10 Reasons Social Media Will Not Kill Traditional Agencies

The unprecedented growth of digital & social media has been labeled a threat to the traditional marketing model but the truth is that the two models aren’t substitutes for one another. The following article is a summary of observations by Simon Mainwaring from Cannes. As a well credited social media guy, Simon argues that traditional advertising is more relevant than ever.

I spent the week at the Cannes International Advertising Festival and came away greatly encouraged. Not only did the Festival team (led by Terry Savage and Philip Thomas) do an amazing job but I was impressed by how well the event captured the latest expression of the marketing world. With all the excitement (and, yes, hype) around social media, one might expect this bastion of traditional advertising to take a defensive posture and shun social media, or at least to be a little out of touch. The opposite was true. Not only did the work and seminars fully embrace the potential of social media, but agencies and clients demonstrated real engagement with the marriage of the two. So I thought I’d use my experience of this year’s Festival as a way to explain why traditional advertising is more relevant than ever.

1. IT’S ABOUT THE IDEA: Whether it’s an uber traditional ad spot like Nike’s World Cup spot, ‘Write the Future’, or the Cyber Grand Prix-winning Nike Chalkbot, the fact remains that it’s the idea that determines success with consumers and at the show. Social media expands the reach of great content, but ideas determine reach into hearts and minds. As such, veteran idea generators like ad agencies are very important.

2. FIRST PRINCIPLES, NEW MEDIA: Irrespective of your marketing speciality – whether it be traditional, digital, or social media – the timeless fundamentals of effective advertising apply. Work needs to be simple, emotional and consistent. As such the hard won lessons of traditional advertising agencies are more relevant than ever. They just need to be applied to all media including social media.

3. SOCIAL MEDIA IS IS NOT AN END IN ITSELF: I did not see a single piece of work celebrated at Cannes simply because it was social media. The power of social media is only unleashed when an emotional connection is made that motivates someone to share something using social tools. Brands at the Festival demonstrated a clear understanding of this and a due respect for agencies as architects of community.

4. BRAND CUSTOMERS: Clients made up almost 15% of the 8000 attendees this year according to Ad Age, and this demonstrates a recognition of two facts. One is that consumers are now reaching out directly to brands through social media, and, secondly, that brands are looking to ad agencies for guidance in how to respond. As such the client/agency dynamic is as critical as ever. In fact Terry Savage, Festival Chairman, also said he is 90% sure there will be a prize for effectiveness next year in which clients will play some role.

5. ‘GOOD’ BUSINESS: So much work demonstrated that brands and agencies realize that consumers want a better world, not just better widgets. This a new thing. Campaigns like the Millions, UNICEF Tapwater and Earth hour receiving titanium awards in recent years. What’s more this year the Festival introduced the first Grand Prix for Good indicating a further appreciation of the positive role that advertising can and must play.

6. SILO BLURRING: This year clearly demonstrated the ability of traditional ad agencies to fill new roles. For instance, Interactive Agency of the Year was Crispin, Porter & Bogusky, and Direct Agency of the Year was Abbott Mead Vickers in London. As traditional ad agencies migrate their focus and talent into emerging areas, their creative prowess will come to bear on the marketing.

7. PURPOSE AS PROFIT: One of the things I stressed in my seminar was that the future of profit is purpose. This is based on the recognition that the universal values that inform purposeful work make brands innately sharable and therefore potentially profitable. Across the board work demonstrated a recognition that consumers want to see their brands changing the world for the better. A great demonstration of this was done by the Festival itself when Jeff Goodby, Ben Stiller and Yahoo, enlisted the entire audience to raise money for Stillerstong that is building schools in Haiti.

8. TECH = SAVVY: As someone who attended last year, I was struck by how tech savvy everyone suddenly became. Eyes were permanently glued to iPhones and Blackberries, laptops served as sun reflectors and there was amble wi-fi and power throughout the Palais (which is not always the case even at tech conferences). As such the Festival did a great job of reflecting the impact of technology discussed in so many of the seminars.

9. TRIUMPH OF YOUTH: Each year the Festival does an amazing job of filling its hall with the future of the industry. It would be easy for an expensive Festival such as this to become stocked with veteran ad types (like me!) but this year I felt more old and out numbersed than ever. This is partly due to the Young Lions Zone and new efforts this year through Cannes Connect to put attendees in touch with each other and their communities.

10. THE FUTURE IS HERE: Each year the Festival does a great job of securing the thought leaders from areas that are re-shaping the industry. This year it was Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook. The Debussy Room was packed to the rafters with two others rooms outside full of people as well. Beyond the understandable fascination around such successful entrepreneurs, the industry is clearly listening to those shaping their future on a daily basis.

With that said, there is still ground to be gained. I was surprised how few people were tweeting out from laptops during the seminars (if that’s any indication of the audience’s personal engagement with their own social communities). Plus I believe the private sector (represented by brands and ad agencies at forums like Cannes) can play an even more powerful role in shaping the future of marketing and society at large. No doubt next year will demonstrate an even fuller embrace of this potential in which brands, ad agencies and consumers co-create the stories that move people, sell products and change our world for the better.

How do you think traditional advertising agencies are doing? Are they sufficiently embracing social media?

Source - Simon Mainwaring

Creating Compelling Content

We’re all familiar with the saying: “content is king”. Although this statement is true, it should really be “compelling content is king”. There’s no use adopting a content strategy if you’re content is crap. The guys at College Humor, a site that gets about 10 million unique visits a month, have a few tips to ensure you land in the latter camp.

Today at the Mashable Media Summit, College Humor’s CEO Ricky Van Veen announced a partnership with SoBe to launch SoBe Studios — a project that creates branded video content — and with it a three-part web series called Mr. Vicarious, set to premiere on June 9. He also shared with the audience his “10 Web Content Urban Legends.”

In true Internet entrepreneur style, Van Veen started College Humor in his dorm room — now it’s an operating business of IAC with more than 10 million unique visitors a month. Although it now produces TV shows, films, live tours and books, Van Veen told the audience that the web always remains at the center. And how did the site gain such high standing on the web?

And how can brands capitalize on such cache? According to Van Veen, by being hyper aware of the 10 Web Content Urban Legends, which are as follows:

Myth #1). People will want to watch your branded content: Why would anyone watch this? If you don’t have a good reason, don’t make it. If your goal is 75% to entertain and 25% to sell a product, you already have a handicap.

- Brands need to be flexible. IE, College Humor is a racy site — so if you want to partner with a media outlet like this, its content will be racy. Embrace that. To remedy this issue, you can present content that is not explicitly branded, and then reveal your involvement later.

Myth #2). People will be patient with your content: 35% tune out soon after starting to watch a web video. Also, one third of web activity is executed while watching TV.

- So, get to the point — quickly.

Myth #3). People will find your content: Your video will not necessarily go viral. Over-saturation is not the key, either.

- Have a strong seeding strategy.
- Team up with an established brand or platform.

Myth #4). The Internet is a level playing field: A link on Drudge Report yields more results than some dude’s blog.

- Tap into power users.

Myth #5). We have no idea why things go viral: There are no rules for making a viral video. But all viral videos give the user a reason to pass it on. This all has to do with identity creation: What does passing this video on say about me?

- College Humor has a hit strategy: Only hit for nines and 10s.
- The shorter the better.
- The hook comes within the first 20 seconds.
- Sweet spots College Humor taps into: Topical issues and “Candycorn” (cultural touchstones that everyone knows, but doesn’t actively think about).

Myth # 6). Experience () beats documentation: We have a new generation that puts documentation above experience. It’s all about Flickr feeds and Facebook status updates. It’s basically high-tech bragging.

- if you’re a marketer, create experiences that allow people to show off how cool they are.

Myth #7). You should build your own community and tools: The web values simplicity and openness. Don’t limit the openness of your project. Make all tools open and easy to share. Don’t build your own features — if you want people to share photos and whatnot, use Facebook () and Flickr (). You get much more exposure and reach in that way.

Myth #8). Keep things professional: Show the people behind the scenes. It gives your site personality and makes it sticky. Personality drives your brand. Post photos of staff as well as videos and other content. Perez Hilton does this really well, according to Van Veen.

Myth #9). Traditional media is irrelevant to the web: TV is not over. Content creators are always working to get to TV and film — that’s where the money is. The average American watches 151 hours of TV a month, so that’s nothing to sneeze at. You get a stamp of approval thusly.

Myth #10). People will create good content for you: This is the biggest myth of all.

SOBE STUDIOS

Van Veen topped all of this off by announcing the creation of SoBe Studios, a production studio that creates content centered around the SoBe brand. According to Van Veen, this partnership adheres to two of the rules laid out above: 1). SoBe is partnering with established brand with a history of creating good content. 2). It’s working directly with College Humor to create something that people will actually want to watch.

And what exactly are they creating? A series, which was filmed at South by Southwest, based on SoBe’s “re-skin” campaign — which involves the drink company redesigning the labels of the SoBe Elixir and Tea bottles called Mr. Vicarious. In true metamorphosing spirit, the show centers around two comedians — Paul Scheer and Nick Kroll — who live vicariously through three actors dressed up as different characters, including a karate sensei, a massage therapist and a caricature artist.

Source - Mashable

Cognitive Surplus

Clay Shirky is an extremely well respected anthropologist and writer who has some very interesting thoughts on society and culture in our digital age. He released the book “Here Comes Everybody” and has recently released a new book called the “Cognitive Surplus”. Here’s a really neat fifteen minute (but it’s all good) video that summarize his findings on the Cognitive Surplus.

Go HERE to watch the video.

Quality > Quantity

It’s said that just 1 percent of a brand's fan base on Facebook and Twitter drives 20 percent of traffic to its website. Clearly, it’s important to identify this 1% of your audience and ensure they continue to advocate on your behalf. Although we tend to focus on a quantity approach when it comes to marketing (number of fans, awareness etc), it’s also worth our time focusing on tactics that don’t reach a large audience.

Your brand's biggest influencers are the people who actively and continually talk about, comment on, and spread the word about your products and services. These people are crucial to your bottom-line sales, but they are few and far between. In fact, it's said that just 1 percent of a brand's fan base on Facebook and Twitter drives 20 percent of traffic to its website -- and these influencers can directly influence 30 percent or more of your sales just by recommending your products or services to their wider social network.

I recently wrote an article about the critical importance of finding and identifying this 1 percent, pointing out that most brands today have largely focused on amassing a large quantity of fans, instead of cultivating and engaging their highest quality fans. While it's great to have tens of thousands of people following or friending your brand, the majority of these "fans" will probably never visit your fan pages or company website -- or maybe once. You'll get a lot more impact out of directly engaging one influencer with exclusive opportunities and unique content because that person will indirectly promote your brand to thousands of others who are part of his or her social sphere.

But once you've found your 1 percent, how exactly can you engage them? What type of incentives, rewards, and offers will they respond to?

Finding out what your influencers want is an ongoing process. Sometimes you just have to try out different promotions and then use social media monitoring tools to find out if the content resonated with your influencers, if they shared it, with whom, and what impact the content had on your site traffic and bottom-line sales. There are no hard-and-fast "rules of engagement." However, there are some proven engagement strategies that have worked well to attract and maintain the interest of key social influencers. The key is to continually offer new and enticing content to your top social influencers, like promotions, discounts, games, free stuff, and sweepstakes.

Here are some tips to help your brand begin building a long-term influencer engagement strategy -- so that your biggest fans become your biggest marketing weapon.

Skip the flashy Facebook page
Having a Facebook page for your brand or product is de rigueur today, but you don't need to spend a lot of time making this page look like a flashy, feature-rich website. Most of your Facebook fans will rarely visit your page. Instead, they will get updates about your brand or products through their feeds. The content you deliver through this feed is critical -- but building out lots of fancy tabs and adding zillions of photos to your main Facebook page is not.

Status updates that reach your fans through their feeds are a great way to quickly see who your most active Facebook fans are, as you can see who "liked" the update, who commented on it, and who shared it. Also, if you have already identified your top influencers, status updates allow you to measure which promotions, content, and offers resonate with these key fans. The bottom line: It doesn't matter if your fans never visit your Facebook page -- as long as they are engaging with your brand through their daily feeds.

Reward your top fans
Keeping loyal customers happy is your top goal. Your fans love deals, promotions, special privileges, access to inside information, and other perks. The type of incentives you extend to your entire fan base and those that you extend to only your top 1 percent will of course vary based on your business and industry. But what all incentives have in common is that they are enticing, interesting, or useful to your customers. For a gaming company, for example, incentives for your top fans might be free game points, previews of games, access to secret codes, or the ability to join an exclusive online network of top gamers. For a consumer products company, incentives might be discounts available only to top fans, free samples, an invitation to write a guest post on your website, or a gift of their favorite product every year on their birthday.

Create your own currency
On your Facebook page, Twitter account, company blog, or other social site, you can create your own "fan currency." By allowing your top fans to collect "points" every time they engage with your brand -- such as 10 points every time they write a review, or 100 points if they make a purchase -- you'll build a loyalty program right into your social pages. Fans can redeem these points for prizes, content, or information. In addition, loyalty point programs give you another way to identify key influencers; people with the most points are the most engaged with your brand. Have fun with this program. On a music site, maybe you give away "notes;" on a sports site, fans could tally up "goals" or "dunks."

Make your influencers "stars"
Your biggest fans love your brand or product -- so you should love them back. While everyone likes a special deal or promotion, your top fans are probably more motivated by fame than fortune. If someone takes a lot of time to create and share content about your brand, they want to be recognized as an expert on your products. Recognize the people who create or share the most content about your brand; invite them to write a guest blog post, put their name on the front of your fan pages with a "top contributor" badge next to it, or call them out in newsletters or email communications. Let them know you're listening and appreciate their contributions.

Source - iMedia

Fashion Cycles

Like the ocean’s tide, fashions ebb and flow. Whether it’s an indie band, a type of beer, a style of facial hair, a cut of jean, or t-shirt with obscure references, all trends come and go. (And then come and go again with each new generation, so keep those keffiyehs somewhere safe for your future children.) The infographic above deconstructs the natural cycle of hipster fashion, using the example of a hat. Do our findings line up what you’ve seen?

Source - Flavourwire

The Purchase Funnel - A Different Lens

Purchase models are always a little flaky because they assume the purchase cycle is a linear process. As we know, everybody behaves differently and context plays a critical role in any decision. The following article suggests that looking at the purchasing funnel from a different angle (literally) can have a profound impact on your marketing efforts.

Enough already with the arguments about the death of the so-called Purchase Funnel and its relevance or not, for the digital age. Because maybe the real issue is not whether the funnel is obsolete – but that agencies and marketers have been looking at the funnel the wrong way?

So, take a deep breath. Take a different view of the funnel. And think about it this way.

In a consumer-controlled world, where it’s less about taking the brand to the consumer and more about taking the consumer to the brand, behavioral patterns are less likely to be linear – or sequential. And therefore it’s hard to imagine a consumer who seamlessly transitions from a state of awareness to purchase, by smoothly sliding down the funnel as they consume media. But knowing this doesn’t mean that the funnel is no longer relevant. There’s more to consider. And let me explain why:

1. What we know from our work behind the 7 Modes of The Mind is that consumer behavior in a digitally-powered world is increasingly shaped by their mood, mode and mindset.

2. We’ve discovered that mode of behavior and potential brand receptivity is shaped by a confluence of consumption – based on how a consumer interacts with categories, brands, technology, content and media.

3. We’ve found that the consumer journey towards a brand experience begins at one of seven primary modes: entertainment, share, learn/research, task/transact, socialize/connect, play and information mode.

4. We’ve also studied how the consumer jumps from one mode to another as they make their way towards the path to purchase – based on what frame of mind they’re in while consuming different media, devices and content.

By connecting these dots together in this way it then becomes apparent that the consumer mode of behavior and the “gravitational-pull” towards the bottom of the funnel are highly inter-related. And what’s amazing is that when you take a peak inside the purchase funnel you can begin to see all this unfold.

Go beyond a two-dimesional view of the funnel, dig deeper inside, and with the benefit of a three dimensional perspective it’s fascinating to actually see this modally driven form of behavior unfold. Far from being a linear sequential series of steps, what you’ll likely see is a meandering path to purchase towards the center of the funnel – that’s akin to a journey through a twisting-turning labyrinth, with trap doors and blind alleys, trampolines and pitfalls. But because this journey is fraught with distractions along the way, it also means the consumer may or may not make it down to the bottom of the funnel – depending on when and how a brand engages them.

So far, what’s clear from our initial work in this area, is that knowing how and when to intercept the consumer within the funnel and understanding what mode they’re in at a particular moment, increases the odds they’ll take the chute to purchasing your brand and become an advocate. Using a snap-shot of the three-dimensional view from above the funnel as an integrated modal connections framework can also be helpful, as a way to potentially mapping-out the journey a consumer might embark on as they make their way through the complicated ecosystem within.

So in short, don’t be mistaken. The funnel is far from dead – because on the inside, what we’ve found is that it’s very much alive. Dare to dive in, and what you may discover might initially scare your brand to death. But equally, don’t be surprised if this new perspective of the funnel provides you with a better understanding of how to give your brand a new lease on life.

Source - Mullen

What Makes A Great Planner

The role of a Planner has always been tricky to define. Sure, Planners are strategist & problem solvers but what characteristics do great Planners have in common? In an attempt to answer this question, PSFK interviewed a number of Planners and combined their findings in a series of videos. Take a look and make sure you are getting the most of our your Planner.

Link to the first video here.