Corporate Eye

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Archives for February 2011

Social Networking Accounts for 20% of Australians’ Time Online

Last week, I wrote a post on Corporate Eye about the increasing use of social networking among consumers in China.  This week, I’ll take a look at social networking usage rates in Australia where research by comScore reports that 1 in every 5 minutes spent online in Australia is spent on social networking sites.

In fact, social networking is the top online activity among Australian Internet users based on time spent on various online activities as the following data shows us:

  • Social networking: 21.9% of online time
  • Portals: 19.7% of online time
  • Instant messengers: 11.6% of online time
  • Entertainment: 11.1% of online time
  • Email: 5.9% of online time
  • Games: 3.2% of online time
  • News/information: 3.0% of online time
  • Search/navigation: 2.8% of online time
  • Auctions: 2.4% of online time
  • Community: 2.1% of online time

Facebook was the top site in Australia based on the amount of time Internet users spent on the site, but Microsoft and Google took the top two spots, respectively, for the most visits (Facebook came in third for most visits).

Clearly, the popularity of social networks, particularly Facebook, is not isolated to one part of the world.  Internet users around the world are spending a significant amount of time on social networking sites.  It makes sense that your brand should be there, too.  The days of thinking, “my customers aren’t online and don’t use sites like Facebook,” are over.

What do you think?

Image: stock.xchng

Truffling out a Diamond in Better Cotton

Like a diamond in the rough, you only come across those most precious of websites through digging around and having an open mind.

Actually I’ve always preferred the image of a pig digging around for truffles, but a) pigs don’t have a particularly good press, despite being a highly intelligent and social creatures; and b) truffles have nowhere near the kudos diamonds have. Ah, such is the way public perceptions drive our lives!

However, if you want a diamond (or truffle) of a sustainability website, you should have a look at the website for The Better Cotton Initiative (BCI).

It doesn’t matter that this is an NGO’s website rather than a commercial organisation’s.  How it has its information organised and presented is what matters, and BCI excels at this.

For starters, the homepage is wonderfully straightforward.

“The Better Cotton Initiative exists to make global cotton production better for the people who produce it, better for the environment it grows in and better for the sector’s future”.

These are the only words on the homepage, and I doubt any proponent of sustainability could put it any more succinctly. [Read more…] about Truffling out a Diamond in Better Cotton

Old Spice Continues to Entertain and Drive Social Media Buzz

I’ve been thinking about writing a post about the newest Old Spice Guy commercial for several days.  Yesterday, I found an article on Advertising Age about that newest commercial that includes some interesting statistics which support the post I was planning, so here goes my take on it.

The Old Spice Guy commercials have been very successful in making an old brand that many people associated with their grandfathers into a brand that younger generations are actually pausing to consider.  Both male and female audiences are talking about the Old Spice Guy commercials with the newest commercial (and my favorite so far) getting 3.4 million views on YouTube in the first week that it was released.  You can view it below.

One of the things that keeps the Old Spice Guy commercials alive is the company’s willingness to give up control of their content.  When an Old Spice Guy commercial is uploaded to YouTube, people use clips to create their own videos.  They talk about the commercials, share them, and make them their own.  That’s a brand manager’s dream come true.  However, giving up control of a brand isn’t something that most large companies are willing to do yet.  The Old Spice success is a perfect example of how the power of the social web can drive brand buzz, but unless a company is willing to lose control to a certain extent, that buzz potential is very limited.

It’s still unknown whether or not the Old Spice Guy commercials are actually driving sales, but those metrics are more important when it comes to tracking actual advertising performance.  When it comes to tracking social media marketing success, brand conversations and sharing are far more important and indicative of an initiative’s performance in terms of building brand value, creating brand advocates, and generating word-of-mouth marketing.

Based on the number of social web views of the most recent ad (previous ads each generated over 2 million views online within the first week after their releases), Old Spice is definitely benefiting from a strong social media buzz generated by the ads.  The question is whether or not the company can sustain that buzz, deliver on the brand’s promise, and meet consumer expectations for the brand again and again.  Only then will that buzz turn into long-term, sustainable growth for the brand and business.

What do you think?  Will the Old Spice Guy commercials have a long-term positive impact on the Old Spice brand and business?  Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Barclays and Standard Chartered – Two Sides Of One Coin | FTSE 100 Website Reviews

It’s always interesting to compare two leading companies in a sector and see how they approach their sustainability websites. 

There is a “standard” website design which has pretty well been settled on these days (3 columns, head and footer, menu system etc) but the question always remains how to use this to the best advantage.

Barclays and Standard Chartered are two of the best performing banks in the UK, yet their approaches to how to design a sustainability website are radically different.  You end up wishing they could have got together and produced one super-duper website, but that’s what competition and market segmentation is all about: being different to your rivals in certain, key areas. [Read more…] about Barclays and Standard Chartered – Two Sides Of One Coin | FTSE 100 Website Reviews

Social Networking in China Grows Exponentially Among Specific Consumer Segments

Take a look at the chart from eMarketer that shows the growth of social networking users in China since 2009 and projected through 2015.  It seems like every business is focusing on expanding into China with such a huge number of consumers finally accessing more of the products and services from outside the country’s borders.  Social networking represents a big opportunity to connect with those consumers based on these reported usage trends.

The eMarketer data represents Internet users in China who use social networks via any type of device at least once per month.  In 2009, only 155 million people in China were accessing social networks at least one time each month.  Today, that number is 265 million, and by 2015, 488 million Internet users in China will access a social network at least once per month.  That’s a lot of potential customers who might be interested in learning about your brand.

An interesting fact to consider about social networking in China is that different social networking sites are favored by different consumer segments.  Brands need to find the right social networking destination to connect with the right audience.

eMarketer points out that social networking users in China are very willing to follow brands on social networks, blogs, websites, and so on.  In a study by OgilvyOne Worldwide, social media users in China ranked following and friending brands as the second most popular social media activity that they participate in.  An amazing 87% of social media users in China already follow and friend brands on Twitter.  With such widespread acceptance, it’s unlikely that the willingness to follow brands on social media among the Chinese audience will decrease anytime in the near future.

As with all forms of social media, social networking gives brands and businesses an incredible opportunity to listen to customer conversations, define and meet customer needs, and plan for the future in order to best meet those needs.  There are a lot of people in China who are willing to listen to your brand.  Are you preparing to connect with them?

Image: eMarketer

Bringing transparency to CSR reports

In those far off, misty days of University, one of the terrible misconceptions I used to labour under was that I could play the drums.

My few remaining friends from those days are still trying to convince me of my lack of talent on the piano and guitar as well.

No one mentions singing.

ANYWAY…

One of the drums I keep on banging today is to do with transparency as a foundation of a company’s sustainability, and it’s not just me this time either.  The reason for this is because as regulation has become looser accountability has to be strengthened, and the only way accountability can really be implemented is through transparency.

But how do you do it?  After all, publishing every minute of every meeting ever held will just be a data overload, and while businesses need to move away from secrecy as a default no one’s suggesting the end of commercially sensitive material.

An interesting solution comes from the Netherlands, where the mandatory examination of CSR reports for transparency has been going on for several years now. [Read more…] about Bringing transparency to CSR reports