everyone is media

Digital Dads

Moms have long been the focus of marketing messages for most consumer packaged goods brands, but now it’s time for advertisers to start thinking about dads too. In a new study with DB5 and Hunter, Yahoo! examined the evolving role of men in household purchase decisions.

We found that in today’s economy, men are playing a bigger role in the shopping process, and they expect their role to grow even more in the coming years. Yet, they don’t feel that marketers in traditionally mom-related categories are speaking to them – these include categories such as CPG, pet, home goods, apparel, child and baby care.

To provide a deeper understanding into this emerging trend, we surveyed more than 1,000 dads and conducted in-depth interviews and shop-alongs with 26 dads. By understanding the role of men and dads in today’s household and how their shopping experiences differ from moms, marketers can improve their communication with men and ultimately move more product.

via advertising.yahoo.com

Social Media Strategy Anyone?

Uh huh.

Time to get serious.

 

What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later

View more presentations from Espresso’s Infiltrators.

Web Pivots - Techcrunch

Click to enlarge
After months of over-saturation, word on the street is that “‘Pivot‘ is the new ‘Fail.’” And while Instagram, Twitter, Foodspotting, Groupon have all successfully pivoted in recent years, it seems like everyone and their mother is doing it nowadays, to mixed results.

via techcrunch.com

Article - eMarketer

Article - eMarketer.

Article - eMarketer

Factsheet: The U.S. Media Universe | Nielsen Wire

January 5, 2011

From smartphones to 3D televisions, The Nielsen Company provides a view of the device usage and audiences in the U.S.

Fast Facts:

• Average Number of TVs per U.S. Household: 2.5
• Percentage of Americans with 4 or more TVs: 31%
• Number of Mobile Phone Users (13+): 228M
• Percentage of U.S. Mobile Subscribers with Smartphones: 31%
• Number of mobile phone web users: 83.2M

For more, download Nielsen’s State of the Media – U.S. Audiences and Devices

+click to enlarge

via blog.nielsen.com

Wow. This is a great chart. Thanks Nielsen!

Making Data Relevant: The New Metrics for Social Marketing

However, businesses are facing an uncomfortable truth: There are no “best practices” for measuring a successful social media campaign. Crowd behavior is dynamic and context-specific, and it is difficult, if not impossible, to build a “one size fits all” solution.

A structured approach to capturing, measuring, analyzing and refining marketing strategies in near real time is essential to executing a successful social campaign. Initially, however, companies need to invest in infrastructure to make such a learning cycle possible.

via mashable.com

Great article organizing the various tasks brands need to take to get their arms wrapped around gathering the right data to develop a solid strategy from the insights. Must read!

The HBR Agenda 2011 - Harvard Business Review

In the spirit of the new year, we asked two dozen business and management leaders what projects they'll take on in 2011. Here they share their answers—which range from shaking up the study of economics to lifting the quality of discussion on the internet. We expect these people to make significant headway during the year, and we hope their efforts will inspire HBR readers to pursue similarly lofty projects.

Watch HBR's Julia Kirby on creating the 2011 Agenda:

Click on the author images below to read their answers.

via hbr.org

4 Social Media Marketing Predictions for 2011

I recall once seeing a Zynga billboard while driving up the 280-N from the San Francisco airport to downtown San Francisco. There was no tagline, and I joked to my passenger, who was in the financing and IPO business: “I’m not sure who that’s intended to sell.”

He laughed and responded with “Dude, that’s not for end users. That’s to get the attention of the bankers driving from SFO to downtown.”

Remember, you can have multiple audiences for your ads. At American Apparel, many of its best known ads ran in obscure publications or in short bursts on niche websites. Millions of people know about them, however, because blogs thought they were so interesting that they wrote articles about them.

In that case, the press was the audience and the public only indirectly so. The public was a later side effect, but not the first target. One good test of whether your advertising can become a conversation: Would people notice if your ads stopped running? Clickthrough rate is not going to answer that question.

This is why advertisers should start monitoring chatter about their content and come up with ways to track and value that. You also need be able to think big picture so you can know that sometimes negative chatter is still a good thing (it means people get emotional about what you do).

Does this violate the actionable metric rule in my third point? Not at all. It’s another feedback loop and easily measurable, whether in press mentions (including blogs) specific to an ad, or even product development impact.

For developing product, Amazon is well known for “working backward” from internal press-release response. That is, it starts with the reaction or response from its intended audience and designs its advertising messages — or products — backward from there. Google also used this approach by launching Google News without chronological or geographic filtering, only afterward responding to requests and implementing the chronological feature. There was a ton of debate and fighting internally for both features, and they let the market decide.

“Listening” isn’t enough. Tracking the number of Twitter mentions tells you nothing. The bigger question is: What are we trying to build or accomplish, and how will we digest and use this data?

If you nail that, you can nail your competition to the wall. They’ll be too busy chasing the latest shiny web service.

via mashable.com

Monitoring conversation is nothing new. What brands need to do is drive conversation through crafty messaging that sparks a point of view. Today brands are starting to think about creating a schedule for the content they distribute. Tomorrow brands will chart out the specific conversations they want people that have.

5 Predictions for Game Mechanics in 2011

This year was the first time most people heard the term “Gamification,” the process of using game thinking and game mechanics to solve problems and engage audiences. Although this strategy has always been around us, a combination of factors have made the topic explode onto the scene. These include the rise of Zynga and social games into the largest sector (by reach) of gaming, the demonstrable power of Foursquare ()’s badges and mayor mechanics to engage consumers in simple tasks, and 30+ years of video games everywhere.

But if 2010 was the year we make contact, 2011 promises to truly be the year when game mechanics take over: a potential roller coaster of exciting product, company and organizational launches. And so, here are my predictions for the breakthroughs we’ll see in game-powered enterprises.

via mashable.com

Yankees Try to Calculate the Value of Derek Jeter’s Legacy - NYTimes.com

Vince Gennaro, who consults on strategy for several major league teams, said, “As a nameless, faceless shortstop, I have him worth $10 million to $11 million, but as Derek Jeter, I have him worth about $20 million.”

In 2011, Gennaro said, a little more than half of that value would be as an athlete, but in future seasons, “his performance value goes down as his marquee value ascends.”

He added, “In reality, his value as a brand-builder will grow long after his skills diminish.”

via www.nytimes.com

Interesting article on Derek Jeter. Aside from his production on the field, his brand equity for the franchise and an annuity for everything he has contributed to the Yankees, his contribution in the clubhouse cannot be understated. Jeter not only is a leader in the clubhouse, but drives production through his attitude, role modeling and willingness to work with his fellow teammates. You think A Rod is doing that??