Today, February 29, 2012 Facebook launched the new Facebook Pages. Pages are mission control for your business on Facebook. The new Pages is consistent in both functionality and appearance with the rest of Facebook. It allows you to:

• Express your identity through features like cover photo and Page timeline
• Reach more people on the web and mobile
• Respond to people in a quick, more personal way

Launch schedule:

• Starting today, when you visit your Page, you will see a message at the top of your Page allowing you to preview your Page in the new design. Please note that when you turn this view on, your new Page design will only be visible to you and other admins. People who visit your Page will not be able to see your Page in the new design until you choose to publish your new design.
• For the next four weeks, you’ll be able to play around with the new design in a safe environment. You can add milestones, a cover photo, as well as other content. That content won’t go live to the public.
• NOTE: Posts that you make on your Page and changes you make to your profile picture will be visible to the public. However, starring posts, adding a cover photo, adding a milestone, or pinning a post won’t be visible unless you choose to publish your new Page design before March 30, 2012.
• On March 30, 2012 all Pages worldwide will be upgraded to the new layout and your new Page design will be visible to the public.

To get started:

• Read our Pages product guide here
• View example Pages here
• View the video learning module that walks you through the new features
• Read general FAQs

There have been two groundbreaking pieces of work that give insights into the consumer’s path to purchase: P&G’s FMOT, (The First Moment of Truth), and then revised with Google’s ZMOT (Zero Moment of Truth). In planning 2012 campaigns with an eye on opportunities to engage messaging with consumers, we have identified two incremental and important steps in the path. We also believe that understanding them can create even more engaging messaging and opportunities to connect.

FMOT (The First Moment of Truth)

In FMOT, there were two Moments of Truth: first at the shelf (impulse purchases and brand decisions made at the point of purchase), and second in the experience when the consumer is delighted with a product.

 Google’s ZMOT (Zero Moment of Truth)

ZMOT added the Zero Moment Of Truth or what we call the research stage: search, reviews and reaching out to your network before purchasing (prior to shelf).

The Moments of Truth (TMOT) 

In what we’ve dubbed The Moments of Truth (TMOT), we see two additional steps: in-store (opportunities while customers are actively in-store and shopping, (“showrooming” and “scan and scam”): along with the step of after marketing, rather than simply a happy or dissatisfied customer. Today we have an opportunity of turning negativity into positivity, while also starting an on-going relationship  (e-mail acquisition, Facebook, Twitter, etc).

Having a strategic and tactical media team to integrate elements from this consumer path, allows you to broaden your communication palette and create more opportunities for a sale. These elements will add ROI and justification to many social elements as well.

In Part 2 of our The Moments of Truth, we’ll take a deeper dive into 10 elements that can lead to a stimulus.

Chris Beck

Chief Vision Officer @ #26dottwo

chris [at] 26dottwo [dot] com

What were they thinking? It must have been a pretty “interesting” focus group that led them to this creative conclusion. In case you missed it.

 2.) Netflix (Qwikster): If you received the original e-mail about Netflix’s DVD-rental spin-off, you were probably left thinking, “This must be a joke!” Customer satisfaction, stock prices and brand equity are all in the tank. Really, QWIKSTER? And to top it off? Qwikster’s Twitter handle was already registered to someone with a profile picture of a weed-smoking Elmo puppet. Classic.

3.) HD Radio:

Our bet is that an HD Radio wasn’t on anyone’s Holiday gift list. Terrestrial radio has invested tens of millions of dollars in radio airtime to promote Digital (HD) Radio. Perhaps radio isn’t the best venue to promote this superior technology to consumers. Is it possible that a better, strategic solution would have been a video and social media campaign to create buzz, awareness and understanding of this new technology? Just sayin’.

4.) Ya-Bing! (Yahoo and Bing partnership): This is a case of when a bad idea gets worse. Although they are investing major sums in buying traffic, search results using the combo of Yahoo! and Bing are dismal compared to Google and Facebook targeting. The results versus effort were so poor that we cancelled a recent campaign and put the money back into Google and Facebook.

5.) Republican Party:

Faced with huge wins and an unpopular President and Congress, the Republican Party seems totally out of touch and unable to capitalize on the Nation’s sentiment, due to their move to the extreme right. Since winning control of the House, they are doing everything they can to upset even those in their own party. This is serving to bolster an unpopular President and set themselves up for 2012 losses. You read it hear first; Obama will get re-elected and they will lose several House seats.

6.) Groupon’s Super Bowl Commercial:

The Groupon spot in the Superbowl made the Go Daddy commercials seem almost palatable. The irony? A company based on social shares misses how easy it is to crowdsource feedback BEFORE you launch a concept.

Chris Beck

Chief Vision Officer @ #26dottwo

chris [at] 26dottwo [dot] com

Rather than looking at traditional, broad based demographic groups, such as “women 25-54,” consider focusing your media strategy on specific key consumer segments. You’ll get very different outcomes if you look at the media consumption of a “single, 24 year old female”, a “38 year old working mom,” or a “54 year old empty nester.” Although they all fall into the “female 25-54” demographic, you will want to connect with them in entirely different ways.

Have a Deep Dive Understanding of Each Media

Here are some key questions to ask yourself when trying to gain a deep understanding of media: How are people engaging with it? What is their time spent and frequency of use? What are the differences in web versus mobile or tablet? This deep dive just resulted in us doing the first campaign on Evite.com, where the messaging was segmented for the hosts and guests. We recognized entirely different opportunities for commercial engagement and, as simple as that sounds, it had never been done before

Take Risks

If you are studying your consumer segments with a focus on how they are consuming and engaging with the media, and understand the media being invested in, the “risk” will more often than not generate higher results than your previous “safer” strategies.

Taking a risk isn’t “dabbling”, which in itself often just proves that the new strategy and tactics “don’t work.” Invest enough to achieve high reach and frequencies with your targets and understand how optimize.

Thought Economy

Just because you have 60 seconds or 140 characters, doesn’t mean you need to use them. Shorter, more precisely targeted ads can generate much higher performance.

Consumer Attention is a New Success Metric

The more money you spend and the more mediums you purchase doesn’t necessarily translate into a better connection with your audience. A true focus on the 5^th P (people) will position your brand for both increased visibility and commercial engagement, which is the next benchmark for success. As long as your marketing strategy isn’t siloed, it will serve to open up new creative messaging options to better connect with your specific consumer segments.

Don’t Let Your Agency Partners Outsource Your Future

Your agency either embraces, studies and invests in the usage of digital, social and search…or they don’t. It’s a good time to evaluate whether any of these critical communication strategies and tactics are being outsourced to freelancers and “white labeled” by outside agencies. We believe your agency should own it!

Optimize, Optimize, Optimize!

It’s often the creative that you feel “so-so” about that actually generates a connection with your target. You don’t truly know until you try. Managing AdWords, social and digital campaigns give you amazing insights into what messaging is actually connecting and with whom. Consider multiple pieces of creative, even when using “traditional” media. Don’t forget that great creative becomes bad creative once it hits a frequency level of 5 to 9 times; this can happen with social in a matter of days or traditional in about a week.

Think Mobile

The first part of your mobile strategy should center around a truly mobile enabled website and e-commerce solution, optimized for smartphones. The function and design of your mobile enable website should be based on a real understanding of how consumers are using mobile

Don’t Just Buy It. Live It!

You can’t really understand the digital and social consumer if you aren’t living it. There’s a lot to be said for walking the walk, (or umm…typing the tweet). If you are an actual Pandora user (versus someone who simply learns about its functionality), you understand the different environment of Pandora web versus mobile. Use your smartphone for research and commerce; it will give you a hands-on approach to best practice.

Have a Happy, Successful New Year! If you’re looking for an agency that truly embraces these resolutions, connect with us.

Chris Beck

Chief Vision Officer @ #26dottwo

chris [at] 26dottwo [dot] com

Marketing strategists invest a great amount of time debating the percentages of media to allocate in new media versus traditional media. However, to the consumer there isn’t a distinction between “old” and “new” media; it’s all just media to them.  While we will always be responsible for delivering “top down” messaging and ROI, we can do this with respect to learnings gained from the social and digital consumer.

The next generation of strategy is all about meeting consumers in the middle, in a mash-up of “bottom up” and “top down” messaging. The old adage of, “We have two ears and one mouth,” is apropos to marketing today. Listen twice as much as you speak. Understanding what your segmented consumer groups are talking about, searching for and even the syntax they use when speaking, can all be extremely valuable in connecting your messaging and identifying tactics.

A significant stumbling block to capitalizing on this mash-up, as well as a source of client frustration, is siloed marketing organizations and the increasing use of outsourcing/”white labeling” digital and social strategy. Understanding social conversations and search analytics is crucial to developing “top down” creative and strategy. Everyone on the team should understand the segmented consumer groups, brand objectives and have a deep dive understanding of how and what media the consumer is consuming. Buyers and negotiators should have a clear understanding of campaign objectives and creative approaches, not just “old school” commoditized target goals of GRPs, CPPs and CPMs. If not, you’ll never meet the consumer in the middle.

Chris Beck

Chief Vision Officer @ #26dottwo

chris [at] 26dottwo [dot] com