What Joanna Saw

Post as ads > Facebook's New, Entirely Social Ads Will Recreate Marketing

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 12:56:09 -0500

Post as ads > Facebook's New, Entirely Social Ads Will Recreate Marketing :

Facebook appears ready to launch a new set of premium ad units, and, based on a review of documents which purport to describe them, the social network would seem to be doubling down on two core principles that mark fundamental departures from traditional advertising.

First, Facebook is making the new ads social by default, meaning they will automatically show users when their friends have already Liked the advertiser. And the new formats will draw their content exclusively from posts to brands’ Facebook Pages, rather from advertising copy written independently.

Combined, these features make two statements about where Facebook believes the future of online advertising lies—at least in its particular universe. It is saying that ads based on content, rather than messaging, have a better chance of hitting home, and that ads involving tacit endorsements from the people you know have a better chance of capturing your attention.

“When people hear about you from friends, they listen,” the Facebook materials say. “We’ll expand your ad with stories from friends who have already connected.” (“Stories” is Facebook’s shorthand for a wide varitey of interactions on the site. In the case of ads, it seems to refer to the fact that the ads will display which of a viewer’s friends have Liked the brand.)

Facebook has not commented publicly on the new ads (presumably they will discuss them at a marketing launch event in New York next week). But the materials describing the new units were posted to Scribd earlier this week. The news was first reported on GigaOm. The documents are below.

More at: http://www.fastcompany.com/1818952/facebooks-new-ad-units-reveal-a-future-that-is-social-by-default

It’s not about the message or the medium. It is about the brand.

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 07:49:01 -0500

It’s not about the message or the medium. It is about the brand. :

More at: http://blogs.webtrends.com/2011/06/facebook-marketing-even-more-takeaway-tips/

Creative Review - The Fabergé Big Egg Hunt

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 04:23:08 -0500

Creative Review - The Fabergé Big Egg Hunt:

Devised in collaboration with the charities Elephant Family and Action for Children, the egg hunt sees 200 eggs placed in London throughout the period of Lent, designed by artists including Marc Quinn, Jake & Dinos Chapman and Vivienne Westwood. Those who are game to join in the hunt are encouraged to visit the Big Egg Hunt website, atthebigegghunt.co.uk, where they will find zone maps (examples shown below) and other clues to help them track down the various eggs.

Once an egg has been located, hunters are encouraged to text the unique keyword found with the egg to 80001, and they will be automatically entered into a competition to win the special Diamond Jubilee Egg, valued at £100,000. Each egg they find rewards them with a new entry into the prize draw. Egg fans can also collect all the eggs via Facebook by scanning each egg’s QR code, also found in situ. The website shows all the eggs featured in the hunt, with details on the artists. Each egg will be auctioned off to the highest bidder on March 20, after the hunt is over, with the money raised going to the charities. You can bid for your favourite egg now on the site. Shown below are some examples of the eggs:

And if all this wasn’t enough, the Guinness Book of Records is monitoring the hunt, as an attempt to break the record for the most participants in a live egg hunt. Get hunting people!

See thebigegghunt.co.uk for more info.

More at: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2012/february/the-faberge-big-egg-hunt#

ASA announces it will not investigate 'Bigger. Fatter. Gypsier' ad (via @TheDrum)

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 07:22:10 -0500

ASA announces it will not investigate 'Bigger. Fatter. Gypsier' ad (via @TheDrum):

The ASA has revealed that it will not be investigating Channel 4’s ‘Bigger. Fatter. Gypsier’ ad created in-house by 4Creative.

In a statement, the advertising standards body said: “We have received 316 complaints about the Channel Four ad campaign for the new series of Big Fat Gypsy Wedding.

“The general nature of the complaints were that the ads were offensive because they were racist and denigrated Gypsy and Traveller communities and that the ads featuring children were offensive, irresponsible and harmful because they might encourage bullying.

“We carefully considered the complaints and while we acknowledged that the ads might not be to everyone’s taste, we noted that both the images and the text reflected the tone and content of the programme they promoted. For these reasons, we did not consider the ads were likely to cause serious or widespread offence or be seen as irresponsible or harmful and will not therefore be taking any further action.”

Some versions of the ad had been graffitied with the words ‘more racist’ at the bottom.

More at: http://www.thedrum.co.uk/news/2012/02/22/asa-announces-it-will-not-investigate-bigger-fatter-gyspier-ad?

Are you the left brain or the right - I'm somewhere in the middle! (via @LukasWhite)

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 06:42:00 -0500

Are you the left brain or the right - I'm somewhere in the middle! (via @LukasWhite):

“I am the left brain. I am a scientist. A mathematician. I love the familiar. I categorize. I am accurate. Linear. Analytical. Strategic. I am practical. Always in control. A master of words and language. Realistic. I calculate equations and play with numbers. I am order. I am logic. I know exactly who I am.”

And for the right brain:
…
“I am the right brain. I am creativity. A free spirit. I am passion. Yearning. Sensuality. I am the sound of roaring laughter. I am taste. The feeling of sand beneath bare feat. I am movement. Vivid colors. I am the urge to paint on an empty canvas. I am boundless imagination. Art. Poetry. I sense. I feel. I am everything I wanted to be.”

More at: http://www.fuelyourcreativity.com/left-brain-vs-right-brain-advertising/ via @fayscho

How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did (via @jonpaget)

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 14:57:58 -0500

How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did (via @jonpaget):

So Target started sending coupons for baby items to customers according to their pregnancy scores. Duhigg shares an anecdote — so good that it sounds made up — that conveys how eerily accurate the targeting is. An angry man went into a Target outside of Minneapolis, demanding to talk to a manager:

Target knows before it shows.

“My daughter got this in the mail!” he said. “She’s still in high school, and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?”

The manager didn’t have any idea what the man was talking about. He looked at the mailer. Sure enough, it was addressed to the man’s daughter and contained advertisements for maternity clothing, nursery furniture and pictures of smiling infants. The manager apologized and then called a few days later to apologize again.

(Nice customer service, Target.)

On the phone, though, the father was somewhat abashed. “I had a talk with my daughter,” he said. “It turns out there’s been some activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware of. She’s due in August. I owe you an apology.”

Target’s Andrew Pole (from LinkedIn)

What Target discovered fairly quickly is that it creeped people out that the company knew about their pregnancies in advance.

“If we send someone a catalog and say, ‘Congratulations on your first child!’ and they’ve never told us they’re pregnant, that’s going to make some people uncomfortable,” Pole told me. “We are very conservative about compliance with all privacy laws. But even if you’re following the law, you can do things where people get queasy.”

Bold is mine. That’s a quote for our times.

So Target got sneakier about sending the coupons. The company can create personalized booklets; instead of sending people with high pregnancy scores books o’ coupons solely for diapers, rattles, strollers, and the “Go the F*** to Bed” book, they more subtly spread them about:

“Then we started mixing in all these ads for things we knew pregnant women would never buy, so the baby ads looked random. We’d put an ad for a lawn mower next to diapers. We’d put a coupon for wineglasses next to infant clothes. That way, it looked like all the products were chosen by chance.

“And we found out that as long as a pregnant woman thinks she hasn’t been spied on, she’ll use the coupons. She just assumes that everyone else on her block got the same mailer for diapers and cribs. As long as we don’t spook her, it works.”

via How Companies Learn Your Secrets – NYTimes.com.

So the Target philosophy towards expecting parents is similar to the first date philosophy? Even if you’ve fully stalked the person on Facebook and Google beforehand, pretend like you know less than you do so as not to creep the person out.

More at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/

Apple briefs bloggers, blanks New York Times (via @davewiner)

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 08:23:37 -0500

Apple briefs bloggers, blanks New York Times (via @davewiner):

Apple has a track record of playing favourites with publications, so that a handful of journalists get treated like royalty while the plebs consider themselves lucky if they can extract a “no comment”. Of course, these very select American publications retain their editorial independence, but there’s always a hidden threat: they know that if they don’t provide the right sort of coverage, they can be excommunicated. And it looks as though that’s just happened to The New York Times.

Apple has just released a preview (beta) version of a minor upgrade to its Mac OS X operating system, so who got “the treatment” this time? One unexpected recipient was influential blogger John Gruber, from Daring Fireball. He has been called the Ultimate Apple Fanboy, though given the state of Apple-oriented journalism, there are many rivals for this prestigious title.

What’s interesting is that Gruber actually describes the treatment he got:

“We were sitting in a comfortable hotel suite in Manhattan just over a week ago. I’d
been summoned a few days earlier by Apple PR with the offer of a private “product
briefing”. I had no idea heading into the meeting what it was about. I had no idea
how it would be conducted. This was new territory for me, and I think, for Apple.”
…
“The meeting was structured and conducted very much like an Apple product announce-
ment event. But instead of an auditorium with a stage and theater seating, it was simply
with a couch, a chair, an iMac, and an Apple TV hooked up to a Sony HDTV. And instead
of a room full of writers, journalists, and analysts, it was just me, Schiller, and two others
from Apple — Brian Croll from product marketing and Bill Evans from PR.”

Phil Schiller is Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing and used to be the primary stand-in for Apple’s top salesman, the late, great Steve Jobs. In that capacity, for example, Schiller unveiled the iPhone 3GS.

Someone with Apple Royalty status, such as The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg, might well be blasé about this level of attention, but it’s pretty unusual stuff for bloggerdom.

Apple journalists did not have to work very hard to figure out why the New York Times was being blanked in Manhattan, its own back yard: it’s payback for publishing articles about Apple’s problems with the Chinese factory workers who actually make its products. And as The Washington Post noted, they got the message:

Says a source at the Times: “They are playing access journalism…
I’ve heard it from people inside Apple: They said, look, you guys
are going to get less access based on the iEconomy series.”

The amusing aspect of this story is that Apple is shooting itself in the foot. On American newspapers, the people who review products are rarely the ones who write about factory conditions and similar issues. For example, the New York Times’s biggest “crime” was In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad, published on 25 January, which was written not by tech columnist David Pogue but by Charles Duhigg and David Barboza. And I don’t expect they care.

More at: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/jacks-blog-10017212/apple-briefs-bloggers-blanks-new-york-times-10025445/

UK Pinterest users buck US trend (via @thinktanklondon)

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 05:41:12 -0500

UK Pinterest users buck US trend (via @thinktanklondon):

A recent study has shown that Pinterest is more popular with men than women in the UK. This is, at first glance, quite surprising seeing as 83 per cent of Pinterest’s US users are women.

However, a closer look at the data reveals that many UK users are in fact professionals working in the media industry. This perhaps explains why the gender split is more even in the UK (44 per cent female, 56 per cent male) compared to the US, where women have adopted the site for social rather than professional reasons.

More at: http://www.thinktank.org.uk/blog/2012/02/uk-pinterest-users-buck-us-trend.php

"Regret doesn’t remind us that we did badly — it reminds us that we know we can do better." @kathrynschulz's #TEDX talk (via @brainpicker)

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 11:12:00 -0500

"Regret doesn’t remind us that we did badly — it reminds us that we know we can do better." @kathrynschulz's #TEDX talk (via @brainpicker):

Kathryn Schulz on the Psychology of Regret and How to Live with It | Brain Pickings

If we have goals and dreams and we want to do our best, and if we love people and we don’t want to hurt them or lose them, we should feel pain when things go wrong. The point isn’t to live without any regrets, the point is to not hate ourselves for having them… We need to learn to love the flawed, imperfect things that we create, and to forgive ourselves for creating them. Regret doesn’t remind us that we did badly — it reminds us that we know we can do better.”

More at: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/12/05/kathryn-schulz-regret-ted/

#LoveIt. >If cats were fonts (via @cox_tom @thepoke)

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 07:06:40 -0500

#LoveIt. >If cats were fonts (via @cox_tom @thepoke):

More at: http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2012/02/16/if-cats-were-fonts/

15% increase in revenue with Facebook app (via @usefulsocial)

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 12:16:18 -0500

As the number of Facebook commerce apps grows, choosing the right one to partner with is now an important decision to get right. One of the leading app developers is Ecwid. To illustrate how their platform can deliver real-world revenue gains, the company analysed 2,000 of its user accounts and found that an increase of 15% was enjoyed when using the app. Ecwid itself now has over 10 million ‘likes’ and has reported that total revenue via its Facebook stores jumped by 40% last year.

“Ecwid 10.2 makes it as easy as possible for website owners, of varying level levels of technical expertise, to start monetising their sites,” said Ruslan Fazlyev, founder and CEO of Ecwid. “Traditionally, users would be required to build and maintain a separate e-commerce site; pay for a hosted e-commerce solution; or add additional code to add individual ‘Buy Now’ buttons to their site, all of which can be a time consuming and costly exercise. Ecwid 10.2 not only makes it easy to set up an online store, but it also now offers store owners greater levels of customisation than ever before.”

Ecwid is the first and only store builder created entirely in AJAX. This means website owners can be confident that buyers are able to use the shopping cart regardless of device or browser type and without the need to install a Flash plug-in. Ecwid 10.2 is available in 40 languages and integrates seamlessly with major CMS and site builder platforms such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Parallels Web Presence Builder and now also any site created using Microsoft Office 365, providing them with e-commerce functionality.

Interactive 3D Stream of Love on Twitter #LoveWillConquer via @ImperialLeisure @mark_mcgee

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:14:20 -0500

Interactive 3D Stream of Love on Twitter #LoveWillConquer via @ImperialLeisure @mark_mcgee:

V.nice!

No Longer An Awkward Teenager? Gamification Grows Up (via @TechCrunch)

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:40:22 -0500

No Longer An Awkward Teenager? Gamification Grows Up (via @TechCrunch):

Over the last year, you may have noticed that a once-niche trend not only crept into the mainstream, but is starting to really make a big splash. Gamification has become one of the hottest buzz words in the industry and is probably in the process of taking over a website or user experience near you.

For the uninitiated, gamification, said simply, is the use of game design techniques and mechanics to solve problems and engage audiences. Over the last year, even large companies and enterprises are starting to get in on the game, with Gartner saying that all CIOs should have gamification on their radar, and M2 research predicting that the gamification market will reach 2.8 billion in direct spending by 2016.

Okay, so it’s on the rise, we get that, but let’s take a look at some of the players that are helping to take this trend to the next level. Three companies in particular are currently creating some buzz in the space: Badgeville, Bigdoor and Bunchball.

Badgeville started by making a big splash center stage at Disrupt in the fall of 2009. The company took home the Audience Choice Award at Disrupt, has since gone on a tear and is poised to have a great 2012. (Check out Rip’s original post on Badgeville’s prospects here.)

Badgeville Co-founder and CEO Kris Duggan pulls no punches when it comes to one of the most visible and early adopters of gamification, the check-in king: Foursquare. The CEO says that Foursquare was early in its attempts at gamification, but that its incentivization models remain fundamentally flawed.

Duggan points to the “Mayorship” system within Foursquare: “You have literally hundreds of people and only one mutually-exclusive point of recognition, the Mayor. What happens to the other hundreds of people? Not only are they not engaged, but you don’t take into consideration different types of users.” Duggan believes you need to engage not only the heavy user, but medium and light users as well. Rather than a one-size-fits-all methodology, you can appeal to each user type and incent them accordingly.

More at: http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/12/no-longer-an-awkward-teenager-gamification-grows-up/

Social media engagement is 'the top priority for digital marketers' via @Econsultancy

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:22:53 -0500

Social media engagement is 'the top priority for digital marketers' via @Econsultancy:

New research about digital marketing trends published today shows that social media engagement is rated as both the top priority and most exciting opportunity for companies this year.

But while the fourth Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing, published by Econsultancy in association with Adobe, shows a huge appetite for social media programmes, there is a worrying lack of commitment to investment in associated analytics and measurement.

Research for this report found that, along with content optimisation, social media engagement is rated as the top priority for digital marketers out of a range of digital-related marketing activities and disciplines.

Asked to indicate their top three priorities for the year ahead, companies surveyed by Econsultancy and Adobe found that these areas will be more important in 2012 than other disciplines including conversion rate optimisation, mobile optimisation and content marketing.

Social media analytics lagged behind in ninth place.

More than 600 companies surveyed for this report were also asked about the ‘most exciting’ digital-related opportunities for their organisations in 2012.

More than half of client-side respondents (54%) said that social media engagement featured among the three most exciting opportunities, way ahead of mobile optimisation (38%) and content optimisation (37%). Again, social analytics is much further down the pecking order, this time in eighth place.

More at: http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/8995-social-media-engagement-is-the-top-priority-for-digital-marketers?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed

Brands struggling to follow consumer journey online, finds IAB (via @Jeffmclfc)

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:57:58 -0500

Brands struggling to follow consumer journey online, finds IAB (via @Jeffmclfc):

Over half of brands still struggle with following and understanding the journey of a potential consumer online, known as attribution modelling, according to new research from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).

The IAB surveyed 123 marketers and digital marketers from top 200 advertisers in the UK, between October and December last year for its Search Barometer Survey.

According to the study, which involved marketers from across all sectors, including entertainment, retail, FMCG and automotive, 53% of brands had ‘little or no understanding’ of attribution modelling.

The uptake in tablet and smartphone devices has increased the propensity for broken consumer journeys to occur, which means attribution is more challenging for marketers, according to the IAB.

It also found that only 13% of brands feel they have sufficient amount of performance data to help them with attribution modelling. Search integration is still a challenge for brands, with only one third of the brands surveyed using paid and natural search to build their brand and generate awareness as their primary objective.

Nearly two thirds of the ones which integrate search into campaigns can see ‘tangible benefits’ of doing so, according to the research. Of the marketers surveyed 94% said that there is greater opportunity to integrate search into the wider media mix.

The survey of marketers found that online display and social media are most integrated with search in campaigns, at 65% and 62% respectively. This is followed by TV, with 43% of campaigns integrated with search marketing.

More: http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/bulletin/dailynews/article/1116676/?DCMP=EMC-BreakingnewsfromMarketing

Lady Gaga to launch own social networking site (via @skarritt)

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:34:43 -0500

Lady Gaga to launch own social networking site (via @skarritt):

Pop sensation Lady Gaga is launching her own social networking website exclusively for her fans.

Gaga, 25, has used online forums to boost her worldwide appeal and has become the first celebrity to register 18 million followers on Twitter, Daily Star reported.

Now the `Poker Face` hitmaker is putting her technology skills to use by founding her very own networking site for her devotees, who she lovingly calls “little monsters”.

The site, called littlemonsters.com, is currently being set up and the webpage invites fans to register with their email address.

The site has been set up with the help of social media start-up company Backplane, in which Gaga is an investor.

More at: http://zeenews.india.com/entertainment/and-more/lady-gaga-to-launch-own-social-networking-site_105483.htm

Clever bit of Valentine's Day direct marketing from @Interflora (via @jeffmclfc)

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:30:28 -0500

Clever bit of Valentine's Day direct marketing from @Interflora (via @jeffmclfc):

like sentiment but not execution - was no surprise as wife saw it 1st (unless that was Interflora ploy)

P&G To Lay Off 1,600 After Discovering It's Free To Advertise On Facebook - Business Insider

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 04:25:31 -0500

P&G To Lay Off 1,600 After Discovering It's Free To Advertise On Facebook - Business Insider:

Reality appears to have finally arrived at Procter & Gamble, the world’s largest marketer, whose $10 billion annual ad budget has hurt the company’s margins.

P&G said it would lay off 1,600 staffers, including marketers, as part of a cost-cutting exercise. More interestingly, CEO Robert McDonald finally seems to have woken up to the fact that he cannot keep increasing P&G’s ad budget forever, regardless of what happens to its sales.

He told Wall Street analysts that he would have to “moderate” his ad budget because Facebook and Google can be “more efficient” than the traditional media that usually eats the lion’s share of P&G’s ad budget.

More at: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-01-30/news/31004736_1_advertising-saatchi-saatchi-media#ixzz1l1hknbr4

iPhone app uses a QR code to check you in on foursquare (via @dirktherabbit @aboutfoursquare)

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 09:38:25 -0500

iPhone app uses a QR code to check you in on foursquare (via @dirktherabbit @aboutfoursquare):

in Share1

QR codes are one of the most often asked about topics, but up to now I’ve pretty much avoided the subject. That’s mainly because it’s been three years since foursquare launched, but there’s still no good way to check in using a QR code that works across all the major platforms.

I recently checked out foursQR on the iPhone and it’s a pretty good solution for iPhone users. No, it’s not the answer for everyone, but it works very well in certain cases.

You can quickly create a PDF QR code sticker on foursQR’s site for any venue and put it wherever you like – provided you have the owner’s permission of course.

What’s it good for? Any place that you check in often and that you control. I’ve put one on the wall next to my desk at the office. I can check in using foursQR in less than 10 seconds thanks to its automatic check-in function at places I’ve added as favorites. It’s a fast and easy process.

More at: http://aboutfoursquare.com/iphone-app-uses-a-qr-code-to-check-you-in-on-foursquare/

Pinterest Becomes Top Traffic Driver for Retailers [#infographic]

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 09:26:32 -0500

Pinterest Becomes Top Traffic Driver for Retailers [#infographic]:

More at: http://mashable.com/2012/01/29/pinterest-retail-infographic/