social media marketing

Facebook – Show Me The Money

Posted on by in advertising, Communications Strategy, Marketing, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , .

Today, I present, for your delight and delectation, a piece from the Wall Street Journal, a regional newspaper with a reasonable circulation, entitled ‘Big Brands like Facebook But They Don’t Like To Pay’. I am not going to paraphrase or summarise the article so, lazy blog trotters, you’ll have to get all clickety wid it for yourselves.

So, to my mind, there a few key points to be dragged out of this, and you’ll forgive me for re-ordering them, but in the following sequence, they make more sense:

  • Facebook’s global revenues were ‘not as robust as I would have expected”, said eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson.
  • Facebook’s estimated market value, now in the neighborhood of $70 billion, is founded on the belief that companies will spend big to advertise on the site. Facebook’s revenues, which come largely from ads, were $1.6bn in the first half of this year, up $800m from a year earlier.
  • Facebook is expected to capture just 6.4% of total online ad spending this year, according to estimates by eMarketer.
  • EMarketer expects Facebook’s ad revenues to reach $2bn in the US, from 162 million unique users, according to comScore; Google is expected to earn $12.8bn in US ad revenue from 184.6 million unique US users, according to comScore.
  • The auto maker (Ford)……….said it spent less that 5% of its total online ad budget for the (Ford Focus) campaign on Facebook.
  • Martin Sorrell………..said Facebook works for brand building, but companies that use traditional advertising “are invading a social space. You have to be extremely careful”.
  • “You can give them money, and they can give you Likes,” said Mr Kelly (Scott Kelly, Ford’s head of digital marketing), “but the question is, what is the value of those Likes?”
  • “Likeonomics.” Rohit Bhargrava, SVP with WPP agency, Ogilvy.
  • Facebook says 96% of the top 100 US advertisers, as ranked by Ad Age, bought ads on the site in the past year. Of the world’s 100 largest companies, 61% have a presence on the seven-year old company, up from 54% last year, according to Burson Marsteller.
  • Sony Corp is shifting 30% of its traditional ad budget into social sites, including Facebook, for its Playstation console. Diageo, maker of Smirnoff and Guinness, committed in September to spending more than $10m on Facebook ads.

So, snorkellers all, I’m just throwin’ this out there:

  • Facebook’s immense valuation is based on its certainty that companies will spend big on ads. They’re not. Most of the ‘Book’s ad revenue comes from SMEs.
  • Ford used Facebook for its ‘viral’ possibilities – it spent a little and then pulled the spend once momentum had been achieved. Ford’s head of digital raises questions over value.
  • Martin Sorrell issues a warning against traditional advertising on Facebook and even Diageo (one of ‘Facebook’s recent successes’) is only committing $10m to Facebook ads – which is hardly the big bucks Facebook needs.
  • 61 of the world’s top 100 companies have a ‘presence’ on Facebook – define ‘presence’, please

I’m still looking for the Emperor’s underwear here.

My perception is that Facebook is finding it tough going monetising its undoubtedy enormous user base – and this is partly because savvy companies (Ford amongst them) realise that – whetever value there may be in using Facebook as a marketing and sales tool – it is not delivered through advertising on the site.

Facebook themselves are not helping their cause as David Fischer, VP of advertising and global operations for Facebook, has said that the company is “building our business for the long-term” – and turning down ads that compromise the user experience. In addition, Facebook ads are small – because of an early decision by Zuckerberg to keep the site uncluttered.

Sorry Facebook – you can’t have it both ways. You can either liberate the revenues and sell companies what they’ll pay for – or you can stick with your ideals, and never realise the potential that might (just might) justify the frankly obscene estimated market value that’s being bandied about.

My bet is that Zuckerberg will attempt to have his cake and eat it – and the rumoured float next year will be a car crash of epic proportions.

Reinventing Online Shopping With ‘Social Commerce’

Posted on by in advertising, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , .

Thanks to The Globe and Mail (Toronto) for this article published yesterday, entitled ‘Retail Giant’s @Walmartlabs plans to reinvent shopping with ‘social commerce’.  You can read it by doing the light clicktastic on this word here.

Working in retail in 2000, as I did, one of the questions that ‘brick-and-mortar’ retailers were often asked was ‘do you feel threatened by the rise of e-commerce?’ To which the answer was ‘no – people will always want to experience real goods, in real time, in real surroundings, sold by real people.’ At the time they were right, the tech bubble imploded and things (briefly) went back to how they were.

But, d’you see, we got it wrong – both the question and the answer. We got the question wrong because we didn’t know what to ask – social media had not been invented – and we got the answer wrong because we could never have imagined how reliant people would become on the opinions, statuses, needs, wants and ill-informed dogmatism of others.

The question now is – as a ‘brick-and-mortar’, offline retailer, do you feel threatened by social media?’ And the answer really should be ‘yes’. When Walmart are bringing social media to the in-store shopping experience (want a review of the microwave you’re looking at? Post a message – a member of staff or another customer will respond to you. Want to know where the peanut butter is? Post a message – someone will respond) then you can be certain that this – or something like it – is the future.

And as for the boy turd Zuckerberg – yes, of course he’s in on it. To quote the article – ‘this is where Shopycat comes in. The Facebook application uses social media profiles and comments to generate gift ideas’. Back to Walmart’s breathless tech spokesperson, Venky Harinarayan. (No disprespect to Venky, he (or she, I suppose) has already made a sizeable fortune selling Walmart a thing called Junglee, a shopping comparison site. Well done, that capitalist.)

“It is becoming clear to us that one of the shopping behaviors that people have that is inherently social is gifting. We are building a product that we believe makes peoples’ gifting much more efficient, because all of your friends and family, within reason, are on Facebook. We are leveraging that information to help you buy better gifts and make it easier for you. We believe gifting and social networks are fundamentally made for each other, so getting that right over the next year will be important to us.”

D’you know, snorkellers mine, I’m going to leave it there. I’ll let you work out the number of different levels on which this is just so wrong.  I’ll start you off.

‘Efficient gifting.’

Baileys on Face

Posted on by in advertising, Communications Strategy, External Communications, Marketing, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , .

Ah, snorkellers mine. D’you know what day it is? It is Sad Day.

You know that ( to my mind) rather charming and evocative painting by the clearly quite stable Mr Munch – The Scream? That, dear trotters all, is a bit like how I feel today, on Sad Day, only the painting doesn’t quite capture the same sense of lonely, existential despair.

(Incidentally, do you think that Edvard had a brother, Monster? Or, as it would be in the original Norwegian, Munster?)

So, I hear you breathlessly cry (or, technically, ‘cry breathlessly’ – let’s try and keep our infinitives unsplit), what is the cause of my misery on this, Sad Day? Well , I’ll tell you, it’s this piece from the FT – as is your wont – point your wands, swish and flick – avada kedavra!

Yes – it is a tale of woe. As you’ll know, blog rollers all, I am not a big fan of social media – the ‘book and the twats, mainly – and one of the reasons that I am not a fan lies in the belief by many (otherwise and seemingly quite sensible and likeable) corporates that social media can somehow deliver revenue to the bottom line. Social media, I have maintained, until now, on Sad Day, are not sales, marketing or communications tools – they are at best reputational tools, with a part to play in scenarios of crisis.

So imagine my dismay and horror and feeling of universal wrong-ness when I read that Diageo – a purveyor of pleasant beverages to functioning alcoholics, youths-on-a-bender and stressed-out citizenry – has been using Facebook for marketing activity and has found (through Nielsen basket-scanning research) that certain campaigns for brands like Smirnoff and Baileys boosted  purchases by as much as 20 per cent in the US.

And how am I tempted to be cynical and note the terminology ‘certain campaigns’, and question how, exactly Messrs Nielsen conducted their basket-scanning  research, but I will not give in. As much as 20%. That’s revenue enhancing, whatever way you look at it.

It also adds some extra detail to my own version of The Scream. It’s called The Face (just a working title, most revered rollers) and it is a mental picture (no, not as in ‘mental, mental, chicken oriental’, mental as in ‘all in the mind’) of the tipische Facebooketeer. Hunched over a computer in the darkened third bedroom of his parents’ semi, oblivious to sunlight and the outside world and surrounded by empty pizza boxes and tins of energy drink.

And now with a bottle of Baileys and a liqueur glass by his side.

I think the Munchster would be proud of me.

The Unbearable Lightness of Twitter

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Marketing, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , .

By which, blog snorkellers mine (hello everyone, by the way, been a while) I mean that Twitter remains, as I’ve said before, a not terribly effective communications tool. Much of the content, as we know, is at best banal, and at worst ego-driven and self-important.  Unfortunately, it is the lightweight nature of much of the content that denies it the gravitas and – perhaps – respectability that might render it effective as anything more than a rapid response, or a means to provide service updates. That and, of course, the fact that it’s difficult to say anything of meaning in 140 characters or less. I know that there are serious Tweeters – politicians and thinkers etc – but I cannot but believe that they’re there because they feel, somehow, that they should be, not because they genuinely feel there’s value. What you might call ‘down with the kids’ syndrome. (Absolutely no pun intended, for the easily offended.)

(And yes, Alanis, it is ironic that I shall be attempting to augment awareness of this post via Twitter and also – if you, dear reader, stick with me for a little longer – that I shall, from one point of view, be seen to debunk one of my most fondly held beliefs. Ooooooh, but yes.)

Proof, if any were needed, is supplied by a piece on mediabistro.com, a site which, I freely admit, I know nothing about but (I am afraid) sounds like the sort of place that I would sprint over red-hot, barbed-wire-coated scorpions to avoid.  That being said, the article is called Twitter’s 13 All-Time Most Epic Tweets, it does what it says on the tin and you can view it via the usual swish and flick – engorgio!

(No, of course you won’t. Sigh.)

Anyway, read it for yourself, but I think a couple of comments are in order – not least of which is, if these are the ’13 All-Time Most Epic’ (quite a build-up, do you not think) – why are they mostly rubbish? Why would Jack Dorsey’s first tweet (or twt, at the time) count as ‘most epic’? There was no-one there to read it.

Why would the first tweet from space be the ‘most epic’? Is a radio conversation with the space station considered ‘epic’? Not really – but it’s a sackload more informative that 140 characters of badly-spelled randomness.

Twitter helped a bloke get out of jail in Egypt. Great. I’m delighted. But it’s not ‘epic’. It’s a communication device. If bloke had time to tweet and he could use his ‘phone, why didn’t he call someone? More effective, I’d have said.

None of this stuff is ‘epic’. None of this stuff could not have been done (arguably better) through other forms of communication. It is only seen as ‘epic’ by those who have a vested interest in keeping the service fresh, relevant and – yes – well-used. Normally these people are the ‘social media gurus’ and those who write about social media. I am afraid – dearest blog trotters – the Emperor is still wearing little in the way of clothing.

And finally – and here’s where the lie may be seen to be given to one of my most deeply-held and widely advocated beliefs – to whit – that social media is of no use in selling stuff. Well, on the ‘epic’ list is a tweet from some chap on the top of Everest and – obviously – the first thing he does is get his twat on and namecheck both the service and the brand of mobile device he’s using. Good try, Samsung!

Samsung obviously invested some considerable time and effort and possibly money in this – but my gut tells me that next to no extra devices were shifted on the back of it. I can’t imagine the market for Samsung Galaxys amongst committed mountaineers is that huge.

I am, however, prepared to be wrong. Hell, I would like to be wrong.

I’m not though, am I?

Social Media Measurement – And The Point Is?

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , .

As I was dancing on the outer edges of the internet (to the sounds of popular American beat combo, My Chemical Romance, since you ask) I nearly did myself a mischief as this loomed out of the webspace and into my face. It’s a piece from a splendid site called O’Leary Analytics, which is run by one Stephen O’Leary, out in Ireland, and it is an analysis of social media activity around Oxegene, a yearly festival of young people’s music (probably all bippidy and boppidy and incomprehensible – no tunes these days, d’you see) that took place at Punchestown Racecourse in Co Kildare earlier this month.

Now you are lazy and reticent blog snorkellers so and ye are, but ye will not be understanding the thrust of my post, if you do not and read the analysis on the original internet. So, wands out – swish and click – engorgio!

So, anyway, I’m not going through this with a fine-tooth comb – you can do that for yourselves – but there are a few things that I’d say. Firstly, as a piece of work, it’s efficient and workmanlike and goes to show that it’s not all about the quality of the conversation, it’s also about hard numbers, mentions, tweets and re-tweets.

Unfortunately – while this is all well and good – it is brought up badly short on three fronts. Firstly – erm, so what? 391 comments on a Facebook post! Great! But what did people actually DO with the information they got? Anything? Or were they just prime examples of what I believe is called the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory?

I’m guessing we’ll never know.

Second – well, putting it bluntly, as a serious sponsor, do we think that Vodafone will be happy with 338 (total) mentions? No. But they actually won’t give a flying leprechaun’s shillelagh, because they won’t have been focused on social – they’ll have been focused on making their sponsorship work for them in real time. Social will have been nothing more than something to monitor for potential issues (see Greater Internet F*ckwad Theory, above). 

Third and here’s the thing. Oxegene Facebook page – 200,000 fans. 114 posts by page administrators. Each one with an average 31 comments and 117 likes. Roughly 3,500 comments, roughly 11,000 ‘likes’ (how lazy, can’t be bothered to write anything so press the ‘like’ button in a half-arsed apathetic sort of a way). So where were the other 185,000 fans while all this was going on? Eh?

What I’d really like to know is, of the people who bought tickets for Oxegene, how many of them were prompted to do so by social media. Or, as I suspect, were the ticket buyers drawn to it by the fact that it was live and outside and face-to-face, while the Facebook fanboys and girls were kept away by the fact that it was – erm – live and outside and face-to-face.

Social – it doesn’t deliver anything, really. Does it?

Social Media – Just Say ‘No’

Posted on by in corporate reputation, Corporate Reputation Management, External Communications, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , .

OK, OK – keep your hair on. It’s only a headline, dear. For effect, dear. Yes, dear.

Obviously, I don’t mean ‘no’ – what I mean is ‘oh alright, but only if you really, really have to.’ (Engage in a bit of social, that is.) Reading my newspaper (my copy of the newspaper, obviously – I’m not some Murdoch-alike here) yesterday and drifted over a wee piece about some company’s social media policy (what do you mean ‘policy?’ Yes, you do need one, yes, it should be draconian and yes, it does apply to everyone) and the vaguely humorous conclusion the journalist had drawn was that the overall message was, simply, ‘don’t’.

(This drawn from what was, in effect, a long list of rules – don’t criticise the company or its competitors, don’t insult management or colleagues, don’t post on behalf of the company, don’t hide your identity if you ARE posting about your work – the list went on and on and on.)

Thing is, of course, while it was supposed to be humorous, it is, of course, true. If you are a company with a hard-won reputation, you do not want it pissed up the wall by some employee who’s very good at attaching spangle brackets to flange clips but who, when it comes to understanding boundaries and the nuances of self-expression, well……..not so much. (This is a sort of meta-metaphor as I fully understand that hardly any of you, blog trotters mine, are involved in the spangle-bracket-and-flange-clip industry. Despite it being, I am sure, a dynamic growth sector.)

Thus, arguably, spending days and weeks formulating a corporate social media policy, with all the guidelines, rules and strictures that it necessarily must have, then going through the approval and enrolment process and then attempting to instil it in your staff from president to postboy – well, it’s probably a waste of time, isn’t it. Like it or not, you’re not going to catch everyone and, of those you do, not all are going to understand what you’re telling them.

I meant – do you actually know what you’re dealing with? You want to have a rummage around the back of Facebook and see the sort of thing you dig up. This is why Vodafone had to clean up its Twitter feed after it fell victim to a twat, and why Dixons/PC World had to take down a Facebook group entitled (something along the lines of) ‘Our Customers – What A Bunch of Culture Secretaries’.

You see on recent evidence, even the professional communicators cannot get it right. Cue PR advisor to some manufacturer of electronic games (if, indeed, Duke Nukem can be included in the sunlit and carefree category that is ‘game’) who used his 140 to threaten bloggers who gave his client’s product a bad review. I take it that this guy wasn’t a numpty and had had some success on the field of PR – but he got it wrong. Going back to our metaphorical spangle-bracket attacher, what chance does he (or she – but I tend to associate spangle brackets with he) actually have.

Nope, my convictions are firm and remain unchanged – by all means noodle with social if you feel you must, but do it sensibly. And in a corporate context, for the bulk of your employees, the answer has to be no. No way, no how, no never. And the punishment for breaking the rules needs to be frightening. More frightening than, say, Rebekah Brooks.

Lies, Damn’ Lies and Social Media Statistics

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, media relations, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Another day, another hefty dollop of horseshit about how the social media conversation is changing, irrevocably, life as we know it. (While I’m here, big up to Danny Rogers, the ‘editor’ of PR Week, for this phrase ‘Increasingly one hears that ‘PR is the new advertising’ or ‘conversational content is now king”. On so many different levels, blog trotters mine, on so many different levels. He goes on to say that we need some stats to confirm what we suspected – don’t tar me with your cavalier ‘we’, Danny – as if stats could actually prove that ‘conversational content’, whatever the living crap that is when it’s at home, is indeed ‘king’, another nebulous and completely immeasurable concept. Anyway, the whole stats thing is what’s driving this post, so let’s proceed, shall we?)

Today’s merde de cheval du jour is from the Not PR Week (some may say that this is a good thing),  Communicate Magazine – you may visit its hallowed portal here – swish and flick – crucio!

Anyhoo, it’s an article entitled Fit to Print (which is, indeed, in the print version of the magazine but not, strangely, available online) and it’s about how ‘social media has fundamentally changed online communications over the last few years.’ Backed up by a wodge of statistics – here’s a few examples:

  • 90% more journalists use social media than in 2010
  • Tumblr’s referrals to news sites increase 350% in past year
  • The Independent has seen referrals from Facebook grown (sic) 680% year on year, whilst Twitter referrals have increased 250%

The problem – obviously, I don’t have to point this out, I know, but let’s pretend that there’s one lone blog snorkeller out there who’s maybe just a soupcon less incandescently bright than the rest of us – is that the stats are meaningless. An increase of 350%? Enormous! Unless your starting point was one, or two. In which case it would be up to three and a half, or seven. (I think. Maths never was my forte.) You see, without hard numbers, it’s impossible to tell. And if people are making it difficult for me to see the full picture well – forgive me – I get a little suspicious.

Even when the stats are reasonably clear cut, there’s something not right about it. Read!

“Visits to news and media sites from social networks have increased by 80% in three years up to March 2011, and in that period social networks have gone from providing6.26% of total traffic to news and media sites to providing 11.33%.”

Great! My comment would be that news and media sites are on t’internet, and part of t’digital age. Thus, really, you got to expect that a proportion of their traffic would come from social media, which are also internet-based and part of the much-vaunted digital age. In fact, you’d be forgiven for expecting that the proportion of traffic provided by social networks – if they’re the phenomena everyone says they are – would be CONSIDERABLY FUCKING MORE THAN A MANGY 11.33%. Just sayin’.

Thank God, however, that Communicate magazine got digital content agency Zone to ‘dramatise the findings’.  Interesting choice of words. ‘Dramatise’. Implies making a story out of something. A fiction.

Which is exactly what I remain convinced the hype around social media actually is.

Told You So.

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Marketing, Social Media and tagged , , , , , .

Now, dearest blog trotters, I am not one to say ‘I told you so’. Nope. Hold my tongue and never take pleasure in other people’s discomfiture, those are my watchphrases. (Is discomfiture a word? Or a sort of anti-fruit preserve?)

Anyway. I told you so. Oh yes I did.

Here’s the headline – ‘Facebook won’t become e-commerce force, analyst says.’ And here’s the link:

Told you so.

God Loves Facebook – Could He Be Fallible?

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Crisis Management, Social Media and tagged , , , , .

Following my post of yesterday, in which – in the desultory and louche fashion that is my wont and has become such a firm favourite with discerning blog snorkellers worldwide (hey – forget worldwide – GLOBALLY) – I examined the Busy Bees of the Divine’s decision to invest some $450m in the Book of the Face, I have some across simply acres of opinion that – to a greater or lesser extent – agrees with my conclusions.

Now, to say this is unusual would be a masterpiece of understatement, but that notwithstanding, it should also be genuinely concerning for those who are investing their hard-won marketing budgets in ever-more-complex Facebook campaigns. It should also be concerning for large companies whose digital media function is becoming ever-more powerful and starting to grasp at the reins of the whole shooting match.

You see, when even Goldman Sachs Capital Partners (the company’s private equity fund) turns down the opportunity to invest in Facebook – and does so (in part) due the lingering burning sensation that remains from the serious injury it received when the dotcom bubble burst – you have to question the longevity of Mr Zuckerberg’s monster.

And when Facebook falls – and it may already be on shaky ground, given there have been no membership number updates since July (is it possible, whisper it, that people are beginning to sign off?) – what will be left of the social media phenomenon that was going to change the way we communicate? Whither the social media gurus then? Whither the value? Eh?

Anyway – don’t take my word for it – read all about it here. (Thank you, Fortune magazine.)

Cluster Zuck

Posted on by in Social Media and tagged , , , .

Hello in haste, snorkellers mine. No links today, for your lazy little arses to ignore, no – should you wish to read up on this then get your googly eyes on, or your bingly bong or your yahoo moo, whatever takes your fancy and searches your boat, and go get clickety on this story’s topic’s ass. Inna jungle stylee.

Briefly, it’s that nice tweedy Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the gentleman inventor of t’interweb ( and no, I have no idea whether he’s tweedy, or a gentleman, or whether he invented t’interweb in a garden shed in the Yorkshire Dales, but the fact remains that he should be and he should have) who has, in brief, pronounced that Facebook and that horrible little turd Zuckerberg (and no, I don’t know whether Zuckerberg is a turd but he seems so – well – unpolished, so one must draw one’s own conclusions) are, between master and monstrous creation, about to destroy the internet.

The basis of Timbo’s hypothesis is that the internet needs to be free to work (I know, never trust a hippy – but bear with him here) and that the ‘Book and the Zuckerbergster (and, in fairness, all social media of its ilk) are trapping users and information and then refusing to share. I’ve said it before (and if I haven’t, then I meant to) and I’ll say it again (if I haven’t already it said it, then I’ll say it again in the future – but you may have to remind me), once you’re in his Face – you’re never getting out. It’s just a little too Brave New World for me, I’m afraid. With a dash of Terminator and a few sprinkles of I,Robot. Ooooh, ooooh – 2001: A Space Odyssey, don’t get me started.

Where will it all end? In the instantaneous and spontaneous combustion of most of the ‘Book’s apparent 400m users, probably. Which Lord Young might consider an acceptable margin of error.

But that’s not the point. No, the point of today’s diatribe is a little compare and contrast exercise. Compare – Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the internet and then gave it away for free, for the betterment of mankind. Contrast – the odious demon-child Zuckerberg and others of his ilk, who have a taken the gift freely given and done their utmost to fuck it up for everyone in the constant search for their next billion.

This is probably a metaphor. For something.