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Archives for June 2012

Cross-Platform Hot Topics for Brand Executives

Consumers are using more devices to access more content every day. Where should your brand be? What platform should you focus on? The answers are — everywhere and all of them.

As recent data from Nielsen proves, consumers aren’t single-device dependent anymore. Instead, they’re using multiple devices, and they’re using those devices at the same time.

Nielsen reports that in the last 12 months, smartphone penetration increased by 34%, tablet adoption was up by 400%, and Internet connected television (IPTV) adoption was up by 25%.

With all of these devices being used by so many different people, marketers are faced with more media challenges than ever. Recently, Nielsen gathered marketing and media leaders from Disney, Facebook, Walmart, and more at its Consumer 360 event, and a few hot topics rose to the top. These are the topics related to the consumer shift to cross-platform content consumption and communication that executives are highly focused on right now.

1. Cross-Platform as a Strategic Imperative

A cross-platform marketing focus is no longer an option. It’s a strategic imperative. As John Spadaro, Senior Vice President and Managing Director of Research at Zenith (a media planning and buying agency) explained, “It’s really not a question of how to use a specific channel [anymore]. You simply cannot succeed in a single-channel environment.”

2. Actions and Behaviors Across Platforms

Executives want to know what consumers want, how they act, and what the differences are between behavior patterns across platforms. Peter Seymore, Executive Vice President of Strategy and Research at Disney Media Networks noted that all of these elements are used to determine where and when the company delivers the Disney brand experience to the consumer. Gathering behavioral data and analyzing across platforms to find correlations and patterns is essential to making the right marketing decisions.

3. The Off-site and Off-platform Collaboration Strategy

The executives agreed that some of the biggest opportunities for brands and media will be found off-site and off-platform. For example, Brad Smallwood, Head of Measurement and Insights for Facebook, acknowledged, “We recognize that the future for us is very much about people developing off of our platform. Collaborations with Zynga, social TV — that’s where we see a lot of our growth happening.”

Clint McClain, Senior Director of Marketing for Walmart also understands the importance of collaboration in the cross-platform consumer environment as a key way to increase consumer engagement with the Walmart brand. In fact, he revealed that Walmart is actively looking for innovative collaboration opportunities that will engage consumers.

Bottom-line, the future is cross-platform! Is your brand ready?

Cookies for Lunch

Recently I was invited to participate in a round table discussion over lunch at UKFast, talking about cookies and the ‘cookie law’. Other participants were Steve Kuncewicz from BooHoo.com, Garry Byrne from Reading Room and Mark Steven from Civic UK.

We were pretty much in agreement about the implementation issues around the cookie law, but still managed to discuss them for an hour or so—we covered a lot of ground, but in particular we discussed:

  • the need for education in this area: not only of website owners who are responsible for making changes, but also of the general public, who don’t, on the whole, understand what cookies are, or what they do.
  • the best approach for website owners to take at this point. We were meeting in the week before the deadline, that is, before the most recent change in advice from the ICO, but our views still hold: find out which cookies your site uses and why, and explain this to your website visitors.

See what we said…

Cookie Law Education is Key

Cookie Law What should you do?

Cookie Law Top Tips

Thanks to UKFast for inviting me.

Online Relationship Recruiting: Invitation to That First Date

I invited Lindsay Harper Mac to write a guest post for us today. Her interests include education, technology and social media, so are complementary to our own. Over to you!

Companies are always looking for the most effective way to recruit new employees, but the process of filling vacant positions or increasing the size of a company’s workforce comes with considerable costs.

Among those expenses are advertising job openings, screening candidates and interviewing those who have passed the initial screening process. When a corporation wants to hire a new CEO or other high-powered executive, they often turn to a head-hunter firm to find suitable candidates. The cost is usually based on a percentage of the position’s salary – 20 to 30 percent is not unusual. It’s easy to see how expensive the recruitment process can be.

Email, social media and online video can all be very cost-effective ways of recruiting if they’re used correctly, as part of a ‘we find you’ approach – or relationship-recruiting. And this can work for new entrants too: relationship-recruiting is not just for senior hires.

Let’s suppose that you’ve identified a set of potential recruits via one of the methods outlined by John Sullivan. What next?

Sending Out the First Email

Your first attempt at communication with potential job candidates is to send them an email. The purpose of the first email is to introduce yourself and your company to the reader. You should try to arouse the curiosity of the recipient without making it sound like a hard sell. The focus should only be on making a connection and not trying to pressure the reader to take any further action such as visiting your company’s website. Allow the reader to make their own decision. A casual statement such as saying that you’re in the process of putting together a new team for a long-term project is a good opening line; or, if you’re planning on recruiting a batch of interns from which to recruit permanent staff, you could mention a short-term assignment. You can then follow that up with something like “if you would like to be considered…” to give the potential candidate a chance to decide whether or not to seek further information.

Reaction to the Initial Email

If the response is positive, follow up with another email that thanks the individual for their interest in the opportunity. You can, at this time, explain the details of the job and provide a link to your company page for some more information. A clickable link allowing an individual to submit some basic information and perhaps receive a more formal application form is appropriate.

Using a Newsletter with Video Links

Alternatively, a great way to attract new recruits is to send out an online newsletter with links to short videos that talk about the job or jobs being offered. Most young people applying for jobs are very familiar with YouTube or other video providers and make use of them all of the time. The most effective videos are short, use actual employee testimonials and show them doing their job.

Before you send out such a newsletter, you must have a database of individuals that have expressed an interest in applying for a position; while campus events are one way of collecting names of people who are potentially both interested and interesting, social media provides another. Inviting people to sign up for newsletters as a first step can be done from any of the company’s online web estate, including Facebook.

Make Use of Social Network Sites

Emails are great, but they’re not the only online avenue to help companies recruit new talent. Social networking sites are a great source for identifying and building a relationship with people who might be potential recruits—and inviting them on that first date—and also for checking out applicants before making any hiring decision. Although it may be a bit controversial, seeing an online profile of a candidate can provide further insight into their character and even be a tool to disqualify an otherwise acceptable applicant.

Companies should take a multi-channel approach to recruiting. They should use traditional media such as help-wanted ads in newspapers and magazines and employment agencies. But adding an email marketing campaign to find new employees will also help with your company’s efforts at recruitment.

Thanks to Lindsay Harper Mac

About the author: Lindsey Harper Mac is a professional writer living in the Indianapolis area. She specializes in writing guest posts on social media and education. Currently, Lindsey is completing work on her master’s degree.

Best Global Green Brands of 2012

toyota prius green brandThe 2012 list of the Best Global Green Brands was released by Interbrand this week, and nearly 40% are automotive brands. Considering that automobiles are one of the biggest environmental problems and consumers are demanding fuel-efficient vehicles more than ever, it’s not surprising that 8 of the 21 brands on Interbrand’s list of the Best Global Green Brands are automotive brands.

The automotive brands that made the 2012 list include Toyota (#1), Honda (#3), Volkswagen (#4), BMW (#10), Ford (#15), Mercedes-Benz (#16), Hyundai (#17), and Nissan (#21). These are companies that invest a lot of money into promoting their green initiatives. Since a significant part of the Interbrand scoring methodology relies on consumer perceptions of brands, automotive brands are rewarded for their green marketing investments.

Highlights from the 2012 Best Global Green Brands report include the following:

  • Industry: Automotive and technology brands dominate the list.
  • Newcomers: Brands appearing on the list for the first time include Nissan (#21), H&M (#46), and UBS (#50).
  • Biggest Position Jumps: Brands seeing the biggest jumps from 2011 to 2012 include: Danone (up 5 spots to #9), Ford (up 5 spots to #15), Starbucks (up 6 spots to #36), and UPS (up 6 spots to #43).
  • Biggest Position Drops: Brands experiencing the biggest drops from 2011 to 2012 include: 3M (down 10 spots to #11), Nike (down 9 spots to #26), and Allianz (down 9 spots to #30.
  • Countries: Countries that lead the list in terms of manufacturing and managing green brands are the United States (22 brands on the list), Japan (7 brands on the list), and Germany (7 brands on the list).

In 2012, corporate sustainability is no longer an option or a differentiator. It’s a necessity. Consumers don’t just want companies and brands to be green, they expect them to be green. As Jez Frampton, Global Chief Executive Officer of Interbrand, explains, “Sustainability has proven to be a strategic and profitable aspect of business and a brand-strengthening asset. It is crucial that consumers’ impressions of a brand are in close alignment with that brand’s actual environmental performance. Otherwise, a brand’s efforts in this area could serve as an under-utilized asset, or conversely, suffer due to accusations of ‘greenwashing.’”

The 2012 report shows that companies are focusing more efforts and budget dollars into sustainability, and they’re doing a better job of promoting those efforts, too. It’s very possible that there are other brands that could be considered greener than the ones on the Interbrand list, but they might not be reporting those efforts externally in a manner that changes consumers’ perceptions.

Are consumers aware of the green efforts your company and brand are doing? If not, it’s time to let them know!

Image: Autoviva

Digital Champions and the Digital Divide

rural CheshireThe county I live in, Cheshire—a large county in the north of the UK—has ambitious plans: aiming for 100% coverage of superfast broadband by 2015.

For some of you, who live in big cities or in other countries, this won’t seem much. Apparently 50% or more of European households already have a connection of over 100 Mbps, and the EU definition of superfast is only 30 Mbps.

But Cheshire is a rural county: 60% is classified as rural, and the settlements are small and dispersed. That is, a lot of us live in tiny villages that are scattered across the green countryside. Yes, that is an image of Cheshire countryside to the right.

For two-thirds of the geographical area of the county it is simply not viable for telecommunications companies to roll out superfast broadband without financial subsidies.

A challenge, in these straitened times.

I went to a Connecting Cheshire Digital Champions event last week, representing the tiny village I live in, and was struck by two things that follow from the statistics they shared:

  • Your web visitor is struggling to see your pages

    Over 5% of Cheshire inhabitants can only get a maximum broadband speed of less than 2 Mbps

    And yet the size of web pages continues to grow. The average web page is now 1 MB. Even if your rural visitor could actually achieve the maximum of 2 Mbps, it takes a significant time to download your 1 MB page.

  • And there is still a potential audience you haven’t reached online

    15% of Cheshire inhabitants have never used the internet.

    How easy is it for someone who is unfamiliar with internet convention to understand and use your website? This group may well include some of your stakeholders, such as shareholders; a rush to e-communications is not going to serve a group who don’t use the internet, or whose connection isn’t good.

One more thing: you’re not alright, Jack

There is a digital divide. And it is one that affects most of us, even if you are lucky enough to live and work in a high-speed area. Because if there are consumers and businesses that can’t make equal use of the internet, those are potential customers, clients, shareholders and job-seekers of yours that would struggle to find your business online.

It’s not just Cheshire.

Email and Social Media Marketing Tricks Marketers are Missing

twitter iphoneMarketers are missing big opportunities for digital marketing. According to a new report from Yesmail Interactive, Using Digital Market Intelligence to Drive Multi-Channel Success, many email campaigns and social media marketing efforts don’t align with consumers’ usage or behavior patterns.

The study tracked retailers’ Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and email campaigns over a three month period and analyzed the companies’ marketing efforts during that time to evaluate how successful the campaigns were in increasing consumer engagement. Retailers that were included in the study were Abercrombie & Fitch, Aeropostale, American Apparel, American Eagle, Ann Taylor, Banana Republic, Diesel, Eddie Bauer, Express, Forever 21, The Gap, Guess, H &M, J Crew, Kenneth Cole, The Limited, Old Navy, Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and Urban Outfitters.

The study results highlighted a few significant opportunities that marketers are missing in their email and social media campaigns. Specifically, companies are running campaigns on the wrong days and at the wrong times. They’re also not integrating email and social media marketing effectively. Following are some findings that can help guide marketers in boosting the success of email and social media marketing campaigns in the future:

  • Study Finding: Facebook campaigns get the most engagement on Tuesdays. Current Reality: That’s the fourth most popular day that the companies in this study deployed campaigns.
  • Study Finding: Facebook campaigns reach the  highest levels of interaction between 10:00 p.m. and 12:00 a.m. EST. Current Reality: That’s the time period when the fewest campaigns are launched. The most commonly used time to launch campaigns on Facebook is 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. EST.
  • Study Finding: The worst day to launch a Twitter campaign (in terms of engagement) is Friday. Current Reality: That’s the day when most campaigns are deployed.
  • Study Finding: The time period with the most customer engagement on Twitter is 5:00 a.m. – 8:00 a.m. EST. Current Reality: More than 4 out of 5 (84%) of Twitter campaigns launch during traditional work hours (9:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m. EST).
  • Study Finding: Monday is the day when YouTube sees the most interaction. Current Reality: Monday is the least often used weekday for companies to launch campaigns on YouTube.

The study also found that email campaigns should launch with social media campaigns rather than sending emails out before a social campaign starts. Specifically, the report explains that Facebook engagement grows by approximately 50% when an email campaign is sent on the same day as a Facebook campaign is launched. Engagement doubles when two emails are sent on the same day as the Facebook campaign is launched. Similar results were discovered on Twitter. One email campaign sent on the same day as a Twitter campaign is launched boosts engagement by 35%, and two emails increases engagement by 50%.

An integrated marketing approach that includes various media is always going to be the most effective plan, but the results from this study reveal some interesting tricks related to timing that many marketers aren’t leveraging yet. Use them and get a jump on the competition!

Image: William Hook