Advertising
Cottonelle Almost Gets Social
I really enjoyed the Cottonelle “How do you roll?” commercial when I first saw it last week, asking people how they prefer to present their paper, over or under (apparently the answer is over).
But, for a campaign that can get people to the internet pretty easily, their integrated social media, if you can call it that, reminds me more of any empty roll that needs to be replaced.
Yes they have two of their commercial’s characters on Twitter, and a Facebook page, and the poll itself with a nice map of results. But these small efforts are social for social’s sake with very little thought toward tying it all together. They even went out and interviewed folks on the street to add to their actor interviews and put all of it on Youtube, but check out the views on those videos. There is obviously nothing being done to promote them.
It smacks of a brand or agency that thinks social media is suppose to be cheap and easy. I see a multi-million dollar traditional ad campaign and a dollar store social media effort.
There is no effort to engage the consumers, whose attention they are buying with some major TV spots, in a long term way. I am sure the media buys will produce a short bump in sales and if that is all Cottonelle wants, then fine, good show.
But in 2010, pointing people to a micro-site that does not extend the relationship beyond the length of a media buy, is traditional advertising and less effective. The opportunity is to build a community, to engage the consumer in a way that creates a longer term relationship (meaning more money), to ask questions of consumers, to answer questions, to get the people they are pulling in with a clever, simple question, and convert them into spending more time with their brand. Consumers want dialogue.
It is a cute campaign Cottonelle, but perhaps you should consider building consumer relationships with a longer shelf life than say, I don’t know, a roll of toilet paper?
Superbowl Commercials and Youtube with Bridgestone
Bridgestone has had several top ranking Superbowl commercials over the last few years and has seen great return from them. From this, they have begun to see the value in sharing that media through social sites like Youtube and are beginning to actively invest in these tools and social media as a whole. Michael Fluck, Director of Brand and Retail Marketing, had a quick talk with us about this and more.
Bridgestone will be attending Social Fresh Nashville, a one day social media conference for marketers, on Jan 11, 2010
One of my favorites of their Superbowl Commercials
The Democratization of Advertising
The Democratization of Advertising
Presentation Transcript
- The Democratization of Advertising JasonKeath.com
- Santa Claus is Real
- YES Kids Love Santa.
Read the rest of this entry »
15 Top Social Media Agencies
In the last month I have had 6 separate conversations with peers surrounding the question “What is a social media agency?”
There are several types of social media companies out there. Some are research focused, or software heavy, or app developers, or monitoring services. Some are purely extending the PR battle plan to a new medium.
The social media agency is one that can grasp all these segments and help companies extend their brand and marketing through training, long term strategy, and execution.
For the purpose of this list, I have focused on companies who mostly do social media. There are many companies making social media a piece of what they offer. These companies are the top ones focusing on social media.
As Armano points out “What McKinsey would offer in SM would be very different than Crayon”. Since almost every company would almost be it’s own category, I am avoiding the categories for now. Perhaps in future lists we can add some delineation.
Advanced Guard of CC Chapman fame. Acquired by Campfire, which may not fall into our criteria of a “social media agency” but now has some major talent in the arena.
Altimeter Group, of Charlene Li and more recently Jeremiah Owyang fame, “provides thought leadership, research, and consulting on digital strategies, with a core focus on how companies can leverage social and emerging technologies.”
Ant’s Eye View “At Ant’s Eye View we concentrate on helping companies of all sizes understand and engage in customer collaboration, social media, and community building.” Clients include Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Dr Pepper, and Maker’s Mark. [added per @TShelton]
The Conversation Group “The Conversation Group is a global consultancy broadly dedicated to the art, science, and practical application of social technologies. We’re enabling organizations around the world to radically scale their ability to discover, engage and collaborate with their constituencies, both inside and outside the enterprise.” [added per @PeterKim]
>carrot creative “is a new-media marketing agency located in DUMBO, Brooklyn, NY specializing in social media marketing and user experience design. We have the unique ability to take a project from the initial ideation stages to full scale application development all under one roof.”
Collective Bias “The Wisdom of Connected Crowds – this is CollectiveBias, a partnership between us, consumers, brands, & retailers.” CollectiveBias, of John Andrews, @GeekMommy and Walmart Moms fame, is a new social media company underneath the MARS Advertising umbrella.
Crayon, of Joseph Jaffe fame, “is a strategic consultancy that helps its clients achieve positive change and impact by joining the conversation.”
Dachis Group, of Jeff Dachis, Peter Kim, and David Armano fame, “was created to unlock the value of social technologies for large corporate enterprises through its Social Business Design global advisory practice and technology implementation program.” Dachis has $50 million in funding from Austin Ventures and recently purchased London/Sydney based Headshift.
Ignite is “the Original Social Media Agency ®. We’ve combined content developers, technologists, and social media strategists to form the Ignite team. Together, we keep up with trends, filter the noise, and help companies like yours put social media to work.”
the Kbuzz “is a Word of Mouth Marketing firm that creates and sustains buzz through word of mouth and social media marketing.”
New Marketing Labs, of Chris Brogan and Justin Levy fame, “is dedicated to solving your online marketing and social media challenges. They approach this in two ways, events and education (see Inbound Marketing Summit) and through guiding you and pitching in as a social media marketing agency.”
Mullen “is a social media agency rooted in strategy, public relations and a belief that creativity is as important as community. Social agency of record for Panera, Olympus, Grain Foods Foundation, Stanley, Stop and Shop and others.”
Shift Communications “is a fast-growing, national agency that lives at the intersection of Influencer Relations & Social Media. We measure our performance according to the impact that we have on driving your business forward.”
Social Media Group “Highly respected independent social media shop, delivering results as Ford’s social media agency since 2007, clients include SAP, Yamaha, ING & govt. One of the world’s largest independent agencies devoted exclusively to helping companies navigate the new socially engaged web.”
Undercurrent “is a think tank based in NYC that provides digitally-focused strategic planning, ideation, measurement, training, and advisement to global brands ready to engage a new generation of human beings that were born digital.” Clients include Pepsi and Ford.”
We Are Social is “a conversation agency. We help brands to listen, understand and engage in conversations in social media. We’re already helping Ford, Skype, Eurostar, The Economist, Absolut, Dunlop, Barclaycard and the WWF.”
Deloitte, McKinsey, Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence, and Porter Novelli are also in the space. Not sure any of them would pass the “mostly social media” standard, but I felt the need to include them in the discussion. They are all contributing to what a “social media agency” is evolving into.
Also, Charlene Li of the Altimeter Group has a great Wiki going with more information if you want to dive in deeper.
Who did I miss?
Include it in the comments and I will add them to the post.
Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com
Youtube Edges Closer to TV Numbers and TV Money with Wedding Dance
Google put up a blog post today about how they monetized the viral video hit Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz’s wedding party dance(below). This video was posted on July 16th and has generated over 12 million hits in 2 weeks.
TV Numbers
For some perspective, the highest rated American prime time TV show during that time was America’s Got Talent with 13.2 million viewers. TV has long been light years ahead of any online numbers. This example shows that the gap is closing. Truly remarkable content is beginning to reach large viewership numbers online in shorter and shorter time spans. And it is not always professionally produced.
And the gap is only going to narrow. The online audience will continue to grow larger. The information is moving faster and faster. And more and more people are becoming savvy content creators.
Who is Making the Money?
Google is, the content middle man, the distributor. The distributors hold a lot of the power moving forward. Think iTunes on the music front and Amazon on the book front. The “rights holders” to the song in the video, Forever by Chris Brown, were also able to easily monetize (I assume his label or manager). The song has shot up to the top 5 on both Amazon and iTunes.
A Workable System
This did not happen overnight. Youtube has been a battleground for some time now, with entertainment industry giants facing off against Google on profit sharing. Google has been working voraciously behind the scenes to make this process easy for the rights holders. Instead of deleting every piece of copyrighted material, the entertainment industry can overlay an amazon download link for the song and Google Adwords in the sidebar. Everyone is happy.
Of course it would also be nice if after a certain viewer threshhold the video creator got a peice of the action as well. No word on that from the Google blog as of yet.
