360DigitalInfluence

A few weeks ago, Molli Sullivan told us about some of the ways consumers are gearing up for a very mobile holiday season. But what about brands? Amidst Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the next few weeks of shopping mania, many companies and organizations are doing their best to tie in cause marketing to their holiday deals. Here is a quick overview of how some brands are utilizing digital and social methods to give back this season.

1.) The Salvation Army Bell Ringers Go Mobile: The Salvation Army has evolved its traditional approach to donations this year. While you’ll still see volunteers in red vests and full of holiday cheer around town, some of them will also be equipped with special cell phones that read credit cards for mobile payments. Rather than going completely digital, Salvation Army simply incorporated a digital component of its traditional plans to cater to a changing consumer who often doesn’t carry cash.

2.) Walgreens Swaps Check-Ins for Flu Shots: Walgreens ran a campaign this season to help those in need stay healthy during the winter. For every Foursquare or Facebook Places check-in at a Walgreens, the drug store donated one flu shot voucher for those individuals who would otherwise be unable to afford a flu shot. Walgreens promised to donate up to 200,000 vouchers – valued at more than $6 million – to the American Diabetes Association, AmeriCares, Feeding America, League of United Latin American Citizens and the National Urban League this season.
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Black Friday and Cyber Monday have become synonymous with big deals… and holiday season chaos. In fact, some say that the name ‘Black Friday’ first originated in Philadelphia where it was used to describe the disruptive traffic that occurred the day after Thanksgiving. Others say it was named for the point at which retailers begin to turn a profit, otherwise known as ‘in the black’ because most retailers during the year were ‘in the red’ (ie. using red pens on their balance sheets).

Anyway you slice it, given the history of disruptive traffic (and potential in-store madness), the online and mobile shopping holiday experience is looking even more appealing as offline purchases continue to migrate online with online shopping statistics demonstrating that 71% of all U.S. adults now shop on the Internet. So, for those looking for Cyber Monday Deals, brands and social media networks are raising the bar.

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It has taken the whole weekend to completely digest all the amazing learnings we gathered last week at the WOMMA summit. The WOMMA tagline is “Creating Talkable Brands Next and Best Practices” and they totally delivered. Great learnings from great brands like Mattel, Sprint, Intel, Unilever and Sephora just to name a few. But the most talked about sessions were definitely the keynote addresses that carried four themes that will help us navigate the social media industry over the next year.

The summit opened with Sally Hogshead teaching us all what it means to Fascinate – the theme of her recently released book of the same name. One key theme was how brands need to stand out in our cluttered and noisy world. It doesn’t matter if you’re the best, if no one knows about it. And with an average attention span of only nine seconds, consumers will remember the brands that persuade them in the most social ways. The brands with the best word of mouth reputations will stand out and others will fade into the background. Later in the conference, there was a panel discussion of legal counsel from Coca-Cola and American Express, and I was reminded that both of those brands have been able to stand out with plenty of reason to be risk averse.“

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Tis the season of marathon shopping sessions, and even longer mall lines. A trip to the mall can also mean sore feet, less time for family and unappetizing food court offerings. However, with the exponential growth of the smartphone market, brands are creatively leveraging devices to beef up their digital holiday offerings. Translation: holiday gift buying just got more fun, and in some instances, you can skip the mall altogether!

Reprinted here from the Cutter Consortium (full publication here), to which I contributed these words:

I, like many who have benefitted from the genius of Steve Jobs, can’t imagine what my life would have been like had he stopped pursuing greatness. What would the world be like today if he had given up after being fired from Apple? What if he chose to leave the technology space altogether after such a public dismissal? What if he hadn’t founded NeXT and created the core of the next generation of Macintosh computers? For a while, we had a taste of that alternate universe; a myriad of beige boxes from every corner of the universe and a flurry of Windows releases that were so far from inspired, I don’t know where to begin.

Apple’s innovations help me every single day. So frequently, in fact, that I have to force myself to stop and take notice. Just last week, I was working on a project and needed to brainstorm with a creative partner in Shreveport, Louisiana, USA. I emailed him using my MacBook Pro and asked if he could do a video iChat. In a matter of seconds, he was showing me paper sketches and gesturing movements through our interface. He then held up his smartphone to the built-in iSight camera in his MacBook Pro to demo an augmented reality app he and his colleagues were developing. While chatting, I emailed him a PDF of my presentation made in Apple’s Keynote. A moment of silence suddenly came upon us. Looking into the camera, I said to him, “Do you remember when we were in college? What we’re doing right now would have been impossible!” He replied, “I know! This is Buck Rogers stuff!” Despite our collective imaginations, the thought of emailing presentations, easy-to-use live video chats, or powerful laptops that handled everything with ease was never in our wildest dreams. We laughed realizing that life was surreal — and real at the same time.

I collect rare Apple hardware. I own a prototype Apple Interactive TV set-top box, a Newton 2100 and 130, an eMate, and a developer edition of Pippin. I own those devices because they are beautiful reminders that life is about more than just “going with the flow.” These machines represent the embodiment of the idea that being creative is about trying something new. Something difficult. Something worthwhile. You’re right if you’re thinking, “Wait a minute, those weren’t created during Steve’s tenure as CEO.” People love to think of those products as failures or flops. I don’t. I see them as brilliant examples of Apple’s innovative what-if culture that Jobs created and, remarkably, endured despite his absence. To me, an organization that continues to push the boundaries in ways that redefine or create industries — without a fearless leader — speaks volumes.

If the time between his CEO tenure at Apple is any indication, I’m more than confident that his spirit will continue to inform and inspire Apple employees, Apple products, and legions of insanely grateful Apple customers for a long time to come.

On behalf of those who prefer the bar held high, thank you Steve. You will never be forgotten.

Sincerely,
One of the Crazy Ones

This week, Atlanta is celebrating social and digital media with five days filled with workshops, panel discussions and networking events known as Digital Atlanta. Ogilvy’s 360⁰ Digital Influence team in Atlanta is happy to be part of the celebration.

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We’re all rightly impressed with social media when it activates communities to engage with a brand — when it does its job. We’re even more pleased when that community uses our social channels to lift that brand to a new level, even boost sales and profits.

I’d suggest that there’s an even greater accomplishment for social media, one that our integrated, cross-regional Ogilvy team recently saw in action. At the Opportunity Nation Summit in New York, a broad coalition of activists spent two days crowdsourcing solutions for our country’s joblessness and faltering education system. Some of the biggest names in business, media, policy and entertainment came together: Arianna Huffington, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, CNN’s Dr. Fareed Zakaria, financial guru Suze Orman, Pastor Rick Warren, hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons, tennis star Serena Williams, and several business icons lent their voices at this critical moment for our country, sharing ideas and making solid commitments.

With a combination Atlanta/DC/NY/Chicago Ogilvy team at the controls and global CEO Chris Graves leading the charge, we produced an event livestream from the stage at Columbia University, live celebrity interviews from our Conversation Room, and liveblogging and tweets from Ogilvy content creators, making the conversation a worldwide talking point. And an innovative new Opportunity Index was unveiled. It was social media for a special cause, playing a crucial part in the effort, and it was an honor to be a part of it.

The conversation was built on the foundation of our New York and Washington DC offices’ remarkable work for Opportunity Nation’s new brand identity and website. We spent a month seeding conversations throughout the social web and promoting the stage and livestream events. Then, at Friday’s summit, the conversation really took off. We invite you to take a look at the video interviews, Facebook activity, and follow the continuing conversation (#oppsummit).

On October 27, I joined communications pros on Bulldog Reporter’s webinar “An Advance Look at Hot, New Google+: How It Will Impact PR Pros, Social Media Strategy and Your Customers.” Co-panelists were Jennifer Lashua, Global Social Media Strategist from Intel; Vidar Brekke, Chief Product Officer from Converseon; and Mark Traphagen, Internet Marketing Manager from Virante.

A lot of our value-add from Ogilvy comes from helping clients anticipate which platforms will win.  There are a million ways to optimize your social media presence, and spending more time on yet another social network is something many social media pros are not wont to do.  That said, despite social media fatigue, and despite the enhancements on Facebook released in the last few months, I’ve become more convinced that time spent on G+ is well spent.  The panelist laid out a compelling case.

“My friends aren’t in G+” is no excuse. We should never forget that Zuckerberg made a decision in establishing the “real identity” and “know in real life” folkways of Facebook.  Google+ doesn’t share these; in fact, panelists said that much of the value of Google+ comes from meeting new people around interests in the platform and having meaningful, thoughtful conversations.

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