360DigitalInfluence

Okay okay, you may be “William & Cate” ‘d out…but I can’t resist! I, like many many (2 billion to be more accurate) others was quite affixed with the Royal Wedding this morning on NBC and living streaming on CNN.com, this afternoon through word of mouth with co-workers and clients, and tonight ending with Katie Couric’s wrap of the day on ABC. That’s what being a part of the 6th biggest Web event is all about…

We’ve all seen the stats on social media usage around the Royal Wedding (links to stats below if you’re interested*), but let’s look at what’s being done well by those behind the official royal channels.

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For an industry that makes its money on figuring out what’s next, fashion companies have notoriously — and surprisingly — lagged behind when it comes to social media. Whether it’s a luxury brand that’s worried about diluting its exclusive status or smaller shops that have had a hard time making a dent in the vast Web, other industries have surged ahead while fashion figured out what to make — and how to make the most — of the social media movement.

How times have changed. In hopes that a concentrated effort means a quicker catch-up, many retailers and brands are now eager to put social media front and foremost. Here are a few of the key trends heating up the space (after the jump). Finally, for a change, other industries might do well to follow fashion’s social media lead.

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Today’s Wall Street Journal featured an article on a study that is rekindling some fierce debates about the central role that social media is taking in all aspects of healthcare.  Based on data contributed by 596 patients who all self reported outcomes through a community they belonged to on PatientsLikeMe in a Nature Biotechnology journal article - it is one of the most visible in a trend towards patients using the empowerment that social media tools have offered them, and using that power to add their voices into the previously untouchable realm of clinical research.

“Trialsourcing” is where patients conduct their own self reported research (often on new indications for existing medications) and share their results over social networks such as PatientsLikeMe. It is a controversial idea. After all, no one expects that patients would apply the same scientific rigor to the clinical trial process as professional scientists and researchers - so the results they find could be meaningless at best and actually harmful at worst.  Still, the approach is winning some high profile advocates for its potential. The WSJ article also quotes Dr. Lee Hartwell (a Nobel Prize-winning scientist at Arizona State University) opining that “the approach has tremendous potential.”

So will this be the wave of the future? There are at least a four key reasons why trialsourcing may be here to stay:

1. Patients are desperate for control. The thing about most serious medical conditions is that they tend to render patients powerless over their own outcomes. It is a frustrating position to be in. If you could self organize, create your own data and offer that up to research professionals and scientists in order to help them, however … that is empowering and liberating for patients.
2. Empowerment leads to better data. There is no doubt that a patient who is more invested in a particular trial or type of treatment will be far more likely to be more compliant with required dosages and taking necessary measurements at set intervals. In this sense, the data that patients self collect and self report may rival that of an “official” clinical trial if they are coached on all the right steps to take and data to measure.
3. Public data breaks down academic barriers. In the world of academics, sometimes the structure of funding and pressure to publish can lead to inefficiencies. In many cases there is a disincentive to share research and data before it is analyzed and findings can be published. Patients have none of these barriers … all they care about is getting better treatment options sooner rather than later. As a result, trailsourcing has the potential to enable collaboration on a level that can be hard within the confines of traditional academic research.
4. Data can be globalized. One major challenge with clinical trials is to get enough diversity in the participating population to ensure that the treatments developed will be equally effective on patients from ethnic minority groups. In many cases, this diverse type of data simply doesn’t exist. If patients can share their data across geographic boundaries, all of a sudden data can be collected in a truly global way and new pools of data from diverse ethnic populations can be gathered and used by scientific researchers to validate data and conclusions they are already working on.

The world’s demand for resources (food, energy, water, minerals) seems to be outrunning our ability to supply these needs in a way that doesn’t dramatically impact our lives. We are increasingly exposed to threats such as rising core inflation (described recently by Chinese officials as a long-term, not short-term challenge), financial burdens of securing energy supplies (and the cost of investing in new ones), and the multiple economic and social risks of long-term climate change on our planet and way of life.

The trouble is that, according to “Mainstream Green“, a new report released by Ogilvy Earth, all this doom and gloom hasn’t been particularly effective in driving mainstream consumers to make (and push for) changes to reduce demand for energy and other resources.

In the US, there’s a 30 percentage point gap between people’s stated importance of living sustainably (80% say this is important), and their action (50% engage in sustainable behavior, e.g. taking public transportation or hiking/biking to work; using eco-friendly products and recycling). (It’s less in China — 14 points — for reasons covered at length in the report.) The mainstream consumer isn’t adopting or championing behavior change.

The possible solution?

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…Were you calling from a walkie talkie? Actually no. It was my iPhone.

When people bring tried and true technologies, like SMS, back to the drawing board there’s a chance that the outcome will be something like GroupMe.

Here’s how GroupMe presents the service:

GroupMe lets you effortlessly group text with the people in your life that are important to you. It’s your real-life network, in your pocket. It’s totally free and works on every phone.

• Group Messaging: Start groups with the people already in your contacts. When you send a message, everyone instantly receives it—it’s like a private chat room that works on any phone.
• Conference Call: Each group has a unique phone number. Text that number, and the message goes to everyone in the group. Call it and start an instant conference call.
• Locations: Share your location with the people in your group. Find out where your friends are and see them all on a map.
• Photo Sharing: Capture your groups moments as they happen, and share them instantly within the conversation.

Among reviews from New York Times and CNN on GroupMe.com, Gizmodo claims that GroupMe is a “Lifechanger…. utterly indispensable…. Whether or not you think you need group texting in your life, you won’t know how you lived without it once you give it a shot.”

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What do the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland and Altoids have in common? Certainly both have a relationship with all things wintergreen. Aside from that, they are also among the first brands to be featured on Facebook Studio. On Monday April 18th www.facebook-studio.com went live and declared the following as their mission:

“Facebook is recognizing the most creative, innovative, and effective marketing that makes use of the Facebook platform. Facebook Studio is a community for advertisers and marketers to share and be inspired by the best work on Facebook. Check it out, and submit your campaign today.”

This may be a good time to get your case studies studio-ready. Since its Monday launch, the Facebook page of Facebook Studio has garnered just over 19,000 likes.
 
Facebook studio how-to: Gallery>Spotlight>Awards
To submit work, upload a short description of your campaign along with the creative. If approved, this work will be posted to the site. If enough users like it your submission, it can earn a permanent home in the “Spotlight” and also be eligible for a Facebook Studio Award.  All submitting agencies are added to the Facebook Studio directory.

Learning Lab

Is “the Studio” all creative and prizes? No. Facebook Studio also seems to be the official “agency” outreach arm of the social media uberchannel. The “Learning Lab” provides instructional video for available Facebook tactics, marketing tips, and strategy insights for building your brand with word of mouth Facebook plays.

Until this week agencies were mostly unknown automators behind Facebook campaigns, creative and content. It wasn’t always so easy to associate an agency with a given Facebook play. Now that agencies can be listed, liked, and awarded on Facebook Studio do you think this increases the competitive spirit between agencies by giving more access to other companies work?

Photo: Associated Press

Social media is most often thought of as the space to connect with friends (or share with them the latest laughing baby penguin video). But for the recent crisis in Japan, social platforms took on a much more serious — and crucial — role as a key information resource.

Since the March 11 earthquake and subsequent tsunami, social platforms have become hubs for critical information, a method to search for loved ones, and a way to raise urgent funds for relief efforts. After the earthquake, the U.S. embassy in Tokyo even sent a message to U.S. citizens in Japan encouraging them to use social media to connect with family. Millions of users have gone to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mixi, and other sites to share and find the latest information. According to Tweet-o-Meter, within hours of the earthquake there were over 1,200 Tweets per minute coming from Tokyo. User data like that reminds us that social media is an essential global tool in both times of peace (and, er, baby penguins) and times of immense crisis.

One particularly noteworthy aspect of the crisis response, a trend that we are seeing with previous natural disasters, is the use of mobile. Japanese citizens turned to their mobile devices when all other methods of communications were tied up. Com Score reported a significant spike in mobile usage after the earthquake and tsunami. Mobile communications were not only used for Japanese citizens to communicate, but texting also played a vital role in fundraising. Similar to their efforts for the earthquake in Haiti, the Red Cross implemented a donation by text campaign which has raised millions of dollars for the efforts so far. Other organizations have also set up donations via text message, including Save the Children and the Salvation Army.

The following are some additional highlights of the use of social media during the crisis in Japan:

• Google Person Finder – Google launched this name database site within hours of the earthquake – it can be used to look up or report missing people.
• YouTube Video Person Finder – Similar to the Google person finder, this YouTube channel aggregates messages from earthquake survivors.
• Japan Earthquake Facebook Page – An Australian news.com Facebook page with over 17,000 Likes, used as a community for information sharing.
• Twitter Hashtags – A variety of hashtags have been created in response to the disaster including #Tsunami, #JapanQuake and #Japan just to name a few.
• Crowdrise Hope for Japan – An aggregate of various Crowdrise fundraising opportunities that has raised over $1,200,000 so far.
• Flickr Galleries – A variety of Flickr galleries have been set up with cross promotions for donation opportunities.
• Live Blogging from Al Jazeera – The news site provided live blog coverage of the earthquake’s aftermath.
• Quakebook – A charity book created solely from Tweets about the earthquake.

Resources:

http://mashable.com/2011/03/11/follow-japan-earthquake-online/

http://www.comscoredatamine.com/2011/03/mobile-internet-traffic-in-japan-spikes-in-response-to-the-tsunami/

Definition: Badge fatigue – noun. c. May 2010

• a reduction in the effectiveness of mobile loyalty programs that use status or icons as incentives
• being so over the idea that you’ll be rewarded with some intangible thingy for identifying yourself as a fan

About a year ago, the discussion around “badge fatigue” began. Fans and followers were starting have trouble seeing through the clutter of countless gaming programs that offered incentives. So, plans were hatched to reinvigorate the model before it became another fad.

In the initial format, a user was given the incentive to go to an establishment because he or she would be rewarded with an intangible prize: a title (e.g. “mayor” Foursquare or royalty titles on Yelp!) or an icon (e.g. “badges” on Foursquare or “pins” on Gowalla). Users competed with their friends and unknown competitors to get the best status and personal gratification. As users achieved higher status and left check-in competitors in the dust, they got an even greater incentive: a discount or something for free.  This discount wasn’t targeted to the individual’s tastes specifically, but more so, whoever got the reward first.

The model grew and companies began to experiment; people gained VIP access to parties (Internet Week 2010) and points for existing rewards programs (Top Guest). And this is where we stand today – with a lot of great experiments, but also a lot of clutter.

So, what will happen next?

There seem to be three (somewhat nebulous) schools of thought:

1. We continue along the same lines with this gamification model that has a broad reach, because, in all honesty, it has worked. These indicators of status in the “game” continue to get people in to the cash register even without targeted (and often intangible) incentive. (Note: Some are questioning the impact on business)
2. We move on. Since the market is becoming saturated with these types of programs, it is worth the effort to focus efforts elsewhere.  “Call me crazy, but I say that Foursquare badges go the way of POGS, Tamagotchis, and Farmville – interesting ideas that captivated our attention for a time, but ultimately lost out,” hypothesizes Colin Slasheimer.
3. We repurpose and rebuild these programs a highly relevant, laser-focused marketing tool. Two examples of how this can happen include finding a way to hyper-locate down to the layout of a store or revaluating how the data is used (see pilot launched by Foursquare).

I fall in the third group. I want to be found where I already need to go and told about specifically what I want with hyper-relevant offers. I want to check into the toothpaste aisle of the drug store, and be told what toothpaste brand sale right now.  (Ok, I know this probably isn’t possible right now, but could be pretty cool.)  If I go to the hairdressers, I want to come across an incentive in 3 months when I need my next haircut, instead of right when I check-in.

So, what do you think?  Have we jumped the shark?

Earlier this month, Facebook launched a page for journalists intended to serve as an ongoing resource for the growing number of reporters using Facebook to find sources, interact with readers, and advance stories.

While the opportunities for media outlets to expand their social footprint beyond Twitter and on-site share functionality is clear, I see larger implications in the impact of more individual journalists leveraging Facebook for the development of stories.

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Egyptian Women Harassed on International Women's Day 2011

Oscar Wilde once famously proclaimed, “One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.”

It goes without saying that at least once, if not several times in our lives, we have all experienced the negative backlash a spiteful rumor or an embarrassing truth can have, but it is often how we handle these imbroglios that truly define our reputations.

In 1997, according to Measures That Matter, The Center for Business Innovation (CBI), and Cap Gemini/Ernst & Young, about 35% of investment decisions were based on factors such as reputation and image.  Today, this percentage is considerably higher with the activity and immediacy of Facebook and Twitter.

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