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BAMF MKTG

“Social Media | Digital | Technology | Advertising | Mobile”

Category Archives: Social Media

July 20, 2011 Name Change

Oye.

Upon my graduation, I felt it necessary to change the name from “The Student’s Perspective,” to BAMF MKTG. Not only is it politically correct, but its BAMF awesome.

Three reasons why this blog will be better:

1. Bolder

2. More posts

3. More relevant

I am still developing the page and seeing that I lost a lot of CSS skills, I will have to re-teach myself. In the mean time, I will be raising issues, posting questions, and starting conversations. Have a topic to discuss? Share it. Nothing is more rewarding than starting conversations with like-minded strangers with mutual respect for marketing.

February 12, 2011 Mobile Applications: A Love Story

This has been quite some time since my last post, so I excuse my delay. I have been transitioning from the European mindset to an American one which proves to be difficult since I have become accustomed to becoming more relaxed (lazy) with life. Now I am trying to create that “competitive position” again inside the chatersphere.

Let’s brief you on the topic. As my last semester as an undergrad, I chose to create an independent study. I wanted to understand more about mobile applications; specifically, what motivates users to use them more. This will become a time consuming but very enlightening research study. To start out, I focused on speaking with the experts: ad professionals. Liz Giel, a digital strategist from Fallon recommended MobileMarketer.com as a good resource to check out. Following the 20+ articles I found I moved on to eMarketer.com and numerous others. I felt I had a pretty good direction.

It seems to me through a general enquiry of the topic that mobile applications are not yet fully perceived as a cost effective channel to reach target audiences, with a few exceptions. I have found from both agency professionals and articles agree that mobile websites tend to be more effective to reach audiences since anyone with a mobile browser can interact with it.

There is a trade off though: Apps get more face time than mobile websites.

Now I need to revise my direction. Maybe, how to reach a larger audience with mobile apps? Who knows, they are all good questions and I will go where the research guides me.

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January 2, 2011 Recap: RockMelt Web Browser

It has been over a month since my initial review of the RockMelt browser and promised a recap, so here it is:

To be honest, a week after my first impressions, I ditched it. Simply because I felt like I was using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. It was laggy (for me at least), clouted and distracting. I did have a lot of Facebook activity and RSS feeds from 10 different websites which would update on a constant basis. So for the student’s perspective, the consequences were noticeable.

As I would do research for course papers, I would constantly get distracted with updates. Granted it is up to the individual to have self control, but it was if it was taunting me. As I would bore myself with the hours of monotonous research, I had the desire to constantly check on blogs and the latest tech and social media news. However I notice one important factor that determined my frequency of procrastination: “Out of sight, out of mind.” To address this, I simply saw myself using Google Chrome.

However, if I am working on social media, RockMelt brought the convenience of organizing updates, grabbing them instantly and made work easier.

If you are also a Facebook junkie, you like to keep the Facebook Page open. However, if you are chatting via the web page, it will become annoying when you get two notifications of a chat message and a separate window for the chat log.

For the future instalments of RockMelt versions: I would like to make a few recommendations:

  • A “hide all” button to minimize all distractions
  • Integration to other services
  • Optimization of bandwidth
  • Intelligent suggestions – Understand the web content and suggest to the user if they want to share pictures/text/videos

November 30, 2010 RockMelt Browser: First Impressions

RockMelt was introduced to me through word of mouth from a colleague at my agency. The message was simply put that I should check it out and from the link I was given, it seemed worth doing, after all it is designed for social media, sharing and keeping up with the gazillion updates from RSS feeds.

It is an amazing concept. Molding multiple elements into one browser. But first thing is first: What is it?

RockMelt is essentially a beefed up Google Chrome with nice bells and whistles. It supports awesome functions like drag and drop sharing to Facebook friends which are on your left-side bar, making it easier to share with the people you care about. One the right-side bar, there are the sites that you subscribe to and show how many updates are unread and give you a pop up notification for each notification. If you prefer to not get pop ups notification for each subscription, you can easily change it. Take a look at the differences:

I want to bring up a few things that I noticed at first about RockMelt, I want to mention that I have only had this for a couple of days so it would be fair to do a follow up post later on.

Sharing:

Pro: One can easily drag and drop text, links, photos on Facebook friends. You can also share pages via Facebook and Twitter.

Con: Limited to Facebook and Twitter sharing.

Recommendations: Allow the user to pick and choose which networks to share to (Digg, Stumble Upon, WordPress, email etc…)

Updates:

Pro: Organized and simple individual feeds from multiple sites that you subscribe to such as Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Websites. Also, if you are viewing a page that has an available RSS feed to subscribe to, it will notify you and you can quickly add it to your right-side bar.

Con: None so far. However, I should note that the user should experiment to get a feel for how you are updated, updates can be come very cluttered.

Recommendations: Maybe allow for groups or lists

Functionality:

Pro: I use Google Chrome as my main browser so it was an easy switch. It is easy to share and effortless to customize who I wanted on my Facebook bar (left-side bar) and what subscriptions I wanted (right-side bar).

Con: I have noticed there are a few minor bugs with the browser. I have had a few lock-ups but not sure if it was the browser’s fault or me over-experimenting with the functionality. Again, minor and not constant. Many new things are not flawless, a few minor bugs are acceptable. They will probably be fixed soon.

Recommendations: New features to merge with tools to adapt to the constant change of the web, BUT, give the user the ability to turn on/off features or customize which ones to use.

Practicality:

Pro: If you are a blogger, social media guru, journalist, or any profession in communication, this is very useful.

Con: If you are a student, this is very distracting, but you should have the maturity to avoid the distractions or turn them off if you are trying to type a 10,000 word thesis…

Recommendations: A practical browser is always a simple one. I recommended above with new features, but make sure they don’t clout the browser, unless you want to change your position on the “browser”.

Summary

RockMelt is in a good direction. With the development of the Semantic web, RockMelt saw this great opportunity and approached it beautifully. The next steps will be to keep up with the developments in technology. I have not looked at other browsers such as Flock or Fizzik, so I can not say which is better. What I can tell you is, the one that sets trend changes will be the best. Much like Clay Shirky said about “when we change the way we communicate, we change society”, if we change the way we surf the web, we change how we interact.

Take a look at RockMelt’s video demonstration

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October 11, 2010 Old Spice: Great Ad Campaign, Messy ROI

I know all of you have watched and helped Old Spice become viral. Over the past year, they have transformed a once troubled brand personality into web Dynamite. Boom!

Sure, they have brand awareness, social media implementation (genius use of Twitter and Youtube) and conversation, tons of conversation. But before I go through the low-down of what Old Spice created, watch a few parodies, then come back.

Sesame Street Parody

Scholar Grades Parody

I hope you enjoyed them! Let’s talk some sense though. If you are following social media, love social media, in the social media industry, then you know very damn well that is it difficult to measure your ROI on a social media campaign. Sounds easy to look at campaign budget, compare sales figure spreads, then formulate. No. You cannot account for conversation and other variables. In some cases you can, with new software revolutions in the industry. Maybe you can over a long term approach, but According to an Adweek blog, Ad Freak, published August 4th, just 6 months after the Red Spice campaign, stated some numbers gathered from the Wieden + Kennedy Agency, two I love and one makes me dumbfounded:

-Half the conversations came from women. (Great! The secondary target market responded!)
-The YouTube/Twitter social media response campaign was “the fastest-growing and most popular interactive campaign in history.” (Saw that coming when Old Spice Man responded to twitter questions.)

-Since the campaign launched, Old Spice Bodywash sales are up 27 percent; in the last three months up. 55 percent; and in the last month up 107 percent. (Quite a data confusion)

See, I looked at other people talking about the same mess. SymphonyIRI did some research on sales figures:

(Picture courtesy of Ad Age) Looks good for the overall but two commenter’s from Robert Paterson’s blog, also talking about Old Spice published July 27th suggests good insight:

Commenter 1: “According to PR Week sales of the product increased over 100% last month. A piece in Forbes.com uses the same SymphonyIRI study to show that sales were up 7.9% from the previous year.”

Commenter 2: “…people have got to STOP citing these SymphonyIRI numbers in reference to the Old Spice campaign. They measure the year ending June 13th, 2010, a full month BEFORE the viral/social aspect of the Old Spice campaign even started.”

Granted these results were made in July, the point stays the same. Digging some more, the media took the hook on the first results when actually the results were misleading. But something more interesting is that coupons also had a major effect on sales, Buy-one-get-one-free. In that same article from Evidence Soup, they provided a quote recorded by Ad Age on the Procter and Gamble spokesperson, Mike Norton:

“How much of Old Spice’s recent gains… come from Mr. Mustafa’s ads and how much from the coupons? It’s impossible to know.”

So now I wait for official results, if there are any, on the success of the campaign. Either way I loved the campaign, I subjectively believe that the campaign had positive ROI in addition to the mass conversation and growing viral videos. Let this be a learning experience.

I also came across Heidi Cohen’s blog where she lists out 31 well needed questions to ask about the Old Spice Campaign, number five being:

“5. Brand status. Did the campaign transform the brand making it an icon? Did the brand’s reach become part of the culture?”

Yes, and yes.

Cheers from London.

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July 26, 2010 The New Age of the Digital Office

of·fice  -noun: a room, set of rooms, or building where the business of a commercial or industrial organization or of a professional person is conducted: the main office of an insurance company; a doctor’s office.

I have been noticing that some companies have been dissolving the the physical office and creating a digital one. Coffee shops, restaurants, home offices are becoming workplace offices, we are seeing a trend of distancing employees from the physical business office to mobile offices. What I want to investigate is, are we more or less productive from staying away a common meeting place to interact with co-workers. In my mind, I feel bringing people together is ultimately most productive, but what if the work was still accomplished from afar?

For instance: IBM, who is now 10,000 employees strong, worldwide. How do they ever communicate across the world and still become productive? The answer is Second Life. A virtual world that has limitless possibilities, you can do whatever you want, literally. IBM has begun to teach employees how to use the game and navigate around in order to meet virtually and cut travel costs down tremendously.

Watch a this video to watch just a quick snippet of a meeting on Second Life

However, I want you to watch chapter 7 of the Digital Nation, a PBS Series. Go here, and scroll to chapter 7. Or just watch the whole series to learn where this internet revolution is taking us.

Comments are awesome.

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June 7, 2010 OMG Agency

So let me tell you a little something about biggest BANG 4 UR BUCK. OMG Agency.

An advertising agency started by college students that focuses on social media. They work to integrate social media sites together in addition to building innovative and captivating websites. They are probably the first agency to focus completely on social media.

Chad Olsen, CEO of OMG Agency said, “we have interviewed other agencies in Minneapolis and asked them about social media and what they do with it. They responded with good luck.”

With OMG, they don’t price out their services like other agencies do. They hardly have any overhead and the price is mostly a labor cost for their work. Good value, amazing work!

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May 18, 2010 200 Minnesotans you should know!

I was reading up on the Fallon Blog and they had a post linking their CEO, Chris Foster to an article from Twincities Business Magazine titled, obviously: “200 Minnesotans you should know.”

Checking out their Linkedin page, I found an excerpt of their summary:

“Twenty seven years ago, five Minneapolis entrepreneurs met at a downtown diner and pooled their life savings to buy a single print advertisement that ran in two metro newspapers. On that day Fallon opened its doors, without a single client, under the headline, “A new advertising agency for companies that would rather outsmart the competition than outspend them.””

Fallon has created some pretty interesting ads and in December, they just scored Chrysler as their new client. CHA-CHING.

Check out their website, some of their advertisements are very appealing and many have done a perfect job of emotionally charging them.

This is the company you want to work for, best part is, they are close to home, well, for those of us who live in Minnesota.

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April 30, 2010 56 Social Media Sites

If you were asked how many social media sites you can name. How many could you list? I will name the ones I can:

Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, WordPress, Google Buzz, Digg, Del.icio.us, Linkedin, Youtube.

Well those are the ones I use at least. But I did find this article that listed 56 websites that a business should be engaged in. Many of these I have never heard of! It did list some of the obvious ones such as Myspace and Wikipedia but I feel some of it is a little outdated. I have a harsh biased behind Myspace unless it has to do with music. Many of the sites also list out niche networking sites to help connect professional and companies alike.

Some of these seem pretty awesome:

8. Squidoo: According to Squidoo, “everyone’s an expert on something. Share your knowledge!” Share your industry’s secrets by answering questions and designing a profile page to help other members.

But some of these don’t even exist:

15. Kirsty: A colourful website for articles, features and information on life, the universe and everything.

Repost this link around, I’m sure many people could find these sites useful!

Go to the article here and check out these sites.

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April 16, 2010 Social Media & Buzz Marketing

I attended a couple of conferences this week, the first one was the American Marketing Association International Conference in New Orleans, LA. The other was the Midwest Journalism Conference in Bloomington, MN.

Bill Blank from GMR was at the AMA conference to talk about buzz marketing. In a nutshell, GMR “Creates, executes brand engagements that captivate consumer attention to influence opinion, behavior or purchase.”

That is pretty much what marketing is, to get you to buy. But buzz is a little different. It is to take a business or product or whatever, and place it into an audience to get this audience to interact with what you place. A perfect example of this: a rumor.

“Oh my God, did you hear that Sally got so wasted last night?!”

“NO WAY”

“YA! I KNOW!”

When this conversation carries out mostly because people are curious and want to know what is going on, they ask questions and people talk. “Who is sally? What did she do? Why did she do it? When did she do it?” These questions are just like buzz marketing. It’s a catalyst to get people to know more, get involved, buy or whatever you what the audience to do.

It is not for everyone though: Bill Blank said that “half of the buzz marketing campaigns for 75% of fortune 1000 companies fail.”

Now this social media stuff.

After attending the MW Journalism Conference, I got a better grasp of its practicality.

One of the sessions was a social media session that explained how to drive viewers to your youtube videos. After the speakers were done, we had to shoot a video, upload it to youtube and tweet about it as fast as we could. The fastest was about 3.5 minutes. Then we had to continue to post videos with the #mwjournconf on twitter to drive viewers.

This only works if you have a lot of followers or use a good hash tag when people search for it. But linking Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, WordPress and other social media websites will really drive the audience to go somewhere.

The best way is to always start with Twitter. Post a few tweets about what you want people to do and offer them a place to get more info, whether it be a website or another social media place, but continue to get them to snowball the audience to create a “buzz”.

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