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.