360DigitalInfluence

In the wake of Gap’s recent misstep in crowdsourcing its logo, brands should be advised to tread lightly when crowdsourcing. Truth be told, there are some things that a brand should never crowdsource - like its name, culture, or point of view. But brands can incorporate the fresh perspective of the public without sacrificing its brand quality.

Here are five ways brands can effectively crowdsource:

1) Poll the crowd first to identify brand affinity. If you are considering a major brand overhaul, it would be fatal to do so without first gauging your audience. But try and do so early on, and determine if you need a total brand overhaul, or just some minor improvements. The age-old adage, “If it ain’t broken…” is totally applicable here.

When Time Warner Cable split from parent company Time Warner Inc., it embarked on a journey to find a distinct identity. [Full disclosure: Time Warner Cable is a client]. But after 18 months of research, the company decided against a total identity overhaul, opting instead for an update.

“We are giving ourselves a brand identity refresh… so you’ll see a new logo, new colors, new photography, new graphics, and a new ad campaign,” said Marissa Freeman, Time Warner SVP of MarketingCommunications in a video posted on the company’s blog, twcableuntangled.com.

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Transparency, access, engagement, participation, and collaboration are the common themes that tied together the nine different presentations during today’s Gov 2.0 Summit session “Fueling the Innovation Economy“.

During the session, representatives ranging from the U.S. Department of Education, to TED (or, as this month’s Fast Company calls it - “The New Harvard“) shared their respective formulas and designs for creating a more open, collaborative, engaged world that match our nation’s democratic ideals.

I have to admit that I was most excited to listen to June Cohen, executive producer of TED. During her 18-minute speech, she shared the wildly influential non-profit’s secret to success: radical openness.

Sound familiar?

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Photo courtesy of lululemon athletica via Creative Commons.

For those of you into healthy living, you have likely witnessed the merger of your fitness and digital worlds. I am no exception.

On my Facebook newsfeed, my spin instructor friend has announced an open spot in her 6:30pm spin class. When I check Foursquare, I can see that my friend Mike just checked into the Whole Foods, and is still the mayor of the organic restaurant across the street.  And even though I want to make an excuse to skip a yoga class, the Mind Body yoga app on my i-Phone shows me that there are still 74 yoga classes happening before the day is done. And not to mention the various Facebook posts from friends who are “hitting up the gym” or “out on a long run.”

In my digital world, signs of healthy living are inescapable.

Hence, the fitness and wellness crowd is a great example of using social media to communicate, collaborate, motivate, and create community in a landscape that might otherwise be occupied by silos.

But what does this mean for brands? The adoption of social media by the fitness and wellness worlds benefits businesses in at least four ways: continue reading

This past week, Ogilvy PR of Washington DC had the treat of hosting a discussion with DC-based Facebook representatives Adam Connor and Andrew Noyes. Among the topics discussed was the new Facebook community page feature, which Ogilvy blogged about in April.

Facebook Community Pages 101

For those unfamiliar, a Facebook community page is a separate page that groups users around a common interest. Users opt into the page automatically when they list the interest on their profile.

For example, when I click on my interest in “yoga,” I am taken to a Facebook yoga community page. Here, I can see all of my friends who also like yoga. I learn that my friend Erin “really needs some yoga in her life,” and that my favorite yoga teacher is hosting his next rooftop yoga class at the W Hotel. I can also see status updates from people and companies who would not otherwise show up in my newsfeed: yoga studio events, a yoga apparel company’s new product, what yoga DVDs are for sale. I have a whole yoga community at my fingertips, with current and future connections… all in what appears to be an informative, authentic, non-commercial space.

4 Ways Community Pages Boost Brands

Now, there is ample opinion about why brands need to tread slowly with community pages, and how such pages are harmful to brands (see this post by our Global Managing Director, John Bell). Though I would likewise advise brands to proceed with caution, I also see some silver linings to the Facebook community pages. Here are four ways Facebook community pages can boost brands:

1) Attract new brand followers. Think of the Facebook community page as a crowded expo, with a self-selecting base of consumers who are there to see what’s new. Your brand’s page is one among the many booths competing for attention. By posting engaging updates, you can lure users to your “booth.” If users are inspired by your content, they can easily like your page, and know where to find you in the future. Bonus – this grows your online fan base at no added cost to you. In that sense, these pages are more desirable than paid-for ad space.

2) Create more authentic consumer connections. In an ideal world, brands would do the impossible and create real, face-to-face relationships with consumers. In many ways, Facebook is the next best thing to face-to-face interactions, and community pages help further target the people with whom you need to be connecting. That is, because these community pages allow consumers to find your brand based on what it represents, it creates somewhat of a more authentic brand-consumer relationship.

3) Glean Useful Consumer Intelligence. Facebook community pages can offer some useful quantitative insights on consumers. Sticking with my yoga example from earlier, let’s pretend that you are a running apparel company considering expanding into the yoga market. On the yoga community page, you can tell at a glance that there are 500,000 yoga fans, about a third of the amount of proclaimed running fans. This supports your suspicion that the yoga market may be worth your investment (and considering the 400 million+ Facebook users worldwide, this is no sample size at which to sneeze!).

4) Monitor What People Are Saying About Your Brand. By clicking on a community page, you can also monitor what kinds of conversations are occurring around your brand outside of your page… for better or for worse. This can help you learn qualitative information you might not easily find elsewhere about your potential consumers.

Clearly this list is not comprehensive and omits the glaring pitfalls… like the loss of brand control on user-generated brand pages. Merely, I aim to offer an optimistic alternative to some of the fears surrounding the new feature.

What are your thoughts on the new Facebook community pages? We would love to hear your opinion in the comments below.