by Lisa Mané, Head of Social Media, COI
No one can deny, especially as Mark Zuckerberg has been crowned Time Magazine’s person of the year, that social media in general and Facebook in particular have become mainstream, and in a cross-gererational way.
Some of our highlights of 2010 include the Old Spice and Tipex YouTube campaigns, The Social Network movie, UK hastags in general (e.g. #ashtag, #uksnow, #GE2010), and tv programme hashtags in particular (think BBC QT and Xfactor), and of course, our own sexworthtalkingabout FB actvity. In terms of data visualisation, we all love the map of the world through Facebook connections and the one inspired by that map using public data from data.gov.uk
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By , Sales Group Head, .
There through choice? Yes. Loyal? Yes. ENGAGED? YES. Social Media users are arguably the most lent forward of all those online, real people logging into their own space online, adding that extra level of potential Engagement for brands, not achievable through other platforms. So, advertisers are embracing this and spending huge amounts of Sponsorship/Engagement budget in Social Media, right? Not really.
Social Media is to online, what Cinema is to broadcast, it is the part of the online mix that can really help drive consideration, awareness, propensity etc with a captivated audience, all very valuable measures, some of which seem to have been forgotten in this age of clicks and acquisitions.
I am not saying that online can’t do a fantastic direct response job, we all know it can, this too is an area that needs a marketers attention. But now is the time to undo some of that damage you may have done to your brand equity by placing a standard banner within a social network, and then only measuring success by click through rates. There is a whole depth to its effect that is often ignored.
Vodafone, Unilever, COI, are a few of the brands that understand Social Media is ‘not just for Christmas’ and increasingly brands are getting the idea that these are not impression farms but communities brimful of real people, I am loving the Marmite’ election’ campaign that has just been announced. Real people need to be entertained, enticed, emotionally stimulated, all the things we would expect when paying for a ticket to the Cinema, or for a gig by one of your favourite artists, and like voting for the Tories, Lib Dems or Labour, deciding whether you ‘love it’ or ‘hate it’ is a decision not to be taken lightly.
