Cymfony's Influence 2.0

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. 

Some of these insights include:

• 80% of the companies told us they are including social media in their marketing at some level.  These companies are pleased with the results they’ve seen and they are very optimistic about the impact social media will have on their business in the future. But they had a lot to say about the barriers they face within their organization and the sophistication they are getting from their agency partners.
  

• “Revolutionaries” (those who feel social media is a revolutionary opportunity that must be grasped with urgency) are twice as likely to see a lot of impact from monitoring social media to gain consumer insights than the “Wait-and-Sees”. (those who believe social media is important, but it should not absorb significant company resources).

• The importance of social media will continue to increase. Close to two-thirds of global respondents, and 88% in the U.S, said reading and analyzing social media would have a lot of impact on the future of their businesses.

Jim Nail will review the results of these interviews and discuss strategies you can use to improve the success of social media initiatives in your business.  This will be a fun and informative session so I hope you can attend.

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.

As the site’s traffic grew in the weeks before the game, I became a target for PR pitches.  PR representatives from many of the advertisers in the game wanted me to write about their Super Bowl ad news. The experience was enlightening. Some of the communications were outstanding and demonstrated what “best in class” PR outreach looks like, and others proved that there is a big divide between those that get it and those that don’t. Considering I heard from the PR representation of some of the biggest brands in the world, I think I got a good view of the state of blogger outreach.

So, as any good blogger would do, I’d thought I’d turn my observations into a short list of recommendations for reaching out to bloggers effectively.

Make a personal commitment
I know it seems obvious, but I also know how difficult it can be.  When you have to reach out to a long list of bloggers and journalists, it takes a lot of time to write a personalized message to each person. Invest the time, it pays off.  One PR person who emailed me knew exactly what my blog was about and he knew exactly what I wanted to know.  He gave it to me straight and he gave me exactly what I needed. I couldn’t login to Typepad fast enough to write about it.

You are in tune or you are just noise
One PR firm did a great job reaching out and talking to me directly, but they didn’t have anything relevant to say.  There were no stories about the ad, why the company was advertising, what they hoped to achieve, and there were certainly no teasers available. There just wasn’t anything to write about.

The company enthusiastically sent me their ad, but it wasn’t until after the game. By that time the story had completely changed and the ad wasn’t news anymore. 97 million people saw it on TV the night before and millions were watching it again on YouTube and Myspace. The blog conversation moved on to stories about the impact of the ad. Too bad they had nothing to say about that.

The sting of spam can hurt you
My email address must have made it into a blogger contact database at one agency because I started getting emails about product announcements from their other clients.  Of course, these clients had nothing to do with the Super Bowl now or anytime in the future. (You think they’d at least take a second and look at name of my blog before pressing send.)

That turned me off to anything that I received from that firm after that. That’s the thing about reaching out to bloggers. Their specialty is usually pretty niche so it is very obvious when you spam them with a form letter announcement.

Timing is everything
A lot of the messages I received had information I already knew (I do work for a buzz tracking company, you know), but a lot of it was hot off the press and I was excited to have an opportunity to help “break” the news.  I know we aren’t talking CNN Headline News stuff here, but if I can contribute something to my marketplace first, I’ll get more site traffic and greater visibility for my company, our product and for myself.  I don’t deny it - I’m also trying to make a name for myself here as well.

Of course you are going to save the good stuff for a mainstream media exclusive, but don’t underestimate the value of the small stuff for a budding blogger.  Try feeding smaller news stories to a few bloggers right away. They’ll appreciate it and return the favor.

Helpful is helpful, pushy is not
I felt that the “Here’s some info I thought you’d be interested in since you are writing about the Super Bowl” followed up with a “and I’m happy to answer your questions …” worked a whole lot better than the “Here’s some great information, can you write about this today” approach.

Bloggers don’t work for your clients. Actually, there’s not a lot that keeps them from working aggressively against them if you push the wrong buttons.

Persistence pays
I skipped some stories because I didn’t feel the news was that important, or there might have been bigger stories demanding attention that day ….and also because I have a day job… and a family that needed some attention as well, but I always appreciated the dedication some reps had to their client.

One PR rep kept sending friendly reminders about his client’s campaign and he didn’t just try to pound a point again and again. He offered something new to the message each time. His persistence also told me that me that he saw value in my site. 

Misleading is a big mistake
One PR rep did everything summarized above, but he was a little misleading.  He never outright lied, but he led me to believe teasers of the company’s ad were on their new corporate blog.  It wasn’t there, and it wouldn’t be for several days.  The funny thing was when the goods finally did appear I never heard a thing from them.  It was obvious he was pushing this new blog and he wanted to hook me into it so I’d tell people to read it daily for news on the ad. I felt manipulated and never wrote about it.   

I ended up wasted a lot of time with this rep and that stupid blog. A little part of me wanted to blast him on the site, even though it may not have been the most professional thing to do.  In a world where stirring up a little controversy can get you notoriety, you can’t certainly count on restraint from all bloggers.

There is nothing revolutionary here, but it surprising how many top-tier PR firms don’t get it. By the way, I will say that the one PR rep who blew me away was Chris Thilk from MWW Group.  Thanks for making my job easier Chris.

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?

I read Peter's post early this morning, then the question of predictability came up on a Blog Council webinar where I presented with David Rabjohns of Motivequest and Ann Green of Millward Brown. David had shown their Cooper Mini case study, and the work he had done with the Kellog School of Management which statistically correlated levels of advocacy detected in social media to sales of the cute little cars. He mentioned his experience across product categories that predictability is only reliable out to about 1 month in the future.

Why 1 month I wondered....

It is well known that the impact of a marketing event has a short half-life. Recall of TV ads decays quickly, and even the increased awareness from an 8-week flight wanes in a short period of time when the campaign is over. Competitors' messages come to the fore, economic conditions change, the seasons change...all sorts of things crowd the brand out of the consumer's mind.

So the benefit of social media is not so much in its predictive ability -- with this complex environment and consumers' serendipitous reaction to events, predictability is virtually impossible.

Social media's benefit is more in its ability to keep the marketer in tune with consumer moods in real-time, or, as I like to say, "at the speed of the market." 

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...

After responding to the initial question about the return advertisers hope to see with their ad investment, Jim discusses some interesting observations about the tone of this year’s ads.  It’s become apparent that many advertisers have left the rock ‘em, sock ‘em attitude behind in favor of themes about charity, social responsibility and family values.

We spoke to Stuart Elliott of the New York Times about this earlier this week and he wrote about it his article “This Year’s Super Bowl Ads to Be Gentle and Sweet”.  Many of the ad execs quoted in his article agreed that advertisers are approaching the Super Bowl differently this year. David Lubars, the chairman and chief creative officer at BBDO North America, said  “no dying this year” and “we have several commercials that are all fun and nice”

Why the change of heart?  Are we getting our fair share of blood and guts in political ads? (That's Jim's line from the NY Times article)

We expanded on this idea in this post on our www.SuperBowlAdvertisers.com blog.