Introducing TV ad targeting on Twitter

Kit-Kat – Digital Detox

Trendwatching suggested at the start of the year that there would be an increase in Digital Detoxing, where people start to switch off their social media accounts and always on digital devices. Not necessarily for good, but for digital holidays to get away from what can be an overwhelming always on culture. People say digital detoxing can be as difficult as giving up smoking! 

Digital detoxing is said to help people relax, declutter their brains even make you happier! There are apps out there to help to take the plunge like Digital Detox which  irrevocably disables your Android phone for a period of time you specify.  There are Digital Detox holidays with… “St. Vincent and the Grenadines asking travelers to leave their technology at home as part of their digital-detox vacation package. Included in the package is a pre-mailed guidebook explaining how to function on a trip without technology and features an onsite life coach who provides advice on how not to let technology control one’s life. ” (Source: Forbes)

Closer to home, Kit-Kat in Amsterdam have tapped into the Digital detox trend with their Free No- Wi-Fi Zone campaign. The idea is simple and taps neatly into the brand promise:

Free WiFi is available everywhere we go. People are constantly online, busy with their electronic gadgets all the time. As Kit Kat we saw that as an opportunity to give people a break. So instead of offering Free WiFi like every other brand, we created a Free No-WiFi Zone. A big sign with a small WiFi jammer that blocked all signals within a five meter radius. By doing that we encouraged people to read a newspaper, a real book or have a genuine conversation again. All while munching on a Kit Kat.

Top 7 Marks Of A Great Client – SOdA report 2013

The SOdA report is well worth a read when it comes out and its free on iTunes or Slideshare. One of the articles I really enjoyed was this one, the top 7 marks of a great client. Its not a client bashing piece by any means, but for clients it helps you look at what you can do to get more out of your agency. And for agencies, you need to read this to see how you can help your clients get more out of you. This is a direct drag and drop from the report, so sorry if the images are low quality. Please do check out the original document here or download it here.

(Source: Stefan Tornquist, SOdA report, Vol1 2013)

Why Things Catch On

By the end of the summer, we will have all read this book!

Twitter Music

As you have probably heard, twitter has launched a new service, Twitter music with an iPhone app for U.S., Canada, Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Through the app, users can find tracks that are popular on Twitter, tracks from emerging artists and tracks that are popular with their friends. They can also check out the music of the artists they follow and the artists that those artists follow.

Twitter launched its music service without striking deals with music companies , they used existing deals the labels have in place with subscription music services, choosing to partner with Spotify and Rdio to allow users to listen to full-length tracks.

Some were left wondering what it was all about. But as Wired pointed out – its simple (and therefore a pretty genius move!)

But really, it’s simple: Twitter Music is all about getting you to spend more quality time with Twitter. It’s about everybody’s favorite buzzword: engagement.

(source: Wired) 

Twitter are simply tapping into users behaviour and recognising that users follow musicians and talk and share music a lot on the service, so this is a smart play for them. It also continues to engage musicians and their labels who are likely to invest in advertising on the platform.  All in all this is a really interesting move by Twitter and with BBC America partnering with Twitter (for their Doctor Who and Top Gear programmes) the future seems bright for the blue bird.

 

Good To Know

I sometimes get asked by people for digital stats in Ireland and it can be hard to track down the latest information. Well obviously the folks over at Publicis D have been asked the same question. So they have, cleverly, developed the Good To Know app.

The app will help you keep on top of the latest “good to know” trends, behaviors and market information in Ireland. Developed by Publicis Dublin, there are six sections of information for marketers that cover the economy, consumer trends, media consumption and digital behaviors.

Nice work!

download the app here Good To Know

I did not know this…

Shaquille O’Neal, the basketball player, has a doctorate in Education. I did not know this.

I also did not know that Dr. Shaq is a  self confessed geek (according to Brian Solis). Always looking for the next tech thing:

He bypassed traditional media and announced his retirement on Tout, a platform that at the time had only been live for six weeks. Shaq was early to embrace Twitter where he still engages with his now 7 million fans. In fact, Jack Dorsey was once asked who he thought the ideal Twitter user was and his response was Shaq. Why? Because he’s engaged, it’s him, and he believes in community

Social Media Today

You learn something new everyday.

So far this may not have been a really useful post – but I think his mantra for social media will help, its

 60% to make you laugh, 30% to inspire you and 10% to let you know about this product.

At SXSW he took part in Pitch Shaq and is taking official meetings with two  startups, Speakerfy and Beam – worth a look

An Intro to Facebook Home

So Facebook didnt really launch a phone yesterday.

“I’m finally going to talk about that Facebook phone, or more accurately turn your phone into a great simple social device. Or turn your Android phone into a great social phone.” Mark Zuckerberg said “We asked ourselves — if we’re already spending this much time on our phones, how can we make it easier? What if they were designed around people first, and you could also just happen to interact with apps?”

Is this a game changer?

Facebook News Feed Re-Design & You

Another Facebook redesign is no doubt going to frustrate people, have brands up in arms and probably throw up some privacy debate too. But Facebook has to iterate and if they didn’t recognise how things have changed, in terms of consumption of content, they risk the irrelevancy slide. They clearly do, as Robyn Morris product designer at Facebook says  “The design of News Feed hasn’t changed much since 2006, but the world has,”.

Mark Zuckerberg said at the launch that he wanted Facebook to be “the best personalized newspaper in the world.” And like a newspaper editor, he wants the “front page” of Facebook to be more engaging — in particular on the smaller screens of mobile devices. (NewYorkTimes)

So its on its way. But what does it all mean? Well trawling through a few articles (sources at the bottom of this post) here seem to be some of the highlights:

1. Facebook Page Posts and Sponsored Stories that contain photo and video will appear 20% larger. This is obviously good for brands, they can leverage higher resolution assets and use more compelling captivating content. (the journal crunch)

2. The new design also includes some photo page posts being overlaid with a caption or description rather than the text appearing below, suggesting that shorter text on photo updates will be more effective. (the journal crunch)

3. The new look News Feed “celebrates content” in a way that the last iteration did not. One of the key thrusts of this change is the increased emphasis on the visual experience. “Photos are bigger and more visually compelling,” says global head of brand design Paul Adams. “They have always had higher than average levels of engagement so we know they’re more interesting to people.” (Marketing Week)

4. For both organic and paid page ‘like’ stories, the image that will be displayed in News Feed will be the brand’s cover photo, giving this more prominence. It is therefore even more important that the photo is representative of the brand. (Marketing Week)

5. The new Facebook design also means users will be met with the same look and feel on mobile, tablet and web. For example, the left-hand menu will be visible on any Facebook page, while users can quickly move to the top of News Feed when new stories arrive (Marketing Week)

6. Links shared to the site from other places like Pinterest or Quora  will have bigger blurbs (techCrunch)

7. News Feed’s introduction of filters or feeds, enabling users to drill down to specific content. For example, users can see news from ‘All Friends’, showing everything their friends are sharing, or ‘Photos’, featuring only photos from friends and the pages users ‘like’ or ‘follow’. (Marketing Week)

This last point seems to be something that could prove problematic of businesses. As TechCrunch point out

“ If users choose to frequent that, they could be free to Like Pages to show off their interests or personalize third-party apps, but not have to see their feed updates.”

There is also some interest to see if video will play a larger role, but it is interesting to hear Facebook’s view on this:
“… with videos, people have to press play so there is a higher level of effort required – it’s more effort than viewing a picture. The reward from watching a video needs to be greater.” Paul Adams says.

It seems that this move by Facebook will have some challenges for brands, but  seem to have welcomed the changes as it seems like it will increase dwell time on Facebook. Users, according to the New York Times, aren’t as happy, with suggestions that Flipboard, already offers a personalized newspaper in which users choose the topics and publications they are interested in.

Like it or not, Facebook is a giant and like all changes Facebook has made, we will all have to get our heads  around them pretty quickly and find ways to make it work!

I just hope it puts a stop to all the Like and Share to win rubbish I see on my news feed all the time!

Sources:

http://onesmg.com/pov-facebooks-redesigned-news-feed/

http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/trends/design-a-less-familiar-facebook/

http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/07/for-businesses-facebook-redesign-means-bigger-ads-a-pages-feed-but-friends-only-section-too/

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/technology/facebook-shows-off-redesign.html?pagewanted=all

Round up of some of the best campaigns of 2012

This is a great round up of campaigns from 2012 from Gregory Pouy (HT to AdverBlog). When reviewing it I thought some of the campaigns were older than 1 year, amazing how much can happen – where will we be this time next year. Lots of great creative in here – well worth taking the time to look over it.

 

Apple Donation Box

 

This is clever, I would have lots of apps to put in there – most were free though

Are we tweeting blindly?

I love twitter and have been tweeting for 4 years, 6 months, 2 weeks, 2 days, 3 hours, 54 minutes, 40 seconds (according to http://howlonghaveyoubeentweeting.com/). It has become an incredible resource for me, I pick up so much, have built relationships online (some people I have been lucky enough to meet offline). I would say that I will still suggest to our clients that we use it….but

I was at a DMI event this morning and when Stephen McIntyre (who seems like a really smart guy) was asked about how many active users were on twitter he said that the twitter policy was not to divide twitter users by region. The only exception they have made was the UK.

This scares me!

The last time I heard figures (and they were guesstimates) about users was a few years ago and the guesses were that there were 200,000 users in Ireland and 10% were active. That’s 20,000 people! If we assume that number has doubled and active users have doubled we are at 80,000 people – a decent number but not critical mass by any stretch.

As a guy who developed a strategy and trained 100 people in a telco on how to use twitter for their business I’m not going to throw the baby out with the bath water, but it does make you wonder are we tweeting blindly – with no real clue of what numbers are really engaged. Yes you can use social monitoring tools to look at who is talking about you etc…but you have to wonder why twitter aren’t being open about their numbers?

So what does all this mean?

Well like I said, I wouldn’t suggest ditch twitter – but maybe you need to work out if its right for you (now). Maybe a place to start is looking at your category – What competitors are up there? what are they up to? what levels of engagement are they experiencing? Perhaps it’s going to make sense for a certain part of your business (customer care – just by the way twitter suggest you dont say you are there 9-5 you should be there 24/7).

I think companies need to look at what twitter is doing for their business against the resources they are putting against it.

The questions answer opened up, for me, a whole host of questions. As a twitter user, I think it’s an amazing platform, but are we tweeting blindly?

Trendwatching.com’s 10 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2013

First World Problems

Thanks Paul de Gregorio

Facebook says impressions, reach and frequency matter more than clicks

Well worth a read if you missed it. Clearly Facebook need to react to all the “my click through rates arent good” stuff, but to be honest I know someone who uses Facebook (major international brand) for quick reach and scale, so this seems to align. Article is from Inside Facebook written by Brittany Darwell

 

Clicks aren’t the right metric for brand advertisers, Facebook Head of Measurement and Insights Brad Smallwood told the audience at the IAB MIXX Conference in New York today.

Smallwood shared results from recent campaign studies that indicated impressions, reach and frequency were more valuable than clicks. Specifically, 99 percent of sales came from users who saw an ad but did not interact with it. Campaigns that optimized for reach were 70 percent more effective at driving ROI, and campaigns that optimized for frequency had a 40 percent increase in ROI.

Smallwood began by outlining the history of advertising and measurement, noting that for the past few years Facebook hasn’t had the right tools and metrics for advertisers to understand their performance on the platform. Now with the company’s partnership with Datalogix, which connects digital media and offline purchasing data, Facebook says it has found a better model that not only proves ROI but also helps advertisers improve their campaigns.

Clicks are important to direct response campaigns, but they’re only one part of brand advertising, Smallwood said, citing a past Nielsen study, which found no correlation between sales lift and clickthrough rate. Moving forward, Facebook will help its advertisers understand the value of the impressions they’re getting on the social network, as well as determine the optimal reach and frequency for their ads.

Smallwood said there is a “sweet spot” for the number of impressions that maximize ROI, but it might differ for different advertisers depending on the product, the campaign and other factors. For example, some advertisers will find that four impressions per user will increase profit. After that, retail sales might still go up, but not enough to cover the cost of advertising and production. When impressions are more evenly allocated — so one user isn’t seeing an ad twice and another seeing an ad 20 times — advertisers have seen a 40 percent increase in ROI. Facebook is applying these findings, and others related to reach, to its ad products to optimize how it serves ads to users.

Tom Buday, head of marketing and consumer communication at Nestle S.A. who went on stage after Smallwood, addressed some of the articles and conversations that try to declare whether Facebook or other social media platforms “work” or “don’t work” for advertisers. He says success or failure isn’t dependent on the advertising channel. It comes down to brand messages. Once advertisers have a quality message and they understand their overall brand health and performance, they can apply it to platforms like Facebook. Message quality is more important than ever, he said, because of the technology that is available. Not only do consumers have more control over the messages they see, they have the means to share whether they love or hate an ad with millions of people. He said Nestle has found Facebook to be a valuable platform for its different brands, including Gerber USA, which is seeing $3.91 ROI for $1 spent.

Original Source: Brittany Darnell, Inside Facebook