Huxley Quayle von Blog

Word of web takes off as social networking becomes biggest part of internet.

How Marketers Tap Facebook and Twitter, Apps and Widgets
Digital Marketing Guide: The Social Web

by Abbey Klaassen and Beth Snyder Bulik

Published: March 30, 2009

Questions Answered
Isn't the entire web social these days?

To an extent, yes. If 2008 was the year everyone -- and their grandmas -- joined a social network, then 2009 is the year those networks' social graphs spread their tentacles beyond their borders to other sites across the web. Already it's common for many sites, including major news sources and entertainment properties, to have commenting and sharing features. So we admit the social web is a pervasive concept. But there are several interesting newer developments at Twitter and Facebook, as well as in the widget space and the app world.

What's the story with Twitter?

Twitter is one of the fastest-growing social networks, but it's very different from Facebook and MySpace. The microblog essentially began as a mass text-messaging-meets-instant-messaging utility. You sign up for an account, people follow you, and you follow them. When you "tweet" a message, the folks following you see it instantly on their phones and computers.

Everyone bandies around the term "social graph." What exactly does it mean?

A social graph is a map of a person's connections, through which they communicate and share information. People often talk about social graphs in relation to social networks, such as MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

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Marketers finally clue in to Social Media. But do people want them there?

Marketers Moving to Social Media
MARCH 23, 2009

Let’s talk about budgets.

It took a while.

Even though tens of millions of users were flocking to social media sites every day, most marketers stayed away. They either didn’t understand how to join the conversations—without sounding like shills—or they were frightened away by the prospect of associating their brands with questionable content.

But things are changing.

Companies are learning how to leverage social media and tap into the rising tide of consumers participating in social network sites, blogs, wikis and Twitter.

According to the “The ROI on Social Media Marketing” report from the Aberdeen Group, sponsored by Visible Technologies, marketers have developed the tools and methodologies to drive marketing ROI by listening to and learning from customers and prospects.

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HQvB and Just One Project in the news again.

Proof that consumers own your brand as much as you do.

How Two Coke Fans Brought the Brand to Facebook Fame
Soda Has Most Popular Page After President, in Collaboration Between Creators and Marketer

by Abbey Klaassen

Published: March 16, 2009

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Pop quiz: Who has the most popular page on Facebook? Barack Obama. Who's second? Coca-Cola. Yes, sugared water runs second only to the leader of the free world. Who was it again that said people don't want to be friends with brands?

Coca-Cola still remains perplexed over why, of the 253 pages on Facebook devoted to the beverage, Messrs. Sorg and Jedrzejewski's page is the only one that has amassed millions of 'fans.'
Coca-Cola still remains perplexed over why, of the 253 pages on Facebook devoted to the beverage, Messrs. Sorg and Jedrzejewski's page is the only one that has amassed millions of 'fans.'

The Coke page, which totals 3.3 million "fans," wasn't even created by Coca-Cola, but by a pair of Los Angelenos who just love Coke.

In late August 2008, aspiring actor Dusty Sorg was hunting for a Coca-Cola fan page he could join on Facebook. He didn't find one that seemed legitimate so he hunted down a high-resolution digital image of a Coke can, uploaded it to Facebook and made a page.

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Emotion as a marketing advantage.

Why Emotional Messages Beat Rational Ones
Settling the Debate: 'Soft Sell' Can Reduce Price Sensitivity, Create an Enduring Sense of Brand Differentiation

by Hamish Pringle and Peter Field

Published: March 02, 2009

Hamish Pringle
Peter Field

Ever since the DDB creative revolution in the 1960s, debate has raged about the best kind of messaging for building profitable brands. On the one hand, devotees of the "hard sell," or persuasion-based communications, argue that facts and rational arguments sell products and services best. On the other hand, devotees of the "soft sell" contend that brands that can inspire strong emotional responses in consumers and create true engagement can transform businesses, turning the tables even on bigger competitors. In recent times the tide has begun to turn in favor of emotional engagement, with some high-profile converts at Procter & Gamble, but the argument is far from over.

So when we sat down to write our book, "Brand Immortality" -- a manual on how to keep brands healthy in the long term -- we knew this would be one of the key issues to address. Our primary data source is the U.K.'s Institute of Practitioners in Advertising Effectiveness Awards, which were founded in 1980. The book's analyses are based upon the accumulated learning from 880 case studies from the U.K. national and international competition.

The cases cover two recessions and the occasional market wobble, so we can distinguish between strategies for the good times and the bad. By comparing the case studies that generated the largest business effects with those that generated less impressive effects, we have been able to explore which marketing inputs tend to promote success and which do not. We can also see how this varies during the life cycle of market categories, from birth and growth to maturity and decline.

What the data show us is that emotional campaigns are almost twice as likely to generate large profit gains than rational ones, with campaigns that use facts as well as emotions in equal measure fall somewhere between the two.

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