Behind the Buzz - digital and interactive advertising and marketing

Digitivity and Social Networking

by Rachel on September 20th, 2007

A panel discussion on Social Networks and Branding

Beyond Friending and Pokes: What Social Media Means for Brands
Tom Arrix, VP of Sales, Facebook
Joshua Dern, VP of Social Media Strategy and Operations, MTV
Joshua Schachter, Founder, del.icio.us
Troy Young, Chief Marketing Officer, VideoEgg
Moderator: Brian Morrissey, Digital Editor, Adweek

• BM: growth has been huge. Flickr had 4k photos in last minutes, Facebook has 4200 apps created on platform in last 2 months, MySpace has 200milion profiles, In Brazil, you do not exist if you are not on Orkut. They just facilitate what humans do - connect and story telling
• MTV will be having around 300 sites by end of year; just announced Flux, a social networking platform.
• BM: give us an overview? What is the biggest shift in communicating?
• JS: the notion of having mass media is disintegrating, as people clump into groups, channels; people talk directly to each other - affinity groups. Different selections, by interests and desires rather than anothers choice.
• TY: a lot of things that are new and somethings that are not. still a craving for mass cultural experiences, will see a continuation of this. Never quite seen the integration of entertainment, communication and self expression - all coming together now. We need to get our heads around this; content has always been a carrier for ads and the form is changing. Shorter, different recommendations. There is a return to social media consumption before TV isolated us. It’s a de-centralised mode, still gather together but across network. Big implications for targeting and delivery.
• JD: the key is to stay relevant in the dialog; you need to speak in language and use tools they use. A shift from top-down to a framework, allow users to interact and have more control over their own experiences. We believe in fragmentation, we believe that the same concept will continue to apply in online world, with a virtual niche strategy. people are aggregated around affinities. There are cross over around your groups, but not always. And people are passionate about brands and will talk about them
• JS: passion is a key part. you do not need a huge platform and infrastructure to trigger this. it’s inexpensive to implement the systems and easy to find them through search; so people connect over the smallest units of affinities. Couch crashing have about 150k users. He’s making serious money doing it. The thing that wins is the passion, from inventors and users.
• TA: look at the huge changes. the behavioural changes have been huge over the last few years. Look at the time spent on the web; the SN is a new medium; the amount of time, effectiveness of info sharing, the quality of info shared all huge.
• JD: not really new behaviour, but it is enhanced; they have changed the norms - diaries used to be private, now it is open. It empowers youth is a new way, they believe they can achieve success, they know they are the stars, so aspirations have changed as well.
• BM: What does that mean for authoritative sources?
• JS: consumption is driven by peers of consumer, search lets things move around and find audience. content can be separate from brand. It is easy for people to become tastemakers. What replaces ‘brand’ is the person generating or choosing content. A personal brand is developing - people need to be a little careful with their personal brand. What you do now is part of your transaction history and will follow you around.
• TY: fragmentation means that people need navigators more than other - and people become wayfinders. The people who do this become from strange places.
• JD: MTV is still an authority. It becomes even more important to have sources of authority. But there will a lot more. there is a lot of equity in brands like MTV - teens want to be on MTV and we look at enabling this. Look at participation. When MTV started, it was odd for that to be a source - it was rebellious - now it’s older. It’s about building the relationships, building the trust identities.
• TA: the sources are blended. Brands are handed off to fans - trusted referrals. Blending of brand and individual is what we are seeing.
• TY: Media becomes more about rules, filters and ways of constructing community. The way things are surfaced- the rules that guide the community become important. You create mechanisms for people to interact and that guides selections What is acceptable and not.
• JD: Colbert can get on air and tell someone to do something online and they do. You have to find ways to have dialogue with users.
• JS; one issue is people creating content that cannot be pointed to…stuck in large media piece. Only the suggest wants to get forwarded.
• BM: are we getting SN fatigue?
• JS: they are replacements to mail. To other comms services. We will see connecting and portability, There’s not that much difference btw MySpace and Outlook.
• TA: not with youth - they will keep trying new things. Generation gap is now around things like SNs, not music..it’s a way of differentiating.
• JS: Emails is for talking to teachers and their parents - it’s IM and SNs. Moving to new networks is not a problem. Choices in terms of engineering affects how people have used it.
• TY; without a universal adapter, you have many things working - vertical communities, vast networks like Facebook, small verticals will last. Interoperability needs the network effect.
• TA: the options is healthy - new stuff gives choices. What facebook is today will change dramatically overtime.
• BM: what’s over or under-hyped?
• TY: open app environments are incredibly important, it allows us to add functionality from the social graph into places. Extending open apps to a broad set of developers, is a huge step forward in the web and how advertising works. Over in SV, under in other places.
• JD: over and under - is Twitter. generating that much buzz that quickly is under appreciated but itself is over-hyped.
• TA; use of tech in general is under-hyped. Open platforms will change everything.

Q: can social media play a role in political action?

• JS: aggregations of people gives the opportunities. Exchanging of info is key. Eg GetSatisfaction, coupon sharing. People bring info together and act on it without overview. People are only just starting to realise the power. Candidates are building their own systems.
• TA: last midterms were huge, it’s getting larger. If you have the broadcast options and the network to get the feedback, mine the information, change message points and take action, Not polls - these are passionate people voicing their opinion. Seeing in UK, Canada, will continue to be part of it.
• JD: people can feel closer to the ‘brand’, have a direct dialogue. We find that people do not know how to find out how to get active and SM can be one of the best tools to get people involved. We announce today a new thing (live this PM) to get people closer to the issues, to learn how to find things out. Working with MySpace on TownHall meetings with candidates. People feel closer to the process and that their voices matter.
• TY: more substantive, more important than making a new stump speech.
• JD: everything becomes more visible and candidates are far more accountable - stuff moves out of the hands of the media to the constituents.
• TY: everything is on the web and people find it.
• BM: now things live forever, will people change?
• JS: people will stop being embarrassed. And they will learn to take much better control of their identities.

Q: How do you measure success and define engagement?

• JS: build tools of engagement that people can engage with - forums for conversations,. How many reviews on Amazon, how many people are talking about it. A big challenge..and even more of a problem if no one is talking at all
• TA: very very difficult. It’s involvement. Has to be a strategy. Have to figure out what is your success. It can vary. Is it discussions, is it promotions, is it handraisers. Frame it and then build the tools to do and manage. Many partners overlook at the beginning.
• JD: it’s feeling, it’s sentiment, click is not just the only thing. If you are disingenuous means failure, it has to be real. Benefits always outweigh what you think…openness means being embraced.
• TY: engagement - time spent, quality of interaction,. But it is a composite measure of what is going on. Hard to create standards as a series of different interactions. A series of stimulus and response, once you define standards you can compare. A challenge around how banners are used - the a balance has shifted so that the product becomes key in market. When banner ads do not work, you get more inventory - drives blindness.
• TA: you have to do the research, do not jump into a network without understanding it. Have the strategy first.
• BM: is advertising less important in SM world?
• JD: it’s harder to communicate, not ness less important. There are so many different ways, little standards. You have to find the right touchpoints, what is the right time and place to touch somewhere. Still have to do the mass stuff, but lots of other things to think about it. Find the simple message that is clean and clear and find the right touchpoints people will respond and it will resonate, do not offend, do it at right time, people prefer that.
• JS: there is an immune system toward advertising. you need to understand it. Sell things that people want! Key - if not then move along.
• JD: great creative and then have to understand how this fits into the online world. Figure out the touchpoints.
• BM: so what does this mean for a brand that is not a passion brand
• TY: it will be difficult Low involvement categories will stay interruptive. It needs to be helpful or entertaining. There’s little in between.
• BM: the Fb platform provides a opps for utilities?
• TA: we are encouraging brands to crawl before they can walk. To put your brand in this environment, you have to do it like. A fab app, that can be socialised and relevant. Can it be a real utility and not just and ad. We encourage a wait and see, let’s see the first 6 months. You can create your own ecosystem in our environment -but don’t take focus on connecting with consumers to build an app.
• TY: It’s the same issue as sites - how do you get people tp it. you need to market.
• JS: many apps are around being viral instead of being useful. Product is marketing. My marketing guy had to understand the product, understand features etc. Engineering is marketing. Marketing a product without the feedback is wrong - have to change things.
• TA: Referrals are powerful. iLike - referrals, book referrals etc, All powerful utilities.
• JD; brand has tendency to be overprotective, but that does not work well in this environment. you have to cede control, don’t even try to control. You are trying to craft an experience. How they react to it is out of your hands. If we are smart we enhance and foster what happens. If we are dumb we try and fix things.
• JS: people are interested in one good story than aggregates - my friend recommends a book rather than 75 great reviews on amazon (recent research). figuring out how the stories happens is paramount. How to share.
• BM: walmart were not that successful on facebook?
• TA: some brands should not have a group because of that concern. you have to put the brand in an environment and your advocates will win the day/ have the right gameplan, know the positives and negs, have the strategy.
• JD: critics will appreciate that you have allowed them to criticise and brand recognition will grow. Openness is good.
• JD: they may not like it. you have to be prepared to accept that, to hear the bad stories as well.

Q: how can social media affect context - absorb media and you can take time to reflect. Speed fights against that.

• JD: youth understand media at a different speed. Don;t think your premise is sound. Kids are probably doing the same kind of reflections. They don’t read op-eds, they read blogs. Sources are changing. They want people to talk to them in the way they they talk. They find their own trusted sources. Tech is enabling reflection more.

Q: We are scratching the surface of the SM. MTV have TVland - boomer etc; what about this space. SM with older

• JD: TVland.com will be part of SNetworks, and will have the tools. SN are aging up more and more. Cross blending going on. Diff things are interesting. Similar tools, but grouping in different ways. Eg photo sharing. Not too different, but talk to them in a different way. Not on SM sites to build an identity - they have one, it’s about connection and tools. Youth is very ID driven.
• TA: huge growth in 25+ Sites are quickly 18-49.

Q: how much is SN being used to meet new people

• TA: sites do that, yes, but we are about connecting with RL friends online - an extension of online. Bringing real people to the site. There are environments about people you do not know.
• JD: different levels. MySpace is about marketing, identity, not about friendships. FB is about qualified relationships, as is Linked IN. Then there is affinity topics and you meet people with shared affinities. 3 different worlds.

Q: any thoughts for SM for companies? how to communicate with employees.

• TY: it’s a natural way to create knowledge exchange within a company. Creating enterprise connections to fb would be great. A huge opp to use SN infrastructure within an org. Top down KM rarely works, informal comms are the best ways.
• JD: Xobni was announced at TC40 the other day and very interesting. Creates social graphs around your emails. lots of different tools to help you org data.
• JS: software around KM in general is terrible. there are neat things, Yahoo has great tools to find expertise in the orgs, a previous employee has an alumni list to track people and share knowledge. We have done very little to date, CRM is early, there are so many opps there. It’s difficult to sell KM as rarely anyone internally in charge it, little ROI so also diff to sell.

Q: are AOL. Yahoo/ google, doing SN?

• JD: they are already
• TA: youtube is a beast, a strong asset

Q: where are agencies using them; when do you get into the process. SM is a continuum, not campaign based.

• TA: we are getting going, we try and say the earlier the better. Have to be there at start of planning. Shape goals, set goals, set up expectations.
• JD: we have recently created a new group to help agencies come up with cross media campaigns, we are having a few big announcements coming up soon. we re trying to tool ourselves to assist you.

• BM: so what is the one big advice?
• TA: get rid of internal silos. Have cross-team comms. Digital is the tip of the spear - it’s the connective tissue. everyone has to work together.
• JD: accept there is a transition. Understand it. spend time in it. Realise it is different. There is no distinctions. Change the way you execute your creative.
• JS: learn how to learn faster - do things and face the consequences and change it. Iterate faster. Learn faster. Listen and understand.
• TY: use the tools. do small things to change things. enhance the dialogue. Move half of TV budget to new media. a permanent beta mindset
• TA; join a social network!.

Tags: delicious, mtv, facebook, videoegg, social+networks

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