360DigitalInfluence

If you haven’t yet seen the Emmy winning Old Spice commercials in action and haven’t quoted the Old Spice Guy at least once in conversation over the past few months, you must be sleeping under a rock (well, okay, maybe only a few fanatics are actually quoting the commercials…).

Never-the-less, the Old Spice phenomenon has created a surge of conversation around virality and brand engagement with the online audience. But let’s talk about the brand personality, because - to me - that’s one of the main things that really made this campaign go big.

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This past winter was one the snowiest on record in the Lake Tahoe region of California, which was great for skiing but horrible for keeping cars on the road. I skied 28 days in a four months with a full time job in San Francisco — basically, every Friday night I was driving up to Tahoe in a blizzard.  And every Friday night I was glued to Google Buzz for real time updates about accidents and road closures — the results came in about a half hour to an hour before California Highways did. I also was checking for backroads ways around these road closures. Google Buzz saved anywhere from 2 to 12 hours of time each weekend; that’s a lot of precious hours on the snow when you add that up across a ski season.

Each time I used the mobile app portion of Google Buzz on Google Maps, I shared an experience with people normally separated by their cars. Google Buzz, to be just a bit sentimental, brought us together. And we weren’t talking about what we ate for lunch or some random Internet meme but about something actually — sorry Triffle — useful.

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In my 7+ years working with professional services firms and B2B brands, I’ve experienced first-hand, the conservative nature of these companies and their marketing practices. So imagine my surprise in 2009, when these generally risk-averse companies began flooding my inbox with requests for counsel on the implementation of social media programs.

B2B marketers, long considered by some to be two-steps behind their B2C counterparts, are beginning to dip their toes in the unfamiliar waters of social media, as they quickly realize how they can pinpoint buyers, generate leads, and provide more accurate program measurement.

Even as social media use in B2B marketing continues to grow—57% of B2B marketers are currently using some form of social media in their business, up from 15% in 2007¹–many in the C-suite continue to have their doubts. For the past two years I’ve heard from clients, “social media is only for young people,” “my customers aren’t reading blogs,” “my clients aren’t engaging in social media,” “it’s not worth the risk,” “I can’t measure it,” and my personal favorite, “social media doesn’t apply to B2B.”

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Latinos and Hispanics in Web 2.0 are in the sweet spot. Over the course of the last few days, whether it be at Netroots Nation in Las Vegas, the Bridge Conference in the beltway or within Ogilvy’s own LatinRed professional network during an event in New York City, I have found myself in conversations with various folks talking about the opportunity found in engaging this demographic online here in the States.

So what is the opportunity?

At the end of last year and beginning of this year, I was thrilled to see a couple of recent studies that provided a quantitative backing to what I and others in the industry have been saying for years. Latinos are in Social Media.

According to a report released by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Internet & American Life Project in December of 2009, internet use among Latino adults rose by 10 percentage points from 54% to 64% between 2006- 2008. In comparison, the rates for whites rose four percentage points, and the rates for blacks rose only two percentage points during that time period.

A recent report published by AOL and Cheskin states that the number of Hispanics online has grown faster than the growth of the total US population. Two similarly striking findings of this report are that Latinos have more confidence in online product rating sites than their friends’ opinions (78%: 28%) and that they are earlier adopters of technology, more so than general market users.

Moreover, the AOL and Cheskin report found the percentage of bloggers in the Latino community to be at 21%.

So what does all this mean?

The numbers show that Latinos are:
-A significant presence in the Web 2.0 space and growing
-Content producers
-Early adopters
-Significantly influenced by online product ratings

Although two recent studies, “How Young Latinos Communicate with Friends in the Digital Age” and “The Latino Digital Divide: The Native Born versus The Foreign Born,” just released by Pew report that Latinos are still playing catch up to their non-Latino counterparts online, the reports also state that younger native-born Latinos are embracing the technology enthusiastically. According to the reports:

- 85 percent of native-born Latinos older than sixteen use the internet
- 80 percent of native-born Latinos between sixteen and twenty five use cellphones and
- 78 percent of native-born Latinos between sixteen and twenty five with internet access use social networking sites.

With one out of every four children being born in the US of Hispanic origin, the significance of these findings should not be lost on us as it relates to this market or the opportunity it presents in the private, nonprofit and political sectors.

To not realize on this opportunity would be foolish.

It’s like catching a baseball on the ’sweet spot’ of the bat. If you don’t swing, you can’t knock it out of the park. It’s time to swing and swing now!

This week, Ogilvy is launching a new initiative to publish Red Papers of our thought leadership. Red Papers are Ogilvy-ized white papers meet books. I mean with the emergence of the iPad and even the iPhone as reading formats, I am having a hard time understanding what is a “paper” and what constitutes a “book.”  This one is a bit long - almost 8000 words - not there is valor in length.  I wanted to share some of my experiences in a practical way and therefore I get into some nuts and bolts for planning really effective social media.

What is it about?

For the past few years, we have been helping established and emerging brands apply social media in the most impactful way possible. That means getting beyond tactical and often token gestures at applying social media-based approaches. We work with enterprise to help them not just realize marcom programs but also change they way they interact with customers and organize themselves. While every brand is different, there are common experiences. My Red Paper outlines these and offers a foundation - practical and high-minded - that brands can apply to ensure their own approach is as strategic or as impactful to the business as possible.

Get it now

The Red paper is available for download now. It sits alongside another excellet read in Dimitri Maex’s Red Paper Learning to Read the River which is all about understanding the flood of data and metrics available to us as marketing experts.

Between The World Cup and LeBronapalooza I’ve had sports on the brain for the last few weeks.

As I followed the media coverage I thought I might be able to take some of the tired clichés and re-fashion them into lessons for social media practitioners.

My original plan was to post 10 items, but I could only muster up nine.  Anyone care to help with the 10th?

1. Singles and doubles start rallies. Not every social media program has to be a round-tripper.  In fact starting small - listen, test and learn - can lead to bigger and better things down the road.  The groundwork gives you permission to swing for the fences.
2. The “12th man” is your greatest advantage. Give your fans something to cheer about - something exclusive, entertaining, educational or utilitarian.
3. Don’t hold your stars down.Let your most popular personalities represent you in social media.  Do you have a rockstar product manager?  A charismatic executive?  Give them the tools, forum and role to be a voice of your organization. continue reading
   

If you’re wondering who owns the eyebrow-lift-inducing Facebook vanity “hotasianbuns”, look no further than Chicago’s own Wow Bao.  Wow Bao is a concept of Lettuce Entertain You, but it has a social media voice and plan of action all its own.   Geoff Alexander, Wow Bao’s Managing Partner joined me on a panel at WOMMA’s School of WOM and shared enough of those elements to make me want to learn more.  The personality and choices that Wow Bao has made qualify it as a Brand Worthy of a Weekend (BWOW) - a brand for whom there is a passionate set of fans that would give up a weekend with their families to come “immerse” themselves in the brand - learn more, meet the people behind the brand, and want to have a hand in crafting the brand’s future.  So what’s Wow Bao’s recipe for a talkable, weekend-worthy brand? continue reading

The World Cup, the biggest sporting event in the world, is quickly approaching. Starting June 11^th, 32 teams representing different countries from around the world will compete for the soccer title that has been given every four years since 1930 (with an exception of 1942 and 1946 due to WWII). But 2010 is a particularly special and relevant year. Why, you ask? Because of social media!

Social Media as we know it did not exist during the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Twitter did not launch until July 2006. Facebook didn’t become public until September 2006. YouTube existed but videos looked like this #6 most popular YouTube video of 2006. Now, only 4 years later, Facebook has over 400 million members and more than 50 million tweets are sent each day. These platforms, which were infants during the last World Cup, are now globally available and hugely popular.

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Day one at the WOMMA School of WOM, and a key theme has already emerged … Advocacy.

It’s on the tips of everyone’s tongues - mentioned in every session yesterday.  What I took away …

• Advocacy is a marathon, not a sprint.  Takes true commitment.
• Scaling advocacy efforts are crucial to driving sustained WOM.
  
• Share everything that’s great about your organization (and even, in certain circumstances, what’s not so great) - the honesty and transparency will engender trust.
• You gain vocal advocates by focusing on people’s hearts/minds versus their eyeballs/ears.
• Desire + Direction = Change (per Dan Heath).  The path to success is to stir up that emotional desire ->  give people clear motivation to advocate on your behalf -> make the behavior visible to make it contagious.
  

Let’s see what day two brings …

Getting jazzed for the WOMMA School of WOM confab in Chicago (my hometown) on May 24-26.  A few thoughts and tips …

Sessions

The conference is packed with great sessions.  I’m seriously impressed.  A few I’m personally keen to catch …

• Jeffrey Hayzlett of Kodak speaks on Monday from 2pm-3pm.  You might know that Hayzlett recently announced he’s leaving Kodak, which could make for a very candid session.
• Also on Monday (4:30pm-5:15pm) , Pete Blackshaw and John Stieger lead a session on P&G’s customer relations efforts as a spark for WOM.  I’ve never met Blackshaw, and am looking forward to doing so.
• On Tuesday morning, Sarah Hofstetter and Roberto Mastracola deliver a case study on Coke Zero.  When Coke speaks, I listen.
• The Tuesday keynote is from Andrew Mason, CEO of Groupon.  These guys are darlings of the Chicago scene.  Very eager to hear what he has to say.
• Ogilvy’s very own Kaitlyn Wilkins will join Ford’s Marisa Bradley on Tuesday to talk about building a more social Ford Motor Company.  This is a topic near and dear to my heart; and knowing how passionate Kaitlyn is about her Ford work, I’m sure it’ll be a great discussion.
• Jason Anello of Yahoo will lead a session called “How 20 Purple Bikes Generated 20 Million Impressions.”  I’m a big Y! fan, and I’m really looking forward to hearing Jason deliver an overview of this program.

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