360DigitalInfluence

Happy Friday!

Yesterday in Lisbon at the Global Sabre Awards, Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence team won the THE GLOBAL SABRE FOR OUTSTANDING DIGITAL/SOCIAL CONSULTANCY! Winning what we see as the top honor in the communications field is hugely uplifting to our team around the world. Receiving this honor from Paul Holmes organization means a lot to us. He is the one thought leader in the communications field that actually takes time to spend with all of the agencies out there to really learn what they are doing - year after year.

From day one (7 years ago) we focused our attention on being the best strategists and practitioners in social media not on blowing our own horn, so-to-speak. We wanted to develop creative and effective ways to solve real business problems via an emerging discipline. We also believe in the power of social media to transform marketing and communications organizations.  So, we applied that to our own organization.

We  focused our energy on growing the largest global network of social media strategists and practitioners. We see change all over the world albeit differently in every market. My recent posts on my own blog about Russia are a good example of that.

The true power of  social media comes through a fully integrated model. Not simply where we combine owned, earned and paid media for the compound effect it delivers but connecting new disciplines like shopper marketing, CRM, crisis management, and advertising with social media. This means breaking down the barriers between disciplines and forming new teams and new ways to work.

We are honored to win this award.

Last week, Google+ announced changes 91-107 for the platform many of which are strong indicators of a site that is listening to its users and thinking thoughtfully about use cases. Unfortunately for a fledgling social media site, the very next day at f8, Facebook shared its latest and greatest rollouts with developers and the public.

Amid Andy Sandberg appearances, Spotify integration, and a sweeping UI change called Timeline (all of which are well recapped by my colleague, John Stauffer, in his post), it was tough for Google+’s more functional changes to stand out in conversation.

In fact, if you look at online conversation about the two, Facebook conversation eclipses Google+ conversation ten to one the last two weeks.

Volume of Social Media Conversation about Facebook and Google+ from 9/14/11-9/28/11

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image by John Moore a.k.a. @BrandAutopsy

On a panel last week for a WOMMA event at Chicago’s Social Media Week, I had the pleasure of sitting with Keller Fay’s Ed Keller, Brains on Fire’s Robbin Phillips, and Social Media Today’s Robin Carey to discuss social media measurement under the heading of “Is WOM worth it?”.  In the context of that discussion, I talked about the siren song of social media counting (vs. measurement) and the trap that we too-frequently see: social media “cases” that end by rattling off 20 different social media metrics that do not track to a meaningful business metric.  To illustrate, I mentioned that no CEO is not banging the table looking for more tweets (which BrandAutopsy riffed into the above), he’s looking for shareholder value - sales, market share, preference, purchase intent and a legion of other measures that can not be ripped off the back of Facebook insights.

So, with that in mind and the voices of my esteemed co-presenters in my head, I put together a list of 4 potential measurement pitfalls that can kill your social media measurement program before the horses have left the stable:

1) Setting the wrong objectives.  This sounds silly, but often an activity or “client brief” will be mis-translated as an objective.  For example, “run a high-impact event” is an activity, but “increase consideration and share of voice among X audience” attending that event is an objective.  TEST: Can it be measured?  If the answer is no, it isn’t an objective.

2) Determine the meaningful (vs. diagnostic) KPIs before you begin:  Chances are, meaningful KPI’s will require measurement techniques beyond simple, spoon-fed social media metrics like likes and shares.  Take a walk through our Conversation Impact(TM) white paper to determine how to craft meaningful Reach, Preference, or Action KPIs.

3) Find where your audience is interacting on a relevant topic: Yes, Facebook has 800 million people and likely some of them are in your desired “audience” but they may not be on Facebook to discuss their mother’s prescriptions or whatever topic that you may have value to add.  The important second step to “going where the party” is already happening is not just determining where your audience is, but how they are using social media for different things - where do they share recipes vs. look for snowboot recommendations?  While they could light up for FB, Twitter, Flickr, etc it will be critical to understand the relevance of those platforms to their lives to put together a measurable strategy.

4) Plan to measure: If you put together a measurement plan after you’ve already begun, you have lost your chance at a baseline and being able to know the true impact of your efforts.  Ed Keller admitted that he often gets calls halfway through campaigns at which point, there are limitations on the types of measurements that can be taken.  The baseline is going to be the key to your “winning” metric such as “Increased purchase consideration by 45%”.  That is the type of metric that CEOs do care about and will keep your social media efforts on strategy and in budget in 2012.

Like most in our industry, I tuned in to the live stream of f8 to hear what Mark Zuckerberg and team have been working on and what’s in store for the brands who use the platform to build their business.

Our Ogilvy team will be looking at these changes and their impact on marketers in detail over the coming week.  In the meantime, below are five quick takes as the microphone cools down from more than 75 minute presentation:

1) Facebook Timeline

Sound byte: “It’s how you can tell the whole story of your life on a single page.”

This may be the biggest new feature since the introduction of the news feed in 2006 and the impact for brand pages is just as profound.  In short, Facebook has packaged all the activity that tends to fall off the “news feed cliff” after a few days and assembled a personal museum showcasing the highlights from a person’s Facebook life.

Presumably - though Mark didn’t mention this explicitly - brand pages, too, could have a timeline that fans could use to chart the launch of major product announcements over the course of many years, plot the rise and fall of logos, styles, and product designs, and even see a customised version of a Brand Page timeline a highlighting the history of the brand along with interaction from a specific user.

One could also imagine a timeline in which Brand Page Administrators could upload historic photos and brand history well before their plunge onto Facebook, seamlessly threading a 100-year legacy to the current day on the wall.  Imagine reading the latest news from the Ford page this week and scrolling down on the same page to see the evolution of the vehicles and the history all the way back to Henry Ford himself (disclosure: client).

This seems like a great way to craft an image-rich brand history, though it could haunt some brands with early missteps on the platform as those early posts may be easier to dig up than ever before.

2) “Lightweight” Earned Media & Open Graph

Soundbyte: “”Ticker is a lightweight stream of everything going on around you. Because it’s moving by so quickly, you will never feel annoyed by a friend. When you share a post it goes into the News Feed, but when you add activity through the Open Graph it goes into Ticker”

Research suggests many brand fans stop short of sharing content through their feed for fear of annoying friends tired of seeing your daily Nike+ Running app updates.  “I don’t care how far you ran this morning, get out of my feed!” users likely hear in their heads and opt not to share.  To address this, Facebook created a second, fast moving stream called Ticker.  Built on the back of the Open Graph, ticker is designed to launch a new form of social app relying on a set of verbs “Read”, “Watch”, “Listen” designed foster a spirit of serendipity as these help you “discover new things through your friends,” as Zuckerberg announced.

As new verbs possible come on board (imagine “drove” for an automaker, “ran” for the Nike+ running app) the power of earned media increases in both breadth as more people are likely to share if they can plop this in the Ticker versus the bright lights of the news feed and in depth as brand fans are freed from the one-word Like Lexicon and have greater degree of control in the way the share and describe affinity.

3) Longtail Lifestyle

Sound byte: “Express who you are through all the things that you do — the music you love, the recipes you enjoy, the runs you take, and more.”

Closely related to #2, Zuckerberg made reference to a suite of music and movie apps that had been given early access to the new feature set in the form of a social lifestyle app collection including Spotify, Deezer, Earbits, Mixcloud, Hulu, and Netflix.

Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, made a brief cameo to talk about how, in an early roll out of this feature among his Netflix employees, he was more compelled to watch an episode of Breaking Bad by a friend’s ticker post alerting friends that he was “watching” breaking bad, despite months of seeing the AMC television show in his own “recommended for you” list.

4) Potential Friction for “Frictionless”

Sound byte: Mashble editor Jennifer Van Grove wrote on Twitter, “I can see a lot of users getting peeved about the “frictionless experiences” piece. Apps auto-posting to the Timeline sounds like a lot less control for the user.”

Zuckerberg pointed out his frustration with apps interrupting users to share an action in the middle of using an app as major problem.  He gave an example of a mario brothers apps that pauses in mid play to encourage users to share once Mario nabs a mushroom.  Now, those “share / don’t share” days are gone.  Apps will now make these updates “frictionless”, easier for apps to publish to the ticker without the need to prompt users. One can envision a situation in which frictionless publishing will result in a less control of what get published - newsfeed, ticker, or otherwise.

Time will tell how much of a privacy issue this becomes.  History tells us Facebook will ask us to become a bit more open with our data than we’re currently comfortable with, Facebook will hold the line, and we’ll get used to a new level of openness.  Brands will need be wary of a frictionless world for the sake of its consumers, while still using the data that pours out as a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

5) Facebook as the Preferred Social Hub for Brands

Sound byte: “For the first time ever in a single day we had half a billion people use Facebook.” - Mark Zuckerberg

Google+ has put up some impressive early figures and many have written about the superior Google+ brand pages and potential take over of Facebook.  Had Facebook remained unchanged, and Google+ scored some major brand cases in Q4 2011, there may have been the case for such an argument.

Now, with a new form of earned media on Facebook beyond “Like”, with the introduction of a lightweight stream designed for users to share everything, and with half a billion users logging in everyday, Facebook and its Brand Pages have gained greater distance from rivals competing for eyeballs.  Brands with years of experiences under their belts and in year 3 or 4 of Facebook will continue to devote more resources to the diverse forms of earned media it generates as the platform races toward the once unbelievable one billion mark.

Stay tuned for a deeper analysis of Facebook’s new features in the coming week as our f8 Live Stream attendees explore the new features and work with our clients to kick the tires on these major changes.

Ogilvy Chicago was thrilled this week to take part in the city’s debut hosting of international Social Media Week, a hub of the newest, brightest trends in social and mobile media.

Yesterday, Ogilvy 360˚ Digital Influence’s Ian Sohn led a panel of brand, agency, platform and technology specialists to discuss how B2B brands should approach social media. Judging by the event’s standing-room-only attendance, it’s clear the topic is on the mind of many marketers.
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Sunrise over Marathon, Greece.

Even after the jetlag has subsided and you’ve had a few days to reflect, it’s nearly impossible to justly capture the sense of creativity, openness, innovation and playfulness you experience at WPP Digital’s Stream 2011 ‘unconference’.

An avante-garde mix of WPP agencies (think Ogilvy, Mindshare, Hill & Knowlton, Blue State Digital) and clients (think Ford, IBM, Unilever, P&G, Coca-Cola), communications thought leaders (think Sir Martin Sorrell, Ze Frank, Rory Sutherland) and technological innovators (think Facebook, Google, Spotify, Yoni Bloch, Innovid), the event was a shorts-and-flip-flop discussion of everything ranging from the malpractice of Dr. Google to the miner (Chilean) Twitter parody.

I had the chance to meet folks from Facebook and Google and was pleased to hear that they’re not only thinking about how to work with marketers, but also how to work with marketers in ways that make sense to their customers. The major social platforms are now putting greater resources into collaborating with agencies who they see as partners in unleashing the full potential of their platforms - not just on the media side, but now on the creative design side.

As Facebook’s Patrick Harris and Sarah Personette expressed it, Facebook is primarily a technology company - not a content company. Thus, they see agencies as the “evangelists, designers and curators” of effective social media marketing and integration.

And as we all anticipate what the Google+ platform will offer brands, Chris DiBona says they’re structuring the platform for smart, sensible, segment-able marketing that makes sense to consumers. (I swear it was just a coincidence he used one of my favorite clients, Ford, as an example.)

And because I’d love to tell you more about Stream 2011, but don’t have the time or space, here are some great recaps:

• Five-part series in the Huffington Post penned by the likes WPP’s Sir Martin Sorrell, txteagle’s Nathan Eagle, SoundCloud’s Caroline Drucker, Ford’s Alex Hultgren and Y&R’s David Sable.
• TechCrunch video interview with Sir Martin Sorrell on content valuation and the “dreadful mistakes” we’ve made in giving it away for free.
• H&K’s (and die-hard Stream-er) Candace Kuss’ amazing Storify curation of #stream11 tweets.
• WPP Stream’s YouTube channel. Especially check out the Ignite playlist. Everyone should try to do a presentation with 20 slides that advance every 15 seconds for a total of exactly 5 minutes. My favorite: Esther Dyson on paying attention.

Facebook is always making minor tweaks to its platform to enhance users’ experience and last week introduced three functionality changes that may impact the way both you and your favorite brands use the social network.

View Shares on Your Profile or Fan Page

Facebook users can now view shares from public-facing status updates on their page, friend’s pages, or fan pages. It’s important to note that you can only view who shares a status update if the post was shared publicly by a user or by one of your friends.

Now you can easily see which of your friends shared your public updates, but how will this affect your favorite brand?

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A big thank you to Forrester Research, Inc. for providing the research and Lisa Simpson for developing this infographic.

Personal branding has taken kind of a bad rap over the past few years. As the overglorified “social media rockstar” label has been brought to life by people skilled in hype and little else, the idea of building a personal brand can seem inherently egotistical. Yet what if someone were to suggest that only egotistical companies need to worry about building a brand? Of course that would be silly, yet there is a double standard when it comes to individuals.

In many cases, there is good reason for this. Most companies are afraid to get employees who are not dedicated to doing their job, but rather focused on self promotion to their own ends. Yet the companies that manage to create an atmosphere where employees can build their personal brand and explore their interests are the ones who will win in the long term because they will have the employees that everyone wants to work with - and be better able to hold on to their best people and not drive them away to look for jobs elsewhere.

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What if, instead of targeting 5,000 people, you could achieve the same bottom line results by engaging 500 or even 5 people, at a lower total cost? That’s the potential of influence marketing. Is it living up to that promise and how can this type of marketing be scaled in 2012?

What we do know:

• Changes in consumer attention mean marketing is changing, and the change is dramatic
• It’s becoming clear that one of key players in this change is the individual consumer
• Individuals are playing a central role because they trust each other – often a lot more than they trust companies
• In today’s environment they’re able to better communicate and share with each other – on many things, including products, services and causes

So, do we then target all individuals engaged in social media? Our thinking is that individuals who are influential can create outsized value. There’s been a lively debate around this (see, for example, Paul Adams excellent discussion and his comprehensive collection of relevant research links). It seems to me that most of the debate seems to center around the definitions of who is an influencer. To us, an influencer is not defined solely by the number of people they connect to. Quite simply, an influencer is someone who is capable of – and wants to - bring about changes in awareness, perception or action in a group of people, around a specific topic. Below, we present 3 real world data points assessing the value of different types of influencers.

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