360DigitalInfluence

We all survived the blackout, but how effective was it? The question may take some time to answer, but support for SOPA/PIPA appears to have weakened in its wake.

The biggest light shed this week may have been that on the rift between Hollywood and Silicon Valley. And why not? I mean, we have content creators and content access providers – and they both have their interests. But when Bills are drafted that seemingly only protect the rights of one, surely the other will see a few ruffled feathers.

We ‘Creatives’ are lucky. We get compensated for our ideas and the intellectual property that we create. In our industry, much of what we create isn’t tangible. But the creation and ownership of that product is just as real as the cake your local baker prepared. Art is art, content is content – though the form may take many shapes, it’s all creation – and the rights of those who create content should be protected. So, how can we have our cake and eat it too?

The answer lies in the way these Bills are written. We all agree that we must protect IP – this has been a challenge in our industry for a long time. America is a place of tremendous freedoms – and with the freedom to create also comes the right to protect. But, we also need to protect the rights of those who provide the access. After all, without an audience, who would consume the content?

By and large, the tech giants support the bills in theory – but take issue with it as drafted, stating that they expose law-abiding web and tech companies to uncertain liabilities, calling for monitoring of web sites. Thus, infringes on the rights of the content providers.

Rights should be protected, but censorship is not the answer. In order to draft a proper Bill that manages to protect the rights of content creators, but isn’t a gateway to censoring the web, one needs understand the architecture behind the internet. Backers of SOPA/PIPA do not appear to fully appreciate the unintended implications critics are citing. So, in addition to the great web blackout, the tech giants have thrown support behind the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) Act in an open letter to Chairman Issa and Senator Wyden.

Could the OPEN Act be the solution we are all looking for?

We need both the creators and providers – and we need to protect the rights of each. So, we need to find a middle ground. The day the web went dark is only the beginning.

How did the blackout affect your January 18?

I was certainly not surprised to read that Twitter is calling this the year of the Twitter election; former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs had said as much in a PRWeek interview last October that stated: “political campaigns, governments, and businesses face a “unique” environment with a completely new set of rules: no-one is immune to society’s doubts and everyone has to be accountable to their users, who are now the ones in control.”

Moreover, we see the impact of users’ voices on Twitter every day - whether occupying Wall Street or voting for The X Factor winners. As social media professionals, we advocate that one of the regular benefits of social media listening for any organization is the opportunity to take a pulse of the community, but in the upcoming election, that pulse can impact media coverage, debates, and candidates in real time.

continue reading

With the new year upon us and 2011 in the rear view mirror, it’s time to pay attention to where social media will go this year. In December, the Ogilvy Digital Influence New York City team hosted its year end 2011 Social Trends Lab. The team predicted 12 trends we think will shape and influence 2012. Is there a prediction you don’t see on this list? Let us know!

And now without further ado, here is the Ogilvy Digital Influence crowdsourced Top 12 in ‘12 list of predictions in social media trends (in no particular order). continue reading

While the majority of the social media world was getting excited a few weeks ago about the launch of brand pages on Google+ and the timeline feature rolling out on Facebook, last Thursday that other platform of the “Big Three,” aka Twitter, decided it would not be upstaged by the whales in the social ocean. In what’s being seen as a play to fend off Facebook and Google+, Twitter has given itself some new bells and whistles in a major reboot.

Twitter’s revamp comes at a time when they want to prevent their current user base at 100 million from eroding. The reboot consists of a major user experience overhaul of Twitter.com, updates to their mobile application (Twitter has had an explosive increase of 25% in new registrants in 2011 based solely on mobile usage) and an unveiling of two very large new features to help marketers. These include the debut of brand pages and embeddable tweets.

Some of the key takeaways on this revision are the following: continue reading

Definition: Badge fatigue – noun. c. May 2010

• a reduction in the effectiveness of mobile loyalty programs that use status or icons as incentives
• being so over the idea that you’ll be rewarded with some intangible thingy for identifying yourself as a fan

About a year ago, the discussion around “badge fatigue” began. Fans and followers were starting have trouble seeing through the clutter of countless gaming programs that offered incentives. So, plans were hatched to reinvigorate the model before it became another fad.

In the initial format, a user was given the incentive to go to an establishment because he or she would be rewarded with an intangible prize: a title (e.g. “mayor” Foursquare or royalty titles on Yelp!) or an icon (e.g. “badges” on Foursquare or “pins” on Gowalla). Users competed with their friends and unknown competitors to get the best status and personal gratification. As users achieved higher status and left check-in competitors in the dust, they got an even greater incentive: a discount or something for free.  This discount wasn’t targeted to the individual’s tastes specifically, but more so, whoever got the reward first.

The model grew and companies began to experiment; people gained VIP access to parties (Internet Week 2010) and points for existing rewards programs (Top Guest). And this is where we stand today – with a lot of great experiments, but also a lot of clutter.

So, what will happen next?

There seem to be three (somewhat nebulous) schools of thought:

1. We continue along the same lines with this gamification model that has a broad reach, because, in all honesty, it has worked. These indicators of status in the “game” continue to get people in to the cash register even without targeted (and often intangible) incentive. (Note: Some are questioning the impact on business)
2. We move on. Since the market is becoming saturated with these types of programs, it is worth the effort to focus efforts elsewhere.  “Call me crazy, but I say that Foursquare badges go the way of POGS, Tamagotchis, and Farmville – interesting ideas that captivated our attention for a time, but ultimately lost out,” hypothesizes Colin Slasheimer.
3. We repurpose and rebuild these programs a highly relevant, laser-focused marketing tool. Two examples of how this can happen include finding a way to hyper-locate down to the layout of a store or revaluating how the data is used (see pilot launched by Foursquare).

I fall in the third group. I want to be found where I already need to go and told about specifically what I want with hyper-relevant offers. I want to check into the toothpaste aisle of the drug store, and be told what toothpaste brand sale right now.  (Ok, I know this probably isn’t possible right now, but could be pretty cool.)  If I go to the hairdressers, I want to come across an incentive in 3 months when I need my next haircut, instead of right when I check-in.

So, what do you think?  Have we jumped the shark?

If you’re like me, you follow a lot of people on Twitter and thus have a lot of tweets to read. When I finally get a chance to read my tweets, I find myself scrolling through hundreds of them and I assume I’m not alone on this. So, what tweets grab my attention? More importantly, how can you develop a tweet that will grab your audience’s attention?

It turns out the same advice people gave me for years about dating can be applied to crafting an effective tweet! Here are 5 tips for writing a noticeable, clickable, action-taking tweet:
continue reading

One of the biggest issues holding the pharmaceutical industry back from greater participation in social media has often been the issue of presenting the product’s fair balance. For those not in the industry, fair balance is that long list of side effects  and warnings about a prescription drug (you know — that usually include diarrhea and constipation) that the FDA mandates the company include when they say what the drug actually does/is for (the indication).

Because the full text of the fair balance needs to accompany the indication, it makes it hard to put prescription where it can be shared, since the company doesn’t have full control about how much information the company shares.  For example, when you post a link on Facebook, you are limited to just a few lines of text about the product - not enough for the full fair balance, something that has gotten companies such as Novartis in trouble with the FDA. As they say in the George S. Kaufman play from the 1930’s, you can’t take it with you.

What makes me optimistic is that companies are developing innovative tools that WILL let you take the fair balance with the user.

One tool I came across recently is Share. Send. Save. What this tool does is lets the site owner (the pharmaceutical company or healthcare provider) post a bar that says  above content that let’s a user share the information via a social network, email, or as a favorite in their browser without any of the indication, removing the need all together  for the balance, or send an e-mail with the full fair balance included.

What it does:

• Keeps standard metadata intact.
• Enables consistent sharing of only specified content and images across selected channels.
• Sends secure e-mails that can include detailed safety information.

Another tool I’ve recently started hearing a lot about is CMP.LY, which looks to have a lot of promise with Twitter. CMP.LY (read as “comply”)  lets a company set up custom disclosures and codes that can be used to identify any material connections, such as a product indication) in their own blog posts, tweets or other communications. When they are present, the tool presents the user with the required safety warnings, side effects or official links with information.

Other tools are in development as well, but it makes me optimistic that pharma and healthcare brands will be able to engage with their consumers in the social media channels they use to get health information, while still abiding by required regulation. I’m sure we’ll see more of these tools rolling out over the next few months.

As mentioned in last week’s column, this past weekend hosted the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference in Austin, Texas.  Over just a few short days, members of the interactive community came together to discuss new technologies and trends, and this year we saw the introduction of health focused sessions in the world of social media.

On the whole, I found the sessions to be filled with great content from people across different areas of the industry who are innovating in their areas across the healthcare spectrum.  While many of the sessions ran concurrently and I couldn’t attend them all, below are a few key takeaways I left with:

• For healthcare, the Internet is about access to information - something that was reinforced to me over and over again is that we turn online for health information. What the information we’re looking for is varies by audience - whether it be new clinical data for physicians, to let a patient know “what can I expect next in my journey”, to find support from others in similar situations, or to find out “what treatments are available for mom who has just been diagnosed with X disease,” it’s about information. Marketers looking to get involved in social need to keep this in mind if they want to provide their audiences with something of substance that they will find of use.

• There is a role for Pharma in social media - in sessions with patient focused groups such as Patients Like Me and Chronic Babe, something that was reassuring to hear was, “yes, there IS a role for Pharma in social media.” While their sites (which are both doing amazing things) are patient focused, both reinforced that they welcome and encourage participation by Pharma, noting thet they and Pharma have the same goals in the end. They also echoed our own belief that for Pharma to get involved in social media, companies need to be transparent in their role and provide opportunities for communities to self regulate.

• Pharma needs to get past the “adverse event” red herring - one of the major hurdles that keeps healthcare companies from entering the social media space is concern over online reporting of adverse events. As we’ve seen over and over again, patients are not turning to social to report AEs, yet it remains one of the top barriers to getting involved. In discussing this point with a member of a marketing team from a top 10 pharmaceutical company that is very active in social media, and has been for years, he told me they have never had a single AE reported in any of their social media channels. Unlike many of their peers, the company has always allowed commenting in their social properties. This drove home to me what I had long seen myself: patients aren’t looking to social media to discuss AEs. And if a patient does need to report an AE, companies already have existing channels by which to report them.

• Everything is going mobile… and health is no exception - from sessions throughout SXSW one message was very clear: everything is going mobile. As smart phones increase penetration in the market (in the US and abroad) consumers and looking for access and user experiences on their mobile devices that are comparable or exceed what they can do from their desktops. In many cases, such as health, we heard examples of how mobile technology is actually advancing the healthcare industry , such as in Africa, where images of blood samples can be captured from cell phone cameras in high resolution and sent instantly to a specialist hundreds of miles away for analysis. For marketers such as myself, it’s important to keep the role of mobile in mind when developing new platforms and campaigns if we want them to last.

Overall there was a lot of great information presented, and like my colleagues, I’m teaming with ideas about how we can use these learnings, and emerging platforms to help communicate with our client’s stakeholders.

I’m curious to hear what others through of the health track this year. What were your impressions?

How many mobile devices do you think the average adult carries? One? Two? Not quite. The average adult carries 2.5 phones. That’s pretty amazing when you think about how the growth in number of voice minutes used by consumers has stagnated in recent years. continue reading