Cymfony's Influence 2.0

59% say both don't get it

I had a great panel Wednesday at the Ad Age Digital Conference. Ad Age provided an audience polling system, so we asked the question: "Who's to blame for the slow page of development of marketing on social media: (1) Agencies that don't get it (2) Marketers that don't get it (3) Both agencies and marketers". 59% picked both.

See my prior post on the topic!

Getting Past who "Gets It"

Let's face it: agencies don't "get it". Marketers don't "get it". Senior management doesn't "get it". I'll confess, things are changing so fast I feel there is plenty that I don't get! Let's get over it and get together to get with it.

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Consumer Online Behavior: Community or Content as King

An Ad Age story is headlined "Content Trumps Community" and notes that only 7.5% of consumer time online is spent in community sites like Facebook, MySpace, etc. True enough, but the stats say social networks have less of an issue with the number of users and page view consumption than with their users' fleeting attention.

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New Webinar to Discuss Findings of a Global Social Media Study

Feb 28 at 1pm (Eastern)
Register today at: www.SocialMediaInBusiness.com

We all know how important social media has become for consumers, but we still see companies struggle with the best ways to use social media in brand and product marketing.

In our continuing efforts to help companies leverage the benefits of social media, we decided to conduct a study on how businesses around the world are planning, implementing and evaluating social media tools and practices.  TNS interviewed over 70 business executives from leading companies in the US, Canada and Europe about their experiences with social media and we’ll discuss our analysis of their insights in this webinar. 

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Confessions of a Temporary PR Target

I spent the last several months immersed in the Super Bowl… and I don’t just mean following my team’s “pursuit of perfection”.   I tracked advertiser strategies and pre-game promotions on  www.SuperBowlAdvertisers.com to support our latest Super Bowl ad analysis reports. 

What initially started as a little side project turned into a high visibility marketing vehicle for us. By the time the ticker tape rained down on celebrating Giants players, this blog had generated more unique visitors in a week than any of our blogs or even our corporate website ever had.

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Is Prediction Even the Point of Social Media?

On his personal blog, Forrester's Peter Kim writes, "Many [brand monitoring] vendors say they can predict future events based on chatter levels." Everyone wants a crystal ball to ensure correct decisions, but is that a realistic expectation when we are dealing with fundamentally unpredictable entities like human beings? Or is the point to be able to follow more closely the erratic path they invariably take?

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See Jim's Picks and Pans...

...of last night's Super Ad Bowl at our SuperBowlAdvertisers.com blog.

Cymfony Discusses Super Bowl Ads with Fox Business

Cymfony CMO Jim Nail was on Fox Business television today discussing this weekend’s Super Bowl ads and the impact advertisers hope to achieve. Here's the clip...

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Super Bowl ads bad for stock price? I doubt it.

The SportsBiz blog on CNBC speculated that a 20% drop in the stock of sports apparel maker Under Armor was caused by the company's announcement that they will advertise on the Super Bowl. I know it has been a slow news year for Super Bowl advertising, but this blogger should stick to sports, and forget about the business...

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Doritos Super Bowl contest -- what do last year's winners say?

On Monday, Doritos announced the three finalists for this year's Crash the Super Bowl contest. I took that opportunity to talk to last year's winners, Dale Backus and Wes Philips of 5 Point Productions. The full podcast is on our SuperBowlAdvertisers.com blog.

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Corporate Blogging: From the Discovery to Discipline

Cymfony and Porter-Novelli just presented the 2007 update of the Corporate Blog survey we initiated last year. We christened last year "The Discovery Age". Changes in the past year have brought more discipline to the management of some aspects of the corporate blog, while evaluation and monitoring lag.

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Bubble 2.0 -- set to music

If you've developed a bad case of angst around whether there is a new bubble or not, kick back and lighten up with this video.

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Social Networks' 2008 Tightrope Walk

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble....

My musings on whether social media has become a bubble has stirred up a bit of buzz.

But here's the real issue: in order to develop a solid revenue model, social networks must walk a very thin line between pleasing marketers without alienating their users. The models and examples exist today; the question is: will media companies and marketers resist the urge for the quick hit and exercise the retraint, wisdom, and patience to build a mutually beneficial relationship with their audience?

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Memo to Bob Parsons: You are so wrong!

Dear Bob:

I read that you have decided that it is not worth it to promote GoDaddy's Super Bowl ad ahead of the game as you have in the past. I say, the strategy of promoting early isn't wrong -- your execution last year was flawed! Tune in to my webinar tomorrow with the Advertising Research Foundation and I'll show you the proof!

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The Road to Super Bowl XLII

With the Patriots steamrolling through the NFL this season, many people here in the Boston area are thinking a lot about the Super Bowl coming up this February.  But here at Cymfony, the Super Bowl has become a year-round obsession – but for a different reason:  It is the perfect example of Influence 2.0.

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Some Sanity Comes to the Hype Cycle

The PQ Media forecast of the size of Word Of Mouth Marketing injects some needed discipline into the crazy projections floating around about the growth of WOM. Putting this study side-by-side with some other reports and it becomes clear that social media is about a $1 billion industry.

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I'm not the only one thinking Bubble 2.0...

Maurice Levy, Chairman of Publicis echoed my concern that social media is gaining the inflated expectations we saw in Bubble 1.0. Am I worried? Actually, no.

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More on Conversational Marketing

My blog post last week about whether social media is scaling the Hype Curve hit a nerve last week and spawned two podcasts. So I faced off with Joseph Jaffe and Pete Blackshaw....

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Thoughts on the Social Media Value Proposition: What kind of friend are you?

In yesterday's post I summarized the key learnings of Coca-Cola, Digitas, MySpace and YouTube in how the social media value proposition is evolving. Today, I'll share my reflections on it.

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Free Webinar with Paul Gillin, Author of “The New Influencers”

We are excited to have Paul Gillin, author of the new book “The New Influencers”, join us for a free webinar on Nov 28th.   Paul will present insights from the book and join Jim Nail in a discussion about the best ways companies can identify and communicate with influencers in social media.

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