360DigitalInfluence

We’ve been watching social media chatter around the “big game” intensify over the past week – especially if you live in Indianapolis. But since Volkswagen first teased its teaser ad with the barking dogs (and garnered over 11 million views along with way), the ad community has slowly followed suit and rolled out their wares.

Consumers that wanted to gain clout (and Klout) passed it along as quickly as possible. But will two weeks of conversation or two minutes of 1.5 million tweets (like those amassed around Tim Tebow’s heroics this season) sway opinion, increase favorability or drive sales? Or are brands just trying to be “part of the conversation”? The answer to both is yes. 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

This week marks the beginning of arguably the most exciting sports event of the year – the NCAA Tournament. From frantically preparing brackets, diehards planning out their wardrobe to optimize their sporting of team colors, to heated discussion on who will be this year’s Cinderella team, March Madness is one of the most social sports experiences around.

Last year, social media was the talk of the tournament, and it will continue to play a major role in how Americans experience the madness. In fact, research released by IMRE Sports found that nearly a quarter of online American adults (23%) plan to use some sort of social media to follow this year’s men’s NCAA Tournament.

The more interesting finding of this research is that 27% of those who will use social media plan to use a mobile application, and those with higher household incomes ($75K+) and college graduates are even more likely to use mobile applications and Twitter to catch the action.

In 2010, 8.3 million unique viewers watched or listened to 11.7 million hours of online streams of the NCAA tournament, and those numbers should increase this year. Turner Sports has seen these two trends and has taken an exciting step to continue to drive viewership of the tournament through their NCAA’s online platform – FREE March Madness On Demand for iPhone and iPad (goodbye productivity at work!).

The app – did I mention that it’s now free? (last year, this app would run you $9.99) – allows users to watch live streaming games, provide enhanced statistics – but more importantly, fully integrate their social media life into their tournament experience. One of the things I was most excited to see (other than the games, of course) was that the sharing functionality is front and center in the interface - and conveniently positioned next to the second most important element…My Bracket.

As we see more media networks investing in this trend toward mobile capabilities, I expect we’ll see social networking get continually higher billing.

No matter how you plan to follow the action this year, one thing is clear. It’s going to be “Awesome, with a capital A!”

Headline image courtesy Sports Chump

Mashups are nothing new.  In fact on this very blog we recently provided some historical perspective related specifically to music.  OK, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way …

In the last few days I’ve come across three really rad examples of people/organizations continuing to embrace the mashup movement.

continue reading

On Wednesday around noon, half of the 10th floor at Ogilvy Washington made a mass exodus to the corner of 20th and L … all in the name of grilled cheese served out of a truck. Not many things make a large group of very busy people suddenly crave the same lunch and wait outside in the cold for it. While gourmet food trucks are nothing new in cities across the US, the excitement surrounding them hasn’t waned. Why? Because their whereabouts are unpredictable, they exude an air of mystery … and you can personally beg them via Twitter to go to your neck of the woods, not Virginia.

Like many of the clients we work with, food trucks’ entire business models are built on social media and word of mouth. It’s their lifeline. But with more mobile businesses staking their claim on street corners, these entrepreneurs can’t just tweet about their coordinates or shortages of bulgogi steak and call it a day. Thanks to new technology and mainstream acceptance of the trend (restaurants and fast food chains are getting in on the action), food truck entrepreneurs are thinking outside the box to keep customers coming back for more. Here are some online and offline tactics we’re seeing:

Online:

•    Mobile Meteor just launched a new app (it works with an existing Twitter account) that optimizes food truck websites for smartphones, so they can reach new customers who may not use Twitter as regularly. A Google map feature with their exact location will automatically appear on the mobile site. With half of all Americans expected to own smartphones by the end of 2011, it will be interesting to see how many trucks go this “route”.

•    Huge corporations see the value of reaching consumers through food trucks — Virgin America worked with Loopt and rebranded two taco trucks in California with specials to market the airline’s new flights to Mexico.

•    Food trucks are joining forces on tracker sites, like Food Truck Fiesta (DC) and Mobile Cravings (which covers about 30 cities), making it simple for fans to get a quick glimpse at the daily food truck scene.
continue reading

It’s no secret that pharmaceutical companies had a lot of regulatory issues to consider when marketing – and no marketing channel is more hotly discussed right now than the internet. From the highly anticipated guidelines on social media usage to the FTC’s proposed do-not-track list, there’s definitely a lot to keep track of these days.

Below are three regulatory issues that we here at 360 DI are monitoring closely. continue reading

If you haven’t noticed, the healthcare industry, whether pharmaceuticals, doctors, hospitals, etc., is experimenting quite a bit in the social media space and with all the changes occurring, it is worth highlighting some recent trends from the past month.

continue reading

360 DI Black Belt Summit, Darlington House, by Joeywan

Great things happen. At this weekend’s 360 Digital Influence Black Belt Summit in Washington, D.C., 50+ strategists from N. America, the UK and France convened to discuss the latest trends shaping social media marketing and communications.

After two intense days of brainstorming, redstorming and thunderstorming, we all left a bit pooped. Chris Graves, Ogilvy PR global CEO, helped uplift the crowd with a thought piece on influence.

As a social media marketer, I spend day and night thinking about influence. How to inspire a group of consumers to learn about a product? Share a post with a friend? Write a positive review? Conducting business is contingent on the ability to influence potential customers. It’s no surprise influence lies at the center of any social media program.

continue reading

Over the last few days Facebook insiders have posted about two major changes coming the Facebook Pages by this summer, probably being officially announced closer to f8 Conference. One of these changes is a subtle but important word change and the other is the creation of a new genus of Facebook Page called a Community Page. More after the jump. continue reading

This week, sightings of mysterious links for users to View QR Barcode or Generate Status QR Code popped-up everywhere but no one knew what was up. Today Tech Crunch got more information: Facebook is rolling out location-based check-in for late April’s f8 conference that will allow users and Pages to have these codes. Imagine you can snap a photo of the QR code with your iPhone and it will post your status update as well as link to a map of which Starbucks you’re at. Having taken this long to get into the location-based world, I expect Facebook’s offering to be thoughtful and uncomplicated- hopefully I’m right.

continue reading