Brittany Smith's Blog

A recent article in the Globe and Mail released that, as of Wednesday March 9th, Telus customers can now access Facebook through their Tv’s and they wont miss a second of their favorite shows. A Telus internal article states that it is

Offered as part of the Optik TV subscription, the Facebook application on Optik TV uses the standard remote control to allow you to view status updates, activities and wall posts, find a friend, and write messages on friends’ walls. The application also offers the ability to view photo albums in slideshow mode, creating a high-impact full screen presentation view of photos right on the TV.

An additional feature that will be offered exculsively with Telus TV is the ability to screenshot what you are watching and post it on your wall, named “share your view”. The new Telus commerical is the first one to feature a celebrity, which appropriately is Nimoy the actor who plays Spock from Star Trek.  This represents a “new frontier” for Telus. 

We are now in a multiscreen era with a socially charged audience and this new technological advancement has many implications for marketers. For example, an article on Advertising Age  states,

It’s here that we see the future of branded entertainment come into vision. Breaking from the age-old tradition of 30-second TV spots, brands now have the opportunity to create socially driven TV campaigns that give viewers a reason and reward for paying attention to advertising on TV.

This new partnership of traditional television and social media will allow marketers to further be able to target their customers.  They will be able to address them with advertisments specific to their individual interests and characteristics.

Just think: algorithmic advertising based on each viewer’s preferences. Less interruption and more integration.

It was recently annouced in the Globe and Mail that Youtube and American Universities are joining forces to essentially produce professional creators of user generated content.

Youtube viral videos are increasingly becoming a main media platform for marketing campaigns.  Therefore, marketers need to understand how to create a video that will become viral or create campaigns that encourage customer segments such as “Creators” and “Evangelists” to compose user generated viral video content.  An eMarketer survey states that 17% companies plan to use viral video (e.g., Youtube) as a media platform in their marketing strategies, especially in their efforts to each multicultural customers.

YouTube’s dynamic role in Universities is not surprising, Universities such as Berkley have been offering full University lectures on the video sharing website since around 2007.   However, now Youtube and select US Universities are launching a new media course focusing mainly on Youtube for aspiring digital filmmakers.

YouTube Creator Institute with the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts and Columbia College Chicago. It says the schools will offer on-campus and online educational courses to its users so they can “hone their digital media skills and accelerate their YouTube careers.”

This course will also offer many benefits for aspiring marketers since YouTube is becoming a popular platform for advertising.  Recognizing this fact, the course work will not only include cinematography it will additionally cover social media strategy.

Facebook has many different capabilities and applications but everyone was surprised today when Warner Bros. Digital Distribution (WBDD) announced how they are harnessing this powerful social medium.

Warner Bros. will now be offering movies to rent or purchase online through their Facebook movie page

WB’s movie pages use a very similar model to popular movie renters such as Pay Per View and iTunes, where each rental is available for 48 hours after initial purchase.  You can also pause, rewind, and resume playing when you log back onto Facebook.  However, Facebook offers one important advantage over other movie rental providers; you are still enabled to interact with your social network during the movie viewing experience. The press release states that:

“Consumers will also have full Facebook functionality including the ability to post comments on the movie, interact with friends and update their status. Consumers simply click on the “rent” icon to apply their Facebook Credits, and within seconds they will begin enjoying the film.”

An additional exciting Facebook capability is how consumers pay for the movie rental transaction.  They can either use US dollars or even “Facebook Credits”. WB currently launched this program with the popular move THE DARK KNIGHT, for the price of 3 US dollars or 30 Facebook Credits. Facebook now has it’s own currency that consumers can easily monetized into US dollars.

This further proves that social media is the future of marketing and all brands should work on innovative methods to harness its capabilities.

We are all aware that the baby boomers are now becoming senior citizens that will dominate the current market place. EMarketer forecasts that:

“By 2030, the senior population, which eMarketer defines as all US consumers ages 65 and older, will reach an estimated total of 72 million, nearly 20% of the projected total population.”

The senior demographic consists of primarily white (80%) women (57%), although this is expected to further diversify in the future.  Making this demographic group easy for marketers to target due to its similar and specific nature. Their current online usage consists of mostly newspaper and email reading but they are beginning to utilize the web for different activities such as social media.

Although they are not the largest demographic on social networking sites, they are the one that is growing the fastest.  They have already sextupled from 4.7% to 28% in 2 years and eMarketer forecasts that they will amplify to 36% in the next 2 years.

Seniors motivations for using social networking sites are very different than Facebook’s typical users.  They are mainly prompted by the connection and communication to their families that they receive through this social medium.  For example my grandparents had moved back to Ontario and they were worried that we would fall out of touch. Thus to stay connected and to monitor what I have been up to they both created a Facebook account.

“For brand marketers looking to appeal to internet-savvy, doting parents and grandparents, Facebook could be an important venue to sell gifts for life-stage events like birthdays, graduations, weddings and new grandchildren.”

Therefore seniors should be an essential part of every companies online target market.

Although this doesn’t seem like ground breaking research findings, there are some important implications for marketers.

Teenage girls seem to always be on a social shopping mission, and once being a teenage girl myself I can confirm this assumption.  Shopping is a leisure social activity that girls participate in both online and offline.  Although, most of their purchases may not be made online they are using online social mediums such as Facebook and Twitter to influence their purchasing decisions in the traditional brick-and-mortar store.

For example my sister was recently shopping for her highschool prom dress, which is a significant purchase for any teenage girl.  She took pictures on her mobile phone of herself in the different dresses that she was considering.  She then immediately uploaded the pictures to Facebook to solicit feedback from friends and family.  Some of the different retailers did not like that she was taking pictures on her phone, and although she loved some of the dresses she could not seem to commit to any of the ones in those particular stores.  The retailers prohibited her from attaining her friends’ approval on this important purchase.

Marian Slazman summarizes this point well in an interview with eMarketer,

“[girls are] incredibly social beings and very involved with their friends’ lives. These intimate relationships have enormous influence over decision-making in all aspects of girls’ lives—especially what they spend their money on.”

This segment represents a huge opportunity for marketers due to their sheer number, spending power, and their heavy and hyper connected internet and social media usage.  By possibly implementing a mobile application for certain retail stores to allow teenage girls the ability to easily and efficiently share their finds, steals, and considerations with their peers will attract new customers turned on by the viral buzz that teenage girls created themselves.

This year it cost approximately $3 Million dollars for a 30 second spot during the Super Bowl.  This figure is of course excluding costs and fees for actors, equipment, ad agencies, directors, crew and other personnel, according to Wikipedia.  That is plenty of money for companies to spend, especially new companies like Groupon, on advertisements that all seem to have failed to score a touchdown.

According to Ian Schafer in the article “The Super Bowl of Social Media? Maybe Next Year“,

Nearly two-thirds of 18-34 year-olds planning to watch the Super Bowl have smartphones and intended to use them while watching the game.

There was not one spot that actually asked us to do anything. Or suggested that we do something. These ads could have all run before the internet was even invented. Nothing acknowledged that we had any other connections at our disposal other than the one between us and our televisions.

Not only were most of the advertisements complicated and distasteful, like this one, they missed the opportunity to form meaningful connections and dialogues with millions of viewers by integrating social media into their commercials. I am confident that large proportion of the segment mentioned above was sending emails, text messages, and even tweets during the game about the advertisements. Therefore, all the advertisements seem disconnected by ignoring the most popular and fastest growing advertising medium.

Another way to interact with consumers online

Wikipedia and Google are two of the most popular information search engines.  They are add value by allowing people the ability to quickly and efficiently (“wiki” is Hawaiian for “fast) access relevant information.  But what if a text search engine such as Wikipedia and a video search engine such as YouTube were to procreate? You would get Qwiki, a revolutionary rich media experience of facts, pictures, and videos.  Qwiki is new technology that takes normal static information and presents it in an entertaining and interactive way.  It is a search engine that consists of dynamic presentations and has eliminated the need to search through pages of blue links. In the article, “Qwiki introduces multimedia storytelling” Amber Macarthar writes about her experience with Qwiki:

Not only can I take this visual tour of Charlottetown, as a registered user I can improve this Qwiki by recommending a photo or a YouTube video, so there’s a great crowd-sourcing element to the service. I can even suggest the reader’s voice be slowed down or sped up. And like any good multimedia site in 2011, I can share these entries on Facebook and Twitter

Qwiki technology even has Google Maps capabilities when a place query is made. Furthermore, it also incorporates social media that allows users to merge all their social data from Facebook and Twitter etc., onto the site. This will give users a default personal profile that can interact with them individually, giving this new technology the benefits of the 2 “i”s: individualization and interactivity.

However the real promise of a platform like Qwiki is in what it might do beyond Wikipedia. Every content creator, be they a media organization like the Globe or a food blogger – has a database of previously published information just sitting there. The whole principle of cobbling together text, pictures and video into consumable packages could change thanks to an idea like Qwiki.

Not only will this be useful for students and education professionals, it can also be used to market a company or product such as the iPad.  Most companies have information and rating on the web, which will all be aggregated and presented in a Qwiki.  Companies can improve on their Qwiki simply by clicking the button “improve this Qwiki” (once they have registered).  It could be used as a fast and easy way to keep customers informed and up to date with company information.  I predict that there will soon be a place on Qwiki where companies can advertise by sharing their recent commercials, pictures, and news. Qwiki is a new media platform for companies to dynamically communicate and interact with customers online.

Tablet advertising is building momentum in 2011, as major OS developers such as Apple, Google, and RIM are adapting their mobile advertising campaigns into interactive and engaging tablet ads. The tablets large and sharp screen, and many interactive capabilities offer marketers many opportunities that are not obtainable in standard static ads. The interactivity potential of the tablet can translate into a more active consumer base, and possibly even consumer evangelism for companies that attempt to harness its capabilities.

One of the main advantages associated with Tablet advertising is it’s specified and targeted consumer market.  The main users are males who are in a high-income bracket and are from 18 to 34 years old. This markets psychographics show that they have increased purchase intent when they are responding to an advertisement. In the report, Tablets: New Screens For Marketers, Paul Verna states that,

iPad users were more likely than users of iPhones and other connected devices to click on ads of various types, including video, text, multimedia and interactive. iPad users were also more likely than their counterparts to enjoy ads on connected devices, but all users shared a preference for ads that did not take them outside the application when they clicked through

Although, tablet marketing is not very popular yet, the Interactive Advertising Bureau recently launched an initiative to stimulate advertising on tablets.  It is obvious that consumers want an experience and are seeking more than a stagnant advertisement. The new tablet technologies allow advertisers to satisfy this need and emphasize the significance of possessing a unique, entertaining, and interactive ad, which will be crucial to a company’s tablet marketing success.

This video exemplifies the new Tablet advertising that is possible in digital magazines

It has become more and more apparent that there is no age limit to joining social networking sites such as Facebook.  Recent data shows that the fastest growing user segment on Facebook is women aged 55-65 years old. Furthermore, according to the article “Parents of Young Children Prime for Social Marketing”

More than 60% of adults with kids of any age living at home used Facebook, Twitter or Myspace, vs. 51.3% of all adults, and the parents of young children were especially avid users.

This data has huge implications for marketers who are considering using social media as a media platform for advertising.  It is trite and obvious that the consumers life stage (not demographics) influence their presence on these popular networking sites.  This growing trend of young parents, with children under 6, being the most active signifies that Facebook is not just for teenagers anymore. Therefore, marketers should recognize this new statistic when designing their online campaigns for this specific target market.  The segment of young parents is potentially very profitable since

They represent a group more likely than average to make many big-ticket, family-oriented purchases, such as cars, video cameras, PCs, large appliances or a new home

Social networking sites are a great opportunity for marketers who are trying to target consumers in this specific life stage.

Advertisers use search engines as a marketing medium with the main goal of increasing awareness and to also “Get Found”. I think that the best way to ensure that searchers or potential customers find your specific website is to:

(1) Be knowledgable about their behaviour and intent

Being a seasoned web surfer and search engine user myself, I know that I want to land on a web page that answers all my questions and supplies me with all the information I need quickly. According to the December.14, 2006 article “Dan Russell: How Do People Use Search Engines” this is true for most search engine users

Russell mentioned how quickly people scanned, and that they often refined their query within 2-3 seconds of their initial result. He emphasized the importance of making sure your titles are written well so that your site won’t be overlooked in the 2-3 seconds before the user decides the results are not applicable

This implies that Marketers should make sure that they understand what there keywords and titles imply about the corresponding website.  A website could be either informational, transactional, or navigational. However, over approximately 50% of queries are informational based so marketers that are trying to optimize their position need to ensure that they have informational type keywords.  They also must have the corresponding information to meet with the searchers expectations, so that they can achieve their goal of “Getting Found”.

(2) Understand that Google is not the only way customers search for and find websites

The way customers obtain information is rapidly changing due to the increasing popularity of social media.  Searching for a website or information used to consist of entering a search engine page such as Google or Yahoo, then finding an applicable site to gather the needed information.

Today, consumers increasingly rely on social media as a source for finding information online. This means marketers must adapt their search marketing strategies in order to be found. We recommend using social content to inform and drive search results, a process that you can start by planning search and social together and seeking internal staff and partners with research, technology, and social expertise. See the November 23, 2010, “How to Integrate Search With Social Media”

In 2004, 83% of consumers said they used search engine results to find Web sites; in 2010 that number decreased to 61%. Additionally, 16% of consumers surveyed said they used a social networking site to find Web sites in 2010. See the August 11, 2010, “The Future of Search Marketing”

Today searching isn’t just about search engines such as Google and Yahoo, as seen from the data above.  Marketers need to acknowledge that potential customers are also using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to find the information that they need to satisfy their questions and queries.

To be successful at “Getting Found”, there should be a focus on understanding what searchers are looking for on search engines so that businesses can make sure that they have the most optimal titles and keywords. However, businesses should focus on integrating social media into their SEO plans since sites such as Facebook are beginning to look like more and more like the new wave of search engines.