The May issue of Fast Company Magazine features a great article by Ben Paynter on the proliferation of social media tools and how major consumer brands are using them to build customer loyalty. The article, entitled “Five Steps for Consumer Brands to Earn Social Currency”, is also very applicable to non-consumer brands, including many of the B2B technology companies we work with at the Bateman Group.

The impetus of the story was a new study by Vivaldi Partners and Lightspeed Research examining how companies create true value from social media and online community. Not surprisingly, the study revealed that many brands are still using social media to drive buzz, often too fixated on the numbers, i.e., “We’re up to 100,000 Facebook fans now, how cool are we?”

The study offers great insight and real-world cases on what works. Even better, Fast Company’s Paynter did an excellent job dissecting the study for the best five lessons. If you haven’t abandoned this post yet to go read the full article, you should! If you’re too lazy or pressed for time, here’s the Cliff Notes version:

It Ain’t All About the Numbers – Just look at Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks. The former has 80% fewer Facebook and Twitter followers than Starbucks. Yet Dunkin’ Donuts fans are 35% more likely to recommend the brand, according to the study. This is because Dunkin’ takes a more advocacy-driven approach. Their create-the-next-doughnut contest drew nearly 300,000 different entries this year and has become an annual event.

Context is King – Beer drinkers don’t give a rat’s ass if their beer tastes great or is less filling. At least they don’t talk about it with their drinking buddies. This means bottle packaging holds little relevance and that the bonding or “social context” during consumption is what’s most important, according to the study. Anheuser-Busch’s bud.tv encouraged being a solitary Web potato and failed. On the other hand, Bud’s attempt to brand “fan cans” in collegiate colors for tailgating was on the right track. Unfortunately for Bud, it was foiled by college administrators who viewed the campaign as condoning underage drinking.

Not All Brands Need a Facebook Page – Mass-market utility brands such as Gillette aren’t likely to see much upside in social currency, says the study. Gillette has loyal users: 96% of respondents in the study touted its good quality and reliability. Yet Gillette jumped on the social media bandwagon, producing a series of YouTube videos giving tips on how to “manscape” down below. One video shouts, “When there’s no underbrush, the tree looks taller”. Really, Gillette? Really?

Social Tools are Just That: Tools – Axe definitely pushes the envelope with its racy ads and viral videos on CollegeHumor. But does the body spray product really help guys close the deal? Because Axe’s social media strategy is pure goofball, the study concludes that it doesn’t translate as strongly compared with a more serious brand such as Clinique. Clinique’s educational YouTube how-to tutorials on applying makeup have earned it stronger social currency in the end.

Social Media Stunts are for the Birds – Two social media campaigns launched by Wendy’s and Burger King prove this point. Wendy’s “You Know When It’s Real” campaign featured commercial spots, online games, and contests about how it’s never-frozen patties are cooked to order. Burger King’s much buzzed “Whopper Sacrifice” asked fans to drop 10 friends on Facebook to get a free hamburger. Today, BK’s fans have moved on, but customers trust Wendy’s products much more, concluded the study.

To download the full report, visit: http://www.vivaldipartners.com/pdfs/Vivaldi_Partners_Social_Currency_US_Report_2010WEB.pdf.

For those of you social media pros in the know or brand marketers with good common sense, none of these lessons should come as a big surprise. What they all remind us is that any social media initiative needs to be authentic to the brand’s identity and engage its audience in the way they expect and want to be engaged with. If you’re an irreverent brand, it’s fine to perhaps push the limits a bit further. Just be mindful that all the buzz (Facebook fans, YouTube views, etc.) might not translate into more engaged, brand advocates in the end.

We were pleased to announce this week the addition of two more European-based companies to our expanding client roster of national and global brands.

Effective immediately, CoreMedia of Germany has appointed Bateman Group as agency of record for the U.S. for the full range of integrated PR and social media communications programs.

In addition, StepStone Solutions of the U.K. retained Bateman for a three-month brand building project to increase perception of StepStone Solutions in the U.S. as one of the world’s leading suppliers of Total Talent Management Solutions.

CoreMedia and StepStone Solutions join a small, but growing cadre of European-based companies who have turned to Bateman Group to jumpstart their North American presence. Others include The Open Group, Jericho Forum, Panda Security and Kapow Technologies.

Please join us in welcoming CoreMedia and StepStone Solutions to the Bateman client roster!

Behold the April Fool’s Day edition of the Bateman Buzz Meter (technically #4), our semi-regular ranking of recent newsworthy events based on PR and Social Media effectiveness.  As always, please comment on any current news headlines or PR stunts you think are worthy of the Buzz Meter we may have missed.

(Remember to click on the image to view it in full screen)

]]> http://www.batemanbanter.com/2010/04/bateman-buzz-meter-april-fools-day-edition/feed/ 0 http://www.batemanbanter.com/2010/01/the-new-j-school-the-rise-of-%e2%80%9ccorporate-sponsored-journalism%e2%80%9d/ http://www.batemanbanter.com/2010/01/the-new-j-school-the-rise-of-%e2%80%9ccorporate-sponsored-journalism%e2%80%9d/#comments Thu, 28 Jan 2010 04:11:32 +0000 Fred Bateman http://www.batemanbanter.com/?p=440

Today’s post is the first in a new series debuting on Bateman Banter we’re calling: “The New J-School”, a semi-regular examination of the evolving nature of journalism in today’s digital age. The month of January brought to light some interesting developments we feel signal the start of a much larger trend — one that could swallow the conventional ad-supported media whole — the rise of corporate-sponsored journalism.

In the last week, two former BusinessWeek editors disclosed new deals to write for the corporate blogs of companies they used to cover. Steve Wildstrom, until recently the Personal Technology editor for BusinessWeek, forged a relationship with graphics chip giant NVIDIA to write for the company’s popular nTersect blog. This kicked off with a well-publicized trip to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas where Steve reported live from the show floor. Wildstrom’s former BusinessWeek colleague Steven Baker also announced ongoing deal to write for SmartData Collective, a community of blogs sponsored by data warehousing leader Teradata.

Either by choice or necessity, more and more journalists are becoming independent agents forced to fend for themselves in the open market. Wildstrom and Baker are at the forefront of this new breed of journalist cutting their own deals, and, in the process, figuring out how to do the reporting, get paid and deal responsibly with ethical issues. As these free agents seek out new opportunities to make money, they’re finding very little coming from traditional advertising-based media outlets. There are, however, an increasing number of corporations producing their own content and becoming media companies in their own right, and many of them need help.

For even the largest companies, maintaining a corporate blog with the kind of content needed to become the “must-read” site in a given sector is an uphill battle. At best, there may be 2-3 budding thought leaders in every organization, but the responsibility of writing thought-provoking, compelling content week in and week out is burdensome when it’s an adjunct to a full-time job. The burden is then passed onto the PR team to clean up poorly written or conceived copy until it’s suitable for publishing; nudge others to complete their drafts; and source more and more “content creators” within the company to share the burden.

Cutting deals with former journalists brings a new level of professionalism, respect and credibility to a corporate blog while alleviating the burden that has fallen on the marketing and PR professionals who produce it. Moreover, these deals allow the newly freelance journalists to remain a part of technology sectors they’ve followed for years. Without a masthead to call home, fewer PR people are calling them with breaking news or to broker meetings with their CEOs. These journalists are worried, and rightfully so, that their value in the marketplace will diminish as their relationships with story sources and C-level executives erode over time.

If approached the right way, the rise of corporate-sponsored journalism sounds like a win/win for the reporters and corporations, but it also raises several questions. How will this impact the quality of the reporting long term? How will this benefit readers, if at all? In the tech sector, the number of journalists considered truly credible is quite small. With the publishing industry imploding, who’s grooming the market influencers of tomorrow?  How long before demand soon outstrips the supply? Could companies that fail to broker deals with newly independent journalists ahead of their competitors soon discover there aren’t any good ones left? Worse still, could a Cisco or Oracle or EMC swoop in and buy all the quality ones up?

Next time on “The New J-School”, we’ll attempt to address these “what if” scenarios and share our thoughts on effective ways to integrate corporate-sponsored journalism into a marketing strategy.

With the holiday season upon us, we were feeling especially creative this year. We wanted to apply this energy to a project that both celebrated our industry and made use of the very elements responsible for its rapid change — digital media, new delivery methods and viral publishing. Our holiday video card features a very special rendition of the 12 Days of Christmas performed by the amazingly talented Gale Bradley Singers. Its a parody of what we can only call “Silicon Valley values” at a time we can all use a good laugh. Credit for this creative and humorous send up goes to the entire Bateman staff. Special thanks to Amy Ziari for her masterful video editing and production skills.

Last week, The New York Times’ Virginia Heffernan began tolling an early death knell for Facebook in her article, “Facebook Exodus.” According to Heffernan, despite the fact that people are continuing to join Facebook and “compulsively visit the site,” she claims that many people are abandoning Facebook for a variety of reasons-from its heavy-handed tracking of users for marketing purposes to the breakdown in privacy to the heartbreak (yes, heartbreak!) some users feel when “friends” drop them in a public forum. Heffernan says one user compared Facebook to a kids’ new toy-once the novelty wears off, it gets tossed aside.

I think Heffernan may be onto something here. I recently received suggestions from Facebook to “friend” my 70-something aunts and uncles. If this isn’t a clear sign that Facebook has gone too mainstream, I don’t know what is. Thankfully, it hasn’t reached my parents yet-that may be the day I quit myself!  Seriously though, if Facebook users are increasingly over 50 and the site is already being abandoned like my Quik-Curl Barbie once was a few days after Christmas, it begs a couple of questions:

1) Is Facebook’s usefulness as a social media marketing tool beginning to lose its cache?  

2) As PR practitioners, how do we best advise our clients which social media tools are right for their business and for how long?

Social media is still a developing medium. Many of the elements we collectively group together as “social” are still in the early fad stage and largely unproven. We have no way of knowing which will stick and which will go the way of MySpace, which in a two short years has gone from a “must be on it” social network to place primarily used by musicians for self-promotion. All the cool kids once on MySpace gave it up for Facebook long ago. Will, as Heffernan’s article implies, Facebook share a similar fate?

There’s no easy answer to that question, and if I could answer it, I could just pack it in and retire right now! What I do know is that these things come in waves. In PR, businesses must be smart about which waves they surf and which they choose to stand and watch. When mediums such as Facebook and Twitter are new, hip and exciting and early adopters are clamoring to join the wave, the pressure to conform can be overwhelming. After all, that’s how marketing works – it needs to stay ahead of the curve. 

Technology companies feel this pressure every day, particularly when it comes to figuring out how best to mine the emerging social media landscape. Many have begun to engage Facebook as a marketing tool by building “fan pages”. For consumer brands, a Facebook Fan page can be a good tool to build and maintain a community of brand enthusiasts. Facebook Fan pages for Apple Computer, the iPhone or the Wii, for example, make perfect sense to me. Are fan pages also an effective tool for B2B technology companies? It depends. If it’s just a static page of information like news releases or company events that can be easily found on the corporate website, then Facebook adds little value. If you use Facebook to cultivate an active developer community or user group-why not? The bottom line is to know your objectives in advance and be specific about what you want out of social media. Just jumping on the bandwagon will be completely unproductive or potentially damaging to your brand.

I feel Twitter is much better suited as a social media channel for the news-driven nature of PR and B2B campaigns in general. Unlike Facebook’s slow-moving walls, it’s much more dynamic. I can learn up to the minute news or link through to more in-depth information – and I get the added bonus of personality and opinion rather than press release repostings and pictures from the company picnic. I don’t have to worry about whether anyone I follow is actually my “friend” or not, whether they’ll post embarrassing pictures of me with a bad ’80s perm, or whether I’ve insulted anyone by not following them. I can tweet my client’s news or retweet industry articles and not wonder if I’m annoying people I care about. It’s also not profiling me for advertising purposes or making me vulnerable to fraud through the people in my network or quizzes I’ve taken. On Twitter, I can actually follow and get interesting updates from the journalists and other influencers in the industry I need to follow. Kara Swisher of AllThingsDigital isn’t going to friend me on Facebook anytime soon or consider a pitch I post on her Wall. But on Twitter, I can follow her professional musings and even pitch her when relevant. 

My prediction: Facebook will ultimately become a medium for the branding and advertising facets of marketing, particularly for consumer brands where creating a personal affinity with a product is desirable. B2B companies will likely lose interest in using it for marketing within a couple of years. Twitter, on the other hand, will evolve into more of a business tool, with less emphasis on the personal and mundane. And something else will come along soon enough that will upend the process yet again…

So, what do you think?