Corporate Eye

...compare, compete, excel

Archives for April 2010

Advertising, Social Media, and Neuroscience – Marketing by the Numbers

neuroscience_brainwavesIn the first study of its kind, NeuroFocus (a leading neuromarketing company) researched how consumers subconsciously react to ads viewed on different media.  Specifically, the company used its own brain measurement technology to analyze consumers’ responses to VISA’s “Trip for Life” television commercial related to the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.  Consumers watched the ad on television during the Olympic Games, on a special VISA-created Olympics Web site, and on a VISA-created Olympics Facebook page.

Key results reported by NeuroFocus included:

  • Overall effectiveness for the ad, especially with women: highest on Facebook
  • Purchase intent generated by the ad: highest on both Facebook and TV
  • Messaging carried by the ad: strongest on the Internet, with Facebook stronger than the Web site
  • Attention-getting: highest on the Internet
  • VISA brand perception: lifted most strongly TV

These findings certainly indicate that social media marketing has strong effects on consumers’ subconscious minds and can even effectively boost purchase intent.  However, it’s also important to note that social media comes in many forms and those forms are multiplying and changing quickly.  With the widespread use of smartphones, the new iPad, and more gadgets undoubtedly coming soon to make it easier to access the Internet than ever, social media marketing is like the Wild West with few rules and even fewer people knowing what they’re doing.  Therefore, it’s not surprising that executives are afraid to take the risk necessary to build a social media marketing strategy that actually works.

For corporate brand managers and marketers, you can add the results from this report to your arsenal.  Next time you need to argue for social media marketing for brand building and marketing with senior management, take these statistics with you as evidence that social media marketing has tangible benefits in terms of motivating consumers to action just as traditional advertising and marketing does.  Ask them to argue the case for television advertising over social media marketing.  See if they can provide any argument other than “because TV ads are what we’ve always done,” and then challenge them to come up with a better argument.  You might not win, but you might successfully plant a seed that will grow into a bigger social media marketing budget in the future.

Image: Flickr

The Social Media Newsroom: X-Factor Style

sony ericsson social media newsroom
Sony Ericsson

Communicate Magazine’s Social Media in a Corporate Context conference yesterday ran a session examining social media newsrooms in the style of The X-Factor. Yes, really!

If we’d been assessing each of the sessions of the day to see whether they should go through to the next stage, this one would have got my vote.

Naturally, nobody was publicly humiliated and bleeped off stage, but the format of the session was entertaining, and enabled us to see 3 corporate social media newsrooms in some detail, with highlights presented by their ‘owner’, with commentary on each from the panel of 3 experts, and then questions from the floor.

First Direct social media newsroom
First Direct

This meant that we could hear from the inside about the issues involved in getting the newsrooms established, which included:

  • meeting the requirements of the Legal and Compliance teams
  • dealing with the difficulties of using legacy IT systems
  • and the organisational difficulties in dealing with large companies with a lot of historical momentum going in the traditional direction.

These issues, which were mentioned several times, received a lot of nods and smiles from the audience, who clearly recognised the situations the speakers had found themselves in.

GM Europe (Opel) social media newsroom
GM Europe

We heard about the intentions of the companies in moving towards a social media newsroom, and some of the benefits they found:

  • projecting good news, and news to interest consumers, not just professional journalists
  • supporting a brand refresh, with new brand values including ‘openness’ requiring that this be demonstrated on the corporate site
  • significant increase in the number of visits per week – from 5 per week to over 2,000
  • decrease in time-to-publish, so they were able to respond faster, which was of particular benefit in managing crises
  • the ability to provide embeddable, sharable content for visitors to reuse, reaching their target influencers and spreading the brand message.

I was particularly impressed by the astonishing increase in the number of visits to the newsroom achieved by going social. This, together with the statistics presented by Simon Henderson from Centrica in a later session – that visitors to their CSR blogs visited 11 more pages than the average visitor, spent 8 minutes longer on site and were 10% more likely to return – makes a good argument for moving in this direction.

The experts appeared to be enthusiastic about all the sites, picking up on different good features of each. There did seem to be a slight divergence among the three on whether or not it was a good thing to merge news intended for consumers, news intended for the professional journalist, and content intended for reuse or sharing, with a suggestion that it could be of benefit to have a dedicated area for the professional in case of crisis. Two of the responses that I noted to these questions were:

  • the ‘contestant’ (in this case Merran Wriggley from Sony Ericsson) responded that they didn’t mind who was visiting (that is, whether it was a traditional journalist or a blogger) but were much more interested in where their material was used
  • one of the judges (Stuart Bruce from Wolfstar Consultancy) later pointed out that one option could be a popup mini-site triggered in case of need, and available from the social media newsroom, to provide a dedicated area for crisis communications.

For me, this was the standout session of the conference, and it’s well worth looking at all three of the newsrooms examined. I’ve included images (just click the image to see a bigger version), but they don’t really do them justice. Why not have a look at the newsrooms (links under each image above), and then let us know which you’d vote for – and why?

Online Video Viewing up 37% in U.K.

Online video presents an incredible opportunity for brands to reach consumers, and in the past year, that opportunity has increased by 37%.

According to a report from comScore, U.K. online video viewing grew by 37% between February 2009 and February 2010 among the U.K. audience age 15 and older accessing the Internet at home or at work.  Mirroring online video viewing statistics in the United States, the U.K. audience watches the vast majority of online video content on YouTube (99.6% in the U.K.).  You can see the specific results in the chart below.

comScore_uk_online_video_viewing_statistics

Clearly, online video is attracting more attention from audiences who are spending more time watching online video than ever before with no signs of that growth slowing down.  Many viewers are even shifting time away from broadcast television to watch traditional programs online instead, making the case for two opportunities: online video creation and publishing as well as online video advertising.

The question for brands is not whether or not you should consider leveraging online video to build your brand but how fast you can capitalize on the opportunity.  The problem, however, is identifying the best way to successfully capitalize on that opportunity, which is something no one knows how to do yet.

So what do you do?  First, you have to set your goals for online video and commit to the fact that it’s a long term marketing strategy that will take time to test, tweak and try again in order to figure out what works for your brand, business and audience.  The challenge is getting buy-in from senior management to invest time and resources into experimenting with and learning about online video in lieu of sure-fire, short-term tactic implementation that is practically guaranteed to bring results.  There is no doubt that shifting money and time into untested and unfamiliar territory is a risk.  The rewards are out there to reap, but it will take time to figure out how to reach them.

Has your business committed time and resources into testing online video marketing opportunities?  Leave a comment and share your story.

Can “Disability Humor” Really Work?


Beyond the Label

A television ad has been running in the U.S. to promote disability/diversity awareness.  Watch the spot online if you haven’t seen it—but basically, it’s a running (or actually, rolling) gag in which an African American woman in a wheelchair goes through the hallways of her workplace, commenting into the camera about the many types of “different” people in the office.

One of her co-workers is “Fashion Deficient,” another is “Copy Incapable,” and a third has “Volume Control Syndrome.”  But, explains the narrator, no one in the office is concerned about labels (not even her own label, which turns out to be “Coffee-making Impaired”) because everyone is appreciated for their individual skills and contributions.  A voiceover at the end says “Labels get in the way.  Disabilities rarely do.”  The viewer is invited to visit thinkbeyondthelabel.com, a website designed to educate decision-makers.

This ad is part of a $4 million campaign that will appear on television, in print, on the web and on billboards, according to the group Health and Disability Advocates (HDA).  “The goal of the humorous, edgy campaign,” according to HDA, “ is to change attitudes about hiring people with disabilities, raising awareness of the need for diversity in the workplace, and countering stereotypes about people with disabilities.”

A New York Times story on the campaign explains that “the ads are being financed largely by agencies in 30 states that provide employment services as well as health and human services to their citizens who are disabled. The agencies have set a goal of raising $10 million for the campaign’s budget for the full year.”  HDA spearheads this coalition, which has chosen to use a bold marketing approach rather than depending on Public Service Announcements to get their point across.  According to the Times story, the campaign—which is targeted toward senior management, HR staff, and hiring managers—is intended to be “on that fine line of provocative but not polarizing.”

The campaign apparently tested well, and I haven’t found any information about response levels in the couple of months since it launched.  I’m honestly not sure whether it’s a good idea or not.  But I will say this:  I really, really doubt that a “humorous” approach to disability/diversity would go down well on the corporate website, or in a board room, or—well, I just can’t think of a real workplace context in which this approach would seem acceptable.

And maybe that’s okay, since advertising is a special category of communication, with its own rules and goals.  But on the other hand, maybe there can be too much of a disconnect . . .

Corporate Executives Prefer Clicks over Brands

boardroomA new survey of Fortune 500 executives released by Datran Media reveals that the people who fill the C-suites favor clicks over brands when it comes to digital marketing.  In other words, digital marketing goals mirror financial goals — short-term gains are better than long-term sustainable growth.  Sadly, that’s a problem that keeps rearing its ugly head across the financial sector, but executives whose salaries and bonuses are tied to short-term growth continue to pursue those quick gains — in both finance and marketing.

The survey reveals executives’ top objectives for digital marketing:

  • 84% want to reach a target audience.
  • 74% want to generate high quality leads.
  • 63% want to convert leads into sales.
  • 60% want to measure and understand their audiences.
  • 57% want to digitally interact with consumers.

The power of social media marketing comes from the long-term, relationship and brand building opportunities that it presents.  Unfortunately, just over half of corporate executives surveyed cited interacting with consumers as an objective for their own digital marketing plans, which doesn’t bode well for social media marketing success.

But that’s not all.  When the same executives were asked to identify the digital channels that performed the strongest for their companies in 2009, the results revealed the following:

  • 39% email
  • 24% search
  • 9% affiliate marketing
  • 5% social media
  • 1% mobile

Clearly, the surveyed executives haven’t made the necessary shift in thinking that will help them understand how to measure social media marketing performance.  By measuring return on opportunity in terms of soft metrics such as long-term brand building and relationship building as opposed to only evaluating hard metrics, these companies are missing out on huge opportunities for long-term sustainable growth based on trust, brand advocacy, and word-of-mouth marketing that come from active participation in social media marketing activities.

Let’s face it.  Most large companies are a long way from being able to truly leverage the power of social media marketing for a myriad of reasons.  However, it’s very obvious from these survey results that the necessary shift won’t be made anytime soon — not until corporate executives understand the value of moving from a short-term tactical focus to a long-term strategic focus that relies on many of the intangible components of business strength (such as brand and customer relationships) rather than hard numbers.  However, for public corporations that must increase shareholder value year-over-year, that shift in thinking and engagement might never happen.

What do you think?

Image: sxc.hu

Facebook Like Opens Targeting Opportunities for Marketers

facebook_like_buttonYesterday, Facebook announced the new Like feature that enables businesses to add Like buttons to their Web sites and increase their presence on Facebook.  While the debate is just beginning about the new Like feature with marketers and consumers on very different sides, the addition of the Like button has also raised speculation that Facebook is preparing to launch its own ad network to add to its own bottom-line.

Whatever Facebook’s ultimate goals are (and I’m sure they’re huge given the 350 million Facebook users around the world), the addition of the Like button does add a new layer of targeting for marketers that is sure to be popular.  When Facebook users click on the Like button indicating that they like a brand or business, that preference will now show up in their own Facebook profile, adding a targeting element that advertiser’s can easily exploit to boost the return on investment on ads they place on Facebook.  On the flip side, when people click that Like button, it also makes it easier for brands to interact not only with that person, but also with that person’s network of friends.

For Facebook, the most interesting part of this story is the perception that Facebook is getting too big and powerful with too much access to too much personal information about its users.  The word “trust” is being used across the Web as social media professionals, marketers, and consumers wonder whether or not they can actually trust Facebook with all of this private information.  We’ll have to wait and see how that story develops, but it is certainly the trend for large online companies to attempt to access and control information about its users (Google has certainly been accused of this in the past).

I predict there will be some regulations and laws developed in the not so distant future related to accessing and using all of this information.  The hope is that there isn’t some kind of tragedy before those regulations are defined.  In the meantime, marketers who can exploit that information should enjoy some nice returns.

What do you think?  As a marketer?  As a consumer?