.html