360DigitalInfluence

In a recent Washington Post article, Polarized News Market has Altered the Political Process in South Carolina Primary, we peak into the news consumption habits of a South Carolina voter. Two election cycles ago the South Carolina native would read newspaper for political news, now she “settles in at her desktop to fire up Facebook.”

“Selective Exposure”, described by researchers from UCLA and Stanford suggests to that consumers are “tucking themselves inside information silos” and that this is compounded by the speed and like-mindedness of social networking.

New research from Facebook suggests that - despite what many instinctively believe - social networks actually expose us to new, novel ideas and information rather than polarize us. While politics indeed may be more polarizing than ever, social networks like Facebook actually perform the opposite effect. According to a massive experiment, rather than polarize us, Facebook brings us together.

continue reading

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.

When I first started at Ogilvy, our Digital Influence team was an average-sized practice scattered across a few time zones. Now, as the sun sets on the second quarter of 2010, Ogilvy Digital Influence is a large network of experts from around the globe. An all-hands-on-deck staff meeting requires a NASA-powered satellite up-link.

All of this global growth comes with, well, global opportunities. For me this means closing up shop here in Washington and heading half way around the globe to Ogilvy, Hong Kong. In just a few days, I’ll be saying goodbye to the nation’s capital and moving to Hong Kong in an effort to help grow Ogilvy’s digital practice in Asia.

continue reading

Want to earn a three month fellowship at Ogilvy and go to the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in France? Well, then, simply sell us a brick.

That’s the pitch from our colleagues over at OglivyOne. They’ve recently launched a search for the World Greatest Salesperson. The call for entries is simple: send in a video selling a brick and you’re entered to win. Head over to Ogilvy’s Youtube Channel to submit. “If you can sell a red brick, maybe you can sell anything,” said Mat Zucker, of OgilvyOne in a recent interview about the contest with the New York Times.

The contest is in response to what many perceive as the industry’s wandering away from the discipline of sales. Sure, social media has brought about major changes in the way that businesses communicate with consumers. But, for many of our clients, the way they make money has not. Selling is still critical to success. Our founder and former door to door salesman, David Ogilvy, is often quoted as saying “we sell, or else.”

The spirit of this contest is akin to renewing your wedding vows; many years have passed and the environment is radically different, but the commitment remains the same: we sell, or else. So check out the video, and sell us your brick. You could find yourself working at Ogilvy.

Check out our Facebook page or head over to the Ogilvy Youtube Channel to enter.

Word of mouth practitioners often find themselves in uncharted territory. The majority of the digitally led programs being developed or put into the marketplace simply could not have existed two years ago.  Sometimes not even two months ago.

As a result, planners and strategists in our industry rely on piles of research to gain insights into what’s likely to work for a particular audience. Some of that research comes from inside our own walls, sometimes we consult outside experts and publishers to make sure we know as much as humanly possible about a particular topic. The latter can come from peer-reviewed academic journals or independent publishers like eMarketer or Forrester.

Beyond those sources, though, there’s been a sharp uptick in research from a new universe of resources.  Some doing great work.  Some not.

Here are a few warning signs that suggest you could be relying on some shaky data…

continue reading

In his famous visit to the Galapagos Islands, Charles Darwin developed a theory suggesting a link between the environment and evolution. He cataloged the incredible biodiversity of plant and animal life and the unique evolutionary quirks that allows these creatures to thrive.

B2B Marketers are sometimes considered to be behind the evolutionary curve of most digital trends when compared to their B2C brethren.  But like Darwin’s turtles in the Galapagos, the B2B Marcom species is evolving in this space because the social web environment happens to be extraordinarily well suited for their needs as they work to build trust, generate and convert leads, and provide a mechanism for sustained engagement.

Here’s how… continue reading

Neatly six months after the feds officially dropped the “Swine Flu” term in favor of the scientifically-grounded “H1N1″, web users are finally showing signs of following suit as evidenced by recent shifts in keyword searches.

According to Google’s Insights for Search tool, worldwide searchers for the first time since the outbreak have searched for “H1N1″ in greater numbers than “Swine Flu.”

The data shows that while “H1N1″ never received the surge of search queries earned by “Swine Flu” during the height of outbreak, the science-based strain term has slowly climbed atop the level of swine searches.



So what does this mean for brands?

continue reading

A really interesting example of aggregation launched recently in the academic world. Fururity.org is a no nonsense aggregator, pulling the latest research from North America’s leading research universities, compiling the finding in an easy-to-digest interface complete with a by topic architecture spanning across major research disciplines.

continue reading

Mashable this week posted about the low numbers of teens on Twitter.  The post invited readers to weigh in on why they thought this was (e.g. they’re too private, they prefer texting, etc) – once the comment count spilled into the hundreds, Mashable wrote a follow up post further analyzing the issue.

At the risk of throwing my hat into an already crowded ring, here’s why I think Twitter sees low adoption among teens:  Teenagers, for the most part, do not yet posses weak social ties – the very connections that fuel nearly all of twitter’s growth. continue reading

Bloggers using creative commons licensed photos have reason to celebrate: Google has finally added a Usage Rights feature in the Advanced Image Search tool. I often use Google’s image search though, when I’m blogging, I usually am forced to go to Flickr and search for creative commons photos to make sure I legally use and credit the work.

Now, with Google’s new tool, I can search across photo sharing sites (Flickr included) as well as the broader web knowing that the images I’m browsing are okay use, assuming I follow the Creative Commons guidelines.

If you’re also searching for a particular color (or colors) in a photo, don’t forget about Flickr’s MultiColor Search Lab (powered by idee) to quickly scan Creative Commons photos based your pallet section: