Consumers Want Incentives and Entertainment from Brands on Facebook
January 31, 2011
In a study conducted by Cone, 77% of study participants indicated that they want brands to provide incentives online and 28% want to be entertained by brands online. When it comes to connecting with consumers on Facebook, brands that offer incentives and entertainment are leaving the competition behind. You can see some of the companies that are finding success with Facebook pages in the chart from eMarketer shown to the left.
One of the best examples of delivering the type of content a brand’s target audience wants on Facebook is Red Bull, a brand whose Facebook page grew from a couple million fans in early 2010 to over 12 million by the end of that year. The Red Bull Facebook page is targeted directly at the 18-24 year old market with feeds from professional athletes, games, and entertaining features like the Drunkish Dials and Procrastination Station.
Successful brand Facebook pages are not static. They continually offer useful information, entertaining content, and conversations that add value to consumers’ lives. As eMarketer reports, Coca-Cola held a year-long social media campaign targeted at its Facebook page fans. In an effort to keep the Coca-Cola Facebook page an active place for fans to find the useful and valuable information they want and need, Coca-Cola’s Expedition 206 campaign used brand ambassadors to constantly update the Coca-Cola Facebook page with fresh content. As a result, the Coca-Cola Facebook page more than doubled in 2010 to nearly 20 million fans in December 2010.
eMarketer also reports that by adding an interactive game to its Facebook page, Oreo doubled the number of fans its Facebook page had in 2010 as well. In an effort to better integrate social media marketing efforts with traditional marketing initiatives, Oreo added an in-person event element to the campaign in late 2010.
The key to Facebook page success for brands is to remember that a Facebook page isn’t meant to be a place to publish company news. It’s a place that should be interactive and fun or there is no real reason for people to visit. Brands like Red Bull and Coca-Cola have developed Facebook pages that can be benchmarked and improved upon by other brands.
In fact, it’s probably safe to say that the Facebook pages for brands that exist in early 2011 will look very different in early 2012 as more and more brands understand what works in Facebook marketing. As the Cone study revealed, consumers want incentives and entertainment from brands in the new media space. Now, it’s up to companies to create the types of branded experiences on the social Web that consumers are asking for.
Life After The Financial Crisis Inquiry
January 31, 2011
The US’ Financial Crisis Inquiry has concluded with a set of damning conclusions (PDF). These are:
- it was totally avoidable and caused wholly by people’s catastrophic mistakes
- failures in regulation and supervision had a devastating effect
- failures in boardrooms were a key cause
- excessive borrowing, risk and a lack of transparency were all exacerbating factors
- the US government’s ill prepared response added to the turmoil
- there was a systematic breakdown in accountability and ethics
- mortgage standards were the trigger (but not the cause)
- the removal of the regulation of over-the-counter derivatives was a significant contributing factor
- failures in the credit rating agencies drove the crisis forwards.
This is nothing short of a manifesto for regulatory reform along CSR lines. The question is, will it happen? After all, with a lack of regulation being the second item on the list, can business trust the government to give it the medicine it needs?
Unfortunately, it also raises huge questions about the ability of businesses to self-regulate and take steps where government doesn’t direct them. So can we trust corporations to do this now? That seems almost as unlikely as getting strong CSR based legislation.
Now it may seem unfair to tar all politicians and all businessmen with the same brush, especially when the crisis is focused very firmly on the financial sector and treasuries alone. The trouble is that in a capitalist based society this is the heart of all other activity. These are the leaders others follow and attempt to emulate: so even if you’re a follower at least some of the tar from the brush has probably spattered you. Us. Us all.
So here are some key things (in no particular order) I believe should come out of this as lessons learned:
- it’s not all about money; non-financial reporting now has to be seen as just as important as financial reporting; attempting to squash everything into the pounds and pennies bottom line quite simply doesn’t work
- regulation should no longer be seen as the lowest common standard; compliance must cease being a box ticking exercise; the legal framework should be seen as a foundation to build upon, not an exercise in pseudo-morality
- transparency has to become the new watchword of politics and business alike; commercial confidentiality can no longer mean keeping everything secret except mandatory disclosures; instead, everything has to be disclosed unless there is a clear case that it will compromise patents etc; competitiveness must now be about the delivery of quality services and products, not backroom deals
- no company must ever be too large to fail; a resilient and sustainable economy can only be built around smaller organisations which are independent from one another and yet networked closely together; as soon as a single point of failure presents itself it must be removed forthwith; this may mean a decrease in overall efficiency but if it builds in long term stability and reliable growth what’s the problem?
I’m perfectly aware this is me firing off a few rounds from a 12-bore shotgun and that there’s plenty of contentious issues in what I’m saying.
So please, rather than just taking issue with what I think, let’s talk about what you think. Where should the business and financial world go from here?
Picture Credit: Phoenix by David Armano under Creative Commons Attribution License.
Eight Standards for CSR and Fashion Websites
January 28, 2011
One of the biggest running sores in the landscape of CSR is the fashion industry.
Clothing manufacture in the UK (outside of Jermyn Street and Saville Row) appears to have all but died out and those garment factories which do still exist struggle to compete with cheap imports from the Indian subcontinent and China.
Trouble is the cheapness of those imports have generally come from grave human rights abuses which, for many a decade, passed along unnoticed and uncommented upon.
Now that consumers are more knowledgeable, shocking health and labour conditions have been uncovered. Fashion companies throw up their hands and say “we didn’t know”. Right you are then, so do something about it.
One of the ways fashion companies (labels in other words, not retailers) can “do something” is through participation in the Fair Wear Foundation (FWF). Read more
Facebook Plans to Allow Brands to Sponsor Stories from Users – Without Asking
January 28, 2011
Facebook is getting more buzz this week with a new advertising program that will enable brands to sponsor user actions. For example, a Facebook user’s “likes,” his page posts, and his check-ins via Facebook Places could all become content that brands can sponsor. In simplest terms, brand can pay (based on a pay-per-click or pay-per-impression model) to boost that content up to special placement on the right side of the screen where Facebook ads typically appear.
For brands, Facebook Sponsored Stories is a great opportunity. Giving prominent placement on screen to user actions that support a brand draws attention to what can be perceived as a customer endorsement. Research shows that conversations and endorsements of brands on social networks are trusted more than ads, so sponsored stories seem like a perfect match for brands.
However, Facebook users are likely to not feel the same way, although Facebook representatives are quick to point out that sponsored stories will only appear to people that the user has identified as being able to see those types of updates within his Facebook account settings. There is currently no reported way for Facebook users to opt-out of the new sponsored stories initiative.
According to BrandWeek, both Coca-Cola and Starbucks are signed on to roll out Facebook Sponsored Stories campaigns, and other brands are sure to follow.
Let’s face it, sponsored posts are likely to be more effective for brands on a social network like Facebook than display or text ads are. It’s true that people notice and respond to people they know and trust over brand messages, and research report after research report supports that. The problem would come if this level of intrusiveness (i.e., republishing people’s content and conversations without their permission) will be considered acceptable or not to Facebook users. If users don’t respond well to it, there is the risk that they’ll stop talking about brands altogether. That’s the type of negative backlash that could really damage a brand’s social media and content marketing efforts.
How do you feel about Facebook Sponsored Stories from the brand’s perspective? How about from the Facebook user’s perspective? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.
Image: stock.xchng
A Nice Place to Work . . .
January 27, 2011
Last week Katherine Ratkiewicz, a Senior Research Analyst at the Human Capital Institute, published a thought-provoking post on one of the HCI blogs. Ratkiewicz recaps recent events in the U.S. that have prompted a national discussion about civility, and suggests the discussion should extend to workplaces as well as political institutions.
Office politics can be just as intense as any election campaign, and there’s no doubt that once toxic talk gets started in an organization, it can easily spread. As Ratkiewicz points out “nothing is worse for an organization’s productivity and effectiveness than toxicity”–yet all too often there is no plan in place for recognizing and reshaping problematic situations.
For example . . . what happens when a project is behind schedule, or a particular unit is underperforming? If the response is blame-shifting, finger-pointing, and/or scape-goating, the result is likely to be harmful to morale, and not particularly productive. When this is the norm within an organization, there will be a lot of unhappiness.
These days, social media can alert job-seekers—and desirable passive candidates—to toxicity in organizations. If there is negativity in the company environment, HR may or may not be able to surface the problem, and may or may not be able to foster a solution. But if your company has a positive environment . . . how can the Careers website communicate that?
Just proclaiming that you have a happy workplace may not carry much weight. Even employee testimonials, video diaries, event snapshots, and similar online promotions won’t convince most visitors that your company is a little slice of Eden. In fact, it’s important to avoid the impression of overselling the environment, lest it appear there is something to hide.
A better strategy is to ensure that everything on the Careers site maintains a pleasant, respectful tone. And design also sends subtle signals—a frenetic look (too much color, needless motion, etc.) can suggest a nervous environment.
For more thought-provocation about workplace communications, check out a new book from experts Vincent Waldron and Jeffrey Kassing: Managing Risk in Communication Encounters: Strategies for the Workplace. Despite the somewhat daunting title, this brand-new text is practical and readable—and it covers territory that is often left out of happy-talk manuals. The focus here is “risky interactions that threaten identities, relationships, and sometimes careers, including voicing dissent, repairing broken relationships, managing privacy, responding to harassment, offering criticism, and communicating emotion.” Worth a browse!
(Thanks to the Yorck Project for this image of Giovanni di Paolo’s fifteenth-century painting Paradise.)
Get our updates
 |