Category Archives: Brands

Yesterday, we bore witness to one of the greatest sporting events in the history of the modern age. A clash of titans, as it were…the New York Giants slugged it out against the New England Patriots and emerged to come out victorious in what is now being called the most-watched television program in US history and also the highest-rated Super Bowl in 26 years! Congratulations to the New York Giants!

But while we remember the game, let’s not forget all the other news that are happening around the Internet simultaneously as the big game. Not only was this the first time the Super Bowl was livestreamed on the Internet to mobile and tablet devices (leading to more viewership, I’m sure), there seemed to be a greater play on social media by not only the NFL and the NBC Network, but also advertisers too. Twitter reported today that the service set a record for the most tweets sent per second (TPS): 12,233 tweets! That’s an amazing amount since in 2008 during the Super Bowl, it was 27 TPS, and in 2011, it was 4,064 TPS. Of course, this massive record of tweets per second occurred during the last three minutes which is when Twitter says an average of 10,000 TPS were sent. But what does this all translate into? Well during the Super Bowl, there were 13.7 million related tweets sent out during the five hour game. These numbers are absolutely staggering!

And what about the other part of the game? The so-called “Brand Bowl”? Well some of them did very well in terms of the conversation, but it’s a bit of a mixed reaction. First, let’s see which of the brands succeeded in getting the most comments:
 In Advertising Age this morning, Bluefin Labs analyzed data of all the television commercials to see which one of them earned a spot in the top 10 highest rated spots with the most response. It should be noted that Bluefin only reviewed content pushed on two major networks: Twitter and Facebook. I wonder how these would be changed with Google+ or on social sporting networks like on OnShare?

Regardless, each ad was tracked for 45-minutes after it began to air and what’s surprising is that one of the first commercials to air during the game was the David Beckham H&M underwear commercial and received 108,914 comments – a sign that the first is the best? Either that, or sex sells…

Not surprising, Chrysler’s hit ad featuring Dirty Harry himself, actor/director Clint Eastwood in “It’s Halftime in America” was a rousing success with over 95,000 comments and came in second. It was definitely one of the big winners of the evening and people are STILL talking about it today! But nowhere on this list was the GoDaddy commercial – perhaps a sign that after years of the racy ads, the public is getting tired about ripping on them and decided there’s much more worthy commercials to talk about?

Perhaps the biggest stumble in the “Brand Bowl” this year was the use of the hashtag in commercials. In light of the McDonald’s hashtag debacle, it might not have seemed good to throw out a hashtag unless you were 100% sure that your commercial would ellicit the response you were hoping for. Some had a pretty good chance at positive reactions, like the Audi vampire commercial (#solongvampires) and the Bud Light Platinum (#MakeItPlatinum), but then there were others like GE’s commercial with the hashtag #whatworks — a friend of mine said that he would tweet out “#whatworks not this commercial”. Hashtags were genuinely a gamble for advertisers in an attempt to get into the social scene.

But did advertisers really embrace the role of social media this Super Bowl? According to the Altimeter Group’s Jeremiah Owyang and Brian Solis, maybe not and they’ve discovered five interesting trends out of the 87 advertisements:

• Brands heavily invested in promoting their traditional websites
• Many did not promote a call-to-action
• Only a sixth of ads explicitly promoted social media
• Hashtag marketing emerged to stimulate continual engagement
• Cutting edge marketers teased with new marketing tactics, including Shazam

So while I think that the hashtag attempt on commercials was a fumble, it’s a trend of the Super Bowl nevertheless. But is anyone still surprised at any of these trends? The website is here to stay and advertisers will continue to push people to them just like they asked them to call their 800 numbers for several decades. There are a few risky marketers who will ask people to tweet at them using the hashtag, but if anything, the Super Bowl is showing us that advertisers are starting to be a slightly bit more innovative in how they reach people, especially on television. Just take a look at this breakdown from the Altimeter Group:

Maybe the 32% of brands during the Super Bowl were airing ads more as brand promotion, but the question is why aren’t you giving your customers something more to take away from it? Even those commercials that asked viewers to use Shazam were giving them a song that would forever be associated with their commercial (lasting branding) and also invited them to rate their commercial (feedback), but by not doing anything like that leaves much to be desired.

So I leave you with this fascinating tip from the Altimeter Group report: promoting traditional websites still king with brands while social integration is “nascent”. Yes, that’s right…brands seem to be gun-shy at using social media to help converse with their customers and the viewers. If anything, the most successful commercials from last night will become viral and people will be talking about it. But will the brands actually be listening?

Photo Credit: Football field by Juggernautco/Flickr

A couple weeks ago, a quick teaser video emerged on the web and many thought that all signs pointed to the sequel to the classic movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The teaser video simply had Ferris Bueller star, Matthew Broderick emerge from behind a curtain and hint “how could he go to work on a day like this”. The full-length video was supposed to air around the time of this year’s Super Bowl, but according to All Things D’s Lauren Goode, Hawker Media’s car blog Jalopnik, discovered it online last Friday. It seems that the rumors were all wrong…well at least technically. The teaser wasn’t about a movie sequel. Rather, it was a promo spot for a car – the Honda CR-V.

Directed by the writer/director of “The Hangover”, Matthew Broderick pulls a Ferris by calling in sick from his work and does all the things he did in his movie, but with a more modern twist. There’s no more high school in Chicago – he’s now playing himself in real life and avoids work with his agent. Next, instead of the favorite St. Patrick’s Day parade and crooning “Danke Schoen”, he celebrates Chinese New Year (well-timed, by the way). Oh, and the topping on the cake? Remember when Cameron’s car gets stolen by the valets in the movie? Well Broderick’s video has that too, except the valet steals the CR-V.

So the video has been definitely upgraded for the modern times, but I’ll admit that I’m a bit disappointed that it’s not for the next part of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Nevertheless, it is a bit funny and doesn’t necessarily focus on the car, but you do see Broderick driving it around Los Angeles enjoying his day off while reminding us about the cool parts of Broderick’s movie.

Below is the entire YouTube video for your enjoyment.

Broderick? Broderick?

By Julie Blaustein

The Social Media Club Panelists: Moderator Chris Heuer, Peter Kim, Jen McClure and Michael Brito

The Social Media Club of San Francisco held their monthly meeting at PeopleBrowsr offices on Tuesday, May 17th. in SOMA. It was a conversation that included Chris Heuer, Founder of the Social Media Club as Moderator, Peter Kim of Dachis Group, Jen McClure of Thomas Reuters and Michael Brito of Edelman.

There appears to be a shift in the way that companies are messaging themselves; rather than conducting Social Media its preferred to be known as conducting Social Business. Much of the discussion centered around how each of the panelists define social media in terms of their companies and how it relates to social media. All agreed that social media has evolved from when it first came into our consciousnesses around 2004. Brito saw that when it first debuted to companies it was creating chaos but now companies are making sense of it and embracing it. McClure whose company has a large workforce felt that the term itself is being used less and its now more about it becoming part of the social organization and enabling employees to communicate with one another. Kim shared how the social media term is on the “outs” with the story of  how his client, Zappos‘ CEO Tony Hsieh, fined $1 to anyone who even uttered the term social media.

The panelists also shared their own definition of Social Business. Kim saw it similar to how you connect consumers but in the business world. Its how you communicate with employees through technology such as Jive Software that provides social networking, collaboration software, community software and media monitoring. Kim said, it “pains him when people use social business as social media which it is not.” McClure sees social business as a platform to connect and help employers learn from. Brito shared his definition of social business from an infographic that he has created. As he defined it, its the natural evolution that companies go through internally to equip themselves with customers. It starts with the people internally in a company such as the CMO and as a result processes are established within and technology brought on to manage it results.

Google Trend Comparison of Social Media vs. Social Business

A comparison between Social Media and Social Business in terms of search and news interest demonstrated how Social Business is barely a blip, yet its most definitely of importance to those in the enterprise social world. In the end perhaps the discussion was mostly about the semantics of language as it was agreed that social media is the umbrella term, with social business being a niche version of it. Some examples of those companies as seen in the forefront of this focus on Social Busienss were IBM, SAP, Cisco, Intel. Kim though felt at tis time no one is doing Social Business Particularly well but just getting started such as Disney and AT&T. There is still a huge amount of opportunity for companies to join the social world in a business way in the near future.

Join the Conversation with the Social Media Club SF at #SMCSF, view the video and photos from the event.

It is no secret that traditional media has been on the decline since the advent of social media. Consumer trust of traditional media sources, and corresponding advertising spend by businesses, has continued to drop in recent years.

Businesses used to focus their marketing efforts on a few key channels (television, radio, and print). These media have very few decision makers controlling what stories and advertising they run, and it’s easy to identify who these influencers are. In social media, figuring out who matters most can be a daunting task.

The influencers (the people affecting our actions) are found in our network. They are the friends, celebrities, and other trusted sources that we follow. Sometimes, they are even you or me.

Here is a video outlining four rules that businesses can follow when determining who the influencers in their market are today:

Who influencers your decisions? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Disclosure: In addition to being a contributor to Bubblicious, I also work at FutureWorks. The above video was commissioned by mBLAST, a FutureWorks client.

By Julie Blaustein

PR Summit Boot Camp, produced by Shaun Saunders of Graffiti PR and held in San Francisco, brought together experienced speakers in the PR world who provided great tips and insights into how the media and you should be embracing today’s changing landscape. The old and the new protocols of PR 2.0 are starting to blend and with it are new ways of going about doing the business of PR. At the end of the day, it was agreed by all that the key to successful PR is to create, foster and engage your personal and your businesses contacts along with those in your community to create your networks both online and offline.

Social Media & New Media Protocols Panel

There are a number of tools available at your fingertips to engage in social media. The burning question is, what social media tools are the most productive and which are the time wasters? The Social Media & New Media Protocols panel addressed this by asking the seasoned PR speakers how they go about their day in terms of social media. Myles Weissleder of Mylermedia still feels email is the best tool to focus on to do important communications. “Although its beneficial to check your Facebook and Twitter streams numerous times a day, doing so can take up all your time. And if your network is large, it can be like a fire-hose providing you too much useless information.” Daniel Lemin, formerly of PainePR and now the founder of Social-Studio digests his daily news through newsletters which he considers the most credible source of information. He then turns to his Twitter and Facebook streams but strictly for business, to seek out information about his own campaigns. His tools of choice include Hootsuite, TweetDeck, LinkedIn, Cadmus along with in-house proprietary tools. Preston Lewis of Bonfire Communications uses social media throughout the day to build awareness of events to come that night. “My personal and professional lives are blurred on Facebook while Twitter is strictly professional.” And Ryan Singel of Wired.com’s Threat Level views navigating websites as the best source of information and starts his day off by viewing numerous content aggregators through open tabs. He also finds Flipboard and the search engine Duck Duck Go most useful.

Facebook’s Manager of Corporate Communications, Matt Hicks, shared how to grow a company’s fan page. He used Facebook’s own Fan Page as an example of a successful Fan Page. It was launched after the Haiti Disaster and already has 14.8 million people who have Liked its fan page, 9 million monthly actives and 1 million daily actives. It has been promoted in organic ways such as through photos, videos, a link to its blog and is always creating fresh content. Each time you publish an update on your Fan Page with  photos, videos or links it will automatically go out into the News Feeds of all your fans creating not only virality but enabling your content to be searched and found by others. In addition, sharing content on YouTube and Twitter and directing users back to your Facebook Fan page also keeps them engaged.

Akilah Bolden-Monifa, Director of Communications with CBS5 | The CW44 cable 12 and CBS Radio has had decades of experience in the media. Although she receives tons of pitches through Twitter, FB and email for news reports, the reality is that most of the news comes from the wire services. If you are going to do a pitch, she suggests to keep it simple and keep in mind the basic 5 W’s – Who, What, When, Where and Why. To her, the Press Release is dead and ineffective for getting press. She toots the horn for Twitter. Being brief and to the point might get her attention while long wordy press releases, especially with attachments, will most definitely not get her attention.

The Old Spice campaign was brought up numerous times throughout the day as a great example of how using Social Media has revived an old brand. We all associate it with the smell of our grandfather so how did it become the phenomena it has become? Thanks to the cunning creativity of the ad agency Wieden + Kennedy and the help of Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, millions of people have viewed the campaign. Daniel Lemin summed the hit as a result of them taking risks and pushing boundaries. “They factored into their campaign that people want to be entertained, add that with the shock factor and you have a HIT.

Much more was discussed at the PR Summit Bootcamp and it was all captured on Justin TV. And check out Amie Vaccaro’s great summary of the confrerence in, “Graffiti PR’s 12 Tips for reaching Your Audience.”

Speakers Teresa Rodriquez, Alkilah Bolden-Monifa and Liana Burtsava

Myles Weissleder, Shaun Saunders and Leyla Fara

Ryan Singel of Wired.com's Threat Level

PR Summit Bootcamp Audience