One example: the major Gap debacle. After years of promoting the classic Gap logo, corporate management underwent a re-branding effort complete with new logo. As a soft launch, the logo on their e-commerce site was nonchalantly replaced. Backlash ensued! Via Gap’s Facebook Fan Page, every comment from housewives to Creative Directors bashed the logo. Apparently, Gap didn’t know that their logo was so iconic! As a result, Gap tried to defend this move, but fans would have nothing of it. They wanted the classic logo back. Gap has now decided to stick with old faithful and save themselves millions in replacing name tags and other collateral—not to mention further public humiliation.

Another example can be found within Proctor & Gamble. In a New York Times article, Marc Pritchard, global marketing and chief branding officer states,”we are at the start of one of the most exciting eras in brand-building history.” P&G, which is the world’s largest marketer by spending and known for extensive product research with branding processes envied the world-over, is taking branding and marketing cues from regular people via social media. For example, commercials that “were almost pulled” by higher-ups, were saved solely by positive comments about the spot in their social media outlets!

Social media is a great way to get your message in front of millions of consumers, but it also is a great way for consumers to get their message across to the brand. In this day and age, even after research, marketers still run the risk of alienating their consumers (Tropicana!). The value of immediate and substantial feedback from your most vocal brand advocates is almost priceless. Social media, though still very  much a buzz word, is beginning to prove that it has a place in legitimate marketing strategy—most of all among premium brands.

Today, bathroom advertising is as common as a highway billboard. But it seemed to usher in the beginning of an “anything goes” era of ad location and placement. Think about it. Advertising is now everywhere. On the floor of grocery stores. On your shopping cart. On your cell phone. On your Facebook page. Even on people’s faces and bodies. No space is safe and no space seems sacred from the attention of our industry.

Which brings me to this point:  tread carefully when choosing spaces for your product messaging. Especially when it involves a premium product or service. Because, as Marshall McLuhan suggested decades ago, “the medium is truly the message.” And that means your brand probably doesn’t belong on the wall of a bathroom or the stomach of a ring card girl.

But, what about the other side of the promotional coin? What about old-fashioned, old-school forms of sale promotions in today’s super-savvy web age?  Well, according to ad agencies like ours and other industry experts, they are starting to make a comeback – and in some cases, they’ve never left.

Lauren Comiteau writes in a recent edition of ADWEEK that “brands are discovering that low tech (and no-tech) marketing still turns heads.”  She goes on to report of the success of promotional gimmicks like chicken suits and bounce houses.  They’re decidedly low tech but, when deployed properly in the right settings, are still highly effective.
Factor in the relatively low cost of such efforts, and the benefits become even greater.

We’ve experienced success first-hand with old school promotional tactics here at Warren Douglas.  One of our clients, a leading manufacturer of eyewear, accepted our recommendation for creating lifesize eyeballs to roam around a large amusement park (see below).  The results were amazing. Hundreds of children (and adults, it seems) eagerly engaged with the characters, resulting in parents collecting pertinent materials which drove them to a website for more information.  (Read the resulting case study.)

So the next time your brand or client is interested in running a sales promotion,  consider taking an old school approach.  Sure, someone in your organization might have to don a chicken suit.  But that’s a small price to pay if you lay the elusive premium gold egg of effectiveness.

I believe this new invention—although it’s basically a larger iPod Touch—could revolutionize print advertising as we know it today. Truth be told, when I’m reading news online in a traditional web-browser format, ads are too often easy to ignore. Online, I don’t get the same level of marketing impact as I do when I’m flipping through the pages of the printed form of a magazine, looking at full-page ad after full-page ad. That printed form, however, makes the metrics of my intake of that marketing message tough to measure. How long did I stare at the ad? Did the pages stick together, making me miss it altogether? Did this ad’s call-to-action (visit www.companywebsite.com) prompt me to do something? Wouldn’t marketers like to know!

The middle ground the iPad could occupy between the PDA and the laptop could be just the remedy that publishers and marketers have been waiting for, especially if the technology will allow users to earn their subscriptions by agreeing to view the ads measurably. People want free content. Publishers want to sell ads AND charge for the content. Looks to me like the paradigm could soon shift to an online format where consumers could choose: view ads and let us measure your interaction for free content, or just look at everything at your leisure and pay for all the content. Either way, advertising still drives the financial model. That’s good for ad agencies, and that’s good for the publishers.

Boy, I’d hate to be Kindle right now.

No … I’m tired of marketers’ and researchers’ ploys to convince me and my clients that Social Media only applies to white female moms with HHI of $75K+. This may sound like a ridiculous thing to be fed up with, but hear me out.

1. While the fact that here 300 million users on Facebook and there are more females (55%) using the site than males is consistently parroted,  the thing that is often overlooked is that 45% of those users are going to be male. When I made a mock Facebook ad targetting males in the U.S. 25-54, 24,722,340 users came up as eligible to receive my Facebook ad. 24,722,340! How it the world is this an insignificant number to other marketers? Having just a fraction of that number for fans creates an opportunity for some of the most targeted and meaningful advertising in the world today!
2. According to a recent study by Liberty Mutual, two very interesting facts about men’s online behavior include the following:
   • With the exception of Facebook, men are generally more likely than women to use their other social media accounts at least a few times a week, particularly Twitter.
   • MySpace: 35 percent of men vs. 26 percent of women, LinkedIn: 25 percent of men vs. 16 percent of women, and Twitter: 53 percent of men vs. 38 percent of women
   • Dads are more likely than moms to have a MySpace account or a Twitter account, 43 percent vs. 29 percent and 50 percent vs. 32 percent, respectively.
3. And, lastly, simply perusing the LinkedIn site, I came across their demographic breakdown of users—51% male, HHI 100K+, 35–50+. Don’t know about your marketing experience, but the mere fact that there is a single place where this demographic comes to talk about all things corporate and business-related, where I don’t have to do any schmoozing, is the greatest gift I’ve been given in a long time. One could equate it to finding the Holy Grail.

Moral of the story: Men are on social networking sites. They have different objectives, different patterns, but are on there nonetheless. So, please, stop assuming that every online tactic has to be centered around shopping moms. Because the truth is, the great success of those campaigns is only because coupons are the big rage in the “economy today.” It’s the only reason I joined half the Fan Pages I did, and I’ve not visited again … NOT ONCE.

So, I’m begging, stop all this bleating about mom, and take a look at half the world your advertising is missing out on by making assumptions rather than looking at the facts—men use social media. Get used to it.

So, while knee-deep in indexing products within the grocery, home, software, and health & beauty categories, I began to wonder what would happen if I indexed the popular sites YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook against each other. Taking information from Mediamark Research & Intelligence® (MRI), Google analytics and other special goodness (we’ll never tell!), our system plotted these guys on a scale of 0 to 100 in what we call “premiumness.”

Not all too shockingly, MySpace came in as the least premium with a score of 5 out of 100, while Facebook ranked at 49, and YouTube at a whopping 96! Among other factors, the interesting details that surface include the knowledge that 49% less information is consumed on MySpace than it’s counterparts. Also, 45% of MySpace users also use Facebook, which, if talking about cream cheese, we’d consider to be a brand loyalty problem.

The data also reveals interesting trends in the buy styles of these media consumers—20% of YouTube users fall into the category of “Buyers of the Best.” This generally denotes that they are brand loyal and tend to be willing to spend that extra dollar to get it. YouTube users also tend to have a higher overall income and have the most loyal following in incomes of $200K+.

While all this data is wonderful, how do we apply it to marketing in the real world? It may not seem too far-fetched from our current assumptions that YouTube is pandemic, Facebook is getting there (if China will let them), and MySpace is just plain sad. However, when structuring a marketing plan for a brand that utilizes these three modes of social media transportation, it is emperical evidence that it does matter which brands advertise where.

For instance, even though my last post indicated that 18–22 year olds are now purchasing more specialty food items, a such brand should not inherently push all their efforts into a MySpace campaign. We learn in this study that not only are MySpace subscribers less loyal to brands, they also aren’t the 18–22 year olds with the cash to spend. Also, they tend to lean toward coupon purchases, which most specialty foods cannot afford to do.

So, while this exercise is not 100% fool-proof—and is done mainly as an illustration (we charge for the real thing!)—it does convey the general idea that not all entities within a category can be premium. There are definite factors determined by the consumer’s perceptions, behaviors and experiences that shape what your brand is. And doesn’t it just make you the least bit curious to find out how premium your brand is?

The other day, Mr. Bossy Boss told me a tale about this Facebook friend calling him and reiterating an interesting conversation he had with “Mr. Boss Man” on Facebook chat. Evidently, “Mr. Boss” had told this friend that he needed money for his cousin but he had been mugged while in the UK. FBfriend replies, “Are you a Nigerian Prince?” The profile hijacker immediately shuts down the chat and unfriends the witty little guy.

Needless to say, Bossy changes his password, and his status to tell everyone about the potential scammer on the loose. Later that night, his wife goes to check his Fbook, and lo and behold … he is not there.

No friends. No profile. No Farmville Animals. Mr. Bossy Boss was Facebook murdered.

Shocking tales like these are occurring more and more within the Facebook realm. Due to its international popularity, Fbook has become the #1 target for spreading viruses, hijacking information and all-around chaotic malarkey! It is an alarming powerhouse in our world today—it has the ability to connect you to anything, but also disconnect you from the world, your fans, and even worse, your consumers—all in the blink of an eye.

Premium brands that don’t engage with newer types of interactive media are like Mr. Bossy Boss and his imposter—someone out there is representing their brand, whether they like or not, and they are taking control. However, if you play the game right, those imposters won’t matter, because, like real-life friends, once you build your relationships, brand advocates will know that you’re not a “Nigerian Prince.” They’ll recognize your brand’s true voice and learn to trust it.

The bottom line to consider is this: Life is scary. And social media is just life happening online. So, learn how to interact effectively with the real world, and you’ll see that being a “victim” online isn’t as easy as it first sounded. Your brand will be able to handle it. Your brand will be better for it.

These fond memories, however, are just that this year—memories. Because the 2009 holiday season is rife with new and larger opportunities to get the latest on Black Friday deals with minimal effort through my favorite information-sharing platform—Social Media.

From Facebook to Twitter to specialized web sites and splash pages, this thing we lovingly call the “inter-web” has revolutionized even the biggest in-store selling opportunity of the year. Some of my favorite, yet not necessarily new, uses of SM to promote Black Friday sales are below:

• Toys ‘R Us Fan Page – These geniuses have become the fastest-growing brand on Fbook simply by developing a custom Black Friday Preview application which lets Facebook fans find out what deals are available before the rest of the masses.
• Blackfriday.info – This site compiles and organizes all those pesky inserts and mini-catalogs into one place. You can also add items to a customizable list as well as check store open and closing times.
• @blackfriday on Twitter – This user lists deals, stories and tips to get the most out of your Black Friday. My favorite tip is a link to a page where JCPenney-sponsored Cindy Crawford will send you a wake-up call to get up and get shopping!
• BF Deals App – While not technically social media, and not free, this app lets you see a map of other users at stores so you can find a less crowded one, and it sends your deals to your Twitter account – there really is “an app for that,” too.

So, while these developments, and the many others like them, don’t necessarily mean greater sales or margin growth for retailers, they do provide further evidence of the power of real-time and easily accessible information, even when it comes to advertising. Because, let’s face it, Black Friday is the one day a year when people are actually CLAMORING to hear what retailers have to say and now there are a plethora of options and avenues for them to reach that information. And, in a world where the marketing dollar doesn’t quite go as far as we’d like, what could possibly be wrong with that?

The most important restrictions are the prohibition of:

• Photo contests which require profile photo manipulation
• Status update contests which require posting status updates for entry
• Contest entries once a user has become a fan
• Promotions appearing anywhere but in an application on a tab within the respective Fan Page

Even worse, every promotion must be approved by Facebook through an account representative and have a listed disclaimer!

So, with these new limitations, what is a brand to do? At the risk of seeming arrogant, I have to point out that premium brands must now stop the insistence that they can handle their own Fan Pages and social media. They must turn it over to someone who can develop apps, has a standing relationship with account reps, as well as have the strategic thinking behind how in the world to get users to care about a Widget Deluxe Fan Page when they get nothing free from it. In plain English, they need a marketing agency.

Not to toot my own horn or do the sales pitch, but in past posts, we’ve pointed out how it is virtually impossible for a one-man-band to handle a full social media strategy—emphasis on strategy. So, throw in creative web application development on top of legalese, and it’s way over what Jimmy the 18-year-old intern can handle on his own. And while this may seem discouraging to brands that have relied on this “cheap” form of social media connection, I must remind us all that in marketing, we get what we pay for.

So, Facebook has, in essence, secured the need for a well-thought-out plan of attack and I applaud them for taking such measures to keep their product premium and free of spam-inducing promotions popping up on their highly-successful product. Though it might be hard at first for premium brands to part with their dollars to produce a new way of reaching Fans on their Page, it really is long overdue if they want any chance of retaining their premium status on Facebook.

Just from reviewing and trying to get the social search features activated on my personal Google and Bing searches, it seems to be a lot more complicated than most are letting on. Not only do you have to have an account for each respective engine, but on Google, you also have to submit profile information, links to your social networks, and then be logged in at the time of search. After doing all that, even searching a familiar term like “facebook” yielded no results from my networks. And before you ask, yes, the account was signed up in the Google Lab, the testing section for the feature.

As explained above, these searches only pull up information from the user’s “circle of friends.” So, the doom and gloom of getting any and every negative comment about a brand seems highly unlikely. And although it can be said that a negative comment made within a customer’s social network may be more damaging than one outside, the likelihood of its occurrence diminishes quite a bit when all the filters are in place.

So, brand managers, take heart. The only thing this social search means for your brand is you had better pay attention to what’s being said about your brand online. And I know you’ve heard that one before.