Quality Control

Why has a random song from a previously unknown South Korean singer become a viral hit you ask?  Let’s start by looking at some of the primary reasons why this song is now stuck in your head….

1)      Uniqueness: Seeing a South Korean guy sing something foreign, with a title like Gangnam is very intriguing.

2)      The Artist: Psy is a South Korean singer who is very outgoing and loves the spotlight and entertainment business. Just this past week he was teaching UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon how to dance to his song.

3)      New dance Moves: The invisible horse will forever live on in dance studios and clubs around the world.

4)      Catchy Beat: The beat in the video is something original and extremely catchy.

5)      User approval: There was a large consensus around the globe to spread this video with an outpouring of support, laughter and likes on YouTube.

Costs and YouTube Revenues

According to recent Forbes article discussing streaming costs associated with Gangnam style:

Estimated cost for running the servers $296,360
Estimated revenue from the ads $348,285

Projected Growth

The video is on track to pass Justin Bieber’s video Baby and become the most watched Youtube Video in history according to Channelmeter. Channel meter says the video will hit 1 billion views on or before December 12^th assuming linear growth will remain constant. I have provided the figure from Channelmeter below. Additionally the video broke the record of reaching 220 million  views in its first six weeks, breaking the previous record held by the song ‘Call me Maybe’ by Carly Rae Jepsen.

You may have heard about the recent ad campaign launched by Channel, it utilizes Brad Pitt in typical Channel fashion.  According to a recent statement released by Hollywoodgossip.com, the French luxury goods producer is paying Pitt somewhere in the neighborhood of seven figures for his part in the serious, grave black and white video. Critics and marketers around the globe are discussing whether Pitt’s portrayal of timelessness is an accurate description. The video which was released earlier this month has gone viral with 4.64 million views on YouTube, and with website Visible measures putting its true reach at just over 7.4 millions views.

The video has also spawned numerous parodies, a popular one  launched by the tv show Saturday night live is below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcdQNh_P9tE

Implications:

• This product is target towards the women segment of the fragrance market but it may help in raising awareness and appreciation from male consumers also.  For example according to Andrew sacks, founder of a namesake luxury ad agency in New York- “The choice of Pitt can serve to make guys more comfortable going to the fragrance counter……. It makes it both cool and gives confidence to the male gift-giver.”
• Secondly Channel is ranked as the fourth most valuable luxury brand in the world with a value of $6.68 billion. We can expect to see this value go up in the upcoming Christmas season. The Fourth quarter is crucial for luxury goods producers as fragrances products are a major gift item for department stores such as Macy’s.
• I personally can’t wait to compare Channel No 5 sales figures for the quarter to previous fourth quarter sales.

Are you excited? Well you should be considering the fact new Windows operating system is coming to a future shop near you! All kidding aside, let’s look past Microsoft’s marketing tactics and the Window haters out there on social media, to see what the new operating system really has to offer.

Fact1: It will incorporate touch screen technology

I would recommend not upgrading your PC to the new operating system simply because you won’t be able to use the touch screen features and get the full benefits of the system. Buying a new laptop with the system is an entirely different issue though. I wouldn’t immediately do that either considering the fact there will be a bunch of bugs and glitches that need to be addressed as is the case with all the newly released tech products.

Fact 2: Large Media Spend

Microsoft is set to release the new operating system on October 26^th and advertising is pegged at $1.5-1.8billion dollars! This is being seen as the biggest launch in industry history. According to Forbes, “Microsoft, at the heart of personal computing for 30 years, is betting its future on the cloud and tablet computing.” Will this payoff? More importantly will consumers around the world buy into it? Only time will tell if the advertising campaign is a bust or a success.

Fact 3: New Metro style user interface

The good news is that you can switch back to the old windows 7 desktop view if you dread the new billboard looking view. Will Metro be counterproductive? This is something I personally feel will happen since users won’t waste to much time trying to learn how to use it, as they have the option of switching to the old desktop view. I realize that Microsoft wants to leave the desktop option out there so that they don’t irritate traditional users. The fact remains that if users don’t 100% buy into the Metro interface, critics will dub the entire launch as another Microsoft underachievement.

What to do?

My recommendation is to be a laggard in this case and wait about 6 months to a year to upgrade to the new windows 8. Let the Microsoft fans [if they exist] be the guinea pigs for the upgrade as they can be the ones dealing with the bugs. Don’t be fooled by the low price point tagged to the upgrade.

There must have been a time you thought about the actual returns a social media campaign brings about. More importantly, how would one calculate those returns? As a CFO of large company such as Nike, how would you tell if the sales growth of new running shoes was attributable to likes on Facebook? Many people see this is a controversial topic and don’t believe an exact numerical calculation exists that is feasible and applicable across all social media platforms.

A recent analysis put forward by Jaap Favier, attempts to calculate the ROI for social media campaigns. His approach is interesting and definitely worth discussion amongst marketers if not hard nose financial buffs. Let’s take a closer look at what his approach entails.

For example, when 2 or more consumers engaging with social media share a brand experience, we have something described as a ‘touchpoint’. The cumulative value of the various touch points across the entire campaign represent the increase or decrease to the Brand equity of that specific company.

The actual formula for calculating an individual touch point is determined by the following factors described by Jaap.

“Time.
Every tweet, retweet, post, comment, online video, pin, and repin takes a few seconds both to produce and digest by subsequent users.

Trust.
Look at the intensity of the online interactions between consumers to assess how close they are. A good metric for intimacy is the comment-to-like ratios of Facebook fan posts: the higher these ratios, the more close friends shared the brand experience. On Twitter, the retweet-to-tweet ratio is a solid indicator.

Sentiment.
Measure the shared sentiment between consumers by sifting through the comments and retweets. Friends use words like “fun” in their exchanges, while close friends may use words like “moving” and “emotional.”

Income.
Social marketers know the demographics of their fans and followers.”

Jaap applies his analysis to a super bowl ad, and goes on to show that social media campaigns are far more effective. For example:

30-second message from a marketer with a trust factor of 1.

33% of the 100-million odd viewers like the average Super Bowl commercial.

Their average net income is $35,500 per year, so $0.21 per minute

……….ROI of super bowl ad $3.5million

He then uses the Superbowl ad as a benchmark and compares it against social media campaigns by companies such as Estee Lauder. It is clear from his findings that the ROI of social media is up to four times greater than TV commercials.

Is Jaap’s analysis valid?

I think without measuring the actual I, investment part of the ROI equation we can’t really make any decision. Additionally the actual metrics used by Jaap might be refuted by others who decide to use other metrics or modifications of these ones. In responding to Stephen Waddington’s comment on his blog post, I believe Jaap does an exceptional job at addressing any critique:

“…I completely agree with your point that both an “R” and an “I” are included in ROI. Marketers are generally well aware of the “I” part (their budget), but struggle to assess the “R”. This blog post and the ROI model are intended to help them with that part and to let them make educated decisions while planning, running and auditing their programs. The ROI model is indeed a planning tool and not a financial reporting tool…..”

All in all I applaud Jaap for making a legitimate attempt to uncover the returns on social media.

A recent awareness campaign launched by DDB New York has gone viral, and like all viral videos it is receiving a wide range of criticism and praise.

What is it?

The ad campaign was created by DDB New York for the non profit organization Waterislife, which is a company focused on getting clean drinking water to third world nations. The video shows Haitian citizens reading Twitter posts with the hashtag “#FirstWorldProblems.  Towards the end of the video the phrase “#FirstWorldProblems Are Not Problems,” appears on the screen. Throughout the video we see disenfranchised people standing in front of inadequate housing and saying things such as, “I hate it when I tell them no pickles and they still give me pickles”. The video does an extremely effective job at pointing out poverty issues of the third world while highlighting the absurdity of first world citizens and their lifestyles.

Backlash

There are those viewers who feel insulted claiming that that the marketing agency is insulting it’s target group of first world citizens who posted such tweets out of humour. DDB responded in one of their recent statements claiming they want to “eliminate the #FirstWorldProblems hashtag on Twitter,” as it “showcases concerns that seem important to those living in wealthy, industrialized countries, yet are, fact, trivial compared to the issues faced by those struggling to survive in many parts of the world.”

Takeaway

All things considered, this ingenious video is a piece of effective marketing communication. Any and all individuals associated with the marketing realm will most likely appreciate this unique marketing tactic.

After hearing abou the 1 billion users, I decided to do some research into this market for myself. I found some of the stats in Cotton Delo’s recent article to be amazing, as I previously didn’t really know how to quantify Facebook’s success besides the recent IPO-which later turned out be somewhat of a spectacle. Let’s briefly recall what transpired in the past few months. Facebook goes public at an exaggerated listing price of $38 per share and then began to go downhill from there reaching lows of roughly $17 in early September.  The stock hasn’t rebounded quite yet but things are looking up, let me explain.

It is apparent that the social media giant has saturated large portions of North American and European markets. For examples in the US 61% of the 65-and-older population visited Facebook in August, while 87% of the 18-to-24 set did, according to ComScore. It’s really hard to get better than that.

The markets which will be undoubtedly targeted next by Facebook will be Japan and South Korea, as there is still large amounts of growth expected to occur in the social media realm in these nations. Japan for example only has 27.6% penetration and South Korea has about the same.  Additionally the issue of China is always of debate; just imagine the thousands of millions of our Chinese counterparts using Facebook if the Chinese government one day breaks the ‘great firewall of China’. In Russia however, Facebook is not facing the government but stiff competitors such as VKontakte and Odnoklassniki who have 10x the users facebook does. Below is a mini chart which explains the situation in a nutshell!

I personally feel Facebook will not stop in its quest to reach every corner of the plant, as demonstrated in part in their first ad released last week.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7SjvLceXgU