My Last Take on Super Bowl XLIV

You’ll see a lot of analysis of what took place on the Internet before, during and after the game. Watch for things like maps of the Twitter traffic, perhaps some Facebook traffic stats, and perhaps some on social network activity.

I watched on TV so I could concentrate on the ads, which I always enjoy. Maybe I missed a lot of what was going on, but I didn’t see much in the advertising that was directly related to websites and social media. Yes, they had their website and Facebook URLs, but that was about it. Maybe what I should have done is watch on the Internet; there were apparently several sites streaming it live. I like this one; it not only accessed the Super Bowl, it accessed the Puppy Bowl. Something for everyone, as I said last week! Thinking back to watching the Inauguration online, I saw a lot of things going on, but I was watching that on my Facebook page. The channel you use may have a lot to do with what you see, which I think is the essence of targeting.

If you want to review ads or vote for your favorites, there are many places to do that. As part of good coverage by Ad Age, Bob Garfield opines that most marketers should have stayed home. His ad-by-ad commentary is always thought-provoking, whether you agree or not. I like Garfield because he’s a curmudgeon, but even more because he focuses on whether customer benefits or key selling propositions are communicated. He’s right that advertising basics tend to get lost in the hoo-ha surrounding the Super Bowl.

I thought the actual chicken ad (Denny’s) was cute. What’s more important is that they are getting lots of mileage beyond the ad with the contest. They are also able to paint themselves as community-friendly in a time that’s economically difficult for many people. Or you can buy a chicken t-shirt What’s not working there?

I also checked out Intel, another of my long-time favorite advertisers. They’ve been at it for a long time and they know how to do TV, whether you liked Jeffry the Robot last night or not. There’s not much for them to say on their website except “watch it again,” which is exactly what they are doing. Their Facebook page is lively and had Super Bowl related posts yesterday, but they’re pretty much on to other issues today; the page is pretty busy this morning. Their Twitter page was lively yesterday with posts to point their followers to “geek humor” sorts of issues related to their ads. It’s pretty quiet this morning, which may suggest something about the way they use the two channels.

Let me close with two related issues. First, Pepsi again. The Ad Age coverage has an article about the Pepsi Refresh program, which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. They quote Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi as saying Pepsi has shifted almost one-third of its budget to interactive and social media. That’s as big news as their skipping the Super Bowl in the first place.

Second, comScore recently reported that nearly 178 million US Internet users viewed over 33 billion videos were viewed in December. So don’t roll your eyes because Intel posted its ad on its website; people watch those, they watch on Facebook, and, of course, they watch on Facebook. So, in spite of the fact that it wasn’t entirely visible to the TV game viewer, savvy advertisers distribute their content widely. From what I saw on Facebook, I’ll bet Intel with be giving out little Jeffry the Robots at the next big IT conference! The work continues to be “integration” whether you’re talking about the rarified atmosphere of the Super Bowl or everyday communications.

And congratulations to the Saints—and to the wonderful city of New Orleans, which deserves all the good vibes it can get!

Marketers Prep for Super Bowl XLIV

The Friday before THE BIG GAME always brings bloggers out in force. Just as in the game itself, there are two opposing forces. One is the group who care about the football game; the other is the group who care about the ads. I count myself a member of the latter!

So here’s an update to what I wrote earlier about Super Bowl ads and Pepsi substituting a social media program. Coke has 3 ads; I thought one of them was going to be pushing their Expedition 206 program. Apparently not; it appears they are trying to get more fans on their Facebook page—as if they need them. There is apparently going to be a Living Positively theme to the ads and the charitable tie-in. Read about Coke's social media program (including the video about how Coke’s top-ranking page came about) on another recent post.

Animals seem to be big again this year. What’s even more interesting is the number of teaser ads that have been released (see some of them here)—that’s part of the traditional practice of building buzz before the game itself. Ads themselves will certainly be posted on YouTube and other sites during and after the game.

Read all about it in Ad Age’s special section. The one that interested me most was the article about marketers moving to ‘platforms’ and Garrick Schmitt describes some interesting ones. I prefer the explanation that Harry Gold of Overdrive Interactive gave in my class last night. It’s all the channels marketers are using to reach out to audiences—and more. Your blog has to integrate with your Facebook which has to interact with your Twitter—and on and on. These interconnected channels are the ways marketers “broadcast” these days; they are just on the web, not on the tube. Except maybe on Super Bowl day!

Not a football fan? I’m sure you’ll find counter programming. Ad Age had an article about the Puppy Bowl on Animal Planet. I checked some of the other usual suspects and didn’t find anything interesting—perhaps they don’t have a schedule that’s as easily searchable as Animal Planet’s! Note that the Subaru ad for the Puppy Bowl also has a charitable tie in. That’s social media in action also!

In other words, it’s a BIG DAY—for football, and also for social media. Enjoy!

The Importance of Social Media Policies

One of the annoyances of writing a blog is how often you see content the very next day that adds to what you just posted. Usually I just hope people will see it. But this one is so timely and so important it deserves its own post.

This Marketing Charts post from yesterday was in my inbox today. It headlines two important issues:

1. Formal social network policies are important for employers
2. 75% of the employers recently surveyed by Manpower do not have a social network policy

The Manpower report quotes statistics that attribute lost productivity to employee use of social networks at work. True, some of it is undoubtedly totally frivolous. But employee participation in social nets can also be a brand building activity—think Zappos as only one example of many. I gave links to guidelines from ESPN and Cisco yesterday.

The Manpower report acknowledges that workplace use of social nets can add value in the following areas:
• Productivity
• Collaboration
• Knowledge Management
• Innovation
• Employee Alignment and Engagement
• Recruitment
• Reputation Management.

This seems to be especially true if the firm has a substantial number of relatively young employees who are comfortable with social nets (or wants to be attractive to younger workers). I would argue that all companies need, as suggested yesterday, a crisis management plan that includes social nets. Toyota is the cause célèbre at the moment. I heard strategy guru Jeffry Sonnenfeld critize Toyota’s total lack of engagement with the auto blogosphere on CNBC this morning. Newsweek agrees and has recommendations.

This isn’t really a new thought, is it? If companies have thoughtful strategies and policies to implement them, they often navigate choppy waters reasonably well. If they don’t, something always jumps up to bite them. It may be customer complaints, it may be a product quality problem, it may be an environmental crisis, and many more. But stuff happens, and being prepared with employees who have social media skills and policies to guide them is one step in the right direction.

Responding in Social Media

For quite awhile I’ve been using a conceptualization of social media with 5 steps:

Listen > Speak > Engage > Support > Cocreate

Recently I’ve noticed conceptualizations that have these three elements
• Listen
• Respond
• Engage
They aren’t necessarily in this order (although Listen is always first—always!) and some have an additional element; I’m going to call it
• Collaborate. That covers working with both B2B and B2C customers in way that is supportive and that encourages them to add their own content. It gives me a more concise strategy concept to work through over the next week or so, starting with the two listening posts on Friday and Monday. All are issues I’ve written about before; all need updating.

The other thing that occurs to me as I’ve read through posts and articles is that there may be a discernable difference in the terms that public relations and marketing practitioners use in talking about responding. There is the true crisis situation, for which PR needs to have a plan in place. I’m talking about responding in a marketing sense—responding to everyday brand-related conversations. Some of them are positive, some may be negative. Some can spiral into a real crisis or at least a black eye for the brand. Such was the ill-conceived Motrin ad last fall. Frederic Lardinois, writing on ReadWriteWeb, points out that Motrin bowed to a vocal minority and removed the ad, ignoring whether it was offensive to a majority of their target audience and not engaging with that audience on the web. See the ad on the RWW link (or many other places!) and judge the ad for yourself. RWW points out that the brand response was a press release. I’ll have to take their word for it; I can’t find it on either the Motrin site or the McNeil Pharmaceuticals site. That’s a really effective response, right??? Sounds to me as if they were embarrassed and trying to forget all about it!

So how should you go about responding to everyday conversations? I found this chart by Laura Bergells that really squares with my own experience. I’ve come to think of it as ‘social media triage’ and someone (or a team) has to be responsible for responding. Unless it’s an assigned responsibility issues are likely to fall through the cracks. Of course, that assumes that the business saw it in the first place—is your listening operation well honed?

My own experience says:

• Deciding whether it’s positive or negative is the essential first step. That’s usually easy, although sometimes you may not be entirely sure and have to keep watching that specific line of conversation to be sure.
o If it’s positive, seriously consider saying “thank you.” All of us get thanked too infrequently, and it’s just nice. Beyond that, it may start a useful conversation.

• If it’s negative, there’s a consideration that a lot of people don’t think carefully about. Does it really need to be answered? Laura Bergells calls them ‘trolls;’ I have some other names for them; ‘boneheads’ is the nicest. They are actually rather easy to identify. What they say often doesn’t make sense and it is borderline, if at all, relevant. They tend to be ‘serial commenters’ either on a specific subject or just for their own entertainment. You may have to follow comment feeds for awhile to be sure. But no one takes them seriously—you shouldn’t either. They will quickly move on to something else or they will get entangled in arguments with other commenters. Either way, stay out of it.

• If it’s a factual error, you need to fix it, politely but immediately. Do you need internal experts you can call on to ensure the accuracy of your facts? If so, make sure they are lined up before the need arises.

• If customers are reporting a negative experience with your brand, you need to respond in a way that resolves the issue. That simply goes back to good customer service—apologize, take ownership of the problem, fix it, or at least explain why you cannot provide a perfect remedy. People are the angriest if they are ignored. Saying you are sorry, offering whatever restitution is appropriate, goes a long way.

Some of this is policy. I like Fresh Networks posts on writing your social media policy. Here’s an interesting post about an experience ESPN had that includes their policy. I recently ran across a discussion of Cisco’s social media policy; this appears to be the current posting.

The very existence of those policies suggests a tension in the way social media is handled by organizations. On one hand, certain people must have clear responsibilities for things like monitoring brand-related conversation. On the other hand, everyone in the organization should consider social media part of their job description. (Does that remind you of discussions of “customer orientation” in Marketing 101? It should!) In fact, a lot of communities rely heavily on members for monitoring; they can be an excellent early warning system. How do you keep these roles straight?

I come back to a simple rule from customer service. Everyone in the firm must be concerned about the customer; not everyone is a good customer service rep. As long as we’re talking about training and internal organization, that’s controllable. In today’s brave new world of social media a lot of that control has flown out the window. That’s why companies must have not only social media strategies, but policies about how they deal with customer conversations and the participation and response of their employees!

Strategy for Effective Listening

On Friday I wrote about the importance of listening to brand-related conversations on the web. It’s an important source of information these days. It’s also a potential source of qualitative data.

The problems with thinking of web conversations as data are twofold:
1. There is so much of it
2. It is qualitative.
A lot of us use Google Alerts to manage our own personal brands or brands with limited reach. Google Alerts are great, but if there’s a lot of conversation taking place, it quickly becomes unmanageable. I’m also not smart enough to filter what comes in so I only get the specific types of items that I’m looking for. Google Alerts picks up items that have a URL but in order to monitor microblogs and other social media conversation you have to use different services.

I’ve tried Social Mention in the past. I used a rather generic search string and I was inundated. That tends to cause the user to just give up and cancel the alert. Fortunately, cancelling them is easy, so you shouldn’t hesitate to give it a try. I just set up another one on Social Mention with a very specific search string. It immediately sent me an email to catch me up on what I think was the last month’s activity and the first dozen or so entries (of 28 for this specific, local issue) were spot on.

When there’s a problem web entrepreneurs arrive to try to solve it. I wrote about Techrigy last summer as a social media metrics service. Obviously, in order to produce the types of social media metrics described in the post it has to collect social media data. That huge database made it attractive to a larger firm and Techrig recently became part of Alterian. According to the site, the SM2 monitoring product continues to grow in line with the ecosystem it monitors.

What really interested me on Friday, though, was a firm called Clarabridge. They describe themselves as providing data for customer experience management, another recent subject. They do it by content mining. Data mining for quantitative data; content mining for qualitative data—concept makes sense, doesn’t it?


The relationship is that Clarabridge uses the Techrigy database of social media activity and puts its proprietary content mining algorithm on top of it to produce actionable insights in various aspects of marketing operations.

And that’s my point. Every business needs a listening strategy. Start small, say with Google Alerts. If that works for you, fine. But you also need to be monitoring social media and that requires another service. If the volume is high, you will need more help.

But that’s not all you need. This is a lot of effort; it’s going to require some resources. That means you must have a thoughtful listening strategy. Jeremiah Owyang outlines 8 Stages of Listening. We all must be progressing through those stages as our needs and our resources allow.

Evolution: The Eight Stages Of Listening

View more presentations from Jeremiah Owyang.